Death in the Time of Ice (17 page)

It turned its head and Jeek saw the gleam of two front teeth, wide and white, curving outside its mouth for a length greater than Jeek’s hand-span. A hard lump rose in his throat.

The creature turned its dripping body, faced them, and sat. It eyed the Hamapa band with cautious curiosity. Jeek wished he could see inside the mind of the majestic beast. He gazed into the small, bright eyes, but they were opaque to him. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat.

His brother and sister tribe members started to fan out slowly, but, with the movement, the beaver lumbered to the pond above its dam, slipped into the water, slapped the water with its long, curious tail, and disappeared under the roiling surface.

The hunters continued moving until they surrounded the pond and lodge, then hunkered down to wait. Jeek felt they would never spear the beaver. It would probably wait inside its lodge until they left.

They waited. Sister Sun traveled far, throwing a lengthening shadow of the lodge across the pond. No beaver appeared. The water lay still, its surface unbroken.

A thought came from Kung.
We have to prod it out of its dwelling. I will take a long stick and climb on the structure, then poke him and make him come out.

Jeek could feel the adult females, Enga and Roh, resisting this idea, but the rest of the youth thought it might work. The older females capitulated and gave Kung permission to try to move the beaver. How much did the Hama’s desire to give preference to Kung influence them? Jeek wondered. Roh told Kung that there was a place at the top of the lodge that was not as sturdy as the rest, to provide ventilation. Maybe he could get at them through that place.

Jeek saw a thought of Kung.
My Passage Ceremony will be soon. I will be named Kung Beaver Slayer.

He countered back to Kung,
You are not slaying the beaver. You will be Kung Beaver Poker.

Kung did not like that. He shut Jeek out and went toward the trees edging the water upstream to find a stout limb. He returned with a long spruce branch, stripped the needles, then stole toward the lodge.

He had no trouble wading through the chest-high water. He stopped when he got to the pile. A soft breeze had sprung up and carried the odor of the stale water to Jeek. It also carried the strong musk of the animals that must lie waiting inside the lodge.

It carried one more odor, too. Jeek smelled fear in Kung, but not as much as the fear Kung had radiated on the caribou hunt. Jeek decided to send good wishes for Kung. If this did work, and the beaver were speared, it would be a very good thing for the Hamapa. Kung disdained the well-wishes of Jeek. He turned his head toward Jeek and gave him a sneer.

With one foot, his skin-wrap dripping with pond water, Kung tested the wall before him. It held. He took a step, then another, then put his hands down and started climbing the wall of domed sticks on all fours, still gripping his stick. He moved so slowly Jeek knew his fear was holding him back.

At last Kung neared the top. Jeek felt lightheaded from holding his breath. Kung straddled the top of the mound and began prodding it with his stick. Jeek heard a few twigs snap. Kung jabbed harder. More pieces of the shelter dislodged and fell.

He looked around and grinned, then attacked with his full strength. He brought the stick down again and again. But not on the beavers, on the lodge.

The females were sending him advice.
Start poking. Poke the beavers. Don’t hit the walls.

Jeek was about to add his message to theirs, advising him to go for the smallest one, when it happened.

A section of mud and twigs gave way.

Kung fell into the beaver lodge.

Jeek and the rest of the Hamapa sprang up. Stood paralyzed for a moment. Then they all dashed toward the screams and skirmishing coming from inside. Roh reached the lodge first, scrambled up the slope and, peering into the structure, began thrusting her spear downward. Enga soon joined her.

All Jeek could see from the minds of Enga and Roh were confusion at the dark interior, and worry that they must not stab Kung.

The large beaver Jeek had seen earlier surfaced near the dam, clambered over it, and splashed through the swamp, escaping the hunters. Jeek could see several cuts bleeding through its fur, but the animal did not look mortally injured. Two smaller beavers followed the big one. They appeared unhurt.

