by Watson, Tom
What a strange world full of odd people, he thought. Perhaps one day he would take the time to visit one of these larger villages.
Pak traveled with an older, burly man named Rosif who had the look of one who had seen many a hunt, or too many a fight, in his time. Rosif was by far the leader of the group. He was nearly three times Pak's age and at least that many times his size. Rosif was huge and imposing, but not so well kept. His muscles were old and gristly, but he was still a dangerous man to cross. Rosif wore a leather shirt open on the sides and fastened by a leather thong. About his waist he wore a roe deer skin wrap with leather leggings. His dark hair was never quite in order and his skin featured many scars in intricate patterns displaying his prowess. Rosif boasted that he had a scar for every predatory animal he had killed. In fact, it had been many seasons since Rosif had claimed a wolf that came too close to the village. His very size and those mysterious blue-gray eyes of his held back all who would question his prowess. Only the most fierce practiced scarification and Pak was not up to the task, currently, but if they returned with good trades, it would be expected.
Pain, suffering; just like this trip, he grimaced to himself. At least he might get a little time to think while away from the complex social structure of the tribe.
Rosif was flanked by Calpano, a rough man with a remarkably introverted personality. Calpano was not much older than Pak, yet he had already participated in several scouting and hunting journeys, mostly because he liked to be away from the village. Calpano had already achieved greater things than Pak in a short time and it unnerved Pak a little. Calpano had taken a mate, a young brown haired girl from a neighboring tribe, and already had a child on the way. Pak had always liked the girl, Faja was her name, and she seemed to like him too, but that was a relationship which would not be, now.
If Calpano ever failed to return it might be..., he thought, and Faja would be better off in my arms. As suddenly as he thought it, he waved the notion aside. Such thoughts poisoned the mind and would never come true anyway. Calpano had a short, recently cut, streak of blonde hair, deep blue eyes, and an ever-smug look about him. Considering the demeanor of Rosif and Calpano, Pak generally kept to the rear of the party and avoided as much socialization with either of his companions as possible.
Pak had been coerced into going along with this present group by his father, a stern and uncompromising man. His father, Ran, had been wounded in a raid when he was younger and had never achieved any of the accolades his father, Torn, had. He now spent much of his time seeking power from the people of his tribe as a tribal elder, though he was far too young. Regardless of age or ability, Ran would become an elder one way or another. A son who joined a dangerous scouting trip and returned a success would make him look better in the eyes of the Elders, speeding this process along. Ran would seem as wise as any hunter, merely wounded. If Pak failed, then his father would appear to be the break in a long line of hunters ending with Torn, Pak's grandfather. Having just recently become a man, Pak still had a duty to follow his father's wishes and accept the journey. Many tribes forced new adults to undertake tasks or feats, but not Pak's tribe. He wondered what it would have been like to be forced to perform a feat...
Oh yeah... this is what it would be like, he thought, as he recalled that he was effectively undergoing a task per his father's wishes.
Pak relaxed with a few deep breaths, gave his bright blue eyes long exasperated blink, and tried to consider the benefits of his current situation. If he felled a large animal, such as an Auroch, a large wild cow of sorts, or obtained rare wares from a distant trader, he would be at an advantage in calling a woman to his side at a ritual. Such benefits were the real prize a man sought when hunting rare or dangerous game. The dangerous and lengthy hunt was actually just the first step towards a man's true quarry: a mate.
It was customary for a man to call out to a woman to dance with him during a ritual and if she accepted it was understood that they would become a mated pair. Often, these events were well choreographed by carefully plotting parents long in advance, but Pak could choose as he wished and be reasonably sure his choice would choose him as well if he could return in triumph, though any woman he called would have the final say. He had several women in mind, too. There was a young blonde he liked, and that one girl with the pointy nose. With thoughts of potential females in mind, Pak pulled his long dark hair back in a ponytail, slung his bow over his shoulder, and did his best to laugh off the events.
If I found a wife because of this trip, that would make this worth it, he mused.
* * *
The Great Lunar Festival was normally a major event, but this full harvest’s would be more important to Ember's family because Ember's cousin Heather was to be joined with a man from a neighboring tribe. Heather was named for a flower which bloomed a purple color and gave the grassy meadows some needed color in the late thawing season. The lucky man, Vance, would probably come to call Ember's longhouse home and ally himself with her tribe. Both Heather and Vance would stand before the tribe and agree to live as one. This was an exciting and wonderful event which happened once or twice a harvest at best.
It was a common custom for a young man to leave a tribe and join another tribe or wed and bring a wife from another tribe to his own. The practice had originated so far in the past that its rationale was not even considered, though there were practical reasons, including the sharing of skills learned from other tribes and the reasons unknown to Ember, such as keeping a fresh gene pool. Often tribes would hold group festivals or rituals where people could meet, aiding this exchange.
Ember momentarily considered the eventual day when she might be chosen by a man from another tribe. Would he join her tribe or would she be forced to leave her home and venture elsewhere? The thought scared her, yet her fear brought forward a sense of exhilaration as well. Ember had always been excited by the prospect of adventure, and soon she might just get it. This was not only the Great Lunar Festival or even a joining, it was also the day chosen as Ember’s coming of age; on this day she would become a woman.
