The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) (15 page)

Grimstone had broken Mark’s wrist, twisting his arm in order to tear the harmonica from him. The broken wrist had made it all the more awkward for him when, with Mo standing guard, he had climbed out of the bedroom window before dawn and sneaked out to the dustbin to reclaim the harmonica. He had taken great care to keep it hidden from Arseless ever since, coming to see it as his most precious possession, taking care to practice playing it only when he was far away from the house.

That memory—the sweetness of it—kept him going for another mile. But his tired legs needed new things to be angry about, new hungers . . .

Hunger
—that felt like the right word for it. But he wasn’t really thinking about food. He was beyond any hunger for food.

Tick-tock . . . tick-tock. The clock in his head beat time with his legs.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Suddenly he pitched headfirst into snow, deep snow, as if he were falling into a cloud of bitter, threatening cold within a paranoid dream. Still he dragged himself up, sitting first, resting on his arms, then pushing himself onto his haunches before climbing back onto his legs.

The thing is, it’s up to me. I’m the leader! Got to do it . . . no slacking. Just got to keep moving!

He shook his head, within the cowl of webs. Blinked his eyes.

That bloody never-ending snow!

There was too much of it. He hated the bastard, the way it just kept shitting down on him out of the sky. He hated the way it stuck to him, sucking the heat from his head and shoulders even through the spiderweb mantle. He felt it strike back at him in a series of heavy, solid blows. His eyes swiveled upward to glimpse the green patches from which the big clumps of snow were falling.

Green!

He looked up again. Saw pine needles.

I made it . . . I made it to the trees!

He tried to laugh but ended up tottering for support against a branch. His contact shook the tree, shaking more snow down on his head.

Don’t stop, stupid! Get a move on . . .

Tick-tock . . .

A mistake, that. Should never have stopped.
His legs were a lot more wobbly now. Yet still he discovered the rage to keep on trudging, the air wheezing out of his open mouth like exhausted bellows, his breath freezing to a mask of ice in the cobwebs over his cheeks and chin.

Blinking again . . . his eyes trying to make sense of what he was looking at. . . . It seemed that he had wandered into the sea.

No, not the sea . . .

What it is, stupid, is just more snow! A whole flat field of it!

He peered again.

No—not snow. More like the sea and the snow have become one . . .

As in the slow motion of a never-ending dream, he trudged on, his feet numb with cold so he couldn’t feel them hit the ground beneath him. It really was a disorientating feeling. He was gliding over a still sea in which dark shapes were floating, yet perfectly motionless.

Boats. Wooden boats . . .

A fleet of wooden boats was floating on this sea of ice in this world of perfect stillness. They wheeled and spiraled about him.

And then his heart thudded with alarm as a strange face appeared above him, a ludicrously impossible face. The face was on top of a huge shaggy body and it was peering down at him.

A Village, Ice-Bound

Alan, who had insisted on taking last place in the trek down the mountain, could see tall figures dressed in thick-furred animal hides sewn with leather threads. He tried to talk but no sound emerged from his frozen lips and tongue. “People who could help us,” he insisted mentally, his legs still propelling him forward in stumbles and staggers.

Now he was among them he saw that they were bigger and more fearsome-looking than anyone he had laid eyes on before. Their heavyset faces were moving in and out of his spiraling vision. A man abandoned his repair of fishing nets to walk alongside him, looking him up and down as if he were some exotic animal. The man’s face was tawny, his dark brown eyes thickly padded against the cold. His skin looked strangely leathery.

More and more people were arriving to look at him. They were coming out of boats built with stout cedar planks, the decks and timbers peeping out from under their burdens of snow.

