by Jack Lasenby
“It’s funny what you dream.”
“I suppose so.” His voice slipped away.
“Do you ever talk in your sleep?” I asked, but there was no reply. What else had I said in my sleep? What had I dreamt about? Kalik mentioned the Showman, the donkey, the Carny. Had he questioned me as I slept? Had I answered him? And what had I said?
Chapter 14
Death on the Skids
Sluggish, mind filled with images from Kalik’s stories, from dreams, I heaved myself into the canoe and dragged aboard swollen-bellied Nip by her scruff. Sun burned through mist. A charred piece of tote bobbed past.
Kalik’s black curls were wet with dew. He had no idea of right or wrong. Just what succeeded. He watched Lutha’s worship of Hekkat with a cynical eye, supported her only because it was to his advantage.
I liked him. Liked was not strong enough a word – I was attracted by Kalik. But was he friend or enemy? I held two images in my mind: the iceberg’s underwater hulk, and the unmasked Showman, the Carny.
The sun warmed my shoulders. Kalik’s curls dried. I paddled drowsy. What did last night’s stories mean? Was the Stranger a warning? I knew Kalik would kill anyone who stood in his way, as Queen Amtris killed her own children. Lutha and the worship of Hekkat stood in Kalik’s way to power, if power was what he wanted.
We had fought side by side, saved each other’s lives. But his dog – who sooled it on to Nip? The unnecessary slaughter of the Salt People up the valley. The cannibal orgy. Kalik kicking the Salt Child that first night. Like Lutha striking the girl – Maka – who held the baby. To understand Kalik, I must understand his callousness. His sudden swings from cruelty to merriment.
“Most problems are simple, Ish. Think that, and you will solve them. Think they’re difficult, and they will be.” I remembered the Shaman’s words.
All right. Kalik wants to rule the Headland People. That’s why he told the story of Promise and the tote tree last night, and the stories of the King, the Queen, and the Stranger. Trying me out, wanting to know if I will support him against Lutha.
He liked but could not trust me because Lutha had given me her protection. And Lutha protected me because I brought her father home to die, too simple an idea for Kalik’s tortuous mind. Because he was complex, he looked for complexity where there was none.
I laughed aloud. Nip whined and nudged my back with her nose.
“What’s funny?” asked Kalik.
“Everything. It’s all so simple!”
Kalik’s paddle dipped, came out running water then dripping. “I can’t think this morning,” he said.
“We ate too much.”
“Good though!” He chuckled.
Some huge black birds took off, circled the lake. Even though I could no longer see the birds themselves, a white flash echoed their flight.
“White feathers under their wings,” said Kalik. “Black swans. There’s another lake, Lake Weah.” He pointed north. “And I’ve seen them fly south.” The white flash faltered.
“That outcrop,” I said. We were running beneath a grassy hillside. “That’s where I stole Nip on our way down the lake.”
“You were seen. Somebody stole another pup from the same litter. The dog you killed, your first night on the Headland. Nip’s brother.”
I remembered its heavy head. It had been red, like their mother, the red bitch I’d seen going to and from the outcrop.
“So we almost met each other!”
“You disappeared on your raft, or my people would have killed you. Dogs are precious to us.” Kalik’s gay laugh fell across the water with the drops from our paddles. “You were lucky, Ish. So you’re here.” And I had to join him in his laughing.
We came in sight of a hillside stripped of its trees, the timber workings. A rumble. “Watch this!”
A log hurtled down a narrow gully, skidding over short logs half-buried. Faster and faster. Its nose caught beneath one of the skids, as Kalik called them. Tossed it high. Despite its size, the big log spun end for end, whacking down scrub, tossing up boulders, gouging soil. It leapt, toppled, slewed across the beach. Rolled, bumped, and rocked still. A moment before it had been a wild beast.
I let out my breath. Kalik smiled. His eyes had been on my face. Did he know I had been comparing him with the log?
“Marvellous!” His voice reminded me of the night we waited for the Salt Men. His words then: “Stay with me. You’ll see some action!”