Ember continued her alterations between fear and exhilaration as she left the village and strode down the small, but well worn, dirt path which the tribe used to access the river banks. Behind her a sort of token palisade of wooden poles kept the boundaries of the village in order, without truly gaining much security. Tribes farther away from the river, who relied on farming more heavily, or even mining, required better walls and traps to discourage raiders. This was not as serious to Ember's people who fished and gathered from the river much of their foodstuffs. The collected foodstuffs could easily be replenished and did a raiding party little good. Not only did the river provide a passive form of protection, but the river was the mainstay of the tribe providing water, food, and building materials. Houses were patched with drift wood, mud, and clay. The bellies of those workers were filled with shellfish, fish, and animals lured to the waters.
The river was the center of most of the tribes’ activities. In the morning and evening the younger men and women would fish, primarily for catfish and salmon, using simple spears. Many would use nets to catch varieties of small fish which swam in schools close to shore. The older women would clean clothing and gather reeds for weaving at the shores. At the end of the day, the men could often be found cleaning and dressing the animals which they had hunted earlier that day.
Aside from working by the water, everyone in the tribe bathed each morning, and sometimes at night, on any day warm enough to do so. Every ten-day from the start of the cold season until the start of the warm season, a large fire would be set by the water and those who needed extra cleaning would take a quick dip in the cold waters, or hand wash themselves. The fire would provide the instant warmth needed to allow such cleaning during the cold season. When the cold season proper fully came, the water would become too cold for anyone, fire or no. Washing was then performed by hand, one body part at a time. Ember's land was a cold place, but People of the Great
River were hearty and tough.
Besides the fishing and gathering, the tribe grew some simple crops in several small demarcated squares of land. However, nearly half of their food still came from hunting, fishing, and foraging. One of Ember's favorite dishes, boiled lentils with salt, came from those fields and every few days her turn came to spend a full day working them. In this way the work was distributed amongst the people just as the crops.
With thoughts of boiled and heavily salted lentils on her mind, Ember skipped happily down the path feeling the cool earth on her bare feet. Most people wore shoes made of hide wrappings or woven reeds, but a person walking barefoot was not all that uncommon when it was warm. During most of the seasons it was much too cold.
Along the way to the river, Ember ventured off of the path and behind a copse of trees where she found the small bushes of red colored “sour berries”, as they were called, which she had been picking for quite some time. She squatted with her reed basket and began selecting the best berries, those free of insect damage. The berries were warmed by the sun and ripe for the picking. Ember quickly placed nearly as many berries in the little reed basket as she placed in her mouth, and trotted off down the path towards the river. Her stomach grumbled from the tartness but she didn't care.
Ember always made the worst work of harvesting. She generally stuffed herself with the majority of what she had picked. As a result, her duties often included fishing, which she was good at, and finding flint pieces at the rivers shore. It was doubtful she would stuff a fish in her mouth raw, though she had done so a few times with small shellfish she found. Ember paused for a moment to savor the memories of tasty raw mussels. She often found them in the mud by the banks, and ate them raw. The taste was sweet but chewy. Her mother seemed more amused by her daughter's inability to forage, with any net returns, than angered by her antics. With a smile, Ember burped loudly and continued to skip lightheartedly down the path towards the river where she knew her mother would be working.
Ember heard the river before she saw it: a rushing sound of water mixed with the muffled sounds of children playing and women laughing. As she rounded the bend, the river came into view in all of its glory: a great expanse of water nearly twice as wide as the village with pebbly shores and gently moving waters. At the shore, women were cleaning caught fish and herding the children out of the more dangerous deeper waters and into the small shoals where they might look for the finely colored stones which could be crafted into trade wares.
Mostly the women wore woven reed skirts and an occasional woven plant fiber shirt or fish skin leather clothing, while the children ran about the same way they came into the world. Some of the younger women, hoping to catch the eyes of any man from neighboring villages who might wander by the river, or even tempt a local man, wore fine necklaces of multicolored beads or even a colorful bird feather in their hair. Their faces were painted with more striking patterns, zigzagging lines or dots, than the married women. Ember thought the finery beautiful, if not totally cumbersome in the water.
In the deeper water, several of the older boys could be seen with small spears catching fish. Like the women, the older boys wore woven reed wraps around their waists, though some opted for thin animal skins wrapped in the same manner. The boys were hoping to catch the eye of women with their fishing skills, each trying to outdo the next.
Like the boys, Ember also tended to spend the rare warm days in the deeper water fishing for larger fish. Most of the time it was too cold and she would have to rely on a fishing spear, with a tether to retrieve it from the bank. Luckily, the water was warmer than normal from the warm temperatures of late.
