He had only meant to doze then leave in the pre-dawn light. But yesterday’s walk — and the relief of finding humans — had tired him more than he’d thought.
The sunlight on his face woke him. He sat up suddenly and looked around, alarmed.
Where were the younger dogs? Had they wandered near the camp? Maybe they were already dog meat …
He scrambled to his feet, then saw them sitting on the rock, comfortably surveying the world below. If they’d hunted earlier there was no sign of it. And if they had, he realised with relief, no one had seen them.
He heard voices in the distance, further away than last night’s camp.
Good, he thought. No one was coming this way.
He needed time — time to get back to his own camp, time to think about how he could make the strangers see the dogs as friends, not food, to show them how good a partnership between dogs and humans could be. To see him not as some magician who could talk to animals, or even as an enemy who’d come sneaking by to steal a woman, but as exactly what he was — a young man who had lost his own people and was prepared to take on another clan’s language and ways.
As long as they spared his dogs.
He strode down the hill, keeping away from the river, where men might be silently fishing or women catching birds. He didn’t stop to drink. The dogs did — there was no way he could stop them and he couldn’t risk calling them. But finally the river was behind them. The world was silent, dawn’s bird chorus done for the day. Only one more lake through the grasslands …
The birds that had flown away the day before weren’t there today. Maybe a crocodile had scared them —
He saw her then. But realised she’d seen him first. She stood immobile: she was long-limbed, her skin as dark as the water, her eyes wide and scared. She was a little younger than he was, perhaps. He saw when she saw the dogs too, her eyes widening as she wondered whether to run from the strange man and the strange beasts, or if running would just make them chase her.
‘Sit,’ he whispered to the dogs. Little Boy and Little Girl sat obediently. The dog glanced at her puppies, then at Loa, then at the girl. Finally she decided to sit too, scratching her ear with her hind leg.
The girl stared at Loa and at the dogs. She looked scared, but curious too.
Loa tried a smile. ‘Hello.’
The girl said something he didn’t understand.
Loa put his spear down, then lifted his hands to show he held no weapons. He reached down and scratched Little Boy behind the ears. The dog grinned. Little Girl rolled over to let him scratch her tummy.
The dog gazed at the girl. The girl gazed back, then at Loa, fascination battling with fear.
How could he say, ‘Don’t be scared of us’? How could he show her he wasn’t going to try to capture her, or hurt her, and that the dogs wouldn’t hurt her either?
Suddenly Little Girl stood up. Before he could stop her she padded over to the girl. She sniffed the girl’s legs, curiously, then snuffled at a woven bag lying in the grass. She sat at the girl’s feet, looking up hopefully. Loa wondered if the bag held mussels or maybe wood grubs. He didn’t know how to ask.
The girl looked at Loa, looked at Little Boy and the dog, then at Little Girl, still sitting at her feet, mouth open in a doggy grin. Slowly, very slowly, the girl reached out and touched Little Girl’s head, then darted her fingers away, as though she was scared she’d be bitten.
‘Grrf,’ said Little Girl, drooling at the scent of whatever was in the basket.
Loa reached down and scratched Little Boy’s ears again. The girl gave a delighted giggle as she bent down and scratched Little Girl the same way. The young dog shut her eyes in pleasure.
The girl looked at Loa, a true smile on her face now as she scratched Little Girl just the way he was scratching Little Boy. He smiled back at her, admiring her courage. She must have seen Little Girl’s sharp teeth. Any of the girls back home would have run away screaming. But this girl touched a strong and frightening animal. This girl smiled at a stranger.
The dog gazed at them, wary.
He wanted to stay with the girl. Learn how to talk to her, ask her to take him to her family. But he had to think about the dogs too.
Suddenly Loa knew what to do.
He held up his hand and pointed towards his far-off camp. He gestured at himself, then at the dogs, then at the camp again. Then he pointed towards the girl’s camp, made a beckoning gesture, then pointed to his camp again. The signals were the only way he knew how to say, ‘I’m taking the dogs back to my camp. Tell your people to come to my camp too.’
The girl stared at him. Did she understand?
Someone called from back towards the river. The girl called something in return.
He had to go. Now. Fast, before a hunter could find them and cast a spear: at the dogs for food; at him in case he was attacking or stealing the girl. He had to hope she’d tell them he wasn’t an enemy, that his dogs were strange, but not dangerous or for eating.
He smiled at her one last time. She smiled back, her face like the sun edging above the mountains, like the moon lifting out of the seas.
He began to jog into the grasslands. The dogs pranced after him.
He glanced back. The girl watched him. He wondered what she saw, then looked at her face and knew.
She saw a hunter. A man, his muscles stronger from the last hard year of work, not the boy he’d been such a short time earlier. A man who could survive alone, who could make a camp from nothing. A warrior who commanded animals.
That’s me, he thought. That’s who I am now.
The voices were closer now. He began to run through the grass, the dogs trotting on either side. But his mind’s eye still saw the girl.