Free Kalik by Jack Lasenby Page B

and confused them. It was just a dream: the mind out of control, making random pictures, absurd stories that disappeared in the logic of daylight.
    “Don’t dismiss all dreams,” the Shaman had told me. “The art is in learning which one is telling you something. Offering an answer to a problem. Learn to recognise the true dream.”
    “Wake up, Ish!”
    “I was thinking.”
    “Dreaming, more likely.” Kalik paddled faster, and I kept up to him. Bays, beaches slipped by, grassy hillsides. Some trees. Scrub. Nothing worth felling and dragging down for timber.
    “Why aren’t there bigger trees here?”
    Kalik didn’t look round. “We’ve cut all the easy stuff this end of the lake. And fired a lot.”
    “But –”
    “We burned off the hills close to the Headland, so the sentries can see anyone coming. It was dry. The fires spread further than we expected.” His paddle chopped the water. “Sometimes you fell several trees before you find one good enough for a canoe.”
    “Still –”
    “People have been living here a long time, Ish.”
    “Then why haven’t the trees regrown?”
    “Goats. Deer browsing.”
    I thought of the deserts of the Western Coast, the North Land. “Why not plant trees handy to the Headland? Protect them from the animals.”
    Kalik struck the water with the flat of his blade. “Don’t make me laugh, Ish!”
    We paddled, and he said, “I like to keep an eye on the timber camp anyway. But this time they’ve found a tote. If it’s big enough and sound, it might make a canoe.”
    Kalik was good company. He sang the songs of his people, told their stories. I listened and laughed. Still I kept his cruelty in mind, and the dream of the Showman.
    The second afternoon, a stag swam from an island. Hunger drove our paddles as Kalik promised. Head laid back along the top of the water, the stag spotted us. The eye rolled in terror. A single spear thrust through the back of the neck. Whooping, we dragged it ashore. The mountains blacker than the sky, night edging down the lake, shadows dulled the bays, and we were still gorging. Nip cracking bones. A bit of wood snapped sparks.
    “Who put tote on the fire?”
    “Must have been you.”
    “I know tote sparks. It was you!”
    “You threw it on with that armload.” I pulled out the piece of tote and flung it still burning to hiss in the lake. For a moment its own light showed steam then darkness folded over the water.
    Kalik stared into the fire. “Long ago there was a goddess who guarded the secret of fire. She tried many hiding-places. At last she hid it inside her own body.
    “A hero called Promise had just made the first humans from clay. He breathed life into them, and they stirred and spoke. Promise loved his children. Their first summer they played, then came winter. His children began dying of cold. Promise came through the Western Mountains to the Land of the Lake, looking for the goddess who guarded the secret of fire.
    “He was so beautiful, the goddess desired him. But first she set him three dangerous tasks. Promise performed them bravely. She set three problems. He solved them with kindness. She set him three questions. He answered wisely. The goddess took him into her bed. And Promise found the fire inside the goddess. He waited until she slept, stole it, and ran to give it to his children.
    “The goddess woke cold. She flew across the lake, tracked Promise up the river into the mountains. But he heard the wind of her coming and threw the sparks of fire into the branches of the insignificant little tote tree and whispered the secret to his children.
    “Thinking he had eaten it, the goddess caught Promise and ate him. Still she was cold. Raging, she returned along the way Promise had come, asking the rocks and hills and streams if they had the secret. She asked the trees. She asked the clouds and the lake. But since the tote tree was small and insignificant she did not bother asking it.
    “And the tote tree grew its bark