Lok was aware of the old woman moving earlier than any of them, busy about the fire in the first dawn light. She built up a pile of wood and in his sleep he heard the wood begin to burst and crackle. Fa was still crouched and the old man's head stirred on her shoulder restlessly. Ha moved and stood up. He went down the terrace and made water, then came back and looked at the old man. Mal was not waking like the others. He sat heavily on his hams, turning his head from side to side in Fa's hair and breathing quickly as a doe when she is heavy with young. His mouth was open wide to the hot fire; but another fire that was invisible was melting him away; it lay everywhere on the sunken flesh of his limbs and round the hollows of his eyes. Nil ran down to the river and brought water in her cupped hands. Mal sucked the water in before his eyes were open. The old woman put more wood on the fire. She pointed into the recess and jerked her head at the forest. Ha touched Nil on the shoulder.
"Come!"
The new one woke too, scrambled over Nil's shoulder, mewed at her a moment, then was at her breast. Nil padded after Ha towards the quick way down to the forest while the new one milked her. They edged round the corner and disappeared into the morning mist that lay almost level with the top of the fall.
Mal opened his eyes. They had to lean down to him before they could hear what he said.
"I have a picture."
The three people waited. Mal raised a hand and put it flat on top of his head above the eyebrows. Though two fires were shaking in his eyes he was not looking at them but at something far away across the water. So intent and fearful was this attention that Lok turned to see if he could find what Mal was frightened of. There was nothing: only a log, moved from some creeky shore of the river by the spring flood slid past them and up-ended noiselessly over the lip of the fall.
"I have a picture. The fire is flying away into the forest and eating up the trees."
His breathing was quicker now he was awake.
"It is burning. The forest is burning. The mountain is burning——"
His head turned to each of them. There was panic in his voice.
"Where is Lok?"
"Here."
Mal screwed up his eyes at him, frowning and bewildered.
"Who is this? Lok is on his mother's back and the trees are eaten."
Lok shifted his feet and laughed foolishly. The old woman took Mal's hand and raised it to her cheek.
"That is a picture of long ago. That is all done. You have seen it in your sleep."
Fa patted his shoulder. Then her hand stayed against the skin and her eyes opened wide. But she spoke to Mal gently as she might have spoken to Liku.
"Lok is standing on his feet before you. See! He is a man."
Relieved to understand at last, Lok spoke quickly to all of them.
"Yes, I am a man." He spread out his hands. "Here I am, Mal."
Liku woke, yawning, and the little Oa fell off her shoulder. She put it to her chest.
"I am hungry."
Mal turned so quickly that he nearly fell away from Fa and she had to grab him.
"Where are Ha and Nil?"
"You sent them," said Fa. "You sent them for wood. And Lok and Liku and me for food. We will bring some for you quickly."
Mal rocked to and fro, his face in his hands.
"That is a bad picture."
The old woman put her arms round him.
"Now sleep."
Fa drew Lok away from the fire.
"It is not good that Liku should come out on the plain with us. Let her stay by the fire."
"Mal said."
"He is sick in his head."
"He saw all things burning. I was afraid. How can the mountain burn?"
Fa spoke defiantly.
"To-day is like yesterday and to-morrow."
Ha and Nil with the new one laboured through the entry to the terrace. They bore armfuls of broken branches. Fa ran to them.
"Must Liku come with us because Mal said so?"
Ha pulled at his lip.
"That is a new thing. But it was spoken."
"Mal saw the mountain burning."
Ha looked up at the great dim height above them.
"I do not see this picture."
Lok giggled nervously.
"To-day is like yesterday and to-morrow."
Ha twitched his ears at them and smiled gravely.
"It was spoken."
All at once the indefinable tension broke and Fa, Lok and Liku ran swiftly along the terrace. They leapt at the cliff and began to clamber up. Directly they were high enough to see the line of smoky spray at the foot of the fall the noise of it hit them. When the cliff leaned back a little, Lok went down on one knee, and shouted.
