by Jack Lasenby
Towards evening, clouds rolled across from the Western Mountains. I showed the Children how to jam long branches between trees to make a shelter, leaning others against them. More and more. Then a thatch of long grass.
“First layer across the bottom. Tips down so it carries the rain towards the ground. Next layer on top, overlapping the first. Another layer above that. That’s it! Till you get to the top. Then start all over again. A layer across the bottom. One above. That’s the way. Pack it tight.
“When you think you’ve got the thatch thick enough,” I said, “then start all over again from the bottom and double it. That’s right, Puli, overlap it. See how Puli’s doing it? The rain will drip down from the top bit, on to the next bit, all the way to the ground at the back of the shelter.” Puli hung her head. A flush came up her neck, but she was pleased.
“You want the thatch at least this thick.” I showed Paku with my hands. “Lash some branches across to hold it down. Then start everyone collecting firewood.
“Build a fire against the rock,” I said to Maka and Tepulka. “It’ll reflect heat into the shelter. And get twice as much firewood as you think we’ll need. I’m going to have a look at the way ahead.”
Smoke curled up where Maka was taking her turn at pushing the firestick backwards and forwards in its groove. Paku was sending the little ones for more grass.
The country rose to the south-east. The Western Mountains had disappeared. Over a ridge the far side of the valley, cloud poured like a river of snow.
Three sheep sheltered under an outcrop on a small clearing. Two looked like lambs. If only I had Nip! I backed away. No sense scaring them. We needed to catch some alive. Train them to walk with us. To become our Animals.
I headed back. When the smell of smoke came through the first drops of rain, I felt happy!
It rained three days. We hunted, fixed leaks, closed in the ends of the shelter. To keep the cooks dry, Tepulka built a high roof beside the fire.
We all went to the small clearing. Paku saw at once what to do and led Tulu, Maka, and Tepulka around through the trees. The rest of us ran up, shouting, waving. The ewe got away, but the two lambs ran into thick scrub at the top where the others were waiting.
We trussed and slung the lambs in deerskins, carried them back to camp. Tepulka cut up the cured deerskin I had brought, cut it around and around into straps of even width. We made harnesses, and the Children took turns training the half-grown lambs to walk with us. Tama showed more interest than anyone else, and the lambs responded to his quiet way.
When I chipped an arrowhead out of stone, everyone wanted to try. I watched Tepulka, but couldn’t see why it was the stone seemed to chip the right way for him, as if it was wood.
We made bows and arrows. Paku and Tulu got stung robbing a hive, but the arrowheads were lashed and coated with beeswax, and we ate honey. Kimi and Tupu, Chak and Hurk, all carried small spears with fire-hardened points.
Since we couldn’t catch the ewe, Paku shot her. We had her wool, and that off the one we had eaten. I lashed sticks around a stone, this way and that, and showed the Children how to hold the wool under their left arm, how to tease it out between their fingers so the yarn wound on the spindle as it turned and rose and fell.
By the time we moved on, we had several large balls of yarn. Deerskin bags. Ropes of plaited leather. Bows and arrows. Spears.
“Travellers only own what they can carry,” I said.
We led the lambs on ropes at first, and they took some holding. It was easier to leave them to Tama. After the first few days, they followed him! At night he tethered them. “They feel safer near us,” he said in his serious way. My heart leapt at his little smile.
We were throwing up a shelter near a stream where rushes grew, fine thatching. “Ish!” Puli screamed. She was cutting rushes with my knife. Something huge and black had leapt out of the rushes, woofed at her, and bolted. Worse, Puli had dropped my knife.
I hoped it wasn’t a bear, but found the same tracks Maka and I had seen before. More rounded than a deer’s. Heavier. Thick dung, hot and rank. Black bristles caught on a broken branch, about the height of my knee from the ground. More of them caught in a log rubbed to a polish. I also found my knife.
