The Kin (10 page)

Suth grunted. It made sense. The deer had learned to hide from the night prowlers, and to hide again from the daytime hunters. There were just these two times, dawn and dusk, when it was safe for them to graze.

It didn't matter now. It was important for Tinu to be happy, but he was aching to get back to the cave and tell Noli that he now knew that there had to be a way through the desert.

They were in time to see the last of the people disappearing into the scrub on their way to the lake for their morning drink. Hurrying, they caught up as the line wound into the trees. Jun was among the rear guard. He turned, grabbed Suth by the hair, and cuffed him stingingly on the side of the head.

“Where do you go?” he snapped. “This is not good. Do you say you are a man, to come and go?”

He kicked Suth forward. Several of the women scolded him as he made his way up the line to join the Moonhawks.

Noli was clearly relieved to see him.

“Suth, I fear for you,” she told him. “The women say you take Tinu, you go away, you leave us. I say you do not do this. But I fear for you.”

Suth hardly listened. He took her by the arm.

“Noli,” he whispered. “A way goes through the desert. I saw people. They came through the desert.”

She didn't react with excited questions, but simply stared at him, frowning, while he explained what he'd seen.

“What people are these?” she asked doubtfully.

Suth had been puzzling about this since he'd woken.

“My thought is this,” he said. “They are Moonhawk. They found Good Places beyond the desert. Now Bal sends some back. They tell Fat Pig, they tell Little Bat and all the Kins,
Come to these new Good Places. No murdering strangers are here!
”

Noli frowned and sighed, and then walked on with her head bowed, troubled and silent. When they reached the lake, he drew her aside.

“Why do you not speak?” he asked. “Is it not good, this that I saw?”

She took his hands and looked into his eyes but still didn't answer.

“Does Moonhawk say nothing to you?” he asked.

“Moonhawk does not come to this place,” she whispered. “Do not ask more. Oh, Suth, I am sad, sad.”

She clutched his hands tight and let go. He could feel her distress, though he didn't understand it. He grunted and moved away. All his excitement was gone, leaving him sour and miserable.

When he glanced back, Noli was standing where he'd left her, staring out across the lake, while the eerie howl of Big Voice floated over the water.

Oldtale

MONKEY IS FOUND OUT

Black Antelope grazed far out on the plain
.
At evening he lifted up his head and sniffed the air
.

He smelled fire
.

He smelled the odour of burned flesh
.

Thus he thought, The First Good Place burns. The creatures burn, and An and Ammu and their children
.

He came swiftly, but all was still
.

At the sound of his hooves, the creatures came out of their holes and lairs and nests to greet him
.

“Who is hurt?” he called to them. “Who burns?”

“None of us,” they answered, each one
.

In the darkness he saw the glow of a great fire. He heard the sound of singing, and loud boasting
.

He came softly to the place and saw An and Ammu and their children feasting around the fire that they had made. His nostrils were filled with the smell of the roast flesh that they ate
.

Black Antelope called the First Ones to him
.

“Which of you has done this?” he said. “Which of you gave fire to the children of An and Ammu?”

“Not I,” said Little Bat
.

“Not I,” said Fat Pig
.

So they answered, each one
.

Only Monkey said nothing
.

“Was it you, Monkey?” said Black Antelope
.

Still Monkey said nothing. But the itchy place under his arm, that had never healed, tickled him
.

He scratched
.

“Why do you scratch, Monkey?” said Black Antelope
.

“A tick bit me,” said Monkey
.

“Let me breathe on the place and make it well,” said Black Antelope
.

At that Monkey tried to run away, but Snake caught him and wrapped himself around him so that he could not move, and Black Antelope looked under his arm and saw the place that had not healed
.

By that all knew that Monkey had given fire to the children of An and Ammu
.

