The Dream Time Read online

  THE DREAM-TIME

  In the dawn of time—when people were

  not used to being people at all—there was

  a boy called Crookleg. He was a strange

  boy, because he did not want to be a

  war-man. So he ran away, to live

  a wandering life and meet all sorts

  of different people, and have all

  sorts of different adventures

  Table of Contents

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  Postscript by

  HENRY TREECE

  THE DREAM-TIME

  With a postscript by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Illustrated by Charles Keeping

  KNIGHT BOOKS

  the paperback division of Brockhampton Press

  ISBN 0 340 17464 1

  This edition published 1973 by Knight, the paperback

  division of Brockhampton Press, Leicester

  First published in 1967 Brockhampton Press

  Text copyright © 1967 Henry Treece

  Illustrations copyright © 1967 Brockhampton Press Ltd

  Printed Offset Litho and bound in Great Britain

  by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Fakenham

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall

  not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, re-sold, hired

  out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior

  consent in any form of binding or cover than that in

  which this is published and without a similar condition

  including this condition being imposed on the

  subsequent purchaser

  The background figures used on the jacket and to indicate breaks in the text are taken from a drawing by Henry Treece and include, in his own words, ‘the sun and the moon, the watching eye, the hunting man, the antler-pick, the leaves, the leaping salmon, the Old Man in his antlers, the spiked boar, the hand, the polished flints, the painted stones, the waves, the berries off the hushes—and lots of dark caves to go into!’

  For RICHARD

  and OLIVER KAMM

  who are the Boys

  Henry Treece

  1.

  THE DREAM-TIME

  Crookleg lay in the darkest corner of the longhouse wishing he had not fallen out of the beech tree when he was gathering nuts and wishing that Holly the Old Man of the Dog Folk had known better magic for mending broken legs. Crookleg was afraid that his right leg would never be straight again to let him run with the other boys of the tribe. Besides, in its willow splints and with all the deerhide wrappings round it, it hurt, especially when the women rolled him over carelessly with their feet as they hurried up and down the long low room.

  His mother Bluestone lay on a heap of brown fern at the far end of the dark room crying out and some-times groaning. She had been doing this for three days and Crookleg wanted to crawl to her. But the priest woman with the black robe and the ash on her head always pointed her snake stick at him and told him harshly to stay where he was.

  Her name was Ash and all the men were afraid of her even Crookleg’s father Thorn—and he was not afraid of much; not of the darkness and wolves and wild dogs. Only Holly the Chief was not afraid of Ash, because she was one of his women. But when she pointed at him he always crossed his fingers—even Holly—and turned his dark eyes away.

  Ash had sent all the men and boys away from the longhouse when Bluestone started to groan. She would have sent Crookleg too, but some of the young women had begged her not to because with his crippled leg a wolf could have got him in the dark woods outside the village. Ash said that he could be lowered into the flint mine on ropes, but the women said that he would die there too because it was a cold time of the year. So he was allowed to stay while the magic happened to his mother, though Ash made him turn his face close to the mud wall so that he should not see anything.

  She kneeled by him and said bitterly, ‘At these times all the men go away. It is not for men to see. Because you have stayed bad luck may come on you and your mother and your father. It may come on the one who is not yet with us. We shall see, but if bad luck comes and the little barley crop does not sprout we shall know who to blame. The Old Man will not like you then. He will give you to Bone. Then you will know what there is to shout about. The pain in your leg will seem nothing.’

  Crookleg shivered at this. Bone was the Rainmaker and lived in a little cave deep in the forest. The women took food to him and laid it outside the door. The men laid out flint knives they had made or small tender deer they had caught. Last year they laid a brown bearskin from a beast that they had lured into the pit with the sharp stakes at the bottom. Bone only came into the village through the oak stockade at the barley blessing time before the grain was put in the earth; and at the time of late-year fires when the stubble was burned and there was dancing to give thanks for the harvest. When he came, three boys went before him swinging bone bull-roarers to make the right terrible music for such a man.

  Bone was very old and bent and no one had seen his face behind the leather mask that witch doctors always wore. This mask was shaped like a stag’s head with the white antlers on the top of it. His eyes stared out of holes in the mask. His mouth gaped to show the flint teeth. Behind the mask Bone’s hair hung down very white and greased with sheep fat. When anyone of the Dog Folk broke the law they were tied up and taken to Bone. He punished them and they did not come back to the tribe again. Their bones were put up in an old elm tree until they fell apart. The ground below the tree was littered with old bones. The leaves fell on them every year and covered them, but they were there. You could feel them if you felt down.

  Even the wolves were afraid of Bone and ran away with their tails down when he turned towards them in his antlered mask and with the rattle-stick in his hand.

