18

IN THE SHADOWY, firelit cave above the Hair River, many important things were being said. And so, my mouth greasy with meat, my heart filled with the nearness of Timu and my ears with the sound of his voice, I began to listen to the women around me. I learned that Ethis had given birth to her little boy while on the way from the Char River. Like Ankhi, Ethis had given birth easily, going to find a sheltered hiding place as soon as her birth-water ran down her legs. Ankhi had gone with her and helped cut the cord.

Yoi told Ina that her sons were married and that she had grandchildren, even a stepgrandson from The Frog’s wife. Ina wasn’t pleased to learn that we had hurried ahead of her sons’ families. Yoi said, “You’re complaining because you want to see your sons again. But if we waited, none of us would be here yet. You really have no cause to complain.” Yoi then smiled, content that Ina couldn’t argue with her. Soon she turned to White Fox’s mother, the smile gone. “We were forced to hurry,” she said, “by our distress at Meri’s betrothal being broken! We expect White Fox for Meri, and no one else!”

Taken aback, White Fox’s mother admitted that people had been thinking of another girl for her son, the girl named Sasa whose people lived about a day’s travel downriver in another cave. Meri, said White Fox’s mother, was promised to Swift.

Yoi brushed this aside. “Your son can’t have Sasa because he’s still betrothed to Meri,” she said. “How can the betrothal of children be broken without the consent of the adults who made it? I was one of those people. The others, besides yourselves, were Meri’s parents, and they’re dead. I wouldn’t have agreed to breaking the betrothal, and I wouldn’t offer an ungrown child to the strong and honorable headman of this cave. He should father a child, not marry one.”

“Since he wants a woman of our lineage, have you someone else for him?” asked Teal dryly.

“I?” said Yoi. “How can I advise you? I just came.”

Since I seldom took my eyes off Timu’s handsome back, outlined by firelight in the men’s circle, I couldn’t help noticing that Swift kept turning his head as if to hear what Yoi might be saying. This too made me happy. Across the fire from me, Teal caught my eye and raised her chin very, very slightly to beckon me. I got up and went to sit behind her.

She stood, and I followed her out of the cave and up the shadowy trail to the open rim of the ravine, where there was a pile of boulders, white in the moonlight. A dayfire sometimes burned here, I saw from the ashes. I smelled grass on the fresh wind and saw fireflies. “Well, child,” said Teal. “Tell me what is happening here?”

So I told her of Yoi’s willingness to marry Swift. Teal thought for a while. “It’s sad,” she said, “that Yoi is childless. I wonder how Swift feels about that.”

I too had considered Yoi’s childbearing, and saw that it needn’t be a problem. “Yoi is childless now, Aunt,” I said. “But think. Father got no child from her because he slept mostly with Mother. I should know, because I slept with Yoi. Without coitus, Yoi couldn’t get children.”

“Can that be true?” asked Teal.

Take care, I said to myself. This is Teal, not some young woman at the Fire River. “It’s true, Aunt,” I said, and laughed. “I met Yoi’s second husband, a man named Otter. He was a very kind man, but she divorced him because he was too old to give her children.”

“So?” said Teal doubtfully.

“And without Yoi, the ties you want between Swift and Graylag can’t be made. Since Yoi and I are Meri’s elders, Yoi won’t let Meri marry Swift.”

“Not if Yoi wants him herself,” said Teal.

“Anyway, what can we do about it? Yoi and Swift aren’t children. Who will tell those two that they may or may not marry? They like each other. Watch when we go back. They keep looking at each other.”

“So they do,” said Teal. “Well, Yanan. Isn’t it good that all this came about? If I didn’t know you to be rash and headstrong, I might think you helped make these plans.”

“Why, Aunt,” I said, “Yoi came gladly when she heard Swift wanted a woman of our lineage.”

“Someone said good things about Swift, in that case,” said Teal. “Was it someone who once called him a lion?”

