The Moon Child

by Mark Lucek

  She could almost have been back at the camp, her stomach filled with the first taste of freshly caught deer and getting ready for the dance which the women gave to Marzanna in celebration of the thaw and the setting of the camp. Sometimes they dedicated the dance to the morning dew that would tell them that, at last, the thaw was on its way. Alia would lead the younger girls whilst the old ones would keep the tune with hand-held drums or reed flutes. Even old Stefina would be there, keeping the tune with tiny hand bells that jingled from strands of rainbow-coloured threads that she wound about her fingers.

  Years ago and it would have been Stefina to lead the women in the dance. Now her hips were too old and her knees pained her. ‘I have only so much movement left in me,’ she’d say, ‘and what I have is saved for berry-picking or working on skins.’ So she clung to the edges of the fire and watched, the bells jangling round arthritic fingers.

  Yet, as the firelight played across her wizened flesh and the hard calluses of her misshapen knuckles, her hands would regain some of their youth as her wrists twisted in perfect time to the sway of the young girls’ hips. The light played across the polished silver so that the bells hung like stars from her fingers. In her youth Stefina had enjoyed the songs of the sun and daybreak, but now she felt more at home with the last rites of the day when she could sit by the great fire and ease the warmth back to her aching limbs. Far easier to remember youth in the cover of night and the crackle of the fire.

  Lately she’d begun to teach some of the young girls how to use the bells. Iwa had spent ages, sat on the edges of the group as Stefina showed the younger ones how to jingle them, her wrists moving swanlike as they glided over one another, the bells clinking like tiny droplets.

  For Iwa it was better even than playing with the spiders, and she found that at last there was something she appeared good at, even Alia and the others had to admit to that. But there was only one set of bells in the camp and, on the rare occasions that Stefina let them out of the polished leather bag, everyone wanted to have a go. What Iwa wouldn’t have given to have them now, to feel their weight pulling reassuringly under her fingers.

  More than anything she wanted to dance. This might not be the great clan fire, little more than a pathetic excuse for some smoke, but it was all that was left. I should bless this place so that Marzanna will know that there is still a clan and a fire to watch over.

  Iwa continued to dance, her feet stumbling over the cold ground. Jarel looked up from the fire, a look of almost total incomprehension crossing his face, and then he realised. She danced on, whilst he sat back and clapped in time to her movements.

  It wasn’t the hardest of dances, nor the trickiest of songs, but she was too caught up in her longing and slipped on a piece of wet moss which, despite the fire, had been covered with a thin layer of frost. For a moment it looked as if she might regain her footing, her mind still half seeing the figures of the women as they swept round the fire, but it was too late and, caught in mid song, she was sent tumbling to the ground. It was still hard, despite the sun, the chill of winter clinging just below the surface.

  Red-faced she struggled up. Jarel’s laughter didn’t help ease her embarrassment as she clambered up, her backside stinging and her gown wet with mud. But his thoughts too had drifted back to the camp and the chatter of the men as they prepared their bows. Though none of the men were allowed to join in with the dance of the morning dew, they liked to watch, many of the younger hunters marking out their favourite by the sway of her hips or the litheness of her tread. And even the older hunters would gather and watch or else cheer the women on from the sidelines. Many of them said they could tell how the hunt would go from the way that the women danced.

  Let’s hope that’s not true, because he’s not going to catch very much after my fall. Even before that it hadn’t been the most accomplished display. But he too had been taken back to the old ways and was grateful for those few moments when they seemed not far away.

  Still smiling, he hunkered low over the flames, but there was a hard edge to his gaze, his movements stiff as if the chill had crept into his marrow. ‘We could give the heads as an offering for the Leszy,’ he nodded to the fish. Iwa tried her best to laugh, but she felt it too, that unspoken dread that passed between them. Careful to avoid her gaze, Jarel took up a twig and began to play half-heartedly with the fire. He wanted to know more about the woyaks and the women trapped in their ship, but he was too tired and too afraid at what he might hear.

