by Jack Lasenby
Tupu cried, scratched till her fingertips were raw, and called out all that long day. “When it got dark, I pulled my legs up under my tunic. I curled against the side of the hole and tried to imagine I was sleeping next to Kitimah, because she’s warm!”
Next morning, Gobble and Hurry tumbled into the hole on top of Tupu. She was cuddling them when she heard Bar and Tag bark. Tama heard a hoarse whisper and saw the hole. He poked a branch down, clambered in himself, and pushed Tupu up into the sun under the wide blue sky. Gobble and Hurry were busy eating something and squealed when Tama lifted them out.
He piggybacked Tupu back to camp. She ate the stew Kitimah had ready and slept all day, her skinned fingertips wrapped in bandages smeared with a soft ointment. When we returned her face was still flushed, and I was afraid she was suffering the fever of the wasting disease again.
I took a shovel up to the gardens at once to dig out the side of the hole so nobody else would ever fall in and die there alone. I found what Gobble and Hurry had been eating. A heap stored in the bottom. Dry because of the spur falling away either side, and because the sandy soil drained well. That was why they were in such good condition, the things that rolled when Tupu tried to stand on them. I searched and found several more holes along the top of the spur. The entry into each covered with a slab of tote.
The night of our return, I hugged Tupu on my lap and said: “Once upon a time there were some people who ran away from a wicked man who wanted to kill them. They escaped in a canoe, ran down a tunnel, crossed a river, and built themselves a winter camp. They gathered all the food they could: leaves, plants, roots, berries. They caught fish. They tamed pigs and goats and sheep and dogs.
“One of them, a little girl called Tupu, went looking for herbs and fell down a hole. Next day two little pigs and two little dogs led their clever master to the hole. He got Tupu out. And they all lived happily ever after.”
Tupu wriggled. Tama shifted on the edge of the circle.
“And Tupu discovered something that was going to help her people forever and ever. Because that wasn’t an ordinary hole.”
“It was special!” said Kimi. She jiggled, eyes flashing with impatience.
“It had something special in it.”
“Magic!”
“Not just magic,” I said.
“What?” asked Tupu.
I tipped out a basket so they rolled and bumped across the floor of the camp. “Potatoes!
“There’s five other pits filled with them. Plenty to eat. And plenty to take with us, for seeds. They’re going to make life easier.”
“Who hid them in the holes?”
“Whoever made the gardens. It must have been a few years ago. Maybe they left these here in case they ever came back and needed them.”
“Did they die?”
“Maybe they went too far to ever come back.”
“The red ones,” said Paku, “they’re the ones we used to grow at the Headland.”
“We’ll dig a patch and plant it, just in case those people come back. And we’ll leave some in the store-pits.” I didn’t say it might be useful to us, too, if we had to return.
“Why didn’t the wild pigs eat them?” asked Hurk.
“The pits were too deep. They might eat the ones we plant, of course. But somebody might find them first. And they’ll make the pigs fatter anyway.”
So that was our last job, planting potatoes. While Tepulka split some tote slabs and replaced the wooden covers on all the store-holes. He also put a pointed digging stick in each hole, just in case. Then we said goodbye to Sheenah, sang the Travellers’ song so our voices blended with the creek’s.
By the river, our people lie,
By the river rushing by.
They hear no sound,
Feel no burning sun.
Their journey ended. Ours goes on.
Up Wild Dog Creek we went and across the big clearing. Maka laughing at something Tepulka whispered to her. Gobble and Hurry rolling like two round black boulders at Tama’s heels. The sheep following. The goats spreading, Tag and Bar heading and turning them back.
Kitimah beside Hika, murmuring a lullaby to Arak and Perrah already nodding in their basket. Puli beside Bok who carried her loom as well as a heavy load of potatoes. Kimi, Hurk, and Tupu chattering. The other pups tripping them, running up the line to Tama, and bolting back again.
Three more laden donkeys, then Tulu and Paku, spears and bows slung on the last. Each of us carrying a spindle, twirling and winding the yarn from the wool tucked under our arms. I looked back down our column. Travellers!
