by Joan Wolf
“Beki is well,” the blond young man called Dai replied quietly. “She and Kasar both. She has a child coming.”
Kenje smiled and, like Thorn before him, said, “I am glad. Will you tell her that for me? That I am glad she and Kasar are happy.”
Dai nodded and turned away, the shell in his hands. Thorn and Kenje exchanged a look and were beginning to turn away themselves, when a young man wearing the signature braid of the Goddess approached and demanded of Bror, “You are Ronan’s men?”
“We are Ronan’s men.” Slowly and deliberately, Bror rose to his feet. The other four men turned to face the newcomer. The air was suddenly full of hostility.
The braided man seemed not to notice the threatening atmosphere. “I am Tyr, of the Tribe of the Red Deer,” he said, “and I have a message for Ronan. Will you carry it?”
“The Tribe of the Red Deer cast him out,” Bror replied brutally. His heavy face looked as if it had been carved in wood, so still and stern it seemed. “What do you want with him now?”
“This is not a message from the tribe,” the Red Deer man said, “It is a message from Tyr, his old agemate.”
There was silence. “And what is this message?” Bror asked at last.
“It is this: The temper of the tribe is changing. Have patience. I will send for you when the time is ripe for your return.”
The hostility of the men of the Wolf was now so palpable that Thorn could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.
“That is all?” Bror asked deliberately.
“Sa, that is all.”
“Ronan has a new tribe,” the redhead said. “He does not need the Red Deer any longer.”
Bror reached out and put a large hand upon the redhead’s arm. “I will tell Ronan,” he said to Tyr, his face impassive.
The braided man nodded, and then hesitated, as if he wished to say more. The expression on Bror’s face discouraged him, however, and the men of the Wolf stood in silence watching as the Red Deer intruder turned and slowly walked away. Then they went back to their packing.
Thorn and Kenje waited until Tyr was well away before they followed in his steps.
* * * *
“Your sister is with Ronan?” Thorn demanded when at last he and Kenje were standing by the edge of the rushing river, safe in the midst of the bustle of men packing up their wares.
“Sa,” Kenje sighed. “She is.”
“You did not tell me.” There was reproach in Thorn’s voice.
“It is not something that my father wishes to have known.”
“She must have done something dreadful,” Thorn said. There was a distinct note of admiration in his voice.
But Kenje shook his head. “It was just that she gave her love to the wrong man.”
“Kasar?”
“Sa, Kasar.”
“Why was he the wrong man?”
“He came of a poor family. His father was not a good hunter, and the family had only the bare necessities of skins and furs. Kasar could not afford Beki’s bride price, which was high. In my tribe, you see, the bride price is very important. The rank of a whole family—husband, wife, and children—depends upon how much was paid for the woman. My father did not want his daughter undervalued.”
“What of Beki?”
“She said she did not care, that she wanted only Kasar. But my father is the shaman, a man of great importance in the tribe. He would lose face by taking less for Beki than she was worth.”
Thorn nodded in understanding.
“My father said that Kasar could marry Beki if he came to live in my father’s house and worked for my father. But if Kasar did that, then his children would belong to my father and not to him. Kasar is very proud. He would not become my father’s servant, he said, not even for Beki.”
“So what did your sister and Kasar do?”
“Beki pretended that her blood was flowing and went to stay at the moon hut,” Kenje said matter-of-factly, “She took food and water with her, so it was not until suppertime of the following day that we realized she was no longer there. Of course, the first thing we did was look for Kasar, and he was gone too.”
“They ran away together,” Thorn said, fascinated.
“Sa. Kasar had heard of Ronan’s new tribe, and that was where they went. Beki sent my mother word by a shell trader that she was safe.”
“You must miss her,” Thorn said, thinking of the shell Kenje had given to Dai.
“She was a good sister,” Kenje said simply.
“Your father is still angry?”
