Twice we saw other boats in the distance. When we saw the first one I wanted to paddle to them at once, but Basajaun said no. ‘We don’t know who they are.’
‘But they’re our People! They might be kin!’
‘And they might not. We’re not trusting anyone until we get to our own hunting lands. Everything’s different now.’
I wanted to argue, but he wouldn’t let me. We paddled further out to sea and the waves hid us. We did the same when we saw the other boat. My heart was heavy: those People might have been our kin. I didn’t want to live in a world where I couldn’t trust other Lynx People. I wanted Basajaun to be wrong about that. Perhaps he was.
But my People – my own family – Basajaun and I came to the place where Fishing Camp had been.
The shore was gone.
You don’t understand me. We couldn’t understand either. We paddled up and down. We knew this was the right place, but the land wasn’t there. We found the River. It ended in a place that used to be far upstream. We paddled back to sea, and, now we knew where the River was, we worked out where Fishing Camp had been. The sea had taken it away. All my family were gone. We paddled inland – what had been inland – picking our way among floating trees and dead Animals. We got ashore and searched in mud and sand and broken trunks. We weren’t even certain which of our places this new shore had once been.
We found one body. We thought it might be our sister’s son. A child about that age, anyway. We tied a stone to the rotting corpse – we had no colour to adorn his body – and paddled out to where Fishing Camp had been – or where we thought it had been – and dropped him overboard there. We thought that, if it was him, his soul would know the place, and land or water would make little difference to the dead.
When that was done we headed upriver to our Hunting Camp. We’d left some flint there, and by now we needed tools very badly. At Hunting Camp we met two of our far-off cousins who were also fleeing from the dead lands. You can imagine how glad we were to find each other.
I held Ekaitz to my heart – his grandfather and mine were brothers – he was initiated only two Years before I was – we’d often hunted together. We wept for joy to find each other still alive. Ekaitz’s youngest brother was there too. The sea takes what it will, and spits out what it will, and we People can see no pattern in it.
Now we’d found kin, Basajaun started making plans at once. Ekaitz was never one to argue. Even when we were all boys, he’d just look at Basajaun and smile. But Ekaitz has his own way of getting what he wants! He’s – he was – one of our best hunters. Now we’d found Ekaitz, I began to look beyond my own shock and despair. As we sat round our Campfire that night, we all talked about what we should do.
Ekaitz and his brother had a couple of dogs with them. That meant we could hunt properly. But it was hard to see what shape our lives should take. Everything we knew or loved was lost. All our close kin had been born and lived and died on the ruined coast we’d left. We didn’t want to search there any more – we wanted to go somewhere else. But where?
Then Basajaun started talking about our grandfather’s father: how he also was Basajaun, and how he had come to the Lynx People from the Evening Sun Sky when he left the Auk People long ago. He first brought my brother’s name to the Lynx People.
‘I am Basajaun,’ he said now. ‘The Auk People live in my name and blood. I say we should go back to where I came from. You three are my kin. We are all of Auk blood. The sea has told us to go. Auk spirits are waiting for us! We should go back!’
Basajaun argued that in the Auk lands under the Evening Sun Sky, the sea wouldn’t be angry. It would have stayed in its own place. In the end he persuaded us.
We stayed at Hunting Camp for a few days, working in our rock shelter out of the rain, making plenty of blades so we’d have spares to carry as well, and trapping small game to eat while we worked. Each of us made a knife, a short hunting spear, a bow, a quiver-full of arrows and a roll of twine. We repaired our clothes, and filled our pouches with flint cores, embers and meat for the journey. The morning after we were ready we filled our waterskins and set off towards the Evening Sun Sky.
We followed the deer paths over the hills – these were Lynx hunting lands, so the way was easy – until we came down to the valley of the Great Salmon River. The rain stopped. Mist wreathed over the hills and curled like smoke over the River. The glen smelt of too much water. We saw the smoke of a Camp and approached it cautiously. On the one hand, the Salmon People ought to give us food because we were kin: young men bringing gifts have always crossed the hills between Lynx and Salmon lands, looking for women and a place to hunt. On the other hand, there’d also been fights, and sometimes young women had been carried off. My younger cousin and I had never been this way before. None of the Salmon People could possibly recognise us, so we two walked in front.