“I had time to think, Aunt,” I said.

Teal smiled. “And what of you?” she asked. “I see you won’t be childless.”

“No, Aunt.”

“When will you give birth?”

I hesitated, afraid to follow this talk. I didn’t know when I would give birth. Worse yet, her question had a right answer and a wrong answer, a safe answer and a dangerous answer. I hated to lie to Teal, but at last I took a deep breath and said, “I felt life before we left the Char.”

“And still you left us?” Teal waited. I waited too, knowing better than to let more words betray me, as they had with Yoi. When I didn’t answer, Teal went on, delicate as a hunter. “If you felt life in the end of winter, your child must be nearly ready. Do you agree?” I said nothing. Teal watched me. “You don’t look ready,” she said. When I still made no answer, Teal’s questions took a new turn. “Did you marry at the Fire River, or will you cancel your divorce?”

“I didn’t marry. I was wrong to divorce Timu. I’ve thought about it ever since. I don’t know why it happened. Anyway, I’m back, if Timu will have me.”

“He’ll have you, especially if the child is his. His father will have something to say about that.”

But I had seen from Timu’s happiness that Graylag wouldn’t have to force him. And as Teal and I found our way along the trail to the cave, we met Timu coming toward us, carrying his spear. “Let me speak with my wife a while, Stepmother,” he said, so Teal went on alone and I followed Timu back to the boulders.

In the moonlight we faced each other. “I’m glad you’ve come,” he said.

“I hurried here, Husband. I refused to wait for my cousins and their families, and I forced Meri. I ran.”

“And you’re pregnant?”

“I am.”

“Is it mine, or did you meet someone at the Fire River?”

“Yours,” I said, although I felt my tears coming.

Timu must have heard the tears in my voice. “Why are you sad, Wife?” he asked.

His voice was so soft, there in the cool, sweet air with moonlight and fireflies, that I wanted terribly to tell him about Elho. I wanted no lie between Timu and me. I opened my mouth to speak.

But just then I heard the voice of a night bird, a burrowing owl, and a sigh of wind like the breath of The Woman Ohun. I felt Her, She who knows the wombs of all the animals and all the people. She was near. Silence, She whispered. Silence.

“I’m not sad, Husband,” I said.

Timu’s hand stroked up the bulge of my belly to my belt, which he loosened. “Is your pregnancy too far along?” he asked. “Or may I have you? I’ve missed you.”

I stood up. “Not here,” I said.

Timu hesitated. “You’ve become shy since you left. Why?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Husband.”

He took my wrist. “Come then,” he said, and led me down the trail to a little grove of small birch trees with bare earth under them, all dark and shadowy even under the moon. On the far side of the grove the enormous white skull of a mammoth rested on its upper teeth, the tusks drawn, the nostril sockets gaping in the forehead like a huge dark eye. “The dancing ground,” said Timu, pushing the tail of his spear into the earth to keep it at hand in case an animal came along to trouble us. “The Bear may hear us, but no person will.”

Suddenly I heard a short, booming whistle, so deep, so low and quiet, that I felt it rather than heard it, and the hair rose on my skin. “What’s that?” I whispered.

“The hum? It’s the voice of the mammoth skull. The wind makes it sound so.” Timu held me close and slowly drew the pin that fastened the neck of my shirt. So once again in a grove of birch I took off my moccasins, my trousers, and my shirt and set my hands and knees against the cold earth. Timu’s hard body was warm against my back, and the feeling of his wrist against my breast when he reached under me to pull me to him almost stopped my breath.

Yet I wept when we finished. Timu sat on his heels, watching me. “Are you still weeping? Why?” he asked.

“No reason,” I answered. “Except that while I was away I was lonely and frightened, and now I’m glad.”

