The Limping Man Read online

  ‘Will my brother see me?’ Xantee asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ben said. ‘Ask Pearl and Hari when they come back.’

  They did not know either, but Xantee went into the forest alone that night and came back in the morning with tears on her face.

  We spoke, Xantee told her parents, but it hurts him and he won’t let me touch him any more.

  Pearl comforted her. It had been the same with Hari and her. Lo was no longer the Lo they had known. But he’s still our son, and your brother, she said.

  That night they held a conference, Pearl and Hari and Xantee and Ben in the house, with Tealeaf and Blossom and Hubert joining in from far away. Blossom and Hubert were wanderers, close to each other but apart. Their connecting was like a flash of light. They roamed the forests and coastlines of the Inland Sea and the Western Sea, lived among Dwellers and humans with equal comfort and came back to the village frequently. They were not lost to their parents the way Lo was. Neither had taken a partner.

  Hubert was far away in the northern mountains. Blossom was at Stone Creek with Tealeaf. They ‘spoke’ as if they were in the same room. Ben heard them but concealed it. Pearl spoke aloud to him the things he should hear.

  A messenger came from Danatok, Tealeaf said. The Limping Man is massing his armies on the plain. All the tribes are there, southern and eastern and even some from the ice islands beyond the south. Danatok says they’ll march in high summer and sweep as far north as Stone Creek and then come eastwards in the spring.

  How can Danatok know that? Hari said.

  Danatok guesses. He uses his good sense. But it doesn’t matter when the Limping Man starts, he will come.

  Why?

  Fear of us. He calls us witches.

  He wants to be the only speaker? Hari asked.

  It’s not speaking, it’s control. It’s power. He wants to rule every living thing, everything that moves. He wants the whole world to bow down and worship him.

  Why?

  Because he is who he is. I have no answer but that.

  They talked on but could not think of what to do. Only Ben had a plan: I’ll go there with my knife and stick it through him, he thought.

  Blossom said: Hubert and I have tried to see inside him but we can’t. We can’t even see into the city. There’s a fog lying over it, with the stink of swamps. It pushes us away. This man, the Limping Man, has huge strength. Danatok has felt it. No one who hears his voice escapes. He can kill if he wants to. He can make you worship him and hold you on your knees until you die.

  Why didn’t Danatok die?

  There’s a boundary. This power that he wields has an edge. Danatok was there, on the edge. He would have died if the sea hadn’t carried him away. But whatever the thing is that makes the Limping Man strong lives in his palace. Some magic thing –

  There is no magic, Hari said.

  Some thing, magic or not. Without it he’s a man no stronger than any other.

  Then I’ll go there and find what makes him strong, Hari said.

  No, Hari, Pearl said.

  No, Blossom said. He would kill you like a fly. He would kill me if I was alone. He would crush me in one hand. And Hubert too, alone.

  Hubert said: He’s stronger than us.

  They heard the sadness in his voice.

  But if you go together, Tealeaf said.

  No, Pearl said.

  Then how do we fight him?

  Not with our minds, Blossom said. Not till we know him.

  We’ll creep into the city and be among his slaves and never ‘speak’. We’ll find out who he is, and what he is. Then . . .

  Who will go? Hari said.

  Hubert and I. But he’s far away and we need to be quick.

  I’ll come as fast as I can, Hubert said.

  Who else?

  Our brother, Lo.

  Why him? Hari said.

  Blossom did not answer but Tealeaf said, Because he’s a limping man. No other reason. The two must meet . . .

  And he lives with the people with no name, Blossom said.

  The Limping Man will kill them too.

  Listening, Ben thought: If my father goes to the city I’m going too. Pearl whispered to him what had been decided, and he repeated, aloud: ‘If my father goes to the city I’m going too.’

  ‘No,’ Hari said.

  ‘Yes,’ Ben said. ‘Lo needs me. He won’t go if you leave me behind.’

  He felt Blossom smiling at him, smiling in his head. She whispered silently, Yes, he needs you, and we’ll need you too. But why are you hiding from us, Ben?