“I think it’s a pig,” I told Paku who ran with his bow. “Have you ever heard of them? Boars?” I remembered the Boar Man in the Animals’ Dance when I was a child. In the Travellers’ Cave in the Whykatto.
Paku shook his head.
I tried squealing and grunting, but Paku laughed until he cried and shook his head.
Later, with charcoal from the fire, I drew on a cliff what I remembered of the Boar Man. A beast heavier than a dog but lighter than a bear. Stronger in the shoulders. Huge head. White tusks.
“The Boar!” the Children repeated to each other. Other memories came back to me. I drew a sow. Several piglets. “Boar,” I printed under the first drawing. “Sow.” “Piglets.” And I wrote “Pigs” across the top. “Pigs!” I said.
The Children looked at the pictures. They said the words with me. Kimi and Tupu, Chak and Hurk rolled, grunting, laughing, squealing. That night, as I told them their story of the Five Friends, they asked for others about sheep and pigs. About tunnels. About children who ran away, tamed sheep, made arrows, bows, spears. Crossed rivers and hills. And learned to cook mutton and make their own spindles and spin yarn from wool.
That night, after they were asleep, I drew a column of children and sheep walking across a wide land. I took care to draw each child. I wrote their names beside them, so they could see them, first thing next morning, and I wrote “The Travellers” underneath.
We were late starting next day. Everyone had to practise writing their own name, over and over beside their picture. At last we travelled on. Our flock grew to nine. Six little ewes, three rams. I taught the Children to pick the wisps of wool snagged on the scrub, to run their hands over the sheep for loose strands. The spindles rose and fell as we walked.
I showed Tepulka how to make fire with a bow-drill. “That’s a machine,” he said, ‘for making fire.”
“You might have shown us before,” Maka said and pulled a face. “It would have saved us a lot of work.”
“That’s what a machine does,” said Tepulka.
Where a hillside had collapsed, we found good clay and made rough pots. For several days we built huge fires and baked them. A few didn’t break. I remembered the glaze that Taur had shown me, to seal pots so they would hold water. We would make that, too.
I showed the Children how to pack a couple of firepots with embers and moss. We wove nets to carry them. “Now we can have fire whenever we want it,” said Maka. “Without all that work!” Her eyes flashed at me, and I caught my breath at her prettiness. “Ish, tell us a story about a man who wouldn’t show some children the easy way to make fire?”
One day I said, “We’re going to have to stop before the cold weather. We’ll make a winter camp, spin more wool and weave clothes. For ourselves, and for trading.”
“Trading?” asked Paku.
I told him about the Iron People in what Kalik called the Cold Hills. “They’ll trade knives and cooking pots for our woven cloth.”
“I remember Kalik going away with a trading party,” said Paku. “In the early summer.”
“They took some of our men to carry everything. Their backs were all scarred when they returned,” said Tepulka.
“The track from Lake Ka must come somewhere between here and the Cold Hills,” I said. “Kalik talked of a wide valley. I think I saw it west, over that way.”
“Remember those cliffs we saw through the trees, yesterday? Where Tepulka and Maka caught the ewe. There might be a place for a winter camp back there.
“We can search the Cold Hills, find the Iron People, trade with them, and be on our way as soon as winter’s over. Long before Kalik comes to trade with them.”
“What if they tell him about us?” said Tulu.
“Only a couple
of us will go, so they won’t know about the rest. And we’ll say we’re from the east. They’ll have nothing to tell Kalik.”
“Do you know the place where we’re going?” asked Puli. She was so much better, she was thinking about the future. Both Puli, and Tama with his sheep.
“No, but I’ve got an idea,” I said.
“Tell us?”
“We’ll know it when we see it! It’ll seem just right for us. Away to the south there’s a warm piece of land between a lake and a river rushing by….” I repeated everything I had told them the night of our feast, after they had all gone to sleep.
“Why don’t we just keep going till we get there?” Kimi asked. And there was a chorus, “Yes!”
“Because, we can’t travel through winter with two babies.”
