The Animal Wife (17 page)

Where would I hide it? I looked around for a tree. No tree was tall enough, of course. I thought of the water. Perhaps I should sink the carcass in the lake, to come back for it later with my uncles. And so I should have done, but by then I wanted to walk out of the dark woods, with everyone watching, with meat.

Liking more and more the idea of walking into the lodge clearing with a carcass on my shoulders, with Pinesinger's eyes and all the other women's eyes on me, with my uncles watching me, just a little ashamed that they hadn't decided to take me hunting, I grasped the reindeer's hairy ankle and gave his corpse a tug that pulled him straight. He was very heavy. Would I have to drag him? Dragging him would get him there, of course, but not without spoiling the skin. My mind's eye didn't see me dragging him.

I shook his leg. It was still loose, but soon would stiffen. Getting down on one knee, I took his foreleg in one hand and his hind leg in the other and pushed my shoulder into his belly. Pulling his legs tightly across my chest, I stood up unsteadily. For a moment I waited with my feet braced, getting used to the weight. I saw that I might be able to carry him after all, at least for a way. When I got tired, if I couldn't put him down, I could lean against a tree.

Off I went, taking smaller steps than I was used to taking. From the corner of my eye I saw the three ravens launch themselves from the rock to the air, and soon heard them shouting above me. For a long time I staggered forward. My bending legs and straining shoulders ached, a place in my back became sore where my spear dug into it, and sweat stung my eyes. I went from the willow thicket to the pine woods, and keeping the shining water to my right, I made for the end of the lake. The ravens kept pace with me, flying from tree to tree and waiting. Round and red and far away, the sun went down.

Not long before dark I heard something close behind me. I also heard the ravens' excited screams. Sure that I would see the tiger, I turned my whole body, planning to drop the carcass and back away from it, leaving it to the tiger. Yet it was not the tiger who followed me but the wolves, six of them spread out among the trees, ears up, eyes wide, their minds on how they would soon be eating reindeer. If I could have bent down, I would have stoned them.

But how was I to turn my back to them? The wolves seemed to have asked themselves the same question. Their tongues rolled cheerfully as they stood waiting for me to try. Yet if I didn't keep walking, I'd be standing there forever. Unsure of what might happen, I started to turn around. The wolves moved forward. I turned to face them. They stopped in their tracks but now seemed almost poised to rush me. I saw how I would soon lose meat to these wolves, or even the whole carcass, and my mind's eye saw me arriving at the lodge with nothing at all, then explaining to my uncles how I came to lose my spear and a reindeer.

"Be gone!" I said.

The wolves stopped at the sound of my voice but didn't do as I asked. I thought to put the carcass in the water. Off I went toward the shore, the wolves following. Expecting to feel at any moment a tug at the tail or a tug at the antlers, I shouted again, hurrying. The next thing I knew I was stumbling backward into the water, glad that the carcass was saved. Down I threw it with a splash, and snatching up the biggest rocks I could find, I aimed one, then another at the nearest wolves, throwing with such force that the rocks moaned in the air. One hit a wolf on the side with a loud thump. The wolf cried, and all the wolves vanished.

"Lululululululu iyo!" I shouted across the water.

"Iyo!" answered a woman's voice. "Kori? Is it you?"

On the far shore I saw Andriki's wife, Hind, standing still among the trees. She was carrying something, a waterskin. She had been on her way to the lake.

"Aunt!" I called. "Send people with spears to me!"

"What's wrong?" called Hind.

"I've killed a reindeer. The wolves want it. My spear is broken. Send someone here."

"Are you safe?" she called.

"Yes, Aunt. Please just send someone with a spear!"

"Wait there," I heard her say.

So I waited. What else did she think I would do? The daylight faded and the woods filled with faint moonlight as the first quarter of the Fire Moon shone behind the clouds. Strangely warm, the wet wind stirred the surface of the lake. The wolves came back and sat down to wait. I wished that Father or Andriki was with me, there by the lake in the windy night.

Suddenly a terrible new fear seized me. What if my uncles weren't back? What if my aunt came to rescue me? I prayed to the Bear. "Send my uncles, not my aunt," I begged. "I'll burn fat for you!"

