by Bjorn Kurten
“I did not know how you were going to take it, Mister Tiger. What I regarded as an honor and a privilege might perhaps, in your eyes, be a disgrace. I did not wish for your memory of your father to be stained. We Whites do not know how the Gods think about these things. But,” she added, with a smile, “I did not know you then as well as I do now.”
“I can only thank you, Miss Angelica,” said Tiger. “I have regained a brother, in place of the one I lost.”
“And I,” said Miss Angelica, “am now not only the mother, but also the grandmother, of a child of the Gods.”
Veyde’s child was born the day after the Battle of Platform Hill, as they called it. Contrary to her expectations, it was a boy. He was well-shaped and strong, and came into the world with a lusty yell. Old Mister Silverbirch, who assisted at the birth, had never seen a stronger and healthier baby. His skin was brown. Veyde looked into his dark eyes, and proudly counted his fingers and toes. Her happiness was complete. She now was the mother of a child of the Gods.
Contrary to the custom of the Whites, Veyde asked Tiger to name the boy. A child of the Gods was special, and old customs were overruled. Tiger, who was now a man in the most important respect—he was the father of a son—called the child Marten, in memory of his brother. On the wall of their winter house he engraved the symbols of man and woman, and beneath them the likeness of a marten. Veyde also wanted the boy to have a White name signifying the bird guise in which he would enjoy his afterlife. She called him Dock, and his bird was the crossbill.
Afterwards, Tiger was approached by Baywillow and Silverweed, who had a proposal to make. They were still childless. Among the Whites, it was the duty of a brother to step in, so with Veyde and Baywillow as witnesses, Tiger impregnated Miss Silverweed. Next summer, the happy result was a daughter born to the proud parents.
It had been a happy and untroubled year. The shadow of Shelk and his Devils had been lifted from the island. At first Tiger was uneasy because the coracle was gone, which suggested that one of the attackers had escaped. As time passed, though, the menace faded from their memory, and the present filled their life with its unceasing demands on their thought and energy. And Tiger, together with Silverbirch, built a new and bigger boat.
They lived from season to season, often wandering far from their island base. Early summer always found a strong party on the mainland, where salmon was taken in great numbers in the river winding down from Blue Lake. Later on came the time of the great berry harvest; then the mushroom season. Elk was an important game throughout the year, but especially in winter when tracking was easy. Winter meant the coming of the caribou, and when the sea froze over, the seal skerries could also be visited. Ringed seal could be had close to Veyde’s Island. To hunt the large grey seal, they had to journey all the way out to Morningland. It was worthwhile, though. Tiger and Baywillow’s present trip, two moons after midwinter, was in the nature of a reconnaissance. They were returning with the good news that the seals were there.
Moving numbly in Baywillow’s wake, Tiger almost stumbled over the seal that had been dragging along in front of him. Baywillow had stopped, and Tiger ran up to his side. It was getting dark.
“Listen,” said Baywillow anxiously. “The ice is breaking up.”
The ominous cracking was repeated.
“The snow is wet now,” he said. “I think the wind has been veering. We have to keep it more in our faces, Tiger.”
“Do you want me to lead, Baywillow?”
“No, I’d better go first. I’ve been out in this kind of weather before. Just keep close behind us.”
They moved slowly against the wind, which hurtled masses of wet snow in their faces. Breastplates of snow formed constantly on their bodies, then fell off. Again and again came the cracking sound, and Tiger felt the shocks in the sea-ice under his feet. As if from a great distance, he could hear Baywillow call out encouragingly, “Not far now…Soon there…Deadman…right in front…”
Suddenly there was a cry and a splash. Tiger left his seals and started to run.
“Stop! Don’t come closer!”
“But I can help you up!” cried Tiger.
“No! I can get up! You’ll just fall in too!”
Tiger peered into the snow. “Can I throw you a rope?”
“No, I’m getting up,” said Baywillow. Tiger could hear him splashing around, and knew he was using his javelin as an ice-prod to pull himself out of the water. He heard the ice breaking, then renewed splashing, then a breathless shout:
“Tiger! I’m up on the ice! Don’t come this way. Try to the left!”
