The Inheritors

by William Golding

  “Where is Liku?"

  He saw the people still their bodies and shrink. Only the child Tanakil began to scream until the crumpled woman seized her by the arm and shook her into silence.

  “Give me Liku!"

  Chestnut-head was listening sideways in the firelight, searching for the voice with his ear and his bent stick was rising.

  “Where is Fa?"

  The stick shrank and straightened suddenly. A moment later something brushed by in the air like the wing of a bird; there came a dry tap, then a wooden bounce and clatter. A woman rushed to the cave where Lok had crawled and brought a whole sheaf of branches and dumped them on the fire. The dark silhouettes of the people gazed into the forest inscrutably.

  Lok turned away and trusted to his nose. He cast across the trail, found the scent of Fa and the scent of the two men who had followed her. He trotted forward, nose to the ground, along the scent that would bring him back to Fa. He had a great desire to hear her speak again and to touch her with his body. He moved faster through the darkness that preceded dawn and his nose told him, pace by pace, the whole story. Here were Fa's prints, far apart as she fled, the grip of her toes forcing back a little half- moon of earth out of the ground. He found that he could see more clearly now that he was away from the firelight for the dawn was breaking behind the trees. Once more the thought of Liku came to him. He turned back, swung himself into the cleft trunk of a beech tree and looked through the branches at the clearing. The guard who had run after Fa was dancing in front of the new people. He crawled like a snake, he went to the wreck of the caves; he stood; he came back to the fire snapping like a wolf so that the people shrank from him. He pointed; he created a running, crouching thing, his arms flapped like the wings of a bird. He stopped by the thorn bushes, sketched a line in the air over them, a line up and up towards the trees till it ended in a gesture of ignorance. Tuami was talking rapidly to the old man. Lok saw him kneel by the fire, clear a space and begin to draw on it with a stick. There was no sign of Liku and the fat woman was sitting in one of the hollow logs with the new one on he^ shoulder,

  Lok let himself down to the ground, found Fa's tracks once more and ran along them. Her steps were full of terror so that his own hair rose in sympathy. He came to a place where the hunters had stopped and he could see how one of them had stood sideways till his toeless feet made deep marks in the earth. He saw the gap between steps where Fa had leapt in the air and then her blood, dropping thickly, leading in an uneven curve back from the forest to the swamp where the tree-trunk had been. He followed her into a tangle of briar that the hunters had threshed over. He went in deeper than they, heedless of the thorns that tore his skin. He saw where her feet like his own had plunged terribly in the mud and left an open hole that was filling now with stagnant water. Be- fore him the surface of the marsh was polished and awe- some. The bubbles had ceased to rise from the bottom and any brown mud that had been whipped up to make coils in the top water had sunk again as if nothing had

  happened. Even the scum and the weed and clustering frog's spawn had drifted back and lay motionless in the dead water under the dirty boughs. The steps and the blood came thus far; there was the scent of Fa and her terror; and after that, nothing.

  TEN

  The drab light increased, silvered, and the black water of the marshes shone. A bird squawked among the islands of reed and briar. Far off, the stag of all stags blared and blared again. The mud round Lok's ankles tightened so that he had to balance with his arms. There was an astonishment in his head and beneath the astonishment a dull, heavy hunger that strangely included the heart. Automatically his nose inquired of the air for food and his eyes turned this way and that among the mud and tangles of briar. He lurched, bent his toes and drew his feet out of the mud and staggered to firmer land. The air was warm and tiny flying things sang thinly like the note that comes in the ears after a blow on the head. Lok shook himself but the high thin note continued and the heavy feeling weighed on his heart.

  Where the trees began were bulbs with green points that just broke the ground. He turned these up with his feet, lifted them to his hand and put them to his mouth. Outside-Lok did not seem to want them, though inside- Lok made his teeth grind them and his throat rise and swallow. He remembered that he was thirsty and ran back to the marsh but the mud had changed; it was daunting now as it had not been before when he was following the scent of Fa. His feet would not enter it.

  Lok began to bend. His knees touched the ground, his hands reached down and took his weight slowly, and with all his strength he clutched himself into the earth. He writhed himself against the dead leaves and twigs, his head came up, turned, and his eyes swept round, astonished eyes over a mouth that was strained open. The sound of mourning burst out of his mouth, prolonged, harsh, pain- sound, man-sound. The high note of the flying things continued and the fall droned at the foot of the mountain. Far off, the stag blared again.

  There was pink in the sky and a new green in the tops of the trees. The buds that had been no more than points of life had opened into fingers so that their swarms had thickened against the light and only the larger branches were visible. The earth itself seemed to vibrate as though it were working to force the sap up the trunks. Slowly as the sounds of his mourning died away Lok attended to this vibration and was minutely comforted. He crawled, he took up bulbs with his fingers and chewed them, his throat rose and swallowed. He remembered his thirst again and went crouched and questing for firm ground by the water. He let himself head down from a raking branch, held with one hand and sucked at the dark onyx surface.

