by Jack Lasenby
Taur’s rough song became the beginning for each march, night or morning. He sang of where we had come from, and where we were going. I smiled at his joy. He loved his song and would often roar at me to join in, and the pair of us walked along with the animals, bellowing together, the dogs looking up, their ears pricking and dropping again.
We grazed down the coast. Taur’s cow was still in milk, and we made butter and cheese in skins that slopped on the donkeys’ pack saddles as we went. Our potatoes and oats were running low when Taur led far inland through hills, followed down a river, and brought us to where the North Land finished. West across a lurching grey sea, I saw snow peaks of a large land uplifted high, the source of Squint-face’s green stone. I dared not tell Taur I wanted to find it.
Chapter 7
Four Tall Scribbles
By a circular sweep of grey sea ringed by hills, we camped at the bottom of the North Land. There were days wind was a tumult upon the water – others, its calm reminded me of Lake Top’s regard, its eye’s unwinking blue.
On the ribbon between water and hills lay walls collapsed and fallen, even more than at the place the Travellers called Hammertun beside the Whykatto River. So many walls, I remembered my father’s story about the sun-smashed city of Orklun. And, as in that story, the grey sea moved in and out like a bitter-tasting river, rising and dropping twice each day.
I thought of that story, wondered about the two messengers sent to explore Orklun. Only one returned and described his companion’s death after drinking from the poisoned river. Had it been the salt sea?
As I thought, I sketched the story of the two men. Black charcoal on a white wall. Taur watched and tried to draw, too, but his bulls and cows were clear only because of his bellows and moos. I tried to help him do better, but drawing did not live in his hands.
We sheltered under trees growing on top of the walls. The sun here was still dangerous. Taur told stories his father and mother told him about the disappeared People of the Walls. He drew crude pictures of how they lived, showed me how the walls themselves had been huge houses holding great numbers of people.
“You’re making it up.”
“Gaw!” He shook his head, shouted what must have been the name of the dead city. I tried to copy his voice, to turn it into sounds I could recognise.
“Ellun?” I said, and he roared, “Gaw!” and nodded at the same time, so I knew I was almost right. When I said, “Elltun?” he shouted agreement, thumped my back, swung me up and danced me around, feet scrabbling on air.
“Elltun!” I laughed.
“Awgh! Gahr!”
Unlike Orklun, Elltun had not only been blasted by the sun, walls toppled and bleached like bones. By notches and slides through the hills around the dead city, I could see it had been ridden on the Shaker, tilted, torn, tumbled. We soon learned to keep away from the walls. They slid whenever the Shaker returned.
Taur spent much time with his cow. Her milk had dried up, her calf feeding itself now. I knew he missed his other cows, but he said he was happy to have left the Salt Men behind. I took increasing pleasure in his company, and he in mine for he had been lonely, too, but we both felt uneasy among the ghosts of Elltun. As the sun raged down the sky, we explored the uplands behind, watched the snow mountains of the South Land shine red-gold over the sea.
“If the Salt People come,” I told Taur, “we’ve nowhere to hide. Those mountains to the east–” I turned and pointed, “–they look safer. Better still,” I turned again and pointed west, to the snow peaks.
“Gaw!” Taur knew we could not cross that grey sea, not without the strange craft his dead father had described, the boat the Salt Men used to get to the South Land. “Garawgh!” he shouted. “Urgsh!” He knew of a better place.
I was pleased. Elltun, the fallen city, was not the place for our garden. For several days, bellowing his raucous song, Taur led us north again, over hills and down a creek. When we saw blue water shimmering between low ridges, Taur bawled and yelled until the goats stared.
“This is where I grew up,” he shouted as we came down beside a narrow inlet of the sea. “Where Squint-face killed my father and mother.” He sat by the water, head hanging while I explored.
On a hidden clearing beside another arm of the inlet, we began a garden. Planted seeds, transplanted young fruit trees from what had been the old settlement. Taur thought the Salt Men, if they were following us, would search where his family had lived, that we would be safe up the other arm. I thought of when he did not even believe in his right to run away, and was pleased his confidence had grown.
