by Lou Cadle
Or maybe Hannah was.
Life inside an igloo was hard enough. With two people sniping at each other, it would be more intolerable still. Hopefully Ted and Dixie would control their mouths.
* * *
By the next morning, the storm had stopped. The sky was still overcast, but to the east it was lighter, not just from the sun but from the clouds being thinner over there. Come to think of it, the storm had blown in from the east. Were the weather patterns entirely different? She asked Bob when he returned from the latrine.
“The earth still rotates in the same direction as it ever has, so I’d think weather would come from the west most often and the north second most, as the jet stream dipped. But a single storm might appear from any direction.”
“I wonder if it’s connected to the ice age, or just a fluke.”
“Snow sure transformed the look of the world, didn’t it?”
It had. Eighteen inches of new snow covered everything, though the wind had pushed it into drifts of several feet in places and into dips where it was hardly a couple new inches deep. All the plants that they might burn to heat water were buried under snow. It wasn’t as cold as yesterday, or the lack of wind made it seem warmer.
More and more people were gathering outside, most wrapped in a hide cape and wearing mittens. Zach crawled from the igloo. He stayed on hands and knees for a moment. She went to help him up, wanting to feel for a fever again. He snatched his head away from her hand, but not before she had felt that he was too warm.
“You have a fever. I wish you’d eat. It takes calories to generate that heat,” she said.
Jodi said, “He can have my share of food today.”
Claire walked up. “No, everybody eats. Including you, Jodi. And you, Zach.”
“Latrine,” he said.
Rex glanced at Hannah and said, “I’ll make sure he’s okay.” He helped Zach to his feet and walked with him out to the latrine.
Hannah said, “I want to start a fire. Let me put on mittens, but then whoever wants to join me can. Laina, if you can come to show me what plants, which part of them will burn.”
Jodi and Nari came along to help. The four of them found a spot where they were sure plants had been peeking out of the snow before, in an area that hadn’t as deep a coating of new snow, and they dug down. The snow was light and easy to move.
“Must still be well under freezing,” Jodi said. “Or it’d be wetter.”
“And heavier,” Nari said. “I’ve shoveled snow that felt like bricks. This is nothing.”
They found a patch of plants and Laina pulled one up by the roots. “The roots won’t burn easily. So I pull the tops off like this.”
Hannah had her pack but hadn’t thought to dig for one of their baskets. “If we stuff my backpack to the top with them, how long will the fire last?”
“Not long. Less than an hour. Not even a half-hour.”
“We need something denser, right?” Jodi said. “To make it last. Logs or something.”
“We’re in short supply of logs,” Hannah said. As she scooted around to find more plants, she caught sight of Claire and Bob working at clearing the hole in the snow over the lake to fill water bottles. They’d gone through all of the water they’d had on hand last night.
Little more than a half hour later, Hannah’s pack was full, and Jodi had another armful of plants. They carried them back to the igloo and set up a spot for the fire.
Laina told them how to do it. First, they had to create a fire ring of rocks for the fuel to sit on. Snow would just melt and put out the fire. And more stones were needed to heat water, which was Hannah’s ultimate goal, getting hot willow bark tea inside Zach. Jodi took Hannah’s pack and went back to collect rocks and more plants to burn, and Hannah dug through the storage igloo to find dry tinder and a couple of the small bowls.
Once they had a fire pit built, Hannah worked at starting the tinder. She had to take off her mittens, and her hands grew cold and clumsy quickly.
“I’ll try,” said Laina. She crawled into the storage igloo and pulled out her own gear, dug through it, and came up with a pair of rocks. She kneeled over the tinder and began striking sparks from the rocks.
“I had no idea you’d learned to do this,” Hannah said. “It works?”
“Eventually,” Laina said, striking spark after spark onto the straw tinder.
A wisp of smoke rose, but before Hannah could move to breathe on it, it disappeared. “Close,” she said.
