by C. S. Bills
Attu nodded.
“We will begin next sun,” Rika said.
“But we go on the hunt next sun,” Attu objected.
“And, as much as I don’t want to lose any more time, I think you need to go,” Ashukat said. “You also need to see the life you’ll lead as Clans hunting the great curved tusk ones. And you can speak to the hunters with Gifts along the way, about how they use them, even though some of my Clan seem to think that their Gifts are useful for little more than tracking and killing game, now that the Expanse Clans are off the ice.” He looked into the fire again, his lips drawn down, his eyes heavy-lidded.
“You don’t want your Clan to become curved tusk hunters,” Rika spoke, her voice as soft as a mother calming her poolik.
“No, my child, I don’t.” The old man sighed. “You are seeing my spirit correctly. But I know we cannot stay.”
“Because of the feelings?” Rika asked.
The old man didn’t answer. Instead, Ashukat stood. “I need to go. We’ll talk more when you return from the hunt.” He slipped out of the door as silently as he had come.
There is more this Elder, this Ancient One knows, but for some reason he’s keeping it from us, Attu thought. But it’s late, and I’m too tired to think what Ashukat might be holding back. Rika stretched out beside the fire and Attu lay with her, warm under the furs.
Deep in the night, Attu dreamed. He saw a burning mountain, spewing fire and smoke so high in the air it looked like the fire would burn the sky itself. A voice inside his mind yelled, “Flee,” and Attu seemed to be flying, but not away from the fire. He felt himself heading straight toward the flames. He felt the searing heat of them sizzling his skin and he awoke, shaking with fear.
“What?” Rika asked. “You were dreaming? What did you see?”
The dream had been so real. Attu ran his hands over his arms in the darkness, assuring himself he was unharmed, his flesh still intact. He couldn’t talk about what he had seen and felt. Not yet. It had been too overwhelming. He reached out for Rika. “I’m sorry to have woken you,” Attu said, pulling her close to his side. “I’ll tell you in the morning.”
Rika sighed, but snuggled up against him and fell back asleep. Attu listened to her quiet even breathing for a long time while he waited for his own heart to stop pounding. He finally fell into another dream, this time of flying in a skin boat high above the mountains, back to a place of snow and cold, a place he longed to be with all his heart.
Attu walked with Suka and Kinak. He held his spear with its ice bear tooth point at the ready as the three hunters took the lead along with one of the Seer men. When they first came, Attu had been surprised to discover most of the people of the Seer Clan, however different they looked from Attu’s people, were simply hunters and gatherers like themselves, living off the land and always looking for ways to provide meat for their families. Only a few of their Clan devoted themselves solely to the Gifts, like Ashukat.
Now Attu also knew there was division in the Seer Clan among those with Gifts and those without. But it was more complicated than that. Some of the hunters had Gifts. Some of the Seers occasionally hunted or, like Tingiyok, used the skin boats and fished.
A nuknuk with two heads swims nowhere, Attu thought of the old saying. Then another came to mind, which mothers often used among quarreling children. When two hunters fight over one fish, neither catches it.
How like a child I still am, sometimes, Attu thought as he moved east with the others through the tall wet grass of early morning. I thought we’d reach this place and all would be well. But it’s the same with these people as it has always been among my own people.
While some of Attu’s people were concerned with the things of the spirit, others were looking for their next meal. The two seemed to see Nuvikuan-na itself as if it were different worlds. And no matter how important it is to understand the spirits and follow tradition, Seeing into the far distant past, or searching into the future, or calling the Clans as the Seers did for us, none of that puts food in anyone’s mouth. Why can’t we all respect the importance of the other’s ways and learn to live together as equal partners?
“So you’re saying that any place your ancestors have been, you can see again, even though no one with Gifts lives there?” Kinak asked the hunter named Bruna.
Attu pulled himself back to the conversation. Bruna reminded Attu of Suka, only the man was taller even than his cousin, who was tall for a Nuvik. Bruna had the same ground-eating stride. Kinak and Attu and even Suka had to hurry to keep up with him.
