The Dog Master (32 page)

Calli could not imagine what that must have been like for the girl. She regarded Ema with sympathy and admiration. A strong heart, indeed. It reminded her of her son Mal, always living his life as if he were not afflicted with a deformity.

“But now,” the man whispered, leaning forward, “no one from my tribe will marry her. Who would, with that arm? It is hideous.”

Ema was listening, her expression bland. Calli felt her anger stir that he would speak so bluntly and unkindly in front of his daughter.

“But your son. Perhaps he will have the same problem? You see? Ema is thirteen years old. Next time you come, on your way to your winter quarters, perhaps we can have a wedding.”

Calli looked at Ema, who gazed back solemnly. “Do you know my son, Ema?” Calli asked softly. The man seemed surprised at the question, but Ema nodded, smiling a little. “Does he seem like the sort of boy … the sort of man you would like as a husband?”

“Yes,” Ema replied. “Yes, he does.”

“And where would they live? With the Kindred? Or here, eating fish?” Calli wanted to know.

The man shrugged. “Perhaps he is happy here, perhaps he is happy with the Kindred. My wife is dead, so there is no woman to pine for grandchildren. I would be satisfied to see my daughter when the Kindred comes through to trade meat, and perhaps one winter or two they stay here if they wish.”

Calli could see it, and it made her smile. A wife for Mal. She thought of the Blanc Tribe and their accepting ways, always welcoming, and of the bruises Mal tried to hide from his mother—bruises administered on a regular basis by his “friends.” She knew Albi's influence among the women had all but evaporated, but she saw the older woman sometimes sitting and talking to Grat and some of the other boys, as if she were a kindly aunt. Calli suspected Albi was giving the boys malevolent ideas.

Calli pictured stopping here twice a year to see her son and his family. Her happy son and his happy family. “Yes,” she found herself saying. “This is a wonderful idea.”

Year Nineteen

When the man was in the den with the wolf puppy, they would play games together. Often they simply wrestled, but there were other games, such as when he made recognizable noises and gestured with his hands, over and over, until she reacted with a behavior that he praised and rewarded with a succulent morsel from the pouch he kept out of her reach. Sometimes she was to sit down. Sometimes she was to wait for him while he left, not moving from the spot where he put her until he returned. Her favorite, though, was when he called to her and she ran to him. She loved these games, and she loved the man.

“Before I can take you out of this cave, I have to know you will come to me when asked, or remain where I tell you, to keep you out of danger. I do not want to lose you.”

One day he put something on her neck. The smell was familiar—he had something with the same scent looped around his waist. When he stood and her neck was yanked, though, she did not understand and rebelled, twisting and pulling, choking, getting frantic.

The man threw his arms around her and she calmed.

“I think this will work. With the rope on your neck, you will not be able to run off. Please. We will walk around the cave. You only need to become accustomed to it.”

After some time, the wolf understood. It was another game. Tight, the cord choked her, but if she followed next to the man's heels, the rope dragged on the cave floor and he gave her meat. Not a fun game, but they did it over and over again.

That night, the man brought in something very strange—it was somehow the mother-wolf, with her scent and soft fur, but the pup's mother herself was not there. The pup smelled it up and down and whimpered, more out of bafflement than fear.

Later, though, the man lay on the mother fur and the wolf pup drowsily put her head on his chest, feeling content. The presence of the mother-smell gave her comfort.

“Tomorrow,” the man said, the vibrations in his chest filling the young pup's ears, “we will go outside. I will carry my spear. I hope I can protect you.”

Year Eighteen

The Kindred stayed with the Blanc Tribe for two days. Calli found Mal in an isolated group of Kindred adolescents, and called to him to help her. When she had her son aside, Calli pointed to a group of girls who were fussing with a tangle of ropes called a “net.” Many of the women of the Blanc seemed to spend a lot of their time building or repairing the things, which were somehow used in catching fish.

“See that girl there? Her name is Ema. The one with the arm?” Calli asked.

