She watched the shadowy image of herself, her mind sad and quiet. Suddenly something else came into the reflection—the dark outline of a figure standing behind and above her. She whirled in quick fear and then, her heart still beating tumultuously, laughed for joy. It was Dom who stood behind her.
She was astonished that he had managed to creep up so quietly that she had not been aware of his approach. None of the boys from the village could have done that; however preoccupied she had been she would have heard something. As the squirrel had done . . . that was why it had scurried back into the tree.
Dom smiled. He was carrying something and he offered it to her. He had made a score or more of flowers—bright pointed stars of scarlet—into a kind of necklace, threading each one through the stem of the next. It was clumsily done but Va smiled her approval.
“It is very pretty, Dom.”
He took the chain of flowers and put it over her head, around her neck. He spoke words that she did not understand. She smiled again.
“We will go and find fruit to eat. And perhaps find nuts for my squirrel.”
She put her hand in his and together they went away from the pool. He limped a little, but she could tell his leg was almost well.
• • •
They found fruit and berries and ate them as they walked; Va also gathered some nuts and put them in the small pouch she carried on her belt. Wandering with no particular aim they came back in due course to the pool, and Dom made the swimming motions with his arms to show that he wanted to see her go in. So she slipped into the pool and swam from the shadowed dark to the golden sunlit water. Looking back to where Dom stood—seeing him only hazily from the sunlight that dazzled her eyes—she called him to come and swim with her: his leg was well enough for that. He made no move, though. Probably because he did not understand, she thought, and swam back to the bank. She told him again to come in, but he only stood there, looking down at her.
After a while he stooped and stretched out his hand toward her. She guessed he was offering to help her get out of the pool. She clasped her hand in his and then, laughing, pulled hard. Dom struggled for a moment to keep his balance before tumbling forward.
Their hands unlinked as he fell with a great splash beside her. Still laughing, Va swam round him, trod water and splashed at him. Dom was making clumsy threshing movements with his arms and legs, gasping and spluttering and swallowing water. When his head disappeared below the surface she realized what it was that had kept him from coming in when she called to him. It was nothing to do with his leg being hurt: swimming was another art that was unknown to the savages.
The water was deep in that part of the pool but shallower farther along. Va dived under, fishing for him. She got hold of his arm—he resisted but she managed to pull him along. Where the pool’s bottom shelved, she let him go. He went on threshing frantically until he realized that she was standing upright in the water, and stood up, gasping, beside her.
Va’s laughter stopped at the sight of his face. He was frightened, and also angry. He waded through the water toward her, his arm raised to strike. The blow landed harmlessly on her shoulder as she dodged and, plunging back into the water, swam out into the center of the pool. He shouted angrily but could not follow her.
It was her turn to be frightened: for the moment she was safe in the pool but she could not stay there. She saw Dom scramble up the bank and take hold of the club which he had dropped when he offered her his hand. He was a savage after all; as soon as she left the pool he would strike her with it and kill her.
But after a moment or two his face and voice softened. He made a beckoning gesture, but Va shook her head violently. He was only trying to persuade her to come out so he could kill her. Even when he dropped the club and beckoned again, with both arms this time, she made the same response.
Then he did a strange thing. Leaving the club behind him on the ground, he dropped awkwardly into the pool. She thought he was coming after her and, although she was already in deep water, swam farther out. He called to her, and waded out until the water was up to his chest. When she refused to come he waded still farther, though it was plain from the expression on his face that the depth of the water dismayed him. At last he stood with water up to his neck, his hands helplessly raised.
He was showing her that his anger was at an end. When Va finally smiled, he smiled in return. She swam to him and he took her arm, but not roughly. He said something she did not understand, and she told him that what she had done had been intended as a joke—that she had not wanted to hurt him or frighten him. It was his turn not to understand, but they laughed together.
They played for an hour or so in the pool, and Va tried to teach him to swim. It was not easy: he kept spluttering and sinking and a couple of times she had to pull him back into shallow water. At last, though, he managed a kind of swimming, for half a dozen strokes at a time.
Va said: “In a few days you will be swimming as well as I do, Dom.”
He did not know what the words meant, but he smiled and nodded.
• • •
Afterward they lay on the grassy bank, where the patch of sunlight had now settled. They ate the rest of the fruit they had gathered and rested from their exertions in the water. The sun moved on across the sky until it was time for Va to be going back to the village. She said so to Dom, who smiled and nodded uncomprehendingly. So she pointed toward the sun and then in the direction of the village as she had done the day before, to explain that she must go.
Dom shook his head, more emphatically when she repeated the gestures. He did not want her to leave, and for her part she did not want to go. She thought of the possibility of the two of them staying on together here. She knew where to find food; they had the pool to swim in, the animals to play with, each other for company. In due course the rest of the savages would grow tired of trying to get into the village and go somewhere else. When that happened she could take Dom back to the village with her. By that time he would no longer be a savage because she would have taught him things, as she had already taught him to swim. The Village Mother would not order him to be killed then: she would accept him as one of their people.