Chapter 32
The Ooze
We climbed to the same height as the bluffs and found a clear terrace that looped southwards. Around spurs, in and out of gullies. Covered by slips here and there, but so level it must be one of the Ways of the Old People. Kitimah had stopped her lullaby as the babies slept. Puli was singing one of her weaving songs, the three little ones chattering still. We had followed the Way some distance before a cold thought struck me.
Tepulka took the lead on his own, Maka the rear. Paku, Tulu, and I turned back. By mid-afternoon, the Way led us north – past where we had joined it – and along the top of the bluffs to a cave overlooking the big clearing.
“Someone’s been watching us all winter!”
Paku knelt. The ashes in the fireplace were warm, flew at his puff. Two sets of footprints left the cave and headed along the Way north. A man’s, with a badly-shaped left foot, probably an injury. I could not remember anyone at the Headland with a foot like that. The other prints were a child’s. Towards evening what looked a dark tower reared ominous upon the Way. Another Triple-Hekkat. One face gazing upwards, one to the south, the third looking north to a silver glint between distant mountains.
At the statue’s base was a chunk of bloody meat. “A meal for Hekkat,” said Tulu. Her voice shook. White-faced, she pointed down. At the Hekkat’s foot, the earth was piled as if the great statue on its plinth of stone was moving south. Splitting, turning back the earth like water. Paku and Tulu were already running when I called them back.
“Look!” I showed them the footprints, the same ones. I pointed at the marks of the broad-headed spear the watchers had used to dig. The hole where they had stood the spear in the ground.
“What were they doing?” asked Tulu.
“They wanted to make it look as if the Hekkat is hunting us.” I remembered Kalik’s story of the goddess who waded into the lake and turned to stone. I forced a laugh. “Maybe somebody was trying to scare us.”
“Well, it worked,” said Paku. He laughed, weakly at first, and Tulu and I laughed with him. It helped. We knew whoever had made the marks, they were humans. Not a monstrous stone statue come to life.
Down the hillside I flung the sacrificial meat. “So much for superstition!” And I remembered Jak, my old dog, pissing on the feet of of one of the Guardians in the mountain pass. “They’re too far ahead for us to catch, but we’ll scare them!” I said, stamping the earth flat again. “When they come back with Kalik, they’ll wonder what’s happened. Let’s warn the others.”
But Paku grinned, drove in his spear, and turned up the earth at the northern base of the Hekkat. “We’ll scare them instead,” he said. “They won’t like it when they find the Hekkat going the wrong way!”
We turned, still laughing, and trotted till dark.
Outside the cave next morning I looked at the injured left footprint again. In my mind I saw a steel trap and, caught between its jagged teeth, part of a white bear’s left hind foot. I saw the Carny limping on his left foot. The picture changed again, became the nightmare in which that evil face turned into Kalik’s beautiful mask.
“What did you say?” Tulu was staring at me.
“I was just telling myself not to believe in superstition.”
Paku, too, stared at me before he grinned. “It’s easy –” he said, “– I mean, to believe in it.”
“I have to fight it
all the time,” I admitted. “If you give in, you let yourself be ruled by fear you invented yourself. Kalik understands that.”
We caught up to the others that evening. The little ones cried at the thought that we had been watched all winter. Maka sat silent.
We travelled on at first light. Tag and Bar now at the back with me. They looked behind and sniffed the air, as I did.
We stopped several times a day for Kitimah to feed the babies. We hunted as we went, gathered what green leaves we could eat, and collected the wisps of wool and hair the Animals left on twigs and thorns. The days went by in the regular rhythm of the Travellers, the Animals grazing as they walked. We could not go any faster.
Where were we going? We’d know when we saw it. By another lake between mountains. Grassy flats. “By a river running by,” I murmured. Good soil lying into the sun. Our first crops. Oats. Potatoes. Stores of winter food. Stacks of hay. Planting the winter wheat.
I saw the planks we would split for walls. Thatched roofs bonneted with snow, smoke rolling low in winter. Shaded by fruit trees in summer. Gardens. Yards with railing fences. Goats and sheep, pigs, donkeys.
