I wanted to run, but there was no reason to run. The claycolored animal with teats just stood in the same spot. Every now and then it turned its head like it was waiting for someone to appear. Soon it started to hug itself, as if its body was cold.
Farther along the hillside, Hugger stepped out from behind a thickbark tree, and, clumsy as a man, he stepped on something that made a small crunching noise. The animal looked up in Hugger’s direction, and its glance must have scared him because he stepped back once, then twice, and returned to hide behind the thickbark tree.
The sun had burned off the mist when one woman after another joined I. First came Wisdom, also called Talk Too Much, who had nothing to say when she saw the animal. Standing as tall as the bone-pains would let her, Wisdom stepped back until she stood near an arrowpoint tree. Childless Crooked found her own tree to stand near. Both Wisdom and Crooked stared at the animal for the longest time. The animal remained standing. Finally Crooked reached into her shoulder bag and took out two strips of smoked lightfoot meat, which she offered to each woman. “It will spoil unless eaten,” said Crooked after I’s first refusal.
The animal looked in their direction, its eyes wide, as if trying to understand what each woman might be saying. Then it did something an animal—one that was intent on understanding what was going on—wouldn’t do; it looked down at the cracked ground, as if examining the blackened lines. It was as if the animal knew it had stared too long at them, as if it were aware of its improper behavior.
I remarked upon this to Crooked and Wisdom, making her voice louder than usual, trying to attract the animal’s attention. Crooked laughed at the idea; there was fear in the laughter. Wisdom looked at I with her sad eyes, as if the healer were hopelessly naïve.
“Hey, animal!” shouted I.
The animal continued to ponder the ground. An animal—whether it had hooves or paws—would have looked up at the sudden shout. Crooked was asking I what she thought she was doing, but I barely heard the words. I felt suddenly very alive and aware, the same way she felt when she tracked a meat animal for most of a day and found it nibbling leaves in a clearing, or when she found the right music to drive away the spirit that had sickened a child. She was certain: this animal was not an animal.
But she couldn’t believe it was a first soul. A first soul wouldn’t act so much like… like a stranger to the world it had helped create.
After a while the animal returned to the boulder, and the opening to the thing disappeared. Gone, like it had never existed. Maybe it was a first soul.
Hugger came out from behind his tree and took several steps down the hill. “Iamhere!” he shouted, but of course nothing happened.
After a while, when it was clear the animal was not going to come back out, Wisdom and Crooked stepped away from their trees. Wisdom talked for a while about what the animal could be. Crooked said, “I don’t care what it is. I want to know when it will leave.”
The sun had barely moved in the sky before the opening appeared again and the animal stepped out. This time it wore a ka- ross‚ and one of its teats was covered by the fabric. Wisdom and Crooked remained where they were seated, but I could tell that each one wanted to head back to the safety of a tree. But the animal stood still again, and soon Wisdom spoke in hushed whispers about the animal’s kaross. The animal looked up. Wisdom stopped talking. The animal looked away, and Wisdom began to speak again. The color of the kaross was darker than any animal skin Wisdom had ever seen, and she wondered what kind of man would make a kaross so dark and why he would make a gift of something so plain. Wisdom finally grew restless with her own words and left to gather some food.
Roofer came to the hillside and stared hard at the animal. The animal ignored Roofer, and he walked away. When Crooked told Squawker that the animal never moved, Squawker sat down to nurse her daughter, her son pacing back and forth behind her. The animal looked up for a moment, her eyes on mother and child, and then looked away.
I looked at Squawker’s teats, then at the animal’s. The skin on Squawker’s was so rough, while the animal’s was smooth. Squawker’s infant daughter cried whenever she stopped nursing, so Squawker left, even though her son insisted that they stay. What would the son say if the animal walked up the hill right toward him?
The animal returned to the boulder. The sun rose until the boulder cast a shadow so thin that it was hardly a shadow. I knew that it had to come out again; if nothing else, it would need to look for food. If it didn’t have food, then it couldn’t provide milk for its child. What kind of child would such a creature have?