  Without Bone there would be no barley out of the ground and without Ash the fire would not flare from the struck stones. Without Holly there would be no victory against the other tribes from beyond the forest the Eagle Folk and the Fox Folk. Crookleg’s father Thorn was the war-leader and could throw a spear into a striped lynx from twenty paces; but unless the Old Man Holly touched him on the forehead and right hand before the war-men went out, no luck went with them and they brought their warriors back on hide blankets to the village, groaning.

  Crookleg wished it was not like that. He wished that things could be happy all the time and the sun shining, without having to go off with spears and bows to fight the other folk. He thought that if all the tribes would only sit round a big fire and talk about what made them angry with each other, then they need not throw spears and shoot arrows to make wounds. But this had never been done and he did not dare tell Holly, or even his own father, about it.

  Then suddenly his mother began to howl out more than ever and he wished he could go to her. The women were sitting round her now, not even looking at her, and singing a very merry song that only the women of the Dog Folk knew. It was not in the men’s language, so Crookleg did not know what it was about. That was another thing he would like to change. He wanted all the tribe to understand one another. But when he said this to his father once, Thorn glared at him so fiercely that he knew he had said something bad. Holly sent for him soon after this and said, ‘Do you dream, boy?’

  Crookleg nodded, looking at his feet. Then Holly said, ‘If you say bad things again, Ash will be in your dreams. She will show you things in your dreams that will frighten you, and she might even speak to the King Wolf about you, and then he wou
ld wait in the wood for you. Do you want that to happen?’

  Crookleg shook his head, so Holly sent him away and none of the other boys of his year spoke to him for a week.

  Lying in the longhouse with his mother crying, Crookleg wished that a wolf bigger than any other wolf would leap over the tall stockade one dark night and eat up Ash, so that there was only her black robe left.

  Then suddenly she was sitting by him and saying, You are not like the other boys. You cannot throw the spear very far. You have never even killed a wild cat. You cannot strike the fire from flint. What use are you in the tribe?’

  Crookleg did not answer her because he knew that she would come into his dreams if he did, as the Old Man had threatened.

  She said, ‘Your mother is going away from the tribe. The little thing called Bud has already gone before her. It would be as well if you went too. We could do without you. You are useless to the folk.’

  Then she got up and led the women in another song.

  Crookleg did not understand what she had meant.

  He was very angry with Ash and wanted to hurt her. With a little twig in the soft earth by his fern bed, he made the shape of a big wolf. It had its jaws open and was leaping at someone. Crookleg knew what that wolf wanted to eat, but he did not dare say it even to himself.

  Just then one of the women passed by him carrying a limp bundle. She stopped and cried out, then ran back to Ash and said, ‘He is trying to hurt us all, he is trying to kill the tribe. Look what he is saying with that twig!’

  Ash came to him again and looked down at the leaping wolf in the earth. Then she suddenly rubbed it out with her foot, fiercely. She said, ‘Why do you hate us so? Why do you try to work the bad magic on us all? You are not good to have in the tribe. Something bad is in you and the Old Man must know. I shall go and tell him now.’

  Then three of the women picked him up and flung him outside the longhouse into the bracken. They did not look at him when they did this in case the magic of his eyes would give them a disease.

  2.

  his father Thorn came to him at dusktime and seemed almost afraid to speak to him. But at last he said, ‘Holly is very angry. It has been three men’s lifetimes since one of us made an animal in the earth, and ten since we made one on the rock walls. We have learned that it must not be done. Not even Bone may do it. The Dark Ones in the wood do not like it. It is forbidden to make shapes.’

  Crookleg said, ‘I was not making magic, Thorn. It came into my hand to do it, but I meant no magic. Where is Bluestone?’

  Thorn stood away from him, thinking. Then he said, ‘Bluestone was making the women’s magic so that another should come into the tribe. Then suddenly she stopped crying out and did not move any more. The one she gave us did not move either. It was called Bud. They have both gone away. They will lie under the long hill on a bed with a hide over them and tall stones above them. If they wish to come back, they will. If they do not, they will not. There is no more to be said. It is as well they have gone away, since you are making magic, because your magic will stop the barley from springing and the deer from running into our pits. There will be no food for any of us if you keep doing this bad thing.’

  Crookleg wept then. He thought that he had sent Ins mother and Bud away because of the wolf he had drawn in the earth. But Thorn poked at him with his spear stick to quieten him, then said, ‘Holly does not want to tell Bone about you. Bone might have you put up the tree. Holly wants all the young men he can get for the next fighting.’

  Crookleg said, ‘Why will there be fighting?’

  His father said, ‘If the barley does not spring this year, we must go to the Fox Folk and take their sheep. We must eat. They will not give us their sheep, so we must fight for them. That is the custom.’

  Crookleg said, ‘It is said that away over the big hill, four days of running, there are folk who take their food out of the sea. We could go to them and give them flint arrows for that food from the sea.’

  Thorn was so angry he almost struck the boy with his spear-stick. He said, ‘What are you saying? That food is unclean food. It would have scales grow on us if we ate it. They are bad folk by the sea. Their smell is not our smell. Do you want our tribe to disappear? Are you trying to kill us all, with your wicked ways?’

