by Lynn Mann
But nature can be cruel, Mother Elder observed as she appeared at my side, almost as tall on her feet as I was whilst mounted on Infinity.
I nodded, remembering only too well the harsh winter before last, when Kindred had been driven by hunger to attack bonded horses at The Gathering.
It is not just the winters, Mother Elder told me. We dwell here every third summer, to allow plants and prey to recover their numbers in our absence. Whilst we are away, our homes rot and on our return, we must weave them anew. Some years, if the seasons have been harsh, food is scarce and no sooner than we have rebuilt our homes, we must move on in search of somewhere that will sustain us until it is cool enough for us to move back south, where the climate allows for an easier existence. Except for when it doesn’t, as happened the winter before last, and then we must either watch while the weakest of us perish, or take desperate measures.
I’m sorry you’ve been neglected for so long, I replied. We need to have you all living with us as soon as possible.
The idea is very tempting, but how will we live? Your houses of stone sound wonderful and they may well keep us cool in the heat of summer, but will we never venture outside between spring’s end and autumn’s beginning? And though our communities are small, in total we are too many for your people to accommodate in their homes, let alone in their minds, which I foresee being the biggest obstacle, as I know you do.
We’ll work it out, I assured her. Maybe we could tailor clothes that would keep you cool. Rowena’s a Tailor and one of the best – she often comes up with solutions to problems that haven’t even been thought of, so I’m sure she’ll think of something. And we’ll help you to build your own buildings from stone with smaller windows and thicker walls than ours, so that they stay even cooler. Maybe we could link them with stone corridors or underground tunnels so that you can move around when it’s hot outside. As for your numbers, we’ll take a small number of you back with us to begin with, until our people are used to the idea. Then, as the Kindred begin to help them, they will help in return and build homes for more of you. It’s perfect. Our two races will help one another, and in the process, they’ll integrate. Before we know it, the Kindred will be back where you all belong, with the rest of us.
A warm weight rested on my leg and I looked down to see that Mother Elder had placed her hand there, her fingers outstretched so as not to score my leggings with her talons. Her gratitude and relief spilled into me. Daughter of my heart, I’m sorry I didn’t trust you from the beginning. I should have, and not just because of all we are to one another. When you think of what will be, it’s as if everything swirls around you – as if just by thinking of something, you can make it so.
I chuckled. My friends call it my vortex and I’m afraid it looks as though I’ve managed to pull you into it.
She laughed a hoarse laugh. There is nowhere I’d rather be.
When will the first of you be able to leave with us? I asked.
If you take only younglings, then as soon as you are ready. Their skin is not yet so thickened that the heat is a problem for them, as Lacejoy has demonstrated with her escapades. If you require adults to accompany you, then they cannot leave for at least a month, after the heat of summer has passed. Even then, they will have to take a longer route than that which you took in finding me, since they will have to restrict themselves to the cool of the forests. I know you intend to go to your own village first. They will not make it there until late autumn.
Late autumn it is, then, because I’m not leaving without you, I told her.
Whilst I am happy to make the journey to your village to try to help your people, I am not among the adults who would be suitable choices to go with you on your return. The skin of my throat is so thickened now that I rarely use my voice, so I would be of little help in the early stages of befriending your people and I am old and slow. I would be of much hindrance to you all on the journey. It would be well into winter before we arrived at your village, were I to accompany you.
‘I’m not leaving without you,’ I said out loud and Mother Elder looked at me in surprise at the conviction of my words as much as at the sound of my voice. We’ll rest here another month, I continued, and while we’re here, we’ll teach your community all the uses for their newfound Skills, including how to build dwellings with rock-singing. That way, they’ll be able to start building as soon as they decide where they would like to live, down south. We’ll make sure that everyone who will be travelling with us, including you, is as healthy as they can possibly be and while we’re about it, if you’re willing, we’ll see how we can use tissue-singing to ease your throats.
‘And they tell me I’m bossy!’ Rowena said.
‘You are, Ro,’ said Aleks from behind us. ‘Interminably. You are also, however, as Am pointed out, a very good Tailor. Any ideas on the cool clothes front?’
‘As it happens, yes. There’s a moss that’s particularly good at holding water and I was thinking of drying it and weaving it into a fabric to make bottle sleeves, you know that you’d soak and then put around bottles to keep drinks cool. There may be something I could do with that, or I was also thinking of trying to produce a fabric with reflective qualities to make covers for babies’ prams, you know to keep the sun off them, maybe I should make that a priority now...’
You see? My thoughts were aimed towards Mother Elder, although I realised now that I may just as well have been speaking out loud. Whatever problems come up, we’ll find a way around them.
I will accept your help and I will travel with you to help your people in whichever way I can, Mother Elder thought to our group. I am proud of you, daughter of my heart. Now, let me show you my home.
We spent the day in Shady Mountain, as the Kindred referred to their settlement, whilst our horses grazed the trees around the perimeter. Between us, we visited all of the vine shelters. Some, like Mother Elder’s, housed a single occupant. They were just large enough for a sleeping mattress made of the finer vines woven together to produce large sheets, which were then bound together around the edges and stuffed with moss. The shelters were usually anchored between the branches of a single large tree, but some of them reached across to a second tree for extra space and security.
