Read Online The Gathering Night by Margaret Elphinstone - Free Book Online

great feast, the Go-Between’s chant to Bear – which had really frightened me – and the dancing that had followed. There were no baskets inside the tent – that meant they’d gone out for food.
    I ran back to the top of the beach. Already our gear was piled up on the sand. ‘Father! Mother! Alaia! Cousin Sendoa is here! With someone else, but I can’t tell who! It’s SENDOA!’
    â€˜Haizea, come down here at once! D’you think there’s no work to be done?’
    I went down to help with the loaded baskets.
    â€˜Perhaps your daughter thinks she’s already one of the Wise,’ said Amets, laughing. ‘She thinks she doesn’t have to carry gear like the rest of us!’
    â€˜She’s no good,’ agreed my father. ‘You’ll bring yours up better. Give her a good beating sometimes. It’s never too soon to start with these women!’
    My mother and Alaia were laughing, but I wasn’t. I was at the age when I was beginning to want some sort of respect which my family weren’t prepared to give me. All this talk of beatings made me feel like a child. It was stupid, anyway. My father had never beaten me, nor Alaia either, and he never would. I’d heard enough stories at Gathering Camp to know that in some families it was different. The trouble was I’d grown old enough to pay attention to what the men and women were always saying to each other, and to realise that I would have to be a woman too, quite soon, so all this was going to have something to do with me. But I was still young enough to resent it when the joke seemed to be against me.
    Amets said:
    I was pleased to find Sendoa at White Beach Camp! Sendoa is one of the best hunters of the Auk People. We pulled up the boat, and carried up the gear. Alaia dumped her baskets, went straight to Sendoa’s tent and disappeared inside it. I wondered what she was doing. When she came out she said nothing, but her mouth was set in a hard line.
    â€˜Ah,’ said my wife’s father, as he stood at my shoulder. ‘She was hoping to find some sign . . . Young men, travelling together . . . Sendoa’s winter Camp is on the Long Strait . . . He could have gone that way . . . But no, she’s found nothing.’ He turned away. ‘Ah well . . .’
    We all stood round the hearth while Alaia put our fire with the one that was already there. Our spirits saw our fire and came to join the others who were already at White Beach Camp. We held up our arms to them and thanked them for bringing us safely across the sea. Then Haizea was sent to gather shellfish to eat with the rush roots we’d brought across. Alaia and I went to find our old tent poles in the dry hollow above the dunes, while Nekané peeled back the turf from the inside hearth. The poles were in good condition. I lashed twine around one weak place, just to be sure. Then I helped Alaia put up the frame, and I tied the wands together at the smoke hole. I’m telling you this because I want you boys to know that I’m not ashamed to help women with their work sometimes. I hope you’re all listening to me: you don’t always have to do nothing, just to show a woman how clever you are! Anyway, Alaia’s shorter than I am so it’s easier for me to reach. I unrolled the birch-bark round the smoke hole and tied it down. Only then did I leave Nekané and Alaia to lash the rest of the frame. My wife’s father and I carried the heavy rolls of hide up from the beach, and dumped them by the tent frame.
    We strolled back to the beach. The tide was at the turn, lapping the stern of our boat. ‘It’s enough,’ said my wife’s father. ‘When Sendoa comes he’ll help us pull her up further in case the weather changes. Like this, she’s all right.’
    I felt I must speak, and called him by name.
    â€˜Yes, Amets?’
    â€˜Alaia – when she went to look in