Chapter Eleven
She awoke well after first light, and the sun was already warming the far end of the ledge when she had finished eating the breakfast provided by her pack. She felt sticky and uncomfortable, and walked to the stream to freshen up, taking some fresh moss with her. As she was getting dressed again after a good splash, it occurred to her she didn't have a great deal of it. What would she do if it ran out while she still needed it? Would the pack provide more? What would she do if it didn't? Experimentally she dipped some of the used and revolting moss in the stream, and found to her surprise and satisfaction that it was possible to get it clean. She squeezed it out as best she could, and left it spread out on a stone to see whether it would dry out well enough to use again, disgusting though the idea was.
Wandering back to her camp, she surveyed the area thoughtfully. The fireplace was not very far from the large rock where she had rested yesterday. She walked around them both, thinking that it might be fun to lay out a circle around them to make a sort of boundary. It would at least help to pass some time. She started to gather and place the palest stones she could find, and after several attempts got them so that the space they enclosed looked more or less round. If she thought of the rock as the centre it was possible for the circle to come right up to the white cliff and still be a safe distance from the sheer drop at the other side, and also left enough room for her to lie down anywhere she chose. It seemed to be pure luck that she had dug the waste pit well outside the circle.
Then she decided to try and guess where the compass directions might be by remembering where the sun had set last night, and wondered whether the curve of the cliff, just past the rise of the stream, might have been in the way of the sunrise. That would be roughly East and West, she thought; but how did North and South fit in? She strained her memory to recall what she had been taught at school before she realised that of course she knew that from map-reading on car journeys. Determinedly putting the thought of home behind her, she concentrated on finding some larger, more special stones for the compass points. She decided to talk to these bigger stones before she picked them up,in the same way as she had to the fireplace stones, asking if they would like to help her and telling them where she wanted to put them. One big black stone gave her a particularly hard time. She had wanted it for the North, by the cliff; but somehow she got an uncomfortable feeling when she placed it there. She tried putting it in the East and South before she got a good, warm feeling in the West, where the ledge curved around out of sight to the cave where she had met the snake.
She remembered what the Bear said about the talking animals having a direction and played with that concept awhile. Obviously Bear must belong in the West, and Eagle in the East, because they'd told her so; but why would they belong to any particular direction? She was pleased when she realised that her tiny fire was at the eastern edge of her circle when she thought about the warmth of sunrise; but she was no nearer understanding why Eagle would claim the East direction as his home. Giving up, she turned her attention to Bear and the western edge of her circle. As she thought of snug caves that bears used for hibernation, and remembered that the sun sets in the West, she deliberately made herself believe that darkness might be protective rather than scary. At the back of her mind was the fear of the second night she must spend alone.
She glanced up at the sky. The sun was only a little way away from where it had peered at her when she first got up. “Oh well,” she thought, “I suppose I could decide for myself which animals might fit the other two directions.” She ambled towards the precipice, then lay on her tummy and carefully belly-crawled nearer. For a long time she gazed down and across the immense view, her chin on her hands.
She thought she could see the big lake of the crocodile far in front of her, and fancied that her stream might flow all the way to it. She certainly wasn't going to invite that old crocodile into her circle, not even in her imagination. Although there were treetops and rocky shale slopes, and more mountains far in the distance, the water drew her attention as it sparkled and glinted in the sunlight. At the edge of the near shore she could just make out a group of animals drinking. For a moment she thought that they might be her wild dog friends, and sent her thoughts out towards them in a joyful welcome; but the way they moved as they turned away from the water convinced her that they were deer.
“Okay, you can be my South animals then,” she spoke aloud. It felt like forever since she'd heard another human voice.
That left North. She hunkered back until it felt safe to stand up, strolled to the stone nearest the cliff edge, sat by the big stone at the cliff edge and gazed up at the white rocks above her. The cliff and the overhanging branches were festooned with spiders' webs, but these were strange. They weren't the spiral webs she was used to seeing in the garden or the dirty skeins that hung unnoticed from the ceiling until spring cleaning time, but huge, densely woven, three-dimensional pieces of randomness. Seeing them reminded her of the alienness of this land. She felt unbelievably lonely.
“Hey, you spiders!” she shouted. Her voice sounded small and thin.
“I remember you! Can't get away from you anywhere. Come out and show yourselves! Talk to me!”
