BECAUSE SHE SWAM I named my woman Muskrat. Later, after I could make some sense out of her speech—the jabber she had shouted while we brought her to the lodge—I learned she had another name in her own tongue, Dabe Nore. But almost from the start she answered to Muskrat. Anyway, we called her that.
So began a time of great excitement, for me and for us all, starting with Maral's rage when Andriki and I came home with a captive. As we waded across the stream, Maral happened to crawl through the coldtrap and stand up. I almost laughed aloud to see how he looked at us three times—first the quick glance that noticed us, next the puzzled, scowling gaze that found three of us instead of two, and finally the open-mouthed stare of disbelief that took in Muskrat's bare legs and tattooed forehead. His anger came. "By Ohun's name!" he shouted. "What have you here?"
The shout brought people tumbling out of the lodge, gaping at what they saw. They all began shouting.
"Andriki has a stranger!"
"Is it a child?"
"It's a woman!"
"We'll be attacked!"
"The children—where are they?"
"Find them!"
"Death is searching for us! Get your spears!"
The excitement seemed to frighten my woman. Wide-eyed, she braced her legs and wouldn't move. With my spear I prodded her between the shoulders, and with my foot I gave her a shove in the rump. In spite of herself, she stumbled forward.
"Madmen!" shouted Maral. "Turn her loose! She'll get us killed!"
Strangely calm, Andriki shrugged to show his half-brother that he was helpless to change things. I, in contrast, was blazing with pride, shivering with strength and excitement. Nothing my Uncle Maral could have said or done would have made any difference to me. Far from it! I laughed because I felt so happy. And hot, but pretending to be cool, I answered him. "She's my captive, Uncle. You needn't fear her."
"Is this your doing, Kori?" cried Maral, turning toward me. "How will you fight her people?"
"There were no other people."
"But they're somewhere! You saw their smoke! You went to scout them! Are you insane, to say there was just this one woman alone?"
"We saw no others," I said.
"Do you say there are none?"
Andriki's show of calmness was fading. Seeing that I was dodging Maral's questions, he answered instead. "Of course there must be others," he said.
To me Maral shouted, "Did you remember we have only five men here when you got us into a battle with strangers?"
But I had made up my mind that nothing would part me from this woman, so I was ready to fight Maral if need be. "I'll fight whom I must—even you, Uncle," I said loudly.
These words made him very angry. He strode toward me. So I stepped in front of my woman, ready to meet him. But Andriki stepped in front of me. "Save your fighting for the strangers," he said. "Are we women, to fear them? Let them come for us! They'll save us the trouble of searching for them. Or if they fear to visit us, I'll scout them, to learn how many they are and what weapons they carry. Perhaps we can easily fight them. Who knows? Perhaps we can capture more women!"
But Maral wasn't listening to Andriki. "So you would fight me, Kori? You, my son-in-law! My brother's child! You would fight me?"
"If he fights you, Elder Brother, he fights me too," said Andriki. "But he doesn't mean what he says. He's excited. We're all excited. Instead of thinking about fighting each other, we should be thinking about this woman's people and what they want in our hunting lands."
"Make her tell us what they want!" said Maral.
"How?" asked Andriki. "She doesn't know our speech." To me he said, "Aren't Maral and I your father's brothers? If you fight us, don't you fight him? Does the thumb fight the fingers? You shame us and you spoil your own lodge. You should apologize."
Andriki was right, of course. So I apologized to Maral. Like Father, he was quick to anger but quicker to forget. Putting an arm around my shoulder, he said, "You found a woman. Yet women don't roam the country alone, like roe deer. If you're sorry you made me angry, just remember that you've made some strangers really angry. They're not far away. Let all of us think about that!"
"I'm already thinking," said Andriki. "I think some of us should stay here. We don't want to come back only to find our own women stolen by strangers. Three of us should stay while two scout. We'll go tonight." He looked at the western sky, where, low like a fire among the black trees, the round red sun burned on the horizon. Listening, we looked in all directions. The woods were shadowy, and wind was moving the trees. Andriki's breath steamed when he said, "We'll look for the strangers. If we find them, what then?" He paused, searching my face with his pale eyes. "You, youngster! You started this," he said. "Will you be as brave by night as you were when you captured a lonely woman in the daytime? Some big, grown man with a full beard and a strong arm owns this woman. Will you be as brave when you meet this man?"
"Come with me and see, Uncle," I said.
