They sailed hard all that day and the following night and came ashore in the morning by a river leading down to the Western Sea. It was too swift and rocky for their boat. They left it with Dwellers living at the river mouth and struck out south and west through open forest land. Ben was more at home in the silver trees than Lo, who was used to the dark and damp and heaviness of the jungle; but Lo had known the forest as a boy and each day he seemed to shed some of his darkness. Although still limping on his crooked leg, he began to stand straighter. He could walk from dawn to dusk and into the night, keeping up with Ben, moving ahead if he chose, while keeping all his senses alert in his jungle way. He smelled the sea before Ben and saw the different light it made in the sky and heard its slow sound beneath the breathing of the forest.
They met a river winding in its course. Far to the south a range of mountains gleamed against the sky. The place they sought, Danatok’s beach, was south again, beyond the hills where the mountains ended. The river kept them company. It took on a yellow colour from the mud lining its banks. Sea tides reached this far, changing the taste from fresh to salt. They saw Dweller huts in the trees and lines of floats holding nets in the water and turned away, looking for the coast further south.
Lo, Ben, a voice said in their heads, and both, for a moment, refused to answer.
Lo. Ben.
We’re here, Ben said at last. Where are you?
If you climb the hill in front of you you’ll see my boat, Blossom said. You’ll find speaking easier, Ben, with a line of sight.
She spoke as if he were a child, and he answered angrily: I don’t need any help. All the same, he and Lo climbed until the plain of water opened out, shining like glass in the sun. Far out, a small boat with a white sail headed south.
I’ll come ashore and pick you up, Blossom said.
No, Lo said. We’ll travel on land.
The boat is quicker.
We’ll be quick.
Lo, my brother, I want to see you. I haven’t seen you since you took Sal away.
We’ll meet at Danatok’s beach, Lo said.
Ah, Lo, Blossom sighed; and Ben, although he stood outside, felt the love flowing from her to her brother. He felt Lo soften and relent.
Speak to me when you wish, Lo said. We’ll meet at the beach.
They turned their backs to the sea and travelled through the forest again. The mountains came closer. When they rested from the midday heat Ben found it hard to believe the ice on the peaks, whiter than the clouds brushing their tops, did not melt and slide into the valleys. He stretched out on the grass and stared into the sky. What a huge eye it was, watching him. He felt it saw into his head. The black dot motionless there was like a pupil. He blinked and wiped his eyes and focused more clearly.
Hawk, he said.
I’ve been watching it, Lo said.
It’s watching us.
The bird turned in a slow circle, then broke suddenly and sped away south.
Now we must be careful, Lo said.
Why?
It was telling what it saw. And whoever it was speaking to is watching us.
Hana, Ben said. He did not know where the name came from.
Who?
Hana.
Then he had it: The messenger who speaks with a hawk.
Whoever it is, there’s danger. The bird is diving.
What danger?
I can’t see. Men. Hunting someone. Hunting her.
Lo stood up and moved into the valley of trees between him and the place where the hawk had disappeared. Ben followed, straining to keep up. He remembered Tealeaf’s voice reaching him in a dream: Hana . . . she saw the Limping Man . . . she travels with a bird . . . next morning she was gone, we don’t know where . . .
He drew his knife and ran after his father.
Hana stood up quietly from the bed Tealeaf had made her. It was the softest bed she had ever slept in but she did not like the way the mattress – was that its name? – held her as if it were Mam. No one, nothing, could take Mam’s place. She liked the Dwellers’ food, but there was too much of it and it made her stomach too full. She liked the Dwellers too, especially Tealeaf; but snarled when she felt them poking in her head. As for the woman, Blossom, who sat quietly while Tealeaf and the other Dwellers questioned her, she was dangerous. She was, Hana felt, like the Limping Man. Hana knew as soon as she looked at her sitting on a stool in the corner that whatever these Dwellers decided, Blossom was the one who would say yes or no. She knew everything – words before they were spoken and the things they meant that the others might not know. The Limping Man would call her a witch and burn her.
Ignoring her, Hana told Tealeaf everything: Danatok’s message, then Mam eating the frogweed, the burnings in People’s Square, her meeting with Danatok, Danatok spying on the Limping Man and his escape – everything except her meeting with Hawk.
