The Kin (42 page)

Ko found the noises strangely exciting, The woodpecker sound of the tubes had a kind of pattern in it, and the cries were part of the pattern. There was a meaning there too, almost as clear as he had learnt to hear in the grunts and barks of the Porcupines. The meaning was happiness. It was glory.

Oldtale

TOV'S GIFT

Tov and Falu journeyed all day, and came to Bagworm. His water lay beside him. His mouth was full of earth, and he could not suck it away. There were fish in the water. Tov and Falu took them and ate and drank and filled their gourd. Bagworm saw this. He was very angry
.

Night came. Tov and Falu kept watch in turn, each while the other slept. They woke, they journeyed, they came to Twoheads. His heads fought still, and the yellow blood dripped from them. Tov and Falu drank it and filled their gourd. Night came, and they slept and kept watch as before
.

They woke, they journeyed, they came to Tarutu Rock. Weaver camped there, Tov's own Kin. Tov said, “Tell me, my kinspeople, where is Dat?”

They answered, “Parrot camps at Dead Trees Valley. He is there.”

Tov and Falu journeyed to Dead Trees Valley
.
When Gata saw them coming she hid, close, in long grasses
.

Tov stood before Dat and said, “Dat, I bring you the gift you ask. I bring you the tooth of Fododo, Father of Snakes. I bring you the poison tooth. Here is Falu, your daughter. She is a woman. I choose her for my mate. She chooses me. Dat, do you say Yes to this?”

Dat said, “Give me the tooth of Fododo, Father of Snakes. Give me the poison tooth.”

Tov gave him the tooth. Dat held it in his hand. He said, “My promise was not for Falu. It was for Gata. I say No to your choosing.”

Tov was very angry. He said, “Give me back my gift
.”

Dat said, “The gift is given. It is mine.”

He closed his hand on the tooth, tight, tight, so that it bit into his palm and the poison went into his blood. He died
.

Then Tov and Falu smeared salt on their brows, and were chosen
.

All this Gata saw and heard, hiding in the long grasses
.

CHAPTER TEN

Slowly the procession picked its way along the hidden pathway. By the time everyone was ashore on the first island the buried reeds were beginning to give way, with so many people crossing all together. The crossing to the second island was worse. They had to hold hands and form a human chain to pull the last of them safely through.

The marshmen paid no attention, but strutted on ahead. They were well out of sight by now, though their wild music still floated eerily across the marsh. The Kins hurried after the sound and saw them disappearing across a mudbank into the haze ahead. But the marshman's two mates were there, waiting to help. They were obviously amazed to see so many people winding out from the trees, but the younger of them recognized Ko and ran to greet him, marsh fashion, with hugging and stroking.

She crowed with delight over Noli's baby and called to the other woman to come and admire her, and then they set about organizing the next crossing. They made the Kins go over a few at a time, with each party carrying a bundle of reeds to tread in anywhere the path felt weak. With plenty of workers, and cutters to gather the reeds, this didn't take long, but even so the sound of the marshmen's procession grew steadily fainter as they drew ahead.

Then it started to get louder again, and the Kins actually caught up on the far side of the fifth island, where several people had been fishing along a channel of open water, and the marshmen had stopped so that the men there could do First One stuff with the crocodile head. They were just finishing when the Kins came up with them.

The women ran to look at the strangers, and clucked and cooed over the baby, though some of them made sorrowful sounds and looked Noli in the eyes and sighed sympathetically.

“Why are they sad, Ko?” asked Mana.

“Mana, I do not know,” he answered. “I think they say,
It is only a girl. A boy is better
. For them, men are big, big. Women are small. See, these new ones. Three men. Five, six women. I told you this. The women are the men's mates. A man has two mates, or three. It is strange, strange.”

Mana was staring at him, wide eyed. Perhaps she hadn't taken it in, hadn't really believed it, when he'd explained about it earlier.

“Ko, this is not good,” she whispered.

