by J. M. Hayes
After Snow and I scouted a handful of other bands, none remarkable or obviously dangerous, we used the ridge to make good time back toward our camp. We waded through sedges and swarms of mosquitoes to pass it downwind, so our own dogs wouldn’t smell Snow and me. They weren’t likely to make a great fuss about us. But I didn’t want anyone to know my destination that night.
Twilight, actually. The sun had begun slipping below the horizon the last few nights. That’s where it hid as I approached our Women’s tent—Down’s tent.
The Women’s tent is forbidden to men. Dangerous, so most believe. That part didn’t trouble me. But how should I approach the girl? And how would she react to me? If I frightened her—if she screamed—they’d hear her in camp. I could probably get away, but I’d be recognized. The best plan was to creep into the tent as quietly as possible, put a hand over her mouth and calm her, tell her who I was, that I meant her no harm. I only wanted to talk.
I told Snow to wait. I slipped everything off my shoulders and lay my spear across my pack. I pulled my knife and dug up one of the willow pegs that fastened the tent’s edge to the ground, leaving me room to crawl inside. I’d dropped onto my belly when Down spoke to me.
“Is it your time to bleed, too, Raven?”
I must have jumped, because she giggled. She sat on the ground behind me, ten paces up the side of the ridge. In the dusk, her leathers, tanned skin, and dark hair blended into the browns and grays of the rock face.
“Or have you come, so well armed, to force yourself on me? That you’d violate someone who’s bleeding doesn’t surprise me. The women talk among themselves, sometimes even in the presence of children. But that you’d feel you needed your dog and all your weapons…”
She mocked me, teasing without cruelty. Still, her humor sounded forced. She radiated melancholy. I wasn’t the man she’d hoped to tease this way. She missed Hair on Fire.
I released Snow and he bounded up the slope and caressed her face with his tongue. I envied him.
“Why are you awake, Down? These days will be hard for you. Many women suffer pains through their bleeding, and the burden of carrying your own tent will make it hard for you to keep up with the band as they move.
“I had a dream that something dangerous stalked me. It seems I was right.”
I sighed. “I’m no danger to you, Down. No more than you’re already in.”
Her eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
“You think I don’t know who shot Bull Hump?
She didn’t deny it.
“And,” I continued, “who killed Tall Pine. My duty is to tell the band. To warn them there’s a witch in our midst, yet here I am.”
“What do you want from me, Raven?”
“I want to save you from yourself, Down. I want to help you, but first I want you to tell me why you killed and tried to kill. Make me understand why you’ve done these things.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Down said. “Maybe I am in trouble if you think I did them. I thought you were my friend.”
“I want to be.”
“Well, if it helps, I didn’t do either.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Then who did?”
“I thought you already knew. I thought that was why you sent the boys into exile. Or I hoped it was at least part of the reason.”
“I sent them so you’d be safe from Walks Like Ox.”
She nodded. “I know that. And I thank you, but I thought, maybe…”
“Sure,” I said. “There’s always maybe. But they didn’t have anything to do with shooting Bull Hump.”
“And neither did I. I was behind the men at the other end of the line from you, hurling rocks, trying to keep the mammoth’s attention. Maybe somebody saw me there.”
I hadn’t. And I’d asked a few people if they knew where Down had been when we killed the mammoth. None did.
“And,” Down continued, “I certainly didn’t think I needed to do anything that desperate. Right then, I thought Fire was about to become the most popular man in the band. That my father would reward Fire with me. That the gift would keep Fire under my father’s control and strengthen his leadership of the band. All I’d have to do was announce my first bleeding, and then…”
A tear slid down her cheek. “That ought to prove I’m not your witch. The man I wanted is dead. Now who will I end up with? Bull Hump or Takes Risks? Maybe I should just walk off into the tundra and let the wolves have me.”