Bruna grinned at them, and slowed as he answered, his green eyes twinkling in his pale face. “But only as it was when our ancestors saw it last. We only started coming east a few sun’s journey to hunt when the Clans began coming off the ice. That’s when I realized that I too, had a Gift. The first time we walked this particular way, I could see it as if I had been here before. I knew where it would be rocky and where there was a high embankment above the river ideal for hunting, even before I saw it.”
They reached the top of a rolling hill. Here the grass was shorter. By the looks of some torn areas and fresh droppings, curved tusks had been here recently. The hunters stood for a moment, surrounded by a sea of grass fading to the horizon. The long plants undulated in the wind as if they were green waves. The sight of the swaying grass along with the smell of curved tusk dung made Attu feel queasy, as he’d felt the first few times he’d seen the ocean.
I definitely prefer the smell of the ocean. Attu snorted, trying to get the acrid odor out of his nostrils.
“Now I’ve been this way several times, so I just know the way,” Bruna added as he struck out down the hill. The rest followed. “My sister, Keanu, can see animals in her mind and knows where they are if she’s seen them before. I don’t know if she just sees them, or if she knows what they’re feeling. I’ve tried to get her to tell me where tusked animals she has seen before are, but she won’t. Keanu says it would be murder to use her Gifts that way. She never tells me what animals she’s somehow communicated with, but sometimes, when I bring game home, she won’t touch it.”
Attu and the others were quiet for a long time as they walked. A woman who can see where an animal is just because she’d seen it once and somehow she could communicate with it, or at least know what it was feeling? Even Attu found that hard to believe. No wonder the Seers have divisions among them if some of the Gifts these people have are that strange.
Suka glanced at Attu and shook his head before he grinned, then twisted his mouth to the side as they’d done since they were young, a sign between them that whoever was talking was either lying or crazy. But his grin disappeared as he seemed to grow thoughtful. “You don’t have a woman of your own yet?” Suka asked Bruna.
“No,” Bruna answered. “I’ve noticed your hunters bond with a woman when you are very young. That is not our way. A man must prove himself worthy in his family by being a strong hunter for them. He does this for many moons, many seasons, as we now mark time since the Warming, before he can ask to leave his own family and find a woman of his own.”
“Ask?” Kinak said. “Ask who?”
“Why, his mother, of course,” Bruna stopped and turned toward them. “The mother is the keeper of the family, the fire, the dwelling, and only with her permission does a hunter leave to start his own family.”
“When we become hunters, we look for a woman who is willing, and only once we know she will be ours, do we tell anyone.” Kinak said. “Sometimes the father of the woman objects, but not usually. Suanu was mine the first time we met. We knew it in our spirits.”
“Your sister Meavu is nearly grown,” Bruna said. “Will she choose her own man soon?”
“Meavu? She’s just a child.” Attu glared at Bruna.
“She is no child, not any longer,” Suka said. He laughed as Attu stopped and stared at them all as if Meavu was beside him and these men were about to attack him so they could carry her away. I know what Mother says, but Meav
u is still too young...
“She’s like a little sister to me, too,” Suka assured Attu. “But open your eyes, my cousin. She is a woman now in everything but her ceremony. She has grown up and you’ve refused to see it.”
“Yes, she is grown.” Bruna said, but when Attu turned his scowl on him, quickly added, “The women of the Seer Clan are strong in many Gifts. They decide who a hunter will take as his woman by their Seeing rituals.”
The men were traveling back up the next hill, and Attu had to hurry to keep up with the longer-legged men. “You don’t choose your own woman?”
“No. She is chosen for me. I trust my mother knows me well and knows which woman would be the best match for me. The women of the Clan make all such decisions.”
“Strange,” muttered Suka.
“Only to you,” Bruna retorted and lengthened his stride even more.
My legs are on fire, Attu thought as he tried not to puff too loudly, loping to keep up.
