Hope of Earth (17 page)

Normally when they traveled to a new hunting site they cut sturdy saplings to make a framework for a conical house. The poles were tied together at the top, and spread out to form a circle; then the band’s cache of hides was stretched over the pole framework and tied tight with cords. Stones anchored the base of the hides, making a nice tight shelter they could heat with a fire at its entrance. Two days of a warm shelter and a steady healing chant would drive out the boy’s illness, and he would begin recovering.

But this new territory was a harsh windswept plain. No trees were near, and no natural shelter. That wind was tearing into Bry’s clothing, pulling away the heat of his body, draining his vitality when he needed it most. If they had to spend a cold night on the ground, he would be finished. They could wrap him in hides, and lie close around him, but he would still be breathing the chill air. That was no good. The spirits were hovering near him, and they would take him if he did not find physical and magical protection.

She looked around. Maybe they could gather rocks, and make a circle high enough to serve as an effective windbreak, and stretch the hides over the top. They had done that on occasion when wood wasn’t sufficient. But she didn’t see any rocks; there were surely some scattered around, but clearly not enough to do the job in the time they had. In any event, Sam and Dirk were out hunting, so weren’t here to haul the heavy stones. Ned was here, but he was a lean young man, not powerful, not made for heavy physical labor. Jes was very similar to him, though she was a young woman. She was a good forager and a hard worker, but no rock hauler. Flo herself was way too fat for that sort of thing, and Wona too skinny and disinterested in hard work. So rocks were out.

She looked at Bry. He was sitting on the ground, hunched together. Lin was trying to help him, but was plainly inadequate. No, they had to have a good shelter. And there was none to be had.

“We’ll camp here,” Flo decided, determined to be decisive. There were, after all, the others to see to. They would have to eat and get through the night, hoping that tomorrow would bring the men with fresh meat. Their success had not been great recently, so that the berries and roots foraged by the women served as the main sustenance. Flo had been able to gain weight on that diet, but not the others. Thus Flo was an ideal figure of a woman, with the evidence of her survivability layered on her body. She came closest of her generation to matching the standard of the goddess dolls which for as long as any tale-teller remembered had represented the pinnacle of the female form. But she was lucky; the others needed animal flesh to feed them, as well as foraging.

“I’ll forage for firewood,” Ned said.

“I’ll forage for berries,” Jes said.

“Go with them,” Flo told Lin. “I’ll take care of Bry.” The girl looked doubtful, but obeyed. Flo sat down next to Bry and pulled him in to her to her copious bosom to share her warmth. He was shivering despite being well bundled. “We’ll get you through this somehow,” she told him, but she was afraid she lied.

She bared her huge breast and nursed Bry, as was the custom when the need was great. He was her brother, twelve years old and soon to be a man, but he needed sustenance. The youngest ones could get by on less, for a while. He smiled at her, wearily, and relaxed, reassured. Soon he was sleeping. She hugged him, aware of his burning heat; he would not sleep well, but any sleep was better than none. He was family; she had to help him all she could.

The two children, Wilda and Flint, came to join Flo, as they usually did. They were two years old and mostly weaned. Flo had nursed longer and better than Wona, having the body for it, and so both children seemed like hers now though Wilda was actually Wona’s. Wona had never evinced any great interest in sustaining her daughter; she had wanted a boy, and resented the fact that Flo had been the one to get a son.

Wona looked around, then wandered off, theoretically to forage. Flo regarded her as a loss; she seldom pulled her share if she could avoid it, and was generally a force for dissension. But there wasn’t much to be done about it; she was Sam’s wife, and Sam still doted on her. Apparently Sam could see no further than her beauty, such as it was; she was way too lean to handle a winter properly. But it was better to have her out of sight than here, Flo concluded; but for Sam, she’d have driven the woman out of the band long ago.

She reflected again on the irony of the way things had worked out. At the time Flo and Sam had gotten their mates from the same neighbor band, it had seemed that Wona was the bargain, and Dirk the loss. It was the other way around.

