The Kin (8 page)

Meanwhile Tinu and Mana built a trap of their own. All three were baited with seed paste mixed with the crushed leaves of a garri bush, which ground rats were especially fond of. When they'd finished, they marked the traps with the Moonhawk mark and set off for the foraging grounds.

The foragers weren't where they'd been yesterday, but he found them easily enough by the noise they were making, down in the thicker scrub. They were hunting for a kind of caterpillar that came out of the ground on the morning after a rain and climbed a bush and hung itself from a thread, to begin the process of turning itself into a moth. Only on the first morning was it good to eat, Sula told Suth. By evening the case it spun around itself had begun to harden, and the flesh inside was too bitter to swallow.

While the foragers searched they kept up a constant yodelling, passing it to and fro along the line. The men didn't join in. They just stood guard, striding around at the edge of the group, letting out hoarse shouts and thwacking at the bushes with their digging sticks. Every now and then one of the foragers would bring one of them a caterpillar, pinch off its head and pop the body into the guard's mouth.

Ko was delighted by the shouting and thwacking and ran around yelling at the top of his voice until one of the women caught him and brought him back to Suth.

“You keep him close,” she said scoldingly. “You want a leopard to take him?”

“I thank,” said Suth meekly. He realized that however bravely he had spoken to Mosu, he had a lot to learn about being a man and caring for his family in this new place.

The caterpillars were delicious and plentiful, and they ate all they could, pinching the heads off, because that was where the bitterness came from. When the taste began to change they gave up and moved into the open, but before they had formed their foraging line, a man came running from the distance. While he was still some way off he stopped and made signs, and without a word spoken all the men in the party ran off to join him. Suth watched them lope silently out of sight in single file.

“What happens?” he asked Sula.

“Men hunt deer,” she said. “We make no noise.”

He understood at once. The men of the Kin also hunted deer when they got the chance, but they didn't often kill one, except at a Place called Mambaga, where at the right season deer passed through in great numbers, and several Kins joined to hunt them as they crowded together to cross a particular dry gully. Usually it was a matter of the best hunters lying in wait, and the others trying to drive the deer to that point. But deer were quick and tricky. Mostly they ran somewhere else, and even when they didn't the hunter had only an instant to leap up and get his blow in.

Now the foragers moved into shade and sat quietly until the hunters came back dejectedly. The hunt, it seemed, hadn't really begun. The deer had run off before the ambush was properly set. So the men settled down to their game, while the foragers went back to work. Once again Suth was struck by how much there was to gather, and what a rich, easy living these people had here. Perhaps it was because Monkey had made this Place for them, he thought. Monkey was clever. Everyone knew that.

On their way back to the camp that evening they stopped at the warren to pick up their catch. But, although several traps had been sprung, only the one that Tinu and Mana had made had caught a rat.

The women, of course, seized the chance to jeer at the men. These mighty hunters couldn't catch deer. They couldn't even catch ground rats. A couple of girls could catch a ground rat, but the men couldn't.

The men didn't like it. They were still sore about missing the deer. Dith looked at the trap with the Moonhawk mark beside it, and then his eye was caught by Suth's and Ko's, not far off, and marked the same.

He turned angrily on Suth.

“No girl made this trap,” he said. “The boy made it. See, he made three. You! Boy! You set three traps. This is bad. Each must set one trap only.”

He glared at Suth with his shoulders hunched and his hair bushed, but Suth was angry too. He couldn't stand up to a grown man, but he refused to go into the full submission ritual of kneeling and pattering his hands on the ground. He just bowed his head and fluttered his fingers for a moment in the air.

“I built this one,” he said. “Ko built that. See, it is a child's, a small one's. Mana. Speak true. Who made this trap?” There was no point in asking Tinu herself. They wouldn't have understood what she was trying to say. And in any case she would have been utterly tongue-tied.

“Tinu made this trap,” said Mana sturdily. “She knew the way. I watched.”