Other shelters housed families, usually of two parents and a youngling but occasionally with the addition of an elderly relative. These were stretched between three or four trees and consisted of sleeping mattresses around the edge and a communal area in the middle. There were few possessions in evidence anywhere and when I voiced my observation to Mother Elder, she replied that the younglings were off playing in the trees as soon as they were old enough and the adults were always busy hunting, gathering, cooking or making the constant repairs needed to their vine shelters. They had no need for possessions that would only weigh them down as they travelled between settlements with the change of the seasons.
We received a warm welcome from the occupants of each and every shelter but we found them much quieter than humans. Their babies rarely cried for long, if at all, since their mothers were Aware of and addressed their needs immediately and provided comfort and reassurance by weaving nurturing energy around them in the same way that Infinity had always done for me. Mindspeak and Awareness of the immediate thoughts of those around them negated the need for much talking out loud, and once of a certain age, adults found it too uncomfortable and too much of a strain, anyway. Younglings came and went with ease and lack of instruction, since their parents could be Aware of their whereabouts at will and they could easily be recalled or instructed by mindspeak.
There was a calm, measured sense of purpose about the Kindred and a love and loyalty that extended far beyond immediate families. But there was also something missing. Humour, I realised. The Kindred had the ability to recognise humour and to laugh, I had seen that in both Fitt and Mother Elder, but they didn’t seem to incorporate either as part of their daily life. I grinned as I realised that with us around, that was about to change.
&n
bsp; ‘Horse dung in my bed, I’m sore,’ Vickery said as she dropped to the ground beside me from the tree down which we had both just scrambled. ‘I was born to ride horses, not shin up and down trees like a squirrel hiding acorns. What?’ she added as I began to laugh.
Her laughter joined mine as she read my thoughts about her comment being so much at odds with the polite introversion we had witnessed all day. Then she came to the same realisation that I had: we were inflicting Marvel, Justin, Rowena and Aleks on a community that wasn’t used to humour.
‘Maybe we should keep them away while the Kindred get used to the rest of us, you know, break them in gently?’ Vickery suggested.
‘Now where would be the fun in that?’ I said with a wink.
Twenty-Four
Humour
After an evening meal around Mother Elder’s fire, we returned to sleep for the night in the clearing in which we had spent our recovery. We had been invited by some of the Kindred to sleep in singles and pairs in their vine shelters, but we knew that our horses would want to return to the grasslands in which they had been grazing for the night, and we wanted to be near them. As we shook out and reorganised bedding, we discussed our findings of the day.
Justin and Aleks had spent some time with a couple whose youngling hadn’t returned from his Findself, and whom they knew to be dead. Mother Elder had observed him during his trial, as she did all of the younglings of her community – her attention tended to be less of a disturbance and less likely to incite homesickness than that of their parents – and after only a few months had passed back the sad news to his parents that he had perished due to his inability to be decisive.
He had already been underweight due to a failure to prioritise his needs, when he found himself too far north and without shelter as winter arrived. He then hadn’t been able to decide whether to attempt the journey south, or start work on a shelter and hope that he could hunt enough in the harshness of a northern winter to keep himself alive. He had done neither and within days, the winter snows had seen him dead.
His parents had been near paralysed with grief and had blamed the human race for his death on top of everything else that had befallen the Kindred as a result of their creation and abandonment. In forgiving their past in recent weeks, however, in clearing all of the holds it had had over them, they were free to explore the full extent of their Awareness and had been able to find their son within it. He was so proud of them. His death had given them every reason to resist forgiving what humans had done to their race, yet they had chosen bravely and well. His parents would always miss his physical presence, but they were thrilled that the choice they had made meant that he was once more a part of their lives.
All of us, except Fitt, had been disturbed by the changes that occurred within the Kindred as they aged, due to their skin. We knew that the creators of the Enforcers had introduced genes from something with an exoskeleton to give them extremely tough skin, capable of repelling any weaponry that might be used against them. It had proven to be extremely effective, but had the unfortunate side effect of continuing to thicken both to the outside and inside as the individual aged, with the result that body heat regulation became more difficult, limb movement became more restricted, their voices failed and eventually, their internal organs were crushed. Older Enforcers had been given duties inside the carefully air-conditioned buildings of The Old during summer so that they didn’t overheat, and had used the voices of the younglings they were training to give orders to the public when their own voices failed. Once they were in the throes of being killed by their own skin, they had been put down by lethal injection.
‘The oldest of my community here in Shady Mountain is only a few years older than Elder Hobday, and she’s around fifty,’ Fitt told us. ‘Natural death is a lengthy and painful process for us, so once our elderly reach the beginning of the end, they choose to stay north as winter approaches. That way they aren’t a burden to their families and they find a quicker and less painful conclusion.’
