The Kin (38 page)

Oldtale

STONEJAW

Tov journeyed west. The parrot sat on his head, and slept. The sun was behind him, and over him, and shone in his face, and his gourd was empty. He came to the place of Stonejaw
.

There he saw a great rock. That was the head of Stonejaw. There was no body, no arms, no legs, only the head. In the rock was a cave. That was the mouth of Stonejaw. Out of it came his song
.

Come into my cave
.

In it is water
.

Hear the sweet water
.

It is cool, cool
.

The song was magic. When Tov heard it he forgot the skills of the hunter. He ran to the cave, not looking, not seeing
.

The parrot woke and screeched in Tov's ear, so that he could not hear Stonejaw's song. Now he looked and saw. He said in his heart, This is Stonejaw. The cave is his mouth
.

Beside the cave Tov saw a great rock. He rolled it into the mouth of the cave, between the jaws of Stonejaw. Then he walked through
.

The jaws closed on the rock, but could not close further. Tov went to the water and drank, and filled his gourd. Beside the water he saw a dead gazelle, a gazelle of the desert. Stonejaw had caught it. Tov took it and carried it out of the cave
.

He said, “Come, little parrot. We have food, we have water. Stonejaw, farewell.”

Tov camped, and ate of the gazelle. The parrot did not eat. Gazelle are not parrot food
.

Tov said, “Little parrot, all day you slept on my head. Now I sleep. You watch.”

When he lay down he put a sharp thorn beneath his ribs. He did not sleep
.

In the dark the parrot became Falu. She was hungry, and ate of the gazelle, sucking the marrow from the bones. The noise was loud. Tov heard it, and opened his eyes, and saw her where she sat sucking the marrow bone. He crept softly towards her and caught her by the wrist
.

Falu cried aloud. She said, “Tov, let me go.”

Tov said, “I do not let you go. Soon it is morning. I see who you are.”

Falu wept. She said, “Tov, do not do this. You hold me, you see me. Then your parrot dies, the little grey parrot with the yellow tail feathers.”

Tov said in his heart, I cannot do this. I need my little parrot. She is clever, clever
.

He let go of Falu's wrist, and lay down and slept. In the morning Falu was a parrot again
.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The path came out on the far side of the island. Looking past the man, Ko could see a stretch of mud, and beyond it another island. The man stepped confidently onto the mud, and at once started to sink. The mud closed over his foot, but then he stopped sinking and took another pace, and another, checking his foothold each time before he moved on.

Ko followed him, stepping exactly in his footprints, and found that there was something solid just below the surface. Curious, he stopped after a while, balanced on one leg and carefully felt down with his other foot beside the line of footprints. There was nothing there, and nothing on the other side, only this single narrow path.

He bent and probed through the mud with his fingers and felt around. The solid stuff seemed to be a thick layer of reeds, laid all in the same direction. That couldn't have happened by accident. He realized that they must have been put here.

He hurried after the man, before the mud could close over the footprints. Looking back he saw that it had already done so where they'd started from the first island. So if you didn't know exactly where the path was, you couldn't use it.

On the far side of the next island there was a more open shoreline. Some way along it two women were fishing, using sticks like the man's. The man called to them. They turned, stared for a moment, and came running.

The man showed them the fish he'd caught and they clapped their hands and made the chortling
wo-wo-wo-wo
that Tor used when he wanted to praise someone. They hugged him, and fawned on him and stroked him, while he laughed with triumph. Their faces weren't coloured like the man's, but they wore the same sort of belt that he did, with the wooden tubes on it. One of them had a baby inside her. Ko guessed she must be the man's mate, but he was puzzled by the other one, because she was behaving in exactly the same way. She looked a bit younger than Noli, but he didn't think the man was old enough to be her father.

