by Jack Lasenby
“Was she beautiful, Ish?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“Killed. Tara, her family, and all the Metal People.”
“Who by?”
“The Salt Men from across the eastern ranges by the sea.”
“Do you hate them?”
“For a long time I did. They chased us down the North Land, across to the South Land, and the Western Coast. Until Taur brought down the mountain and killed them all, and himself.”
“We’re Salt People, Ish. Tepulka and Paku, Tulu, and the rest of us.”
“Yes, but when I came you were the slaves, Maka. It was your people who were massacred. I helped fight them, but didn’t know what was going to happen afterwards.”
“But you knew Lutha!”
“Lutha saved Jak, Nip, and me, before we were swept down the river under Grave Mountain. I dreamed about her all that time in the Land of the White Bear. When I returned, she was different. I’d been dreaming about somebody I wanted her to be. Not the real Lutha.”
“Were you in love with her?”
“Not with the Lutha who tortured the Salt Men, who struck you. The first time I saw you. Remember?”
“No.”
“You were holding a baby by the Roundhouse. It cried, and Lutha punched your face.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Kalik and Lutha looked so beautiful together. I thought the baby was theirs.”
Maka stood. “Lutha had to present any new-born girl baby to Hekkat and the old women.” She turned and called to Kitimah and Sheenah, “I’ll give you a hand to carry that up.”
We took the nets we had woven to the river. I would have gone to our crossing-place, but Maka was silent when I suggested it. Paku looked uncomfortable. It was Tepulka who told me, “We can’t fish where Chak died.”
“Why not?”
“When we were little, if anyone drowned, we weren’t allowed to fish there.”
“What if you were starving?”
“An old man, Tunga, had to chant over the water first – to lift the danger. When we sang the Travellers’ song by Chak’s grave, that was like Tunga chanting where somebody had drowned. It made the water sacred until he lifted the danger.”
“What if we sing the Traveller’s song again. By Chak’s grave. And at the crossing?”
“You’re our Tunga, Ish. That should make it all right, but maybe it’s still too soon. Besides, his grave’s too close to the river.”
“Why didn’t you say?”
“I didn’t remember. Maka knows about those things, more than the rest of us. Her mother taught her.”
I felt annoyed then realised it was important that the Children should remember something of their own. They had forgotten almost everything. That had been part of the reason for Tama’s and Puli’s depression.
I waited a day or two then asked Maka, “If we could get down to the river below the waterfall, could we fish there?”
“Oh, yes,” said Maka. “Below the waterfall.”
“Even though Chak drowned above?”
“It’s where he drowned that’s dangerous. Below the waterfall, that’d be all right.”
If the ban on fishing had any sensible reason, I thought to myself, it was because of the danger of infection from the drowned body. Or, was it the idea of eating fish that had eaten the dead?
“What about visiting Chak’s grave? I thought it might be good for the little ones to see it again.”
“Especially for Hurk!” Maka nodded vigorously.
“Then we’ll go down for a look. You, Tepulka, and me.”
We found an easy spur to the river. A cliff hid the waterfall. Below the cliff was a deep pool where we could set the nets. The far side was all jumbled rocks and drifting mist. Tepulka and I were so busy talking, we didn’t hear Maka at first. She pointed.
We shaded our eyes. The bottom of the pool was lined with trout! A couple of days later, the three of us were were back at the pool with the nets, Tama, the donkeys, and the three little ones. We visited Chak’s grave first.
Chapter 29
Twelve Again
Over the grave we sang the Travellers’ song.
“Chak won’t talk to me now,” said Hurk and cried. Kimi and Tupu leaned against me.
“Will Chak look just the same?” Tupu whispered.
“His body will rot,” I said. “Like anything that dies. Like that bird you found.”
“I’m not going to rot,” said Hurk. “Never!” He ran down the bank and threw a stone hard at the water. Kimi joined him, and they tried to skip flat stones. Tepulka straightened the post with Chak’s name and drove it deeper. Tupu knelt with Maka and pulled some grass that had crept on to the grave. Hurk and Kimi brought smooth stones and set them around.
