by neetha Napew
The movement of the dancers shoved her along. To her infinite relief, she saw her own fire circle. Karana sat solemnly before it. She forced herself out of the dance, half stumbling as she seated herself gratefully upon her sloth skin. Breathless, dizzy, she shook her head to clear it. When Karana asked if she was all right, she told him that she was fine.
But when she saw the way that Ai was looking at Torka, she was not sure.
The night passed slowly, like a bad dream. For Lonit, the only good thing about it was that Torka did not linger with Ai. After a few moments he left the headman’s woman and the dance to join Lonit at their fire. Ai glared after him, as did Galeena. When Lonit asked Torka what he had done to offend them, he exhaled a sigh of annoyance, wrapped his sleeping skins around them both, and held her close. “Nothing and everything,” he replied obliquely, then would say no more on the subject.
They slept together until the night was nearly over. Lonit awoke and lay still within Torka’s arms, remembering the previous night and wondering if her fear of Galeena had caused her to misunderstand his words. She could see no reason why the man should wish to threaten her and even less reason for him to desire her. She could hear him now, sating himself upon one of his women. Probably the pretty one, she thought, and recalled the way the woman had looked at Torka. Not wanting to remember or to hear more of the breathy, savage coupling, she buried her head in Torka’s arm. She snuggled closer to him beneath their sleeping skins and wished that Galeena and his band had never come.
Far beyond the mountain, the howling of a wild dog rose with the dawn. Lonit wondered if it was Aar and hoped that the animal had found a better band than that which had driven it away. She took her memories of Brother Dog with her into her dreams and was sound asleep when Karana rose, took up his spear, and walked out of the cave to stand in the light of the rising sun. He stood alone. He listened to Aar, and to the summit ice pack shifting and settling on the heights far above the cave. He had heard that sound a thousand times before, yet now, on this cold, clear morning, it was as though he were hearing it for the first time. It spoke to him so clearly that he cocked his head and closed his eyes, allowing its voice to whisper to him not out of the deep, uncharted canyons of the mountain but of his own soul.
Go. Go now. Boy Who Brings Rain is no longer welcome on the Mountain of Power.
The inner voice startled him almost as much as the pressure of Umak’s hand.
“Karana rises early to greet the sun,” commented the old man.
The boy stared at him, sensing that his words, although gently spoken, had nevertheless been a rebuke. It was for the spirit master to greet the sun.
Yet, as they stood together facing into the rising sun, it was the boy who was touched by its power. Karana’s eyes and heart and very being were seared.
Umak was unsettled by the strange, wide-eyed expression that appeared upon the child’s face as Karana’s voice tumbled out of his mouth, a breath ahead of the fear that colored his revelation.
“The mountain says that we must go from this place. We must go eastward into the face of the rising sun. Listen! Brother Dog calls on the wind and echoes the voice of the mountain. He warns us. We must go from this place, or we will stay here forever!”
“Karana must stop such talk! Because Umak has refused to use his magic to make Galeena’s people disappear now Karana would have us pack up and leave and abandon to them the best encampment we have ever known!”
“It is a bad encampment.”
“Hrmmph! It has saved the life of one small boy! It has allowed Umak, Lonit, and Torka to live in safety! Karana will anger the spirits of this place with his ungrateful talk!”
“It is the spirits of this place that speak through Karana’s mouth!” Umak was taken aback. “Umak is spirit master! Karana is a little boy!”
Karana gulped. Umak was very angry. The boy nodded, not wanting to upset him. He decided that he would say no more. Umak must be right. He was being presumptuous to assume that the spirits would wish to tell him anything. If they had warnings, they would give them to Umak.
Days and nights flew before the sun and moon like clouds driven by the gales of time. Karana listened in vain for the spirits of the mountain to repeat their warnings. After a while, he was glad they remained silent. His leg was not quite strong enough for a trek into far and unknown lands, and even if it were, he would not want to go without Torka, Lonit, and Umak. And they would not believe that the spirits of the great mountain would choose to speak through such a little mouth as his.
