What was a scrap of meat for a ravenous mother?
The nerve of them. Especially when no less than three of those stinking, hairy protesters, those not named U’ku’let, could just as easily have been responsible for the growing bulge at S’tka’s middle. Look at them, the gallery of buffoons. That any one of them would beget her a child was a nauseating thought.
Looking at you, Yq’mat, with your massive brow ridge, and dim, deep-set eyes.
Looking at you Kt’ak, with your chafed lips, and flat nose, and tiny, misshapen ears.
Looking at you, oh wise one, Ok’eh, courageous leader, with your stupid fantasy of another world beyond the ice.
And what of poor, hapless, U’ku’let, with the harelip, and the bulging neck? U’ku’let, who couldn’t grow a decent beard, or bag even the most beleaguered of diseased bison without the aid of another hunter. U’ku’let, maybe never quite as clueless as the clan suspected, but forever a follower.
That among all people it was the coward U’ku’let who found the courage to defend S’tka’s honor, even as she gnawed on the filched hindquarter in question, blood dripping down her chin, was nothing less than a wonder.
But so it was.
Bony chest thrust forth, exposed nipple stiff from the frigid air, U’ku’let stepped between the offended mob and S’tka’s bulging belly.
“She’s carrying a baby!” he proclaimed.
A proclamation by which the clan was less than moved.
“Just what we need, another mouth to feed,” replied one of the elders.
Hard to argue with that. But consider the indignity of her condition. All those months swollen with child, and so little to eat, S’tka had carried the load of two men down the rugged, snow-packed mountains, away from the security of home, and over the endless ice, as they made their way toward a horizon that never seemed to get closer, a sun that only seemed to grow weaker. Why ever had they undertaken this journey? Clearly, there was nothing beyond the ice. It went on forever, anyone could see that. They should have stuck to the mountains. Better to starve there in the relative safety of their den than to freeze to death in this barren wasteland.
S’tka, however, had little choice but to follow them on their futile journey into the new world. And despite her condition, she worked dutifully through the months, until every joint in her body ached. See her disemboweling and dressing the animals, see her scraping the stinking, bloody pelts for curing, see her urinating on them to cure them, carrying them over her shoulder for miles on end. S’tka had scrubbed the bugs and the stink from the men’s furs, always wary of exposing her backside, lest Yq’mat, Kt’ak, or Ok’eh decided to take liberties as she kneeled at the banks of icy streams.
They took whatever they wanted, the men. They viewed all that they saw as something to be possessed or conquered. They walked about scratching their chests as though they were the masters of this icy hell. They acted as though they were not beholden to the Great Provider for the game they took, or the light that shined down on them. These men acted as though they themselves were the great providers. Though each of them was born out of a woman, each of them had suckled at a woman’s breast, each of them owed his life to woman, still, they treated a woman as something less than themselves.
Someday soon, all that would change.
Curse them, the stinking hypocrites. S’tka was entitled to fresh meat; her body demanded flesh and blood. She’d shouldered more than her share of the burden, so why shouldn’t she have meat? Was it S’tka’s fault that the food was so scarce this season? Had she decided their fortunes would be better out on this ice? Did they suspect she could live on such meager rations as bones without flesh?
Oh, but the clan elders were angry for her trespass. Their sanctimony knew no bounds.
“Thief! Thief!” they shouted.
“You can’t let them starve,” U’ku’let protested, indicating S’tka’s swollen abdomen.
“She would have the rest of us starve,” they insisted. “By stealing, she has betrayed us. Go, both of you.”
And just like that U’ku’let and S’tka were cast out of the circle, banished to the endless ice, essentially condemned to death.
Still, they could not pry the bloody hindquarter from S’tka’s grasp in the end. S’tka would have her meal. When Ok’eh attempted to wrest the shank back from her, S’tka sunk her teeth into his hairy forearm, delighted when he cried out like an old woman! To hear him screeching, to see him hopping up and down as though on a bed of hot coals—that was almost worth the price of banishment.
Almost, but not quite.
The wind was bitter cold away from the fire. The flat, white world offered no shelter, nor much in the way of variety. Without discussing a course of action, U’ku’let and S’tka mutually agreed to reverse their course, and abandon the possibility of a new world. They found themselves moving with the wind at their backs, away from the fading sun as they began their journey back toward the distant mountains from which they came, a barely perceptible ridgeline along the eastern horizon, three, maybe four days across the ice without the security of the clan, with little sanctuary, and the slim possibility of survival.
U’ku’let, stonily silent, walked ten paces in front of S’tka, never once looking back at her. For many hours they trudged along at a measured pace, collecting windblown sticks, whose journey across the ice may well have been as long as their own. S’tka continued to gnaw occasionally on the stringy remains of her bloody ration.
“I didn’t ask you to stand up for me, you know,” she said.
But U’ku’let did not answer. Nor would he partake of the picked over appendage when she offered it to him.
“I don’t need you. Go back if you wish,” she said.
At last he stopped and swung around to confront her, his face contorted with anger.
