Mammoth Boy

by John Hart

  The marmoset-like creatures proved good eating, creatures that his clan eschewed, nobody knew why. If Agaratz ate them, Urrell felt safe to do so too. His camp’s taboos held no power here. He memorised each fungus Agaratz gathered and ate, and learnt their names, known only in Agaratz’s language.

  When they had finished eating, he saw how Agaratz gathered the bones and leftovers to burn in the fire, something no-one would have bothered to do in his home group, where leavings lay where they fell, to be trampled into the shelter floor.

  CHAPTER 6

  He had no notion of what to expect next. Only that it would be good, new knowing, like Old Mother’s knowing when they were alone in camp, by her fire.

  “You know how to make… spear-caster?”

  “For throwing spears? I have seen some, in my tribe.”

  “Come.”

  Agaratz went to one of the recesses at the back of the gallery, lighting his way with a burning stick from the fire. Inside, laid out on a skin, were spear-thrower heads. Some looked yellow with age. Each was carved in the shape of an animal – bison, deer, horse – so as to wed purpose and shape in one thrust of the shaft straight to its mark. Urrell’s eyes widened.

  “Oh.”

  “You like?”

  “Oh, I like them, yes. Did you make them, Agaratz?”

  “No. These olds.” His eyes lost their lustre for a moment. “These, keep. I make you one.”

  They went back by the fire. Nothing stirred outside in the sunlit gulch. From the bundle that he had been carrying when Urrell first met him, Agaratz drew out a collection of flint and bone tools – scrapers, chisels, burins, drills, blades – which he laid out in rows on a bit of leather before Urrell’s intent gaze. Then he went to one of the piles of objects ranged round the sides of the cave and selected a piece of hard, dark wood, of the kind that Urrell knew was found in bogs. It was crooked, like an elbow.

  “You watch, Urrell.”

  Gripping the wood upright between his good and his cloven foot, Agaratz began to shave and pare the wood with a two-handed scraper. Urrell squatted to watch. When the scraper bluntened Agaratz stopped to sharpen it, not as the boy thought he would, by tapping the blade edge with a flint. Instead Agaratz chose a burin from his array and, with small, rapid pressures on the flint edge, prised slivers of stone off. His speed and deftness dazzled Urrell. Soon the scraper was keen again and Agaratz resumed work for a while.

  “Now stop.”

  He stowed his tools back in their bundle, tied the thongs that Urrell had noticed on that first meeting, when the bison hunters had sped off after their prey, and replaced the bundle with the wood on a natural shelf. Agaratz then swept up the flakes and shavings with a handful of twigs and, to Urrell’s surprise, instead of throwing them out of the cave, dropped them in the fire, muttering something.

  “Now go find food. Hunt. Come.”

  From a sort of rack Agaratz took down a spear-thrower from among several others, complete with grip dowelled into the throwing piece whose cup to hold the javelin butt Urrell saw was shaped from two stags confronting each other, forelegs and antlers locked in battle.

  “Did you carve these, Agaratz?”

  “No. Father.” It was Agaratz’s first reference to any kin.

  Urrell durst ask no more. Instead his eyes fastened on the stags. That Agaratz had had a father who could create such a thing roused in him even greater awe of his mentor. The men of his own tribe made plain throwers, wooden or bone dog-legs, sometimes adorning them with sketchy shapes of game animals to ‘bring good luck’ during the hunt. Boys made their own in imitation of their elders to chase small game and birds. But nothing like Agaratz’s stags.

  As Agaratz chose two javelins with long blade-like points to use with the thrower, Urrell could not resist asking: “Agaratz, where are your people?”

  Immediately he knew he had overstepped some invisible mark. Agaratz shrugged, his eyes clouded as Urrell had seen them do before, but the impression was gone no sooner than expressed while Agaratz went on choosing hunting gear.

