The Boy with the Bronze Axe

by Kathleen Fidler

  “Why should they kill you? You have saved our lives. Besides, how can you be a stranger when you speak as we do?” Kali said.

  Still Tenko hesitated. “Perhaps I had better put you on land and go away again.”

  “But that is foolish,” Kali told him. “You cannot go over the sea for ever and ever. What will you eat? Come with us and share our limpets and meat.” She shook the bag of shellfish.

  Tenko felt the keen pangs of hunger. It was nearly two days since he had eaten the last steak of deer meat he had carried in the pocket of his tunic. The girl was right. Where could he go? He would have to land soon and then he might meet with unfriendly people. This girl, Kali, would speak for him to her tribesmen. Had he not saved them from the sea? The words of an old wise man, a priest of his tribe, came back to him.

  “In the great water one will be lost, yet two will be found. Out of this, good will come.”

  The sea had brought him, the lost one, to Kali and Brockan. It was a sign.

  “Very well! I will go with you to your people,” he told Kali. He turned the nose of the boat in towards the shore. It grounded and he set foot on the island of Orkney.

  2. The Axe of Bronze

  The children helped Tenko to haul his boat high up beyond the reach of the tide in the Bay of Skaill. Before Tenko left his boat he reached into the bottom of it and took out his treasures from beneath his wolfskin cloak. There was a light bow of springy birchwood and a bundle of shafts tipped with flint arrowheads. The most precious treasure of all, flat and shining, was a bronze axe fastened by thongs of leather to a haft of wood. Tenko lifted it with reverence. It was almost as dear to him as life itself.

  Kali and Brockan looked at it with big eyes.

  “That is not like our axes. Our axes are carved out of stone. What is your axe made of?” Kali asked.

  “The head is made of bronze.”

  “Bronze? What is bronze?” Kali asked. “Is it not a kind of stone?”

  “No, but it is made out of something that is found in the earth and is melted in a great fire.”

  Brockan stroked the haft of the axe. “What is this? It is not so hard or cold as stone.”

  “It is wood.”

  “Like your boat?” Kali’s quick eyes saw the stuff of both was the same. “What is wood?”

  “It comes from trees. In my land there are many trees.”

  “Trees? What are trees?” Brockan asked.

  Tenko looked at him with astonished eyes. “Have you no trees growing in your land?”

  The children shook their heads, bewildered. Tenko took one of his arrows and with it he drew a tree in the sand, a tree with long branches. Kali and Brockan watched, fascinated. Suddenly Kali clapped her hands. She pointed to the trunk of the tree and to the long hollowed-out boat drawn up on the sand.

  “Your boat has come from that?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “It grows big, big out of the ground?” Kali spread her arms.

  “Yes, that is a tree. Surely you have seen a tree?”

  Kali shook her head. “We have no big trees like that in our island, but we have tiny ones.” She seized the arrow and drew a small gorse bush. Tenko nodded.

  “Sometimes, but not often, there are pieces of trees brought ashore by the tide. Once, long ago, a large tree was washed into our bay by a storm. I do not remember it, but Lokar, the old wise man of our tribe, told us about it. His father saw it,” Kali told Tenko.

  “Did they not make a boat of it?” Tenko asked.

  “Yes. That is another of the tales Lokar tells. He said it was not a good boat for it kept rolling over. Three young men set out in it but they never came back again. Lokar said they might have gone to another island.”

  “There are other islands besides this one, then?” Tenko asked.

  “Yes, but we have never been to them. Our boats are not big enough.”

  “Have you got boats?”

  “Yes, but they are only big enough for one man. My father made one of sheepskin stretched over the bones of animals. He uses it sometimes to cross a channel to the rocks so that he can gather limpets,” Kali told Tenko.

  Brockan was fingering Tenko’s axe with interest. He lifted it and tried the weight of it in his hand. Tenko did not forbid him, but as soon as Brockan laid it down, Tenko picked it up and tucked it away in a big flap-like pocket inside his cloak. Before Brockan could ask another question there came a shout from the village of stone huts just above the sand dunes. Birno had emerged from the narrow opening to the huts and came running towards the children.

