Calling the Gods

by Jack Lasenby

An unearthly noise came from Larish. She clawed the air, stamped, and glared. Words vomited from her swollen mouth, jostling a violent torrent. She had taken the pot from its hiding place in the thatch; she gave Luce the poison, first in some food; then one day when I left Luce alone to work in the garden, she had slipped inside the cottage and given her more poison mixed in water.

  Voice still uncontrolled, but now thick with satisfaction, Larish boasted of how she replaced the beeswax and flax, copied the secret knot in the lashing, and hid the pot back under the thatch. She seized a length of twine from the floor and demonstrated the knot. Petra looked at it and nodded: the same knot he had found on the lashing, he muttered, not his but very like it.

  All urgency gone, Larish’s body slumped, and her voice now matter of fact, she described how she poisoned Lorne. There was even more madness in the flatness of her words. I thought of the strain of losing her family, wanting Jenek, envying me but having to accept my leadership. Then her unhappy pregnancy, Tara’s difficult birth. It had been too much for her mind.

  She cawed that awful sound again, and swung into her earlier excited mood. Flaunting her guilt, she accused others, threatened anyone who spoke. Terrified, one of the boys from Pyke laughed nervously, and she leapt at him, pulling a knife from inside her tunic. Jenek sprang and tore the knife from her, cutting his own hand. Tobik and Petra held Larish back as she clawed at the boy’s eyes, and tried to throttle him. Several had to hold her down, spitting, biting. Since there was nothing else, they tied her hands, gagged her mouth, and roped her to the tree.

  The boy from Pyke rubbed his reddened throat. “She should be poisoned herself,” he managed to say.

  “We can’t ever trust her again,” said somebody else.

  “Does she know the secret of Petra’s poison, which plants he used?” asked Jedda.

  Petra shook his head. “Larish asked me often, but I would not tell her that.”

  I held Enna tight, listened to the calls for punishment; aware of the voice inside my head that bayed so loud for vengeance, I thought the others must hear it. Larish had killed two of us, as well as Luce’s unborn child. She had destroyed the confidence in our village, damaged our growing family. If I said she should die, everyone would agree, but something made me silent. I looked up and saw their eyes on me.

  “Kill Larish,” I said, “and we are no better than her.” I would not say any more, lest vengeance swamp my brain.

  Tobik took my hint.

  “Banish her,” he said.

  “Banish her?”

  “Not as Selene was banished, driven out to sea to die. In any case we cannot spare a boat. Put Larish ashore on Table Island where she can’t hurt anyone but still has a chance of living. If she doesn’t survive, she will be responsible for her own death.”

  “Why should we let her live?”

  “Did she show Luce any pity?”

  “Or Luce’s baby?”

  “Or Lorne?”

  “Her own sister.”

  The words, the arguments tossed back and forth. I closed my eyes and saw them like broken waves rearing and collapsing against each other only to lurch up again. One by one, people agreed with Tobik: banish Larish to the island. The rest would be up to her.

  “What about Tara?”

  “Petra’s done all of the looking after Tara. We’ll all help.”

  Petra was sitting silent, his head down. He looked up, stared at the shapeless figure slumped against the ropes and said, “Let me go with Larish and take Tara.”

  “Why punish Tara? She’s done nothing.”

  “I am her father,” Petra said, “Larish is her mother.”

  “She neglected Tara. Selene fed her and kept her alive.”

  “Even so, Larish is Tara’s mother, the only one she can have.”

  There was a long silence.

  I watched Jenek and Tobik. They sat thinking, then Tobik nodded, and Jenek, too. They understood what Petra was saying.

  “What about Katerin?”

  “I want to stay here.”

  At the certainty in her voice, I thought of the feeling between Katerin and Ansik, and of the time when Larish and Petra had moved into their cottage, how Katerin moved in with them but soon came back to the Great House.

  Just as well, I realised now. Had Katerin kept close to her father, she might have died, too.

  “What sort of punishment is that for Larish?” asked Likad. “She’s allowed to live on the island, with Petra and her child. And Katerin loses her father and her half-sister.”