“I can’t smell him rotting,” said Tupu.
“That’s why we buried him deep,” Maka told her.
“Ish, would the wild dogs eat Chak if we hadn’t buried him?”
“Probably. And the pigs, too. They’re scavengers.”
“What’s scavengers?”
“You saw what they did to Tepulka’s deer.”
A few days before, Tepulka had shot a deer and hung the carcass from a branch. I went with him to bring it down. Hurk and Tupu came along, too.
Three big pigs scattered. Their feet drummed, and they were gone. Where Tepulka had bled and gutted his deer, the ground was chopped, the grass torn and stained brown.
“I hung it high up!”
Nevertheless, the pigs had pulled it down. Tepulka found the deer’s skull. No flesh or skin left on it. Then Hurk and Tupu found a half-chewed pair of ribs still attached to a piece of backbone.
“They bit through the bone!”
“They couldn’t!”
“They must have.”
“I only killed it this morning!”
I glanced at the midday sun. The pigs had cleaned up almost the whole carcass.
“Would they eat us?”
“If we were dead,” I told Hurk. “Henga didn’t say anything about them attacking people, but her pigs were tame. We need some dogs.” We walked back to camp, bows ready, and warned the others.
Now, at the grave, Hurk said, “I’m glad we dug such a deep hole for Chak. Will his bones still be there?”
“Bones take ages to disappear. We’ll be dead ourselves before then.”
“I’m never going to die!” Hurk ran down and threw more stones into the river.
“At the Headland,” said Tupu, “I coughed up blood, and somebody said that meant I was going to die. But I’m not going to now. I want to catch the trout and eat them.”
Below the waterfall, we set two nets across the tail of the pool. Tepulka swam out with a longer net and we dragged from the top. We took it in turn, because of the cold, worked the nets in, heavy with trout. Throwing them up the bank. Resetting. Splitting and drying the trout on racks in the sun.
“High up, so scavengers can’t eat them,” Hurk said.
The second morning at the falls, Tepulka called me downstream to watch trout jumping up a stepped series of pools. Many fell back and had to try again. Something big and silver leapt.
“Did you see that? It landed halfway up the next pool!”
Later we found one of the silver fish in the net. We ate it at once, its bright orange flesh.
“Poor silver fish,” said Kimi.
“It doesn’t hurt if somebody eats you when you’re dead,” Hurk told her.
We dried the nets and bundled them under a leaning rock. The donkeys had full loads. Our own packs were heavy. Tama carried a few fish. And Hurk, Tupu, and Kimi insisted they each carry one in their small packs.
“We’ll give you some of ours when we get near the camp. You can tell the others you carried them the whole way.”
It took all day. Hurk, Kimi, and Tulu staggered the last stretch up to the camp, packs filled with trout. As we unloaded the donkeys, Tama counted his piglets and sheep
. Kitimah and Sheenah laughed and told him they’d watched them carefully because they knew how angry he would be if any were sick. Tama just nodded and led the donkeys down to drink and roll.
“I threw some scraps across the creek,” said Paku. “The wild dogs ate every last bit. I reckon it wouldn’t take long to tame them.”
I saw Tama look. “It’s all right,” I told him. “There’ll still be plenty of food for Gobble and Hurry.”
We hung the trout row upon row, split sides held open by sharpened twigs. Smoke drifted and turned them gold and brown. They glistened oily. “We’ll have to store them well up,” said Paku. “The wild dogs can jump high.”
“So can Hurk,” said Tulu and laughed at his face.
We tried our trap. Tepulka went round through the bush to lash railings across the back of the yard. The rest of us crept up the creek and climbed out on the clearing, driving the wild animals. As they got near the fences, we leapt and shouted. Most of the deer drifted off, but the goats plunged and the sheep followed between the fences. We chased the last of them up the narrow entry into the yard, and Tepulka appeared, shoving sliprails across.
