The Kin (11 page)

Suth hesitated. If I can drive it off, he thought, I can drag the deer home, and then even Dith will have to give me praise.

Though he knew he was doing a stupid and dangerous thing, he took a pace forward, just to see.

Instantly the leopard was springing for his throat.

His heart clenched in his chest, but his arm and his body answered without thought, lunging full strength to meet the attack. He was belted sideways. His digging stick was torn from his grasp. There was a searing pain down his left arm. He was falling, helpless. A hard thing crashed against his skull. Blackness.

He woke to the throb of pain, pain all through him.

A voice mouthing his name.

“Suth! Suth!”

Tinu.

He opened his eyes. Through the pain haze, he saw her face, close above his. The haze half cleared. He wiped the rest away with the back of his right hand. It was blood. The pain found its sources, aching fiercely at the side of his head, searing down his left arm from the shoulder. He craned, and saw his left side smeared with blood from deep gouges slashed down the arm. He eased himself up, clutching the wound with his right hand, trying to stem the flow.

The leopard! His body sprang alert. He stared around. No sign. But a sound, a ghastly retching cough, mixed with violent thrashings among the bushes.

“Run, Tinu! Run!” he gasped, and staggered to his feet, searching for his digging stick.

Gone.

A rock, then …

His eye fell on the body of the deer.

He forgot the wound, forgot the pain. This was what he had fought for. He seized it by the hind legs and frenziedly started to drag it up the hill.

It was too heavy for him. The pain came rasping back. He stopped and stood, shuddering, with the blood welling from the wound. He looked back. Still no sign of the leopard, though the racket in the bushes rose and fell. He bent and dragged the body a few more paces towards a scatter of loose rocks and began to pile them over it. Every few seconds he glanced down the slope, but nothing came.

The daze returned, but he worked on. Tinu was helping him. When the body was covered he stood swaying. The valley seemed full of darkness.

“Face hurt, Suth,” said Tinu's voice.

He put his fingers to his left cheek and flinched at his own touch. Another wound, but his hands were so covered with blood that he couldn't tell how bad it was.

“You die, Suth?”

The darkness cleared and he stood erect.

“No, I live,” he said.

He must tell the men himself that he had fought a leopard and robbed it of its prey. Their faces would change. He must see that.

He was in no state to scramble across rocks, so despite the danger he headed down towards the scrub, where the going was less rough. The sun was above the ridge now, and warmed his back. He walked slowly, but steadily at first, clutching his right hand over his wounded arm. The flow of blood seemed to ease.

But then the darkness closed in again, filling his eyesight and his mind, though his legs still walked as they did in dreams. There were clear patches in the darkness, when he would find Tinu holding his elbow and guiding him carefully along, and he'd remember where he was and what had happened, and then there'd be nothing but pain and darkness once more.

They stopped, and then they seemed to be climbing. Tinu's voice told him to sit and she eased him down onto a rock. She was gone.

He waited, and then she was back and coaxing his head up and putting something against his mouth. The smell woke him.

Stoneweed.

He sipped, and his mind cleared. She'd remembered the stoneweed he'd marked a few days earlier, and then forgotten to gather on his way back to the cave, in his eagerness to tell Noli what he'd seen. Tinu had fetched it for him.

“My thanks,” he muttered, and sipped again, carefully, feeling the warmth and strength running through his veins. He passed her the stoneweed and she took a couple of sips and handed it back.

He saw her stiffen and gaze down the slope. She let out a shout, climbed a boulder, and waved and shouted again. Suth rose, swaying, and saw men with digging sticks halted just above the scrub and gazing towards them.
They have come to find me
, he thought.
Noli told them I watched deer. They are angry
. Then he thought,
No, they are too many. They go to build their trap
.

He swayed and almost fell, but managed to settle onto a boulder. Two of the men were climbing the slope. His eyesight was all blurred, but from the way they walked he recognized them as Mohr and Gan. He rose. He was almost too weak to stand, but he knew what he needed to say and do.