My answer didn’t seem to satisfy him, I saw from the way he watched me. As our eyes met I heard the skull’s choked hum, while the whispering breath of The Woman Ohun blew cold on my bare skin. She said, You thought you would be safe when you found your husband. But he can’t make you safe. In spite of all your schemes and haste to come here, you are still in danger. You will never find safety. You will always live with fear and danger. And I wept again, because I saw that this was true.

Well, there was nothing I could do about the danger but wait, and nothing I could do about the fear but get used to it. In the morning, when I went with the other women to bathe among the mammoth bones scattered in the river, I showed everybody my swollen belly, my large breasts, my dark nipples, and the line down the middle of me. People said a brown, strong line showed that the baby would be healthy. This one thing made me glad. And glad was what I wanted to be, and how I wanted to act. I laughed a lot and showed my teeth and plunged myself several times in the freezing water, then noticed Junco and Owl, Ethis and Teal, all watching me happily, as if they were pleased to have me.

In the days that followed I often overheard people talking about me, saying how right I had been to come back, how happy I seemed, and how well I had managed everything. I was even given credit for the marriage of Swift and Yoi, who began to share a sleeping-skin before the first presents had been given for their marriage exchange. Swift promised me ivory beads to replace the betrothal necklace I had thrown at him. Yoi took to calling me “Hide-in-the-Grass,” just because Swift did. I don’t think she knew why. And when Yoi and I were alone one day, she gave me an ivory hairpin to thank me. I took the pin in silence, perhaps even with a little shame.

Only Timu sometimes seemed to be watching me as if he were wondering about me. Because of my pregnancy, he slept with Ethis, as everyone, even I, would have expected. And he spent his days hunting on the steppe with the other men or at the dayfire, watching for herds in the ravine. I wasn’t with him enough to learn what he might be thinking.

But Ethis and I often found ourselves together very happily. Since I now could feel knees and fists inside my belly, I took a great interest in Ethis’s tiny son. One day when we went with the other women to bathe in the river, Ethis asked me to hold him. I reached out my hands for him and cradled him against me. Not since I held my own sister at the time Mother died had I held so small a baby. I sat on my heels to look at him. Like my sister, this one turned his head to grope for a nipple when I touched his cheek. But although my breasts were flat when my sister was born, now they were full, with the nipples standing out, and when the baby found a nipple he snapped at it. To my surprise he sucked, and a strong, sharp feeling close to pain rushed from my breast to my throat. Then the baby looked up at me! Our eyes met! Just then Ethis happened to dip herself suddenly in the icy water and cry out. At the sound of her voice, her baby let go of my nipple to look in her direction. On my dusty breast I saw the wet mark of his mouth and, to my amazement, a smear of milk on my nipple! My milk? “Aunt!” I said. “See here!”

“See what?” Teal asked, leaning her bare and lanky body down for a look.

“I have milk in my breast!”

“Oh? Did you expect something else?”

“But so soon?”

Now Teal looked closely. “It isn’t your milk. He had some in his mouth.”

“So!” I said, meeting the baby’s eyes as he again took my nipple. Then I said, “He’s looking at me. He knows me.” But Teal had turned her back and was talking with another woman, so I just smiled at him. “Is this your foot?” I whispered, clasping his foot. He smiled! “Look! He’s smiling,” I said. But the other women were talking, and no one turned to look. That was all right, though. “You little thing,” I said, putting my forehead against his forehead and letting him catch my hair. And so we enjoyed each other until Ethis came dripping from the river.

Almost every day I went with Ethis over the plain, gathering mammoth dung for the night’s fires. Sometimes she carried the baby, and sometimes I carried him. After we had gathered enough dry droppings we would stop at one of the many firebushes where, standing side by side among its branches, we would pick the red, bittersweet berries and toss them into our mouths. Unlike Ethis, I saved as many as I ate and gave them each night to Timu, pouring them into his hands as he sat at the men’s fire, talking and talking of mammoths.

