Immediately he set to breaking her apart. A young doe. He would not be able to defend the whole body, indeed he needed to leave the scene as soon as possible, and without dripping blood as he went. He wanted the rear legs still linked at the spine, so he could carry them over his shoulders; then also the skin and the heart and kidneys. He ate as much of the brains as he could while he cut away with his clumsy choprock, frustrated at the lack of a good blade, which would have made this work ever so much easier. As it was he had to bash away. It was a ruination of the poor deer, and he apologized to her, explaining his need for speed. He smashed and pulled and cut as best he could with the tip of his bad chopper. He was going to take the hide with him, no matter what kind of scent it cast. He would find a good place and hide in this hide, and although uncured it would keep him warmer.
Even at speed the skinning and breaking up took a couple of fists, and when he was done he was sweaty, bloody, exhausted, but full of food. He had had to cut away the skin in two big parts. The doe’s heart and kidneys he bundled in the two pieces of hide, which he could tie to each other and hang over his shoulder with the two legs. He was almost completely covered with blood. Under a dead pine he found a walking stick to help keep Crouch happier. In his other hand he held Chopper, large enough to crush but small enough to throw, a nice heft to feel in one’s hand. A rain of thrown rocks could make even a solitary man dangerous. No animal is safe from a man with a good arm! He was floating a little with the joy of the kill.
He limped downstream with the deer’s rear legs and her organs wrapped in her hide, all slung over his shoulders. Sometimes he walked in the little creek itself. His walking stick he named Prong. When he was far enough away, he stopped and washed the deer’s hide in the creek, and the legs too, also himself.
He had taken the hide off in two sections, because given the bluntness of his chopper, he could not get the hide cleanly off the spine. But two pieces was fine. He would probably cut the leg skin off later to make patches. He chewed away at a bite of the deer’s heart. Normally hearts were cooked, but this wasn’t bad. Raw meat had to be chewed for a long time, and starting with small chunks was best. Loon liked the taste of heart, and enjoyed chewing for such a long time.
The creek was cold, and he sat on its bank and wiped his legs dry before working further on the hides. Uncured as they were, it was not so easy to cut them straight. Nevertheless, out of one half of the deerskin he cut parts for a rough vest and a skirt. The remaining half would serve as cape and blanket.
This day was almost done, it had flown by as if the sun were a bird headed west. He needed to find a place where the night hunters on the plateau couldn’t reach him, and that was going to be hard. A cave with an entry he could block with a rock would be so nice; or a tree that only he could climb. These were both very unlikely things to find. But where the plateau began to break toward its drop into the canyons, it did ledge off in a way that provided low walls and wind-gnarled trees. If he could find a good refuge before night, this would have to be counted a great day; but now the sun was tilted hard west, the half moon palely visible in the afternoon sky, just east of overhead.
Under one little bluff dropping toward the river gorge, he found an overhang. There was no cave at its back, so it was exposed, but only to half the world, and that half was really on the opposite side of the gorge. A tiny abri, in effect. And in fact someone had painted a bison and horse on the flat back wall at the bottom of the overhang. Loon was heartened to see this, and examined the paintings closely. The painter had smudged the animals’ coats to a very handsome blackened red or reddened black, the same color for both bison and horse. Thorn always kept the two colors separate. It was good to know that another human had been here.
Looking down toward the gorge, which was not visible except as a line between the foreground and the next stretch of plateau, he saw under him a broad squat bush pine that had broken off and then grown again, in a swirl around the break point, which had become a hollow of exposed heartwood all filled with leaves. That hollow would not be out of the reach of climbing cats, but he might be able to defend it from them; and nothing looking up at the tree from below would see him. He would have to try climbing it to see if he could, so he pronged down to its foot and looked up at it. Climbing was not an activity that Crouch was going to like.
Loon did his best to work around the hurt, using his left leg only to hold positions, never to lift him higher. That put a lot of strain on his good leg, but that one could take it. Eventually he grunted up into the high hollow and slumped there, pleased to find that it must have been cracked at its bottom, for it was dry. Indeed it would make a comfortable bed of leaves and duff. And good views in all directions. Awkwardly he moved around his nest, and with his choprock broke off a large dead branch to use for protection. Refuge! He thanked the Raven, and curled around like a cat until he had found the least bumpy position.
