by Jack Lasenby
Nip came whimpering, leapt upon me and Jak. Ran between us, barking. Everybody laughed.
“Nip was company,” said the Shaman. That was all. I knew he was very fond of her. He felt the healed scar on Jak’s side. Then I was telling him how I had treated the sick, cooked up the green leaves, how the seals had returned. Arku’s people pressed about us nodding, smiling, chattering so nobody noticed another sledge.
The crowd parted. An apparition minced in, dancing, now taller than the Shaman, now only half his height. Singing in an eerie, high voice, chattering, gossiping, hands fluttering over people, too familiar. A tunic of black dogskins, a fringe of tails bouncing around him. A miasma entered with him, the oppressive reek of a swamp where, out of the sun, water lay black and unmoving.
I held my breath to keep out that clammy unclean air. Arku pulled a handful of dry grass out of the vent in the roof, opened the door. We were used to the smells of people and cooking; in this cold land warm air was always smelly. I could see the stench disgusted others, too. Most of the time, these people managed to get on with each other in their confined houses. Now they tried to hide their detestation. The newcomer smiled, as if knowing they feared him. Only the Shaman showed no emotion.
Shambling, skipping, the grotesque creature helped himself – greedily – to fresh seal liver and blubber. He sat and ate and talked, hands still dancing, touching anyone within reach. I saw several women hide children behind themselves.
Why was I so revolted by the slobbering mouth, darting eyes, those hands that never kept still, that crawled and leapt and joined and fluttered apart again? Why was I so filled with distrust? Then I saw he had somebody with him. Small. A child. Girl or boy? A hood over the little head so I could only see the lower half of a pallid face. Small hands stuffing meat into the mouth, wiping grease on the front of its tunic, darting for more.
A short beard jiggled slick under the man’s chin, the scattering of hairs on his upper lip gleamed with oil as he gorged. And he looked at me and leered. Beckoned. Hands shoved me forward. I smacked them away without looking around.
“The Carny doesn’t know you,” the nauseous voice was saying. “We haven’t seen you before. You must be Ish, the Shaman’s young friend.” He made it seem shameful.
“Oh, yes, the Carny knows all about Ish!” Tongue busy as his hands, licking his lips, the air, as if it would leap like his fingers, try to touch me. And there was a terrible snarl.
Jak leapt, hackles up, thick ruff on end. Ears shrugged. Drawing back the corners of his mouth, lips clear of his teeth, ready to slash.
A sour cackle. The horrid, knowing laughter. The restless hands dropped out of the air, crawled into the man’s lap, lay as if dead. Jak’s growl quietened. “But we will get to know each other better,” the man said, like a promise, and I thought I would keep well away from him. “Why should the Shaman need a little friend?” he asked.
And then I understood the Carny and the Child were like a distorted mirror of the Shaman and myself. I wanted to say, “We’re nothing like that!” But I could not speak, I realised, without the Carny twisting my words.
“And, so,” he smiled, “there is going to be a marriage? The Carny heard the news and came because we know there can be no marriage without the Clock.”
“The Clock!” voices repeated.
White lashes gave the Carny’s dodging eyes a painful, raw appearance. My own felt sore at the sight. Again the little beard jiggled at his chin as he saw my disgust and laughed. “Yes, the Carny has brought the Clock. We all know, don’t we, there can be no marriage without the Clock.”
He walked to the door, the Child half-hidden beside him. Because the Cliff People who filled Arku’s house were silent, his voice came clear. “My love,” he called, unclipping something at his belt, “fetch the Clock!” And the slight hooded figure detached itself from him and came staggering, carrying inside a stack of broad, shallow bowls looped with light chains.
The Carny, hands flickering, scampering over the Child’s clothes, lifted it on to a tall stool. And I saw the Child wore a heavy iron chain around its waist. Its other end hooked on the Carny’s belt. The Carny handed up the other lighter chain which the Child drew over a peg in the roof. I saw the hood slip back, caught a glimpse of huge eyes, heavy with shadows. The Carny shoved the hood in place, drew on the fine chain. Bowl by bowl, lifting one off the other, the whole stack rose in the air, suspended themselves, separated by short links hooked around their sides. A sigh went through the crowded house.