I very much liked to wander with Ethis and her baby under the dome of the hazy summer sky, through the thin red grass that trembled and rippled with the wind as far as the eye could see. Ethis said that late summer was the season of bustards, and sure enough, we often met a herd of five large gray bustards, all carefully poking themselves forward like hunters through the grass. Sometimes, out on the plain, we saw a small brown bustard rise straight into the air, hover and call, then drop into the grass again. But the plain was so flat that we couldn’t see far, so usually we saw no other animals and no people. Even so, I was always looking around for Timu, wishing I knew where he was.

“Where are the men?” I once asked Ethis.

“Who knows?” she said, tilting her head to keep the berries in her mouth. “The men care only about mammoths, so they’re probably following some of them, watching what they eat, smelling their urine and dung.”

“Really?” I said. “Why?”

“To see whether they’re finding enough water on the steppe, or if they’ll need to climb down the cliff to drink from the river. The pools on the steppe go dry in summer. This year was wet, or the pools would be dry now.”

“What if the mammoths climb down the cliff?”

“We push them off.”

“The dead mammoth on the riverbank—did you push her off the cliff?”

“Yes, while Red Hair was trying to bring her down to wallow. The dead one had many big maggots of warble flies under her skin.”

“Red Hair? Who is Red Hair?”

“Red Hair is a mammoth, a leader.”

“Do you name mammoths?” I asked, putting a handful of fireberries into my carrying bag.

“The men name them,” said Ethis. “Why are you saving berries? Aren’t there plenty?”

“I’m saving them for Timu,” I said, surprised.

“Ah yes,” said Ethis.

Her tone puzzled me. “Why else would I be saving berries?” I asked.

“Of course you must bring him things,” she said, her voice soothing. “Of course you must please him. I can see that.”

Distressed, I sat down on my heels under the crossing shadows of the firebush branches. “Sister,” I said, “is there a special reason I should please Timu? Because I see no special reason. I gather berries for him because he’s our husband. I gather berries for him every time we go out. I ask you, why else should I please him?”

Ethis looked embarrassed, but sat down beside me with her baby in her lap. “I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s no other reason.”

“There is,” I said. “There is.”

“But you must know it!” cried Ethis in dismay.

“I don’t!”

“Why, Yanan,” said Ethis, “of course you do! If the child you’re carrying isn’t his, you want him to forget.”

These words should not have shocked me, but they did. I had almost forgotten what other people seemed to remember very well. And I saw how, by always bringing Timu presents, I showed the truth of what Ethis said. Berries grew everywhere. If Timu wanted berries, he had only to eat from the bushes as other men did. I saw that I was the only woman who came every night to the men’s fire to pour berries into her husband’s hands. But, “Does he think this isn’t his child?” I asked.

“Yanan. You went away for a long time and came back pregnant. One day I heard our husband ask Elho what men you were with at the Fire River.”

My skin felt cold. “What did Elho say?”

Ethis looked at me carefully. “In a loud voice Elho said he didn’t know, since he wasn’t with you all the time.” Ethis thought for a moment, then added, “The loud voice caused the trouble. Everyone who heard the answer guessed the question. Timu’s stepmother reminded Timu of his doings on your people’s old summergrounds, and that he of all men should know best about other men’s wives. She also reminded him that your father had caught Elho with your Aunt Yoi.”

“Which of his stepmothers said these things?”

“Ina, of course. Ina’s angry with you. She’s angry because her sons and their families aren’t here. She knows you made Yoi and Elho hurry away from her sons instead of helping them carry their children.”

I saw truth in these words, and felt sick to learn that after all, people still held much against me. “What did Aunt Teal say?”

“Do you think Ina would have spoken against you in front of your Aunt Teal? Would you speak against me in front of my Aunt Rin?” The very thought was so unlikely that I couldn’t help but smile, which pleased Ethis. “So, Yanan,” she laughed. “Don’t be sad.”

But I was sad, and angry too. On the way home I shared all the berries in my carrying bag with Ethis, so that by the time we reached the cave, none were left for Timu. Now I was ashamed of giving him berries.

