by neetha Napew
The snow turned to rain again as she built a small fire of bones and dried sod that she had carried with her in her pack. By the time Torka and Umak were awakened by the scent of its smoke, she had taken strips of dried caribou steaks, wet them with melted snow until they softened a little, then threaded them on thin skewers of bone and set them to cook over the flames.
They sat close together in silence around the little fire. Torka and Umak on one side, Lonit on the other, the dog at a wary distance, watching and salivating until the old man tossed it a portion of his share despite Torka’s sullen disapproval. Umak smacked his lips and nodded to show the girl that she had done well. Torka made no effort to display his appreciation. But for Lonit, who had often been severely beaten by her father if he did not like her cooking, his willingness to eat what she had prepared was compliment enough.
The meat was soon gone. The little fire smoked. The sods had been transformed into heat. The burning bones cracked and settled into ashes. Inhibited by their surroundings, the travelers did not speak. Outside, it was still raining hard. Beyond the bleak, barren protection from the elements that their high, rocky aerie afforded, the wind moaned and the rain beat upon the face of the mountain as waterfalls of meltwater cascaded downward from the summit ice pack.
After a while, uncomfortable with their silence, discomfited by the strange sounds of the mountain itself---deep, internal groanings and shiftings that seemed to emanate out of the rock—Umak was inspired to speak. He told the story of how the People came to be created. “It began on a day like this, long ago. Before the Great Flood, when all living things were male, the first rain fell. It did not turn to snow but stayed as rain for many days and nights, until all living things were drowned except two spirit masters.”
Torka and Lonit were enthralled. The old man spoke with the flat, formal cadence of one who has spent over half a lifetime learning to tell a story correctly. He cast an enchantment with his words. Even the dog listened, its head cocked, appearing to understand.
“The two spirit masters took refuge from the rain on a day like this in a cave like this, high on the Mountain of Power. And when at last the waters receded from the world, they were alone. It was not a good thing.
“On a day like this, they sat together. In a cave like this. They grew bored with one another’s company. “Let us put life back into the drowned world,” they said. And this they did. From the Mountain of Power, they made great magic. The sun came back, and day was born again. And the moon came back, spitting out the stars that it had hidden in its mouth, and night was born again. The green plants grew anew, and the animals rose up to live again.
“But when they tried to make new people, they could not do this. They tried and tried again. But the great flood had diluted their powers. They were very tired. They looked out from their cave and were sad. It was not a good thing to be alone in a world with no people.”
He paused. His listeners were rapt. It was the most ancient of tales. They had all heard it countless times, but it was comforting to hear it now, on a day like this, in a cave like this, with the rain falling and the mountain holding them high within the clouds as the spirit master’s words poured out of the cave and rode upon the back of the wind to tell the spirits of the air and sky of how the People who were no more had been born.
“The two spirit masters slept. The Mountain of Power gave them dreams. On a day like this, in a cave like this, they awoke and knew what they must do if they would make new people. By the magic of the mountain it was done—they copulated, male to male. By the magic of the mountain, one man became pregnant by another. And when the moon had fled from the night nine times, and returned nine times, the first child of the People was delivered out of a man. In blood. In pain. This was not good. So, by the magic of the mountain, First Child became a female. And from that day to this day, woman is created so that males may know the company of other males without ever again being forced to endure the terrible ordeal of childbirth. That is for women. Always and forever.”
The story nourished them like a good meal. Umak looked thoughtfully at Torka and Lonit. The cold, high world of the mountain was desolate and strange, but Torka had been right to lead them here. Male and female sat safely together within its sheltering walls of stone. They had survived the destruction of the People, and therefore the People had not been destroyed.
As Lonit sucked the last remnants of flavor from her roasting skewer, the old man found himself appraising her speculatively. Man-need stirred fleetingly in his loins, then disappeared as he chastised himself. The girl is only a girl. In time she will be a woman. But not now. He stifled a yawn. The fire was warm. The meat in his belly was as soothing as the juice of the willow. His eyelids felt heavy. He closed them, locked his folded arms around his knees, and allowed himself to nod off to sleep.
For Torka, Umak’s Creation tale roused no speculative interest in Lonit’s fertility. It roused memories of his lost woman and children. He rose and went to stand at the edge of the cornice, just out of the rain. Looking out across the clouded sky and down to the misted, rainy tundra far below, his thoughts roamed the past.
The sound of falling stone suddenly distracted him, and the rank, glandular stink of musteline intruded into his nostrils. Aar was barking excitedly, standing closer to Torka than he had ever done. Torka walked as close to the edge as he dared and looked over. There was nothing, only the rain, only the clouds, only the precipitous wall of the mountain dropping away into the mists. He cast a glance upward into the rain. When it stopped, he would explore the smaller caves that lay above. Perhaps the musteline lived there and had been drawn down to the larger cave by the smell of roasting meat. Strange that he had not seen it.