Luckily we heard women singing before we met any men. We found a hand-full of them singing to the feather-plant roots as they grubbed them up with their digging sticks. I told them who we were, speaking as clearly as I could because the Salmon People’s words are not always the same as ours. Two old women chattered together. We trembled when we heard the names they spoke, for we knew – and they didn’t – that those Lynx names had already gone out of the world. But because they could name our kin, those women led us to their hearths. The Camp was full of People – many of them women and fatherless children – who’d fled upriver from Camps on the coast. Everyone was talking about the Great Wave. The old women told us in slow words what they were saying: how the sea had funnelled up the estuary of the Great Salmon River and swept across salt marsh and forest to the very feet of the high hills. Many men were missing. The Salmon People were glad to have the meat we’d brought, but we had no other gifts, and they had troubles of their own. They didn’t want us.
That night there was an argument. We couldn’t follow the words but the meaning was clear: our two old women were saying that, because we were kin, the spirits said the Salmon People must help us on our way. The men were unwilling. In the end one of their young men hustled us through the glens of the Salmon People as fast as he could. We kept our knives close to our hands the first day, but on the second day he grew more friendly. He took us to the foot of the Loch of the Great Salmon River, where he let us take a boat and a basket of meat. ‘Follow the loch into the heart of the mountains,’ he told us, his hands working hard to make his meaning plain. ‘You can leave the boat on the shingle where the River flows into the loch. We’ll find it in the spring. Then you walk upriver to the watershed. From the pass you’ll see the Grandmother Mountain of the Auk People. On the far side of that mountain lies the Open Sea that surrounds the world. That’s where the Auk People hunt. To get to their sea you have to cross the hunting lands of the Heron People. Keep your course to the Grand mother Mountain; she’ll show you the way.’
We were anxious about these Heron People – we had no kin among them – but the Salmon man was so keen to get rid of us that in the end he gave us his own and his father’s name to trade with. ‘Tell them you’re our kin,’ he said. If the Salmon People hadn’t lost so much from the Great Wave that man would never had given us his name to pass on to a strange People! So though the Great Wave took away so much, it did now grudgingly give something back.
The Loch of the Great Salmon River is like an inland sea. We paddled, heads down, into driving rain, hugging the faint grey line of shore on our left. We were stuck ashore for four days while a gale swept in from the Evening Sun Sky. As soon as the wind gave way we struggled on. Spray leaped up and soaked us; rain tried to blind us. At the loch head we made a fire the length of our shelter so we could sit warm and naked, and dry out our clothes. The rain beat down on our boat-roof like a herd of deer hurtling down a gully. ‘It’s telling us about great hunts to come!’ said Ekaitz. That made us laugh! The great hunts of Yellow Leaf Moon seemed very far away! We caught enough eels in the River to fill our bellies and forget we had no meat.
/> As soon as the wind gave way we struggled on. We left our boat at the head of the loch and climbed upriver among tumbled rocks, avoiding the precipices where the ravens wait. We travelled fast and ate little. Only one Moonless night lay between us and Yellow Leaf Moon. In the hills it was already winter. Mist lay over the watershed so we saw no Grandmother Mountain.
But no spirit had the power to turn us back now! We smelt salt in the sleet that stung our faces. Even as it tried to force us back the wind spoke to us of the Open Sea, and our hearts rose. We followed the stream into lower lands. We had no food left. But we were strong! We knew how to fast! At last the rain stopped, and the wind died down. We saw trees below us. Basajaun shot a stag as it leaped from the bracken. We made Camp at the kill, and feasted by firelight. It was good to taste that rich hot meat! The spirits were at last being kind to us! That made me think we might be drawing near to the Auk People.
The next day we saw Grandmother Mountain at last. She filled the Evening Sun Sky ahead, but we still had to cross the glens of the Heron People. We were lucky: the spirits led us to the fires of good People. We spread our arms wide to show we came as friends, and spoke the names the Salmon People had given us. When we swung the joints of deer meat off our backs and laid them on the ground before the headman of the family the Heron People put away their weapons and began to smile. When we said ‘Auk,’ one of them wrote in the mud of the loch shore with a stick. He showed us Grandmother Mountain, then marked out how the Auk People lived on the other side of Grandmother Mountain, over the sea towards the Sunless Sky.
