The Days of the Deer

by Liliana Bodoc

  The Days of the Deer

  Liliana Bodoc was born in Santa Fe in 1958. She took a Modern Literature degree at the National University of Cuyo. Her narrative works, including the fantasy trilogy Los Saga de los Confines, were published by Grupo Editorial Norma and became bestsellers in Latin America. The first volume of her most recent saga, Memorias Impuras, was published in 2007 by Planeta/Argentina.

  Published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2013 by Corvus,

  an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Originally published in Spanish by Grupo Editorial Norma as

  Los Días del Venado.

  Copyright © Liliana Bodoc, 2000

  Translation copyright © Nick Caistor, Lucia Caistor Arendar 2013

  The moral right of Liliana Bodoc to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  The moral right of Nick Caistor and Lucia Caistor Arendar to be identified as the translators of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 84887 027 7

  E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 016 9

  Printed in Great Britain.

  Corvus

  An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London

  WC1N 3JZ

  www.corvus-books.co.uk

  Contents

  Introduction

  Part One

  1 The Return of the Rains

  2 The Warrior’s Night

  3 Where Is Kupuka?

  4 A Traveller

  5 Two Visitors

  6 An Important Conversation

  7 ‘I Can Still Hear the Rain Before You!’

  8 The Prisoner’s Song

  9 From Minstrel to Messenger

  10 Ancient Events

  11 Farewell!

  Part Two

  12 Heading North

  13 The Carpet on the Sand

  14 Taken Prisoner

  15 The Day the Ships Set Sail

  16 In a Strange House

  17 The Meeting of the Great Council

  18 The Sideresians

  19 The Feet of the Deer

  20 The Return of Kupuka

  21 The Mark of Their Footsteps

  22 Along the Paths of the Fertile Lands

  23 The Awakening

  Part Three

  24 The Deer and the Fire

  25 The Plumed One

  26 The Blood of the Deer

  27 The Son

  28 The Brotherhood of the Open Air

  29 Cacao

  30 In Human Tongues

  Introduction

  It all took place so many Ages ago that not even the echo of a memory of the echo of a memory remains. No trace of these events has survived. Even if archaeologists dug deep down inside caves buried beneath new civilizations, they would find nothing.

  It took place in the most remote of times, when the continents had a different shape and the rivers ran a different course. In those days, the hours passed slowly for the Creatures; the Earth Wizards roamed the Maduinas Mountains in search of medicinal plants, and on the long nights in the southern islands it was still common to see the lukus dancing round their tails.

  I have come to bear witness to a great and terrible battle. Possibly one of the greatest and most dreadful ever fought against the forces of Eternal Hatred. All this happened as one Age was drawing to a close, and another fearful one was spreading to the most distant places.

  Eternal Hatred was prowling around the edges of the Real World in search of a shape, a tangible form to allow it to gain entrance to the Creatures’ world. It lay in wait for a wound it could crawl inside, but none of the Creatures’ faults was large enough for it to gain a footing.

  Yet since everything can happen in Eternity, an act of disobedience became a wound, a scar that created enough space for hatred to come into being.

  Everything began when Death, disobeying the law not to create any other beings, made a creature out of her own substance. This was her son, whom she loved. It was thanks to this ferocious offspring, born in violation of the Great Laws, that Eternal Hatred found its voice and a presence in this world.

  Stealthily, on the summit of a forgotten mountain in the Ancient Lands, Death brought forth a son she called Misáianes. At first he was no more than a puff of air his mother incubated between her teeth. Soon he became a viscous heartbeat. Then he cawed and howled. When he laughed, even Death trembled with fear. Afterwards, he sprouted feathers, and flew against the light.

  Misáianes’ vassals were numerous beyond counting. Beings of all kinds bowed before him, obeyed his every word. Yet every kind of being also fought against him. In this way, war spread to every forest, river, and village.

  When Misáianes’ forces crossed the sea that lay between them and the Fertile Lands, Magic and the Creatures united to confront them. These are the events I will now recount in human tongue.

  Part One

  1

  THE RETURN OF THE RAINS

  ‘It will be tomorrow,’ Old Mother Kush said softly when she heard the first peals of thunder. She laid down the yarn she was spinning and went to the window to look out into the forest. She was not worried, because in her house everything had been properly prepared.

  A few days earlier, her son and grandsons had finished sealing the roof with pine resin. The house was stocked with sweet and savoury four, and with huge mountains of squashes. The baskets were filled with dried fruits and seeds. There were enough logs in the woodshed to burn through a whole winter. She and the girls had also woven thick woollen blankets that were now heaped, a colourful labour of love, in a corner of the hut.

  As had happened every winter in living memory, another long season of rains was returning to the land of the Husihuilkes. The storms came from the southern seas, brought by a wind that spread heavy clouds over the Ends of the Earth and left them there until they had exhausted themselves.

