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You’re listening to The Voice of Dog. This is Rob MacWolf, your fellow traveler, and Today’s story is “Exile from the Land of Giant Turtles” by Gar “Sahoni” Atkins, an indigenous and queer game designer and writer, you can find this story in the anthology collection In The Light of the Dawn; An Anthology of Antiquity. You can also find his games on his Itch.io bramblewolfgames.
Author’s Note: “This is a magical realism retelling of a bit of an important part of Tsalagi oral history and is regarded as part of our origin as a people. The original story is a very straight-forward historical story with no grand or fantastical elements. And while it might make a dry read as a transcription, when you hear it in Tsalagi, from a language speaker, there is a level of emotion and unspoken context that can be felt in the bones. My hopes in adding the narrative beats I did, the big, fantastical elements, the personal perspective, is an attempt to capture the impressions of some of these like you would with an abstract painting. This is a story meant to be read out loud, tasting the syllables and the emotions they carry. They are the bold colors and brushstrokes of the story as it asks you to consider the perspective of the real people that made that journey. I just hope I captured just some of what this story means.”
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https://thevoice.dog/episode/exile-from-the-land-of-giant-turtles-by-gar-sahoni-atkins
Transcripts
You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.
Speaker:This is Rob MacWolf,
Speaker:your fellow traveler,
Speaker:and today’s story is
Speaker:Exile from the Land of Giant Turtles by Gar “Sahoni” Atkins .
Speaker:who is an indigenous and queer game designer and writer.
Speaker:You can find this story in the anthology collection
Speaker:In the Light of the Dawn,
Speaker:in Anthology of Antiquity,
Speaker:and you can also find his games
Speaker:on his itch.io, Bramble Wolf Games.
Speaker:This is a magical realism retelling of a bit of
Speaker:an important part of Tsalagi
Speaker:oral history and is regarded as part of our origin as a people.
Speaker:The original story is a very straight-forward historical story with no grand or fantastical elements.
Speaker:And while it might make a dry read as a transcription, when you hear it in Tsalagi,
Speaker:from a language speaker,
Speaker:there is a level of emotion and unspoken context that can be felt in the bones.
Speaker:My hopes in adding the narrative beats I did,
Speaker:the big, fantastical elements, the personal perspective,
Speaker:is an attempt to capture the impressions of some of
Speaker:these like you would with an abstract painting.
Speaker:This is a story meant to be read out loud,
Speaker:tasting the syllables and the emotions they carry.
Speaker:They are the bold colors and brushstrokes of the story
Speaker:as it asks you to consider the perspective
Speaker:of the real people that made that journey.
Speaker:I just hope I captured just some of what this story means.
Speaker:Exile from the Land of Giant Turtles
Speaker:by Gar “Sahoni” Atkins
Speaker:I tell this story as it was told to me…
Speaker:A sudden frigid jolt rattled through the bones of The Sailor,
Speaker:snapping him out of his passive dream and crashing him back into reality with the wake beneath him.
Speaker:The Sailor hurt. Bruises bloomed onto his skin like unwanted flowers as salt ground into the bends of his body.
Speaker:Pale mockeries of the sweet land he left behind.
Speaker:The Sailor came from a land of giant turtles,
Speaker:and in the future
Speaker:that’s what he would use
Speaker:as its name to others.
Speaker:Part of his body would always know the island. The ache
Speaker:in his muscle from pulling fishing nets.
Speaker:The longing for the taste of the tart-sweet fruit
Speaker:he worked the land for as a child.
Speaker:The way his ears picked out the songs of familiar birds and let him know
Speaker:home was near.
Speaker:The memory of
Speaker:its burning sun on
Speaker:his skin and the relief he felt as he dove into its waters to where the giant turtles play.
Speaker:The Sailor wondered if the land of great and giant turtles would ever be the same.
Speaker:He yearned to know if the land would remember him in turn.
Speaker:Some bitter irrational part of him wondered
Speaker:if he did something to spoil the relationship he and the land had.
Speaker:It was all he knew and
Speaker:all he knew now
Speaker:was that he could never return.
Speaker:Not to the land of his birth.
Speaker:The place of his father and generations of his ancestors’ fathers before him.
Speaker:This was a bond so personal and it had been pulled away from him
Speaker:with all the time and effort of a shaky breath.
