by neetha Napew
lana tensed. “This camp is full of meat because Torka has led us to it. For lana, no camp would be warm enough or be suitable as shelter without Torka at her side.”
The woman’s reply stung Cheanah before his people, before his women and sons and mother. For the first time, he was infused with anger. He glared at lana, Torka’s little girls, and then Lonit as he sought to hurt Torka through them.
“Ask your daughters if they are not afraid,” he drawled maliciously, fixing the little ones with his eyes, trying to frighten them even as he smiled benignly and offered them safety in his care. “Yes. Torka would lead you alone into the unknown vastness of the Forbidden Land, where wolves and lions dream of eating the soft flesh of little girls! And why does Torka do this? Because he has made the people angry for the sake of an infant brother whose life causes the sky to catch fire and the earth to shake and the wanawut to howl!”
Wide-eyed, the little girls stared at him. How pretty they were, especially the older. In a few years’ time .. . He allowed the speculation to continue but without disrupting his thoughts: “In order to save the life of a suckling, Torka would risk his daughters. They are welcome in this band, whether Torka chooses to stay or go. Cheanah will raise them as his own, for himself and for his sons, who will be men for them when they are grown.”
Torka stared at him with cold contempt for a moment before seeming to come to a decision. “Is that an invitation or a threat? Or can you tell the difference, Cheanah?”
Cheanah hated him now; he had failed to humiliate Torka, and in that failure, he knew that he himself had been diminished. “May the spirits of the angry sky fall and break upon your head, Torka. I am headman now, and for the good of the people, I tell you to take your suckling and leave this band, or expose him and stay within it. The forces of Creation have spoken through the mouth of Karana, your own son! Before you go, so the people may know you for what you really are, I ask Lonit, who is weary from enduring the mysterious suffering within the hut of blood, if she is not afraid to walk the world alone, without the protection of a band, for the sake of a suckling that should never have been born.”
“Yes! It is time that someone asked Lonit!” Startled by the hostility and unexpected strength in her voice, everyone looked at her. Torka turned and saw his beloved first woman standing with Wallah at the entrance to the hut of blood. Still holding tiny Umak protectively within the bed furs that she had wrapped around herself, her posture revealed the extent of her exhaustion. The morning sun illuminated her face and the dark-blue circles beneath her eyes. Nevertheless, she held her head erect, and her voice was clear and emphatic. She spoke loudly, so all could hear her words, as well as her contempt for Cheanah.
“Lonit is Torka’s woman, always and forever. Where Torka walks, there will Lonit walk also, gladly and without question or fear. Lonit is the mother of Torka’s daughters and son! Yes, this woman is weary from her ordeal, but more draining is her grief for her stolen baby, whom Zhoonali has seen fit to feed to the wanawut! No, Cheanah, Lonit is not afraid to walk out of this camp alone with Torka and her little ones. But truly she would be afraid to stay, for what trust may be placed in a headman who cannot be moved to action except at the prodding of his mother and with strongmen at his side to protect him from the consequences of his actions? And what loyalty may be expected from people who turn so easily against their friends, feed their babies to beasts, and gladly throw away the lives of healthy children because they would rather bend to their fear than learn new ways in this new land?”
Cheanah’s eyes widened. He was stunned by the woman’s audacity and open disdain. “No woman speaks so to a man in the camp of Cheanah!”
Lonit did not flinch. Her shadowed, weary eyes sought Torka. “Then it is time for us to leave it.”
Torka could have kissed her right then and there, before the entire gathering. Instead, he nodded. For the first time, as he appraised the avaricious faces of those who had professed unending loyalty to him only days before, he had no doubts about the way he had chosen. He would not abandon Umak to ease the fear of such people as these!
For Cheanah and his followers, the omens would always be bad; Torka needed no magic to tell him this. Nevertheless, he waited for Karana to speak, to say words that would ease the way for him or even turn the flow of events against Cheanah and put Torka back into authority.
