Firesong (3 page)

He crossed over to the women by the fire. For a few moments, as if warming himself by the fire, he stood near Lunki and her mistress. Sisi was stitching the heavy blankets with small tight stitches, working with care and concentration. He could see from the groove the needle made in her fingertip how hard she had to push to drive the point through the stiff fabric. He could also see the smooth curve of her neck, and the rise and fall of her breast as she breathed.

‘That’s good work,’ he said. ‘That’ll keep out the cold.’

She looked up, her eyes grave, questioning.

‘The tailor taught me,’ she said. ‘I’m doing my best.’

‘Hard on the fingers.’

‘Is it?’ She looked at her needle-finger as if unaware of the pressure she was putting on her soft skin. ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter.’

Bowman heard the clatter of falling nuts, and looking up saw that Pinto had joined the Mimilith boys in the sourgum trees. They had already stripped the lower branches of nuts, and were now climbing higher, each in an adjoining tree. He could think of nothing more to say to Sisi, who sat, head bent, steadily sewing, so he moved away once more. As he passed the wagon, Mist the grey cat uncurled himself from his bed on the tent-cloths, and jumped down to rub against his legs.

‘Well, boy,’ he said. ‘Are we nearly there?’

‘No, my Mist. First we must reach the mountains.’

The cat did not speak aloud, nor did Bowman answer him aloud. But they understood each other well. The cat asked this question every day, and every day received the same answer. There were never any mountains to be seen, so Mist had come to believe that Bowman chose to conceal their true destination. Mist knew that Bowman had great powers, greater even than his former master, Dogface the hermit, who had been able to fly. If the boy had such powers, he could not possibly be leading all these people with so much effort for so long, without knowing where he was going. Therefore their destination was a secret. So reasoned the cat, clever but not wise.

‘And on the other side of the mountains, your homeland.’

‘Yes. We believe so.’

‘It must be something very wonderful, this homeland.’

‘We shall see.’

‘Do the cats there know how to fly?’

‘I don’t know, Mist. I don’t know that there are any cats there. But if there are, I doubt if they can fly.’

‘I shall teach them.’

Bowman smiled and stroked the cat’s head. This annoyed Mist. It had always been his heart’s dream to fly, and just once he had made a jump that was so immense that it must have been flying. He had told the boy, and the boy had said he believed him, but the look in his eyes had shown that this was no more than a polite pretence.

‘You don’t believe me.’

‘If you say you flew, Mist, then I believe you.’

‘Well, I did fly.’

The truth was, he couldn’t be entirely sure. The time he had flown, it had only been a short distance. A short flight is very like a long jump.

‘Take care, Pinto!’

This was Hanno, calling out in warning. Pinto had seen a plump husk on a very high branch, and she reckoned she was light enough to reach it without danger. Looking across to the neighbouring tree, she saw that Mo Mimilith was also climbing, and he saw her. At once, instinctively competitive, they began to race each other.

Mo Mimilith was three years older than Pinto, and much heavier. At first his greater strength enabled him to outclimb her. But then he felt the branches bending beneath him, and realised he was at his limit. Pinto kept on climbing, her skinny little body easily supported by the upper branches; and so was the only one to reach to the very top of the tree.

She looked down and saw the wagon, with the horses among the cows, snuffling out what coarse grazing they could find. She saw the huddle round the fire, where the sourgum was being boiled, and she smelled its strange sharp-sweet smell. She saw her mother, seated on the ground with her father beside her, holding her hands and stroking them, as he so often did. Then she looked across and saw Mo Mimilith on his way down his tree.

I’ve won! she thought, exulting. I’m the highest one of all!

Only now, turning and looking up and ahead, did she think to take advantage of her high vantage point. There were the rolling hills, receding into the distance. But beyond them, far off, she could clearly discern through hazy low cloud a range of jagged white-capped peaks.

‘Mountains!’ she cried. ‘I can see mountains!’

No one else would be able to climb so high. She must be the eyes for all. She looked and looked, and memorised.

