The Wild Way Home

by Sophie Kirtley

  I watch him nervously. Why has he gone so quiet? Something’s not right. I look around the little camp. Maybe this is not right? Maybe I’ve taken Harby to the wrong place entirely, maybe this isn’t the place he remembered. I think of the footprints, the shadow … maybe this is somebody else’s home.

  ‘Harby?’ I say, biting my lip. ‘Is this actually your home?’

  ‘Home,’ he echoes, nodding, but his voice sounds hollow.

  He hangs his head. I look at the smouldering ashes, the little hut, the meat abandoned on the fire. Why is no one here? Why did no one come running out to greet Harby? Why was no one out looking for him? I think of Dad calling Lamont and Beaky, of them promising to search for me in Mandel Forest.

  Home isn’t home without people, without your family. Then I remember what Harby said in the cave, when we were looking at the handprints: My people. Gone. Has Harby’s whole tribe really been wiped out? Is he all that’s left? My heart aches, imagining how it would be to be truly alone in the world. I touch his arm.

  He just stares into the embers. Remembering? Not remembering? Who knows? What can I possibly do to help him?

  The animal skins, which cover the hut, flap noisily in the breeze, almost like applause. I look across at the little hut. Maybe Mothga’s in there? I try to imagine the tiny baby curled up and cosy, snug beneath a soft deerskin blanket in a little woven crib. I push away the other imagining: a shadow man, waiting in there to ambush me with his flint blade ready.

  I try to swallow, but my mouth has gone dry. I pick up a big stick from a pile next to the fire. ‘Let’s have a look in there,’ I say to Harby, but he ignores me totally; he’s still staring into the embers, like he’s in a trance. Slowly, slowly I take a step towards the hut.

  ‘Eeeeeee-eeeeeee-kurreeeeeee!’ shrieks a night creature from the forest. My belly does a flip. I tiptoe closer to the hut.

  Gripping my stick tightly, I stand for a second by the hut’s entrance and I listen. No sounds, just the hiss and crackle of the fire behind me and my own thudding heart.

  I draw back the animal skins in slow motion and peer inside.

  HUT

  Velvet dark. I blink; the triangle of moonlight from the hut’s opening falls on to a strange lumpen shape. I clasp my mouth, take a staggery step back. It’s somebody … somebody here … somebody sleeping.

  But the shape doesn’t move, and as my eyes accustom to the lack of light I peer harder and I realise it’s not a person at all, it’s just a bundle of what looks like animal skins, all dishevelled, like an unmade bed. I peer into the edges of the hut. There’s no one in here. It’s empty. Abandoned almost. Like the rest of the camp. A chilly breeze passes; I shiver. This whole place is spooking me out.

  I’m just about to let the door flap fall closed when I notice something glinting in a stray shard of moonlight, something small and white and glowy, right in the furthest corner of the hut. I hesitate, squinting into the darkness. What is that?

  I step slowly into the hut, the entrance flap closing behind me. Inside, the hut is so dark. I edge towards the moonbeam and the curious little white thing glowing there. I bend and cautiously pick it up; it’s very small, it feels … familiar. I examine the thing in the thin strand of moonlight and I gasp.

  It’s a tooth! ‘A deertooth!’ I whisper in the dark. A deertooth! Just like my deertooth! The one I found in my Mandel Forest! I pat at my shorts pocket, feeling for the familiar shape of my own deertooth; still there. I shuffle back out of the hut into the moonbrightness, to show Harby what I’ve found.

  He’s still just standing there, right where I left him, staring at the smouldering fire. ‘Hey!’ I say as I approach him. ‘Look at this, Harby.’

  I hold out the deertooth to him on my palm.

  He starts back, as if in fear almost.

  ‘What is it, Harby? What’s wrong?”

  Then he steadies himself, reaches out his hand and takes the deertooth. He lifts it up to the moonlight and stares at it, wide-eyed. I notice that this deertooth has a little tiny hole in it too, just like the one I found before. I reach towards my pocket to show Harby my deertooth too, but suddenly he grabs my wrist.

  ‘Mothga,’ he says breathlessly. ‘This Mothga deertooth!’

  ‘Mothga’s deertooth?’ I repeat. Why would a baby want a deertooth?

