He saw it was no good—she would not come with him freely and he could not take her by force. But as he was beginning to despair she spoke again, in a different tone. He did not know what had caused the change and did not care: the change itself was all that mattered. He pulled at her arm and she came, willingly if not eagerly.
• • •
Outside the hut Dom looked to see what was going on in the village. The old ones and the women and children of the tribe had come in also now, and were walking about. They gave small cries—of satisfaction at the sight of the sprawling bodies of the enemy, and of interest at all the things they found: stone knives and hammers, pots, cloths and woven mats. Some were clustered round the fire, fascinated by the way it was held in and tamed by stones. A piece of wood fell and sparks flew upward, making them draw back in sudden terror.
The hunters were still occupied with the killing of the beasts, except for the two Dom’s father had set to guard the gap in the hedge and make sure no one from the village escaped. Dom motioned Va to stay close in the shadow of the hut, and walked toward those two.
“My father sent me,” he told them. “The enemy are all dead and there is no need for you to stay here. You are to go and kill the beasts with the others.”
They went gladly, swinging their clubs and giving the hunting cry. Dom ran to where Va was and took her hand.
“Come quickly!”
Together they ran through the hole the stone had made. That was my doing, Dom thought: if I had not had the idea we would not have been able to get into the village and conquer it. Perhaps the other hunters would have killed my father, as the old women said they once before killed a chief. And yet he would not let me have this girl, and almost broke my jaw for disputing it.
But he knew that such thoughts were valueless. The tribe was victorious and the victory had set a new seal on his father’s authority. His father was the chief and must not be disobeyed—he had said he wanted Va and that was enough. No one must defy him, least of all his son. If they were caught now he would almost certainly be killed.
His father might already have noticed, despite the frenzy of killing, that the guards had come away from the place where he had put them; in which case they would have told of the lie by which they had been tricked. He and Va were out in the clearing and had no cover. He pointed to a small clump of bushes, a hundred yards away, and urged Va to run in that direction. She needed little urging and ran fast at his side.
He did not stop at the clump but keeping this as a screen between them and the village ran on toward denser undergrowth. Not long after they reached it he heard shouting in the distance, and guessed that the chase was on. He told Va: “Run faster,” but she was already doing so.
Gradually the shouts grew fainter. Good hunters though they were, they could not scent their prey as a lion did, and in country like this few marks were left by fleeing feet. They would be fanning out, he guessed, beating through the undergrowth surrounding the clearing. Every moment put a greater distance between them and their pursuers.
They came to the outskirts of the wood as the sun’s rim touched the western hill. It had been a long day, Dom thought—morning and the struggle to move the stone seemed an age ago. He realized when they at last stopped running that both his arm and his face were hurting, and the wound in the arm was looking red and angry. He showed it to Va, and said:
“Find the plants to make it better, as you did before.”
She said nothing. He used the words she had taught him. Pointing to the wound, he said:
“Plant . . . arm.”
She still did not speak, but he was sure she knew his meaning. He cuffed her, not too hard but enough to make her wince and shrink away. He said, more threateningly:
“Plant! Arm!”
He watched as she searched among the bushes and found it. She bandaged his arm as she had done before, and Dom realized something else—that he was hungry. He thought of the fresh meat on which the tribe might now be feasting, and saliva ran in his mouth. He would have to make do with what there was here. He said to Va:
“Fruit . . . eat.”
She gathered fruit for him and he ate some while she stood with her head bowed. That was the way it should be, the way a woman should attend a man. He said to her:
“You eat, too.”
She made no reply, so he put one of the fruits in front of her mouth and spoke her words:
“Va . . . fruit . . . eat.”
She shook her head. She was not hungry, he supposed, and ate the rest of the fruit himself. Dusk by this time was growing in the wood; the shadows thickened and birds sang their evening songs. Dom was tired: the day had been arduous as well as long. Va still stood before him with her head hanging, and he thought of the moss-bed she had made for him. He could not remember the name in her language, so he lay down and then got up again and pointed to the place where he had lain. She either did not understand or pretended not to, but when he had cuffed her she found mosses and leaves and made the bed.
He told her to make another for herself and she shook her head again; if she preferred to sleep on the hard ground, he thought, that was her concern. He himself lay down in the softness of the moss. She squatted nearby, not looking at him. The sound of the birds died away into the quieter noises of the night, and the last flush of daylight gave way, bit by bit, to the softer glow of the moon.
As he lay there Dom reflected on the day which was ending. It was not easy to think clearly because so much had happened, and it had all been so confusing. But one thing he knew, and the reminder of it was like a cold fist clenched about his heart: he could never go back to the tribe.
The thought itself was like death—no one could live away from the tribe, no one ever had. A person who was cast out or abandoned or lost must perish. That was as certain as anything could be. In panic he wondered if even now there might be a way of avoiding such a disaster. If he were to go back in the morning, and give Va to his father, and bow his head in obedience. . . . It was no good. The die had been cast when he took her away: they would kill him on sight.
