Mammoth Boy

by John Hart

  Urrell’s next try went closer but he knew it was skill, not whatever Agaratz called poodooec, that had guided his arm.

  “Urrell, think bad man, think poodooec, and not miss.”

  He handed the next javelin to Urrell and stood behind him with his fingers on the butt, as though to help propel the missile. “Now throw.” The javelin quivered in Urrell’s grasp as, with absolute certainty, he lofted it, with Agaratz moving in unison, his arm working with a will of its own, and sent it flying with total accuracy at the target where it lodged alongside Agaratz’s two.

  “See, Urrell – poodooec.”

  They retrieved the spears and tried again. And after that again and again. Whatever his hits, Urrell knew they were luck or skill but never whatever it was that Agaratz called poodooec. Not once did the shaft quiver again for him nor did he sense that feeling of foregone accuracy he had had in the throw under Agaratz’s guidance.

  If Agaratz felt disappointment in his disciple he did not show it whereas Urrell allowed frustration to surface, for the first time since he had known Agaratz. This certainty of aim that the crookback’s powerful shoulders appeared to transmit to the javelin, to a stone thrown by Agaratz if he chose to, lay just beyond Urrell’s reach. Once more he sensed that it had something of dreams about it, of a knowing that lay just beyond his touch.

  CHAPTER 23

  With the lengthening days, game returned by land and air, filling the sky and woods with sounds and calls. The air grew scented. Insects teemed so that each stride roused clouds of grasshoppers and flies from the grass. Worst were the swirls of gnats.

  Into this world Urrell and Rakrak roamed, sometimes overnighting in simple bivouacs against a tree. However far he went Urrell never wandered beyond sight of the scarpment that was now home to him. In it somewhere strode his mammoths, forever marching into the mountain. Strive as he might he could not find their entrance. Spring seemed to have wiped out the memory of winter. Each cleft and cave he explored led nowhere. His careful mind-set of what the entrance looked like fitted nothing he found. In his searching he wandered as far as the cliff hollow where he had eaten with Agaratz that day they first met. He approached warily, as Agaratz had done, but nothing stirred in the undergrowth or among the saplings that looked more grown than he would have expected. He had to push his way through them into the hollow. Inside nothing showed signs of occupation by man or beast. The ledge where Agaratz had kept food, as though in anticipation of his coming, lay bare and it was hard to believe that here the hunchback had amused a quailing boy with animal mimickry and handstands. He remembered the climbing pole Agaratz had thrown back into the undergrowth and looked for it. Nothing remained amid the well-grown young trees. Rakrak entered into the fun, fossicking about for whatever it might be her master sought.

  “Gone, Rakrak, all gone.”

  Then, on a sudden resolve, he set off further along the cliffs, to the spot where he had watched the bison, the hunters and had come face to face with Agaratz.

  The fir trees were much as he remembered them, boughs sweeping to the ground, each huge tree big enough to hide a tribe under its skirts. Beyond the firs, however, the glade where he had spied on the hunters was now so overgrown that he would have been hard placed to see them, and might have blundered into them. He looked for the spot where in his hunger he had gnawn the cast-off bones from the hunters’ meal. A return of his boyhood fear held him back. The glade was strangely silent, not a bird singing or even a butterfly fluttering past. He looked at Rakrak but she remained unconcerned, so he gathered his courage and moved out of the firs, as he had that time, to the spot where the bones had lain scattered. No sign of the hunters’ hearth remained nor the stone on which they had sketched the bison.

  A coldness hung over the spot. Of a sudden Urrell picked up his spears and set off at a fast lope into the firs towards home cave, hastening his pace as he went, feeling pursued. Rakrak trotted by him.

  … below him he saw once more the combe, the women berry-picking…

  He ran and ran on the springy pine-needle floor of the forest till his breath gave out. Only when familiar sights appeared did he slow.

  When youth and wolf arrived at the cave it was empty and cold, the fire out. Urrell felt the ashes – they were dead. Piura was nowhere to be seen. Neatly stacked nearby were two more wickerwork traps. It was as though Agaratz, in his sly humour, had made them to mock Urrell’s trip into the past. Piura, with the better weather, had perhaps ventured out too. Not for a long time had Urrell felt so lonely.

