WE WALKED EAST, crossing the Char River the day after we passed south of Graylag’s empty lodge. We followed the Antler River up the west slopes of the hills, then followed the Marten River down the east slopes until we heard the roar of rapids where the Marten River and the Glacier River join. On the far side of this wide place, where water tosses into the air and rainbows hang, was the mouth of the Pine River, Father’s childhood home.
It took a long time—more days than I could count. When Mother died, the Mammoth Moon was waning, and when we reached the Marten River, the Yellowleaf Moon was almost gone. Every night we set snares, and every day we stopped to gather and eat food when we found it. Even so, we traveled far every day. Father wanted to reach his old lodge before the snow.
I didn’t like the trail. The farther we got from Mother’s grave, the more I missed her. One day the air was filled with big white flakes like feathers. Meri turned up her face and put out her tongue for a snowflake, but I waited for someone to say “Geese are flying” or “Goosedown.” Then I remembered that Mother was the one who said this when she saw big snowflakes in the fall. The more I missed Mother, the less I wanted to be shut in a lodge all winter with Meri and Yoi. Most of all I didn’t like it that Father and Yoi had made their bed together from the day Mother died. I even noticed that once or twice in the middle of the night they forgot their mourning and made those soft, struggling sounds and changes in their breathing that the rest of us were supposed to ignore. Every night when we camped I sat by myself, until Yoi began to call me Egg, for a silent person who is hiding something that grows large inside.
One day we came to a very old lodge on the bank of the Marten. The roof of the coldtrap was caved in, and the smokehole was filled with fallen pine needles and leaves. We crawled over the dung of the hares and wolverines who once had hidden there and found the room dirty and very dim. But the walls were still in place, and the locked antlers bracing the roof were hardly sagging. The lodge was made well, and I asked Father who owned it. His father had helped build it, he said. It was the second lodge of the Pine River people, where he himself had lived when he was a child. When I asked where the owners of the lodge were now, Father gestured to the air, to the west. They were spirits, he meant. There were no owners. When I asked why we didn’t stay, he said that for as long as anyone could remember, a large herd of reindeer spent the winter in the valley of the Pine, where his people had built their main lodge. We were going to live near those reindeer.
We reached the Pine River lodge by noon the next day and found it badly broken. This lodge was wider than the lodge on the Marten, so the roofspan, being weaker, had fallen in. We camped and began to fix it.
The valley was sunny and sheltered. Down the middle, the Pine bubbled over rocks and watercress. Here, and through the hills beyond, the trees were taller than the trees I was used to—many were much taller than a man—and grew closer together than the trees by the Char. We would have firewood and shelter from some winter storms. But the most interesting thing at the Pine was something I had never seen before: the shining white tip of a glacier reaching from a cleft in the hills beyond.
I found myself always looking at the glacier. While we gathered wood and sedge root, it shone white like a lake in winter, and when we built our fires in the evening, it turned pink and then red in the sunset. Best of all, after dark but before the moon rose, the glacier made the night sky lighter, the same as fallen snow.
Soon after we arrived at the Pine River, Father told us that the glacier had moved. When he was a young man, he said, the glacier was back in the hills. Now the glacier was coming out of the hills, and at its tip trees were leaning forward as if the glacier was pushing them. Yoi and Father’s nephews doubted this. How could it be, they asked, when the land was flat so the glacier wasn’t going downhill? And of course the glacier wasn’t alive, so it couldn’t crawl. It was ice, they said, which can’t move by itself, and it was also like a mountain, which can’t move at all. No one could argue with this, of course. They were right. Even so, during the winter we spent by the Pine River, the leaning trees were pushed down. Perhaps the glacier did this at night, when we couldn’t see it moving. Or perhaps the mountains also crawl and no one notices.
By the time of the next full moon, the Reindeer Moon, there were scattered herds of reindeer, red deer, horses, and bison in the Pine valley, and our lodge was mended well enough to keep out the wind. Then the wind blew the last of the yellow leaves from the birches, and the trees stood in the woods like naked people, thin and pale. I remembered a riddle Mother once taught me: “Who is the girl with twigs in her hair? In summer she’s clothed, in winter she’s bare!”
On the night of the second snowfall, The Stick and The Frog offered a prayer for our safekeeping, while gusts of tiny flakes came down the smokehole and the wind moaned. “Give us life,” they prayed. “Give us food in winter, Ohun. Give us children.”
“Hona,” said the rest of us, and burned a piece of fat.
We then settled into our winter life, different in our small group from what it had been in Graylag’s large group. Yoi said that life was very hard for us because we were so few—people only need one fire, she said, but when there are many people, the wood for that fire can be gathered quickly. She and I, with some help from Meri, spent a large part of every day just getting enough wood to keep ourselves from freezing. At first we snapped the dry, dead branches of the evergreens beside the lodge, but later we had to go farther and farther. Even so, no one had gathered firewood here for a long time, so it wasn’t as scarce as it was around the Char River; we didn’t need to chop so much; we usually found enough.