That night a wolf pack howled at the half moon, and Loon listened with his skin goose-pimpling, as silent as the rest of the animals out there listening. The old ones would not be out and about on this night, not with wolves nearby. And tucked in the wrap of his big piece of deer hide, he was warmer than he had been since being forced to give up his fire. That night he slept as well as he had during the entire wander.
What to do?
No answer is also an answer.
The next day he stayed in his nest, and either slept or chewed on the deer’s legs. Same with the day after. Gibbous moon, oh yes. Nights mostly lit by the pale fuzzed light of the pregnant goddess. He supposed there would come a day when the deer’s legs went too off to eat, too smelly to stay near. Until that happened, he had no reason to move. And getting down from the tree was going to be painful. He was content to rest, and hope for healing.
Thus four days passed, and the moon swelled fatter every night. Big pregnant belly, soon to give birth. Give birth to a new shaman.
On the fifth night in the tree, however, the rustling below resolved into a catlike shape, and he stood in his nest and shook his big branch at the black shape with its scarily wide-set, starry eyes. A big head on a big cat. Lion, or worse yet, a leopard. Dappled in the moonlight in a way that suggested leopard. Either way, disaster. Again his heart pounded so fast he burned. He had to seem bigger than he was, so he stood on the highest branch he could balance on, deerskin blanket over his shoulders. When he had a clear view he threw a few thick branches he had cached down at it, and saw it dodge some, even get hit by one. All the while he cursed the cat viciously, waved Prong overhead as he made all the bad sounds he knew, animal or human; not the fearful sounds, but the angry sounds, the hungry sounds. He cursed in a rage till his throat was raw.
When dawn finally came, the cat seemed to be gone. He waited until midday, but never saw it again. He climbed down the tree, letting his left leg hang mostly free. It seemed both that he had just arrived a short while before, and that he had been up in the tree for years. Either way, it was over. Crouch was quieter now, but still hanging around. It would be a long time before Crouch left, he could feel that.
As soon as he started walking he had to stop and shit, and after that effort he felt a little sick, but emptier, and then better, and ready to limp on through the day. Wash in the creek, find some berry patches in the sun, eat as many old berries as he could. Newly awakened bears would be doing the same, he knew. But better bears than cats. Bears will keep cats away. Still, Loon didn’t stay long at any berry patches. The berries were nearly goners anyway.
He came on a bare knob of rock protruding from a low ridge crossing the plateau, and he went to it and found a break on its far side that served as a way up it. The broad top of the knob gave him a view down into a short curve of the river in its gorge, and some canyons dropping to the river on its other side. He could see where the two big loops in the river seamed the plateau; his pack’s camp was hidden beyond them, on the other side of the Stone Bison, also invisible from this vantage. The plateau behind him was revealed from here to
be a snowy moor, its point-and-bowl edge dropping toward the river. Many of the most dangerous animals would not go up onto the moor. And there were big boulders up there scattered about. Almost certainly there would be one he could crawl under, into a space too small and low for wolves or big cats to fit. It would also be possible to cross the moor westward, uphill toward the Ice Tits, a particular pair of the ice caps out that way, and then descend into the western head of Upper Valley, and from there drop down to his pack’s camp, when the time came.
So he walked north onto the moor. The snow on it was old and hard, and held his weight even in the afternoon. Up there he could look back south across many ridges and valleys, like gray hands cupping the river gorge. Lines of green, patches of white. Crouch was really barking now, crying Hi! Hi! Hi! with every step. Loon had his deerskin cape rolled and tied around his waist, Prong in one hand, a clutch of needled branches in the other. He limped along, looking at the hollows under each big boulder he passed.
