Firesong (32 page)

Hanno saw that passing smile, and squeezed her hand.

‘Not yet,’ he said.

Pinto sat beside him, filled with a strange mixture of grief and excitement. Every time she looked at her mother, she wanted to cry. But every time she looked ahead, towards the homeland, she felt a fierce thrill of joy. She had never seen it before, but she recognised it. This is where my life will begin, she thought. This is where I’ll grow and be strong and do great things. This is where I won’t be a child any more.

There was no way to reach the homeland. The cliff was too high, too steep. The rest of the Manth people sat in bewildered huddles, utterly defeated by this one insurmountable fact. Coming as it had, when they were so close to the end of the journey, when their hopes had risen so high, it was a crushing blow. But not to Pinto. She had no answer to the problem. All she knew was that the homeland was found, the prophecies were true, and her life lay before her.

Her mother’s dying was all muddled up inside her with this final impassable obstacle, the cliff. There was no logic to the thought, but it seemed to Pinto that when the first impossible event occurred, the death of her mother, the second would follow in its course, and they would enter the homeland.

She said as much to Mumpo.

‘Ma has brought us here. She’ll lead us the last mile. You’ll see.’

Mumpo believed her. He was learning to respect Pinto’s pronouncements. She was a special person, and it was his task to look after her for all of them. Also, she loved him, and that seemed to Mumpo to be a gift of great preciousness.

Those among the Manth people given to forming opinions took a gloomier view. To Branco Such, and Silman Pillish, and Cheer Warmish, it was all too clear that their journey was over, and had ended in failure. Their prophet was on the point of expiring, and their leader had no answer to their dilemma. At the same time, there were plumes of smoke rising in the sky to the west, and the glow of unnatural fires. The world seemed to be ending, so they might as well sit on the cold hard ground, eat what was left of their food, and despair.

‘We should never have left,’ grumbled Branco. ‘No good ever comes of leaving.’

‘Never left where?’ said Silman Pillish.

‘Anywhere,’ said Branco, irritably aware that it made no difference where they were if the world was ending; and that the place he wished he had never left was the past.

‘Everything will work out. You wait and see.’

This was little Scooch.

‘I won’t,’ responded Cheer Warmish. ‘I won’t wait and see. I’ve done enough. Why should I suffer? It’s someone else’s turn.’

‘Hush!’ said Lea Mimilith, nodding towards Ira Hath. ‘At least you’ve got your health.’

‘And for what?’ demanded Cheer Warmish. ‘What use is health when the world’s about to end? What have I done to deserve it, I’d like to know?’

‘I suppose,’ murmured Scooch, ‘that the world is about to end for everyone else too.’

‘Oh yes, go on, make it worse. I know I’m nobody special.’

The young men, Tanner Amos, Miller Marish and Bek Shim, had gone off exploring the ridge to see if there was a way down the cliff further on. Now they returned with bad news. The sheer vertical face seemed to extend the full length of the mountain range. No doubt there was a way to the homeland back down the mountains, along the river, and round by the sea. But would they be given the time?

The wind was rising. They all felt it now.

Sisi remained apart from the others, even from Lunki. She was not concerned by the cliff, or the homeland, or Ira’s dying. She was listening. She had told Bowman she would wait for his return, and she was waiting. Sisi made no claims to prophecy, but she had a strong will, and she trusted her will. Bowman would come back to her because she wanted it so much. So she listened, and waited.

She didn’t know that the Hath family were waiting for Bowman too: but both Ira, in her weakness, and Hanno, in his patience, understood that he would return. It was fitting, it was the only way, therefore it would happen. Both of them, faced by the immensity of death, had given up seeking to understand the reason for things, and were content with the lesser knowledge, of what was likely to happen. For Ira it presented itself to her in the simplest of terms: she would not die without saying goodbye to her son.

The little children, unaware of the seriousness of their situation, were becoming over-excited. The sight of the cliff frightened and fascinated them. They took it in turns to creep to the edge, look over, and then run back screaming. As they became more confident, they developed the game. They took little runs at the cliff, as if to jump off, stopping short, with a sharp scream, a few yards from the edge.

