THE STORM MOON that winter brought heavy, wet snow. Many times blizzards kept us in the lodge. Sometimes our firewood ran out, and no one wanted to go for more, so we lay under our deerskins to keep warm. Our food ran out too. Soon after I killed the reindeer doe and Swift killed the reindeer stag, most of the reindeer went over the hills to the south slopes, so we had to travel far to find them. That winter we were hungry, cold, and wet, and the storms gave all of us bad tempers. Sometimes we tried not to speak at all, lest we say something awful. We were afraid we would quarrel and then have to stay close together until spring.
One night at the beginning of the Lodge Moon, Swift gave me a beautiful necklace: my share of the betrothal exchange for Meri. I had no gift to give in return, since I owned almost nothing. However, it didn’t matter—even the mammoth hunters must be used to waiting a long time to complete betrothal or marriage exchanges. Reaching out my hands to receive this necklace gave me a very strange feeling, since my mind was set that Meri and Swift wouldn’t marry. But I took it, of course. When the betrothal was broken would be the time to give it back. It shames me to remember how much I liked the necklace; each bead of polished ivory must have taken many, many days to shape and drill. And it shone by the fire as if it made its own milky light. I would not get a gift like this from White Fox or his people. Wishing I could keep it, I put it on.
Ankhi’s baby was born in the Lodge Moon. The birth must have been easy, or so she made it look—she tried to chat and smile not only when a pain took her but even while she pushed the baby out. The rest of us had nothing to do but keep her company and clean up afterwards. She must have noticed how I had borne pain during my initiation; she kept looking at me lest I miss the fact that she was just as indifferent to pain as I had been, but she was having more pain.
The baby was a little girl. Elho was delighted with her and would play with her by the fire when he sat with the men at night. Everyone else was happy at first, then worried, because hunger took away Ankhi’s milk. In the Hunger Moon the baby sucked Ankhi dry time after time, and then we had to listen to its whining. We felt sorry for it, but the crying put our nerves on edge. Ankhi’s too: during one night of whining I heard a slap, a silence, and terrible crying. At the fire Elho stiffened, then bit his lips to stop his tongue while Rin went to talk to Ankhi in an angry voice, so low we couldn’t hear the words. Ankhi’s voice answering sounded like a child’s.
By the end of the Hunger Moon I was always tired. When we went for pine nuts, I thought my legs would never carry me to the grove. Somehow they did, there and back too. Sometimes I thought of Mother, wondering why she had bothered to seem always cheerful. Perhaps she really had felt cheerful, and hadn’t been pretending, or perhaps she hadn’t been as tired as I seemed to be. Unlike her, I didn’t care. I wanted to sleep.
Ethis, by now very pregnant, wouldn’t share her deerskin with anybody, so every night Timu crawled in with me. Once I would have been happy, but now he made me cross, always running his hand over my body. If I told him to stop, he thought I was teasing and would try to force open my thighs. Once I bit him. Furious, he jumped to his feet and took the deerskin blanket with him to another place in the lodge. This left me with nothing but my parka, not warm, but I slept like the dead.
One night I was kept awake by people remembering the past. They sat around Graylag’s fire, blocking the heat from the blazing wood I had walked all day to find. By this time in winter firewood is like food—hard to get, and we are greedy for it. If we find food, we eat too much at once just to be satisfied, and if we get wood, we burn too much at once just to be warm. I was still wet from pushing through the snowdrifts for the firewood, and very cold from lying on the floor, but I was too tired to sit by the fire and too bored by the things people said.
The old people were talking about other old people, and listed all their names. I didn’t know any of them. Graylag reminded the others of the winter many people had died, among them his three brothers. It should have made me sad, to think of those who had started our lodge only to die helping others. Instead it annoyed me. Were the old people the only ones who knew about hard winters? What did they think we were having now?
Graylag’s talk must have made Swift impatient; Swift said that hard winters could be foreseen, and reminded everyone of how he had foreseen this winter when the rhino and her calf came into our valley for the shelter of trees. Or as he put it, “dreeze.”
How I hated Swift’s endless boasting about how much he knew! He should be back with his kinsmen, not here making us listen to him. I should have held my tongue, but that night I couldn’t. “How can animals know how hard a winter will be?” I asked. “Do they know more than people?” Swift’s back was to me, but he turned to give me a long questioning look. I propped myself on my elbow and met his sky-colored eyes. “And what if you did tell us a bad winter was coming?” I asked. “Did you think we could stop it?”
“Yanan!” said Teal, shocked. “Respect our guest!”
“Apologize!” cried Graylag.
But I felt sick and sulky, too tired to think of an apology. Instead I lay down again, saying nothing. After a long, embarrassing wait, Graylag apologized for me. “My son’s wife has shamed us,” he said.