Umak was now wide awake and kneeling by Torka’s side as he touched the rain-sodden ground, then brought its scent to his nose via his fingertips. Weasel? No. Not quite. The scent was not quite like any animal scent that the old man had ever smelled. It was as though the smells of several species had melded. He sniffed. He did not like it. There was even the vague essence of Man mixed into it. But that was impossible; there were only the three of them alive in all the world. A dark cloud of foreboding rose in him. “If it comes to our cave again, we will kill it,” he said, thinking, before it kills us.
Torka shrugged. Despite the previous night’s rest, he was tired and annoyed with himself for not having seen the intruder before it slipped away. He would have to guard against such carelessness in the future. With Umak at his side and the dog following, he went back to hunker close by the fire where Lonit sat carefully unwrapping her bandages.
She felt so miserably ill that she had barely paid heed to Torka’s and Umak’s concern over the animal whose essence had permeated the wind. Whatever it had been, it was gone now. She wished that she could say the same for her pain. What she saw beneath the bandages came as no surprise. Her woman’s blood had ceased to flow the night before, but her arm was bleeding again and oozing a clear, hot fluid in the few places where Umak’s sutures still held fast.
“Aiyee-eh!” exclaimed the old man as he looked at her arm. He dropped to his knees beside the girl and began to examine her wounds with gentle fingers.
Torka was furious with them both. Why had the girl not complained about her arm? Why had she allowed her wounds to fester at the risk of infection? He had seen hunters lose fingers, limbs, and lives because of such carelessness. In her arrogance, did Lonit imagine that she was above the corruption of the flesh? How could Umak coddle her and encourage her irresponsible behavior? What an outrageous, insufferable creature she was! Why, out of all of the women in the band, had she alone survived? Why was his beloved Egatsop not here beside him? The question brought all of the agony back, and the longings. In a sudden fit of rage, he grabbed Lonit by her good arm, swept her to her feet, and dragged her to the edge of the cornice. She screamed, certain that he was going to throw her off. Instead, he half ripped off her sleeve and held her injured arm out into the rain.
“This female is the only female in the world!” he shouted at Umak. “If the People are to live, they must be born again through her someday! She may think herself above the rest of us, but she is not! If she dies, the People die forever. Umak has said this. Umak should remember it. This is not the Creation story told again—Torka will not couple with Umak to produce a first child. Of this Umak may be sure! If this female will not care for herself, then Torka will care for her, and the care that Torka will give will not be as gentle as that which Umak has given!”
With hard, compassionless fingers he scrubbed her wounds and opened the soft, infected scabs to the cold, clean, healing rain. The girl sobbed and squirmed, but he held her fast until an equally enraged Umak charged him with all the force of a rut-maddened bull caribou.
Taken by surprise by the force of the old man’s blow, Torka released his hold on the girl. Lonit collapsed in a heap, and only Umak’s strong, broad fist curled tightly into the fabric of Torka’s tunic kept him from falling backward off the ledge.
The girl stared in shock, and the dog growled in confusion.
Torka gaped at his grandfather in amazement as rain fell upon them, cooling their tempers.
“Hmmph!” snarled Umak, releasing Torka with disdain. “Torka is brave! Torka is strong! But Torka is blind when it comes to women!” The days passed. Rain continued to fall in intermittent squalls that kept the face of the mountain slippery by day and icy by night. It was not safe to venture out. The travelers were content to remain within the sheltering confines of their aerie. Across the entrance to the ledge they hung the oiled hide that would ordinarily have served as flooring for their pit hut. It proved an effective weather baffle, screening out wind and rain and keeping the floor of their shelter dry. They collected drinking water in bags of oiled skin that Lonit had contrived to hold the rain. They gathered loose stones and placed them in a circle at the back of the cave, making it as good a fire pit as any that they had ever built of sods upon the open tundra. Hungry for warmth after days of wandering in the wind and cold, they piled their skins close to the fire. The stones absorbed the heat of the flames and, unlike sods that burned away to nothing, radiated heat long after the meager fire had died and the meticulously banked coals had cooled.
They slept. They rested. They recouped their strength. Umak filled the hours with tales of the People. Aar lay close to the fire pit, but not so close that any member of the dog’s man pack might take it unaware. It watched the entrance to the cave, listening and sniffing for any hint of the foul smelling intruder, but the mysterious creature did not return. Just in case it did, Torka set a snare across the entrance, hoping to entrap it.
Umak stood by, watching stoically. “Wind spirits will not be caught in the best of Torka’s snares. A man cannot hold the mist.”
“Perhaps.” Torka went to sit by the fire again. He took up the piece of whalebone that he had taken from the plain and began to wrap a length of sinew binding around its blunt end. “When the rain stops, Torka will hunt it.”
“A wise man does not hunt spirits. A wise man makes praise songs to those whose flesh is of air and wind.”
“Torka can think of no praise words to sing to a thing that smells like a foul wind blowing out of the hind end of a badger. When the rain stops, this hunter will find out what its flesh is made of. If it is spirit, Torka will praise it. If it is meat, Torka will kill it.”
The rain continued. The hunters grew restless. They readied their weapons for future use. Torka began to think of more appetizing prey than mustelines. Like Umak and Lonit, he salivated when he recalled the camels and musk oxen that they had seen on their way to the mountain. When the weather cleared, he would hunt big game before he turned his talents to confrontations with odoriferous mountain dwellers, be they flesh or spirit.
