Her children were there. Not here, but safe.
This was a land of dogs now.
She howled once more and heard them answer again.
Then she padded back down the hill to Bony Boy and his dogs.
CHAPTER 50
Loa
The Season of Fruit and Flowers
Loa gazed out across his land as the first of the sunlight glinted on the rocks. Little Boy and Little Girl sat next to him, chewing hopper bones from yesterday’s hunt. He only had to say ‘down’ now and they’d sit and then roll over, waiting for their treat. Beside them the fire flickered and flared.
The river had shrunk to a clear sweep of water down one end of the swamp; the once-submerged grasslands were again hard and flat and just beginning to brown off. Flocks of birds bobbed among the grass seeds.
The dog was out there, somewhere. Even as he thought it he heard her howl from the top of the ridge.
‘Hrrrrrl! Hrrrllll!’
The sound echoed across the rocks and another call came from the far-off hill towards the sea.
‘Hrrrl! Hrrrl!’
Little Boy and Little Girl stopped chewing to listen, but they didn’t answer back.
So Big Boy and Big Girl were safe. He’d worried when they hadn’t come back one day with the other dogs. He grinned. Three dogs were enough for any hunter.
‘Hrrrl!’ That was the dog’s call again. Loa leaned back against the rock. He and the dogs would hunt again this morning, before the hoppers went to the shade of their midday resting places. Little Boy and Little Girl were getting even better at herding the game his way. Sometimes the three dogs even brought the game down themselves. But these days the dog knew to let him take the skin, the bladder and whatever else he wanted before they dragged away the rest. He smiled. Little Boy and Little Girl obeyed him every time he gave an order. Their mother obeyed only when she wanted to.
He had more spears now, with good bone points. He still used his obsidian knife as a spearhead for hunting hoppers and large birds, but the bone-headed spears were good enough to fish with.
Maybe we won’t hunt hoppers today, he thought, idly rubbing Little Girl’s ears. He never tried to rub the dog’s ears — she might nip his hand. He could fish from the river bank — his fish hooks were useful now, strong enough to catch the biggest fish. This was the season for turtle and crocodile eggs. The dogs sniffed out the nests easily, crunching the soft bones of the baby crocs and turtles in the eggs. There were a couple of crocs near now, a big one and a small one towards the sea. He watched for their tracks every day, making sure he knew exactly where they were. The dogs seemed to be able to sniff out crocs as well as their nests too. They were so big now that no other animal could catch them.
Suddenly he sat straighter, staring at the horizon. Smoke!
Another wildfire? But this grass was still too green to burn easily. He hadn’t heard thunder either. This smoke hung like a necklace in the sky: it was a campfire.
People.
For a moment all he felt was joy. He hadn’t allowed himself to feel lonely this past season, but now it came swelling back like a storm tide.
Men to hunt with. Women’s laughter, songs and stories around the fire. He had dreamed of finding people for so long. Reality struck him like a wave in the face. These people would be strangers — as strange, perhaps, as this new land he was just coming to know. He’d had no idea back when he’d landed just how different this country and its animals were from all he’d known. Worse — to the people here he would be a stranger too. And, he remembered, his dogs might be strangest of all. There were no other packs here.
A stranger might be an enemy. The unknown was always frightening.
Back home clans spoke different languages. The further away they were the more their language was different. He could learn a new language — but not in time to say, ‘I want to be a friend. I am a stranger in a new land. I will take to your ways. Just let me live.’
What if these people were head-hunters? The grandfathers told stories of clans who killed strangers and hung their skulls on trees around their camps.
He swallowed. What if the people who lived here were really different, just like the hoppers weren’t like any animal he’d ever seen? Maybe they had tails, or swung from trees. Maybe this really was the land of ghosts …
Stop it, he told himself. You’re a man, not a boy to be frightened by stories around a campfire. But a wise man, a hunter, should be cautious.
He held himself straighter. He was a hunter. He could move silently, a shadow among the trees, so no one could see him. The dogs moved silently too. Rubbish dogs were good at silence, at slinking around the edges of a camp. The dogs would scent out people long before they might see him.
He’d find these people and watch them, silently, secretly; he’d make sure of them before they even knew he was there.
He had learned to live with this new land. Now it was time to learn its people too.
CHAPTER 51
Loa
He cut that afternoon’s fish into long thin strips, enough for him and the dogs to eat for the next couple of days, then hung it over a green wood fire overnight. The smoke and dryness would stop the strips spoiling.
He covered his campfire with dry bones, and then big logs, damp from the swamp. The coals should stay slowly burning for days, but with almost no smoke — he didn’t want the strangers to see it till he knew more about them.
The strangers’ smoke still lazily spiralled into the sky. He headed towards it, the dogs padding at his heels.
The dogs stayed with him all day, skirting around rainwater lakes covered in water lilies, keeping to the high ground where the grass was shorter and the going easier. Clouds of birds flapped into the sky as they passed. I’ll need to be careful, he thought. The birds’ alarm might give him away.
