by neetha Napew
He pulled Lonit to him. Lustfully, his hands slipping from her shoulders, cupping her breasts, then easing downward around her supple waist, he drew her down .. . down .. . kissing her .. . whispering his love to her so that, if anyone should overhear, only she would know that he knew the dangerous secret that they shared.
“Sondahr ...” He spoke the other woman’s name, knowing that she knew that he meant Lonit, only Lonit, for Torka the first woman, the last woman. “Always and forever, Sondahr ...”
Drumbeat throbbed across the tundra. In the darkness, beneath the rising moon, Karana felt it beating .. . pulsing in his heart and mind and loins. He could see the fire clearly, a red aurora leaping into the sky, illuminating the wall of bones and the Hill of Dreams and the tiny fingers that danced around it, circling, merging, falling away into the fire lit shadows.
He did not know just when Sondahr joined him. Suddenly she was there, standing between him and the fire glow, a tall form wrapped in a robe of feathers with a white circlet of down upon her brow.
“Karana.” She spoke his name in a whisper as soft and as warm as the wind.
He caught his breath, startled. Beside him Aar lay his head down upon his paws and made a low huffing exhalation that sounded very much like self-recrimination. Once again the magic woman had come upon him unaware; the animal sensed no threat in her, except to his self-respect.
She stood very still, unfolding her cloak as though it were not a single garment but a pair of wondrous wings. The wind took them and blew them back.
Karana gasped. Beneath the winged robe Sondahr was naked. She did not move. She might have been a woman carved of bone. In the pale glow of the moon she was that white, that smooth. Then the wind touched her and she trembled, and the youth knew the softness of her form with his eyes. He took in every curve, every line. He could not look away.
She knelt. Her hands reached for his, drew them to her breasts, filled them with her breasts. She sighed, arched her back, and tilted her head, revealing her throat to him, yielding all to him.
He burned as though the fire upon the distant plain had somehow come to flame within his flesh. Eyes, mouth, heart, lungs, loins—all burned, especially his hands. A boy’s hands, so full of woman that he was afraid to move them. If only he knew what to do with them! He could have cried at his ineptitude.
She straightened and drew back, smiling softly, understanding. The time was not right. She drew her robe around her and moved to sit beside him, close but granting him space—room to breathe, room to cool as the wind rose. As the moments passed, neither youth nor woman spoke. They needed no words. They were attuned to each other, to the land, and to the black, star-filled enormity of the sky. Slowly, within the caul of the wind, beneath the silent sentinel of the moon, their hands reached, touched, held. They were one with the night. Theirs was a joining more profound than a physical mating; their souls were one as, from across the tundra, dire wolves howled, and far across the world a high, thin cry ululated across the night, like that of a lost child mourning for a parent it knows will never come.
Torka awoke with a start.
Lonit lay sound asleep, curled in the fold of his arms. Shivering, his head pounding, he listened to the lonely howling in the distant ranges. No wolf or dog that he had ever heard had sung a song like that. It was almost human, as though a young girl moaned from across the miles.
Images flared, misted, tangled in memories of the distant past. Wind spirit.
He had heard its voice before. In the depth of the winter dark, from a hundred unnamed and all-but-forgotten camps, he had listened to its kind howling in the night. Beneath the light of auroras long faded from his memory, he had heard it cry as he had hunted as a boy with his grandfather. As they had hunkered together in the endless winter days of impossible cold, Umak had pointed to the glittering vapor that hung above the earth. Not unlike smoke from invisible Gampfires, it sparkled white, blue, red, and gold, in the way stars shimmered on clear nights.
