Beyond the Sea of Ice

by neetha Napew

  He was disgusted with himself for having been caught. His glare intensified. He had ferreted out each snare except the last one. He knew that he had been right to fear the strangers. They, or at least their magic man, must possess a great and fearful magic to have bent the will of a beast so that it lived with them as though it were a member of their band. Had it not been for the growls of the beast, he would have blundered into their company sooner, drawn irresistibly down from his cave to theirs by the smell of roasting meat.

  Now the girl was kneeling before him, offering a sliver of bone upon which she had roasted choice blood meats. The two men had hunted earlier; the smell of the fresh, fire browned meat was almost too much to refuse.

  Nearly. He made a face at the girl. She lowered her unusual eyes, sighed, and went away, leaving the meat beside him. He let it lie, not certain if it was poisoned.

  “It is safe! Eat! You are a boy, not game to be taken with bad meat!” snapped the old one. The boy’s eyes widened. The old one was a magic man. He had seen into his thoughts. Fear tightened in his gut, obliterating his hunger. Why were these strangers so kind to him? He was not of their band. Perhaps they were going to feed him to the wild dog? But no. If they were going to cut his throat and slice him into fillets for the dog, they would not have stanched and stitched his wound. A new thought dawned. It made him feel weak and sick with dread. Perhaps they were what all men feared? Members of the Ghost Band. In times of light they came from nowhere and disappeared into nowhere, stealing young women and boys, then vanishing as though they had never been there at all, leaving burning encampments and dead and dying to mark the reality of their raids.

  Suddenly shivering and trying hard not to show it lest the strangers know that it was from fear and not cold, he realized that this cave must be the place to which the Ghost Band vanished to dance its ghost dances. Here they must gather after their raids, with their tattooed skin and their huge, flapping labrets of carved bone that so deformed their lower lips, they terrified everyone who had ever seen them and lived to tell the tale.

  “Where is your band?” pressed the young hunter again, speaking slowly, with an intensity that made his voice sound as though it was ready to snap. “If your people abandoned you, in which direction did they go? Can you tell this man nothing? Can you understand not even a word of what this man says?”

  The boy slapped his arms across his chest and locked his hands beneath his elbows in an effort to keep himself from shivering. The young man bore no tattoos, nor was his lower lip pierced to hold a labret of any kind. And why did he care so much about one small boy who had been left behind by others? Maybe he was of the Ghost Band, waiting here for his fellow raiders to join him in their mountain stronghold. Those others would be tattooed and wear labrets so huge that they tripped upon them when they walked! They would try to make the boy point out the way that Supnah’s band had gone; then they would follow and kill them all.

  The thought was so anguishing, it drove back the boy’s fear and replaced it with anger. “Karana will tell the Ghost Man nothing! Karana is not afraid! This boy’s father is the mountain, and his mother is the mist! Karana is alone! He has no band!”

  Beside the fire, the girl looked up, as startled by the sharp outcry of the child as the dog, whose ears went up.

  Torka measured the boy shrewdly through half-closed eyes. He reached out and pressed gently upon the child’s bandaged thigh. When the boy gasped with pain, Torka nodded. “Karana is not made of mist or stone. In time, he will tell Torka where his band has gone.”

  Karana hissed and bared his teeth like a cornered lynx, hating himself for having blurted out any words at all. Now they knew that he could understand them. Now they knew that he could speak. Now they would never stop asking their questions. But he would tell them nothing. One day his leg would be healed, and he would run away, find his father and his band, and lead them here to kill these strangers. If only they were ugly, they would be easier to hate. If only they were not so kind, it would not be quite so hard to keep up his guard against them. If only the girl were not such a good cook, the smells of roasting meat emanating from her fire would not make his stomach lurch and gurgle in betrayal of his resolve not to be hungry. Where was Supnah? Why had he not returned as he had promised? Karana would not allow himself even to think that his father might not have survived the winter. Supnah would return, and soon. Karana was finding it very hard to be brave.

