A Hero's Tale (5 page)

"Even when I understand the words, I don't know what they mean," I mumbled to myself in my own language.

Maara laughed. "I think he means you need more practice."

As we settled ourselves by the fire, I whispered to Maara, "Ask them about the wolves."

Before she could speak, one of the hunters said, "My brother called me in a dream. He called me to the hunt. I woke my brothers, and we went together."

Soon the other two joined in telling the story of the hunt. They all spoke at once, so quickly and with such enthusiasm that I had trouble following what they were saying. Since I had witnessed the hunt myself, I had more success reading their gestures. Little by little the story came together in my mind. I had thought at first that when the hunter spoke of his brothers he meant the men who had hunted with him, but I came to understand that at least some of the time he was speaking of the wolves. It was the wolves who had trailed the deer by following their scent, who had run ahead and turned them back. The hunters had only to follow the chase and wait. Then the wolves had waited for the hunters to wound the stag, so that they could bring it down with little to fear from the stag's hooves and antlers.

"Do you always hunt with wolves?" I asked, when I could get a word in edgewise.

"Not always," said one of the hunters. "Sometimes they call us."

"Or sometimes we call them," said another.

"Why do you speak of the wolves as your brothers?"

"They are our brothers," said the first man, as if that explained everything.

"Did you kill your brother, you who wear his skin?" said Maara.

The hunter laughed. "Sometimes brothers fight," he said.

I had been nodding for some time, leaning against Maara's shoulder and listening with half an ear to the conversation and storytelling that went on in the evenings inside the cave. Usually, after one last story, everyone got up and went to bed, but this night only the women left the fire, while the men stayed where they were. When Maara and I started to get up, Sett motioned to us to stay.

"Let's talk together," was all he said.

I thought they might be having second thoughts about our staying in the village, but we were there at Aamah's invitation, and Aamah had gone with the other women to her bed. Whatever Sett wished to talk about, it was something that concerned the men alone. He talked with the others for a little while, in low tones that Maara pretended not to hear. Then he turned to me and spoke. I understood the words for brother and for hunting and that he was asking me a question, but I couldn't put it all together.

"Sett asks if you wish to learn the hunting magic of the forest people," said Maara.

"Hunting magic?"

"I don't know how else to say it," she said. "All the hunters here are men, but it may sometimes happen that a woman who has not yet borne a child will ask them for their secrets. They have seen for themselves that you are skilled with the bow. They will teach you, if you ask."

The idea of learning the forest people's secret lore filled me with excitement, but before I gave my answer, I wanted the blessing of my first teacher.

"What shall I do?" I asked her.

Maara saw my eagerness and smiled at me. "Never miss an opportunity to learn something new."

I turned to Sett and said in my own language, "I would be honored to learn the hunting magic of the forest people."

"She said yes," said Maara.

When I was to learn to hunt was a mystery. Once I had given my consent, everyone rose and went to bed, and nothing more was said about it. It was three days later, at the first glimpse of the new moon, when they surprised me.

The men came for me in the middle of the night. They took me naked from my bed, from the warmth of Maara's arms, and carried me outdoors. They set me down by the cold ashes of the central fire and wrapped me in a robe. Still I shivered, more from excitement and from fear than from the cold.

I looked for Maara, but she hadn't followed me. Already I missed her reassuring presence. And how would I understand the men without her to explain the meaning of their words? Even as my mind was considering the question, I knew the answer. There would be no words spoken to me this night. This was a thing beyond words, a teaching and a testing, all at once.

Above me the sky was clear, alive with stars. Like distant fires, they winked and twinkled in the winter sky. They cast an eerie light on the frosty ground and on a dozen men clad in wolfskins. They were the color of frost, of winter mist, of snow and ice. They were the wolves in their winter coats, and then I understood that this kind of hunting, this brotherhood of wolves and men, was something that happens only in the dark time of the year, the starving time.

