“Be silent!" Lok did not hear. He was babbling.
“I have seen the other. Ha fell in the river. The other came and watched the overhang."
Fa seized him by the arm. The bundle was clutched against her breast.
“Be silent! Oa will let the ice women hear and they will fall!"
“Let me stay with you!"
“You are a man. There is terror. Go back!"
“I will not see or hear. I will stay behind you. Let me come."
The drone of the fall had diminished to a sigh like the sound of the sea at a great distance, but in bad weather. Their words had flown away from them like a flock of birds that circled and multiplied mysteriously. The cliffs of the deep gully were singing. Fa clapped her hand over his mouth and they stood so while the birds flew farther and farther away and there was no sound but the water by their feet and the sighing of the fall. Fa turned and began to climb the gully and Lok hastened after her. She stopped and motioned him back fiercely but when she went on he followed. Then Fa stopped again, and ran to and fro between the cliffs making silent mouths at Lok and showing her teeth but he would not leave her. The way back led to the Lok-other who had been unutterably alone. At last she gave up and ignored him. She padded up the gully and Lok followed her, his teeth rattling with the cold.
For here at last there was no water by their feet. There were instead, congealed trunks of ice that were fixed solidly against the cliff; and under the unsunned side of every stone lay a bank of snow. He felt all the misery of winter again and the terror of the ice women so that he followed Fa close as though she were a warm fire. The sky was a narrow strip above him, a freezing sky, that was pricked all over with stars and dashed with strokes of cloud that trapped the moonlight. He could see now that the ice clung to the sides of the gully like ivy, broad below and dividing higher up into a thousand branches and tendrils and the leaves were a glittering white. There was ice under his feet so that they burned and then were numbed. Soon he was using his hands as well and they were numbed like his feet. Fa's rump bobbed in front of him and he followed. The gully widened and more light spilled in and he could see that they were facing a sheer wall of rock. Down the left side there was a line of deepest black. Fa crept towards this line and vanished into it. Lok followed her. He was in an entry so narrow that he could touch both sides with his elbows. Then he was through.
Light hit him. He ducked and brought both hands up to his eyes. Blinking, looking down, he could see stones that flashed, lumps of ice and deep blue shadows. He could see Fa's feet in front of him, whitened, dusted with glitter and her shadow changing shape over the ice and stones. He began to look forward at eye-level and he saw the clouds of their breathing hanging round them like the spray clouds of the fall. He stayed where he was and Fa dimmed into her own breath.
The place was huge and open. It was walled with rock; and everywhere the ice ivy-plants reached upwards until they were spread out high above his head on the rock. Where they met the floor of the sanctuary they swelled till they were like the boles of old oaks. Their high branches vanished into caverns of ice. Lok stood back and looked up at Fa who had gone higher towards the other end of the sanctuary. She crouched on the stones and lifted up the parcel of meat. There was no sound, not even the noise of the fall.
Fa began to speak in little more than a whisper. At first he could hear individual words, "Oa" and "Mai": but walls rejected the words so that they bounded back and were thrown again. "Oa" said the wall and the great ivy, and the wall behind Lok sang "Oa Oa Oa". They ceased to utter the separate words and sang "O" and
“A" at the same moment. The sound rose like water in a tidal pool, smoothed like water, became a ringing "A" that beat on him, drowned him. "Sick, sick," said the wall at the end of the sanctuary; "Mai" said the rocks behind him, and the air sang with the interminable and rising tide of "Oa". The hair lifted on his skin. He made with his mouth as if to say "Oa". He looked up, and saw the ice women. The caverns where the ivy branches led were their loins. Their thighs and bellies rose out of the cliff above. They impended so that the sky was smaller than the floor of the sanctuary. Body linked with body they leaned out, arching over and their pointed heads flashed in the light of the moon. He saw that their loins were like caverns, blue and terrible. They were detached from the rock and the ivy was their water, seeping down between the rock and the ice. The pool of sound had risen to their knees.
“Aaaa" sang the cliff, "Aaaa.."
Lok was lying with his face against ice. Though the frost twinkled on his hair sweat had burst through his skin. He could feel the ravine moving sideways. Fa was shaking his arm.
“Come!"
His belly felt as though he had eaten grass and would be sick. He could see nothing but green lights that moved with merciless persistence through a void of blackness. The sound of the sanctuary had entered his head and was living there like the sound of the sea in a shell. Fa's lips moved against his ear.
“Before they see you."
He remembered the ice women. He kept his eyes on the ground lest he should see the awful light and began to crawl away. His body was a dead thing and he could not make it work. He stumbled after Fa and then they were through the crack in the wall and the gully led down in front of them and another crack was the new arrangement of the gap. He fled past Fa and began to fight his way downward. He fell and rolled, stumbled, leapt clumsily among snow and stones. Then he stopped, weak and shaken and whimpering like Nil. Fa came to him. She put her arm round him and he leaned, looking down at the thread-like water of the gap. Fa spoke softly in his ear.