Umak had told him that this was the mist that killed, for it was so dangerously cold that if a man or boy inhaled carelessly, it would cut his lungs and he would die. As patient as the night, Umak instructed Torka how to breathe through the cold-filtering guard hairs on his ruff and told his grandson how in such cold as this, the stars above froze and shattered and fell to hover low in particles so small that they formed the mist that kills—star mist, he called it—and only spirit masters could tell that it was a thing of the sky and not of the land. In his dark curly winter robe of bison hide, the spirit master had told Torka to observe the star mist closely, and if the stars allowed, he would hear them calling to the wind to blow them back into the sky where they belonged.
“And so it is that hunters must be wise and wary, for if the wind comes and they are caught within the mist of stars, then they shall be blown away into the sky, never to walk in the world of men again.”
The boy had been frightened and fascinated all at once. In his hooded, multilayered garments of caribou hide, with his hands stuffed into thickly furred mittens padded with swan’s down, his face buried deep within the extension of his wolf tail ruff, he had listened, thinking that it would be a wonderful thing to hear the stars speak. But the wind never came, and he never heard the voices of the stars in the strange, glittering mists that hovered above the earth in times of severe and protracted cold.
But he had heard the voices of wind spirits. With Umak at his side he had looked through the star mist toward the clouds that wreathed the higher, night-veiled ranges, and he had heard the lonely keening of the creatures of the wind.
Umak had told him that men did not hunt within the mountains, for the high country was the realm of the wind spirits.
“Since time beyond beginning it has been so.”
Torka’s fingers moved to press his eyes. It was as though Umak were with him now, speaking to him, and he was a boy again, listening eagerly as his grandfather lowered his voice and reverently explained that wind spirits were neither man nor beast but things of mist and power. They caused avalanches to thunder from the heights and captured men nol only to feed upon their flesh but to mate with them and hold them captive, to suck the blood from them until they were dry and wasted like fragments of old skins blowing on the wind.
The words of the old man faded.
The howling stopped. He closed his eyes and slept, to dream of the past, of Umak, of a great white bear with his grandfather’s spear in its belly. Of childhood. Of his people. Of laughter and of all the good things that could never be again.
When he woke, it was not yet dawn. Lonit was still curled against him within the fold of his arm. The plaku fire was dead, and the dancers of the night before were asleep in snoring little heaps and piles of tangled limbs and arms. Memories of the past night drifted through his head. The ache was still there. He regretted drinking so heartily of the liquor that had been passed around in the council house. He wondered if Lonit had partaken of a similar brew. Perhaps this was what had enabled her to overcome her shyness among strangers. He stroked her shoulder. She shivered.
Suddenly he realized that if others awoke to find them in each other’s arms, her masquerade would be discovered and her deception and flaunting of tradition of the plaku would endanger them both.
“Come .. he whispered, lifting her as he rose and began to carry her away from the fire circle.
She awoke and wrapped her arms tightly about his neck, nestling close.
Her warmth stirred him. He quickened his pace, stepping over sleeping bodies until he was well out of the area of celebration and halfway to his own pit hut. He was smiling as he spoke to her, softly, in the tone of a passionate and loving conspirator. “Torka is proud that “Sondahr’ had chosen him.
Torka desires no other woman. Always and forever he would have
“Sondahr.” “
She moved so quickly that she cut off his words. Exhaling a little cry, she twisted from his grasp, leaped to her feet, and ran off into the
dawn.
The next day it rained, but no one cared except the dogs. They remained outside, tucking noses beneath tails against the weather while the people were content to remain inside their huts, nursing the headaches and nausea that invariably followed a plaku. It would be several days before anyone felt strong and rested again.
Within Torka’s pit hut, while Summer Moon listened wide eyed with wonder, Aliga babbled constantly about the plaku and could not refrain from informing Lonit that her eyes had not missed the fact that Lonit had somehow avoided attending the sacred dance.
“This woman was there,” replied Lonit dully, her eyes on her sewing, her fingers tightening noticeably on her bone needle—so much so that she cracked it and, despite the protection of her leather thimble, pricked herself.
