Keys of Babylon (33 page)

Small breasts, my brother claims. Well, like pine cones even I would say. But cockleshells to him. Black teats of a fox.

Yeah, yeah, I say. Look who's talking. Not even half a man, you puny piss-stain. Cuttlebones where your muscles should be. Slow as a dewcat with your cock.

And he sniggers and cuffs me and I rumple his hair and he goes off to his chores and I to mine. Pulling out gorseroots for the fire. How the thorns stay in my hands and heels, hot and golden, nagging all day. But it's the needles burn the best. Fine fuel. And how dreamy the flowers smell when I crouch under the bush. Before I cut I listen to the yellowhammer singing above me. Little goldsmith of the gorse, my mother names him. My mother names all things. She has given me my first tattoos, her nib a splinter from a spindle tree.

There, she laughed. Wolf girl. Brave girl. And kissed me with her fishy breath. And went back to tending the garden in a clearing of the gorse. She grows her radishes there and tall alexanders. But also her herbs, muttering songs over them. Songs with strange words, but she'll teach me soon she says. Herbs for headaches. For women's bleeding. Herbs to make you horny and herbs to make you smell nice. Herbs for delirium. Herbs for snakebite swelling and joint swelling. Herbs to anoint the sacred skin of the dead.

And then I'm off to dragging branches from the beach, salty boughs that burn green as copper. And checking the nets. And pulling the seaweed out of the nets. And opening oysters. And smoking the dogfish we trap in the rockpools. Or filleting bass. Biting out their bones. And gathering seaweed. And making the fish stew for the night, putting in a mullet head, its eyes dulled as if with bubbles of sand. Pieces of eel, gutted with a razorshell. How the brew bubbles. Then cleaning the pots. And picking the ticks out of the skins. And cutting my sister's hair and hiding my make-up from her. And mending our clothes. And checking the nets. And checking the nets. And pulling the nets through The Dafan. And diving with my knife. And duelling with crabs in the crevices. No wonder we all smell of fish. And woodsmoke. No wonder my hair is stiff as rope, washing the smoke out of it in salt water because the fresh is drying up. Yes, the spring is low, lower than last summer. It's getting warmer, my father says, crabmeat in his beard, the firelight on his tattoos. Warmer every year. You should bathe in the sand.

But I love making the stew. Picking the roots and the rocket and the fennel bulbs to go with the bass the men catch. Sometimes I hide in the rocks and wait for turnstones. I follow their wet footprints which look like tiny arrowheads. I go creeping in the boulders, all the gutters red with anemones, on through the carpets of kelp. The turnstones are gossipers and never expect the net. My brother casts it well. I'm clumsy. And not much meat on those birds: just roasted salt and crunchy bones. When they fly away it makes me dizzy. How they jiggle, all of a zigzag.

Yes everyone cooks. Everyone except the simples. Who only eat. Because if you don't cook you're a fool. A simple. You're a danger to yourself. To the families that live with us you might as well be dead. So I must look out for something. Never go home empty-handed, is one of the main laws. You never ever do that. So I'm looking as I climb. Maybe strawberries for my pocket. There are so many here.

Strawberries, my brother will mock. Those finches' hearts. Yet still he'll cram his face.

Forage, father will say. You have to forage. And I'm one of the best. Once I brought home honey twisted round a stick. Now everybody does that. And once an egg. But not the normal eggs, seagulls, curlews. This egg was huge and green. Its shell was rough as hemp, covered with craters. And maybe it had just been laid, but by what bird I never saw. Still warm, it was on a ledge of sand, and took both my hands to hold it. Like a drinking cup.

How carefully I carried that egg home and even my mother was surprised. Such an egg, she laughed. Clever girl. And though I've searched everywhere since, I've never found another. No one has. Perhaps we should have waited for the egg to hatch so we might tell what type of bird it was. But father was hungry. He said it was a swan. We made an omelette for him with marjoram, and he shared it with me. The egg bringer he calls me. Honey twister. And yes, that night he told us tales.

