by neetha Napew
“Yes, Torka has been with Sondahr, but only to ask for healing for the tattooed woman—nothing more. Yes, he has looked at Sondahr as a man looks at the beauty of the first dawn of spring or the great herds of caribou when they move across the world in the last red glow of sunset, to winter in the face of the rising sun. He has looked and has looked away, knowing that he has seen a rare beauty but nothing more than that, nothing that he would reach to keep and hold.” Sadness moved upon the magic woman’s face, and with it came regret, then acceptance as a small, bitter smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “All men look at Sondahr. It has always been so. And Sondahr has lain with many men, although she assures Lonit that Torka has not been one of them. Not that she has not envied Lonit, for Torka is the best of men. But Sondahr will never have a man of her own. Sondahr is Teacher. Sondahr is Seer. Sondahr is Healer. Sondahr is all that the forces of Creation have conspired to make her, and so she has no band of her own. All men fear her as much as they desire her, and many resent her for her gift, so that she has wandered among the people of the tundra, until now, at last, she dwells alone in a house of bones and grows old, childless, sharing her gift with the young, like Karana, who show promise as shamans. Sondahr had hoped that someday one of them would truly have the power to take the gift from her so that she might at last be ‘only’ a woman, content to walk beside one man, with children sucking the sweet milk of life from her breasts. Sondahr has lived long and has learned that the gift of love between man and woman is the greatest magic—the only true and lasting magic—a magic that Sondahr has never known. It is a rare gift, great enough to create life, to gentle the days and bring joy to all the nights that otherwise must be endured alone.”
Lonit was deeply moved. “It might yet be for you.”
“No,” said Sondahr, “it is ending for me now. I have seen it in the mists. There will be few tomorrows for Sondahr, and so I have called Lonit here to warn her.”
“Of what?”
“Of her own stupidity! Lonit must stop doubting herself! Lonit must stop hiding in the shadows. Lonit must stand tall and confident beside her man and know that there is no other woman in the world for him.” She paused, and her eyes narrowed speculatively. “Can Lonit say the same now that Navahk walks within this camp?” Lonit gasped. Sobered, amazed, and ashamed, she hung her head, not wanting Sondahr to see the truth in her eyes. Once again the magic woman had seen into her thoughts. Once again she had spoken words drawn from her own heart, and those words frightened her, because Sondahr spoke them with such intense urgency that Lonit knew they would forever be seared into her soul.
“Look at me.” Sondahr’s hand reached to lay long, gentle fingers beneath Lonit’s chin and turn her face up. “You must heed me, Lonit, daughter of Kiuk, child of a people who are no more. Look not to Navahk. His beauty is deceptive. He is a man of flesh, not of spirit. He is a magic man, not a shaman. Navahk walks in the skin of wanawut, but look beneath the skin of that beast, for the man who has slain it is infinitely more dangerous. I know—I have seen into his soul and have turned away, as you must turn away, or he will devour you as he has devoured his brother and will devour Karana if he can. And when he has sucked your spirit dry of life, he will throw you away to walk upon the wind forever, and he will smile and grow stronger by your death.
“Heed me now, Lonit, for in the days to come you must be a guide to Karana. He is wise and his gift is great, but he is as wild as a north wind and his moods are as dangerous. He has much to learn, but I cannot teach him. He might have been the one for me, but time will not allow it. He is of the world to come, and Sondahr is of the past. Lonit is the future. Lonit must be strong—for Torka, for Karana, and for the children of Man Who Walks With Dogs. Lonit must become all that Sondahr would have been in a new world, beneath a new sky, beneath a new sun. First woman to first man. Mother. Sister. Friend. A new Creation.”
Torka jogged alone across the land. He did not know when the day ended. He did not know when the night began. He knew only that he trailed Karana and that it was good to run alone, away from the scene of the mammoth killing—one man carrying one spear and trying to forget that the other lay embedded in the body of his totem.
