by Jack Lasenby
Maka cried into my shoulder. I stared into the darkness, seeing Chak’s face. His tricks. The knife he had worn a few days.
When I woke, Maka was still beside me. I tried to draw my arm from beneath her head. Half-asleep, she turned and held me. And I stiffened against her softness. Wanted her. Knew she would let me.
And something stopped me. Part of me said I was being a fool. Part said, “You are their leader.”
“Sleep now.” I disengaged my arm, kissed Maka, and rolled away. And knew Tepulka had been awake, listening.
Next morning, Maka accused herself again. I held her, let her sob until exhausted. I said she must not think it was her fault, told everyone it was my responsibility. “I knew the risk, but thought it was worth it to get the river between us and Kalik.”
Without my telling him, Paku kept everyone busy. Throwing up a better shelter. Getting firewood. Feeding the Animals. Making handles for the axes. Tepulka split a log into a thick post, flattened one side, sharpened the end. I wrote, “Chak” on it with charcoal. Tepulka followed the letters with his knife, carving them deep. We stood the log upright at the head of Chak’s grave, and drove it in.
That night when the Children wanted a story, I took out the book I had carried all this way from the Shaman’s cave.
“The Old Man and the Priest,” I read aloud. The Children huddled around me. A wind wailed along the ridge above.
“What’s a priest?” asked Paku.
“Like a priestess. You know, like Lutha,” Tepulka told him.
“Shh!” said Kimi. “I want to hear the story.”
“Once upon a time there was an old man and his wife. Snow was deep outside their hut. The old woman was sick. The old man burned the last of their firewood, trying to keep her warm. But she died.”
“Is that reading?” asked Paku.
“Shh!” said Kimi. She snuggled against me. “Go on!”
I nodded to Paku. “The old man pulled his thin coat around him and went through the village, asking for someone to help him dig a grave. He had nothing to give them, so people slammed their doors.”
“That’s not fair,” said Hurk.
“Shh!”
“Still, they should have helped him.”
“Be quiet! Go on, Ish!”
“The old man went to the priest’s house near the church and asked for help to bury his wife.
“‘I will bury her. But you must pay me now,’ said the priest.
“‘I have nothing,’ said the old man. ‘But when spring comes, I will earn some money and pay you then.’
“‘Bury your wife yourself,’ said the priest and slammed the door.
“The old man took his axe and spade to the churchyard and chopped the frozen ground. He was digging out the ironhard clods when his spade clinked on a chest full of gold coins.
“He carried the heavy chest to his hut, and took one gold coin to the priest’s house.
“‘Go away!’ the priest shouted. ‘I’ll put the dogs on you. Stop! What’s that?’
“The old man held it up. The priest snatched the gold coin and bit it, to see it was real. ‘Of course I will bury your old wife!’ His hand closed over the gold coin.
“After the funeral, the old man bought food and wine and gave a feast in his wife’s memory. The same people who had refused to help him dig a grave were now happy to eat and drink at his expense. And, eating and drinking more than anyone else, the priest grasped and gobbled. He grabbed and gulped. He ate and drank enough for three. When everyone else had finished and gone home, he was still there, gobbling meat, gulping wine.
“‘Old man,’ gasped the priest. He swallowed a glass of wine and took another breath. ‘Yesterday you were poor. Today you are rich. Who did you murder? Confess or be damned in hell!’
“‘I am not a murderer.’
“‘Then you robbed somebody. Confess or be damned in hell!’
“‘I am not a robber. I tried to dig a grave in the churchyard and found a chest of gold.’ And because he was an honest old man, he dragged out the chest. The priest’s eyes gleamed.
“Home he staggered, told his wife of the gold, and went to bed to sleep off the food and wine. Next morning he killed his goat and skinned it, even the head. His wife threaded a needle and sewed his feet inside the goat’s back feet. She sewed his hands inside the goat’s front feet. She sewed its belly tight over her husband’s fat belly.
