The Scorpion God: Three Short Novels (11 page)

The Sky Woman was halfway down her tree, yet so bright was she that she had the sky to herself, save for one icy sparkle of light above the mountains where the sunset had been. Chimp no longer ran fast, but trotted and still whimpered every now and then. He had remembered things that slowed him—one, that when the Sky Woman was in full belly, children went to the huts and stayed there, while unguessable things occupied the girls and the mothers. Moreover he remembered that he had no mother himself, since she had died—accidentally, of course, as so often happened to the daunting, mysterious creatures. This did not matter to him much, and never had; but now, he felt the lack of her without understanding what she might have done to take away this pain. Nor had he a woman of his own, which was unusual, but happened too. Those hunters who had no women thought of it as a stroke of good luck, when they thought of it at all. Yet he was trotting towards the women, drawn, in his extremity; and when he had got so used to the pain that it was a thing there, like a wound, he began to feel a certain caution as if he were a man approaching a lair. His shadow followed him and his foot held up. This too was strange enough but there was a reason for it. He was running along the skirts of rock. Upended strata sloped up from his left to his right. The slope was just enough to force his foot up on the right side, against the weakness. This fact was another that kept him trotting and seemed in some obscure way to be forcing him towards the place where he was no longer wholly certain he wanted to be.

At last he could see the cloud of steam that hung over the Hot Springs. He slowed to a crouching walk that brought his limp back. He held his spear, as if he might have to use it at any moment. He moved towards the river and the open place where the children played. Everything was still, everything silent. He went close, till at last he could hear the ripple of water.

A baby whimpered in one of the shelters, and an old man coughed somewhere, tuss, tuss, tuss. He stood, crouched on the bleached earth and the goosepimples rose all over him. He licked his lips and looked round him slowly, saw the trees round the Place of Women and flinched away. He took a step or two towards the safety of the plain then stopped. Suddenly, for no reason at all, he remembered the Namer of Women and his hair prickled.

The rising vapour above the Hot Springs had changed. It had not changed while he watched; but there was something different about it that had been there all the time he ran through the open space and he had not noticed it before. The Sky Woman shed her light through it and on it, as she shed light on everything. But the vapour was lit from below, as if there were a fire, kindled impossibly in water. From that direction, as from a local sunset, the cloud was coloured dull pink—so dull a pink, the eye could not stay with it, but saw it for a moment then had to wait until the colour seemed to flow back again. And now—as if his ears had gone up there among the pans with his eyes—he heard a faint sound, high and complex. He dismissed this sound because it was impossible, like the fire. He put one foot back and lifted the spear by his shoulder. He began to move forward, hunting fashion. He gulped, and ran forward to the rise where the first pan was, with a white Sky Woman caught in it. He climbed soundlessly; and in each pan, a white Sky Woman danced. He went faster from pan to pan until he reached the open space before the Lodge of the Leopard Men and the pink light of the fire spilled over him so that his face shook.

The leopard skin that had kept the entrance inviolate was down on the rock at his feet. The impossible sound was indeed the laughter of women. He leapt into the entrance and his hair stood up as if he faced a rhino in rut.

The fire burned on the floor in the middle of the pan and the women lay, squatted, lounged round it. In his first glimpse—a glimpse that froze everything like a lightning flash—he saw two girls, little more than children, holding leopard skulls with two hands against their mouths. The noise, the babble, screech, giggle, chatter, scream, was brighter than the fire. Opposite him, and leaning against the inner pan where the leopard skulls had been, was She Who Names The Women, Namer of Women, She Whose Heart is Loaded Down With Names. She held a skull in her right hand. She held it by its fangs and liquid ran out of it. She was leaning back, one hand supporting her. She was laughing and the light of the fire flowed in her eyes through her tangled hair. She saw him, she screamed with laughter. She lifted the skull in her hand over her shoulder with a woman’s gesture and hurled it at him. The skull flipped sideways out of the pan, the length of a man from his face. He cried out, half in outrage, half in terror.

“No!”

But there were faces turned towards him, firelit faces, faces moon-whitened, with sparkling eyes, white teeth and a maze of floating hair. Shrieks, laughter and words rose together.

“A man! A man!”

