He wept and stared at his friend for a long time. Juniper’s face was white, his breathing heavy. Perhaps it was already too late.
‘It’s Stonegod,’ thought Oak. I’ll have to fight him all through the night.’
He prepared himself for the battle. First he cut down some of the branches and built up the fire. Then he once more went out and filled his bag with water and poured a little into a stone cup, wedging it onto the hot ashes. By the light of the flames he laid out the herbs he had brought or gathered: broom, balm, bilberry and the gentians he had found by the pool whose powdered root would ease sickness. There was enough for the moment but he must collect more before Icegoddess came.
All night he sat cross-legged, stroking Juniper’s head, singing Juniper’s spirit back into the cave. His own voice gave him courage. He stoked the fire, bathed his friend’s sweating face and filled the air with the scent of warm herbs. Lumba had told him even the scent of herbs was refreshing for a sick man. When Juniper suddenly vomited Oak hastily powdered the gentian root, mixed it with warm water and poured it down his sick friend’s throat. At last, in the grey earlylight, Juniper opened his eyes and saw his friend. He was too weak to say anything, but his eyes smiled trustingly and he sank into a calmer sleep. For a while Oak watched him until, feeling he had done all he could, he lay down beside Juniper.
They slept through the next day, Juniper fitfully, Oak deeply, like brothers who have nothing to fear
‘How did you find me?’
Juniper’s voice was very weak. He was lying on his side watching Oak mix bilberry leaves in the stone cup. Oak smiled.
‘I followed the blood trail. Juniper, it’s already very cold. If your leg doesn’t mend we’ll have to stay here through the winter.’
They fell silent. Juniper closed his eyes and sank into ; a fitful sleep again while Oak talked to the little fire.
‘We’ll use the dead tree for firewood, then I’ll kill ibex before they wander off.’
After a while he stopped stirring the leaves and felt Juniper’s forehead. It was still on fire but the bilberry leaves should cool it. And if not? If Juniper should die? I’ll be alone this winter, he told the fire, with nothing, nothing at all. No! He must put that picture out of his head.
He bathed Juniper’s forehead and poured the warm bilberry water down his throat. He eased his friend back onto his deer hide and watched him shiver and shake. Perhaps Icegoddess had already aimed an icicle at Juniper’s heart. He waited patiently as the mixture slowly calmed his friend and sent him back into an uneasy sleep.
Then Oak talked to the fire again.
‘I’ll have to kill ibex and gather more wood. Maybe I’ll find the lemming burrows, and the ground squirrels’ hoard. Masu root, liquorice root, berries—Lumba says they’re all good.’
At last he lay down and Sleepgod showed him Juniper swimming and laughing by their secret cave.
Early in the morning, before he went hunting, Oak built up the fire.
Juniper stirred and whispered hoarsely, ‘I’ll die if you leave me.’
Oak tied the straight stick more firmly to Juniper’s leg.
‘You must wait here without moving. I’m going out to hunt. I won’t be long.’
Slowly, through the hunting days, Juniper grew stronger. When Icegoddess came down suddenly from her mountain, he was well enough to help cut up the carcasses. Icegoddess rode the wind and scattered her snow petals so they lay in drifts across the shelter’s entrance. Her ice gales cut the air to pieces and smoked Oak’s breath when he went outside to bury the flesh they had cut up. Oak melted snow for water and went on making Juniper herbal drinks.
Once he went outside to clear the ground. He looked up at the White mountain to see if more snow was on its way. Sungod was walking up from his other land, turning all the ice to fire. The tip of the White mountain was red, yellow and white. Oak caught his breath: he watched a herd of golden mammoth follow the slope downward towards the tree line and the distant rivers. Were these the messengers from the gods, the ancient magic animals only a few saw? He bowed his head and ran inside to tell Juniper.
Juniper smiled. ‘It’s a message from the gods!’