The Stick and The Frog also complained because there were so few of us. Hunting was hard without many people, they reminded Father. “You should have gone with Graylag to the mammoth hunters,” Father would tell them. “We are the same number now as when we left the Fire River. Nothing has changed.” He meant, of course, the same number of hunters, of men.
“Let Yoi help us,” said Cousin The Stick. So the four adults went hunting every few days. I thought that Yoi would be slow and not pay attention. This turned out to be true. After the first few hunting trips the men left her behind again. Then she and I looked for pine nuts, winterberries, deerberries, and even bristlecones, at least to notice where we could find them if all other food was gone. And we set snares for small game.
In fact, Yoi and I brought more food than the men. Our snares often held something, a hare or grouse or ptarmigan. And almost every day we gathered enough so that all of us could satisfy at least some of our hunger. But the three men didn’t manage to kill anything until the Storm Moon was a crescent. Their kill was a reindeer doe. When The Frog came for Yoi and me to help carry the meat home, Yoi was so happy she sang. And when the meat was in the lodge, we cooked and ate far into the night, and again the next day and night, so a lot of the meat was eaten quickly and we didn’t have much to freeze.
At the end of the Storm Moon, Father made his trip to the Char River, taking his spear, his ax, and his firesticks rolled in his deerskin. Not having to wait for people who travel slowly, he came back after only eight days, bringing with him from the lodge several greenstones to make spearpoints. No one was there, he told us. The lodge was still empty. Then we were glad we had come instead to the Pine River.
At the beginning of the Lodge Moon, the weather turned warm for a few days. Then the dry, cold wind came back, and the wet snow froze on the ground like ice on a lake. We could hardly walk without falling. After this, many of the hoofed animals left the valley. Because each blade of grass was held tight in solid ice, the animals had no hope of grazing, and because they had already browsed high on the trees, they couldn’t reach higher. Only a few reindeer stayed, eating bark, as they do when all other food is gone. Our snares caught nothing. We were frightened, and one night we appealed humbly to The Bear.
You in the northern lights,
We are calling
Hear us calling
Hear us in the wind, Hona
Calling The Bear
Calling The Bear’s head, Hona
Calling The Bear’s teeth
Calling The Bear’s hump, Hona
Calling The Bear’s legs
Calling The Bear’s feet, Hona
Hona! Wiri! Hona! Wiri!
Feet turn toward us,
Bring us food,
Give us meat,
Send us game,
Hona! Wiri! Hona! Wiri!
Help us in winter.
So we prayed, and burned a bristlecone (the only food we had) for the smoke to carry to The Bear. Sometimes at night we heard the wolves howling. They called together, letting their voices rise and fall as if they too were praying. But in spite of our prayers, hunger came to us as it does almost every winter at this time, which is why the moon that rises next is called the Moon of Starving. We had very little hope of catching the reindeer with their wide, hairy hooves that cling to the ice, but we heard them outside our lodge, passing in small groups. Something in their feet makes a loud ticking. The sound mocked us. And wolves came at night to eat our frozen feces outside our lodge. We ate nothing.
Meri began to cry for Mother until I wanted to stifle her. One night when the sun set, Aunt Yoi looked at it, glowing red on the horizon, and she said, “In the Camps of the Dead they eat the sun. Every night of the year they have plenty. They don’t have to walk in the cold all day searching but finding nothing—their food sits down in front of them. Because of this winter, we will all go there. I wish I were there now.”
“Don’t envy them yet,” said Father. “Every winter has a hard time in it. Soon this time will pass. Soon enough we will all go to eat the sun. Don’t reach for death.”
He made us exhaust ourselves walking all day in the cold without food. We followed the tiny trails of mice around the stalks of bushes, looking for the seeds that mice store in their burrows; we watched the sky for ravens, which might show us a kill we could rob. Far away one day Father found some broken bones and part of the tattered, frozen skin of a red deer, killed but not finished by a tiger. We ate this gratefully.
The Moon of Roaring came and went, and the dry, icy weather went on. The Moon of Cast Antlers followed. When it was full, Father and his nephews killed a second reindeer, a small one. We finished it when the moon waned. Just as we did, Father and his nephews found wolves eating the carcass of a winterkilled stallion, chased off the wolves, and brought the carcass home. On this we lived a little longer. Before the Icebreaking Moon, a blizzard filled the woods with snow that packed easily. Our lodge was buried; we dug our way out the door and saw that the bearded lichen and edible twigs were easily within reach of browsing deer now that they could stand on snowdrifts. We hurried to set snares.
