The Kin (29 page)
Authors: Peter Dickinson
They made their fire some distance away. By the light of its flames the women lined up with the men opposite them. The women stamped their feet and sang the same wailing chant that Noli and Tinu and Mana had sung by the lion's lair, while the men grunted deep in their throats and beat out the rhythm by knocking two stones together.
Net and Kern spoke Bal's praise. They feasted on the food that was left and laired by the embers of the fire, with two to keep watch all night.
Back at the outcrop the next evening, the Porcupines greeted the Moonhawks like friends. A few came with small token gifts to their fire. Tor was one of these. He stayed longer than the others, and went to each of the Moonhawks in turn and made a slow buzzing hum that died softly away. They didn't need words to know that he was saying,
I sorrow for your sorrow
.
“Who is now leader?” asked Chogi, when he had gone. She had been the mate of Bal's dead brother and was senior among the remaining Moonhawk women.
Net and Kern looked at each other. They were both good men, but in their different ways were not the sort who'd usually get to be leaders. Suth might well be leader one day, but he was still much too young.
“What does Noli say?” said Net.
The others looked surprised, but only for a moment. Whenever a Kin was undecided about something important, they'd turn for guidance to the person to whom their First One came. Noli was a child, and that was strange, but they had all heard the voice that had spoken to Bal through her mouth. They looked at her and waited.
But Noli was troubled. She wasn't ready for this. If Suth was too young, then so was she. When Moonhawk used to come to her, and then when Porcupine came, that was their choice, not hers. How could she have a voice in something as important as choosing a leader �
Not your voice, Noli
, came the whisper in her mind.
Mine
.
She waited, staring at the orange glow of the fire. Her lungs heaved slowly. The people around her faded. The chatter of the Porcupines died away. She was somewhere else. The night was the same night, starry and still, with a small moon high, but the fire was another fire, at the bottom of a rocky valley, with different people around it. There were seven of them, she thought. She could feel their thirst and hunger, their weariness after a hard day's travel. Some she felt she knew well, others less so. But none were strangers.
She woke from her trance with a snort and looked dazedly around her.
“I see ⦠others ⦔ she stammered. “They come ⦠They are Kin ⦠Some are Moonhawk.”
They sat silent, thinking about it.
“It is Tun,” said Chogi decisively. “Tun and Var and Yova. They go to our old Good Places. They find others. They bring them.”
“Chogi, you are right,” said Kern. “I say this. We wait. There is no leader. These others come. Tun is our leader.”
“This is good,” said Net.
They were all used to such dealings with the First Ones, though sometimes what the First One told them didn't seem to help, and often no First One came at all. Dreams were particularly tricky. A dreamer could have a strong dream, but it would be like a riddle, and they'd have to guess the answer. It was easy to guess wrong. So what had just happened didn't seem strange to them.
But it seemed very strange to Noli now, though she too had felt used to the idea. Why her, and not one of the others? Why couldn't everyone in the Kin do it? Suppose the lion had killed her, what then?
And anyway, what
were
the First Ones?
She couldn't get out of her head the notion that Porcupine was a new First One. And just now ⦠the whisper in her mind ⦠had that been Porcupine? Perhaps, but there was something â¦
Could it have been Moonhawk, come back after all?
No. Without knowing how she knew, Noli was certain all those First Ones were gone. And that meant that their Kins must be gone, and their old Good Places. Gone. Moonhawk had stayed for a little, but her Kin was too few, too far away. So Moonhawk went, too, in the end ⦠Gone.
Noli was filled with sadness. The sadness was everywhere, immense as the night. Someone settled beside her, put an arm around her, and mourned with her. Noli didn't need to look to know it was Goma. Goma had felt her sadness as she sat by one of the other fires, and had come to be with her, to share the sadness. Goma, without words, understood.
The moon became thin, almost died, and started to grow again. One night, as the Moonhawks laired on a different outcrop, they heard a shout from the Porcupines. They went to see what had caused it.
In the far distance, too orange to be a setting star, a small light shone. A fire. Not a bush fire, too small and unchanging. A people fire.
The Porcupines were alarmed, but first thing the next morning, the Moonhawks set out eagerly in that direction. Halfway towards where they had seen the faint light, they met Tun and his party.
This was Tun's story, as Noli heard it over the next few days: he and Var and Yova had worked their way up the canyon, hiding by day and moving at night, while the canyon people were in their caves. When they thought the canyon was as near as it would come to Dry Hills, they had filled their gourds at a pool, climbed out, and crossed the last stretch of desert.
“Four moons back I stood on the mountainside,” said Suth. “I saw people in the desert. They were three. They woke in the evening. They went towards Dry Hills. I said in my heart,
These are Moonhawk
.”
“Suth, you were right,” said Tun, and went on.
The three had managed to cross Dry Hills and reach the old Good Places. They had found them full of the murdering strangers, but because they knew the land so well, they had been able to hide for a while as they moved around, living like wild beasts. Then they had been discovered and attacked, and had had to flee west into the Demon Places, where there was very little food or water. There they had met a few of the remaining members of the Kins. No one knew what had happened to the others.
They were still in the Demon Places when the volcano had erupted. Everything to the west of it was smothered in ash, but the Demon Places were far enough away to escape the worst. Most of the Kin people decided to go yet further west, but the three Moonhawks had persuaded a few of them to try to make it around the north of the old Good Places and back across Dry Hills and the desert.
They had had a terrible journey, and several of them had died on the way, but these seven had come through, very thin and tiredâthe three Moonhawks, a man from Snake, another from Fat Pig, and a woman and a girl from Little Bat.
