by Rebecca Rupp
“Grak!”
Pippit, the small green watchfrog squatting on the bottom of the boat just behind Birdie, gave a sharp warning croak.
“Tad!” It was Pondleweed. “Rocks to the right!”
Tad came to with a start, quickly wielding his paddle to shift the boat out of harm’s way. He took a peek back over his shoulder. Birdie still wasn’t paddling. And when she finally starts, Tad thought resentfully, in next to no time she’ll be saying that her arms are tired and can’t we stop to rest and how long before we get there. I wish that she had just stayed home. Like Fisher girls are supposed to.
Pippit croaked excitedly.
“We’re nearing the entrance to the stream!” Pondleweed called. “Everybody get ready to paddle together!”
They maneuvered the boat through the thicket of reeds and furry cattails at the end of the pond that masked the mouth of the stream.
“Now!” shouted Pondleweed.
All together they bent to their paddles. The boat shot forward, slithered between two towering boulders, and leaped from the pond into the flowing stream. Even though the stream was low, the paddling was much harder here. Tad dragged his paddle painfully through the water, arms straining, forcing the boat forward.
“The current is against us paddling upstream,” Pondleweed called. “It’s a little difficult going in this direction, but it will be easier coming home.”
He was trying, Tad supposed, to be encouraging, but it was hard to be encouraged when your arms felt like they were about to fall off. I’m not sure we’re going to be able to do it even now, Tad thought grimly, paddling. He felt as if they had been paddling uphill forever. His arms ached all the way up to the back of his neck and sweat dripped off the end of his nose. Behind him, at each dip of the paddle, Birdie was making a little moaning noise. Pull, Tad thought to himself with each stroke. Pull. Harder. Pull.
“I’m tired,” Birdie said. Right on cue, Tad thought. “My arms hurt.”
“There’s not much more of this steep stretch,” Pondleweed called again. He was paddling steadily, and he sounded infuriatingly calm and cheerful. “Don’t stop now, Birdie, or we’ll start going backward. The stream will flatten out soon and then we can rest a bit.”
He was right. Soon the streambed grew level, the current slowed, and the paddling became easier. Tad found that he could straighten up and look around. A dismal sight met his eyes. The stream, like the pond at home, was dwindling. Drying stripes across the rocks showed clearly where the water level had been: higher — much higher — than it was today. The towering wildflowers and grasses along the banks looked limp and faded, and every once in a while Tad saw ugly patches of dead brown.
Brown.
Suddenly — without warning — he was thrust into a Remember.
He was standing beneath a dead and withered tree. His tongue was thick with the taste of dust and the parched gritty ground burned beneath his bare feet. Someone behind him was crying — a dry, painful sobbing — and he knew it was a child crying, a child dying of thirst. The forest all around him was the color of sand and ash, and the ground was littered with the brittle husks of dead leaves. The child’s cries grew weaker and finally faded away.
“No!” he tried to shout. “No!” But the words stuck in his throat, scratchy as dead brambles.
“What?” said Birdie. “What did you say?”
The ruined forest vanished. Tad blinked and shook his head.
“Nothing,” he said. It’s nothing, he told himself firmly. It’s hot. It’s just that I’m worried about what Father said last night. I’m daytime-dreaming.
They paddled on and on, gliding along the shallow stream channel, maneuvering between still rock pools and bumping through little runs of rapids. At highsun, when the sun stood directly overhead in the sky, they stopped for lunch, pulling the boat out of the water and laying a picnic out on a wide, flat sun-warmed rock: rootbread sandwiches stuffed with radishes and peppergrass, a jar of lilyroot pickles, honeycakes, and a bladderpod filled with mint tea. Pippit stepped on the sandwiches and was scolded; ribbeting sulkily, he lolloped off to hunt for flies.
Tad was so hungry that he didn’t care that his sandwich was damp and slightly squashed. They ate and drank hungrily. Pondleweed lay back in a hollow of the smooth stone, rested his head on a folded arm, and pulled his wide-brimmed woven-grass hat over his eyes.
Tad, still hungry, reached eagerly for the honeycakes. The Drying, for the moment, was pushed to the back of his mind. It was strange to be so far from home, but it was fun too, and exciting. Everything was new, different — and anything could lie in store for them up ahead.