That stung me. “He talks as if we’re stupid, Father-in-Law,” I said.
“Stop your tongue!” cried Graylag, openly angry now. “Timu should take you outside and give you a big beating for what you said!”
“Are we like the mammoth hunters? I don’t care if Timu beats me or not.”
What did I know about mammoth hunters? The only ones I had ever met were right here with me: Swift, Rin, Ankhi, and Ethis, my own co-wife. Now they would guess that the rest of us said certain things about them behind their backs.
A shocked silence fell, and the people at the fire wouldn’t look at each other. Graylag glared at me. “Now! Now you will apologize!”
I had said things that wouldn’t be forgotten. What had Graylag or the mammoth hunters ever done to me that I should insult them? I was so tired I could cry, and I felt sick to my stomach. After an awful silence, Teal stood up, stepped over some people, and sat on her heels next to me. “Yanan, what’s the matter?” she asked. “This isn’t right.” She felt my cheek. “Are you feverish? Why are you lying in wet clothes?”
“I’m tired,” I said. “All day I walked through the snow to get firewood. Now people are burning it as if there was no end of it. Tomorrow someone else can get it. I won’t go.”
“Timu! Your wife must apologize at once to all of us!” said Graylag in a loud voice.
“She will. She’s not herself,” said Teal quickly. To me she said, “You’d better apologize.” When I said nothing, she looked at me sharply. “If you’re tired, sleep! Stop this rudeness! And give me your clothes to dry by the fire.” So I gave her my clothes and pulled the deerskin over my head. When the talk at the fire began again, the words were slow and stiff from the insults, but the voices pounded in my ears. Although I was exhausted, I couldn’t lie still but turned over and over. Perhaps I really was sick, or just hungry. But what did it matter? Only reindeer bones lay in the coldtrap, with so little meat on them that all day none of us had eaten more than a mouthful. It was the men, not me, that people should be angry with. Where was our meat?
One by one, people were leaving the fire to find their deerskins. In time the lodge grew quiet, and I felt Timu beside me. “What’s wrong with you?” he whispered. “Why were you rude? Swift was talking to the people at the fire, not to you. And why were you rude to Father? Now everyone is angry with you. I’m angry too.”
“Then sleep with Ethis,” I said loudly, sorry as soon as the words were out of my mouth.
Timu sat up. “Must I beat you?” he asked, his voice rising dangerously. “Are you angry from hunger? Do you think you’re the only one who’s hungry? Do you think you’re the only one who’s tired? I’ve been walking all day in the snow. The other men want you to hunt with us tomorrow, or they did until you insulted our lodge. And tomorrow you must apologize to Swift and Rin and Father, and to Ethis and Ankhi too.” He lowered his voice again so no one else could overhear. “The last time you insulted Swift, everyone knew I didn’t beat you but just took you away. Next time they’ll want me to beat you right here so they’ll know I’m doing it. And I will. Then we’ll all be unhappy. Don’t force this, Yanan.”
All this talk of beating he had learned from the mammoth hunters. Another time I might have said so, but tonight I felt I had already said enough. “I’m sorry, Husband,” I told him. “I’m tired and I don’t feel right.”
“We’re all tired and none of us feels right. Remember that. Don’t make trouble in winter.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
“And apologize tomorrow. Take time tonight to think of something fine to say, then say it in front of everyone.”
“I will,” I said.
During the night the wind brought wet snow down the smokehole, and we heard the voice of a storm. In the morning there was no question of hunting, or even finding much firewood—the snow was blinding. Most of us stayed rolled in our deerskins, going out from time to time to look at the weather or visit the latrine. Since all of us were here and most of us awake, I stood up and in a sincere voice I said, “Last night I insulted our guests and the people of this lodge. I didn’t mean what I said, and I’m ashamed and sorry. I ask your forgiveness, although I don’t deserve it.” I waited, listening for an answer from the silent lodge. But no one spoke. This was the moment for me to offer a gift to Swift or Rin, perhaps a new pair of moccasins I was making to give to Timu, but I let the moment pass. Then I sat down.
As soon as I did, I knew I should have spoken in a tearful tone or made a gift. Graylag saw this too. Wanting peace instead of fighting, he said, “There is her apology. If Yanan makes no more trouble, we will accept it.” He waited, expecting one of the mammoth hunters to agree with him. But no one did.
Then Teal tried. “Yanan is young and ignorant,” she began. “She seems sick, too. None of us is well. Let’s forget her childish talk and think of hunting.”
Father’s sister, Ina, spoke too. “We are all angry with my brother’s child for spoiling the peace of this lodge. In here we are all friendly and we care for one another. Yanan sees what stupid things she said. If her parents were living, they would teach her better. Now that she knows she did wrong, she won’t speak stupidly again.”
