Kalik (16 page)

I worked on the thatching, and watched Tama giving orders to Tepulka. He had him building a pen on a sunny slope to the creek.

“What are you grinning at?” Maka's hands were full of green leaves.

“I used to worry about Tama, that he hardly ever talked.”

Maka smiled. “Have you seen the way the little ones order Tepulka around? He's too good-natured.”

His nature was one of the reasons I had chosen Tepulka to learn my knowledge of healing. I looked at the green leaves. “Is there much of that?”

“Lots. You'd better come and have a look.”

Maka had found what looked like fruit trees and old gardens. “This is where Wirrem would have been useful,” I said. “He knew all the plants and trees, how to collect their seed, and take cuttings. I often think of him and the others, wonder how they –” I stopped myself.

“We can eat this one,” said Maka. “And this.”

“That one near you, that's good for upset stomachs,” I said. “This one the Shaman called Woman's Ease. And this is good to eat in winter. That one you simmer, mix with rendered fat, and it's good for salves. Somebody must have grown them specially.”

“Show me the ones you want, and I'll get Hurk and Kimi to collect them. And Tupu. She likes helping. She is getting better isn't she, Ish?”

“Good food, the exercise, sunshine. I'd like to catch a goat with kids, get some milk for Tupu, then you'd see her put on some weight. It'll take her a while yet. It's Tama and Puli who've improved.”

“It's because we're running away, isn't it?”

I nodded. “Hope. Having something to live for.”

Back at camp, Paku favoured his leg. The flesh around the sow's bite had darkened red, tight and hot to my touch. Paku flinched. Yellow stuff oozed. It didn't smell too bad, but the ointment hadn't done its job. I called over Tepulka.

“Even the bleeding and washing didn't clean it,” I said. “Bites are dirty wounds.”

Just then Kimi came running with a basket of leaves, tiny, grey, and pungent. “Maka says do you want these?” She stared. “Poor, Paku! Does it hurt?”

“Tell Maka to get all she can.”

We got Paku sitting with his leg propped up, the wound in the sun. Usually so active, he was content just to sit while everyone else was busy. The pungent herbs mixed with lard made a salve stronger than the ointment. Tepulka was careful putting it on, but Paku seemed indifferent to pain now.

“Better keep lying here,” I told him. “Your forehead's a bit warm.” His pulse was fast.

He lay on the edge of the tree's shadow, the others working on the shelter looking towards him now and then. He took little notice of what was going on about him. When I went to find something to bring down his temperature, Tulu sat beside him.

Tepulka and I collected bark from a patch of willows similar to the brushy ones the Shaman had taught me to use. Some of it we bruised, steeped, and gave to Paku to drink. He slept that night, uneasily.

We finished the thatching, cut and dried fern for bedding. We dragged logs out of the creek and stacked them on end to dry. Tepulka and Maka shot a deer early one morning and saw pigs and goats on the big clearing. We hung herbs to dry in bunches, and Puli wove fine, thin bandages. The full days spun by, one running into another, as we prepared our winter camp. We should have been happy, but Paku's leg was getting worse.

We soaked and roasted flax roots, made a hot poultice.
With that and the willow bark, Paku got some sleep. But our salves and dressings weren't strong enough. One night I found myself remembering all I could of how to amputate feet and legs. The only way to stop the killing infection called gangrene.

Tepulka beside me, I went all over Paku's body, sniffing the skin, listening to the workings of his belly, his heart, breathing. My fingertips found no invisible rash. I used my nose each time I looked at the wound. Dreading yet half-expecting.

One night I dreamt of the time Arku and I arrived in the White Bear People's village too late to save the life of a man. The gangrene stench! In my dream, the man had Paku's face.

I woke sweating, shook Tepulka awake, crawled over and sniffed at Paku's bandage. No smell, no dangerous stench came from his leg. I sat back, dizzy with relief.

“It's itchy.”

“Are you awake?”

“You must have been dreaming,” said Paku, “before you had a look at my leg. I heard you talking to somebody called Arku. It's itchy,” he said again, “under the bandage.”

Tepulka laid his fingertips gently on the leg. “It's not as hot.”

