The Kin (44 page)
Authors: Peter Dickinson
Tinu was staring directly at him, though he was sure she couldn't see him behind the bushes. Her face went stiff. She turned back to Nar and mouthed a questionâ
Who is there?
Ko guessed. Nar answered. Now a longer question. Oh, let him lie, let him lie! Let him tell Tinu that he, Nar, had asked Ko to take Tinu there to wait for him so that he could offer her the salt without everyone watching. But of course he wouldn't. This was a way out for him, a way he could give his gift to Ko and still not make his mother furious. Stupid, stupid Ko, when he'd got everything else so right, and then at the last minute spoilt it all.
Nar was speaking. Tinu listened. Once or twice Ko had seen people's faces after they'd died. Tinu's was like that. When Nar finished she bowed her head and at the same time pushed away the hand that was holding the salt.
Nar stared at it, then turned and walked back the way he had come. Tinu looked up to watch him go. Her face was so twisted that it didn't seem like a human face at all. Tears streamed down it. Ko couldn't bear to watch, but at the same time couldn't look away.
A few paces from Ko, but still on the far side of the bushes, Nar stopped. The hand with the salt moved gently up and down, as if he were judging its weight so that he could throw it as fiercely as possible into Ko's face. He had the look of a grown man, the same look that Suth had had when he'd told Ko how bad he'd been, going out into the marshes alone.
“Hear me, Ko,” he said, just loudly enough for Ko to catch the words. “I, Nar, speak. My gift to you is given. I promised upon Odutu, Odutu below the Mountain. It is done. Now go. Go back to the others.”
“I go,” whispered Ko miserably, and trudged back up the hill.
He couldn't bear to face anyone, so he climbed across the slope and round to the far side of the spur. He sat down well below the ridge, put his chin on his fists and stared glumly west.
It was a wonderful day. He couldn't remember a day like this, so clear, so fresh. The marsh stretched limitlessly away, first the immense reedbed, and then the maze of islands and mudbanks and channels. Birds rose in flocks, circled, settled. The air was full of their calls. Another rainstorm was massing in the distance, a black bank of cloud trundling slowly towards him with its veil of rain beneath it. To left and right of it rose the outer ends of a rainbow, and between them flashed the sudden spikes of lightning. Already he could hear the unsteady burr of thunder.
Wonderful, but Ko barely saw it. All he could think of was that he had ruined his chances, andâfar, far worseâruined Tinu's chance of happiness. Everything was pointless, stupid, and it was all Ko's fault.
Vaguely he noticed the voices of people, chattering excitedly. Something must be happening in the camp, but he wasn't interested. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. If they'd never got across the marshes, if they'd all died in the desert, it wouldn't have been any worse.
A hand touched his shoulder. He looked round, ready to snap. It was Mana, with a broad smile on her face. Even Mana was laughing at him for being so stupid.
“Go!” he snarled.
She shook her head, still smiling.
“Come, Ko,” she said. “Suth says this. Come now.”
She took his wrist, dragged him to his feet and started to pull him up the slope. He came, grudging every step. From the ridge they looked down into the hollow.
Ko couldn't make out what was happening. Everyone was massed in an excited group on the other side of the fire. He could see Tun and Chogi and Suth near the centre, talking to a woman who had her back to him. Chogi was speaking earnestly to her.
The woman shook her head angrily. From the way she did it Ko recognized her as Zara. Chogi went on speaking till Tun held up his hand and spoke briefly to Zara.
He moved aside to make space for someone standing behind him. Nar.
Nar and Tinu, standing close together, with their fingers laced into each other's, Tinu, of course, had her head bowed to one side with shyness, but Nar faced his mother directly. He began to speak to her, firmly. His forehead was smeared with white stuff. So was Tinu's.
Ko stared, bewildered.
“What happens? What happens?” he muttered.
Mana laughed.
“Nar tells us,” she said. “He goes to Tinu. He chooses her for his mate. It is his gift to you, Ko. A twig breaks. Tinu hears. She is clever, Ko. She asks,
Is that Ko? Why does he watch?
Nar tells her. She says,
Tinu is not Ko's gift. Nar, I do not choose you. Go
. Nar goes. He sends you away. He comes back. He says,
My gift to Ko is given. Now, Tinu, I choose you for my mate. It is my choosing. Do you choose me?
Then Tinu says,
Nar, I choose you
.
“Oh, Ko, Tinu is happy, happy!”
MANA'S
STORY
For Rosemary and George
Contents
Oldtale:
BLACK ANTELOPE'S WAKING
CHAPTER ONE
Mana was fishing, alone, among the reeds. She had her own fishing hole. Suth and Tor had helped her to make a path into the reedbed, laying the cut reeds flat on the net of roots, for her to walk on. Ten and ten paces in they had made a small clearing, and in the middle of this they had cut a circular hole down through the roots, leaving a little pool of clear water, less than a pace across.
They'd known what to do because Ko had seen one of the marshwomen fishing like this. But after that they'd had to find stuff out for themselvesâwhat sort of bait was best; how a target in the water was never where the eye saw it, but above; and, most important of all, how to wait and wait in utter stillness, and then fling the power of every muscle in arm and shoulder and side into a strike as quick and sudden as the strike of a snake. Any twitch, any hesitation before that moment, and the fish would startle, and flick away. Mana was good at waiting.
Tinu had first found the trick of it, and shown the others. Then Suth had made the children practise and practise. He'd put a leaf on the end of a thin reed and moved it around under the water, as a fish might move, and they'd used that for a target. When Mana's fishing stick pierced the leaf three times out of four, through several trials, Suth and Tor made the path for her.
