Valri looked toward the shore again. Her eyes focused on a log that looked as if it might be floating freely, though it was about 10 body lengths away. Best of all it didn’t look like it had branches to get tangled with others. Once again she slipped into the water and started paddling.
Reaching her new log, Valri discovered a new problem inherent to branchless logs. They rolled. It did have a surface that was normally up, and when Valri pulled herself on from the end instead of the side she managed to get onto that surface. Paddling with both hands simultaneously rather than alternating sides, she thought she was moving the log toward the shore. At least a little.
Valri carefully lifted herself to look toward shore, thinking she needed to choose the best direction to paddle. Her log started to roll and she quickly lowered herself. But, she’d seen people! Are they coming to help? she wondered, lifting just her head, not her body this time. She could intermittently see the upper bodies and heads of two people, depending on the waves. She lifted an arm and waved at them.
One of them waved a piece of wood at her in return.
For a while the two men seemed to be getting closer, then Valri realized they were angling off to one side. Worried that they’d lost sight of her, she called out and waved again.
One of the men waved again and called back to her, “We see you. Wait your turn.” To Valri’s dismay, he sounded angry.
Looking in the direction they appeared to be going, Valri suddenly realized a woman was draped amongst the limbs of one of the other trees. She looked unconscious!
Or, perhaps, dead.
Anxiously, Valri waited as the two men approached the tree. When they got close enough, Valri could see they were on some kind of long narrow raft. It looked like four or five long timbers lashed together. The man in front was on his knees while the man behind sat cross legged. They were propelling their raft with the pieces of wood they’d waved at Valri before—long shafts with flat areas at the ends. They stroked them through the water, the action seeming to propel their raft.
Arriving at the tree, the two men examined the woman there, then pulled her loose from the limbs of the tree and flaccidly draped her onto their raft. After what looked like some debate, they began paddling the raft toward Valri.
As they got closer, Valri said, “Thank you for coming to get me! I was getting ready to try to swim for the shore, but I was afraid the sea monsters might get me. Is that girl okay do you think?”
They didn’t say anything, just continued to paddle even closer. Desperate to make a connection, Valri said, “Do you live at the mouth of the river? Are you the people who trade salt up the river?”
They still didn’t speak. Have I floated so far that people speak a different tongue? she wondered. Each tribe spoke a little differently. She’d heard that if you went far enough, people spoke so peculiarly they couldn’t be understood. Valri’d never encountered anyone like that, but she could believe it. Then she remembered that one of the men had spoken to her already. She opened her mouth to try saying something else but the man in front reached out and painfully smacked her bottom with the flat of his paddle. “Shut up!”
The words were shouted and spoken a little oddly, but Valri certainly understood them.
Her insides congealed as she cowered away. She took in the way his eyes lingered on her body. She’d heard something about the people who lived at the coast…? Something, not good?
In an ugly tone, the man said, “You will do exactly as we tell you, or we’ll just leave you out here for the sea monsters, understand?”
Valri nodded timidly, though she wasn’t sure this man might not be worse than the monsters. Slaves… she thought. That’s what I heard. The sea people keep slaves!
With even greater horror she realized the girl lying unconscious on the raft was Karteri.
Chapter One
As Tando and Pell walked the trail behind Gontra, Pell thought about how much he missed having Ginja with them. The wolf had disappeared a hand of days ago.
At first he hadn’t been worried; after all, Ginja’d disappeared for days at a time on many occasions in the past. She usually disappeared for a while when new humans showed up and started spending time around the cave. She’d returned when the humans left, or when they’d been around long enough that she evidently decided she was going to have to put up with them.
However, it was late winter and no new people had shown up recently. Pell had just woken up one morning to find his friend the wolf wasn’t sleeping against his legs like she normally did. The wolf hadn’t been back since, and he’d been worrying more and more about her. Pell surveyed the landscape, wondering if he might see her in the distance. Perhaps she’d be hidden in the trees like she had been other times. After all, Gontra was with them now, and he didn’t normally live with the Cold Springs tribe. He’d arrived at Cold Springs few days ago at the end of a warm spell. Gontra’d come to ask whether the people at Cold Springs might have enough smoked meat that they could share some with Pell’s old tribe at the Aldans’ cave.