They were tumbling over each other, foul stuff spilling from scattered skulls so that the fire spat, hissed and died down. Faces rose up among the shrieks and hands clutched at him. He threatened the faces with his spear, dropped it, then stumbled back and fled. He found himself only a pace from the boiling water and only just swayed round it. He ran down to the next pan, but the laughter and the white faces were there, so that he turned back. He blundered into a knot of soft flesh that would not be untied. There was noise, there were arms of blunt flesh that wound round him like the strings of a bolas. They were screeching to him and to each other. His belt and loinguard went away as if they themselves had elected to. He was being forced down and there was more soft flesh to receive him. His loins refused them in hatred and dread; but their hands were clever, so clever, so cruel, so cunning. In the noise he heard his own cry of pain fly up and up——

“Hoo-oo-oo-oo!”

Up and up his cry went away from the pain that stayed behind between his legs and stiffened him. He was down on the soft flesh, the soft wetness and terror of teeth. Half of him tried to get away from the terror and the weight of soft arms holding him down; and half of him was thrusting and jerking like an animal wounded in the spine. Then he and sheness entered the dreadful place and cried out together and small teeth met in his ear. But there might be teeth, there would be teeth waiting in that wet place and when half his body had jerked its will, he tore himself away. The arms allowed him for a moment but then they caught him again.

“Me! Me!”

Shrieks, laughter, babble, and the merciless skill of hands——

“Hoo-oo-oo-oo!”

There was no way out, but through, compelled to go once more into the place of darkness where the wet flesh had its will. Then he lay, his ears singing among the white women sprawled on rocks, the laughing, hiccuping girls. He felt blood on his neck, tasted it in his mouth. The woman smell was all round, hung on his flesh, hung in his beard and under his nostrils. He tried to get up but his arms and legs were held. A white leopard skull was approaching his face backwards, he turned his face away from the foul smell in the skull. It was forced against his mouth and he clenched his teeth and pressed his lips together. But a hand stole over his forehead and two fingers closed on his nose so that his mouth gaped open for air. His ears sang so that he could hardly hear their laughter; and then the dreadful liquid was slopped in his mouth. He gulped and gagged and struggled against blunt flesh but more liquid slopped in, more and more so that his chest contracted and blew the last of it out in spray. Then he collapsed back against rock, faint, in the binding arms, the laughter, the unmeaning talk, the kisses, small bites and caresses. A hand came from nowhere and wiped his face with hair.

There was silence, except for the singing in his ears. He hiccuped like a white girl and opened his eyes. Someone was approaching over the rocks and the Sky Woman lit her softly from the side. She came swaying, her long grass skirt rustling, the shells making a tiny noise on her breast. She staggered once in her swaying, but still came on towards him. Hair draggled over one side of her face and was caught among the shells. She was laughing without a sound and her eyes were dark and seemed to take the marrow from his bones. She came closer and the women who held him giggled as if the joke would never end. She was beginning to kneel down between his feet. She knelt, laughing soundlessly, leaned forward on her left hand and her hair fell on his thigh.

He cried out.

“No!”

The giggles turned to laughter and the hands held him fast. She shot out her right hand like a snake.

“Hoo-oo-oo-oo!”

When he came down with his cry, back down to the rocks and arms, something had happened—and not between his legs. The foul-smelling drink had warmed itself in his belly. He could feel it glowing and about to burn. It sent up a flame that reached nearly inside his head. Another leopard skull appeared, backwards and pressed against his mouth, another hand closed his nose. He gulped and gulped again, then blew out another spray. The fire shot up and the inside of his head was visited by a puff of flame. Suddenly, he understood that he had never noticed how beautiful She Who Names The Women was, how exquisite and exciting was her smell, how white and young her body, how clever and to be consented to, her hands! The women were letting him go and laughing and he heard himself laugh with them as the flames licked up round his head and down, warmingly, exhilaratingly between his legs. She was letting him go too; and laughing, he seized her hand to put it back. But she avoided him gently then beckoned. Another skull appeared and he shook his head but she would not be denied. Her soft face with its huge eyes came close to him, she gurgled with laughter, in her voice that was deeper than the voice of girls, and spoke.

“Drink, little Leopard Man!”