  The season began with showers that the birds watched from the mouths of their nests, the hares from their burrow entrances, and the Husihuilkes from their low houses. By the time the downpours began in earnest, no being was outside its refuge. The lairs of puma and vixen, nests in the trees or on the mountain tops, underground caves, dens hidden in the bushes, even worm holes were protected. So too were the Husihuilkes’ houses, thanks to a store of knowledge that taught them how to make the best use of all the forest and the sea could offer. Here at the Ends of the Earth, the Creatures faced the wind and rain with strategies almost as old as the elements themselves.

  ‘The rains will start tomorrow,’ Kush repeated. She began to hum a farewell song. Kuy-Kuyen and Wilkilén crept closer to the old woman’s warmth.

  ‘Start again so that we can join in,’ the eldest of her granddaughters begged her.

  Kush hugged the girls, pulling them towards her. Together they began to sing again the song the Husihuilkes chanted whenever the rainy season returned. This was the warm, broken voice
of the southern people; a voice unaware that soon the ones who were to bring these bountiful years to an end would be putting to sea.

  The women sang as they waited for the men to appear along the path from the forest, loaded with the last provisions. Old Mother Kush and Kuy-Kuyen sang as one, never making a mistake. Wilkilén, who had only lived through five rainy seasons, had trouble keeping up with the words. She looked gravely at her grandmother, as though promising to do better the next time. The Husihuilke women sang:

  Until we meet again, deer of the forest.

  Until then, run and hide!

  Fly far away, bumblebee, rain is on its way.

  Father Hawk, make sure

  That you protect your young.

  Friends, beloved forest,

  We will meet again when the sun

  Shines on our house once more.

  The three faces peering out of the hut had dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes.

  The Husihuilke people had been forged in battle. That was why their men were so tough; and the long periods of waiting had made their women caring and patient. The only decoration they wore was sea coral threaded into their plaits and headbands, or fashioned into arm-bands and necklaces. Their garments were light-coloured tunics reaching below the knee, sandals, and cotton or warm woollen shawls depending on the season. This was how the grandmother and her two granddaughters looked now, generous with the beauty of their people.

  ‘The lukus! There are the lukus!’ shouted Wilkilén. ‘Old Mother Kush, look at the lukus!’

  ‘Where can you see them, Wilkilén?’ her grandmother asked.

  ‘There, over there!’ she said, pointing straight at a huge walnut tree growing halfway between their house and the forest.

  Kush followed her gaze. It was true: two bright tails were curling and uncurling round the tree trunk, as if seeking attention. One was red, the other a faint yellow. Their colour was a sign of their age: the older they became, the whiter their tails shone.

  Kush was not surprised. The lukus were coming for honey and squash cakes, just as they had done every evening during the dry season since the day of Shampalwe’s death. Kush put two fresh cakes in a basket, left the hut and headed for the walnut tree to leave them their cakes and then return. The lukus never spoke to her; they had never done so in all the five years they had been visiting.

  They never made friends with mankind, and whenever possible avoided them. They would sink down onto their four legs and run away as fast as they could. But if they were caught by surprise deep inside the forest, they would remain completely still, heads tucked down and claws gripping the earth, until the human being passed by. Yet despite this reluctance, it was the lukus who had brought Shampalwe back to the house, already close to death from the snake bite, and it was they who had laid her gently under the walnut tree. That was the first time Kush had seen a luku’s eyes from close to. ‘There was nothing we could do for her,’ the eyes had told her. Now Old Mother Kush was about to see a similar expression on their faces.

  The old woman had put the basket down on the ground and was about to go back to the girls when a whisper from one of the lukus kept her there. Recovering from her astonishment, she whirled round, thinking she was being ambushed. Instead, she found herself staring into the eyes of the yellow-tailed luku, who was gazing at her in exactly the same way as the other one had the day Shampalwe died. Realizing that sorrow was on its way to them once more, she faced it with the calmness learnt from her people.

  ‘What is going to happen now?’ she asked.

  The luku remained silent, its huge eyes filled with foreboding.

  ‘Talk to me, brother luku,’ Kush implored it. ‘Tell me what you know. Perhaps there is still time to remedy things.’

  In reply, the luku turned back towards the forest, and leapt away on all fours. Oblivious to the preoccupations of its elders, the younger one was not going to let the feast go to waste. It was only after he had scooped up both the cakes in the basket that he sped off to join his companion.

  Kush walked very slowly back along the path to the hut. As she walked, that day long ago when Shampalwe died and Wilkilén was born flashed through her saddened mind.

  Shampalwe had married Dulkancellin shortly after the Festival of the Sun. She was from Wilú-Wilú, a village close to the Maduinas Mountains. Her heart was the sweetest of all those that beat at the Ends of the Earth.

  ‘When she sings you can see the pumpkins grow,’ people who knew her would say.

