The Animal Wife (19 page)

"If he fights you, Elder Brother, he fights me too," said Andriki. "But he doesn't mean what he says. He's excited. We're all excited. Instead of thinking about fighting each other, we should be thinking about this woman's people and what they want in our hunting lands."

"Make her tell us what they want!" said Maral.

"How?" asked Andriki. "She doesn't know our speech." To me he said, "Aren't Maral and I your father's brothers? If you fight us, don't you fight him? Does the thumb fight the fingers? You shame us and you spoil your own lodge. You should apologize."

Andriki was right, of course. So I apologized to Maral. Like Father, he was quick to anger but quicker to forget. Putting an arm around my shoulder, he said, "You found a woman. Yet women don't roam the country alone, like roe deer. If you're sorry you made me angry, just remember that you've made some strangers really angry. They're not far away. Let all of us think about that!"

"I'm already thinking," said Andriki. "I think some of us should stay here. We don't want to come back only to find our own women stolen by strangers. Three of us should stay while two scout. We'll go tonight." He looked at the western sky, where, low like a fire among the black trees, the round red sun burned on the horizon. Listening, we looked in all directions. The woods were shadowy, and wind was moving the trees. Andriki's breath steamed when he said, "We'll look for the strangers. If we find them, what then?" He paused, searching my face with his pale eyes. "You, youngster! You started this," he said. "Will you be as brave by night as you were when you captured a lonely woman in the daytime? Some big, grown man with a full beard and a strong arm owns this woman. Will you be as brave when you meet this man?"

"Come with me and see, Uncle," I said.

***

"If you set her free, I'll leave here forever and go to my Uncle Bala's lodge on Woman Lake," I said to Maral and the others who sat outside beside a large fire that threw light around the clearing to help us see whatever might be lurking at the edge of the trees. In the growing dusk the moon stood in the sky, casting the light Andriki and I would need for scouting. "Or die on the way," I added, remembering the enormous distance across the open plain.

"Set her free? Are we women, to oblige trespassing strangers?" asked Maral.

All the women were inside except Andriki's wife, Hind—she who sometimes hunted, she who owned a spear. Squinting into the dark woods, Hind sat on her heels next to Marten, her spear ready. When Maral asked if we were women, she glanced up at him.

The mood of the people of our lodge had changed greatly, from their first surprise at the sight of my woman and their anger at me for surprising them to a strong but quiet excitement, as if an important hunt were starting—as if we were after a bear or mammoths or large cow bison. As for me, I now saw Muskrat's people as my enemies, as hated intruders. I couldn't wait to find them.

So when the moon was high above the trees, Andriki and I went quietly back up into the Hills of Ohun. We were so ready to attack the strangers that we were almost disappointed to find, by the pond, the remains of a camp that had been abandoned in a hurry. The people had left by day, before dew fell, and had trampled their way across the brittle groundcover. The tracks belonged to a rather small man and two small women whose wide heel marks showed the weight of their packs. One of the women had also carried a burden on her right hip, probably a baby. The man was old and lame—he walked with a staff. These people had been followed by a young child, whose trotting footprints were the last in line. We followed these tracks straight east, down through the wide, moonlit sweep of brush and juniper, until the tracks left the hills. In all that distance no other people had joined the group. So we knew that my woman's people had been few, in a hurry to escape us. We had nothing to fear from them.

We went back to their old camp to learn what food they had been eating. In someone's stool in their latrine we noticed specks that were probably redberry seeds, and by the ashes of their fire we found some tiny fishbones—pike, maybe—and grouse feathers. These people hadn't been eating very well. Of course, with three women, two children, and a lame old man, that wasn't surprising. Also in the moonlit ashes we found the broken shaft of what seemed to be a tiny spear with a blade like the one we had found near Uske's Spring. Then we believed that these were the same people who had visited the spring, or at least the same kind of people, with their little bird-spears. We laughed, glad to have such good news for Maral. No wonder the strangers feared us! No wonder they had hurried away!

On our way home, down the western slope of Ohun's Breast, I happened to look back and noticed against the moon something dangling from the branch of a tree—a large wasps' nest, I thought at first. Round and black, it swung gently. But it wasn't a nest. Andriki and I took it down and found that it was a carrying bag. We opened it.

