The Kin Read online

  Tinu waited till he had finished, and then edged up, as if she was expecting him to bark at her to go away, and eased the end of the stick into the crack. Suth watched her, puzzled, as she tried it at different angles. Then, wonderfully, a drop of water appeared on a side twig beneath it, and another and another. She cupped her free hand under them and caught them as they fell, until her palm was full. She lapped the water up and looked at him, still as if she expected him to yell at her or strike her.

  “Good, good,” he said, smiling. “Now you show Noli.”

  While the others were learning how to use the stick, he picked up the fox and laid it on its back. Holding the flake of stone between thumb and forefinger he drew the cutting edge slowly along the seam of the belly, again and again, never pressing hard for fear of breaking his cutter but gradually slicing through the tough skin.

  The three girls watched in silence, but Ko squatted by his side, jaw set, frowning, longing to join in, longing to help. Suth was about to snarl at him to keep clear when he thought, Ko saw his father die. He saw his mother taken. He was walled in a dark place for a day and a night. He does not understand any of this. He does not understand there is no Kin now for him to belong to. I understand all this. With Noli’s help I am leader now. We are their father and their mother.

  So he told Ko to hold the fox’s tail clear while he worked. It didn’t need holding, but it gave Ko something to do, and they both felt better.

  Slowly a scratch formed. The scratch became a cut, and then Suth was slicing into the fat beneath the skin. He sawed at the ends of the cut, widening it until he could plunge his hand through and pull out the guts. Still very careful of his precious tool he cut the liver free.

  Suth was the leader now, so he ate first, cutting himself a mouthful before hacking off pieces for the others while he chewed. Fox meat was better roasted, and even then had a strong, rancid taste. Still, it was food, and none of them had eaten cooked food since the fight, when the strangers had taken away their fire log along with the women.

  They chewed in silence. Noli put her mouth to Otan’s and forced some of her chewings between his lips. He sucked them in and gaped for more.

  “That is enough,” said Suth, when they had eaten the liver and the heart, though his own stomach still ached with hunger.

  “Yes,” said Noli. “It is strong meat. Too strong.”

  The Kin were used to empty stomachs. Sometimes a Good Place would fail. They would find no game, or there would have been a bush fire that destroyed the plants they’d expected to harvest. Then they would have to travel on, foodless, to the next Good Place. Even the little ones understood that cramming a starved stomach with meat ended with a bellyful of burning stones.

  Suth cut away the parts of the fox that people do not eat and told Mana to carry them well away along the slope and leave them there. The rest of the carcass he laid against the foot of the cliff and piled rocks over it to keep it safe. Then he drank again and sat looking out over the burning plain below. Somewhere out there what was left of the Kin was moving further and further away. Soon they would be dead, in the waterless desert. He would never see them again.

  Another thought came to him. No. We six children, on this hillside—we are what is left of the Kin.

  He looked at the others. Tinu, so skinny and small, so ashamed of her odd face and speech that she had never dared be anyone’s friend. But smart all the same—the trick she had done with the twig in the crack showed that. Little Ko, who had always made everyone laugh—almost as soon as he could walk he was trying to swagger like a man. Mana. Suth realized he knew almost nothing about Mana, had barely noticed her before now, she was so quiet, though he had known her since she was born. Otan, lying asleep in Noli’s lap. He was still too small to know or guess much about. And Noli herself …

  When had Moonhawk begun to visit her in her dreams? Suth wondered. He had never heard of any of the First Ones coming to a child, not in any of the Kins. He knew Noli well. His father and hers had been brothers. He had played with her since they were babies, walked beside her as the Kin journeyed from one Good Place to the next. She’d never said anything about Moonhawk visiting her in her dreams. But then, half a moon ago, she’d woken them all where they lay by springing to her feet in the darkest part of the night and shrieking about the strangers, the cruel fighting, the blood …

  And Bal had cursed her, and said she was only a stupid child having a nightmare. When her shrieks had gone on, he’d struck her. He had seen nothing.