"Up!"
The light was brighter now. They could see the shining river where it lay in the gap through the mountains and the vast stretches of fallen sky where the mountains dammed back the lake. Below them the mist hid the forest and the plain and rested quietly against the side of the mountain. They began to run along the steep side, flitting down towards the mist. They passed across the bare rock and reached high screes of broken and sharp stones, clambered down crazy gullies until they came to rounded rocks where there was a scant fledging of grass and a few bushes that leaned away from the wind. The grass was wet and spiders' webs hitched across the blades broke and clung to their ankles. The slope decreased, the bushes were more frequent. They were coming down to the limit of the mist.
"The sun will drink up the mist."
Fa paid no attention. She was questing, head down, so that the curls by her cheek brushed drops of water from the leaves. A bird squawked and blundered heavily away into the air. Fa pounced on the nest and Liku beat her feet against Lok's belly.
"Eggs! Eggs!"
She slipped from his back and danced among the tufts of grass. Fa broke a thorn from a bush and pierced the egg at both ends. Liku snatched it from her hands and began to suck noisily. There was an egg for Fa and one for Lok. All three were empty between two breathings. When they had eaten them the people knew how hungry they were and began to search busily. They went forward, bent and questing. Though they did not look up they knew that they were following the retreating mist down on to the level ground and that towards the sea the luminous opacity contained the first rays of the sun. They parted leaves and peered into bushes, they found the unawakened grubs, the pale shoots that lay under a load of stone. As they worked and ate Fa consoled them.
"Ha and Nil will bring a little food from the forest."
Lok was finding grubs, soft delicacies full of strength.
"We cannot go back with a single grub. And back. And then a single grub."
Then they came into an open space. A stone had fallen from the mountain and struck another from its place. The patch of bare earth had been invaded by fat white shoots that had broken into the light, yet were so short and thick that they snapped at a touch. Side by side they concentrated on the circle, eating in. There was so much that they talked as they ate, brief ejaculations of pleasure and excitement, there was so much that for a while they ceased to feel famished and were only hungry. Liku said nothing but sat with her legs stretched out and ate with both hands.
Presently Lok made an embracing gesture.
"If we eat at this end of the patch then we can bring the people to eat at that end."
Fa spoke indistinctly.
"Mal will not come and she will not leave him. We shall come back this way when the sun goes the other side of the mountain. We will take to the people what we can carry in our arms."
Lok belched at the patch and looked at it affectionately.
"This is a good place."
Fa frowned and munched.
"If the patch were nearer——"
She swallowed her mouthful with a gulp.
"I have a picture. The good food is growing. Not here. It is growing by the fall."
Lok laughed at her.
"No plant like this grows near the fall!"
Fa put her hands wide apart, watching Lok all the time. Then she began to bring them together. But though the tilt of her head, the eyebrows moved slightly up and apart, asked a question, she had no words with which to define it. She tried again.
"But if—— See this picture. The overhang and the fire is down here."
Lok lifted his face away from his mouth and laughed.
"This place is down here. And the overhang and the fire is there."
He broke off more shoots, stuffed them into his mouth and went on eating. He looked into the clearer sunlight and read the signs of the day. Presently Fa forgot her picture and stood up. Lok stood up too and spoke for her.
"Come!"
They padded down among the rocks and bushes. All at once the sun was through, a round of dulled silver, racing slantwise through the clouds yet always staying in the same place. Lok went first, then Liku, serious and eager on this her first proper food hunt. The slope eased and they reached the cliff-like border that gave on to the heathery sea of the plain. Lok poised and the others stilled behind him. He turned, looked a question at Fa, then raised his head again. He blew out air through his nose suddenly, then breathed in. Delicately he sampled this air, drawing a stream into his nostrils and allowing it to remain there till his blood had warmed it and the scent was accessible. He performed miracles of perception in the cavern of his nose. The scent was the smallest possible trace. Lok, if he had been capable of such comparisons, might have wondered whether the trace was a real scent or only the memory of one. So faint and stale was this scent that when he looked his question at Fa she did not understand him. He breathed the word at her.