  “I’m staying here,” Katerin stated, even more definite. She glared at Ansik, as if something was his fault.

  “No punishment will bring back Luce and Lorne,” said Tobik. “What we have to do is make sure Larish never kills again.”

  Some — mainly those from Pyke — still wanted Larish banished on her own.

  “What for?” asked Tobik. “That’s just revenge.”

  “If Petra goes, we lose his skills with him,” said Likad.

  “At Pyke,” said another boy, “when anyone murdered, they were killed the same way, as a warning to others.”

  “Who killed them?”

  “Somebody from the victim’s family.”

  “What good did it do?”

  “At least it made them feel better.”

  “It was a warning to others.”

  “It didn’t work,” said Jedda. “Don’t you remember? Two years ago, there was that man who drowned his wife. Her brother drowned him as a warning to everyone, yet within a short time somebody else was murdered. Have you all forgotten that?” She paced up and down in the Great House, staring at people, demanding, strong-voiced.

  “I agree with Tobik,” she said. “Banish Larish to Table Island, and let Petra go with Tara.”

  “Petra taught Ansik how to work iron,” said Tobik. “We know how to spin and weave now, how to make pots. We’ll miss Petra’s skill, but it’s better he goes, if that’s what he wants.”

  “What does Selene think?” asked Likad.

  I still feared my own wish for revenge, the rage I had felt. “Let everyone speak.”

  The argument went on till only one or two were reluctant; that was as much agreement as we would get. Two dead, and three to the island. Fifteen left. I would rather have kept Petra and Tara, but not against his will.

  “We will vote on it,” I said. “That is what the elders said must be done at Hornish, so everyone gets an equal say. Here.” I handed around the baskets of white shells and charcoal that Tobik had got ready, set a large clay pot in the middle, between the chimney and the tree.

  “If you think Larish should be banished to the island, do not mark your shell but put it into the pot. If you think she should be poisoned herself, mark your shell black with charcoal and put it in the pot.”

  “Do Larish and Petra get a shell?”

  I thought. “Of course. She must be able to defend herself. That is only fair. And Petra must be allowed to make up his own mind. That is fair, too. Tara and Enna are too young to vote. All right?”

  There was a growl of agreement.

  When Tobik loosened one of her hands and gave Larish a shell, she flung it back in his face. He tried it a second time, and she did the same thing.

  “Set it aside,” I said.

  “What?”

  “She was given the chance to vote,” I told Petra. “She chose not to. She has that right. Smash her shell and put it aside so it will affect the result neither one way nor the other.”

  The other shells rattled into the pot. Jedda and Ansik spilled them on the sandy floor in front of the fire, sorted them in two piles. There was no need to count, though they did so aloud.

  “We have voted to banish Larish to the island,” I said, surprised at how firm my voice was. “Petra and Tara will go, too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Invention and Possession

  On a hard, bright winter’s morning we landed them on the island.

  Re
leased, Larish seized the knife in Tobik’s belt and struck at him, but Jenek tore the knife from her hand as she lunged and tumbled her headfirst over the boat’s side into a wave that threw her up the steep beach. Cawing, cursing, stamping up the shifting grey shingle, she disappeared between wind-cut banks.

  We unloaded quickly, in silence. Some of those from Pyke had watched but said nothing when I filled several barrels with dried fish, teetees, fishing lines, and a net, and put a few tools in the boat.

  An ugly chop was building. The air filled with the grating roar of pebbles, and seething water swept the beach, slopping against the bows as we shoved off and scrambled aboard, the boat carried out on a retreating wave. Tobik ran out the oars and pulled; Jenek started getting up the sails; I pushed down the rudder, took the tiller, and glanced back.

  Petra stood by the barrels at the top of the beach. Smoke shredded and whipped from smouldering bracket fungus I had buried in a pot of soil so he could get a fire going quickly to keep Tara warm. A milking goat, kids, and a couple of pigs were trussed and tied to wind-crouched bushes. I raised one hand, but Petra had Tara in his arms and stared back expressionless.

