Firesong (4 page)

He bowed his head, and they all repeated,

‘We will meet again.’

They could do no more. Hanno gave Bowman a quick sad smile, and turned to his wife. Bowman caught the faint whine he had heard before, and the quick shimmer in the air. He saw his father give a small start, and raise one hand to his throat. Bowman suddenly felt the close presence of danger.

‘What is it, pa?’

‘Nothing. Some little stinging insect. Nothing to worry about.’

He turned away, a little too quickly.

‘Pa, look at me.’

Hanno turned back, frowning with annoyance.

‘I’m alright, I tell you. We have to get moving. We’ve wasted enough time already.’

For the last time Bowman looked down at the long mound by the roadside, and wondered fearfully what would make a man tear at his own face. But now the column was reforming, and it was time to go.

2

Drunkenness

W
hile the wagon had been stationary, Seldom Erth had loosened the horses’ harness, and Mrs Chirish had decided to wrap the cook-pots in an extra layer of cloth, afraid that the shaking of the wagon-bed would shatter them. The cows had drifted off in search of grass. Many of the people had sat down.

Now that it was time to move off again, Hanno Hath started to shout at them.

‘You! Cowman! If you can’t control your animals we’ll have them for dinner!’

Creoth was speechless with surprise. Hanno never spoke like that.

‘You! Old man! Did I say you could unharness the horses?’

Ira Hath, aware that something was wrong, tried to take him aside.

‘Hanno –’

‘Not now, woman. Come along, everybody! We’ve wasted enough time!’

Kestrel heard him, and reached out for Bowman with her mind.

What’s wrong with pa?

I’m not sure. Something bad’s happened to him. I need to feel him.

Come on. I’ll help you.

Kestrel knew what her brother meant when he said he wanted to ‘feel’ their father: he wanted to enter Hanno’s mind. For that he needed close physical contact, preferably brow to brow. But Hanno was moving fast, never staying in one place for long. The twins didn’t want to alarm everyone by making a direct attack on their father.

‘Pa,’ said Kestrel. ‘Before we set out again, let’s have a wish huddle.’

‘No time,’ said Hanno.

‘Please. It won’t take a moment.’

‘Ma! Pinto!’ called Bowman. ‘Wish huddle!’

Hanno turned on them, eyes blazing with anger.

‘I am the head of this family! You heard me say we have no time! How dare you disobey me!’

Pinto had come running.

‘But I’d like a wish huddle, pa –’

Smack! He struck Pinto across the face with the flat of his hand.

‘You will do as I say!’

The blow hurt. Pinto bit her lip to stop herself crying, not understanding how her gentle father could hit her so hard.

‘I’m sorry, pa.’

Hold him! Don’t let him move!

Bowman and Kestrel hurled themselves forward in the same moment. Bowman got his arms round his father’s chest, pinning his arms to his side, while Kestrel wrapped herself round his legs. Hanno struggled, and fell to the ground, but Bowman did not let go. He pressed his head to his father’s head, and summoned all his power to force his way into his father’s mind. He found it at once, felt its shape without seeing it: it was like a grub, curled up tight, with a thick and slimy skin. He tried to grasp it, but it was slippery, and it wriggled out of his grip. It was strong, and growing stronger, feeding on its host that was his father.

Bowman set about flooding his own mind into his father’s mind, filling him up, leaving the grub no room to breathe. None of this was apparent to the others, who saw only that Bowman and Kestrel had fallen to the ground with their father in their arms, and were holding onto him. They crowded round, not sure what to do.

‘Leave them!’ said Ira.

Bowman found his father’s brow at last, and pressed his own brow against it, and the force pulsed from him in waves.

Out! Out! Out!

Suddenly he felt all resistance cease. His father’s body gave a juddering jerk, and went limp. The creature was gone.

Hanno Hath let his head fall. Bowman released his hold. He took his father’s face and turned it, so he could see it. It was mottled with pink blotches, and beaded in sweat. Bowman gathered up his loose sleeve and wiped his father’s brow. Kestrel let go of his legs, and moved to his other side, resting his head on her lap. Ira sat down close by, as did Pinto. Hanno’s eyes opened. He looked dazed.

‘Are you alright now, pa?’ asked Pinto.