“What do you think we’re going to find?” he asked. He took an enormous bite of honeycake, chewed hastily, and swallowed. “Up at the top of the stream?”
From under the hat, Pondleweed shook his head. “I don’t know, son,” he said. “There are a hundred things that could block the water of a stream. A fall of stones. A tree trunk. A mudslide. I don’t know what we’ll find. Or what we can do about it once we find it. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
He yawned hugely, making the hat brim wobble, and fell into a doze. Tad silently finished his honeycake, licked the crumbs off his fingers, and reached for another. Birdie — leaving the uneaten crusts of her rootbread sandwich cunningly hidden under its leaf wrapping — slid down from the rock to wade in the shallow water of the stream, cooling her webbed toes in the wet sand. Suddenly there was a loud splash, a startled squeal, and a derisive blatting. Pippit leaped by, heading downstream, pursued by a shrieking Birdie. They vanished around a corner, then reappeared, both very wet, Birdie pursued by a squawking Pippit.
Tad, munching his third honeycake, wandered lazily down to the water’s edge. The water, kicked into muddy froth by Birdie and Pippit, was slowly settling down again, returning to its clear glassy green. Tad crouched in the shallows, digging his toes into the mud, and bent forward, studying the reflections in the water. The stream, in this sheltered inlet, was as still and smooth as polished glass. In it, the world was upside-down. Behind his solemn brown face — topped by a shaggy tangle of greenish-brown hair — the images of trees seemed to plunge to astonishing depths, reaching toward a distant underwater sky. A sunken sun, blindingly golden, glittered up at him from the water. Tad blinked, squeezing his eyes tight shut against the glare.
When he opened them again, a strange face stared up at him from the silent stream. There, in his place, was an older face, square-chinned and defiant. This new face looked tired and troubled — its lips were compressed in a tight line, the eyebrows drawn together — but for all that, it was a kindly face. There were laugh crinkles at the corners of the eyes. Then the eyes shifted — green-brown eyes, Fisher eyes — and gazed right into Tad’s. Tad gasped in surprise and jerked backward. The strange Fisher’s lips were moving now, saying something, but Tad couldn’t understand what it was.
Who are you? He thought the words as hard as he could, wrinkling his forehead with effort. The face looked surprised — and then Tad’s foot slipped in the mud, and the reflection dissolved in a flurry of shimmering ripples. When he peeped into the water again, he saw nothing but his own face, its astonished mouth rimmed with honeycake crumbs. Had it been real? He couldn’t have imagined it. He would recognize the strange Fisher again anywhere. He tried to conjure up the vanished face and, probing, found only a fading whisper in his mind. Sagamore. Beware of Ohd.
Sagamore. Tad repeated the strange word to himself, tasting it on his tongue. The word was elusively familiar, like something he’d heard before, long ago, in one of Pondleweed’s stories, or maybe in a dream. And who or what was Ohd?
On the rock above him, Pondleweed sat up, pushed his hat back, and began to pack the remains of the picnic back into the basket.
“We’d better move on,” Pondleweed said. “We want to make as much headway as possible before dark. Come on, Birdie! Pippit! Back in the boat!”
They clambered into the birchbark
boat, Birdie and Pippit dripping squelchily onto the blanket bundles, which luckily were wrapped in waterproof bags of oiled leaves. With renewed energy, they paddled on. The farther they traveled, the grimmer Pondleweed’s face became. Something was terribly wrong, Tad knew. There could be no doubt now. The stream was drying. In places it was so shallow that their paddles scratched and scraped against pebbles on the bottom, and several times they had to get out to carry the boat over a stretch of streambed where there was almost no water at all.
When the sun was low in the western sky, just nudging the tops of the distant hills, they stopped and made camp for the night under a sweet-smelling honeysuckle bush. Birdie untied the braided grass cords fastening the blanket bundles and spread out the sleeping mats, while Tad dug a shallow fire pit at the edge of the stream, surrounded it with stones, and collected a heap of kindlesticks and dry wood. Pondleweed, spear in hand, prowled slowly back and forth in the water at the edge of the stream, searching for fish for dinner. Pippit excitedly hopped back and forth, stepping on things he wasn’t supposed to and getting in everyone’s way.