 

If Timu noticed that I no longer brought a gift for him each night, he gave no sign. Perhaps he, as well as the other men, thought too much about the mammoths. From overhearing the men’s talk at night, I understood that the meltwater pools on the plain were drying at last, and that although it seemed the mammoths already knew about us and were putting off their use of the trail down the ravine as long as possible, soon they would be forced to drink from the river. Every night Timu sat in the crowd of men with his back to the women’s fire, busy with talk of hunting. The men’s voices filled the cave; they interrupted each other while their gesturing hands flew, and over the sounds of talking came the ticking sounds of chisels against flint. They were getting themselves and their tools ready to do a big thing. I saw how much Graylag and his men liked the excitement that their ties with Swift brought them.

After I could no longer give Timu berries, I begged part of a bison skin from Ethis and began to make him a pair of winter moccasins instead. I then worked quietly among the women at the women’s fire, trying always to sit beside Teal or Ethis, trying from time to time to catch Ina’s eye so I could look reproachful and she could see how wrongly she accused me. The burst of happiness that people might have felt when I came seemed to have passed, and since every woman had her own things to think about, no one paid much attention to me.

I wanted very much to talk with Timu. I thought I could make him forget his doubts about me. But life at the Hair River summerground wasn’t like life at the Char—the men never formed small hunting groups which a woman could join, and never helped the women gather fuel. There was never a reason for Timu and me to be together. I asked Ethis to whisper to him at night, to tell him that I wanted to be alone with him. But if she did, nothing came of it.

One long evening in late summer, when the light in the ravine was dim and blue and cliff swallows were flying low over the river, we heard voices on the trail outside the cave. Startled, we looked around at each other. None of us was missing. Who could it be? The men leaped to their feet to stand with legs apart and spears ready, facing the mouth of the cave as if they would welcome any excitement, even a battle. But very cautiously around the corner came the unmistakable figures of Kamas, The Frog, and Henno, The Stick, lit from behind and empty-handed, moving slowly and looking very polite. Ina gave a great loud cry and ran forward to embrace them.

Then we all got up to greet them. In came their wives and children, shy at first, to greet Yoi, one of the few people who knew them. For me the wives had only sharp glances. Soon Ina was embracing them all, welcoming the children, and settling them near her sleeping place between the back of the cave and the women’s fire. And soon after that, since the meat of the men’s last kill seemed to have been eaten, Ethis and I were on our way down the trail to the river to cut meat from the dead mammoth for the newcomers’ evening meal.

The flyblown meat was quite badly spoiled, even for the tastes of the mammoth hunters. So we cut strips from deep inside the ragged carcass and then washed ourselves and the strips in the river to get rid of the maggots and the smell. I thought with some satisfaction that my cousins’ wives would find fault with this food, having grown used to fresh fish every day in summer. But I had forgotten how long they had been on the trail. All the newcomers ate so gratefully, so eagerly, that they shamed me, and without anyone asking me to, I went alone to the carcass to get more meat for them.

By now the ravine was filled with darkness and the echo of the wind. The waning crescent of the Mammoth Moon lay on the slowly moving water, and a white fox slipped away from the carcass as I got near. I heard someone behind me, and turned to see Timu’s head and wide shoulders against the night sky. He was carrying his spear. He had come to protect me from large animals who might be here in the dark. Ah, Husband, I thought. Welcome. And when he stood beside me, I put my hand on his arm.

But he stood stiffly, looking down at me thoughtfully, without speaking. I leaned toward him a little bit, as if I were yielding, and took the ivory pin from the front of my shirt so the neck fell open. “Timu,” I whispered.

“What’s this? Isn’t your pregnancy far gone?” he asked rather harshly. “Are you so greedy that you would lie with me now? Do what you need to do, and do it quickly. Lions come here.” So although his words and manner hurt me very much, I turned to burrow in the carcass, then hurried to wash the meat in the river while he looked on. Although I didn’t want to cry, my tears came anyway, and I brushed them from my face with my sleeve.