In it were some bits of shiny black rock, not found anywhere known to Andriki; some tinder; a bone needle; some twine; seven pieces of clothing, and a necklace. The necklace was very simple—part of an eyetooth with a hole bored in it and a string through the hole. The only thing was, Andriki and I couldn't tell what animal the tooth had been taken from. The tooth was thick, round, and as long as my thumb. It seemed to curve, but where the curve began the tooth was broken. What good does it do to wonder over things for which there is no answer? We set the necklace aside and spread out the clothes in the moonlight.

They were worn, shabby, and very strange. Although the leather had been worked like the leather of our clothes, it wasn't deerskin. The strange clothes were thinner and softer than ours, with much stitching in them, as many small skins had been sewn together. The ragged leather felt soft, as if it had once been soaked a long time in urine, and was black, as if it had once been rubbed with charcoal and fat. The clothes smelled strong, like foxes. And they were trimmed with balding fox fur.

When we separated them we found a long fur-trimmed shirt which pulled over the head, two ankle-high moccasins, a loincloth, a belt, and two long things that we finally figured out were pantlegs that tied around the waist, each worn separately. We laughed! How could people dress so strangely? They were my woman's clothes, we reasoned, left by her people in case she would follow them.

My woman would rather wear our people's clothes than her people's clothes, I thought. Anyone would. Even so, lest the sight of her things made her think of her people, I stuffed the bundle into a crack in the rocks. Foxes would take the leather clothing. From that time on, as I foresaw, my woman wouldn't walk in the Hills of Ohun unless she went with me.

The wind rose. We went back to the lodge, walking quietly and carefully and looking before and behind us on the trail, now dark with cloud shadows. More dangerous than my woman's people was the hunter who used trails at night, or watched beside them, crouched and hungry, with big green eyes.

***

At first my muskrat-woman seemed stupid. I began to think she knew nothing, as Rin was the only one of us she seemed to recognize. Every time she saw me she seemed bewildered, as if she had never seen me before. But if Rin left the lodge, my woman would watch the door until she came through it again. Of course, it was mostly Rin who fed her. Rin also gave her reindeer moss to soak up her menstrual blood and in time helped her make clothing.

Muskrat hadn't been with us long before Rin took one of my sleeping-skins to make proper trousers for her, I then had to sleep on my parka and other outer clothes. For moccasins Rin took part of the skin of the reindeer I had killed. The skin belonged to Frogga by way of her mother, Lilan, but as Rin pointed out, on bare feet Muskrat couldn't help with any of the work in winter, and someday I could give Lilan another skin, to replace the skin Muskrat owed.

For a bed we gave Muskrat two bald old skins that had once belonged to Father and had been stored behind the poles that braced the roof. The wolves had worried the skins and torn them trying to pull them free, but hadn't succeeded. Much hair fell out when we opened the skins. But they were better than nothing. Until her menstruation stopped, the woman couldn't sleep with me.

For a parka, Rin used the skin of the bear we had found robbing our mammoth carcass by the cave on the Hair River. Since Maral's and Father's spears had been the first into this bear, the skin belonged to Lilan, Truht, and Pinesinger. It had been carried from our summerground in three pieces. Before these women would part with their pieces of bearskin, I had to promise them the next three skins of reindeer hunted by me. And because any large skin gotten by my hunting would rightfully belong to Frogga, I had to promise Lilan my next three shares of meat to replace the reindeer skins.

I could see I would own nothing for a long time, not even the meat I killed or the new clothes I myself needed, because of my woman. I would have to borrow clothes and beg others to feed me. Yet not for a moment did I regret what I had done.

On the first night we were all too excited to think of bedding, so my woman slept on the bare floor. I didn't notice, since that night I lay with my spear in the coldtrap, sometimes dozing but never really sleeping, to be sure she didn't escape. I kept looking up to check on her, and each time saw her sitting by the fire. She seemed lonely, staring at the flames, thinking her own thoughts and sometimes crying. The sight made me want to take her into my bed—to comfort her and keep her warm, I told myself—but I was afraid of her menstruation, so I waited. The other people of the lodge kept waking too, lifting their heads uneasily to see what she was doing. Perhaps they were afraid she might take a knife to us all.

