Travellers #1 Read Free

the western sky, I heard a hawk cry, “Kek! Kek!” There’s usually another around when they call like that. Then I heard the pattering and cries of the big mobs coming down.
    Before starting, my father had warned everyone. The Narrower Ford wasn’t savage with rocks and waves. It was dangerous because the middle channels were deep, the bottom slippery with long weeds that could drag you under. It was the first ford, and people were a bit careless. But everybody said Hawk knew the fords like the back of hishand. He’d been leading the Journey for years, getting everyone across safe.
    Tody’s sheep fanned out over the shingle. Others straggled down: Moy, Heka, Jonny, and Mor. They were all older than me. Then I heard Rose’s dog, Lik. Her lead goat, Berta, trotted across the stones and nuzzled Speckly. I slid down the tree, my right foot feeling for the ground. If I could reach it without having to let go, it was going to be a good crossing. If I had to drop the last bit, it’d be bad. I stretched, swung by my hands, and something grabbed my ankles. Somebody tickled my feet. I daren’t let go but couldn’t hold on for laughing.
    “So you were going to drop on me?” said Rose. Bar and Lik barked.
    “Let go!” I dropped and ran screaming because she’d catch and tickle me. And because I was laughing, looking back, and running, I got caught up in Karly Campy’s mob. He cursed me, and I cursed and swore back at him. I knew better. You never run through a flock. He’d complain to my father and tell him what I’d said. I hid behind the pack-donkeys coming down while Rose stopped and talked to Karly Campy.
    “Rose!” I yelled. “Don’t you want to chase me?” but she was too busy smiling and talking to him. I got my goats together. If she wanted to talk to Karly Campy, then it served her right if her goats got mixed up with the others. I had called her.
    The rest of the men came down in the dust of the big mobs, dogs barking, donkeys trotting. The women came in groups, leading the children and the newborn animals.
    Karly Campy’s mother, Old Hagar, walked at the back. She jabbered to herself, raising and lowering a spindle, teasing off a strand of wool from the fleece around her left arm, running it through her fingers, the weight of the spindle drawing it into a thread, winding as the points twirled.By evening she’d have spun several balls of wool.
    Old Hagar always wore two bags. In one she put bits of lichen off trees and rock. Wisps of wool and hair that snagged on twigs and thorns she put in the other. Little children were scared of Hagar, but I liked listening to the stories and songs she told and sang whether there was anyone to hear them or not. Her hands had dark spots on the back.
    You had to walk close to hear her stories, ready to run because the big boys said Hagar was a witch. Mor said she could frizzle you up with her eyes, as if you’d been killed by the sun. Once, Tody said it was time to leave the old witch behind.
    “She spins a lot,” said my father, “good, even yarn. She eats nothing much, gets herself across the fords, cooks. She knows where the herbs grow for doctoring the animals and us. She knows all the old songs and stories. Hagar’s more use than a lot of people half her age.”
    Rose told me our father saved Hagar’s life, saying that. “When he sticks up for someone, there’s no more talk of them being left behind. The old and the sick,” said Rose, “they know when their time’s up. Hagar’s useful, she knows a lot, so our father defended her, but some day she won’t be able to keep up, and she’ll be left behind. It happens to us all.”
    “Is that what happened to our mother?”
    “She died giving birth to you.”
    “Will I be left behind?”
    “Not as long as I’m here, Ish.”
    “I won’t ever leave you behind either, Rose.”
    Rose, our father, and me, we’d never die. There was no end to our Journey that went around and around in a great circle.
    Now