I looked around to see how people took this. Timu looked satisfied; I had done just as he told me. Elho gave me a cold stare under lowered lids. How dared you? asked his eyes. Owl looked soft and forgiving, as if she were asking, Oh, what does it matter? Meri looked scared; Ethis looked hurt; Rin looked blank, showing nothing; and Swift gave a shrug and a soft grunt, as if he, at least, was grudgingly willing to accept my apology. What did he care if a young woman wanted to offend him? But Ankhi, covering her baby as if to protect it from me, looked straight into my eyes. “A bird can be snared but a spoken word is loose forever,” she said.
I tried not to show it, but I was shocked. Whatever did Ankhi have against me? Last night I was angry at Swift, not her. Ankhi was the last person I thought I had offended. In fact, I hardly thought about her at all. Did she know that her husband, Elho, once had followed me into the woods? Had he said something? And why was she covering the baby? You slapped it, not me, you bad-mannered squirrel, I said to myself. Who are you to act superior?
But now was not the time to quarrel with Ankhi or anyone else. I was in disgrace, so I hung my head a while. Then, so I wouldn’t have to sit ashamed and idle, I groped around my sleeping place for the moccasins I was sewing, hoping that something sudden would happen to take everyone’s attention from me. But nothing did. In a dark corner, Rin snored.
The lodge was so cold I had to wear my parka, and so smoky I couldn’t see the holes for my needle. Snow almost blocked the smokehole, and the fire wasn’t making enough heat to carry all its smoke up and out. I coughed until my eyes streamed. The men began to complain in rough voices about Meri’s wolf, who was robbing their snares. Then they put their heads together to whisper, and I began to suspect that they might have set a snare for him. How like them, I thought. They couldn’t make him help them, and now they’re trying to kill him, but they don’t have the courage to tell even such a little person as Meri. My anger burned.
Yet there I sat, making a present for Timu! Quickly I stuffed the moccasins out of the way. Then I had nothing to do. When Owl asked Teal for a story, I felt hopeful. But when Teal began to tell how Whitefish stole fire from the Hare, I ground my teeth with irritation. I couldn’t count how many times I had heard that story before; to hear it again was more than I could bear. I took off my parka and rolled up in my deerskin. Before I knew it, I was fast asleep.
So passed the Hunger Moon. During it we killed only one reindeer, although plenty of them were hiding in the trees across the river. During the Moon of Roaring the tigress came to stalk the reindeer also. The time for tigers’ rutting was here again, and at night we heard the tigress call aao-o, a-a-oo-ng. As before, we thought the woods more dangerous and formed two groups for hunting. In one group were Graylag with his son-in-law, Crane, and his son Elho, and in the other group were Swift, Timu, White Fox, and I. Swift and Graylag were the leaders. They thought White Fox and I together equaled either Elho or Crane. Perhaps that would have angered me when I felt well, a time that now seemed long ago. Now I was too tired to care.
Because of being tired, I had trouble keeping up with the men. Sometimes when I was out of their sight I sat on my heels, crossed my arms over my knees, and put my head down to rest. Sometimes I had to move quickly onto my hands and knees to vomit without spoiling my clothes. The vomit was a foamy yellow bile that dripped from my nose.
In time the tigress made the reindeer wary. We couldn’t seem to get near them. One day, when Swift and the rest of the group were widely spread out among the trees in search of their trails or signs of browsing, I circled the base of a hill, and when I found my own trail again, I saw the tigress’s footprints over my footprints: she was following me. Very scared, I found an open place where the tigress couldn’t ambush me and gave the alarm call: lululululululu!
The men found me quickly, their spears ready, and although my alarm call spoiled our hunting (and I hoped we could go home), they insisted on backtracking the tigress along the riverbank to learn what they could about her and to find a scat. They found an icicle of urine on a twig where she had backed up to squirt, and a scat full of hair. Not bothering to show me, they broke open the scat, and to their surprise found that the hair belonged to two animals, a red deer and a reindeer. What did the scat mean? they asked each other. This tigress might be hunting very widely, which worried them more than her following me.
After dark at our fire the men had a long talk about hunting and animals. If the other women hadn’t gone far away to the pine groves and filled two large bags with nuts, our meal that night would have been snow. I was too tired to crack nuts so, asking Meri to crack some for me, I rolled myself in my deerskin and fell asleep. When Meri woke me I heard singing and realized that a shaman was about to trance. I hardly believed my eyes when I saw Swift naked to the waist and streaked with ocher. Was he really, as he said, a shaman? It seemed he was. To help him trance, we sang.
You who watch all the animals and all the people,
Hear us!
Give us those who carry antlers!
Give us those with white hair!
You whose children are the deer!