“The priest’s eyes glared between the goat’s eyelids. On top of his head, the goat’s ears stuck out, and the goat’s horns stood up. Between his legs hung the goat’s tail. ‘Aaargh!’ the priest shouted, and even his wife was scared.
“‘You look like the devil!’
“‘Good!’
“‘And you sound like him, too!’
“At midnight, the priest danced on his hind legs to the old man’s hut and butted the door.
“‘Who’s there?”
“‘The Devil! Give back my gold that you stole from the churchyard. Or I will carry you down to hell!’
“The old man picked up the chest of gold and thrust it into the Devil’s arms. He bolted his door, pulled the blanket over his head, and tried not to hear the Devil’s laughter.
“The priest pranced home clutching the chest of gold. ‘We are rich! Quick, cut the stitches! I am burning inside this skin. It itches all over.’
“His wife took her sharpest knife and cut the skin along the seam of stitches. The priest screamed and grasped his belly. ‘You fool!’ Blood spurted between his fingers. ‘Cut the stitches. Not me!’
“His wife cut another place she had stitched. Again, the priest bled. ‘I am burning!’ he screamed. His wife tried again and again, but now there were no stitches. She could not cut the goatskin off without cutting her husband. It had grown and become the priest’s own skin.
“He carried the chest of gold and gave it back to the old man. ‘Now cut off this skin!’ shrieked the priest. But, when the old man tried to cut the goatskin, he too cut the priest.
“And the priest ran away screaming, itching, in agony. Trapped, burning inside the goatskin, he died. But, with the gold, the old man bought himself a warm house, firewood, and plenty of food.”
I put down the book. The Children stared at me. “Poor goat,” said Tama. Everyone turned and looked at him, and he hid his face.
“The priest,” said Kimi, “he was nasty to the old man.”
“It served him right,” said Hurk. “What happened to him?”
“And is that story in there? In your book?” asked Paku.
“Yes. It’s written down here. All this print,” I showed them. “That’s what I read to you.”
“I want to learn to read,” said Paku.
“I’m going to teach you. Everyone.”
“Who wrote the story?” Tama wanted to know. Again, everyone turned and stared at him. This time Tama ignored them.
“I don’t know.” I opened the book again. “It says it’s an old Russian story. Russia was a country around the other side of the world.” I remembered that much from my reading in the Library.
“There are other countries. Across seas so big you can’t see across them.”
“You’re making it up!”
“I’ll tell you all about it some day.”
“When?”
“When we’ve found wherever it is we’re going to.”
“Poor Chak,” said Kimi. “He couldn’t hear the story.”
Later a voice came from where the little ones were lying. “Ish,” Kimi asked. “Is Kalik the Devil in the goatskin?”
“We’re safe across the river now,” I said. “And I won’t let Kalik hurt you. That’s why we ran away.”
“To find a place of our own,” I heard Kimi say. “Anyway,” she whispered, “anyway, we buried Chak in a proper grave, didn’t we? And we sang the Travellers’ song for him, didn’t we, Ish?”
“Yes.”
Chapter 26
Something for Chak
; “Listen!”
“What?”
“Listen….”
“I can’t hear anything.”
“There!”
“I don’t even know what to listen for.”
“Barking.”
Paku stared down through the branches. Cocking his head.
“Steady.”
Paku nodded. “It must be a pack. Hadn’t we better go back?” It was the first time he had ever shown fear.
“They won’t attack us. Come on.” Then I remembered the Salt Men were afraid of dogs. The Children had got used to Nip, but wild dogs were different.
“Why are they barking like that. All together?”
“They’ve got something bailed up. A stag. Or a goat.”
We had been climbing, looking for a campsite. We dropped down the other side of the ridge. Paku fell headfirst through some ferns. He looked at his bow. Swung his quiver round and checked his arrows. Touched his knife handle in its sheath.
We lowered ourselves, hanging off roots, sliding, trying to be quiet. The barking grew louder. Then a howl.
“One’s hurt.”
“What if it’s a bear?” asked Paku.
I grinned at him. “We’ll sneak away.”
