Kalik (6 page)

“The donkey woke on the edge of the Dark Forest. The sun was warm on his coat. Before him were the walls of a town. Over them he saw the roofs of houses and shops.

“The donkey trotted through the town asking, ‘Have you seen a dog, a cat, a rooster, and a little girl?’ But people shook their heads.

“He saw a butcher’s shop. The butcher looked at the donkey and sharpened his knife on a steel. He laughed a meaty laugh and slapped a carcass with his hand. Smack! The row of carcasses swayed. For a moment, the donkey thought he saw a skinned cat among them.

“‘Hmph! Just a skinned rabbit. That’s all!’ And he trotted away, saying to himself, ‘You mustn’t go imagining things.’

“That was when he found the market-place. ‘Cheap curtains!’ somebody shouted, and the donkey bought some. Another stall-holder shouted, ‘Fiddle strings!’ The donkey bought enough to last for years.

He bought fresh bones for the dog, a toy mouse for the cat, a trumpet for the rooster. He bought new clothes for everybody, and shiny black button shoes with red heels for the little girl. When he came to the last stall, he had two gold coins left.

“The last stall was a tent. Inside was an iron cage on wheels. And inside the cage were the dog, the cat, the rooster, and the little girl. All crying.

“‘Watch the witch and her wild animals dance!’ shouted the Showman, who wore a black mask. With a long sharp spear he prodded between the iron bars.

“‘Dance, curse you!’ He prodded again. ‘Howl, yowl, screech, and shriek, damn your eyes!

“‘Listen to the wild animals roar!’ the Showman shouted through a speaking-trumpet. ‘Hear the witch shriek!’ And he prodded the little girl till blood dripped off the spear.”

Chak turned his head into my chest. Kimi butted hard against me. I heard somebody draw in her breath and sob – Maka. The fire burned lower.

“‘Ha, ha! Look how the witch jumps!’ A crowd gathered around the cage. ‘Look at the wolf! The tiger! The eagle! Ha, ha!’ they screamed. ‘Look at the witch bleed!’

“The Showman jabbed the donkey’s friends again. ‘Serves them right for living in the Dark Forest,’ said a man.

“‘It’s full of wild animals and witches!’ said a woman. ‘Give it to her again!’

“‘They’re not wild animals and a witch,’ said the donkey. ‘They’re my friends!’

“‘Come to the show tonight,’ shouted the Showman through his speaking-trumpet. Eyes gleamed through slits in his black mask. ‘Watch the witch burn! See the wild animals hanged!’

“‘Hooray!’ cried the crowd.

“‘Only one gold dollar to get in!’ shouted the Showman. ‘Roll up! Roll up!’

“‘I’m going to watch the witch burn!’ people said to each other. ‘And see the wild animals hanged. They’re from the Dark Forest.’

“‘But they’re my friends.’ Tears rolling down his long face, the donkey begged people to listen. They knocked him down and ran over him, scattering to get their money. The donkey limped to the cage.

“‘Clear off!’ shouted the Showman. ‘No talking to the exhibits!’

“‘How much will you sell them for?’

“‘How much have you got?’

The donkey took out his purse. ‘Two gold dollars!’

The Showman sneered. ‘I’ll get five hundred from all the people who come tonight.’ He rubbed his hands together, and
the donkey noticed his long, slender fingers.

“‘I’ll pay twice that much!’ cried the donkey. He could gallop home along the Blazed Track, take a bag of gold dollars, and gallop back to the market-place.

“‘When?’

“‘Tomorrow.’

“‘Can’t wait!’

“‘Can I just talk to my friends?’

“‘Talking costs two dollars.’

The donkey gave the Showman all his money.

“‘Listen!’ His friends nodded. He whispered something. They nodded again.

“‘We’ll be ready,’ the little girl whispered back.

“‘You paid to talk only,’ shouted the Showman. ‘Whispering costs another two dollars!’

“‘But I haven’t any more.’

“‘Then clear off, and quick about it or you might find yourself in the cage, too. Roll up! Roll up!’ the Showman shouted through his trumpet. ‘See the witch burn. See the wild animals hang!’

“People paid their gold dollars and fought for front seats.

“‘Be ready!’ said the donkey. ‘Friends must stick together!’ and he disappeared. The Showman tried to hear what he said, but the clink of coins deafened him. His assistants built a bonfire under a hole in the middle of the tent. Others made nooses in ropes.

