by Harper Swan
Raven composed her face, swallowing the bubble. “I’m sure Bear only asked for your help because you alone know the Longhead’s words and ways.”
She moved closer to his side. With a quick and light touch, she ran her fingers over his hand holding the leash. “I wish they hadn’t taken you, but we’re fortunate you escaped and are here with us now.” Her fingers again flickered over his hand, back and forth. “And I wish your other hand had not been so lazy and had helped this one more,” she teased gently.
Leaf looked fixedly at her hand covering his, and she thought he had calmed down. But then his brown eyes flared at her like a wounded wolverine’s, pained and vicious. “They eat their own people. Did you know that, healer?”
His grin was cruel, and she drew away. At her abrupt movement, his face fell.
“But only if someone happens to die when the hunting is bad and everyone is starving,” he said hastily as if apologizing for shocking her. He looked into the distance, and pain lingered in his eyes.
A piercing whistle silenced them. Raven knew it was Bear before she saw his bearded face glaring back at her. She noted with a start that their small group around the captive had fallen back a short distance from the rest—the guards had been caught up in Leaf’s story just as she had.
“Better go,” Leaf said softly. “Don’t want to make him mad.”
When she reached Bear, he plunged his hand through her cape’s arm slit to grasp her upper arm. He pulled with such roughness that her feet skittered as he snatched her around to walk in front of him. Several nearby grouse, wriggling and flapping in a dirt bath, took fright and lifted off in a whir of dust.
“You’re slowing us down,” he said.
She couldn’t help throwing a scathing look over her shoulder. After her father, he was the most dominating man she’d known. His large shadow followed her closely, and the stony weight of his eyes upon her every movement was every bit as uncomfortable as the heavy load of meat.
The sun had floated a good way toward the horizon before they passed from low hills into the valley where their journey would end. After the expansive steppe, the foliage seemed close and lush. A large lake surrounded by trees sparkled in the distance, and soon they could see the low bluff where the camp’s dwellings perched. This band’s spring camp was much larger than the camp Raven had come from.
She suddenly felt timid. Even though Bear left her before they reached camp, she maintained a rapid pace. Her legs were tired to the point of collapsing, but she refused to let herself trail the others. It would not do to seem weak in the eyes of her new band.
She was almost totally ignored, however, as news spread about the other, unexpected newcomer. Someone blew a long note on an aurochs horn, and excited shouts echoed around the lakeside. The recently returned travelers piled the meat to one side. When the gathering crowd began pressing too closely, the weary men formed a fence with their spears around Leaf and the Longhead. Bear soon climbed onto a nearby stump and began narrating their journey. Everyone became quiet, hanging on his words.
Raven stood at one edge of the massed group and, from time to time, looked unsuccessfully through the crowd for her sister. Disconcerted by seeing so many unfamiliar people in one place, her glance fled from face to face. From the riled looks forming on some of them and a background muttering near the end of Bear’s tale, not everyone was in agreement with giving the Longhead his freedom.
A loud voice suddenly croaked throughout the clearing, “If you know where to find a pool, then you know where to catch fish.”
The crowd parted as an elder hobbled to the front, pushing everyone aside with his walking stick. He stopped in front of Bear and waved the stick at him. “How will we know?” he asked in his rasping voice.
With a disgusted frown, Bear crossed his arms and stopped talking.
“How will we know that he won’t come back with the others and raid us, now that he’s seen our camp?”
Bear opened his mouth, but before he could speak, the older man began laughing. Bear was forced to wait while the elder struggled to control his wild cackles.
“Before your time, we threw them in lakes and rivers when we caught one.” The elder wiped his eyes. “Have you ever seen their bones? No? Well, I have. They’re thick and heavy. Longheads drown if you don’t let them back on land soon. Ask your father. He knows all about this.” He jabbed his stick at Bear. “You need to seek his counsel.”
Raven looked sharply at the Longhead. He stood there, watching everything calmly, his hand spread over an enormous bruise coloring his chest and abdomen. She had to remind herself that he couldn’t understand.
Bear jutted out his chin. “I take it upon myself to make decisions,” he shouted, “because I’ve just been told that although my father yet breathes, he is scarcely with us. I can no longer receive his counsel. The only elder left now is you, and you’ve just given me yours.” His smile was a dismissive sneer.
A murmur went through the crowd, and Raven began to understand why the men had deferred to Bear throughout the journey. The elder’s voice still echoed in her ears. It was as if she heard him say the words that tripped through her mind: When the old bull falters, the young one takes the herd.
But the band wasn’t a herd of animals—Bear risked making enemies if he released the Longhead without bringing everyone around to his side. With annoyance, Raven realized that in this situation, she did side with Bear. The Longhead should be allowed to leave.
Bear grabbed one of the meat-filled skins and held it up. He looked at them all through eyes like dark slits. “The Longheads wouldn’t fight over food, but I believe they would have fought us to the death if we had killed this one,” he said. “And I know from my father”—he glared at the old man—“that they don’t want anything to do with us. But they called this Longhead ‘brother.’ He is of some importance to them.”