Nor even now, for all his fear of loneliness and helplessness, could he contemplate giving her up. She was his: no one, not even his father the chief, must be allowed to take her from him.
And thinking this he wondered if it might not after all be possible to go on living without the support of the tribe. The ones who had died had died in the grasslands, where there was little water and food could be obtained only through the hunting of game, and then only by the combined cunning of all the hunters. This land was different: greener and richer, full of trees which provided sustenance as well as cover. Fruit was not as good as meat, but one could live on it for a time.
The thoughts comforted him a little. Although he had cut himself off from the tribe he was alive, and he had Va. They would find a way of living; all the things she knew would help.
Drifting into sleep his ears, tuned by hunting skill to catch the least whisper of a movement through grass, caught a sound that was neither the distant passage of an animal nor a cat’s faraway yowling. It was nearer, much nearer. At once, alerted, he came back from sleep, but he did not move. He peered instead through low-lidded eyes as Va, all the time watching his unmoving figure, got stealthily to her feet and began to steal away.
When she was a few yards from him she turned her back, and Dom rose to his feet. She heard him and started to run, but he ran after her with all his strength. She was his—he had given up the tribe to get her and he was determined not to lose her now. He brought her down, gasping and struggling, crashing into a bush.
Then, in the moonlight, he beat her, as all his life he had seen hunters beat women who dared disobey a man’s command. He did it more coldly than in anger: she must learn, as all women must, that a man was her master, and that he, Dom, was that man. She did not struggle or cry out, only moaned softly as the
blows landed. When he had finished she lay sobbing quietly, almost under her breath.
She might still try to run away, Dom thought, and he could not stay awake all night to watch her. So he took the belt she had around her waist, and tied one end round her neck and the other to his own belt. He went back to bed, dragging her roughly after him, and when he lay down she was forced to lie at his side. Tiredness soon overcame him after that, and he slept.
• • •
In the morning he made her find more fruit. When they were in the wood before they had done this together—now he must show her that he was the master, so he stood and watched her and took the fruit she gathered for him. He offered her some again, after his own hunger was satisfied, and as before she shook her head. He shrugged—when she was hungry enough she would eat.
She did whatever he told her, only nodding or shaking her head in response to his commands. When they went on he made her follow a few paces in the rear; far enough behind not to be able to attack him unexpectedly—though he did not think she would do anything so foolish—and near enough for him to catch her easily if she tried to get away. Occasionally he looked back and saw her walking there, with bowed head and closed unhappy face.
His arm was feeling better but he got her to replace the bandage. Watching her do this, with the hot sun bursting through the leafy cover and birds singing all round them, Dom felt a surge of confidence. She knew so many things which women in the tribe had not known. Even now, when she was being sullen and silent, she was useful to him, and when she realized that she could not run away and accepted him as her master, everything would be so much easier. Life would be as it had been the other time in the wood—all playing and smiles and laughter.
He led the way to the pool, and when they reached it pointed to the water and made swimming motions with his arms. She looked at him dumbly. He did the movements again, pointing at her and then at the pool. She shook her head.
The thought of the coolness of the water was tempting, but he knew that if he went in himself and left her standing on the bank she might seize the chance to run away. He pointed once more to her and the pool and nodded his head vigorously, but she still shook hers. Then, with a flail of his arm, he pushed her so that she fell in. He thought of the time he had put his hand down to her and she had pulled him in. Afterward they had laughed about it, but there would be no laughing today.
As she stood up he jumped in beside her, glad of the liquid freshness flowing against his skin. He thought again: this is a good land. He did the clumsy swimming strokes she had taught him, moving out into deeper water. Va followed him as she had done on land, but here more smoothly and powerfully.
Dom was looking ahead as he swam doggedly toward the far bank, where the stream splashed into the pool over its ledge of rock. Then something caught his leg, dragging him down—a water-beast, he thought, as he floundered in panic and felt the water close over his head. He opened his mouth to cry out and choked instead. He kicked out his legs against that which was holding him just above the ankle but could not break the grip. He knew what it was, though: no water-beast, but Va. Her hand was grasping him—she was pulling him down to make him drown.
When he realized that, he stopped trying to rise to the surface, and instead plunged deeper and struck out with his fist at the place where she must be. The yielding element of the water confused him, but he felt his fist make impact with less yielding flesh. He was choking still and his ears were roaring but he punched a second time, savagely, and felt the hold on his leg break.
He came up, gasping and spluttering, vomiting water, and it was a moment or two before he was sufficiently recovered to look for Va. He saw her swimming strongly away from him, almost at the far side of the pool. Having failed to kill him, she was trying to escape again.