One of the hunters put into my hands a wooden bowl, a steaming bowl of tea. I huddled over it to warm myself. The man lifted it to my lips, and I drank. The tea was so bitter I almost spit it out. Once I had swallowed a few sips of it, the drink warmed me from within.

The men in their wolfskins sat down around the central fire pit. The air was freezing, but no one lit a fire. Wolves fear fire.

A noise began, a low, murmuring noise, a humming, growling noise. Although it seemed to come from nowhere, or from everywhere at once, it had to be coming from the men. They were sitting cross-legged around the circle. The forelegs of their wolfskins fell over their shoulders. The men leaned forward, until the wolves' paws touched the ground. The men bowed their heads, so that I couldn't see their faces. They showed me instead the faces of the wolves.

The wolves' black eyes twinkled with starlight. Their ears pricked forward, as they listened to the chant. The wolves had called a council, and I was sitting there among them. I blinked and saw that they were men, but a moment later they were wolves again.

One of them stood up and began to move around the circle. He stood on two legs like a man, but bent over, so that the shape of his body took on the likeness of a wolf. He was a wolf too in the way he moved, as he stalked, low to the ground, freezing in mid-step when his quarry raised its head to look for danger. Twice around the circle went the stalking wolf before he stopped and glanced around. He looked with curiosity at the other wolves, as if something had changed and he couldn't discover what it was.

Then he saw me. He approached me, doing a stiff-legged dance, as if inviting me to play or perhaps to fight. He stopped in front of me and gazed into my eyes. He raised his muzzle to the night sky, and I expected to hear him howl, but from under the wolf's face, Sett's face appeared. Sett the storyteller, who could speak with the voices of the animals, who could transform himself into each animal as he told its story, Sett grinned at me with a wolf's grin. He crouched down before me on all fours, then leaped up and bounded over my head and ran away into the shadows.

Another man stood up and moved around the circle, as he too transformed himself into the animal whose skin he wore. Another followed him, and then another, until all of them had joined the dance. I watched them stalk each other, now crouching, now leaping, as they ran and fought and played together, and after a time I could not have said if they were wolves or men.

Suddenly the wolves stopped where they were, and their heads all turned together. I turned my head in time to see a stag step out of the shadows. Holding his proud antlers high, he came toward us, one step at a time, cautious and courageous. The wolves began to stalk him. From time to time the stag stopped and sniffed the air, and the wolves crouched down and watched him. When he dropped his head as if to graze, the wolves crept closer, until he caught a glimpse of them and leaped away.

The wolves pursued him, but the stag was unafraid. The closer they came, the less he minded them. Among the wolves he danced, and no wolf touched him. Like children who play at life before they have to live it, the hunters and the hunted played at life and death. They made life and death into a dance.

Without knowing I had done it, I stood up. Wearing only my own skin, I joined the dance. As the fish who swims in icy water doesn't feel the cold, as the bird perched on an icy bough doesn't feel the cold, no more did I feel the cold, I who was only life in a different form.

It seemed that the dance went on forever, yet I was sorry when it ended. The stag lifted his antlered head from his shoulders and set it down, and Sett emerged from his disguise. The wolves stood up like men, although they kept their wolfskins on. I stood among them, not knowing which form I took, though I was neither man nor wolf, not yet.

Sett led us out of the enclosure and into the wild wood. Unseen creatures watched us pass. I felt their eyes. Sett led us around the hilltop and up a narrow path that ended at a pile of tumbled rock. With the help of two others, he moved one of the rocks aside to reveal among the shadows a deeper shadow. One by one the hunters vanished into it. I was the last to enter. The passage was so narrow that I could feel the rock on either side, and in places the rock above me was so low I could barely raise my head. Sometimes on our bellies, sometimes on hands and knees, we crawled and crept into the mountain's heart. There was no light at all.

The men pulled me from the passage into a larger chamber and helped me to sit up. My eyes were blind. By the sound of their breathing and the warmth of their bodies on my naked skin, my mind formed a picture of them sitting in a circle all around me. I waited for what would happen next, but no one moved or spoke. I heard only a roaring in my ears, as may happen in small spaces where no sound is.