He lowered the skin. “I’ll need help from some of the men to build a pen for our captive and to split up the meat. It is best that the rest of you leave.” His face became hard. “Every hearth will get its share…but only if someone is there to receive it. If not, that hearth will be passed over.”
The elder mumbled something about whelps with eyes still closed and turned away.
When the crowd began dispersing, Raven felt a hand on her hair and turned her head. “Willow!” Relief surged through her.
Her sister’s face bloomed in a big smile, the slight gap between her front teeth—which she shared with Raven and had also been their mother’s—reassuringly displayed. Willow’s five children stood behind her. They watched shyly as their mother slipped her hands under Raven’s cape and around her, holding her close.
“Little sister, I thank the Earth Mother you are here,” Willow said. “I feared you would be lost to me forever. When I heard you would be sent far away, I pleaded with Bear to fetch you,” she murmured in Raven’s ear. “And I had our healer, Old Cloud, talk with Bear about you helping out with her tasks.”
Her eyes blurring, Raven touched her tongue against the back of her front teeth, lightly dabbing the small opening. She had always been close to her sister, but Willow’s manner and appearance were so similar to their dead mother’s that Raven, for a disoriented but sweet moment, felt as if her mother held her.
“I miss you,” she said, and realized that sounded odd. “I’ve missed you. Thank you for accepting me at your hearth.”
Willow’s hands rubbed up and down Raven’s back, and she gave a little laugh. “How could I not have fought to get you here? I always stood up for you when no one else would.” Her fingers tapped Raven’s spine. “My bad little sister, who forever made life interesting.”
Raven stiffened at that, but she managed a smile when she slid out of her sister’s embrace. It was true she had always been getting into trouble as a child, and she suppos
ed Willow was also thinking about the matter of the baby.
When Raven had reached fifteen summers, she began spending time with her aunt, their mother’s sister and band healer. She trailed along whenever her aunt attended illnesses or injuries. Raven began assisting her in every way, even during birthings.
Fern, the youngest mate of an elder, after bearing two perfect children, gave birth to a boy whose cheek was marked with a large purple splotch. Fern was appalled—that kind of mark was always a bad omen. The child would be weak and sickly, she had said. She told Raven’s aunt to expose the baby out on the steppe. Raven tracked her aunt, following the baby’s cries, and rescued the small bundle before a predator could find him.
Upon her return with the baby, there had been a big uproar in the camp. Her father demanded she give him up. When she refused to do so, he wrenched the screaming infant from her arms. She retaliated by attacking with teeth and nails while he held the baby out of her reach. After he kicked her off, her mother and brothers held her tightly on the ground.
“There must have been brambles in the bedding when you were birthed!” her father yelled. “You’re too full of thorns, always scratching and pricking.” He left with the baby, and on returning, he used the flat of his hand on her face and body for a good, long time before finishing with his whip. Raven had never been told where he’d taken the child, and she’d never asked.
Then there was the question of Fern’s sickness several years later when, after being treated by Raven for a minor stomach problem, she became dangerously ill. No one ever accused Raven of not tending Fern properly. She continued working with her aunt as always.
But when Reed died, Fern pointed out to anyone who would listen that no man in their band needed another mate—every family who wanted another woman at their hearth already had one. Besides, it was almost unheard of for a grown woman to remain in her home band unless she was a healer, and they already had a healer. And Raven was childless. No great loss would occur if she were given to some other band within the Fire Cloud tribe. If no other band wanted her, then that was too bad, but she could be swapped as a slave to another tribe.
By that time, Raven’s parents were also dead, her brothers and sister living with other bands. Although her aunt thought it best that Raven stop helping for a while, she let Raven know that she still supported her. But everyone else, who’d once welcomed her approach with a smile or a nod, began letting their eyes glide over her, past her, through her. Shunned, she had become like mist.
Reunited, Raven grasped her sister’s hand and kissed it before turning to meet her two nephews and three nieces. She hugged each one and picked up the smallest, a boy barely old enough to walk.
“The girls look like you and the boys like their father,” she said to Willow, smiling at the tallest girl, just beginning to blossom. When her sister didn’t reply, Raven followed Willow’s eyes across the clearing to where Bear was slicing bison meat. He looked up and waved a bloody hand but didn’t move to come over.
“He’s busy now,” Willow said. “We might as well go on to the hearth.”
As Raven followed her sister, she glanced back at Bear. He was watching them leave with a face as frozen and blank as snow.
Using hardened wooden tongs, Raven quickly placed hot stones from the fire into the nearby hollowed-rock basin they’d filled with water, seared bison, and roots. She breathed in deeply as the stew began to steam, becoming more than food, the smell speaking of survival itself.
The children, losing their shyness in the excitement of having a new kinswoman, buzzed about the hearth. But when Bear arrived, the children became subdued. Even the toddling boy stayed out of his father’s way.
“Bear, you’ve safely returned to us—it lightens my heart.” Willow arose from the fireside. He went to her and caressed her cheek.
Willow smiled up at him, and when he embraced her, Raven felt a softening toward her sister’s mate. There was, perhaps, a whole other side to Bear.
