Corridor of Storms

by neetha Napew

  She stared at his organ, not liking what she saw. Nudity was common among her people within the confines of their pit huts, not flaunted beneath the blazing eye of the summer sun. She had seen all of the men of her band naked at one time or another—as they had seen her—but never had a man displayed himself like this .. . nor had she ever seen an organ so engorged that it stood upright, above the magic man’s navel, moving slowly, as though it had a life of its own.

  The sight of it unnerved her, as did the entire atmosphere of the impending ceremony. It had been the talk of the band for days now, ever since both Pet and Ketti had come to their menses simultaneously and the women had hurried to raise the hut of first blood for them. She had been jealous at first; at eleven she was nearly as old as they. Her mother had consoled her, saying that it was difficult to predict when blood would come to a girl, and starving times could delay a girl’s time indefinitely: Under the starving moon many women did not bleed at all. And in a band where most of the children had been abandoned years before, everyone doubly rejoiced when first Ketti, and then Pet, had announced within hours that at last their time of blood had come.

  Mahnie had found it unfair. The three of them always did everything together. Wallah had hugged her and said that her time would come soon enough, and in the meantime Wallah would enjoy having her little girl for a bit longer. But Mahnie did not want to be a little girl when Pet and Ketti were women. She had pouted as she watched the hut of first blood go up and saw the special treatment accorded to her friends.

  Everyone was so happy, especially Grek. Her father had been eyeing Pet, Supnah’s girl, for years. And for years the two girls had giggled about it.

  “If I bleed before you, I will come to share the bed skins of your father. We will share the same hut, and you will have to call me Mother!”

  It had been a great joke between them. When Grek was not within hearing distance, Mahnie often teased Pet by calling her Mother. Pet teased her back by calling her Daughter, turning up her pert little nose, and ordering her to do as she was told or Grek would hear of it and Worthless Daughter would be punished. Overhearing, Wallah had been amused. She liked Supnah’s gentle, pretty daughter. There would be no jealousy at Grek’s fire; the more women in a man’s camp, the less work for all.

  For three long days Mahnie had been angry with her friends and the blood spirits, who denied her the privilege of sharing the hut of first blood with Pet and Ketti. Then, slowly, as the days passed and the women came and went from the hut, their rejoicing became a quiet introspection. Sometimes, if someone spoke too loudly, the women jumped and skittered off across the camp like frightened antelope. The men were different too, watchful, full of unspoken secrets. And the magic man was not seen for days after he retired into his own hut to do whatever magic men did when they were alone and preparing for a ritual ceremony.

  Mahnie asked her mother why the other women were so tense, but suddenly Wallah was nervous and flighty like all the others, with no answers at all. So she asked Grek, who grunted, looked for Wallah, and not finding her, explained as best as any man could about woman wisdom.

  “It has to do with the acceptance of the girls into the band.”

  She sensed evasiveness, which was not her father’s way. Even when Navahk had become headman, when everyone had known that eventually Grek was to have been chosen, he had dealt with the matter in a straightforward way. He made no attempt to hide his disappointment, but he did not brood on it either. When Wallah had attempted to console him, he had brushed her away, saying simply that the spirits had chosen who would lead the people; a man did not argue with the spirits.

  And girls did not argue with their fathers. But Mahnie was Grek’s only surviving child. She was only a female, but he adored her, and she knew it. So she pressed him. “The girls are already members of the band? The statement was a question. From the look on her face, he had known that she needed an answer from him. “As girls, yes. As women, no. Since time beyond beginning, it is up to the headman of each band to accept each daughter of his people into the protection of the band—to blood her, or, by refusing to blood her, to deny her that protection.”

  “Blood?”

  “First piercing. It must be done by the magic man. Then the headman makes second piercing, as a man. And if he does not choose to keep the woman for his own bed skins, then her father may at last be rid of her by giving her to the man who gives him most for her.”

  “Does Grek long to be rid of Mahnie?”

  “Of course! You are a girl, aren’t you?”