He climbed up onto a hill, away from crocodiles. The strangers’ campfire smoke was close now, possibly only a few bends along the river that curled below them. But no one would find him here. People stayed by their campfires at night, unless they were ghosts, nightwalkers roaming the shadows …
No ghosts! he told himself firmly. And if they were … he could make a raft and paddle along the coast where the ghosts wouldn’t find him. But would the dogs follow him onto a raft? What if they jumped off and tried to swim to shore?
Little Boy and Little Girl might let him tie them up. But the dog was too wise to be tricked. Nor did he want to do it: you didn’t trick your friends.
All at once he knew how much the dogs meant to him. They were his family, his clan, his hunting partners. Had anyone ever had a friendship with animals like this before?
He didn’t know. But he couldn’t part with the dogs now.
The dog stood up in what could have been a signal. Little Girl and Little Boy stood up too. The dogs vanished into the shadows, returning almost immediately with a long-necked bird each. The younger dogs dropped their birds at Loa’s feet. They sat obediently while he plucked them. He waited till they’d rolled over, then let them sit up and gave them back their birds, eating the smoked fish himself.
Darkness gathered like a woven basket across the sky. The moon rose, soft looking and silky. The darkness turned to shadows in the moonlight.
He stood and signalled the dogs to be quiet. It was silly to sign to dogs, he knew — they didn’t know the hunting signals. And they always were quiet! But it felt right.
He trod carefully down the hill, then walked along the river, trusting the dogs to scent crocodile or snake. He could smell campfire smoke now and the fatty scent of charred hopper. The dogs lifted their noses. He was glad they’d just eaten. He thought they’d be wary of strange humans, just as he was, but at least they wouldn’t be tempted too close by hunger.
He looked at them, his shadow companions, almost the same colour as the moonlit grass. What if the strangers speared his dogs?
Suddenly he was more scared for them than himself. The dog knew that humans could
be dangerous. But Little Boy and Little Girl had known only him. He imagined Little Girl bleeding in the grass; or Little Boy with a spear through his side. He could hardly explain the dogs were his friends if he didn’t know the strangers’ language.
All at once he wanted to gather the dogs to him, to carry them away where they’d be safe. If only he hadn’t brought them with him! Though in fact the dogs had brought themselves. Dogs went where they wanted to, even if they came when you called them — most of the time. He had no way to make them stay.
Please, he thought, stay with me now. Don’t go near the strangers, no matter how interesting they smell. Stay.
Flames rippled around the next bend, the fire reflected in the water. Another few steps and he could see the fire itself, and then the figures around it.
‘Sit,’ he whispered, soft as a breath of wind. Little Boy and Little Girl sat. The dog looked at Loa, then at her puppies. She didn’t sit. But she didn’t leave his side either.
He let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, then looked at the strangers more closely.
They were as human as himself. Not ghosts. No tails either. A few wore strange breechcloths or necklaces, but others were naked.
They could almost have been his own clan, only taller and more long-legged, though maybe that was the effect of the leaping shadows from the flames. A few grandfathers and grandmothers, younger women with babies, children already curling up to sleep near the fire. A couple of men rubbed fat into their spears. They were longer and thicker than his weapons, he thought.
Something cold nudged his leg. It was Little Girl, trying to get his attention. She looked at him and then at the camp, as though to say, ‘Are we going there?’
The dog looked at him too. She seemed as wary of the strangers as he was. Did she remember being tied up by the cooking pit? He shook his head at Little Girl, though he didn’t think she understood the gesture. But they understood when he began to creep away. They stayed at his side, as quiet as the moon.
CHAPTER 52
Loa
He had only meant to doze then leave in the pre-dawn light. But yesterday’s walk — and the relief of finding humans — had tired him more than he’d thought.
The sunlight on his face woke him. He sat up suddenly and looked around, alarmed.
Where were the younger dogs? Had they wandered near the camp? Maybe they were already dog meat …
He scrambled to his feet, then saw them sitting on the rock, comfortably surveying the world below. If they’d hunted earlier there was no sign of it. And if they had, he realised with relief, no one had seen them.
He heard voices in the distance, further away than last night’s camp.
Good, he thought. No one was coming this way.
He needed time — time to get back to his own camp, time to think about how he could make the strangers see the dogs as friends, not food, to show them how good a partnership between dogs and humans could be. To see him not as some magician who could talk to animals, or even as an enemy who’d come sneaking by to steal a woman, but as exactly what he was — a young man who had lost his own people and was prepared to take on another clan’s language and ways.
As long as they spared his dogs.
He strode down the hill, keeping away from the river, where men might be silently fishing or women catching birds. He didn’t stop to drink. The dogs did — there was no way he could stop them and he couldn’t risk calling them. But finally the river was behind them. The world was silent, dawn’s bird chorus done for the day. Only one more lake through the grasslands …
The birds that had flown away the day before weren’t there today. Maybe a crocodile had scared them —
He saw her then. But realised she’d seen him first. She stood immobile: she was long-limbed, her skin as dark as the water, her eyes wide and scared. She was a little younger than he was, perhaps. He saw when she saw the dogs too, her eyes widening as she wondered whether to run from the strange man and the strange beasts, or if running would just make them chase her.