On the trail to the cave Timu walked ahead of me, letting me carry the meat. Halfway up I heard the voices of the people above, and saw my chance to speak disappearing. I stopped as if I needed a rest. He walked quite a way before noticing that I wasn’t behind him, then didn’t come back. I leaned against a rock to show I wouldn’t follow quickly. In time he walked down the trail to me. “What now?” he said.

There he stood, the light of the low moon on his forehead, and suddenly my words left me. I wet my lips. He waited. “I wonder why you have nothing to say to me,” I began fearfully. “Are you angry? Should I not have come here?”

“Why not?” he asked. “Aren’t you my wife?”

“Is it the baby? Has someone said something to you about the baby?”

“Am I a woman, to talk of your pregnancy?”

“No, Timu. I’m wondering what you think.”

“I think about hunting, not women’s business,” he said.

“I want to talk with you now.”

“Then talk.” But he seemed so forbidding that I couldn’t. Instead I took his hand and placed it on my belly so he could feel what was inside. Our eyes met, and he took his hand away. “Come,” he said. “Your cousins are waiting.” And he turned and led off again. I followed, wondering if I was tear-streaked. Perhaps I should have thought of that at the river, where I could have washed my face.

It was easy to slip unnoticed behind the people, all talking eagerly at the fires. I rolled myself in my deerskin but lay awake listening. Timu sat far away—I heard him laugh from time to time. Near me the wives of The Stick and The Frog fed small bits of meat to their children. The Frog’s little stepson, Kakim, had found a place right beside mine and was already fast in an exhausted sleep. When I heard his shallow breathing, I propped myself on my elbow to look at his face. In the dim light reflected from the cave’s low ceiling I saw how very thin he was, how lightly his eyelids lay over his eyes, how tight and blue his skin seemed, and how his face quivered faintly even in sleep. He looked worse than when I saw him as we left the Fire River. Had he eaten? I didn’t think so—I noticed no smell of meat on his breath, and his face wasn’t greasy. Quietly I reached out to touch him, which made him stir but not wake. His skin was cold and dry. He was sick with an old sickness. I felt someone watching me and looked up to see Ethis, whose eyes met mine. We exchanged a glance of understanding. She too had noticed this child.

Talk at the women’s fire that night was strained because of the new women. Only Yoi knew them well, and I got the feeling she didn’t think much of them. She seemed to ignore them and often interrupted when they tried to speak. Of course, for Yoi such behavior wasn’t unusual. But the two newcomers didn’t make talk easy. Rather, their offerings were nothing but complaints about the distance they had come and the lack of good water on the plain. Their praise was for the people they had left behind, and sometimes they even whispered to each other, as if about us. I’m sure that Ina had built them up in her mind before she met them, since they were her new daughters-in-law, and I wondered if she was now disappointed. She made much of the two babies who were her grandchildren. Little Kakim, Ina learned from questioning the new women, was not only the stepchild of The Frog, but also the stepchild of The Frog’s wife—the child of this woman’s first husband, who had been a widower. Surely Yoi knew this, but perhaps her interest in the two new women was so small she forgot.

Talk and laughter at the men’s fire echoed from the walls. The Stick and The Frog had wonderful news: herds of mammoths were drinking from the river upstream. No doubt more mammoths would soon drink in the river here. The Stick and The Frog were very interested in how mammoths were hunted, since at the Char, the Pine, and the Fire rivers, people for the most part left mammoths alone. All talking at once, the other men described how mammoths took the narrow trail down the ravine while people threw stones on them from above, frightening them and making them crowd together, hurrying them so they lost their footing. Then they fell, and most couldn’t get up again. Because there wasn’t much to eat on the riverbank, the other mammoths couldn’t guard the injured mammoths for more than a day or so. Then we could kill the injured mammoths easily. “We cry from so much eating,” said Swift. “And we laugh from so much ivory.”

