A Bone From a Dry Sea

THEN

THE SUN WAS high by the time Greb’s challenge ended, so the tribe rested in the shallows of the bay, re-forming their family groups, fussing over anyone who’d been hurt in the mêlée, unsure and unhappy. The seniors visited Presh where he lay at the edge of the wave-lap, conscious now, but with his eyes shut and moaning at the slightest movement of his leg. Ma-ma and Hooa were with him, stroking his body beneath the water, and wetting his face often.

The visitors peered at him, muttering mournfully. The tribe needed a leader, but not one with a broken leg. They grieved because they liked Presh, but also because they felt things wouldn’t be right until a new leader established himself. Meanwhile Presh’s authority remained strong. When Ma-ma and Hooa tried to begin to tow him to calmer shallows at the end of the beach he barked at them to stop and they obeyed.

There was a further worry. These shingle beaches swarmed at night with savage little crabs which scavenged for flesh, living or dead. They would pick a stranded fish, however large, down to its skeleton by morning. They would do the same with Presh. As the sun moved on and the tribe began to think about foraging again before the night, Ma-ma and Hooa became increasingly fretful, and when Tong visited he stayed, sharing their anxiety. He took Presh’s arm as if to tow him elsewhere, but then like the females obeyed the order to stop. Despairing he looked around, saw Li close by and grunted What to do?

Li had been as worried as the others. Presh, she could see, must be moved. He must be towed at high tide, soon before dark, out to the headland and lifted on to a shelf just above the water, where he could spend the night. And then, tomorrow . . . But tomorrow was tomorrow. First, he had to be moved, and for that to happen his leg must be protected.

She could see it in the clear water, foot and ankle grossly swollen. She could sense the grind of the bone-ends as the leg moved in the water. She must stop that grinding. When Greb had broken Nuhu’s arm . . . What could she use? There was nothing in the slop and slither of the sea. She looked along the barren little beach. A curtain of creeper hung from the cliff. A ridge of dried tide-wrack marked the highest reach of the waves. She left the water and climbed the burning shingle, thinking perhaps if she made a bundle of wrack and bound it round with creeper . . . A white gleam in the wrack caught her eye. Bone? She pulled the object free and found it was a crooked branch, wave-worn and sun-bleached. The thought of bone was still there, so she laid it against her leg. The bent part at the end followed the line of her feet. Something fizzed in her mind and said Yes. I can do it.

Carrying the branch she climbed and tested the creeper, swung herself up the mat and bit through suitable strands, as she had done for earlier attempts at net-making. On her way back to the water she gathered an armful of wrack and settled at the edge of the wave-lap to experiment on her own leg. This was awkward. She turned, saw Tong watching from the water and grunted Come-help. Children never gave commands to adults, but he came without resentment, only puzzled that she wanted to do things to his leg when it was Presh’s that needed her healing magic.

Her mind was still fizzing but her movements were slow. Her earlier experiments with creepers, reeds and grasses had taught her that a step-by-step approach was best, trying out each element and testing its possibilities and limits before moving on. She laid the branch beside Tong’s leg, looped creeper round it to hold it in place, padded it with wrack and tied the creeper more firmly, making adjustments till she was happy. She untied the bundle and turned towards Presh.

He would have to be right out on the beach. She couldn’t work in the water. Again she called Come-help, and set Tong and Hooa by his shoulders and Ma-ma by his waist while she readied herself to look after the broken leg. Having seen her experimenting on Tong’s leg they now understood what she wanted, and as soon as she grunted a Now they bent and lifted Presh.

At once he barked Stop. They stopped and looked at Li. She gestured and grunted Now and again they lifted Presh, and this time merely hesitated at his bark and then carried on, though he wrestled to loose Tong’s grip and cried with pain. As soon as he was out on the beach Ma-ma knelt by him, coaxing and soothing and stroking his mane. When Li started to work he tried to kick her away with his good leg, so that it took three males to hold him still. By now the helpers had understood what was needed – it had been the means, the possibilities and difficulties, that had been beyond them. Even Presh in the end lay still, only wincing or moaning as his leg was moved to work the lashings beneath it. By then many of the tribe had returned to the headland to forage, and a shark-watch had been set, though at whiles they’d come back to see what was happening and to help keep a cooling spatter of water over the group on the beach. There was a return of confidence and security. The tribe had its leader, though he was hurt for the time being. Li would see that he got well.