Guards stood over slaves levering another log on to the skids. The slaves were stained by sap, grimed with mud. Some were tattooed. Once again, I wondered what it was that made a Salt Man different. Clean and in tunics, they would have looked just like Kalik’s men.
They all had one lame leg, the tendon cut so they could hop and shuffle enough to work, but never escape. Helpless against a man with two strong legs, against the two fierce dogs which, I knew, were trained to run down escaped slaves.
“This will happen to the Salt Children. They will be lamed and brought here.” I suppressed the image in my mind, watched two men chopping a deep scarf in the direction they wanted a tree to fall. Wedge-shaped chips flew. The V of the scarf gaped. Pleasant, the fresh scent of wood. The two men hopped behind the tree, began a back cut. The nearer one slipped. His axe flew as he fell. Kalik jerked me aside. The axe lopped off a sapling.
The Salt Man looked at me from eyes like scars burnt into his dark face. “Get your axe,” Kalik said to him. That was all. Another glance from those awful eyes.
I tried to thank Kalik. “It could have been an accident.”
“Perhaps.”
The axes drove hard. Faster. A crack. Wood tearing apart. The tree fell. The slaves hopped and clambered, chopped the trunk through below its first branches. With heavy poles, others began to lever and swing the butt. The axemen were already scarfing another tree. The others strained, rolled the log on to the skids, and it shot down.
“Any trouble?” Kalik asked the guards.
I knew several of them. Pleasant, decent men. But here they were supervising the work of men they had lamed. Whom they would run down with dogs, if necessary. Kill with not a second thought. As I came down the Western Coast with Taur, I had asked, “What makes a slave?” Now it seemed more important to understand the people who make slaves.
“Where do you get your metal tools?”
“South-east,” Kalik said, “the Cold Hills are nearly always covered with snow. The Iron People live below them and dig for a black stone that burns hot. They heat iron in its flames, beat it into tools and weapons.
“Twice a year we send a party to trade for their tools and weapons. We never go further than the Trading Place. The Iron People never come this side of it. So we have no reason to fight.” He grinned.
I thought of Tara’s Metal People at the Hot Pools in the North Land. And the Coal People in the Land of the White Bear. Why do some people fight each other; why are some able to live in peace?
Kalik hurried the slaves. He struck one with his spear-handle. Another with a branch he snatched up. One of the men bled where Kalik hit him across his face. And though the blood ran free, the slave did not dare wipe it away, but worked on. I had to remind myself, if I was to help the Salt Children, I must keep my feelings hidden. So when Kalik struck another man a fearful blow and glanced, my face showed no emotion. Kalik struck the wretched slave again.
All afternoon, logs shot down to where more slaves lashed them into a raft. Even at that distance it was easy to tell the Salt Men by their curious hobble. Ugly, misshapen, dirty. Perhaps that made it easier to be cruel to them.
Salt Men killed Tara. Taur died saving me from them. They killed the Shaman. And here I was feeling sorry for them! I shrugged.
Late in the afternoon, the slaves worked even faster under the blows of the guards. Logs went grinding and shrieking over the skids, leaping, smashing.
Two more lay ready for sending down. “That’s enough for today,” Kalik said. “We’ll have a look at t
his tote.”
Its shaggy head of sharp-tipped leaves reared over the hill as we climbed, its trunk straight and clean all the way to the first branch. Long strips of bark hanging. Furrowed. Grey outside, reddish underneath. I had seen bigger totes, but they were old, past their best. Their trunks great stubs but usually with some fault, an unsoundness where a branch had fallen a hundred years ago, where rain had worked in.
Kalik went forward, chanting. He waved leaves, fastened them to the trunk. Laid another bunch at the base of the tree. And a chunk of cooked meat.
Kalik’s chanting continued as he circled the tree. Its trunk was as thick through as the height of a tall man. The roots spread wide. Kalik’s voice rose and fell as he turned to and away from us. The guards muttered responses. I could not understand their words either. It was like a forgotten language.