Mal stared. “What happened to her arm?” he gasped, looking repulsed.

“What happened to your leg?” his mother responded sharply.

Mal looked up at her, shocked.

“How do you feel when people react with such dread to your leg?” Calli asked more gently. “Think how she must feel when people are unkind to her because of her arm.”

Mal took this in and, to his credit, seemed to understand.

“Her father asked that you help her and a few of the other girls do something. I want you to go with them.”

“Her father?” Mal repeated dumbly.

“Mal. Just go with them. The girl's name is Ema, and she is two summers younger than you, I think. Maybe just one. The Blanc use years instead of summers, so it is always a little difficult to calculate.”

“Yes, Mother,” Mal replied.

“And while you are out with Ema, ask about her. Find out about her. Notice how pretty she is.”

“How pretty she is,” Mal echoed without comprehension.

Calli sighed. “I just think that someday a woman like Ema could make a good wife for a man like you.”

“Oh,” Mal responded, his vision clearing of doubt. “No, Mother, I have already decided who I want to marry.”

“You have?”

Mal nodded vigorously. “Lyra, of course. We are in love.”

*   *   *

Mal did as he was told, escorting the Blanc girls on their mysterious mission. At first he was irritated as he followed the well-worn path. The girl Ema walked serenely next to him, while her two companions, older by a couple of years and each carrying a rolled-up net under an arm, skipped ahead and then glanced back over their shoulders at them, laughing as if there was nothing more hilarious than a Kindred carrying a club. But then Ema said, “Thank you for protecting us,” and Mal instantly changed his perception of what they were doing. No wonder Dog had suggested the club. These girls from the Blanc Tribe were going somewhere, and Mal was there to protect them from predators.

“I like it when the Kindred comes. You always bring meat, and everyone is always happy,” Ema observed. She ran a hand through her hair, which was even lighter in color than most of the Blanc Tribe. The motion made a small rattling sound as the decorative shells threaded into her locks clicked together.

Mal nodded. He was older and thought he should say something wise in response to this, but he could not think of anything. She
was
pretty, he saw. Small dots of darker color stippled her pale cheeks, as if her skin was trying to turn to a more normal brown color, a tiny bit at a time. Her arm was less revolting than interesting, once he became accustomed to it.

He liked how tranquil and composed Ema was, nothing at all like her tittering friends, who were walking backward now so they could laugh openly at the two of them. It made Mal want to throw something at them.

“I think something is going to happen today,” Ema blurted.

He glanced at her curiously. “Happen? What?”

She regarded him intently, her pale eyes full of energy. “Something wonderful,” she whispered.

 

THIRTY-EIGHT

The path soon turned toward a small rocky bluff. The two older girls darted ahead and left the trail and bent over, gathering dry, brown grasses in their hands. Ema did not help them, so Mal did not either.

At the top of the trail, a cave waited, wide open and tall enough at the opening for a man to walk in upright. Several club-length tree branches were piled at the entrance, some of them blackened at one end. The older girls had wound the grasses around the tips of three of the branches. One of the girls was huddled over a rock with a piece of flint, her tongue in the corner of her mouth while she worked to strike a spark. Mal waited, more and more impatient, as the girl continued her inexpert efforts.

“Would you like me to try it?” he finally interrupted.

The girls all glanced at each other and, naturally, giggled. But he was handed the flint and he set his club aside and leaned down and found out that what he had seen Bellu do countless times was actually rather difficult: he struck and struck, but the few sparks he made flew in random directions and then flared out the way the vividly bright blood drops of the sun sometimes streaked across the night sky and vanished.

“I have never done this before and it is not as easy as I thought,” he admitted. He looked up and saw the girls staring at him in something like shock. “What is it?”

They exchanged glances. “It is just so seldom that a man admits a mistake,” Ema observed.

“Or that he cannot do something,” one of the older girls added.

