The Limping Man (5 page)

She headed inland, labouring in gullies and on slopes, and came down to the coast again north of the hills, where she rested for a night and a day. She wasn’t sure she wanted to find Dwellers. Hana enjoyed being alone. But she knew she must deliver Danatok’s message.

In the morning she climbed a hill back from the beach to work out the easiest way to go. The coastline was lost in haze. The headlands ended in sheer cliffs. She would have to keep inland and travel in the forest. It would slow her but there was no other way. She went to the edge of the hill to find her way down. High in the air, so high it showed no larger than a pond midge, a hawk turned and hovered.

‘You could show me if you wanted to,’ Hana said. She wondered if it was the same bird that had hunted in the hills and along the coast by Danatok’s shelter. Probably not. Each part of this land had its own hawk. She watched as it glided out over the sea and came back in a circle that placed it above her.

‘You are the same one. You’ve been following me.’ She raised her hand in greeting. The hawk dipped and made a lower sweep. A small breeze ruffled Hana’s hair, the same that stroked the bird’s feathers in the sky.

‘Come down,’ she said. ‘I can’t fly up there.’

She felt a prickling in her head, as though a small sharp needle had stitched a thread.

‘Was that you?’ she whispered. Then she was dizzy and almost fell. The world turned over. She saw land and sea from high in the air and saw herself on the yellow hill, tiny, with an upturned face. Her eyes were green, her mouth open, her black hair tumbling. One pleading hand was raised at the sky. She saw, for a few seconds, what the hawk saw. Then it was over. She picked up her mind and held it straight.

‘Hawk, that was you. You said hello.’

The bird circled lower, taking its time. Soon it swooped around her, with its head cocked sideways and its unblinking eyes fixed on her face. It had a white breast speckled with brown. Its wings were a shimmering green when it banked and were barred white and brown on the underside. Feathers on the tips spread like fingers. The tail, forked and tipped with white, twisted one way then the other as the bird glided in a circle round Hana.

Its beak was made for tearing and killing. Its eyes were hard and bright. They watched Hana as though she were prey.

‘I’m too big,’ she said. ‘Anyway, you want to be friends.’

The hawk settled on a rock but kept its wings spread. Hana took a step towards it. The bird opened its beak and made a hard sound, like a snarl.

‘All right.’ She stopped. ‘But we can’t stand here all day.

And you were the one following me.’

The hawk made no answer. Its eyes were so sharp she felt they could see her heart beating and blood flowing.

‘My name’s Hana.’

No answer.

‘I have to go soon. Will you show me where?’

But words were the wrong way to speak with the hawk. must do it with things, with images. So she asked the question again by picturing the boulder-strewn hillside dropping to the forest, and showed herself labouring down, as a bird would see her. Then she turned her eyes to the mountains in the north, where she must go.

‘There,’ she whispered. ‘That’s where I’m heading. Will you show me the way?’

The bird made no reply, but folded its wings.

‘Well, I can’t stay here all day,’ Hana said. ‘I’m going now.’ She went to the edge of the hill and down a few steps, then looked back. ‘Come if you’re coming.’

She saw herself again as the hawk saw her, looking back, silhouetted against the dark forest. There was no discomfort this time, no pricking in her head.

‘So,’ she whispered, ‘that’s the way we’ll talk.’

The bird sprang into the air and swept over her. It angled down the hillside, a long powerful glide, then climbed and flapped back to her, high in the air.

But all the same, you’ve got to have a name, she thought.

They went towards the forest, the girl striding through the scattered boulders, the bird circling above her and making every now and then its single cry.

She tried to respond. It was not an easy sound, but by the end of the morning she could make it perfectly. Hawk, it said. A lonely cry.

So, Hana thought, that’s what I’ll call you. Hawk is your name. Stay with me, Hawk.

THREE

A man with no name limped from the forest at dawn, carrying a baby in his arms. He passed through the village above the boats drawn up on the beach where a fisherman, setting off early to raise his nets, recognised him but lacked the courage to call the name that had once been his. The man climbed to a house overlooking the bay. He laid the baby down in front of the door, touched it on the forehead, let his hand linger, then limped away. Only a woman coming outside for wood to light her fire saw him pass back through the village. She whispered his childhood name and watched as he limped past the gardens and into the forest. No one else saw him and he never returned.

Pearl found the baby. She carried it inside and called Hari and Xantee, who was visiting while Duro was away on the summer hunt. Each knew, as Pearl had known, who the child was.

