The Dream Time

by Henry Treece

  12.

  twilight was afraid they would never come back. He sat outside the cavern and watched the moon come and go, round the sky. It was quite safe to be out there, because no wolves ever dared prowl near that place.

  When the sun came up again, Twilight thought that it had all been a dream. The old ones and women did not come near him, but stayed in the farthest cavern, with their babies and children.

  Only Big One’s daughter came to him and gave him white roots and nuts and cheese to eat. Later she gave him meat of some sort, but she held it away from her as though she did not care to touch it and he did not like the smell of it, so flung it into a heather clump when she had gone away.

  He tried to find his way back into the dream-cavern where all the coloured creatures were; but the old men crouched in the tunnel glaring at him all hairy and he did not dare try to pass them. It was a forbidden place when Big One was not there to give permission.

  Then at dusk the Red Men came back. They were carrying Blackbird on a litter made of woven boughs. She was very frightened till she saw Twilight, then she ran to him and put her arms round him and laughed into his face. The Red Men watched this, then began their grunting dance, beating their chests and making the dust fill the cave.

  And when the dance was over and Blackbird had stopped hugging Twilight, Yellow One came to them and flung a bundle at their feet like an offering. In the dusk, Twilight could not tell what it was, but when he got a rushlight and bent over it, he saw that Wander and Adder must have lost most of their hair.

  He snarl-laughed at Yellow One, as though he was pleased; but as soon as he could, he took the bundle and dropped it down into a hole in the ground forty paces away from the caverns.

  Blackbird saw this and said, ‘If they had beaten you as they beat me, you would not look so sad. See, there are marks on me that I shall never lose.’

  Twilight said, ‘That is a small thing. To lose one’s hair is a big thing. Wander had great pride in her hair, It was the colour of corn in the sunlight.’

  Blackbird laughed at him and said, ‘The biggest thing for us is to be together again and to be happy, But I do not think that Big One’s daughter is happy; she looks at me as though she wishes to bite me.’ Twilight said, ‘She will come to like you if you are kind to her and do not sniff at the food she finds for us. Perhaps one day she will let you go out and help to find the food too.’

  Blackbird said, ‘Yes, and I will teach her to spin wool and to weave. We shall be like sisters together.’

  Twilight said, ‘It will be better when we have learned how to speak with them. I have tried, but it hurts my chest to make the words they make. I can only speak to them with my shapes. We are so different, but our shapes bring us together like brothers and sisters. I thought that I was the only man who could make shapes, but each one of the Red folk, even the youngest, can make much better shapes than I can. But when I have found out the way to make my things in copper, melted in the fire, then they will see something!’

  Blackbird screwed up her nose. ‘Shapes in melted copper?’ she said. ‘I think you are dreaming again. You are the strangest man I have met. That is why I like you.’

  Twilight said, ‘I like you just because you are Blackbird. I do not have to have things to like folk for. I like them just because they are themselves. You are my sister and we can talk and laugh together when we say strange things. To be able to laugh, that is a big thing. Without laughter life is very black.’

  13.

  so they stayed with the Red Folk. Big One gave them a little cave to be in when they felt like talking and laughing together. Yellow One sometimes took Twilight into the domed cavern and showed him how to put the colours on to the wall, to make all the wild creatures look more real. Once Yellow One covered Twilight’s hand with red clay-paint and then pressed it on to the wall so as to leave its shape there for ever. Then he put paint on his own hand and placed it beside Twilight’s on the wall so that they were together, like the hands of two close friends. Big One came in when this was being done, and put his great arms round both of them, hugging them. He was so strong that Twilight felt the breath go out of his body and he hoped that Big One would not squeeze any harder in case his bones broke.

  At this time, Blackbird taught Big One’s daughter how to spin and weave. The Red Men went out every day to find scraps of wool left on bushes, and brought them back proudly as though they had done something very important. Blackbird made herself a little loom over which she criss-crossed the strands of wool when she had rolled them between her hands into a rough yarn. This loom could only make small squares of loosely woven cloth, but Blackbird stitched the pieces together and at last made a skirt for Big One’s daughter. As the Red Men sat round, watching the cloth growing in size each day, they grunted and beat their chests and bobbed up and down, as though this was the most wonderful thing they had ever seen. Big One’s daughter let Blackbird put the skirt on her, but after>a while took it off again and placed it on a shelf in the cave where it would be safe. She tried very hard to make cloth like Blackbird, but her fingers were so strong that she always broke the wool. At last she grew so impatient that she broke the loom into pieces and threw it away. Then she was sorry for what she had done, and went out every day, even when the weather got to be much colder, to fetch good things for Blackbird to eat. Once Blackbird tried to make porridge for the Red Folk, from acorns which she had dried and roasted, but they spluttered and spat this porridge out.

  Then a bad thing happened quite suddenly. One day Big One’s daughter did not come back from the woods when she went to gather roots. The Red Folk in the cave waited until it was almost dusk, then they began to stare at one another and to sniff and bob up and down. They made little restless movements with their fingers and tore at pieces of fern. Sometimes the reddish hair on their backs seemed to stand up straight and they made low growling sounds in their stomachs.

