Ivory and Bone (2 page)

I
lie in the grass with my eyes closed, listening for the whir of honeybee wings, but it’s too early in the season for bees and I know it. I needed an excuse, I guess, something to say to get out of camp for a while, and the bees will be back soon, anyway. Before the next full moon comes, these wildflowers will be covered in bees and I’ll be hunting for their hives. I’m just a little ahead
of them.

“Kol!”

I sit up at the sound of Pek’s voice, calling from the southern edge of the meadow. It’s a wonder I hear him at all, with such a stiff wind pushing down over the Great Ice that forms the far northern boundary of our hunting range. He waves his spear over his head, and a brief flash of sunlight reflects off the polished-stone point—a momentary burst of light, like a wink of the
Divine’s eye. Pek calls out again, and it sounds like “a boat,” though that can’t be right. From
so far away, into the wind, he could be saying anything.

Pek is a swift runner, and he reaches me before I have time to worry about what he has to say to me that couldn’t wait until I returned to camp. The skin of his face glows pink and tears run down his face from the sting of the wind.

“A boat,”
he says. He sets his hands on his knees and bends, sucking air.

“Did you run the whole way from camp?”

“Yes,” he says, tipping his head to let the wind blow his hair from his eyes so he can look at me. Sweat glistens on his forehead. “A boat is on the beach. A beautiful long canoe dug out from the trunk of a single tree—you wouldn’t believe how beautiful.”

I run my eyes over Pek’s face, still
somewhat soft and boyish at sixteen. He favors our mother—he has her easy smile and eyes that glow with the light of a secret scheme. “Is this a game? Are you playing a trick on me—”

“Why would I bother to run all the way out here—”

“I’m not sure, but I know that there’s no such thing as a boat made of the trunk of a single tree—”

“Fine. Believe what you want to believe.”

Pek rolls his spear
in his right hand and peers off into the empty space in front of us, as if he can see into the past, or maybe the future. Without warning, he takes a few skipping steps across the grass and, with a loud exhale of breath, hurls his spear—a shaft of mammoth bone tipped with an
obsidian point—at an invisible target. He had the wind at his back to help him, but I can’t deny it’s a strong throw. “Beat
that,” he says, picking up my own spear from where I’d discarded it on the grass earlier.

My spear is identical to my brother’s—a shaft of mammoth bone—but instead of obsidian, I prefer a point of ivory. It’s harder to shape, but ivory is stronger. I grip the spear, tensing and relaxing my hand until the weight of it feels just right. I take three sliding steps and roll my arm forward, hand over
shoulder, releasing the spear at the optimal moment. It is a perfectly executed throw.

Still, it lands about two paces short of Pek’s. I may be his older brother, but everyone jokes that Pek was born with a spear in his hand. He has always been able to out-throw me.

“Not bad,” he says. “That should be good enough to impress the girls.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” I say, forcing a laugh. There
are no girls our age in our clan, something Pek and I try to joke about to hide the worry it causes us. But it’s not a joke, and no one knows that better than Pek and I do.

Without girls, there will be no wives for my brothers and me. Our clan could dwindle, even end.

“You won’t have to remember for long.” Pek’s gaze rests on something past my shoulder as an odd smile climbs from his lips to
his eyes. Suddenly, this doesn’t feel like a joke anymore. My stomach tightens, and I spin around.

At the southern edge of the meadow, at the precise spot where Pek had appeared just moments ago, two girls come into view, flanked by our father, our mother, and a man I don’t recognize. “What—”

“Do you believe me now about the boat?”

I have no reply. I stand still as ice, unsure how to move without
risking falling down. It’s been so long—over two years—since I’ve seen a girl my own age.

My eyes fix on these two as they approach, a certain authority in their movements. They practically saunter toward us, each carrying a spear at her side. One, dressed in finely tailored hides, walks slightly ahead of the group. Her parka’s hood obscures her hair and her face is half-hidden in shadow, but
there’s no question that she’s a girl—the swing in her shoulders and the movement in her hips give her away.

The second girl is you.

