by Joe Zeigler
“If that is true,” Aitor asked, “why has the value of combs doubled? Ohad had renegotiated and was getting twenty combs from Itzli for one flint arrowhead. Today you are offering one obsidian arrowhead for only ten of Itzli’s combs.”
“The obsidian is not worth less than flint,” Micaela replied. “Rather, from our experience trading combs, the combs are worth more than Ohad estimated. And we want to be fair. We want to be equitable and honest with everyone we deal with so we can establish long-term relationships where everyone profits, from the producers of goods to the customers. We believe that a trade is only a successful one when both parties benefit equally.”
“That is an admirable ideal,” Aitor replied. “We will see what the future brings. I do agree that the girls’ raising of the value of combs without being asked bodes well.” He rose, and the meeting was over.
After Micaela had left, he said to Itzli, “We will proceed cautiously and see if these women can deliver what they promise. If not, we will lose little.” He shook his head. “If they are what they say they are, a lot of things will change.”
“But, Aitor,” Itzli replied, “they are mere girls. As long as they are poor and failures, they will be OK. If they succeed, some man will take it all away from them, and then we’ll be left to deal with him.”
“I am not certain of that,” Aitor said. “Have you seen that they practice the martial arts for at least an hour every morning and again in the evening? They look like a force that may be hard to overcome. I certainly would not want to try to take what was theirs.”
“As you say, Aitor, we’ll see what the future brings.”
“Yes, and until then we will deal cautiously.”
The arrangements were going better than Micaela had hoped. Their obsidian was well received, so they were getting good value in trade. Surprisingly, they were being offered credit and consignment items to take and sell with the promise of paying for them later. This was a new idea for Micaela, and she was thinking about it, considering the ramifications. They had so much inventory now that there was no choice but to raft it downstream. This carried risks they didn’t understand. If it went badly, they could lose their investment. They could start over. But if they lost goods they did not yet own, that could be a much weightier matter.
In the meanwhile, the young men of the Cliff Dwellers courted the girls. Lofn had quickly succumbed to the charms of a handsome young man named Dewii, and the other girls did not see her for some time once the Sun went down. Micaela was beginning to wonder how serious this was becoming. Lofn had not yet dropped to her knees before him in public, but no one doubted her position in private. There might be one less returning with them to the Lowland.
The other three girls had formed the habit of sleeping together every night, keeping the men at bay and making things simple. Micaela thought it a mistake to mix business and romance, especially as the business relationship was new. On the other hand, she understood Lofn’s motivation. There were no bad feelings.
Politely she deflected the potter’s efforts to supply them with pottery because they agreed that these items would not survive the trip downstream. Rather they planned a day trip to collect potting clay. Micaela had made a travois of two long poles with a net woven of light hemp rope tied between them to transport the clay. She wasn’t planning to bring a lot back—only one hundred pounds. This would just be a test of their ability to produce pottery in the Lowland.
She had discussed this plan with Aitor. “I am not planning to produce pottery to avoid trading for it from you,” she told him. “It’s a transportation problem. I just don’t believe I could transport any quantity of pottery downriver without it breaking. It is just too fragile.”
“I understand,” he replied, “and you may take as much of our clay as you like. There is so much else that we have to trade. I’m happy.”
“Thank you, Aitor.”
“And,” he continued, “you may go down to the river and watch the potters and ask questions. Learn from the masters.”
“Oh, thank you, Aitor. I will do that.” Unfortunately, she would not have much time for that. Next time…
The next morning the four girls, bundled against the cold, prepared to go to harvest the clay. Lofn arrived with her young man, Dewii, who insisted on joining the expedition.
“OK, Dewii,” Micaela said, “you’ll pull the travois on the way back.”
They made good time along the well-beaten trail that led along the steppe without any significant elevation change. After exploring the area and digging out the clay, they were on their way back just before dark. Contrary to Micaela’s teasing, they took turns pulling the travois, and all helped in challenging sections. It was Dewii’s turn, and he was pulling the clay along in front of the girls. The trail led between two large boulders and turned left just ahead, and as Dewii passed through, a large mountain lion leaped twelve feet from the top of the boulder on the right. All four girls froze—it was a very large cat, bigger by far than any of them had ever seen. Micaela was astonished by its grace as it jumped and flew through the air as effortlessly as a bird. Then, as one, they readied their spears and advanced. And were too late. The creature had ripped Dewii open from his neck to his pelvis, and its teeth had almost severed his head from his body. Crouching over his kill, the big cat turned toward them and growled, bringing them up short.
“Dewii’s dead,” Micaela called. “Let’s not get ourselves hurt protecting a dead man. Back up slowly.”
“It’s going to eat him,” Lofn cried, and the lion growled again.
“Quiet! Be quiet, or it’s going to eat us, too,” Micaela whispered harshly. “Back up slowly.” As they backed away, the tension visibly left the cat, and it started to devour his meal.
