Travellers #1

by Jack Lasenby

  I tried to keep my news a secret that night, but burst out with it. Hagar chuckled. “Now find the nest,” she said. “Mak and Bar will watch the animals. I can keep an eye on them.”

  I wanted to ask how she could work the dogs from her loom under the cliff. She smiled. She always knew my thoughts. Putting her fingers to her mouth she whistled so loud it bounced off the cliff. Mak and Bar leapt, and Nip stared.

  “When I was a girl I led my own flock. I had my own dog.”

  “Why did you stop?”

  “Babies to look after, wool to spin, rugs to weave, food to cook. I liked being a shepherd. Then, suddenly, I was a woman, and I wanted to be that, too.”

  I thought of Rose leading her flock across the Narrower Ford. That was what happened to her, too; she became a woman. Not a day passed that I did not think of Rose. I had learned much from Hagar, but Rose was my sister. She made me.

  “If you find a younker you’ll have to stay in camp more,” said Hagar. “That’s why I wanted you to explore the grass, find how far it goes. You won’t be able to spend much time with the animals, not once you’re training a hawk.

  “You’ve got to make it rely on you yet be its wild self. You can break a hawk’s heart. It will live with you a while, but you’ll never tame it. They’re crazy, hawks.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Wait till you see its mad eye. They’re killers. That’s what they know.”

  Hagar was sorting skeins, matching colours, laying one against another. Her blanket showed the beginning of a huge diamond pattern. She saw me look.

  “We’ll put up another big loom. You can start a blanket while the hawk’s getting used to you. But first you’ve got to find the nest.”

  I looked up at the top of the cliffs. Across the lake the mountains shrugged black shoulders against the stars. They seemed far distant, our days in their high basins. I wondered what a hawk sees as it flies above them.

  Next morning I climbed a series of grassy benches. Hagar stepped out and waved. I scrambled higher. Because I was pulling myself up with my hands as much as using my feet, I could climb as well as somebody with two good legs. It was only on the flat my gammy leg was a nuisance.

  I could have gone up the zig-zag between the bluffs but it was more fun climbing the narrow ledges of turf. Then came a face where the only way was a chimney in the rock. I put my back against one side, my feet against the other, shifted my shoulders, wriggled my behind, walked my feet up the wall opposite, and shifted my shoulders again. There was a long slant to a vertical bluff, then the grassy brow, the knuckled top of the cliff. Hagar could not see me now.

  The sheep were feeding in a dark swale, one of those wet patches on the plain of grass below. The goats spread outside, and Bar and Mak lay outside them again, dots on the green. One of the dogs rose and turned back a goat that had gone too far. “Jokey, I bet.”

  The lake was a blue sheet scored by white lines. The mountains lofted sharp on the bright air. There was the island and the bluffs the other side. I rolled back from the edge. Something about the lake scared me still, as if it was trying to drag me off, to fall and bounce and smack and tumble so somebody below might hear a shriek and see a boy falling out of the sky. I crawled back, not looking at the lake.

  Into some scrub along from the bluff I worked. When it came it was as I had expected it, the buffet to the side of my head, the thump of air its wings shoved against me. It turned on an invisible hinge, dived again. I rolled under branches. Just as well I had not brought Nip in the front of my tunic. There were now two hawks jinking and screeching through the trees.

  I stood holding a branch over my head, and they flung through, fluttering the leaves. Wing-tips and talons rattled. Eyes flashing they curveted, screamed. When I ran along an open stretch one bird broke off but the other followed. I crawled through a thick patch, and it lunged between branches. Fierce hawk!

  Long after it abandoned me I returned, hunching to where I could see the male flying in and out, disappearing beneath a cornice. Once it carried something the size of a baby rabbit, perhaps a rat; another time a small bird.

  Hagar kept working as I limped into camp. “Well?”

  “I found the nest.”

  “Good.”

  “I saw the father carry in a young rabbit or a rat. They chased me, Hagar.”

  “They could knock you off the cliff.”

