The Waterstone (5 page)

Birdie and Pippit squawked in alarm, and Tad almost lost his balance and tumbled into the fire. Peering out at them through the honeysuckle leaves was a dark walnut-brown face. Tad recognized it immediately.

It was a Hunter.

The Hunter’s teeth flashed at them in a broad white grin. His hair was tied back in a thick braided tail, and he wore a scarlet head-scarf, a pair of leather trousers, and a short fur vest that was open in the front, leaving his chest bare. A wooden bow and a leather quiver filled with red-feathered arrows were slung across his back. There were leather bracelets incised with red-and-black diamond patterns on his upper arms. Across each cheek was painted a horizontal stripe of bright blue.

Tad felt a pang of nervousness. Though Hunters and Fishers were not enemies, there was a coolness between the two Tribes. Hunters were said to be tricky and untrustworthy — and sometimes outright thieves, stealing vegetables out of gardens, laundry off of drying lines, even babies out of cradles. “Never turn your back on a Hunter” was one of Granny Thimbleberry’s sayings. Hunters were dirty, they had no proper family feeling, and they ate odd things too, things that no self-respecting Fisher would ever put in his or her mouth. Tad wasn’t sure what the odd things were, but they sounded horrible. Whatever the Hunter in the honeysuckles ate, though, he looked just as clean as Tad did — though his smell was different: a pleasant leafy bonfire smell of forest floor and wood smoke. He took a step forward and raised his right hand, palm open and outward.

“Nobono of the Hunter Tribe,” he said. “Peace and plenty.”

“Pondleweed of the Fisher Tribe,” Pondleweed said, raising his right hand in turn. “And my son and daughter, Tadpole and Redbird. Peace and plenty.”

“Well met,” the Hunter said. “Shall we join our camps to share food and fire?”

“You are welcome,” Pondleweed said with equal formality. It was the accepted code of Tribal behavior: upon first meeting, you introduced yourself and offered to share your food, even if you had nothing more than a crust of rootbread or a single berry, even if you suspected that your new acquaintances were going to pinch your bladderpods and blankets in the night.

The Hunter flashed his teeth again. “A strong boy you have,” he said to Pondleweed. “And a fine girl. I, too, have sons and daughters. They follow behind in caravan.”

Tad threw a worried glance at the three fish.

The Hunter laughed. “It will be enough,” he said. “We will have food to share.”

He turned and winked broadly at Birdie.

“A fine girl,” he repeated. “Near old enough for trading. Perhaps we speak to your father, eh?”

Then he said, “I fetch my family.” There was a rustle of leaves as he slipped back into the bushes and disappeared.

Birdie glared after him indignantly.

“What did he mean, ‘old enough for trading’?” she demanded.

Pondleweed pursed his lips disapprovingly.

“It is what Hunters do when their youngers grow old enough to marry,” he said. “They bargain, one family with another, to find the best mates for their sons and daughters. It seems to work well enough for the Hunter Tribe, but Fishers do not treat their children that way.”

“Listen!” said Tad suddenly.

From some distance away, there came a rhythmic creak and jingle and the lumbering noise of something heavy, rolling.

“The caravan,” Pondleweed said, answering the children’s unspoken question. “You know that Hunters have no permanent homes like Fishers and Diggers have. They’re travelers, never settling, always moving from place to place, searching for game.” He sounded disapproving.

The creaking was louder now, and soon the leafy branches pushed apart to let the caravan pass through. Or rather caravans. There were two of them — both little houses on wheels. Nobono’s family lived in a wooden wagon with a tentlike cover of stitched animal skins fastened to a frame over the wagon bed. The frame was decorated with colored ribbons of dyed and twisted grasses, and hung with strings of hollow seedpods and baked-clay bells that clattered and tinkled musically as the wagon moved. Bundles of pelts were strapped to the wagon’s sides, and an earth-filled box fastened to the back was planted with herbs: onion grass, elf parsley, and tea mint.

Nobono and a woman with dark braids that hung to her waist walked before the wagon, pulling it along by a pair of wooden handles. Three children scampered beside them, and a fourth peeped shyly out from between the flaps of the skin tent. The children’s faces were deep nutbrown like their parents’, and their cheeks were also painted with stripes of blue.

The second wagon was smaller, its wheels gaudily striped in yellow, red, and green. It was pulled by a plumpish elderly Hunter whose long braid was almost pure white. He had a thick white mustache that curled up jauntily on the ends, and bushy eyebrows that looked like fat white caterpillars. When he grinned at Tad and Birdie, they saw that he was missing two teeth in the front.