“Would you consider becoming my woman?” I asked. “If you can’t stand the thought of lying with me, we could fake that part. Lie under the robes and thrash around and grunt a little, to convince the others. The rest of the time you’d continue studying healing under Gentle Breeze and me. And you’d become my pupil. I’d teach you to be a Spirit Woman. I know how clever you are and I’m impressed by the wisdom you already possess. I want to help you live the life you deserve, to survive and be happy.”
“Oh, Raven. You’re very kind, but how can I ever be happy without Fire?” Her tears came faster and she began to sob.
I have a weakness for crying women. I feel their pain and blame myself for not making things better. Illogically, I believe curing their hurt is up to me. I had no way to fix Down’s hurt. No way to bring Fire back.
“You really shouldn’t keep mentioning his name. It’s one thing for me to do it. Another for one he’d loved to speak it and call to his spirit.”
“I wish I could call his spirit to me.”
I reached out my hand to wipe a tear from her cheek. She looked up at me with such terrible sadness. I took her in my arms and she came willingly enough. Her body shook. I held her and rocked her and stroked her hair. Finally, she whispered something into my chest. I couldn’t understand. I found her chin and raised it so I could hear her.
“I miss him so, Raven. You hear the spirits. You communicate with them. Can’t you bring him back?”
I bent and kissed the tears from her cheeks. Some of them had run onto her lips and I kissed those, too. I couldn’t give her Hair on Fire, but I could give her his need for her. Her lips opened under mine. My hands found the laces of her leathers, loosened them. I touched her small breasts. The place between her legs. I gave her Fire’s desire and my knowledge of the things that pleased women. She cried out, softly, and then I found ways to make her cry out again. Over and over until it was she who demanded more. She who rode me until we were both beyond exhaustion.
“You are Fire,” she whispered as she lay atop me, grinding her pelvis against my own.
I wasn’t. Her need for him combined with her inability to understand how someone else could make her feel these things. I did feel Fire’s need to touch her through me. I should have explained to her that this was as close as he’d ever come to her again. But I wanted to join her this way many, many more times. I wanted Down to desire me as much as I desired her. So I said nothing to deny it. I pressed myself against her and touched the places I knew would make her forget everything but the pleasures of the flesh. I delayed my own gratification until I felt the pulse of her complete surrender. And then matched it with my own.
Ivory
Bone
I should have been too exhausted to dream, and yet I was back in that strange place where cold fire burned along the roof and every corner was exactly square. The perfect woman and the man with ice eyes were at it again. Though his mask lay elsewhere. Both of them were naked. She, teasing him, arousing him, refusing to satisfy. He, enjoying it but increasingly frustrated and demanding.
This time the perfect woman no longer seemed so perfect. I recognized something false about her. She wasn’t doing this for pleasure. She had another purpose which troubled me. Or would have troubled me if I’d been her partner. I saw her in a new light—in comparison with Down. This one might have larger breasts, and fuller hips. More dramatic curves. But Down had something else.
Something fresh and real.
My skull lay on the flat wooden surface again. Near the edge, as if I were a necessary prop for this couple’s mating rituals. And she was easy enough to watch, or had been. Now, my eyes wandered around this strange hut. There were things I recognized beside me on that flat slab of wood. Stone tools—flint scrapers and a spear point. An obsidian blade—sharp and brittle. Carved mammoth ivory. At the far corner of my eye lay something hauntingly familiar, just beyond my ability to see it. Strange, I decided, since even without eyes I could only look ahead of myself, as I had when I was flesh and not just bone.
With that thought, suddenly I could see all around me, including the thing I’d been trying to make out. Ivory—a carving. An Earth Mother figurine. I recognized it because I’d made it years before—a gift for my woman. The one who’d been washed away as we crossed that icy river. I’d made the figure while I courted her. Before I won her. Before I lost her.
Her name was Willow. I’d used her face and slim, supple figure in my effort to portray The Earth Mother. As a result, this image of The Goddess was longer and leaner than the few others I’d seen, a vision of Willow with the bulge of pregnancy I’d hoped to give her. She’d worn that carving on a leather thong around her neck every day. She’d been wearing it when the waters took her. How could this pair have it?
