The Kin (33 page)

Tov said, “Parrot, we are two who laugh. Come with me. You are my guide.”

At that the parrot flew down and sat upon his head
.

It was the night of little moon, so Tov journeyed to the waterhole beyond Ramban. He saw a wing nut tree beside the path, and said, “This is good. I lie in wait behind this tree. Gogoli comes. I leap out. I catch him. Parrot, fly into the tree. Keep watch with me. Make no noise.”

Tov lay by the path and waited. At dusk Gogoli came. Many people hunted Gogoli, to steal his knowledge. So he made a magic as he went, a sleep magic. The hunters slept, and did not catch him
.

Now Gogoli made his magic, and Tov slept
.

The parrot did not sleep. It was not people. When it saw Gogoli it flew down and cried in Tov's ear. He woke and leaped out
.

Gogoli fled, but Tov caught him by the tail. He tied tingin bark to the tail and hauled Gogoli up into the tree
.

Gogoli said, “Man, let me go. This night I drink at the waterhole. I do not drink, then I die.”

Tov said, “Tell me this first. I seek Fododo, Father of Snakes. Where is his lair?”

Gogoli said, “It is in the desert, where no man goes. It is west from Tarutu rock, three days. It is north a half day.”

Tov said, “Where is there water on the way?”

Gogoli said, “Two heads has water. It is beneath him. Bagworm has water. It is there, and not there. Stonejaw has water. It is inside him.”

Tov said, “Last, tell me this. I seek the tooth of Fododo, the poison tooth. How must I steal it?”

At that Gogoli was very angry. He said, “How can I know this? No man has done it. It is a thing not known.”

Then Tov untied the tingin bark and Gogoli went to the waterhole and drank. But his sleep magic was still strong, and Tov lay down and slept
.

Now it was dark, and the parrot was people again. It was Falu
.

Falu said in her heart, Gogoli's magic is strong, strong. Perhaps danger comes. Tov does not wake. Now I, Falu, keep watch
.

So Falu watched all night. She did not sleep. In the morning she was a parrot again
.

Tov woke. He said, “Little grey parrot, I dreamed. In my dream I slept. One kept watch. It was a woman. My thought is, It was Gata.”

The parrot answered. Its voice was laughter
.

CHAPTER FOUR

There was nothing to do but turn westward and try to find a way round the marsh. As the sun rose higher the mudbanks began to steam, and soon everything beyond the first few tens of paces was again hidden in haze. Sometimes a pool of water between the mudbanks reached as far as the dry ground, so at least there was enough to drink. But there was no food at all, only the reeds and the mud and the dry, dry land.

So they trudged along all day with despair in everyone's heart. Soon clouds of insects found and followed them, so they moved a little inland to be free of the worst of them. Tun was already looking for a place to camp when Ko noticed Moru heading off by herself to the right. For something to do, he trotted after her.

“Moru, where do you go?” he asked.

“I go see,” she said. “Perhaps we are lucky.”

She smiled her thin smile. Moru was one of the stragglers who had come back with Tun when he had gone to see if there was anyone left in the Old Good Places. Her Kin was Little Bat, but her mate was dead, and so was Var's, so they had chosen each other. But Ko felt that she always had a sad look because of everything that had happened to her.

Just before she reached the edge of the marsh she stopped and crouched down. Here the solid ground didn't end in a bank, but in a large, gently sloping patch of soft, sandy earth. With a grunt of satisfaction Moru walked a couple of paces forward, crouched again and gently scooped the earth aside. Ko watched over her shoulder.

She grunted again, scooped even more gently and then carefully lifted something free and showed it to Ko. It was a large egg.

“What bird makes this?” he asked, astonished.

“It is not bird. It is turtle,” said Moru. “We, Little Bat, had a Good Place. It was at Sometimes River. There were turtle nests. Look, here are many. Call the others.”

Ko ran up the slope, hallooed, and beckoned. Heads turned.

“Come. Moru finds food,” he called, and they all came running. Moru showed them how to look, and in the end they found ten and ten and two more nests, all full of eggs with little baby turtles almost ready to hatch. They carried them well away from the marsh and built a good fire of dead branches and roasted the eggs on the embers. It was the best feast they'd had for several moons.