  But three days later, as they gathered for their evening meal, the strangers had attacked.

  Suth thought of a time when he had been small. The Kin had come to a place called Ragala Flat, and had found another Kin, Weaver, already there. There had been great feasting, and giving of gifts. But while the fire had still burned bright, Bal and an old man from the Weaver Kin had gone off together into the dark.

  “Where does Bal go with that old man?” Suth had asked his father.

  His father had made a sign, putting his palm to his mouth.

  “They go to talk dream stuff,” he had muttered. “It is a thing that is not spoken of. It is secret.”

  As he had grown older Suth had realized that in each of the Kins there was one person like Bal. Their own First One came to that person in dreams. It didn’t need to be the leader, though Bal was. It could be a man or a woman. But it was never a child. How could it be? And yet Noli …

  She was looking at him as if she’d guessed his thoughts, but all she said was, “What must we do now, Suth?”

  “We rest,” he answered. “All are tired. We have water. We have meat for three days.”

  “The meat is too strong,” she said. “Soon the small ones are sick. They must have plant stuff.”

  “Yes. All that below is bitter bush, I think. Let us look.”

  Leaving the little ones in the shade of the cliff, they climbed down the gully but, as they had thought, only one sort of shrub seemed to grow there, with twisted grey branches and round, fat leathery leaves. It was common in dry places, but the Kin did not eat it. Experimentally Suth nibbled a leaf, and spat. The harsh taste stayed in his mouth a long while despite a lot of rinsings with water from the crack.

  Tired from their night’s walk they slept through the middle of the day, but were woken by Otan’s crying. He was hungry again, and so were they all, so Suth fetched out the carcass of the fox. Ants had found it, but he brushed them away and butchered more meat, though again he wouldn’t let anyone eat more than a few mouthfuls.

  “Today we rest,” said Suth. “Tomorrow we go.”

  “Where do we go?” said Noli.

  “I do not know. Perhaps Moonhawk sends you a dream,” said Suth.

  “Perhaps,” said Noli.

  He was too anxious to sleep. They could not stay here long. If they tried to follow Bal across the desert they would die. If they tried to go back through Dry Hills they would almost certainly die too. The Kin had only made it as far as they had because they had set out with full water gourds. Suth’s little group had none.

  Restless, he rose and went to explore along the slope. There might be more water seeping out of the cliff, with good plant stuff feeding from it. That would at least allow them to stay here a few more days, until the little ones became stronger.

  It didn’t look promising. The slope became steeper, and changed to dangerous scree—a great stretch of loose rocks ending far below in what looked like another cliff. He tossed a stone down. It dislodged another, and between them they started a small avalanche, which went rumbling out of sight. No, not this way, he decided, and went back to the others.

  Noli was awake, trying to comfort Ko, who had gobbled his meat without chewing it enough and was whining about a stomach ache.

  “Did Moonhawk come?” Suth asked.

  “No,” she said.

  He lay down, more anxious than ever, trying to remember any details he could about the journey across Dry Hills. But he had been in
his trance of shock then, hardly noticing what happened around him, so all he could recall was endless thirsty trudging across hot stony ground, with rough slopes rising on either side, and no sign of food or water anywhere.

  As the sun went down he was still worrying about this, lying on his back and gazing up at the sky, hard blue all day, but now paler, greyer, and turning golden towards the west.

  Out of that sky he saw a flock of birds descending, circling around and around, wings spread, coming nearer and nearer until they disappeared behind the rim of the cliff.

  Suth’s spirits rose. This was something he had seen before. There was a Good Place called Stinkwater, which the Kin had used to visit at two special seasons. At other times it was a useless marsh, its water black and foul. But then at the good seasons the birds came spiralling down out of the sky, countless, tens beyond tens beyond tens, some so weak and tired with long flying that they were easy to catch. Several Kins would gather at those times at Stinkwater, and there would be fine eating for everybody.

  Noli too had seen the birds and had thought the same thought.

