Folded back into the life of their pack, Loon and Elga and Thorn rested and ate, then rested some more. Their child clung to Elga, and would not let her out of his sight. In the evenings he sat between Elga and Loon, or on one of their laps, a little fist clutching each of them by their clothing. Seeing it Heather would shake her head and say,—You are a lucky boy. I thought you were an orphan.
Everyone wanted to hear Thorn tell stories around the fire again, and he did, croaking away as he stared into the fire, or up at the stars. Sometimes after he told one, someone would ask for the story of his rescue of Loon and Elga. But Thorn would shake his head.
—I can’t tell it yet. It’s not ready to tell.
People knew that the old one had died during the rescue, of course, and so they left Thorn alone, to tell it in his own time. Aside from that, he seemed willing to tell any of the old stories, starting with how wolverine pulled summer out of winter, which now as he told it seemed to resemble what he had just accomplished, in pulling Loon and Elga out of the icy north and bringing them back to their sunny abri, so that he told it with palpable satisfaction.
Indeed every story he told he seemed to be enjoying more than before. Then in the mornings he would sit by Loon and require Loon to tell the stories on his own, nodding and teaching him hooks to remember it. These lessons were not like they had been before, when Thorn’s words had gone in one flicked ear and out the other. Now Loon watched Thorn’s face as the old shaman talked, and found he could hold more in mind afterward, and repeat the story in much the same way, sometimes by seeing a memory of Thorn saying it, with all his little squints and scowls and crooked little smiles, and most of all, tones of voice. They had to be remembered as songs with tunes, that was the trick. And Loon carved some sticks with sequences of Thorn’s tells too, to help him later.
Also the rules for remembering were clearer to him now, more helpful: the rule of threes, the up-to-down and down-to-up, the helpers and their chores, and so on. It was still hard for him, and even when he succeeded, a fortnight later he would too often find that it had all gone again. And because he now wanted to please Thorn, the losses were more frustrating than ever. His heart would sink a little as he realized that now that he was back, and saved, he was going to have to learn these stories, even if he never got good at them. Not until now had he ever believed he would have to do the things a man had to do.
But mostly, he was just happy. He watched Elga eating like a mink, filling out right before his eyes, and he could hardly believe she was there among them. It felt like a dream, and he was afraid sometimes that one day he would wake with the sunlight turning the gorge mist yellow and find that he had woken up in a different world where it hadn’t happened. That they had gotten her back was perpetually amazing to him; he would never get over it, he would always be a little stunned. He wanted nothing ever to happen again.
Heather was clearly pleased they were back.—It was dull without old unspeakable spouting all his carbunculosities. The men in this pack are mostly fools, and the women are in a little showdown right now, so there was no one left to talk to. And a pack needs its shaman, I guess, even if they’re a little snake of a shaman.
She regarded Loon closely.—I’m glad to see you too, Loon. But listen to me: you need to take care of that bad ankle, or you’ll be lame for life. You’re still a young man, just a little more than a boy. You don’t want to be lame for twenty years. You need both legs to get by in this world!
—I know it, Loon said fretfully.—Believe me, I know.
—So why are you still walking around on it then?
Loon was surprised.—Because I need to be helping! I can’t just sit around and be fed like a baby. Even if I can’t hunt, I can at least get firewood.
She was shaking her head as he said this.—We were doing fine before you got back. We don’t need you. Listen! If you don’t sit down for a moon and rest that leg, you’ll never be able to hunt again. And we need your hunting, and we can do without you for a while around camp. Everyone will understand. Even Ibex will understand. And if he doesn’t, I’ll make him. This last in a dark tone that made Loon shiver a little.
She put that darkness into a look and pinned him with it.—So will you do what I say or not?
—I’ll try.
After that Loon sat around camp, even during the day when everyone was out and about. He helped look after Lucky and the other kids, and knapped blades from cores, and cured hides, and cut and sewed new jackets and leggings for Elga. His sewing was serviceable, but several of the women made clothes so much finer than his that he gave up and turned to carving figures out of sticks, and grinding earthblood to powder, and reciting some of the stories he was learning. No matter what he did, Heather didn’t want him standing up. On many days, and every night, she heated water in buckets by putting fire stones in the water, then poured the hot water into bladders and draped them over the ankle of Badleg. She also tried a few of her poultices, although when she inspected his leg after these applications, she shook her head dubiously. Clearly she thought the hot water bladders were helping the most, and they felt good to Loon too. After the heating was done, she would hold his foot and ankle and press gently on the skin over the swollen top of the ankle, testing where it hurt, or trying to rub some healing into it.
—You should do this too, she told him.—You can feel it better. Sometimes if a ligament or sinew breaks, they just won’t heal. But other times they will. A lot more of these tears and breaks heal than you might expect. So you have to assume the best, and act like it’s going to work out. You can get over this. At the very least, you should be able to get around without pain.
—That would be good.
It was true that it didn’t hurt as much as it had on their trek. But certain accidental movements, or slips of balance, still caused the little snick of agony to shoot up his leg. Heather could see that, and she also saw that he wasn’t going to be able to keep sitting around for too much longer. Soon it would be a month of it; soon they would be preparing to head north; he would have to get up and give it a try. So one morning she told him she was going to make a healing shoe for him.
