Beyond the Sea of Ice

by neetha Napew

  Beside the headman’s fire circle, Ai whispered incendiary words to Galeena. Well-pleased by her behavior of the last few days, he accepted her advances. Smashing a woman in the face was a good way to deal with troublesome females, although Ai had taken longer than most to stop sulking. Now, as she handled him, he sighed with pleasure and nodded at every word of flattery that she was whispering into his ear. As she opened herself wide to his impatient rutting, he did not doubt her for a moment when she told him that he was the best of all men at all things.

  But then Weelup, his second woman, whispered the words that Ai had told her to say under threat of being tripped the next time she descended the mountain wall: “Some say Torka is betteh.” Weclup cringed as she spoke and rolled away in anticipation of a blow.

  It came.

  Galeena hit her hard across the back as he shriveled, his mating with Ai ruined. “What wuhman say that?” he demanded with murder in his eyes.

  “No wuhman,” soothed Ai. “Torka thinks he is best man at all things.

  Always Torka challenges Galeena. Torka does not eat from our fiahs. Torka does not drink from our flasks. Torka insults our men by lying only with his own wuhman.”

  Briefly, at the back of his anger, Galeena knew that no man had offered to share a woman with Torka. It was up to the headman of a band to make such a gesture first. And Galeena had deliberately chosen not to do so. If any man was guilty of insulting another, it was he for not extending such a common courtesy to another. Torka did not seem to mind. The young man was obviously more than content with his own strange-eyed female, and Galeena was glad, because he had no desire to share either of his women with a man of whom he was clearly jealous.

  Ai ran her small, warm palms over his chest and lifted her head to lick and nip at his skin. “Galeena not worry what Torka say or what other wuhmen and men of his band may think. Ai hears the old ones say that long ago, Galeena was best man of all at great gathering where many bands come to hunt and dance the plaku at the entrance to the Corridor of Storms.”

  “Old ones? Long ago? .. . Galeena is best man now! If wuhman dance plaku in this khamp, Torka could not come close to matching this man’s prowess!”

  Ai smiled and buried her face in his chest lest her smile become laughter at his expense. “Galeena not have to say this to Ai! Ai is Galeena’s wuhman, she wants no man but headman! Ai knows that Galeena is best of all!”

  “Ai will seel” He shoved her away and was on his feet, declaring that his people must prepare for a plaku immediately.

  Silence fell. Galeena’s people stared at him with stunned and gaping incredulity.

  “Plaku! Plaku! Make ready! Make ready!” he ordered, watching as the men’s blank faces wrinkled into lecherous grins and the women’s hands flew to their mouths in a vain attempt to suppress their titters.

  Ninip hooted and led the boys into a snickering little clot of whisperings as lana came to take Lonit by the hand and draw her away from Torka to sit with her at her fire circle.

  “Plaku not for woman with baby in belly,” she explained, and had time to say no more before Naknaktup joined them. The older woman gloated as she informed them that Umak was indeed a great and powerful spirit master, for he had put a baby into the belly of one who had thought herself long past bearing. Lonit was so delighted, not for Naknaktup but for Umak, that she forgot to ask why she had been drawn away from Torka’s fire. Now the old man would be young again, for the child that Naknaktup would bear him in his last years, the child that would strengthen him and renew his purpose in living—not just to posture and preen and make his wonderful magic but to pass on the gift of his life to one whose spirit had been formed with his own loins. “Yuh see! All wuhman will want Umak! They will dance the plaku for my man! This wuhman will be proud!”

  Naknaktup beamed.

  “Plaku? What is the plaku?” pressed Lonit.

  “It is a dance that is done at the great encampment of mammoth huntehs near the entrance to the Corridor of Storms. Plaku . the dance of wuhman’s choosing. It is a sharing of pleasure, from one band to aiiotheh, from one man’s wuhman to anotheh wuhman’s man,” explained lana.

  Lonit blinked, not liking the sound of this at all. “Who shares? Who chooses?”

  “All share, but it is the one time when the wuhman may choose. One man. Many men. Any man they would desire to lie with. Any man except their own man. For this one time.”

