by neetha Napew
“Rain will come.”
“Soon?”
“Soon.”
Zinkh nodded thoughtfully, rubbing his cheek, wincing again against pain. “If Torka say it will be good, Zinkh will make one camp here with Torka’s people. If Torka’s dogs will not eat us--?”
The question reeked of deference and fear. Torka looked down at the little man in the elaborately constructed garments and the absurdly overwhelming helmet. Zinkh had deliberately taken a tone and position of subservience. He stood with his head twisted to one side, his throat bared, like a wolf or dog cowering before a dominant member of its pack. Startled, Torka realized that the little man was relinquishing his position as headman, yielding his authority to a man whom he feared capable of taking it and leaving him nothing in the bargain.
“The dogs are this man’s spirit brothers. They will do as Torka commands,” he said, and knew that Zinkh and his people would do the same, as long as it served them. “Go. Bring your people across the river. Torka says that, until we reach the Great Gathering, it will be a good thing if we be one band.”
Pomm laid her hands upon Aliga’s belly. She raised her voice in what she called a song. It had the yapping cadence of a dog when its tail has been stepped upon. As the members of her band crossed the river, set up their lean-tos, and gratefully fed upon Torka’s rations, Pomm sang and sang until she grew tired and asked that more food be brought to her.
While she ate, she could not sing, and although no one said as much, everyone was glad for the silence—especially Aliga, who midway through Pomm’s caterwauling looked beseechingly at Lonit and asked, “This is the healer you would bring to me instead of Navahk? This fat one will sing me to death.” With that she pulled her bed skins over her head and lay moaning while Pomm continued her song.
Now she knelt beside the sick woman’s fur-covered form. Lonit watched Pomm, who stared at Aliga. Her weather savaged face would have been as runneled as an outwash plain except that her fatness absorbed her lines. Lonit wondered how she stayed so fat when the rest of her band was lean with hunger.
Pomm belched resoundingly, then patted her belly, which was rounder than Aliga’s. “Good food in this camp,” she commended, nodding at Lonit. Then she sighed and looked to Aliga again. The tattooed woman had drifted back into sleep. Pomm made a tis king sound with her tongue.
“Pomm says that we talk quiet. Sleep is good for woman with baby in belly. Baby sleep long enough, it wakes up and says, “Too long has this one dreamed alone in the dark. Now will this child be born! Now will it come forth into the world of people, to be alone no more!” “
“Karana has tried to convince Aliga to drink bearberry tea, for the yellow in her eyes and skin and—“
“Karana?” An unmistakable glint of interest sparkled in the woman’s eyes. “Karana be handsome boy that Pomm sees with Lonit’s man? Who sits now alone—“
“Yes. And Karana says that Aliga needs—“
“Shhh!” Pomm’s fat index finger flew to press warningly against her small, childlike mouth. “Not say name! This is the most powerful medicine of all. Teas? Bah! Bearberry juice? Bah! Lonit, listen you good what Pomm she tells you now: Tattooed woman, she sick with bad spirit. Bad spirit loves that woman whose name you speak, and it will live forever in the belly of that woman unless we confuse it ... unless we make it want to go away.”
“How?”
“Give woman new name! Never more call her by old name. Spirit will mourn, then it will go across the world until it finds another woman with the same name! Is great magic, Lonit! You learn from this woman, you will be wise someday, and all people will look to you for healing magic! Pomm is greatest healing woman in all bands! At Great Gathering Lonit will see how big is Pomm’s magic!”
“Lonit sees that now,” she said quietly, and turned away, despairing for Aliga, who grew weaker daily, and for the unborn child, whose chances were slim indeed if its life lay in the hands of such would-be healers as Pomm.
They slept as one band beneath the light of the midnight sun. Then suddenly Zinkh jumped straight up from beneath his sleeping skins, his hand pressed to his jaw. He cursed and paced. As everyone stared at him in stunned amazement, he took up a bone awl and shook it at the sky. With the index finger of his left hand hooked into his cheek, he exposed his teeth and, and with his right hand, gouged the offending member from his mouth.
