consideration. “I don’t know. Maybe! I hope never to find out, because that means I’m running from a bison!”
“Oh.”
“Oh, yes!” Ta Fast said, giving him a hug.
The Bison Hunt
“I have a memory I can share. It’s not a story, though, it is a thing I did myself.” Eh Last said with a smile.
Everyone leaned back, getting comfortable. The night settled in with them, the churrup of crickets and the ululating calls of night hunters haunting the dark.
“I was a young hunter, I’d been hunting for several moons by then. I knew my craft! I was the master of it, although the other hunters might not have agreed in such pealing tones. We were on the great plains, so large an Eh could walk from season to season and not see the end of it. Animals so many, they looked like ashes spread over a midden, dark and clustered. We knew it would be a great hunt, for even if our casts missed, we would hit something near.
“I was excited! How my heart pounded! The ground trembled from the mass of them; horses, rhinos, bison, deer, uncountable numbers, mind blackening numbers. My hand gripped my child size spear so hard, it cramped. I wanted to leap forward, screaming like a sabre toothed cat, to rend and kill.” He stopped and laughed at himself.
“There were 3 hunters as well as myself, the only trainee. We crouched above them all, on a rising, narrow cliff. On one side was the plains, but on the other a box like canyon, with only one entrance. It was shaped like a fist on the end of an arm. The grass was deeply green and not too high. Still soft and tender but so much of it! On one end, farthest away from us, there were many thorny bushes, greened out and thick. We could see the glint of water, so knew a stream flowed by although we couldn’t see where it came from or where it went. The trees were old and well established. Indeed, I remember thinking it was a place I wouldn’t mind staying at and thought to go get a drink of water.
“The hunt leader searched the plains, looking for a small group that might have separated from the safety of the larger group. But then another hunter started laughing quietly.”
“Look,” he said, pointing into the empty canyon. But no, it wasn’t empty! On the far end, resting in the shade of all those bushes, was a large pride of lions. A single large male lounged, yawning. A few young cubs climbed over his back, one chased his lazily flicking tail. Females lay panting, licking wet lips. There were some males there that the older male hadn’t chased off yet, but they had their own little area under the trees. Now that I could see them hidden in the flickering shade, I was surprised at how many there were, and how invisible and visible. If I had done what I’d thought earlier and gone looking for a drink, I would have been at my sky fire before I’d finished swallowing!”
“I remember I got some chuckles from the hunters when I said that. Thinking back now, I wonder just what they laughed at.” Eh Last picked through the last of the apples on a shoulder bone, then continued talking as he ate.
“It was a day when both one of those cubs and I both learned a very important lesson.
“The hunt leader had found a group he thought we could get when into our little canyon a small herd of bison lumbered into the field. They spread out a little in the middle of the field of grass. Strangely, a single rhino travelled unmolested with them. There were seven of them, I can see them even now. Their small ears flickered, their thick necks twisted to help rip the grass from the ground. Huh, I just remembered. I could see the rumps of two other rhinos, deep in the entrance to the canyon. I wonder what they found there, that they’d rather have had than that grass?”
“I like a long winded story as well as the next Eh, Eh Last, but I got a Ta waiting for me. Want to move along?” A voice rose over the crowd, thick with humor. Eh Last threw his head back and forth, the crackle of bones and tendons evidence of what he did.
“Those cats went still as stones, then flowed up into a mass that looked like a tawny river. The cubs got cuffed by a young female, so they backed up out of the pride. She sat next to them, watching them, just like a hunter would today if they wanted a trainee to stay out of trouble. But all the other ones, male and female, crouched low and moved forward as coordinated as any hunting group. Um, with my experience now, I’d say better than most!
“Those bison had no idea those cats were there. They ambled along as they ate, pushing towards those cats without a thought to danger. That one rhino lead the way and I wonder now as I wondered then, if he was the leader of that little pack. Seems crazy, but it seemed they were friends somehow. I’d never heard of such a thing, so maybe it was just coincidence. He moved that way, and the others did, too.