“I will,” shouted Tiger. He caught up his rope and started pulling, the snow plastering his side. A distant voice reached him: “Remember…prod…ice…”
Tiger took his javelin and struck it into the ice ahead of him. Aghast, he felt the point go through. He turned left again and walked a few steps, trying the ice each time. It seemed thicker here. Again he faced the wind and snow. After two steps the javelin went through once more.
He stopped, called out, and listened. He thought he heard a shout, but was not sure. Again he turned his back to the wind, walked ten steps, and turned right. The ice was good here, but whenever he faced the wind, a few paces took him back to thin ice.
“Baywillow!” he shouted. There was a splintering sound in front of him, and he could feel the tremor in the ice, stronger than before. Then the wind carried faint words to him, Baywillow calling out at the top of his voice: “South…Go south…”
Which way was south? There was nothing to guide Tiger except the raging wind. The snowfall was turning into torrents of rain. The darkness was complete. For the last time, the voice came to him through the darkness, a world of love and anxiety in it: “Careful…Careful…” From his left came a curious grinding noise, and a series of new shocks passed through the ice. He realized that he was standing on an ice-floe and that it had collided with something. South! Could he reach the fast ice that way? He started walking with the wind on his right cheek. He must be going south now, if the wind had veered to the west as Baywillow thought. Careful! He made himself thrust the javelin into the ice at every step, but it always rebounded on hard ice.
The grinding had ceased and there was nothing now except the sound of rain and wind. He stopped suddenly. There was a different note in the rain: it was splashing. Yes, there was open water in front of him. He stumbled forward, trying to see in the darkness. It seemed blacker in the distance; there was no way to safety here. A tremendous gust of wind and rain made him stagger. He could not go on.
Tiger stood motionless, almost overwhelmed by panic. For a moment he considered running forward, jumping into the water, swimming to safety. But he knew that only death awaited him in that cold black water. Slowly his reason returned. He was still holding the rope attached to the seals. It felt vaguely reassuring. What would Baywillow have done? Probably he would go away from the open water. Tiger went back to the first seal, then walked slowly away from the wind. Better not go very far. There was nothing to do now. He would have to wait, wait for daybreak, wait for the rain to stop, wait until he could see. And all the time his ice-floe would be drifting out to sea.
The thoughts were milling in his head as he stood with his back to the wind and rain. He stared into the darkness. Time passed, and passed, and passed. Much later—or just a moment later?—he was sitting on the body of a seal. The rain poured down. The wind was on his cheek. Had it changed direction, or was it his ice-floe that was turning around?
More time passed. He had forgotten where he was. No, he is back on the island. It is summer and little Marten-Dock-Crossbill is at Veyde’s breast. Tiger is smiling and joking about all the names of his son. There is sun and wind, and the eider and tufted ducks are out with their young in the bay. A few goldeneyes fly overhead. The smooth rocks feel warm to the touch. The drying rockpools are bordered by yellow pollen, but one of them has red water in it and Veyde avoids it. There is an evil spirit in it, she says
. A small patch of earth in a sheltered spot by the shore is a wilderness of flowering mayweed and stands of orpine, their stiff meaty leaves turning red in the dry weather. Behind them, as they sit on the beach, the pines stand gnarled and defiant, their new shoots a golden brown or light green. A couple of oystercatchers fly by swiftly, their calls ringing out. In a grassy cove to the right, buttercup and silverweed flower in bright yellow patches. A cuckoo calls, and a tree pipit sinks down with stiff wings, the last languishing note of its song drawing out into infinite, caressing sweetness.
Still later, the sun is low and the wind is gone. The reflections from the water weave a billowing network of light over the pines. Marten is sleeping in his arms. Old Mister Silverbirch rakes a few goosander eggs out of the dying fire. Someone tells a story, and everybody laughs.
