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He stares at me. The long, unblinking silence holds and holds, and only now he speaks.
‘Hurna? Back to my hut now.’
Not to me. Although he stares the while into my eyes he does not speak to me but to the hulking, silent woman looking on. Her name is Hurna, then. Out of her crouch she rises, wearily unfolds her largeness, all without a word. She turns her back upon the bed of sticks then stoops to grasp the poles that thrust out from its head. She lifts. The smallest grunt escapes her, less from effort than her need to mark a task completed.
Having lifted up the old man to a tilt, not steep enough to tip him from his bed, she drags the litter off towards the roundhouse door, whereby the man with dyed and shaking hands still waits and watches us. The pallet leaves a pair of grooves behind it, scratched upon black dirt, and still the old man holds my eye even as he is dragged away, bound in his blackbird shroud.
‘Well? Are you coming, daughter?’
There! He speaks. He speaks to me and calls me daughter.
‘Coming, father. Does your woman need my help in dragging you?’
He makes a creaking sound. It comes to me that he is laughing.
‘Hurna? She is not my woman. All she does is wipe my arse and feed me, drag me here and there, and in return it is for me to suffer through her thoughts upon the spirit world and all her foolish gods.’
Her. Foolish. Gods. The words burst out between the shallow breaths. The woman pulls the litter, slow and even; does not seem to hear the Hob-man make complaint against her. Follow, walking in between the scratch-lines scored upon the dirt behind. Deep in my throat there is the smell of tallow smoke and feathers.
One last glance behind: the monster boys are sitting on the furs to each side of their bloated queen. One, Bern or Buri, nuzzles with his head to kiss her underneath the arm. The other has his hand beneath her wraps. Look quick away. Out through the veil of reeds we step into star-frosted air. The palsied gateman with the blackened hands watches me pass, but does not speak or follow.
Outside, it seems that Olun and his tow-horse woman do not wait for me, but drag away into the twists of path foot-worn between the crowding huts, asleep and sunk in dark. They make me run to fall in step with them, walking beside of Olun’s bier and talking to him once my breath is caught again. About us, shiftings, mumbles in the thatch-topped dwellings, bodies settling for the night into their rags and straw
.
The old man turns his head, looks up towards me from his bed of sticks that bumps along here by my side.
‘How well are things,’ he says, ‘now that here is my daughter come. What is the many of the nights you spend upon the track?’
This is an answer that the dead girl does not give me, at the river’s edge, one of the things it slips my thoughts to ask her. Too late now to cut away her other thumb. My wits must save me and my wits alone.
‘More days than are within my reckoning,’ is my reply, then, quickly, moving on: ‘All of those nights, sleep passes by and does not take me with her, so great is my fright to hear that you are sick.’
The old man smiles, lips crawling back from off the few and yellowed teeth. The skull is restless, eager for that day soon come when it may shed the dried meat and the sun-cured hide, emerge from Olun’s head wearing a grin of victory at conquering the flesh. These teeth, poked through the shrivelled gums, are but the heralds of its coming. Up above his smile, the old man slides his ice-white blinded eye towards me, sidewise there between its greying lids. It seems to stare at me.
‘Do you think that your scheming is not known to me?’ he says, the smile grown wider still, and in my stomach something heavy flops and moves and makes my arse pull in all tight. He knows. The old man knows about my plan, the borrowed beads, the dead thing in the river. What is there for me to say or do but make to run and hide myself?
He speaks again, and holds me with his smile, his dead-snake eye. ‘You think to win my favour with your words, is that not it?’ He laughs to see me, staring like a throttled cat towards him in my fear and wonderment. ‘You think to have the old man’s treasure when the old man’s dead. There is a little of your mother in you yet,’ and here he laughs again, and shuts his eyes and laughs so much the laughter turns to coughing, wet and deep.
He does not know. He thinks me sly and greedy, but he thinks me his. Thank all the gods, though none in truth there be.
My answer is come easily to me, with just the ring of feeling hurt yet touched with shame that such a girl might have: ‘How can you mock your daughter so, that walks the great long way to be beside you? How is it you say she does not care for you? Why, there’s a notion in me to walk back again, so little is my want for such a father or what wealth he has.’
At this the coughing stops. His look is worried now, less sure he has the hold of me.
‘No. You must stay, and pay my tongue no mind. It is an old man’s jest and nothing more. You are my only flesh, and you must stay with me until my end.’
His live eye searches mine, afraid that he may drive me off from him with all his taunting. He has need of me, and is not certain of my need for him: the game is mine. My voice is sniffy and uncaring in reply, to make him squirm more fast upon the hook.
‘Oh yes? Your only flesh, you say? What of my brother Garn? You favoured him above me once before. Why not make him your comfort now and leave me in my northland home, if you can think so little of me?’
Here he looks away, and for a while he does not speak. There’s silence save the drag and rattle of his bed across the soil and stones; the noisy breathing of the woman as she trudges onwards, pulling him between the huts.
‘Garn is no son of mine.’ His words are hard, like unto flint. He stares up at the stars and does not look at me.
My best course is to hold my silence, wait ‘til he says more of this. The huts crawl by. The woman pants like some great dog, and now he speaks again.
‘It is our custom, passing teachings to the boy, as it is our custom to seek mates among the further lands so that it gives a strongness to the blood. That is why Garn is taken far away and you are left beside the great cold sea. It is our custom, to pass teachings to a boy, but Garn . . .’
