16

IT HURT ME to say good-by to the people who remembered Mother, especially Black Wolf, whom I would not see again until we met at the fire of our lineage in the Camps of the Dead. Still, as soon as we set off in single file through the long red grass with the morning sun on us, my spirits rose like the swallows overhead. First went Elho and White Fox, then I came with Meri, and last came Yoi. All of us were very happy, and Yoi taught us a song.

After we had walked a way, we heard people behind us. We turned to look, and saw my cousins The Stick and The Frog following, now with their families. Having been so busy with my own problems at the Fire River, I hardly knew their families, and I looked at them closely. Both wives were carrying small children. An older child, a boy, followed The Frog. How was it I knew so little about these people? The older boy must be the wife’s son from an earlier marriage, since he was too old to be a child of The Frog’s. We stopped and waited for them, and when they caught up with us, we welcomed them. “Father will be glad to see you,” said Elho. “He often says you left Ahi’s place empty in the lodge.”

“We will be glad to see Graylag,” said The Frog. “It’s been a long time.”

“Two years,” I reminded him.

He looked at me but didn’t speak, and a little chill passed over me. When I thought all my troubles were settled, here was Cousin The Frog following me, he who suspected me, he who had found me with Elho in the long grass. What had Yoi said he might find? But I had carried myself well at the time, and couldn’t worry about him now. I was too happy.

“If you won’t go first, I will,” I said to Elho, and took the lead. But since I didn’t really know the way, in time Elho and my cousins were calling to me.

“There. There!” they shouted, pointing. I was far ahead of everyone, but saw where they pointed and tried to find a landmark to walk to. But the plain was flat and grassy. There were no hills and no trees, just the dome of the sky and herds of bison far away. I stopped to let Elho and White Fox catch up with me.

“How am I going wrong?” I asked.

“Look at the sun,” said Elho. I looked. “We want to go north.”

“No landmarks?” I asked.

“Nothing much,” said Elho. “The country is flat and open all the way.”

“Have you come here from the Hair?”

“Not this far, but it’s all the same.”

“How do you know?”

“Wouldn’t people tell me?”

“Good. Then you know,” I said, and started off, but soon I heard people calling me again. Again I waited, and again Elho and White Fox caught up.

“You’re running, Yanan,” said Elho. “Aren’t there small children with us? Can’t you slow down for them?”

“No,” I said. “I want to see Timu. Stay behind if you like. I’ll take Meri and go on by myself.”

“You won’t find the way.”

“Of course I’ll find the way. If I kept going straight north, wouldn’t I come to the Hair River?”

“You won’t find the people.”

“Of course I will. Don’t they leave tracks?”

“Yanan,” said Elho impatiently, “the Hair is very long. People don’t walk the length of it. You won’t find the cave.”

“Keep up with me, then,” I said.

But he didn’t, and soon I was far ahead again, with Meri. She was stubborn about traveling so fast, but I insisted. “Think what I’ve done for you,” I said when we were out of earshot of the others. “I saved you from a marriage to Swift. You didn’t like Swift. Now you’re betrothed to White Fox again, or you soon will be. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“I don’t want to be married,” said Meri.

“Well, you won’t have to be for years,” I said.

“I won’t have coitus.”

Coitus! How did Meri know of coitus? The sooner she was married the better, since she knew about coitus. But I didn’t want to talk of marriage with her now, and reminding myself to ask White Fox what he had been saying to her, I hurried on. In a while she said, “I won’t go this fast.”

“Yes you will,” I said. “We can be there in a short time if we hurry.”

“You want to see Timu. I don’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

“He beat you. He might beat me.”

“All that is forgotten,” I said. “And he wouldn’t beat you.” Again we walked without speaking, listening to the wind in the grass and our own hard breathing.

“You’re forcing me,” said Meri after a while.

“I’m not. Just walk, don’t talk if you’re getting tired.”

“The others won’t find us.”

“Aren’t we leaving tracks?”

“The grass is closing behind us. We might meet a lion.”

I stopped and turned around. “What’s wrong, Meri?” I asked. “Why are you complaining?”

“I don’t want to go to the Hair River,” she said.

“No? Why?”

“Because you’ll have a baby there. Then I won’t see you. I’ll have to go away.” Meri began to cry.

I sat on my heels and put my arms around her. “What’s this? Whatever makes you think this?” I asked. “I won’t go away. And when the baby comes, you can play with it. You’ll be the aunt.” Then I added, “Don’t be like Aunt Yoi,” hoping to joke her out of her tears.

But Meri clung to me and said, “What if you’re like Mother? What if you die?”

So for the second time that day a chill ran over me. “Well, I won’t die,” I said. “Did you see all the children at the Fire River? How could there be so many if their mothers died? Don’t talk to me of death.” Then I saw that I was being unkind, and I thought for a moment. “Meri,” I said at last, “listen to me. What if I do die? You might miss me, and I would miss you, but you won’t be alone. You’ll be married, and people will be with you. Do you remember Junco?” Meri looked doubtful. “White Fox’s sister. You’d be with her. There are always people.”