  “Not my man!” protested Lonit.

  Naknaktup laughed at Lonit’s exclamation. “Any man, my little one. Torka .. . Umak .. . Galeena .. . any and all! More wuhmen want one man, more proud his wuhman be!” She clapped her large, work-roughened hands together with delight as she savored her memories. “This wuhman live long, see many things, dance at many plakus. Long time back, before Galeena become headman this band, Naknaktup see him take on all wuhman at great gathering!”

  “That is not possible!”

  “Galeena young eh then,” conceded the matron, adding a conspiratorial wink. “Very small gathering that time. Not so many wuhmen, and plaku last long time. But Naknaktup tell Lonit that Galeena has one big, hungry, rising bone! That one reason huntehs make him headman this band.

  Any man with bone that big—“

  “My own Manaak once took three wuhmen same time,” lana interrupted, obviously not wanting to hear Galeena praised. “When Manaak finish, all three wuhmen filled and appy. Not dry and bruised like Galeena leaves wuhmen aft eh his pounding! But that no matt eh All wuhmen want Galeena. He headman. No wuhman but lana want Manaak now that he has scars on his face.”

  Lonit was in despair, yet she saw the sadness on lana’s face and wished to soothe it. “Among this woman’s people, a man with scars is a man who is envied by others. Manaak is strong and has a fine face. His scars say that lana is lucky not to have to share her man with others! Lonit does not want to share Torka!” She looked so distraught that Naknaktup reached out and swept her into a motherly embrace. “Listen to this wuhman, little one. Manaak has scars because Galeena cut him. Manaak’s scars mark him as man apart ... as man who will die if he challenges Galeena again.”

  lana put a gentle, empathetic hand upon Lonit’s arm. “You will share your man, Lonit.” Her voice was as soft and sad as her eyes. “The plaku is a dance of our people. You and Torka are of this band now. If Torka is chosen and refuses one of our wuhmen, he will not be a man to envy. Our huntehs will be angry. They will hold Torka while Galeena cuts his face or maybe even drives him from this place. Then Lonit will become Galeena’s wuhman. Then Galeena will kick Lonit until Torka’s baby dies. Then Lonit will live by his fiah and share his sleeping skins with Ai and Weelup until Galeena grows tired of her. Then Galeena will send Lonit to follow Torka, to walk alone into the wind, to be food for beasts.”

  The men of the band built a single fire in the center of the cave. It was a smoky, careless pyre heaped high with the bones and refuse of recent meals. They dragged their sleeping skins close and seated themselves around it, leaving a broad circle of open ground between themselves and the flames. Here the women would dance. The hunters made lewd jokes about the dancers, and wagers as to whose prowess would be tested and by whom. When Torka made no move to join them, they called out to him, patted the ground where they wanted him to sit, and reminded him that he was a man of their band now. No man of the band could stand aside during a plaku, nor would any male who had a breath of spirit left in him wish to do so.

  They all laughed at that. One of them suggested that perhaps Torka was a different kind of man. Another replied that since he had yet to join with one of their women, there was no way to tell if he even was a man; although he was a fine hunter and his own female seemed to be evidence enough of the workings of his rising bone.

  Torka felt his face flush with resentful embarrassment. He was aware of a pitifully distraught Lonit sitting far off across the cave with lana and Naknaktup. He could not bring himself to look at her. He wanted to speak out, tell Galeena’s hunters t
hat, among Torka’s people, it was not expected of a man to copulate with other men’s women in order to prove his virility; but he knew that they had spoken the truth when they had said that he was of their band now. The People were dead and gone. And Umak’s sage words of advice were proving their validity more and more every day: In new times, men must learn new ways.

  Even if they neither like nor approve of them, he added to himself, reluctantly joining the circle. He sat down beside Manaak and, for a moment, was distracted by Karana staring judgmentally from the shadows just beyond the circle of hunters; then the boy was gone, off to mope at their own fire circle no doubt, and Galeena was summoning Umak to join the others.