“Where we come from, a man must prove himself while he is still young and must father as many sons and daughters as he can, or our Clans won’t survive.” Kinak thrust his spear out in front of him as he walked, as if he were on the Expanse again, testing the ice ahead.
Bruna pressed his lips into a thin line, apparently offended by Kinak’s comment about proving himself. He walked on.
“Many children died young on the Expanse,” Suka said. He had slowed his pace and was now in step with Attu. His voice was so low Attu thought he must be talking to himself. “Many mothers, too,” he added.
Attu remembered the day his father had told him that Suka’s mother had died giving birth to him, and that Tulnu was not Suka’s real mother, although she was the mother of his heart. Suka had always cared for Tulnu and she for him, having raised him from a poolik. Still, Ubantu’s brother, Moolnik, had been cruel to his own son. He blamed him for his first woman’s death.
Attu tried to catch Suka’s eye to talk to him, but his friend stared straight ahead and walked on in silence, his face a mask of supposed indifference.
“The man was crazy, Suka,” Attu kept his voice low. “You have proven yourself a man over and over again. Your father has gone Between, killed by Paven for murdering a hunter. He can’t torment you anymore. Don’t allow the memories of his cruelty to wound you forever. I will live with painful scars from the ice bear that attacked me for the rest of my life. You don’t have to. Let the past go.”
Suka flashed him a look of thanks, then the two continued walking, side by side, behind the others.
They moved south, around the flank of the curved tusk herd and back toward them from the east. They stayed low. The plan was to come at the animals from the east in three groups and cause them to stampede toward a rise in the north. The rise ended in a sheer drop down to a slow-moving river, at least two spear throws below. “A fall far enough to kill or fatally wound a curved tusk,” Bruna assured them.
They reached the point where the hunters would startle the curved tusks into running. Bruna signaled with his spear to the other groups, who were hiding in the long grass to the south of the herd. One group ran north along the west side of the herd, and as the curved tusks caught their scent, they churned up the grass with their feet, milling around in agitation. That was the signal. Attu’s group leaped to their feet and ran at the herd, yelling and waving their spears over their heads.
This is a crazy way to hunt, Attu thought, even as he ran, yelling with the others. It went against everything he had been taught his whole life about sneaking up on game and waiting patiently, as beside a nuknuk hole, until he saw the bubbles of a the large seal-like animal as it surfaced.
The curved tusks trumpeted in distress. Mothers grabbed babies with their long snouts and the herd pushed the babies into the center, even as they ran away from the yelling hunters.
“Just until the first few fall off the ridge,” Bruna panted. “Then run to the edge and climb down the ridge to the east, where I told you it’s not too steep.”
Attu followed behind Suka, Kinak, and Bruna as they ran, waving his spear with theirs. The ground shook, as if a chunk of ice had moved, and for an instant Attu panicked before he remembered he was on solid ground. The vibration had been the dropping of a curved tusk onto the riverbed below. He felt another, even stronger thump, then one more.
“Drop!” Bruna shouted, and they dropped to a low crouch and ran alongside the ridge until Bruna stopped and leaped over the edge. He disappeared.
Attu ran forward with the others and looked down to see Bruna standing on a ledge a few feet below them.
“Climb down!” Bruna yelled and slid down the edge of the embankment to the river, picking up speed as he hit level ground and ran toward the sound of hollering men and trumpeting curved tusks.
Attu reached the bottom and ran around the bend in the embankment. His mind reeled as he saw the thrashing curved tusks in the throes of death, churning the riverbank into a pit of mud and rocks as hunters stabbed at them with their long spears. Above them milled the rest of the herd, so close to the edge it looked like a few more animals might be pushed over the ridge by the ones behind them. Rocks clattered down, as well as chunks of grass, as the animals jostled to keep their footing. All around them the ground was littered with debris from the ridge as it had given way under the weight of the huge animals.
Kinak yelled and ran forward, his spear at the ready. Suka followed close behind. But Attu stopped and stood, frozen to the spot, watching the horror of this hunt unfold.