He held out the stoneweed to them, one-handed, the gesture of a man offering a gift to another man, an equal.

“Mohr, Gan,” he said. “I fought with a leopard. It killed a deer. I drove it off. The deer is under rocks. Tinu shows you.”

“You are hurt,” said Mohr. “We must take you to Mosu, to see to your hurts.”

“No, I wait here. You bring the deer. I, Suth, ask this. Here is my gift. Drink.”

Gan accepted the stoneweed, took a couple of sips and passed it to Mohr, who did the same and then handed it back.

Suth sat and closed his eyes. He heard the men muttering to each other, questioning Tinu, Tinu painfully mouthing her answer, for once not afraid to speak to them. All three moved away. He heard other voices from further down the slope. They faded.

While Suth waited, he did his best to clean the wounds in his arm and cheek, using spit from his mouth. The three claw slashes on his arm were deep and throbbing, though the stoneweed dulled the pain. The cut on his cheek seemed shallower. Perhaps his head had flinched just in time from the strike.

He eased the torn flesh together with his fingertips, as best he could.
I wear these marks for all my days
, he thought.
All then know how I fought the leopard
.

He finished the stoneweed. He'd never before had so much all to himself, and the juice made him drowsy. He lay down on the hillside and fell asleep.

A voice woke him. Tinu again, urgent, excited.

“Suth! Suth! Wake! You kill … leopard! See! Gan bring!”

The words were bursting from her. He could barely make them out. Blearily he sat up and looked. Men were coming up the slope, two of them with loads over their shoulders. He rose. They stopped a few paces away and stood looking at him. Their faces had changed.

“Suth,” said Mohr stiffly. “You killed the leopard. We found it among the scrub. Your digging stick is fast in its throat. So it died. I, Mohr, praise.”

“I, Gan, also praise,” said Gan. “I bring your brave digging stick. See, it is here.”

He held it out, but froze as Suth, without thought, wiped the back of his hand across his bleeding cheek before stepping forward to take it.

“See, Mohr!” whispered Gan. “Suth's face! He has the man-scar! The leopard made it!”

Oldtale

PEOPLE HUNT BLACK ANTELOPE

Such was their lust for roast flesh that the children of An and Ammu would eat nothing else. They passed by the seeded grasses and did not gather them. They left ripe berries on the bushes, and fruits on the vines, and nuts on the ground beneath the trees, as if they had been dirt. All day from sun up they hunted and killed the creatures, and at sundown they made a fire and roasted their catch and ate until their stomachs were round and full, like a ripe gourd. They fell sick, but they did not care
.

The creatures came to Black Antelope. They said, “The people hunt and kill us day after day, without rest. Tens and tens and tens of us they kill for their feasts. Soon none of us are left
.”

Black Antelope gathered the First Ones. He said, “We made this Good Place for ourselves. Now people spoil it. Go, all of you, far and far. Make new Places. Then people live there. Set these Places apart. Then people must journey between them. See to it
that there is food of all kinds, a little of each kind. Then the people must forage as well as hunt. They do not fall sick from eating only flesh. Let each Place have its season. Then the people leave it. They are gone. The creatures breed. The plants seed and grow. All is new again.”

The First Ones agreed, and did all that
.

Then Black Antelope took the shape of a common antelope and let himself be seen by the children of An and Ammu as they were setting off to hunt. They saw him grazing on the plain a little way off
.

Da and Datta said, “We hunt that antelope.”

The others were afraid. They said, “Do we kill and eat antelope? Is not Black Antelope the greatest of the First Ones?”

Da said, “Why do we not eat it? Which of us is of the Kin of Black Antelope?”

Datta said, “See how fat he is. His flesh is very good to eat.”

But still the others were afraid
.

Da and Datta said, “We are the best. You must do as we say. You swore it at Odutu below the Mountain.”

Because they had sworn at Odutu, they agreed to hunt the antelope
.

Black Antelope saw them creeping towards him and moved a little away and grazed again. They crept further, and again he moved away, and again, and again. All day he did this, and always they said in their hearts: “Next time we have him.” The thought of fat roast flesh was strong in their mouths
.

