The Sky And The Forest (20 page)

“Musini!” he whispered.

“Loa!” came the instant reply. “Lord!”

“Father!” said Lanu.

It might not have been they, after all -- Loa had no certainty of it -- but not then nor at any subsequent time did Loa ever think of that possibility.

“Be quiet,” he ordered, and he turned aside in the darkness to feel for the little axe where he had left it; the little axe which Litti the worker in iron had made so long ago at Loa's order as a gift to Lanu, and which had been so immeasurably valuable to them ever since. He approached the pen with it, and felt in the rainy darkness to ascertain what he should do. The pen, as was to be expected, was constructed of stout stakes and crossbars fastened together with vegetable fibre, and he set to work with the axe to sever the fastenings. It was not easy, for those fastenings were of split cane which almost turned the axe's edge. Loa chopped and tugged; he tore the nail loose on his left forefinger almost without noticing it, before he managed to cut through three sets of the fastenings. Then he laid hold of the upright and put out all his strength, tugging, with his eyes starting out of his head in the darkness, until a final ounce of effort tore the upright free.

“Let me try to come through,” whispered Musini, who sensibly and with remarkable self-control had contrived to stay quiet during Loa's efforts. Loa felt her wriggling in the darkness, her hands touching his knees as she put her arms through. The pen shook with her struggles, and soon Loa knew that she was squeezing through.

“Lord, I am free,” whispered Musini, rising to her feet beside him in the darkness. She trod on the dead woman as she spoke, but that did not alter the tone of her voice at all. Her hands patted his shoulders, and she nuzzled her face against his wet chest.

But this was no moment for tenderness. Loa shoved Musini away from him, for his mind was obsessed with the business in hand -- had he not, with incredible self-discipline, kept his mind on it for many hours past? It could no more be diverted at present than a charging elephant.

“Lanu,” he said, and felt his way to Lanu's end of the pen.

“I am here. Father,” whispered Lanu.

Loa felt in the darkness along the top of the pen.

“This is the fastening to cut. Father,” said Lanu.

Loa felt his hand touched by Lanu's, which he had put outside the cage, and he was guided to the place. He hacked in the darkness at the tough cane, more than half his blows missing their mark, until, feeling in the darkness, he felt that the fastenings had parted. And he felt, too, Lanu's hand upon him again.

“Cut the one below, Father,” said Lanu. “I will finish the unfastening of this one.”

Lanu used the mode of address common between children and used by ordinary children towards their parents; obediently Loa addressed himself to the lower fastening. He chopped and chipped away until the fibres parted, and then, crouching low, began on the next one below. When this had given way he put out his strength to tear the upright free from the cage, but it would not yield. He had to cut another fastening, and this time, when he tugged at the upright, it gave way with a splintering crash that could possibly have been heard in the houses despite the noise of the rain.

“I can come through now, Father,” said Lanu, and Loa felt him squeeze himself through the gap. Loa was conscious that Musini was embracing their son in the darkness.

“Let us go,” he said, and added, “I must take my arrows.”

There was no diverting Loa from his purpose; haste could not overcome him in this present mood of his, as this last speech of his proved. He felt for, and found, his arrows in the darkness where he had left them to spring on the old woman, and he gave them and the bow to Lanu, retaining the little axe for himself.

“Come with me,” said Loa, setting off into the darkness, so dark still, with the rain falling heavily, that Lanu took his hand and Musini his other arm so as not to part from him.

There was no need now to crawl along in an effort, expensive in time, to achieve utter silence. The old woman was dead, and no one else in the town would be specifically on guard, so that they could walk, slowly and with caution, through the mud of the open space. The rain beat down on their naked bodies quite remorselessly, with a stupefying effect; it was as well that Loa had a plan in his mind at the i start. But Musini still had to ask questions.

“Whither, Lord?” she whispered.

“River,” growled Loa.

