The Animal Wife (23 page)

By dusk, when we saw the tip of the shelter against the red evening sky, we had found only the tracks of a pack of wolves who were also going to the swamp, one behind the other, taking turns breaking trail just as people do. We couldn't help but feel disappointed, to find no tracks but wolves' tracks. But thanks to the trail the wolves had broken, we reached Maral's shelter before night.

The night was long and moonlit—the round Lodge Moon was balancing the sun. For our meal we had only the scraps of dried meat we had brought with us and some frozen strips of inner bark peeled off a young larch tree. The bark is said to take away hunger. Perhaps it does for some; it didn't for me.

In the morning we sang, praying to the Bear to give us food. Then, with Maral leading us, we circled the swamp. Here the snow was very light but almost waist deep, so that Maral was sweating after a very short time of pushing through it. Soon Andriki took Maral's place in the lead and Maral took my place at the end of the line. In this way we took turns breaking trail and walking last in the path made by the others. We stopped to rest many times, being hungry and not at full strength. Often in winter one must work hard on an empty stomach, yet one never gets used to it.

Because we were hunting and also saving our strength, we didn't talk as we walked, but when we stopped to rest we talked a little, softly. We had been following a ridge where no trees grew, where the wind had blown away most of the snow, and where we could see far in all directions—white snow, gray sky, and black spruce trees. We looked for plumes of snow, which like dust can be caused by the movements of animals. But against the vast white landscape and gray sky a plume of snow would have been hard to see.

As we rested we spoke of the snow, of how it was much deeper than usual, deeper than I had ever seen. Since it had come in the early part of winter, it would stay. Also we spoke of the trail we were making with such effort. The wind would soon blow snow to fill it in, unless we used it often. We planned to use it. Other animals would also use it, Maral pointed out. This would be good and bad for us—good because we could hunt the animals with hooves, bad because our open trail would be helping the wolves and even the tiger, who also hunted animals with hooves. Marten reminded us that a single well-worn trail would bring hunting animals straight to our lodge.

"Wolves already know our lodge," said Andriki. "How can we show them what they already know?"

"I wasn't thinking of wolves," said Marten.

"Perhaps you were thinking of the Lily," said Andriki.

"That one," said Maral. "He makes his own trails." To me he said, "If enough snow falls that we must make trails, we find that he has also made trails. Like us, he keeps his open. And although it is true that he uses ours, we use his. They lead where ours would lead. He thinks like a man, the Lily."

"He eats like a man too," said Andriki. "He eats like many men. All of us here could fill our bellies on just one of his meals."

"Since we respect him," said Marten, "let's not speak of his meals."

"If I had food, I would share with him," said Andriki.

Struck by the thought, I guessed that Andriki was saying something that would please the Lily if he should happen to be nearby, listening to us. "Hona," I added. "I too."

"There are four of us here, hunting for many hungry women," said Maral. "Are we going to rest all day?"

We got to our feet, brushed the snow from our clothing, and, choosing a place we could see from the ridge, a distant, low-growing thicket where roe deer or reindeer might have sheltered from the storm, we went on.

As we moved down the slope, a raven called. Soon two ravens flew above us, both calling. They who follow hunters, they were calling their kinsmen, but what good would that do them if they frightened our prey? Marten and Maral kept walking, ignoring them while they soared above us through the sky. But I looked up at them. Why, I wondered, were they excited? High up, they could see things we knew nothing about. They knew something.

Sure enough, in the thicket we found a long trail left by reindeer. They had used the thicket to shelter from the storm, and when the snow had stopped they had gone into the swamp in single file. Breasting the snow, following in each other's footsteps, they had packed their trail so hard we could easily walk on it. So we did, not minding the ravens or worrying too much about being quiet. The herd hadn't made this trail easily, and since we were behind the deer, they couldn't use their trail to escape. In fact we wanted to chase them forward, to founder them in the snow. Heads up, eyes open, we hurried on, first Maral, then Andriki, then Marten, then me. Now and then we passed a place where the deer had dug for moss. At last we found dung that wasn't even frozen. We were so near we could almost taste the meat.