“No more will that tooth cause this man pain!” Blood seeped from his mouth. He stamped upon the tooth, grinding it into the tundral earth. “There! Now Zinkh laughs at you! Ha!” Blinking, Karana shook his head. The headman was bleeding badly. His laughter had vanished as suddenly as it had come. He had removed his tooth but caused greater pain. He slapped his hand against his jaw and moaned in abject misery.
Karana waited for Zinkh’s wise woman to rise and bring him a paste of ground willow shoots to pack into the wound; this would slow the bleeding and ease the pain. But the little headman began a frenzied dance, blood bearding his chin and staining his clothes while Pomm watched, unmoving. With a sigh, Karana rummaged through his supplies, found what he needed, and went to the headman with it.
“Here. Take this. It will stop the bleeding. It will drive away the pain spirit.” He was suddenly aware of everyone’s rapt attention. Old Pomm was frowning. Zinkh, holding his jaw with one hand, opened his mouth like a baby waiting to be fed.
Grimacing, Karana stuck a finger into the narrow ointment bag, took up a generous amount of the efficacious pulp, and obliged Zinkh by administering it directly to his wound.
It was instantly soothing. Zinkh’s eyes widened. He embraced the embarrassed youth. “You! Pain Eater! Magic Maker!” He kissed him on both cheeks, looking over his shoulders at Pomm. “You! Why does Woman Who Knows Everything not know this?” His hands gripped Karana’s shoulders and enthusiastically shook the youth. “Zinkh to Karana give great gift of thanks! To Karana, this man gives Pomm! You teach Woman Who Knows Everything. Together your magics be big.”
Karana was flabbergasted. “It is only the pulp of willow root, ground with oil from—“ “You teach Pomm, not Zinkh!” She was at his side, grinning rapaciously.
Karana had not imagined that anyone so fat could move so fast. She was on him as voraciously as a leaping cat. Her strong arms went around him, and she hugged him so hard that the air went out of his lungs.
“Come! Karana teach Pomm later! Now Pomm make Karana happy. Pomm will make Karana give her big gift!”
Everyone except Karana laughed at her brazen lewdness. He was appalled and horrified. She had him by the hand and was pulling him toward her sleeping skins. “Wait!” he implored, his eyes seeking Torka’s, his heart sinking as he saw that Torka was as amused as the others.
“There must be a first time for every man,” Torka jibed with paternal affection.
“Perhaps,” Karana retorted, anger giving him the strength to jerk away.
“But this will not be the time for me!”
In all of her years, Mahnie had never seen her parents so preoccupied. The entire camp was quiet—too quiet. Now and then, from beyond the walls of her family hut, the whispering voices of a man or woman would rise slightly, then ebb away, and Mahnie would try to sleep again; but when she did, she saw Pet and Ketti and Naiapi and the horn of First Man and blood .. . everywhere .. . blood.
She sat up and leaned back on her palms, staring and blinking, trying to obliterate her memories. Three little dolls stared back at her from the far end of her sleeping skins. Three little dolls of remnant fur and hide, with eyes of dried cloud berries and mouths of sedge seeds, with bodies of doeskin stuffed with moss and encased in summer dresses and trousers, and tiny boots, and long hair made of cuttings from Wallah’s own hair, so that Mahnie and her friends could enjoy combing it with the tiny bone combs Grek had carved for them. A sob of grief shook the girl as she reached for the dolls and drew them into her protective embrace. A doll for her, one for Ketti, one for Pet. She buried her face in their softness and
let her tears fall as she mourned for days of childhood happiness that could never come again.
“Leave the girl alone.”
Grek’s voice was soft, but Mahnie heard it and knew that Wallah had moved, wanting to comfort her.
“There is no consolation,” he said bitterly. “Not for what she has seen. Or for what she will fear until her own time of blood has come and gone. And even then ...”
Her father’s words trailed off into a sigh. Bed skins rustled, and she knew that Wallah was comforting him now.
“It was his right,” whispered the woman tremulously.
“Right? To kick Naiapi’s unborn child to death in her womb? To take the life of Pet before the entire band, with the children watching?”
