Free Kalik by Jack Lasenby Page A

I woke and called, “Nip!” No answer. Annoyed, I whistled. A yap, and she came scuttling around the rock, ears and tail down. She leapt on me. “Get down!” I brushed my tunic. Nip ran behind the tall grey rock. Barked. A hollow sound. I followed, found fresh dirt scattered under a flat stone propped like a lid across two others. I got on my knees, looked under as Nip’s bark came again. There was just enough room to crawl in.
    The hole slanted down. At its bottom, I stood and felt around. Stone walls, smooth and curved like the tunnels behind the Shaman’s cave. Unlike those, the floor of this tunnel carried a shallow stream of water. When I called, Nip came careering, bumping me, and we climbed back into the sun. I brushed out our sign, dragged a broken branch over the hole, and sent Nip after the wounded spiker.
    She found him lying. Struggling to get to his feet. Nip at his throat, I pithed him. Gutted, front hooves thrust behind the tendons of his back hocks, he made a pack that I heaved up. Then, near the beach, Nip caught my eye, and took off. I just had time to drop the spiker before she brought several goats past. I shot two.
    Kalik had shot a deer, too. He gave me a hand with the goats. As we paddled home, he asked, “Did Nip find a warren?”
    “An old one. Not a rabbit in it,” I explained. And I imagined a picture of a burrow. Grass growing over its mouth. Myself kneeling to put my arm in to the shoulder. Getting dirt on my tunic.
    “Still, you did all right.”
    “I like getting something. And Nip worked well. I wish she’d stopped that bear, though.” I pictured it in my mind. For a moment I saw the hole into the tunnel, then the bear disappearing, konny branches springing together.
    “We’ll come back and work those gullies again,” said Kalik. “We’ll get one there, sooner or later.”
    A day or two and he was at my door. “Come on! We’re going up the lake – to the timber workings!”
    The Headland People used timber for almost everything. Spears and bows, huts, palisades, fences. The canoes were hollowed out of whole tote trunks. Some firewood came from drift logs stacked on end, dried, and lugged up to the huts each day by the Salt Children. But most, and the settlement burned a lot, came down the lake in rafts. I had asked Kalik to show me the source of all this timber.
    The Salt Men who had not been killed had gone up the lake under guard. I was interested to see the timber workings – to look for a way to escape. Perhaps a valley that would carry us south, one with a pass at its head. Not too high for the Children.
    I told them where I was going, made sure they had plenty of food, checked the sick ones. Chak and Kimi wouldn’t look at me. I ran down to the lake with Nip. Lutha was leading her bodyguard towards the Roundhouse, to dance before the Goddess. I stood to one side, hand raised in salute. She swept past unseeing, and I got the usual disdainful stare from the Maidens.
    Waiting for them to pass, I smiled at their foolishness. And I thought, too, how foolish I had been, dividing the world between Salt Men and others. Getting to know the Salt Children had taught me something.
    Nip yelping, we ran down. Waves jobbled and flared tiny suns. Knee-deep, Kalik danced impatient. “Dreaming again, Ish!” He leapt into the front of the canoe.
    “What about food?”
    “We’ll catch something if we’re hungry enough,” he cried, already paddling. Nip jumped in and shook herself.
    “Ugh!”
    I laughed, slid in behind Kalik. Our paddles dashed. We skimmed across the water. I would never begin a journey without food. Nor would Taur. Arku’s people used to say hunger makes the best hunter, but they starved in the GreatHunger.
    Kalik said over his shoulder, “Why carry more than we have to?”
    His muscles tensed as he levered against the water, relaxing, taking the strain again. I thought of my dream of the Carny. I must have imagined Kalik into it, put his face on the Showman,