With a start, Tiger remembered where he was, still on the ice-floe, sitting on the seal. The rain had stopped, and suddenly two stars shone out overhead. It was clearing up. Again he looked around. He seemed to be on a gigantic ice-floe. No water was in sight before him, but from the other side he could hear the lapping of small waves. The wind had died down, and through the stillness came a sound as of distant voices, repeated time and again. He strained to hear the words, but they were unintelligible: hah-iyeh, hah, ho. Suddenly he understood: it was the barking of seals. He must be near Morningland.
He tried to recapture his dream, but it was gone. He felt weak and suddenly hungry, and he cursed himself for finishing his provisions before starting back from Morningland.
More stars came out, and he could now see the polestar, though it wasn’t much use; there was nowhere to go. But wait—he had heard the seals in the east. That meant he was still to landward of Morningland. Maybe he would drift ashore. Then at least he would have solid ground under his feet, and he could hunt the seals for food.
Seals! Fool that he was! Here he was sitting on his food! He came to life and carefully penetrated the neck of the dead seal with his javelin. Soon he was sucking the blood, still lukewarm. A new glow filled him. He stretched his numbed body, hopped up and down, waved his arms. Yes, he was still alive.
The seals had fallen silent, but now there was a slight breath of wind in his face. Where did it come from? He looked to the stars: southeast. He jumped a few more times, and his hopes rose. With the wind from that direction he would drift back toward land. Again the wind picked up, and a blackness in the east blotted out the stars. He could hear the surge of the sea against the outer border of the ice, and suddenly he felt a tremor under his feet.
Panic gripped him. The waves were beginning to break up his ice-floe, the stars were gone, and once more blackness engulfed him. Yet a picture was forming in Tiger’s mind, the bird’s-eye view he had seen two winters ago from the coracle. He saw it now as clearly as he had then, and his mind’s eye traced the outlines of the skerries, identifying them all: Deadman Island, Morningland, and the others. Now he knew where he was, and he could tell, approximately, where he was going—if only the wind would hold.
The long night finally coming to an end, Tiger realized that he could see again. Eagerly he looked to landward, and saw the contours of an island, not far away, outlined in the murky light. Then he looked back to the sea and saw that a large part of his floating island had been lost: the waves were breaking only a few fathoms away.
Suddenly there was a terrific snorting, and a huge white head rose out of the water. Two gigantic paws with long claws gripped the edge of the ice. An enormous bear turned its wedge-shaped head toward Tiger, staring at him with small, piercing eyes. The animal looked as if he were about to clamber up on the ice.
“No!” Tiger cried out, terrified. The ice-floe cracked straight across, and Tiger got himself onto the bigger piece with a desperate jump. Two of the seals’ bodies slid into the water. The bear, diving and surfacing in a single fluid movement, caught one of them in his jaws and made off with it. Before Tiger had time to catch on to the rope, the last seal was pulled down, and the bear swam toward land, one seal gripped between his teeth, two trailing behind him.
Utterly shaken by this encounter, Tiger sat down gingerly in the middle of his ice-floe, and watched the waves lapping at its borders, constantly threatening to swamp it. In front of him there was open water, but closer to the island he could see ice.
The island was wooded, with a high, sloping, rocky beach on which he recognized the immense, polished excavation of a giant’s kettle just by the shore. The steep slope of the beach probably meant deep water outside. There was a lot of floating ice. Nearer the shore he could make out a dark shape, lying motionless on the fast ice. A seal? Could the bear have left one of the dead seals on the ice?
Tiger’s ice-floe ground against the floating ice near the shore and gently came to a stop. There was nothing to do now but jump, and probably swim. His first jumps were lucky. The small floes sank under his weight, but not before he had time to jump to the next. He was closing in to land rapidly, lurching this way and that, his arms flailing. Then he made a false step and fell through. He surfaced and struck the point of his javelin into the ice, trying desperately to pull himself out and to work his way landward. The ice gave way; he tried, and finally wriggled himself out of the water.
