“Is this the first time she’s done this?” asked Flatface’s eldest daughter.
“Maybe,” said Crooked, “she’s done it in the boulder and the stink is too much for her.”
Newcomer said, “She could have walked farther away.”
“You can walk farther away,” responded Flatface’s almost-a-man son, who was now standing at a respectful distance behind his mother.
Newcomer glared at him, and he glared back. Then Flatface’s son looked away, and it was like nothing had happened.
The animal retied the public apron and adjusted the kaross and hadn’t taken several steps away when Hugger scrambled down the arrowpoint tree. Was Hugger scared by the animal and trying to run? The animal had been definitely scared by Hugger’s sudden presence. She stopped dead where she was, obviously uncertain as to what to do while Hugger ambled toward her, an almost-a-man trying to walk with the confident gait of a man. If she had been a first soul, she would have been able to do something, but the animal stood as if planted there. Her eyes met Hugger’s, and Hugger stopped. He stared at her. Was he going to embrace her? Why didn’t she leave? What was she trying to encourage? Hugger reached out and touched one of her teats. I wished she had been closer to see the animal’s reaction, but from here it looked like she hadn’t moved at all. She faced Hugger and allowed the tips of his fingers to rest on her teat. No one said a thing. Each watched the animal watch Hugger. It must have been too much for Hugger. He looked away, and knowing he had lost, he dropped his hand to his side. He walked off into the woods until he was out of sight.
If that wasn’t enough, once the animal got back to the creek, rather than crossing over, it once again removed the kaross then the pubic apron. It stepped naked into the creek, then crouched until the cold water covered its knees and thighs. I wanted to be closer, to be able to study the way foot was joined at ankle, the set of curves below the knee, the set above, the way the hips were wider than the torso, the clear curvature of the teats and the nipples large enough for nursing, the sets of curves connecting shoulder to elbow, elbow to hand. The odd, flattened features of the head, the thin eyes, like someone always squinting. There was a patch of hair covering the labia, and I wondered how big they were, if this animal could bear the children of people. The idea of a person mating with this clay-skinned animal was both revolting and intriguing. Why didn’t the creature have the modesty to bathe when no one was here? Or perhaps this was the creature’s way of demanding the solitude no one would give her. The animal cupped her hands and splashed water all across her body. Each one watched.
There must have been something provocative about it, because in spite of her teats, Newcomer called out to the animal, “Do you want to mate?”
Crooked hissed at Newcomer. The animal’s eyes fixed on him just for a moment, as if she had understood his words; then her gestures became more rapid. She splashed water on her face, along her arms, then rose and gathered kaross and pubic apron to her chest before she ran and stumbled into the boulder. The opening disappeared.
That afternoon a woman came to the hillside and built herself a fire. Her skin sagged like Flatface’s‚ but there were no signs of a child. Across her chest were dark scars, which marked her as a woman who lived along the lake. When a woman brought down her first lightfoot‚ scars were cut into her body. The woman with the chest scars did not look at anyone in particular‚ but she asked to the air, “Does a woman gather her food from these trees and bushes?”
“A woman does,” said Flatface. She told Chest Scars how to find Squawker’s hut and hearth.
Night had begun to steal light from day when a woman, who said she was from the south, arrived with a leg-hugging daughter. Her belly was wide with another. She walked a respectful distance from Chest Scars’ fire and built her own. She too asked if a woman gathered from these trees and bushes.
“If more people come,” said Crooked, “and if more people will build fires, there will be little wood on the ground for Squawker to warm herself.”
“If more people come,” said Flatface’s eldest daughter, “she will have to move. Everyone will eat her food.”
“The next place to gather is where Crooked gathers,” said Flatface.
“Maybe more won’t come,” said Crooked.
“Maybe we should say no,” said Flatface’s eldest daughter,
“Yes,” said Crooked. “Tell each one no. Then no one will be here. Maybe the boulder will leave.”
“Say no?” said Flatface. “And when the berries are sour and the tubers are dry, who will say yes to you?” She didn’t give Crooked time to respond. “It will be dark soon. There’s no reason to stay. The animal is too ashamed of its improper behavior to come back out.”
Flatface left, followed by each child. Crooked left. Newcomer trailed after her. Only I and the woman with the big belly and the leg-hugging daughter remained. Not much later Chest Scars returned from her visit to Squawker’s hut and hearth. She had flatleaves and springnuts in her kaross. She left some by I’s fire and some by Big Belly’s. Each woman ate quietly.
When the first moon had risen above the trees, Big Belly and her daughter were asleep. Chest Scars stood on the opposite side of I’s fire. “I am here,” she said. “I have some dried meat.”
“I am here,” said I. “And I have nothing.”
“I still have meat, if you have words to share.”
I gestured for Chest Scars to sit. Chest Scars placed several pieces of meat between herself and the healer. I took half of them. The meat was old and tough. She said it was good.
“No,” said Chest Scars. “The meat is stale. But I have eaten mostly fish. Fish does not travel as well as meat.”
“What words did you want to share?”
