Forbidden Land

by neetha Napew

  Lonit dozed. The sound of a barking dog awakened her. This barking seemed closer than Aar’s had earlier—one dog, not a pack. No danger in one dog. Was he also an outcast, wandering the world as she and her little family wandered it?

  Sleepiness took her briefly into shallow dreams of happy, long-gone days that would never come again. She drifted in memories of the past until Umak stirred sleepily against her breast and she awoke to lie silently in Torka’s embrace, knowing that two infants should be suckling within her arms.

  “Manaravak ...” She whispered the name of the one who had been taken from her, mourning the loss of a baby whose warmth and sweetness she had never known, hating the old woman who had taken him to his cold, com passionless death without ever having allowed him to know the touch or the kiss of his mother.

  Suddenly bereft, she sat up, her grief so intense that it was choking her. Careful not to disturb Torka, she rose and stood facing into the wind. Far across the benighted world, something—not a dog or wolf—howled. It was something almost human. The wanawut? She trembled violently. “Manaravak ...” She exhaled the name of her son and tried not to think of the way in which he must have died or how much he had looked like her beloved Torka.

  Umak’s tiny fingers clenched and unclenched, pinching her. She winced, drawn forcibly from her dark reflections. The wind trespassed into her ruff to touch her face. She looked up. The new star was high in the sky, bright and clear without the moon to rob it of its light.

  Startled, she felt the presence of her lost son, of his spirit. Was he alive in the sky, watching her from above the world and soothing her in the cool, constant breath of the wind? Yes! In that moment, the terrible anguish somehow passed from Lonit. She knew that Manaravak would live in her heart forever, just as Karana and Brother Dog, Simu, Eneela, and Dak, and Mahnie, Wallah, and Grefc would forever be a part of her band.

  For even in the darkness she could see them moving up from the valley. She knew them by the varying styles of their heavy furs as they trudged on, silhouetted against the stars, bent almost double under heavy pack frames while a great, barking, broad-shouldered dog ran ahead of them, following the way that Torka and his family had taken into the Forbidden Land.

  PART III. THE FORBIDDEN LAND

  They followed the mammoth eastward into the face of the rising sun, but before that first day Torka and Karana lay their hands upon each other’s shoulders and affirmed the bond between them.

  “Karana is this man’s son,” Torka assured him. “That which we have shared and endured makes this so. No words spoken in anger can change it.”

  For a moment, Karana looked as though he were about to weep. He started to speak but sucked in his thoughts and ground them into silence between his teeth. Whatever was in his mind remained unspoken as he embraced the hunter who had raised him to manhood, “Never again will Karana speak words that will hurt Torka or cause his father to turn away from him in anger. Never.”

  The women nodded in approval, and the dog wagged its tail. When the two men stepped back from one another, Torka looked slowly from Karana to Mahnie, the magic man’s girl-woman, and then to Grek and Wallah, her parents. Grek had proved his loyalty as a friend in the past, and Torka was not surprised that he was doing so again. But the presence of Simu and Eneela puzzled him. He knew it would have been difficult for Eneela to say good-bye to her sister, Bili, who was Ekoh’s woman. And he had not forgotten Simu’s open hostility toward him.

  “Why has Simu taken his woman and infant from a meat-rich camp to follow me?”

  The young man looked embarrassed. His woman did not. Her head was high as she rocked her yearling boy and stared at her man, her eyes prodding him to reply.

  Simu swallowed, then spoke softly but defensively. “For her I follow! For Eneela. I would not have her stay in a camp with a headman who looks at her all the time with hungry eyes, or who makes good hunters walk the world alone because they are unwilling to abandon their babies.”

  Torka leveled a thoughtful gaze at him. “Does Simu no longer believe that twins bring bad luck?”

  The young man thought long and hard. “Maybe what brings luck is different from one band to the next. Since following Torka, Simu’s luck has always been good. And Simu has a baby, too! A son! Eneela has said to this man that if we stay in the camp of Cheanah, maybe the sky will catch fire again, or maybe starving times will come, and then maybe Zhoonali will point a finger at our son and say that for the good of all little Dak must become meat for beasts. And so, since it was Torka and not Cheanah whom Simu chose to follow out of the far country, he thought that maybe Torka would not mind if he came along.”