I wondered at Kalik’s performing a ritual. He often seemed to have no conviction about anything. Was he acting a part?
“The right prayers have to be made,” he said when he finished. “People need to be reassured everything is done the right way.”
Next morning, everyone bathed in the lake. Nobody ate. Most of the guards and slaves were left working on the rafts, while Kalik, the same guards, the two Salt Men with axes, and I climbed to the tote.
The leaves and the chunk of meat were gone. The guards nodded, pleased. Kalik indicated the cut, and the slaves swung their axes. Chips of red wood heaped below. Mid-morning, the slaves were replaced by two others. The first two gathered the chips in flax baskets.
By afternoon, the scarf was finished, the back cut well in. Kalik circled, repeated his ritual, and the chopping continued. The great tree cried out like a man and fell towards evening. The slaves gathered every last chip, carried them down in baskets. After dark, we ate for the first time that day.
The same bath, and no food again next morning. By midday, the tree’s head had been cut off. Everyone, slaves, guards, Kalik, and I levered with poles, working the trunk to where it would take its plunge.
Kalik sent some slaves to skid down the two lesser logs left below. One of them was the man with eyes like scars burned into his face. Their first log shot off and plunged out of sight, reappearing on the beach. The second jammed halfway down the gully. Kalik shouted. The two slaves hung off their poles, using their weight to shift the log back on to the skids. And beside me, Kalik levered, gave the huge tote log the smallest movement. It hung, shifted, and whispered downhill.
The Salt Men looked up. For a moment I saw the man’s face, the one who had almost struck me with his axe. Then they were both diving aside. Their log had just begun to move. The tote struck its butt a clear smack! The smaller log sprang like a spear. The huge tote swung across the gully, tearing bark in a strip which shot vertical. A scream! The skidding tote rolled over the two Salt Men and was gone. Bucking, thundering, exulting down the last slope, it shot across the beach, threw up water its whole length, and rocked still in the bay.
The guards cheered. The remaining Salt Men picked up the axes where they had been dropped, walked on down, not looking at the smeared hillside.
By dark, three rafts were moored. The tote trunk was fastened to a post dug upright into the beach, what Kalik called a dead-man.
It rained as we ate. Comfortable in the guards’ hut, I wondered how the Salt Men slept in their rough shelters. Next morning the three rafts set off, poled by the slaves. The tote log towed behind. Guards’ canoes circling lazy.
It was as we paddled back to the headland that I asked Kalik something about the dance-worship of Hekkat.
“Who told you about it?”
“Raka.”
“No wonder she died.”
“Dead! Why?”
“The Maidens are sworn to secrecy.”
“But everyone knows Lutha is Hekkat’s priestess.”
“Yes,” Kalik smiled. “But the worship: the dances, the prayers, the songs, it’s death to talk about them.
“Raka was Lutha’s favourite. She fell from grace. It happens. Usually the girl is expelled from the Maidens, and Lutha takes another lover. But Raka disappeared. Lutha might have done it because she knew Raka had been talking to you.”
“Nobody saw us!”
Kalik turned, paddled dripping on the silent lake. “There is always somebody watching, Ish. Listening.” He smiled at my face.
“How did she die?”
“Bound and left on the Island of Bones. For the next flood.”
Was it my fault? Had Lutha killed Raka for sleeping with me? Or was it something she had done earlier, even before she put her spear to my throat? Was Raka a sacrifice, like the two men who died on the skids?
Chapter 15
A Flash of White
The canoe ran silent. I looked at the mountains south. Several notches that looked promising on the way up the lake now had blue ranges piled behind. None offered escape.
Getting up Lake Ka to the Western Mountains would be difficult not just because of the guards at the logging camp. I had learned slave will betray slave rather than see them escape. Besides, how could the Children survive that climb? And for those who did, life on the Western Coast? Dried riverbeds, desert, the insane sun spinning across a brazen sky….
The Salt Men had come from the north, down the valley under Grave Mountain. Kalik would search there first. Even if we escaped successfully, life amongst the Salt People? Exchange one bloody society for another?
