by neetha Napew
The beast was there, just ahead, standing over the body of the child’s mother. With all but his head and hands hidden within the white skins of caribou, he seemed to be a creature composed of light, so beautiful that, for a moment, the child was almost drawn out of hiding.
Then the beast smiled, and the little one saw his ugliness—a hideous twisting of his naked face as he drew a stone from a double-sided length of tree bark that he carried attached to a thong wrapped around his midsection. The child stared, squinting through shadows as it tried to get a better view without being seen. The stone was black, shaped like a willow leaf, and as shiny as river ice after a sudden freeze. It was similar to the stone that had been embedded in its mother’s chest; the stone that now lay at the feet of the beast beside the motionless body.
The child sucked at the gash that the stone had made in its own palm. The stones of the beast were sharp. The child did not like them or the way the beast was looking at its mother. He was kneeling now, and poking. Suddenly the child nearly cried aloud, and only the pure, raw instinct for survival kept the little one from leaping out of. hiding in order to stay the beast’s hand.
In the dim, filtered light at the bottom of the gorge, Navahk lay his head upon the corpse. He could hear his own heart beating, feel his blood throbbing as his nightmares dissolved and he realized that the dead thing was no spirit. She was of flesh, bone, and blood, animal and human all at once. And still warm. His hand lay open upon her chest, a large island of bare, bloodstained flesh exposing now-flaccid breasts and a portion of massive rib cage. The rest was furred, as gray as the skin, wolf-toned, and as sleek, with a short, thick nap underlying the longer, stiffer guard hairs.
Navahk stared down at the creature, appalled by her ugliness and fascinated by the power that now lay stilled forever within her extraordinary musculature. If only such physical power were his! He would not need magic to manipulate the lives of men.
He looked up through the gloom, along the wall of the gorge to where his fellow hunters stood peering down at him in awe and terror. His smiled intensified. They shall have their magic now!
Working quickly, he skinned the corpse, leaving its hands and head attached. The work excited him. Pausing briefly, he looked for Supnah’s head and arm. Neither was to be seen. He was glad. His brother’s soul was doomed to wander the spirit world forever, but Navahk had no fear of him. Dead or alive, Supnah’s gentle, guileless spirit would never be a threat to such as Navahk.
Standing, the magic man donned the skin of the creature as though it were a robe of honor taken in a particularly dangerous and difficult hunt. Balancing her heavy head atop his own, wrapping her gory arms around his neck and folding them across his chest in a grotesque embrace, Navahk danced in her skin and felt her power rising within him, as sweet and heady as blood sucked from the wound of a living beast.
Navahk’s eyes glittered at the idea. Bending, he savagely tore open the chest of the mutilated corpse, ripped out its heart with his bare hands, then consumed it, gnawing and gulping like a wolf. No man would contest his right to become headman now. He was Navahk, the magic man who dared to kill a wind spirit and dance in its skin! The mystical force of the wanawut was in him now. No man would ever stand against his will again.
Suddenly aware of being watched from within the tangled shadows of the stunted grove surrounding the little clearing in which he danced, Navahk stopped.
He saw the child—a hairy, heavy-featured, misshapen thing as ugly as its parent. Nevertheless, its eyes were as rarely beautiful as the softest gray of the clouds—but clear, without threat. Yet they cut Navahk to his soul as he stood in the skin of its mother as though he, and not the creature, were mute and unintelligent. But he knew in that moment that somehow the creature’s intelligence was as fully advanced as his own; and in its grotesque, half humanness, he had glimpsed a reflection of himself.
For a long time after the beast had wheeled and fled from the gorge in the skin of its mother, the child barely moved, barely breathed. Around it the world seemed to be holding its breath, too, as though in sympathy with the plight of one of its creatures.
Bereft and stunned by what it had witnessed, the child slowly returned to what was left of its mother. Mutely it mourned. The image of the beast was seared into its brain. Hatred for all beasts of its kind burned within its heart. For a long time it sat, moaning softly.
