The Kin (4 page)

He explained his plan to Noli while Tinu clambered up and down, bringing two or three stones at a time. She passed them to Noli, who handed them on to Suth. He took them and slid them out onto the surface of the ledge.

Each time he reached up the eagle swung menacingly in, so close that its wing tip almost brushed the cliff as it passed. When he had the last stone in his hand, Suth passed the fox leg down to Noli, made sure he had a good foothold, and then reached up and merely pretended to push the stone out onto the ledge with the others.

The bird swung in and down as before. As it crossed above him, Suth flung the stone with all his strength, catching it full on its body just below the outstretched wing. It gave a sharp squawk and fell away. Instantly Suth scrambled out onto the ledge, picking up two more stones as he rose. The bird had recovered at once, and was almost on him, coming along the cliff from his right.

His first stone went wide. He slung the second and instantly flung himself flat against the cliff. The bird missed its strike.

He jumped to his feet and saw a feather drifting away, so he knew he'd scored another good hit. He snatched up two more stones and edged closer to the nest, to draw the eagle from the crack. Now that he had stones, and a place to stand, he felt confident. Stones were the Kin's main weapon. Like all the children, Suth had practised throwing them since he'd been big enough to hold them. He was an excellent shot. He stood poised and ready as the eagle attacked again.

This time it seemed to come more cautiously, which was a mistake as that made it an easier target. His first stone struck home and it wheeled away.

“Ready, Noli!” he called.

The bird circled out, turned and swooped towards him. Would it attack yet again? He watched it, panting.

No, the curve of its flight continued, taking it a safe distance from the ledge.

“Come, Mana!” he shouted as it swung away. “Quick! Hide in the crack! Good. Noli, wait! It comes again … Now! Quick!”

Three times more the bird circled past. Each time it swung away a Moonhawk scrambled out of the crack, across the ledge, and into safety. Suth could hear Noli encouraging Mana to climb on, to make room for the others. When Tinu was across, Suth dashed for the crack. Once inside he waited to catch his breath and let his heart stop pounding, and then climbed on.

As he was working his way past Noli they heard a new wild squawking from below. Craning out they saw that there were now two great birds circling by the ledge, calling to each other.

“The mate comes back to the nest,” said Noli.

“Noli, you are right,” said Suth, sick with the thought of what might have happened if the other bird had come home while he was out on the ledge, with the small ones trying to cross.

Wearily they clambered on, and before very long came out onto a steep rock-strewn slope. Here they rested, and Suth passed the fox leg around for each of them to chew off what they could. Then they struggled on up. There was nothing else to do.

The slope seemed endless. Wherever they could find shade they rested and looked back. Each time they could see more of the desert stretching away beneath them. Never in their lives had they been so high.

“We are climbing into the sky,” said Noli.

The sun was hidden beyond the ridge when they came to another barrier, a jagged line of tall rocks, like the teeth of a monstrous crocodile. Here Suth almost lay down and gave up, but he saw the others looking at him for orders, so without a word he explored along the barrier and edged through a gap between two of the rocks. It twisted on itself, and twisted again, and then they were through.

They paused, and caught their breath. At first, with the setting sun in their eyes, it was hard for them to be sure what they were looking at. But then they saw that ahead of them lay a vast, secret bowl, an ancient volcanic crater concealed among the mountains, ringed by the ridge on which they stood. The bottom of the bowl was hidden from them by the slope, but it seemed to be filled with a light mist. The sun had almost set and their shadows were long across the slope before they reached another edge where they could look down.

Below them, veiled in greyness, lay a wide green basin. It was not like anything they had ever seen, so soft, so green, so misty. Even here, out on the barren slope, the air smelled of sap and growth.

There had been nothing like this in their world. The very best of the Good Places they knew were hot and dry and filled with glaring sunlight. Young grass that was fresh and green at sunrise would be tired and dusty by noon, and the few trees were tough and twiggy, with small dusty leaves hardened to withstand such heat. They had never before seen forest. It took Suth a little while to grasp that the strange green mass that half-filled the bottom of the bowl was trees.

