***
Gia woke up feeling cold. She’d spent the night spooned with Pell because the Aldans didn’t exactly have a surfeit of sleeping furs. She felt around for him in the darkness.
Pell was gone.
Getting up, Gia could see a little from the glow of the fire even though it’d burned down to coals. She picked her way through the bodies of the sleeping Aldans and picked up a couple pieces of wood for the fire. She used one to stir the coals to a brighter glow, then laid the firewood onto the red embers.
Trusting them to begin burning, she made her way amongst the sleeping people again, this time to the opening in the cave wall that Pell had taught the Aldans to build. The wall enclosed their wide mouthed cave and kept it much warmer than it had been. Pushing aside the big leather flap they’d fashioned to cover the opening, Gia peered outside.
The sun was rising on a white landscape.
Snow!
Gia’s heart skipped a beat. The leaves had turned colors, but most of them were still on the trees. To have snow so soon… Could this be a bad omen?
Gia saw Pell standing at the right end of the ledge outside the Aldans’ cave. His wolf, Ginja, stood beside him. He absently scratched the wolf behind one ear. Gia went back into the cave to get her moccasins and leggings, as well as the fur blanket they’d been sleeping under. Noting that the two small logs she’d put on the fire had caught, she wrapped the fur blanket around herself and went out onto the shelf.
Because of the snow, the world outside was completely silent. Gia quietly came up behind Pell and startled him by throwing her arms around him. “It’s a good thing I’m not a lion, I’d be eating well now.”
The wolf licked Gia’s hand, and Pell tentatively put his arm around Gia, apparently still unsure of their relationship. “Are you warm enough?”
“As long as I have your arm around me. Isn’t the snow beautiful?”
There was a pause before Pell answered. “Yes, it’s beautiful… but deadly.” She felt him shake his head. He whispered, “And the Aldans are so unprepared.”
Gia turned her head to look up at him. He’s handsome even when he’s looking sad, she thought. She slid a hand up around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. Gia had kissed several boys before Pell and found his fumbling uncertainty endearing. She suspected that he’d never kissed anyone else, but whether he’d had practice or not, she thought no one else could ever have kissed as sweetly. Pulling back, she said “You don’t have to take care of them, you know?”
Pell’s eyes rose to the horizon and he wiped at one of them. “But… some of them are my friends. And the children…”
Gia looked at the horizon herself, giving a little shrug. “And you can’t take care of the children without taking care of their mothers. You can’t help the mothers without helping their mates. You can’t help one hunter, without helping his friend… Yes, I know. It goes on and on.”
Pell drew a shuddering breath, “Why couldn’t the snow wait until we’d gotten in a few good hunts?”
“There’s no accounting for what the spirits decide to do.” Gia said, “I should know, look what happened to my tribe…” her voice broke for a moment, then she continued in a rasping tone. “So many dead… so many…”
The two young lovers were still quietly holding one another in the snow blanketed silence when suddenly Gontra burst from the opening of the cave, looking wildly about. When he saw Pell, his shoulders visibly relaxed and he started through the snow toward Pell and Gia. “Spirits,” he almost gasped, “I thought you’d left us!” He looked around, “And it snowed last night!” He shook his head, “We’d be goners if you’d left us.”
Gia felt Pell shrug, “We may be goners anyway. I can’t do anything about the weather!”
Quietly, Gia said, “Pell, maybe your ‘trapping’ will work even in the snow?” Pell and Tando hadn’t yet taught the members of Aganstribe who’d joined them at Cold Springs how to trap. Therefore, Gia really had no idea what trapping was or whether it might work in the winter. She did know they’d only developed it this summer and so they couldn’t have used it in the winter before.
Pell shrugged again, “Maybe,” he said dubiously.
The flap over the cave mouth opened and Tando came out. He rubbed his arms and said, “What’re you guys doing out here?” He walked to the edge of the ledge and started passing his water.
Gontra said, “I woke up and saw them gone! I thought they’d left. Then when I came out here and saw it’d snowed, I really started to panic. Fortunately, it turned out they were just out here fooling around.”
