Calling the Gods

by Jack Lasenby

  Larish threw off Tobik and Jenek’s hands, and left the Great House, cursing. Petra followed. Everyone looked at me.

  “She hasn’t been well since having Tara. We’ll leave her alone to calm down.”

  But it had a bad effect, especially on the younger children from Pyke, who were already scared by Larish’s moodiness and didn’t understand anything of the background of Hornish, the violence we had escaped. As they went on with their meal, Lorne and I rubbed whale oil on Ansik’s grazes and bruises.

  “She’s not well,” I said. “Best keep clear of her.”

  “I forgot,” was all Ansik said, but I knew that like the others he expected me to protect him.

  I got Larish on her own in the work shed. “Larish, Ansik is sorry he spilt the soup. He didn’t mean to.”

  Larish glared at me, and I noticed the shapelessness of her features, as if I was looking at her face out of focus. “Don’t you try to tell me about my own brother …” she began just as Petra appeared, moved between us, and murmuring something led her into their cottage.

  Had Larish just been unhappy, I thought, there might have been more I could do, but she was suffering something beyond ordinary misery.

  The rest of us joined in building and thatching a cottage for Jenek and Luce, and before long another one for Jedda and Tobik. The younger children still slept in the Great House, though Enna and I now lived in a thatched lean-to. She would sometimes fall asleep with the other children, waking and stumbling through to me in the middle of the night. Petra kept Tara in the workshop where she slept in her basket amid the noise, Lorne still bringing her to me to be fed. Larish kept out of sight much of the time, while Jedda, with the help of some of the children from Pyke, took over the potting and weaving.

  So things seemed to settle; then, from good health, in love with Jenek, and carrying their child, Luce fell ill, and we missed her laughter, the sight of her fair curls, her good humour. It was if the sun had stopped shining. Everyone feared what had killed the people at Pyke, and I asked Jenek to leave their cottage and moved in myself to nurse and keep Luce comfortable, leaving Enna to be looked after by Lorne and Jedda in the Great House.

  No red rash developed on Luce’s body. I would not let Jedda near, but stood at the door and described Luce’s vomiting, her thirstiness, blotched skin, the shuddering, the strange smell of her body.

  “It sounds like something else, not the Punishment,” Jedda called back.

  Lorne held Enna up, and I waved to her, but she put her face into Lorne’s neck, refusing to look at me, shaking her head at my voice.

  “Mummy loves Enna,” I called, “but she has to help Luce.” I could hear Enna crying as I went back inside.

  A few more days and Luce was getting some strength back, a little more colour in her face, eating a few mouthfuls of soft stuff. While she slept one afternoon, I slipped outside and — still keeping my distance from the others — worked in the garden, weeding a row of carrots, enjoying the sun and wind on my skin, the feel of soil between my fingers, the escape from the smell of sickness. It was only for a little while, but I went back relieved. Luce breathed quietly, a healthy sleep, her forehead cooler.

  Soon, I thought, it will be safe for me to hold Enna again, to let Jenek help Luce recover. Soon she will laugh again.

  Next afternoon I slipped away while Luce slept. Two or three days, and, after another of those breaks in the garden, I returned to find her ill once more. That night she worsened suddenly, vomiting, thirsting, her body doubling up, convulsing. She lost her baby before morning and died in agony the next day. A gloom of wretchedness and despair filled the village.

  In his distress, Jenek said she had been poisoned. Petra listened to my description of Luce’s sweating, vomiting, convulsions, and was silent.

  “All we carried away from Pyke was food and what we wore,” said Jedda, when I asked her. “The dog poison was brewed by old Baal in a hut downstream from the village, where she lived away from everyone else when she was making it. None of us dared go near it. Baal and her family were the only ones who knew how to make and handle the poison, and they all died of the Punishment.”

  I held Enna again, and she would not let me stir away from her, refusing even to go to Lorne. We buried Luce, as Jedda said was their custom at Pyke, and I saw Tobik watching me, some question in his eye.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” he shrugged, but I saw his eyes on me several times after that and wondered what he was thinking.