Some way off, the rolling land levelled out and became rocky and craggy: it seemed to be a huge desert of cracked and shivered land, a rubble of boulders and fissures. On the far side of this broken plain, where the cloud lay low over the land, there was a belt of dark forest running from side to side of the visible world. Within this forest gleamed a river; and beyond the river towered the mountains. They rose through the cloud, to rear their bare-toothed peaks all along the white horizon.

Bowman called up to her.

‘Can you really see the mountains?’

‘Yes! Far, far away!’

People were gathering below, staring up at her.

‘Be careful!’ That was her father, who could see how the treetop swayed under her weight.

She came scrambling down, a little too fast, showing off, and grazed one arm. She pretended not to notice. The marchers gathered round her, eager to hear what she had seen.

‘There’s a river,’ she told them. ‘And a forest. But before that, empty land, for miles and miles, all full of cracks.’

‘Cracks? What kind of cracks?’

‘Like cracks in dried mud. Only much bigger.’

‘Did you see any people? Any houses? There must be people living somewhere.’

‘No. I didn’t see anyone.’

‘How far to the mountains?’ asked the teacher, Silman Pillish.

‘Miles and miles. Days and days.’

‘Days and days!’

‘And how far beyond the mountains?’

This question was addressed to Ira Hath. She was the prophetess, the one who knew the way to the homeland; though, as she told them again and again, she would only know it when at last it lay before her. She had seen it in a dream. They would find it on the other side of mountains, at the end of a path rising between steep slopes of land. It would be snowing. Ahead, the sun would be setting. Red sky, falling snow: and framed in the V of the hills, a land where two rivers ran to a distant sea.

‘I’ll know it when I see it,’ she said. ‘First we must get there.’

‘It’s just beyond the mountains,’ the people told each other. ‘The homeland!’

Even though the mountains Pinto had seen were so far away, this news gave everyone heart. They felt the end of their journey had been sighted. Their task now was to survive the getting there.

While Hanno Hath questioned Pinto more closely about what she had seen, Kestrel went up to Bowman.

‘It’s only mountains,’ she said, very low. ‘We don’t know the homeland’s on the other side. There might be a desert on the other side, or a swamp, and then more mountains, before we get to the sea.’

‘There might.’

‘So there’s nothing to get so excited about.’

‘No,’ said Bowman. ‘But people need hope.’

‘I don’t. I don’t want hope. I want what’s real. I won’t believe we’re getting to the homeland until I see it.’

‘You don’t really want to get to the homeland at all, do you, Kess?’

‘Of course I do.’ Kestrel was irritated that Bowman could think this of her. ‘I don’t want to be wandering about for ever, always tired and hungry. Why would I want that?’

‘I don’t know. I just feel that you’re frightened of the homeland.’

‘Oh, you feel. You’re always feeling. Why would I be frightened of the homeland? It’s the place where we all sit about being happy for the rest of our lives, isn’t it?’

Too angry to wait for his reply, she took herself off to the far side of the trees, where Mumpo and Tanner Amos were chopping wood. For a few moments, as she listened to the
dock, dock, dock
of the axe, she thought how maddening her brother could be, with his assumption that he knew her better than she knew herself. Then as she calmed down she realised he was right. She was afraid of getting to the homeland; and not only because of what it meant for ma. There was something else.

She tried to make out the shape of her fear. She could imagine the journey ahead, but when she tried to imagine the end of the journey, all she saw was a blank. It was like a book without the last few pages. All at once there was nothing. That was what she was afraid of: the nothing. But nor did she want the journey to go on for ever.

What is it I want? she thought, shivering. What’s wrong with me?

Tanner Amos and Mumpo between them filled the bed of the wagon with firewood. And now Mrs Chirish’s sourgum was beginning to set. She dipped a spoon in the sticky froth and drew out a scoop of the amber-coloured gum, and waved it back and forth until it cooled. Then she nibbled at it.

‘There it is,’ she pronounced. ‘Fetch some dishes.’

All the people round the fire had a taste. Some liked it and some didn’t. It was odd, both sweet and sour at the same time, and it got stuck in the teeth; but it was edible, no question about it.

