Ria waited until the hunters had passed by. Then, with ferocious energy, she threw herself again at the wall of the pit, again sunk her hands and feet into it, again climbed by sheer force of will, and again reached nearly to its lip before falling. But her landing was bad – there was an agonising crack! and she couldn’t stifle a gasp of pain and shock as her left leg buckled under her.
Braving the hurt, she rolled onto her back. If her leg was broken she was fucked. She looked up. Framed by the square mouth of the pit, the cloudless sky was dazzling with the glitter of a host of stars. Then a grizzled head and shoulders appeared, silhouetted against the starlight, and – with surprising agility for so massive a figure – Grondin jumped in beside her.
Ria didn’t struggle – she couldn’t beat this guy – but the first thing Grondin did surprised her. He dropped down on his knees and ran his hands over her injured leg, massaging the point where the pain was most severe. There was nothing predatory about his touch and at once she began to sense a warm, healing glow.
When Grondin seemed satisfied with his work he placed his strong arms under Ria’s thighs and shoulders, hoisted her over his head, passed her up into the callused hands of other Uglies waiting above, and leapt out of the pit himself. A stretcher was improvised from branches lashed together and they laid her upon it. Then, with one Ugly in front, one behind and Grondin walking by her side, she was carried away from the pit, through scattered stands of trees and back up the hill towards the fires of the distant camp.
Now that she was truly their prisoner, with no hope of escape, Ria began to relive the events that had led her to flee earlier: the body in the fire, the females tearing at its flesh, the decapitation and – horror – Brindle smashing the base of the victim’s skull in order to feast on his brains. Once again, despite Grondin’s gentleness, she was racked by a spasm of disgust for the Uglies. She was injured, helpless, and surrounded by stinking subhuman cannibals who were going to kill her and eat her.
Preferably in that order.
They were closer to the fires, climbing steeply, and suddenly, as though out of nowhere, Brindle’s voice was back inside her head: ‘Not cannibals! Not way you think!’
Ria formed a thought and threw it at him as though it were a rock: ‘Liar!’
‘Told you before. Uglies don’t lie.’
‘But I saw you. I saw what happened to that body in the fire … Was he Clan?’
‘Maybe in death Uglies and Clan look same—’
Brindle’s thought-voice was full of some intense emotion that Ria was too furious to identify. ‘I’m not interested in your maybes,’ she interrupted. ‘Just answer my question.’
‘He was not Clan. He was my father, King of the Uglies. Died last night.’
That was when Ria recognized Brindle’s emotion for what it was. Sadness. Deep, aching sadness. But she was still so angry that it didn’t stop her saying: ‘You ate your own father’s brains? That’s such a gross thing to do!’
‘Maybe gross to you, but we do not put dead in hole in ground like Clan and leave to rot. For us that is very bad thing. By eating, we bury dead … inside our own bodies. Is how we respect them. Is how we keep them with us. Is not … “cannibalism”. Uglies never, never kill other Uglies or Clan to eat.’
‘It is cannibalism, Brindle. What you’re saying is that it’s not murder as well …’
‘No! Not murder! I love my father.’
This time Ria’s rage drained away and she shared the young Ugly’s pain and loss through the openness of thought-talk. It made her ashamed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said as the full force of his grief hit her. ‘Oh Brindle, I’m so sorry I misjudged you …’
A few more steps up the incline and her stretcher-bearers lifted her onto a spacious terrace, wide and flat, leading to a looming cliff wall. The glow of fires was all around her and there were Uglies everywhere, males and females, young and old, with matted hair and wild, uncouth looks, gazing down wide-eyed as she was carried by. Many were covered from head to toe in stripes of yellow, red and black paint. Several carried clunky spears or flint knives.
Brindle’s voice again: ‘We look wild, but our hearts are pure. Will not hurt you. I promise.’