  “I stuck a branch above my head.”

  “You’ll need a hat if you’re going to steal a chick.”

  “They’re fierce.”

  “Brave little hawks!” Hagar’s knuckly old fingers worked busily. The diamond pattern of her rug was echoed in shades from cream through yellow to a deep red.

  I sighed. “I wish I could draw those colours.”

  “You’d better make a perch. It’s going to be standing on it a long time, so make it a good one.”

  At a little distance from our cave, under the overhang, there was a twin-trunked sapling. I trimmed it and lashed a straight stick across. It was high enough for a hawk to feel safe, close enough for me to reach. All I had to do was steal a chick. I stepped back, looking up at the airy summits, tripped, and fell backwards into the creek. Hagar had her back to me, but I heard her snigger.

  Chapter 16

  Dragon

  The cornice was a protruding rock that capped several boulders. Under its shadow something grey tottered and toppled. This was the third time I had spied upon the eyrie.

  When the mother left the nest it was usually at a signal from the father who passed food to her in flight. Only once did she miss it. If he had something as big as a rabbit he flew it right into the nest and took off again while the female mounted the corpse, ripping and feeding bits to each chick in turn.

  Hagar’s bag around my neck, I waited half the morning before the mother flew away. I tied on the hat with its mask. Where the cornice jutted I had to swing myself around. A moment’s terror, feet scrabbling over space, fingers clutching, and I was there.

  The nest was a scrape among stones. Two chicks with huge, grey claws, grey down, skull-like heads, and enormous dark eyes. I put the biggest in my bag where it bumped like my heart and cried loud and angry.

  I was outstretched, sidling the jutting rock, when the hawks punched my back. They screamed and struck my head, but the hat and mask saved me. I was scared of squashing the chick between chest and rock. Both feet kicked air. I swung from my hands. My right one slipped. One big toe found a niche. I pushed off that and grabbed blind. Two fingers found a knob of rock, and I swung around the stone protrusion and sidled the face to the safety of a ledge. There I bent and vomited, spitting and spitting the sour taste from my mouth, then scuttled, hunched over the clamouring bag.

  They got me on the back of my legs and the soles of both feet as I crawled along the tunnel under the scrub. I kept going, triumphant, crying. I left the shelter and skipped along the back of the cliffs, swinging my leg, screaming and waving a branch. Both hawks dived beneath its sweeps and struck my hands. One disappeared, the mother. I kept going.

  It didn’t matter that the father followed me along the cliffs, down the zigzag, through the trees. I yelled to dull the pain. When I sat to catch my breath the chick squalled again.

  Hagar slipped cords around its feet. Their other ends were tied to the perch. “Leave it to calm down.”

  There were chunks off both hands, strips off the back of my legs and feet. They stung but I was still excited.

  “Just as well your eyes were hidden, Ish. They’d have blinded you.” Hagar washed the bites and scratches with yellow sulphur powder in hot water. She wiped them with jelly from the base of a flax leaf. “That’ll keep them clean so they heal. It’s not just a younker. Much bigger and you would have been too late. What colour was the mother?”

  “She had yellow round her beak and eyes. The tip of her beak was dark and curved. And I saw nostrils, holes. Dark-reddish feathers, and all flecked down the front. They screamed and dived
into me.”

  “Those hawks!”

  “Should I give it something to eat?”

  “Let it settle. It’ll get hungry, and you can feed it then.”

  The chick fell off the perch. It rocked and hunched skull-like with its grey beak, down, and feet, its huge dark eyes. It was uglier than anything I had seen, and I loved it!

  Feathers sprouted through the down. At my stare it scrambled and cried wildly, and I remembered not to look at it directly. In the late afternoon it gulped a bit of rabbit’s liver, blinked unsteady on its big feet, gulped a bit more.

  “Don’t stuff it,” said Hagar. “The trick is to give it enough but keep it peckish, and it will look to you.”

  “What about water?”

