The Scorpion God by William Golding

Author:William Golding [William Golding]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571305018
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2013-04-03T16:00:00+00:00

III

The settlement stayed as wide awake as the animals on the plain. It was not merely that the children had had a sleep in the middle of the day and now played on into the sunset, for they always did that. It was rather that Palm knew, and the women with her, what shape the Sky Woman would be in when she rose. It was a later rising than for the Leopard Men, for the Hot Springs were in the shadow of the mountain. So the women strolled for a while in blue twilight. They did not talk much, though they moved in groups. Every now and then, there would come a sudden burst of laughter in the twilight. The woman with child hooted more regularly and with abandon, in her shelter.

Palm stood once more by the topmost pan where the water boiled and the vapour hung. She watched one part of the mountain outlined darkly against the deepening blue of the evening sky. Below her, by the river, the women had their arms about each other’s waists and necks, or waited in groups from which the bursts of laughter or giggles rose, but she paid no attention to them. A fire burned brightly before one shelter where the woman was in labour, but she ignored it and the hooting of the woman. She stood there, not her own length from the boiling water. Her fists were clenched, and she yearned up at the dark outline.

Children began to scream by the river. They had passed to the state where they did not know how tired they were. They fought and howled. She heard how the women went to them and tried to quieten them. Somewhere, a baby was whining and some booby of a boy crying his eyes out. Suddenly there was no more laughter from the women but firm words. She heard how they shoo’d the children, collected them, brought them to the rocks; and the children quietened, with the occasional spat from sheer exhaustion. Presently there was no human sound at all except the regular hooting. In a dozen huts or shelters or lean-tos the children were being told how this night of nights they must not come out till sunup, because of the dreams that walked. Palm yearned at the mountain, and panted, her mouth wide open.

There was a change in the sky. Just over the dark outline and in the expected place, the blue of the sky was lightening. She watched, until the water in her eyes blurred everything so that she swung on her heel and blinked them clear. Half the plain and the mountains that surrounded it were drenched in milky light that moved closer and closer to the river and the settlement. The women were coming out into the open from their homes again. She saw flashes and glossy loops wake as the light moved across the river, fast as girls could wade in line with a net. The light touched the nearer bank.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.