Lin came bounding back, her hair flouncing under the tight hair net. The girl was small for her age, but pretty, except for that hand. Sometimes Flo wished they had simply cut off the extra finger, back when the girl was a baby. But it hadn’t happened, and now it was too late. She was twelve years old, the same as Bry, and very soon, food and climate permitting, would become a beautiful if thin young woman. But the years would put some mass on her, when needed.

“Bones! Bones!” Lin cried, excited.

So they had found some bones. Scattered across the landscape there were bones, because when animals died the bones were what didn’t dissolve away. Many of their tools and weapons were made of carved bones, including some savagely barbed spears. Why did that so excite the girl?

“Bones!” Lin said again as she arrived. “All over! Big! Dry! Piles of them!”

Flo didn’t want to deflate her, but didn’t see the point. “We need food and scraps of wood for a fire,” she reminded the girl gently. “And poles for a shelter. Your brother—”

“The bones—Ned says the bones will help—they’re bringing them. I must go help haul.” And she ran away again, following the faint path she had picked out.

What good would old bones do? They would have no usable marrow. But then Flo remembered that some bones would burn, if the fire was hot enough. Not as good as wood, but better than nothing. So maybe it was worthwhile.

Then Ned and Jes came into sight, looking like two young men, hauling on something. Flo strained her gaze, trying to make it out, without disturbing Bry. It was low to the ground and very long, like a pole. Its dragging end furrowed the ground, clearly marking what had been a faint path.

Then her mouth fell open. It was a tusk! A mammoth tusk. Almost as long as two people lying end to end. What a monster!

Panting, they brought it near. “We can make a house with these,” Jes said. “There are so many!”

As a substitute for wooden poles. Now Flo saw the logic. “But that thing is curved,” she said, getting practical. “They won’t make a good point for the top.”

“We’ll tie them together anyway,” Ned said. “If we can just get enough of them here.”

Flo had a flash of inspiration. “If there are so many there—we should go there. Easier to move ourselves, than such heavy bones.”

Ned paused. “You make me feel stupid,” he said.-“Of course we should build it there.”

Had she really figured out something he had not? Flo wasn’t sure. Ned was very bright. Maybe he had simply wanted her to suggest it. “Maybe we’ll build another one here, later,” Flo said. “But for now, let’s go there.”

She lifted Bry, who stirred sleepily. “We must move, Bry,” she said. “But then we can rest. I will carry you.” She knew he would have protested, had he had the strength, but he didn’t.

Ned and Jes helped get the boy up in her arms. Then Flo marched after the two of them, following the scuffed line. She was used to carrying her own considerable weight around; she could handle his too, for a while.

The bones turned out to be in a hollow that looked as if it had once been a bend of a river. Perhaps a temporary flood during a heavy rain, that had carried the bodies along with it, then pooled here, leaving the bones when it sank away. There certainly were a lot of them; she had never seen such a white jumble. A dozen mammoths, maybe.

But first things first. She found a clear place and laid Bry down. “Can you build it here?”

“Anywhere,” Ned said. “We just need to figure out how to do it.”

“Tie the bones together,” Flo said. “Lin and I will make rope.”

But he hesitated. “These bones are big. The framework will be big. Our hides won’t cover all of it.”

So he had thought it through. He had a good notion of what to do, and had anticipated the problem. Big irregular bones could not make as efficient a house as straight wood poles, and they had no hides to spare. A house with big holes would be largely useless as shelter, because the cutting wind would keep the interior cold.

She looked again at the vast jumble of bones all around them. They were all sizes, but only the tusks were as long as good construction poles. Unless they made the house entirely of tusks—but there weren’t
that
many good ones. They were stuck with an inefficient big bone-pile shelter—or nothing.

“Put the hides inside,” Lin suggested.

Jes laughed. Whoever heard of such a thing? But Ned looked thoughtful. “Could we tie them in place?” he asked.

“We can
sew
them in place,” Flo said. “Pass threads through the stitches, then loop them over the tusk-poles. It will be clumsy, but it can be done.”

“Then it shall be done,” Ned agreed. “Lin can work with you on the hides; Jes can work with me.”

