ALMOST AS SOON as we left the cave our two groups lost sight of each other, since the people with Father went east and we went west. In single file, getting more into our stride with each step, we followed the lanky form of Andriki along an unused game trail that traced the ravine's rim, walking into winter.
I was last in line. What would the winter bring us? I wondered. Which of us would be alive by spring to eat the fern fronds uncurling under the melting snow? Whose spirit would have left for the Camps of the Dead, to eat the sun with members of his lineage? Whose corpse would be stored in a tree, waiting for the thaw, for burial?
I remembered how Uncle Bala at the Fire River used to call his people "the hands of the lodge." "We need two strong hands to live through a winter," he would tell us.
With Father and Kida and all the others, we had been very strong. Twice two hands and more, we had been. Were we still strong? Were those who followed Andriki enough? Counting me and Maral's son, my brother-in-law, Ako, who was still young, the men were five—a right hand, as Bala would have seen it. But were we a strong hand? Maral and Andriki were the thumb and forefinger, strong enough for any group, and Maral's tall, thin brother-in-law, Marten, was the long finger, also strong. But because I was new, and wouldn't know where I was in Father's hunting lands without someone with me to show me the way, I saw myself as the third finger, the stiff finger that can't move far unless it takes another finger with it, a finger that is strong but sometimes helpless. And since Ako was small, I saw him as the little finger, never helpless but not strong. Uncle Bala wouldn't have reckoned Ako as a man at all, but would have counted him with the children. Yet if Ako wasn't a man, our group wasn't a hand, so I counted him as a man.
There was also the left hand, the women's hand, with Rin as the thumb—Rin, whose brothers and stepbrothers were the owners of the lodge. Next to her was her daughter, Waxwing, who was Marten's wife. The other fingers were the wives of the owners: two women for Maral—his dark-haired Truht and his pale-haired Lilan, tall like her brother, Marten; and one woman for Andriki—his bold wife, Hind. There was Pinesinger, too—Father's wife. Yet she wasn't joined to the group, and I didn't think of her as one of the fingers. Even so, she belonged with us, as we were the right and left hands of the lodge, we who feed our group, clothe our group, and keep our lodge warm in winter.
Then, of course, there were also the children, they whom the two hands cradled. Our lodge had only two small children: Hind's daughter, Pirit, who walked at Hind's heels unless Andriki carried her, and my wife, Frogga, who rode on Lilan's pack. Last among the children were three babies still unborn but also traveling with us—winter children, to be born in the lodge, to honor the Bear with their animal names someday if they should live. One lay in Truht's belly, one in Waxwing's, one in Pinesinger's.
Never before had I thought so much about a winter, or found the future worrisome, or wondered who would live and who would die before spring. I looked ahead at Frogga's brother, Ako. Still young, he seemed carefree, as I had once been carefree. I wondered what Andriki was thinking as his long legs carried him westward. What did Maral think? Or Father?
At the trail's first bend I turned to look for Father, but he and most of the people with him were already hidden by blueberry bushes. I saw Kida's trouser legs under his huge pack, on top of which, holding tight to one of his braids, his little son was riding. Not for this child were fears of winter—just as the blueberry bushes seemed to swallow Kida, the little boy shouted with joy, and suddenly I remembered being very young, and the excitement of starting a journey.
***
Because the plain fell slowly, we walked downhill all morning. By afternoon our trail was almost as low as the river. We came to a place called Bison's Ford, where the hooves of scrambling bison had cut great notches in the sandy banks. We crossed the river there, taking off our moccasins and trousers to wade through the fast water on a bed of smooth round stones.
On the north side of the Hair the plain became a rolling heath where cloudberries grew in their red-brown leaves as far as the eye could see. We threw down our packs and began to pick and eat. Just before dark I looked around for the others but couldn't see them. I stood up. At last I made out the faraway form of one person, then another, then another, all scattered widely, all crouched low and busy eating, almost lost in the brown landscape under the wide yellow sky.
After that our way turned due north and we walked for six days, following Maral's easy strides over a brushy plain. We looked for sheltered places to camp at night, places beside rocks or in heavy thickets; we burned what we could—grass or heather, bones, dung, or wood, if we found these things. We watched for ravens in the sky, who might show us the way to carcasses, but on that trip we found no carcasses. Every evening we set snares for small animals and birds. All in all, the trip was easy. Cloudberries and black crowberries were in season, and we carried with us strips of dry meat.