Dewii’s Revenge
“We brought back what was left of him,” Aitor was saying to a group of men and the four girls, “which wasn’t much. We cannot let this be. Once a mountain lion has killed a man, it acquires the taste. Six of you, come with me—we’re going to end this cat.” The whole group surged forward, including the four girls. In the end, Aitor had to select the six who would go with him. The four girls were not among the chosen.
“We want to help,” Micaela said to Aitor. “After all, it tried to kill us and did kill our friend, whose only fault was to fall in love with Lofn.”
“Well then,” Aitor replied, “bring your spears, and you’ll stand guard while the men prepare the trap.”
A trap? How is this to work? Micaela wondered. The only things any of the men carry are a coil of rope, a spear each, and a knife. How are they going to make a trap?
Once they arrived at the scene of the attack, the men started gathering large stones and arranging them in a narrow, elongated U shape. After piling them waist high, they sought stones large enough to bridge the top and create a roof. They piled on stone after stone, strengthening the structure while Micaela wondered what it was. Finally, they located a large flat stone as tall and thick as Micaela. It took all six of them to move it to the structure and to position it over the opening. After studying it for a moment, Aitor secured the rope to the top, laid it lengthwise over the structure, and pushed it through a gap in the stones above the closed end. Micaela noticed for the first time that there were many such gaps in the structure. Small holes, too small to get her hand through, but quite evenly spaced. She suddenly saw that the design was more complicated than it first appeared.
Just then, a small hunting party appeared from the north. Micaela recognized them as men of the Cliff Dwellers. They were carrying a large goat suspended from a pole between two of them.
Aitor must have arranged this before we left this morning, Micaela thought.
Seemingly everyone knew what they were doing except the four girls. Without saying a word, the hunters unceremoniously deposited the animal by the opening of the new structure. Then, one of them tied a loop of rope around the goat’s neck. Next, he untied the feet, dropped onto his belly, and crawled in
to the structure, dragging the goat with him.
Bait, Micaela thought, figuring it out. He will tie the rope to the inside of the trap. The lion will hear the goat’s cry of distress, enter the trap, kill the bait, and try to drag the body away. The goat is tied to the stone and will cause it to fall across the entrance—simple.
“All right, let’s get out of here,” Aitor ordered. “The cat will be hunting at dusk, and we don’t want to be here.” As they walked back to the canyon, Aitor explained to Micaela and the other girls. “We used to hunt down rogue cats, corner them, and spear them. But this is better. It’s easier, and it’s safer. No one gets hurt, except the man-killer.”
And the goat, Micaela thought.
That night, for the first time in days, Lofn returned to sleep with the other two, though little sleep took place. Lofn was inconsolable. She was sure that the right and only mate for her had just been killed, though it wasn’t clear if she had reached the conclusion that he was the one before or after Dewii was killed.
Young girls can be very dramatic, Micaela thought.
Lofn went on and on, sobbing all night, crying that she was alone and there would never be another. There had just been Dewii.
Oh, give me a break, Micaela thought, but she did not speak the words. Who knows? It could be true.
It was midmorning before Aitor led them back to the lion trap, for lions also hunted at dawn. As they approached from upwind, everything was quiet.
“It seems we missed him,” Eijá said.
Just then, a roar and dust rose from the structure. The massive stones were shaking, and dust was rising inside the trap, escaping through the holes like a cloud of steam from a boiling pot.
“No, we got him,” Aitor said.
The men moved quickly to surround the low structure. It became apparent what the gaps were for as they pushed their spears through the holes and pierced the lion, enraging him further—something Micaela had not thought possible. Lofn advanced with her spear and angry countenance and found a gap in the stones through which to apply it. The men made no sound and wouldn’t have been heard anyway above the roars. Then the roars changed to screams. Horrible screams from the depths as blood sprayed out between the stones. It seemed a long time before it was over, and Micaela was sickened.
Aitor looked at Micaela’s stricken face and said, “I know, I know, child, but it had to be done.”
Everything in One Basket
Finally, their business with the Cliff Dwellers was finished. They had completed the negotiations, and all their obsidian was spent, exchanged for goods Micaela believed would be more valuable in the Lowland. She felt they had done well with both the trading and the relationships that promised a prosperous future. Now it was urgent that they go. The cold was becoming dangerous, and soon it would make travel difficult on the trails and impossible on the river.
The discussion focused on whether to use one large raft or two smaller ones. Ixchel and Eijá argued that they should not put all the goods on one raft in case it was lost to the rapids. Micaela felt that two rafts would double the chance of loss, and both would be undermanned, so to speak. Lofn sat alone, quiet in her grief, and did not join the discussion.
Micaela felt that the four of them would be needed to navigate a raft of any size. Unfortunately, the Cliff Dwellers had no experience on the river and were of no help.
“Look,” Micaela said, drawing in the dirt with a stick, “if you make one large raft, imagine fifteen feet by fifteen feet, you will need two feet clear around the edges for us to stand to pole the raft. If you build two smaller rafts that have the combined total cargo space of one large one, and the same two feet clear on the edges, they would each be only a little smaller—about eleven feet by eleven feet—too big to be handled by only two of us.”
