by Jack Lasenby
Like ours, their mast was hinged with an iron pin at the level of the forward thwart. I undid the forestay, and Jenek helped me lower it, lash everything down, and lift the rudder.
Their boat in tow, we rowed out far enough to pick up the wind. Jenek and Ruka ate hungrily from the stewpot, but Gulse would not even open her mouth. I wrapped her warm in a sack, held her tight, and got well clear of the coast before heaving to for the night.
All of us sitting in the bottom, I listened to Jenek and Ruka telling Tobik and Peck how, when the boat from Lador appeared, their father hid them in one of the orchards, how he came for them in the night, bleeding from a gash in his side. They found a boat and slipped out with the tide before putting up the sails, but their father weakened and died just before we came in sight. Perhaps because they were so close in, they had not seen the Lador boat put out to sea. They did not know what had happened to their mother.
Three of us might have survived on Rabbit Island, I thought; six was more than it could support. At the edge of my mind was Palik’s idea, riskier but much better than the arid little island still too close to Hornish for comfort.
No challenge from the lookouts, no gongs as we ran in under the Horns next morning. Bodies lay half in the water and on the rocks. We searched the burnt ruins of the houses, but all we saw were the dead, too many to bury. Jenek and Ruka found their mother’s charred corpse, and we sank her with their father outside the Horns, chanting their story as we rowed back. Gulse lolled against me, silent.
The pigs, sheep, and goats had vanished from their paddocks and enclosures. We scoured the gardens, taking everything, mainly beans, spinach, and potatoes, and lit a fire outside the ruined village that night. As we sat around the cooking pot and ate, I felt myself being watched and looked up. A girl of about five stood smiling on the edge of the light, behind her a boy younger than Tobik, and shoving them forward, ready to whirl and run, a girl about my age. “Lorne,” I called the little girl and held out my arms. “Ansik. Larish.”
I thought of Larish slashing with her nails at Ennish’s face in the Great House, of her exulting dance in the frieze of shrieking hysterics on the beach, of how she had helped kick Patch to death. Her own face looked stolid now, as she pushed her younger brother and sister between us.
“Come and eat.” I heard my own voice say the words and wondered where was the violence I had felt, the need for vengeance.
Ansik and Lorne edged forward. I smiled at them, knowing that Tobik and Peck were watching.
“There is plenty for everyone.” I pointed at the cooking pot.
“It’s good,” Peck told them.
First Lorne ran and squatted beside me. Ansik hung back a little longer, then knelt by Lorne. Larish came forward at last, and squatted heavily on the other side of the fire, Jenek between her and Tobik.
They crammed down the thick gruel before I would let them talk. I tried to get control of my feelings by helping Lorne and Ansik with the wooden spoons Jenek and Tobik had roughed out with their knives.
Forget it, I told myself. It is different now. If we are to survive, we need every person we can find.
What they remembered of the massacre was Tilsa and Ulseb hiding them in an empty food pit, telling them not to make any noise, and dropping a wooden lid over the hole. A little light came through where it was propped open for air, and Ulseb threw a heap of branches over the top. They heard terrible shouts and shrieks, so stayed in the pit all that day. After dark they climbed out and ran for the scrub on the other side of Hornish, living on bread Ulseb had given them, drinking from a stream. They had seen the Lador boat leave, but did not dare come down until they saw our fire and crept to its light.
Three more, I thought. Nine of us and two boats. I said nothing aloud, but the idea in my mind grew clearer, its details hardening.
Although we built up the fire and called late into the night, nobody else came. In the morning I described Rabbit Island. The others listened, silent.
“Why don’t we stay here, Selene?” Lorne asked.
“Because the Lador soldiers are coming back,” Jenek told her.
“What about the fishing camp?”
“They will find that, too,” I said. “We are unsafe anywhere here.” Jenek nodded. “The soldiers will come back, settle Hornish, and search everywhere within a couple of days’ sailing. We need to start a new village somewhere they will never find.”
