by neetha Napew
“I come to speak the truth,” old Teean said with shaky deference as he stood before Cheanah within the headman’s pit hut. “This man has done much thinking. It may be time for this band to go from this place. In this Place of Endless Meat, there is no meat. Never has this man seen so much rain. It is not a natural thing. The herd animals cannot come through the passes this year; the rivers are too deep and wide for the herds to cross them! Perhaps we should follow the way of Torka and walk into the face of the rising sun before it is too late.”
With narrowed, resentful eyes Cheanah observed the wasted figure of the bow-backed old man. How had Teean managed to survive the winter? How had any of them survived it? “How far do you think that you—or any of us—could get, old man, if we took up our belongings and set out across this sodden country?” The question hung in the air. Cheanah looked across the hut and eyed Zhoonali with grim speculation as she sat with her empty badger-skin bag in her lap, casting the bones of telling again and again. The bones clicked and rattled as they fell. Her hands resembled them—pale, dry, purely skeletal. She was wasted by malnutrition.
Guilt caused Cheanah to look away. Since the day he had shifted the responsibility for the weather onto her back, she had not nagged him or voiced an unsolicited opinion. She was his mother, but since being attacked in his own encampment by a. spear-hurling wanawut, he had found himself thinking: If Zhoonali dies, no one will ever know that it came into camp and that I failed to pursue it. No one will know that I lied about my stolen spears. What if Zhoonali is right? What if the forces of Creation have been angered by my wanton breaking with tradition?
Beyond the pit hut, the rain intensified into a downpour. Honee put her head onto her knees and began to cry. Zhoonali’s eyes narrowed as she looked long and hard at the girl, then at Teean, and lastly at her son. There was challenge in her eyes—and more than that, open castigation.
Resentment flared within Cheanah. He would not change his mind. “We will find food,” he said, knowing that he would have to make good on his word. “When the rain slows, we will go out. And this time we will find meat.”
The next day, Cheanah called for the starving hunters to assemble. The hunting party’s destination was on the eastern horizon, where circling birds promised meat under their shadow.
The promise was not broken. The men found a small pride of lions feeding on the carcass of a decaying elk. The wind blew the stink of the dead animal to the hunters. It had been dead a long time.
“Rotten meat is better than no meat,” said Kivan, salivating. “My women told me to bring home something-anything—for the little ones.”
“I count five females, all grown. They won’t be easy to drive off.”
Ekoh’s expression revealed his lack of enthusiasm.
“We have our spear hurlers,” reminded Mano. “What’s the matter, Ekoh? Lost your nerve? Been too long without a woman while waiting for Bili to free herself of that child she still carries?” “You keep my woman’s name out of your mouth!” Ekoh’s face congested with anger. “Besides, we’ll just get close enough to the lions to startle them off. And you, Kivan, could shut your women’s mouths with a lion kill!”
Kivan nodded happily at the prospect.
“Maybe the lions will run,” Yanehva volunteered. “But maybe they won’t. They may be as hungry as we are.”
Mano snorted a hot rebuke. “Always the cautious one, Yanehva! As tremulous as a first-time woman. I’ve been driven off by lions and bears from every carcass that the river’s washed down from the hills since the thaw. I won’t be driven off today.”
Pride in Mano’s assertiveness shone in Cheanah’s eyes. “Mano is right. We can close from three sides. Teean, you stay here and yell. Your lungs are strong, but your legs and arms aren’t what they used to be. You’ll only be in the way.”
It was a good plan. But the wind turned and the big cats scented the hunters before they could draw upon the element of surprise. The lions circled round, then charged them. The men scattered.
When the other females turned back to feed upon the elk, one of them kept on coming. Kivan screamed as a great, sweeping paw knocked him from his feet.
Ekoh and Ram positioned themselves to hurl their spears, but by then Kivan’s screams had stopped; Cheanah called them back. The hunters turned their spear hurlers on the lions, driving them away, then dragged the mutilated remnants of the elk and of Kivan back to camp.