I wanted to stay, but she stood up and walked back to hut and hearth. Huggable and her daughter were sitting by the remains of I’s waiting fire. “I brought more strips of meat,” said Huggable. “I came earlier, but you weren’t here.”
“I’m here now.” I accepted the meat and told them they were much too generous; her abilities with the music would make her seem stingy. She walked into the hut, and they followed. I sat on one side of the fire; mother and daughter sat on the other. I added wood to the fire until its warmth created a sense of respectful distance between the two of them and the healer. “The body best hears the music when there is no skin over the body’s skin.”
The daughter was already standing to remove her pubic apron when Huggable grasped her hand to stop her. “When I lived by the river’s mouth, no woman would ask such a thing.” The music was meant to be respectful, but I wanted each one to be uncomfortable, especially the mother. “I have not eaten the nuts. I have not touched the meat.” I gestured to the food, and Huggable’s eyes followed the motion of her hand.
Huggable let go of the daughter’s hand and rose. She removed the kaross first, then the pubic skirt that modestly covered buttocks and pubis. Standing naked in the firelight, her shape highlighted by shadow and shifting light, it became obvious how large Huggable’s teats were for a woman with a waist-high daughter. As the woman sat, I, whose eyes should have been averted to show the proper respect, glimpsed Huggable’s labia. One woman or three liked to joke that the ones by the river’s mouth had long penises or long labia, but there was a thickness to Huggable’s labia that suggested the onset of desire. And she was still nursing her first daughter. Why did a woman like this have to move here?
“Now,” said I, “would the mother sit with her legs open and the daughter sit with her back to the mother’s belly and chest?”
“This is the kind of behavior I want to stop.”
“The music works with the behavior,” said I, “and changes it. You should embrace her.”
Huggable averted her eyes, and her chin quivered, as she sat there hugging her daughter tight to her. I knew she was being cruel, but a woman who nursed her waist-high daughter needed a measure of cruelty to get her thinking properly. The daughter smiled at I, but it was an anxious smile. She had the daughter’s trust and she had the generous gift of meat and nuts, and it made I feel as if she were lying. The music might not be needed at all. If this was indeed her time, Huggable would mate, have another child—a daughter, if lucky—and the first daughter would have to stop nursing and learn to favor her solitude. But what if Huggable was too fond of nursing and did not mate?
I closed her eyes and began to play. She focused on the daughter, sent out the music, felt for its resonance. There was a tightness in the way the daughter held herself, a bounded energy. I touched her fingers to the upper keys until she played a soft song she liked, a child’s song, one her mother had sung to her; then with the lower keys she started another music, one to relax the daughter, to ease each muscle in her body. The daughter’s smile had changed; it was the smile of someone asleep. I changed the song, played a hunt song, something a little more jarring. The daughter opened her eyes, squirmed in her mother’s grip, pushed away her arms.
“Don’t push,” said the mother. “The healer wants me to hold you like this.”
The daughter kept pushing.
“You did want your daughter to reject your hugs,” said
I.
Huggable was confused. She let go and her naked daughter stepped away. “Come back and pick up your apron to cover yourself,” said Huggable.
I said, “If you take a bitter root, mash it to paste, and spread it on your nipples, your daughter will no longer be eager to nurse.”
“She no longer nurses,” said Huggable. “My teats are filled with milk that had been meant for my second daughter.”
It was an obvious lie. Huggable’s teats should have been thinning out after the infant’s death. They would not be heavy with milk unless she was suckling the first daughter. I felt great anger, but she said nothing. Huggable dressed and walked away, her daughter following.
I cooked the meat Huggable had brought. She ate two strips. Two pieces of wood had been driven into the ground on either side of the hearth; they held a long piece of wood that had been carved by a man whom I had cured of a spring sickness. Over that wood I hung a portion of the meat to dry it and preserve it, and to keep the meat out of the reach of scavengers. Another portion she cut into bits, which she scattered far in the woods to offer thanks to those animals who avoided her hut and hearth. She placed other portions into her carry bag, made for her by a man who had lost his arm to a nightskin‚ and set off into the woods.