We got kicked, bruised, scratched, knocked down. But we brought out two nanny goats with two kids each. We caught three other goats, youngsters. And we had three well-grown lambs. Five other sheep and about ten goats got out when a stag threw itself at the rails and broke down the yard.
Tama brought up the tame Animals, and moved the new ones down. We led the nanny goats in deerskin harnesses, their kids following. It took time, but was worthwhile.
Soon after that we set the nets again, this time for the great silver fish which had begun their spawning run.
Paku kept feeding the wild dogs. He and Tama returned one evening with three pups. Their mother called half the night. She was back next day, flitting between the trees, calling, answering the pups’ wails. Tama fed them meat and goats’ milk, but still they cried. When the bitch stayed near the camp all day and night, Paku said, “She must have moved her other pups closer.”
Tama had her feeding on meat he put out. At last, the bitch led two wild pups down. In a few days they were waiting across the creek for him, cringing and eating from his hand.
Their mother began to disappear, leaving the two wild pups, turning up to see if they were all right, disappearing again. She no longer had milk but, even after the wild pups had followed Tama across the creek and joined our three tame ones, she would still appear. At night she crept closer. She would disappear for several days, then turn up again. All winter she kept returning, long after the pups had stopped answering her calls.
By that time we were milking the nanny goats. The little herd went out each morning with Hurk and a pup. Kimi and Tupu, each with a pup, led out our sheep. The donkeys grazed up and down the creek. Tama moved around with the other two pups at his heels, as well as Gobble and Hurry. Kimi said he had secret names for all the Animals.
We ate well, as I had promised Maka. And by the end of winter, we had two more children. A boy and a girl. Arak and Perrah.
Kitimah’s waters broke one evening and she gave birth to Arak some time before the following morning. Everything happened faster than I had expected. When we were sure the baby was on its way, Tepulka built up the fire and lit the smoky lamps we’d made of moss burning in rendered pork fat. Calm and confident, he helped me deliver Arak.
Maka and Tulu woke the little ones as they’d promised, and just in time. The baby came headfirst, face crumpled, mouth screwed up. “His nose is flat,” said Tupu.
“And his ears,” said Hurk. “They’ll have to unfold.”
“He’s beautiful!” Maka said and showed them his miniature fingers and toes.
“Is Kitimah all right?” Kimi wanted to know. In fact it had been an easy birth, especially for a first-time mother. We all woke in the morning to the sound of Arak’s cries. The sun was up, and we had a new member of the family. “Twelve again!” I said to myself after examining Kitimah and her baby in the daylight.
Perrah was born about a week later. A long and difficult labour for Sheenah. As I had felt in examining her the last few days, the baby was in the wrong position. Instead of its head showing, an arm appeared. I had discussed with Tepulka what we would have to do. I worked at turning the baby, the way I had learned from the Shaman. It was even more difficult because the birth cord was around the baby’s neck.
Tepulka helped with his deft hands. I explained to him what he should feel, and he managed it well until at last a little girl, Perrah, slid out.
Maka and Tulu had taken the little ones down the creek out of reach of Sheenah’s cries. She and Perrah were exhausted. Once the afterbirth came, and we had done all we could to make Sheenah comfortable, I looked up to see the little ones standing outside the shelter, crying.
Finger at my lips, I beckoned them in. “Quietly!” Maka whispered. They crept in with exaggerated caution, staring at what they could see of the baby in Sheenah’s arms.
“Sheenah’s too tired to talk. And the baby’s going to sleep.” But Sheenah woke enough to give them a wondering look, smile, and drift off.
Despite all our care and cleanliness, an infection too powerful for my simple medicines burned and tortured Sheenah. The next day, she grew hotter and hotter. We bathed her with cool water, tried to lower the fever, but the heat raged in her. The following night Sheenah died knowing neither us nor her child.
