Wooma searched his face. ‘What are you seeing now?’ she asked anxiously.
‘I am seeing a tree strook down by the man’s axe. The tree groans, and the tree’s demon is angry. But the man is not afraid. He is mighty. He is fearless.’
‘The man is Ogo,’ affirmed Wooma.
‘It is so. With his axe the man strips the tree of its waving arms. The tree has a fat body and now it is naked. Many days and many darks the man works with his axe at the tree. He is making a boat.’
Wooma said nothing. Her face assumed the fixed grin of incomprehension, and she stared at the ground.
‘And now,’ said Ogo excitedly, ‘the boat is on the top of the water, and the man is sitting in it. He beats the water with a flat stick, and the boat swims away.’ Ogo laughed with pleasure and glanced at Wooma for applause. Her face was downcast. ‘Ugh?’ he said. He was puzzled and his tone impatient.
‘Lord!’ She nestled closer, and looked timidly up at him.
Ogo sat rigid and sulky. ‘Doesn’t it please you, what I am seeing?’
Her face crumpled with grief. ‘Lord,’ she wailed, ‘at first you were seeing a man and a woman. Now you are seeing only a man.’
‘Ugh?’ He was baffled. ‘Ah!’ He understood. ‘But the woman is there too, my soul. She is in the boat. She is Wooma.’ He bit her ear tenderly, and she was happy again. But she asked him no more about his thoughts. He had been already too long away from her. She was lonely, neglected, jealous. Wanting nothing but him, her heart demanded that he should want nothing but her.
Ogo resumed his thoughts and the recitation of them, his body swaying and his voice rising and falling in a chant. ‘Ogo and Wooma are in the boat, and the boat is a bird flying on the water. The spirit of the river is noble and kind. He is very big, but he speaks in a little voice, and Ogo is his friend. Ogo is his friend and he is the friend of Wooma. Ogo and Wooma are in the boat. They ride on the river’s back and the demons of the forest cannot catch them. The sun smiles on the river. He laughs and is friendly. The sun and the river laugh together. The man shouts with a loud noise and the woman claps her hands. Ogo and Wooma are in the boat. Ogo and Wooma are joined with the boat in flight. The wind runs to meet them, and because the river is good and mighty the wind lets them pass. So they come to a great water at the end of the world. It is a good water, and the sky is a good sky, and the water and the sky touch each other and are friends. The man and the woman and the boat—’
She gripped his arm in a fierce grip. ‘There are men coming.’
They jumped up, looking round for a hiding place.
‘There are dogs with them,’ said Ogo. That meant that unless the dogs had already scented quarry, no hiding-place would shelter the lovers for many seconds. ‘Where is my axe?’ he cried (for the axe still lay where he had dropped it twelve hours ago). They stared at each other wildly, and already there was distance between them. The steps came nearer; and now to the dogs’ barking was added the sound of human voices. These sounds reminded the lovers of what they had put out of mind. They remembered the law of sib, and each to the other became tainted with the terror of the curse: the spirit of the herd mastered and divided them. They ran in different directions. Wooma went first, Ogo watching her in stupid despair. Then he crawled into the undergrowth. The conflict of impulses made him numb. His hiding was purposeless and half-reluctant. And when from his cover he saw the young man Stare approach, he shouted a greeting and moved forward to meet him. Burning with guilt, he was surprised at Stare’s quiet acceptance of him. ‘There’s good hunting,’ said Stare. ‘Come on.’ He had not seen Ogo for many days. Ogo had been away and forgotten. Now he was back. ‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Stare. But there was hunting afoot; the others, half hidden by trees, were pressing forward; and he did not wait to be answered. He went on, and Ogo followed him.
Wooma, out of reach and hearing, flung herself down. She lay sobbing, raging with grief. She hated Ogo and wanted him. That last sight of him, when she had seen Koor looking out of his eyes, shone luridly in her memory. The same shrinking distaste, born of fear, had been legible in her own glance. But that she did not know or remember. The law in itself, being a man’s law given by man’s gods, had less hold on her than on him. For him it had a mysterious inward power; for her it was something external that had to be obeyed. Not since his avowal of yesterday, that she was his woman, had she had a moment’s shame until now; since that high peak of her life he had been, for her, both law and conscience. And now he had accused and condemned her and with one look cast her out. Having exhausted herself with weeping she lay quiet and numbed for many hours; then rose and wandered aimlessly, without hope, until the forest began filling with the red glow of sunset. The hour came charged so richly and cruelly with reminiscence that sorrow shook her again. And the threat of darkness terrified her. She pictured the returning hunters, with Ogo, forgetful of her, in their midst; she saw the shadows gathering to enclose her; and her feet began following where her heart had already gone. She was very young, a child; she had been companioned only by women jealous of her budding loveliness, and touched by no man except Ogo. But the squat of the tribe was her home; the valley was friendly; and the shape of the surrounding hills was like a lyric in her memory. And now, she surmised, Ogo was there; and to be near Ogo was necessary to life; for, till the next man claimed her, she was his alone. She forgot Flint’s malice and the vengeance she had taken upon Flint. She forgot Koor and his laws. The forest with every passing moment grew more dim and dreadful, and she ran faster and faster, calling on Ogo to save her. There came no answer, but when at last she descended the familiar hill, and emerged from the forest that covered it, she gained new heart, seeing that there was still light in the sky, and knowing herself back among her own people. Trembling, but dry-eyed and quiet, and keeping to the edge of the two broad terraces of tilth at the base of the hill, she ran lightly into the valley and across the clearing in the direction of the women’s quarters. In the doorway of Koor’s squat, which she must pass on her way, crouched a dark motionless figure, Nigh the Tale-Bearer. He grinned as he watched her, and moistened his lips. But he made no sound, and she went by without seeing him.
CHAPTER 9
OGO IS BETRAYED BY HIS FRENZY, WITH NIGH AIDING
Seven days passed before Ogo and Wooma set eyes on each other again, days in which, for Ogo, all that had happened in the forest seemed like a dream. It was not the less real for that, but it belonged to a different order of reality. Back among his own people, accepted by them, and taking his place once more in the hunt and the common life, he almost believed at last that it was his soul, which he pictured as another body, a shadowy duplicate of himself, that had had those experiences while he had lain asleep. The wandering, the slaying, the meeting with Bikkoo, the wooing of Wooma: all this belonged to another world, which he could re-enter only in sleep and then only by chance. He was not easy; he was intimately changed; but for the while he was able to move without overmuch difficulty or danger in his accustomed social groove. He had moments of strange absentness, when silence fell upon him and his eyes stared wonderingly into a far distance; but at other times he talked much, and quickly won a reputation for story-telling. All that could be safely told he told freely and in graphic detail, with a great wealth of mimicry and gesture. He even claimed to have met and possessed a strange woman; but this part of the tale no one believed. ‘Where is she, this woman?’ demanded Hawkon, with curling lip; and Ogo’s account of how she had escaped him while he slept exposed him to jeers and to polite grins that were harder to bear than jeers. In this way he learned the wisdom of confining his story within more credible bounds, telling the whole truth about the boar hunt, the man slain, Bikkoo, the river magic, and his first sight of the sea, with such additions as fancy suggested to him. He told his stories again and again; they became richer and stranger with each telling. He made songs and chanted them, and others chanted with him. By the exercise of his unsuspected talents he won many hearts, even the Old One himself taking pleasure in the entertainment. He was active, talkative, brimming over with his own cleverness. But somewhere within him was an ache he would not heed, a silence, a bottomless pit of sorrow and hunger; somewhere in his heart the thing that he had never told, and did not think of, lay coiled like a snake ready to rise and strike him.