by neetha Napew
“Come away, girl,” he whispered imperatively. “Only the forces of Creation know how the others passed by without seeing you! Come quickly, before the bad luck of Man Who Walks With Dogs contaminates you too!”
“Are he and Karana—“ She dared not complete the question lest speaking of their deaths make them a reality.
“No. And they may yet survive. I fell behind the others coming back in the dark, slipped back to cut the thongs that bound Torka and Karana, and left them with a spear and dagger and my wind coat and surplice.”
Her eyes widened. Could he have done such a wonderful thing? Her ever-cautious father? Yes! It must be so! He was without those warm layers of clothing!
“Hurry now before someone guesses what I’ve been up to!”
She jumped up, ran to him, and would have thrown her arms around his neck to kiss him, but he waved her display of affection away just as frantic Wallah appeared out of the dark to cry out with relief at the sight of her daughter.
“I have been searching for you everywhere!” She was so distraught, she did not notice the absence of her man’s outer clothes. “I should have known!” “No time for that now!” Grek silenced her as he took Mahnie firmly by the hand and began to pull her in the direction of their own fire circle.
She balked. For the first time Mahnie felt how cold the wind had grown. Snow stung against her cheeks and caused her eyes to tear as she looked up at her father. “But Karana’s brother Aar lives. They’ll kill him if they find him and—“
“He is but a dog, girl! Forget him!” Grek jerked her onward angrily. Wallah walked beside her, bending close. “Bad spirits walk this night for all of us, Daughter! The wanawut has been heard close by, much too close to this encampment! And Sondahr lies in terrible pain. The woman Pomm, who calls herself a healer, is unable to help her, nor have any of the magic men been able to drive her pain away. Some say that it looks as though she will be dead by dawn.. .. Naiapi says that it is Navahk’s magic—punishment for Sondahr’s daring to challenge his powers. And Navahk, he has gone to his hut to take Torka’s woman while her little daughters weep and cannot be consoled!”
Through a veil of formless dreams and shadows, Lonit slowly became aware of pain and darkness, and of sweet, liquid fire burning at the back of her throat. She swallowed. The fire entered her, expanding deliciously within her body, warming and soothing her pain. She sighed and drifted in darkness, unable or unwilling to rise through it.
Someone was holding her, soothing her with gentle strokings . someone
.. .
Torka! Her lids flickered. Shadows seeped into her eyes. Black on deeper black. An arching vault of night curved above her, defining the confines of a space without moons or stars .. . the interior of a pit hut. There was danger here. But unable to understand what its nature was, she closed her eyes and lay motionless and hurting upon soft, enveloping furs that covered her, warmed her, allowed her to drift in and out of unconsciousness, mixing with the warmth of the intoxication that had entered through her lips.
She could hear the wind now, long and strong. It was hissing beyond the pit hut, prowling in the darkness-dangerous, fanged, a watching, waiting wind with the cold compassionlessness of a beast. The danger lay there, in the eyes of the beast. She shivered. Even that slight movement roused pain, and she moaned softly. Someone whispered her name, and his voice was the voice of the wind.
“Drink now again. This will take away your pain,” the wind urged.
A flask was pressed gently to her lips. She drank greedily of the sweet, painkilling fire that lay within. It was good, so good. Her eyelids flickered. In the darkness a shadow sat beside her, bent over her, stroking her, soothing her with low, sinuous exhalations of her name. The shadow of a man. A man who was not Torka.
“Navahk?” Panic and recollection exploded within her with white-hot intensity, sending her mind swimming back down through darkness, away from a stark reality that she could not bear to face. Not yet. No. Not yet.
She willed herself into oblivion, away from her pain. She swam downward through the core of herself, deeper and deeper, through layers of her life. But pain was there also—in childhood days and nights of brutalization at the hands of her father and his women, in a girlhood of hopelessness and endless abuse, until at last, within the darkness, she walked alone across a storm-driven world with Umak and Torka, in the wake of a killer mammoth that had made her Only Woman In The World. She raced across the broad, golden river of grass, hunting at Torka’s side, laughing and loving and living with him and their children within the Valley of Songs, boldly lying naked with him beneath the benevolent eye of the watching sun and the towering blue shadows of the Mountains That Walk.
