Firesong Read online

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.’

  He bowed his head, and they all repeated,

  ‘We will meet again.’

  They could do no more. Hanno gave Bowman a quick sad smile, and turned to his wife. Bowman caught the faint whine he had heard before, and the quick shimmer in the air. He saw his father give a small start, and raise one hand to his throat. Bowman suddenly felt the close presence of danger.

  ‘What is it, pa?’

  ‘Nothing. Some little stinging insect. Nothing to worry about.’

  He turned away, a little too quickly.

  ‘Pa, look at me.’

  Hanno turned back, frowning with annoyance.

  ‘I’m alright, I tell you. We have to get moving. We’ve wasted enough time already.’

  For the last time Bowman looked down at the long mound by the roadside, and wondered fearfully what would make a man tear at his own face. But now the column was reforming, and it was time to go.

  2

  Drunkenness

  While the wagon had been stationary, Seldom Erth had loosened the horses’ harness, and Mrs Chirish had decided to wrap the cook-pots in an extra layer of cloth, afraid that the shaking of the wagon-bed would shatter them. The cows had drifted off in search of grass. Many of the people had sat down.

  Now that it was time to move off again, Hanno Hath started to shout at them.

  ‘You! Cowman! If you can’t control your animals we’ll have them for dinner!’

  Creoth was speechless with surprise. Hanno never spoke like that.

  ‘You! Old man! Did I say you could unharness the horses?’

  Ira Hath, aware that something was wrong, tried to take him aside.

  ‘Hanno –’

  ‘Not now, woman. Come along, everybody! We’ve wasted enough time!’

  Kestrel heard him, and reached out for Bowman with her mind.

  What’s wrong with pa?

  I’m not sure. Something bad’s happened to him. I need to feel him.

  Come on. I’ll help you.

  Kestrel knew what her brother meant when he said he wanted to ‘feel’ their father: he wanted to enter Hanno’s mind. For that he needed close physical contact, preferably brow to brow. But Hanno was moving fast, never staying in one place for long. The twins didn’t want to alarm everyone by making a direct attack on their father.

  ‘Pa,’ said Kestrel. ‘Before we set out again, let’s have a wish huddle.’

  ‘No time,’ said Hanno.

  ‘Please. It won’t take a moment.’

  ‘Ma! Pinto!’ called Bowman. ‘Wish huddle!’

  Hanno turned on them, eyes blazing with anger.

  ‘I am the head of this family! You heard me say we have no time! How dare you disobey me!’

  Pinto had come running.

  ‘But I’d like a wish huddle, pa –’

  Smack! He struck Pinto across the face with the flat of his hand.

  ‘You will do as I say!’

  The blow hurt. Pinto bit her lip to stop herself crying, not understanding how her gentle father could hit her so hard.

  ‘I’m sorry, pa.’

  Hold him! Don�
�t let him move!

  Bowman and Kestrel hurled themselves forward in the same moment. Bowman got his arms round his father’s chest, pinning his arms to his side, while Kestrel wrapped herself round his legs. Hanno struggled, and fell to the ground, but Bowman did not let go. He pressed his head to his father’s head, and summoned all his power to force his way into his father’s mind. He found it at once, felt its shape without seeing it: it was like a grub, curled up tight, with a thick and slimy skin. He tried to grasp it, but it was slippery, and it wriggled out of his grip. It was strong, and growing stronger, feeding on its host that was his father.

  Bowman set about flooding his own mind into his father’s mind, filling him up, leaving the grub no room to breathe. None of this was apparent to the others, who saw only that Bowman and Kestrel had fallen to the ground with their father in their arms, and were holding onto him. They crowded round, not sure what to do.

  ‘Leave them!’ said Ira.

  Bowman found his father’s brow at last, and pressed his own brow against it, and the force pulsed from him in waves.

  Out! Out! Out!

  Suddenly he felt all resistance cease. His father’s body gave a juddering jerk, and went limp. The creature was gone.