Mal did not like the idea that he had made either a mistake or an admission of a lack of aptitude, and did not see why they were speaking to him as if it were a compliment. Just then, his efforts made a spark fly and land on the head of one of the torches, and he leaned over and blew on it as he had seen Bellu do, until a little flame started in the grass.

To Mal, this proved the girls were all wrong. He looked up at them proudly.

“Though you never attempted it before, it came to you easily,” Ema praised him, completely getting the point. She reached out and touched him with her one hand as he stood, and, of course, the girls giggled.

There was plenty of illumination from the girls' torches. A few feet into the cave, he was surprised to see the walls coated with ice, and the temperature plummeted.

“It takes nearly the summer, but eventually it will all melt,” Ema told him. “Then the walls are wet instead of frozen. And back there, the ice never melts, because all winter long the women come and break off ice tongues and throw them back here.”

“Ice tongues?” Mal frowned, trying to picture it.

“When water flows in the winter, it forms a tongue to lick the earth,” she explained.

“I have not seen such a thing.”

“Maybe you should stay here next winter!” one of the older girls suggested. Barely had she spoken than the two girls were laughing so hard they had to clutch each other, their torches wavering and sending mad shadows dancing on the walls.

Ema turned to them. “Why would you try to ruin my life?” she asked softly.

It was as if the two girls had been slapped. They stared at Ema, speechless, while Mal tried to figure out what was happening. There was no laughter now. One of them nodded. “I am so sorry, Ema,” she apologized.

“Sorry about what?” Mal asked curiously.

The girls did not reply. They lowered their eyes and went deeper into the cave. Another few feet and a wall of ice greeted them, an odd wall that looked as if frozen logs had been stacked up on top of each other. The ice tongues, Mal supposed. Here there were several odd clubs lying on the ground, their stone heads placed so that the blade pointed straight forward from the top, like a spear tip but thick and heavy like an ax.

“Would you help us?” Ema asked, touching his arm again.

The older girls demonstrated and he quickly got it: the point of the club was thrust at the frozen ground, cracking it. Most of the earth had been turned this way before, Mal saw, and once he broke the few inches of ice the soil underneath, while frozen, yielded fairly easily into chunks. Proud to show how strong he was, he attacked the task without questioning why he was doing it.

“That is good,” Ema praised. The girls all dropped to their knees and, to Mal's astonishment, began pulling fat fish out of the earth, each one as long as the distance between elbow and hand. They threw these fish on the nets they had brought, piling it up.

“Do they live in the ground?” he asked, bewildered.

This time even Ema laughed. “All summer long, we bring fish here and bury it where the ground is always frozen. The ice tongues melt a little. These fish are frozen solid. See?” Ema thumped on one with her hand. “But when they are cooked, they will feed all of us. This is why we always have fish for the Kindred.”

The older girls trussed up their nets and slung the heavy loads over their shoulders. “Thank you for helping us,” one of them said in Mal's general direction. Once they were out of the cave they tossed their torches to the dirt and ran ahead, so that Mal and Ema were alone. He picked up his club and the two of them headed back.

“I can go faster,” Mal told Ema, conscious that her pace was deliberately slow.

“But then we would be home much more quickly,” Ema replied.

Mal pondered this. Yes, that was true. But so what?

“Most of the Kindred are so thin, but you are like us, with muscles on your arms and shoulders,” Ema remarked.

Mal glanced at his arms. “I have always noticed that the Blanc people have bigger bones,” he admitted after a moment, “but I have never seen myself as anything but a boy with a bad leg.”

“I remember the first time I saw you,” Ema replied. “Even then, you were stronger than all the other Kindred boys your age.”

Mal doubted that anyone who saw him noticed anything but his limp. He glanced down at his tiny, toeless foot. No one would ever miss that, he reflected bitterly.

She caught him looking at his own leg. “Does it hurt?” she asked him quietly.

“No. Never. In fact, I have trouble running over rough ground because the leg is a bit numb,” Mal replied, shocking himself with a confession he had made to no one.

“My arm hurts. Even though it is not there anymore,” Ema told him.