The Gathering Night (32 page)

‘Why indeed?'

Perhaps this was what she'd planned to make me do all along. It didn't matter. I said, ‘You think one thing and I think another. But to ask “who did what?” is just to think of small matters. We're not Go-Between for small matters. We're here to speak to the spirits. If something has happened to upset the rightness of things for the Auk People, then we're here to put that right. We're not concerned with anything less.'

‘I agree that we're here to speak to the spirits and make sure of the rightness of things. But I think the way to do that is to be concerned about
everything
less.'

‘Perhaps it's the same thing,' I told her. ‘Anyway, if we're to speak to the spirits, Nekané, we must stop arguing. We have today – and only today – to get everything ready.'

Nekané said:

The children were playing Blind Man's Buff when Hodei and I came back to Loch Island Camp. Argi was Blind Man. He groped his way towards us, arms stretched wide and ran straight into me. He seized me by my cloak.

‘Guess who! Guess who! Guess who!'

Argi could tell by the shrieks of laughter that this was no ordinary catch. He ran his hands over my cloak.

‘Guess who! Guess who! Guess who!' Everyone started to join in. The women were holding on to each other, wiping the tears from their eyes, they were laughing so much. Even Osané's brothers took up the chant. ‘Guess who, Argi! Guess who!'

Argi's small hands clutched my necklace. He felt the oyster shells and the wolf claws between each one – the very claws that Kemen had given me, though no one here knew that. He screamed in triumph. ‘It's her! It's her! I've caught the Go-Between!' He ripped the leather bandage from his eyes and gave me a gappy grin – Argi had no front teeth that summer – ‘I caught the Go-Between,' he sang. ‘I caught the
Go-Between
!'

The other children took up the song: ‘Argi caught the Go-Between! Argi caught the Go-Between!'

They were still singing while everyone moved up to give the best places at the hearth to Hodei and me, and thrust full plates of mussels, scallops, crab meat and blueberries into our hands. ‘Eat, eat! We've all had plenty. This is for you!'

It was hard to believe anything could be wrong. The afternoon Sun shone through the leaves and brought out the gold inside the green. A breeze trickled through the branches, making each tree sing its own song: hazel, alder, birch, aspen and one little oak. Dappled shadows drifted across the Camp. As the day wore on they touched us where we sat. The air above our heads was full of butterflies, blue and brown. Every now and then the children broke out into Argi's song. They'd gone to play on the shore, but we could still hear their laughter. The rest of the People lolled in the shade; no one was doing any more work that day. I realised why they all seemed so much happier: it was because I'd talked to Arantxa. They were good People. They wanted things put right. Yesterday I'd felt like a stranger among them. Now I felt welcome: an old woman sitting among my kin.

Just as the Sun left the clearing, the dogs jumped up and ran towards the shore, tails held high. The women got to their feet and took the stones they'd been heating out of the fire. They laid the hot stones at the bottom of the cooking pit, and covered them with birchbark. Then they fetched baskets of shellfish and sea-roots from a shady pit, and took off the damp leaves: it would be very bad to look as if they'd been expecting meat if there was none.

The children down on the shore were quiet. No one was running back to be the first to tell us what the hunters had brought. We glanced at one another.

The men came into the clearing. They carried their weapons. The dogs padded at their heels. The tail of children hung back, keeping out of the way.

Arantxa's man came over to the hearth.

‘Welcome, husband.' The fear in her voice made me angry.

Arantxa's man looked suspiciously at me. I greeted him by his name. ‘And these men are your guests at Loch Island Camp?'

Because I was Go-Between he had to lead them forward and tell me who they were. ‘Basajaun, of the Lynx People.' He named the cousin too.

‘You're Kemen's brother?' I said to Basajaun.

‘Yes. You know him?'

‘He belongs to my family.'

That startled him. ‘To
your
family? But . . .' Basajaun wasn't one to write his thoughts across his face. He caught himself up at once: ‘In that case, Wise One, I'm glad to call myself his brother.'

