Tikkipala (25 page)

While the bone parts were knitting themselves together, Maw began to try to contact Pala. In the palace, each time Maw had tried to communicate, the thoughts of the people round him had been so jumbled and so gross that he had never been able to go beyond them or direct his own thoughts. But now he was far enough away and his mind felt clearer. He tried again and again to get some message to his friend, but nothing came back. The tribal trees were too far away, he decided, and too much rock and height was separating him from his people. He needed to find the tunnel that his people sometimes came down on a ligament but he did not know where it was, for they had never allowed Maw to use it.

‘You are the Maw and must never go into the land of the Coarseones,' they had always told him. But now, he thought, if he could find it, he might even be able to climb up it and rejoin his tribe. Years ago, long before Maw was born, a woman had carried the Coarsechild up this tunnel. It had taken her many days, scrambling upwards in the dark and Maw would have to make the journey without a ligament.

But Maw's need was desperate. He spent the following several days crawling among the rocks hunting for the tunnel entrance, until, exhausted, thirsty and hungry, he started to feel despair. He tried to instruct the Animal to search for the tunnel. If he had the whole pack, with all the qualities, then he felt sure they would have found it quickly, but this one creature, whose name was ‘Love-and-aggression', was only a part of a mind. It could not understand what Maw asked of it. With anguish in its eyes, it tried frantically to understand Maw, but its brain was not good enough. It was only good for attack and loving.

He began to call to his people with his throat because neither Pala nor the people seemed able to hear his mind, but though he called in every voice there was, only jungle fowls and barking deer answered. Once or twice he thought he heard, very faintly and far away, a voice of his people, but so far that he could not be sure.

At first, when Animal had come bounding up to him, free at last, Maw had thought that all his troubles were over and that soon he would be back with his tribe again, but now a dreadful sadness began to overwhelm him and he feared that his people were all dead, that Pala was gone forever and that even if he could manage, with his broken leg to get to high jungle, there would not be anyone there. He had seen the wood cutters murder all his tribe's Animals. Perhaps by now they had murdered the people too. He sat down and pressed his hands against his face.

Animal came over to him, and resting its jaw on Maw's knee, looked into his eyes with ferocious love. Maw pressed his lips against the top of the Animal's head and felt comforted. He was still alive, the Animal was with him. Perhaps tomorrow he would find the entrance to the tunnel.

Then a pain struck him, hitting his brain, making him gasp and nearly fall over with the shock and intensity of it. And at the same time he felt Pala's voice inside his head screaming, ‘Oh no, Oh don't, I can bear any more…'

‘Pala, Pala, Pala.' A great trembling seized Maw's body. ‘What is happening? Where are you?' he shouted the words aloud at first, then repeated them with his mind. At first Pala seemed to be unable to hear and still into Maw's mind, again and again, came Pala's dreadful cries of pain. ‘Don't let them go on doing this to me. Oh no, oh please…' Pala's thoughts were gargled, burbled and unclear.

‘Pala, I am down here, in the land of the Coarseones,' cried Maw with his mind. ‘I am trying to get to you.'

Then suddenly Pala's voice sounded, quite clear. ‘Maw? My Maw? Are you there? We thought you were dead, my beloved.'

‘It is me. I am coming to you, Pala.'

In the days and nights that followed, again and again Maw would feel Pala's pain and hear his screams of agony. Sometimes he even heard fear in Pala's thoughts. Fear? Pala? Even in the moments of the most terrible danger, like the time the tigress had pinned Pala to the ground and scored him with her teeth until Maw had managed to pull her off, Pala had not been afraid. What terrible things were they doing to the great hunter? Maw wept aloud as he hunted desperately. He never slept, but sometimes would fall against the rocks, with a kind of unconsciousness overtaking him for a few moments, till he came to himself and could go on beating hopelessly against the rocks, listening for a hollow sound. All the time he kept shouting in his mind and with his throat, ‘I am coming Pala. I am coming Pala.' But he was not coming because he could not find a way up. His wild thoughts became so loud and frantic that they made the Animal yelp, and cringe its head against the ground as though its brain was hurting.

