The Kin (40 page)

She rose and put her arms round Ko and made
Thank you
sounds to the women, and then ran off, while Ko led the way on. The moment they reached the ridge and could see the camp below them, the man halted and gave a sharp bark. All three stared wide eyed down the slope. Ko followed their gaze, bewildered. There was nobody down at the camp, nothing but the embers of the fire, and the crocodile head on its pole …

Of course, the crocodile head! Ko remembered what a celebration there'd been when the marsh people had brought home the little crocodile they'd caught—and the crocodile heads on the poles around the entrance to their lair, none of them anything like the size of this monster.

The man turned and stared at Ko. Ko smiled confidently.

“We kill the crocodile,” he said. “Our women do it. I, Ko, help.”

He tapped himself on the chest. It was good to be able to boast a bit in front of this man, after all that grovelling and pleading in the marshes. He made the
Come
sound and started down the slope. The marsh people followed, murmuring doubtfully, and then hanging back, and finally stopping completely.

Ko waited. He wasn't impatient. He needed them still to be here when Suth came, because that would put off the time when Ko had to face him alone. And surely, however bad he'd been, Suth would see that some good had come of it, and be easier on him because, after all, he had found the marsh people. Didn't that count for something?

So he watched the man gesture to the women to stay where they were, and then walk with slow, stiff strides towards the crocodile head. A few paces from it he stopped and barked, three times, with long pauses between each bark. Then he knelt and crawled to the pole and knocked his forehead on the ground at its foot, and finally rose and stood directly in front of the monster. He raised his right arm in a kind of salute and stood in silence for a while.

Very slowly, like a man going through some kind of big test in front of his whole Kin, he moved his hand forwards and rested the fingers against the monster's snout, waited a little and withdrew it. Still saluting he took several slow paces backward, knelt, knocked his forehead on the ground again, and then rose and came back to the women.

They fawned on him as usual, but this time with gentle, wondering movements, as if he were part of something magical. Each of them took a hand, and together they led him to join Ko, and then on into the camp, where they carefully sat him down as if he couldn't do even that for himself.

Ko didn't interrupt. He had some idea what was happening. Noli often needed help like that after Moonhawk had come to her. The man had been doing First One stuff. So Ko quietly went and fetched three small blocks of salt from under the rock where it was stored, and then waited until the man gave a violent shudder, and sneezed, and shook his head and stared around as if he had no idea where he was, until his eye fell on the crocodile and he remembered.

He grunted and looked questioningly at Ko. Ko went over and formally presented him with the largest chunk of salt. The man took it and thanked him and then just as formally gave Ko back his own cutter, and Ko thanked him as if he'd never seen it before. Quickly he gave the two women their salt. They crowed with delight, but instead of thanking him they fawned on him, the same way they did on the man, while the man looked on benignly.

They hadn't finished when Ko saw Suth loping up from the inlet. He signed to the man to stay where he was and ran to meet him. Suth stopped and waited, making Ko come to him. Ko had seen him looking angry before, but never so stern.

“Oh, Suth,” he gasped. “I am bad, bad. I, Ko, know this. But hear me. I went to the marsh. I found people. Suth, they live in the marsh. They know all its paths. Three brought me back, one man, two women. Suth, they are here. Come greet them. Perhaps they show us the way through the marsh.”

Ko's voice trailed away. Suth didn't answer. Beyond him Ko could see Noli, Tor, Bodu and her baby, Tinu, Mana and Tan coming up the hill. Tor was carrying Tan on his shoulders.

“Ko, you are bad, bad,” said Suth. “I tell you later. Come.”

On the way back to the camp Ko explained as much about the marsh people as there was time for—how they didn't have words, but used sounds and gestures like Tor and the Porcupines, and the men coloured their faces like demons, and they mostly ate raw fish because they didn't have fire, and the crocodile was some kind of First One, and so on. Suth said nothing.

They found the three marsh people standing close together with the man in front. He looked very tense, and was holding his fishing stick point down but ready to raise and strike. Moving calmly and confidently Suth laid his digging stick on the ground and walked forward with his right hand raised, palm forward, fingers spread. As he reached the man he made a low humming noise in his throat. This was how the Porcupines greeted each other when two men met.