Despite a careful sweep of their surroundings, Pell didn’t see Ginja anywhere. It did seem unlikely that he’d happen to find her out in this particular direction. At present, he, Tando, and Gontra were toiling up a hill on the path that’d eventually take them to the Aldans’ cave. He resolved to look for Ginja again when they reached the top of the hill and he could see farther.
Their packs, laden with the smoked meat jerky they called “spirit meat” made climbing up over the ridge more difficult. The meat would come as a much appreciated supplement to the Aldans’ sparse late winter diet. They’d run out of meat a hand of days ago. They still had some grains and roots to eat because the Aldans’ women had been assiduous about gathering before winter. Especially so, once the men had started failing in hunt after hunt. Also, some of Pell’s ideas about how to keep their stores dry and free of vermin had helped them keep the products of their harvest from going to ruin like they often had in the past.
Pell felt excited because he had some of Donte’s dried berries and apple slices hidden away in the bottom of his pack. When his mother’d first started drying fruit, they’d all been thrilled that it seemed to keep, but, of course, they didn’t know whether it would actually last all winter. Now, at the tail end of winter, they knew the dried fruit actually could last. They all loved getting a bit of tart sweetness with their meals. It wasn’t as good as the ripe fruit in autumn, but was so much better than no fruit at all. Pell wasn’t bringing much of the leathery dried fruit because of how much his own Cold Springs tribe loved it, but he thought the Aldans would appreciate even a little bit.
And, it’d forge their desire to dry some fruit themselves later in the summer.
They’d reached the top of the hill. Pell stopped to look around. His heart skipped a beat when he saw a pair of wolves in the distance. “Ginja!” he called out, hoping against hope that one of the pair might actually be his old friend. He lifted his far-seer and peered through it. Pell just had a moment to think that, even if it was Ginja, she was probably mated to the other wolf and no longer tied to him.
But then the head of the larger wolf jerked up and turned his way.
A moment later Ginja started trotting his direction.
The other wolf bounded forward a few steps. Once he was in front of her, the male wolf tried to shunt her aside. They are mated! Pell thought with chagrin, assuming Ginja would never return to Pell against the will of her new mate. However, Ginja turned and appeared to be nipping at the other wolf. It backed off unhappily.
Pell lifted his far-seer to his eye again. Ginja’s mate approached her one more time and this time Pell could see Ginja’s bared teeth as she nipped the other wolf.
Ginja loped up to Pell, bumped him hard, then stood on her hind legs to put her big paws on his chest. Her tongue lolled out to give him a joyful lick. Pell threw his arms around his old friend and scrubbed his fingers through her pelt. A glance showed Tando grinning while Gontra looked o
n apprehensively.
Ginja dropped to all fours. Pell scratched behind her ears as he looked out at the other wolf. The male wolf had stopped uncertainly, about thirty paces away. It yipped but didn’t attempt to come any closer.
Gontra said, “Can we keep walking? I don’t want to get caught out on the trail at night.”
Pell started walking the trail again and Tando followed suit. To Pell’s relief, Ginja trotted along beside him like she had much of the past year. For a moment Pell wondered whether he should be trying to come between Ginja and her mate. Then, deciding he loved her more than any other wolf could, he took a couple of quick steps to catch up to Tando. He reached into Tando’s pack and pulled out a couple of strips of smoked meat. When he held them out to Ginja the big wolf bolted them down happily, then looked expectantly at Pell. With a laugh, he said, “One more, that’s it!” He pulled out another strip and held it out to her.
Tando grumped, “Are you feeding that damned wolf again?!”
“Of course,” Pell said mock disdainfully. “She’s saved my life a bunch of times. What’ve you and Gontra done?”
