The Kin (19 page)

She started to experiment with bindings for Tor's arm. He seemed to understand what she was doing and did his best to help.

By nightfall she had managed a clumsy-looking bundle that held the arm firm, with a loop of braided fibre around Tor's neck to carry the weight. It obviously helped a lot, and Tor kept patting it and showing it to them all and making his thanks grunt to Tinu.

She didn't seem at all afraid of him. It was the first time Noli had seen Tinu behave like that with an adult. Usually she hung her head and stared at the ground, but she looked Tor right in the eyes.

It took another two days to finish the fire log. The three older Moonhawks worked at it in turn, slowly burning the centre out with hot embers, cooling and softening the charred wood with water, and then reaching in and using one of the flakes from Suth's cutter to chip it away, time after time after time.

A fire log seldom lasted more than a moon or two before the sides burned through, so they'd all seen new ones made and knew how it was done, but Tor obviously had no idea what they were up to, and watched, fascinated.

But he knew things the Moonhawks didn't. On the second day he led them up the canyon to a place where the water came out onto the surface and they could all lap up as much as they wanted. Then he surprised them.

The bed and sides of the pool were flat, smooth rocks. Tor showed them that if they lifted one of these they might find a swimming creature lurking beneath it, about the size of a child's finger, pale grey and with lots of legs and feelers. The trick was to move the rock suddenly and then grab the creature before it shot into a crack. Then they could chew it up and spit out the shell.

On the fourth morning Tinu thoroughly wetted the outside of the fire log and smeared the inside with a thick paste made with moistened ash. Then, using twigs to handle the hot embers from the fire, she packed them into the bottom of the log and filled it up with bits of cold charcoal that she'd raked out the evening before. She plugged the top with a round flat rock that almost fitted the hole, and sealed the gaps with more paste, leaving one tiny gap for air. Finally she fitted the fire log into the cradle she'd braided so that it could be carried on a loop over the shoulder.

By now Tor had learned the Moonhawks' names, as well as his own. If Noli said “Tor,” he would look up. If she said something about Suth, he would glance towards Suth. But he still didn't say anything, names or words. Instead, the Moonhawks learned, his barks and grunts carried different meanings. There was a sharp yap that meant
Watch out
, and a series of snorts when he was particularly interested in something, and a kind of questioning hoot that meant
Help me here
, and so on.

“These are not words,” said Suth. “He does not say,
Suth, go to the wing nut place. See the white rock. There a fat lizard basks
. He cannot say this.”

“I can say this,” said Ko. “
I
am people. Tor is not people.”

“Tor is people,” said Mana, firmly.

In her quiet way she had adopted Tor, peeling whitestem and popping wing nuts for him, and licking his leg morning and evening to keep it clean as it healed.

“Tor is not people,” said Ko, obviously out to annoy her. “He does not have words. Suth says this.”

“Tor has words,” said Mana. “He says to me,
I thank
. He says,
Come
. He says,
What is this?”

She made the sounds to show them. She got them just right. Tor looked up, amused.

“Suth says these are not words!” shouted Ko. “Suth, do you say this?”

“I say
Yes
, I say
No
,” said Suth, doing his best to keep the peace. “I do not know if these are words. But Tor is people.”

They discussed the question several times more as the days went by, but didn't get any nearer to an answer.

On the fifth morning, Suth said, “The fire log is made. Today we journey. We find a new camp. Tor, do you come? Do you stay?”

Tor made his questioning grunt. Suth did his best to explain with gestures, but Tor still didn't get it.

“I show him,” said Mana.

She made the snorting bark that meant
Come
, and led him off to the rockfall. When they came back he seemed to understand what was happening and was ready to leave.

“Tor says goodbye to his friends,” Mana explained.

Noli was relieved. She didn't want to leave Tor behind. His leg was slowly healing, but it would be a long while before his arm mended, if it ever did. Till then he'd need help just to stay alive. He'd slow them down a lot, but they had taken him into the Kin. He was Moonhawk. They had to look after him.