Yet he was unable to forget. And this, too, was good, for the memory was cleansing, clarifying, and it enabled him to look back over his past to see the fault in it.
To have led his little band out of the lonely country in the hope that they might seek shelter within a larger band, that had been a good thing; but to compromise all that he believed in, all that he held sacred, that was an offense to the spirits of Creation, an offense to the great mammoth Thunder Speaker .. . Life Giver .. . who had brought him and his people into a new and better world. And an offense to himself.
The terrain, open grassland devoid of tussocks, allowed a good pace. In the thin, fading light of dusk, he saw Karana trotting ahead of him. The youth had made no attempt to conceal his trail. As Karana ran, his legs cut deep depressions through the grasses, which made Torka’s way easier.
He lengthened his stride. Soon they were running together, side by side. Neither spoke. They ran until the dark came down and they could run no farther.
They rested together, ignoring, hunger, watching the night thicken and the stars prick its surface like embers from a crackling fire. Far off across the tundra the sounds of the still-distant Great Gathering reached them: The women were singing, the elders beating drums. The single lonely whistle of a flute rode across the night. In the opposite direction, from the dark, tangled foothills in which the mammoths had been entrapped and killed, the voices of hunters rose in a song of their own—a praise song, a song of life for men, a song of death for mammoths.
The darkness seemed suddenly heavy, palpable, as though some great, black creature were moving invisibly across the sky, pressing down upon them, watching them from above. Torka looked up, half expecting to see ghostly cloud shapes above him in the dark. But the sky was clear; the feeling of heaviness and foreboding was within himself. He looked at Karana, wondering if he had also felt a presence within the night. But the youth stared off, his handsome features set as he balanced himself beside Torka, forearms resting lightly across his thighs, his spears held loosely in one hand, buttocks tucked to heels, weight held forward, balanced upon the balls of his feet. They had both assumed this half crouch, half squat. It was a comfortable position in which to rest and doze; if danger threatened, it would allow instant action as their limbs uncoiled and they sprinted forward.
Moments passed. Torka listened to the distant singing and became aware of smaller sounds as well—little sounds, stirrings and scurryings, soft, silken whisperings in the grasses as creatures all around slipped between them unseen. His hand tightened around the haft of his spear. His eyes scanned the benighted land, then moved to rest upon the youth. But he found a man instead—a man who so resembled Navahk that Torka actually winced. Again the night felt heavy. He wished to lighten it.
“So. Once again Torka pursues Karana and finds him alone within the dark. You are still easy to track.”
“Only because I hoped that you would follow.” Karana’s lips tensed visibly against his teeth as his head turned slightly. There was weariness and sadness within his eyes. “Either your step has slowed with the years, Torka, or you did not leave the killing site at once. I see but one spear in your hand. Did you hunt? Did you take the life of that which is totem to us? Did you wet your spear in the blood of mammoth?” Karana’s questions were soft, tentatively spoken, as though he were not certain of wanting answers.
“I killed. And in the killing, deprived Navahk of his kill. Before, he was not a friend. Now, he is an enemy.”
“He has always been your enemy, Torka. And mine. Until he is dead, it
will be so.” The youth’s expression changed
from weariness to absolute intensity. “I have listened to the wind, Torka, and now you must listen to me. I have let the wind pour through my spirit as a river pours across a rock
y river bottom, and I have drunk deeply of the wind—the spirit wind—and it has told Karana that he and Torka cannot share the same world with Navahk.”
“I do not know of another,” “Think back. The answer will come to you. You have warned me not to speak the words again. I will honor your wish and my promise. But I will not stay in the encampment of the Great Gathering. I will take Aar and go from the world of men. It is not a good world.”
Torka nodded, taking measure of the youth and of the validity of his words. “To live among others is demanding; compromises must be made. Perhaps I have made more than I should have, but we live among many diverse peoples in this camp.”
“And when the headman is wrong? Must all follow him then?”
“If others see no cause to challenge, yes.”
“Because it has always been so from time beyond beginning?”