  “Hrmmph!” was all the old man said as he came forward in his bearskin robe and his softly clicking necklaces of claws and paws. Over the last few days, he had completed stitching the flight feathers of the condor to the seams of the sleeves of his tunic. When he raised his arms, he appeared to have wings, as though he were not a man at all but some strange, otherworldly combination of bear and bird. He held his arms high for a moment, waiting for the exhalations of awe from those who observed his display; they came, mainly from the women. Satisfied, he folded his legs beneath him, laced his arms across his chest, and stared stoically into the flames.

  But only a rock could have sat stoically through the plaku. As a prelude to the dance, the women circulated among the men with flasks of the oily, thick, foul-smelling drink that Torka had managed to avoid over the last few weeks. It was a revolting mixture of blood and fermented berries and juices, of mosses and fungi, and of willow bark pounded into pulp and then chewed by the women until it became totally liquified and mixed with their saliva.

  Now he had no choice but to drink, and to drink deeply. To do otherwise would be to offend the people of Galeena’s band, who set much store by the potion. He gagged twice, but managed to swallow down a mouthful. The men nodded. The watching women tittered and moved on.

  He soon understood why they drank it. It had nothing to do with flavor, for the taste was even worse than he had thought it would be. And he knew in less than a minute why Galeena and his people were so often indolent and lethargic. One swallow of their women’s potion, and he was warm and blinking. His shoulders tingled. The soles of his feet seemed irritably sensitive. He worked his toes. The sensation was exquisite. His eyes were suddenly taking in light and substance differently than they had ever done before. The cave, the fire, the men seated around it, the women moving slowly with their flasks of fluid, all seemed as beautiful as the first dawn at the ending of the time of the long dark. He felt somehow larger, stronger, yet as light as a small boy riding snugly bound to his mother’s back as she walked out across the tundra in the long-gone days of his earliest childhood.

  But he was not a child. He was a man seated among other men, watching as the women slowly stripped themselves of their garments; watching as they slowly oiled their bodies with fat and rubbed their breasts, bellies, and the soft, dusky inner curves of their thighs with leaves of aromatic wormwood; watching as they slowly joined hands and, facing away from the men, began to circle the fire, stepping to the side, not lifting their feet from the ground, but sliding them slowly along the earth; watching as they raised their arms and slowly began to chant; watching as their steps grew wider, allowing firelight to show between their thighs before they scissored closed again.

  Slowly.

  Everything moved, swam, and pulsed a beat slower than that of his heart; and then his heartbeat was hammering, and the movements of the dancers quickened as they turned. The fire was behind them now, and within the men who watched them. Their bodies glistened. They displayed their breasts and bellies and the soft, oiled triangles of fur that hid softer, moister areas that were not so easily displayed. They tilted their hips, rolled them slowly, allowing glimpses of vistas rarely seen.

  Dry-mouthed, Torka watched, hard with need, entranced, unaware that he, along with the other men, had begun to clap an increasingly strident, quickening rhythm. He had forgotten Lonit. He had forgotten Karana. He had forgotten everyone and everything but the dancers.

  Their movements determined the cadence of the clapping rhythm. They smiled as they danced—not wide, tooth-showing smiles, but tight, grim little contractions of pleasure. The brief autumn day that had seemed so long was finally ending. The long shadows of night were filling the cave. The women of Galeena’s band danced the plaku, and for one brief night they were in control of their men, and they knew it.

  The dance continued, each woman moving more slowly as she passed a man she favored, her knees bent, limbs splayed, hips moving, arms extended upward, shoulders jerking so that her breasts quivered and her round, soft nipples went hard and dark.

  It was growing dark. The fire had consumed most of the bones and refuse and was settling now. The circling stopped. Ai danced before Torka and fed another fire. Her back was to him. Her arms were raised, small pudgy hands entwined. With her strong little limbs splayed wide and her knees

  bent, she rocked her hips back and forth, shifting her weight from heel to toe, flexing her surprisingly slender ankles and supple waist as she stretched upward, arching her rib cage like a well-fed lioness clawing at a tree, and began to answer the fire’s sounds with low, hungry mewings

  All around the circle, the hunters had gotten to their feet. They were casting off their clothes and freeing themselves. Torka was no exception.