Lonit sighed, content within the caul of her dreams. Within her body the world was blue, expanding, as soft and warm as the sweet summer skies of the forbidden country. An equally warm, soft wind was blowing moistly against her face, downward over her throat and breasts and belly, licking tentatively between her bruised and slightly parted thighs. Again she sighed, relaxing in the arms of her man, opening herself to the trespass of the sweet and gentle wind that, as though by magic, transposed pain to pleasure. It entered her, probed languorously until her loins caught fire, then withdrew as the hands of Torka began to salve her body with some sort of balm that was fire and ice against her skin. As he followed the course of the wind, she trembled and reached to draw the heat of his naked body closer to hers.
“Torka ...” She whispered his name with longing, and as she flung her arms about his neck and arched to accept him, his entry startled her from her dreams. He stabbed deep, deliberately rousing pain.
Stunned, she opened her eyes. She felt hot and disoriented, as she had felt after drinking too much of Pomm’s mind-numbing berry brew. Her mind was a blank, which was slowly filling with confusion. Her arms and back and limbs ached from the beating, and even in the darkly shadowed interior of the pit hut, with dreams and reality still half fused, she knew that the man who was joined to her, poised over her, and balanced upon his splayed hands was not Torka.
“Forget him.” Navahk’s voice was that of the slow, warm wind that moved upon and within her body. “Do not speak his name in longing when you lie with me. I have wanted you, Lonit, across great distances, across the long seasons, and there have not been many women whom Navahk has desired. But Lonit has been one of them. Beautiful Lonit, move now for Navahk, as I have dreamed of you moving beneath me.
He gave her no chance to reply. He bent his head and kissed her slowly. He probed hungrily with his tongue. The kiss put the fire into her loins again, but she was free of her dreams now. She bit him fiercely. He knelt back and pulled out of her, backhanding his mouth, observing his blood and smiling as though he enjoyed the pain.
“This woman is Torka’s always and forever!” She spat the words at him.
His smile lengthened across his face. Even in the dark she could see his teeth, small and white and serrated, like the teeth of a hunting animal. “We will see,” he intoned, and bent to her breasts. She tried to twist away from him, but a bare, hard knee rammed between her closing thighs, forcefully holding them open as his hands clasped her wrists and held her fast to the bed furs as he slowly suckled her breasts, drawing throbbing fire upward from her loins. She sobbed, enraged by her own body’s betrayal. His tongue was tracing a line of moist fire downward from her breasts, across her belly, to become a probe as it entered her. She gasped, desperately wanting to flail free of him, yet he was a magic man. He had broken her will to resist him. She yielded, opened herself to him as he moved to mount her, penetrating, deep, moving with slow, controlled, and rhythmic thrusts. She heard him exhale through his teeth with excitement and triumph as he felt the change in her.
She hated him—but no more than she wanted him now.
Until, from beyond the little pit hut and the darkness that encapsulated it, the cry of Sondahr rent the night. It was a high, wild cry, like that of an animal at the moment of its
death, and as it faded, it formed into words that struck Lonit to the heart.
“Woman of Torka ... re ... them .. . her me....”
Lonit went cold.
Navahk stiffened. He raised his head, listening, waiting. His face contorted with hatred, and when the cry did not sound again, he sighed with infinite satisfaction and pleasure. “Sondahr is dead.”
“No,” she said coldly to Navahk. “Sondahr is not dead. Her spirit will live within this woman forever.”
“That will not be long if you do not dance for me.”
“I will not dance for you.”
“You will, or I shall find my pleasure in your death, and your children will die as surely as Torka.”
“I am his woman, always and forever. When he dies, my spirit will die with him. And you will kill my children whether I dance for you or not—I see it in your eyes, as I have seen through your ‘magic’ into your spirit, Navahk. You are ugly and twisted and more repulsive to me than the skin of the wanawut in whose skin you dance.
