AFTER OUR WAY led south from the Hair River, we started across the plain, taking our direction from the sun by day and from a big dim star at night. That star, said Graylag, was the Spotted Deer, and would show us to his lodge. In our minds’ eyes we saw the lodge with the spotted deer’s antlers standing on it, long and dark, with something triumphant in them, like a stag with his head up.
But the lodge seemed far, at least to me. My body was heavy, and my spirits too. Since it seemed best that I travel at the end of our line with Yoi and Meri, all I ever saw of Timu was his back far ahead of me. And the only words I heard from him were spoken to others. He stayed mostly with The Stick and The Frog, who remembered all the old jokes they used to share together. At night Timu shared a sleeping-skin with Ethis among the many people at Graylag’s fire, leaving me to sleep with Meri; it was lonely with no one but Yoi and Swift and Rin at Swift’s fire.
Also our travel was slow, even though all the children with us were being carried. I was slow, Ankhi and Ethis and my cousins’ wives were slow with their packs and children, and the older children easily grew bored with travel, so almost every day we stopped early. Wherever there were fireberries, we stopped to eat all we could. Far up the Hair we stopped to hunt, since the plain in the fall, unlike the plain in spring, isn’t littered with carcasses. We killed a saiga, losing a day’s travel on it. And after we left the river, we had to stop to dig milkroots as we found them for the water inside.
My cousins’ wives complained that the food we found on the open plain upset their stomachs. When Ethis’s baby began to show signs of an upset stomach, I went with her to look for the soft, curling grass that works best underneath a baby, glad of a chance to speak with her alone. I begged her to try again to talk to Timu for me, and in her warm, giving way, she seemed eager to help. But the next day, when I asked if she did, she shook her head as if she had lost interest, and I saw that she was crying. “What is it?” I asked, afraid she had bad news for me.
“My milk isn’t good,” she said, opening her shirt to show me the baby. He was fussing, crying. “He doesn’t want my milk.” To prove this, she put her nipple in her little boy’s mouth. He turned away.
I remembered the complaints of my cousins’ wives. “Can it be the berries? Perhaps your milk tastes of them.”
Ethis squeezed a drop of her milk onto the palm of her hand and licked it. “It’s sharp,” she said, taking my hand to squeeze milk onto my palm.
I tasted and found it mild. “The sharp taste could be on your hand from the berries. Perhaps he isn’t hungry.”
“Perhaps,” she said doubtfully.
“Let me carry him. Maybe he’s tired of being in the same place.” So she handed him to me in his sling and I put him in my shirt. Hot, he tossed and cried. I gave him back, and just as Ethis took him, he passed diarrhea.
“Do his stools come often?” asked Rin when, at our camp, Ethis took her baby out for Rin to look at.
“Yes,” said Ethis.
“Next time he has one, show me,” said Rin.
“He always has one,” said Ethis, pulling the grassy pad from under the baby and handing it to Rin. Rin glanced, then threw it away and turned to Teal to speak of the constipating deer’s-eye. But deer’s-eye is only found on tundra or low plains where fine grass grows. We would find none here, in the dry tussock-grass of this high plain. We looked around at each other in case one of us had a piece of its root. My cousins’ wives hesitated. They had it in their packs, I realized. Perhaps they had been feeding it to Kakim. Unwillingly, The Frog’s wife brought it out. Ethis chewed it and smeared the paste in her baby’s mouth.
Noticing this, Timu came to sit on his heels beside us, stretching out his hands for his baby, then holding him close while he cried weakly. Very tenderly, Timu rocked him. But there wasn’t much else to do—when Ethis reached for him, Timu gave him back.
Everything happens suddenly with babies. One night later Ethis’s baby was much too quiet. He lay on her arm with his head limp and his parched mouth open. Teal told us to build the fire and sing so she could trance and beseech The Woman Ohun, then called Her name in the loud voice of a pine grouse. Swift took from his pack his thin blade of ivory, which he fastened to its string, then whirled around his head until it roared like a mammoth.
These sounds went far, but The Woman and The Bear were farther. When Ethis and Timu and then their sisters, Ankhi and Owl, began to wail during the night, we at Swift’s fire knew that something terrible had happened. Miserably we waited for morning. When it came, cold and windy, with many flocks of small birds scattering overhead, Ankhi asked me to bring my pick and follow her. Owl came too, her eyes red with crying, and as we dug a hole at a place Ankhi chose, Owl told me that Ethis’s baby was dead. Of course I knew, but to hear the words shocked me. When Timu brought the little body, wrapped in its carrying sling, and placed it on the ground beside us, I couldn’t look at it or at him. Timu couldn’t watch, and went back to camp.
