Dance of the Tiger

by Bjorn Kurten

  Greylag and his family lived in temporary dwellings for a whole year, until the second Midsummer Day gave him his final directions. He marked the spot where the Sun Globe’s shadow fell: that would be the entrance to his house. By the time he built it, his youngest son, Falcon, the only one of his children who had accompanied him and Hobby to the new village, had already left them to make his own home with the tribe.

  “By rights we ought to move with the Sun’s cattle,” Greylag said. “I did in my young days, but now I’m too old.”

  “Did you follow the caribou, Uncle Greylag?” asked Right Hand.

  “I went north with the caribou one spring, when the snow melted. It was a long trek, and I saw how the small groups of animals united into ever greater herds, until there was a sea of animals streaming north and the click of their hoofs grew into thunder. Then I lost them! It was in the land of the Whites, whom foolish people call Trolls. Instead of tracking the caribou, I stayed with the Whites for a summer and a winter, learning their ways and language.”

  Left Hand interrupted him eagerly: “Is it true that our father was White?”

  Greylag smiled. “Your father was White, and a better man than those who drove him away. He was just a boy when he came to us, but when he grew to man’s estate, he struck down the wrongdoer who abused your mother. Then he left us as mysteriously as he had come. Truly he was a denizen of the northlands, and he came and went like the caribou.”

  “When I grow to man’s estate,” said Left Hand, fiercely, “I shall seek him out and honor him. I wish to see my father before I die.”

  “That is right,” said Greylag. “You should honor your father above all others except our Father the Sun.”

  Left Hand was silent. In his mind he saw his unknown father, a strange and wondrous figure, silvery white like the foam-topped waves in a westerly gale. He was faceless and radiant, a moving light in the night, or great and shining like the sun itself! He sighed. “I wish—” he began, but he was interrupted by Right Hand.

  “Have you been in the south too, Uncle Greylag?”

  “Yes. I have seen the world. I have followed the shelk, the noblest of the Sun’s cattle, to the Land of Flints, which is their winter abode.”

  “What sort of people live there, Uncle Greylag?”

  “The people are like us, and speak our tongue, but there was an old shaman who knew the High Language and the wisdom of the old times. I learned much from him.

  “They also have an animal that is unknown here. It is called the boar, and its meat is sweeter than that of any other four-footed beast, sweet as the white meat of the wood pigeon, sweet as the red meat of the salmon in the sea. Ah!” He smiled, reminiscing.

  As he regaled the boys with such stories, Greylag’s good humor returned. With a twinkle in his eye, he leaned forward. “You will turn into a goosefoot bush if you sit rooted to the ground like that,” he told Left Hand. “Look!” and he pulled on orache stalk out of Left Hand’s hair and held it at arm’s length. The orache immediately sprang into life and shrilled at him in angry tones, “Not so! Not so! Give a poor fellow a chance, will you?”

  The boys grinned. They knew these tricks almost as well as Greylag himself, but this was his signal for them to get up and leave him to his thoughts.

  The great Shaman’s fame had spread far. Many journeymen sought him out and stayed as his apprentices for a moon, a winter, or even longer. They were always welcome, for Greylag loved to teach, and the strangers brought news and stories as well as a humble trick or two of their own.

  Skua was one of them, a young man with a pair of shrewd eyes in an ugly face, which he could contort into incredible grimaces; but his voice was more beautiful than that of anybody else. He stayed longer than any other, made friends in the village, and settled down as a member of the tribe. He attached himself to one of the most respected hunters, Stag, and divided his time between Stag’s retinue and old Greylag’s classes. His songs brought tears to every eye, and his stories of great hunts, of ghosts and Trolls, and of the mysteries of the Sun and Moon moving in majesty across the skies were made doubly thrilling by the measured swell and surge of his delivery. Skua’s shows were rare events. He performed only seldom, knowing that this heightened the demand, and so he came to be the highlight of the festivals, especially the greatest festival of them all, the Midsummer Feast.

