by Joan Wolf
“Ronan told us to bring him to you,” Dai said.
Eken smiled. “We will take care of him, Dai. Thank you.” Then to Thorn, she said, “Come in, come in!”
Thorn ducked into the hut and saw Fara sitting on a reindeerskin beside the hearth, nursing a baby. Thorn smiled all over his face just to see her so. Her brown eyes looked so happy and serene as she gazed up at him, her babe at her breast.
“Have you come for me?” Eken had entered behind him, and as she took a seat next to her sister her pretty face puckered with a frown. “If you have come to bring me back to wed Herok, I will not go, Thorn. I am staying here with Fara.”
“I have not come for you, Eken,” Thorn said. “I have come to join the Tribe of the Wolf for myself.”
The women looked at each other in wonderment, then turned back to him. Eken waved for him to sit, and demanded, “Why?”
Thorn sighed, sat on his heels, and told them the story of the shaman’s son. While he was speaking Fara finished feeding one babe, handed it to Eken, and received the second, which she put to her other breast, Eken expertly cradled the first babe against her shoulder and began to pat its back.
“And so you came because you thought Ronan would let you continue to draw?” Eken asked when Thorn had finished his tale.
“Sa, And he has agreed that I may join the tribe—as a flint knapper and as an artist.”
“It is in my heart that you came on a fortunate day,” Fara said. “He has turned away two other men since we first arrived.”
“I do not understand that,” Thorn said in bewilderment. “If he wants to build a tribe, I should think he would want to increase his numbers.”
“He does, of course, but these two were particularly unsavory characters,” Eken said. “The tribe does not need thieves and murderers to make up its numbers.”
Thorn thought of Ronan’s comment about rapists and murderers, but did not know quite how to put his question. “Ah…”he said, “then what kind of people do make up the Tribe of the Wolf?”
Eken’s hand was gently massaging the baby’s back. “People who broke the rules of their own tribes,” she said. “People who made a mistake and were made to pay heavily for it. Not bad people, Thorn.”
“People like Beki and Kasar?” Thorn asked.
The two women looked at him curiously. “How do you know about Beki and Kasar?” Fara asked.
“The shaman’s son whose face I drew? He is Beki’s brother.”
“Sa,” said Fara, and she bent her head to rest her lips on the fuzzy baby head nursing at her breast.
“Well, then, sa, people like Beki and Kasar,” Eken said. “When I think of it, there are actually a number of people here who were unlucky in love.”
Thorn thought of Bror, whose sad story he had heard from Kenje. There was a man who had certainly been unlucky in love. “What of the two men who brought me here?” he asked Eken. “Dai and Okal. Were they unlucky in love also?”
“Okal was. He is of the Tribe of the Bear, and they are a tribe that is very strict with their unmarried girls. Okal lay with one of these girls and got her with child. She tried to rid herself of it and died in the attempt. Her brothers swore to kill Okal, and he fled to Ronan.”
“They must be strict indeed if the girl was reduced to such a fearful measure,” Thorn said wonderingly. “Why did she not just marry Okal?”
Fara raised her face from her baby’s hair. “He was to marry someone else,” she said drily.
“Oh.” Thorn thought of the redheaded young man whom he had first met at the gathering and slowly shook his head, “He does not look like the sort of man who would play games like that.”
Fara took the baby from her breast and lifted it to her shoulder. “It is not always easy to tell a man’s heart from his face,” she said.
Thorn nodded politely. “That is so.” He glanced at the open door and the daylight beyond it. “What of Dai, then?” he asked.
“I am not sure of his story,” Eken answered. “It has something to do with the death of his brother. I do know that he has been with Ronan for a long time—for almost as long as Bror.”
“How many people are there in the tribe altogether?”
“There are three handfuls of men—plus one, now that you are here. And one handful plus three of women.”
“That is a goodly number,” Thorn said, impressed.
“There are children also,” Fara said. “Three others besides my twins.”