Craning her head over the side of her stretcher, Ria saw that she was already halfway across the terrace and being carried towards the base of the cliff where a massive overhang and fallen boulders almost concealed a dark opening in the rock. As she came closer she saw that it was a tunnel about as high a man and ten paces wide. She was carried through it – twenty paces, thirty paces, it was hard to estimate the distance in the dark – and emerged into a cavern so vast that she gasped with surprise. Around its walls the Uglies had positioned a huge number of their fat-burning lamps, a thousand at least, as many as the stars in the sky. The reflected light of their guttering flames revealed a roughly circular chamber that seemed – was it possible? – to be hundreds of paces across in some places. She looked up. Far above her head the soaring dome of the ceiling disappeared into lofty darkness.
There were a lot of Uglies in the chamber already and more were pouring in through the entrance all the time. Their burly forms, looming up out of the faint glow cast by the lamps, seemed alien and monstrous. Grotesque shadows played across the walls, unfamiliar smells assailed her and Ria found that her stretcher and its bearers, with Grondin still by her side, had been swept into the midst of a large crowd moving across the floor.
She struggled to sit up. ‘What’s going on, Brindle?’ she pulsed. ‘What’s this crowd about? I don’t like it. Why am I being brought here?’
She had a sense he was very close and as she sent out her thought-voice she caught a glimpse of him in the flickering light. He was seated, enthroned between two stalagmites, on a natural rocky platform jutting out from the side of the cave.
‘When old Ugly king dies,’ he said as she was carried forward, ‘new Ugly king must make journey to spirit world to speak with him. I have to go tonight.’ He paused: ‘You can make journey to spirit world too, Ria.’
Her stretcher-bearers brought her in front of him and stopped. The platform was about waist-high and he was looking down at her. She pointed to her injured leg: ‘I don’t think I can even walk …’
‘Not that kind of journey.’
Chapter Sixteen
Grondin lifted Ria onto a comfortable cushion of ibex skins piled up for her beside Brindle. The hysterical way she’d run – totally freaked at the thought of being eaten – was really shameful now she’d had a chance to review it calmly.
Of course the Uglies were never going to eat her. Only dumb fear and prejudice had made her imagine such a thing.
‘Don’t feel bad,’ said Brindle. ‘You been hero all day, kept courage strong, saved lives of many Uglies, didn’t freak when it mattered.’
‘I guess … But I still freaked.’
Ria very much wanted to stop talking about herself. ‘Do you know what happened to your father?’ she asked. ‘Did he die suddenly? Was it an accident?’
Through a mixture of images and thought-talk Brindle made her understand how proud he had been three days ago when Grondin had asked him to join the expedition from which they had just now returned – an expedition to persuade outlying communities of Uglies to take refuge in the sanctuary of Secret Place. His father had seemed well then, and had sent Brindle off with his blessing, but it seemed that soon afterwards he had sickened with some mystery illness, begun to stumble and fall, lost the ability to walk, talk and eat, and very rapidly died.
‘I angry with Father,’ Brindle now confessed. ‘First time I ever go away he dies. Now suddenly I responsible for everything. Don’t know what to do.’
Ria too was an orphan. Her mother and father had passed on together seven winters ago. She’d been nine years old then, on the worst day of her life, when the two people she loved most had left her without saying goodbye, and for a long while afterwards all she’d been able to feel towards them was the same sort of bitter,
cheated anger that Brindle was dealing with. ‘You won’t be angry for ever,’ she promised. ‘And you’ll figure out what to do.’
As if it had happened yesterday Ria found herself reliving the whole sequence of events that had stolen her own parents from her – that stupid, stupid accident, so avoidable and unnecessary that even now the memory of it made her choke.
Through the broad valley where the Clan pitched its principal summer camp flowed the great river called the Snake. It was deep and wide, filled to the brim with leaping, succulent fish but – like its namesake – it was also dangerous and unpredictable. It could bite.
