by Jack Lasenby
“That’s the best meat I’ve ever eaten,” Hurk said as he curled up. “My belly’s hard with it.” He rubbed his stomach. Tupu patted hers, and Kimi tried to belch. “Listen!” she said. “I did it the first time. You heard it, didn’t you Ish?”
“Really loud!”
“I wonder if it was loud enough for Chak to hear?”
I looked at Kimi and the other two little ones and wondered how much they understood of death.
“Chak isn’t coming back, you know,” I said.
“We know. We saw him buried. We threw the dirt in on top of him,” said Hurk. “But he’s still here, isn’t he? He talks to me sometimes.”
“You’ll hear his voice sometimes, and you’ll see him. But that’s hearing and seeing him in our minds. It doesn’t mean he’s alive.”
“I put some meat with a bit of skin over there in the shadows for him,” said Hurk. “Was that all right?”
“Of course it was. We’ll never know if Chak ate it, or if the wild dogs stole it. But it’s a kind idea.”
“You know the song?” said Kimi. “About the river rushing by. Is that true, Ish, that Chak won’t feel anything now? Won’t he feel the rain?”
“He doesn’t feel anything now.”
“Tell us about Chak,” said Hurk. “Tell us a story about him.”
“There was a little boy called Chak,” I said, “who lived up the valley under Grave Mountain. He was brave and always wanted to do everything for himself. He fought Kalik’s warriors, but they captured him. He fought them all the way down the valley. He fought them in the canoe. He fought them on the Headland.
“The Headland People starved Chak and his friends. And they beat them and treated them cruelly. So they ran away.”
“In a canoe,” said Hurk.
“In a canoe.”
“Through the trees in the moonlight,” said Hurk.
“Down a tunnel,” said Kimi.
“And through the darkness for day after day after day,” said Tupu. “And Chak cried because Ish pulled down the roof and Nip was still outside. And Chak heard Ish crying, too. So he stopped crying and told the rest of us he was going to catch a wild dog for him.”
“I know,” said Hurk. “And they got out of the tunnel and caught some sheep and they were the Travellers. And Tepulka and Ish traded for some knives and the axes and the donkeys, and the Iron People taught us to eat pork.”
“And we crossed the fastest river anyone’s ever seen,” said Kimi. “And Chak tried to swim it on his own. And the river took him away.
“And Ish found him, and we dug a grave and threw dirt on top of him,” said Hurk. “And Ish says his body will rot there under the ground. But we still hear Chak talking to us. And sometimes I see him, too. And that’s why I put the meat and the bit of skin over there for him. In case he’s hungry.”
“In case he’s hungry,” repeated Kimi.
We sat silent, the rest of us, until they had fallen asleep. Tepulka tossed Chak’s piece of meat in the fire.
I put some more ointment on Paku’s leg before we slept. It smelled all right, but the skin was a bit warm and red. “I’ll have another look in the morning,” I told him. “I saw some herbs today that will heal cuts.”
Chapter 27
Paku’s Leg
I worked on the thatching, and watched Tama giving orders to Tepulka. He had him building a pen on a sunny slope to the creek.
“What are you grinning at?” Maka’s hands were full of green leaves.
“I used to worry about Tama, that he hardly ever talked.”
Maka smiled. “Have you seen the way the little ones order Tepulka around? He’s too good-natured.”
His nature was one of the reasons I had chosen Tepulka to learn my knowledge of healing. I looked at the green leaves. “Is there much of that?”
“Lots. You’d better come and have a look.”
Maka had found what looked like fruit trees and old gardens. “This is where Wirrem would have been useful,” I said. “He knew all the plants and trees, how to collect their seed, and take cuttings. I often think of him and the others, wonder how they –” I stopped myself.
“We can eat this one,” said Maka. “And this.”
“That one near you, that’s good for upset stomachs,” I said. “This one the Shaman called Woman’s Ease. And this is good to eat in winter. That one you simmer, mix with rendered fat, and it’s good for salves. Somebody must have grown them specially.”