The inlet was shallow. Fish were abundant, grey and blue, tasty-fleshed. There were mussels much bigger than the freshwater ones, and other shellfish. Taur ate them and a little fish, but still he would not touch deer meat. Even so, we lived well beside the inlet that filled and emptied twice each day like Elltun’s.
Out to sea was a flat-topped island, its lower part light-green, the hills at its northern end dark. Taur remembered stories about people who lived there and crossed to the inlet on things called canoes, hollowed-out logs. “There must be water on the island,” I said.
Taur made a model from short sticks. It was, he shouted, a raft. He even wove a tiny sail of leaves.
“You think we could make a big raft,” I said, “and sail to the island?”
“Gahr!” he shouted, and pointed. “Squint-face would never think we were out there.”
We climbed a headland, watched the currents change with the tides up and down the coast. With much excited shouting, waving, and crude drawings in the dirt, Taur showed how we might use the currents and wind. We could carry the sheep and goats, the cow and calf on the raft, and tow the donkeys behind, but it would take several trips.
We gathered driftwood logs, choosing the dry and high-floating. We plaited flax ropes, tied them together, and learned to sail our raft. With a long steering paddle we had some control.
Since it was Taur’s idea, he claimed the first trip. I led the animals around the inlet, while he slipped down on the tide to a beach opposite the island. One afternoon, when the current had set in the right direction, and the wind blew off the shore, Taur loaded two sheep, two goats, and Het and her three pups who were grown now. We pulled up the woven-flax sail, fixed its ropes, and I just had time to leap on to the sand before the raft moved off. Crying encouragement at the animals, Taur slipped the steering paddle in a crutch at the back of the raft and turned once to shout, “Gurgh, Urgsh!” All evening his sail grew smaller and disappeared into the night. I woke alone, cold on the sand. The wind dropped, swung around, and blew the other way. By morning light the raft blew back on to the beach. The animals plunged ashore, scampered to find grass and water, and would not let Taur near them. His face was long.
I would not let him go alone a second time. “You could drift out to sea and never get back to land. What if you blew past the island, all the way to the South Land? We’ll make a bigger raft, take what animals we can. Once on the island, we can think about returning for the others.”
We built a much bigger raft and loaded aboard tools, seeds, woven gear, metal goods, and a bale of wool and goats’ hair. We put aboard five sheep and five goats. We took all the dogs. Reluctantly, I turned loose six sheep, eight goats, and all the donkeys. Taur put his arms round the necks of his cow and calf, but they went on feeding.
I gazed back at the dark shrug of the land as we sailed with the wind before first light. Our shelter dismantled, gardens dug up, signs obscured. The sheep and goats we had driven up and left grazing on the hills. It was the donkeys worried me. Those old friends Hika and Bok trotted together down the beach, stood in the water, looking after us through the morning gloom.
We were soon too busy to worry about them. The sheep were all right in their pen. The goats, however, were nervous and plunged about. I had to get amongst them, talk, pat, and calm. When I looked back again I could no longer see the donkeys and, away to the east rose something that me
ant we would never return for them. High in the hills behind the inlet, four tall scribbles climbed the morning sky.
The tides would obscure our marks on the beach but, if the Salt Men searched, they might find the animals. So used to us, unafraid, they would trot up and be killed and eaten, I thought, but said nothing to Taur.
On the outgoing current, the raft drifted towards the flat-topped island. The wind strengthened and shifted north. I tied the sail sideways for its advantage. Taur leaned on the steering paddle, holding us on course. All that morning he stared ahead, lifting the island, willing it closer. Never once looking back. I saw no reason to tell him about the smoke signals.
Chapter 8
Adrift
Halfway to the island, wind and current died. The sail slatted as the raft’s dip and pitch made the animals sick. As if it had waited this chance, the sun glared and winked off an oily swell, malignant. Taur and I had some protection from flax hats and tunics. We lowered the sail, rigged it to shade the animals as well.
