Ivory and Bone

by Julie Eshbaugh

  I’m transported to the moment we kissed.

  I feel her fingers, thin and cool, wrapped in mine. The pressure of her lips. The heat rising in my chest. The trail her fingertips traced along my jaw . . .

  “Kol!” my mother shouts, and the spell is broken. I blink and Mya drops her eyes.

  Chev steps toward me and acknowledges me with a nod. “I wanted to thank you for everything you did—I may have died if not for you—but when I looked for you today you were already gone.”

  My mother’s eyes slide to my face. I’m sure my parents were not aware that I’d left without saying good-bye. “I wanted to hurry back to let my family know I was all right. And to share with them the other news—that you had all survived, and that Lo . . .”

  “Of course,” Mya says. “I’m sure your clan was happy to have you back, safe and well.”

  “Yes.” My eyes sweep over the water, taking in the canoes floating a short distance from the edge of the sand. Urgency rises in me. I have to speak up. “They were happy to know that the Bosha had failed in their plans. That despite the fact that each of us—you, Chev, even me—had come so close to death, we had all survived. Yet here you are, preparing to board these boats. By the will of the Divine, the Bosha’s attempts to kill both of you failed. Why would you now climb into these canoes and deliver yourselves to their shore?”

  “It was not the Bosha who tried to take our lives,” says your brother. There is a softness in his words, an uncharacteristic compassion in his tone. “It was Lo and it was Orn. Both of them came to kill, and both of them died. But the others of their clan left—”

  “They left to preserve their own lives!” I’m startled by the force of my own voice, by the tremor of anger in my tone. I glance at my father’s face, expecting him to raise a hand, signaling me to back down. Instead, he nods, so I continue. “What do you think will happen when Lo’s followers learn that Lo and Orn are both dead? Do you think they will put aside their desire to kill you? To kill Mya? And can we trust that the Bosha elders would be able to stop them if they tried?”

  Chev does not reply, and at first, I worry that I have overstepped my bounds. But then I see that he is watching something, and all five of us turn toward movement out on the bay.

  A kayak. A long, two-person kayak carrying a lone paddler.

  One of Lo’s people is approaching our shore.

  Time slows down as we stand, as rigid as a row of spears stuck in the sand, watching the kayak draw closer. As the face of the paddler comes into view, I can see that our visitor is a woman. With the long, deliberate strokes of someone who is seldom on the sea, she steers her kayak toward the waiting canoes. She is trying to pull close, craning her neck, stretching to peer over the sides of the boats. Once she is close enough to see into them, close enough to recognize the faces of the dead they carry, she lets out a cry that shatters the silence above the bay.

  Not a cry of anger, but of loss.

  “Dora,” Chev says under his breath. “It’s Dora.”

  He strides out into the water without hesitating, wading right up to the side of the small boat. He throws his arms around the woman. Still strapped into the kayak, she falls against him and sobs into his chest.

  This is Dora, the mother of Orn. The mother of the boy I killed.

  It isn’t long before Mya has waded out beside her brother. The rowers, too, turn their attention to the kayak, to the woman who they would all have known until five years ago. From where I stand on the sand, the distance is too great to hear the conversation, but it appears that Dora protests the care being offered to her. I watch as she pulls away from Chev’s embrace, unties the sash of the kayak, and climbs out of the boat. She reaches into the opening at the front of the kayak—the empty seat for a second paddler—and withdraws what appears to be a pile of sealskin pelts. As the three of them wade into shore, I get a better view of her. An older woman with a small, pointy face and long white hair pulled back in a traditional braid, Dora accepts Mya’s extended hand as she carries the pelts up the steep slope at the water’s edge.

  My mother hurries over, taking half of the pelts and handing them to me. Mya takes the rest of the pile from Dora’s hands.

  “No, I can carry them,” Dora starts, but then she steps back as if seeing Mya for the first time. “Can you really be Mya?” she says. “How old are you now?”

  “Seventeen,” says Mya.