The next day we visited the snares. Leaving Meri in the lodge, Yoi and my cousins went one way while Father and I went another. When we were near the first snare, we heard ravens, then saw them looking down at the branch that held the snare, which was moving with short, irregular jerks. Above the bushes we saw the ears and antler buds of a reindeer, then we saw its rolling head with eyes bulging and tongue out. It was a doe. She looked dead, but she was moving. Something was tugging at her, trying to pull her down. Motioning me to wait, Father went forward in a cautious crouch until the ravens screamed and flew up. When I heard Father say “Get along!” I ran up to him, knowing that the robber was too small to deserve respectful speech. I found Father working to untie the snare’s frozen knots, ignoring a wolverine which was arching its back in the bushes, watching him. It was a large wolverine, black and silver, surely very hungry and unwilling to give up the deer. It circled us twice, then came nearer to circle us again.
Father loosened the knot and laid the deer down on the snow while the wolverine circled a fourth time, coming closer. Father reached for his spear. Suddenly the wolverine dashed up to snatch a bite of meat. Father threw his spear, pinning the wolverine through the hindquarters. Then, grasping the spear shaft to hold the wolverine down, Father swung his ax at its head. But the twisting wolverine dodged the blow, and before Father could lift the ax for a second blow, the wolverine was hanging by its teeth from his hand. Father grunted with pain, let go of the spear, and grabbing his knife from his belt, stabbed it into the wolverine’s ribs. Nothing changed. I snatched up the ax from where Father had dropped it and began to chop at the wolverine’s head, but still it hung on. Father tugged at the knife, which came out of the wolverine’s chest with a spurt of blood, followed slowly by the pink tip of a lung, which I saw was still breathing. “The ax,” said Father, and catching it from my hand, he chopped the wolverine’s neck again while blood flew. “The knife,” said Father. I groped for it in the snow. Seizing it, Father forced it between the wolverine’s jaws, which, when the teeth broke, slowly pried open. The wolverine, still living, fell to the bloody snow, where Father stood over him, raised his spear, and pinned him.
Then Father sat down to look at the bite. I peered at it over his shoulder. The eyeteeth must have met between the bones of his hand, which was quite torn from the shaking and was beginning to swell. The incisor teeth had cut gashes, which were bleeding fast. Father packed his hand in snow. We looked for something to bind it up, and I was taking off my parka to offer my deerskin shirt when Father showed me that the snow was already helping and the bleeding was beginning to stop.
Father calmly started to skin the reindeer. After a moment he sent me to get Yoi and his nephews. They were very happy about the reindeer and glad that the snare-robber was destroyed. They were worried to hear of Father’s bite, though, and sorry that the struggle had spoiled the wolverine’s skin, which could have been a hood. Together we found Father beside a fire with many strips of liver cooking on the coals. We looked down at the wolverine, its breath shallow, its pink tongue stuck out, and its blood-matted hair frozen to the snow. The Stick jabbed the spear into its neck, and when it still refused to die began to skin it anyway.
We all stopped work when the liver was ready to eat. The food was so good and so welcome that we felt glad, we laughed, we liked each other, and when we had eaten we worked quickly and willingly to finish cutting the meat and carry it to the lodge. There was so much, we had to make two trips each. Father even took the chewed lichen and spruce twigs from the rumen—he called it “winter vegetable.” On the second trip we made sure to gather up every last scrap, even the wolverine’s torn skin. The Frog hesitated a moment over the wolverine’s flayed carcass, in which a spark of life may still have clung, then took it too. The ravens sitting in the trees flew down to eat the bloody snow.
At the lodge, with more liver cooking and the meat freezing in the coldtrap, The Frog and Father looked at the bite again. Father’s hand was sore, but at least the wounds had stopped bleeding. We ate, then rested, then ate again, until we were full of meat and almost asleep. During the night wolves walked over our roof, sniffing at the smokehole for the smell of our good food. Now and then one of them scratched at the smokehole, whining. In the morning we found where they had trampled the snow around and over the lodge, leaving their scats and urine and even round hollows, their beds, in the snow.
Starting early, the men visited the snares again, then went hunting and were gone all day. They came home at night to say that although we had killed the wolverine, the snares were now being robbed by wolves.
Father said that his hand hurt and he had pain up his arm. We built the fire to roast meat while The Frog looked at Father’s hand carefully. The Stick looked too, and even Yoi took Father’s hand in hers and turned it over and back. Then The Frog said that poison was in the hand and the wounds should be opened. Taking his flint knife, he tested its edge, then with his antler chisel and a stone from the fireplace, he chipped a very small sharp place near the tip, which he pierced into the toothmarks. Father watched this without flinching. Some blood came. Then The Frog heated a stone in the fire and told Father to hold it, to let the heat drive out the pain. Father did. During the night I saw him sitting by the fire heating the stone again.
The next afternoon when Father came home, he had trouble taking off his parka. When he tugged the sleeve over his hand, we saw that his hand was swollen hugely, with a wrinkle in his wrist as in the wrist of a baby. Even his arm looked fat. Father sat up again that night, and in the morning he was sweating with fever. He was quiet, but we knew he was angry and kept out of his way.