Her words enraged him. He forced entry, brutally, jamming himself deep, watching her, waiting for her to cry out in pain or fear. She did neither. She lay passively beneath him, daring to look directly into his eyes as he moved on her—not as a man but an animal, riding her as a stallion rides a mare, gripping, pumping in hard thrusts. But unlike the wild, savage stallions of the open steppes, his release did not come quickly. He worked at her hard, deliberately hurting her, purposely prolonging what he knew she loathed him for, and all the while she smiled her contempt at him, until, at the moment of climax, she laughed, ruining his release. He roared with anger and struck her so hard across the face that he rendered her unconscious. And still he rode her, a limp and useless doll, but it was no good for him. His power over her lay in her fear of him, and Lonit did not fear him anymore.
Unless .. .
He smiled again. With Torka gone, her children were alone with a mute woman and a dying one. He rose and reached for his clothes. He would make Lonit fear him yet!
Grek lay close to Wallah, shivering himself warm, bundling together with his woman as the two of them drifted into troubled sleep. Mahnie watched them from her own sleeping skins, adoring them both, so proud of Grek that tears of love welled beneath her lids when she thought of leaving him.
But she must leave. Her time of blood was at hand. There was no use denying it; she had seen the signs. Her eyes scanned the shadows, moved to the closed door skin, half expecting Naiapi to come in from the rising storm. Where was she? Not that the girl cared; she was glad Naiapi was not in the hut. What Mahnie intended needed privacy and secrecy, even from Grek and Wallah and especially from Naiapi.
In stealth, moving as silently as a night creature that fears itself watched by predators, she moved from her own bed skins to rummage through Wallah’s personal supplies of soft, absorbent hare skins. Her mother had prepared extras, anticipating the day when Mahnie would need them. She kept them in a special sack made from the skin of a female mountain sheep. Now the girl took half of them and, scooting back to her sleeping place, donned one where need demanded and placed the others on her top bed fur.
Kneeling back on her heels, she peered through the darkness at the closed door skin. It was moving in and out, straining the thong ties that held it in place. For a moment she feared that Naiapi was about to come barging in, but it was only the rising wind pressing against the hide flap. Mahnie breathed a sigh of relief. Naiapi was not coming. Wherever she was, she would probably not return until well after dawn.
By then Mahnie would be gone.
Hurrying now but working in absolute silence, she began to assemble her belongings: sewing supplies, her all-important awl, her bone needles in their carrying cylinder made of the hollow shaft of a feather, a new roll of freshly prepared sinew, her knife and scrapers and pounders and—still biting her lip-Wallah’s bow drill, and most of her emergency supplies of moss wicks and dried grass for kindling. She would need these things more than her mother would. Wallah would have time to gather more grass and make new wicks, as well as a new bow drill; Mahnie would not. She would have two broken, beaten men to care for, and with a storm coming on, fire would mean the difference between life and death—fire and warm clothes.
Grek had left his surplice and wind coat of opaque, meticulously stitched and oiled antelope intestines with the injured men, but Karana and Torka would need warmer clothes than that, and winter boots if the weather turned cold. From the howl of the wind outside the pit hut, it sounded as though the weather was already turning. If they were as badly beaten as Grek said, they would not be able to hunt. If they could not hunt, they would have to rely upon her to provide meat. Her skills and gender would bring only small animals to their fire; and from small animals there would not be enough hides out of which to make decent clothes. Again she bit her lip, momentarily paralyzed with indecision. If Karana and Torka were to live—and they must live if she were to have any chance of survival—then the time for indecisiveness was over. She moved quickly and quietly, and in a moment Grek’s new winter boots, as well as his old ones, were on her bed fur and she was rationalizing her theft to herself. If Wallah could make new wicks and a new bow drill, she could make new boots.
Mahnie nodded. Yes. It must be so.