  Big One went to the cave entrance many times and stared out towards the woods, sniffing and grunting to himself. Yellow One joined him and did the same. Their yellowish eyes were wide and gleaming. They kept plucking at the hair on their faces.

  At last, when they could stand it no longer, the two of them ran off towards the trees and were away until the moon rose high above the caves. And when they came back, Big One was carrying his daughter. There were four arrows in her chest, two of them broken off short as though she had tried to snatch them out.

  Twilight looked at the arrows and said to Blackbird, ‘I have seen arrows like these before,’ he said, ‘and so have you.’

  She nodded. ‘They are the work of the River Folk,’ she said. ‘And this one, with the black feathers on it, belongs to Adder. He sent this one into her.’

  While they were talking, Big One watched them carefully, his eyes and nostrils wide, as though he was trying to sniff in all the words they spoke to understand them.

  Twilight turned to him and made the motion of shooting an arrow, then took a strand of his own hair and stretched it out. Big One seemed to know then that it had been Wander and Adder who had ambushed his daughter.

  That night, Twilight heard the Red Men going off into the woods. He saw their shadows passing the mouth of the little cave where he lay, and knew that this time they were taking spear-sticks with them.

  He said, ‘All this is because of me. If I had stayed with the River Folk, Big One’s daughter would not be dead. They have tracked you here and this is their revenge.’

  Blackbird said, ‘You did not do it, brother. It must be Wander. She is a bad woman who wants everything for herself. She has told Adder to do it. You did not do it. Do not weep.’

  But Twilight shook his dark head and said, ‘It is because of my pictures. They were the beginning of all the bad things in my life. If I had not drawn that wolf in the longhouse, perhaps my mother would still be alive. And perhaps little Bud would not have died either.’

  Blackbird could tell that it was useless to talk to him at this time, he
was so deep in his dreams of all the things that had happened.

  14.

  in the morning the Red Men came back to the caves. Some of them had been hurt with arrows, and Big One had a cut across his cheek from an axe. But they seemed pleased with what they had done. Yellow One came to Twilight and quickly sketched the shape of the village by the river, then drew his hand across it as though to wipe it out.

  Then he called to one of the other Red Men who came shambling up with something wrapped in a woollen shawl. He gave it to Blackbird who was afraid to open it at first, but then it began to move in her hands, and she pulled back the wrappings and said, ‘Look, it is a baby.’

  Twilight looked down at it for a while and then said, ‘See, it is wearing the copper thing I made, round its neck. This must be Wander’s baby. But how will it live, with no mother to care for it any longer?’ Blackbird said, ‘We have no quarrel with a little baby, brother. This little thing has hurt no one and killed no one. We can look after it, and when it grows you can show it how to draw shapes and make things.’

  This was in the bad time of the year, when the snow stayed so long that great stags came out of the woods and nibbled at the rotten black thatch of the storehouses.

  They called the baby Linnet because her hair had the glints of many colours in it, and Twilight remembered that he had once seen a linnet with seven different colours in its feathers. At first Linnet’s temper was not as pretty as she was. If she grew angry she yelled till her face went a deep red like the colour of sandstone. And she flailed her little arms and legs till the wicker basket that Twilight had made for her fell to shreds. Worst of all, she kept screeching when Twilight wanted to make his pictures.

  He said, ‘I can face many things. You know how I once stood against Shark of the Fish Folk with his fearful axe. But I cannot put up with Linnet’s howling. It drives all the pictures out of my head. She should know better than to howl all the time and to kick her basket to pieces. This upsets a picture man.’

  Blackbird smiled and said, ‘You men are so stupid. It is only for a little time, then Linnet will wear a coloured skirt and a necklace of blue beads, and then all the fierce young men with black beards will come rushing to ask for her, shaking their axes.’

  Twilight went to think about this in his own dark corner, where he drew his most important things. He said at last, ‘When I have a dog, I know that the dog is mine. It will come when I call its name. The dog is

  for me and no black bearded young men come asking for it. Linnet is mine and no one shall take her away.’

  Blackbird said softly, ‘We are not talking about dogs. We are talking about menfolk, who are the masters of dogs. We are talking about folk who go like trees, upright, and can make pictures on earth or on clay. Now, dogs cannot do that. They cannot throw spears. They are not the same.’

  Twilight gazed into the fire for a long space; then he said, ‘I know that dogs cannot throw spears. Only a woman would say a foolish thing like that. But I will remind you that dogs can bite. They have fangs, but men have no fangs. Dogs do not need spears, you see, my foolish sister.’

  In the end Blackbird had to give in. Of course dogs had fangs and men had no fangs. It didn’t seem worth arguing about. She could not understand how menfolk came to speak the words they did, and with such serious faces too. Besides, Linnet was so pretty that it was a waste of such a baby not to keep looking at her all the time. That was better than silly quarrelling.

  Big One and the Red Folk thought she was pretty too. They stood near Twilight’s cave door watching her and would not go away. When Blackbird let them handle her they did it as though she were a bird’s egg that would break. Blackbird laughed at them and said, ‘She is as strong as a little wolf. See, you can throw her up into the air.’