  Old Grek chortled like a musk-ox with a foxtail up its nose. “And why would Torka mind?” he queried, looking at Simu as though the young man had just posed the most stupid question that he had ever heard.

  Before the younger man could speak, Wallah jabbed Grek sharply with her thickly sleeved elbow. “Simu has not spoken to you! He has spoken to Torka!” she said, admonishing her man with stern eyes and puckered lips.

  Torka expected to see Grek react strongly to his woman’s shaming reprimand; but they had been together for a lifetime of seasons. Instead of castigating Wallah, Grek drew her close. “A man cannot have too many women,” he teased.

  “Grek has but one!” she snapped.

  “And she is more than enough for me!” He squeezed her hard, deliberately teasing his flustered mate as she spluttered and demanded that Grek unhand her.

  He obliged, winking at Simu, then at Karana and Torka. “And a man can stay too long even in the best of camps! Wallah will tell you. Look at her. See how she has grown fat—and I do not mean glossy fat as all must strive to become before the rising of the starving moon .. . but bear fat, rodent fat, fat fat.”

  Wallah glowered. “This woman has not heard Grek complain before!”

  “It is time,” he declared, pulling her close again.

  Torka watched the matron squirm to free herself from her man’s embrace, but Grek only hugged her harder while Mahnie, standing proudly beside Karana, clamped a mittened hand across her mouth lest others see her grin at the antics of her parents. “So I say that it is good that we

  leave the Place of Endless Meat!” the old hunter proclaimed. “Grek, like Torka, is a hunter, a nomad, always following the herds, seeking the caribou, the horse, the musk-ox—“

  Torka felt obliged to interrupt him. “In this new land there may be lean times ahead of us.”

  “Good!” Grek stated emphatically, and pinched Wallah’s bounteous backside. Although she could not have felt pain through the many-layered furs of her traveling robe, winter tunic, trousers, and undergarments, for the benefit of those gathered round, she winced and reached back with both hands to rub the spot.

  Torka tried hard not to smile, but his effort was in vain.

  Grek continued: “Let Cheanah live his life in one denning site, content to eat of whatever comes. He is a rodent, not a man! Grek has chosen to walk with Torka once more, to follow the great mammoth spirit into the face of the rising sun. Grek thinks that Torka will be glad to welcome others to his little band, for even such a great hunter as he might be able to use an extra throwing arm or two, or even three!”

  Torka nodded and laughed aloud with joy as he reached to lay a hand upon the old hunter’s shoulder, and another on Simu’s. And since he did not possess a third arm, he looked directly into Karana’s eyes as he replied: “I think that I can learn to put up with the lot of you!” He was no longer alone. He had a band again! And no headman could have asked for finer hunters than Grek, Simu, and Karana, or for stronger and more agreeable women than those who boldly shadowed these fine men.

  And so they traveled on, resting often but making no encampments in which they stayed for more than a single night until the hills that would forevermore form a wall between Cheanah’s people and them lay at their backs.

  Now they stood at last at the edge of unknown country, deeper int
o the Forbidden Land than any of them had ever gone before.

  “Why is this called the Forbidden Land?” asked Summer Moon, walking close to Torka’s legging and wrapping her mittened hand around its shell-beaded fringes.

  He paused, knelt, and put an arm around the child as he stared ahead. “No man may say. No man may know. It is said that no man has walked into this far country. It may be forbidden because men fear what they do not understand.”

  The little girl thought about his words. She sighed and leaned her head upon his shoulder. “Life Giver does not fear it. He walks on as if he knows where he is going.”

  Torka rose and hefted his daughter onto his shoulders. “Perhaps he does, my little one .. . perhaps he does,” he said as he began to walk again.

  Behind lay the past. Ahead lay the future. Torka led his people on and did not look. back.

