Throughout the hours of darkness a cold wind had swept across the low marshlands towards Conlaodh’s camp, striking the rising lands of the ridge and chilling him to the core. After Yara had left him he had gathered small branches to lay at an angle between the ground and the fallen branch they had moved to form a canopy that enclosed a nest-like space for him to tuck himself away. He had also had the foresight to pick up handfuls of moss and leaves to pack the area and provide some insulation against the cold. It was not enough. Several times he almost started the process of building a fire for warmth, but each time he remembered Yara’s warning. In any case, if he tried to find kindling and fuel in the darkness he would probably blunder away from his camp and become lost on the rough, sloping ground. Instead, he sat under the canopy, with his arms encircling his legs, drawing them in towards his chest, chin resting on his knees and bouncing up and down as shivers wracked his body. He sat and he thought.

Meeting Yara had only served to make him feel more aware that he was far from home and the familiar places, people and routines that had been the basis for his life so far. As he had crossed the scrubland towards the four trees on the bluff he had had a sense of purpose and that had kept his mind from wandering into the dangerous territory of ‘what if?’ questions. What if he was being followed? What if he was stumbling into danger? What if this was his entire life now – pushing his way across strange terrain as his body steadily weakened until it could carry him no more? Yara’s appearance had burst the bubble that he had constructed around himself and thrust him into a new phase of his journey in which he would be dependent on her kindness, and, he suspected, dependent on her skill.

It was no good. He was miserable, he was afraid, and although he liked Yara and thought that he trusted her, he was not certain that he wouldn’t be safer on his own, and so he made his decison. He would return to the bluff and then strike inland, skirting the marshland along the higher ground, moving towards the interior. He would start at first light, master of his own destiny. With that settled in his mind Conlaodh slipped into a fitful sleep.

He woke to find that the black of the night had been replaced by swirling grey mist. There were times when he could hardly see ten paces in front of him and others when the folds of damp greyness parted and he could look down the slope to see that the marshlands had been swallowed by a soft blanket of mist that lapped against the slope like waves arriving at a beach. That was another reason why he should not go down into those lands. He would be lost before he even started.

He was in the process of re-stowing his few possessions in his pack ready to strike off towards the interior when he heard a sound unlike any he had heard before – a soft booming sound that seemed to fill the air all around him. He could not pinpoint the direction of its source. There it was again, and then another but at a slightly lower pitch, like an answering call. Was this some kind of warning sound? Or perhaps a hunting call? If it was a hunting call, what was the prey? What, or perhaps who? Conlaodh froze as this thought occurred to him. If they were out there looking for him he could not risk moving from his current spot, and if he was not the prey then he should not risk blundering into a hunters’ trap. He realised that he had no choice, he had to sit tight.

As the morning passed the mist gradually began to lift but Conlaodh’s earlier indecision and the fear that it had induced held him at his camp. He had heard the booming sound many times more but over time, as the air around him cleared and normality returned, his thoughts became more rational. He realised that there was no reason for the marsh dwellers to know of his existence unless Yara had been loose with her words and, in any case, how could anyone hunt on this complex and sloping terrain unable to see a path ahead of them? He decided he would wait. Yara had said she would return and if she was to find him he must stay where we was.

Down in Yara’s village, people were begin to stir and go about their daily work. The men and older boys were loading the boats with fresh nets and readying themselves to cast out into the broader waters towards the ocean’s edge. Yara’s mother had already checked on the reed-woven traps and had returned with three juicy, fat eels that, with their tough flesh and slightly muddy taste, would be their meal that evening. Yara herself was itching for more adventure, to retrace her path back up the slope and to talk some more with the strange boy who had suddenly appeared into her life. First, however, there was a morning of work for her to do.