“Show me the ones you want, and I’ll get Hurk and Kimi to collect them. And Tupu. She likes helping. She is getting better isn’t she, Ish?”
“Good food, the exercise, sunshine. I’d like to catch a goat with kids, get some milk for Tupu, then you’d see her put on some weight. It’ll take her a while yet. It’s Tama and Puli who’ve improved.”
“It’s because we’re running away, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Hope. Having something to live for.”
Back at camp, Paku favoured his leg. The flesh around the sow’s bite had darkened red, tight and hot to my touch. Paku flinched. Yellow stuff oozed. It didn’t smell too bad, but the ointment hadn’t done its job. I called over Tepulka.
“Even the bleeding and washing didn’t clean it,” I said. “Bites are dirty wounds.”
Just then Kimi came running with a basket of leaves, tiny, grey, and pungent. “Maka says do you want these?” She stared. “Poor, Paku! Does it hurt?”
“Tell Maka to get all she can.”
We got Paku sitting with his leg propped up, the wound in the sun. Usually so active, he was content just to sit while everyone else was busy. The pungent herbs mixed with lard made a salve stronger than the ointment. Tepulka was careful putting it on, but Paku seemed indifferent to pain now.
“Better keep lying here,” I told him. “Your forehead’s a bit warm.” His pulse was fast.
He lay on the edge of the tree’s shadow, the others working on the shelter looking towards him now and then. He took little notice of what was going on about him. When I went to find something to bring down his temperature, Tulu sat beside him.
Tepulka and I collected bark from a patch of willows similar to the brushy ones the Shaman had taught me to use. Some of it we bruised, steeped, and gave to Paku to drink. He slept that night, uneasily.
We finished the thatching, cut and dried fern for bedding. We dragged logs out of the creek and stacked them on end to dry. Tepulka and Maka shot a deer early one morning and saw pigs and goats on the big clearing. We hung herbs to dry in bunches, and Puli wove fine, thin bandages. The full days spun by, one running into another, as we prepared our winter camp. We should have been happy, but Paku’s leg was getting worse.
We soaked and roasted flax roots, made a hot poultice. With that and the willow bark, Paku got some sleep. But our salves and dressings weren’t strong enough. One night I found myself remembering all I could of how to amputate feet and legs. The only way to stop the killing infection called gangrene.
Tepulka beside me, I went all over Paku’s body, sniffing the skin, listening to the workings of his belly, his heart, breathing. My fingertips found no invisible rash. I used my nose each time I looked at the wound. Dreading yet half-expecting.
One night I dreamt of the time Arku and I arrived in the White Bear People’s village too late to save the life of a man. The gangrene stench! In my dream, the man had Paku’s face.
I woke sweating, shook Tepulka awake, crawled over and sniffed at Paku’s bandage. No smell, no dangerous stench came from his leg. I sat back, dizzy with relief.
“It’s itchy.”
“Are you awake?”
“You must have been dreaming,” said Paku, “before you had a look at my leg. I heard you talking to somebody called Arku. It’s itchy,” he said again, “under the bandage.”
Tepulka laid his fingertips gently on the leg. “It’s not as hot.”
“Itching might be a good sign,” I whispered.
“When you put the
salve on this afternoon –” another voice said. Tulu’s. She crawled over and sat holding Paku’s hand. “When you put the salve on this afternoon, his leg was still hot. I felt it the way you do.”
Paku’s forehead was warm, but not hot as I expected. His pulse was slower, but that sometimes happened. “I was awake, so I thought I’d just have a look.” I didn’t tell them why I had wakened Tepulka and come across.
Since the Salt People didn’t know about amputation as a way of saving life, I hadn’t even thought of how to explain it to Paku. We sat awhile with him and Tulu, then I sent Tepulka back to his bed. I was still too worried to feel reassured.
In the morning, Paku’s temperature had dropped again. The flesh above and below the bandage had lost its angry red. And much of its heat.
“I think we’ll leave it alone this morning. Something’s working.” I heard the tremble in my voice. Tepulka glanced at me. Trying to sound casual, I turned away. “We’ll have a look at changing the dressing later.”