In many ways, life was improving upon the ledge. The autumn nights were growing longer. The days were sweet and burnished by the light of the Arctic sun, but there was an ever-increasing quality of fragility to that light. Man and beast became restless in anticipation of the time of the long dark, so even Galeena’s people were moved to rise with the sun, to hunt, to gather, to prepare for the lean, dark days to come.
The skies turned white with tens of thousands of migrating snow geese heading south and east. They competed with Lonit and the women of Galeena’s band for the last of the season’s berries and roots. While the geese fattened on the autumn bounty of the tundra, Galeena’s women came down from the mountain to set snares for them, and Lonit took great pleasure in stalking them with her bola, a weapon totally unknown to the people of Galeena’s band. Torka was proud to see how the hunters openly admired Lonit’s skill with the strange device. They and the boys murmured with amazement at the whirring sound it made as it flew low over the ponds and marshes, and even surly Ninip cried out with astonishment as its perfect weighted thongs hissed around the legs and necks of its prey. Wishing to make a gesture of friendship, Lonit offered to teach the women of the band how to use it, but they were not of a mind to try new things; Ai turned up her flat, now-crooked little nose and said it was easier to set snares than to waste her time attempting to master such a complicated thing as a bola.
The enmity that had strained Torka’s relationship with Galeena was gradually softening into a begrudging toleration. Neither man liked the other, but Torka had proved that he was a good man to have along on a hunt, and for the sake of his people, he had not challenged the headman since their last exchange of hostile words. Now that Galeena was finally showing concern for the future welfare of the band, Torka saw no reason to provoke him; his younger woman was already going out of her way to do just that. It was obvious to everyone that, since Galeena had cracked her nose, she was nursing a grudge against him, deliberately focusing her attentions upon Torka in order to antagonize her own man. Torka avoided her when he could. Now she was angry with him, too, which pleased Galeena and made Lonit very happy.
The inner recesses of the cave were once again packed high with provisions for the coming winter. Drying frames were everywhere, and each was weighted with meat and fish and fowl. The women worked skins and fashioned horns and bones into tools of many uses. Umak, happily situated with Naknaktup and Oklahnoo at their decidedly cleaner fire circle, portended good things for those who spent the last days of the time of light in preparation for the inevitable rising of the starving moon. With the two doting matrons to see to his every need and whim, he had no time for Karana. When the boy came to him, Umak waved him away, telling him to seek those of his own age for companionship. Karana shrank back from him, hurt and bewildered by his rejection, but the old man did not notice. He had his women and his port endings and those were enough to keep any man busy. Arrogant, confident, and fully virile again, he had assumed great status as spirit master of Galeena’s band. He might be beyond his years of running down steppe antelope and killing them with his bare hands, but everyone knew that he had recently stood against the great short-faced bear, and he would not let anyone forget that he drew the essence of its power from its skin each time he wore it. He greeted each dawn with a chant in which he referred to himself as Man Who Kills Great Bear Alone. He invoked each sunset with a plea for the return of the sun, in the name of Man Who Walks In Skin O
f Great Bear Spirit.
And behold! The sun rose! The sun set! Everyone was impressed. Especially Umak. Because of their confidence in his magic, Galeena’s hunters were bolder and better at their kills. Because they feared his power, Galeena’s women bathed and maintained a cleaner encampment when, from out of a feigned trance, he insisted that they do so or be eaten by the wind spirits. Torka was openly proud of him, and a beaming Lonit brought him prime portions of meat from her own fire. All the women of the band did so, for as the man who called the spirits of the game to die upon the hunters’ spears, Umak was not required to hunt for himself or for his women.
For the first time since his youth had left him, Umak was content with his life .. . except when he was distracted by Karana’s watchful eyes. The boy’s face was impossible to read, even for a spirit master, so Umak did not try. It was enough for him to see that the boy was walking without the aid of his crutch. Soon Torka would take him down from the ledge to hunt small geese. And all because Umak had used his skills as a healer to drive the bad spirits from the boy’s injured leg. The old man was proud of his accomplishment.
