by Sean Golden
“What did you do?” Jerok hissed at Lirak.
“Hold!” Kodul sternly held up his hand. “Think of your place, Jerok!”
Jerok looked down, and taking Soonya’s hands in his, he led her out of the hut, glaring at Lirak whose attention was now focused on Kodul.
As Soonya’s cries faded into the distance, Lirak faced the elders.
“What is this test?” He asked Kodul.
Kodul nodded at Chutan. “This one faces his fears.”
“He does not yet know what it means,” Chutan replied.
“He will soon enough.” Sampt licked his lips nervously and a sneer seemed to crawl across his face.
Lirak waited. Finally Kodul sat back in his chair and motioned to Traze, who stepped outside to bring in a stool for Lirak to sit. Once Lirak was sitting, Kodul lit a small torch in the corner as the sun was going down outside.
“Lirak,” Kodul began. “You aren’t the only one who has spirit dreams.”
Endsummer Moon
Wyla rules the harvest and taught men to find food in the forest and the planting of seeds. Wyla is revered as the village mother and the defeater of hunger. Her hands first crushed the berries for the spirit-water, and she is the master of herbs and healing.
– Dwon oral tradition
As the drums subsided momentarily, Lirak removed his eagle mask and feathered wings and moved away from the bonfire, so deep in thought that he didn’t realize he had company until the tap came to his shoulder.
“What are you thinking about?” Mayrie asked, her body gleaming in the firelight, the tight buckskin dress hugging her body in stark silhouette. Lirak’s pulse quickened as Mayrie’s hips swayed in memory of the dance’s rhythm. Her face and neck were flushed with the excitement and exertion of the dance. The sharp shadows from the bonfire highlighted her cheeks and nose, giving her face a tantalizing exotic flavor.
Lirak forced a smile, though his eyes remained severe. “I’m thinking about Wyla and the joy of the harvest,” he said.
“Oh stop it. No you aren’t.” Mayrie slapped at his shoulder playfully. “You should be happy, tomorrow you are free to roam the forest and Jerok can do his own chores again.” Her smile faded to be replaced with a worried look. “How are you and Jerok getting along now? I haven’t seen you fighting since the elders talked to you.”
“Jerok and I are fine,” Lirak said, knowing it wasn’t really true. “He’s concerned about the elders’ judgment.”
“What is the big secret anyway?” Mayrie asked. “Jerok and Soonya won’t tell me, and I’m not happy that you won’t tell me either. You’ve been so quiet all this time.” Mayrie gnawed at her lower lip. “Even Traze won’t tell me,” she pouted.
“Jerok and Soonya don’t know. I’ve promised the elders I won’t speak of it until they’re ready.”
“Well, when will that be?” Mayrie’s annoyance was obvious.
“They haven’t told me,” Lirak said.
“Well, I think the whole thing is stupid.” She tossed her head, her fiery hair gleaming in the light. “You did a brave and wonderful thing Lirak, and most of the village knows it.” She leaned forward, her hand gently touching his, sending an exhilarating surge through Lirak. “I know it,” she whispered.
“Hey Lirak!” Jerok’s oddly thick voice came from near the food table. “You sh… shu…bett’r get some food ‘fore it’s … gone.” Jerok was in a festive mood. This was his first Harvest festival as a man in the village, and he had drunk his share of the unfamiliar spirit water. He approached the pair with Gawn, Toldek and a few other of Jerok’s group following like ducklings on the Fedon River.
“Mayrie, wh… why r’ you wa… wastin’ your time wit’ chil…dern?” he said, stumbling slightly as he walked and swaying as he stood.
“Jerok, you’ve had enough spirit water, don’t you think?” Mayrie asked, and Lirak could hear the concern in her voice.
Jerok raised his head and howled at the bright full moon. “Not yet.” He grinned and winked at Mayrie. Toldek howled in response and soon Jerok’s entire group howled with enthusiasm.
Taking Lirak’s shoulder Jerok addressed his little brother. “You need t’eat somethin,” he repeated, steering Lirak toward the food and away from Mayrie.
“OK, Jerok,” Lirak said, reeling a bit from the powerful smell of spirit water on Jerok’s breath. “I’ll go eat.”
