Breakaway: Clan of the Ice Mountains (12 page)

Attu walked home, wishing things were back to the way they’d been just a few moons ago, the clan safe on their own land, no threat of ice bears, no more than the usual arguments between Moolnik and his father,
and no gold-flecked eyes of a girl promised to another man haunting my dreams

“H
old still,” Rika said. Attu was lying face down on his furs, his bare back bathed in the sunlight streaming in through the open door of the shelter. Rika was removing his stitches.

“You’re a terrible nuisance,” Rika said, and she slapped the back of Attu’s head playfully. “Now hold still, and I mean it.”

A sharp sting as Rika cut and pulled another stitch out caused Attu to flinch again. Rika’s hand slipped, and Attu felt a small pain in his back near where the stitches were being removed. “Now you’ve done it,” Rika exclaimed. “You made me knick you with my cutting bone.”

“Me?” Attu protested. “You’re the healer here. Watch your tools.”

“Treating you is like trying to remove stitches on a squirming poolik,” Rika scolded.

“I can’t help it; they sting,” Attu said. He was frustrated by this girl, who thought she could order him around by day, just because she was a healer, then proceeded to give him meaningful glances in the evening, like she was free to do so and not spoken for by Banek.

Every day she’d come by, check his wounds, re-clean them as needed, and rewrap his torso in fresh hide bandages. She’d put a poultice on a couple of places that had started weeping, to prevent the spirit of fever from attacking him. Yet she was often rough in her treatment of him, especially since the day he had visited her people’s camp. Attu didn’t like it. Still, he had healed quickly.

“Attu?” Rika’s voice was suddenly soft.

“Yes?”

“Have you had any more dreams?”

“Why?”

“I just wondered.” She pulled another stitch.

Attu tried hard not to move. “Yes, I have. But I can’t talk about them.”

“Oh.”

Another stitch.
Ouch.
But Attu held steady.

“I, too, have dreamed.”

“You have? Can you tell me about them?” Attu tensed, his stitches forgotten.

“The dreams are confusing. It’s not so much what I see in them. That keeps changing. Once it was ice surrounded by water.”

Attu held his breath.
Has Rika dreamed the same dream as me?

“
Another time it was as if I were floating under the stars. It’s what I hear each time that stays the same, that bothers me.”

“What do you hear?”

Rika didn’t answer, just pulled another stitch.

Attu jumped.

“Hold still, I said,” Rika exclaimed. “I can’t believe how much you’re wiggling now, when not too many suns ago, your back was slashed open and bleeding, and you held perfectly still while I cleansed your wounds.”

“Yes, and most of that time I was Between from the pain,” Attu grimaced at the remembering.

Rika pulled at another stitch, a deep one, but Attu held himself still.

“What do you hear, Rika?” He asked again as she settled back into the routine of cutting and pulling out stitches in his upper back, where it wasn’t as tender.

“I hear a voice, a man’s voice, as if calling over a great distance. He says, ‘When others would show judgment, you must show mercy. If you do this all will live. If you do not, all will die.’ The voice is powerful, Attu, and it scares me.”

“And what do your elders say about your dreams? What does your father say?”

“I have told no one about them, until now I’ve told you. My father would laugh at me. ‘Show mercy?’ He would scoff. To him, showing mercy is showing weakness.”

“So why tell me?”

“I thought,” Rika replied softly, “because you have also dreamed and it came true, you might understand.”

“I do.” Attu turned his head, so he could see Rika. She looked frightened. Something deep inside him stirred with compassion for her. He continued carefully, wanting to reassure her. “I know most people will not believe your dreams until they come true. Then for a while, they might. But it doesn’t last. I’ve been trying to help my father convince Moolnik to leave this land and continue south and east to the great land beyond that our Elder Tovut told us we must reach, but Moolnik won’t listen to us, like he refused to listen to Elder Tovut when he was alive, or Elder Nuanu now. He thinks men who believe in dreams are weak. Your father said dreams are dangerous and usually just our own imaginations, needs, or fears. Our leaders no longer believe in the power of dreams as our ancestors did. So I think you are doing the right thing to keep your dreams to yourself. And you must decide for yourself whether or not to trust in them, follow them.”