‘Hawk has got nothing to do with you,’ she said when Tealeaf asked.
The woman sitting in the corner smiled. Hana felt she knew all about Hawk and she wanted to jerk the stool away and sit her on her bum.
‘I want to sleep now,’ she said. ‘I’ve told you what Danatok said.’
Tealeaf showed her the bed. Hana tried it. Too soft. If she knew where Hawk was she would go outside and sleep close to him. But she had no idea where he slept – some tree branch, high up, or some ledge on a cliff. Each dawn she looked anxiously for him in the sky. He was always far away and did not plunge down to her until mid-morning.
Hana slept. Hawk was in her dreams. Blossom too. The woman was brown and dark-eyed and quick when she moved, but as still as a lizard when she listened. She did not laugh in her head, as Hana suspected the Dwellers did, but aloud, and softly, with a sound like stones rattling in a creek. The Limping Man would burn her in a slow fire. She was beautiful, like Mam must have been when she was young. She wore a brown shift, tied at the waist, and her hair in two plaits, but did not seem to care where the halves fell – both back or one curled on her shoulder and one on her breast. When Hana woke she whispered, ‘Get out of my dreams.’ She knew the woman had been poking in her head as she slept.
In the morning she took her belongings and crept away. Light showed over the eastern hills. Hawk would soon be on the wing, hunting his prey. She was nervous that if she was not clear of Stone Creek by mid-morning he would abandon her and fly away south. It had taken all her days of travelling to secure his trust. She had it now, and would not risk damaging it by mixing with Dwellers. By the time he looked for her she would be high on a hill, where he could scan the countryside before dropping down.
Hana went along the beach, past fishing boats lying tilted at low tide. No one was stirring. The sky was red. She ran south, keeping a steady pace. This was the way she had come the previous day, and found Blossom and Tealeaf waiting for her. Hawk had made his cry and peeled away inland. He did not like her going there. Now she whispered, Sorry, Hawk. I had to take a message for Danatok. And, something in her added, for Mam.
How had Blossom known she was coming? Hana stopped to chew some smoked meat from her pack. She shivered. The woman knew everything. She had probably woken and watched Hana creep away.
It rained that morning. Gusts of wind blew warm showers in her face. She enjoyed it, but wondered how Hawk managed, in the sky. Was he above the rain? Did it make his hunting difficult?
She turned inland at a little stream – again the way she had come – and broke clear of the forest and climbed a bare hill. The rain stopped; and there, in her head, was a picture of herself, tiny on the summit, looking up. It vanished and she knew Hawk received, for a moment, her picture of him, a small circling dot against a sky suddenly blue.
She had not felt so happy since before Mam died.
Hana and Hawk travelled south for several days. Neither decided which way to go, it seemed her steps and his soarings fitted on a string. But the direction was south, even though they struck inland when the coast was too broken for her to pass, and back to the sea when the hills were too steep. Hawk needed space for his hunting, he could not follow prey into the trees. He also took food from the sea, snatching with his hooked feet as he skimmed along the surface. Several times he brought her a fish.
She made a shelter and stayed for two nights, but headed south again when she sensed he was restless. And she too wanted to go south. Something beckoned her and she could not understand. Was it love for Mam or hatred of the Limping Man?
Just before dusk Hawk dropped down. He sat on a rock and folded his wings. He had never come so close. She approached until she could have touched him, and offered him a piece of the fish she had baked – his own fish. He did not want it. She ate, not watching him, leaning against the rock. After a moment she hoisted herself and sat beside him. His beady eyes watched her. She turned her head away, pretending indifference. Everything must be easy and natural, only then would they be true friends.