They’ve given him to us. Why? Xantee said.

They want him to have a name, Hari said.

And be one of us, not one of them, Pearl said.

Xantee fetched a woman able to feed the baby at her breast. Pearl named it Ben, the Dweller word for gift. She thanked her son Lo and the woman Sal for their gift. She and Hari raised the boy as their own child.

He grew active and contented, but quiet. He could have learned to ‘speak’, but refused. He closed his mind and used his tongue, forcing Pearl and Hari to speak aloud so he might learn.

Why? Xantee said. Lo and Sal ‘speak’. The people with no name can’t talk any other way.

Perhaps that’s why, Pearl said. And why Lo brought him to us.

Ben worked and learned beside the other children of the village. But more and more he turned to the forest. Hari taught him knife skills. At ten years old he hunted alone. At twelve he sailed alone along the shores of the Inland Sea and went inland from his anchorage for weeks on end. By the time he was he knew the forests better than anyone in the village, better even than Duro. Even so, there were dangers too great for him. He spent a whole night up to his chest in sucking mud and would have died if Hari and Duro had not found him. And the next time he went out a fangcat tore off his hand. Ben made it home, with the blood flow stopped by a tied vine.

One-hand, some of the village people began to call him. It did not bother Ben. He learned to make one hand do the work of two.

In the next summer he set off to find his father.

‘We’ve been calling him,’ Hari said. ‘Pearl and I have called. And Xantee and Blossom and Hubert. We don’t know if he hears or if he won’t listen.’

‘Why do you want him?’ Ben said.

‘There’s a man in Belong, on the hill and in the burrows.’ Hari shivered. The scar circling his neck showed whiter than usual.

‘His name is the Limping Man,’ Pearl said. She shivered too. ‘Tealeaf says a messenger came from Danatok. The Limping Man is raising an army. He’s going to march north and kill all the humans he can find, and all the Dwellers. He knows about us here.’

‘Why do you need my father?’ Ben said.

‘Because Tealeaf says he’s a limping man too. We know you were a baby when he brought you . . .’

‘I can find him,’ Ben said. ‘He told me.’

‘How . . .’

Ben would not say. ‘What do you want me to tell him?’

‘Say Tealeaf sent a message and he must go to Belong. Tell him what we’ve told you – the Limping Man will kill us all. And he’ll kill the people with no name. But Ben, take someone with you. Take Duro or how will you find your way?’

‘I know the way,’ Ben said.

He set off next morning, alone in Hari’s dinghy, and sailed south for five days, then east along an arm of the sea until he found the place where a brown river emptied its flow.

He knew the way from a memory containing only pictures: an arm of the sea, a brown river, a mountain with a stone face that frowned, a red valley widening to a lake, and more beyond those, a trail of images leading to his father, whose hand had imprinted them as he laid the child at Pearl and Hari’s door. If you need me this is the path, his hand had said. Also: learn their ways, forget ours until you need them. The child had little to forget, but the instruction beat in him like his own blood; and now, as he travelled, river, mountain, valley, lake revealed themselves. A wide jungle, thickening each day, lay on the other side of the lake. He made his way towards the rising sun, climbed a stone mountain with black uneven fangs and found a pass looping like a snake. Two days to pass through. The jungle spread out again. Distantly, sunlight gleamed on water that had no end. There were no more pictures. Ben made a shelter and settled down to wait. Two days, four days, six. No one came. Now is the time to remember, Ben said. Softly, not using his voice, he whispered, My father. He slept in his shelter, leaving a fire of hardwood burning in the night. When he woke a man sat by the embers.

Ben stretched in the morning sun. He sat down opposite the man. Something touched his mind like a fluttering moth and he brushed it away.

‘I speak with my voice,’ he said.

The man jerked as though the sound stabbed him deep in his head.

‘Does it hurt you?’ Ben said.

The man opened his mouth. Ben saw his tongue move and heard a sound like branches rubbing in the wind. ‘Like breaking bones,’ the man said.

‘I’m sorry, but you told me to learn their ways.’

‘Humans “speak”,’ croaked the man.

‘Some do, some don’t. I’ll “speak” when I need to.’ He felt no liking for this man. ‘Where’s my mother?’

‘She couldn’t learn new ways. She told me to take you – home, she called it. Then she died.’

‘Say her name. Say Sal.’

‘I can’t say names. No, don’t tell me yours.’

