The Old Ways

 

Jaya did not want to leave her canoe, but she could not hope to keep pace with the Ekwa boats.  Without a word they unstepped her mast and removed the outrigger so they could lash her craft into a smaller bundle, and they stowed it aboard one of their own.  She admired the workmanship of their boats.  The sleek lines and the jagged black coloration.  They were made for eleven men each, deeper and wider than hers.

She sat at the center and watched as they rowed low and swift, bent over their places with their hard, tattooed hands on the seasoned wood of their oars.  The steersman sat at the stern, one leg over the side to brace his foot on the rudder.  They sliced through the waves and then out beyond the scattered rocks.  They stayed close in to shore, evading shoals and sandbars with the ease of long experience.  There was no chatter among them, no jokes or stories or songs, only the steady, low exhalations as they sped through the waters.

The day burned down behind them in the west, and they rounded a point and then struck out across the deeps toward the dim shadow of another island.  Jaya noticed how sharks haunted the waters behind them, sniffing at the drops of blood that fell from the fresh heads hung on the high prows.  The sea-beasts knew to follow these ships, seeking meat.  She imagined the Ekwa must feed them often, to keep them hungry.  Shark-hunted waters would help keep intruders away.

It was after dark when she heard the crash of waves, and by the light of stars and the rising blade of the moon the Ekwa rowed between high points of rock hung with clinging vines and night flowers and into a hidden lagoon between ridges thick with jungle growth.  She smelled cooking fish and boiling pitch, and she saw the shimmering lights of many fires.  Here was a village tucked away from seeking eyes, canoes drawn up on the white crescent shore and stilted huts clustered near the water.  She closed her eyes for a moment, for the sight and the smells, while different, were familiar enough to cause a pang in her chest, a missing place of home in her heart.

The Wandering Sea

 

She sailed in and out of days, following the setting sun into the west.  The deep sea rolled slow beneath her, the waters a bottomless blue, and she fell into the rhythm as though she were remembering it from another life.  Jaya had absorbed the stories of sailing and voyaging from her mother, now long dead, and she remembered what she had been told to do.  At night she reefed her sail in close and rode the hollow waves, in the morning she cast her net and fished, and then when the winds rose she raised sail and let the canoe run as fast as it wanted.

Alone, she could only sleep in little breaths when the wind slackened, day or night.  She had to watch the weather and the waves.  A real storm here in the deeps would be dangerous, could drive her little craft far off its course, but then her course was not set very closely.  She knew to go west and north, but nothing else.  She had seen a map, once, sketched on the inside of supple bark, but her father had destroyed all that still remained.  To him, the outside world was dead, and yet it had still come to kill him.

Night was the strangest time.  On the sea, the sky was bright and terrible to look on, the high vault set with a thousand stars like jewels, all clustered in loops and coils and the great trail that stretched from one horizon to the other.  The moon was waning, and so only a sliver rose and set like a hook cast into the black sea to hunt for prey.

Sometimes, the sea glowed in the dark, threads of green or blue or pink coursing over the waves, wending deep down out of sight.  Jaya heard whales rise in the dark not far from her, heard their great, gasping breaths and felt her canoe shift as they slid by, close.  Sometimes, in the dusk, she saw the fins of sharks cutting the water like knives, but she did not fear them.  Sharks did not hunt men unless there was blood poured in the water, and she drank the blood of the fish she caught to save what little water she carried.

Three days.  Six days.  Nine.  On the ninth night the wind was restless, and she sat up as the sky came alive with stars and the moon cut the horizon.  The waves were shallow and uneasy, the wind shifting from quarter to quarter.  Jaya had to keep her sail close and adjust it so she would not be blown in circles.  She watched the moon and steered by it, keeping her heading.

The moan came from beneath her, and at first she thought it was a whale singing in the dark, as they sometimes did, but it was deeper than a whale, and it seemed to shudder through the skin of her canoe.  She braced against the rail and gripped the ropes, but she looked to where her father’s sword hung from the mast.  If some sea-demon set upon her, she would be alone in the emptiness, with no one to aid her.  Perhaps it was the will of the gods that she survive, but none could know it.  Jaya did not believe the gods would aid her if she were so foolish as to expect it.

