Travellers #1

by Jack Lasenby

  That evening Dragon stood over a rabbit’s liver, mantling and guarding as if somebody might take it away. I told him, “You can help guard the animals from the black-backs.” Beak flecked, he ignored me and stripped meat.

  Now when I took off the cords and whistled, he leapt to my glove, a hop and a single wing-beat, unaware he was free. I fed him a tidbit. Twice more I whistled, rewarded him with liver and brains, and returned him to his perch. He sulked immediately, appetite dulled. “I used to have a bad temper,” I told him, “just like you.”

  He came greater distances till I could whistle from a hundred paces and he would arrow through the air, glaring, as if to fly through the centre of my eye. Then he would be cuffing air against my face, talons gripping the glove, mewing for his bloody reward.

  Once as I carried him a big rabbit ran. Fingers trembling I unlaced Dragon’s hood. The rabbit bounced into the scrub. Dragon might have mistaken it for a dog. When another got up he ignored it. It disappeared, his talons tightened cruelly, and I almost shrieked.

  Together next day we saw a rabbit start. My hand was shoved back, and Dragon was striking through the air, round-tipped wings chopping, hitting a tussock, hopping, glaring. I got him on the glove. His heart beat enraged. I had meat hidden but did not feed him. We walked on. He squirted shit hard against my tunic.

  He had several flights at rabbits. Twice he took off after small birds. Each time he missed but got closer. His parents would not have rewarded him. Nor did I. He returned at my whistle. Just once he landed in a small tree and sat ignoring me. When I waved a strip of meat he came down like a spear, snatching, gulping.

  One morning as Dragon was watching the wind lifting the grass like a wave through water, a young rabbit ran and stopped. I turned myself around and prayed he would see it, but he turned his head back to watch the grass lift and drop again. The rabbit scratched with a hind leg, and Dragon floated softer than a shadow crossing my hand.

  He flew into a tussock, bounced, almost smashed into the scrub, but pinned the little rabbit, talons and beak. When I ran to him, he struck at me, would not withdraw his grip. I got him on the glove, fed him the liver, and he gulped and splashed blood in my face. I revelled in his wild satisfaction.

  Home I carried him, crooning his song, whistling quietly, and split the head so he might gorge himself on the brains. He blinked at me over the top of a distended crop. I avoided his gloating eye.

  Hagar listened to my description as she had listened to every step of my first deer hunt. “You have learned much,” she said.

  “About Dragon?”

  “About yourself.” She turned back to her weaving as I wondered what she meant.

  Hagar said she smelled snow. We moved the looms inside the cave and kept a fire going. The animals fed greedily. At night they were pleased to have the leaning cliff’s shelter. One morning the mountains at the head of the lake were sculpted white.

  “Time we were off,” said Hagar. “We’ve left it late, but I wanted to get this stuff woven.”

  I had begun some drawings on the wall of our cave and wanted to show the mountains under snow. “I wish we could stay here,” I said.

  The looms dismantled and stored, firewood stacked for next year, we took up the Journey. The lake jigged and sparkled. The animals had eaten little of the grass; the uplands above were hardly touched. Hagar’s nimble air was more exciting than ever. It was a good morning to be on the move, but something in me wanted to stay.

  “Travellers don’t look back,” Hagar muttered.

  “I was just looking at the weather!” I said angrily.

  The sacks of wool were now pack-loads of clothes, blankets, rugs. Dragon rode a perch on a donkey. I had woven a red cover for him over a willow framework. “Dragon’s tent,” Hagar called it, an odd-looking dome on top of the load. It meant he didn’t have to wear his hood when we were travelling. Sometimes he preferred his cage to rain and wind.

  I got behind Hagar, looked back at the Hawk Cliffs silhouetted against the sky. Along their top, wind-buffed scrub was like a column of burdened animals on the move. I was still looking back, hoping it was a sign we would return, when I heard Hagar’s cackle. She had caught me again.

  We passed walls at the foot of the lake. The Whykatto River began, and we camped above a waterfall where the river bent, green and white. Its roar grumbled away as Bar led east next morning.

  “The Metal People live by hot springs,” Hagar said.

