Caltraps of Time (14 page)

‘Are we all dead, then?’

‘No, we are not the Faded; we are the Invokers, we are Inside. We spoke the names, in carelessness or defiance, so we crossed.’

‘They — they know nothing about this world where I was.’

‘No, but we try. We call. And at night we dream of them, as we dream of the Faded. But they are too circumspect, the Hard of Hearing. Few of them leave the Outside.’

‘Is he well?’

‘He is half-wild, but still hopeful of your coming.’

‘How do you live here?’

‘Just as the Outsiders do. We hunt, we fish, we grow plants, we harvest fruits. It is another land, simply, only Inside. There is nothing all round but the seas, the great waters; you can hear them roar far off. We have never got far out in them. There is no way back. Few of us regret it long.’

‘We shall not... How did those children cross over?’ added Nira, seeing a bunch of small ones on a track below them. ‘They look too young to have bandied the names of adults about — or did they say a dead brother’s name?’

‘They didn’t cross over — these were born here.’

‘What are those mounds over there?’

‘Burial mounds.’ And, seeing Nira did not understand: ‘Mounds built to cover the bodies of the Faded.’

‘Do we not live for ever here, then? Or were those people killed by accident?’

‘No, no, we simply live a normal life-span. We put the bodies of our Faded in these mounds. Those flowers you see are their birthday flowers for those who were born here, or crossing-day flowers for those that crossed here.’

‘Do you not remember the days of their deaths, since you think so steadily of the dead?’

‘What would be the sense of that? We want to recall the lucky day they came among us, not the sad day they faded from us ... Let us try calling Nant now.’ And the girl began shouting downhill through the forest. The others joined in. Presently there was an answer. In a few minutes someone came running uphill, dodging the boles and tussocks. It was Nant. The others melted away.

When the first ecstasy was over Nant and Nira — he insisted on calling her by her old name — walked hand in hand to the valley, where they meant to build a home not far from one of the clusters of houses. On the way they passed a small grouping of burial mounds. Several were decorated.

‘You and I will have crossing-day flowers like these one day — you on one day, I on the next.’

‘May that be long hence. Our children’s children will be there with the first to lay them, I hope. Now we must find something to eat to restore you, pale thing. Then we must get some help to fell the timber for a start. And tonight they will have a guest-house for us. Tonight, too, will be held a specially joyful celebration for you and me together.’

‘What shall you do for a living?’

What should I do but hunt, as I always did?’

~ * ~

A day before the great boar hunt, and a week after the burning of the vanished couple’s house and goods, Sull told the community, ‘The man that was Heft’s father has died.’ No one was surprised — Heft’s father had been doddering for some time. Heft had stuck up the black cloth. That evening he and Sull pitched the corpse into the volcano. Heft was avoided for a few weeks, though he was already learning to say ‘The man that was my father’ by the time the boar hunt was over. People had become nervous, especially the mothers and fathers of families.

One of the heroes of the hunt was Little Ness’s friend Tan. This was because exasperation and self-contempt had made him foolhardy, and he speared and shoved among the ravening beasts like a madman. The fact was, Tan had quarrelled bitterly with Danna, his girl, about half an hour before. She had spoken warmly of ‘our two friends who were unlucky after naming, and vanished’, and Tan, who always felt an irrational dislike of the attractive Nant, accused her of thinking too much of ’the man’. The colder Danna grew the more blindly enraged Tan became, and they parted as if for good. Once the hunt was on, Tan felt himself to have been insanely and pointlessly jealous, and doubted if he could ever patch matters up. Hence his ‘heroism’.

Three others would have been heroes of that hunt, but of them only Keth survived. One man died speedily, and his corpse was slung on a pole to be committed to the volcano as soon as convenient. Another, after ten minutes’ agony (he had been extensively trampled and gored) bethought himself of a way out and groaned out ‘Nant’. He disappeared as the bystanders scattered in horror.