  Jenek was withdrawn, and Luce’s death continued a mystery, then I had a dream in which the whale appeared to me and said it was time to begin teaching Lorne the chants and songs. When I told everyone in the Great House, I said Lorne already knew some of the songs, had learned them as we sailed from Hornish. Katerin was disappointed, but the meaning of the dream was clear.

  And then Lorne sickened exactly as Luce had done, the same first illness, recovery, and relapse followed by the same convulsions, vomiting, sweating, stench, and agony. I wiped the smelly froth from her lips and body, cleaned and held her, crooned the whale songs, trying to comfort her, to ease her going when she vomited blood, her tongue hung out, and I realised I could not stop her dying.

  We slipped the tortured little body over the side of the boat in the deep water under the great cliffs outside our bay, and sailed home telling Lorne the story of her short life that she might tell the gods.

  Since Hornish, I had done my best to guard against losing anyone through sickness and injury. The more our numbers grew, the more likely it seemed some accident could happen, and I tried to prepare myself, but those were bitter deaths. I thought of different things I might have done, what to do if the illness happened to anyone else.

  Enna had little understanding of what death meant. When I explained that Lorne was with the gods beneath the sea, Enna still expected her to come back, and I thought again of how hard it is to understand death, even when we are fully grown.

  I tried to talk about it with Tobik, and his very quietness, his simple words seemed to help. Jenek, he said, was bewildered and cast down by Luce’s death, working hard each day to tire himself so he could sleep.

  “He still thinks somebody poisoned Luce.”

  About that time, Petra found me sitting alone above the beach, watching the tide brim at its height. Soon it would turn, begin its movement out, but now it lay broad and calm under the windless blue sky, reflecting the flight of a single black and white gull, the green bushed hills, a pink-edged cloud. It was a moment that always reminded me of the morning we arrived here from Hornish.

  “What’s that?”

  Petra opened the sack he carried. It contained the poison pot, the one he had hidden after killing the wild dogs. Jenek and I had seen him pour beeswax over it, wrap the pot in a folded flax leaf, and bind it with twine before hiding it.

  He muttered something more.

  “It looks the same to me. How do you know it’s been opened?”

  He pointed.

  “The knot?”

  “Remember how I lashed the flax with twine? I finished it with a secret knot, one I’ve never shown anybody. This is a clever copy, but it’s not the same.”

  He showed me the knot he had used, the difference between it and the one now finishing the lashing on the poison pot. He paused, as if thinking of something.

  “Who would know that much about knots?”

  “We’re all tying knots every day,” he said in his hoarsest voice. “Weaving, repairing nets, lashing handles, the whole lot of us.”

  “Not as complicated as that one. Where did you hide the pot?”

  “Under a log up the hill. Then I thought somebody might stumble on it, so I brought it down and hid it under the thatch of my cottage.”

  I thought of his story of Karo and the feud and asked, “You, Jenek, and me, we are the only ones who knew there was any poison left over?”

  Petra went to speak, stopped, and cleared his throat.

 
“What?”

  “I was just thinking of something.”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing important.”

  “Everything matters now. What?”

  “Larish.”

  “Larish?”

  Petra coughed and the words came in a croak.

  “Larish knew.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Our Mind is a Curious Thing

  I had guessed it the moment Petra opened the sack and showed the poison pot, but still had to ask.

  “Larish knew where the poison was hidden?”

  “She went on and on until I told her.”

  My fingers were as hard as wood, cold against the heat of my throat, my cheeks. Something dark pressed behind my eyes, swelled inside my head till I was dizzy, and my whole body shivered as I ran down the beach and in above my knees, the water smoothing itself still again.

  All colour drained from sea, sky, bush, the sandhills across the harbour, everything gone white. I knew I was in a vengeful rage, that I must control it.

