The Days of the Deer (2 page)

‘What is going to happen now?’ she asked.

The luku remained silent, its huge eyes filled with foreboding.

‘Talk to me, brother luku,’ Kush implored it. ‘Tell me what you know. Perhaps there is still time to remedy things.’

In reply, the luku turned back towards the forest, and leapt away on all fours. Oblivious to the preoccupations of its elders, the younger one was not going to let the feast go to waste. It was
only after he had scooped up both the cakes in the basket that he sped off to join his companion.

Kush walked very slowly back along the path to the hut. As she walked, that day long ago when Shampalwe died and Wilkilén was born flashed through her saddened mind.

Shampalwe had married Dulkancellin shortly after the Festival of the Sun. She was from Wilú-Wilú, a village close to the Maduinas Mountains. Her heart was the sweetest of all those
that beat at the Ends of the Earth.

‘When she sings you can see the pumpkins grow,’ people who knew her would say.

After the wedding came the good years. Dulkancellin went hunting with the village men. He took part in all the border patrols and came back safely from two battles against other clans. Kush and
Shampalwe shared the household tasks. Children were born. Shampalwe and Dulkancellin had five of them; all were a delight to Old Mother Kush. First came two boys: Thungür and Kume. Soon
afterwards, Kuy-Kuyen was born. Then Piukemán, the third boy. Then at the height of summer, Wilkilén was born. Kush liked to look at each of them in turn, because in one way or
another they all reminded her of Shampalwe’s beauty and grace.

On the day Wilkilén was born, Shampalwe left the children in their grandmother’s care and set out for Butterfly Lake. She wanted to bathe in its waters, renowned for helping new
mothers recover strength in their bodies and serenity of mind. It was from there that the lukus brought her, with still just enough life left in her to kiss her children and beg Kush to look after
them on her behalf. Shampalwe did not breathe her last until Dulkancellin returned from hunting fresh meat to celebrate the new birth. In the mouth of a lakeside cave, a grey serpent of a kind not
seen for years in those parts had bitten Shampalwe on the ankle. She had been picking flowers, and still had them in her hands when the lukus found her.

‘Flowers that did not grow from any seed,’ muttered Kupuka the Wizard.

The Earth Wizard tried to bring her back to life with remedies he had found in forest and mountain. But neither Kupuka’s medicines, Shampalwe’s youth, nor the pleas of a man who had
never pleaded before were able to save her. She died that same day, as the sun was setting over the Ends of the Earth.

That was why Kush had asked the lukus to come and receive a gift at sunset whenever it was possible to venture out.

‘That is how we can show them our gratitude, and it will help you remember your mother,’ she told her grandchildren.

The lukus had left. Kupuka left as well. Dulkancellin fired his arrows at the stars. And, under Kush’s protection, the children grew.

The old woman heard distant laughter. Kuy-Kuyen and Wilkilén were laughing at her because she was so absorbed by her memories that she had come to a halt a few feet from the house door,
her arm stretched out in front of her.

‘That’s enough ... there’s more work to do,’ Kush said as she walked into the house. She was pretending to be angry, but the children were not fooled.

‘What happened with the lukus?’ asked Kuy-Kuyen, who had inherited her grandmother’s ability to see beneath the surface of things.

‘What could have happened?’ she answered, trying to convince herself. ‘Nothing . . . nothing.’

Wilkilén spoke in her own way:

‘I think they sang you their song, grandmother Kush. The song of the lukus ... I can sing it too.’ She tried to whistle like them, hopping from one foot to the other. Little
Wilkilén had inherited the gift of happiness from her mother.

Before their grandmother could tell them to get back to their weaving, they heard familiar voices approaching the hut. Dulkancellin and his sons were returning from the forest. With them they
brought more firewood, aromatic herbs to burn in the long nights of story-telling, and the last hare of the season, which they would eat as soon as Kush could prepare it.

The men did not head straight for the house. First they stacked the new logs on the pile, sorting them according to size. Then they went over to a low circular stone building. This was where
they washed and rubbed a light oil over the scratches they had got in the forest.

The first to enter the hut was Dulkancellin, followed by his three sons.

Outside, night closed in. The tall trees drove their roots into the ground. The wind started to blow, bringing with it a flock of crows, and everything turned dark.

Cooked in broth, the hare lay steaming on a stretched animal hide. Hare with herbs, corn bread and cabbage was that day’s meal for the warrior and his family.

In the firelight their seven faces looked dream-like. The Husihuilkes ate in silence. It was only once they had all finished that Dulkancellin spoke:

‘Today in the forest we heard Kupuka’s drum calling to his brothers. We also heard the reply they sent. I could not understand what their message was, but the Wizards’ drums
sounded very strange.’

The name of Kupuka always intrigued the elder children and silenced the younger ones.

‘Which direction did the sound come from?’ Kush asked her son.

‘Kupuka’s drum came from the volcano. The other one sounded fainter. Perhaps it came from ...’

‘The island of the lukus,’ said Kush.

‘Did you all hear it too?’ Dulkancellin’s question remained unanswered because Old Mother Kush was once more recalling the look on the face of the yellow-tailed luku.

‘Kush!’ her son called to her. ‘I’m asking you if you heard the drum here too.’