“The wolverine’s spirit is making you sick,” Cousin The Frog told Father in the morning, and taking the wolverine’s carcass from the coldtrap where it lay frozen, he wrapped it in its skin again. Then he cut a bit of fat from behind the reindeer’s eyeball—one of the few bits of fat to be found on the reindeer after a winter of hunger and much traveling—which he forced between the wolverine’s broken teeth. Carrying the wolverine outside, he lifted it into the branches of a tree, saying, “This is how we mourn for you. Forgive us.”
Also to help Father he made many small cuts on Father’s swollen arm and packed them with snow to cool the heat inside. But this made Father both hot and cold—he was both sweating and shaking.
Our fire was gone. Meri and I were sent to get more firewood. Father seemed so angry that we hated to stay in the lodge with him, so we came home slowly. At the door we heard him talking, and thinking that The Frog was inside with him, we went in. But we found him alone, sitting at the back of the lodge, his legs straight out in front of him, his back against the wall. But for the deerskin wrapped around him, he was naked.
Not an ember remained of the fire, and in the cold lodge Father’s breath made a great cloud. “I’m glad you’ve come,” he was saying. “I greet you all. Sit here by the fire and take food.” He didn’t seem to see me in the doorway but kept his eyes fixed on the air in the middle of the lodge. I stared at him a moment, then suddenly the skin at the back of my neck and shoulders prickled so sharply it hurt me. Quickly I backed out.
“What’s he doing?” asked Meri, looking at me. But I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know.
Meri sat on her heels to suck her thumb. I sat beside her and took her other hand as we tried to catch what Father was saying. His voice grew warm, then friendly; then he laughed at something. Hearing his laugh, Meri glanced at me and smiled. But I clutched her hand so tightly she withdrew it, and we sat without touching, our teeth chattering with cold.
The sun was near the horizon, but the dome of the sky was bright; with the return of the long, cold days of early spring, the light would last a long time, and we knew that Yoi and Father’s nephews might still be far away. A thin stream of snow blew off the top of the glacier, showing the wind from the north. It blew in the trees, waving the branches, and made our faces numb. I saw that poor Meri was crying, her tears freezing on her cheeks and under her nose, and after putting my arms around her and telling her to wait for me, I crawled very quietly inside to the crack in the wall behind my bed where my firesticks stayed. It was so dark in the lodge that I couldn’t see Father, but I felt his eyes on me. I crept out quietly and rolled a fire, feeding it with the firewood we had brought, and soon we were warm.
When the last rays of the sun shone on top of the glacier, turning the bright ice pink over the darkening trees, Yoi and Father’s nephews came home with a ptarmigan. They were astonished to find no smoke in the smokehole and us by a fire outside. “You left your father alone without a fire?” asked Yoi angrily. “Is this why we sent you for wood?” Meri hung her head miserably, as if she had done something wrong, but my face didn’t change. The Stick, often more thoughtful than Yoi, looked around carefully, then asked me why we were sitting outside. I glanced at the doorway but still didn’t speak. I didn’t know how to answer, and I thought that if we waited, Father would talk again. Soon he did. The Stick and The Frog looked surprised, then leaned their spears against a tree, as if they thought strangers were inside.
“Why didn’t you tell us that people came?” asked The Frog.
I still didn’t know how to answer, but when The Frog started to crawl down the passageway I said, “We couldn’t see the people.” Quickly, The Frog backed out.
He and The Stick exchanged a worried look, then went bravely inside. Yoi sat on her heels beside our fire, her hood thrown back, her eyes wide. She hadn’t brushed her snow-blown parka and didn’t notice that the front of it was slowly getting wet.
After dark The Stick and The Frog came out. They showed Yoi by their faces that they didn’t know what was happening, but they got firewood and soon sparks were rising from the smokehole. Inside the lodge Father stopped talking and we heard the snap of the fire. When The Stick and The Frog came quietly out for the meat but not their spears, we all went in.
Father was lying in his deerskin, asleep. The fire burned fresh and bright—his nephews had made a large one—and over it strips of the reindeer meat were roasting. The lodge looked warm and welcoming; my heart lifted. But after turning the roasting meat, The Stick and The Frog excused themselves rather stiffly and went outside. We heard them talking together in very soft voices. Yoi, Meri, and I sat quietly waiting for the food, and when it was ready Yoi began to eat. When Father sat up and asked for some, she brought him a portion. He ate a little, thanked her, and lay down again. Once he said, “The lodge is hot.” Then he asked, “Did my nephews kill anything?”
“A ptarmigan, Ahi. We haven’t cooked it yet,” said Yoi.
“No, you gave me reindeer meat,” said Father, dozing again.
