by neetha Napew
As he walked now with Karana and the dogs upon the sea of grass, he tested the weight of the bludgeon within his hand and thought of that strange land across which he had come. There was no way for him to know that it had once lain at the bottom of a shallow strait that connected two oceans and was a bridge between two continents—or that, in millennia to come, it would lie at the bottom of the sea again. He could only perceive some difference in that plain, as he sensed that the
Mountains That Walk on either side of the sea of grass were not mountains at all but the leading edges of glaciers larger than any that had ever lain upon the world. He could not know that three-fourths of the moisture of all the seas and oceans and rivers on earth lay captive within their appalling mass, or that most of the northern half of the North American continent, into which he had led his tiny band from Asia, lay entombed in ice.
The sound of the horses was close now. At the crest of a low hill Karana signaled to the dogs with the flat of his hand, and as one they hunkered in the grass beside him. Torka joined them, watching through the screen of summer gold as, below them in a narrow depression in the sea of knolls and hillocks, two stallions fought savagely for dominance over a small herd of shaggy, blocky mares. The dominant stallion was unusual not only because it pursued its older, less aggressive foe even when the other horse attempted to run away, but also because its uniformly pale coat was devoid of the dark stripe along the spine that was characteristic of its species.
The frenzied, bleeding animals screamed and reared, kicked and bit and pawed the air. The older, more sturdily built stallion wheeled and ran; the younger, leaner, fleeter animal pursued it and turned it back to the battle. The older stallion was clearly losing ground. Torka marveled at the beauty, power, and persistence of the pale horse. Beside him Karana’s head dropped a little as his pleasure ebbed. Where Torka saw beauty and power, Karana saw beyond the animal’s physical perfection to its unrelenting savagery and cruel and merciless power. It reminded him of his father.
When suddenly a leaping cat sprang from a thick stand of scrub into which the dominant horse had driven the exhausted older stallion, the fight ended. The lion-sized cat sank fangs that were nearly as long as Torka’s forearm into the hindquarters of the stallion. Battle-weakened and bloodied, it screamed but had no strength to flee. Its rear legs went out from under it, and in a moment the cat was at its throat while the pale horse wheeled and raced away, neighing triumphantly. It drove its newly acquired mares ahead of it, viciously kicking and biting at them as it ran, brutalizing them so that any that were pregnant with the other stallion’s foals would miscarry. This was the stallion’s way of assuring that only its offspring would survive.
“Navahk would do that,” hissed Karana.
But Torka was not listening. The sudden, brutally quick death of the stallion had worried him. Torka could die in such a way—quickly and without warning. What would happen to my women and children then, with only a boy and a pack of dogs to protect them?
As they went farther east, Torka could not keep his thoughts on his tracking. Karana scouted ahead with the dogs, but Torka stopped and looked back, thoughts of Aliga haunting him. Poor, frightened woman. If she did not bear her child soon, she would die of it. He had seen the sickness and weariness growing in her. And the fear of death.
“Torka! Come! It is a good day to hunt!” The youth was beside him now, gesturing. They could see for miles, where great herds of awe-inspiring numbers and diversity grazed. “There! Do you see? As in my dreams, Life Giver walks ahead, into the sun, leading us to the game.”
But Torka was still looking back, toward the world out of which he had come, toward a distant land where mountains did not smoke, the earth did not move, and where, if a man were killed, there would always be others to care for his women and children. “We will hunt for the last time in this land without people,” he declared, looking at Karana with stern and uncompromising authority. “Tomorrow we will gather our women and children and return to the land of men.”
PART III.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SKY
A frigid wind stirred the stunted, misshapen trees that choked the bottom of the gorge. The shadows were warmed by the light that seeped into the world through the hole in the sky, but the child shivered amid the scattered remnants upon which it had been feeding for weeks—the bones of its mother of Supnah’s arm .. . and his skull—smashed in the child’s attempt to extract marrow and the brain. The bones were no longer distinguishable; they were only splinters and jagged fragments, rubble from which meat had been gnawed and all juices extracted.