But now the wolf is at the top, up to her belly in sand, sending an avalanche down upon me and on I go and yes, here is the crest, the highest part of all. For even she is panting. Froth on her ragged gum. She shakes the sand out of her coat like seawater. But this is where we watch. This is our pinnacle. And the sea is calm and the tide coming in and blue as a mussel shell it looks, day after day, not a storm for weeks, not a rain cloud, the mussel beds already half hidden, the waves white against them and white around the reef that lies a mile off shore, and look, and look. Because. Because a boat. Between the rocks of the inlet. A big boat. Bigger than I've ever seen before. And now our drumming starts.

I am wary coming off the ridge but when I arrive on the beach my father is already there, and my brother and some of the other men. They are laughing and not afraid because there are only two people aboard, allowing the tide to bring them in, waving, calling out, standing up unsteadily. Sitting down again. And it's not a boat but a raft, a long raft that is soon beached. Some of its timbers are painted blue. It is stuck on a rock shelf that rises out of the sand, so that the two sailors have to wade ashore, staggering out of the shallows.

You're drunk, spits my father. Filthy drunk. You might have drowned.

And we help them on to the dry sand and they collapse before us. One man, long hair and beard, his tunic dyed red. And a woman, skinny as a boy, her hair cut short, her arms covered in tattoos and insect bites. The man is laughing. He sits up and shakes his head.

Dogtooth already has, he says. Well, he must have. At least he wasn't with us when we woke up. Probably slipped overboard in his sleep, the silly bugger.

The woman looks round. Bastard beer was stronger than usual, she grins. Hell of a brew. But we'd welcome another. Dry as ashes, aren't we? And burned.

Our men are looking at the raft, wedged on the rock.

What you carrying? asks one.

What's it look like?

Like a bloody big stone.

Got it in one, says the woman. Bloody big stone.

The stone is three men in length and one broad. This load is lashed to the raft and I can hear the hissing of seawater evaporating down its sides.

Now where's that drink? asks the bearded sailor.

Soon it is dark. We sit around the fire and the drunk man, who doesn't seem so drunk now, regards the wolf with a narrow eye.

Maybe it's appropriate, he says. It was wolves who first owned fire. Of course you know that. But the pack leader wandered off, looking for wolf food. Deer or lizards or worms. Worms or a child of woman. A wolf eats anything. So the pack left fire behind and fire cried out as it burned low. Fire was lonely. Fire was frail. Fire was almost out, only sparks left in the dark. Weak as glow worms. But a woman heard fire crying and she came and took it. Thought it an abandoned bairn. She blew on it and the brand burned. She fed it straw. Nursed it. Soon it was burning twigs. Then she took it home and now it's people who own fire. Not wolves. That's why you never see wolves at a fire.

Raised it from a cub, my father says. That's why it's not afraid of the flames. Where you coming from?

West just now, says the man. Been sailing about a week, but there's no wind, only current.

How far west?

Where the land ends. Mountains, a maze of coves. They're a rough lot down there. The wild bunch we call them. They wave sticks at you or axes made of slate. I ask you. And bad hair. And terrible tattoos.

Rank smell too, said the woman, sucking out an oyster. It's poor country and ignorant people. They speak like bears.
Umph, umph
. Like that.
Hurrumph
.

I think they drink blood, says the man. And I'm sure they drink piss. A disgrace to mankind.

They used to say west is best, laughs my father.

Not now, the man scowls.

His companion, I see, must be hungry, because now she has a plover's egg. Only yesterday I picked it from the scrape. Speckled, triangular. Easy to find if you know where to look. But isn't everything? The plover pretended to have a broken wing. It limped away, hoping I'd follow. But I knew where the eggs would be. Stupid bird, what could it expect, making a nest on open ground.

My brother is drinking beer with the others but I'm not allowed yet. At least, not in public. But there are plenty of times the girls have taken a jar up to the crest and swigged it round and giggled and gone moony-eyed and the wolf has lain with us in the sand with her muzzle between her paws. Eyes closed. Ears up. Girls' day off, we call it. Forget the nets. And we paint our symbols on each other's skin, or make the stories we want to tell. That's when I think of our twilight fires, with owls calling and cockchafers dive-bombing the camp.