Thorn looked from the bundled twin on Fara’s shoulder to the one that was reposing upon Eken’s. “Are they boys?” he asked.
“Girls,” Fara replied proudly.
Thorn smiled at the look on her face. “I am so glad that Ronan let you keep them.”
“He was brought up in the Way of the Goddess,” Fara said. “The Mother is gentler with children than Sky God is.”
“Yet it is my understanding that even the Goddess allows you to keep but one twin,” Thorn said. “At least, that is what my father told me.”
“Your father was right,” Eken said. “We have people here from the tribes of the plains and they are followers of the Mother. Twins, they believe, are really one child that has split in two in the womb. All of the goodness given to that one child goes into the first twin, the twin of lightness, and this twin they keep. The second twin, they believe, is the repository of all the single child’s evil, and this twin they expose.”
“But the Tribe of the Red Deer keeps them both?”
Fara shook her head. Her face looked strained. “Na. The Tribe of the Red Deer keeps the first twin and exposes the second. It is Ronan who said both babies should stay.” Her arms tightened around the precious bundle on her shoulder. “I will call blessings upon him for the rest of my days for that.”
Thorn said, “His heart is kind.”
Both Fara and Eken gave him identically startled looks. “I do not know if I would say that, precisely,” Fara murmured doubtfully.
“Why else would he allow you to keep the twins?”
It was Eken who replied. “I think it is because he is not afraid.” She rocked slowly back and forth, her cheek brushing against the baby sleeping so contentedly on her shoulder. “He is not afraid of twins, at least. Nor”—here she smiled faintly at Thorn—”of having pictures painted of his face.”
“But it is dangerous not to fear anything,” said Thorn, frowning slightly. “A man who has no fear has no reverence.”
Both women gave an identical shrug.
“What god does the Tribe of the Wolf worship?” Thorn asked next.
“We are all from different tribes, Thorn,” Fara said, “and we have different ways. Ronan’s rule is that each person should be free to follow his or her own way, so long as it does not interfere with the way of someone else.”
“What god does Ronan worship, then?” Thorn asked.
“Now that,” Eken said softly, “is a mystery.”
Chapter Twelve
It was not long before a procession of women began to appear before Fara’s tent, Thorn soon found himself at the center of a good-natured and curious group, all drinking Eken’s freshly brewed sage tea. Thorn was still young enough to feel perfectly comfortable among women and children, and so he drank his tea and answered their questions readily, and all the time his eyes were flicking from face to face, trying to match individuals to the names and stories Fara and Eken had told him earlier.
He would have known Beki for Kenje’s sister anywhere, he thought, looking at the girl’s sleepy blue eyes and tip-tilted nose. Seated next to Beki was a woman called Yeba, whose once-pretty face was disfigured by an ugly scar, It was not until afterward that Thorn learned from Eken the story behind that scar: Yeba’s husband had caught her in adultery and in punishment she had been expelled from the Tribe of the Squirrel with the tip of her nose cut off.
Thorn was also introduced to two women from the People of the Dawn, one of the tribes that dwelt on the plain to the morning side of the Al
tas. Thorn had never before met a woman who was not of the Kindred, and he looked at them with wide-eyed curiosity.
Both Berta and Tora had glossy, dark brown hair, which they wore in a single braid that reached to their waist. Their eyes were large and brown, their nosebones and cheekbones broad, their complexions warmly olive. They were sisters, Thorn found out later, who had left their tribe when their brother had been expelled by the healing woman for being possessed of an evil spirit. The girls had refused to desert their young brother and had taken him into the high mountains in a valiant attempt to contact the spirits that would cure him of the sweating sickness that had so terrified their tribe. There they had been discovered by Heno, one of Ronan’s men, and he had helped to care for the sick boy. When Mait had recovered, all three siblings had followed Heno to the Valley of the Wolf, Both girls had since married, and both had arrived at Fara’s fire with young children in cradleboards upon their backs.