I had read how to make paper. We could try reeds and flax. Ink would be easy. I would write down all I could remember of healing, and Tepulka would add to it so Children still unborn would start with our knowledge and discover more. We would write our story, build up our own Library. I would find a cliff and paint our journey, and Puli would tell it through her weaving.
We would send trading parties to the Cold Hills. Perhaps some of Henga’s people would come to live with us. We slowed down when lambs and kids were born, slinging them on the donkeys as they tired. Tupu ran with Kimi and Hurk among the sheep and goats. The first milk went to Kitimah and Tupu. Any left over to Kimi and Hurk. As more kids were born, there was enough for everyone. Tulu remembered making cheese and began to experiment.
The Way wound down off the ridge and ran beside the wild river. Tama said to me, “They’re following us, aren’t they?”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve seen you and Paku dropping back with Tag and Bar. Looking. Sniffing. Why don’t we ambush them?”
“Kalik won’t walk into any ambush. We’re looking for a place we can make a stand, Tama, somewhere to defend ourselves.”
A white wall of mountains closed the valley south as if the river ended in the lake Henga’s mother had described to her. Lake Tip she had called it, stretching below the mountains’ feet. But if it lay there, we couldn’t see it yet.
There were several places we thought of stopping, but each had some disadvantage. Tama wanted to fortify a hillock on the floor of the valley. With a hollow in the top, like a huge dimple.
“No water,” I said. “No feed for the Animals. We’d last only a couple of days.”
One morning Paku spotted tiny figures crawling across a shingle fan we had descended two days before. The wind was carrying their scent to the dogs. Paku counted twenty-one warriors. Ahead of them a group of three. They were moving fast, would catch up tomorrow.
“What will we do?” asked Tulu.
“We’ve all got bows, spears, knives. We know how to use them.”
Then Tama came running. “I’ve found a place!” We followed him up a rock-choked slot between bluffs. I thought of Karly Campy’s mistake all those years ago when he led the Travellers into a closed-off gully. But in Tama’s narrow valley the Animals could not be panicked to run through our tents. We would build our cooking fires well away, to be safe. The bluffs right around the valley were sheer, surely too high for our attackers to lower themselves. Nor could they shoot arrows so far with any accuracy. Even if they could see the floor of the valley.
A stream of good water came over the cliffs. A separate spring welled under a boulder. Grass for many days. Firewood. I saw deer tracks, and some wild goats that climbed and stood craning, and I felt safer. If there were a way up or down these walls, the wild goats would know it, but these were now trapped with us.
We unloaded the Animals, passed their packs up the tumble of boulders in the gully mouth. Tama called his sheep and goats, jumping from rock to rock. The donkeys heaved themselves up, stretching out their necks, leaning forward as we pulled from in front and pushed from behind so their clattering feet gripped on the rock and they toppled forward into safety. The kids and lambs we passed up.
For Gobble and Hurry’s short legs, the climb seemed impossible, but Tama called, and they bolted, tails stiff, squealing, up and over. We laughed as their round black behinds disappeared. The little ones forgot Kalik and explored our retreat. The Animals grazed.
Tepulka thought we could shift the unstable slip of boulders in the entry, make it into a wall. With thick poles, Paku and I levered at what he said was the keystone.
“Run!”
Paku’s feet skipped past my head. Tepulka dragged me up. We ran shouting, laughing. It would have been too late, anyway, if the boulders had fallen our way. As it was, they teetered, rumbled, and slid. We levered a couple and had a wall like a parapet from side to side of the gorge. With everybody helping, we soon built a ledge behind.
“They’ll have to come up one at a time,” said Paku.
“Better than I hoped,” I puffed. “Give us a hand.” We stacked smaller rocks, made slots to shoot through.
There was the flesh of two deer killed the night before, four baskets of dried meat, and several of freshly-picked green leaves and roots. While Tama kept a lookout, Tepulka, Paku, and I went down to the river and netted three baskets of trout. We hung them in the smoke from the campfire under a huge bulge of rock. There we should sleep safe.
