The Gathering Night

by Margaret Elphinstone

  ‘What about firewood?’ said Amets at last.

  ‘It’s spring,’ said my father. ‘The sea will let us through. You and I can take the big boat along the shore and fill it with wood from further off.’

  Amets moved the oak log further into the fire. After a while he said, ‘We’ve only three flint cores left. I doubt if there’s more than a hand-full of good blades left in them.’

  ‘Flint won’t go away,’ said my father. ‘We can get it later. There’s an old Flint Camp at Boat-Hazel River. We can go there and find what we need for now.’

  Amets was silent. Then he said, ‘I could get us much more meat at Flint Camp. I wouldn’t have to hunt alone.’

  ‘We are few,’ said my father. He held his left hand up with all five fingers spread, and his right forefinger. ‘That’s all. The brown trout are rising already. We can catch those. We can set more eel traps. And if we stay here Alaia and Haizea can still get roots from the marsh. And now the days are longer there’s nothing to stop them getting sea-roots from the shore, and more shellfish.’

  Amets looked at the ground. I felt my heart beat in my chest, but I couldn’t speak. To be eating eels and shellfish and sea-roots right through the Moon of Rushes, when a bare day’s paddle away our family would all be feasting together, with plenty of meat for everyone! I didn’t want Esti to learn the Moon of Rushes as a season of wretched hearths and scanty food. I didn’t want to go on living in our own dirt – it’s unhealthy to stay in one place too long. But much more than that, I wanted to see my aunts and cousins. I wanted something done about my mother. There she lay, even as we sat by the hearth, with her face to the wall, pretending – in my anger I was sure it was all pretence – to be asleep.

  ‘To fish for eels and river trout will be more work,’ said Amets. ‘I could take the boat and get sea-fish – I could get plenty for all of us – but you know how far I’d have to go to reach the grounds. The Moon of Rushes will rise tomorrow: we’d do better if we camped by open water.’

  ‘Amets,’ said my father, ‘I’m thinking of Nekané when I say this.’

  I lifted my head. ‘Father, I know you want to help my mother. But it might be better for her – for all of us – if we get away and leave this sad winter behind us. My aunts and cousins are expecting us! We agreed when we left Gathering Camp that we’d all meet again at Flint Camp in the Moon of Rushes! My aunts might help her more than we can.’

  ‘I might have known these women couldn’t keep quiet,’ said my father to Amets. ‘I don’t know what I did wrong, but these daughters of mine don’t seem to have learned any respect.’

  ‘I have no fault to find with your daughter,’ said Amets, smiling. ‘I’d like to hear what she has to say.’

  ‘You would, would you? That’s asking for trouble. But if Alaia gets uppity you’ll be the one that has to live with it.’ My father turned to me. ‘So you think I’m making a mistake, little daughter?’

  I looked him in the eye. ‘You’re speaking to the mother of your granddaughter, remember. Perhaps I’ve learned something, even though I haven’t lived as long as you.

  ‘I think my mother’s sickness would be cured if we took her away from this place where my brother was lost. Flint Camp would remind her of all the good things in our lives. It would be better for us too. We’ve been away from the others for long enough. We’ve suffered, and we’re tired. We need food and warmth and company. If we stay here it’ll be like a bad dream.’ I added boldly, ‘That’s what my brother would say, I know.’

  ‘Alaia,’ said my father, speaking directly to me, quite gently, ‘all that you say is true. For a woman you’re learning to be Wise. But there’s more in this than you understand.’ He sighed. ‘Yes,’ he went on, as if he were speaking to himself, ‘it will be like a bad dream, because that’s exactly what it is. Alaia, Haizea, Amets . . .’ He looked round at us all as we gazed at him in the firelight. A gust of rain swept against the house, and a spatter of drops came through the smoke hole and hissed in the fire. ‘I’ve known Nekané for longer than any of you. She’s done all that a woman should. She’s given me five children. Three lived, and she taught them to look after themselves. Two little ones died here at River Mouth Camp. We wrapped them in birch-bark and hung their bodies from a high tree when the snow was on the ground. The spirits took them home. She’s provided well for all of us. But now there’s something else . . . She’s wandering in places that I can’t see. The possibility was always there, like a seed in dry ground. And now our son’s gone . . . Alaia, you tell me that you’re a mother now and not my little daughter. Your mother lives, but you don’t need her any more. We have to let her become what she will.’