The stars reflected on the sea in a mirror of light, shimmering on the waves, and then she saw a light from below.  Something shone blue down in the deeps, and then brighter, and she made her rope tight and crawled to the mast and took down her sword as the water heaved under her.  Her canoe lifted and then turned, caught the wind and slid down the slope of the wave as the glow came again, seemingly from everywhere beneath her.

The First King

 

Another foreign-made historical film about Rome, and yet this one is actually pretty good.  The First King (known in Italian as Il Primo Re and variously billed as The First King: Birth of an Empire and Romulus and Remus: The First King) is an attempt to give the legend of the founding of Rome the serious treatment.  Rather than treat this as pure legend, the film is a gritty, dirty, bloody epic that tries to realistically depict life in Italy in the 8th Century BCE.

The story opens with two brothers tending their sheep, and right away we see the essential difference between them, as Romulus is the gentler, more spiritual brother, while Remus is tougher and more practical, and yet he is willing to go to any lengths to protect his sibling.  The move then hits with a bang as the two are washed away by a massive flood that shows off the generally high production values this movie has, as the effects look spectacular.

Washed ashore along with many others, they are enslaved by the people of Alba Longa.  In myth, the brothers were hidden heirs of the bloodline of the kings of Alba, and thus were said to be descended from Aeneas of Troy, but here there is no mention of that.  The brothers and the other slaves are made to fight each other to the death, but they start a riot and escape.

The violence in the film is brutally direct, with no flinching away from the blood or gore.  People are impaled on spears, stabbed, gutted, shot with arrows and beheaded.  All the weapons are good, period designs from the iron age, and the swords in particular are well-done for a change.  The armor and clothing look very primitive, and I think they may have gone a bit overboard on that, as it often makes the movie look closer to Paleolithic than it maybe should, but we have very little solid information about what people of the time wore, as textiles don’t survive very long.

Romulus is wounded in the battle, and so Remus drags him along, refusing to let him die, even when the other escapees want to kill him, fearing he is cursed by the gods.  I think it’s a bit of a misstep having Romulus out of action for so much of the second act, as it lessens the conflict between them later.  But it does show us how far Remus is willing to go to protect his brother.

After they escape they wander through the forest and defeat another tribe, taking their village and people as their own.  Here things do drag some, as Remus is supposed to be having a kind of existential crisis, denying the hand of the gods in his life and claiming to be the master of his own fate.  It’s meant to draw him as opposite of his brother, who is much more spiritual, but mostly it seems like he is just being a dick.

When Romulus recovers, then the schism between the two brothers can really get going, with Remus demanding obeisance as king, casting down religious symbols, and enforcing his will with the threat of violence, while Romulus reaches out to the conquered tribe, helps build trust, and shows his devotion to the will of the gods.  In so many Greco-Roman stories the gods are very present and very much real, but here we are seeing Roman mystisicm in its primitive infancy, with bloody rites and sacred flames, men living in genuine fear of offending the gods and willing to kill over it without hesitation.

All of it builds to a final battle and the final showdown between the brothers and their differing viewpoints, and we know Romulus founded Rome, so it’s not like it’s a spoiler who wins.  Overall the movie is very well-made, with some good acting and excellent cinematography.  The effects and practical gore are solid, and the fight choreography is exciting and varied without being too fancy, preserving a raw-edged, savage feel.

This is a pretty slow-paced movie, with much more a focus on drama than action, but the action is good, and the brooding, iron age world is forbidding and primal.  The gods are a mysterious, bloody power to be appeased, and there is very little in the way of right or wrong, just power and resistance to it.  It’s in Latin, but a reconstructed version that is meant to sound more like the ancient language of the time, worked out by scholars.  Everything about this movie speaks of care and an earnest desire to tell an uncompromising story.  This is on Prime Video and is definitely worth your time.