“‘Everybody ready?’ shouted the Showman.

“‘Ready!’ roared the crowd.

“‘The dog looked at his friends. ‘We’re ready, too,’ he said, and they nodded.

“The Showman cracked his whip. ‘Light the bonfire!’ He cracked his whip again.‘Get the ropes ready!’ Some soldiers played a roll on their drums.

“The assistants dragged the iron cage on its wheels into the middle. The Showman turned a key in the lock. ‘Bang!’ The iron door crashed back.

“The Showman cracked his whip. ‘Come out, curse you!’

“‘Look at the wolf’s teeth!’ cried the crowd. ‘Hang him!’

“‘Look at the tiger’s claws! Hang her!’

“‘Look at the eagle’s beak! Hang him!’

“‘Look at the witch! Burn her!’

The friends looked around for the donkey, but could not see him. He was at the other end of the market-place, trotting downhill towards the tent. Faster and faster. Cantering. Galloping. Bolting. He flapped his long ears like wings and took off.

“High in the air he flew and came down on top of the tent. His sharp hooves ripped it open. The donkey landed on top of the Showman and knocked off his mask. The Showman hid his face in his hands. Torn canvas fell across the bonfire.

“‘Jump up!’

“The dog jumped on the donkey. The cat on the dog. The rooster on the cat. The little girl jumped on top of the lot.

“‘Sing!’

“The rooster crowed. The cat screeched. The dog howled. The donkey brayed. ‘Hee-haw! Howl! Screech! Cock-a-
doodle-doo
!’ The little girl shrieked. And the tent caught on fire. Through the smoke and flames towered a monster with five heads braying, howling, screeching, crowing, and shrieking. People panicked and leapt out of the way.

“At the edge of the Dark Forest the dog took the donkey’s tail between his teeth. The cat took the dog’s tail in her mouth. The rooster took the cat’s tail in his beak. And the little girl hung on to the rooster’s tail. Along the Blazed Track through the Dark Forest they ran till they saw their own place.

“They tried on their new clothes and danced in their new shoes. They put up the new curtains. After dinner, the little girl put new strings on her fiddle, and they sang until it was time to go to bed.

“‘I don’t ever want to leave our house again,’ said the cat.

“‘We’ve got everything we need here.’ The little girl stuck out her feet and admired her shiny black button shoes. She looked over her shoulder at their bright red heels.

“The rooster flapped his wings but didn’t crow because it was so late.

“The dog chewed a fresh bone. The donkey looked at him and blew through his nose, ‘Hmph!’

“‘How much did everything cost?’ asked the little girl.

“‘Nothing!’ The donkey tipped up his bag. Out fell the Showman’s sack of gold. ‘I grabbed it as we ran. We’ve got more than we started with! Hmph!’ Everyone agreed he was the cleverest donkey in the whole world. And they all lived happily ever after.”

The Children clustered around me stretched as if waking. Maka sighed and smiled at me. “I wish we had a place of our own,” Chak said. And the rest sighed, “Yes!” and went silent to bed. As I laid Chak and Kimi on the bunk, they both hugged and kissed me.

That night, I woke sweating from a nightmare. I had been telling the story of the five friends again. And, suddenly, I knew what had terrified me. In my dream, as the donkey fell through the tent roof he ripped off the Showman’s mask. The Showman stuck his hands over his face, but I had caught a glimpse. Why hadn’t I seen it then, as I was telling the story to the Children?

I remembered his voice, too. High, eerie, a chattering, gossiping voice. And hands that fluttered and danced over the people standing near them. Dreadful soft white hands. And that face: slobbering mouth, darting eyes. A short beard that jiggled slick under the Showman’s chin, a scattering of oily hairs on the upper lip. A leering, horrid face.

A stench filled my nostrils. I knew that reek. Just as I had seen that face before. I thought of the Showman again, brought his face back to mind: the white lashes that gave his dodging eyes a painful appearance, as if they were raw. The knowing cast to those eyes. The dribbling lip. The way the Showman bobbed his head to the crowd, nodding, whispering, promising to show them torture and death.

I saw his curved wet lips again, heard the ingratiating lisp. In my mind, I heard him laugh, wet-mouthed, flaccid. I wiped my face, as if something wet had landed on it. “Idiot,” I said to myself. “You only saw him in a dream.” But I looked at my hand and saw a fleck of spittle there, as if it had flown off the lips of somebody standing beside me while I slept.

