—I don’t think Firestarter is starting a fire, Loon said.—I think that’s his antler pronging down at us. He’s on his back trying to mate with Mother Earth, and he can’t get close enough, and the Spurtmilk came from him.
—But the Spurtmilk is in the summer sky, Thorn pointed out.
—That’s right, he came so hard that his spurtmilk flew right around into summer.
Thorn laughed in a way he had never laughed at Loon before, truly amused.
—I don’t think so, he said at last, shaking his head.—The firestick is just at the right angle. And then there’s the base too. Those stars can’t be his nuts, they’re too far apart.
—Those are his hip bones, Loon explained.
Again Thorn laughed.—All right, good, he said.—A new story to tell.
The eyes speak what the tongue can’t say. Force begets resistance. Even a mouse has anger. After dark every cat is a lion. In spring Mother Earth is pregnant, in summer she gives birth. Children are the true human beings. The good-looking boy may just be good in the face. Danger comes without warning. Every fire is the same size when it starts.
Such an itch for something different to happen. How he wanted his wander back. The ducks kept not showing up, and Thunder and Bluejay began to roast Schist daily for giving away some of their food to the Lion pack. Schist ignored them, his face hard. He turned his back on them and walked away. No one got to complain to him about their food, even though they were the ones feeling the pinch in their guts.
Eventually Loon just had to go back out on the hunt again, Crouch or no Crouch.
—You’ll be all right, I think, Heather said doubtfully.—If not just come back. You can’t push the river. Hurry the break-up and bring on a flood. So be careful. Let your good leg carry you. If you can do it at all, it will be good for you. You need to get out there for it to go completely away.
So he went off with Hawk and Moss and they went upstream, over the low ridge between Loop Meadow and the confluence where the Ordech ran into the Urdecha.
Hawk and Moss were happy to have him back with them on the hunt, and after asking once or twice about his leg they stopped mentioning it, as being an unwelcome reminder. This was the usual courtesy among men on the hunt. They went neither slower nor faster than normal, and when they came to Mother Muskrat Meadow on the Ordech, they went silent and took the west ridgeline around it, single file and heads down. Loon focused on the ground, and on dancing over it in a way where good leg carried bad. His javelin served as Prong had in his wander, and its cupped back end took a little beating; hopefully it would still fit onto his spear thrower cleanly when the time came. Best not to jam it down onto rocks, and to hit the ground cleanly with the whole rim of the cup. Ah yes, it was going to work. His friends were happy and he was happy.
Above the meadow they came on some of Mother Muskrat’s children, splashing in the inlet turn. Their black heads swam around in the water, their whiskers cutting little curls in the sides of the nose wave. If they thought the three young men were interested in them, they would dive and take refuge in a muskrat house emerging from the water near the far bank. Possibly the humans could have descended behind trees close enough to throw a javelin, but it would be a long throw. Better to remember and come back and set a trap underwater. They wanted something bigger anyway.
Bigger, they said to each other, and hiked onto the upland at the top of the Ordech saying bigger, bigger, bigger. And today luck was with them; the hunger month was almost over, and some of Mother Earth’s creatures were in trouble. On the rim of the upland stood an elg, thin under its enormous splayed antlers, looking out of place on the broad moor, where you could see so far that the Ice Tits were visible over the horizon to the west.
The three hunters had frozen on seeing this elg, and after that they moved without moving, flowing like snakes into a alder brake that filled a wet seam in the moor. Inside the brake they had to move over the alder branches without moving any of them enough to squeak, or even quiver. The elg themselves were unexpectedly good at this complicated procedure, despite their immense size, so it would be a coup to use the method to creep up on one. And it would also be a coup to bring back to camp that much meat and hide. Indeed they might have to make two trips home with it all, and hope for the best concerning what got left behind.