Help us under the Moon of Roaring
Help us under the Moon of Cast Antlers
Give us life,
You who give life!
Send us food,
You who give food!
Help us in winter.
How strong Swift looked, I thought. Although he was very thin, the firelight showed the fine hunter’s muscles of his back and shoulders. Strange to say, my throat tightened at the sight of him. Around and around he turned, looking up at the smokehole, until he collapsed on the ground. Teal didn’t trance with him, but she rubbed his back, his arms, and his legs while he lay unconscious. At last he sat up, wiping his face, and said, “I have seen the spirit of Sali. She’s here. She’s angry. The deer are hers—she wants to hunt them. We may not take them. That’s what she said.”
Sali! Sali was our kinswoman, the famous shaman of the Fire River whose daughter was Teal! But how had Swift found Sali? She wasn’t one of the spirits of the lodge; hers was the spirit who walked naked in the woods, carrying a baby, or stalked the riverbanks as a tigress, carrying a cub.
No one knew what to make of this. Rather doubtfully, Graylag said, “Hona!” The mammoth hunter women seemed fascinated, staring at Swift open-mouthed. But the thought of Sali made Meri and me uneasy, and we grasped each other’s hands. Swift himself sat perfectly calmly across the fire from us, his elbows on his knees, his hands shading the firelight.
Teal stood straight and tall, lit from below by the fire. As if she didn’t believe Swift, she looked down on him. “Tell us, Swift Shaman,” she said, “what my mother looked like.”
Swift relaxed, the man of meat again. With his pale eyes he looked up at Teal, and in the patient voice he sometimes used to answer women’s questions he said, “She looked like a tiger. Stripes, and a long tail on her. She wants to eat the deer herself, you see? She doesn’t want us to starve, so instead she’ll let us find a sleeping bear.”
Teal sat down, looking puzzled. We all felt puzzled. Sali had never appeared like this before, not even to her own daughter. How unusual! Yet the strangeness of it didn’t bother Swift, who seemed to be thinking only of the bear. Even with his trance still near him he added, “A tiger doesn’t hunt grown bears—not even young ones in winter.”
In the morning we found the weather clear. Graylag went hunting, taking Timu, White Fox, and me. Perhaps because he had been married so long to a shaman, or perhaps because he didn’t quite believe Swift, Graylag seemed unworried by Swift’s message of the night before. Graylag told us that people could say what they liked, but we were going for reindeer, Sali or no Sali. After all, Sali’s own daughter was suffering. Her grandson too. Her great-granddaughter was suffering most of all—Elho’s little baby, who now cried all the time, weakly and without hope.
Timu agreed. Like his father, he didn’t give much thought to spirits, at least not by day. I didn’t think we should go against the wishes of a spirit, and I said so. Timu looked at me scornfully. “You think only of yourself and your own fear,” he said. “Yet you have less to fear than we do. Sali is your kinswoman, not ours. What about the other people? They’re hungry, even if you’re not.”
But Graylag said, “Your wife is right. If we kill a reindeer, we can leave the spirit’s portion for the tigress. That should please her, if she’s Sali. She can’t refuse food to people who need it. Her own grandson’s wife needs it the most. Without food, women can’t give milk!” I glanced triumphantly at Timu, and off we went, crossing the river on the ice.
Snow had drifted during the night, covering old footprints. All the deer trails we saw were fresh. Before the sun was high we found a likely trail, spotted the deer hiding in a thicket, surrounded the thicket, and killed the deer. So much for my mother-in-law, Graylag’s manner seemed to say as he cut open the belly. It was a yearling doe, so small and thin that two of us could carry her. We seemed about to take all the meat, but I reminded Graylag of the spirit’s portion, so he carefully placed the flesh of the belly on the bloody snow. Then we went back to the lodge, the men with the meat and I with all the wood I could gather, and in the lodge we made a fire and put the liver to roast.
The smell was so good I wept. Rising through the smokehole, it brought home all the women, who were nearby, looking for firewood and winterberries. Laughing and talking, they hung their wet clothes from the antlers in the roof and made ready to eat. Ethis with her huge, pregnant belly and Ankhi with her nursing baby sat close to the fire, staring right at the meat as if their mouths were watering. We put aside a large share for Swift and the two men with him, but the moment our shares were ready, we snatched them up and ate them, so hot they burned our mouths. How good they were! Graylag added strips of the foreleg, his own share, to the fire. Soon we were eating them too.
Perhaps I ate too fast, or perhaps my stomach wasn’t used to food—in no time I wanted to vomit. Horrified, I lay down on my back, trying to keep the food inside me. But it was no use. Suddenly I had to jump up and hurry out of the lodge, where my stomach heaved again and again, and soon all the bits of liver and foreleg, hardly chewed, were lying on the snow.
