The Kin (43 page)

Now the going was different, no longer islands and reedbeds with hidden pathways between them, but one endless vast reedbed where they trod not on squelching earth but on a solid network of reed roots just below the water. A maze of paths ran through it. Sometimes one of their guides would turn off down one of these, and a little later come hurrying up from behind with another fish to add to the collection.

Ko was curious. He found the ways of the marsh people weird but fascinating. So next time one of the women turned off he followed her. She heard him and looked back, but smiled and led the way on. Soon the side path ended. The woman put a finger to her lips, moved stealthily on and knelt beside a hole among the reed roots. From one of her belt tubes she sprinkled a few crumbs of something into the water, and then waited, motionless, with her fishing stick raised. Ko saw her tense. She struck, and with an expert movement of her wrist twisted the spear so that the fish didn't flap itself off as she was pulling it out.

Ko clapped his hands. She laughed, and gave him the fish to carry as they ran to catch up with the others.

They took no midday rest, but splashed steadily on, passing fish down the line to eat. Ko had never known this kind of moist heat. The haze was so dense that it was hard to breathe. Insects swarmed. Sweat streamed down. There was a kind of buzzing tingle in the air. It felt as if the haze was somehow being stretched, tauter and tauter, and at any moment it was going to rip apart from horizon to horizon and let the clear sky through.

Noli's baby was whimpering and wouldn't be comforted.

“Her head hurts,” said Noli. “Rain comes.”

“Noli, you are right,” said Suth.

And then, in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, the procession halted. Ko was near the tail of it and couldn't see what was happening, but after some while Tun and Chogi came back down the line with their guides. Ko watched, puzzled, while they made
Goodbye
noises and exchanged yet more gifts. The marshpeople were obviously very anxious, and kept adding
Danger
sounds onto their farewells, but in the end they turned and went back the way they had come.

“They go no further,” Tun explained. “They are afraid. There is a path. It is not good. It is old.”

“Tun, what is this danger?” Bodu asked.

“Bodu, I do not know,” he answered. “We go on. We see. We are careful.”

After that they struggled slowly on for a while along what had once been a good path but was now almost blocked with new reeds. And then Ko came round a bend and saw that ahead of him the line of people seemed to be rising into the air, and a moment later he realized that they were climbing a solid slope. The haze thinned. Now Ko too was out of the reeds and climbing. Ahead of him he could see a whole hillside, strewn with rocks and boulders. This was the northern edge of the marshes. They had come through.

The Kins stood and looked around. The sun was already low. They were standing on what seemed to be a spur of hill jutting out into the marsh, so that both east and west they looked out over the same haze-hidden reeds. Though the hillside itself seemed barren, the shore was lined with thickets, but before he would let them forage Tun sent scouts up the hill and along the edges of the marsh. They returned saying that the promontory seemed to stretch a long way north but they had seen no sign of danger.

“The marshpeople were afraid,” said Chogi. “Why is this?”

“They know this place,” said Var in his gloomiest tones. “It is dangerous. We do not see this danger. It is here.”

“Var speaks,” said Kern, and they all laughed as usual, but nervously. The very stillness and emptiness of the hillside seemed a little menacing.

“I say this,” Kern went on. “They are marshpeople. They do not like hard ground. It is not their Place.”

There were murmurs of agreement, but all the same Tun sent Shuja and Nar to keep lookout while most of the others foraged along the shoreline for what they could find until it was almost dark.

But Suth and his family gathered fuel and climbed the hill and chose a site for their camp, in a hollow between two ridges, so that no stranger could see their fire from a distance. Now Tinu anxiously opened the fire log. The reeds they had burnt last night had turned to ash, not embers, but she had saved the few bits of wood they had found to the last, for this purpose. When she tipped the fire log out and blew on the blackened pile a few sparks glowed, and she was able to nurse a flame from them.

So they all gathered round in the near dark, and sang the song that the Kins had always sung, whenever they moved to a fresh camp and relit their fire. Then they cooked their food and shared it round. When they had eaten, Tun rose and held up a hand for silence.