"Honey?"
Liku jumped up and down till Fa hushed her. Lok tried the air again but this time a new coil of it came to him and this was empty. Fa waited.
Lok did not need to think where the wind was coming from. He clambered on to an apron of rock that held its area out to the sun and began to cast across it. The direction of the wind changed and the scent touched him again. The scent became excitingly real and soon he was following it to a little cliff that frost and sun had fissured and rain worn into a mesh of crevices. There were stains round one of these like the marks of brown fingers, and a single bee, hardly alive, though the sun shone full on the rock-face, was clinging perhaps a hand's-breadth from the opening. Fa jerked her head.
"There will be little honey."
Lok reversed his thorn bush and pushed the torn butt into the crack. A few bees began to hum dully, drugged by cold and hunger. Lok levered the butt about in the crack. Liku was hopping.
"Is there honey, Lok? I want honey!"
Bees crawled out of the crack and lumbered round them. Some fell heavily to the ground and crawled with fanning wings. One hung in Fa's hair. Lok drew the stick back. There was a little honey and wax on the end. Liku stopped jumping and began to lick the butt clean. Now that the others had dulled the point of their hunger they could enjoy watching Liku eat.
Lok chattered.
"Honey is best. There is strength in honey. See how Liku likes honey. I have a picture of the time when honey will run out of this crack in the rock so that you can taste honey off your fingers—so!"
He smeared his hand down the rock, licked his fingers and tasted the memory of honey. Then he thrust the butt into the crack again so that Liku might eat. Presently Fa became restless.
"This is old honey from the time when we went down to the sea. We must find more food for the others. Come!"
But Lok was thrusting the butt in again for joy of Liku's eating, the sight of her belly and the memory of honey. Fa went away down the apron of rock, following the mist as it sucked back to the plain. She lowered herself over the edge and was out of sight. Then they heard her cry out. Liku scrambled up on Lok's back and he flitted down the apron towards the cry with his thorn bush at the ready. At the edge of the apron was a jagged gully that led out to the open country. Fa was crouching in the mouth of this gully, looking out over the grass and heather of the plain. Lok raced to her. Fa was trembling slightly and raised on her toes. There were two yellowish creatures out there, their legs hidden by the brown bushes of heather, near enough for her to see their eyes. They were prick-eared animals, roused by her voice from their business and standing now at gaze. Lok slid Liku from his back.
"Climb."
Liku scrambled up the side of the gully and squatted, higher in the air than Lok could reach. The yellow creatures showed their teeth.
"Now!"
Lok stole forward holding his thorn bush sideways. Fa circled out to his left. She carried a natural blade of stone in either hand. The two hyenas moved closer together and snarled. Fa suddenly jerked her right hand round and the stone thumped the bitch in the ribs. The bitch yelped then ran howling. Lok shot forward, swinging the thorn bush, and thrust the spines at the dog's snarling muzzle. Then the two beasts were out of reach, talking evilly and afraid. Lok stood between them and the kill.
"Be quick, I smell cat."
Fa was already down on her knees, struggling with the limp body.
"A cat has sucked all her blood. There is no blame. The yellow ones have not even reached the liver."
She was tearing fiercely at the doe's belly with the flake of stone. Lok brandished his thorn bush at the hyenas.
"There is much food for all the people."
He could hear how Fa grunted and gasped as she tore at the furred skin and the guts.
"Be quick."
"I cannot."
The hyenas, having finished their evil talk, were circling forward to left and right. Shadows flitted across Lok as he faced them from two great birds that were floating in the air.
"Take the doe to the rock."
