The Kin (37 page)

For that he needed more mats. It was far too slow, crawling along with only three pairs of mats. If he had five pairs he could lay down a longer path and move three pairs at a time. That would be much faster.

When the men weren't foraging, they were making fresh cutters with the stones they'd brought back. Kern was teaching Nar how to do it, but Ko's hands weren't strong enough yet, so he'd asked Suth to make him a small cutter of his own. It was a good one, with an edge both sharp and strong, which would last some while before it blunted. No one thought there was anything unusual about Ko wanting to try it out—all boys were like that with cutters—and the obvious thing was for him to go off on his own and cut a few reeds, so it was easy for him to get away and carry on with his plan.

But making mats was much trickier than he'd thought. Ko copied Tinu's as carefully as he could, but his weren't nearly as good. It took him all his spare time in two days to make another pair, and he then decided that would have to be enough. On the third day he collected the eight mats and started off on his adventure. He was scared now, both of the danger and of what Suth would say about it, but he wasn't going to give up.

He had studied the island he was aiming for from his lookout above the camp, just after sunrise when the mists had cleared, and before the haze hid the marshes again. It wasn't all that far from the shore across a level stretch of mud. And it had real trees on it.

So he didn't follow the shoreline, but went some distance up along the slope, because from there he could see the tree tops poking above the haze. As he came opposite them and was about to start down to the marsh, a little swirling dust storm came scurrying out of the hills, straight towards him. Just in time he flung his mats on the ground and knelt on them so that they shouldn't be carried away, and then crouched with his hands over his face while a hail of grit and twigs, caught up by the flurry, slashed against his skin.

In a few moments it was gone, and he rose and watched it whirl crazily down the slope and out into the marsh, tearing the haze apart and leaving a clear patch which moved across the mudbank, dying as it went. It vanished just as it reached the island, so Ko caught only a glimpse of its eastern tip. But in that glimpse he saw a man.

The man was standing on one leg, at the edge of the water, still as a heron. His other leg was bent, with the sole of that foot resting against the straight knee. His right arm was raised to his shoulder, holding a long, slim stick. His head was bent, peering at the water. Ko understood at once that he was doing what herons do. He was fishing.

Then the haze closed up and hid him.

Of course Ko knew what he ought to do. He should run at once and tell Suth and Tun what he had seen. But he wasn't going to. He told himself the man was there now. By the time he'd reached the others and brought them back, the man might be gone. And there were only eight mats. They wouldn't be strong enough to carry the weight of a grown man. But if Ko could reach the island and watch this stranger, without himself being seen, and perhaps follow him when he left …

Why?

Because the man must have got to the island somehow. That meant he knew a way across the marshes!

Before he could change his mind Ko ran down to the shore, chose a place and laid the first pair of mats on the mud. He crawled onto them, reached back for the next pair, and then the next, and the next. Only when he'd crawled back to fetch the first two pairs, and so cut himself off from firm ground, did he hesitate, biting his lip. It still wasn't too late to go and fetch Suth.

No. He, Ko, was going to do this thing.

So he set off, working as he had the day before, moving his little path steadily out across the mud. Soon he was in a rhythm. The surface was caked hard, and he could barely feel it move when he crawled forward onto the next pair of mats. Now he could see the island, a vague brownish mass in the dense haze. And looking back he could no longer see the shore. He must be halfway there, at least.

Then the surface changed, becoming softer and stickier. His mats became clogged with mud, and when he dragged them forward they started to fall apart with their own weight. He did his best to be careful, but each time he moved one it became looser, and pieces fell away. The two he had made himself were useless almost at once …

He looked back, and saw nothing but mud and the sticky ooze he had crossed. He looked ahead and the reedbed that lined the island seemed very near. He could see the individual stems. He would have to get there. His mats wouldn't last long enough to get him back to the shore. Perhaps he could make himself fresh ones on the island.

For the last few paces he abandoned the ruined mats and lay on his belly and squirmed his way forward over the stinking, clinging ooze, until he could haul himself out onto a layer of fallen reed stems.