I wanted to cry. I thought perhaps I should try to put the food back into my stomach again. What would people think of this waste? I looked around in case anyone saw me, and noticed Meri’s wolf watching anxiously from a thicket. He too had smelled the cooking liver in the smoke. Slowly, with his ears folded and his face begging, he crept toward me on bent legs, looking from my face to the vomit. He was starving. Even under his winter coat his bones stuck out. “Eat,” I said, moving away from the vomit. I wouldn’t have been there at all if his mother hadn’t done the same for me. Gratefully he hurried to the vomit, and before I could blink my eyes it was gone.
In the lodge I asked for another strip of meat and ate it slowly. This piece I kept. Later I ate another, and kept that too. Then I lay down to rest, and at last I felt stronger.
After sunset a long time passed, but Swift, Crane, and Elho didn’t come. When the moon rose, we went outside to look for them and saw them crossing the river on the ice. They were empty-handed, we saw from afar, but they hailed us gladly. When they had eaten their fill of the reindeer, they told us where they had been and what they had found.
Walking fast, eating birch twigs on the way to stop their hunger, they had gone all the way to the hills where the Char rises. There, as Sali had promised, they found a bear’s den from the little smokehole made by the bear’s warm breath. The bear inside was probably asleep and probably a female. Listening at the smokehole, they thought they heard a cub.
A bear! Perhaps two! So much meat might last us almost until we traveled to our summerground. How lucky we were to have the reindeer now, to give us strength to walk the long way to the hills, dig out the bear and kill it, and carry the meat home again. Swift and Graylag were already planning the hunt. We would be gone at least two days, perhaps longer, as we would have to camp there and might be slow coming home with the weight of a lot of meat, if we got it. All the men would go except Elho, who would stay to help the women in case the tigress bothered them.
Elho objected, and seemed hurt. After all, he had helped find the bear. I offered to stay instead, since I thought myself as handy with a spear as Elho and I felt exhausted just thinking about the hunt. And hadn’t Elho been caught in the act of calling his kinswoman “wife” the last time he had been left alone with women?
But Graylag’s mind was set. I could help dig out the bear just as well as Elho, but Elho was bigger and stronger, which would matter if the tigress troubled the lodge. Also he was older and had more experience with animals, said Graylag. And Elho’s wife was recently delivered. And if the tigress was Sali, she was Elho’s grandmother but only my kinswoman. No—Elho would stay and I would go. The subject was finished.
In the morning, under the waning moon still shining in the clear, pale sky, we set off in weather so cold that our breath froze on our faces. We walked all day, backtracking Swift and the others. Late in the afternoon the trail led to a north-facing slope where Swift showed us a little hole among the roots of a pine. When we put our hands over the hole, we felt a faint, warm draft softly rising: the sleeping bear’s breath. The north slope was bad—to dig there we would have to chip the frozen earth in tiny pieces, like ice—but then, the weather was so cold that the south slope wouldn’t have been any better. To start digging in the evening would be foolish; we wouldn’t be able to do much before dark and might wake the bear besides. We would begin work in the morning. Meanwhile we would camp.
Far from the den, so we wouldn’t disturb the bear until we were ready, we chose a small clearing sheltered by low pines. The men rolled a little fire in some tinder, then sent me to gather the firewood for the rest of the night. This was easy, as there was plenty around. Alone in the woods, I remembered crossing these same hills with Meri and being too scared to build a fire. No wonder there was plenty of wood—not even she and I had gathered here before.
When I brought my bundle to the camp, I found that the men had almost killed the little fire by piling it with strips of reindeer meat. They hardly noticed me, but went on with their men’s talk, which I soon realized was about Sali. Swift was telling Timu about her, with Graylag adding a few words now and then. It soon was clear that a kinsman of Swift’s had been none other than Sali’s husband. No wonder Swift knew about her. Was this why he thought he saw her during his trance? Interested, I listened.
Long ago, Swift told the others, there was a man with two little sisters. Their summergrounds were on the Hair River, and their people were mammoth hunters. The two sisters found husbands among their own people: Swift’s father and another man. The grandchildren of that other man were Ethis and Ankhi.
I now thought that this was not to be an interesting story after all, but a boring list of names I didn’t know. And so it was, for a while. By the time the subject of the elder brother came up again, I was looking around for my pack. When I heard that the brother went to the Fire River and married someone there, I unrolled my deerskin. And when I heard that he and his wife were the parents of Sali’s husband, I lay down and settled myself for sleep. Who cared about marriages so long ago?
