by neetha Napew
His puzzlement grew. He reached out and turned her face up to his.
“What are you trying to say?”
Her face was ashen. “Only that Sondahr has made me see that I have been a foolish woman. I have seen things that have not existed .. . and refused to see that which is true and real.”
He shook his head. “I do not know what you are talking about.”
She bit her lip and shook her head defiantly, as though she dared some inner part of herself to try to stop her from saying: “In this camp or any other, in the land of mammoth eaters or in the Corridor of Storms, in this world or the next, whatever Torka does, Lonit will accept without question. And wherever Torka goes, Lonit will be at Torka’s side. And when Torka’s spirit walks the wind, Lonit’s spirit will walk with Torka, always and forever—this is what Torka wants.”
“If?” Her proclamation was so unexpected that he was struck dumb by it. She was staring at him boldly, with her beautiful head held high and her eyes steady, yet there were tears in her eyes and she trembled. Suddenly he understood, drew her close, and held her tightly as he realized that it was he who had been the fool. How could he not have realized how deeply she had misunderstood him and how desperately she needed assurance of his love? “Forgive me,” he said, kissing her gently and closing her eyes with his lips. Breathing the breath of his life into her nostrils and mouth until, at last, he felt her body meld to his, then lifting her into his arms, he carried her into the hut of Sondahr high on the Hill of Dreams.
The tallow lamp still burned. The room was aglow with sunrise and shadows. He lay Lonit onto a sleeping pallet, and casting his spear aside, he undressed and lay down beside her. “Torka would never want your death, Only Woman In The World. Never. For you are that to me—the only woman I will ever love or desire. And someday, if the spirits grant that we grow old together—so old that our own spirits yearn to be released from our bodies to seek life and youth anew-then we shall walk the wind together, one and unafraid. But now we are young, and Torka has only one request of Lonit. I ask only for her love, one with mine, always and forever.”
With a sob she threw her arms about him and held him as though she feared that the forces of Creation would sweep down and rip him from her life.
Afterward, as they lay naked within the hut of Sondahr upon the Hill of Dreams, entwined from their lovemaking, Lonit slept and murmured against troubled dreams while Torka held her close, watching the shadows change as the sun claimed the height of noon, then began to ease slowly across the sky on its inexorable passage toward dusk and dark. He slept, and awoke, and stared at the room in which he lay: mammoth tusks above him. Mammoth hide and bones and hair all around and beneath him.
Visions of the hunt filled him, choking him—memories of the baby mammoth, of the screams of the entrapped dying animals, of Navahk’s savage and sadistic butchery of a living animal, and of his own killing of that animal.
You have killed that which is totem to you!
He sat up, so filled with distress that he could barely breathe. The warm, fragrant confines of the little hut were suddenly suffocating. Lonit stirred sleepily beside him, reached for him. “What is it?” He took her hands, drew her up, kissed her, and said imperatively: “We must go from this hut. It is not good for us to be here. And no matter what may be said to you by others, you will not join the other women at the killing site.”
She blinked, startled and alarmed by his intensity. “I will do whatever Torka tells me to do.” He kissed her quickly. “Dress then. Go back to our own hut and our children.”
But Torka did not join her. He dressed, took up his spear, and stalked across the encampment, through the opening in the wall of bones, and did not stop walking until he had reached the shores of the nearby lake. Fully clothed, spear in hand, he plunged into the shallows, seeking to cleanse himself and his weapon and garments of mammoth blood. But although he swam and splashed until he was exhausted, it was not enough; he felt unclean, as though the blood of his killing would never be washed away.
For all that day and into the night, the shamans sang magic songs and danced magic dances while the women who had come to assist the hunters with the butchering worked side by side with their men atop the bodies of the fallen mammoths. The women had spoken not a word to Sondahr on the long trek out from the encampment to the killing sight, unless they had a special “spirit request,” and when they arrived, they refused to allow her to assist them at their work. She stood at the edge of the lake of death, appraising the slaughter scene; then she ascended the promontory from which Navahk and Torka had made their kills.