With intense relief he stood and walked carefully along beside the dense tangle of growing reeds, looking for an opening. But after a little while the muddbank ended at a patch of open water, so he was forced to turn back. He chose a place where the tangle didn't look quite as hopeless as elsewhere and started to wrestle his way through the reedbed.

It was horrible. Soon he could scarcely move. With a great effort he would force his way through a gap, find himself trapped, struggle on a little further, and be trapped again. The sweat streamed down. Swarms of insects, disturbed by his efforts, gathered eagerly round him. He could no longer tell which way he was heading. He felt helpless, desperate, terrified, utterly alone. Even if he got free of the reeds, he'd never get back across the mud. The others would never find where he was. He was going to die, caught in this horrible place, this Demon Place—stupid, stupid Ko. To his shame he started to sob. His breath as he dragged it in moaned in his throat. His tears blinded him. He groped forward.

And something caught him by the wrist.

He yelped with the shock of it, and in the next instant realized that the thing was a hand. It dragged him forward and flung him down on a patch of clear ground. He heard a hiss like the hiss of an angry snake and looked up, raising his arm against the expected blow.

Through the blur of his tears he saw a face. It was the face of a demon.

His mouth wrenched itself open, but the scream jammed in his throat. The face was the shape of a man's face, but striped bright yellow, like the tail of a parrot, and with purple blotches round the eyes.

The demon snorted. Ko cringed, and then some corner of his mind that hadn't frozen with terror recognized the sound. It was almost the same snort that Tor used when he was surprised or puzzled by something new to him. Tor didn't have words. He couldn't say, “What is this?” Instead, he snorted.

Ko's voice came back to him.

“I … I … I … Ko …”

All he could think of was to offer the demon a gift. He knew that in the old days, when a Kin came to a Good Place that belonged to some other Kin, this was what they used to do. He scrabbled in his gourd and found a hard lump. Yes, the bit of salt he'd stolen. Salt was a real gift. He cupped it in his hands and offered it to the demon.

The demon snorted again with surprise and took it. The hand didn't have great, hooked talons, like a demon's in the Oldtales, but ordinary fingers, people fingers. There was a yellow circle on the back of it, but seeing it up close Ko realized that wasn't the colour of the skin. It was some sort of yellow stuff that had been smeared on. The skin itself was brown, not as dark as Ko's, but like Tor's skin.

The demon was a man. He had coloured stuff smeared onto him to make him look like a demon.

With a gasp of relief Ko watched the man raise the salt to his mouth and lick it, and then grunt. Again Ko recognized the sound. It wasn't the same, but it was something like the grunt Tor used to mean he was pleased.

Feeling much better, Ko rose to his feet and stood while he and the man looked at each other. Now that he wasn't stupid with terror Ko saw that the man could easily have been one of Tor's people, the Porcupines. He was taller and skinnier than Tor himself, but he had the same thin face and sharp, hooked nose and protruding teeth. After a while he looked at the lump of salt in his palm and offered it back to Ko with a questioning grunt, as if he wasn't sure Ko meant him to keep it.

Feeling steadily more confident, Ko raised both hands, palms forward, fingers spread, and moved them towards the man. At the same time he made a brief double hum in his throat, the second part lower than the first. This was more Porcupine stuff. The Porcupines were always giving each other small gifts. It was one of the things they did instead of talking. Ko had once seen three of them passing the same coloured pebble to and fro all through a rest time, and then when they'd moved on they'd left it behind. It had been the giving that had mattered, not the gift.

The man made his pleased sound again, even louder. He was wearing what looked like a strip of reed leaf round his waist. From it dangled several short wooden tubes, not any kind of wood Ko knew, but more like very thick reed stems. Some of them were stoppered with a wad of leaf. The man opened one, dropped the salt into it, and stoppered it up. He picked up his long stick and turned, gesturing to Ko to follow him, then led the way along the narrow path on which they'd been standing.

