by neetha Napew
It was Umak who first saw the form of the woman. She knelt at the opposite end of the ruined encampment, across a bloodied lake of collapsed huts and scattered corpses. He focused past the bodies, not wanting to see them, for most were crushed beyond recognition, their garments dark with blood and fouled with gore. The mammoth had not been content merely to kill; it had ground and crushed and mutilated until most of what had once been men and women and children was now a part of the tundral earth, joined to it in a final hideous melding so that, in places, Umak could not tell where flesh ended and earth began.
The woman had knelt with her back to the carnage. She had covered herself with a swathe of hide and looked like a little tent sitting alone amid the devastation until she moved, rocking back and forth—as Umak had all too often seen mothers do when their infant sons have died, clutching the babes to the breast, tragically attempting to nurse and croon them back to life.
It was understandable that Torka assumed that it was Egatsop who sat there with his baby in her arms; he wanted it so badly. He crossed the encampment to her. He lifted her by the shoulders, turning her toward him as he spoke her name. The hide fell away, taking his illusions with it. It was not Egatsop. It was the girl Lonit.
Huge-eyed, dirty-faced, pale with shock, she held no child but had crossed her arms protectively over her chest, cradling herself as she had sat and rocked and tried to prevent her terror from taking control of her mind. It had already done that once, when she had been awakened by the screams of her people, to her world collapsing all around her. Her father’s pit hut had fallen down, smothering her, it had seemed, as her father’s women had clambered over her, stumbling and fighting their way out of the tangled mass of hides and hones, and left her to suffocate. She had heard her father shouting, and the other men, too; all screaming about gathering up spears and blades and making torches to drive “it” away. His voice had been lost, then; there had been too many voices, blending into one mass of sound. And above it all, she had heard “it” and had lain wrapped in her bed skins, trapped beneath the collapsed frame of her father’s hut, unable to move, nearly unable to breathe, screaming in strangled terror as the world shook and shook and then went silent.
She had fought her way free of the hut to see what had brought madness to her; Her people were dead, all of them, and she was glad. Glad! Her mind had filled with memories of hurt and humiliation, of cruelty and lack of compassion. Of late, Kiuk had come to pound her in the dark, and although she was not yet a woman, he had pierced her as was his right as her father. Until another man spoke for her, she was Kiuk’s to do with as he pleased. Since his two women were both big with child, he used her to ease himself. He rode her hard, stabbing deep. Sometimes she thought he was trying to ram straight through into her heart so that he might kill her. He pumped and pumped until her thighs were bruised and the place that he entered was raw and sore and bleeding from his brutal handling. She had not cried out. Not once. Not even when he blacked her eye because he was slow to come to his release. When he finished and rolled away, she had cried herself to sleep; a silent, inward sob that she had learned to make so that he, or his women, would not hear her and beat her for disturbing them. It was the females’ place to be silent. It was the females’ place to be strong. It was the females’ place to oblige the men in all things. She lamented her inability to satisfy her father when he rode her in the night. It was her duty to satisfy him, but nothing that she did ever pleased him. And now nothing would please him ever again. He was dead. They were all dead. And she was glad! Who among them had ever shown kindness to her? Only old Umak. Only Torka. But they were both gone, perhaps as dead as all the others.
The enormity of that possibility had nearly struck her down. In an instant, her gladness had become guilt. What a wretched creature she was! Her father had been right to despise her. They had all been right to despise her. And now they were dead, and only she, a half-grown, miserable excuse for a girl, was left alive, to run about the encampment, howling her grief like a frenzied animal until she had collapsed, unable to cry or howl anymorer Without her people she would die. Without the protection of the band, the huge wolves, and bears, and lions would come to feed upon her flesh. They, at least, would find her satisfying. For them, perhaps, she had been born.
Now she stared at Torka as though she dared not believe that he was real. The blank look of madness was in her eyes. She could feel it. She blinked, willing herself back from the brink of insanity, back from that mindless world in which she had taken refuge since the mammoth had gone its way, leaving bloodied, tangled ruins all around her, leaving her alone with no hope of survival. Until now.
