In the Beginning (8 page)

Desperately Dom lumbered after her through the water, threshing and splashing his way to the bank. By the time he got there and heaved himself out she was far away in the wood, a distant running figure among the trees. He shouted after her, but she did
not check in her flight and he wasted no more time but went after her.

It was a long chase but by now his leg was well again and his strength greater than hers. He followed her through the wood and out onto the open slope below, the gap between them narrowing all the time. A brightly colored bird rose squawking from a bush as she crashed through it, and farther on two small pigs scattered away in the long grass.

She looked back and faltered, and he knew he had her. In another couple of minutes he caught her—she stood with shoulders bowed, awaiting chastisement.

The previous day he had beaten her coldly, as something that had to be done to teach a necessary lesson. This time he was bitterly angry. She had not only refused to learn the lesson, but had tried to kill him, her master. She fell to the ground, moaning, and he lifted her by her long hair and beat her again.

It was a distant sound that stopped him at last. It came from farther up the valley, from the direction of the village. He had heard it before, many
times, and it had filled him with excitement, but today it chilled his blood. It was the cry of the hunters in the chase.

Va heard it, too, and looked up at him, shivering and sobbing. He said, speaking to himself:

“It may be they are hunting game. But usually they go farther afield—there is not much game left here in the valley.”

She stared at him, uncomprehendingly. After a moment the cry came once more.

“And if it is not game they are hunting . . .”

He gestured abruptly to her to follow him, and she obeyed meekly. They went back up to higher ground, the small hill which was crowned by the wood. There was one spot which afforded a view a good way along the valley. Dom shaded his eyes against the sun, and peered southward.

He picked out a single dot first, then a second, eventually many. They were half a mile away, he judged, and heading this way.

They were spread out across the valley at intervals of about fifty yards. It was the formation and the maneuver used by beaters to drive game toward
the waiting hunters; but if that had been the object the hunters would have been in position roughly where he and Va now were. So they were not beaters but hunters, and knowing that, Dom knew what quarry they sought.

If Dom had merely gone away from the tribe, his father would have let him go unhindered; but he had taken Va with him and Va was the property of the chief. So his father was leading the hunters in a chase that was not for game but for Dom and Va—to kill one and repossess the other.

They could not stay in the wood, which offered no protection against men whose eyes and ears were as keen as his own—no, keener. They could not stay in the valley, even, because the hunters would scour it from end to end.

He drew Va down into cover and crouched beside her. It was lucky they had not been spotted already. If they had been, those distant dots would not have been moving so slowly—the chase would have been on at full pelt, and Dom had no illusions about the way in which it must end. He might be able to outrun a girl, but there were a dozen at least among the
hunters, including his father, who could even more easily run him down.

He said to Va, whispering although they were well out of earshot of the hunters:

“We must get away. And they must not see us. Follow me, and stay under cover.”

She looked at him silently. Dom slipped away through the thicket, beckoning her to follow. For a moment she seemed to hesitate; then she came.

8

T
HE WOOD, WHEN THEY GOT
there after fleeing from the village, was an entirely different place for Va. In the past it had been special to her; her mother and the Village Mother had known that she went to it but not even they had ever gone there with her. The wood had been a place to be alone and private; to enjoy times of happiness, more rarely to console herself when her heart was sore.

And in the wood the most important part was the pool, where she had bathed, or fed the squirrels with nuts, or simply sat and thought. It had seemed
right that it had been at the pool that she had found Dom, because the pool was an abode for dreams and ­wonders.

After having it to herself for so long it had been strange, but good also and exciting, to have someone to share it with. She had loved it very deeply in the past but those two days with Dom—the nursing and the teaching and the playing—had been the best of all. Even what had happened at the end—the killing of the squirrel—although it marred the memory, had not destroyed it.

It was destroyed now, though, and the wood itself changed beyond recognition. It had turned into a place of gloom and horror, almost as much so as the desert of death that had been her home. When, after he had eaten, Dom offered her some of the fruit she had picked at his command, she could not possibly have taken it. It was not just because of her misery or her hatred of him: everything here was poisoned, and she would have choked on the fruit she had once loved.

She made his bed as he ordered her, and sat on the ground near him. She thought of all those she
had loved whom Dom's tribe had murdered—her mother and grandmother, father, brother—and all those who had been her friends, like Gri.

Yet she had not seen Gri's body. It was true that she had not seen all the slain—in the end she had averted her eyes from the ugliness of the ­slaughter—but it might be, as the Village Mother had suggested, that some had escaped in the first confusion. Gri might have escaped. If she could only find him they could go away together to a different land, forgetting the piles of corpses and remembering only the living—helping each other to remember.

