“Liku crossed the river in the log. Where does such a log grow? Now Liku will come back in the log and we shall be together." He pointed down to the men in the log.
“They have twigs."
The log was returning to the island. It was nosing at the bushes by the shore like a water-rat examining some- thing to eat. The man in the front end stood up carefully. He parted the bushes and hauled himself and the log through. The other end swung slowly downstream, then drew forward until the hanging branches covered it so that the man at the back ducked and laid down his stick. Suddenly Fa seized Lok by his right arm and shook him. She was staring into his face.
“Give the twig back!"
He shared some of the fright in her face. Behind her the sun made a slope of shadow stretch from the lip of the fall to the end of the island. Beyond her right shoulder he glimpsed a trunk of wood, upending and disappearing without noise over the fall. He lifted the twig and examined it.
“Throw it. Now." He jerked his head violently.
“No! No! The new people threw it to me."
Fa took two steps back and forth on the rock. She looked quickly towards the cold overhang, then at the island. She took him by both shoulders and shook him.
“The new people have many pictures. And I have many pictures too." Lok laughed, uncertainly.
“A man for pictures. A woman for Oa."
Her fingers tightened on his flesh. Her face looked as though she hated him. She spoke fiercely:
“What will the new one do without Nil's milk? Who will find food for Liku?"
He scratched in the hair under his open mouth. She took her hands away and waited for a moment. Lok continued to scratch and there was an aching emptiness in his head. She jerked twice.
“Lok has no pictures in his head."
She became very solemn and there was the great Oa, not seen but sensed like a cloud round her. Lok felt him- self diminish. He clasped his twig with both hands nervously and looked away. Now that the forest was dark he could see the eye of the new peoples' fire blinking at him. Fa spoke to the side of his head.
“Do what I say. Do not say: 'Fa do this.' I will say: 'Lok do this.' I have many pictures."
He diminished a little more, glanced quickly at her, then at the distant fire.
“Throw the twig."
He swung back his right arm and hurled the twig feathers foremost into the air. The feathers dragged, the shaft swung round, the twig hung for a moment in the sunlight, then the point dropped and the whole twig entered the shadows as smoothly as a stooping hawk, slid down and vanished in the water.
He heard Fa make a choking sound, a kind of dry sob: then she was holding him and her head was against his neck and she was laughing and sobbing and shaking as though she had done something difficult but good. She became Fa without much Oa and he put his arms round her for comfort. The sun was right down in the gap and the river flamed so that the edge of the fall was burning bright as the ends of sticks in the fire. There were dark logs coming down river, black against the flaming water. There were whole trees, their roots behaving like strange creatures of the sea. One was turning towards the fall beneath them; roots and branches lifting, dragging, going down. It hung for a moment on the lip; the burning water made a great heap of light over the end and then the tree was going down the air to vanish as smoothly as the twig. Lok spoke over Fa's shoulder.
“The old woman was in the water."
Presently Fa pushed him away from her.
“Come!"
He followed her round the corner into the level light of the terrace and their bodies wove a parallel skein of shadows as they walked so that a lifted arm seemed to lift a long weight of darkness with it. They went by habit up the rise to the overhang but it was empty of comfort. The recesses were there, dark eyes, and between them the pillar rock, lit redly. The sticks and ashes were so much earth. Fa sat on the ground by the hearth and frowned at the island. Lok waited while she pressed her hands on her head but he could not share her pictures. He remembered the meat in the recesses.
“Food."
Fa said nothing, so Lok, a little timidly, as if he might still have to meet the old woman's eye, felt his way into a recess. He smelled at the meat and brought enough for both of them. When he returned he heard the hyenas yelping on the rocks above the overhang. Fa took meat without seeing Lok and began to eat, still looking at her pictures.
Once he had begun to eat, Lok was reminded of his hunger. He tore the muscle in long strips from the bone and stuffed it in his mouth. There was much strength in the meat. Fa spoke indistinctly.
“We throw stones at the yellow ones."
“The twig."
They ate again in silence as the hyenas whined and yelped. Lok's ears told him they were hungry and his nose assured him that they were alone. He picked in the bone for marrow, then took up an unburnt stick from by the dead fire and thrust it in as far as he could. He had a sudden picture of Lok thrusting a stick into a crack for honey. A feeling rushed into him like a wave of the sea, swallowing his contentment in the food, swallowing even the companionship of Fa. He crouched there, the stick still in the hollow bone, and the feeling went through him and over him. It came from nowhere like the river, and like the river it would not be denied. Lok was a log in the river, a drowned animal that the waters treat as they will. He raised his head as Nil had raised her head and the sound of mourning broke from him while the sunlight lifted from the gap and the dusk came welling through. Then he was close to Fa and she was holding him.