And Torka, seeing the change in him, was glad.
“Umak is happy in this new way of life?”
“Hrmmph! To live in one place is not the way of the People! But Man Who Kills Great Bear Alone says that this mountain is the Mountain of Power. To this spirit master it gives great strength and wisdom! To those who camp within its walls, it is good!
Torka could find no cause to disagree with him. Galeena and his people left much to be desired when he compared them to the members of his own band, but life was easier since they had come; and, although Torka often found himself longing to be alone again with only Lonit, Umak, Karana, and the wild dog for company, he had to admit that the future seemed far less threatening. Umak was right. Life was good upon the mountain. For the first time in longer than Torka could remember, days and nights were passing with very few shadows.
Until, one night, he dreamed again of the roaring wall of water. It rose up from beyond the horizon to sweep eastward toward the mountain. Black and raging, it drowned all that moved before it, except one indomitable creature that walked through and above it.
It was huge. It was silent. It was terrible in its unwelcome familiarity. Neither flesh nor spirit, its shoulders held up the sky. Its massive, stanchion limbs parted the waters. Its bloodied tusks ripped the fabric of the clouds. Bodies rained out of them. Headless, faceless, crushed, and mangled, they grasped at its shaggy hair and rode its monstrous back, leering at the dreamer across the tormented miles of his memories.
Alinak. Nap. Egatsop. Kipu. The bodies of the People-they were all there, beckoning and speaking to him on the rising wall of the wind, telling him that he could not walk away from them, that they had followed, that they would always follow .. . until he was one of them, a member of their band again, forever. He twitched in his sleep. He tried to shake the dream away, but it intensified. The beast of his nightmares reached the mountain wall. It was larger than life, but only half the size of his terror as the beast raised its trunk, so the bodies of the dead could clamber upward and leap onto the ledge.
They were mists, smokes, swirling over the sleeping forms of Umak, Lonit, and Karana. He knew them all, and yet did not know them. Those flattened, mangled, hideously smashed, and bloodied corpses could not be his beloved woman, his more-beloved son. Neither had faces, yet somehow they smiled and stared at him before putting their mutilated cloud mouths over the faces of Umak, Lonit, and Karana to suck their life spirits from them.
The beast rammed its tusks into the mountain wall. The world shook as Thunder Speaker trumpeted its triumph over the man who had dared to stand alone against it and live to tell the tale.
Torka!
It spoke his name as its impossibly long trunk encircled his chest, crushed his ribs, and lifted him, carried him out of the cave, and hurled him upward into the night. He flew into the clouds and. was blinded by their mist. Lightning flashed nearby. Thunder deafened him as he grasped the bolt and turned it to his purpose.
It was a part of him. He was the lightning bolt. It was an extension of his spear arm. It burned and set his spirit afire. It sapped him of his humanity as it transformed him into a living weapon. His arm was not an arm, it was a five-jointed sling of power; its muscles and tendons and flesh were all fused by the lightning into a wondrous device that coiled back and then sprang forward like the limb of a leaping lion. The power of that beast, and more, was his as the lightning bolt was propelled from his hand downward with the speed of a plummeting eagle.
He struck the Destroyer through its red, hate-filled eye. He went down into that hatred, into a lake of blood that choked him and cooled the power of the lightning bolt until it and he lay cold and lifeless within the heart of the great, dead spirit that would never again roam the world to feed off the lives of men.
“Torka!”
Manaak’s imperative whisper brought him out of the dream. He stared up at the scar-faced hunter, dazed, dry mouthed, his heart pounding. Dawn was thinning the darkness. Lonit lay warm against his back beneath their sleeping skins, but he was cold, badly shaken, glad that Manaak had awakened him.
“Khum! Listen! Torka must hear!”
Rising carefully so as not to awaken Lonit, Torka drew on his tunic and followed Manaak to the edge of the cornice. The world was blue with cold, and the waterfalls were frozen solid. The wind spoke softly, promising that soon the sun would rise.
From across the endless miles, from out of distant canyons and glacier-choked mountain ranges far to the east, there came a sound that gave substance to Torka’s dream.