Light came through the branches. We heard water and crawled on to a clearing. A creek meandering down its middle. A pack of dogs brindled, brown, white. Barking continuously. Leaping in and out. A huge black head on slab shoulders backed under a log. A white flash. Another dog howled, dragged itself away.
“Boar!” I whispered, though the dogs were making so much noise.
“Will they kill it?”
“They’ll wear him down, unless too many get ripped by those tusks.”
“What if they take to us?”
“Get up a tree. But I don’t think they will. Can you see any bitches?”
The dogs showered aside as the boar skimmed the ground, drove its black wedge through white spray across the creek. The dogs howling after.
“They won’t come back now. We’ll hear them if it bails again.”
Wild Dog Creek looped between grassy terraces. Upstream and around a bend, we stood tiny on the edge of a vast clearing surrounded by steep ridges. Bluffs closed off the top end, the west. We found deer sign, goat, sheep.
“It’ll do. More grass than we can use. Plenty of hunting.”
“And across the river from Kalik,” said Paku.
The place was well-hidden from the east by the ridge we had descended. We followed the creek down to where it smoked over a precipice. The river muttered through a gorge below.
We brought the others up by an easier way. The donkeys worked their way cleverly. The sheep were more trouble until we left them to follow Tama. There were cries of delight as the Children stepped out into the open, ran, and knelt side by side to drink from Wild Dog Creek.
Only Tama was off amongst his Animals. If he didn’t recover his trust in people, did it matter? Because he and Puli had suffered in the same way, I had expected them to depend upon each other, had paired them in my mind. But Tama seemed to choose his solitary condition, whereas Puli – even with her sharp tongue – liked company.
She would never have Tulu’s lively ways, her carefree laugh. She spoke less than Kitimah and Sheenah who kept up a soft chatter, much of the time, but she was often near them. They were slower-moving, getting heavy now. Perhaps Puli found that comforting. Certainly, she sometimes drew away from the little ones with their sudden movements, their high voices. She liked to think rather than talk about things. Her weaving, for example, she would work at it for hours, intense, withdrawn, yet happy to let others talk around her.
It was as if their long depression had altered their attitude towards words, Tama and Puli. I watched Puli now, looking at the creek, something there. It was a while before I realised she was looking at its surface, at the changing pattern of light as she moved her head. Then shifting where she stood. Crouching to look. Seeing something she might reproduce in her weaving perhaps? I was just grateful she was better.
A tall tree kept a light rain off us and our fire. That first night we tethered all the Animals. We weren’t going to lose any of them to the wild dogs. But the only sound was the dripping of rain, the chatter of the creek. Everyone was relieved to be away from the river’s noisy boast.
Kitimah and Sheenah rested the next day, keeping the little ones with them. Tama grazed his Animals below the camp. Puli was stringing a piece of weaving back on to a small loom she had made. Rain lifted up the bluffs. Paku and Tulu crossed the creek and followed the big clearing’s northern side. Tepulka, Maka, and I the southern.
We met about mid-morning, up under the bluffs. Tulu smiled and shook her head. They had seen nowhere for a camp. Her smile turned to laughter. “Paku’s got something to show you. I’ve never seen him scared before!”
He came limping behind her, one leg bleeding. He swung down his pack carefully, and it wriggled! There was a squeak, and a squeal.
“I caught two!” he said. And Tulu giggled.
“And nearly got caught yourself!” She spluttered. “Because he just had to catch a couple of – what do you call them, Ish? Piglets. There were about seven. And Paku caught two and was putting them into his pack, and the mother pig –”
“Sow.”
“The sow came so fast, she almost got Paku as he jumped into a tree. Then she chased me, but I was up my tree already. I pretended to get down, and she ran around with her mouth open. Woofing. She was that angry! And while I was dangling my foot and pulling it up again, Paku jumped down and got his pack with the two piglets. He got it on his back, but they squealed. Just as he jumped into his tree again. But she jumped, too. The piglets were squealing, the sow was grunting, and Paku was yelling.”
“I was not!”
