The Kin (15 page)

And then Noli was awake. Her right shoulder was numb from her having lain on it too long. Her face was wet with tears.

Where was she?

The dream had been so strong that it still filled her mind, and for a little while she couldn't think about anything else. Then the ground beneath her seemed to quiver. She looked up and saw the cliff towering black above her, and beyond it the night sky full of stars.

Now she remembered. She was lying in the lair that she and Suth and Tinu had built last night. They'd piled a wall of rocks against the cliff for themselves and the three small ones. She remembered how they'd escaped from the secret valley at the top of the mountain, when the mountain itself had suddenly exploded into flame and smoke.

Was anyone else left alive? she wondered. Any of the Monkey Kin, among whom they had been living for the past nine moons? As far as she knew, she and her friends were the last of the Moonhawk Kin: Suth, a boy still, though he had been counted as a man since his fight with the leopard; Noli herself, a little younger; Tinu, younger still, but small and slight, and shy too, because of her twisted mouth which stopped her from speaking clearly; Ko, a boisterous little boy, and Mana, a quiet, solemn girl the same age; and finally Otan, Noli's baby brother, who had only just learned to walk.

Again the mountain quivered, and the memory of her dream flooded back into her mind. She looked at the sky. The moon was moving towards its setting, and the slope where she lay was in the shadow of the cliff, so the stars shone clear. Five points of light in a curving line. Moonhawk had shown them to Noli in her dream. But there were so many stars. Was that them, three bright and two fainter? The dream had seemed so certain, but now …

They were the only ones she could find. Yes, that must be them.

She reached across and felt for Suth on the other side of the sleeping bodies. She touched an arm, and knew it was his by the scars that the leopard had made. She shook it.

“Noli?” he whispered.

“Moonhawk comes,” she said. “She tells me,
Go.”

He was starting to answer when the mountain groaned, not loudly but hugely, a sound so deep that they felt it as much as they heard it, throbbing up through the cliff and far out under the desert. The hillside shuddered. The crash and rumble of falling rocks broke the night silence.

Suth sat up. Tinu was already awake. They woke the small ones, gathered their few supplies by touch, and took a last drink at the dribble of water from the cliff. Noli hefted her baby brother, Otan, onto her hip, and they picked their way down the slope.

When they reached the moonlight they could move more easily. Suth halted and pointed.

“We go this way,” he said. “It is there I saw people, two moons back. They came from the desert. They knew a way.”

“No,” said Noli. “See these stars, Suth? Three strong, two weak? A bent line? Moonhawk showed me these.”

Suth didn't argue, though the stars were well to the right of the route he had suggested. He was the leader, but Noli was the one to whom Moonhawk came.

“You go first, Noli,” he said.

She shifted Otan to her other hip and set off. Tinu came next, and then Suth, with Ko and Mana. They were still almost babies, so Suth carried them in turn when they were tired. In the bright moonlight they climbed on down the mountain until they reached the plain. There, walking was easy, until the moon vanished behind the mass of smoke from the volcano. But they went steadily on by starlight, with short rests every now and then.

The stars moved westward as the night wore by, but Noli stuck to the direction that she had started on. She did this without thought. She carried Otan without noticing his weight. When Tinu offered to take him for a while, she passed him across without a word. Her mind was still full of her dream.

These were dreams like no other dream, more wakeful than waking.

Moonhawk came. Noli's whole self trembled with the presence of the First One. She knew, without touch or seeing, the softness of breast feathers, the folded strength of wings, the hooked sharpness of beak and talons.

She knew, this time, sadness.

Moonhawk spoke in Noli's mind:
See this
.

In the darkness of the dream, five points of light in a slanting curve. The lights vanished.

I do not come again
.

In her dream, Noli shrank until she was as small as the smallest grain of sand in a desert that went on for ever, and Moonhawk was nowhere in it. The grain of sand wept.

Moonhawk spoke for the last time.

Go
.

So now, Noli trudged numbly on with nothing in her mind but the knowledge that never again would Moonhawk come to her.