“You’re imagining things! And now you’ve scared yourself with a story!”

Nip stood, front feet on my bunk, whining, licking my hand. She could tell I was scared.

“It was the Carny, Nip! But he couldn’t have been in here or you’d have barked. It was just my mind playing tricks on itself.” Nip whined again, pressed against me as I got off my bunk, opened the door.

“Nobody there,” I said to her, but Nip crouched, whined, and stared. The hairs bristled along her neck as, floating in the dark, I saw the Carny’s face. The wet loose lips. Little beard. The sore-looking eyes that would not look straight at me but dodged, rolled, and slid sideways. The stench again – a swamp reek. And, as I stared at the Carny, his face blurred, merged, changed into the beautiful mask of Kalik smiling on the edge of the darkness. I ran, but he vanished. I listened and heard running feet. So he had been there, watching me: Kalik!

I could never see him again without seeing the Carny, I realised. And I wondered if that unclean spirit had followed me from the Land of the White Bear – disguised as Kalik. Then I must have closed my door, fallen back on my bunk, because it was morning, and I was waking, remembering.

I understood the warning of the dream. I must escape. Take the Salt Children with me. And again I remembered the Shaman warning against superstition yet encouraging me to rely upon intuition.

“Is it superstitious to act upon a dream?” I asked aloud. But the dream had confirmed that Kalik was evil, that in some sense he was the Carny, the servant of the Droll.

Contradiction of the dream, Kalik was at my door next morning. Laughing, friendly. How could I confuse this beautiful face with the Carny’s? Or last night’s cruel eyes watching through the dark? I blushed at my silly imaginings.

“Still asleep, Ish! Spent the night with some girl, have you?” His mockery light on the air between us.

“Idiot!” I mumbled at myself.

“Dreamer!” Kalik charmed away my superstitious fears. “Come on! The bears are on the konny berries. They’ll be fat.”

We hunted that day up the valley below Grave Mountain. There was plenty of sign in the konny gullies. Nip picked up several scents, but each one petered out. “As if they disappeared down a hole in the ground,” said Kalik. Rueful, but still amused.

We left the canoe on the beach behind Hekkat’s statue and hunted the south side of the river next morning. Clearings lifting all the way. On one a black bear sat up, a branch of konny berries dropping from its open mouth. It stared at Nip. Something clicked in its mouth, as if it chewed on rocks, and it surged out of sight, as if the earth lifted itself and slid uphill.

Kalik laughed when Nip came back, whining, telling us about it. “We need a pack to stop them,” he said. I thought of his dog I had killed, but Kalik shook his head. “We’ll breed up a pack. Then we’ll stop some bears!”

We separated to hunt our way back. On a clearing under a white bluff, the foot of the mountain, I surprised a young stag, two tines standing straight up from his skull, a spiker. My arrow stood out from his belly, a clumsy shot. He would run for hours, unless the broad head cut into a great vein. I sat, my back against a tall grey rock. If he wasn’t chased, he’d lie and
stiffen up, and I’d put another arrow into him.

The rock warm, I drowsed in the sun. I woke and called, “Nip!” No answer. Annoyed, I whistled. A yap, and she came scuttling around the rock, ears and tail down. She leapt on me. “Get down!” I brushed my tunic. Nip ran behind the tall grey rock. Barked. A hollow sound. I followed, found fresh dirt scattered under a flat stone propped like a lid across two others. I got on my knees, looked under as Nip’s bark came again. There was just enough room to crawl in.

The hole slanted down. At its bottom, I stood and felt around. Stone walls, smooth and curved like the tunnels behind the Shaman’s cave. Unlike those, the floor of this tunnel carried a shallow stream of water. When I called, Nip came careering, bumping me, and we climbed back into the sun. I brushed out our sign, dragged a broken branch over the hole, and sent Nip after the wounded spiker.

She found him lying. Struggling to get to his feet. Nip at his throat, I pithed him. Gutted, front hooves thrust behind the tendons of his back hocks, he made a pack that I heaved up. Then, near the beach, Nip caught my eye, and took off. I just had time to drop the spiker before she brought several goats past. I shot two.

Kalik had shot a deer, too. He gave me a hand with the goats. As we paddled home, he asked, “Did Nip find a warren?”

“An old one. Not a rabbit in it,” I explained. And I imagined a picture of a burrow. Grass growing over its mouth. Myself kneeling to put my arm in to the shoulder. Getting dirt on my tunic.