  “They eat so much meat, they don’t drink a lot. Chop open the rabbit’s head and give it the brains. It’ll like that.”

  I was afraid it would starve. It took a while to learn to feed it a little, every now and again, as Hagar had said. Then I remembered how the mother fed the chicks.

  Sometimes it snatched at a morsel, but it often drew close its plumage and shrugged low. Its head reminded me of the lizards that live among rocks. When Hagar asked what I was going to call my hawk, I thought of the giant winged lizards that destroyed Orklun. “Dragon!” I told her.

  His feathers grew. The down disappeared. His head was all eye and scrolled beak. He accepted me, took food from my hand. I kept an eye on the animals and worked on a big loom beside Hagar’s, trying to make a rug as good as the ones she wove so fast. As Dragon got used to me I moved my loom closer to his perch. I drove a few sheep and goats past, getting him used to them. It was Hagar who suggested gentling him that way.

  I stitched a heavy glove and walked with Dragon on my fist. Once or twice he gripped bare skin, and I yelped. He dived off my hand, flapping, complaining, and I drew him back by the cords. His rages were appalling. I told him I never lost my temper like that.

  I talked and stroked him, not with my hand because Hagar said that would take the oil off his feathers. What he liked was a hawk’s feather. I stroked him down his legs and over his talons, and he closed the glare of his eye.

  We walked around the animals, Dragon watching everything that moved. He was still uneasy with Nip who looked straight into his eyes and barked. Occasionally Dragon stared upwards, his claws closing on the glove as he watched a skylark hovering, dropping, dropping, dropping, spilling song down the sky. I knew hawks took larks and pipits.

  Dark feathers covered his back and wings. Above his eyes was a line of light-coloured feathers; below his beak, a thicker band. Under his body were softer feathers, russet, almost the reddish-brown we dyed our wool. His legs were light-grey, talons black.

  Hagar said to whistle always before giving him food. He soon learned what it meant, shuffling and hopping to the glove. I increased the distance with longer cords, whistling further off. He took a flap or two to reach me. I kept accustoming him to my whistle, its three notes. And he was learning.

  He flew further and further to my glove. He would take his reward and straddle it, tense with appetite, beak clotted with meat. I hoped he might come just to the whistle, but he always looked for food. The glutton would stuff himself with a whole rabbit’s leg if I let him. Twice I let him feed on, and he nearly choked and was bad-tempered afterwards.

  “In a way you’re keeping him immature,” Hagar said. I was helping her on the big loom. “That’s what we do with animals we tame. They lose something when they rely on us. In the wild he’d know how much to eat.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I’ve lived longer than you, that’s all.”

  “You know more than anyone except my father.”

  “Hawk knew a lot,” said Hagar. “And he was a just man.”

  “What’s just?”

  “Before your father we had an unjust leader. His animals got the best grass. He took the young women for his wives, threw them out when he tired of them. He was cruel, unfair.”

  “What happened?”

  “One morning he did not wake.”

  “Why not?”

  “People said it was a punishment from the Gods of the Cave. They said the Stag Man and the Dog Man punished dishonest leaders.”

  “And did they?”

  “No.”

  “Who killed him then?”

  “His old wife was jealous of the younger women he kept bringing into their tent. Perhaps she put something in his food.”

  “Poison?”

  “What he did was wrong. The leader of the Travellers has to be just, like your father.”

  “You should have been the leader, Hagar.”

  She shook her head. A long rug was wound around the beam at the other end of the loom. She was showing me how to finish with a row of tassels.

  “Here.” Her hands went over mine and slipped the threads so they tied off evenly. Despite the wool and its oil her skin felt dry. Her hands looked like Dragon’s claws, but I pushed that idea into the back of my mind. I didn’t want to hurt Hagar.

  “A woman couldn’t be leader. I was busy having children, raising them, telling my husband what to do when he forgot.”

  “Do you mean…?”

  “He didn’t always remember things. But people wanted it to come from him always, not from a woman.”

  “That’s silly,” I said. “We’re the Travellers, now, and you’re our leader.”