“Patience,” said Laina.
Hannah warmed her hands in her armpits and watched. Nari was off to the side, doing her physical therapy exercises. Jodi returned with rocks and more plants. She paced, either from nervousness or simply trying to keep warm. “I wish we had scarves,” she said.
“We might use ropes. Braid them, wrap them around our necks,” Nari said.
Laina made a satisfied sound as a thin plume of smoke rose from the tinder. “Wait until it’s going well before putting the plant on. Just a little at a time, Hannah. Pretend it’s raining, that you’re trying to start a fire in a heavy rain.”
Hannah took the advice to heart and stripped the driest of the flower heads from the tundra plant, waiting until the flame grew. She fed in the thinnest end of plant. Smoke and steam came off it, then it blackened, and finally a tiny flame appeared from the plant. She leaned it next to the burning tinder, and picked another dried flower. Feeding one after the other into the flame, she built up the fire. It was labor-intensive to get it going at first, but finally, she was able to pile up more of the plants and turn away. She pushed all the rocks for heating water right up against the flames. Probably should have put them under the flames, for maximum heating. She would next time.
Too soon, the fire burned low and they were out of plants. She put her mittens back on, scooped the hottest rocks into the bowls and poured water over them. The rocks hissed. Quickly, she added the willow bark. There wasn’t much of a window to do this right. “Might as well see if you can get Zach to crawl out here again,” she said to Jodi. “I hate for him to leave the warmth of the igloo again, but there’s less chance of spilling the tea that way.”
Zach emerged surly, but he drank his medicine. “What are we going to do today?” he said, as Claire crawled out of the igloo.
Claire said, “You’re going to do whatever Hannah tells you to do.”
Hannah smiled at him. “Rest. If you feel up to it you can help Nari with some sewing task, but only if you stay inside.”
Claire gave Jodi a look and jerked her head toward the igloo. Jodi sweet-talked Zach into going inside. A few minutes later, everyone else started coming out.
“Man, he’s in a mood,” Ted said.
“Sick and fretful,” Bob said. “I doubt you or I would do much better. Will he be okay, Hannah?”
“I don’t know.”
Bob said, “Maybe I should go out on a hunting trip too.”
Claire said, “Absolutely not. Nor Nari. For one thing, if you need to run from danger, you can’t. Neither of you can.”
“I doubt any of you could outrun most of what was chasing you,” Bob said.
“We might.” Claire dismissed that with a gesture. “You can try fishing if you want to contribute to the food stores. The rest of us, we’re going to go look for those birds again. We’ll take the net, spears, pick up rocks on the way. Anything that might help us catch them.”
Nari said, “Mr. O’Brien and I can gather plants to burn today too.”
“Okay, good. There are mittens for everyone now?”
“Yes. Zach won’t need any.”
Jodi said, “You’ll check in on him now and again?”
“Of course,” Nari reassured her.
Another fifteen minutes of digging out gear, and they were ready to go on a bird hunt. If they found something bigger or easier or—ideally—both, they had spears to go for that game instead.
The birds were not where they had last seen them. Claire didn’t want
to break into two teams. “I’m thinking we’ll break into two groups when we find them. One team flushes them and the other throws the fishing net from the opposite direction, trying to get them before they climb too high.”
“There’s only the one net,” Rex said. “So whoever has that on them needs to be the one to find the birds.”
“Right,” Claire said. “Rex has modified it the best he can for throwing at birds.”
Hannah hadn’t known they’d been working on that.
“Pick a direction,” Claire said. “Anyone?” When no one offered, she said, “Dixie, pick one.”
“Me? Okay, if I were a bird, I’d be over that way.” She pointed southeast.
The new snow made it hard to walk. And struggling through drifts burned calories. Hannah had a calorie calculator going in her head. Food in: food burned. The first number stayed low and the second only climbed.
Claire said, “Did you ever try snowshoes, Laina?”
