Travellers #1 (14 page)

Through a world of snow I dug a trench to the big cave. Jak, Jess, and Trick came out, slithering, barking at the white stuff. The donkeys trod down a track to the creek. The sheep drank more than usual because of the dried grass.

I fed the animals in the open, when possible, and built feeding racks in the cave to stop waste through trampling and fouling. Still I spent much time forking out muck-coated hay to a heap outside and carrying in fresh stuff. I learned how hard a Farmer must work to keep animals inside.

There were long days of snow and rain, others when the sun shone and Jak led the animals. They ran and looked for fresh feed but liked returning to the warm cave, redolent of dried grass, dung, their sweet breath. The dogs slept beside the donkeys. When the wind off the mountains struck like a dagger, I wore a cloak over my tunic, a woollen cap, and slept in the big cave, too.

All winter I kept the fire going in Hagar’s cave, spun, dyed, and wove. A stack grew of blankets, rugs, lengths of material.

I wondered how the old painters made their bright colours. I collected deposits from the hot springs, soils and clays, ground them in one of the rock basins, and mixed them with fat and fish oil. With wool and goat hair brushes I painted a Travellers’ encampment: tents, cooking fires, children playing; the Animals’ Dance, the Stag Man, the Dog Man; and somebody dying in the Narrower Ford. I painted massacre in a steep-walled gully; a girl and her baby.

Using long sticks I daubed a woman’s life across the roof. A flower-girdled child she led sheep. A young woman she leapt in the Animals’ Dance, poisoned her husband, left her father behind by a river he could no longer cross. Her face sharpened, haggard-eyed; her nose curved until her head became a hawk’s. A polished spindle descended from bent hands; yarn looped her shoulders. She told stories, hobbled, and was left behind by her cruel son in an empty valley. She gathered lichens, bark and leaves, dyed wool and yarn, and wove on wooden looms. All Hagar taught and told me, I painted.

I painted a crone with many hawk heads, many breasts, and many hands, who held out food and love and learning to all the world. I surrounded her with sheep, goats, donkeys, with Bar and Mak, Jokey, Whitey; Nip, Jak, Jess, Trick, and Het. I painted the bows and arrows, the knives and axes, the shears, the scythe; wool in fleeces, yarn in skeins and balls, and woven into cloth. And last I painted the beaked crone dead, eyes great as a hawk chick’s beneath a wreath of dried seeds and dark leaves, the dry husk of a girl’s flower-bedecked corpse beside her.

Travellers leave no memorials, Hagar once said, yet I recorded the life of an old woman and a boy who limped beside her. So when Nip died beside the fire one wolfish night I painted how I stole her from the wild litter, how she became part of the Journey which is made of many Journeys.

I knew now the pictures were never going to finish. I painted trees around the walls of the cave, trees that would shelter and warm and feed the animals and us. Softening the sun’s rage, bringing rain. I painted the dead city of Orklun, alive again beneath a canopy of trees, its great river cleansed of poison, running one way and then the other, emptying and filling.

Frost broke down the soil of my garden. Remembering
something Dinny said, I dug into it the heap of fouled hay that steamed and was already turning to earth thick with worms, smelling good enough to eat.

The soil was warm to my fingers as I planted the seeds. They came through as the first green blush showed across the creek. We had an early spring below the Hawk Cliffs. The tilted uplands were lifeless still.

The days grew longer. The animals ran to wrench green shoots. Sleek, shining-eyed, they fattened. Lambs, kids, and foals leapt. Het’s pups scrambled and fought for her dugs. Birds sang. Leaves flourished. The blue lake jigged, reflected a thousand suns. All night I dreamed of Tara. All day I thought of Tara.

A Traveller’s life is hard, but a Farmer is busy all day. I examined my plants for growth each morning, chopped and hoed a multitude of weeds, and moulded soil around the growing potatoes as Dinny had shown me. I outsmarted the goats who nickered and plotted getting through the fence. When the sun dropped behind the rim of hills across the lake, I bedded down the animals and found I had spent all of another day gardening.

I loved being a Farmer and Gardener, I said to Hagar, told her how the flock had grown, how the garden and grass were going to feed us through next winter and the next. In dreams I saw her with the Stag Man, and the Dog Man. I asked them questions and waited days before they returned in dreams with answers. It was exciting, a satisfying life, I told Hagar, but sometimes I forgot to keep working, and loneliness rocked me with its agony.

I dreamed of Tara. One night in my sleep I heard her calling, “Ish! Ish!”, saw her holding out her arms. Then the Stag Man appeared and bellowed. It was the sign I had been waiting for. I heaped more soil over the potatoes, spread the garden with straw, strengthened its fence, and hung dried fish and meat in the cave.

Last snow rimmed the Hawk Cliffs white as Jak led in Bar’s old place, and I brought up the rear. Het’s pups tumbled alongside till they tired, and I slung them in a basket.

I was going to get Tara, talked to her as if she was already there. She was waiting for me to bring her back to the Hawk Cliffs. I wanted to feel her body against mine, to tell her of Hagar, to show her the Painted Cave, the cliffs, the lake. Dinny would come, too, and Sim and Petra. They could have a pup each. We were going to be a family.

We were going to dig a bigger garden, plant an orchard, grow trees around our grasslands. One day we might even fulfil the old dream of the Travellers, go north to Orklun, and plant trees.

As we neared the Swapping Ground I imagined how Tara would look, the sound of her voice, felt her hand in mine, wondered what to say, tried words aloud. The donkeys turned their ears, the dogs looked up and grinned, and a hawk cried down the sky, “Kek! Kek! Kek!”

I looked at the animals, and they looked back at me. Their fathers and mothers looked through their eyes. I remembered old Bar and Mak, Speckly, Jak, Jess, Nip. Their lives went backwards and forwards in time, I thought. Even though we settled and became Farmers and Gardeners we would go on down the years. Because we were the Travellers.

“Come on,” I said to the animals. “We’ll find Tara.”

I smelled the sulphurous air of the mud pools and began to trot. The animals were excited, too. By the track a metal-headed arrow lay broken in white dust. I ran, one arm over a donkey’s neck to keep up. The blood drummed in my head: Tara, Tara.

Jak stopped, ears pricked, listened. The sheep pressed on him. He ran forward, stopped, head cocked, looking up at me, listening. Hearing voices, I supposed: Tara’s, Sim’s and Petra’s. Wondering why I didn’t hear them, too.

We were at the Swapping Ground. My face twisted as if it was going to cry, and I heard an old voice telling a story. A spindle rose and fell, twirling. I smelled wool grease, the sharpness of a herb she picked. Hagar who had been my companion, who taught me so I might continue the Journey. Hagar and I. Because we were the Travellers.

Charlie
the
Cheeky
Kea
1976

Rewi
the
Red
Deer
1976

The
Lake
1987

The
Mangrove
Summer
1989

Uncle
Trev
1991

Uncle
Trev
and
the
Great
South
Island
Plan
1991

Uncle
Trev
and
the
Treaty
of Waitangi
1992

The
Conjuror
1992

Harry
Wakatipu
1993

Dead
Man’s
Head
1994

The
Waterfall
1995

The
Battle
of
Pook
Island
1996

Because
We
Were
the
Travellers
1997

Uncle
Trev’s
Teeth
1997

Taur
1998

The
Shaman
and
the
Droll
1999

The Lies
of
Harry
Wakatipu
2000

Kalik
2001

Aunt Effie
2002