Karana had thrown his own oft-asked question back in his face. It was an answer that was not an answer, yet he could think of no better one. “Someone must lead,” he said at last. “And the old ways are proven ways.”
“If Torka believed that, he would never have made a spear hurler or created a new type of spearhead. If all men believed that, then things would always stay the same, never getting better, never getting worse, but always staying the same. And from what Karana’s eyes have seen, nothing in the world stays the same forever: Rivers that are frozen solid in the dark times melt and flow in the days of sun and sometimes rise to flood their banks and cut new courses. The earth moves. The white mountains walk. Peaks of stone give birth to clouds that rain fire. As old Umak taught me, in new times men must learn new ways or die. In this camp, if the mammoths had not come, Lorak would have kept his people fasting and praying until they starved to death, even though there was bison meat for the taking. And in order to be accepted by the people of this camp, Torka has become another man entirely!”
“No, Karana. But I am not headman here except within my own pit hut. As you have yet to learn, when a man is responsible for the lives of his women and children, he has more than his own pride to care for. This has been a good camp for us. The men in this part of the world are good men. Their fellowship has been welcome. They have named you Lion Killer, and you have become a man among them. Many a young girl looks at you with hopeful eyes. Many a grown man envies what is between you and Sondahr. Many a youth names you friend. Would you not miss these things, Karana, if you were alone, one man in a world without people, with only the wind to speak to your spirit? All of your decisions are easy because you have only your own life to care for.”
“You will stay, then?”
“Until the time of the long dark has come and gone, yes. I will not put my family at risk by a confrontation with Navahk.”
“He has shamed you. In Supnah’s camp, and now at the Great Gathering.
He will try to take Lonit from you. He has forced you to take the life
of your totem. He is—“
“—a man who will not shame me again. I do not fear him or his magic.”
Karana was silent. Then: “It is because of me that he hates you.” The words were very soft.
“No. He and I see each other for what we are. He hates me because he knows that I see through him—not because I saved the life of one small boy whose life he threw away upon the wind.” “He wanted me dead. He still wants it. My presence reminds others that he is not infallible. He hates me for that.”
“Then, by all means, you must run off alone and give him what he wants!”
“I am his son.” The admission came as though from an open wound.
Torka nodded. Yes. Somehow he had known it all along, yet his head moved in slow negation. “No,” he said. “I have made you mine.”
Karana’s love for Torka was so great at this moment that it nearly choked him. Nevertheless, words could not undo the truth. “You are the father of my heart, but I have called the game and I have called the mammoths to die upon the spears of men. And if the spirits have turned against us, it is because of me, because I am of his blood, because I share his powers and do not know how to use them!”
Again Torka nodded, only this time he smiled and swung an arm around Karana’s shoulders, drawing him close. “Then you must learn, Lion Killer. For the good of us all, you must learn. As you have said, in new times men must learn new ways. You are a man now. It is time to stop running. It is time to face Navahk. Like it or not, we must share the world with him.”
They returned to the main encampment. By dawn they were within the wall of bones and tusks, with the dogs yapping and crowding around to offer greetings and complaints about having been left behind when there was hunting to be done. The old and sickly and the women and children gathered to hear of the killing of the mammoths. Torka eloquently told them what they wanted to hear and kept his opinions to himself. These were mammoth eaters, and so he told them of the killing site, the courage of the men facing certain danger, the way they readied themselves for the kill, how their spears flew to take their prey, and of the size of the mammoths that lay dead in the lake, awaiting the skilled hands of the women who would now go out to butcher them and honor their life spirits by turning them into meat and hides and useful tools for the people.
The people cheered while Torka tried not to think of the piteous sight of the little calf slipping beneath the surface of the water, its body riddled with spears, its last little bleats of life rising unheard except for the bloodied bubbles that told of its death, as a snarling Navahk crouched upon the body of the dying cow and grew strong upon the pleasure that he took in the agony of her death.
Karana turned away, wanting no part of their adulation.
