The Kin by Peter Dickinson

in his hands back to the cave.
    On the way the men ran ahead and set ambushes, and jumped out at him with fierce yells, trying to scare or startle him into spilling the water, but he carried it on steadily.
    When they reached the camp, Jad kneeled by the fire and his mother, Fura, scooped ash into the water and mixed it to a thick paste, which Jad then took to where Mosu sat by the cave mouth. He kneeled beside her. She felt for his face, dipped her other hand into the paste and smeared it onto his forehead and cheeks, muttering as she did so. Then Fura took over and covered the rest of his body with paste until he was grey from top to toe.
    During this the women preparing the meal didn’t gossip and chatter as usual, but sang a slow, wailing chant, too softly for Suth to hear the words. He didn’t need to, because the Kin used to do these things in almost exactly the same way. The chant was the song the women sang when one of their children died, because tonight Jad was leaving his mother’s side and becoming a man.
    Tonight Jad was nobody, neither man nor child, so he sat cross-legged in front of the fire, and ate no food. He was nothing, a grey ghost, and ghosts don’t eat. Nor do they sleep among the living, so just before everybody else went into the cave Jun took him along the cliff and helped him to climb a notched pole to a ledge where he could spend the night. Then Jun took the pole away so that Jad would be safe from night hunters.
    The next morning he was helped down again, but he wasn’t allowed to walk to the lake. Instead the men carried him like a dead body and laid him by the water, where Jun washed the ash from his skin. Then Mosu crouched beside him and cried out in her croaking voice to the power that laired in this place, telling it that from now on Jad was a man.
    Jad stood up, and Jun put a pole into his hand and told him to make himself a digging stick, and Dith, who was the best stoneworker in the valley, gave him a new cutter so that he could shape the point.
    They all went up the hill to prepare the man feast, laughing and teasing Jad with the very same jokes that the Kin would have used at Suth’s own man-making at Odutu below the Mountain.
    Suth watched the whole ritual in silence, though his heart was bursting with bitterness and grief. As he had said to Mosu, three moons ago on that second morning in the valley, this should have been his day. At this very moon the Kin would have journeyed to Odutu, and his mother would have smeared the ash onto his body, and his father would have taken him to a particular ledge far up the mountain, to spend the night alone …
    It would never happen now. He had no father, no mother. This valley was not the place where a Moonhawk could be made a man.
    At the feast he could barely eat. And when the time came for Jad to kneel beside Mosu so that, with Foia guiding her hand, she could slice the first man scar into his cheek, Suth couldn’t bear to watch. He closed his eyes and bowed his head. He felt Noli’s hand on his arm, but he brushed it away and wept.
    A few days later, on their way back to the cave, the foragers and hunters stopped as usual to inspect the traps they had set. It was almost time to move on to a fresh warren, and only two traps had caught anything. They were Baga’s and Tinu’s. Dith’s had caught nothing. Baga was his sister, and she never missed a chance to tease him.
    â€œYou are no hunter, Dith,” she called out. “You catch nothing. It takes a woman to build a good trap. See, this girl child makes a better trap than you. See how well it was made.”
    Dith was furious. He came striding over, kicked the remains of Tinu’s trap with his feet, picked up the ground rat and flung it across the hillside.
    Tinu flinched as if he’d struck her. Suth gathered her to his side and turned to Dith. He felt his hair starting to bush.
    â€œBaga speaks truth,” he snarled. “Tinu