The silence sharpened, as though she was being listened to intently; but there was no reply. She swivelled round and thought about all the things she knew about spiders. One of their babysitters used to tell them stories about Anansi the trickster, funny stories which had made them both laugh and which had reminded her of Brer Rabbit; and at school they had come across spiders in the Greek myths. Ariadne, was it? Or Arachne? One was a woman, the other a goddess who turned her into a spider out of jealousy; she never could remember which was which. Then there was that silly song:
“Intsy Wintsy spider...”
She started to sing loudly, craning round to look at the webs on the cliff again, but it was too late. She had inadvertently reminded herself of Grace, who had been scared of spiders. She could see the two of them sitting in the garden at Gran's when they were both quite little, working out together how to do the silly finger-to-thumb movements that went with the song. Jay felt as though her heart was being squeezed. Tears came to her eyes, and her determination not to cry was undone.
She sank into a long time of loneliness, worry and longing for her sister. All sorts of memories came to the surface, reminding her of times they'd enjoyed together and of times they'd argued.
“Grace!” she cried, “if you'll only get better I'll never fight with you again! Oh please, please make her get better!” She didn't know who she might be praying to, in this different world, and this set her off shaking and weeping. Every time she got the better of crying, something else - a memory, a thought, homesickness - would trigger it. Maybe Grace wouldn't get better? That was absolutely unbearable, and made her shake and quiver all over. At one point she got furious at the unfairness of it all, and shouted and yelled and raged until her throat was sore again. At last she slept for a while in a small pitiful heap under the cliff, exhausted by the outpouring of emotion.
When she awoke she was stiff and dully miserable. Her head hurt, her back and shoulders ached and her eyes and throat felt raw. There was nothing at all to do after she had built the fire ready for lighting, with the charcoal pot waiting on one of the stones, and she fiddled around with it until there was nothing left to the imagination at all. The day stretched ahead of her with no markers; and the magic pack was empty. She kicked the pack towards the cliff face, then wandered over to the middle of her circle. The sun still seemed to be stuck to the same place in the sky, as though it was glued to a big piece of blue paper. Leaning against the big rock, she stood and gazed out over the expansive landscape until she was even more bored. Nothing moved in the whole of her view. As she started to sit down, pain hit her: a sharp pain in her stomach and a hard ache in her lower back. Jay gasped and doubled over, clasping herself with her arms, and lowered herself gingerly to the ground using the rock for support. Tears came to her sore eyes, and she rested her head on her knees and sobbed with surprise, fright and betrayal. She had never felt anything like this, something so deep inside her body; and there was no-one to help her, no-one to comfort her.
She crawled to where she had left the pack, hoping that there would be something in it to ease her suffering, but there was nothing. Carefully she rose and almost tiptoed to the stream, hoping that sitting in it would make the pain better; but she soon discovered that the cold water made it even worse. She went back to the rock, sat in its shadow with her back to it and her arms huddled round her knees and shut her eyes, resigned to waiting it out.
Immediately her eyes were closed she had the distinct sensation that she was sitting on the lap of a large comfortable woman, whose arms were wrapped round her. Startled, she opened her eyes and the sensation disappeared. She experimented once or twice: when her eyes were closed, there was the woman and her comfortable lap. When she opened her eyes, the woman was completely absent.
Baffled, she relaxed into the embrace, and the woman began to talk gently to her in a language that Jay did not know or recognise, but understood somewhere deep inside herself. The woman was welcoming her into a special hut where there other women were gathered with them, and explaining that all of them were menstruating together. Other women's voices joined hers, women of all ages. It was such a relief that she was not alone in her bleeding. The women crooned and sang quietly, rejoicing that Jay had joined them and calling her their special new woman; and as the tension in her muscles unwound, the pain lessened until it was almost bearable.
She drifted in and out of sleep in this strange world within a world. Whenever she awoke and opened her eyes the ledge was there, unchanging except for the sun's excruciatingly slow progress across the sky, and when her eyes were closed there was the comfortable and comforting lap of the huge woman, and from time to time the quiet songs and conversations of her companions. Occasionally there was laughter, and, although Jay didn't understand anything of their language, it cheered her up. In between was the almost imperceptible sound of the drumming that had accompanied her from the beginning. She was in no doubt as to which world she preferred, and hardly moved or opened her eyes until the dimming of the early evening sun cooled her, and she had to get up and move around to get warm. When she returned to the boulder, the women were no longer there.
