The Gathering Night by Margaret Elphinstone

Author:Margaret Elphinstone [Elphinstone, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical, book, FIC014000
ISBN: 9781552788806
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2009-05-21T04:00:00+00:00

A shadow fell across us. I looked up. It was Kemen.

I stopped singing.

‘I heard your song.’

I was silent.

‘I heard your song.’

My heart spoke to him. He didn’t know that, because I had no words.

Kemen moved the full waterskins aside, and squatted beside me on the riverbank. ‘Osané, I’m very glad you have words for him. Couldn’t you find even one for his father?’

My voice fled. I swallowed, searching for it in my throat. Something changed inside my heart and now I wanted my voice to come back. I couldn’t force it. Instead, I nodded.

Kemen laid his hand on my knee. ‘I heard you sing about the light drifting across the land, always wanting to go home.’

I looked away. The lights danced on the River. After a while I saw that the River was holding the song curled up inside it. I listened to the River, then I hummed the same tune under my breath. Then, very softly, fixing my eyes on the lights until I couldn’t see anything else, I began to sing the words.

The song reached its end. I’d been looking at the sparkling lights so long I couldn’t see the River any more. I could only see the patterns the light made inside my eyes.

‘Osané?’

I kept my eyes on the River. I cleared my throat. I found my voice huddled inside my gullet. I forced it to remember.

He had to lean very close to hear me.

‘Yes?’ I said to him.

I’m glad Kemen was the first – it was different with my son – he had no words of his own – he was still part of me – I’m glad Kemen was the first to hear me speak again.

Alaia said:

The storm had filled the Sun with new strength; the great rain had washed the sky deep blue. The nights were growing longer, and in the clear skies the stars came back to us. They told us the summer was almost gone, even though the days were hot. One afternoon we spread a bearskin cloak for my father so he could sit propped against his oak tree. Esti knelt between his knees decorating his leggings with rows of shells and different-coloured pebbles. Amets sat on a log a little way away, chipping new blades off a white-stone core. Haizea and I had walked a long way in the heat that morning. We lay back in the Sun and closed our eyes. All I could hear was the River flowing through the gorge, a blackbird singing in the oak tree and the steady knocking of stone on stone.

‘What is it? Has something happened?’

Haizea’s clear voice came into my dream. I jerked awake. Kemen was coming towards us, leading Osané by the hand. Why would he do that? He brought her over to the hearth. But it was all right: he was smiling – more than I’d ever seen him smile before.

‘Osané would like me to tell you—’

I knew already what he was going to say. Osané’s arm was round Bakar in his sling.

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