  ‘Get out,’ Ben said. ‘I didn’t ask for you.’

  If you come you can’t hide from us. It will be dangerous.

  ‘I’ll “speak” when I’m ready,’ he said.

  You’re ready now.

  ‘And when my father tells me.’

  Don’t be too long, Ben. We’ll need every weapon we’ve got.

  She had been speaking to him alone. Now she opened her voice: Ben can ‘speak’. He speaks with Lo. When he’s ready he’ll speak with us.

  Ben stood up. ‘I’m going now. I’ll sleep outside. I’ll take a boat in the morning and pick up my father.’ He smiled. ‘I think he can make the breeze blow any way he wants. Where shall we meet? Ask Blossom.’

  At Danatok’s beach, south of the poisoned hill. I’ll wait for you there, Blossom replied; and Ben heard.

  He embraced Pearl and Hari and Xantee, collected the few things he would need – his blanket, his knife and water bottle and his flints for making fire – and lay down in the warm grass at the back of the gardens. The night was cloudless. Multitudes of stars spread their light, making the bays of the Inland Sea shine like the petals of a flower. Ben felt that he never wanted a roof over his head, or a bed or tables and chairs, or the touch of hands, and it made him afraid, for although he did not need company he did not want to be like his father. He felt Lo close; he had lain down somewhere beyond the hill.

  My father, Ben whispered.

  My son, came the reply.

  There were other voices too, murmuring in Ben’s head: Blossom, Hari, Tealeaf, Pearl talking in the house. The edges of their ‘speaking’ touched his mind as, half-understanding, he drifted to sleep.

  The messenger, Tealeaf said, was a girl who fled from the burrows. She saw the Limping Man. Her mother was one of those he calls witches. She died of poison before he could take her but he burned her with her friends all the same.

  The girl . . .

  She travels with a bird. A hawk. She speaks with the hawk.

  No one speaks with a hawk.

  Hana does. She gave us her message and the next morning she was gone, we don’t know where . . .

  Next morning, Ben thought, as he slid into sleep, we’ll be gone, my father and I . . .

  FOUR

  They sailed across the Inland Sea with a breeze behind them. Ben did not ask if his father made it blow but he noticed that when Lo slept it lost some of its strength. When he trailed a line a fish took the bait after only a moment. Ben heard him whisper as he removed the hook, using some word that stilled the creature’s pain. They ate fruit and dry food and raw fish and drank from the sea. Ben could not imagine water that was salt.

  One night, before Lo took his place at the tiller, Ben said, My father, tell me about the people with no name.

  You name them when you call them that, Lo said.

  How can I speak of them then?

  Lo smiled – he smiled more frequently as the journey went on. There’s no way.

  Who are they? What are they?

  The jungle.

  Ben did not understand.

  They grew with it, as much as trees and ferns and vines, and snakes and hummingbirds – and they’ll die with it.

  But they rule –

  No. Lo spoke the word so sharply it stabbed like a blade. They exist, like every other part of the jungle.

  But they can make sounds to keep animals away.

 
It’s part of them, the way claws are part of a fangcat or wings part of a bird. The cat doesn’t rule. The bird doesn’t rule.

  And they can make light.

  It’s part of them.

  And heal.

  They healed me badly. There’s no magic, my son. They are who they are.

  But why no name?

  Does a cat have a name? Or a bird? But more than that, each one of these people, as you call them, is part of another until each reaches out into all the rest. They grew like that. The jungle made them. A name breaks them apart from it and from each other.

  You’re one of them –

  No. The word was sharp again. I lived around their edges. I couldn’t go inside. They taught me as much as I could know, which is almost nothing.

  But you were happy with them . . .

  I was happy. I was sad. For a while I said: I’m one of them. Then I knew I could never be.

  And my mother couldn’t?

  No.

  She died – of that?

  She died of grief for her dead cousin.

  Mond?

  That was her name. For a while she . . .

  Sal.

  Yes, Sal – was happy with me, and with them, but when you were born she pined again, she wanted to share you with Mond and she could not. So she wished to die.

