My skin prickles. I watch the girl while the snow melts on my ankle, cooling the pain down to a rheumy throb. As I dab off the water, she begins carrying in the furs to cover the twig mattress. ‘That looks very comfy,’ I say.
‘It’s a good bed.’
‘Why do the women here have many husbands?’ I must have been half blind last time I was here, because I didn’t notice how their families were organised. I was probably too focussed on Runner and on finding out what he did for a living.
‘Because that’s normal,’ Uma answers and squints at me. Her brain is rattling behind her eyes. ‘Is it not normal where you come from?’
I blink and look up at the ceiling. Swirling patterns of clouds, stars, moon and sun have been sewn there with blue thread. I’m about to say that, where I come from, it’s normal for a man to have several wives aged nine to twenty-five. Sometimes, but not often, the girls are even younger. But they are never older, because they’ve already been used up by abuse, rape, malnutrition, and excruciatingly hard work. Or they’ve been shot or beaten to death, sometimes burned. But they usually die when giving birth to their fifth or sixth child.
‘One man can have many wives,’ I say at last. ‘I’ve never seen a woman with more husbands than one.’
‘That’s not smart,’ Uma pipes up. ‘What if the man dies? Who will hunt and provide for all his kids and wives?’
‘Hm. Good question,’ I mutter although I already know the answer: no one. If your husband dies, your kids will either be assimilated into military training, or, if too young to carry a rifle, they’ll be killed with a blow to the head and a knife to the throat. Widows are made available to all men in the camp. Some women would call it prostitution. But I’ve read somewhere that a prostitute gets paid for her services.
Blood is seeping onto the thick bandages between my thighs. It’s as if my uterus is weeping hot tears for a loss it cannot explain. Maybe it’s compensating for something my eyes are unable to do.
———
The yurt is dimly lit by an oil lamp. Shapes of sleeping people form bumps on the floor. The large bed is occupied by Uma and Masha’s three kids. Tears were spilled in abundance; the smallest of them — a three year-old boy whose name I didn’t hear properly — fell asleep at Seema’s breast and is now curled up in Uma’s armpit.
No one has interrogated me and I don’t understand why. How can these people survive if they keep inviting strangers into their homes, not asking them the most important questions? Where did you come from? Where are you heading? What side are you on? Who did you kill? Who do you plan to kill?
I lie on a pallet that used to be Uma’s and I’m glad I don’t need to share it with three orphans. I don’t like being touched. Hate it.
My mind’s eye shows me the usual: war, death, carnage. The yurt collapses, an avalanche of Erik’s troop rolls over men, women, children, staining the snow deep black in the faint light of the waning moon. My hand doesn’t stray from my loaded pistol.
———
I have not seen Katvar in three days. Birket’s home is now closed to everyone who is not family, because the new mother needs rest. That’s me. I’m considered a new mother although the necessary other half is missing.
Seema explained to me that a woman doesn’t stop being a mother when her children leave — be it to marry a man or woman in another clan, or to go to their ancestors.
I nodded at her then. I can accept that notion of souls going places, I guess, but it’s not my belief. I’m pretty sure that when you are dead, you’re dead and that’s it. No paradise at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
The Dog People feed and pamper me. Uma tells me it’s what’s done with all new mothers. They have to heal and regain their strength. I get the impression that women here are considered valuable and that weighs like a rock on my chest.
At headquarters, the girls and women were considered dirty (I should say “even dirtier”) for twenty days after giving birth if the child lived, and ten days if the child died. That alone was a motivation for many men to get rid of newborns. But even then, only a females’ lower half was the dirty part. The mouth was considered unsoiled.
‘You look like you want to kill someone,’ Uma says and moves her fingers in the air.
I think of my own child and how short her life was. My mind strays there unbidden and frequently. I wish I could cut that part out.
‘I said, “You look like you want to kill someone.” Are you still here? Micka?’
My head snaps up. I try to relax my jaws. She nods at the piece of wood in my lap. I look down at it; my right hand is trembling. I uncurl my fingers and a bead of blood crawls along the ridges and furrows of my palm. The sharp little rock I’m holding is black with my sweat. I take a deep breath and rub my palms on my pants. ‘I need to take a walk.’