So they moved slowly down the canyon, foraging as they went. Here and there fresh rockfalls, loosened by the earthquake, lay against the cliffs. At each of these Tor stopped and called anxiously and listened, but there was no answer, so he hobbled on. By midday he was very tired, and at almost every step grunted softly with the pain in his arm.

Suth halted at a patch of trees so that they could rest in the shade, as usual, but despite the heat and his pain and exhaustion, Tor insisted on going on, so they did as he wished. The canyon zigzagged, and they could seldom see far along it. They rounded a corner, and another, and there the scene changed.

The canyon itself widened, and its floor dropped steeply away. The underground stream gushed out between boulders and foamed down to the lower level, where it ran on as an open river.

At the top of the slope Tor halted and gave a shrill cry, not a noise they'd heard him make before. He listened, but no answer came, only the echoes, and the screeching of the birds he'd disturbed.

“I see caves,” said Suth, pointing to the left-hand cliff. “There, where rocks have fallen close by.”

Tor called again and headed for the caves. The others followed, and as they came nearer they could both see and smell that people had laired here not long ago. At the mouth of the first cave, Tor made a sign to them that he wanted to go in alone. They understood. This was his stuff, not theirs.

While they waited in the stillness, Noli could feel the faint presence of people's lives, many, many lives lived in this place, far back into time. Her skin began to tingle. She shuddered.

After a while Tor came gloomily out and hobbled off to two more caves a little further on.

“We lair at this place,” said Suth. “First we find wood for our fire. Noli, do you come?”

Her mind seemed full of cloud stuff. She heard the question as if it had come slowly, from very far away.

“I stay,” she muttered, and then she was alone, only vaguely aware of the weight of Otan, asleep on her hip. The feeling grew stronger. She was still in the glaring light outside the cave, but at the same time she seemed to be inside it, in total darkness, except for the moonlight beyond the mouth of the cave. In that darkness she felt a sudden pulse of panic, felt somebody jerk out of sleep, heard a cry of wild alarm. Others were waking, beginning to move. Rock trembled beneath her feet. Fresh cries rose from all around in the darkness. The rock shuddered violently this time, and loosened stuff clattered from the roof … terror, panic all around her, a muddle of people jostling and fighting towards the cave mouth … and then the bellow of the exploding mountain, and moments later the thunder of the main rockfall from the cliff …

The feeling faded, and she was standing out in the sunlight, shuddering, and breathing in huge, sighing lungfuls. Otan was still fast asleep. Suth and the others were still in earshot. Very little time had passed, and yet she had felt all these things. Strange, strange.

“Mana,” she called, “come. You watch Otan. I help fetch wood.”

Mana trotted obediently back, and Noli hurried after the others.

“The ground shook,” she told Suth. “People slept in the cave. Rocks fell. They were frightened. They ran away.”

“Moonhawk shows you this?” he asked.

“Moonhawk does not come again,” she said. “No one shows this. I see it.”

He stared at her, shrugged, and led the way on.

When they had enough fuel to get a fire going, they went back to the caves. In front of the largest one, Tinu built a hearth and tipped the embers out of the fire log. They were black now, but when she heaped dried grass and twigs onto them and blew, they began to glow. Smoke curled up. The flames were invisible in the fierce sunlight, but the twigs shrivelled into ash, and the larger sticks she heaped on charred almost at once.

So the Moonhawks had their fire again, and sang their song and made camp.

Tor seemed not to have noticed any of this. First he had roamed from cave to cave, looking for signs of his people, and then he had hobbled off down the canyon and called, and called again, with no answer but echoes. Finally he came back and settled with them in the shadow of the cliff, where he sat with his knees drawn under his chin, rocking himself to and fro and moaning softly.

When the Moonhawks had their midday meal, Tor didn't join them, so after a while, Mana hunkered down beside him and offered him a bit of roasted lizard.

He looked at her. She put the morsel to his lips. He opened his mouth and she popped it in. He chewed slowly. Little by little she continued to feed him. He ate, not seeming to notice what he was doing.