When they'd finished letting the man know how wonderful he was they turned and stared at Ko, making sounds of astonishment. They bent and sniffed him and poked him, and the younger one licked his skin, and then rubbed hard at the place with her fingers, while he tried to squirm free. The other two watched, laughing, until she realized that Ko's skin colour wouldn't come off, and gave up.

They set off together in single file, winding from island to island, mostly using the hidden paths across the mudbanks, but sometimes wading through water up to their waists. After a while they came to another of these open channels and Ko saw a group of people standing on the shore of the next island. The three Ko was with stopped and squatted to watch, making quiet mutters of excitement, though as far as he could see the other group weren't doing anything special. Then he noticed that one of the men was crouched down, holding one end of a fishing stick with its other end beneath the water, and jiggling it gently to and fro.

Nothing happened for a while. The usual horrible insects gathered and settled and stung. Ko switched at them with a piece of reed. The marsh people didn't seem bothered by them. The air was dense and hot and steamy. He couldn't see the sun, but it must be high overhead. The Kin would be having their midday rest. No, they'd have noticed by now that Ko was missing. They'd be angry and worried and unhappy, and they'd be looking for him despite the heat. They'd find the trail he'd left with his mats on the dried mud near the shore. Perhaps they'd see the bits of broken mat far out across the marsh. They'd think he'd sunk in the mud out there, and drowned.
Stupid, stupid Ko
, they'd say. He said it now to himself.
Stupid, stupid Ko
. Why hadn't he run and told Suth about seeing the man on the island? He felt very miserable and alone and far away from his friends.

Now the man he was with picked up the big fish and began to chew at its back. He had trouble getting started, because he couldn't get his mouth round it, so Ko felt in his gourd and offered him his cutter. It was already a bit blunt, after cutting all those reeds for the mats, but there were still some sharp places on its edge. The man frowned at it, puzzled, until Ko knelt by the fish and sliced a chunk out and gave it to him, then did the same for each of the women. Though he didn't feel hungry he cut a small piece for himself. The man took the cutter and felt its edge with his thumb, grunted approvingly and handed it back.

Then he opened one of his belt tubes, took out the lump of salt Ko had given him, and crumbled a few crystals onto his piece of fish. Immediately the women started wheedling for some for themselves, and very grudgingly he broke them off a few grains each, but when they begged for more he snorted crossly and shook his head.

Ko groped again in the bottom of his gourd and found several crystals that had fallen off the main chunk, so he scraped them out and gave them to the women, who crowed with delight over them.

Suddenly there was a shout from the other bank. Ko's three guides were on their feet, jumping with excitement. He ran to look. The man with the stick was standing up now, straining back to stop himself from being pulled into the water. A couple of others were helping. Several more had jumped in. There was a flurry of splashing, and glistening arms and bodies heaving about as they struggled with something below the surface. The stick came loose, and the three holding it tumbled on their backs. The ones in the water were lifting a large creature out, working all together as it thrashed around, and now Ko could see that it was a crocodile, a small one, not much longer than his own body. Despite that, it took six people to hold it, one to each leg, one to the tail, and one to grip the jaw and hold it shut.

They hauled it onto the bank and pinned it down while one of the men stabbed it again and again through the eye sockets until it was dead.

Now Ko's party picked up their fish and waded in and crossed, splashing the water around and shrieking and yodelling as they went. Ko was pretty scared. He guessed this must be a bad crocodile area. None of the Kin would have dreamed of wading into water like this. But he wasn't going to be left behind, so he followed, keeping as close as he could and shrieking and splashing like the others, and climbed out onto the far bank with a sigh of relief.

Everyone gathered round the dead crocodile. They were mostly men, all with differently coloured faces, and a few women who were hugging and stroking some of the men, and making
Praise
noises to them. The man who seemed to be the chief hunter was standing proudly with his foot on the crocodile, and he had three women to himself; while others had none.

Ko stared at the scene, bewildered. And then an extraordinary thought came to him. Perhaps these men had more than one mate each. His friend had two, and this chief hunter had three. Which must mean that some of the other men had none at all! Ko couldn't imagine how anyone could live like that. It was too weird.