  The land opened wide before them. It was a high, win dripped shaggy steppe land that plunged eastward along the course of a great frozen river, which cut its way between broad, shouldering, un glaciated mountain ranges. On the far horizon, the sun rose over massive, snow mantled peaks so high that it seemed that birds would not be able to fly over them. But they did, and sometimes in numbers so great that they took most of the day to pass overhead.

  “Where do they come from, Father?” asked Summer Moon, always full of questions.

  “From out of the face of the rising sun,” he told her.

  “And where do they go?”

  “Into the face of the north wind, seeking good feeding grounds in the land from which we have come.”

  “But the lakes are still frozen, and there is little grass,” said Simu.

  “Not for long,” replied Torka, eyeing the ever-widening arc of the sun.

  Following the mammoth, he led his people on and on. The land was hard, the way difficult, and game scarce. Although Grek had spoken with disdain about the prolonged comforts that had softened them all within the Place of Endless Meat, even he began to long for another wide, wind-sheltered, meat-rich valley such as the one Cheanah and his followers had usurped from Torka.

  “You see, we have all gone soft, like old meat,” Grek grumbled.

  “Speak for yourself,” suggested Simu, and smiled when the older hunter glowered at him and showed his teeth in a most impressive snarl.

  With Brother Dog leading the way, Karana walked at Torka’s side. As the distances slipped away beneath their feet, the magic man began to wonder if they would ever find good hunting again, let alone a wonderful haven such as the Place of Endless Meat.

  As the days wore on, Karana watched weariness grow within the women and children, and by the silence of the hunters, he knew that they might be wondering if they had done the right thing.

  “What does my magic man see ahead of us?” whispered Mahnie, bundling close beside him in the night beneath their traveling lean-to of bison skin.

  Her words startled him. His reverie exploded into pain within his head.

  Nothing. Karana saw nothing except haunted visions of the past and his own guilt-ridden fears. But he could not tell her that. Instead he told Mahnie that he saw good things ahead for them. And in the days and nights that followed, he began to speak of that which he and the others longed to see ... to keep them plodding on and on. It did not occur to him that he was lying as he began to conjure stories of a wonderful valley ahead of them.

  In a way he did see it, as any storyteller sees the images that he creates and sets to life through words. Somewhere beyond the country of the big river, beyond a broad, blue lake, beyond the white arm of a great glacier, protected from the wind by the sheltering heights of tall peaks, such a valley must exist. Whether or not they would find it, or whether or not it would be rich in game, he could not say. He only knew that in this land of many rivers and glaciers and lakes and peaks, there was the likelihood of their stumbling upon the place of his conjuring. So it was that with the passing of each day, the story of the wonderful valley grew. By night it was like an owl winging across the moon, casting a giant shadow, its song of hope and good hunting embellished by the wind and stars.

  Thus, on this bleak, overcast, snowy day, when Torka bade his people rest lest the footsteps of Lonit or the children begin to lag, the magic man raised their flagging spirits with visions of the wondrous new home waiting for them in the east.

  “Behold .. he said as, bending to rummage amid a snowy clump of cold-britt led dry grasses, he plucked up a quivering longspur. Exhausted from its long overland flight, the tiny, sparrow like bird had plummeted to earth and, with pounding breast and quivering wings, had hidden unsuccessfully. While the other members of the band looked on, Karana held the trembling creature captive in his hands, blew the warmth of his breath upon it, then held it to his ear for a moment before allowing a delighted Summer Moon and Demmi to peek at it through his gently closed fingers.

  “You see? The longspur knows,” he told them.

  “What does it know?” pressed Summer Moon, looking at Karana out of tired but ever-adoring eyes.

  “That it is spring, even though it seems as if winter will last forever. If it could speak, the longspur would tell you its secret—as it has just shared it with me. It has seen the sweet, sheltering valley that awaits this people, a valley where the great herds winter, where rivers will soon churn with leaping fish, where ponds await the gathering of cranes and herons and geese and swans, where warm pools bubble from the earth amid groves of fragrant spruce and where children will have to be very, very careful.” He waited until he saw the question in their eyes, and then went on: “Because they will not be able to take a single step in springtime without staining their legs with the purple blood of blueberries. And in autumn, it will be the same as they go with their mother into the mountains to gather crane berries.”