Chapter 22
Puli’s Pattern
The Children understood our need for a winter camp but, over and over again, they wanted to hear more about our place.
“Of course there might not be a lake, or a river.”
“You said a lake and a river,” Chak grumbled. “You said, ‘…a river rushing by.’” The three other young children backed him up.
“And a pool,” said Kimi. “With a tree to swing from.”
“And a rope,” said Hurk. Tupu coughed, the first time that day.
“We’ll know it when we see it.” I tried to sound confident. “Wherever it is!”
“We’ll know it,” repeated Maka. The others looked at her.
“When we see it,” Tulu laughed.
“It’s better than being slaves,” I said, then wished I hadn’t. But the smaller children were already forgetting the Headland. Travelling, collecting food, and making camp each day kept us busy. Looking after the sheep. Mending clothes. And spinning while we walked, while we sat at night, while I told stories. Adding ball after ball of yarn to our store of yarn.
Tupu looked better each day. Sweating, coughing less, her fever disappearing. Her ribs no longer shone white through her skin. I tapped her chest, listened, and said, “You’re getting fat, Tupu!”
Puli went nowhere without her spindle, her hands always busy. Everyone admired the strong even yarn she made. It gave her a sense of purpose, of feeling useful. Even more than that, as her skills became more obvious, so did her personality. Puli was not always easy to get on with. She was intelligent and didn’t mind showing it.
Remembering all I could of the Shaman’s care of pregnant women, I checked Kitimah and Sheenah. At first I had thought them sisters, but they were just close friends, and their common experience brought them closer together.
Our slow pace suited them, their leisurely conversation continuous like a half-heard stream. Sheenah especially had a keen eye for green-leaved plants, roots, and berries. Every few days they seemed to find us something new to eat. Once, as we made camp, they caught up, their hands full of seeds. “They’re good to chew,” said Sheenah, handing them round.
“I know this! Where did you find it?” Sheenah led me back to a patch of long grass. “It’s … it’s called….” I couldn’t remember the name.
We gathered the seedheads, threshed and winnowed them on a bare spot. In a hollow rock, we ground the seeds with a rounded stone. “It’s called….” and my voice faded. “I’ve forgotten its name,” I said to Sheenah, “but we can bake a sort of bread with it.”
“Bread?”
“I’ll show you.”
It took us a couple of days to grind enough. I made a dough, wetting the flour, mixing it, and remembering the first bread I ever tasted. When Taur made it from oats, he used potato water to make it rise. This bread wouldn’t be as light. We didn’t have any cooking pots, either, so I sprinkled the ball of dough with clean white ashes, raked away the fire, and covered it with embers.
When I brushed off the ashes and broke the hot loaf open, everyone crowded, sniffing, exclaiming.
Chak nibbled a bit of his crust. A bit more. Then some of the bread inside. Kimi still sat smelling her piece. “It’s good,” said Hurk, as if unsure. The older ones were asking for more before the little ones had finished theirs.
It wasn’t as good as Taur’s bread, but they ate every crumb. The little ones had forgotten their first caution and now wanted more. “You stay here and collect all the seeds you can. We’ll make some more when I get back.”
“Where are you going?” asked Maka.
“I want to find Kalik’s track to the Cold Hills. If it’s further than a couple of day’s travel, we’ll be safe camping somewhere around here for winter. If it’s closer, then we’ll have to go back.”
“How long will you be away?”
“A few days. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” Maka looked down.
“Their track will have grown over since last spring,” said Paku.
“Everyone follows the same line across country. Specially up a valley. There’ll be signs: old campsites, fireplaces.”
Paku wanted to go with me. “I can manage on my own, “I told him, “but the others will need you if something goes wrong.” He looked at me quickly. “A good leader always makes sure there’s someone to take over.” Paku thought and nodded.