‘Unless we can use tissue-singing to help,’ Holly said. ‘All of us can multiskill now that Aleks has finally caught up, sorry Aleks, no offence...’
‘None taken, I think,’ said Aleks.
‘...and the Kindred are discovering how they can use their Skills now that they know how to perform them silently, so between us, we’ll find a way to stop the process, or at least heal it as it happens so it doesn’t limit you all the way it does, Fitt.’
‘If we can use bone-singing to break healed bones in order to re-heal them correctly, as we did for Flame, then I wonder if we can use tissue-singing to do something similar,’ said Marvel thoughtfully.
‘That’s it!’ Vickery said. ‘We’ll just break the skin down! It’ll have to be done slowly, so that the body can eliminate the waste products easily, but as long as the Healer is pinpoint accurate and only affects the tissue she means to, it will work! The Kindred can heal themselves and their families, every day, every week, or whenever they want, to keep the newly forming skin from building up, and then who knows how long they’ll be able to live!’
Fitt looked around at us all in the fading light. ‘I think it will be too late for those who are already elderly and have much thickening,’ she rasped sadly, ‘but for the rest of us, it would be marvellous indeed.’
‘We’ll do what we can for those who are older,’ I said. ‘We can at least halt the process so that their skin doesn’t kill them and we can try to ease their throats. With cool housing and Rowena’s tailoring, there will be no need for them to come north to die in the snow.’
‘That would be a huge relief for us all,’ said Fitt. ‘I keep finding myself amazed by how much change can come about in such a short space of time.’
‘Talking of which, Fitt, do you think your community will cope with what passes for humour in this little group of ours?’ Vickery asked. ‘You seem to go along with it okay, but do you think Shady Mountain is ready for our teasing, Marvel and Rowena’s pretend arguments, and Aleks and Marvel chasing one another around the campfire with water or socks as weapons, while the rest of us make out that we think they’re funny?’
She spluttered suddenly as a damp and particularly smelly sock slapped against her cheek and its toe flicked into her mouth. Then she screamed as a beaker of water was upturned over her head.
‘Your mistake there Vic, was to think that chasing around the campfire is a necessary element to the use of socks and water as weapons,’ advised Aleks, still leaning towards her with his empty beaker in his hand. It was his turn to cough and splutter when the contents of Vickery’s beaker were hurled into his face.
‘And yours, Aleks, was to be sitting beside your victim,’ said Marvel, waving the partner to the sock that he had hurled at Vickery.
‘Teasing,’ said Justin, ‘is an affectionate kind of humour and I think the Kindred will be more than ready for it.’ He removed Marvel’s other sock from where it had just landed in his lap, and said, ‘this, though? I’m not so sure. Fitt?’
Fitt was grinning as much as her fangs allowed whilst her shoulders shook with mirth. ‘When we are younglings, we know of humour but we put it to one side during our Findself and never seem to take it back up again. It will be good for you to remind us all of what we have been in the habit of forgetting.’
‘No soooooooner said than done.’ Aleks picked Marvel’s sock up from where Vickery had thrown it, and launched it at Fitt.
‘I should warn you that a game we play when we are small is to take a friend on our backs and see who can climb the highest tree carrying double our weight,’ rasped Fitt. ‘You weigh less than I do Aleks, and I’m three times as strong as I was then. Climbing to the top of those trees carrying you will not be a problem and neither will be coming back down on my own.’
We all looked up to where we could just see the dark leaves of the highest branches waving around in the moonlight and then we looked back at Fitt in wonder. She slapped her leg and emitted a sound like a cough that
we realised was her laughing.
‘I think they’ll cope with us just fine, Vic,’ Sonja said.
And so they did. We were careful to use our humour only on one another and not to direct it towards the Kindred during the first few weeks that we spent with them. After initial bemusement at our teasing of one another and the pranks that Marvel, Aleks and Justin insisted on playing on one another and the rest of us, the Kindred began to smile and laugh with us.
As we coached them in groups on the various uses to which their newfound Skills could be put, we increasingly found that younglings who weren’t part of the groups that we were teaching began to gather to watch, eager to join in with us when we laughed and hopeful of witnessing behaviour that they could emulate.
After watching Justin demonstrate the harvesting of root vegetables using earth-singing by lifting a not inconsiderable amount of earth and depositing it on Marvel’s foot, the younglings’ response was to lift an even larger amount of earth, hold it hovering above the entrance to the settlement until Justin walked underneath it, and then let it drop on his head.
When Marvel demonstrated the use of tree-singing for the rapid growth of crops by singing a tree sapling to where Rowena sat in discussion with some older Kindred so that it tickled the back of her neck, he woke the following morning to find that the younglings had silently sung the branches from the trees above us down to form an almost impenetrable barrier around him as he slept.
And following Aleks’s demonstrations of using fire-singing safely so that it wasn’t used to create bigger fires than intended – which he demonstrated by bringing the banked fire near which Holly sat to full flame with a roar, making her jump and spill her drink down her front – he found that he was constantly jumping out of his skin as fires that were either banked or dying down exploded into flames when he walked near them.