When the hole was finished, Owl and Ankhi waited for me to put the baby inside. So I did. He weighed no more than a dry leaf, but his stiff, cool stillness seemed to travel up my arms, numbing them. Ankhi opened her shirt and with her knife made a scratch on her breast. “I mourn you, my sister’s child,” she said. Then we pushed earth into the hole, packed it down, and walked slowly back to camp, not looking at each other, none of us knowing which child would be next. On the wind we heard the voice of a child in camp—probably Ankhi’s, wanting her back. And inside me someone kicked and struggled, as a frog might struggle in my hands. But on this plain Owl’s baby, dead a year now, also lay in a grave. I realized that wherever people lived or traveled, the earth was burrowed with little graves. Grass grew over them or spruce needles covered them, but they were there, hiding the babies too young to have names. How many there were, no one knew. But all the wisest people in the world together couldn’t count them.
“Where are your tears for your co-wife’s child, since you had so many for Kakim?” asked The Frog’s wife when I was making my pack.
Shocked, I turned to face her. “I am crying,” I said.
She looked wise, then said nastily, “It’s only right.”
While I puzzled over her manner for a moment, something quick happened inside me, like a pine nut bursting in the fire. As if a stranger, not me, were in my clothes, I noticed that I was rising to my feet. I saw how I was going to rip the braids off this woman! But someone clasped my shoulder and pushed me down. It was Swift. “Be peaceful, Hide-in-the-Grass,” he said. “We’re all unhappy.”
Then I cried hard, with angry, ugly sobs. And other people began crying. But Swift exchanged a glance with Graylag. Graylag looked serious, then told The Stick and The Frog to follow him, bringing their wives. The rest of the people also started. When Rin touched Ethis’s elbow, Ethis moved after the others as if in her sleep, as numbly and obediently as a mare might follow her herd. I’m sure she didn’t know whose heels she followed.
I tried to follow Ethis, perhaps to comfort her later if I could, but Swift stopped me. “Stay with us a while, Hide-in-the-Grass,” he said, not unkindly. “Let the others go on a way.” Did he think I would find The Frog’s wife’s braids too tempting?
But without a word I did as he asked. Knowing how far I already was from Timu, I saw how much further this death would take me. More threatening than helpful, I was almost like a stranger again. Months would pass before Timu would forget the baby I had helped put under the ground. Until then, the loss of his child would increase his anger. What would come from so much anger? In spite of Teal he could divorce me. And if he did, where would I go? To some crowded lodge on Woman Lake, where people like The Frog’s wife would begrudge each bite I ate? If I didn’t have a good place to live, what had just happened to Ethis would happen to me.
That day we traveled very slowly. All morning the wind tried to loosen my braid, my shirt. By afternoon the air was filled with snow. We tried to walk faster to reach the shelter of the woods, but because we had lost too much time that morning, by night we were still on the plain.
The night was the worst I’ve ever spent. Our fuel was hidden with snow—we found enough for only one small fire. We had nothing to eat but a handful of plains-peas, and no water but scrapings of snow. I didn’t want to lie down—to be covered with snow made me think of being buried, and though some of us were too unhappy to speak, the others quarreled miserably. The three children who were still living, who could still feel cold and hunger, cried because of it. Their parents pinched them, making them cry more. And we heard lions. “They may come here,” said The Frog’s wife.
“Let them,” said Timu, the only words I heard him speak all day.
The next night we were among the trees that grew in the basin of the Black River, camped under the shelter of a hemlock. The night was clear and the light in the woods was blue. We found bristlecones—not good food but enough to kill our hunger—and many little runs used by small animals, in which we set snares. By morning, we thought, we would be eating well. And of course we had plenty of firewood, so we built a great fire.
The low-lying woods were colder than the plain, but alive with animals. We heard footsteps and the tsi! tsi! tsitsirivi! of a hazelhen. We heard wolves in the distance, and then, very near, the loud rutting challenge of a red deer. Swift cupped his hands at his mouth and drew a deep breath.
“Stop,” said Graylag quickly. “Don’t call him! We can’t get him tonight!”
“I know stags,” said Swift. “We’ll get him tonight.” And cupping his hands again, he gave a great bellow, which brought the stag crashing toward us, a loud roar jolting in his throat as he ran. The men were on their feet in an instant, spreading in a circle to surround the stag. We heard stamping and branches breaking. Soon the men came back again. They had lost him. “We’ll get him tomorrow!” said Swift, as if hunting the stag in the morning were his idea. “He wants this place. He won’t go far.”
