Blue Mountain

by Martine Leavitt

  Tuk wished he had big horns to fight the wolf. Also he was grateful for the companionship of his peaceable friend and wished he could be more like him. What kind of animal are you? Balus had asked. Tuk felt like there were two paths to the answer: one was the long way, and one was the hard way, but he didn’t know which was the better way. He reminded himself of Kenir’s counsel to trust the mountain.

  Late in the afternoon, the wood began to close in and the way narrowed until Tuk and Rim had to walk single file. They came to a part of the wood that was diseased, the tree branches gray as shed antlers. Scattered along the trail were the remains of a rabbit kill. It was an unhealthy place, and gloom followed them like the cloud of gnats that had discovered them in the heat of the day.

  Tuk stopped in the path before a curtain of thick brush. “Do you hear that, Rim?”

  “Hear what?”

  Tuk peered into the brush. “I think I see a way that the wolf could be reasoned with.”

  “It’s a wolf, Tuk. They don’t reason with us. They eat us.”

  “Kenir says the bighorn live in the high places where no other animal wants to live,” Tuk said. “We survive on the steeps and on the bare-rock outcrops, and we escape our predators with speed and agility. We go into places others cannot follow. I think we’ve found such a place.”

  He stepped aside so Rim could see through the curtain of brush.

  The wood and overgrowth opened up to a meadow thick with clover and bright with wildflowers. But rising up from the clover and flowers were many leafless trees, their trunks black with old sugar, having long ago died with honey in their hearts. Droning between the trees were bees, thicker than the mosquitoes on the bog.

  Rim stumbled backward at the sight, and that small sound caused the bees to swarm. The earth and air thrummed as the bees readied themselves to guard their ancient treasure.

  Rim made a low, guttural sound in his throat, half fear, half fascination.

  “Look beyond the trees, Rim,” Tuk whispered at his flank, “to that steep rocky rise beyond the field. There—you see the waterfall? After we run through the field, we’ll climb the rock tumble at the side of the waterfall all the way up to that cave under the upper falls. The wolf cannot climb that. We’ll hide from the bees in the cavity until they go away. From there we’ll reach the top and make our way south to meet the others.”

  Rim whispered, “To go through that field would be to die.”

  “If we are fast, if we run through the meadow as only the bighorn can, we can make it through in four leaps. If we’re fast. And if we don’t fall.”

  “Bighorn can’t outrun a wolf,” Rim said.

  “No, but we can outclimb him. That rock wall west of the bee field is the mountain’s gift to us.”

  “Would white wolf be so foolish as to follow us into the meadow?” Rim asked. “Or do you mean not to tell him? That would not be … peaceable.”

  “I will tell him about the bee trees,” Tuk said. He raised his nose. “He’s coming.”

  Tuk could hear the wolf’s footpads now, untiring. He could hear the wolf panting.

  “Steady,” Tuk said.

  White wolf appeared below them on the path and stopped cold. He stared at the young bighorn.

  “You have given up,” he said. “You wish for me to end your fear and suffering.”

  “Wolf,” Tuk said, trying to steady his voice, “you must stop following us. We are going to blue mountain where it is too forbidding and wild even for the wolf.”

  “Very well. I will follow you no longer. I will eat you instead.”

  “We are going to run into the meadow behind us, and there you will not want to follow. It is full of bees.”

  “Bees? Wolves do not fear bees.”

  “Many bees. You would best turn back.”

  “The mountain decrees that some of you must feed me,” white wolf said, the fur on his neck lifting. “And you, who called me dog and got my mate killed, are what I hunger for. I will follow you wherever you go.”

  “Goodbye, white wolf,” Rim said.

  “Goodbye,” white wolf said, and he ran at them.

  “Leap!” Tuk cried.

  Tuk and Rim turned. With a single great bound they were a quarter the way through the bee field, a quarter the way to the safety of the rocks.

  A silence among the bees. A stillness—a disbelief.