In the morning The Stick and The Frog willingly joined the other men in carrying a great many large rocks from the river. All day they worked in groups together, resting when the sun was high, bathing in the afternoon. My cousins stayed with Timu, I noticed. The women made blinds of branches cut from thickets; most of us were caught up in the excitement of hunting. Swift now felt sure that the herd of mammoths led by Red Hair wouldn’t wait much longer to use the trail. Little Kakim was not thought too young to help the men, and often I saw him staggering patiently up the trail, each time with a rock too heavy for him. He tried to rest in the cave for a while, but his stepfather, The Frog, called him out again. Often Kakim had to leave his work to squat in the bushes. I saw that his sickness was caused by diarrhea.

By nightfall even the two new women felt happy and hopeful. As the mammoth hunters put it, the time of meat was coming. But little Kakim fell asleep before he ate, just as we lay meat to cook. Sitting side by side, Ethis and I exchanged more glances. At last I couldn’t help myself, and spoke to The Frog’s wife. “Your little boy needs food,” I told her. “May I wake him?”

“What makes you care about him now?” she asked. “Is someone watching your manners?” Her rudeness was no more than I expected. What did it matter? I shrugged. When I caught Ina’s spiteful stare, I smiled pleasantly to annoy her. I would have no more to do with any of the newcomers, who could fetch and cook their own food for all of me. But later, when we were eating, I noticed that Ethis had found the boy and was shaking him gently. She let him wake slowly, then put her arm around his shoulders and fed him a strip of meat. He looked up at Ethis so humbly, so gratefully, that I felt a pang of sadness. Still later I noticed that he had fallen asleep again, leaning against Ethis.

In the middle of the night I heard him crying. The sound shocked me, and I sat up. He was sitting on his heels beside his stepparents, tearfully insisting that he needed to move his bowels. Hardly awake, neither of them wanted to get up and go out with him. “Please,” he begged, afraid to go alone.

“Take the trail a way. Nothing to hurt you,” mumbled The Frog. So at last, slowly, the little boy began to make his way among the sleeping people to the mouth of the cave. I got up. “What now?” murmured The Frog.

“I need to relieve myself,” I said. “I’ll take him to the latrine.”

“Good,” said The Frog, as if in his sleep.

Outside in the starlight, with the burrowing owl calling in the grove of trees and the faint watery sound of the river below us, I took Kakim’s thin, dry hand in mine and led him to the plain. He squatted for a long time, passing only a little mucus. I heard him breathing, panting. He seemed very tired and sick. At last he stood up. “Are you Yanan?” he whispered.

“Yes, Kakim.”

“I’m ready to go back.”

“We’ll go,” I said, and again took his hand.

“Is there any more meat?” he whispered when we were inside. “I’m very hungry.”

“I’ll see,” I said, and trying to move quietly, I looked on all the flat stones by the fires where a piece of meat might still be lying. I found none, but accidentally woke Ethis. She looked out from beside Timu’s naked shoulder under the deerskin.

“What do you want?” she asked.

I sat on my heels beside her bed and whispered very softly. “Poor little Kakim is hungry. I’m trying to find something for him.”

Careful not to wake Timu, Ethis got up with her baby, stuffing her breast in his mouth so he wouldn’t start to cry. “I’ll help you,” she said. So we both searched, but found nothing.

Now we looked long into each other’s eyes. There was nothing for it—one of us would have to go down to the carcass. “I’ll go,” I said. “I’m not tired.”

“I’ll go with you,” whispered Ethis. We sat on our heels by little Kakim. “We’ll soon have food,” she said. I got my spear, and we left.

The ravine was very dark. Partway down the trail we threw a few stones ahead of us to startle anything that might be waiting there, then thought to sing.

 

Save my life, hunters!