Never again. Never again. Never again.

She did not notice how the sky ahead turned pale, or when the stars vanished. She looked around, and it was brilliant morning, with the rising sun glaring into her eyes.

With no warning, the ground that they were crossing heaved beneath their feet. Noli staggered and caught herself. She looked back. Tinu was carrying Otan and they'd both fallen. Suth had grabbed hold of Mana and Ko. He too had turned and was looking back.

Beyond him, something was happening to the mountain. The immense column of smoke was still rising into the sky, silvered by moonlight along the edge, but just above the mountaintop it had bulged into a shape like a thundercloud. A series of huge deep booms swept across the desert.

“Watch!” shouted Suth. “Something comes! Run! There!”

He pointed to a great slab of rock they had just passed. Noli grabbed Otan and ran for it. They scrambled up and looked towards the mountain.

It wasn't the mountain. It was nearer than that. The desert itself was moving. There was a line across its surface. The line was nearer. In a moment Noli saw that the line was a sort of ripple. The solid ground had risen into a wave which was rushing towards them. She saw it reach two tall boulders leaning against each other. They swayed. One toppled, the other fell across it.

“Down!” yelled Suth. “Kneel! Hold the rock!”

She crouched, slid Otan between her legs and gripped him with her knees. She scrabbled for handholds, found a crack for her fingers, and hooked them into it. She could hear the wave coming, growling like a beast growling deep in its throat as it worries a bone.

She raised her head and saw the wave hit the rock they were on.

A shower of gravel shot into the sky. The rock tilted up, up, up. For a moment Noli thought it would go right over and crush them, but then it lurched sideways and crunched back down. The jar loosened her hold and she had to fling herself flat to stop herself slithering off. Otan was under her, yelling and struggling.

She picked herself up and looked around. Tinu had tumbled right off the slab, but was getting to her feet and seemed to be all right. The others were kneeling, looking towards the mountain.

It was invisible, hidden in its own black smoke.

They were still staring at it when the sound of the main explosion reached them.

It was louder than the loudest thunder when lightning strikes close by. They clapped their hands to their ears, but that made no difference. It didn't stop. The small ones were screaming, but Noli couldn't hear them. She could see Otan's mouth wide open as he bellowed with pain, but not a sound reached her. Something crashed into the rock by her foot. It made no noise. She noticed it only because of the rock splinters that stung against her leg. Stuff was raining out of the sky all around them. She looked desperately for somewhere to shelter. If any of this hit one of them …

Tinu was shouting and pointing. She ran to the end of the rock and disappeared. They scrambled off and saw that when the rock had tilted up and fallen back, something had stopped it from going the whole way down, so that there was now a narrow slot between it and the ground.

They wormed their way in and waited, safe, while the debris of the explosion thudded down all around them.

Gradually, their hearing returned though Noli's ears ached painfully. The shower of rocks stopped and they crawled out and looked at the mountain. The smoke had moved away under the wind and they could see it clearly.

It was not the same mountain. Its shape had changed. A whole wedge of it, all its northern rim, had been blown clean away.

Noli stared in disbelief. She couldn't believe that anything, even the First Ones, even Black Antelope, had such power.

She heard Mana cry out in pain.

“Hot!” she said. “Hot!” and pointed at a piece of rock by her foot. It was paler than the desert rock, and the air above it shimmered slightly in the heat that rose from it.

“We go,” said Suth, speaking loudly, so that Noli knew that he too must be still half-deaf. “We go quick. Perhaps it comes again.”

So they set out once more and tramped steadily on all morning. Mercifully, most of the ash and lighter stuff had been blown westward by the wind. But they had to keep a close watch on where they put their feet, as all the desert was littered now with the burning rocks from the mountain.

The sun rose, and it grew steadily hotter. Still they kept on long after they would normally have stopped and looked for shade. At last Suth trotted up from the rear and pointed to a rocky hill to their left.

“We rest now,” he said. “The mountain is quiet, and there is good shade.”

