Kalik (13 page)

Puli understood at once. Without being asked she began spinning a finer yarn. Before I could describe how I once made needles from scrub wood and bone, she instructed Tepulka and Paku. Remembering the difficulties I had, I came back to see how they were getting on. Tepulka had almost finished shaving a needle of wood. Paku was taking longer, cracking a shoulder blade into long splinters. There was a grunt from Tepulka.

“I did the same thing, the first one I made.” His face made me laugh. “Try drilling the hole first, with one of Paku’s bone splinters. Cut the wood away around it for the head, then make the shank. Even then, you’ll still break more than you make.” I stopped myself. I must learn to stand aside.

Paku had several bone splinters, but only one or two with a head thick enough to take a hole. He drilled carefully, but didn’t have Tepulka’s patience.

When Tepulka held up a wooden needle it was finely finished, like everything he made, even rubbed with wool grease so the wood darkened. I looked at his hands and wondered if he might learn to be a healer. He had the nature to be a good one. I watched Puli double her yarn around the needle, draw it tight, and push the bight of the thread through the eye. She looked up, smiled, and began sewing together some woven pieces.

She tried them for size against Tepulka. Using quick, long stitches, she fastened the pieces together across his shoulders, his chest. A gap left at the neck. She stitched down the sides. Gaps for the arms. Puli would make better ones, but this would always be our first woven tunic. Puli saw where it needed to be slit part-way up the sides so Tepulka could move freely. She
made him stand while she adjusted and fastened with those long stitches. When he moved, Puli pricked him with the needle. “Keep still!” There was something new in her voice. We all watched her ease the tunic over Tepulka’s head, sit down, and start to sew with tiny stitches, ripping out the old ones as she finished a seam.

“Don’t go too far away,” she said to Tepulka. “I’ll want to try this on you again.” Maka saw my face and smiled.

“Here!” said Puli. “Finish this seam.” She thrust needle and thread into Maka’s hands, took another piece of woven stuff, and held it up against me. “About time,” she said as Paku offered his first bone needle.

“Where did you learn to sew?” I asked.

“I grew up sewing,” Puli mumbled, lips half-closed on the needle. “Don’t move!” I smiled helplessly over her head at Maka.

By the time we were ready to move, Maka and Tulu had finished sewing both tunics to Puli’s liking. Loose enough for us to move freely and to use our arms. Warmer than our old deerskin tunics. And the oily wool would shed rain.

“We’ll all have one this winter,” I said. “But these two are for something special.” We packed them, Tulu’s and Maka’s blankets, and the other pieces. As she folded it carefully, I looked at the special length of material Puli had woven. And I wondered at her growing confidence, at the air of satisfaction about the camp.

There was a piece still on a loom, unfinished. I went to show Kitimah how to undo it, prepare it for travelling, but Puli was already there, helping take it off. Folding it deftly, to keep its shape. Talking about how they could set it up again. There was nothing much I could teach her.

Paku and I lay in the scrub up the valley wall and watched Kalik’s track. Deer grazed in the open. I crawled down a gully while Paku sneaked from one fold to another, climbed a clear hillock, and watched up and down the valley. When he waved,
I signalled Tepulka and Maka who brought the others out of the scrub. The little ones surrounded the sheep, as we’d practised, and trotted after Tama down the hillside and across the valley floor. Down the sandy patch, through the water, and up the sandy patch opposite. Across the open valley that side, and under the trees.

Tepulka and Maka dragged leafy branches to sweep the sand. Paku joined us.

“Did you see the way the sheep followed Tama?”

He nodded. “What about their droppings?”

“There’s plenty of wild sheep.”

Paku and I checked both sides of the stream for footprints, and ran for the trees. Maka looked back and gave a deep sigh.

“Were you afraid?”

She nodded. Tepulka exchanged a look with her.

One gloomy afternoon, we reached the wild river. There I explained my plan. Paku was to be in charge again. Tulu and Maka would help him. They were to search for a spot where we might build our winter camp. And look for a crossing-place.

“We’ll be well-hidden here. And next spring we’ll put the river between ourselves and Kalik’s track.”

When I described what Tepulka and I hoped to do, some of the Children looked worried. “Last time you said only three days, and you stayed away for ages,” said Chak.