“It is too much Oa for a man."
He turned inward and got his head between her breasts.
“I was afraid."
For a time they were silent. But the cold was in them and their bodies shuddered apart.
In less panic but still crippled by the cold they began to feel their way down the steepening slope where the sound of the fall rose to meet them. This brought pictures of the overhang to Lok. He began to explain to Fa.
“The other is on the island. He is a mighty leaper. He was on the mountain. He came to the overhang and looked down."
“Where is Ha?"
“He fell into the water."
She left a cloud of breath behind her and he heard her voice out of it.
“No man falls in water. Ha is on the island."
For a while she was silent. Lok thought as best he could of Ha leaping the gap across to the rock. He could not see this picture. Fa spoke again.
“The other must be a woman."
“He smells of man."
“Then there must be another woman. Can a man come out of a man's belly? Perhaps there was a woman and then a woman and then a woman. By herself."
Lok digested this. As long as there was a woman there was life. But what use was a man save for smelling things out and having pictures? Confirmed in his humility he did not like to tell Fa that he had seen the other or that he had seen the old woman and known himself invisible. Presently even pictures and the thought of speech went from his head for they had reached the vertical part of the trail. They clambered down in silence and the roar of water came at them. Only when they were on the terrace and trotting towards the overhang did he remember that he had set out to find Ha and was coming back without him. As if the terror of the sanctuary was pursuing them the two people broke into a run.
But Mai was not the new man they expected. He lay collapsed and his breathing was so shallow that his chest hardly moved. They could see that his face was olive dark and shone with sweat. The old woman had kept the fire blazing and Liku had moved outside it. She was eating more liver, slowly and gravely, and watching Mai. The two women were crouched, one on either side of him, Nil bent and brushing the sweat off his forehead with her hair. There seemed no place in the underhang for Lok's news of the other. When she heard them, Nil looked up, saw no Ha and bent to dry the old man's fore- head again. The old woman patted his shoulder.
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br /> “Be well and strong, old man. Fa has taken an offering to Oa for you."
At that, Lok remembered his terror beneath the ice women. He^ opened his mouth to chatter but Fa had shared his picture and she clapped her hand across his lips. The old woman did not notice. She took another morsel from the steaming bag.
“Sit up now and eat." Lok spoke to him.
“Ha is gone. There are other people in the world."
Nil stood up and Lok knew that she was going to mourn but the old woman spoke as Fa had done.
“Be silent!"
She and Fa lifted Mai carefully until he was sitting, leaning back in their arms, his head rolling on Fa's breast. The old woman placed the morsel between his lips but they mumbled it out again. He was speaking.
“Do not open my head and my bones. You would only taste weakness."
Lok glanced round at each of the women, his mouth open. An involuntary laugh came from it. Then he chattered at Mai.
“But there is other. And Ha has gone." The old woman looked up.
“Fetch water."
Lok ran down to the river and brought back two handfuls. He dripped it slowly over Mai's face. The new one appeared, yawning on Nil's shoulder, clambered over and began to suck. They could see that Mai was trying to speak again.
“Put me in the warm earth by the fire."
In the noise of the waterfall there came a great silence. Even Liku ceased to eat and stood staring. The women did not move, but kept their eyes on Mai's face. The silence filled Lok, turned to water that stood suddenly in his eyes. Then Fa and the old woman laid Mai gently on his side. They pushed the great gaunt bones of his knees against his chest, tucked in his feet, lifted his head off the earth and put his two hands under it. Mai was very close to the fire and his eyes looked into the flames. The hair on his brows began to crinkle but he did not seem to notice. The old woman took a splinter of wood and drew a line in the earth round his body. Then they lifted him to one side with the same solemn quiet. The old woman chose a flat stone and gave it to Lok.
“Dig!"
The moon was through to the sunset side of the gap, but its light was hardly noticeable on the earth for the ruddy brilliance of the firelight. Liku began to eat again. She stole round behind the grown-ups and sat against the rock at the back of the overhang. The earth was hard and Lok had to lean his weight on the stone before he could shift any. The old woman gave him a sharp splinter of bone from the doe meat and he found he could break up the surface much more easily with this. Underneath it was softer. The top layer of earth came up like slate, but below it crumbled in his hands and he could scrape it out with the stone. So he continued as the moon moved. There came into his head the picture of a younger and stronger Mai doing this but on the other side of the hearth. The clay of the hearth was a bulging round on one side of the irregular shaped hole that he was digging. Soon he came to another hearth beneath it and then another. There was a little cliff of burnt clay. Each hearth seemed thinner than the one above it, until as the hole deepened the layers were stone hard and not much thicker than birch bark. The new one finished sucking, yawned, and scrambled down to the earth. He took hold of Mai's leg, hauled himself up, leaning forward and gazed unblinkingly and brightly at the fire. Then he dropped back, scuttled round Mai and investigated the hole. He overbalanced into it and scrambled mewing in the soft earth by Lok's hands. He extracted himself arse- upward and fled back to Nil and crouched in her lap.
