A Bone From a Dry Sea

THEN

NOBODY LIKED GREB. He was a big, surly young male who didn’t keep to the rules. A while ago he’d broken Nuhu’s arm. She and some other children had been playing a splashing-game round a rock-pool when Greb had settled near them with a clam he’d found and a rock to hammer it open. Nuhu had wheedled for a bit of clam. A normal male would have barked a Go away, but Greb had shoved her hard enough to knock her flat, so that she’d banged her head on a rock and started to howl. Greb in sheer bad temper had brought his hammer-stone down on her outstretched arm, snapping the bone above the wrist.

Mirn had tried to give Greb a hiding, but Greb had refused to be cowed. That was when Mirn had started to lose his leadership, giving Presh the chance to take over. Nuhu’s arm had mended, crooked and short, so that later, when she’d begun to wonder about things, Li had become interested in it and, when Nuhu would let her, had touched and felt and stroked it, comparing it with the feel of the bone in her own arm, wondering how a bone could mend itself, and whether, if it happened again to someone, she could help the bone to mend straight . . . you’d have to hold it straight with something, for a long time . . . difficult . . .

Now the children gave Greb a wide berth, and the adults had as little to do with him as they could. He paid no attention, and foraged wherever anyone else was finding food, often snatching their catch from them. Males sometimes did this, but Greb seemed to prefer to steal food, rather than find it for himself. And when the tribe settled down for the night he made a point of choosing a place where the bodies lay thickest and forcing himself down among them. He refused to do shark-watch.

Though still young, Greb was as strong as any male in the tribe, and if he’d known how to make allies everyone would have realized that one day he’d become leader. Presh was quite different, friendly and easy-going. He liked to visit the families every day, and not just because they would offer him any food they’d found, out of deference. Usually he’d take a mouthful and give the rest back. If children disturbed him while he was snoozing in the shallows his Go away was more laughter than anger, and they weren’t afraid of him. Only when his dominance was threatened did he make the hair on his head and nape stand out, and snarl and bare his teeth, and hunch his shoulders, big-muscled from swimming. Then he could look really dangerous.

When Greb had made trouble before, Presh had taken Tong and Kerif to help give him a thrashing, reinforcing their authority over their own groups of families, so though one of them would have been the natural challenger they remained content as things were. In fact a challenge from any male in the tribe would have been a surprise, so complete was his acceptance. That it should be Greb – young, disliked, without any authority beyond his own strength – broke all the rules.

A challenge should have been built up to in a series of confrontations, testing the leader’s self-confidence and his support from the rest of the tribe. It should come like the start of the rains, slowly, with tension in the air and days of waiting and far-off thunder, until everyone was ready for the outburst, longing for it, to get it over.

No-one realized at first that anything was happening. Greb chose a place where a headland ended in a series of shelving rocks, with deep fissures between them. A seaweed grew here whose young fruiting-fronds were good to eat. Juicy sea-snails fed on the weed, and crayfish could be poked out of crannies, so the tribe was spread along the headland, mostly out of sight of each other, foraging between the rocks. Many of them missed the challenge ritual and only arrived to watch when the actual fighting had begun.

This may have been clever of Greb. A popular leader drew confidence from the support of the tribe, and at first Presh was partly deprived of that. But some, including Li, saw everything that happened. Ma-ma was still carrying her baby and so had a right to the best feeding places, and Li foraged alongside her. She had eaten as much as she wanted, and was now floating in the gentle swell, eyes closed, looking as if she were asleep but in fact wondering about the dolphins. They hadn’t returned, but they still haunted her thoughts. Last night, waking on a roosting-ledge and seeing the moonlit sky, she’d found herself wondering why the sun was hot and the moon cold, why the moon changed its shape and the sun didn’t, and then she’d slept and dreamed of dolphins playing with the moon and sun. Now, remembering that dream, she told herself that they all came out of the sea, the dolphins as well as the sun and the moon and the stars. Perhaps they all come from the same place. Perhaps one day a dolphin would take her there. It couldn’t be far, at the speed a dolphin swam.

A hoot of challenge broke into her musings and she rolled over to look. A few yards away Greb shot vertically out of the water, visible almost to his knees, bellowing as he reached the top of his leap and flailing his spread arms down as he sank back to arch two huge jets of spray at his opponent. It was a terrific display. Li paddled swiftly clear – fighting males had no time to watch out for children.

Her move brought Presh into view, rising, bellowing, flailing in rhythmic answer. His voice was far more commanding than Greb’s but his leaps not quite so high. It didn’t cross Li’s mind that he wouldn’t punish Greb easily enough. He was in his prime and had the whole tribe behind him.

The challenge ritual was exhausting. (It was meant to be, so that if it came to a full-blooded fight both combatants would already be very tired and the weaker would quickly give in. That way neither of them would get seriously hurt.) Gradually the tribe gathered to watch. Li moved to be close to Ma-ma among the rows of bobbing heads. The baby floated asleep by Ma-ma’s shoulder with his hands twined fast in her hair, and occasionally she’d scoop up a little water and wet the smooth round face. She looked worried. Presh was her brother and they had always been close.

At last Presh decided that he wasn’t going to overawe Greb by mere display and he would have to fight him. He climbed out on to a flat platform of rock and fell into his combat pose, erect, arms braced, fingers half-clenched like the talons of a sea-eagle, teeth bared between snarling lips. He shook his hair around him so that it would dry into a glossy black mane and crest. He bellowed, challenging Greb to match his-display.