As they walked on, Pell worried Ginja’d leave him for the male wolf anyway, but it didn’t happen. When the sun had crossed another fist of the sky, Ginja was still there, but Pell could no longer see the male wolf.
He wondered if he should feel guilty.
***
When Pell, Gontra, and Tando arrived at the Aldans’ cave, Pell was surprised to see that most of the Aldans weren’t there. Lessa was tending the fire and watching over a couple of babies.
“Hi Lessa, where is everyone?” Pell asked.
She grinned at him. “Someone told us that if we didn’t want to be hungry, we should constantly work to find food.” She shrugged, “Belk and Exen are out hunting…” she stopped, apparently seeing the questioning look on Pell’s face. She corrected what she’d said, “Well, mostly setting snares.” She glanced at the babies, then turned back to Pell, “The women are out looking for root vegetables.”
Pell frowned, “Didn’t they dig up all the root vegetables back in the fall?”
“They’re looking in places they didn’t look last fall. Making longer trips and looking in areas where there aren’t good trails.”
“And they’re finding some?”
Lessa nodded, “It’s harder because the plants are harder to recognize now that their leaves are dried up. But, the root vegetables are still good! In fact,” she lowered her voice, “I think some of them taste better than they do when we dig them up in the fall.” She turned her eyes to Pell’s, “Do you think that’s just because we’re hungrier?”
Surprised she’d ask him since he was a man, Pell nonetheless considered the question. “I don’t know. Do you still have some of the roots from the fall you can compare them to?”
Lessa’s eyes widened a little. She turned to glance in the direction of their stores. “I think so. Do you think next fall we should leave some of them in the ground to dig up later?”
Pell didn’t answer because he’d suddenly started worrying about a completely new problem. When they set snares, they couldn’t catch unlimited numbers of animals on the same trail. He’d decided long ago that once you caught the animals that lived on a particular trail, you needed to set your snares somewhere else. Eventually, you could go back to that same trail and catch animals again. Pell thought that was because animals from elsewhere moved into that now empty area.
But what about plants? If you ate all the plants in a particular area… Plants didn’t travel! At least Pell didn’t think they did, since they didn’t have any legs to move themselves with. He’d never seen a plant going anywhere either. He eyed Lessa, “When the women gather all the food in a particular area, does more grow in that spot the next year?”
Lessa frowned at him, “Wait a minute. You didn’t answer my question about whether we should leave some in the ground for later in the winter.”
Frustrated, Pell shook his head as if he was trying to get rid of a bothersome fly. “I don’t know. I guess if you think they taste better when you leave them in the ground it seems like a good idea to leave them there. But what about my question? If you harvest all the grain or root vegetables or berries from an area one year, do more of those same things grow in that spot the next year?”
Lessa shrugged, “You don’t know the answer to my question, and I don’t know the answer to your question. I’ve never worried about whether there are more or less plants in a location than there were the year before. We just go out and gather them. Some years there’s more, some years there’s less…”
Pell found this unsatisfying but couldn’t pursue his questions further because just then the rest of the Aldans returned to the cave. Exen excitedly showed Pell a snow hare they’d found on their trap line. The women had found a few edible roots and listened with great interest to Lessa’s description of Pell’s recommendation they not dig the root vegetables up until they needed them in the winter—which wasn’t at all what he thought he’d said.
Gontra announced that the tribe at Cold Springs had given the Aldans some spirit meat. When he told them that they’d brought three large backpacks full of meat, the awe and gratitude in the cave was palpable. Gratitude for the food and astonished awe that the small neighboring tribe had so much to spare this late in the winter season. Many of Pell’s former tribe gathered about him to touch and hug him. At first Pell felt embarrassed and tried to shrug it off. He repeatedly pointed out that Tando had contributed as much to the food they’d brought as he had and they did thank Tando, but still focused most of their attention on Pell.
