by neetha Napew
Torka is alive. Torka is near. As on that cold, clear morning when the mountain had spoken to him from out of his own spirit, the voice that told him that Torka was alive was a spirit voice. Karana could no more have disregarded it than he could have ignored the cries of Lonit. He had heard women in labor before. Lonit’s time was very near. And Karana’s time to escape was now.
Naked or clothed, he might never get the chance again. In absolute stealth, he peeled back the bed furs from the mattress, and with the speed of an-eagle launched from its perch, Karana flew up the ladder, shoved the sod to one side, and forced his body through the vent, back into the world of the living.
With Aar on the scent and leading them as though he were master of the pack, Torka and the men of Supnah’s band advanced across the tundra in search of the Ghost House, following the stench of Man that had briefly risen from the earth to foul the wind. For a moment it returned, strong and sweet with the stink of hot urine and decomposing refuse and fecal matter. Then it was gone, as completely as though they had imagined it.
They paused, scenting like animals. Supnah’s even, weather-lined features were taut with concentration as, beside him, the man in the skins of winter-killed caribou knelt, balancing his weight upon the balls of his feet. “Is my brother, Supnah, certain that he wishes to follow these Ghost Men when we have spent half a lifetime successfully avoiding contact with them?” “If Karana is with them, Supnah will follow,” replied the older man.
“Karana is with them,” said Torka emphatically. “And this man says that ghosts do not leave tracks by which they may be followed.”
Navahk, magic man, eyed Torka out of cold, heavily lidded eyes that seemed to see right through him. Torka could not remember ever having seen a handsomer man, or one whom he instinctively distrusted more. Not even Galeena had elicited such a negative reaction from him at their first meeting. Perhaps his experience with that headman had adversely colored his attitude toward all strangers? He could not be certain. He felt no repugnance toward Supnah, even though he found it difficult to overlook the fact that he had abandoned Karana. Nevertheless, Torka saw the resemblance to the boy in the father’s weatherworn face, and responded to the clear-eyed intelligence that honed his features and defined his open, albeit cautious nature. Supnah was totally unlike his younger brother.
The magic man’s every word and gesture were guarded. His long, full mouth was set into a perpetual smirk, as though he held a great and wonderful secret that no man save him would ever know until it was too late—and even then it would not matter, because no one but Navahk was capable of understanding it. Torka had not been with Supnah’s band for more time than it took to tell them of how Karana had followed an eagle to a safe refuge upon the Mountain of Power before he had felt the eyes of the magic man boring right through him. He had turned to look at the man, and Navahk had smiled in the most friendly manner, showing wide, perfect teeth that were oddly pointed, as though he possessed an entire mouthful of canines; but it was not the man’s unusual teeth that caught Torka’s attention and put him on guard. It was his eyes. There were depths within them that warned of treacherous undercurrents. For reasons of his own, although he smiled and pretended otherwise, Navahk was not glad to hear that Karana, his brother’s son, was alive, nor was he eager to take the opportunity to rescue him from the Ghost Band.
But Supnah was elated. He seemed half a lifetime younger. “Karana was abandoned by this man once. It will not be so again!” He put a strong, beautifully gloved hand upon Torka’s forearm. “It is good that the spirits have guided us to this meeting.”
“It is good,” agreed Torka.
Navahk, magic man, said nothing.
The hunters shook their spears, and all agreed that if Supnah willed it, then it was time to hunt the Ghost Band; too long had that band preyed upon others as though their fellow men were beasts who might be hunted like animals.
Navahk’s smile deepened. “Can men hunt spirits? It is said that, because the Ghost Men possess no true flesh, they must steal the women of human bands. Otherwise they would have no sons. Can we feel anger toward them for that?”
“Were it your woman they had stolen, you would have no need to justify your anger,” said Torka coldly. “And this man says to you that they took more than women from Torka’s camp. They took furs and what little food we had. Ghosts do not need to eat or to clothe themselves. They sound less like ghosts than like men who would rather prey upon the women of other bands than take the time to raise girl-children of their own.”
