Forbidden Land

by neetha Napew

  “No! No, Cheanah, please. Now Bili will dance ... for her son, yes?

  So Cheanah will not be angry with her son!”

  And so she danced, moving in ways that she had never moved for him before, and he smiled and trembled in the ecstasy of his release in her, wondering why he had ever thought that an unwilling Bili was more pleasurable than the woman who lay beneath him now.

  Violent, fitful storms continued to blow across the Forbidden Land, but they were no longer constant, and the savage bite of winter had left them: When snow fell, it was a softer substance; and when the sun rose, it stayed long enough in the sky to bring joy to Torka and his people.

  In the night, the wind beat a gentler rhythm. Lonit, Mahnie, and Eneela listened, fingers laced across their swollen bellies as they smiled the small, secretive smiles of mothers-to-be, for the rhythm of the wind was no sweeter than the promise of life that stirred within them.

  When the wolves and wild dogs howled in the darkness, Aar sat at the edge of the cave, his head cocked to one side, his one remaining ear up and twitching. The song of the dogs and wolves had changed. The dog sensed it long before Torka and his people did—but not before Karana and little Umak.

  Umak was the dog’s good friend now. “Aar listens to his brothers in the night,” he remarked.

  “Yes,” agreed the magic man, sitting next to the dog at the edge of the cave. He always spent his nights and the bulk of his days here, away from Mahnie, away from everyone, along with his thoughts and his worries, with only the company of the dog to ease his increasingly troubled mind. He could talk to Aar, and Aar asked nothing except that they maintain their closeness and unwavering bond of mutual affection. Karana scowled as Umak seated himself on the other side of the dog and slung a fur-clad arm over Aar’s broad shoulders.

  “Brother Dog wants to be with his true brothers and sisters instead of with his man pack,” said the boy. “He will soon go far away. A long time will pass before we see him again.”

  Karana’s scowl deepened. The child rarely asked questions; he always made statements, and this last one was particularly annoying. “You cannot know that,” he replied sternly. “And Aar is free to come and go as he chooses.”

  “He will go,” repeated the boy quietly.

  “Perhaps.” Karana was ill at ease with the idea. He could barely remember a time when he and Aar had not been together, nor could he imagine a time in which the great grizzled dog would not be at his side.

  “This boy will miss you while you are gone, Aar!” said little Umak, hugging the dog.

  Aar turned his head and painted little Umak’s face with a wet, sloppy lick. The boy licked him back and nestled close.

  Karana’s scowl deepened. Umak spoke to the dog as though the animal were a human brother fully capable of understanding his words—as Karana himself had always spoken, and old Umak before him. The scowl settled into a thoughtful frown, then disappeared entirely. He smiled. Old Umak would have liked to see his namesake and great-grandson sitting here with Aar. True, there was nothing of Torka or the old man in his face and form; the child looked like a miniature, masculine version of his mother. Nevertheless, he was Umak’s great-grandson, and Karana sensed a strong feeling of continuation in the moment.

  Continuation. His smile vanished. Behind him, deep within the cave, Mahnie slept warm and safe, his child within her. Never would there be a son for Karana. For Karana’s life spirit, there would be no continuing.

  “You are sad, Magic Man,” Umak observed.

  “Yes.”

  “My mother says that it is not a good thing for you to be sad so much.” The boy sat very straight, peering at the magic man from over the shoulder of the dog. “Brother Dog will soon go away, but he will come back to us.”

  “You should not speak with such certainty of things you cannot know, Umak.”

  “Brother Dog will come back!”

  Karana shook his head admonishingly. “He has not yet gone away.”

  “He will.” The boy sighed and blinked sleepily. “Can this boy stay here with Magic Man and Brother Dog until the sun comes up?”

  “Umak may stay.”

  The boy grinned happily as he settled himself back into the warmth of Aar’s side. “This boy is glad to call Karana Brother,” he admitted softly.

  The confidence touched the magic man. If only he were the boy’s true brother, Torka and Lonit’s true son! All would be well, then. He would lie happily in Mahnie’s arms and look forward to the birth of as many sons as she could bear.