Willow’s statue had yellowed and worn smooth with age. Great age, if Ice Eyes had told the truth about how long my skull lay in the earth before he found me.
“Where did you get this?” I demanded in my mind, having no tongue or lips or breath with which to shape the words.
“What?” he said. “Who?”
The girl did something to refocus his attention. But I sensed he’d heard me. Could I communicate with him? What should I ask? And what was that noise I’d just heard?
“Now. I want you now,” the girl told him, suddenly eager for what she’d been avoiding. He took her as the entry to the hut opened and another perfect woman appeared.
The man saw the second woman just as she saw him.
“No,” I heard the man call out.
The new woman echoed him in his mind, and in mine. “No.”
The second woman looked more mature than the perfect one, whose arms and legs enwrapped the man’s body. I had a strange feeling the second woman wasn’t much younger than I. Or than I’d been when I went to sleep. Yet she showed no signs of age. Her hair was rich and full and dark. Her face remained as free of lines as Down’s. But her shape was fuller and there was something about her eyes. A hardness. And shock just now, but not surprise. Weariness, I thought, at repeated disappointments.
She spoke the man’s name, though it made no sense to me. I heard it through his mind, and even there, it seemed only sounds without meaning. I was Raven, the black bird filled with wisdom and given to tricks. Down was the soft feathers you found on waterfowl. Ice Eyes real name was only random noises.
“You promised me this would never happen again,” the second woman said.
“Again?” the perfect woman said, unconcerned by her nakedness. She hadn’t stopped grinding against the man, even though he’d wilted and fallen out of her. At the moment, he was more interested in covering himself than in continuing to mate with the perfect woman.
“Who’s this little violator of my rights as your woman?” the new woman asked. That isn’t the right translation, but it’s the sense of the uncomplimentary term she used.
The second woman wore fine skins, though they were duller in color than what the perfect one had worn. And she wore more layers of them. Bright hoops dangled from her ears and a ring adorned with a fabulous crystal decorated one slender finger.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” Ice Eyes told her. If I hadn’t been only a skull, I would have laughed out loud. What else could it be?
The man glanced around in panic, a strange look on his face. “Who laughed?”
“Me, you fool,” I thought.
“Who said that?” the man demanded.
He had heard me.
“Oh, I see,” the second woman said. “You’re going to pretend you’re having mental problems. That this is part of some confused episode. Are you about to tell me that until this moment you didn’t realize what the two of you were doing? The insanity defense? Nice try.” She turned and stormed back toward the entrance to the shelter.
“Yeah,” the perfect one said. “Cut the crap. Tell her about us. Tell her you’re leaving her for me.”
“Maybe she’d believe a fertility ceremony,” I thought. “Something to increase your band’s numbers.”
“Fertility ceremony…?”
He heard me the same way I’d been hearing him.
“Oh, brother,” the second woman said. She left the hut, slamming a piece of wood that neatly fit the exit as she left.
“You’ll have to admit our relationship to her now,” the perfect one said. “Leave her. Do it, and you can have me anytime you want. I’ll see that you’re put in charge of our dig program. You can open any site, anywhere. Don’t leave her, and you’ll never dig again. Never touch me again, either.”
“Who cares?” I thought at him. “Tell me where I am and why I’m just a skull.”
His eyes got very large as they turned to me.
“Skull,” he whispered. He grabbed his leggings, pulled them on, and went through the shelter’s exit like a fox bolting from camp after sneaking in and grabbing someone’s lunch.
The perfect one stood, hands on those magnificent hips.
“You arranged this,” I thought at her. “You planned this to trap him.”
The perfect woman showed no indication of hearing me. Apparently, only the man could do that. And I, him.
