“Ha! Where are you? Where are you?"
Someone thick-legged ran clumsily across the clearing and disappeared. The fire stayed dead and the bushes were combed by a breeze from down river and then were quite still. Desperately:
“Where are you?"
Lok's ears spoke to Lok.
So concerned was he with the island that he paid no attention to his ears for a time. He clung swaying gently in the tree-top while the fall grumbled at him and the space on the island remained empty. Then he heard. There were people coming, not on the other side of the water but on this side, far off. They were coming down from the overhang, their steps careless on the stones. He could hear their speech and it made him laugh. The sounds made a picture in his head of interlacing shapes, thin, and complex, voluble and silly, not like the long curve of a hawk's cry, but tangled like line weed on the beach after a storm, muddled as water. This laugh-sound advanced through the trees towards the river. The same sort of laugh-sound began to rise on the island, so that it flitted back and forth across the water. Lok half-fell, half-scrambled down the tree and was on the trail. He ran along it through the ancient smell of the people. The laugh-sound was close by the river bank. Lok reached the place where the log had lain across water*. He had to climb a tree, swing and drop down before he was on the trail again. Then among the laugh-sound on this side of the river Liku began to scream. She was not screaming in anger or in fear or in pain, but screaming with that mindless and dreadful panic she might have shown at the slow advance of a snake. Lok spurted, his hair bristling. Need to get at that screaming threw him off the trail and he floundered. The screaming tore him inside. It was not like the screaming of Fa when she was bearing the baby that died, or the mourning of Nil when Mai was buried; it was like the noise the horse makes when the cat sinks its curved teeth into the neck and hangs there, sucking blood. Lok was screaming himself without knowing it and fighting with thorns. And his senses told him through the screaming that Liku was doing what no man and no woman could do. She was moving away across the river.
Lok was still fighting with bushes when the screaming stopped. Now he could hear the laugh-noise again and the new one mewing. He burst the bushes and was out in the open by the dead tree. The clearing round the trunk stank of other and Liku and fear. Across the water there was a great bowing and ducking and swishing of green sprays. He caught a glimpse of Liku's red head and the new one on a dark, hairy shoulder. He jumped up and down and shouted.
“Liku! Liku!"
The green drifts twitched together and the people on the island disappeared. Lok ran up and down along the river-bank under the dead tree with its nest of ivy. He was so close to the water that he thrust chunks of earth out that went splash into the current.
“Liku! Liku!"
The bushes twitched again. Lok steadied by the tree and gazed. A head and a chest faced him. half-hidden. There were white bone things behind the leaves and hair. The man had white bone things above his eyes and under the mouth so that his face was longer than a face should be. The man turned sideways in the bushes and looked at Lok along his shoulder* A stick rose upright and there was a lump of bone in the middle. Lok peered at the stick and the lump of bone and the small eyes in the bone things over the face. Suddenly Lok understood that the man was holding the stick out to him but neither he nor Lok could reach across the river. He would have laughed if it were not for the echo of the screaming in his head. The stick began to grow shorter at both ends. Then it shot out to full length again. The dead tree by Lok's ear acquired a voice.
“Clop!"
His ears twitched and he turned to the tree. By his face there had grown a twig: a twig that smelt of other, and of goose, and of the bitter berries that Lok's stomach told him he must not eat. This twig had a white bone at the end. There were hooks in the bone and sticky brown stuff hung in the crooks. His nose examined this stuff and did not like it. He smelled along the shaft of the twig. The leaves on the twig were red feathers and reminded him of goose. He was lost in a generalized astonishment and excitement. He shouted at the green drifts across the glittering water and heard Liku crying out in answer but could not catch the words, They were cut off suddenly as though someone had clapped a hand over her mouth. He rushed to the edge of the water and came back. On either side of the open bank the bushes grew thickly in the flood; they waded out until at their farthest some of the leaves were opening under water; and these bushes leaned over.
The echo of Liku's voice in his head sent him trembling at this perilous way of bushes towards the island. He dashed at them where normally they would have been rooted on dry land and his feet splashed. He threw himself forward and grabbed at the branches with hands and feet. He shouted:
“I am coming!"
Half-lying, half-crawling, grinning all the time with fear he moved out over the river. He could see the wetness down there, mysterious and pierced everywhere by the dark and bending stems. There was no place that would support his whole weight. He had to spread it not only through all his limbs and body but be always in two places, moving, moving as the boughs gave. The water under him darkened. There were ripples on the surface behind each bough, weed caught and fluttering lengthwise, random flashes of the sun below and above. He came to the last tall bushes that were half-drowned and hung over the bed of the river itself. For a moment he saw a stretch of water and the island. He glimpsed the pillars of spray by the fall, saw the rocks of the cliff. Then, because he no longer moved, the branches began to bend under him. They swayed outwards and down so that his head was lower than his feet. He sank, gibbering, and the water rose, bringing a Lok-face with it. There was a tremble of light over the Lok-face but he could see the teeth. Below the teeth, a weed-tail was moving backwards and forwards, more than the length of a man each time. But everything else under the teeth and the ripple was remote and dark. A breeze blew along the river and the bushes swayed gently sideways. His hands and feet gripped painfully of themselves and every muscle of his body was knotted. He ceased to think of the old people or the new people. He experienced Lok, upside down over deep water with a twig to save him.