When his nephews returned to sit on their heels at the fire, we tried to see from their faces what they might have talked about, but their faces wore no expressions. They were hiding their thoughts. Yoi whispered to ask who was talking to Father, and Cousin The Frog seemed to want to tell, but suddenly he stopped himself and glanced around the lodge. We waited. Finally The Frog leaned forward to whisper, “I don’t see the people. But I think they are many. Ahi was planning with someone to hunt a bear. He calls someone else ‘Uncle.’ Maybe the Pine River people are here.”
“Now?” whispered Yoi.
“Maybe. Whoever they are, I don’t know them,” whispered The Frog uneasily. “Uncle Ahi and Mother knew them, since they grew up here. My brother and I never came to this lodge.” Then he added, speaking louder, making his voice congenial, “Move nearer to Yanan there. We must leave room for our hosts at this fire. And cut more meat.” He bowed his head politely to the empty space beside the fire, a gesture that made Meri shrink closer to me. “We are your guests,” he said to the empty space. “We were brought here by Ahi. We are his sister’s sons. We thank you for giving us shelter. We are here in friendship, in peace. The spear there belongs to Ahi. Our spears are outside, in a tree.” He smiled as if expecting an answer, his broad face wrinkling pleasantly, but no answer came. The fire crumbled, making a little sound, the smoke rose coiling to the smokehole, and the bleached antlers that arched under the roof showed dimly in the firelight. I wondered whether the people were still here.
“You are tired from a long trail,” said Cousin The Stick. “This good meat, we cooked for you. Now eat your fill to please us. Hona.” The cousins began to eat, while the many strips of meat that they left on the fire slowly grew small, turned black, and flamed. The adults seemed not to notice.
Later, Cousin The Frog spoke to the spirits again with carefully chosen words. “Hosts of the lodge, we are grateful that you have come to welcome us here. Hona.”
“Hona,” added The Stick respectfully.
That night all of us except Father spread our deerskins near the door, leaving the back of the lodge, the best and warmest part, for the use of those who owned it. When Meri asked why, I reminded her of the lodge at the Char River and how Graylag and his family slept in the back because they were the owners.
Meri looked hopeful. “Is Graylag coming?” she asked.
“Not Graylag. The owners of this lodge. Father is talking to them now, so be quiet.”
I lay awake, listening to the whispering voices of The Stick, The Frog, and Yoi, so soft that I couldn’t overhear them, and also to Father, who began to talk again. The hosts must have asked him about Mother, because he lied about her, saying she was with her relatives on the Fire River. They must also have reminded him of the past, because he began to speak of the past in a hearty voice, as if he were speaking to men of his own age with whom he must have hunted. They seemed to be reminding him of the plain that lay beyond the Marten River, sheltered from the wind by the glacier, where many animals came in early spring. Father seemed to remember this place well—he showed his agreement by repeating some of their words. “Yes, sheltered from the north, very good, I remember,” he said seriously. “Yes, many animals, many. Wolfskins, we got them. Speared them. Even red deer. Yes, I remember now. We did that. Yes, bison. Yes, you and I.”
In the morning Father got dressed to go hunting. When The Stick and The Frog asked him what the hosts had told him, he looked puzzled. “People talked to me?” he asked, frowning. “I was asleep.” Then he added, “I’m going to hunt on the riverbank. Did you kill yesterday?”
“I told you last night,” said Yoi. “The Stick killed a ptarmigan.”
Father looked unhappy and confused. “I’ll eat now,” he said at last. Going to the coldtrap to cut some meat, he put a large strip on the fire. “I’ll go far today,” he said. “Yanan, get plenty of firewood.”
“Yes, Father,” I answered.
“If you go out through the woods,” said Father to The Stick and The Frog, “visit the snares. Take Yoi as far as the last snare. Then she can get firewood and come back.” But The Stick and The Frog were in the back of the lodge rolling up their packs. Then, with serious faces, they came to sit on their heels beside Father, who was eating.
“We’re going to find Graylag,” The Stick said at last. “This lodge belongs to your people. We must not stay.”
Father stopped chewing. “Graylag?” he asked. “My people? What people do you mean?”
“The people you spoke with yesterday, Ahi,” said Yoi. “They were here, many of them.”
Father swallowed, looking troubled. “My people died or left here long ago,” he said at last. “The lodge was my father’s, and is nobody’s now if not mine.”
“You talked with them all last night,” said Yoi. “How is it you don’t remember?”
Father thought for a long time. “Their spirits came?” he asked softly. “So they’re all spirits.” He looked very sad.
“You hear us, hosts of the lodge,” said Cousin The Frog. “The meat is your meat, the lodge is your lodge. We thank you for your hospitality and we’re sorry we must go.”
“Where will you go?” asked Father at last.
“To Graylag’s lodge,” said The Frog.
“No one is there,” said Father.
“They may be there by now,” said The Frog reasonably. “Or they may be on the Black River, or going to the Grass River, as they used to.”
“You must come with us,” said Yoi to Father. “I’ll carry some of your pack for you.”
“What?” asked Father angrily. “Are you leaving, Wife?”