  ‘Perhaps the Leszy would be good enough to give us a healthy fire in return,’ she added uncertainly. It wasn’t any sort of a joke but Jarel smiled all the same.

  Soon the air was filled with the smoky scent of cooked carp. ‘Save some water for later,’ Jarel said as he took back the skins. ‘It’s best to stay away from the river as much as possible. They might make enough noise to wake Zaltys from his sleep in the forest, but the river’s another matter, especially with those boats of theirs. They could be up near the rapids before we’d have much of a chance to pick them off.’

  ‘We’d need more than a few arrows.’

  ‘We could manage it if they were caught midstream.’

  Finishing a handful of the fish, Iwa didn’t bother to answer. Obviously he was still thinking about the small canoes and dugouts of the traders. And, if she hadn’t seen the ships for herself, she probably wouldn’t have believed in them either. Even now she could hardly imagine they were built by men. Or did the frost giants make them for the Krol? She shivered.

  ‘How’s the leg?’ she said, trying to shake the thought of the giants.

  ‘You’re not going to start with that poultice rubbish again.’

  ‘No, but I could make a splint. And that,’ she nodded to his bandage, ‘will need changing soon.’ She looked round for a stray piece of wood, or a scrap of cloth. She desperately wanted to be useful, even if she didn’t really know what she was doing. Maybe I shouldn’t try to help, I’d only make things worse.

  ‘I get around fine enough,’ Jarel said, ‘and I’m luckier than some. I’d spare more thought for Yaroslav…’ His voice trailed off uncertainly.

  ‘My father?’ Even through the dance the thought had been clawing at the back of her head. She’d wanted to broach the subject earlier, but had seen that Jarel had not been in the mood to talk and wanted to settle him first. ‘Is he alive?’ she said softly, a little shocked that, after all her planning, he had brought up the subject himself. ‘He has to be, please?’ Suddenly her fears welled up in a multitude of questions that flowed so quickly that she hardly had time for breath.

  Jarel paused and nodded slowly as he waited for the deluge to subside. ‘He made it out of the camp all right.’

  ‘So you know where he is? Once we get to him then everything will be all right – you’ll see!’ She was almost manic with joy; for the first time since the woyaks attacked she felt a touch of hope. Yaroslav was the wisest person ever. If only she could get to him then everything would be fine. He’d find a way to get rid of the woyaks, something better than Katchka and her stupid mushrooms.

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ Jarel said, as he took one of the fish, the crucifix balanced clumsily in his hand.

  ‘You’ll have to take me to my father,’ she said through a mouthful of carp. ‘Maybe we should save some for him.’

  ‘He had food enough when last I saw him.’

  ‘But he could probably do with some more.’ Yaroslav’s inability to hunt had been the source of many a joke.

  Yaroslav was not born of the clan but was one of the outsiders who’d been allowed to settle within their ranks. He’d come up with the traders from the Polish lands. Before that he’d lived in their towns, where people didn’t hunt but traded for their food.

  The clan kept him on because he could make pots and all sorts of other things, but he’d never learned to hunt and, though his skills with clay were much prized, even Iwa could handle a spear better than him. ‘Is he far away?’ she asked, slipping a h
unk of fish into one of the reed baskets.

  ‘We left him in a cave about half a day down the track.’

  ‘Then we can get there well before dusk. You’d have time to do some hunting and I’ll gather berries. After that we can start up a fire and have a proper meal.’

  ‘Kazik said it would be better for us to keep apart,’ Jarel replied slowly, ‘so that the woyaks don’t catch us all in one go.’

  ‘And is Kazik the hunt master now?’

  ‘No, but he is wise.’

  ‘Well, he can be wise later. Just take me to my father. If you don’t want to hang round with us afterwards, then that’s up to you.’ There was a moment’s pause as Jarel weighed up the situation. He didn’t want to take her. Why should he leave the safety of his hideout and the warmth of his skins? His wound had begun to ache again as he finished with the fish and tried to warm his fingers over the fire.

  ‘Just don’t blame me…’ His voice trailed away, but Iwa was too happy to catch the tone: she was going to see her father and that was all she cared about.