“My father says that Kasar kidnapped her from the moon hut. He has named Kasar for rape and says he will never be allowed to return to the Tribe of the Leopard. So I am glad that they have found safety with Ronan. There is no longer a home for them in their own tribe.”
“Thorn!” Thorn looked up to see his father signaling to him from the higher ground near the wall.
“I must go,” he said to Kenje.
“Don’t tell anyone about my sister,” the younger boy enjoined quickly.
“I won’t,” Thorn said. He took a step, stopped, and said over his shoulder, “I promise.”
Kenje nodded and watched him walk away.
Chapter Ten
Thorn finally settled for a handful of small golden shells to bring to his mother. One encouraging thing about the trade was that the shell man was willing to accept one of Thorn’s own engraved bones in exchange, and he did not have to go and beg one of his father’s. It made the golden shells more palatable, as Thorn was not so certain that he would have gotten the white shell in exchange for his own work.
By late in the afternoon, most of the Buffalo tribe were gathered around their campfire, packing for the return trip on the morrow. It had been a good gathering; most of their goods had been traded successfully, and two of the men had made profitable marriage contracts for their daughters. News had been exchanged, and friendships renewed.
The packing was almost finished when one of the men picked up a torch and went to search along the walls to make certain nothing had rolled away. Thorn was busy arranging his mother’s shells so they would not get broken, when a startled cry caught his attention. He turned to see Herok holding a torch up to the wall, right by the place where Thorn had done his drawings. His blood froze.
“What is it?” Haras asked.
“Come here and see,” Herok replied.
Haras went over to look at the wall. Then he said, “Rilik.”
Thorn sat like a stone and waited. “Thorn,” his father’s voice came next. It sounded very grim. “Did you do this?”
Thorn got to his feet and bravely faced the men at the wall. His heart was hammering within his chest. “Sa,” he said. “I did.”
“What is it?” the others were asking. “What has Thorn done?”
Haras told them. “He has drawn a picture of the son of the shaman of the Leopard tribe. A picture of his face.”
Shocked silence.
Behind him, Thorn heard one of the other boys say softly, “Thorn, how could you?”
“I didn’t mean to do it,” Thorn tried to explain. In the light of the torch, Rilik’s face looked white as death. “I drew the buffalo and the horse, and then…before I even knew what my fingers were doing…I drew the picture of Kenje.” He met his father’s eyes. “I am sorry, Father, I knew right away I should not have done it, but I was afraid to scratch it out…” He bit his lip. “I was afraid something bad would happen to Kenje.”
“What should we do?” It was Haras, his large, genial face looking worried. “Jessl is not with us. You are the artist, Rilik. Do you know what we should do about this?”
Rilik said heavily, “We must show it to the boy’s father. He is a shaman. He will know what to do.”
Thorn’s chin jerked up. He did not want Kenje, or Kenje’s father, to know what he had done. Kenje thought that he was a friend.
“Were you just planning to leave this here, Thorn?” his father asked cold
ly.
Miserably, Thorn nodded. “I did not think anyone would ever find it. I thought it would be safe, that Kenje would be safe.” He had to look away from his father’s eyes, they were so cold.
“I will get the shaman,” Rilik said to Haras, “We will deal with you later, Thorn.”
* * * *
The shaman of the Leopard tribe came and looked at the picture. He was very upset. He did not know what magic was needed to cancel the power of the picture. Finally, after a long talk with Haras and Rilik, he agreed to perform a ceremony. He also agreed to take a large amount of the goods the Buffalo tribe had traded for in payment for the danger to his son’s life.
Thorn was not allowed to attend the shaman’s ceremony, nor did he get a chance to speak to Kenje. He saw the boy only once, as he came with his father from the inner gallery after the shaman had finished his rite. Kenje gave Thorn one long, reproachful look as he silently followed his father out of the tunnel. It took three men of the Leopard to carry the goods that Haras had been forced to part with.
Thorn was in disgrace. No one spoke to him. We will deal with you later, Rilik had said, and evidently “later” meant when they returned home. For two long days, Thorn walked miserably in his tribe’s line of march and thought about what he had done.