  He selected a second weapon, a throwing-stick unlike anything Urrell had seen before, a short shaft ending in a cup or dub the breadth of a man’s hand. Agaratz saw Urrell’s interest. Pointing to the cup, he said, “Mammook” – the sly grin – “see, is carved mammook.” Urrell looked closely at the grain, yellow with age, knew it was not bone but ivory, ivory like the beads Old Mother wore in the dirt round her neck, keepsakes of her youth. The boy’s excitement overflowed: faintly but distinctly engraved round the edge of the cup ran a series of miniature representations of mammoths, in profile, follow-my-leader. The artist had hinted at each beast, etching in the bulbous head, the ears, the outline of the back, its long curving tushes overlapping the animal ahead so that they went round the rim in a never-ending line, each no larger than a child’s thumbnail. Urrell could scarcely contain his urge to skip about at the sight.

  Old Mother of the Mammoths. Fire-crone.

  “Agaratz, take me to the mammoths.”

  His mind, fired by the miniatures round the cup rim, overflowed into a state of excitement that he had never experienced before. While part of him remained aloof, another part seemed able to leap distances with the power of dreams and conjure up the old woman crouched in her usual position by her fire, only now it was by Agaratz’s hearth. Her face turned up towards him, but her old hag’s cackling humour was no more; her stare as remote as stone. “Old Mother, Old Mother,” but the vision vanished, and the part of him which had remained aloof told the part of him that dreamt that Old Mother was dead.

  Old Mother…

  He was back in Agaratz’s cave, a lad developing in strength, alone with a hunchback. Those yellow eyes intent on his face told Urrell that they had seen what he had seen, had been present in his vision, shared his woe.

  “One day, Urrell, when you strong, we go find mammoths.”

  Urrell knew then, with the knowing that is true knowing, that he would never return to his tribe, beyond the cliffs and across the moors. Henceforth his life lay wherever Agaratz led. Through him he would find the mammoths.

  CHAPTER 7

  Instead of mammoths, that day’s hunting was to take on homelier quarry. The climbing pole once lowered and stowed among bushes, they left the gulch, Urrell following his leader through the cleft and out into open country, but not before Agaratz had scanned the outlook as far as they could see. Summer’s high grasses rose to the lad’s knees, so that both humans seemed to wade through a vast inland sea of grass, broken in places by islands of trees. Ahead, in the distance, ran a long reef of more trees, a continuous line, and it was towards this that Agaratz travelled, moving at a steady trot with the rolling gait peculiar to himself, as though the grassland heaved underfoot. The sun shone. At each step they disturbed tiny blue butterflies, insects of all kinds and grasshoppers, these last the boy snatched without pausing and crunched as he went.

  After half the day of travel the line of trees was growing closer. Far off a herd of horses grazed at walking pace. Sighting the two humans, they paused as one animal, heads turned to watch them; then, caught in heedless panic, galloped off across the grassland, gliding over the green surface on hooves and fetlocks hidden from sight in the deep grass. Urrell watched them until they were a frieze skimming along the horizon.

  The nearer they came to the tree-line, the more evidence of herds showed in the grass – droppings and trampling of horses, deer, even bison. These Agaratz ignored, eyes on the trees.

  “River soon.”

  Once into the woodland they saw more evidence of herds sheltering. Several times remains of kills attested to the presence of predators. “That lion, those wolf, and here one by…” Agaratz was lost for the name “… like big cat.” As he seemed unconcerned by these signs, Urrell felt unconcerned too.

  The river was a considerable one, flowing strongly and smoothly between banks thick with rushes which grew some way out into the current. As they emerged from the tree
cover Agaratz signalled to Urrell that they were to start stalking but he was not in time to avoid disturbing a flock of ducks which rose from the rushes and flew off upstream.

  “We hunt,” and Agaratz pointed at the disappearing ducks. Wildfowl were seldom pursued by Urrell’s tribesmen, being hard to bring down with javelins and beyond the range of stones and throwing-sticks, however accurately flung. Sometimes where roosts were known, fowl were caught by stealth at night: this was hunting that boys could and did do. How Agaratz intended to capture ducks, Urrell could not guess.

  “You watch, Urrell. Not move.”

  Javelins and spear-throwers were set aside in favour of the cup-shaped device with the mammoth carving that had so excited Urrell. With this, and three egg-sized pebbles from his pouch, Agaratz crept off through the undergrowth to reeds along a spit of land which gave him a better view of the rush-beds. Urrell watched, wondering.