Like my story of the forest. One month ago. I was foraging, of course, without much luck. Going over the tops away from the sea, and soon, I hardly noticed, but soon I could see I might reach the line of trees. Yes, it was hot. There were flies on me. The orchids had erupted, violet and hairy. A viper, very dark, mottled like a wildcat, dreamed in the sand. Such are the summer days. And there were the trees and the wolf was with me and when we reached the trees the wolf paused but I steered past her and she followed and soon I was further into the forest than I had ever been before.

Brazen is how my father describes me. Brazen hussy, he laughs. My little belter. I like that. It makes me feel I'm brave. So this hussy walked on with her wolf and it was cooler, and the green shade divided my body into thousands of squares and spangles. Like plovers' feathers.There was grass on the forest floor and white flowers. We stopped to listen, the wolf and I. Not a breath. Or maybe gnat whine. Sap rising. And soon I could smell water. Really smell it. The wolf could smell it too and so we crept low, completely silent, as there was light coming through the birch.

Such a pool I had discovered. Green water with green rushes round it. The sun shattering on the surface. No one had told me about this place. It wasn't part of the stories. But there would be fish there. And grebes perhaps with freckled chicks.

I held the wolf's rope tight and we slid under the last branches. Grass ran down to the rim. The pool was full of lilypads and some were in flower, white and golden. Now here's the story. Amongst the lilies was a boy. A boy swimming. He might have been diving because he surfaced as we settled down to look at the pool. A real boy. But what a boy. He stood up in the water and his skin was white. The whitest skin I had ever seen. Blue-white as whey. A spurt of milk. And his hair was white. Like a crown. And I could see his eyes were red as if he had been crying a long time. Strange red wounds his eyes were. Buried deep in his face. He was staring straight towards us but I knew he couldn't see. We are the invisibles, after all. The invisible people who can hide in sand. In seawater. We are mother of pearl. We are betony. The bleached bones of hyenas dug out of the dune.

And then he turned around and waded to the other shore and pushed through the rushes and was gone. Skinny boy. Arse a white conch. Sharp elbows and knees. Then only the dragonflies were left but he had been no less curious than that tribe of cannibals.

To tell the truth, the wolf was not much bothered. As if she knew him or understood his mystery. One of the simples perhaps.

After the boy left she went down to drink. I stood up to my knees in the pool and it was icy. No wonder he had no dick. Come back you little fairy, I wanted to say. I'll do you no harm. I'll crown you with a lilypad. But then I looked round. I was a long way from home. Who else was there, I wondered. Who was looking at me?

Because I know the stories. Of the people who were here first. The old people who have different words. No, they're not all dead, my mother says. They can hide better than us. And they've learned how to disappear. Into thin air. My brother's been far into the trees. He has to go further than me to prove himself. But he said he was scared by the silence. He also told me of the wind in the forest and how the trees shook, branches falling, branches rubbing against branches in the storm's language. I heard a sobbing, he said. It was the grief of trees. But the silence was worse.

Those strangers are still talking. As if they know more of the world than us. Travel broadens the mind, they say. The strangers you meet will teach you things. But the man especially won't learn much from us because he doesn't ask questions. I hate people who don't ask questions. It's a kind of insult. And anyway, I don't think bears speak like they said.
Umph, umph
, they said.
Hurrumph
. No, it's not like that.

Because I remember a bear. A brown bear sitting on a dune. Oh sad lord, I thought, as I watched him sucking a root. Resting he was. Perhaps grieving for something. Then he picked up one of the stones in the sand and looked for beetles. Like mother taking the lid off the cookpot. And just like mother he put the stone back exactly in its place. The one right place so that the stone fitted the stone's shape. A young bear, legs apart, scratching his armpit and muttering to himself. Too hot in his fur I suppose. Then he swarmed off through the sand.