It began like little tufts of grass, poking out of the barren field. A miracle, perhaps, or just the result of the previous season’s extensive rainfall, for which all were very grateful. After a long drought and hunger, fields had sprung to life from nowhere, producing a harvest such as they hadn’t seen in eighteen years of life, giving forth edible titbits and boilable broth ingredients and corn. That one field remained bare, but for the tufts, however; the earth stayed drier than July and harder than the giant nut that fell on old Martha’s nose in the Year of the Nut and broke it clean off. The farmer whose field it was scratched his head whilst looking out at his field eleven times a day; he could be seen there at the exact same times every day, you could set your watch by him. He couldn’t fathom why he had been chosen by his deity for such cruel punishment. His daughter, however, a ten year old with the wisdom of an old man and the simplicity of fool, had other ideas, and had secretly been watering the patch where the tuft grew with her special blend of water from the well, infused with stolen petals from their richer neighbour’s fertile land, and her cat’s urine. As her father was scratching his head for the ninetieth day in a row, and the congealed blood on the wound there began to flow freely again, Hummhimmina, for so she was called, screamed with shock and delight. For there, in the corner of her father’s barren field, where he couldn’t espy her, Hummhimmina had found that her watered patch was sprouting her very own little tuft of grass.
She ran full pelt to her little stone house, tripping on her way and obtaining a lovely read welt along her forehead, and she ran clean through the door, which was, luckily, open. Her mother, Hemmhimmino, whacked her on the shin with a stirring spoon for her clumsiness, and asked nothing about her scream, for Hummhimmina was always screaming about something. Hummhimmina sulked for forty-five seconds, then took a bucket and ran to the well to make up some more of her special life-giving mixture. Having collected the water, the petals, and her cat’s wee, she gently poured the lot over the tuft of grass and sang it an encouraging song, that went:
grow little tufty, grow fro grow
and if you don’t, I won’t water you again
grow little tufty-wuft, grow-y fro-y grow
and then I’ll be a rich girl and run away from home
grow tufty wufty tuft, grow until you’re grown
or I won’t be nice to you and you won’t be alive
grow my little tufty friend, come out and play
and then Daddy will see that I’m better than James
James was Hummhimmina’s little brother who their father doted on. He was only eleven months old but his father had already named him heir to the farm and announced that he would grow to be a hero. Hummhimmina had her reservations, which was fair enough, given his size and the fact that all he did was cry and poo into his nappy, and didn’t feel too kindly towards the family’s new edition. As she sang her song she elaborated on all the things that would happen if the plant grew well – fame for her, maybe a little more love, the chance of a better life, perhaps – and on all the things that would happen if it didn’t grow well – which are best left between Hummhimmina and the plant.
Each day the tufts grew an inch longer and taller and looked thicker and healthier. After several weeks they were so long that they’d begun to droop over with the force of gravity, and the whole thing was wider than Hummhimmina’s torso, top to bottom. She decided the plant needed a name and she called it Hessikinto, which she later shortened to Kinto so that it’d fit better into her songs of growth. She could feel the crackle of something magical surrounding Kinto and she couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen with it. Would it be a giant carrot? Giant magic carrots, maybe? She thought she’d give Kinto another week and then it would be time to dig him out. Each night as her parents cooed over James and either snubbed or whacked her with whatever implement they happen to have in their easy reach, Hummhimmina merely smiled dreamily and thought about Kinto and what he’d turn out to be and how much he’d be worth. James could gurgle or scream for all she cared, he didn’t have a secret plant growing right under her father’s big ugly nose.
The morning for digging up Kinto arrived murky and cold and Hummhimmina was mighty glad of the dull weather, which would all the better hide her secret activities. As usual her father got up, marvelled over his son, and set off for a day of standing in his field, wondering what to do and what had gone wrong. Once he’d gone Hummhimmina performed her morning chores and then escaped her mother’s watch by prodding James and making him bawl. She slipped out and ran to Kinto with her little shovel and a very large sack to put him in, which earlier that morning she’d stolen from their rather empty larder. She knelt down and jabbed her shovel into the earth, coming up with a nice little shovel-full, which she flung behind her. She did it again, and heard a noise. “Whosat, whosere?” she cried, standing up, brandishing her shovel around like a dagger at the empty mist. A muffled cry replied, “Hmm hmm mm ma!” Hummhimmina gasped and fell down onto her knees before Kinto. She brushed aside his thick tufts and there, just visible above the earth and beneath his tufts, a hard, round surface was peeking out, like a very, very big potato. Hummhimmina rapped at it with her knuckles and it cried out again, “Hmm hmm mm ma!” Hummhimmina figured out that Kinto wasn’t ready to be dug out yet and so, casting aside the shovel, she knelt before him and sang him her new favourite song.