Greb didn’t bother. Neither the display, nor the fact that the whole watching tribe were on Presh’s side, seemed to affect him at all. He climbed out on the other side of the platform and immediately flew straight at Presh. The impact flung them both off the rock and into the water.

The tribe yelled their excitement. Challenge fights were a break from the day-to-day. They wanted to see Greb humiliated and punished, but they wanted a good fight first. It would add to Presh’s prestige if he won with courage.

The combatants rose apart, climbed out and rushed at each other. This time they fell on the rock and rolled about, locked together, biting and clawing. They separated, stood, circled, grappled and fell once more, rolling across the rock till they tumbled over the edge, bouncing off a jut of barnacled rock on their way down. Greb was underneath and must have caught the side of his head on a jag, because when he climbed out blood was pouring down his neck and shoulder. Such a hurt would have allowed any normal challenger to give in without loss of prestige, but Greb ignored it and rushed at Presh once more.

The nature of the tribe’s interest changed. Now they realized that for Greb no rules applied. This could be a fight to the death.

The pair battled repetitively on, exhausted, bruised, cut, blood-smeared. Greb’s first wound was still the only serious one. The sea would wash him clean, but before the fighters grappled again his neck and side would be streaked with scarlet and then as they fought the blood would blotch both of them until they tumbled once more into the sea. Greb was weakening faster than Presh, who now at the start of each bout fell into his challenge pose again, inviting Greb to submit. Greb ignored the offer and every time flung himself into the attack, blinder, madder, ever more hopeless. But still he fought on.

At last the end came. Once more they climbed on to the rock, once more Presh took up his pose, once more Greb attacked. They stood wrestling together. Presh began to force Greb to the edge, meaning to fling him into the sea and stand in triumph over him. The movement stopped. The rock surface was invisible to the watchers below, but they could see that Presh had caught his foot in something. For a moment he and Greb poised together until Presh in his effort to free his foot unbalanced them both and Greb wrestled him down. The whole tribe heard the leg-bone snap.

Presh screamed. Greb rose dazed and gasping, wiped the blood from his eyes and stared around, not understanding that the fight was over, looking to see where his enemy would rise from the water. Then he saw him lying moaning at his feet. He bent. Presh yelled with agony as his foot was wrenched from the fissure that had trapped it, and was still screaming when Greb tumbled him into the water.

Strength seemed to flow back into Greb. Still bleeding he stood erect, surveyed the platform and saw that it was too small, too uneven and too high above the water for a good triumph ritual. The tribe watched him, dazed, seemingly without minds of their own, and when he made a gesture of command and plunged into the water they followed him, but reluctantly and with many stragglers, down beside the steep dark cliffs to a shingly bay between that headland and the next.

Ma-ma stayed with Presh, buoying him up and crooning comfort. He had fainted now, and without her help might have drowned. Li took the baby while with Hooa’s help Ma-ma towed Presh along after the others. By the time they reached the bay, Greb was well into his triumph-dance.

Lined along the shallows the tribe cried Praise and dutifully flung their arches of water towards him, some so half-heartedly that the splash barely reached his ankles. If he noticed he would pause in his dance and come menacingly down, frightening the offenders into showing him more respect. This had happened twice before he reached the place where Ma-ma had joined the line.

The baby had woken and was crying. Li was trying to soothe him, Ma-ma and Hooa were busy with Presh. None of them attempted a splash. Greb glared at them and came stamping down. Alerted by the sudden hush Ma-ma looked up, saw him coming, and then slowly, deliberately, turned her back on him. Without thought, Li copied her.

Greb bellowed and gave Ma-ma a buffet that sent her floundering. He seized Li by the nape. She screamed and dropped the baby. She thought he was about to fling her on to the shingle and trample on her, but instead he crammed her on to his shoulder and stamped back up the beach to continue his parade, just as Presh had paraded with her after her dance with the dolphin. He would show the whole tribe that Li and her prestige were now his, to command and control.

She was terrified. She screamed and struggled. He struck at her with his free hand and she screamed louder still. Ma-ma was there, facing him, with Hooa beside her, both yelling – more of them, females, and then males, all crowding out of the water, thronging round Greb screaming their outrage, refusing his triumph after all. It was over. They wouldn’t accept him. He had broken the challenge-rules, won the fight by an accident, struck a mother who carried a baby still in its birth-fur, tried to own and control Li, who belonged to them all. He was not their leader.

Being Greb he tried to fight them all, but they were too many and too angry. The scrum milled to and fro. Li rocked above it, yelling with terror and clutching Greb’s mane to keep herself from falling. He loosed his hold on her to fight, and then she was grabbed from behind and wrenched free and passed back over the heads of the crowd, till they set her down. Whimpering she staggered down to Ma-ma, who was crouched in the shallows, clutching her screaming baby to her. Presh lay inert beside her, half in and half out of the water. Shuddering with sobs, Li clung to her side and watched the end of the fight.

The milling mass dwindled as the females worked themselves free, leaving the males to finish Greb off. The cliffs echoed and re-echoed with yells and bellows. Some fell and were trampled on until they crawled free. Then the scrimmage stilled and moved apart, forming a ring around the single body which lay inert in the middle. Silence fell. Li thought they must have killed him, till he moved.

He rose to hands and knees, lifted his head and snarled. His blood smeared his whole body. One eye stayed closed. Watched by the males he staggered to his feet and lurched towards Kerif as if he meant to start the fight again, but when Kerif moved aside he lurched on. The tribe watched him limp down the shingle and wade into the healing sea. Followed by their hoots of Shame! he swam awkwardly away, using only his left arm, out along the cliffs of the further headland, and disappeared.