  “If they can live there in winter, why can’t we stay at the Hawk Cliffs?” I did not look at Hagar but spoke to Dragon on my fist.

  “We are Travellers. We must go north for the Whykatto rains, then it will be time to start off once more.”

  I thought of my father and Rose, wondered what it would be like to see our winter encampment again. Dragon clenched his talons. I heard what he had already seen and cast him off. He lifted, tilted, and fell, a shooting spark, down the sunlit morning air. A puff of feathers; the high trill stopped; and Dragon carried to the ground a skylark for the Journey.

  Chapter 18

  The Swapping Ground

  “If you had any sense,” I muttered, “you’d want to stay at the Hawk Cliffs.” But Bar trotted ahead. The sheep ran and fed. Mak and Nip sniffed every rock and stump. The goats snatched leaves and tried to outwit the dogs. Although laden high, the donkeys moved fast. They seemed pleased at taking up the Journey.

  “We’ll be back next year,” Hagar said.

  I grunted, “How do you know?”

  “When there were more of us we had to travel further east. Now there’s just us, we can go back to the Hawk Cliffs.”

  “I wanted to stay there.”

  “Don’t blame me.”

  “I’m not blaming anybody.”

  “There’s no need to be bad-tempered.”

  “I’m not bad-tempered!”

  She urged her donkey on. “I’ll show her,” I grumbled to Dragon. “I won’t talk to her.” I was sick of being pushed around. At the Hawk Cliffs there was feed for months yet. And winter mightn’t be so bad. There were the hot springs and lots of firewood.

  “Mean old bitch!” I muttered at Hagar’s back. Her black scarf and dress were already white with pumice dust. “She always has to have her way.”

  For days we followed grass strips between pines. I spoke only to Dragon. Hagar was too busy singing her silly songs, telling her stupid old stories, to notice.

  “She doesn’t care,” I complained to Dragon. “I’ll fix her. I can get all the deer and rabbits I want. We don’t need her, do we?”

  One afternoon we came down a valley clouded with steam. Water seethed and bubbled. In dreadful holes boiling mud heaped itself in swollen puddles, spat, and hissed. The ground trembled as if it might crack. The air stunk of rotten eggs. I walked closer to Hagar.

  The dogs kept the animals bunched. I tugged Hagar’s dress and pointed at footprints in the dust. She looked but said nothing. We wound through thick scrub to an open space where Bar held the animals. On a circle of white sand that had been swept, we spread the rugs and blankets, the bags and mats, the tunics and jerkins Hagar had woven, even my wretched attempts at weaving.

  In the sand nearby, Hagar drew pictures of two long knives, big enough to slash branches and grass. “They’ll be handy,” she said aloud to herself. “And we need a couple of cooking pots. That boy’s skinning knife is wearing down. He’ll need another before long.” She spoke as if I wasn’t there.

  “And another axe.” She drew it. “But it’s arrowheads we need, lots, and some spear heads. And shears. That boy should have had the sense to remember them at Tayamoot.”

  She drew a copy of everything we wanted. Beside each drawing she made marks. She laid down one of our bone needles and made a row of marks. Beside an arrowhead she made rows and rows. We would have plenty of spares for hunting and fighting off wild dogs. She even laid down a deer and a rabbit snare and made marks beside them.

  “They won’t show thems
elves so long as we’re here.” She pulled herself up on her staff. I put my hand under her elbow. “I thought you weren’t talking to me!” she cackled, and I didn’t know where to look. I turned and yelled at Nip to come away from a boiling mud pool, and Hagar squawked and flapped like a dusty magpie.

  “I’ll show her!” I kicked something but stubbed my toe. Hagar squawked even louder.

  Around the Swapping Ground the scrub was thick with white fur. Steam drifted through branches from pools that heaved and sank. Bordered by vents that whined, mud that slopped, plopped, and collapsed, a track disappeared between stunted trees. I wanted to see the Metal People, but we moved to a hillside and put up the tent.

  Dragon on my glove I walked around the animals. Bar and Mak thumped their thick tails on the ground and sniffed Nip. Below I saw a lake, a grey puddle at the bottom of a bowl of hills. A dead band marked where it had shrunk.