  “There is a Good Place up there,” she said.

  “We look for a way tomorrow,” he said, “when we go back through Dry Hills.”

  Oldtale

  MONKEY MAKES FIRE

  Snake and Crocodile and Fat Pig and the others came to Monkey and said, “Monkey, you eat our food. You drink our water. You sleep in our caves. Your chattering disturbs us on our crags. But you make nothing of your own.”

  Monkey said, “Very well. I am cleverer than you are. Now I do something better than any of you.”

  He thought for a day and a night and a day, and then while Black Antelope slept, he looked at the sky and saw a great cloud that covered the moon.

  Then Monkey clapped his hands, and so great was the sound that the cloud burst and fire fell out and poured down to the earth and burned the trees and the grasses and dried up the water holes and smote the crags where Moonhawk perched and shrivelled the roots on the ground, and only Little Bat was safe in her caves.

  Little Bat looked out and saw what was being done, so she flew to where Black Antelope slept and squeaked in his ear, “Monkey is killing our Good Place with fire. Stop him.”

  Black Antelope woke and he too saw what was being done. He reared up and breathed through his nostrils and blew out the fire.

  He called to Monkey to come, and Monkey was afraid, and hid. But Moonhawk spied him from her crag and told Snake, who went softly and coiled himself around him and caught him and carried him to Black Antelope.

  Black Antelope said, “You have done bad things. Now I make your skin itch. It is like fire. You must put all our Good Place to rights. Make it as it was. Then I take your itch from you.”

  Then with his skin itching like fire Monkey set to work, but he could not do it. He poured water into the holes, but it was salt and sour. He put roots into the ground, but they made Fat Pig sick. He grew trees, but they were too thorny for Weaver’s wives to nest in, and their fruits fell to the ground before they were ripe.

  In the end Monkey came to the others and said, “I cannot do this. You must help me.”

  They said, “What do you give us in return?”

  Monkey said, “I have nothing to give.”

  They said, “You give this. We tell you a thing. You do it. You do this for a whole moon, for each of us in turn.”

  So they agreed, and all in their ways made that Place good again, with clean water and fine trees and grasses and sweet nuts and fruits and roots, and in exchange Monkey worked for each of them in turn, doing whatever he was told from morning till night for a whole moon. He did not like this at all.

  One day, while he was catching insects for Little Bat, Monkey smelled smoke. He looked and found a spark of the fire he had made still smouldering. He fetched dry leaves and blew on the spark and fed the leaves into it until he had fire again. Then he found a hollow log and sealed the ends with clay and put the fire in the middle and made the first fire log, which he hid in a secret place.

  When all the work was done Monkey went to Black Antelope and said, “Look. Now our Good Place is as it was before.”

  Black Antelope looked, and saw it was true. But he did not see where Monkey had hidden the fire log. Then he breathed on Monkey and made his skin clean.

  Only one small patch under his armpit still itched like fire. That was because of the fire log.

  And that is why Monkey is always scratching.

  CHAPTER THREE

  They slept well away from the water, in case a fox or some other hunter came to drink in the night. Suth and Noli piled rocks around a nook in the cliff to make a small lair where they could huddle, and nothing disturbed them.

  In the morning Suth let them eat more meat and told them to drink as much as their stomachs would hold. While they did he cut off a leg of the fox to carry with them, breaking his cutter as he wrestled with the tendons of the joint. When he had finished he looked for Noli, but couldn’t see her. Tinu had gone back to sleep. Mana was playing a pebble game with little Otan. Ko was banging two rocks together, trying to make his own cutter.

  “Where is Noli?” Suth asked.

  Mana pointed along the cliff and he saw her, far beyond shouting range, picking her way across the dangerous rock-covered slope.

  He was angry. The morning was already hot. They had far to go, back along the way they had come, before they could begin to look for a way to climb to the top. This was not how a leader should be treated. He would have words to say to Noli.