  “It is my father! He has come back from the Ring of Brodgar,” Kali exclaimed.

  “Where have you been?” Birno asked. He sounded angry. Then he noticed Tenko. “Who is this?”

  “He is a boy from over the sea, Father. He came in a long boat just like the ones Lokar told us about,” Kali explained quickly.

  Birno looked disbelieving.

  “Yes, he did, Father!” Brockan put in. “Look! There is his boat down there.” He pointed to the long, dark shape of the boat lying on the beach. Birno cast a quick astonished glance at it.

  “Which island are you from, lad? There are no islands here where men build boats like that.”

  “I am from no island. I come from a great land across the sea to the south. My boat was blown here in a storm.”

  Birno looked unbelieving and Kali put in quickly, “Lokar told us there was such a land, Father. Do you not remember?” Kali was eager that Birno should accept Tenko with friendship.

  “Tenko took us off the rocks just in time before the sea washed us off,” Brockan put in, also eager that his father should like their new friend.

  “Which rocks?” Birno asked sharply.

  Kali hung her head a little. “We … we went to the far rocks to get limpets for your meal, Father.” She pointed to the rocks over which the sea was breaking in clouds of spray. “See, we got crabs and an eel too.” She feared her father’s anger and, woman-like, she was trying to placate him with the thought of the good meal to come. Birno was not to be beguiled, however.

  “You went to the far rocks and took Brockan with you? You disobeyed my word?”

  “The tide was very low, Father. I … I did not think there would be any danger,” Kali faltered. “There were so many limpets and crabs that we did not notice the tide rising.”

  Brockan was too fond of Kali to let her take all the blame. “I asked Kali to take me. And Tenko reached us with his boat and saved us before the waves could wash us off the rock.”

  A little crowd of people had come out of the stone huts when they heard Birno’s voice raised in anger. They stared in astonishment at Tenko.

  Birno turned to the boy. “You saved my children from drowning? For that I thank you, stranger. Will you eat with us before you set off back again in your boat to your own land?”

  Suddenly Tenko staggered from utter weariness and faintness from hunger. The tossing for two nights and a day in the open boat had left him weak. The cloak he was clutching round him flew open and the axe with the shining head fell to the ground. A murmur of surprise ran round the crowd. A youth a little older than Tenko stooped to pick it up from the ground, but Tenko quickly recovered himself and snatched it up first. He stood there with the axe in his hand, menacing and gleaming. Once again he swayed on his feet, almost fainting. Birno put out an instinctive hand to help him.

  “Father, let him sleep in our house tonight. He has not slept and he has not eaten for more than two days,” Kali begged Birno.

  “Come with me, boy,” Birno said. With his arm supporting Tenko he led the way down the stone passage to his hut. Even in his utter exhaustion, Tenko still clutched his axe. Kali carried the skin cloak he had dropped. Neither of them saw the look of hate and envy that the youth who had tried to pick up the axe gave Tenko. But Brockan caught it out of the corner of his eye.

  Stempsi, Birno’s wife, gave a cry of surprise when she saw Tenko.

  “I will t
ell you about this boy when we have eaten,” Birno said. “Get food now. He has not eaten for two days. Sit there, boy.” He indicated the stone bed like a trough that was filled with heather and bracken. Near to the bed was a square hole about a foot deep, lined with slate. It was filled with fresh water. Birno lifted an earthenware bowl from the floor and filled it with water and held it to Tenko’s lips. He gulped down the water thirstily.

  “More!” he begged, pointing to the bowl. Birno refilled it and Tenko took it into his own hands this time. Colour began to flow back into his cheeks. “That is good,” he said.

  “Have you been without water for two whole days?” Birno asked.

  “No. There is always a horn of water left in the boat in case we cannot easily get back to land. That lasted me till this morning, as I took only a sip at a time. But I have been thirsty since then.”

