Hope of Earth (14 page)

The three of them made their dancing way down to the spot where Hugh was playing, and finished with an accelerated cadence of drum beat and feet, and a double whirl that made the skirts rise until they were almost flat disks around the woman and the girl. The effect was not only artistic, it was marvelously seductive; Anne surely had devastating impact on grown men, despite being clearly beyond her maiden stage. Then suddenly everything stopped, together, and all was still.

Bry realized that his mouth was hanging open. Never before had he seen an act as coordinated and beautiful as that. They were all so
good
at what they did!

“Of course the children are still learning,” Hugh said. He played a sudden riff of notes, and Chip brought out a little flute of his own and was able to play only a few of them. Anne moved her hips as if her torso had turned to liquid, then did a high kick with her toe reaching the level of her shoulder; Mina wriggled her body and kicked as high as her waist. That was still better than Bry could have done, on any of it. Once again it made him realize that he would be a man before long.

“Now we must be off,” Hugh said. He and Anne fetched hide packs from the house, slung them on their backs, lifted staffs, and walked down to the river.

“Already?” Bry asked, dismayed.

Mina set her little hand on his. “They will return in a moon,” she said reassuringly, as the two hauled their boat into the water, put the packs into it, and changed the staffs for paddles. They started paddling efficiently, and soon disappeared upstream. The children waved them bye-bye, smiling bravely.

But in this, too, Mina wasn’t perfect. Bry saw the tears in her eyes. He put his right arm around her and squeezed reassuringly, though he had substantial doubts of his own.

“They don’t want us to catch fever and die,” Chip explained. Then he swallowed and changed the subject. “Let’s fish.”

There were spears in the house. This was something Bry did know. They went down to the river’s edge and waited with spears poised. When a fish swam close, Bry stabbed suddenly with the point of the wooden pole. His ribs gave him a jolt of pain, but he was lucky: he speared the fish. He brought it up flopping. He pulled it off and set it in the basket Mina provided, then used a stone edge to sharpen the point again.

Chip tried for the next fish, with his smaller spear. He missed, and missed again, but kept trying. “Aim where the fish will go, not where it is,” Bry suggested, and next time Chip managed to snag one, off-center. It was another lucky thrust, but it did make it look as if Bry’s advice had helped. The truth, he knew, was that no one could be sure of spearing a fish with any particular thrust; much patience was necessary, and if every third or fourth thrust nabbed a fish, that was good.

The children showed him where the best foraging was, along the edge of the forest, where there were fruit trees, nut trees, berry bushes, and herbs. The grubs were fat in fallen wood, too. Paths went to all the good places, showing the truly human nature of this region. It was evident that they would be eating well; the parents had selected this site for its ready access to food, and had prepared it well.

In the evening they gathered wood and brought up the fire. They didn’t need it for heat, but for dryness and comfort. They stared into it, and Bry told stories of his family to entertain the children. They were fascinated by the way the six children had been orphaned by a terrible storm, being on land while their parents tried to bring the boats to shore. Sudden storms were the bane of shore boaters. Bry told how the eldest, Sam and Flo, had assumed the job of the lost parents, and after lean times the six of them had finally gotten established as a wider family itself. But he didn’t speak of Flo’s rape and the child she left; the implications were too uncertain.

At last, talked out, they slept. Chip made a point of sleeping in his own bed, but Mina moved close enough to catch Bry’s hand for reassurance. She was a remarkable little girl, but also, after all, very young.

Three days later it happened. Mina woke tense, looking fearfully around. Bry saw nothing, but her nervousness made him nervous too. She was too much in tune with the spirits; her fear might be groundless, but Bry did not care to gamble on that. So he went out and checked all around the house, looking for the tracks of predators or for anything unusual in the water. He saw nothing.

Still, he was watchful as Chip and Mina emerged from the house. He knew it wouldn’t help to ask her what she was afraid of; her awareness was not of such a nature. What she knew came to her on its own, and could not be consciously evoked. The spirits could not” be commanded by living folk.