  He looked for his flute, found it and played a little, half solace, half the nagging wish to recapture the music of that night in the mammoth cave. In it lay the key to finding the elusive place itself. His flute played true, entering into his mood, its notes floating in the cave and drifting into its depths, drawn to the black chasm where the Old Mens dwelt with their hoard of tusks. Normally he never thought of the pit. He knew it was cut off from him by the red dots and the engravings, placed there to seal its entrance from the outer world, yet the flute was hearkening back to its origins, trying to draw him with it. He swayed as he played, stomping slowly round the dead hearth. In the deepening gloom the outer mouth of the cave showed lighter against the sky. His excitement grew, he felt he was recapturing the half-remembered dream-like night when the mammoths came to him. The music drew from the cavern’s depths a breath of air as cold as off an icepatch in summer. Rakrak whimpered. The flute distinctly moved just as a figure appeared against the cave entrance and startled Urrell into silence. It was Agaratz, back from the hunt.

  “Ha, Urrell, play flute. Good.”

  How much he had heard, Urrell could not know. But the cold vanished. In one hand Agaratz held two wildfowl by the neck and in the other his weapons and a pouchful of something he handled with care.

  “Eggs, Urrell.”

  He had found clutches of wildfowl eggs, beautifully speckled, and caught two of the parent birds as they brooded.

  “Light fire, Urrell. Time we eat.”

  “Where is Piura?”

  “Piura here soon.”

  Agaratz asked nothing about Urrell’s adventures, leaving Urrell almost sure that in some way he knew, however much Urrell practised blanking off his mind.

  “Agaratz, where did you hunt these?”

  “By river. Soon we go. Much eggs and fishes.”

  The prospect of a joint hunting trip calmed Urrell’s mind. He twirled the fire-stick till the tinder smouldered, glowed and lit a twist of grass. In a trice the fire was ablaze. Only then, in the glow, did he look closely at Agaratz’s traps: the bindings were twine, exactly like that given him by Old Mother with her necklace and whose retting process she had taught him and he in turn had described to Agaratz. It had been something Agaratz had seemed to value and not to know. The boy had felt proud. Now he saw that Agaratz must have known all along and this was his way of saying so.

  They roasted both fowl and ate them with Rakrak. Agaratz set aside some ‘for Piura’. It was a feast. The eggs they cracked and ate raw or, if part-hatched, buried in embers and baked. They were on these when Piura crept in, exhausted from her sortie, and slumped by the fire. Agaratz fed her. She must have gone far, on her old legs.

  The two men finished off with green shoots, bulbs, herbs and a remnant of honey.

  “Why the traps, Agaratz?”

  “Help catch bison.”

  “Are we going bison-hunting alone?”

  “Only for one, for pelt and meat. Rakrak wolfs want meat.”

  At the sound of her name, Rakrak cocked her ears.

  Urrell’s fear that Rakrak, a fully-grown she-wolf, might rejoin her pack or seek a mate resurfaced.

  “Will Rakrak come?”

  “Yes, she hunt bison, like wolf.”

  “But she may run off with the wolves.”

  “She stay. I tell her. She now Urrell’s wolf. Tomorrow go river, Urrell. I show you go on water.”

  The bison hunt was for later.

&nb
sp; Their expedition was to be a long one, to judge by Agaratz’s preparations. They were to take their travois, laden with spears, fishing lines, fire-making things, bags and pouches. He produced axes and adzes Urrell had not seen before. They were made from big flakes of the beautiful flint that Agaratz called sakarrik.

  Next day, as they followed the now familiar route across the grasslands, Urrell could see the vast herds of game moving north; and in their wake the beasts that preyed on laggards, calves and strays. Overhead circled vultures and eagles, ravens and crows.

  Not far from the herds, as both of them knew, travelled bands of hunters, ahead of their women and children, as they followed the yearly tide of animals to the summer grazings. Those must be the ‘bad mens’ Agaratz was wary of.

