The Kin (21 page)

Suth, not realizing there was anything wrong, turned to greet and thank them in the regular way, but the men strode past him and snatched the fire log from Tinu as she was starting to seal the lid in place.

“Why do you do this?” cried Suth. “This fire log is ours. We made it.”

Though they didn't understand the words, the men got the meaning and closed in on him with snarls and barks. Their hair bushed out. So did Suth's, and he half raised his digging stick. Their barks became fiercer and deeper. They bared their teeth.

Noli had noticed Tor watching with an anxious look. There'd been a couple of spats like this between men the evening before, and no one had paid much attention. Because they didn't have words, they couldn't argue over their disagreements—they could only snarl at each other. But this time Tor grabbed Suth by the elbow and grunted warningly.

Suth shook him off, but Noli had heard what Tor had been trying to tell him:
Watch out! They mean it!

She squeezed behind Suth and took hold of his digging stick. He tried to jerk it free.

“Suth, this is dangerous, dangerous!” she said. “They are too many!”

“The fire log is Moonhawk's!” he snarled. “We made it!”

“Suth, we make a new fire log. There is good wood in this place. They keep this one.”

“Noli, this is foolish. They do not know fire logs. Their fire dies.”

“We show them the making of fire logs. We show them how they keep the fire alive. It is a gift to them, Suth. It is a man's gift, the gift of a leader.”

He looked at her. His hair settled. She saw his anger turn to suspicion, and then to amusement, but he kept a straight face. He let her take his digging stick, and turned to the men, holding up both hands, palms forward. Their faces cleared, and their hair, too, settled. They didn't try to stop him as he stepped forward, took the fire log from the man who was holding it, and presented it to the leader.

“I, Suth, give,” he said. “This gift is Moonhawk's.”

The leader snorted and hummed in his throat. He took the fire log and passed it to one of the others. Then, with both hands, he offered the stone he was holding to Suth.

Suth took it and held it up so that everyone could see it. It wasn't just a stone. It was a well-made cutter with a good, sharp edge.

“I, Suth, thank,” he said.

The leader answered with the triple bark that the canyon people used to show they were pleased, and all seemed well again.

After the exchange of gifts, everyone became friendlier than before. The Moonhawks gave the leader of the canyon people a name, Fang, and when Suth and Tinu started making a fresh fire log, they made sure that Fang and some of the others watched to see how they did it. And every evening Tinu emptied the embers out of the old log and prepared and packed and sealed it each morning, so that they'd understand how that was done. Of course, she wouldn't normally have bothered, as they had a good fire going and were planning to stay where they were for another night, but she wanted them to get the idea that the embers wouldn't stay hot in a fire log for much longer than one day.

Making the new fire log took three full days. On the first morning, Suth was still cutting the branch to shape, and Ko begged to stay and help. Mana obviously longed to fuss over Tor, and it didn't seem fair not to let her, so Noli took Otan off and foraged with Tinu.

Deliberately she tagged along with the woman she'd made friends with. These people didn't seem to have names, so Noli decided to call her Goma, at least in her own mind.

There'd been enough of them foraging yesterday to strip the area around the fire almost bare of food, so today they needed to travel further before they could spread out and start work. The ground was too rocky for good fat roots to grow, but otherwise the canyon was far richer in food than any of the Kin's old Good Places. There were edible leaves and seeds and berries, birds' eggs and nestlings, grubs and bugs and lizards, a bees' nest dripping with honey, as well as the swimmers and crawlers and water nuts (if that was what they were) in the river.

At midday they found shade trees to rest under, near the water. Noli watched Goma unpacking her gourd of all the things they had found. It was a very good gourd, big enough to be useful, and light and firm. Goma carried it in a cradle made of some kind of twisted fibre with a loop to go over her shoulder.

Gourds were very important, but the best kinds weren't common. In the old Good Places, only Fat Pig and Snake had had some, and the other Kins had needed to trade them for things like tingin bark and glitter stones and salt. The best ones would carry water for many moons without going soft, provided they were carefully dried and smoked every now and then.