Tad added another dry twig to the bundle of kindlesticks already in his arms. It seemed strange to be doing all these homely chores so far from home — exciting, but a little lonesome too. Home-wishing, that’s what Pondleweed called it. Fishers have pond water in their blood, Pondleweed said.
“Get too far from home and your pond tugs at you, calling you back again, reminding you where you belong. All youngers get an urge for traveling, but sooner or later . . . well, you’ll see,” Pondleweed had said, “as you get older. You’re a Fisher. You’ll settle.”
Tad had never thought he would, but now he wasn’t so sure. For a moment he felt a terrible wave of longing for the home pond. From the look on Birdie’s face, she was feeling the same way. At least all of us are together, Tad thought. He was suddenly glad that Birdie had come along.
“I’m hungry, Birdie, aren’t you?” he said. “Let’s start the fire and make a pot of tea.”
By the time Pondleweed returned with three minners, cleaned and scaled and wrapped in a wet maple leaf, Tad had the cooking fire blazing and Birdie had brewed a pot of mint tea. They sprinkled the fish with snippets of peppergrass, set them to roast on pointed sticks over the fire, and buried wild onion bulbs to bake in the hot coals. Soon the minners began to sizzle and give off a delicious smell. The smell made Tad’s mouth water. He crouched down on his heels next to the fire, happily sniffing. He was so intent on the slowly crisping fish that he didn’t hear a sound behind him until a voice spoke suddenly out of the underbrush.
It said, “Fishers!”
Birdie and Pippit squawked in alarm, and Tad almost lost his balance and tumbled into the fire. Peering out at them through the honeysuckle leaves was a dark walnut-brown face. Tad recognized it immediately.
It was a Hunter.
The Hunter’s teeth flashed at them in a broad white grin. His hair was tied back in a thick braided tail, and he wore a scarlet head-scarf, a pair of leather trousers, and a short fur vest that was open in the front, leaving his chest bare. A wooden bow and a leather quiver filled with red-feathered arrows were slung across his back. There were leather bracelets incised with red-and-black diamond patterns on his upper arms. Across each cheek was painted a horizontal stripe of bright blue.
Tad felt a pang of nervousness. Though Hunters and Fishers were not enemies, there was a coolness between the two Tribes. Hunters were said to be tricky and untrustworthy — and sometimes outright thieves, stealing vegetables out of gardens, laundry off of drying lines, even babies out of cradles. “Never turn your back on a Hunter” was one of Granny Thimbleberry’s sayings. Hunters were dirty, they had no proper family feeling, and they ate odd things too, things that no self-respecting Fisher would ever put in his or her mouth. Tad wasn’t sure what the odd things were, but they sounded horrible. Whatever the Hunter in the honeysuckles ate, though, he looked just as clean as Tad did — though his smell was different: a pleasant leafy bonfire smell of forest floor and wood smoke. He took a step forward and raised his right hand, palm open and outward.
“Nobono of the Hunter Tribe,” he said. “Peace and plenty.”
“Pondleweed of the Fisher Tribe,” Pondleweed said, raising his right hand in turn. “And my son and daughter, Tadpole and Redbird. Peace and plenty.”
“Well met,” the Hunter said. “Shall we join our camps to share food and fire?”
“You are welcome,” Pondleweed said with equal formality. It was the accepted code of Tribal behavior: upon first meeting, you introduced yourself and offered to share your food, even if you had nothing more than a crust of rootbread or a single berry, even if you suspected that your new acquaintances were going to pinch your bladderpods and blankets in the night.
The Hunter flashed his teeth again. “A strong boy you have,” he said to Pondleweed. “And a fine girl. I, too, have sons and daughters. They follow behind in caravan.”
Tad threw a worried glance at the three fish.
The Hunter laughed. “It will be enough,” he said. “We will have food to share.”
He turned and winked broadly at Birdie.
“A fine girl,” he repeated. “Near old enough for trading. Perhaps we speak to your father, eh?”
Then he said, “I fetch my family.” There was a rustle of leaves as he slipped back into the bushes and disappeared.
Birdie glared after him indignantly.