“Itching might be a good sign,” I whispered.

“When you put the salve on this afternoon –” another voice said. Tulu's. She crawled over and sat holding Paku's hand. “When you put the salve on this afternoon, his leg was still hot. I felt it the way you do.”

Paku's forehead was warm, but not hot as I expected. His pulse was slower, but that sometimes happened. “I was awake, so I thought I'd just have a look.” I didn't tell them why I had wakened Tepulka and come across.

Since the Salt People didn't know about amputation as a way of saving life, I hadn't even thought of how to explain it to Paku. We sat awhile with him and Tulu, then I sent Tepulka back to his bed. I was still too worried to feel reassured.

In the morning, Paku's temperature had dropped again.
The flesh above and below the bandage had lost its angry red. And much of its heat.

“I think we'll leave it alone this morning. Something's working.” I heard the tremble in my voice. Tepulka glanced at me. Trying to sound casual, I turned away. “We'll have a look at changing the dressing later.”

Something made me leave it alone again at midday. “Your head's cooler,” I told Paku. “And your leg's not nearly as red. Look, you might be able to see it for yourself.”

“It really is better,” said Tulu, who hadn't gone far from him all morning.

“We'll leave it till later to change the dressing,” I said to Tepulka. “No point interfering if it's getting better on its own.”

We were busy all that afternoon. It was warm on our sheltered side of the clearing, but the treetops swayed on the ridge opposite – a southerly. It must soon get much colder. Maka and the little ones spread herbs to dry. Kitimah and Sheenah were cutting more reeds from a swampy hollow. Tama was loading them on to the donkeys and carrying them up for the walls. Tepulka and I were splitting more timber to enlarge the shelter. We would need more space for the babies.

When Tepulka heard dogs, we dropped everything. On the big clearing, the wild pack had pulled down a deer.

“We could crawl up the creek, climb the bank, and shoot a couple before they take off,” said Tepulka.

“Let's just watch them awhile. Look, a bitch with milk! If we track her….”

The dogs fed, dropped, and slept around the carcass. When the bitch finished eating, she headed to the bluffs. We lost her and looked for a den under logs, a hollow beneath a bank, a crevice among boulders, but no luck. Tepulka liked the idea of pups, but he was afraid the bitch would rush out of nowhere and attack us. It was late in the afternoon before I remembered Paku.

“We haven't changed Paku's dressing. It seemed so much
better, I didn't like to go touching it.” As we jumped from one clump of reeds to another across the swampy side of the clearing, I told Tepulka about gangrene, how it killed people unless the leg or arm could be cut off before the infection spread.

Tepulka slipped and pulled his legs out of deep mud. “What if it's in the body?” he said, washing off the black stockings of mud as we crossed the creek.

“Then you die.”

In the late light, I knelt by Paku and supported his leg. As Tepulka unwound the bandage, Paku showed no discomfort. I eased off the wad of material now stiff with the dried salve.

The edges of the sow's bite were a cleaner white, the mass of infected stuff vanished, clean pink flesh in the bottom of the wound! And stirring, wriggling, the cause of Paku's itchiness, two fat, creamy maggots. Two more dropped out of the bandage.

“Ugh!” Maka ran.

“Take them out, Ish!” I brushed Tulu's hand aside.

Puli craned to stare. “Has Paku got worms?”

“Look what's cleaned up your wound! What you felt wriggling and itching.” I held Paku up so he could see.

“Are they eating me?”

“Not you. Just the dead tissue. The rotten stuff that was infecting more flesh.” My mind flashed back to a book about a war long, long ago, about how the healers found maggots ate dead flesh and cleaned up infected wounds.

“I knew about it,” I told Tepulka, “but I've never seen it before. The flies must have crawled under the bandage and blown it. And the maggots hatched and ate all the infected stuff.”

“Ugh!” Maka had come back, but wouldn't look.

“They might have saved Paku's leg. They might even have saved his life.” We dressed and wrapped Paku's leg with a clean bandage. “That wound's so clean, it'll start healing at once.”

Tulu ruffled Paku's hair. She shoved him, hugged him,
half-smothered
him. I heard a tearful note in her laughter. And
Paku just lay and smiled, tired with relief as Tepulka gathered up the old dressing and bandage.