“Torka?” She spoke his name. Her knees nearly buckled, but she kept them locked lest she faint and shame herself before him. He was real. The hard, hurtful grip of his hands told her that. She was glad for the pain. She was alive, and Torka was with her. He was not dead. He had come home. The spirits had heard the supplications that she had made over and over since he had failed to return to the encampment with the others. He had come back, as she had known that he would, even though everyone believed that he would not. No one had spoken the words, but Lonit had sensed them seeping through the encampment like smoke from an ill-made fire. Bad smoke. Dark and foul with unburned things, such as envy and covetousness and resentment. Torka had been a friend to all. All would mourn his loss. Many would lament the starvation that had rendered them too weak to go in search of him. But others would remember that he was potentially better at so many things than they, and if he did not return, how much braver and stronger and more clever they themselves would seem to their women and children . and to themselves.
It was the way of the People. Lonit had learned it long ago. One did not set oneself apart. One strove to be like all others, to unify the band, to exist within it for the sole purpose of the survival of the whole. The band was a living, functioning organism that was only as strong as the whole of its parts. So it was that its weak members were cast away. So it was that its superior members hid their strength in order to inspire the lesser members to reach toward a level of excellence that all might achieve. Experience had taught that twenty good, steady hunters would always bring home more meat than a single stalker, no matter how superlative his skills or extraordinary his bravery. Torka had understood this. Lonit had watched him from afar, marveling at the way he had paced himself. He was like a runner holding back at the end of a race, knowing that he has won too often and too well; for the sake of others, he held himself back, allowing others their pride, not realizing that his very deference to them shattered it. Torka was the best. They all knew it. Lonit knew it. She could not remember a time when she had not adored him.
Now shame filled her as she looked up at him. She was aware of the wind blowing across the devastated encampment. It surrounded her, whispered to remind her that she alone was left alive to speak the traditional, obligatory greeting of a female to a returning hunter.
Her mind went blank. It did not occur to her that, in such a scene, words of welcome would be obscenities—she only knew that she could not remember them. Her shame intensified. She was not worthy to be alive when all of her people lay dead around her. How Torka must hate the sight of ugly, awkward Lonit when his own woman was dead, when all of the women were dead ... all the pretty ones with their small, compact bodies and uniformly beautiful faces, which were as round and flat and fair as moons. Torka would want no greeting from one who would have been exposed at birth had she not been born to Kiuk’s favorite woman during a season of plentiful game. She had been so ugly that she would not have been allowed to suckle had not her father, in a moment of weakness, seen fit to indulge a poor female who had never before been able to bring an infant to full term.
Her mother had thought her beautiful. Lonit had never understood why. From the first, it must have been obvious that she was different. Her face was oval rather than wide and circular. The bridge of her nose was not flat. She was big for a female, and most unforgivable of all, sh
e had been born without the taut span of skin that covered each eyelid and stretched from the inner edge of the tear duct to the temple. A shield against wind and snow glare, this fold was more than a requirement for female beauty; without it, no girl-child was allowed to live. But Lonit had lived, despite her deformity. Her mother had begged for her to be named and thus allowed a life spirit. Kiuk had conceded. No doubt he had hoped that she would outgrow her ugliness. She had not; she had grown strong instead. After the death of her mother, her father’s other women had not turned her out. Kiuk would have done so; her ugliness embarrassed him. But the women always had work for her to do. Hers were the heaviest loads, the most tedious chores. She was grateful. She was worthy of no better life. Someday, when she came to her time of blood, a man might take her to be his woman; an older man, perhaps, widowed or scarred or in some other way undesirable. In the meantime, Kiuk found his own uses for her. But, although eleven times of the long dark had come and gone since her birth, she had not yet bled as a woman. Others of her age had sucklings at their breasts, but it did not matter. Her desire to live was fierce. Sometimes she found this puzzling, but always she remembered her mother’s dying words;
“You are not like the others, my little one. They call you ugly. They say that there is no place in the band for an ugly girl. So you must be useful. You must be brave. And above all, you must be strong. If you are not, you will be cast out and your spirit will walk upon the wind while foxes follow wolves to feast upon your bones.” She had listened. She had learned. She had made herself useful. She forced herself to be brave. Lonit knew that as long as she was strong she would have a place within the band.