Juniper took a flat shoulder bone from their bone pile. On one side he engraved a chamois standing, its ears alert and on the other side a deer lying down, its neck pierced by a spear. He bore a hole in the shoulder blade and threaded it with a cord of animal gut then gave it to Oak.
‘Mammoth are too sacred to put down. But when you look at this you’ll remember them.’
For a long time Oak stared at the engraved bone.
‘I’ll always keep it.’ He paused. ‘The gods must have taken me for you. You’re the one who sees things—’
‘My marks,’ said Juniper, suddenly afraid, ‘do you think my marks—?’
Oak shook his head. ‘Mammoth are good power—we must take them as a sign.’
All through the night they slept peacefully together and Oak kept his hands over the chamois as if it would guard him forever and ever.
Chapter 11
FIRST MEN
Juniper’s leg slowly mended but it was stiff with disuse and left him with a limp. Outside the snow was too deep for him to wander about so he only walked round and round the shelter. To fill his time he shaped flints and knocked blades out of them with one of the antler prongs Oak had picked up. He sharpened spearheads and knife blades and made necklaces out of bone to wear on the journey they would take in Spring.
They were always cold but with their small supply of wood they had to keep the fire low. Oak made long cords out of animal gut to hang another hide at the entrance to the shelter. It kept out the wind but they still shivered.
‘When we’ve nothing else we’ll burn soup bones!’ said Oak, burying the used ones in a corner of the shelter.
‘Bone fire burns slowly,’ said Juniper. ‘Do you remember . . ?’
They often told each other stories about Greenwater and the big fire they built and the people they knew. Oak longed to be in the shelter again and once when Juniper was silently working he felt lonely and angry and went outside to explore. He dug a path round the rocks where ptarmigans and pygmy owls were sheltering in nearby crevices. He saw a ground squirrel scrabble in the snow so he dug down and found a hoard of berries and nuts. There must be other hoards, he thought, so he left the path and pushed his way through the deep snow. Anything was better than thinking about Greenwater! It was then he stumbled into a drift that came up to his chest. Scrabble as he might, Oak couldn’t get out. He froze in fear when a brown bear came round the rocks and padded towards him. There was nothing else to be done but shut his eyes and pray to Pollon. Every pulse in his aching body pounded as he willed the creature, willed it with all his might, to hunt elsewhere. When he opened his eyes the bear had turned away and was ambling silently towards the higher rocks.
Once the creature was safely gone, Oak shouted and shouted to Juniper but there was no reply. His voice was lost in the howling wind.
He looked round. There was a jagged edge to one of the nearby rocks. Perhaps he could throw his skin bag round it! By holding onto the cord maybe he could pull himself out!
He pinned all his skill on the throw, watching the bag curve up and settle over the jagged point. The cord was fully stretched but it didn’t give way and with a great deal of effort he was able to pull himself out of the drift.
It was a little while after this that Oak began to feel he could no longer endure this lost, white place.
One night he sat in a corner of the cave, hugging his knees, his head buried in his arms.
Juniper put down the necklace he had been carving.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I can’t stay any more—I’m going to find my way home.’
Juniper limped across to Oak and squatted down in front of him. ‘We’ll make it together. Think of the sign. Think of the golden mammoth.’
But Oak could only think of Greenwater. At dawn
he stumbled out of the cave.
Juniper limped after him. ‘Come back, Oak, come back. We’re nothing by ourselves, we need each other.’
Juniper’s voice carried across the cold air and Oak stopped and slowly turned back.
‘It’s Fategod,’ he cursed, as he tramped back into the shelter. ‘This long, lonely wait.’
Juniper’s voice echoed round the rocks. ‘Winter’s nearly over. I smell it in the air. Soon we’ll begin our journey. I know you’re lonely and it’s my fault. When I work, I see nothing else. That’s how I make beautiful things. If you leave me, Oak, I’ll die too—’
Oak covered his eyes and Juniper held onto his arms.
