by neetha Napew
“Torka has heard,” said the hunter.
“Then Torka will obey. Or he will walk from this band as he came into it—alone.”
Alone.
Torka’s pit hut was filled with sleeping women and a suckling child, yet he was alone, isolated amid the dreaming females, tormented by his thoughts, unable to sleep, and suffocating in the all-confining darkness in which he lay ... alone.
It was late. Darkness would fill the sky for hours before it yielded to dawn. Torka lay on his back, naked beneath the bed skins that he shared with Lonit. She was warm against him, curled close, her breathing deep and even, perfectly synchronized with his, as though one being lay beneath the skins, not two.
He lay still, listening to the cool, mild wind move through the encampment. He could hear it prowling around the exterior of his little conical hut, slap-slapping gently as it searched with invisible feelers for gaps in the layered bison skins that covered the shelter’s arching framework of caribou antlers and mammoth ribs. The wind might find breaches in the coverings of other huts within the encampment, but Torka knew that it would find no entrance here because Lonit had been responsible for the skins that formed the walls of his shelter. With the help of Aliga, Lonit had sewn seams and patched where there was need. Then, while lana sat crooning to the baby as she nursed it, Lonit and Aliga had lashed the dark, thickly pelaged skins down with strong thongs laced crosswise and secured them to fire-hardened stakes of bone that he had helped them to drive deep into the permafrost.
Them!
How had he come to have so many women? Mad lana. Tattooed Aliga. Lonit of the antelope eyes. And his tiny daughter, as precious to him as her mother, and both of them as warm and beautiful as the golden summer moon for which the child had been named.
Nevertheless, the presence of the women and child was strangling to him now. He drew in a breath, found no air within it, gasped soundlessly, and rose, desperate to be outside, beneath the night, within the wind, and alone.
A man could think when he was alone. A man could not think when he was surrounded by females.
Lonit sighed in her sleep, sensed his absence, and reached for him, whispering his name.
Carefully, not wishing to wake her, he bent and tenderly drew the bed skins back over her smooth, tawny form, pausing just long enough to look upon the relaxed grace and suppleness of her body. The sight of her soothed him a little as, even in the darkness, the beauty of her profile against the pale, spotted lynx fur of their pillows illuminated his heart.
Taking his clothes from where they lay in a jumble next to his moss- and down-lined sleeping pad beside Lonit’s meticulously folded garments, he straightened as much as the height of the pit hut would allow and, his mind filled with images of his first woman, began to dress.
It never failed to amaze him that once, long ago, his people had considered Lonit ugly—a too tall, coltish girl who should have been exposed at birth. Females were considered beautiful only if they were dull eyed, short limbed, broad hipped, capable of working endlessly, bearing children with minimal complaint, walking long miles under heavy packs, and eating only as much as their men allowed them .. . and never of prime portions.
Torka knew that Lonit’s father had allowed her to live only out of pity for her mother; the woman had never before been able to bring a child to full term. Kiuk had spent the rest of his days and nights regretting his weakness and later had done all he could to abuse and degrade the living proof of his unmanly generosity to a lowly female. After the death of Lonit’s mother, Kiuk’s other women found endless uses for her as a drudge, and the child became Kiuk’s vessel for the outpouring of his lust. It was his right to mount the child in the night and to abuse her verbally and physically by day. Old Umak, Torka’s grandfather, had observed that by so doing, Kiuk degraded not the girl but himself and the band.
The other members of the band had found amusement in his brutal degradation of the unusual-looking little girl and had mocked Torka when, pitying Lonit but admiring the way she clung to life regardless of its adversity, he occasionally went out of his way to encourage her. Umak had advised Torka to remain aloof from the child. As magic man for the People, Umak had already spoken to the spirits on her behalf; but she was only a. female, after all, and would live or die according to the whim of her father. This was the way of the People. From time beyond beginning.
As he pulled on his buckskin boot liners, Torka’s mouth worked bitterly at the memory of that statement. How many times had he been confronted with those now-despised words?
