Shaman: A Novel of the Paleolithic Era

Chapter 54

The Wolves’ camp under its little abri, overlooking Loop Meadow, Loop Hill, the Stone Bison, the river in its gorge. Midsummer sunset slanting in from the gorge to the west, cutting through the smoke from their fire. Home home home home home.

Heather walked them in, carrying all their things, and by the time they limped down the last part of the river path into camp it was after sunset, early dusk, and the firelight caught every face, they were all masks of themselves, expressing joy at the travelers’ unexpected return: Hawk and Moss shouting in his face, seizing him up in fierce hugs, everyone reaching in to touch them all, to be sure they were real, it was such a surprise. Even Sage gave him a kiss. It reminded Loon of the night he had come in from his wander, but this time launched above the sky, to a dream place more real than real. Or else this time it was the real real, as undeniable as pain, flush in his face.

They stayed up for a time talking and sipping duck soup, until exhaustion felled the travelers and they were carried to bed. All night in his dream, all Loon saw was the firelit faces, laughing, masklike. His pack.

Next morning he woke late and staggered like a wooden man to the east end of camp. The Stone Bison still arched over the river, morning light filled the gorge, the camp basked in the sun, the air was full of summer smells and the cluck of the river, the twitter of the birds. Every tree was a beehive. The sky was blue, and it seemed impossible they had been freezing in the wind and snow just a few days before. The sixth month could be like that. And home stayed home whether you were there or not. Loon kept looking around, he sat down and touched the ground, tasted some dust. It was hard to believe. The feeling in him was like some spring bud that he could look at and know it would grow into something big.

Folded back into the life of their pack, Loon and Elga and Thorn rested and ate, then rested some more. Their child clung to Elga, and would not let her out of his sight. In the evenings he sat between Elga and Loon, or on one of their laps, a little fist clutching each of them by their clothing. Seeing it Heather would shake her head and say,—You are a lucky boy. I thought you were an orphan.

Everyone wanted to hear Thorn tell stories around the fire again, and he did, croaking away as he stared into the fire, or up at the stars. Sometimes after he told one, someone would ask for the story of his rescue of Loon and Elga. But Thorn would shake his head.

—I can’t tell it yet. It’s not ready to tell.

People knew that the old one had died during the rescue, of course, and so they left Thorn alone, to tell it in his own time. Aside from that, he seemed willing to tell any of the old stories, starting with how wolverine pulled summer out of winter, which now as he told it seemed to resemble what he had just accomplished, in pulling Loon and Elga out of the icy north and bringing them back to their sunny abri, so that he told it with palpable satisfaction.

Indeed every story he told he seemed to be enjoying more than before. Then in the mornings he would sit by Loon and require Loon to tell the stories on his own, nodding and teaching him hooks to remember it. These lessons were not like they had been before, when Thorn’s words had gone in one flicked ear and out the other. Now Loon watched Thorn’s face as the old shaman talked, and found he could hold more in mind afterward, and repeat the story in much the same way, sometimes by seeing a memory of Thorn saying it, with all his little squints and scowls and crooked little smiles, and most of all, tones of voice. They had to be remembered as songs with tunes, that was the trick. And Loon carved some sticks with sequences of Thorn’s tells too, to help him later.

Also the rules for remembering were clearer to him now, more helpful: the rule of threes, the up-to-down and down-to-up, the helpers and their chores, and so on. It was still hard for him, and even when he succeeded, a fortnight later he would too often find that it had all gone again. And because he now wanted to please Thorn, the losses were more frustrating than ever. His heart would sink a little as he realized that now that he was back, and saved, he was going to have to learn these stories, even if he never got good at them. Not until now had he ever believed he would have to do the things a man had to do.

But mostly, he was just happy. He watched Elga eating like a mink, filling out right before his eyes, and he could hardly believe she was there among them. It felt like a dream, and he was afraid sometimes that one day he would wake with the sunlight turning the gorge mist yellow and find that he had woken up in a different world where it hadn’t happened. That they had gotten her back was perpetually amazing to him; he would never get over it, he would always be a little stunned. He wanted nothing ever to happen again.

Heather was clearly pleased they were back.—It was dull without old unspeakable spouting all his carbunculosities. The men in this pack are mostly fools, and the women are in a little showdown right now, so there was no one left to talk to. And a pack needs its shaman, I guess, even if they’re a little snake of a shaman.

She regarded Loon closely.—I’m glad to see you too, Loon. But listen to me: you need to take care of that bad ankle, or you’ll be lame for life. You’re still a young man, just a little more than a boy. You don’t want to be lame for twenty years. You need both legs to get by in this world!

—I know it, Loon said fretfully.—Believe me, I know.

—So why are you still walking around on it then?

Loon was surprised.—Because I need to be helping! I can’t just sit around and be fed like a baby. Even if I can’t hunt, I can at least get firewood.

She was shaking her head as he said this.—We were doing fine before you got back. We don’t need you. Listen! If you don’t sit down for a moon and rest that leg, you’ll never be able to hunt again. And we need your hunting, and we can do without you for a while around camp. Everyone will understand. Even Ibex will understand. And if he doesn’t, I’ll make him. This last in a dark tone that made Loon shiver a little.

She put that darkness into a look and pinned him with it.—So will you do what I say or not?

—I’ll try.

After that Loon sat around camp, even during the day when everyone was out and about. He helped look after Lucky and the other kids, and knapped blades from cores, and cured hides, and cut and sewed new jackets and leggings for Elga. His sewing was serviceable, but several of the women made clothes so much finer than his that he gave up and turned to carving figures out of sticks, and grinding earthblood to powder, and reciting some of the stories he was learning. No matter what he did, Heather didn’t want him standing up. On many days, and every night, she heated water in buckets by putting fire stones in the water, then poured the hot water into bladders and draped them over the ankle of Badleg. She also tried a few of her poultices, although when she inspected his leg after these applications, she shook her head dubiously. Clearly she thought the hot water bladders were helping the most, and they felt good to Loon too. After the heating was done, she would hold his foot and ankle and press gently on the skin over the swollen top of the ankle, testing where it hurt, or trying to rub some healing into it.

—You should do this too, she told him.—You can feel it better. Sometimes if a ligament or sinew breaks, they just won’t heal. But other times they will. A lot more of these tears and breaks heal than you might expect. So you have to assume the best, and act like it’s going to work out. You can get over this. At the very least, you should be able to get around without pain.

—That would be good.

It was true that it didn’t hurt as much as it had on their trek. But certain accidental movements, or slips of balance, still caused the little snick of agony to shoot up his leg. Heather could see that, and she also saw that he wasn’t going to be able to keep sitting around for too much longer. Soon it would be a month of it; soon they would be preparing to head north; he would have to get up and give it a try. So one morning she told him she was going to make a healing shoe for him.

—What do you mean?

—Let me show you.

She sat him down in the sun with a supply of sticks, antlers, mammoth tusk pieces, sinews, leather strips, and cedar bark cord, and they took all morning to make a wooden frame somewhat like a boot, with leather straps, so that Heather could bind it to his foot, ankle, and calf. With the frame strapped to his foot and lower leg, all the way up to his knee, he could only walk by swinging the whole thing ahead and landing each step on the bottom of it. This made for quite a limp, but no matter how he stepped, no matter what he did, the left foot and ankle were held in just one position. That would give the break time to heal, Heather said. And it was true that when he wore it he never felt the click, even when walking.

So he could help collect firewood, and do other slow tasks around camp. As the days of the seventh month began, and he continued to use the wooden boot, and apply hot water bladders to the ankle by night, he felt less pain from the area, and could see there was less swelling. He was slow, he moved ugly, as Hawk put it, but a day finally came when he could dispense with the boot, go barefoot, and not feel any pain in the ankle when he walked around. There was stiffness there, and weakness when compared to Goodleg, but no pain. This was astonishing to Loon; he had not expected it, had not dared to hope. Heather had cured him!

She shook her head when he said this to her.—No no. Your body healed itself. But I know what you’re trying to say. When you’re hurt, it’s very difficult to believe your body can heal itself. Mostly it seems to go the other way. We fall apart and die, that’s how it goes. But sometimes healing happens. I’ve seen it too often to doubt it, I’ve even felt it in myself once or twice. No, healing is real. But why does it come into us some times and not others?

She shook her head darkly.—No one knows. Really we know nothing. We only know the shit that Raven dumps on our heads, we only know what comes out of the world’s asshole onto us. But what that world is up to up there, why we get the particular shit we get, no one knows.

They were sitting against the cliff wall in the sun, with the smell of thyme and gray stone and the river percolating in the warming air. Loon rotated his ankle slowly and carefully, and couldn’t help grinning.

—Pretty good shit this morning, he pointed out, sniffing the air and looking around.

She glared at him, still wanting to indulge her bad mood. Finally she changed the subject. She had a list of forest plants she wanted him to go out and find and bring back to her. He could take it slow, and she suggested he take the wooden boot along with him, in case he ever felt like he needed it.—The last thing you want is to injure yourself again just as you’re getting well.

It was mostly women’s work, but boys or old men or shamans did it too, especially in this month. Quite a few of the girls worked for Heather and thus learned what she knew about plants and healing and midwifery, without her making any special thing about it. Loon wished Thorn would be that way about the shaman stuff. But the women did things differently. Many of them often went out trapping by day. These women would disappear up and down the riverside to set underwater snares to drown muskrats. Some of them threw spears too at the small animals in the gorge, killed some sisters to pass the time during their monthlies, when not a few of them were surly. Yes, the women were all hunters too in their way, whether they went out or not. Some of the ones who stayed in camp were the scariest of all. They worked as a gang within the pack, they stared at you. They judged you. They would slit your throat if that’s what it took to get what they wanted. Even Elga, with all her warmth, and the way she loved him, the way she took him in her, the way she had pulled him back home through the snow, even Elga had a look in her that was more cave bear than elg. She was not to be crossed, now less than ever. Which was fine, because Loon only wanted what she wanted. And anyway her cave bear look was mostly directed at Thunder and Bluejay, and Sage.

Best stay out of that. So he crossed the Stone Bison and wandered the thick forests on the north-facing slopes on the other side of the Urdecha, looking for hellebore and nightshade and mint and mushrooms and truffles, and finding them under beds of ferns, or around the little springs that gurgled out of the holed cliffs on that broken shady wall of the gorge, often where the cliffs met the forest tilt sloping down to the floor of the gorge. Places that were always in the shade nurtured plants that grew nowhere else. Rocks in permanent shade were covered with mosses and lichens, and footed with ferns and sprawling nets of shrubs. Cool wet green smells were spiced by little flowers, and by the dry scent of thyme wafting in from sunnier air. Robins pecked around on the forest floor near him. They were known to be calm and wise birds, who would hang around people who didn’t bother them. Loon felt blessed by their presence. Out across the gorge, pine needles on the sunny side were flashing in the wind.