In the darkness under the northern wall, the creek backed up behind the boulder parapet. The top end of the pool finished under a bank of scrub which kept falling away, mixing with the water. Sunless. The smell, the look of fetid swamp reminded me of something. Slime dribbled out over the boulders below our parapet, making attack even more difficult.
Then a deer bounded out of the scrub. The pups yelping behind. The deer leapt on the jelly-like pond. One pup flung itself after. I held Tama back. The deer’s head rose coated with liquid clay, eyes opening, rolling in panic. Its drowning bawl gurgled. The white patch of rump hair tipped and slid under. The pup crying, following it out of sight.
As we stared, another section of dry ground carrying a couple of trees and some scrub detached, subsided, and sank. A wave travelled slow down the swamp’s surface. Half the ledge and parapet was now backed by the sinister ooze.
I worked out a roster: two on guard at the parapet; two waiting just behind, one to support, the other to run and call the rest.
“The moment you feel yourself getting tired,” I said, “call the next person up.”
I was on watch with Tulu in the early hours. Maka and Paku slept wrapped in cloaks on the ground behind us. Through a spyhole I could see the way any attacker had to climb.
The eastern sky was lightening when I glanced back down. Something had changed. I touched Tulu’s arm as she reached to touch mine. Three warriors sliding up, arching their bodies to seem part of the slimy rocks. Clinging, then sliding up again. The first was just beneath us, the second below him, the third heaving himself up. Their hands shifted, finding grips. I nodded to Tulu and we stood together and leaned over.
“Now!” Tulu shot the first. I took the second. They both lay where they fell. The third sprang downhill, but I hit him, and he fell between boulders. The other two died before dawn. Throughout the day, the third man’s voice weakened. It stopped in the afternoon.
“We’re fighting for our lives,” I said.
An occasional arrow clinked upon our parapet. I kept two groups of two children on patrol, looking for any attempt to climb down the steep walls. Kimi and Hurk ran down the second day, crying that a man had fallen.
From what was left of his face, I recognised one of Kalik’s men called Munt. His bow had smashed, his arrows. We took the bowstring, the flights, the arrowhe
ads, and the knife still in his sheath. The bones so broken, his body felt like a loose sack. Tepulka and I swung and pitched it into what we now called The Ooze.
Chapter 33
The Wooden Doll
Kalik lost eight warriors in the mouth of the gorge and on the unclimbable walls. He began a siege of terror. Hoots and screams echoed between the cliffs, night and day. The roar of bears. The rumble of avalanches shook our gully all one day. I woke once to the Children’s screams and heard the terrifying pour and thunder of a river in flood.
How did he do it? Kalik understood how to use others’ imaginations. Intuitively, he already knew what images were in our minds. He only had to distort and enlarge them into fears. But how could I explain that to the Children? All they remembered was the Kalik who had killed their families, who had practised evil upon them. I tried hooting back at Kalik’s hoots, screamed when he screamed, and the Children copied me. They screeched and roared louder than any bear. Still, I knew Kalik’s inventiveness and warned them we must be patient.
After several nights of noise, Tepulka woke me to a great silence. Maka had seen something on the high rock wall that bulged and soared above our camp. We looked up the great swell of rock, but nothing moved.
“It might have been a huge bird flying across the moon. But it looked like a man’s shadow thrown upon the wall,” said Maka. “There!”
My skin prickled cold. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled. Limping high across the wall of rock, hands weaving, dancing, posturing, enticing, body doubling and straightening, I saw the shadow of the obscene creature who had haunted me in the Land of the White Bear.
I had never told the Children of the Carny. How he had come like an apparition, dancing tall, then shrinking dwarfed, bending low, repulsive. Singing in his eldritch voice, screeching, chattering, gossiping. His hands fluttering over people, too familiar. Now I told Tepulka and Maka of his oppressive reek like a sunless swamp, how his stench filled the snow-house where we waited for Cheena’s marriage. Of how the Carny gulped greedily at fresh seal liver and blubber, blood and oil over his face, in his hair. How the women hid their children behind themselves, away from his dancing, unclean fingers.