  Chapter Six

  They kept to the ash-grove path that skirted round the base of one of the hills overlooking the river. Jarel led Iwa on to a great oak, clan marks carved deep into the wood. The hunters must have sacrificed to it – a deer skull was placed roughly amid the branches with the sign of Karnobog daubed in faded blood across its forehead.

  Here the trail curved away. Carefully Jarel walked off the path, his spear prodding through the undergrowth. A little way further and a smaller, rougher track began. Jarel paused and made the sign of reverence by touching his forehead with the first two fingers of his left hand as he began down the track, which was so slender that even she struggled to keep her feet on it.

  This must have been one of the secret trails which Karnobog had given only to the hunters, but she’d never imagined that there would be one so close to the camp. Such things were usually for the deep forest where the herds of elk and bison hid. No wonder the hunters had worshipped at the tree so that it would keep the secret trail safe and guide all but the clan along the clearer path.

  Surely the woyaks would never find this place. Iwa took comfort from that as she pushed passed a briar, the thorns digging into her arms. Up ahead she could hear Jarel, his tread uncertain as the undergrowth thickened and the going became more difficult. Even when the trees thinned out again, she found it hard to keep her footing. They were now on the slope of a mountain, which rose gently above them. A brook, little more than a rough ribbon of water, meandered through the trees.

  ‘It’s not far now.’ Jarel paused to regain his breath. His leg dragged heavily behind him now, giving him tiny stabs of pain with each step.

  ‘We can rest later once we get to the cave.’ She started to follow the brook, but Jarel pulled her to one side and pointed to a narrow path, barely perceptible through the undergrowth.

  ‘Hardly anybody comes here, so be careful, the way isn’t clearly marked,’ he said.

  ‘Not more brambles,’ she replied as she dug the thorns from her dress. His leg had slowed them and she was in no mood for any delay, part of her desperate to scamper ahead. One look from the young boy and Iwa realised his shame. A lame hunter was of hardly any use and a young one without any wisdom to share round the campfire was worse. ‘I’ll be ripped to shreds before the day is through.’

  ‘And you want to be a hunter,’ he smiled, some of the sense of his own importance coming back now that he had someone to look after. ‘We’ve had to travel far worse after the herds.’

  After a while they came across the brook again, or maybe it was a different one. Just where the water slid past an aspen grove there was a tiny fissure in the rock, barely taller than a man. Half hidden by moss and bracken, Iwa doubted that she’d have noticed it if it were not for the bison’s skull placed in a carved hollow at the top.

  Without needing to be told, she made her way in, the rock cold as she squeezed inside. A little further in, the cave opened into a large chamber. ‘Yaroslav!’ she called, her voice echoing through the dark. ‘Father!’ Her words came back empty and hollow as she pushed further into the cave. ‘Yaroslav?’ she said again, less certain this time; maybe Jarel had taken her to the wrong place.

  ‘He could have gone.’ Jarel said as he came in. ‘There was talk of leaving to join up with the Wolf’s Jaw. Maybe he went to them. We ought to go.’ He took her by the shoulder but she shrugged him off.

  There was the smell of a fire and the scent of charred meat: somebody had been living here. ‘He couldn’t have got far,’ she said, as her foot touched something brittle. Bending down, she picked up a piece of dried fungus. ‘He’d never leave good tinder like this lying around.’

  ‘Very well then,’ Jarel said, as he took the fungus from her. From the cave mouth a shaft of sunlight broke the gloom. Going back, he picked up a few twigs and, tearing off a small patch of the fungus, he set about making a fire. There was a snap as he piled on a few more twigs and the flames roared through the gloom to send shadows across the rocks.

  Iwa gasped – the cave was far bigger than she’d imagined. Lines of gypsum and lime glowed in coloured bands, but it was the paintings that caught her eye. The walls were filled with them: swirling colours and symbols mixed in with the forms of bison and deer, and tiny stick figures hunting them. There were snakes as large as men, and creatures the like of which she’d never seen. Palm prints littered the rock; the marks of ancient hands laid out before her in a myriad of colours and, in between them, strange symbols flowed. This wasn’t the work of the Bison Grass, or any other clan.