This is the way it has been .. . always has been .. . from time beyond beginning.
He jammed his feet into his boots, and as he began to lace them, memories swam in the darkness. One night Thunder Speaker, the great mammoth that his people called the Destroyer, came to the band’s encampment to fulfill its name in death. Its tusks had hurled them high, and as its trumpeting, man-hating shrieks had cracked the sky, it had ground their lives inte the tundra until it was not possible to tell where earth ended and the flesh of Man began. In the end only Torka, Umak, and Lonit had survived.
And it had seemed as though it were time beyond beginning. They were First Man and First Woman, with a spirit master who was only a frail old man. Together they had fled across a savage, unknown land, without the protection of a band, learning new ways, forgetting the past except for that which served the present. And so, against all odds, they had survived. In time Torka discovered the truth about Lonit, when he had looked at her with eyes free of the blinding, insular conventions of others. He had seen that she was beautiful.
As he saw her now.
As Navahk had seen her. And had dared to try to win her away from Torka to his own fire circle!
In a sudden, so injudicious but righteously seething rush, the anger that had caused him to challenge the magic man pulsed behind his eyes. It was a fire-heated bone lodged at the back of his throat. Again he could not breathe. Again the darkness was suffocating him. If they stayed in this camp, in time Navahk would find a way to have his woman. And nothing Torka or Lonit could say or do would stop him.
On the piled furs that she shared with lana and the baby, Aliga made smacking little sucking sounds in her sleep as, with a sigh of contentment, she hefted herself onto her side.
The wave of anger crested within Torka as he focused on the tattooed woman and the sleeping form of mad lana. Why had he accepted the responsibility for their lives? Did he honestly believe that the responsibility was only temporary? No man would ever invite Aliga or lana to leave Torka’s fire. They would be upon his back like a sodden pack filled with boulders forever! If starving times came to this band again, Navahk would send them both to walk the wind, and if Torka tried to stop him, Supnah would send Torka with them .. . and Navahk would have Lonit and would never let her go. Never! Torka had seen this in his eyes.
With two long steps he crossed the dark confines of the hut, pulled back the door skin, and stepped out into the night.
To the south, far beyond the pit hut, a lion roared from out of the tangled hills. The sound rolled across the tundral world and echoed through a thousand unseen glacial canyons. Wolves answered—and something else, something deeper than a wolf cry and less scraping then the scream of the lion. Something as full of latent power and threat as the wind whistling across the land from out of the north. Something familiar somehow, something almost human.
Wah nah wah .. . wah nah wut .. . wah nahhh .. .
The wanawut! He stiffened, listening, unable to believe what he heard.
Words? Had he heard words?
The sound rose and fell, not one sound but many, calling, answering.
Wah nah wah .. . wah nah wut .. .
In his boyhood he had heard these strange bowlings and mewings in the night. And later, crossing the tundra close to the mountains, he had heard them moaning and roaring in the long, burnished twilight of autumn or whispering on the winds that blew down from the heights in the depth of the winter
dark.
Men did not go into the mountains, which were the realm of wind spirits. Men hunted the open tundra, beneath the open sky. And Torka, who had stood against wolves, wild dogs, lions, bears, and the great mammoth Thunder Speaker, wondered why he should fear phantoms that existed unseen within the misted mountains. Yet now, as the voices of the wind spirits began to fade, he feared them, as all men instinctively fear the unknown. He stood listening until the voices melded into the dark and wind-combed night.
A mammoth trumpeted somewhere to the east. Torka looked toward the sound. The Mountains That Walk bulked against the horizon. Two miles high, they glistened blue on either side of broad grasslands that stretched into the infinity of the forbidden country that Supnah’s people called the Corridor of Storms.
Navahk had said that the wanawut lived there. Navahk lied. The wanawut was in the southern hills, close to this encampment. Karana had seen it, and Torka had heard its song. He stood very still, feeling the night, drinking in its sounds and scents. His eyes strayed over the sleeping encampment, past the smoldering bones of fire circles, to linger on the charred rubble of the feast fire where, not for the first time, Torka had observed the virulent antagonism that lay between Navahk and Supnah. That hatred would erupt someday, and one or both of the brothers, and perhaps their entire band, would be destroyed.
