Here, where it lifted from the fen, the earth rested warm. The sun moved red through a zone of mist. The tall reeds made a wall for the grassy island. Gata and Amru sat facing each other on the round earth, round like a shield, above the fen. A last ray from the sun brightened Gata’s hair that was darkly red. With the flat fen about them, and behind the low forest, they looked larger than life. They leaned toward each other, they pressed their hands together, their bodies together. Lifted by the lifting earth, they looked one piece.
The sun touched the rim of earth and coloured the river through the fen. Gata and Amru lay embraced.
Almost as soon as the sun sank, the moon rose. It came up round and golden—only the people of the long houses did not know gold. Still the folk slept, tumbled like acorns beneath the council tree. A few old people did not sleep, but sat nodding, nodding, and women who had young children did not sleep. But all the strong men slept, some lying like fallen trees, and others snoring and grunting. The man with the gourds, who had watched the farmers, did not sleep. He had a mind and a conscience that often kept him awake. Now, as the moon came up, he wandered forth from the littered strip before the houses. “One Other” often commanded his presence by night. Now he walked by the fen and regarded the moon. The night was hot, but the lean man felt a wildness and exaltation that kept him above the heat. He wore skirt and baldric and headdress of grass and mussel shells and coloured feathers, and he moved at tension through the hot, moist air.
Going so, he overtook another who had left those who gorged upon mammoth meat—Aneka the Wise Woman. He shook his coloured headdress; jealousy stung him. “Ha, Aneka! It is Haki who walks here by night and talks with One Other!—Why do you not stay and watch children so that they do not eat that-which-poisons?”
Aneka, wrinkled and brown, gazed at him and then over the fen to the golden moon. “There is much spite in you, Haki! I am older than you and I walked here first.”
They turned into the path through the fen. Haki waved his arms. “You and all the people cry to the Great Turtle. I cry to One Other!”
“One Other?” asked Aneka. “Where is she?”
Haki looked at her aslant. His voice sank. “Hush! He has gone into the ground for the night. He lives in the sun.”
The long houses used feminine pronouns when they spoke of the supernatural. Aneka stared at Haki. “He?” she said. “How bold are you, O Haki!”
But Haki, having plucked a feather from the future, came back to the present and its so solid seeming realities. A thrill of fear and awe of the Great Turtle ran through him, with thought of what vengeance she might take. “I call to the Great Turtle too!” he said hastily. “One Other and the Great Turtle are friends.”