I didn't reply. Kemen didn't waste his words saying clever things that had no meaning. But if I hadn't had eyes to see, I'd have thought it was Kemen speaking. These brothers twisted their words the same way. Their tongue was Lynx. Kemen didn't make so many mistakes as he used to, but when I heard Basajaun speak I realised that Lynx words still lived in Kemen's tongue, and however hard he tried to speak like Auk People, they always would.

I let my gaze rest on the two strangers. Basajaun raised his brows, then he saw that everyone held me in respect. Perhaps he guessed I was Go-Between. He braved it out, but I could see he didn't like the way I stared at him. He was taller and stronger than Kemen. His hair was darker. He wore it in a long plait down his back. Kemen had plaited his hair the same way when he first came to us. I realised, looking at Basajaun, that Kemen now looked like one of us. Only in the heavy outline of nose and chin did I see a likeness. The eyes were different, and the thoughts inside the eyes even more so. All I read in Basajaun's gaze was a proud refusal to let me read – but that told me something. I turned to the cousin. The shock was like touching ice. In his eyes – blue like Kemen's – I read naked fear.

He knew he'd shown me too much. His eyes dropped. I watched how he looked down – how he moved – how he stood. For a heartbeat the spirits drew aside the hide and let me see through a doorway I'd never entered. They showed me a hand-full of boys huddled under an oxhide. Blizzards swirled round them, wiping out the world. I couldn't see what spoke to them, but I read fear in every upturned face. In one I saw blind terror. What the test had been, and by what chance he'd survived his initiation – all this was closed to me. But I had my warning: terror in a man means danger for everyone who comes near him. I looked from the cousin to Basajaun, and from Basajaun to the cousin. It was very clear who was the strong one – which one led the way. But already my Helpers had shown me how to reach what was hidden in Basajaun's heart.

No one spoke about the lack of meat. The men laid their clean weapons in the shelter, and the women tipped their baskets of shellfish on to the birchbark in the cooking pit. When the shellfish were roasted they picked out the best bits for the men. They gave the razorshells and mussels that were left over to the children, but the women only got limpets. If things got no better, I thought, they'd have to leave Loch Island Camp within the Moon.

We finished our meal. Even the children were unusually quiet. They knew something was about to happen. When Hodei and I stood up, everyone's eyes followed us. Some looked hopeful; some looked afraid. Basajaun's face showed nothing. The other Lynx man sat in Basajaun's shadow, so I couldn't see what he was feeling.

In spite of everything, I smiled as I fetched my Drum from its sleeping place. I remembered how angry Hodei had been when he first saw that Drum. It was Zigor who'd sent me to find my Hazel Tree. I found it in the Moon of Rushes, far upriver under the Morning Sun Sky. The spirits showed me where my drumstick waited. I told them I was much too old to climb so high. The Hazel bowed down low, and I cut my drumstick. Hazel showed me a straight wand growing from its bole. It told me where to cut.

I'd already worked out how to get the hide for my Drum. It had to be done alone, but what kind of hunter was I – a woman, and old at that? After I got my hazel I went into the high birches and watched the deer for a long while. I saw what paths they took. I walked back to a place where I'd seen a fallen pine, and cut four spiky branches. I sharpened the ends with my knife. I carried my sharpened stakes up the hill to the deer path. I dug a pit, loosening the earth with my digging stick, and emptying baskets-full into a heap. Then I drove my pine stakes into the hard earth at the bottom of the pit. I wedged them with stones. I filled my pit with leaves. After a day and a night, a Yearling hind gave herself. I found her in the morning. Two stakes had run her through. I cut her throat and hauled her out of the pit. I drank her spirit as if I had been a man. I gave thanks as men do. I became a man that day, although I remained a woman.

