by neetha Napew
“Look,” said Torka, raising his arms. “The wind has blown the flies and biting ones away across the plain. Let us take advantage of this. Such a day may not come again until the time of the long dark has come and gone and a new summer is born!”
He gave her no opportunity to reply as he put down his spears, dropped the egg-gathering nets, stripped off his clothes, and plunged into the cold shallows, hooting with delight as he splashed and wallowed like a child.
“Come!” he called.
It was a command. She could not refuse. It was good to peel off her summer tunic; it had grown much too tight across her breasts, no doubt the result of all of the food that her men so generously shared with her. Yet she had found it strange that only her breasts should grow fat while the rest of her remained lean and her belly tighter than it had ever been.
Removing her boots, she walked into the shallows, gasping against the unexpected chill of the water, hoping that Torka would not find the sight of her too repulsive.
As she came toward him, he grew suddenly quiet. The expansive, boyish expression of absolute carelessness vanished from his features. She paused, knowing that the sight of her had ruined his happiness—but when he got to his feet and came to her, she knew that the sight of her had only banished the boy and roused the man.
His eyes moved over her slowly. His hands followed. When he touched her breasts, she gasped and shivered as though the wind had suddenly turned cold. But she was not cold. She was aflame. His palm pressed gently against her lower belly to lie flat against its tautness, and slowly a smile moved upon his mouth as he nodded.
“Lonit is beautiful,” he said, and drew her to him in an embrace of exquisite tenderness, holding her, enfolding her in his arms. “Lonit is Torka’s woman. This baby ... it will be a good thing.” “Baby?” He did not speak. He breathed the breath of his life into her nostrils, then lifted her and carried her out of the water. Gently, he lowered her onto the tundra, and more gently than that he made love to her. Beneath the golden eye of the midnight sun, Lonit knew that it was love, and when at last they lay joined, exhausted and fulfilled, she understood why she had not shed a woman’s blood and needed no one of her own gender to explain to her how she had come to be carrying Torka’s child.
Now they were lovers. They shared the same sleeping skins. The days ran on, one into the other, like golden fish leaping through the mesh of a skeining net that would not hold them.
And still Karana’s people did not come.
The boy was walking again, with the aid of a crutch that Umak had made for him out of a caribou antler. His wound was still painful and he limped badly, but he continued to keep his vigils on the ledge, patiently waiting for his people as he watched Umak and Torka hunting on the tundra far below the mountain.
Berries began to ripen in the canyons. The hunters accompanied Lonit on gathering forays and stood guard over her as she dug for edible tubers. To humor her insistence that they store as much as possible against the threat of starving times, they went with her into the wetlands and stood by admiringly as she refined her skill with her bola by hunting geese and other waterfowl. Even with the first roundness of pregnancy beginning to show, she was still as swift and lean and agile as a young doe.
“Hmmph. The longer Umak looks at Only Woman In The World, the less ugly she becomes.”
“Lonit is not ugly, said Torka defensively, and did not correct his grandfather for referring to her as the only woman in the world. For Torka, she was the only woman. He rarely thought of Egatsop these days, and when he did, it was a sad and tender remembrance. The possessiveness and the rage against the way she had died were gone. She was dead; he had placed her to look at the sky with his own hands. Lonit was his woman now. He knew that he would never desire or love anyone the way he loved Lonit.
Hatchlings were flying. Young foxes, wolves, and lions were learning to hunt. Burrowers and rodents were watching the unwary among their young learn how to die. Bison and musk ox, horse and camel, antelope and yak, the great browsing herds grazed their way ever eastward across the steppe beneath the great mountain. Soon the first of the season’s migratory birds would rise from the tundral wetlands to wend their way into the face of the rising sun. Karana looked out across a world that had been tinted rust by the first frost of autumn. Where were his people? Why did they not come?
Lonit sat in the sun on the far side of the cornice. The boy heard the soft sound of her voice as she hummed to herself while she sewed. She was stitching new boots for them all. Her voice was soothing. The boy did not want to be soothed.
