Calling the Gods

by Jack Lasenby

  “For when the herrings come,” I said.

  “Do you think they’ll school in the bay?”

  “It looks like the right sort of place. And the gods are coming home.”

  Peck stared at me. “Are you calling the gods?”

  “The days are getting longer: the gods are towing back the sun.”

  Ruka and Peck jabbed each other and leapt around shouting, “Selene’s calling the gods, bringing them back,” as I picked up Enna.

  She turned from my nipple, stared up and smiled, and I nuzzled her.

  “What are you telling her?”

  “That we are building a village here.”

  Lorne touched Enna’s cheek. “I’m going to have a baby, too. That’ll show Ruka and Peck. They never let me go with them to pick up their net.”

  In a spell of light winds, Tobik, Jenek, and Ansik went to fish for groper off Table Island.

  “The holding tank’s empty. We’ll set the pots at the reef and pick them up on the way home.”

  Ruka and Peck wanted to go, too, but Tobik looked at my face and said it was unwise to have all the boys in one boat outside. Instead they went with Larish to set a net off the creek up the north end of the inlet and explore the valley we could see from our beach.

  Lorne and I carried Enna in her basket between us, and worked in the garden. The Hornish potatoes had strong stalks and leaves; those from Table Island were spindly. I remembered my father saying plants lost their virtue, growing in the same soil too long. “Feed the soil,” he used to say. “The soil feeds the plants.”

  “There’s lots of weeds among the peas,” said Lorne.

  “The ground is soft from the rain. They will pull out easily.”

  We called to Enna as we worked. When she cried, Lorne went and talked, distracting her. “Do you think she wants a feed?”

  “I will just finish this row.”

  “She’s really hungry.”

  “Pick her up.”

  “She’s going red.”

  “Wipe her. There is soft fern and dry grass in the foot of her basket.”

  “She wants you.”

  “I am finishing now.”

  Her wail stopped, she butted and tugged at my nipple, and the eyes that stared up at me were so like Ennish’s, I gasped. Lorne leaned over my shoulder, murmuring encouragement.

  “The wind is going south,” I said.

  “She watches you talk.”

  “She is learning, copying us.” I smiled and stroked Enna’s cheek so she stared and sucked again.

  “When I grow up, will I have a baby, too?”

  “We will have a whole village.”

  “Where’ll all the people come from, Selene?”

  “Our babies. And people might join us. We have not even looked north yet.”

  Enna sucked a moment, her mouth fell away, and her eyes closed.

  Warm in the sun, back against a post, I watched the returning trickles join in glittering blue sheets across the sand. A gull flew up and dropped a mussel that crunched on the beach. I felt Lorne take Enna, heard the little hiccup as she patted her back.

  “You are very good,” I said and dreamed of being established.

  I floated up towards a voice murmuring far away, and woke, Enna asleep beside me, Lorne singing and decorating several sand houses inside a stockade of sticks. More sticks made a little platform for the lookouts above the gate, and an avenue of shells led between the sand houses, one of which was topped by a yellow flower.

  “Thank you for looking after Enna. I was tired.”

  “I told her this is her house, the one with the yellow flower, but she went to sleep. Selene, when Enna grows up, will she think I’m her sister?”

  “She does already.”

  “I’ll be kind to her, kinder than Larish is to me. Can I wake Enna?”

  “Let her sleep. The southerly is picking up.”

  “Selene, when are we going to build a stockade around the Great House?”

  “What for?”

  “To keep ourselves safe.”

  “We are safe here. Besides, it would take a lot of work.”

  “We had a stockade at Hornish. I remember it.”

  “There were lots more people to do the work. Even then, the stockade was useless against the soldiers from Lador. They were too many for us. When you are small,” I said, “you have to be cleverer.”

  As I repeated my father’s words, I remembered it was the enemy inside Hornish that had betrayed and defeated us. But I could not say that to Lorne, tell her it was her own family that brought about the destruction of Hornish.