On a sunny morning under a clear sky, with no intimation of impending doom, Ria had walked and skipped beside her parents along the banks of the Snake at the start of a day’s fishing. Father had been twenty paces ahead when Mother had seen the ideal spot. ‘Shush’, she whispered ‘let’s catch one before he turns round.’ She told Ria to stand back, then lowered herself onto her stomach and leaned out over the rushing water, reaching into the hollows under the bank to snatch sleeping fish. Her arm was submerged to the shoulder when she made a sudden grab and brought up a fat, glistening brown trout, flapping and wriggling in her firm grip. But just then the undermined bank gave way beneath her weight and pitched her, and the trout, head first into the river, with a mighty splash.
At first Ria laughed. It hardly seemed serious – more like a joke – but it stopped being fun when Mother didn’t resurface. Then Father was pounding along the bank, yelling to Ria to stay where she was, and when Mother’s head at last bobbed up amongst the roiling waters, gasping for air, he jumped in after her. That was when Ria started to scream, with tears rolling down her cheeks, as she too ran along the bank as fast as she could, for a short while keeping pace with her parents.
Father was a strong swimmer. He reached Mother, grabbed hold of her and lifted her face above water. No doubt he believed he could save her. But, instead, the two of them, clinging to one another, were whirled into the main torrent, pulled under the surface, and lost for ever. Left alone on the bank Ria sank down on her haunches, buried her head in her hands and wept. Much later that was where her brothers found her, no longer crying, just staring out at the river with vacant eyes.
Brindle was tuning in: ‘Afterwards your brothers became your parents,’ he said.
‘Hond and Rill. They’re much older than me. They were already men when the accident happened … They’re good hunters and they’ve looked after me well. I can’t complain …’ – Ria touched her heart – ‘but the pain is still here.’
‘Maybe help if you can meet mother and father again,’ said Brindle.
‘Maybe it would, but it’s not very likely is it?’
‘Told you, Uglies know way to spirit world. This is the Cave of Visions, and I will talk with spirit of my father tonight.’
Ria felt uncomfortable when Brindle spoke of spirits and the spirit world. She believed in them, of course; everyone did. But at the same time she’d never seen any solid evidence for their existence.
What happened next only added to her conviction that the Uglies were getting everything upside down.
Grondin had quietly left the platform while she’d been talking to Brindle but now he returned carrying a broad woven basket filled with hundreds of small mushrooms of the vile and obnoxious ‘Demon’s Penis’ variety. By age-old lore the collection and consumption of these mushrooms was forbidden to the Clan under penalty of death, so Ria spat and made the sign of the evil eye. ‘You’re not planning to eat those, are you?’ she asked.
‘Of course we will eat them,’ said Brindle. ‘How else you think we get to spirit world?’
‘But those who eat Demon’s Penis turn into demons!’ Ria exclaimed. ‘Don’t you know this? I can’t believe you don’t know this! They grow long tiger teeth. They go mad. Their mouths foam. Blood drips from their eyes. They run about trying to kill everyone. If they are pregnant they give birth to monsters. These mushrooms are very, very bad, Brindle.’
‘You are intelligent person, Ria, but right now being kind of stupid – I’m sorry. You don’t know anything. Have just been told these things by other know-nothing people and you believe. Have you ever with your own eyes seen somebody eat these mushrooms and grow tiger teeth, go crazy, like you say?’
‘Well, no. I haven’t. But everyone knows it’s true.’
‘No, Ria! Not true! Uglies know these mushrooms very well. They are sacred to us. Very special. Very good. We don’t call them bad name like you do – “Demon’s Penis” – which makes you think bad thoughts, puts horrible idea inside head. We call them Little Teachers – because they teach us. We call them Little Doctors because they heal us. We call them Little Guides because they show us how to enter spirit world, and return to land of living.’
‘Well, maybe they do all that for Uglies, but I am Clan and if I were to eat them I’d turn into a demon with long teeth.’
‘Let me ask you question, Ria. The Painters – they were your ancestors, right? If you go back to your father, and your father’s father, and your father’s father’s father – all the way back to the long-ago – then no more Clan, only Painters, right?’
‘Yes. We came from the Painters.’
‘Means Clan and Painters same thing but at different time?’