‘So,’ Ben said, ‘you did what she said. You took me home.’ Then deliberately he added: ‘To Pearl and Hari.’

The man made a sound that might have been a sob.

‘Why?’ Ben said. He felt another moth-like fluttering in his head and shook it out. ‘No, talk like me.’

‘I thought you might die too.’

‘So you told me to be like them.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve done it.’

The man nodded. He sat still for a long while. At last he said, ‘Your arm?’

‘Fangcat.’

‘You could have pushed him away with your mind.’

‘I did in the end.’

‘So you know how?’

‘If I need to.’

‘And you can “speak”?’

‘I don’t need that.’

All the time they had talked Ben had been aware of movements in the trees. ‘Do your friends hear what we say?’

The man shook his head. ‘They’re not my friends, they’re my people.’

‘Tell them to go away.’

The movements stopped.

‘Now I’ll tell you my name,’ Ben said. ‘It’s Ben. Use it.’

The man struggled with his tongue. At last he croaked: ‘Ben.’

‘And you are Lo. Say that too.’

‘Lo,’ he croaked.

‘I’ve heard your tale, and my mother’s, many times,’ Ben said.

‘Yes. The gool,’ Lo said. He spoke even that name with pain.

‘Now there’s a man who’s just as bad.’ He told Lo about the Limping Man and the army he was raising and his mission to kill all speakers, human, Dweller and people with no name. ‘Tealeaf says you must come.’

‘Because I’m a limping man too?’

‘So she says.’

Lo seemed to shrink by the dying embers. Ben watched him with pity. He felt an unspoken bond – this man was his father – but no love. It was too soon, and perhaps there would never be, for Lo was strange, with his matted hair and leathery skin and jungle smell and his twisted leg. He wore no clothes. He carried no weapon. He scarcely seemed human any more.

‘Will you come?’

‘The Dweller asks?’

‘Tealeaf asks.’

‘And my mother and father?’

‘Yes. Pearl and Hari.’

‘And my sister?’

‘Xantee too.’

Lo sat hunched. He seemed to think, moment after moment.

‘I ask too,’ Ben said.

Tears rolled from Lo’s eyes into his beard. ‘You? My son?’

‘Yes, Lo. Come with me.’

Lo nodded. He wiped his eyes and stood up. ‘Wait,’ he said and vanished into the trees.

Ben ate strips of meat and drank water. He pissed on the fire to kill the embers. Then he practised with his knife, throwing it at a tree trunk. He had learned to be just as quick and deadly with his left hand as his lost right. His toes were useful too. He could pick up the knife with them and flick it into his hand.

Lo came back. Still he carried nothing. They travelled through the looping pass and down the mountain into the jungle. Ben wrapped himself in his blanket to sleep at night. He did not know where Lo slept or how, or what he ate. He had trouble keeping up with his father, who leapt and climbed and scuttled, then waited patiently. They talked very little. Ben saw how painful using his tongue was for Lo. In the end he would take pity on him and ‘speak’. In the end, he thought, he would love him too. Already Lo’s oneness with everything around him filled Ben with envy. He wanted to be like that. But he wanted to be human too.

They came to the brown river. Ben pulled the dinghy from
its place among the ferns. He was careless and did not see the snake curled up in the bow. The creature drew back its head to strike, and Ben had time only to think: I’m dead. There was no antidote for a viper bite. Time paused for a heartbeat as boy and snake faced each other; then moved again as the creature made no strike, but drew back its head, writhed out of the boat and rustled away in the ferns.

Ben turned.

You have much to learn, my son, Lo said.

Thank you, my father, Ben said. What did you tell the snake?

Lo smiled. It was the first time Ben had seen his face change in that way.

No magic, he said. I just told it to go away.

After that they conversed by ‘speaking’; and Ben found himself acquiring other abilities almost as if he took them in by breathing. He found that he could remember the moment on the porch of Pearl and Hari’s house when Lo had placed his hand on his forehead, although he had been no more than a month old. He remembered a voice that carried everything Lo knew and planted it like a seed and covered it over. All his life he had known it was there and not wanted it. He wanted it now. As he sailed the dinghy down the river, with Lo silent in the bow, he let the seed grow. Every now and then he said, My father? and Lo replied, It is so. By the time they reached the arm of the Inland Sea Ben knew everything Lo could teach him; and a part of what the people with no name knew. I’m two things now, he thought,
but less than my father.