  The eyes of the old one swept over him. It was as though the wings of an invisible bird had brushed against his skin.

  “Hmmph,” exhaled the old man in a voice that revealed nothing of himself. “Do not try to be so bold, Little Hunter. We are not ghosts. We are all that is left of the People. You are of our band now.”

  While Torka and Umak hunted with Aar upon the tundra far below the cave, the boy slept in the sun on one side of the ledge, and an unhappy Lonit cracked marrowbones with a stone on the other.

  The full, yellow light of the cloudless morning washed over her. Lost in thought, she took no notice. She was remembering another light: the invisible light that had burned within the cave when she and Torka had “caught fire.” It had been brighter than a thousand Arctic mornings, warmer than the sun at noon upon an endless summer day. In that light, she had been Torka’s woman. Fully his at last, she had trembled with gladness, knowing that in all the world there was not a female left alive to take him from her side, nor was there a man who would say that she was not worthy of him.

  Her happiness had been such that she was actually thankful to the great mammoth who had destroyed the lives of many so that joy might come into her life. Lying warm and exhausted from lovemaking within Torka’s arms, she had drifted into sleep, too blissfully content to feel guilty about her gladness. Those who had been harsh and cruel to her were dead. The only two who had ever shown kindness to her were here beside her. Together they would make a new life, a new People. A sweet, euphoric contentment had absorbed her consciousness as she had willingly slipped into the sweetest dreams that she had ever known.

  The sense of bliss and gladness had remained with her until the animal had cried out and she had known that it was not an animal. When Umak had returned with the boy in his arms, she had taken one look at the child’s face and had nearly swooned with dread. It was Torka’s little son, returned from the dead to remind her of what a selfish creature she was. Had she actually been glad for his death? No. Her heart bled for the children who had died beneath the rushing, ripping onslaught of the killer mammoth. She had been foolish to think that Torka had made love to her; he had used her to sate his need because she was the only woman available. How he must long for Egatsop!

  She sighed with pained resignation. Torka would have another woman soon, she was certain of it. She paused in her work. Her eyes moved to rest upon the boy. His existence was proof of the existence of others. No longer could Lonit cling to the belief that she was the only woman in the world. When Torka had thrown the boy’s foul, tattered rags off the cliff, Lonit’s practiced eyes had noted that they must have been beautiful once, for they had been sewn of many strips of furs that had been joined with infinite precision. The hands of his human mother had sewn his garments with pride and love. Karana had screamed in rage as he had made a pathetic, lurching grab for those garments. Lonit knew that the intensity of his attachment to his clothes had little to do with the clothes themselves; it was a manifestation of his love for the woman who had made them. Lonit wondered what she was like. No doubt she was beautiful, like her child. It must have torn her heart when she had been forced to abandon such a fine son. But why had Karana’s parents left him? He was well beyond the years during which it had been acceptable among Lonit’s band to expose a child. The fact that he had been able to survive on his own proved that he had been strong and able to hunt. Perhaps he had not been abandoned? Perhaps he had been lost in a storm and even now his people were backtracking along the game trails in their search for him. Lonit did not want to think of th
at. She preferred to think that they had died of starvation during the long, bitter time of the winter dark.

  The sun was so warm upon the ledge that the marrow in the bone that Lonit had been cracking softened and grew oily and rich with scent. A fly buzzed in, fighting the wind with transparent wings as it began a greedy exploration. Another joined it. Still lost in thought, Lonit absently waved them away as she was confronted by a sobering truth: She wanted the boy’s people to be dead. She wanted to be alone in the world with Torka as her man and Umak as the patient, caring father whom she had never known. But it was not likely that an entire band would starve to death, and the boy’s behavior drove that point home to her. Fighting against pain and fever, he dragged himself to the lip of the cornice and sat staring across the tundra. Lonit watched him and knew that he was certain that it was only a matter of time before his people returned.