“This is Branica, my
mari
,” Nobono said. “The mother of my children.” He gestured expansively. “And these are my sons, Bodo and Griffi, and my daughters, Ditani and Kelti. Our Ditani, she is now of the Hunt, having brought home First Blood.”

The Hunter boys were dressed like their father, in leather trousers and fur vests, while the girls, like their mother, wore bright full-skirted dresses dyed scarlet with berry juice. There were ropes of agate and amber beads around their necks; and carved bone bracelets on their wrists and ankles clacked and clattered as they walked. Even Kelti, the baby of the family, wore necklaces of blue and yellow wooden beads, and there were goldfinch feathers tied in her pigtails. Birdie, stricken with shyness, edged closer to Tad, tugging nervously at the hem of her fringed tunic.

“They look like flowers,” she whispered.

Tad could hardly stop staring at Ditani. She was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. Her dark braids were threaded with red-dyed grasses and twisted into thick coils over her ears, and her eyes tilted up at the corners, which made her look as if she were laughing at some secret joke. With her black hair and scarlet skirt, she did look like a flower: a brilliant wild poppy or a slim stalk of flameweed. Beside her, Tad felt stodgy, clumsy, flapfooted, and dull.

“And this” — Nobono gestured again, teeth flashing —“is Uncle Czabo, my father’s cousin, who travels with us.”

The white-haired Hunter gave a loud bellow of laughter. Tad thought he sounded like a bullfrog.

“Well met, Fishers!” he shouted. Something glittered when he turned his head. Tad saw, astonished, that he wore a silver ring in his nose.

“We will eat, eh? And drink!” He dropped the shafts of his wagon, clapped his hands together, and pointed a long finger at Tad and Birdie.

“And you, Fisher cublings, I will show
you
my magic tricks!”

He winked at Tad and waggled his bushy eyebrows up and down at Birdie, who giggled.

The children were shy at first, but soon they were chattering together as Branica rummaged in the wagon, pulling out food. Hunter food. Tad peered at it suspiciously. It looked like perfectly ordinary food, though it smelled strongly of onion grass and wild garlic. Even more interesting than the food, though, was the neatly packed wagon, with its piles of tightly rolled sleeping furs, its red- and blue-painted wooden chests, and its rows of lidded storage baskets. Birdie was entranced.

“It’s perfect,” she said wistfully. “I wish we had a wagon like this.”

“Eh, and so you should,” Branica said, nodding approvingly. She was cutting thick slices of pungent sausage with a curved knife. “You Fishers stay too close to roof and doorstep. We Hunters, now — we live in all the world at once and sleep beneath new stars each night. It keeps the mind easy and the spirit free. To stay in one place, then that place comes to own you, no? When you find a place you can no longer leave behind, that is not to be whole.”

She handed Tad a wooden plate piled high with sliced sausage, and laughed at his puzzled expression.

“You do not understand me, little pond-dweller, no? You Fishers are like the rocks, who sit-sit-sit, and let the world pass by them” — she made a little crouching movement, then froze, rocklike, flashing dark eyes at Tad —“but we Hunters are like the wind in the grasses, touching all, seeing all. You should spend a summer with us in caravan. Then you see how it is to live.”

Tad wanted to protest that that wasn’t what Fishers were like at all — even though, secretly, he had sometimes thought so himself.
We don’t just sit like a lot of stickmud turtles
, he thought resentfully. He opened his mouth to argue, but before he could speak, Ditani interrupted with a question.

“Is that your frog?” Ditani asked curiously — and then, when Tad nodded —“I’ve never seen anyone keep a frog as a pet before.”

Pippit, hovering at the edge of the campsite, croaked and rolled his eyes at her, which was his way of looking endearing. Ditani leaned closer to Tad.

“They’re really good to eat,” she whispered.

Pippit gave an outraged croak and vanished into the shrubbery.

“To
eat
?” Tad repeated incredulously.
“Frogs?”

Ditani nodded. “Their legs,” she said.

Tad stared at her in horror.

“Nobono!” Branica shouted over his shoulder. “Talk later, man! We need meat for the supper!”

Nobono, shaking his head, broke away from his conversation with Uncle Czabo and Pondleweed and walked toward her, soft-footed, unslinging his bow. He smacked Branica on the bottom. “No need to screech like a huntercat, woman,” he said. He grinned at Tad, teeth flashing white in his dark face.

