Viper's Daughter

by Michelle Paver

She and Naiginn had pitched camp in a sheltered hollow, and Torak had fetched his boat from behind the headland and turned it into a shelter for him and Renn. At the clan meet she’d traded the deerhide canoe for a skinboat, a smaller one, which Torak had placed on the other side of the fire to throw back the heat as they slept. He was piling rocks around it to make a wall that would cut them off from Naiginn, who’d left his own boat on the shore and tactfully carried his sleeping-sack some distance upstream.

  ‘Why won’t you even listen to him?’ Renn said crossly as she baited fishing-hooks with whelks.

  ‘Either he’s your half-brother, or he’s lying about everything. There is no in-between.’

  ‘You’re not giving him a chance. And stop needling him!’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Yes, you are. Just now when he helped carry your boat, you stood next to him so that he had to look up to you, because you’re taller.’

  Torak chuckled. ‘He didn’t like that. I think he’s vain.’

  ‘Sh! He’s coming!’

  ‘I’m going fishing,’ called Naiginn. ‘I’ll leave you two to talk things over.’

  ‘Good,’ Torak called back.

  ‘Go with him,’ said Renn. ‘You need to get to know each other.’

  ‘No, we don’t,’ said Torak.

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Naiginn with a rueful grin. ‘Besides, I’m going after halibut—’

  ‘Meaning what?’ said Torak.

  ‘Well, you don’t know how to catch them. And they’re really dangerous.’

  ‘What, like walruses?’ mocked Torak.

  ‘No,’ Naiginn said patiently. ‘But they’re strong and they fight hard.’

  He spoke with no hint of a challenge, and yet Torak bristled. ‘Changed my mind. I’ll come and lend a hand.’

  Naiginn shrugged, and Renn threw Torak a look: Try to get along!

  Out of respect for the Sea Mother, the two boys tied back their hair and made sure their clothes were clean, then washed in the shallows and rubbed their faces and hands with seaweed to take away their scent. Naiginn took much longer than Torak, he wasn’t satisfied till his clothes were spotless. He wore a beautifully made parka and leggings of bleached gutskin painted with black stripes, and seal-hide boots fringed at the tops. His weapons had to be spotless too: barbed bone harpoon, axe, knife, bow, arrows of gleaming black flint. ‘Don’t touch,’ he warned Torak. ‘Some of them are poisoned.’

  ‘I’m not a child,’ said Torak.

  Naiginn’s fishing gear was a very long coil of tough twisted kelp and a hook of a kind Torak hadn’t seen before. Bigger than his hand, it was a piece of forked driftwood with an inward-pointing bone barb tied to one fork with sinew. Naiginn had already baited it with a chunk of octopus he’d caught on the rocks.

  ‘It works like this,’ he explained, to Torak’s irritation. ‘The fish sucks in the bait, can’t swallow it and tries to spit it out. That’s when the barb snags its cheek. The trick is to make the size of the hook just right: you want to catch a halibut big enough to get its mouth around the whole hook, but not so big that it’ll flip the boat.’

  Torak thought of the man-sized fish at the clan meet with both eyes on the same side of its face. ‘Are halibut really that strong?’

  ‘Oh, many a hunter’s gone after them and never come back.’

  Torak met the pale-blue gaze and wondered if Naiginn was trying to scare him. ‘Why’s the line so long?’

  ‘Halibut feed on the Sea bottom. That’s why you need a big sink-stone, to take the hook all the way down. I tie the line around it with a special knot, so it’ll come loose at a tug and the sink-stone will stay on the bottom: that way we only have to haul up the fish.’ He studied Torak. ‘It’ll take both of us to bring one in. And be careful not to get snagged in the line—’

  ‘I have been fishing before, you know.’

  ‘Not for halibut. They fight hard, Torak. That’s what this is for.’ He held up a driftwood club. ‘Soon as we get the fish near the boat, we kill it. Can’t risk hauling it in till it’s dead, or it’ll smash us to pieces.’

  ‘Right,’ said Torak.

  He wasn’t frightened, but he was uncomfortably aware that he was about to give Naiginn a splendid opportunity to make a fool of him.