Something made me leave it alone again at midday. “Your head’s cooler,” I told Paku. “And your leg’s not nearly as red. Look, you might be able to see it for yourself.”
“It really is better,” said Tulu, who hadn’t gone far from him all morning.
“We’ll leave it till later to change the dressing,” I said to Tepulka. “No point interfering if it’s getting better on its own.”
We were busy all that afternoon. It was warm on our sheltered side of the clearing, but the treetops swayed on the ridge opposite – a southerly. It must soon get much colder. Maka and the little ones spread herbs to dry. Kitimah and Sheenah were cutting more reeds from a swampy hollow. Tama was loading them on to the donkeys and carrying them up for the walls. Tepulka and I were splitting more timber to enlarge the shelter. We would need more space for the babies.
When Tepulka heard dogs, we dropped everything. On the big clearing, the wild pack had pulled down a deer.
“We could crawl up the creek, climb the bank, and shoot a couple before they take off,” said Tepulka.
“Let’s just watch them awhile. Look, a bitch with milk! If we track her….”
The dogs fed, dropped, and slept around the carcass. When the bitch finished eating, she headed to the bluffs. We lost her and looked for a den under logs, a hollow beneath a bank, a crevice among boulders, but no luck. Tepulka liked the idea of pups, but he was afraid the bitch would rush out of nowhere and attack us. It was late in the afternoon before I remembered Paku.
“We haven’t changed Paku’s dressing. It seemed so much better, I didn’t like to go touching it.” As we jumped from one clump of reeds to another across the swampy side of the clearing, I told Tepulka about gangrene, how it killed people unless the leg or arm could be cut off before the infection spread.
Tepulka slipped and pulled his legs out of deep mud. “What if it’s in the body?” he said, washing off the black stockings of mud as we crossed the creek.
“Then you die.”
In the late light, I knelt by Paku and supported his leg. As Tepulka unwound the bandage, Paku showed no discomfort. I eased off the wad of material now stiff with the dried salve.
The edges of the sow’s bite were a cleaner white, the mass of infected stuff vanished, clean pink flesh in the bottom of the wound! And stirring, wriggling, the cause of Paku’s itchiness, two fat, creamy maggots. Two more dropped out of the bandage.
“Ugh!” Maka ran.
“Take them out, Ish!” I brushed Tulu’s hand aside.
Puli craned to stare. “Has Paku got worms?”
“Look what’s cleaned up your wound! What you felt wriggling and itching.” I held Paku up so he could see.
“Are they eating me?”
“Not you. Just the dead tissue. The rotten stuff that was infecting more flesh.” My mind flashed back to a book about a war long, long ago, about how the healers found maggots ate dead flesh and cleaned up infected wounds.
“I knew about it,” I told Tepulka, “but I’ve never seen it before. The flies must have crawled under the bandage and blown it. And the maggots hatched and ate all the infected stuff.”
“Ugh!” Maka had come back, but wouldn’t look.
“They might have saved Paku’s leg. They might even have saved his life.” We dressed and wrapped Paku’s leg with a clean bandage. “That wound’s so clean, it’ll start healing at once.”
Tulu ruffled Paku’s hair. She shoved him, hugged him, half-smothered him. I heard a tearful note in her laughter. And Paku just lay and smiled, tired with relief as Tepulka gathered up the old dressing and bandage.
“Don’t you bring those things near me!” said Maka.
A hand thrust between us, took the maggots where I had put them on a leaf, carried it down to the creek where the water whirled them away. Puli’s lips parted in her beautiful smile. “There’s plenty more where they came from,” she told Paku.
Chapter 28
Lifting the Danger
Paku was soon hopping on a crutch Tepulka made him. I insisted everyone had a look at the clean wound. “They’re worth remembering,” I said of the maggots, but Maka wrinkled her nose and whispered “Ugh!”
The piglets followed Tama, nipping each other, squealing. He called them Gobble and Hurry. They ate anything: scraps, grass, beetles, roots, berries.
“Chak would have given them Paku’s maggots,” said Hurk. He and Kimi looked at each other and spluttered.