—What do you mean?
—Let me show you.
She sat him down in the sun with a supply of sticks, antlers, mammoth tusk pieces, sinews, leather strips, and cedar bark cord, and they took all morning to make a wooden frame somewhat like a boot, with leather straps, so that Heather could bind it to his foot, ankle, and calf. With the frame strapped to his foot and lower leg, all the way up to his knee, he could only walk by swinging the whole thing ahead and landing each step on the bottom of it. This made for quite a limp, but no matter how he stepped, no matter what he did, the left foot and ankle were held in just one position. That would give the break time to heal, Heather said. And it was true that when he wore it he never felt the click, even when walking.
So he could help collect firewood, and do other slow tasks around camp. As the days of the seventh month began, and he continued to use the wooden boot, and apply hot water bladders to the ankle by night, he felt less pain from the area, and could see there was less swelling. He was slow, he moved ugly, as Hawk put it, but a day finally came when he could dispense with the boot, go barefoot, and not feel any pain in the ankle when he walked around. There was stiffness there, and weakness when compared to Goodleg, but no pain. This was astonishing to Loon; he had not expected it, had not dared to hope. Heather had cured him!
She shook her head when he said this to her.—No no. Your body healed itself. But I know what you’re trying to say. When you’re hurt, it’s very difficult to believe your body can heal itself. Mostly it seems to go the other way. We fall apart and die, that’s how it goes. But sometimes healing happens. I’ve seen it too often to doubt it, I’ve even felt it in myself once or twice. No, healing is real. But why does it come into us some times and not others?
She shook her head darkly.—No one knows. Really we know nothing. We only know the shit that Ra
ven dumps on our heads, we only know what comes out of the world’s asshole onto us. But what that world is up to up there, why we get the particular shit we get, no one knows.
They were sitting against the cliff wall in the sun, with the smell of thyme and gray stone and the river percolating in the warming air. Loon rotated his ankle slowly and carefully, and couldn’t help grinning.
—Pretty good shit this morning, he pointed out, sniffing the air and looking around.
She glared at him, still wanting to indulge her bad mood. Finally she changed the subject. She had a list of forest plants she wanted him to go out and find and bring back to her. He could take it slow, and she suggested he take the wooden boot along with him, in case he ever felt like he needed it.—The last thing you want is to injure yourself again just as you’re getting well.
It was mostly women’s work, but boys or old men or shamans did it too, especially in this month. Quite a few of the girls worked for Heather and thus learned what she knew about plants and healing and midwifery, without her making any special thing about it. Loon wished Thorn would be that way about the shaman stuff. But the women did things differently. Many of them often went out trapping by day. These women would disappear up and down the riverside to set underwater snares to drown muskrats. Some of them threw spears too at the small animals in the gorge, killed some sisters to pass the time during their monthlies, when not a few of them were surly. Yes, the women were all hunters too in their way, whether they went out or not. Some of the ones who stayed in camp were the scariest of all. They worked as a gang within the pack, they stared at you. They judged you. They would slit your throat if that’s what it took to get what they wanted. Even Elga, with all her warmth, and the way she loved him, the way she took him in her, the way she had pulled him back home through the snow, even Elga had a look in her that was more cave bear than elg. She was not to be crossed, now less than ever. Which was fine, because Loon only wanted what she wanted. And anyway her cave bear look was mostly directed at Thunder and Bluejay, and Sage.
Best stay out of that. So he crossed the Stone Bison and wandered the thick forests on the north-facing slopes on the other side of the Urdecha, looking for hellebore and nightshade and mint and mushrooms and truffles, and finding them under beds of ferns, or around the little springs that gurgled out of the holed cliffs on that broken shady wall of the gorge, often where the cliffs met the forest tilt sloping down to the floor of the gorge. Places that were always in the shade nurtured plants that grew nowhere else. Rocks in permanent shade were covered with mosses and lichens, and footed with ferns and sprawling nets of shrubs. Cool wet green smells were spiced by little flowers, and by the dry scent of thyme wafting in from sunnier air. Robins pecked around on the forest floor near him. They were known to be calm and wise birds, who would hang around people who didn’t bother them. Loon felt blessed by their presence. Out across the gorge, pine needles on the sunny side were flashing in the wind.
Loon walked painlessly, always testing the miracle, finding it again sound, then plopping onto his knees at a likely bed of ferns, and knocking around under it hunting for nightshade. From time to time he stood and looked down at the river sliding through its little gorge, and their camp across the river. It was nice how most of the best overhangs in this gorge were under walls on the north side, thus facing southward to the sun. The river had wanted people to be comfortable in its bed, and had arranged things accordingly. Over here on the shady side an overhang would be wasted, and a few were, being the wettest places of all. But they were good for certain shady plants.
He stood up, crushed the leaves and new buds of blossoms of mint under his nose, felt the scent cut into his head. Down there in camp, he could see Elga and Lucky sitting by the fire, Elga punching leather with a bone awl, Lucky playing with what looked like the little wooden owls Loon had carved for him.
