Calling the Gods Read online

  Dedication

  For Cathie

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Banished

  Chapter Two

  Selene and the Map of the Gods

  Chapter Three

  To Batter and Smoke the Cliffs Beneath the Horns

  Chapter Four

  Selene, Born of the Moon and Whale

  Chapter Five

  Laying Off and Waiting There

  Chapter Six

  Selene and the Sacrifice of the Gods

  Chapter Seven

  Rabbit Island

  Chapter Eight

  Selene and the Time for Feasts and Stories

  Chapter Nine

  Ennish and the Gods

  Chapter Ten

  Singing and Telling Ennish His Story

  Chapter Eleven

  Trade and Tribute

  Chapter Twelve

  Why the Gods Were Angry

  Chapter Thirteen

  Survivors of Hornish

  Chapter Fourteen

  Twelve Days North and Three Days East

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Old Man’s Story:

  (1) Catching a Kahawai in the Garden

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Gods Must Have Been Helping

  Chapter Seventeen

  Flint and Steel and Knife

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Old Man’s Story:

  (2) The Cannon Ball

  Chapter Nineteen

  Under the Wooden Map

  Chapter Twenty

  The Old Man’s Story:

  (3) The Significance of the Tree

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Abundance

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Petra’s Story: The Secret of the Diggers

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Old Man’s Story:

  (4) How Many You Need to Survive

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  A Dark and Secret Thing

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Five of Them and Twenty-Three Sheep

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Old Man’s Story:

  (5) Something Dark in Larish

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Something Beyond Ordinary Misery

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Our Mind is a Curious Thing

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Invention and Possession

  Chapter Thirty

  The Old Man’s Story:

  (6) “Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  If I Am

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Banished

  Thrown hard on the bottom boards, I stared up at distorted mouths, faces so red I could feel their heat. They stank of rage and of something else; several frothed at the mouth; their howls drowned the clatter and shriek of gulls swerving and tilting above the mast.

  “Slut. Whore.”

  His scalp bleeding, eyes bruised, cheeks ripped by fingernails, a young man bellowed louder than any of them and lunged at me over the stern. His shout stopped for a moment, and I read the words he shaped with his lips. “Lay off.”

  He shouted even louder. “Go and never return.”

  A brief silence, and I read his lips again. “Wait there.”

  I dropped my eyes.

  “Out,” he joined the chorus. “Out.” And somebody cast her own filth on me.

  Eyes bulging, tongue lolling, hair snaking, Ulseb pushed her daughter Larish aside and jostled forward. She sucked in her cheeks, pleated and pursed up her lips, and the young man blundered between us to shake his fist as she spat. A dozen hands, their fingers crossed, scrabbled at the stern to shove me off.

  “Out to sea.” The young man bellowed my banishment. He was my lover, Ennish.

  Chapter Two

  Selene and the Map of the Gods

  One of my earliest memories is of sitting by the tree. I can feel Ennish’s shoulder against mine, and we are looking up the trunk at the roof where the moving dark reflects the lick of flames in the chimney. In the high, airy space between the roots of the upside-down tree, the rafters, and the thatch, some enormous creature stirs its flanks, tilts, and disappears.

  “Our fathers’ fathers searched the coast for the tree,” grey-bearded Kelak is saying. “They towed it home, and buried its head so its roots hold up the roof of the Great House of Hornish.”

  Ennish and I lean against each other and stare up the trunk at the roots knuckling into the darkness, at the rafters growing out of them like spokes of a wheel.

  “The tree is our backbone. Its roots and the rafters are our ribs, and deep beneath the floor the tree’s head stands on the back of the god at the centre of the world.”

  Kelak points down, and the faces of all the children of Hornish darken. He points up, and our faces lift into the light.

  “That pattern of roots is the map of the journey the gods make across the world.”

  I wriggle against Ennish. Gazing at the spaces between roof, roots, and rafters, we watch the gods swim on their vast journey.

  “Without the whale, the tree would fall.” Kelak chants in his high old voice, and I watch Ennish’s lips move as we join in: “Without the tree, the Great House would fall: without the Selene to sing them home, the gods would lose their way: without the gods, the world would fall past the moon and into space.”

  Chapter Three

  To Batter and Smoke the Cliffs Beneath the Horns

  Shoved off in the boat, I had sense enough to turn my eyes from Ennish’s broken face and look at the others contorted by fury and something else. I called aloud the names of three: “Tilsa, Ulseb, Larish,” but only tipped their anger into terror. Screeching higher, white-knuckled fingers crossed, even in their frenzy they dared not meet my eye.

  They stank of fear. That knowledge and Ennish’s mouthed and murmured words cleared my mind, brought me to my knees. I reached for a rope.

  Ennish disappeared amongst the clumped frieze of shawls and cloaks, black-holed mouths, tossed hair, knotted fists. Chanting the wild hymn, swaying forward and back, crouching, squatting, straightening, throwing stones, sticks, ordure, for a moment they froze black against the rising sun as flung from out of sight behind them a spear howled over their heads and glanced off the boat’s side.

