I thought maybe we’d be too late for any woollybucks, seeing as the dip had been short short and had passed over while we were asleep. (Never do that again, I thought to myself: what’s the point of living up Cold Path way if you don’t go after woollybuck in a dip?) But bucks do sometimes stay down in forest for a waking or two after a dip and, sure enough, after we’d got a couple of little birds and bats, we found three good bucks by some rocks along the stream. I stayed in front of them, lying low, while Tina went in a big circle out round the rocky bit and back again behind them. There were three of them, two fully grown and one about three-quarters size. They weren’t just having a drink, they were eating wavyweed from the water, like bucks sometimes do. They were standing with their back legs on the bank and their middle legs splayed out at the edge of the stream, and they were using their front legs like arms, reaching into the water and yanking up the shiny weed. They were in no hurry to move on and the soft lanterns on their heads weren’t shining bright like they do up on Dark, but just softly glowing.
Well, it couldn’t have been a better time to find them because the strong muddy smell of the fresh weed would prevent them from getting wind of us. They lifted their big heavy heads from time to time and stared out into forest with those round flat Eden eyes, but I kept myself down, just peeping over the edge of a ridge, and they didn’t see me.
When she was ready behind them, Tina made a sound like a starbird: Aaaah! Aaaah! Aaaah! The bucks lifted their heads again and looked round, but after a few seconds they carried on gorging at the weed. I crept forward. I’d left the bag and the rope behind on a rock so that all I was carrying was my good spear ready in my right hand and the other spear in my left.
I was about ten yards from the stream when they all looked up again. They knew something was up now, and they dropped the weed they were holding back into the water, so as to have all six legs ready for running.
I made a starbird noise — Hoom! Hoom! Hoom! — to tell Tina to close up behind them. The bucks were sampling the air with those four feelers they had round their mouths, at the end of their long bendy snouts. One of them growled softly, and the lanterns on the heads of all three of them started to shine more brightly. Then they began to move off to the left.
Tina jumped up behind them and ran towards them yelling.
They turned and ran straight towards me. I kept down low until they were nearly on top of me, then threw the blackglass spear straight at the first one. I got it right in the shoulder, right in deep so I knew it wouldn’t need another spear to finish it, then turned and chucked my second spear at the second buck, the newhair. The spear got it in the face. It didn’t badly injure it, but the creature was scared and turned round again, which meant that Tina, jumping across the stream, could get it smack in the side with one of her spears.
The other buck ran off. We ran up to the two injured ones threshing about on the ground there, and Tina did for them both with her remaining spear. Then she knelt and dipped her fingers in its greeny-black blood.
Gela’s tits, that was enough meat for two whole groups and there were only four of us here to feed.
‘Michael’s names!’ I said laughing. ‘How are we expected to get this lot back to the caves?’
Tina stood up, licking the blood from her fingers and laughing too. It felt great. It felt, for the first time since I’d been out of Family, like everything might work out well.
‘One of us can stay here and guard them to keep off the tree foxes and starbirds. The other can go back to get Gerry. Then we can take them back one at a time. Look at all this meat, look at all this woolly skin! And we’ve only been hunting a couple of hours!’
‘Didn’t get a live baby, though,’ I said.
‘No. Do you really think that would work?’
‘Worth a try, I reckon, like you said. And, think about it, if there had been a baby one here, we could have got it, couldn’t we? If one of us had done for its mother the other could have jumped the baby and held it down, and we could have tied its feet with rope so it couldn’t run. Those little bucklings can’t be that strong.’
She bent and ran her fingers through the wool on the big old buck.
‘Enough skin here to try and make some warm wraps for us, and even some of those greased footwraps you were talking about.’
‘Easily. If it’s enough to keep two big bucks warm, it should do for all of us.’
‘Taste the blood,’ she said. ‘You should taste the blood when you make a kill.’
She got some more on her fingers and offered them to me to lick. All round her mouth was stained dark with buck blood.
‘You should see your face,’ I said, laughing as I took the thick sweet stuff.
‘You should see yours!’
She reached out to pull me towards her for a kiss.
And I wanted to kiss her too, but at the moment our lips touched Bella came back into my head. I thought about her tying a wavyweed rope to a branch and round her neck, all alone, all alone in forest, thinking I didn’t care about her. I thought of her testing the rope to make sure it was firm and then getting ready to jump, knowing that in the next second there’d be a horrible scary choking time and then nothing, nothing, nothing ever again.
I froze up inside. Kissing me must have been like kissing a stone.
‘What’s the matter, John?’
I didn’t tell her. I didn’t like to talk about things like that. I didn’t want people to think things like that were a problem for me.
‘We shouldn’t hang about,’ I said, trying to move away in my head from that cold cold stone inside me, which was how it felt to know that Bella was dead, a big icy lump of stone filling me up. ‘We’ve got two dead bucks here, look, and foxes and starbirds will soon want their share. I’ll mind these bucks, and you run back and get Gerry. You won’t need to run all the way. You should be able to call him not far from here, if you just get above the trees a bit.’
Tina looked at me, and shrugged.
‘We need to get some clay,’ I reminded myself out loud, as she walked off. ‘Clay to line the glue pit with.’
23
Tina Spiketree
Six seven wakings after we did for those bucks, me and Gerry went over Lava Blob way, hoping to meet people from Family. John was busy trying to figure out how to make wraps that could keep a person warm up on Snowy Dark, sitting surrounded by woollybuck skins, and a leopard tooth knife, and string made with dried wavyweed, and more string made of buck sinews and dried buck guts. He’d been absorbed in this for several wakings, absorbed like only John could be, cold and distant and sunk down inside himself, not caring or noticing anything else at all, and it was good to get away from him.
Jeff stayed and helped him. He was good with his fingers, and good at thinking of new ideas, and his feet weren’t up for another long walk.
Gerry and me had done for a few bats on the way to Blob, and picked a bit of fruit. We’d brought some embers with us on a piece of bark and now we lit up a little fire to cook the bats and soften the fruit. Hoppers came out of forest and looked at us, funny yellow hoppers, wringing their four hands together like they wanted to say something but were too shy. They waved the long feelers around their mouths in our direction, and went Peep peep, peep peep. Gerry chucked them a few fruit rinds and they hopped forward, snatched them up and darted back again to a safe distance to munch them up, watching us all the time with their big flat eyes.