On the sixth day there came such a long silence from Pala that Maw thought the hunter was dead. Then a clear strong thought came. ‘Don't come back here, Maw. No matter what I say in my desperation, stay where you are, for if you come here they will do to you the awful things they are doing to me.'

‘Pala, Pala, Pala, I am coming whatever you say,' screamed Maw but for reply got only a long thin scream of pain.

Maw could only creep by now. His strength was almost entirely gone. Holding onto the Animal, who was weak with thirst and hunger too, he dragged his broken body across the rocks and through the bushes. Dizziness from thirst and lack of food kept
darkening his sight and several times he fell and thought he might not have the strength to rise. But somehow each time he managed it, hauling himself up the legs of the Animal. Sometimes he had to hold the tail of the Animal to walk at all. As he staggered on, his own brain became increasingly muddled. He would start to imagine that Pala was at his side and that they were hunting together.

‘I dreamt you were dead, my beloved,' he said. ‘I thought I might have lost you forever.' And Pala put his arm across Maw's shoulders and whispered, ‘I will always be with you. I will go with you to the end of the world.' Everything they had done together, memories of all their loving, all the hunter's care rushed through Maw's mind. Whenever Maw had been afraid, Pala had soothed him. For instance there had been that time when Maw was two and the Coarseones' flying machine had frightened him, how Pala had hugged and comforted him. Flying machine. Perhaps Maw could get one of these to take him up to the high jungle.

Maw knew now that he was not going to find it and no wonder, for it was the tribe's most carefully kept secret. Only the subtle ones knew where it was and only those who they thought should use it were told. He would try to get back to the palace, he decided and get them to take him up to the high jungle in a flying machine. He was so dazed by now that idea did not seem ridiculous. When he got there he would contact the female with the laughing round face and explain what he needed. Once or twice when he had directed thoughts at her, when he had been in the palace, she had flinched suddenly as though she was aware of his mental scrutiny. Once she had stared at him, as though waiting for something more.

But then he crashed down for the last time and this time no matter how much the Animal tried to help him, nor how heavily he hauled upon its leg, he become too weak and could not rise again. As he slumped there, feeling that not only his life, but
everything he considered precious was destroyed and done for, he heard a tiny buzzing sound quite near his ear. He swept his ear with his hand a few times, thinking that a wild bee was flying round his head, or that his weakness was the cause of the sound. But the tone of the buzzing remained unchanged. And now he realised that it was not coming from the air, but from the ground. He put out his hand, and began to feel around. His fingers encountered a patch of soil that was warmer than the rest, as though a little fire burnt just below. He started scraping at the damp soil with his fingers.

The Animal dragged itself up painfully and stared to where Maw was digging. Then with it put out a hoofed foot and began digging too.

The layers of earth fell away slowly. As they dug, the buzz got louder. Then it was there. A little muddy. But through the veil of dust, you could see the red heart throbbing out of its blue stone.

‘The Ama,' breathed Maw, then taking up a piece of bark, because it was disrespectful to touch the Ama with bare skin, and also because it burnt you. Maw wrapped the precious thing and slipped the bundle inside his waist beads.

The Animal crept against his knees, looked into his face and seemed to smile. There was mud on its hooves. Very gently Maw cleaned the hooves of the Animal with his naked fingers.

Devi dreamt of an enormous statue with blazing red eyes and staggering feet.

She woke suddenly with the feeling that someone had called her. She sat up in bed listening but the only sounds were the crows outside and the chatter of the thag women as they washed the passages.

As she dressed she got the feeling again. Not a sound really, but as though someone was calling her inside her mind. And when she was ready and went out later the feeling grew, and there was a sensation of being pulled.

She began to walk, following the direction the strange mind summoning seemed to come from. For two hours she climbed the hill, not even stopping when she saw things sparkling from the soil. And all the time the sensation that someone up there needing her grew stronger.