A murmuring went through the hunters. The corners of Navahk’s lips pulled inward, creating hollows beneath his high, rounded cheekbones. “It is said that they are great, shaggy spirits, with the bodies of bison and the stabbing fangs of leaping cats. It is said that their faces are black, and that the only time that men may look upon them without being killed is when they come to the great gathering to gain women for trade goods. They come in the mist and disappear into the mist. No men have ever dared to hunt them as we do now.”
Again the hunters murmured. This time they looked to Supnah, waited for him to refute his brother. He was momentarily at a loss for words.
Torka knew that Navahk was playing upon the fears of the others. Was the magic man afraid? Torka measured his smile, his eyes, and the straight, lean lines of his body within the white casing of his clothes. No. Torka was certain that fear was an emotion that did not come easily to Navahk. There were subtler motivations beneath his reluctance to pursue the Ghost Band. His tongue was as cold and quick and dangerous as a river in spring flood. From the way the others behaved toward him, it was apparent to Torka that Supnah was not the only decision maker in this band. Navahk’s judgment was sought in all things. Together Supnah and Navahk shaped and steadied the lives of their people; but although Navahk openly shared in the leadership of the band, Supnah bore the ultimate responsibility for its successes or failures. No wonder the magic man smiled, thought Torka, remembering that Karana had told him that it was because of omens seen by Navahk that Supnah had left his son to care for the other children of the band while the adults went off in search of food. The memory disturbed him. Why would Navahk have advised such a thing? And how could Supnah have listened to him?
Ahead, in the distant turnings of one of the mountain canyons, the mammoths began to call to one another again. Distracted and suddenly impatient, Torka gestured toward the sound. “Go, then. Hunt mammoth. This man will search for the Ghost Band. For his woman, for the woman and child of one who was a friend to him, and for a boy who has been as a son to him, Torka will go on alone. He is not afraid.”
He had meant to goad them, to sting their pride, and by so doing force them to commit themselves to the course that he so desperately needed them to take. Alone, he had virtually no chance at success. With nearly twenty armed men beside him, success might just be assured.
But they stood and stared. Their magic man’s statements had robbed them of their zeal. Even Supnah seemed uncertain now.
“How can we know that Karana is still alive and not a spirit?” the headman asked.
Torka felt disgust for Supnah. He was weak, and Navahk manipulated him like a strip of soggy sinew. He was not fit to be headman. “We cannot know. We can only try to find out.” With that, he turned and walked away before he lost control of his tongue and made a statement that so impugned the manhood of Supnah that his own life would be forfeit. If Karana, Lonit, lana, and little Ninipik were to be found, he would have to find them alone.
He lengthened his stride, so frustrated and angry that he was half-blind with suppressed rage. Aar and his female ran ahead of him, noses to the earth, tails up, cutting wide circles until, suddenly, Aar stopped dead in his tracks.
From out of the east, a small, naked boy was stumbling toward them. The old woman’s face was black. There was not an inch of her skin, including her eyelids and ears, that was not tattooed with swirling dots that whirled over her features in patterns resembling the rib
boning spirals of the aurora borealis.
Lonit stared at her through a haze of exhaustion and ebbing pain. Never had she seen such a hideous apparition. Green mold colored the woman’s brows and lashes. Repeated rinsings in urine had britt led her hair and bleached it yellow. It fuzzed around her face like an aura of matted spider webs upon which some animal had relieved itself. Her features were hidden in folds of oiled, weathered skin that was full of peaks and valleys. And out of those peaks and valleys, a chasm opened—it was the woman’s mouth. From out of the mouth poured words that Lonit could not understand, but they were spoken in the voice of youth, not age. It was like hearing a newborn infant cry out with a voice of an adult. Lonit was so startled that, for an instant, she forgot the fear that had come to her when Gulap had entered the Blood Room.
Now Gulap smiled, displaying small, tattooed teeth that had been filed down to points—a mark of beauty among the women of the Ghost Band. She shook a rattle over Lonit. It was a hollowed sloth’s claw into which the bones of rodents had been placed. They made small, dry clickings, punctuating Gulap’s words. As she spoke, the other women began to keen. Gulap’s smile widened.