  For a moment she forgot herself and ran her fingers over one of the symbols. The colours shone brightly as if freshly painted, but she had the feeling that this was something very ancient.

  Then she saw the burnt-out husk of a fire. ‘Yaroslav!’ she cried. This time there was a moan as a formless shadow stirred within the cave. Now that the fire had taken hold she could see more clearly. Further along the cave wall, where the rock had been worn away to form a tiny hollow, a bundle of rags lay next to the remnants of a meal. ‘Yaroslav,’ she called again and, this time, the rags moved. ‘Father!’ she cried and ran over, but there was no reply. ‘It’s me.’ She reached down and touched his skin, clammy and wet as though he burned with a fever. Carefully she rolled him over. It was hard to recognise the face that greeted her; the skin was drawn thin and yellow over the cheekbones and the eyes were pallid. Red blotches stained his neck and forehead, and it was only the whisper of a breath that told her he was alive at all.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jarel said. ‘We were almost into the woods when an arrow caught him. Kazik and one of the others helped him, or else he’d never have managed to escape at all, let alone live this long. It was a wonder that we ever got him up here; the arrow must have ruptured his liver.’

  ‘And so you left him to die.’ Iwa shuddered. She’d gutted enough animals to know how deadly such a wound would be.

  ‘His blood’s gone bad. It was all we could do to get him here and ease his way into the ancestor world.’

  Around Yaroslav a few pieces of broken pottery lay scattered on the ground. Now she understood: they were remnants of his life, left about his body so that his spirit could remember who he’d been as he passed into the ancestor world. Jarel had been lying all along, with his story about joining the Wolf’s Jaw. Iwa shot him a narrowed gaze as he lurked uncertainly at the cave mouth, his feet trembling as if about to run. Maybe he had wanted to spare her, but she hated his cowardliness all the same. Better to bed down with hard truths than soft lies, as Katchka would say.

  ‘We should go,’ he said, his voice little more than a whisper. He wants to spare his own feelings, she realised. He’d seen too much of death to want to face any more. She could have forgiven him that, but not the lie. He probably didn’t even think he’d find the man still alive.

  From underneath the rags there was a flicker of movement, which brought with it the hot, sweet sm
ell of death and decay. There was no telling how bad the wound was under the skins. ‘There was nothing we could have done.’ Jarel turned away as he shifted the weight from his wounded leg.

  ‘We need some coltsfoot and comfrey,’ she said firmly, ‘and some burdock root; gromwell too, lots of gromwell.’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do for him,’ Jarel put his hand on her shoulder, ‘except to make his death a little easier. There,’ he said as Yaroslav moved slightly, ‘he knows that you’ve survived, that should ease his passing into the spirit world. Now he can stand before his ancestors and tell them that you are safe.’

  He tried his best to smile. Nobody lived so closely with death as a hunter. There were many things that the hunt alone could teach, and though the women lived amid the gutted carcasses and scraped the skins clean to be tanned into leather, few had ever attained the same intimacy with death.

  ‘We’ve got to try and keep him from the ancestor world. I’ve helped Katchka often enough. She’s managed to cure bad blood before.’

  ‘There’s no herb to help him now.’ Jarel knelt and tucked the blankets around the man. Yes, there were a few women who tended the sick and dying, they understood about death and the passing to the ancestor world almost as much as any hunter. If only this child had picked up Katchka’s skill, she’d recognise the time of passage then. If only there was anything he could do to help her.

  He remembered his first sight of a man’s death, a young hunter who’d been too eager for the kill. He could still hear the screams as the man tried to pull his ripped guts back into his stomach, the blood thick about his fingers and the trace of a boar’s tusk still lodged in the ruined remnants of his abdomen. He stood by and watched, tears in his eyes as he felt his own helplessness. ‘Did Katchka give you any recipes to ease pain?’ He shook the memory off. At least this man’s passing would be easier.