The Gathering Night

by Margaret Elphinstone

  ‘Once we got to River Mouth Camp it was different. Our enemies – the enemies I’d brought on you – were far away. You needed me to hunt. You and I hunt well together. Everyone seemed happy. Osané began to smile more often. I watched her play with Esti, and I thought things might get better.

  ‘I didn’t know Osané was pregnant at first – how could she have told me? Not that she would have – everything in Osané’s life is secret. Sometimes I . . . Anyway, when Osané was sick on the boat coming round Red Point it suddenly struck me. Then your wife looked back at me from the bows, and I saw she was wondering if a man would have the sense to notice what must have been so very clear to her.

  ‘When I realised Osané was pregnant I couldn’t think about going away any more. Our son . . .’

  My voice trailed away. I found I couldn’t tell Amets how Zigor’s promise – it had sounded like a promise, or a threat – certainly as if the spirits meant that it should happen – had stayed in my mind. Zigor had told me that the names of my lost family would live again among the Auk People. When Bakar first lay between my hands I gazed into his face for a long while. Hopes and memories whirled through my mind. But all I saw in front of me was the little closed face, red and wrinkled, of a complete stranger.

  Sitting there on the riverbank, I thought about how Alaia’s father came and looked at my boy and recognised him at once. Everyone was happy. What could I have said? Also, I wanted to love my son. That, I realised, was why I couldn’t admit to Amets, or indeed to anyone, that Bakar wasn’t the child I’d hoped for. I can say this now because all that has changed.

  Amets probably knew what I was thinking. All he said was, ‘Your son is one of us. A child without its father usually dies. Also, this family needs you at River Mouth Camp. It would be very bad for all of us if you went away.’

  ‘But if it’s true that I bring bad spirits with me . . .’

  Amets spat into the River. ‘You sound like Osané’s mother! Anyway, there’s no such thing as a bad spirit. If the spirits you bring are our enemies – well then, we have to make them change sides!’ Amets reached over and slapped me on the back so hard I nearly fell in the fire; I caught his arm to steady myself. ‘At least your wife speaks to you!’ He gave me another great buffet on the shoulder. ‘Some men would say that was good. I’m not so sure – I envied you the way you had it before! Plenty of sex every night – oh, we all heard that! – and no words battering against your ears all through the day. I wouldn’t call that bad luck!’

  In this way Amets made it clear he liked hunting with me and he wanted me in his family. This made me very happy. I didn’t want to hurt them or make their lives more difficult. I didn’t want to leave them either. I had too many things now which made me long to stay.

  Haizea said:

  I was with my father when he died.

  I was glad about that. When my father said he wanted us to go to River Mouth Camp without him I cried. My father told me that when I was old I’d meet Death as my friend. He said that Death hears our first heartbeat in this world, and from then on he knows us. My father told me that neither People nor Animals want to recognise Death until he comes so close they see his face. Then they find he’s a friend who’s been waiting kindly for them all along. My father said his own name would come back into the world one day, and if I were there to meet him we’d be together again. He said it touched his heart that I was sad, but the sadness would pass as my life went on. He was right, but also wrong.

  Deer Moon waned. Amets had promised my father we’d leave before Yellow Leaf Moon. Every day long strings of geese flew over us, all heading towards the High Sun Sky. Esti was usually the first one to hear the geese honking as they flew with the wind from the Sunless Sky. ‘Geese! Geese!’ she used to shout, waving her arms towards the sky. She always made us stop whatever we were doing and watch until they’d gone.

  I told Esti about the Bird-spirit Woman far away under the High Sun Sky who keeps calling the birds to come to her, all through Gathering Moon and Deer Moon, and how when Moon of Rushes is over she lets them all fly home again. ‘The Sun tries to go with the geese,’ I told her, just as my mother had told me. ‘He sees how the geese are free to cross the sky as the seasons change, and fly far over the horizon where no one can follow. The Sun can’t do that because the Moon and Stars tell him he has to stay in his course just like they do. But every Year he does his best to fly away with the geese. He manages to go a little way – that’s why in winter he rises and sets nearer to the High Sun Sky, and in summer he moves as far towards the Sunless Sky as he can. But he can’t follow the geese, any more than we can.’