“Your sadness over the loss of the girl talks for you, Grek. First-blood rites are always viewed by all. It is just that this band has had no one to blood for so many years, we have forgotten how—“
“Forgotten? Never in all of this man’s years has he witnessed anything like what happened today. Never in Grek’s memory has the horn of First Man been blooded by anything but the first blood of a woman. To take more than that, to take a life—such a thing has not happened since time beyond beginning. And yes, this man thinks of Pet. She was like a daughter to you, Wallah! Like a sister to Mahnie! And Navahk knew that she was for me. He knew it!”
The bed skins rustled again. Mahnie heard the whispered soothings of her mother and the infuriated, restless breathing of her father. She looked up at them through her laced fingers, where they sat together upon their piled sleeping skins. Although the time for sleep was nearly over, neither had undressed or slept. Mahnie doubted if anyone within the entire encampment had slept. She frowned. Grek looked old and haggard. His face was drawn with grief, his eyes focused inward in solemn introspection. Wallah rested her head against his shoulder, one arm beneath his and draped around his back, the other held across his chest, her hand idly stroking.
“This woman wishes that Grek had been named headman instead of Navahk. Grek would have been a good headman. He is a better hunter than Navahk, and Pet would be alive to come to this hut. How Mahnie had looked forward to that. Mahnie—“ Her words caught in her throat, and her hand froze. “When the time of first blood comes to our little one, the magic man would not—“
Mahnie’s heart stopped. She shared her mother’s fear. Her inevitable trek to womanhood would unavoidably bring her to where her life and death lay in the hands of a magic man who seemed to loathe all women.
She could hear him howl now like a wolf from within the hut of purification into which he had disappeared with Ketti hours before. Mahnie shivered. The howling stopped. It had not been Navahk—it had been Ketti. A single high cry, answered by the baying of wild dogs that roamed the distant hills.
“Sometimes this man thinks that he would have been wise to have taken his women and belongings and followed Torka. Torka was a good man. But Navahk is new to woman making. By the time it is Mahnie’s turn, he will have learned how to be gentle.”
Grek looked with love at his distraught woman and thought of Pet. His heart bled. Something deep and basic to his nature had changed within him when he had witnessed her death. He felt drained of himself, somehow, as though a stranger filled his skin and all that was trusting and open bled out of him, leaving him hard, unforgiving, and infinitely protective of those who were dearest to him. When he thought of Navahk and all that had been conceded to him, Grek’s eyes narrowed. “The magic man had better learn how to be gentle by the time this man’s girl conics to first blood, or Grek will teach him another lesson: He will teach him how to die.”
The horn went deep, moving, probing. Ketti fought to be free of its invasion. She screamed again, but this time the sound was forced back down her throat by the smothering kiss of the magic man. His body lay splayed across her, pinning her down while he worked the horn deep between her thighs, deliberately tearing her womb so no child would ever take root.
His tongue entered her mouth, stabbed rhythmically, keeping perfect cadence with the jabbing, circular movements of the horn. She was too tired to fight him. He sapped her of life.
“Move!” He rammed the horn deep and smiled when she went rigid against it. “Dance in the way you were taught by the women, in the way you first danced naked before me when we entered this hut. Dance! Open yourself, offer yourself. But we will see who is weakened by your women’s dance, you or this man who takes his pleasure as he sees fit, not in the way that you would give it!”
She nearly fainted as he knelt back from her. She could breathe again, but only for a moment. His left hand slipped beneath her buttocks, forcing her hips up while the other hand still worked the horn, rousing pain, not the pleasure that her mother and the other women had promised.
She felt blood upon her thighs and through the daze saw him smile as the horn slipped out. He bent to browse between her thighs, to lick her blood, to suck, to bite until she could bear no more of him. Summoning all her strength, she lurched up screaming, pulled herself away, and kicked him hard in the face.
He caught her ankle and pulled her back. Impossibly, his smile had broadened. His nose was bleeding; he seemed strengthened by the pain.
“Ketti is bold. Ketti is brave to defy Navahk. Would you be like Torka’s woman, then? Yes, like Lonit. She would be bold. She would dance bravely against the pain that I would give her.”