“Karana! Your woman Pomm, she has been proudly waiting!”
He rolled his eyes with exasperation as Pomm elbowed her way tenaciously through the throng like a small, fat, hornless rhino charging through the crowd. But this rhinoceros had ribbons of white goose feathers streaming from the top of her head. He could not remember ever having seen a more ludicrous sight as, before he could backhand her away, her strong, fat fingers latched onto his arm at his elbow and she pressed close to him, fawning like a young girl.
“Pomm has prepared a soft pallet for the returning hunter!” she
simpered. “Within Pomm’s hut sweet balls of fat and berries await the
returning hunter to restore strength to one who has—“
“I have not hunted. Karana’s spears have not tasted the blood of mammoths, nor will he eat of their meat with Pomm or with anyone else! Leave me alone, woman! Let go of my sleeve and find a man your own age to fuss over!”
With Aar at his side he twisted violently to the left, freeing himself of Pomm’s grasp to leave her standing ashamed and bewildered with a handful of his torn, stone-beaded fringes laced through her fingers.
Her face turned as red as if he had scorched her. “Sorry will you be, son of Man Who Walks With Dogs! Pomm does not forget or forgive those who spurn her magic! And Zinkh will make you pay for refusing to wear his hat and for turning your back upon his one great wonderful gift to you of me!”
He heard her shriek after him, but in the noisy crowd it was easy to ignore words that he had no wish to hear. A few elderly men teased him as he passed, and one of them, a skinny fellow, asked if he might have what the young hunter obviously did not desire.
“Take her and know that Karana will forever thank the spirits for your favor to me!” he snapped, and heard the happy hoot of the man and the laughter of others as he strode off across the camp, past Grek’s family, and a small, pretty young girl who resembled their daughter, Mahnie. She was staring at him with the expression of one who longs to speak to another yet cannot quite find the right words. Yes. It was Mahnie. She still had the look of a cloth doll in her lightweight buckskin tunic and trousers, with her thick black hair loose and shining about her shoulders. So she was still a girl; the women of his band wore their hair plaited and piled into topknots upon their heads as a sign of mat
urity.
Wallah nodded to him as he passed, and he felt obliged to nod back; he had always liked Grek and his woman. Wallah was brusque and outspoken, but as kind and steady as her man. Beside her Naiapi stood watching him in silence. She was still a handsome woman, and from the imperious set of her chin and mouth, she was still as hard and unforgiving as he remembered her. From the corner of his eye he looked for Pet. Now she was a girl who must have grown into a beautiful woman by now; but if she had come across the land with Navahk and his people, he saw no sign of her.
The girl Mahnie finally found her tongue and called after him softly as he walked by her.
“Karana ...” she stammered. “I knew you would still be alive. I am glad to find you in this camp.”
He said nothing to her. Her words annoyed him, for although she was glad, he was not. He wished he were away from here, back within the Valley of Songs, hunting antelope within the river of grass, in the forbidden land where men did not hunt mammoths and where Torka deferred to nothing but the spirits and the weather and the land.
Lonit stood with Sondahr upon the Hill of Dreams. With a gesture of infinite grace the magic woman summoned Torka. Puzzled to see his woman with Sondahr, he left the elderly and the children. He assumed that the women needed his assistance to prepare for the trek to the butchering site.
“I must join the others on their trek. They will need me to invoke the spirits on their behalf,” Sondahr said when Torka had joined her and Lonit on the high ground of the shamans. “Torka and Lonit, you will stay here in my absence. It will be good for you to talk alone, without anyone to distract you.” Granting him no time to reply, she moved past him, her feather cloak flowing behind her, her head high.
Torka felt a sudden sense of foreboding. “Has Aliga died? Are the children all right?”
“They are all well, even Aliga. Since Navahk has come to this camp, she feels so much stronger. She is awake all the time and preening like a young girl. That is why Sondahr has asked you to come here ... so that we might-So that I might—“ She was looking down, breathing shallowly, fighting for every word.