The bowls shimmered blue-green, seemed to move. I looked closer and saw they were engraved with coupling figures, writhing, knotted, interlaced. A seething confusion of bodies, limbs, hair.
“Now,” said the Carny. “The young couple.” He called Kelu and Cheena forward. The Shaman stood, face averted still, the shadow of his head outlined sharp against the stone wall, his nose a dark slash. The Carny kept glancing, grinning, as if challenging his authority.
Those disgusting hands flickered and ran over the faces of Kelu and Cheena. “You were born,” he said to the young woman, fingers scampering up and down her breast, neck, hair, “in the year the whales came ashore in the bay. The year old Tihoi died. At the time of the seals’ appearance. He gabbled and counted on his fingers.
“Your hands,” he said and turned them upwards. “Yes,” tracing something across Cheena’s left palm. He turned and repeated the action over the other. Did that several times. His fingers running over Cheena’s, separating hers, turning her hands sideways, scrutinising, licking one finger and writing with its tip on her flesh.
“The auspicious moment, the only time for your marriage,” he said, “the Clock will tell us. You must be married then, not a moment sooner, not a moment later. The Shaman must wait to marry you until the Clock tells the Carny the auspicious moment. Start the Clock!” he ordered. The Child, chain clinking, brought a great pot of water.
The Carny poured some off, knelt and eyed the level. He poured off a little more. Lifted the Child back on to the stool, and passed up the pot. “Pour it in, my Love,” said the Carny. “Spill not a drop, for this is Cheena’s happiness.”
He turned and fawned on Cheena. Darted a look at Kelu. Looked around the crowd of awed faces. “When the last drop empties the fourth and reaches the fifth bowl,” said the repulsive voice, “that will be the auspicious moment. Not a minute sooner. Not a minute later. That will be the only time the Shaman can marry you. None other. The Carny will say when!”
The Shaman still stood, face raised, withdrawn. Arku wouldn’t meet my eyes. Why had nobody told me about the Carny? The Shaman had told me about the Droll, the way people sometimes chose superstition. How it was impossible to fight if that was their choice. Surely that was what the Carny was encouraging, with his nonsense about the Clock.
And why was the Shaman standing aside while the Carny went through his mumbo-jumbo? I had read about clocks in the Library. Water clocks measured time in drips of water, that was all. There was nothing magic about them.
The Carny was looking at me. I tried to look unconcerned. Stared back. But I loathed the shape of his face. The knowing cast to his eyes. The dribbling lip. The way he bobbed his head, nodding, whispering, fondling the Child.
All that rubbish about reading Cheena’s hands. And the auspicious moment. The only moment Cheena could be married? More superstitious nonsense! Why didn’t the Shaman tell the Carny to take his Clock and go. I looked at him, disappointed.
And the Carny saw my look and licked his lips and smiled. His curved, wet lips filled me with revulsion. Why did everyone let him touch them? Cheena had let him rub his hands all over her. And Kelu just stood and watched.
“Ish doesn’t understand,” said that ingratiating lisp. “Ish doesn’t know what is happening,” he told the hooded figure of the Child. He bent and put his horrid mouth to the opening of its hood. Whispered.
“The Shaman will have to explain to Ish, won’t he! Perhaps the Shaman will have to tell
Ish about the…” His voice dropped, but I was sure he had mentioned the Droll’s name.
He laughed, wet, flaccid. Open-mouthed. So spittle sprayed. I wiped a fleck off my face, and Jak rumbled, growled again.
Chapter 24
The Clock
Drip! There was a hole through the bottom of each bowl. The first drop had found its way into the second bowl. Silence. Another drop. Slow, regular. People looked to the Clock. Cheena’s face was tense, excited. Eyes fixed on the Clock. Waiting the next sound. Drip!
The Carny collapsed his grotesque figure on a bench, drew close the Child on its chain. “Where are the drummers?”
