The Kin (16 page)

When they'd knocked off enough they all searched for the fallen nuts. The third one Noli picked up was only the upturned half of an empty shell. She looked at it and frowned.
What animal does this?
she wondered. The shells of wing nuts were very hard. There was a rock squirrel, whose teeth were sharp enough to nibble off the pointy end of a nut, but people opened them either by popping them on the embers of a fire, or else by laying them on a rock and tapping them exactly on the seam with a sharp-edged stone or a cutter.

But who would come so far to gather wing nuts, out here in the middle of the dead desert?

Noli showed the shell to Suth. He, too, frowned, and then climbed a boulder and gazed up and down the canyon.

“I see no people,” he said in a worried voice. “The birds are still. Noli, we watch. We make small noise. We take little food from a place. Always we leave some. We make a gift pile.”

Noli grunted agreement. If people did use the canyon, they'd regard all the food in it as theirs. That was how it had worked in their old life, when the eight Kins used to journey between one Good Place and another to find food. Different parts of those Places belonged to different Kins. The Moonhawks didn't take what wasn't theirs, except in an emergency, and then they would leave a little mound of ritual gifts—a gourd, a stonecutter, a bit of dried meat, a bone spike—by way of payment and thanks.

So now they didn't try to knock down any more wing nuts, but rested where they were until the sun had moved far enough to leave shade beneath the other cliff. Then they crossed the canyon and explored that side, sometimes stopping to nibble a leaf of a plant they didn't know. Even the small ones had been taught that most leaves were not much use as food, and some were poisonous. So they instantly spat out any that tasted harsh or bitter. With anything else they weren't sure of, they ate very little, so that they could wait a day or two and see if it made them ill.

Apart from some more unripe jada berries, they found nothing for a while, but then they came to a large patch of whitestem, a plant that grew after rains at one of their old Good Places, beside Sometimes River. The new shoots were good to eat, but it was better to leave them, because they would grow and unroll into long, broad leaves with a thick central stem. The leaves themselves were leathery and useless, but the pith inside the stringy outer stem was deliciously juicy and crunchy.

Eagerly they started to gather enough to carry back to their drinking place, taking only a leaf or two from each clump.

“Noli, come. See,” Suth called from the further edge of the patch.

She went and looked at what he'd found. There were a couple of boulders that would have made a comfortable place to sit. Beside them, on the ground, was a loose pile of torn leaves and stem peelings. Noli fingered them. They were dry, but not yet brittle.

“People were here,” she said. “Two days, three days back.”

Again they looked anxiously up and down the canyon, and saw no sign. Above them, several of the redheaded birds were still scolding. If there were other people anywhere near, surely there'd be birds doing the same for them, but there weren't.

Even so, they finished gathering the whitestems as soon as they could, and built a gift mound before they left. It wasn't much—one of the braided grass cords Tinu had made to help carry their food supply, and a couple of pretty pebbles Mana had picked up—but it would have to do.

They were halfway back to their drinking hole when Noli heard Ko cry out in pain. She turned and saw that he was hopping about on one foot, still clutching his bundle of whitestem.

“Ow!” he said, not quite weeping. “Hot. Rock hot.”

They went to look, and realized at once what had happened. The rock was like the ones that had fallen all around them in the desert, pale, and pitted all over with little holes. It was about the size of a man's head.

“The mountain threw it,” said Suth in an awed voice. “It threw it far, far. And it is hot still … What do you do, Tinu?”'

Tinu had held a hand briefly above the rock and felt the heat of it, and then had at once put her bundle of whitestem down and was now kneeling beside a nearby bush, reaching in beneath it. She turned and showed Suth a handful of withered grass.

“I try … make fire?” she mumbled.

Even now, after all they'd been through together, needing and trusting each other, she still sounded half-afraid that Suth would be angry with her.

“This is good, Tinu,” he said encouragingly.