He heard mutters of agreement from around and realized that several of the others had been listening, Yova and Var as well as his own family. Suth nodded encouragingly to him. It was a curious feeling for Ko, being listened to as if what he had to say was something his hearers wanted to know about. He was pleased, but at the same time uncomfortable. It was as if he had been somehow changed by his adventure, but wasn't quite ready for the change.

All afternoon the procession threaded its way across the marsh, going more and more slowly as it picked up fresh followers. The men joined on at the front and added to the patterned din, while the women and children thronged laughing behind. By the time they reached the central camp the line was snaking almost across two islands and the channel between them.

Already the sun was a fuzzy blob low down on their left, all the shrouding haze glowed gold, and the lake surrounding the island shimmered with the coloured light. Across its shining surface Ko watched the men at the head of the procession move onto the raised path to the islands. Their reflections moved with them, scarcely rippling on the silky water. The echoes of their music floated away over the distant reedbeds. Five of them now were carrying the crocodile head at arms' length above their heads. Even seen at that distance through the marsh haze it looked a fierce and dreadful thing. Ko shuddered, remembering his nightmares. He well understood why this was First One stuff for the marshmen.

A small procession came out to meet the main one and did their greeting in the middle of the pathway, then turned and led the trophy home, with the whole long line of people shuffling behind. The music, tens and tens and tens of marshmen rattling their sound-sticks and shouting their cries, didn't stop for an instant. By the time the Kins reached the pathway it was dusk.

They found the area round the entrance to the main island already crowded with excited people, so they pushed their way through to the further side and settled down where they could hear themselves talk.

“We were eight Kins at Odutu,” Ko heard Chogi say. “All of the Kins, men and women and children. Yet these marshpeople are more.”

“Chogi, you are right,” said Kern. “But what do we eat? We have little food here.”

“We eat fish,” said Suth. “Come, Kern. Come, Zara. Come, Mana and Ko. Bring salt. Ko, you know these people. You say to the women,
You give me fish. I give you salt
.”

It was still just light enough to see. The women were sitting in groups, with the fish they'd caught piled between them. Suth chose a group that seemed to have plenty, handed Ko a chunk of salt and gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder.

Hesitantly Ko went over. The women were already watching him, nudging each other and making their chuckling noise of interest and amusement. He crumbled some grains of salt into his palm and offered them round. The women took them and put them to their tongues and begged for more. Ko picked up a fish and made the
I ask
grunt. All the women grabbed for fish and thrust them at him, with eager
I give
noises. One by one he took them and passed them back to Suth and handed over another morsel of salt.

The job wasn't made any easier by the women who'd already had their share pinching and rubbing at his skin, or scratching it with a fingernail, to see if the colour was real. He could hear Suth and the others laughing behind him as he tried to slap the hands away, not let go of the precious salt, and pass the slippery fish back to them.

They worked on from group to group. Sometimes one of the marshmen would come strutting up and bark at the women, who would give him a fish and fawn on him while he munched it. He paid no attention to Ko and the others, and as soon as he'd eaten he'd strut away to rejoin the noise makers.

By now it was fully dark, but when Ko and his party got back to the others they found a fire going, with everyone scavenging along the shoreline for broken and discarded reed, which burnt brightly, but without much heat. Luckily there was masses of it, and after a while they were able to bury fish among the ashes and wait till they were cooked and rake them out with sticks to cool. They were delicious, as good as the crocodile tail had been that first night.

The marsh people didn't seem to have fire, but they must have known about it, because soon they were coming with dry reeds and thrusting them into the blaze and then they ran with them to piles they'd already built and got their own fires going. By the time the Kins had finished eating, the island was dotted with patches of light, with dark figures moving to and fro between them. The brightest blaze of all was over by the entrance, where the main crowd was, and where most of the noise came from.

Ko was intrigued.

“Suth, we go see?” he begged.

Suth rose, saying, “Come, Tinu. Come, Mana and Tan. This is a thing to see. We do not see it again. Noli, do you come?”