Suddenly Maral stopped. We all stopped, even the two ravens, who landed behind us in silence on the very tops of two trees. We looked. There in the open woods ahead we saw the rumps and antlers of many reindeer. They were kneeling, using their faces and brow tines to dig the snow. They seemed hungry, and so they should be, kept from food for three days by the storm. Yet it cost them their lives, that hunger, since all were eating. None were watching for danger, and none saw us.

Motioning us to wait, Maral moved quietly toward a large doe. Quiet as he was, she heard him, raised her head, and whistled an alarm. Maral's spear struck high in her groin, making her kick upward. The ravens screamed. The other deer tried to run, but the snow was too deep. Instead they plunged helplessly in different directions.

I had time to choose the fattest of them. Another doe, she was. I ran up behind her in the trail she had packed for me, trying to step on her footprints, and when she turned to face me, perhaps to aim a kick at me, I threw my spear. I was so close that it hit her very hard, the point sinking deep behind her collarbone. Her knees buckled and she went down, blood pouring from her wound, bright red on the snow. All around me deer were crying. Mine fell dead, but Maral's gut-wounded doe was still moaning as he tried to cut her throat. So too were the deer speared by Andriki and Marten. Hearing something behind me, I turned and saw a doe plunging toward the trail. As hard as I could, I threw my second spear. Ng! I hit, but in the belly. More kicking. I should have led her more, but I hadn't guessed her speed. Jerking my first spear free from the dead reindeer's side, I chased the struggling doe, leaping through the snow until I overtook her, then pushed the spear hard into her rib cage. Speared twice, she was as good as dead. She fell.

***

Six deer, all females, lay in the snow. One was Maral's, two were Andriki's, one was Marten's, and two were mine. Even though the wind stirred their soft hair, they seemed very still—six heavy bodies on their sides in the long shadows of the trees. What would we do with so much meat?

First we would eat. While Maral and Marten rolled a fire, I opened the belly of my first deer and took out her liver. I did this with bare hands, and my fingers almost froze. While the meat cooked, the ravens flew down to eat the scraps and the quickly freezing clots and even the bloody snow. Somehow other ravens heard them or saw them, and soon many ravens were eating.

When the meat was ready, we ate too. Hot meat! Strength from it went all through me. My happiness came. My pride came, since I had killed so much of it.

"Well, Brother," said Andriki to Maral, "how will we get this home?"

"We can't cover it," said Maral. "It's too much for us to carry, and I see no tall trees. Marten should go get the women. That's the only way. The trail is packed solid for him. He'll travel very quickly on it. He'll reach the lodge by night and bring the women back in the morning. So, Marten. You'll reach the lodge by dark if you go now."

"I agree," said Marten. "I'm going."

"Take meat with you," said Maral. "The women will be angry if you don't take them meat."

But Marten was already skinning the deer he had killed. "I will," he said. "I'm afraid of those women."

We helped him skin the deer and cut enough meat to make a large load. He left. I didn't envy him, setting off alone with the smell of fresh meat making a cloud around him.

"Look at the sun," said Maral later. We did. It was round and red, like a fire in the trees. "Feel the cold coming. We must work fast before these deer freeze. Skins off, meat into strips. Kori, you get wood while the daylight lasts. We may fight for our meat before morning."

Andriki looked around at all the carcasses. "There's much work here," he said.

"Let's begin," said Maral.

So we began. Since no one had gathered wood in this place before, or not for a long time, there was lots of it, easily found. Before the sun reached its resting place I had made a large pile of it—enough, I thought, for the night. "More, Kori," said Maral. "We may want firelight tonight." So in the dusk, as the woods grew dim and blue, I gathered more, the same amount again. Then I helped Maral and Andriki, and among us we skinned all the deer except for the feet and heads, scraping the hides quickly and roughly and rolling them up so they could be carried after they froze.