I might have saved Sheenah if I had known enough. If I had remembered more of the Shaman’s teaching, the books I had read. In the rush of surviving and escaping, I had never really got to know Sheenah. She had been one of the older girls, that was all. What she thought, her feelings, ideas, I had been too busy to learn. She had neither complained nor drawn attention to herself, walking quietly, keeping up. I remembered the low murmur of her voice with Kitimah’s through the babble of the creek. All I could think was that I wanted to be on my own.
Then I realised Tepulka’s sense of failure was stronger than mine. He had seen the first death of someone he had tried to help. I followed him up the clearing where he had gone, his footprints black across the frosted grass. Maka found us there and led us back.
Kitimah took Perrah. Kimi, Hurk, and Tupu needed comforting. I was grateful for Paku who kept things going, saw the goats were milked and led out with the sheep to feed. He reminded us of the little, everyday things that needed doing. It was their ordinariness that helped us all.
“Twelve again,” I said, after we buried Sheenah within sound of the creek’s voice.
Chapter 30
“It’s My Story Now.”
Snow streaked and swathed the bluffs like Puli’s weaving patterns. On a clear night we could hear the wild pack baying.
Blankets, lengths of cloth lined our walls until the hut kept out not just the cold, but even the sound of the creek, the rain. I remember days so cold Tama left his Animals and came inside. When Puli left her loom to listen to stories by the fire.
Just when we hoped the bitch had forgotten her pups, she returned whimpering, crying, skinny. Tama put out food, but she skulked away. As soon as he came inside, she cried for her pups again. When he put out a bowl of goat’s milk, the bitch overturned and fouled it. A shadow between the trees, she remained a haunt upon Tama’s conscience.
One day, he tied the smallest pup to a bush across the creek. Its yelps were frantic. Kitimah begged Tama to bring back the runt, but he stared into the fire.
We returned from hunting to find Tama sitting across the creek with the pup’s body, throat torn open. Two days later, he found the bitch frozen stiff.
“I should have left her some pups.”
“Some animals can’t go back once they lose the smell of the pack,” I told him. “Perhaps the bitch killed it because the pup smelled of us. You did your best, Tama.”
“I don’t think about it,” he said.
Outwardly, he seemed tougher now, but something had shifted deep inside Tama. I thought of the har
der behaviour Puli showed, too. Both had survived depression, but at some cost.
Tama spent more time going round his Animals, Gobble and Hurry at his heels, and training the remaining pups, but he needed human company as well. Then I thought of how the bitch had reacted to Tama’s offers of help. “It might be better to leave him to recover his own way,” I said to Tepulka.
Kitimah had plenty of milk for Arak and Perrah. They grew rolypoly babies like twins who even looked like each other. I watched them sleep and feed, watched their eyes wander and learn to focus. Did Perrah miss her own mother? Kitimah seemed to love Perrah equally with Arak. And Maka was quick to help with the two babies. Sheenah seemed forgotten and, in Hurk’s dreams, Chak no longer spoke to him.
I told Puli all I remembered of dyeing cloth, and we searched for coloured soils and clays, collected leaves and bark. We gave up several cooking pots to her experiments. She worked with different designs, thicknesses of yarn, combinations of goat hair and wool. Even the woven pieces she called failures had a lustre to them.
Sometimes when I looked at the shifting colours and shapes on her loom, I thought I understood what she was doing. As if there was a meaning to her patterns, the colours.
“I see things in it,” Tepulka said. “It’s like looking at long grass when the wind blows. The sun shines, and it changes. Like trees, sun reflecting off the leaves. And the wind turns them over, green to silver. A cloud, the trees are all the same; the sun comes out, and every tree’s a different green.”
Puli smiled and passed the shuttle across faster.
“It’s like a picture,” Tepulka said to her. “As if it’s telling a story I can’t quite hear.”
“It is a story,” said Puli. I looked at the piece she was weaving in greens and yellows, reds and golds. “This is the story about the name of the man who spun yellow hair into gold.”