  I could understand Petra’s giving in to Larish: that thought made me turn and walk slowly out of the water and back up the beach. Little by little the pressure inside my head eased, colour seeped back into the sky, the inlet. As the tide turned, as the first movement of water broke the reflected sky, I heard my voice speaking from a long way off.

  “Here is Tobik. Let us tell him before we talk to Jenek.” They were my words spoken in my voice, but they made no sense until I repeated them. “Here is Tobik. Let us tell him before we talk to Jenek.” For one moment, I felt a thrill of terror, of not knowing who and where I was. I tasted bile and swallowed.

  Tobik looked at Petra, back to me, and nodded.

  “I suspected it,” he said in his quiet voice. “I didn’t think of Lorne till it was too late, but since Luce died I have been watching to make sure you were safe.”

  My head filled with pictures of Lorne appearing out of the dark in the light of our fire at Hornish, playing knucklebones in the boat, building a sand house with a yellow flower for Enna. I blinked.

  Tobik nodded. “I knew the answer, but asked myself who wanted Jenek so badly they would kill Luce, and who would kill Lorne because they were so envious of her being chosen for the next Selene?”

  “Katerin wants to be the Selene, and Jedda talks about it. So did Luce.”

  “All the girls want to be the Selene,” said Tobik. “Only one was brought up to hate you because you were chosen.”

  “Go back to what you said about Jenek. Larish has Petra.”

  “Having Petra, even loving him doesn’t stop her wanting Jenek. I’m sorry, Petra.”

  Petra stared at Tobik, who continued. “Larish was after Jenek right back in Hornish, but he never liked her. She pestered him in the boat at night, sailing to Rabbit Island. That’s why I said I’d go with them when we sailed from there, because he’d asked me. Remember you were a bit unsure about it.

  “He wouldn’t sleep with her, but she didn’t give up. Then she had a go at me at Table Island, trying to make Jenek jealous. We had left Jenek to look after the boat, while we were supposed to find water and a place to camp.

  “I always disliked her, even before you were banished from Hornish. She knew that, and joined Tilsa and Ulseb beating me, getting her own back. She helped kill Patch. I told her that, when she made up to me on the island, and she shrieked and tried to hit me. I kept calm, and that drove her so wild she seemed to lose her temper and gasp for air, as if she couldn’t control herself.

  “I knew she was acting her rage deliberately, exciting then giving in to it so that it took her over. It was the same way she behaved with her mother and grandmother at Hornish, when they kicked Patch to death. They hated us because our father was trusted by everyone else, and because you were the Selene, but there’s something strange about Larish. I think she might be mad.

  “Out on the island, it took ages for her to get control of herself. By the time we got back, Jenek guessed something must have gone wrong and left the beach to look for us, the boat got swept away, and he tried to swim after it.”

  I remembered thinking there was something odd about their story, but had thought it best to say nothing.

  “I could have told you, when you rescued us from the island, but it would have just made it more difficult for you. Then we found Jenek after all, and it seemed best to forget it, specially once Petra came to the inlet.”

  My breathing had steadied. The pictures of Lorne, the sick taste in my throat, the strange feeling in my head had gone.

  “You did what you thought was right,” I told Tobik. “Like Petra. But we have to make sure nobody else dies. Jenek should know what we’ve found out, and then we will call everyone into the Great House.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I do not know yet. But everyone must hear what has happened, and say what they think. We cannot judge this on our own.”

  Jenek listened impassive as Tobik and I went through the story again. Petra sat silent.

  “Why did you—” Jenek turned on Petra but stopped himself. “There’s no point,” he said, dull-voiced. “Luce is dead. And Lorne.”

  “We have to stop any more deaths.”

  Jenek shrugged.

  “Call everyone to the Great House.”

  There was no need to go looking; the others had noticed the four of us talking. Ruka and Peck were just bringing down the sheep for the night, their helpers with them.

  Petra stirred. “I’ll get Larish.”

  “We know this is difficult, Petra.”

  “What are you going to do to her?”