Desperately Dom lumbered after her through the water, threshing and splashing his way to the bank. By the time he got there and heaved himself out she was far away in the wood, a distant running figure among the trees. He shouted after her, but she did not check in her flight and he wasted no more time but went after her.
It was a long chase but by now his leg was well again and his strength greater than hers. He followed her through the wood and out onto the open slope below, the gap between them narrowing all the time. A brightly colored bird rose squawking from a bush as she crashed through it, and farther on two small pigs scattered away in the long grass.
She looked back and faltered, and he knew he had her. In another couple of minutes he caught her—she stood with shoulders bowed, awaiting chastisement.
The previous day he had beaten her coldly, as something that had to be done to teach a necessary lesson. This time he was bitterly angry. She had not only refused to learn the lesson, but had tried to kill him, her master. She fell to the ground, moaning, and he lifted her by her long hair and beat her again.
It was a distant sound that stopped him at last. It came from farther up the valley, from the direction of the village. He had heard it before, many times, and it had filled him with excitement, but today it chilled his blood. It was the cry of the hunters in the chase.
Va heard it, too, and looked up at him, shivering and sobbing. He said, speaking to himself:
“It may be they are hunting game. But usually they go farther afield—there is not much game left here in the valley.”
She stared at him, uncomprehendingly. After a moment the cry came once more.
“And if it is not game they are hunting . . .”
He gestured abruptly to her to follow him, and she obeyed meekly. They went back up to higher ground, the small hill which was crowned by the wood. There was one spot which afforded a view a good way along the valley. Dom shaded his eyes against the sun, and peered southward.
He picked out a single dot first, then a second, eventually many. They were half a mile away, he judged, and heading this way.
They were spread out across the valley at intervals of about fifty yards. It was the formation and the maneuver used by beaters to drive game toward the waiting hunters; but if that had been the object the hunters would have been in position roughly where he and Va now were. So they were not beaters but hunters, and knowing that, Dom knew what quarry they sought.
If Dom had merely gone away from the tribe, his father would have let him go unhindered; but he had taken Va with him and Va was the property of the chief. So his father was leading the hunters in a chase that was not for game but for Dom and Va—to kill one and repossess the other.
They could not stay in the wood, which offered no protection against men whose eyes and ears were as keen as his own—no, keener. They could not stay in the valley, even, because the hunters would scour it from end to end.
He drew Va down into cover and crouched beside her. It was lucky they had not been spotted already. If they had been, those distant dots would not have been moving so slowly—the chase would have been on at full pelt, and Dom had no illusions about the way in which it must end. He might be able to outrun a girl, but there were a dozen at least among the hunters, including his father, who could even more easily run him down.
He said to Va, whispering although they were well out of earshot of the hunters:
“We must get away. And they must not see us. Follow me, and stay under cover.”
She looked at him silently. Dom slipped away through the thicket, beckoning her to follow. For a moment she seemed to hesitate; then she came.
8
THE WOOD, WHEN THEY GOT there after fleeing from the village, was an entirely different place for Va. In the past it had been special to her; her mother and the Village Mother had known that she went to it but not even they had ever gone there with her. The wood had been a place to be alone and private; to enjoy times of happiness, more rarely to console herself when her heart was sore.
And in the wood the most important part was the pool, where she had bathed, or
fed the squirrels with nuts, or simply sat and thought. It had seemed right that it had been at the pool that she had found Dom, because the pool was an abode for dreams and wonders.
After having it to herself for so long it had been strange, but good also and exciting, to have someone to share it with. She had loved it very deeply in the past but those two days with Dom—the nursing and the teaching and the playing—had been the best of all. Even what had happened at the end—the killing of the squirrel—although it marred the memory, had not destroyed it.
It was destroyed now, though, and the wood itself changed beyond recognition. It had turned into a place of gloom and horror, almost as much so as the desert of death that had been her home. When, after he had eaten, Dom offered her some of the fruit she had picked at his command, she could not possibly have taken it. It was not just because of her misery or her hatred of him: everything here was poisoned, and she would have choked on the fruit she had once loved.
She made his bed as he ordered her, and sat on the ground near him. She thought of all those she had loved whom Dom’s tribe had murdered—her mother and grandmother, father, brother—and all those who had been her friends, like Gri.
Yet she had not seen Gri’s body. It was true that she had not seen all the slain—in the end she had averted her eyes from the ugliness of the slaughter—but it might be, as the Village Mother had suggested, that some had escaped in the first confusion. Gri might have escaped. If she could only find him they could go away together to a different land, forgetting the piles of corpses and remembering only the living—helping each other to remember.
First, though, she had to be free of Dom. She watched him in the moonlight, waiting for signs that he was asleep, and at last heard his breathing become quiet and deepen. When she rose carefully to her feet, watching still, he did not move. So she began to creep away from the clearing and then, hearing him rouse up behind her, ran hard through the black and silver trees.