Young Warriors (18 page)

The quick-leaper hopped away, awkward in slow motion, and stared at Gulpilil some more. Its eyes were very large, he noted. And very brown, with lashes like a young girl's.

“I would share more, brother, but I need it myself to reach where I am going.”

The quick-leaper nodded its head as though it understood. And then it departed in long, graceful bounds, like a rainbow arching over the land.

Once it was gone, Gulpilil got to his feet, slinging the waterskin over his shoulder. There was less in it now, and that was not good, but he could not regret having shared it.

The soles of his feet were beginning to burn and the sweat was drying on his lips when the sun rose fully overhead, and he stopped to rest. His destination was much closer now; he could see the stripes running across the stones where the All-Father had run his fingers through the different-colored sands, building mountains out of the ocean.

A wild yam pulled from the ground and a mouthful of water refreshed him, and the sun warmed him from his skin down into his bones until Gulpilil could almost forget that he was on a terrible journey; that danger and killing death waited for him. Only the spear by his side and the knife against his thigh reminded him.

It was tempting to stay here in the sun, where shadows and fears and terrible noises in the darkness couldn't reach him. But the sun would go over the mountains and leave even this earth-warm spot in the shadows. So he rolled to his feet and bent down to pick up his spear, increasing his pace until he was trotting through the grass. It was lower now, and easier to move through.

“I am Gulpilil, who carried the spear with the head he himself shaped and the knife with the blade he himself made. I share
water with the quick-leaper, and I go to the aid of my sister and
her people, against the thing which rises from the shadow.”

The story fit his movement so easily that it was some time before he realized that his shadow had doubled. He glanced to his left and stumbled over his own toes. Catching himself before he fell, Gulpilil kept striding along, his eyes fixed firmly ahead on the red-rock hills.

And beside him, bushy red tail held high, the dingo ran.

There were dingoes who hunted with his people, but they were smaller, sleeker creatures than this. And their red fur was brushed with white around the eyes and muzzle. This beast rose to Gulpilil's thigh, and its fur was dark red, the color of the sun before a storm. But it seemed content merely to pace Gulpilil as they moved from the grasslands into the scrublands where the hills' toes dug into the dirt. Gulpilil was thankful that the quick-leaper had left long before, although a dingo battling a full-grown quick-leaper was something he might have wished to see in another place and time.

When the ground changed entirely from firm brown earth to dry, dusty red-gray soil, the dingo fell back, sitting on its haunches. Gulpilil looked back and saw its open-jawed grin as it watched the human go.

“Thank you, little brother, for accompanying me.”

The dingo yipped once, muzzle pointed toward the sky, and loped off, back toward the grasslands.

Gulpilil's stomach rumbled a wish to be going hunting with the dingo. In the fishing camp, if his people were still there, the smell of fresh-caught fish would be rising from the fires, and the rest of the catch would be going into the smoke. He should have risked taking food for the journey.

But he hadn't, and so he didn't, and now there was no choice but to go on. But he still wished he had something to eat.

The red-plumed tail gone from sight, Gulpilil cast his glance to the sky. The sun was still overhead, but the shadow behind him was lengthening. Dusk would fall soon. He needed to be in the rocks before then.

“I am Gulpilil, who was late to the fight, late to the shadows, late to his death . . .”

Sometimes a bad story could be a good retelling. The problem was, who would tell it for him?

He had gotten to the encounter with the quick-leaper when something made him look up. The sun blinded him until he lifted his arm to block its rays. A dark shadow in the sky was circling overhead.

“Go away, feathered brother,” he told it. “I'm breathing yet.”

But as the bird swung lower, Gulpilil saw that he was mistaken. It was not the great-winged carrion-eater waiting on him. The sun flashed on one down-stretched wing, and colors glinted in the brightness.

“Good flying, brother!” he called to it. The rough singer was far from its wooded home, but seeing it reminded Gulpilil of time spent underneath the branches of those trees, and the green shadows that promised rest, not danger.