The two girls came to understand the logic of that argument, and finally, with everyone in agreement, they started to build the raft under Micaela’s supervision. She had some experience from watching the Raiders. The Cliff Dwellers helped cut the logs and supplied the hemp rope to bind them together. Her design was robust but flexible, able to bend without coming apart. The plan called for the logs to be set perpendicular to the flow of the river. Micaela envisioned the raft crawling over shallow rapids, with the logs still floating upstream, initially pushing the raft up and over the rocks. Then the logs in front, floating downstream, would pull the rest of them over. With so much help from their friends, the raft was finished, launched, and loaded in only two days.
That night the Cliff Dwellers hosted a feast in their honor, and the next morning they pushed off after a huge breakfast, many goodbyes, and good wishes. They would miss these people, but they consoled themselves with the knowledge they would see them again.
The river, which at this point ran east at the bottom of the canyon, was very narrow, barely wide enough for their raft. They had scouted down to the lake, found no more restricted places, and seen only one snag—a fallen tree that blocked a quarter of the width. They quickly cut it free and sent it on its way downstream.
The river ran slowly this time of year, and the voyage down to the lake was peaceful as one girl stood on each corner of the raft. By midafternoon, they exited the canyon. The raft floated out onto the lake and slowed to what seemed a stop as the flow dissipated across the width of the lake. Each girl pulled a paddle out of the pile in the center, and forward progress again became apparent. Micaela’s eyes kept moving to the spot on the shore where the Raiders had held her, and she imagined that she could see the smoke from their fires in the steam rising from the lake.
They’re gone, she reassured herself over and over. They’re gone. They were in the middle of the lake when the last vestiges of light dissolved. With an overcast sky and no moon, they could not even see the other side of the raft.
“I’ll take the first watch,” Micaela said. “I’ll wake Ixchel when I tire. The river is still flowing through the lake toward the south. We’ll slowly move in that direction during the night and be closer, with no effort, in the morning.”
After an hour of staring into the blackness surrounding the raft, relying on her hearing for warning of anyone approaching, Micaela started to have hallucinations. Her mind created images in the darkness. She could see a line of people, burdened with large objects on their backs, moving through the blackness. Then two men chasing a young girl. Micaela couldn’t tell what color her hair was, as all the images appeared gray on black, no color at all. Micaela blinked her eyes and rubbed them. Strangely, the images did not disappear when she closed her eyes. It seemed like such a long time, but she didn’t know how much time had passed. There was no moon to measure time; the overcast sky hid the stars. It was as if she were suspended in a void.
“Ixchel, Ixchel,” she called and turned. She was no longer sure in which direction she was standing.
“What?” Ixchel answered, not entirely awake. “Is it my watch?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how much time has passed.” She heard Ixchel get up and knew that she was looking around.
“This is strange,” she said. “Where are you?”
“I’m here. It is very strange and disorienting. I don’t think we should stand watch alone.”
“OK, I’m awake now. Hum a song, and I’ll come to you.”
They spent the rest of the dark night sitting together and watched the sky lighten in the east. They never wakened the next shift because neither of them felt like relinquishing control to sleep in the midst of the blackness. As the light gained dominion, they saw that they were very close to the entrance to the river that flowed from the lake.
“Ixchel, quickly, let’s land on the beach—there. We can take a break, eat, and then check to make sure everything is secure before we enter the river,” Micaela said.
Nodding, Ixchel took up her paddle. The light, voices and splashing noises had awakened the other two, who also took to paddle. Upon landing, Eijá started a cooking and warming fire.
“
Make it big,” Lofn called out. “I’m freezing.”
“Yeah, make it big,” they all joined in, laughing. The girls spent that day and night on the beach. Ixchel and Micaela slept. The others hunted and rerigged the load.
“Micaela was right,” Eijá said. “The load was working its way loose.”
“We haven’t even been through any rapids yet. We have to do better. If the load shifts even a little, the whole thing will go over,” Lofn said.
Eijá, though glad Lofn was coming out of her shell and becoming involved, was a little irritated at her stating of the obvious.
“OK, Lofn, you take a look and tell us how to do it better,” she said. Immediately she felt sorry for her bitchiness when Lofn did just that. Surprising Eijá, Lofn proved very competent, devising a system that was self-tightening. The more the load wiggled, the tighter the ropes became. Perhaps there is more to this girl than I thought, Eijá realized.
The next morning the dew was thick and frozen, covering their furs and cracking as the girls shifted underneath. However, the day broke bright and clear, with a promise of warmer air in the afternoon. Eijá rose first and made a fire, which they all gathered around to eat their morning meal. Then they boarded and pushed off into the river.
At first, the river was wide, its progress smooth and stately, though it slowly narrowed and picked up speed as the canyon walls rose around them. Soon the banks of the river ended, with only vertical cliffs on either side. “Tie yourselves on,” Micaela shouted. “If you go over here, there is no saving you.” She noticed that Lofn had anticipated the need and had already secured herself to the raft. Then they heard a roar ahead—rapids.
The raft rounded a sharp bend, and white water appeared before them. The craft shuddered as it dragged across a series of rocks.