When Goma's was empty, Noli picked it up.

“Where do you find this?” she asked.

“And where … this? …” mumbled Tinu, testing the carrying loop and peering eagerly at it.

Goma just nodded and smiled and got ready to feed her baby. Noli wasn't sure she'd understood, but when the rest was over, Goma beckoned to Noli and Tinu and led them across the river where she showed them a plant with long, spiked leaves that sprang straight from the ground. She hacked one off with a cutter that she took from her gourd, ripped the front from the back, and picked out a series of fibres that ran the full length of the leaf. She gave one to Tinu, who tried to snap it in two. It didn't break.

Tinu was delighted. She borrowed the cutter and hacked off more leaves, spiking herself several times in her excitement, but she barely noticed. She tied the leaves into a sheaf with the first bunch of fibres and trailed them behind her as they went on.

Goma led them across the canyon to an old rock-fall that lay piled against the further cliff. It had been there long enough for patches of bushes to have taken root, and at the top was a thicket of twisted trees. Scrambling through these were several gourd vines.

Noli put Otan down on an open patch and asked Tinu to keep an eye on him while she hunted for a good gourd. At first all the ones she could see were green and small, but on the further side of the thicket she spotted a good-sized one growing high up in one of the trees. Its skin was just turning orange, which meant that it would be tough enough to last several moons. She wormed her way into the thicket, climbed the tree, and with a good deal of trouble bit through the stem.

Then she was stuck. The gourd was too heavy to hold with one hand, so she couldn't climb down with it, and if she dropped it from this height, with all the weight of the pulp and seeds inside it, she'd be sure to break it.

She could see Goma watching her from outside the thicket, but realized that she herself was half hidden by the leaves, and Goma couldn't see what the problem was.

“Come, Goma, help me,” she called.

But of course, those were words. They didn't mean anything to Goma. Then Noli remembered the snorting bark the canyon people used when they meant
Come
, so she tried that. She didn't get it right the first time, but next try Goma seemed to understand. She saw her look carefully around her before laying her baby on a flat rock and then crawling into the thicket to the foot of the tree. She stood up, laughing, obviously amused by the noise Noli had made.

Noli lowered the gourd as far as she could reach, and dropped it for Goma to catch. Then she climbed down and they crawled out, Noli rolling the gourd in front of her.

Goma picked up her baby and turned to Noli. Smiling, she made the
Come
sound. Noli tried to copy it, but it still wasn't right, and they both laughed.

They tried again and again, still laughing. Then they fell silent. Something had changed. The strangeness that Noli had felt yesterday morning came back even more strongly, the tingling of her skin, the stir of her nape hairs. She saw that Goma was staring at her with her eyes so wide that the whites showed all the way around. Her mouth was slightly open. Noli knew that she looked the same, that they were feeling the same, sharing the strangeness.

They each raised a hand and put them together, palm to palm, breathing deeply but making no other sound. What they were sharing was a knowledge, but it didn't have words. Words were no use to it. It wasn't word stuff, a thing you could say. It was knowledge about a First One.

Abruptly the knowledge changed. Still without words, Noli felt
Danger!
Not danger to her but to something small and helpless.

Otan.

She looked at Goma. They turned and ran.

Noli leaped from boulder to boulder down the slope and scrambled up on the further side of the trees. Goma, hampered by her baby, was a little behind her.

They stood and paused, panting. Nothing seemed wrong. Otan was sitting almost where Noli had left him, busily banging one pebble with another as if trying to make a baby-sized cutter. Tinu was further up the slope, absorbed in stripping the fibres out of the leaves she had brought. She hadn't noticed their arrival.

Goma yelled and picked up a stone and flung it and bent for another one. For an instant Noli couldn't spot what she was aiming at. Then she saw it.

Looped across the rocks lay an enormous rock python. Its skin colour made it almost invisible on the stony background. Its head was barely two paces from Otan. It must have been creeping towards him, and frozen at Goma's yell.

