Читать книгу The Gathering Night - Margaret Elphinstone - Страница 12

All winter I searched in every place I knew, right to the edges of our hunting grounds. I went down Long Strait beyond Boat Crossing Camp. When I got to my sister Sorné’s winter Camp the men were away hunting in the hills. But Sorné sees everyone: she told me that no one for far around had seen my son that winter. I realised by now that I wouldn’t find Bakar alive, but I needed to know what had happened to him. If only I could know it would be easier, or so I felt.

The others seemed to have let him go. At first they mourned almost as much as I did, but as the ripples fade and vanish after a fish has leaped into the Sun then disappeared again into deep water, so too did the memories of Bakar fade from the minds of his family. Only I, his mother, never ceased to think of him.

In Dark Moon the nights become dangerous and powerful and almost swallow up the days. For half a Moon the days were so starved and shrunken it seemed as though they could never recover. Day after day the wind was from the Sunless Sky. Blizzards and hail came down with the wind, and blotted out the weary Sun. For seven nights we saw no stars. On the eighth night the wind died. The snow lay still at last; it had grown so thick it reached almost to the top of the door. We’d piled thick logs across the doorway to keep it out. The clouds died with the wind, and when Amets dug away the snow so that we could step outside everything was quiet. We heard a big branch snap under its weight of snow. The sky blazed with stars.

I trudged over the frozen snow. Once more I climbed Lookout Hill. I read the shape of the hills in the darkness where there were no stars.

I looked up at the River of Milk that spurted from the breast of our First Mother – the white River that spans the sky and dims the farthest stars. I saw it as a sandy strand where a man might easily walk. Although the air was freezing I stood staring, and I saw how the stars were as many as the grains of sand on the shore. It was as though the hide of an immense beast had been hooked back from a huge door. Inside a house one can see no further than one can stretch out one’s hand and touch. A house holds us close, like children in the womb. But when the hide is lifted from the door you can see across the world to where the sea meets the sky. And sometimes in the winter Moons it’s the same when you look into the sky: everything is sharp and clear and bright, and there are more stars in the sky than you’d ever see on a summer night.

I looked into the stars, and I saw the shape of my son Bakar. I saw him stand above the River of Milk with his bow over his shoulder and his knife hanging from his belt. Red spirit-lights flickered round his head. His wolfskin cloak streamed across the sky, green as the sea. And I knew that I must search for him in places more different than I’d ever dreamed of.

On every cloudless night after that, I went up Look-out Hill and watched the stars. As the Sun got tired the nights grew strong. One by one new stars peered over the Morning hills, ready to begin their winter journey. Each night they climbed higher before they dropped into the Deep Sea under the Evening Sun Sky. Slowly the Hunter shook himself free of the horizon. Soon the timid Marten followed him, crouching low, ready to run back to his cave before day came and put him out. As the Sun grew weak the dark grew strong. I was glad. Like the winter stars, my journey belonged to the night, and the braver the dark grew the more I welcomed it.

One day a Dark Moon will come when the nights will swallow the days for ever, and when that happens our world will end. Every person who was ever born must have wondered if the last Dark Moon would come in their lives, but it never has, and now I have travelled far enough to know that there is much more still to come, and many more lives to be lived, before the Sun dies.

But that winter my eyes were on the dark. The days were an empty waste. I lay in the sleeping place and turned my face to the wall. When my family all danced in the melting snow to greet the light I wouldn’t raise my head. They thought I was ill, and so perhaps I was, for what is ill? I don’t know if I ate or drank or slept. I only know that slowly the days passed, and each one was far too long.

Each night, when the dark came, my man lay down in his usual place beside me. I ignored him, and when his breathing told me that he slept I slid from under the thick bearskin and crept away from my family, where they lay in their bed places round the hearth, all fast asleep. I pushed aside the hides that covered the door, and stepped into the freezing night. Did I wrap a fur round me? Did I put on my sealskin boots or my hood? I don’t remember. Perhaps I stood under the icy stars with no protection at all. Perhaps not. But the small things we do every day to protect ourselves – the way we take care to be warm and dry in winter, cool in summer – the way we eat when we’re hungry and drink when we’re thirsty and sleep when we’re tired – the way we enjoy and comfort one another – none of these things seemed to matter any more.

In Thaw Moon Esti was born, and her father recognised her. I should have been very happy to see my daughter a mother and I still as strong as ever, and able to travel as far as I liked. I knew that much of my life still lay before me. Ever since I’d seen Bakar outlined in the stars, I knew that the next direction would be new and strange. As the Sun recovered its strength, I did too. I began to go out in daylight again, and to eat and drink with the others. I could see they all hoped that whatever illness had struck me down in Dark Moon had gone away for ever. I knew I hadn’t been ill. I came back into the world only for a breathing space. I had to gather my strength for what lay ahead.