Forbidden Land

by neetha Napew

  Karana scowled. “I do not worry.”

  “You always worry .. . but not enough about yourself to cover your own back, it seems.”

  Karana felt cornered, ill at ease. “I am a magic man. The people expect me to worry. What are you doing here?”

  “For much time have you been away from the cave. Mahnie worries, and Wallah’s bones portend another storm. Summer Moon longs for you to share her joy in the good camp to which your visions of the wonderful valley have brought her people.”

  “You have come out alone across the land at the request of females?”

  “I have come out alone across the land because I am concerned about my son. You have been brooding too much, Karana—unless, of course, the Seeing wind has given you cause to be so preoccupied .. . and if this is so, then I think that you had better share the cause of your preoccupation with me.”

  “No!”

  “Is that a refusal or a denial?”

  Karana sucked in his breath; he had forgotten how easily Torka read his moods. “I make the songs for the People, and tell the stories of the People, and dance the dances with the People! What more must I do for them? I must take time to commune with the spirits. The responsibilities of a shaman are many! And since when is it wrong for a man to be concerned about his woman when she is with child?” “It is not wrong. All the songs and dances and storytelling will not ease the burdens of Mahnie’s pregnancy more than a simple smile and the open affection of her man.”

  “When the baby is born to us ... when I see with my own eyes that all is well, then I will smile.”

  If it is a female child, he added in his own mind. For if it is a male, after I have-killed it, I do not think that I will ever smile again.

  Winter passed slowly.

  With provisions stacked high all along the walls, the women and girls passed the hours sewing new garments from the many skins and yards of sinew thread that they had prepared during the time of light. The men had no real need to hunt, so when the moon bathed the world in blue light and dire wolves and wild dogs sang the songs of the pack and of the hunt, the men of the band listened and sighed against boredom.

  “When do you think we will find bison in this good valley?” asked Grek. “Perhaps a good, fat hump steak would make my Wallah feel better, yes? Does Magic Man think that we will find bison soon?”

  “Perhaps .. . yes ...” replied Karana in the practiced tone of a seer.

  But after the next series of storms, as Karana walked the valley’s eastern edge with Brother Dog, he came upon bison sign and followed it to discover a half-grown calf that had become separated from a small herd that browsed the snow-covered tundral steppe only a few miles distant. The magic man returned to the cave at once, and in no more time than was necessary to gather up his spears and spear hurlers, Grek was off, with Karana leading the way and Torka and Simu following close. While the magic man stood aside, Grek made the kill before the others caught up with him.

  “Not bad for an old man, yes?” he proclaimed, and after cutting out the tongue and two huge slabs of hump meat, he left them to take what they would of the animal as he ran practically all the way back to the cave in his eagerness to share his treasures with Wallah.

  When Grek backhanded the weather baffle to stand before his woman, his happiness was quashed by Wallah’s wan smile. She seemed to have lost her appetite along with her leg, and during the past moons, she was noticeably shrinking within the skin of the bear that had maimed her. Her wound was healing. The massive, crusted scab that had formed over it was gradually peeling away to reveal new and tender scar tissue. Nevertheless, Grek knew that she was still in constant pain.

  “Hump steaks, woman! And bison tongue!” he announced. “To make my Wallah feel better in the winter dark!”

  “This woman feels well enough!” she protested, and made a good effort to appear enthused as he knelt before her.

  She was seated on her bed furs, stitching delicate feather trim onto the baby carrier that she was making for Mahnie. Her once-corpulent body looked small and wan. Grek pretended not to notice. He took up his eating knife from in front of the large concave tallow lamp that he had carved for her years before out of an elongated green stone that had caught her eye. It had been a portion of her bride price.

  Well paid, he thought, reminiscing how it had been between them in those long-gone days and marveling at how many years had passed between this moment and the time of the making of that lamp. An old, pain-ravaged woman sat across from him, and yet she was still Wallah, as he was still Grek. He looked down and ground his teeth. In his heart and bones and along the smooth, timeworn edges of his molars he knew that a lifetime had passed. Behind her, the other women were raising life out of the well-banked main cooking fire. The children were running around it, singing the songs in praise of meat that Karana had taught them. It was a good sound, and it cheered him a little as he thought that soon his first grandchild would be joining them in their games and songs.