“Back to where? Back to what? You have doomed us, woman!”
From there they retreated into silence once more, plodding on over the ice, as the sun sunk below the edge of the world. They were doomed from the start, thought S’tka. People were never meant for this world. Why would the Great Provider have made them so scrawny and helpless, so dependent upon one another for survival? Why would she maroon them in this ghastly, frigid nothingness? More each day, S’tka found herself angry and disillusioned with the Great Provider. It almost came as a relief to be cast outside of the circle, away from the collective struggle, and the desperate impetus to survive.
Let this wilderness swallow her, child and all. Take her now, and end her useless suffering, spare her unborn child the agony of birth. S’tka would mourn the loss of nothing this stingy world had to offer. How could she even call the provider great when she provides but the bare minimum?
Eventually, U’ku’let glimpsed a tiny smudge of black awash in the endless white, presumably the remnants of an abandoned fire, smoldering weakly on the ice. They hurried their pace over the barren ground.
Upon arriving at the dying fire, they fell to their hands and knees, and began to heap the ashy remnants into a mound at the center, blowing desperately on what little that glowed, until they managed to revive it, nurturing it back to a nearly respectable state of insufficiency. They camped on the ice beneath the moon, hunkered around their paltry fire, accompanied only by the sucking and smacking and gnawing of U’ku’let, who had finally consented to take the giant femur and suck it dry of marrow. With this, along with the low hiss of the glowing coals, came the moaning of the wind blowing in from the north, and in the distance, the baying of wolves.
Funny, how quickly S’tka appealed to the Great Provider for her safety now, when only hours ago she’d been ready to forsake her altogether. Why had the creator made her so weak? U’ku’let was right, she had doomed them. They could not possibly survive outside the circle. Soon enough, they would become food for the ravenous wolves, a certainty she felt in her bones.
Rocking gently forward and back on her haunches, S’tka cradled her swollen belly against the
cold, as the wolves bellowed in the darkness.
Ha’act too ha’act too ha’act too, she chanted beneath her breath. I am you. A song to appease the Great Provider. But the howling, and the yelping of the wolves, and the crippling sense of vulnerability never ceased. It didn’t help that U’ku’let soon fell asleep sitting upright, leaving S’tka alone to ponder all that was terrible and unknown.
H’act too ha’act too ha’act too, she chanted.
Finally, she succumbed to sleep, and dreamed of more ice.
U’ku’let shook her awake with the weak sun, and the first thing she heard was the baying of the wolves, closer now than the previous night.
“We must go,” he said.
Without another word, S’tka was on her feet, her great belly thrust out before her, trudging east for better or worse into the great, white world.
Nothing or No One
When she was not living outside of herself on the ancient ice, Bella belonged to the mountains. Now that her dad had finally permitted her to explore farther and wider, extending her range as far as the upper rim of the canyon, and the forested hill on the far side of the meadow, Bella’s days were much fuller. See her frolicking in the high grass with the kitties, see her scrambling up hillsides like she was born to it. Hear her identify the trees by name: silver fir, and hemlock, and maple, and red cedar. And the fish: coho, and king, and sturgeon. See her dart sprite-like in dirty tennis shoes between the evergreens. Hear her say how she loves what she calls the “whistley” call of the white warbler, and how she thinks the song of the varied thrush is “sad and beautiful.” See her observe, hear her question, watch her explore. Listen to her talk excitedly of her discoveries and adventures. See her dirty little face rapt in the glow of the fire.
As for Dave, he had good days, and he had bad days. On the good days, he was able to breathe deeply and stay ahead of his anxiety. On such days, he was able to connect, able to ground himself in the physical world, to exist in the present moment, at least some of the time. On the bad days, it felt as if he belonged to nothing or no one. Though he was alert and observant, he could not seem to access a sense of curiosity or wonder. He did not yearn or seek to expand his interior life on the bad days. It was a room he preferred to keep unfurnished: a window, a mattress, dingy white walls. Better yet, a cave. Never mind the natural wonders that surrounded him. On the bad days, nothing stirred his appetites. Still, he knew he must abide for Bella’s sake. And so, Dave planned. He acted, he taught and protected, maintaining the smooth surface of his patience at all times as he dutifully went through the motions.
In the fall, with any luck they would smoke salmon and sturgeon, deer and perhaps even elk. And so, Dave busied himself completing the little smoke house hunkered amongst the firs, along the wooded ridge a hundred yards south of the cave. As he was caulking the slat roof—the slats made of fine wedges hacked from cedar—and stuffing the gaps with moss, Bella appeared suddenly at his side, something she’d done on a number of occasions lately. Either Dave was losing his edge, or Bella had mastered stealth.
“You scared me, baby,” he said.
“Sorry,” she said. “Daddy, how do you know if something is real?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how do you know the difference between real and obstruct?”
Dave mussed her hair.
“You mean, ‘abstract’?”
“Yeah, abstract.”
“Well,” he said. “If it’s abstract, you can’t touch it, baby. It’s just an idea.”
“Can you see it?”
“In your mind you can,” he said.
