by neetha Napew
The grasses concealed the movement of the hunters. The land conspired with them in their hunting plan. Torka soon understood why this area had been chosen for the Great Gathering year after year. Not only was it along the major easterly winter migration route of mammoths and other big game, but to the north and south of the nearby lake it was cut by long, deep, natural gullies into which panicked animals could be driven by experienced hunters. And this they were.
The herd grazed, ambling mindlessly along in broken segments of hundreds to thousands of animals. With Karana and Aar directing the movement of the other dogs, the animals hunkered low and twitched with restrained excitement as the hunters slowed their steps. In groups of fifteen to twenty men and youths, they advanced slowly on a group of several hundred animals. The grasses provided ample cover. At a shout from Torka, they burst forward into a mad run, closing on the startled animals, leaving them only one route of escape as spears rained down. Panicked, the bison grouped into a protective mass and stampeded in the only direction available to them—toward the lake, directly into the waiting gullies. A few of the younger, lighter, and more agile of the animals managed to leap across and run to safety. Others fell, stumbling headfirst into deep, narrow defiles from which they could not extricate themselves. Other animals fell on top of them, crushing them, suffocating them as still others charged across the ravine, over a bridge now made of dying bison.
And then the herd was gone, rumbling off across the edge of the world, while Torka, Karana, and the others shouted praises to the life spirits of the dead animals. They killed those that were still alive, driving their spearheads deep into quivering, bawling flesh. The dogs barked and pranced around, snapping at any hapless beast that seemed even half-capable of dragging itself out of the pit. Now that the excitement and pleasure of the hunt was over, the work began. It took four or five men to heft a single two-thousand-pound bison out of the ravine for butchering. This done, one man twisted its head around by the horns while another slit its throat with a stone splaying dagger, then reached up and under its jaw to sever its tongue, jerking it loose. He sliced it into portions, and each man hunkered down to indulge himself in this tender est and tastiest meat.
They ate in silence, nodding and smiling at one another with satisfaction. When all had eaten their fill, they shared the delicacy of the tongue meat with the dogs, then rose and rolled the carcass of the tongueless bison over, four men holding it so that one might open the hump. The knife wielder cut out wedges of bloody, fatty meat, and again they ate and smiled, glad that they were men who did not choose to limit their diet to only one kind of animal. This had been a good day to hunt. Thirteen bison lay waiting to be butchered along the rim of the ravine. Over one hundred more still lay within the pit.
“Even if the mammoths do not come, there will be enough meat to feed the entire encampment throughout the winter,” said Torka.
“The mammoths will come,” assured one of Zinkh’s men. “Truly it was said that they have always come. Perhaps tomorrow, yes?”
Torka nodded. “Perhaps. But in the meantime this man will eat bison and be glad for the gift of life that the spirits have given him today.”
The butchering went on for days. Still the mammoth did not come. But the bison killers were not concerned—they would have meat to see them through the time of the long dark, and the thick, shaggy hides of the slain bison would make warm robes and sleeping skins for them and their women and children. While those mammoth hunters who had refused to participate in the hunt continued to pursue their day-to-day activities, the bison hunters set up a temporary butchering camp under Torka’s direction on the killing site.
Their women and older children had come out from the great camp to begin the enormous task of butchering so many animals. They dismembered the carcasses and set to the arduous work of fleshing the skins and staking them out in the wind to dry and cure, according to the various methods of their bands and the different uses to which they would be put. But first they had praised the hunters and delighted in their good fortune as they were allowed to feast upon leftover tongue, intestines, and blood meats before setting prime haunch and hump steaks to roast over spits of bone.
By nightfall the exhausted women slept together with their children, apart from their men but close to their work. And the next day Torka, Zinkh, Karana, and several others went back to the main camp and told all who were interested that if they would come out and help with the preparation of the meat, they and their families would be welcome to their fair share of it, for there was more than enough for all. A few came. Many, noting Lorak’s scowl of disapproval, did not.