‘In my silent time I felt like you do now. It was old Hornbeam who pushed Cloudgod from my heart. Listen!’
Once more he told Oak the story of his childhood by the river, as he had seen it in his sleep.
‘Don’t you see we belong together,’ he said. ‘We’re different. Very different. But we belong to each other.’
Oak nodded and looked up at his friend. Suddenly he shouted as if he was chasing away Cloudgod.
‘We’re the first men from Birch’s family to travel beyond the tallest tree.’
Juniper took up the cry. ‘We’re the first men to survive exile.’
‘We’re the first men to find a new path.’
‘We’re the first men . . . we’re the first men . . . We’re the first men.’
That night Juniper dug out two big pieces of meat and they burned a log to celebrate their new beginning.
Spring came and they set out.
For many days the land was rocky. The jagged boulders, fractured by Icegoddess were suddenly covered in brightly coloured lichens and dried grass gleamed golden in the crevices. Meltwater from thawing lakes reflected the pale blue sky and everywhere there were signs of animals—fleece of musk ox, discarded antlers from red deer, the chalk-white skull of a mountain goat Juniper tied to his bag. They needed the luck it would bring.
They often confronted animals. One day a wild-eyed auroch stood in front of them and lowered his head. Oak held up his deer hide and danced round the animal while Juniper speared its stomach. The auroch roared, circled round then paced back to the herd. They left chamois behind on the higher slopes and passed the fawning grounds of deer where newly born fawns staggered after their mothers. Oak shot one and cooked its carcass on the fire. It was tender and filled them with hope. At night they were always afraid of bears and maneless lions and wolves that howled a short distance away from the flames.
They journeyed on. Here nothing had made the animals afraid of man. Musk oxen grazed over the spiky grass, staring curiously as they moved about. Deer circled round on their way down the valley and rough-legged hawks hovered above as if they might be prey. Wild geese appeared from nowhere in the wide sky and once a woolly rhinoceros crossed their path, stopping to feed on willow leaves and plants.
‘Look at those horns,’ whispered Juniper, ‘one behind the other. Look at that massive head.’
If he hadn’t been wary, he would have stayed there to engrave the great beast on a piece of bone. But the animal looked up, and he was overwhelmed with fear. Hornbeam had once told him of a rhinoceros who gored a bison with its powerful horns.
‘Stay still,’ he whispered to Oak, and they waited in silence until the rhinoceros moved away towards another willow tree.
‘Everything’s on the move,’ said Juniper as he gathered twigs from under a dwarf birch tree and lit a fire. ‘Hornbeam once told me there are many families who follow animals and only settle in winter. We might meet them.’
‘Here?’ laughed Oak, looking round at the darkening plain. ‘Here there’s nothing but animals!’
Juniper drank out of the goat skull.
‘Even the water’s sweeter here. And the animals—’ he poked the skeleton of another baby deer they had slaughtered. ‘I wonder whose spirit we released?’
‘You’re always wondering things. What does it matter if it tastes good.’
Juniper’s dark eyes were filled with the light from the fire. ‘It’s true. I wonder all the time. Why do herbs grow here and not there, what is hunger, is it there to make us live? And love? What about love?’
He had a picture of Rose waiting for him on the river bank.
Oak laughed. ‘Our friendship is love. It helped us live through winter—’
Juniper looked into his friend’s face. ‘Do you still want to go back?’
Oak rocked on his heels and sighed. ‘I always want to go back.’
They fell silent. By the light of the flames they watched the hares race in front of them towards their burrows.
The mountains were behind and a hilly plain stretched ahead. Except for small patches where drifts had gathered, the snow had disappeared and small pools rippled with ducks and geese and whistling swans. Purple saxifrage grew on the stray moraines, and marigolds stood like tiny suns by the marshy lakes. They came across many secret nests and lived off birds’ eggs. They often stopped their journey to look at the young birds stretching their wings. The immature hawks rose and fell, preparing for their solo flight.