But the next three days were very bad. They found only two patches of water they could reach, and almost no food at all. On the third day the ground rose, and they walked endlessly along a barren, rocky slope above the marshes. By afternoon even the usually cheerful Kern was looking dismal, and poor Bodu was weeping with anxiety over her baby. Ko was too sick-hearted to dream.

Then, when the sun was low in the west, he felt a faint breeze blowing in his face, with a new smell in it. Water. Not the dead, stinking water of the marsh, but sweet, clean water with green plants growing in and around it.

Everyone smelt it at the same moment. Their weary legs found strength. The loads they were carrying seemed suddenly lighter. Their pace quickened. Some of the men loped ahead. Ko saw them turn and shout and wave, black, spindly shapes against the glare of sunset. Most of the party broke into a run, but Noli was very tired after walking all day with her baby inside her, and by now Suth and Tor were helping her along, so Ko stayed too. They came up with the others last of all, and saw what they had found.

It was a true Good Place, like the ones that Ko could only just remember, before the rains had failed. A narrow strip of the marshes ran south into the desert, but this was a different kind of marshes, with good clear pools and banks of tall green reeds, and leafy bushes growing along the shorelines. Surely there was food there, as well as water.

Hungry and thirsty though they were, they didn't rush down, but stood and looked around for possible dangers. Then Tun pointed to a place where open ground reached down to the water between two patches of bushes. He set lookouts in every direction before he and a few of the adults took the water gourds to refill.

Ko was told to watch back the way they had come, but hardly had he taken up his post when he heard a yell from behind him, one voice, then several, screaming
Danger! Run!
He turned to look. People were racing away from the water. Beyond them something large and dark and glistening was hurtling up the slope. For a moment he couldn't see it properly. A scream rose above the yells. Someone had fallen down.

As the others stopped running and turned back to help, Ko saw the creature clearly.

Crocodiles didn't come that big!

Ko could remember crocodiles basking on the sandbanks of the river when it had still run through the New Good Places, ugly creatures, with thick, scaly hides and long snouts full of jagged teeth. He'd been smaller then, and they'd seemed huge to him, but he knew that they'd really been only two or three paces long, at the most.

This one was more than twice that. It was a monster, a nightmare, a demon from the Oldtales.

He watched it shy away as the people rushed shouting towards it. The men struck at it with their digging sticks as it hummocked itself down to the water. It seemed not to feel their blows. As it slid beneath the surface Ko saw that it had something in its mouth.

Now the people were coming slowly back up from the water. Ko could feel their shock and horror. Four of the men were carrying somebody cradled between them. When they reached the crest where Ko and the others were waiting they laid him on the ground. It was Cal. His left leg, the one that had been stung by the scorpion, was gone, bitten clean off just above the knee. He had fainted. Chogi was trying to staunch the blood flow with her hands, but it pulsed violently out between her fingers.

Ko couldn't bear to watch, so he stared out over the desert. Still nothing moved there, so he turned again and gazed down at the peaceful-seeming stretch of water below, all pink and golden under the sunset. His thirst was suddenly so fierce that he barely noticed when Chogi said, “Cal is dead. He is gone.”

Everyone groaned, but still Ko could think of nothing but his thirst.

“Tonight we mourn for Cal,” said Tun. “Now we fill our gourds. This is dangerous, dangerous. First, I do it. Then others, by one and by one.”

Again Ko was set to keep lookout, but kept glancing over his shoulder to see what was happening. One by one the adults dashed down to different places on the bank to fill the gourds, while the others showered rocks and lumps of earth into the water to scare attackers away. Nothing happened, and after a short time they returned to the ridge with brimming gourds.

Everyone had a drink, and then, still keeping careful watch and staying well away from the water's edge, they used the last of daylight to explore for food. To their delight they found several patches of dinka and one of thornfruit. Dinka was a small bush whose young leaves tasted of nothing much but could be swallowed after a lot of chewing. Thornfruit was a sort of cactus with vicious spines. The fruits were tricky to pick, and poisonous raw, but well roasted on embers they became sweet and juicy.