So now for the first time she crouched by her own fishing hole, with her stickâa strong reedstem, sharpened to a pointâresting on her shoulder, ready for the strike. This part of the reedbeds was full of fish. It was strange that none of the marshpeople came here to hunt them, but they seemed wary of coming so close to the shore, as if there was something here that scared them badly.
She could see three little fish, silver with a green stripe along the side, the size of her middle finger. That was good. They were much too small to spear, but their movements would tell larger fish that there was food here. Gently she edged her left hand forward and dribbled another few dragonfly eggs onto the surface. As the white specks wavered down through the water the little fish darted at them and sucked them in. Two more appeared from the darkness beneath the reeds, one the same sort, and the other slightly larger, dark brown and blunt nosed.
Was that a movement, a shadowy something stirring at the edge of the darkness?
Mana's heart started to pump. More slowly than ever she drifted her left hand forward and dropped a few more of the precious eggs. The shadow came nosing out to take them, a fish as long as a man's foot, deep-bellied, blue-black with a red spot behind the eye. It was too late. The little fish had got there first.
Mana released another dribble of eggs. All six fish rose for them, competing, and began to follow them down.
Now!
As the dark back turned away, Mana struck. The point jarred for an instant against a toughness, but she drove it on. At once the spear came alive in her grip, snatching itself to and fro as the fish fought to wrench itself free. Hands and arms remembered their endless lessons, so she didn't make the instinctive move, pulling the stick back along the line on which she'd thrust it inâthat would risk pulling it out of the fishâbut grabbed it with her left hand as far forward as she could reach, and then pulled up and sideways, leaning her body back to heave the stick out with its point just clearing the far edge of the hole. A hand's breadth down it, pierced clean through, the fish flailed in the air.
With a sigh of happiness Mana rose and stood, absent-mindedly brushing the insects from her body. They'd swarmed around and on her all the time she was fishing, but she'd scarcely noticed them. Several had bitten her. She guessed how she'd be itching by nightfall, but she didn't mind. It was all so worth it. At her first try, at her own new fishing hole, she'd caught this beautiful fish.
She forced the stick further through it so that it couldn't wriggle itself free, then laid it on the path. When the water was still she took a different sort of bait from her gourdânot the dragonfly eggs, which were hard to find, but crumbs of the stuff left over after pounding blueroot pasteâand sprinkled them onto the hole. They floated on the surface, so that the fish that had been frightened away would find them when they came back, and think this was a good place to look for food again. The one fish she'd caught was enough for Mana, enough happiness, enough food for herself and someone else. She put her stick over her shoulder with the fish hanging behind her, and left.
Now, climbing the hill, she realized how glad she was to escape from the marsh insects. This happened every time anyone went into the marsh. Clouds of the horrible creatures gathered around them in the steamy heat, mostly just to settle and tickle as they drank their sweat, but some to bite in and suck their blood. They had all learned to put up with it, to forget about it as they did what they were there for. But as soon as they could they climbed back up the hill, into the fresher, drier heat, where the insects mostly didn't come.
When she was high enough she sat down to wait. Now, of course, more than anything, she wanted to show someone her lovely fish, but they were all busy fishing at various fish-holes in the huge reedbed that reached along the shoreline below her. She'd chosen a place where she could see anyone who came out, so that she could run at once and show them. But she wasn't impatient for them to do so. She was happy to wait, happy in her own happiness, not needing anyone to share it.
The hill on which she was sitting was like the tail of some vast crocodile, a craggy, steep-sided promontory rising to a central ridge, where the crocodile's spine would have been. From north to south it was a whole difficult day's journey in length.
Mana was sitting on its eastern flank, with the morning sun shining in her face. In front of her and to her right the mist-veiled marshes stretched away. Somewhere out there Var and Net and Yova and Kern should now be making their way back from the far side, using the paths that the marshmen had shown them.
They had gone to fetch fresh supplies of salt. They'd used up almost all of what they'd brought with them, as gifts for the marshmen, and Tun had decided they might need more, to help make friends with any new people they met when they journeyed north to look for new places where they could live. It was something to do while they waited for everyone to get well from the marsh sickness.
Two of them had died, Runa, and Moru's little daughter Taja. Most of the others had been very sick. Mana had been the first, before they'd even started to cross. Chogi said that it was from sleeping in the marshes, or too near them. But now everybody was well again, though some were still a bit weak, and as soon as the salt party returned they would be ready to travel north.
Mana felt anxious about the move. She knew they couldn't stay here for ever. Plant food was already getting scarce along the shorelines, and they couldn't live on nothing but fish. Besides, this wasn't the sort of life they were used to. But Mana didn't really like change. She preferred things she knew and understood. That was one of the reasons she'd been so pleased about catching her fishâit meant that there was something useful she could do. Fishing gave her a place among the Kin, a purpose. It helped her to know what she was there for. And now that she thought about it she felt suddenly sad that soon she would be leaving her fishing hole. She would be going to places where, perhaps, she would never have the chance to fish again.
She rose and looked north, along the way they were going to travel. Tun had sent scouts up there to explore. They'd come back and reported that after half a day's journey they'd not reached the end of the promontory, but it had become steadily steeper until its flank was almost a cliff, with neither room nor soil for anything much to grow between the plunging rockface and the marsh.
So now Mana gazed along the hillside, trying to imagine the difficult journey, and wondering what might lie at the end of it. Would it be a great wide open landscape, perhaps with a river running through it, and clumps of shade trees and patches of bushes, like the Good Places she could just remember, before the rains had failed?
The imaginary landscape filled her mind, so she wasn't really studying the actual one that lay in front of her. Even so, a quick movement caught her eye. She stiffened, and stared.