  “Leap!” Tuk called again. With the second leap, they were halfway through the bee trees, and the wolf had entered the clearing, drooling, baying triumphantly.

  The bees’ low steady thrumming became a roar. Tuk heard the wolf cry out with dismay.

  The bighorn rams leaped the third time, over and between fallen trees. The bees swarmed Tuk so that he could see Rim only as a shadow beside him. They stung him everywhere, especially on the tender parts of his mouth and eyes and nose. Behind him white wolf howled and snarled in pain and fury.

  Leap!

  One moment the air was black with bees, and in the next they were on the rock tumble at the side of the fall. Tuk and Rim climbed the fall desperately. As they climbed the air thinned of bees, until finally they were able to duck under the shelf of rock that was the lip of the waterfall. Over the sound of the rushing water they heard white wolf scrambling at the rocks below, falling back, scrambling and clawing again while he howled and whined.

  Finally he fell silent.

  Tuk and Rim stood behind the waterfall until the field lightened and the bees returned to their honey business.

  They didn’t speak. They dipped their swollen nostrils and mouths and eyes into the icy water.

  When it began to get dark, Tuk said, “Let’s go.”

  They nimbly climbed the rock tumble beside the waterfall until they reached the top. Far above the bee trees they teetered on little shelves of stone, panting. Their stings burned, and they soothed them again and again in the cold, rushy water.

  MEADOW MOUNTAIN

  Tuk and Rim bedded down for the night farther up the river that fed the waterfall. The next morning their stings had swollen their eyes almost shut. It was painful to graze. A mild wind blew through a curved blue sky as they made their way up and south on the mountain, looking for Dall and the others.

  The wildlife was more abundant on meadow mountain than it had been on treed mountain. Through swollen eyes Tuk saw elk and deer, coyotes and badgers, and birds of every kind. He could still catch the scent of man in his nose when the wind blew down the mountain.

  They traveled slowly, stopping often to rest. Gradually they were able to eat a little and the pain in their faces lessened.

  At evening, they spied the rest of the band.

  The others, when they saw Tuk and Rim approaching, leaped about and ran to meet them. As they came closer, they slowed and stopped and looked tenderly at Tuk’s and Rim’s swollen noses.

  “Are you dead?” Mouf asked.

  “Mouf,” Dall said, not taking her eyes off Tuk. “You can see they are alive.”

  “But are your faces dead?” Mouf asked.

  “Our faces met with some angry bees,” Rim said.

  “Bees?”

  “Yes,” Tuk said. “We may not look so well, but white wolf won’t trouble us anymore.”

  Dall showed them the small mountain meadow they had found, and they all grazed on the new spring grasses. But though their stomachs were full for the first time since they’d left their old mountain, and though the night was mild, and though the scent of the wolf was gone, none of them slept easily.

  * * *

  When he woke the next morning, Tuk saw Ovis standing beside a pika and his treasure of winter seeds.

  “Why are you here?” the pika asked.

  “We are going west to blue mountain,” Ovis answered.

  “I’ve heard,” answered the pika, “that all the animals who go to blue mountain fall off the edge of the world.”

  “Did you hear that, Tuk?” Mouf said. “The part about falling off the world?”

 
A mule deer coming down the mountain stopped to speak to them.

  “Are you going up the mountain for man’s flowers?” he asked.

  “No,” Ovis said. “We are going to blue mountain, where we can be free of man.”

  “Man has an outpost farther up this mountain,” said the deer. “We go at night to eat the soft grass and the fruit and flowers.”

  “But doesn’t man hurt you?” Nai asked.

  “Sometimes,” the deer said, turning away, as if Nai had said something impolite. “It is the price of fruit and flowers. Are you the ones who have brought the puma?”

  Tuk looked at his bandmates, but none of them appeared surprised. He had smelled puma coming from the south since he’d arrived in the meadow, and now he saw that the others had as well, though no one wanted to say it.

  “She has left Kenir’s herd to follow us,” Dall said.