“What about Wona?” Lin asked mischievously.

“She can choose,” Jes said, grimacing. “When she shows up.” By tacit agreement they did not openly speak ill of their brother’s wife.

They got to work. Ned and Jes hauled bones into a nearby pile and separated the tusks. Lin ran to dig out their supply of twine, but realized that it wouldn’t be enough for this. But some distance away from the bones they had seen a mass of shed mammoth hair, so she went for that and carried it back. Flo drew out lengths of it and twisted them into a serviceable cord. They would need a lot.

Wona showed up. She surveyed the situation, then went to join Ned. Flo was surprised; usually the woman chose the least rigorous task to work on. But this time Wona threw herself into it and seemed really to be helping. They did need the help, because there were so many bones to move, and some of them evidently weighed more than any two people together did.

Bry stirred. Fio laid a hand on his forehead. He was still burning. “We are making a house,” she told him. “Soon it will be warm.” He sank back into his troubled sleep.

“It
must
be warm,” Lin breathed. She was Bry’s closest sibling, their two mothers having birthed them within days of each other, with the same father, and the two were also emotionally close. Just as Jes was to Ned, and Flo herself to Sam. Lin was in most respects a fine girl, but she would be a wreckage if Bry died. She had been distraught when Bry had been lost, and came to life again only when they found him. There had been a time when Bry had teased her about her fingers, and she had thrown dirt in his face, but that was long past; now he was her stoutest defender. The girl was neither crying nor showing particular concern now, and that was a troublesome sign, because normally she expressed herself freely. She surely thought that to admit there was a problem would be to give it power. And, indeed, the spirits did seem to operate that way at times.

Meanwhile the construction of the house proceeded. Ned laid out the parts in an expanding pattern that resembled a giant flower, with the largest tusks in the center. Flo wasn’t sure what the point was, but knew that he had a reason. Wona continued to labor industriously, even working up enough heat to enable her to shed her outer jacket, just as Jes had; what was the matter with the woman?

Then they started assembling it. Ned heaved the point of one giant tusk up to waist height, which wasn’t hard because this was the light end, and the curve of the thing allowed it to rest its center on the ground. Jes hauled another tusk up similarly. They walked toward each other, swinging their two points around, until they crossed like two enormous spears. Then Wona took a length of cord and wound it around the tusks where they crossed, tying them together. Flo couldn’t hear their dialogue, but knew that Ned was giving instructions, so that their acts were coordinated.

They laid down the tied tusks, which now formed a huge semicircle. They picked up two more, and bound them together similarly. Then two more, smaller ones. Flo still couldn’t fathom the purpose.

They took yet smaller tusks and used the points to dig in the ground in several places around the edge of the circle. What was the point of that?

Then they heaved the first set up again, this time all the way, until they were holding it up so that it formed an arch higher than any of them could reach. The two base ends of it were set in two of the holes in the ground they had made. Aha; now she saw it. Anchorages, just as they normally did with wooden poles. They got the arch steady, and two of them let go, leaving Jes holding it up. The arch weighed several times what she did, but she was able to keep it balanced. The other two rolled mammoth skulls to the two bases of it, bracing it in place, and wedged smaller bones around, until Jes was able to let it go. There it stood, like a rainbow made of ivory.

Now they hauled up the second arch, which was slightly smaller than the first. They got it standing crosswise, its bases in two more holes, so that its highest point was under the highest point of the first one. They braced it similarly, until it too stood by itself.

The third arch was the easiest, angled against the other two, passing under both. They braced it until it stood.

Then they rolled a larger skull to a point in the center, under all three arches. Wona stood on it and reached up with cord. But she wasn’t tall enough to reach the intersection, even with that added height. Neither were Ned or Jes. Finally Ned got down, and Wona climbed onto his shoulders, her heavy hide skirt falling around the back of his head. Jes helped him get to his feet with that burden.

Now Wona could reach high enough to loop the cord around the three intersecting arches, without otherwise touching any of them. She made one loop and tied it; then Jes handed her more cord, and she made a second loop, and then a third. She pulled them all snug. The three arches were bound together.