***
"If you set her free, I'll leave here forever and go to my Uncle Bala's lodge on Woman Lake," I said to Maral and the others who sat outside beside a large fire that threw light around the clearing to help us see whatever might be lurking at the edge of the trees. In the growing dusk the moon stood in the sky, casting the light Andriki and I would need for scouting. "Or die on the way," I added, remembering the enormous distance across the open plain.
"Set her free? Are we women, to oblige trespassing strangers?" asked Maral.
All the women were inside except Andriki's wife, Hind—she who sometimes hunted, she who owned a spear. Squinting into the dark woods, Hind sat on her heels next to Marten, her spear ready. When Maral asked if we were women, she glanced up at him.
The mood of the people of our lodge had changed greatly, from their first surprise at the sight of my woman and their anger at me for surprising them to a strong but quiet excitement, as if an important hunt were starting—as if we were after a bear or mammoths or large cow bison. As for me, I now saw Muskrat's people as my enemies, as hated intruders. I couldn't wait to find them.
So when the moon was high above the trees, Andriki and I went quietly back up into the Hills of Ohun. We were so ready to attack the strangers that we were almost disappointed to find, by the pond, the remains of a camp that had been abandoned in a hurry. The people had left by day, before dew fell, and had trampled their way across the brittle groundcover. The tracks belonged to a rather small man and two small women whose wide heel marks showed the weight of their packs. One of the women had also carried a burden on her right hip, probably a baby. The man was old and lame—he walked with a staff. These people had been followed by a young child, whose trotting footprints were the last in line. We followed these tracks straight east, down through the wide, moonlit sweep of brush and juniper, until the tracks left the hills. In all that distance no other people had joined the group. So we knew that my woman's people had been few, in a hurry to escape us. We had nothing to fear from them.
We went back to their old camp to learn what food they had been eating. In someone's stool in their latrine we noticed specks that were probably redberry seeds, and by the ashes of their fire we found some tiny fishbones—pike, maybe—and grouse feathers. These people hadn't been eating very well. Of course, with three women, two children, and a lame old man, that wasn't surprising. Also in the moonlit ashes we found the broken shaft of what seemed to be a tiny spear with a blade like the one we had found near Uske's Spring. Then we believed that these were the same people who had visited the spring, or at least the same kind of people, with their little bird-spears. We laughed, glad to have such good news for Maral. No wonder the strangers feared us! No wonder they had hurried away!
On our way home, down the western slope of Ohun's Breast, I happened to look back and noticed against the moon something dangling from the branch of a tree—a large wasps' nest, I thought at first. Round and black, it swung gently. But it wasn't a nest. Andriki and I took it down and found that it was a carrying bag. We opened it.
In it were some bits of shiny black rock, not found anywhere known to Andriki; some tinder; a bone needle; some twine; seven pieces of clothing, and a necklace. The necklace was very simple—part of an eyetooth with a hole bored in it and a string through the hole. The only thing was, Andriki and I couldn't tell what animal the tooth had been taken from. The tooth was thick, round, and as long as my thumb. It seemed to curve, but where the curve began the tooth was broken. What good does it do to wonder over things for which there is no answer? We set the necklace aside and spread out the clothes in the moonlight.
They were worn, shabby, and very strange. Although the leather had been worked like the leather of our clothes, it wasn't deerskin. The strange clothes were thinner and softer than ours, with much stitching in them, as many small skins had been sewn together. The ragged leather felt soft, as if it had once been soaked a long time in urine, and was black, as if it had once been rubbed with charcoal and fat. The clothes smelled strong, like foxes. And they were trimmed with balding fox fur.
When we separated them we found a long fur-trimmed shirt which pulled over the head, two ankle-high moccasins, a loincloth, a belt, and two long things that we finally figured out were pantlegs that tied around the waist, each worn separately. We laughed! How could people dress so strangely? They were my woman's clothes, we reasoned, left by her people in case she would follow them.
My woman would rather wear our people's clothes than her people's clothes, I thought. Anyone would. Even so, lest the sight of her things made her think of her people, I stuffed the bundle into a crack in the rocks. Foxes would take the leather clothing. From that time on, as I foresaw, my woman wouldn't walk in the Hills of Ohun unless she went with me.
The wind rose. We went back to the lodge, walking quietly and carefully and looking before and behind us on the trail, now dark with cloud shadows. More dangerous than my woman's people was the hunter who used trails at night, or watched beside them, crouched and hungry, with big green eyes.