  Crookleg shook his head and did not say any more. His father gave him a piece of dried meat cut in a strip, and a clay cup of water. Then he left him.

  After that no one would speak to him or even look at him for a week. He wished he could be under the long hill with Bluestone and Bud, under the hide blanket sleeping. It was cold lying out there in the bracken, and hearing the wolves howling beyond the stockade every night, and scratching with their long claws.

  then his leg got better. He could walk on it and almost run if he leaned on a stick. So he went to the men’s longhouse and stood by the doorway until they grinned at him to come in. They were sitting in a ring talking and showing their big arm muscles. Crookleg thought how fierce they looked with their black hair pulled through round marrow-bones at the back and their faces and bodies all covered with the blue marks that Bone pricked on to them with a little sharp needle.

  One of them wore a bracelet made from a ring of bull’s horn. It made him look very important. His name was Fang and he was the one who would lead the war-folk when Thorn went away under the long hill at last.

  Fang saw Crookleg and laughed at him then said,’What magic are you doing today then, warrior? Are you fetching the bears to eat us all up this time?’

  One of the men picked up a stone and threw it at Crookleg, but it missed. The man said, ‘See, I never miss what I throw at. But he has a magic that turns the swift stone away. There is something bad about him.’

  Then they all began to laugh at him and point and he knew happily that they were only making fun with him. Fang shouted out, ‘Come nearer the fire, Crookleg We have something good to say to you.’

  He went bowing his head before his father because Thorn was the war-chief. Thorn caught him by the arm and drew him closer then said, ‘See, I am giving you the blue stone that your mother wore round her neck. You shall wear it round yours and then all the other folk will know who you are. I had meant to give it to the new woman I would capture from the Fox Folk. But then I had a dream and in it Bluestone told me to give it to you. So put it about your neck. It is yours.’

  Crookleg did as he was told. The stone seemed warm on his bare chest as though his mother’s warm hand was touching him. This made him shiver a little and then cry because he had lost her.

  His father said, ‘You are a lucky boy, Crookleg. Today we are planning the fight against the Fox Folk. We shall bring back sheep for the people and I shall get myself another woman for my house. So you are lucky to be with us here by the fire. You cannot run very well, but the men think that you could hold a spear-stick and stay at the back. It is time you saw fighting and began to learn what a man must do.’

  Crookleg put on a hard face because he did not dare tell his father before all the men that he did not like fighting. Then Fang said, ‘Show us, Crookleg, which finger you use when you draw the wolves in the earth.’ He was speaking very slyly, looking like a wolf himself.

  Crookleg said, ‘I do not use my finger. I use a stick.’ His father said, ‘But you use your hand to hold your stick. So show us which finger you use to guide the stick to make wolves.’

  Crookleg held out his right forefinger and said, ‘This is the one that guides the stick.’

  Then Fang said, ‘You know that when our boys become war-men they must make an offering?’

  Crookleg thought that they wanted him to draw another wolf and he nodded his black head.

  Fang laughed and said, ‘Aye, you know well enough. And do you agree?’

  Crookleg nodded again. He looked round the house to see where he might draw a wolf. It would need flat earth and a big space that no one would tread on to wipe out the picture.

  Fang said, ‘Then if you agre
e we shall take you to the fighting to get a taste of it and to see if you are brave and then when we come back we will make you a man of the tribe. And we will take the finger that guides the stick as your offering. Then you shall dip your hand in the wet clay and place it on the rock wall so that the shape will always be there and all the people will know what offering you made.’

  Crookleg clenched his right hand and felt how good it was to have his forefinger. Without it he could not make pictures any more. He did not want to lose it just to be in the fighting.

  But his father was looking so proud then, with the bunch of hawk feathers in his hair and the blue marks across his cheek-bones, that Crookleg did not dare draw back or weep or run out of the longhouse, though he badly wanted to.

  Fang gazed at him a while then said, ‘Yes, you will be a man yet. We thought you would scream or try to run away, and then I should have had to throw my spear at you. But you are braver than we thought. Now lie down in the corner on the sheepskins and sleep. We shall go off through the woods at dawn, before the Fox Folk are awake. That makes the fighting easier for us.’

  But Crookleg did not sleep much. He kept trying to think what it would be like without his finger. He had always had his finger and now thought how much he liked it. He did not want them to knock it off with a stone axe. He even thought of getting up in the night and of running away somewhere, perhaps to the Fish Folk. But there was a guard by the door; and there was the high stockade to get over with the thick thorn bushes drawn across the gate space. And even if he got past the thorns there was the moorland to cross and there under the green-scummed pools were monsters with flint eyes and black scales on their bodies. All the men who travelled the moors at night had seen them.

  So he did not run away but just lay on the skin and waited for the dawn when Fang would wake up the war-men and set them off.