The single word was all that was necessary. During their confinement in the cage Musini and Lanu had had time enough to familiarize themselves with the topography of the town, and it was by river they had been brought here. But it was Loa who guided them; perhaps because of the numbing effect of the rain his instincts had full play, and his sense of direction could guide him without interference from thought. A sudden sound at Musini's very elbow made them stop dead, all three of them, rigid, until their minds, slower than their physical reactions, told them that what they had heard was the maa-aaing of a nanny goat sheltered somewhere near. There was no further sound, and they moved forward again feeling their way with the utmost caution. The bleating of the goat told them they had reached the ring of the town; invisible to them, houses must be on either side of them. They paused at every stride, testing the ground beneath their advancing feet before transferring their weight. Loa's sense of balance first told him that they were on a downward slope; they were over the lip of the bluff and on the path down to the water. He felt pebbles under his feet, and Musini and Lanu on each side of him were pressing in upon him; the path was deeply worn and intended for the use of people in single file. And as the path steepened before them they could tell that they were among trees again; the noise of the rain on the leaves told them that if nothing else did. Steeper and steeper grew the path, and then through the roar of the rain their ears caught another noise, that of the river, which, sweeping round the bend, came swirling against the foot of the bluff. The next moment Loa, striding forward with less than his usual caution, stumbled over something solid in his path which the touch of his hands told him must be a canoe. They had reached the river.

“Whither now, Lord?” asked Musini as Loa felt round for the axe that he had dropped.

“This way,” said Loa, turning to the left -- downstream as ever.

Only a few steps took them among the trees, into the odorous forest where they could feel the leaf-mould under their feet again. It was a nightmare experience. The trees grew thicker and lower here on the water's edge, and many of them were out of the vertical. The slope of the bluff was steep, and although that was a valuable guide for direction in the dark, it made walking difficult with one foot always higher than the other. They bumped into trees, and they slipped and slithered on the wet leaf-mould. Always present in their minds was the fear of snakes and of pitfalls. Their rate of progress was deplorably slow, but they maintained it for a couple of hours before Loa called a halt. He was weary, although Musini and Lanu, after twenty-four hours of complete rest and good food in the pen, were still fresh. Loa slept, belly down, his face pillowed on Musini's thigh, while the others dozed fitfully as the rain ceased.

It was Lanu who woke Loa, shaking him by the shoulder so that he started up in alarm.

“Father -- Lord,” said Lanu. “The light comes.”

Only the smallest possible greyness was leaking in through the trees around them, but Lanu was as fully aware as Loa of the value of these minutes. At dawn, or not long after, the death of the old woman and the escape of the prisoners would be discovered in the town. Almost for certain there would be pursuit; conceivably, despite last night's rain, their tracks would be picked up. It was vitally necessary that they should make the most of the few minutes' grace which they had gained. Once deep in the forest and they would be safe, save for some unfortunate and unforeseeable chance, from the townspeople.

“Let us go,” said Loa, scrambling to his feet.

He ached in every joint, but he made no remark about it. Aching joints were part of the life of the forest -- he might as well have remarked on the fact that there were trees round them. He was desperately hungry, too, but that was equally part of the life of the forest.

They could just see the tree trunks about them now, and could pick their way along the slope, while beneath them the river gurgled and chuckled. Very soon full daylight came -- for them the greenish twilight of the forest. They hurried along as fast as they could, taking care to make no sound, but not seeking for food, and pausing to listen and look for an ambush by the little people less than they would have done normally. They listened for sounds of pursuit coming from behind them, but they heard nothing; the gentle wind that was blowing in their faces would carry sound away as well as the smell of the town -- in their nostrils there was only the scent of the forest, untainted by smoke or humanity.

The slope of the bluff soon became vertical again, so that they found themselves walking on the lip among the tangled trees, with the water some forty feet directly below their right hands. Soon they came to a point where the bank had given way, and Loa emerged momentarily to a view over a long reach of the river, but only momentarily, for he sprang back, his gestures fixing the others motionless. On the broad surface of the river was a canoe, and now a canoe was an object of fear instead of idle curiosity. They peered at it through the leaves, as it passed rapidly downstream with its paddles gleaming wet in the sunlight. Lanu was shaking his fists at it, threatening it with his arrows, and mouthing boyish curses at it -- he was far too cautious to say them aloud.

