by John Hart
“Big ice then, Urrell. No river. River under ice. Mens walk on ice.”
After an explanation this long, Agaratz fell silent and they slithered on into the cavern over mountains of bat dirt, disturbing myriads of the faintly luminous beetles which fed on it. Overhead an incessant low squeaking announced the bats. Light from the huge cavern mouth filtered in just enough for them to make their way deep inside. At the very limit of the light’s range, in near-dark, Agaratz stopped and began scraping about in the dung.
“See, Urrell.”
He saw, or rather felt. There was a harsh, dry surface; then he felt coarse bristles.
Old Mother. Beneath the droppings lay a mummified mammoth, or part of one.
“Agaratz, mammurak!”
“Mammurak. Die when big cold. More inside.” He pointed into the vast black gulf of the interior.
“Did your people kill the mammoths, Agaratz?”
His voice, half grown man’s, quavered.
“No, no. Old Mans hunt mammoth. But mammoths come and die here when big cold. No foods.”
Then, as though that was that, Agaratz spun on his club foot and started back to the entrance.
“Go see fathers.”
Urrell tingled with excitement. The touch of a mammoth! Now what else was to be shown to him? He sensed it would be something extraordinary as he followed Agaratz back over the mounds of droppings, their droppers starting to squeak more loudly overhead in readiness for the dusk flight. At the entrance they picked up their pouches full of eggs and moved to a side entrance, one of several which Agaratz plainly knew.
“Light fire now, Urrell, eat and rest.”
To do this they had to return to the raft and their belongings for tinder and supplies. It was dark by the time they camped. There was too little fuel for much of a fire. They ate fish they had brought and sucked several eggs apiece near the cavern entrance where Urrell was soon to view one of those sights which mark a life to its end – the dusk flight of clouds of bats into the sunset as the wildfowl were returning from a day’s foraging far away, their pouches and maws heavy with fish for their brooding mates.
Agaratz was withdrawn, Rakrak subdued. Only the rush of water far below broke the silence once the waterfowl had subsided into rest. Urrell re-felt and relived the sensation of touching the mammoth. Agaratz had vouchsafed him something, a precursor to more? He had not been able to recapture the music of the mammoth frieze, to find his way back to it; and it had slipped beyond his grasp for ever. This time, whatever it was, he would be alert to it, note the markers back to it and its retrieval, never again to be baffled by a blank cliff.
When it was dark, a clear night with stars but no moon, Agaratz bestirred himself as Urrell awaited the next move.
“Bring torches, Urrell.”
“Can Rakrak come?”
“Rakrak come.”
Urrell lit a torch from the fire for Agaratz, took spares and followed. They entered the cavern, shutting out the stars. In the stillness the rustle of insects running up and down the bat hills was clearly audible. Faintly he could hear the plash of the river on a rock, an aural bearing to the outer world, but soon that too would vanish with the starlight.
Their pouches of eggs awaited them in the side cave for collection as Agaratz led the way up an inclined tunnel, gravelly underfoot as of an old watercourse. This soon opened into a domed chamber so big their torchlight could not light the roof clearly but only illumine the nearer reaches of the walls. Urrell looked for signs of engravings – nothing. What took his eye instead was the floor of the cavern. As far as the light of the torch carried it was littered with heaps of stones.
Agaratz stopped, stuck the torch in the nearest cairn and with fluent speed stripped down to his breechclout, revealing the hair-covered hump of his back, oddly out of place next to the powerful arms and torso, as though they had been assembled from two separate beings, much as the two legs, though familiar enough to Urrell, might have been taken for those of a beast and a man joined at the crotch. Yet this was not what surprised Urrell but that the massive torso, arms and waist had been streaked with dye or reddle while scarifications marked forearms and chest. Agaratz must have prepared himself for the trip in some solitary ceremony, as would have been his custom over the years that he had dwelt alone. It marked the importance he accorded the egg-gathering trip.
CHAPTER 24
Watched by Urrell and by Rakrak, Agaratz dismantled a cairn stone by stone till a slab appeared. This he gripped at the edges, the lift straining his powerful arms.