His brow furrowed as he stared out across the world. Aar had followed Umak and Torka down from the heights. The old man had discovered bear sign in the canyon. He and Torka had decided that they would dig a pit trap for it at the head of the canyon. Such a large and potentially dangerous animal was not welcome in their hunting range, and bear meat was among the best if eaten fresh. Rich and sweet, it would be a feast for them all. The fat of the animal would burn long and steadily in Lonit’s oil lamp. Its thick hide would provide warm winter leggings and over vests for them all.
But Karana was not thinking about the bear that would soon die at Umak’s and Torka’s hands. He was thinking of his people. A deep, aching hurt formed at the back of his throat. Was his father dead? Could it be that Karana was the only member of his band to survive that last terrible winter? Or was the old spirit master right? Could it be that his people had abandoned him?
The supposition was one he had not allowed himself to consider. Supnah would never have abandoned him. Never. Yet now he remembered the anguished look that had contorted his father’s face when the magic man, Navahk, had spoken to him. And he remembered the way that the magic man had smiled at him. It had been a smile full of secrets, dark secrets, like insect larvae hidden deep within the belly of a wounded longspur that he had once found upon the spring tundra. The little bird had looked all right; he had thought that it was only stunned and shivering against the cold. But when he had lifted it from the snow, the worms that were eating of its damaged breast squirmed and wriggled against his palms as, with one last shudder, the tiny bird had died.
The memory was so unpleasant that Karana closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to blot it from his mind. He hoped that Navahk was dead, his own belly eaten out by worms. He could not understand how his father could have taken the advice of such a magic man. Perhaps it was because they were brothers? Perhaps it was because, long ago, Karana’s mother had adored Supnah but avoided Navahk, and Supnah felt obliged to compensate him for that?
Perhaps Karana would never know the answers to these questions. Supnah, Navahk, and his band were far away. Karana was alone with strangers, and as time continued to pass, he was finding it harder and harder to remain hostile toward them. It was clear to him now that the old spirit master had not meant to hurt him. Still, he resented the old man for his refusal to believe that Karana’s people would return.
He opened his eyes. He looked around the well-stocked, meticulously maintained encampment and had to admit to himself that life here with Umak, Torka, Lonit, and the wild dog was good, so good that sometimes he actually hoped that his people would not come for him.
But they would. He knew that they would. To wish otherwise was to be a disloyal son. He clenched his teeth and set his mouth into a scowl. Karana would wait for his people. Soon now they would come.
The dog alerted them to danger. They had been busy digging the pit trap, cutting down spruce trees and hacking them into stakes onto which the bear would, they hoped, fall and impale itself. To be certain of their quarry’s death, they had baited the canyon with freshly killed marmots into which they had inserted deadly slivers of bone that had been ingeniously softened and bent double. Pointed on both ends, when swallowed by the bear, the bone splinters would be straightened by its digestive juices, expanding into lethal rods that would pierce the animal’s intestines. Weakened by pain and internal bleeding, such a bear could be trac
ked and killed by two men. It would be dangerous, but if the bear avoided the pit trap, they would have no other way of successfully bringing it down with minimal risk to themselves. It was not a way of hunting that either Torka or Umak liked, but both men knew that even with a full complement of hunters there was no prey more dangerous or unpredictable than a bear unless it was an enraged mammoth.
Their main problem had been keeping Aar from making off with their marmots. They kept throwing stones at the dog to keep it from snatching the deadly bait, and the dog, insulted and confused by their behavior toward it, had turned and started back toward the ledge. So it was that Aar came upon the bear and alerted the hunters to the fact that they were about to become the hunted.
For one moment, the great bear froze in the brush at the neck of the canyon. Standing on all fours, it was over six feet tall at the shoulder. When it stood erect to sight its prey, it was more than twice that. It had a push-faced snout and a wide, over slung lower jaw. Its huge, shaggy body rippled with an under layering of fat, and its small yellow eyes fixed the hunters as it shook its enormous head and slobbered out of a gaping maw of a pink-lipped mouth that showed teeth more suited to ripping flesh than grinding berries.