‘Yes, darling.’

Bowman stood up, to reassure the anxious crowd.

‘He’s alright. Nothing serious.’

As he spoke, he looked round all the watching faces, searching for signs of any others who had been attacked in the same way. But everyone seemed as they had been before.

Hanno got up off the ground, shaking his head and smiling.

‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what that was all about.’ His eyes fell on Pinto, whose cheek still bore the red mark of his blow. ‘Did I hit you?’

‘Yes, pa.’

‘I didn’t mean to, my darling. It wasn’t me that did that. I’d never hurt you.’

‘I know, pa.’

Hanno smiled at the staring faces all round.

‘I’m not as strong as I thought I was.’

‘What was it?’ they asked him. ‘What happened to you?’

‘I seem to have been stung by some kind of poisonous insect. There may be more of these insects in the air around us, and they may sting you.’

The people began to look nervously about them.

‘They’re too small to see. Even the sting is tiny. You hardly feel it. It’s like an itch.’ He touched his throat.

‘What does it do, Hanno? Will it harm us?’

‘It doesn’t exactly do any harm. What it does is bring on a kind of drunkenness. I don’t know how else to explain it.’

‘Drunkenness!’

The younger men laughed, and nudged each other. Rollo Shim waved one arm in the air and called out,

‘Here I am! Sting me!’

‘It’s not pleasant,’ warned Hanno gravely. ‘Please, if you think you’ve been stung, go to my son Bowman. He has a way of dealing with it.’

A sudden gust of icy wind reminded them all that this was no time of year to stay still, for those with no sheltering homes. So the marchers prepared to set off once more. Before taking up their places in the column, Hanno and Bowman exchanged a few brief words alone.

‘I think whatever it was came out of the dead man,’ said Bowman.

‘You saved me, Bo. I do know that.’

‘It made you shout, and give orders. Not like you at all.’

‘No. I’m happiest in my own small quiet world, aren’t I? With my family and my books. I don’t want to make people fear me. I’m only leading our people now because I believe in Ira’s gift. Nobody is obliged to follow me.’

Bowman could hear the puzzled note in his father’s voice, and realised that he was not as sure as he wanted to make out.

‘They follow you because they respect you.’

‘All I mean to say, Bo, is I don’t set myself up as wiser or more important than others. Who am I, to tell them what to do?’

‘You’re our leader, pa.’

Hanno gave him an odd smile. Bowman reached gently into his father’s mind, and was surprised by what he found there. He heard a chatter of thought-voices saying,
What an absurdity you are! Go back to your library, librarian! Nobody pays you any attention. Speak more softly or people will laugh
. But deeper than these sounds, like a steady beat below the cackle of interference, he caught another voice, that whispered,
I do know more, I am wiser, they would do well to follow me
.

What is this fly that came from a dead man’s mouth? Bowman asked himself. What does it do to us? How can it reach such deep and hidden passions?

He remembered then how he too, long ago, had been touched in just such a way. In the halls of the Morah, when he had looked into those eyes that were the eyes of a multitude, he had felt the stirring of wild desires within himself, and he had been changed. Was this stinging fly a creature of the Morah?

He felt a sudden lurch of fear.

I’m not ten years old any more. I have powers of my own.

The Morah comes from us, he told himself. The Morah is ourselves. This stinging fly has no poison; unless it takes poison to discover to ourselves our own hidden passions.

This last thought was almost the most frightening of them all. What if all of us are quite different inside? What if some tiny insect, with a momentary scratch, can transform us into this alien self? My gentle father becomes a shouting dictator. And I, I become a killer –

He shook his head. Better not follow that path. Whether the insects came from the Morah or not, he was the only one who could protect his people from their poison, and that was his task. That was all he needed to know.

As the march was resumed, Hanno Hath’s strange drunkenness was on everyone’s mind. The people looked out for the flies, slapped their own arms and faces every time they imagined something had settled on them, and watched each other for evidence of strange behaviour. Mrs Chirish complained that the pace of the march was too rapid, saying, ‘It makes my legs jabber.’ Was that a sign of drunkenness? Creoth answered her, ‘If the cows can keep up, madam, so can you.’ That seemed unnecessarily harsh, coming from the kindly Creoth, the very man who had helped to carry Mrs Chirish on the slave march. Had he been stung by the invisible flies? Then young Ashar Warmish started to giggle, and couldn’t stop; but it turned out that she and her friend Red Mimilith had been making moonish faces at the Shim brothers, and it was this that made her laugh.