A movement at the base of the rock drew her attention. She had dropped fishbones between her feet as she ate and ants living under the rock were pulling scraps of flesh from them. Small red ants, busy ants, hundreds of them. Suddenly a door opened in the packed earth at the base of the rock and a dozen larger insects erupted into sight. These were scaly creatures, half the length of Hana’s finger. She drew up her feet. They had claws like pond lobsters and tails with stings that curved over their backs. She watched, fascinated, as they attacked the ants, snipping them in half with their claws, scattering them with sweeps of their tails. They seemed to be infested with mites that ran across their backs as they worked and fitted into cracks in their armour and seemed to suck. Hana shivered. Everything seemed to feed on something else. The red ants were defeated, but some message had gone back into the nest, for suddenly warrior ants streamed out. They were larger, although not a tenth the size of the attackers. They moved so fast Hana could barely follow them, and could not work out what they were doing, how they were driving the attackers away. Then she saw. They were not biting the large creatures but picking off the mites infesting them, crushing them in their jaws, dropping their bodies on the ground. Once the mites were dead the creatures they rode became helpless. They did not know where to turn or where to find the trapdoor of their nest. The warrior ants butchered them. Only one, ridden by a mite between its eyes, made it to the hole. It dived inside and pulled the door shut with a flick of its tail.
Hana shivered again. How savage and bloody everything was. How dangerous. There were many things about Country, and probably Sea, she would never know. But then she reflected that her world, the burrows, was dangerous too, and just as cruel. It suddenly seemed to her that she belonged nowhere.
Hawk broke into her thoughts with an impatient cry. His eyes were still fixed on her. ‘Sorry, Hawk,’ she whispered. ‘We all kill other things, don’t we?’
He spoke to her in their way of speaking; and as though looking into a pond she saw her face, anxious and fearful, looking back at her.
‘Is that what I’m like, Hawk? Not very friendly.’ She blinked to get rid of the image. ‘This is you.’ Looking at him, into his eyes, she sent him his own picture, so clear it seemed to startle him, for he shuffled his feet on the rock and made his half cry.
‘There, Hawk. We know each other now. Can I touch you?’ She reached out and put her finger on the back of his neck and ran it down the silky feathers to the place where his folded wings met. He allowed the touch, although it made him shuffle again. After a moment she took her hand away. It was enough. It made their friendship secure. She would never need to touch him again.
In a moment he leapt into the air and flapped away. She made a place to sleep, well away from the rock where the insects had fought their battle.
Three more days they travelled south, keeping by the coast then moving inland. Hawk sat with Hana each evening before flying away. There was nothing she could give him in exchange for the fish or rabbit or plump bird he brought, but she always chose a rock well warmed by the afternoon sun.
The snowy mountains reared over them. They angled back towards the coast. Danatok lived south of the hills where the mountains fell away. Hana realised that this was where she was going. The further south they travelled the stronger the memory of the Limping Man became.
Hawk flew over the sea, so far away she lost sight of him. She climbed down stony hills deep into a valley packed with bush. A stream ran on a bed of pebbles. Her easiest way to the coast was to follow it. She doubted Hawk would come to her. He did not like places enclosed by trees, but she found a flat boulder in the middle of the stream and waited there, eating a haunch of rabbit she had saved from the night before. He would find her easily enough, and perhaps fly low. She lay resting on the warm rock, and saw the wide sea in her mind – Hawk’s view – with a small sailboat foaming southwards in the wind. He swooped down until she had a picture of the person at the tiller. Blossom. She waved at Hawk.
He turned away. Hana was pleased. She did not want to see Blossom, and did not want Blossom seeing her. She found a seat lower down the boulder and rested her feet in the water. Hawk knew where she was. She felt safe.
Suddenly another picture pushed into her mind, making her jump and scattering her thoughts. Hawk was close, for she saw part of the stream she had followed, then bony hills above the trees enclosing it, the hills that had forced her to descend; and there, crossing them, two men. Hana looked for somewhere to hide. She wished she could question Hawk. What sort of men? Where are they going?
Hawk circled, keeping watch. The men found narrow strips of shade among boulders and sat to eat. One lay down and gazed at the sky. She saw with Hawk’s sharp eyes: he was a boy. She shuddered as he stretched out his arms – one was chopped off at the wrist. His colour was reddish-brown, like her own. That was all she could see. Hawk was too high. The other man – was he a man? He was not a Dweller. His beard hung down to his waist. He wore a knotted cloth about his loins. She could not see a weapon; but saw with a shock of fear that he limped as he moved to a wider strip of shade. A limping man. But he was unlike her limping man –
the
Limping Man. No robes, no coloured headdress, no carved stick, no pink face. He was browner than the boy, no red in his skin. Although he dipped as he walked on his twisted leg, he moved easily. He lay down in the shade and seemed to sleep.