The Kin (22 page)

He squeezed it by the neck so that it wept. The gourd was filled with its tears
.

Sol said, “Now demon, fill the river as it was before. Then I let you go.”

Woowoo said, “I cannot do it. I have wept my magic into your gourd, all but a little.”

Sol said, “I leave you here to make what magic you can.”

Sol struck the riverbed with his digging stick, Monoko. He made a pit. He cast Woowoo into the pit and closed it with a great rock
.

He took the gourd. He said, “This is my gourd, Dujiru. Woowoo's magic is in it. It never runs dry. It is mine.”

But Woowoo was held fast in the pit beneath Sometimes River. He makes water when he can. When he cannot, the river is dry. Thus it is Sometimes River
.

CHAPTER FIVE

Two days' journey to the west, the volcano was settling down after the eruption. Smoke and steam still billowed from it, but the explosions were over and the lava had begun to cool.

The lake that had lain along the floor of the crater was gone. Some of it had boiled away, but most of the immense mass of water had flowed off into underground channels opened by the earthquake. It lay blocked for several days, until a late aftershock disturbed the rock levels and the sheer weight of water forced its way through, downwards and outwards. The people in the canyon knew nothing of any of this.

At last Tinu finished hollowing out the new fire log.

“Tinu, I praise,” said Suth when she showed it to him. “Fill this tonight. Fill it with good embers, then I hide it among the rocks. In the morning we go. These people do not see we take our new fire log.”

Tinu did as Suth told her, and in the dusk he slipped away and hid the fire log out of sight further down the canyon.

When they took their last drink at the river that night, the water tasted different. The canyon people drank it with doubtful grunts. Noli looked up and saw Suth tasting again, then frowning.

“What does this mean?” he said. “It is the same as the water in the lake up in the mountain.”

“Suth, I do not know,” said Noli. “Drink. That is good water.”

She went to sleep that night with nothing in her mind beyond the thought of moving on, just the six of them on their own again, and the sadness of leaving Goma and Tor behind.

Noli woke, shuddering with wordless knowledge, the certainty of a huge unstoppable something coming from further up the canyon.

She sat up. The moon was high, the canyon silent except for the rush of the river.

A voice cried out in alarm. She recognized it. Goma.

She shook Suth. “Quick!” she said. “Danger! We go!”

“What danger, Noli?”

“I do not know. Quick, Suth, quick! It comes!”

By the light of the moon she saw Goma standing to call her alarm, again and again. The cry echoed from the cliffs. Now others joined in. By the time the Moonhawks were moving, the whole troop was scrambling over the boulders in panic.

Noli was too filled with her terror to think, but Suth kept his head. He made the Moonhawks stay together. Noli carried Otan. Suth told Tinu to take the gourd while he helped Ko and Mana. On their way, he picked up the fire log from the place where he'd hidden it and gave it to Tinu to sling over her shoulder.

Hampered by their three small ones, the Moonhawks began to fall behind, but Suth still refused to panic and kept up a steady pace. Ahead of them, Noli could hear Goma's cries whipping her people on each time they paused.

The river twisted away towards the further cliffs, taking its noises with it. In the near silence they now heard a new sound, a dull roaring, distant still, but rushing towards them. It mingled with the shapeless sense of danger in Noli's mind and told her what it meant.

“Suth!” she called. “It is water! Much water! Like at Sometimes River, after it thunders! It comes!”

Many moons before, when Noli had been no older than Mana was now, the Kin had been camped by the river and she'd seen a flash flood, a sudden torrent hurtling along the riverbed where a little before there'd been only dry rocks and one stagnant pool.

“Up!” said Suth. “There!”

He pointed to the old rockfall where Noli had found the gourd.

Noli cupped her free hand by her mouth. “Goma!” she yelled. “It is water! Up! Up!”

Goma couldn't have heard. She didn't know words. But Noli felt an answering pulse in her mind and knew that she'd understood.

