“You would be going with us, if we went there?” Aimettual asked.
“If Maber will have us along, yes, we will,” Akrumtry said.
“Of course, I’d be glad to have you accompany us.” Maber smiled. “Do you still refuse?” Maber looked right at Aimettual.
“No. I’ll agree to travel there. It frightens me to think of such a trip, but, yes, I’ll go.”
Maber looked at Akrumtry. “Will you check with Ghee and Lag. They may want to join.”
“Of course,” Akrumtry replied.
Maber and Aimettual returned to their temporary hut.
Three couples made the trip from the west side of the mountains to the western sea. Lag chose to remain with the Maikumata.
The three couples lived in the low hills of the mountains on the southwest side of what is now Mt. Rainier. They had occasional encounters with others in the area. The meetings involved trade and were pleasant. Maber and Aimettual had thirteen children, only three of whom lived to adulthood. Maber lived to the age of seventy-five. Aimettual lived two years after his death. Their bodies now lie under lahars on the mountain.
Chapter 9
Reg and Blad’s Story
Reg was forty-nine years of age. He was a very large man, towering over the other SealEaters, and his strength was legendary. He was unaware that his hair was graying. Appearance mattered not at all to him; what mattered to him was that he was in control. He and Blad were rowing upstream to learn where the best place for the SealEaters to migrate might be. Reg, seated in the back of the small boat they had taken, rowed with fury at least two strokes to Blad’s one. His voice filled the landscape.
“I’ll kill you, Maber, when I find you. You disloyal, slinking, sea slug snot frozen to Father Sky’s upper lip in the cold! How dare you leave us? How dare you! Have you no sense of responsibility. I will find you. You’ll wish you’d never been born, Pus Bag! Didn’t I take care of you: seeing that you ate and had shelter all your seventeen years? Didn’t I teach you how to hunt? How to live at sea? And this is how you treat me?”
Reg pinched his finger on the last swipe through the water with the oar. He gave no appearance of noticing any pain.
“You’re the provider, Mother Earth! What a lousy effort you’ve shown! My son deserts and you fail to stop him! You let him go! Curses upon you and your daughter, the Pale-Faced Moon. Curses upon you forever. You let him leave with the love and devotion he should have had to me. Me, I tell you! For all I’ve done for him! You are a pretend god! Not real. Not doing what you’re supposed to do—provide for me and Blad.”
“And you, Father Sky. You went black while Maber left. You keep us warm? Not so! Ice advances to the Cove! You the supposed giver of life—you went black while my son stole away into the forest or up the river—I know not where. You went black! Curses also upon you, Father Sky. I do well without you. Curses upon your son, the Water that always moves, not because Water failed—he did not. Curses upon Water because he is your son. May you lose him as I lost my son.”
“Hearth Fire, the source of family ties, cursed may you be also! You failed here. My family is untied. I curse you!”
“Maber, if you can hear me, know that you are a dead man! I have cursed those gods without whose help you could never have escaped. They cannot help you now that I’ve cursed them. Maber, may you rot. May you never have sons. May you meet with a great bear and have him claw you to pieces!”
Reg stopped his rant and reached for his water bladder. He took a great swig and then another. His rant had caused him to have a dry mouth. The water helped.
Despite Reg’s inhuman energy rowing, Blad continued rowing with great strength, while his mind remained tied to his father’s words. Horrible words! Words that froze his thinking place with fear. He knew better than to blaspheme the gods. Everyone knew that. How could his father do it? He wondered why his father didn’t understand Maber’s need to flee. Blad wished he could have been with his brother in the escape, but he knew his brother had reason not to trust him. Many times when they were children, he’d blamed Maber for his own wrongdoing so that punishment fell to Maber when it was due him. He wished the best for Maber. He had taken a great risk. Blad wished his brother well.
Blad then began to think of his father’s cursing. Suddenly, it occurred to him that such behavior was something only humans did. Not all humans did it. Birds don’t curse or blaspheme; four-legged hairy animals don’t do it; fish and animals of the sea don’t do it; birds don’t blaspheme or curse. Why, then, do some humans do it? Blad had never seen that it had any effect whatsoever when his father did it. Why participate in such a non-effective rant? Blad rowed, unable to answer his own questions.
“Birds of the air and beasts of the land, I call to you,” Reg continued, “Find my son and punish him for his treachery! Peck at his eyes, scratch him with your claws and bite him with your teeth. Remove all sources of food from him that he may starve. Let his wounds fester and fill with pus, stink, and rot.”
Blad rowed and remembered that Maber had their supplies for emergency wound care. He hoped they had no need for those supplies.
Reg continued on with his rant until the day darkened and they had to stop for the night. His throat hurt. He stopped to refill the water bladders. He kicked a small rock, then looked at Blad.
“What’s the matter with you? You rowed like a girl today! I don’t suppose you have energy to find us real meat for tonight! Toss me my spear. I’ll be back.” Reg stormed off into the forest. He instantly switched to the silence and stealth for which he was well known. He went deeper and deeper into the forest, still carrying the sense that forests were not places for SealEaters, but driven for desire to eat some fresh meat.