“Hear me, Tun,” he said. “I praise the boy Ko. Often Ko is foolish. Often he is bad. So it is with boys. But we cross the marshes. Ko found the way. This was his deed. Now let Ko speak. Let him boast.”

Ko hesitated, astonished, then rose. This time he didn't feel nervous or tongue-tied. He had had his great boast last night, sitting on the marshman's shoulder, and that was enough. He remembered something that Suth had said to him not long ago.

“I, Ko, speak,” he said. “Hear me. Tun is right. I was foolish. I was bad. But I was lucky, lucky. Lucky does not boast.”

He sat down, feeling that this time he'd got it right. The others seemed to think so too, and cheered quietly and laughed without any jeering. He even saw Chogi smile at him and nod. He felt very good.

Nar came and squatted beside him and said, “Ko, you keep your promise. You find the way through the marsh. Now you tell me my gift to you.”

Ko smiled teasingly at him.

“I tell you tomorrow,” he said.

Oldtale

GATA AND NAL

Gata said in her heart, My father, Dat, is dead. My sister, Falu, is a woman. She chooses a mate. Now I, Gata, have no one
.

Men came to Gata, from Little Bat and from Ant Mother. They said, “Gata, you are beautiful, beautiful. I choose you for my mate. Do you choose me?”

To each of them Gata answered, “I do not choose you.”

In her heart she said, I choose only Nal
.

Gata left her Kin and journeyed alone to Ragala Flat. Snake camped there. She waited and watched until Nal hunted alone. Then she stood before him and said, “Nal, I choose you for my mate. Do you choose me?”

Nal answered, “Gata, you are Parrot. I am Snake. This is not good. It is bad, bad.”

Gata said
, “Good
is a word
. Bad
is a word. I do not know them. I know only this. I choose you, Nal, for my mate. I choose no other man, ever.”

Nal looked at her. She was beautiful, beautiful
.

He said, “Gata, how do we live? Who is our Kin? Nobody. Where are our Good Places? We have none. Where do we hunt? Where do we forage?”

She said, “We go far and far. Perhaps we find Good Places. Perhaps we die. I choose you, Nal. I choose also this.”

Nal said, “Let it be so. I choose you, Gata, for my mate
.”

Then they smeared salt on their brows, and were chosen. Their Kins said to them, “This is bad, bad. Go far and far.”

Gata and Nal went to the Dry Places, the Demon Places. They found no food and no water. They lay down together and said, “Tomorrow we die.”

They slept, and Gata dreamed
.

Parrot came to Gata in her dream, and sang. This was his song:

Gata, my daughter, my nestling
,

I do not brood over you
.

I bring you no sweet fruits
.

Tomorrow you die
.

But I say this to you, this:

There are Kins, men and women
,

They have children, they grow old, they die
.

And their children, and their children's children
.

They sit round fires, they tell Tales
.

They speak your name, Gata
.

They say, Beautiful, like Gata
.

They are sad, sad
.

The First Ones too were sad for Gata and Nal. They changed them
.

Two rocks stand in the Dry Places, a day's journey and another day's beyond Ragala Flat. No other rock there is like them
.

One rock is smooth and black. When the sun shines, see, it is full of bright stars. It is beautiful. It is Gata
.

The other is tall and strong. It is Nal
.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Everyone was exhausted with the long day of toiling through the marsh, and there seemed to be no immediate threat of danger, so Tun didn't set sentries, and they lay down thankfully to sleep by their fire.

In the middle of the night, with a colossal crash of thunder, the rain came. The sleepers leaped awake and stood and raised their arms to the sky and let the warm, dense downpour sluice over their bodies. Hastily Tinu packed the fire log before the precious embers could be dowsed. Then they trooped up out of the hollow and watched the jigging legs of lightning prance to and fro over the marshes while the thunder bellowed on and on.