Loon walked painlessly, always testing the miracle, finding it again sound, then plopping onto his knees at a likely bed of ferns, and knocking around under it hunting for nightshade. From time to time he stood and looked down at the river sliding through its little gorge, and their camp across the river. It was nice how most of the best overhangs in this gorge were under walls on the north side, thus facing southward to the sun. The river had wanted people to be comfortable in its bed, and had arranged things accordingly. Over here on the shady side an overhang would be wasted, and a few were, being the wettest places of all. But they were good for certain shady plants.

He stood up, crushed the leaves and new buds of blossoms of mint under his nose, felt the scent cut into his head. Down there in camp, he could see Elga and Lucky sitting by the fire, Elga punching leather with a bone awl, Lucky playing with what looked like the little wooden owls Loon had carved for him.

It was hard to believe he wasn’t dreaming. But here he stood, upright and pain-free, in the cool of an ordinary morning. Really it was the things that had happened during his time away that were now dreams, even though they still seemed to threaten him. Real in their time, terrifying and hopeless in their time, they were now gone. They could not happen other than they had, they could not hurt him any more than they had. He did not have to fear them anymore. He had woken up from them, to this dream that was not a dream. Again he had stepped into the next world over from the one he had been in. All the worlds meet. Time to feel that and be happy.

Chapter 55

Thorn, however, was not happy. Loon was at first surprised at this. But then he began to understand: Thorn would never be happy. It wasn’t his way. Maybe all old people were like that. But no, Windy had been as happy as anyone, till right near her end. It was just Thorn. Had he always been that way? Loon couldn’t remember.

One night they were sitting around the fire, eating salmon steaks and a seed mash Thunder had cooked on a hot rock. Thorn was standing, drinking from a ladle, and Loon was sitting by the fire, massaging his left foot and feeling the new hard little lumps in there, so solid and painless. He looked up because Thorn had started, and saw that Thorn was staring over Loon’s head, across the fire at something, his face a wooden mask of itself, flickering in the light. No one else was acting any differently, they chattered to each other about this or that: only Thorn had frozen. Suddenly Loon realized that Thorn was staring at Click’s ghost. That was what his mask of a face said.

Loon felt his stomach shrink and the hair on his forearms rise. He did not dare turn around and see the ghost himself, he was much too scared for that; Click could be there half-eaten, bleeding, red eyes ravenous for revenge, teeth all fangs. Not for anything could he turn and look.

Thorn remained transfixed. The moment hung suspended: people talked in the orange flicker. Loon became curious despite himself. He wanted to see without looking, know without seeing. Holding his breath, asshole painfully tight, he turned his head and looked down at the fire; then, eyes straining far to the right in their sockets, he glanced over the flames in the direction Thorn was staring.

It was Click all right. He was standing at the edge of the firelight, in the dark between two trees, so that the firelight flickered him in and out of existence. But most certainly it was Click. His pale face appeared frozen, his hair and beard and brows frosted, but his eyes were alive, and they were fixed on Thorn. His expression was reproachful. All the parts of him they had eaten appeared to still be there under his bearskin cloak.

Then his frozen gaze shifted from Thorn to Loon, and Loon quickly whipped his head back around, completely unnerved. His face was tingling. Thorn glanced down at Loon, then back at Click. It was clear from his expression that he was still seeing him. Loon hunched over, head down, helpless to do anything but peer fearfully up at Thorn.

Thorn took his flute from his belt, very slowly, and played a tune that reminded Loon of the one called Fools the Wolves. Then it took a turn, and he recognized it as a version of Click’s triple walking whistle, turned somehow into a lament. One two three, one two three. All the time he played this, Thorn stared across the fire at Click. Finally he finished, nodded, kissed the flute, put it away. Then he turned and walked off toward his bed.

After that, Click’s ghost starting hanging around camp. At night by the fire Loon often realized that Thorn was seeing Click there at the back of the firelight, like a hyena at the edge of a kill site. Thorn played his flute when it happened, but to Loon it didn’t look like that was enough. Maybe when they gave Click’s bones a proper burial, his spirit would be satisfied and go away. Loon put his hopes in that.

Thorn passed the days wearing a little scowl of endurance. More than ever he looked like a black snake. Sometimes Loon could distract him with a carved knot or antler, or an etching on a slate, or an animal painted on a slab of wood. Loon also told many of Thorn’s favorite stories, including the one about the man who married a swan woman and ruined his life, ending up a seagull. That one caused Thorn to smile a gloomy little smile when Loon finished.

—Well said, youth. That’s your story all right. And you’re getting better at telling it too. Much better than that time at the corroboree. There’s some real heart in your ending now. You know how it feels, eh? But don’t forget the part about the old man who helps him.

The summer month was nearing full moon. At some point it had been established that they were decided not to go to the eight eight this year. Lots of reasons were given all around, but the main one seemed to be Schist’s desire to avoid an immediate confrontation with the northers. He suggested they go as far as Cedar Salmon River, fish the salmon run, and spend the following fortnight hunting in the canyons west of the ice caps, forgoing the caribou steppe to go after horses and musk oxen and sheep and bears, and all the other creatures of the west. It had been such a stormy spring and summer, possibly the caribou wouldn’t be coming anyway. Storm years had been known to do that before.

Of course some of them thought this change was a mistake, and no one liked missing the eight eight, except perhaps for Loon. So it was another thing not going well for Schist. He was losing the ability to make the pack feel whole. Ibex was always berating Hawk and Moss for one thing or other, and Hawk did not hesitate to mouth back at Ibex, always eyeing Schist as he did so. Youth will have its way. Thorn, the oldest of them all, except for Heather, was supposed to be the one who could reconcile all disputes, being their shaman. But he remained distracted, and offered no opinion about the pack’s summer, but only played his flute for longer and longer parts of the day.

Chapter 56

So they stayed in camp that summer, and some of them went to Cedar Salmon River for the fall run, and some went out to hunt the herds of horses that came through the gorge, driving them up kolby canyons from which they could not escape. Those who stayed in camp trapped deer. They had to gather enough food to get through the winter, and also have enough to give back to the Raven pack what they had given them in the hunger spring, plus a little more as thanks. It was quite a task, given the loss of the caribou harvest, and it was interesting as the fall months passed to find that they could do it; all but the return to the Ravens, anyway.

—We may have to wait on that a year, Schist admitted.—Or see what happens in the spring, and decide then.

—We’ll have to make a compensation to the northers, too, Thorn warned him.—When we go to the eight eight next year. Even if it was their fault. The corroborators will make the judgment, and it could be against us. So we need to be ready for that too. But that shouldn’t be food, it has to be something else.

Loon had an idea about that.—We took some of their snowshoes when we escaped, and broke the rest. So we could give the snowshoes back, but better.

—Better?

—I can make snowshoes better than theirs, and we could give them those.

Thorn nodded thoughtfully.—That’s the kind of thing the corroborators like. We’ll tell them that we forgive the northers for stealing Elga, so they have to forgive us for whatever we did to them when we got you two out of there. We’ll give back the snowshoes we took, but they’ll be even better. Then let bygones be bygones, or else we’ll fight them to the death. And the corroborators don’t like fighting at the eight eight.

Schist said,—It sounds good. No one wants the ice men thinking they can push around the corroboree. So it might work. And we need to go back.

After that, as part of his fall foraging, Loon kept an eye out for wood to use in making snowshoes. They had stolen four pair, so he intended to make that many, ignoring the memory of the many more he had broken. The ones he made were going to be better than the jende’s snowshoes. He had thought about this sometimes while tromping over the snow by the great salt sea, hauling the jende’s sleds. They had to make their snowshoes out of the gnarled little spruce trees that filled the nearby ravines, and with occasional pieces of driftwood they collected from the shore. Little trees made for little lengths of wood, and so their snowshoes were strapped-together things. Down here under the sun, the trees were so much more big and various that there were all kinds of tough woods that could be used.

And Loon now had an image in his eye, which he painted on a flat rock. He was quite sure that the most important thing for a snowshoe was that the foot be held steady, while the frame was still free to rotate up and down over the ball of the foot. The jende had solved the problem of these contrary requirements by strapping their tall boots onto mammoth tusk crossbars that crossed the snowshoe just behind the toe hole, so that the toe of the boot could angle through the snowshoe into the snow when you went uphill, and the snowshoe would stay flat when you took a stride on flat ground. Their crossbar tie worked well enough on flat snow, and when going straight up or down a slope, but on any kind of a traverse the boot would twist and slide, and a great effort had to be made to place the foot as flatly as possible on the snowshoe, and the snowshoe also as flat as could be on the snow. On traverses this couldn’t really work, so one was always slipping, and it was easy to tear straps, or break the bar under the foot away from the rounded frame. A broken snowshoe makes a bad day, as the saying went; and yet it happened pretty often.

The way to secure the foot on the snowshoe, Loon had decided, was to lash a wooden boot sole to a tough crossbar stick across the back of the toe hole, with a wrap made of bear leather sewed to this boot sole, so that the whole thing was a permanent part of the snowshoe. One would then place one’s boot on the wooden sole and tie the wrap over it. One’s foot would be stabilized on the wooden sole, which would make traverses very much easier. With a strong frame made of a single curve of ash wood, and wide cross straps of leather, or spruce roots, tied to the frame, the result would be very strong. He could consult with Heather and Sage about the best knots to use. Also, antler tips lashed or glued to the front end of the wooden soles would give them more grab going uphill, which would be a great thing, and they would be almost retracted when the sole was flat to the shoe, which it would be during a downhill glissade.

He could see it so well, he easily drew it: the best snowshoes ever. The northers simply didn’t have the ash trees to make them, even if they did suddenly think up Loon’s design, which he doubted they would, having not done it before. They lived on a coastal plain, while Loon was a hill person; maybe that explained it and maybe it didn’t, but when the time came and the northers tried Loon’s snowshoes, they would see they were better, and never make them the old way again. Maybe. It was worth a try.

So all that fall and winter, while Thorn was struggling with Click’s ghost, and the rest of them were packing on their winter’s fat by eating and sleeping as much as possible, Loon spent a lot of his time in camp working on snowshoes. Quite a few of the pack got interested in what he was doing, because whenever the snow was soft they themselves went out on snowshoes that they had never taken much trouble to make. But there were a lot of storms that winter, and better snowshoes would be a good thing, all agreed.

Thorn was interested but dubious.—You need to make sure they have some give. If they’re too rigid they’ll break under a strain, and then you’ve got no snowshoe at all. Better to give a little over and over than give it all at once.