When they’d finished they carried Presh down into the water and towed him out towards the headland. He didn’t resist. It would be hard to say how much the splint Li had made prevented the break from hurting, and how much the change was due to the fact that once his commands had been overruled to get him out of the water both he and the tribe accepted that that would happen again if he tried to resist. Perhaps too his body and mind had become used to the pain and he was more able to cope with it. At any rate they took him out to where he could lie in a calm inlet and food could be brought for him, and then as the sun went down and the tide reached its full they lifted him out on to a smooth flat rock to spend the night. Hooa stayed with him for warmth and company while the others climbed up to their regular roosting-ledge to sleep.

* * *

By morning the sea had changed. Last night’s near-calm had become a slow heave of waves from the main ocean, which as the tide rose slopped on to the rock where Presh lay, the larger ones covering him and tugging at his body as they retreated. The tribe understood these signs and knew that by evening full-scale rollers would be dashing themselves in spume and thunder against the headland.

Li, exhausted, slept late. When she climbed down she found several of the adults bobbing in the water clear of the rock where Presh lay, watching him anxiously but not doing anything. He rose on one elbow to watch as she slid up beside him and tested the wrappings round his leg. The wrack had swollen with wetting and some of the vine-strands had worked loose. Crouching to shield the leg from the waves with her body, Li refastened the lashings and signalled to the others to come and help Presh into the water, but at once he snorted disapproval and before anyone could stop him used the backwash of the next wave to ease himself to the lip of the ledge, and on the next slid deftly into the sea, letting Li lift the wrapped leg clear of the rock as he went.

The effort must have hurt but Presh refused to make pain-noises as he let the others tow him clear of the rocks to rest in the lulling swell. Ma-ma and Hooa brought him food and the tribe spread out to forage as much as they could before the waves became dangerous. They felt that their world had returned almost to normal. They had their leader, and though his leg was broken Li had worked her magic and it would soon mend.

Only Li was worried. She was thinking about fresh water, for Presh to drink. (Spending so much time in the sea the tribe didn’t yet have the human need to sweat, which demands pints of drinking water every day. Their main need was to wash the salts from their diet out of their bodies from time to time, and they could go several days together without a drink, but then it became essential. Their whole economy depended on moving up and down the coast, balancing out their needs for food and drink and shelter.)

During the rains fresh water streamed for a few days out of the sky, runnelled down cliffs and filled every hollow, but for the rest of the year there were only three places. There was the river at the northern edge of their territory, the bay with the water-caves where they’d trapped the shark, which they had left only the day before Presh had fought with Greb, and a place three days further south where a steady flow of fresh water welled up from the sea-bed, enough in calm weather to make a wide pool where you felt your buoyancy lessen as you swam into it.

In none of these places was there enough food, and only at the bay was there shelter. The river held muddy fish and clams, but also crocodiles. From trees on the bank fell a fruit whose fermenting juices made you dance and shout and rollick for a while, and then fall, sad, but there were leopards and other night-hunters so the tribe would arrive at the river on a morning around new moon, post look-outs landward and seaward, and leave before dark on their tide-like drift down the coast.

At the bay there was food for two days, at most, for the whole tribe, while along the glaring coral beaches behind the sea-pool there was none at all. Still it was a place of great happiness. They took care to feed well before they reached it and would arrive with shouts of joy, and splash for a while across and around the pool and then, without any signal, form a rough ring and dive one after the other to the place where the water streamed out and allow it to take them back to the surface, soaring like gulls in an updraught. There were no fights there, and kin-quarrels were forgotten. The children chased through the frothing shallows while the adults lolled in deeper water, greeting each other as they went to and from the pool to drink, and couples who were ready swam a little way apart and mated. If they’d had words for such a thought they’d have called the pool holy. They came there twice a month for the middle part of a day, going south towards the shrimping grounds or back again north, moving as the moon changed, as both they and the moon seemed to have done for ever. Now the thought of their next visit to the pool was already growing in their minds.