It was such a joke and she was so gentle he could do nothing but please her. He gulped again and again, therefore, spluttered and choked. Then they were laughing together, she was holding his hand and pulled him after her. He went with her, on fire, with the world moving round him. Even when he saw where she was leading him he felt no terror. It was as if a ravine had opened between him and his dread of the Women’s Place. She lurched against him and it was natural that his arm should go round her waist. She laughed with him and he thought it was the lurch that made her laugh. They came to the barrier of hide sewn with awful shells and he shouted and struck it with his fist. She lifted it and he blundered in. She came behind him, pulled him round. She came close and her laughter gurgled like a little spring. He could see nothing but the glossy water of the river and She Who Names The Women, who was so young and beautiful, outlined against it. She pressed close. She kissed him with her lips and tongue, she laid her breasts against the blood on his chest. His mouth searched after hers when she let him go and he could not find it. He looked round for her but there was nothing to see but a strange shape by the river’s edge—a shape from which the foul—but not so foul—smell came reeking. Then he saw her dark figure appear beside it. She thrust her arm in, lifted it, held something to her face and stood there drinking. She took the thing down from her face and threw it—again with the womanish gesture—into the river. She turned round and though the darkness hid her face he knew she was looking for him. She made her body move like a snake from feet to head so that he knew without seeing, her softness and wetness and warmth. He saw the outline of her grass skirt collapse round her feet. She stepped out of it into the darkness and vanished. He looked round him.

“Where are you?”

Her laughter gurgled again, softly, like a little spring. The water comes up with never a bubble, it wells, dances to itself night and day and lets flow a stream of clearness and life for the grasses and the flowers.

“Here.”

He knelt down. His head was in the woman smell of her hair and neck. Her warm arms stroked his back, there were no teeth—only dark closenesses into which he throbbed and sank. Thought went from him, and the very possibility of fear. The end was like a beginning, and it merged softly with sleep.

The Sky Woman went down, taking her light with her, and the ripples of the river lit from the other direction. In the trees round the Place of Women, a bird began to strike his incessant note. The ringdoves spoke and the rock pigeons. A fish leapt. The sunlight crept down the trees and touched the hide curtains on one side, slid down, shone from the polished top of a clumsy bench—examined a multitude of shapes, bundles of plants, vessels of coconut shell or bark. The light touched the earth, moved to a foot, an ankle with a callous. It found other feet, warmed a leg, a thigh. Outside the hide curtains the day went about its business in full swing. The sunlight found a face.

Chimp rolled away from the light. He was conscious first of himself, coming from a darkness without dreams, then of himself surrounded by a faint and unaccustomed ache as if he had been too long in the sun. It was the strangeness of these feelings that opened his eyes before he had remembered anything. But when he had opened them his mouth fell open too. There was an unquestionably female back in front of him with black hair straggled over it. He sat up with a jerk, so that the faint ache in his head jerked too, and looked round him. He leapt to his feet.

The Namer of Women groaned, said something and rolled over. She sat up and smeared the hair from her face. She was neither young nor beautiful. The dust of the place was on her face and her body and her hair tangled as a briar. She blinked, put one hand to her forehead and screwed up her face. She opened her eyes again and looked round slowly. Her eyes passed across Chimp, so that he backed away, his hands between his legs. She looked at the tripod with the hanging skin and she went still, as if she were looking at a poisonous snake. She licked her lips and muttered.

“Now you’ve done it!”

She looked at him with a hatred that lifted the goosepimples on his skin.

“You naked ape!”

He stayed frozen—not even enough in control of himself to be wary. She looked down at her own body and the hatred went out of her face. She bit her lip.

“Two of us.”

She got up and went to the edge of the river. She did not sway like a palm, she was not gracious and graceful, she staggered as she went. She took a shell, knelt down, scooped up water and drank again and again. She threw water over her face and body till she dripped with it.

Chimp remembered everything. Devastation fell on him out of the sky. He lay down, his face against the earth. He could not even weep.

Presently he saw feet by his face, and the ends of a grass skirt. Her voice sounded mild.

“Well, we must think what to do. Sit up!”

He rolled over and squatted, his hands still between his legs. He muttered.

“My loinguard——”

The feet went away and he heard her voice by the river.

“How should I know?”

He looked cautiously sideways. She was reaching into the skin that hung from the tripod. She brought up a coconut shell and drank from it. He smelt the stuff, and his face twisted with disgust. He could find no words anywhere and stared down at the ground again. There was a time, while he heard her moving about—heard a rubbing, a washing, the swish of hair. The feet came back, and there was no dust on them. Her skirt rustled and spread on the ground as she knelt in front of him.

“Well? Aren’t you going to look at me?”

He lifted his head. She was the Name Giver again, the shells white on her splendid breasts, the hair no longer smeared across her face. The tears welled from his eyes and he said the only words he could find out of the confusion.

“I shall die.”

“Come now! Who said anything about dying? Only women die!”

He looked down again.

“I shall die.”

A hand touched his arm.