“Don't you bring those things near me!” said Maka.

A hand thrust between us, took the maggots where I had put them on a leaf, carried it down to the creek where the water whirled them away. Puli's lips parted in her beautiful smile. “There's plenty more where they came from,” she told Paku.

Paku was soon hopping on a crutch Tepulka made him. I insisted everyone had a look at the clean wound. “They’re worth remembering,” I said of the maggots, but Maka wrinkled her nose and whispered “Ugh!”

The piglets followed Tama, nipping each other, squealing. He called them Gobble and Hurry. They ate anything: scraps, grass, beetles, roots, berries.

“Chak would have given them Paku’s maggots,” said Hurk. He and Kimi looked at each other and spluttered.

We ring-fenced a yard below the camp. Tepulka was clever at leaning forked branches against the trunks then inserting pole rails between fork and tree so they locked firm. In some places we had to dig in posts and lash the poles. Each evening, the sheep and donkeys followed Tama inside through sliprails. From the bush the other side of the creek, the wild dogs watched curious. The only time they went near the yard, the donkeys made such a commotion, the dogs fled.

“Up the big clearing,” I said to Tepulka and Paku, “have you noticed the goats and wild sheep always run off through the same gap between the trees? Well, how about building a yard with high rails at the top of that gap? With fences like wings either side to guide the sheep and goats in?”

“We could build it all right,” said Tepulka.

“The goats would jump the fences,” said Paku, “unless we chased them so fast they just ran between. But they wouldn’t go into the yard if they know it’s closed off.”

“That’s it! Say we build the fences,” I scratched in the dirt with a stick, “and the yard up among the trees. But leave the top end of the yard open. Just put in the posts, no rails. Then
keep away and let them get used to it. One day somebody goes up through the trees, lashes rails across the posts, closes off the top end of the yard. The rest of us move up the clearing. Once the goats and sheep head back between the fences, we start running and shouting. Drive them fast into the yard. Shoot slip-rails across behind them.”

We were sitting under the tree, watching Tama walking up the creek, Gobble and Hurry at his heels, several sheep following. “Then we send in Tama,” said Tepulka. “And he talks to them and leads them out tame.”

Paku organised the building of the wing-fences and the open-ended yard. We kept away and left the big clearing undisturbed. Winter coming on, we finished our hut with brush walls. Mushy clay patted into the twigs dried solid. It dried and cracked all over Hurk and Kimi, too. Tepulka built a chimney the full width of one wall, so we could all sit in front of the fire.

We had dried deerskins, sheepskins, a stack of washed and combed wool for spinning. The logs piled along the creek bleached as they dried. Wherever we went amongst the trees we dragged out fallen branches, stood them on end in the sun and wind.

Under the roof, Tepulka hung bunches of herbs. Every day, Maka and Tulu found something else in the old gardens. Green-leafed vegetables. Long red roots, the sort Taur had called carrots. And others, white and red.

“Some of these will keep through winter,” Tulu said. “They did at the Headland.”

“Winter will be harder up here. But some of those green things might keep growing.”

“Until you came, Ish,” Maka said, “we lived on much less than we’ve got here. Hardly any fish or meat.”

“We’re going to eat a lot better than that! I want to see Tupu fat, and Kitimah and Sheenah with plenty of milk.”

“They look well enough.”

“They are.” Kitimah and Sheenah were sitting down by the
creek where they had washed and dried a fleece. They were combing out tangled bunches of wool. I’d mentioned Hagar’s iron-toothed brushes to Puli who pestered Tepulka to make wooden combs. Then she asked Kitimah and Sheenah to wash the fleece and comb it.

Sheenah laughed. Her voice and Kitimah’s came to us like a murmur through the babble of the creek. The setting sun threw a golden glow on their faces. Soon it would be too cold to sit outside in the evening. Meat was keeping longer, now the flies weren’t there to blow it at once. During the hotter weather, we’d drawn it high on ropes over branches, or smoked it.

Kitimah was pointing at the creek. Sheenah laughed again and shook her head. They both turned back to combing, teasing out the wool.