  The rains hadn’t come here yet. We would have to keep moving to find enough grass. I wondered what the Metal People did for milk and cheese and supposed that was why they traded metal things, because they had no animals. It was no good asking Hagar about them. She would be asleep. She was old.

  I flew Dragon at a rabbit that reached shelter before he could cut it off. He tilted, slid along the edge of the scrub, and crashed on another rabbit that scuttled under a big tree. His beak was already dripping when I got there.

  He gulped the liver in his bloody way, tore at a hind leg I skinned. Nip was watching him at his messy feast when a branch snapped, and a girl fell out of the tree.

  She landed on her back, so hard all the air was pushed out. She lay grunting, unable to get her breath, the skin around her mouth blue. When I was little, and Mor punched me in the stomach, Rose tucked my knees up into my chest. It helped my breathing start again. I remembered and pushed on the girl’s feet. Her knees bent up into her chest; her gasping eased; her face got its colour back.

  “Sit a moment,” I told her. “Get your breath.” She kicked my chest hard with both feet, pulled herself up, and menaced me with a dagger. She backed away, breath rasping. Nip growled. I laid my hand on her neck. The girl slipped into the scrub, disappeared in its gloom. I hunched to get my own breath, dazzled by what I had seen.

  “Come back! I was trying to help. You can hold Dragon.” There was only the stillness of dusk, the rumble of steam.

  Hagar snored under her blanket. A morepork hooted. A distant reply. Rowing soundlessly through the dark, plucking mice off the ground, little birds off their branches. I wouldn’t like to be a mouse, or a bird, I thought, crawling beside Hagar. If it wasn’t the moreporks at night, it was Dragon during the day. Then I thought of the girl crouching in the branches like a big morepork, and that made me grin and snort. I was sorry she had gone. A real girl, like Rose! One of the Metal People nobody else had seen.

  There was no mist next morning. The place was too dry. The animals had drunk from near-stagnant pools last night, the donkeys pawing the water because it smelled sulphurous like the air. Already the goats were trying to spread through the scrub for better feed. We’d have to move them. I wanted to go to the Swapping Ground at once, but Hagar said, “Take your time, Ish. We don’t want to scare them.”

  “Why not?”

  “This is the best way, them taking our stuff, and swapping theirs. Nobody gets hurt. I’d like to see them, too, but we’ve got to do it their way.”

  I said nothing about the girl. Part of me wondered if I had dreamt her, but I could feel my chest sore. “Do they look like us?” I asked though I already knew.

  “Your father said they wear skins. That’s why they like our woven stuff, I suppose, for softer clothes.”

  “Does it get very cold here?” I didn’t tell her I had seen a girl wearing a tunic like mine.

  “Away from the hot pools it probably freezes in winter. It’s better to be a Traveller. Look how dry it is. Their lake’s a stinking puddle.” Hagar pointed north-west. “The Whykatto’s across those hills. The rains will come and there’ll be grass but up here, it’ll be bitterly cold. I don’t like the steam rumbling, and this shaky ground.”

  “They live here.”

  “Only because they don’t know any better,” said Hagar. “Travelling’s what we were meant to do.”

  “I wouldn’t mind staying in one place.”

  “Up at the Hawk Cliffs, snow will be a blanket around the lake. The winds howl from the south where the great mountain lies, the one that eats the sun each winter. Everything leaves or dies.”

  “There was enough grass to feed the animals.”

  “Under the snow?” Hagar cawed.

  I couldn’t answer that. “What’s this lake called?” I asked.

  “Rott. There’s walls by it. Come on, we’ll have a look.”

  Our goods had vanished from the Swapping Ground. In their place lay the things Hagar had drawn. Metal things, all new! A skinning knife for me, and two long slashers, hooked at the end. I swung one, and it felt well-balanced. Two leather bags filled with metal arrowheads. Spear heads. The shears were marvellously-made blades that closed on each other with a grinding sound. Hagar was looking through a wallet of needles. They had swapped us a new axe, a couple of cooking pots, and a heap of metal snares of fine wire. And there was a string of hooks.

  “Thank goodness,” said Hagar. “I forgot to ask for them.”

  I pulled a wire noose around my arm. “They’ll kill,” she said. “Look at this!” Two narrow blades pivoted on a pin. Handles made it easy to open and close the things. The blades snicked. “Little shears. Handier than a knife at the loom.”

