The Animal Wife (6 page)

Much later the rhinos left too, making a noise like two boulders rolling down a hill. We could still hear them far away on the dark plain, breaking bushes and kicking stones.

Suddenly Andriki became very still. I thought he had stopped breathing. Soon I felt him jabbing me desperately with his thumb. "What's wrong?" I whispered.

His answer was to seize my head, clamp his hand over my mouth, and point my face toward the slit in the mammoth's belly. Right beside the carcass I saw what had made him suddenly go quiet—the four legs of a lion.

I froze, staring. I had never seen a living lion so near. I could smell it, even over the smell of the carcass and the dung. My first thought was to run, but that of course was impossible. My next thought was to attack the lion. But with what? A spear? If he should come into our cramped space, our spears would be too long. We hardly had room to move, let alone to aim a spear. With Andriki's hafted ax? Andriki's ax was in camp, in his pack. With Andriki's knives? Earlier he had put one into my hunting bag so I could help cut up the horse we were here to kill. I groped for this knife and felt the edge—not very sharp, more for rubbing back and forth to make a cut than for stabbing. Was it better than nothing? I wasn't sure. The lion wouldn't like having a knife rubbed back and forth on him. So my third and best thought was to sit perfectly still and pray to the Bear not to let the lion notice us. Andriki, I realized, was doing this already.

After a while, rather slowly, the lion lowered his rump to the ground. The tip of his tail now lay within my reach. An awful thought came to me: what if I pulled it?
Ai! Kori!
cried a voice in my mind.
Has fear made you crazy?
I stared at the tail where it lay in the starlight, until at last the lion stood up again. Then I saw eight legs. Two lions. They passed close to each other, rubbing their chins on each other as lions will. We heard them purring.

We saw more legs—three lions. A pride was gathering. Out the rear opening of the carcass, against the pale earth, I saw a fourth lion passing, then a fifth, going to the water. We heard the tongues of lions slapping the water—three slaps, a rest, three more slaps—then we heard quarrelsome growls like thunderclaps. And then came a noise so loud it was almost beyond hearing. On and on it went, louder than thunder, robbing me of my senses, stopping my breath. Andriki and I seized each other when the noise started and fell back limp when, after a trembling grunt, it ended in silence so deep I could hear my heart. A lion had roared.

The roar left us deaf and weak. While we tried to gather our wits so we could think straight, two lions began to grunt as if they wanted to roar again. Soon they roared together. We were stunned by the time they finished. Our ears just didn't work. So the silence was almost worse than the terrible roaring. The silence grew large, and with it my fear. At last, very carefully, very slowly, I put my head low and peeked out the slit in the carcass's belly. All around me large, pale shapes were moving back and forth. I drew back so I wouldn't be seen.

In fact, there seemed to be nothing to do but keep still and wait. I thought,
If the Bear wants us to live until morning, we will.
Even so, I saw myself being torn apart, my arm here, my leg there. I remembered Father's necklace with a lion's eyeteeth, each tooth as long as my hand. Such teeth would go right through my skull and meet in my brain, right through my chest and meet in my heart. A voice in my mind said,
Think of something else,
but I couldn't do it.

So we sat still while the night wore on, our muscles crying with cramping pains, our eyes stinging with sweat. Sometimes a lion would roar in the distance, filling us with hope that the pride had gone. But sooner or later a nearby lion would answer.

At last it came to me that the lions might never leave. Why should they? After all, this pool wasn't like the river, which had more drinking places on its banks than anyone could count. This pool was the only place to drink for many days' travel in every direction, and for this good reason the lions must have claimed it long ago. It was their camp, where they needed only to wait near the water until the animals on the plain grew bold with thirst.

Then a thought came to me which made me feel very ashamed that we could have been so simple, so stupid. Whatever had made us think that in a place like this we would find horses at night, or bison, or saiga, or deer? Such animals surely drank here, but in daylight, when they could see. No grazing animals would come blindly at night into the lions' camp! It was we who had come blindly.

And at home in camp was how the lions acted. Not caring who heard them, they snuffed and rumbled, snarled, scratched, and roared. A big male noticed our trail of scent—he squirted urine on our footprints, then scratched backward to scatter the earth—but he must have decided we had traveled on. He wouldn't have dreamed we cared so little for our lives that we would spend a night in his camp.