When Miller Marish saw what they were doing he was appalled.

‘Fin! Jet! Stop that!’

‘Why? It’s fun!’

‘Because you’ll go over the edge.’

‘Who cares? Everything’s blowing up anyway!’

‘I care! I don’t want to lose you!’

‘Everyone’s going to lose everyone. Look!’

The little girl pointed to the sky. The smoke plumes were rising in the west, and shoots of bright flame fringed the horizon. There was a distant rumble of thunder, and a heaviness in the air. The children were half-intoxicated by the strange sensations, and by waiting for the end.

Creoth sat with his three cows. No longer able to tell himself stories of the life he would lead in the homeland, he had fallen back on remembering the past.

‘You’ll never believe this, Dreamer,’ he told the cow. ‘I used to live in a palace, and eat chocolate buttons. Ah, how I loved those chocolate buttons! And yet, here’s the oddity, I wanted them so much before I popped them into my mouth – so much that I scrabbled, I gobbled – but once they were in my mouth, even as I was eating them, I found I didn’t really want them at all. What do you make of that?’

The cow swung its head slowly away, to look into the trees.

‘Quite right. Foolishness, downright foolishness.’

Mrs Chirish waddled over to his side.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Here’s a fine to-do.’

‘And nothing to be done, eh?’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that. Things don’t stay the same, sir. Events, that’s the thing. They do keep happening. I say we wait for events.’

In their different ways, they were all waiting for events. Only, for Ira Hath, time was fast running out.

‘Is it close?’ Hanno whispered to her.

He felt the slight pressure of her fingertip. He leaned forward, and very softly kissed her sunken face.

‘I won’t hold you, my dear,’ he said. ‘Only your love. I’ll hold your love. And you take mine.’

She pressed his hand.

‘I’ve loved you for half my life,’ he said. ‘The best half.’

No movement from her finger. She refused to agree.

‘Don’t argue with me, woman.’

A shadow of a smile formed on her face. Then the smile remained, but her eyes closed. Her hand lay still in his.

‘Ira?’

No response. He leaned close to her nostrils, to feel if she was still breathing. Very faintly on his moistened lips he caught the movement of air.

‘Pinto,’ he said, looking up. ‘Call the others.’

‘No, pa,’ said Pinto, not thinking what she was saying, which sprang unbidden into her mind. ‘She can’t go until –’

A sudden shiver went through them all. Creoth’s cows jerked their heads upwards. The children froze in their game. The grumblers fell silent, mouths gaping. Sisi looked up, feeling tall and strong and full of certainty. And Pinto said no more, her eyes staring above her –

Bowman was circling them, high above, finding the precise spot for his descent. He had appeared so fast that to many he had come from nowhere. Now, treading air with his bare feet, he let himself drop gently down to the ground, by the side of his dying mother.

As he touched her, her eyes opened again. She saw him, and smiled.

‘My brave birds,’ she murmured.

Bowman took her from the litter, held her thin body in his arms, and kissed her face.

‘You waited for us,’ he whispered to her. ‘You knew we’d come back.’

She looked on him one last time, and gave him her love, light now and faint, like the wind from a butterfly’s wing. Then her eyes closed for ever.

At once, in angry exhilaration, still holding her warm in his arms, Bowman kicked up into the air, straight up, higher and higher. When he was as high as he could go he kissed her again, and said goodbye, and let himself cry, up there in the secrecy of the sky.

Down he came, gently, gently, and gave her back to his father, her lover, her husband. Hanno took her and held her among her people. They were all still and silent, astonished by the two wonders they had witnessed, Bowman’s flying, and Ira Hath’s death.

Pinto kissed her mother, weeping. Hanno did not weep. He had made himself ready for this moment.

‘We who are left behind watch you on your way.’

He spoke the old words without ever taking his eyes from his dead wife’s face; as if he spoke to her directly, in the certain knowledge that she heard him. As he spoke, the others joined in with quiet voices.

‘The long prison of the years unlocks its iron door. Go free now, into the beautiful land.’