  A bellow, and Larish appeared bounding from boulder to boulder of the spit, a rock swung above her head. The sails curved for one moment; the wind failed and they drooped empty. A wash slid us in towards the boulders. Tobik threw himself back, straining on the oars. Jenek and I got ready to fend off.

  Larish’s howl filled the air, sound unshaped by words, mixed with the smash of waves. On the boulder above our stern, I glimpsed a lolling moon face plastered with wet hair, swollen-cheeked. Thick-lipped, bulge-eyed, she lost balance, dropped the rock, raised both hands, fingers crooked in the sign of the Horns.

  Our sails snapped and filled, the rudder bit, and I steered out, turned downwind. Instead of fighting against waves and water, we were running with them, coasting smooth, easy, and quiet.

  Jenek shivered and pulled up his hood. “Mad.”

  “Or acting it,” said Tobik.

  In the sea of emotion that washed me — pity, fear, vengeance — I wondered if he was right. Had Larish acted madness until possessed by the very thing she invented? I doubled up, leaned over the stern. A hand took the tiller from mine as I vomited into the wake.

  Out of the south a black cloud bellied. Jenek turned into it while Tobik reefed. The hard, bright light turned louring grey, and rain struck like sharp pebbles. I washed my mouth with handfuls of salt water, spitting, eyes wet.

  All the way back to the inlet, we sailed in silence until an enormous back parted the waves ahead; water spouted and drifted in mist before the wind; a fluked tail rose and slid under. We sailed through its swirl, looked at each other, and Tobik said, “The gods approve.”

  Beside me, Jenek stared ahead, face set, keeping us just off the wind against any chance of a gybe, a tear slipping down his cheek.

  Chapter Thirty

  The Old Man’s Story (6) “Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”

  “SAILING TO BYZANTIUM” W.B. YEATS

  Selene’s inlet village stopped appearing, and I started rationalising the whole thing as a cockeyed dream. At another level, I knew I just didn’t want to see the tragedy happen.

  When there were voices on the beach, voices I recognised as the family’s, I went on with whatever I was doing, digging, splitting firewood until they faded. One night, I dreamt I was seeing a sprawl of sleeping figures by the light from a mound of embers, and realised I was inside the Great House. At the same time I had the peculiar feeling — don’t ask me to explain it — that somebody else was having the same dream, and I thought of that cunning allusion to Yeats: “How know the dreamer from the dream?”

  It was what had happened in Philippa Pearce’s book, the boy and the old woman dreaming the same dream from opposite directions of time in the old house. It had seemed reasonable enough while reading the story, but now half-awake I wasn’t so sure.

  “Not a bad writer, eh?” I grinned at the sound of my words in the dark. “Convincing you that somebody’s dreaming somebody else’s dream. Who’s kidding whom? Or should that be ‘who’? Oh, for god’s sake.”

  Wide awake now, I lay and thought of the image I’d read somewhere of the mind making random associations while asleep and out of conscious control. One of those old Penguin books with a blue cover. You read it one winter in the bush, up the Horomanga in the Fifties, I told myself. Eddington? Sherrington? Sir Charles Sherrington. Man on His Nature. Comparing night-time railway yards and a half-asleep mind, lights coming on blurred and weak, on and off, shifting points, setting signals at random, an occasional engine shuffling through, dragging its carriages like a succession of lights. Something like that. Check it tomorrow, I said to myself and went back to sleep.

  Then while unloading firewood from my boat one day, I heard voices so known, so familiar I couldn’t stop myself listening:

  “Ansik said it was coming from on top of the cliffs, up the north end.”

  “Why would they light a fire up there?”

  I balanced a length of totara on the thwart and grinned to myself. I knew who they were.

  “Don’t ask me. Ansik said it must have been pretty big, because the smoke spread right across the bay. Get down, you mongrel.”

  That was Peck.

  “Maybe they need help.”

  And that was Ruka.

  “We banished them, remember?”

