More and less, Lo replied. He meant that Ben was human while he could no longer be. He meant that he lived with the people while Ben could not, and although Ben might ‘know’, it did not mean that he could ‘do’. But many things came to Ben, came easily, as they travelled. He found things to eat that no human knew about – a poisonous berry that, when wrapped in a poisonous leaf, produced a drop of nectar satisfying hunger for a whole day. Grubs that wriggled from the ground if a twig was snapped over their hole in a certain way. He baked them on a fire made from dead branches that burned when spat upon. Many things. He understood how the people made light, but he could not do it. Lo could, although not easily. He surrounded them with a yellow globe that kept the darkness pulsating beyond its edge. Ben tried, and tried again, and made only a flicker that slipped beyond his control and died. Then he slept for a day and a night, while Lo watched over him, smiling to himself.
They turned north out of the arm and sailed along the coast. Half a day short of the village Lo asked Ben to put him down on a beach.
Tell my mother and father to come.
Where?
Into the forest, Lo said. He limped away.
Ben sailed on. Late in the afternoon he pulled the dinghy on to the sand and walked to the house, where he found Pearl working in the kitchen.
‘My father is waiting,’ he said. He did not want to ‘speak’ with anyone but Lo. Pearl tried to hug him but he stepped back. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I need to wash,’ and he ran back to the beach and swam in the sea. It took away his feeling of strangeness and when he came up to the house again he was able to embrace Pearl and describe his journey.
She and Hari went into the forest next morning. Ben walked through the village and over a headland to the next bay, where Xantee and Duro farmed. He spent the afternoon working with them in the fields. Their four children worked too, chattering silently, creeping at each other with ideas, leaping with jokes, some of them about poor Ben, who could not ‘speak’. He heard them but made no sign, only smiled to himself. He liked it best when the children laughed, which they did out loud. Xantee had taught them that laughter was shared and sharing was closer when everyone could hear.
‘Will my brother see me?’ Xantee asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Ben said. ‘Ask Pearl and Hari when they come back.’
They did not know either, but Xantee went into the forest alone that night and came back in the morning with tears on her face.
We spoke, Xantee told her parents, but it hurts him and he won’t let me touch him any more.
Pearl comforted her. It had been the same with Hari and her. Lo was no longer the Lo they had known. But he’s still our son, and your brother, she said.
That night they held a conference, Pearl and Hari and Xantee and Ben in the house, with Tealeaf and Blossom and Hubert joining in from far away. Blossom and Hubert were wanderers, close to each other but apart. Their connecting was like a flash of light. They roamed the forests and coastlines of the Inland Sea and the Western Sea, lived among Dwellers and humans with equal comfort and came back to the village frequently. They were not lost to their parents the way Lo was. Neither had taken a partner.
Hubert was far away in the northern mountains. Blossom was at Stone Creek with Tealeaf. They ‘spoke’ as if they were in the same room. Ben heard them but concealed it. Pearl spoke aloud to him the things he should hear.
A messenger came from Danatok, Tealeaf said. The Limping Man is massing his armies on the plain. All the tribes are there, southern and eastern and even some from the ice islands beyond the south. Danatok says they’ll march in high summer and sweep as far north as Stone Creek and then come eastwards in the spring.
How can Danatok know that? Hari said.
Danatok guesses. He uses his good sense. But it doesn’t matter when the Limping Man starts, he will come.
Why?
Fear of us. He calls us witches.
He wants to be the only speaker? Hari asked.
It’s not speaking, it’s control. It’s power. He wants to rule every living thing, everything that moves. He wants the whole world to bow down and worship him.
Why?
Because he is who he is. I have no answer but that.
They talked on but could not think of what to do. Only Ben had a plan: I’ll go there with my knife and stick it through him, he thought.
Blossom said: Hubert and I have tried to see inside him but we can’t. We can’t even see into the city. There’s a fog lying over it, with the stink of swamps. It pushes us away. This man, the Limping Man, has huge strength. Danatok has felt it. No one who hears his voice escapes. He can kill if he wants to. He can make you worship him and hold you on your knees until you die.