We discovered a pitful of potatoes the soldiers had missed, and Tobik and Jenek crawled under an old hut in one of the orchards and found somebody’s private cache of dried peas and beans. The others carried it all to the boats, while Tobik and Ansik helped me search through the village again for anything useful.
The most unpleasant job was stripping the dead, but our need was greater than our distaste. Most of the clothes had to be rinsed of blood and worse, but we kept at it and dried them on the smooth boulders beside the stream where our mothers had always rubbed and beaten and washed.
Tobik and Ansik helped me scratch among the ruins of the Great House; of the enormous tree that once supported the rafters and the roof, there were only ashes. It was Tobik who spotted the ancient iron knife of Selene, its handle burnt away. I wiped the worn blade with whale oil, folded it in a clean piece of sacking, and hid it in my tunic.
“We are going to find another tree, build another Great House.”
“You said there are no trees on Rabbit Island.” Tobik looked at me. “Is it far enough away from Hornish?”
“We have to go somewhere.”
Get them that far, I thought to myself. It is a start.
Though the soldiers had smashed and burned every boat, Ansik found some useful lengths of rope they had missed, several sails, and a couple of nets hung to dry. Both our boats already had a barrel of oil aboard, and two water breakers. The soldiers had thrown bodies down the village well, but Ruka and Peck found three unsmashed water breakers that we filled from a stream. That gave us three in our boat, four in the other. We divided the food and gear: nets, cooking pots, axes, knives, flint and steel firelighting pouches, sacks of clothes, seeds.
“Take everything useful. There will be no coming back.”
I thought with regret of our stolen pigs, sheep, and goats, the horses, of the fowls that had vanished, then laughed at myself for dreaming. Even if there had been room, we hadn’t the food or water to spare for them on the journey ahead.
Then Ruka and Peck, fossicking amongst the ruins of the boats, found two barrels of shenam that hadn’t been smashed in. We drew up both our boats and spent the last day scrubbing their hulls below the waterline and daubing the planks thick with the creamy mixture of burnt shell lime and whale oil, to keep off weed and the sea worm. All day we sent up a tower of smoke, and that night we built a great bonfire and took turns calling into the dark, but nobody came.
Nine of us. Enough to start a village. Four in one boat, five in the other. If one sinks, the others would still have a chance. I gave a last call into the night, threw wood on the fire and slept with the rest.
The wind was from the west, as we rowed between the Horns, out of the clinging stench of Hornish and into clean air. I had Peck and Tobik in my boat, and the two little girls, Gulse and Lorne. Gulse was still silent, but I had got her to eat and drink a little. She was unresponsive to the others, even to her brothers, just let herself be put to sit beside me.
Jenek and Ruka sailed in the other boat, with Larish and Ansik. I watched them check their rigging, tighten the stays, pull up the sails, and cleat the halyards. Larish was slow, but she always had been. Jenek took the tiller and they followed us north.
The main thing, I had explained, was to stay together. We had plenty of food and water, and we could troll for fish as we sailed. Last night and again this morning I drew a map in the ashes of our fire, showing them where Rabbit Island lay and how to find it even if we got separated. Jenek nodded when I said to start looking for the cloud to the north-east after a couple of days and sai
l towards it, how they would see gulls flying from the island in the early morning and towards it in the evening, how they would notice a difference in the feel of the waves against the bottom of the boat.
“You feel it through your feet.”
Jenek nodded. I liked his lively face, something about his eyes. We could rely on him, even if he was often a bit quick to act. Larish stared back wooden-faced. She would probably forget most of what I said. I wanted to give her a good shake, but knew I must not even think of it.
Things are different now, I reminded myself. We need everyone we’ve got.
That first night we hove-to, lashed the boats together using sacks of old clothes as fenders, and sat in the one boat and told our parents their stories, even Lorne joining in with her memories.
“Don’t cry,” I heard her telling Gulse. “I’ll be your friend. And Selene will look after us. She’s old.”
I took Gulse in my arms and told the children about the island, the rabbits, the tumbled walls of the fishing camp there, the waterhole.