They had been improving on their fish spearing, day by day; the fish were good when roasted on the fire, and even when they didn’t manage to spear any, it was fun trying. The days tended to get dull, because they never ranged far from the house. Dullness was preferable to danger, while the adults were away. So as the day warmed, they took spears and basket and went to the water’s edge.

But the fish were slow in coming. There was only a mossy log floating slowly by. They waited patiently; once the log passed, the fish would fill in the space. Chip squatted, spear posed, and Bry stood behind him, watching.

Suddenly the log opened a huge mouth and lunged at them. Mina screamed almost before it happened. It was a crocodile! Chip, closest to it, lurched to his feet, lost his balance, and fell back on the sand. The narrow snout swung toward him.

Bry brought his spear up and plunged it at the monster. He was only dimly conscious of the pain at his ribs as he did so; the threat was making it fade. The point bounced off the tough green snout without doing any apparent damage. He realized that it was foolish to strike at the hard parts; he needed to go for the vulnerable ones. So he jabbed at the nearer eye. But it was hard to score on; the creature was moving, and the eye was small, and when the point touched it, it closed, and the spear slid on past it.

But at least it was a distraction, for the crocodile did not snap at Chip. The boy scrambled away, leaving his small spear behind. Mina’s screaming was continuous in the background;this was surely what she had feared, without knowing its identity.

They retreated from the water’s edge, getting clear of the menace. The river had become fearsome, but the land represented safety, in this case.

However, the crocodile was not giving up. Perhaps realizing that these creatures were after all vulnerable on land, it crawled on out of the water, orienting malevolently on Bry. He did not dare turn his back on it, and he was afraid that if he backed away too fast, he would trip and fall. So he kept jabbing at the eyes, forcing the heavy eyelids to close, momentarily baffling the thing.

But something more was needed. Even when fully healthy, he could not hope to hold off a crocodile for long. This was by no means a large one; it was not much longer than Bry himself. It must have been attracted to the fish remnants they had left in the water. But it was big enough to do them real damage, once its teeth closed on flesh. He had to balk it decisively, so as to make it go away. He knew it would be impossible to kill it. Those enormously long, mighty jaws—

Then he had a notion. “A rope!” he cried. “Fetch a rope!” He did not look to see if the children were doing it, because he dared not take his eyes from the crocodile. In the instant he looked away from it, it could loom up and get him, like a storm cloud.

In a moment Chip was back with the cord woven from fibers. “A loop!” Bry said. “Make a big loop!”

Fumblingly, the boy worked the cord into a loop, the kind used to hold on to an outcropping when a person was using the rope to climb. The harder the pull on the rope, the tighter the loop became.

“Now we must get it over that snout!” Bry gasped.

Chip, showing increasing courage, approached with the loop. But Bry realized that it was simply too dangerous for the small boy to get that close to the monster. “Give me the rope!” he cried.

Chip held it out, and Bry grabbed it. He tossed aside the spear, then made a leap in the direction the crocodile did not expect: toward its mouth. Nevertheless, its reaction was swift. The snout came up to meet him, the jaws parting—and he put the loop over and jerked it tight. He knew he had been lucky to do it just right on the first try; he might never have gotten a second chance.

The crocodile whipped its head back and forth, aware of the impediment. Bry hung on, feeling his ribs being wrenched, but knowing that this was his only avenue to any kind of victory. He kept jerking on the rope, and with each jerk the loop pulled more tightly around the snout.

The crocodile lunged at him, the tip of its snout touching his leg. But now it was closed; the teeth could not bite. Still, the animal seemed to think that because its jaws were closed, it must have something pinned between them; it rolled quickly over, trying to drown its catch. But of course this didn’t work. Bry kept stepping back, hauling on the rope.

Finally the crocodile had had enough. It righted itself and scrambled back toward the water. “But you’ve got our rope!” Bry cried, following.