“Do you trust in them, Attu? Your dreams? Do you believe?”

“I don’t know. But the ice bear did attack.”

Rika sighed then turned back to cutting out Attu’s stitches again. A few moments passed in silence, then Rika pulled a deep stitch and Attu jerked.

“Just hold still!” Rika seemed to have lost all patience with him.

Attu gritted his teeth and tried not to move. “Show mercy,” he said in a beggar’s voice.

Rika laughed, “It’s only justice for you, hunter who cries out like his wound is mortal when it’s only a scratch.”

“Ouch. Your tongue is sharper than your tools, Poosha.”

“Who told you my old name?” Rika slapped his leg, hard.

Before being named Rika, after Rikakuan, the healing trysta spirit of fresh air after a snow, Attu had found out from Rika’s little brother that she had been called Poosha, which meant “strong mouth.” It meant she always had something to say about how things should be done, even when her advice hadn’t been sought.

Attu grinned now at the thought. Rika had recovered quickly from her fear and gotten bossy again.
Poosha, this girl was.
His words had helped.

Attu jumped yet again as another stinging pull of a sinew stitch sent the flesh on his back quivering.

“You have to hold still,” Rika exclaimed. “This is going to take forever if you don’t.” She let out a sigh of frustration mingled with annoyance.

Suddenly, before Attu could take in a breath to protest, Rika threw her leg over his backside and Attu found himself pushed deeper into the furs. Rika was sitting on him, low, below the edge of his wounds, her legs on either side of his back, knees pushing in to steady him.

“Rika,” he breathed, too shocked to say anything else.

“Be quiet, mighty hunter,” Rika said, “and let me concentrate on getting these stitches out without your back ripping open again. Men...” the last word was a mere whisper as Rika bent to her task, Attu now firmly held in place.

What will this crazy girl do next?

Attu lay as still as death while Rika breathed on his back, her face inches from his skin, concentrating on clipping and removing each small stitch. She seemed oblivious to the fact that she was sitting on him, her warm legs embracing his sides.

Rika moved slightly to get a better view of the stitches near his shoulder. Her braid brushed lightly across his side, and a sigh escaped Attu’s lips. Rika didn’t seem to notice; she was so intent on her task. Attu waited for her to be done, trying to push his mind away from thoughts he should not be having. It didn’t work. Rika was beautiful, with her light eyes and curving brows, her bossy ways and her healing hands. And she was being given to another. It made him feel sick, not unlike how he felt about the bear attack. He hated that feeling.

“There, all done,” Rika said. But she made no move to climb off him. Instead, she patted his back, tracing her hand along the lines of his rapidly healing wound tracks, most now new scars. “You need to begin using your muscles, throwing your spear, so your back does not become rigid with the scarring,” Rika said softly. Still she sat there, stroking his back. Nuvikuan-na itself seemed to stand still.

“Rika,” Attu whispered.

“Yes?” Rika said, as if lost in thought and only half paying attention to him.

“Do you want Banek for your man?” Attu hadn’t meant to say it. But he had to know how Rika felt. Banek was a strong hunter. He was probably exactly what Rika would want.
He is certainly more hunter than me, a wounded boy-man,
Attu thought.

Rika went still.

Attu waited.

“Oh,” she finally breathed. “Oh, no... I didn’t mean...” and she scrambled to her feet, grabbed up her pouch, and was gone from the shelter in an instant.

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T
wo days later, the gift giving ritual was held in the light of the full moon. The two young couples were given to each other along with an exchange of gifts. There was dancing and feasting. Attu sulked in a corner of the huge shelter that had been erected between the two camps, watching Rika dancing with the younger children. He refused to join in with them. He was not a child.

Attu’s healing back gave him the excuse not to participate when the group gathered around the large sewn skins that would make up each new couple’s shelter. First one couple and then the second sat wrapped in each other’s arms on the new skins, which were lifted up quickly by at least twenty pairs of hands, causing the couple to be tossed into the air, falling back down onto the skins that were held off the ground to cushion their fall. The process was repeated several times, while everyone hooted and called out to the young pairs.