  Naiginn cast the fishing gear over the side of the boat and he and Torak settled down to wait. Between them the end of the line lay coiled like a greenish-brown snake. Bobbing on the waves and tied to the line was a seal-stomach float: if it went under, they’d know they’d hooked a fish.

  Naiginn tossed Torak a flat piece of driftwood. ‘Be ready to wind the line round that as soon as I start drawing it in. Don’t be tempted to wind it round your hand or you’ll get pulled overboard.’

  Torak threw him a look.

  It was warm in the sun. They’d left their outer clothing onshore and sat barefoot in jerkins and under-leggings. The wind was rampaging elsewhere and the Sea was calm. They weren’t far from the coast, as Naiginn said halibut liked to feed in river mouths. Torak watched Renn casting her hooks from the rocks.

  ‘Back at camp,’ said Naiginn, ‘I noticed you’ve painted your baler red. Why’s that?’

  ‘Trick I learnt from a Seal Clan boy,’ said Torak without turning his head. ‘Makes it easier to spot if you drop it overboard.’

  ‘Clever. I’ll try it.’

  Stop trying to make friends, Torak thought sourly.

  Then he relented and took his medicine horn from his pouch. ‘I’ve got earthblood. If you’ve got seal oil we could do it now.’

  Smiling, Naiginn shook his head. ‘That horn looks like red deer antler. We don’t mix Forest and Sea.’

  ‘Ah, I forgot.’ He frowned. ‘How did you know it’s red deer if you’ve never been to the Forest?’

  ‘Because I have. When I was younger my father sent me to learn the ways of the Far South. I was fostered with the Swans in the Mountains and the Aurochs in the Deep Forest. The same old man who made Renn’s bow made one for me.’

  ‘Then you must have seen a viper. You told her you hadn’t.’

  ‘It’s the truth, Torak. I was in the Forest in spring-time, the vipers hadn’t woken up.’

  Torak grunted.

  ‘I saw lots of other creatures, though. So much life, I couldn’t believe it! All those teeming souls… The hunting was much easier than what I’m used to.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Prey doesn’t leave tracks in the Sea.’

  ‘Tracking’s not as easy as you think.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was.’ He rearranged his grip on the line. ‘Renn says you’re the best tracker in the Forest. She says you could track a ghost over solid rock.’

  Torak didn’t reply. He wondered what else Renn had said about him.

  The sun climbed higher and he watched the play of waterlight through the skinboat’s translucent sides.

  ‘That’s my first memory,’ said Naiginn. ‘Watching the waves through my uncle’s boat. In our clan boys aren’t raised by their fathers but by their uncles.’

  ‘I know,’ said Torak. ‘Fathers aren’t harsh enough and you have to grow up tough. Unlike us Softbellies.’

  ‘I meant that I envy you,’ Naiginn said quietly. ‘I’m only one summer younger than you and Renn, but I look older. People in my clan age fast. I had no idea that living could be fun until I went south.’

  His tone was matter-of-fact, and Torak repressed a twinge of pity.

  ‘You don’t believe I’m her brother,’ said Naiginn.

  ‘No, but she does. That’s what counts.’

  Naiginn sighed. ‘Believe me, the last thing I want is to come between you.’

  ‘Then give up any idea of “taking” her north.’

  ‘I can’t! But, Torak, know this: whatever happens, I will help you in any way I can.’ He spoke with peculiar urgency, as if with some hidden message.

  ‘The only way you can help,’ said Torak, ‘is to forget about—’

&n
bsp; The float went under with a plop. Naiginn yanked the line. ‘We’ve got a bite.’

  He drew in the line a few lengths, then let it out again, repeating this several times so that the fish would tire itself. ‘It’s big,’ he muttered. Torak knew that already. The boat was rocking, he had to lean back to steady it.

  Hauling in the line was slow, grinding work. Naiginn’s face grew red, the tendons on his neck bulged. Twice his grip slipped. Torak offered to take over but he refused.

  Some time later, he agreed. ‘Make sure you keep the line taut,’ he gasped, ‘or it’ll steal the bait.’

  ‘I know,’ growled Torak.

  As he took the line he felt the power of the monster fish cutting into his palms. Hand over painful hand, he dragged it closer. The fish was cunning, letting the line go slack, then putting on a burst of speed and trying to dive under the boat. Torak was soaked in sweat, his arms trembling with strain.