***
At first my muskrat-woman seemed stupid. I began to think she knew nothing, as Rin was the only one of us she seemed to recognize. Every time she saw me she seemed bewildered, as if she had never seen me before. But if Rin left the lodge, my woman would watch the door until she came through it again. Of course, it was mostly Rin who fed her. Rin also gave her reindeer moss to soak up her menstrual blood and in time helped her make clothing.
Muskrat hadn't been with us long before Rin took one of my sleeping-skins to make proper trousers for her, I then had to sleep on my parka and other outer clothes. For moccasins Rin took part of the skin of the reindeer I had killed. The skin belonged to Frogga by way of her mother, Lilan, but as Rin pointed out, on bare feet Muskrat couldn't help with any of the work in winter, and someday I could give Lilan another skin, to replace the skin Muskrat owed.
For a bed we gave Muskrat two bald old skins that had once belonged to Father and had been stored behind the poles that braced the roof. The wolves had worried the skins and torn them trying to pull them free, but hadn't succeeded. Much hair fell out when we opened the skins. But they were better than nothing. Until her menstruation stopped, the woman couldn't sleep with me.
For a parka, Rin used the skin of the bear we had found robbing our mammoth carcass by the cave on the Hair River. Since Maral's and Father's spears had been the first into this bear, the skin belonged to Lilan, Truht, and Pinesinger. It had been carried from our summerground in three pieces. Before these women would part with their pieces of bearskin, I had to promise them the next three skins of reindeer hunted by me. And because any large skin gotten by my hunting would rightfully belong to Frogga, I had to promise Lilan my next three shares of meat to replace the reindeer skins.
I could see I would own nothing for a long time, not even the meat I killed or the new clothes I myself needed, because of my woman. I would have to borrow clothes and beg others to feed me. Yet not for a moment did I regret what I had done.
On the first night we were all too excited to think of bedding, so my woman slept on the bare floor. I didn't notice, since that night I lay with my spear in the coldtrap, sometimes dozing but never really sleeping, to be sure she didn't escape. I kept looking up to check on her, and each time saw her sitting by the fire. She seemed lonely, staring at the flames, thinking her own thoughts and sometimes crying. The sight made me want to take her into my bed—to comfort her and keep her warm, I told myself—but I was afraid of her menstruation, so I waited. The other people of the lodge kept waking too, lifting their heads uneasily to see what she was doing. Perhaps they were afraid she might take a knife to us all.
During the night we heard thunder. The wind grew strong, and just before dawn wet snowflakes began whirling down the smokeholes. We had gathered very little wood the day before and were saving what we had to cook the reindeer meat, so to keep warm we stayed in our sleeping-skins, listening to the thunder and the wind over the lodge and watching the snowflakes turn to water on the still-warm ashes of our dying fires. Only Muskrat sat up. With her arms and legs tightly folded to her chest, she had pulled her whole body inside my shirt. The empty sleeves dangled; her tangled hair stuck out of the neck; the flattened edge of her bare buttocks and the soles of her feet showed under the hem. Meanwhile snow was covering all traces of her people—their trail, their night's camp, the guiding signs they might have left for Muskrat. Even with moccasins, my woman couldn't follow. I slept at last, content.
***
Catching Muskrat was very exciting; so were the anger and the stir she caused, and so was the hunt for her people. We were excited to think of a stranger in our lodge, and to think of her people returning to find her. In case they came, we took care each day to circle widely through the woods several times, looking for the tracks of strangers. They didn't come, nor did we really expect them—but the thought of them excited us so much we talked of nothing else.
And the woman herself was exciting, certainly to me! Not even in my dreams had I ever thought of owning a full-grown woman. But I did, and not because my relatives and her relatives had come to an agreement, nor because gifts had changed hands. No—I owned her because I had seized her! So she was exciting in the same way that a large animal close by is exciting, filling a place with its unusual bulk, its strange look, and its special odor. Such an animal will always bring surprises, since no one can say what it will do. And it doesn't know speech!
But not until my woman finished her menstruation did the biggest excitement of all begin for me, which of course was the excitement of lying with her—a story in itself. I could hardly wait to do it, since day and night my mind's eye saw her red, wet, naked body standing up from the reeds in Leech Pond. My shoulder remembered the weight of her body, my face remembered the heat burning from her hip, my eyes remembered the light cast into them by her bare skin, and my nose remembered the pond water that had clung to her, and her musk, her woman's smell. From then on, I never seemed to notice the smells of the other people. Perhaps I knew their smells too well. It seemed that each time my nostrils caught an odor it was Muskrat's—her crotch, her feet, her sweat, her hair.