In the days that followed, Supnah and his people broke camp and moved south in search of new hunting grounds. If any men or women saw sign of the wanawut, they remembered Navahk’s warning and spoke no assent to their sighting lest wind spirits leap from the shadows to take their lives.
At night, although weary from the day’s trek, Torka slept fitfully, his question demanding a decision from him. Is it wise for Torka to stay with Supnah’s band? It was not the sort of decision that a man made in a night, or a day, or a week of days. It was made and unmade a dozen times.
He could not say that he did not enjoy their daily treks. It was good to walk across the land in the company of men, with Lonit at his side.
She held little Summer Moon close to her breast, while a distraught lana often plucked at the wrappings of the baby’s sling to make certain that the child was safe in her mother’s arms. Aliga trudged behind, the dogs at her side. She would kick out at them if they came too close. The
big blue-eyed male, Aar, walked with Karana, tongue lolling, tail up and curled forward over his rump as he proudly carried side packs loaded with the boy’s belongings. Sister Dog, Aar’s mate, and her pack of pups had taken a liking to Aliga, and nothing that she did, short of tethering them and leaving them behind, could keep them from romping at her heels and trying to grab at the loose ends of her boot ties.
It was an amusing sight. After the tension of the camp that they had put behind them, the sight of the tattooed woman kicking and cursing at the mischievous pups for mile after mile lightened Torka’s mood more than a little. Although Aliga never stopped complaining about the dogs and openly feared the older pair, she had an obvious soft spot for the pups. Her kicks were as ineffective as her curses.
The people of the band began to point and laugh with merriment at her predicament. Supnah was openly amused. And for the first time in longer than he could remember, Torka laughed with unrestrained delight when the most tenacious of the pups, a blue-eyed, black-masked replica of Aar, sunk its molars into a boot lace and, pulling hard, ran a neat circle around Aliga’s ankles, effectively hobbling her. Seeing the big, bold woman go to her knees amid a swarm of licking, yapping puppies—one still tugging on her boot lace, his bottom up, tail curled, head down, growling as ferociously as a bear in rut—brought everyone to pause with laughter.
Then the magic man turned to see the cause of his people’s unbidden happiness.
“It is not natural for people to walk with dogs. Look. See how Torka’s woman slows our trek. It is not a good thing! Perhaps, in this night’s camp, we will eat the meat of these dogs. The little ones will be tender.”
They did not eat the dogs. Although Navahk would have liked to do so, Supnah acquiesced to Karana, who swore that the dogs were his brothers. No one seemed to know what to make of such a ridiculous assumption, but the dogs were like no others that they had ever seen: The big male carried a pack like a man, and the female cared for her pups as diligently as any woman.
It was early evening. The women had formed what Torka had come to think of as a chatter circle. He heard the sound of Lonit’s laughter as she sat with the other women, enjoying her baby and the company of other females. He watched her with troubled eyes and thought: If I take her from this camp, then she will be alone with only mad lana and a tattooed woman for company. Here the number of women makes the workload light for all.
His eyes strayed to Hetchem, an extremely pregnant female who, judging by the gray strands in her hair and the many lines about her eyes, was very old. She claimed to remember seeing the sun rise to eat the winter dark over thirty times, and her teeth were showing signs of wear. Torka could not help but notice how Lonit and Aliga and the other females of the band doted upon the older woman. In the morning they brought special boot pads to soften her step on the long trek of the day. In the evening they brought poultices for her swollen ankles and charms to string about her enormous belly. They would break stride with their men to walk beside her during the day, offering to share her load, entertaining her with hours of idle female chatter.
Torka recalled the long, dangerous days that he had shared with Lonit, Karana, and his grandfather upon the distant mountain and the open tundra. It was not good for Lonit to be alone with only one hunter, a boy, and an old man. She must have been lonely. She must have been frightened when she began to shed a woman’s bhjod. Or thought about giving birth to the baby. Torka cannot ask her to bear such fear alone again! It is good for a woman to live in a camp with others of her kind.