Now that he could see how far they had to go, Suth allowed them to run, though he still tried to keep them together. He had picked up Mana and was dragging Ko. Noli could hear him gasping with the effort. Her own lungs gulped for air. Her heart slammed. The roar of the coming water grew louder and louder. Something glimmered to her right. She looked and saw that the river had grown to a wide sheet, flickering in the moonlight.

She floundered on, slower now. The others were a little ahead. Each time she looked, the sheet of water was nearer. It rose with a rush and swirled around her ankles. She stumbled among rocks she could no longer see. Someone snatched Otan from her. A strong hand grabbed her arm and dragged her forward. Goma.

The water was sluicing around their knees as they reached the rockfall. Noli let herself fall forward. Blindly she crawled up the rough slope.
Higher! Higher!
said the wordless voice inside her.

At last it let her rest. She turned and sat, sobbing for breath, with her blood roaring in her ears.

No, not her blood only. The retching of her lungs slackened to deep gasps. The agonized pounding eased in her chest. Sight came back. The roaring was now the sound of what was coming towards them down the canyon. She looked, and under the bright moon she saw it.

It came like a moving cliff around the bend above them. It slammed into the canyon wall with a booming bellow louder than its main awful roar. The impact forced a glittering spout of foam far into the night sky. The torrent churned around the bend and rushed on.

It struck the rockfall and was instantly almost at their feet. They yelled with terror, but their voices were drowned in the uproar. Spray drenched them, denser than any rain. And still the torrent rose and rose, driving them steadily up the mound, whirling bushes and boulders away as it thundered past. By the time the water stopped rising, they were huddled against the grove at the top, and beginning to climb into the trees.

No one slept. All night they watched the flood charge past. They were soaked, but not cold. The canyon was full of steam, and the spray from the churning waves was as warm as fresh blood.

Day came, and let them see how the flood filled the canyon, foaming along the opposite cliff and swirling around the next bend. Only the top of the mound they were on stood clear of the murderous water. They moved around, checking that all were safe. All the Moonhawks were, but Noli had been afraid for Tor. His bad leg and useless arm must have slowed him down, but he was there and made the noises that told her he was relieved to see her.

Somebody must have been lost, though, because a wailing started, several women passing the sound to and fro, one taking it up before another had finished, while the men made sad booming sounds deep in their throats.

They searched the grove for food. There was little plant stuff. The unripe gourds were too bitter to eat, and the few ripe ones were mostly fibre, with little goodness in them, and had a musty taste. But a lot of small creatures had taken refuge on the mound, and these they hunted eagerly.

Here and there in the grove, the leaf cover was thick enough to protect anything underneath from the drenching, so the Moonhawks found some dry litter and Tinu started a fire. Soon it was hot enough to burn the wetter fuel, so they could roast what they caught.

The floodwater was drinkable, though muddy with churned-up particles and stinking of the underfires of earth. This time the Moonhawks understood.

“It is the lake in the mountain,” said Suth. “The mountain cracked. The water came here.”

“Suth, you are right,” said Noli.

She remembered with grief that awesome but beautiful place, the still lake stretching away between the forest trees, the frightening closeness of the First One who lived there, the way her skin almost itched with its presence, and the air came and went in quick pants between her parted lips.

The memory seemed to bring those feelings back. She was alone on this crowded mound. Alone, except for Goma. All the others were ghosts, dreams. She sat, not seeing, not hearing.

Another feeling came to her, strong, strong.

It was sadness.

She wept with the sadness of the First One.

It was the sadness of Moonhawk when she had said goodbye.

It was this Good Place, the Place of a First One, gone beneath the destroying flood.

It was all the old Good Places, buried under the ash of the volcano.

It was all the loss that people had ever known.

A thought came to her. It was strange, too strange to understand.

The First Ones need people. It is not the Place, it is the people
.

When the people go, the First Ones go too. They do not die. They vanish. There are no First Ones in the desert
.

Now these people go. They cannot live in this canyon any more
.

So, no First One. Not any more
.