The women and children of Kivan mourned his death. Zhoonali made a little fire for Kivan and sang softly to his spirit while her people gorged themselves on the elk’s meat. It was late in the night when the meat proved to be bad. Zhoonali alone was able to care for her winter weakened people when they grew sick on it. Most she saved, others she could not.
Amazingly, old Teean survived, while Kivan’s youngest widow died, as did Klee, Bili and Ekoh’s little girl, and Shar, Cheanah’s youngest daughter. One of the women of Ram succumbed, and after the bodies were abandoned to look upon the sky forever far out from camp, the people staggered back against illness and grief.
Zhoonali despaired. The breast milk of the meat-poisoned women made the surviving babies gravely ill. In a single night, one infant died, and three more girl babies were so sick that their fathers smothered them. As was customary during starving times, the bodies of the infants were taken well out from camp to serve as bait to lure small carrion eaters to the snares that were set around them.
That bleak, miserable night the people of Cheanah sat within the silent camp, listening to the wind, the rain, and the constant sound of water running over the land. Neither the wolves nor the wanawut howled or wailed, but the people sensed predators lurking .. . hungering .. . for the soft, sweet flesh of the naked infants.
“Whatever is found in the traps tomorrow, I will eat none of it,” Bili whispered bitterly as she drew Seteena close within the pit hut of Ekoh; she ached inside when she felt the thinness of the boy, and she marveled at how he had survived when her outwardly stronger little girl had not.
“Do not speak so, my woman,” soothed Ekoh. “Things will be better for us soon. We have endured bad years before.”
She shivered. “Never like this.”
Seteena patted his mother’s face. “It will be all right, Mother. You will see.”
“Your sister is dead,” she reminded him gently.
The boy eyed her thoughtfully. “Maybe the child that grows within my mother has waited so long to be born because it has known that my sister would need a way to come back into the world. If it is a girl, we will name it after Klee! She will live again; you will see.”
Bili sighed. The boy was so frail, yet so kind and brave. “I will always be sad, Seteena, for as long as we live within this band.”
“What else can we do?” Ekoh asked.
“We could leave. We could walk to the east, as Torka walked. Perhaps we could find him. Oh, think of it, Ekoh! To see Eneela again, and Lonit and lana, and to laugh at the wonderfully terrible jokes of Grek, and to be mothered by Wallah and—“ “Just the three of us? Half-starved and still weak with sickness, and you great with child? We would never reach them. Surely, Bili, we would die.”
“We will die if we stay here. You will see. We will all die.” Within the pit hut of Cheanah, the sons of Cheanah lay awake within their warm, albeit moldering bed furs.
“Did you see the red star just before the weather closed in?” asked Yanehva, lying on his belly with his arms folded beneath his chin. “It looks like the same star that we saw long ago. You remember?”
Mano snorted. “Let’s hope it isn’t the same star. The sky caught fire, the earth shook, and the moon went black. We can do without that.”
“The red star,” Ank pondered. “If it shines when the sky is clear, maybe it will bring us luck. Maybe there’ll be meat in the snares that we set around the dead babies. That would be something.”
That was the first night that Sister led the way down from the hills. The beast ling was not pa
rticularly hungry, but Sister, being fully grown, always had an appetite, and the smell of meat on the wind was sweet and enticing indeed.
His fingers curled now around the smooth hafts of his throwing sticks, which he could use very well. Whenever he left the nest, he always brought two along. He quickened his step. Sister was so far ahead of him that he could not see her now. The smell of the meat was stronger on the rain-misted wind. It was an odd smell, soft and sweet, but with the stink of beast to it.
And then he heard Sister scream.
“Did you hear it?”
“I heard,” Cheanah replied to Zhoonali.
Mano was sitting up, shoving his feet into his boots. “Do you think it was one of the cubs, or another beast?”
“You said that the cubs of the wanawut were dead,” Honee reminded him; fear put a wheedling tremor in her voice.
“Be quiet!” Cheanah’s command stung the entire family to silence. Close at his side, little Klu, openly the headman’s favorite since the day of his birth, stared up at his father questioningly.