After a moment's scan of the river, Ember’s eyes settled upon her mother, East. East sat upon the ground cleaning a fish not ten lengths of a man from the path where Ember stood. East looked up and smiled at her daughter. Ember walked over and knelt beside her mother, who was using a thin and very small flint blade to clean a large catfish. The blade was probably a small shard from a flint knapper, someone skilled at the craft of creating tools from flint or chert. Such shards were kept and tooled using firm pressure to shape them into tiny but useful knives, of a sort. Today, the flint was being used to dress a Catfish. Catfish were a favorite catch because they were easier to prepare than many fish. This was because they bore no real scales and required only gutting, a messy job.
Gutting was required for any animal before it could be cooked and eaten. The entrails would first be removed and discarded. Eating entrails or allowing any of their “poisons” into the body would make you very ill. This was common wisdom passed down from mother to daughter. However, many of the organs were kept and eaten for their nutritional value. Great care was required when removing and separating these organs from entrails and other discarded pieces. This was a task at which East was quite proficient.
“It’s always nice when you awaken merely to see how the rest of us do our work,” she said sarcastically. Ember shrugged and let the comment roll off of her. She had been guilty of sleeping late many times in her life and she wasn’t about to let her mother get to her.
“You will have to be more considerate of others when you become a woman, Ember. Or do you plan to remain a girl for your entire life? You could even start by sitting down beside your tired mother and helping her with these fish. They don't gut themselves, you know,” she said gesturing to several fish of different sorts beside her. Ember held back a smile as she thought of a self-gutting fish, causing East to frown. Often, the older women gutted and cleaned the fish while the younger folk caught them. With that opening, Ember took out the small reed basket and set it beside her mother.
“You're right, I should be more considerate. I picked some sour berries for you on my way over because I know how hard you work.” Smiling to herself, Ember’s smug expression drew an incredulous look from her mother who was not fooled a bit by her daughter’s explanation.
“Well, at least you always know how to talk your way out of any situation,” her mother said, eying the delicious gift. “Here, make yourself useful and carry these fish back to the village for the festival,” East said, indicating a reed mat-wrapped bundle of small cleaned catfish and organs. Catfish is normally a rather large fish; though these were small fish, each being no longer than Ember’s arm in length and the width of her leg.
“I’ll get right to it, but first, the water calls!” Ember said as she broke into a run towards the river giving her mother no time to come back. East merely sat there shaking her head as she flicked another fish into the pile.
When will that fool girl ever take anything seriously? She's just like her father was, East wondered.
As she ran, Ember stripped her clothing leaving her flax skirt, doe skin shirt, and leather wrap handled flint knife in a small line headed to the water. With a great leap Ember flew into the water with a vast splash, drawing the ire of everyone fishing nearby. She could clearly hear several people shouting negative things about her swimming, or was it her form?
Perhaps they are just jealous. My swimming is pretty good, she mused. Ember simply took a deep breath and swam beneath the water. She kept her breechcloth on for the sake of modesty. Had there been more men around she would not have removed her skirt at all.
Though it was the middle of the warm season, the water was only mildly warm on the surface and became quite cold as she touched the bottom of the river. Her body gliding just near the bottom of the shallow bank, Ember swam out from the shore in water just deeper than a man stood tall. Any farther and she would have to deal with the stronger currents. Several times before, Ember had been pulled away by those stronger currents and had to swim her way, slowly, back ashore. The last time, just a ten-day ago in fact, she had drifted away from her laughing friends ashore, a frowning smirk and rolled eyes the whole way.
After a moment she opened her eyes under the water to have a look. The water was silty and hard to see in, but Ember kept looking at the bottom of the river for the telltale reflectio
n of high quality stones. Normally the river was decently clear, but the lack of recent rain and the very uncommon wave of heat had lowered the level of the river, producing a much more silty swimming experience. In the darkness of the silty water Ember felt a sense of wonder and fear.
To her right she caught the glimpse of sudden movement. A closer look revealed what was most likely a catfish nearly half her size! The large fish quickly swam away towards the deeper part of the river.
Hello Catfish! How's the water? She asked to herself. Ember always tried to keep her mind free and lighthearted, but there was always an ever-present edge of danger when swimming in the river. Coming up for a much needed breath of air, she laughed and then dove deeply again. If she were a bug or small fish she would have been frightened, but a catfish was not likely to try and gulp her down. If it did, they would both be stuck for only about half of her body would have fit! The fish would have had half of a girl protruding from its mouth!
Ember choked back a laugh at the thought causing her to lose her recently acquired air. Closing her eyes, Ember reemerged from the water and once more took a full breath of the warm air. In her mouth, she tasted the pleasant motes of a cooking fire, likely preparing the nights meals. Ember again dove deep towards the black and silty bottom.
As she reached the bottom of the river, Ember extended her hands and felt through the silty bed of the river for smooth flint pieces. The cool current of the river and the dark depths of the water made each dive a small adventure. A gleam of light suddenly caught her eye, ending her musings. Ember reached out for the object which produced the reflection. It was a small but overly heavy piece of stone; Ember palmed the stone and felt around for flint as her lungs began to burn. Ember continued to feel about the silt when her right hand rubbed over something smooth and large.