  “We will be careful!” promised Summer Moon eagerly, her imagination already having placed her well within reach of the yearned-for fruits of summer. “Demmi does not like crane berries informed the littler, her round, chapped face set and serious within her ruff of fox tails “Demmi would eat blueberries.” She sighed, creating a cloud of condensation before her ruff. She was tired and sat down. “Longspur is lucky. Wings are better than feet, Demmi thinks.” She looked at Karana, cocking her head. “Has Longspur really told the magic man about the valley?”

  Summer Moon flushed with anger. “Would the magic man lie to us?”

  The girl’s words stung Karana. He rose, still holding the bird. He turned and walked away, with Brother Dog following. When he reached the lean-to that Mahnie was raising for the two of them, she ruffled the thick fur of the dog’s shoulder with one hand and reached out to Karana with the other.

  “Come,” she invited. “Rest beside me.”

  He refused the offer of her comforting arms, oblivious to her hurt expression as she turned away and began to rummage through their larder of traveling rations for something to please him. He sat beside her in silence, arms wrapped around his knees, as memories of the wanawut filled him.

  Yes, the magic man would lie. Yes. He has lied. And he was prepared to lie again. Karana felt his lies settle and harden within his chest as he gruffly waved aside an offering of food from Mahnie. She shrank back from him, her eyes full of hurt and confusion. “Why is my magic man angry with this woman?”

  “He is not angry!” he retorted sharply. He made no move to stop her as she hung her head and left him to brood. He was glad. He did not want her company. Mahnie tried too hard to make him happy. He did not deserve to be happy. He was no magic man. He was a liar. He looked down and slowly uncurled his fist. The little longspur lay dead in his hand.

  The days passed.

  If there was another wonderful valley such as the Place of Endless Meat, Torka and his people could not find it. They continued on, sleeping under lean-tos, camping only when their traveling rations were gone or when the weather was bad, which was often. The duration of their stay in any one place was determined by the amount of g
ame available, the weather, and Life Giver’s own migration.

  While the men hunted with Aar, the women and girls set snares and marveled at Lonit’s skill with a bola. It was a simple enough contrivance—four long, harmless-looking braids of thong were brought together at one end and secured by another neatly wrapped thong; two condor feathers attached to the united end lent stability in flight; four round, perfectly matched stones weighted the tips of each of the four loose ends—but in Lonit’s skilled hands, the bola took life! Now that she was strong and well again, even with baby Umak bundled and bound to her breast, she could whirl the hunting device in circles of deadly speed. When the thong found the prey, it snaked around the neck or limb of the hapless bird or animal.

  “Someday I would love to be able to use a bola like that,” confided Mahnie, striding out with Lonit to pick up a felled ptarmigan.

  “It is learned through practice. I would be proud to teach the woman of Karana! After all, our magic man is as a brother to me, and so you are my sister!”

  Mahnie looked up at the lovely, much taller woman. “I have often wished to have a sister, Woman of the West.” She paused, gathering courage. “And as your sister, I would ask why our brother hates me so.”

  Lonit should have been surprised by the question, but she was not. Karana troubled her. He was so sad, so moody, not the same person she had known and loved. He had been a wild, savage little boy, whom Torka and old Umak and she had discovered abandoned and surviving by his wits in a cave high on the Mountain of Power in a distant land. They had tamed the child and come to love him. He had matured into a brave, handsome, laughing youth, who had come to his manhood in the Corridor of Storms, in the arms of the mystic Sondahr.

  Lonit sighed. Sondahr. Perhaps Karana had not forgotten her after all? It was said that one never forgot a first love. She would never know, for Torka had been her only love, first and last and forever. It was not the same for Karana. Sondahr was not a woman that a man could forget.