  And the people let her?

  It was what she wanted. I’m sorry, my son.

  Ben gave Lo the tiller. He wrapped himself in his blanket and crouched in the bow, looking ahead.

  You could have brought her to the farm, he said.

  She wouldn’t go. What happened was the thing that had to happen. I did what she asked me, I took you.

  Ben stayed in the bow for a long time. The thing that had to happen. He fought against the words but could not change them.

  Sleep, my son, Lo said.

  Ben tightened his blanket.

  This Limping Man?

  What of him?

  Will he kill the people? Will he find them?

  If his army is big enough and has enough time he’ll sweep through the jungles and drive them out, and outside the jungles they’ll die.

  Ben felt the sadness of that and lay thinking about it for a long time. Then he said, Tell me what they look like.

  It can’t be told. Sleep, my son.

  Ben slept. Deep in the night the wind died and the sea stilled and Lo sat motionless in the bow, and in that time Ben dreamed . . .

  . . . trees heavy with moss, tangled in vines, with fat insects droning and lizards unblinking on the boughs. Cats creeping.Birds darting. Thin light leaking through the canopy. And here a flicker of movement as something not cat or bird, not snake or lizard, made its soundless way across the jungle floor, through ferns that touched like hands and heavy leaves that opened like doors. It did not trouble Ben that he could not see what it was.A small hand, monkey-pawed, curved round a branch. A foot, five-toed, sank in rotting leaves. An eye gleamed. Skin lit up in a shaft of sunlight and sank again like a stone in water. A whispering, soundless; a harmony reaching through valleys and winding down rivers and creeping as far as the jungle stretched, saying . . . Ben could not hear the message: love or fear or hunger or pain or satisfaction? The only meaning he could find was sharing. He heard as much as he could hear, and understood as much, which was everything and nothing. Everything because he was alive and human; nothing because he was not jungle. Yet there was no striving in his dream, no questioning and no disappointment, only acceptance. When it stopped he slept peacefully. The breeze mounted and Lo worked the tiller again and sailed towards the western shore of the Inland Sea, where dawnlight slid down from the sky behind him.

  Ben woke. He thanked his father.

  That is as far as seeing goes, Lo said. To know more you must live with them.

  Ben shook his head. He spoke aloud, but softly, so as not to hurt Lo. ‘I’ll stay who I am. But teach me how to make the wind blow.’

  Lo grinned at him. That’s something humans can’t know. But bring me my line and I’ll show you how to catch a fish . . .

  They sailed hard all that day and the following night and came ashore in the morning by a river leading down to the Western Sea. It was too swift and rocky for their boat. They left it with Dwellers living at the river mouth and struck out south and west through open forest land. Ben was more at home in the silver trees than Lo, who was used to the dark and damp and heaviness of the jungle; but Lo had known the forest as a boy and each day he seemed to shed some of his darkness. Although still limping on his crooked leg, he began to stand straighter. He could walk from dawn to dusk and into the night, keeping up with Ben, moving ahead if he chose, while keeping all his senses alert in his jungle way. He smelled the sea before Ben and saw the different light it made in the sky and heard its slow sound beneath the breathing of the forest.

  They met a river winding in its course. Far to the south a range of mountains gleamed against the sky. The place they sought, Danatok’s beach, was south again, beyond the hills where the mountains ended. The river kept them company. It took on a yellow colour from the mud lining its banks. Sea tides reached this far, changing the taste from fresh to salt. They saw Dweller huts in the trees and lines of floats holding nets in the water and turned away, looking for the coast further south.

  Lo, Ben, a voice said in their heads, and both, for a moment, refused to answer.

  Lo. Ben.

  We’re here, Ben said at last. Where are you?

  If you climb the hill in front of you you’ll see my boat, Blossom said. You’ll find speaking easier, Ben, with a line of sight.

  She spoke as if he were a child, and he answered angrily: I don’t need any help. All the same, he and Lo climbed until the plain of water opened out, shining like glass in the sun. Far out, a small boat with a white sail headed south.