“What did he mean, ‘old enough for trading’?” she demanded.
Pondleweed pursed his lips disapprovingly.
“It is what Hunters do when their youngers grow old enough to marry,” he said. “They bargain, one family with another, to find the best mates for their sons and daughters. It seems to work well enough for the Hunter Tribe, but Fishers do not treat their children that way.”
“Listen!” said Tad suddenly.
From some distance away, there came a rhythmic creak and jingle and the lumbering noise of something heavy, rolling.
“The caravan,” Pondleweed said, answering the children’s unspoken question. “You know that Hunters have no permanent homes like Fishers and Diggers have. They’re travelers, never settling, always moving from place to place, searching for game.” He sounded disapproving.
The creaking was louder now, and soon the leafy branches pushed apart to let the caravan pass through. Or rather caravans. There were two of them — both little houses on wheels. Nobono’s family lived in a wooden wagon with a tentlike cover of stitched animal skins fastened to a frame over the wagon bed. The frame was decorated with colored ribbons of dyed and twisted grasses, and hung with strings of hollow seedpods and baked-clay bells that clattered and tinkled musically as the wagon moved. Bundles of pelts were strapped to the wagon’s sides, and an earth-filled box fastened to the back was planted with herbs: onion grass, elf parsley, and tea mint.
Nobono and a woman with dark braids that hung to her waist walked before the wagon, pulling it along by a pair of wooden handles. Three children scampered beside them, and a fourth peeped shyly out from between the flaps of the skin tent. The children’s faces were deep nutbrown like their parents’, and their cheeks were also painted with stripes of blue.
The second wagon was smaller, its wheels gaudily striped in yellow, red, and green. It was pulled by a plumpish elderly Hunter whose long braid was almost pure white. He had a thick white mustache that curled up jauntily on the ends, and bushy eyebrows that looked like fat white caterpillars. When he grinned at Tad and Birdie, they saw that he was missing two teeth in the front.
“This is Branica, my mari,” Nobono said. “The mother of my children.” He gestured expansively. “And these are my sons, Bodo and Griffi, and my daughters, Ditani and Kelti. Our Ditani, she is now of the Hunt, having brought home First Blood.”
The Hunter boys were dressed like their father, in leather trousers and fur vests, while the girls, like their mother, wore bright full-skirted dresses dyed scarlet
with berry juice. There were ropes of agate and amber beads around their necks; and carved bone bracelets on their wrists and ankles clacked and clattered as they walked. Even Kelti, the baby of the family, wore necklaces of blue and yellow wooden beads, and there were goldfinch feathers tied in her pigtails. Birdie, stricken with shyness, edged closer to Tad, tugging nervously at the hem of her fringed tunic.
“They look like flowers,” she whispered.
Tad could hardly stop staring at Ditani. She was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. Her dark braids were threaded with red-dyed grasses and twisted into thick coils over her ears, and her eyes tilted up at the corners, which made her look as if she were laughing at some secret joke. With her black hair and scarlet skirt, she did look like a flower: a brilliant wild poppy or a slim stalk of flameweed. Beside her, Tad felt stodgy, clumsy, flapfooted, and dull.
“And this” — Nobono gestured again, teeth flashing —“is Uncle Czabo, my father’s cousin, who travels with us.”
The white-haired Hunter gave a loud bellow of laughter. Tad thought he sounded like a bullfrog.
“Well met, Fishers!” he shouted. Something glittered when he turned his head. Tad saw, astonished, that he wore a silver ring in his nose.
“We will eat, eh? And drink!” He dropped the shafts of his wagon, clapped his hands together, and pointed a long finger at Tad and Birdie.
“And you, Fisher cublings, I will show you my magic tricks!”
He winked at Tad and waggled his bushy eyebrows up and down at Birdie, who giggled.
The children were shy at first, but soon they were chattering together as Branica rummaged in the wagon, pulling out food. Hunter food. Tad peered at it suspiciously. It looked like perfectly ordinary food, though it smelled strongly of onion grass and wild garlic. Even more interesting than the food, though, was the neatly packed wagon, with its piles of tightly rolled sleeping furs, its red- and blue-painted wooden chests, and its rows of lidded storage baskets. Birdie was entranced.