Guided by Mrs Chirish, they spread the gum over all the tin dishes they had, and let it cool. It hardened quickly in the cold air. Then when it was hard, they banged the underside of the tin plates with spoons, and the gum cracked off in clear amber fragments. The fragments were then packed in barrels, with layers of flattened husks between them to stop them sticking to each other. By the time they had done, they had filled four barrels, and there were enough crumbs left for everyone to have a snack.

Hanno was quietly grateful to Mrs Chirish. Their supplies of food were running very low. Now he calculated they could survive on a barrel of sourgum a day, which gave them four days to find the next supply of food. Water was another matter. He checked the level in the big water barrel, and made another simple calculation. The people must drink; the horses and cattle too. No doubt they would find a stream soon. But just in case, it would be wise to save all they could.

‘From now until we find water,’ he ordered, ‘the ration will be two cups a day each. And no washing.’

‘No washing!’ exclaimed Lunki. ‘How is my precious one to keep clean?’

‘It won’t be for long,’ said Sisi. ‘We’ll find water soon.’

Hanno made his rounds, speaking softly to Creoth about the cows, and to Seldom Erth about the horses, saying nothing new, giving no instructions they would not have carried out for themselves, but showing a care for each person on the march. This was the nature of his leadership: not the shouting of orders, but the letting himself be seen as the link between all of them, the one to whom they all turned their eyes, so that as they went on their way, they went together.

Now he gave the signal to resume the march. The group round the fire put out the flames, stamping out the embers and rescuing the unburned faggots to be used again. Others bent down to lace up boots that had been loosened to ease their weary feet. Bowman moved to the front of the column as it formed, and took up his place as the lead watchman, his eyes alert for danger. So it was he who found the body.

It was not the first body they had passed on their long march. In these lawless times, the robber bands that attacked travellers on lonely roads often left their victims dead or dying; when what knives and clubs had begun was finished by the night cold. The Manth people could do no more than pause on their way, and cover the sad remains with stones, as an act of respect.

This was the body of an old man, lying face down on the ground, his hands raised as if to cover or protect his face. Bowman knelt down by his side, and gently eased the body over, to satisfy himself that there was no hope of saving him; though the utter stillness of the body told him that life was long gone. The hands remained clutched to the dead face, concealing the features. Bowman let his sensitive probing mind reach gently into that lifeless skull, and as he did so he felt for an instant that something was moving within it; then the moment passed, and all was still. He took hold of the dead man’s hands, and drew them away from his face.

The eyes were open, and unseeing. The old cheeks grizzled, unshaven. The dry lips apart, as if calling. But most shocking of all, the skin of his face, from brow to chin, was lacerated: scratched and torn into a hideous wreck, the blood dried black in the dead white skin.

Mumpo now joined him, and stood looking down at the dead man in silence.

‘What would do that to him?’ said Bowman.

‘He did it to himself. Look at his fingernails.’

Mumpo had noticed what Bowman had overlooked: the dead man’s fingernails were black with dried blood. For some terrible reason, as he was dying he had torn at his own face.

The rest of the marchers were approaching. Creoth came up to them, and looked.

‘Oh, the wretched man!’

‘Let’s cover him,’ said Bowman. ‘No need for the others to see.’

He scraped up handfuls of stony earth and began to sprinkle it over the corpse. Mumpo and Creoth did the same. Bowman hurried to cover up the torn face. He thought again as he let the earth drop over that dead open mouth that something moved: a brief flurry in the air that shivered the falling dust. He thought he heard a faint whine pass close by his head, as of some small flying insect. But then the wagon was rolling near, and with it his father.

‘Poor fellow,’ said Hanno Hath, kneeling down to help with the roadside burial.

When the body was entirely covered, a dusty mound that would not long resist the wind and the rain, the Manth people stood round the stranger and Hanno Hath rose to his feet to speak the customary funeral words.

‘We who are left behind watch you on your way.’

He fell silent for a few moments. No one spoke or moved. Then he went on with the old words in his quiet clear voice.

‘The long prison of the years unlocks its iron door. Go free now, into the beautiful land. Forgive us, who suffer in this clouded world. Guide us and wait for us, as we wait for you. We will meet again.’