Grave Mountain cut off escape to the east. Kalik had talked about the Cold Hills to the south-east. Grim country. Whichever way we went, the Children must have a chance of surviving.
“We’ll have a look at Lake Weah,” Kalik said. “Where the swans went.”
We crossed our lake to its northern side, climbed the cliffs on to the shoulder of a spur. Lake Weah lay below, surprisingly close. Mountains crammed its upper length. It was too near Lake Ka.
We descended and paddled on. There were Chak, Kimi, and the smaller children to consider. Two older girls, Kitimah and Sheenah, were pregnant. Then there were the sick. Far easier to take only the fit…. As well escape on my own! Was that what I wanted? Survival without the Children would be a mean, pinched thing. Escape meant taking them all. Again I looked at the mountains south.
Kalik shook a trickle of water off his arm. “You’re thinking of mountains,” he said.
I looked over his shoulder toward Grave Mountain. “There’s a lot of smoke rising.”
“After rain, you’ll often see steam or smoke along the top.” More smoke rose, cupped white against the perpetual black cloud walling the sky. “You told Lutha there was no way across the mountains from the Land of the White Bear. But from this side there must be a way up to the crater.”
I grunted, “What makes you think that?”
“An old story of a shaman,” said Kalik, “who climbed Grave Mountain. Food and sex were forbidden on the sacred mountain but, once on the summit, he ate meat and lay with one of his slaves. White stuff fell out of the sky, covered the ground, and froze. The shaman must die of the cold. He cut the slave’s throat, prayed for warmth. His god sent fire under the sea from the North Land. It burst out of the mountain. The white stuff melted to a pool of hot water in which the shaman recovered his strength. He climbed down the mountain, but the roar of the fire had left him deaf.”
“What about the other slaves?”
“The white stuff froze them; the fire ate their bodies.” Kalik laughed. “Isn’t it interesting, Ish? The story says ‘white stuff’. He turned, looked at me. “Whoever first told that story couldn’t have known what snow was.”
I mumbled agreement but was seeing the people perish on top of Grave Mountain.
“Lutha’s old women know that story,” said Kalik, “but she says Hekkat forbids anyone to set foot on the mountain top. I have heard of men who tried to get up.”
“Yes?”
“The stories always say the mountain opened and swallowed them.” He chuckled. Kalik’s laugh
was joyous, made me want to join in, but too often he was laughing at something cruel. Evil was deep in his nature. He would not change – perhaps could not. Yet I still found him attractive.
“Opened and swallowed them!” Kalik chuckled again. “More likely they fell. Whatever happened, the cold would kill them, if the fires on top didn’t. Look!”
Six black swans swept past, necks straight as spears tipped with red beaks. The creak of wings, the white flash as they wheeled a great broken ring above the lake. I kept seeing the flash as their wingbeat carried them south.
The white flash became confused in my mind with the snow that fell on Grave Mountain. And another image came to mind: the story of a young man who sailed home with a black sail. His father saw it, and threw himself off a cliff. The young man had forgotten he had promised to hoist a white sail if he came home alive.
“Black and white,” said Kalik. “They build huge untidy nests. The eggs are good eating. And the flappers.”
“Flappers?”
“Fat young birds without their full feathers. All they can do is flap across the water. Fast, but you can catch them. Like the geese when they’re moulting.” And he laughed again.
“If they only come here occasionally, do they spend the rest of their time on Lake Weah?”
“There might be another lake to the south,” Kalik said. “But if there is, it must be a long way off. That’s what one of the old stories says. ‘A long hard journey over mountains. Down a long valley, by a savage river.’ I can’t remember how it goes now. You know what those stories are like. Somebody looking for a place of their own.”
“A place of their own!”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve heard stories like that.”
“They’re all the same.” Kalik laughed. I thought you’d had enough of journeying, Ish? Besides, Lutha wouldn’t let you go. You’re her good luck sign – returning under the mountain, bringing her father back.”