Three young men leapt forward with circles of thin bone, stretched skins. One skimmed his hands across the taut skin, exciting a vague tremble that echoed and grew. Somewhere in the crowd, a voice moaned tight. The Carny sniggered, hands skipping along the chain, freeing the iron hook. Fumbling, flying, stripping the furs. And the Child stepped out of them and stood slender in stuff that shimmered, unfolded, floated on the air. Turning, rising to her toes – it was a girl, only about eight or nine, or maybe ten or eleven, no more. The shining cloth fell apart, revealed a smooth chest, the nipples flat spots. A boy! No, a young girl? Her arms rose, hands pointing, fingertips meeting high above her head. His head. It was a boy, I was sure. Now he was turning slowly on that one spot in the little circle, and people moaned in time with the drum.
A second drum spoke, running its rhythm across the first. Like a ripple running along a beach, across the returning slide of a wave. Until they were two voices growling, muttering, talking each other down. And the boy – girl – turned one foot, turned the other, and the body began to turn, to follow the feet, hands still pointing to the roof unmoved. Then the hands following the body.
And the third drum muttered and ran across the voices of the others, trembled, and fell into a staccato of chirps, cries, broken laughter, sounds no drum should have made. And the Child danced faster, following, leading, swaying, spinning, body questioning and answering the drums, the clapping of the Seal People.
The Shaman stood still, shadow unmoving upon the wall.
The Child swayed forward, as if diving into the seated crowd, recovered, and swayed back, swayed out from its feet, as if they were anchored to the floor, around and around. Then the feet began lifting. The toes had never left the floor. Now they never touched it. And the hands, head, shoulders, knees, legs, all moving against each other in time, disjointed yet keeping the rhythm of the voices and the drums.
Our clapping frenzied now, we all swayed. Danced, sitting, standing. Moved with the drums. And suddenly, the Child sprang upon the air like an arrow, quivering high above the chanting faces, the raised hands. I thought of the green stone dolphin I had taken at Tara’s death and thrown away after Taur’s. Curved ecstatic, the Child floated above the chanting faces, sank soundless to the ground and writhed, back arched, hips convulsing, mouth wide-open, tongue darting. The eyes turned back till the whites showed.
Cries and moans from the watchers, dulled eyes glazed as the Child writhed in frenzy, bucking and twitching. And cried, a child’s wail of abandon. The drums stopped.
A moment of silence. The crowd on their feet, shouting, clapping, some shrieking. Several couples slipped outside, hand in hand. A tang of sweat wild on the air.
And the Carny was holding, dressing the Child’s limp body between his arms and legs, adjusting the furs, hiding the great shadowed eyes beneath the hood. Snick! The hook. The gesticulating hands accepting the applause as his. Smiling, nodding, babble-mouthed.
Food was carried around. Great joints of boiled meat. Fish. Fresh seal liver. Arku and some other men brought in skin and blubber from a whale they had killed up the coast, one caught in a crack in the ice so it could not escape to the open sea. They had thrust harpoons into it, with sealskin floats attached so the whale could not sink, had to keep coming to the surface of the water, to be harpooned again. The eaters cried out at the rich flavour of its skin. It was my favourite food but, without being told, I knew I must eat nothing. I stood near the Shaman.
Cheena kept running to the Clock. She drew herself up over the bowls, to see how far the water had dripped. The second emptied into the third. The Carny had called the bowls Hours, a word I had read in the library. Hours I knew were a division of the Day: so many Hours made a Day, so many Days a Week. And the Hours were divided again into smaller parts called Minutes. And the Minutes into fragments called Seconds.
The feasting continued. People danced, told stories, jokes. Arku danced my first seal. People wept with joy as he went on his back, arms wide, embracing something. He hugged and clasped and rolled with it across the floor, legs crooked around the invisible seal, and the women sniggered and pointed until my face went red. Cheena stood on tiptoe, and I heard her beads scrape on the sharp edge of the fourth bowl as she turned, said something to Kelu, and he smiled and spoke to the Shaman.
Now somebody else took a drum, set it murmuring, and danced from vigour into weakness until the dancer lay motionless, only an indistinct drone from the drum, and I realised I was watching death in the Great Hunger. Then Arku and me. The return of the seals. Their fresh liver. The Shaman. The Carny, the Child, the Clock.
I saw Cheena and Kelu’s marriage was the hope of the Cliff People, putting to rest the memory of the dead. So I read the dance as Cheena kept checking the flow of time from bowl to bowl. Hour to Hour, Minute to Minute, Second to Second.