She listened for the call of Roofer’s “Iamhere. Stayaway.” When she came close enough that she could hear him snap a branch, she called to him and said she had meat. She later found Old Sour Plum and also gave him meat in return for staying away. She found Wisdom at her hut and hearth and gave her a larger portion.
I was on a trail leading to the clearing when she found Flatface, her knee-high daughter, and her waist-high son returning to hut and hearth. I gave Flatface an even larger portion because Flatface and I’s mother had shared a mother. In turn Flatface offered to hunt with I soon. She also told about what she had seen this afternoon. “The animal started to walk. It walked back and forth in front of the rock, but it never left the black ground. Its head hung low, and it kept sitting down. My eldest daughter thinks it is sick. Crooked said that if the animal was sick, then it couldn’t be a first soul. I think Crooked is right.”
With a few portions of meat left in her carry bag, I made her way to the clearing. When night came, she built herself a small fire and sat in front of it to watch the rock. Hugger came and stood behind her. Every now and then he came close to add a piece of wood to the fire, and once he wrapped his arms around I in a quick embrace, withdrawing into the night before I could strike out at him. The night dragged on, the animal remained in the rock, and exhaustion crept up on I like a nightskin. I dreamed she was mating, her mate taking her from behind, and the dream was pleasant. But she woke up and found that Hugger, still modestly dressed, had nestled up to her and had fallen asleep. She was about to yell at him when she heard the short, toneless hum.
She could hear the animal’s soft footsteps as it emerged from its boulder. It stood there and looked first in her direction, then up at the sky. I disengaged herself from Hugger’s embrace and took several steps closer to the edge of the woods to get a better look. The first moon was out and full tonight, and it was easy to make out the animal’s basic form, the way her neck twisted back so her face could confront the sky. The animal was always alone. Where was the child who suckled from those teats? Was it in the boulder? Or had it died, like Huggable’s second daughter?
The animal had turned and was now looking up at I. I knew that she was a shadow standing several paces in front of a fire, but she felt like the animal could see her clearly. It was hard to be brave when there was no daughter to feed, but I stood there and stared back. There was too much dark and too much distance to see more than the animal’s face, and I so much wanted to look into those eyes, to see what kind of animal it was that could live for three days in a rock without once coming out for food. The animal returned to the boulder, and the opening closed.
Hugger still slept by the fire as if nothing had happened. I tried to sleep on the other side, but she found that sleep wouldn’t come. The first moon was setting and the second was rising, so it was easy to make her way down into the clearing. She looked up into the night sky to try to see what the animal had seen. But the sky looked like the sky always did. The true bodies shone clearly against the night’s darkness—many of them—tiny bright motes that had positioned themselves the way they did each spring to remind a woman to eat more fish than meat, to gather nuts rather than to pluck the fruit before it had grown large and ripe. And beyond the true bodies were faint clouds where it was said that the first souls roamed, each in her solitude, free and unseen.
And this animal, staring up into the night sky, could she be a first soul? Could she be looking up there and longing for her distant home?
The Fourth Day
The animal did not come out right away the next morning. Before she stepped out of the boulder, one person after another came to the hillside. Flatface came first and found a place to sit, her knee-high daughter sitting beside her. Her waist-high son and her almost-a-man son were farther back in the woods, chasing each other in and around the trees. I was glad to see the eldest son playing; he had reached the age where every now and then he eyed respectful women as if their labia were showing. Flatface’s eldest daughter, who carried her own infant son in her kaross, sat a respectable distance from her mother.
