Ivory and Bone

by Julie Eshbaugh

  DEDICATION

  For my parents, George and Louise Krikorian

  Thank you for teaching me to dream big dreams,

  and to never stop believing in them.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Julie Eshbaugh

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  The darkness in this cave is so complete I can no longer see you, but I can smell your blood.

  “I think your wound has opened up again.”

  “No, it’s fine.” Your words echo against the close walls. Even so, your voice sounds small. “I ran my fingers over it. It’s dry.”

  We need light and heat. I pat the ground, feeling for the remnants of the fire we made in here before.

  “The wound is under your hair, Mya, and your hair is drenched.”

  “My hair is cold—wet with rain and ice. It would be warm if it were wet with blood.” Injured, bleeding, freezing—yet still stubborn.

  “I’m going to try to get a fire going,” I say.

  My hands search the floor, fumbling across silt and cinders, until they land on a chunk of splintered wood that flakes at the ends as if it’s been burned. A short distance away the ground drops down into a shallow hole—the fire pit.

  I crawl farther into the dark, one hand extended out in front of me, my knees grinding against knots of broken wood and nubs of rock. At last, my hand lands on what I remember as a deliberate, orderly stack of firewood piled against the far wall.

  It’s unnerving to be in a place so dark. It’s even more unnerving to be here with you.

  As I turn pieces of wood in my hands, my eyes begin to adjust to what little light filters in from outside. Black yields to gray as shadows become objects. I separate kindling and tinder. On a flat rock beside the wood I discover the starter kit—a long whittled stick and fireboard. “Give me just a little longer and I’ll get you warmed up, all right?”

  I wait, but you don’t answer.

  “Mya?”

  “Go ahead and make a fire. I think I’ll just sleep a bit.”

  “No—no sleeping. I need you to stay awake. I need company. Someone to talk to.”

  “What are we going to talk about?”

  Rolling the firestick between my fingers, I hesitate. “What do you think we should talk about?”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have asked this question. There are countless things that could be said between us, and probably countless more that should be left unsaid.

  I grasp the firestick between my palms, one end buried in a notch cut in the fireboard, surrounded by fistfuls of dry grass like clumps of human hair. Rubbing my hands back and forth, I twirl the stick like a drill. My hands pass down the entire length of the stick once, twice, three times. Friction builds, and at last a ribbon of smoke curls around the board.

  Distracted by my task, I almost forget the question I asked you. I’m not sure how long you’ve been silent. “Mya?”

  “Fine,” you say, the word scratching in your throat like you’ve swallowed bits of gravel. “I’ll try to stay awake, but you need to give me something to stay awake for.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Why don’t you tell me a story?”

  “I don’t know any stories.”

  An ember catches. An orange glow blooms in the kindling. I lie on my side and blow a steady stream of breath into the grass, coaxing out garlands of smoke.

  “Everyone who’s ever lived has a story to tell, Kol.”

  As the fire spreads I sit up, turning your words in my mind. What could I possibly tell you? All my stories have become entwined with yours. “What do you want to hear?” I ask.

  “Tell me something wonderful—a story that’s startling and marvelous.” Despite your grogginess, there’s a lilt of expectation in your voice. “Tell me about the most startling and marvelous day of your life. . . .”

  ONE

  I lie in the grass with my eyes closed, listening for the whir of honeybee wings, but it’s too early in the season for bees and I know it. I needed an excuse, I guess, something to say to get out of camp for a while, and the bees will be back soon, anyway. Before the next full moon comes, these wildflowers will be covered in bees and I’ll be hunting for their hives. I’m just a little ahead of them.

  “Kol!”

  I sit up at the sound of Pek’s voice, calling from the southern edge of the meadow. It’s a wonder I hear him at all, with such a stiff wind pushing down over the Great Ice that forms the far northern boundary of our hunting range. He waves his spear over his head, and a brief flash of sunlight reflects off the polished-stone point—a momentary burst of light, like a wink of the Divine’s eye. Pek calls out again, and it sounds like “a boat,” though that can’t be right. From so far away, into the wind, he could be saying anything.

  Pek is a swift runner, and he reaches me before I have time to worry about what he has to say to me that couldn’t wait until I returned to camp. The skin of his face glows pink and tears run down his face from the sting of the wind.

  “A boat,” he says. He sets his hands on his knees and bends, sucking air.

  “Did you run the whole way from camp?”

  “Yes,” he says, tipping his head to let the wind blow his hair from his eyes so he can look at me. Sweat glistens on his forehead. “A boat is on the beach. A beautiful long canoe dug out from the trunk of a single tree—you wouldn’t believe how beautiful.”

  I run my eyes over Pek’s face, still somewhat soft and boyish at sixteen. He favors our mother—he has her easy smile and eyes that glow with the light of a secret scheme. “Is this a game? Are you playing a trick on me—”

  “Why would I bother to run all the way out here—”

  “I’m not sure, but I know that there’s no such thing as a boat made of the trunk of a single tree—”

  “Fine. Believe what you want to believe.”