  His grip tightens. Harby stares at me; I can’t read his look. Confused? Angry? Scared? ‘Ma,’ he whispers. ‘Ma make Mothga deertooth. Ma? Where Ma?’

  ‘Ma?’ I answer. Now I’m confused. ‘I thought we were looking for Mothga?’

  He drops my wrist and stares all about him wide-eyed; he looks suddenly very very … little … like a lost little boy. ‘Where Ma?’

  I NOT MEMBER

  ‘Ma?’ I say. ‘Is Ma your mum? Do you remember your mum, Harby?’

  He blinks down at the deertooth in his hand and his face turns suddenly pale, like he’s just seen a ghost. ‘Ma,’ he says, and he curls his fingers into a fist around Mothga’s deertooth, squeezing his eyes tight shut. ‘No. I NOT member! NO!’

  ‘Harby,’ I say. ‘Try to remember! It’s important!’ My mind starts racing – if Harby can remember where his mum is then surely she’ll have Mothga with her. Maybe she’ll even help me find my way home! I joggle his arm, my heart trills in excitement. ‘Come on, Harby, try!’

  But Harby shakes me off and starts that low hummy chanting, like he did to ward off the bear. What did he call it? His spirit song. But this time his spirit song is faster, desperate and feverish. I strain my ears to understand, but I can’t; it’s almost like he’s locked me out.

  ‘Come on, Harby! Retrace your own steps. You were here! Right here.’ I stomp hard with my foot. I give his closed fist a little shake. ‘If that’s Mothga’s deertooth in your hand then Mothga was here too, wasn’t she. And then? Well? Then what happened? Just remember, at least try to remember. I don’t have the answers, Harby; you do!’

  Harby’s spirit song grows louder. My patience snaps. ‘Do you want to remember or don’t you?’ A sudden wave of anger surges up in me. ‘Do you know what you remind me of, Harby? You remind me of a little kid, with his stupid fingers in his ears, going “la-la-la” to block everything out.’ I grab his wrists. ‘Blocking everything out. Running away. It does nothing. Nothing to help anyone! NOTHING!’

  I shake him hard, my face close to his. ‘Listen to ME!’ I shout. Harby stops chanting and opens his eyes. His eyes that are dark as caves and night sky and bottomless wells. I look into his eyes and see my own face reflected there. I look small and lost. Just like Harby. Suddenly I hear my own words in my mind.

  Running away … Blocking everything out … Does nothing to help anyone. I remember the squeak of my trainers in the hospital corridor. I remember Dara’s baby-bird mouth. I remember Beaky’s soft sorry touch on my arm. I remember the shriek of the jay and force field of heat and Mum’s cry that turned me inside out and I remember running away … faster than fast down through my forest to the river …

  I drop Harby’s wrists; he rubs his skin where I held him too tightly. ‘I’ve done exactly what I’m accusing you of, Harby,’ I say quietly. ‘You’re running away too, aren’t you? You’re running away from … something … what happened here, Harby?’ I sweep my arm across the abandoned camp, Harby’s abandoned home. ‘I think you can remember, Harby … I just don’t think that you want to remember … because … because some things are really …’ I pause, I remember the tubes that went in and out of my poor baby brother as he lay so still and tiny in his little fish-tank bed. ‘… some things are just … just too … too big … too big to know what to do with …’

  The whole while I’ve been talking at him he’s been narrowing and narrowing his eyes at me. Now his face is all screwed up like he smells a great stink.

  ‘Cholliemurrum!’ he growls at me low like a warning. ‘I. Not. Member.’ His eyes flood up with tears. He turns his back on me and starts to run, clumsy and limping, back down the mound, towards
the forest; the moon makes him a long thin shadow.

  ‘Oi! Harby! What? Hey! Where do you think you’re going? Hey! Harby!’ My voice sounds shrill and pathetic, like a yappy little dog tied to the school gates.

  He pauses on the dark forest fringe, glances back at me over his shoulder. ‘Go home, Cholliemurrum,’ he says. Then he steps amongst the trees and disappears into the dark.

  ‘I bloody saved your life!’ I call after him. ‘Come back here! Harby! Harby!’

  But I hear the sounds of him crashing away from me through the bushes.

  I don’t understand. ‘Wait! Harby! Wait! Please!’ I call after him. But it’s too late; the forest has fallen silent and Harby has already vanished into the shadows.