“I remember Junco,” said Meri, wiping her eyes.

“Yes. Well, she’s at the Hair River, waiting to see you.”

Meri thought for a moment. “We can go,” she said at last. So we did, hurrying for the rest of the day and stopping that evening in a thicket of sagebrush to shelter us from the wind. Meri looked for bison dung to burn and I looked for the vines of milkplants so we could scrape the roots and drink the juice from the scrapings, because we were thirsty. I had almost forgotten, while hurrying all day, that on the plain we might not find water.

At dusk Elho and White Fox caught up with us, followed a little later by Yoi. After dark The Stick and The Frog and their families came into our camp, very tired. They had stopped to gather food on the way, and now they shared it, getting in return squeezed root instead of water.

I was a bit sorry to have hurried everyone so much, especially since I could see that people were angry with me. I was truly sorry for the little boy, The Frog’s stepson, whose name was Kakim and who now looked so tired, with dark circles under his eyes, that he seemed faint. He looked to be about the same age as Meri, yet she was able to keep the pace. Kakim’s pack was very thick and heavy, I noticed, but I also wondered if he was sick. I saw that we would have to think more about the way we were traveling.

“I’m sorry to walk so fast,” I said. “I’m in a hurry, but the rest of you don’t need to be. I don’t mean to hurry the children.”

“You should think of others,” said The Frog’s wife nastily. “Unless you like forcing your sister and listening to children cry.”

I felt a little flame of anger. “What I mean is this,” I said. “I am going to the Hair River. I’m going to my husband, and the only person I must take with me is Meri. And of course my aunt,” I added quickly, “if she wants to hurry. The rest of you are coming by your own choice.” I looked at my cousins. “In Father’s lodge on the Pine River, I never asked anyone to wait for me.” I paused a moment to let them remember. “And no one did. I’m surprised that you think I ought to wait for you. If I get to the Hair River first, I’ll tell the people that you’re following slowly because of children. I’m finished speaking.” And I sat with my chin high, looking at the embers of the burning bison dung.

“This is very rude,” said The Frog’s wife, breaking the silence that followed my speech. “When people travel, they should stay together.” She looked indignantly around at the others, waiting for some reply. But only The Stick’s wife seemed to agree with her, and for a long time the rest of us waited.

At last White Fox said, “Yanan can hurry if she likes. If no one minds, I’ll hurry with her. I want to see my parents. I haven’t seen them for more than a year.”

Elho said thoughtfully, “Perhaps we should talk of finding the Hair River in case we separate. Some of us don’t know the way.”

“Good,” I said. “Tell us.” So he did, describing how we should use the sun by day and which stars we should follow at night. And when we got to the river, we should walk downstream, looking for high banks. The cave we wanted was in a ravine. “If you meet the river in the ravine, you should go west. You’ll be on the summergrounds of mammoths, so be careful,” he finished.

“Why should we be careful?” I asked, wondering what dangers we should expect from mammoths.

Elho misunderstood my question. “Yanan—always rash,” he said tiredly. “Don’t be careful, if you don’t want to be.”

 

In the morning Elho, White Fox, and Yoi seemed to be keeping up with Meri and me. By noon The Stick and The Frog and their families had fallen far behind. We rested and ate in a thicket of low-growing bearberry bushes, but the families didn’t catch up with us. White Fox asked whether we should wait for them after all. “Not I,” I said. “When they were with Father, they didn’t wait for him or me.” Then I couldn’t help but glance at Yoi, who hadn’t waited for us either.

Yoi yawned, as if what I said had no meaning for her. Elho seemed a bit uncomfortable to be separating from other people, but he wanted to reach the Hair River as much as I did. At last he said, “They’re grown men. They don’t need us to take care of their families.” And so we hurried for the rest of the way, and never saw my cousins again in all the time it took us to reach the Hair River.

 

On the night we left the Fire River, the rising moon that lit us was the Bearberry Moon in its last quarter. When we reached the huge, shadowy ravine of the Hair River, the crescent of the next moon, the Mammoth Moon, was following the sun. The distance is very great, but that was how fast we traveled—Elho hurrying to Ankhi and his daughter, White Fox hurrying to his parents, Yoi hurrying to ivory, and I hurrying to Timu.

Elho was right about the mammoths. As we walked on the grassy plain, following the river downstream toward the cave, we saw many mammoths, huge and hairy, with great, sweeping tusks that crossed far in front of them—enough ivory for the marriage exchanges of all the people in the world. Only cows and calves were in the herds; the bulls were alone or in twos or threes, sometimes an old bull with youngsters following him. The mammoths worried us a bit—they were so very big that our spears looked like twigs beside them. We thought that if a mammoth chased us it would kill us, so we kept near the edge of the ravine, ready to slide down where we thought no mammoth would follow. If the ravine was too steep for sliding, we looked nervously at the rocks below, hoping we wouldn’t have to choose between the mammoths and the rocks.