Kung was injured, however. Enga and Roh lowered themselves to the floor of the lodge, then tore down its walls. They carried him, dripping a great quantity of his Red and still screaming, out of the ruined beaver lodge and to shore. Enga gripped Kung’s shoulders and Roh his legs. Kung’s head was carried higher because Enga was taller than Roh. He appeared to be clutching his arms together across his chest. They set him gently on the ground and tried to soothe him.

Jeek tried to see the source of all that Red. Kung was losing so much Jeek thought he would not live. Akkal and Mootak hacked at some of the hunting skins, peeling them into strips. With shaking hands, Enga grabbed a piece of skin and wiped at the blood.

Then Jeek saw that Kung’s hand gripped the end of his other arm. It was severed just below the elbow. The beaver must have bitten it off. Jeek reeled. Felt dizzy. But he could not take his eyes from the horrific sight. He swallowed the bitter bile that rose in his throat and managed not to vomit.

Shame washed over Jeek for having felt animosity toward Kung earlier. How could he have let petty personal feelings rise above the good of the tribe? He felt deep dishonor, unworthiness. He did not deserve to be a Hamapa. He stared at the crimson stump.

As fast as Enga dashed it away, more Red appeared and gushed from the place where Kung’s arm should have been. Akkal and Mootak worked quickly. They wrapped strips of hide tightly around his arm, then whipped some more skins over the wound.

Jeek felt the jagged agitation of everyone, but Kung’s fierce, vivid, screeching agony overrode their swirling emotions. Enga took a deep breath and straightened her back, then leaned in toward Kung’s face to focus his attention on her.

We must get you back to the village,
Enga told Kung.
You must stay calm until we reach Zhoo of Still Waters.
Jeek didn’t think Kung heeded Enga’s thoughts. He might have heeded her horror at his mutilation, though. Or that of Roh, or any of the rest of them. They couldn’t conceal it.

The other young males hurried to fashion a carrier from the remaining hunting skins, then the failed hunters slogged through the swampland and rushed into the woods.

Kung screamed for a while, then stopped his screeching, moaned and thrashed for a short time, and finally fell still and quiet. All they heard was the pounding of their feet on the dirt trail and their heavy panting as they ran. Jeek could tell he was not the only one feeling broken inside.

Chapter 13

It was too bad, Enga Dancing Flower thought, that Kung’s burial ceremony was not what it should be. Aside from the fact that there was not enough food for a feast, and hunger gnawed at her belly like the teeth of the giant beaver, there was not enough grief for a proper mourning.

Kung had no living birth mother, only Cabat the Thick, his seed-giver. Akkal had also come from Cabat’s seed, but he had been born of the Aja Hama. Two males could not be more different than Kung and Akkal. Still, Akkal came to help. But with only two family members, it fell to others to help attend Kung. Doon and Mootak, with some of Mootak’s birth family, as well as several others who, Enga surmised, were trying to atone for not liking him, gathered in the wipiti of the single males where Kung had lived.

Enga joined them, she, too, feeling guilty for disliking Kung.

Cabat squatted near the body of his son. He reached out to stroke the cold, lifeless hair, then sat back and let the others do the work.

The Hamapa stripped his handsome body and rubbed his skin with mint-scented water. Enga braided his hair, then they carried him out to the Paved Place.

The tribe had sat around the fire with ashes on their faces last night and had gone through the motions of mourning Kung. But true grief, the kind that dripped with black, came only from Cabat and dim-witted Doon. Even the grief of Mootak, Kung’s other follower, was edged with a tinge of relief. Cabat’s loud wails had screeched on and on until Panan One Eye had told him to stop. That, however, had only made Cabat escalate his keening. It battered Enga’s ears until very late.

Kung’s birth mother had died shortly after he was born. And he was born just before the two toddler orphans, Enga and Ung, were taken in by the tribe.

Poor Kung
, thought Enga.
How awful to go to death with so few true mourners.
Enga wondered if their arrival had taken away attention that the baby Kung had needed. Would he have been easier to get along with if he had been cared for more? She held these thoughts in dark blue to keep them private.