  Hanno Hath let his head fall. Bowman released his hold. He took his father’s face and turned it, so he could see it. It was mottled with pink blotches, and beaded in sweat. Bowman gathered up his loose sleeve and wiped his father’s brow. Kestrel let go of his legs, and moved to his other side, resting his head on her lap. Ira sat down close by, as did Pinto. Hanno’s eyes opened. He looked dazed.

  ‘Are you alright now, pa?’ asked Pinto.

  ‘Yes, darling.’

  Bowman stood up, to reassure the anxious crowd.

  ‘He’s alright. Nothing serious.’

  As he spoke, he looked round all the watching faces, searching for signs of any others who had been attacked in the same way. But everyone seemed as they had been before.

  Hanno got up off the ground, shaking his head and smiling.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what that was all about.’ His eyes fell on Pinto, whose cheek still bore the red mark of his blow. ‘Did I hit you?’

  ‘Yes, pa.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to, my darling. It wasn’t me that did that. I’d never hurt you.’

  ‘I know, pa.’

  Hanno smiled at the staring faces all round.

  ‘I’m not as strong as I thought I was.’

  ‘What was it?’ they asked him. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I seem to have been stung by some kind of poisonous insect. There may be more of these insects in the air around us, and they may sting you.’

  The people began to look nervously about them.

  ‘They’re too small to see. Even the sting is tiny. You hardly feel it. It’s like an itch.’ He touched his throat.

  ‘What does it do, Hanno? Will it harm us?’

  ‘It doesn’t exactly do any harm. What it does is bring on a kind of drunkenness. I don’t know how else to explain it.’

  ‘Drunkenness!’

  The younger men laughed, and nudged each other. Rollo Shim waved one arm in the air and called out,

  ‘Here I am! Sting me!’

  ‘It’s not pleasant,’ warned Hanno gravely. ‘Please, if you think you’ve been stung, go to my son Bowman. He has a way of dealing with it.’

  A sudden gust of icy wind reminded them all that this was no time of year to stay still, for those with no sheltering homes. So the marchers prepared to set off once more. Before taking up their places in the column, Hanno and Bowman exchanged a few brief words alone.

  ‘I think whatever it was came out of the dead man,’ said Bowman.

  ‘You saved me, Bo. I do know that.’

  ‘It made you shout, and give orders. Not like you at all.’

  ‘No. I’m happiest in my own small quiet world, aren’t I? With my family and my books. I don’t want to make people fear me. I’m only leading our people now because I believe in Ira’s gift. Nobody is obliged to follow me.’

  Bowman could hear the puzzled note in his father’s voice, and realised that he was not as sure as he wanted to make out.

  ‘They follow you because they respect you.’

  ‘All I mean to say, Bo, is I don’t set myself up as wiser or more important than others. Who am I, to tell them what to do?’

  ‘You’re our leader, pa.’

  Hanno gave him an odd smile. Bowman reached gently into his father’s mind, and was surprised by what he found there. He heard a chatter of thought-voices saying, What an absurdity you are! Go back to your library, librarian! Nobody pays you any attention. Speak more softly or people will laugh. But deeper than these sounds, like a steady beat below the cackle of interference, he caught another voice, that whispered, I do know more, I am wiser, they would do well to follow me.

  What is this fly that came from a dead man’s mouth? Bowman asked himself. What does it do to us? How can it reach such deep and hidden passions?

  He remembered then how he too, long ago, had been touched in just such a way. In the halls of the Morah, when he had looked into those eyes that were the eyes of a multitude, he had felt the stirring of wild desires within himself, and he had been changed. Was this stinging fly a creature of the Morah?

  He felt a sudden lurch of fear.

  I’m not ten years old any more. I have powers of my own.

  The Morah comes from us, he told himself. The Morah is ourselves. This stinging fly has no poison; unless it takes poison to discover to ourselves our own hidden passions.