Loon nodded. It was true that his design would only work if the foot bar was very strong and well attached to the frame, and the wooden sole well attached to the foot bar. These were the parts that would be tested the most, time after time in the ordinary course of walking, and with extra force during traverses and step-throughs and glissades. So he did a little jumping up and down on them while they were suspended between rocks, to see what they could handle. They performed pretty well. Some he found difficult to break no matter how hard he tried. That was really pleasing.

Heather took an interest in these tests, because she liked tests. She came over and watched Loon closely, and even made some jumps herself.—Try making them a few different ways, she said,—and see how they do before you make any more. Different shapes for the shoe, different attachments and bindings. I wonder, could you reinforce where the foot bar fits into the frame? Make frame sockets out of tusk or antler?

Loon tried various things. There was a lot of time that winter around the fire, during the long nights and the stormy days, so much time that it was hard to sleep through all of it. Elga was sewing new clothes for him and Lucky, and all in all, there was little he was needed for once night fell. So he worked on the shoes. Eventually Thorn came to agree that the wider variety of trees in their region, especially ash, and the sheer number and size of trees, should allow for the making of snowshoes superior to the northers’, and any design improvements would be good too. Being better would make them an excellent compensation, because they would compensate while also being a little put-down. There was no doubt they were going to be locking horns with the northers at the eight eight one way or another, so a little poke in the eye was always a good thing. You had to front up to such crass barbarians, he said, especially if you happened to have scalded some of them for their badness.—But they can’t be so stiff they break, he said more than once.—You can always deal with a little slip and slide on a traverse, but a break can be a really bad thing.

—I know, Loon said, and was about to explain yet again how much flex there was in ash wood, and how the foot bars were to be seated in mammoth tusk sockets, when he saw that Thorn was staring white-eyed across the fire again. The hair on Loon’s arms prickled, and Badleg started humming inside his ankle. Slowly Thorn pulled his flute from his belt, and again breathed through it the low tune of his apology. He had recently begun adding to it some birdlike notes that sounded like Click’s roop roop. As he played this song he continued to look across the fire, eyes still round, pleading with Click’s ghost to understand, to forgive.

During this particular visitation Heather was sitting by the fire, using its light to see dried branches of various herbs, plucking off their leaves and seeds and making careful piles on little patches of qiviut cloth, made from the underfur of the musk ox. She continued to do this without indicating in any way that she saw what was happening to Thorn.

It was only when she and Loon were alone the next morning, by the purling and chuckling ford of Upper Creek, that she said to Loon,

—Is it Click that Thorn thinks he’s seeing?

Loon didn’t want to talk about it, but he could not help but nod, almost in the same way Click would have.

She stared at him as he looked at the ground.—What happened to Click? How did he die?

Again Loon didn’t want to speak, but the words came out of his mouth anyway, like rocks he was spitting.—We woke up one morning and he was dead.

He told Heather about how they then took his frozen body along to use as a sled, a sled that they ate as they went, because without it they would have died. He told her how Badleg had forced him first to ride on Click’s back for a day, then to sit on Click’s frozen body and be pulled by Elga, while Thorn found the way. How Click’s ghost might have moved into Badleg during that time, because Click’s legs were among the first parts of him they had eaten.

Heather listened in silence, only nodding occasionally to show Loon that she heard him and understood. She sniffed from time to time.

When he was done she heaved a sigh.

—You need to collect Click’s bones and give him a proper burial. The ravens have cleaned them by now.

—We know. But until then…

She shrugged.—It’s going to be a long winter. It may be he will never leave this, no matter how long he lives. You never know how he’ll respond to things. He’s a hard man to guess.

—That’s true, Loon said.

Come second month of winter, he had the best pair of snowshoes he could make. When he was satisfied with them, or had defeated his dissatisfactions as much as he was able, he made another pair just like it. He invited Thorn to take a walk with him, and one morning they strapped the two pairs on and went downstream, as was proper for a first walk in a new pair of snowshoes. Thorn swerved left and right like a cliff swallow, traversing down the slopes to the river, cutting up and over the knob leading to Next Loop Down, and glissading down the steep slope on its western side. When he came to the confluence of the river and Upper Creek, he stopped over the lead. Black water slid smoothly by just beyond his snowshoes. He threw back his parka hood, and his earless balding head looked like a big black snake rearing up from a rock to look around. Liplessly he smiled at Loon.—They’re good. If Schist can keep from messing things up at the eight eight, we should be fine.

—You can help him, Loon suggested.

Thorn gave him a sharp look, but did not disagree.

One sunset soon after that Loon was on the ridge between Lower and Upper Valleys, and up the ridge beside the ridge trail he saw Click coming down. He leaped back in fear, then looked closer and saw that it was a different old one, a real one and not a ghost. Then he was afraid in a different way, and as he hurried down the ridge trail toward camp he pondered whether it would have been worse or better if it had been Click’s ghost. Possibly better. He could feel Click’s back, carrying him through the night he couldn’t walk; he could see Click’s snowshoe tracks, veering away to improve on Thorn’s routes. A spasm of grief cause him to groan like a loon in the night.

Full winter, but the days getting longer; storms; sitting around the fire, making things and telling stories. Making love with Elga in the night when everyone else was asleep, doing it silently among the rest, feeling themselves melt together into one silently spurting and clutching beast with two backs, nearly motionless under their blankets, a way of doing it that made it strangely intense, a fusing of two into one, a secret love blossoming like a red prong out of the snow. The snow, the iced-over river. Black leads that they didn’t have to go anywhere near. Elga wedge-browed at something she didn’t like that Thunder or Bluejay had done, hard-eyed and silent as she thought what to do about it. Starry taking care of all the new kids. Lucky babbling, learning to talk a little, learning to walk. Making them laugh. Hawk with Ducky. Despite all the talk, the women had recently arranged several in-pack marriages. Apparently, they were told now, this was not unusual.

Eating what Schist pulled out of his holes, watching his face to see how they were doing.

Remembering the previous winter, and feeling luckier than Lucky.

In the spring when the snow had melted off the south-facing slopes, and black water was opening on the sunnier ponds, Thorn and Loon went back to the tree west of Northerly Valley where they had left Click’s body to the ravens. Thorn never said a word about why they were going there, and Loon didn’t either. There was no need to point out something so obvious: Click’s ghost led them every step of the way, slipping through the trees ahead, occasionally looking back at them as if to make sure they were following. Thorn resolutely ignored these sightings, and Loon felt a warm humming in Badleg that made him nervous, as if the pain would come back if he did not behave well. If it had not been for Thorn’s presence he most certainly would have turned tail and run back to camp like a rabbit, keeping his eyes on the ground the whole way.

They got to the tree, which Thorn located without a problem. There was Click’s exposed ribcage and skull, with the other bones scattered around, moved by the little scavengers of that spring. A number of his bones were obviously missing, but then again they had not given the complete body to the ravens anyway.

Silently Thorn and Loon gathered the bones. Almost all of them were picked clean. Thorn stacked them carefully against each other, like sticks of firewood arranged for easiest carrying. Loon carried the skull inside the ribcage, at Thorn’s request. Before putting the skull and jawbone in the ribcage, Loon touched the skull to Badleg, and whispered inside himself, Thank you Click. If you want to help me, stay in me here. If not, go to your place in the sky, and leave Thorn alone.

They carried the bones down to the narrow pond that was the highest one in the canyon they were in. On the deepest part of the shore, Thorn took Click’s skull and jawbone out of his ribcage. He sang the spirit-freeing song:

Loon looked at Click’s thick bony brow, his bulky forehead, his skull so long, his big worn chompers. His teeth still looked just as they had in life when they had been revealed from inside his lips in a fear grin, or a shy smile. Seeing that gave Loon another stab of grief, a hot rush in his eyes and throat. The skull was both Click and not Click. A body was just clothing; Click was his spirit, as was made clear by his ghost, still out there in the forest with them. Although now he was concealed, which was a great relief, even though they could feel that he was nearby.

Thorn sang with his eyes closed, then opened them. He looked around, and it was clear he saw nothing but the ice-edged pond, the trees, the tight valley walls, the sky. Loon saw a weight lift off Thorn’s shoulders at that moment.

Loon took in a deep breath, let it out. He realized, by the beelike humming that had now started in his leg, that Click’s spirit was inside him, occupying the numb spot in his ankle. Again he decided that Badleg’s new name would be Click. Badleg was gone. Loon would carry Click along inside him and hope that Click would be his friend, even though Loon had been forced to eat some of him. That seemed like a lot to ask. But Click had been willing to help them. Ever since Heather had tended him back to life, he had been willing to serve. So, possibly that would continue. Loon would find out later.

For now there was just Loon and Thorn, alone in the forest. Carefully they set the bones in an open patch of black water and watched them sink into the pond, one by one, while they chanted together the good-bye:

Chapter 57

In the seventh month of that year, with Elga pregnant again, they left for their summer trek, past the Ice Caps and then north to the steppes. The walking was so unlike their forced march home of the year before that their escape seemed more than ever a dream. Or else this now was the dream; to Loon it often felt like one. The skies were clear, the air warm; the salmon run at Cedar Salmon River gave them more than they could eat. When they had smoked a load of fish they walked on, hauling the travois only a fist or two at a time. Short hikes, long rests, with every valley, every ford, pass, rest stop, and camp familiar to them. On the steppe they followed the trails along the curving streams north to their caribou ravine, and though there were not as many caribou this year as two years before, they still managed to direct a line of the beasts into their chute with its little cliff, and the resulting glut of meat kept them busy both day and night.

One night before going to sleep Elga and Loon went down to the river to wash off, and they heard two loons downstream. Loon looned his loon cry, and the loons looned back, and then Elga tried it, and the loons hesitated, and then answered her too. They held each other and laughed aloud to be so blessed. There’s nothing like a loon’s cry.

Then it was new moon of the eighth month, and they were off to the festival. Everyone in the pack began to act a little jumpy, but none of them could possibly have been as nervous as Loon, who could not bring himself to leave Elga’s side for even a moment. She was about halfway through her pregnancy.

So they came into the festival valley in a completely different mood than in summers past, clumped tightly together, with the men at the fore and all the kids tucked in among the women, who were dressed to kill, their hair braided and tied up in a way they usually would be only for the eighth night dance. The men’s spears were prominent in a way they wouldn’t normally be at festival. Schist and Ibex and Thorn took the lead, with Hawk and Moss and Nevermind and Spearthrower flanking them, and even as they proceeded to their usual campsite they called out to the corroborators that they had arrived and needed a judgment.

And it was true they did, for the northers were already there, at the northern end of the meadow in their usual spot, if they came at all, and their men had spotted the Wolves and were even now crossing the camp, spears in hand. This made it clear to the corroborators that their presence was required, and they too converged at speed from wherever they had been. All this hurrying and shouting drew everyone else at the festival too, of course.

The ice men were roaring,—There they are! Thieves, murderers! We want justice! We’re going to kill them if we don’t get it!