  The dance went on. There was an excruciating moment as one of the younger hunters dropped to his knees, moaning in shame and frustration. Already spent, he would be of no good to any of the women who might have thought to choose him. Torka felt a momentary pang of pity for him. It would be a long time before his woman or hunting partners allowed him to forget this moment.

  The women turned as one. Torka looked into Ai’s face and saw features as savage and impassioned as an Arctic storm-and, despite the heat of the moment, every bit as cold and uncaring of all but its own release. In that instant, Torka knew that Ai had provoked Galeena into calling for the plahit so that, while the headman was distracted by other women, she could demand from Torka what he and Galeena had both denied her. She was a bold, selfish, manipulative creature who was responsible for the shaming of the young hunter and for the hours of worry that her threats had brought to Lonit. He was filled with loathing for her; but the loathing did nothing to cool his lust. If anything, it inflamed it.

  All around the circle, the women of Galeena’s band were choosing partners. Torka saw or heard none of their ferocious joinings.

  Ai was smirking at him, displaying herself, handling herself as only a man should handle a woman. Her eyes fastened on the erected height and width of that portion of his body that she had so long desired and now so thoroughly aroused. Little pearls of saliva appeared at the corners of her mouth. She licked them away as she came forward to fulfill the threat that she had made to Lonit.

  He hated her, yet wanted her and would have taken her even if he had not known that to refuse her would be to insult Galeena and risk being cast out of the band. It was not his welfare that concerned him. It was Lonit’s, and Umak’s, and that of his unborn child. With the time of the long dark soon approaching, they needed the protection of the band ... as much as he needed to have Ai now—but on his terms, not hers.

  He fought back an urge to snap her in half and sate himself upon her lifeless body so that she could find no satisfaction in his release or in Lonit’s humiliation.

  Lonit.

  Her name was in his heart as he lifted Ai from her feet, gripping her firmly beneath each armpit, deliberately hurting her. He felt her tense and try to twist free of his grip as she realized that she had lost control of the moment.

  He lowered her slowly, browsing, biting, thinking of the wild stallions of the steppe as he took her down and impaled her so violently that he knew he had hurt her. He was larger and harder than he had ever been. Too big for her, but not for Lonit. The realization gave him immense pl
easure. He thrust deep, heard her cry out in pain, and knew that Galeena’s legendary organ was overrated. Release came, and it was as violent as the penetration. Like a rutting wolf, he remained within her and held her close even though she tried to twist away.

  “Ai, Galeena’s woman, is this what you have wanted?” He whispered the words into her throat, just below her ear, and took her again with deliberate carelessness.

  He lay, still joined, with the bulk of his weight atop her, deliberately ignoring the pressure of her small hands as she pushed upward at his shoulders. She gasped his name and begged him to move.

  He did, not to release her, but only to press her harder. He pretended to sleep then, holding her down with the weight of his body as he listened to the other hunters ambling back to their own fire circles or breathing in deep satisfaction where they lay. He feigned snores and breathed them into her ear as he felt her squirm and pant as she fought to free herself from his grip. He held her where she was until sleepiness took the edge from his intent. She was crying softly when at last she managed to slip from his near stranglehold and tiptoe back to Galeena’s fire circle.

  Torka folded his arm beneath his head and allowed himself to yield to sleep, smiling because he was certain that Ai would never want to lie with him again.

  He slept fitfully. His dreams were fragmented images of the past: of Egatsop, beautiful and alive; of little Kipu shrieking with childish delight as he tossed him high into the air, caught him, and tossed him up again; of Big Spirit, shadowing the world, shaking it, destroying it; of Ai dancing naked in the ruins of his life, boldly offering herself to him while Galeena glared at him with killing on his mind and Lonit held an infant to her breast and wept softly.

  Lonit.

  He reached for her in his sleep. She was not there. His dreams shifted, becoming troubled recollections of his coupling with Galeena’s woman and of the way that he had been forced to put Karana in his place. He had found pleasure in his demeaning of the woman but not in his humiliation of the child. That brave, loyal, stubborn little scrap of a boy had come to mean more to him than he would ever have thought possible.