by neetha Napew
PART V.
THE CORRIDOR OF STORMS
Alone on the winter tundra, Torka set his little band to the tasks necessary for its survival. The weather cleared briefly. They worked together in stunned silence, still only half believing the enormity of the catastrophe that had destroyed Galeena’s band and had nearly befallen them. They used every scrap of the bison carcass, eating as they worked to scrape precious, life-sustaining marrow from its joints, then setting aside the long bones of its legs, which would later be fashioned into spears. They extracted sinew from its meat and plucked the long, tough strands of hair from its tail and mane so that these wiry filaments could be braided into snare nets for birding and rodent catching and into lines for ice fishing.
By the time the weather closed in again, they had used the bison’s horns to break up the frozen tundra and hack out a larger, deeper circle over which they reerected their pit hut. With sods banked high all around, it was a warm refuge from the cold wind and hard-driving snow as, far off across the tundra, a wild dog howled as though in protest to the storm.
Karana cocked his head in the darkness. “Listen. Brother Dog has seen the mountain fall. He mourns for us.”
Umak listened to the distant, mournful cries of the dog. He held Naknaktup close as she silently grieved over the deaths of her people; however, he was not thinking of her or of the members of Galeena’s band. He was remembering another night, another storm, and an old man who walked away upon the wind while a wild dog followed and kept him from dying. He closed his eyes. Where was Brother Dog now? And by what selfish enchantment had Umak gone so long without wondering about the fate of the brother who had saved his life?
The wind rose. It took the sound of the dog and whipped it away across the world so that, within the pit hut, the voice of the wind was the only voice that could be heard. Manaak and lana slept in each other’s arms as their infant suckled contentedly.
Lonit drifted off to sleep. She lay nestled close to Torka. His right hand rested lightly across her belly. The baby moved. The future moved.
Torka listened to the wailing of the wind and reflected on the events that had made him headman of this tiny, vulnerable band. He had never wanted to be headman. Yet now that he thought about all that had brought him to this desolate, storm-ridden place, it seemed that, ever since Thunder Speaker had rampaged into his life, some invisible force had been directing his steps. Testing him. Leading him. But why? Where?
The questions followed him into sleep. He dreamed of distant lands stretching eastward beyond the Corridor of Storms, of lands warmed by the rising sun, where flocks of birds filled the skies and herds of game roamed the valleys. The dream was so intense and of such a fine and glorious land, that he awoke half-hoping to find that he had been transported there. But around him, the world was cold and black. Beyond the pit hut, the storm raged, and winter ruled.
There was no time. No days, no nights, no dawn, no dusk.
There was only darkness, and in that darkness the wind lived and breathed its dry, cold, savage breath in a ceaseless exhalation that flayed the world and raked the skies clean of clouds.
And in that endless dark, beneath those cold skies, Torka and his little band survived. Food was scarce, but such a small group of people needed little to sustain them. As game dwindled in the vicinity of one camp, they moved to another. They warmed themselves with meager fires fueled with small bones and dried dung, and as they left one encampment to seek out another, Lonit encouraged them to gather stones and pebbles. They were rare on the open tundra, but life upon the mountain had taught her how valuable they were for taking in heat and radiating its precious gift of life-giving warmth for many hours after even the most carefully tended sods, bones, and fragments of dung had burned away to nothing.
They walked across the rolling land, their direction determined by the game that they followed and by the bite of the subzero wind. Without the heavy winter garments that they had been forced to leave behind, they were at a profound and deadly disadvantage until they were able to contrive suitable cold-weather clothing out of the most unlikely skins and furs imaginable. Whatever they hunted and killed, they ate and wore. In the skins of fish and birds and squirrels they went forth. Badger and fox, lynx and hare and lemming—their skins were cursorily treated and stitched into patchwork gloves and boots, hoods and surplices. The intestines of their prey were opened, their contents shared among all members of the little band; then the opaque casings were dried over their fire, oiled with melted fat, and transformed into parchmentlike sheets that were fashioned into outer tunics that effectively broke the wind.