For the first time in all of the hours of abuse that he had inflicted upon her since entering the hut of purification, he penetrated her with his organ. He was hard, engorged, impossibly huge for a mere man. But he was not a mere man; he was Magic Man, a dark and perverse power that defied her understanding as he called her by another name—Lonit-and hissed with pleasure, thrusting deep, swelling within her, shivering as he heard her sob. He smothered her cries with his open lips, invading her mouth with his tongue.
She could not breathe. She wanted to die. Perhaps he was leading her to that, and she would be with Pet soon, a spirit woman, free of him, and that would be a mercy.
“Dance!” The word was an imperative snarl. His organ was shrinking as he gripped her hips and rode her brutally, viciously, to a release that would not come. He cursed and rode her harder.
A terrifying howl suddenly pierced the silence of the encampment. It was the cry of a wild animal, followed by the scream of a fear-maddened child. Yet the scream was not fully human.
Navahk, still joined to the girl, stopped and lifted his head, listening. “Wanawut ...” He exhaled the word with reverence, visualizing the shadowed gorge, the female corpse of the massive, half-human thing with the breasts of a woman and a musculature powerful enough to rip off the arm of a man with one casual swipe and to remove his head with another. The vision thrilled him. He looked down at the girl. So small. So weak. So shattered by his power.
Sensation flooded back into his organ, swelling it until, suddenly, as he closed his eyes and imagined how it would be to couple with the wanawut ... to ride it as he rode the girl to lick its blood ... to draw its power into himself, release came, and he poured himself into the girl while crying out with the pure, savage ecstasy of ejaculation.
He slept then and did not wake until the girl’s pathetic mewing roused him. Her hands were pressing against his shoulders.
Far away within the distant hills the howling had begun again. Navahk listened, transfixed and envious, knowing that the beast-child that he had chosen not to kill would someday grow to dimensions that equaled its parent’s.
He felt suddenly weak. He rolled off the girl, hating her. She had sapped him of the exquisite feeling of power that had swept through him just prior to ejaculation. If only he had been able to maintain the strength that had been in him at that moment, his power would equal that of the wanawut—a power greater than any man could ever hope to own.
Just thinking of it made him potent again, but this time he wanted no part of the girl. Her very femaleness disgusted him. Tomorrow he would give her to R
hik, who was old and a widower and would appreciate having a young girl to ride again. And tomorrow, if Naiapi was still alive, he would give her to Grek lest she continue to come mewling after him. That would repay the aging hunter for daring to challenge him with his eyes when he had killed Pet. Oh, yes, Grek deserved Naiapi. She would be a bone in his throat to the end of his days or hers. He got to his feet and left the bloodied bed skins that the traditions of his people had forced him to soil through his use of the girl. Impatiently he backhanded the hide door flap away and left the hut to stand naked in the watery, bloodred glow of the midsummer morning. The sun was rising from above the eastern ranges.
Trembling, his organ fully erect again, the magic man raised his arms and invoked the forces of Creation. As though in response, the wanawut answered him out of the distant hills.
PART IV.
THE GREAT GATHERING
The child huddled within a stand of scrub willow, shivering against the cold of an early, wind-driven snow. Weak with hunger, it drew aside a frost-brittled screen of yellow-leaved branches with hairy-backed, snow-dusted fingers. Beyond, falling snow gauzed a rolling, tundral world, which had only moments earlier been aflame with the colors of summer’s end as the sun’s last rays had pierced the cloud cover. The child drew in a thousand tawny scents: shrubs, grass, bogs, rivers and ponds thickening with ice, ripening berries sheened white with frost, distant forests of climate-stunted spruce and hardwoods, open miles, and ranging glacial vastnesses ... all masked now by the impending night, the stinging white smell of the snow, and the overriding smell of that which the child feared—the beast.
He was hunting alone again, walking boldly with the wind at his back and making no attempt to hide either his scent or his presence. As he had done for several evenings now at the end of each daily trek, the beast in white was coming away alone from the traveling camp of his kind. And the child, exhausted at the end of each day of following the beasts, put aside its desire to seek a nest in order to watch the one in white.