Yoi looked fierce. “We can’t stay here,” she whispered. “I must leave. You must too.”
Father sat as if thinking. Absently, he ate a bite of meat, but most of his cooked meat lay cooling by the fire. At last he said, “I feel weak for traveling today. Any pack would hurt me, and my legs still shake when I stand. I’ll go hunting by the river now, and eat and grow stronger, and later I’ll follow you. If you go down the Black River, leave me a sign. What about the snares?”
“We’ll get ours on the way,” said The Frog.
“Then Yanan can visit mine this morning,” said Father, “because I’m not going that way.” He turned to me. “If you find something large, carry home what you can and call for me.”
“We must give something to the hosts of the lodge,” said The Frog seriously, and he cut more meat to lay on the fire. “Accept this meat,” he said. I watched it burn, noticing that today he gave less than the night before. When it was crisp The Stick said “Hona,” lifted his pack, and started for the door. The Frog followed. Yoi quickly tied her pack. As The Stick and The Frog ducked out the coldtrap, she dropped to her hands and knees, and without looking back, showing us the seat of her trousers and the soles of her moccasins, she followed them and was gone.
We sat by the fire until a patch of spring sunlight through the smokehole made a circle around it, showing us that it was almost in ashes with only a few sticks left to burn. I heaped the ashes over the coals to save a few embers. Father sat on his heels, not speaking. His breath was fast and shallow; his eyes were on the smokehole, where a tiny icicle dripped. The lodge was cold again, although outside the air was soft and the sun warm.
I thought to look at the meat in the coldtrap to see what Yoi and Father’s nephews had taken and what they had left behind. Father’s snare had killed the reindeer, so some of the meat was his; a hindquarter and a forequarter belonged to Yoi and the other hindquarter to The Stick and The Frog. These were gone, as was the ptarmigan. One forequarter should belong to Father, and sure enough, although a lot of it had been eaten, it was still there, and so was a piece of the belly, usually the spirits’ portion, which Father’s nephews had left for the hosts. The head and feet had been left behind too, and even the skin, with meat still on it. We had enough for a while.
Just outside the door I saw where The Stick and The Frog had stripped the meat off the bones to make small pieces, easily packed and carried. They must have done this when they had gone out to talk privately the night before. I picked up the scattered bones and brought them in for the marrow. I showed them to Father, but he took no notice.
I wanted to ask what we would do now. Would we wait until later in the spring before traveling? Would we go back to the Char River? The Black River? What sign would Father’s nephews leave us? People sometimes tied a bundle of grass in a tree, pointing to where they had gone. Sometimes people broke a sapling, or left a small, a middle-sized, and a large pile of stones in a row. Where might they leave their sign? But I saw that Father was sad. He was lonely already, with his old home empty except for the people of long ago, who by now perhaps had also gone. I couldn’t find a way to mention traveling.
When I got up to get firewood, Meri came right behind me. She made no fuss about the way I helped her into her trousers and parka, but followed me obediently into the woods. When we were far from the lodge she whispered, “Where is Aunt Yoi?”
“Visiting the snares,” I said. “She’ll be home later.”
“Why did they take their packs?”
She followed in my footsteps as we went, snapping dry branches as we found them. I thought to visit Father’s snares and led us to the nearest, which was large enough for reindeer and was empty. Farther on we came to the second, also empty. But in the third, set on a tiny path that led to a juniper, hung a small grouse. I took its body and reset the snare, carefully spreading the noose over its pegs, hiding the string with snow, and placing three dry berries in the center. Then we crossed the river on the ice to look for wood in the trees on the far side, and found a line of tracks in the snow. They were the tracks left by Yoi and Father’s nephews, going west in single file on their way to the Marten River. Each footprint was filled partly by a shadow and partly by a little drifted snow. The sight of them made me want to cry.
When our bundles of sticks were big enough to bring home, we came out of the forest by the river and turned north toward the lodge across the plain. In the middle of the plain we saw a small figure sitting on the snow: a man wearing a hooded parka, with his back to the wind. Surprised, we stopped. Then, thinking that he might be The Stick or The Frog come back for some reason, we hurried to him and found that it was Father.
When we came up behind him, he turned his head and nodded to us. I thought to sit beside him, but leaning heavily on the shaft of his spear, he got to his feet and led us off toward the lodge. I followed in his footsteps, noticing that the steps he took were even shorter than mine, when always before I had to stretch hard to put my feet where his had been. But I didn’t want to pass him—I followed him as Meri followed me, and the walk home took a long time. I didn’t ask if he had killed anything to eat.
When we reached the lodge, he went in first, going straight to his deerskin to lie down, without even taking off his outer clothes. I took mine off, then helped Meri and hung our clothes from the roof to dry. When I sat beside Father and took his hand, I found it very warm and very dry. Gently, it clasped mine. “The fire,” said Father, and I got up to build it. When it was burning well, I sat beside him again.