From hunting camp to hunting camp, they moved and prospered. Although heavy with child, Lonit had never felt better. Naknaktup had recovered from the initial queasiness of her pregnancy, but she still brooded over the loss of her people, especially Oklahnoo, her sister. Along with a fully recuperated lana, Naknaktup worked with Lonit to set snares and sew, to butcher and scrape skins, and to pound fat into oil as she shared lana’s joy in her tiny son and outspokenly anticipated the birth of her own child.
“This woman so old, she think she never again have baby,” she said, beaming as brightly as though she had swallowed a piece of the summer sun. “Umak is great spirit master This wuhman proud to be his woman!” Then the sunlight slowly faded from her eyes, and her smile sagged as memories clouded her happiness. “So many little ones this wuhman have. All dead now. Killed. Sent into storms. Or eaten in dark time winteh.”
Lonit’s eyes went wide. “Eaten?”
“Caleena not like little ones. Keep only some few strong childs. If times bad, in dark times winter, when game is scarce and men not like to hunt in cold, Galeena kills little ones. Babies make good meat.”
Now Lonit at last understood why there were no children in Galeena’s band and why lana had shown so little enthusiasm over the impending birth of her baby. The Destroyer had not killed all of the little ones of her band; Galeena had.
Naknaktup was perplexed by Lonit’s surprise and obvious revulsion.
“Torka and his people not eat babies?”
“We do not!” she cried, then recalled the rumors that had circulated in the winter camp of her own band before the great ghost mammoth had come, rumors that Teenak, the headman’s woman, had killed and portioned her newborn infant to be used as food. Her hands crossed protectively over her own unborn child. “Never in this new land, in this new band, will the people of Torka eat their children. Never!”
Naknaktup and lana looked at one another, then both of them smiled hopefully at Lonit. “May this be so,” they said in unison.
“It will be so!” she replied emphatically.
The two women nodded.
The sun was back in Naknaktup’s eyes as she said: “Then life with Torka’s band will be a good thing.”
And it was so. Each camp seemed to be a little better than the last. The men hunted successfully, taking Karana along with them so that he might learn from their skills and experience. The women shared the work of life, preparing not only food and clothing but all of those little things that raised the quality of their existence from mere subsistence to a level that allowed them a modicum of pleasure.
They laughed. They sang the songs of life. Umak filled the hours with wondrous tales. Manaak and lana’s infant wailed and whooped with lustful, aggressive exuberance for life. He had survived those first few tentative weeks of life in which it was not certain if a child truly possessed a life spirit; now there was no doubt of that. Manaak’s new son was old enough and strong enough to be named and thus acknowledged as a member of the band. They called him Ninipik—Little Ninip. And there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the brazen spirit of the brave, dead boy had come to live again within the body of Manaak and lana’s little son.
Torka would always remember the exact moment in which the idea came to him. He was on the way back to camp with Manaak and Karana after several hours of successful hunting. The three of them had taken
two steppe antelopes, a winter white hare, and four fat ptarmigan; nevertheless, the sight of a large herd of horses stopped them dead in their tracks.
“Look at that....” drawled Manaak, salivating. “All of that red, sweet meat on the hoof, standing just out of range of our weapons, as if they knew the exact distance that our spears can fly.”
“We should make longer spears,” suggested Karana.
“Longer spears would be too light to take such heavy bodied quarry from this far away, replied Manaak.
“Then we should make longer, heavier spears!” retorted Karana.
Manaak laughed. “Our speahs are fine for taking horse, Little Hunter.
What we need are long eh arms}”
It was the last sentence that snagged in Torka’s brain and hooked itself into his thoughts so that he could not be free of it. He mulled it over and over, all the way back to camp, all the way through the meal that Lonit had ready for him, and when he slept, he dreamed about it.