  I smiled and thought of how she had appeared out of the dark with Larish and Ansik that night in Hornish. In spite of the things she had seen, she survived, whereas Gulse had died.

  The power of forgetting, I thought, it helps us live. Then why did I hold to the memory of my own mother, father, Patch, of what Larish and her family did?

  “Are we going to make bacon, Selene?”

  “When the pigs are fat enough.”

  “Did we have bacon at Hornish?”

  I nodded. “It keeps. You want to smoke and salt all the meat you can. We will make more barrels when we have time, and put down meat in a brine. Every few years, the crops fail, there are hardly any fish, and the mussels and cockles disappear: that is when you need everything you have preserved.”

  It would be another year or two before our own trees and vines were bearing; we would pick all the fruit we could find in the old orchards around the inlet, gather baskets of grapes and dry them in the sun till they shrank to raisins wrinkled full of sweetness, and add them to the sacks of dried peas and beans we would hang in the roof. Just thinking of it, the idea of abundance made me feel safer.

  “Here come Larish and the boys. Listen to them.”

  “Look,” Ruka and Peck stood yelling.

  “Sit down,” Larish shouted, making a clumsy job of bringing the boat in.

  The boys ignored her, holding up long fish that flashed silver-grey.

  “So they are in here.”

  “What are they?”

  “Mullet.”

  “What do they taste like?”

  “Delicious smoked. Oily.”

  “We went away up the valley.”

  “We saw sheep.”

  “And a lake.”

  They chattered over the top of each other. Larish looked as if she had had enough of them.

  The boys told their story as we soaked the mullet in brine, cleaned the net of crabs, strands of seaweed, and sticks, and hung it to dry.

  “We climbed where the hillside fell and blocked the creek so it jumps down a lot of little waterfalls,” said Peck. “There’s trees growing on top of the dirt and boulders, and there’s a lake up behind.”

  “How big are the trees?”

  “Huge, so it must have been ages ago.”

  I looked at Larish, but she shook her head. “I didn’t feel like climbing up there.”

  “What is this about sheep?”

  “We saw pigs and goats—”

  “And sheep.” Peck couldn’t wait for Ruka to finish.

  “How did you know they were sheep?”

  “They looked grey after the goats.”

  Ruka handed me something. “It was caught on the scrub.”

  “It is wool all right.”

  “And I found this,” said Peck.

  “Iron. An arrowhead.”

  “Sticking between the ribs of an old goat skeleton. I wish we had proper arrowheads.”

  “Peck and me, we wondered if people lived in that valley, and they got squashed when the hillside fell on top of them and made the lake.”

  “Sheep.” I stretched the wisp of wool, looked at the crimps again. “We need them so badly, and you have found them for us.”

  “They took off when they saw us.”

  “How many?”

  “Four near the lake, and a couple further up, but they went for their lives.”
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br />   “Jenek and Tobik will work out how to catch them. I wonder where they are? That wind is stronger.”

  Long after dark we heard shouts down the channel. Lorne and I stood the cooking pots over hot embers. One was already full of hot water. Tide was against them, but the sharp southerly blew the boat to where we waited, torches flaring above our heads.

  “Catch any gropers?”

  “Any crays?”

  The wind gusted so the torches flared and painted everything a lurid red; the boat seemed full of people, shadows thrown up against the dropping sails. Then I saw somebody else aboard. She dropped from sight, but I waded out and saw her back where she knelt over something.

  “His leg’s cut and it’s going bad.” Jenek slid over and stood beside me. “We thought you’d know how to fix it.” Ansik and Tobik were lifting a man’s shoulders. He groaned, and his head fell back.

  “Quick, while he is unconscious. Larish, get aboard and help them.” I reached for his arm. “Got him your side? Lift.”

  Tobik and Ansik slid into the water and took his legs. We surrounded him, the girl, too — she was about the same age as Ansik — and carried him up to the Great House.

  Behind the right knee and running down into the upper calf, the wound was festering, the flesh around it red and puffy, hot to the touch. I put my nose close. Not too bad; he might be lucky. I tipped hot water into a smaller pot, hung it over the flames.