It came out on the open space at the tip of the island, where Ko had first glimpsed the man. Here he kneeled and moved some fallen reeds aside, revealing three fish. He chose one, bit a chunk from its back, took the morsel out of his mouth and offered it to Ko.

Ko knew about fish. There'd been some in the river that ran through the New Good Places. The Porcupines had sometimes managed to catch one in their bare hands, but the Kin hadn't bothered until the river started to dry up and they found them stranded in pools. Ko made the
I
thank
noise and chewed the mouthful up. It was very good.

The man went back to what he'd been doing before, standing one-legged, motionless, right at the tip of the island, staring at the water.

Ko waited. An insect settled on his neck and bit. He slapped it, and instantly the man turned his head and hissed for silence, then returned to his fishing. Ko moved back along the path as far as he could without losing sight of him, picked up a broken piece of reed to use as a swat, and waited again.

Time passed. The man seemed not to move a muscle, not even to breathe. This is good hunting, thought Ko. There was a saying among the Kin,
The hunter is strong
—
good. The hunter is swift
—
better. The hunter is still
—
best
. People were always telling Ko that, because he wasn't very good at stillness.

But now he did his very best to be almost as still as the man. It wasn't just that he didn't want to be left alone on this horrible island, with no way back to the Kin. But also, having got this far, having started to make friends, Ko wasn't going to give up easily. The man had to know the way across the marshes. There would never be a better chance of finding it.

The stillness ended in a movement as sudden and sharp as the strike of a snake. The left arm shot out. The bent leg straightened into a huge stride. The body flung forward, with the right arm hurling the long stick ahead of it, out and down, in a thrust that lanced it cleanly into the water. An instant later the man splashed in behind it and disappeared under the foam.

When he came up he was grasping a fish in both hands. Ko had never seen one as large. It was as long as his arm, with a gaping jaw and thin, curving teeth. The man's stick was still in it, piercing it through, but it was alive and thrashing around in the water while the man fought to hold it. Somehow he shifted his grip and got both hands on his stick, one on each side of the fish's body, and then dragged it to the bank and heaved it ashore. Ko ran and caught it by the tail and hauled it well clear of the water while the man climbed out. Laughing with triumph the man put his foot close behind the head, pulled the stick out and stabbed down, piercing the fish through again but this time pinning it to the ground. It lay there, flopping and gasping, and at last was still.

While they waited for it to die Ko looked at the stick. It was taller than the man, about as thick as Ko's thumb and very straight but with knobby rings at intervals along it. He thought it must be another kind of reed. What impressed him was how sharp it must be, to pierce clean through a big fish like that, and how good for throwing. It was lucky the man hadn't thought Ko was some kind of animal while he was struggling among the reeds, making all that noise. He could easily have thrown his stick at the sound. Or perhaps Ko had been lucky to be weeping aloud, making the sort of noise that only people make.

It looked as if the man thought he'd now done enough hunting for the day. As soon as the fish was dead, he picked it up with his stick still through it, then threaded the three smaller fish onto the point. He lifted the stick and its load onto his shoulder, nodded to Ko and made a double grunt. Again it was a bit different from the Porcupines', but close enough for Ko to realize it meant both
I
go
and
Goodbye
.

“I come too,” said Ko firmly. He had no intention of being left behind.

The man looked puzzled, but Ko didn't waste time trying to explain what he meant with signs. Knowing Tor and the Porcupines so well, he realized that this wasn't the sort of thing he could quickly get across to this man.

“Tor is not like Tinu,” Noli had once explained. “Tinu's mouth is hurt. It cannot make good words. But Tinu has words in her head. Tor does not have words in his head. There is no place for them. I make signs with my hands. These signs are hand words. You understand my signs. For you it is easy. For Tor it is hard, hard.”

So now Ko guessed it would be no use tapping his own chest and then pointing across the marshes to say
I want you to take me over there
. Instead he simply grasped the man's free hand and started off along the path. The man still looked puzzled, but he came. The path wasn't wide enough for two, so Ko let go of the man's hand, waited for him to pass, and then followed him. The man looked round, shrugged, and walked on.