Instead of the hum, the man gave a soft bark, but his gesture was the same as Suth's, and the two men touched palms. Ko sighed with relief. So far, so good.

Next Suth put his arm round Ko's shoulders and drew him against his side and made
Thank you
noises, and then presented the man with his cutter. The man gave him in exchange two of the wooden tubes from his belt. Suth looked at them, puzzled, and the man took them back and struck them against each other, showing that they made a sweet, ringing noise. Smiling, he beat out a pattern of sound with them,
tic-atic-tack, tic-atic-tack
, and Ko recognized the strange woodpecker sound that had reached him across the water when the hunters were carrying the crocodile home. Suth smiled and took the tubes and tried for himself, while the man made encouraging murmurs.

By now Noli and the others had arrived. While Tor greeted the man, the rest of them hugged Ko, laughing and crying, and then bowed and fluttered their fingers to the man and went to greet the women. In no time Noli and the older woman were stroking each other's rounded bellies with admiring coos and a lot of laughter from the other three.

Then they all sat down, and Mana took round a small gourd of seed paste, and showed the marsh people how to dip a finger into it and lick the paste off. But before long the marshman started to become restless, and as soon as Suth stood up he jumped up too and called to his women to come.

Before he left the camp he knelt in front of the crocodile head again, and rose and touched his fingertips to the crocodile's snout, and to his own forehead, and then backed away.

Suth and Ko walked down to the marsh with the visitors, and on the way Suth tried to get the man to understand that he needed someone to act as a guide across to the far side, but the man didn't understand, so they made
Goodbye
noises on the bank, and watched the marsh people pick their way along the hidden path until they disappeared into the haze.

“Now, Ko, I speak to you,” said Suth, and told him in a quiet, even voice, without anger or contempt, how bad he had been. It was very bad indeed. Ko wept.

They walked up the slope in silence, but before they reached the camp Suth said, “Hear me, Ko. Soon people come to rest. Tun calls you. He says,
Ko, tell what you have done. Tell what you have seen
. You tell all. Think now of your words. But hear me, Ko. You were lucky, lucky. Lucky does not boast.”

“Suth, I hear,” said Ko. It struck him that Suth could have waited until everyone was there, and then told Ko in front of them all how bad he'd been. He was very grateful that he hadn't, but that didn't make it any easier when Ko had to stand in front of Tun and the others and tell his story. Even Kern looked horrified as Ko explained how he'd glimpsed the marshman and crawled out across the dangerous mud and tried to reach him, without telling anybody.

But as soon as he got to the meeting, their faces changed, and they started to ask questions. And when he told how the women had tried to lick and rub the darkness off his skin somebody laughed, and he started to feel better.

There were a lot more questions. The rest time lasted halfway through the afternoon, and then Ko took everyone down to the marsh and showed them the hidden pathway. It was easy to find now, because the dried mud near the shore was still trampled where Ko and the marsh people had crossed it, but further out the wet mud had closed over their footprints, and there was no trace at all.

They foraged until dark. Ko felt wonderfully happy to be back where he belonged, among friends. To his surprise Nar came to talk to him, and asked several questions, and then laughed and said, “Ko, I think you find the way through the marsh. Soon I give you my gift.”

“Tomorrow is tomorrow,” said Ko, loftily, and Nar laughed again.

Nothing much happened for the next two days. By now they'd almost stripped the inlet of food, and would have liked to move on, but there was nowhere to go. Var and Net explored the way into the marsh, taking salt in case they met any of the marsh people, but they got only as far as the first island, and Ko's friends hadn't been there. They couldn't find the path to the next island.

On the third morning Ko and Mana were deep in a thicket, excitedly digging out a burrow Mana had found. They were almost at the nest, and could hear the frenzied squeaking of the little creatures trapped below, when Suth called. Disappointed, Ko wormed his way out and found Suth, with Tan standing puzzled beside him.

“Noli's baby begins,” explained Suth. “Men and boys go.”