“Mammoth ...” Manaak exhaled the word as though it were the answer to a long-chanted prayer.
Torka listened, his heart and spirit as cold and frozen as the waterfalls, until the sound redefined itself and he smiled with relief. “Many mammoth. A herd. Very far. Days from this place. A herd means females and young.” The dream was fading now. He felt better. He saw the look of disappointment cross Manaak’s face and did not care. “Big Spirit . World Shaker .. . the Destroyer .. . the one that Manaak would kill, that one is solitary. That one walks alone.”
Manaak’s eyes narrowed. “Big Spirit was not alone when it came upon the encampment of mammoth hunters at the entrance to the Corridor of Storms. The mammoths screamed as they died in the bog pits into which the hunters drove them. Then Big Spirit came. Like the shadow of an early winter he came and fell upon us like a storm. When he left, he went alone; but it is said that Big Spirit follows the herds. He watches the old, the weak, the little lost ones who wander off to die. He kills those who would eat of their flesh. He grinds into the tundra those who would disturb their bones. It is for this he lives: to crush the life spirits of those who hunt mammoth.”
“Then he will not seek us here, for we are men who prey upon other kinds of meat.”
Manaak shook his head. “It is said that Big Spirit knows and remembers all. And like Manaak, he does not forgive. Big Spirit is out there somewhere; even as we speak, others may be dying in their encampments. Someday it will come to us, and we will have to face it. Galeena may be content to hide in the belly of this mountain, but until Big Spirit is dead, Manaak will listen for the sound of mammoths moving in the night, and Torka will twitch in his dreams.”
Torka was troubled by Manaak’s words, but as game continued to pass below the mountain in a slowly dwindling parade, no mammoths were seen, and the animals that he and Manaak had heard trumpeting in the distant mountains were not heard again.
Fowl continued to fill the skies by day and to chortle, honk, and quack within the frosty marshes during the ever lengthening nights. The animals of the tundra were exchanging their summer coats for winter white. Pikas and other rodents feverishly stockpiled the last of the season’s available greenery—sticks and stalks and tender shoots that dared to sprout in defiance of the increasing cold. Cached in lichen lined burrows, these would dry and
serve as fodder when snow and ice lay deep and impenetrable upon the surface of the tundral world.
The men of the band hunted with less urgency now. The boys were encouraged to go out on occasional forays as long as they remained within hailing distance of an elder. Karana’s leg was much improved, but when he took up his spear and prepared to follow the others, Ninip mocked him for his lingering limp, and Torka was adamant in his refusal to allow him to descend the wall.
“When your leg is stronger, you may go. Not yet.”
Karana accepted Torka’s words in sullen silence, but he glowered when the others left without him, and would not be cheered, even by Lonit’s offering of his favorite pudding, a mixture of finely beaten fat sweetened with congealed blood and pebbled with dried bunch berries and cranberries picked fresh in the canyon at the base of the mountain wall.
The days passed, and the nights, and Torka nodded with encouragement when he saw how Karana exercised his leg until its muscles burned; but the boy continued to limp badly, and Torka refused him permission to leave the cave.
“You will be slow. You will be unsteady. You will be a danger to yourself and to any man or boy who hunts beside you.”
“Then let me hunt alone! Let me prove what I can do!”
The boy looked so much like his lost son that Torka had to look away.
“Soon,” he said, and tried to put his memories behind him. He failed. When he looked again at Karana’s earnest little face, he spoke his heart to one who had become like a son to him. “Time passes quickly, Little Hunter. It seems that only a moon ago I was a boy walking in the shadow of my father, eager to prove myself to him and to my people. Sometime between then and now, I became a man, shadowing my own son. And now, my father and my son and most of my people walk the spirit world, and Torka walks with Karana, and both of us are shadowed by the wisdom of Umak, our spirit master. I will ask him to make the chants that will cause the spirits to hurry the healing of Karana’s leg. But Karana must remember how much Umak has already asked of the spirits in behalf of one small boy.”