  The skin on my back tight, I plucked the spear from the water, threatened the mob, and they scattered shrieking. I dropped the spear in the bottom of the boat, cleated the mainsail halyard, and the jib snapped and kicked as I yanked it up. Wind filled both sails as I drew them in. At one banishing, the wind had turned and blown off the sea and the outcast was stoned to death beside the jetty. I must move fast; there was the gauntlet yet to run.

  The tiller came hard into my hand as we glided between the cliffs, the water pocked by stones that rapped the planked sides, plopped soft in the sails, clattered in the bottom. A spinning shell cut my cheek, another my arm. Spears splashed like diving gannets, arrows hissed.

  The sails’ curves, soft and rounded, drew us down the passage, where I was pelted by children lining the cliffs above. Blood ran into my eyes so I blinked as the wake surged and curved behind like polished soil falling back from the plough.

  In a faraway corner of my mind, I saw my mother Hulsa leading our horse, Palik my father holding the handles, the ploughshare turning over its long wave of earth. My brothers coming behind me: Tobik determined, quiet, and serious, copying me, taking a step and placing a seed potato, another step another potato; Peck and Patch chattering, stumbling behind him, picking them up, babbling to the potatoes, dropping them bac
k in the open furrow.

  I heard myself laugh: the soil turned back to water, my tears stopped, and I raised my right hand.

  At its seaward end, the entry narrowed between dripping black walls of stone. On top of Skull, a tower of rock at the northern side, men levering a boulder saw my raised hand and whimpered. The boulder rolled too soon; its splash ran up the channel and slopped into the boat. Covering their eyes, the men threw themselves face down on the rock.

  On the lip of Dis, the twin tower on the southern side, women with poles held back a second boulder. At sight of my lifted hand, one turned her face away, her pole snapped, and she fell forward.

  The boulder nodded. She had time to fling herself aside, but her shriek bubbled as the boulder slid and carried a jerking bundle of rags into the whirlpool at the foot of Dis. If only it had been that other, the one who had flung her filth on me.

  Bow, jib, and mast vanished in spray; the boat bucked; the sails kicked till I hardened them. They filled again as the Horns fell behind. We had run the gauntlet, and because I was the Selene, because of what they were doing to me, I stood and raised my other hand, the sinister, above my head. Stones fell from slings, arrows from bows, the shrieking women dropped to their knees, covered their eyes.

  I cackled at the terror in their canting whine as I bent the thumb and two inner fingers, pointed the index and little fingers at those who yesterday had been my people. As if from a high place, I looked down on a girl in a boat making the sign of the Horns, cursing those who drove her out.

  I put the tiller over, brought both sails across, and ran down the other tack, raised my left hand again, and they wailed and cast themselves flat. They knew I had killed that woman beneath the boulder. Another spear flung by somebody out of sight whickered past and quiffed the water ahead. I plucked out that one, too, put the stern towards Skull and Dis and their wheel of gulls, and closed the narrow glimpse of the village behind.

  Mouthing, too hoarse to croak my curse aloud, I washed myself of blood and filth, the salt water stinging in my wounds. I tugged an arrow from the mast, another out of a plank, found a third, and laid them with the spears, their sharp heads under the stern seat.

  Lashed under the middle thwart was a breaker of fresh water, and another of hard-baked bread. An outcast was given enough for several days: if the wind was right, and if they survived the gauntlet, they might sail over the edge of the world into the space from which none returned. That’s what the storytellers always said in the Great House, but there were also whisperings of what was done to those who tried to return.

  I saw Ennish shoving me off, shrieking abuse with the others, mouthing the words: “Lay off” and “Wait there”. And because we were children of the fishing village of Hornish, and because I loved him, I knew what he meant.

  For a moment, rage and vengeance filled my mind, then I thought of my father and mother with the gods beneath the sea, of my brothers: Tobik, Peck, and Patch. The long swell picked up the tiny boat, swung it down its back, and we lifted on another and another rocking on their colossal way to batter and smoke the cliffs beneath the Horns.

  Chapter Four

  Selene, Born of the Moon and Whale

  Each year as the sea gets colder, the gods swim north, towing the old sun down the sky and over the edge of the world till darkness eats our day. Only the gods see the old sun die, the new sun born, and I — the Selene — sing the strong words that guide their journey home.

  Through the hill of water where the world ends, the gods listen, turn, and swim back along the great sea-roads. Singing their own song they come, towing the new-born sun out of the abyss until it rises above their colossal wake, bringing light and warmth back to the world. When day begins to eat night, I know I have my power still.

  In the story of our people that is told in the Great House each winter, the Whale lay with the first Woman, and she gave birth to us, people of Hornish. In a dream my mother was visited by the god; that is why I was named Selene, born of the Moon and Whale.

