The fuzzy gray line of deer had broken into a series of dots. Clusters exploded over the valley floor. Individual animals staggered alone, then collapsed. On the bank the men appeared as running, hurling blobs.
Lefthand forgot his weakness and pain, forgot even the suddenly vanished wolf. He set off at a limping, dragging run toward the red wolf. She was jumping and waving her arms and yelling at the handful of stragglers who had stopped. Heads up, ears stiff, as one deer they had turned their white rumps on the hunters and gathered all their fading strength to gallop back over hard-packed snow. With snowy ruffs streaming and nostrils heaving, they threw themselves into a hard trot that erased distance.
They were coming at an angle to bypass the shouting wolves. Lefthand flung himself out before them. He waved his arms and howled. In a moment the racing deer were all around him. They flashed by, terror-glazed eyes watching him sideways. He saw the foam on their lips and smelled their bodies as they rushed past, while he had to stand weaponless.
He hung his head and let the last few deer dash by without attempting to stop them. He saw only their hoofs thundering on the hard snow. Then four slender legs pumped past, little black hoofs winking sunshine. With head down and forward, shoulders hunched, the fawn presented only a fast vanishing white rump, propelled by strong swinging hindquarters. Lefthand stood watching while the whiteness of the fawn vanished against the snow. For a time the dark legs could be seen dwindling, and sometimes the smudge of his head and ears, until the vast, white morning took him.
5
“Walk,” a voice twittered in Lefthand’s ear, “keep walking. If you lie down you’ll never get up.” Lefthand was stooping to crawl into Provider’s tent when Sorcerer grabbed him from behind. Bony fingers clawed his shoulders and Sorcerer pushed him away from the tent, back into the crowd.
The one thing Lefthand really ached to do was to creep into a tent, pull a robe over his head, and shut out the world. Sorcerer had taken away the white wolf skin, and with it his magic strength. Now he was again a cripple, wandering painfully about the camp, avoided by everyone. With Sorcerer spying on him there was no help for it; he could do nothing but limp around, feel his pain and look and listen.
After the tremendous slaughter on the riverbank the camp had been moved. This was no great trouble. The women simply collapsed their tents, rolled up their few goods on the baggage sleds, and moved out to camp among the corpses. Now the tents sprawled among pegged skins and piles of innards. Meat strips dangled to darken over small fires. All over camp the women worked merrily, spicing labor with talk. A steady drone rose into the air, a constant hum of happy voices interrupted by laughter. One of these voices, momentarily raised in argument, was familiar. Lefthand turned hopefully toward it.
“I know, I know, your son is a handsome boy,” it said loudly, “but I want more than that! I don’t care if he is handsome. I’m looking for a man. Onedeer is too young.”
“What are you, Red, an old woman?” The answering, chuckling voice was Bright’s.
Bright, Red, and Snowbird were kneeling on a bloody skin. Eight sharp bone pegs held the skin taut while they worked rhythmically together. First Red would throw herself forward, dig her scraper into the middle of the skin, and pull it back to herself. As she withdrew, leaning back on her heels, Bright would dive in from the other side; and as she leaned away, Snowbird would come in between them. Working at this happy, swinging pace, they would have that skin clear of blood and clinging fat before the sun reached its height. Lefthand knew what Snowbird planned to do with it. It was the skin of an old, barren doe, the first reindeer killed from the ambush, and Bright had given it to Snowbird for a special purpose.
Lefthand moved slowly toward the familiar group. He wanted to hear Bright’s comforting voice and he wanted to see how his doe skin was progressing. As he crept forward he crossed the path of three young men who were striding together, boasting loudly with large gestures. They stopped abruptly at sight of Lefthand. He stood still for them but they hesitated to pass in front of such an evil apparition.
They were red-faced, big-shouldered young men, full of meat and laughter. Two were dark and ruddy. The middle one was blond and blue-eyed and the shadow of grief crossed his face as he looked at Lefthand. It was Onedeer. Then he laughed and pointed out to his friends a way around Lefthand. They passed behind him, three in step together, and walked away into the crowd, leaving him behind.