“Good night Lirak,” Mayrie said brightly. “Remember, tomorrow you are free again! And you promised to take me hunting again!” she smiled as Lirak and Jerok headed towards the food covered table.
“Wha… what d’ she say?” Jerok asked. “You going t’ take her hu… hunting again?” Jerok’s face darkened. “Isn’t right f’ you two… t… to be ‘lone in th’ forest. An… an’way, she sh… shouldn’t be wastin’ time wit’ you. Gir… women don’ need t’ hunt an’way, I’m the hun… hunter!” Toldek suddenly bumped into Lirak from behind, his shoulder hitting Lirak in the middle of his back, making him stumble forward.
“Oops,” Toldek snickered.
“I suppose she wouldn’t be wasting her time if she went with you,” Lirak snapped, stepping back and turning enough to keep both Toldek and Jerok in his view.
“I’m a man now.” Jerok drew himself up to his full height, “An’ don’t you f’get it.” Jerok’s grin was lopsided. He shook his head as if trying to clear it. “B’sides… I got oth… dif’rent things t’do w’t women than hunt.” His large hand fell onto Lirak’s shoulder. “I don’ like you talk’n to her al… so much either.” Jerok’s festive mood had been replaced by a dark frown.
“Why do you care?” Lirak asked. “She’s nobody’s betrothed.” Lirak sighed. “Besides we hardly speak to each other anymore. This hunting was her idea.”
“She’s not my betr… btrot… not yet.” Jerok belched. “But that’ll ch…ange.” Leaving Lirak, Jerok wobbled back into the milling group of Dwon as the drums began again. Jerok laughed loudly at something Toldek said.
“You OK?” Gawn’s oversized hand rested on Lirak’s shoulder.
“Yes, I’m fine,” Lirak responded.
“Yeah, look, I’ll have a talk with Jerok,” Gawn offered.
“Don’t bother,” Lirak said. “It won’t help.”
Lirak looked at the food on the table, his hunger building until he walked away with a hunk of river pig and some of Baxi’s goat cheese. He sat next to Soonya to eat, and although he looked for her, he didn’t see Mayrie again that night.
A Day in the Life
And when the Seven had completed their labors and the world was as it should be for all living things, the Seven spoke to the man and woman saying to them “go forth into your home and have many sons and daughters for it will be the honor and duty of man and woman to birth the one who will fight against death.”
– The Prophecies
Cleaning the village green where the bonfire and feast had been held, Lirak watched Jerok as he left the Dimeni hut with Gawn, Toldek and the rest of the young hunters. Jerok seemed more sullen than usual, and the entire group seemed lethargic and tired. Lirak recognized the effects of too much spirit water the night before and the thought of Toldek nursing a pounding headache was not an unpleasant thought.
Soonya had slowly seemed to come to accept that the elders would have their way with Lirak. Lirak heard her cry herself to sleep almost every night, but each day she seemed herself again. Lirak had never realized how brave his mother could be. He hated that he was bringing her such pain.
A smoldering smoky haze rising from the ashes was all that remained of the great bonfire. People moved around the village doing daily chores, but a little more slowly than usual. Normally at this time of morning, with the sun already rising up through the top limbs of the giant redwoods, the village would be bustling with activity. Lirak noticed that even the younger children were not yet up and doing their daily chores.
Gathering up the detritus of the festival, Lirak sighed, missing his rock chip
ping. He wanted to complete his knife blade. He had pushed himself for days shaping extra arrowheads and axes so that he could spend some time focused on the much more difficult task of making a long, thin, sharp blade for hunting. Bok, his teacher and the master knapper in the village, had made virtually every knife used by the hunters and tanners of the village. Lirak was determined to be as good as Bok by the time of his Ko’Dimen. Putting the last chair back to the large table, Lirak leaned back and stretched his back and shoulders.