But now the band was gone. Her father was dead, and his women, and all the young girls, and all the sucklings. All dead. And here she was, the most unworthy member of the band, alive and unhurt and as strong as ever. She was confused. How could she stand before Torka, the most worthy of them all, and presume to speak to him?
“Where is Torka’s woman ... his son ... his infant?” She flushed at the sound of his voice. Now, for the first time, she noticed that he was badly injured. She could see it in his stance and in his fevered eyes. His voice sounded strange to her, distant and hollow, as dry and brittle as old bones. Lonit knew that when she spoke the truth, something inside him would break.
And something did. He felt it bleeding deep within his chest. Instinctively, he knew he would not accept Lonit’s words as truth until he saw Egatsop and Kipu with his own eyes. And perhaps even then .. . somehow ... it would not be so.
Umak watched Torka and the girl from the edge of the ruined encampment. He too felt the wind blowing around him. His eyes squinted against it as they scanned the sky and the far, encircling horizon. Birds of prey had already found the encampment. It was still early morning, but Umak knew that, at this time of the year, the dark would soon come. With it, drawn by the smell of so much blood, foxes, lynx, wild dogs, and dire wolves would follow.
The thought of wolves was sobering. Their broad, crushing jaws could easily snap a man’s thigh. The wolves’ strong, sharp teeth were perfectly designed for cracking bone and ripping through skin and muscle. He tried not to think of that, but the wolves walked within his mind and fed upon his courage, and visions of the huge, voracious, meat-eaters joined them: towering, fleet-footed, short-faced bears; shaggy-coated, maned lions; saber-toothed, springing cats. With stabbing fangs nearly as long as the forearm of a man and nostrils set far back and high upon their muzzles, these lion like felines could breathe while they rooted their faces into their prey and sucked their victims’ blood before it ran, wasted, out of the wounds.
Umak stood facing into the wind. Against such predators, he knew that one old man, a young girl, and a severely injured hunter would be virtually defenseless. They dared not linger here. The wind had steadied and grown colder. Umak could sense the threat of a storm in it. He, Torka, and Lonit must salvage what they could from the ravaged pit huts and be far from here by tomorrow, protected against predators and the storm within some rough shelter, with the makings of a new life gleaned from the remnants of the old.
Umak frowned. It would be no easy task to convince Torka and Lonit of this. Indeed, the premise was upsetting to him. The living were not allowed to claim the belongings of the dead, to do so would deprive the departed spirits of their weapons, tools, and shelter in the spirit world. They would wander the wind forever, unable to hunt or rest, haunting those who had robbed them until they, too, became spirits. But what life would the three of them have if they did not take up these things? Perhaps if the correct chants were made, the spirits would understand.... It would be Umak’s task, as spirit master, to make them understand.
Umak watched Torka moving through the remains of the winter camp. He walked stiffly, obviously forcing himself to ignore the pain of his injuries, and was unaware that the girl, Lonit, followed at his heels like a stunned colt terrified of abandonment. His step was slow, cautious, as though he walked upon spring ice across the surface of a deep and dangerous lake. And in a way, thought Umak, he did. When Torka found what he was seeking, the ice would break and he would fall through it to drown in his grief. Then he would die a little.... A portion of his heart would always walk the spirit world with his dead woman and children; but the man who would be reborn through the searing agony of the truth that Torka must face would be a harder, stronger man. Like the killing point of a well-made spear, Torka must now be shaped and redefined in the fire of his anguish. Umak wished that he could help his grandson endure the pain; but he knew that Torka, for the sake of pride, must suffer it alone. Umak could not share or lessen the pain. Yet, despite his resolve to remain a stoic observer inured to suffering by age and wisdom, the old man’s chin quivered when he saw Torka kneel amid the rubble of what had been his pit hut. Umak knew what Torka was seeing now and longed to go to him. He wished that he had the power to command the pit huts to rise again and to order life back into the bodies of his people. A true spirit master would be able to do these things. A true spirit master would not have stumbled in the snow. A true spirit master would have arrived in time to send an invisible spear into the mammoth’s heart.