Lok had never been so near the middle of water before. There was a skin on it and under the skin specks of dark stuff rose towards the surface, turned over and over, floated in circles or sank away out of sight. There were stones down there that glimmered greenly and wavered in the water Regularly the weed-tail eclipsed and revealed them. The breeze died away; the bushes bowed and lifted rhythmically as the weed-tail, so that the shining skin moved to and from his face. Pictures had gone from his head. Even fear was a dullness like the ache of hunger. Each hand and foot clung implacably to a sheaf of branches and the teeth grinned in the water.
The weed-tail was shortening. The green tip was withdrawing up river. There was a darkness that was consuming the other end. The darkness became a thing of complex shape, of sluggish and dreamlike movement. Like the specks of dirt, it turned over but not aimlessly. It was touching near the root of the weed-tail, bending the tail, turning over, rolling up the tail towards him. The arms moved a little and the eyes shone as dully as the stones. They revolved with the body, gazing at the surface, at the width of deep water and the hidden bottom with no trace of life or speculation. A skein of weed drew across the face and the eyes did not blink. The body turned with the same smooth and heavy motion as the river itself until its back was towards him rising along the weed-tail. The head turned towards him with dreamlike slowness, rose in the water, came towards his face.
Lok had always been awed by the old woman though she was his mother. She lived too near the great Oa in heart and head for a man to look upon her without dread. She knew so much, she had lived so long, she felt things they could only guess at, she was the woman. Though she wrapped them all in her understanding and compassion there was sometimes a remote stillness in what she did that left them humble and abashed. Therefore they loved her and dreaded her without fear, and they dropped their eyes before her. But now Lo
k saw her face to face and eye to eye, close. She was ignoring the in- juries to her body, her mouth was open, the tongue showing and the specks of dirt were circling slowly in and out as though it had been nothing but a hole in a stone. Her eyes swept across the bushes, across his face, looked through him without seeing him, rolled away and were gone.
SIX
Lok's feet unclenched themselves from the bushes. They slid down and he was hanging by his arms and up to the waist in water. He raised his knees and his hair pricked. He was past screaming. The terror of the water was only a background. He flung himself round, grabbed more branches and floundered through the bushes and the water to the bank. He stood there, his back to the river, and shivered like Mai. His teeth were showing and he had his arms raised and tensed as though he were still holding himself above the water. He was looking slightly up and his head was turning from side to side. Behind him the laugh-noises began again. Little by little they took his attention though the posture and grin of strain stayed in his body. There were many laugh-noises as though the new people had gone mad and there was one louder than the rest, a man's voice, shouting. The other voices ceased and the man went on shouting. A woman laughed, shrill and excited. Then there was silence.
The sun was making a stipple of bright spots over the undergrowth and the wet brown ground. At intervals a breeze would wander up river, making the new and vivid foliage turn slightly to a new direction so that the spots were sifted and resprinkled. A fox barked sharply among the rocks. A pair of woodpigeons spoke to each other of nesting time monotonously.
Slowly his head and arms came down. He no longer grinned. He took a step forward and turned. Then he began to run down river, not fast, but keeping as near to the water as he could. He peered seriously into the bushes, walked, stopped. His eyes unfocused and the grin came back. He stood, his hand resting on the curved bough of a beech and looked at nothing. He examined the bough, holding it with both hands. He began to sway it, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, faster and faster. The great fan of branches on the end went swishing over the tops of the bushes, Lok hurled himself backwards and forwards, he was gasping and the sweat of his body was running down his legs with the water of the river. He let go, sobbing, and stood again, arms bent, head tilted, his teeth clenched as if every nerve in his body were burning. The woodpigeons went on talking and the spots of sunlight sifted over him.
He moved from the beech, back along the trail, faltered, stopped, then began to run. He flashed into the open space where the dead tree was and the sun was bright on the tuft of red feathers. He looked towards the island, saw the bushes move, then one of the twigs came twirling across the river and vanished beyond him in the forest. He had a confused idea that someone was trying to give him a present. He would have smiled across at the bone-faced man but no one was visible there and the open space was still full of the faint excruciating echo of Liku screaming. He wrenched the twig from the tree and started to run again. He came to the slope up to the mountain and the terrace and checked at the scent of other and Liku; and then he was following the scent back through time towards the overhang. He moved so fast, in
pressing down with the knuckles, that were it not for the arrow he held in his left hand he would have seemed to be running on all fours. He put the twig crosswise in his mouth between his teeth, reached out with both hands, half-ran, half-clambered up the slope. When he was near the entry to the terrace he could see over the rock down to the island. One of the bone-faced men was visible there from the chest up, the rest of him hidden by bushes. The new people had never shown up at such a distance before in daylight, and now the face looked like the white patch on a deer's rump. There was smoke behind the new man among the trees, but blue and transparent. The pictures in Loku's head were very confused and too many - worse than no pictures at all. He took the twig from his teeth. He did not know what he shouted.