The dream was in part a memory. He saw a young girl holding up one of the long wing bones of a condor. She marveled at its lightweight structure and asked how such a fragile bone could support the weight of such a great wing. He saw himself, kneeling, working the wing, fascinated by its anatomical structure, intrigued by the strength and elasticity of the powerful tendons that gave a spring like movement to the muscles and bones.
And then, in a recollection of a dream within the dream, Torka saw himself as a man with the wings of a condor; wings that carried him high above the world, that made him weightless and allowed him to experience the awesome thrust and power of flight. He was a spear hurtling across the sky, a spear that controlled its own passage.
He awoke with a start, his right arm bent, fist against shoulder. Slowly, the idea uncurled within his mind as his arm curled outward. He lay flat on his back. Again and again, he bent his arm inward, then straightened it, feeling the workings of muscle, bone, and tendon. The idea grabbed him, forced him to his feet, and hurled him out of the pit hut. He stood erect beneath the savage Arctic sky, a man in darkness with the light of inspiration igniting his soul. He took one of his spears from where it rested with the others against the conical exterior walls of the pit hut. He tested its weight and balance. The idea was growing in him; shapeless but not without direction. He hefted himself squarely on both feet. He pivoted to the right, leaning back, back, until all of his weight was on his right limb and he was twisted, helix like until he could twist no more. His power was now concentrated within the right side of his body. He could feel it deep within his calf and thigh as, through the controlled tension and angle of his foot, he willed himself to whirl around. He felt his power uncoiling, releasing itself upward along his body as he hurled himself forward, caught his balance on his left foot, steadied it with his right, and threw the spear.
It flew up and out in an arc against the stars. It sliced through the frigid air as cleanly as Torka’s creative imagery sliced through his brain. He caught his breath, stunned as the idea flared to life and took shape until, in the darkness, he saw it clearly and cried out to the stars.
“This is how it flies!”
Umak peered out from the pit hut, frowning as he saw Torka throwing one spear after another toward the stars. He asked his grandson if he thought that the lights in the sky were prey that men might hunt and eat, then informed him that bad spirits had gotten into his head if he did.
Torka ignored Umak. The idea had taken direction now. It led him, and he followed eagerly, throwing his spears toward the stars. With each release, he felt the source and the redistribution and the flow of his power radiate through him into the shaft. He understood that, as in his dreams, the spear was an extension of the man. Again and again, he retrieved his spears and threw them, feeling the throw, understanding the mechanics of it, remembering the great, long bones of the condor’s wing and realizing that the beginnings of the idea lay in that moment when Lonit had wondered how such lightweight bones could support the flight of such a great bird.
It was not the size of the bones; it was their length, the elasticity of their tendons, and the multiplicity of their jointing. The power of a man’s spear lay not in the weight of the shaft but in the tension that the man released through every bone in his body. The snap-and-fling action of his wrist was as crucial to the throw as the long, sustained push of the powerful muscles of shoulder and back.
“Torka?” Manaak came out into the night to stand beside him, obviously worried about the strange and apparently irrational behavior. “What are you doing?”
“You were right!” Torka said, slapping him on the shoulder. “We need longer arms! Another joint! Perhaps two! And more tendons to bind them tight and allow for greater thrust!”
Manaak stared, his mouth agape. “Come back into the pit hut, friend.
Umak is already making chants to drive the bad spirit from your head.”
Torka smiled. “The spirit that has come into this man’s head is a good spirit—so good that it may change the way we hunt forever!”
Torka was right. It took him several weeks of experimentation and frustration, of failure and mediocre success and failure again; but soon he had devised a harmless-looking device with a handgrip at one end and a barbed tip at the other. Carved out of the pelvis of the bison, it was the length of his forearm. With the grip held in his right hand and the butt of his spear braced against the barb—the narrowing, pointed end of the shaft facing back over his shoulder and gripped midway along its length between his thumb and index finger—Torka had designed a crude missile launcher.