The great head dropped. The eyes did not blink. The bear made no sound. It charged without warning, but Aar’s sudden, lightning-swift counterattack distracted it. Confused by the dog’s frenzied barking and bold, circling, snapping lunges, the bear paused. It turned first one way, then the other as it attempted to swat the audacious dog. Its movement allowed Torka time to level and hurl a spear. It went deep into the bear’s shoulder, quivering harmlessly but not painlessly in a layer of fat. The bear growled now, rearing up and shaking itself. With the spear still projecting from its shoulder, it came down onto all fours again and ran straight toward Umak.
The old man never flinched. With his spear in one hand and his dagger in the other, he crouched, waiting. The bear was a blur of brown as it filled his vision. Behind Umak, Torka raged at his grandfather to run, but he did not. A lifetime’s worth of hunting wisdom and experience galvanized his senses. Sight, sound, smell, taste, and the sensory nerves at the tips of his fingers all functioned at their maximum levels as Umak, spirit master, bent them to one purpose. He was master of his own spirit now, in complete control of his body and emotions. The light that burned at the back of a man’s eyes when death was near was white-hot within his own eyes now. He stood his ground until he could smell the breath of the bear and one huge, clawed paw flew outward toward him in an attempt to swipe off his head.
In that instant, his mind and body were consumed in the bright inner fire of pure intent and absolute fearlessness. The eyes of man and beast met as Umak lunged forward to drive his dagger deep and his spear through the bear’s left eye socket straight into its brain. The animal swept over the man like a breaking wave of brown fur. When it fell, it fell with Umak in an embrace of death.
Torka’s heart was in his throat and his knife-edged whalebone bludgeon was in his hand. Time seemed to throb in cadence with his pulse—and it was fast, much too fast. He was breathless, unable to react to what he had just witnessed. And then, in an explosion of energy, he cried his grandfather’s name. As Aar leaped upon the fallen bear with slashing, ripping teeth, Torka joined him, hacking and slicing with his weapon. He knew that he was sobbing. He did not care. The great bear was dead, with Umak’s spear in its skull and Umak’s dagger deep in its thorax, and all that Torka could see of his grandfather were his legs sticking out from beneath the monstrous mound of ruined fur and bleeding carcass.
Then one leg moved, and the other. From out of the bottom of the mound came a weak and angry voice. “Torka can skin this great bear later! Umak may be a spirit master, but what he has killed is not going to get up and walk away! Get this old man out of here!”
Night had returned to the tundra. And in its star-filled darkness, the little band feasted on the meat of the great short-faced bear. Umak had not come away from the encounter unscathed. The bear had half-scalped him, but as wounds went, it was not so bad. He sat proudly while Lonit sutured it. He remembered his failure with the wolves and smiled as he thought: This wound is a good thing. It has given back to this old man his pride.
They shared their food with Aar. Karana sat close to Umak as Lonit built their fire high. For the second time since he had come to live with them upon the ledge, the boy spoke.
“Karana is glad old man alive.”
“Hmmph! This old man is not so easy to kill!” replied Umak. “And Umak is glad boy has decided to use his mouth for more than eating and scowling!” He gave the child a cuff to the side of the head. It was gently done. The boy smiled as he watched Umak don the bear-claw necklace that Lonit had made for him. The old man had salved his wound with a paste of willow pulp and urine. The curative oils of the willow soothed the rawness of his sutured scalp. Ammonia in the urine would discourage infection. Although he was tired and hurting, Umak had never felt stronger or younger or more deeply at peace with himself. In his old age, he had faced down and killed a bear that was even larger than the great white bear that he had slain in his youth.