Attu noticed Suka worked his way around the skins so he could stand near Rika for the second tossing. Suka spoke to Rika, leaning in to make himself heard. Rika laughed and flashed Suka a smile. Suka glanced back at Attu, as if making sure he saw.

Always trying to show me up,
Attu thought.
Be careful, Suka.

Suka leaned in to say something else to Rika, but he never got the chance. Banek appeared at Rika’s side and with a shove, pushed Suka so hard he fell backwards into the rest of the jostling crowd. Banek scowled at Rika and took Suka’s place hanging onto the skins. Rika grew still, her face now a mask. Attu’s heart skipped a beat, and he balled his fists in frustration. No one else seemed to notice as Suka got up and walked away into the night.

Everyone else laughed and grinned as the second couple, Kinak and Suanu, clung tightly to each other, tumbling together on the skins. They didn’t pull apart when the tossing was over, but stayed wrapped in each other’s arms. The other men whistled their approval amid the women’s lip popping. Jokes about how soon a baby would follow such a good tossing became the main topic of conversation for the rest of the evening as the men set up the two new shelters, one in each camp, a bit off to the side for privacy, but close enough for safety. Attu walked over to help the men set up Kinak and Suanu’s shelter, hoping to see Suka, but he hadn’t returned. Moolnik had kept up such a tirade of insults towards his second son all evening that Attu didn’t blame Suka for staying hidden somewhere. He was tired of the whole thing himself and headed back toward his own shelter as each clan’s women said a tearful goodbye to the young woman leaving to join her man.

Attu could not fall asleep until late that night. When he did, he dreamed of the young woman crying out to him for help, across a rapidly spreading dark chasm of water. And this time she had Rika’s golden eyes.

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P
aven’s clan left two days later. A group of his hunters had seen a young ice bear roaming along the edges of the camp, and Paven would take no more chances with the safety of his people. Attu stood with his family, watching the other clan traverse across the flat ice of the Great Frozen,
in the direction we should be heading,
Attu thought.
South and east.

Attu knew he was well enough to travel, and for a while he had considered talking with his father, of asking him to speak with Paven, to try to convince him to let him, Attu, speak for Rika, not Banek. But his people needed him now more than ever with Moolnik set on staying on this ice bear-infested land. And Attu didn’t know how Rika felt. He couldn’t ask her, not after she had run from him. He had his pride. So he said nothing.

Attu stood on the edge of the land until the whole Great Frozen clan was only shadows on the horizon. Everyone else had long since turned and walked back to camp, leaving Attu alone. He had hoped Rika would turn to look back at him, see him, give the sign of farewell, safe hunting. But she hadn’t looked back. Not even once.

Attu picked up some small loose rocks and began bouncing them across the ice. He couldn’t believe Rika was gone. He threw harder, ignoring the pain that stretching his back muscles caused. Let his wounds rip open again. What did he care?

Rika hadn’t even come to say goodbye. She’d sent her little brother with a small pouch of ointment. “Rika says to use this for the next moon, to keep the scars soft and help the rest of the healing,” Rovek had said. The child had run off before Attu had a chance to reply.

“I’m the fool,” Attu grumbled to himself. “She’s just a girl.”

“Attu!”

Attu turned and saw Meavu running toward him, her ice bear necklace jangling. Since it had been given to her, she’d never taken it off. He smiled.

“Mother says to come,” Meavu said, and she put her arm in his and began pulling him up the small slope toward the camp. “She’s cooking the last of the ice bear meat, rare, over the nuknuk lamps. And there is rock moss, enough for everyone!” Meavu beamed at him. “Come!”

“I’m coming, Kip,” Attu said. “Don’t pull me so hard.” He was hungry. And ice bear meat was greasy and smoky. It was the best meat any of the clan had ever eaten.
Almost worth a few scars,
Attu thought.
Almost.

They headed back toward camp. Yet, at the thought of eating the ice bear meat, Attu felt uneasy. Moolnik was impulsive, a reactor, not a planner. Would he place guards around the camp as Paven had done, or would he simply ignore the threat of the ice bears and send his men out to hunt nuknuks, leaving the women and children behind, defenseless?

Attu’s stomach knotted at the thought.
I must speak with Father about this,
he decided, and hurried even faster, causing Meavu to jog beside him to keep up.