Alan followed on after the others, leaning on the shaft of the Spear of Lug, unable to feel his legs moving under him. Then another stranger was walking backward in front of him, a man so tall he would have dwarfed Padraig, but far burlier, built like a heavyweight wrestler. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, indigo in color, like a pilgrim’s hat with a downturned brim. Underneath the hat his face was a gingery brown in color, and a fawn moustache filled his upper lip and curled down at the sides of his mouth. Reddish whiskers covered his cheeks, from his chin to the brim of his hat, and there were dark circles around his chestnut-brown eyes and over his broad flat nose. His neck was as thick as a grown man’s thigh, widening to massive arms and shoulders, while his chest was as stout as . . . as a bear’s, Alan now thought with growing alarm. It was this bear-like man who finally stopped Alan walking. He yanked the spear out of his hand and threw it to one side, where it became the center of attention for the excited children. Grasping Alan solidly by his mantle-capped shoulders, the burly man brought the automatic walking to a halt, then stared into Alan’s web-shrouded face. Sharp fingernails poked through the icy mask, tearing it away from his mouth and nostrils.

Alan’s breath caught in his throat.

Except for his nose and lips, the man’s face was covered with fur. Even the enormous hand, tearing the cobwebs from Alan’s face, was covered with that same gingery-brown fur, other than the leathery pads of the fingers. His broad dark lips were moving, calling out in some guttural language. Alan, with his heart pounding, caught a single word: “Hul-o-ima!”

His voice was deep as a bellow.

“Hul-o-ima! Hul-o-ima!”

The cry was taken up by the others milling around them, the children too. Alan gazed in astonishment at the bear-like resemblance of their faces, with many shades of brown, gray and creamy yellow, and burly bodies dressed in the same leather-sewn furs. Soon, the air was filled with strange hisses and growls, the chomping of teeth, and a high-pitched whining from the little ones. The whole village milled around the four exhausted friends, the villagers’ breath clouding the air and their fur-booted feet shifting and stamping on the ice.

When Alan poked his hand out through the mantle of cobwebs, its hairless appearance stunned them into silence. He tore away the remainder of the cobwebby mantle and tried to speak to them, but still his lips and tongue were too frozen to let the words come.

Kate seemed to be equally dumbstruck. She had also torn away the cowl and was holding onto Alan’s arm, unable to speak but clearly astonished by everything she was seeing in the ice-bound village.

Kate gave up her attempt to communicate. She was bewildered and utterly exhausted. But there was no time to wonder what any of this might mean. A bear-man picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, carrying her as if she were a sack of potatoes. The others were all being carried or assisted in one way or another, until they arrived at a central area, where the boats were clustered around a massive ship, a great galleon with timbers of black and fissured oak soaring above the smaller boats.

Another face was blocking out her vision. This man had gray fur, the color of slate, and narrow weasel-like features, with eyes that were black. He poked at her face with black-clawed fingers before discarding her to examine the others. In that fleeting contact, Kate shrank from the cruelty she sensed in those eyes, which were now scrutinizing Alan.

The thin man gesticulated at Alan’s brow and he growled and snarled at the other villagers.

Then, abruptly, another of the villagers confronted the thin man. This new man was the oldest of all, almost as tall as the gingery-haired giant, but leaner and bent, with silvery hair on a wrinkled and weathered face. His lips, like his broad flat nose, were a leathery black, in striking contrast to the silvery fur over the rest of his face, and his left eye was a whited-over, sightless orb. Kate noticed that he also hobbled on his left leg as he
put himself between Alan and the thin man, before stooping to examine Alan’s brow with his good eye.

At a signal from the old man, the villagers herded the four friends up a gangway, through a leather-hung door and into the gloom of one of the boats. Kate could smell fish and something else—a heavy animal odor. It was much warmer here out of the biting wind, although there was no sign of a fire. She winced with stiffness as they deposited her onto some hide-covered planks. Her senses swam in the heady mixture of smells and she squeezed her eyes shut for a short while to clear her mind. When she opened them again all of the bear people had departed except for the limping old man.