  But they had not returned. It had been many days since Umak had carried Karana down from the heights. The hours of light were growing longer. Soon night would become a thing of the past, and still there was no sign of Karana’s people. Lonit’s eyes focused upon the boy. His leg was healing very slowly. It was still hot and so full of pain that he could barely move it. Had Torka not insisted that he spend his nights out of the wind, he would have remained on his mat of piled skins, there on the other edge of the cornice, and never stirred at all, except to relieve himself. Still, Umak said that his wound was healing. Fragments of bone from the splintered end of the spear were beginning to work their way out of the inflamed thigh. Umak said that this was good, for it was the splinters that caused the festering. The wound still bled a little and sweated clear fluid, but it no longer oozed the thick, greenish secretions that had caused the old man so much concern in the first few days after he had speared the boy.

  Karana’s appetite had returned, although he still refused to eat in front of any of them. He snarled at Lonit each time she came close to place an offering of meat before him. When Aar ventured near to steal the neglected portions, the boy clouted him across the nose. Insulted and intractable, the dog stayed near the child, waiting patiently. When no one was looking—except the dog, and Lonit from her place at the far side of the fire pit—Karana wolfed down every morsel of food that she had brought to him. Covertly, she had observed the boy’s growing interest in the dog. His initial fear of the beast gradually became curiosity. Intrigued by having a wild animal in such close proximity, he had begun to toss it the joints that he had not quite scraped free of marrow. Each day his toss grew shorter, drawing the animal closer and closer, until one day he held out a generous scrap of meat and Aar was eating out of his hand.

  From that day, when not hunting with Umak, the dog stayed beside the boy. In the cave or on the ledge, Aar could be found at Karana’s side, sleeping next to him in the night, absorbing sunlight with him by day as the boy sat with his back against the mountain wall and kept his vigil over the empty tundra far below, patiently awaiting the return of his people.

  Lonit sighed again. Soon now, they would come.

  Torka was also convinced of it. He seemed reborn, no longer sullen and reflective but eager to greet each day. He had no time for Lonit. When he was not hunting, he was busy with his weapons, working and reworking his spears, knapping and re-knapping his projectile points. Lonit was convinced that he occupied himself to keep his man-need quelled, and when Karana’s band came, he would choose someone worthy from its women to warm him in the night. Meanwhile, when darkness fell, he built a signal fire on the ledge, sheltering it from the wind within an open-ended baffle of skins laid around a brace work of bones.

  “If Karana’s band is out there, they will see Torka’s fire. Soon they will come.”

  The boy had listened with wide-eyed apprehension, as though he feared that the flames would attract ghosts instead of men; but as time passed, he began to relax a little. Both Umak and Torka ignored his hostility. They spoke to him and shared their thoughts, and Torka showed him the People’s way of making weapons out of stone and bone, and Umak told him tales of magic and myth, and although he would not speak in acknowledgment of their open concern for him, the fear and hatred that had gleamed from wide, dark eyes when they had first brought him to the cave was less apparent now.

  Still, he kept his unrelenting daylight vigils and snarled at Lonit whenever she brought food to him. She had given up trying to communicate with him. In time, he would speak again. In time, he would lose his fear. In time, his people would come, and who knew what would happen to her among strangers, when her own band had barely tolerated her.

  She had said as much to Umak. He had listened pensively and understood her fears, for he himself suffered similar apprehensions. Here, alone with Torka and Lonit, he was a hunter again, needed again, strong again. Within a band, he would be only one more old man living out his days until his time came to walk away upon the wind.

  They had sat together the night before, close to the fire, while Torka and the boy slept. The sounds of meltwater cascading down from the ice pack had filled the darkness. Now and again, from somewhere deep within the mountain itself, there was the low groan and grinding sound that had become familiar to them.

  Umak had seemed suddenly to come to grips with an unspoken argument that he had been waging with himself.