Urrell, determined this time not to be cheated, would have wished to take the torch and shine it into whatever the slab hid, but he held back in awe. Something in Agaratz’s behaviour and the solemnity with which he treated whatever he was doing warned Urrell that he was witnessing a central event in the hunchback’s world, and that he was meant to witness it but not to intrude.
Agaratz straightened, took the torch to light the gap under the slab and said: “My father.”
A bundle lay in the hollow, a mummy, the legs tucked under. Looking closer Urrell made out a shrivelled face with dishevelled reddish hair on the skull. A spear lay by it, of an ancient sort like some Agaratz possessed, as well as a flute like the one Agaratz had carved for him, Urrell. Would his be his own funeral flute, when the time came?
All around, beneath their stones, Agaratz’s people lay, with their flutes and spears, awaiting each year the visit of their own kind from the land above, from Agaratz the last of their kind to see the sun.
Agaratz broke an egg and smeared the yolk on the mummified face. Rocking on his hunkers he keened in a note almost beyond hearing. Rakrak lowered her ears and cowered. His dirge done, Agaratz replaced the slab and piled the stones back on top, then moved to the next cairn and opened it in the same way. A dried face, the hair longer, necklets and ornaments of bone and shell revealed a woman’s finery. Urrell guessed she was Agaratz’s mother, whom he seldom mentioned. Agaratz broke an egg, adding red ochre for a woman, and keened again, in a different note. Urrell helped to rebuild the cairn unbidden, and went on to help with the next, and the next, as the night wore on.Their torches burnt low and were renewed, until a score and a half of tombs had been opened and closed again after the ritual egg-wash. From the delicacy with which Agaratz touched their faces and the sorrow of his lament Urrell knew they had been family members he had known in life and that he recognised their features in death. He seemed tireless. For the many other cairns of remoter kin he simply broke an egg on each, with an incantation. Old shells strewn everywhere spoke of earlier times, of bygone ceremonies held by Agaratz’s forebears over their own dead, whom they had long since joined under those very cairns.
When they issued from the funerary chamber into a dawn chorus of birds, the bats had already been back on their roosts for some time.
Agaratz resumed life as if the night had not happened, but he would eat no more eggs from the island nor touch the wildfowl. Instead, they lived off their stores and off fish caught in the pool at the shingle beach, along with mussels, some bigger than any Urrell had seen before but, to his disappointment, empty of pearls. On the crags Agaratz showed Urrell a samphire-like plant that made crisp eating.
This way they stayed for several days and though Agaratz did not say so, Urrell sensed that the delay formed part of their visit, as if to keep the dead company for a while. Most of the time Agaratz left him to his own devices. With Rakrak he explored every cranny on the ait and sat for hours watching the water slide past. On one of the days he made himself a bundle of torches from rushes and the grease of a dead waterfowl. Determined to revisit the mammoths, lest they too were a trick of memory, he set off into the cavern. Overhead the bats formed their rippling, squeaking mass, dimly discernible in the rushlight. Underfoot he scrambled over mounds of droppings and rocks fallen from the roof, disturbing the translucent insects which teemed on the ever-renewed detritus of the cave floor. He found a young bat that had fallen from its perch.
It was quite unafraid and fastened itself to his tunic like an emblem, ate insects he fed it and was content to travel with its benefactor on his mammoth-quest.
Far into the cave where the roof gradually sloped down and bats did not venture he stumbled on huge bones. Shreds of hide hung from them. The massive shapes lay where their owners had huddled in death. Urrell’s weak light threw shadows of rib-cages on to the rock face, shone on whitened, domed skulls, heightening the eye and tusk sockets. These were not the remains to which Agaratz had led him. It was a while before Urrell realised no tusks lay about. A cold shiver ran down his spine, as a spider might, when he remembered the hoard in the pit; his fear and his flight up the pine trunk; Agaratz’s humorous nonchalance as he swarmed back down to retrieve the torch Urrell had dropped in his fright. Not a memory he welcomed. Now he, Urrell, disciple of Agaratz, would fear no more, and with an effort of will he quelled his terror and forced himself to approach the bones. Even by the glow of his sputtering rushlight it was evident that tusks had not been wrenched or broken from their sockets. They must have lain loose with age when the Old Men gathered them for their hoard, in the times when the ice bridge allowed access to the island. Urrell felt proud to have thought this out for himself.
