It rained heavily during the night and cleared just before dawn. Morning light speared through the thinning mist. The sun had lost its brilliant whiteness now that the sky held clouds again.
Yesterday’s leftovers were already flyblown. He’d hunt and eat later.
Below him the hoppers bent their delicate heads to the grass. Overnight the world had become green, grass green, mangrove green. Even the trees were freshly washed. He could almost see the hoppers getting fatter.
He limped down to the spring, using his spear as a crutch, and found that it had become a creek meandering towards the swamp. It even tasted different: of leaves and growing things, not its old tinny taste of rock and earth.
Something moved on the hill above. The dog. He stilled as she slunk past. She must have smelled him and chosen to ignore him. He waited till she crept up towards the leftovers, then circled around up to her crevice and peered in.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness and see them. Puppies. Five tiny squirming bundles with their eyes sealed shut. So that was why …
Something growled behind him.
He froze, remembering the sow’s fury when humans had threatened her piglets.
The dog had been his companion since the storm. But he knew that a mother dog would let nothing — not even him — threaten her puppies. He tried to breathe thinly, shallowly, as though he wasn’t breathing at all. He looked away, not at her, not at the crevice where the puppies wriggled. He pushed himself back from the opening, not getting up to his feet, but sliding along the rock. It was only when he was a spear’s length away that he allowed himself to look at her.
She carried a piece of cooked fruit bat. It must be for herself — he supposed rubbish dogs’ puppies lived on milk when they were very small, like most other animals.
She met his eyes. She growled again — an almost imperceptible sound, like the rock had vibrated. She was waiting for him to leave before she went in to her pups. But he couldn’t go any higher, not with his bad leg. He’d have to go past her to get down.
He sat there, hardly breathing, wondering if she would drop the meat and go for him. But at last she lowered to her stomach and wriggled into the crevice.
He let out his breath. Heart pounding, he limped down the path, careful not to linger by the crevice in case she jumped out at him. He made his way to the edge of the swamp, quickly speared a sleeping fruit bat — they never seemed to realise that one of their number was gone when they woke at night — then carried it back up to his fire.
He sat as it roasted, looking out at the new green of the grasslands.
What would the dog do now? Would she ever come back to him? Or would the puppies be her pack now? Dogs stayed with dogs, humans with humans. That was the way the world was. It should be as impossible as having a whale as a friend. And yet, he thought, we have been friends. It was not just an alliance of convenience.
Could he bear the loneliness if she left for good?
He pulled at the fruit bat’s wing to see if it was cooked enough; the bone slid out. He tore off the wing with two bits of twig so he didn’t burn himself, waited till it had cooled a bit and began to chew. Suddenly he longed for real meat — not shellfish or mangrove worm or bat. Hunter’s meat. There were no pigs, but one of the hopping animals would do.
He needed to find other people. He hadn’t seen any more smoke in the distance, but that didn’t mean there was no one there. Perhaps they made small hot fires with little smoke. Most of his clan’s fires were like that: dry driftwood that flared hot and almost smokeless.
He could even try to get back home. Not in a canoe — even if he’d had an adze, or a rock that could be made into an adze head, he knew he didn’t have enough skill to make a canoe that would take him that far. A canoe looked simple, but it had to be perfectly balanced or it rolled over. He’d need years of learning and practice to manage that.
But he could make a raft, the logs tied together with cord made from twisted inner bark, waterproofed with flame. A raft would take him …
Not home, he realised. The winds and current had brought him here. Now they’d take him even further away. He couldn’t paddle against them, especially not on a clumsy raft. But if he went further along the coast he might see campfire smoke.
Perhaps.
He sagged against the rock. The Rain Season was nearly upon him, with its drenching showers and then its wild storms. If he was caught in a storm now there’d be no sandbank to rescue him. The first giant wave would smash him into the sea.
The Rain Season meant floods too. He didn’t know this land and how strong the floods and storms might be. At least he was pretty sure he was out of the water’s reach up here — there was no debris among the rocks or in the trees. But once he ventured down onto the grasslands a flood might cut him off from the safety of cliffs and high country, easy meat for crocodiles.
No, he had to stay here till after the Wet. Alone.
He came to a decision. The dog had trusted him before. He’d win her back. He’d bring her meat … He grinned at himself. Like a warrior courting a girl he wanted for his wife. There were no girls to win here, but he could try to persuade a dog to be his friend.