It was in Li’s mind too, but how could Presh make that journey? Between feeding-places the tribe moved steadily, close inshore where possible, wary of sharks. Towing Presh would slow them and make them more vulnerable, and would need a calm sea, which they were soon not going to have. How would his leg mend, constantly in movement in the water? Where would he sleep? There were only two sets of caves on the coast, and elsewhere the tribe used ledges with a difficult climb to them, which no predator would make.

No, he must lie on land, in shade, with drinking-water easy. There was only one place, the bay with the water-caves. He must go back.

Li swam off to look for Tong who was family-close and had been her main helper the night before, but found him in confrontation with Kerif. With Presh unable to patrol the tribe and remind everyone of his authority it was natural for the other males to start jostling for status, so Tong and Kerif were face to face beyond the headland, rising and falling, yelling their challenges and sluicing their arches of water. It was still more like a game than a serious contest for leadership, but their minds were filled with it. Nor could Li have brought herself to interrupt. Though she was aware of her own new status in the tribe she knew that it only worked some of the time. Now, with two adult males engaged in something that took all their energies and attention, she was an unnoticed child. Li watched for a while but the contest showed no sign of ending so she swam back to Presh.

He too was anxious, but only about his need to move on from this exposed headland. ‘On’ for him meant south, past more headlands with shingle beaches between, plagued by the savage crabs, and eventually to the coral beaches and the fresh-water pool. He had not considered how long it would take to get him there, where he would sleep, how great his need to drink would become. Normally before a move he’d have gone round the scattered families expressing his restlessness in sounds and signals, making them feel restless also, so that when he at last swam off they’d all have been ready to go. But it was different here. There was still plenty of food and it was important to eat all they could before the sea rose. No-one expected to move or wanted to. Even Ma-ma and Hooa, who’d been attending to Presh’s needs and could sense his anxiety, could only mutter soothingly to him and coax him to stay where he was.

He was relieved to see Li, but astonished and angry when she grunted a Come-help to Hooa, put an arm under his arm and started to tow him north. Her idea was to take him to Tong and Kerif and use his authority to stop their contest. Then, somehow, she would have to get him to detach Tong and a few of the others to help tow him back to the water-caves while the rest of the tribe continued their usual journey south. They couldn’t all go back. They’d just stripped that section almost bare of food. So it would have to be like that.

At one level Li was aware that she was asking something almost impossible. You simply didn’t leave the tribe. To do so was a kind of dying. The tribe was where you belonged. But the need was now so obvious to her that at her surface level she couldn’t see that the others would be unable to grasp it.

So Presh resisted and Ma-ma and Hooa didn’t know what to do but at length gave in to Li’s insistence. They found Tong and Kerif, their contest over, feeding together, touching each other often and sharing any prey they caught. They peered briefly at Presh, grunted commiseration and returned to the vital business of re-making their friendship.

It was the same with all the others. They were hungry, and occupied with settling into themselves after yesterday’s upheaval. They didn’t want to move. Only two attached themselves to Li’s group – a young male, Goor, who was in the stage of splitting himself off from his immediate family, and the stranger whose baby had died, Rawi – Presh had always been kind to her and she would have liked to mate with him.

Presh was too tired, too shaken by his loss of command to resist any more. Ma-ma and Hooa were deeply worried about leaving the tribe and at first gave signs of wanting to break off and return, but then became afraid to leave the little group. Rawi and Goor were readier for the idea and did most of the work, towing Presh through the rising swell, lying on their backs and kicking with their webbed feet, the tribe’s usual stroke for longer journeys.

Normally it would have taken them less than half a day to reach the caves from that headland, but it was almost dark when they came to the bay, hungry and exhausted, and working together lifted the unconscious Presh across the rocky foreshore and into the smaller cave.