The moon had risen when they moved. Fa stood up and squinted at it then looked at the island. She went down to the river and drank and stayed there, kneeling. Lok stood by her.
“Fa."
She made a motion with her hand of not to be disturbed and went on looking at the water. Then she was up and running along the terrace.
“The log! The log!"
Lok ran after her but could not understand. She was pointing at a slim trunk that was sliding towards them and turning as it went. She threw herself on her knees and grabbed a long splinter from the bigger end. The log turned and pulled at her. Lok saw her slip on the rock and dived at her feet. He got her round the knee; and then they were straining landward and the other end of the log was circling round. Fa had one hand wound in his hair and was pulling it without mercy so that the water stood in his eyes, swelled and ran down to his mouth. The other end of the log swung in, and it was floating by the terrace, pulling at them only gently. Fa spoke over her back.
“I have a picture of us crossing to the island on the log." Lok's hair bristled.
“But men cannot go over the fall like a log!"
“Be silent!" She puffed for a while and got her breath back.
“Up at the other end of the terrace we can rest the log across to the rock." She blew her breath out hugely.
“The people cross the water on the trail by running along a log." Then Lok was frightened.
“We cannot go over the fall!" Fa explained again, patiently.
They towed the log upstream to the end-of the terrace. This was a difficult and hair-bristling job because the terrace was not at an even height above the water and there were gaps and outcrops along the edge of it. They had to learn as they went: and all the time the water tugged, now gently, now with sudden strength as though they were robbing it of food. The log was not as dead as firewood. Sometimes it twisted in their hands and the broken branches of the slenderer end would twitch over the rock like legs. Long before they had reached the end of the terrace Lok had forgotten why they were towing it. He only remembered the sudden enlargement of Fa and the wave of misery that had drowned him. Working at the log, frightened of the water, the misery receded to a point where it could be examined and he did not like it. The misery was connected with the people and with strangeness.
“Liku will be hungry." Fa said nothing.
By the time they had worked the log to the end of the terrace the moon was their only light. Th
e gap was blue and white, and the flat river laced all over with silver.
“Hold the end." While he held it, Fa pushed the other end away from her into the river but the current brought it back. Then she squatted for a long time with her hands over her head and Lok waited in obedient dumbness. He yawned widely, licked his lips and looked at the sheer blue cliff on the other side of the gap. There was no terrace on that side of the river but only a sharp drop into deep water. He yawned again and put up both hands to wipe the tears out of his eyes. He blinked awhile at the night, inspected the moon, and scratched himself under his lip. Fa cried out:
“The log!"
He peered down past his feet but the log had gone; he. looked this way and that and flinchingly into the air; then he saw it drifting by Fa and turning away slightly. She scrambled along the rock and grabbed at the leg- like branches. The trunk dragged her, checked, then the end that Lok had forgotten began to swing outward. He made motions of catching hold but the log was out of reach. Fa was chattering and screaming at him in rage. He backed away from her sheepishly. He was saying
“The log, the log.." to himself without meaning. The misery had withdrawn like the tide but it was there still.
The other end of the log thumped against the tail of the island. The water of the river pushed sideways against it and the log turned, grinding, pulling the branch out of Fa's hand. The branch scarred down the terrace, bent, flicked, bent again and gave with a long crackle. The log was jammed, the thicker end bumped on the rock, bump, bump, bump; the water made a sluice over the middle, and the crown was crushed in the uneven side of the terrace. The middle of the log, though it was nearly as thick as Lok, bent under the pressure of the water for it was many times as long as a man.
Fa came close to him and looked doubtfully in his face. Lok remembered her anger when the log had seemed to go away from them. He patted her shoulder anxiously.
“I have many pictures."
She looked silently. Then she grinned and patted him back. She put both hands on her thighs and beat them softly, laughing at him so that he patted and laughed with her. The moon was so bright now that two grey- blue shadows imitated them at their feet.
A hyena whined by the overhang. Lok and Fa scuttered over the terrace toward them. Without a word their pictures were one picture. By the time they were near enough to see the hyenas each had stones in either hand and they were wide apart. They began to snarl and yell together and then the prick-eared shapes had fled up the rock to slink and sidle there, grey, with four eyes like green sparks.
Fa took the rest of the food from the recess and the hyenas snarled after them as they ran back along the terrace. By the time they reached the log they were eating mechanically. Then Lok took the bone from his lips.
“It is for Liku."
The log was not alone. Another smaller one lay along- side it, bumping and grinding and the water flowed over both. Fa went forward in the moonlight and laid a foot on the shoreward end. Then she came back and grimaced at the water. She walked away up the terrace, glanced downstream to where the lip of the fall was flickering and then traced forward. She baulked, checked, stopped. A large stick, turning in the water, added itself to the two logs. She tried again with a shorter run and stopped to gibber at the dazzling water. She began to run round by the logs, not speaking proper words but sounding fierce and desperate. This was another new thing and it frightened Lok so that he edged away over the terrace. But then he remembered his own antics by the log in the forest and made himself laugh at her, though there was an emptiness on her back. She ran at him and her teeth grinned in his face as though she would bite him and strange sounds were coming out of her mouth. His body jumped back.