In the sunset he found a hollow that he liked the look of, and crawled under the boulder into it, through a gap just big enough to let him pass. The open space under the boulder was just taller than his prone body. The boulder rested on the stone ground on four big points, like a giant tooth. He pulled his branches in after him and arranged them into a bed. It was going to be cold up here. Prong was now a spear to defend him in his rocky burrow. The moon was full gibbous, bright in the mid-twilight. It cast distinct shadows.
Wolves howled somewhere again that night, and his sleep was often disturbed by them; but when he woke and listened, he liked hearing how far away they sounded. He also liked how much their presence would discourage other hunters, especially old ones. Old ones mostly stayed off the moor anyway, people said. He believed it, as the moor had very little shelter from the wind. So, taken all in all, this was really the right place for him on this night.
During each interval of wolfsong he would wiggle all his muscles, starting with his numb toes and moving up to his jaw, and thus fall back asleep with the weird singing of the wolves as his lullaby, often before he had wiggled his muscles even as high as his rump.
Once, however, the wolves’ chorus woke him and he found himself confused. His father was sitting just outside the entry to his hollow, howling along with them quietly. Come out with me, my son, he said, come out and let me show you which star I am now.
Oh but it’s too cold, Loon protested, and I’m tired. I don’t want to leave the warmth I’ve made in this hole.
It’s all right, I’ll make you warm, his father promised. Loon recalled that his father had said these very words to him once before, when he had hauled Loon out of the river under the Stone Bison, spluttering and terrified after he had fallen through thin ice. His father had held him upside down by the ankles and whacked him on the back, as if he were being born, and as Loon retched and wailed in fear, he had laughed and said, It’s all right, little one, I’ll make you warm. So it really was him.
So Loon pulled himself out from under the boulder and rewrapped himself in his deer hide. The stars were dim in the moonlight, the whole sky as white as the Spurtmilk in summer. His father stood over him, a little transparent, his head touching the sky, his face overlaid on the lopsided grin of the moon. Come walk with me, he said.
Should I bring my things? Loon asked.
No, I’ll bring you back by dawn.
Will you take me to mother?
Yes. She’s where we’re going.
They flew over the moor, down the etched land to a deep valley with a moonbright river. At a tight spot in its canyon the river ran under an arch of stone; it was the Stone Bison, the bridge of rock near where Loon had fallen in as a child.
This is where you saved me, he said.
Yes, his father said.
I have to return to the pack on the night of the full moon, Loon explained. I’m on my wander. I’ve only got three—he looked up at the moon—three or four nights more.
I know. That’s why I brought you here now. Soon you’ll be here again. I wanted you to know that I’ll be here with you. And your mother too.
Show her to me.
And then he saw her, standing on the stone arch over the river, the water sweeping under the black shadow of the bison arch and rippling moonily downstream. She was naked and her arms were outstretched to greet him.
Mother! Loon cried.
That caused him to wake, and he was surprised to find his father had tucked him back under the boulder in the time it had taken him to cry out. He had frightened their spirits with his cry. Thorn always said you had to speak calmly to spirits when you had the chance. They didn’t like noise or hurry; they were beyond that, it offended them.
—Ohhh, Loon said, angry with himself; but then he heard a snuffling around the boulder. Something big, checking it out. Possibly a bear; anyway, too big to get under the boulder. Whatever it was snuffled off, and he was left to sleep again.
When he woke he found a knot in his hand, a twist of hard wood that looked like it had spent quite a bit of time free of its tree. A knob at one end gave it the look of a lion’s head; he could see the indentations between the shoulders and the clean bulk of the neck; it was a male lion, there was the little bump of its spurt lying against its underside, but it was standing upright like a man. It would only take a little carving to bring all that out. This was his father’s gift from out of the dream. Lions were fearless. From his deerskin belt flap he took the flake of flint he had broken off when he made his choprock. It would be better to set the flake in the end of a shaft, but for now he could scrape away at the knot, make the first cuts. There was just enough dawn light, and just enough warmth in his fingertips, to make it possible to do the work, lying on his side with the knot and flake right in front of his nose. The ragged tip of the flake was almost like a little burin. He scraped away, looking deep into the bloodless white flesh of his fingertips, which would take impressions from the flake and hold them until he rubbed them away. Crouch was humming sleepily, Spit was pulsing with his heart, but only right at the broken skin itself, almost outside of him, not in him. These people were not his friends, and needed to be ignored. What hurts you has to be forgotten. The lion man was emerging from its knot quite nicely.
