Authors: Peter Dickinson
They waited, tense, till the tremor ceased, and then hurried on. The food store, when they reached it, had collapsed, but the food was safe beneath the pile. Suth gave Mana and Ko a couple of lizards each. He draped the snake and one braid of seed bags around his neck, put the other around Noli's, who seemed to be still in her dream state, and gave Tinu a sheaf of unhusked seed heads to carry in her free hand. He shifted Otan onto his other hip and started to climb, using his digging stick as a staff. Ko and Mana scrambled behind, and Tinu led Noli at the rear. The hill did not stir.
After several moons of good food, Otan was a lot heavier than when they had carried him across the Dry Hills, and before long Suth was panting with the effort. He could hear Ko and Mana gasping too, and since all seemed quiet he paused to give them a rest. Turning to look back, he saw that the plumes of steam from the lake had drifted away and not renewed themselves, and the two outbursts of fire had steadied to glowing patches, with black smoke churning skywards under the setting moon.
But before they had begun to get their breath Noli, who had been lagging behind while Tinu dragged her on, broke abruptly out of her trance.
“Up!” she cried in her ordinary voice. “Quick, Suth! It is coming!”
She snatched Otan from him and pushed past. He picked Mana up, told Ko to grab the other end of his stick, and scrambled after her as fast as his legs would take him until his lungs were retching for air and the blood thundered in his ears.
Through the roaring he heard Ko cry out as he lost his hold on the stick and fell. Gasping, Suth turned to wait for him. That was how he saw the first of the major eruptions.
It began with another immense jet of steam from the lake. Before the sound of it reached him, the hillside where he stood leaped, as if it had been struck a blow from beneath, and at the same moment, the whole of the bottom of the valley split open like a bursting seedpod as out from under it rose a boiling orange wave. The roar of its uprush reached him as a blast of scorching wind swept up the slope, knocking him flat.
He rose instantly, dropped his stick, grabbed Ko by the arm and dragged him on. Vast burning clods started to fall around them. They'd never make it to the top. He turned aside and headed for a cluster of large boulders, pushed Ko and Mana down against the upper side of the nearest one, and lay down above them, shielding them as best he could with his body. A few moments later Tinu was cowering against the next boulder beyond him. He didn't know what had happened to Noli and Otan.
Oldtale
NIGLU
Children were born to the daughters of An and Ammu. First born was the son of Nal and of Tarka, who were Moonhawk. Thus Moonhawk is first among the Kins, and the other Kins are liars who say that it was among them that the first child was born. They came after
.
And they grew to be men and women, and chose mates according to the custom established at Sometimes River, and had children in their turn. So began the Kins
.
Then Da and Datta said, “This is not good. You have mates and children. You have tens and tens of mouths, and tens and tens of stomachs. You hunt all the game and you pick all the berries and you dig all the roots. There are none left when we come by. There are you eight Kins, and there are us, Da and Datta. That is nine in all. We came to these Places. We shared everything by nines, the
creatures and the berries and the roots. Let it be so now. Then we find our share when we come by.”
The others said, “This is not good. You have only two mouths and two stomachs. You cannot eat all of a ninth share. Must our children's children starve, and you two have more than you can eat?”
Da and Datta said, “It must be as we say, as you swore at Odutu below the Mountain.”
The others were angry, but they had sworn, so they agreed
.
Now, the Kin of Little Bat were at Sometimes River, and Niglu was there. She was the mate of Dag
.
Niglu gave birth to a girl baby and took her to a pool of the river to wash clean. But there was thunder and great rain, and the riverbed was filled and they were carried away
.
Then Little Bat came flying swiftly and pushed them onto a mudbank near the Gully whose Name is not Spoken
.
Niglu came to the gully and saw a garri bush that had been stripped of its berries, all but the share that was Datta's and Da's. And she was very hungry
.
She said in her heart, These are for Da and Datta, but my stomach is empty and I must fill it, or I have no milk for my daughter
.
So she took the berries and ate them, and when her stomach was full she lay down with her baby and slept
.
In the evening Da and Datta came to that place, and saw the bush stripped of its berries, and Niglu lying beside it with the juice of the berries on her lips, and they were very angry. In their rage they picked up two rocks and flung them at Niglu and struck her on the temple, so that she died, but the baby lived
.
Datta said, “We cannot kill the baby also. I take it for mine, for I have none.”
So they took the child and journeyed by night to Tarutu Rock, and there they hid. For they were afraid for what they had done
.
But Little Bat was watching all that happened, and she plucked hairs from Niglu's head and followed Da and Datta, flying very silently. And all along the way she hung the hairs from bushes and trees as she passed
.
The next day Dag, who was Niglu's mate, was searching for her along the banks of Sometimes River, and when he came to the Gully whose Name is not Spoken he saw her body lying beside the garri bush. But the child was gone. Then he searched along the gully for the child and came to a tree with a thread of hair hanging from it, and there was blood on the hair, so he knew it for Niglu's
.
And a little further on he found another. Thus he followed the trail that Little Bat had left all the way to Tarutu Rock. There he waited, and in the evening he saw Da and Datta coming down to drink at the dew trap, and with them they had his child
.
Dag was very angry, but they were two and he was one, so he went swiftly to his own Kin, who were Little Bat, and to Snake, which was the Kin of Niglu's father Ral, and told them what he had seen. And they journeyed, all of them, to Tarutu Rock
.
In the morning Da and Datta went down to drink at the dew trap, and the Kins of Snake and Little Bat came to them quietly and stood around them and
said, “What is this that you did? You killed our Kin and the daughter of our Kin, and you must die.”