The storm ended as suddenly as it had begun, and the dark hillside tinkled with streaming water, and the smell of rain on dry earth filled the night with sweetness, and Ko lay down to sleep again on the soaked ground and thought
Ah, this is good, good
.

He managed to wake himself early next morning, in the first grey light. He knew exactly what he was going to do. He crept across to where Tinu lay and touched her gently on her shoulder.

She woke instantly, and he put a finger to his lips for silence and beckoned to her and stole away up the short slope and over the brow, out of sight of the others. While he waited for her to join him he studied the hillside for any sign of danger, but it seemed as empty as ever. Then he looked around for somewhere a little hidden and private, so that there wouldn't be any interruptions. The rain had washed the air so clear that he could see all the way across the marshes, and across the New Good Places, to a faint blue line that he knew must be Dry Hills, the range of mountains on the further side of the southern desert, many long days' journey away.

There were some promising-looking places among the bushes beside the marsh to his left, so when Tinu joined him he took her by the wrist and said firmly, “Come.” She stared at him, but he tugged at her arm and she went obediently down the hill with him.

He found a little open space between some bushes and the marsh, well screened from up the slope. He studied the ground for paw prints, and sniffed the air, which carried scents richly after the rain. There was nothing to suggest any dangerous beast might be lurking close by.

“Wait here, Tinu,” he said. “I bring you a thing.”

Before she could object he scurried back up the hill. By now the camp was stirring. He caught Nar's eye and waved to him to join him. At once Zara called to ask Nar where he was going.

“I go with Ko,” Nar answered cheerfully, making it sound like boy stuff. “We have a thing to do.”

Ko led him a couple of paces down the slope. He put his hand in his gourd and drew it out with the fingers closed to hide what he was holding.

“Now I tell you the gift you give me,” he said.

With his free hand he pointed towards the marsh.

“Tinu waits there,” he said. “Go to her. Take this.”

He opened his hand and showed Nar the palmful of salt he had prepared, the whitest he could find, crumbled fine and mixed with a little spit and seed-paste so that it would stick.

“This, Nar, is the gift you give me,” he said. “You choose Tinu for your mate.”

Nar stared at the salt.

“Ko, I cannot do this,” he said.

“You made your promise,” said Ko firmly. “On Odutu you made it, Odutu below the Mountain.”

Nar started to smile, as if this were boy stuff he was now too old for. Ko kept his face serious. What he was asking was perfectly fair. A gift didn't need to be a thing. It could also be a deed, a favour. Nar's smile faded. He knew that he had promised on Odutu below the Mountain, and that was something he couldn't go back on.

He turned his head for a moment and looked back towards the camp. From where they were standing they could just see the heads of the people moving around in the hollow, and Ko guessed Nar was looking to see if his mother was watching. He remembered how furious Zara had seemed when Chogi had first suggested that Nar and Tinu should choose each other. What, her lovely son, the last of his Kin, mate with this girl whose face was all twisted and wrong, and who couldn't even talk right! No! He could wait till Mana was old enough, or Sibi.

Nar had always been a very good son, and done whatever his mother wanted. Zara wasn't going to like this at all.

He looked at Ko and nodded.

“I do it,” he said slowly. “Give me the salt. Come.”

They walked together down the slope, but Ko stopped before they reached the bushes.

“I stay,” he whispered. “You go alone.”

Nar seemed to be deep in thought, barely noticing where he put his feet on the rough hillside, but he nodded. Obviously it would be better for Tinu to think he was asking her of his own accord. Ko waited till he was out of sight, then crept down until he could see Nar and Tinu through a screen of branches. He was just in time to watch Nar hold out his hand and offer Tinu the salt.

She stared at it. Her jaw moved to and fro, the way it did when she was too excited, or too upset, to force her mouth to make words. She took half a pace back. Now a branch hid her face from Ko. As he moved to where he could see her again a twig cracked beneath his foot.

At once Tinu's head turned. Ko froze, cursing himself. Stupid, stupid Ko, always getting it wrong just when it mattered. Oh, why hadn't he looked, like a hunter, to see where he was putting his foot?