They all put their bundles down and helped Tinu gather more small fuel: dry grass and leaves and fallen twigs. She made a small loose ball of the finest stuff, and a careful pile of the rest, with a hollow at the side. Using sticks to handle it with, she turned the hot rock over and placed the ball of grass on top, then crouched close and blew very gently.

They watched, holding their breaths. Would the rock be hot enough still?

A thread of smoke rose from the grass ball. At once Tinu gathered the ball between her cupped hands and breathed softly into it between her thumbs. Smoke seeped between her clasped fingers. Just before it became too hot to hold, she slipped the smoking ball into the hollow in her pile and blew on it. The air prickled with the odour of burning.

And now, in a moment, the little pile was all alight, leaves and twigs crumbling rapidly into ash beneath the pale flames. While Tinu fed it the others gathered anything else they could find to burn, until they had a good sturdy fire roaring away. Then they worked back towards their drinking place, gathering fuel as they went and building several more piles along the way.

Now Suth took the branch Tinu had laid ready in the embers and, shielding the lit end as best he could, hurried to the first pile. By the time he reached it the flame was out but the tip still glowed, so he thrust it into the pile and blew on it until he had flame again. And so on, back to the main pile that Noli and the small ones had been building by the drinking place.

They stood and stared at the blaze and laughed with triumph and rejoiced. Fire was glorious. Fire was people stuff. No animal had fire.

“Now we sing the song,” said Suth.

They looked at him doubtfully. They were children. None of them had yet been old enough to join in when the Kin had moved camp and built a fresh fire and lit it.

He smiled at them, full of confidence.

“These are new times,” he said. “But we are Moonhawk still.”

So they stood in front of their fire and sang, stamping their feet to the rhythm. Even little Ko and Mana knew the words, they had heard them so often.

Ha!

We have fire!

We bring fire to the camp!

Ha!

The women open the fire log
.

The men set meat to roast
.

The smoke makes sweet smells
.

This is the camp of Moonhawk
.

This is our fire
.

Ha! The brave fire!

Oldtale

SOL

Naga was very beautiful. She was the daughter of Nar, of the Kin of Fat Pig
.

A young man came from Weaver, saying, “Naga, I choose you for my mate. Do you choose me?”

She answered, “I am not ready.”

A young man came from Snake, saying, “Naga, I choose you for my mate. Do you choose me?”

She answered, “I am not ready.”

Naga grew fat
.

Nar said to her, “Naga, my daughter, there is a child in you. Yet you have no mate. How is this?”

Naga said, “We camped at Odutu below the Mountain. As I slept, one came to me. This one was not a man. I did not see him. I did not hear him. I did not smell him. I did not feel his touch. Yet he was there. He held me inside himself, and I was glad, glad. I woke and he was gone. I said in my heart, This is a dream.”

Nar said, “The First Ones live on the Mountain above Odutu. And you are beautiful, my daughter
.”

Ten moons and two more Naga carried her child inside her
.

At Lusan-of-the-Ants, he was born
.

He had no Kin, for none could say the name of his father
.

When he came from Naga's womb he did not cry
.

He stood up and looked around him
.

He had hair on his head
.

He had teeth in his mouth
.

With the birth blood still on him, he spoke
.

He said, “I am Sol.”

CHAPTER TWO

Where there is water there may be mosquitoes, so late in the afternoon they made a new fire near the corner where the rock pile met the cliff. They broke off branches of garri bush, which would smoulder with a thin bitter smoke and keep the insects away. When night came, they huddled into the corner to sleep.

Noli lay down, exhausted, and was asleep almost at once, but then woke and saw Suth sitting by the fire with his knees drawn up and his digging stick across his lap.

“Suth, sleep,” she whispered. “Then tomorrow you are strong. No animal passes our fire.”

“Noli, this is good, good,” he answered, his voice full of happiness and confidence.

“Suth, sleep,” she repeated.

He grunted, set some more branches onto the fire, and lay down.

Noli didn't go back to sleep at once. She lay gazing up at the cliff. The lower half was black shadow, the upper half pale with moonlight. Beyond it the stars moved very slowly westward.