  “Those karwa leaves we picked this morning, Lorne.” The water boiled as she dropped them in.

  “Ruka and Peck, light a torch and look in the pens for any fish the pigs have not eaten. I want a bit that is flyblown, and some maggots — little ones.”

  The leaves really needed boiling longer, but that could not be helped. I dipped a piece of clean cloth, waved it to cool, wrung it out, and wiped gently. Even so, the man moaned through his heavy beard.

  “It’s all right.” The girl sat, his head in her lap, and stroked his cheek. “She’s cleaning your leg.”

  “We got some good ones.”

  “You’re not putting those on my father.”

  I was picking the eggs and some smaller maggots from the flyblown piece of fish.

  Jenek and Tobik came in from bringing up the boat and held her back. “Selene knows what she’s doing.”

  The girl screamed and struggled while I set the eggs and maggots on the pus and dead flesh, and bandaged the leg.

  “Dip out some of the karwa water in that wooden bowl,” I told her.

  “But the maggots …”

  “They will clean the wound.”

  “It really works,” said Ansik.

  “How would you know?”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “When your father comes to, give him some karwa water,” I told the girl. “Once he gets that down, see if he will eat something.”

  Jenek and Tobik were gulping fish and potato stew. The girl crouched by her father. “Eat something yourself,” I told her. “He will be unconscious awhile.”

  “We set the pots, but the groper weren’t biting, so we sailed to that point you can see to the south.” Jenek swallowed. “We got there and saw another about the same distance again, and headed down.

  “It was a hook-shaped headland with a shingle beach inside, about the only protected water south of here. Along the other end there’s a creek you could land in at high tide, but not if there’s any sea running. Tobik and I waded ashore and found Katerin.” He nodded at the girl. “Her father was inside a driftwood hut.” Jenek took a huge mouthful.

  “Ansik backed the boat in, and we got him aboard, but even with the southerly behind us it was getting dark when we reached our bay. The pots are still down. We’re going to lose them tonight if it gets up.”

  “We can make more. What is his name?”

  “Petra,” said the girl. She was dark-skinned, black-eyed, mainly concerned about her father, but I had seen her stare up at the tree and its roots, and she had taken a quick look at each of us.

  “We saw some sheep down there.” Jenek sat back from the pot and wiped his mouth. “Above the little bay.”

  “Could you catch them?”

  Jenek looked at Tobik. “We’d have to drive them into the scrub. If they took off up the hill, we’d never get near them.”

  “They’re our sheep,” said Katerin. “I tried to tell you in the boat, but you didn’t listen. We bring them down to the flat at night and yard them up.”

  “That’s what the fence was?”

  “How many sheep did you have, Katerin?”

  “Eight.”

  “We could do with them. Ruka and Peck saw some up the north valley.”

  “You know there’s a rock wall you can see up there on the right? Well, the whole hillside must have fallen down, and blocked the valley from side to side, and made a lake. That’s where we saw the sheep,” said Peck, “and goats, and there was pig rooting. The slip’s got big trees growing all over it, so it was a long time ago.

  “And I found this.”

  Jenek took the metal arrowhead and whistled.

  “Is the man going to die?” Ruka whispered in my ear.

  “Not if I can help it. Katerin gave him the karwa water, and he ate a mouthful or two. He should sleep now.” I did not say that another day and I would not have given him much hope.

  “Where we found them was about the only shelter on the coast,” said Jenek, “and it wasn’t all that good. Just as well you found the inlet, Selene.”

  “It was the old sailing directions brought us here. Could you land there in the northerly?”

  “Tricky. I suppose you could swim ashore if somebody holds the boat off. The scrub’s grown flattened against the hillside by the north-westerly, so it must blow most of the time. Are you thinking of their sheep?”

  “Look at your tunic; and think of having blankets. We will teach ourselves how to spin and weave. Otherwise we are going to have to use sealskins.”