“You yelled all right. I thought she was going to pull him down, but she just bit his leg. Poor Paku!” Tulu laughed again, and set us all going.
Paku pulled a face and grinned. We sat in the sun by the creek, washed Paku’s bite thoroughly – it was a messy wound, but had bled freely – and talked about what we had seen. Several mobs of deer. The sow with her litter. Some sheep up the top of the clearing. Goats. But there was nowhere for a camp under the bluffs. No convenient leaning walls. No caves. And in winter they would lose the sun early.
“If we camp under the big tree,” I said, “we can leave all this undisturbed. For when we want meat.”
“What about our smoke?” asked Tepulka.
“Who is there to see it?”
“I mean the deer, pigs.”
“The air was carrying the smoke down towards the main valley this morning. Maybe that’s its usual direction. But, wherever we camp, we can’t do much about it.”
“Look, it ate that beetle!” said Tulu. We had been handing the piglets around, laughing at their urgent little feet kicking, trying to run. Sharp black eyes.
“Maybe they’re big enough to live,” I said. “Did the sow have much milk?”
Paku grinned. “I think she’d weaned them. She was skinny. And that fast!”
Tulu giggled. “Paku yelled, ‘Help!’ I wasn’t going to get down out of my tree and get bitten, too.” We all laughed again.
“You caught a couple, anyway. And, if there’s one sow with a litter, there’ll be more.” I was tying a wad of leaves to keep Paku’s wound clean. “I’ve got some ointment back at camp.”
As we walked down, Tulu kept acting out Paku’s adventure with the sow. Jumping into a tree, shrieking for help, kicking. We laughed and begged her to stop.
It was late in the afternoon. We cut through one of the islands of trees that stood out on to the big clearing. Tepulka turned, finger on his lips. Tulu put her hand over her mouth. We crept forward.
Tepulka had an arrow ready, but he handed his bow to Maka and took the heavy spear. We could see fresh earth turned over. Like the pig rooting near the Iron People’s village in the Cold Hills. And dung, the thick stuff.
Dirt flew. Tepulka peeped over a heap. Reversed his hold on the spear, swung its blunt end around, and struck something. A piercing scream, and he flung himself. By the time we ran forward he had his knife in the throat of a good-sized young boar, the blood gouting. Its back legs kicked as Tepulka dropped his knife and held them up; the front legs striking at the ground. One last shudder.
“I hit him across the back of the head, but he just shook it.” Tepulka grinned nervously.
“We need dogs,” I said. “Those tusks could give you a nasty rip.” We ran our fingers along their curve, exclaiming at the sharpness of the edge ground by the stumps in the upper jaw.
“If we skin it,” said Maka, as if to herself, “it won’t be like…. Remember the pork you brought back from the Iron People? It had the skin on it still, that stuff that crackled as we ate it. And the one we cooked, the one they’d given to you raw, the bristles had been scraped off. But we didn’t get the skin to crackle like the one they’d cooked themselves!”
“Henga, their old woman, said they singe the bristles, scrape them off with a knife.”
We gutted Tepulka’s boar, to make it lighter to carry but, back at camp, the singeing was difficult. “Perhaps we shouldn’t have gutted it,” said Maka. “The bristles don’t singe properly off the flaps, and they won’t scrape off either.”
We ate a lot of them with the meat. Tepulka said he’d grow bristles himself, he’d eaten so many. Roasted, boiled, grilled on sticks, we tried his pig every way we could think of. Even the Iron People’s pork hadn’t tasted as good.
By the time Maka remembered how the skin was slashed on the cooked pig Henga had given us, it was too late. The skin on our boar was hard, like iron sheets, and bristly, of course. But we enjoyed it. And said we’d singe the next one before we gutted it, and slash the skin so it crackled properly.
Tulu acted and told her story for the others, and we all laughed again. Paku didn’t laugh so much this time. And he didn’t pay much attention when Tepulka got up and killed his boar again. We laughed and rolled on the dry ground under our big tree, while Tepulka throttled the huge boar with his bare hands, and tore out its throat with his teeth.