“Al-ah mika chak-ko?” He spoke in a growl, but low-pitched, as if in a passion. Kate stared up into his silvery-gray eye, wishing she knew what the words meant.

There were other words spoken with that same passion, words she could not understand, though she heard that key expression again, “Hul-o-ima!” That same word went round and round in her head as she fell into an exhausted sleep under a blanket sewn from seal skins—that and the old man’s silvery eye peering down at her, his low, growling voice with its unanswerable questions, his limping movements in the murky interior.

When Alan woke it was daybreak, judging from the wintry light diffusing into the room through chinks
and gaps. He discovered that he had slept curled up in the hide of a walrus. A gangling youth was moving around in the murky light between the sleeping shapes of his friends. The youth had the same gingery-brown face as the giant from yesterday, though he was smaller, relatively speaking—he was still half a foot taller than Alan—and with a lighter halo around his mouth. Alan looked all around for the spear, but there was no sign of it. The gangly youth handed him a bowl of soup in which there were chunks of fish mixed with roots and red berries. Alan’s stomach was growling so loudly with hunger he could hardly contain his impatience, lifting the bowl to his mouth and taking a sip. The shock of it almost made him vomit. The soup was icy cold and the fish, vegetable and berries were raw. He dropped the bowl with a clatter.

The youth stared at him, then rushed back out through the leather door, letting in a blast of freezing air.

Alan swilled his saliva around in his mouth to get rid of the taste of raw fish, then pulled the walrus hide around his shivering body and began calling out to the others to see who else was awake.

Mark was the first to call back. Alan told him about the uncooked food.

“Fishier and fishier!” Mark cackled.

Alan swallowed, realizing that Mark’s voice had recovered from the cold. He tested his own. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Cool eating if you’re a—growl, growl—bear?”

“Oh, man!”

“Man is hardly the word!”

“Those faces! Did you see the claws on their fingers?”

There was a murmuring from the two girls. Kate’s voice sounded plaintive. “Oh, will you two stop trying to frighten us!”

Mark chuckled. “We’d better hope they’re of the teddy variety—and not the grizzly.”

“Put a sock in it, Mark.”

Mark opened his eyes wide. “Come along now—no cause for panic, folks. They’re just fattening us up for dinner!”

Alan threw a sneaker at Mark. “Oh, don’t listen to him! Are they running around on four paws? Are they roaring and snarling, showing their fangs?”

“Alan’s right.” Kate shuffled over to sit next to Mo “They’re fisher people. We saw the nets and boats.”

“Grrrooowwwlll!” Mark fell back on his bunk, collapsing into laughter.

“Okay, Mark,” said Alan. “You can joke as much as you like. But think about it. The old guy put us up on his boat. He gave us these rugs to keep us warm. They’re civilized, no matter how different they look.”

Kate said, “Maybe they just don’t cook their fish.”

Mark chortled. “What bears do?”

“Hey, maybe you’re right, Kate.” Alan laughed aloud with relief. “That’s got to be the explanation. They eat it raw.”

“Luh-luh-like suh-sushi!”

Kate nodded. “That’s right. And think about it. It isn’t always the best thing to cook food. We know that cooking vegetables kills off the vitamins.”

Alan tried to stay cheerful. “Well I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. What do you say we go out there and tell them we cook our food?”

“That’s an excellent idea,” muttered Kate. “We need to find some way of communicating with them.”

“I think I know a way of capturing their attention.” Mark grinned, twirling the harmonica he had drawn from his pocket.

Alan picked up the discarded soup bowl, which was still about a third full, and he stared at it while Mark played around with a bluesy tune. Within a minute, the lame old man was standing in the open doorway, staring at Mark, with the equally curious gangling youth hanging back behind him. Alan held out the bowl, doing his best to convey in sign language the lighting of a fire under it. The old man watched him bemusedly for several seconds. Then he growled an instruction to the youth, who disappeared into the cold. Meanwhile the old man took Alan gently but firmly by the arm and brought him closer to the bright daylight streaming in through the open door.

