The Gathering Night (5 page)

Alaia said:

Slowly the Sun came back. The days grew longer and milder. Most of the gulls had gone to sea, but we were woken earlier every day by the blackbirds in the thicket, telling us that spring was on its way. Catkins dangled from the hazels; birch twigs took on the purple tinge that promises green leaves. Rising sap filled birch bark and pine bark with the delicious flavours of spring. Celandines lay like stars along our paths, and the trees overhead were filled with song. The oaks were black and bare against blue sky, but even their buds were beginning to swell if you looked closely enough.

The Marten disappeared below the High Sun Sky, but even though the stars were telling us it was spring the dark still brought the frost with it, and we spent many evenings by the inside fire. One evening, when my mother appeared to be sleeping, my father said to Amets, ‘We won't go to Flint Camp this Year.'

My hands were still. Not go to Flint Camp? Not meet our cousins, and gather flints, and fish for saithe among the islets in the loch, and build big fires with fresh firewood, and feast in the dusk on sea-fish and seal meat? I'd been thinking about Flint Camp all through Limpet Moon. I'd been holding on until the meltwater spate was over so we could launch the boat and paddle towards the Morning Sun Sky, round Hidden Shelter Point, along the Sunless shore to Flint Camp.

I'd been scraping an otter pelt in the light of the fire. When my father spoke I pressed the soft red fur against my cheek as if that could bring me comfort. Esti lay sleeping; I felt her warm skin against my back. In the silence after my father spoke we heard the rain swishing on the wet ground outside, soaking our already-sodden walls. Daylight filtered in at the smoke hole, mingling with the firelight. The fire ate away at the end of a long oak branch whose cold end stuck out way beyond the hearth circle. The flames licking round the wood sounded like water trickling across the floor. Haizea dropped her scraper, and the bone made a little clunk against one of the hearthstones. With our hearts in our throats we waited for Amets to speak.

‘What about firewood?' said Amets at last.

‘It's spring,' said my father. ‘The sea will let us through. You and I can take the big boat along the shore and fill it with wood from further off.'

Amets moved the oak log further into the fire. After a while he said, ‘We've only three flint cores left. I doubt if there's more than a hand-full of good blades left in them.'

‘Flint won't go away,' said my father. ‘We can get it later. There's an old Flint Camp at Boat-Hazel River. We can go there and find what we need for now.'

Amets was silent. Then he said, ‘I could get us much more meat at Flint Camp. I wouldn't have to hunt alone.'

‘We are few,' said my father. He held his left hand up with all five fingers spread, and his right forefinger. ‘That's all. The brown trout are rising already. We can catch those. We can set more eel traps. And if we stay here Alaia and Haizea can still get roots from the marsh. And now the days are longer there's nothing to stop them getting sea-roots from the shore, and more shellfish.'

Amets looked at the ground. I felt my heart beat in my chest, but I couldn't speak. To be eating eels and shellfish and sea-roots right through the Moon of Rushes, when a bare day's paddle away our family would all be feasting together, with plenty of meat for everyone! I didn't want Esti to learn the Moon of Rushes as a season of wretched hearths and scanty food. I didn't want to go on living in our own dirt – it's unhealthy to stay in one place too long. But much more than that, I wanted to see my aunts and cousins. I wanted something done about my mother. There she lay, even as we sat by the hearth, with her face to the wall, pretending – in my anger I was sure it was all pretence – to be asleep.

‘To fish for eels and river trout will be more work,' said Amets. ‘I could take the boat and get sea-fish – I could get plenty for all of us – but you know how far I'd have to go to reach the grounds. The Moon of Rushes will rise tomorrow: we'd do better if we camped by open water.'

‘Amets,' said my father, ‘I'm thinking of Nekané when I say this.'

I lifted my head. ‘Father, I know you want to help my mother. But it might be better for her – for all of us – if we get away and leave this sad winter behind us. My aunts and cousins are expecting us! We agreed when we left Gathering Camp that we'd all meet again at Flint Camp in the Moon of Rushes! My aunts might help her more than we can.'