The next thing we knew, the lions were leaving. One moment we heard them snuffling near us, sometimes purring together, sometimes threatening each other, and the next moment I looked out and saw them walking quickly away.

Then all around us we saw mammoths. A herd was drifting by as quietly as smoke. Just as quietly as the moon, which was lifting itself from the grass on the horizon, they cast their huge reflections on the surface of the pool. At the water, though, their silence ended. The calves squeaked and squealed while the females rumbled and screamed. All drank noisily, then the calves rolled and played in the water while the grown females splashed their breasts and bellies and behind their ears like people rinsing themselves after a tiring day.

Suddenly the carcass began to shake. In panic, I must have tried to scramble out, because Andriki seized me. I struggled, but he held me tight. Then in the gap between the hind legs of the carcass the tip of a mammoth's trunk appeared—a hairy tip with two holes like mouths, wet, shining in the moonlight, holes that in a moment let fly a burst of hot, grassy air.

Still holding me tight, Andriki clamped one hand over my eyes so I wouldn't see the trunk and the other hand over my mouth so I wouldn't shout. But he needn't have bothered. Through cracks between his fingers I watched that great trunk, as thick as a man's leg and many times longer, probing delicately as it searched for us, stretching its twin mouths to let loose another blast of air within a handbreadth of Andriki's dung-rubbed moccasin. I felt no fear. Inside my body, my spirit had fallen into a faint, knowing we were as good as dead. I waited for the powerful mammoth to pull us out where she could smash us to paste.

But no. Slowly her trunk withdrew. Slowly she moved it up between the legs, until we couldn't see it. Then over our heads we heard a long, slow scratching as her trunk dragged over the carcass's dry skin. For a little while the trunk scraped gently on the carcass, then it slipped off. Then, as quietly as they had come, the mammoths left. When we dared to peek out, they were gone.

We saw the black pool still rippling, with the moon making a straight path on what was left of the water. We knew better than to leave, so we sat, cramped and very tired, to wait for daylight, which we saw was not far away. Andriki put his arms on his knees and his head on his arms and dozed.

But I was too excited to sleep. We had been frightened, it was true, but in spite of everything no harm had come to us. We were alive! Not only that, we were still hunting. Or I was—I could do anything! Jokes came to my mind so that I almost laughed aloud. My mind's eye saw me telling the story of this night to Pinesinger.

Pretty Pinesinger! In fact she was lying with Father, caring nothing about our danger. Nor would she care later. No—when she heard of our trouble, she would laugh at us. So ran my thoughts as I watched the moon's path on the water, when suddenly, to my surprise, I saw the moon's path ripple. Ah? Something was stirring the water. I saw one, two, then five shapes, animals with long necks, animals with their heads bent, drinking. The horses had come back! "Andriki!" I whispered, shaking him. "Quick! Your spear!"

So Andriki and I, spears in hand, eased ourselves out of the carcass, looked for danger in both directions, then crept toward the horses, bending low and stepping so carefully that our footsteps made no sound. Or almost no sound. Suddenly the stallion raised his head and looked right at us. We froze, but not in time. The horses turned, already running. But in the instant they showed us their sides, our spears flew at the nearest, a mare.

Andriki's spear hit her in the neck, and my spear pierced her heart. She screamed, then ran bucking, then fell. The stallion turned to scream an answer and might have come back to help her, but she was dead. With a moaning sigh, her breath left her and her body relaxed. Dead by my spear! I couldn't believe the size of her. She was a mottled yellow mare with a short black mane, huge and fat—enormous!

"Get your spear, quick," said Andriki, busily working his own spear free. "Her scream could bring the lions."

I tugged at the spear, sure that at any moment lions would walk out of the gloom to take the mare from us. "We could hide her under the water," I said.

"Good," said Andriki. "Let's tie her feet before she stiffens." With twine from our hunting bags we did this, then took off our trousers and moccasins and together, with much effort, dragged her under the water.

"She'll swell up," I said.

"Take her deeper," said Andriki.