  She saw his love through his scowl, but her heart had not been lightened by it. The ritual of first blood no longer seemed a thing to be envied. “Grek has said ‘deny.” Do you mean, turn her out to walk the wind forever?”

  “Something like that, but that has not been done among this people since time beyond remembering.”

  “But it has been done?”

  “Not in this man’s memory. Not in the time of Supnah.

  “Navahk is headman now.”

  The sky bled heat.

  Navahk looked up, directly into the molten eye of the sun—then through it, to the other side of the sky, to the endless, burning lake of power that lay beyond.

  Heat and light poured into him, burning his eyes, but he did not flinch. He drew his strength from them, as he drew strength from the flame light of feast fires, from the cold, distant fires of the uncountable stars, and from the dazzling color displays of the aurora borealis that so cowed and intimidated his people. And from their fear he drew his strength.

  He closed his eyes. The sun shone beneath his lids, pooling outward in red and orange, in yellow and white-hot, evanescence; like the glimmering lake of heat he had glimpse beyond the eye of the sun, on the other side of the sky, it was power .. . pure, mind-consuming power. If it were possible for him to fly up into it, piercing the eye of the sun, then to swim in that lake of fire, he would do so. He would not be consumed by the flames; he would be transformed by them, like a spear shaft is strengthened when it has been subject to the searing heat of coals.

  The imagery pleased him. He felt the power of the sun engorging his maleness, his pride, and his sense of control over his people and the two young women whose fate lay within his hands. He opened his eyes again, still daring to stare into the eye of the sun, opening himself to its heat,

  filling himself with its light as though it were blood that might be sucked hot from a living beast.

  It burned. He smiled. Pain was sweet to him. Slowly his eyes focused upon the two girls. Ketti, bright and eager in her fear. Pet, wide eyed, trembling lipped. He despised Pet. He saw his brother in her face. She saw the hatred in his eyes. Her lips went white.

  His smile broadened. He knelt. The chanting of his people stopped. Absolute silence was a song of its own, beating its portent in his ears as, from the skin of the wanawut, he lifted the horn of First Man, a heavily greased phallus that was said to be the penis of the first man in all the world. It was not a penis; it was the bone like protuberance that once grew atop the nose of what must have been a massive woolly rhinoceros. The wide base had been cut away. All that remained were twelve inches of narrow-tipped, up curling deadly looking horn. Smoothed by age and generations of handling, it was black with a patina of oils and fat, body fluids and dried blood.

  Navahk rose, holding it as though it were his own organ, working it, walking a circuit around the two girls, then pausing before Ketti.

  Behind him he heard murmuring as Ketti took the position the women instructed her to take. With knees bent, hips arched, and limbs splayed, she waited.

  He looked at her with interest only because her bravery annoyed him. Her bare body did not excite him; if his organ was erect, that was due to the thrill of power that the ceremony was granting to him. He did not look forward to sharing his bed skins with either of them, but he did look forward to the moment of blooding. The horn was smooth and warm within his palms. His lips were taut across his teeth. He rais
ed the horn high above the girl. He saw her grit her teeth and close her eyes, readying herself for pain.

  The magic man saw no reason to disappoint her. Nor did he see any reason to prolong the blooding for the pleasure of the girl or the watchers. When Supnah had lived, Navahk had done it that way, to please his brother. Now Supnah was dead, and Navahk pleased himself. His arm arced down. The horn went in fast, hard. If the girl had moved, it might have pierced her womb. But she did not move; the women had warned her that she must not move.

  Navahk was disappointed. He snarled as he raised the bloodied horn. A jubilant cry went up from the People.

  Ketti’s entire body blushed pink with relief and pride. She had survived! She had survived bravely, without a sob or a tear! Her eyes sought Mahnie among the women. Finding her girlhood friend, she beamed with pride as Navahk announced to all that Ketti was now accepted as a woman of his band.

  And now it was Pet’s turn. The girl was deathly pale. She fought to take the required position of submission. She shook so badly that balance was difficult; her knees buckled, then locked, then quivered pathetically. Beside her Ketti stood as tall as her plump little figure would allow, her posture and expression informing Pet that the worst would soon be over. Be brave, her eyes said. Do not be afraid. It is not so bad.