  “Just twelve years old when you left. My Anki was eleven, and Orn was only ten.” Her voice breaks on these last words, and she drags the backs of her hands across her eyes before taking the pelts my mother gave me out of my hands. “I’m fine. I can carry those,” she says. “I brought them as a gift, as a symbol of our sorrow and regret for the harm the Manu suffered at the hands of the Bosha.” She pauses and takes a deep breath, as if drawing in strength to say what she came to say. “We learned about a fire—the elders, I mean—we had been away from camp, but when we returned we learned a fire had been set by my son, Orn. We pulled apart our kayaks. These are the pelts they were made of. I know these can’t make up for what was lost, but I hope you will accept—”

  “Of course we will. Thank you,” my mother says. She takes the pelts back from Dora and drops them in my arms again. They bristle against the wound that runs across my forearm—the wound I got trying to save Lo—and I wince, more from the memory than from the pain.

  “And injuries?” Dora’s voice is a tentative whisper, as if she has to ask but fears the answer. “Were there injuries from the fire?”

  “There were . . .”

  Dora takes a step back. For a moment I think she might fall, but my mother catches her under the arm. I can’t help but wonder how she was chosen for this task. Did she insist she be the one to come, since her own son set the fire? “Could I meet those who were hurt? I need to apologize on behalf of the clan, and on behalf of my family. I know it won’t help them, but I need to—”

  “You can meet my sons,” my mother says. “This is my oldest, Kol. Two of his brothers were injured. Kol, would you lead Dora to our hut so she can speak to Pek and Kesh?”

  And so I find myself leading Dora up to the gathering place, a tumult of emotions churning inside my chest. How do I reconcile my anger toward the Bosha with the guilt I feel for the death of this woman’s son? As we begin to climb the path, my mother lingers behind us. Over my shoulder, I hear her ask the rowers still perched in the canoes if they would like to come with us into camp. “Thank you,” answers the tall, broad-shouldered woman who sits at the front of the canoe that holds Lo’s body. “But we will stay here and guard the boats and the Spirits they carry.” My mother, a gracious hostess under even the worst of circumstances, promises to bring back something for them to eat.

  The evening meal is being prepared in the kitchen. Ahead of us, I see Roon duck under the door, a basket of greens in one arm and a load of firewood under the other. Tram and my youngest cousin are playing, running in circles around us as we walk, but Dora seems blind to it. She plods along, her eyes on the ground in front of her.

  We head for my family’s hut, and when we step through the door we find Pek and Kesh in bed, just as I left them, but now they are both awake and sitting up. Urar is there, too, mixing something dark and wet in a bowl made of a hollowed-out driftwood log. Shava sits beside Kesh, holding his hand.

  As he did when I surprised him earlier, Urar startles as we all enter, but the sight of Dora, a complete stranger, brings him to his feet. “Urar,” I say, “this is Dora, an elder of the Bosha clan. She brought these sealskins as an offering of regret for the fire. She also asked if she could meet those who were injured.”

  The hut is dimly lit—only a single flap is open to let in light—so Urar comes close to Dora and runs his gaze over her features. His is a healer’s gaze. My father and mother, Mya and me—we all stand aside and wait. I can see the discernment in Urar’s eyes, as if he is listening to the Divine, letting her direct his judgment. His eyes stay narrowed as he walks
a slow circle around Dora, taking her in, but then they widen and fill with a warm glow. His verdict reached, he gives Dora a small nod.

  “This is Pek,” says Urar, motioning.

  Dora takes the pile of pelts from Mya’s arms and approaches Pek’s bedside. “May these comfort you,” she says. He sits up in bed and nods, and she drapes a pelt across his legs and tucks a few behind his back.

  “And this is Kesh,” says Urar. Dora turns toward Kesh and her eyes fall on Shava, folded on the floor beside him.

  “Hello, Dora,” says Shava, getting to her feet.

  “Shava . . . I’d heard you and your mother were staying with the Manu. My daughter Anki told me you were visiting with your old friends.”

  “Yes. In fact, I’ve become betrothed to Kesh.”