When it was almost dark they carried what they'd found back up the hillside and built their fire and made camp. After they'd eaten Tun stood and raised his hand for silence.

“We mourn for Cal,” he said. “He is dead.”

The women rose and stood in a line on their side of the fire. The children moved back to give them room. The men, sitting cross-legged opposite them, started to beat out the rhythm with their hands. But before the dance could begin Ko saw Noli stiffen and then walk with slow, jerky steps, as if something were moving her from outside, to the gap between the two groups. The men stopped clapping, and waited. Noli closed her eyes, and when Moonhawk's voice came out of her it spoke so softly that Ko could only just hear the words.

“Fat Pig is dead. He is gone,” said the voice.

It was the saddest sound Ko had ever heard.

Noli bowed her head. For a long while nobody moved or spoke, and then she opened her eyes and moved quietly back to her place in the line.

“Cal was Fat Pig,” said Chogi. “He was the last. There are no more Fat Pig.”

Even Ko, who didn't often think about such things, felt the solemnity of the moment. The Kins had always been there, ever since the time of the Oldtales. There'd been eight of them (or nine, counting Monkey, but Monkey was different). Now … Now, really, there was only one, Ko's own Kin, Moonhawk. Moonhawk and a few scraps. There was nobody from Weaver in the group round the fire, and nobody from Ant Mother. As far as anyone knew, those Kins were dead too, gone. But Cal's death was the first time anyone had actually been there at the moment when a Kin vanished.

Tun gave the signal, the men clapped the rhythm, and the women shrilled the death wail and danced the dance—three stamps of the right foot and three stamps of the left, again and again and again—while the sparks wavered up above the embers of the fire towards the star-filled sky. Mana, sitting beside Ko, took his hand. He looked at her and saw she was weeping, so he put his arm round her and held her close.

Ko didn't feel like weeping but he felt very strange, not like Ko at all, but like somebody much older, much more wise and serious. This person didn't think about Ko stuff. He thought about time, and the people who'd been alive once and weren't any more—all those lives, those ancestors, going back and back and back to the time of the Oldtales, all who had ever been Kin, come down to these few living people left round their fire in the desert.

And they were alive only by the skin of their teeth. If they hadn't found this Good Place, then tomorrow, perhaps, or the day after, Moonhawk would have been gone too, like Weaver, like Ant Mother, like Fat Pig. No Moonhawk, not any more, ever …

From where he was sitting, if he looked to his right, Ko could see out over the marshes. The haze that had hidden them all day had gone. What he saw was an immense dark distance, ending in a range of hills outlined against the paler sky. Over there, the rains had not failed, over there were Good Places where Moonhawk could live and thrive, more lives and yet more lives, going on and on through time …

It had to be true.

If only they could get there.

Next morning, they filled their gourds in the same way as they had last evening, some darting in one at a time to different places on the shoreline, while others showered the surface with clods and stones. Ko and the children watched tensely until it was over, but there was no sign of the monster, or of any smaller crocodiles.

Next, according to their custom, they carried Cal's body well away into the desert and mourned again and left it there with his gourd and digging stick and a cutter.

Then they returned to the inlet and explored this new Good Place, foraging as they went. They found plant food, dinka leaves and whitestem and thorn-fruit, and a bluish root called ran-ran, and various seeds, a far better harvest than they'd gathered anywhere for the last several moons. Even the swarming insects seemed somehow less horrible than in the main marsh. There were plenty of birds deep in the dense thickets, and tracks of small animals beneath them, but no sign of anything larger. Ko heard some of the men talking about this.

“This is strange,” said Kern, who was the best tracker among the men. “Here is food. Here is water. I see deer tracks. I see pig tracks. They are old, old. None are new.”

“I see no swimming birds,” said Net.

“The crocodile eats them,” said Var gloomily. The other two laughed, because that was the sort of thing Var always said, but a little later, while Ko was hunting for a way into a cactus thicket to reach a juicy-looking thornfruit, he heard a call of “Tun, come look!”