“That was because I hurt my leg. I’ll be more careful this time. Paku will look after you,” I said. “If we’re lucky with our trading, if we get an axe, we’ll be able to build a good camp for winter – and make a raft to get us across next spring.”

Tulu had made Paku a belt and sheath for the knife. He heaved up my woven pack sewn with Puli’s strongest yarn. I got my arms through the straps. Maka helped Tepulka with his and said something to him. Wearing the new woollen tunics, we headed back across the first ridge.

“The Cold Hills,” I said at the top, pointing at the snow-lined horizon east. “That’s what Kalik called them.” Tepulka stared
at the same cloud I had seen before among the pale gullies, the bony ridges.

“Why is it so dark?”

“The Iron People burn a black stone called coal. Wait till you smell the smoke! But it burns hot enough to heat metal for working.”

“This tunic’s hot enough, Ish!”

“We’ll be grateful for woollen clothes when winter comes.”

We cut across the head of the valley with Kalik’s track, spent a whole day circling through the hills so our tracks would appear to come from the east. Metal workers were neither great hunters nor wanderers. Still, just in case they looked.

I was watching Tepulka when he stopped and sniffed. Went to say something. We walked a few more steps. He stopped, sniffed again. “Ish!”

I looked at him.

He grinned. “That smell?”

“I can’t smell anything. Unless it’s your new tunic!”

He sniffed again and laughed. “The smoke from that stuff – the coal! That’s what it is!”

“I wondered how long before you’d notice.”

“I thought you’d farted!”

“Not as rotten as that!” I sniffed. “There’s something else … not just coal.”

“It stinks, Ish!”

“Listen, when we speak to them, call me Chech. I’ll call you Terek.”

“Chech. Terek.”

“And if you see anything we want, don’t go saying so. Don’t look at it. If you show you’re interested, they’ll want more for it. Do you understand, Terek?”

“Yes, Chech!”

We swung down between a couple of hills. “It’s a different smell now. Chech!”

“That’s the coal smoke. That other stink, I don’t know what
it was. Terek.” And we grinned at each other.

The smell of coal smoke was much stronger before we found their Trading Place. A terrace with a tall post on which stood an iron figure, a squat man holding a heavy hammer. I recognised Thug, the god of the metal-working Coal People in the Land of the White Bear.

Tepulka struck a metal gong with the butt of his spear, a clang so loud we both jumped. We laid our bows, arrows, spears, and knives to one side, went back and sat before the statue.

Two boys. Shouting, staring, running up the hill. “Strangers!” I heard in their cries. An old woman came down, two young men behind her. Before we had even spoken, I saw them staring at our tunics. Their own were of leather. The young men’s scarred by burns. The backs of their hands and their forearms were spark-pocked.

“People of Thug,” I began, bowing to the statue.

There was a gasp. “How do you know Thug’s name?” asked the old woman.

“We come from the east,” I said. “Beyond our country is the Land of the White Bear. The Coal People of that land work metal. And over their forges they have the statue of Thug.” The young men looked at each other. “Each day before they begin work, they ask Thug to bless their hammers.”

The old woman smiled. “We do the same thing.”

“We brought a few miserable things for trade. To see if it is worth coming all this way from our village.” I pointed east.

The old woman put out her hand, touched my tunic. Lips pursed, she hissed in admiration. “What do you want for it?”

I undid my pack and took out a woollen blanket. The old woman hissed again. Tepulka drew another from his pack. She clapped her hands. In the end, they gave us thirty metal arrowheads, five spearheads, four knives, a shovel, and two beautiful axes. Three round-bellied cooking pots. A leather wallet of iron needles. I grinned at Tepulka as I held them up.

I described the shears the Travellers used for cutting wool
from the sheep. The young men looked at the drawing I scratched in the dirt. I took two knives and worked them against each other like shears. “But with handles,” I said, pointing at my drawing.

“With a pin through here,” one said. “So the blades cut against each other as they close. Sharpened down the outside.”

He had never seen shears before yet understood at once how they worked. “We can make them!”

“And smaller ones, this big,” I said. “For cutting little things. Yarn. Thread. Hair!”

The young man nodded again, pleased at the idea of working on something new, the challenge. Like Puli’s pleasure in weaving.