After a while hunger caused the child to stir and look at the arm and head of the beast, which it instinctively had taken from its mother’s side before the beast in white had come into the gorge. Man meat was good; its mother had taught it that man meat was the best. Weak with exhaustion, the child began to gnaw upon the meat that its mother had provided at such great cost.
Darkness filled the gorge. The wind stirred softly. The child slept and dreamed terrible dreams, then awoke, thinking of the beast in the skins of winter-killed caribou .. . thinking of how someday it would hunt him and dance in his skin as he now danced in the skin of its mother.
In the shadow of the Mountains That Walk, Torka and Karana stalked antelope with the dog Aar. They moved slowly, hunched forward, concealed by the deep, sweet grass of spring. The land sloped upward beneath their feet. Everywhere was the smell of grass and wind and open, sunlit spaces. They paused at the top of a knoll and lay on their bellies in the shoulder-high grass, so content with the moment that they decided to savor it before going on.
“It is good,” said the youth, still breathing hard from the long, unbroken trek out of the valley in which their encampment lay. “It is good,” affirmed the man as his hand parted the long, tender stalks of grass and his eyes scanned the land that lay before them. It was like no other. Even now, three years after entering it, Torka remained awed and amazed by it. Neither valley nor plain, it was a twenty-mile-wide swath of undulating tundral steppe that ran southeastward for uncounted distances between towering mountain ranges. On either side of the river of grass, the Mountains That Walk, unlike other mountains, were not the exposed bones of Mother Below. They lay atop those bones, clothing them in ice that stood some two miles high.
The grassland rolled away before them, pooled here and there with tundral lakes, which sparkled silver in the sun, and veined with the meandering rivers of meltwater cascading out of the surrounding, glacier-buried ranges. Westward the land rose into high hills, which led off into familiar country where dark fingers of shadow spilled out of canyons. Hardy, weather-stunted spruce forests grew there, and a scabrous, heavy-shouldered peak devoid of ice stood tall against the sky. Smoke rose from its summit as though, somehow, a band of men were camped within and building ill-made fires.
Neither Torka nor Karana paid heed to the lambent smoke that clouded the distant volcano. They had passed within its sulfurous-smelling shadow on their way into the new land, when they first had left the protection of Supnah’s band. The volcano had been an object of fear and wonder then, but no more. Its plume was no longer remarkable; they found it no more threatening than fair-weather summer clouds drifting before the sun.
“Look,” whispered Karana, his strong, sun-browned hand pointing off through the grass. “Can there be so many?”
Torka gestured the youth to silence; but beside him even the dog seemed incredulous as it stared straight ahead, salivating, its body tense, its blue eyes fixed and dilated in its black-masked face.
Torka’s broad, powerful hand flexed about the bone haft of his spear. He counted the various species that grazed ahead of him and thought: For three passings of the time of light this man has hunted in this land, and still the game comes, always walking eastward into the face of the rising sun, vanishing into it at the beginning of the time of the long dark and leaving my people with meat to feast upon beneath the rising of the starving moon. And now the time of light has come again. Again the cycle begins. And again this man wonders how a land so rich with game could have been forbidden.
The question troubled him, but only for a moment. A panorama of life spread b
efore him. Bison, black maned and long horned, huffed and bellowed and pawed up the fragile skin of the tundra, cropping the grass in a vast, dark line of life the size of which Torka had not seen since he was a boy hunting the broad hills of the high Arctic with his grandfather. They were miles away, but he could see the black blur of them upon the horizon, feel their movement in the earth, and smell their good, rich, acrid stink mixing with the smells of other animals.
Close to the western hills a moose stood shoulder deep within a tundral pool, its head underwater as it browsed upon the bottom. Nearer to the knoll, antelope were grazing, and Torka could see a small herd of elk, antlers furred with velvet, high stepping across a broad stretch of tussock. Nearby, a group of three camels, tall-humped and as irritable as always, observed the elk and brayed with the coughing, hacking, phlegmy sound that old men make after too many years of breathing winter smokes. It was a sound designed to drive the elk away; when it did not, the camels hacked more loudly than before and scattered, indignant.