Speaker:This wasn’t even the right canoe for a journey like this
Speaker:under the best of circumstances.
Speaker:A single hull vessel with a float to steady and hardly enough room for the people it held.
Speaker:This was never meant to leave the relative peace of the cove,
Speaker:let alone drift into the dangers of the open ocean.
Speaker:This hadn’t been a journey The Sailor had planned on making.
Speaker:The Sailor remembered when the canoe was made.
Speaker:His Lover had made it from the trees between their houses.
Speaker:An unsure gift between them, an offered hand. He could
Speaker:practically taste the smoke on his tongue
Speaker:from when they hollowed the insides,
Speaker:though he could name
Speaker:other more likely reasons for that sensation
Speaker:other than a sweet memory.
Speaker:It was something they made together between jokes and boasting.
Speaker:Quiet bets and teasing each other over the small things
Speaker:he wished he could hold in his hands once more.
Speaker:He remembered pulling splinters out of His Lover’s hands the next day as they argued over a name.
Speaker:The all too warm body that felt too uncomfortable in the summer months. How it
Speaker:felt when they fell asleep
Speaker:in the canoe together.
Speaker:He wished he could feel it against him
Speaker:more than anything.
Speaker:To brace him against this storm.
Speaker:To feel him keep The Sailor warm and
Speaker:add his strength to his own.
Speaker:He knew all too well the canoe was far too fragile for its cargo.
Speaker:He lost track of the times he had to repair the float after a storm.
Speaker:So he held fast. He wished he had cared more about the repairs
Speaker:when he had had the time. He hoped the rope binding would hold.
Speaker:This canoe held all of his home that was left,
Speaker:huddled and clinging just as tight to what they could.
Speaker:Family, friends, whoever could make it in time.
Speaker:Mothers comforted their children, stern elders stared onwards
Speaker:with wounded memories deeper than The Sailor’s own,
Speaker:trying to keep watch on the other ships as they were flicked among the green foam-tipped waves.
Speaker:He had no way of telling if the painted red hulls of the boats he saw were the same vessels or someone new. His body burned and struggled against him as he kept pushing forward
Speaker:through another wave that threatened to capsize them all
Speaker:to chase those glimpses of scarlet.
Speaker:He had to focus on keeping them upright and forward.
Speaker:He had to keep them together.
Speaker:They would die if he didn’t
Speaker:and that was an immutable truth.
Speaker:Some part of him wondered if His Lover was on one of those ships.
Speaker:It was impossible to tell.
Speaker:The silhouettes he could make out didn’t give away much.
Speaker:Just that other fishers who had the same idea as him
Speaker:and gathered as many folks as they could
Speaker:before pushing out into danger and unknown.
Speaker:It had all been so fast. So loud, when it happened. In a breath.
Speaker:The island had shook underneath him.
Speaker:It had sunk and slipped,
Speaker:changing underneath the fisher as it split.
Speaker:Water from the ocean rushed in to fill the gaps
Speaker:and reclaim what slipped
Speaker:from its secret grasp.
Speaker:But an earthquake wasn’t an unknown experience.
Speaker:An earthquake wasn’t new.
Speaker:The Sailor had lived through his share of tremors and major disasters. He remembered the first time
Speaker:he had been woken up by an earthquake.
Speaker:He remembered how his mother comforted him
Speaker:and told him that it was just the giant turtle the island was on deciding to move.
Speaker:He remembered being taken up the old trails and hiding out high on the mountains as hurricanes drove through their homes
Speaker:at the peak of every summer,
Speaker:as if to mark the shift of seasons.
Speaker:But those were the sort of things you could rebuild from,
Speaker:as long as you had people at your side.
Speaker:He remembered clearly clawing through the black dirt to help his aunts recover what precious things could be salvaged
Speaker:from under the mud of the
Speaker:landslide. He supposed he was leaving
Speaker:those memories behind as well.
Speaker:What had been different
Speaker:was what came after the turtle shifted.
Speaker:The mountain spit smoke and ash and soot
Speaker:that stuck to everything
Speaker:like the remnants of the ashes from the sacred fire.
Speaker:But there was no good luck to be found there.
Speaker:Just aching scalding burns.
Speaker:It stung his eyes and made it hard to see beyond a hazy double vision.
Speaker:A hateful cloud that wrapped its fingers around his throat and tried to strangle the life out of him.