One night Andriki said we would see the Breasts of Ohun by noon the next day. Beyond those hills was Father's lodge. I thought of Father as we walked, and how our journey was almost over while his journey, because of the great distance between the Hair River and the Char River, had hardly begun.
The Breasts of Ohun! My mind's eye saw two pointed hills, and I looked for them as we traveled. By noon we saw a few low, rounded hills that ran east and west with ridges between them, and I thought that among them we would see two peaks that would mark Father's lodge. The country rose toward the hills, and up we went, through a mossy wood of spruce and birch, out onto a sunny, red-brown heath of blueberry and crowberry shrubs. But from the heath we saw no hills like breasts, only mounds with a thick, red, rolling scrub of low-growing bushes on their sides. Among the bushes I saw sedges, and here and there a lonely black spruce, wind-shaped so that its north side grew no branches. The heath was sunny and warm and very quiet. Far away in the stillness a willow-tit sang its pure, sweet song: Di! Di! Chibidi!
Most of the people dropped their packs and made for some crowberry patches, where they squatted on their heels to pick and eat. Andriki pointed with his lips. "At the end of this trail, beyond the ridge, is the lodge," he said.
"Will we see it from the ridge?" I asked him.
"We could, but we won't," said Andriki.
His answer puzzled me. Was he going to shut his eyes on the ridge? "Don't we climb there?" I asked. "Is it so high?"
Andriki pointed with his lips again, and I saw how our trail would run west to go around the hills, tracing the edge of the heavy scrub. "Why would we climb the ridge?" he asked. "Were there no berry heaths where you lived on Woman Lake? The bush is thick and heavy. Some of the leaves are poisonous. Nothing eats them. Except for bears, who eat berries in the fall, there's nothing there to hunt. Birds and mice go there. Foxes go there for the mice. Women go there to pick berries and set snares. So that's all it is—woman's country."
I could see that Andriki was right. There were no trails, just bird-songs. Anything that walked was close to the ground. But the sunny, silent landscape looked so different from what my mind's eye had seen that I felt confused. "Where are the hills?" I asked.
Now Andriki looked puzzled, and pointed with his lips at the range. "Those are the hills," he said.
"Then which are the breasts?" I asked him, laughing.
He also laughed. "All of them. Aren't all hills like breasts? How can I know which hills are breasts? No one told me."
Ready to have a joke with Andriki, I looked around to see which hills were most like breasts. I saw only four bare summits, all much the same except that two were larger than the others. A pair of hawks flew high above them, one far behind the other, going south. Suddenly my skin prickled. Perhaps the hills were breasts, but if they were Ohun's breasts, Ohun wasn't a person. She was a very large animal asleep on Her back—a tigress, a lioness, a hyena!
I knew I should think a long time about the name of these hills and its meaning. Surely there was a story, with much to be learned from it. Hadn't Sali, the great woman-shaman from the Fire River, become a tigress after her husband killed her? Did Sali have something to do with Ohun? With these hills?
The thought was disturbing. I opened my mouth to ask Andriki, but when I looked around I saw him far away, squatting with the others, tossing crowberries into his mouth. I stood alone on the trail, strangely upset, feeling very much an outsider in this quiet, sunny land of Father's. I didn't even know the way to the lodge, and I didn't want to go without the others. So I too pushed through the scrub to a sprawled bush that still held some black crowberries, and I too sat on my heels to eat.
All afternoon, alone in the sunshine, I picked and ate crowberries while the light wind whispered through the hard little leaves, bringing the smell of juniper from the sun-warmed heath. Late in the day, as I was looking around for more crowberries, I happened to notice all the people far down the trail, already wearing their packs. Some had started! Would they have left me behind? I hurried to catch up, and once again I was the last person in line.
Horses, I saw, had used the trail before us, although our footprints had covered their footprints and flattened their balls of dung. The trail and the horse tracks took the quickest, shortest way out of the brushy growth into a valley and across a quiet, west-flowing stream where now, in the dry season, the water lay still. Dust and yellow birch leaves floated on it. In the low water grew little islands of grass. When I stepped on them to cross, water soaked into my moccasins.