Lonit closed her eyes. The pain was returning; it was a terrible, strapping pain that encircled her back and belly like an invisible belt that was being tightened and tightened until she was certain that it was going to cut her in half. The sound of the women’s low mourning seemed to intensify the pain. They held her upright in the birth position. She was glad for that. She was too weak to kneel alone. But she wished they would stop their ululations. She wishedPain suddenly ripped upward into her body as, with a brutal thrust, Gulap turned her rattle into a dagger that entered Lonit, pierced the water-filled caul that surrounded her baby, and pulled out. Lonit’s eyes were wide as she screamed against the violation. Only the tension of her muscles, locked in the vise grip of a contraction, had kept the now-bloodied claw from penetrating the flesh and bone of her baby.
Gulap spoke. Gulap shook her head. She watched Lonit protectively recoil, violently tearing herself from the arms of the women who held her. Aliga was closest. She looked sorrowful and repentant as she translated Gulap’s words to Lonit.
“Gulap says she will end your woman pains. Gulap says it is better that your baby die, Gulap has seen bad omens for you: Your milk will be poison, and your infant will be unfit to suckle from any woman’s breast.”
“And so she will guarantee that by putting a hole in my baby’s skull before it can take its first breath!” Lonit glared at Gulap, wanting the woman to know that she was not duped by her pretense to magic.
“Do not look so at the wise woman, cautioned Aliga.
“She is not wise, she is wicked! Tell her that this woman wants no part of her help with the bearing of this baby! Tell her that Lonit has no desire to be her brother’s woman! Tell her that if she will stand aside, Lonit will have her baby and then leave this place. With Jana and the boy Karana, Lonit will go far and never look back!”
Aliga’s head swung from side to side. “We would all go far and never look back if we could. If Gulap were to let you go, the men of this band would kill her.”
“Tell her my words!”
Aliga shrugged and did as Lonit asked, showing no surprise when Gulap grinned with malevolence as she spoke directly to Lonit.
Aliga translated. “Gulap says that the boy Karana has run naked into the cold. He has been gone for a long time now and must be dead. When those who have left the Ghost House to hunt mammoth return, they will be very angry and will punish the hunters who were careless enough to allow such a pretty boy to escape. Even now Liquah and Tlah look for his body. When they find it, they will skin it. Gulap will make a dress of it for you to wear when your bearing blood has ceased to flow. It will make the headman smile to take you and what is left of the boy at the same time. And in the meantime, Gulap says that Woman Of The West should not worry about her baby. It is cursed. Male or female, it matters not. The minute it is born, Gulap herself will take it out and feed its spirit to the wind.”
Brother Dog welcomed Karana with such enthusiasm that the boy was knocked flat. The hunters of Supnah’s band would have speared the beast that seemed to be devouring their leader’s long-lost son; but Torka shouted “hold,” and in a few moments Karana was running toward them again, with Aar trotting happily at his side, licking at his hand while the female dog followed, whimpering in confusion.
Never had the hunters of Supnah’s band seen a boy walk with a beast as though it were his brother. They whispered among themselves, wondering by what magic the small, naked boy stumbled past them, with an animal loping at his side as though its spirit were enchanted into believing that it was a human being instead of a wild dog.
Navahk watched and listened resentfully as Karana paused before his father and accepted the obligatory welcome from the headman of his band. For a long time, Supnah looked at the boy with eyes that spoke of a love that was deeper than his words could express. He put his hands upon the child’s shoulders. He called him Boy Who Follows Eagle. He wrapped him in clothing brought quickly by other members of the band.
Karana was proud to accept the name. He was glad to be reunited with his father. Yet there was a strange, bittersweet emptiness within his heart where filial love should have been. Supnah had turned his back upon him and abandoned him to the storms of the time of the long dark. On the other hand, Torka had risked his life to face into those storms in order to save him. It was Torka to whom he owed his loyalty now. It was Torka to whom he turned, embracing him shamelessly, as a son embraces a beloved father. When Torka returned his embrace and called him Little Hunter, that childhood endearment was more welcome than the bolder name that Supnah had given him. Boy Who Follows Eagle. He was that. But he was also Little Hunter, and he knew that he would always be Torka’s son. And Lonit’s brother.