“I am coming with Fa!"
He ran through the entry and was on the terrace, and no one was about, he saw that, felt it as a coldness coming from the overhang where the fire had been. He went quickly up the earthen rise and stood looking in. The fire had been thrown about and the only one of the people left was Mai under his hump. But there were smells and signs in plenty. He heard a noise on the top of the over- hang, leapt out of the circle of ashes and there was Fa coming down the ledges of rock. She saw him and they flew together. She was shuddering and she held him tightly with both her arms. They babbled at each other.
“The bone-face men gave it me. I ran up the slope. Liku screamed across the water."
“When you went down the rock. I am climbing the rocks because I am frightened. Men came to the over- hang."
They were silent, clinging and shuddering. The pack of unsorted pictures that flickered between them tired them both. They looked in each other's eyes helplessly and then Lok began to turn his head restlessly from side to side.
“The fire is dead."
They went to the fire, holding each other. Fa squatted and poked about among the charred ends of branches. The hand of habit was on them. They squatted each in the appropriate place and looked out dumbly at the water and the silver line where it poured over the cliff. There was evening sun slanting into the overhang now but no ruddy, flickering light for it to contend with. Fa stirred and spoke at last.
“Here is the picture. I am looking down. The men come and I hide. As I hide I see the old woman go to meet them."
“She was in the water. She looked at me out of the water. I was upside down." Again they gazed at each other helplessly.
“I come down to the terrace when the men go away. They have Liku and the new one." The air round Lok echoed with the phantom screaming.
“Liku screamed across the river. She is on the island."
“I do not see this picture."
Neither did Lok. He spread his arms wide and grinned at the memory of the screaming.
“This twig came to me from the island."
Fa examined the twig closely from the barbed bone- point to the red feathers and the smooth nock at the end. She returned to the barbs and wrinkled up her face at the brown gum. Lok's pictures were a little better sorted.
“Liku is on the island with the other people."
“The new people."
“They threw this twig across the river into the dead tree."
Lok tried to make her see a picture with him but his head was too tired and he gave up.
“Come!"
They followed the scent from the blood to the edge of the river. There was blood on the rock by the water too and a little/milk. Fa pressed her hands on her head and gave her picture words.
“They killed Nil and threw her into the water and the old woman."
“They have taken Liku and the new one."
Now they shared a picture that was a purpose. They ran together along the terrace. At the corner Fa held back but when Lok climbed round she followed him and they stood on the rock-face looking down at the island. They could see the faint blue smoke still spreading in the evening light; but very soon there would be the shadow of the mountains on the forest. Pictures fitted together in Lok's head. He saw himself turning out on the cliff to speak to the old woman because he had smelt fire when she was not there. But this was only another complication in a day of total newness and he let the picture be. The bushes were shaking on the shore of the island. Fa seized Lok by the wrist and they shrank down against the rock. The shaking was prolonged and excited.
Then the two people became nothing but eyes that looked and absorbed and were without thought. There was a log under the bushes floating in the water and one end of it was swinging out into the stream. It was dark and smooth, and hollow. One of the bone-face men sat in it at the end that was swinging out. The branches that hid the other end dragged on a sort of lump ; and there it was, free of the bushes, floating, and a man at either end. The log pointed up towards the fall and a little across the river. The current was beginning to take it bac
k downstream. The two men lifted sticks that ended in great brown leaves which they stuck into the water. The log steadied/remained in the same place with the river moving under it. Patches of white foam and swirling green were tailing away down river from the brown leaves. The log sidled out and there was a stretch of uncrossable deep water on either side. The people could see how the men peered at the bank by the dead tree and into the under- growth on either side through the little holes in their masks of bone.
The man in the front of the log put his stick down and took up a bent one instead. There was a bunch of red feathers by his waist. He held this stick by the middle as he had done when the twig flew across the river to Lok. The log sidled into the bank and the man in the front jumped forward so that he was hidden by the bushes. The log stayed where it was and the man in the back end dug his brown leaf into the water every now and then. The shadow from the fall was reaching him. They could see how the hair grew on his head above the bone. It made a massive clump like a rook's nest in a tall tree and every time he tugged at the leaf, it bobbed and quivered. Fa was quivering too.
“Will he come to the terrace?" But then the first man appeared. The end of the log nosed out of sight against the bank and when it reappeared the first man was sitting again, and he held another twig in his hand with red feathers at the end. The log turned out towards the fall, both men were dipping their leaves together. The log sidled out into deep water. Lok began to babble.
The Inheritors Page 9