  Navahk read the reassurance in her eyes and reacted perversely to it. He looked from Ketti’s plain, round face to Pet’s more defined, infinitely prettier one. Again he saw his brother in the girl. And himself. And Karana. The same eyes. The same nose. The same mouth. Cut to feminine dimensions, but the same. It occurred to him then, as it had before, that she might be his get. He had secretly joined with Naiapi enough times to make it a distinct possibility.

  His head eased to one side, his eyes lingering on the girl’s face as he recalled that both he and his brother were the sons of many generations of magic men. How many of their fathers had stood where he stood now, holding the sacred horn of First Man? Karana would have known. Karana would have stood beneath this same sun, and the power would have come to him from the other side of the sky, as it had yet to come to Navahk—fully, effortlessly. Karana would have seen through time as Navahk had never been able to see. Karana would have been able to give his father an answer. Karana had the power.

  He had not thought of the boy in many days, but he saw Karana now, in the face of Pet. In his dreams the boy walked the other side of the sky and was still too innocent to realize it. He saw a similar innocence in the eyes of Pet. Looking at her now, he wondered if, although Supnah had possessed no precognitive powers, it was still possible for the girl to have inherited those powers through his brother. Or, if she had inherited them, had they been a gift from him, if he were her real father? She had none of the bold inquisitiveness of Karana, but she was only a female. Females were deceitful creatures. Perhaps her fear of him was feigned, and she was a latent force waiting to overshadow him before he managed to hone his abilities into the perfection and absolute power that still eluded him? The possibility reminded him of the magic woman Sondahr.

  The sun was very hot on his back. For the first time since he had come to stand naked in its light, it began to sap him of energy. Anger rose in him at memories of Sondahr, and of Lonit, who had shamed him before his people by preferring to walk into forbidden country with Torka than to share the fire of Navahk.

  Anger fused with hatred and jealousy. Now he was strong again. His arm rose, holding the bloodied horn of First Man high. The power was in him—the power of headman, the power of magic man, the power of life and death. His arm arced with the force of a spear thrust, driving twelve inches of rhinoceros horn straight up through her belly into her heart.

  Naiapi screamed. She did not break from the women’s side of the circle, nor did she run to her only child as Navahk ripped the horn from the dead girl’s breast. Pet’s death had been quick, although she had shamed herself by crying out at the moment of her unexpected impaling, an unforgivable offense not only for her, but for the mother who had borne her.

  Navahk was advancing slowly toward the women’s side of the circle, to where Naiapi cowered before him. The woman expected to be killed. Death was in his eyes. She met it boldly with her own. Since Supnah’s death Naiapi had lived at the fringes of the band. Pregnant with a dead man’s child, no other man welcomed her to his bed skins. She had gone to Navahk, offering herself, saying that the child she carried might well be his and that she would be his woman on any terms, on any day or night he wanted her. But he did not want her, or the infant, or her daughter. She and Pet had lived apart, grateful for Navahk’s sufferance, knowing that soon Pet would be a woman at Grek’s fire, and that once Naiapi’s infant was born and exposed—if it was not male-one of the hunters of the band was certain to welcome such a comely woman into his protection ... if Navahk allowed it if Navahk did not take her for himself.

  But now that would never happen, for Naiapi had screamed at the moment of her daughter’s death. Despair growled at the back of her throat. If only she could bring herself to break tradition once again by daring to tell them all that her scream had not been a protest; it had been a cry of surprise and joy. She would have exposed the girl at birth, as she had exposed all the others—four little girls—had Supnah not insisted upon her keeping the child. Pet—another daughter—had been living proof that Naiapi could bear no sons. But Supnah had insisted upon accepting the child. Her mouth twisted. How she loathed the girl! Navahk should have killed her years ago instead of allowing her to live to soften the headman’s grief at Karana’s abandonment.