But Swift’s droning voice kept me awake, and his accent kept me puzzling, since I couldn’t easily catch all his words. When he said “bee-dray,” I listened more carefully. And suddenly I was wide awake. Sali hadn’t liked her husband’s people. Ah well, no wonder, if they were Swift’s kinsmen. I drifted off again. Again I was awake! She became pregnant by her own kinsman not because she loved him, as Teal and Mother once claimed, but to spoil her husband’s lodge! “Sali thought she could do whatever she wanted,” said Swift. “She was wrong about that. Some things can’t be done at all, not by her, not by anybody. But for a while people thought Sali could do anything. She had power. Have you heard how she brought The Woman Ohun to all the people camped on the steppe?”
“Some haven’t heard it,” said Graylag. “My son hasn’t heard it, or White Fox.” I hadn’t heard it either, and I propped myself on my elbow to catch all Swift’s words.
“Sali was a very famous shaman,” he began, “whose name was known to all of us along the Hair River. The summer she was pregnant by her kinsman, my father and other men went to find her people’s camp, to see if we could exchange women and to get feathers and shells. I was a boy then, and my father was the age I am now. When we found her people they welcomed us and we camped with them on the open plain. We soon learned of the trouble between Sali and her husband. Everyone talked of it, and we did too.
“On the night of the full Mammoth Moon the people built a big fire. Sali told them to start singing, so they did. My father and all the people with him, they obeyed like children, because they feared her.
“But above the singing we heard something new. It sounded like a heartbeat. What was it? We looked, and saw Sali with a little thing in her hands. It was a branch bent round with a swan’s skin tied over it, and when Sali tapped it, it sang ah, ah, ah, ah.
‘“What’s she doing?’ asked my father.
“‘She’ll call a spirit,’ said a man. ‘The voice of that will call a spirit. Wait and you’ll see.’
“But now we were afraid of the round thing, and when Sali laid it on the ground, we didn’t look at it. We were afraid of Sali too. She was all streaked with ocher and her hair was loose, blowing in the wind. And when she washed herself with fire to heat her power, we smelled burning skin.
“Then we saw what Sali wanted to show us. Out of the fire rose a big cloud of smoke, and in the cloud we saw another woman, as big as a bison. She was so huge, she frightened us, this woman. She was naked too. She had big long shins and big thighs, and a huge belly. This is how she stood, like this, with her arms up and her head back so we couldn’t see her face. We just saw the front of her body and the underside of her chin.
“We were surprised, I can tell you. But we were more surprised when she spread her legs and bent her knees to squat. It didn’t seem right to watch a woman doing this, even if she was a spirit. But she was showing us something.
“What happened next will scare you. It scared us. She didn’t squat all the way down, but stopped halfway. And we saw a head coming out of her body, upside down. It was a baby, facing forward with its eyes squeezed shut.
“We stared at this baby, hoping it wouldn’t open its eyes and stare at us. And then we saw it disappearing. The big woman straightened her legs and drew the baby back inside her body.
“The woman waited. We wanted to run but we didn’t dare move. As if a lion was right beside us, we made ourselves sit still.
“When the woman was ready, she bent her knees a second time. And again a head slid out to the neck. But now the head was longer, with a wrinkled, blunt snout. And we saw it wasn’t a person but a cub! The woman let us look a long time so we didn’t miss what she was showing us. And then she straightened her legs and the cub’s head slid back into her body.
“A third time she bent her knees. And a third head slid out of her, a narrow head with long, folded ears—the head of a fawn or a colt.
The big woman moved very slowly, like a mammoth. When she was ready, she straightened up a third time, and the fawn’s head slid back inside and disappeared.
“Then the woman dropped her arms to her sides and bent her head so her hair fell forward. We saw her belly, huge like a hill with we didn’t know what inside it. But we never saw her face, because her hair hid it. And the next thing we knew she wasn’t there.
“In her place, Sali stood by the fire. Like the big woman, Sali’s face was also hidden in her hair. She threw it back and said to us, ‘The Woman Ohun. Now you have seen her. Her message is my message. Make of it what you will.’
“What were we to think?” asked Swift. “Even now, most of us don’t dare speak of that night. Most of us call it ‘the night we first heard a drum.’ But we think Sali meant the message for her husband’s kin. Like The Woman Ohun, Sali would give birth to anything she wanted. What did she care if The Bear didn’t like it? The Woman Ohun gives birth to bears.
“That’s the story,” said Swift. “You know the rest. When Sali’s labor began, she wasn’t as strong as she thought she was. From the start she had trouble. The baby was her kinsman’s so it lay crosswise, showing its buttocks but hiding its face in shame. It didn’t want to be born.”
All the men nodded wisely, waiting to hear of Sali’s punishment. But I felt awed by what Sali had done and thought the story should stop there. As for the rest, that Sali died in childbirth, I didn’t want to hear it from these men.