“Have you been on the hunt before, young Fisher?” At the shake of Tad’s head, Nobono crooked a finger and jerked his head toward the dimness of the forest. “Time that you were then. Follow me and try not to set those webby feet to break twigs.”

Tad looked anxiously toward his father for permission; Pondleweed shrugged resignedly and gave a little nod. Torn between anticipation and resentment, Tad hurried behind as Nobono slipped into the underbrush.

Tad had never seen anything like the Hunter’s skill in the forest. Nobono was as swift and silent as a brown shadow, sliding from tree root to tree root, slithering through dead weeds and bracken, light as a dried leaf. Motionless, he became invisible, and Tad felt his heart give a nervous beat at the thought of losing him, of being abandoned in the forest all alone. A hand gripped his shoulder and Tad jerked with alarm.

“Softly.” It was Nobono, speaking in a breath of a whisper. He crouched, pulling Tad down beside him, and pointed. “There. Can’t you smell it? Blood.”

Tad squinted in the direction of the pointing finger, sniffing the evening air. He couldn’t smell anything. At least not anything different. Just leaf mold. And he couldn’t see anything either. He turned to ask Nobono a question, but the Hunger impatiently jerked his head, gesturing for silence. Tad looked again. Was that something moving — there, beneath that shaggy clump of ferns? He couldn’t be sure. Then he heard a faint rustle and a sound of scrabbling claws, and caught, just for an instant, a glint of beady eyes.

“Deermouse,” Nobono murmured. He barely moved his lips.

Moving slowly, the Hunter reached behind his back, slipped an arrow from his quiver, and nocked it to the string of his bow. In one silent, fluid motion, he drew the bowstring back, took aim, and let fly. There was a whispered rush of air and a sharp cry. Tad winced.

Nobono stood up, nocking a second arrow. “Be wary yet. Deermice are dangerous, wounded,” he said. “Behind me now.”

He moved forward, soundlessly, and Tad followed. No matter how carefully he set his feet, they still made tiny crackling sounds. He wondered how Nobono did it.

The deermouse was dying. It lay on its side, Nobono’s arrow buried deep in its chest. Its muzzle was dark with blood. As Tad watched, it twitched once, convulsively, and went limp. Its bright eyes glazed over and turned dull. Tad felt sick. Nobono reached down and gripped the haft of the arrow, then pulled it sharply out of the deermouse’s flesh. He bent to clean the stone point on a withered blade of grass.

“Never leave your arrows,” he said. “A good arrow”— he reached back to pat his quiver affectionately —“a good arrow, he is a friend. Faithful like your greeny frogs, eh?”

His teeth flashed at Tad, bright in the dimness. Then he pulled a knife from the leather sheath at his belt, knelt, and with a sharp downward slash cut off the deermouse’s front paw. Blood dripped sluggishly onto the dead leaves.

Tad gasped.

“It is the way of the Hunters,” Nobono said. He was scooping a shallow hole in the dusty forest floor. “It is the Honor of the Hunt. To prepare the weapons, to stalk, to take blood. And then, always a part of the kill to Great Rona. To show our gratitude.”

He placed the bloody paw in the hole, covered it with earth, and tamped it down. Reverently, he drew a circle around the spot with the point of his knife, muttering soft words under his breath.

Then he sprang to his feet, flashing his white grin again at the gaping Tad.

“Now we skin the kill and prepare the meat.”

In the following quarter hour, as he struggled to help Nobono, Tad became convinced that he could never be a Hunter. Nobono, with quick skillful cuts, skinned the mouse, sliced the meat of its haunches into slabs, and directed Tad to stack them on a fallen birch leaf.

“We drag the meat home, eh? Easier than carrying it,” he explained. “Though this mouse, he has not much meat on his bones. It is the Dry. The eating is poor.”

His arms were red to the elbows. Tad felt sicker than ever. It must have showed in his face, because Nobono paused in his cutting and slicing and sat back on his heels.

“You do not like the Hunt, eh?”

Tad felt guilty and awkward. He averted his eyes from the stripped remains of the mouse carcass.

“It’s just different,” he said haltingly. “It’s not . . . I’m just not used to it, I guess.”

“To eat is to kill,” Nobono said. “To survive is to spill blood, little Fisher. It is the way of the world. The fox kills the squirrel; the hawk kills the sparrow; the owl kills the mouse. Even you, you hunt your watery fish.”