  Soon the calls of a duck attracting drakes rose from the reeds where Agaratz was hidden. For a few moments even Urrell was fooled: Agaratz was mimicking a female; several drakes, equally fooled, settled among the rushes in search of the caller.

  The calls intensified, luring the birds closer inshore. When he judged they were close enough, Agaratz changed calls to a sort of whistle that disturbed the drakes, causing them to fly up and circle the reeds were he was hidden, bringing them within range. With astonishing speed Agaratz loosed a pebble with all the extended power of his arm and the shaft of his cupped thrower, hitting a fowl in mid-flight, recharging his thrower with his free hand and sending the second missile at another drake with such smoothness of action that it struck its target as the first duck landed in the rushes. His third shot at another drake, by then at tree height, missed by a finger’s breadth.

  “Come,” he shouted and plunged into the waist deep rushes to retrieve the downed birds. Urrell leapt in and made for the spot where the second one had fallen, finding the dead bird easily whereas the first one made efforts to escape and kept Agaratz engaged longer in its capture.

  The excitement of the hunt showed on the boy’s face.

  “You like? asked Agaratz, pointing at the stone-thrower.

  “I have never seen one before.”

  “My people use.”

  Fleeting sadness passed across the light eyes, but Urrell thought better than to enquire further. A shrug would have been his answer. “Now we hunt more, Urrell.”

  By late afternoon, when they turned back towards home gulch, the two bore between them seven game birds brought down by Agaratz’s marksmanship plus pouchfuls of freshwater mussels and crabs that Urrell had been detailed to gather. The boy felt that it had been the happiest day in his life. There was much to be learnt with Agaratz. He vowed that he too would become skilful with a stone-thrower, this new hunting device.

  “Agaratz, will you show me how to use a stone-thrower like yours?”

  “I make one you. For boy.”

  What made Urrell sense that his request had struck a chord in the breast of his strange, hairy protector?

  A grin, the sly smile. “But now eat duck.”

  There was little to do by way of preparation when they got back in the dark. Agaratz revived the fire, Urrell fetched wood, Agaratz plucked and burnt off the feathers of two ducks, filling the cave with the smell of singed plumage. When the fire had been well built up, Agaratz made an oven with stones, placed the ducks inside to roast and scooped embers all round and over.

  While waiting they ate the mussels and crabs, raw, by the fire, as the short summer night drew into the dawn. Never had Urrell feasted as he did then, with a whole duck to himself, gnawing and crunching his way through it, entrails and all, till only the charred bill and cracked bones remained. Happy, glutted, he reeked of singed feathers and burnt fat from his ragged hair to the tatters of fur round his breechclout and jerkin, whereas Agaratz had picked his duck clean without smearing himself in grease and juices. The crookback grinned at Urrell. “You like?” Urrell could only nod.

  “Come.”

  Agaratz lowered the pole in the dark and Urrell followed him down, wondering why, bloated from his feast. They went to the spring. Here Agaratz wet a handful of grass and rubbed his arms and face vigorously, signalling for Urrell to do likewise. He explained: “Smell bad.” Urrell knew that hunters sometimes rubbed themselves with strong-smelling plants to mask their own scent. Children splashed in brooks for fun and he knew women washed off their berry-juice designs to paint on new ones, but this was different. He scrubbed with a will to please his teacher, stood in the pool and rubbed his legs for good measure, enjoying the tingling freshness.

  Then Agaratz indicated, by gesturing, that he was going one way to fulfil private needs and that Urrell should go in the other, before they returned up-ladder to sleep.

  This day set the pattern for the next ones, Urrell swiftly learning from Agaratz by example. Agaratz seldom explained. True to his word, he made a stone-thrower for Urrell and set him to practise in the gulch till his aim became passable. He refashioned the lad’s javelins to sit well in the spear-thrower that he finished carving and paring from the bog-wood elbow. He showed Urrell how to improve spear points and glue them with resin on to the shaft. Agaratz himself used points with tangs that fitted into a slot at the tip of the shaft, an improvement new to Urrell.

  They went fishing along the river using harpoons to spear a fish unknown to Urrell.

