The Kin by Peter Dickinson Page A

up.
    â€œSee, I come back,” he said.
    She put her arms around his neck and hugged him. Noli looked up and smiled.
    â€œYou hear the thing Mana says?” she asked him.
    â€œYes. It is true,” he said.
    That evening, when the sun was low, the fire was piled with wood and those who had caught ground rats skinned the bodies for roasting. Then they all trooped down to the lake for their evening drink. Even Mosu came, hobbling on her stick and helped along by the woman with the withered leg, whose name was Foia. This time it was Mosu who raised her hand and spoke in greeting to the water before anyone drank.
    On their return they settled in a wide circle around the fire, with the men on one side and the women and children on the other. While they ate, Mohr, who was Paro’s mate and Sula’s father, carried the new baby around and showed him to everyone in turn. Men as well as women held him and looked him carefully over while he thrashed and squalled, and then passed him back to Mohr.
    Mohr didn’t show him to the Moonhawks, but Sula brought him proudly over.
    â€œSee,” she said. “He is whole and clean.”
    She opened one of the tiny clutching hands and showed that there were four good fingers and a thumb, without webs, like hers, between them. After his mistake with Loga under the shade trees, Suth didn’t dare ask what was so wonderful about a child being born normal. Apart from Tinu, all the babies he had known had been born whole and healthy, though later some had fallen sick and died. As it happened, Sula told him anyway.
    â€œWhen my brother was born he had no arms and no legs,” she said. “He would not live. My father carried him into the trees and left him. Our blood is sick. Mosu says, We are too few. That makes the sickness . We have only each other to mate with . Now the sickness grows stronger. See. It is here, in me.”
    She spread her webbed fingers to show him.
    â€œSoon I am a woman,” she said. “Then I have you for my mate, Suth. Your blood is good. It gives me good babies. Mosu says this.”
    Suth smiled uneasily, but she wasn’t joking or teasing, though there was always a lot of that among the Kin when children were reaching the right age. He glanced at Noli for reassurance, but she was sitting hunched into herself, breathing heavily, not noticing anything. Tinu was amusing Otan by tickling his feet with a grass stem. Mana was asleep, and Ko was playing tag around the circle with a boy his own age. Suth didn’t really understand what Sula had told him, but he didn’t feel easy about it. Perhaps this was not a Good Place after all. Perhaps it was like the fruit of the sixberry bush, which tasted so good in the mouth that you wanted to eat more and more, but when you’d had more than five it caused you to vomit until you thought you would die.
    Sula carried the baby away and gave him to Paro. Ko returned panting and bright eyed from his game. Noli gave a shuddering sigh and sat up and looked around.
    â€œYou hear the thing that Sula says?” Suth asked her.
    She shook her head and in a low voice he told her. She nodded.
    â€œI slept and did not sleep,” she said. “Moonhawk came. She told what Kin these are. They are Monkey. Big Voice is Monkey.”
    He stared at her, remembering what the Oldtales said.
    â€œMonkey has no Kin,” he said.
    â€œThese are Monkey,” she insisted. “Does Moonhawk lie?”

Oldtale
    HOW SORROW CAME
    An and Ammu journeyed through all of the First Good Places with their children. They showed them the trails and the water holes and the dew traps and the warrens. They told them the names of the plants, root and fruit and nut and leaf, those that were good to eat and those that were bad. They showed them the places of safety and the places of danger .
    They came to a tree that held the nests of weavers, and An cut a long pole and showed how to knock down the nests, so