  Rakrak’s senses helped. She warned of big cats before they got close and her presence frightened off inquisitive predators more than once. Piura, bringing up the rear, must have disconcerted them even more. The long-haired lions that followed the herds cocked their heads above the grass as they passed, Agaratz amusing himself addressing them in Piura-talk, in which Piura joined, teasing them till they got up and ambled grouchily away from the man-wolf-lion circus going past.

  At the river, Agaratz turned upstream. Full of meltwater the river ran dark and smooth between its banks, high into the rushes where waterfowl nested and Agaratz and Urrell had splashed to retrieve ducks brought down in their previous hunt. This time Agaratz was intent on other things.

  He stopped at a small creek sheltered by birch and sallow carr. Rushes grew taller here than lower downstream. Agaratz downed pouches, and Urrell the travois. Agaratz plainly knew the spot. Hearth stones were dragged from the bushes, a fire lit and food was soon cooking. While Urrell handled this task Agaratz reconnoitred the banks and came back with duck eggs and freshwater mussels.

  Placed on embers, the mussels opened. The iridescence of their mother-of-pearl insides delighted Urrell. In one he found a small pearl and showed it to Agaratz, who held it delicately, rolling it between finger and thumb and naming it in his own language, then returned it with an appreciative nod.

  “You keep, Urrell. Girls like.”

  He now surprised Urrell yet again. From a small wallet he took out several fish-hooks carved from the very mother-of-pearl Urrell had just been admiring in the mussel shells. With the hooks went fishing lines plaited from the long hair of horses’ tails.

  “For to fish, Urrell. But first go on water.”

  He showed what he meant – half afloat, half beached among the sallows, lay a thing Urrell had never seen before: a construction of poles and logs lashed together with thongs and strips of bast. It was his first view of a raft.

  Agaratz set to with Urrell dragging more, drier logs from the woods around and when he had as many as he thought needful he showed Urrell how to cut last year’s dry reeds with a flint knife and bundle them. They only stopped to have time to fish for supper, using mussel for bait, and soon had as much as they cared to bake or eat raw and share with Rakrak and Piura. The cooking smells attracted a fox which came and sat with them for its share, reminding Urrell of the lame one they had befriended that winter. It seemed to know Agaratz who treated it, as he often did other animals, with humorous familiarity. He had shown the same insight when he had collected Rakrak from her pack. Like poodooec, this ability to empathise with the animal world was something Urrell knew he could never match.

  “Tomorrow, make float. Now sleep, Urrell.”

  The next few days they spent cutting and adzing logs to renew rotten parts of the raft. Using withies they bound in the new poles till the raft met Agaratz’s satisfaction. Then he showed Urrell the purpose of the bundles of reeds by lashing them round the outer edge of the craft, as floats and fenders. Once pushed and shoved into the water of the creek it floated high and true. They moored it to a tree and went off to fish for supper, as Agaratz intended to go afloat next day. Whither they were going he did not say but Urrell guessed an egg-hunt was intended.

  During the night a panther or lion snuffled round the camp, attracted perhaps by Piura’s presence. They added dry sticks to the fire to make a blaze, Agaratz made noises and the beast slank off.

  They cast off early, Rakrak a little hard to coax aboard but once aship finding the adventure to her taste. Only Piura would not budge. They left her on the shore, Agaratz soothing her with promises to pick up her up on the return journey, or so he explained to Urrell. He left her a pile of food, knowing a lion will hang around a supply till it is eaten before moving off.

  Agaratz had cut two long poles. With one he punted the raft into the stream while Urrell tried with the other. It was some time before he got the knack and assisted Agaratz against the current. It was very slow going. Late in the day Agaratz steered the raft into an inlet among giant trees and tied up. Blackened stones attested to regular use of the spot for campfires. While Agaratz fished, Urrell and Rakrak explored the woods. They saw the bark of saplings frayed where stags rubbed their antlers and heard larger beasts crashing about in the depths of the woods. Wild strawberries were ripening. On their way back, Rakrak darted into the bracken and came out with a fawn in her jaws. She had killed it cleanly and brought it still warm to Urrell. He patted her head and they quickened their pace back, Rakrak bearing her prey.