Looking around to make sure no one was watching, he pulled the unfinished obsidian blade from a makeshift sheath he wore on his belt to keep it protected. Turning it slowly over in his hands, he marveled at the sunlight dancing on the blade, making him blink when the sun caught a flake scar just right. He ran a thumb along the small area which he had completed with the fine, precise pressure flaking to give the blade its final edge. The straightness and sharpness of the edge was gratifying. But his thumb strayed like a tongue to a missing tooth to the one spot where one of his shaping chips had removed more material than he had intended. He frowned as his thumb dipped into the concavity in the stone. He hoped that he could work the stone so that the flaw was merged into the blade edge unnoticeably. Such flaws were not uncommon with arrowheads and spear heads, but those were much smaller and did not take the stress a knife blade did. There was a flutter in his stomach each time he ran his thumb across it. I should show this to Bok. The thought came to him again, as it had each time he contemplated the flaw, but he feared what Bok would say.
“That’s really amazing.” The voice of Patrik, the young fletcher’s apprentice, caught Lirak unprepared and he almost dropped the unfinished blade.
“Don’t do that!” Lirak looked over at Patrik, his face caught halfway between anger and laughter.
“Ha! That’ll teach you to stand there admiring your own work,” said Patrik, a broad smile on his thin face and a devilish twinkle in his pale blue eyes beneath a wild shock of dark hair.
Sighing, Lirak returned the unfinished blade to his belt sheath. “You do enough bragging for both of us,” he said.
“I’m just glad I managed to sneak up on you for once! You must have really been thinking hard about something,” Patrik said.
Patrik was nine moons younger than Lirak, enough to be a summer younger. He was almost the same size as Lirak, and the two of them had developed a strong friendship over the summer as Patrik took the steady flow of Lirak’s arrowheads and attached them to his straight, feathered, wooden shafts to make deadly arrows for the village hunters.
Patrik laughed in his short, sharp, wicked way and patted Lirak on the shoulder. “That blade really is looking nice.”
“Thanks,” Lirak said. “Jerok doesn’t get it. He just sees a knife or an arrow. He doesn’t understand the making of things the way we do.”
Patrik nodded. “Yeah, it’s really sort of magical if you think about it. We take stones lying in the ground, and sticks from bushes and trees, and we create knives, arrows, spears… Jerok would find it a lot harder to hunt if he had to use his teeth and fingernails.”
Both laughed easily, and for a moment Lirak forgot his dreams, the elders, his missing father and the burden he had become for Soonya. The sun felt warm on his face and Patrik’s natural easy wit and enthusiasm always made Lirak feel better.
“Race you to the Old Oak!” Patrik said, and before Lirak even realized it, he and Patrik were dashing across the village green toward the one ancient oak tree that remained alone and untouched in the village’s large clearing.
Patrik got there first, by a hair.
“Hah!” he gasped for air. “I beat the great bear-slayer again!”
“You cheated,” panted Lirak in response, leaning against the massive trunk of the ancient, gnarled tree as his breath returned. “You got a head start.”
“Next time you go bear hunting, take me!” laughed Patrik. “It won’t matter if I outrun the bear or not, I just have to outrun you!” Patrik sat on the dusty ground beneath the oak’s huge canopy, his infectious grin causing Lirak to smile in return.
Lirak reached down and patted Patrik’s shoulder. “Next time I’m in a fight for my life, I promise you I’ll want you there,” he said, laughing as he regained his breath.
“Lirak, I’ve got my bow, and I’m ready to go hunting.” Mayrie’s soft voice snapped Lirak’s head around as she stepped out from behind the oak. As she said, she had a Dwon bow over her left shoulder and a quiver full of red-feathered arrows on her back. She wore a typical Dwon buckskin dress, tight at the waist with a loose skirt that ended just above her knees. The dress was unadorned, with none of the yellow and red painting or beadwork she usually wore. Somehow this simple dress made her look even more beautiful than usual to Lirak.
Patrik laughed his wicked laugh again, and smirked at Lirak.
“A trick?” said Lirak. “This was a trick?”
“Heh, you’re a hard person to nail down Lirak,” Patrik said. “You promised Mayrie to take her hunting, and I plan to see you do it. Today’s a perfect day for it, everybody is sleeping off the festival and nobody is going to care if we spend our morning in the forest. And Jerok can’t complain if I go with you two.”
Lirak looked from Patrik to Mayrie, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t find it in himself to be angry. Patrik was right, he realized. It was a perfect day for it, and Mayrie’s eyes pulled at him like a spring surge in the Fedon River.
“You win. I’ll go get my stuff. Patrik, you’ll need to…” Lirak stopped mid-sentence as Mayrie grinned and pulled Lirak’s bow and quiver from behind the tree.