Lefthand saw Red look after Onedeer. She shot out a strong white arm to point at him and then swung around to point at a silent group of hunters crouching together, happily sucking marrow from a pile of bones.
“That one,” he heard her say. “Your man’s brother.”
“Provider?”
“Yes, Provider. That’s what I’m looking for, a hunter. He didn’t get that name sitting around all day sucking marrow!” With a teasing smile she added, “He’s almost as handsome as Onedeer!”
Snowbird remarked softly, “I’d want one younger.”
Red explained in her carrying voice, “You don’t know how a young one will turn out! He might be no good. He might even turn out like that poor beast who can’t even stand up straight!”
“You mean Provider’s son,” Snowbird told her, angrily.
“Provider’s son!” Red stopped work. She leaned on her scraper in the middle of the skin, staring open-mouthed at Snowbird. Obvious thoughts galloped through her mind.
Bright cast a look like a spear at her sister. A new hope had been dawning in her starved heart. In a few days she would have to pack her sled and go trudging off into the endless world with her silent men. Perhaps this big, hearty girl who liked to talk could be persuaded to come.
She began to talk. In her haste she stumbled over words and forgot them and said them again. Words came tumbling and flopping like young birds from a nest, as Bright explained to Red what had happened. Lefthand was not born like that, she assured her. “It happened a moon ago, and in any case he won’t be coming with us,” Bright said, just as Lefthand’s shadow fell across the skin.
Bright’s voice trailed away and the two girls looked up. They grinned at Lefthand and Red bent to her scraping again. She scraped briskly, Snowbird thoughtfully. Bright was flustered and she missed two turns.
“Come on, Bright,” Red scolded, “you’re missing!” Bright went back into action and Red returned to the subject on her mind, just as though there were no boy within hearing distance.
“He is a fine, handsome man,” she said, “and a good hunter. You don’t often go to sleep hungry, do you?”
“Not often,” Bright hastily agreed, and added slyly, “He’s lonely.”
Lefthand slumped, looking down at the three heads, black and red and gold-gray, which swooped by turn across the skin. The blades bit, the words flew. They were women’s words, small and gossipy. After a while he turned and wandered away to watch other groups, listen in on other conversations.
A rushing gang of children almost swept him off his feet. Behind the gang ran Jay, a string of intestines flying from his fist.
Near Lefthand the gang stopped in a huddle, with Jay hopping up and down on the outside. Lefthand watched him sadly. No one, not even the children, wanted to have much to do with a boy whose brother had been mauled by a bear.
The gang jiggled and squirmed with excitement as one little boy broke from its center and dodged inside the nearest tent. He came out smiling smugly, with something white clasped in his sooty little arms. He disappeared in the shouting, jumping mass of children. Lefthand drew nearer and lowered himself gently onto the packed snow well away from the gang but close enough to see the game.
The huddle broke up and from it came a procession of little girls. They pranced and minced in single file, fingers spread from their foreheads like antlers. The little boys threw themselves prone on the snow and wiggled, bottoms up, skillfully stalking. Lefthand nodded to himself, pleased at their craft. He and Onedeer had wiggled just so through many a serious game.
Then, like sickness, a cold sorrow spread through his vitals. He saw the little boy wrap himself in mysterious whiteness. It was the wolf skin in which he, Lefthand, had turned the herd. The head bobbed on the little boy’s chest and the tail thumped after his heels. He lolloped along, leaping and squatting with a staccato motion—exactly the motion of a cripple pretending to be a wolf.
From what vantage point had this sharp-eyed child been watching? Lefthand grimaced and bit his tongue. At the same moment shouting erupted from the bubbling stream of adult voices.
Into the mock hunt burst a huge, lumbering woman, red-faced with fury, swinging a powerful open hand. She knocked the proud little lead doe off her feet. She charged down the line of tripping reindeer, sending the slow ones sprawling, while the more alert shied away and trotted to a safe distance.