Uma opens her mouth for a reply, probably to comment on my ankle and that Barktak forbade me to put weight on it, then she shuts it and looks down at my work. ‘Okay,’ she says, her hand making a wiggly sign in front of her chest.
She’s teaching me sign language. Someone has told her about the ivory dog Katvar made for me and since then she’s convinced I should be able to speak my friend’s language. ‘We are not friends,’ I told her.
‘Then do it out of respect,’ she retorted.
I couldn’t disagree with that. So I’m learning sign language now. It’s a waste of time, because I’ll be leaving here soon. And it’s a bit like tying knots in my brain.
‘This is never going to be a longbow,’ I mutter at the crooked piece of oak I’m holding.
‘Looks like firewood to me.’ She giggles. ‘If Seema sees it, she’ll insist you babysit Jarvis instead.’
My face falls. When, two days ago, Seema held out her tiny boy to me and told me to be useful, I was close to losing it. ‘Anything,’ I whispered. ‘I can do anything for you, but not that.’
So now she wants me to make a longbow for her. Or whatever this thing is going to be. With a sharp rock, no less, instead of a knife. Seema showed me how the layers of wood are shaved off the hard core. She’s teaching me stuff from the Stone Age. Sometimes, when I run obsidian over oak, I touch the two pendants around my neck: the dog made of tooth and the silvery exabyte drive made to bring down the sky. Low-tech and high-tech. They belong as little together as I belong here.
Jarvis kicks off his fox fur blanket and grasps the edges of his basket. Tiny pink fingers slip between woven willow twigs. Uma bends down to him and dips her forehead against his. His mouth begins to search for his mother. ‘Uhm-uhm,’ he says.
Uma looks up at me. ‘Was that a smile?’ She signs the words she speaks, and suddenly pokes my nose. I give her a dangerously cold stare that blanches her cheeks.
She stands, walks to the door, and sticks her head out to call for Seema. I scoot back to put a little distance between me and the basket.
‘Need help?’ Uma asks as she sits back down.
I wave her away and pick up my crutch. I’m getting better at walking. Crossing the room in five seconds is my new goal for today. It takes me six seconds to reach the flap door. I’ll try again in an hour.
‘You bring war.’
My neck prickles and heat rushes over my skin. ‘What?’
‘You bring war,’ Uma whispers. ‘Everyone can see it.’
‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’ I even manage a smile before I turn my back on her and grab the door.
‘When men return home from battle, some have the same look you have. War rides on their shoulders.’
The door flap escapes my grip.
‘They bring suffering to their families,’ Uma continues. ‘You should leave soon.’
Slowly, I turn my head and gaze over my shoulder. ‘You are wise. Don’t worry, I’m eager to leave.’
I step out into the deep snow. The sunlight blinds my eyes and I stagger as far away from Seema’s yurt as I can without hurting my ankle and delaying my departure. I walk past a group
of women skinning and cutting up deer carcasses, past the laughing, jesting, and the telling of stories about dog, wolf, and bear — as if these people understood the languages of beasts. No mentioning of battles won or lost, no talk about strategies, weapons, enemy positions and movements. Don’t they know what’s coming? How can they be so ignorant?
Behind a group of trees I hide, crouch down and bury my face in my hands. War rides on my shoulders. What an apt description.
A gentle wind pushes clumps of snow off the trees. They land with small thuds in the snow cover, punching holes into it. The sun throws sparks over the white landscape. Crows are cawing above me; they can be found all around the village, scavenging for bits of food. They seem to find enough to get through the winter.
I think of Rajah, of the first day we spoke. She had taken one look at my clenched fists, my cold and determined face, and she knew. She knew I wanted nothing more than to die and take as many men with me as possible. I was on the way to Erik’s hut, to grab his semiautomatic rifle and squeeze a spray of bullets into his chest, run back out into the camp and fire until the weapon stopped sputtering. The moment I walked past Rajah, she straightened up from her washing and said, ‘I made tea. Sit with me for a moment.’
Tea. How could anyone think of drinking tea in that hellhole? And yet, I sat and let my bangs slide over my brooding face.