  I run down through the clearing and into the forest. He can’t just … abandon me. We’re a team; I was trying to help him; we were helping each oth—

  My foot tangles in a briar and I trip. My head clonks forward with a mighty thwack on to a tree branch. For a moment I just stay there on my hands and knees, partly in shock, partly because my eyes have gone all funny. Cautiously, I touch my head; I can feel a bump actually rising under my fingers. It really hurts. I look at my fingers; no blood. I blink, squeeze my smarting eyes shut and open a few times until my vision starts to clear. I can smell mint. Sniffing, still on my hands and knees, I raise my chin and look up. Straight into a pair of huge amber eyes.

  LYNX

  The lynx is so close I can smell her warm scent, leafy like autumn. We crouch, frozen in time, face to face, eye to eye. Her nostrils flare slightly as she breathes, breathes in my smell. Her fiery eyes bore into mine, dangerously calm, like a deadly staring contest. Her eyes narrow but I blink first.

  She opens her black mouth; I can hear the sticky smack of saliva as she shows me her long curved teeth. I draw back from the meaty whiff of her breath. Her eyes stay fixed on mine, and she hisses, powerful and wild and proud.

  Slowly, carefully I start to crawl backwards, my eyes fixed on hers. Keeping her head low, she arches her back and her shadow-striped fur stands on end along her bony spine. I see the angry twitch and flick of her tufted ears. I shuffle backwards, scarcely breathing, mouth dry. What do I do?

  Then I remember: spirit song.

  I make the circle shape with my free hand and I start to chant, low and slow and dangerous.

  ‘TWINkle

  TWINkle

  LITtle

  STAR.

  HOW I

  WONder …’

  Her golden eyes stay fixed on mine. She lowers herself, shifting her weight back on to her haunches, like Howard Carter does when he’s readying to pounce.

  Panic pounds in my heart.

  ‘… what you …’ My voice is all weak and wobbly. The spirit song isn’t working! I can’t get it right on my own! It’s not enough …

  ‘… are …’ I squeak.

  The lynx hisses again. I brace myself for her pounce. And then in the rhythm of my own pounding heartbeat I hear the echo of another song. An older song. The oldest song I’ve ever known. The first song I ever heard, the one Dad sang every bedtime, back when I was little.

  I start to hum, swaying slightly. Just how Dad always used to.

  The lynx’s ears are pricked.

  I keep humming, creeping backwards, slowly, slowly.

  I lock the lynx’s honey-yellow eyes with my eyes and take a deep breath. Then I sing my spirit song. I don’t chant like Harby. I sing it. I sing it slow and soft, like a lullaby.

  ‘Row, row, row your boat …’

  The lynx holds her about-to-pounce pose like she’s turned to stone.

  ‘Off into the night …’

  My voice wavers slightly, but as I stare into the lynx’s eyes my heart fills with an ancient wildness that feels like it’s hers, but mine too somehow.

  ‘… and if you meet a wild cat …

  … don’t give her a fright …’

  The lynx blinks.

  I swallow, then I put my hand over my own strong heart and I sing again.

  ‘Row, row …’

  My spirit song rises into the dark, like it’s made of more than me, and as I sing I half hear Dad singing too … and Mum … like how when one wolf howls all the wolves howl together, answering each other’s call.

  ‘… row your boat,

  Off into the night …’

  As I stare into the lynx’s eyes, tangled images flash through my mind: Dad and me fishing in our star-sparkled river. Dad’s warm safe cuddle. A moth flying moon-bound and white in the dark of night. A birthday wish. A brother.

  ‘… and if you meet a wild lynx …’

  The lynx starts to back away; slow elegant steps, like a dancer. Her movements mirror mine.

  It’s working! It’s working! My spirit song is actually working! I almost laugh in shock and amazement, but I keep singing instead.

  ‘… don’t give her a fright …’

  I blink at the lynx through the shadows, holding out a tremulous hand, understanding suddenly. ‘I’m frightened of you,’ I whisper, dry-mouthed. ‘And you’re … you’re frightened of me.’

  The lynx steals backwards, her bones and muscles rippling beneath her glossy coat. I hum my spirit song. Maybe that’s what spirit song is made of – it’s not made of words or even of music – it’s made of the spirits of us creatures who are brave enough to look each other square in the eye and say this is me and this is you and we’re both fierce and we’re both afraid. Equals. As one.