First, though, she had to be free of Dom. She watched him in the moonlight, waiting for signs that he was asleep, and at last heard his breathing become quiet and deepen. When she rose carefully to her feet, watching still, he did not move. So she began to creep away from the clearing and then, hearing him rouse up behind her, ran hard through the black and silver trees.

The beating he gave her when he caught her hurt, but it was not so bad as the feeling inside herself of having failed, and in doing so having failed the
Village Mother. Nor as bad as the humiliation of the belt being roped round her neck, and of being forced to lie yoked to someone whom in her mind she no longer thought of as Dom, but as this savage. He was asleep quite soon, properly so now, but she lay awake for a long time. If she had still had her stone knife she would have plunged it in his throat or breast, but she had nothing except her bare hands. And she knew her touch would waken him, and that against his strength she was powerless.

She slept at last, and woke and slept and woke, fitfully, through the long night.

The pool next day was like everything else here, as repulsive to her as once it had been inviting. But after he had pushed her in the water and jumped in after her, she had an uprush of hope. Here his strength was lessened, and her physical skill the greater. And perhaps there might be a spirit in the pool which would aid her. So she dived deeply and caught hold of his leg, and tried to drag him under.

She thought at first she was succeeding, as he struggled in vain to free himself—she had taken a deep breath before she dived and was sure she could
hold out longer under water. But then, instead of trying to get away, he came at her, punching viciously, and even here his strength prevailed. So she broke clear and swam for the bank, climbed out of the pool and ran.

She had a good lead this time and she ran hard, but she did so with no real expectation of getting away. She had failed in this as in everything else: there was no friendly spirit in the pool, no hope or help anywhere. She ran out of the wood and down the hillside, but she knew he would catch her. When he did, and beat her so savagely, she thought he might be angry enough to kill her, and almost welcomed it. It had been silly to imagine that Gri might have escaped—he was dead like the Village Mother, like all her people. What use could there be in going on living? When the beating stopped suddenly she looked up at him, waiting for it to start again, even wanting it.

Then she heard the distant cry and knew what it was that had checked him. She saw the anger drain from his face, giving way to fear. He spoke, and though she had no idea what he said, she heard the tremor in his voice.

She followed him obediently back up the hill, and took cover when he drew her down. When he beckoned to her to come away with him she understood the gesture, and knew how great was his fear of those small dots farther up the valley—so much greater than her own because she had had her fill of fear and gone beyond it. She hated the hunters who were searching for them, but she hated Dom more because he had destroyed more, and a more precious thing, than they had. All she needed to do was cry out: they would hear her and come running. It would not matter what happened afterward as long as she saw Dom brought down and slain first.

For a moment she thought she would do that, and framed the cry in her throat. He beckoned her again, almost pleadingly. Then, really not knowing why she did so, she stifled the cry and followed him.

They traveled fast all that day and the next, Dom occasionally pausing on high ground to scan the horizon for pursuers. After that first sighting they saw none, but he kept up a frantic pace—running and walking, running and walking, rarely resting,
impatient when they had to stop to look for food.

At night he was careful to find good cover; and at night he tied her to him again so that she could not escape. This time, weary from the day's exertions, she slept heavily. In the morning Dom was awake early, dragging her to her feet: they ran southward through the dim cool dawn.

After two days with no sign of pursuit, Dom permitted their pace to slacken somewhat. They had come, also, into more level country, where it was possible to see for a long way. There were few trees here, and those there were bore no fruit. Instead Va searched for roots that could be eaten and they stayed their hunger on them, very grudgingly in Dom's case.

When they had traveled several days across the plain the landscape changed again. There were more trees, though still barren of fruit, sandy soil with thin wiry grass, and many rocks. The loose earth was very hot in the sunshine, and tiring to her feet.

In the early evening, Dom killed a rabbit. He stalked it carefully, gesturing to Va to stay back, and had almost reached it when it took fright and tried
to whisk away. He quickly flung his club, striking the animal as it ran, and despite her hatred she had to admire the skill with which he did it. He picked up the rabbit with a shout of satisfaction and displayed it triumphantly.

What happened next, though, sickened her utterly. He used his teeth to bite through the skin of the rabbit's neck and quickly skinned it with his fingers. Then he tore a limb off the carcass and, putting it in his mouth, vigorously chewed it. Va watched, fascinated and appalled by the sight. She had known he was a savage, coming from a tribe of brutal killers, but she had not dreamed he would be an eater of raw flesh.

He finished that leg, tossing away the bone, and ripped off another leg to eat. Then, pausing, he tore away a third limb and threw it in Va's direction. She made no attempt to catch it, and it fell on the sandy ground.

Dom spoke one of the words he had learned from her when she fed him fruit and berries by the pool.

“Eat. . . .”

He pointed at the rabbit's leg. Va turned away in
disgust, but she could still hear the noise of his chewing.