  The rest of the time, I am just a girl growing up with Hulsa my mother, my father Palik, Tobik my younger brother, and our little twin brothers, Peck and Patch, both of whom I helped out of my mother’s body and into the world. Growing with Ennish, closer than brother and sister: what I knew, he knew; what he thought, I thought; we scarcely needed words. When we became lovers, it was what I had always intended.

  Chapter Five

  Laying Off and Waiting There

  I did not want to think of what might have happened to my brothers since they were dragged out of the Great House last night by Tilsa, Ulseb, and Larish: Peck and Patch crying my name, Tobik kicking, fighting. I tried not to think of revenge. Instead, I sat to one side to hold the boat level and looked again at every detail of mast and sails, the rope coiled without an anchor in the bows, at the two spears and three arrows, water breaker, bread barrel.

  Five paces long, the boat was built of plank lapped over plank. The mast was stepped through the middle thwart, foot gripped in a hollow wooden block on top of the keelson.

  From the masthead, two rope stays fastened to the sides behind the mast. A third stay, the jib hanked to it, ran down to the bow. Like Hornish’s bigger fishing boats, the mainsail was boomless so the fishermen could work under it safely. Its head stretched high above the mast on a sliding spar. Both sails were woven of flax and dyed red-brown in a boiled mixture of leaves, bark, and whale oil.

  I knew without looking that the rudder had two pintles that fitted into lugs on the stern, that the tiller slid into a hole in the rudder’s head, that the oars flattened at one end to bite the water, narrowed for the hand at the other, but I made myself scan every detail. On each side behind the bow and centre thwarts were twin pegs called rowlocks. The keel was deep enough to grip the water, so the boat could sail upwind without slipping sideways, making leeway, but as we escaped the gauntlet and headed out we were running still, ahead of the wind.

  “Check everything.”

  I wore sandals the village shoemaker had sewn of tough pigskin. My woven woollen tunic I had spread to dry. I had on shirt and knee-length trousers. My leather belt had a sheath, but somebody had taken the knife. In one pocket was a woollen hat. The same person had pulled the other pocket inside out to empty it. I felt under the stern seat, hoping to find a knife, a fishing line. Nothing.

  “Lay off,” I said aloud. “Wait there.”

  When I looked back, the harbour entrance had sunk so the cliffs were now low, only the tips of the Horns showed, and smoky haze rose where the village lay. South was a wall of blue hills and above them the mountains — Harsh, Skeleton, and Scry — heaved into view. I named them aloud, set my face ahead, listened to the run and slap at the stem and along the sides, let out the ropes and tightened them to make the most of the wind.

  When I could bring myself to think again of who and where I was, the coast had sunk; only peaks sawed the jagged air. A blue sky curved overhead, lighter than the darkening water.

  My cuts and bruises hurt; I was tired, but not hungry. If I could not see Skull and Dis, the watchers could not see me. Before night, I lowered both sails and lay off. I furled the jib with its own rope, pulled the woollen hat over my aching head, and rolled myself in the mainsail, listening to the slap of water, adjusting to the easy movement.

  In the morning, stiff and sore, I raised the sails to run back.

  “You sailed west, towards the setting sun, so the land must lie east, towards the rising sun. It must do.” I could hear the lack of confidence in my voice. “Ennish is relying on you,” I said. “And the boys.”

  The wind vanished; the sea came by in a longer swell that lifted the boat, dropped it almost to the sea floor, hesitated, and began the long swing and climb again. The sails slatted until I lowered them and ran out the oars, taking a stroke, keeping bow-on to the swell, finding the boat could handle the growing seas on its own, lying head slightly off, lifting, riding, falling, and lifting again, while I sat uncertain and
afraid of the great shifting waters at the edge of the world.

  Although brought up in boats, I had never been so far from others, alone at sea. I thought of my mother dreaming of the whale. I had her green eyes, everyone said, and my father’s mind.

  A crazed wooden cackle from above, a blackback staring down cold-eyed. I cackled back till offended it flapped away east. That made me feel better.

  The wind returned, the masthead swayed up, down, and around in a dizzy spiral so my stomach swooped and heaved, following its lunge against the sky. That weight so high was making the boat roll. Stiff from lying on the bottom boards, I unhanked jib and mainsail, bundled and lashed them under the centre thwart.

  Crouched, keeping my own weight low, I slipped past the mast, bringing the bow deeper, adding a screwing kick to the boat’s movement, and let go the forward stay. I slithered back behind the mast, taking the stay around the bow thwart, cast off the side stays, let go the forward stay then, judging it carefully, half-standing, using the swell, lifted the mast up and out of its hole through the middle thwart.

  That is what I intended, but an unhelpful wave tipped me off balance, the mast toppled, and I stopped it shooting forward only by grabbing a stay so its head fell backward.

  “You could have smashed it, or the boat,” I said aloud, working the mast’s foot into the bows, so only the head stuck out over the stern. My hands shook. “But you were lucky.” The rising wind whipped my words away, so I felt them on my lips, knew I had spoken them, but heard nothing.