Before I left, I made several simple frames, the way Hagar had shown me at the Hawk Cliffs. Looms big enough to stand at. And I showed the Children how to set them up, threading them. By the time I left, Maka and Tulu had woven the beginnings of two blankets. The sight of cloth growing at their fingertips delighted them. But the cleverest weaver was Puli, deft, quick. She was soon passing the shuttle back and forth, beating down the growing cloth. She reminded me of how quickly Taur had learned, how he invented patterns and improved on my plain weaving. I showed the little ones how the Travellers used to make small looms, ones we carried on the donkeys.
When I left to look for Kalik’s track, Kitimah and Sheenah were looking for more seeds. Tama was helping Puli – in between keeping an eye on the sheep. Puli stood with her back to her loom.
“It’s a secret,” she said and smiled her rare smile. Puli had a wide mouth, beautifully curved. For so long it had been turned down. Full of life now, she was a different person from the sad child in the stockade.
“Go away, Ish,” she laughed. And the others chorused, “Yes, go away. Find Kalik’s track.”
“You feed yourselves properly.”
“We can look after ourselves,” said Maka. And Tulu gave her laugh that made everyone join in.
Chak wouldn’t look at me, and Tupu just stared. At the edge of the trees, I looked back. Puli stood hiding her loom still.
Out of sight, I ran – excited at being on my own – then dropped to a trot. That afternoon I came down into a broad valley with a stream running north-east – towards the lake. I found a campsite at once. Less than half a day from where I had left the Children….
Charred wood of old fires. Smoke stains up a cliff. Long tent poles stood out of the rain, for use again next summer. And shoved nearly out of sight, a metal cooking pot! I put it back. Kalik would know at once who had taken it, would guess we were alive.
Keeping out to one side, I followed what I guessed would be the line of their track north, as far as a column of rock. Closer, it turned into several drums of stone stacked on top of each other. And then I saw where the three-faced head had toppled and rolled. A Hekkat, the boundary of Lutha’s People.
But why had its head been toppled? And why had it not been replaced, an earth ramp thrown up, the head rolled and mounted again? Kalik, of course. The trading party would have laughed and whispered the story around the Headland. Making things more difficult for Lutha.
At the base of its broken column were bones. I looked at the faces of Hekkat and shivered at the thought of Kalik’s casual murdering.
I climbed the ridge to the west next day, and dropped into a stream running south-east down a narrow valley. I kept on against the lay of the land. It would make it harder for anyone to follow us.
The third night, I slept
on another ridge. In the first light next morning, I stood on a bluff and upon the air below saw three black swans unwind the valley, flying south. I couldn’t help singing as I climbed down and found a wild river rushing south. Even at its widest, the water was too deep and fast for most of the Children.
“If you dive in below those rapids and swim hard enough, the current will carry you across,” I said aloud. “You’d have a bit of a climb getting up that cliff the other side.” I tried the depth by the bank, but my spear was nearly swept away. Stronger current than I thought. Still I could get across.
I was filled with the pleasure of being on my own. In three days, I had gone further than the Children could go in about ten. Suddenly, I saw their faces. Chak, Kimi. I thought of my long journey from the North Land. The loneliness until I’d found Taur. The worse loneliness after his death. I was responsible for the Children. Paku would become a leader, but he was still too young now.
“If you got drowned, they’d think you’d abandoned them.” I listened to my voice and didn’t like what it said.
“There’s no way we could cross here,” I said loudly. Even if we found a crossing, we would probably need a raft, and for that we needed an axe. And long ropes.
Picking my way back east through a tangle of ridges, I made a mistake, and had to climb a high spot before dropping down to the valley with Kalik’s track. Looking for the best way, I climbed a clear knob for a view and saw pale shapes, what must be the Cold Hills, snow lying along distant crests. And, shrugged among lower gullies, a dark cloud.
I watched the dark cloud a long time, thinking. At last I imagined I heard the Children’s voices calling, as if pulling me back. I plunged down a spur. It was only when I smashed into a fallen tree and a broken branch stabbed into my leg that I slowed.