  Kali emptied the limpets and shellfish on to a stone slab and began to scrape the limpets out of their shells into a shallow earthenware bowl. She used a tiny flint scraper as a knife. Stempsi took the crabs and eel and wrapped them up in a covering of wet clay which she thrust into the glowing heart of the fire, prodding it into place with the long leg bone of an ox which she used like a poker. There the shellfish would bake while they ate the raw limpets.

  The family gathered round the peat fire in the very centre of the house. The smoke escaped through a hole in the thatched roof. Round the fire was a low curb of stone around which were placed larger stones for seats. On these the family sat.

  “There is meat too today,” Brockan whispered greedily to his sister and pointed to legs of mutton placed on a stone dresser at the side of the hut. “It will be quite a feast.” His mouth watered.

  Kali offered the dish of limpets to her father first, who signed that she should hand the dish to Tenko.

  “Eat well! Do not hold back,” he told Tenko.

  Tenko took a handful of the limpets and swallowed them hungrily. Birno himself ate some and so did Stempsi.

  “Hand the dish to the stranger again,” Birno ordered Kali.

  Kali did as she was bidden, but Tenko looked doubtfully at the dish. “There is not much left in it,” he said, hesitating to put in his hand.

  “Kali and Brockan owe you thanks for saving their lives. Today you will eat their share of the food. It will be your reward and their punishment for going to the rocks when I had forbidden it,” Birno said sternly.

  Kali hung her head. Brockan began to sniffle. The tears came into Kali’s eyes, nevertheless she held up her bowl to Tenko. “Please, eat,” she said in a low voice.

  “I … I cannot.” Tenko’s voice faltered. “Let Kali and Brockan eat too,” he begged Birno.

  Birno’s face softened. “Not of the limpets or crabs. I have spoken my word about that. They may eat of the meat, though, because you ask it.”

  Kali looked gratefully at Tenko. Brockan cheered up at once, though he still looked regretfully at the limpets.

  While the crabs and eel were baking in their clay wrapper in the fire, Stempsi handed the mutton bones to everyone. Earlier she had thrust the meat among the hot stones in the fire, and though the outside was scorched, the inside meat was almost raw. That did not worry anyone. The family was used to eating its meat either raw or partly burned. They all gnawed at the bones with relish, their strong white teeth tearing the meat away.

  Tenko smiled happily for the first time as he sat on a stone beside the fire. He had been asked by this family to sit at their hearth and eat their meat. Among his people this meant that they accepted a stranger as a friend. No doubt it would be the same in Birno’s tribe.

  When they had done eating they relaxed and Birno seemed inclined to ask questions of Tenko. “You carry a strange axe, Tenko. Will you let me see it?”

  Tenko handed it to him. Birno examined it curiously.

  “What kind of stone is used for the head?” he asked.

  “It is not stone nor flint,” Tenko told him. “It is made out of two substances found among the rocks in a land that lies far to the south. They are tin and copper and they show like streaks in the rocks. The tin and copper are melted together in a hot fire and poured into a shape like an axe head hollowed in the sand. That is what my father told me.”

  “Did your father not make it for you?”

  “No. We have no tin or copper in our land, but my father’s father came from a tribe in the south. He had two axes with him, that he had got by trading skins with men from across the sea that lies far away to the south. My father had one axe. He gave the other to me.”

  Birno felt the edge with his thumb. “It is far sharper than our stone axes. Take care of it, Tenko.”

  “While I live I will not be parted from it,” Tenko said.

  Stempsi drew the clay wrappers from the fire by the long piece of bone and left them to cool. While they were waiting, Tenko looked about him. Bone rafters made the roof, and turfs had been laid upon them to thatch them, but a large hole had been left above the hearth for a chimney. Through this the smoke swirled. At one side of the hut was a stone dresser built of flat slabs resting on pillars of stone.

  “You have beds and a dresser just as we have, but ours are made of wood from the trees that grow round about our houses,” he remarked to Birno.

  “Wood like your boat?” Kali put in.

  “Yes. We make nearly all our things of wood.”

