The Kin (54 page)

It was dusk. Fat Pig went to the reedbeds of Old Woman Creek. He spoke to the pig in their wallows
.

He said, “The water goes. Soon these wallows are dry. Beehive Waterhole has good mud. Come now. It is night. The sun does not burn us. The moon is big. We see the way.”

The pig rose from their wallows. They went with Fat Pig
.

Now a great snake lay in their way. By the moonlight they saw him. He reared himself up. He hissed. Fat Pig said, “Run! Run! It is a demon snake! It eats us all!”

Pig are not wise. One does a thing, they all do it
.

Fat Pig ran east, toward Yellowspring. The others followed. They came to Long Rock Ridge. Fat Pig stopped. They all stopped
.

They said, “The snake is gone. Now we go to Beehive Waterhole.”

They went. They walked on Long Rock Ridge. They made no tracks
.

Fat Pig did not go with them. He went to Old Woman Creek. There he found Siku. She hid in long grasses. He said, “Climb on my back. I take you to Windy Cliff, to your own Kin.”

It was morning. The Kin of Snake woke. They filled their gourds. They set out for Beehive Waterhole. Men led the way
.

Soon they cried, “Ho! What is this? Here are tracks of pig, many, many. See, they go this way, toward Beehive Waterhole. Pig are not zebra. They do not run far and far. Now we hunt these pig. We kill them
,
we eat them. Fat Pig are our enemies. We take their strength from them. Women, follow these tracks. We go fast.”

Now they cried, “Ho! What is this. The pig turn aside. Something makes them afraid. See, they run fast. Soon they are tired. We catch them.”

They followed the tracks. They came to Long Rock Ridge. The tracks were gone
.

The men said, “Now they turn aside. Which way do they go? Beehive Waterhole is this way. Yellowspring is that way. It is nearer.”

They went towards Yellowspring. The rock ended. They saw no tracks. They came back. The women were there
.

The men said, “Now we go to Beehive Waterhole.”

Farj said, “Yellowspring is nearer.”

The women said, “Farj is right. Our small ones are tired. Our water gourds are empty. We go to Yellowspring. Men, do you come with us? We have plant food.”

The men said in their hearts, Plant food is better than no food. They went to Yellowspring
.

The men of Fat Pig lay in wait at Beehive Waterhole. No people came. Many pig came. The men did not hunt them. Fat Pig do not eat pig
.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Days of peace followed the battle. Tun set lookouts still from dawn to dusk, and from dusk to the next dawn, but all the Kin knew in their hearts that they had dealt with the menace from the north. No great raid of demon men, people hunters, would come again. Nor were they likely to attack by twos and threes. If any were left where these had come from, surely they were now afraid. And more than all that, Moonhawk was strong in this place. She would warn and protect her Kin.

Before anything else they took the bodies of the five demon men they had killed in the earlier skirmishes and carried them round into the burned area on the west. This cleared the eastern side of the promontory of anything that might attract demons, so that the Kin could settle back there to lair and fish and forage, and allow Tun's wound and Net's to finish healing and Moru to recover from her burns.

All the time she wasn't on lookout Mana spent at her fishing hole. She usually caught something, and one wonderful afternoon came back to the lair with four fish, all handsome and fat. But she was perfectly content to wait poised beside the hole, and watch the minnows come and go, and catch nothing.

Fishing was good for her. She felt that she too had a wound to heal, a wound inside her, in her spirit. It had come to her with a blow from a digging stick. She had struck that blow with her own hand and arm as she had stood by the trap in the path through the reeds, with Tun sprawled beside her struggling to kick himself free from the demon man's grasp. She had hammered down on the demon man's head with Tun's digging stick, and at that third blow had felt the demon man's skull shatter. That was the moment she'd killed him. That was the wound in her spirit.

She had burns, too, not as deep as the wound, but sore. She would wake in the middle of the night and everything would be still, apart from the faint hiss of the wind crossing the ridge above her. But Mana would be sure that just before she'd woken she'd heard noises borne by that wind, the screaming of men trapped in the western reedbed, as the wall of flame swept over them.

