LITMIR.BIZ

      

Chapter 6

      Saban and Derrewyn went eastwards across Mai’s river, then north past the settlement until they reached a place where the valley was steep and narrow and thick trees arched high above the running water. Sunlight splashed through the leaves. The call of the corncrakes in the wheatfields had long faded and all they could hear now was the river’s rippling and the whisper of the wind and the scrabble of squirrels’ claws and the staccato flap of a pigeon bursting through the high leaves. Orchids grew purple among the water mint at the river’s edge while the haze of the fading bluebells clouded the shadows beneath the trees. Kingfishers whipped bright above the river where red-dabbed moorhen chicks paddled between the rushes.

      Saban took Derrewyn to an island in the river, a place where willow and ash grew thick above a bank of long grass and thick moss. They waded to the island, then lay on the moss and Derrewyn watched air bubbles breaking the leaf-shadowed water where otters twisted after fish. A doe came to the farther bank, but sprang away before she drank because Derrewyn sighed too loudly in admiration. Then Derrewyn wanted to catch fish, so she took Saban’s new spear and stood in the shallows and every now and then she would plunge the blade down at a trout or a grayling, but always missed. ‘Aim below them,’ Saban told her.

      ‘Below them?’

      ‘See how the spear bends in the water?’

      ‘It just looks that way,’ she said, then lunged, missed again and laughed. The spear was heavy and it tired her, so she tossed it onto the bank, then just stood letting the river run about her brown knees. ‘Do you want to be chief here?’ she asked Saban after a while.

      He nodded. ‘I think so, yes.’

      She turned to look at him. ‘Why?’

      Saban did not have an answer. He had become accustomed to the idea, that was all. His father was chief, and though that did not mean that one of Hengall’s sons should necessarily be the next chief, the tribe would look to those sons first and Saban was now the only one who might succeed. ‘I think I want to be like my father,’ he said carefully. ‘He’s a good chief.’

      ‘What makes a good chief?’

      ‘You keep people alive in winter,’ Saban said, ‘you cut back the forests, you judge disputes fairly and protect the tribe from enemies.’

      ‘From Cathallo?’ Derrewyn asked.

      ‘Only if Cathallo threatens us.’

      ‘They won’t. I shall make sure of that.’

      ‘You will?’

      ‘Kital likes me, and one of his sons will be the next chief and they’re all my cousins, and they all like me.’ She looked at him shyly, as though he would find that surprising. ‘I shall insist that we all be friends,’ she said fiercely. ‘It’s stupid being enemies. If men want to fight they should go and find the Outfolk.’ She suddenly splashed him with water. ‘Can you swim?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Teach me.’

      ‘Just throw yourself in,’ Saban said.

      ‘And I’ll drown,’ she said. ‘Two men in Cathallo drowned once and we didn’t find them for days and they were all swollen.’ She pretended to half lose her balance. ‘And I’ll be like them, all swollen and nibbled by fish and it’ll be your fault because you wouldn’t teach me to swim.’

      Saban laughed, but stood and stripped off his new wolfskin tunic. Until a few days before he had always gone naked in summer, but now he felt embarrassed without the tunic. He ran fast into the water that was wonderfully cold after the heat under the trees and swam away from Derrewyn, going into a deep pool where the river swirled in dark ripples. Splashing to keep his head above water, once he had reached the pool’s centre, he turned to call Derrewyn into the river, only to find that she was already there, very close behind him. She laughed at his shocked expression. ‘I learned to swim a long time ago,’ she said, then took a deep breath, ducked her head and kicked her bare legs into the air so that she could dive down beneath Saban. She too was naked.

      Saban splashed back to the island where he lay on his belly in the grass. He watched Derrewyn dive and swim, and still watched her as she came to the river’s edge and slowly walked from the water with her long black hair sleek and dripping. To Saban she appeared like the river goddess Mai herself, coming from the water in awesome beauty, and then she knelt beside him, making the skin of his back shiver where her hair touched the burn scars on his shoulder blades. He lay very still, conscious of her, but scarce daring to move in case he frightened her away. This, he told himself, was why he had asked her to come into the forest, though now that the moment was on him he was consumed by nervousness. Derrewyn must have known what he was thinking for she touched his shoulder, making him turn over, then she lowered herself into his arms. ‘You ate the clay, Saban,’ she whispered, her wet hair cold on his shoulders, ‘so the skull’s curse cannot touch you.’

      ‘You know that?’

      ‘I promise that,’ she whispered, and he shivered because it seemed to him as if Mai really had come in her splendour from the water. He held her close, very close, and like a fool he thought his joy could last for ever.

      That afternoon, as Derrewyn and Saban waited for the sun to sink and the twilight to bring the shadows through which they could creep secretly home, they heard singing from the hill above the river’s western bank. They dressed, waded across the branch of the river, and climbed towards the sound that became louder with their every step. The two went slowly and cautiously, but they need not have worried

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