But Karana stood aloof, impassive, as though watching with the eyes of a blind man. Whatever the young man felt, thought, could or could not do, he was deliberately standing aside, not at all like a son but like an uncaring stranger who had inexplicably determined the way that Torka and his little family must follow and felt neither concern nor responsibility for the consequences.
“Torka. and his females and his bad-luck baby will not survive!”
Cheanah portended sullenly.
Torka waited for Karana to speak in his defense. When he did not, a small portion of Torka’s heart seemed to bleed, as a man’s heart will always bleed when he knows that a son has turned against him. He pivoted, heart blood congealing into a bitter anger that strengthened his resolve as he eyed Cheanah coldly. He felt stronger now, almost as though he had eaten. “But we must survive, Cheanah, and not only for our own sake. Because when at last Zhoonali is no longer at your side to tell you what to do, when Cheanah withers and breaks under the inflexible burdens of the old ways, someone will have to come and show him how to survive in this new land.”
Cheanah reacted as though Torka had struck him. Standing in the shadow of her son, Zhoonali was bristling, waiting for him to react. And so, chafing against Torka’s insults as well as against Lonit’s slurs about his inability to act without his mother’s prodding, Cheanah stood tall, impressively, he thought, in command of the moment.
“Go! There will be no more words between us. The spirits of the angry sky and the trembling earth have spoken against you. Walk out of this camp. Take your women, your children, and your suckling with you! But should you return into this land, know that Cheanah will kill you!”
Night was upon them by the time they were ready to travel, and although Torka would have preferred to wait until first light before moving on, he was not allowed that choice.
His spear hurler and whalebone bludgeon were in hand, and his spears were thrust laterally through his heavily loaded pack frame of crossed caribou antlers. He silently led his women and children eastward under a rising moon, across a blue world, beneath a sky from which the fires of heaven had faded.
Close to him, bent forward under a pack frame that was much lighter than she normally would have carried, Lonit walked with a slow but resolute step while baby Umak snuggled to her breast. She looked at the sky but did not speak; she was too weary, although time and again since leaving the encampment she had sworn that she was not.
“A good sign ...” lana remarked, also looking at the sky as she walked beside Torka.
“Perhaps,” he assented, knowing that the people in Cheanah’s encampment would certainly view it as such. But he did not want to think of signs, omens, or Cheanah’s encampment, for such thoughts brought memories of the magic man, and Torka did not want to think of Karana.
“I will come with you,” the young man had volunteered, coming to stand beside him as Torka had hunkered outside his pit hut, assembling his knapping tools for the journey.
Torka had looked up at him and had shaken his head.
“No. I think not. I am the grandson of Umak, and the blood of many generations of spirit masters flows within me. Torka will need no magic man on the journey that he is now forced to make.”
“But I am also a hunter, and a good one! You should know! You have taught me everything!”
“It is difficult for me to remember when you yourself forget so easily. I see you not as a hunter but as a young man gone from my side when your magic was needed most, off wandering the misty hills, unable to use your powers to save my infant from the wanawut. And then you stood against me, looking on in silence
when, with only a word, you might have turned the fears of the people in my favor. Oh, yes, Karana, you are a magic man. But a magic man needs a band to impress with his magic. Now, thanks to you, I am headman of a handful of women and children and am not impressed. Your magic has nothing to offer me or mine but danger and the threat of death. So go. You have chosen the path to follow and those with whom you would walk it.”
Karana had stared with disbelief. “But the spirits .. . the forces of Creation—“
“Have spoken through your mouth to deny Torka, his women, and his children a place within this band!”
“But the mammoth walks to the east. Surely you have seen it! Surely you know that we must follow Life Giver together! We share the same totem! Wherever Torka walks, whatever dangers Torka faces, these things Karana always shares! I am your son!”