The procession, with Tan and Keth carried shoulder-high among the inverted hanging carcasses, arrived home to a wildly excited mob of women, children and old men. For a tense moment these, who had studiously avoided mentioning names of those away on the dangerous enterprise, heard the news that the first son of Pemf and the second of Rann were gone, then the joyful uproar recommenced.

It was only to be expected that Danna should keep away from the crowd until she heard of Tan’s prowess, but he hoped she would come round presently. As the feast developed without sign of her, however, an icy clamp seemed to fasten slowly on his bowels. He fought his way towards an old woman at the back of the green and murmured in her ear, ‘Tell me, please, is the daughter of Ban and Daaba anywhere to be seen?’

‘Why no. I have not seen her today at all.’

‘Would
they
have seen her, then?’

‘Perhaps. Wait.’ And the old crone ambled over to where Daaba sat balancing a large beaker. Tan saw Daaba shake her head and call across to Ban two rows in front. The huge man rose and lumbered towards her. Daaba whispered to him. Ban stared back at her. Then he shuffled towards Tan, threading his way through the half-drunken feasters.

‘No.’ he said unsteadily, meeting the youth’s eyes (his own shatteringly like those of the missing girl). ‘No, our daughter spoke to us after the hunt moved off. She was upset over something. Then she walked off down the path.’

‘Could she have wandered far?’

‘I don’t think she did. Someone would have seen her. And although she was upset, she was not — you know what I mean — she could not have ... I am sure ... Besides there was nothing she could have used, unless a knife. And we missed nothing.’

‘Or an accident — a wild animal?’

‘Let us speak to Forna.’

They made their way to where the couple sat, arms round each other’s necks, cackling and swaying, not far off.

‘Forna!’ shouted Tan in the dark one’s ear. ‘Was your old friend that was my friend, my girl, was she in the place all day? Tell me, I must know.’

‘Eh — oh it’s you, you are a hero now, you know. Oh yes, it’s odd she isn’t here. No; I remember, she was sitting down grumbling to herself about something down by your hut all afternoon. About an hour before the hunt came back I saw her last. Next time I looked, she was gone. Freth — did you see her?’

‘No-o!’ said her husband.

Tan, followed by Forna and Ban, escaped from the assembly and went round, through and all over his own hut and its neighbourhood. Nothing disturbed within. Nothing gone. A smoky torch showed the ground scuffed up in front of his hut, but there were no obvious recent footmarks. They looked at one another.

‘She that was my daughter must have met vanishment. Perhaps she spoke a name of those two — she knew them well,’ said Ban heavily. ‘I must warn the rest. Let us go back to the feast.’

Tan spent the rest of the night wandering alone round the settlement. He dare not call her name. In the morning he began a search throughout the land, even wandering among the dust-devils as far as the encircling desert, but to no avail. In his heart he could hear the girl uttering the names of her vanished friends. Estranged from Forna when Forna married the frivolous Freth, ill at ease with most of the community, too tender-hearted, too thoughtful, she must have felt herself deserted by Tan, and in desperation called on that unlucky pair, and so like them was swept away. Now Tan dare not even think her name. Yet when on the third night he slept he dreamt repeatedly of her, sad, reproachful, hungrily staring at him, calling him, calling.

Of this he could speak to no one. As a hero of the hunt he continued to rate an uneasy slap on the back from men like Heft and Little Ness. In the end he drifted back for form’s sake to the good cheer and the drinkings of nights, but Ban if they met would stare at him grimly for an instant and turn aside; perhaps he suspected, thought Tan, that there was a quarrel at the back of it; but neither man could even mention the vanished girl now. (In truth, Ban was merely avoiding the embarrassment and risk of an encounter that must remind him of his former daughter.)