  There was the sound of feet in the forest. He scrambled back to the firm earth and saw two of the new people flitting past the trunks with bent sticks in their hands. There were noises coming from the remainder of the people in the clearing; noises of logs moving over each other, and of trees being cut. He remembered Liku and ran away towards the clearing until he could peer over the bushes and see what the people were doing.

  “A-ho! A-ho! A-ho!"

  All at once he had a picture of the hollow logs nosing up the bank and coming to rest in the clearing. He crept forward and crouched. There were no more logs in the river, so no more would come out of it. He had another picture of the logs moving back into the river and this picture was so clearly connected in some way with the first one and the sounds from the clearing that he under- stood why one came out of the other. This was an upheaval in the brain and he felt proud and sad and like Mai. He spoke softly to the briars with their chains of new buds.

  “Now I am Mai."

  All at once it seemed to him that his head was new, as though a sheaf of pictures lay there to be sorted when he would. These pictures were of plain grey daylight. They showed the solitary string of life that bound him to Liku and the new one; they showed the new people towards whom both outside- and inside-Lok yearned with a terrified love, as creatures who would kill him if they could.

  He had a picture of Liku looking up with soft and adoring eyes at Tanakil, guessed how Ha had gone with a kind of eager fearfulness to meet his sudden death. He clutched at the bushes as the tides of feeling swirled through him and howled at the top of his voice.

  “Liku! Liku!"

  The cutting noises stopped and became a long, grinding crackle instead. In front of him he saw Tuami's head and shoulders move quickly aside and then a whole tree with arms that bent and shattered in a mass of greenery came smashing down. As the green of the tree swept side- ways he could see the clearing again for the thorn bushes had been torn down and the hollow logs were coming through. The people were heaving at the logs, inching them forward. Tuami was shouting and Bush was struggling to get his bent stick off his shoulder. Lok raced away until the people were small at the beginning of the trail.

  The logs were not going back to the river but coming towards the mountain. He tried to see another picture that came but of this but could not; and then his head was Lok's head again and empty.

  Tuami w
as hacking at the tree, not cutting the trunk itself but at the thin end where the arms stuck out, for Lok could hear the difference in the note. He could hear the old man too.

  “A-ho! A-ho! A-ho!"

  The log nosed along the trail. It rode on other logs, rollers that sank into the soft earth so that the people were gasping and crying out in their exhaustion and terror. The old man, though he did not touch the logs, was working harder than anybody. He ran round, commanded, exhorted, mimed their struggles, gasped with them; and his high bird-voice fluttered all the time. The women and Tanakil were ranged on either side of the hollow log and even the fat woman was heaving at the back. There was only one person in the log; the new one stood in the bottom, holding on to the side and gazing over at the uproarious commotion.

  Tuami came back from the side of the trail dragging a great section of the tree-trunk. When he got it on to smooth ground he began to roll it towards the hollow log. The women gathered round the staring eyes, heaved up and forward and the log was rolling easily over the soft ground with the tree-trunk turning under it. The eyes dipped and Bush and Tuami came from behind with a smaller roller so that the log never touched the ground. There was a ceaseless movement and swirl like bees round a cleft in the rock, an ordered desperation. The log moved along the trail towards Lok with the new one swaying, bobbing up and down, mewing occasionally, but most of the time fastening his gaze on the nearest or most energetic of the people. As for Liku, she was no- where to be seen; but Lok with a flash of Mai thinking remembered that there was another log and many bundles.

  Just as the new one did nothing but look, so Lok was absorbed in their approach as a man who watches the tide come in may not remember to move until the spray washes at his feet. Only when they were so close to him that he could see how the grass flattened in front of the roller did he remember that the people were dangerous and flit away into the forest. He stopped when they were hidden from sight but still within earshot. The women were crying with the strain of pushing the log along and the old man was getting hoarse. Lok had so many feelings in his body that they bewildered him. He was frightened of the new people and sorry for them as for a woman who has the sickness. He began to roam about under the trees, picking at what food he could find but not mind- ing if he did not find it. Pictures went from his head again and he became nothing but a vast well of feeling that could not be examined or denied. He thought at first he was hungry and crammed anything he could find into his mouth. Suddenly he found himself cramming in young branches, sour and useless inside their slippery bark. He was stuffing and gulping and then he was crouching on all fours, vomiting all the branches up again.

  The noise of the people diminished a little until he could hear no more than the voice of the old man when it rose in command or fury. Down here where the forest changed to marsh and the sky opened over bushes, straggling willow and water, there was no other sign of their passage. The woodpigeons talked, preoccupied with their mating; nothing was changed, not even the great bough where a red-haired child had swung and laughed. All things profited and thrived in a warm windlessness. Lok got to his feet and wandered along by the marshes towards the mere where Fa had disappeared. To be Mai was proud and heavy. The new head knew that certain things were gone and done with like a wave of the sea. It knew that the misery must be embraced painfully as a man might hug thorns to him and it sought to comprehend the new people from whom all changes came.