The little wolf saw her coming. He tried to run, but his path was blocked by the stalkers scrambling in all directions. Before he could move the roaring woman had caught him in a bear hug, ripped the wolf skin from his shoulders, and sent him staggering with a resounding box on the ear.
Lefthand sat grinning, delighted. He would gladly have broken up the hunt with equal violence. He watched with relish after the little boy who stumbled away crying, pressing his ear with his palm.
Meanwhile the woman hugged her wolf skin. She rocked it in her arms like a baby. Murmuring to it, she carried it back to her tent.
Behind her the children collected again, laughing. They brushed snow from knees and shoulders. Some of the little girls swung their arms, practicing for the day when they would be mothers. Then like a swarm of bees the gang seemed to rise in the air, barely skimming the snow as they flew away to play another game. Jay ran behind, earthbound, but flapping hopefully.
Lefthand was suddenly seized from behind and dragged to his feet.
“You’ve sat around long enough,” growled the Bear. “You’re going to stretch those muscles!” And he turned Lefthand about and propelled him back to the doeskin. Bright, Red, and Snowbird looked up amazed as Lefthand was pushed to his knees in their circle.
“Give him your scraper, Red,” the sorcerer ordered. “This boy is going to get a workout, ha-ha!”
Slack-jawed, Red stared. Sorcerer snarled at her, swiped a paw at her, and she hastily tossed the scraper across the skin to Lefthand.
“Now,” said Sorcerer, bending over him, “you know well enough what to do. Let’s see you do it!” He stamped and snorted like a suspicious pony as Lefthand gingerly reached out his hand and set the scraper in the center of the skin.
“No, no, boy, two hands! And reach out with your belly!”
Lefthand stretched and groaned.
“That’s it, that’s it. Put the belly and the back into it and earn your new coat!” The sorcerer giggled, whirled about, and hare-hopped away.
Lefthand scowled stormily after him.
“You’d better do it,” Bright advised.
“Sorcerer knows what’s best,” Snowbird encouraged.
Red snorted, got to her feet, and moved away. She had no scraper now and she did not think it wise to witness Lefthand’s disgrace. She could not be sure the sorcerer would fail to cure him. This wreck might yet be walking around like a man.
Viciously, grunting with pain and anger, Lefthand bent to the scraping. “There!” he told the skin, and “There!”, wishing it were the sorcerer’s back. The skin ripped, a small red hole opening under his angry hand.
“Lefthand,” Bright murmured, “not so rough. Work in the corner, where it won’t matter.”
A shrill yell ripped across the low hubbub around them. “Look at the cripple! He’s working!”
With a swirling rush Jay’s gang surrounded them. The little boy with the swollen red ear pointed at Lefthand and screamed derision. Other boys threw themselves on the snow, scraping and grunting. The little girls staggered and howled with laughter.
Lefthand straightened. He put his shoulders back, regardless of the hurt. He was holding Red’s scraper like a spear and he stared coldly at the swollen-eared boy.
Laughter died. The children drew away, astonished and fascinated.
“Hey!” said the boy softly, and he stepped back.
Then Lefthand’s fury-hazed vision cleared. The boy was not an enemy, only a jeering personification of the hostile camp. He was actually no larger than Jay.
Lefthand lowered the blade.
Instantly Snowbird jumped up and over the skin. She threw off the pretense of being grown up as she would throw off a cloak.
“I’ll race you!” she called to the gang. “I’ll race you to the drum!” And she was gone, swooping away among the fires, the children screeching at her heels. Only Jay hung back, looking at Lefthand with sorrowful wonder.
“Sorcerer’s coming!” Bright warned, and Lefthand scraped with her, stretching and wondering that it hurt less. His arm reached easier and his shoulders tingled.
6
In the clear, chill evening the twins came to Bright’s fire. They sat close to the coals, wriggling their toes and their noses, tasting in anticipation the haunch of reindeer she poked out of the ashes. Sparks popped up and spiraled lazily to join the stars. Other cooking fires flared around them. The rich smell of roasting meat overhung the valley. In good-natured silence the twins watched as Bright raked the haunch out onto the snow. Then they attacked it with blades and hands.