One night I smelled the faint, bitter odor of yellowroot slime, and I knew that Rin had given that slime to Muskrat to rub between her thighs, to clean herself of menstruation. Yellowroot was a plant of open grassland. How had Rin gotten its slime? Rin's yellowroot was a woman's secret that pulled my mind between my woman's legs.
That night, when people were asleep or lying still, I crawled quietly out of my bed in the coldtrap, saw Muskrat curled tight under one deerskin by the wall, and tossed a bit of burned wood at her. She raised her head fearfully. Our eyes met. I beckoned to her. She gave me her blank stare, as if she didn't understand what I wanted. I stood up and beckoned. She stared ignorantly. I walked over to her, stood above her, and beckoned again. She shrank from me, so I took her arm and pulled her gently. Fearfully she stood up.
Rin had not finished sewing Muskrat's trousers; all Muskrat wore was my shirt. Her hair was partly combed, though, and twisted into a short, ugly braid. I thought of loosening the braid, then decided I didn't care about it, and let it be. At the door of the coldtrap I forced Muskrat to her heels and pulled the shirt over her head, although she tried to stop me. Turning her around, I folded her into my sleeping-skin beside me, her shoulder blades against my chest. She lay still and felt cold, and didn't seem to know to press her rump against me. Even so, my penis found its place inside her; I pulled her to me and began to thrust. Her vagina was dry. She gasped. I put a hand over her mouth so no one would hear. Her bent body seemed to straighten and her vagina became short; she wasn't helping. But she wasn't fighting. Her breath was quiet, shallow. I knew she was waiting for me to finish so she could leave. Still, just holding a woman was exciting. My breath felt strangled, so that I almost had to gasp aloud. My climax came very suddenly, and with it, to my great surprise, a rush of tears drenched my face and would have dropped on Muskrat if I hadn't lifted my hands to wipe my eyes. Muskrat felt me let her go, and slipped away. I didn't try to stop her.
Ah, well. To lie with her at all was better than lying with no one, better than remembering Pinesinger, better than imagining how it would be someday to lie with Frogga, with her running nose and her cold, damp, too-smooth skin.
As I listened to Muskrat's clumsy footsteps going to her sleeping place and watched her rumpled shadow sweep the ceiling of the lodge, I wondered who else was listening and watching. Poor Marten, who slept at Rin's fire near the door, had surely heard me taking Muskrat. He surely envied me. At that time, if Marten ever climaxed, he did it in his dreams, since his pregnant wife, Rin's daughter, Waxwing, was not supposed to lie with him until after their baby was born.
Rin had surely heard me too. Rin would have been listening for the sounds of her daughter and her son-in-law together, for the sounds of their breathing, since their having coitus could frighten or bruise her unborn grandchild. Everyone knows that even a very pregnant woman can't always refuse her husband, since he can (like my Uncle Bala) usually command her, or, after she falls asleep, he can (like my stepfather) play with her softly until she wakes up lusting. So in a way it was Rin's duty as a mother-in-law to make sure no harm came to her unborn lineage; it was her duty to be listening for Marten, so she could say a few words that would help him chill his need.
Maral could have heard me. Andriki too, that light sleeper. In the morning he would tease me. Their wives would have heard me. Pinesinger would have heard and realized that Muskrat had no interest in me, or worse, that I had given her pain but no pleasure. This thought made me angry. The women would think little of me. Behind my back, they would laugh. I made up my mind to wait for a chance to show my woman how to do this thing. Then, if she and I made sounds at night, the sounds would show our happiness, not her fear and my need.
***
Because of the snow, my chance came soon. Muskrat couldn't leave the lodge until she had clothes. Instead, while everyone else was out, Muskrat waited by the fire, trying her best to keep warm. All I had to do to be with her was to wait until all but she were elsewhere, then come with my load of wood. The very next time I brought wood I knew she was inside alone. I scrambled down the coldtrap, found her sitting by the embers, pulled her to her feet, and took off her clothes.
Would I have acted so if she had been a woman of our people? Just the thought is funny. Our women can't be treated lightly—it makes them angry. Often it makes their kin angry. And always it makes the other women angry. Then all women turn against you, even the little girls. If I had tried to pull the clothes off one of our women, she would have boxed my ears and laughed in my face.