CHAPTER NINE

Suth began to make plans for their journey. There was no point in waiting for the dry season to be over. Very little rain ever fell in Dry Hills, and clearly none ever did in the desert. (It was some freak of the ground that made little local storms fall over this valley and keep the lake supplied—Suth had decided it was Monkey who made that happen.)

They couldn't carry water, so they would have to find it. The people Suth had seen coming out of the desert must have found water. He wondered if they had been travelling at night not just to avoid the dreadful desert sun. Perhaps there were dew traps they knew about. Dew traps weren't common. There was a good one at Tarutu Rock, and the bad one Suth and Noli had found. Those were the only ones he had seen or heard of. But there might be others in the desert, and better …

And even if they were lucky about water, how would they carry food? In the old Good Places, the Kins used to make straps from the bark of tingin trees, and light nets from special grasses, but he hadn't seen anything like that in the valley. They didn't have gourds. Perhaps they didn't have tingin trees either.

He asked Tinu if she had any ideas and she nodded, gesturing to show she would think about it, but as far as Suth could see, she did nothing.

Besides, she was busy with something else. In all her spare time, at the camp and while they were resting under the trees at midday, she would be shaping grass stems into individual knots, which she stored in a folded leaf and carried around with her. Later she broke branches from the bushes and took them back to the camp.

Then one evening she took Suth aside and led him to a piece of ground she had cleared of loose stuff a little beyond the main camp area. He watched while she laid a lot of twiggy branchlets out on the slope until she had a wide belt of them across the lower half of her cleared patch. There were narrow paths through the belt, running down the slope.

Next she unfolded her leaf and took out the grass knots she had been making. When she laid a line of them out on the rock Suth saw at once what they were. Two grass stems below, twisted together to form a thicker bit, with two more stems sticking out on either side and a round knot at the top. Legs, body, arms, head. People. Tiny grass people.

She showed him some more. These were made in the same way, but each had four stems below a horizontal body that curved up into a neck, and was then pinched over to make the head. Deer.

And now he saw that the slope of rock was the hillside where she'd watched the deer with him, and the line of twigs was the belt of scrub below.

“Clever,” he said.

She smiled, and began to move the little grass deer up through the paths to graze on the hillside. She set two little grass men to watch unseen what the deer did. Then more men came to cut branches from the bushes, and block all the paths but one. Halfway down this one they cut a clearing. She showed the deer going in and out through this one path.

Now, while the deer were out on the hillside, the men came creeping back through the scrub. Two groups moved up the hill on either side of the deer, while a smaller one went to the clearing and blocked its lower opening with more branches, and then waited there, ready.

She clapped her hands, and with rapid, deft movements showed the hunters leaping out of ambush.

“Yik-yik-yik-yeek!” she cried. “Wow-wow-waah!”

Suth joined in with the noises of the hunt.

“Oiyu, oiyu, ooiyooo!”

The hunters closed in. The deer fled for the one remaining path and streamed through, only to find themselves trapped in the clearing. Before they could turn back, the hunters from the hillside were on them. All the while Tinu kept up the shrill hoots and squeals that the Kin had used when driving game out of cover towards the hunters. Suth, caught up in the imaginary excitement, joined in.

“Who hunts?” said a man's voice above their heads.

Suth turned and saw Gan and Mohr watching, amused, and no doubt looking for another chance to jeer at him, though they were in fact the least unfriendly of the men.

“Who hunts?” said Mohr again.

“Tinu makes a deer trap,” said Suth. “Show, Tinu.”

But Tinu was cowering from the men's gaze with her head turned away and her thin arms crossed protectively over her chest. In the end it was Suth who had to show the men what she'd made. At first they laughed and wouldn't take it seriously, but then they got caught up in the excitement, as Suth had been, and called the other men to come over.

It turned out that they weren't nearly as interested in the deer trap as they were in the imaginary hunt. By the time it got too dark to see, they were all crouching around, arguing about it, elbowing each other aside as they tried to have their own way about how the hunt should go. They even chose special grass people to be themselves, so that they could play the most important part, and then boasted about what they'd done as if it had really happened, and quarrelled with each other about their share in the hunt. None of them paid any attention to Tinu. The model was their game, their toy.