“Still, you did all right.”

“I like getting something. And Nip worked well. I wish she’d stopped that bear, though.” I pictured it in my mind. For a moment I saw the hole into the tunnel, then the bear disappearing, konny branches springing together.

“We’ll come back and work those gullies again,” said Kalik. “We’ll get one there, sooner or later.”

A day or two and he was at my door. “Come on! We’re going up the lake – to the timber workings!”

The Headland People used timber for almost everything. Spears and bows, huts, palisades, fences. The canoes were hollowed out of whole tote trunks. Some firewood came from drift logs stacked on end, dried, and lugged up to the huts each day by the Salt Children. But most, and the settlement burned a lot, came down the lake in rafts. I had asked Kalik to show me the source of all this timber.

The Salt Men who had not been killed had gone up the lake under guard. I was interested to see the timber workings – to look for a way to escape. Perhaps a valley that would carry us south, one with a pass at its head. Not too high for the Children.

I told them where I was going, made sure they had plenty of food, checked the sick ones. Chak and Kimi wouldn’t look at me. I ran down to the lake with Nip. Lutha was leading her bodyguard towards the Roundhouse, to dance before the Goddess. I stood to one side, hand raised in salute. She swept past unseeing, and I got the usual disdainful stare from the Maidens.

Waiting for them to pass, I smiled at their foolishness. And I thought, too, how foolish I had been, dividing the world between Salt Men and others. Getting to know the Salt Children had taught me something.

Nip yelping, we ran down. Waves jobbled and flared tiny suns. Knee-deep, Kalik danced impatient. “Dreaming again, Ish!” He leapt into the front of the canoe.

“What about food?”

“We’ll catch something if we’re hungry enough,” he cried, already paddling. Nip jumped in and shook herself.

“Ugh!”

I laughed, slid in behind Kalik. Our paddles dashed. We skimmed across the water. I would never begin a journey without food. Nor would Taur. Arku’s people used to say hunger makes the best hunter, but they starved in the Great
Hunger.

Kalik said over his shoulder, “Why carry more than we have to?”

His muscles tensed as he levered against the water, relaxing, taking the strain again. I thought of my dream of the Carny. I must have imagined Kalik into it, put his face on the Showman, and confused them. It was just a dream: the mind out of control, making random pictures, absurd stories that disappeared in the logic of daylight.

“Don’t dismiss all dreams,” the Shaman had told me. “The art is in learning which one is telling you something. Offering an answer to a problem. Learn to recognise the true dream.”

“Wake up, Ish!”

“I was thinking.”

“Dreaming, more likely.” Kalik paddled faster, and I kept up to him. Bays, beaches slipped by, grassy hillsides. Some trees. Scrub. Nothing worth felling and dragging down for timber.

“Why aren’t there bigger trees here?”

Kalik didn’t look round. “We’ve cut all the easy stuff this end of the lake. And fired a lot.”

“But –”

“We burned off the hills close to the Headland, so the sentries can see anyone coming. It was dry. The fires spread further than we expected.” His paddle chopped the water. “Sometimes you fell several trees before you find one good enough for a canoe.”

“Still –”

“People have been living here a long time, Ish.”

“Then why haven’t the trees regrown?”

“Goats. Deer browsing.”

I thought of the deserts of the Western Coast, the North Land. “Why not plant trees handy to the Headland? Protect them from the animals.”

Kalik struck the water with the flat of his blade. “Don’t make me laugh, Ish!”

We paddled, and he said, “I like to keep an eye on the timber camp anyway. But this time they’ve found a tote. If it’s big enough and sound, it might make a canoe.”

Kalik was good company. He sang the songs of his people, told their stories. I listened and laughed. Still I kept his cruelty in mind, and the dream of the Showman.

The second afternoon, a stag swam from an island. Hunger drove our paddles as Kalik promised. Head laid back along the top of the water, the stag spotted us. The eye rolled in terror. A single spear thrust through the back of the neck. Whooping, we dragged it ashore. The mountains blacker than the sky, night edging down the lake, shadows dulled the bays, and we were still gorging. Nip cracking bones. A bit of wood snapped sparks.

“Who put tote on the fire?”

“Must have been you.”

“I know tote sparks. It was you!”

“You threw it on with that armload.” I pulled out the piece of tote and flung it still burning to hiss in the lake. For a moment its own light showed steam then darkness folded over the water.