Speaker:It had weighed him down and made it heavy to move.
Speaker:Sitting in his lungs until he put water between them.
Speaker:He remembered seeing those collapsed on the beach,
Speaker:those who didn’t move quickly enough, cautiously enough.
Speaker:Where those that were
Speaker:too unlucky or refused to move without making sure others were safe had collapsed. Dead or as good as dead in the moments to come.
Speaker:The Sailor wished he could have done more. Saved more.
Speaker:But a second later and he would have been another body on the beach.
Speaker:Something dropped out from under his stomach
Speaker:as he came to the realization of
Speaker:what leaving all that behind meant.
Speaker:When all this started, there had been five trade boats out,
Speaker:larger canoes made for the ocean,
Speaker:that had been out when the disaster had struck.
Speaker:They would have been out on the deep water when they were affected. Would they be okay? Would
Speaker:they have been safe or
Speaker:able to hide out from the worst of this disaster?
Speaker:What would they think when they saw what happened to their home?
Speaker:Would they be able to find home? The stars
Speaker:they shared to navigate were blacked out by the cloak cast by the mountain’s clouds.
Speaker:Seven vaults high and stretching out as far as he could imagine.
Speaker:All he could do was follow the others and hope for
Speaker:the north they knew to be there.
Speaker:Seven canoes. That was all there was left.
Speaker:That’s all that there was left of The Land of Giant Turtles. All the proof that their home existed
Speaker:and had been destroyed by something they couldn’t stop
Speaker:was them and what they had been allowed to carry.
Speaker:The words on their lips, the clothes on their backs, and the memories they left behind.
Speaker:Something happened on that trip.
Speaker:No matter what their relationships had been before, those
Speaker:had died and been
Speaker:washed away in those waves. Something new formed in their place
Speaker:calcinating friends, family, old rivals and enemies into something more unified.
Speaker:Maybe just because that’s what they needed in that moment.
Speaker:An unspoken telepathic promise
Speaker:of shared responsibility or a simple recognition of familiarity
Speaker:and the comfort found within that.
Speaker:Why wasn’t as important as what it meant.
Speaker:The seven had landed someplace North
Speaker:and with little more direction than that.
Speaker:A marshland made of tall grass and slow water, and that was calm enough for the fleet’s bruised bodies and bones.
Speaker:The marshes and swamps were home to many strangers that regarded them as strangers in turn.
Speaker:To the west, they met the crawfish between the reeds, fierce and bold.
Speaker:They showed them how to fashion darts and feed themselves.
Speaker:To the east, the alligators with powerful jaws,
Speaker:slow to act but decisive in their choice.
Speaker:They gave them the quiet they needed,
Speaker:at least for a little bit,
Speaker:but they knew they couldn’t stay.
Speaker:This was not their home
Speaker:and they could still see the clouds that took their home
Speaker:from them on the distant horizon.
Speaker:So The Sailor left that name behind
Speaker:and became The Traveler.
Speaker:The Traveler had pushed forward,
Speaker:leading the march through the stranger lands.
Speaker:They followed the old trade routes worn into the earth by people they never knew,
Speaker:trading what crafts they could make on the road in exchange for supplies and directions.
Speaker:The more they moved, the heavier the words on their tongue felt,
Speaker:bitter like a medicine intentionally turned poison.
Speaker:The Traveler’s feet felt raw,
Speaker:leaving behind footprints of salt and soot
Speaker:wherever he went,
Speaker:black marks and blood sinking into the land.
Speaker:But nowhere they rested their heads was home.
Speaker:Every night he would awaken to find those choking jealous clouds, just on the edge of camp,
Speaker:threatening to cross some unseen threshold.
Speaker:He could see their eyes,
Speaker:flickering with the embers that burned down the forest he spent his childhood running through.
Speaker:Smelling like the flesh of family he left behind.
Speaker:Whispering with the heated crack of his house collapsing in on itself.
Speaker:He could see it in the eyes of those he traveled with,
Speaker:and somehow, he knew,
Speaker:they could see it
Speaker:just as clear in his judging by the sadness they would trade.
Speaker:They spoke of The Traveler like he was already dead.
Speaker:They feasted on the bones of all they stole
Speaker:while comparing him to mosquitoes and ticks.
Speaker:They claimed he still owed them
Speaker:and that he should be thankful for the burns and rattling breath.