  Hagar smiled.

  “You mean your husband was the leader somebody poisoned?”

  She bent over the tassels.

  “You killed him?”

  “They were going to hamstring him, leave him behind. That was the punishment for an unjust leader.”

  “Would you have stayed with him?”

  “I was still young, strong, with a baby to look after. I knew a lot about weaving, dyeing, plants for medicines. I was too valuable. They would have made me travel on. He had hurt me, too, but I didn’t want him to suffer his way to death alone, listening, watching our dust vanish. Then the bite of the cold, the wild dogs…” She tied another knot. “So I poisoned him.”

  “When someone was hamstrung and left behind, were they given anything to defend themselves?”

  “Not a stick. Not a stone. No fire.”

  I stroked Dragon’s breast with the feather. He wore a red cap that cut off the light so he sat quiet. “Wouldn’t it have been kinder to put a hood over their heads so they couldn’t see?”

  “Part of the punishment,” said Hagar, “was seeing the Travellers walk away.”

  “Weren’t you allowed to look back?”

  “You might be hamstrung, too.”

  “Did it keep the leaders honest?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “Was Karly like his father? Was that why he was cruel?” Hagar turned both hands, palms uppermost. “Is that why he hated my father? Because he was the next leader?”

  Hagar shrugged.

  “Is that why he drove me out, why he came back to kill me?”

  “We’ll roll this rug,” she said, “and set up the loom for another. You know how to do that. Take Dragon for a walk. Bar and Mak like to see you come around and speak to them. They get lonely just like us.” Hagar nodded her head which grew more like a skull, I thought, like Dragon’s head when he was a chick, all eyes and beak.

  Chapter 17

  A Skylark for the Journey

  There was plenty for all at the Hawk Cliffs. I tickled, speared, and shot trout with arrows. I set lines for them. Hagar showed me how to make a net, the simple knot, and the clever needle with its middle prong. It caught more trout than we could eat. We hung them from the roof of a small cave and kept a smoky fire going.

  “They’d last well into winter,” said Hagar, “only we won’t be here then.”

  I looked at their rows of smoky gold and red and wanted to stay at the Hawk Cliffs for ever.

  One afternoon Dragon teetered on the glove as I knelt and looked into the la
ke’s deep, reflective eye. Across a blue sky small white clouds swam lazily. Their reflections drifted across the lake. I wondered how to draw them. Did the sky reflect the water? A trout jumped, and the clouds rippled. Circles followed each other out from the splash, losing their edge, becoming bulges rather than ripples. The surface smoothed again to small white clouds, travellers across a blue plain that stretched to the foot of the mountains.

  I tied Dragon to a branch and waded, leaning forward till the water swung my feet up behind. The lightness it gave me! My lame leg floated as easily as the good one. I stared at the little clouds, and kicked until my head beached between smooth stones.

  Nip whined beside Dragon whose head cocked under a bright cap. When I swam out to deep water Nip stood and barked. She was usually happy to lie near Dragon, and I would see them looking at each other, Nip lifting her head, gazing at the hawk which tilted its head and stared back. It was when I carried Dragon that Nip got jealous, especially when I stroked his neck or breast, his terrible talons. She whined and pushed against my leg, and I talked to her in a different voice, one for her alone. I was careful, too, to keep Dragon’s whistle different from the dogs’. Now I whistled Nip, and she swam to me, grinning because Dragon could not follow.

  We paddled into our creek’s milder current. A sudden westerly blew. My tunic was warm from its boulder. The reflected mountains and clouds vanished, serried in white-capped waves, steely light.

  Yellow-beaked, cold-eyed, two huge black and white birds hung above and rattled an evil call until Dragon plunged off and fought his leash. Crooning, humming, I settled him and followed the animals home.

  “Black-backs nest around the lake,” said Hagar. “They’ll land on the water, tempt a dog to swim after them, and try to drown it. They’ll peck the eyes out of a lamb or anything helpless. A hawk kills clean.”