The recently vanished couple had made many friends, indeed, whom wine and meat and good company could not entirely distract. Thus it was that impulsive Valla, one day at dinner with her husband (they had married very young more than a dozen years ago) said of a basket she had seen in Sull’s house: ‘You know, it was exactly like the one Mara—’

Vol stood up shouting, scattering platters as he did. The place opposite was empty. Vek was away from home; but he had to be told, and the whole community. No one had to change their name. Vol tried to forget, busying himself with Vek’s coming of age, and as for Vek, he was wholly taken up with himself.

It was about a week after that Tan was found standing staring silently at nothing, near the house of Little Ness, one arm half-extended, one heel slightly raised. He stood thus like wood for two hours and then consented to be led away. They penned him up behind Sull’s house, where an eye could be kept on him, and used to fling him scraps of meat whenever they went by. He raised a few laughs, but most preferred to look aside. In two months he was dead. But his name had long ceased to be spoken.

Vol had successfully outlived his dreams of the woman who had been his wife, but in waking he found her memory growing rather than diminishing. Five months after her disappearance, with Vek safely launched, he found himself sleepless one night and in agony called Valla’s name.

A cold slice cut through his brain and he felt a gravelly bank about him, while the stars (different stars) twinkled. This is death, he thought, but by the time morning came and his stiffness made him all too aware of his body, he knew it was no death. He was on the bare neck of a long drumlin, grass-covered, in the midst of a rolling vale. Above him on both sides rose ferny and foresty slopes, the nearest a couple of miles away. Far behind and about them there gleamed mysterious white shapes which Vol could not interpret. Water chattered over stones not far off. The birds skimmed and screamed overhead. A continuous faint murmuring roar rose and fell far off downhill. Movement glimpsed upstream showed him where the settlement was.

When he had hobbled up to it, there was Mara, there was Nant, there was Danna, with a new darkness in her eyes, but a new boy; there was even Vaata, whom he remembered as a lass, much older now but still recognizable. There were many others he had once known, but somehow different. He realized the truth almost at once.

‘Where is Valla?’ he shouted at them. ‘I have come through! Where is Valla?’

‘They are at the flower ceremony for poor old Somm,’ called a young girl, anxious to show off her knowledge.

‘Come, Vol, you are going to have some trouble; come, dear boy,’ said an old woman he had forgotten or had never seen, taking his hand firmly; ‘come with me and listen carefully; steel yourself; you have been too long among the Hard of Hearing.’

At this moment, in a grave group of people advancing down the hill, Vol saw Valla. She was hand in hand with a tall man, a stranger. The truth burst upon him. With a cry he sprang forward.

The people encircled the three, who stood, as though of stone, face to face a few paces from each other.

‘Yes, Vol, you would not come. So few come anyway from the Hard of Hearing. I married Tel here. I am sorry. It is too late. I am going to bear his child.’

Wheeling round, Vol broke through the group and fled upriver. Eventually he found the gorge, where he threw himself over. They found his body on the rocks beneath the sombre crags, and carried it back and buried it. On the anniversary of his crossing Valla and her husband (and half the settlement) used to load his mound with rich flowers and chant their saddest songs. On this first occasion the whole community, singing, escorted them back to their house, and with a long chant bidding Valla think of the future and of her coming child and seeking to reconcile her to herself, took farewell of them for that day.

‘That is the most terrible crossing I have ever known or heard of,’ said Losp to Mek as they were walking away.

‘Yes indeed. Though all crossings are painful at first. The careless-mouthed children are the most difficult: I saw two — long ago. But they have grown up all right among us.’

‘Kush is a pretty unsatisfactory fellow, all the same.’

‘Well, yes; he is hard and moody. But one of the worst crossings till now was poor Gal’s, wounded in the boar hunt Outside. He’d expected a quick release, but he came Inside only to die in pain.’

‘Still, he had Doctor Lann to help him. But it was a bitter end.’

‘We have had rather many crossings lately, but in general they are getting fewer, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, the Hard of Hearing are getting harder. But we Invokers have more children than they have, according to report: our numbers are growing steadily that way. Look at us two: at least third-generation Invokers.’