During the night I knew that Ethis was crying. I couldn’t hear her, but my skin prickled suddenly, and I guessed why. Perhaps I heard something after all—Ethis sniffing back her tears, or sighing. Timu spoke, very low. I tried to overhear. “It flows. Look,” whispered Ethis. Shocked, I hated to think what she meant. But I knew anyway: her milk was still running. Timu said nothing. After a long silence he make a choking cough, as if he cried.
Rin must have overheard them too. “Nurse your sister’s baby,” she whispered. “It helps the soreness. It helped me. When I lost a child, I nursed you.”
At the first light the men set off through the woods, their breath making clouds and their footsteps crunching on the frost. The stag must have heard them. Unwisely, he challenged the sound with a bellow so loud it rang from the trees. We saw that we would soon be eating him.
The women didn’t go for firewood or food that morning, but stayed to give advice to Ethis. Of the ten of us, I realized, only three had never lost children—me, Yoi, and Ankhi. We sat at the edge of the group and listened, as girls who don’t yet have their Woman Ohun scars listen to older women. I didn’t think the other women gave Ethis any comfort, but at least they reminded her that she wasn’t alone.
“The sooner a dead child is forgotten, the better,” said Teal.
“One dies, another begins,” said The Frog’s wife.
“It’s worse the first time,” said The Stick’s wife.
“You still have your sister’s baby to play with, and Yanan’s on the way,” said Rin.
“We all lose children—one day we get used to it,” said Ina.
“I hope your baby isn’t like mine, born over and over to keep hurting you,” said Owl. That was the first I had heard of Owl’s losing more than one baby. Others must have died on our old summergrounds at the Grass River. Had I ever been too young to notice such a thing?
“Ethis and I had a brother like that,” said Ankhi to Owl. “Four times he was born and died, never once living long enough to have a name.”
Ethis cried, then said her breasts hurt, and Rin again suggested that she nurse Ankhi’s little girl. Ankhi thrust the child at her sister.
The little girl wasn’t sure what to do at first, but Ethis cradled her in a nursing position until the full breast by the child’s face gave her the idea. When at last the child sucked, Ethis looked grim, as if she were removing a splinter. The little girl stopped sucking and stole a glance at Ankhi. Am I making a mistake? her eyes asked.
Ankhi also seemed grim. So the little girl twisted away from Ethis and held out her arms to Ankhi. But Ankhi turned her head and wouldn’t look at her daughter, to show her daughter that there was work to be done. Then Ethis made the mistake of jerking the child from one breast and forcing her at the other, and the child began to cry. Angrily, Ankhi snatched the poor child back as if something were the child’s fault, which made the child cry all the more, with her mouth open and her wide, tear-filled eyes fixed on Ankhi. Ethis had to empty her breast by squeezing her milk into the fire.
In the middle of the morning all the men but Swift came back, carrying the bull’s forequarters, hindquarters, flanks, and sides, with The Stick carrying the good winter hide and Timu dragging the head by an antler. We built a big fire and cooked the liver, wondering what had happened to Swift. The other men couldn’t say. While they had been cutting up the stag, Swift had gone somewhere else.
Soon we saw him through the trees, carrying something over his shoulder. When he flung his bundle down beside our camp, we saw that it was a wolf.
Surprised, people asked him why he had brought the whole of it. Why not just the skin? Was he going to eat it? When it moved, we saw that he hadn’t even killed it. What now? But Swift didn’t stop to explain. Instead he hurried off again, leaving us gaping.
The wolf was very young, I saw when we went to look at it: a pup of last spring, a male. With his four feet tightly tied together and his head tied to his feet by a thong that also held his jaws shut, he couldn’t move. Only his tail was free, but that was tucked tightly. Although his eyes were open, he didn’t seem to be looking at anything; he was just staring. But when we stood over him, he stole a glimpse of us out of the corner of his eye, then looked quickly away, as if what he saw was so bad that he didn’t dare see more.
Well, he belonged to Swift. We would have to wait to learn what Swift wanted with this wolf. While we waited we ate the stag’s liver, and at last we saw Swift among the trees, again carrying a bundle. This too was a wolf, also tied tightly. With a thump, Swift flung it down beside the first.
“Hide-in-the-Grass!” cried Swift. “Now see how we’ll hunt this winter! You’ll have to show us how!” I must have looked down at my belly, because Swift added, “Later.” Then he looked hard at Meri. “My wife’s younger niece must leave these wolves alone. They’re mine, not hers,” he said severely.