The women of the Aldans began working on a small celebration feast. As it was being cooked, Pell asked several of the women his same question about whether a particular type of edible plant grew in the same place every year. Several of the women said that the plants did seem to be in the same location each year, but no one ventured an opinion on Pell’s theory that, perhaps, if they harvested too many plants—or perhaps every plant—from an area whether the plants might not come back there the next year. One of them even shrugged and said, “If you say so…” apparently unable to accept that he didn’t know.
Boro’s mother Teda was of the opinion that you could harvest too many plants from an area and cause problems with the next year’s harvest. She claimed not only to have seen it happen, but to have had it passed down to her as a bit of wisdom from one of the older women in the tribe she’d come from when she’d joined Bonat in the Aldans. While Pell was over asking her more about this, she put her hand on his arm and quietly interrupted, “Can I come join you and Boro at Cold Springs?”
“It’d be okay with me, but I’d have to ask Agan.”
Teda drew back, giving Pell a reproachful look. “You’re their leader, why do you have to ask? Just tell.”
Once again, Pell found himself explaining that Agan was their leader, and how that was because of her years and her wisdom. He’d even begun to explain the system of pebbles they used to vote on who would be the leader when Teda interrupted him again, “Okay, okay. But I know they’ll take me if you ask them. Will you?”
Pell nodded, thinking that this was one more reason he didn’t want to be a tribe’s leader. Making decisions like this had to be horrible at times. And a decision like this one would be as nothing compared to the horror of having to cast out the elderly or infirm if the tribe didn’t have enough to feed its members through a winter. Right now the Cold Springs tribe had plenty, but that might not always be the case. Just the thought gnawed at his stomach. What if we harvested so many of the plants in our region that they don’t grow back next year? What if the very way we gathered all that food to get us so easily through this winter dooms us for the next one?
Pell stayed deep in thought as they ate, barely even answering questions they posed him. Everyone had almost finished eating when he suddenly realized that he hadn’t gotten out the dried fruit! He went to the backpack he’d been carrying and
dug through it for the skin he’d wrapped the fruit in. Standing, he said, “I have a treat!” At this announcement, everyone turned to stare at him with excitement. Anything out of the routine, especially something edible, was cause for enthusiasm at the end of a long hungry, boring, winter. He unwrapped the skin and went around the fire giving each person a slice of dried apple or pear and a dried currant, grape, or raspberry.
They all frowned at his offering initially, but a sniff, a lick and then a cautious nibble was all it took to turn their doubt into delight. “What is this stuff?!”
“Donte thought this up. It’s like spirit meat, but with fruit instead of meat.”
“Fruit?!”
Pell nodded, “During the autumn harvest we pick all the fruit we can get, instead of just what we need at the time…” Pell paused. His audience thought he was trying to draw out their anticipation, when actually he was once again wondering if having taken all the fruit might somehow have doomed them in the coming year. The bushes and the trees the fruit had grown on were still there of course, not dug up like root vegetables, so they should make fruit again next year, shouldn’t they?
Someone impatient with Pell’s long pause, said, “Then do you smoke it? It doesn’t taste smoky.”
“Um, no. We put it out to dry on the rocky cliffs above our cave. You can probably tell that we slice the apples and pears into thin pieces first so they’ll dry more easily. If you don’t, they still rot. We cut the grapes and remove the seeds. Then we put them out to dry underneath loosely woven baskets to keep the birds from eating them.”
The Aldans were ecstatic about the dried fruit, with many of the women asking for more details on how to dry their own next fall. Pell urged them to travel over to Cold Springs and ask Donte about it shortly before the fruit was ready to harvest. “She knows a lot more about it than I do.”
The next morning, Pell and Tando went out to set snares with Gontra, Belk, and Exen. Gontra asked them to, hoping Pell would make more suggestions about trap placement. He actually wanted better performance from their traps now, even though Pell and Tando told him their traps weren’t doing well in the cold moons either.
Bonesetter 3 -summer- (Bonesetter series) Page 2