The girl's name was Bodu. She was about the same age as Noli.
They all returned to the place where Noli's group had laired, and rejoined the Porcupines. As they sat around their fire that evening Net said, “Tun, Bal is dead. Now you are leader.”
Tun sat thinking for a while, then rose. “Who says Tun is leader?” he asked.
The men stood and touched palms with him. The women, children, and small ones pattered their hands on the rock in front of him, as a sign that they accepted him as leader. He would be a good leader, Noli thought, better than Bal. Bal had been angry and strong. Tun was calm and strong.
Chogi, looking around the circle, said, “I see Bodu and rejoice. She is Little Bat. Soon she is a woman. Soon Suth is a man. He is Moonhawk. They choose each other for mates.”
Both Suth and Bodu looked startled. This wasn't a thought they were ready for. But this was something the senior women took charge of, and discussed with senior women in other Kins when they met. Little Bat was one of the two Kins from whom the young men of Moonhawk could ask for mates, so in Chogi's eyes the arrangement was acceptable.
Everyone, of course, began teasing Suth and Bodu. But Chogi stayed serious, and as soon as the laughter lessened, she held up her hand.
“I say more,” she announced. “Here is Noli. Here is Shuja. Can they find mates? Where are they? They are not here.”
The men shrugged. These were serious questions, but they weren't man stuff. The women discussed them in low voices. Noli didn't listen.
A thought came to her.
When I am a woman, I choose Tor for my mate
.
Everyone was looking at her. She realized she'd spoken the words aloud.
“Who is Tor?” said Tun.
“One of these,” said Net, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder towards the nearest Porcupines.
“This is not good,” snapped Chogi.
Noli barely saw or heard. She was breathing in the familiar dragging lungfuls.
The One came softly, almost hesitantly. She knew at once, this time, that it wasn't Porcupine. It was very young. It spoke through her mouth.
“These are new times,” it said.
As it spoke, she knew it. In her mind she heard the faint rustle of feathers, felt the curved beak nibble gently at her ear, the talons clasp her shoulder.
“Who speaks?” gasped Tun.
“It is Moonhawk,” Noli whispered in her own voice. “It is not the Moonhawk that comes before. It is new, new. We have new Places to live. We find new ways to live. We are together, a Kin, new in these new Places, these new ways.
“So Moonhawk comes. She is new.”
KO'S
STORY
For Sam and Andrew
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
No rains came.
For moon after moon after moon the sky stayed the same harsh blue. All day the sun glared down. The nights were very cold, but no dew formed.
The grasses withered, with empty seed heads. The roots that people could eat shrivelled in the ground. If nuts formed they were empty shells.
The river dwindled to a stream, to a trickle, to a few stinking pools. When they were gone, it ran underground, and then the people had to dig down till they reached the water and scoop it out handful by handful.
When they did this, animals smelt the water from far away and came for it, desperate to drink, but weak with hunger and thirst. This made them easy to hunt, but there was not much meat on them.
And people were not the only hunters. There were lions and cheetahs and packs of wild dogs and hyenas. They too smelt the water and came to it, knowing that they would find both drink and food. People might be food, if they didn't set lookouts. Lookout was something a half grown child could do. Even Ko, though he'd had to ask.
Ko had climbed a tree. It was dead, because of the drought, so there were no leaves to screen his view. It was a bit far from the water hole, so he'd really need to shout if danger threatened.
He was pleased with himself. When the men had been arranging their hunt he had nudged Suth and whispered, “Suth, I do lookout? I, Ko, ask.” Suth had smiled and spoken to Tun, who was leader, and Tun had glanced at Ko and nodded. So Ko was one of the two lookouts. Nar was the other, over on the far side of the dry riverbed. Nar was Ko's private enemy.
“Keep good watch, Ko,” Suth had told him quietly. “Do not dream.”
But of course Ko dreamed. He was always full of dreams. This time he was the hero of the hunt. Antelope would come to the water and the hunters would spring their ambush, but they'd be unlucky. SomeoneâNet, probablyâwould move too soon and the antelope would take fright and race away across the plain. The best of them, a glossy great buckâhe must have found good grass somewhere to have all that meat on himâwould run close by Ko's tree, and clever Ko had taken a couple of good stones up with him, and now he slung one at the buck, slung it with deadly aim, catching him full force on the side of the head, just in the right spot below the ear, and ⦠and â¦
Ko hadn't decided on the end of the dream. Would he kill the buck outright? That seemed a bit much, even for a dream. Perhaps he'd just stun it, so that it lost its bearings and ran back into the arms of the hunters â¦
Anyway, he kept an eye open for good stones as he made his way across to the tree, but there weren't any. How could he change the dream � Before he'd thought of anything he reached the tree.
It was growing on a sloping slab of bedrock a bit taller than a man at its upper end. The tree-roots ran down the face of the rock into the soil beneath. At the bottom lay a single chunk of rock, almost as large as Ko's head, much too heavy for him to throw. It would have to do. The buck would just have to come nearer, so that he could drop the rock instead of throwing it. Why, he might even kill it, that way â¦
With a lot of effort he heaved the rock up into the tree and managed to wedge it into a fork. Then he found a place where he could perch in the shade of the trunk and start his watch.
Time passed. Ko didn't mind. He had his dream to play with. It was a good dream, wonderful but not impossible, something he, Ko, might really manage to do if he was very lucky ⦠There would be a feast that night of course, and praise from the hunters, and he, Ko, would be allowed to make his boast, and no one would laugh at him ⦠and Nar would be watching with jealous eyes â¦
Something was happening!