  At the camp Agaratz was already baking fish and opening mussels. He had also caught some crayfish by hand. Despite Agaratz’s pleas of a cub beseeching its mother for food, Rakrak would not yield her fawn to him, but took it to Urrell.

  “See, your wolf, Urrell.”

  They dined off the tenderest of venison, baked fishes, mussels, crayfish and strawberries by the mouthful.

  It was the fat time of year, when food abounded, furs grew sleek, young were born and nestlings flew. Day merged into day.

  “Tomorrow be at island, Urrell.”

  The line of cliffs towards which they were slowly propelling their craft must have been an outlier, thought Urrell, of their home escarpment, or perhaps its continuation as it swung in a wide loop. What he could not guess was how the river got through the barrier.

  Later next day this grew clearer as they worked their way round a long bend in the river and the cliffs came into sight. There was a gap parted by a solitary crag with a dark patch on it. The cliff line continued into the distance until it merged with the horizon. Only ahead, both sides of the crag, were there breaks through which the current ran.

  “Egg place,” said Agaratz, nodding at the crag round which wheeled thousands of water fowl, more than Urrell had ever seen in one place, even by the sea. He saw now that the dark patch was the gape of an immense cavern.

  The current, forced through narrows, ran strongly, twisting and swinging the raft, which took all Agaratz’s strength and skill to edge slowly into the lee of the crag where eddies swirled. Rakrak cowered amidships, ears flat. Their poles were finding increasing depth while the current snatched at them with a malice of its own.

  “Now, Urrell, now,” and with a supreme effort both drove the raft under the lee of the rocks into a pool of still water with a little shingle beach, hidden from view even from half a spear’s cast away. Agaratz jumped ashore and pulled the raft up, Urrell and Rakrak only too happy to follow. Evidently Agaratz knew the spot and exactly what to do. Urrell’s legs trembled as he stood on the shingle. He felt queasy from the effort and tension and it was a while before he could do much, leaving the unloading of the raft to Agaratz who piled such contents as they had higher up the shingle and manhandled the raft above the water-line.

  “Now go for eggs,” he said.

  He knew his way up the wet, black rocks, white on top from guano. Overhead sea and waterfowl wheeled and squawked at the intruders. Nests were everywhere.

  As they climbed Urrell was mightily surprised to find the birds quieten rather than grow noisier. It was as though they recognised Agaratz or he possessed some power over them or they knew he was no threat, or all three. Despite the plentifulness of eggs, t
he strain and hazardousness of the voyage by raft to collect them seemed to Urrell to be disproportionate. Could they be the sole purpose of the trip? He waited to learn what it might be.

  His first surprise came at the manner Agaratz collected eggs on the way up. He took one egg only per nest, groping under the unresisting bird, often replacing the egg without explanation, stroking the bird’s neck and making soothing sounds. There was no pattern or choice of species: all contributed. Soon his and Urrell’s pouches were full.

  They had reached the flat upper part of the crag by then.

  “Now cave, Urrell.”

  This would be the huge cavern he had seen gaping from afar, approached by a rough path. Large as he expected it to be, Urrell was still taken aback by its looming height.

  “Many flying mouses, Urrell. Leave pouches here, with Rakrak.”

  From just inside the entrance, overhead and into the cave, he saw what Agaratz meant. Bats lined the roof and walls of the cavern. Their droppings lay in drifts, in places half up the walls. Strange colourless insects scurried about in the gloom over the mounds.

  “When big ice, Old Mens live here.”

  Urrell looked around, half expecting to glimpse slouching shapes. He wanted to ask why they were there. What was the reason for the egg-collecting. But somehow the sheer size of the cavern, its rustle of bats and insects, silenced him in awe. His unsaid questions were part answered when Agaratz volunteered, “Then my fathers come.”

  “Your people lived here, with the Old Men?”

  “After Old Mens.” He rolled his hands over and over in that gesture for immemorial time past, then added, “Old Mens go with ice.”

  Now Urrell was all attention. His own thinking surprised him. Something in him seemed to take over as he heard himself ask: “How could the Old Men live here, or your fathers, with the river?” He meant the stream running both sides of the cantle of cliff on which they found themselves.