She thought about Suth. She understood how he felt. He had hated the strange valley at the top of the mountain, where they had lived with the Monkey Kin for the past nine moons. It wasn't just that they had been prisoners there—it was always waking in the same place, going down to the lake in the forest each morning to drink, foraging the same hillsides day after day, drinking again at the lake each evening, sitting around the same undying fire to eat their meal, and settling down night after night to sleep in the same stinking cave. Suth had longed for the life he was used to, journeying every few days with the rest of the Kin to the next of their Good Places, to forage and to hunt.

But the rest of the Kin were gone. Noli had seen some of them killed, when strangers had attacked without warning and driven them from their old Good Places. Their leader, Bal, had taken all who were left to look for new Good Places beyond the desert, but Suth and Noli had turned back to rescue Tinu and the small ones, whom Bal had left behind. Perhaps Bal's group was still alive, if they'd found the canyon. But they'd been travelling in a different direction from the one Moonhawk had shown Noli, so perhaps they'd never reached water and died of thirst in the desert.

If so, these six children, huddled by their fire in the canyon, were all that was left of the Kin. But few though they were, they had journeyed together through hardship and danger, and found water and food and built their fire, just as they used to in the old days, in their old Good Places. That was enough for Suth.

But not for Noli.

Moonhawk was gone. Moonhawk wouldn't come to her again. She felt empty.

No, more than that. She felt as if there used to be two Nolis living in the same body. The daytime Noli had foraged and journeyed with the Kin, and eaten and talked and played with her friends, and lain down to sleep at the end of the day. Then the nighttime Noli had woken, and Moonhawk had come to her in her dreams.

As far back as she could remember she'd had these dreams, a vague, huge something filling her mind, both frightening and comforting. For a long time that was all. But then the daytime Noli had heard bits of adult talk about dream stuff, and the night-time Noli had given the something a shape and a feel, the golden eye, the featheriness, the fierce beak—Moonhawk.

Tens and tens of moons passed, and the dreams didn't change until, at the last rains, Moonhawk had suddenly shown her the horrible thing that was going to happen to the Kin, and Noli had woken, screaming. When she'd told the adults her dream, nobody had believed her.

But the thing had happened. The murdering strangers had come.

Six times since then, Moonhawk had shown or spoken. Three times to tell, and three times to warn. Without that help and those warnings, she and Suth and the others would all be dead. Thanks to Moonhawk the Kin still lived, here by the fire in the canyon.

But Moonhawk herself was gone. Without Moonhawk, how could there be any Moonhawk Kin?

Noli slept and woke and saw the moon shining sheer down into the canyon. She slept and woke again, and it was gone. Each time she woke, the same thoughts came back and back.

Somewhere towards morning, lying awake and thinking them yet again, she heard an odd sound. A voice? Not quite a voice. It seemed to come from the rock pile beside which they were lying.

The canyon was very still, the chattering birds asleep. Noli could hear the water trickling through crannies an arm's length below the floor of the canyon.

Yes, there it was again, a sort of whimper.

“Who is there?” she called.

The voice answered, but the sound was drowned by Suth's questioning grunt.

“Something is under these rocks,” Noli explained. “Suth, hear.”

She called again, and again the thing replied.

Tinu was awake now, though the small ones slept on. They listened. The noise came several times. It wasn't words, but it had a sort of people sound to it, and it seemed to answer their calls. Suth eased a rock out of the pile, but it had been holding several others in place, and he had to jump clear as they clattered down.

“This is dangerous,” he said. “When it is day, we see.”

When they lay down, the noises went on for a while, and then stopped. The next time Noli woke it was early morning, and as soon as the children stirred, the birds came chattering out to protest, drowning all fainter sounds.

Noli saw Suth already kneeling by the hollow, scooping out water to drink and to bathe his face. Tinu was building up the fire. Noli went and scooped out water for herself and Otan, and peeled a piece of whitestem for him to chew with his three teeth.