  He fell asleep before dawn and dreamed terrible nightmares of another cave and of another boy ... of Torka’s son Manaravak .. . and awoke with a start, sweated and sickened by memories.

  Stars jeweled a moonless sky. Aar was gone. In the fold of Karana’s arm, Umak, smiling, slept like a baby. The magic man drew him close. Umak had been right about the dog’s intent to leave the cave. He had known that Aar was going to answer the call of wolves and wild dogs, when Karana, magic man of the band, had not. Indeed, the boy was the grandson of a spirit master!

  Karana peered down at him. Even in the near darkness, Umak closely resembled his mother. He was a beautiful boy. Karana felt a brother’s love for the boy. Now that he realized that they shared a similar gift, they would become closer. He could teach the child all that he had learned from old Umak and Sondahr and the shamans at the Great Gathering. When at last he was old and his spirit went to walk the wind forever, he might not die completely and forever, for Umak would remember his teachings and share them with future generations of magic men. Umak would be the closest thing to a son that Karana could ever hope to have. They would be brothers!

  Once again, it was the time of the coming of the caribou. For many days before the first animals were sighted returning to the wonderful valley, the earth trembled beneath the weight of their hooves, and the air was thick with the scent of them.

  “This is the first time of light in which Umak and Dak are old enough to stalk big game with their fathers,” Torka announced proudly. “They will learn from their fathers and be blooded by the life spirits of the great herds of the animal that has always been the favorite meat of Torka’s people.”

  “Caribou!”

  In unison, Umak and Dak named their prey. The carcasses of two small caribou lay motionless at their feet. The boys’ faces flushed with pride as their fellow hunters gathered around them and the fallen game.

  Both animals were stringy—one sickly, the other old-but neither Dak nor Umak found them anything less than magnificent as the wind sang the Song of First Kill and the hooves of the departing herd thundered in the distance under the stampede’s dust cloud, which now obscured the western horizon.

  Observing the kill site from the cave, the women and girls cheered while the adult hunters formed a circle around the boys. In their stalking cloaks of caribou skins, the men seemed larger than life. Indeed, they did not look like men at all but like wondrous spirit forms that were half man, half caribou: The time-cured heads of the dead reindeer like animals balanced atop their own, projecting forward over their faces, while the great, multi pointed curvilinear antlers branched up and out as though strange trees of twisted bone grew from the heads of each hunter.

  Umak looked up at them with open adoration. Soon now Dak and he would wear such antlered cloaks. Soon!

  He tried hard not to tremble visibly with anticipation as the hunters who had guided Dak and him to their first kill nodded with approval of their success. He drew in a deep breath. He was a hunter! It did not matter that he was small or that his spears were less than half the size of an adult’s.

  The boy frowned. The special moment was shadowed by his realization that Dak had brought down his caribou with one sure throw and had killed it with a second. It had taken all four of Umak’s slender, perfectly balanced spears to accomplish the same thing, and his animal had been the smaller. Had Torka noticed? Of course he had—everyone had noticed!

  No matter, thought the boy
defensively. Now that the deed was accomplished, he was confident he would do better next time. Dak was older! It was only natural that he was swifter and stronger. Umak was certain that he would catch up with him in time. After all, he was the son of the finest hunter of the band.

  “Now ...” said Torka, laying a hand on the shoulder of each boy. “Not only have you stalked game alongside your fathers in the winter dark, but you have both achieved first kill .. . and the first to make first kill in this new land!”

  It was a wondrous and intoxicating moment. The shadows flew from Umak’s mind and heart. Simu, Grek, and Karana had odd, happy looks of nostalgia upon their faces. The boy knew that they must be remembering their own first kills.

  “Praise now the life spirits of the game that, through the skill of these new hunters, will nourish the People! Praise now the life spirits of Umak and Dak and welcome them into the brotherhood of the band, according to the ways of our people.” And so it was done, with each adult male contributing some small portion of ceremony in the way that he remembered from his own first kill. This melding of custom brought them all closer than they had been before; from this day forth, the ritual that they performed would be the only ceremony.