Kinto, Kinto, Kinto, I love you,
Kinto you’re my friend and I love you very much
Kinto, Kinto, Kinto, I love you,
Kinto you’re my friend and I love you very much
One week later, Hummhimmina was wondering again whether or not she ought to dig Kinto out. But as she sat with him and bent down to kiss his potato-like protrusion, she saw something new; the tops of two eyes were now peeking out, and they were looking right at her. “Kinto!” she cried. “You have eyes!” Once again, all Kinto would reply was “Hmm hmm mm ma!” In another week, both of his eyes were entirely above the earth and, while they fixated mostly on Hummhimmina while she was there, when she wasn’t they roamed the plane of earth before them, looking for the first time at the world, and thinking how very dull it was. Kinto was very bored of the earth in another week’s time, when the top of his nose appeared; and a month after that, when his mouth was nearing the surface, and he’d begun to pick up the rudiments of language in his mind but couldn’t speak yet, he willed himself to emerge quicker. In another month his whole face was out.
“Hummhimmina,” he said one morning as she watered him. “Can’t I have a cheese like you? I wish I could taste something!”
“Alright,” she said, suppressing her natural greed and unwillingness to share. And indeed the following week she regretted ever giving Kinto food to eat, for, as well as wanting an equal share of Hummhimmina’s food, which wasn’t generous anyway, he was much bigger than her and began demanding more and more.
“Hummhimmina, I’m starving!” he’d wail, tears pouring down his huge face which Hummhimmina would have to wipe away with her skirt. “Please feed me more, it hurts!” and she’d have to hoard whatever she could, steal whenever she could, and go without herself in order to feed the ever-hungry Kinto. But no matter how much she fed him, he grew no more, and remained for the next three months only head out of the ground. Whatever was underneath the ground attached to the head stayed there. At the end of the three months Hummhimmina was looking peaky, thin, and pale with malnutrition, and was weak and injured from the many beatings she’d received for stealing food. One day she woke up and sat down meekly at the table where her parents were eating their meagre breakfasts. An empty plate stood at Hummhimmina’s place. As she sat down and looked in puzzlement at the offending item, her father growled:
“No more food for you.”
“What, Papa?” she cried.
“You’re a thief. No more food until you stop stealing.”
Hummhimmina started wailing. Her father had expected that and ignored her, tucking into his own hunk of dry bread. But when she didn’t stop when he had drained the very last drop of his muddy oat drink, he kicked her under the table and said:
“Shut up.”
“Please Papa. You don’t understand. I had to steal that food. I stole it for Kinto!”
“Eh? Kinto? Is that another stray cat you’ve picked up? Because if it is…” he shook his fist at her.
“No! Just – just come and see,” she said, putting her little hand in his and dragging him away from the table. He followed her to the tufty patch, Hemmhimmino close behind with James. Kinto’s eyes saw them coming from afar and he began to sweat with fear. As they approached Hummhimmina’s father’s eyes widened in amazement.
“What is this, Hummhimmina?” he asked, kneeling to stroke the tufts of grass that were Kinto’s hair.
“That’s where all the food’s been going,” she said, crying. “That’s Kinto.”
Kinto looked up at Hummhimmina’s father with pleading, scared eyes.
“He’s a miracle,” her father said. “Can he speak?”
“Yes – go on, Kinto.”
“Hello,” Kinto said nervously. “I’m Kinto. Sorry I ate all your food. I was really hungry. Have you got any more?”
Hummhimmina’s father frowned. “Afraid we’ve had a bad year, son. We’re all but broke. I wasn’t planning on telling Hummhimmina yet, but…We’ve got to go away. Find another farm or another fortune, else we’ll starve.”
“Hummhimmina, don’t leave me!” Kinto cried. Hummhimmina dropped to the floor and embraced Kinto’s larger-than-life head.
“I won’t!” she swore.
“There’s no other way, Hummhimmina. We have no crops to sell. Unless we have something to sell, we starve.”
“Sell her,” Hemmhimmino said, jiggling James around. “Old Martha needs someone around the house. She hasn’t been too able since her nose came off. She’ll pay a good price for Hummhimmina, I’ll warrant.”
“No! Not old Martha!” Hummhimmina cried, but her father was already looking at her like she was a bag of money.
“Yes,” he said slowly, advancing towards her. “It’d only be a few years, she’s old, and without her nose she won’t last much longer. Come on, my girl, to Old Martha’s!”
“I won’t, I won’t!” Hummhimmina cried, throwing herself on the floor.
“Come, come, you don’t want Kinto to starve, do you?”
“Of course not! But who’ll look after him when I’ve gone?”
“Well I will, won’t I? He’s my crop, I’ve got to look after him.”
“He’s not a crop! He’s Kinto!”
“He’s a miracle, my girl, and we must keep him alive!”
“I won’t go to old Matha’s!”
“Not even for poor little Kinto?”
Hummhimmina looked at Kinto, who looked at her.
“Yes, for Kinto.”