Fa began to lug at the doe, then cried out in anger at the hyenas. Lok backed to her, bent down, seized the doe by the leg. He began to drag the body heavily towards the gully, brandishing the thorn bush the while. Fa seized a foreleg and hauled too. The hyenas followed them, keeping always just out of reach. The people got the doe into the narrow entrance to the gully just below Liku and the two birds floated down. Fa began to slash again with her splinter of stone. Lok found a boulder which he could use hammer-wise. He began to pound at the body, breaking out the joints. Fa was grunting with excitement. Lok talked as his great hands tore and twisted and snapped the sinews. All the time the hyenas ran to and fro. The birds drifted in and settled on the rock opposite Liku so that she slithered down to Lok and Fa. The doe was wrecked and scattered. Fa split open her belly, slit the complicated stomach and spilt the sour cropped grass and broken shoots on the earth. Lok beat in the skull to get at the brain and levered open the mouth to wrench away the tongue. They filled the stomach with tit-bits and twisted up the guts so that the stomach became a floppy bag.
All the while, Lok talked between his grunts.
"This is bad. This is very bad."
Now the limbs were smashed and bloodily jointed Liku crouched by the doe eating the piece of liver that Fa had given her. The air between the rocks was forbidding with violence and sweat, with the rich smell of meat and wickedness.
"Quick! Quick!"
Fa could not have told him what she feared; the cat would not come back to a drained kill. It would be already half a day's journey away over the plain, hanging round the skirts of the herd, perhaps racing forward to sink its sabres in the neck of another victim and suck the blood. Yet there was a kind of darkness in the air under the watching birds.
Lok spoke loudly, acknowledging the darkness.
"This is very bad. Oa brought the doe out of her belly."
Fa muttered through her clenched teeth as her hands tore.
"Do not speak of that one."
Liku was still eating, unmindful of the darkness, eating the rich warm liver till her jaws ached. After Fa's rebuke, Lok no longer chattered but muttered instead.
"This is bad. But a cat killed you so there is no blame."
And as he moved his wide lips he dribbled.
The sun had cleared the mist now and they could see beyond the hyenas the heathery undulations of the plain and beyond it the lower level of light green tree-tops and the flash of water. Behind them the mountains sloped up, austere. Fa squatted back and got her breath. She rubbed the back of one hand across her brows.
"We must go high where the yellow ones cannot follow."
There was little left of the doe but torn hide, bones and hoofs. Lok handed his thorn bush to Fa. She swished it in the air and shouted rude things at the hyenas. Lok laced the haunches together with twisted gut then wound the end round his wrist so that he could hold them with one hand. He bent down and took the tail of the stomach in his teeth. Fa had an armful and he a double embrace of torn and quivering fragments. He began to retreat, grunting and fierce. The hyenas moved into the mouth of the gully, the buzzards flapped up and circled just out of reach of the bush. Liku, very bold between the man and woman, flopped her piece of liver at the buzzards.
"Go away, beaks! This is Liku's meat!"
The buzzards screamed, gave up, and went to argue with the hyenas who were crunching the split bones and the bloody hide. Lok could not talk. The food from the doe was as much as he could have carried on level ground as a proper load over the shoulder. Now it hung from him, bearing mostly against the grip of his fingers and his clenched teeth. Before they reached the top of the apron he was bending and there was pain in his wrists. But Fa understood this without sharing a picture. She came to him and took away the floppy stomach so that he could gasp easily. Then she and Liku climbed on ahead, leaving him to follow. He arranged the meat in three different ways before he could labour after them. There was such a mixture of darkness and joy in his head that he heard his heart beating. He talked to the darkness that had lain over the mouth of the gully.
"There is little food when the people come back from the sea. There are not yet berries nor fruit nor honey nor almost anything to eat. The people are thin with hunger and they must eat. They do not like the taste of meat but they must eat."
Now he was padding along the side of the mountain on a slope of smooth rock where he depended on the grip of his feet. Still dribbling as he swayed along the high rocks he added a brilliant thought.
"The meat is for Mal who is sick."