  Colorful and gay as a wreath of midsummer flowers, the celebration focused on a moment of stillness and high solemnity. This was when the Chief of the tribe took the oath of leadership and devotion for the year to come. Year after year, old Lion the Chief had stood up, flanked by two immense shelk antlers forming a grandiose triumphal arch, to repeat the ancient formula administered by the Shaman one step behind him, while the sun dropped behind Summer Island.

  The sign for the revelry to start again was given when Greylag fitted the lion-skin robe over the Chief’s shoulders. With a shout of joy the people thronged around their chosen leader, and great bonfires blazed up. Now the merrymaking would go on through the brief, twilit night and peter out slowly in the morning. For once, Skua did not stint. He performed over and over again, greeted with roars of applause, until finally, exhausted but still cheerful, he had no strength to continue.

  For all his majestic presence at the Midsummer Feast, Lion was now an old man who had survived his own sons. For a long time it had been tacitly assumed that Stag would eventually succeed him as Chief. Stag was a big man, in his mid-thirties by the time the twins approached the age of initiation. Taciturn and unsmiling, he had an angular, clamp-jawed face that seemed somehow larger than life; his gaze was steady and cold. The boys feared him without knowing why. He never spoke to them for good or ill, but it was whispered that he had been an enemy of their mother’s, and they did not relish the thought of his coming chiefdom.

  In recent times, though, another man with the makings of a chief had come to the fore. This was Falcon, Greylag’s son and a great friend of the boys. He lacked the impressive stature of Stag, being short and spare, but he was keen and sharp-witted, and more than once had shown such superior prowess as a hunter that many a provider wanted to be led by him.

  Now the time had come. In the fifteenth summer of the boys’ life a great change came over Sun Village. The old Chief died. It was said that he suddenly sank to the ground, and when the tribesmen tried to raise him, half of his face was dead, while the other half remained alive. He did not speak a word, and next morning his breath was gone, despite all Greylag’s administrations. The Chief’s people buried him in state on a high ridge overlooking the Salt Sea, and turned to look for a successor.

  What deliberations were held in the Council of the Men, the boys never knew, but they saw Stag stomp off to his house with jaws clamped tight and a smoldering anger in his eyes; and they knew the outcome of the election even before Falcon came to them, smiling, the next morning. He carried two javelins.

  “You are now coming of age,” he said and embraced them both. “So I thought you could use these. As the future Chief of Sun Village, it behooves me to see that you have the best, for I look upon you as my young brothers.”

  The spears were of beautiful workmanship, with thin, deadly flint tips. “See to it that you make a straight throw. Their place is between the ribs of the caribou, or you will break the point.”

  Right Hand laughed happily, weighing the spear in his hand. “This is a great gift, Falcon. Its place will be between the ribs of the caribou, as you say. But if ever an enemy rises up against Falcon, it will find its way between his ribs, too.”

  “There are no enemies in Sun Village,” said Falcon.

  Right Hand looked thoughtfully at him. “Don’t be too sure, Falcon. There is one who is not happy about your chiefdom.”

  “You mean Stag? I knew he wanted to be Chief. But he held his peace and bowed to the decision of the Council.”

  “That is what makes me suspicious,” murmured Right Hand. But Falcon, in his happiness, took little heed of the boy
’s words.

  Everybody now turned to the preparations for the Midsummer Feast. Hunters brought in two bison carcasses, to say nothing of smaller game. Additional fare was provided by the women, who also gathered salt and herbs to spice the meat. The salt was scraped from the drying rockpools and rubbed into the meat, together with sweet gale and tansy. Stocks of angelica, sorrel, chives, chickweed, and silverweed roots were laid up, and perhaps most important of all, hoards of berries and wine were brought out from secret hiding places. The berries were lingonberries and cranberries, their taste now sweetened by the frost of winter. There was still a skin or two of the autumn’s black wine, which was now judiciously blended with the birch-syrup wine of the spring.

  Evening after evening, the thrilled boys watched the sun set ever closer to Summer Island. Greylag smiled indulgently. His reckoning would not fail him. He knew the day.