Little Fin Marish, who was eight years old, took advantage of the general excitement to run ahead to the front of the column to march by Mumpo’s side. She adored Mumpo, as did all the smaller girls, because he was tall and strong and slow in his speech, and believed everything you ever said to him.

‘Mumpo,’ she said, ‘did you know you talk in your sleep?’

‘No,’ said Mumpo. ‘What do I say?’

‘You say, “Pooa pooa Pinto! Hubba hubba Fin!”’

‘Do I? Do I say that? I wonder why.’

‘Because you hate Pinto,’ said Fin, ‘and you love me.’

Miller Marish came looking for Fin, and scolded her sharply for leaving her place in the column. Fin responded by pointing an accusing finger at him, and crying out in a shrill high voice,

‘My papa’s become a horrid monster! I think the flies have stung him!’

The effect of so many false alarms was that quite quickly they all became tired of the matter, and stopped believing the young people with their games. After the first hour on the resumed march they had forgotten that they were to watch out for each other’s behaviour. No one else had been stung, and their spirits were high. The going was easier than it had been for some time, because they were making their way down a gentle slope; and now that the mountains had been sighted, there was a general feeling that the long trek would one day have an end after all.

So the wagon wheels crunched on over the stony ground, and the horses clop-clopped along, and each of the marchers fell into their own private dream of the life they would make for themselves when at last they reached the homeland. Creoth, feeling he had been a little sudden with Mrs Chirish, chose to tell her of the farm he planned to establish.

‘Not a great deal of land. I’m not as young as I was. Just a meadow or two for the cattle to graze, with the river on one side, and the sea on the other. I shall have a little house for myself, just the one room, and a nice shady milking parlour that looks out to sea. To the east, if possible. Then I shall watch the sun rise during morning milking. Beard of my ancestors! There’s a life to envy, eh, ma’am? The smell of fresh milk, and the light of the rising sun.’

‘You may sit and shiver in your shed, sir. I shall be in my bed.’

‘In your bed, eh?’

‘My bed will be such a bed! Up on each side, and down in the middle, and fluffy as a nest! I shall lie in my nest like an egg, and my poor legs will never ache again.’

‘Just lie there, will you, ma’am? And do nothing all the long day?’

‘I might get up and eat a little this and that around noon, and stand on the porch and nod to my neighbours, and wish them good day. Then it’s back to my bed.’

Silman Pillish, stumping along beside the wagon, told Seldom Erth about the school he would set up in the homeland. Seldom Erth showed no signs of wanting to hear this, but nor did he object, and this was permission enough for Pillish.

‘In my school, the lessons will be a service to the children, not a burden. They’ll come to me, you see, and tell me what they wish to learn – for example, a song to sing together – you never forget the songs you learn as a child, don’t you agree?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Seldom Erth.

‘I’ll say, Ah, I can help you there! Then I’ll teach them a song – perhaps “The Hen and her Chicks”.’

He sang a line of the song in an unexpectedly sweet voice.

‘Where have you gone, little chicks, little chicks? Oh! oh! and oh!’

These last exclamations were, it seemed, the lost chicks reappearing from behind Pillish.

‘So you see, they’ll come willingly to school. Yes, our homeland school will be a happy place. They’ll love their teacher too, don’t you think?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Seldom Erth.

Mumpo strode along at the head of the marchers, dreaming no dream of the homeland. The little girls had left him, and he must be alert, watching out for danger; and anyway, he had no dream any more. He glanced back down the line, and let his eyes rest for a moment on Kestrel, who was walking with Sisi. For as long as he could remember he had loved Kestrel. He knew every line of that agile high-boned face, every mood of those restless eyes. But Kestrel did not love him. He accepted this, feeling it to be natural and fitting. Who was he, that Kestrel should love him? But without her, what was left? It was as if a hole had been cut out of the future. So he went on his way in a kind of puzzlement, not grieving, but without any real hope of happiness to come.