From this distance I can’t quite see your face, so I notice your clothing first. Your parka and pants must have been borrowed from a brother—they’re far less fitted than those of the first girl—yet there is femininity in the smaller things, like the curved lines
of your long, bare neck, and the golden glow of your tan skin in the sunlight. Your hood is back and your head is uncovered, letting your black hair, loose and unbraided, roll like a river on the wind behind you.

You come closer, and I’m struck by the beauty in the
balance of your features. I notice the strong lines of your eyebrows and cheekbones tilting up and away from the softer lines of
your mouth. Your eyes—dark and wide set—scan the meadow, and I’m startled by the way my heart pounds as I wait for them to fall on me.

This may be the most startling and marvelous day of my life.

As the group advances, however, I notice you drop back. The closer you come, the more certain I am that you are miserable. Your expression—tense jaw, pursed lips—makes your annoyance plain. I imagine
you’ve been dragged along on this journey. Your head pivots, your eyes sweep from side to side, taking in what must appear to you to be no more than a wind-beaten wasteland. To me, the meadow is like the sea, life teeming below the surface. But to most people—to you, clearly—it’s just empty grassland.

My mind clogs with questions, but before I can ask Pek a single one, the five of you stop in
front of us.

“Son,” my father starts. There’s tension in his voice. A stranger might not notice, but I can tell. “This day has brought us good fortune. These are our neighbors from the south, from the clan of Olen. They visited us once several years ago, when they were traveling from their former home north and west of here, to the place they now call home.”

I remember this, of course. Our clan
has such infrequent contact with outsiders that when a group passes through, I
don’t forget. It was five years ago; I was twelve. I remember young girls of about my age. I realize, standing here now, that I remember you.

You were traveling by boat, a small clan moving south in kayaks made of sealskin stretched over a frame of mammoth bones, just like the kayaks my own clan uses to fish and gather
kelp and mollusks.

I think of the boat Pek described—a canoe dug out of the trunk of a single tree. I’ve never even seen a canoe, though I’ve heard stories of them—open boats made of wood instead of hide and bone like our kayaks, long enough to carry several people at once. My own father tells of wooden canoes he saw with his own eyes, on a scouting trip he made south of the mountains, long before
I was born.

But I’ve never heard of a canoe made of the trunk of a single tree. I’ve never even imagined a tree that big.

Not until today.

There has already been talk of the need for our clan to attempt a move farther south. Our herds have been steadily dwindling—some have completely stopped returning from the south in the spring. Others, like the mammoths, have moved north, following the Great
Ice as it slides away from the sea.

Yet there has been one insurmountable obstacle to any plan for a southerly move. When your clan departed our shores five years ago, you did not leave as friends, but as enemies.

Even now, with the years stretching out between that day and this one, I can remember the bitterness of your clan’s departure. I remember the murmurs of a possible war. The fears that
kept me awake as a twelve-year-old boy—fears that my father could head south to fight and never return. As I stand here today, with the intervening years to dim the memories, bitterness still takes its place like an eighth figure in this circle of seven.

Still, whether you brought the bitterness with you or it joined us, uninvited, the three of you are here, and that suggests new prospects. Could
our two clans—enemies for five years—become friends, even allies? My mother must believe so. Nothing else would explain her presence out here in the meadow, since she so rarely hikes this far outside camp anymore. It would also explain the smile on my mother’s face.

She knows opportunity when it lands on her shore.

“Father invited our guests to hunt with us,” Pek says, raising his eyebrows while
giving me a small nod—two things I think are supposed to hold some kind of veiled meaning. All I can guess is that he’s warning me to keep calm and not try to back off from my role as a leader in the hunt.

Pek knows that I hate to hunt mammoths. Not because they are so dangerously immense, or because they are so difficult to bring down. Each kind of prey presents its own difficulties and dangers.
No, I hate to hunt mammoths because
their intelligence is impossible to ignore. They have more than a sense of fear; they have an understanding of death. They don’t run just because they are being chased; they run to avoid being killed.

They know that I am trying to kill them.

I didn’t always feel this way. Just a year ago, when I was Pek’s age, I begged our father before every hunt to let me
take the lead. Finally, he let me try. I went ahead of the rest of the hunting party. I gave the command when it was time to swarm the herd. And I threw the first strike that landed deep in the animal’s side.