The sky clouded, and a thin, sleeting rain began to fall. Nevertheless Sondahr stood unmoving upon the promontory, her arms extended and head back, chanting praise to the spirits of the slain beasts until her voice was gone. And still she stood silently invoking the mammoth spirits to grant their strength and wisdom to the women of the Great Gathering, until at last the day thickened into dusk. Exhausted and shivering against the cold, she climbed down from the stony heights to be confronted by Lorak, who held a steaming cup made of hollowed tusk out to her.
“To Sondahr, who speaks to the spirits for the females of the assembled bands, Lorak offers the blood of that which is sacred to us: the blood of life, of strength, of power. Of the great, tusked ones. Of mammoth ... at last!”
She took the cup. She drank deeply, gratefully.
Everyone saw the old man’s eyes shine and his organ rise with lust beneath his bloodied, loose-fitting tunic, straining the skins as he took back the tusk. “Too long have we fasted, Sondahr. Too long have you stood alone in the icy rain.
Come! Rest, eat. There is much man meat at the place where Lorak has spread his sleeping skins.”
Navahk had come to stand beside him. The eyes of Sondahr moved slowly, from Lorak to Navahk, where they measured, then dismissed the man. They moved back to Lorak. If she noticed the expression that her dismissal has caused to move upon Navahk’s face, she gave no sign of it. Making no comment to either man, she turned and walked to the closest of one of several small, communal fires that the women had made and shielded from the rain with broad tarpaulins of staked hide. Without a word to anyone, she bent, took a slender bone of spitted meat from where it roasted upright over the flames, rose, and strode into the thickening shadows of dusk, where she seated herself and began to eat alone, shivering within her sodden robe of feathers.
From where Mahnie sat beside Wallah, she could see the magic woman clearly and thought how beautiful Sondahr was, even when she was wet. A pang of jealousy stabbed her as she recalled the way the woman had come to stand at Karana’s side on the Hill of Dreams. Rumors about them had been the talk of the women and girls as they had hurried to prepare for the trek to the butchering camp; and on the long walk across the tundra, everyone seemed to avoid Sondahr. Mahnie had not failed to notice the glaring, murderous looks that Naiapi was giving the magic woman, and she had asked Wallah why everyone seemed so hostile toward Sondahr. Her mother answered in a hushed voice that because everyone feared the powers of the great Sondahr, no one really knew quite how to address or approach her. She had been Navahk’s teacher and lover, long ago, when he had been little more than a child. Supnah had worn her feather, sign of a great favor. One could not blame Naiapi for resenting her. And mere females could not assume friendship with such a legendary seeress and healer. Sondahr was one who called the spirits. Sondahr was one apart.
Mahnie frowned. It was true that she did not like the magic woman; after all, she had seen Sondahr with Karana upon the Hill of Dreams. But Sondahr had spent an entire day standing in an icy rain while she invoked the forces of Creation on behalf of the females of the various bands, and it did not seem right that not one of them had so much as offered the magic woman a dry skin in which to shiver herself warm. With a little sigh of resolve, Mahnie reached for her traveling bag and began to rummage through it for the extra, lightweight cloak that she had brought along in case the nights at t
he killing site turned unduly cold. Wallah stayed her hand. “What are you doing?” she whispered, her voice barely audible, her expression strained with disbelief and fear.
“Getting my cloak for the magic woman.”
“Stay out of this!”
Again Mahnie frowned. She had not thought it possible for someone to whisper and shout at the same time, but Wallah had done just that. Why? What danger could threaten her in a butchering camp? The prey was slain. The people were tired and well fed and looking forward to a good night’s sleep before trekking back to the main camp under their heavy load.
Mahnie felt a poke at her side and saw her mother indicate with a snap of her head that she should direct her attention elsewhere.
Bewildered, Mahnie followed her mother’s glance to where the magic men had gathered behind Lorak. The supreme elder’s face had grown purple. It was as engorged with anger as his penis had been with man-need only moments before. But now his organ was deflated, and his only visible erection-other than the sizable protuberance of his nose—was the twisted, bony finger he was pointing at the magic woman.