Two hides, it came to me, were mine. I wanted to give them to Muskrat, because I knew how happy they would make her. In fact, though, they were my wife's share of the hunting. I would have to give them to Frogga. Since Frogga was too young to need them, her mother was sure to take them instead. Then, since the hide of Maral's deer would belong to his first wife, his second wife might give him one of Frogga's hides so that he would have a deerskin like the rest of his family. As for my deer, the best meat from the hind legs would go to Frogga's family. Meat from the front legs and neck would go to Rin and Waxwing. Through Waxwing I would be giving to Marten, he with a large reindeer of his own. Much of the rest of the meat was already promised in return for clothing that had been given to Muskrat when she first came. I would have liked to take Muskrat something of her own, but I didn't see what it would be. We hunt for our in-laws, truly.

The long blue twilight began to fade, and in the east the moon rose, yellow-white with faint, dark markings on it, for all the world like a skinned carcass. The ravens had gone long ago. I wondered if they were roosting in the trees—I hadn't seen them leaving.

On the bloodstained moonlit snow the naked carcasses lay freezing. "They'll soon be solid," said Maral. "We don't have time to make strips of all the meat. For the rest, just cut the joints. Kori, start with her." Maral pointed with his lips at the first deer I had killed. "Cut the hind legs at the hip and knee. Cut the ribs at two places. Cut the neck separately. Do the legs first. Leave the guts to the last. There's still heat in the guts." So I did as he told me, spreading out the joints and pieces so they wouldn't freeze together, squeezing the feces from the gut, and leaving the gall and the rumen behind on the snow.

At last we were finished. The firelight showed Andriki and Maral dark with blood stuck in their beards and smeared on their clothes and their hands and faces. I looked at my hands as I warmed them over the fire and saw that I was filthy too.

"Hi," said Maral, stretching and looking around. "We should bring everything near and cover it with firewood. Look there."

We looked. A black shadow moved stealthily among some of the guts. Maral threw some snow. As the shadow turned, its eyes flashed red. It was a marten. It ran.

So our long night began. We had no thought of sleeping, because we had to keep watch. What would we have told the women if we had slept while animals ate our meat?

Our fire was sheltered by a growth of low spruce trees, but to give us more warmth Maral and Andriki made a long lean-to of branches, which I packed tight with snow on the outside and piles of our frozen meat on the inside. When the wall was finished, it broke the freezing night wind and reflected the heat of the fire. Between us and the wall, our meat was safe even from small robbers like sables, who, low to the ground and hidden in shadow, might otherwise be filling their bellies where we couldn't see.

Comfortable in the shelter, we cooked and ate and then cooked more, eating slowly, sighing as we grew full. The deer were still fat from their summer feeding. We did not forget to cut some fat for the Bear, who had made our hunting possible. This offering we laid on the fire; then we sat quietly, watching it burn. In the lodge we would have sung to praise the Bear, to wake Him so that He could get His gift, but out here in the dark woods, with the Lily waiting somewhere, crouching, listening, we thought to let the smell of the fat wake the Bear. There would be time later to give a song.

The heat of the fire was very good; the meat was even better. Andriki and Maral told hunting stories and stories about themselves when they were boys. The stories carried my thoughts far away to a time gone by, to a wide, dark wood of spruce and birch on a west-flowing stream that fed the Hair. Father, his three brothers, and Rin grew up there. The four boys did daring things when they were young! Rin was good, but the boys took risks and didn't mind punishment.

Warmed by the fire and full of meat, with my uncles' laughter in my ears and my mind's eye filled with the doings of long ago, I laughed too. As soon as one of my uncles finished a story, I asked for more. "Who but Kori would want to hear these old tales of ours?" asked Maral.

"Tell him how you made Uncle Hooked Gandre throw his spear into a wasps' nest," said Andriki.

So he did. Yet as we laughed, we saw a pair of huge green eyes shining beyond the firelight, and we stopped laughing and stood up. The eyes watched. We cupped our hands under our chins so we could see over the firelight into the dark woods beyond. There some large animals were gathered—great black shadows in the shadows of the trees. One of them watched us steadily, but now and then several would look at us together, and their eyes too would flame green. "Wolves," said Andriki.

I raised my spear, but Andriki caught the shaft. "Wait," he said. "They're eating rumen. We don't mind that."

"Next they'll try to get the meat," I said.