She had lain back in the sun, thinking of this, imagining how it all might be. Looking idly up into the tree she saw her squirrel again. She clutched Dom’s arm, pointing to it. They both stayed very still and the squirrel came down the tree trunk onto the ground. Va still had the nuts she had gathered in her pouch; she took one out and held it in her hand.
The squirrel ran across to take it from her. Dom did not move until it was a few feet away; then, before she realized what was happening, he swung the club of bone through the air in a flashing arc. It hit the squirrel’s head and crushed it.
Va cried out in distress. Dom picked up the squirrel’s corpse and held it in front of her for inspection. He was smiling, proud of the skill with which he had swung his club and killed this small animal. A trickle of blood ran from its mouth.
She shouted at him: “You are a savage! You know of nothing except killing. I hate you for coming into my wood and killing my squirrel!”
Dom looked at her, puzzled but still smiling. She scrambled to her feet and ran away from him through the trees. He called, and then ran after her. She heard the thud of his feet, but the sound fell farther and farther behind. His leg was still not strong enough for him to be able to keep up with her.
She was clear of him before she reached the outskirts of the wood, but still ran on. She met Gri, not at the place where she had seen him in the morning but close to the village. He said:
“You are just in time, Va. The savages are coming back. I saw them far up the valley.”
• • •
As soon as she got back, Va went to see the Village Mother. She ruled and looked after all the people, but because she was the mother of Va’s mother Va was special to her. She had long white ha
ir, a kind strong face, and was wiser, Va knew, than anyone in the world.
She told her the story of finding Dom and helping him. She admitted that she had been wrong in not telling the Village Mother about it at the beginning, and begged her forgiveness.
When she had finished, the Village Mother said:
“Your fault was one of kindness in the first place. That is better than other faults, but a fault is still a fault. These people are savages, as I have said. They have no arts, no skills except in hunting and killing. They seek to destroy us, and will do so if they can. You thought you could teach this boy, and some things perhaps you could. He could learn swimming. Perhaps he could understand the beauty of flowers and the joy of singing. But there are more important things he could never be taught; and things he knows which he cannot unlearn. So he killed the squirrel, a pretty, harmless creature, because killing lies deep in his nature.”
Va listened and wept. The Village Mother put a hand on her head.
“You are sad, daughter. It is right you should be, as punishment for your disobedience. But the sadness will not last. Soon the savages will tire of trying to get into our village and go away. Then you will forget this boy.”
• • •
Before sunset the savages were outside the hedge, raucously shouting their hatred. Va listened with horror to the ugly sound. At times she thought she could hear Dom’s voice among the rest.
5
DOM WAS MORE CONFUSED THAN anything else when Va ran away. He did not really become angry until she was completely lost to view, and he realized he could not hope to catch her. He went on, limping, to the edge of the wood and saw her far off, a small dot in the distance. He watched until she disappeared into a copse and then, both furious and miserable, retraced his steps.
The body of the squirrel was lying by the pool and he picked it up and looked at it. The single stroke with which he had crushed its skull had been a good one—something to set against her prowess in swimming. The fact that instead of praising him she had run away made no sense. He stared at the squirrel in disgust: it was not even good eating. He tossed it into the undergrowth and gloomily stared at the pool.
He had liked this place better than any he had ever seen. The green hush tempered by bird song, the dimness broken here and there by spears of sunlight, the animals and bright flowers and whispering water: it was as though his eyes and ears had been suddenly opened so that for the first time he could truly see and hear. Va had shown these things to him. Now, with her gone, although the other things remained he was only conscious of what was absent. Without her it meant nothing.
So he turned his back on the pool and left the wood. He went in the direction of the village but traveled warily; he knew what would happen to him if, by himself, he were to fall in with the men of Va’s tribe. He saw no sign of them, though, and when he reached the open space in which the village stood, he noticed that the gap in the hedge was closed and the villagers and their cattle were safe inside. Not long after that he heard the sounds of his own tribe approaching. They came noisily: they were not on a hunt and they wanted it known that this land was theirs. The triumphant shouts of the hunters went ahead of them.
They stopped, staring, when they saw Dom. His father came forward from the rest. He stood before Dom and put his hands on his shoulders, shaking him to make sure he was not a ghost.
He said: “We thought you were dead, my son. We returned to where we had left you and you were not there. We guessed you had crawled into a ditch to die. The old woman said that the evil spirit was so strong in you that you could not live another day.”
Dom showed his leg with the wound healing, and flexed it to show how much strength had already come back.
“I was given help.”
“What help?”
His father stood back from him, suspiciously. It was plain he thought the evil spirit might still be in Dom’s mind, twisting his thoughts. He said:
“No one of the tribe was with you.”