Even now Torka could feel the way his anger had moved in him—slowly, painfully, like the tip of a spearhead probing a wound. He could still hear himself saying coldly: “No, Karana. A son stands with his father when he is needed. He does not choose to stand apart. You have shown Torka that he has only one son, an infant named Umak. Karana is a man now, no longer in need of a father—especially a father against who he has spoken before the assembled people of the band.”
“But I did not mean—I-You do not understand.”
He had waited, wanting to understand. But in that moment, from within the pit hut he was about to disassemble, the sounds of little Umak fussing hungrily at Lonit’s breast reached him. And so he had said:
“No, Karana, you are no longer my son. Sons do not speak against their fathers. You have a woman in this camp. Stay here with Mahnie, within this band over which Torka would still be headman if you had kept the spirit voices captive within your own mouth! Because of your so-called vision, my life and the life of my family is at risk. Torka has survived without you. And now, because of you, he shall do so again!”
Now, as he led his women and little girls slowly upward through rough and stony country, he regretted those words as much as he regretted his uncharacteristically impetuous decision to leave Karana behind. If the spirits had spoken through Karana’s mouth, how could Karana be held responsible for their words? He had not chosen his gift; the forces of Creation had made him what he was. How could Torka have turned his back upon one who had been a son to him, who was and would always be a son to him? But he had done just that. Karana had remained in the encampment of Cheanah, and Torka had left it. It was impossible to go back now, and even if he could, he doubted that the young man could ever forgive him for the anger and coldness with which he had left him.
Although he heard no words of complaint from them, Torka walked slowly for the sake of Lonit and the little girls as they crossed the valley that Cheanah had taken to calling the Place of Endless Meat. He created opportunities to rest without conveying to his family how much they were slowing a journey that he could easily have made at a lope, traversing the ground in the great strides that a hunter takes when he has great distances to travel and no reason to look back. Now and again he would find the women covertly watching him. Both had traveled with him before and had seen him on the hunt, so they recognized what he was doing. He knew they were grateful.
As they began the gradual ascent into the hills, Demmi took pride in riding much of the way on her father’s hip, until a petulant Summer Moon called her Baby Feet. Stung by the insult, Demmi insisted on walking.
It soon became apparent that, try as she might to prove otherwise, she was a baby—a proud little three-year-old who could not go far without becoming distracted by the unfamiliar landscape or sitting on the moonlit stones when her feet began to hurt.
The second time this happened, Summer Moon tugged at Torka’s leggings to alert him, rolling her eyes in the way that children have when they are trying very hard to behave like an adult. Torka turned. As the first time that Demmi had lagged behind, Lonit, despite her increasing fatigue, was already hovering over the little one, softly insisting that she must keep up or be carried.
“I think it is time for lana to carry this one,” said Torka’s second woman, reaching for Demmi. “She will be no burden for me. Even though my pack is heavy, I have no other baby to carry.”
“Demmi is not a baby!” protested the little girl. Summer Moon, feeling the need to vie with her sibling, was delighted.
“You are a baby! Babies fall behind and—“
Lonit put loving but firm fingers across Summer Moon’s mouth to silence her. Demmi’s misery was clear in the moonlight. To ease the hurt pride of the little girl and to eradicate Summer Moon’s obvious feelings of being overshadowed, Torka knelt and made both daughters face him, gesturing them close in the manner of a conspirator. “Listen now, Daughters, and keep what I will say secret in your hearts forever.”
They listened, enthralled and enraptured.
“This man must admit that now and again it would be a great help if he could carry at least one of you—both would be better—to balance the load of his pack frame. If Mother or Second Woman see that Torka’s pack needs balancing, they might ask him to carry them, and as you can see, they are much too big and too heavy for a man who is not as young as he used to be. But with one of you on each hip, you are the perfect size to balance this man’s pack frame.” Much too young to know a ruse when they heard one, they were instantly eager to assist. They raised their arms and competed for the honor of being the first to help their father. Lonit and lana, realizing at once what Torka must have said to the girls, turned away and avoided each other’s glance so that the children would not see them smile.