After a timeless time, someone struck a spark. It fell into dry tinder and smoldered there, sending up a curl of sweet-smelling smoke. The man breathed on it until it grew into a flame. With it he lit the wick of a stone lamp.

As my eyes became accustomed to the light, I looked around me. The passage we had come through may have been made by human hands, but the cavern where we sat was not. The rock beneath us was smooth, as if water had once flowed over it, but the rock above was rough and craggy. I felt its great weight, not many feet above my head.

I looked up. Swirls and patterns, patches of color, red and brown, streaks and smears of charcoal, covered the rock. I leaned back to get a better look, and what I saw so astonished me that I lost my balance and toppled over backward. Someone's hands broke my fall and laid me gently down.

I gazed up at the animals. Red cattle with long, sharp horns ran across the cave roof from end to end. Among them ran antelope and deer. They ran, not as if they fled from danger, but for the simple joy of running. I saw stags with branched antlers, goat-like animals with long horns that curved over their backs, as well as animals so strange they could never have existed, the kinds of animals we see in dreams. One had the body of a boar, his tail like a boar's tail waving in the air, but he had two horns on his face, one between his eyes and the other on the end of his nose. Another resembled a cow, but was bearded like a goat, with tiny horns, and a great hump on his back covered with curly hair. Most beautiful were the horses. Although I had never seen one, my people remembered them in stories, and they looked much as I'd imagined them, with their long curving necks, rounded bellies and rounded rumps, black legs, black noses, and tails of long black hair, their bodies multicolored, red and brown and dappled yellow.

The painted rock brought to mind the wall of painted shields in Merin's great hall. By firelight their animal devices seemed to come alive, as if by invoking their courage and their strength, we had invited the spirits of the animals to join us by our hearth fire. The shields became, not instruments of war, but relics of our past, and now above me I saw the world they came from.

Around me the men began to chant, not the wolf chant this time, but the steady rhythm of running animals. Several of them tapped on the rock with sticks, making a sound like running hooves. Although I knew it was impossible, the animals began to move. On my bare skin I felt the wind of their passing. They ran and ran until I became so dizzy I had to close my eyes. Then I felt them all around me. They teased my spirit from my body, making me run with them, until I was as fleet of foot as they, as stout of body, as strong of limb, and as wild as they were wild.

I woke with only Sett beside me. He helped me to sit up and said, "Tamara, he is a brother of the animals, the same."

I understood.

When I emerged from the narrow passage, a faint light shone in the eastern sky. Sett wrapped me in a robe, and together we returned to the village. It was too early for anyone to be up, but when we entered the cave where the people slept, the fire was already lit. Three women sat beside it.

My eyes met Maara's first. I smiled when I saw her pride in me. Aamah sat beside her. Next to Aamah was a young woman whose name was Daani. She stood up and came to meet me. She had a bundle in her hands. As she approached me, she shook it out. It was a wolfskin.

"Mine," she said. "Now yours."

I hesitated, not knowing how to accept such a valuable gift or if to refuse it would be impolite. She thrust it toward me again, insisting that I take it.

"Why?" I asked her.

In answer she smiled and rubbed her belly, which had begun to swell with her first child.

Although I was neither cold nor hungry, Maara made me sit close to the fire while she fed me venison and acorn mush. Then she put me to bed. Even as I protested that I wasn't sleepy, I fell into the land of dreams.

A fortnight passed, and I had not yet been called to the hunt. I looked forward to it with both eagerness and apprehension.

I knew Maara would not go with me. When I had once suggested that she too might ask to learn the hunting magic of the forest people, she shook her head.

"This is for you," she said.

I couldn't persuade her to make more clear to me what she meant. Nor would she allow me to share with her what the men had shown me. Whenever I tried to speak to her about it, she put her finger on my lips and refused to hear me.