“Let me help you take off your parka, Father,” I said.
“I’m cold,” he said. “I’ll take it off later. Now let me rest a while.”
“Please, Father.”
“I’m all right. Just let me rest,” he said. “Go and cook something. Cook the ptarmigan.” But Yoi and Father’s nephews had taken the ptarmigan. So I plucked the grouse and placed it over the fire. When it was ready I brought him a piece but he was asleep. We tried not to eat too much but we were very hungry, so when Father didn’t wake up we ate his share. Soon we heard him ask for food. I cut some of the reindeer meat and was putting it on the fire when he called me angrily. “Why do you make me wait?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, Father. It’s cooking,” I told him.
“Bring it,” he said. So I did. I gave it to him although it was barely warm. “This is raw!” he called angrily. “Must I do everything? Can’t you help at all?” He struggled to stand in his heavy, wet clothes and came to the fire, where he threw the meat back on the flames. Then he tried to take off his outer moccasins but the laces were wet and the knots were hard and by now he could only use one hand. When I tried to help him, he struck me in the face so hard he knocked me over backwards. He had never struck me before, and it shocked me so much that I lost my breath. Meri started to cry. Father took out his knife and cut the laces. Then I almost cried, as I knew of no other laces he could use except the strings of his pack. What was he doing? He was sick, and didn’t seem to know it.
When Father tried to take off his parka but couldn’t get it over his swollen hand, he called me to pull the sleeve for him. I did, then hung up the parka while he lay down again. By the time the meat was cooked he was asleep. Then I put Father’s piece of meat beside his head and lay down with Meri in our deerskins.
In the middle of the night Father woke and asked for water. We had no water—the waterbags belonged to The Stick, who had taken them. But Father begged. “Please get some water,” he said. “I’m burning.” So I went outside. Under the trees lay shadows where an animal might be hiding. I made a snowball quickly. Father took a few bites, then put it down and fell asleep again. I sat by him while the snowball grew small and vanished in a puddle, and then I went back to bed.
When I woke, morning was near. Hoarfrost from our breath covered the walls. While Father and Meri slept, I built up the fire and made plans for the day. I hated remembering that Father had cut his laces; I could have used them for snares. I wanted to cut strips from one of our deerskins, but I was afraid to cut a skin without asking. I knew I should set snares, many snares, but I was afraid that if I left Father alone he would go out again, perhaps to wander away, perhaps taking Meri with him. I was afraid that I would come back to the lodge to find myself alone.
But I was also afraid that our food would run out and we would starve here, as the hosts of the lodge had starved before I was born. So I decided to visit the snares and gather wood and come back quickly. I woke Meri, who looked at me with an anxious frown. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’ll be back soon. If Father wakes up, get him an icicle or a snowball. His meat is by his head. Tell him I’m right outside.” I wondered if I should tell her not to follow him anywhere, but decided not to. After all, if they left, I could follow their tracks. She saw that I wanted to say more and waited, but I just smiled at her. “Comb your hair,” I said. “I’ll braid it when I get back.”
The first snare, at a hare’s run, was empty. When I got near the second, I prayed that The Bear would have put an animal in it, and sure enough, I heard something flapping, then saw that the snare held a grouse. I broke its neck, reset the snare very carefully, and went on to the third, which was also empty. Then I wondered if I should move the empty snares, but decided to wait for Father’s advice. Maybe he would soon be well enough to help me find new places.
The fourth snare was for a reindeer and was empty, but had been sprung, so that the noose dangled uselessly from the branch of the now straight tree. I didn’t know how to reset it, and when I climbed out on a branch to try to get the leather thong, the branch bent, dropping me to the ground. I thought for a while, wondering if I should go back to the lodge for Father’s ax and try to cut the tree, but the cutting would take a very long time and Father kept his ax beside his bed—he might not let me use it, or be angry if I tried to take it secretly. Then I noticed wood that I could gather and went to break it, then saw more wood, and was soon quite far away. I decided to wait and ask Father, knowing that he would be angry if a marten took the thong in the meantime.
When the sun was high, I had a large bundle of wood, and I started back toward the lodge, looking at the snares again on the way. But there is almost no hope of filling a snare in broad daylight—the animals move at dusk and dawn—and as I feared, the snares were still empty. I decided to visit them in the late afternoon and went home through the empty, quiet woods.
The lodge was very dark after the bright day. When my eyes got used to it, I saw Father now undressed completely, still lying on his deerskin, and Meri crouched on the opposite side of the lodge, far away from the fire, with her hair all loose and tear stains on her face.
Father’s eyes were partly open, but he didn’t seem to see me. Suddenly terrified, I thought he was dead, but he was breathing softly, and when he turned on his side I showed him the grouse. “Look,” I said. “From the second snare.” But he didn’t look. Quietly, I got the comb and braided Meri’s hair; then I plucked the grouse, forgetting to take it outside, so the lodge filled with feathers; then I combed and braided my own hair and suddenly felt so tired that I thought I would fall asleep before this was done. I lay down between our deerskins and dreamed for the first time of Mother, who stood on the far side of a bearberry bush and talked to me while we picked.