“I’ve got everything you need, right here,” said Mayrie, the green flecks in her eyes sparkling as she smiled innocently at Lirak.
“I bet she does,” laughed Patrik.
Lirak punched him in the shoulder, just hard enough to show he meant it, while Mayrie seemed to be fighting the urge to giggle.
Setting a finger across his lips, Lirak motioned for Mayrie to move forward. Patrik carried no bow, apparently content to just be watching Lirak and Mayrie. Mayrie’s bow was in her left hand, and she held one of the special red-fletched arrows in that hand as well. Patrik had dyed the fletching on her arrows red at Lirak’s request; red for her flaming hair. Her right cheek and chin were smudged with dark brown soil where she had rubbed an itch. Her hair was askew and there were bits of grass and leaves caught in it. Her smile was radiant, and Lirak was struck again by her raw, natural beauty. No, I can’t let her see how I feel, he thought, smashing down his desires mercilessly, and his face hardening into a stony mask. She needs to live, to marry and to birth strong healthy children. My path is not that way. No matter how much I wish it was.
Mayrie carefully knelt down, and mimicking Lirak’s earlier movement, used her elbows and knees to work her way to Lirak’s side. Her elbows were raw and scratched, and her skirt was sodden with dirt, but she seemed oblivious to all that, focusing on moving as quietly as possible, and keeping her profile below the low bushes at the edge of the small clearing ahead. Patrik stayed where he was.
Lirak cringed with every sound Mayrie made, although her movement was quiet and controlled. Just the sound of her skirt dragging leaves along the forest floor sounded alarmingly loud to Lirak. But other than the buck in the clearing lifting its head and twitching its ears for a moment, Mayrie’s movements seemed to go unnoticed. Soon Mayrie was beside Lirak, her breathing sounding loud in his ears. But he could see that she was trying to breathe the way he had showed her, long, deep breaths in through the nose, slow and steady out through the mouth. Within a few moments her breathing returned to normal.
Lirak pointed at the closest doe in the clearing. Mayrie was no longer smiling, her face showed a firm determination. She locked eyes with Lirak, nodding slightly to show she understood. Lirak carefully drew his feet up under him, and with his thumb he indicated “up.” Mayrie followed his lead, struggling a bit with her skirt, but managing to move quietly into a
low squat behind the bush. Her breathing was coming quicker now, and she breathed in and out through her mouth, forgetting Lirak’s teaching as the excitement of the hunt came over her. The buck’s head rose and his ears twitched, so Lirak placed a hand on Mayrie’s shoulder to stop her. They held their breath and froze in an awkward half squat behind the low bush for several long moments, and then the buck flicked his white tail and went back to grazing.
Lirak again gave the thumbs up signal, and he and Mayrie each nocked an arrow to their bowstrings. Mayrie’s eyes flicked between the doe and Lirak, her breath coming in short gasps and her eyes wide with excitement. Lirak nodded, his mind accelerating and his senses expanding as they always did when hunting.
He and Mayrie silently stood as one, each drawing back their bow in the same motion as they stood, as Lirak had taught her. The buck immediately raised its head in alarm, but it was too late. The doe did not react as quickly, and Lirak watched as Mayrie aimed and loosed her arrow. Immediately Lirak realized the arrow was not quite true. He saw that it would hit just below and to the right of the spot behind the shoulder where the heart was. It was a good shot, but not the clean kill he had hoped for. He released his own arrow so that two arrows were in the air.
Mayrie’s arrow struck the doe just where Lirak had expected, causing the doe to bolt in panic and pain. Lirak’s arrow, aimed well to the left of Mayrie’s, and higher, caught the doe before it completed its first step, sinking deep behind its shoulder and piercing its heart. The other deer fled, but the struck doe’s legs buckled and it crashed to the ground.
Mayrie’s mouth made a wide “O” as she watched the doe’s last feeble kicks subside. Then she raised her arms in triumph, stepping around the bush and into the clearing. As she neared the doe, her smile suddenly changed into a frown, and she whirled on Lirak, her face reddening.
“You shot it too?” she asked, her voice sounding hurt, and her eyes narrowing in rising anger.