But my woman didn't know this. While I took off my own clothes and shook out my sleeping-skin to make a bed for us, she stood watching me, her bare, bent legs pressed tight together, her arms hugging her goose-pimpled body, her chin shuddering with cold, and her tattooed forehead scowling with puzzlement.
What did I think I could teach about coitus? I had known only Pinesinger, yet I fancied I had much to teach! In truth, of course, I knew very little, and Muskrat had a big surprise waiting for me, something that has stayed with me all the rest of my life, but something that I have seldom spoken of, not even to Andriki. Thinking of it now makes me smile, since the memory still pleases and shames me. To come out with it, what happened next, what happened when I pulled Muskrat down on her knees, bent her forward, and raised her hips so I could enter her, was that she rolled on her back like a beetle and opened her legs!
I had never seen a woman's vulva, yet there it was. Red! Like a ferret's den, like a small skull's eye, the hole stared up at me. Around it I saw damp, wavy ridges like the edges of a snail. And it was wide! As wide as my palm, or so it seemed. Something like a mouth, it had lips and gums, without true skin. All around it was her hair, and below it was her anus. I knew I shouldn't stare, but I couldn't stop.
Muskrat said one word to me in her twisted language. I didn't understand her, and don't remember the word. But her voice helped me tear my eyes from her vulva and set them on her face, where her own eyes, round and angry, seemed very impatient. She raised her head and said the word again louder, pointing her thumbs at her gaping red vulva. She wanted me to hurry!
So I did, I dropped my body onto hers and entered. She clasped me with her hard, cold arms and legs. The feeling shocked me, as if a hunting animal had seized me, or as if an enormous beetle had fastened itself to my hips and chest. I tried to thrust, but I was slowed by her clinging, and the position was so strange that I had trouble starting. Even so, it was very exciting. I heard her panting—her breath stirred in my ear! Her thighs gripping my waist, her two breasts squeezing tight between us, made me dizzy. I would have liked to get used to this new thing, to think how best to do the man's part, but she began to growl, then moan, then cry aloud. She frightened me! I thrust as quickly as I could and climaxed suddenly, then felt a sense almost of panic. I had wanted to teach my woman something. Instead, to my great surprise, she had taught me something, and I had no idea what she might do next to me, or what I should do with her!
I didn't have long to wonder. Almost at once she set her feet firmly on the floor, heaved her hips to get rid of me, slid out from under me, and hurried to the fire, where she sat on her heels almost in the flames and quickly pulled her shirt on, her teeth chattering and her lips blue. I stared at her, stunned by the suddenness of everything. We had gone against nature!
I was not a little frightened by this slave of mine and by what she had showed me. Desperately fighting animals, cornered animals, also insects, beetles, sometimes roll onto their backs with their legs up. Babies lie on their backs with their legs open before they understand decency, and so do women in difficult childbirth, if exhaustion overcomes them. But not even the animals turn wrong side up for coitus! Coitus is done by the will of the Woman, who shows us, Her children, how it must be. When we see the rainbow, we know it is She, head down and back bent, taking Cloud Woman's Son as Her lover. Rain is Her sweat, thunder and lightning are Her climax, and the rainbow is the arch of Her spine. Huge mammoths, lions, deer, birds, frogs, and everything else too, even flies, all do as She does, even though some get only eggs from doing it. Who were this slave-woman and I to do differently?
Suddenly ashamed, I swept away all traces we had left on the floor of the lodge, especially the places scuffed by Muskrat's shoulder blades and buttocks. I pulled up Muskrat's shirt and wiped the dust from her back, and took my sleeping-skin outside and shook it. Then I took my spear and ax and hurried away to gather more wood, before anyone came back to the lodge to make fun of me.
After that, though, I made one bed for both of us every night, and when Muskrat was in it, I, with a show of yawning, would lie down. Then, when I hoped the others were asleep or at least too tactful to be listening, I would roll over to face her as she had showed me. In truth, I liked her way of coitus. I liked to feel the grip of her thighs around my hips and the solid, fat pads of her breasts between her ribs and mine. I liked her breath in my ear and her arms around me. And I liked that she liked to be taken this way.
Not when others could overhear us did she growl or shout. And not in the dark, with my sleeping-skin over us, could anyone see that she faced me. So every night we made love in the way of her people. Then, with our arms around each other, we slept like children, while our spirits flew where they would in dreams.