Karana supressed a laugh. When Torka looked at him, the youth smiled, and Torka smiled back. To share in the sighting and observation of game was a good thing, as was the love shared by this man and the youth.
The dog sat up and cocked its head. Karana reached out and slung an arm around the neck of the animal, drawing it close with rough and well-appreciated affection. Torka looked across the land. He saw a ring of musk oxen on a not-too-distant rise and knew that if the shaggy beasts formed a circle, there must be wolves about, or lions.
Or bears, he thought, recalling the enormous paw prints that he and the boy had seen earlier in the day while crossing one of the refugium’s innumerable outwash streams. Once again he was troubled by his thoughts. He and Karana had been only a short distance from their encampment when they had sighted the bear tracks.
For three summers they had lived in that camp, which lay within a wide, wind-protected valley he and Karana had discovered while pursuing a gut-wounded goat into one of the many canyons that cut deeply into the glacier-smothered ranges. Almost perfectly circular, its high, stony hills stood between the valley floor and the surrounding ice-capped mountains. Sweet, warm springs bubbled from the earth, and the pools remained liquid even during the coldest days of winter. It had proved a perfect refuge from the nearly incessant wind that ripped across the game-rich grasslands upon which he and the boy did most of their hunting.
Finding the paw prints of the great, short-faced bear so close to the entrance to the valley had set him on edge, for no other predator was as agile, aggressive, or unpredictably dangerous. The short-faced bear was almost exclusively a meat eater. When Torka had knelt and measured the paw prints, he had felt a terrible hollow expand within his belly. Only because the prints had been leading away from the valley had he continued on with Karana instead of turning back to make certain it was not on the scent of the encampment.
“Torka ...”
Karana’s whisper drew him back to the present.
“You still worry about the great bear?”
It was not unusual for the youth to know his thoughts. He nodded. “It is so.”
“The entrance to the valley is staked against predators. If the great one walks there, he will turn back or blunder into the pit trap that we have dug and die upon the sharpened stakes within it. He will be food for us. It would be a good thing. Bear meat is fat. It gives much oil. We would have plenty of tallow for our lamps in the winter dark.”
The boy was right. Nevertheless, the concern stayed on Torka’s face.
Karana shook his head. “Torka worries too much these days. All is good in this land.”
“Yet we are alone—one man, a boy, three women, a child, and a suckling.”
“Karana is not a boy! Karana will soon have seen the passing of fourteen summers. He is a man! Torka does not hunt alone!”
“No, but Torka does worry. When we walked from Supnah’s band, it was in this man’s heart that we would soon find a new band—a better band—but not once has this man seen a sign that even a solitary hunter has ever passed this way.”
“We are a band. We need no others. We have taught the women well. Aliga is good with a spear. Lonit is better, and deadly with her bola.”
“And lana is hopeless with either.”
“lana does not need her spear. We will hunt for her and protect her.”
“And if something should happen to one or both of us?”
Karana shook his head and smiled, then leaped to his feet, spear braced and nocked to his spear hurler. “Torka must stop worrying! Torka has done the right thing by leading his people into this new land! Look! There is so much game waiting to be taken, the spirits will be offended if we sit here talking like a pair of fat old men! Come! A blind man could make a kill this day!”
On the horizon the plume of smoke that rose from the distant volcano thickened visibly. The moose raised its head from the tundral pool, and its ears swiveled as it nickered loudly. Then, with a wheeze, it broke into a run, its nose and antlers dripping moss and water as it disappeared into a grove of scrub spruce and alder. Birds flew up and wheeled screaming overhead, while foxes, lynx, wolves, and lions ran with squirrels and hares, voles and lemmings, and made no attempt to catch and eat them.
But Torka and Karana did not notice the odd behavior of prey and predator, nor did they pay heed to Aar as the dog frantically attempted to gain their attention by pulling at the fringes of their leggings. In frustration they kicked out at him, and the dog, despairing, whined and circled and hunkered close to the ground, yapping like a disoriented pup.