‘I guess.’
‘Then safe for you to eat the Little Teachers.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Painters ate the Little Teachers in the long-ago. Made ceremony with them. Travelled to the spirit world. Uglies showed them how.’
In front of the ledge where Ria was perched with Brindle the rock floor was flat and open. Here, with much shuffling and hooting, all the Uglies – hundreds of them, males and females, young and old – found places for themselves, settling down cross-legged or reclining on improvised cushions of skins. Grondin and three other elders moved amongst them distributing more of the woven baskets overflowing with Demon’s Penis. Despite everything Ria had been taught it was obvious that the Uglies weren’t in the least bit afraid of the disgusting fungi.
‘Why should I believe you,’ she asked Brindle, ‘that the Painters ate Demon’s Penis?’
‘Please don’t call bad name like that, Ria!’ he protested. ‘Hurts my head. Please show respect to the Little Teachers.’
‘OK. Why should I believe you that the Painters ate the … Little Teachers?’
‘Should believe me,’ Brindle said, ‘because Uglies can’t tell lies – we share our thoughts. Don’t forget past. Uglies were here in the long-ago, welcomed first people who looked like you to come into this land. Showed them many things – good hunting grounds, good shelter, good water. Fed them when they were hungry. Gave healing when they were sick. When my ancestors gave your ancestors the Little Teachers, that was when they became the Painters. When your ancestors turned against the Little Teachers that was when they became the Clan.’
Brindle reached into the basket of mushrooms that Grondin had set down between them, took a handful, pushed them into his wide mouth and made a great show of chewing.
Ria watched, bewildered. How could the Uglies just sit here and feast on these obnoxious mushrooms while enemies with terrible spears roamed free in the world beyond? Who knew how many more of them there were than the four they’d killed today?
‘I will ask spirit of my father about the spearmen,’ Brindle said, picking up her thoughts. ‘He will tell me what to do.’
‘You should ask him about Sulpa as well,’ Ria remembered. ‘Grigo, Duma and Vik said he’d told them to kill Uglies. Whoever he is I think he’s part of this.’
A strange, irregular beat began to echo round the Cave of Visions, growing in volume, an amazing, hair-raising, exhilarating sound, the like of which Ria had never heard before. In the lamplight, with its play of flickering shadows, she found it difficult to pinpoint the source of this mysterious, complicated reverberation, which seemed to come from everywhere at once. But soon she traced it
to three Ugly males, spaced far apart amongst the crowd, hunched with batons in their hands over knee-high cylindrical sections of tree trunk. Each of these wooden cylinders had a deerskin stretched tight over both ends and the braves seemed to be producing the sounds she was hearing by beating on the deerskins with their batons. Awesome. Ria began to keep time with them, sitting up on her cushions and swaying her head and shoulders from side to side.
Then a small, very ancient and wizened female Ugly rose to her feet in the middle of the floor, brought a length of cave-bear femur to her mouth and blew through it while the fingers of both her hands danced over holes drilled into the bone. The result was another sound, so heartrending, so plangent and so energised with emotional power that Ria found tears – of joy, of sorrow, she didn’t know which – running down her face.
‘What’s that incredible sound?’ she asked. She felt dazed. A little giddy. ‘What’s it for? Why does it make me feel so weird?’
‘We call it the bone song,’ said Brindle. ‘It goes out into the spirit world. It’s like a serpent, winding here and there.’ He made sinuous hand movements. ‘It becomes a road for us to follow when the Little Teachers bring us through to the other side …’
Brindle was eating more mushrooms as he sent her these thoughts. Just about everyone in the room was eating mushrooms, even the kids. Everybody looked … calm. Kind of relaxed and thoughtful. No one growing tiger teeth. No one going insane. No atmosphere of threat or violence at all.
Still swaying to the unfamiliar rhythms, Ria took one mushroom from the basket and placed it in her mouth.
It was bitter, tasting of roots, of earth.
Chapter Seventeen
‘False.’ ‘True.’ ‘False.’ ‘False …’