  At last he glimpsed a huge pale-green form thrashing and twisting underwater. ‘It’s coming,’ he muttered.

  With a drenching splash the fish broke the surface, nearly flipping the boat. ‘The club!’ shouted Naiginn. ‘It’s behind you, I can’t reach—’

  As Torak groped for the club his grip on the line briefly slackened. The fish seized its chance and dived. Flinging himself backwards, Torak hauled with all his might. Naiginn had thrown down the driftwood and was snatching at the line. Torak cried out as his leg was yanked from under him: the line was twisted round his calf. He grabbed the side of the boat but the halibut was strong, it was dragging him overboard.

  Suddenly the pull on his leg went slack and he fell into the boat. Naiginn had cut the line.

  Mocking waves slapped the sides as Torak pushed himself upright. Blood was dripping from a gash in his calf. He felt horribly foolish.

  ‘I told you to stay clear of the line!’ shouted Naiginn.

  ‘I thought I had!’

  ‘Well, it’s gone now! Your leg: are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘It’s bleeding.’

  ‘I said I’m fine!’

  In strained silence they took up their paddles and headed for the beach.

  Renn blenched when she saw Torak limping ashore. ‘Now do you understand why I left?’

  ‘How could it be your fault?’ he said. ‘You weren’t even there.’

  ‘The very day that you find me and you nearly drown!’

  ‘It was my fault, I should’ve kept clear of the line.’ He was furious and embarrassed: he’d nearly been pulled overboard by a fish. And there was no convincing Renn that it was an accident.

  Naiginn had stayed by his boat to make another halibut hook. Torak and Renn trudged without speaking to their camp, where Renn took her finest bone needle and sinew thread and sewed up his wound.

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered as she dug in her needle.

  ‘Doesn’t hurt,’ he lied.

  When she’d finished she took a little birch-bark box from her medicine pouch and smeared the wound with pine-pitch.

  ‘I’ve missed that smell,’ he said.

  ‘Me too.’ She put her hand on his knee. ‘I miss trees and hazelnuts and roast boar.’

  ‘Stewed elk and lingonberries.’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Most of all I’ve missed you,’ said Torak.

  Rip and Rek flew past making cuckoo calls, then disappeared over the fells.

  ‘Why do they keep doing that?’ said Torak.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Renn, scratching the scar on her hand. Torak told her about the scar on his forearm itching, and how Wolf kept scratching his flanks. ‘What d’you think is causing it? I’m pretty sure it’s not midges or fleas.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering if it’s my Soul-Eater marrow,’ she said. ‘You have that too. And Wolf has eaten Soul-Eater flesh.’

  ‘But why hasn’t it happened before?’

  ‘I don’t know. All I have is questions. No answers.’

  She looked unhappy. Torak took her hands in his. ‘Tanugeak told me about the riddle. We can solve it. Together.’

  ‘No, Torak, no! As long as you’re with me you’re in danger!’

  ‘You can’t seriously think I’ll go back to the Forest without you?’

  ‘But don’t you see, nothing’s changed! I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you!’

  They were still miserably arguing when Naiginn joined them and it was time to eat.

  While he and Torak had been failing to catch halibut, Renn had caught three rockfish from the shore. She’d baked two in seaweed and stewed a pile of roseroot from the fell. Torak noticed that she left most of her fish as an offering and gave him all the roseroot.

  Naiginn ate his fish raw, sucking the brains and saving the eyes and tongue till last. ‘We prefer our food raw or rotten,’ he said with a grin. ‘I never liked Forest food. All that greenstuff!’

  ‘Seaweed’s green too,’ said Torak. ‘So’s roseroot.’

  ‘Which is why I don’t eat it,’ said Naiginn. Soon afterwards he went upstream to his camp, leaving Torak and Renn alone.

  They lay side by side in separate sleeping-sacks. Torak was annoyed to find that he could hardly keep his eyes open.

  ‘You might try to get along with him,’ Renn said crossly.

  ‘He’s too eager to please and he smiles too much, but it doesn’t mean anything. And he spent ages cleaning his clothes.’

  ‘That’s out of respect for the Sea Mother.’

  ‘Rip and Rek don’t like him, they haven’t come near us. Neither has Wolf.’

