by Barbara Wood
She stopped and gave him a worried look. After uttering a few incomprehensible words, she crawled out of the shelter through an opening he had not noticed before. “You didn’t cover me up!” he wanted to cry, but his lips and tongue would not obey.
She did not leave him for long and when she returned, another person was with her, a tall, broad-shouldered figure. Avram watched in puzzlement as the second person divested itself of layers of clothing to reveal full breasts, narrow waist, and flaring hips. She laid herself alongside Avram and took him into her arms. The old woman covered them up and left the ice hut.
Avram drifted in and out of consciousness many times before he came fully awake. The first thing he noticed were golden lashes lying on the crests of pale cheeks, a fine long nose and wide pink mouth. He would learn much later that her name was Frida and that it was she who had saved his life when she pulled him from the ice.
His recovery took weeks and was mostly left to Frida and the old woman, who massaged him and fed him fish and soup and healing herbs. Men came to look in on him, squatting inside the small ice house and asking questions that he did not understand. Each night he fell asleep in Frida’s warm arms and woke the next morning to find her flaxen hair spread across his chest. The morning he awoke with an erection, the old woman declared him cured and Frida did not sleep with him after that.
Later he would learn why they had saved his life and why they had shared with him what small food stores they had. Before he had fallen into the ice, before he had started his trek across the frozen sea, a wind had blown his hood back from his head, and Frida had seen it. Unaware that there were people nearby, Avram had pulled his hood back up and started across the frozen waste, but not without Frida having seen the black hair and swarthy skin. Among their gods, she would later explain when Avram had learned their language, were dark-haired ones who were the guardians of the woods and caves and who possessed wondrous powers.
Finally one morning the old woman set his clothes before him, dried and soft again, and which he eagerly donned. He was overjoyed to see his phylactery, still on its leather thong, and it appeared to have been untouched. But he opened it anyway, to make sure he had lost nothing valuable in his mishap with the ice, and although the old woman watched in curiosity as the objects spilled out—the string that was his withered umbilical cord, a baby tooth, Yubal’s wolf fang—it wasn’t until she saw the blue crystal that she cried out.
To Avram’s astonishment, she hurriedly crawled out of the ice house and he could hear her shouting outside. A moment later, the biggest man Avram had ever seen squeezed his way inside. For an instant Avram thought the stranger was going to steal the crystal. Instead, the man squatted on the ice floor and stared in wonderment at the stone. He looked at Avram and asked a question, to which Avram could only say, “I do not understand your language.” The man nodded and started to leave. Then he stopped and beckoned for Avram to follow.
With the phylactery securely around his neck and hidden beneath his fur tunic again, Avram took his first steps outside to discover that the “morning” had only been in his imagination, for he found himself in a land of constant darkness.
The people clustered around him, shyly curious about the newcomer. They wore hooded jackets, pants and boots of waterproof sealskin, and they all looked so alike that he wondered how the men and women found each other for their pleasure. But most of all they resembled ghosts, for their skin was like white smoke and their hair the color of pale wheat. And they were tall! Even the women towered over Avram. They seemed to find novelty in his short stature, black hair, and olive complexion.
The leader of the clan introduced himself as Bodolf.
In his journey across the continent, Avram had encountered bears. They were what Bodolf reminded him of—a huge, pale bear with a thunderous laugh. Bodolf did not oil his beard as the men in Avram’s clan did, but he did braid his long blond hair. However, the braids were not ornamented with shell and beads, but rather with human finger bones. “Plucked from the corpses of our enemies,” Bodolf later boasted.
Avram was then introduced to a man named Eskil, whom he thought was Bodolf’s brother, the resemblance was so strong. But then he realized that Eskil was considerably younger—uncle and nephew perhaps? And then it was cleared up when Bodolf said, “Eskil and I are not blood-related. He is the son of my hearth-mate, the woman I have spent all my winters with.” For Bodolf was one of those who did not seek variety but found contentment with the same woman every year.
That night—although the sun had never risen—the clan held a feast in honor of their visitor who possessed a piece of the sky. Avram dined on seal for the first time in his life, and whale oil and the meat of a bear whose fur was as white as snow. They sought to impress him with their favorite delicacy—a roasted goose that had been fed only rotten fish, which supposedly imparted to the meat an exotic flavor but which Avram found revolting. Still, he was thankful to be alive and in the company of so hospitable a race. Especially as the women, with hair like corn silk and skin as smooth as fruit, found him an intriguing novelty.
He continued to share the old woman’s ice house and earned his keep by entertaining the clan with what they called lies: descriptions of palm trees and sandy deserts, giraffes and hippopotamuses, and summers so hot that water dropped onto a rock sizzled and evaporated.
At the first signs of spring, Bodolf’s clan, who called themselves the People of the Reindeer, left their ice houses and traveled by sled to a mountainous region where pine and birch trees were shedding their snowy burdens. Here the people got to work chopping trees for logs. The work went night and day until a mighty timber house was built, large enough for all to live and sleep in. Avram helped, wielding axes and applying pitch, and eating with them at mealtimes but sleeping alone at night. He didn’t want to learn their language, he didn’t want to know their names.
