O'wa! H'ani prodded her husband in the ribs, and hooted.
O'wa! The old man slapped his own chest, and bobbed up and down with gratification.
For the moment the argument was forgotten, as Centaine had intended, and as soon as the first excitement had passed, she pointed at the old woman, who was quick to understand her query. H'ani? she enunciated clearly.
On the third attempt, Centaine sounded the final click to Ham's satisfaction and high delight.
Centaine. She touched her own chest, but this precipitated shrill denials and a fluttering of hands.
Nam Child! H'ani slapped her gently on the shoulder, and Centaine resigned herself to another christening. Nam Child! she agreed.
So, revered old grandfather, H'ani rounded on her husband, Nam Child may be ugly, but she learns fast and she is with child. We will rest here and go on tomorrow.
The matter is at an end! And grumbling under his breath O'wa shuffled out of the shelter, but when he came back at dusk, he carried-the fresh carcass of a half-grown seal over one shoulder, and Centaine felt so rested that she joined in the ceremony of thanksgiving, clapping with H'ani and imitating her piping cries while O'wa danced around them and the seal meat grilled over the embers.
The ointment which H'ani had used on her injuries brought rapid results. The raw burns and blisters on her face dried up, and her skin with its Celtic pigmentation darkened to the colour of teak as it became conditioned to the sun, though she used her fingers to brush out her thick dark hair to shade as much of her face as possible.
Each day she grew stronger as her body responded to hard work and the protein-rich diet of seafood. Soon she could really reach out with her long legs and match the pace that O'wa set, and there was no more lagging behind, or argument about early halts. For Centaine it became a matter of pride to keep up with the old couple from dawn until dusk.
I'll show you, you old devil, she muttered to herself, fully aware of the strange antagonism which O'wa felt towards her but believing that it was her weakness and helplessness and her drag on the party that was the cause.
one day as they were about to begin, and despite the old woman's protests, she took half the water-filled ostrich eggs from H'ani's load and slung them in her canvas shawl. Once H'ani realized her intention, she acquiesced willingly and ribbed the old man mercilessly as they set out on the day's trek.
Nam Child carries her share, just like a woman of the San, she said, and when she had exhausted her gibes she turned all her attention to Centaine and began her instruction in earnest, pointing with her digging stick and not satisfied until Centaine had the word right or showed that she understood the lesson.
At first Centaine was merely humouring the old woman, but soon she was delighting in each fresh discovery and the day's journey seemed lighter and swifter as her body strengthened and her understanding grew.
What she had at first believed was a barren wasteland was instead a world teeming with strange and wonderfully adapted life.
The kelp beds and underwater reefs were treasure houses of crustaceans and shellfish and seaworms, and occasionally the low tide left a shoal of fish trapped in a shallow rock pool, They were deep, fullbodied fish with gunmetal gleaming scales and a slightly greenish tinge to the flesh, but when split and grilled on the coals, were better than turbot.
Once they came across a nesting colony of jackass penguins. The penguins were on a rocky island, connected to the mainland by a reef across which they waded at low tide, although Centaine had shark horrors all the way over. The thousands of black and white jackass penguins nested on the bare ground, and hissed and brayed with outrage as the Bushmen harvested the big green eggs and filled the canvas carrying bag with them. Roasted in the sand under the fire they were delicious, with transparent, jelly-like whites and bright yellow yolks, but so rich that they could only be eaten one at a time and the supply lasted many days.
Even the shifting dunes with precipitous slip-faces of loosely running sand were the homes of sand-burrowing lizards and the venomous side-winding adders that preyed upon them. They clubbed both lizards and adders and cooked them in their scaly skins, and after Centaine had mastered her initial aversion, she found that they tasted like chicken.
As they trekked northwards, the dunes became intermittent, no longer presenting an unbroken rampart, and between them were valleys whose bottoms were of firm earth, albeit as bare and as blasted as the dunes or the beaches. H'ani led, Centaine over the rocky ground and showed her succulent plants which exactly resembled stones. They dug beneath the tiny inconspicuous leaves and found a bloated root the size of a football.
Centaine watched while H'ani grated the pulp of the root with her stone scraper, then took a handful of the shavings, held them high with her thumb pointed downwards like a teat on a cow's udder and squeezed. Milky liquid ran down her thumb and dribbled into her open mouth, and when she had squeezed out the last drop, she used all the remaining damp pulp to scrub her face and arms, grinning all the while with pleasure.
Quickly Centaine followed her example. The juice was quinnine-bitter, but after the first shock of the taste, Centaine found that it slaked her thirst more effectively that water alone, and when she had scrubbed her body with the pulp, the dryness caused by wind and sun and salt was alleviated and her skin felt and looked cleaner and smoother. The effect was to make her aware of herself for the first time since the shipwreck.
That evening as they sat around the fire waiting for the kebabs of limpets threaded on a piece of driftwood to broil, Centaine whittled a stick and with the point cleansed between her teeth, and then used her forefinger dipped in evaporated crystals of seasalt that she had scraped from the rocks to scrub them again. H'ani watched her knowingly, and after they had eaten, she came and squatted behind Centaine and crooned softly to her as she used a twig to pick the knots and tangles out of her hair, and then dressed it into tight new braids.
Centaine woke when it was still dark to the realization that a change had taken place while she slept. Although the fire had been built up, the light was weirdly diffused, and the excited voices of H'ani and O'wa were muted as though they came from a distance. The air was cold and heavy with moisture and it took Centaine a while to realize that they were enveloped in dense fog that had rolled in from the sea during the night, H'ani was hopping with excitement and impatience.
Come, Nam Child, hurry. Centaine's vocabulary already contained a hundred or so of the most important words of San, and she scrambled up.
Carry. Bring. H'ani pointed at the canvas container of ostrich eggs and then picking up her own leather bag scampered away into the fog. Centaine ran after her to keep her in sight, for the world had been obliterated by the pearly fog banks.
in the valley between the dunes H'ani dropped to her knees.
Look, Nam Child. She seized Centaine's wrists and drew her down beside her, and pointed to the desert plant that was spread out flat against the ground. The thick smooth skin that covered the stone-like leaves chameleoned to the exact colour of the surrounding earth. Water, H'anfl Centaine exclaimed delightedly. Water, Nam Child. H'ani cackled with laughter.
The fog had condensed on the smooth leaves and had run down the slanted surface to gather in the trough-like depressions of the point where the foreshortened stems disappeared into the earth. The plant was a marvellously designed gatherer of moisture, and Centaine understood now how that bloated subterranean root was replenished at each coming of the fog.
Quick! H'ani ordered. Sun come soon. She stood one of the empty ostrich shells upright in the soft earth and unplugged it. With a ball of animal fur she mapped up the glistening pool of dew and then squeezed it carefully into the egg-bottle. With that demonstration, she handed Centaine a wad of fur.