“All of us were watching now, lying flat on the cliff so as not to skyline. The lead hunter suggested letting the cats do the work and us stealing from them. Which in my youth sounded a very fine idea, but now sounds like it would have been easier just to go to the other side of that cliff and get something from the larger herds. Perhaps our hunt leader was newer than I knew. A pride of cats that large wouldn’t have wanted to share. Um, but on the other foot, they may kill so much they became sleepy full, and we could have snuck away with a left over carcass.”
“Eh Last, move on, Eh!” the voice said, a touch more serious.
“Right. We watched as that pride spread out, just like the hunters were training me to hunt. It felt as if I watched an expert hunting team, one of The Peoples. Even now I marvel at their precision. They moved as if they were all controlled by the same thought. Each moved to a specific position, as if they always did the same position or they knew them all so well they could take any.
“The closest was that rhino, and I watched as that big lion crouched down tighter to the ground. I could see Father Sun strike his eyes, but they were so low, the grass covered him all the way to his shoulder tips, the only part of him that showed. Even his ears were back and down, and is tail straight out behind him. I learned later this was for balance, because they used it in their turns and twists. At the time, I thought him only in a position to run. I have never seen cats attack yet, it was my first time.
“I had taken my eyes off the cubs, watching the upcoming battle, when I saw something move in the back. All three of those cubs had crouched down, imitating their adults just I did the hunters in my group. Their tails twitched, I could even see their skin twitching. Father Sun must have been catching them just right, although the day was getting later and I could see better.
“Then one of those cubs broke discipline. He leaped forward awkwardly, his tail all wrong for balance, his too big feet catching on clumps of dirt. With a baby roar, he ran forward, right past a female, right past a male, and right into that big rhino.
“I wish you were there, that day! I’m so glad I was! That cub sitting at the rhino’s feet, all hunched over and his tail around his feet. His head lowered, his ears back. He knew he was in trouble. He knew it. The rhino looked at him, the female lion poked her face in his, broken shells, even a bison looked at him like he was crazy!
“We all laughed! We all laughed so hard, I knew the animals must have heard us! It was so funny, the cub doing that, the animals looking at him, the tiny little pause. It was as if The People had put on cat skins and pretended to be cats, to teach the young what to do - and not to do!
“Then it started! As all the animals realized that the hunt was on! The bison turned on their back feet and exploded in the other direction, the lions exploded forward, easy targets gone and after a running one now. The large male jumped on the rhino, who had started to move, but it was too late and being a rhino, charged forward not back away from the cats. That male went for the neck, hit the rhinos shoulder, and dug in. Climbing onto its back, he gnawed and scratched and quite quickly the rhino was drenched in blood.
“That fool cub wasn’t done yet! Ignoring the chastisement of all its elders, it leaped to help the male with the rhino. It got tangled up in the rhinos footing, and the rhino went down on him and the male cat last of all, on top.
“
I couldn’t hear anything over the rumble, bleats, growls, screams of the hunt, not in truth anyway. But I think the young hunter in me, the cat cub you might say, might have heard the final small sigh of an impatient dying cub.
“When it was over, they’d killed 3 of the beasts; the rhino and two of the bison. Who’s to say how many they would have got, if the cub had maintained his role? The job of a hunter in training is to watch and learn. Because if you don’t, you can foil the hunt. Or die.
“That young cub died, his little body under the massive rhino. I learned from his mistake. When told to stay after that, I always did.”
The Hive
“So tell us!” Eh Speak had said, looked over the bedraggle group. “What happened to you?”
“It’s all his fault!” Ta Laf pulled her wet and muddy hair from her face and pointed a dramatic finger at her brother, Eh Quest. “It’ll be fun, he said...”
Eh Quest lifted his chin and picked another thorn out of his arm. “I said no such thing. What I said was ‘are you trying to be funny?’.”
Ta Sim, whose sleeve dangled past her hand, attempted to pull it back up to her shoulder but it promptly fell down again. She had a red welt across one cheek. “There was this nice bee hive in a tree, with honey