Noli, standing beside him, sighed.

“It is a Good Place,” she whispered. “It is the First Good Place.”

All five of them stood and stared. Even Ko was silent in wonder.

Oldtale

HOW PEOPLE WERE MADE

Black Antelope said, “It is time for us to make people. Let each give something. From these things we make people.”

Snake gave two skins, which he had outgrown
.

Crocodile gave teeth she had shed
.

The Ant Mother gave earth from her nest
.

Moonhawk gave the shell of an egg she had hatched
.

Parrot gave the shell from one of his wife's eggs
.

Little Bat gave some of her droppings
.

Fat Pig gave strong hairs from his hackles
.

Monkey bit the ball of his thumb and squeezed out drops of his own blood
.

“What does Weaverbird give?” said the others
.

“Weaver and his wives build the people, because they know how,” said Black Antelope
.

“And what do you give?” they asked him
.

“I give breath
,”
he said
.

“What shape do we make these people?” they asked him
.

“Let them be long and thin to slither along the ground,” said Snake
.

“Let them have thick hides and great teeth, to lie in wait in water,” said Crocodile
.

“Let them be very many and small and quick,” said the Ant Mother
.

“Let them be fat,” said Fat Pig
.

“Let them fly through the air with wings,” said Little Bat and Moonhawk and Parrot
.

“Let them be like me,” said Monkey
.

“These people are their own shape,” said Black Antelope
.

Then Weaver summoned his wives and together they built two people. They broke up Crocodile's teeth to be the bones of two skeletons, and mixed Monkey's blood with the earth from the Ant Mother's nest to be the flesh of two bodies. These they bound around with the two skins that Snake gave. On top they put Moonhawk's eggshell and Parrot's to be the skulls, and filled them with Little Bat's droppings to be the brains. Lastly they added Fat Pig's hackles to be the hair
.

Still these people had no shape, only two round bodies with round heads on top. And they did not move or speak
.

Then Black Antelope breathed on them, and filled them with his breath, and they grew arms and legs and ears and noses, and fingers and toes formed on their hands and feet. And they woke and stood up
.

The one whose skull was a parrot shell was the man, and his name was An. The one whose skull was the shell of Moonhawk's egg was the woman, and her name was Ammu
.

The First Ones stood and watched them, to see what they would do, but were not themselves seen, because they had made themselves invisible
.

The man and the woman looked around and saw the First Good Place. They looked at each other, and laughed, and were happy
.

“These people are like me. They are not like you others,” said Monkey. “My blood did that.”

CHAPTER FOUR

For a long while the Moonhawks gazed at the great green valley below them. At last Suth gathered his wits, looked at the sun, and saw that in a very short while it was going to be dark. Hungry and thirsty though they were, this was not the time to explore.

“Night comes,” he said. “We must find a lair.”

He began to lead them back up the slope, but before they had gone many paces Noli said, “Wait,” ran to one side, put Otan down, and kneeled. She took hold of what looked like two small grey stones, lying against each other amid a jumble of other stones. Carefully she twisted them loose. They were held to the ground by a thin tough root, which broke after several turns. Stoneweed. She nibbled around its base until she was able to pull up a flap of thick rind. She took a suck for herself, and another, which she gave, mouth to mouth, to Otan, then passed the plant to Suth. He sucked a little of the dense, oily juice and gave it to Tinu and the little ones. They took their turns without squabbling.

He felt cheered. It was a good sign. Stoneweed was always a lucky find, anywhere. Its juice was strong, and gave strength, as well as quenching thirst, though if even a grown man drank a whole one he would become dazed and stupid.

They climbed back almost to the ridge, looking for some natural lair, but the ground was too open for that, so they huddled against a boulder. Suth and Noli slept with stones in their hands, but nothing disturbed them.