She awoke well after first light, and the sun was already warming the far end of the ledge when she had finished eating the breakfast provided by her pack. She felt sticky and uncomfortable, and walked to the stream to freshen up, taking some fresh moss with her. As she was getting dressed again after a good splash, it occurred to her she didn't have a great deal of it. What would she do if it ran out while she still needed it? Would the pack provide more? What would she do if it didn't? Experimentally she dipped some of the used and revolting moss in the stream, and found to her surprise and satisfaction that it was possible to get it clean. She squeezed it out as best she could, and left it spread out on a stone to see whether it would dry out well enough to use again, disgusting though the idea was.
Wandering back to her camp, she surveyed the area thoughtfully. The fireplace was not very far from the large rock where she had rested yesterday. She walked around them both, thinking that it might be fun to lay out a circle around them to make a sort of boundary. It would at least help to pass some time. She started to gather and place the palest stones she could find, and after several attempts got them so that the space they enclosed looked more or less round. If she thought of the rock as the centre it was possible for the circle to come right up to the white cliff and still be a safe distance from the sheer drop at the other side, and also left enough room for her to lie down anywhere she chose. It seemed to be pure luck that she had dug the waste pit well outside the circle.
Then she decided to try and guess where the compass directions might be by remembering where the sun had set last night, and wondered whether the curve of the cliff, just past the rise of the stream, might have been in the way of the sunrise. That would be roughly East and West, she thought; but how did North and South fit in? She strained her memory to recall what she had been taught at school before she realised that of course she knew that from map-reading on car journeys. Determinedly putting the thought of home behind her, she concentrated on finding some larger, more special stones for the compass points. She decided to talk to these bigger stones before she picked them up,in the same way as she had to the fireplace stones, asking if they would like to help her and telling them where she wanted to put them. One big black stone gave her a particularly hard time. She had wanted it for the North, by the cliff; but somehow she got an uncomfortable feeling when she placed it there. She tried putting it in the East and South before she got a good, warm feeling in the West, where the ledge curved around out of sight to the cave where she had met the snake.
She remembered what the Bear said about the talking animals having a direction and played with that concept awhile. Obviously Bear must belong in the West, and Eagle in the East, because they'd told her so; but why would they belong to any particular direction? She was pleased when she realised that her tiny fire was at the eastern edge of her circle when she thought about the warmth of sunrise; but she was no nearer understanding why Eagle would claim the East direction as his home. Giving up, she turned her attention to Bear and the western edge of her circle. As she thought of snug caves that bears used for hibernation, and remembered that the sun sets in the West, she deliberately made herself believe that darkness might be protective rather than scary. At the back of her mind was the fear of the second night she must spend alone.
She glanced up at the sky. The sun was only a little way away from where it had peered at her when she first got up. “Oh well,” she thought, “I suppose I could decide for myself which animals might fit the other two directions.” She ambled towards the precipice, then lay on her tummy and carefully belly-crawled nearer. For a long time she gazed down and across the immense view, her chin on her hands.
She thought she could see the big lake of the crocodile far in front of her, and fancied that her stream might flow all the way to it. She certainly wasn't going to invite that old crocodile into her circle, not even in her imagination. Although there were treetops and rocky shale slopes, and more mountains far in the distance, the water drew her attention as it sparkled and glinted in the sunlight. At the edge of the near shore she could just make out a group of animals drinking. For a moment she thought that they might be her wild dog friends, and sent her thoughts out towards them in a joyful welcome; but the way they moved as they turned away from the water convinced her that they were deer.
“Okay, you can be my South animals then,” she spoke aloud. It felt like forever since she'd heard another human voice.
That left North. She hunkered back until it felt safe to stand up, strolled to the stone nearest the cliff edge, sat by the big stone at the cliff edge and gazed up at the white rocks above her. The cliff and the overhanging branches were festooned with spiders' webs, but these were strange. They weren't the spiral webs she was used to seeing in the garden or the dirty skeins that hung unnoticed from the ceiling until spring cleaning time, but huge, densely woven, three-dimensional pieces of randomness. Seeing them reminded her of the alienness of this land. She felt unbelievably lonely.
“Hey, you spiders!” she shouted. Her voice sounded small and thin.
“I remember you! Can't get away from you anywhere. Come out and show yourselves! Talk to me!”
