Winter in Eden

CHAPTER TWENTY

The wastes of the frozen north were home to the Paramutan. They knew how to live here and survive, knew everything that there was to know about frostbite and freezing. Now they called out in excitement to each other as they pushed Armun aside and jammed their way into the cave. While Kalaleq opened Kerrick’s furs and tore them off him, two of the others were undressing as well, laying their still-warm clothing out on the frozen ground. Kerrick’s chilled body was placed carefully on the furs and the naked hunters lay beside him, holding him tight to them, using their body heat to warm him. The others piled all of the rest of the furs over them.

“Such cold — I will freeze myself for sure, sing my death song!” Kalaleq cried out.

The others laughed, their good spirits returned now that they had found the hunters alive.

“Get wood, make a fire, melt snow. They must be warmed and will need to drink.”

Ortnar was treated in the same manner. Armun realized that she could help best by getting the wood. And he was alive! The sun was warm on her face, warmth penetrating her body at the realization that both she and Kerrick were safe now, alive and together again. At that moment, as she leaned her weight on a branch and cracked it free, she made a promise to herself that nothing would ever separate them again. They had been apart too long. The invisible cord that bound them one to the other had been stretched too far, had been near to breaking. She would not let that happen another time. Where he was — there she would be as well. No thing and no person would ever come between them. Another frozen branch broke free with a loud crack as she hauled on it with all her strength, a mixture of anger and happiness filling her. Never again!

The fire roared, the cave was warm. Kalaleq had gone over Kerrick’s unconscious body, pushing at his extremities and nodding happily.

“Good, very good, he is strong — how white his body is! Only here on his face is there freezing, those dark spots. The skin will come off, that is all right. But the other, look how bad.”

He pulled the furs back from Ortnar’s feet. All of the toes on his left foot were frozen, black.

“Must cut them off. Do it now and he won’t feel anything, you’ll see.”

Ortnar groaned aloud, even though still unconscious, and she ignored the grisly chopping sounds behind her as she bent over Kerrick. His forehead was warm now, becoming moist. She stroked it with her fingertips and his eyelids moved, opened, closed again. She took him around the shoulders and lifted his body, held the leather cup of water to his lips. “Drink it, please drink it.” He stirred and swallowed, then slumped back again.

“They must stay warm, have food, get some strength before they can be moved,” Kalaleq said. “We’ll leave meat here from the boat, then maybe go catch some fish. Back at dark.”

The Paramutan left her a great mound of wood as well. She kept the fire banked high, stirred it, and uncovered the glowing coals. When she turned away from it later in the afternoon she found Kerrick’s eyes open, his mouth moving as he tried unsuccessfully to talk. She touched his lips with hers, then stroked them as she would silence a baby.

“I’ll talk. You are alive — and so is Ortnar. I found you in time. You will be all right. There is food here — and water — you must drink that first.”

She supported him again as he drank the water, coughing a bit at the dryness of his throat. When she laid him back down she held tight to him, whispering, her lips close to his ear.

“I made an oath to myself. I swore that I would never allow you to leave me alone again. Where you go, I go. That is the way it must be.”

“The way… it must be,” he said hoarsely. His eyes closed and he slept again: he had been at the brink of death and it is most difficult to return once you have come that close. Ortnar stirred and made a sound and Armun brought water to him as well.

It was almost dark when the Paramutan returned, shouting and calling out to her. “Look at this tiny thing I bring,” Kalaleq called out as he pushed into the cave — holding up a great, ugly fish covered with plates, its mouth bristling with teeth. “This will give them the strength they need. Now they eat.”

“They are still unconscious—”

“Too long, not good. Need meat now. I show you.”

Two of them lifted Ortnar until he was sitting up, then Kalaleq, moved the hunter’s head gently, pinched his cheeks, whispered in his ear — then clapped his hands loudly. Everyone shouted encouragement when Ortnar’s eyes opened slightly and he groaned. One held his mouth open while Kalaleq hacked off chunks of fish, then squeezed the juice from this into the hunter’s mouth. He spluttered, coughed, and swallowed and there was more excited cheering. When he came blurrily awake they pushed bits of raw fish in between his lips and encouraged him to chew and swallow.