Alan called back to the others, “It’s okay. He’s just fascinated with my birthmark.”

“What’s the big fascination?”

It was Kate who answered. “Granny Dew did something to it—to you, Alan. You have a ruby triangle in its place.”

“You’re kidding me?”

Mark cut in. “She isn’t kidding. You have a crystal in your head where the birthmark used to be.”

Alan lifted a finger to touch his brow, jerking it away as he felt some kind of electric shock. It left him feeling sick to his stomach.

“We were all given something by Granny Dew.” Kate held up the gold-speckled green crystal she had brought down from the mountain.

“All except muh-muh-me,” Mo grumbled.

When the old man let him go, Alan hurried back to his bunk and sat there in silence for several moments. Then he reached up, more gingerly this time, to touch his brow—and jerked his hand away with that same sensation of shock.

“Shee—it!”

Kate reflected, “Granny Dew—do you remember how she reacted when we switched on the screens! She did something to them. She changed them.”

Mark widened his eyes. “Maybe she changed us too?”

Mo nodded.

Alan muttered, “Who the hell was she?”

Mo shook her head, her expression deeply thoughtful.

“What is it, Mo?”

“The Eh-Eh-Eh-Earth Muh-Mother.”

Mark gave Mo a hug while roaring with laughter. “Oh, Mo—are you seriously suggesting that we’ve just met the Earth Mother?”

Kate whispered, “The Earth Mother?”

Alan shook his head. “But this is hardly Earth!”

While discussion continued, the gangling youth returned, bringing a piece of wood, like a box-lid, in which there was a flat layer of soft clay, along with a narrow stick. He pressed them both into Alan’s hands. It was obvious they hadn’t understood Alan’s earlier gesticulations about cooking food. Alan spent several moments just thinking about it before sketching something simple, using the stick on the soft clay. When he was finished, the gangling youth took the clay from him and looked at his sketch of a fish in a pan over the image of flames. His face wrinkled with disgust before he departed through the doorway.

“What’s happening?” Kate asked, coming over to sit by Alan.

“I think he got the message. But he didn’t seem to like it.”

“Let’s hope we haven’t given him the idea of cooking us,” whispered Mark.

“Oh, button it, Mark! If you can’t say something useful, go play your harmonica.” Alan threw the walrus hide over his and Kate’s shoulders, then hugged her shivering body.

About half an hour later Alan sniffed the air, then left Kate, still wrapped in the walrus hide, so he could poke his head out onto the deck. “You guys get a whiff of that?”

“Fish cooking!”

Alan laughed in triumph. “C’mon, Kate! Let’s go see if we can attract the cook’s attention.”

“Do come back and let us know,” Mark’s voice followed them through the flapping doorway, “if it means food for us—or for them!”

With warm hides pulled tight around their shoulders, Alan and Kate followed the smell of cooking back along the deck until they came to a wider platform at the stern, where the youth was grilling a whole salmon over a brazier of burning charcoal. The brazier stood on a wide flat stone to keep it clear of the deck. They watched as the youth sprinkled herb-scented oil and fresh berries over the salmon’s silvery length before turning it over to cook it through. Nearby, a second pot bubbled over another brazier, full of fish soup. The youth grinned back over his shoulder, to where Alan and Kate were watching him, making no secret of the fact they were so hungry that they couldn’t help but make appreciative noises, hunkered under their furs, their teeth chattering.

Kate winced. “I’m so famished I can’t bear the sight and the smell of it. I’m going to have to head back!”

She made a prayer sign with her hands, as if imploring the cook to get a move on, before dashing back to the warmth of the cabin. Meanwhile, Alan stayed behind and watched the youth, noticing the jerky awkwardness of his limbs. Alan couldn’t figure out whether he was naturally awkward or just nervous. But there was no mistaking the intelligence he saw in those large brown eyes.