  Esti loved stories. I told her how the cuckoo and the swift always left together, before any of the other birds, but one day the swift borrowed the cuckoo’s winter cloak, and that’s why the cuckoo always calls, ‘Where is – my cloak?’, and that’s why swifts are always darting through the air, and never stop to rest, in case the cuckoo asks for its cloak back.

  ‘The geese make me sad,’ Alaia said. ‘It’s another Year gone into the dark – it’s not as if we have so many.’

  The swallows were gone too, and the starlings, and the rafts of auks in the bay. Salmon Camp was strewn with yellow birch leaves, brown oak leaves, blades of willow leaf with a tinge of green still in them, aspen, alder and rowan. I played with Esti in the leaves. We made pretend house circles and built up the walls of leaves. I helped her find acorns and hazelnuts, and she played at storing food inside her leaf houses. I knew we ought to be storing real food in our winter house at River Mouth Camp. The wind came and tore more leaves off the trees. The whitecaps on the sea chased each other towards the Morning Sun Sky. I was frightened because it looked as if the sea would never calm down enough to let us pass Fierce Point before the winter came.

  Alaia wanted to gather green rushes to make new baskets. It was a long way. I didn’t want to go. Alaia said in that case I could turn the fish that she’d laid out on the rocks to dry in the sun, and she’d leave Esti with me. Esti could go without milk for half a day now, though if she cried while her mother was gone I couldn’t easily comfort her. Sometimes Esti was angry because I didn’t have any milk. She’d pull at my tunic as if I could find some if I tried hard enough. I chewed up hazelnuts and acorns and mixed them with water and a bit of fish with no bones in it, and she ate that. Every day when the weather was good my father sat leaning against his oak tree – there were still skulls in that tree from Animals that had given themselves to him long ago – while Esti and I played in the leaves. My father liked watching us. When we ate I made him take a little food as well, but he didn’t eat it. What he wanted was water. Esti quickly learned what he was asking for. She liked to lift the waterskin for him and help him hold it. When we go back to Salmon Camp now I always greet my Father’s Oak Tree as my friend. I call it my father’s tree because it sheltered him in his last days.

  I was decorating my clothes, squatting by the hearth close to my father. He’d just given me his necklace with all his wolf and bear claws, and I wanted to honour so great a gift by making the rest of my clothes look as good as possible. I already had a full set of cat claws, which Amets had given to Alaia and she had given to me. I had plenty of shells too. I took off my tunic and laid out my shells and cat claws in a pattern. Then I fetched Alaia’s awl and needles and her best sinew thread from her basket and started making holes in my tunic. It was difficult. I decided just to sew the cat claws on to the deerskin and thread the shells on a string to make another necklace. I borrowed Alaia’s hammerstone and started rubbing holes in the shells so I could thread them. While I worked, Esti was counting out acorns to a pretend family, and telling each one they were getting their fair share. My father was dozing in the Sun.

  I remembered I hadn’t turned the fish.

  I looked up and saw my father had changed. His eyes were still shut, but now his mouth hung open. His face looked empty. Death had come for my father while I was decorating my tunic, and I hadn’
t even heard him pass.

  Then . . .

  No! I don’t want to say any more about that.

  Later we bound hazel wands to make a frame, and we wove willow across the top. We laid my father on his frame. We mixed ochre and painted his body red to remind the spirits that, although his life-blood no longer flowed through his body, his soul-blood still lived as much as ever. As I rubbed colour into my father’s cold skin I told the spirits how much I wanted my father to come back. I begged them to send him back to me before I left my present life.

  Amets, Kemen, Alaia and I each took a corner of the frame. We crossed the River and carried it up the slope of Mother Mountain. My father had been a big strong man, but now he didn’t weigh much at all. We built his platform high on the side of Mother Mountain where only small birch, willow scrub and juniper grow. Alaia chose the place because she said my father’s soul would like to rise over the top of Mother Mountain and look across the sea to Grandmother Mountain with its two sharp peaks that reach up and trap the clouds. When we were little, and my father used to take us up Mother Mountain and tell us about the world we could see from there, he used to talk about Grandmother Mountain most of all. He’d been there when he was a young man looking for adventure.