It was something like what had happened to Moru. While Mana had been standing with Tinu on the hillside watching the smoke stream off the reedbed as the burning arc closed and closed, an eddy of wind had swirled over her, filled with the dark flame of the men's dying, and scorched her spirit as it passed.

She didn't talk to anyone about this. As far as she could tell, the others, even Noli, felt nothing but triumph and relief for what they had done. Mana felt those too. She was happy that all of them except poor Kern were still alive, happy that the days were quiet and they could lair in safety round their fire on the hillside, happy in the beauty of the world, now that the wind had come to blow the haze off the marsh and let her see far into the sparkling distances. Happy to fish.

On the second day after the battle two of the marshmen appeared from the reeds and climbed cautiously up to the camp. Shuja was on lookout, but didn't at once spot them as she was mainly watching for danger from the north. Then she turned and saw them, but recognized them as friendly, so stood and hallooed down to the others, who were all foraging along the shore, or fishing, or searching the reeds for insect bait.

Mana came out from her hole and saw Tun and Var climbing the hill to greet the visitors. This wasn't child stuff, so she returned to her fishing. She heard what had happened when they were all sitting round the fire that evening.

“One man is our guide,” said Var. “He brought us to this place. Then his two women were with him. They did not leave the reeds. Not the man, not the women. They were afraid.”

“I saw this,” said Net. “They were afraid.”

There were murmurs of agreement. They could all remember.

“Again we saw this man,” Var continued. “We fetched salt—I, Var, and Net and Kern and Yova. We met him in the reeds, on a path. He sees us. He is afraid. He turns away. I call, We
meet well
. He runs. I call again. He stops. He comes back, slow, slow. He touches me. He smiles. He is happy. Now he is not afraid. He calls to his women. They come, afraid, afraid. They touch me. They are happy. I say in my heart,
These people think Var is dead. He is a spirit
. They touch. I am warm. I am not dead. They are happy.”

“Var, you are right,” said Yova. “I saw this.”

“I say this,” said Tun. “The marshpeople fear the demon men. They say in their hearts,
These strangers are fools. They go to the places of the demon men. The demon men kill them
. They hear fighting in the night. They see great burning. Then they see our fire on the hill. It is still there. They ask,
Do the strangers live?
They come. We take them to the dry reeds. We show them the bodies of demon men. They are happy. They are like Ridi. They give great praise. Soon others come. They see too.”

They talked it over for a while, and agreed that Tun was probably right, but they weren't ready for the way it happened. This time Mana was on lookout. She heard a strange noise rising from the marsh behind her, and coming nearer and nearer. After a little while she realized that she'd heard it before, when the procession of marshmen had carried back to their central island the head of the monster crocodile that the Kin had trapped and killed.

It was the sound the marshpeople made by banging together two of the reed tubes they carried at their belts. But this time it was different. When Mana had heard it before it had been a wild, dancing rhythm, mixed with shouts of triumph. Now it was slow and solemn and monotonous, with no intermingling of human voices. Mana recognized at once that it must be a death sound.

All the Kin seemed to have heard the sound too, and gathered from whatever they'd been doing to watch the procession. Tens and tens and tens of marshpeople, men, women and children, came out of the reeds and climbed the hill towards the camp. Then there was the usual exchange of gifts. Even from the lookout point well up the hill Mana could see that the marshpeople had brought far more than the Kin could possibly give them in exchange.

After that they moved out of her sight, round to the western side of the promontory, but their sad music was carried to her on the wind all morning. As soon as Nar came up to take over as lookout she climbed to the ridge and looked down.

Far below her on the scorched mudbank women and children were moving to and fro, searching the ground, while the men stayed at the shoreline, steadily banging their tubes together. Every now and then one of the searchers would stoop, pick something up, and carry it to the shore to add to a pile that was already there. Though she couldn't see them for sure at that distance, Mana realized at once that they were collecting the skulls that the demon men had carried at their belts.