At first the new people were too excited by their catch to notice him, but when they did they weren't friendly. They made their sounds of surprise, and some of them prodded and rubbed his skin, but they snatched at him when they wanted to look at him and shoved him roughly away when they'd done.

Then one man tried to grab Ko before another had finished with him and neither of them would let go. He yelled as he was pulled to and fro, until the man he'd first met joined in and there was the sort of snarling match he'd often seen among the Porcupines, because they didn't have words to argue with. In the middle of it one of the men gave a sudden jerk and got Ko to himself, but then just slung him aside while he went on with the snarling match.

Ko crashed into someone's legs and fell, half stunned. As he struggled up, determined not to let anyone see the tears that were starting to come, a hand took his arm and pulled him, much more gently, away from the men. It was the younger of the two women he'd come with. She patted him comfortingly and pushed him behind her until the spat was over.

When the man joined them, she and the other woman stroked him and cooed at him for a bit, as if he'd done something almost as wonderful as catching the big fish, and then they left the hunting party to their celebrations and moved on.

Soon the journey became easier. The hidden paths across the mudbanks were firmer, and nearer the surface, and the trails through the reedbeds and islands were wider. From time to time Ko saw people fishing from different islands, both men and women, standing in that one-legged heron pose, waiting in total stillness. Though he could see that what they were doing was a kind of hunting, it seemed very different from the sort of hunting he was used to. His sense of loneliness deepened. He didn't understand these marsh people at all. He felt as helpless as a baby in their world.

And he was completely lost, more lost than he'd ever been in his life, among the shapeless tangle of reedbeds and islands, and with no way of knowing where the sun was, above the dense haze. At last they came to somewhere different, a much larger patch of open water with a cluster of small islands in the middle of it, just mounds rising above the water, almost bare of reeds or trees, with people moving about on them.

Ko couldn't see any way across to the islands, but the man led them on round the edge of the water until they came to what looked like a long, narrow muddbank running out from the reedbeds to the nearest island, with a reed path laid along the top. As they approached the place Ko's guides each scooped up a handful of mud, and then as they crossed to the island they chose a spot and put the mud down and carefully stamped it in to strengthen the path.

These people were clever, Ko thought. They didn't have words, or know about cutters, but they knew a lot of things that the Kin didn't know. They must have built the hidden paths through the marshes and chosen these islands for their lair, and made them safe for themselves.

Where the path reached the first island there was a strange, low wall, with a gap in the middle, and a row of poles behind it with objects on top of them. As he came nearer, Ko saw that these were crocodile heads—and then, with a thud of the heart, that the whole wall was also made of crocodile heads. Some of them were so old that the flesh and hide had fallen away, leaving only the grinning white skulls. None of them was half as big as the monster that the Kin had killed, but there were tens and tens and tens of them.

Ko found them really scary. They gave the entrance the look of a demon place. But the man simply halted at the gap, touched the snout of the largest skull with his hand and led the way on. The women followed without any fuss, so Ko did the same.

There were several women and a lot of children on the island, who cried out the moment they saw Ko and came crowding round, sniffing and touching him and muttering with surprise. Then a man came striding through, pushing them roughly aside. His face, too, was coloured like a demon's. He stared at Ko, snorted with anger, grabbed him by the shoulder and flung him back towards the entrance.

Immediately a ferocious snarling match began between the two men, but as Ko picked himself up he could at once see who was going to win it. This new man was older and more important than Ko's guide, who was already backing away from him when the two women took Ko by the arms and hustled him down to the water and along the edge of the island to another path. This led to a smaller island which they crossed, again going round by the edge, and so on, past two more islands, till they reached one right at the outside of the group, where they let go of him and put their burdens down. Ko guessed that this must be their home. A few moments later the man arrived, looking both anxious and angry.