  “The People were not the only people,” he said. “There are other bands. We are not alone. Umak says that it may be the people of the tundra are like the great herds of caribou. Once they were one bull, one cow, then one herd with many calves. Calves grow. They become many bulls, many cows. The bulls lock horns in combat. Blood is shed. The younger bulls break away from the main body of the herd. Cows follow to form a new herd. Like this it happens, many times. Soon there are many herds, each moving its own way, each following its own route of migration in endless search for food, forgetting that there are other herds until not one cow or one bull remembers the beginning.”

  “This woman is happy here upon the mountain. She is content with Umak and Torka as the only members of her ‘herd.” “

  “It is so with Umak. But no man or woman may hold the wind. It will blow what it will to us. And whatever comes, we must be strong.” Now flies were landing on the back of her hand and crawled between her fingers, buzzing and circling as they feasted on the oils that had risen from the marrowbone. She flicked them away with disgust and rose to her feet, wiping her hands on the hide apron that she had made of unwanted scraps left over from the garments she was sewing for her men.

  She could see them now: two solitary figures striding toward her, with Aar trotting along to one side, tail up and bouncing. They had taken a fair-sized ground sloth; its bulky shape was unmistakable as they took turns dragging it. Its thick pelage would make a wonderfully thick sleeping mat, and its extraordinary claws would make excellent tools with which to dig the late-summer harvest of edible tubers. The happiness of anticipated pleasure filled her, then disappeared. The warm, sweet springtime wind moved around her. It brought no warmth or sweetness. Remembering Umak’s words about the wind, Lonit considered it a hostile thing.

  Her eyes scanned the tundra. Were people of another band there, just beyond the mountainous, snow-mantled horizon, walking toward her even as she gazed? No! It was not possible! She could not bear to think of it. Yet she could not help herself. Torka would welcome them. He had said so. He had spoken enthusiastically of safety to be found in numbers and of workloads eased. Umak had accused him of planning to go off to hunt the Destroyer. He had not denied it, but Lonit was certain that the last thing on his mind was hunting mammoths. He was thinking of a new life, of a new woman, perhaps many women, and Lonit knew that he would have it all. What woman would not eagerly open herself to pleasure him? What hunting band would not welcome a man of Torka’s skill and daring among its ranks? And what of Lonit?

  She drew in a breath. It was bitter. Her mother’s words rose from the past. “.. . there is no place in the band for an ugly girl .. . you must be useful .. . you
must be brave .. . you must be strong....”

  The bitterness within her grew. Lonit has been all of these things. And still Torka will choose another. But Lonit is strong. Let the wind blow to her what it will. Lonit will not be afraid.

  She would still have Umak. She would stay with him, to serve him as a daughter—or as a woman if he wished it. She would be all things to him, and when the time came for him to walk away upon the wind, she would walk with him to gentle the journey for him. Together, they would set their spirits free upon the wind. It would not be a bad thing. Without Torka as her man, Lonit had no wish to go on living. The long, lengthening days, which yielded to star-filled nights, continued to pass. Below the mountain, grasses greened and grew tall. Across the tundra, flowers of every shape and shade imaginable burst into bloom. In the high, precipitous alpine canyons, groves of miniature dogwood became spangled with white, four-petaled stars, while willow catkins turned gold with tiny blossoms, and dwarf bunchberry and cranberry flowered and began to set fruit.

  Flies, gnats, and great hordes of whining mosquitoes formed black, veil like transparencies over ‘pristine lakes and ponds. Birds were everywhere. Fishing hawks and eagles rode the thermals, soaring and banking above rivers in which salmon had begun to run. Geese of myriad sizes and varieties vied with ducks, swans, turn stones and sandpipers for prime nesting sites within the wetlands. Cranes and herons stood serpent-necked and stilt-legged in the sedge marshes, while loons called and lobe-toed phalaropes splashed and spun within the shallows of uncountable streams as they ducked their heads beneath the water to scoop up larvae and freshwater crustaceans with their beaks.