“She lives,” he said. “She cries out in childbirth, and her life is in great danger in the most terrible place that this boy has ever seen. This boy will take you there. Together we will bring Lonit out of the spirit world and back into the world of the living!”
“So they are ghosts.. ..” Navahk’s words were half statement, half question, spoken in a tone as soft as the finest sinew.
Somehow, as Karana paled, Torka felt a sinew noose fall around his neck and tighten. “Look!” Karana pointt’d eastward, glad to look away from his uncle.
Barely visible upon the distant talus slopes, two figures were trotting toward them. They moved in the stop-and-start way of trackers, and only the angle of the sun kept them from sighting Supnah’s hunters in the shadows of the rolling tundra.
“Ghost Men, whispered Karana.
“You cannot be sure of that,” said Navahk.
The boy nodded. “Their house is there, under that long mound that looks like a hill. They will be trailing me, I think. They would not want any of their captives to escape to bring others back to their hiding place or to tell others how easy it would be to kill them there. It would be like smoking badgers. The Ghost House is a great burrow with many tunnels and breathing vents; but the vents are very small, and there is only one entrance. Block that, close the vents, and they would all die.
“Or stand with spears at ready at the entrance, send fire into the vents, and then close them. They would come pouring out like the vermin they are rather than suffocate.” Torka smiled at the concept; with a few refinements, it might work.
“Spirits are immortal. Those who would hunt them are risking their anger,” said Navahk obliquely.
“The Ghost Men have risked my anger!” Torka shot back. “And now I will prove to you that they are men!
He asked no man to follow but commanded Karana to remain behind. With his bludgeon and spear thrower at ready, he stalked those who sought Karana. It did not take him long. The first man never saw the spear that killed him. The second whirled, looking for adversaries who were not there. When Torka showed himself, he was so far out of normal spear range that the
man threw all three of his spears, plus those of his fallen comrade, and not one of them came close. Torka smiled when he saw panic take the man. Now the Ghost Man was seeing a ghost.
He took his time picking up the man’s spears. Slowly he gathered them, tested their balance, and found them crude but serviceable. The Ghost Man watched him, backing up, almost tripping over himself as he finally turned and began to run.
Propelled by his spear hurler, Torka’s spears flew like missiles, one after the other. The first two landed ahead of the man, stopping him in midstep as the third pierced his back, to emerge through his belly, and two more embedded themselves in the backs of his thighs. Torka’s mouth twisted with satisfaction as, from behind him, Supnah and his men approached, amazed by his prowess and the “magic of his spear thrower.
“No magic, he told them, and offered to fashion a spear hurler for any man who wished to have one .. . but after they helped him to rescue his woman. They mumbled among themselves. He barely heard them as he leaned over the dying Ghost Man and rolled him onto his side, ignoring his cries as pain ripped through legs, in which spears were still imbedded. “You are no ghost,” he snarled, remembering Manaak and Naknaktup and Umak as his hand curled in the leather at the man’s throat. “Tell them what you are.”
The Ghost Man’s eyes bulged in his black face. Beneath the tattoos, the skin was paling as the luster of life began to fade from his eyes.
“Tell them!” Torka insisted, shaking him, savoring the knowledge that he roused pain.
“Man ... I am ... a man ... I am.. ..”
“Soon a dead man,” Karana said, jerking the spear from the man’s gut, knowing that in doing so, he disemboweled him. He would die slowly. As Karana had suffered slowly, under this man’s maulings, under his weight, and under the terrible knowledge that this was the man who had hit Umak from behind and thrown him into the blazing pit hut to be burned alive. They went forward under a lowering sky. Karana led the way, glad that Navahk had chosen to remain behind with several other men, who would guard their women against any large flesh-eaters that might come against them.