I made fire. I opened my hind along her belly-line. I eased the hide away from the stomach. I took out the liver and cooked it while the blood was warm. When I'd eaten some of it – it was too big for one old woman! – I shoved my fists down the ribs, between skin and flesh. The hide came away sweetly. I stretched it on a frame. I built a shelter of birch boughs and laid moss over it. Now I had everything I needed for my Drum, I knew I'd be in this place for a long while. I hung my meat and dried it. My Hind gave enough meat to keep me as long as I needed to be at Drum Camp. I'd carried woman's-stone and ochre with me. I took the wand Hazel had given me. I ran my hands to and fro along its length. Gently I bent it to my will. I persuaded it into a circle. I sang as I bound it with rawhide. I sang until it forgot it had ever been a wand. A new spirit entered it: not Hazel, but Drum. I sang to my Drum as I cut willow and wove its base. I sang as I carved my drumstick. I sang as I stretched my hide over its frame. I sang as I sewed it with sinew from my Hind.

I sang as I mixed colour and water on a flat stone. I sang as I wrote my helpers into my Drum: Dolphin and Swan, Hind and Hazel Tree. I sang as I wrote my long journey. I sang for the son I had lost. My Song wrote patterns I couldn't yet read, as it sang itself into my Drum. I sang to my Drum as it tightened in the Sun. I sang to it for two days and two nights until it was dry and taut.

Hodei had been furious when I'd hung that Drum in the Go-Betweens' tent at Gathering Camp three Years ago. But he saw that I hadn't written the Hunt, so he let it be. And now, here at Loch Island Camp, his Drum and mine together would wake the spirits. Neither of us had dreamed that this would happen.

Our drums awoke so quietly that People were only gradually aware of them. The spirits came as rain on water, rain pattering on hide, Rivers running into rapids. People hushed their children, threw the baskets of empty shells on to the midden and turned towards the hearth. The spirits grew louder. Children too young to be afraid began to clap as the spirits drummed. Their elders were slower: they knew that beyond the swelling water lies melting ice. The spirits spoke to men and women of wrong deeds uncovered, trapped water finding a way out, floods that sweep away good and bad without making any difference between them.

The Dark crept in and listened. The Fire shrank from the sound of the rain, and went out. The light was in the stars: the Evening Star, the Red Star, the Wolf, the Lynx, the Fox, the Red Deer. The River of Milk streamed across the sky. I remembered when I'd seen my son outlined against the winter stars. I thought of how he'd come back to me, how once again I'd held him in my arms. I saw that if my little Bakar were to live to become a man, we must make this world a safe place for him. And that, the stars told me, depended wholly on what the spirits said to us tonight.

Hodei and I sang to our Helpers as we drummed. The People clapped and sang. A Fox barked from across the water. The trees woke. Animals rustled through the grasses of the clearing. A Swan splashed into flight and rose above the loch. A Peewit tumbled through the air, bringing with it the smell of the high moor in Seed Moon. A star shot across the sky in the curve of a Dolphin's back.

The dead fire leaped up in answer. In one heartbeat the drums stopped.

Before anyone could move, the Go-Betweens struck.

Itzal said:

I was furious when Nekané loomed out of the mist at Flint Camp demanding that we take her to Loch Island. Of course I respect the Wise, but when she said she'd come instead of Zigor I was so angry I could hardly speak. This wasn't what Hodei had meant! I'd given Hodei's message to Zigor very clearly, and there was certainly nothing in it that suggested anyone at Loch Island Camp wanted to see Nekané.

I'd felt torn in two when Hodei sent me secretly to Zigor. I owed loyalty to my father. I had no right to betray him just because I hated him. When Edur arrived at our Camp with the two Lynx People I didn't understand why he'd come to us. My family were more likely to kill Lynx People than give them food, because a Lynx man had stolen my sister Osané. Hodei told us we must welcome them and pretend to be friends. As soon as they arrived we gave them food.

Yes, we gave them food. What was I to do? My father said he'd take them to our Hunting Camps. I couldn't speak to my father about it. Not because he could hurt me – I was a man grown, and he couldn't touch me if he tried – but because I didn't want a fight. I'd hit him once. My family could have sent me away for that! When I struck my father they took me to Hodei.

Hodei made me go into his tent so we could speak privately. I was shaking with fear. I thought he'd say I must go away from the Auk People because I'd struck my father. But all he said was, ‘Do you want to see your sister again, Itzal?'