“We were not!” Pell exclaimed.
Gia looked up at him and saw that Pell was blushing. He really is new to this, she thought, then supported him by saying, “Pell’s really worried about how the Aldans are going to make it through the winter. He thinks this snow is a bad omen.”
Tando turned and walked towards them, a surprised look on his face. “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. Pell will figure something out.”
Pell gave him an irritated look, “How am I going to ‘figure out’ food for so many people?! They don’t have any fat stored up! They don’t have any meat, and they only have three hunters!”
Tando shrugged, “Teach them to trap. Teach them to smoke their meat. They should be fine, just like we are.”
Exasperatedly, Pell said, “What if trapping doesn’t work after the first snow?!”
Tando made an odd twist with his lower lip, then said, “What if it does? You worry too much. I’ll bet you put snares out yesterday when you got the deer, rabbit, and squirrels, right? We’ll go check them this morning and find out.”
Enthusiastically, Gontra said, “Yeah, and we can start learning how to do your new kind of hunting. Are these ‘traps” and ‘snares’ part of how you hunt?”
Pell nodded.
Tando said, “For the Spirits’ sake! Let’s go back inside.” He rubbed his arms again, “It’s really cold out here!”
They made their way back over to the cave opening and pushed their way through the big leather flap. Once it fell back into place, Tando said, “Hoy! It’s so dark in these caves with flaps over their openings!” He turned to Pell, “You need to figure out how to get more light in here.”
Pell said, “How would I do that?! If we make an opening for light to come in, the cold will come in too!”
Gia said, “Our winter cave had only a small opening, so it was dark like this one. We made ‘lamps’ which help. I can show you how to make them.”
“Lamps?” Pell asked, appearing very curious. “What’s a lamp?”
“It’s a way to make a small steady flame,” Gia said. “It’s hard to explain, so it’d be better if I showed you. It’s not a good choice for the Aldans right now, because it burns animal fat. The Aldans can’t afford to burn fat when they’re so hungry.”
Back in the cave, Gontra barked at the Aldans until they’d all gotten up. The women began preparing food to start the day. For the first time in many weeks, with the deer, rabbit, and squirrels Pell had brought in the previous day, they had plenty of meat. Everyone got a small strip of deer liver and some stew with bits of meat, grain, and roasted tuber.
While they waited for their food, Gontra said, “As soon as we eat, we’ll go for a hunt and Pell can teach us his new methods.” Gontra, Belk, and Exen got up and went to the men’s area of the cave.
Tando looked over and saw they’d gotten out their spears and begun sharpening the wooden ones and tightening the points on the ones tipped with flint. He laughed, “That’s a great idea, but stop worrying about your spears and come on over here. Pell and I’ll start teaching you how to make a snare.”
The Aldans’ men looked surprised, but they gathered off to one side of the hearth where they could see by the light of the fire. Pell got out one of his thongs. He and Tando explained how a noose made from the thong could be suspended above the paths that animals followed. Then, Pell held the small noose over a
n imaginary path while Tando used his hand as a puppet. Tando ran his hand into the noose and pantomimed the rabbit jerking around in a panicked fashion until it’d strangled itself on the cord.
Pell looked up at the three men of the Aldans and found them staring wide-eyed at Tando’s “dead rabbit.” Belk said, “That can’t work… can it?”
As Belk said it, Lissa brought him a clay bowl full of stew. Tando reached out and poked a chunk of meat floating in the bowl, “It can work, and there’s your proof.”
Once they’d all eaten, Pell had each of them cut several long narrow strips of leather and make little nooses on the ends of them. They headed out to check the snares he’d left the day before. He had them pick up lumps of grass-eater dung on the way.
The first two snares they came to were empty. Pell picked them up to move them to new sites. Belk said, “Was there something wrong with those two?”
Pell shrugged, “Maybe? Maybe there aren’t any small animals running those trails? Maybe the snow kept them in their burrows? In the past I’ve tried leaving a snare on a trail where it didn’t catch anything the day before. Sometimes it catches something the next day, but not very often. So, now I usually move it.” He rubbed some droppings on the thongs as they walked. “Whenever I move them, I put more dung from plant eaters on the thongs to cover up my smell.”