On the far side the woods were open and sunny, welcoming to a hunter—man's country once again. Beyond the trees I saw a narrow meadow. The tracks of the horses led there. I soon began to look around. A fire had been through years before; now young larch and stone-pines grew, winterberries and bilberries, lichen, grass, and many good mushrooms. The shallow river would flood in spring, making the ground a bit soft for horses, but spotted deer and red deer wouldn't mind it, roe deer and moose would prefer it, and reindeer would visit it in winter for the reindeer moss that grew everywhere. In fact, the browsing of many kinds of deer had kept the birch trees low and dense, making good cover for deaf-grouse and ptarmigan. We would probably find a bear or two asleep in the hillsides, and since no bear could hope to wake up alive after a winter's sleep near Father, the bear we would find would probably be a young newcomer drawn by the berries on Ohun's Breasts. I saw how Father had chosen his place well.
Or chosen the hunting well. As for the rest, I also saw that the slowly moving water would freeze solid with the first heavy cold, so people and animals would have to work hard to drink; I saw that all the dry wood and low branches had been used, so we would have to work hard with our axes or else travel far for fuel; and although the woods seemed too thick for lions, I saw how a tiger might like them, so we would have to watch where we went. It was a hunter's place. But what had I expected? It was Father's.
Walking east, I found where the stream drained a narrow lake, and thinking that the lodge would be in sight of the lake, I followed the bank. In no time I noticed a dark mound half hidden in a haze of yellow grass and the thin green needles of sapling pines, the summer's growth which no feet had trampled. Like Uncle Bala's lodge, Father's was domed, but Father's was bigger—half again as long and also higher. The tallest men of Father's family would almost be able to stand inside. Grass grew on the arching roof among the stones that weighed down the sod. Some of the grass stood tall, waving gently in the wind, but in places the grass on the roof lay flat. Trails ran through it. Wolves had climbed there, using it for a resting place or a lookout.
I had not been inside a lodge since the winter before, when I had lived with my mother and stepfather in the lodge belonging to Bala. For as long as I could remember, my place had been with Mother at the fire by the door, in the cold end of the lodge, the bad end, the end used by in-laws or kinswomen of the owners. As I crawled down Father's coldtrap I realized I didn't know just where I was going, where in this lodge I should take my pack, or where I would sleep. I kept moving, though, because everyone but Maral was already inside.
At the end of the passageway I stood up. If the lodge had seemed big from the outside, it seemed small from the inside, small and dark and already filled with the smell of smoke, of the bodies and hair of all the people who, still bulky in their outer clothes, turned to look at me, some of them shading their eyes from a sudden blaze of birchbark they were using to start the fires. With its thick walls, the lodge was much colder than the outdoors, as if it still held the cold of last winter. And from the heavy smell, it seemed that wolves had used the inside as well as the roof.
Behind me, Maral squeezed against me as he stood up and, taking my pack from me, carried it past his stepsister, Rin, and her daughter, Waxwing, who, heads low, were blowing on their fire by the door. Moving carefully to avoid his brother and their wives, who were crowded together in the middle of the lodge, waiting for more light before they found their sleeping places, Maral led me to the rear of the lodge and put my pack by his.
I looked around. Piles of large stones had been used to brace the poles that made the walls of this lodge, heavy walls bent with the weight of crosspoles and with covering sod. In the middle of the lodge a line of four forked lodgepoles braced a rafter running the length of the domed roof, a heavy load, and although these poles were dug into the earth, they were also braced deeply with boulders.
In Uncle Bala's lodge, in a wide spruce wood that was the winterground of mammoths, the stacked bones of many young winter-killed mammoths had made the walls of the lodge—lower jawbones resting on their condyles with their chins up. Compared to rocks and poles, these arched bones were very strong but not very heavy. No bracing was needed, as the jaws interlocked. But no mammoths, dead or living, would be found in an open wood like Father's winterground; the men who had built the lodge would have found no huge bones and would have had no choice but to cut poles and carry rocks. Also, a lodge made with rocks and poles could be strong only if it was narrow. The people who would have to fit themselves into the rear of the lodge would be squeezed very close together.
I had never much liked crowding. I had never liked to inhale the breath of others. I had never much liked babies, with their sharp knees and their cold, smooth bodies, crawling over me, as Frogga might do here, to get from one place to another. I did not want to test myself by lying for a long time beside Pinesinger. But even so, even though the lodge was cold and dark and crowded, even though I was already coughing from the smoke and my eyes were already stinging, I felt a strange happiness to belong, for the first time I could remember, at the owners' fire.