He faltered, and fell silent. The others in respect fell silent too. For a few moments Hanno Hath remained still, his eyes gazing on his dead wife’s face. Then he lifted his head to meet Bowman’s eyes. He did not need to ask the question aloud.

‘Soon,’ said Bowman. ‘Very soon.’

Hanno completed the words, his gaze fixed once more on his wife’s face.

‘Forgive us who suffer in this clouded land. Guide us and wait for us, as we wait for you. We will meet again.’ He kissed her. ‘We will meet again.’

Bowman turned towards the cliff edge, towards the homeland far below. As he turned back, his eyes met Sisi’s, watching him from the back of the crowd of Manth people. Very slightly, he inclined his head to her, and very slightly, she inclined her head in return. It was enough.

‘We wait for the wind,’ said Bowman.

19

The wind on fire

K
estrel stood singing among the Singer people, losing herself in the song, becoming one with the thousands who had gathered here from all corners of their world. The sun was rising behind them, pouring sharp winter light over the barren ground, laying their shadows long and thin before them. The fire that raged in the sky carried no terrors for them. It was the roaring of a caged beast, venting its anger and frustration before a power greater than its own. Kestrel felt it in every nerve, the astonishing power of the Singer people. The more they sang, the greater this power grew. She was part of it, she was sharing that power, she was contributing to it. She sang joyously, because by singing she sent her life force out to join the others, to form this mighty engine of change.

She felt the wind on her back, and shivered with wonder at what was to come. She lifted up a little, pushed by the wind, she was so light now, and dropped down again. All over the plain she could see it was the same for the others, rising and falling like boats on a rolling sea. They would all rise up soon enough: but not yet.

There came a crack that was thunder and earthquake together. The ground buckled beneath her feet, and in one great wave of movement, she and all the Singer people lifted up into the air. From the plains ahead came deep groaning sounds, then a cracking and a ripping, as the ground fissured and crazed before their eyes. The song of the Singer people grew stronger, to be heard above the exploding land. Now, within the weave of sound, Kestrel heard a new note: thin and far off and desolate.

She looked towards the mountains, and saw a lone figure walking out of the trees. Distant though the stranger was, Kestrel felt with certain knowledge that they had met before. It was a slow moving, frail, elderly lady with pale eyes. She seemed weak and helpless amid the heaving earthquake, but she did not concern herself over the destruction of the land. She walked on towards them, passing over fissures great and small, through the smoke that now hissed from the hot cracks, her pale eyes fixed on the way ahead.

The Morah was come again.

No power this time, it seemed to Kestrel. What need to destroy this pitiful creature? And yet that was what they were gathered to do. The vast might of the Singer people would surround her, and take her life, and in doing so they would give their own.

‘Find the flame!’

It was the soft voice of Jumper in her ear. She turned and saw him, far away, but his mind was close. She understood. It wasn’t hard, now that she saw what was happening to those around her. They had begun to glow, as Jumper had done before, on the barge.

Like dying, but not dying.

Kestrel didn’t need to ask how, or why. She needed only to sing the song.

As she sang, gladly, eagerly, she felt the cool flame form round her, like a space close to the skin. The sensation was in no way painful. It was calming, and made her body feel lighter, and her senses keener. And yet along with this sharper vision and keener sound went the feeling that such things had happened long ago and far away.

She was watching the old lady. She was nearer now, and she was changing. At first she seemed to be losing focus, becoming blurred at the edges. Then the blurring resolved itself into two figures, one peeling away from the other. Then these two divided in their turn, becoming four. The Morah was multiplying. Human forms burst out of human forms, more and more, not all old now, not all female: there were men emerging, and boys, and girls, peeling the one from the next, spreading over the smoking earthquake-riven land. The Morah was unfolding into the legion that was her true being: not one giving birth to many, but the force that had always belonged to the many now redistributing itself into its original parts.

Kestrel felt the flame grow more intense around her as she sang, as through the shimmering air she watched the multitude form before her. She was amazed by the numbers, for every wave replicating itself brought a doubling, a redoubling, until it seemed the whole visible world would be filled by – what could she call it now, this enemy she had come to destroy? – not monsters after all, not devils – but by nothing less than mankind.