Da and Datta said, “It was our right. She ate the berries of a garri bush. These were our share. So you swore at Odutu below the Mountain. How else is one punished who breaks that oath?”
To that they had no answer
.
But Dag said, “You killed my mate for a handful of berries. For this I now hunt and kill you, oath or no oath.”
So also said Niglu's father, Ral
.
But the rest held them fast, and said to Da and Datta, “Go far and far. These we hold for a day and a night and a day. Then we set them free, to do as they choose.”
Da and Datta said, “Let it be so. Now we go back to that First Good Place, where we were born. There we hunt and forage and forget you.”
So they went, and though Dag and Ral tracked them far and far into the desert, they did not find them, and they were not seen again
.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The firestorm went on and on. The moon set, but the heavy glare still filled the valley. When Suth raised his head, he could see all along the ridge until the churning column of smoke blanked out the view. Reeking gases fouled the air.
Beside him Mana yelped with pain, then tried to stifle her weeping. A scorching ember had fallen on her arm. Suth licked the place for her and comforted her as best he could, until a fresh rush of gases made him gag and try to throw up.
At last there came a lull in the thundering explosions. Suth rose. Dawn was breaking behind him, greying that half of the sky, but the half ahead of him was black with swirling smoke, rising and spreading as far as he could see, as the wind from the desert pushed it westward.
It was the wind that had saved them. Nothing on the other side of the valley could have lived.
Mana sat up. One whole side of her body was grey with the film of ash that had fallen on her, despite the saving wind. It was the same with Ko. Suth looked down and saw that he too was half grey, as if he had been smeared with paste for his man-making at Odutu below the Mountain.
“Noli!” he called. “Noli!”
She rose from behind a boulder a little further up the slope.
“I live,” she called in her normal voice. “I am burned on my leg. Otan lives.”
“Wait,” said Suth. “I find my digging stick.”
The moment he stepped from behind the shelter of the boulder, the heat of the molten lava below swept up at him, hotter than the sun in a desert noon. He could see his stick a little way off, jutting up across the rock on which it had fallen. Otherwise he might not have found it under the layer of ash. Crossing the slope to fetch it, he realized that the dried snake and the braid of seed bags were no longer around his shoulders. He could remember slipping the braid free once they were safely in shelter, but not the snake. Perhaps it had slid off earlier, in the scramble. He was fairly sure he'd still had it when Ko had fallen.
He reached the stick, knocked the ash off it, poked around without much hope, found a dried lizard and then, to his great relief, the snake.
He picked them up and carried them back to the others.
“What food do we have?” he said.
His braid of seed bags was by the boulder where he had lain. Tinu had her small sheaf, and Ko had clung obstinately to his lizards throughout everything. Mana had dropped both hers, though Suth had found one. He looked at Noli and saw that she had her seed bags intact, but she seemed not to have heard his question.
She was staring at the appalling pillar of smoke. Suth thought perhaps she had gone into one of her trances, but she spoke in her ordinary voice.
“They are gone,” she said quietly. “All the old Good Places are gone. Stinkwater and Sometimes River and the dew trap at Tarutu Rock. Gone. Grey stuff buries them, deep, deep. I slept. Moonhawk came. She showed me this.”
Suth bowed his head and stood silent. He had no doubt that what she told him was true. One day I weep for this, he thought. One day I tell my own children about the old Good Places. Then they are not forgotten.
The ground shook. The pillar of smoke convulsed from its base. Huge rocks, golden and orange like the embers of a great fire, flung themselves from it. An immense coughing roar boomed up the slope, followed by another wave of roasting gases.
Suth turned.
“Come quick,” he said. “It is not finished.”
He took Mana's hand, made Ko hang on to his digging stick as before, and hurried them slantwise up the slope, aiming for the gap in the barrier of boulders that he had marked earlier. Gasping, they made their way through it, and rested at last in the shelter on the further side. Suth passed one of the lizards around, and they took turns chewing, dry mouthed, at the tough and stringy meat.
Suth studied the downward slope. The crack by which they had first climbed the cliff must be almost directly below this point. It would take them all morning, at least, to make their way down it, but at the bottom there was water, and they had food for several days, if they were careful.
He raised his eyes and looked at the desert, already glaring with heat under the risen sun. A dreadful, lifeless place, but he was not afraid of it any more. Cautious, yes, wary, yes, but no longer scared. They could do it. The small ones were strong. They had fed well for many moons.
They would rest by day in the shade of some large rock, moving around it as the sun moved, and in the evening they would set out again. They would find water because it must be there, and Moonhawk would show Noli where to look for it, or else they would find the trail left by those others who had crossed the desert.
And when they had drunk, they would move on. They would walk and walk under the stars, walk as they knew how to, walk as they were born to, because they were of the Kin. And in the new Good Places beyond the desert they would find the others, and Moonhawk would be Moonhawk once more.
The mountain shuddered. Bits of the crest detached themselves and rumbled away down the slope. The boom of another immense eruption shook the air. The sound seemed to speak to Suth, to tell him that everything that had so far happened was now over and done with, and this dazzling morning was a new beginning.
He rose unhurriedly to his feet.
“Good,” he said. “Now it is time to go.”
NOLI'S
STORY
For David
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
In the darkness of Noli's dream, Moonhawk spoke for the last time.
Go
.
In the dream the huge, strange presence moved away, becoming smaller and smaller until it vanished into the distance, a distance that was still somehow inside Noli's own mind.