That night in the butchering camp, while exhausted women again slept close to their work, bison hunters and mammoth hunters ate together. The smell of the roasting meat and dripping fat drew wolves, wild dogs, and other larger, more dangerous carnivores close to the butchering site, but sentries, along with Aar and his pack, kept watch. No one ventured far from the camp, not even to relieve himself, for in the night, eyes glowed from every tundral rise and the surrounding grasses, and the wind carried the scents of many animals.
But not of mammoth.
Lonit slept deeply but fitfully, too bone weary even to remove the thick pads of rhinoceros skin that she wore to protect her palms from being worn raw or nicked by her razor-sharp obsidian skinning dagger. She dreamed tortured dreams in which Torka turned his back upon her and walked off toward the Valley of Songs with Sondahr at his side. She awoke, her heart aching and her mind a roiling river of confused emotion.
Suddenly fiercely annoyed with herself, she sat up and stared across the moonlit butchering camp to the Hill of Dreams. The council house of bones gleamed white, and she could just make out the white-tipped tera torn feathers that covered Lorak’s hut; they made it look as though it had been encrusted with ice. Smoke issued through the vent hole. Lorak must be within, doing whatever magic men did in such high and mysterious places while, on the crest of the hill, the figure of a woman stood against the sky, arms raised, head back, as though opening herself to the forces of Creation.
Sondahr.
Lonit almost spoke the other woman’s name aloud with resentment. Every night, while the majority of the women fell exhausted into sleep, Sondahr stood upon the Hill of Dreams, making her songs and chants to call forth the mammoths. It seemed blasphemous to Lonit, who had suffered near starvation many times, for anyone to so prefer the meat of one species of animal to the exclusion of another.
Nearby a little girl tossed in her sleep and whimpered that her hands hurt. Her mother, who had made a new skinning pad for her, whispered softly to her, telling her to go back to sleep, that in time her blisters would heal and become calluses, a mark of pride she could show to prove to any man that she was a hard worker and would make a worthy mate.
Lonit sighed, missing her children. She longed for the day when Summer Moon would be old enough to join her in her work and not remain always at lana’s calm, ever-doting side. Shadows skimmed across her thoughts. The children adored lana; did they love their mother less because by necessity she hunted as a man beside their father in the Valley of Songs, spear and hurler in hand, her bola bound around her brow, the shell-weighted ends dangling behind? She had been not only a mother to her children, but a provider of man meat as well.
Lonit frowned. She had seen the hands of Sondahr. They had no blisters, no calluses. That woman did not hunt. That woman did not butcher or flesh or work skins or make garments for the many men who stared at her with open adoration. Other women’s men hunted for her and brought meat to her fire. They considered themselves honored by her smile and blessed by her invocations to the spirits on their behalf.
And yet Aliga’s baby did not come forth. And yet the mammoths did not come. Lonit smiled. Why should she sit here in the night, full of self-doubt? Lonit can hunt as well as any man. Lonit can butcher and flesh and cook and sew, and Lonit has stood alone against a great leaping cat! Lonit drove it off with only a bola an
d a thongful of ducks! Sondahr would not have been so brave!
Yet Torka has said that Sondahr is wise. Sondahr is wary. Torka has said these words to Lonit’s face. And Sondahr is so beautiful that she does not have to be brave! What man would not desire to possess and protect such a woman .. . even if she is useless.
She lay back, feeling miserable. She pulled her sleeping skin over her head, wanting to feel bold again, recalling that in this camp, as in the camp of Supnah, many men had looked at her, including the disreputable twosome that held the little boy captive by the thonged collar. She had not seen them in the camp for many days and often wondered what had happened—not to them but to the unfortunate child who suffered at their hands. They had come close to her once, when Torka was off with some of Zinkh’s hunters, and made lewd comments, suggesting that any time she grew tired of living with a man who walked with dogs, they would show her what they could do for such a beauty as she.