But this was getting ahead of the game. For now they had to flow through the brake toward the elg without revealing themselves to it. Elgs didn’t have much of a nose, and the hunters were downwind of it. So for a long time they slithered through the net of alder branches, making sure their javelins never got hung up. Sometimes finding a spear’s way was harder than getting through oneself. Some of the thorny vines that grew under alder were so intensely thorny that they could pass over one’s skin without pricking it at any point, the many tips making a surface of sorts. If one could pass these without snagging… but so often they snagged. One had to accept the poisoned little scraping and slip on, indomitable as an otter.
Loon came to the edge of the brake, and through the last net of branches saw the elg still where it had been. Its hide was unbroken, free of sores on the back, and yet it was gaunt. Probably sick, or old. It would still be well worth bringing back. Hawk and Moss appeared to his left and right, and they had a little eye conference. The problem was clear: how to get the javelins deployed on their spear throwers, and then throw them, without revealing themselves to the elg. It wouldn’t be possible unless it had its back to them, in which case it would be hard to kill with javelins. If they hit it and then it ran off, they would lose their spears to it. So, two of them should throw, hope to wound it, and the third chase it and rush in for a more direct throw or thrust. Hawk wanted that part, so Loon and Moss twisted and contorted until they had their javelins cupped on their throwers, and aimed. Loon eyed his throw space, got ready to throw; the convulsive jerk would have to be just right. Looking into each other’s eyes one last time with a mad glee of anticipation, they counted it out with their moving lips—one, two, three, throw!
Hawk immediately burst out onto the moor and ran toward the elg, which was trotting away, both spears hanging from his right haunch. So they had both hit him, but now they had to get him. Loon and Moss crawled out of the brake and followed Hawk, who was chasing down the elg with his javelin held in his right hand just over his right shoulder, ready to throw. It would take a thrust to the gut to bring him down, so Hawk would have to outrun it, and to Loon’s surprise he was actually doing that, running faster than Loon had ever seen any human run.
Then the elg suddenly stopped and kicked back at Hawk, who had to tuck and roll over his spear, then stop on one knee and thrust the tip up into the exposed gut and roll away, dodging a kick of the elg’s foreleg. That too missed, and Hawk had stuck him deeply in the gut. For a time the beast stood there, breathing heavily and bleeding from Hawk’s puncture, which was so close to the ribs that it might have hit a lung.
—Die brother die, they implored it, looking around for rocks of the right size to make a useful blow to the head. It might also be possible to withdraw one of their spears from the right haunch, but that would risk another vicious kick, and backward rear leg kicks were dangerous. And the last kick is the worst.
There were rocks ready to hand almost everywhere on the moor, and as soon as they all three had both hands full, they threw six rocks in a flurry, and Loon’s first throw caught the elg right on the ear, causing him to bellow and turn as if to charge, but this was too much for him. He stood there quivering and bleeding more than ever from the gut stick, as the spear was dragging on the ground. Moss dashed around him like a mink and darted in to pull out one of the spears from his haunch. The elg did indeed kick at him, but feebly. Moss got his spear out and prodded briefly to spur another weak kick, and after Moss ducked away from that he came back in with the returning leg and stabbed deep at the gut just in front of the haunch, twisting it at the end of the thrust and then leaping back to avoid another kick. It was just like whe
n they had fought as kids: Moss was a counterpuncher.
The elg began to bleed from the mouth and nose, which meant one of them had punctured a lung. They cheered as the elg went to his knees and snorted out his last breaths.—Ha! they shouted, slapping each other with a huge delight.—Thank you brother! they shouted at the dying beast.
The elg crashed onto his side and gurgled his last breaths. When he was gone they could tell; there was always a noticeable difference when the spirit departed a living thing. Immediately it was as inert as a stone. The spirits sometimes stayed nearby, and there were certain proprieties and taboos about eating creatures too soon after they had died, just to respect these hovering spirits. But the bodies were empty. And none of the taboos obtained when it came to getting meat back to camp before scavengers arrived to complicate things. Indeed this was a time to hurry.