The women jeered again, and picked Tinu up and held her high in triumph. She hated it and tried to cower into herself until they put her down. When the fuss had died away, Suth took her aside and praised her quietly, but she hid her face even from him.

That evening as they sat around the fire, Suth asked Noli about her talk with Mosu. He was hoping she might have learned something useful about these people and their ways.

She was feeding Otan and didn't answer right away, but then she looked up with her face smeared with the mixture of seed paste and berry juice she had been chewing for him. She shook her head.

“Do not question me, Suth,” she said. “I, Noli, ask this. It is secret.”

Suth was hurt. He knew that people to whom the First Ones came sometimes talked among themselves about how it was, and not to anyone else. Suth remembered what his father had said at Ragala Flat, when Bal and the old man from Weaver had gone off into the darkness to talk dream stuff together. But he was still hurt.

He turned his head away and stared at the fire. He needed Noli. Didn't she understand? He was a boy, but he must pretend to be a man and stand up to the men as he had stood up to Dith at the warren. How else could he care for his family?
Their
family. If he was the father, she was the mother. Would she spend all her time talking secrets with the old woman? This was not right.

He felt her fingers touch his arm, and her hand move down to rest on the back of his hand and hold it. Still he would not look at her.

“I tell you this, Suth,” she said in a low voice. “These people keep us here. They are sick. Their blood is bad. Soon we are men and women. Then they choose us for mates. They have our good blood. They are sick no more. All this Mosu tells them. But they think this. We are all together, all six, perhaps we go secretly away. Can they watch all the time? That is difficult. Can they keep us in the cave? Then we fall sick, we die. So Mosu says,
Let Noli stay with me. Suth does not go without Noli
.”

Now Suth stared at her, appalled. Without thought he began to rise to his feet, as if he meant to gather the Moonhawks and lead them away, then and there, away from these people, out of this trap. Noli tightened her grip on his hand and pulled him down.

“They watch,” she muttered. “Be clever, Suth. Be secret.”

Oldtale

DA AND DATTA

The sons of An and Ammu strove among themselves to see who was best. They wrestled, and raced, and threw rocks at a mark, and such things
.

And one was strongest, and one was swiftest, and one was keenest of sight, each according to the nature of the First One who had reared him. But Da was none of these things
.

“I am still the best of you,” said Da
.

The others mocked him and said, “How are you best? First Ones cared for us. They made us stronger and swifter and keener of sight than you.”

Da said, “I was cared for by people, and they made me best. People are above creatures.”

They said, “How so?”

To this Da had no answer, and they mocked him again, until he ran weeping into the desert
.

There he found Datta, and told her what had been done and said, and she wept also
.

They slept, and Monkey came to Datta in a dream
.

In the morning she said to Da, “Go to your brothers and say thus and thus.”

Da went to his brothers and said, “Now I tell you how I am the best of you. I eat of the flesh of all creatures, as I choose, and their eggs also. But for each of you there is one creature whose flesh you do not eat, nor its eggs
.

“Weaver cared for So. Does So eat the eggs of weavers? Ant Mother cared for Buth. Does Buth dig the nests of ants for their grubs? Fat Pig cared for Gor. Does Gor track the sow to her lair and eat of the tender piglets? And so with the rest of you. I do all of these things
.

“But people cared for me. Who eats of the flesh of people? None of you does this. It is a Thing Not Done. So people are best. I, Da, say this
.

“Lowest are rocks and earth and water. Next above them are plants. Next above plants are creatures. Next above creatures are people. They are highest.”

They had no answer to this, but they mocked him all the same and threw dirt at him and drove him away, and he wept
.

Monkey was angry when he saw what was done to Da. He came to Datta in a dream, and showed her where he had hidden the fire log that he had made
.

Da and Datta went to that place and found the fire log. They made fire and roasted the flesh of lizards and ate it, and it was very good
.

They roasted more and took it to their brothers and sisters and gave it to them. Then the others lusted for roast flesh and said, “Give us the fire log, so that we too can make fire and roast what we catch.”