The raft nudged into a belt of seaweed like a bridge towards the island, thick tangled straps of what Taur called kelp. I pulled one aboard, fastened it around the mast so we did not drift back towards the Salt Men.
The animals soon drank most of our few pots of water. As I wondered if I should tell Taur about the smoke signals, the nestled straps of kelp came undone, stretched, and pointed in the direction of the island. A current beginning, a breeze with it. I hacked the kelp loose from the mast. We worked our way out under sail again.
Taur looked at the island standing higher and made a mooing noise, trying to remember the name his family had called it. I helped with various sounds, but each time he shook his head. “Marn!” I said at last, and Taur leapt in agreement so the logs jostled under him. The goats looked uneasy.
“Marn Island!” I said. Taur grinned and smacked the steering paddle, shouting, “Gurgh, Marn!” I thought it was a good sign. We moved closer, Taur steering towards the grassy flat at the south-east end where a stream tumbled down.
The goats sniffed the air as if they could taste the grass already. The sheep seemed to realise we were safe. The dogs leapt to see what they could. Taur roared his song, and we braced to run the raft upon a beach of rounded boulders.
I could have taken a rope and leapt ashore dry-footed. And just then, the wind died. The sail fell slack. A current formed along the beach and carried us away. Taur worked his steering paddle. I thrust a pole to keep the raft moving, touched bottom, saw sand puff at the pole’s prod – then we were swept into deep water, the current strong. On my own I might have flung the animals into the water, led and called them to the beach, but Taur could not swim. I cursed myself for not jumping when there was a chance.
Off the northern tip of Marn Island we drifted past outliers, rock towers and pillars. Coiling in endless ribbons, thousands of gulls swung and cried and jostled for air, somehow keeping their distance from each other. Huge yellow-headed seabirds dived, closed elegant angled wings. Their feathers whistled and they splashed about us. Their dives still pouted the surface as they came up with fish. The current here weakened, and we paddled for the cliffs of the northern end.
The island dragged itself away again, and Taur shouted and spat. He saw me look and grinned. We could never have climbed the cliffs anyway, he said. When the wind came up from the north, we sailed down the outside of Marn Island, its western side facing the South Land, all cliffs. Along their rocky base, logs were pitched helter-skelter, enormous skeletons rinsed by the sea, bleached by the sun.
Towards evening, the northerly dropped. A black cloud came up from the south. Cold rain hit. Taur and I were both sick, so lost in despair we left up the sail. With a bang that set the goats lamenting, the mast broke, and the sail ripped free, flapped, and winged into the murk. Steering was useless. We could not see land. Soaked, cold, we lay and vomited.
In the middle of the night the raft tilted. The animals must have broken out of their pens, run to one side, but I was too miserable to lift my head. We were going to drown anyway, the sooner the better. Then I thought of the trials we had overcome, and heaved on to hands and knees.
The southerly had dropped. There was the smash of breaking water somewhere, the animals’ cries. I shook Taur who moaned to be left alone. At the misery in his voice, its unusual quietness, I grinned and felt much better. I pulled myself up, bumped my head on the broken mast, and crawled forward. The dogs whimpered and followed. Jak ran and leapt out of sight. I croaked his name, he barked back, and Jess knocked me down following him. The other dogs ran over me.
I made out a boulder high above, and drove the animals on to some flat rocks where they stood, heads down, knees wobbling. The raft tilted, lurched, slid backwards into the sea, but this time I leapt with a rope, lashed it to something in the dark.
“Taur!” No reply. I felt around. He must have rolled into the water when the raft tilted. Then I heard him laugh. He had found a basket of cooked food, was gulping a potato. “Gurgh!” he called, and something that meant at least we were alive. I growled but was thankful. In the dark he shoved a chunk of meat into my eye, and I was surprised to find myself hungry. More cheerful, we climbed on to the rocks, fed the dogs and, surrounded by the animals, warming each other, we slept.
I woke to a roar. “Urgsh!” The animals had disappeared. Taur stood on top of the boulders. I crawled beside him. Beyond, the sheep and goats, misery forgotten, grazed across a grassy flat divided by a stream.