  Haizea gave a little sob. ‘But I’m not grown up. Why can’t we take Mother to Flint Camp and let her get better with our family there, and then we can all be happy again?’

  ‘You have Alaia,’ my father reminded her. ‘You’ve been lucky to have two mothers for so long. So that’s enough!’ He turned to me. ‘You’re right, Alaia. If we took Nekané to Flint Camp no doubt we could bring her back into the good world of familiar things where you and I will always dwell. But if we did that, there’s something in her that would be unsatisfied. And for our People too – what would we become, if there were no dreams? If there were no one to Go-Between?’

  ‘Go-Between’. The word was said. My hands flew to my cheeks. Amets looked up under his brows, his hands – he’d been plaiting twine in the firelight – suddenly still. Haizea looked from one firelit face to another, trying to understand. Even Amets’ dog stirred and growled in its sleep. This was the thing hanging over us, which we’d all been dreading. ‘Go-Between’. Not in our family, no! We’d lost my brother – why did we now have to put up with this?

  ‘If that’s how it is,’ said my father, ‘then for the sake of all our kin we must accept it. That’s why we must stay here for now, and let her be.’

  So my father had the last word, and after that we let the days go past when we would have launched the boat and gone down-river. Soon my mother went away again. We waited for her to come back.

  I’d never seen spring at River Mouth before. The first crumpled hazel leaves unfurled. The birches turned from purple to pale green, and the sallows put out stiff little catkins. Only the oaks still stretched their empty twigs towards the sky, while the ivy clinging to their trunks looked dusty under the new Sun. When we dug for roots the brown marshwater was almost warm against our legs. We chewed fresh garlic leaves as we walked through the woods, and when we pushed aside the scrub with our digging sticks we found violets hiding under the birches like little bits of sky. We gathered sorrel and silverweed, while all along the River toads basked in the first heat and mayflies danced above eddies of still water. Our winter fire seemed to dwindle in the Sun, and when I went inside the tent everything was dark and green as if I’d dived into deep water.

  The heat on my back was like the touch of a spirit; all day the good light fell round me in a shower of birdsong. Winter was past: we’d all lived. Esti was born – she had a name – she lived. In spite of these good things I was unhappy. Even when everything has gone well for a small family, it’s good to see the others after the long cold Moons when the family is splintered into little pieces at the winter Camps. It’s like being made whole again. That was the hardest winter I ever lived through. I felt the loss of my brother. I wanted my little daughter to find her kin as soon as possible. That was all the more important because she was Esti, and came from her father’s People. It couldn’t be too soon to plait the careful threads that would bind her to the Auk People. But my father had decided, and so we stayed on at River Mouth Camp.

  Haizea and I fished for the brown trout that were beginning to rise from the bottom of the pools. At first we lay on the banks upriver and caught them in our hands. When the Sun grew warmer we grew wary of fishing the upland pools, because these were given to the bears, not us, in Moon of Rushes. Amets killed a young bear that came out to fish in High T
arn. He set the skull in the tree next to the boar skull, so we had both Bear and Boar to watch over us.

  Haizea and I scraped the bear hide clean, and stretched it on a frame. We rubbed it with the bear’s brains and ashes, and propped it downwind of a smoky fire. We kept on rubbing it every day until the hide was as soft and white as a swan’s feather on the inside. It’s a beautiful pale-brown pelt – that winter cloak should last me all my life. Once the bears were on the move, hungry after their long sleep, Haizea and I went downstream and fished for trout with lines and baited juniper hooks, though sometimes we sneaked upriver in the early mornings and took the headless bodies of the fish the bears had thrown away. We cut hazel wands and willow withies, and made more eel traps. Every day we walked the shoreline at low tide, taking turns to carry Esti on our backs, and dug for sea-roots. Once the sap began to rise we collected strips of birchbark for tents and baskets. We scraped all the inner bark clean and mashed it up with the sea-roots. We weren’t hungry – I can’t say any better than that.