  I sing on, steady and strong; I sing from somewhere deep deep down in me, the place where growls and giggles and unstoppable tears come from.

  Suddenly the lynx flattens her body to the ground. I gasp.

  A thin whistling noise. I look up. Something thrums through the air just above my head and thonks into a tree behind the lynx.

  Instantly, she springs away, her dappled body vanishing into the moon-dimpled undergrowth.

  I press myself to the ground. What just happened?

  Then I hear feet, human feet, crashing through the forest towards me. It must be Harby, he must’ve thrown his spear to rescue me again. A flash of anger rears in my belly. I didn’t actually need rescuing; I was saving myself quite nicely, thank you very much.

  I get to my feet. But when I catch sight of the shadow that’s running through the dark forest towards me, I drop instantly back down again. The shadow is strong and fast and absolutely massive; the shadow is NOT one bit like Harby’s; the shadow is the shadow I saw in the storm.

  ATTACK

  I press myself into the earth, squeeze my eyes tight shut. The thump-thump of heavy footfalls vibrates up through my body.

  Crazily I think of the frogs that Howard Carter brings into the garden back home, how they sit, still as still on the grass, playing dead even when Howard Carter pats and paws them, until he loses interest and they hop back into the flower bed. But I’m way too scared to play dead. I’m just about to leap up and make a run for it when I realise the pounding feet have gone right past me. I hear a grunt and the rip of the spear being pulled out of the tree trunk. A pause, then the thump of running feet again, snapping branches, swooshing grasses. The sounds fade and are gone.

  In a daze, my head spinning, I stagger slowly to my feet. I stare in the direction the footsteps went: downhill, away from the Spirit Stone, curving back round towards the river. I breathe a shaky sigh of relief.

  But who was that man throwing his spear at anyway? Was he hunting the lynx … or me? Somewhere, far away in the forest, a wolf howls. I shudder, looking towards the sound, and notice that the sky over there is brightening slowly. Dawn … morning … a new day …

  Then I remember. Harby! No! That shadow man was running in the very direction Harby went off in. I give myself a shake. What am I doing, just standing here? I have to warn Harby! I have to get to him before that man does! I charge in the direction of the river.

  Thorns rip my bare legs and tangle my hair, but I tear through them as fast I can. Gasping
for breath, I trip into a hollow and as I right myself, I notice something familiar lying next to me.

  Heart pounding, I pick it up. My hand fits the smooth indent Harby’s hand has made. I touch the splintery broken end, remembering the snapping sound of the wood when Harby saved me from the wolf. I press my thumb gently to the sharp flint tip. ‘Spea!’ I whisper, gazing all about me. The forest is pale pale blue in the first morning light. Somewhere a blackbird starts to sing. This is Harby’s spear … but where’s Harby?

  Harby would never just leave his spear behind. His spear is part of him; he needs it for hunting, for protection. ‘Make safe,’ I murmur. Harby must be close by.

  ‘Harby!’ I call softly; that man could be close by too. My eyes dart from tree to tree: What if Harby’s been attacked already? Captured? I swallow. Killed? I listen hard, but all I hear is birdsong as the dawn forest wakes itself up. Peering about in the eerie early light, I realise I’m next to that massive pale tree we stopped beside in the night. It’s definitely the one, I recognise the branch where Dad’s shirt was caught. I edge around the huge tree trunk and I’m in a funny, bare patch of forest, it reminds me of a gap where a wobbly tooth has fallen out. I don’t remember this; where are all those gigantic white honeysuckle flowers?

  ‘Harby?’ I try again, slowly moving onwards, watching for movement in the trees on the other side of the gap. The air smells earthy and damp like when Mum digs over the veggie patch.

  As I part the long grass and step forward, the ground feels kind of crumbly. I glance down and stumble backwards, gasping in horror. I tremble as I cling on to the trunk of the huge pale tree and just stare.

  Right where I was about to step there’s a big empty … nothing. A deep dark hole.

  What is it?

  Carefully I edge slightly closer and peer at the huge hole – it’s the size of a car. Holding a branch, I lean forward a little to look in; bottomlessly dark. This hole wasn’t here earlier, I’m certain of it. Great big massive bottomless holes can’t just suddenly open up out of nowhere! Can they?