With practice it became a second forearm and wrist, allowing him to increase the power and snap of his throwing arm, more than doubling the speed and distance of his spear’s thrust.
Manaak, Umak, and Karana each insisted upon making his own spear thrower, and soon they were hunting with Torka in amazed delight as their women stood by and were glad.
“With the new tool, the hunters can stand well back from the game and make their kills in safety,” observed Lonit proudly.
“It is a good thing,” agreed Naknaktup.
And lana, no longer sad-eyed, smiled and nodded; but her smile would have fallen had she heard the words of her man as he knelt beside Torka over the body of the horse that they had taken.
“Look how deep the spearhead has gone into the flesh . straight into the lung .. . and from such a distance!” Manaak fingered the wound that his weapon had made. “With the right projectile points, a man could dare to hunt mammoth with this spear throw eh Torka looked at the other man and shook his head. “Torka has no taste for mammoth.”
“The one that Manaak would hunt, he would hunt to kill, not to eat.”
“Then Manaak will hunt alone,” said Torka.
“If Big Spirit comes, we will stand togetheh.”
Without warning, Torka struck out at him. Manaak fell sideways, more surprised than angry; his thick winter garments had cut the sting of the blow, but nothing could have lessened the anger that he heard in Torka’s voice.
“You speak with a tongue that will bring ruin to us all!” accused Torka. Manaak had named the unnameable. Here, in this wide, rolling land where their women had no recourse to a high, safe ledge upon which they could seek shelter in time of danger, Manaak had spoken the name of the beast that Torka feared more than death. He reached out and jabbed Manaak’s shoulder warningly. “Life is good! Your woman smiles in a camp where there is meat. Your infant suckles, and mine readies itself to be born out of my woman’s womb. We have responsibilities in this life! Are you so eager to die, Manaak? Are you hungry to have me die with you? Without us, who will hunt for our women in the time of the long dark? How long will they live with only an old man and a little boy to protect them?”
They ate the horses flesh for many days. Slowly winter began to wane. It had been cold and dry, with little snow; but now, as the time of the long dark approached its end, the weather changed. The wind turned, drawing moisture-laden c
louds inland from distant polar seas. Snow fell and fell. Above a thick and storm-swept cloud cover, the starving moon rose over the tundra.
As Torka and his little band moved from camp to camp, game became harder to find. Low on the eastern horizon, when cloud cover allowed, they could see the first promising glow of sunlight above the tangled summits and glaciers of distant ranges, but hibernating animals still slept beneath the ground, safely hidden from the prods of the women by deep, hard-packed drifts of snow, and when browsing animals died from lack of accessible forage, they, too, were buried as soon as they fell. Wolves and wild dogs sang the song of hunger as they prowled the lonely, wind-driven landscape. And the people of Torka’s band grew lean and began to starve.
They made an encampment in the smothering, howling whiteness. They lived on wedges of fat that had been meant for use as tallow for their oil lamps. Lonit was approaching the end of her pregnancy. She wondered if she would have milk for her baby. Although lana had not spoken of it, Lonit knew from the fretful sounds her infant made while nursing that her milk was not flowing as it should. Naknaktup knew it, too. Occasionally Lonit would catch them both looking covertly at their men, and at Torka in particular. Since they had been forced from Galeena’s mountain, they had all looked to him as headman. Umak made the magic;
Torka made the decisions; and Manaak was second in command. They had assumed their roles as easily as they donned their garments. Only now the decisions were growing more and more difficult, and it was natural for them to be questioned.
“Why do the women watch me like that?” Torka asked Lonit.
“They wait for you to command lana and Manaak to give up their baby to be food for us all.”
“This man will never ask such a thing!”
“It is what Galeena would have done.”
“Torka is not Galeena! Torka does not eat the children of his band! The children are the iuture of the People! II is for them that we fight to survive the winter dark!”