  “This is a good camp for us,” he said, slicing a ribbon of meat and handing it to Wallah.

  “A good camp,” she agreed, accepting the meat and eating it, making a show of her enjoyment.

  Grek watched her and was not heartened. He could tell that she was forcing herself to eat because to do otherwise would make him unhappy. She did not ask him for a second portion, and when he handed one to her, she waved it away, and sighed apologetically. “Perhaps later I will be hungrier. Now Grek should eat. Please. It will make Wallah happy.” “Later,” he said. “When the others return and Wallah joins them at their feast, Grek will eat then.”

  And so he did.

  But much later, when the feasting was over and the people of his band slept, he lay naked beside Wallah beneath their bed skins. He enjoyed the warm privacy of their little fur-walled space inside the communal winter hut, but he worried as he stroked her back, as he often did, and felt how thin she was. What had happened to the big, broad, fleshy body that had once melded so perfectly to his?

  “You must eat more. You are becoming a skinny woman,” he told her.

  “Hmmph! There is no pleasing some people! Out of your own mouth—and not so long ago—you were complaining that I was a fat woman ... as fat as a rodent ready to go to ground for the winter!” “It is winter,” he reminded her gently. “In truth her fat was indeed sweet to this man, and he would have it on her bones again!”

  “Along with her leg, no doubt.”

  Her bitterness hurt him; it was a thing that he could neither soothe nor wish away, no matter how hard he tried, so he hugged her tightly, and careful not to rouse pain from her injury, he kissed the dry, narrow nape of a neck that had once been sweet and moist with the well padded flesh of a woman who loved to eat. “Grek did not place five spears, a stone lamp, and twelve bison hides before the pit hut of your father in exchange for a leg! These things were given for a woman ... a woman named Wallah.”

  “A lifo-legged woman named Wallah.” Her whisper was thick with tears.

  He sat up and moved so that he was facing her beneath their bed furs, holding her old tear-streaked, pain-worn face in his hands. “A bold-eyed, broad-bottomed, big bosomed woman named Wallah.” His hands stroked downward, caressed her breasts as his mouth found hers and tenderly kissed her. “What is a leg? When Grek still has his woman .. . his bold, bear-chasing woman! His Wallah!”

  She sobbed softly and turned her face down, away from his kisses. “I am old and tired and so full of pain .. . and without a leg.”

  “We are old together, woman! Not many are lucky to say this, yes? Old and sharing a good camp, with a daughter swelling with life that will soon bring joy to us! And you still have your leg! There, in its elks king bag. A part of you still, but not the best part. That is here .. . this.” His hand rested between her breasts, over her heart. “My bold woman. My bear-hearted woman. My Wallah! You must eat and be strong again, if not for yourself, then for our Mahnie. She will need you when her time comes, and her ba
by will not be happy without a grandmother .. . and ...” He paused and shook his head, then laid it down over her heart lest she see the tears that now filled his eyes. “No, my woman. Not for Mahnie, nor for her baby, but for this man.

  Because without his Wallah, Grek will have no heart to live at all!”

  Change.

  The people began to feel it happening long before the first wash of color began briefly to soften the darkness along the eastern horizon at that hour that should have been called dawn.

  “Look, Father Mine! I think it is morning!” cried Demmi in delight.

  And it was morning: a brief, lingering, dawn-gold promise of a sunrise that never came, of a day that was not quite born before the dark came down again.

  “Between the storms there is now light in the sky, Father. When next you go to hunt with the others, will Dak and this boy Umak walk at your side?”

  “Yes,” agreed Torka when Simu had nodded in unspoken affirmation. “It is time.”

  “Yes, it is time,” Lonit agreed after a moment.

  “Make the songs for the coming day, Magic Man! For this girl longs for the return of lasting light!” Summer Moon implored.

