The Vorrh

he’d never accepted one of the solid bibles. He was an excellent policeman from the first day, obeying all orders and achieving all of his tasks. It was simpler than it looked – he explained to his people what they must be seen to do, they agreed and so it was done, and the new masters believed their wishes had been carried out. So good was he, in the eyes of his masters, that three years later they rewarded him by flying him from his land, into theirs; a long and meaningless journey, to show him the magnificence of their origins. By the time he had arrived in the grand European metropolis, he was without compass, gravity or direction; his shadow had remained behind, bewildered and gazing at the empty sky.
    They dressed him in smooth cloth and polished his hair. They put gloves on his feet and pointed boots; they called him John. They took him into great halls to meet many people; he had conducted his duties perfectly, they said. He was trustworthy, they said, a new generation of his clan, a prize in their empire.
    He just watched and closed his ears to the drone of their voices. He touched everything, felt its texture and colour to remember the difference, the size, and the fact that all things there were worn down, smoothed out and shiny, as if a sea of a million people had rubbed against the wood and the stone, curving its splinters and hushing its skin. The food they gave him made his mouth jump and sting, burnt him inside and skewered him so that he had to shit continually; even this they kept contained. He was not allowed outside into the clipped gardens, but locked in a tiny room, where all his waste had to be deposited, washed away in a cold stone cup. He could endure all of it, because he knew he would return soon.
    It was the museum that changed everything and explained the volume of their lies. Like the churches he had been to, it was lofty and dark; everyone whispered and moved quietly, respectful of the gods who lived there. One of the army men had guided him through, showing him box after box of impossible things, all caged in glass. They told lies – the scenes, the guide – about men, living in ice and sleeping with dogs; pointing to tiny totems that glowed in the dark; murmuring their magic; nodding together. Steadily growing more sickened, he had walked ahead and turned a corner, coming to a standstill before the next great case. In it shone all the gods of his fathers. The prison of glass and wood held them, cleaned and standing proud, so that all around could see their power and worship them. But on the floor of the prison were the prized tools and cherished possessions of his clan, all mixed and confused: men and women’s tokens, implements and secrets, entangled and fornicating, lewdly exposed and crushed under writing. Manila tags were tied to each, scrawled Whitemen lies gripping each cherished thing, animals in traps; the poached, the stolen and the maimed. All those things which had been taken away, discarded as shoddy and replaced with steel. And there, at the centre, was his grandfather’s sacrificial spear. The one that had been handed down towards him for centuries, its wood impregnated with the sweat and prayers of his family. The one that he had never touched. He had walked into a trove house of all that was significant, all that was cherished – all that was stolen.
    The visitors were humbled before these objects and deities, quietened into reverence by their influence. One of the uniformed elders got down onto his knees, nose almost touching the glass, to come closer to a carved manifestation of Linqqu, goddess of fertility and the fields.
    On the far wall were pictures. Almost in a state of trance, he walked closer to these, into a memory of his village, pinned to the wall and drained of colour. This was the final sacrilege; the exposure of the sacred, the dead, and the souls of the living.
    His sponsors were enjoying his visit, pleased with his attentive behaviour. They watched as he stared at a photograph of an elder of his tribe, sitting before an elaborately carved dwelling. It was a significant image of anthropological value, a first contact document that showed an uninterrupted culture in domestic vigour. Tsungali stared at his grandfather. The old man had never been photographed before, and he’d had no idea why the stranger was covering his face and shaking the box at him. Sitting on the steps of their Long House, legs holding an animal-tailed fly swat, the other