by Sue Harrison
He returned to his yoke, cut away one of the clusters of bottle gourds, and, clutching it to his belly with both hands, scurried back toward the path. The gourds slowed him a little, but at least with the water, he could stay in the caves for a few days without venturing to the springs.
He crouched low amidst the grasses, and at the crest of the second hill he looked down toward the village, stifled the groans in his throat as he saw flames rising from many of the huts. He trembled in his helplessness and clutched his armful of gourds more closely, then again started toward the caves.
He had taken only a few steps when he stopped in horror. Bear-god warriors were ahead of him on the trail. His fear was so great that his bladder spilled out its load of water. He did not allow himself time to feel ashamed, but a thought sped through his mind: amazement that he, an old man who belonged to no one and had no one to claim, would want so desperately to live. He turned the other way, toward the burning village, stopped short of Fire Mountain Man’s iori—it, too, now in flames—to run the overgrown path to the boatmakers’ beach, where the River Oi emptied into the sea.
As he ran, a voice in his mind chided him. You are foolish. Why come this way? The Bear-gods will be here, too. Better to fight and win yourself some glory to take with you to your death.
But whether because the entrance to the path was overgrown with hemp or because the Bear-god warriors had already been there and left, when Water Gourd came to the first hut, he found it empty. He crept quietly among cedar and nutmeg trunks, some still whole, others scarred with flame where the craftsmen had begun their work of hollowing and shaping. Smoke blowing in from the houses burned his throat and pulled water from his eyes, and the screams of fear and fighting tore at him like claws.
He hid in the darkest corner of the hut, farthest from the open side that faced the estuary. The builders had set the tree trunks they were shaping nearest the hut’s entrance. They claimed it was good for those trees, as the fire chewed them hollow, to look out at cool water. Then as boats they would leave the land more willingly, go where their paddlers directed.
Water Gourd had heard stories about boats left onshore for a night that grew roots and bound themselves again to the land, stranding paddlers and hunters so far from their village that their families never saw them again. The best boatmakers not only burned out the land-heart of the tree, but gave it a vision of other possibilities. What hunter wanted to be trapped in some foreign land by the whim of a tree, not quite boat?
Water Gourd hunkered down on his knees, his arms still hugging the gourds. Their weight unbalanced him, but he did not want to set them down. They were one more wall between himself and the Bear-god People, perhaps even had some small power of protection. If water would protect anyone, why not him? He had always honored the spring with his gratitude, with clean hands and grass-wiped feet. But the gourds contained only a small amount of water. Enough to keep a man through four, perhaps five days, but not enough to douse the flames should the Bear-god People decide to burn this hut.
Suddenly, through the soles of his feet, Water Gourd felt the pounding of the earth, and he knew men were coming. He rolled himself into a ball and, taking his water with him, broke out through the thatching of the hut’s back wall. Humped around the gourds like a beetle, he crept through the undergrowth away from the hut, toward the estuary that angled up from the sea like an arm bent at the elbow. Boats lay on the shore, new boats, those nearly finished, hauled for testing balance and buoyancy to this gentler, shallower water. Most had no outriggers and lay with backs up, oiled wood glistening. But one had its outrigger log attached with sturdy poles, and the bow close to the water as though its maker had been ready to launch it. Inside was a paddle, a worker’s rush fiber shirt, and two deerskin blankets, humped as though they covered supplies.
The old man threw in his water gourds and, using all the strength in his ancient arms, he pushed the boat into the estuary, praying that the boatmaker had done his work well. Water Gourd could swim, but why pit himself against those sea gods who find sport in grabbing ankles, hauling people into the depths?
When the water reached the old man’s knees, he climbed into the boat, grabbed the paddle, and quietly pushed away from the shallows. The boat was steady, the outrigger stable. He pushed again, this time almost losing his paddle as the land fell away, and the estuary grew deep. He crept forward a little ways in the boat, tucked his heels under his rump, his knees widespread for balance, but as he continued to paddle, the tree boat started to circle, so that he was gaining no real distance from the shore. He thought he might be safe if he could get the boat from the estuary into the river. The growth of trees, vines, and moss was so rich and thick that he could hide himself under the branches that arched to dip their new spring leaves into the water.
As a young man, he had been harpooner rather than paddler, but still he knew that to keep going straight, he must paddle with equal strength on both sides of the boat. He scooted himself to the other side, earning splinters in his knees. But he ignored the pain and thrust his paddle into the water two times, then lifted it to the other side, again paddled twice. He went back and forth, until blood from his knees dyed the raw wood crimson, but finally the boat was at the center of the estuary. He turned it, headed against the current, up toward the river, but each time he switched sides, he lost whatever distance he had gained.
He tried three strokes, then four, and found he made headway with that, though the course he took was no longer straight. Each time he lifted his paddle, he looked toward the shore, sure he would see Bear-god warriors watching him, perhaps even launching one of the other boats to follow him, but no one came, and finally, as the thick black smoke from the burning village billowed up through the trees and curled down to the estuary, Water Gourd’s boat entered the river.
He closed his eyes in a moment of gratitude as the shadows of the trees welcomed him, then he found a snag, an upended cedar with roots and earth woven into a circle, the weight of it compressing the bank so that the tree had slid, roots first, into the water. The old man maneuvered the boat until it was upriver from the snag, then he turned it and used the paddle like a fish uses its tail, allowing the current to move the boat, the paddle to direct its path until the bow snugged itself into the interstices of the root mass.
Then Water Gourd, peering out through the tunnel of trees, could only wait while the smoke filled the estuary and blocked his vision of the sky.
About the Author
Sue Harrison grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and graduated summa cum laude from Lake Superior State University with a bachelor of arts degree in English languages and literature. At age twenty-seven, inspired by the cold Upper Michigan forest that surrounded her home, and the outdoor survival skills she had learned from her father and her husband, Harrison began researching the people who understood best how to live in a harsh environment: the North American native peoples. She studied six Native American languages and completed extensive research on culture, geography, archaeology, and anthropology during the nine years she spent writing her first novel, Mother Earth Father Sky, the extraordinary story of a woman’s struggle for survival in the last Ice Age. A national and international bestseller, and selected by the American Library Association as one of the Best Books for Young Adults in 1991, Mother Earth Father Sky is the first novel in Harrison’s critically acclaimed Ivory Carver trilogy, which includes My Sister the Moon and Brother Wind. She is also the author of Song of the River, Cry of the Wind, and Call Down the Stars, which comprise the Storyteller trilogy, also set in prehistoric North America. Her novels have been translated into thirteen languages and published in more than twenty countries. Harrison lives with her family in Michigan’s Eastern Upper Peninsula.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1998 by Sue Harrison
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
978-1-4804-1195-1
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media
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New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
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