In the early dawn they rose and went back down to the place where they had stood last evening, and again gazed down on the strange green bowl. There was a new smell in the air, an odd reek, like smoke, but not any smoke that Suth had smelled before.

“Did Moonhawk send you a dream?” he said.

“No,” said Noli.

He was disappointed. The more he gazed at what lay below, the more he was afraid. It wasn't ordinary fear, such as fear of a big wild hunter, or fear of Bal when he was angry. Nor was it like a night fear, fear in a bad dream before the horrors begin but the dreamer knows that they are coming.

There were spots in the old Good Places where he had felt a little like this. Tarutu Rock was one. The Kin walked quietly when they came there, and didn't shout or laugh, because it belonged to Little Bat. They would ask her goodwill before they laired there or drank at her dew trap. This place was something like that, but the feeling was far stronger. He stayed rooted where he was, and Noli did the same.

It was Ko, too young to feel such things, who started down the slope. At his movement a basking lizard scuttled off a rock. Further off a ground rat rose on its hind legs to look, then dived into its burrow. That broke the trance. If there was such game here, there must also be water.

“Come,” said Suth, and led the way, peering to the left and right and sniffing the air for danger.

Between the dry slope and the start of the forest lay a belt of scrub—coarse bushes, sometimes growing impenetrably close together, sometimes more scattered. There was no knowing what might be lurking there, let alone in the dark, strange shadows beneath the trees, so Suth led the way along the edge of the belt, moving warily, looking at everything. Where the ground was soft, he stopped and studied it for tracks. He saw several—the scuttlings of ground rats, the slots made by small deer, and the spread prints with a groove between them, where a lizard had passed, dragging its tail. He saw no large paw prints, but he was sure that where there was so much to hunt there must also be hunters. He picked a way around the edge of the soft patches so that the Kin left no tracks of their own. Even on the hard ground, the earth felt faintly moist beneath his feet, as if there had been a heavy dew, though they had slept dry out in their lair on the hill.

“Wait,” called Noli from the rear. “I smell juiceroot.”

Suth stopped. Yes, there was that thin, bitter odour. He would have noticed it himself if his mind had not been so set on the scents of danger. Exploring down into the scrub they found a bush almost smothered by a straggling creeper with small dull brown flowers. They traced the vines across the ground to the place where they entered the earth. Stoneweed and juiceroot, growing so close together, Suth thought—this was indeed a Good Place.

The ground was too hard to dig with bare hands. With a lot of difficulty they chewed off branches from another bush and made themselves digging sticks with which, morsel by morsel, they began to chip and move the soil away. It was slow work. Among the Kins the men used heavy stone cutters to make themselves strong digging sticks, and hardened their points with fire. The ones Suth and Noli had made were blunt and weak.

Bit by bit they dug a hole. At last they came to the top of the tuber from which the vine grew, and saw that it was fat and pale. That was good. Juiceroot was different from stoneweed. It was full of water, with a faint bittersweet taste, very refreshing and far nicer than the dribble they'd found running out of the cliff below. After you'd sucked the juice out you could eat the stringy flesh as plant food. It was poor stuff, but better than nothing.

They forgot about anything else. The sweat streamed from them as they worked steadily on, until every muscle ached and their hands were torn and sore. This was how you got juiceroot out of the ground. It took all day, but it was worth the effort.

The little ones understood that too. They had seen it all before, so they sat and watched in silence. Noli broke small pieces from the top of the tuber for them to suck. Time passed. Suth was quite unprepared when Tinu gave the sharp hiss that meant Danger.

He looked up and saw her and the little ones staring beyond him.

He straightened and turned.

Men.

Four of them, standing in a line, just a few paces off. They had digging sticks in their hands. They looked like the men in the Kin, with scars on their cheeks to mark them as grown men, and very dark skins. But one of them had eyes of two different colours, dark brown and pale. Shakily Suth rose and faced them. His throat was dry. His heart pounded.