Ko understood at once. The same thing had happened when Ogad had been born, a few moons back. It had been night time, and they'd been asleep, but Suth and Ko and Tan and all the other males old enough to walk had left the lair and gone away into the dark and waited until they heard the birth song rising from around the fire. Then they'd gone back, and Suth had seen his baby son for the first time.

Childbirth, more than anything else, was woman stuff. Men and boys weren't allowed near it. Only small babies like Ogad could stay, because they were still feeding from the breast, and needed their mothers. So now all the males trooped back up to the camp to wait in the mottled shade beneath the leafless trees. The men settled down to playing their usual game, tossing pebbles into a circle drawn in the earth and trying to knock someone else's pebble out of the circle.

Ko was very restless. After his adventure in the marsh he'd promised he wouldn't go out of Suth's sight without permission. There was nothing he wanted to do under the trees. He was too young to join in the game. He had no one to play with, only Nar. He had begun to feel differently about Nar since their strange little conversation a few days back, but he didn't know how to start making friends after working so hard at being enemies for so long.

Ko went and watched the game until Suth had finished his turn, and then knelt beside him and whispered, “Suth, I go up the hill. I look at the marsh. I stay there. I do not go down to the marsh. I, Ko, ask.”

Suth glanced at him. Ko could see he was trying not to smile. “Go, Ko,” he said, and turned back to the game.

So Ko climbed to his watch place and sat with his back to a boulder, staring longingly out over the marshes. He could just see the tops of the trees on the island where he'd met the marshman. So close … Perhaps the man was there again, at this very moment … Suppose Ko borrowed the soundsticks he'd given to Suth, and went down to the shore and banged them together …

He'd hardly got into the dream when Nar came and squatted beside him.

“What do you do, Ko?” he asked.

“I wait,” said Ko. “Perhaps I see something. Perhaps I hear something.”

“I wait with you?” asked Nar.

“Good,” said Ko, and made room for him to put his back against the boulder. Below them the marshes steamed in silence.

After a while Nar said, “My mother Zara is sad, sad. All of our Kin are gone. Dead. Lost. We lived on the mountain. We were happy. The mountain burnt. It threw up great rocks. One hit my father, Beg. He died. We fled. We came to a desert, no food, no water. Many died there. My sister Illa died. Others were lost. Now my mother says to me,
We two are all our Kin. Here is little food. Soon it is gone. Then we die. You die, my son, Nar. Then our Kin is dead
. Ko, my mother is sad, sad.”

Ko murmured sympathetically. He remembered the strange feeling he'd had when Cal had been killed by the crocodile. His whole Kin, Fat Pig, had died with him. Until that moment there'd always been a Fat Pig Kin, ever since the First Ones had raised the children of An and Ammu in the First Good Place. Ko could imagine how he would feel if he knew that he was the last of Moonhawk, and there would be no more after him. It would be worse than his own death.

No wonder Nar was so interested in finding a way through the marshes.

Ko couldn't think of anything to say, so they sat in silence. Though there was no wind, the haze over the marshes seemed to move around all the time, with thicker and thinner patches coming and going. At times Ko could see the dim outlines of several islands, but a few moments later they would all have vanished.

He was getting restless again when Nar straightened, peered and pointed.

“A thing comes,” he whispered. “People? Animals?”

Ko stared, and he too saw the vague, dark shape coming slowly through the haze towards the land. It was roughly where the hidden path was. It was too big to be an animal. It could only be several people, moving close together.

Both boys rose. Ko took a couple of paces down the hill. In the nick of time he remembered his promise to Suth. He turned, and together they raced back to the men, and knelt and rapped their knuckles together. The men looked up, frowning at the interruption.

“Tun, I, Nar, speak,” said Nar, and at once went on without waiting for permission. “People come from the marsh. Ko sees this also.”

The men snorted with surprise, broke off their game and ran up to the ridge. By the time they got there the vague shape that Nar and Ko had seen had reached the shore and was clearly visible. It was indeed people. Seven or eight marshmen. They formed themselves into a line and marched up the hill with their fishing sticks gripped menacingly above their shoulders.