She was silent, clinging to him and trembling, they were one shadow on the rock. She muttered to him in a voice that had no Oa in it:
“Go first on the log."
Lok put her to one side. Now they made no noise the misery was back. He looked at the log, found there was outside of Lok and inside and that outside was better. He hung the meat for Liku firmly from his teeth. She was not riding him and with Fa trembling and the river moving sideways, he did not care to be funny. He inspected the log from end to end, noted a broad bit on this side of the sluice where there had once been the division of a limb and walked away up the terrace. He measured the distance, leaned and rushed forward. The log was under his foot and slippery. It was trembling like Fa, it was moving sideways up the river so that he swayed to the right to retrieve himself. Unaccountably he was falling. His foot came down full force on the other log which sank and he stumbled. His left leg thrust, he was up and the sluice was pushing with more force than a great wind at the crooks of his knees and cold as ice women. He leapt frantically, stumbled, leapt and then he was clawing at the rock, reaching up, holding the top of it with his face pressed in Liku's meat. His feet walked away from each other up the rock until he felt that his crutch would split. He hitched himself painfully round the rock and faced back at Fa. He found that a sound had been coming out of his mouth for all the meat, high and sustained as Nil's sound when she ran on the log in the forest. He fell silent, breathing jerkily. There was another log adding itself to the pile. It lay alongside, bumping, and the sluice broke into foam and sparkling places. Fa tried this log with her feet. She walked carefully along over the water, straddling, with a foot on each log. She reached the rock where he lay and climbed up beside him. She shouted to him over the noise of the water:
“I did not make a noise."
Lok straightened up and tried to pretend that the rock was not moving with them up river. Fa gauged the leap and landed neatly on the next one. He followed her, empty-headed for the noise and newness. They jumped and clambered until they came to a rock that had bushes at the top, and when they reached this Fa lay down and gripped her fingers in the earth while Lok waited patiently with his hands full of meat. They were on the island, and on either side of them the lip of the fall ran and flickered like summer lightning. There was also a new noise, the voice of the main fall beyond the island which was nearer to them than ever before. There was no competing with it. Even the sketch of sound that the smaller fall left of their voices was taken clean away.
Presently Fa sat up. She went forward until she was looking down the shin of the island and Lok went to her.
The foot spread and by the ankle the drifts of water smoke ate inward so that they left only a narrowing way down. Lok crouched and looked over.
Ivy and roots, scars of earth and knobs of jagged rock ó the cliff leaned over so that the top with its plume of birch was looking straight down on to the island. The rocks that had fallen were still jumbled against the cliff at the bottom and their dark shapes, always wet, contrasted with the grey gleam of the leaves and the cliff. Trees still lived at the top, though perilously after the rock had torn most of their roots away. What remained were clutched into the crevices in the lip or writhed down the cliff or ended pointlessly in the wet air. The water poured out and down on either side, foamed and flashed, and the solid earth quivered. The moon, nearly full, fronted the cliff high up and the fire glowed in the farthest reach of the island.
The people made no comment on the dizzy height. They leaned out and searched the face of the cliff for a pathway. Fa slid over the edge, her blue shadow more visible than her body, and let herself hand over foot down the roots and the ivy. Lok followed, the meat in his teeth once more, squinting when he could at the glow of the fire. He felt a great impulse to hurry towards it as though there were some remedy by it for his misery. Nor was this remedy only Liku and the hew one. The other people with their many pictures were like water that at once horrifies and at the same time dares and invites a man to go near it. He was obscurely aware of this attraction without definition and it made him foolish. He found himself at the end of a huge broken root in a wilderness of glittering, cavernous water. The root was swinging with his weight so that the meat flopped on his chest. He had to jump sideways to the tangle of root
s and ivy before he could follow Fa again.
She led the way over the rocks and into the forest of the island. There was little here that might be called a trail. The other people had left their scent among smashed bushes and that was all. Fa followed the scent without reason. She knew the fire must be at the other end but to say why, she would have had to stop and wrestle with pictures, holding her hands to her head. There were many birds nesting on the island and they resented the people so that Fa and Lok began to move with great care. They ceased to pay direct attention to the new scent and adjusted themselves to threading the forest with as little noise and disturbance as possible. Their pictures were shared busily. In the almost total darkness under the coverts they saw with night sight; they avoided the invisible* lifted aside the clinging ivy, undid the draped brambles and sidled through. Soon they could hear the new people.
The Inheritors Page 10