In the end they spoiled it, moving the cunning little grass models roughly around until they lost their shapes, and scattering the belt of twigs apart. They were still arguing about it as they built the wall across the mouth of the cave.

Over the next few days, the men came to Suth one after the other, and either asked or ordered him to tell Tinu to make them their own little grass man, and grass deer for the man to hunt. Tinu seemed happy to do it, and to replace them when they were spoiled, and to rebuild her model of the hillside so that they could play their game afresh each evening. They ignored Tinu, sitting to one side, deftly knotting men and deer for them out of grass stems, and listening to what they said.

And then, suddenly, one evening, it was all decided. They would start to build a real deer trap the next day. Tinu listened with dismay.

“This not good,” she told Suth in her mumbling whisper. “First men wait. Watch deer. Deer come, go. Men watch.”

She was right, of course. Somebody had to go and watch the deer in the early dawn, to see how they came and went through the paths in the scrub, or the men would build their trap in the wrong place.

“Tinu, I cannot say this to them,” he told her. “To them I am a child. They do not hear me.”

She hesitated, then bent her head and fluttered her fingers in the air.

“Suth, I ask,” she mouthed. “You, me, go. Go now. See deer, sun up.”

He looked around. The notion of sleeping out under the stars again was very tempting. It was almost dark, but the men were still arguing about their game. The women were on the far side of the fire. Suth walked quietly over to where Noli was sitting among the small ones. Ko and Otan were already asleep, and Mana almost.

“I go with Tinu,” he whispered. “We watch deer.”

“This makes the men angry,” she said.

“Is Dith my father, to say yes and no to me?”

“When you are gone, I tell them.”

“My thanks.”

He went back to Tinu and squatted down beside her. When no one was looking in their direction, they rose and moved away.

They laired well up on the hill, as before, and in the earliest dawn made their way down the slope, moving carefully, not dislodging a pebble, and bending low so that they were hidden from anything in the dip of ground. Then they turned and crept towards the rim of the dip.

The deer were there. Suth counted them. Ten and three more, in a rough line, working their way up the slope. Most were nosing among the rough tussocks but at any moment two or three had their heads up, alert, with ears cupped to catch the slightest sound.

Suth and Tinu watched them in silence. The light grew stronger. Then Tinu touched his arm and signalled him back. As soon as the deer were hidden she put her mouth to his ear.

“Make deer run,” she whispered. “This way.”

She gestured to show what she wanted. He nodded. It made sense. This was their one chance to see which path the deer naturally used for escape if they were startled on the hillside. He would need to hurry though. Soon it would be full day and the deer would be going back under cover until dusk. He climbed as fast and silently as he could, wormed his way across the open hillside above the dip, using any cover the boulders gave him, then down again in a crouching lope, below where Tinu waited.

When he crawled to the rim of the dip, the deer were still there, apparently undisturbed, but to judge by their fidgety movements just getting ready to return to shelter. He gave himself a moment to catch his breath and then jumped to his feet, yelling and waving his digging stick.

Instantly they were streaking down the slope, clearing the boulders with great flowing bounds. They swerved away as he sprinted to head them off, but Tinu herself had come further down and rose whooping to meet them. They swung back, heading for three separate pathways as the herd split apart. They were well ahead of him now. There was no hope of his cutting them off.

Then, just as the nearest group reached the scrub, something leaped to meet it, bowling the leading deer clean over. The others vanished, but that one lay thrashing and struggling to rise while the leopard that had been waiting in ambush wrenched snarling at its neck.

Suth halted, panting, and raised his digging stick. The movement caught the leopard's eye. It looked up and stared at him. Its tail lashed to and fro and it bared its fangs, but it stayed where it was, crouched over the deer.