Fa and Liku found a fault in the mountain side and began to trot onward to the gap. Lok was left far behind, labouring along and looking for a rock on which he might rest his meat as the old woman had rested the fire. He found one where the fault began, a table spread and emptiness on the other side. He squatted and let the meat slither till it bore its own weight. Below and behind, the buzzards had been joined by others and an angry party was in progress. He turned away from the gully and its darkness and looked for Fa and Liku. They were far ahead, still trotting towards the gap where they would tell the others of the food and perhaps send Ha back to help him carry it. He was disinclined to go forward again and rested for a while watching the busy world. The sky was light blue and the distant bar of the sea not much darker. The darkest things to be seen were patches of deep blue shadow moving towards him over the grass and stone and heather, over the grey outcroppings of the plain. Where they rested on the trees of the forest they damped down the green mists of spring foliage and took the flash out of the river. As they came nearer the mountain they widened in extent and dragged over the crest. He looked along towards the fall where Fa and Liku were tiny figures about to duck out of sight. Then he began to frown at the air over the fall and his mouth opened. The smoke of the fire had moved and changed in quality. For a moment he thought that the old woman had shifted it but then the folly of this picture made him laugh. Neither would the old woman make smoke like that. It was a coil of yellow and white, the smoke that comes from wet wood or a green branch loaded with leaves; no one but a fool or some creature too unacquainted with the nature of fire would use it so unwisely. The idea of two fires came to him. Fire sometimes fell from the sky and flared in the forest for a while. It woke magically on the plain among the heather when the flowers had died away and the sun was too hot.
Lok laughed again at his picture. The old woman would not make such smoke and fires never woke of their own accord in the wet spring. He watched the smoke uncoil and drift away through the gap, thinning as it went. Then he smelt meat and forgot the smoke and his picture. He gathered up the lumps and staggered after Fa and Liku along the fault. The weight of the meat, and the thought of bringing all this food back to the people and their respect for the bringer kept the pictures of the smoke out of his head. Fa came running back along the fault. She took some of the lumps from his arms and they half-climbed, half-slithered down the last slope.
Smoke was rolling heavily from the overhang, blue, hot smoke. The old woman had lengthened the bed of the fire so that a pocket of warm air lay between the flames and the rock. The flames of the fire and the smoke were a wall that interrupted any attempt of the light wind to penetrate the overhang. Mal lay on the earth in this pocket. He was curled up, grey against the brown, his eyes were shut and his mouth was open. He was breathing so quickly and shallowly that his chest seemed to beat like a heart. His bones showed plainly and his flesh was like fat that the fire was melting. Nil, the new one and Ha were just moving away down to the forest as Lok came in sight. They ate as they went and Ha waved a congratulatory hand at Lok. The old woman was standing by the fire, picking at the stomach which Fa had left with her.
Fa and Lok dropped down to the terrace and ran to the fire. As he piled his meat on the scattered rocks Lok shouted across the flames to Mal.
"Mal! Mal! We have meat!"
Mal opened his eyes and got himself on one elbow. He looked across the fire at the swinging stomach and panted a grin at Lok. Then he turned to the old woman. She smiled at him and began to beat the free hand on her thigh.
"That is good, Mal. That is strength."
Liku was jumping up and down beside her.
"I ate meat. And little Oa ate meat. I frightened the beaks away, Mal."
Mal was grinning round at them and panting.
"Then after all, Mal saw a good picture."
Lok tore out a scrap of meat and chewed it. He began to laugh, staggering along the terrace in mime of the load as he had mimed the night before. He spoke indistinctly with his mouth full.
"And Lok saw a true picture. Honey for Liku and the little Oa. And armfuls of meat that a cat had killed."
They laughed with him and beat their thighs. Mal lay back, the grin faded from his face and he was silent, concentrating on his pulsing breath. Fa and the old woman sorted the meat and laid some aside on shelves of rock or in the recesses. Liku took another piece of liver and edged round the fire into the pocket where Mal lay. Then the old woman lowered the stomach gently on to a rock, untwisted the mouth and began to poke about inside.
"Bring earth."