Lonit observed her little family from her encircling ruff of wolf tails. Her hooded winter traveling coat was of dark, shaggy bearskin, its well-fitted slee/es cut from the hides of winter-killed caribou and worn with the fur side in. Deep within that warm shelter, tiny Umak wiggled in the binding that held him snug against Lonit’s breast. Invisible to all except his mother, he could nurse whenever he hungered without causing her to stop.
He was feeding now, drawing deeply with his little gums clamped together hard and hurt fully allowing her to feel the nubbins of tiny teeth that had yet to protrude. By the time they did, her nipples would be ready for them. Now they were tender, as was her heart as she looked at Torka and her daughters and longed for the lost son who would never know the comfort of her arms.
Manaravak. She almost spoke his name aloud. Her mouth was set, but a sad, bittersweet smile was shining in her eyes; Torka had risked everything to keep the vow that he had made so long ago in a land so far away: He would never abandon the children or babies of his band, because they were the future of the people; if a people were careless of the future, there might come a day when they would have no place within it.
In the clear, blue light of the moon, she observed Torka’s behavior with Summer Moon and Demmi. It was exactly as she had expected: gentle, patient, loving, and wise. As he hefted the two little girls and walked on as though their combined weight were no more than that of the moonlight, her love for him was so great that her terrible fatigue and the soreness, natural after childbirth, fell away.
“Come,” said lana, slipping an arm through the crook of Lonit’s elbow. “Lean on me. Together we will both feel stronger. Perhaps your pack is too heavy? I can carry more, if it would ease the way for you.”
Lonit’s affection for lana was deeper than words could have expressed. What a fine band this was! Small and vulnerable, yes—but soon she would be strong and could hunt beside Torka. She was not sorry at all that they had put the encampment of Cheanah and the others behind them, although she would miss Wallah and Mahnie and gruff but lovable old Grek. Briefly and fiercely she missed Karana. But Torka was right;
Karana had chosen to act like a stranger—even an enemy. It was best to release him from her thoughts, with the hope that the forces of Creation would be good to him, and that with loyal Brother Dog ever at his side, he would find the happiness with Mahnie that Lonit wou
ld always wish for him.
With a sigh of acquiescence, she began to walk with lana, assuring the sister of her fire circle that she was in need of no support.
“Truly, I can carry the weight of my own pack, and your presence at my side is enough to ease the way for me, lana, as it has always been!” She felt strong and renewed as they climbed to follow the tracks of the great mammoth from the valley and along the spine of the ridge over which it had disappeared.
Here, at Torka’s insistence, they rested, eating together as they watched the moon slip lower in the broad, black, star-flecked lake of the long, long night. Sated on strips of cured bison meat and sweet wedges of fat into which dried cloud berries had been pounded, Summer Moon and Demmi slept close to lana while Lonit joined Torka.
He sat alone upon the ridge, looking back, observing the flickering, golden glint of a fire in the encampment over which Cheanah was now headman.
“Listen .. he said, inviting her to sit beside him.
She could just make out the distant sound of chanting and drumbeat as she knelt. Was Karana making the magic smokes and singing the spirit songs for Cheanah’s people? Or was he making them for Torka’s family ... or against them?
Far away, the barking of a dog could be heard echoing in the hills.
Aar, Brother Dog!
“Will we ever see them again?”
He shrugged, miserable. “Only the spirits of the world beyond this one may know the answer to that.”
She nodded and, sensing his sadness, moved closer and laid her head upon his shoulder. “They will live always in this woman’s heart.”
“And in mine,” he admitted, sighing as he drew her close and wrapped her in the sweep of his own wide, warm traveling robe so that they, and the sleeping infant, huddled together within it as though within a tent.
She felt him relax into sleep. In the valley far below, the glittering light of the fire blinked out like a little red eye that fought against sleep. The thought made her smile. The moon was setting, taking the blue light with it. Gradually, darkness filled the world below, and the world above.