  Karana obliged her, and soon, after so many dawns that never quite yielded to sunrise, the sun showed itself above the peaks of the eastern range and the people gathered at the edge of the cave to rejoice in the days of light that were to follow.

  The wind was beginning to gust with the first stirrings of morning; but because it was the Month of the Starving Moon, it was still dark, and stars pricked a sky that showed no light except along the far eastern horizon. In this restless, fetal hour, Zhoonali glared up at her son and took hold of the fringes of Cheanah’s sleeve. “Wait!” she whispered.

  Cheanah paused just outside his new, larger pit hut. It was an impressive shelter, fit for the most commanding of headmen. The tusks and four of the ribs of the old, mired bull mammoth braced the vaulted ceiling, and the shaggy hide of the beast formed its outer covering.

  With the scowling condescension of a man who had grown comfortable—and more than a little careless—with command, Cheanah turned and looked down at his mother. “You are up even earlier than usual, my mother. What is it?”

  “The man need is on you again? Not even the great bear spirit is in rut all the time, Cheanah! The men of the band grow tired of rolling over in the winter dark so that you can ride their women.” The starlight shone like flecks of falling snow within the darkness of his narrowed eyes. “Go back to your bed furs, my mother. You have forgotten how it is with young men and women.”

  “Beware, Cheanah. Ekoh resents your preference for his woman. You must not abuse his generosity. And you must ease the fears that trouble your people.”

  He sighed. This was not the first time that she had come to him with this demand. “This is a good camp. My people want for nothing.”

  “No, they do not want. This is a good camp—so good, in fact, that your people wonder just how long the goodness can last! You have promised to kill the white lion but have failed to do so. Find the lion. Kill it. Skin it and hang its head from—“

  “I would if I could.” He sighed. “I have failed to find any sign of it since it disappeared into the foothills along with the wanawut and its cubs.”

  “You should not have boasted that you would kill it.”

  “Perhaps not. But one more skin in a camp full of prime pelts, what can it matter?”

  “The skin means nothing. It is the word of Cheanah that counts.”

  “My word--? Byagh!” he sputtered, and waved her away. “The white lion will return to the northern edge of the marsh country with the sun. When it comes, I will hunt and kill it. And when I do, the people will know that not only Torka walks this world in the skin of lions ... if, in fact, Torka still walks this world at all!”

  Zhoonali watched him stride across the camp and disappear into the pit hut of Ekoh and his woman, Bili. She frowned, greatly disturbed. In this harsh, unstable season, when men were vulnerable to their fears, hardheaded headmen who would not heed them were the most vulnerable of all.

  The sound of a hide weather baffle being slapped aside drew her eyes across the camp. Ekoh emerged stark naked from his hut and, dragging one of his bed furs, stood glaring up at the sky. The lean, usually mild-natured hunter clenched his fists, pulled his furs up around his shoulders, and, muttering furiously to himself, stalked off a few paces to the hut of Ram, his closest hunting companion, before turning and ejecting a stream of urine in the direction of his own pit hut.

  Cheanah has won the enmity of that man, Zhoonali thought.

  She wondered if Ekoh harbored second thoughts about not following Torka into the Forbidden Land. Ekoh had admired Man of the West. His woman, Bili, had mourned for many days over the absence of her sister, Eneela, woman of Simu; but Ekoh was a practical man. He treasured his young woman, mother of his son, Seteena, and would not risk them to the unknown.

  Zhoonali sighed. Of all the women in this camp, why did Cheanah repeatedly single out Bili? He disliked the young woman. Furthermore, Bili had never made a secret of the fact that lying beneath Cheanah was something that she found unappealing.

  “Dance!” Cheanah demanded.

  “Choose another partner,” Bili suggested as she strained against the press of his body.

  He was naked over her, moving on her, mouthing her. “Dance!” he commanded again, ferociously, his command intensified by the strength of his hands as they worked her buttocks, forced her wide as the driving pressure of his man bone buried itself so deep that Bili gasped against the massive thrust of his invasion. “Come, you know you want it. Who else can ram so deep?”