The old woman came out of her sombre reflections and apologized, but she did not want to tell Dulkancellin what had happened earlier that evening.

‘We didn’t hear anything,’ she said, quickly adding: ‘I like to guess what the future may hold.’

‘Tomorrow I will go and visit Kupuka in the Valley of the Ancestors. I’ll talk to him,’ said Dulkancellin, signalling that the conversation was at an end.

Each year, just before the rains started, the Husihuilkes assembled in the Valley of the Ancestors to say farewell to the living and the dead. It was an occasion to eat, sing, and dance. Above
all, it was an opportunity to barter their surplus goods for anything they did not have enough of, so that they would get through the rainy season. A day for exchanging abundance and scarcity so
that everyone would have all they needed.

Within a short space of time they would be separated by the sodden earth, the winds, and the cold. There would be no chance to hunt, sow crops, or to fight. All communication between them would
be reduced to the bare essentials.

2

Even though the night was calm and a multitude of stars persisted in the last
clear gaps in the sky, Dulkancellin could not sleep. Life at the Ends of the Earth lay
curled up on itself; even the distant rumble of the storm was another kind of silence.

The warrior closed his eyes, waiting for sleep. He turned towards the wall facing the forest, the wall where his axe was leaning. He did not want to think about that day’s events, and yet
much later he found he was still puzzling over the meaning of the drums. Dulkancellin remembered what Kush always said: that sleep never came when it was pursued, but always when it was ignored.
Trying to disregard it, he concentrated on the breathing of each of the other six people sleeping in the hut. Before he could discover whether Old Mother Kush was right or not, he heard noises that
seemed to come from near the walnut tree. He leapt silently to his feet, and was outside the hut in an instant, axe in one hand and shield in the other. He stood stock still outside the door until
he could be sure no one was close enough to slip inside while he went to discover what was going on. Then he stole noiselessly towards one end of the building. When he had almost reached it, he
jumped round the corner. For once, though, the Husihuilke warrior was taken completely by surprise.

Between the house and the forest, dozens of lukus were spinning round apparently aimlessly, their luminous tails flailing through the air. From the expression on their faces, it seemed as if
they were all whistling, but Dulkancellin could hear no sound. He took a few steps forward so that they could see him. As soon as the lukus caught sight of him, they all rushed to the bottom of the
nearest trees, and soon were no more than a host of yellow, unblinking eyes. One very old luku ventured towards him. Considering the distance and the darkness between them, the warrior could see
him far too clearly. The creature from the island stretched a thin arm towards the west. Dulkancellin followed his direction. From their house, the Lalafke Sea was only visible on clear, summer
days; even then it was no more than a line that appeared on the horizon and then disappeared in an instant. But now when the Husihuilke warrior looked, he saw the sea blocking out the sky, crashing
down on his house, his forest, his life. Dulkancellin gave a mighty cry, and instinctively raised his shield. All at once, the giant wave paused, then flowed round the house like a furrow in
Kush’s vegetable garden. Crushing everything beneath their feet, along the furrow came pale-faced men mounted on huge animals with manes. They were both near and far, and their garments did
not flap as they ran. For the first and last time in his life, the warrior drew back. By now the lukus’ whistling was almost unbearably shrill. Beyond the pale-faced men Dulkancellin could
see a landscape of death: a few fayed deer were wandering among the ashes. The poisoned fruit of the orange trees fell to the ground. Kupuka was walking towards him, his hands amputated. Somewhere
Wilkilén was crying, making the sound of a bird. And Kuy-Kuyen, her skin covered in red blotches, was peering from behind a dust-storm.

The warrior woke with a start. Once again Kush’s words had proved true. The axe was still leaning against the wall. Everything was still silent.

Dulkancellin remembered it was a day of celebration. It would soon be dawn, and even sooner his mother would be up to light the fire and begin her daytime tasks.

Wrapped in a fur cloak, Dulkancellin left the hut, feeling as if this were the second time he had done so that night. The world outside was the same as ever: the warrior took a deep breath. A
dull grey light spread through the darkness. To the south, another grey that was as solid as the mountains began to cover the landscape.

Dulkancellin’s hair was tied back by a band across his forehead: the way the Husihuilkes always wore it before going off to war or when they were training their bodies.

The forest was far enough away for him to sing the song that only the warriors knew. Each time they sang they promised that every day they would honour the blood that had lain down at night, and
begged to be allowed to die fighting.

When Dulkancellin reached the tall trees, he took off his cloak and left it on the roots of a tree. Flexing his body like a young cane, he ran through the undergrowth, leapt like a jaguar,
climbed to impossible heights, and finally hung suspended from a branch until the pain made him drop. On his way back to the hut, he recovered his cloak and picked some seeds to chew on.

Ever since Shampalwe had died he had become harsh and silent. Before, they said he fought with no fear of death. Now they complained they saw him fight with no regard for his life.

3

The Husihuilkes lived at the Ends of the Earth, in the furthest south of a continent
its inhabitants called the Fertile Lands. The warriors’ territory was a forest
between the Maduinas Mountains and the Lalafke Sea. A forest crisscrossed by mighty rivers, with cypress trees growing right to the mountain tops, and laurels and orange trees reaching down to the
sea. The land of the Husihuilkes was a forest in the south of the Earth.