She took food now from the shadowed niche where Wallah kept her cooking supplies and extra stores: dried meat, wedges of fat, and a few cakes of berry mash and tubers. Not much, but enough to last through the storm until she could brain a few ptarmigan with well-placed stones or could catch a few fish. Fish! She had almost forgotten her lures and hooks and nets. She had spent hours tying those nets, knotting every sinew filament.
She reached under her bed skins where they lay stretched flat and pulled them out .. . along with her little doll. Memories flashed, and tears welled. The time that Wallah had spent making dolls for her and the other little girls of the band! Hours and hours of cutting and sewing and piecing. Dolls for Ketti, dolls for Pet! Oh, Pet. How this girl misses you! Oh, Wallah, you will never know how sorry this girl is to leave her mother!
With yet another sigh, she took the doll and the net and placed them onto the bed fur along with her assembled things. Hastily and with deft hands, she rolled her bed furs into a carrying pack, then took up her winter coat from where it lay next to her sleeping place, put it on, checked to make certain that her gloves were still folded within the storm flap, jammed her feet into her winter boots, picked up her pack, and slipped out, letting in as little cold air as possible.
Snow continued to fall. Although the encampment was hushed with sleep and whiteness, there was an underlying tension about the place. She sensed that many would be plagued by troubled dreams this night. Her eyes strayed toward the Hill of Dreams. It was shrouded in clouds of wind-driven snow. A figure emerged from one of the huts.
Her belly tightened.
“Navahk ...” She whispered his name as an invocation. Keep him there. Away from me. She thought of Lonit, Torka’s woman, and she wondered if she was still alive. She wondered if Torka and Karana would be willing to turn their backs upon her and her children. It did not matter. If they were still alive, she would walk with them, regardless of what they decided to do. She picked up her pack frame of caribou antler from where it rested with those of Grek, Wallah, and Naiapi against the leeward wall of the hut. She slung it on, hefted her pack, secured it, and hurried on, surprised that the weight of the pack was much less than she had imagined.
Her step was light, as quick as a vole darting across open land where owls and hawks were known to fly. She took the shortest route to the opening in the wall of bones, then paused. The snowfall was so heavy. The wind was so strong. She knew she must hurry. Yet she turned back, sought out the place where the dogs lay dead, white now, their fur thick with snow. By morning they would be buried, frozen stiff-even the great dog Aar. She went to him, bent, and brushed the snow away with her palm, pressing lightly, surprised to feel the animal’s heart beating stro
ngly. The dog raised its head, weakly licked her bare hand, and whimpered softly.
Carefully, still a little afraid of him, she nudged him gently, hoping that he would rise and follow her. He seemed to understand what she was trying to do, but try as he might, he could not do more than lift his head.
But though Mahnie was small and burdened with a pack frame, she knew she could not abandon the dog. She stole a sledge, used to haul meat, from where it leaned against Torka’s pit hut, and hefted the dog onto it. “Come, Brother Dog,” she said, dragging the wounded animal out of the encampment and into the snow-driven night. “This girl goes to Karana, and he would not want me to leave you behind.”
“Navahk ...”
He stopped and turned, annoyed to have been called from his purpose. Naiapi stood behind him in the wind-whipped snow. Her voice had struck him with an imperative ring. He waited as she walked to him from the crest of the Hill of Dreams. She strode proudly, wrapped against the weather in a heavy shawl of mammoth hair. It was deep red and shaggy beneath a quickly thickening coat of snow that would soon make its color and texture invisible. “I come from the house of the magic woman Sondahr. She is dead.”
His brows met over the bridge of his nose. “Sondahr does not concern me now,” he said, making no attempt to conceal his irritation. He would have continued on his way down from the hill to the fire circle of Torka’s family, but her hand shot out and grasped his wrist.
“Navahk did not come to tend Sondahr when he heard her screams.”
He jerked his arm free. “No.” “It was not wise of her to challenge you.”
There was an odd, anxious tone to her voice that set him on edge. “Get out of my way, Naiapi.”