  She bit her lower lip as she fought against him.

  “Move!” he shouted, biting her neck in frustration with her lack of response.

  “Go away, Cheanah,” she grunted, pushing at his shoulders, twisting her hips—not to please him but to be free of him.

  He moved back, suddenly pulling out, and exhaled with satisfaction when he heard her gasp with surprise and pain. He took her breasts in his hands and began to manipulate them, working her nipples between his thumbs and index fingers. “If you can spread yourself for Ekoh, then you can spread yourself for me.”

  “Ekoh is my man! And you come too often!”

  “I am your headman. Why do you not let yourself take pleasure in Cheanah? Who else has breasts like these? They are like your sister Eneela’s, eh? But she is gone, into the Forbidden Land with her fine, big breasts made for babies and for men to suck. But it is good that she is gone, for Torka would not have shared his women. Here, now. Let me share the woman of Ekoh. Yes, like this, yes ...”

  He was mouthing her breasts. Again she gasped. When Ekoh did this, it set fire to her loins. It made her arch and open to him with sighs of delight. But Cheanah was not merely mouthing—he was not even kissing—he was suckling her, as an infant would suck, and at the same time fingering deep between her thighs, not to arouse her for her own sake as well as for his, but to test for readiness as he might have fingered roasting meat to see if it was hot enough for his tastes.

  Bili was revolted by him. Cheanah demanded too much too often, and with absolutely no finesse at all.

  “No!” she hissed, desperately trying to be free of him. But it was no use. He was too much for her. Briefly, she cursed Ekoh for yielding her body to Cheanah so easily. But she knew that it was not easy for her man. It was not easy at all.

  Her open resistance was pure instigation to Cheanah. It was what he came for, what he never failed to arouse in her, and what excited him most about her. None of the other females in the band could be counted on to fight him. Tradition demanded that they yield. Tradition honored their men when their headman asked for them. He laughed, low and deep. How stupid women were. If only Bili knew why he came to ease his need in her, she would not resist; she would dance and sigh and open herself to him. Once she did, all of the pleasure of the hunt would be gone for him.<
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  “Go ...” she implored, anger spicing her voice.

  “Soon ...” He gripped her breasts, moved now to do that which always offended her and caused her to flail against him like a netted fish. He was a big man. Beneath the bed furs, he knew that he must look like a bear curling over a fawn as, gripping her arms and holding her limbs fast with his own, he bent to browse deep between her thighs, to send his tongue deep, probing, drawing the sweet taste of woman into his mouth until Something hurled itself against his lower back, growling and snarling. “Leave my mother alone!”

  The blows of the boy Seteena were dulled by the thickness of the bed furs. One backward swipe of Cheanah’s arm was enough to send the youngster flying. He turned, saw the boy sprawled across a collapsed pile of extra bed skins; close by, the three-year-old daughter of Bili and Ekoh was crying in distress.

  Cheanah snarled in annoyance. “Get out,” he ordered the boy. “Take your sister to one of the other pit huts. You dishonor your father by raising your hand against one whom he has welcomed into his hut and into his woman.”

  The boy’s head went up. His nostrils flared. There was fire in his eyes as he looked to his mother.

  “Go,” she told him before he could speak, and when Cheanah looked down at her, he was gratified to see that she was terrified of what might happen to her only son as just punishment for his attack against the headman. “Take your sister to the hut of Ram. Your father will be there.”

  The boy, openly resentful, did as he was told.

  Cheanah watched him pull on his boots and clothes and gather up his sister. He was small for his age. For a moment longer than was necessary, the boy stood with his back to the door flap, glaring at Bili.

  When he was gone, Cheanah smiled and returned his attention to the woman beneath him. “Now,” he slurred. “Where were we?”

  “You will not hurt him? .. . He did not mean to—“

  “It takes a brave boy to stand in defense of his mother. But it is a bad thing for a boy to offend an elder. He will have to be punished .. perhaps put out of the band—“