It was hard to believe he wasn’t dreaming. But here he stood, upright and pain-free, in the cool of an ordinary morning. Really it was the things that had happened during his time away that were now dreams, even though they still seemed to threaten him. Real in their time, terrifying and hopeless in their time, they were now gone. They could not happen other than they had, they could not hurt him any more than they had. He did not have to fear them anymore. He had woken up from them, to this dream that was not a dream. Again he had stepped into the next world over from the one he had been in. All the worlds meet. Time to feel that and be happy.
Thorn, however, was not happy. Loon was at first surprised at this. But then he began to understand: Thorn would never be happy. It wasn’t his way. Maybe all old people were like that. But no, Windy had been as happy as anyone, till right near her end. It was just Thorn. Had he always been that way? Loon couldn’t remember.
One night they were sitting around the fire, eating salmon steaks and a seed mash Thunder had cooked on a hot rock. Thorn was standing, drinking from a ladle, and Loon was sitting by the fire, massaging his left foot and feeling the new hard little lumps in there, so solid and painless. He looked up because Thorn had started, and saw that Thorn was staring over Loon’s head, across the fire at something, his face a wooden mask of itself, flickering in the light. No one else was acting any differently, they chattered to each other about this or that: only Thorn had frozen. Suddenly Loon realized that Thorn was staring at Click’s ghost. That was what his mask of a face said.
Loon felt his stomach shrink and the hair on his forearms rise. He did not dare turn around and see the ghost himself, he was much too scared for that; Click could be there half-eaten, bleeding, red eyes ravenous for revenge, teeth all fangs. Not for anything could he turn and look.
Thorn remained transfixed. The moment hung suspended: people talked in the orange flicker. Loon became curious despite himself. He wanted to see without looking, know without seeing. Holding his breath, asshole painfully tight, he turned his head and looked down at the fire; then, eyes straining far to the right in their sockets, he glanced over the flames in the direction Thorn was staring.
It was Click all right. He was standing at the edge of the firelight, in the dark between two trees, so that the firelight flickered him in and out of existence. But most certainly it was Click. His pale face appeared frozen, his hair and beard and brows frosted, but his eyes were alive, and they were fixed on Thorn. His expression was reproachful. All the parts of him they had eaten appeared to still be there under his bearskin cloak.
Then his frozen gaze shifted from Thorn to Loon, and Loon quickly whipped his head back around, completely unnerved. His face was tingling. Thorn glanced down at Loon, then back at Click. It was clear from his expression that he was still seeing him. Loon hunched over, head down, helpless to do anything but peer fearfully up at Thorn.
Thorn took his flute from his belt, very slowly, and played a tune that reminded Loon of the one called Fools the Wolves. Then it took a turn, and he recognized it as a version of Click’s triple walking whistle, turned somehow into a lament. One two three, one two three. All the time he played this, Thorn stared across the fire at Click. Finally he finished, nodded, kissed the flute, put it away. Then he turned and walked off toward his bed.
After that, Click’s ghost starting hanging around camp. At night by the fire Loon often realized that Thorn was seeing Click there at the back of the firelight, like a hyena at the edge of a kill site. Thorn played his flute when it happened, but to Loon it didn’t look like that was enough. Maybe when they gave Click’s bones a proper burial, his spirit would be satisfied and go away. Loon put his hopes in that.
Thorn passed the days wearing a little scowl of endurance. More than ever he looked like a black snake. Sometimes Loon could distract him with a carved knot or antler, or an etching on a slate, or an animal painted on a slab of wood. Loon also told many of Thorn’s favorite stories, including the one about the man who married a swan woman and ruined his life, ending up a seagull. That one caused Thorn to smile a gloomy little smile when Loon finished.
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br /> —Well said, youth. That’s your story all right. And you’re getting better at telling it too. Much better than that time at the corroboree. There’s some real heart in your ending now. You know how it feels, eh? But don’t forget the part about the old man who helps him.
The summer month was nearing full moon. At some point it had been established that they were decided not to go to the eight eight this year. Lots of reasons were given all around, but the main one seemed to be Schist’s desire to avoid an immediate confrontation with the northers. He suggested they go as far as Cedar Salmon River, fish the salmon run, and spend the following fortnight hunting in the canyons west of the ice caps, forgoing the caribou steppe to go after horses and musk oxen and sheep and bears, and all the other creatures of the west. It had been such a stormy spring and summer, possibly the caribou wouldn’t be coming anyway. Storm years had been known to do that before.
Of course some of them thought this change was a mistake, and no one liked missing the eight eight, except perhaps for Loon. So it was another thing not going well for Schist. He was losing the ability to make the pack feel whole. Ibex was always berating Hawk and Moss for one thing or other, and Hawk did not hesitate to mouth back at Ibex, always eyeing Schist as he did so. Youth will have its way. Thorn, the oldest of them all, except for Heather, was supposed to be the one who could reconcile all disputes, being their shaman. But he remained distracted, and offered no opinion about the pack’s summer, but only played his flute for longer and longer parts of the day.