There was no one left in the whole river valley who might aspire to the status of a painted man either. She hadn't realised that the scarred hunter had led his men to cull all those suspected of such powers before the ground had broken. Had they truly been afraid one of them might challenge the strangers and bring their astounding powers down to devastate the village?
She rose stiffly to her feet. Everyone was expected to bring food to the hearth, however slowly in the case of the elders. At least she had an easier task than most. She took a moment to count the swollen-bellied trees as the village woman had shown her and walked towards one of the oldest. This one had grown hollow over the years, hiding a dark void within while the leathery walls still bore a twisted green tangle. She had to duck to get through the split in the trunk, with a twist that set her back aching.
Her eyes stung with unexpected tears as a different pain assailed her. She had given birth in the safe embrace of a mighty tree, just like the village women. She had come back when the eyes of the sky were closed to bury the tie that had bound the child into her belly. Did any
of her children still live? How far had this catastrophe reached? Certainly the most distant mountains still burned and smoked. Had the green forest where she had lived for so long been burned to ashes?
She screwed her eyes shut and refused to give way to weeping. Her daughters, wherever they might be, were grown and might have had some chance to save themselves. There were enough women grieving for their little children lost in the confusion of the calamitous night. Every day some woman broke down, inconsolable when the man who had begotten babies on her wasn't among the latest group to make their way back, battered and dazed.
And there were still children to be fed, so they might grow to be hunters and mothers in times to come. The old woman opened her eyes. She could just make out bulbous shapes hanging in the folds of the tree's interior. She tugged at one but it refused to come loose. A crawler ran down her arm and she recoiled, shaking it away. It took a few moments for her heart to stop pounding.
But it had not bitten her, she realised, so she would not die today. Taking a deep breath, even though her chest still ached from the after-effects of that choking night, she reached up and pulled on one of the dark bulges as hard as she could. The vine snapped and she clutched the precious lump to her bony breast. As she wormed her way out of the hollow tree, the bright sunlight outside prompted fresh tears.
She looked at her prize. The lizard's stomach had wizened to a hard casing, the sinew tying it tight darkened by the smoke that had first dried it. She examined it carefully for any sign that some curious creature or insect had eaten its way through to the pounded meat and fat and herbs within. No, it looked as secure as the day that the village woman had hidden it, against those hungry
seasons when such caches might be all that would save the children she had borne there.
The women of the village had all agreed that food hoarded for an uncertain future was best eaten now. They had need of it, and besides, who knew what might lie ahead? The old woman gazed inland to the distant peaks still belching pale smoke into the soiled skies. Was it her imagination, her old bones and meagre flesh failing and her eyes clouded by age? Or were the days truly darker and cooler since the mountains had caught fire?
A shout startled her so badly that she nearly dropped her precious burden. She crouched, ready to duck back inside the tree, for all the protection that might afford her. Two figures came closer, close enough for her to recognise them and feel her racing heart slow for a second time.
It was the white-haired old man from the village. He waved a sturdy stick in greeting. One of the aged sisters was with him, carefully carrying a gourd full of fat white grubs. She congratulated the aged sister and secretly hoped the village woman who had taken her in would share instead some of the wind-dried meat cut from a lizard that one of the hunters had found crushed beneath a fallen tree. And she had heard one of them say the great lizards were returning to the flooded plain, to lurk among the decaying grasses. The hunters had agreed that the waters were too deep and too perilous to wade in now. They were talking of going inland to try to find trees large enough to make boats.
The white-haired old man was shrill with irritation as he was explaining how he had very nearly stunned an immature stalking bird that the two of them had startled from its hiding place. The old woman commiserated with him as they walked back to the village together. The aged sister was less sympathetic. She was more concerned that
one such marauder might mean that more and bigger birds had found a way across the flooded valley. How long would it be before some child was taken by their cruel beaks?
The white-haired old man dismissed such fears. Let the biggest, most ferocious birds come, he scoffed. The village's hunters would slay them with the new weapons the tall stranger had shown them and everyone would go to bed with a belly full of sweet meat.
The aged sister would not be reassured. How far were the floods going to reach now that the river's path to the sea was blocked by the upthrust broken land? And the hunters who had ventured towards the sunset, to what had been the edge of the cliffs, had found the ground impassable with no water visible beyond. The sands and rocks lay bereft. They would go hungry, she predicted sourly, in the driest season. The fish from the great water and the shells from the rocks had often been all that they had had to eat.
The white-haired old man shook his head resolutely. If the waters towards the sunset were gone, they must turn their attentions inland. There were still birds and lizards to eat.
The aged sister wasn't listening, continuing her querulous complaints. Where, she wanted to know, were those strangers who had shown the village hunters how to make those curious weapons that flung sharpened and feathered sticks so hard and so far? They had not returned, had they? Who was going to protect their village now? Strangers they might have been, but the red man and the golden woman had undeniably had the powers of the painted men, even if they used them in such a puzzling fashion.
The old woman shrugged as both elders looked ques-tioningly at her. She had no idea where the strangers were
and that saddened her. They had shared the spoils of the hunt instead of fastening on the villagers like leeches, as any other painted man would have done. She struggled not to feel despondent as the three of them trudged on through the clotted ash, past thistly plants defaced by dirty smears and scored with deep burns from the rain of searing embers. The wind had had less chance to scour away the thick carpet of fallen stones here and they crunched through drifts of clinker.
The aged sister had a point. Who was going to defy any painted man if one did arrive somehow to claim the village for his own? She tried not to think of her likely fate if a beast and a painted man appeared together. She and all the elders would be sacrificed to satisfy the beast's hungers. That would please the painted man, and a contented painted man could summon clean water out of the dry earth and kill birds or lizards and roast them over fire that needed no fuel.
The upthrust fingers of the spiny thickets were burdened with dried black mud like the nut thickets. A group of children were trying to salvage something from a sprawl of fleshy-leaved plants choked with ash. The hunter with the stooped back was keeping watch. He carried a spear as well as one of the new curved weapons the tallest stranger had made. He grinned at the elders and held up a feathered stick that had skewered a dappled scratching fowl.