Another canoe was following closely behind, and they could see the men at the paddles plainly enough. It was reassuring that they were not looking at their bank as they passed it. That did not seem as if they were consciously pursuing them, but canoes were such strange unknown things that it was hard to be sure. A moment later Loa had another shock of fear, for the two canoes swung round in the current and lay alongside each other. Loa felt sure that this implied that the paddlers knew they were there and were concerting pursuit of them. But just as he was about to lead a flight deeper into the forest the paddlers bent to their work again, urging the canoes upstream on diverging courses, while a man in the bow of one of them threw overboard armful after armful of some brown material -- Loa could not see more exactly what it was, but the proceeding attracted his curiosity and he lingered to watch, against his better judgment. After a while the man ceased to throw the material overboard, and the canoes toiled on upstream parallel to each other, and Loa could see they were connected together at the bows by some sort of rope. It was an odd kind of ceremony; over the water came the song of the paddlers as they worked; the words were indistinguishable but the rhythm was marked.

Loa could not tear himself away from the spectacle, although he well knew that they should be on their way, but Lanu and Musini seemed equally fascinated, and after some time their curiosity was rewarded by the sight of the canoes inching together again, while this time a man in the bow of each canoe hauled out of the river the brown material previously thrown in, which apparently had all the time been suspended in the water from a rope between the canoes. At intervals one man or the other would stoop and pluck something glittering white out of the material, and throw it in the bottom of the boat.

“Fish,” said Musini, using a word that Loa had never heard before.

“Very good,” said Lanu, with a pat at his stomach.

It was a fishing canoe that had captured them the day before, they explained to him in whispers; they had seen the things and had later eaten them, but this was the first time they had known how they were caught. The word for fish had completely disappeared from Loa's language (if indeed it had ever had a place there) from the time when Nasa his father had gone up against the riverside village and wiped it out. But Loa was impressed by the stress Lanu laid upon the excellence of their eating qualities; one of the old women who had fed them yesterday had told them the name and persuaded them to try the new delicacy, and the townspeople who had gathered round the pen had been vastly amused to hear that the captives did not know what fish was and had never heard the name.

The canoes passed on up the river, casting their net again as they went; the incident was comforting as it tended to show that any pursuit of Loa and his family was not being pressed to the utmost. Yet as the canoes passed out of sight Loa turned his face downstream again.

“Let us go,” he said, as he had said a hundred times before.

There was no pursuit from the town that they ever knew about.

They went on along the river as before, and as before they starved most of the time with an occasional overfull meal to sustain them. The bluff on which the town stood was succeeded by marshy bottom land as the river wound back in the opposite loop. Here there was treacherous and difficult going, where the trees stood waist-deep in slime, so that they had to pick their way from root to root, and where the mosquitoes ceased to be a pest to become a plague that made life almost unbearable. Clouds of mosquitoes followed them closely as they floundered through the marsh, and leeches clung to them and sucked their blood -- they early found that if they tore the horrid things off without letting them drink their fill the jaws remained in the flesh to cause a sore that was hard to heal. Their bare feet, horny though they were, were bruised and cut by the unseen roots in the mud, the sky still dripped upon them, and there was more than one night when it was impossible to light a fire in the general wetness.

It was at a despairing moment in this misery that Loa decided upon leaving the river. Child of the sky, the river was betraying them, was taking advantage of a too close association. Loa turned his back on the water and led his family directly away from it, intending vaguely to attempt to use it as a guide without keeping close to it, hard though that would be in the forest. It was thus he learned to keep to the higher ground above the river and cut across the necks of the loops, avoiding the bottoms altogether and saving an enormous amount of distance. It was an almost automatic process. They left the marshes to find themselves on firm ascending ground; turned to the right to keep parallel with the river, and shortly afterwards discovered that they were on the bluff at the head of the next loop, with two long reaches of the river stretching away before them, with sky and river their friends and allies again instead of their irritating enemies.