For some time now there had been nothing nourishing left except the small comfort that the child found in gnawing and sucking them. It lived on bark and spruce needles, insects and unwary birds, and the body of a lemming that it had managed to root from its burrow beneath the spruce trees.
It chewed the lemming now, grinding it between molars adapted to masticate heavier, more nutritious bones. The child trembled as it ate, dizzy, its body craving more meat and blood than the stringy, sweet flesh of the rodent could provide.
Mother! I am alone! Mother! I am hungry! Mother! I am afraid!
There was no comfort for the child in the bones and meat of the lemming nor in the warm, yellow wind that blew across the world from out of the hole in the sky. The child rose and climbed out of the gorge to crouch upon the ridge that allowed an overview of the tundra. Comfort came as it stood, where it had once stood with its mother, and thought of her. It leaned forward, head out, the wind ruffling its gray fur and filling its nostrils with the scent of the beasts that camped far below upon the plain. Comfort came as its gray eyes drew in the sight of the ones who had killed its mother. Comfort came with hatred, which nourished the child more than meat, bones, or blood.
They had moved their encampment once. The child had watched them, perplexed, as they had dragged their shelters with them upon their backs, plodding across the grasslands as slowly and ponderously as sloths. They went several miles, to a spot more protected from the wind and closer to water. For a brief time the child had panicked, fearing that they would keep on walking, right off of the edge of the world, leaving it alone with no one to hate. But they had paused and raised their odd shelters and built their smoky fires and lifted their voices in the peculiar ululations. The child found these sounds strangely soothing, as beautiful as star song murmuring across the sky in the depths of the winter dark. For weeks it had watched them from the heights, salivating each time it saw the blur of white that was the object of its hatred, knowing that someday it would hunt him, kill him, and dance in his skin, singing its own celebration of his death.
Now, light-headed with hunger, the child exhaled a hoot of frustration. The encampment was gone! The beasts were trailing off into the distance, all bent beneath their packs, except the mother-killing one in white, who led them.
The child whimpered at having lost the deep, perverted comfort from knowing that those who had killed its mother were near. Bereft, it shifted its weight from one foot to the other again and again. It beat its curled, hairy fists against its hairy thighs. If the beasts were to walk off the edge of the world, how would it find them again? How would it someday leap from the mists onto the one in white, as its mother had leaped, to rip him apart until he was red with blood and shrieking?
As the focus of its existence began to disappear across the eastern horizon, the child screeched, enraged. It knew instinctively that it would die if it was deprived of its sole reason to live. It hunkered, apelike, then rose. Supremely agitated, it swung its torso back and forth as it waved its long, hairy arms. It shook its fists at the departing beasts, screaming in frustration and anger.
“Wah nah wah! Wah nah wut!”
The beasts did not slow their progress, although the child saw the one in white pause and look back. The child drew its hand across its mouth, erasing the blood of the lemming and hungering for the blood of the mother killer.
The beast shone
gold in the light of the hole in the sky as, slowly, he turned and disappeared into the haze of distance.
Now the child’s solitude was absolute. Again it mewed for its mother, for any of its kind, but all were gone—killed by beasts.
That thought gave the child courage. The way down from the heights was difficult, but the little one was undeterred. Drawing energy from its hatred of the mother killer, it left the familiar territory of its past behind, coming out of the mountains and walking across the tundra alone, to follow the band of the one in white, in whose skin it longed to dance.
Karana bolted upright on his sleeping skins. “No!” he cried, still tangled in his dreams. Howling dire wolves raced across the tundra, pursuing him. He looked back, and as he did, the wolves turned into hideous, half-human beasts that loped after him, with Navahk in the lead—an amalgamation of magic man and wild stallion and something else .. . something dark and terrifying that he had seen long ago ... a shadow silhouetted against distant, glistening mountains of ice ... a form moving in the night, furred, massive, and powerful, with glinting eye and bearlike snout and broad lipped mouth pulled back to reveal protruding canines longer than Karana’s dagger.