  Torka instructed the boys to withdraw their spears from the slain caribou and to hand them up to their fathers. They obeyed with alacrity. As Torka removed the spearhead from the shaft that had struck Umak’s killing blow, Simu followed suit with Dak’s weapon. Simu watched closely as the headman broke Umak’s spears across his thigh and, still holding the spearhead that had inflicted the actual kill, threw them down.

  “These spears are cast away along with your childhood,” Torka told the boys solemnly. “But the spearhead that makes a man’s first kill of big game is to be kept always.” He held Umak’s spear reverently down to him on his upturned palm.

  As the boy took the stone projectile point into his hand, Simu nodded, his expression revealing that this ritual was familiar to him. Simu proudly handed Dak’s killing spearhead to him, then cracked the boy’s spears in half across his raised thigh and threw them aside. “Now you will make new spears,” he intoned. “The spears of men.”

  “And your next kills will be as those of hunters, responsible for the nourishment of the band.” Torka tried not to smile as he looked down at the boys.

  They hardly looked like men. Dak, whose age could be counted in the passing of six starving moons, was standing splay-legged with his narrow little boy’s chest thrust out. His round, baby-cheeked face was set into the pugnacious expression of a self-satisfied owl.

  Torka felt a stab of paternal tenderness. How much like his mother Umak looked, with his fine, straight, high bridged nose, widely set, deeply lidded eyes, highly placed and rounded cheeks, and dimples. Umak grinned up at his father. He revealed a space where he had just lost a baby tooth, but all of his remaining small, white, sharply pointed little teeth were displayed like those of ... Navahk.

  Torka gaped at Umak, no longer seeing Lonit, but the man who had raped her. His heart was suddenly so cold that he clenched his fists and jaws. All feelings of tenderness toward the boy vanished. He stared at his son as though at a stranger. Umak frowned at the sudden change in Torka. His little body tensed, waiting for his father’s expression of approval and pride to return.

  Karana spoke then, commanding the hunters’ attention. “From this day on, the females will look to Umak and Dak for sustenance.”

  “And in starving times,” added Grek somberly, “the old and the sick will have no lives at all if Dak and Umak do not choose to share their youth and strength with them.”

  Torka saw the boys’ eyes grow wide as they met the stern, steady gaze of the old hunter. Grek’s words had made an impact on them. With Umak no longer smiling, the boy had the look of his mother again.

  What a handsome, thoughtful child he is, Torka reminded himself. What sort of a father am I to stand aloof from him, especially at such a time as this?

  The boys did not flinch against the responsibility that Grek had just handed to them. They were eager to take it on.

  Torka felt a momentary pang of pity for them. A man’s life is hard, little hunters. Do not be so greedy for it.

  Umak’s eyes sought Torka’s approval again. He gave it with a nod and a smile. The boy beamed up at him.

  “Now we must honor the spirit of the game,” he said, and knelt to instruct the boys in the way that they must use their spearheads to slit their kills from throat to belly.

  Blood spurted, entrails oozed and steamed. The hunters ate of the heart, liver, and kidneys of each animal, for these were the blood meats, and all knew that the spirit of the animal had drawn its life from these mysterious organs.

  “Now that life is in you and in us,” Karana told the boys. “The hunters of this band are united in the blood of the hunt.”

  The magic man dipped his fingers into the body cavities of the caribou and then reached to color each boy’s forehead lavishly with blood.

  A deep tide of sadness and emptiness swept through Torka. Manaravak should be here now.

  His longing for his lost son was so intense that he winced when the magic man touched the blood of the caribou to his forehead.

  “You are headman,” said Karana. “It is for you to place the skins.”

  Torka nodded. The boys watched, enthralled, as he deftly fleshed and lifted the bloodied hides from the caribou, leaving the antlered heads and hooved limbs intact.

  “From this day forth, in the skin of their kill shall Dak and Umak stalk the caribou,” said Torka as he placed the hides over the backs and heads of the new hunters.