  I can’t quite tell if Dora and Shava are truly happy to see each other. Their greeting was certainly not warm, but I’m not sure if they are wary of one another, or if the horror of the circumstances is just too great to allow for pleasantries.

  “And you are Kesh?” Dora asks. “I’m so sorry for your suffering.” Like with Pek, she drapes a pelt across his legs. She wraps a second around his shoulders, though it is certainly not cold in this hut, especially crowded with people.

  From outside the hut, the steady beat of a drum begins. The musicians are gathering.

  “Are you hungry?” my mother asks. “You’re welcome to be our guest at the evening meal.”

  The hut falls silent. It’s as if everyone is holding their breath, waiting for Dora’s reply. Do they hope she will decline? Would it be too much to ask for the injured to share a meal with a Bosha elder while the scent of smoke still lingers in the air?

  “Thank you,” Dora says. “You are so kind to offer, but I need to return to camp. I just wanted to deliver these pelts, and to offer the apologies of the Bosha elders. We didn’t know. . . . That doesn’t excuse what happened, I know, but the elders . . . We didn’t know what Lo and Orn . . . She was trusted—the High Elder. And Orn was my son. My own son . . .” She trails off. Her eyes move to my mother’s face before she wobbles a bit on her feet again. This time, my father is the one to reach out and catch her.

  “Please sit,” he says.

  “I couldn’t.” But even as she protests she wobbles again, and my father, his hand under her elbow, leads her to a rug beside Pek’s bed. She sits, and as she does, she continues to speak, though her voice is quiet, as if she is speaking to no one in particular. “Lo was such a lost girl. She made terrible mistakes; she and my son led many people the wrong way.”

  My father gestures for all of us to sit. Sweeping my eyes over the bare patches of dirt I’d noticed this morning, I scatter the pelts I’m still holding on the floor. Dust swirls in the shaft of light that falls through the partly opened vent overhead. All at once the room grows stiflingly hot. Sweat beads spring up on my lip and the back of my neck.

  “When the elders returned before first light this morning, we found the entire clan awake. Even the small children, who of course had stayed behind, were out of their beds, helping clean wounds. The whole camp was in chaos—everything smelled of smoke and blood. I found my daughter Anki. She had stayed behind with the children. I asked about her brother. Where was Orn? It was then that they told us all that had happened.

  “They told us about the fire, about what Orn had done here in your camp. They told us about the attack on the Olen’s camp in the south.

  “And they told me my son had died.

  “No one knew for certain what had happened to Lo, though they suspected that she . . . But it wasn’t until I came here . . . It wasn’t until I saw her in the boat . . .”

  She quiets. Her hand goes to her mouth, and I know she is remembering not just the sight of Lo’s body, but of her son’s, too.

  “They were so close—Lo and Orn—almost like twins. They would think and act as one.” Her face contorts into something between a grimace and a shattered smile. “They were dangerous together, because they each fed the worst within the other. Yet something about them drew people to them. They ignited hope. They read signs about a prosperous future that the Divine was planning for us. Many people found them impossible to resist—”

  “I’m sorry. I have to ask . . .” I can feel my mother’s glare. Does she find it rude that I’ve interrupted? That I intend to question Dora? My mother may feel that way, but then, she wasn’t there. She didn’t chop through the shaft of a spear protruding from Chev’s chest. “Why didn’t anyone stop them? Couldn’t you—couldn’t someone—stop them?”

  Dora tilts her face toward me, her eyes meeting mine. I see now that she is not as old as I had thought, just very weary and worn.

  “They planned it well. For so long, the elders had tried to convince Lo that we should settle on the water—that we should stop following herds as her father had always done.

  “Finally, she began to yield. She focused on building new kayaks. She announced she was sending the elders on a scouting expedition. She was very cunning. We went away so pleased that morning, heading west along the coast in search of a suitable bay, convinced she would soon agree with our own plans for the clan. While all along, they were preparing something different . . . something much darker . . .”

