The shadow of the White Kites started with the question: What would a story without individual characters look like? And can it be any good?
The reason I wanted to try this experiment was to challenge the classic trope of singular heroes, chosen ones, and all those things that tell people they’re separate from and superior to others. The resulting tale is an homage to coming together, to the people and acts that make us stronger when we’re faced with anguish.
Our reader is someone who does just this: gives strength and inspires me to always be generous, mindful, loving, soft in a world that wants to toughen us up. Nita Okoko is an artist and public health practitioner based in Narrm/Melbourne. She is a community builder but a rule breaker. You can find her on Twitter.
The shadow of the White Kites
We are the people of the river bank. We have very little — not even faith in gods anymore. Faith in government, we don't remember ever having.
We lived under the shadow of the White Kites for time immemorial. They let us choose someone to rule over us, but only from among the White Kites. It was a choice between scavenging birds which was like having no choice at all. Their weight above us blocked out the sun, preventing life to thrive in our country.
We've heard other folk tell tales of how they changed the world, yet we are poor in this regard also. There is, however, one story we do like to tell when we look up at the universe in the evening. It reminds us of how the stars are connected.
One winter's day, we had two visitors who seemed to come straight out of the delta where the two rivers meet. One of our family swore that they saw the visitors wading out of the water: they wore black moth vests which were frosted over at the ends, creating a dazzling effect like stars against the night sky.
They didn't need to tell us they were magicians. That much was clear.
They didn't need to tell us they were siblings, so alike were they. A few of us to this day ask whether it was a single person all along who had enchanted the riverbank.
They wore caps of the same moth as their vests: round with no brim. These caps they took off and presented us with a note. It said,
We are the Bakshish twins, here to grace your people with the good fortune of a thousand geese. Open your arms to us to open up to incredible wealth.
The paper the note was written on spoke too; it told that this paper had been handed to many people before it came to our hands on the river bank. There was spilt tea on it with a little robot oil.
We smiled to each other. This charming sister and brother were swindlers. Common quacks. We've seen this before and even tried our hand at it. We can handle them, we thought.
We let them in to see if we could learn anything about the craft of deception.
Their handsome smile (for it really was just one smile) lit up the winter day with a warm glow that nearly reached our hearts. We say "nearly" because the shadows of the White Kites had put a distance between most of us and our ability to feel gentleness. We were all very separate from one another then, living for ourselves.
Surviving.
The two strangers took slices of melon we offered and asked us for some tea. They didn't speak like other people, but always by lifting those black moth caps that revealed shiny bold heads with a single note of paper on them. The note they would take down to pass to one or another of us.
We sat awkwardly in the living room, unsure how to speak with our visitors or their caps. They slurped their tea loudly and finished the additional slices of melon we brought out.
They didn't exactly break the silence so much as give us something to mull over when the brother Bakshish — the one with the thick eyebrows — took from his cap a longer note.
Blessings fall on this generous family and welcoming home. May you lose your poverty but not your humble nature. We wish to return the generosity with a spell, if you would let us perform it. The spell might look strange at first but we plead you to have minds as open as your door and your hearts. This spell can help free you from the shadow of the White Kites.
We passed the note around so everyone could look at it and, with subtle nods, arranged to step outside to discuss further.
The idea of being freed from the White Kites was fantastical.
While our children were open to the impossible idea, our adults were more rationalistic. They determined that this farce — while charming — must be highly scripted, considering it was unthinkable how else the notes could be written out in such short time and be placed onto their heads, under their caps, without any of us noticing.
We all agreed that the pair were really most beautiful to look at (we had never seen such shiny heads) and that it couldn't hurt to entertain them a little longer, just to see where they want to take this silly swindle.
The cold weather rushed us back inside, where one of our elders told them we would be honoured to have them cast their freedom spell. "Thank you for choosing our riverbank for your blessing, magnificent duo", they said.
The one with the full lips offered her moth cap like a vagabond. Inside was yet another note,
Call us brother. Call us sister. Our fates have always been tied together as knotted branches of family for we all live in Their shadows.
The Bakshish twins knew how to warm us also with words, not only with their smiles.
We took their hands. We feasted them generously that night, not sparing on the meal as we would have done if alone. That put everyone in good spirit and we nearly forgot we were being tricked by the pretty young siblings. Lips made the children laugh by pulling comical faces which were almost inimitable. Eyebrows showed the group a couple of card tricks, not blinking once.
We set them up in the kids' sleeping area, moving the young ones to stay with grandparents. The twins were polite and they nodded wishing us a heartfelt restful night.
While some of us took their wishes seriously, our children were much too curious to comprehend sleeping.
Toes first, they slid out of our blankets and waited in the dark to make sure they weren't detected. Only the cold of winter snapped at their skin to scold them off for being up so late. Shushing each other, our children waded through the thick of night to where the strange strangers were sleeping.