Shivering all over from cold and exhaustion, Tiger got up and ran toward the shore, nearly tripping over the dark shape he had seen at a distance. Now he realized that it was a man. For a moment he thought it was Baywillow, but this man was differently dressed, wearing sealskins from head to foot. Tiger turned him over, and looked into a foreign face. The man was a White, but different from all the Whites Tiger had met. He was deathly pale, and his face was peppered with reddish spots which stood out against the pallor. Tiger had never seen a freckled face before; his first impression was that the man was touched by some strange disease. His eyebrows were a russet color, and a wisp of red hair showed under his hood.
Tiger longed above all to get to drier land and to make a fire, but he could not leave the stranger here. Two years before he might have regarded this creature as a Troll ox; he might have turned his back. Now he knew better. Tiger lifted the man in his arms and staggered up the steep beach until he reached a large rock, partly covered by the crown of a pine. There he put the man down and ran off to get fuel. Everything was sopping wet, but he found some small dead pines that were easy to snap off, and dry and powdery within.
Tiger now took out the possession he prized almost as much as his father’s tiger tooth. It was a lump of pyrite and a piece of flint which he had received from the Chief at his initiation, and which he carried in a pouch in his belt. After a few tries the fire blazed up, and he tossed more wood on it. Now he would have to make a shelter. Mumbling apologies to the spirits of the trees, Tiger broke one branch after another and built a hut, which he made waterproof with moss and juniper twigs. When this was done, he put the stranger, still unconscious, in the hut, and stayed by the fire for a while, warming himself.
Now only one thing was missing: food. Warmed and greatly cheered, Tiger walked to the place where he had seen the bear go ashore. The steep, rocky slope was bare of snow, but the bear’s footprints on the ice led him to the right place. He found tracks in the wood and followed them cautiously. He had reckoned right: the bear had eaten one of the seals but left the others untouched. Even the rope was still there. Tiger hitched it over his shoulder and pulled off his booty. Suddenly he laughed, for a strange thought occurred to him: the seals had saved his life. There could be no doubt that the polar bear had originally intended to attack him, not the seals. And now the bear had saved his life by pulling the seals ashore. Tiger would never have been able to handle them while jumping across the ice-floes.
The smell of food aroused the stranger. He stared vacantly, then focused on Tiger. To his surprise, Tiger saw fear and dismay in the man’s face.
“May you soar high, Mister,” said Tiger, using the traditional greeting of the Whites and smiling reassuringly. The man uttered a few words in a
strange language, and Tiger repeated his greeting. The stranger seemed stunned, but finally spoke a few words in the White tongue, brokenly and with difficulty:
“You Black. I Red. You speak White. Why?”
“I live with the Whites,” explained Tiger. He gestured invitingly with the spit. “Do have some food.”
“Black—Red,” said the man and drew his finger across his throat. “No good. Dead Black—good.” He grimaced hideously. His face had flushed a dull red which obliterated the freckles, and he was crouching, as if to attack.
By the Great Mammoth, Tiger thought, that’s a funny way to show your gratitude. Out loud he said, “I am a friend. I found you on the ice. I carried you here.” He wondered how much the man understood, but the sight of the grilled meat seemed to help. The Red man accepted it after some hesitation, and started to eat. While chewing, he pulled together his mighty eyebrows, as if struggling for words. He patted his chest and said, “Red—beautiful—good.” He paused. “Black—no beautiful—no good.” Then he raised his eyes to Tiger, and his features softened: “You Black. You good.”
Tiger stifled an impulse to laugh. Maybe I’ll be beautiful too, in a little while, he thought. But he nodded kindly and started to eat. They ate in silence, and Tiger put more wood on the fire. The short day was coming to an end; he suddenly felt very tired.
In the morning, Tiger woke up, warm and dry, and looked out at a world with traveling skies, rosy from the rising sun. The Red man made it clear to him that he lived near by, and they set out together, Tiger supporting his companion, who had an injured foot. They worked their way slowly across the fast ice to the inner skerries, and entered the Red village when the sun was in the south. The village lay in a sheltered harbor on the south side of an island and differed from the settlements of the Whites in that it had simple huts made out of branches and lined with moss. The beach was littered with butchering refuse and animal bodies, and a great bonfire was blazing. Many people were at work, but at the sight of the ill-matched pair they left everything and ran to meet them.