  Her eyes held upon Navahk now. If only he and not Supnah had seen her first, when their band had come to the Great Gathering! She was glad Supnah was dead.

  The magic man paused before her.

  The band watched, waited, for Navahk to loose Death once again. Instead the magic man smiled. The woman at his feet impressed him. She was unflinching, brave, hungry eyed, and distractingly brazen with open sexual invitation even at the moment of her death. She was beautiful, even though she was no longer young and her body was distorted with pregnancy. Many men were eager to have Naiapi free of Supnah’s child so that they might attempt to win her.

  Navahk’s eyes left the woman and scanned the men’s side of the circle. There was no missing-the resentment on Grek’s face; he had wanted Pet badly, just as others wanted Naiapi. Frustration twitched visibly at the corners of Navahk’s mouth. His blood was up for dealing death. But while the death of Pet had served him, the death of Naiapi would not. Too many lusted for a chance to win her, and he would alienate them if he deprived them of that chance.

  His smiled expanded. Naiapi would live, but Navahk, like the wild stallions of the steppe, would suffer no offspring of Supnah to survive, lest it grow to sap him of his powers. The men of the band would not object to the expulsion of the child from her womb. If she survived, they would thank Navahk for cleansing the woman for their use.

  As the woman herself seemed to be thanking him. Her eyes had seen the subtle change in his expression, telling her that he was not going to take her life—unless she died as a result of his killing of her unborn child. She shivered, but he knew it was not with fear. Her eyes were wide and shining with expectation, as though what must surely follow would pleasure rather than pain her. He knew her reputation for being a woman who had, with her own hands and a notable absence of grief, willingly exposed four of her own infants. At the height of the great killing winter, she had come to him behind his brother’s back and asked him not to spare the life of her daughter. She had even dared to imply that he might be the father. She had taunted him with that and suggested that if he was asking Supnah to abandon his child, he should be willing to offer up his own as well. She had told him that she was sick of daughters, and she had offered herself to him then, suggesting that he put a son in her. He had considered killing her and was sorry that he had not, as once again she offered herself to him. She knelt, limbs spread wide, hips arched forward, moving with slow,
deliberate provocation. As she threw back her arms and exposed the great, mounding expanse of her belly to him, her mouth expanded across her teeth into a mad, salivating smile of anticipation.

  “Kill it!” she whispered with low, hissing ferocity. Her insane sexual eagerness for pain excited him. His organ swelled and throbbed as he obliged her. Once, twice, half a dozen times, his foot struck into her belly.

  Although she fell onto her side and gasped against the pain of his blows, she smiled up at him. “With the horn ...” she begged, opening herself wide to him.

  As the members of the band watched in stunned silence, again he obliged her, straddling her now. Slowly the horn of First Man entered Naiapi, to pierce the unborn infant without undo injury to the woman who accepted it and moved on it as though it were the organ of the man who held it. Then he suddenly removed the horn, and it was his organ that penetrated her, thrusting deep, savagely seeking to rouse pain, then withdrawing in disgust as she cried out with the anguished delight of orgasm. Bloodied, his penis still hard and upright, he got to his feet. As the women turned away and Mahnie sobbed into her mother’s lap, Navahk smiled and held out his hand to Ketti.

  “Come,” he said. “It is your turn now.”

  They put the Corridor of Storms behind them and walked westward into familiar country. They traveled most of the day, resting only when necessary. This was a haunted land for them: In the low, rolling country to the south, they had encountered the Ghost Band and had seen their loved ones murdered; here they had walked with Supnah’s people, and witnessed the death of Hetchem and the abandonment of her poor, misbegotten child.

  In the high hills that stood between this open land and the Corridor of Storms, Torka had stood before the great mammoth and been given the gift of life.

  And now he walks away from that life! thought Karana, begrudingly dragging Aliga’s sledge, plodding grimly beside Torka. It was as though the sky were a great, gray blanket, weighting all those who moved beneath it. The land seemed gray, and the mood of the youth was even grayer. It seemed hours since anyone had spoken. Even the dogs were subdued, their heads down and tails sagging.