He heard a giggle. It was Mina. Then he realized how foolish he was being: chasing after a crocodile! What was he going to do—go into the water to remove the rope? He let go of it and watched the creature splash away. But it was sad to lose the valuable rope.

It took them some time to relax, after that. Mina led the way, her apprehension gone. “I knew there was
something”
she said. “No more.”

But Bry was not at all sure of that. Now, with his relaxation, his ribs were hurting worse; he had done some added wrenching in the heat of the battle. Suppose the crocodile had clamped its teeth on one of Chip’s legs? They had overcome the creature as much by luck and blunder as by effort. Suppose another crocodile came—a larger one? They had had so much trouble with the small one, even when fighting it on land, which was the human terrain, that they didn’t dare face a larger one.

He came to a decision: he had to make sure that there would never be a larger one. But how could he do that? At the moment he couldn’t think of any way. So he asked the children.

They were intrigued by the notion. “Maybe rub on more stink leaf, to make it not bite,” Chip suggested.

Bry smiled. That was clever, in its way. If the taste of the bitter leaf on the skin stopped the mosquitos, would it stop bigger bites? But it was a foolish notion. “It would have to bite once, to find out about the taste,” he said. “And one bite is too much.”

“Make a wall,” Mina suggested. “Keep it out.” She liked to make walls in the sand, keeping the water back for a while.

Bry and Chip laughed. “A BIG wall!” Chip said, lifting a hand to show how high.

Mina frowned. “Why not?” she demanded.

“Because—” Chip started, then looked thoughtful. He looked at Bry for support.

“It might work,” Bry said, reconsidering. “But sand wouldn’t do it. The crocodile would knock it down with its tail.”

“Stone,” Mina said.

“We couldn’t move any stones heavy enough to stop the crocodile,” Bry said.

“Wood,” Chip said, getting into it.

Bry considered. “Maybe if we hammered stakes into the ground.”

They liked that. So their project commenced. They ranged the beach and the near paths, always together, searching out pieces of wood and carrying or dragging them back. There turned out to be a considerable number, because there weren’t any other families near to search the beach for firewood. Some of it wasn’t sound, but enough was; they would be able to make their fence.

It turned out to be no easy project. Some of the wood would have been difficult to manage when Bry was in the best of health, and it was almost impossible in his present state. But the children helped, and Bry gritted his teeth and bore as much pain as he could, and they got it moved by slow stages. Then they had to find rocks to use to pound in the stakes, and if the wood pounded in readily, it didn’t hold, and if the stakes did hold, it was awful getting them in. Again Bry had to fight the pain as he used his arms for such work. Mina saw that, and came to touch his ribs, and surprisingly the pain did diminish, enabling him to work more freely. There was just something about that little girl! They had to sharpen points on the stakes, as if they were spears, and some had to be braced by lesser sticks that couldn’t make, fence stakes on their own. These were tedious tasks, and progress was slow. Bry thought the children would soon tire of the effort, but they didn’t; the scene with the crocodile must have scared them more than they admitted, and they wanted to be safe. Also, they were good children, remarkably responsible for their ages. That spoke well for their parents.

Their parents. Bry remembered the beautiful music Hugh had made, and the phenomenal dancing Anne had done. That sound and that image would remain forever in his memory.

It became a system. Mina sharpened points by rubbing small rough stones across the narrow ends of the stakes. Chip held each stake steady, upright, while Bry pounded it in. He found that it helped to drag a good-sized rock across to the stake, so that he could stand on the stone and hammer from a greater height. When the stake was down as far as it would go, Chip used a smaller rock to pound in bracing pieces, getting the main stake firm. They had to place half-buried stones around it to brace it, because the sand was never completely firm, but the end result was pretty good. The work was wearing, and they had to rest between stakes, and they got only a few done the first day, but they were highly satisfied with their accomplishment. À line of several crooked but firm stakes extended from the shelter toward the river. Of course it wasn’t enough, because the crocodile could simply go around it, but it was the start of their wall.