Fa and Lok went through the entry to the terrace where rocks and bushes sloped down to the forest. They tore out lumps of coarse grass with the earth still hanging to them and brought the loads back to the old woman. She took the stomach and laid it on the ground. She scraped up fire ash with a flat stone. Lok squatted on the terrace and began to break up earth with a stick. As he worked he talked.
"Ha and Nil have brought many days' wood back. Fa and Lok have brought many days' food back. And soon the warm days will be here."
As he collected the dry, broken earth, Fa wetted it with water from the river. She carried it to the old woman who plastered it round the stomach. Then she quickly raked out the hottest ashes of the fire and piled them round the plastered earth. The ashes lay thick and the air over them shivered with heat. Fa brought more earth and sods. The old woman built these into a pile round the ashes and shut them in. Lok stopped work and stood, looking down at the food. He could see the puckered mouth of the stomach and plastered earth, then the sods. Fa nudged him aside, bent down and poured water from her cupped hands into the mouth. The old woman watched critically as Fa ran back and forth. Again and again she came from the sliding river until the surface of the water in the stomach lay level with the mouth, flat and scummy. Little bubbles bulged out of the scum, wandered and blipped out. The grass on the sods that covered the red-hot ashes began to curl. It writhed and began to blacken and smoulder. Little flames popped out of the earth and ran about in the grass or moved in balls of consuming yellow from the base of a stem to the end. Lok stepped back and reached for scraps of earth. As he poured them over the burning sods he talked to the old woman.
"It is easy to keep the fire in. The flames will not crawl away. There is nothing here for them to eat."
The old woman smiled wisely at him, saying nothing, and this made him feel silly. He tore a strip of muscle from a flabby haunch and wandered down the terrace. The sun was over the gap through the mountains and he adjusted himself without thinking to the fact that now the end part of the day was coming. Part of the day had gone so quickly that he felt he had lost something. He began to picture confusedly the overhang when he and Fa had not been in it. Mal and the old woman had waited, she pondering Mal's sickness, Mal panting, waiting for Ha with wood and Lok with food. Suddenly he understood that Mal had not been certain that they would find food. Yet Mal was wise. Though Lok felt important again at the thought of the meat, yet the knowledge that Mal had not been certain was like a cold wind. Then the knowledge, so nearly like thinking, made a tiredness in his head and he shook it off, returning to be the comfortable and happy Lok whose betters told him what to do and looked after him. He remembered the old woman, so close to Oa, knowing so indescribably much, the doorkeeper to whom all secrets were open. He felt awed and happy and witless again.
Fa was sitting by the fire toasting scraps of meat on a twig. The scraps spat and trickled as the twig burned and she stung her fingers every time she took meat off to eat. The old woman was pouring water from her hands over Mal's face. Liku sat with her back against the rock and the little Oa was on her shoulder. Liku was eating slowly now, her legs were stretched out straight in front of her and her belly was beautifully round. The old woman came back and squatted by Fa and watched the wisp of steam that rose from the bubbles in the stomach. She snatched a floating titbit, juggled with it and popped it in her mouth.
The people were silent. Life was fulfilled, there was no need to look farther for food, to-morrow was secure and the day after that so remote that no one would bother to think of it. Life was exquisitely allayed hunger. Soon Mal would eat of the soft brain. The strength and fleetness of the doe would begin to grow in him. With the wonder of this gift present in their minds they felt no need for speech. They sank then into a settled silence that might have been mistaken for abstracted melancholy, were it not for the steady movement of the muscles that ran up from their jaws and moved the curls gently on the sides of their vaulted heads.
Liku's head nodded and the little Oa fell off her shoulder. The bubbles rose busily in the mouth of the stomach, slipped to the edge and a cloud of steam puffed upwards to be sucked sideways into the rising air of the bigger fire. Fa took a twig, dipped it in the seething mess, tasted the end and turned to the old woman.
"Soon."
The old woman tasted too.
"Mal must drink of the hot water. There is strength in the water from the meat."