“A mighty hunter die? You might be killed, indeed. It is your glory, is it not? But die! Why—if mighty hunters believed they all died, think how
lonely
they would be! No man could bear it!”

Timidly, he looked up. She was smiling. She was younger once more. Her eyes were young and taking charge of her face. Among all the mysteries and confusions that had overwhelmed him, there rose another—that She Who Names The Women could look at him with a face that was at once smiling and sad.

She patted his arm and spoke as to a child.

“There! Better?”

Some of the confusion left him; and because of this he found indignation stir in him. He opened his mouth to speak, but she saw, and forestalled him.

“You shouldn’t have come hunting us poor women when the Sky Woman has a full belly! Who knows what dreams she would send you?”

A little of yesterday’s grief came back to him.

“It was none of my fault—they drove me away from the hunt.”

“Why?”

The grief swelled.

“The root is warped, the branch twisted! Charging Elephant fell on his face before a gazelle——”

She made an impatient gesture.

“You have a weak ankle. We all know that!”

“The gazelle leapt over me as I fell!”

She squatted back. She frowned and spoke thoughtfully and as if he were not there.

“I understand. You should have gone down the river. But it is very difficult to tell, in these cases where the foot is not turned right over at birth—oh, now, come, Leopard Man!”

She knelt forward and peered into his face.

“You mustn’t be frightened! You didn’t go down the river! See—the river is there and you are here!”

The grief of yesterday boiled up and swamped everything else. He put his head back, howled, and the tears shot out of his eyes.

“They called me Chimp!”

Then her arms were round him and he was sobbing against her shoulder. Her hands caressed his back.

“There, there!” she said, “there, there, there——”

And all the time, her own shoulders shook.

Presently his sobs died away. She took his smudgy chin in her hands and lifted it.

“They’ll forget,” she said. “You’ll see, my little Leopard Man. Men can forget anything. They’ll have a new song or tune or saying. They’ll have a new joke to tell over and over again, or a bright stone to show, or a strange flower, or a splendid new wound to boast about. Why—you’ll forget your dream, too, won’t you?”

“Dream?”

“Last night—all the confusion. The Sky Woman sent it. About the Lodge of the——”

He looked at the ground, glumly.

“I shan’t forget.”

“Oh yes you will!”

He glanced up briefly, then down again.

“There is too much song—too many leaves in the forest—too many words like dust—they’d never believe it—never. How could they?”

She came close and spoke earnestly.

“Listen, Chi—Listen, Charging Elephant. The Leopard Men wouldn’t believe it. You said that.”

“Well?”

“Aren’t you a Leopard Man?”

“I suppose so.”

“Then,” said She Who Names The Women, “you can’t believe it either, can you?”

Chimp inspected this. There was a long silence.

She sat back, legs tucked under her, weight on one hand, palm spread out. The other hand was making little marks on the ground with the point of one finger. She watched her finger.

“In any case,” she said at last, “I don’t think I should talk about my dream with the others. Particularly not with Stooping Eagle and Firefly. You see, Stooping Eagle and Cherry, and Firefly and Little Fish——”

“Cherry? Little Fish?”

There was another long silence.

“Well,” she said at last. “Well, I see.”

The confusion was simplifying in him. It was a dream; and it left him looking at the cruelty of the Leopard Men.

“Clonk.”

“What?”

“Clonk. My ankle says clonk.”

He looked up at her—for comfort perhaps. But she had turned her head sideways and was staring at the fat bag in its tripod. The wry smile was back. Her words meant nothing.

“And I go clonk inside. But you can’t look into a baby’s head.”

She glanced back at him, then down at her fingers on the earth.

“When I have a baby——”

Instantly the goosepimples were back.

“What is that to do with me?”

“Oh nothing, nothing, of course! The Sky Woman does it all by herself! However, I haven’t had a baby since my Leopard Man was killed by the sun. Strange, is it not? But now——”

He tried to understand her.

“Now?”

She sat up and passed a hand over her forehead.

“I have dreams, too. But they mean nothing. Nothing, nothing.
What
threatens
us?
The Sky Woman is—who knows what she is, or what we are, except that we are like nothing else? Charging Elephant—the dream, your dream——”

“Well?”

He saw that she was changing colour, a flush was spreading over her breast, her neck, her cheeks.

“When I brought you here, it was—not wholly bad?”

He remembered the place with no teeth, the darkness that took away fear.

“No. No.”

The flush came and went in her cheeks.