Speaker:That they were gifts and a mercy.
Speaker:Something that made him better for knowing the curse they brought.
Speaker:The Traveler found himself, despite everything,
Speaker:looking for the body of his lover.
Speaker:He didn’t know what he expected to find among the grim mess and he couldn’t
Speaker:decide for himself what would be the worse outcome.
Speaker:Was it better to have a longing hope they were still out there,
Speaker:or a grim resolution so he could mourn?
Speaker:The knowledge it gave him offered no answers,
Speaker:but he knew if he let those clouds get closer he’d join that pile of bones they dragged behind them.
Speaker:So he kept moving.
Speaker:He led his people through the golden grasslands where
Speaker:the leaves were as tall as trees and the wind raced through unfettered.
Speaker:Cutting, singing, telling stories of things they had yet to see.
Speaker:Where buffalo stood like silent guardians and weaved pretty things in the grass.
Speaker:But it was not home.
Speaker:He led them through hills
Speaker:and green, where spirits marched nightly between the mounds and cicadas hawked their goods.
Speaker:But this was not their home.
Speaker:The clouds followed.
Speaker:Always just on the edge of camp,
Speaker:feeling ready to snatch and take what they could.
Speaker:The Traveler didn’t know what the future looked like.
Speaker:He had felt like that had been one of those things the clouds had taken from him too.
Speaker:So he focused on today and tomorrow.
Speaker:He knew he needed a place to rest.
Speaker:He ached as real as
Speaker:wounds on his body for the right to rest,
Speaker:in a place where his people could exist as themselves.
Speaker:Not much to ask of the spirits around them, but it
Speaker:felt like an impossible goal
Speaker:from the aching feet on which he stood.
Speaker:The only thing he was allowed to think about
Speaker:was the next step.
Speaker:With the steady forward beat
Speaker:of his people’s march,
Speaker:The Traveler felt the clawing wound of the clouds he carried inside him reach around his heart,
Speaker:anxiety the blade of its knife.
Speaker:What future did they have?
Speaker:What sort of people would they be without the island they called home?
Speaker:Would they know the gentle side of the sea?
Speaker:How to catch a fish? The satisfaction of the juice
Speaker:of the fresh fruit on their tongues?
Speaker:Without giant turtles?
Speaker:All the little things that
Speaker:didn’t seem to carry with it much weight on their own
Speaker:made up home. It was these things that connected them to land
Speaker:and let them know it loved them back.
Speaker:Even if they survived, without these things would they know the same songs and why they sang them? Would they understand the stories they told?
Speaker:Someday, when his people no longer had a use for the words for these things,
Speaker:would they understand him?
Speaker:The Traveler wondered if
Speaker:he would be another thing lost.
Speaker:He wondered if it was just enough to make it to another day.
Speaker:The footprints of The Traveler were stained maroon with ash and blood
Speaker:as he felt another wave of grief roll over him.
Speaker:He mourned for the death of the future
Speaker:that could never be.
Speaker:For the hole inside him of things he could never replace.
Speaker:He never let it cross his face as he marched, for fear of the clouds,
Speaker:but he ached for the things he didn’t know
Speaker:and never could. His stomach lurched as he felt the weight
Speaker:and responsibility of the things he did know.
Speaker:Sometimes the dreams of those no longer with them were heavy as the tent packs he carried on his battered back.
Speaker:He came to the top of a mountain
Speaker:and listened to it sing a song older than anything else.
Speaker:Red earth and yellow stone formed the gentle slopes and sudden cliffs.
Speaker:Gentle cedar green as far as the eyes could see.
Speaker:From his place on high he could see
Speaker:a great rattlesnake.
Speaker:He watched it slide free of its old skin in the valleys below,
Speaker:slow and careful.
Speaker:A white haint battered and bruised
Speaker:was left behind while the snake’s new scales shone like the rocks from the bottom of a river.
Speaker:It flexed in the sun,
Speaker:the same as always,
Speaker:if bigger. There had been a period of quiet,
Speaker:if not peace. In the cold north, they learned
Speaker:how unprepared they had been for the land away from their homes.
Speaker:But they had found shelter with Five Sisters.
Speaker:For a while, the clouds had not been able to find them.
Speaker:They could, for a while, rest. He didn’t feel that burning slag clogging up his throat with every breath.
