Jomar and Veig came out to meet them; the burrow was not facing the direction from which they were approaching, but Jomar had sensed their arrival with that natural, intuitive awareness that desert dwellers took for granted. Even if they had known the word, they would not have described their vague awareness of one another’s presence as telepathy; it was as natural to them as hearing. And it was possessed in a far more terrifying degree by the death spiders.
Jomar was hardly able to walk; the thigh gripped by the mandibles of the tiger beetle had swelled like a grotesque black pumpkin. Veig had dressed the wound with the crushed root of the devil plant, which grew nearby; it had powerful curative properties. But it could not repair the severed muscle, and Jomar would walk with a limp for the rest of his life.
That night they feasted — at least, it seemed a feast to beings who had never lived much above starvation level. Veig had speared a large, squirrel-like mammal and cooked its flesh by exposing it on hot rocks at midday; for Niall, it was a completely new taste. Then there were the cactus fruits, yellow and astringent, and the juice of the barrel cactus. Clearly, in spite of its barren appearance, this place contained far more life than the inland plateau. It was also, they all realised, far more dangerous. There were the sand scorpions and tiger beetles, the striped scarabs with their poisonous stings, the millipedes and the grey sand spiders, which were non-poisonous but very strong and swift, and which could truss up a human being in their sticky silk in less than a minute. Fortunately, these predators also had their predators. The spiders were a prey to a wasp called the pepsis, or tarantula hawk, a creature not much larger than a man’s hand, which would paralyse them with its sting then use them as a living larder to feed its grubs. And most of the desert insects and small mammals were regarded as fair game by the enormous solifugid or camel spider, an ugly, beetle-like creature with immense jaws which could move so fast that it looked like a ball of thistledown blowing over the desert. Strangely enough, the camel spiders made no attempt to attack human beings; as Niall watched them, he often had a feeling that they were vaguely benevolent, as though they regarded human beings as some kind of ally or fellow-creature. It was just as well; their shark-like jaws could have bitten a man in half.
For many weeks after they first moved into the burrow, Niall spent his days peering out of the entrance at the creatures that went past. There were not many of them — during the heat of the day, most desert creatures retreated to their dens — but to a child brought up in a cave with an endless view of sand dunes, it was like a picture show. He learned to distinguish many of the creatures simply by sound, so that he could instantly tell the movement of a scorpion or desert spider from that of a tiger beetle or a millipede. And when he heard the movements of a camel spider, he knew it was perfectly safe to venture out; most sensible creatures kept out of its way.
During those early days, he was left alone a great deal. The women were delighted with the variety of their environment and wanted to explore. To the civilised eye, this area of shrub-steppe land at the edge of the desert would have seemed a desolate wilderness; to human beings who had lived in the true desert, it was like the Garden of Eden. Many bushes contained spiky, thick-skinned fruit that had to be picked with caution, but which proved highly edible when the skin was hacked away. Brown, dead-looking plants often had tuber-like roots that stored water. In some cases, this liquid was too bitter and unpleasant to drink but could be used for cooling the skin. Guarded by the men, Siris and Ingeld wandered far afield, carrying baskets woven from alfa grass, and returned with all kinds of strange delicacies. The men became experts in setting traps, and often caught hares, suricates and even birds. Ingeld, who had always been greedy, became distinctly plump.
Niall was ordered to stay in the depths of the burrow while the family was away; but the moment they left, he pushed aside the branches and stones that covered the entrance, and stood on the large rock that formed a step, peering out at the strange creatures that went past. If, as occasionally happened, some huge ant or millipede tried to force its way in, he discouraged it by thrusting a spear out of the hole; as soon as they knew it was occupied, they hurried away.