“Beware, Sondahr. That which is female is of Mother Below, that which is male is of Father Above, and what is below can easily be crushed by the powers above. Lightning rends earth, remember that!”
She looked at him, observed that his “power” had wilted, and nodded. “Where is your bolt, Lorak? And if you rend Sondahr, who then will speak to the spirits for the women of this camp? Who will share woman wisdom with them, deliver their babies, and call forth the pain and fever spirits from their little ones, if not Sondahr?”
Suddenly, from all around, birds flew skyward, shrieking, wheeling, and forming winged clouds that shadowed the dying day. And from beneath clumps of grass and burrows in the earth, rodents scurried and ran in frenzied circles.
Everyone was standing, staring, waiting for the earth to move. Far away to the east a terrible roaring rent the sky. No one could have said exactly where it had come from, except that it came from the forbidden land where the world ended, somewhere beyond the Sea of Storms.
And then the earth did shake. It rolled once, like a single wave surging across the surface of a wind-tossed lake. It lifted them and dropped them, so gently that no one was knocked from his feet before the wind reached them, a wind that stank of sulfur and smoke and the innards of a distant mountain that rained fire. They could feel its heat. They could smell its breath. And they were afraid.
Even when the wind had passed and the world was still again, they stood in stunned silence, listening and waiting for the end of the world.
The world did not end. It grew quiet instead—so quiet that the lack of sound pressed against their ears. Where had the birds flown? Only moments before, the sky had been filled with them. Where had the little ground-dwelling animals scampered off to? It was as though they had disappeared. Even the ever-present wind, which moved across the sky as blood flowed in the veins of men—constantly until death-had stopped. They held their breath, lest breathing offend the spirits as they watched the sky and listened for the pulse of the earth, wondering if Mother Below and Father Above had died.
But clouds moved across the sky, and rain continued to fall. Black rain. Their eyes turned up. Their faces were darkened by it. Father Above made the rain. It was his tears—or his urine, depending upon the mood of the diviners of such things. It must be very bad for them if Father Above wept black tears or voided black urine.
Slowly, like a lioness coming up out of sleep, Mother Below stretched and moved .. . not enough to shake the earth, but enough to cause the skin of the permafrost to tremble, enough to cause the surface of the lake to stir. Then she was still again, and from deep within the flesh of the world, a sigh was heard, as though Mother Below were yawning and returning to sleep—for now.
No one moved. No one spoke or looked at anyone else. The lake sloshed back and forth, slopping softly against the dismembered carcasses of the mammoths that lay stripped to the bone within it. Creatures began to scuttle and make welcome little sounds from the grasses and shrubs, assuring the people that the order of their world slowly was returning.
But then Navahk leaned close to Lorak and, smiling at Sondahr, whispered slowly, almost sensually to the old man.
Lorak bristled like a spear-stung tera torn as he once again pointed a finger at Sondahr. This time he did not threaten; he accused. “Yes! Navahk is right! The mammoths have returned, but the signs and omens are bad! Mother Below and Father Above have spoken together! This is a rare thing! Sondahr has offended them by defying Lorak and taking sides against this man and with the people of Man Who Walks With Dogs. With Torka and Lion Killer—who has run from this killing site—Sondahr has called down the dark spirits of Creation in the form of trembling earth and stinking wind and clouds that bleed black rain.”
A trip that had taken only a day now required twice that and more when the meat was being transported. And all the long way, the black rain fell, and Grek mumbled and ground his teeth until Wallah warned him to stop lest his molars split and he would be unable to chew that which he carried.
“The wanawut cried in the hills last night .. . close, very close. Did you hear it?”
“I heard,” she replied in the resentful tone of one who does not appreciate having her memory jogged. They were bent nearly double under the weight of their pack frames, and between them they dragged a meat-and skin-laden sledge. Leaning into her own load, her head pressing outward against her brow band, Wallah stared straight ahead and plodded onward, her mouth set and scowling.
The sodden tundra made travel slow and difficult. At dusk, while a few solitary hunters went on ahead, others encamped again, although they were only a few miles from the main gathering. The rain continued. Mahnie was glad that Grek had chosen to rest, eat, and sleep before going on.