“Tell him in your Erqigdlit tongue, he must eat. Chew, chew, that is it.”

She fed Kerrick herself, would let no other near him, tried to give him her strength as she held him tightly against her breasts.

It was two days before Ortnar was fit to travel. He bit his lip until there was blood upon it when they cut more black flesh from his feet.

“But we are alive,” Kerrick told him when the ordeal was finished.

“Part of me isn’t,” Ortnar gasped, the beads of moisture standing out on his face. “But we have found them — or they have found us — and that is what is important.”

Kerrick had to lean most of his weight on Armun when they went down to the boat: Ortnar was carried on a litter of branches. He was in too much pain to take much notice of his surroundings, but Kerrick was wide-eyed and appreciative when he looked about him at the boat as he climbed in.

“Made of skins, light and strong. And all the oars! These Paramutan can build as well as the Sasku.”

“Some of what they make is even better,” Armun said, pleased at his interest. “Look at this — do you know what it is?”

She handed him the length of carved bone and he turned it over and over in his hands.

“It is from some large beast, I don’t know what kind. And it has been hollowed out — but what is this?” He shook the dangling leather tube, put his eye to the hole on top of the bone, pulled the knob next to it and discovered that a length of round wood, the thickness of an arrow, was attached to it. “It is wonderfully made, that is all I know.”

Armun smiled, her split lip revealing the evenness of her teeth, as she poked the end of the tube down into the water that was sloshing at their feet. When she pulled up on the knob there was a sucking sound, and when she pulled a second time a thin gush of water shot from the top opening and over the side of the boat. He gaped — then they both laughed at his astonishment. Kerrick took it from her hands again.

“It is like something that the Yilanè have grown — but this was made, not grown. I like this kind of thing.” He turned it over and over with admiration, tracing the carvings on its length that pictured a fish spitting out a great stream of water.

The return to the paukaruts was a great triumph with the women pushing each other, screaming with laughter, for the privilege of carrying the litter with the blond giant on it. Ortnar looked at them with amazement as they fought to touch his hair, barking at each other all the time in their strange language.

Arnwheet stared at his father in wonder; he had very little memory of any Tanu hunters. Kerrick knelt in the snow to look at him more closely, a solid, wide-eyed boy with little resemblance to the baby he had left. “You are Arnwheet,” he said and the boy nodded gravely — but shied back when Kerrick put his hand out to touch him.

“He is your father,” Armun said, “and you must not be afraid of him.” But the child clung to her leg at the strangeness of it all.

Kerrick stood up, the word bringing up long buried memories. Father. He dug into his furs and found the two knives that hung about his neck, his fingers touched the smaller one and pulled it free. This time when he knelt down the child did not pull back. Kerrick held out the shining metal blade, glinting in the sunlight.

“As my father gave this to me — so do I give it to you.”

Arnwheet reached out hesitantly and touched it, looked up at Kerrick and smiled. “Father,” he said.

Before winter ended Ortnar was on the mend. He had lost flesh, was still in pain, but his great strength had pulled him through. There had been more black flesh on his feet, pus and an awful smell, but the Paramutan knew how to treat this as well. As the days grew longer the flesh healed and scars formed. With fur padding in his boots he hobbled out of the paukarut each day and learned to walk again. The foot without the toes made this difficult, but he learned nevertheless. He was walking far out along the edge of the ice one day when he saw the boat approaching from the distance. It was one of the larger ones with a large skin tied to a pole and did not look familiar. Nor was it. When he stumbled back to the paukaruts he found that everyone had turned out, were shouting and waving as the boat came close.

“What is it?” he asked Armun, for he had learned only a word or two of the strange tongue.

“Newcomers, they are not from our paukaruts. It is very exciting.”

“What’s happening now — all the loud talking and arm waving? They seem very worked up about something.”

“I can’t tell, they are all shouting at once. You have been walking too long. Go to the paukarut and I will find out what is happening and meet you there and tell you.”