But Schist was good at projecting an immovable resolve, and he stood at the point of the Wolf men holding his spear in both hands across his chest. All the Wolf men stood the same, spears up and ready. Loon’s heart was thumping hard in his throat. He stood right next to Elga.

The big men among the corroborators bulled to the center of the growing crowd, and one of them shouted for order. Festival protocol demanded compliance to this command; any fighting now would cause the fighters to be beaten ferociously and then kicked out of the festival, and perhaps not allowed to come back. Most of the corroborators were from the packs who lived closest to the festival grounds, and they wouldn’t abide any challenges to their rule; if they sensed that their right to rule was being questioned they would swell up like toads and mass together like lions at a kill, their eyes fixed and round. They were like that now, bristling, ready to leap and pummel. Seeing them like that made it clear that the northers and Wolves were by no means the most dangerous men there, even if they were the angriest. And some of this anger was a pretense, it had to be; the crimes causing the anger had happened many months before.

The corroborators’ spokesman threw up his hand. The crowd went silent.

—Speak, he said heavily, glaring at the northers in a way that made it clear he meant, Speak and speak only.

One of the jende from one of the other houses spoke for them, a man Loon had worked for a few times in the ravines, and at the sound of this man’s voice Loon’s stomach shrank to the size of a nut.

Some of the corroborators knew the jende tongue, and one of those gave a short version of the norther’s statement in the southern tongue most of the people there spoke. It was as expected: Loon’s pack had stolen one of their women three summers before, and the following summer they had taken her back, and prevented Loon from stealing her again. Then Loon’s people had invaded their camp and with Loon’s help burned down a house and kidnapped her again. The attack had hurt a bunch of people, a woman and child had died by scalding, and one of their biggest houses had been destroyed.

—The woman in question came to us on her own three summers ago, Schist declared as soon as the translator had finished.—She was never a part of these ice men’s pack. She doesn’t even speak their tongue. She came from the east, and joined us at this festival of her own free will. You all saw it. She married into us and we took her in. Then the ice men stole her. Then we got her back. We did what had to be done. It’s too bad some of their people got hurt, but we didn’t start it.

Lots of shouting from the jende men followed this statement, and Schist’s fierce retorts cut right through them. Louder and louder insults led to the shaking of spears, and at that the corroborators swelled even bigger, and hefted their thick sticks over their heads, ready to strike. Again their spokesman raised his hand, in a fist this time, and the noise wavered and then died down.

Suddenly Elga stood forward between Thorn and Schist, with Lucky in her arms. Hastily Loon stepped up behind her.

—I came from the east, she declared loudly,

She said these last words in a voice so choked and furious that everyone jumped back a little. Loon and the rest of the Wolves were amazed, their eyes wide, mouths agape; they had never heard their Elga say even half as much as this, and never in such a strangled angry voice. But now was the time. Elga who always slipped aside; this time she had gone straight at it. Now she stared around at the crowd, and they could not take their eyes from her. She had won the day.

The ice men had their answers for her, of course. They contested what she had said, and insisted that people had not just been hurt, that a child had died by scalding, a woman too later on. And a house had been torched, and things stolen, and so on. Even without the translator it was clear what they were saying. It was beginning to seem like the two languages being spoken shared more words than anyone had realized until now.

Schist didn’t concede any of their points in any way, but only began to grate out more insults. Then Ibex joined him in that. This began to enrage some of the ice men, and the toad-swollen corroborators turned toward Schist and Ibex; they didn’t like it either. The young Wolf men were not shouting with Schist and Ibex, they were letting their leaders stand to the fore, and this was encouraging more abuse from the ice men, while also making Schist more vehement.

Thorn finally cut in front of Schist and Elga and raised his hand, which held one of Loon’s new pair of snowshoes, tied together with red cords. When silence fell, Thorn said,

The last part of Thorn’s speaking was aimed mainly at the corroborators, who liked being appealed to. They liked it also when Thorn gave them the four pairs of snowshoes to pass along to the northers. Loon and the other Wolves passed them forward, each pair tied together bottom to bottom by red leather cords. Loon found himself holding his breath, as if in the crucial moment of a hunt. He forced himself to breathe.

The corroborators, and the crowd too, were pleased that Thorn and his pack had thought to bring compensation. The ice men were of course still very unhappy, but they were also eyeing the new snowshoes that the corroborators held in the air, interested despite themselves. Their men conferred briefly; it looked like their headman was urging his hotheads to be satisfied. And indeed, when they were done they spoke in low tones to the corroborators’ translators, and those men nodded and spoke briefly among themselves. Their spokesman leaned into the discussion, and after listening for a time nodded with a satisfied expression. He and his helpers took up the four pair of snowshoes and walked with them held overhead to the northers, and gave them to four of the norther men with a ceremonial flourish. Then the spokesman for the corroborators held both his hands overhead, palms out, as he rotated in place and blessed the crowd.

—This matter is settled, he announced loudly.—No more fighting over this, be warned! It’s exile for good to anyone who disturbs the peace about this any more.

—And Elga is ours, Heather added loudly from the center of the Wolves.

—Yes, the festival spokesman said, looking pointedly at the ice men.—The woman Elga belongs to the Wolf pack. Know that, all of you!

Briefly the crowd cheered or howled, then dispersed. Twentytwenty people at least were standing there in the broad meadow, and now they all wanted to trade and dance. It felt good to think they could douse such a fire with words alone. Everyone knew that when packs fought people got hurt, even killed, after which it could go on for years. It was not that uncommon. But not this time. The dispute would give them something to talk about for a while, which was another pleasure, but mostly it was time to forget it and start dancing.

So then the eight eight went on as it always did. The Wolf pack stuck together more than usual, and Loon never left Elga, who never left their camp, so that it was a subdued festival for them. Everyone avoided the jende, and the northers stayed away from the Wolf camp. No one got in any fights. Even the young men who wanted to fight didn’t want to fight there. In the end the jende left two mornings later, without either apologizing or accepting apologies.

So all was well. But Heather scowled when Loon said that to her in the camp, when only she could hear.

—We’re just lucky your shaman was there, she said,—because bad as he is, he’s not as stupid as Schist.

—What?

—It was Schist’s task to make peace, and instead he was throwing fat on the fire. Thorn had to step in and save him. Schist has gone foolish trying to match Thunder and Bluejay, and it’s dangerous to have a fool as your headman. He was never that good, and Ibex is worse. And now Hawk is making him so nervous that he’s worse than ever.

—Hawk?

Heather stared at Loon.—There is a curse on this pack, she muttered to her right hand as she turned away.—All its men are stupid. All but the unspeakable one, and he’s unspeakable.

—I don’t know what you mean, Loon said.

—I know.

Elga laughed at Loon’s stickiness during the rest of the festival, so like Lucky’s all the time, and she looped a long knitted horsehair scarf around all three of their necks to mark their bond. They walked around always together. Part of Loon was giddy with relief, while another part of him was still twisted to a little ball of apprehension, and the two feelings mixing together made him unsteady, a little sick-drunk, even though he drank none of the mash. The gorgeous attire of all the people passing their camp was more than his eye could take in, and everything blurred as if beyond the rising heat of a fire, or in the side vision of a dream. At the big bonfire on the eighth night, he watched the bursts of colored fire that spilled out of the firemasters’ sachets, and looked around at the dancers, and the stars overhead, and it seemed to him that everything was made of banners of colored fire, shimmering in their burn from one moment to the next. He held the scarf running from his neck to Elga’s, felt her tugging him here and there like a child, realized the tug itself meant he was not dreaming, because it was all too much right there tugging at his neck, too real to deny.

On the morning of the last day, he and Elga and Lucky went to the broad sandy bank of the meadow’s river, where there was a group of men in the sun busy at work on their bird’s eye views. As always it was mostly an old man’s game, and the more they had wandered in their lives the better they were at it, and the more interested. It was a traveler’s game. Now a lot of old men, and a few old women, maybe two score in all, were strolling about watching those who were actively making views.

The makers crouched and tiptoed about on the edges of their patches, stretching far out to smooth and shape the sand to what they thought some part of the world would look like from the sky, if shrunk to the size of their patch. The areas they portrayed were sometimes big, extending from the festival grounds and the caribou steppe to the mountains to the south, and the great salt sea to the west. Others portrayed smaller areas. There were distinct styles, which Loon thought were somewhat like the way wall paintings were either three-liners or fully detailed: some views were made simply of wet sand molded into the shapes of the land by hand and stick, so that one saw the stripped flesh of the land, so to speak; others used moss for meadows, twigs for trees, pebbles shoved into the sand to look like the gleam of water seen from on high, even some little toy animals and shelters and people, taken from kids’ camp games. Someone had even packed down snow to represent the ice caps on the central highlands, and in one old woman’s view, even the great ice wall of the north, here ankle high.

It was funny to see these little worlds as if one were an eagle at the highest point of its gyre, and some of the decorated views were quite beautiful. But what the makers mostly discussed was how accurate they were. Long sticks were used to point out features; traveling stories were related, with lots of argument about what a day’s walk meant in terms of a stretch of land. This last argument was impossible to resolve, both in principle and in relation to the shrinking they had done to reduce a big part of the earth to three strides on a side; but it obviously gave many of them immense pleasure to discuss it at length, with sand hills and canyons to point to:—I was in this valley you mark as shallow, but it’s deeper than that, I passed through it twelfth month and the sun never came over the southern ridge, so you need to have it deeper.—Maybe so, here I’ll scoop it down a bit.

And so on. At the end of the session they would all declare their favorites, and a best of day would be declared, and the winner given a bucket of mash and a chance to brag for a fist or two, and then they would all stand around the edges of the view, observers and makers both, and leap out onto the little worlds and tromple them to a chaos of torn sand, worse than the mud at a caribou ford. Gods destroying worlds: and while it lasted it was the best dance of all, they shouted and laughed as they leaped and kicked, it felt glorious.

Still, Loon only really began to relax when the festival was over and they had dragged their dried meat and new goods back home to their abri over Loop Valley.

Chapter 58

Loon began to feel like his life was real. Ever since his wander, it had not felt real; it had felt as if in some instant of the wandering days he had wandered into a different world and never come back out. Wandered into a dream and not woken up. That happened to people; some of Thorn’s stories told of it happening, and Loon fully believed it, because it had happened to him before, as a child, when his mother died. And then again during his wander.