“Anything you want made of iron, we will trade for blankets, cloth. All you can make,” said the old woman. “What do you call yourselves?”

“We are the Weavers,” I said. “Chech,” I nodded, “and Terek.”

Henga, that was her name, ordered the boys to bring food. Under a shelter by the Trading Place, they gave us meat they called pork. Boiled and roasted. Delicious! With peas and beans that Henga said came from a people by a lake far to the north.

Henga asked again for our tunics. Offered us leather ones to replace them. I didn’t say no, but asked if we might see the animals the pork came from.

Henga was reluctant. She felt Tepulka’s tunic again, smiled at its warmth. “It is against the law to take strangers into our village,” said Henga. “But you knew Thug. Come, Chech, I can show you where we keep the pigs.”

It was the reek! Coming from pens beside a stream. I recognised the pigs from my memories of the Boar Man in the Animals’ Dance, and from drawings. Black, some brown, and some patched white. With bristly coats, long noses, and strong jaws. Long hairy tails. The boars had tusks. They looked at us the way goats look at people. Inquiring. Intelligent.

I pointed at their tracks, their dung. Tepulka nodded.

“How do you feed them?”

“The children drive them into the valley. They dig up grubs and roots. And they eat scraps. They grow fat on anything!” Henga laughed. “Especially these ones. Poony! Poony!” Henga pointed at a pen of pigs with squashed-looking faces. Chubby friendly creatures that muttered and grunted, coming over to the fence to have their backs rubbed. Round with fat!

“Hee-haw!”

“What’s that?” Tepulka stared amazed up the gully where the terrible noise had sounded.

“That thing?” said Henga. She didn’t even bother to look. “That’s a donkey.”

“Ish –” Tepulka began to say, but his voice cracked. He swallowed and said, “Chech….”

I glanced away as if the donkey did not interest me, clicked my tongue, and scratched the back of one of the poonies. My mind would only think of the donkey, but I pretended interest in the pigs. “They’re fat!”

“They’re not much good for anything,” Henga said to Tepulka. “We traded for them,” she said to me, “thinking they might be good to eat. But we tried one, and nobody liked it. Now, the pork – everyone likes that! Here in the Cold Hills, we need the fat in winter. And the People of the Lake, they trade us smoked bear and deer meat, and dried fish.”

I scratched behind a poony’s ears. It groaned, closed its eyes, and pushed against my hand. Its ugly squashed face smiled. “What do donkeys eat?” I asked.

“Grass. There’s hardly enough for them now. When winter comes, they’ll starve, but before that we’ll kill them for their skins. Feed their scrawny carcasses to the pigs. At least we’ll get some meat out of them that way.” Henga laughed.

“I like the poonies,” I said to her. We sauntered down to the Trading Place. Without looking at Tepulka, I knew he was wondering what I was doing.

We looked again at the trade goods. “We will trade you two live pigs,” said Henga. “For your woollen tunics.”

I stood silent a long time.

“Two fat pigs.” I was silent. “For each tunic,” Henga offered. “If you will give us your woven packs as well. And we’ll give you leather packs to replace them, as well as leather tunics to cover yourselves.” She smiled.

“That pork…. It tasted good, Chech!” said Tepulka.

“It would take too long to drive pigs all the way back to our village. I’ll tell you what,” I said to Henga. “Each summer we follow our sheep as they graze through the eastern hills and then circle back home for winter. Those donkeys might save us carrying things.”

“There’s harness goes with them. They’ve been trained for carrying loads. But we are the Iron People. We don’t travel.”

The boys led down the donkeys. All five. I went over each one, looking at their teeth, their feet. Feeling their ribs, their legs. They were healthy and in good condition. The boys reappeared with the leather harness.

“We’ve kept it oiled,” said Henga.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you our woollen tunics and packs for the five of them and the harness.”

“Done!” said Henga. She smiled. “And we’ll give you some pork to take with you.”

It was time for us to be generous, too. “Have you a grandchild?” I drew out a tiny tunic sewn from the pieces of cloth the little ones had woven. Odd shaped pieces, well-sewn together by Maka. A colourful patchwork tunic for a baby. Henga sighed and held it up. “It might be a little big now,” she said, chuckling, “but she will grow into it by winter.”