All of the women were politely curious about what had brought Thorn to the Tribe of the Wolf. Reluctantly, he told them his tale, acutely aware of Beki, Kenje’s sister, sitting at his side. When he had finished he turned and assured her earnestly, “I am convinced that Kenje was in no danger.” And he related the story of Ronan’s pictures.
“Ronan was mad to let you draw his picture in the first place,” Fara said firmly. “What was he thinking of?”
Before Thorn could reply, Berta spoke. “Ronan was brought up in the Way of the Mother and we do not believe in painted images as do those of you who follow Sky God.” Berta spoke the language of the Kindred, but with an accent that proclaimed her outlander origins.
Beki spoke next, her voice bitter. “I see that my father has not changed. You say that he managed to extort a big fine from your chief?”
“Sa,” Thorn said. “We lost all the profits of our trading. Haras was furious with me.”
“My father has ever been watchful to make a profit from his children,” Beki said, even more bitterly than she had spoken before.
“Fathers do not feel for their children the way mothers do,” Berta said. Her baby had begun to fuss a few minutes earlier, and she was busy unfastening her from the cradle-board. “It is a constant amazement to me the way the women of the Kindred have allowed the men to usurp their mother-rights.”
Everyone watched Berta as she loosened the leather ties that supported her babe on the cradleboard. “That is how things have always been with us,” Beki said finally.
The last tie had been unfastened and Berta lifted her whimpering child into her arms. “This child that you carry,” she said to Beki, “will you give Kasar the right to make all the decisions as to what will be good for it and what will not?”
Instinctively, Beki placed a hand upon her swelling stomach. “I will not.”
Berta undid the thong on her shirt and put her babe to the breast. The fussing immediately ceased. “If Tabara had belonged to the People of the Dawn she would never have had her children taken away from her,” Berta said. “That is a barbarous thing to do to a woman, worse even than what was done to Yeba.”
“That is so,” Berta’s sister, Tora, agreed.
Thorn did not remember being introduced to a woman named Tabara, and indeed, from the behavior of the others, it was clear to him that she was not present.
It was Eken who spoke into the suddenly somber silence. “Tabara was found in adultery. For us of the Kindred that is a serious matter. It strikes at the very heart of the family, Berta. It cannot be passed over lightly.”
Berta’s babe hiccupped loudly, and all the women smiled. “The family is a mother and her children,” Berta said, her hand gently patting her child’s back. She looked at Thorn, the only male present. “The man is not important.”
Thorn looked back into those challenging brown eyes. The women were quiet, waiting to hear what he might say. “It’s not true that the man is unimportant to the family,” he said indignantly. “My father was very important to me. It was he who taught me all the skills I need in order to be a man. How can that not be important?”
“Any man can teach those things to a child,” Berta said dismissively.
“That is so,” her sister agreed. “In our tribe that kind of teaching is done by the mother’s brother. A father is not necessary.”
Thorn stared at the two of them in amazement. So this was the thinking of women who followed the Goddess! Thorn was very glad he himself came from a tribe that understood the importance of men.
“Is your tribe led by a Mistress, like the Tribe of the Red Deer?” Thorn asked.
Berta shook her head. “The People of the Dawn are led by a chief. A woman has too much responsibility at home to have the time to assume responsibility for others who are not of her family. But the matriarchs of each family sit on the chief’s council and give him their advice.”
Thorn thought of his shy and gentle mother, who would never think of gainsaying a word that dropped from his father’s lips. He shook his head in astonishment.
A little silence fell as Eken filled the cups with more tea. Then a very pretty girl named Yoli said to Thorn, “When you were at the Spring Gathering did you hear aught of a marauding tribe from the north that rides upon the backs of horses?”
“Sa,” Thorn said, glad to have the subject changed. He was not accustomed to dealing with such forthright women as Berta and Tora. “My chief, Haras, spoke to us about it. It seems that the tribes to the north were spreading this news around the gathering. The men of the Buffalo found it hard to believe.”
“Ronan took it seriously enough to send Bror and Lemo north to learn what they could,” Fara told Thorn.