The perfect woman slipped into her skins. She reached inside a brightly colored pack and took out something she held in front of her face while she smoothed the brilliant red paint she used to color her lips and added more. She painted her eyes and cheeks with other tools. As she put them back in her pack, she glanced at the flat place where I sat.
Her mouth opened as she asked a question I’d understand soon enough.
***
“What’s this?”
For a moment I was certain the perfect woman said it.
My eyes flew open. I was confused, wondering where the perfect woman had gone. Wondering what Blue Flower was doing in my dream. Wondering how I could be so lucky as to lie beneath a robe snuggled against Down’s unclothed body.
“Raven!” Blue Flower screeched. “You evil old man. You’re not allowed near a woman during her bleeding. You know that.”
My tongue was faster than it should have been. “I follow the instructions of the spirits, Blue Flower, not the superstitions of The People.”
Blue Flower bent and snatched the robe away from us, exposing our nakedness. Now, she truly screamed. Loud enough that I knew they’d hear her in camp. Stone and Bull Hump and Takes Risks would come running, armed, thinking Blue Flower had met a bear or a lion or hunters of women from another band.
“You haven’t just been with her in this tent,” Blue Flower howled in outrage. “You’ve raped her. You’ve raped Stone’s child.”
Down shouldn’t have said a thing, but I wasn’t surprised when she did.
“Actually, Blue Flower, I raped him.”
Blue Flower’s jaw dropped. When she spoke again, her voice was little more than a horrified whisper.
“You two have committed crimes against the spirits. You both must be punished. Otherwise, the spirits will damn us. Send sickness and bad luck and our band will perish.”
“No, no, no,” I said. “Only Down and I are at risk and I can protect us.”
I wasn’t worried about the spirits, but I had to admit I wasn’t sure I could protect Down and myself from her father’s wrath. The entire band’s, actually. But Blue Flower was
no longer there. She’d spun on her heel. The meat and roots and berries she’d brought for Down’s breakfast lay scattered at our feet. Blue Flower sprinted along the ridge toward camp. And, from the camp, others ran to meet her.
“Down,” I said. “There are times for explaining and times for running. This is a time to run.”
She gestured at our bodies. “Naked?”
I judged the distance between camp and the Women’s tent. “Put on your moccasins. Bundle everything else you’ll need. No provisions. We may be running for some time.”
I began looking for my boots. I found one near where I’d left my pack at the edge of the tent. The other, just below where we’d coupled. I grabbed my things and rolled them with Down’s into the robe with which she’d covered us. She grabbed a small pack from the tent.
“Time to go,” I said. Stone was bellowing my name.
“Lead the way,” Down said. “I’ll be behind your behind.”
I scrambled up the side of the ridge above the Women’s tent. Snow bounced around us, delighted at the chance to join in our run. It would be more of a climb for the men from camp to get up here than it was for us. And they wouldn’t remember there was a game trail on the other side leading down to a great mass of willows and another wandering stream bed. We’d be down there and out of sight by the time they reached the top. Once among the willows, wading through the frigid stream, we’d make it very hard for them to follow us.
“Where are we going?” Down was breathing easier that I.
“Just follow.” I couldn’t be more specific because I didn’t know.
“Yes, Raven. I’m on your skinny ass.” She laughed and proved it by patting each of my cheeks.
I laughed, too, and lengthened my stride to lead us deeper in the willows. Before the day ended, I planned to also pat her buttocks, the beginning moves of a coupling such as the one that exhausted us the night before.
***
I expected the band’s hunters to run themselves out long before they did, but rage is a powerful emotion. Stone must have had it in abundance, though they never managed to gain on us. Down was young and strong. She had the inexhaustibility of youth. I had stamina. I’d never been one of our fastest. But even though I’d grown old, I could still run all day. I’d often chased down wounded animals before wolves or other predators got to them. I ducked and danced among the willows, using the streambed occasionally when another stream joined this one or we rounded a rocky spot where we might have taken another path. We’d continue running as long as I could hear them behind us.