When we were within a day’s travel of the cave, we met a herd very close to the ravine. We stopped to think about these mammoths, and wondered whether to wait until they moved away, or go around them, or go down into the ravine.

The mammoths seemed to be thinking about us; they were pointing their trunks, blowing air, waving their ears, and rumbling, soft and deep. In the herd were tiny, long-legged infants who peeked at us from under their mothers while older calves trotted back and forth in front of the herd, their ears fanned and their tails high, as if the sight of us excited them. Suddenly one of the calves, its eyes bright with mischief, launched itself toward us in a jiggling trot.

I dropped my pack and leaped into the ravine, with Yoi and Meri right beside me. We clung to bushes to keep ourselves from sliding, and lay against the slope, looking up to see White Fox and Elho soar over the rim and land below us. Above, a mammoth trumpeted.

Since we were almost in the river, we slid the rest of the way down the bank and washed ourselves carefully, then smoothed and braided our hair so we would look nice when we met the other people. While we washed we heard a mammoth whacking something against the earth above us, and when we scrambled to the rim again, we saw my pack flattened. The mammoths who had done this were now grazing far away. Except for my ivory comb, my pack held only things made of leather and stone, not things that could be broken, so I threw away the shattered comb and cleaned the pack a bit, then put it on, and we left there, looking over our shoulders from time to time in case another mischief-maker took it into his head to follow us.

Late in the day we smelled carrion and heard someone pounding something between two stones. Looking over the ravine’s rim, we noticed the corpse of a mammoth by the water. Also we saw a trail. Elho led us down this trail, along a wide ledge, and into a great, dim space in the wall of the ravine: the cave of the mammoth hunters.

Our eyes weren’t used to the dark. We stood in the cave’s mouth uncertainly, trying to see the many shadowy faces of the people inside. There were more people here than I expected—they must be mammoth hunters, surely. Our hearts were filled with happiness to be here at last, and I was looking everywhere for Timu, when to our surprise some of the men leaped up and grabbed their spears! We shouted with laughter. “Shall we fight, Father?” cried Elho.

“Elho! White Fox! You’ve come!” Graylag’s spear thumped on the sandy floor of the cave as he threw his arms around them. “Did you want us to kill you? We didn’t expect you! We saw your outlines with spears!”

“It’s us, not strangers! You needn’t expect us to leave our spears in a bush! We won’t harm you!”

“My daughters!” Teal hugged me and Meri and Yoi. “How long it’s been since I’ve seen you. Ah, welcome.” I was so happy that I began to cry, and I hid my face in Teal’s shoulder.

The cave rang with the voices of the men greeting Elho and White Fox. Suddenly a tall young woman stood in front of me. I gaped. It was White Fox’s sister, Junco, strong and beautiful, wearing an ivory necklace. “It’s you!” we both cried, hugging each other.

Then Ethis was beside me. In her open shirt I saw a small baby in a sling. It isn’t right to shout about a baby, but I put my hand gently on the bulge it made. In return Ethis put her hand on my belly. Our eyes met and she gave me a little, secret smile.

“Hide-in-the-Grass!” said Swift. “Come and eat. You’re hungry from traveling.” Then he noticed Yoi. He ran his sky-colored eyes from her feet to her face, where he met her brown eyes, staring openly. He nodded politely. “Welcome,” he said.

“She is my aunt,” I told him. “My father’s widow, my mother’s sister, Yoi, Child of Hama. He is Swift, Child of Akima, uncle of my co-wife and headman of the mammoth hunters.”

As the newcomer, Yoi began the long formal greeting, offering her respect to Swift and all the people with him. Her voice, so often a threatening scream, now had a huskiness to it. Her eyes were cast down. Swift gazed at her even after she had finished her greeting. At last, almost reluctantly, he had to turn to greet Elho and White Fox.

“Why did he call you ‘Hide-in-the-Grass’?” whispered Yoi.

“I forget. Perhaps a nickname.”

“Why can’t he speak right?” she whispered again.

“Hush, Aunt!”

“He’s rather white.”

“He’ll hear you!”

“But his teeth are nice.”

Then I heard a voice behind me. “Why are you whispering, Wife?” it said. I turned, and there was Timu.

Now I had no words. I just looked at my husband, and my eyes filled with tears. “What’s this?” he asked, laughing. “Do we make you so sad?”

I laughed too, but it sounded like sobbing. Then I was sobbing! Quickly I drew a deep breath and wiped my eyes and nose. Again I was laughing. He seemed so handsome I could only say, “I’m here.”