The wanawut.
Spirit Sucker.
Navahk.
His father!
He blinked. The dream vanished. And yet he did not think it would ever vanish. He sat shaking, his sleeping skins tumbling down from around his shoulders into his lap.
It took several days to dismantle the camp and prepare for the long trek ahead. Each time he slept, Karana dreamed the same dream. But each time he spoke of it to Torka, leaving out no detail except the fact that Navahk was his true father, the hunter silenced him with grim admonishment.
“This man also dreams, and his dreams have been untroubled since he has made up his mind to return to the world of men.”
“It is a bad world.”
“Karana left it as a boy and will return to it as a man. Perhaps he will find it better.”
Karana harrumphed. “Why? Because there are girls? Karana cares nothing for girls!”
“Yet,” replied Torka, finding it difficult to suppress his smile when the youth stood chin up, arms folded belligerently across his chest, taking on all of the mannerisms of Torka’s beloved grandfather. In moments like this he wondered if, when old Umak had died, his life spirit had entered Karana to live again within the flesh of youth. It was not an unpleasant thought; but, as always, he was startled when Karana responded to it as though he had spoken it aloud.
“Umak has said that Karana would be a great spirit master someday. Umak would have listened to Karana!”
“Torka listens. But we must go. Aliga is sick. We have not the magic or the medicine to cure her. Her baby should have been born weeks ago.”
“Babies come when they are ready.”
“And if they do not come, then death comes to them and to the woman who carries them.”
Torka put a reassuring hand upon Karana’s shoulder. “Perhaps we will come back to this place someday. We have cached the meat and supplies that we cannot carry. If we meet with others who would wish to return with us, we will tell them that hunting is good in this land. But Karana is quick to forget that beyond this Valley of Songs, within the Corridor of Storms, the winter wind is cold and constant and crueler than any storm wind that this man has ever known. If, for any reason, the game did not come to winter in our valley, we would be forced to follow it into the sea of grass, and Torka wonders if a band could long survive the winter dark within the Corridor of Storms.”
“Longer than we will survive among Supnah’s band!”
“It is not this man’s intention to seek out Supnah’s band. Long and hard Torka has thought on it. If we leave our valley now, we should easily reach the Great Gathering before summer’s end. There will be wise women, spirit masters, and magic men there from many bands. Think of all the healing knowledge that Karana will learn from them!”
“They are mammoth hunters,” the youth reminded sourly.
“We need not join in the mammoth hunting. We can hunt for our own fire and provide for our own needs. Our women will savor women talk with others. Summer Moon has never seen little ones her own age. And this man longs to hunt and talk with other men again!”
Stung, Karana wondered if Torka would ever consider him a man. “If Aliga is sick, she should not make such a journey.”
“Aliga feels better just thinking about it. She will travel by sledge and will be no worse for the traveling than she is for her worrying.”
The boy shook his head, refusing to hear logic. “Lonit does not want to go.”
Torka sighed. Discussing this subject with Karana was like talking to a mountain wall. In time he would see the wisdom of Torka’s decision; in the meantime, there was no use arguing. His hand opened as he patted the youth’s shoulder with paternal affection. “Lonit, unlike Karana, has learned that it is not good to challenge one’s headman once he has made up his mind.”
“But will Torka remain our headman in the world of men?”
The question was sobering. Since Torka had no answer for it, he turned away.