  Pek rolls his spear in his right hand and peers off into the empty space in front of us, as if he can see into the past, or maybe the future. Without warning, he takes a few skipping steps across the grass and, with a loud exhale of breath, hurls his spear—a shaft of mammoth bone tipped with an obsidian point—at an invisible target. He had the wind at his back to help him, but I can’t deny it’s a strong throw. “Beat that,” he says, picking up my own spear from where I’d discarded it on the grass earlier.

  My spear is identical to my brother’s—a shaft of mammoth bone—but instead of obsidian, I prefer a point of ivory. It’s harder to shape, but ivory is stronger. I grip the spear, tensing and relaxing my hand until the weight of it feels just right. I take three sliding steps and roll my arm forward, hand over shoulder, releasing the spear at the optimal moment. It is a perfectly executed throw.

  Still, it lands about two pa
ces short of Pek’s. I may be his older brother, but everyone jokes that Pek was born with a spear in his hand. He has always been able to out-throw me.

  “Not bad,” he says. “That should be good enough to impress the girls.”

  “I’ll try to remember that,” I say, forcing a laugh. There are no girls our age in our clan, something Pek and I try to joke about to hide the worry it causes us. But it’s not a joke, and no one knows that better than Pek and I do.

  Without girls, there will be no wives for my brothers and me. Our clan could dwindle, even end.

  “You won’t have to remember for long.” Pek’s gaze rests on something past my shoulder as an odd smile climbs from his lips to his eyes. Suddenly, this doesn’t feel like a joke anymore. My stomach tightens, and I spin around.

  At the southern edge of the meadow, at the precise spot where Pek had appeared just moments ago, two girls come into view, flanked by our father, our mother, and a man I don’t recognize. “What—”

  “Do you believe me now about the boat?”

  I have no reply. I stand still as ice, unsure how to move without risking falling down. It’s been so long—over two years—since I’ve seen a girl my own age.

  My eyes fix on these two as they approach, a certain authority in their movements. They practically saunter toward us, each carrying a spear at her side. One, dressed in finely tailored hides, walks slightly ahead of the group. Her parka’s hood obscures her hair and her face is half-hidden in shadow, but there’s no question that she’s a girl—the swing in her shoulders and the movement in her hips give her away.

  The second girl is you.

  From this distance I can’t quite see your face, so I notice your clothing first. Your parka and pants must have been borrowed from a brother—they’re far less fitted than those of the first girl—yet there is femininity in the smaller things, like the curved lines of your long, bare neck, and the golden glow of your tan skin in the sunlight. Your hood is back and your head is uncovered, letting your black hair, loose and unbraided, roll like a river on the wind behind you.

  You come closer, and I’m struck by the beauty in the balance of your features. I notice the strong lines of your eyebrows and cheekbones tilting up and away from the softer lines of your mouth. Your eyes—dark and wide set—scan the meadow, and I’m startled by the way my heart pounds as I wait for them to fall on me.

  This may be the most startling and marvelous day of my life.

  As the group advances, however, I notice you drop back. The closer you come, the more certain I am that you are miserable. Your expression—tense jaw, pursed lips—makes your annoyance plain. I imagine you’ve been dragged along on this journey. Your head pivots, your eyes sweep from side to side, taking in what must appear to you to be no more than a wind-beaten wasteland. To me, the meadow is like the sea, life teeming below the surface. But to most people—to you, clearly—it’s just empty grassland.

  My mind clogs with questions, but before I can ask Pek a single one, the five of you stop in front of us.

  “Son,” my father starts. There’s tension in his voice. A stranger might not notice, but I can tell. “This day has brought us good fortune. These are our neighbors from the south, from the clan of Olen. They visited us once several years ago, when they were traveling from their former home north and west of here, to the place they now call home.”

  I remember this, of course. Our clan has such infrequent contact with outsiders that when a group passes through, I don’t forget. It was five years ago; I was twelve. I remember young girls of about my age. I realize, standing here now, that I remember you.

  You were traveling by boat, a small clan moving south in kayaks made of sealskin stretched over a frame of mammoth bones, just like the kayaks my own clan uses to fish and gather kelp and mollusks.

  I think of the boat Pek described—a canoe dug out of the trunk of a single tree. I’ve never even seen a canoe, though I’ve heard stories of them—open boats made of wood instead of hide and bone like our kayaks, long enough to carry several people at once. My own father tells of wooden canoes he saw with his own eyes, on a scouting trip he made south of the mountains, long before I was born.

  But I’ve never heard of a canoe made of the trunk of a single tree. I’ve never even imagined a tree that big.

  Not until today.

  There has already been talk of the need for our clan to attempt a move farther south. Our herds have been steadily dwindling—some have completely stopped returning from the south in the spring. Others, like the mammoths, have moved north, following the Great Ice as it slides away from the sea.