His mother was not in their hut when he reached home, and the first thing Thorn did was to get out the pictures he had once drawn of Ronan, the ones he had told his father he had thrown in the river. He had done them three years before on smooth oval-shaped stones, and he had hidden them under some old toys in a deerskin bag he kept in a corner of his mother’s hut. He took the bag now to a nook in the cliff face and opened it.
Thorn remembered clearly that he had drawn five different pictures of Ronan’s face. He reached now into the bag and first lifted out a small bow that he had once played with; next came a set of darts and the rings made of reeds through which the darts were thrown. There was an old bull roarer, and a set of knucklebones. Then an oddly shaped white rock he had once fancied. At last his fingers closed around a smooth oval stone. He lifted it out and laid it carefully on the ground before him. He reached into the bag again and took out another, then a third.
The fourth time his fingers touched a sharp edge. Slowly, fearfully, he removed his hand from the bag and found himself looking at a fragment of one of the smooth oval portrait stones. One of Ronan’s pictures had been shattered.
Thorn sat in utter stillness and thought.
Ronan’s picture had been destroyed, but Ronan still lived. Ronan was well. Thorn knew that from the men of the Wolf he had spoken to at the gathering. The picture had had no power over Ronan.
And the picture was a good one. Thorn looked now at the three stones that still retained Ronan’s image, looked at the high cheekbones, the arrogantly arched nose, the proud mouth. He had even caught the look of shuttered reticence and the faint suggestion of physical pain. Ronan was there.
Thorn reached into the bag and brought out the last stone. There was a great crack all through the middle of it.
Yet Ronan was fine.
After a long time, Thorn put the stones and the fragments back into the bag and returned to his mother’s hut. She had come back from her gathering expedition and welcomed him with soft cries and warm hugs. He gave her the shells he had brought for her and watched with pleasure the way her delicate face lit with joy. For a few minutes he almost forgot that he was in disgrace. Then his father came into the hut, and all his pleasure was quenched.
“W-what is wrong?” his mother asked her husband, divining immediately from the look on his face that something was.
Rilik told her what it was that Thorn had done.
“But surely it cannot be so terrible,” Thorn’s mother said, standing up for her child the way she would never stand up for herself. “Have you not said, my husband, that the shaman made a ceremony to take away the picture’s power?”
“The shaman himself was not certain if the ceremony would be effective,” Rilik said grimly. “Haras was forced to give over a large amount of our goods in reparation for the damage done to the shaman’s son.”
In her gentle way Thorn’s mother replied, “If that is so, I am thinking that even if the shaman had known the ceremony to be effective he would not have said so.”
“Perhaps that is true,” her husband agreed. “But it is unarguably true that his son was wronged. Nor was this the first time Thorn has been guilty of drawing human faces. I have warned him before about it.”
Siba made a soft noise of disbelief.
“It is true, Mother,” Thorn said.
“Oh, my son,” his mother said despairingly. “Why?”
“I do not know,” Thorn said with almost identical despair. “I cannot seem to help myself, Mother. My fingers just do it.”
“I have spoken to Haras about this,” Rilik said.
Tense silence fell.
“He has decided that since you cannot control this urge of yours, Thorn, then you cannot be allowed to draw at all.”
Thorn stared at his father.
“This is a blow to me. It is a blow to all the tribe,” Rilik said. “There is the promise of a great artist in you. But I think Haras is right. If you cannot control your gift, then you cannot be allowed to use it.”
Thorn did not speak. Rilik turned his eyes from his son’s face as if it hurt him to look at it. After a moment, he left the hut.
* * * *
Thorn stood it for the length of one moon before the emptiness in his life became unbearable. He had found the taboo against drawing the faces of humans frustrating, but frustration was a mere triviality in comparison to what the prohibition against drawing at all was doing to him.
Since first he had been able to hold a graver, Thorn had drawn pictures. He drew as naturally as he breathed. To give it up was like an amputation.