The bird sang out once, its usual harsh cry, and dipped again. As it pulled back up into the sky, an object fell downward, not fluttering but dropping straight like a stone.

Gulpilil reached up instinctively and caught the feather between two fingers. It looked blue at first, then green, then golden in the sunlight, and the beauty of it made him laugh.

“Thank you, brother! Now I am Gulpilil the stone-worker, who wears the colors of the sky.” Tucking the feather into his headband, Gulpilil felt as though wings had been placed on his feet as he continued toward his destination.

The entrance to the mountain's path was smaller than Gulpilil remembered, but the handprint was the same, white clay pressed against the left-hand rock. The thumb pointed up to where the trail cut through the rock and wound into the hillside.

Walking into the cooler air should have been a relief. But when the air touched his sun-heated skin he shuddered; it was a reminder of how short time was getting. The beast had struck at sundown. Jinabu must have left at sunrise, and still it had taken him a full day to reach the fish camp. Gulpilil was younger and he moved more swiftly, but still, too much time had gone by.

The path led up, into the hills. Here and there boulders had rolled into the cleared area, shaken loose when the Great Serpent had twitched five days earlier. One boulder blocked the entire path, and Gulpilil found purchase with his hands and toes in order to climb over it, picking up the trail on the other side. He had just jumped down to the ground again when he saw something move out of the corner of his eye.

Snakes were elder brothers, short of temper and long on venom. You walked carefully when on their ground.

“Forgive me, I meant no harm,” he said, watching the creature as it coiled around itself, head raised to scent the air. If you were polite, if you were well-meaning, they let you pass. He tried to remember that, especially when the muscular brown-scaled snake slid out of the rocks and into the middle of the path, directly between Gulpilil and his destination, pulling back its head as though considering whether or not to attack his interloper.

“Elder brother, I must pass,” he tried explaining. “I have a reason and a cause and a need . . .”

The snake stared at him, tiny black eyes unblinking, and Gulpilil felt the sweat run down his skin.

“Eldest brother, please.” He was begging, but the snake was unappeased. Something brushed the side of his face and Gulpilil resisted the urge to jump, which would have made the snake bite for certain. The something brushed his face again, and the snake's attention shifted from Gulpilil's torso to higher up.

Gulpilil blinked and reached up with a slow, cautious hand to touch the feather he had tucked into the hide headband.

“This, eldest brother? You wish this? It is yours.”

He pulled the feather free with the hand not holding the spear and held it off to the side, watching as the snake's eyes followed it away from him. He dropped it, letting it drift back and forth as it slowly settled to the ground.

The instant the blue tip touched the dirt, the snake lunged, its narrow head touching the feather. In the next instant, in the space of an eyelid's closing and reopening, both the snake and the feather were gone.

Gulpilil stood for a long moment, staring at the space where both had been, and then—carefully—stepped forward again.

No other snake crawled out to interrupt him, and he climbed farther and farther up the trail until he came to a plateau where another hand-marker pointed down into the valley Jinabu's people had called home.

The sun was trailing over the far side of the rocks now. On the side he had come from, the blue shadows would cover the grasslands and the watch-fires would be lit near the water. Here, the shadows crept in the undersides of boulders and lingered just out of reach. Gulpilil felt the skin between his shoulder blades crawl, as though someone were staring at him with evil thoughts. His hand clenched the spear more tightly. The desire to fling it into the deepest pile of shadows almost overwhelmed him, but he stayed the need. There might come a time for the spear and the knife. That time was not now.

The path led him to a ledge of rock where he could look down into the valley. Small stone-roofed shelters met his gaze. Normally there would be people about. Children, women, men. A dingo or two. Activity.

Perhaps they were already inside, the doors drawn shut against shadows, waiting for dawn to come again.

Perhaps . . .

THE DINGO KNOWS.

Gulpilil almost fell off the cliff at the dry, amused-sounding voice behind him. Had someone else come to fight the shadow-beast? He turned, and saw . . .

No one.