‘I am Rajah. You are Micka, I heard.’
I nodded.
She held up her hand and spread her fingers. ‘Look.’
I didn’t look up at her, but down at the ground. There was a dark hand, shaped like a starfish, rippled by short grass and small rocks. The sun painted Rajah’s outlines onto the earth and I felt ready to press my face right there into the dirt and cry.
‘Shadows. Darkness,’ she said. ‘We think them…unnecessary. Painful. We want them gone. But see! Do you see, Micka?’
I shrugged and squinted at her.
She smiled and twisted her neck, looking up at the sun. ‘You see the sun, no?’
‘Who wouldn’t.’
She wiggled her fingers, held them up high, then pointed at the larches that silently bent in the wind, and at the dark at their feet. ‘Life casts shadows.’
And just like that, she cast herself in a new light. I wondered, and still do, how this wise, gentle, and intelligent woman could have survived the camp for so long.
I gaze at my palms, the calluses and cracks there, and whisper her name.
When I walk back to Seema’s, one of the women lifts her head and waves at me. I approach the group seated around three dead deer. The women’s hands are bloody, as are their knives. Small children squat next to them, eating bits of raw meat. The bigger kids hang thin slices of meat on a wooden rack to freeze and perhaps slowly dry in the wind and the sun.
‘Eat,’ she says and points at liver and heart — the prime parts, if one doesn’t prefer the head.
I pull my knife and everyone starts laughing.
‘You need an eating knife. Small and sharp. Not a sword.’ She holds out her own and I take it. Her expression is open and friendly and I’m surprised by my own reaction — I relax.
‘Thank you. I am Micka, sniper. No husband, no kids.’
‘I am Tari, mother of one son, wife of Oakes and Aidan.’ She says, and the other women introduce themselves, too.
I sit and eat the offered meat, help with cutting off slices for drying, and cleaning off bones for boiling. I find myself grinning at silly stories about neighbouring clans, jokes about Birket and the chief before him, and I realise I’ve never heard Katvar’s story.
‘Uma is teaching me sign language, but I don’t understand it properly yet. Can you introduce Katvar? I mean…I don’t know whose husband he is and how many children he has. But I know he’s good with dogs and…’ I trail off when everyone stares at me.
‘Katvar is no one’s husband and no one’s father and never will be,’ says an older woman who introduces herself as Krista, mother and grandmother of…I don’t know how many.
‘Why?’ I ask.
‘He has bad blood.’
‘What?’
‘It’s his story to tell,’ Tari says and offers me another piece of liver.
I reach out and take it. ‘May I ask another question?’
Tari nods and smiles. ‘You may ask as many questions as you like. We choose to answer or keep silent.’
‘Are your men ever jealous?’
A peal of laughter erupts. Even the children are amused.
‘How could they not be? But it’s the task of a good wife to pay attention and not favour one man over the other,’ Tari answers.
‘Seema has been at Birket’s home for too long,’ mutters one woman.
‘I took good care of Oakes while she was away,’ Tari replies and grins again. The fine lines around her eyes willingly conform to her laughing. They must be used to it.
Puzzled, I cock my head. ‘You enjoy it? Your husbands’…sexual attention?’
Her eyes darken when she gives me a measuring stare. ‘You do not.’ A statement, not a question.
‘I must go back,’ I say and stand. ‘Forgive my questions. I’m not used to… Forget what I said.’
I limp back to Seema’s or Birket’s or whoever’s yurt. Unfortunately, I run into Oakes, a short man with broad shoulders and a friendly face.
‘Hey Micka, Uma told me you need this.’ He holds out a piece of split oak. It’s as long as I am tall.
‘Yeah. I screwed up the first one. Sorry about that.’
‘Don’t worry. You can always use the wood shavings to start a fire.’ He laughs and offers his arm for support.
I allow myself to accept his help. ‘Why are people so happy here?’ slips from my mouth.
‘Why should they not be?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say and bite my tongue. My body might be growing stronger, but everything else seems to be softening up dangerously.