The Bear agreed—just then I heard my uncles Andriki and Maral calling, "Kori! Kori!"

"Uncles," I answered, "I'm here."

O
N THAT STRANGE
, warm night there was distant lightning. Wind was in the cloudy sky, so the moonlight flickered like flames. Outside the lodge we built a fire, and by firelight and moonlight we butchered my reindeer and cooked the meat. The Bear was near, waiting for the fat I saved for Him. I could feel Him. He likes the wind to carry the smell of smoke and meat.

People spoke of Kori's reindeer. For a while the only sound we made was chewing, chewing. Hind noticed something and stood up, then sat down again. I looked. At the edge of the trees were six pairs of round green eyes—the wolves sat on their heels, watching us eat.

I was very happy. Best of all, in a way, was that my uncles had killed nothing, although they had found dung and footprints in a wide thicket where the horses seemed to shelter. The weather was so strangely warm that the horses weren't taking shelter, though. My uncles had come home with nothing but the smell of horse dung on their hands and moccasins. I had brought a reindeer!

When I could eat no more, I rubbed the grease into my hands and face. Andriki said, "You make us happy, Kori. We will sing now. And you must choose a song."

I remembered songs to the Bear and the Woman Ohun, but these were prayers. Not for fun would people sing these songs. I also remembered my mother's "Frog Woman's Song," but it was for women, and against men at that. I was sorry I had even remembered it. "What song, Uncle?" I asked. "I never learned any."

"You didn't learn songs?" cried Andriki. "It's a good thing we took you from your Uncle Bala's people. Here we teach young people how to sing. Since my brother and I hunted horses, I will sing about horses." Clearing his throat, he did.

 

You with round hooves,
We will hunt you.
You with woman's hair,
We will kill you.
You with a woman's voice,
We will cook you.
You with a woman's rump,
We will crack your bones.
Your husband won't avenge you.
The first time he saw us,
He ran.
The last time he saw us,
He also ran.

 

"That song is called 'The Mare,'" said Rin above the voices of the others, all by then singing. The style of singing was called wolf-singing: not all the voices sang the same notes, but men's and women's voices sang different notes, some high, some low, always weaving. It was a style used by Mother's people. So I sang too, noticing that the wolves had moved closer together and deeper into the trees.

"You did well, Kori," said my Uncle Maral when we had finished the song. "Hear how happy you made us. Last night we had no fat to give the spirit. Tonight we have plenty." Across Maral's palm drooped a long, lumpy strip of fat from the skin of the reindeer's belly. Carefully Maral placed the strip on the fire. "Honored Spirit," he said, looking up at the moon as the fat began to crackle and flame, "take this from my brother's son, your kinsman, Kori. Like us, he is an owner of this lodge. Like us, he feeds you. Hona."

"Hona," said we all.

"We must bring the meat into the coldtrap," said Hind. "Look at the wolves there, waiting to rob us."

Maral looked over people's heads to the wolves. In the dark woods their eyes no longer shone, but their shadows sometimes moved among the shadows of the trees. "Be gone," said Maral to the wolves. But of course they didn't obey.

Not until the rest of my reindeer was safe in the coldtrap and we were taking off our clothes and spreading out our sleeping-skins did I think to mention that I had seen smoke and heard chopping. At first no one wanted to listen.

"There's a warm pond in those hills," said Hind. "Mist comes from it. When my husband first brought me here, I took the mist that comes off that pond for smoke."

"Chopping?" asked Maral.

"Yes, Uncle, and smoke too."

"That was me. I was chopping," he said, easing his naked body into his sleeping-skins.

"In the four hills? Up in the Breasts of Ohun?"

"Not in the hills! Out there." With his lips he pointed north.

"Uncle, I think there are people in the hills," I said. "I saw their smoke. I heard them chopping."

At last my words seemed to find him. Across the low fire that burned in the owners' end of the lodge, Maral's eyes met mine. "Smoke and chopping in the hills?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Again, Kori. Tell us again what you think you saw and heard."

So I did, beginning with the line of geese, ending with the sound of chopping. The people in the lodge fell silent and looked at each other. At last Maral said, "I don't like it. We should go to see what made these sounds. We should go now, but there's the Lily. We'll go in the morning."