  On Midsummer Eve, the two shelk antlers were painted with ochre and planted beside the Sun Pillar in front of Greylag’s house. The house was decorated with garlands of green leaves and the small, tinted wild flowers of early summer: red campion, speedwell, and heartsease. In the evening, the people of Sun Village gathered on the beach, smiling with anticipation and admiring the decorations. In the warm light of the evening sun, the red-painted, many-tined shelk antlers seemed incandescent, like two great tongues of fire rising out of the ground. There were appetizing smells too, infused with the aroma of the sea. Beside a blazing fire the bisons were being butchered, and some pieces were already on the roast.

  Nobody could say how much Hobby understood of what was going on, but she was clearly in a happy mood, moving about in the expectant throng and talking deliriously about the beauty of it all. The children whistled through blades of grass, making sounds that were interspersed with the sonorous tapping of tomtoms, as the drummers tried out their instruments. One of them had his drum upside down and was using it for a wine-barrel. All were amused by this new trick, and fortifying sips were quickly distributed from the somewhat leaky vessel.

  Right Hand stole into the lean-to to gloat once more over Falcon’s marvelous gift. On Midsummer Day no weapons were allowed on the beach, and the boys had reluctantly stowed away their new javelins. A moment later Right Hand ran out, consternation in his face. He wriggled through the milling crowd and caught up with Left Hand.

  “Left Hand,” he asked softly, “did you take the javelins?”

  “Of course not. Are they gone?”

  “Come and see,” said Right Hand, and tugged him along.

  Inside, the boys rummaged around. Then they looked at one another, dismayed. The javelins were indeed gone, and as far as they could see, nothing else was missing.

  “Someone’s taken them,” said Left Hand.

  “A thief! But who would steal them? Everyone in the village knows them. Why, we’ve been showing them to lots of people.”

  “And there are no strangers here,” said Left Hand. “Everybody says the people in Moon Village are thieves, but I haven’t seen—”

  Right Hand gripped his arm. “Wait! I’m beginning to understand,” he said slowly. “Yes. Let’s go out and look.”

  As soon as they were outside, Right Hand ran up to the edge of the forest, where he could survey the mass of people. “Almost everybody seems to be here…Uncle Greylag and Falcon, of course, are not…”

  They knew that these two, the principal characters of the festivities, would not make their appearance before sundown, when Falcon was to take his oath and be proclaimed Chief. Until then, they would be secreted somewhere in preparation for the great moment. “They’re either in Falcon’s house or in the cave. That’s my guess,” said Right Hand. “But do you see Stag anywhere?”

  “No,” said Left Hand. “No, I can’t see him, can you?”

  “Just as I thought,” said Right Hand grimly. “And if I’m not mistaken, one or two of his henchmen are missing also; and so is our moon-prophet, Skua. There is deviltry afoot, Left Hand. We must find Falcon and Greylag and warn them. I see now what’s being planned.”

  “You mean—with our javelins?” asked Left Hand, suddenly alarmed.

  “Yes. The javelins of the Troll imps, brother mine. You know what they call us.”

  Left Hand nodded. “I’ll run to the cave, and you go to Falcon’s house. There isn’t a moment to lose.”

  No more words were needed; they separated and ran, telling nobody of their suspicions. And that was their first mistake.

  Left Hand made his second mistake almost immediately. The cave was in the wood. It was not a real cave but a wide crack between two great rocks, covered by an immense boulder. Here, Greylag and his family had spent their first year with the tribe. Now Left Hand sped headlong down the narrow path, too filled by the urgency of his mission to take precautions. Suddenly somebody tackled him, and Left Hand went down, all but stunned by the fall. Lying on his face, he was pinned by several men, and one of them clamped a hand over his mouth to keep him from screaming out.

  “Keep him down,” somebody hissed. “Here, give me a rope. Stuff something into his mouth. Ough! He’s biting me!”

  The boy’s hands and feet were tied. He tried to cry out, but the sound was muffled by the gag. “We’d better kill him,” said a low voice he could not mistake: it was Skua.

  The next speaker was Stag: “Good thing we heard him coming. That was quick work.”

  “Better kill him right away,” said Skua again.