Then, saved till last, Puli’s length of cloth I had been keeping hidden. Warm and yet light. I let it unfold from my hands. “You can wear it over your head or put it around your shoulders.” I stepped forward. “Like this!” Henga smiled and flushed until she looked younger. And I remembered the way Hagar traded with Tara and her father, how she made me give Tara the scarf she had woven for herself.

Henga laughed while we slipped on leather tunics and handed over our woollen ones, our woven packs.

The donkeys stood in their resigned way, while Tepulka and I harnessed them and tied on the leather packs. The bags of arrowheads and spearheads, the axes, and cooking pots. The
spare set of harness from the donkey Henga’s people had eaten. As we balanced the loads Henga sent the young men off.

I whispered in their tall ears to the two bigger donkeys, “Your name is Hika. Your name is Bok.” My mind filled with a picture of two donkeys running down to the water’s edge as Taur and I sailed from the North Land to Marn Island.

The young men returned with even more gifts. When we left, the donkeys also carried: a fresh carcass of pork, a whole cooked pig, and two huge cooking pots, twice as big as the others. Then, at the last minute, Henga produced three more knives.

“We will trade for all the woollen tunics and cloth you can bring. We’ll make the shears and anything else you want. And we’ll throw in some more pork.” Puli’s shawl about her old shoulders, black eyes shining with pleasure, Henga thought she had traded well. So did we.

“You said there is a lake to the north?”

“Lake Ka,” Henga replied. “Kalik’s people!” She spat and made a sign with her left hand. The two middle fingers bent down. The outer two raised like horns. “Their slaves carry dried fish and meat, fruit, vegetables. And wine. We trade because it suits us. But I do not trust Kalik!” She spat and made the sign again.

“In the olden days, we traded for woven clothes and blankets with the Woollen People who lived by a lake among mountains to the south. They came up a river, they told my mother. One year, when she was a girl, they stopped coming.”

“What was the name of their lake?”

“Lake Tip, my mother called it. When will you come again, Chech?”

“I’ve just remembered something else we want. Scythes!” I pretended I hadn’t heard Henga’s question, knelt, and drew in the dirt.

“A blade that long?” asked one of the young men.

I nodded. “Sharpened along this side. The back you can
make about this thick, for strength. And a lug here, to go on the bottom of the handle. A strut to go across from the blade and fasten on the handle up here. I can make the handle.”

“This lug,” said the young man. “Can you draw it? Where it fits into the handle?”

I drew what I hadn’t explained. “A metal sock to go round the bottom of the handle. With a hole to take the lug. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.”

“Then the strut takes up the strain, and the lug’s held in place.”

“What’s it for?”

“Cutting grass.” I held my hands out, as if grasping a scythe. Swung the long cutting stroke. Stepped forward and swung again.

The young man nodded. “Like a long knife. A curved one. But not chopping the grass. Slicing it. This edge slicing a strip. Then another.” He understood at once how the scythe would work.

“That’s it!”

“We can make it!” He turned to the other young man and explained something. “How many?”

“Three.”

“When will you be back?” Henga asked again, but the young man asked me to draw the handle. When I drew the shaft, he nodded.

“You can’t hold that,” he said.

“I’d forgotten. Here, like this.” I drew in the two hand grips. The two young men talked excitedly, kneeling, drawing in the dirt.

“We’ll make something for you.” I could tell by his voice he was interested. He was like the men of the Coal People, proud of what he could make of iron. “We’ll work it out!” he nodded and smiled.

“And you’ll be back for them when?” Henga’s lined old face
cracked with laughter. She knew I was trying not to answer her. “Traders have to be good at minding their own business, Chech,” she said.

“Late winter,” I said reluctantly. What if Kalik came and she told him about us?

“I will make sure it is kept a secret.” Henga chuckled. Her old voice stirred a memory. “Goodbye, Chech! Terek!” And by the way she said our names, I knew she understood they were made up. We smiled at each other.

As a spur closed off the Trading Ground, I looked back. Henga brought out one hand from beneath Puli’s shawl and waved. My eyes blurred. She had reminded me of Old Hagar. I liked the idea of her being warm that winter.