Kill ten horses,

One for each of my fingers!

 

The echo of our song rang from the ravine walls. Ethis and the baby kept watch while I again took off my shirt and dug inside the carcass. I had forgotten a knife, and had to cut with the spear. Only the lower side of the mammoth was useful anymore, and with the spear shaft catching awkwardly in the ribs, the digging took quite a while. “Sister!” whispered Ethis suddenly, as if alarmed. I backed out of the mammoth’s ribcage. There stood Timu, facing us without speaking, looking so severe that he frightened me.

“What is it, Husband? You startled us,” said Ethis.

“Why are my wives here, at this time of night? You woke everyone with your singing! People wonder what you’re doing. I came to find you!”

“What does it seem that we’re doing?” asked Ethis, perhaps annoyed by his tone.

“Come. We’re going back,” he said.

“Are you finished, Yanan?” asked Ethis.

“Almost,” I said, and leaned into the ribcage to dig some more.

Timu caught the shaft of my spear. “We’re going,” he said.

“A piece of meat is almost loose. I’ll get it quickly.” But Timu wouldn’t let go of the spear.

What had happened to me? In my mind’s eye I saw this taking place a year before. I saw myself bracing my legs, seizing my spear with both hands, and giving it a great yank. Now, as someone struggled in my belly, I stood anxiously in front of Timu, not sure what had displeased him, dreading to find out, dreading even to speak for fear of displeasing him more.

“Finish,” he said, and rudely gave the spear a shove. So I did, then went to rinse the meat and myself in the river. While I was there, I heard Ethis and Timu talking urgently and angrily in very low voices. I stood up. “Why do you listen to everyone with bad will?” Ethis was saying.

“I don’t listen to everyone,” said Timu. “But since Elho is my halfbrother, I know what he does. Why shouldn’t I believe The Frog?”

Elho and The Frog. I guessed, of course, what had happened. One way or another Timu had heard whatever it was that people thought they knew about Elho and me. Or since Timu already suspected my pregnancy, perhaps The Frog had only to tell him the story of finding me and Elho talking in the grass by the Fire River. I saw all this with a dull, dead feeling. Yet I saw something new as well, although to see anything new at that moment surprised me. I saw that Elho hadn’t told Timu. If he had, Timu would feel differently. Timu would be sure of what had happened, which would put him in a pure, high rage. Instead he showed the dark, sullen anger of suspicion, with the cloud of his anger covering everyone, Ethis as well as me.

I didn’t know what to do except to walk back to them slowly. They stopped talking and looked at me. “We can go now, Timu,” said Ethis. So we did, climbing the dark trail, feeling the way with our feet—Timu first, then Ethis, then me.

Ethis let Timu get far ahead, then whispered, “He’s sure he’s not the father of your child. The Frog told him that you used to go away alone with Elho.”

“I know. I overheard Timu,” I said.

“Such trouble is too much for one person,” said Ethis.

“Yes.”

“I’ll help you! And I’ll divorce Timu if he doesn’t show more respect for his wives! As you tie us to Graylag, I tie him to Swift. Remember that.”

“If you help me too much, he could divorce both of us.”

“And turn everyone against him? I don’t think so,” she said.

Inside the cave Ethis and I cut the mammoth meat into very thin strips so they would broil quickly on low embers and also be easy to eat. When we brought them to little Kakim, we found him asleep. Since it was almost morning, we decided to give him the meat when he woke. Then Ethis with her baby crept back into bed beside Timu, who was too quiet to be sleeping, and I crept into my own bed, where I felt another person inside me turning over and over. In time everything was still. Then my thoughts gathered in my womb, right in the center of me. The child who had been turning now lay quiet, warm and safe, knowing nothing of anger or danger or of anything that had happened or that could yet come. It might know me, though. Perhaps it could hear me. Perhaps it already cared for me, as I once had cared for my mother, as I still cared for my mother, wherever she might be.