During the night we heard thunder. The wind grew strong, and just before dawn wet snowflakes began whirling down the smokeholes. We had gathered very little wood the day before and were saving what we had to cook the reindeer meat, so to keep warm we stayed in our sleeping-skins, listening to the thunder and the wind over the lodge and watching the snowflakes turn to water on the still-warm ashes of our dying fires. Only Muskrat sat up. With her arms and legs tightly folded to her chest, she had pulled her whole body inside my shirt. The empty sleeves dangled; her tangled hair stuck out of the neck; the flattened edge of her bare buttocks and the soles of her feet showed under the hem. Meanwhile snow was covering all traces of her people—their trail, their night's camp, the guiding signs they might have left for Muskrat. Even with moccasins, my woman couldn't follow. I slept at last, content.

***

Catching Muskrat was very exciting; so were the anger and the stir she caused, and so was the hunt for her people. We were excited to think of a stranger in our lodge, and to think of her people returning to find her. In case they came, we took care each day to circle widely through the woods several times, looking for the tracks of strangers. They didn't come, nor did we really expect them—but the thought of them excited us so much we talked of nothing else.

And the woman herself was exciting, certainly to me! Not even in my dreams had I ever thought of owning a full-grown woman. But I did, and not because my relatives and her relatives had come to an agreement, nor because gifts had changed hands. No—I owned her because I had seized her! So she was exciting in the same way that a large animal close by is exciting, filling a place with its unusual bulk, its strange look, and its special odor. Such an animal will always bring surprises, since no one can say what it will do. And it doesn't know speech!

But not until my woman finished her menstruation did the biggest excitement of all begin for me, which of course was the excitement of lying with her—a story in itself. I could hardly wait to do it, since day and night my mind's eye saw her red, wet, naked body standing up from the reeds in Leech Pond. My shoulder remembered the weight of her body, my face remembered the heat burning from her hip, my eyes remembered the light cast into them by her bare skin, and my nose remembered the pond water that had clung to her, and her musk, her woman's smell. From then on, I never seemed to notice the smells of the other people. Perhaps I knew their smells too well. It seemed that each time my nostrils caught an odor it was Muskrat's—her crotch, her feet, her sweat, her hair.

One night I smelled the faint, bitter odor of yellowroot slime, and I knew that Rin had given that slime to Muskrat to rub between her thighs, to clean herself of menstruation. Yellowroot was a plant of open grassland. How had Rin gotten its slime? Rin's yellowroot was a woman's secret that pulled my mind between my woman's legs.

That night, when people were asleep or lying still, I crawled quietly out of my bed in the coldtrap, saw Muskrat curled tight under one deerskin by the wall, and tossed a bit of burned wood at her. She raised her head fearfully. Our eyes met. I beckoned to her. She gave me her blank stare, as if she didn't understand what I wanted. I stood up and beckoned. She stared ignorantly. I walked over to her, stood above her, and beckoned again. She shrank from me, so I took her arm and pulled her gently. Fearfully she stood up.

Rin had not finished sewing Muskrat's trousers; all Muskrat wore was my shirt. Her hair was partly combed, though, and twisted into a short, ugly braid. I thought of loosening the braid, then decided I didn't care about it, and let it be. At the door of the coldtrap I forced Muskrat to her heels and pulled the shirt over her head, although she tried to stop me. Turning her around, I folded her into my sleeping-skin beside me, her shoulder blades against my chest. She lay still and felt cold, and didn't seem to know to press her rump against me. Even so, my penis found its place inside her; I pulled her to me and began to thrust. Her vagina was dry. She gasped. I put a hand over her mouth so no one would hear. Her bent body seemed to straighten and her vagina became short; she wasn't helping. But she wasn't fighting. Her breath was quiet, shallow. I knew she was waiting for me to finish so she could leave. Still, just holding a woman was exciting. My breath felt strangled, so that I almost had to gasp aloud. My climax came very suddenly, and with it, to my great surprise, a rush of tears drenched my face and would have dropped on Muskrat if I hadn't lifted my hands to wipe my eyes. Muskrat felt me let her go, and slipped away. I didn't try to stop her.