“Come, Rakrak.”
Before leaving he tore off a shred of hide as a keepsake, as a token of the mammoths’ existence.
Near the entrance, Agaratz, stripped to his breech-clout, shoulders and torso streaked with reddle and guano, crouched in a circle of eggs, some dabbed with ochre, some not. He was chanting and rocking, his low chant aimed at each egg in turn.
Although Agaratz went on regardless of his presence, Urrell knew that this farewell, staged at the entrance of the cavern as he returned from his private mammoth hunt, was partly for his benefit: Agaratz meant him to hear this call to his people and his yearning to join them in the land beyond.
The ceremony filled Urrell’s breast with foreboding. Urrell the foundling lore-bearer, bereft-to-be in the icelands.
Old Mother. Those tuskless mammoth bones.
CHAPTER 25
Their return downstream took only a few hours. Agaratz steered from the stern, using his pole to keep the raft inshore, surprising animals drinking along the banks. It amused him to see how startled they were at the sight of logs drifting by with a cargo of humans and a wolf, and even more so when they heard themselves called in their own voices from the flotsam. Some stopped in mid-flight, a paw raised, heads turned. Agaratz mimicked the calls of each beast without moving his mouth, throwing his voice in a way Urrell could not make out. Another skill worth learning.
To their amusement a bear followed them along the shore bandying growls with Agaratz, convinced there was a bear aboard the raft.
A thrush-like bird landed on Agaratz’s shoulder, in answer to his whistle.
“I feed when sick,” he explained.
Urrell wondered if his bat would know him if he ever returned to the island of the dead.
“Soon see hunters,” Agaratz warned, as though he was announcing sunset. He steered closer inshore, away from the farther bank.
Urrell watched out for them. How did Agaratz know? Was it the same as he had foreseen Urrell’s own approach that day, and come provisioned for a starving lad? His musing was broken by a javelin striking the log by his foot.
“See, Urrell?”
Agaratz pointed at the trees opposite till Urrell, as keen-eyed as any hunter, made out the tiny movements that the canniest stalker makes. He saw the movements but not the movers. Soon they were out of range. Agaratz examined the shaft of the javelin, reading the incisions that ran in a whorl from tip to butt, snake-like.
“Who are they, Agaratz?”
“New peoples, Urrell. Follow bison and fight. Come from hot lands, far.”
He seemed unconcerned. The javelin lay on the raft for Rakrak to sniff, its stone tip chipped from the impact.
“Agaratz, what shall we do with this spear?”
“Aztamakil. You keep for owner.”
“The owner?”
“Yes, when you meet.”
“When shall we meet?”
“Soon. You see. Not good mens.”
Urrell left the matter there but determined to be wary.
At their starting point Agaratz floated the raft into its hithe among the sallow carr and rushes. With practised ease he camouflaged it so well that Urrell had to look twice to see it. Piura awaited them, hungry but well. She nuzzled them all three in turn, rubbing her scarred old head even against Rakrak. They made something of a feast from food cached, caught a salmon and bivouacked for the night.
“We stay a while, Urrell. I show you swim.”
Urrell’s home folk had always shunned water, afraid of water sprites and monsters that dwelt in deep still pools. Urrell had grown up among them, folk who never went further than a shallow paddle. Agaratz showed no such concern.
Next day he bound two bundles of rushes as floats for Urrell then both stripped down to their breech-clouts and waded into the creek, the icy water numbing Urrell’s legs. It did nothing to Agaratz, who ducked right under. He swam as animals swim, dog-paddle, but fast with the power of his shoulders drawing him through the water.
“Like this, Urrell.”
Urrell strove to overcome his apprehension and hide it from Agaratz. Soon he got the knack but the cold chilled him to the bone and he had to get out of the water.
