Monala the Hero: An Oral Tradition Story of Courage

The World Before the Rains

Every year, right before the beginning of the rainy season — right when the air is at its thickest, hottest, and most utterly unbearable — everybody rushes around trying to get everything done. When the rains come, you want to be ready. You never want to get caught out. Because once they start, they do not stop for months. The world is transformed entirely: the fields become lakes, the stilted houses on which we live become islands, and life becomes attuned to the migration of the padang fish. They come so thick through the muddy waters that once held our crops that one cast of the net will feed each family for a week. I remember the idyll — those carefree days after the lakes have formed, when there is nothing to do but lie in a hammock listening to the rain patter on the tin roof.

But the rainy season does not begin with idyll; it begins with fury. The rains wash off the hills, flooding the land, bringing debris and danger. Brightly coloured banda birds dance in the rain, squawking, hoping to attract a mate to their nests under the leaves of the seringa tree — larger than a man those leaves are; they call them the umbrellas of the forest. And what of man? During the floods, we huddle in our homes, those shacks made of a'iti wood and hammered tin. The harvest leaves us with rice, vegetables, and chiles. The pigs have all been cut, seasoned, and dried in the pantry. The chickens are too frightened to produce eggs, but we need them for later, during the Draining, when we run out of fish.

We pass the fury of the floods in terror. Every year, homes are washed away. Every year, somebody we know dies, their whole family with them. Our children, every flood, will lose a friend or two. Oral traditions like the one I am about to tell exist in communities all over the world precisely for moments like these — to make sense of suffering and to give the living a reason to endure.

The Duty of the Storyteller

To soothe the children, we tell them the story of Monala. This job falls to the eldest in the household, and for the first time, this is my duty. So I conjure the memory of my father, rest his soul, and I gather the children around.

The Invaders and the Flight into the Caves

Monala was just ten years old — scarcely old enough to recite the Babbanods by heart, let alone save her people — but that is just what she did. Monala's story begins in the Caves of Qan, where the young people liked to gather. There was a pool there, so clear you thought it was air, not water. The youth liked to swim there, and Monala was always sneaking off from her chores to follow her older sister Monawa. "Monala, go home," her sister used to tease. "There are boys here, and I can't be seen with you." But Monala would not leave. Instead, she would go past the pool, into the cave, and explore in the darkness while her sister socialized. She knew a shortcut to run ahead of her sister, so that when her sister left to return home, Monala would always be there to meet her, never letting on that she had been playing in the caves all day.

Monala and her sister lived in the Niniu Valley, where their people had lived peacefully for generations. They were so isolated that they were unaware of the conflict that raged all around them, until one day a group of strange men appeared. They wore suits of metal and carried weapons so fearsome they would frighten a vang. The strange men wasted no energy on talk; they simply began killing. They spared nobody, and within minutes the entire valley was in a panic. Some tried to fight back with their farm implements, but these were no weapons and the men were no soldiers — they died in the most gruesome of ways. Their heads were set on pikes and their entrails spilled to the ground. Cold, black death was set upon the valley that day. A purer evil had never been seen there.

The older men went to meet the invaders, to slow them down so that the others could escape. They fled, bringing nothing but the shirts on their backs, into the hills. Monala, Monawa, and their two little brothers headed into the hills while the eldest brother and their mother gathered up some food and blankets. The children gathered at the entrance to the cave — sixteen in all, from four families.

They waited for the others to join them. Every minute took forever, and nobody ever came. All they could smell was the acrid smoke in the air from the burning fields and homes, and the shadows cast by the vile uduti, circling for dead flesh, drawn to the valley in numbers so great they nearly blotted out the sun. The older children needed no explanation — nobody would be joining them. Monala clambered up the rocks to see. Wanting to remain hidden, she crawled under the ci'ili bush, its thorns reaching down and cutting her open as she crept beneath it. That is when she saw them. The invaders were coming, headed straight up the path from the valley, toward the hills and the caves where the children waited quietly by the pool of water.

Monala crawled backward, getting cut some more, and ran back down to tell her sister. Monawa looked at the group — none was older than she. "They are coming. We must go."

"Go where?" said Tammon, a boy of nine and a playmate of Monala's.

"The only place we can — into the cave."

The children shuffled into the cave, but Monawa knew they were doomed — their tracks would lead the invaders right to them. Monala saw her sister's fear. "I know where we can go," she said, taking her big sister's hand, and she led the children down the dark path. Before long, they could not see a thing.

But they could hear, and the invaders were near. The soldiers moved silently, the only noise the clanking of armor. They followed the children's footprints into the cave, and with their torches they would soon catch up. Monala implored the children to move quickly, into a small shaft on the right. The light of a torch filled the small cavern just as Monawa, the last of the children, was sneaking through the opening. An arrow hit her from behind, piercing her kidney, and with a final pull from Monala she fell through the opening — but it was too late. The life was leaking out of her.

Monala looked on in horror. Ever since she was born, there was only her sister. They were inseparable. Monawa looked up at her younger sister. "You have to go. They will get through that opening soon enough."

"I can't — not without you. You're our leader." A man's hand reached through the opening, which was only two and a half feet high. Then came a face. Monala kicked him hard and looked back to her sister, but Monawa was gone.

Monala ran back to the other children, who were waiting only a few feet away. She did not know what to do. It seemed hopeless. Then she looked back at her sister, and did the only thing she could do: honor Monawa. She turned to the other children. "Follow me!" And she dashed down the pitch-black corridor.