As with most children Niall’s sense of danger was at once exaggerated and unrealistic. To begin with, he was terrified of anything that moved; later, when he discovered that most desert creatures fear the unknown and prefer to avoid trouble, he became over-confident. One morning he grew bored with looking out from the entrance and decided to explore. He carefully closed the burrow behind him, then wandered among the organ-pipe cacti. Because it was still early, the cup of the waru plant was still half full of dew, and it was deliciously cool to the throat. He found a prickly pear and tried to detach one of its fruits, but he had forgotten to bring a flint blade, and it was too tough for his small fingers. He stooped over a devil plant and was fascinated by its grotesque, claw-like appearance. He walked over to the euphorbia that stood a few feet from the burrow and, after making sure that no creature was hiding in its branches, climbed into it and found himself a comfortable perch. It was not unlike being in a cage. This vantage point was far better than the mouth of the burrow, for he could see for miles. When a big tiger beetle came and rested in the euphorbia’s shade, he almost stopped breathing. Then it struck him that this might be one of the original inhabitants of the burrow come to reclaim its home, and he had to fight against panic. A large fly more than three inches long alighted on a drooping branch and cleaned its forelegs; with breath-taking speed, the tiger beetle had launched itself off the ground and, although the fly caught the movement and started to rise, it was too late; it disappeared into the beetle’s jaws. Niall was petrified as he watched the beetle chew the fly, with disgusting crunching noises, then swallow it. He leaned forward to get a better view and his foot slipped. The beetle pushed itself up on to its front legs, and peered into the tree with its prominent, button-like eyes; Niall gripped the branch, convinced he was about to be dragged from his perch and eaten like the fly. The beetle continued to stare up for what seemed an age, its long feelers waving gently. Then it seemed to lose interest and ambled off. Niall had never experienced such deep and enormous relief. Yet as the beetle had stared into his eyes, the sensation he had experienced had not been fear, but a curious suspension of his senses as if all the normal functions of his body had paused in their activity. In that state of mind, it had seemed that everything had grown very silent, and that he was communicating with the beetle exactly as he might have communicated with another human being. Nevertheless, he ran back to the burrow as soon as he was sure the beetle was out of hearing, and stayed there for the rest of the day.
A few days later, chance saved his life. Having recovered from his fright, he decided to go and see if there was water in the waru cup. It was empty — some creature had been there before him — so he wandered on through the cactus grove and stood looking out over the desert. A few hundred yards away there were more cacti, of another variety; these, he could see, had clusters of the astringent fruit of which he was so fond. There was no obvious danger, but he had the whole day before him, so he sat in the shadow of a cactus and stared out over the steppe. Idly, he picked up a flat stone, cradled it in his fingers, then placed his index finger along its edge and threw it so it spun through the air. It landed twenty feet away, with a puff of sand. At that moment, something happened. It was so swift that for a moment he disbelieved his eyes. Some large creature seemed to be there, in front of him; then, in the time it took him to blink, it had disappeared. He stared hard, wrinkling up his nose. There was nothing there — only the flat, sandy ground, littered with blackish rocks. He threw another stone, and his aim was good; but this time, nothing happened. The air was already trembling with the heat; he wondered if the brief apparition had been some kind of mirage. But the area of ground between himself and the fruit-bearing cacti now communicated an air of menace. He sat there, perfectly still, for perhaps an hour, his chin on his knees. Then, from the other side of the cacti, he saw a movement. It was a crablike insect, slightly more than a foot long — later he would recognise it as a species of darkling beetle — with a greenish-yellow skin resembling a toad’s. It ambled on slowly, and paused under the cacti to poke its reptilian face into the empty shell of a dung beetle. Then it kept on coming, straight towards him. As it approached the spot where the stone had landed, Niall held his breath. Then it happened again. With incredible speed, some large, dark creature seemed to leap from out of the ground. As it grabbed the darkling beetle, it paused long enough for Niall to see that it was a big, hairy spider whose segmented body must have been more than three feet long. A moment later it was gone, and a circular trapdoor seemed to close behind it. The beetle had gone too, and the sand looked level and undisturbed. If Niall had glanced away, even for as long as it took to turn his head through ninety degrees, he would have seen nothing. The thought of what would have happened if he had walked across that empty space made his skin crawl with icy shivers.