  “Nothing yet. We have to make quite sure of everything first.”

  “Who else could have done it?”

  “We must be fair,” I told Jenek, “and we must be certain. Remember what happened at Hornish when people gave in to fear and hate, and what Petra told us happened at Karo?” I thought of the feelings I had just had to control, the shocking urge for vengeance. “We do not want a feud here.”

  In the Great House, Jedda and the others from Pyke told their story again, pleaded their ignorance of poison, how to make it, even how to use it. Petra shook his head and could not speak, so Tobik described how Petra had hidden the pot of leftover poison under a log, then shifted it to the thatch of his cottage.

  “Only Petra knew where he had hidden it,” said Tobik. “That’s what Selene and Jenek thought, but we now know that somebody else found out.”

  “Who?” The word jerked out of her mouth as Larish tried to scramble up, and Petra put his arm about her, held her down. Those sitting near them shifted away.

  Without accusing Larish, Tobik described the questions he had asked himself about Luce’s and Lorne’s deaths.

  Larish threw off Petra’s arm and leapt up. “Selene lusted after Jenek.” Her eyes popped round as she pointed at me. “Have you forgotten the way she destroyed Hornish by lying with Ennish and offending the gods?”

  Her mouth worked, her lips moved, but no more words would come out. She spun and pointed at Tobik, choked and pointed at me again, and her voice came back.

  “You all saw the way Selene looked at Jenek. She wanted him, so she poisoned Luce and killed her baby as well, Jenek’s baby. Luce was just sick from being pregnant at first, like I was; she was all right till Selene started nursing her and made everyone else keep away. How could I kill her, when Selene was there all the time, feeding her poison?”

  The faces turned and looked at me, some of them startled.

  “Not all the time,” said Tobik. “Selene left Luce alone, as she was getting better. When Luce slept in the afternoon, Selene left her and worked in the garden for fresh air.”

  “Why would Selene kill Lorne?” somebody asked.

  “Why would I poison my own little sister?”

  Others joined in the argument, and Larish turned on the newcomers from Pyke, tried to blame them. Waving her arms, shouting, threatening, she backed across
the floor till she came up against the tree and stood looking trapped. Hanging high on the trunk, the worn spine of the ancient knife of Selene pointed its narrow tongue down upon her head. I listened and thought of the shakiness of evidence, how easy it is to jump to a conclusion.

  “You didn’t like Lorne,” said Ansik. “You never did.”

  The left corner of Larish’s upper lip lifted till the tip of one tooth showed. “If there’d been enough poison, I’d have killed you as well.”

  Those snarled words convinced almost everyone of her guilt, but as some cried for punishment, I kept quiet. That I had managed to control my earlier rage and fear now gave me strength.

  Back in Hornish, my father had told me of a man accused of murdering his wife, of how he was tried by the elders. Two women and a man gave evidence that made him look guilty, and other villagers joined in with things they had forgotten but remembered now, little facts that had seemed unimportant but fitted as part of a pattern.

  As his guilt looked more and more certain, the man broke down and admitted the murder, became talkative, and even boasted how he did it. The elders banished him out to sea, but as his boat ran the gauntlet between the cliffs, a spear killed him.

  Some days later, one of the three main witnesses went to the elders, his conscience worrying him: he had confused things; something he had said in evidence was wrong. The elders called another meeting, and several other witnesses admitted to being carried away and exaggerating things, to giving false evidence, even to lying. In the Hornish Great House, people fell silent as they realised they had killed an innocent man, that the murderer was still among them.

  I thought again of Palik’s words: “Our mind is a curious thing. We can be driven to confess something we never did, to claim somebody else’s crime.” At the same time I thought of the bewilderment and rage I felt when banished from Hornish, how Larish and her family had accused me, killed Patch, and beaten Peck and Tobik, how Ennish had died because of them. My mother and father, too. I tasted blood, found I had bitten the inside of my lip, and reminded myself again not to give in to the urge for vengeance.