We slept well-wrapped in spare clothes and sacks. I woke towards dawn, Gulse cold in my arms, lifeless. Telling her the story of her short life, promising she would be taken by the gods to meet her mother and father beneath the sea, I slipped her body over the stern as we sailed into the light.
Eight.
Jenek sailed the other boat well. When Larish took the tiller, they slowed so Tobik who was steering our boat spilled wind. Ansik did better than I expected but looked askance at me several times. After that, I was careful not to let him see me watching. Larish, I thought, seemed to have forgotten anything of what her family had done at Hornish. In fact, she seemed intent on making eyes at the two older boys, who took no notice.
On the third day, we saw birds working, sailed through them, and landed five karfish. We sucked the liquid out of their eyes, heads, and bodies, filleted and handed around strips of raw flesh. Because we hove-to and lay lashed together each night, it took four days to reach Rabbit Island.
The children splashed ashore and scampered up and down the sand. Rabbits sprang about their feet as they ran up to the top of the island and back. I listened to their yells and wild laughter and realised that was what had been missing.
Tobik and Jenek rigged blocks and tackle, anchored them to a log, and we pulled up the boats, and made a shelter of the sails spread over oars. Peck, Lorne, and Ruka tried to catch rabbits, and Ansik was already gathering mussels. He would see something that needed doing and do it without being told.
That night, I reminded the others of the old story of how our ancestors came from the north.
“Three days west and twelve days south they sailed. And they came to Hornish.”
“Why are you telling us this?” asked Jenek. He and Tobik had searched the island, and I had seen their disappointment.
“I think we should sail back to the old land to the north, as my father said. Follow the old sailing directions in reverse. Twelve days north and three days east. But we must do it at once, get settled before winter.”
Jenek and Tobik agreed; Ansik, too.
“Why don’t we stay here?” said Larish. I felt a sickening flare of hatred for her, but tried to ignore it.
“No timber, no shelter, no firewood,” Jenek told her.
“Not enough water,” said Tobik. “Not enough food. No decent soil for gardens. And rabbits. They’d eat anything we tried to grow. Besides, once Lador settles Hornish, the soldiers are going to find this place.”
“Just stay here for winter.”
“And die?” asked Jenek.
Larish turned away, looking unconvinced. As for the children, they decided sailing north would be an adventure. Despite being cooped up in the boat to Rabbit Island, they had little real idea of the longer journey.
While a southerly blew over, we netted fish and speared flounder to keep us going, and boiled oats, beans, and barley into a porridge each day. We dried all the mussels we could collect, rabbit meat, and any fish we didn’t eat; the children told stories of what they saw happen in Hornish; and I tried to prepare them for the journey.
I was surprised by how easily everyone had agreed to my suggestion. Even Larish had fallen silent. Then I realised it was because they wanted somebody to decide it for them, and that person had to be me. I still had the power of the Selene.
“We can do it,” I said. “But we must be clever and lucky.”
“I’m clever,” said Ruka.
“I’m lucky,” Peck told him. They rolled over and over, shoving, punching each other, yelling. Lorne looked at me and smiled.
“I’m lucky, too,” she said, and I hugged her. Since that night when she appeared out of the dark, I had become fond of Lorne.
Be careful, I thought to myself. Do not offend Larish. She is her sister.
I almost said again that sailing north was what our parents were going to do anyway, then thought it better to say nothing of them. In their curious way, the children were forgetting ever having had any other family.
You are going to have to do the same thing, I told myself.
Chapter Fourteen
Twelve Days North and Three Days East
Try to keep in sight of each other, but if we are blown apart it does not matter,” I told Jenek and Larish. “Keep sailing north, twelve days.”
“We’re four days from Hornish,” said Jenek, “part of the way already.”
“We made slow time, and hove-to at night. Sailing directions cannot be exact. Keep to the idea of at least twelve days north and three days east. It will take us longer, and we will have to allow for days we cannot sail, for heaving to at night.”