After she had threatened to tell Torka if they did not go away, they slunk off like a pair of dirty foxes, leaving her appalled by their outrageous behavior toward another man’s woman, yet strangely pleased by their flattery. After nearly a lifetime of thinking herself ugly, it was now always gratifying to know that among all but her own people, she was considered beautiful. Even funny little Zinkh had said so, and his hunters had echoed him. And far away, long ago, another man had looked at her ... a man more beautiful than the moon ... a magic man whom every woman wanted.. ..
Navahk.
At last the butchering was done. But still the mammoths had not come.
Using the thigh and rib bones of their kills, they fashioned crude sledges upon which they piled their meat on neatly stretched skins, which they then folded into packets so that they could more easily drag their bounty back into the camp.
As the hunters trudged toward the wall of bones, the people of Zinkh’s band watched in amazement as Torka, Lonit, and Karana not only devised sledges for themselves but also for their dogs. When at last they stood ready, their own bodies were burdened by less than half the load of the others.
“Could other men do the same with other dogs, or would they need a magic power such as Torka’s?” The question came from Simu, one of Zinkh’s young bandsmen.
Zinkh, whose minor wounds had been stitched and were healing nicely, had come out to keep company with the men and women of his band. Now that he was feeling more or less well and strong again, he wanted to do his share in helping to carry the bison meat back to the encampment. He was not in a good mood. His lacerations were tight and itching, and during the last few days he had begun to chafe at the sight of Torka leading his hunters. It seemed that no one asked him anything unless Torka was unavailable. He was also insulted by the fact that Karana was not wearing his good-luck helmet. The youth had assured him that he had left it on his bed skins within the main encampment lest it be damaged in the hunt, but Zinkh was not happy with the reply, any more than he liked Simu’s query.
So he snapped emphatically, as nastily as a dog irritated by blackflies, “What kind of man be you to question the magic powers of Torka? It is enough that he and his spirit dogs walk with you in one band! He will not share his magic! You will not ask him again! You are Zinkh’s band. Always for us carrying sledges has been a good way. Why now, suddenly, is it not good enough for you and your woman? Does Simu think he is better than the rest of Zinkh’s people? Maybe he would make his own band with Torka as leader and forget that Zinkh has been his headman and leader and friend, yes?”
Standing beside Eneela, his pretty and very pregnant young woman, Simu sucked in his breath with shame. As he looked down at his feet, unable to look at his woman or at any of his people, his face congested with resentment of his unwarranted humiliation.
Torka was astounded by Zinkh’s unexpected display of animosity. He had not failed to note the sting in the little man’s voice when he had snarled his name.
He was aware of Karana watching him with a bemused expression upon his handsome young face and was suddenly struck so sharply by a memory, it was as though the boy had flung it into his head like an invisible spear.
Torka is not like other men. Torka cannot live within a band, he must lead it. And so other men will always try to bring Torka down or drive him out from among them.
Karana had spoken those words on the day they had left the Valley of Songs. They had rankled him then; they rankled him now. Once again Karana seemed to be right. Torka found himself virtual headman of Zinkh’s people, and now Zinkh, who had been so eager to yield his rank, coveted it and resented Torka for having accepted it from him in the first place. Torka snorted as he realized that he had not even set foot within the encampment of the Great Gathering before he had inadvertently roused hostility and jealousy in old Lorak, who seemed determined to lock horns with him. Surely he meant no challenge to the supreme elder. Yet he had challenged him over his decision to refrain from hunting when so much meat was at hand.
Nevertheless, his course was set. For the sake of his women and children, he would not be intimidated by either man. To be the only adult man in a band composed of women and children compromised the lives of his loved ones.
He eyed Zinkh and saw for the first time that he was a small man, in ways that had nothing to do with his minimal stature. Torka knew he must give Zinkh back his sense of importance, or for all that the man feared his powers, Torka would have an enemy in him.