“I’m afraid of the wanawut,” Honee whimpered. “I wish its head did not hang outside this hut!”
Had the girl been within striking distance, she would have received the back of Cheanah’s hand across her face.
“Stupid girl, you do not know a good thing when you see it! And do not put name to that which you have not seen lest you cause it to be!”
“Name it then, for I would gladly wet the head of my spear in wanawut blood!” said Mano.
Yanehva frowned at his older brother. “The skin of one wanawut has brought enough sorrow to this camp.”
Other members of the band could be heard stumbling from their pit huts. In a moment they were standing close to Cheanah’s, and he was up and opening the hide door.
“Did you hear it?” The question came from every mouth.
“Do you think we’ve snared it? Taken a wanawut alive?” Ram’s voice held a tremulous edge.
The beast ling found Sister on the ground, rolling on her back, curled up with her feet in the air and her hands desperately holding on to a long barb of bone that had somehow driven itself straight through her snout and palate. When he succeeded in gentling her by stroking her and sounding to her, she allowed him to pull it out. That was when the blood started to spurt and flow, and that was when she reflexively backhanded him ten feet through the air. He landed flat on his back, and the world went black.
When his head cleared and he was able to get to his feet again, he saw that Sister was down and half drowning in her own blood. He ran to her and pulled her to her feet; upright, she could breathe. While she was gasping and mewing in confusion and pain, he saw the meat and the snare. The beast ling snarled at the cleverness of the device.
He frowned. It was starting to sleet. Instinct told him that the beasts must have heard Sister’s screaming and that they would be coming soon. He must get her away.
“It has escaped,” declared Cheanah, hopeful that the others had not heard the relief in his voice.
The sleet was stinging the ground with a fury.
“In this weather we have no chance of tracking it!” snarled Mano with obvious disappointment. “Look, the tracks have already washed away!”
Ank was on his knees. “Not all. Here are a couple. And blood. Yes. You can smell it if you bend close.”
“Watch the snares, boy! They’ll put a hole in a skull as small as yours!” cautioned Ekoh.
“Leave the snares set,” Cheanah decided. “We can check them again in the morning.”
Mano cast a hateful look up at the stormy night. “If we’re lucky, we can pick up a few tracks then, in better light.”
“If we do, it should prove interesting,” said Yanehva as he knelt and touched the rapidly disappearing tracks. “There are two of them. And one wears boots!”
Late the next morning Mano roused Cheanah into reluctant leadership of a hunting party that went out under heavily clouded skies. The wanawut had not returned, but in one of the snares, the hunters found cause to smile: Eight foxes had come to feed upon the bodies of the dead babies. Six had been caught in the net. Mano broke their necks with his bare hands and laughed with the pleasure that the killing gave him. The other two were already dead in snares similar to the one that had injured the wanawut. No one spoke of that. The people were hungry, and the rain had washed away all signs of the beast; even to those who had clearly heard the scream, it seemed like a dream born of the storm of the previous night.
That day the people of Cheanah ate of the molting, malnourished foxes. If anyone thought about the dead infants that had served as bait, it was not mentioned. Food was food, and the babies had been dead anyway.
When the last of the muscle meat and marrow was gone, the women pounded the skulls and bones into fragments and dumped them into a large communal boiling bag with the ears, tails, snouts, sinews, and strips of hide. Rainwater was added to the bag, along with heated stones.
The bag was then wrapped in several layers of water saturated skins and buried in the ashes of the fire pit. The women periodically dug it up to add more heated stones and remoisten the outer layers of the skins to keep them from burning. After several hours, the bag was taken up and its contents strained into bowls of antelope skulls; the liquid that resulted was a thin but nourishing soup. They shared it, drinking it all. The men took the largest portion, as well as all the now moribundly tender ears, tails, snouts, sinews, and bits of hide. When Ekoh reached out and handed a portion of one of the ears to Seteena, Zhoonali rose from the women’s side of the fire and struck it from his hand.