We threw more meat on the fire and cooked and ate while Swift told us how he had caught the wolves. While hunting the stag, he happened to notice a clearing, he said, a place where trees were tipped over. Thinking it was a place that wolves might like, he went back to it. There he saw something twitch beside the upflung roots of one of the trees—something gray, an ear. He crept forward, his ax raised. Three young wolves were curled up in the shelter of the fallen tree, and flattened themselves in terror when he loomed over them. One, two, three, he clubbed them on the head, then sat on one while he trussed another. He couldn’t work fast enough—the third came to its senses and ran. But the one he sat on didn’t stir, although it opened its eyes. It even lay limp while he tied it.
We looked at Swift’s captives. They seemed dead to me. Swift might have clubbed them too heavily. Not so, he said. They were very much alive. To prove it, he untied them, and although they hardly moved, he put the thongs around their necks and tied them to a tree.
A third time we threw meat on the fire, glancing at the wolves from time to time, wondering if we would have to share our food with them. “Hi!” cried Timu suddenly. We looked. Both wolves were gone. Swift ran to the tree, then laughed. They were hiding behind it, but because he found them chewing at the thongs, he again tied their jaws together.
Late in the afternoon we cut all the uneaten meat into strips and hung them from branches to drain the heavy blood. Our camp reeked of deer. We would draw a bear or worse, said Graylag. Timu and Elho climbed the tree to put the meat higher, and we gathered plenty of firewood, to be ready to fight for our meat if we had to.
During the night we heard the rising voice of one wolf calling far away in the woods. Near me, Swift said to Yoi, “The grown wolves are back in their camp. I should have set a snare. I wasn’t thinking.”
“I want the skins if you change your mind about the two you caught,” said Yoi.
“Yes, if I change my mind,” said Swift.
Later that night we saw wolves all around us, their eyes green in the firelight, their shadowy gray shapes pale among the trees. Swift seemed delighted. I heard him remind Yoi that wolves keep bears away.
When I saw the morning star, I woke Meri, rolled our sleeping-skins, and made our packs. Remembering the Black River from our travels to our old summergrounds, I knew that if we left soon, by sunset we would reach a shallow place on the river where water rushed through a tumble of large, flat stones. There we would ford and camp on the far side. I wanted to be ready to start this hard day, to be helpful and pleasing to others, so no one would have reason to be impatient with me. When I heard someone climbing the tree, I groped my way to it to see if I could help pack the meat. But The Stick and The Frog were in the tree, handing strips of meat to Timu and Elho below. Timu seemed not to want my help. Rather, as if I weren’t there, they went on with their work, so I went back to Swift’s fire and sat down to wait.
Yoi was still asleep, but Swift was tying his pack strings. “Hide-in-the-Grass,” he called, “you know wolves. Help me tie mine.” So as gray light spread through the misty woods, I followed him. From afar we saw the dark shape of the male wolf at the very end of the thong that held him. He lay flat on his side, his head and tail limp on the ground, his feet stretched in front of him, as if he thought himself already a carcass. But the female wolf was gone. Her leather thong lay bitten through, and in the dim light we found large round footprints, which showed how other wolves had helped her. “By The Bear!” cried Swift. “I should have brought them to our fire.”
The male seemed more scared than ever without his sister. When he heard us, he twitched an ear, then raised his head a hand’s breadth for a glimpse of us. At the sight he couldn’t help but startle, then crept to the far side of the tree, where he cowered.
Swift looked at the bitten thong, disappointed. Then, because the thong was still good leather, he sat on his heels beside the tree and began to pick at the knot. “Don’t stand there,” he said. “Tie him up.”
It hardly seemed worth the trouble. “You won’t get much help from this wolf. You should skin him,” I said.
“Why?” asked Swift, as if the thought surprised him.
“He’s too scared. If you untie him, he’ll run away. And you wasted the female.”
“Wasted?” asked Swift, sounding irritated. The other people were awake now, all talking, perhaps waiting for us. They could become impatient with me after all, so I didn’t answer Swift. Instead I pushed the male wolf onto his side, gathered his four limp feet together, and wound a string around his ankles. Although he humbly folded his ears and tried to raise his thigh slightly, he didn’t dare watch what I did to him.
My remark seemed to be bothering Swift. “I wasted?” he repeated. “How did I waste her?”
“You didn’t take her skin.”
“No, because I didn’t catch her for the skin!”
“Well, it’s gone now,” I said. “She’ll starve with her jaws tied shut. So would you.”
“Ah, Hide-in-the-Grass,” said Swift, laughing. “Who is strong enough to tie my jaws shut?”