  “No. Not now. That’s bad luck. The others first.”

  “Oh, Stag,” pleaded Skua. “It’s dangerous to leave him alive. If it’s all right to kill Greylag and Falcon, why not the Troll imp? Nobody will suspect us. They’ll think he’s fled—after murdering his benefactors.”

  “You don’t understand, Skua.” Stag was still holding Left Hand’s arm in an iron grip, and Left Hand could feel the man shake with anger. “I’ll kill Falcon myself. To put that undersized squirt before me is an insult. I’m more of a man than he’ll ever be. And you shall be a shaman if you kill Greylag. But they come first. It’s bad luck to start by killing someone else.”

  “In that case”—and there was an undertone of laughter in Skua’s beautiful voice—“in that case we’ll let him kill himself.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Skua did not answer, but Left Hand felt a noose being slipped around his neck. His legs were forced backward, and he could feel the rope tied about his feet. Suddenly the men let go of him, but as he stretched out, he felt a terrible pressure around his neck. He labored desperately for breath. All his veins seemed to swell up, and his manhood rose in a futile erection. He dimly heard the mocking laughter of the men. Then they were gone. All he knew now was an incredible agony. He tried to force his legs and feet back to ease the pressure around his neck, yet every muscle in his protesting body was trying to straighten him out. He was blind, his mind filled by a single unceasing scream in a raging blackness.

  That was how Right Hand found him, half strangled but not dead. He cut the bonds and, sobbing with fury, carried his unconscious brother into the wood to safety.

  STAG

  Mine eye hath seen his desire upon mine enemies.

  —Psalms 54:7

  I have no sons.

  The words brought another image, of a tall young woman, laughing, standing broad-legged in a landscape of silver-stemmed birches. Her chestnut-brown hair hung down to her hips. Her arms were stretched out to a caribou cow and her calf, who advanced shyly toward her. She was talking softly to them. He himself was standing behind her, hardly daring to breathe. The sweetness of the image hurt him inexpressibly more deeply than the memory of the agony he had suffered in Skua’s noose. That agony had been avenged.

  I have no sons, I have no father.

  I have a brother.

  He had come to life in his brother’s arms, but it was not until the next evening that they heard the full story of what had happened on that fateful Midsummer Eve. It was Fox who told them, at their old hid
ing-place by Watersmeet. His story confirmed all their suspicions.

  At the moment when old Greylag was to have robed his son Falcon with the Chief’s mantle, both their dead bodies were carried in. It was Skua who stood up and told the people how he and Stag had found them murdered. Never had Skua been more eloquent; never had he swayed his audience as he did with this tale. There was terror in every heart, and all those who heard the story dissolved in sobs. At the climax of his speech, Skua pulled the murder weapons out of the two bodies and held them high for all to see in the last slanting rays of the setting sun. They were the javelins of the two Troll imps.

  “Thus the Troll folk repay all the kindnesses that our dear Shaman and Chief-elect have heaped upon them for so many summers and winters,” said Skua in his vibrating voice, while tears started into his eyes.

  After recounting these events, Fox paused. Then he said simply, “Both points were broken. That’s how I knew you couldn’t have done it. So forgive me, but that man Skua could talk water out of a rock. I’m ashamed I ever doubted you, but when I saw those points, I knew.”

  Fox had no opportunity to protest his friends’ innocence at the gathering of the tribes. A motherly woman took him in her arms, crying over the poor orphaned youth—orphaned for the second time—and practically smothered him at her ample breast. Fox saw Stag stand up. He spoke briefly, but to the point. If the tribe elected him Chief, he swore to hunt down the treacherous Troll imps and bring them to justice. If it was the people’s wish, he would lead Sun Village, faithfully and devotedly, ever after.

  At this a cry went up: “Stag for Chief! Stag for Chief! Death to the Troll imps!”

  Then there was a hush. Hobby had worked her way through the crowd up to the bodies, and now stood silent, looking down at them. Then she raised her head, and her once-vacant eyes were bright and intelligent. She turned toward Stag, and he backed away from the burning contempt in her gaze.