Kalik stared into the fire. “Long ago there was a goddess who guarded the secret of fire. She tried many hiding-places. At last she hid it inside her own body.

“A hero called Promise had just made the first humans from clay. He breathed life into them, and they stirred and spoke. Promise loved his children. Their first summer they played, then came winter. His children began dying of cold. Promise came through the Western Mountains to the Land of the Lake, looking for the goddess who guarded the secret of fire.

“He was so beautiful, the goddess desired him. But first she set him three dangerous tasks. Promise performed them bravely. She set three problems. He solved them with kindness. She set him three questions. He answered wisely. The goddess took him into her bed. And Promise found the fire inside the goddess. He waited until she slept, stole it, and ran to give it to his children.

“The goddess woke cold. She flew across the lake, tracked Promise up the river into the mountains. But he heard the wind of her coming and threw the sparks of fire into the branches of the insignificant little tote tree and whispered the secret to his children.

“Thinking he had eaten it, the goddess caught Promise and ate him. Still she was cold. Raging, she returned along the way Promise had come, asking the rocks and hills and streams if they had the secret. She asked the trees. She asked the clouds and the lake. But since the tote tree was small and insignificant she did not bother asking it.

“And the tote tree grew its bark over the secret of fire. Its trunk grew thicker and thicker around the secret. The tips of its leaves grew sharp at the bite of fire. Its wood grew red as the flame. And the tote grew to be one of the greatest trees, living longer than people.

“Many years passed. Most of Promise’s children had died of the cold, but a few remembered the secret he whispered before his death. They let loose the fire from inside the red wood, warmed themselves, cooked their food. Some learned to melt iron with fire, to drive away fear. Fire became their greatest tool.

“Since that time, people have lit their fires with a few shavings of tote. And the tote always spits sparks if people waste it. Promise allowed himself to be eaten – so he might give the secret of fire to his children – but the tote is too valuable just for burning.

“The spirit of fire gives the wood its virtue, makes it float. The Floating Village was built on a platform of tote logs. Its timber is light and strong. It will stand in the ground a man’s lifetime without rotting. It splits easily, yet it is tough across the grain. So men made canoes from the tote. They split it into planks for their walls, shingles for their roofs, posts to hold them up. And because it lasts forever, they carve the stories of their ancestors into the tote.

“My people carved a great trunk of tote. It showed Promise
making his children from clay, sleeping with the goddess, stealing the fire, and hiding it in the tote. The goddess eating Promise, searching for the secret. The last carvings show humans lighting their fires, building their houses, their canoes, carving their stories out of the timber of the tote tree.

“When our people joined with Lutha’s on the Headland, Ish, we rafted our great carved tree down the lake. We dragged it up on rollers, on top of the Headland. It stands at the centre, holding up the roof of the Roundhouse.”

“And yet you never see it now?” I said.

“It is enough that we know it is there. And Lutha and her Maidens worship our tree beside Hekkat.”

I watched Kalik flick twigs into the fire with an easy jerk of his wrist. As always, his movements were elegant. “What happened to the goddess?”

“She burrowed under Grave Mountain to escape the cold. She is still there, with Promise inside her body. In icy torment. And the mountain smokes from its summit while it lies upon her in never-ending punishment.

“But that’s just a story.” Kalik laughed at my serious face. “One the old people tell.”

“Do you know any more?”

His voice changed again. “Long, long ago, many more people lived in villages around the lake. You can still see the terraces where they built their houses. Some of our tracks follow their old Ways, those long flat stretches that wind through the hills. Those vanished people were the subjects of the King of Grave Mountain.

“Once he led his army south, to fight the people beside a great lake there. But the further he went from Grave Mountain, the weaker he became. His people thought he was dying and carried him home. As they got near Grave Mountain, his strength returned. The king swore never to leave the mountain again.

“He travelled under the mountain and learned wisdom:
all about Healing, how to grow crops, when to fish, when to hunt. Best of all he knew how to rule his people, to keep them safe and happy. All his power came from inside the mountain.

“The king grew old and chose a boy to succeed him. When he had taught the boy everything he knew, he took him inside the mountain to learn the secret of wisdom. They returned. The old king died, and the boy took his place. And life went on for the people of the lake, king replacing king.”

How like the story of the Shaman it was. “And always a king?” I asked.

“Never a queen.”

“Why not?”

“Because of an even older story.” I could just see Kalik’s smile.