Chest Scars wanted to know about the boulder. One woman had told another, and she had heard about it. I told her that Squawker had seen it fall from the sky, that the music I played had done nothing, that the animal inside it had smooth skin, teats, and no infant.
After a moment of respectful silence, Chest Scars said, “I want to share with you something that happened several winters ago. The snow fell till it covered our knees, and the winds off the lake froze sweat into ice. I spoke to the one woman and another who shared my mother. We decided to leave for the sturdy hut and hearth I had built in a ravine where the winds are not so terrible. I have given birth to one son who lived and who is now a man. The next woman had one son and another. The youngest had no children that lived. Each of us bore the lack of solitude and shared our warmth until one day when there was a sound like the wind. But it was a wind that echoed only through one set of trees. Each was scared. The sound was over, but the youngest and I tracked it down. In a nearby clearing we found something that looked like a rock with legs. The rock was large, but not so large that a woman couldn’t pick it up. It was made of the same kind of rock as this boulder.”
“Did the rock have an animal in it?”
“No. A man took a heavy stick to it and broke it apart. It was full of strange lines and light. The man hit it again, and sparks the color of true bodies flew out of it. Then all its light was gone. I dug a hole and buried it. When we returned to the river’s mouth, I told one or another, but no one believed me. It was a good winter story. Anyone who sees this boulder will have to believe about our rock with legs.”
I looked to Chest Scars, whose eyes were filled with the fire’s glow. She sounded like a woman who wanted to impress another woman, and I did not know if she should believe the story about the rock with legs.
The Fifth Day
I woke up several times that night, but was too tired to sit up and enjoy the wakefulness. She later remembered hearing one woman sing a song I’s mother had never sung and later listening to the soft patter of rain that walked atop the leaves but never fell through. What woke her in the morning was less the dim brightness of a cloudy day and more the sounds of Squawker’s son shouting at Squawker’s infant daughter, who laughed in reply. I opened her e
yes to see a woman sitting on the other side of the fire, presenting her back to I, allowing the healer a degree of solitude. The woman’s back was a fine one, and her arms curved like those of a hunter.
I sat up and announced she was awake and listening.
The woman repositioned herself to present the side of her body to I. Her belly was tremendous, and I remembered musing the night before why a woman so close to delivering would walk north from Small Lake all the way to this clearing. Big Belly said, “The woman with a daughter and a son”—she nodded toward Squawker—“told me you healed with music. Would you play for me?”
I looked down into the clearing. Everything looked different when the sun walked behind the clouds. There was a kind of bright darkness illuminating the boulder and the blackened land around it. The boulder’s opening had not appeared.
Big Belly waited without speaking. I could not refuse her request, so she left for hut and hearth, Big Belly and her daughter following from a respectful distance. Mother and daughter sat by the blackened spot of the winter-waiting fire while I lit the fire in her hut, fed it wood, and played the gzaet until her fingers moved comfortably on the keys. She then gestured that Big Belly should come.
The woman left her daughter at the waiting fire and approached I, remaining outside the hut until I gestured her in, remaining standing until I gestured her to sit, and then sitting on the opposite side of the fire, respectfully looking away from both the fire and the healer. I began to think that Big Belly was the wrong kind of name for a woman whose manners were full of respect. “What does your mother call you?” she asked.
“Right now she calls me Moon Belly”—and she patted the stretched skin—“because it looks as large and round as a moon.”
“And before that?”
“Lightfoot Watcher. I like to track lightfoot and watch them. I shoot them only when I’m meat hungry.”
One and another child were called Watcher by a mother because a child did like to watch something: a bushy tail hunting for nuts, a flathead slithering through the brush, water dripping from leaves, fire consuming a log. I’s mother had called her Maker of Parts because she used to pull legs and wings off insects and then try to put the parts back together again.
Lightfoot Watcher set her kaross aside and leaned back on her strong arms so the music could touch the completed curve of her belly and reach into her and touch the readying child. I played the music, and she enjoyed replaying the pattern of welcome songs her mother had sung and played for each pregnant woman who had come to her. Soon she played the lower keys, reaching out with the most private of touches, to discover what Lightfoot Watcher must have known all along. The belly was big, but not because the belly protected the child with lots of water. I stopped playing the gzaet. Lightfoot Watcher opened her eyes and sat up.
I faced the woman. “A woman once told a woman who told me about the healer who lives near the Tall Hills. It is said that she is good.”
The woman nodded.
“No woman who carries a child within should walk one day and another to the Winding River when she could walk a little less than a day to Tall Hills.” I stared at the woman because she wanted this to be a confrontation.
Lightfoot Watcher looked away. She said, “I have heard what a woman told a woman about Small Winding River: there is a woman who has no children and would like one.”
The woman shifted her gaze to face I, and I looked away to show the proper respect. When twins are born, the first one out of the womb, it was said, was the second one put in the womb; that was the one to be buried before it breathed, before anyone spoke the word ‘child.’ “Forgive me,” said the woman. “I don’t know how to ask.” She edged her body away, draped it with the kaross‚ hunching her body over in embarrassment.