The silence sharpened, as though she was being listened to intently; but there was no reply. She swivelled round and thought about all the things she knew about spiders. One of their babysitters used to tell them stories about Anansi the trickster, funny stories which had made them both laugh and which had reminded her of Brer Rabbit; and at school they had come across spiders in the Greek myths. Ariadne, was it? Or Arachne? One was a woman, the other a goddess who turned her into a spider out of jealousy; she never could remember which was which. Then there was that silly song:
“Intsy Wintsy spider...”
She started to sing loudly, craning round to look at the webs on the cliff again, but it was too late. She had inadvertently reminded herself of Grace, who had been scared of spiders. She could see the two of them sitting in the garden at Gran's when they were both quite little, working out together how to do the silly finger-to-thumb movements that went with the song. Jay felt as though her heart was being squeezed. Tears came to her eyes, and her determination not to cry was undone.
She sank into a long time of loneliness, worry and longing for her sister. All sorts of memories came to the surface, reminding her of times they'd enjoyed together and of times they'd argued.
“Grace!” she cried, “if you'll only get better I'll never fight with you again! Oh please, please make her get better!” She didn't know who she might be praying to, in this different world, and this set her off shaking and weeping. Every time she got the better of crying, something else - a memory, a thought, homesickness - would trigger it. Maybe Grace wouldn't get better? That was absolutely unbearable, and made her shake and quiver all over. At one point she got furious at the unfairness of it all, and shouted and yelled and raged until her throat was sore again. At last she slept for a while in a small pitiful heap under the cliff, exhausted by the outpouring of emotion.
When she awoke she was stiff and dully miserable. Her head hurt, her back and shoulders ached and her eyes and throat felt raw. There was nothing at all to do after she had built the fire ready for lighting, with the charcoal pot waiting on one of the stones, and she fiddled around with it until there was nothing left to the imagination at all. The day stretched ahead of her with no markers; and the magic pack was empty. She kicked the pack towards the cliff face, then wandered over to the middle of her circle. The sun still seemed to be stuck to the same place in the sky, as though it was glued to a big piece of blue paper. Leaning against the big rock, she stood and gazed out over the expansive landscape until she was even more bored. Nothing moved in the whole of her view. As she started to sit down, pain hit her: a sharp pain in her stomach and a hard ache in her lower back. Jay gasped and doubled over, clasping herself with her arms, and lowered herself gingerly to the ground using the rock for support. Tears came to her sore eyes, and she rested her head on her knees and sobbed with surprise, fright and betrayal. She had never felt anything like this, something so deep inside her body; and there was no-one to help her, no-one to comfort her.
She crawled to where she had left the pack, hoping that there would be something in it to ease her suffering, but there was nothing. Carefully she rose and almost tiptoed to the stream, hoping that sitting in it would make the pain better; but she soon discovered that the cold water made it even worse. She went back to the rock, sat in its shadow with her back to it and her arms huddled round her knees and shut her eyes, resigned to waiting it out.
Immediately her eyes were closed she had the distinct sensation that she was sitting on the lap of a large comfortable woman, whose arms were wrapped round her. Startled, she opened her eyes and the sensation disappeared. She experimented once or twice: when her eyes were closed, there was the woman and her comfortable lap. When she opened her eyes, the woman was completely absent.
Baffled, she relaxed into the embrace, and the woman began to talk gently to her in a language that Jay did not know or recognise, but understood somewhere deep inside herself. The woman was welcoming her into a special hut where there other women were gathered with them, and explaining that all of them were menstruating together. Other women's voices joined hers, women of all ages. It was such a relief that she was not alone in her bleeding. The women crooned and sang quietly, rejoicing that Jay had joined them and calling her their special new woman; and as the tension in her muscles unwound, the pain lessened until it was almost bearable.
She drifted in and out of sleep in this strange world within a world. Whenever she awoke and opened her eyes the ledge was there, unchanging except for the sun's excruciatingly slow progress across the sky, and when her eyes were closed there was the comfortable and comforting lap of the huge woman, and from time to time the quiet songs and conversations of her companions. Occasionally there was laughter, and, although Jay didn't understand anything of their language, it cheered her up. In between was the almost imperceptible sound of the drumming that had accompanied her from the beginning. She was in no doubt as to which world she preferred, and hardly moved or opened her eyes until the dimming of the early evening sun cooled her, and she had to get up and move around to get warm. When she returned to the boulder, the women were no longer there.