When he had moments to himself, he would look at the new green growth and, thinking of springtime at the Place of the Perennial Spring, turn his eyes southward. Since he could no longer press northward nor westward—he had come to the edge of the world—perhaps it was time to turn back.
But…to where? Back to the Perennial Spring where he would only know dishonor? There would be only one reason for him to go back: he pictured Marit living in his house with his grandmother and his brothers.
“Stay with us,” Bodolf said, laying his arm across the young man’s shoulders. “We will tell you our stories and you will tell us yours. And we shall drink together and gladden the hearts of our ancestors.”
They introduced him to mead, a drink made of fermented honey that they consumed in copious amounts in the summer months. When Avram tasted the drink and saw how attractively Frida’s hair caught the firelight, he decided there was no urgency to leave.
He watched them hunt, listened to them talk, and gradually, despite himself, learned their language. “How did your people come to live in such a place?” he asked, thinking of his own sun-blessed homeland that seemed a more sensible place to live.
“Our ancestors originally lived in the south. When the reindeer heard go-north voices, they went and my ancestors followed them.” Bodolf pointed to the mountains rising like knives from the earth and the great rivers of ice in between. “The voices came from those glaciers. They were retreating north and left behind the lichen and moss that our reindeer love so well. So, you might say those glaciers brought us here.”
“Why are they retreating?”
Bodolf shrugged. “Perhaps the sky is calling them back.”
“Will they come again?” Avram asked, trying to picture a world blanketed entirely in ice.
“It depends on the gods. Maybe. Someday.”
Avram looked at the compound where the strange wolves were kept. To his astonishment, men were feeding them and the beasts were not attacking.
“How is this possible?” Avram said.
“Do you not have dogs where you come from?”
“What a
re dogs?”
“Cousins of wolves.”
“You tamed them?”
“They tamed us,” Bodolf said with a smile. “They approached our ancestors long ago and said, ‘If you feed us we will work for you and be your companions in the dark nights.’ ”
Avram learned that Bodolf’s people worshipped the reindeer, as a provider of food and hides, but also as the creator of life as well.
The magnificent beasts were kept in a large compound where they were free to roam, handsome animals with long dark fur and white mantles, and antlers so splendid they resembled trees. To see such animals kept tamely by men was a marvel to Avram, but even more astonishing was how the reindeer allowed themselves to be milked. He thought of Namir and his experiments with keeping goats, and suddenly Avram had new respect for the man, because he had not thought the taming of animals possible.
Bodolf told him about the days of the ancestors when they used to chase reindeer herds across the ice and how one man had gotten cut off from his hunting party. As he lay in the snow, frozen and starving and near death, a reindeer materialized and crouched down next to him, keeping him warm with her massive body, and then she allowed him to drink her milk. And while Reindeer was nursing him back to life, she said to the man, “Do not chase us and hunt us down. Bring some of us to live with you and we shall feed you and keep you warm. But let my herds roam free.” So they captured females and brought them back. There was milk for a time, and then Reindeer came to the ancestor in a dream and spoke again: “You cannot separate my females from the males, for as with men and women, my reindeer must have pleasure.” So the ancestors brought a male to live with the females, and the people had milk forever after that.
Avram frowned. “But how do animals take pleasure?” he asked, trying to imagine it.
Bodolf laughed and made a gesture with his hands. “The same as we humans do! Animals are no different!”
Having only ever seen animals when he had hunted them in the hills, chasing after them with spear and bows and arrows, Avram had never seen this behavior. It made sense, he supposed. The Goddess created the act of intimate pleasure for people, why not for animals as well?
“Come the spring,” Bodolf said with satisfaction, “calves will be born.”
Avram’s eyebrows shot up. “How can you know this? The moon chooses when young will be born. Men have no way of predicting this.”
Bodolf gave him an impatient look. “Do you not have animals in your land?”
“We have many.”
“And they bear young?”
“When we hunt in the spring, we see babies among the herds.”
“And so it can be predicted! Because in this way,” Bodolf said, again making a crude copulating gesture with his hands, “the Reindeer spirit begets females with offspring. She does the same with humans. When a woman dreams of a reindeer, or inhales the smoke from reindeer meat on a fire, or if she wears a reindeer amulet around her neck, she will get pregnant. Reindeer is the life-giver of all things. Is it not the same among your people?”
“In my land, it is the moon that gets a woman with child,” Avram said, still unconvinced about animals and sexual pleasure.
But more intriguing to Avram than the puzzle of the reindeer was the people themselves. He observed more permanent pair-bonding among the People of the Reindeer than among his own kind. There were no alliances between families but rather between two people: the woman provided the hearth and shelter while the man provided food and protection. Perhaps it was because of the long and harsh winters that made life harder here and so survival depended upon cooperation. Avram thought, A man can’t very well go roaming at night for a woman, not like during the hot sultry nights at the Place of the Perennial Spring, where copulating is random and beneath the stars.