  “We have no trees on this island. That is why we make things of stone and bone. They will last many many lives and our people will use them long after us,” Birno said. “Our wise man, Lokar, has told us about trees, though. To him all the stories of our tribe have been handed down. He is our storyteller during the long winter evenings round the fire.”

  Birno broke away the clay covering from the crab. He broke the shell with a stone and pulled away the two large claws. These he gave to Tenko. He was about to hand Stempsi her share when there came the sound of feet along the narrow entrance to the hut. Korwen, the youth who had given Tenko the look of dislike, poked his head through the door.

  “Birno! I am sent to ask you to come to the meeting place. The men of Skara have gathered together.”

  Birno frowned. At first he stayed where he was; then he dropped the crab into a bowl and rose to his feet.

  “Very well! I will come.”

  Stempsi lifted the bowl of shellfish on to the stone dresser and covered it with a piece of slate so that no rats could get at it while the family slept.

  “Into your bed, Brockan,” Stempsi said. “Tonight Tenko will share the bed with you and Kali will sleep in the little bed at the foot of mine.”

  Tenko’s eyes were already closing and his head nodding. He had been so long without much sleep and he was exhausted by his battle with the sea. He willingly stretched himself on the springy bed of heather and bracken. Brockan climbed in beside him and Stempsi stretched soft sheepskins over them. Tenko was still clutching the two large crab claws in his left hand. Before he slept he gave them to Brockan.

  “Wait till all is quiet and then give one of them to Kali.”

  “But Father –” Brockan began.

  “Ssh! The crab claws are mine now. Your father gave them to me, so I can do as I wish with them. Eat one yourself and there is one for Kali.”

  Soon Tenko was fast asleep, but his right hand still clutched his bronze axe, which lay among the heather between him and Brockan.

  Stempsi swept the hearth with a brush of bracken and laid fresh peats on the fire so it would smoulder away till morning. The new peats threw a black shadow over the hut and its occupants. Stempsi too went to her bed. There was no knowing when Birno might return. Sometimes the men talked long into the night. Soon she too fell into a doze.

  Brockan stayed awake, sucking and nibbling at the crab claw, rolling the meat over in his mouth. Across on the other side of the fire-hearth Kali stirred restlessly in the smaller bed.

  “Sss! Kali!” Brockan hissed.

  “What is it?” Kali whispered
back

  “Catch! It is from Tenko.”

  The second crab claw whirled through the air above the fire and into Kali’s bed. She felt around till she found it. When she discovered what it was she gave a little exclamation of delight. Soon she too was busy pushing her tongue into the crevices of the claw. She looked gratefully in Tenko’s direction, but he was drenched in sleep. Soon Kali’s eyes closed too, but not before she had hidden the claw among the heather of the bed. It was now a treasured possession. Only Brockan stayed awake beside Tenko, his bright eyes gleaming when an occasional flicker of firelight caught them.

  In the centre of a group of stone huts was a paved space open to the sky. To it four passages led from all the stone huts that made the village of Skara. This was the meeting place, where the men of the village gathered to decide matters which affected them all. When Birno got there he found the other men awaiting him. In the place of honour was Lokar with his long white beard, the wise old man of the tribe. Lokar sat on a large stone slab but the other men sat cross-legged on the ground. Lokar looked up when Birno joined them, but said nothing. The evening light was fading but they could still see each other as the meeting place was open to the sky. Birno took his place in the circle.

  “Why have you all met here?” he asked. “I did not call you.” It was Birno’s right as head of the tribe to call the men to a meeting.

  “No, Birno, you did not call us,” a man called Tresko replied, “but I spoke to Lokar and he agreed that it was wise that we should meet and talk together.”

  Lokar inclined his head.

  “What have we to talk about that calls for all the men of the village to sit here?” Birno asked in a haughty voice.

  Tresko spoke up. “It is about the stranger who came here today from out of the sea. Surely that is a matter for us all?”

  “Why should it be? I have taken him into my house,” Birno was beginning hotly when Lokar interrupted him in a quiet voice.

  “You have taken him into your house, Birno, and it is a law of our tribe that you must answer for him.”