So that afternoon her father marched her round to the noseless old Martha and exchanged her for a sum of money healthy enough to keep he and his family fed and clothed until the following year. Hummhimmina was slave-driven by old Martha and never got the opportunity to visit her beloved Kinto. The years dragged by and Hummhimmina spent long days cleaning, cooking, mending, and tending to Martha, while her girlhood passed her by, and, before she knew it, she was a young lady, ripe for marriage. She often thought about Kinto, who she thought fondly back on as her best friend, the lover she was cruelly taken from, her only chance of a future, and awaited him. As she eased out of childhood into womanhood, and began to lose the ability to accept as fact mystical or impossible things, however, Kinto evolved in her memory from a giant plant into a strong, wild boy that her family took in, and it was for him that she waited. But she knew she could never leave until old Martha passed on, and every night she prayed for her death. Her wish was granted on the eve of Hummhimmina’s eighteenth birthday. Finally free, she happily took the money old Martha had left her on her death bed and made the long trek back to her parents’ old farm. But when she got there, it was deserted and derelict. All signs of life, including Kinto, were gone. Hummhimmina cried and cried, her dreams all dashed against the wayside, and ran around her old house maniacally. When she’d expended all her energy doing that she lay down and slept for twelve hours. Awaking in the morning she decided she was going to forget Kinto, not waste any more years of her life waiting for him to rescue her, and make it on her own.
And so she did. Aged twenty-eight, she’d found a decent husband and had children of her own, whom she called Hessakimlo and Hessalimto. They were twin boys, good as a pair of eagles, and stocky too; Hummhimmina’s pride but also her demise. She made a good mother and was full of love to give but her mind had been blighted by sorrow since the day she found out Kinto was no longer at her farm. When her boys grew into men and her husband had passed on, she knew she had to find Kinto before her own death, lest she miss her chance to pursue true joy. Not really know where to start, she headed back to the old family farm and, to her intense surprise and delight, found someone living there.
“Ho!” she called to the man digging in a field. “Ho, who are you?”
The man looked up and replied “I be James, this be my farm, and you be trespassing so Miss better go afore I introduce my shovel to her head.”
“Can it really be, James, my long-lost brother, son of my proud father John and our mother Hemmhimmino?”
“That be me…You’re never Hummhimmina? They said you’s dead.”
“I, dead? No James, I’m here and alive and I came back to find…my family. Where are our parents?”
“They’s dead, int they?”
“Dead, really?”
“Oh yes, very dead, these ten year.”
“And what of the…what of my…what of Kinto?”
“Him? He be upstairs, int he?”
“Upstairs? What – in the house, here?”
“Oh yes, in the house, here.”
Hummhimmina ran to the house, through the door (again, thankfully open), and up the stairs. She fell into her old room, which was empty, bounded into her parents’ room, which was also empty, and finally tried James’ room, which was occupied.
“Kinto, Kinto, oh my, oh my Kinto!” she cried, espying the enormous head peeking out of the bed. She flung herself at his side. “Kinto! It’s your Hummhimmina, come back!”
“Hummhimmina’s dead, they said.”
“Yet here I am, alive!”
“She’s dead, they said. You got any cheese?”
“Not changed a drop! Oh my Kinto, here I am, Hummhimmina, come back for you!”
“She’s dead. Cheese?”
“Kinto, my Kinto, don’t you understand, I’m not dead, I’m here, here, for my Kinto!”
“Can’t be, Hummhimmina died.”
She punched his large head. “It’s me, Hummhimmina, here!”
“A ghost!” Kinto cried, shrinking into his bed. “James, a ghost! James, help!”
James came bounding up the stairs.
“Come on, idiot, she be Hummhimmina, alive, not ghost.”
“Ghost, James, Hummhimmina’s ghost has come!”
“Shut up, idiot,” James said, bringing down the shovel that was still in his hand heavily on Kinto’s leg. “She be alive and here.”
“Cheese?” Kinto asked. Hummhimmina looked between the two men in disgust.
“What’s wrong with you two? James, why do you hit him? Kinto, why are you in bed?”
“He be ill, int he? He be a right freak, don’t he? James be always looking after him, don’t I?”
“Why do you talk like that? Why do you hit him?”
“Talk how? He be a right idiot, that’s why. Never be helping, always be wanting cheese. I be breaking my back for him, and he just be bleating all the day long!”
“Cheese, who has cheese for me?”
Hummhimmina’s expression of incredulity and disappointment and disgust was lost on her brother and Kinto.
“I think I’ll go now.”
“That be the best, Hummhimmina.”
“Bring cheese next time, Hummhimmina!”
“Farewell, my brothers.”
Hummhimmina turned and left. Before leaving the farm entirely she visited the spot of Kinto’s birth and found it, along with the rest of the farm, sprouting potatoes and cabbage. A forlorn-looking cow was sitting in the old barn. Hummhimmina spat on the ground and left.
Elva Jozef 