  At last my mother came back. She came into River Mouth Camp at twilight. Haizea and I had caught enough trout to fill a small basket. We were rolling them in sea-root paste, and roasting them on twigs at the outside hearth. As fast as they were cooked we were all eating them, burning our fingers and then licking the juice off them. Esti lay against my heart, eyes half open, watching the firelight flicker, suckling sleepily while I turned the fishes. She was growing firm and round, alert as a wagtail. Haizea was never far from my side, watching over her.

  Haizea said:

  I was the first to see Mother come back. I just looked up from the fire and there she was, standing at the edge of the clearing. She looked white like a dead person. I screamed. Everyone looked round. Alaia leaped to her feet, holding Esti to her heart.

  My father didn’t get up. He said in his usual voice, ‘Welcome back, wife. There’s not much to eat – these girls have managed very badly without you – but we can offer you a small fish if you’re hungry enough.’

  My mother smiled and stepped forward. The fire shed its warm light on her and she stopped looking so pale. I hadn’t seen my mother smile since my brother was lost. She said, ‘They look like fine fish to me, a very good catch for the hungry Moons. You should be grateful for your clever daughters. And grateful to the woman who taught them, too!’

  I hadn’t heard my mother speak with a laugh in her voice since my brother went away. I felt as if my real mother had been dead all this while and now she’d suddenly come alive. I jumped up and ran into her arms and hugged her. I’d missed her so much. I was only a child, remember. My mother was hugging me, and I was laughing and crying all at once. She spoke to me in the old way: ‘Yes, yes, little one. I’ve come home. It’s all right. Everything is changed and it’s going to be all right.’

  I didn’t know what she meant by ‘changed’. I don’t know if she had any idea then of the troubles that lay ahead, or of how she was going to deal with them. But this I can say: although Nekané has travelled so far and done so many things for our People, although she became Go-Between and could never be with us in quite the way she was before, she’s never again rejected her children or been unfaithful to them. After she came back she couldn’t be the sort of mother I’d had before. But that was all right: I was growing older myself, and I had Alaia, and later on Osané. So no one can say I’ve ever been short of a mother, except in that bad winter after Bakar was lost. I don’t even like to remember it. I think we should pass over all that now, and go on to what happened two Moons later, in Egg Moon, when we were at White Beach Camp.

  Nekané said:

  Before we do that, I’ll tell you how I left behind the woman I’d been before, and how I was born into a world that was new to me. I can’t say everything because it would destroy you to hear it. But the story I’m about to tell won’t hurt you, so there’s no need to look afraid.

  I’d wandered far inland, past the Long Loch and the Boat Crossing Path, and by hunters’ paths into the hills around our Mother Mountain. At River Mouth Camp the Year was already beginning to grow strong and green, but it was too young to have reached the hills. I walked back into the old Year, right up into the high snows. I climbed beyond the oaks, through the birch and scrub willow, past juniper and myrtle, up into the empty places where People are not meant to go until the Year has opened the way for them. There was no food up there. It was very cold. I didn’t care. I was thinking only of Bakar. It was in the old Year that he went away, so only by returning to the old Year could I follow him.

  When I reached the bare rock, Mother Mountain was hidden in mist and I couldn’t go any further. I squatted down, leaning forward with my arms between my knees to rest my aching back. I stayed there in the shelter of a little cliff while the cloud swirled above my head, sometimes dipping down to smother me. It was too wet and cold to sleep much. I had no food. If I’d had no purpose I’d have died, but my purpose burned inside my ribs and kept me from freezing.

  I waited for days and nights and then a dawn came when everything came clear. The cold Sun struck the rocks and made them gleam. I looked at the little cliff above me and saw a place where I could climb up. Lichen and mosses grew among the boulders, but the bloom of the new Year wasn’t on them. I was glad of that, because my purpose lay in the past. I came to the top of the hill. The air was still and cold. A greater world than I had ever seen glimmered at my feet. I saw beyond the lands of our People and the lands of our People’s kin. I saw range upon range of hills, from our own lands which we know, into the far blue where there are no more names.