She came upon Maw and Animal suddenly. They were lying in the shadow of the great stone brow and Devi nearly stepped upon them before she saw them. They were clasping each other, the cloven feet of Animal lying limply across the boy's chest, the boy's arm over Animal's shoulders. They were both very thin.

Devi bent down and touched the boy's shoulder and he opened his eyes and looked at her. His lips were cracked, bleeding and scummed with dried saliva. His breathing was shallow as though he was almost done for.

She poured a little water in her flask cup and held it to the boy's lips but, pointing with a finger at the recumbent Animal, he said in a croaking voice, ‘Give to he first.'

Devi was so startled at the sound of comprehensible words coming from the boy's mouth that she nearly dropped the water. But when she held out the little cup, the Animal dipped in a long tongue, took the water softly and let out a kind of purring like a grateful cat.

Then the boy took the cup from her and clasping his hands around it, drank too.

Then Devi looked down and saw that the plaster was gone from the boy's leg.

The boy, as though reading her thought, raised the leg and bent his knee. It is no longer broken, thought Devi, with amazement. In a week it has healed. And she remembered how the people of the village kept talking about the magic people who
lived in the high jungle. The boy's leg must have been healed by magic. There was no other way.

As they made their way back to the palace Devi looked again and again at the magically healed leg. How had it been done? The thought was swept from her brain by a dreadful stabbing pain in her head, and, as though she was having a hallucination, she began to see an aeroplane. She frowned and shook her head. The picture was so clear it was as though she had been taking some kind of drug. Then abruptly, in place of the aeroplane came the picture of a man whose only covering was glittering minerals sewn into his skin and again came the pain. As she gasped and staggered the wild boy began staring at her with a look of urgent pleading.

‘Up there you have a friend who is dying and you need a plane to get you there?'

She said the words aloud, but the boy looked blank.

Closing her eyes she tried to imagine the boy sitting in a plane which was rising upwards to the mountain peak.

Instantly, as though he had heard her thought he grabbed her hand and gripped it.

Devi frowned. The boy's wish was an impossible one. She had no access to a helicopter. Instead she imagined a car, seated Maw in it, imagined it climbing climbing, climbing, winding through the twisting hill roads that Mr Dar had had cut. Imagined days and days of travelling. She tried imagining a day then a night then a day then another night.

The boy looked miserable but accepting.

Khan felt depressed when Devi arrived at the hill palace, her arm around the skinny body of the wild boy. And even more so because the boy balanced himself on the other side against the shoulders of the revolting Animal. But then Khan raised his
eyes to Heaven and thanked Allah, on whom be peace, that Madam was returning to the city the very next day, and that he would only have to endure the presence of these filthy creatures for a short time. I praise and thank Allah, sighed Khan, that after tomorrow I will once again be living in the company of sane, civilised and cultured people, and he vowed that in future, even if the Raja should insist on it, he would not accompany Madam any more. Never again, vowed Khan, would he risk being sent to live among madmen from the trees, repulsive animals and gun slinging thags. This time tomorrow he would be on the road back to the clean and orderly palace. Tomorrow, for the first time for weeks, his new little wife would stop crying and even smile again.

In the evening, because the wild pair had refused all day to enter the palace, but lay instead under the shade of a garden peepul tree, Devi ordered the thags to provide them with bedding for the night. Instead of wrapping himself, though, the boy had slung the blanket from one of the peepul branches and then climbed into it, much to the derisive amusement of the thagees and the disgust of Khan, while Animal lay below, apparently on guard.

In the morning Khan prepared the car for the journey cautiously, for the boy and the Animal were both loose in the grounds, the boy still dangling, the Animal crouched menacingly below. Even as he filled the radiator, from the corner of his eye he kept watch in case the deadly couple suddenly leapt down and came for him. As he was stowing Madam's bag in the boot, the hanging blanket did a heave which made Khan nearly jump out of his skin.

At last all was ready and Khan announced that they could leave.

It was only then that Devi told him that, after all, she would not be leaving today.