Noli screamed and flung a stone and dashed to snatch Otan. Tinu was on her feet and shouting, too. Otan was yelling with fright at the sudden uproar. Goma's second stone struck just in front of the python's head. It jerked itself back, doubled around, and slithered rapidly away.

Noli picked Otan up and tried to comfort him. She was gasping, and her heart was pounding with effort and fright, but she got her breath back and thanked Goma.

Then she turned, gazed across the canyon, raised her free hand, and whispered, “First One, you I thank also.”

She heard Goma's approving grunt, and guessed that she understood.

Now Tinu crept in front of her and kneeled and pattered her hands on the rock. She was weeping bitterly and could scarcely mumble the words. “I am … bad, bad …” she sobbed. “Not watch … not see … snake … Ah, Noli … !”

Noli was too relieved at Otan's escape to be angry with her. Noli knew that if she'd been looking after Otan while she was doing something else that interested her, she too might well not have noticed the danger. So, still holding Otan with her left arm, she crouched and lifted Tinu up and held her, still sobbing, against her side.

“Do not cry, Tinu,” she told her. “It is done. Otan is well. Snake is a clever hunter. Now you hold Otan. I fetch my gourd.”

She went slowly, full of relief and thankfulness. Her sense of the presence of the First One had dwindled away until she was left with only the memory of it. But her feeling of oneness with Goma, of a thing they and no one else could share, remained. It was stronger and stranger than friendship. In two days the Moonhawks would leave, and probably she would never see Goma again. But Noli knew that if time did at last bring them together, this feeling would still be there, strong as ever.

Oldtale

WOOWOO

Sala-Sala screamed
.

In the Father of Trees, where Sol had bound him, he raged and screamed
.

After many moons, Woowoo came to Stinkwater. He heard the screams of Sala-Sala
.

He said, “Sala-Sala, my brother, who bound you here? Why do you not come out?”

Sala-Sala answered, “The hero Sol bound me here, though he was but a child. He bound me so tightly that I cannot come out.”

Woowoo laughed and said, “My brothers are fools,” and went on his way. But in his heart he said, Now I show my brothers that I am cleverer than they are
.

He took the shape of a little frog and waited at the drinking places for the Kin of Fat Pig to come
.

Sol was now a man. He said to the men of Fat Pig, “Let us hunt.”

They said, “We are tired.”

Sol said, “I hunt alone.”

Woowoo heard this. He took the shape of a dirri buck and fled from Sol. To Sometimes River he fled, and Sol tracked him
.

Sol said, “Good, the buck flies to the river. There I drink, for I am thirsty and my gourd is empty.”

In those days Sometimes River was filled with water all the time. When Woowoo came there he worked a magic. His magic was strong, strong
.

He dried up the river
.

Sol came to the river and saw that it was empty. He said, “Where can I drink, for I am thirsty, and my gourd is empty?”

Woowoo took the shape of a yellow snake and lay in the bed of the river
.

He said, “Sol, I too thirst, for I am a water snake. I know a water hole far into the desert. Carry me there, and I show you.”

But he said in his heart, Now I take Sol far and far into the desert, where there is no water, and there I leave him, and he dies. My plan is clever, for I am Woowoo
.

Sol looked. He saw the tracks of the dirri buck. They came to the river and they were gone. The river was gone also. He saw a water snake. It spoke to him with the tongue of a man
.

Sol said in his heart, This is demon stuff. With his mouth he said, “Snake, I carry you to this water hole.”

He picked up the snake. He caught it close behind the head and held it fast. He said, “Demon, I have you.”

Woowoo made the snake big. Its body was as wide as a man's. From nose to tail it was as far as a strong man can throw a rock. But Sol held fast
.

Sol said, “Demon, tell me your name.”

The snake said, “I am Woowoo
.”

Sol said, “Good. You are a water demon. I need water. Woowoo, make water for me.”

He held the snake's head over his gourd. He said, “Weep, Woowoo.”