It was early evening. A temporary camp had been set up for the night—a careless jumble of packs and lean-tos, of fire circles over which the last meal of the day had already been prepared and eaten. The men gathered to work their weapons and talk of the next day’s journey. In the thin, remaining light of the long Arctic dusk, while an unnaturally sallow looking, exhausted Hetchem lounged on her sleeping skins, the females kept her company while working happily at their various sewing tasks, talking of those things that were a mystery to their men, until Navahk walked into their circle.
Nearby, Torka watched from where he sat cross-legged before his lean-to, instructing Karana in the best way to re knap a damaged spearhead. Within the chatter circle Navahk paused before Hetchem. He waved his staff above her. He spoke words that Torka could not understand. After a moment Torka realized that they were not words, they were some sort’ of chanting no man or woman could understand. They were for the spirits. The women were impressed.
Karana was not. He made a low harrumph of deprecation. Torka elbow-jabbed him to silence. Navahk was smiling now, inquiring with utmost solicitude into the state of Hetchem’s health. She beamed at him out of a clammy face, assuring him that all seemed well with the spirit within her. The magic man nodded. He told her that he had made good smokes for the baby spirit.
“Hrmmph!” This time Karana’s exhalation was a little louder, and Torka’s following elbow jab a little harder. The boy looked up at him, frowning. “What good will the burning of green sticks soaked in rancid fat do for Hetchem’s baby? It is Hetchem who is sick! Look at her skin. And her eyes. The whites are as yellow as egg yolks. Umak told this boy that when eyes look like that, it is a very bad thing. Hetchem should be drinking much bearberry juice. This boy told her that, but she would not listen. As long as Navahk makes his smokes, his magic is enough for her. She will be sorry.”
The boy’s words had been audible only to Torka, but Torka was not listening. Navahk was smiling at the other women. They were smiling back at him, even Lonit. It was impossible for a woman not to smile back at Navahk; he was a cool, magnificent winter moon shining down upon them out of the dying
warmth of the springtime sun—and he knew it. He deliberately held the eyes of Lonit and offered an open, if unspoken, sexual invitation with his smile until Naiapi glared resentfully at Lonit and the other females tittered. Flustered, her face afire, Lonit stared into her lap.
Navahk turned to face Torka. He smiled at him, but it was not the same smile that he had bestowed upon the women. It was a malignant leer of contempt and daring. He raised his staff and held it out toward Torka. The horned skull of the antelope atop his staff stared sightlessly, grinning as though it were somehow an extension of the man who held it. Torka shook with revulsion, jealousy, and then anger as Navahk took something from his medicine bag and dropped it into the pool of shadows that lay in Lonit’s lap. Startled, she lifted a thong of highly polished, perfectly matched white stone beads. While the other women exhaled in envy, she looked up at the magic man, not certain what he intended her to do with them. “They are a gift!” he exclaimed. “From Navahk! To Torka’s woman!” Her blush deepened. She looked to Torka, saw the anger on his face, and quickly turned back toward the magic man. She did not look at him as she handed the beads up to him, stammering, “Torka’s woman can accept gifts from no other man.”
His smiled deepened. “I am Navahk. I am Magic Man. You will accept gifts from me!” He turned then, allowing no further dispute from her as he strode across the encampment to stand alone, arms raised to the setting sun, head thrown back in communion with the spirits.
If Torka’s spearhead had been attached to its shaft at that moment, Navahk might have entered the spirit world permanently. As it was, Torka was shaking as his eyes moved back to where Lonit knelt, holding Navahk’s gift as though it were a living thing capable of stinging her from each of a dozen polished round heads.
“This woman will wear it if Lonit finds it so repugnant!” said Naiapi, greedily reaching to snatch the necklace from Lonit’s hands. “Naiapi would not insult the magic man of her people by refusing to accept a gift from one who—“