  My mother leans forward, placing herself between me and Dora. She’s noticed, as I have, Dora’s voice growing thinner as she speaks, fading into a whisper. “Why don’t you let me bring you something to eat? I could bring it in here—”

  “I’m not saying we were innocent,” Dora says, completely ignoring my mother, her eyes wide and unblinking. “We know the weight of our guilt. We know there will have to be consequences for what happened. Lo and Orn didn’t act alone.

  “But in the end, it happened as they say—you die the way you live. They lived for vengeance. And for vengeance they died.

  “Out of all of them, everyone else came back alive. Only those two—only Lo and Orn—lost their lives.”

  She drops her eyes. Turning away, she picks up Pek’s hand, as if he were her own son.

  As if he were Orn.

  Later, I stand in the shallow water, holding the kayak steady as Dora gets in, ready to return to the western shore. The kayak bobs, thumping against my leg, as Dora moves slowly and methodically, tying the belt around her waist. Chev and Mya are there, climbing into the only canoe with room to sit.

  When I wade out of the water and back onto the sand, my parents are talking about the burials. They will be tomorrow, when the sun is at its highest point in the sky.

  The rowers wait until Dora is out in front of them. Then they dig hard with their oars. I watch them recede across the bay, remembering how I’d watched the Bosha cross the bay in the same way. When they are so far away that they are no longer distinct individuals, but mere dark shapes blending into one another, I think I see Mya look back, but I cannot know for sure.

  THIRTY-THREE

  I am alone in my family’s hut, dressing to do something I do not want to do.

  My mother stands at the door. She tells me everyone else is leaving. It’s time to go. I tell her not to wait. I’ll come on my own. Soon, I promise.

  “I won’t leave without you,” she calls through the door.

  I step outside, barefoot, still tying my pants at the waist. “Just go,” I say. “I promise I won’t be long.”

  My mother raises her hand to shield her eyes from the sun as she looks at me, and the lines at the corners of her lips deepen. She will wait. My mother has had to wait for so many things. For the bay to thaw. For the herds to return. For the first kill of the spring.

  For the Divine to provide wives for her sons.

  I should not test her patience now. I drop my head and step back into the hut. I have no choice. This task will not go away. I lace up my boots, pull the elk-hide tunic over my head, and join my mother outside, where the sun is reluctantly climbing out of the eastern sky.

  A two-man kayak waits for us on the beach. The rest of our party is
far out on the bay. The wind is in our faces, slowing us, and by the time we land on the western shore, the sun is directly overhead.

  It’s time.

  A girl approaches, helping my mother alight from the boat. She is familiar to me; I’ve seen her in this very spot. The day I hiked the overland trail with Lo, she met us right here on the beach.

  This is Anki, the sister of Orn.

  She glances over at me, and I can’t quite read the emotion on her face. Does she know that I am her brother’s killer? She can’t possibly. If she did, I doubt she would look at me at all.

  “Mya was asking for you,” she says. “She was on the beach earlier, looking for you.”

  I hear voices. Up ahead, on a ridge above the Bosha’s camp, a crowd is gathered around two open graves.

  Chev stands at the head of the circle of mourners. I try to imagine the conflict he must feel today—reunited with his old clan, but at such a great cost. Beside him stands a man dressed in black bearskin—the Bosha’s healer. He begins a chant, asking the Divine to pull back the hides that drape the doors of her land, to open wide the entrance to receive Lo and Orn.

  Something inside me flinches. I swallow, and hot anger burns down my throat.

  As the chanting continues, two drummers beat a rhythm that rolls out from this ledge, vibrating out over the sea. From behind me, a dancer emerges. He wears a broad mask made of twigs and vines, bent and twisted into the face of a mammoth.

  A wide mammoth hide is spread at the bottom of each grave, and in the center of each one rests one of the dead. Orn is dressed in a hunting parka, a spear clutched in his hand. I can’t help but notice the details of this spear—a thick bone staff hafted with sinew to a black flint point. It is identical to the one that broke off in Chev’s chest.

  Lo is also dressed in hunting clothes, but her hands are empty. Around her neck, she wears the bone pendant, the symbol of her status in the clan.