‘No,’ said both Shade and Jurgi, together. ‘Please,’ said Shade. ‘Just stay out of the way. Look – don’t come out of your house tonight. During the feast. You may not like what you’d see.’
Zesi did not enjoy being hidden out of sight. But she stomped off to the house. The house itself was massively built, laden thick with leaves sandwiched between two hide layers, and it was cool inside. There was a hearth, unlit, a couple of hide pallets stuffed with leaves, and bowls of water.
It had been a long journey. After a wash to rinse the grime off her limbs and a soak of her feet, and a piss into a pit at the rear of the house, with relief Zesi lay down on one of the pallets. It crackled softly, smelling of autumn and wood smoke, and she fell into a deep sleep.
She didn’t wake until evening, with the scent of cooked meat in her nostrils.
She sat up, suddenly hungry. The house was dark. By the light of a lamp of oil burning in a stone bowl, the priest was unwrapping a parcel of meat covered with leaves. He sat by the hearth but the fire still wasn’t lit; the night was too warm.
She could hear chanting outside, laughter, running footsteps, a kind of singing.
She came to join Jurgi. ‘They’re having their feast.’ She found her blade, grabbed a bit of meat and sawed at it.
‘Yes. Making quite a row at times. This is the Pretani in the wild, I guess. And I think the Root is using his Etxelur gift, the herbs and unguents and seeds. I’m glad he didn’t ask me to administer it for him-’
A scream cut through the night like a blade, making them both jump.
Zesi hurried to the door flap.
The priest called after her, ‘Zesi – no – you heard what Shade said.’
‘I’m just going to peek.’ She loosened the flap’s ties, making a crack so she could see out.
Fires blazed all around the grove, making a light bright as day. People danced, frenzied, men and women alike, even older children, in the flickering shadows of the ring of poles. There were no drums, no flutes, as there would have been in Etxelur; the only music came from the people’s ragged song. The Root and his green-clad priest stood before the great old tree at the heart of the clearing.
And a man was suspended from the holy tree, his arms outspread, his wrists tied by lengths of rope to the branches. Zesi could see how he shifted his weight, agonised, struggling to breathe, his face a grimace in the firelight.
It was Shade.
Jurgi’s hand was on her shoulder; otherwise she might have lunged forward. ‘Stay,’ he whispered. ‘This is their way. This is Shade’s way. Come back inside.’
But she shook him off and stayed to see more.
The Root stood on a log before his son. He held up a blade and swiped it across Shade’s forehead, creating a vivid red gash. She understood. This would be the kill tattoo, a memory of Shade’s brother that he would carry for ever.
The blood ran in a sheet over Shade’s forehead and into his eyes. Suspended, he thrashed, but made no sound.
34
They were woken before dawn by Alder the medicine man, who came to their house, his finger held to his lips. Hush.
Zesi rolled off her pallet and pulled on a tunic. She glanced over at the priest. ‘The hunt?’
‘Evidently.’
She quickly emptied her bladder, and grabbed a blade and a spear. While she waited for the priest she tested her weapon one last time, feeling its balance, stressing the attachment of the point to the shaft with resin and dried rope. She had made the spear herself, with her father’s help, and used and repaired it many times. It was short enough to be used as a stabbing spear, long and well balanced enough to throw if need be.
Zesi felt her heart beat harder as she faced the unknown challenges of the day, of a hunt in a terrain she didn’t know, surrounded by men who longed for her to fail. Bring it, she thought. I am ready.
They stepped out of the hut. In the dying light of last night’s fire she saw half a dozen Pretani waiting for them, hunters, the green-clad priest, gathered around the Root and Shade. The Pretani carried spears and light packs, and they all had their faces and arms dyed dark green. The new scar on Shade’s forehead, crudely stitched and stained black, was livid.
As soon as Zesi and the priest emerged, the Root set off without a word. The others followed, and Zesi and the priest had no choice but to jog after them.
At first the Root led them along one of the wide ways that led from the ceremonial centre, but he soon cut off onto a track which, if it existed at all, only the Pretani could see, and they pushed into the deeper forest.
The dawn sky was visible only in glimpses through the endless canopy, and the trees grew dense, their massive root systems sprawling, always ready to trip a careless foot. The Pretani moved silently, all but invisible in the homogenous gloom of the forest in their brown tunics and green and black faces, and Zesi had to concentrate hard to keep them in sight at all. She saw no animals – no deer, no boar, no sign of cattle. Evidently they knew to keep out of the way of Pretani hunters.
The light was brighter when the Root at last called a halt, at the base of yet another massive tree. Jurgi was breathing hard, but the Pretani didn’t look as if they had worked at all. Some of them glanced up at the canopy, wary, narrow-eyed.
The Root beckoned to the priest and Zesi. ‘So,’ he whispered. ‘What do you imagine we are hunting?’
Zesi said immediately, ‘Aurochs.’ The wild cattle, a huge and ferocious prey, had always been the target of the wildwood challenge.
‘Not today,’ the Root said.
Jurgi frowned. ‘The hunt is a custom. A way of binding our two peoples. And we always hunt aurochs. It is central to the meaning. Your own priest should advise you that to defy tradition is to court problems.’
But Zesi glanced at the Root’s priest, hunched over, grinning, showing green-dyed teeth. ‘He won’t help you, Jurgi. Look at him. He does what the Root tells him, not the other way round. If not aurochs, what are we to hunt?’
The Root glanced upwards. ‘Leafy Boys.’
Jurgi looked up, squinting. ‘And what are Leafy Boys? There is no Etxelur word-’
‘Of course not. Not all knowledge resides in salty Etxelur heads. It will be a new challenge for you, Zesi, daughter of Kirike.’ He pointed to the tree behind her. ‘Here’s how we will organise it. Each of us will climb a tree. You, Zesi, take this one. Priest, yours is over there-’
‘I’ve never climbed a tree,’ Jurgi moaned.
The Root sneered. ‘Then you can thank me for a new experience. If you see a Leafy Boy up there-’
‘What do they look like?’ Zesi asked.
‘You’ll know when you see them. If you find one, drive it out along a branch. In distress they call to each other, bring each other out of the foliage. And they leap from tree to tree – flit between the branches like birds. It’s a marvellous sight. We’ll soon see where they’re congregating, which tree. Then we’ll close in. Got that?’
It sounded simple enough to Zesi – just entirely unfamiliar.
The Root stalked away, and his hunters dispersed. Zesi saw Shade looking at her. He had an expression of confusion on his face, faint concern. But he trotted after his father. The priest, with an uneasy frown, jogged over to the tree that had been picked out for him.
Zesi was left alone with her tree. She was distracted by all those looks of disquiet. Something wasn’t right here. But she was in the hands of the Pretani. There was nothing for it but to climb. She had spare rope around her waist. She took this now, tied either end to her spear, and slung the spear over her back, leaving her hands free.
Then she walked up to the tree, stepped on its roots, and stroked its bark, which was sagging and wrinkled. It really was a very old tree. ‘Forgive me,’ she whispered to it. She looked for her first foothold, and found it in a bulge in the bark – some infestation, perhaps. She stepped up, fingers probing at cracks in the bark. The lower branches weren’t much more than her own height off the ground. When she had hold of the lowest she was able to pull herself up. From here the next branch, oddly bent back on itself, was only just above her.