  She raised her empty hands and called, “Thank you!” She looked silly, talking to the scrub. I grinned and joined my voice to hers. “Thank you!” We called it several times, turning and holding up our open hands. I wondered if there’d be a crack and the girl would tumble out of the scrub, but the branches did not move. A steam vent gurgled as if a rock stuck in its throat. Boiling mud glopped.

  Hagar laid down gifts of finely-woven stuff, soft shawls she said might do for somebody old or a baby. She had used goats’ hair because it made warmer cloth. We loaded the swaps and left. There was just the sound of steam, mud, and water boiling. The shaky ground.

  “Lucky we had those shawls,” said Hagar. “They gave us more than we asked for.”

  “I wonder if they look like us?” I said.

  Hagar glanced at me. “I thought they might show themselves, since there are just the two of us. They’ll be wondering if it’s a trick. We can’t tell them they’ll be short of blankets and material this year.” Bar started ahead of the animals, Mak out to one side. Dragon was riding my wrist, Nip at my heel.

  The man was tall. He wore a deer skin tunic with a knife on a belt around his waist. He looked so like my father something clicked in my throat. Hagar gasped so she didn’t hear me. He had appeared from nowhere, empty hands raised. Beside him stood the girl. She saw me and hid behind the man.

  “Go on,” he said. He was smiling as if amused by something.

  “You,” said the girl.

  The man laughed. “She wanted to give you this.” He took something from the girl and put it around my neck, a chain with a disc. I turned it up and saw Dragon’s head cut in the metal, wild eyes, cruel beak.

  “Give her the scarf from the saddle-bag,” Hagar muttered. She had woven it for herself, a floating thing to keep her throat warm this winter. “Go on!” She nodded and chuckled as I held it towards the girl.

  She crept, reaching for the scarf, but her fear was too much and she snatched it. Behind her father again she looked at Hagar who put her hand to her neck. The girl drew the scarf around her own, smiling, glancing down, pleased. She was as pretty as Rose. “Thank you!” she said. She even sounded like Rose.

  The man bent his head, and I saw it had no hair on top. I think Hagar was going to tell him we were the only Travellers left, but his skin clothes and the girl’s blended into the scrub colours. They vanished wi
thout seeming to move. Even Nip was surprised and growled.

  “Thank them!”

  “Thank you!” I held up my empty hands. “Thank you!” There was only the silent wall of scrub. I imagined I saw the girl’s face, her hand waving.

  We followed the animals around a tall hill to better grazing. I kept taking the chain off to look at the disc. Dragon ignored his image. There was a picture of the girl on the other side. I exclaimed and handed it to Hagar. I had forgotten I wasn’t ever going to speak to her again.

  “They sounded just like us,” I said.

  “What did you expect?” She turned over the disc. “They are great workers in metal,” she said, “able to cut a picture in it! Those marks, I wonder what they mean?”

  There were marks beneath the two heads, carefully cut like the pictures themselves. I hung the chain around my neck again, wondering how the girl and her father lived in that shaky valley during winter.

  “I wonder why she gave it to you?” said Hagar. The goats were trying to get past Mak. I ran whistling to help him turn them back. For the rest of that day I kept myself busy, helping the dogs, avoiding her. And I felt her sharp eyes watching, wondering.

  The ranges north-west of Lake Rott had little grass. “We have to come this way to swap,” said Hagar, “but the feed’s never much good.” The animals got enough, but it meant covering more ground. There were few deer, and wild dogs hung on our tracks. As Dragon killed, he led to where I could get enough rabbits for everyone. We were all pleased to descend from those dry hills into the Whykatto.

  “That’s rain to the north,” Hagar said one day. “I was beginning to think it would never come.”

  But the rain was light, the meagre feed unlike the rich growth I remembered in the Whykatto. We had to move camp to reach fresh grazing. “If it goes on like this,” said Hagar, “we’ll have to start early.”

  To the east a line of steep-faced hills walled the Whykatto. Fires smouldered along their tops all winter. “I’ve not seen that before,” murmured Hagar. “None of the stories talk about it. The Whykatto always has rain in winter.”