“Not from the tribe,” Dom said. “It was a girl, from that place there.”
He pointed to the village, and told the story. At the end his father said:
“You say that when you killed a squirrel she ran away from you. So the evil spirits were at work in her mind also.”
“She helped me. I am better because of the help she gave me.”
His father nodded. “This proves her madness. She knew you to be an enemy: she should have killed you when you were helpless, not helped you. Perhaps they are all mad in that place. It makes no difference. Mad or not, we will destroy them.”
His anger swelled up again as he remembered how they had defied him. He led the hunters forward into the clearing and they shouted with rage. Dom went with them and did his best to shout with the rest; but he kept thinking of Va and the wood. He knew that what his father said was right—he was the chief and therefore always right—but he could not help remembering the coolness of the pool and how good it had been to walk with Va in the shade of the trees.
Yet she had run away from him, for no reason, and refused to stop when he called her. Dom’s own anger was stirred by the recollection of that. In the end he shouted as loudly as the other hunters.
“We will kill you! This land is ours—we are the masters of it. Come out and fight if you are not women. And if you do not come out, then we will come and kill you where you hide!”
They went up close to the hedge in their frenzy, but a shower of stones drove them away.
• • •
That night they ate the meat which they had brought back from the day’s hunt. It was the first meat Dom had eaten since the tribe left him. He remembered the fruits and berries Va had brought, but thought how much better this meat was, full of red blood to give a hunter strength. From meat also one acquired that which was best in the spirit of the animal: courage from the lion, cunning from the pig, fleetness of foot from the antelope. What use were fruit and berries compared to this?
When they sat with full bellies, Dom’s father pointed to his belt.
“What is that?”
Dom explained that it was the stone knife the girl had given him. His father put out his hand and Dom handed the knife to him. He examined it carefully.
“It is much better than the knives our women make from the jaws of antelope. Why did she give you such a thing?” He tried it on the antelope hide he was wearing. “It cuts well.”
He put the knife away in his own belt. It was something Dom had expected and he did not resent it. Everything the tribe possessed belonged to the chief.
“There will be many things to take from them,” his father said. “Not only their beasts.”
One of the hunters said: “But we cannot get into the place. We have been many days in this valley, and we still cannot bring them to battle.”
“We will destroy them all,” Dom’s father said, “and take their goods. There are the tree-caves also. When we have slain them we will have those caves as shelter against the rains.”
The same hunter asked: “But how will we get through the hedge of thorns to be able to slay them?”
He was a powerful man, as strong as that one who had challenged Dom’s father following the defeat on the hillside, and who had been killed by him.
Dom’s father said: “We will stay here until we find a way.”
He looked at the hunter with fierce eyes, and the hunter dropped his head, Dom’s father said:
“They come out during the day while we are away hunting. Dom saw this: it was not the evil spirit telling lies to his mind. He met the girl, who tended his wound.” He patted the stone knife in his belt. “Here is proof of it. They wait until we have gone and then bring their beasts out to graze. They watch for us coming back, cowards that they are, and run when they see us. So we will not go away, but wait. They may stay in there many days, but in the end they
must come out.”
“If we must wait many days,” another hunter said, “we will have no meat. There is no game left in this part of the valley. We must go far away to hunt.”
“Then some will wait,” Dom’s father said, “while others hunt. And to make the meat last longer the women will cut it into strips and dry it in the sun, as they did when we lived in the grasslands. Fresh meat is good, but it will be better to have their beasts and stone knives, and their tree-caves.”
He looked hard at the other hunters, who listened to him in silence.
• • •
So next day the tribe stayed close by the village. Nothing happened except that the hunters went as near to the fence as they dared and hurled jeers and threats at those inside. No gap was opened in the hedge, and no one came out.
On the second day half the hunters went away down the valley to look for game, while the rest, along with the women and some of the boys and the old ones, kept watch on the clearing. Dom was one of the ones who stayed—his leg was not yet strong enough for the chase—but his father was with the hunters who went away. His strength and cunning would be the more needed in the hunt because their numbers were fewer.
That evening they returned with their kill, and the day after the women cut up the remaining meat into strips and dried it. On the fourth day they had dried meat to chew and some of the hunters grumbled, but stopped their grumbling when Dom’s father looked at them.
By the sixth day even the dried meat was almost finished, and half the hunters went off again, leaving the rest behind. Dom’s leg was now quite well but his father ordered him to stay, and although like the other hunters he was bored and restless he was bound to obey. The hours crawled by. Then in the middle of the afternoon someone noticed that branches of thorn were being pulled away to make a gap in the hedge.
The hunters started to run forward as soon as they saw what was happening; and at the same time men were coming out of the village. These formed a line and hurled stones at the hunters as they rushed toward them. A couple fell wounded; then the two bands came to grips, one side swinging their clubs of bone and the others using their stone knives.
In the Beginning Page 5