“Zinkh is headman of this band, and Torka walks beside him at his sufferance,” he declared, taking that chin-out, arms crossed over chest position that magic men always assumed. “But it is good that Simu asks. Zinkh has taken Torka into his band as though he were a brother. Perhaps it is time that Torka behaves as a brother and makes Zinkh and his hunters magic men at Torka’s side?”
And so it was that in the days that followed, Torka began to teach Zinkh and Simu and the hunters of his new band the way to use a spear hurler and the way to gentle a dog so that it would respond to commands. He was a patient teacher. The men were eager pupils, and since the use of the spear hurler was an exacting and difficult discipline, it was easy for them to believe that only through his magic were they able to learn .. . that the gift of the knowledge and skill that he gave to them was special and only for them. Zinkh was given back his pride, and his hunters strutted more boldly than any others and kept the secrets that Torka gave to them, lest other men learn them and thus become their equals.
And still the mammoths did not come.
The women gathered berries. The children’s faces, hands, and tunics turned red-purple with juice. With several hunters to guard them, they sloshed through the bog lands around the lake, waded across a cool, clear freshet, and headed out of surrounding willow scrub upward toward a thick expanse of berry shrubs, which grew on a slight rise amid a thin stand of birch trees. They formed a small, white-barked, stunted forest, with broad areas of sunny patches between their meager trunks.
With Summer Moon holding her hand, Lonit paused and looked back toward the stream, noting the way it tumbled easily from the heights, emptying into the lake within a small, stony-bottomed, shallow cove, which would serve as a wonderful catch basin for fish if a stone weir were built across it.
“What see you there?” asked one of the other women, wondering why she had fallen behind.
Enthusiasm filled her as, beaming with memories of the days when she had devised the weir within the Valley of Songs and had caught her first captive grayling, she told that woman and several others what they could accomplish with minimal effort if they all worked together. “There would be fish in the pool always. We would need only to come with our tridents.”
“We are not fish eaters in this camp. Except in the worst of starving times, our men will not eat of such woman meat.”
“Fish is good!” piped Summer Moon, frowning, not liking the disdainful tone with which her mother had been addressed.
Lonit could have kissed Summer Moon for her loyalty. She would, later.
Now her fingers curled about her daughter’s pudgy little hand, communicating her desire that the child should be still. Summer Moon obeyed but continued to pout as Lonit quietly replied that she had been taught as a child that she must eat whatever food was put before her, not only by her own parents, but by Father Above and by Mother Below. “All meat gives life from life, and all food is spirit given,” she said.
A broad-bottomed, flat-faced matron named Oga turned up her bridge less nose with a snort of reproof. “The man of this woman is a mammoth hunter, not an eater of bison or of things with scales or feathers!”
“Then you must be growing hungry, Oga,” Lonit responded coolly. “For this woman has seen no mammoth anywhere near this camp.”
“Come! We are one band in this camp until the time of the long dark is over,” Pomm cut in. “We women have enough work to do without arguing about whose ways are the best.”
They went on, with snow geese scattering out of the bushes before them, tails up, honking hysterically as they ran from cover to cover. The great white geese were flightless now, bound to the earth by the seasonal molt that made them easy targets. Crying aloud with ‘delight, the women momentarily forgot about berry picking and turned to goose killing instead, striking the hapless birds with stones that they carried in pouches at their belts. Feathers flew like snow in a blizzard. But only a handful of women seemed to be killing for meat; the rest left their prey where it fell, having merely enjoyed the sport.
When Lonit refrained from joining in, Oga looked at her with satisfaction. “You see, we have no need to learn to use the weapon of Lonit. The sling with many arms takes too much time to master. In this camp if we hunger for goose, we eat it now, not in the season when the birds can fly away from our stones.”
“But there is so much meat in the encampment now.
There is no need for you to hunt the white geese,” Lonit pointed out.
“Not all of us are bison eaters!” Oga snorted with derision.