Lonit shared the impatience of her men. She was feeling much better. Her fever was gone, her arm was healing nicely, and her appetite returned just as the supplies of dried caribou meat began to run low. Despite their best conservation efforts, they used most of the sods and bones that she had brought along for fire making. They ate their meals raw and made fires only when it was necessary to cut the chill of the most bitter mornings.
While the men worked to make projectile points out of the odd assortment of stones that they had collected enroute to the mountain, Lonit spread out the roughly cured caribou skins that she had packed from their last encampment. It would take hours of meticulous scraping before they were supple enough to be sewn into garments. Undaunted, she applied herself eagerly to the task with her good arm, not only because there was nothing else for her to do, but because she knew that her men would savor the luxury of possessing two sets of clothing again so that they would be able to don clean, dry garments after a day’s hunting the muddy tundra. She smiled as she worked. She would make Torka’s clothes first: a new pair of trousers to go with the tunic of fox skins that she had stitched for him. Torka. She cast him a longing glance, then quickly looked away. She had successfully managed to stay out of his way lest she inadvertently provoke his ire once again. But new clothes would please him, even if they came from a homely, unworthy girl.
The nights were still long and cold. The mountain filled the darkness with strange, otherworldly sounds that made sleeping difficult. The dog would growl now and again. The travelers would awake, but the darkness lay undisturbed, and the snare that Torka had rigged at the entrance to
the cave went untripped.
“Whatever walks the dark wind of the mountain night is not of flesh. It is spirit.” Umak rose from his sleeping skins, knelt, and raised his arms, rocking back and forth as he chanted a praise song to the invisible spirits of the mountain.
Torka watched him, unconvinced. “We shall see.” He burrowed beneath his furs. He went back to sleep and dreamed of mountains made of roaring water and of crooked spirits that walked the earth in the flesh of a mammoth that fed upon the deaths of men. He opened his eyes, suddenly wide awake, listening to the sounds of the summit ice pack shifting in the night. He thought of the Destroyer and knew that if a man dared face it with the right weapon, it could be made to bleed.
Lonit curled herself into a little ball within her sleeping skins. She listened to Umak’s song of praise to the mountain spirits and was afraid. She did not like the mountain at all.
Two days later, the rain stopped. They drew the weather baffle aside. The clear, clean light of a cloudless sunrise filled the cave. Far below, scattered across the tundra, game could be seen grazing: a small herd of musk oxen, the family of camels that they had seen before, and a few head of steppe antelope. Without a moment’s hesitation, Umak and Torka eagerly took up their weapons and went out to hunt. At Torka’s insistence, Lonit stayed behind. He wanted no female at his side to contaminate his luck. Umak reminded him of how helpful the girl had been in the past, but Torka was adamant. Lonit made no complaint. She was certain that he was right. Still, even though Umak assured her that they would stay well within hailing distance, she was apprehensive about remaining alone on the mountain.
With her splaying dagger in her hand to protect herself against any wind spirits who might come to menace her while her men were away, she watched the hunters descend the trail. It was wet and slick, but without the weight of their traveling packs to hinder them and throw them off-balance, they moved easily. The dog followed at its usual wary distance, its tail high and its tongue lolling. Lonit was sorry to see it leave. She would have appreciated its company.
The wind blew softly out of the east. Warmed by the yellow light of the rising sun, it was sweet with the scents of earth and grass, of fragrant spruce and artemisia, of a thousand scents that Limit knew but could not put name to. Her hand relaxed around the bone haft of her dagger. It was not a morning to sustain thoughts of ghosts.
She forgot all about her fear of wind spirits as she went back into the cave and withdrew the stone shells from the bag in which she had carried them along with her fire making tools. From her
pack, she took the four braided lengths of sinew that would form the arms of her bola. With these in hand, she went back to the lip of the sun-washed cornice and seated herself. It was her intent to begin the assembly of her bola, but the beauty of the morning distracted her.
Never before had she rested in such a high place. Never before had she imagined that such vistas as this could exist. She drew in a satisfying breath of the morning, held it in for a long time—digesting it, savoring it—before she released it and drew in another and another until she felt lightheaded and as radiant as the sun. Perhaps the mountain was not so bad after all.
Far away across the rolling tundra, enormous banks of clouds spanned the horizon. It was a moment before she realized that they were not clouds. They were mountains. Birds flew against them, tiny motes against soaring walls of ice and stone. The birds flew closer. She saw them sweep across the sky, then bank and swoop down to land upon the many ponds, lakes, and swollen rivers that glistened in the morning sun. She smiled as she turned her attention to the making of her bola. In the days to come, she too would hunt. Not with her men, but in the way of a woman. She would take many birds. She would snare them with her stone hurler, pluck them, and hang them to smoke over smoldering beds of spruce and moss. When the time of the long dark returned, Torka and Umak would have much meat to augment their own stores of game. Smoked waterfowl would serve as a tasty diversion when they were all sated upon the heavier flavors and textures of game meat. They would be pleased with Lonit.