At sunset he led them to a water hole where there was blueroot growing beside the water. They drank
,
and dug out the blueroot and ate it, and said, “Tomorrow we return to the First Good Place and hunt there.”

Next day they woke and saw Black Antelope grazing close by, and again they hunted him all day, and at sunset he led them to a water hole where there were binjas growing beside the water. They drank, and gathered and husked the binja seed and ate it, and said, “Tomorrow we return to the First Good Place and hunt there.”

So it was for many, many days. And at last they came to one of the new Good Places, which the First Ones had made for them, and there Black Antelope left them. As he passed by the water holes on his way, he drank them dry. And he ate the binjas and the blueroot and everything else that grew near them, so that the children of An and Ammu should never return to the First Good Place
.

CHAPTER TEN

On Mosu's instructions Foia licked Suth's wounds clean and pounded leaves of bitter bush and pressed them on. The juices stung like fire but dried the exposed flesh so that the blood stopped oozing and scabs began to form. Mohr and Gan carried the news out to the foragers and hunters, who came home early for the feast. The men butchered and roasted the deer.

Suth knew very little of all this. He was weak with loss of blood and groggy with shock and the aftereffects of the stoneweed. He was aware of a moment when the Moonhawks were suddenly there, and Noli's concern for him, and Ko's wide-eyed awe at his wound, and Mana settling beside him to be hugged by his good arm.

The men came too, and spoke to him in new voices. He couldn't see their faces clearly, or understand the words, but he knew that they were praise. Dith was among them, who had scorned him so. He too spoke praise.

Now I may die
, Suth thought, overwhelmed with happiness despite the pain.

He would have slept where he was, in the full sun and on bare rock, but the Moonhawks gathered bedding for him inside the mouth of the cave and Noli helped him to his feet and led him there to sleep in the shade.

They woke him for the feast. He was still too weak and dazed to do his part unaided, so Mohr held his hand on the cutter and helped him slice open the belly of the leopard and draw out the heart and liver and cut them in pieces, so that everybody could eat of them and the power of the leopard would be in them all.

Night fell and there was firelight and singing and many mouths speaking praise. Somebody came and put something hard and round into his hand. It was a cutter. The giver was Dith. He had done the same for Jad at his man-making.

Suth managed to speak his thanks, but when he was called on to make his boast he needed to be helped to his feet and then could only stand there, mumbling. He knew what he wanted to say, but the words wouldn't come to his mouth. But no one mocked him, for no one—not even Mosu, who had seen everything and knew everything—had heard of anybody who had fought and killed a leopard alone.

For the next several days Suth was too feeble to do more than make the morning and evening trips to the lake, so Noli took the Moonhawks foraging, while he rested at the camp.

When he was strong enough to join them, she continued to come with them and he began to feel that things were back now as they should be, with his family together and whole, and given their place and respected by the men and women of the valley. The men were busy building deer traps, and he might have joined them, or sat with them in the shade and played their game with them, and they wouldn't have made him unwelcome, but he preferred to be with the Moonhawks and plan for the day they would leave.

Then Mosu fell ill, and became too weak to hobble to the lake, and in too much pain to be carried there by the men. Instead the women folded leaves into bowls, which they filled with water and carried carefully back to her between their two cupped hands. Though Foia was there to look after her, Noli said she must stay with her too, and even when Mosu got better and could go to the lake again she continued to stay.

Suth didn't like this at all. He resented it much more than he had before, and resented how silent and withdrawn Noli had become. One evening he could bear it no more. After they had finished eating, he took her aside.

“Why do you do this?” he said. “I, Suth, ask. Why do you not speak? Why do you choose to be with the old woman always? You are Moonhawk. Your place is with us.”

She shook her head, and he thought she was going to tell him again that her reasons were secret—dream stuff that she could share only with Mosu. But for a while she simply sat with her head bowed, staring at her folded hands. When she did speak it was in an almost toneless mutter, slow and hesitant.