Blad carefully started a fire. Then for the night he built a shelter made of windfall logs laid together in a circular arrangement. In between the logs he stuffed mosses, leaves, and branches, anything he could find to make it waterproof. The clouds above made him think of rain, and Blad was certain he could smell it. He placed their backpacks in the shelter and laid out the sleeping skins. Blad gathered and peeled as many sticks as he could find to cook meat his father was certain to bring. Then, Blad waited. Suddenly, he jumped up and went to the boat and tilted it, so all the water that had collected in the bottom could drain out. Blad returned to put some large logs near the fire where they’d sit to cook their meat.
It was not long before Blad heard crashing through the forest and knew his father was approaching. The man had a way of heavy breathing after a hunt that was unmistakable. Blad was glad to have meat but wished he’d had a little more time without his father.
They bled the beaver and butchered it. After cleaning it, Reg removed the beaver’s head, sliced the beaver along the spine, and then each one skewered his half. They cooked and ate in silence. Reg entered the shelter to go black, while Blad finished eating. He took his time carrying the animal parts to the center of the river, where he’d dump them since they couldn’t use all the parts at that time. He banked the fire and entered the shelter to go black, where he could hear Reg’s snore. Blad wished he had the courage of Maber to gather his own things and go into the forest to disappear from Reg forever. He didn’t.
Overnight a huge storm passed over. Neither awakened, but in the dawn’s light it was clear there’d been a downpour. They wasted no time. Each wolfed down some jerky, loaded the boat, killed the fire, knocked down their shelter, and left. Reg was silent for most of the morning.
Reg kicked Blad. Blad turned to see what Reg wanted. Reg pointed ahead to a bend in the river where a large deer was standing. He pointed to shore. Both rowed as quietly as possible to shore. Reg exited the boat silent as a cat and headed toward the forested edge. He slipped up on the deer without being detected and threw his first spear, hitting the deer behind the front leg. The deer was stunned, and Reg threw the second spear. It hit the deer behind the ear and the deer fell to the ground. Quickly, Blad joined him and they took care of the deer and prepa
red it for transportation in the boat. They wouldn’t have to be concerned about food for some time.
They resumed their rowing upriver. Reg, who had been fairly quiet all day, decided to make the shelter for the night. He used two trees at the edge of the forest. Between them he attached a single log and then laid windfall logs against the one that spanned the two trees. It gave him a wider interior to their shelter. He raised up the lower level logs by placing another wind fallen log under the ends. Reg set up the sleeping skins and put the backpacks inside.
Blad had a larger than normal fire going to roast the deer. He had buried two Y-shaped poles in the ground and put the deer meat on a horizontal bar resting in the Ys of the poles. The deer would roast over the fire for a good part of the day. By evening, it would be ready for them to eat. Blad gathered some greens and laid them aside for the evening meal. He noticed that his father had walked downstream a bit and was standing at the forest’s edge.
Suddenly, Reg let out a loud noise. He was dancing from one foot to another.
“Blad, come help me. I’ve have things crawling all over me.”
Blad went to his father quickly. Reg had been standing in a bug nest and was covered with amazingly tiny little eight-legged, gray-brown bugs. They were crawling up both his legs.
“Remove them from me!” he bellowed at full volume, as if he were terrified of the tiny bugs.
Blad pulled his father towards the river hoping to guide him away from the source of the bugs. He began to pull them off and rinse them off his hands in the river water. He was appalled at the number of them. Blad tried to wipe them off, but numbers of them had attached themselves to Reg’s skin, and they had to be removed one at a time.
Reg stood there, completely horrified at the bugs crawling on him and angry that it happened. He tried to remain calm while Blad wiped and pulled at the bugs. It took a very long time.
“Oh, by the gods, there are some on my butt,” Reg yelled.
“You’ll have to uncover yourself, if I’m to reach them,” Blad replied.
Reg removed his clothing with his back to Blad, covering his private parts with his hands. Blad found that somewhat amusing for the SealEaters were not shy about their bodies, but he would never have admitted his thoughts to his father.
Eventually, Reg seemed comfortable that nothing else was crawling on him. He pulled his clothing back on.
Time passed and one day Reg noticed two gray things he thought were growths on his groin. They were gray. They had appeared very fast, he thought. He asked Blad to look at them. Blad said they looked to him like two of the bugs that had crawled on him. He suggested to Reg they might be sucking his blood from the looks of them. Reg told him to remove them. After dislocating the first one, Blad squeezed it between his fingernails. Sure enough, the bug was filled with blood.
“Take the other one off!” Reg screamed.
Blad removed the other one. He didn’t see any more.
For days Reg itched terribly at the places where the bugs had attached. He was totally disgusted with the effects of the bugs.
After several more days of rowing, they finally reached the place where the boat could no longer travel upstream. They hid the boat by the small lake, and Reg and Blad began to walk.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Blad asked.
“A place for our people,” Reg replied not understanding why Blad asked such an obvious question.
“What I want to know is what makes a good place for our people.” Blad was looking for the criteria for discovery.
“Then you should ask what you want to know,” Reg replied, ignoring Blad’s request for information.