  We all helped make the platform – even Esti. My father lay on his back, facing the sky. We tied his body to the platform with twine. As we did so a high-pitched honking came from the Sunless Sky. We shaded our eyes with our hands and watched the geese come down with the wind. Hands-full upon hands-full of geese – more hands-full than you could count on the hands of all of us put together – had made themselves into arrows as wide as the whole hunting lands of the Auk People. The goose-arrows shot slowly across the sky, honking over our heads on their way to the far edge of the world. We heard their wingbeats in the frosty air. Past Mother Mountain and Grandmother Mountain they flew – past every winding path my father had travelled in his small life – past the Sun treading his endless way across the High Sun Sky. The Bird-spirit Woman was calling them out of the world.

  We watched them until the Sun shone straight into our eyes and we couldn’t look any more. When we came back to where we were, everything looked like twilight after the bright sky. Crows flocked around us. Two ravens eyed us from the crag. The hill waited for us to go away.

  I laid my cheek against my father’s cold forehead. Alaia took his hand and held it for a heartbeat. Then we left him.

  At dawn the next morning we took the hides off the tents, and stacked the poles against my Father’s Oak Tree. We laid turfs over the hearths. We gave Salmon Camp back to the Animals, and told them we’d like to come back when the Salmon came next Year.

  We couldn’t take our boat round Fierce Point so late in the Year. Wild winds drove the swell right up Mother Mountain Loch. Waves crashed on the beach, and funnelled into Shellfish Narrows. We didn’t dare wait. With the wind on our beam we paddled across the loch at slack tide. At the top of each swell whitecaps broke against the boat-hide and drenched us. Esti was sick. The tide shoved us through the narrows between Mother Mountain Island and Cave Island. We paddled with all the strength we had across Cave Island Loch and beached in Sandy Bay. I was sweating with effort, and yet I was frozen. I’ve never been so glad to beach a boat as I was that day!

  We slept that night in the cave at Sandy Bay. People had been there not long before. They’d left dry wood; I hope the spirits are forever kind to them! When I woke next morning I jumped up, pushed back the hides and gazed out to sea – when it’s clear you can see the whole of White Beach Island from that cave, but on that day I could barely see to the other end of the sands.

  We left our boat in the cave, and walked over the hill to River Mouth Camp. It’s only a half a morning’s walk usually, but we were heavily loaded. No one wants to travel with children if they haven’t got a boat! At least we had the rain and wind behind us all the way.

  We reached River Mouth Camp in driving sleet. You can guess how glad we were to get our fire going, and invite the friendly spirits of warmth and light and dryness into our winter house. I don’t think anyone ever stayed so late at Salmon Camp as we did that Year, before or since.

  FIFTH NIGHT: LOCH ISLAND CAMP

  Nekané said:

  Four Years passed after I took down Aitor’s Drum. Hodei grew used to me being Go-Between. At Gathering Camp I never went near the Go-Betweens’ shelter when the men were speaking to the Animals about the Hunt. That pleased Hodei. He accepted that when the men had left for the Hunt I’d go behind the Go-Betweens’ hearths and hang my Drum with the others. The fourth Year, Hodei agreed that I could deal with the questions People had brought to Gathering Camp while the other Go-Betweens went to the Hunt. It was Hodei’s turn to stay behind; of course that was why he agreed to it. When I sat alone outside the Go-Betweens’ shelter I felt strong but not proud. If People had been troubled by spirits bringing illness or quarrels into their families, I knew my Helpers could do as much for them as anyone’s.

  By now People were used to a woman Go-Between. Anyway, I didn’t look much like a woman any more. I’d burned my last woman’s skirt on the fire at River Mouth Camp before my son Bakar was lost. I’ve worn my deerskins the man’s way ever since. Over my tunic and leggings I had this cloak – the very one I’m wearing now. See how it’s plaited from all kinds of reeds, rushes, grasses, bark-twines? See how they make patterns with their different colours? Yes, you can look – you little ones can touch if you like. I dreamed this cloak in Salmon Moon when I first went Go-Between. It took me until the end of that winter to make it. In my dream I saw how the colours of the different twines changed as I moved. Like this! I wanted my cloak rough and smooth, soft and shiny, dark and bright, thick and delicate – all these things at once. And so it is – no, don’t stop her – let her feel it! That way she’ll remember even though she’s so small – the children and I don’t have much longer together – I want her to remember.