In the end everyone came and joined the crowd at the entrance. None of the marsh people paid any attention to them. Ko couldn't see over all those bodies, but he managed to squirm his way through to the front. There he found an open space around the wall of crocodile skulls and the line of larger skulls on poles. The head of the monster crocodile was now on the central pole. In front of it a fierce fire blazed, with the firelight glinting off the ragged fangs and throwing flickering shadows across the scaly hide. The mass of marshmen stood in front of the wall, slamming their soundsticks together and yelling their cries. The women and children formed a circle round the scene. Inside this circle one man strutted to and fro, leading the shouting and brandishing his fishing stick above his head every time he yelled.

Ko didn't recognize him until a pregnant woman came up from the pathway and flung fresh reeds onto the fire and then fawned on him briefly. She was the elder of the two women he'd met when he'd first found his way into the marsh. But then, a little later, a strange young woman appeared with more reeds and did the same. Before she'd finished, the younger of those first two women came with more reeds, and then joined her. She didn't seem to mind about the other young woman being there already.

Ko was watching this, open mouthed, when the one he knew spotted him and dashed across and dragged him, laughing, in front of the man. Now Ko could see by the firelight that it was indeed his friend, the man he'd met five days ago. He'd thought it must be, but he wouldn't have known him, with the mad, proud look on his face. His eyes were so wide open that the whites showed all the way round the irises, and the glisten of the flames added to the wildness.

Since noon the man had been leading the procession and then strutting in front of the crocodile head, and all the time yelling his triumph cry. His voice was hoarse, his coloured body shone with sweat and shuddered with effort, but he was still full of hero strength. He barely paused in his strut when he saw Ko, but laughed and snatched him effortlessly into the air and sat him on his shoulder while he paraded round the ring.

Now Ko found himself sucked into the frenzy, as he swayed above the heads of the crowd and looked out from the firelit island across the misty waters to the shadowy dark distances of the marsh. He clutched the man's hair with his left hand and raised his right fist above his head and shook it to the beat of the sound-sticks, and when the man yelled his cry he joined in at the top of his voice.

It was thrilling, a wonderful, wordless boast, a boast like no other boast that ever had been or ever would be, a boast to remember all his days, and there was no shame in it at all.

His throat was sore by the time the man at last put him down, and the crowd let him through and patted his back as he ran laughing to join his friends. They too were laughing, with him, not at him. They watched a little longer and then went back to their fire.

As they were lying down to sleep Ko heard Var say, “This man makes a promise. He leads us through the marsh. Does he remember his promise tomorrow?”

“Var, I do not know,” said Tun. “He is like a drinker of much stoneweed. Perhaps he remembers nothing.”

They are wrong, Ko thought. In the middle of his triumph the man recognized me. He knew what he owed to me, even if I didn't do anything of it on purpose. He'll remember his promise.

Ko was right. The man did remember. He came next morning with his three mates and two other men and three more women—the two men's mates, Ko guessed, though he didn't yet have a chance to work out who was whose. All of them carried fishing sticks, and the women had several fish strung on each of theirs.

Ko's friend looked utterly exhausted, and when he tried to grunt or bark he made faint croaking sounds, but he still seemed completely sure of himself and greeted Tun as leader to leader. He let his senior mate make the
Come
sound, but he led the way off the island.

By now most of last night's crowd were gone, but the great crocodile head still stared grimly to the north, with the lesser heads on either side. The marshmen touched its snout reverently as they left. Ko looked at it for the last time. It was just a crocodile head. Dead. It didn't scare him any more.

They had crossed only a few more islands when Ko's friend halted and started to croak
Goodbye
sounds. After a moment's puzzlement Ko realized from the way they were all behaving that his friends were now going to turn back, while the other five led the way on. The man presented Tun with the fishing stick one of his mates was carrying, with several fish on it, and Tun gave him a gourd and salt in exchange, with more salt for the women, and then with a great chorus of different sorts of
Goodbyes
they parted.