“No. But without trees, what would we make them of? Reeds or bush stems should work as well. Flexible thin wood is a requirement. And there isn’t any.”
“Yeah. I wish I would have thought about it beforehand. We could have brought the raw materials.”
Hannah said, “Was food ever a problem for you, Laina?”
“Not for long. The traps work.”
Ted said, “Maybe you should set them out here. I could use a bigger meal.”
They all could, the weak and injured most of all. But Laina said, “Until I see signs of animals, there’s no reason to set out traps.”
A half hour of silent hiking later, Claire said, “Let’s rest on those rocks up ahead and eat some jerky.”
“Wait,” said Dixie. “I see something.”
“Where?” Claire said.
Dixie pointed. “I think it’s them, the birds. Or some birds. Might be little ground squirrels too.”
“Not seeing them.”
Ted said, “I might see something.”
“Let’s go that way,” Claire said. “Slow and steady. Stop plenty far away from them.”
Hannah finally caught sight of the animals. She’d never thought her vision was a problem before. It was 20-30 or so, both eyes, and she’d never worn glasses. But she wished she had that last bit of acuity that Dixie had. It meant nothing in the computer age but everything in the primitive world.
Claire stopped them. “Does anybody have a suggestion on what direction to come at them?”
“There’s a patch of rocks sticking up out of the snow,” Dixie said. “Maybe if the netters stood there, they’d have a slight height advantage.”
“I’ll throw,” Rex said. “I know how. But if two others come with me, if I miss, they might be able to organize the net for a second try at them.”
“You’ll need more than two to throw, right?” Hannah said.
“Not with this. Just me.” He reached into his pack and pulled out Laina’s atlatl.
“You figured out a way to launch the net with that?” Must have been when she was out with a different group of people.
Rex nodded. “Five times out of six, it works.”
“Let this not be the one bad time,” said Ted. “I’ll throw rocks if you miss.”
“I can do that too,” said Laina.
“Okay, let’s split up here,” Claire said. “Net team in position first. Then the rest of us will move in on the birds from directly opposite, with rocks in hand.”
Rex and his group made for the rocks. Claire had the flushing team go on and eat a few bites while they waited. “Might as well be fueled up to run at them.”
“That what we’re doing?” Dixie said. “Running at them?”
“I guess. Try to get them all startled and moving at once.”
“Maybe we should walk slowly at them. Make them less nervous. It might mean they fly slower and will be easier to net.”
“What do you think?” Claire asked Hannah and Jodi.
“What?” Jodi said. “Sorry, I wasn’t listening.” She had been silent for most of the hike.
“Try,” Claire said. “Focus.”
“I’m worried about Zach.”
“We all are. Best thing we can do for him is get him some bird soup.”
That seemed to focus her attention. “Okay, what did you ask?”
Claire explained again.
Jodi said, “I guess what Dixie says. If we want to hunt them more than once, why make them associate us with a frightening behavior?”
Hannah had no opinion but agreed with Dixie simply to be agreeable. They ate, watched as the others looped around to get in position, and then they walked toward their assignment, staying silent. Only the susurration of their boots on the new dry snow marked their passage. Ahead, the birds made the occasional sound as they hunted, heads down, pecking through a thin patch of snow.
Claire held a hand up and then motioned until they were lined up, three yards between them, and signaled the four of them to march forward in line. A bird looked up and saw them, hesitated, and sprinted away. Another half-dozen steps by the humans, and another bird caught sight of them and hopped away. The disturbance to the flock made several of them look up at once. Again, they spread out, scattering in response to the danger. Too bad they didn’t huddle together instead. That way, when they took off, if the net worked, more of them would be trapped at once. But the birds must have learned over generations to automatically respond to danger this way. Spreading out might be a form of defense against losing too many at once.
No birds were eating now. All were watching nervously. At a call from one of them, they took to the air in a noisy group cry.