And now, yet again. He had walked into a different dream, stepped through the place where all the worlds meet, into the next world over. In this one the clench slowly left his belly, and he could laugh without a catch in his throat. Elga sat there by the fire, big among the other women, fattening up on the autumn’s bounty, growing big around the new child inside her, soon to be born; still not much of a talker, and eyes hard as pebbles, always watching; but always there, too, listening to the other women and nodding patiently, asking questions that kept them going. The questions made her sound skeptical, but Loon noticed that her eyes would be on Lucky, or the skyline, as she talked with the other women, and with a simple—But why? she could have the other woman talking for most of the next fist, while Elga continued to eye something else beyond their talk. She could do several things at once. She was harder than before, no doubt about it. But she still had a warm spot for Loon, he could see that in the way she looked at him, feel it in her hands and the way she kissed him at night. She seemed to give him the thanks for her rescue, although Loon didn’t think he deserved it, as he had had to be rescued himself; and in the end it was Elga who had hauled him home.

But it was true that Elga was thankful to Thorn too, as she made clear often, bringing the old sorcerer things by the fire, or down by the river, or at his bed: ladles of soup, needles, birdskins, buckets of water, morsels from the kill. Loon did the same when it occurred to him, and he saw how much Thorn liked Elga’s thanks, much more than Loon’s, which he accepted as only what was due. Loon ignored that, which seemed proper to him anyway. Thorn had come and rescued them, and now Loon was going to be the pack’s next shaman, it looked like, so he needed Thorn to teach him things. It was exactly the reverse of how he had felt after his wander, which again made him feel like he had fallen into a different world. As for Thorn with Elga, no doubt it felt good to Thorn when she was nice to him, considering the treatment he always got from Heather, her constant needling. Very different to have a woman be sweet and kind, and a young strong woman at that, fat with child.

Also: Elga never thought about what had happened to Click. She did not see Click’s ghost, or if she saw it, pretended to perfection that she didn’t. She refused even to see how the haunting had affected Thorn, or Loon too for that matter. She never mentioned the past at all. Thorn liked that in her.

Because for Thorn the past was still alive. Loon could see it. There was a dream world Thorn could stumble into, even while fully awake. Although it was true that since they had buried Click’s bones in the lake, Click’s spirit had stopped hanging around at the edges of the firelight. He was not inside Badleg either, as Loon could tell because he walked around painlessly, and without the sound of humming bees from inside him. The lack of pain there remained new enough to Loon that he remembered to know it was a miracle. It seemed to him a clear sign that the burial had been good, and Click’s spirit content. And it looked like Thorn was seeing signs of this too, although he was still wary at the end of most nights; he kept his gaze on the fire itself, and did not look sideways or out into the night. And so there were no more moments when his fireside face would turn to a wooden mask as he looked out at the flickering trees at the edge of the light.

But then one day Hawk brought back an antler fragment he found in Quick Pass, and gave it to Loon while Thorn was there. The moment he saw it Loon snatched it up and tried to keep Thorn from seeing it; unfortunately the snatching motion drew Thorn’s eye, and before Loon had it hidden in his fist Thorn too had seen: it looked just like Click’s body after they had eaten the legs, the same truncated thighs at one end and long head at the other, all rough but obvious. And Thorn recognized it. His mouth tightened hard at the corners. Click’s spirit had said hello to him.

Loon took the antler fragment away, and refused to see the little incisions that one could have made to clarify the neck and crotch, which would have made it a toy in just the shape of Click’s body. Instead he cut away with his burin until the fragment was splittable, and then split it and turned the lengths into needles for Elga and Heather and Sage. So much for that.

Although it could also be said that now Click’s spirit was always there among them, and getting all sewn up in the seams of their clothes, and occasionally even sticking them in the thumbs. Loon realized he should have just lost the fragment in the forest, or cast it with the appropriate song into the pond with Click’s bones. He still didn’t have enough practice dealing with ghosts to understand how subtle they could be.

Thorn did, having spent many years in concourse with them; and the look on his face as Loon had hurried away with the antler piece had said that there was no way to avoid a spirit, if they wanted to visit you. One could do one’s best to assuage it, but in the end the spirit did what it wanted.

So Thorn kept his head down, and was as peaceable as he had ever been. He tended the sick with a particular regard, formal and distant, but intent and meticulous. Scared of Fire started vomiting, and Thorn listened to his breathing, then conferred with Heather before devising his healing ceremony; and when consulting her, he treated Heather with the same regard he gave to Scared. All of his ceremonies he performed with particular care. He did the monthly counts with perfect etchings on his yearstick. He made his old jokes. He ran the kids through their songs and riddles in the mornings.

All this unthorny behavior, as if with Elga there about to give birth, and Lucky underfoot, he could be content despite all his thinking. And yet one night when the fire had died down and he was approaching his bed, he stifled a cry and stepped back. Loon saw this from his own bed and exclaimed,—What? before he could stop himself.

Thorn didn’t answer. He was standing back, hands out, staring at his empty bed. Loon tried to look sidelong, not wanting to see. Thorn’s bed appeared empty to him. But not to Thorn. Loon flexed Badleg a little, felt nothing there. Click was not in him.

Loon didn’t know what to do. He had never heard any stories about such a situation, and it wasn’t clear to him what Thorn might want him to do. Well, Thorn would want him to stay out of it. Possibly there was something Thorn could say now to Click, something he could do…

And yet he seemed at a loss. His lips were flopping like a fish out of water, mouthing words soundlessly, just like fish did. Loon had never seen him so taken aback.

Finally Thorn pulled himself together, drew himself up, sighed heavily. He flicked the back of his hand, the way he would at kids who had gotten in his way.—What? he complained in a low voice.—What am I supposed to do? Just tell me and I’ll do it.

Then he stood there for a long time. Finally he went back down to the fire. Loon fell asleep before he returned, having never seen Click or felt a twinge.

That winter people began to say that Thorn had lost his luck. They didn’t know about Click, they didn’t see Click around the camp, but still they saw something in Thorn, and said what they said. Not when he could hear them, of course, although sometimes he heard it anyway. If he did he only turned his head away, sometimes nodding to himself. The hunters often talked about losing their luck, that was the only way one could deal with it; you had to face up to Narsook, and if it happened to you, let your friends know about it, and let them take the lead for a while to help you, and then something might happen and your luck would come back to you.

But for shamans it was different. They ventured into realms far beyond luck, into dreams, into the sky, into animals and Mother Earth. They entered spirits, and spirits entered them. Clearly they needed their luck to do that, or something like luck; and if their luck was gone, not only would their shaman’s work get harder, but the whole pack might suffer. So no one liked to see it, and after a while, anyone who talked about it was told to shut up.

On a cold winter’s night, a new person was born into Wolf pack. A woman, salmon clan. The men sat around the fire smoking from Thorn’s pipe. Thorn sang a long version of the swan wife story, laughing cheerfully at his own jokes, and cuffing Loon more affectionately than ever before.

Loon spent a lot of time with Elga and Lucky and the new babe, and in helping Thorn do things. When he wasn’t busy, he carved figures out of antlers and little sticks of mammoth ivory they had gotten at the festival. Some were toys for their new baby. Elga was happy to see them, but she was tired with the new baby, and distracted with the things going on among the women.

—Is everything all right? Loon would ask when he saw her face.

—No, she would say.—But it’s the women’s affair, nothing you can do anything about. Thunder and Bluejay are beginning to notice that no one likes them anymore. Actually no one ever liked them, but they think it’s changed to that, and that the change is my fault. Which it is, too. So, it’s too late for them now, but they’re just realizing that and are mad about it, and making things worse to make them better. Which never works. But we have to get through that one way or another. Don’t you worry about it. Someday you and your friends may have to get involved in a solution. But right now you just take care of Thorn.

—I will.

Before giving the little carved figures to the baby to play with, he took them to Thorn and asked for his comments on them. Same with his cliff paintings in Upper Valley, and his charcoal boulders on the river, which he asked Thorn to visit and look at. Thorn would join him in a walk to the river, then when they were there Loon would walk over the river’s ice and go to work. Curve after curve, animal after animal.

Thorn would sit by a little fire he would light, interested in Loon’s work. When they returned to camp after these days, he often took out a big smooth slate and a stick of earthblood mixed with beeswax, and gave them to Loon and then called out animals and postures for Loon to three-line:

—Hyena looking over its shoulder at you.

—Ibex horns, seen from behind.

—Ibex horns seen from straight on.

—Bull elg, wasted after the rut.

—Baby rhino stuck in the mud.

—Female lion on the hunt. Oh, that’s very nice. That’s the exact look in her eye there, with just a dot and a tear line.

—Stallion throwing his head up to threaten a rival near his wives. Ah, well done. You are getting very good at horses.

Loon didn’t know what to make of these unthorny comments, but just wiped the slate clean and waited for the next prompt.—Horses are beautiful, he said.

—Yes.

Both of them only looked on when Hawk and Moss went at it with Schist and Ibex. This could be regarded as an aspect of Thorn losing his luck, in that if they had a shaman feared by all, then they might have behaved better in front of him. But probably it would have happened no matter what, because Schist kept making decisions about food that no women but Thunder and Bluejay and Chamois liked, from the winter stores to that night’s meal. And also because Hawk and his friends were now bringing home most of the winter meat. And really because the two of them had never liked each other, not since when Schist had been Hawk’s babysitter, Heather said.

So they knapped away at each other, bang, bang, bang, and sparks would fly. Schist would be sitting by the fire sniffing his mash, and Hawk would come into camp all bloody with a saiga rear over his neck and the hooves hanging down his chest before him. The mass over his shoulders gave him a bison look, and as he passed between Schist and the fire he dipped his head toward Schist, as if to a female being told to submit. Schist saw it and surged to his feet, which meant he almost got a hoof in the eye, and he swept the hoof aside, but this brought the other hoof into the side of his face, even though Hawk was stepping back as it happened, and could pretend it was an accident and laugh. Schist fumed while Hawk hefted the rump and legs off his head and held them out as if to protect himself. Schist cursed him, red-faced, and Hawk waggled the saiga hooves at him, another bull command to bison women.—Out of my way, old man. I was just trying to get by the fire to the cutting stone, don’t know why you jumped up at me like that!

To which Schist could only scowl and stomp off to the wood pile.

Endless number of incidents like that. It got tedious. Their jokes were too pointed. There were two score nine of them in the pack now, and three of the married women were pregnant. In a lot of ways things were good. They had not starved last spring very much, and it was looking like they were going to be all right for the coming spring. Seemed like that could last for year after year; so why the tension? Was it just something about the men who took charge, the ones who wanted to be headman? The young one going after the old one, the old one fighting back? They saw that a lot out in the herds. But did the pack really need a headman? A lot of packs seemed to work fine without them; the men did what needed doing, the women made the family and clan decisions without fuss in a continuous flow of talk, and things went fine. It would be good to be in a pack like that. Loon had cause to wonder whether Hawk would like it too. But he thought Moss would. And Hawk disposed, but Moss proposed. This was something Loon knew without Heather’s help, that he had seen his whole life, since they were all little boys together.