  “Does that mean you don’t help them?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so.”

  “We banished Larish. But not Petra and Tara.”

  “Jenek said he didn’t have to go with her; he could have stayed here. Hey, what if they’re signalling somebody else?”

  “Who?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Likad reckons there were people on Pity Island once.”

  “When?”

  “Ages ago. They attacked Pyke and most of them were killed. A few made it back to their boat and got away.”

  “I never heard about that.”

  “A long time ago. Before Jedda and the rest of them were born. You ask Likad. He said they headed back out to Pity Island.” Ruka’s voice began to fade.

  “They couldn’t see smoke that far.”

  I only just made out Ruka’s reply: “They could if they were sailing near Table Island.” There was the sound of footsteps crunching away on the beach, a shell popped, and they disappeared.

  Larish banished? Why? And Petra chose to go with her. And they’d taken Tara as well. I hefted the totara on my shoulder, staggered to the sea wall, got its end on the concrete, and slid it towards my sawhorse.

  Sending up smoke certainly sounded like a signal, but, as Ruka had said, to whom? Not Pity Island, not that far. To a strange boat, but what strange boat? I forgot about it in wondering what Larish had done to get herself banished. What would Selene do when the smoke was reported? I didn’t hear the boys’ voices again; for several weeks my dreams held nothing but present and past.

  When Selene’s village appeared once more, I saw Jedda loading the kiln with pots, and she went into Larish and Petra’s cottage a couple of times without so much as a call or a knock. It took a while to work it out. Each time the village appeared, I wrote down the names of those I saw. Slowly, a pattern grew. Larish, Petra, and Tara never appeared, and neither did Lorne and the girl from Pyke, the one with the laugh, Luce. One night as I read over my notes, thinking of scraps of conversation I’d heard that afternoon, it all came terribly clear.

  My sense of impending tragedy had been justified: Luce and Lorne were dead — dreadfully by poison; Larish banished to the island as their murderer. How had Selene tried her, taken the decision? I never worked that out, but heard Tobik say something to Jedda about “the shells”. It sounded like some form of voting, but I couldn’t be sure.

  Why Larish had killed Lorne, her own sister, I didn’t understand; she’d never shown her any affection, but murder? On the other hand, sh
e’d been jealous of Luce moving in with Jenek, so that didn’t surprise me as much: Larish had been more fulfilled, living with Petra, but the old itch she felt for Jenek was still obvious. She was ruthless enough for anything, but that didn’t explain her killing Lorne.

  And Petra had gone with Larish and taken Tara. I could understand that. Then I admitted my relief: it was Selene whose life I’d feared for.

  Jenek was living on his own in the cottage the family had put up for him and Luce. And then Ansik and Katerin moved into the cottage that Jedda and Tobik moved out of when they took over Petra and Larish’s. And that’s why I’d seen Jedda walking in and out, because it was her own. A bit confusing? It took a while to work it out.

  I was busy, but kept making notes; there was a heap of them now. At first, writing them had helped me understand what was going on, but as things became difficult I found myself explaining what wasn’t clear with what might have happened. I was fictionalising, of course, turning it into story. And every now and again, I had the feeling that somebody else was there watching the family or dreaming them.

  Sometimes when the family appeared now they were vague figures, their voices indistinct. Selene was there, still running things, Jenek and Tobik helping her. Jedda was turning out handy at just about everything, especially pottery. And there were a couple more babies, just whose I wasn’t sure. I saw that much, then the family disappeared for another spell.

  Old Mac died in his cottage along the beach, about that time. He hadn’t been feeling too good, and we used to sit in the sun watching the harbour.

  “I’ve been seeing things,” Mac said one morning when the rising tide was slapping the rocks in front of his place. He rolled himself a smoke. “I’d give these things up,” he said, “but there doesn’t seem much point now.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “I wouldn’t mind in a way, but I still enjoy them, even if they’re killing me. Or that’s what the quack reckons.” He laughed, the breathless chuckle he’d developed, leaned forward, and coughed.

  “Then if you’re enjoying it …”