They talked, though—nothing would have stopped them. For a while they argued about the way Sali died, Timu insisting on a story like the one he must have heard from Elho, that Sali’s husband tied Sali’s legs together so the baby couldn’t come out. That was like the story I believed, but Swift thought he knew different. Sali’s husband didn’t kill her, Swift told Timu. He wouldn’t, because killing causes trouble. Even killing a baby can lead to fighting and sometimes to more killing. If Sali’s husband had killed anyone, the shame would follow his lineage even now. But though Sali’s husband didn’t hurt her, he stopped everyone from helping her. “Let Sali bring The Woman to help. I won’t dare stop The Woman,” said Sali’s husband, according to Swift.
Before the trouble, Swift went on, people from the mammoth hunter lineages and the Fire River lineages married each other. But after the trouble they didn’t, or not as much. Each group was afraid of the other. Sali’s daughter, Teal, once was promised to the mammoth hunters, said Swift. But after the trouble, both the Fire River people and the mammoth hunters changed their minds. “That’s why Teal could marry you,” said Swift to Graylag. Graylag nodded. He already knew.
“But good things come from bad things, like mushrooms from dung,” said Swift, unrolling his sleeping-skin, as if finished with stories for the night. “Because of the old trouble, our lineages stayed apart. Our people aren’t all mixed together anymore, and we can easily find wives in each other’s camps. Timu got Ethis and Elho got Ankhi, which is good. All I got was Meri.” Swift laughed, having forgotten long ago that I might be listening. “Not so good for me—she’s still a baby. But she’ll grow.”
This talk of Meri must have been hard on White Fox. He poked the fire with a stick to make sparks fly. The angry gesture wasn’t lost on Swift, who turned to him and said kindly, “We’ll find a woman for you at the Hair River. Do you remember Sasa? Sasa’s family will give her to you. Look at Yanan, already asleep. She’ll be the only person strong enough to kill the bear.” Everyone laughed except me and White Fox.
Timu and Graylag stayed up to talk and feed the fire, keeping watch over the dark woods to see what walked there. I fell asleep, and when I got cold I woke to see Timu keeping watch alone. So I got up to warm myself, and we sat quietly together. The sky and the woods were bright, with the waning quarter of the Moon of Roaring shining on the snow. And the air was very still, so wind didn’t blow away the heat of the fire. Instead its warmth stayed around us, as if we were in a lodge we couldn’t see. “Do you believe,” I asked Timu, “that we should join our lineages to the mammoth hunters?”
He thought for a moment, then said, “I don’t know. Young people don’t decide these things. The old people, and the people before them—they know best about marriages and lineages. When we’re old, we’ll know.”
I thought for a while about Timu and me being old together. It was hard to imagine, yet if we lived, it would be so. “If you could choose,” I asked him, “what lineage would you have chosen?”
Timu looked surprised. “I did choose,” he said. “I chose Ethis.” Although this was true, I couldn’t help feeling disappointed. But then he added, “That’s what I mean about the old people knowing. I chose Ethis, but the old people chose you.”
When Timu slept I kept watch alone, thinking how tired I was already, and how sorry I hadn’t slept longer. When I felt like vomiting, as I seemed to do often, I ate a strip of meat. It was the last we had; our next meal would be bear meat or snow. The food helped me stay awake. When Swift and Graylag woke, we saw the morning star rising. The waning moon still lit the sky—we didn’t have to wait for day. We took our packs through the quiet woods and found the den, very dark in the shadow of the pine. We studied the place for a while, trying to think how it would be when the bear came out, deciding ahead of time whose spear should be thrown and whose should stab and where each of us should stand. We made two plans to attack the bear, one if she reared and one if she didn’t. “Don’t forget,” said Graylag, “a bear can come out fast.” When we thought we were ready, we scraped away the loose snow and began to chop our antler picks on the ice around the opening. The ice was like rock. We pounded away at it, each blow ringing, loosening bits no bigger than beads.
“This bear is really sleeping!” said Swift. “How can she do it?”
We laughed, the men at Swift’s joke, I at his accent. I took the chance to rest for a while. Graylag listened at the opening, then beckoned for Swift to listen too. “She’s waking,” said Graylag. “And she has a cub.” Then everyone listened, and with the silence I heard a little voice in the earth—not a loud voice, and not high, just young. I also heard the large bear breathing, lots of air moving, but down in the earth she sounded far away.
“So much meat,” said Swift, giving the ice a powerful blow with his pick. It broke. “By The Bear!” said Swift regretfully, fitting the broken pieces together. The pick looked whole, but of course he couldn’t use it; he tossed it into the woods and reached for his spear. “I don’t think she’s so deep,” he said. “I’m going to try now.”
“Wait,” said Graylag. “I think the den is like this.” He showed with his hands how he thought the hole curved in under the tree and then up a little. “She’s among the roots. If we kill her in there, we won’t get her out.”