  When at last she came back he rose and went to meet her, without thought hunching his shoulders and shaking his mane out to show her his anger. She answered by kneeling and pattering her hands on the ground in front of his feet.

  “I found a way up the cliff,” she said.

  He heard and understood, but his shoulders and neck stayed rigid and his lips taut across bared teeth, as if he had been Bal. It wasn’t anything he was doing on purpose. His body did it to him, because he was angry. Then he relaxed, and laughed, and helped her up.

  “Moonhawk showed you?” he said.

  “No. But … it is hard … I was … pulled.”

  He didn’t understand. “Perhaps it was Moonhawk,” he suggested.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Good. Show me.”

  He let Noli lead the way, with Otan on her hip, and Ko, Mana, and Tinu in single file behind her. He went last to make sure the little ones moved with care. When they reached the slope of loose stuff where Suth had turned back last night, Noli started to pick her way across. Suth made the others wait, and then follow well apart, moving one at a time, testing each foothold.

  But it was Suth himself who fell. A rock twisted under him. He felt himself going, as if the whole hillside was sliding away beneath him, and flung himself flat with his arms reaching sideways, then lay there, gasping, while the avalanche he had started roared away beneath him. He rose and saw with relief that the others were all safe and waiting for him, though their eyes were still wide with fright.

  They moved on, more carefully than ever, until the cliff seemed to come to an end. Noli edged her way around the corner and disappeared. Then Mana, then Tinu, then Ko. Suth came last of all and saw what Noli had found.

  It was as if the mountain had been broken apart, and the two pieces had shifted against each other, leaving a crack between them. The ledge that the children were standing on led into the crack.

  “See,” said Noli. “It is the same as Tarutu Rock.”

  Tarutu Rock was a huge isolated crag, which the Kin had used as an overnight lair. It had a dew trap nearby. The rock was a flat-topped pillar, which could only be climbed by a deep crack running up one side. This crack was like that, only far, far higher.

  Suth gazed up, hesitating. The small ones might need to be carried some of the way. Suppose they all got stuck …

  But he knew in his heart that the journey back through Dry Hills would be just as dange
rous. They might all die of thirst on the way. While somewhere up above this cliff there was a good chance of finding water. Why else should those birds have settled down last night?

  And besides, Noli had said she was “pulled” to find this crack …

  He clambered into it. The rock surface felt faintly moist. The crack faced away from the sun, and its depths would be in shade until the evening. That decided him.

  “We try,” he said.

  The climb was very slow and tiring. They had Otan to carry. Tinu was still weak from her fever. And though the little ones were used to scrambling up to lairs, they still needed help in the difficult places—though Ko, of course, kept wanting to prove that he could manage all on his own. At least they were mostly in shade, and a slight breeze flowed down the crack, cooled by the chill in the rock.

  At last, when the sun was so high that the rocks in the desert cast no shadow, Suth looked up and saw only sky above them. This stretch of climbing had been easy enough for the small ones to manage almost without help. Mana was just ahead of Suth, then Noli with Otan, then Ko and Tinu.

  “Wait, Mana,” said Suth. “I go see.”

  He scrambled past her and put his head cautiously out into the open. To his disappointment he found that they hadn’t reached the top after all, only a wide ledge with more cliff rising above it.

  He was just clambering out when he heard a harsh cry and a sudden movement to his right. He looked and saw a large bird, some kind of eagle, launching itself away from an untidy heap of twigs on the ledge. For a moment he thought it had flown off, scared by his sudden appearance, but then he heard shrill cheepings from among the twigs and at the same time saw the eagle wheel around and come hurtling in to defend its nestlings. Rapidly he ducked back into the crack.

  “Hide! Hide!” he shouted. “Eagle comes!”

  Luckily the crack at this point was deep and narrow. As the eagle rushed closer, Suth huddled back, gripping the fox leg by its shank and holding it ready to strike. The bird was into its attack attitude, with its great hooked talons stretched in front of it, when at the last instant it realized that it couldn’t get at its target without crashing its wings into the cliff on either side.