Ortnar was alone in the paukarut for the Paramutan — Kerrick, Arnwheet, and Harl as well — were all at the boats. He sat down heavily and groaned aloud, since there was none there to hear, at the pain in his feet. He chewed on a piece of meat, grateful for the rest, as he waited for Armun to come.

“Something very good seems to have happened,” she said when she returned. “It is about the ularuaq. They talked about how bad it was all winter, how there were less and less. Now they seem to have found them again. It is very important.”

“What are ularuaq?” Ortnar asked.

“They hunt them, in the sea. I have never seen one but they must be very large, larger even than a mastodon.” She pointed at the arched ribs above. “Those are from the ularuaq. And the skin cover as well — all in one piece. Most of the meat we eat, the blubber too, comes from the ularuaq. The Paramutan will eat any kind of meat, anything at all.” She indicated the seabird hanging by its legs from the ribs above, rotting nicely. “But almost all of their food, the boats, everything comes from the ularuaq. They say that it is the weather, the long winters, that have been driving them away. The ice comes further south every year and something in the water, I don’t understand all of it, has changed. So the ularuaq have been harder and harder to kill and this is the worst thing that could happen to the Paramutan. We’ll have to wait to find out what has happened now.”

It was some time before anyone else returned to the paukarut. Kalaleq was first, crawling in through the entrance and pushing a lattice of thin bones before him, while the others followed. He waved it happily, an intricate array, tied by gut and secured in angles and curves. Armun made him talk slowly as he pointed out the importance of it, translating into Marbak as he spoke.

It was Kerrick who finally understood what Kalaleq was talking about.

“The bones are a chart of some kind — they use them to find their way about the ocean just as the Yilanè do with their charts. Ask him to point out where we are now.”

After much reference to the skein of bones, questions and confused answers, what had happened finally became clear. Kerrick, who had crossed the ocean understood the significance.

“It is the winters. They have changed the ocean just as they have the land, changed the things that live in it. The ice sheet we are on stretches across the northern ocean to the land on the other side. I have been on the land there, though not in the north. For some reason the ularuaq are no longer on this side of the ocean but seem to be all over there now. The ikkergak that just arrived has actually crossed to the other side of the ocean and has seen them. What are the Paramutan going to do?”

Kalaleq was graphic in his demonstration when he understood the question. He pulled on invisible lines, rode over imaginary waves as he talked. They could almost follow without Armun’s translation.

“They are getting the ikkergaks into the water and preparing them for a long voyage. They want to cross over as soon as the ice begins to break and hunt the ularuaq — and return before winter sets in again.”

“Then it is time for us to leave as well,” Kerrick said. “We take their food and give nothing in return.” But as he said this he looked out of the corner of his eyes at Ortnar who smiled grimly.

“Yes, time to go south,” he said. “But it is a walk I do not look forward to.”

“You won’t have to walk,” Armun said impulsively, reaching out to touch his arm. “I know the Paramutan. They will help us. They brought me and the boys here without hesitating at all. They like us, they think we are so different. They will want us to stay but when we insist they will take us south in the spring. I know they will.”

“But won’t they need all the ikkergaks for the hunting trip?” Kerrick asked.

“I have no idea. I will just have to ask and find out.”

“We must leave as soon as we can,” Ortnar said. “We must go back to the sammads.”

Kerrick’s face hardened at these words and his mouth set grimly for the thought of their return brought memories flooding back. Bringing with them fears long forgotten, pushed aside.

And his first thought was of Vaintè, she of eternal hatred. She was out there, planning the destruction of Tanu and Sasku, of all the ustuzou in the world. He had turned his back on the city and the Yilanè that threatened it because he had to find Armun. Well he had done that. They were together again, all safe. Or would they ever be safe? Not while Vaintè was alive, not while she lived on hatred. They would have to return to the city. Back to Yilanè and hèsotsan, the world of ustuzou and murgu, of a battle that had no ending. Or no ending that did not allow the destruction of the sammads.

Armun looked at him and his thoughts were clear to her, for while he thought the murgu words his body writhed their echo, his face worked and grew grim.

They would be going back.

But to what?