But by morning Maral and the others had convinced themselves that I had been mistaken about the sounds. No one was in the hills, they said, nor could there be. Who would know about the pond there? Nothing important was there except the stream that ran from it into Narrow Lake. Who would camp by swampy Leech Pond and not by its fresh-running stream? And who could find the little, hidden pond except by following the stream? If people had been following the stream, they would have come to Narrow Lake. We would have seen them. If they had passed before we came, we would have found their tracks.

Andriki still seemed doubtful, though. Leech Pond was unimportant, it was true, but a warm spring fed it, he said. He reminded Maral that he and I had found a long-abandoned camp of strangers near another spring, Uske's Spring. Perhaps there were strangers who favored springs. As for their finding it, by watching the geese anyone could see that water was there. With the geese as guides, all anyone would have to do to find the water was to climb the hills.

"That may be true," said Maral. "You should at least go to see. Go carefully. Just look. Come back and tell us what you find. Together we'll decide what to do. Until then the rest of us should hunt the horses before the Lily gets to them. Listen." We listened. Outside, ravens were calling as if they knew we had food. "Go out and stone those birds," said Maral to Ako. To Andriki he said, "We need wood. On your way back, bring wood. And you women," said Maral to the women, "you also bring wood."

***

So Andriki and I set out for the place where I had heard the chopping. By now it was full daylight of a cloudy morning. Under the clouds the pink light of the newly risen sun spread through the woods. Side by side we walked through the grass toward the steaming lake, each of us making his own trail in the dew.

Where I had stopped to listen the night before, we stopped again, and this time we heard faraway voices. I thought for a moment they were human voices, but no—we saw a flight of geese dropping out of the clouds to a place between the left Breasts of Ohun. Andriki and I looked at each other. "The pond," he said, and pointed with his lips and chin to the hillside. We would go to the water where the geese had dropped.

Up the slope we went, following for a time a trail made by hares and foxes, a trail as faint and thin as a spider's web. It was much too narrow for us and didn't go where we wanted to go. Leaving it, we forced ourselves through the juniper and the harsh, thigh-high berry scrub, Andriki leading. The summits were farther than they seemed, but we crashed forward, breaking twigs with every step, leaving a rough new trail behind us. Every now and then a grouse rose up, startling us with the noise of its wings. In the warm, damp air we began to sweat, so we took off our parkas and opened our shirts. Soon our skins were stuck with berry leaves. Our sweat drew little black wasps to bother us. When the sun was high, we stopped to eat berries, because it seemed a shame to leave them for the ptarmigans, and besides, the summit seemed almost as far as when we had started. We ate until the afternoon, when we looked at each other and began walking again.

It was midafternoon when we reached the summit. There the harsh berry growth gave way to patches of juniper among moss and lichen or to dense ground-willows growing from the cracks between bare, dark stones. Before us shone the pond, with snowball sedge along its banks. In the dazzle of light sparkling on the water I saw a dark thing moving. One of the geese? I poised my spear.

But like a muskrat the thing turned suddenly toward us. It was a human head, with hair floating behind it—a person! Just like an otter or a muskrat, the person was swimming! I had never seen a person doing that before. Quickly Andriki pulled me to a crouch, down so the juniper hid us, where we could watch unseen. But the person swam with his chin high, his eyes squinting against the sun and water—he didn't see us.

We could see him, though. We saw that he wasn't one of our people. He seemed young. His wet head was small, his face was round and flat, and down the middle of his forehead was a long blue mark. I knew what the mark was—a row of small scars rubbed with ashes, like the Scars of Ohun which our women put on their buttocks. I didn't know what to think of this muskrat person swimming toward us with such a private mark on his forehead! Afraid and excited by the sight of him, I was ready to laugh aloud.

On he came into the reeds, straight for us, squinting at the sun's dazzle, as serious as a muskrat, the corners of his mouth drawn down. At the water's edge he suddenly arched his pink back and pushed his rump into the air, on his hands and feet in the water as if getting ready to stand up. His black hair, which stuck to his back, parted over his ears.