Once Loon was down by Ordech-Meets-Urdecha, and he came on two rhinos having a fight in a snowy meadow. He stepped back behind a tree and sat to look around it and see them. The wool on the two low round creatures was thick and long, black on top, crusted with snow on their undersides. They were funny-looking animals, like the unspeakables of the forest but with their horns proud and dangerous-looking, like prongs on their nose turned into spears. These were their weapons; they seldom bit each other, but instead swung their heads sideways together in great clacking collisions that sometimes caused them to stagger back and the skin around the base of their horns to bleed. A quick sideways thrust could cut a throat or put out an eye, so it could go from a dominance fight to a deadly quarrel at any instant, and almost every bull rhino was scarred around his head.

Now these two faced off, snorting and panting. They had been at it a while and both were bloody, the snow under them splotched with red. Their little eyes bulged as they glared at each other and waited for an opening: they wouldn’t have seen Loon even if he had danced right between them.

They slapped horns together in the usual way, with a kind of dance timing that reminded Loon how much the two fighters had to be in agreement to fight. The clacks sounded like when big solid barkless branches were knocked together, but more hollow.

Then one dipped his head left, and when the other swung to meet it, ducked his horn under and jerked it straight up. The other one saw this and leaped back to avoid the upward thrust, and immediately the first one charged, slapping left and right with furious speed, battering horn against head in a rapid sequence of smacks. The retreating one turned while roaring, very agile on its hooves, and ran hard away. The winner could have followed and horned him in the rump if he had wanted to, but he stood foursquare on the bloody snow and lifted his nose, sniffing disdainfully and then opening his little mouth to emit a short low roar.

Loon went out on a winter hunt with Hawk and Moss and Nevermind and Spearthrower. Thorn came along too; now that he had recovered his strength, he could keep up with the young men in all but their fastest sprints.

Up Lower’s Upper, onto the broad moor to the north. Ah the huge pleasure of walking hard with his friends, uphill and down, pushing the pace, out on a dawn patrol. Left leg stiff, and with a little numbness inside, suggesting things Loon shouldn’t try, reminding him always to rely on Goodleg to take the load when there were any questions: but no pain. Ah the glory of the dawn hunt!

They were going to go west on the plateau, along its edge to the head of Northerly canyon, and then creep down the headwall to the meadow below the cleft between the Ice Tits, where a herd of bison appeared to be wintering. If they got to the Giants’ Knapsite before the bison passed by, they might be able to spear some from their usual blind. They had not been there since the previous fall.

It was a crisp late winter dawn, the air in the valley hazy. Firestarter was plunging into the western skyline, dimming as the sky went gray and then pale blue. The rabbit in the moon was stirring her red paint to throw at the dawn. The meadow at the head of Northerly canyon was empty except for a handful of snow hares, nearly invisible in their white coats, looking nervously around, nostrils pulsing. They were very hard to kill with a throwing spear, which did not keep the men from trying a throw from above, everyone at once, a rain of long flexing spears lancing down onto the meadow, and by chance one of them pinned a running hare right to the grass. It was dead by the time they got down to retrieve it, and it turned out to be Loon’s spear.—Thank you! Loon exclaimed to the hare with a brief kiss to its forehead. He bagged it and looped the bag over his belt at his back, and the hare joined him for the rest of the day, which would make him fast. It would also add to their scent, but they were already completely obvious to the animals with a nose anyway, so it didn’t matter. They would cook the hare if they stayed out that night.

Down the winding route they had established in Northerly’s highest part. Through a notch between rocks taller than they were, down to the Giants’ Knapsite, to wait in the blind and see which way the wind blew.

The Knapsite was a tumble of big flinty boulders, mostly free of smaller rocks. The exposed cliff above them was spalling onto the slope below it, and the slope was at an angle that sorted the rocks by size, with the biggest falling the farthest, as usual. Some house-sized boulders had rolled far enough out to pinch a meadow that curved around them and extended both upstream and down.

There was a flat spot incised into the top of one of these boulders, as if the giants had wanted men to hide there. They hauled themselves up a number of knobs that allowed one to climb the boulder’s uphill side. The incised platform was big enough to hold all of them easily, and its lookout spot gave a view of the head of the curving meadow. The valley walls were steep, and lightly forested with brush pines. The wind was flowing downstream in typical morning style, so if any animals came downvalley they would not smell the men or the dead hare. It was warm for a winter day, though cold in the shade. The sound of the creek making its slow turn under the ice came mostly from the lead at the outlet, clucking away.

Hawk took the lookout first, and soon hissed, and the men fell completely silent as they flowed to positions beside him, hoping to see for themselves.

The bison were there. A little pack of them, hairy-headed and ragged after the winter. Nine women bison followed the chief bull, the women in better proportion than the men because they did not have such massive heads. Beautiful creatures, as always, their close tan fur only a little darker than lions’ fur, their hairy heads the brown nearest black; all moving slowly together, chewing their cuds, the sunlight diving right into their bodies, so that they glowed with their weight, floated on the snow of the meadow like visitors from a denser world. Dream creatures, walking through the waking world.

Three of them had birds standing on their rumps, the birds patiently poking around in the beasts’ fur in search of the fly grubs growing in there. The grubs were a delicacy, as the men well knew. Loon’s mouth was running a little with saliva anyway, just seeing the beasts.

But the bison appeared to realize the men were there. All their tails were raised, and several were shitting or pouring out thick streams of urine, the clear yellow arcs steaming in the morning light. The majestic beasts did not have great eyesight or hearing, but their noses were good. And often if humans were close enough to see them, they just seemed to know it. Bison were hard to hunt for that reason.

Now again it was happening. They hugged the far side of the meadow from the boulders. But even over there, they were within reach of the spears. It was just about as far as they could throw them with spear throwers, so far that it would be a matter of luck to hit anything in particular.

Thorn whispered,—Shall we try?

Hawk nodded. As quietly as possible they placed the cupped ends of their javelins on the knobs on the end of their spear throwers. It took some silent maneuvering to get themselves lined up so that they weren’t in each other’s way.

—Don’t hit anyone with your spear thrower, Thorn whispered as he always did, and they all checked their throwing space and nodded to each other: they would not hit each other, nor the boulder they were on. Ready to throw. They shifted back and forth on their feet like cats getting ready to leap, feeling in themselves how their throws should go. Then Hawk whispered,—Everyone aim for the bull in front. Ready—set—now! And they all threw at once, silently.

Most of the bison bolted as the javelins flashed through the air toward them, but two spears thwacked into the big bull, and the men cried—Yes! Or—Ha! or—Thank you! as they saw it.

—Oh I norbled my throw, Nevermind lamented,—I wristed it again.

Thorn, however, was holding his lower back with his right hand.—That hurt, he said, looking puzzled.—I must have thrown it too hard, maybe, and pulled a muscle.

—Sorry to hear, the others said.

Most of the bison were now at the lead in the meadow outlet, stamping about uneasily, looking back at the chief bull. He had his head down, and was stepping forward hesitantly, as if trying to figure out what he could do. Blood began to pour from his mouth, and some of the men said,—Yes! because one or both of the javelins must have slipped between ribs and punctured a lung. That meant the end of the chief bull. The men slapped each other on the shoulders, watching closely.

They still had their short spears left, and it was a simple task to get off the back of their boulder and stalk the mortally wounded beast, dispatch it with a charge and several thrusts to the gut and in the ribs. One of those thrusts was a heart stab, and the big beast went to its foreknees with a groan, then collapsed onto its side and died.

After that they had a hard day’s work of it, getting the skin off it and breaking up the body into quarters, boning the rear legs and getting it all ready to carry home. Thorn got a fire going, and they ate the usual kill site lunch of liver and kidneys, and changed around the tasks as they got tired, while always keeping guard against lions and hyenas. A little cloud of ravens gyred over them, so they wouldn’t be alone for long. It was important to get the bison chopped up as fast as was convenient. But they were in a good mood too. All but Thorn, who stayed silent.

—Are you all right? Loon asked him.

—I don’t know. I must have pulled something.

Chapter 59

Thorn was looking for Click but not seeing him. Loon considered taking another antler fragment and carving an image of Click and putting it gently down in the water of the pond where they had buried him. Then again, if he did that he might disturb one of Click’s bones and distress the old one. The thought of seeing Click’s skull with its familiar teeth in the water looking up at him was also bad. But to keep Click away somehow… surely there was something he could do. If this, if that: it was a little eddy of ifs that he could circle in too many times, always thrust out by that last bad image of Click’s skull in the water looking up at him. Leave that spot, go somewhere else!

So it was better to keep a little distance from Thorn.

They got through the winter without too much hunger in the spring. But sometime during that winter, Loon noticed that Thorn never threw things anymore, and that he avoided lifting his right arm above his shoulder. And he got gaunter than the rest of them in the hunger month. His was just an old black snakehead now, with lion fangs swinging from the few strands of hair left behind his ears and on his neck. He seemed to be peering out at them all through something that lay between him and the rest of them. He watched Elga and the new baby, and Lucky by the fire, with a most curious expression.

One afternoon just before sunset Pippiloette came by with Quartz, the shaman of the Lion pack to the east. They hallooed into camp with gifts for all, Quartz singing a song and the women all clustering around Pippi as always, but Pippi went through them right to Loon and hugged him, held him and looked at him, saying—I’m really glad to see you here, I’m sorry about that night you got taken, I heard those northers grabbing you and I rolled into a tuck before they saw me, and after that there was nothing I could do, except follow you a while and then go tell Thorn what happened, which I did, as I’m sure he told you.

—Yes, Loon said.—It’s all right. I figured that was what happened.

Pippi nodded.—And all’s well that ends well.

—We made it back, Loon said, feeling a little uneasy, as if it might not be true.

That night by the fire Pippi told them the story of his travels, and Quartz told the story of the bison man in the cave, one of Thorn’s favorites. After that he and Thorn retired to the edge of the firelight with a bucket of mash and talked together long into the night. Loon joined them for part of this, and while he was there Thorn and Quartz discussed whose turn it was to paint the caves. The Lions were to have the spring, the Wolves the autumn. This meant the Wolves would have to deal with the problem of the cave bears coming back to sleep for the winter.

—I’ll get them to leave you a cleaned bit of wall to work on, Quartz promised.

—That’s good, Thorn said.

It occurred to Loon that Thorn was probably going to have to paint with his left hand, unless he made a stool to stand on.

—What will you paint? Quartz asked Thorn.

—I’m thinking about horses, Thorn said.—How about you?

—We’re talking about doing some ibex and mammoths. Quartz looked at Loon and said politely,—And what about you? If Thorn lets you do anything?

—I saw two bull rhinos fighting, Loon said.—I’d like to try that.

Then one night Thorn froze once more as he approached his bed nook.

—Not you again, he muttered, followed by something else Loon couldn’t make out. After a while standing there, Thorn raised up his hands and entered his little nest. He sat down hard on his bed.—Let me be, he said in a low voice that Loon could just hear.—What else could I have done, you tell me that. You see what came of it. That’s all I have to give you. Look at them and leave me alone.