After several infusions of hot stones, the bubbling stew was ready. Willow served them all, using gourds to ladle it into wooden bowls. They settled around the fire in the dusk. Raven held the first sip of hot broth in her mouth and savored its rich, meaty flavor while she watched the oldest boy help the youngest drink from his small bowl. She swallowed only when Willow asked of news about their old home band.
Bear said very little during the meal. While they’d finished cooking, he sat among a pile of rock flakes and chips off to one side, striking a flint core with a hammerstone. Raven was made uneasy by how his eyes, cold and probing, turned her way every time he knocked off a flake. She would hear the clink of stone hitting stone, and then the thick neck would twist toward her. She tried to ignore him, but his scrutiny dampened her happiness at seeing Willow again. His animosity was apparent. He obviously didn’t want her at his hearth.
The day was all but gone by the time they’d finished their meal and cleaned the gourds and cooking area. Bear had already gone into the tent when the children pulled Raven inside, begging to be the ones chosen to sleep on either side of her.
Willow, who followed close behind, laughed at the uproar. “I suggest you take turns sleeping beside your aunt, starting with the youngest two for tonight,” she said.
“She’ll sleep in the lean-to,” Bear said abruptly. “There’s no room for her here.”
The children’s faces fell, and they were quiet. The look her sister gave Bear seemed keen and searching, but when she turned to Raven, her face was serene. “Maybe we can work out something later,” Willow said, shrugging.
“Well, come on before it’s full dark.” Bear held open the flap. “There’s no moon tonight.”
He walked her the short distance to a lean-to built against a large rock face. Skins covered long sapling poles embedded in a knee-high stone base. The top of the skin-covered area was sealed against the rock face with smaller stones. The lean-to seemed secure enough, yet Raven couldn’t help feeling offended. An entry space opened into one of the sides, and Bear stood beside the flap, waiting for her to go in. When she didn’t move right away, he tapped his fist against his chin several times.
“Move things if you need to,” he said and left.
She watched him enter the family’s double tent, the spiked poles of both tops leaking wisps of smoke blending into the dusk. She could understand that he might not particularly want her to sleep in the tent he shared with Willow, but a covered crawlspace closed off by a hung skin led to the children’s tent. He would have neither seen nor heard her there.
In the dimness, Raven pulled out skins and hides from the stack filling much of the lean-to. The next day, she would gather grass straw for the bottom layer, but until then, deer hide covered with bear pelts would do. She picked a spot on the dirt floor closest to the rock side and away from a corner woodpile, which could be full of spiders. After the bed was made to her liking, she undid her braid and stripped off cape, tunic, leggings, and boots before slipping between the thick furs, her shell necklace clicking as she settled.
Although Raven resented being put apart that way, the lean-to was cozy. In the distance, an owl hooted, and she began to drift off with the day’s events shifting dreamlike behind her closed eyes. The Longhead’s face floated by. She wondered if he’d gotten any bison and whether his painful arm would keep him from sleeping. An injury like that needed to be repaired immediately, before too much damage set in.
A sudden brightness against her eyelids made her eyes open, and she struggled out of her heavy covering.
Bear was coming from under the entry flap, a stone lamp in his hand. An acrid smell of burning bear fat filled the lean-to. Alarmed, she gasped and pulled several pelts over her nakedness. “What is it?” she asked.
“No need to be frightened.” He put the lamp on an upended log before he moved over and knelt at the end of he
r pallet. “I simply want you to hear my decision. You’ve been too long without a mate. You should be bearing children. After much thought, I’ve decided the best mate for you would be”—he thumped his chest, making a hollow sound—“me.”
The lean-to suddenly seemed like a trap. Raven’s fingers dug into the fur, tugging the pelts closer.
Bear’s eyebrows lifted. “Don’t you want a child? Your mate didn’t start a bud growing in you—in what, four turns of the seasons? Every time your sister weans one, she has another to suckle. If I can’t aid the Earth Mother in swelling your belly, then no man can.”
He pulled the pelts from her hands, dropped them beside the pallet, and looked at her through the flickering shadows for a long moment before fumbling at his leather loincloth. Then he pushed her down onto the furs and clambered on top. Because of his height, his enormous chest covered her face, and all she could do was lie flat like a stone on a lake bottom until he finished. She gasped for breath when he rolled off.
He sat up and lifted her right hand. “You should be more careful, plant woman,” he said, tracing a slow finger over the crusted scratch made earlier when they’d hidden in the rocks. Then he grasped her arms and pulled her so she was also sitting. His fingers skimmed her hair. “Black and shiny as your namesake’s feathers.” He thrust his fingertips into its thickness.
Her scalp tingled at his touch. There was no mistaking these intimacies—he was wooing her. But Raven was wary. Earlier, he’d made it clear how he felt. He disliked her, and most likely it was only the mating that put him in a better mood—if so, that goodwill would soon fade.
She made herself smile. “I am fortunate to be at your hearth.” She drew one of the displaced furs up against the chill and looked him in the face, holding his eyes. “The Earth Mother favors you.”