They came to the third snare and it had a rabbit! The rabbit’s brown coat stood out against the snow. Pell wondered whether the rabbits’ coats changed to white because of the snow, or for some other reason. Hopefully, he thought, Maybe this’ll be one of those years when the first snow is followed by some warm weather.
The next two snares were empty as well, as was the first large snare that used a heavy rope. Pell began to worry that he’d been right to think the snares might not catch much during the winter.
Then they came to the second big rope snare he’d put out on the trail up the steep slope up to the plateau. It had a goat! One of the goats that so nimbly ran up and down those steep slopes. They were so quick on the difficult terrain that hunters rarely had any chance at them. The goat was only trapped, not strangled like many other snared animals and it was chewing on the rope. Pell thought it would have been free soon, but Tando quickly ran it through with his spear. Tando said, “I’ve never eaten goat! Do you think it’s any good?”
“I hope so,” Pell said, feeling great relief. With the goat, as well as the deer from yesterday, they had enough that he could start teaching the Aldans to smoke meat.
When they got back to the Aldans’ cave, the women and children were excited to see them carrying a rabbit and a goat. Tonday quickly took charge of skinning and breaking down the animals.
Pell walked over to the flint knapping area and found a couple of very sharp shards. Returning to where the women were disjointing the goat, Pell appropriated the hindquarters for himself. Saying, “Let me show you how to make our ‘spirit meat,’” he laid the leg on a leather and began slicing strips of meat off of it.
Looking up, Pell saw that he held the rapt attention of all the women. He was about to hand the other leg off so they could slice strips off of it, when he realized that none of the men were there. Looking around the cave he saw Gontra, Belk, and Exen lounging over on the men’s side of the cave like they always had. At first, he was puzzled.
Then anger flooded over him. He rose and stalked over to them. “I thought you were worried that you might starve this winter.” He turned his eyes to focus on Gontra, “You claimed you were worried about your poor daughter Tila?” Directing his full fury at Exen, he said, “And you, you said you would learn to hunt tubers if I only taught you. Instead,” he said scornfully, “I find you over here lying around while the women do the work that might save your tribe this winter.”
The three men gave Pell an astonished look. Exen, Pell was gratified to see, rose shamefully to his feet. However, Gontra said, “We just brought in a goat! If we bring in too much meat, it’ll just go to waste!”
Trying to keep his temper in control, Pell grated out, “‘We,’ didn’t bring in anything! I set out those snares yesterday. I led you to them. I told you that you would need to put out new snares in new locations, but did you? No… If you’d been listening and trying to learn rather than lounging around, you’d know that I was teaching the women how to make spirit meat. If you’d paid attention, you’d realize that ‘if you brought in too much meat,’ it could also be smoked into spirit meat for you to eat later this winter!”
Gontra and Belk got to their feet as well. Pell suddenly realized he’d been scolding men much older than himself and worried that they’d be angry. Instead, when he looked at their faces, he saw shame. Gontra said contritely, “I’m sorry Pell. We’ll do better. What do you want us to do right now?”
Pell studied them, thinking. He wanted to make them start learning to do women’s work, but at present, the Aldans had plenty of women and not enough men. He looked over and saw that the women were well into cutting up the meat. Looking back at the three Aldan men, he said, “You don’t have enough men in your tribe at present. So, you need to start teaching some of the women how to use snares. Besides, you still need to go set snares for today in the hopes that you can get more meat tomorrow. You can teach them while you’re doing it.”
The three men looked dumbfounded. Gontra said, “Women can’t hunt!”
“They can with snares, especially small animals. If a couple of you get hurt, you’ll surely hope that they know how to set snares! Gontra and Belk, I want you to take Ontru and Teda with you. Set snares like I taught you and explain it to them. Tomorrow, we’ll go see if you caught anything and I’ll be able to see what you’ve learned from where you put your snares.”