But Egatsop had been right about him: Umak was no longer a spirit master. He was a useless old man who could only stand and watch as Torka bent and lifted something into his arms .. . something small and mangled and as limp as the dolls of caribou skin that the women made for their little girls—dolls stuffed with ptarmigan down and bits of lichen and soft scrapings of fur from old hides gone stiff and dark with rot. Shapeless, its seams torn, its bloodied stuffing spilling out, its little arms and legs hanging at grotesque angles out of a flattened torso held together by the blood-sodden casing of its clothes, this doll was not a doll. It was all that remained of a child.
“Kipu!” Umak cried the name aloud. He answered Torka’s terrible wail of anguish with a wail of his own. Until this moment, he had forgotten the little boy. He had been so full of himself, so full of misery over his failure to prove that he was still Umak, master of spirits, hurdler of all obstacles. Now, the sight of Torka holding the crushed and lifeless body of his beloved little Kipu broke his pride.
Umak closed his eyes. Tears seared his lids. His long, unbound hair flew forward in the wind, whipping his face as he thought: This old man is old. This old man is master of nothing. This old man has lived too long.
But not long enough.
The sharp, staccato bark of a wild dog brought Umak up out of the drowning pool of despair. The dog stood nearby but not too close, watching the old man out of its familiar sky-blue eyes.
Umak stared back thoughtfully. So, once again, Brother Dog had followed. Once again, the intrusion of the animal into his thoughts caused him to know that it was not yet time for him to die. Old he might be, and unworthy to call himself spirit master, but he was still alive. He was still Umak, a man. And if Torka and Lonit were to survive, there was much for him to do before he set his spirit free to walk upon the wind.
They worked together to arrange the corpses in the traditional manner: men, women, and children in family groups, on their backs in the position that was called looking at the sky. It was an ugly task, and when at last the grisly assemblage was complete, the three survivors stood together, contemplating the terrible finality of the scene before them.
As Torka dropped to his knees beside the bodies of his family, Lonit shivered uncontrollably and Umak raised his arms, offering up the death song. It was a brief incantation broken now and again by cracks of desolation in the old man’s voice, but he continued until the end, and when the chant was concluded, he had a further plea.
“Go now, Life Spirits. Leave this place of death. Be now riders of the wind and the guardians of Umak and Torka and Lonit. Be born again through this female and live on in the words of these men who shall sing of you always in their songs of life.”
His arms came down. He looked at the girl. “Come. We must prepare now to leave this place before the darkness comes.”
Lonit stood mute, her face pinched and tight with cold, her eyes wide with apprehension. What was Umak suggesting? Had he forgotten that they must remain with their dead for five days? This was the time of the obligatory death watch, when the spirits of the deceased lingered around their fallen bodies and sometimes chose to return to life. Family and friends alike would need assistance if they chose to awake from their death sleep. They would need food and care, shelter and protection from predators. To abandon their people during this critical time was unthinkable. She waited for Torka to question the old man’s order, but the young hunter was in no condition to question anyone. She saw that he had taken little Kipu’s body into his arms again, and her heart bled for him. He had placed his sleeping robe over the bodies of Egatsop and his infant. The fur rippled like spring grass in the cold winter wind. Torka stared across it, his dark eyes glassy with fever. Chanting softly, imploring the life spirit of his son to return to Kipu’s poor, mangled body, he seemed to be in another world, entranced, beyond this place of death.