  When I dreamed my cloak I saw how little bright spirit-catchers made of shell and bone and stone glinted between the threads. Look, you can see them in the firelight now! I saw the snakeskin with the spearhead mark between its eyes woven into the plaited rushes down my back. No, you can’t see that. I’m not going to stand up and turn my back on this warm fire! Remember I’m just a poor old woman. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Anyway, I gathered everything I needed, and slowly I made my cloak until it was exactly how I’d seen it in my dream.

  After four Years it was already much mended, but no one knew that, because as the Moons passed I gathered as many spirit-homes – claws and bones and teeth, polished speaking-stones, memory-shells, dream-webs, shining-light-stones, all with Animal souls sleeping inside – as any other Go-Between. Whenever I moved, the spirit-homes glinted and rippled in the light to show they were alive. I carried many other spirit-matters in my pouch. When I came among People they saw Go-Between, not Nekané the old woman. I looked as Go-Between as Hodei or Aitor or even Zigor, though no one could ever mistake any one of us for another.

  At Gathering Camp the women often chose to come to me. People grew used to me travelling with Zigor and turning up at their Camps, however far away they might be. Now I’d finished learning from Zigor I went alone. People were always willing to take me over the sea from one Camp to the next, and so I learned nearly all the places where Auk People hunt. Sometimes the journeys were hard and dangerous. I was happy, although I missed my family. I missed my husband most of all. After he died I seldom went home. Our winter Camp was still small, but we had two good hunters, and everyone was healthy and strong. They didn’t need me.

  Four Years passed. Then, because of what Zigor told me in Light Moon, I went to Arantxa’s camp at Loch Island.

  I’d never been to Loch Island Camp. By good luck I met two of Osané’s brothers at Flint Camp. I made them paddle me to Loch Island. They didn’t dare refuse. They were bringing back a young stag they’d trapped near Flint Camp. It took up most of the boat; its antlers dug
into my back as I crouched in the bottom of the boat between the two paddlers. At least I wasn’t going to starve in Arantxa’s Camp: I hoped that wouldn’t be the best thing that could be said about my visit.

  We set off up Gathering Loch at slack tide. Rain pocked the sea with as many silvery circles as there are stars in the sky. As we paddled out of the bay at Flint Camp the wooded hills turned from green to grey, then faded into mist. Cloud rested on the water, rocked by a sleepy swell. The sea pressed gently against the boat-hide; through the thickness of my cloak I felt the hazel-wands yield to it. Only the steady plash of the paddles, and the faint crying of far-off gulls, made any sound at all.

  As we rounded Whale’s Nose a sharp black fin cut through the water. Koldo lifted his paddle to point it out to his brother. It dived and surfaced again, much closer. Then another. Sleek black backs rolled through the swell. For a heartbeat I thought it was my Dolphin. But no – it was his far-off cousin the sharp-fin whale. Even so, I took it as kindly meant, that the Animals of the sea should remind me of their presence. Osané’s brothers shrugged, and bent to their paddles again. Unless a Whale chooses to give itself, its riches are out of the reach of People. Koldo and Itzal were too young to recognise a gift beyond the power of a hunter to take.

  The tide gathered strength. Itzal leaned back, trailing his paddle, eyes half shut as if he couldn’t be bothered to steer. He was just a boy – he’s learned now that it’s not that easy to deceive an old woman of the Auk People! Koldo pretended to sleep. Those boys were in no hurry to take me anywhere – they wanted me to be quite clear about that! The flooding tide was kinder: now we could see the grey outline of land on each side of us. White water surged in a broken line against the rocky coast. Islands loomed out of the mist. The boys stirred themselves to paddle round the hidden skerries, deep into the heart of the loch.