At first he had thought his father could not mean it. Surely Rilik would relent. He knew the kind of talent his son had in his fingers; the artist in Rilik would not be able to bear seeing that talent go to waste.
The weeks passed, and slowly Thorn began to understand that it was not his father’s voice that counted in this. The chief had been furious about having to pay so heavy a fine to the shaman of the Leopard tribe. Haras was normally a genial and generous man, but in this matter of Thorn he had made up his mind. Thorn had clever hands, said Haras. Let him learn to make tools. And he sent Thorn to work with the flint knapper.
When the last sliver of the Moon of the New Year was hanging in the late-spring sky, it was Thorn who made up his mind. He would do as Crim had done before him, and take the track to the high mountains, the Altas, in search of Ronan.
It was a desperate decision for a gentle and well-loved boy to make. It would give great heartache to his mother and his father, whom he loved. But Thorn knew he could not go on living like this.
He had been born to be an artist. If he could not be an artist in his own tribe, then he would have to go to a place where he could. It was as simple, and as fearful, as that.
Thorn had asked Kenje if he knew the location of the Valley of the Wolf, and the boy had replied that all he knew was that you must follow the Atata River up the Altas, go through the pass to the other side, and 6nd the Lake of the Eagle.
If a pregnant Fara could make that trip, Thorn told himself, then he could too.
Once Thorn had made up his mind, he did not tarry. He waited until the Moon of the New Foals had grown bright enough to light his way, and then he left. Beside his sleeping mother he placed one of the stones which bore Ronan’s face, so she would know where he had gone. Then he packed his gravers and his paints and his brushes into his sleeping skins and headed south along the river that would lead him up the Altas.
* * * *
The river track was protected on either side by high sheltering cliffs, but when the stone walls gave way to a steep forest of beech and pine, Thorn’s enthusiasm began to ebb. The smells of strong resin and s
harp pine from the great evergreens closed around him. Close by, two wolves howled in concert, and there came a wild shrieking of hyenas from the towering forest on the other side of the river. Suddenly Thorn felt very young, very small, and very frightened.
The miles went by very slowly. For centuries the herds had come this way, following ancient tracks to the rich summer grazing in the high pastures of the Altas, and for centuries the Buffalo tribe had traveled in the wake of the herds, to hunt the animals in their summer environs. Thorn had traveled this track before with the men of his tribe, and so he was ready when the mountain began to rise steeply before him.
The Atata had cut a deep gorge, almost a crack, into the limestone rock of the mountain, and Thorn climbed alongside the river, By the time he had scrambled up through the steep rocky chasm and gained the flat, mist-hung pasture where the men of the Buffalo hunted deer in the summer, the first light of morning was in the sky. Guarded by solemn mountain sentinels just beginning to stain red with the rising sun. Thorn lay down to sleep.
He awoke to the splendor of daffodils, pansies, lilies and other colorful spring flowers, blazing everywhere in the thick grass. Antelope and red deer and reindeer flowed across the brilliantly colored pasture peacefully, blending with each other and then disengaging, harmoniously intent upon nature’s great gift to the herds: the mountain grass.
Almost reluctantly, Thorn shouldered his pack, crossed the pasture, and once more began to ascend. Up through a second steep and rocky gorge he went, up through a second chasm and into a second, smaller pasture. On the far side of the pasture reared the vast wall of the Altas, and Thorn’s Heart sank. It seemed as if all his climbing had been for naught!
Dark fell, and with the dark came the cold. Thorn built a fire and went to sleep under a spray of stars.
He arose with the dawn and commenced his journey upward into a cold and remote universe of stone and sky. The trees fell away, and scrub was the only vegetation in sight. The river fell in one waterfall after another, covering Thorn with a continual, freezing spray. It was midday when he finally gained a third gorge, enshrouded in mist from a hundred-foot waterfall. Thorn stood for a while, his ears full of the water’s thunder, and then he began to climb again.