Across the way, from the rocks, Rex launched the net from the atlatl. It soared out, unfolding as it flew, a thing of beauty, a testament to Rex’s engineering skill. It flew too well, was the problem, sailing over the birds.
“Come on, come on,” Dixie said.
Then the net reached its farthest point and began to drop, like a giant wing itself, or a clean sheet snapped out over the top of a bed and let loose. It drifted down and caught the back half of the flock. At the edges of the net, a few birds were able to dart away from the danger. But in the center, they had nowhere to go. Two dove, a smart move, but the net kept coming, down and down. When it hit the ground, halfway between the two human groups, there were about twenty birds caught under it.
“Let’s get them,” Claire said, and she ran.
Hannah wasn’t far behind, going as fast as she could in the deep snow. She aimed for her side of the net. One bird was pecking its way out, tearing the grass netting apart. She went for it first, grabbing at it and getting pecked for her trouble. The beak was long and the bird desperate, and it would have drawn blood if not for the mittens. Hannah kept after it and finally had it by the head. She broke its neck and dove for the next closest bird.
With all seven of them killing birds, it didn’t take but a minute to dispatch them all. The final count was nineteen. Two and a half birds to eat per person. If a bird had seven ounces of meat on it, she’d be surprised. Probably half that. Pretend they were chicken, that’d be a few hundred calories of meat per person. For those who had hiked all day through new snow to get the birds, it was hardly worth the effort. For the three waiting back at the igloo, it would be enough.
She didn’t mention this. The others were happy enough to have finally caught something, and Rex was beaming about his net launch working perfectly. She didn’t want to break the mood, so except for congratulating Rex, she kept quiet.
But on the hike back, she fell into step with Claire and made her slow down until the others were well ahead. When she explained the problem, Claire nodded. “I get it. Fishing is better. You just sit there. Takes no energy at all.”
“Or trapping, with a pair of people going out to check the traps once a day. We need to pass up the birds and go for red meat if we want to survive.”
“The mammoths.” Claire did not sound happy.
“It’s th
e only game we’ve seen.”
“We didn’t actually see one. I’m just guessing as to what the tracks were.”
“It’s a good guess, and whatever it was, it was huge.”
“We need to find them.”
“They’re out there.” Hannah waved in the direction they had been last headed. “Tomorrow, in my opinion, we need to mount a mammoth hunt.”
Chapter 8
The others had a fire laid, ready to burn. In the hunting party’s absence, Nari and Bob had gathered a lot of fuel. So perhaps their day’s work had consumed several hundred calories as well. They had also found many more rocks to warm soup, and pulled out the largest remaining bowl to get that started. Hannah handed over the fire-starter to Ted to let him try to get the fire lit, and she went right in to check on Zach. Jodi was at her heels.
He was lying under hides, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Hey,” he said, when he saw her. “Monkey.” His voice was weak.
“You look hot,” Jodi said.
“I’m cold. It’s so cold here. How long until we’re home?”
“Three weeks. Not long,” Jodi said, kneeling next to him and smoothing his hair back.
“You find food?” He directed this at Hannah.
“We did. You’ll have chicken soup, just like at home when you’re sick.”
“We might even have some onions for it, right?” Jodi said to Hannah.
“I’m sure we have some left. I hope you’re hungry.”
“I could eat a little,” Zach said.
Jodi was done fussing over him, and Hannah sat on his other side. “You mind if I check your temp?”
“Knock yourself out.” He turned his head and gave a weak cough.
“Does your chest hurt at all?”
“No. I mean, a little, I guess, if I cough for too long. But not now.”
He was definitely fevered. He’d caught some disease here. And there was little she could do to help him beyond giving him bark tea. She wondered if she had modern antibiotics, something like ampicillin, if it’d knock out a three-million-year-old bacterial infection. Who knew? It’d be better than nothing, though. She left the two young lovers alone and joined the others.
