In The Wreckage: A Tale of Two Brothers (21 page)

He paused. Conall saw Jonah’s face set in a deep frown, and he knew what the first mate was thinking.
 

Tugon must have sensed it too. “My people didn’t take your ship, or your friends. It was slavers. They took your crew north, to work in the mines.”
 

“And my brother? Any word?”

Tugon shook his head. “They were taken, that’s all we know.”
 

Conall thought of the slave camp where the three of them had toiled. He remembered the men who died in the night from starvation and exhaustion and disease. The men who fell during the day, when their legs would carry them no more, and the beatings they took from the slavers. “We have to help them,” he said. “We have to do something.”
 

“They’ve taken hundreds of my people,” Tugon said. “Thousands. Of course we will do something.
 
Now that we can. Because we’re not one people. There are many tribes, many leaders. But only one shaman.” Tugon pointed to himself. “Now they will unite, and we will fight.”
 

“But they’ve got guns,” Jonah said. “Just as before, you said it yourself. What good is a spear or a bow and arrow?”
 

“What use is a gun, in the dark?” Tugon took a knife from his belt, the steel sharp and glinting in the firelight, the blade ten inches long. He turned it in his hands. “We will strike in the night.”
 

“That’s a plan,” Jonah said. “Pity it never gets dark in this part of the world.”
 

“Seasons change,” Tugon said. “The dark will come. An hour is enough.”

“So we wait?” Jonah said.
 

“No, we get ready.” Tugon carried on twisting the knife. Conall stared at the blade, transfixed, watching the firelight dance on the steel. He didn’t hear the footsteps behind him. He didn’t notice someone, standing there, watching him.
 

“We will free your crew,” Tugon said. “But you must make a promise that binds you and them.”
 

“What promise would that be?” Jonah spat into the fire.
 

“Respect our laws,” Tugon said. “We know what you seek. You search for it.” He pointed the blade at Jonah. “And your captain seeks it. Your brother.” He turned the blade towards Conall, who looked away. “Anyone who touches the treasure of Spitsbergen will die. It is sacred. You must promise. If we free your friends, obey our laws. It’s our land. The treasure belongs to the land. Without it, the island has no future.”
 

Jonah sat, turned to stone, unwilling to speak.
 

Conall glanced from Argent to Tugon and back again. “I promise.”
 

“Your word binds all,” Tugon said.
 

“He can’t speak for everyone, only himself. He’s just a boy,” Jonah said. “A crewman, he doesn’t speak for the captain. Or the officers.”
 

“His word binds all.”
 

Jonah fidgeted, his hands writhing.

“His brother also,” Tugon said.

Conall glanced at Jonah. He had the map. Would he give it up? “You know where this treasure is?”
 

“Buried deep. We guard the site, so none can approach.”
 

Behind them, Conall heard a woman’s voice, barely above a whisper. “None. Not even you, Conall Hawkins. Is it really you?” The woman stood behind him. She put her hands on his shoulders. He turned his head to look. She was forty or so, her hair long and dark but her eyes were blue. A piercing blue. “Conall, it’s me.”
 

He stood up, heart hammering in his chest. Was it a trick? He’d been so young. But it must be her.
 

She wrapped her arms around him, buried her face into his hair and sobbed. “Dad,” he whispered in her ear. “Is he here? Is he alive?”
 

She sobbed even louder, once, twice, then pulled her face away so she could look him in the eye. “No,” she said, tears pouring down her cheeks. “The treasure. It was the treasure that took him.”

Conall sat with his mother on the edge of the encampment, on the log of a fallen tree. Angela Hawkins had wild hair, long and unbrushed, with a far-off look in her eyes. Was this the woman from his memories, the one who held him, who read to him? He could picture her back then, holding his hand, so tall, confident, in control. But here she was, not just thin but gaunt, shorter than him, as if time had shrivelled her. And she looked half wild, wearing the animal skins of Tugon’s people. The Oduma, she insisted on calling them, the communal name for all the wild tribes of Spitsbergen.
 

Conall gazed across a wood of hazel trees. The tents of the tribesmen formed a circle, and within it children played while women prepared food, and old men slept in the shade. In the distance deer nibbled a patch of new growth.
 

The question had hovered too long between them. Conall had to know about his father. The question burned in his thoughts. “What happened to him?”
 

She frowned, looked away. “He went searching for the treasure, that’s all you need to know.” She fidgeted as she spoke, never quite catching his eye. “He never came back.”
 

“You’re sure?”
 

The muscles around her mouth twitched as if fighting the words. “If he was alive, he would have come for me. He promised.”
 

She was holding something back, he was sure of it. She must know more. “What is it, this treasure?”

“I won’t speak of it, don’t ask, it’s not allowed. It’s sacred, belongs to the Oduma.”
 

“Did they…? Was it the wildmen?”
 

 
“They’re not savages. You don’t know them, you don’t understand,” she said, her voice angry.
 

Why did she defend them? “I have to know. What happened?”
 

 
“No good comes of this treasure,” she said, “never will. It was buried and hidden for a reason. When the world is ready, the legends say, the treasure will be returned to its rightful people.”

“Whose legends are these? The wildmen?”
 

“The Oduma. They have a name, so use it.”
 

She wouldn’t tell more, not now. But there were other hard questions to come. Conall paused, looked at her. He had to ask. Until he knew the truth, there would always be something unspoken, hanging between them. “Why did you leave us? You never came back. We waited. Tell me, I need to know. What happened?”
 

She looked into his eyes, tears on her cheek. She grasped his head and hugged him, holding him close. “Oh my boy,” she said, “my poor boy, how did you survive? I worried, so much, missed you so much.”
 

“Faro,” Conall said. “I survived because of Faro.”
 