  “Wen disagrees very much with pumas,” Sham said.

  “She will follow us to blue mountain,” Nai said miserably.

  “Perhaps it is not even our puma and she will go away,” Dall said.

  Tuk knew it was, but he did not say.

  All that day they grazed the spring grass and felt they could not go up or down. They had a puma at their backs and man ahead on their trail.

  That night, as if she knew they had become aware of her, the puma screamed the white out of the moon until it was tattered and gray. Tuk felt an urge to scream back at her.

  “Blue mountain will not be as good with a puma eating us one by one,” Mouf said.

  “We could fight her together,” Tuk said.

  “Tuk, you know we can’t fight the puma,” Dall said.

  “We could fight her, but we don’t because we are weak and afraid,” he answered.

  Dall raised her head slowly until it was very high and her eyes met his. She spoke in a soft, even voice. “Since the beginning of the mountain, our kind chose peace, and for time and time we thrived. Now the world is changing, and will we change with it? Or will we allow ourselves to die? Perhaps you will make a new kind of bighorn. But do not accuse me of weakness and fear if I choose the other way.”

  Tuk knew that Dall’s gentleness had always come out of strength. That was why they all loved her. That was why he loved her.

  He knew that his need to fight came out of fear, fear that the mountain didn’t care, that the story of their band would end badly. One of his horns was full of temper, and the other knew that if he went to blue mountain as he was, he would be infecting it with something worse than pumas.

  “Pumas fear nothing but man,” Ovis said. “That is what her scream said. She does not even fear the high cliffs. Nothing but man, and sometimes the puma eats a man just to swallow her fear.”

  When some time had gone by and no one had fallen asleep, Tuk said, “What if we went to the outpost and stayed there until our scent was completely disguised by man scent? She might lose the trail or turn back.”

  Dall sighed from deep in her belly. “It is a good idea. In the morning we will climb in the direction of the outpost.”

  * * *

  The starlings were chattering with one another and the sun promised warmth when the band set off up the mountain to the outpost.

  Sham was big with the lamb growing inside her. She was resolute and never complained, but she frequently told them Wen’s opinions about hunger and sore feet and fatigue and flies and especially pumas.

  The outpost, when they finally came to it, turned out to be a shelter made of killed trees stacked upon one another. It had the familiar scent of man on it—fire and salt and metal—but not as overpowering as Tuk remembered from man in the winter valley. The outpost had a woodsy smell, a natural smell that was mildly reassuring.

  They saw the trees and flowers the deer had spoken of, but the bighorn were not tempted by anything to do with man. The band stayed only close enough to be within the wash of man scent. The scent of the puma was soon driven out of their nostrils, and Tuk knew that meant the puma could no longer smell them, either. Together they talked of how they would leave the next day, drenched in the scent of man, and with luck be at the top of meadow mountain by evening.

  There they hoped to have a close view of blue mountain for the first time.

  When they bedded down, Mouf said, “What if blue mountain isn’t there, Tuk? What if it’s just a story and the story is that Mouf and her friends and most important Wen all fell into a blue mountain nothing and at the bottom of the nothing was the throat of a huge puma? What if?”

  NET

  In the night, the pop of a gun.

  Up!

  Around him Tuk’s bandmates leaped up.

  Up!

  But Tuk could not get up.

  “Tuk! Run!” Dall cried.

  But he could not move. The more he struggled to get up, the less he could move.

  Something bound him like a great spider’s web. The gun had shot a net over him.

  In another moment he saw a man, and another, and one more. They came closer until they touched him.

  Flee! Flee! Tuk told himself, but the more he struggled against the web, the tighter it became.

  Two men knelt to bind his forelegs and back legs. One of the men seemed to speak to him in a soft, strange language—tricky sounds, as if he could speak the language of every animal at once. It had the music of birds in it, the buzzing of mosquitoes, the clicks of beetles, the round depth of an elk’s call, and the gutturals of a porcupine.