Fa was frowning at the stomach. She put her right hand flat on top of her head.
"I have a picture."
She scrambled out of the overhang and pointed back towards the forest and the sea.
"I am by the sea and I have a picture. This is a picture of a picture. I am——" She screwed up her face and scowled—"thinking." She came back and squatted by the old woman. She rocked to and fro a little. The old woman rested the knuckles of one hand on the earth and scratched under her lip with the other. Fa went on speaking. "I have a picture of the people emptying the shells by the sea. Lok is shaking bad water out of a shell."
Lok began to chatter but Fa stopped him.
"—There is Liku and Nil——" She paused, frustrated by the vivid detail of her picture, not knowing how to extract from it the significance she felt was there. Lok laughed. Fa brushed at him as at a fly.
"—water out of a shell."
She looked at the old woman hopefully. She sighed, and started again.
"Liku is in the forest——"
Lok pointed, laughing, to Liku who lay against a rock, sleeping. Fa struck at him this time as though she had a baby on her back.
"It is a picture. Liku is coming through the forest. She carries the little Oa——"
She was gazing earnestly at the old woman. Then Lok saw the strain go out of her face and knew that they were sharing a picture. It came to him too, a meaningless jumble of shells and Liku and water, and the overhang. He began to speak.
"There are no shells by the mountains. Only shells of the little snail people. They are caves for them."
The old woman was leaning towards Fa. Then she swayed back, lifted both hands off the earth and poised on her skinny hams. Slowly, deliberately, her face changed to that face she would make suddenly if Liku strayed too near the flaunting colours of the poison berry. Fa shrank before her and put her hands up to her face. The old woman spoke.
"That is a new thing."
She left Fa who bowed her face over the stomach and began to stir it with a twig.
The old woman laid a hand on Mal's foot and shook it gently. Mal opened his eyes but did not move. There was a tiny patch of dark saliva-stained earth on the ground by his mouth. The sunlight slanted into the overhang from the night side of the gap and lit him brightly so that shadows stretched from him to the other end of the fire. The old woman put her mouth close to his head.
"Eat, Mal."
Mal got up on one elbow, panting.
"Water!"
Lok ran down to the river and came back with water in his hands, and Mal sucked it up. Then Fa knelt on the other side and let him lean against her while the old woman dipped a stick in the broth more times than there were fingers in the whole world and put it to his mouth. There was hardly time between his breathings for him to swallow. At last he began to turn his head from side to side, avoiding the stick. Lok brought him water. Fa and the old woman laid him carefully on his side. He withdrew from them. They could see how private his thought was and how trapped. The old woman stood by the fire looking down at him. They could see that something of his privacy had reached her and lay in her face like a cloud. Fa broke away from them and ran down to the river. Lok read her lips.
"Nil?"
He went after her into the evening light and together they peered along the cliff over the river. Neither Nil nor Ha was to be seen and the forest beyond the fall was already darkening.
"They are carrying too much wood."
Fa made an agreeing noise.
"But they will bring big wood up the slope. Ha has many pictures. To carry wood on the cliff is bad."
Then they knew that the old woman was looking at them and thinking that she was the only one who understood about Mal. They came back to share the cloud in her face. The child Liku was asleep against the rock, her round belly glowing in the firelight. Mal had not even moved a finger but his eyes were still open. Suddenly the sunlight was level. There was a flapping noise from the cliff over the river and then the scrape of someone edging round the corner. Nil hurried to them along the terrace, her hands empty. She cried her words out.
"Where is Ha?"
Lok gaped at her stupidly.
"He is carrying wood with Nil and the new one."
Nil jerked at them. All at once she was shivering, though she stood within an arm's-length of the fire. Then she began talking quickly to the old woman.
"Ha is not with Nil. See!"
She ran round on the terrace demonstrating its emptiness. She came back. She peered into the overhang, caught up a piece of meat and began to tear at it. The new one woke under her hair and put out his head. After a moment she took the meat from her mouth and looked closely at each of them in turn.
