Chapter Four: The Three Gooshas
Zeeca yawned and woke up. "Where am I?" she wondered. "I
thought I was a little ant. Is that the wall of a room in my house?
I think I'll go out and play."
Soon, she was climbing a tree. She climbed up very high and jumped
down from branch to branch, but when she got down to the trunk, she hugged
the trunk and slid down. Suddenly, she saw her best friend Looca,
and ran to her, shouting, "you'll never imagine how high I climbed! I
got up to the smallest leaves!"
"Why don't we have a tree-climbing contest?" said Looca.
"Good idea!" said Zeeca.
"I'm climbing higher than you!" boasted Looca after a while, but Zeeca
pushed herself up onto branch after branch until she was at smaller leaves.
"I won, I won!" Zeeca yelled down to Looca -- who was only a little
lower -- and she started jumping down.
When Zeeca was on the ground, Looca shouted down, "I'm climbing higher
than you!" -- since she was. Zeeca started shouting that she had
won the contest anyway, when she was distracted by the sound of Glafo splashing
in the water. "Hey!" she shouted up to her friend. "Do you
want to come splash in the water with my grandfather?"
Looca didn't answer. She just jumped down and started running for
the watering hole that Glafo was splashing in. Zeeca ran after her.
Then Glafo saw his friend Ofoo splashing in another watering hole, and
Ofoo saw his friend Oofa squishing some fruit on her friend Uppa's neck,
and Uppa saw her friend Zezoo swinging upside down from a tree like a monkey,
and so on and so on, until the whole tribe of Rememberers were waving to
each other.
In the middle of all this joyful playing, Oofa leaned over to her friend
Uppa -- whom she had been playing catch-the-coconut with -- and whispered,
"I had the dream last night. I'm going to get my drum now."
She came back with a hollowed-out log and two sticks and began drumming
as loud as she could, until the sticks broke and she took others and started
drumming again: tap tap tap tap...
Everyone stopped what they were doing, and they all started running to
a very old tree, and gathered around it.
Gradually, Oofa's drumming stopped. When it had stopped, they all
began the chants of the first Goosha, "God, please don't forget us!
God, please be like us, not like them!..." over and over. They
all sounded worried.
Now, Oofa led the prayer that opened the second Goosha: "God, we
will now together think of ideas to help the non-rememberers to remember,
which will help You to remember too."
There were a few moments of hemming and hawing. Then someone spoke
up and said, "If we see them remembering anything, we could give them fruit
as a reward."
Uppa whispered to Glafo, "Not again! Blasha's said that a hundred
times already!"
"We should hit them on the head", said a small boy, "and see if it knocks
any remembering into their brains!"
"That's the silliest idea I ever heard", someone groaned. "Did falling
out of a tree knock that into your head, Lebba?"
"Wait a moment", Oba interrupted. "Here's one of them, wandering
away from home again." It was a young boy, about Zeeca's age. With
a curious expression, he was peeking out from behind a tree at the edge of
the meeting.
Everyone in the gathering looked at each other, wondering who would lead
him back to his group of non-rememberers. Zeeca smiled. She walked
over to the boy and took him by the hand. Gently, she led him some
distance off, then stopped to watch the rest of the gathering, still holding
his hand.
The suggestions continued, until, with a stroke of the drum, Oofa began
the third Goosha. "We never stay! We play all
day! That's what we say! Hooray, hooray!..."
All hundred Rememberers were shouting happily.
As the gathering ended, Boofa said to Glafo, "I'm still worried. I
can't keep it to the Three Gooshas."
"That's why we play all day!" Glafo replied. "Come on, I'll
race you to the house!"
But when they got to the house, there was Zeeca with the non-remembering
boy. "During the second Goosha", she said, "I had an idea. Maybe
we can keep him, and see if he can learn from us. I'll call him Esta."
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