“That’s right,” said Swift thoughtfully. “Let’s get her out.” So Swift and Graylag probed with their spears in the hole. Suddenly they stopped and turned to the rest of us. “Don’t stand there like horses!” said Swift. “Get ready.” So we poised our spears. Swift looked at us again. “And not so close! Do you want to spear us or the bear?”
“She’s awake,” said Graylag.
“Get ready! Get back!” said Swift. We heard a rumble—the bear was awake! “Watch out!” warned Swift, his spear raised. Gingerly Graylag poked in the hole one more time; then he leaped out of the way. Up came the bear with a deafening roar, bits of earth and dry pine needles dropping off her. Oh, she was big! Like a mammoth! She was standing, not rearing—I should throw at her chest! I threw with all my strength. My spear was gone, so I ran.
After a few leaps I stopped and looked around. At last the bear reared, but now with four spears in her chest, mine near her shoulder. Timu, Crane, and White Fox also had thrown at her chest, and Crane’s spear, right in the middle, had gone deep. Blood ran from the bear’s nose. From the side Swift and Graylag rammed their spears between her ribs as the bear swung at them. Her swing brought her to all fours, and she ran. We watched her huge rump disappear among the trees, then followed her trail. First she shook off my spear, then Timu’s. We picked them up. We found White Fox’s—or rather my father’s—with blood on the shaft. Then we found Swift’s spear, also blood-stained. We followed carefully, ready if she decided to fight us, and found her lying on the snow.
Just in case, we waited at a safe distance for a while. When she didn’t move, Swift and Timu, with my spear and White Fox’s, slowly walked up to her huge body, threw some snow, gave her a kick when nothing happened, then drove the spears into her heart. She was already dead. She didn’t move or groan.
Then we were happy! The pile of meat and fat in front of us was hard to imagine! And a bearskin too! The sun had just reached the tops of the trees, so we had plenty of daylight to work by. Back to the den we went for our packs and our knives, and we saw the cub’s face in the opening. Timu killed him with an ax. More meat, and two skins! Teal and Ina would be pleased, since the big skin would be theirs through Graylag. And Owl would be pleased, since the teeth would be hers through Crane. My spear had wounded, I saw when we opened the mother bear, but Crane’s had killed. It was buried to three hand’s breadths up the shaft, and had pierced her lung.
It took us the rest of the day to get the big skin off and the meat cut into pieces we could carry. Starting a fire, we cut the meat into strips, cooked a few, and hung the rest from branches to lose the weight of the blood. Ravens found us and landed over our heads, calling to other ravens before they flew down to eat the bloody snow. Their calls or the smell must have traveled far—in the middle of the afternoon we saw the wolves among the trees. They were too scared to come near us, although they seemed to be thinking about it, but after all, we were six, and I could see that they were only six or seven.
Perhaps they thought we had too much to carry and might not be taking all of it. As it was, we had to strip the heaviest bones. And we talked for a while about cutting the skin in half, since it was very heavy and both Graylag’s wives were its owners. It seemed a shame to cut it, though, and when Crane said he thought he could carry it, we gave it a rough scraping and rolled it up in case it froze.
Late in the afternoon all the warmth was gone from the meat, and also the day was turning very cold. We saw that everything would freeze, so we hurried, making packs, gutting the cub, and stuffing most of the guts, the heads, and the heavy bones far down into the den and covering them. If for any reason we needed them, we could always come back and dig them out again.
Then we took up our packs. Mine, the smallest, was so heavy that I couldn’t lift it off the ground. Timu had to help me get under it. Using my spear as a walking stick, I followed the men into the forest, very thankful that the way home was mostly downhill. Even so, I soon dropped far behind the others, until I was out of sight and even out of earshot. But the trail was easy to see—it had been used four times now. I found it by starlight. When I was stumbling with cold and tiredness, ready to lie down on the snow, I saw a large man striding toward me through the trees. It was Timu, coming to find me. When he took my pack, I felt as if I was rising into the air. He told me the others were camped, then made me walk ahead to hurry me. It wasn’t good to bring a big load of meat through a strange woods after dark.
The trail led straight to a wonderful camp—a small, open cave on the hillside, a place Swift must have scouted on his first trip, knowing we might need it on the way home with meat. In it we could keep the meat through the night and not have to fight off every hunting animal in the forest. The men had gathered wood, had rolled a fire in the cave’s mouth, and were cooking. All I had to do was unroll my deerskin and lie down.
It had been a good day, and was a good, starry night, clear and cold, with a yellow glow behind the hills where the moon would rise. The cave soon filled with smoke, but that was no matter. I must have fallen asleep, because Timu woke me to give me my food.