Yara and her mother sat together at the entrance to their hut. As Yara stretched a net apart her mother skilfully wove scraps of old thread to patch the broken areas. Sections that were too damaged for simple repairs were cut away, and once the edges were tidied up, the resulting holes became escape routes for the sacred river dolphins that glided through the coastal waters. It was bad luck to snag one of these magnificent beasts in your net. With the repairs completed, Yara was left with a pile of old scraps and it was her next job to untie knots and tease these apart to provide a fresh supply of threads for the next set of repairs. It was fiddly work and to most people it was boring work, but Yara found that she could her immerse herself in the task, allowing her fingers to operate with a well-practised rhythm while her mind dreamed of mysterious worlds and the adventures she would have exploring them. It was only when her work was complete and her mind returned to her immediate surroundings that she remembered that she would never explore those places, if they even existed, or anywhere for that matter. Her life was in the marshlands, repairing nets, preparing food and, one day, bringing up a family of her own.

Her thoughts were interrupted by her mother calling her.

“Yara, I need you to go down to the drying huts to turn and re-salt the fish. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, mama, and then can I play?”, Yara replied.

“You may, but don’t be out so late tonight, Amaru’s father is visiting and he will want to see that you are strong and healthy.”

Yara’s heart sank. She hated Amaru, but his family were important in the village and her own family could not ignore the interest that his father was showing in her, especially as there would be no-one else to support her mother and father as they grew older.

“Take some food with you”, Yara’s mother continued, “there are fresh rice cakes in the store.”

That was better news. Yara helped herself to three of the rice cakes and then, checking that her mother was looking the other way, pocketed another three and slipped in a couple of pieces of their dried fish.

“Good bye mama”, Yara called, “I’ll be back for Amaru’s father. I promise.”

The track to the drying huts took Yara a little distance from home, through the centre of the village and past the moorings where the boats were tied up overnight. As she passed, she could see that the boats had already departed but there was still a gaggle of boys close to the water’s edge. She could hear that Amaru was among them – his voice was always the loudest even when he had nothing useful to say, which, in Yara’s opinion, was most of the time. And she knew what was coming.

“Hey, Puddle-Face, whose boat is you pa scrounging from today then?”, came Amaru’s taunting words.

Yara turned and scowled at him before turning back and continuing on her way.

“Snake”, she muttered to herself. It was not her father’s fault that he had lost his boat in the storm three years ago and couldn’t afford to replace it. It was Amaru’s father who had insisted that some of the men went out that day even though the rising winds and dark clouds gave a warning to anyone who understood their ways that it was not a day for fishing. And the boat was not all that he had lost, that their family had lost. For it was on that day that they had lost her brother Malik. Oh how sorely she missed him.

Then, as expected, the missiles began to fall, clods of earth and stones, skidding off the track or plopping into the nearby water. She would not give him the satisfaction, that snake with his little bunch of slithering followers. She would not break into a run, even as a ball of clay, packed around a central stone, smacked squarely into her shoulder. She hoped they would have found some other diversion to amuse their simple brains by the time she had to return.

At the drying huts, Yara went quickly about her business. She lifted some of the pieces of fish down from the hanging rack, placed them on the bench and using a big ladle, spooned the pinky-white salt onto them. Then, carefully, she turned each piece while rubbing them all over before returning to the rack and selecting the next set to work on. It took her perhaps an hour to work her way through the entire stock and before she raked the remaining salt back into its basket. She was finished and finally her time was her own.

Yara was relieved to find that Amaru and his posse were no longer at their station by the moorings and she made quick progress back towards the village. But, of course, this was not her destination. Her destination was adventure, and discovery. Just before she reached the first of the living huts she paused to look and to listen. All was quiet and she could see no-one; it was safe to take the other path, the one that skirted inland and then up towards the sloping ground and the bluff beyond. The path twisted gradually upwards becoming narrower and more secret as it went and then she was there, at the place where she turned sharply into a slight gap in the vegetation and down towards Conlaodh’s overnight camp. She checked again, although she knew that she was alone, and then she was on her way, to meet the boy again and to discover some more.

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Next: Chapter 6 – Marshland Training
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