  I saw the Sun cross the sky and set behind an unknown horizon. I saw the stars move through the circling Year. Yet again I saw the Sun cross the sky. I watched it travel through the high paths of summer and the small paths of winter. I saw the Moons wax and wane. I saw how the Years were born, and how they died and came back again, and how everything that lives follows the pattern of the circling Years through all the births and deaths from the Beginning.

  As I watched I died. No living creature can see all the Years and live. I died. My body lay on the hill. Ravens came and pecked out my eyes. They tore my belly open and ripped out my guts and ate them. Lynx drove away the ravens, and feasted on my stomach and my heart. Wolves came and devoured my limbs, splitting open my bones to eat the marrow. And last of all came Bear, who tipped up my skull and licked out the meat inside it.

  As the Sun sank into the far-off sea, a Dolphin came out of the water and swam through the sky. He leaped joyfully through the waves all around the high hill where my body had once lain. I heard him call. I sat up. My Dolphin swam so fast I couldn’t look into his eye, but I could see how he was watching me. His glance was kind. I heard him laugh. In my old life I thought the sea Animals spoke without making any sounds that People hear, but now I often hear their laughter.

  When my Dolphin dived into the deep again, sadness pierced me through, opening the wound below my ribs which I got when I lost my son. I watched my Dolphin go, and from the ripples of his dive I saw Swan rise into the air, flapping his wings to get free of the water. I’d seen that Swan before. In the world I’d left, I’d seen that Swan rise from the still water at River Mouth Camp. I hadn’t known it was carrying Bakar’s soul out of our world. Now I understood. Swan told me that while Bakar was out of the world Swan would accompany me instead. My Swan told me that he wouldn’t leave me – although there would be many days and nights when I saw nothing of him – until the Moon came when he would bring Bakar back to us.

  That’s how Dolphin and Swan came to be my Helpers. I know some of you have seen them just as I do. Not everyone can see them. But every one of you knows them, because, through me, they are Helpers for us all. If we hadn’t lost Bakar, they wouldn’t have found their way to us. I can’t say – none of us can say – how things might have been better or worse. All I can say is, ‘This is how it is.’ And that’s as much about my path to Wisdom as I’m able to tell you.

  SECOND
NIGHT: WHITE BEACH CAMP

  Haizea said:

  Last night we told you how Bakar was lost and my mother went Go-Between. I can see it’s going to take a while to tell this story. I don’t know how many nights you’ll have to sit here listening to us talk. The story’s like a River: it flows as it will, and no one can make it go any faster. The Go-Betweens want us to tell you everything that happened after my brother was lost. They say it’s the only way for us Auk People to decide about the Lynx names. So listen, all of you!

  In Auk Moon a cold wind came from the Sunless Sky and blew away the cloud that had settled over us. Day after day the Sun shone down. Spirits woke in the woods and marshes. The gorse turned flame-yellow as if the Sun had showered down sparks of fire that fell like snow. The air smelt heavy as honey with gorse-blossom. From the shore we saw the first Auk flying over the shining waves. Joyfully we held up our arms to greet them. Sand Island looked near enough to throw a stone across, even though it was a day’s voyage away.

  My father watched the auks flying towards the Evening Sun Sky. He looked at them for a long while. He said that now we should leave River Mouth Camp, and go to White Beach Island.

  I was so excited! The spirits who watched over my birth had been waiting for me at White Beach Camp for ten winters. Some People return to their Birth Place every Year; I don’t think those People can guess what it was like to be me the day I first returned to White Beach Camp.

  The sea only lets us through to White Beach Island in certain Years. Sometimes we go to Sand Island in Auk Moon; sometimes we move to another Camp on Mother Mountain Island. But in some Years a small cold breeze flows from the Sunless Sky and lingers under the young Sun. The wind from the sea gives way to it, taking the clouds with it. Sky and sea blaze blue, as if the stars are on fire and won’t let the daylight put them out. Islands move in closer. Little sounds from far off ring across the water, clear as pebbles in a spring. The sea flattens into a bright path that beckons us into open water, further than anyone would want to take a boat in ordinary Years. Those are the Years when our families know they’ll find each other at White Beach Camp in Auk Moon.