We ring-fenced a yard below the camp. Tepulka was clever at leaning forked branches against the trunks then inserting pole rails between fork and tree so they locked firm. In some places we had to dig in posts and lash the poles. Each evening, the sheep and donkeys followed Tama inside through sliprails. From the bush the other side of the creek, the wild dogs watched curious. The only time they went near the yard, the donkeys made such a commotion, the dogs fled.
“Up the big clearing,” I said to Tepulka and Paku, “have you noticed the goats and wild sheep always run off through the same gap between the trees? Well, how about building a yard with high rails at the top of that gap? With fences like wings either side to guide the sheep and goats in?”
“We could build it all right,” said Tepulka.
“The goats would jump the fences,” said Paku, “unless we chased them so fast they just ran between. But they wouldn’t go into the yard if they know it’s closed off.”
“That’s it! Say we build the fences,” I scratched in the dirt with a stick, “and the yard up among the trees. But leave the top end of the yard open. Just put in the posts, no rails. Then keep away and let them get used to it. One day somebody goes up through the trees, lashes rails across the posts, closes off the top end of the yard. The rest of us move up the clearing. Once the goats and sheep head back between the fences, we start running and shouting. Drive them fast into the yard. Shoot slip-rails across behind them.”
We were sitting under the tree, watching Tama walking up the creek, Gobble and Hurry at his heels, several sheep following. “Then we send in Tama,” said Tepulka. “And he talks to them and leads them out tame.”
Paku organised the building of the wing-fences and the open-ended yard. We kept away and left the big clearing undisturbed. Winter coming on, we finished our hut with brush walls. Mushy clay patted into the twigs dried solid. It dried and cracked all over Hurk and Kimi, too. Tepulka built a chimney the full width of one wall, so we could all sit in front of the fire.
We had dried deerskins, sheepskins, a stack of washed and combed wool for spinning. The logs piled along the creek bleached as they dried. Wherever we went amongst the trees we dragged out fallen branches, stood them on end in the sun and wind.
Under the roof, Tepulka hung bunches of herbs. Every day, Maka and Tulu found something else in the old gardens. Green-leafed vegetables. Long red roots, the sort Taur had called carrots. And others, white and red.
“Some of these will keep through winter,” Tulu said. “They did at the Headland.”
“Until you came, Ish,” Maka said, “we lived on much less than we’ve got here. Hardly any fish or meat.”
“We’re going to eat a lot better than that! I want to see Tupu fat, and Kitimah and Sheenah with plenty of milk.”
“They look well enough.”
“They are.” Kitimah and Sheenah were sitting down by the creek where they had washed and dried a fleece. They were combing out tangled bunches of wool. I’d mentioned Hagar’s iron-toothed brushes to Puli who pestered Tepulka to make wooden combs. Then she asked Kitimah and Sheenah to wash the fleece and comb it.
Sheenah laughed. Her voice and Kitimah’s came to us like a murmur through the babble of the creek. The setting sun threw a golden glow on their faces. Soon it would be too cold to sit outside in the evening. Meat was keeping longer, now the flies weren’t there to blow it at once. During the hotter weather, we’d drawn it high on ropes over branches, or smoked it.
Kitimah was pointing at the creek. Sheenah laughed again and shook her head. They both turned back to combing, teasing out the wool.
“There’s eels in the creek,” I said to Maka, “but no trout. And none of the big silver fish.”
“We’ll have to go back to the river for them.”
“When they come up to spawn. And we can visit Chak’s grave.”
“Hurk still thinks he talks to him.”
“It helps him.”
“After Taur died, Ish, did you hear him talk to you still?”
“I still see him in dreams. And the others. The Shaman. Old Hagar. And Tara.”
“Tara?”
“One of the Metal People. We used to trade with them.”
“How did you meet her? Tara?”
“She fell out of a tree.” I described my first meeting with Tara. How we’d been going to settle at the Hawk Cliffs by Lake Top in the North Land, and have children. How her father and her two brothers were going with us. How we were going to be a family.