I watched the eldest daughter for a moment, the easy way she moved so as not to wake her sleeping infant. She and I had been born around the same time and had played together in this clearing before each had found her solitude. I remembered long ago how they had played the solitude game, how they would hold each other close and stare into each other’s eyes until one smiled, looked away, or, when they were older, pushed her way out of the embrace. I had looked into the other’s eyes and saw herself, a small reflection in a small round spring of water. I used to call her Clear Eyes; now each rarely spoke to the other. After I’s mother had moved south, I began to visit Flatface and to share words and food with her, as I’s mother had done before she had left.
Hugger had left I’s fire at the appearance of the first woman, and with each new woman he moved farther away, following the curve of the hillside, until he now stood across the way, on the other side of the clearing. A long call sounded in the distance; it was Roofer, announcing his approach to the clearing. Hugger immediately climbed the nearest tree as if he were still a boy. Roofer ambled around the hillside and stopped below the arrowpoint tree where Hugger hid. He didn’t look up.
“If Old Sour Plum shows up,” said Flatface, “Roofer will climb the very same tree as Hugger.”
“That’s all we need,” said her eldest daughter, “is more men and more noise. The animal will never come out.”
Childless Crooked arrived, her skin looking soft, almost as smooth as that of the animal. Crooked would soon feel her desire, she would soon try again to have a daughter, so it wasn’t surprising that an almost-a-man whom no one had ever seen appeared on the hillside. He was about as tall as Hugger, but his throat patches were dark, baggy. By next spring he would be as tall as any man. He didn’t look at any of the women except Crooked.
Flatface’s almost-a-man son had stopped chasing the waisthigh son. He stood rooted to the ground, staring at the Newcomer as if he were a rival. I looked to Flatface, but she was purposefully watching the silent boulder. The almost-a-man Newcomer did not react to the eldest son’s stares; he was more concerned with Roofer. He could not know that Crooked’s children would never live, that Roofer would have no interest in her. He did not notice how well worn was Crooked’s kaross‚ how frayed were the edges of her shoulder bag. He must think too much with his penis; otherwise, he would wonder why no man made gifts for Crooked. So he stared at Roofer like a rival, and later looked surprised when Roofer walked off. By then Flatface’s almost-a-man son had returned to chasing the waisthigh son through the forest.
Newcomer now made several attempts to get close to Crooked, but each time she turned on hi
m and hissed until he backed away. He cast his face down, looking hurt. Crooked ignored him; she just watched the boulder. Newcomer’s face took on a harder quality as he stared at Crooked’s back. I became certain that this almost-a-man would have tried to force one woman or another if he’d been big enough. Poor Crooked. I glared at him, as did Flatface, as did Flatface’s eldest daughter. He had to know he risked a stone-throwing if he tried anything, so he walked a bit into the woods, found some flatleaves‚ pulled them off the branch, and nibbled on them.
I walked away into the woods so she couldn’t be seen. She reached into her carry bag for a slice of meat, and she ate it quickly, barely tasting it. She was no longer sure when she would have time to hunt again, and she regretted being so generous with the meat Huggable had given her. She found an old clearing and the remains of an abandoned hut and sought out an appropriate spot to urinate. She was heading back when Flatface’s voice called out, “Healer, Long Fingers.”
When I reached the clearing, everyone else on the hillside was quiet. The opening had appeared, and the animal had stepped out, wearing pubic apron and kaross. Newcomer stopped nibbling and turned to the animal. Flatface’s eldest daughter leaned forward; her mother’s story had not prepared her for the strangeness of what she now saw.
The animal’s walk was slow. She looked up at the ones on the hill for a brief moment, then looked away. She walked around the boulder, crossed the tiny creek, and walked up the opposite hill, where she stopped to lean against a sharpleaf tree. Not very far away from where she stood was the arrowpoint tree that Hugger had climbed. I wondered if the animal had seen Hugger up there. The animal pushed herself away from the sharpleaf tree and took several more uphill steps before stopping again. She lifted up her kaross, undid her pubic apron, and squatted. There was no bush to hide behind. All the brush had been burned away earlier this spring. I was disturbed that she herself did not turn her head away, which would be the proper thing to do, but that instead, like the other ones, she watched the animal first urinate, then defecate.
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