“He did?” Thorn looked bewildered. “I do not understand. Even if the story is true, this tribe is from the Land Where the Ground Stays Forever Frozen. They can have nothing to do with us.”
“That is what my husband says,” Yeba agreed. “Cree told Ronan he was wasting the men’s time by sending them on such an errand.”
“Ronan knows what he is doing!” Eken glared at Yeba.
Yeba shot a look of amusement around the circle. “Sa,” she said with deliberate mildness, “we all know what you think of Ronan, Eken.”
Several of the women laughed and Eken flushed. Berta got to her feet. “It is growing close to suppertime,” she announced. “The men will be returning soon from the hunt. It is time to light the cookfires.”
“Sa, sa.”
“That is so.”
One by one the women arose and began to return to their own huts. Thorn looked with puzzlement toward the peacefully grazing herds and wondered where the men had disappeared to. They did not appear to be hunting in the valley. The women of the Wolf were certainly a strong-minded lot, he thought a little nervously, as he turned back toward Fara’s tent. The conversation he had heard this afternoon was definitely not the sort of idle gossip about children he was accustomed to hearing from his mother’s friends at home.
* * * *
The men had not been hunting in the valley. A half an hour after the cookfires had been lit, a large group of them returned through the narrow passage carrying three dead reindeer. Thorn wandered down to the slaughtering grounds, where the men were skinning and butchering the carcasses.
Crim took Thorn in hand and introduced him to the men he had not yet met. To Thorn’s surprise, about half of the men wore the single long braid that distinguished the followers of the Goddess. They were not from the Tribe of the Red Deer, however. Their accents told Thorn that much.
Mait, the brother of Berta and Tora, grinned at Thorn happily when Crim introduced them. “I am very glad to see you,” he said, “At last I will have an agemate!”
Thorn smiled back. Mait looked very like his sisters; he had the same long glossy braid, the same large brown eyes, the same flat nose and broad cheekbones.
“We must get Ronan to give you boys a hut to yourselves,” Crim said good-naturedly. “It can be our initiates’ hut.”
Mait’s eyes spar
kled. “I will ask Ronan tonight if we can do that.”
“Where is Ronan?” Thorn asked, looking toward the passage.
“Up the valley, I expect,” Crim replied. He squinted against the rays of the sinking sun. “Sa. Here he comes now.”
Thorn followed the direction of Crim’s eyes and saw in the distance what looked like a man and a dog walking together through the thigh-high grass that grew near the valley wall. “Is that Nigak with him?” Thorn asked eagerly.
“Sa.”
Thorn noticed that the man carried nothing. “They do not look as if their hunt was successful.”
“They have not been hunting.” Crim’s voice was stolid. He put a hand upon Thorn’s arm, “Come along, youngster. If you are going to join the Tribe of the Wolf, you are going to have to work for your keep. You can help me finish butchering the hindquarters of this reindeer.”
With a quick smile over his shoulder at Mait, Thorn went.
Thorn ate his supper with Crim’s family, but sleeping space was tight within Crim’s hut, which had to accommodate not only his wife and sister-in-law but the twins as well, so Thorn slept that night in Bror’s vacant place in a hut that also housed Dai and Okal. Both young men carried a handful more years than Thorn did, and would have been nirum, or full-fledged hunters, in their own tribes. Thorn treated them both with respect and had the sense not to ask them too many questions.
One question he did ask, as he was spreading out his sleeping skins. “How long has Bror been gone?”
“Almost one moon now,” Dai said. He too was smoothing out his skins. “I am thinking he will be away for another moon, at the least.”
“Sa,” said Okal. He was already lying down, his arms crossed behind his head. “There will be plenty of time to build a hut for you and Mait.”
“Where does Mait sleep now?” Thorn asked.
“He sleeps with the other unmarried men of the Goddess.”
Thorn silently noted this segregation along religious lines. “Is it…difficult…sometimes,” he dared to ask, “trying to live in harmony with people whose ways are so different?”