“Glawgh!” Taur pointed east. I looked and recognised the North Land. The southerly wind and incoming tide had carried us on to Marn Island, on to the very boulder spit where we had almost landed before. All that previous day and night, the magic island had drawn us toward itself, rejected and pushed us away, and drawn us back.
I looked for signs of the Salt People, but the coast was too far off. Still the thought of yesterday’s smoke signals worried me, as if they were tall eyes in the sky that could see us even on Marn Island. I shivered and told myself to be sensible.
The Salt People might be on their way to the South Land, seeking the green stone. With luck they might continue to the broken ruins of Elltun, giving no thought to us. At worst they were hunting us, in which case they would probably search the inlet. Once they saw the donkeys and other animals, would they think of the island?
There was no sense keeping it secret. I told Taur of the smoke signals. Guffawing, smacking my back with his huge hand, he said he had watched them coming closer for several days, but kept it quiet since he did not want to upset me. We laughed at the dogs’ wondering faces as we capered, shouted, stored our goods, and took possession of our island kingdom.
Chapter 9
Our Island Kingdom
The south end of Marn Island was a rock tower soaring vertical out of the sea, its only approach a natural causeway, steep and razor-backed. On its flat top Jak whimpered, and Taur took my arm and shook his head as I leaned on the dizzy air, looked down at the silent clash of white-scrawled currents far below.
We traversed the cliffs of the western side. From above, the logs like skeletons now looked a bleached, piled forest. Cliffs studded with seabirds’ nests finished the north end. The air was flecked white and grey by gulls circling, diving around the rock pillars. North lay a shapely island of blue and distant peaks. The eastern side of Marn Island sloped south to the grassy flat where Het trotted forward, tail up, to sniff and greet us.
Except on the exposed cliff tops, the north end of the island was protected from the sun by almost continuous forest, dark-green. We had seen no sign of pursuit, no smoke signals. The mainland was too far away for anyone to see our movements.
Where the stream emerged from its gully, we found a hidden terrace with firewood and water handy. Trees uphill could be felled and slid down for a log hut. A knoll between terrace and flat would conceal any glow from a fire. The knoll, a perfect lookout, commanded the water between ourselves and the mainland.
The dogs bro
ught the animals to a fold of the gully below the terrace while we pitched our tent. I ate fish speared on the beach, and watercress from the stream. His mouth filled with his favourite mush of oats and milk, Taur grinned, “Gurgh, Urgsh!”
I woke that night, saw Jak and Jess on guard, and knew Het and her pups were watching over the animals. Embers glowed. The stream chuckled in the gully. An owl gave its double hoot. I listened to Taur’s breathing, wondered at our good luck and, suddenly, it was morning, time to climb to the lookout and cook breakfast.
We dug and planted a late garden, cut and dried grass for winter. Our few animals would not need much hay. As in Taur’s valley, there was a stand of thick-headed trees nearby. Since little rain reached the ground through their dense branches they would act as a roof for the animals.
We got on with a hut, working happily together. Despite what Squint-face had done to him, Taur had the gift of enjoyment. He delighted in everything, whether watching a caterpillar munch along the edge of a leaf, or tumbling logs for the hut. I was inclined to just get on with a job, get it finished, but Taur wanted to have fun doing it. He made me realise how dour I was, and I tried to learn to enjoy myself, to play while I worked.
He loved to pass me something – and drop it just as I reached out my hand. Or he would pretend to lift something, say the end of a log, while I took the other end. I would find myself taking all the weight, and Taur would be looking away, straight-faced but laughing inside. If I got angry, he laughed aloud – and caught me with another of his tricks.
I set traps for him and walked into them myself. I put salt into his hot drink, and found – when my mouth puckered – he had swapped mugs. I put thistles into his blankets and found too late he had exchanged them for mine. When we should have been preparing for winter, we spent most of our time trying to outsmart each other. And though it was fun, everything got done faster – and done better as well.