The magic men walked on, led by Navahk, with Stam, Zinkh, and several other hunters as protective spearmen. Sondahr had left long before. No one had seen her go. Mahnie thought about her as she watched the magic men disappear into the rainy distance. She felt better when she could see them no longer. She was tired; more so now that her pack frame was off and her body could relax.
Wallah and the other women were too tired to bother with fire making, and since none of their men wanted to wait for food, they quickly put up individual family shelters that shielded them from the direct fall of the misty rain. Clustered close beneath the support poles of bones, they ate raw strips of mammoth meat, wrapped in packets of intestine, which they had carried under their pack frames. The meat had been tenderized and “cooked” by the heat and motion of their bodies as they had moved and chafed against their heavy loads.
Mahnie did not like the taste of the strong and fibrous meat. She looked up at her parents. Neither of them seemed to be eating with much enjoyment.
“They say that the man Torka has brought much bison meat into the camp of the Great Gathering. When we return to the main camp, perhaps he might share some with us,” said Grek thoughtfully.
Mahnie felt instantly revived. “Do you think he would? Could we ask him?”
From where she sat next to Wallah, Naiapi nastily mimicked Mahnie. “ “Do you think he would? Could we ask him?” “ Naiapi sneered. “We know who you really want to ask! The youth! The one called Karana!”
Mahnie’s face flamed. How she loathed Naiapi! How she regretted the day that Navahk had given the woman to Grek. She was mean and vindictive and made Mahnie feel unhappy in her own family circle.
“He looks so much like Navahk,” Wallah remarked with distaste, ignoring her daughter’s hurt and lovesick expression. “And they say that he has refused to hunt the mammoth. Also do they say that Man Who Walks With Dogs is not in favor with the elders of this camp. This woman has seen the other hunters look at Grek with admiration and respect. Let us keep it that way. The winter will be long. Perhaps it would be best, Mahnie, if your eyes found some other young man to look at.”
“And what
if she does not!” snapped Grek, seeing his daughter’s horrified expression and coming to her defense. “Karana is strong! They call him Lion Killer in this camp. He wears the fangs of the great leaping cat around his neck. They say that he has hunted rhino, and he has saved the life of the supreme elder himself! Mahnie would be no daughter of mine if she did not look at such a youth with interest.”
“He will not look at her.” Naiapi smiled like a well-fed wolverine, practically licking her chops as she added with cloying sweetness and highly arching brows, “He would not even talk to her when she spoke to him. All the young girls talk about him. They say that he already has a woman, a magic woman from the band of Zinkh. Pomm. The old fat one he shouted at in front of everyone when he returned from the hunt. She boasts about him constantly, and he openly shames her by calling her old and coupling with Sondahr.”
Wallah saw the heartsick look on Mahnie’s face and grew angry with Naiapi. It did not take much for her to turn against the nastiness of the other woman. “Grek is right. Karana is strong. Karana is bold. It is good for a young man to have his first experience with older women before he at last chooses the woman to keep a fire. You should know, Naiapi: You have been trying to teach Navahk more than a few things ever since Supnah took you to be his woman. With memories of Sondahr as his teacher, it is no wonder that he has never desired you and has given you away to Grek, who does not want you either!”
“Navahk does want me! He does desire me! He has said so! Only for the sake of his powers has he put me aside and sacrificed himself by allowing me to come to Grek’s miserable, grieving fire.” Naiapi was so insulted and upset that she nearly snapped to her feet and brought the entire little lean-to down upon them, but Grek took hold of her wrist and yanked her down.
“Enough!” he warned sharply. “What has been done has been done. What will be will be. No one at this fire can truly know Navahk’s heart. Naiapi has been put into the light of this man’s fire, and as long as she is here, she had best remember her place, because this man still grieves over one whom Navahk killed unnecessarily. In the coming days of the long dark, if indeed this fire is miserable and wanting, Naiapi will be the first to leave it so others will not starve for her sake.” He let the threat settle, then turned to Mahnie: “Your mother is right.