“This is not the first bear that Umak has taken,” he informed the boy. “No. Long ago, when this old man was a boy no bigger than Karana, the bear spirits said to their little ones: “Grow strong. Grow wise. Grow wary. Umak is growing to manhood, and he is all of these things!” “
He told his story then. In the high, ruddy glow of the dancing fire, they sat close together in the darkness of the cave, enchanted by the spell that he worked with his words. Umak of old was born out of the dark to live again in the light of Lonit’s fire, to hunt, to walk the savage tundra, to live as a youth again in the magic of the night until, in the dying glow of the flickering shadows, the old man, weakened by blood loss and exhausted by the events of the day, fell asleep.
Karana looked at him adoringly, sighed, put his head on the old man’s knee, and contentedly lost himself in his own dreams of adventures that had been nurtured by Umak’s tales. Aar slept beside the boy, and Lonit lay asleep on her side upon her new mattress of ground-sloth fur.
A weary Torka looked at her with love. His eyes drifted to the old man and the boy. He was reminded of the many nights during his own childhood when he had slept close to his grandfather, with his head on Umak’s knee, nourished by his wisdom and his strength. It seemed so long ago, yet with no effort at all, he could call it all back—all of it.. . too much of it.
Sadness touched him. It erased the soft, warm mellowness of his mood. In the darkness, pale from loss of blood, Umak looked frail and worn. The youth who had leaped to life through the magic imagery of the spirit master’s tales was irretrievably lost to the past. Suddenly uneasy, Torka rose and went to stand at the edge of their aerie. He could not put from his mind the realization that, had it not been for the warning given by the dog, he and Umak would probably not have survived their encounter with the bear.
The wind touched him. It had the chill, dry bite of autumn to it. Beyond the mountain, the world was a vast, texture less sprawl of darkness. Stars, like cold white embers throbbing on the sleek black skin of the night, defined where earth ended and sky began.
Where were Karana’s people? Were they out there now, far across the tundra, staring toward the mountain and wondering at the fire’s glow high on its eastern wall?
Or was it as Torka had feared from the beginning? Were they alone in the world? He was happy now, with Umak and Lonit and the boy in this strange high camp that they had made above the game-rich land. But without another band to give strength to their numbers, they would be doomed to live out their days alone, always at risk of imminent death. Umak was an extraordinary hunter, but he was an old man who would not be able to hunt forever. If Torka were injured or killed, how long could Lonit and their coming child hope to survive with only a wild dog and an injured boy to protect them against the dangers that would face them every day of their lives?
Not l
ong, he thought.
And while Umak, Karana, and the dog dreamed the deep, restful dreams of those who wee content, Torka sat bundled in his sleeping skins against the mountain wall at the edge of the cornice. He watched for distant fires, for signs of other bands, then slept the fitful sleep of one deeply troubled. His dreams were of wolves and roaring walls of water, of frozen wastes of endless tundra, and of a mammoth with eyes as red as blood and shoulders as high as the mountain. He saw himself as a condor, his feathered arms spread wide upon the wind. And then, as in a dream dreamt long before, he became a lightning bolt, a spear of silver, streaking down toward the mammoth, down toward death as thunder rent the sky and he entered the flesh of the Destroyer, piercing it to its very heart.
He awoke with a start.
The thunder had been real. He could hear it now and see the evanescent flash of lightning upon the far horizon. He stared, wondering for a moment if he had heard another sound within the thunder, a higher, sharper sound—the screaming trumpet of a mammoth.
He listened. There was only the sound of the distant storm. Somewhere, high above the cave, something shifted within the summit ice pack. Torka paid no attention to it. He closed his eyes. It was nearly dawn. He slept again, and this time he did not dream at all.
When the sun rose above the eastern mountains, its light spraying across the tangled, icy sprawl of distant summits and spreading across the miles to pierce his lids, Torka came up out of darkness, shielding his eyes with the back of his hand, certain that he had to be dreaming. There was no wind. The silence was so absolute that it hurt his ears, and the color of the dawn was so intense that it seared his vision. It filled the great sweep of plain with shimmering golden light. And in that light, something was moving, schooling in a long stream like fish swimming beneath the surface of a light-dappled lake. And in the silence, slowly, sound was growing.