It was surprising to find them snoring lightly, as we'd not heard a single sound from their mouths until then.
Under crossed palms on the twins' bellies, the two moth hats lolled up and down with their light snoring. With one child taking a hold of each finger, they worked together to lift the palms of the sleeping visitors unnoticed.
Lifting the round hats up, the kids saw nothing unusual: none of the notes we had been given throughout the day were tucked into them, no piece of technology was hardwired to their shiny heads, and certainly no evidence of a mouse scribe.
They tried the hats on each other to see if anything would happen. Nothing did, except the urge to laugh out loud.
Either Lips or Eyebrows stirred in their sleep. It was time to get back to bed; we would learn nothing more that night.
Our children trotted back in perfect silence all thinking that the newcomers might be magic after all. We had put up our defenses yet the Bakshish twins – a bridge in age between us and our children – might really be here to help us.
We slept the rest of the night soundly, blanketed in hope.
The twins' spell-casting the next day tempered that hope. Watching two fully grown people flapping their vests like the White Kites' wings, cro-cro-crowing into sky, and sto-sto-stomping onto ground will do that to you.
They really seemed to be making it up on the spot.
We went about our days as usual. Some of us went to the sandy city, while other stayed home and plugged ourselves into wall sockets to work. The children spent most of their day inside the books, where the teachers lived.
And those strangers? You guessed it, they spent the whole day mimicking the White Kite overlords. They did not stop to drink from the river or to eat melon. With time, their made-up movements revealed a dance with quite some finesse in it. There was order there. Perhaps, there was magic in it too! A cloud began to form around them.
By the hour everyone had finished with their day labours, we were all dumbfounded watching the frenzy of the riverbank dance floor. Again, it was the young ones with hearts least shrouded in shadows that trusted in the strangers first and joined in.
It wasn't long before we were all dancers, little and big.
Lips and Eyebrows welcomed us into their dusty moth cloud with those devastating smiles. They modeled for us what to do next. They blew into the air, trying to lift the cloud from our level to the level of the White Kites.
We understood we needed to follow. So we breathed in deeply and blew with great power, each one of us feeling like our souls were reaching out with the exhalations. The whole village of riverbankers took part, our souls dancing with one another just as our bodies did beneath them.
Some of our party claim to this day that they saw the Bakshish twins wink at each other at that moment, but this is unconfirmed. What we can say for sure is that we all believed then in the magic that was spinning in that dust cloud.
The White Kites took no notice of us and the cloud only made it as far as our heads.
We grew tired of blowing and collapsed to the ground. The dust settled on our smiling faces. Our heads and our hearts were light — some of the darkness brought on by living in the White Kites' shadows was repaired. You could practically feel the healing.
In good cheer, some of us found the twins and raised them into the air. But there was no mistaking their mood was somewhere else. They fought free to the ground. Eyebrows lifted his cap, solemnly. The note read,
We're sorry we couldn't help. As you can see, the only magic we know is the one with our caps. We made up that story and this dance. We will go now, to spare everyone the embarrassment.
"Wait", one of us called. "Why did you make something up about being able to stop the White Kites? "
Eyebrows frowned over at Lips, who lifted her cap. It is was a piece of paper folded up like an accordion with one word on each square saying,
We. Needed. A. Safe. Place. To. Spend. The. Night.
And really that's what we all need. Their deception in the end was quite gentle. They were like us: furrowed in the shadow of the Kites. They were created of the same limitations we were. They were kin.
"Don't go", called our elder. "Stay on this riverbank. We can be the safe place for you every night."
There was no need to commune together separately to agree; our souls already had communication during the dance; the elder knew this was the will of us all.
Lips uncovered her scalp again with a new note on it.
There isn't enough for you here, don't be silly. We appreciate the help you've already given.
They thought their only magic was a trick, but they were able to teach us riverfolk the power of all coming together, of believing that change was possible. Our imaginations would never be the same again. In a way, the twins did succeed at freeing us from the shadow of the Kites.
We told them all these things. We paid them compliments about their dancing, about their goodness. We fed them melon until they were sore. All of these things we did to plead them to stay with us for we had learnt the magic of being together.
And they really did stay.
So now, generations later, as we tell this story on the same riverbank where it happened, some of us are the ancestors of those famous Bakshish twins. But we do not know who and we don't need to know. In a way, we've all inherited their lessons.
No, the mystery of how they used their caps to communicate was never passed down. What we took away was overall much more marvelous.
Where we were once separate, individual, "I";
now, we're together, collective, "We".
Those moth caps have long been dust clouds that have gathered into our heads and shaped our dreams away from the shadows. Day in, day out, we continued the dance that was begun with the arrival of the Bakshish twins — it never failed at making us feel better.
Eventually, the White Kites did notice us. They had no choice: people in the Sandy city and other towns were also practicing the dance. The clouds we formed left a mark on their white, sleet surfaces. The Kites were no longer out of reach.
The shadow of the White Kites