I made myself walk quietly, in case anyone followed. We worked east, well back into the Cold Hills, saying nothing until the smell of coal smoke and the reek of the pens was gone. Then I clapped Tepulka on the back. He laughed and hugged me. “What luck! What luck!” We ran around the donkeys, patting them, rubbing their long noses. Tepulka felt their ears, rubbed their hairy coats.

“This one’s name is Hika,” I said. “This is Bok.”

“When I heard that bray, I knew what it was before I even looked up. Hee-haw!”

“Watch out! They can kick.”

Tepulka skipped back. “I knew it from the story. The drawings!” “You wouldn’t stop staring!”

“I almost said ‘Ish’. Then I couldn’t remember your other name. Hee-haw! Hee-haw! Wait till Chak and Kimi hear them.”

“Lucky Henga wanted our stuff.”

“She thought she got a good deal!”

“And wanted to make sure we’ll come back! They need our woollen stuff. Lucky we had Puli’s piece. It’s good trading to finish with a gift.”

Further east we went, leaving two fireplaces, then turned
north and swung back above the broad valley with Kalik’s track.

I left the donkeys in the trees with Tepulka, went down the slope. Nobody had gone along the track. We watched – taking it in turns – all night and next morning.

“Henga almost certainly told the truth. Still, I want to be sure she doesn’t send a messenger to Kalik.”

“What if we see one?”

“I suppose we’ll have to kill them.”

If it was necessary to kill, in order to help the Children escape their slavery, didn’t that justify it? Their safety for the life of a messenger. It seemed a good trade.

As we watched, I thought of the Shaman. How he took responsibility for necessary killings, executions. And for the times he decided somebody was better dead than alive. Like the woman, Heta.

He had borne the responsibility – and suffered for it. But that was being a leader – I wondered again if I was strong enough. Kalik and Lutha killed without a second thought. But I had no wish to become like either. And Paku, when he became leader of the Children, would he be fair?

No messenger came trotting along the track. As we crossed next morning, one of the donkeys dropped dung where the track came up out of the stream, and we had to carry it away. Every last bit. We brushed out our own sign and every mark the donkeys left. A little wind blew the sand. Soon there would be only the marks of wild animals and birds.

When we came down beside the wild river, Hika smelled the smoke and brayed. I can still see Chak’s face as he jumped up, crying back, “Hee-haw! Hee-haw!”

The Children surrounded the donkeys, unloaded them, rubbed their backs with handfuls of dried grass, led them down to drink. They argued over names for the other three. They brought armloads of grass. Kimi put her arms around Hika’s neck and kissed his ears. And, just as he had taken charge of the sheep, Tama now took over the donkeys. They looked for
him, ears turned to his voice.

Everyone had to handle each arrowhead, spearhead, axe, shovel, needle. Chak and Hurk up-ended the biggest cooking pots over their heads and banged into each other until Tulu called, “Don’t go breaking them before we’ve even used them!”

That night, we feasted on rich pork. Boiled and roasted. “Where we are going,” I said, “we’ll catch some pigs and tame them. Henga, the old woman, said they eat anything, grubs and roots, scraps, and grow fat on it.”

“Good animals to have.”

“Not as good as donkeys,” said Chak.

Next morning, I took out the bag of knives. Seven. I had mine. Paku and Maka wore the guard’s knives. Tepulka the one I had picked up on the track. I gave one each to Tulu, Tama, Puli. “You’ll find this handy for weaving,” I told her. One each to Kitimah and Sheenah. “That leaves us two for spares.”

“What about me?” asked Chak.

“You’re too small to want a knife,” Puli told him. Chak’s face fell. I remembered how much I wanted a knife when I was little.

“There’s only two left. And there’s four of you without them. Kimi and Tupu –”

“They’re girls!”

“Girls have plenty of things they need knives for.”

“It’s not fair,” said Chak.

“I’ll tell you what, you and Hurk can have a knife between you. You can wear it one day, Hurk the next. And Kimi and Tupu can share one.” The four small faces smiled. “But,” I said, “everyone’s got to make a sheath, long ones right up the handle, so you don’t lose your knife. There’s plenty of leather. And you can’t wear your knife till you’ve shown Paku your belt and sheath and he says it’s strong enough.”

The camp was a very quiet place the rest of the day.