Darkness was falling, and he indicated that they would stay where they were for the night. He set Va to gathering grass to make a bed for him. The grass was thin, shorter than the grasses of the valley, and it took her a long time to get enough of it together.

Suddenly she felt very hungry—she had eaten nothing apart from a few roots much earlier in the day. The rabbit's leg lay where it had fallen when Dom tossed it to her. Hungry though she was she could not contemplate eating it raw, but a thought came to her. There was a dead tree not far away, its branches withered and bleached by the sun. She went to it and broke some off, and collected them in a heap on the ground.

Dom watched but did not try to stop her as she did this; nor as she twirled one pointed stick in the hollow of another. But he started back when smoke appeared, and gave a grunt of amazement when the smoke turned to flame and ignited the dry grass she held close to it.

She made the fire, building up from twigs to
thicker branches, and cautiously Dom drew closer. He pointed at the fire and asked her something, but she did not know what he was saying. Then he tapped his chest and said “Dom,” and pointing once more to the fire, asked again. She knew he wanted her to name it but stared at him in silence. Naming belonged to their first encounter, to the happy past which his cruelty had destroyed.

But he stood over her and hit her: so she named it:

“Fire.”

“Fire,” Dom repeated.

He put his hand down and she flinched, but he only touched her shoulder in what was plainly a sign of approval. She guessed then that his tribe had never known fire, except as an accidental thing. Even the Village Mother, she thought with misery, had not realized what savages they were.

When the fire died down Va put the rabbit leg in the embers. Dom watched her, silent again, his nose twitching as the smell of roasting rose in the night air. When it was done she hooked it out with a stick and allowed it to cool; then she took the leg and started to chew it.

The taste was good but she had little chance to
enjoy it; Dom spoke to her peremptorily and stretched out his hand. Silently Va gave him the leg. He held it under his nose for a moment, sniffing, before he opened his mouth and started to gnaw at it. He grunted again, this time with pleasure.

He ate about half the meat off the leg and then, after patting her shoulder with his free hand in further approval, held out what was left. He was offering to let her eat it, but even though hunger cramped her stomach she would not touch it, soiled by his teeth. When she shook her head he looked as though he might be going to hit her, but instead returned to the leg and finished it off himself.

That night, his hunger satisfied and feeling secure at last from pursuit, he used her body for his pleasure. It was painful for her but no more than that: she could not hate him more than she did already.

• • •

They went on, day after day, their journey no longer urgent but steadily progressing south.

One day he had her make him a knife. They were in a rocky valley littered with flints, and he picked up one of them and said the word “knife” in her tongue. It was not the right kind of stone and
she shook her head. Dom cuffed her, though not hard, and she searched for a stone that would be suitable.

She found one at last of the right size and thickness, and another jagged piece with which she could chip it. Dom sat close by and watched her as she worked. It was not easy—making knives required a skill that was developed by long ­practice—and the result, after hours of labor, was poor. The old men of the village, who were best at such things, would have laughed scornfully at the sight of it.

Dom, though, took it from her with evident satis­faction, pressing the point experimentally against his skin and touching her shoulder in a way which showed she had pleased him. Va stared at him, her face expressionless. The stains of her ­people's blood—the blood of her father and brother—no longer marked his gleaming club of bone; but she had not forgotten them, nor the horrors of that day. She had made the knife at his ­command—she would have liked nothing better than to drive it into his heart.

She tried to kill him with it that very night. The
knife was held in a slot in his leather belt, and while he slept she got her fingers onto it and cautiously eased it free. But he awoke while she was in the act, and twisted away from her like a cat. Involuntarily exerting his full strength, he dragged her after him by the noose around her neck. She almost choked as the thin leather cut deep into her throat.

After that, as was only to be expected, she was beaten. He was angry and the beating was severe, but once more the sense of having failed was harder to bear.

She had also shown him that, despite her apparent acquiescence, she was still not to be trusted. Although he wore the knife in his belt by day, from that point Dom took precautions at night, putting it out of her reach where they lay. It was impossible for her to get hold of it without disturbing him.

• • •

So they went on together, always traveling south. The land changed as they went—sometimes arid and rocky, sometimes grassland, sometimes thickly wooded—but was nowhere as rich and green as the valley had been. Finding water was frequently a problem, and once they went a whole day and most
of the next without it before Dom's keen eyes traced signs that led them to a water hole.

For the most part they lived on roots, but occasionally Dom found game. Usually this was in the form of such small animals as rabbits, but once he killed a young pig. He used the knife to cut it up and Va turned her head away, expecting him to eat the raw flesh as he had done before. But he said the word to her—“fire”—and Va found dry sticks and made a fire among the rocks. Dom watched her as he had watched her make the knife, and when the fire was crackling took a stick himself and twirled it against another piece, trying to make the fire come.