Meri woke me later by crawling under the deerskins with me. Father was standing up, trying to get dressed. But he couldn’t put his shirt on over his arm, which was black and terrible, and finally he stopped trying and crawled out the door. Soon he came back and lay down again, having gone out only to urinate or eat snow. I saw from the light in the smokehole that the daylight was almost gone, so I hurried to visit the snares. The first three were still empty. Deciding to forget the fourth, to lose the leather thong if need be, I went home. Meri and I cooked the grouse and divided it, bringing a share to Father. He wouldn’t wake up, so I left his portion beside the uneaten strip of meat. Then I blocked the door with the fir tree and went back to bed.
In the middle of the night, I heard Father softly call my name. I got up and sat beside him, and found him awake and sensible, so I asked his advice about the snares. He had very good ideas for places to set the ones I had found empty, and he told me to forget the leather thong. An animal would have stolen it by now anyway, he said. He told me he was sorry he was so ill, but thought he was getting better slowly. I asked him to eat, and he did, a little. I got him another snowball and he ate it all. When I asked him if I might use his ax, he told me to use whatever I needed but to take good care of everything, and to cut a skin if I thought we needed more thongs. “You’re almost grown now,” he said gently. “You keep us warm with wood and you brought food today. That’s good. Perhaps you should have gone with the others, but you’re here and so am I.” He paused. “I’m sick now, but when I’m well we’ll have plenty. Or we’ll find your father-in-law.” I realized he meant Graylag. “Anyway, the ice on the rivers will soon be gone. It’s rotten now, too dangerous to cross. The others shouldn’t travel at this time of year. And soon there will be fawns to hunt. Winter is nearly over.”
Tears came to my eyes. He was speaking as he always spoke, without anger or strangeness. I wanted to creep into his arms and cry, as if I were little. I wanted to tell him I was frightened, but of course I didn’t. Instead I thanked him for his praise and asked if he needed more water. He shook his head. “I knew when I saw my moccasin laces that I wasn’t thinking clearly. It’s part of my fever,” he said. “I thought you cut them. Now I know I cut them myself. I woke you because I wanted to talk with you while I’m thinking well. I may think strangely again before I’m better. If I do, don’t pay attention. You’re a good child, and so is Meri, and while I’m sick you’re doing everything right. That’s good. Now I’ll rest again.” And he lay back and pulled up his deerskin.
In the morning he was asleep. I brought Meri with me while I visited the snares, all empty, and moved two of them to the places Father wanted them to be. We gathered wood and went home, and found him still asleep, the uneaten food beside his head. “I don’t think he likes it. We’ll eat it,” I told Meri, and we did.
That night I heard him say something but when I went to sit beside him I knew the hosts of the lodge were back. That frightened me, and I burned a piece of meat for them. Father didn’t talk long—he seemed to be listening to someone. I sat alone by the fire, not daring to lie in the dark.
During the next three days the snares set where he had suggested held two hares, a grouse, and a ptarmigan. Each one I brought home hopefully, wanting to show Father, but he didn’t wake. On the fourth day I cracked the reindeer bones for marrow, finding it all dark and shrunken, without fat. Everyone likes fat marrow; I had hoped to give Meri a treat. When she saw the bad marrow, she began to sob helplessly and clung to me until I cried too. Then we ate some marrow anyway and brought some to Father, who was still asleep. The marrow too we put beside him.
During the night, as I watched the firelight on the roof, I realized I had known for several days that Father was dying. Perhaps his spirit was already going, struggling free of his body, waiting for the breath to stop. Would I ever see him again? I wondered. Meri and I would go to Mother’s people in the Camps of the Dead.
I lay awake a long time, listening to the sounds of the night—I heard the wind in the trees, a fox far away, Meri’s childish breathing, the crumbling fire, the soft creaking of the lodge, but nothing else. I listened carefully. The space at the back of the lodge was perfectly quiet. Father was gone.
I woke Meri and we looked at him. His eyelids were open. His face was drawn. I took his hand and found it cold, his fingers tight. We couldn’t bury him, I saw, or put him in a tree as people sometimes do for the dead in winter, and strangely, I felt glad about that. It seemed a terrible thing to put a person in the earth, where it was always close, always dark and cold, and more terrible still to put a person in a tree to freeze like meat, perhaps to be picked by martens or ravens.
We left him where he was. But before we tried to follow Yoi and Father’s nephews, we put all our wood on the fire. We made the lodge brighter than we had ever seen it, and very hot. While the wood burned I cut up the meat in the coldtrap and divided it into three piles ready for carrying. I gave the smallest to Meri and took the next myself for our trail, and put the large one on the fire for Father and the people with him, for their trail.