The Heron People took us to a Camp at the head of a long loch, right under Grandmother Mountain, facing the High Sun Sky. We stayed two days because we needed to repair our clothes and tools before we went any further. On the second night they made a dance to show us why they’d welcomed us. We had no words we could share, but the dance was easy to understand.
In Seed Moon there’d been a big fight with the Otter People in the islands under the High Sun Sky. Nearly two hands-full of Heron men had died when the Otter People had sunk their boats. Now this family had women without men, and children without fathers.
The drums stopped beating and the song grew soft and slow. One of the women stood alone in the firelight. We were lying propped on our elbows beyond the hearth so as to watch the dance, and we had to look up to see her. She wore only her woman’s skirt and the colours of the dance painted on her skin. The firelight played across her face and breasts, turning her skin sun-gold. Her eyes were like dark pools of deep water in hidden hollows of the hills. Ekaitz didn’t need any more persuading; he jumped to his feet and said he’d take that woman. He’d have her that very night! Next morning he told us he wasn’t going any further. He wanted to stay and hunt for the rest of his life with the Heron People.
I didn’t mind that, but when Basajaun told me he had an eye on a woman too, and thought he’d stay for a while and see what came of it, I was furious. It had been Basajaun’s idea that we come all this way! He was our link with the Auk People! I’d set my heart on finding kin of my own. These Heron People had treated us well, but we shared no blood with them.
‘We can’t stay for a while,’ I shouted at him. ‘It’s Yellow Leaf Moon already! We’ll be lucky to get across the sea as it is! If we leave it any longer we’ll be stuck here all winter!’
‘And why not?’ Basajaun was laughing at me. ‘Don’t you want a woman to keep your bed warm, Kemen? You see how easily they give themselves here! You might find the Auk women more particular!’
I’d never been so angry with him before in my life. When I said I’d go on by myself he flew into a rage too. I shouted him down – I’d never done that before. I thought I was the one who should be angry!
But the Lynx spirits didn’t want us to quarrel. I made myself calm, and spoke to him quietly. ‘Basajaun,’ I said. ‘All we have left is each other. Now my path lies one way, and yours another. I hope we’ll meet again in our present lives. When we do, you know what joy that will bring to me, your brother! But if we don’t meet again in this life, what will the spirits say to two souls who lost so much, and then threw away the little they had left at the bottom of the basket?’
Basajaun smiled at that. In the end he stretched up his arms to the spirits, and asked them to help me on my way. He asked the spirits to let us meet again before we died. Then he held me to his heart, and I held him to mine.
I walked away from him without looking back. I left Grandmother Mountain behind, and followed the shores of a long loch. I watched fierce tides sweep into the loch and out of it, and I knew I was close to the sea. I climbed a little hill to see where I was. I looked towards the Sunless Sky and saw the far-off hills of a great island. You know what island that was! I looked at the sea that lay between and saw huge tide rips fighting one other. My heart leaped to my throat. That was the sea I had to cross! It was Yellow Leaf Moon already. I didn’t have very long.
I found another family of Heron People. They’d heard about me already; they took me to their hearth and gave me food. I used my hands and body to tell them what I meant to do. They watched me and shook their heads. But their spirits were with me, and their kindness didn’t run dry: they showed me where they’d coppiced the best silver hazel, and let me take as many wands as I needed to make myself a little boat. They gave me the raw hide of a well-grown hind.
I built myself a shelter above the high-tide line where I could look out towards the Sunless Sky. I gathered sea-roots and shellfish to eat. I slept two nights in my Boat Camp. At night I had strange dreams, sometimes about my old life that had gone for ever, and sometimes about matters I didn’t yet recognise. During the day I worked alone on my boat in a quiet place where a little stream flowed out of the forest and stretched itself in glistening folds across the sand. The wands bent themselves willingly to my will. I sang as I bound them into a frame. I sang to the willow withies as I cut and wove them. I sang to the hide as I stretched it and sewed it over the lip with rawhide strips. As I whittled my paddle into shape I sang how we’d cleave a path through the waves towards the Sunless Sky, looking for the Auk People – the only kin I had left in the wide world.