They’re our prey, he told himself. Animals we need for our food. And yet, the giant curved tusks were dying such horrible deaths. One had apparently died in the fall, but the other two were writhing in agony as the hunters stabbed them again and again. One, its back obviously broken so it couldn’t stand or defend itself, struggled to get up, its eyes rolling wildly, its mouth foaming as blood poured from its wounds. The other lay half on its side, thrashing back and forth with its tusks and trunk. It reached out with its trunk, trying to grab at the hunters who took turns darting in and stabbing it, then jumping back. Above them several animals trumpeted, adding their bellows to the chaos.
How can they hunt this way? This killing does not respect the animal, is not merciful or quick. It does not allow the animal its honor as a living being of Nuvikuan-na.
The second curved tusk now lay dead. Attu watched as Bruna ran up to the third one, taking his turn at stabbing it. With the creature’s last strength, it threw its mighty head to one side, catching Bruna across the arm with its tusk and throwing him off to the side like a hide ball. Bruna flew over the great beast’s outstretched leg and crashed down against the animal’s side. With a great sigh, the curved tusk started rolling onto its side, on top of Bruna.
“No!” Attu shouted. He darted in, grabbed the unconscious Bruna, and pulled him away from the animal. Suka raced up to Bruna and grabbed him also. The two hunters pulled Bruna to safety just as the curved tusk rolled onto the spot where Bruna had lain moments before. It heaved one more breath, and died.
Chapter 4
Attu walked slowly along, dragging a huge chunk of meat piled on a sled-like device the Seers called a sledge. It was made of two tree saplings like runners with a bottom made of the tusk animal’s hide. The women had come to the kill site and with their rounded knives, had skinned the tusked animals, then using larger implements and sometimes the help of the men as needed, they cut the meat into manageable portions and placed it on the animals’ hides.
Attu had stood to the side, watching the women, Meavu among them. He didn’t want to admit it, but the other hunters were right. If he was seeing Meavu for the first time, he would have assumed she was of an age to be bonded. He would have to keep a closer eye on her from now on.
Ubantu saw Attu watching Meavu and a protective look passed between them. Attu relaxed. He and his father were more than enough to keep Meavu safe.
Attu stepped in to help the men, who were using the trees to lash the
hides on each side. Once that was done, the meat was loaded and the women walked behind the men, chatting among themselves while the men dragged the sledges back to the camp on the coast.
“It would be easier if we didn’t have to move the game so far,” Ubantu said, pulling his sledge up alongside Attu’s later that day. “I guess when our Clans are on the move, we’ll just make camp wherever the kill has been made.”
“It is hard to drag these sledges,” Attu agreed. He stopped walking long enough to wipe the sweat stinging his eyes before continuing. He slapped at the tiny blood-sucking flying animals clustering on his arms and neck. And we still have a full day’s walk to go. Meanwhile, we are the prey of these nasty little hunters.
“The bigger black ones bite so fast and fly away; you can’t kill them,” his father said as if he’d read Attu’s thoughts. “But they seem to prefer biting the meat we’re carrying instead of us. At least for now.”
Attu pulled on, not even answering his father.
I hate this place.
Ubantu and Attu walked for most of the day in silence, the other hunters and women talking around them as they slowly traversed back to camp. Suka and Kinak pulled up beside Attu with Bruna and another older hunter, Stannik.
“It is such a dangerous way to kill game,” Bruna was saying. “One must be brave and willing to die for his Clan in the hunt.” He grinned at Suka and Attu. “But you saved me to hunt another day.”
Stannik punched Bruna in the shoulder. “Yes, this time. But you draw too close to the animals too quickly, before you are sure they cannot rise again. You must stab them more first, to make sure of the kill.”
Kinak was hanging on to every word the Seer hunters were speaking, and Attu saw the excitement flare in his eyes as they talked about the hunt, examining each part in detail, what each hunter had done and how it had contributed to the taking of three large males.