"Maybe the lions are already eating somewhere else," I said as we pulled.

"Maybe," said Andriki.

"What next?" I asked when the mare's body was hidden under water.

"Don't you want to get back inside the carcass?" joked Andriki. I laughed. He grew serious. "This is a bad place at a bad time," he said, looking at the eastern sky, where gray light was showing. "Let's get away from here and build a fire. When the daylight is strong, we'll go to camp."

So we dressed ourselves and walked a way in the milky gloom just as the larks began singing. Then we stopped and rolled a fire with Andriki's firesticks in some tinder I took from my hunting bag, piling on grass until we had a good fire going. Because we hadn't bothered to make a clearing for it, the fire was soon caught by the morning wind and spreading freely over the plain. Father saw it, mistook it for a signal, and came to us, followed at a distance by Pinesinger.

During the night, he told us, they had heard the lions roaring. Later they had seen the huge round eyes of several lions just beyond their firelight. While the lions had walked back and forth, Father had showed them his spear and told them how badly they would be hurt if they came nearer. The lions had left after a while.

***

It made me think, that place did. Many mammoths had drunk during the night, but by dawn the pool was full again. It even had a trickle of water running out of it, like a little stream. But unlike a stream, the water soon vanished into the air or sank under the ground.

That place was named for a woman: Uske's Spring. I didn't know anything about Uske, but I felt sure the pool had been there since the world began. The water had a taste to it—almost bitter. Father said it was known to cure illnesses. Many things about that place were unusual, different. A child begotten there could be a shaman, said Father.

But soon we realized that Father had begotten no child that night. Fear of the lions must have made Pinesinger deaf to Father's coaxing. Having been so close to the lions, Andriki and I could understand her feelings, but Father didn't seem to—he seemed disappointed and impatient with her.

Even so, he was pleased with me because of my hunting. As a result, on the following night I saw something very strange, something I had never seen before, a thing that belonged to the world of shamans and spirits, a thing of the air.

"C
HILD OF AAL
, you make me proud," said Father to me as we worked our knives under the skin of the wet yellow mare. "You had enough nerve to spend the night beside the only drinking water for many days' walk, and you killed this horse with that child's spear. When a son does well, people praise the father. So you do right to do well. One day people will call you Strong, a feeder of foxes, a man of meat, as people now call me!"

We had dragged the water-soaked mare to a clump of bushes on a windswept rise of land from which we could see in all directions, especially to the west, where, tiny in the distance, the lions seemed to be stretched out to sleep. The west wind blew in gentle gusts from them to us, each gust stirring the great cloud of odor that rose from the carcass. Father had chosen to butcher there so he would know if the lions learned of us.

His praise made me very happy. I said, "Thank you, Father."

For a little while Father sat smiling to himself, as if in his mind was the thought of people praising him and me. Then he took his knife to the mare again. Suddenly he looked at Pinesinger, who was sitting on her heels watching, tense and angry. "Wife!" he called. "Come help us."

This seemed to annoy Pinesinger. She jumped to her feet. "Help you?" she asked. "Help you what? Why are we sitting beside a pile of meat? What if the wind shifts? There are five of them, at least. There are four of us. What will we do if they come here? Will we fight them? Let's take the best of the meat and pack it before they take all of it and us too! Hi! You want to kill us!"

"We'll pack the meat," said Father, sounding cool. "But not now. Now we're going to cut it into strips. We'll cook some. And you will help. Bring your knife."

"Bring my knife? I'll bring it back to the Fire River where the men have sense!"

For a moment Father watched her thoughtfully. Then he stood up, walked over to her, grasped her upper arm, and pulled her to her feet. He took her jaw in his hand and tipped her face until their eyes met. He smiled. "Do as I ask," he said. So she did, as if she had heard danger in his voice, although his smile and his tone showed none.

Far away, sleeping more deeply than people ever sleep, the lions lay limp on their sides, or flat on their bellies with their hind legs spread, or balanced on their backs with their legs loose and open, their bellies to the sun. But by now kites and ravens had noticed the meat and were flying down to steal a share, calling noisily as they do when they see food. One of the lionesses raised her head, listening. I mentioned this, but only Pinesinger seemed to hear what I said.