  Yet there has been one insurmountable obstacle to any plan for a southerly move. When your clan departed our shores five years ago, you did not leave as friends, but as enemies.

  Even now, with the years stretching out between that day and this one, I can remember the bitterness of your clan’s departure. I remember the murmurs of a possible war. The fears that kept me awake as a twelve-year-old boy—fears that my father could head south to fight and never return. As I stand here today, with the intervening years to dim the memories, bitterness still takes its place like an eighth figure in this circle of seven.

  Still, whether you brought the bitterness with you or it joined us, uninvited, the three of you are here, and that suggests new prospects. Could our two clans—enemies for five years—become friends, even allies? My mother must believe so. Nothing else would explain her presence out here in the meadow, since she so rarely hikes this far outside camp anymore. It would also explain the smile on my mother’s face.

  She knows opportunity when it lands on her shore.

  “Father invited our guests to hunt with us,” Pek says, raising his eyebrows while giving me a small nod—two things I think are supposed to hold some kind of veiled meaning. All I can guess is that he’s warning me to keep calm and not try to back off from my role as a leader in the hunt.

  Pek knows that I hate to hunt mammoths. Not because they are so dangerously immense, or because they are so difficult to bring down. Each kind of prey presents its own difficulties and dangers. No, I hate to hunt mammoths because their intelligence is impossible to ignore. They have more than a sense of fear; they have an understanding of death. They don’t run just because they are being chased; they run to avoid being killed.

  They know that I am trying to kill them.

  I didn’t always feel this way. Just a year ago, when I was Pek’s age, I begged our father before every hunt to let me take the lead. Finally, he let me try. I went ahead of the rest of the hunting party. I gave the command when it was time to swarm the herd. And I threw the first strike that landed deep in the animal’s side.

  It was a clean strike, and as the mammoth ran, blood poured from his wound, leaving a bright red trail in the frost under our feet. That moment is forever fixed in my mind—as the blood dripped down, I believed I could feel the energy running out of the animal and flowing into me. I felt invincible. Pek landed a strike in the animal’s throat, just below his jaw. That weakened him quickly. Blood flowed from both wounds as he staggered and fell to four knees. I ran up alongside him, ready to celebrate the success of the kill.

  But when I came up beside the wounded mammoth, he wasn’t ready to give in, wasn’t ready to let go of the Spirit that dwelled within him. He struggled to raise himself once more, planting his left front foot and trying to stand.

  The effort took the last of his strength. His huge frame shuddered, and he dropped heavily to the ground, his head falling right at my feet.

  I couldn’t avoid looking into the mammoth’s huge dark eye. Though his head lay half in snow and half in mud, he stared right into me. The dark iris was like a hole I’d fallen into. There was knowledge in that eye. Knowledge that he was about to die and that I was the one who had caused it. But there was no condemnation. Only defeat.

  A sudden gust of wind comes down hard from the north, shoving me out of my memories and back to the present. The sam
e gust hits you in the face and you grimace. It was warm lying in the grass—almost warm enough to encourage a honeybee to fly—but standing in the raw wind makes the day feel cold. My mother clears her throat. I realize that no one’s been introduced, and we’ve been standing staring at each other for a moment too long. I break the awkward silence by falling back on custom—I step forward and nod to the man in your group.

  “I’m called Kol,” I say. “I am the oldest son of Arem and Mala.”

  The man nods in reply, the irresistible current of custom pulling us along. “My name is Chev. I am High Elder of the Olen clan. This is my sister Seeri.” He motions to the first girl, and I smile but I doubt she notices. Her eyes are fixed on Pek. “And my sister Mya,” he says, motioning to you.

  Unlike Seeri, you meet my gaze. Your eyes narrow and I hope this is a response to the wind in your face, but somehow I don’t think it is.

  “This is our younger son, Pek,” my mother says, her eyes sliding to Seeri’s face as she steps forward to pat Pek on one of his huge shoulders, ensuring everyone notices Pek was built to hunt. She’s seen the connection between Seeri and my brother and she intends to encourage it. “You are lucky to have him with you today. He’s gifted with a spear, this boy. He’s—”

  My father clears his throat. Mother’s eyes shift to me and I know what she had almost said—He’s the best hunter in the clan. It’s true, but since I’m the oldest, it’s probably not something my father wants her to say in front of guests. Not that it would matter. If you’re going to hunt with us, you’re going to find out anyway.

  My father raises his eyes, judging the progress of the sun. “We should start on our way. The Divine has brought us strong hunting partners, and I suspect she may be sending more good fortune our way. If I am right, we will have a kill before the sun is high in the sky.”

  My mother pulls at the collar of my father’s parka. He is stubborn and insists upon leaving it open at his throat on all but the coldest days of winter. He pushes her hand away, but he can’t stop his lips from curling at the corners. “Don’t fuss with us, Mala; we need to get on our way,” he says. “Besides, when we get back, you will have six hungry hunters to feed. You’ll need time to get the kitchen going for the midday meal.”