“But what if we’re just in our minds?” she said. “What if I’m imagining you, like in a dream?”
“Then you’d be dreaming.”
“How do you know?”
Dave paused in his labor.
“Because you couldn’t touch me in your dream.”
He reached out and squeezed her hand.
“See,” he said. “I’m right here.”
“So then Mommy isn’t real anymore?”
“Mommy’s still real,” he said.
“But I can’t touch her.”
“No, you can’t, not anymore.”
“How is she real, then?”
“Because she lives inside of you, baby.”
“How?”
“You remember her,” he said. “That makes her part of you.”
“What about in thousands of years?” she said.
“What about it?”
“Will she still be part of me then?”
“Nobody lives thousands of years, baby.”
Again, the explanation was apparently not to her satisfaction.
“What if people keep remembering somebody, like in stories?” she said. “And what if the same stories kept getting told over and over? Would they be real, and not ab-structions?”
“They’d still be abstractions, baby,” he said. “But they’d be as real as any Bible, I suppose.”
Dave was hoping this consolation would be enough to put an end to her speculation. But it was not, and he ought to have known.
“What if the person remembering the person never knew them?” she said. “Or they never even heard the stories, they just knew them, anyway?”
Dave spent a moment trying to unpack her logic, but finally grew impatient.
“I wish I had all the answers for you, baby, but I’m not sure I even understand the questions sometimes.”
S’tka
For two days they plodded onward across the ice field, through the frozen haze, hunger gnawing at their insides, guided only by the dim prospect of the mountains on the eastern horizon, with the occasional black smudge of a fire pit to comfort and protect them from the wolves, should the beasts ever decide to overtake them. What option did they have but to keep going, to keep trudging back from where they came? Where else was the promise amidst that flat, white expanse? What else was beyond that frozen haze that hung like a gauzy curtain, obscuring their progress into . . . where, if not what they already knew?
Doomed outside the circle of the clan, with nothing of their own to burn, S’tka and U’ku’let soon learned that even in their solitude they were beholden to the castoffs of others for their survival, their strewn scraps, and their dying fires. To come upon another living person, another outcast, someone else to strengthen their numbers would’ve have been a relief.
It was not until the afternoon of the third day, clear but frigid, that the mountains finally appeared to be drawing nearer, their jagged peaks and snowy cornices discernible against the relief of pale blue sky. Sharp and opposing, frozen and treacherous, they remained a welcome sight, a relief from the flat, one-dimensional world of the ice.
During S’tka’s sleep the previous night, the baby had dropped inside of her. It now pressed against her entrance with urgent force. The terrible cramping slowed her pace, much to U’ku’let’s annoyance. S’tka could feel the baby wanting out with every step. Surely, it would not be long.
Please don’t let it be long. Only long enough to find shelter.
S’tka was determined not to have her baby out there, exposed to the perils of the ice. They must make the mountains before her time came, and find a den or cave, or some sanctuary from the elements. They must have more than measly sticks of kindling, they must have wood to build a real fire. And above all, they must have the one thing that got them in this mess in the first place: meat. Bloody, warm, glorious meat to gorge themselves on.
Despite their determined progress, U’ku’let and S’tka did not make the mountains before the sun dipped beneath the ice. Without a fire, they could not afford to stop, so they slogged on beneath the moonlight for miles, the temperature dropping so low that S’tka’s breath all but crystalized in the air before her. So tiny amidst this sea of ice they must have looked to the moon above. That the baby had not moved inside of her all day was troubling, though the pressure on her opening was now crushing. S’tka began t
o worry that something had gone wrong inside her. As her mood nosed toward panic, the moon ducked beneath the clouds, leaving them vulnerable, and all but blind in the darkness. Still, they muddled their way forward.
When it seemed they could not possibly continue under these conditions, a tiny orange glow to the east beckoned them. The promise of warmth compelled them onward another half-mile.
When they drew close enough to the fire, S’tka could make out a lone figure stooped over it, feeding sticks to the flames. It was impossible to tell whether the figure had registered their approach. Even as they drew within thirty feet, the figure gave no sign that he saw them.
“We are cold,” said U’ku’let to the stranger, who straightened up with a hissing.
“We mean you no harm,” U’ku’let assured him.
The little stranger squatted back down wordlessly at the edge of the flames. He was a hideous sight to behold in the firelight; his cheek covered in angry boils, patchy with facial hair, his head and brow singed hairless, and a raised, pink scar across his neck. Even draped in fur, it was clear that he was gaunt, starved to the edge of death.
“Where are the rest of your people?” said U’ku’let, warming his frozen hands over the flames.
But the stranger said nothing, and only spit into the fire.
It occurred to S’tka that the little man was probably mad with starvation. He scratched constantly at his patchy scalp, once pulling out a tuft of hair and lobbing it into the fire.
“So you are alone?” said U’ku’let to the little man.
But again, the little man refused to speak. He would not so much as look them in the eye as he stirred the flames, a plume of embers rising orange into the night.
Legends of the North Cascades Page 8