“You see—you may—that is—Charging Elephant, you may be my Leopard Man. When you return from the hunt, you may come to the hut and—if you like, that is.”

He thought of the Leopard Men, their awe of She Who Names The Women. A great lightness took the place of the grief in him. He spoke gruffly, to hide his new joy.

“If you like.”

The flush died away from her cheeks. She knelt forward and spoke with quiet dignity.

“Charging Elephant, you may rub noses.”

A girl’s voice was crying somewhere beyond the hide curtains.

“Palm! Palm! Oh Palm!”

The Namer Of Women leapt to her feet and went quickly to the curtains.

“Stay outside!”

“Palm!”

“What is it?”

“They are coming back—Palm. The Leopard Men! They are at least a day early, Palm!”

She Who Names The Women stood silent, her hands pressed against her cheeks. She looked quickly at Chimp then took her hands away.

“Listen—Minnow. Tell the others. Clear everything away——”

“We’re doing it!”

She Who Names The Women called after her.

“Everything, mind! Not a trace!”

Chimp had begun to move round. He searched over the earth.

“My loinguard—where is it?”

“How should I know! Up by the pans I suppose!”

“I can’t——”

“You must go—you
must
go!”

“How? Where?”

“Oh——!”

“Naked!”

“Wait. I’ll see how far away they are——”

She hurried through the curtains and the trees, quickly she climbed by the pans. A belt and loinguard lay floating in the first of them. She fished it out, then stared over the plain under her lifted hand. The Leopard Men were nearer even, than Minnow had said. If she had allowed herself to think that her ears were still girl-keen, she could have believed that she heard their chant. Even so, she could see how they walked in single file and how every few paces they jerked their sticks in the air.

“Rah! Rah! Rah!” said She Who Names The Women bitterly, “Rah! Rah! Rah!”

She blinked in the light, shaded her eyes more closely. She saw that two of the hunters carried a pole between them. A burden hung from the pole. She examined the size of the burden, the colour——

“Oh changeless Sky Woman! Not
another
leopard!”

She went quickly back to the Place of Women and threw his loinguard at him.

“Put it on and go.”

“Where? How?”

She beat her head with her fists.

“Haven’t I trouble enough? Go! Jump in the river—then wade along and up through the woods——”

“I’ll go——’

“And don’t you think I’m going to have a man under my feet all the——”

He went sousing into the water, his loinguard in one hand. He came up and waded, shuddering. The last he saw of her there, she was standing by the tripod with a coconut shell in her hand. Then he was busy in weeds and hanging boughs. He pulled himself up in mud, stood under the trees and dressed himself. When it was secure, he walked casually through the woods and came out on rocks. He sidled round the settlement, up by the Hot Springs in the rising vapour, then down the other side. He could see the procession of the Leopard Men approaching the open space before the settlement. Girls and women were dancing, running forward, embracing their men and dressing them with flowers. The children were dancing and flinging flowers and clapping their hands. The men sang and hoisted their spears and an ancient Leopard Man stood before his hut, leaning on his spear and nodding and laughing out of his toothless mouth. The sun was hardly brighter than the occasion. Chimp stole down and round and inserted himself in the tail of the procession behind Beautiful Bird. The leopard hung upside down from four paws and dripped. Beautiful Bird turned, laughing, saw Chimp and embraced him!

“Where was Charging Elephant? We found the trail again! We killed his mighty leopard! We sang round the fireflower but there was no Charging Elephant and no flute! There was a storm of weeping!”

Firefly looked back, as he held his girl in the crook of his arm.

“Where was the Song of the Wind? We lived in a rain-cloud!”

Dragonfly came close, shyly, and put his hand in Chimp’s. Chimp burst into tears.

There was a sudden silence. Chimp glanced up through his tears and saw where all were looking. The Namer Of Women, the Woman Namer, She Whose Heart Is Loaded Down With Names was coming across the open space from the Place of Women. She swayed like a palm. White shells clinked delicately on her throat, her ankles, her wrists. Her long, dark hair fell smoothly and modestly over her breasts, her grass skirt rustled. She put one foot behind her, spread her hands on either side. She bent her knees and her head. She straightened up and folded her hands before her. She smiled sweetly.

“Welcome, mighty Leopard Men! What pack, what herd, what pride is swifter, fiercer? And welcome to my Leopard Man, Charging Elephant, who goes to my hut when he wills!”

In his daze, Chimp heard a shout. The Leopard Men were all round him, flowers struck him in the face until Stooping Eagle kissed him.