For some time the camp was almost silent, as men at all the fires tore and munched and gulped.
When the hands reached more slowly and beards shone greasy in the firelight, Bright said, “Provider.”
Startled, both men looked at her. In their company she had long ago given up talking. When she did speak, she usually addressed only Bisonhorn.
“Provider, you know that girl, Red?”
Chewing loudly, he stared.
“The big girl with red hair.”
He nodded.
“If you ask her, she will come with us.”
Provider looked into the fire. After a silent while he got up and wandered away. He went vaguely, round-about, more or less in the direction of Red’s fire.
FIVE
THE SORCERER
1
Like a squirrel scrambling out of a dark tree hole, Sorcerer emerged from his magical disguise. He lifted off the gigantic, antlered mask and Lefthand was astonished to see his little, wrinkled face—the face of a very old man—laughing and jiggling with glee at meeting the sun.
He skipped out of the sacred skin and left it heaped on the snow. One by one he shook his bony arms and legs. His whole right side was shrunken and withered. The right arm was half the size of the left arm. Both were stretched joyfully to the shining sky.
Finally, Sorcerer put his tousled white head down and turned a somersault. Leaping up, he laughed at Lefthand’s amazement. “You’ll be doing that yourself before I’m done with you,” he said. Lefthand did not want to imgaine himself doing any such thing. Provider had never, in his memory, turned a somersault.
Quietly impatient, the others waited. Spears in hand, they stood around Bright’s dying fire, in the midst of other dying fires. The last of the crowd was now a faint, moving patch downriver, weaving along like a distant herd. The tent-town had vanished in its own smoke. The hundred smoldering coal piles and the thin layer of waste scattered over the area—scraps of bone, hide and offal—told of human habitation. The next storm would erase these signs.
Two small tents still huddled under the cliff—Sorcerer’s and Lefthand’s, a parting gift from Bright and Red. From the meat rack between the tents hung the stripped meat of three reindeer carcasses.
Provider indicated these with a scornful hand. “What are you going to eat?” he asked. “Those will not last long.”
He stood closest with the women while Bisonhorn and Onedeer hovered well away, poised to go.
Sorcerer laughed. “Three deer for three people! When they are gone, I can still scuttle about some, Provider! One does not have
to eat bison hump or reindeer haunch—I could surprise you with the things I eat. Hare, piglet, rat—anything that comes along.
“Your boy. I will cure him. Come back when the new sun wanes and you will see him dance in a bear skin!”
Provider obviously did not believe it.
“Look how straight he stands now, with the exercise I give him! A young boy like that, you can do anything with him. No need to despair!”
Provider frowned with intense embarrassment. Lefthand had noticed before this how incautiously the sorcerer talked. Like a woman, he jabbered anything that crossed his mind, often acting out his words with gestures and dancing. Now he jumped up and down, pointing insistently to Lefthand.
“That boy will hunt. He will do more than that.”
Sorcerer came close to Provider and thrust his white head forward to touch the younger man’s chest. Provider stepped back.
“I will take your son across the river.” A wizened finger pointed at the wide, white ice. “I have secrets over there—magic secrets. You told me yourself that your son has magic in his left hand.” Sorcerer stepped back and laughed. “When you see him again, you will call him by another name!”
With a final, malicious titter at Provider, the old man turned to Bright. He folded her large form in his lean arms, rather as a spider embraces a fly. Provider and Lefthand looked long at one another. There was hope in Provider’s eyes, seeming to say, Maybe the sorcerer can do it. Maybe I will see you here again. But they warned, I don’t want to see you like this again.
Lefthand’s eyes answered, I know it.
Bright turned and picked up the lead of her baggage sled. Red took her lead. Bisonhorn and Onedeer sprang away like eager bucks, sniffing new smells, searching the landscape.
They had forgotten Jay. Anguished, he hovered, stepping now after the departing women, now back to Lefthand. Deciding, he ran to Lefthand and caught his arm in a desperate, hurting grip. Lefthand shook him off but Snowbird reached out and pressed him against her.
The Sorcerer Page 7