Why didn’t Danatok die?
There’s a boundary. This power that he wields has an edge. Danatok was there, on the edge. He would have died if the sea hadn’t carried him away. But whatever the thing is that makes the Limping Man strong lives in his palace. Some magic thing –
There is no magic, Hari said.
Some thing, magic or not. Without it he’s a man no stronger than any other.
Then I’ll go there and find what makes him strong, Hari said.
No, Hari, Pearl said.
No, Blossom said. He would kill you like a fly. He would kill me if I was alone. He would crush me in one hand. And Hubert too, alone.
Hubert said: He’s stronger than us.
They heard the sadness in his voice.
But if you go together, Tealeaf said.
No, Pearl said.
Then how do we fight him?
Not with our minds, Blossom said. Not till we know him.
We’ll creep into the city and be among his slaves and never ‘speak’. We’ll find out who he is, and what he is. Then . . .
Who will go? Hari said.
Hubert and I. But he’s far away and we need to be quick.
I’ll come as fast as I can, Hubert said.
Who else?
Our brother, Lo.
Why him? Hari said.
Blossom did not answer but Tealeaf said, Because he’s a limping man. No other reason. The two must meet . . .
And he lives with the people with no name, Blossom said.
The Limping Man will kill them too.
Listening, Ben thought: If my father goes to the city I’m going too. Pearl whispered to him what had been decided, and he repeated, aloud: ‘If my father goes to the city I’m going too.’
‘No,’ Hari said.
‘Yes,’ Ben said. ‘Lo needs me. He won’t go if you leave me behind.’
He felt Blossom smiling at him, smiling in his head. She whispered silently, Yes, he needs you, and we’ll need you too. But why are you hiding from us, Ben?
‘Get out,’ Ben said. ‘I didn’t ask for you.’
If you come you can’t hide from us. It will be dangerous.
‘I’ll “speak” when I’m ready,’ he said.
You’re ready now.
‘And when my father tells me.’
Don’t be too long, Ben. We’ll need every weapon we’ve got.
She had been speaking to him alone. Now she opened her voice: Ben can ‘speak’. He speaks with Lo. When he’s ready he’ll speak with us.
Ben stood up. ‘I’m going now. I’ll sleep outside. I’ll take a boat in the morning and pick up my father.’ He smiled. ‘I think he can make the breeze blow any way he wants. Where shall we meet? Ask Blossom.’
At Danatok’s beach, south of the poisoned hill. I’ll wait for you there, Blossom replied; and Ben heard.
He embraced Pearl and Hari and Xantee, collected the few things he would need – his blanket, his knife and water bottle and his flints for making fire – and lay down in the warm grass at the back of the gardens. The night was cloudless. Multitudes of stars spread their light, making the bays of the Inland Sea shine like the petals of a flower. Ben felt that he never wanted a roof over his head, or a bed or tables and chairs, or the touch of hands, and it made him afraid, for although he did not need company he did not want to be like his father. He felt Lo close; he had lain down somewhere beyond the hill.
My father, Ben whispered.
My son, came the reply.
There were other voices too, murmuring in Ben’s head: Blossom, Hari, Tealeaf, Pearl talking in the house. The edges of their ‘speaking’ touched his mind as, half-understanding, he drifted to sleep.
The messenger, Tealeaf said, was a girl who fled from the burrows. She saw the Limping Man. Her mother was one of those he calls witches. She died of poison before he could take her but he burned her with her friends all the same.
The girl . . .
She travels with a bird. A hawk. She speaks with the hawk.
No one speaks with a hawk.
Hana does. She gave us her message and the next morning she was gone, we don’t know where . . .
Next morning, Ben thought, as he slid into sleep, we’ll be gone, my father and I . . .
They sailed across the Inland Sea with a breeze behind them. Ben did not ask if his father made it blow but he noticed that when Lo slept it lost some of its strength. When he trailed a line a fish took the bait after only a moment. Ben heard him whisper as he removed the hook, using some word that stilled the creature’s pain. They ate fruit and dry food and raw fish and drank from the sea. Ben could not imagine water that was salt.