Lok sat back with a grasp. The perspiration was running down his body. The old woman touched him on the arm.
“Dig! There is only Lok!"
Wearily he returned to the hole. He pulled out an ancient bone and flung it far into the moonlight. He heaved again on the stone, then fell forward.
“I cannot."
Then, though this was a new thing, the women took stones and dug. Liku watched them and the deepening and darkening hole and said nothing. Mai was beginning to tremble. The clay pillar of hearths narrowed as they dug. It was rooted far down in a forgotten depth of the overhang. As each clay layer appeared the earth became easier to work. They began to have difficulty in keeping the sides straight. They came on dry and scentless bones, bones so long divorced from life that they had no meaning to them and were tossed on one side, bones of the legs, rib-bones, the crushed and opened bones of a head. There were stones too, some with edges that would cut or points that would bore and these they used for a moment where they were useful but did not keep. The dug earth grew into a pyramid by the hole and little avalanches of brown grains would run back as they lifted the new earth out by the handful. There were bones scattered over the pyramid. Liku played idly with the bones of the head. Then Lok got his strength back and dug too so that the hole sank more quickly. The old woman made up the fire again and the morning was grey beyond the flames.
At last the hole was finished. The women poured more water over Mai's face. He was skin and bone now. His mouth was wide as if to bite the air he could not breathe. The people knelt in a semicircle round him. The old woman gathered them with her eyes.
“When Mai was strong he found much food."
Liku squatted against the rock at the back of the over- hang, holding the little Oa to her chest. The new one slept under Nil's hair. Mai's fingers were moving aimlessly and his mouth was opening and closing. Fa and the old woman lifted the upper part of his body and held his head. The old woman spoke softly in his ear.
“Oa is warm. Sleep."
The movements of his body became spasmodic. His head rolled sideways oh the old woman's breast and stayed there.
Nil began to keen. The sound filled the overhang, pulsed out across the water towards the island. The old woman lowered Mai on his side and folded his knees to his chest. She and Fa lifted him and lowered him into the hole. The old woman put his hands under his face and saw that his limbs lay low. She stood up and they saw no expression in her face. She went to a shelf of rock and chose one of the haunches of meat. She knelt and put it in the hole by his face.
“Eat, Mai, when you are hungry."
She bade them follow her with her eyes. They went down to the river, leaving Liku with the little Oa. The old woman took handfuls of water and the others dipped their hands too. She came back and poured the water over Mai's face.
“Drink when you are thirsty."
One by one the people trickled water over the grey, dead face. Each repeated the words. Lok was last, and as
the water fell he was filled with a great feeling for Mai. He went back and got a second gift.
“Drink, Mai, when you are thirsty."
The old woman took handfuls of earth and cast them on his head. Last of the people came Liku, timidly, and did as the eyes bid her. Then she went back to the rock. At a sign from the old woman, Lok began to sweep the pyramid of earth into the hole. It fell with a soft swishing sound and soon Mai was blurred out of shape. Lok pressed the earth down with his hands and feet. The old woman watched the shape alter and disappear expressionlessly. The earth rose and filled the hole, rose still until where Mai had been was a little mound in the overhang. There was still some left. Lok swept it away from the mound and then trampled the mound down as firmly as he could.
The old woman squatted down by the freshly stamped earth and waited till they were all looking at her. She spoke:
“Oa has taken Mai into her belly".
FIVE
After their silence the people ate. They began to find that tiredness lay on them like mist. There was a blankness of Ha and Mai in the overhang. The fire still burned and the food was good; but a sick weariness fell on them. One by one they curled up in the space between the fire and the rock and fell asleep. The old woman went to the recess and brought wood. She built up the fire until it roared like the water. She collected what was left of the food and placed it out of harm's reach in the recesses. Then she squatted by the mound of earth where Mai had been and looked out over the water.
The people did not dream very often, but
while the light of the dawn brightened over them they were beset by a throng of phantoms from the other place. The old woman could see out of the corner of her eye how they were enmeshed, exalted and tormented. Nil was talking. Lok's left hand was scrabbling up a handful of dirt. Muttered words, inarticulate cries of pleasure and fear were coming from them all. The old woman did nothing but gazed steadily at a picture of her own. Birds began to cry and the sparrows dropped down and pecked about the terrace. Lok flung out a hand suddenly that struck her thigh. When the water was already glittering she stood up and brought wood from the recesses. The fire welcomed the wood with a noisy crackle. She stood close by it, looking down.
The Inheritors Page 7