Sadness
.

Another thought, stranger still.

First Ones come from their people. They are what their people are. These people have no words. Their First One has no words
.

She raised her head.

“First One, we go,” she whispered. “Come with us, First One, and I give you words.”

The trance mood slid away. She shuddered and looked around. Goma was sitting on a rock a little way off. Her face was streaming with tears. She was looking towards Noli. Their glances met, and they smiled.

Late that morning the flood began to subside, but it was the whole day and a night and part of the next day before it was gone. They all made their way down the mound and cautiously began to explore.

It was dreadful. The whole canyon, with its mystery and beauty, was utterly changed. There was barely a sign that anything had ever grown or lived here. In places a few smashed tree stumps stood, but the flood, and the boulders it had rolled along as it swept through, had carried everything else away.

And then, as the water had sunk down, mud and gravel had settled and formed sheets of dense squishy ooze in every flat place and hollow. Often these were waist deep and more, but the people had no way of telling before they set foot in them.

There was no food left on the mound where they had sheltered, so they were forced to go on, picking their way where they could on the exposed boulders, but it was slow going and in a short time they were all caked with mud.

Towards evening, miserable and exhausted, they reached another old rockfall whose crown stood above the flood, and plants still remained. Here, too, a host of small creatures had taken refuge, and furthermore there were two wing nut trees, and bushes whose young leaves were pleasant to chew.

So they had food, and the Moonhawks could build their fire again and they sat around it and scraped the mud off one another, and felt better. They slept, exhausted. If Noli dreamed, she didn't remember.

But when they woke they stared in dismay at the next stretch of the canyon. Here some barrier further down must have trapped the silt, and left a sea of shining mud from cliff to cliff as far as they could see. It looked much worse than anything they'd struggled through the day before. A few people tried wading into it. Very soon they were up to their necks.

They studied the cliff above them. When the rocks that formed the mound had fallen, they had left a stretch of cliff that looked more climbable than the rest of the canyon, so some of the men set out to find a route up. Despite the steamy heat, the Moonhawks kept the fire going, so that Tinu would be able to load the fire log at the last possible moment. Who knew when they would next find fuel?

When the men came back, everyone got ready to leave. The Moonhawks had to wait for Tinu to pack and seal the fire log, so they were last in the line.

The climb was tiring, and in places really frightening, though they were all used to scrambling about on steep crags. There was one spot about halfway up that Noli felt she would remember in dreams all her life.

It came at a place where the cliff was almost sheer, with a long drop below. They had to cross from the end of a ledge not much wider than Noli's palm to another foothold and handhold well out of her reach. Tor and another of the canyon men were waiting on this side of the gap, with a third man on the far side. Tor seemed to be in charge. Noli realized that the men had been helping him up, and now he must have waited to make sure that the other two stayed to help the Moonhawks.

She watched Suth shift Ko onto his back and tell him to hang on tight. Then he edged to the end of the ledge. The man on this side gripped Suth's left hand to steady him, and Suth leaned and reached as far as he could across the gap. Then the man on the far side, also at full stretch, could grab Suth's right hand and swing him across.

Suth put Ko down where the ledge widened and told him not to move, then came back and carried Tinu and Mana across in the same way.

Now it was Noli's turn. While the man steadied her, she settled Otan onto her back, put his arms around her neck, and told him to hang on. Then she let the man take her left hand so that she could spreadeagle herself against the cliff and lean and stretch for the waiting hand on the further side.

Her arms were much shorter than Suth's. She couldn't reach.

The man behind grunted and hauled her back. He plucked Otan from her and passed him to Tor, who was still waiting beyond him where the ledge was wider. Tor settled Otan at his feet.

“Hold Tor's leg, Otan,” said Noli. “Hold tight.”

She turned to the gap and tried again. Without Otan she could reach a little further, but not far enough. The man behind her gave another grunt, this time with a question in it.
Ready?
he was asking. The one on the far side answered:
When you are
. He beckoned to Noli.