‘Like us,’ said Juniper, peering closely at a bird which was trying to fly.
Everywhere herds of deer wandered with their young and they often surprised small blackish-brown aurochs and bison who stared at them and shied off.
‘An earth full of animals and no humans,’ said Juniper.
‘And flies.’
Oak brushed off the clusters of warble flies that clung to his face and arms. They waved leaves to keep away the insects and kept their long hair knotted back so it didn’t tangle up.
As spring gave way to summer Oak’s hair grew fairer and his red moustache thickened. Beside his friend he looked stocky and strong. Juniper’s black hair curled over his shoulders but his moustache straggled across his face. He was taller and thinner than Oak and still looked like a boy.
They walked quickly but Juniper never lost his limp. They carried their deer hides rolled up on their backs and always held their spears in their left hands, ready for anything that might happen. They told each other stories and when they came across horses grazing near a copse of short birches, Juniper spoke of the horse dream he had when he was a child:
‘There was this horse Birch had killed. Its head was on one side, its eye was blank. Its mane was black like these horses but its fur was smeared with blood. Then it came to life. It stood up and—’ even here he was half afraid to confess. ‘I rode him,’ he said, after a silence. ‘Of course I knew it was forbidden. But the horse’s eyes were full of sunlight. He ran and ran in the grass and I rode him across the grass and into the forest.’
Oak looked up sharply. ‘Riding a horse— Birch would have killed you for that. Telling a dream can bring bad fate.’
‘You’re too cautious, Oak. I like to tell my dreams.’
That night Juniper woke up Oak and spoke with tears in his eyes. ‘It’s another dream. There’s Rose lying on her side, her head resting on her arm. She’s in her grave, Oak. I give her a bone awl that I’ve decorated. I make her a little clay bison. Her mother places one of our bone necklaces round her neck. Then Birch comes and holds up a sharp stone. He’s going to cut her flesh so I snatch his stone and throw it a long way off. You’re in my dream, Oak. You’re tied up and Birch judges you while I try to set you free.’
Oak shook his head fiercely. ‘I keep telling you. It’s bad fate to speak of dreams.’
‘I had to tell you,’ said Juniper.
This dream stayed with him for many journeys, like a cloud in his head.
Chapter 12
THE STORM
Small bushes and ferns flicked their legs as they made their way through the undergrowth of a forest. In places the ground was damp and spongy and overhead leaves hid the sky. Then the trees thinned out and they moved into a plain that sloped down to a river. Suddenly Oak put out his hand to warn Juniper.
A group o
f people were climbing up from the river, laughing and shouting. They were carrying handfuls of seeds and leaves. When they saw Oak and Juniper they stopped and stared.
Juniper nudged Oak. ‘There’s no smell of danger. Perhaps they can help us.’ He fingered the beads that hung in many rows round his neck. ‘I’ll give them a necklace.’
He ignored Oak’s angry cries and began to walk slowly down the field. The tribe were squat and he looked down on them as they crowded round. He took off the necklace and offered it to them. They fingered it and passed it to each other, chattering and laughing loudly. When he gave them another set of beads they formed a circle round him, fell on their knees and chanted a low rhythmic song.
Oak lowered his spear and walked across the field.
‘Now you’re surrounded,’ he shouted angrily.
‘They won’t harm me,’ called Juniper. ‘Their singing is better than ours.’
One of the men stood up and held out some leaves and seeds. Juniper took them and put them in his bag. As he made his way through the crowd the people reached across and touched him. Perhaps they thought there was a special power in his body.
Oak pushed Juniper back towards the forest. ‘You’re reckless. You always have been.’
‘They’re good people.’
‘That seed might be poisoned.’
They walked on in silence through the trees until it was dark. At last Oak stopped and spoke. ‘We’ll make a bed for ourselves up there. In that tree. We’ll be safe there.’
The Dream Cave Page 6