“I warm you.”
Agaratz rubbed Urrell’s shuddering body from top to bottom with handfuls of ferns till his skin glowed, then scoured the remains of red ochre and guano from himself. The cold of the water had not affected him.
In the three days they spent by the river Urrell became so adept at swimming that he ventured out of the creek into the main current with Agaratz, drifting with it, even crossing to the far bank at a bend before returning obliquely across the current and landing far downriver. He slowly grew inured to the cold. Rakrak trotted along the bank with Piura and all four walked back up-shore to camp.
“Good to know swim, Urrell. Escape bad mens.”
“Can’t they swim?”
“No. They afraid water.”
Like Urrell’s people. Another difference with Agaratz’s folk, safely asleep on their island.
CHAPTER 26
Home cave was there, waiting. Urrell had half hoped, half expected the lame fox to be waiting too. All the trees and bushes, whose every twig he knew, stood where he recalled them, remembering each detail with his hunter’s eye. In his short absence they had grown; new plants sprouted from fissures; the forest had edged a few strides into the savannah. He glanced at Agaratz, but Agaratz showed no sign of noticing, nor Rakrak of unease.
Would the climbing pole be in its place among the bushes? It was. Together with Agaratz he pulled away the weeds entangling it and set it up. Inside the cave, all lay as it had been left, yet not till the fire blazed and food was cooking did Urrell feel the emptiness disperse and allow him once more to feel at the centre of daily certainty and recurrence. He wanted to speak to Agaratz about this sense of unease but could find no words to express it. Instead he fondled Rakrak’s ears and noticed for the first time silvery hairs on her snout.
“Soon time to go big meet, Urrell.”
“Where, Agaratz?”
“Long way. Go river. Walk much.” The statement left a pause in the air, as unspoken thoughts rose in Urrell’s mind.
Agaratz went on: “Many days we walk. Peoples come. Much dance. Fight. I go with my father, now Urrell go with me. Find you woman, Urrell.”
Softnesses glimpsed under the tunics of girls nagged at Urrell’s imagination and stirred him.
“How, Agaratz?”
Women were traded, swapped, paid for with bride-price. Urrell had nothing.
“Take xerratxis, tusk, necklaces.” Agaratz indicated the store of mammoth beads and trinkets he and Urrell had wrought so long and carefully.
“Find pretty womans, Urrell. You play flut
e, for they dance. I talk to fathers.” He made the trafficking sound straightforward, part of the passage of the seasons.
Then, having made this announcement, he seemed less than anxious to set out, letting days slip by, as though expecting a propitious moment, much to Urrell’s impatience. One morning that looked like any other, he said: “Tomorrow go.”
They spent that day and much of the night repairing and assembling bags and pouches, straps and spears, binding all with thongs to the travois. Their choicest flint heads, ornaments of ivory, needles, fish hooks, a roarer and flutes were packed, whereas few provisions were needed, for the world lay under summer’s plenty. They would forage and hunt as they went. They slept well, rose early, ate and set off, Rakrak scouting, Piura bringing up the rear. The sounds, sights and scents of their gulch as they left it for the open plains tugged at Urrell with a sentiment that a period in his life was over and another beginning. His strength, his hair, his body were now nearly a man’s, his spear-cast as far and as accurate as it would ever be.
They travelled in leisurely stages across the plain, aslant the range of mountains that Urrell had first seen at the end of his boyhood trek across the moorlands on his way, had he known, to Agaratz. To him this new journey was a continuation – he had but to follow, as a tree grows, a body develops, a herd moves.
When the sun was hottest, they rested, lolling in the grasses, amid the flowers of summer and the innumerable insects of the grasslands. Clouds of gnats swirled about, filling eyes and nostrils, biting bare skin, Urrell’s at least. Agaratz was untroubled. They tormented even Rakrak’s muzzle, Piura’s ears and her old eyes. She pawed and rubbed her head in despair.
Agaratz grinned. “You not poodooec, Urrell.”
“Poodooec?”
“For gnats.”
“How can you be poodooec for gnats, Agaratz!”
“You see.”