Speaker:The footprints he brought
Speaker:didn’t blacken the snow and moss.
Speaker:These people they met,
Speaker:in their infinite kindness, introduced them to the land they walked.
Speaker:They used new words to describe the relationship they built but the emotions were familiar.
Speaker:A mother that cared, the responsibility to your relations,
Speaker:that care and work you put into these relationships would be returned.
Speaker:They were taught which plants carried good medicine,
Speaker:what the animals were saying, and how to survive the harsh cold
Speaker:they could expect on the mountains.
Speaker:The Traveler became The Listener
Speaker:and he had found the control he had thought he lost beneath the waves that night long ago.
Speaker:Time had passed and soon it had been years since The Listener’s exile from the Land of Giant Turtles.
Speaker:He had lost count of exactly how many.
Speaker:Enough that he remembered emotions outside of grief.
Speaker:Elders had passed, new life was born,
Speaker:and the burden of the weight he carried
Speaker:grew as he learned
Speaker:the hollowness he carried with him a little more intimately.
Speaker:But The Listener knew this was not their home either.
Speaker:That ashen soot still clung to his body like a reminder.
Speaker:Eventually the clouds had found them.
Speaker:And when they had found him again,
Speaker:the bodies he saw with them
Speaker:were more fresh, more familiar.
Speaker:Sometimes they wore the faces of those he held dear in an attempt to lead him out of the safety of his friends and family.
Speaker:They used their words and voices to call out from
Speaker:the dark, twisting the sounds in ways they were never meant to carry.
Speaker:When he became The Traveler again,
Speaker:he was not unprepared.
Speaker:They carried with them the seeds for something more,
Speaker:both the ones they carried with them,
Speaker:and the ones that they were gifted by the Five Sisters.
Speaker:What they did with them was up to them.
Speaker:By night’s end he would be The Traveler no more,
Speaker:one way or another.
Speaker:He was tired of being tired.
Speaker:He was tired of aching feet and no place to sit.
Speaker:His muscles burned with every stride as they
Speaker:slowly climbed those old mountains
Speaker:and he took the next step.
Speaker:Back to where he heard those mountains sing.
Speaker:Where he saw the snake shed its skin.
Speaker:As he came to the mountain top he could see the stars,
Speaker:the same ones his people had sailed under,
Speaker:the same ones some small part of him hoped somewhere out there they still were.
Speaker:These mountains would be their new home because they would
Speaker:make it so. They would be the ones who carried his ancestors and the generations of ancestors before them.
Speaker:Their songs, struggles, and joys would live on
Speaker:because he would make it so.
Speaker:They would not conquer these mountains, but build new relations.
Speaker:They built and found new ways to care.
Speaker:They would make mistakes. They would learn.
Speaker:They would find new songs to sing. And different berries to eat.
Speaker:And that they could fish in rivers.
Speaker:As long as they survived,
Speaker:they would still be,
Speaker:if a bit more than before.
Speaker:And they would celebrate that.
Speaker:They lit a sacred fire. They made plans about what the future held for them.
Speaker:They danced and ate together
Speaker:and as they did the ash that had clung to their skin was shed
Speaker:like that of a great serpent.
Speaker:Anigilohi, Anisahoni, Aniwaya, Anigotegewi, Aniawi, Anitsisqua, Aniwodi. These were the names those seven canoes took,
Speaker:shedding ash as they sprouted fur,
Speaker:hoof, and feather.
Speaker:They became wolves, deer, and pumas.
Speaker:They became the ravens, bears, and the twirling winds themselves.
Speaker:They danced with bells and rattles for those that were still with them.
Speaker:They sang for those that had moved on and passed.
Speaker:They told stories about people that could not be there with them in the hope that would
Speaker:keep them alive. The new panther told stories about his old lover
Speaker:and listened to others talk about
Speaker:the others that might still be out there under the same stars.
Speaker:The celebration was high
Speaker:and even as the clouds gnashed and cursed and bit
Speaker:from the edges of their shadows,
Speaker:the clouds could not reach them.
Speaker:As long as the seven clans of his nation in all their varied forms could tell their stories about where they had come from
Speaker:and how they got there.
Speaker:As long as they carried with them the lessons and relationships that mattered,
Speaker:the land of giant turtles would still be with them in the oldest mountains.
Speaker:They would be themselves,
Speaker:if a little more.