  ‘Rip and Rek are moulting, it makes them sulky. Besides, you know it takes them ages to get used to strangers. Same for Wolf.’

  Torak rolled on his side to face her. ‘Naiginn’s got an odd walk, have you noticed? Sort of stiff, as if he’s still learning. And his left foot turns out, like a duck.’

  Scowling, she curled up with her back to him. ‘Well, like him or not, he’s my bone kin, so you’d better learn to get along.’

  Torak had no intention of getting along with Naiginn, but he was too sleepy to reply.

  Hail woke him hammering on the skinboat. Renn was not beside him.

  He scrambled out of the shelter. The fire was dead. Renn’s skinboat was gone. He ran down to the shore. Naiginn’s boat was gone too.

  Wolf raced up to him, panting an apology for not waking him: he’d tried, but his pack-brother had been fast asleep.

  ‘Renn!’ shouted Torak. The icy wind tore her name from his lips.

  He felt fogged and unsteady. He remembered Renn offering him roseroot but eating none herself. Oh, Renn. He wondered what she’d put in it to make him sleep.

  And she’d done something else to slow him down: she’d taken his provisions. The salmon cakes, the auroch-blood sausage he’d saved from the Forest, the White Foxes’ wind-dried whale meat. It was so like her: simple yet devastatingly effective. To survive he would have to hunt and fish, and meanwhile she and Naiginn would be getting further and further ahead.

  He wasn’t angry with her, he was angry with himself. ‘Nothing’s changed,’ she’d told him. And he’d been too intent on hating Naiginn to notice. So she’d done the only thing she could do. She’d left him again.

  What have I done? Renn thought bleakly.

  She pictured Torak waking and finding her gone. She remembered how he’d looked when he’d found her with Naiginn. His face had been inscrutable as he’d made his way towards them, his eyeshield of slitted bone emphasizing the clean-cut severity of his mouth. He would never forgive her for leaving him a second time.

  The strange thing was that she’d known she was making a terrible mistake even as she was drugging the roseroot, and waking Naiginn and stealing away. It was all wrong but she’d done it anyway. She’d felt as if she was outside herself, watching someone else.

  ‘I can’t believe you took his food.’ Naiginn had slowed and was paddling beside her, shaking his head in admiration. />
  ‘I had to,’ she muttered. ‘Making him hunt is the only way to slow him down.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no chance of him finding us now.’

  ‘You don’t know Torak. He won’t give up. And he has Wolf.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’

  ‘Wolf’s nose is so keen he could find me in a blizzard.’

  ‘Trust me, they’ll never catch us.’ Naiginn moved ahead.

  Soon afterwards he swerved out to Sea. ‘Whales feeding! Keep well clear!’

  For a while Renn forgot about Torak. The Sea was churning, the boats leaping like hares in spring-time. Kittiwakes were screaming and diving after their share as the whales slammed the Sea with enormous tails to stun their prey, flinging themselves sideways, flailing immensely long flippers and baring huge pleated bellies before crashing down with throaty pffs! of spray.

  Even after they’d left the whales behind, Naiginn remained in front. Renn had noticed that he didn’t like it if she took the lead.

  If Torak was here, she thought, we’d take turns in front. We’d have a race and he’d win. I’d splash him and we’d end up drenching each other and laughing… What am I doing, paddling after a half-brother I hardly know?

  Before her in the boat lay Tanugeak’s parting gift: a small hollowed-out sealskin with a drawstring at the neck which turned it into a neat, waterproof pack. Tanugeak had done a cleansing charm on Renn’s bow to appease the Sea Mother, and given her a gutskin quiver and arrows of light, strong whale bone. Renn was grateful; but now it struck her that with all this new gear, and her seal-hide clothes and walrus-hide boat, she had almost nothing left from the Forest.

  No wonder Wolf hadn’t come near her. She had broken up the pack. With a jolt of terror, she wondered if she would ever find her way back.

  ‘There’s a spring in that bay,’ called Naiginn. ‘We’ll go ashore and fill our waterskins.’

  Renn didn’t like the bay. It had a feeling of violence and catastrophe. The faces of the cliffs were slashed as if by a giant axe, and steam floated over the spring, which had the rotten-egg smell of bloodstone. Dipping in her hand, she recoiled with a cry: the water was hot.