“Do not worry. We are sisters. This woman will keep your secret.” Aliga smiled and turned from Lonit to display her pointed, tattooed teeth for Torka as he came in from the rain. “It is a true thing that no woman of Torka would want to dance before other men.” She smiled at him. “Of all the women at the Great Gathering, Sondahr chose you, and this woman saw how beautiful you were together!”
He stood looking down, trying to win Lonit’s glance but failing as a startled Karana looked up from his sleeping skins, where he lounged moon-eyed and quietly daydreaming. “Sondahr danced for Torka? But that is impossible! She was with me.”
Aliga laughed. She was growing weary and beginning to feel vaguely ill again, but the youth’s statement brought welcome amusement to her. “Go back to your dreams, little boy! What would the magic woman want with you and your pretentions? She would see right through you and name you for the arrogant, foul little wind that you are!”
Karana sat straight up. “I tell you, she was with me.”
Lonit felt sick. Her eyes met Torka’s for the first time since she had run off after hearing him proclaim his love to Sondahr. Now he would know the truth. Now he would be angry for the deception that she had worked upon him. He would be ashamed for the words that he had spoken to Sondahr, realizing that he had been speaking to Lonit all along. His eyes met hers. Her heart nearly broke. There was no shame in them—only an expanding anger as he looked at Karana with absolute warning.
“All saw it!” Aliga persisted. “At the plaku, Sondahr danced for Torka. At the plaku, for the good of the Great Gathering, to entice the spirits into watching and hearing the need of the mammoth hunters, Torka called forth the mammoths and joined with Sondahr and—“
“Torka called the spirits of the mammoths to come forth to die?” Karana was incredulous.
“Torka called them forth. Torka will not kill them!”
“In the end it is the same thing!” The youth’s head swung slowly from side to side in disbelief. “Torka would not do that any more than he would lie with Sondahr. And she was with me. Torka could not—“ Torka’s face flushed with defensive frustration. “Karana cannot say what this man would or would not do to protect his band! With the magic men in the council house of bones, my choice was to call forth the mammoths with the others or be driven from the encampment. So it was done for the good of all of us. And for the good of all of us, the entire gathering saw Torka dance and lie with Sondahr! Karana will not challenge that fact again!” he shouted, not daring to speak the truth to Karana lest Aliga, lana, or the children inadvertently reveal it to others. When they were alone, he would explain it to him.
“Karana must be wary of his words and his actions, he advised, hoping that Karana would understand and, for once, be as perceptive with people as he was with game and the vagaries of the weather.
The youth glared back at him. “Karana will not sit here and be shouted at and called a liar by a—a—mammoth hunter! Unlike Torka, I have not forgotten that I am alive only because Life Giver chose to give me my life instead of my death. The great mammoths are totem to me, and I will not live with one who would call his totem forth to die!”
“It is a bad sign, this rain.”
Lorak’s voice cut sharply through the gloom of the council house. Several elders winced. The shamans sat cross-legged on the uncomfortable bone floor, nursing the aftereffects of the previous night with sips drawn from the same brew that had made them ill in the first place.
“It always rains this time of year,” reminded one of the bleary-eyed men.
“Not after a plakul” Lorak glowered. “Who among you remembers it ever raining after a plakul”
“After days of fasting, followed by a plaku, Lorak, there are not many who will remember much of anything.”
One of the older men nodded and smiled euphorically. “I remember.... I lay with a good woman last night. Fat she was under many feathers, and not young, I think. She danced for many men before I grabbed her. Her elbows were horny, even with all that fat, but she could not have enough of the meat that I gave her and said that it was mammoth! An older man weak from want of mammoth meat needs a woman who can make comparisons like that. But she was gone when I awoke. Phssht! Like a dream. A good, fat dream. I wonder who she was.”
“Forget women! Forget meat! Unless it is the coming of the flesh of the great mammoths to this camp!” Lorak shouted, enraged. “Know only that the spirits rain upon the earth of this camp. The signs are bad, all bad.”