When summer waned and winter approached, Bodolf suggested to Avram he choose a winter-mate. When Avram said he was used to sleeping with men, Bodolf and others boomed with laughter and said, “Choose a woman. What better way to keep warm?”
He thought of Frida, and learned that she had not yet chosen a winter-mate. However, to gain entrance to a woman’s shelter a man must first prove himself a good food provider. And so Bodolf and Eskil took Avram on his first hunt.
The hunters skimmed across the frozen wastes on skis and dog-drawn sleds as they raced after polar bear and elk. Avram threw his hood back and lifted his face to the sky. Such speed! Such freedom! He called to the others and they waved back, and for a while he forgot his wretchedness and accursed state, that he was a murderer, a breaker of oaths, a man who had abandoned his beloved and sullied his family honor. For these few hours he was clean and free, and for a brief time he allowed himself sentimental thoughts of his three brothers, thinking how they would have enjoyed this adventure on the ice.
But when he saw Bodolf and Eskil together, and their special bond, it reminded him of his relationship with Yubal, and it made his heart ache anew with grief. He could tell these people something: that it was possible to kill a man with an uttered oath.
The days grew shorter and the People of the Reindeer left the timberland and headed out onto the frozen waste to build their ice houses. Bodolf tested the snow with his knife at several places before he found the right weight and texture for building blocks. “The snow is very poor here—too soft on top and too hard at the bottom—but it is the best we can find.” He and Eskil cut the first block. Avram helped them turn the big chunk over, then Bodolf carved a usable block from the middle of it. The blocks were laid layer by layer in a spiral and when the dome was completed, Bodolf excavated a sleeping platform by digging out the floor and shoveling the excess snow out the small entrance hole at the base of the dome.
After they had built their shelter, Bodolf and Eskil took Avram seal hunting, which was done through the frozen ocean ice. Bodolf explained that since seals needed to breathe, they scratched holes through the ice as it began to freeze and then periodically returned to them for air. Avram watched as the hunters used their half-wolves to locate these holes by smell, then they slipped a slender whalebone through the thin ice and waited. When the whalebone quivered it meant the seal was surfacing and so the hunter swiftly threw his harpoon. It required a man to stand very still for several hours, a task Avram was good at due to his long hours in Yubal’s wooden watchtower.
Although they laughed at Avram’s failed attempts to harpoon a seal, they finally joined together and helped him to catch one, so that he would not have to spend the winter months sleeping with snoring old men. It was the custom to bring a seal carcass directly to a woman for she must offer it a drink of water as a sign of hospitality, thus propitiating the seal’s spirit. So Avram brought his seal to Frida. She offered it a drink and invited Avram to stay at her hearth.
They gathered in the ice house of Bodolf and his woman of many years, Thornhild, along with Eskil and a girl with a shy smile, and Avram and Frida who sat holding hands. They listened to wolves howling in the night and Bodolf’s explanation to Avram. “No one knows why wolves howl. Perhaps they see ghosts, or they are possessed by the spirits of the men they kill. Perhaps they like the sound of their own voices,” Bodolf said with a smile. They were drinking the last of the summer mead and enjoying the warmth of furs and a smoky brazier in the cozy ice house. “Wolf packs take great pleasure in howling together. I have seen them howl when they greet each other after a hunt.”
“Like people,” Avram said with a grin.
He was growing comfortable with the People of the Reindeer, even though he felt superior to them and knew that they thought themselves superior to him. Their rivalry was good natured. When he tried to describe his house, Bodolf said, “You live in the same house all year?”
“Yes, and for many years.”
His companions were shocked. They pinched their noses and made faces.
“We sweep them out,” Avram said defensively. “We keep the houses clean.”
“Why do you stay in one house?”
; “To watch the vineyard.”
“You have to watch the vineyard?”
“That is what I said.”
“If you do not watch it, the grapes will not grow?”
“Oh, the grapes will grow.”
“Then why do you watch the vineyard?”
“To prevent others from taking the grapes.”
“Why would you prevent other people from taking the grapes?”
“Because they are ours.”
Bodolf exchanged glances with the others. “So when strangers come, the fruit is not for them?”
“That is so.”
“Why not? The fruit is on the vine.”
“But my abba grew the vines and so the grapes are his.”
Eskil frowned. “If your abba were to die, would the vines die?”
“Well, no.”
“Then how are they his?”
He explained the story of Talitha and Serophia, which he told with great solemnity. To his indignation, they roared with laughter. But then as he continued to drink the fermented honey and tell the story, he also began to find it humorous and after a while was clutching his stomach and howling at the antics of those impossible women long ago.
In the end, despite their differences, Avram and the People of the Reindeer agreed on one thing, that fermented drinks were wonderful.
Finally they wanted to hear his own tale, and when he told them, he finished with: “I do not know why I ran or why I kept going. I could have stayed with the feather-workers and lived a comfortable life. But I was impelled westward and now I seem to have come to the end of the world.”
“Perhaps you are on a vision quest,” Bodolf said, and the others solemnly agreed.