But Click must not have been convinced. Thorn saw him often now, usually at night when he went to bed.

And something kept hurting him in the ribs. Just talking sometimes he would wince, or when walking come to a sudden halt, sometimes with a hiss. Once in the forest, when he thought he was alone, Loon saw him stop and sit down.

He even went to Heather about it. Loon was there helping her, and when Thorn saw he was there he frowned, and then sat down and asked Heather to take a look at him. Heather had him take off his cloak, and touched him all over his torso with her fingertips. Then she put her ear to his back and chest and mouth, smelled his breath and skin, felt his pulse. She made him move his arms around, and noted when he winced. She saw what Loon had seen, that his right arm could not go over his head.

When she was done, she crabbed over to her herb shelf and nosed around among the little bags lined up on it.—I don’t know, she said without looking at Thorn.

Only Loon was there with them, and with a brief glance at him, Thorn said,—Come on, tell me. Tell me what you don’t know.

She snorted.—I don’t know anything. Just as you have always told me.

—Well, it’s true, isn’t it?

—Yes. So, here. She gave him a bag.—It will dull the pain. And smoke your pipe.

—But if it’s my lung?

—A little smoke won’t matter.

Thorn gulped, then glowered at her; he didn’t like what she was suggesting, he didn’t want her telling him that. His lip curled in an ugly little snarl, and she stared back at him flint-eyed. Loon saw that the two of them were not going to be getting along any better now that Thorn was sick.

After that Thorn ignored Heather and everyone else, and got on with his days as usual, often going out to scavenge firewood, or gather shaman herbs and mushrooms. He started the day by smoking his pipe. Around the fire he watched Elga and Lucky and the baby. By the way his eyes stayed fixed on things and did not look around, Loon concluded that he was seeing Click follow him around through the course of his day. After this went on for a while, something in the way Thorn wouldn’t look to his right revealed both that Click’s ghost was sitting there beside him, and that he did not mind it as much as he had before. He forbore to look that way not because he was afraid, but as a kind of courtesy.

He started calling their new baby the finch, because she was alert and her movements were fast and jerky. He would sit around and watch the baby and Lucky while Elga and Loon went off to do things. And when the suncupped snow left the earth, he went off on his scavenging forays in a better mood.—Things happen, he said to Loon once when they were standing by the river watching it purl through a sunset.—There’s not a thing you can do about it.

Chapter 60

Then one morning putting wood on the fire he crouched to the ground with a muffled cry, curled around his right side. He crawled to Heather’s nest, refusing help from Loon and groaning from time to time. Loon could only walk beside him, shocked and frightened.

When Thorn got to Heather’s he stared up at her.—It hurts, he hissed.

—Lie down, Heather said. She helped him onto her bed.—Get yourself comfortable.

—I can’t get comfortable!

—As comfortable as you can.

She was digging around in her bags. She gave him some of a root to chew, and rubbed some mistletoe berry paste into his gums. She sent Loon to get Thorn’s pipe and shaman herbs. When Loon came back with them, she dug through Thorn’s stuff as if it were hers, and had him eat some of his own dried mushrooms.

—Now’s the time to be a shaman if ever you’re going to be, she said.

Thorn did not reply. He smoked his pipe when Heather loaded and lit it for him with a splinter brought from the fire.—Why this sudden thing? he asked her when he had exhaled a long plume.

—It cracked a rib.

He stayed on her bed that night. They brought him seedcakes and bits of cooked meat, but he shook his head at them and wouldn’t open his mouth even to speak, until the food was taken away. After these attempts to feed him he would sip water from a ladle, and look at Heather.

—Why should I? he said to her.

Heather didn’t answer. She arranged for his furs to be brought over to her bed, and put them against a log so that Thorn could sit up. She knew before he said it that this would be a less painful position for him. She set a bucket of water by his side, with a ladle in it, and sat beside him when he tossed and turned.

—I could try to drain it, she said to him after inspecting his right side.

—Could you? Thorn’s red-rimmed eyes gleamed with sudden hope.

—We can always try. It might hurt to puncture it.

—It can’t hurt more than it does.

She sniffed at that, but the next morning she took him down to the riverside with Loon. She had him lie down on his left side, on the leather side of a big bearskin, right on the bank where he could put his feet and hands in the cold water of a long black lead.

—Chill yourself as much as you can, she instructed him.

He put his feet and hands in the black water. Heather washed the skin over the bump under the bottom of his ribcage, and then with one swift motion stuck him there with an awl. He hissed and trembled in the effort to stay still. She pulled out the awl, wiped the blood away with a leather patch, and stuck a long elderberry tube, like her blowdart tube but longer and narrower, into the wound she had made. Thorn was sucking air in through his teeth. Heather instructed him to move onto his belly so that the tube was pointed slightly down from the wound. He shifted and rolled onto his chest and belly, pulling his feet and hands out of the water. Blood began to run from the tube. Heather said to him,—Stick your head in the water and keep it in there as long as you can hold your breath.

He took a breath, held it, and ducked his head into the water. Heather crouched down over him and sucked hard on the end of the tube. She spat out a mouthful of Thorn’s blood, then sucked again and spat out some whitish pus, not much of it. Thorn yanked his head out of the river and blew a quick few breaths and ducked in again. Heather sucked again on the tube, cheeks folding far into her toothless face. She spat out a little bit more pus, but not much was coming. She tapped the tube in a bit farther, which caused bubbles to burst the surface of water around Thorn’s head. He hauled himself out yelping.

—Once more! Heather said sharply.—It’s working now.

He ducked his head under again and she tried several more hard sucks, but got very little out.

Finally he pulled out of the water, gasping, and she pulled the tube from his side and pressed some dried moss against the puncture wound. Thorn crawled up the bank and sat, then dried his head with a clean leather patch. Heather washed her mouth out several times with river water.

—Any luck? Thorn asked.

—Not much, she said, looking downstream.—It’s not like pus. It’s more solid.

—Could you cut it out?

She looked at him, eyes round.—It’s inside your ribs.

Thorn stared at her for a long time.—Fuck, he said. For a little while he breathed hard, looking down the river. Heather put her hand to his knee, and he looked back at her. For a long time they looked at each other.

—All right, Thorn said.

Chapter 61

After that he stayed in Heather’s bed.

Most of the pack’s people stayed away from camp more than they might have otherwise. Loon passed his days with Elga and the kids, down by the river. Some days he went to see Thorn in the afternoons when Heather was out gathering. But Thorn did not want to talk.

One day Hawk and Moss were going out on a hunt, and Loon decided to go with them.

It was a cool morning, and his two friends fell into their hunting lope almost as soon as they got out of camp. Loon found he had no problem keeping up with them; he could run on his left leg in a way he hadn’t since his wander, poling over that foot as if he were still wearing his wooden boot, in some kind of leaping limp. In most ways he felt stronger and faster than he ever had, and the stiff leg was like a stout walking pole, powerfully deployed. He crashed through brakes and danced over talus and scree with a speed he had never felt in him before, and when he saw how it was he took the lead from his friends and ran off with it.

He saw as he passed them how he was the third friend to them, the walking pole for their two legs. But they knew him well, and he knew them. They were grinning now to watch him fly, surprised but pleased to be huffing to keep up with him; they followed him gladly over Quick Pass and down into the meadow in Lower’s Upper. On the last slope they shushed each other and began to run silently, which took the utmost finesse in one’s footwork, also a complete control of one’s breathing, which had to be open-mouthed and silent. After a bit of silent running it was as if their bodies were catching fire.

And running so, they came on a little herd of chamois, drinking at the meadow stream, and on sight they instantly threw their javelins, which had been nocked in their spear throwers ready to fly. The spears flew flexing through the air, and all three hit the same chamois. She was dead by the time they got to her. They howled and thanked her and set to cutting her to pieces, and Loon was as neat as Heather with his blade, as sure as Thorn. They did the work with a clean swift rigor.

On the way home they tired, struggled, got their second wind. Humped the meat over Quick Pass and down Upper Valley back to camp, bowed over but in a steady triumph. They scarcely spoke as they returned; they hardly spoke all day.

As they approached camp Loon said,—Remember how we used to do this? Remember how I used to be the fastest, how I used to be the best hunter among us?

—Seems like you still are, Moss said.—That was quite a hunt.

—No, Loon said.—That was just today. You’re the hunters now. But listen. Elga’s been telling me how things are going among the women, and between Thunder and Bluejay and Schist and Ibex. It’s getting bad, she says. She doesn’t like it, and she doesn’t think it’s going to get better. So I’ve been thinking we should move west and start our own pack. Maybe you’ve already been thinking about that.

Hawk and Moss shared a look.—Tell us, Hawk said.

—There’s too many of us now. So many that Schist and Ibex can’t keep the pack fed through the spring. And they don’t like you.

—They don’t like you either, Moss pointed out.

—True, but I’m going with you. And I’ll get Heather to come with us. Then beyond that, just our families.

—That will gut this pack, Moss said.

—I’m not so sure, Loon said.—Schist and Ibex will do all right with a smaller pack, just their kin and the others closest to them. They’ll have that many fewer to feed, and they get along. The only thing I worry about is what they’ll think of us taking Heather.

Hawk and Moss stared at him. Hawk said,—Loon, you’re the only person in this whole pack who isn’t scared shitless of Heather.

Moss and Hawk laughed at Loon’s surprise. They were sure they could take Heather without objections, despite her obvious usefulness. Apparently it came with too much scorn, too much weirdness. Loon was relieved to hear they thought so, because he wanted his Heather.

Moss pointed out that packs did this all the time, that it didn’t have to be a formal split or an angry thing, but just a matter of building a subsidiary abri upriver a ways, to reduce the crowding at the main site. If Schist and Ibex ever needed any more muscle, the younger crowd could come on down and help.

Hawk was nodding at this. Loon saw again that Moss proposed and Hawk disposed.

—But what about if they want Loon? Hawk said.

Loon would be shaman of both packs, like Quartz with the three Lion packs, or any number of the shamans at the corroboree. This Moss said while looking at Loon to see if it were true.

Loon nodded.—I want to do that, he said,—because I want to keep painting in the cave.

They were coming into camp, so Moss said,—Let’s talk about it again later. There’s no reason to hurry with this. Although we need to do it before we start gathering food for winter, maybe.

—Later, Hawk said.

Chapter 62

Thorn lay sprawled over Heather’s furs, leaning back against the big log wedged into the hillside. A lot of the time he slept.

Once Loon and Elga helped him stand and shuffle out onto the hillside to shit, but it hurt him to do it, and when they were getting him back to camp he said,—That’s the last time I’ll ever take a shit. I’ll miss that.