It was a clean strike, and as the mammoth ran, blood poured from his wound, leaving a bright red trail in the frost under our feet. That moment is forever fixed in my mind—as the blood dripped
down, I believed I could feel the energy running out of the animal and flowing into me. I felt invincible. Pek landed a strike in the animal’s throat, just below his jaw. That weakened him quickly. Blood flowed from both wounds as he staggered and fell to four knees. I ran up alongside him, ready to celebrate the success of the kill.

But when I came up beside the wounded mammoth, he wasn’t ready
to give in, wasn’t ready to let go of the Spirit that dwelled within him. He struggled to raise himself once more, planting his left front foot and trying to stand.

The effort took the last of his strength. His huge frame
shuddered, and he dropped heavily to the ground, his head falling right at my feet.

I couldn’t avoid looking into the mammoth’s huge dark eye. Though his head lay half in snow
and half in mud, he stared right into me. The dark iris was like a hole I’d fallen into. There was knowledge in that eye. Knowledge that he was about to die and that I was the one who had caused it. But there was no condemnation. Only defeat.

A sudden gust of wind comes down hard from the north, shoving me out of my memories and back to the present. The same gust hits you in the face and you
grimace. It was warm lying in the grass—almost warm enough to encourage a honeybee to fly—but standing in the raw wind makes the day feel cold. My mother clears her throat. I realize that no one’s been introduced, and we’ve been standing staring at each other for a moment too long. I break the awkward silence by falling back on custom—I step forward and nod to the man in your group.

“I’m called
Kol,” I say. “I am the oldest son of Arem and Mala.”

The man nods in reply, the irresistible current of custom pulling us along. “My name is Chev. I am High Elder of the Olen clan. This is my sister Seeri.” He motions to the first girl, and I smile but I doubt she notices. Her eyes are fixed on Pek. “And my sister Mya,” he says, motioning to you.

Unlike Seeri, you meet my gaze. Your eyes narrow
and
I hope this is a response to the wind in your face, but somehow I don’t think it is.

“This is our younger son, Pek,” my mother says, her eyes sliding to Seeri’s face as she steps forward to pat Pek on one of his huge shoulders, ensuring everyone notices Pek was built to hunt. She’s seen the connection between Seeri and my brother and she intends to encourage it. “You are lucky to have him
with you today. He’s gifted with a spear, this boy. He’s—”

My father clears his throat. Mother’s eyes shift to me and I know what she had almost said—
He’s the best hunter in the clan.
It’s true, but since I’m the oldest, it’s probably not something my father wants her to say in front of guests. Not that it would matter. If you’re going to hunt with us, you’re going to find out anyway.

My father
raises his eyes, judging the progress of the sun. “We should start on our way. The Divine has brought us strong hunting partners, and I suspect she may be sending more good fortune our way. If I am right, we will have a kill before the sun is high in the sky.”

My mother pulls at the collar of my father’s parka. He is stubborn and insists upon leaving it open at his throat on all but the coldest
days of winter. He pushes her hand away, but he can’t stop his lips from curling at the corners. “Don’t fuss with us, Mala; we need to get on our way,” he says. “Besides, when we get back, you will have six hungry
hunters to feed. You’ll need time to get the kitchen going for the midday meal.”

My mother used to join in on the hunts, but that was a long time ago. Now the clan kitchen has become
her personal dominion. Knowing this, and knowing what your visit clearly means to my mother, I can only imagine the sort of meal we have to look forward to.

Mother gives nothing away. She simply shakes her head and turns to our guests. “Be safe,” she says. Then she pulls up the hood of her parka and starts back the way you all came.

Father defers to me to lead the way to the herd. I’ve been
out here in search of hives every day since we last stalked mammoths—unsuccessfully—seven days ago. I know where the herd is gathered, just beyond the ridge that rises to the east.

I may be leading the way, but my father stays close behind. He makes sure he stays close to Chev, too. As we walk, my father explains features of the landscape and points out places where saber-toothed cats have been
found to hide. This spring, these cats have become more active rivals for our game, but my father does not mention this. Pek walks almost shoulder to shoulder with Seeri, off to our right. I cannot see or hear you at all—not even your footfalls on the grass. I assume you are following at a distance, but I don’t dare turn my head to check.