They had to work hard to cut up such a big brother. Their spear tips could be used as cutters, and though they weren’t as good as real meat blades, they were immensely better than the choprock Loon had used to break down his deer. Even so it was hard sweaty work, and they huffed and puffed as they speared the joints apart and cut hard at the ligaments.
They cut the haunches entirely away and then gutted the body, then cut the head and neck off just in front of the forelegs. The head would be the most awkward of the three pieces they wanted to carry back to camp.
As they were working the sun went down and quickly darkness fell, as always on the moors of the upland. And they were covered with elg blood. So they were not comfortable being out there, as several wolf packs regularly passed by here. The closest pack to their camp ran a ten-day circuit around its land, and had not been seen for most of a fortnight, so they were due back anytime.
When the waning half moon rose they hefted their pieces of the elg and began to run toward the mouth of the Ordech. They traded the elg parts during brief rests, to alter the kind of load they had to carry. It had already been a long day and night, and at a certain point Loon felt the weariness in his thighs and calves, and all through him. He had to limp pretty hard to keep his bad leg quiet. He breathed deep and fast, working to call up his second wind. There was a period between when you called for the second wind and it came, when you felt like shit and simply had to bear down and slog through the weakness; that bearing down was the call for the second wind, and the sign that it was on its way. And as often happened, when the second wind came he forgot he had ever been tired at all; the night could go on for as long as it wanted, it didn’t matter. He was eating his own body at that point, Heather said, so there was food enough for a long haul.
But Loon had to admit, as the night wore on, that his bad leg was bad. He also had a good one, however, and because the good leg was so good, he could do it; he could favor the bad leg and in time it would get better. So tonight, the trick was to see how well he could get along on the good leg, and not hurt the bad leg further in this run home.
They came into camp around a fist before dawn, and most of the pack woke up and cheered them, and built up the fire and ate a little roasted meat, while breaking down the elg into parts that would preserve better. Hawk and Moss and Loon were congratulated and cosseted as they told the story of the hunt, and Loon didn’t say anything about his leg, but he couldn’t help protecting it around the fire, and both Heather and Thorn saw it, and glared at each other as if each thought it was the other’s fault. It almost made Loon laugh, but he was too worried to laugh.
The next day Loon looked down at his body and pinched the skin over his hip bones. The lobs of fat that had been there through the winter were completely gone. His skin was the same brown as certain horses’ manes, a particular brown lighter than most of his pack’s skin color. People said he had some lunkhead in him, that that was why he was so stupid. There was no fat in the ring around his belly button either. He couldn’t have packed on much more fat last fall or it would have slowed him down. Some men got so that they almost looked pregnant, but of course they never really did, because they carried the weight low and looked like dropstones in the river, whereas women carried their kids right under their ribs and looked beautiful. It was a stark contrast, and sometimes struck Loon’s eye very strongly when he saw a bag-bellied old man; which was rare, as usually he only had eyes for the women. Men he evaluated with the same dispassion he gave to himself; how was that one doing, how was his body faring in the daily struggle? Not bodies but motions he admired in men, in the way he would admire his own leaps and jumps when they surprised him, coming so fast he could only witness them after the fact, as memories. Things happened so fast he could only remember them. When he saw the other men move like that it was beautiful. They were capable creatures, tough animals among the other animals. They could outlast any animal in a long chase, and that said a lot.
But the women—the women were beautiful. They were as beautiful as horses. Their hair, either braided or flying free from their heads, looked like manes. They tossed their manes like horses, they worked in groups and chattered like squirrels and looked at you; they looked at you, they looked at everything with a most piercing glance. They were the most curious animals of all, even more than their sisters fox and cat. They could spear you with a look.