Da and Datta said, “First you must come to the Rock of Meeting at Odutu below the Mountain and swear that we are best, because we were cared for by people. And you must swear that henceforth our ways are your ways, because they are the ways of people.”

Such was their lust for roast flesh that the others agreed. They came to Odutu below the Mountain and swore upon the Rock of Meeting as Da and Datta had told them. Then Da and Datta gave them fire, and they made fire logs, one for each Kin
.

But when An and Ammu learned what had been said and done, they wept
.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A moon went by, and another, with a thunderstorm every few days. The storm season ended and more moons went by.

Otan could walk. The valley was no longer strange to him. It was as if he had always lived here, being taken down to the pool morning and evening to drink, and at night sleeping in the stinking cave.

It was the same with Mana and Ko. They quickly learned the ways of these people, and made friends with their children and joined in their games. Ko was a favourite with the women, who spoiled him and told him what a fine boy he was. No one paid much attention to Mana.

They paid even less to Tinu. They seemed to think that because she couldn't talk clearly she wasn't a real person. She didn't seem to mind. She spent some of her time helping Noli with Otan, but most of it tagging along with Suth, watching what he did and helping him when she could. She set a trap at the warren almost every time they passed it, and usually caught something. She built better traps even than Baga, with delicately balanced rocks that dropped at a touch.

The men, of course, wouldn't admit this. They said it was because she was Moonhawk, who preyed upon ground rats. That was why Tinu was lucky.

(These people told many of the same Oldtales as the Kin, but some were different. In their Oldtales they called Monkey by his real name. It wasn't Monkey, they said, who'd caused all the trouble. It was Crocodile and Fat Pig, who were jealous of his cleverness because they were stupid. They'd conspired against him.)

Noli seemed to change much more than Tinu. She remembered the Good Places, of course, and the long journeys between them, but she didn't mind their loss. After the first few days Mosu allowed her to come foraging sometimes with the rest of them, but once they were back at the cave Noli would spend much of the time sitting with Mosu, listening or talking, or else in what seemed to be a kind of shared half trance, as if they were dreaming the same dream.

“What do you do with that old woman so long?” Suth asked her.

“I learn,” she said. “She is very old. She knows much.”

Suth didn't like this. He missed Noli. He needed her. She was Moonhawk, not Monkey. She belonged with him, raising their small ones in the true Moonhawk ways. Mosu had power. She must have, to be leader of these people. Ant Mother sometimes had women for leaders, and so did Snake, in the Oldtales, but never since anyone could remember, and never old and blind, like Mosu. Was she using her power to trap Noli, to make her become not Moonhawk but Monkey?

“She sees nothing,” he said crossly. “Her eyes are dead.”

“It is because she is old,” said Noli. “It is not the blood sickness. When she was young she saw well. She says long ago tens and tens and tens of people lived in this Place. Some lived here, at this cave. Some lived over there. That is where Mosu was born.”

She pointed out across the forest to the wide, promising slopes on the far side of the valley. Nobody foraged or hunted there. It was too far to go and return in a day, when there was enough within reach to give them all a good living here. And how would they be safe outside the cave with the big night prowlers around?

The mere sight of those empty spaces made Suth restless. Like the others he had grown used to the valley, but only in certain ways. Almost every day he felt the earth tremble, but now he no longer paused in what he was doing. If it happened at night, it didn't wake him. And he barely noticed the wafts of foul-egg odour that drifted to and fro on the breeze.

On the other hand, the cave still stank in his nostrils. Every evening he entered it with reluctance, wishing there were other places to lair, and in his dreams he walked and walked and walked, and would wake with his legs aching from the imaginary journey. All the life he had known had been moving from one Good Place to the next, following the rains as they moved across the parched land. He could not get used to staying in this one place, going out in the same direction every day, never more than half a morning's journey, to forage the next patch of ground and smell the same smells and see the same horizons as yesterday.