“He was a child himself. How old?”

“He was ten,” Conall said. “I was five.”
 

She sobbed. Crying is contagian but Conall fought it. Faro had taught him to be strong, tough inside, and never show weakness. He turned away from her, unable to look at her tears. “Why did you leave?”

“We didn’t mean to, you must understand. It all went wrong.”
 

“We were children. No one looked after us.”
 

She swiped tears off her face. “It wasn’t our fault.”
 

“Whose was it? What happened?”
 

She put her hands over her face, peered at him through her fingers. “They sailed early, we’d left you on shore, left you safe, but we went back to the cabin.”
 

“Why?”
 

“We were four of us, in one cramped cabin, the whole journey, no time to ourselves.” Her eyes flashed at his, filled with shame and guilt and embarrassment.

“You left us on shore?”
 

“They weren’t supposed to sail. There was an emergency, slavers were spotted, they left, wouldn’t turn back.”
 

His lip trembled. “You never returned.”

She held her face in her hands. “We couldn’t, there were no stops, straight here, to Spitsbergen, and we looked for a ship back but there were none. We tried to buy a boat, to come back for you, but we ran out of money, and there was no other way. He went looking for the treasure. All for you. For our boys.”
 

He thought she might break and crumble from so much crying, her body slumped over her knees.
 

She sat up, put a hand to her mouth. “He never came back. He shouldn’t have gone. I warned him, asked him not to, but we were so worried, I kept begging him to find a way. But not that.”

She seemed a mad woman, not the mother he’d imagined all these years. What had she become? He put his arm around her shoulder to comfort her. He’d waited so long to find his parents, to be under their protection. But it was her that needed the support. He’d care for her, put her right again, if he could.
 

“Did he find the treasure? How did he know where to look?”
 

She shook her head, hair flinging around her shoulders. Something burned inside her. She couldn’t face the pain or talk of what happened. Why? What was this treasure? Who or what protected it so fiercely.
 

“We have to find Faro,” he whispered “before he does something stupid.”
 

≈≈≈≈

Conall and Jonah travelled with Tugon and the Oduma as they crossed the island, a caravan of people and animals heading north, gathering their forces. They were not one tribe but many, some living as nomads always on the move, others in settlements for a season or more. They called the whole of Spitsbergen home, and there were thousands of them. Tens of thousands.
 

They flocked to Tugon’s side, as a messiah returned to deliver them from persecution, or an avenging angel who would set them free.
 

“He’s the only who could unite them,” his mother claimed. “The only one they would all follow.”
 

Conall spent the time with his mother, getting to know her once more, but finding he could never scratch beneath the surface. There was so much pain in there, and she had smothered it so thoroughly, there was no way through. When he asked about her life, or her hopes and feelings, she deflected the questions. So he settled for talking about the tribe, hoping to find out more about her life on Spitsbergen. One day as they walked a narrow, stony trail, he asked her of Tugon, and why he was revered, almost worshipped. She told Conall how the Oduma lived without kings or presidents, councils or governments, without guards or police or soldiers, without written laws. They never fought among themselves, or with others unless pushed to it. But when attacked, they were fierce and unrelenting, like Tugon himself, the brooding quiet man of the quarry, with his hidden strength and deep secrets.
 

“Why do they follow him, if they don’t believe in leaders?”
 

“He was chosen as a child, six years old. The wise men and women found him, recognised him as a shaman who would guide them.”
 

“They picked a child, at random?”
 

She shrugged, as though she didn’t know, or maybe that he wouldn’t understand, so there was no point in saying.
 

“When he was taken by the slavers, they waited for him,” she said, “they knew he’d return.”

“Yes, but…”
 

“Don’t ask. Wait, watch.”
 

When his mother grew tired of his questions, Conall talked with the young men and women of the Oduma, learning their ways. They were a quiet people, hard working, always looking for ways to find food or make shelter, craft tools or build a boat out of bark and sealskin, or a tent from deer-hide. But they were quick to play and laughter. Packs of children and dogs ran around the camps once the day’s journey was done, not exhausted like Conall and Jonah, but bursting with energy, screaming and laughing.
 

On the evening of the sixth day of their trek across Spitsbergen, Conall sat beside Jonah, watching the children play, the dogs circling the tents yelping with excitement. Conall’s mother sat with a group of women in the centre of the camp, shelling hazelnuts. The leaders of the tribe had gone with Tugon for a tribal meeting.
 

“You must be happy. You got what you came for,” Jonah said.
 

“Half of it, maybe. But not my father, and then there’s Faro.”

“It’s a start though, better than you’d any right to hope for, after all this time. Finding your mother’s no small thing.”
 

Conall sat in silence, thinking. He glanced at Jonah. “She’s not how I remembered.”

“People never are.”
 

“She’s strange. She’s one of them, one of the Oduma.”
 

“Must have been difficult for her,” Jonah said, “losing her children. Hits a woman hard, that will. Especially if she blames herself. Then to lose her husband. She’s left all alone, and this is a tough land. And they’re not so bad, these folks. Got some strange beliefs though, all this sacred nonsense.”
 

He meant the treasure, sacred to the wildmen but there for the taking as far as Jonah Argent was concerned. “Don’t even think about it, you promised.”
 

“It was you that promised. I held my tongue.”
 

“He says my word binds all.”
 

“He can think what he likes. You don’t speak for me, young Hawkins.”
 

“You’re going after it?”
 

“I didn’t say that.”
 

“With the captain’s map?”
 

“He wasn’t using it and might be dead for all we know.”
 

“He’s alive,” Tugon said from behind them. They’d heard nothing of his approach.
 

“Sneaking up on us now,” Jonah said, flustered, getting to his feet as if he expected trouble.