There was a grove with some soap trees scattered among the spruces, just over the pass at the head of Upper Valley, in the north-trending canyon they called the Lir. Loon spent some days after their hunt walking slowly over there and cutting off some straight soap-tree branches. It was a hard wood, but filling the core of new shoots was a soft pulp that could be hollowed out. The hollow stick that remained could be used as a dart blower, or made into a flute. Other pieces could be split into four lengths, and each quarter polished and its ends sharpened and fire-hardened and polished again, and the result be two pair of knitting needles, one for Heather, the other for Sage.
Doing that took a few days of sitting in the sun, back against a warm boulder, talking with the kids and eating elg steaks and elg head stew. The moon was almost gone, and they worked by firelight on the things they were going to take to the eight eight festival. The soap-tree leaves he had brought back with him were mashed in a log trough, and on the sunniest mornings they washed their clothes in the foamy water. After that the smell of spring cleaning was in the air, and they knew their summer trek and then the eight eight were coming soon. The hungry month would end, the ducks would be here any day. Their remaining nuts had their overwinter flavor worse than ever, but they were still there at the bottom of their bags. Schist could have pointed this out to the complainers, but that was not his style. Besides, it wasn’t over yet. Until the ducks came out of the south he would definitely not be telling anyone I told you so. When they came, the hard care in his face would finally relax, replaced by a satisfied gleam in the eye, almost a smile.
Thorn showed Loon where to cut the holes to make a flute sound right, and how to blow in the upper end of it to make the notes. After that Loon was like a baby owl hooting, or like a jay squawking if he blew too hard. He would have liked to sound like a loon, but the sounds broke differently inside the flute. Every night in his bed he played. After half a fortnight or so he could make the notes reliably. He wanted to play it inside their cave.
They went out on the hunt again, looking for more animals suffering the long hunger month, in a larger group that included Spearthrower and Nevermind and Thorn. Thorn always brought up the rear, but was smart about the animals, and interesting to have along. Loon thought he might be out there as a drag on the group to help Loon’s leg, but of course he would never admit to that, and Loon didn’t show any sign that he suspected it.
They killed an old bison hiding alone in a brake, and were near the end of the task of breaking it apart for carrying, and had buried its bones and guts in the deepest part of the creek, and jumped in upstream themselves to wash up, when they started teasing Nevermind about his recent marriage to Rose, a good-looking eagle girl from the Lion pack. Moss made one of the usual cracks about gett
ing less of the vixen after marriage than before, and Nevermind parried by claiming he was getting more than ever. When they all laughed disbelievingly at this he got huffy and said that when he wanted it he took it. She didn’t really mind.
A dubious silence followed this assertion.—And how did you find out this would work? Thorn asked.
Nevermind was nervous answering Thorn about a matter like this, but his friends were around him listening, so he said,—Because I just did it! She said no one night when I wanted to, and I said, Oh no you don’t, and made her. After a while she liked it.
Another silence.
Finally Thorn said,—Why would you be so stupid? Now you’ve given her all the power in your marriage, don’t you see?
—What do you mean? Nevermind asked, sullen and offended.
—You have to do what she tells you now, Thorn explained,—or she’ll tell the other women what you did. And if she does that, they’ll kill you. So now she has all the power between you.
—The women can’t kill me.
—Of course they can, Thorn said. He stared at Nevermind with his chin tucked back into his neck, miming a look of exaggerated astonishment. The younger men all stared at him. He said,—How could you say such an ignorant thing? They cook your food and put what they want in it. They give you life they give you death. They bleed and they make you bleed. Talk about the monthlies, they can make you bleed daily, bleed from your pizzle and your asshole and your ears and your nose, even your eyes. Maybe it’s poison in your food, maybe just from the way they look at you. After a bit of that look you’ll wish you’d never been born. You’ll jump off the cliff into the gorge to be out of your misery. That’s the kind of power they have. They have the sky behind their eyes, you can see it when they look at you. So now you have to do just what Rose says, or she’ll tell them, and then you’re a dead man. I’m surprised you would give over that kind of power to anyone, especially just to get a spurt. You could have done it yourself, or just been polite and waited your turn. Even husbands only get their turn.