  Izokin, Agaratz called it.

  Agaratz’s technique for harpooning salmon was to lie along the trunk of a tree overhanging a pool in a bend of the river and wait till a salmon swam into range. His bone harpoon-tip had barbs and was attached to a line of finely plaited thongs. Urrell watched as at the second or third throw from his perch Agaratz hit a fish, the harpoon tip detached and remained in the salmon’s back while Agaratz paid out line, playing the fish until it weakened enough to draw it inshore for a final spear thrust – Urrell’s task from the bank.

  They ate part of it raw, stowing the rest in a pouch to bake later.

  Urrell wondered why Agaratz never cooked anything away from the home cave, however far afield they roamed. One day he asked: “Why not cook meat here?”

  Agaratz was silent. The pause was so long it seemed he would not answer. Then he said, quietly, “Bad. Hunters see smoke.”

  Since the bison hunters on the day he had met Agaratz, Urrell had seen no sign of humans in all their hunting trips across the savannah, or to the river. Only herds of horses and bison, far off, fattening for the migration south as winter would arrive, the time when Urrell knew his home group would migrate in parallel with the herds to the plains by the salt water to seek shellfish, crabs and flightless birds that drifted on the sea currents in vast flocks and sometimes came too near inshore in pursuit of shoals of fry, becoming stranded when the sea withdrew. Those were cold and often hungry times. Even the sea froze in places. Hunters died in the snowy wastes as they pursued game into the frozen woods where bison and horses sheltered, browsing on brushwood and bark, made alert by packs of wolves and all the members of the cat family, that preyed upon them. Some years when the cold became very great, the deer with the wide antlers were driven to the coast in search of grasses and lichens under the snow. His group lived out these months in caves beside the sea, as generations before them had, the mounds of cast-off shells from the food the women gathered at low tide proof of how long they had been coming. When hunting had been good and the fire blazed hot, old men told of monsters and huge beasts from those far-off times, creatures long since vanished. Yet deep in caves Urrell knew there were paintings of great power where these monsters lived on, secrets only a few initiates might visit.

  When and whither would Agaratz migrate – along the river, perhaps?

  “Agaratz, when the cold comes, where do you go?”

  “Stay.”

  “Stay – in the cold?”

  “Yes, stay in cold.”

  Urrell had heard tales of hunters dying on their own, unable to
hunt enough to stay alive. Surviving the cold by the sea was hard, when the wolves, lions and panthers from the forest were famished and ate anything they caught.

  “How… how can you live – in the cold, Agaratz?”

  “I live. You see.”

  “I see?”

  “You see. You see with me.”

  Urrell, so far as he had thought at all, knew his future lay with Agaratz, but had not thought of it like this. It was a reversal of all his experience to date.

  “But, Agaratz, how can you hunt alone in the great cold?” His voice must have trembled at the prospect of starvation, of freezing to death, for Agaratz was firm yet consoling when he answered:

  “You see. I hunt. You hunt.” There was no hint of the bullying or bragging of one of his home group’s hunters: Agaratz stated what he had done. Experience spoke; Urrell’s qualms subsided.

  CHAPTER 8

  “You like to see wolves, Urrell?”

  Wolves. They heard wolves most nights howling afar, responding to one another, or ‘singing’ as Agaratz called it. Nothing in Urrell’s life had led him to want to meet them. Wolves, he knew, unless ravenous, seldom attacked humans so long as one did not encroach on their territory. They warned, and one turned away.

  “We go see.”

  That evening Agaratz roasted two wildfowl and placed them on a shelf, out of reach of rats.

  “Tomorrow we go see wolves,” he said, “take food.” Urrell wondered what he meant. Some sort of bait? Agaratz explained: “Long way. Need food.”

  That night Urrell, sleeping in his burrow of branches, leaves and ferns, dreamt of wolves, of Agaratz as a wolf, of himself in a wolf ’s lair eating roast duck. When he awoke, the dreams had been so real he tried to describe them to Agaratz.

  All he got was a nod and a grin.

  “Take stone-thrower, pouch, spear-thrower, three spears,” said Agaratz, selecting three weapons from his store of antiquities, or ‘father’ as he called them.