He was mostly silent after that. When he spoke it was to himself, muttering away in a rumble no one could follow. Loon gave him water from a wooden cup, using an elderberry stick made into a drinking straw. Sometimes his cracked lips clamped down so hard on the straw that Loon could not pry it out of his mouth. Heather didn’t want him drinking too much at a time, so he had to put the right dose of water in the cup, because there was no way to keep Thorn from draining it once he got going. But this thirst struck Loon as a good sign. When Thorn was asleep, Loon sometimes looked at his desiccated face, and saw his eyes were sinking back into his skull as the fat pads behind the eyes got eaten away by whatever had him. His nose was bending down like an eagle’s beak, and his fingers and toes curled in as he rested. Drying out. Being eaten from the inside, by himself as well as the other thing. Living off himself for the final stretch.—Wait, I see something, he whispered once to Loon.—The river is tearing away things about me.

—An island, Loon said quickly.

—Yes. With a little snake’s smile. He watched Loon’s face for a while, then said,—Did something chase you, when you were out on your wander? You would never tell me. But I’ve been meaning to say, I think Quartz puts on his lion head and goes out at night, to put a scare in the other shamans’ apprentices. He was Pika’s apprentice too, the oldest one, and it made him mean. So, if some kind of thing came after you, it could have been him.

—Ah, Loon said.

Later Thorn shook off one of Heather’s attempts to help him.—I’ve been the healer many times, he said.—I know when it won’t work. You can’t fool me.

Once he saw Heather’s face above him, and complained to her,—I don’t like having it happen now. I’m only two twenties old.

—What do you mean only? Heather said.

—Ha! Thorn’s laugh was painful to him now.—Easy for you to say. What are you, four twenties? Five?

She shook her head.—Lots of twenties. But they’re all gone now.

—Ha, Thorn said again, and lapsed back into his silence.

Much of the time he slept. Heather dosed him with teas she had made for sleeping. Days passed, and Thorn never ate. Loon became more and more amazed by how long it went on. It was like a bear’s hibernation. There was an endurance in it that Loon could scarcely watch.

When Thorn woke and looked around to see what was happening, Loon would feel himself go calm. The old man’s gaze on him made him feel alert and distant, it drove him into his proper place. I helped him with that.

Thorn sometimes asked him to recite one or another of the stories he had tried to teach him. Loon did the best he could, without worrying about any details he might forget. That lack of concern made it a lot easier than it had been when he was a child. Just get to the point, say what was important, say what happened in the way he remembered Thorn saying it. He told the story of the bison man and the wife he took from the salmon clan; Thorn had the bison for his animal, and wore Pika’s tattered old bison head during the ceremonies, and now as Loon told the old story he wondered how much it had to do with Pika, and with Heather, and with Thorn.

—No, no, Thorn interrupted at one point in Loon’s telling.—Don’t forget to tell about the woman running away with a bison, before the man turns into one himself. If they don’t know that, they won’t be able to figure out why he does it.

After that Thorn stopped him once or twice to tell the story himself for a while, in a hoarse voice, short-breathed.

Sometimes he asked Loon to start and then seemed to fall asleep, but frowned if Loon stopped.

Once when Loon had stopped in the middle like this, Thorn clutched his hand hard.

—You’re what I had to carry it along. Do you understand? You’re what I had to work with.

—I know.

—So you have to remember.

One morning at dawn Thorn woke after a hard night, in which he had never once settled comfortably. He looked around at the camp, the hills, then at Loon.

—I’m getting weaker. I can feel it.

That day he rested more easily. He drank as much water as Loon would give him. That afternoon he looked at Loon and said,

—You have to remember the story of the ten-year winter. Also the story of Corban getting blown all the way across the great salt sea and then walking back home over the ice to the north. Also Pippi’s story of the man who walked east to find the end of the world. Those are the ones I liked best. Then also, how summer was pulled out of the other world into this world. And the swan wife, that’s one you can really tell. And the bison man.

He studied Loon’s face.

—I’ll be sorry not to see what happens next, he said.—I wish I could stick around a few more years.

—Yes, Loon said.

—You have to remember. Take care of the kids. They’re the ones who matter. You have to teach them everything I’ve taught you, and everything you’ve learned on your own. It will only go well if we keep passing it all along. There are no secrets, there is no mystery. We make all that up. In fact it’s all right there in front of us. You have to have enough food to get through the winter and spring. That’s what it all comes down to. You have to live in a way that will gather enough food each fall to get through winter. And you, you have to live your life, youth. You can help Heather. Be sure to do that. The old witch will need it. She’s getting on herself. She won’t like it, but she’ll need help. You’ll have to see that without her asking.

—I’ll try.

—Good. Listen to me now. Bad things don’t just grow on one path, they’re everywhere. So don’t blame yourself when those things happen. Don’t let yesterday take up much of today. You’ve always been good at that. Just keep telling the stories around the fire. That’s what needs to be carried on.

Then he couldn’t get comfortable; he writhed on the bed, sweated and gasped. Heather made him drink more tea, and chew a paste under his tongue. After that he was less conscious, though his body still arched and twisted in its hunt for a better position.

A couple of days later he came to and lay there calmly.

—Weaker still, he said.—I can feel it.

—Do you want some water?

—Not now.

The morning passed; no clouds, little wind. Birdsong filling the forest, the chatter of a squirrel telling someone off.

—I wanted everything, Thorn said.—I wanted everything.

—I know you did.

—I worry what’s to become of you all. What’s going to happen when Heather dies? There’s none of you old enough to know everything you need to know. You’ll be limping along like it’s the dream time again. It’s fragile what we know. It’s gone every time we forget. Then someone has to learn it all over again. I don’t know how you’ll do it. I mean, I wanted to know everything. I remembered every single word I ever heard, every single moment of my life, right up to a few years ago. I talked to every person in this whole part of the world, and remembered everything they said. What’s going to become of all that?

He stared for a long time at Loon.

Finally he said,—It’s going to be lost, that’s what.

—We’ll do what we can, Loon said.—No one can be you.

They sat there. Thorn’s breath was shallow and fast, and he started to sweat and squirm again. Heather showed up and Loon was glad to see her.

A long time went by, two days or three: Loon lost track. It was all the same moment, over and over. Thorn’s breath got shallow, he panted and gasped. Heather wetted his lips with a wet cloth, pulled it away before he bit it. One time this seemed to rouse him, and he struggled harder, he writhed under their hands. He croaked out some words they couldn’t understand, his tongue big and dry in his mouth, his throat parched. With a twist of the head he cried out indistinctly,—Oh Heather, I don’t know if I can do this!

—What did he say? Heather asked Loon.

—I don’t know, Loon lied.

He moved around to the other side of the bed from Heather to keep her from seeing his face. He held Thorn’s right hand, and Heather picked up and held his left hand. His body lay more comfortably there between them. From time to time Heather continued to drip water from the wet cloth into his mouth, just a drop or two at a time. Thorn did not respond to this in any way. He was no longer there with them.

Only once more did he regain awareness. Heather was away doing something. He opened his eyes a little, but could not focus them. He clutched Loon’s hands, and Loon said,—I’m here. Heather will be right back. She’s here too.

Thorn nodded. He closed his eyes.—Wait, he whispered.—I see something. Then he squeezed Loon’s hand, and went back to sleep.

Heather returned and took up her seat. They sat there holding Thorn’s hands. For a long time they sat there while Thorn breathed. His breathing slowed, it got harsh in his throat. His eyes were closed, and sunken very far into his head. His mouth was a lipless hole, jaw and cheeks stubbled white with beard hairs, nose a beaky blade. The old black snake, more reptilian than ever. Asleep and more than asleep. As they held his hands it seemed to Loon that Thorn’s spirit was near them, but not in the body they held. Maybe looking down on them, as the body kept breathing its last breaths.

—Go get some more water, Heather told Loon.

—But…

—Go.

Loon took up a bucket and rushed down to the river, at first hurrying to return, then glad to get away.

He stood in the shallows filling the bucket, looking around at the yellow air of an ordinary sunset, thinking, Someday I will not be here for this. That was the truth, he could feel it.

He didn’t want to go back up. He lingered by the sunset river. But then he thought he heard something, and he turned and hurried back up to Heather’s nest.

When he got near he could hear from the center of camp the harsh rattling in-breath of Thorn, like the crackle a raven sometimes makes. Then there was silence and he ran hard to Heather’s spot. Heather was sitting there, still holding Thorn’s hand. She looked up at Loon briefly, a little reproachful for the length of his time away, but Loon got back in position on Thorn’s other side and took up his right hand again, and Thorn pulled another great gasp of air into him, crackling in his throat again. Several moments had passed since his last breath, and Loon jumped when Thorn seized his hand as part of this effort to breathe. Thorn was still alive, somehow, although shrunken into himself completely, and looking just as he would when he was a corpse only. But then with another startling effort he breathed again. The death rattle; then another; and in between he lay there motionlessly, and Heather and Loon sat across him holding his hands and watching him, not looking at each other except once, when Loon said,—I wonder what he is thinking in there.

Heather shook her head.—He’s not there.

—But he’s still breathing.

—Yes, his body keeps trying.

It was true. Again and again he stopped, lay there; seemed dead; then jerked, sucked air into himself in a paroxysm of effort, gasping, crackling, rattling. The part of him still alive was making a huge effort. Then another stillness.

—Couldn’t you give him something? Loon asked.—Help him out somehow?

She shook her head.—Let him go his own way.

Loon felt the stab of that, then went numb again. They sat there and waited. When Thorn breathed, they clenched his hands. They were both hunched over with the effort of listening to him.

As it went on, slowing down each time, the rattle becoming briefer, less violent, Loon began to feel calmer. Thorn was almost done now. His suffering was over. These last breaths seemed no longer sheer stubbornness and refusal to die, but a kind of farewell. So it seemed to Loon. Little Thorn jokes. Playing dead; then a little insuck, an attempt at the rattle. Ha, fooled you again. Then the long moment of nothingness.

—It’s like he’s fooling us, Loon complained.

—I know.

It went on. It kept happening.

After one of these little attempts at breath, Heather said to Thorn,—It’s all right. We’re here.

Then they waited. There came another little rasp. Then Thorn lay there still. They waited and waited for his next breath. There did not seem to be any hurry at that moment; they could wait him out. No rush to declare it over, and be proved wrong yet again. No rush to be right about it. They could sit with him in this in-between zone, on the pass between their valley and his.

Loon would never be able to say how long they waited like that. Thorn’s eyes were half open, glazed and unseeing. Now he was clearly the dead body of a dead animal. As always, death was unmistakable. So much went away.

Heather stirred at last. She reached out and closed Thorn’s eyelids, then put her ear to his chest and listened. She lay against him like that for a long time.

Finally she sat up and looked at Loon.—He’s gone.

They held his hands for a while longer. There was no hurry now.