  But Big One would not let the folk do that. He even snarled when Blackbird did it to show them. And when Linnet was older, Big One was happiest for the child to crawl about in his great cavern. He taught her the picture-making and let her ride on his back.

  Linnet learned to speak the Red Folk language before she spoke her own. This made Twilight angry, just as the women’s language had made him angry when he was a boy. ‘She will be growing red hair all over her back next,’ he said. But he stopped sulking in his dark corner when Linnet took a stick and drew on the earth floor. She drew creatures she had never seen, and made them so swiftly, with so few strokes, that Twilight loved her more than his right hand. He said, ‘No black beard with an axe is going to have you, Linnet. Only the greatest of cave painters is worthy of you, my pretty.’

  Blackbird came in and rubbed out the pictures with her bare foot. ‘Come, Linnet,’ she said, ‘it is time for you to learn how to rub the sheep’s wool between your hands to make thread. That is a woman’s work, not this picture-dreaming. You shall learn to weave.’

  15.

  then there were three bad years, one following the other. Twilight could not get anything to grow in his little square field. Blackbird could not find nuts or berries or birds’ eggs in the wood. The old folk of the Red Men lay down and died, or walked off into the forest and did not come back. No babies were born in the great cavern. It became very quiet and brooding in the darkness there.

  Linnet grew so thin that Blackbird wept. Twilight drew all the flesh creatures he could think of, even hares, with arrows in them; but the hunting was poor all the same.

  Then the worst of things happened. Big One came into Twilight’s house and looked down at Linnet. He bent and felt how thin her arms were now, and his eyes were sad and sunken in his great shaggy head.

  He tried to say words to Twilight but could not form them. At last he took a heavy spear-stick and walked into the forest alone. The snow had made the wolves brave. Seven of them waited for Big One, remembering how he had treated them in the past, and they rushed at him from all sides. They did not find it easy, even so, and four of them did not go back to their lairs. But the others dragged him down and then snarled at one another over him till nightfall.

  After this Yellow One became the cavern chieftain.

  One day he came to Twilight’s house and stood there, holding out his hands for Linnet, as though he wished to take her away, but Blackbird shook her head. Then Yellow One went off sadly and the next morning there was a great stillness in the Red Folk’s cavern. Twilight went to find out about it, and saw that the folk had all gone. They had left nothing behind them. They had even scratched away the coloured pictures from the walls.

  Ash and bracken lay scattered all over the floors, and broken arrows and chewed bones. It was now like a forgotten midden.

  twilight followed their tracks for a while into the deep forest. Then he came to a place where the snow was trampled and red, and the tracks seemed to go off in all directions. Dead wolves lay here and there, one of them even hanging across the bough of an oak tree limply, as though he had been flung there in fury. Among the spikes of the hawthorn and gorse, Twilight found scraps of reddish hair. Broken and stained spear-sticks lay all about.

  He was afraid then to go farther into the forest, and turned and ran back as fast as he could to the little cave. When he had told Blackbird what he had seen, she said, ‘I think that the Red Folk are finished now. We have seen the last of them. They were the first of the folk in the land and now they have gone to quiet places to die. There will be no more pictures in the caves. We were the only folk to see them. Now no one will ever know about them.’

  Twilight could not bear to think of this. He said, ‘Such pictures should last for ever. Why should a man be born to put his dreams on the walls if they are to be wiped away and never be seen again? If you make a little piece of cloth, you take care of it and do not waste it. Yet pictures, which are from the deepest inside of a man’s heart, are wasted because of folk like Wander and Adder, and because of brutish creatures like the forest wolves. Why is this? Tell me, Blackbird, why is this?’

  Blackbird said, ‘I cannot tell you, brother. I am not a dreamer like yo
u and like the Red Folk. I am a woman. All I can tell you is that the wolves will come closer and closer to our cave now that the Red Folk are gone. We cannot deal with wolves, and we have Linnet to think of.’

  Twilight said, What should we do, to save little Linnet, then?’

  Blackbird said, ‘She is very thin and white. She has not laughed or spoken for many days. She has not opened her eyes today at all. If we do not think of something she will go from us into a long sleep and not come back.’

  Twilight got up and went into his dark corner where the dreams came to him usually. And after a while he went back to Blackbird and said, ‘Dreams are well enough. Pictures are well enough. But there is something stronger than dreams and pictures. I have just smelled it.’

  Blackbird said, ‘What is it, brother? Tell me what you have smelled.’

  He said, ‘I cannot describe it, Blackbird. It is not a thing, it is inside the head and has no shape. It is like a strength, but it is not in the arms or legs or body. It cannot hold a spear-stick or an axe, but it is above those things. It is a sort of fierceness that is more than hurting someone, it is something so strong that if a wolf sniffed it he would turn and go away.’

  Blackbird said gently, ‘Are you quite sure of this, brother?’

  Twilight nodded. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I can feel it now, inside my head. It makes me not afraid of wolves or anything. It will protect little Linnet, I am sure of that.’

  So Blackbird said quietly, ‘Very well, while this is in you, let us go away from here and find another place where there are folk we can speak to, folk who have sheep milk and bread and meat for the little one.’