“No! In starving times, that one has no right to eat! He is of no use to his people. Are there no traditions that will be maintained by this band?” Now her sharp, rheumy, hunger-haunted eyes challenged her son. “Tell him, Cheanah!”
He stared back at her as the fox ear he had just secreted under his tunic for little Klu dripped against his belly. He looked at Ekoh and the wasted form of Seteena. He did not like the boy and had not forgotten the way Seteena had attacked him in an imagined defense of Bili. But when Bili was at last free of her pregnancy, the headman knew he would need the boy’s life as leverage; Bili would not be the same when he came to mount her once again.
“Do not be offended, old friend,” he said equably to Ekoh. “Our wise woman speaks with valid concern. Your strength is needed to provide meat for the people.”
“And for my son,” replied Ekoh simply.
Cheanah observed the boy with unconcealed disapproval. “His mother may give to him what she will. You have lost a daughter. Let the boy eat of the child’s share until the spirits smile once more upon this people.”
“That may never be!” Bili retorted. She might have said more had Zhoonali not suddenly slapped her so hard that she fell sideways as blood spurted from her nose and mouth. “Speak not so to the headman of this band, woman of Ekoh!”
Ekoh half rose but was kept in his place by the hard, steadying hand of Mano. “You are envied for your woman, Ekoh, but she talks too much.”
Cheanah waved his hand in a conciliatory fashion. “As headman of this band I could command Ekoh to set his useless boy to walk the wind forever. But instead I say-generously, I might add—feed your useless one as you will, Ekoh, but not of a hunter’s portion.”
Zhoonali looked as though she would explode with anger, but a look from her son stung her to silence. “You have advised, wise woman. This headman has listened. Now he has spoken! You will speak no more!”
“My boy will die without more to eat!” protested Ekoh.
Cheanah shrugged. “Then he will die. As the spirits and the forces of Creation decree. Cheanah will hear no more!”
In silence, with eyes downcast, the people resumed their meal while Zhoonali began to cast her bones angrily, and the boy Seteena stared straight ahead in stoic silence. His gaunt face was set. His sunken eyes were hard with pride when Bili, bloody faced and beginning to swell around the mouth, offere
d him a portion of her broth. He ignored the cup, rose, and walked rigidly from the protection of the sodden tarpaulins to the pit hut of his parents.
“Let him go!” Cheanah shouted at Bili when she made to go after him. “The boy is nothing! Do as I say, or I will send him to walk the wind forever!”
It was late. The other members of the band slept undisturbed by the scuttlings of the youngest children as they went from their family pit huts to scavenge among the cooling embers of the big fire where the strainings of the soup had gone.
There was nothing left but fragments of bone and hairy hide, but the toddlers were hungry, so they chewed and sucked on these blissfully, spitting out the hair and splinters; until one of them discovered the only portions of the foxes that their elders had disdained—the potentially poisonous kidneys and spleens.
By morning the children were all sick. Weakened as they were by hunger and prolonged malnutrition, by nightfall all but one succumbed to the poisonous organs. Perhaps it was the ear of the fox that gave Klu, Cheanah’s youngest and most beloved little son, the extra strength to live as long as he did. But Cheanah had taught all his sons to be bold, and Klu had managed to eat the largest portion of the stolen meat. He died at dawn.
And on that dawn, while the women wailed as they laid Klu to look upon the sky forever alongside the last of the toddlers of the band, Cheanah withered under the strain of his grief and cracked wide open under the crushing weight of his responsibilities.
The headman stood in absolute silence. Water poured off the skin of the wanawut as it lay across his back. In his hand, firmly spiked on a long stake of bone, was the head of the wanawut. Slowly, he raised the head of the beast. Slowly, he took off its skin, drove the stake that held the head deep into the sodden permafrost, then draped the robe over it.
With his head flung back and his arms flung wide, he cried out: “Take back that which is of the wind and storm and misted mountains! It belongs not on the backs of men! Take back the life of the wanawut, and restore our children to this man and to this people!”