Rather than looking angry or resentful like Pell had feared, Gontra and Belk simply nodded. Enthusiastically, Exen said, “What do you want me to do?”
Pell turned to him and narrowed his eyes, “Keep your promise! Learn to hunt tubers. Bring me twenty good-sized edible roots and then I’ll think about teaching you more about hunting animals.”
A flash of anger crossed Exen’s face, but then his eyes dropped and he nodded, looking ashamed. “Yes Bonesetter.”
While Pell was giving the men their orders, the flap over the cave opening pushed open and Tando came in dragging a small tree. Pell immediately saw what Tando intended and thought he should go help him as soon as the three Aldans were on their way. However, when Gontra saw him he barked a small laugh. “Tando, Pell’s sending Exen out to hunt tubers. I didn’t know he’d taught you to hunt trees.”
Tando smiled at his old friend, “Hah! I saw you three start loafing and I knew Pell would be yelling at you for being so lazy. I decided to think of something to do myself. Is he going to make you do women’s work?”
“No!” Gontra said, appalled.
“He will. Pell thinks it’s really important that men do women’s work and women do men’s.”
Listening to the banter, Pell felt appalled to hear it sound like they thought he was such a tyrant. Though he had been telling the men what to do, he still felt surprised that they were actually doing it. Trying to distract them from his dictatorial behavior, he turned to Tando and asked, “Did you get the little tree to hold the meat up in the smoke?”
Tando said, “Yes. I remembered that this cave didn’t have any high places where smoke gathers like the Cold Springs cave does. It seemed,” he said, pointing up to where they’d left an opening for smoke to exit near the top of the wall around the cave, “that the best place to put the meat would be up by the smoke hole.”
Pell studied the smoke hole. They’d built a wall around the Aldans’ cave made of poles and twigs covered with mud. Though they’d called it a cave, the Aldans’ home hadn’t really been one. It’d been more of a shallow recess in the cliff. When they’d walled it in to make a real cave out of it, they’d left a smoke hole at the highest part of the wall where the roof of the rocky part of the cave rose up. Then they’d moved
the fire hearth over near the smoke hole so that the smoke mostly tended to rise up and exit through the opening.
Tando had walked over to the smoke hole. Now he stretched and jumped to show that it was quite a bit higher than he could reach. He said, “I went out looking for a small slender tree, taller than I could reach when I jumped.” He picked up the tree he’d dragged in. He’d trimmed off all the branches except for a big tuft of them up near the top. Now he lifted it up toward vertical and stood it so that the branches stuck up into the smoky recess next to the smoke hole. He looked at Pell, “We should be able to hang the meat strips on this, don’t you think?”
Happy that Tando had put so much thought and effort in, Pell said, “Good idea. I’d been thinking we needed to build a frame like Deltin made for us back at Cold Springs cave, but that’d be really hard without Deltin.” He looked up, “Especially getting it all the way up by the smoke hole. I think your little tree should work fine. Then he noticed the three Aldans men gaping up at the tree in confusion. Turning to them, he said, “Go, set your snares and,” Pell grinned at Exen, “do your tuber hunting. When you come back, Tando and I’ll teach you about making ‘spirit meat.’”
Once the three Aldans’ men had left, Tando worked with the women to densely suspend strips of meat over the branches at the top of Tando’s tree. Pell sent Gurix to wash out the goat’s intestine while he, Lessa, and Ontru chopped up meat from the fattier parts of the goat, mixing them with dried onions.
When Gurix returned with the intestine, they stuffed it with the fatty meat and onions, tying it off into finger length sausages like Pell had made at the Cold Springs cave. They suspended the sausages in Tando’s tree as well, then Pell and Tando carried the tree over and stood it so that the tuft of branches loaded with meat was up in the smoky recess by the smoke hole.
The two men stood staring up into the recess. Despite the general darkness in the cave, they could see fairly well because of the light coming in through the smoke hole. Tando said, “I don’t think it’s as smoky up there as it gets in the recess of your cave at Cold Springs.”
Bonesetter 2 -Winter- Page 2