“There’s eels in the creek,” I said to Maka, “but no trout. And none of the big silver fish.”

“We’ll have to go back to the river for them.”

“When they come up to spawn. And we can visit Chak’s grave.”

“Hurk still thinks he talks to him.”

“It helps him.”

“After Taur died, Ish, did you hear him talk to you still?”

“I still see him in dreams. And the others. The Shaman. Old Hagar. And Tara.”

“Tara?”

“One of the Metal People. We used to trade with them.”

“How did you meet her? Tara?”

“She fell out of a tree.” I described my first meeting with Tara. How we’d been going to settle at the Hawk Cliffs by Lake Top in the North Land, and have children. How her father and her two brothers were going with us. How we were going to be a family.

“Was she beautiful, Ish?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“Killed. Tara, her family, and all the Metal People.”

“Who by?”

“The Salt Men from across the eastern ranges by the sea.”

“Do you hate them?”

“For a long time I did. They chased us down the North Land, across to the South Land, and the Western Coast. Until Taur brought down the mountain and killed them all, and himself.”

“We’re Salt People, Ish. Tepulka and Paku, Tulu, and the rest of us.”

“Yes, but when I came you were the slaves, Maka. It was your people who were massacred. I helped fight them, but didn’t know what was going to happen afterwards.”

“But you knew Lutha!”

“Lutha saved Jak, Nip, and me, before we were swept down the river under Grave Mountain. I dreamed about her all that time in the Land of the White Bear. When I returned, she was different. I’d been dreaming about somebody I wanted her to be. Not the real Lutha.”

“Were you in love with her?”

“Not with the Lutha who tortured the Salt Men, who struck you. The first time I saw you. Remember?”

“No.”

“You were holding a baby by the Roundhouse. It cried, and Lutha punched your face.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Kalik and Lutha looked so beautiful together. I thought the baby was theirs.”

Maka stood. “Lutha had to present any new-born girl baby to Hekkat and the old women.” She turned and called to Kitimah and Sheenah, “I’ll give you a hand to carry that up.”

We took the nets we had woven to the river. I would have gone to our crossing-place, but Maka was silent when I suggested it. Paku looked uncomfortable. It was Tepulka who told me, “We can’t fish where Chak died.”

“Why not?”

“When we were little, if anyone drowned, we weren’t allowed to fish there.”

“What if you were starving?”

“An old man, Tunga, had to chant over the water first – to lift the danger. When we sang the Travellers’ song by Chak’s grave, that was like Tunga chanting where somebody had drowned. It made the water sacred until he lifted the danger.”

“What if we sing the Traveller’s song again. By Chak’s grave. And at the crossing?”

“You’re our Tunga, Ish. That should make it all right, but maybe it’s still too soon. Besides, his grave’s too close to the river.”

“Why didn’t you say?”

“I didn’t remember. Maka knows about those things, more than the rest of us. Her mother taught her.”

I felt annoyed then realised it was important that the Children should remember something of their own. They had forgotten almost everything. That had been part of the reason for Tama’s and Puli’s depression.

I waited a day or two then asked Maka, “If we could get down to the river below the waterfall, could we fish there?”

“Oh, yes,” said Maka. “Below the waterfall.”

“Even though Chak drowned above?”

“It’s where he drowned that’s dangerous. Below the waterfall, that’d be all right.”

If the ban on fishing had any sensible reason, I thought to myself, it was because of the danger of infection from the drowned body. Or, was it the idea of eating fish that had eaten the dead?

“What about visiting Chak’s grave? I thought it might be good for the little ones to see it again.”

“Especially for Hurk!” Maka nodded vigorously.

“Then we’ll go down for a look. You, Tepulka, and me.”

We found an easy spur to the river. A cliff hid the waterfall.
Below the cliff was a deep pool where we could set the nets. The far side was all jumbled rocks and drifting mist. Tepulka and I were so busy talking, we didn’t hear Maka at first. She pointed.

We shaded our eyes. The bottom of the pool was lined with trout! A couple of days later, the three of us were were back at the pool with the nets, Tama, the donkeys, and the three little ones. We visited Chak’s grave first.