  I said nothing of the importance of having one more — Katerin. Ten. Eleven if Petra lived, though he was never going to be whole again. There was something else wrong with him, but I said nothing about it. Nor did I say anything of the difference that could come about with a man much older than any of us.

  Next morning, Ruka and Peck hung the mullet to dry. “We’re going to cold smoke them.”

  Where the iron ball rolled out of the cliff, Ansik had found what looked like a natural cleft from a wide hole at ground level to a ledge halfway up the cliff. When he showed it to the older boys, they recognised it at once.

  “A chimney,” said Jenek.

  “Why dig a chimney up the cliff? Did somebody build a hut against it?”

  “More likely they made it for a smokehouse on the ledge. Up there, it’d only get cool smoke. The fish would take longer to be done, and they’d keep better.”

  They had cleared the old chimney, closed up some holes with flat stones set in clay, and built a good-sized smokehouse on the ledge.

  Now Ruka and Peck lit a slow fire of marnoo at the bottom, hung the split mullet, and closed the door. I turned back inside to Petra.

  All night he had been feverish. I had sat up with him, wiped him with a cool cloth, and held the karwa water to his lips.

  “It will help you,” I said, not knowing whether he heard. The third time he swallowed the lot, and fell back into uneasy sleep.

  “It cleans the blood,” I whispered to Katerin, who lay awake watching me, mistrustful.

  “Can’t we put the leaves on his leg, instead of those things?”

  “It is the only way to get any poison out of the wound. What happened?” I tried again: “It does not look as if he just fell over and cut the back of his leg on something.”

  Katerin would not be drawn, and I did not press her.

  “A deep sleep is what your father needs.” I put driftwood on the fire and lay with Enna.

  In the lee of the cliff, the Great House missed the worst of the southerly, but it was still str
engthening. A gust pushed a bulge of smoke down the chimney, and sucked it up again. I looked at the dried food stored under the roof. Get Petra better. Two more pairs of hands. Fetch the sheep. The clearings out towards the point had grass, and there was the pond up there. The only trouble would be wild dogs. It would mean one or two of us guarding them all the time.

  Bring them down and yard them at night. That is what they did at Hornish. Flick and Tack were the right age to learn to work sheep. I wondered if Petra knew how to use dogs, and what sort of man he was. Could the nine of us support him as well as ourselves? And would he want to change things?

  I tried to remember how they set up the looms at Hornish. Everyone needed a new tunic before next winter. Petra muttered and I cooled him again with wet cloths, gave him more to drink.

  In the morning light, he looked a bit younger, dark-skinned like Katerin, beard curly black. He ate and fell into a heavy sleep. I felt his leg for warmth, and put my nose to it again.

  Out in the channel, gusts flattened themselves on the water like invisible hands, lifting clouds of spray, williwaws, spinning up the inlet and into the northern valley. After getting their mullet smoking, Ruka and Peck wanted to set a net just off the beach, but Jenek said they would get blown across the other side.

  “You’d be stuck. We’ve got your mullet. And there’s plenty for you to do here. Make sure the pigs and goats are all right; the garden needs weeding; Tobik wants a hand making some more cray pots; and that driftwood has to be stacked. Ansik and Katerin will help.” I was always pleased when Jenek took over directing the work.

  On the second morning of storm, I unwrapped Petra’s bandage.

  “Ooh.”

  “Look.”

  “Get out of the light. Ghouls.”

  “We told you,” Ruka and Peck said to Katerin. “Selene knows what she’s doing.”

  I picked out the swollen maggots. They had eaten all the dead stuff, leaving healthy pink flesh. The skin around had lost its fierce red look, the puffiness; best of all, the wound smelled clean. I smeared honey on a patch of karwa-wetted cloth, and bound it on.

  “The tendon behind the knee might be damaged,” I told Katerin. “I can’t do anything about that.”

  In the afternoon Petra wanted to sit up. As he ate his first proper meal, Katerin told him our names, explained where he was.