  Tuk was helpless, but still he tried to fight. One of the men put a covering over his eyes. Tuk realized that he was not injured, but trapped.

  The men continued to make their tricky language, but over it he heard, “I’m here, Tuk.”

  “Mouf?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Are you trapped?”

  “No. I’m just here.”

  “Run, Mouf!”

  “No. I will stay here with you.”

  “The men will see you!”

  “They see me. They are making their sounds at me, but they aren’t trying to trap me.”

  “Mouf, is that really you?”

  “I think so.”

  “But—but you are so brave.”

  Peaceable Mouf. Tuk could not tell her how it eased his fear to know that she was nearby, that he could smell her familiar scent. He thrashed against the web.

  “Don’t fight the web, Tuk,” Mouf said. “It just makes it worse.”

  He tried to calm himself.

  “Dall? The others?” he asked, panting.

  “They are safe,” Mouf said.

  He felt as if he were falling from a great height into the dark. He couldn’t fight the web anymore. It had won. He wasn’t sure if a moment or a moon passed. Mouf was closer now, and absolutely still, as if the men were not there making their tricky sounds, sometimes lowing like cows, sometimes bleating like lambs, sometimes tapping like the sound of hail on stone.

  “Mouf, what are they doing?”

  “They are putting something on your ear.”

  Just then Tuk heard a sharp sound in his ear, and at the same time felt a pain. He cried out in surprise. He felt another sharp pain in his shoulder like a sting, and then he felt sleepy and calm, as if he were dreaming.

  “They are taking the web off you now.” Mouf sounded far away.

  In a few moments he felt the web fall off, and the cover was removed from his eyes. He was awake, aware of everything around him, and yet unable to move. He saw the men closely now, that their faces and arms were naked as newborn mice. Two of them talked to Mouf, who ignored them with great dignity. The other stroked Tuk’s side, and he thrilled at this gentleness.

  His ear throbbed with the device they had attached to it. In a few moments the men vanished. Mouf put her nose next to his.

  “Time to get up, Tuk,” she said.

  His legs twitched, and he ached as if he had fallen a great way, but he stood up suddenly, shaking.

  He leaned against Mouf a
little, getting his legs. He sniffed and nudged her.

  “This way, Tuk.” Mouf led him slowly away from the outpost toward the trees.

  Tuk tried twitching his ear as he would to rid it of an insect, but the device was part of his ear now, cold and heavy. In a short while he saw the others coming toward him, silent as shadows. He was still the same Tuk, a yearling with newly grown horns, but from the look of the others as they came creeping back, he might well have been sporting a set of full-curl horns.

  “What have they done to you, Tuk?” Dall said, sniffing at the device.

  “I don’t know.”

  “We must go. We must leave this place now, in the dark,” Dall said. She began to walk away, and all of them followed.

  CLICK!

  Even if the puma had followed them to the outpost, they reeked so strongly of man smells now that surely they would be hard to track. She would not give up easily, Tuk knew, but he hoped they had made it more difficult to be found.

  It was a long time until dawn, but Dall could not rest. They continued their climb toward the top of meadow mountain. When morning came, still the band made its winding way, wading in broad-leafed undergrowth, in shadow and sun, beneath a roof of leaves and bird call.

  From time to time the forest would end and open to untouched meadows, and they would briefly rest and feast and feel the breezes and breathe. Then again the closeness of the forest. The trees bent toward them curiously, almost welcoming, as if they had been waiting for the arrival of bighorn since they were striplings.

  When the sun was fully up, they stopped in a meadow where the bones of the mountain jutted out.

  The device in Tuk’s ear was heavy and itchy, but the worst was the unnerving sense that man was always close by. His nose told him no, but his ear reminded him of guns and nets and man’s mesmerizing language.

  Tuk wandered a little way from the band. He wished he could be a lamb again who knew nothing of pumas and wolves, guns and nets, and devices that itched and burned and clicked.

  Clicked?

  He listened.