And she knew too—the noise from the sound sticks told her—that what they were doing wasn't demon stuff. It was the opposite. They were taking the skulls not as trophies of their own, like the great crocodile head, but so that they could do something good with them. Some of these skulls must have been the heads of marshpeople, but they didn't know which, so they were taking them all. They would feel about them much as the Kin had felt about Kern's head, so they'd want to do something like the Kin had done, when they had returned that to Kern's body, where it belonged, and only then done the death dance for him.

When they had finished they said their farewells and filed off into the reeds, with the sad music of the soundsticks growing fainter and fainter as they moved away.

They had left a great pile of gifts, mostly fish, but also fishing sticks and crocodile teeth and braided belts and belt tubes. Some of the tubes had coloured paste in them, used by the marshmen to paint their faces, so the children had a great time covering each other with red and yellow and purple blotches and streaks. That night they feasted until everybody's stomach was crammed.

Next day Var and Suth set out on a scouting expedition to the north. Three anxious days later they returned, tired but well, to say that they had gone all the way up the promontory along the same, endless barren slope, and then climbed a range of hills that were almost mountains, almost barren too, with no sign of Good Places for the Kin to live in. They'd nearly run out of food and were getting desperate by the time they reached the top, but had gone on a little further and looked down into a huge valley, full of promise, just the sort of area they'd been looking for. They'd explored a little, and seen few signs of people, but they'd found plenty to eat.

When they had finished their report Tun praised them with strong words. Then he said, “This is good. Tomorrow we go. Be ready.”

Next morning, as soon as it was light, Mana went for the last time to her fishing hole and dribbled scraps of bait into it, then watched the little fishes come to gobble them up. To her delight a beautiful large fish appeared, silver, with a yellow stripe along its flanks. It was one of the best sort, with pinkish flesh, juicy and firm, but she didn't try to catch it. Instead she gave it extra bait, and blessed it, and the little ones, and the water they swam in, and left feeling both sad and happy.

They travelled steadily up the promontory all morning, picking their way along the awkward slope with two men scouting ahead for danger. While they were resting Mana noticed Suth stop what he was saying to the other men and point out across the marsh. She looked, and at once saw what he'd seen. A long way out a line of tiny figures was wading thigh deep across a patch of open water.

“Ho! The marshpeople come too!” said Zara. “Now they are not afraid.”

Net jumped to his feet, cupped his hands to his mouth and hallooed and waved. After a pause Mana saw the marshpeople stop and turn. Everyone stood up and waved. The marshpeople waved back and moved on, while the Kin sat down, feeling cheered that they were not alone in their adventure.

“They use an old path,” said Var. “They know it.”

“Var, you are right,” said Chogi. “I say this. All the marsh was their place. They fished here. They came to the dry land. They were not afraid. Then demon men came. They killed men, they took women. The marshpeople were afraid. They went away. Now we kill the demon men. They are not afraid. They come back.”

“Chogi, you are right,” said Net, and they all agreed it looked like that.

That evening they camped early, a little up from the base of the promontory, where the shoreline swept away eastward at the foot of a great range of hills. As Var and Suth had warned them, these gave no promise of food, so they needed time to fish, and forage among the shore plants.

As usual when they camped anywhere new they made their fire in a hollow, so that it couldn't be seen from any distance. Tun set lookouts, and they scattered to their various tasks. There were rich pickings. No one seemed to have foraged here for many moons. Mana found a fong beetle's burrow with the guardian beetle lurking inside the entrance. It had a viciously poisonous bite, but she lured it into the open by tickling it with a grass stem, and then squashed it with the stone she had ready in her other hand. Now it was safe to dig into the burrow and scoop the juicy brown bugs into her gourd.

Just as she finished she heard a brief whistling hiss from the reeds beside her. She looked and saw a bright-painted face peering at her between the reed-stems. She held up her hand and called a soft greeting, and the marshman came cautiously out. She didn't recognize the pattern on his face, but he seemed to know who she was. He returned her greeting, but looked past her, studying the hillside, and made a questioning sound, like a light bark, but with his lips closed. Though it wasn't the grunt the Porcupines would have used, it was obvious what he was asking her.