One night, before Lo took his place at the tiller, Ben said, My father, tell me about the people with no name.
You name them when you call them that, Lo said.
How can I speak of them then?
Lo smiled – he smiled more frequently as the journey went on. There’s no way.
Who are they? What are they?
The jungle.
Ben did not understand.
They grew with it, as much as trees and ferns and vines, and snakes and hummingbirds – and they’ll die with it.
But they rule –
No. Lo spoke the word so sharply it stabbed like a blade. They exist, like every other part of the jungle.
But they can make sounds to keep animals away.
It’s part of them, the way claws are part of a fangcat or wings part of a bird. The cat doesn’t rule. The bird doesn’t rule.
And they can make light.
It’s part of them.
And heal.
They healed me badly. There’s no magic, my son. They are who they are.
But why no name?
Does a cat have a name? Or a bird? But more than that, each one of these people, as you call them, is part of another until each reaches out into all the rest. They grew like that. The jungle made them. A name breaks them apart from it and from each other.
You’re one of them –
No. The word was sharp again. I lived around their edges. I couldn’t go inside. They taught me as much as I could know, which is almost nothing.
But you were happy with them . . .
I was happy. I was sad. For a while I said: I’m one of them. Then I knew I could never be.
And my mother couldn’t?
No.
She died – of that?
She died of grief for her dead cousin.
Mond?
That was her name. For a while she . . .
Sal.
Yes, Sal – was happy with me, and with them, but when you were born she pined again, she wanted to share you with Mond and she could not. So she wished to die.
And the people let her?
It was what she wanted. I’m sorry, my son.
Ben gave Lo the tiller. He wrapped himself in his blanket and crouched in the bow, looking ahead.
You could have brought her to the farm, he said.
She wouldn’t go. What happened was the thing that had to happen. I did what she asked me, I took you.
Ben stayed in the bow for a long time. The thing that had to happen. He fought against the words but could not change them.
Sleep, my son, Lo said.
Ben tightened his blanket.
This Limping Man?
What of him?
Will he kill the people? Will he find them?
If his army is big enough and has enough time he’ll sweep through the jungles and drive them out, and outside the jungles they’ll die.
Ben felt the sadness of that and lay thinking about it for a long time. Then he said, Tell me what they look like.
It can’t be told. Sleep, my son.
Ben slept. Deep in the night the wind died and the sea stilled and Lo sat motionless in the bow, and in that time Ben dreamed . . .
. . . trees heavy with moss, tangled in vines, with fat insects
droning and lizards unblinking on the boughs. Cats creeping.
Birds darting. Thin light leaking through the canopy. And here
a flicker of movement as something not cat or bird, not snake or
lizard, made its soundless way across the jungle floor, through
ferns that touched like hands and heavy leaves that opened like
doors. It did not trouble Ben that he could not see what it was.
A small hand, monkey-pawed, curved round a branch. A foot,
five-toed, sank in rotting leaves. An eye gleamed. Skin lit up
in a shaft of sunlight and sank again like a stone in water. A
whispering, soundless; a harmony reaching through valleys and
winding down rivers and creeping as far as the jungle stretched,
saying . . . Ben could not hear the message: love or fear or hunger
or pain or satisfaction? The only meaning he could find was
sharing. He heard as much as he could hear, and understood as
much, which was everything and nothing. Everything because
he was alive and human; nothing because he was not jungle.
Yet there was no striving in his dream, no questioning and
no disappointment, only acceptance. When it stopped he slept
peacefully. The breeze mounted and Lo worked the tiller again
and sailed towards the western shore of the Inland Sea, where
dawnlight slid down from the sky behind him.
Ben woke. He thanked his father.
That is as far as seeing goes, Lo said. To know more you must live with them.
Ben shook his head. He spoke aloud, but softly, so as not to hurt Lo. ‘I’ll stay who I am. But teach me how to make the wind blow.’
Lo grinned at him. That’s something humans can’t know. But bring me my line and I’ll show you how to catch a fish . . .