‘I might have known these women couldn't keep quiet,' said my father to Amets. ‘I don't know what I did wrong, but these daughters of mine don't seem to have learned any respect.'

‘I have no fault to find with your daughter,' said Amets, smiling. ‘I'd like to hear what she has to say.'

‘You would, would you? That's asking for trouble. But if Alaia gets uppity you'll be the one that has to live with it.' My father turned to me. ‘So you think I'm making a mistake, little daughter?'

I looked him in the eye. ‘You're speaking to the mother of your granddaughter, remember. Perhaps I've learned something, even though I haven't lived as long as you.

‘I think my mother's sickness would be cured if we took her away from this place where my brother was lost. Flint Camp would remind her of all the good things in our lives. It would be better for us too. We've been away from the others for long enough. We've suffered, and we're tired. We need food and warmth and company. If we stay here it'll be like a bad dream.' I added boldly, ‘That's what my brother would say, I know.'

‘Alaia,' said my father, speaking directly to me, quite gently, ‘all that you say is true. For a woman you're learning to be Wise. But there's more in this than you understand.' He sighed. ‘Yes,' he went on, as if he were speaking to himself, ‘it will be like a bad dream, because that's exactly what it is. Alaia, Haizea, Amets . . .' He looked round at us all as we gazed at him in the firelight. A gust of rain swept against the house, and a spatter of drops came through the smoke hole and hissed in the fire. ‘I've known Nekané for longer than any of you. She's done all that a woman should. She's given me five children. Three lived, and she taught them to look after themselves. Two little ones died here at River Mouth Camp. We wrapped them in birch-bark and hung their bodies from a high tree when the snow was on the ground. The spirits took them home. She's provided well for all of us. But now there's something else . . . She's wandering in places that I can't see. The possibility was always there, like a seed in dry ground. And now our son's gone . . . Alaia, you tell me that you're a mother now and not my little daughter. Your mother lives, but you don't need her any more. We have to let her become what she will.'

Haizea gave a little sob. ‘But
I'm
not grown up. Why can't we take Mother to Flint Camp and let her get better with our family there, and then we can all be happy again?'

‘You have Alaia,' my father reminded her. ‘You've been lucky to have two mothers for so long. So that's enough!' He turned to me. ‘You're right, Alaia. If we took Nekané to Flint Camp no doubt we could bring her back into the good world of familiar things where you and I will always dwell. But if we did that, there's something in her that would be unsatisfied. And for our People too – what would we become, if there were no dreams? If there were no one to Go-Between?'

‘Go-Between'. The word was said. My hands flew to my cheeks. Amets looked up under his brows, his hands – he'd been plaiting twine in the firelight – suddenly still. Haizea looked from one firelit face to another, trying to understand. Even Amets' dog stirred and growled in its sleep. This was the thing hanging over us, which we'd all been dreading. ‘Go-Between'. Not in our family, no! We'd lost my brother – why did we now have to put up with this?

‘If that's how it is,' said my father, ‘then for the sake of all our kin we must accept it. That's why we must stay here for now, and let her be.'

So my father had the last word, and after that we let the days go past when we would have launched the boat and gone down-river. Soon my mother went away again. We waited for her to come back.

I'd never seen spring at River Mouth before. The first crumpled hazel leaves unfurled. The birches turned from purple to pale green, and the sallows put out stiff little catkins. Only the oaks still stretched their empty twigs towards the sky, while the ivy clinging to their trunks looked dusty under the new Sun. When we dug for roots the brown marshwater was almost warm against our legs. We chewed fresh garlic leaves as we walked through the woods, and when we pushed aside the scrub with our digging sticks we found violets hiding under the birches like little bits of sky. We gathered sorrel and silverweed, while all along the River toads basked in the first heat and mayflies danced above eddies of still water. Our winter fire seemed to dwindle in the Sun, and when I went inside the tent everything was dark and green as if I'd dived into deep water.