Jenek nodded and repeated the sailing directions. It was his grey eyes, I thought — they reminded me of Ennish.
“Cut a nick in the tiller at the end of each full day’s sailing. And if we strike head winds, allow extra time.”
Larish looked away to show she was not listening, and I swallowed the hard words that came into my mouth: she would be delighted to upset me. Now she was grinning at Jenek, patting her hair.
“If we are separated, remember we are just out of sight of each other. It only takes a little distance, and you cannot see another boat.”
“When we get there, how are we going to find each other?”
“We will be sailing in the same direction for the same time, so we must be somewhere close.
“Look for somewhere safe to land, an inlet or a sandy beach without waves. A boat can float off with the rising tide, so pull it up and drive the anchor well in. Find water and food. Sleep under the sails, and start building a shelter. You have an axe, knives, a shovel. Make yourselves comfortable. And keep an eye out for us.
“Give your flint a good hard stroke with the steel to make lots of sparks. If you lose the flint and steel, rub dry sticks together. You have seen it done often enough when somebody is acting the old stories in the Great House. Get plenty of dry stuff ready before you start: fluff, tiny splinters, dry grass, fern, anything that will catch a spark. And cut dry sticks with your knife, feather them so the shavings lift but do not come off the stick.” I feathered a stick with my own knife as I spoke.
“driftwood dries out in the wind and sun. If it is raining, look in the bush for dead supplejack; it lights easily. That and dead five-finger. Always get the standing stuff — it is dry.”
Larish yawned.
“It is a lot easier with two. One of you holds a flat bit of wood on the ground; the other pushes a sharp stick backwards and forwards to build up a little pile of dust. Whitewood is best for the flat piece, and tote or keyekor for the stick. Have a straw ready, and when the dust starts to smoke breathe gently through the straw till you have a red dot like a tiny coal. Puff, and you will blow it away. Feed it the dry stuff you got ready, breathe through the straw, put on the feathered sticks, and they will set fire to bigger bits. Keep it going and stack split wood around to dry, so you can build up the fire quickly.
“You know t
hat bracket fungus on the trees? Get that burning, cover it with dirt in a kit or a pot, and you can carry it with you all day and have a fire going as soon as you stop.
“When you see our boat, get the flames roaring and heap on green stuff: grass, leaves, and ferns, to make lots of smoke. Run around, wave your sails. It might take a while, but we will find each other.”
“We will find each other.” Jenek sounded uncertain.
“Nothing surer.” I smiled. “Use your lines and nets. Spear flounder. Collect mussels and shellfish at low tide, and dry lots for when it is too rough to get out. And when the wind is not blowing too hard, put your boat back in and explore the coast, a little further each day. Make sure you get back to camp well before dark, in time to get your fire going again. We will find each other.”
Larish yawned again, tapped her mouth, and turned away. I was talking too much, I knew.
We practised lowering the sails and taking down the masts until it was an easy drill.
“If the wind starts getting up, if you feel at all unsure, reef the mainsail. Always reef before dark. It is so easy to take out a reef you do not need, so hard to put in when you leave it too late.
“If the wind gets too strong, turn up into it and drop the sails. If it gets stronger, turn up into it again, lower the mast and lash it down. Lash your tiller to leeward, and you will lie nose just off the wind. Letting out a rope helps. Dribble a little whale oil over the bow: it takes the crests off the waves. You will ride easy in the slick as you drift downwind.
“Do not hang your behind over the side in a storm. Pee and shit into the bailer.”
Larish snuffled, rolled her eyes and looked at Jenek.
She is quite pretty, I thought, but stupid. There is something else in Larish that I do not understand.
“Most storms last only two or three days. Keep low in the boat. You will be surprised how little spray comes aboard. Tell each other stories. Sing. And remember everything — to tell us when we find each other again.
“When the storm has blown itself out, free your tiller, turn into the wind, and put up the mast. Fasten the forestay, then the backstays. Hank on the jib, pull it up, then the mainsail. Draw them in, take the tiller, and you are sailing again.”