  Both boys staggered against the unexpected weight.

  “Behold the new hunters of this band!” proclaimed Karana.

  “Aieeeh!” exclaimed the others in unison, and circled the two drooping, massively antlered little figures in a hand slapping, foot-stomping dance of celebration.

  From the cave, the claps and song of the women and girls rode the wind to join the sounds of the men. Torka turned back, his eyes scanning the distance and lifting to the hills and the highlands beyond. He could see the cave and the little figures of the women and girls. Lonit stood taller than the others in her pale, fringed, and shell beaded elks king dress, with her long, plaited black hair blowing back over her shoulders. She was not singing or dancing. Her arms were raised. In thanksgiving to the forces of Creation for the successful hunt of her firstborn son? Of course. Torka knew she shared his pride in Umak’s achievement. And yet she also shared his grief. As the wind brought the song of the women down from the hills, he spoke the name of his lost son aloud with terrible longing. “Manaravak ...”

  The other hunters did not hear him—they were too busy dancing, too busy singing. Dak, bent nearly double under the weight of his caribou skin, was strutting boldly in Simu’s shadow; theirs was a rowdy, raucous song, full of laughter and love.

  But beneath the heavy, antlered head of the caribou that he had killed, little Umak had heard him. The blood of the caribou, seeping from the animal’s mutilated throat, trickled from the back of its severed jaw and ran into Umak’s eyes and mouth, making him look as though he were crying tears of blood. Torka saw and was instantly repentant, for surely he had not meant to cloud Umak’s joy by speaking his dead brother’s name aloud.

  “Come,” he said, extending a conciliatory hand to the boy. “We must celebrate your kill!”

  Umak’s expression remained tight as he backhanded the blood of the caribou from his face but inadvertently smeared it. “My brother, Manaravak, is dead, but he would have made a better kill than Umak! Manaravak would have made Torka proud!”

  “No!” cried Torka, taking a step toward the boy, but it was no use. With a sob of remorse, Umak turned and ran away.

  The boy did not go far. The weight of the caribou skin slowed his steps. Besides, he really did not want to run away. He was glad when Torka caught up with him and insisted that he rejoin the others in celebration of first
kill.

  “Come, my son! The dance and song is in your honor.”

  “Dak has made a better kill than Umak.”

  “He is older, stronger. But Umak is my son. Torka’s pride is in him.”

  The words were more welcome than the first rays of sunlight at the end of the time of long dark. Umak had no desire to challenge them.

  A daughter was born to Eneela under the Moon of River Ice Breaking. Simu accepted the tiny girl and named her Larani in honor of a long-dead sister. The people rejoiced, and the children were delighted with the newest member of their band.

  But soon the Moon of River Ice Breaking set beyond the distant ranges. The nights grew short, and days grew noticeably longer. The Moon of the Green Grass Growing rose full and high. The great tusker Life Giver walked with his children in the wonderful valley and migratory birds returned to the Forbidden Land. Although the people rejoiced in the coming of summer, Karana did not share their happiness.

  They saw him often, a solitary figure silhouetted against the fading light of day, arms raised skyward, head back, voice lifted. Sometimes he sang all night. Wolves and wild dogs answered him, but if Aar was with him, the people could not tell.

  Then, on a day that was shadowed by swans winging softly across the sky, another girl-child was born to Lonit. They named the girl Swan, to honor the life spirit of the birds that had flown overhead at the time of her birth.

  “Swan?” Umak tested the name on his tongue, not at all sure that he liked it. “Do you want a long-necked girl with wings and feathers?”

  Torka laughed. “No, we want a girl as beautiful and loyal as that fine bird, for when it mates—like Torka and Lonit—the swan mates always and forever.”

  Then, on a cloudless dawn in which mammoths called to one another from the spruce groves at the far side of the wonderful valley, Mahnie went into labor. Her baby was born as quickly and easily as the morning. As the men, women, and children of the band rejoiced at the perfection of Karana’s firstborn child, Torka left the cave in search of the young man.