He looked to the side. Nothing. To the other side. Empty air and untrodden path.

THE DINGO KNOWS IF THE HAND WILL FEED OR SLAP.

Gulpilil looked down at his feet. And let out a yelp that echoed in the still air.

The serpent chuckled, moving its coils slowly so that each feather shifted against each other just so. Two larger feathers, shading from red to gold to green to blue at the tip, grew from over its small black eyes like plumed eyebrows.

THE DINGO KNOWS WHEN IT'S TIME TO RUN . . . AND WHICH WAY TO GO.

“I'm not a dingo,” Gulpilil managed to say.

THE QUICK-LEAPER KNOWS WHICH WAY THE RAIN WILL FALL.

“You're being no help at all!”

Gulpilil wasn't wise like Marwai. He wasn't brave like Jinabu. He was only a boy, and he was tired and alone, and he wanted to have something he could hit so it would all be over and he could lie down and not have to walk anymore.

ALL ARE OF THE SAME SUBSTANCE. THE ANSWER LIES NOT WITH COMFORT BUT WITH FEAR . . .

Gulpilil looked at the feathered serpent, then back over his shoulder at the seemingly deserted camp. When he looked back, the serpent was gone. But a faint trail in the dust showed where it had gone.

Down the other path. Farther into the stone.

Farther into the shadows.

The quick-leaper trusted me to share water, he thought. And he followed the serpent into the shadows.

Gulpilil stood in the middle of the narrow red-rock canyon and wondered how long it would take him to die. Die like the bones scattered on the hard rock-floor. Die like those in the camp below him, in the valley. And they were dead, because everything died—because nothing could stand against this.

He turned, noticing the fissures in the rocks from which something might slither, the overhangs where larger beasts might lurk. And as he watched, something moved in the depths of those shadows, as though hiding . . . or gathering itself to leap. He could feel the hatred oozing from it like mud underfoot. Hatred directed at him, because he could walk in the sunlight.

Gulpilil did not question how he knew this, he only understood that it was true. This thing would kill him, as it had killed all the others who came within its reach.

“I stand against you, my brother, not because I wish you
harm, but because you and I cannot be in the same place at this
same time. I stand against you, my brother, not because I wish you
to be no more, but because I wish to continue.”

The dingo ran the earth. The bird flew the sky. The people walked the sunlight. This creature had no place here.

“In the Long-Ago Time you knew your place and I knew
mine. But you walk across your place and into mine, and therefore,my brother, I must stand against you.”

He was repeating himself. Knowing you were going to die might do that, he supposed, but it made his telling weaker, and that was no good. The shaft of his spear was slick and useless in his hands. He almost dropped it, but what then would he hold?

Not that weapons would matter, in the end.

Across the rocks, the shadows crept closer. Gulpilil could feel those eyes on him again, even stronger, with ill will that should have knocked him over already. The elders were right: whatever the earth's shaking had released
would
be coming down from the rocks as soon as the nights got longer and the shadows deeper.

But first there was this night to face. In very little time the sun would disappear behind the stone walls that rose high above his head. And at that moment the beast under the rock would spring, wrapped safe in the darkness. When the shadows overtook him, it would be time.

“Serpent-guide, were you sent to aid me or to lead me to death?” he wondered aloud, then threw the question away. It did not matter. In the end, none of it mattered. Save that he tried.

He hoped that somehow the quick-leaper and the dingo and the snake would tell their own people his story; that it not fade forever from the knowing.

And with that thought, the killer came at him in a rush of motion, a shadow taken form. The spear, so long his companion on this trip, was almost forgotten as he dodged the first rush, coming up hard against the rock wall and spinning on the soles of his feet to avoid the second rush.

Gulpilil paused, and they both gathered themselves. He blinked, but the beast refused to come into focus. It was long and lean, built like a serpent upright, but with an oversized head that tapered into a point. And yet there was something else within its outline, a mass of broken shards and molten red rock. It did not seem as though it could move as fast as it did, and yet it did.