Three weeks and still no sign of the Sequencer. The Dog People don’t worry about that. Sometimes the Sequencer comes early, sometimes late, they say.
Shit.
Sometimes, a war begins while you wait for some idiot to show up and transmit your message. I’m about to go nuts.
When I’m not in Birket’s yurt carving away at the longbow, I’m hobbling around the village, lending a hand with butchering or whatever else needs doing.
A horde of screaming kids runs past me, followed by a group of women who seem to be even more excited about returning hunters than usual.
My eyes follow their path, expecting a dog sled laden with deer or moose. The trilling sound of yip yip yip tells of a good quarry just before the dogs run into the village pulling a sled larger than any I’ve seen. A huge black mass is lying on top of it. Then comes another sled, just as large, just as laden. Two hunters. One of them scrapes off his hood. Katvar.
I try to identify what they’ve killed. Head and chest are broad and wooly. Two short horns. A pale tongue hangs out of the gaping mouth. Its small eyes are glassy. I dip a finger into the thick fur and Katvar cracks a smile.
I lift my hands and sign, ‘Wisent?’ in the sign alphabet Uma has drilled into me.
Katvar’s eyebrows rise. He nods.
‘Never seen one,’ I tell him and step aside to make space for the men and women moving the animals off the sleds. The wounds at the sides of the wisents catch my eye. They are not bullet entry wounds, and this time I can identify them. ‘Why the hell would you hunt them with bow and arrow?’
Katvar signs and I’m lost.
‘Sorry, didn’t get that,’ I say.
He repeats himself, and this time he signs not words, but letters. ‘Migration routes.’
‘Okay?’
He grins and mimics a rifle, croaks a muzzle report, points at the wisents, then signs. ‘They leave.’ A quick movement of his flat palm, facing to the side, up, down and forward, closing his fist. All this fuss for one short word — leave.
‘You are sa
ying that they leave when you make a noise?’ I ask, surprised.
He nods, then taps the shoulder of the other hunter and signs to him.
‘I am Kioshi, father of six and husband of Saida and Gnat,’ the man says.
I have to tell my mouth not to gape. Gnat? Really?
‘Katvar asked me to explain. We hunt with bow and arrow because animals change their migration routes when hunted with rifles. When you fire a gun, the rest of the herd remembers. When you kill them quietly, they forget.’
‘You don’t hunt with rifles at all?’
‘No, we don’t.’
‘But, last time I was here, you did hunt with rifles. I remember.’
Kioshi turns away and mutters, ‘That was last time. This is this time.’
Katvar doesn’t meet my gaze. Someone is lying.
Wisent seems to be a special prize. Katvar and Kioshi have the honour of opening the animals and taking heart and liver. They cut the organs into pieces, eat the first bits and pass the rest around for the others. When I slip the meat into my mouth, Katvar’s gaze meets mine. He’s shining with pride.
The women get to work with their knives. I have to wait until the limbs come off, then I can cut slices for the drying rack. I’m not allowed to do the heavy work yet. My hand strays to the exabyte drive around my neck. I’m in the Stone Age. Or Iron Age. Crazy shit. When I look up, I catch Katvar staring at me. All colour has left his cheeks. His eyes are on the ivory dog. He lowers his head, bumps Kioshi’s shoulder, and leaves.
Butchering the two large animals is hard work and we are still at it when the sun dips into the trees and clouds begin to crawl across the sky. As soon as the cloud cover stretches above me, concealing me from Erik’s satellites, I feel safer.
A variety of odours wafts through the village: frying meat, wild onion, thyme, various roots. As if on cue, the women seated in the bloody snow pack up their knives and their baskets, which are filled with meat and bones. Children carry away the baskets and two old women bring a small, shallow tub, fill it with lukewarm water, and hang cloths over its rim. We strip and hurry the water onto our bodies to wash away the blood and dirt. Everyone is laughing, even old Barktak. Someone brings clothes and Uma holds out mine — a present from Seema before she and her youngest children left for Oakes’ yurt. I get dressed and watch Katvar untie the dogs that dive at the leftovers, inhale anything that looks like meat and blood, and roll in the patches of red snow.
Ice: The Climate Fiction Saga Page 3