"Where is Ha?"
The old woman pressed her hands on her head, considered this fresh problem for a moment and gave up. She crouched by the stomach and began to fish out meat.
"Ha was gathering wood with you."
Nil became violent.
"No! No! No!"
She bounced up and down on her feet. Her breasts bobbed and milk showed in the nipples. The new one sniffed and scrambled over her shoulder. She held him fiercely with both hands so that he mewed before he sucked. She crouched on the rock and gathered them urgently with her eyes.
"See the picture. We bring wood into a pile. Where the big dead tree is. In the open space. We talk about the doe that Fa and Lok have brought. We laugh together."
She looked across the fire and stretched out a hand.
"Mal!"
His eyes turned towards her. He went on panting. Nil talked at him, while the new one sucked at her breast and behind her the sunlight left the water.
"Then Ha goes toward the river to drink and I stay by the wood." She looked as Fa had looked when the details of the picture were too much for her. "Also he goes to ease himself. And I stay by the wood. But he cries out: 'Nil!' When I stand up"—she was miming—"I see Ha running up towards the cliff. He is running after something. He looks back and he is glad and then he is frightened and glad—so! Then I cannot see him any more." They followed her gaze up a cliff and could not see him any more. "I wait and wait. Then I go to the cliff for Ha and to come back for the wood. There is no sun on the cliff."
Her hair bristled and her teeth showed.
"There is a smell on the cliff. Two. Ha and another. Not Lok. Not Fa. Not Liku. Not Mal. Not her. Not Nil. There is another smell of a nobody. Going up the cliff and coming back. But the smell of Ha stops. There is Ha going up the cliff over the weed-tails when the sun has gone down; and then nothing."
The old woman began to move the sods from the stomach. She spoke over her shoulder.
"That is a picture in a dream. There is no other."
Nil started again in anguish.
"Not Lok. Not Mal——" She went sniffing over the rock, found herself too near the corner that gave on to the cliff and came bristling back. "There is the end of the Ha scent. Mal——!"
The others considered this picture gravely. The old woman opened the steaming bag. Nil jumped over the fire and knelt by Mal. She touched his cheek.
"Mal! Do you hear?"
Mal answered her between gasps.
"I hear."
The old woman held out meat to Nil who took it without eating. She waited for Mal to speak again, but the old woman spoke for him.
"Mal is very sick. Ha has many pictures. Eat now and be happy."
Nil screamed at her so fiercely that the people stopped eating too.
"There is no Ha. The Ha scent has ended."
For a moment no one moved. Then the people turned and looked down at Mal. With much labour he raised his body, and balanced himself on his hams. The old woman opened her mouth to speak, then shut it. Mal put his hands flat on top of his head. This made his balance even more difficult. He began to jerk.
"Ha went to the cliffs."
He coughed and lost what breath he had. They waited while the fast rhythm of his breath evened.
"There is the scent of another."
He pulled down with both hands. His body began to quiver. One leg shot out and the heel stayed him from a fall. The others waited, red in the sunset and firelight, while the steam from the broth poured up with the reek to be hidden by darkness.
"There is the scent of others."
For a moment he held his breath. Then they saw the wasted muscles of his body relax and he fell sideways as if he did not care how he struck himself against the earth. They saw him whisper.
"I cannot see this picture."
Even Lok was silent. The old woman went to the recesses and fetched wood as if she were walking in her sleep. She did things by touch and her eyes looked beyond the people. Because they could not see what she saw they stood still and meditated formlessly the picture of no Ha. But Ha was with them. They knew his every inch and expression, his individual scent, his wise and silent face. His thorn bush lay against the rock, part of the shaft water-smooth from his hot grip. The accustomed rock waited for him, there before them was the worn mark of his body on the earth. All these things came together in Lok. They made his heart swell, gave him strength as if he might will Ha to them out of the air.
Suddenly Nil spoke.
"Ha is gone."