Noli hesitated. Suth was right. It was already far too hot for walking, and the small ones were beginning to gasp with distress, and all their throats were painful with thirst.

“A little more, Suth,” she said.

He gazed ahead. As far as they could see the desert seemed almost level, with only a scattering of boulders, none large enough for shade.

“I ask this, Suth,” she said. “I think there is water.”

“Does Moonhawk show you this?”

“I have no word for it.”

She felt as if she were being called, or pulled. As if, supposing she tried to turn aside and rest, her legs would refuse to obey her.

Suth looked at her and grunted doubtfully, but nodded, and they walked on. She could see nothing hopeful ahead of her but it was hard to be sure. The sun beat down on rock and sand and gravel, and the heat beamed back from them, making wavering lines in the air, so that the distance ahead seemed to ripple and blur. It took her a little while to realize that one of the ripples wasn't moving like the rest. It was there, a darker mark across the desert, slanting away to her left.

As they neared, it became a crack in the ground. The crack grew wider. Soon Noli could see the top of a cliff, and then she and the others were standing at the very lip of a canyon, broader and deeper than anything they'd ever seen.

They kneeled and craned over. The cliffs ran straight down on both sides. In the bottom was a jumble of boulders, but in places among them, bushes and trees were growing.

Their leaves were green.

Noli raised her head and sniffed. Water.

For a while they explored along the edge of the canyon, looking for some way down. Here and there, far beneath them, they could see fresh piles of rock heaped against the cliff, where the earthquake had shaken stuff loose, but nearly all the rocks had fallen clean away, leaving the cliff still sheer.

Then they came to a place where there'd been an even larger rockfall, so huge that the debris half-blocked the canyon floor. There was a great slice missing from the cliff. One side of the slice was a steep and jagged slant, with enough handholds and footholds for them to climb down. Suth and Noli helped the small ones past the difficult places.

At last they were on the pile of fallen rocks and could scramble to the floor of the canyon. A flock of small birds with glistening dark-blue wings and scarlet heads swirled out from the opposite cliff and circled, screeching, above them.

Noli looked up at them and almost laughed with relief. Plants grew in this place. Creatures lived. The Moonhawks had come through the desert. They were not going to die.

The rocks in the bottom of the canyon were mostly round and smooth, like the ones in Sometimes River. The smells of green leaves and water filled the hot air. They could see the plants, but not the water.

The smell was strongest near the centre of the canyon. They kneeled down and started to move rocks aside. The ones at the top were almost too hot to touch, but the next layer was cool, and a few layers further down, the rocks felt faintly damp to the touch. All the while the smell of water grew stronger.

“Ha!” said Suth, and showed them the rock he had just pulled out from almost an arm's length below the surface. Its underside was wet.

And now, peering down into the hollow they had made, they could see dribbles of water seeping through the crannies. By the time the hollow was deep enough to leave a pool, Suth and Noli were the only ones who could reach it.

Suth scooped out a palmful of water and lapped it up. He moved aside for Noli and then the two of them scooped some out for the others to lap from their palms. The water was beautiful, clean, and cold.

All the while the scarlet-headed birds chattered angrily above them, as if these intruders had no right to be here.

When they'd drunk enough they rested for a while in the shade of the further cliff. But the sun moved on and the shade disappeared, so they started to explore the canyon, looking for somewhere else to settle. Every now and then a fresh flurry of birds would whirl out from their cliff nests to scold them.

Suth looked up and made a face. “In this place, hunting is not easy,” he said. “The birds warn the creatures.”

“There is plant food,” said Noli. “See, there is a jada bush. Its berries are green still, and sour.”

“See, there are trees,” said Suth, and headed for the shade beneath them.

The trees made a small grove close against the cliff. One of them turned out to be a wing nut tree. They could see the dark nuts out of reach at the ends of the thin, whippy branches, so Tinu took the small ones and Otan well aside while Noli and Suth threw rocks and tried to knock some nuts loose. If they were ripe enough they fell at a touch, and a good throw brought several rattling down.