Now, as high sun neared, the New One sat with them on the Paved Place, next to Vala Golden Hair, sewing, as they sang a Death Chant for Kung. The New One puckered his flat brow. Enga thought he probably didn’t understand what was going on. He looked up from time to time, his pink eyes sometimes avoiding hers, sometimes searching for them. Enga was beginning to think of him as Skin Worker.

He could do almost miraculous things with his tiny stitching tools, made from bird bones with a hole drilled in one end, the other end sharpened to pierce the hides he sewed. He held the skin and the stitching bone close to his face, occasionally putting it down and resting his eyes. The Hamapa made neck adornments from bird bones, but had never used them for stitching. Enga had seen Vala holding the bird bones once or twice and wondered if she was trying to learn to use them.

At high sun most of the tribe trudged across the prairie to the rock they used for laying out their dead. It was far enough away from the village they did not have to see the raptors feasting on the body, but close enough so the Elders could walk there and back.

Enga’s face, like the other broad faces, had been cleansed of ashes at new sun, and, like the others, she wore her hair loose. Hama led the procession, her strut parading her consciousness of her position. Just behind her walked the two elder males, Panan One Eye and Cabat the Thick. Panan’s bald pate shone in the sunlight. Enga thought his round head matched Cabat’s round belly. He seemed to drag his squat, heavy body through the thick grasses.

Normally, four sturdy adult males would bear Kung’s body, but the adult males were still gone on their trading mission. So Akkal and the adolescents, Mootak, Doon, and young Jeek, struggled with the body hoisted onto their shoulders, trying to step in rhythm. Sannum Straight Hair, his long dark locks mingling with his beard, carried his small hollow log. He beat it with a stick to keep time. The rest of the tribe streamed after them, walking to the beat and lightly chanting, along with Lakala Rippling Water, a song to the Spirit of Death.

Enga paced behind Ung Strong Arm. The sun glinted off her sister’s short, fiery tresses, and off Lakala Rippling Water’s long light-blond locks that swung to her shoulders. Lakala walked beside Ung and reached to steady her when she occasionally faltered.

Most of the tribe were wrapped in cold weather fur capes of mammoth, brown bear, and moose. The New One, though, limped along in a fitted garment of camel skin he had fashioned for himself. The clothing accentuated how much slimmer and taller his body was than theirs, how much narrower his shoulders, and how thin his arms and legs. The only pale skin that showed was his face and his hands.

At the rock, gleaming smooth and flat amid the waving grasses, they halted. The drum and the chanting stopped. The four who had carried him lifted Kung onto the rock in silence, then rubbed the bit of bear fat they had brought over his skin. Enga joined the others in casting fragrant crushed leaves and pine needles onto the body. Very few flowers bloomed this close to Dark Season. For Kung, there were not enough flowers, not enough grief, and not enough food for a feast.

Hama worked her way over to stand beside Cabat. The way she touched his shoulders and caressed his face made Enga wonder if Hama desired to mate with Cabat. Hama had taken her birth sister’s position in the tribe. Did she now want her sister’s mate?

Hama and Cabat turned and left before everyone else.

After they had gone, Enga was startled to feel ripples running through the group amassed around the rock. Ongu Small One’s soft thought-speak rose above the others, but narrowed so it would not reach beyond the group.

She is not the right leader for us.

She was answered by several others, agreeing.
Bad luck has been ours since she has led us… The future does not look good… There are others more qualified…

Should Enga mention the dirt on the hands of Nanno Green Eyes after her birth sister’s death? Did it mean they had struggled, fought over something? For now she kept quiet. Her last comments on Aja Hama’s death hadn’t been welcome.

After the rites for Kung, Enga tried to take a nap, but her mind would not quit working, so she joined the tribe members back at the fire on the Paved Place. She looked around for Jeek. Her thought feelers found him in his own wipiti, staying there for the rest of the day and helping his mother with her patients. He said he couldn’t meet with her now.

They clustered there in silence, not sharing thoughts. Hers strayed to the absent traders. She hadn’t received any messages from them for several days and wondered why that was. She tried to send a loving thought to Tog Flint Shaper, but didn’t feel it reached him. If only she could feel his arms wrapped around her.