  After the wedding came the good years. Dulkancellin went hunting with the village men. He took part in all the border patrols and came back safely from two battles against other clans. Kush and Shampalwe shared the household tasks. Children were born. Shampalwe and Dulkancellin had five of them; all were a delight to Old Mother Kush. First came two boys: Thungür and Kume. Soon afterwards, Kuy-Kuyen was born. Then Piukemán, the third boy. Then at the height of summer, Wilkilén was born. Kush liked to look at each of them in turn, because in one way or another they all reminded her of Shampalwe’s beauty and grace.

  On the day Wilkilén was born, Shampalwe left the children in their grandmother’s care and set out for Butterfly Lake. She wanted to bathe in its waters, renowned for helping new mothers recover strength in their bodies and serenity of mind. It was from there that the lukus brought her, with still just enough life left in her to kiss her children and beg Kush to look after them on her behalf. Shampalwe did not breathe her last until Dulkancellin returned from hunting fresh meat to celebrate the new birth. In the mouth of a lakeside cave, a grey serpent of a kind not seen for years in those parts had bitten Shampalwe on the ankle. She had been picking flowers, and still had them in her hands when the lukus found her.

  ‘Flowers that did not grow from any seed,’ muttered Kupuka the Wizard.

  The Earth Wizard tried to bring her back to life with remedies he had found in forest and mountain. But neither Kupuka’s medicines, Shampalwe’s youth, nor the pleas of a man who had never pleaded before were able to save her. She died that same day, as the sun was setting over the Ends of the Earth.

  That was why Kush had asked the lukus to come and receive a gift at sunset whenever it was possible to venture out.

  ‘That is how we can show them our gratitude, and it will help you remember your mother,’ she told her grandchildren.

  The lukus had left. Kupuka left as well. Dulkancellin fired his arrows at the stars. And, under Kush’s protection, the children grew.

  The old woman heard distant laughter. Kuy-Kuyen and Wilkilén were laughing at her because she was so absorbed by her memories that she had come to a halt a few feet from the house door, her arm stretched out in front of her.

  ‘That’s enough ... there’s more work to do,’ Kush said as she walked into the house. She was pretending to be angry, but the children were not fooled.

  ‘What happened with the lukus?’ asked Kuy-Kuyen, who had inherited her grandmother’s ability to see beneath the surface of things.

  ‘What could have happened?’ she answered, trying to convince herself. ‘Nothing . . . nothing.’

  Wilkilén spoke in her own way:

  ‘I think they sang you their song, grandmother Kush. The song of the lukus ... I can sing it too.’ She tried to whistle like them, hopping from one foot to the other. Little Wilkilén had inherited the gift of happiness from her mother.

  Before their grandmother could tell them to get back to their weaving, they heard familiar voices approaching the hut. Dulkancellin and his sons were returning from the forest. With them they brought more firewood, aromatic herbs to burn in the long nights of story-telling, and the last hare of the season, which they would eat as soon as Kush could prepare it.

  The men did not head straight for the house. First they stacked the new logs on the pile, sorting them according to size. Then they went over to a low circular stone building. This was where they washed and rubbed a light oil over the scratches they had got in the forest.

  The fi
rst to enter the hut was Dulkancellin, followed by his three sons.

  Outside, night closed in. The tall trees drove their roots into the ground. The wind started to blow, bringing with it a flock of crows, and everything turned dark.

  Cooked in broth, the hare lay steaming on a stretched animal hide. Hare with herbs, corn bread and cabbage was that day’s meal for the warrior and his family.

  In the firelight their seven faces looked dream-like. The Husihuilkes ate in silence. It was only once they had all finished that Dulkancellin spoke:

  ‘Today in the forest we heard Kupuka’s drum calling to his brothers. We also heard the reply they sent. I could not understand what their message was, but the Wizards’ drums sounded very strange.’

  The name of Kupuka always intrigued the elder children and silenced the younger ones.

  ‘Which direction did the sound come from?’ Kush asked her son.

  ‘Kupuka’s drum came from the volcano. The other one sounded fainter. Perhaps it came from ...’

  ‘The island of the lukus,’ said Kush.

  ‘Did you all hear it too?’ Dulkancellin’s question remained unanswered because Old Mother Kush was once more recalling the look on the face of the yellow-tailed luku.

  ‘Kush!’ her son called to her. ‘I’m asking you if you heard the drum here too.’

  The old woman came out of her sombre reflections and apologized, but she did not want to tell Dulkancellin what had happened earlier that evening.

  ‘We didn’t hear anything,’ she said, quickly adding: ‘I like to guess what the future may hold.’

  ‘Tomorrow I will go and visit Kupuka in the Valley of the Ancestors. I’ll talk to him,’ said Dulkancellin, signalling that the conversation was at an end.

  Each year, just before the rains started, the Husihuilkes assembled in the Valley of the Ancestors to say farewell to the living and the dead. It was an occasion to eat, sing, and dance. Above all, it was an opportunity to barter their surplus goods for anything they did not have enough of, so that they would get through the rainy season. A day for exchanging abundance and scarcity so that everyone would have all they needed.