  Lok discovered "Like". He had used likeness all his life without being aware of it. Fungi on a tree were there, the word was the same but acquired a distinction by circumstances that could never apply to the sensitive things on the side of his head. Now, in a convulsion of the understanding Lok found himself using likeness as a tool as surely as ever he had used a stone to hack at sticks or meat. Likeness could grasp the white-faced hunters with a hand, could put them into the world where they were thinkable and not a random and unrelated irruption.

  He was picturing the hunters who went out with bent sticks in skill and malice.

  “The people are like a famished wolf in the hollow of a tree."

  He thought of the fat woman defending the new one from the old man, thought of her laughter, of men working at a single load and grinning at each other.

  “The people are like honey trickling from a crevice in the rock."

  He thought of Tanakil playing, her clever fingers, her laughter, and her stick.

  “The people are like honey in the round stones, the new honey that smells of dead things and fire."

  They had emptied the gap of its people with little more than a turn of their hands.

  “They are like the river and the fall, they are a people of the fall; nothing stands against them."

  He thought of their patience, of the broad man Tuami creating a stag out of coloured earth.

  “They are like Oa."

  There came a confusion in his head, a darkness; and then he was Lok again, wandering aimlessly by the marshes and the hunger that food would not satisfy was back. He could hear the people running along the trail to the clearing where the second log lay and they did not speak, but betrayed themselves by the thump and rustle of their steps. He shared a picture like a gleam of sunlight in winter that was gone before he had time to see it properly. He stopped, head up and nostrils flared. His ears took over the business of living, they discounted the noise of the people and concentrated on the moorhens that were driving their smooth breasts so furiously

  through the water. They came towards him in a wide angle, saw him and sheared off abruptly and all together to the right. A water rat followed them, nose up, body jerking inside the wave that it made. There was a washing sound, a swish and lap among the bushes of briar that dotted the marshes. Lok ran away then came back. He crouched through the mud and began to unlace the brambles that hid his view. The washing had stopped and the ripples from it were lapping the bushes, splashing into his foot- prints. He sought in the air with his nose, fought with the bushes and was through. He took three steps in the water and sank in mud crookedly. The washing began again and Lok, laughing and talking, took drunken steps towards it. The hair of outside-Lok rose at the touch of the cold stuff round his thighs and the grip of the unseen mud sucking at his feet. The heaviness, the hunger was rising, became a cloud that filled him, a cloud that the sun fills with fire. There was no heaviness any more but only the lightness that set him talking and laughing like the honey people, laughing and blinking water out of his eyes. Already they shared a picture.

  “Here I am! I am coming!"

  “Lok! Lok!"

  Fa's arms were up, her fists doubled, her teeth clenched, she was leaning and forcing her way through the water. They were still covered to the thigh when they clung to each other and made clumsily for the bank. Before they could see their feet again in the squelching mud Lok was laughing and talking.

  “It is bad to be alone. It is very bad to be alone." Fa limped as she held him.

  “I am hurt a little. The man did it with a stone on the end of a stick."

  Lok touched the front of her thigh. The wound was no longer bleeding but black blood lay in it like a tongue.

  “It is bad to be alone!”

  “I ran into the water after the man hit me."

  “The water is a terrible thing."

  “The water is better than the new people."

  Fa took her arm from his shoulder and they squatted down under a great beech. The people were returning from the clearing with the second hollow log. They were sobbing and gasping as they went. The two hunters who had gone off earlier were shouting down from the rocks of the mountain. Fa stuck her wounded leg straight out in front of her.

  “I ate eggs and reeds and the frog jelly."

  Lok found that his hands kept reaching out and touching her. She smiled at him grimly. He remembered the instant connection that had made daylight of the disconnected pictures.

  “Now I am Mai. It is heavy to be Mai."

  “It is heavy to
be the woman."

  “The new people are like a wolf and honey, rotten honey and the river."

  “They are like a fire in the forest."

  Quite suddenly Lok had a picture from so deep down in his head he had not known it was there. For a moment the picture seemed to be outside him so that the world changed. He himself was the same size as before but everything else had grown suddenly bigger. The trees were mountainous. He was not on the ground but riding on a back and he was holding to reddish-brown hair with hands and feet. The head in front of him, though he could not see the face was Mai's face and a greater Fa fled ahead of him. The trees above were flailing up flames and the breath from them was attacking him. There was urgency and that same tightening of the skin - there was terror.

  “Now is like when the fire flew away and ate up the trees."

  The sounds of the people and their logs were far in the distance. Runners came thumping back along the trail to the clearing. There came a moment of bird-speech, then silence. The steps thumped back along the trail and faded again. Fa and Lok stood up and went towards the trail. They did not speak but in their cautious, circling approach was the unspoken admission that the people could not be left alone. Terrible they might be as the fire or the river but they drew like honey or meat. The trail had changed like everything else that the people had touched. The earth was gouged and scattered, the rollers had depressed and smoothed a way broad enough for Lok and Fa and another to walk abreast.