The attention of the hunters was focused on the frightened herd of antelope that skittered past them, circling and leaping and trampling the high grasses, making pathetic bleats, oblivious to the man and boy who had not even had a chance to position themselves downwind before each of them had made a kill.
Amazed, Torka and Karana whooped with pleasure, raising and shaking their bloodied spears .. . until Aar leaped with the power of a saber-toothed cat and roared not like a dog but like a lion. With tail tucked, ears back, teeth bared, and every hair along his shoulders and spine standing on end, Aar flung himself past the hunters as they whirled to see the great, short-faced bear that had emerged from nowhere to charge them out of the silken camouflage of the grasses.
“I tell you, this woman does not like the look or the feel of it. It is too quiet, much too quiet, except for the fish in the weir. Even from here you can see them jumping, as though trying to leap from the pool and escape. You would think we were standing over them with a net, ready to scoop them up for dinner! And have you ever seen the dogs behave like this?”
Lonit tried to make light of Aliga’s words, but the tattooed woman was right: No birds sang. No insects hummed. The ground shivered beneath her feet. The water in the hot springs lapped at the embankment of the pools, bleeding quietly into the surrounding earth. The lashings of the pit huts rubbed against the thongs that held them fast, and the huts themselves, as well as the many drying frames upon which meat and skins were stretched to cure, creaked and chafed against their trembling frames.
It was as though a strong wind was blowing through the camp, but there was no wind. The air seemed suddenly heavy, and the dogs whined and sniffed around in directionless confusion. Sister Dog had disappeared, carrying two of her newest litter of pups, with the rest trotting after her, tails up, milk bellies half dragging on the ground. Aliga supported the distention of her advanced pregnancy with her hands, fingers laced protectively beneath it, as she rose with great effort from where she had been sitting outside the main pit hut, cracking marrow bones.
Lonit looked at her and tried not to betray her own trepidation. It was not easy to do, since she had already reached for a spear with one hand and held her bola at the ready in the other. Aliga’s advanced pregnancy made Lonit feel increasingly protective toward her. The tattooed woman wanted this child desperately, not only because she longed for Torka, who lay with her only when h
e sensed that she needed reassurance that she was his woman in every way. She wanted this baby because she had been so sure that she was barren. Lonit had borne only daughters to Torka—first Summer Moon, and then, in the last time of the long dark, precious, plump little Demmi, who had been named for Torka’s long-dead mother—and Aliga wanted to be the first to bear a son to Torka, in gratitude to him for having taken her to his fire circle when no other man would have her. And she wanted it for herself, because she had never borne a child, and because she could not forget that, among the People, it was said that a woman who has never brought forth life can never truly call herself a woman.
“Look, the dogs are quieting,” Lonit said, relaxing a little. The wind was rising again. The moment of unnatural stillness was passing. From within the shadowed interior of the main pit hut, little Demmi’s baby laughter bubbled like a warm spring as lana resumed a happy song.
Summer Moon’s face appeared at the door flap, a little hand holding the intricately seamed hide aside. “This girl cannot nap! Mother Below make belch!”
The little one’s statement brought a smile to Lonit’s lips. The child saw it and dimpled, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she ambled naked from the pit hut to seek comfort in her mother’s arms. Lonit lifted her firstborn and held her tightly, glad that the strange moment had passed. Perhaps she had imagined it. The earth could not move. Yet she could have sworn that it had shifted beneath her feet. No. It could not have been. The dogs were relaxed now, birds were peeping from the willow grove behind the pools, and the blackflies were back.
Summer Moon winced and began to cry as one of them pierced her tender skin. Lonit slapped it away, and to Aliga’s consternation, rather than going to dress the little one, Lonit put down her weapons and began to take off her own clothes.
“Come,” she said to the tattooed woman. “Join us in the pools. The day is warm, and the steaming water will keep away the curse of the biting flies.”