The heat on my back was like the touch of a spirit; all day the good light fell round me in a shower of birdsong. Winter was past: we'd all lived. Esti was born – she had a name – she lived. In spite of these good things I was unhappy. Even when everything has gone well for a small family, it's good to see the others after the long cold Moons when the family is splintered into little pieces at the winter Camps. It's like being made whole again. That was the hardest winter I ever lived through. I felt the loss of my brother. I wanted my little daughter to find her kin as soon as possible. That was all the more important because she was Esti, and came from her father's People. It couldn't be too soon to plait the careful threads that would bind her to the Auk People. But my father had decided, and so we stayed on at River Mouth Camp.

Haizea and I fished for the brown trout that were beginning to rise from the bottom of the pools. At first we lay on the banks upriver and caught them in our hands. When the Sun grew warmer we grew wary of fishing the upland pools, because these were given to the bears, not us, in Moon of Rushes. Amets killed a young bear that came out to fish in High Tarn. He set the skull in the tree next to the boar skull, so we had both Bear and Boar to watch over us.

Haizea and I scraped the bear hide clean, and stretched it on a frame. We rubbed it with the bear's brains and ashes, and propped it downwind of a smoky fire. We kept on rubbing it every day until the hide was as soft and white as a swan's feather on the inside. It's a beautiful pale-brown pelt – that winter cloak should last me all my life. Once the bears were on the move, hungry after their long sleep, Haizea and I went downstream and fished for trout with lines and baited juniper hooks, though sometimes we sneaked upriver in the early mornings and took the headless bodies of the fish the bears had thrown away. We cut hazel wands and willow withies, and made more eel traps. Every day we walked the shoreline at low tide, taking turns to carry Esti on our backs, and dug for sea-roots. Once the sap began to rise we collected strips of birchbark for tents and baskets. We scraped all the inner bark clean and mashed it up with the sea-roots. We weren't hungry – I can't say any better than that.

At last my mother came back. She came into River Mouth Camp at twilight. Haizea and I had caught enough trout to fill a small basket. We were rolling them in sea-root paste, and roasting them on twigs at the outside hearth. As fast as they were cooked we were all eating them, burning our fingers and then licking the juice off them. Esti lay against my heart, eyes half open, watching the firelight flicker, suckling sleepily while I turned the fishes. She was growing firm and round, alert as a wagtail. Haizea was never far from my side, watching over her.

Haizea said:

I was the first to see Mother come back. I just looked up from the fire and there she was, standing at the edge of the clearing. She looked white like a dead person. I screamed. Everyone looked round. Alaia leaped to her feet, holding Esti to her heart.

My father didn't get up. He said in his usual voice, ‘Welcome back, wife. There's not much to eat – these girls have managed very badly without you – but we can offer you a small fish if you're hungry enough.'

My mother smiled and stepped forward. The fire shed its warm light on her and she stopped looking so pale. I hadn't seen my mother smile since my brother was lost. She said, ‘They look like fine fish to me, a very good catch for the hungry Moons. You should be grateful for your clever daughters. And grateful to the woman who taught them, too!'

I hadn't heard my mother speak with a laugh in her voice since my brother went away. I felt as if my real mother had been dead all this while and now she'd suddenly come alive. I jumped up and ran into her arms and hugged her. I'd missed her so much. I was only a child, remember. My mother was hugging me, and I was laughing and crying all at once. She spoke to me in the old way: ‘Yes, yes, little one. I've come home. It's all right. Everything is changed and it's going to be all right.'

I didn't know what she meant by ‘changed'. I don't know if she had any idea then of the troubles that lay ahead, or of how she was going to deal with them. But this I can say: although Nekané has travelled so far and done so many things for our People, although she became Go-Between and could never be with us in quite the way she was before, she's never again rejected her children or been unfaithful to them. After she came back she couldn't be the sort of mother I'd had before. But that was all right: I was growing older myself, and I had Alaia, and later on Osané. So no one can say I've ever been short of a mother, except in that bad winter after Bakar was lost. I don't even like to remember it. I think we should pass over all that now, and go on to what happened two Moons later, in Egg Moon, when we were at White Beach Camp.