‘Sit,’ he whispered to the dogs. Little Boy and Little Girl sat obediently. The dog glanced at her puppies, then at Loa, then at the girl. Finally she decided to sit too, scratching her ear with her hind leg.
The girl stared at Loa and at the dogs. She looked scared, but curious too.
Loa tried a smile. ‘Hello.’
The girl said something he didn’t understand.
Loa put his spear down, then lifted his hands to show he held no weapons. He reached down and scratched Little Boy behind the ears. The dog grinned. Little Girl rolled over to let him scratch her tummy.
The dog gazed at the girl. The girl gazed back, then at Loa, fascination battling with fear.
How could he say, ‘Don’t be scared of us’? How could he show her he wasn’t going to try to capture her, or hurt her, and that the dogs wouldn’t hurt her either?
Suddenly Little Girl stood up. Before he could stop her she padded over to the girl. She sniffed the girl’s legs, curiously, then snuffled at a woven bag lying in the grass. She sat at the girl’s feet, looking up hopefully. Loa wondered if the bag held mussels or maybe wood grubs. He didn’t know how to ask.
The girl looked at Loa, looked at Little Boy and the dog, then at Little Girl, still sitting at her feet, mouth open in a doggy grin. Slowly, very slowly, the girl reached out and touched Little Girl’s head, then darted her fingers away, as though she was scared she’d be bitten.
‘Grrf,’ said Little Girl, drooling at the scent of whatever was in the basket.
Loa reached down and scratched Little Boy’s ears again. The girl gave a delighted giggle as she bent down and scratched Little Girl the same way. The young dog shut her eyes in pleasure.
The girl looked at Loa, a true smile on her face now as she scratched Little Girl just the way he was scratching Little Boy. He smiled back at her, admiring her courage. She must have seen Little Girl’s sharp teeth. Any of the girls back home would have run away screaming. But this girl touched a strong and frightening animal. This girl smiled at a stranger.
The dog gazed at them, wary.
He wanted to stay with the girl. Learn how to talk to her, ask her to take him to her family. But he had to think about the dogs too.
Suddenly Loa knew what to do.
He held up his hand and pointed towards his far-off camp. He gestured at himself, then at the dogs, then at the camp again. Then he pointed towards the girl’s camp, made a beckoning gesture, then pointed to his camp again. The signals were the only way he knew how to say, ‘I’m taking the dogs back to my camp. Tell your people to come to my camp too.’
The girl stared at him. Did she understand?
Someone called from back towards the river. The girl called something in return.
He had to go. Now. Fast, before a hunter could find them and cast a spear: at the dogs for food; at him in case he was attacking or stealing the girl. He had to hope she’d tell them he wasn’t an enemy, that his dogs were strange, but not dangerous or for eating.
He smiled at her one last time. She smiled back, her face like the sun edging above the mountains, like the moon lifting out of the seas.
He began to jog into the grasslands. The dogs pranced after him.
He glanced back. The girl watched him. He wondered what she saw, then looked at her face and knew.
She saw a hunter. A man, his muscles stronger from the last hard year of work, not the boy he’d been such a short time earlier. A man who could survive alone, who could make a camp from nothing. A warrior who commanded animals.
That’s me, he thought. That’s who I am now.
The voices were closer now. He began to run through the grass, the dogs trotting on either side. But his mind’s eye still saw the girl.
CHAPTER 53
Loa
Dusk crept across the world as he drew near to his own camp. The coals of his fire were still glowing. He threw more wood on, knowing it was too dark for the str
angers to see his smoke tonight. He wanted the girl’s clan to find him, but not for a few days yet.
He speared a fish at first light, taking the time to feed it bit at a time to the dogs, making sure that Little Girl and Little Boy sat and rolled over obediently every time he gave the word.
The dog looked bored, as though it was her right to share the fish without all the sitting and rolling. He agreed with her, but worry tugged at him. If only there was some way to tell her that she would be safer if she was tamer.
But he knew her as well as she knew him. She did what she wanted.
He headed back to his camp and began to dig a pit, glad the soil wasn’t yet the hard almost-rock of the Dry. It was hard work, loosening the soil with a stick, scraping it out with a giant bailer shell carried here by a tide at the height of the Rain.
It took a day to make the pit big enough. He ate turtle eggs because he didn’t want to spare time to hunt, but he still made sure that Little Girl and Little Boy sat and rolled over each time before they ate. He gathered rocks, flinging them into the pit, then firewood, as dry as he could find.
At night he dreamed of the girl.
Now it was time to hunt.
‘Dog!’
He never knew if she’d come when he called or not. But today her golden shape appeared on the path, the younger dogs behind her.
He lifted his hunting spear. ‘Hunt,’ he said. ‘Hunt, girl.’
He didn’t know if the dog understood his words. But she knew what it meant when he lifted his spear and gazed at the hoppers then at her.
She gave a doggy grin, her tongue lolling, then slunk off into the still-long grass. The younger dogs followed her.
Loa waited for them to drive the hoppers towards him, his spear in his hands.
CHAPTER 54
Loa
Dingo: The Dog Who Conquered a Continent Page 9