Another dance, and another. And still the Shaman stood unmoving.
The waves of noise: dancing, drumming, the voices of the Cliff People as they swayed, and stamped, and sang. The heat, smells of cooking food, seal oil lamps, and bodies in that small space. The air heavy – above all with the stench from the Carny, that evil smell which followed him wherever he moved behind the fluttering curtain of his hands, those creatures which crawled over each other, scrambled through the air, and dragged him, capering, behind. I felt closed in, as if I could not breathe.
By the laughter and looks of the Cliff People, the Carny was making malicious fun of me again. I wished I had on my snow-mask. The Carny danced up, hands stretching, tumbling over each other, carving my face from air just a finger’s breadth away. The Child tugged after him on its chain. The Carny leaned to touch me, and Jak snarled, was there again, lip lifted. Pucker-mouthed, the Carny backed away. I watched disgusted, and he saw what I was thinking. Hatred blackened his face.
He glanced towards the Clock. Cheena was leaning, breast against the great rim of the fourth bowl, watching the water drip from the third bowl above. The Carny ran to the Clock. Shoved her aside.
“Something has stopped the Hours!” the Carny cried. And there was a sudden new voice. The Shaman advancing tall through the crowd, chanting. But the Carny screamed high-voiced.
“The Clock has stopped! The auspicious moment passed!” There was glee in his voice. Cheena wept in Kelu’s arms. Both white-faced. Arku pushed to their side.
The Carny’s hands fluttered again, scrambled over the side of the fourth bowl, wriggled their way down through the water, stirring, groping. They felt and clutched something. The Carny held up a blue bead. That had scraped off as Cheena leaned over the rim, rolled down, and blocked the hole.
“The auspicious moment has passed. Cheena can never marry, now!” Words crisp with malice. Pleasure plain in the wriggling dance of fingers, he lifted the Child on to the stool, dismantled the Clock. They were backing out the door, the Hours stacked empty in the Child’s arms. The Child gathered up, carried close in the Carny’s. Chains looping the Clock and their eccentric figures together. The Carny turned a look of fury at the Shaman, on me. I staggered at his glare. And he was gone. Just the clink of an iron chain.
“Never!” His voice floated back, purring, caring, unctuous. “The Clock was stopped. The Droll is displeased. She will come for her gift. Let the Shaman protect you now.” His chuckle slithered, dwindled. The crackle of ice as he broke out his sledge
, the whine of runners receding. I looked at my hands, where he had touched them, the front of my tunic where they had fluttered, and felt disgust.
When Arku’s house shook, the Cliff People clutched each other. The bellow was the same I had heard echoing down the passages of the third tunnel behind the Shaman’s cave. I recognised its lonely bray, the hungry cry of something ancient that stirred and splashed like the suck and slither of leather dragging across ice.
Chapter 25
The Droll’s Gift
Lips snarled back thin. Mouths agape in rictus. Cheeks ridged in grimace. The Cliff People reeked of terror. Eyes bulged. Foreheads wrinkled. For a strange moment I thought how like fighting dogs we look when afraid. Bodies scrambling over and under each other to crouch against the wall. Arku tried to quieten them, but I saw a man fling aside a couple of small children, dive, and burrow to hide under somebody else. His stench!
My mind flashed and I was back in the Guardians’ pass, seeing the upturned faces of the Salt Men as the mountain fell upon them. The memory saved me from panic. That and the sound of my name: “Ish!”
I ran after the lamp the Shaman carried. Into the darkness outside. So black it seemed there was no air. I gulped, smelled and tasted the horrible odour again. Heard a single mooching step, the slurp of a leathery body dragging across snow.
“I do not believe in the Droll!” I formed the words with my lips, wondering if I was afraid to say them aloud. Tried to remember the Shaman’s warning against superstition. The sound of a single footstep came again.
“Anathema maranatha…” There was comfort in the power of the Shaman’s chant but I could not understand the words. I sensed he was holding something up. A book, I thought, peering. But he could not have a book there. That word again. “Anathema!” Suddenly the lamp was struck to the ground. The light went out. Either side of me, Jak and Nip trembled.