It was the other way around with Noli and Otan. Otan was greedily gobbling everything Noli gave him and paying no attention to anything else, while Noli's mind was far away, still thinking about what had happened in the cave.

This is Moonhawk stuff
, she thought.
But it is not Moonhawk. Moonhawk does not come any more. How can this be?

Ko's shriek of laughter burst into her thoughts.

“See, Suth, see!” he cried, almost choking at his own cleverness. “The women feed the men! The women feed the men! Noli feeds Otan. Mana feeds Tor. Tinu, you feed Suth!”

Hesitantly Tinu offered Suth the roasted grub she'd just fetched from the embers, and he let her put it into his mouth. They all laughed, and Ko rolled to and fro, helpless, gasping, “The women feed the men!” over and over, because it was a joke simple enough for a small one to understand, and he, Ko, had made it.

Even Tor noticed something outside his own pain and misery, and looked up and smiled, though he couldn't have known what the joke was.

Oldtale

SALA-SALA

Sala-Sala was a demon of dark woods. Woowoo was a demon of drinking places. They were the birth brothers of the demon Rakaka. They met, as was their custom, in Dead Trees Valley
.

They said, “Where is our brother, Rakaka? Why does he not come to our meeting?”

They searched long, long, and found him hiding far out beneath the desert, where no people come
.

They said, “Why do you hide here, brother Rakaka?”

He said, “A hero is born among people. His name is Sol. When he was a baby still I fought with him. He bit off my finger. He threw a great rock at me. It carried me away a full day's journey. I am afraid of this hero. This is why I hide in the desert, where no people come.”

Sala-Sala mocked him and said, “You are soft earth, my brother. The wind blows you where it wills. The rain washes you away. I am great trees
.
The wind blows me, and I roar and sing. The rain lashes me. I drink it and rejoice. Now I deal with this hero, this Sol. At Stinkwater I deal with him, when the Kins come there to feast on the waterbirds.”

So Sala-Sala hid himself in the woods beside Stinkwater. His talons were digging sticks, and his teeth were spikes of stonewood. At the season of waterbirds, the Kins came to feast, and Fat Pig laired beside the woods
.

When all slept, Sala-Sala put out an arm and drew the people of Fat Pig into the woods. There he bound them with lianas so that they could not move. Sol slept beside Naga, his mother. Sala-Sala left them for last
.

Sol woke
.

He felt his mother gone
.

He looked, and saw a great hand that carried her into the woods
.

He struck the hand with his cutter, Ban-ban. So sharp was Ban-ban that it sliced through Sala-Sala's second finger at the knuckle joint
.

Sala-Sala roared. He came out of the woods
.

Sol saw his arms that were branches, his fur that was leaves, his teeth that were spikes of stonewood. He saw the demon Sala-Sala
.

Sol said, “Demon, where are my mother's Kin, the Kin of Fat Pig?”

Sala-Sala laughed
.

He said, “Sol, they are mine.”

Sol was filled with rage, the rage of a hero. He tore up a fangana tree. Root, trunk, and branches he tore from the ground
.

With the tree he struck Sala-Sala. On the side of the jaw Sol struck him
.

Sala-Sala fell to the ground. His strength was gone. He slept
.

Sol picked up the claw he had cut from the hand of Sala-Sala
.

He said, “This is my digging stick. Its name is Monoko. No digging stick is stronger. It is mine.”

Sol went into the woods. He found his mother's Kin, the Kin of Fat Pig, lying beneath a great tree. The tree was a sky toucher. It was the Father of Trees. It has no other name
.

Sol struck that tree with his digging stick, Monoko. The tree opened apart
.

Sol picked up Sala-Sala where he lay sleeping, and stuffed him into the tree. He took off the lianas that bound his mother's Kin, and tied them around the tree. He twisted them tight, so that the tree closed
.

Sol said, “The demon Sala-Sala is bound, as you were bound, my uncles. He cannot come out. Now let us feast on the waterbirds.”

The Father of Trees stands in the woods by Stinkwater. It is bound all around with lianas. Sala-Sala is within it, caught fast. When the wind strikes the Father of Trees, Sala-Sala howls
.