Blad thought for a while and then said, “What are the things that make a good place for our people?”
Reg replied, “An open place, plenty open. Water nearby. Other people at a long distance. Food animals to hunt. Forests for wood. Good weather.”
While they talked, two men on a rocky outcrop spotted the two men walking.
“No more than two?” Ga asked.
“No more than two,” Cu replied.
“It would be wise to gather a few more warriors,” Ga said.
“I’ll go.”
Within a brief time, two more men arrived with Cu.
“I see,” Ja said.
“Let’s go down. We must stop them.”
The four men silently descended the great hill so they would arrive at a specific, well chosen place for their apprehension of the two who walked below.
Below, Blad was wondering why they continued on their course. He could not work out a way to ask his father what he wanted to know, for Reg could take his question as criticism, something he did not tolerate. Blad wanted to know why they were in a region that was cold compared to other places they’d been. There were no open places along this river. Why, he wondered, were they pursuing this place? He kept silent.
“By Mother Earth, I do not understand the disappearance of Maber. He could not have just walked off! I wonder whether he was abducted. But if abducted, why, Mother Earth, would you neglect your duties to protect us? What were you thinking? Were you even there?”
Blad groaned silently. His father was at it again. His face was red and stormy looking. Blad hated to be in these strange surroundings with a man who was one person one moment and another in a heartbeat. He hoped this would not continue for the remainder of the day.
“Father Sky, you who are supposed to have created all that is. Where were you when my son disappeared? Were you off fornicating with Mother Earth? You sopping wet bear turd of a god! I spit on your name! I bet your maleness is skinny and short! Skinny, short, pus-filled slug! I hate you! Hear me? I hate you. Worship you? Never again!”
Blad was becoming alarmed. His father might bring all the gods down on them. They began to walk through a narrow passage at the river bend, where they had to walk through one at a time. No sooner had Reg passed through than four men jumped him. They knocked him down, tied his hands together behind his back, almost cutting off the circulation of blood, and hobbled him so he could not take more than a single small step at a time. They did the same to Blad, but he was a lot easier to subdue.
They issued the standard interrogatories trying hard to obtain answers, and then gave up. Language was a problem. They signed for the strangers to follow Ga, releasing the tie of one hobble rope’s end for walking. It took three days to reach their village. A capture of this nature, however, caused them to have to go to the Alu main village, Alu-a. That took seven days.
The Alu did not want to listen to the angry man whose voice they heard so much before capture, so they kept him gagged. It didn’t stop Reg from railing, just kept it so they couldn’t hear him. Blad was grateful.
Any time the strangers walked too slowly, the Alu prodded them with Reg’s and Blad’s spear points, points they admired. The prodding was effective.
Finally, they arrived at Alu-a. People came to greet them, awed by the size of one of the captives. They took them to the center of the village to meet Chief Xeno.
“Treat them as usual, but use double cordage on that big one,” the chief told them. He turned and took his seat on the bench in front of his place to watch.
There were three trees in the village center. They took Reg to the first two trees. A few men tied one strand of cordage to his left wrist and one to his right. Then they tied another to each wrist. Reg had to stand while they tied one of his arms to one tree and another to another tree. They pulled the cordage very tight. His arms were slightly raised above his shoulders while he stood. Then, they did the same with his ankles. Then, to Reg’s horror, they took sharp knives and cut his clothing off. He stood there like a bleeding kill—nude. Suddenly Ye, an old woman, began to laugh. Then more people saw what she noticed and they laughed. Reg’s face turned blood red. His secret had been uncovered. Now, his son would know.
“We shall call him One Nut,” the chief said. All the people who were in the area began to laugh.
&nb
sp; Blad suddenly realized why they were laughing. It took a moment for the information to settle in his thoughts. He had always known that his father could not ever be elected chief, but he didn’t understand why. Now, he knew Reg’s awful secret. He was not by the SealEaters considered fully male. Blad had a quick flash in his thinking place that caused him to wonder whether his father was the monster he was because the other elders considered him less than fully male. It was a revelation.
Reg remained tied up. Women and men went up and touched One Nut. Some cut him with women’s knives. They cackled as they did it. Reg wanted to become invisible. He hated every second of this torture.
Then, the men who’d secured Reg came for Blad. They tied him up and removed his clothing as was done to his father.
As the men circled Blad, they saw the scars that clearly denoted beatings. They realized this one had endured much pain.
The chief spoke, “We will call him Endured Pain.” The chief looked at the men who had secured the prisoners. “Cut him down, Pi. I want him taught our language quickly. Will you do it, Pi?”
“Yes, Chief. Do you want him tied once he’s freed?”
“Yes, until he learns to talk to us, and we are assured he will not cut the other man down.”
“Very well.”
Pi took Blad down from the trees and led him to his home, where the language lessons began immediately. Blad could still hear the natives taunting his father and laughing. Blad’s jacket was ruined, so Pi’s wife sewed it together at the place the men had cut the shoulders loose to remove it. Blad had so many mixed feelings that he was confused. He also was very tired. Having to sit to learn a new language was not something he would have wanted to do, but he gave it every effort he could.
The SealEaters, 20,000 BC Page 27