“Perhaps not,” suggested the man who had just spoken with such pleasure of his union with the feathered fat woman. “Perhaps the spirits give us other sign—bison. Perhaps the mammoths will not come, as Man Who Walks With Dogs has said? Perhaps the spirits have sent us other meat and
would have us eat of—“
“Never! We are mammoth eaters. Our fathers and their fathers for untold generations have hunted only that meat and praised only that great spirit. Of its bones is this encampment made, of its flesh is our flesh made. To forget this is to forget life! Is this what befalls us when we are generous in lean times and allow caribou eaters and bison eaters to winter among us? They are not our kind! Their spirits are not our spirits! The game that they kill cannot feed us! Man Who Walks With Dogs cannot nourish us—not with his flying spears or hunting beasts or bison meat, which offends the spirits with its stench! If the mammoths do not come, Lorak says now that it is because Man Who Walks With Dogs has driven them away—as he and his people should be driven away.”
Red-eyed men looked at their supreme elder and wondered how, after days of fasting and a night of plaku celebrations, he could still seem as restless and full of angry energy as a man half his years. Then they remembered that when Sondahr had chosen not to dance before him, when she had lain with the Man Who Walks With Dogs, they had seen the jealousy in Lorak’s eyes as, growling, he had turned away and stalked off into the night, to spend it alone within his hut upon the Hill of Dreams.
“It is also an insult to the spirits to accuse a man behind his back because you are offended by the actions of another whom you believe favors Torka above you.”
All eyes flew to Sondahr as she drew back the heavy door skin of mammoth hide. She stood fully clothed in the arching entryway, then advanced boldly into their midst to stand before Lorak.
Shocked, the supreme elder stuttered, “No woman may enter here!”
“I, Sondahr, have entered.”
“You, Sondahr, may unenter No man wants you here!”
“Do they not?”
Her question was so sweetly baited that the others hung their heads lest, in their weariness, they laugh at Lorak and risk rousing not only his rage, but the further marauding of their hangovers.
“Torka is a good man, Lorak,” the magic woman said coolly. “He is a strong hunter who sacrifices his own desires for love of his women and children .. . and son. He has shared all that he has with us, and still, although you know that mammoths are his totem, you forced him to join with you to call them forth to die. But this he did, and not easily, lest your threat against his family be carried out.”
Lorak’s head flew up so fast and hard that for a moment, it seemed it would leave his neck. His
eyes bulged. “How can you know these things that your eyes have not beheld?”
“I am Sondahr. I am a shaman. I know.”
“Because he has told you!” His features twisted with malevolence.
“Torka betrays this council! And no woman can be a shaman!”
She measured him as though he were worthy of nothing more than her contempt. “If you would accuse such a proud and honorable hunter as Torka, you owe it to him, and to the honor of the spirits of this encampment, to speak your accusations to his face.”
“Lorak owes Torka nothing! Torka owes everything to Lorak! His place in this camp, Lorak has allowed! His permission to hunt the meat of his own choice, Lorak had allowed! Allowance to bring within the great wall of bones meat from species other than the great mammoth spirit sanctified here, Lorak has allowed!”
“And in the long dark days of winter, the meat that Lorak had so wisely suffered Torka to bring into this camp will feed the people who have gathered to hunt mammoths that do not come.”
He glared at her, measuring her as she measured him, and then he smiled a grotesque parody of mirth at her expense. “You may speak for Man Who Walks With Dogs, Sondahr, but you cannot heal his woman or bring forth her baby. Your powers are weakened because you, like us, are a mammoth eater. You fast even as Lorak fasts. Whatever powers you say you possess are drawn from the ‘flesh and blood of the beasts whom Man Who Walks With Dogs has sworn that he will not kill. Will he kill them for you, Sondahr? Or will he stand by and watch you die—for without the flesh of the great tusked ones, Sondahr is nothing. Less than a woman.”