When the sun was three fists high, he crawled out from under the boulder and hiked west over the moor, on its hard snow, to a low ridge where he could look up to the land farther west. His people were to the south, down at the mouth of Upper Valley, where the Stone Bison arched over the Urdecha. He was due back in camp in three nights. He could subsist on dead berries until then, and he had his deerskin vest and skirt and cape, and some of his cedar bark underclothing. So he needed to attend to his wander, finish it in style. He recited to himself the story as he would tell it: the night out in the storm, his failure to make a fire; next morning a fire started from nothing, while still in the storm; the glories of the fire; the fish and onions, cooked to a turn; the sighting of the deer killed by bears, their fight over the meal; the lions that chased him; the dream appearances of his dead parents; the disastrous encounter with the old ones, the arrival of Crouch and Spit, his escape; the interval in the tree nest; the time on the moor, under a rock.
Now he needed to add the story’s spurt: the vision. And up here in the hollows of the moor were little sprigs of ground artemisia, and certain old piles of bison dung, not too fresh and not too dry, in which grew the little gray mushrooms called witch’s nightcaps. He wandered around, gathering some of these sprigs and nightcaps and putting them in his belt flap. He would eat them together on the morning of the day before he was to return. Thorn would be impressed despite himself. They would taste bitter, and were best washed down in a big slug of water. After that one needed to chew a sprig of anise, and be prepared to vomit a fist or so later. Loon touched a nightcap to his tongue, and just the touch put a quiver of dread down his throat, right through him to his pizzle and asshole. It shook him. This wander had already been hard enough: should he do thi
s? Would he be making it too hard? He didn’t even want to be a shaman, that was Thorn’s idea. It was his father who was supposed to have been Thorn’s apprentice. Heather didn’t like Loon doing it. If his parents hadn’t died, Thorn would never have taken him on. He had always been away from camp as a boy, out in the canyons absorbed in the animals, looking for Heather’s herbs. After his parents’ deaths he had almost become a wolf child, brought up by the woods themselves, as if stolen by a woodsman. He followed horses whenever he saw them, they were his animal, he was entranced by their beauty. Heather had had to tempt him back in to camp like she did her camp cat. Thorn had never noticed him by the fire, and Loon never remembered any verses to Thorn’s songs. None of this would have happened if his father hadn’t died.
But it had happened. Thorn and Heather had raised him and taught him, and his wood carvings and slate paintings had all come to him by way of Thorn. These Loon loved. Of course the endless verses also came from Thorn, and Loon hated those. But they were all part of what a shaman did. But Loon did not want to be a shaman. It was too intense, too lonely, too scary, too hard. Thorn’s shaman had been a bad shaman because all shamans were bad.
On the other hand, Loon had left on his wander accepting the challenge. To renounce it during the wander would be a shameful thing, an act of fear. If he had wanted out he should have said so before he left. That would have taken cold blood indeed. But he hadn’t done it. Embarrassing not to have acted on his desires, done something he didn’t want to do and then gotten stuck with it. But there he was.
So on the morning of his last full day out, he sat facing the sun and ate the combination of nightcaps and artemisia sprigs. The aftertaste was as bitter as always, so much so that it made his skin crawl. His stomach began to grumble and burn. Something in the mix rebelled inside him more even than usual, and before too long his body rejected it, he had to vomit. He didn’t want to so soon, it felt like his body was taking over and reversing his decision, but he had no choice; he fell to his hands and knees, arched over, and vomited like a cat spitting up grass, his whole body clenching to eject the offensive stuff, a mass of burning spit littered with chunks of mushroom and little leaves, as bitter coming up as going down; the taste itself made him retch some more, made him run at the mouth and nose and eyes, coughing until he was empty and his belly sore.