As it was, I had to wait another hand-full of days because I needed a kind wind and tide to take me into the Auk People’s hunting lands by daylight. I didn’t go looking for food for fear of missing my chance. I bashed limpets off the rocks, and ate them with sea kale and silverweed. But then the wind dropped and the sea went down. A friendly breeze came from the High Sun Sky. It cleared away the mists so I could see the Auk People’s Mother Mountain Island across the sea. The Heron People pointed out the headland I must steer for. They made it clear I must leave at first light so as to catch the tide where I needed it most. They gave me a basket of shellfish. Then I pushed my boat off, jumped in and paddled out to sea.
The Heron People had warned me about the terrible currents that sweep through the Straits. I paddled against the ebb as hard as I could. My heart was in my throat as I met the swell. It rolled in on my beam in great sweeps that reminded me of the terrible wave that swept away the whole world of the Lynx People. Each wave lifted my boat and then swept away under me. With every wave I felt I’d fall for ever, but soon I saw that all I had to do was keep paddling, and let the next swell take me. I came to waters so fierce I thought I’d tip over and drown, but the spirits were with me and my arms were strong. I was more than halfway across when I felt the flood tide tugging me towards the Sunless Sky. I did what the Heron People had shown me, and steered a paddle’s length to the left of the headland where I wanted to go. White waves washed against fierce cliffs. I couldn’t see anywhere to land. The closer I got, the more the sea swept me towards the Sunless Sky. I was going so fast it was all I could do to steer my boat. I can tell you, I began to wonder if I really wanted to belong to you Auk People, if you did this sort of thing every day!
My boat raced round the headland, faster than a man could run, into Long Strait, which the Heron P
eople said would lead me to the Camps of the Auk People. The Heron People hadn’t been able to tell me anything about the waters beyond Wide Strait. ‘The Auk People belong to the sea,’ they seemed to say. ‘They paddle across open waters where no other People dream of going. They know the currents that sweep between the islands. Once you’re across Wide Strait you must find one of their Camps as soon as possible. You don’t want to risk the Auk People’s seas by yourself a day longer than you must.’
You’re all smiling – I know what you’re thinking. But I’m of the Lynx People, and I never saw seas like yours before, let alone paddled across them. But I found my way between the skerry and the headland, just as the Heron People said. After that I had no more words to guide me. I was glad to find the tide and I were in agreement: we both wanted to keep close to the shore of the Evening Sun, sheltered from the wind. The shore of the Auk People’s Mother Mountain Island looked kinder now. Wintry woods sloped down to rocky shoals. Just as the tide was slackening I saw a stretch of sand where a boat could beach. I paddled cautiously into the bay. The wind didn’t follow me into this sheltered place, and everything was quiet. A heron rose from the sea’s edge and flapped away across Long Strait. I watched it go – it was a kind spirit from the Heron People leaving me. When the heron was out of sight I looked back at the shore, but the Sun had gone behind the hill and the slopes lay in shadow. My eyes were dazzled with looking at the bright sky. I shaded them with my hand.
When my sight cleared I saw a trickle of smoke rising over the trees, then bending towards the Sunless Sky before the breeze. My heart leaped to my throat. That smoke was telling me that here was a Camp of the Auk People. So now I must take my chance, whether to find kin, or enemies – whether to live at their hands, or die.
When I stepped out of my boat I realised how cold and stiff I was – hungry too. I carried my boat up the beach, and I found two others upturned above the shingle. I laid mine beside them. A path led through the trees. I looked at it warily. When we’d arrived at the Heron People’s Camp at Grandmother Mountain there’d been four of us. Now I was only one. Without words I might not be able to explain myself. But I was cold and hungry, and I couldn’t make a fire of my own without these strangers noticing. Besides, these were the very People I’d come so far to find. I seized my courage in both hands. I followed the winding path. And the rest you know – because I found myself in the winter Camp of Sendoa’s family, and they told me that they were Auk People.
The Gathering Night Page 7