  I’ll come ashore and pick you up, Blossom said.

  No, Lo said. We’ll travel on land.

  The boat is quicker.

  We’ll be quick.

  Lo, my brother, I want to see you. I haven’t seen you since you took Sal away.

  We’ll meet at Danatok’s beach, Lo said.

  Ah, Lo, Blossom sighed; and Ben, although he stood outside, felt the love flowing from her to her brother. He felt Lo soften and relent.

  Speak to me when you wish, Lo said. We’ll meet at the beach.

  They turned their backs to the sea and travelled through the forest again. The mountains came closer. When they rested from the midday heat Ben found it hard to believe the ice on the peaks, whiter than the clouds brushing their tops, did not melt and slide into the valleys. He stretched out on the grass and stared into the sky. What a huge eye it was, watching him. He felt it saw into his head. The black dot motionless there was like a pupil. He blinked and wiped his eyes and focused more clearly.

  Hawk, he said.

  I’ve been watching it, Lo said.

  It’s watching us.

  The bird turned in a slow circle, then broke suddenly and sped away south.

  Now we must be careful, Lo said.

  Why?

  It was telling what it saw. And whoever it was speaking to is watching us.

  Hana, Ben said. He did not know where the name came from.

  Who?

  Hana.

  Then he had it: The messenger who speaks with a hawk.

  Whoever it is, there’s danger. The bird is diving.

  What danger?

  I can’t see. Men. Hunting someone. Hunting her.

  Lo stood up and moved into the valley of trees between him and the place where the hawk had disappeared. Ben followed, straining to keep up. He remembered Tealeaf’s voice reaching him in a dream: Hana . . . she saw the Limping Man . . . she travels with a bird . . . next morning she was gone, we don’t know where . . .

  He drew his knife and ran after his father.

  Hana stood up quietly from the bed Tealeaf had made her. It was the softest bed she had ever slept in but she did not like
the way the mattress – was that its name? – held her as if it were Mam. No one, nothing, could take Mam’s place. She liked the Dwellers’ food, but there was too much of it and it made her stomach too full. She liked the Dwellers too, especially Tealeaf; but snarled when she felt them poking in her head. As for the woman, Blossom, who sat quietly while Tealeaf and the other Dwellers questioned her, she was dangerous. She was, Hana felt, like the Limping Man. Hana knew as soon as she looked at her sitting on a stool in the corner that whatever these Dwellers decided, Blossom was the one who would say yes or no. She knew everything – words before they were spoken and the things they meant that the others might not know. The Limping Man would call her a witch and burn her.

  Ignoring her, Hana told Tealeaf everything: Danatok’s message, then Mam eating the frogweed, the burnings in People’s Square, her meeting with Danatok, Danatok spying on the Limping Man and his escape – everything except her meeting with Hawk.

  ‘Hawk has got nothing to do with you,’ she said when Tealeaf asked.

  The woman sitting in the corner smiled. Hana felt she knew all about Hawk and she wanted to jerk the stool away and sit her on her bum.

  ‘I want to sleep now,’ she said. ‘I’ve told you what Danatok said.’

  Tealeaf showed her the bed. Hana tried it. Too soft. If she knew where Hawk was she would go outside and sleep close to him. But she had no idea where he slept – some tree branch, high up, or some ledge on a cliff. Each dawn she looked anxiously for him in the sky. He was always far away and did not plunge down to her until mid-morning.

  Hana slept. Hawk was in her dreams. Blossom too. The woman was brown and dark-eyed and quick when she moved, but as still as a lizard when she listened. She did not laugh in her head, as Hana suspected the Dwellers did, but aloud, and softly, with a sound like stones rattling in a creek. The Limping Man would burn her in a slow fire. She was beautiful, like Mam must have been when she was young. She wore a brown shift, tied at the waist, and her hair in two plaits, but did not seem to care where the halves fell – both back or one curled on her shoulder and one on her breast. When Hana woke she whispered, ‘Get out of my dreams.’ She knew the woman had been poking in her head as she slept.