Lonit knelt holding her spear across her thighs, sliding her curled palms along the sleekness of the bone stave. She had made the weapon herself. Torka had taught her how to soak the bone until it was malleable, how to harden it and define its shape in fire, and he had helped her to work the long, broad-ribbed, heavy head of shining, lanceolate obsidian. She remembered the laughter that they had shared over her many mistakes, and how at last, when she had accidentally cut the heel of her hand, he had kissed it, then taken the stone and finished the work himself, while she sat back and marveled at his skill. After securing the projectile point to the shaft, they had begun her training, and after weeks of practice, she had, with this spear, made her first kill.
She sighed and set it aside. She would not be able to use this spear or any other in the future. Beyond the Valley of Songs women did not use spears, nor did they hunt beside their men. She sighed again, turning her attention to the tools and clothing before her. These were the things she would take with her on the long trek into the world of men. Winter things and summer things, all neatly arrayed on separate skins, would be rolled into individual packs, then combined into one main roll, which would be secured by thongs to her pack frame of caribou antlers. There was so much that she wanted to bring, and so much that must be left behind. Never had she stayed long enough in one camp to enjoy the luxury of accumulating personal belongings that were not essential to the daily routine of nomadic life. Never before had she come to love a place, not only because it offered good and sustained hunting but because it seemed as though she had somehow become a part of it.
She leaned back on her heels, resting her palms upon her thighs, savoring the sleek texture of her beautifully tanned dress of unusual pale-gray elk skin. She had worked for weeks upon this dress after Torka had brought the skin back to camp as a present. She had slept with the skin hair-side out, raw flesh pressed to her naked body so it would absorb the precious oils and sweat of her own skin as she lay bundled for the night under as many furs as she could bear. Torka had laughed with amusement, saying that she, instead of the elk skin, would be soft and ready to be scraped by morning. But she had survived the night, greedy to begin work with her scraper.
She had used a sharpened caribou scapula to stretch and soften the hide. With good-natured deprecation Aliga had teased her, asking why anyone would need so soft a dress. It had seemed wrong to say that she simply wanted it. She had the time to spend on such a luxury and considered it a challenge to her skill. But primarily her reason was that Torka had brought the skin especially for her pleasure. She was proud of this, and when she wore it, she wanted the touch of it to pleasure him as much as he had pleased her by bringing it to her.
After she had scraped and stretched it, she moistened it with urine steaming hot from her own body, then left it to freeze in the early autumn night. Sh
e kept watch over it herself so that no predatory rodent would nibble on it in the dark. For three nights she sat guard beside her elk skin, and on the morning of the fourth day, she whisked frost from it, meticulously cut away the thin, fleshy layer of subcutaneous membrane, and began the final scraping and thinning process. For days she kept at it. Karana observed her with interest, saying that he had not thought it possible for Lonit to make better hides than she already did.
“We can always make things better,” she told him. “And Lonit remembers what our old Umak used to say: “In new times, men must learn new ways.” It is so with women too.”
He had nodded, reminiscing that his own mother had once worked hard like this to make special clothes for him. “The tunic she made for my first hunt was of many skins—one strip for each kind of animal that a hunter may hope to kill in his lifetime.”
She had not missed the sadness in his eyes when he spoke of his long-dead mother. Without slowing the stroke of her scraper, she had promised herself that when she was finished with her dress of gray elk skin, she would make Karana a tunic of many skins—perhaps not of all the species of animals that a man might hope to hunt in a lifetime, but at least of those animals that a woman might kill with her spear and her bola.
And this she had done. It had taken her over a year to collect the skins, and Karana, Torka, and Aliga all agreed that they had never seen a finer tunic. Lonit still preferred her dress of elk skin because Torka had brought the skin as a gift to her.
She smiled with pleasure at the recollection of that shining moment. Whenever she wore the pale-gray dress—with its long-fringed seams to which she had sewn many of the tiny, spiral, shell-shaped rocks that she had carried with her into the Corridor of Storms—Torka not only enjoyed touching the dress, he enjoyed touching it so much that, whenever they were alone, he peeled it off her and began to enjoy touching her much more.
How could a woman not love such a dress or the man who loved her above all others?