I was both angry and proud that she had been asked to handle such a delicate matter, but she did not know how to ask this of poor Crooked, who was almost ready to take a man, who believed that this time she would give birth to something large enough to breathe in a true body. I could ask Crooked to take the first twin, and Crooked would refuse. Then, in autumn, when she buried something too small to live, she would cry out into the night for everyone along the river to hear about her grief, and, this time, about her regret that she had not accepted the offer of someone else’s child to be her own.
I did not want to say this about Crooked, so instead she told Lightfoot Watcher, “A woman without a child will have no milk for an infant. The infant will die, anyway.”
“A woman cannot gather enough to nurse one infant and another, and a woman with an infant who always wants to suck rarely hunts and eats only meat that is another woman’s gift. But a woman has two teats after she has given birth, and each child can have one if there is another woman who hunts enough so that there will be enough milk, and if this other woman is well gifted, the child then has blankets to keep her warm and baskets for her to carry nuts and fruit.”
Lightfoot Watcher spoke these words to the ground so that the healer had the solitude necessary to react honestly. The healer did not know how to react. The woman was not offering one of the twins to Crooked; no man made gifts for Crooked. Lightfoot Watcher was offering the twin to I.
“I need a daughter to learn the music,” said I.
“And if the first out is not a girl?”
“I cannot take it.”
“And if the second is also not a girl?”
I could not find the heart to say the words. If the first was a boy, then so most likely would be the second. When the first one breathed, a true body filled the child’s chest and body, and the child would breathe for as long as the true body wanted it to. When the second child came out, a true body would be pursed on its lips, eager because it had been waiting since the first one took breath. If the second one never drew breath, the true body would not return to the night sky. It would be trapped on the world, and it would fill itself with anger; its anger would take away its sense; it would not wait for another newborn’s breath to take it in; it would remain with the mother and the firstborn, and it would trouble mother and child until each had stopped breathing.
This mother, this watcher of lightfoot, loved one child and the other before they were yet children. I once had carried a boy within her, and when she lost it, she too felt like she had loved something that had not yet breathed. She wished this woman from somewhere else had not offered her the chance to have a child, because it had made I see how cruel and heartless she could be.
I continued to play the gzaet, and she hoped that Big Belly would get up and leave. The music sounded like the river after the first rain of spring, a rush over rocks and fallen limbs, a torrent along the banks, and she played the music like the sun and the ground and the softer feminine rains, easing the river to its tranquil downstream flow. Lightfoot Watcher left the hut and sat by her daughter and the empty black ground of the winter fire. She adjusted her kaross and directed her gaze into the woods. I realized that she most likely did not know the way back to the clearing.
It was past midday when Lightfoot Watcher and her daughter and I reached the clearing. There were one or two more hearths built along the hillside, and more people. A child and two or more were climbing trees and shouting to each other, or were they shouting to the women on the hillside? “I don’t see it!” shouted one. “It’s not near here!” shouted another.
Chest Scars was standing by her fire, and standing on the opposite side of the same fire was another woman. This woman had the same thin build, but the scars were along the tops of her arms. She had teats full with milk and a knee-high son standing by her side. Wisdom and Squawker were standing at the bottom of the hill, and Flatface had walked up to where the ground had been burned to the color of night. The boulder’s opening had appeared, and the sunlight made the darkness inside look even darker. The animal was nowhere to be seen.
Lightfoot Watcher and her daughter remained on the hillside. I headed down and stopped at the burned ground, standing at a re
spectful distance from Flatface.
“The animal has gone,” said Flatface. “One or another want to track it and make sure it does nothing harmful.”
“Track the animal?”
“My son came and called for you.”
“No. I haven’t seen your son.”
Flatface looked up the hill. Crooked and the Newcomer were nowhere to be seen.
I said, “When did the animal come out?”
“It came out when the sun was overhead. It followed the creek out of the clearing. Perhaps it is hungry. One or another wanted to follow.”
“Did someone follow?”
“No.”
Squawker stepped forward. “The healer played the music. The next day the animal came out. The healer should track the animal.”
Chest Scars must have heard. She said, “What if the animal is a first soul?”
Wisdom said, “If a first soul came back as a woman, she would have both teats and child, not just teats. Nor would she come back with skin like the color of clay and eyes that are half-closed.”
Chest Scars took several steps down the hill and faced I.
“One first soul became a sunskin and another became a manylegs. You can’t track a first soul like you track a lightfoot.”
“The healer played the music,” said Squawker.
I asked, “Where’s Hugger?”
“Squawker doesn’t know,” said Flatface. “And I don’t know where my son is.”
“Your son,” said Squawker, “is probably following some woman.”
“If the healer played the music,” said Arm Scars, her voice like an accusation, “and if the animal came out because the healer played the music, then perhaps the healer should find the animal.”
Wisdom had come closer. “Maybe each one here should try to find the animal.”
Chest Scars said, “A first soul would not find that respectful. We cannot hunt the animal like it was starvation time. We cannot act like we are trying to drive a lightfoot out of the forest.”
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