  This last thought was almost the most frightening of them all. What if all of us are quite different inside? What if some tiny insect, with a momentary scratch, can transform us into this alien self? My gentle father becomes a shouting dictator. And I, I become a killer –

  He shook his head. Better not follow that path. Whether the insects came from the Morah or not, he was the only one who could protect his people from their poison, and that was his task. That was all he needed to know.

  As the march was resumed, Hanno Hath’s strange drunkenness was on everyone’s mind. The people looked out for the flies, slapped their own arms and faces every time they imagined something had settled on them, and watched each other for evidence of strange behaviour. Mrs Chirish complained that the pace of the march was too rapid, saying, ‘It makes my legs jabber.’ Was that a sign of drunkenness? Creoth answered her, ‘If the cows can keep up, madam, so can you.’ That seemed unnecessarily harsh, coming from the kindly Creoth, the very man who had helped to carry Mrs Chirish on the slave march. Had he been stung by the invisible flies? Then young Ashar Warmish started to giggle, and couldn’t stop; but it turned out that she and her friend Red Mimilith had been making moonish faces at the Shim brothers, and it was this that made her laugh.

  Little Fin Marish, who was eight years old, took advantage of the general excitement to run ahead to the front of the column to march by Mumpo’s side. She adored Mumpo, as did all the smaller girls, because he was tall and strong and slow in his speech, and believed everything you ever said to him.

  ‘Mumpo,’ she said, ‘did you know you talk in your sleep?’

  ‘No,’ said Mumpo. ‘What do I say?’

  ‘You say, “Pooa pooa Pinto! Hubba hubba Fin!”’

  ‘Do I? Do I say that? I wonder why.’

  ‘Because you hate Pinto,’ said Fin, ‘and you love me.’

  Miller Marish came looking for Fin, and scolded her sharply for leaving her place in the column. Fin responded by pointing an accusing finger at him, and crying out in a shrill high voice,

  ‘My papa’s become a horrid monster! I think the flies have stung him!’

  The effect of so many false alarms was that quite quickly they all became tired of the matter, and stopped believing the young people with their games. After the first hour on the resumed march they had forgotten that they were to watch out for eac
h other’s behaviour. No one else had been stung, and their spirits were high. The going was easier than it had been for some time, because they were making their way down a gentle slope; and now that the mountains had been sighted, there was a general feeling that the long trek would one day have an end after all.

  So the wagon wheels crunched on over the stony ground, and the horses clop-clopped along, and each of the marchers fell into their own private dream of the life they would make for themselves when at last they reached the homeland. Creoth, feeling he had been a little sudden with Mrs Chirish, chose to tell her of the farm he planned to establish.

  ‘Not a great deal of land. I’m not as young as I was. Just a meadow or two for the cattle to graze, with the river on one side, and the sea on the other. I shall have a little house for myself, just the one room, and a nice shady milking parlour that looks out to sea. To the east, if possible. Then I shall watch the sun rise during morning milking. Beard of my ancestors! There’s a life to envy, eh, ma’am? The smell of fresh milk, and the light of the rising sun.’

  ‘You may sit and shiver in your shed, sir. I shall be in my bed.’

  ‘In your bed, eh?’

  ‘My bed will be such a bed! Up on each side, and down in the middle, and fluffy as a nest! I shall lie in my nest like an egg, and my poor legs will never ache again.’

  ‘Just lie there, will you, ma’am? And do nothing all the long day?’

  ‘I might get up and eat a little this and that around noon, and stand on the porch and nod to my neighbours, and wish them good day. Then it’s back to my bed.’

  Silman Pillish, stumping along beside the wagon, told Seldom Erth about the school he would set up in the homeland. Seldom Erth showed no signs of wanting to hear this, but nor did he object, and this was permission enough for Pillish.

  ‘In my school, the lessons will be a service to the children, not a burden. They’ll come to me, you see, and tell me what they wish to learn – for example, a song to sing together – you never forget the songs you learn as a child, don’t you agree?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Seldom Erth.

  ‘I’ll say, Ah, I can help you there! Then I’ll teach them a song – perhaps “The Hen and her Chicks”.’