Blood Ties (45 page)

‘Ah,’ said Gaka, ‘and I think I know who she is to meet. He is of the Wolf clan, one of the boys who came when their village was burned out. You know how interesting a new face can seem. Well, they will make a beautiful child, if that is what the Gods want. And it is a good day to be lying by some cool pool with a handsome new boy.’

Now it was Anne who found herself blushing. ‘You don’t mean they … they are going to …’ The older woman was watching her with a smile. ‘But she seems too young.’

Gaka looked puzzled. ‘She can bear a child so she is certainly not too young. And anyway, he will not be her first handsome boy. For she is very pretty, my Blue Feather. And he may not be her last.’

Anne’s blush deepened. ‘This is something else that is very different in my country. There, when you take a husband, he is meant to be your first – and your last.’

Gaka tipped back her head and laughed loudly, the laugh swiftly melded with a cough. Despite a cordial that Anne had made for her, the older women’s throat was still raw, the cough growing worse by the day.

When she had recovered her breath she said, ‘But that is like saying, “I think I will like deer meat – one day! – so I will not taste bear, or moose first.” How can you know you want only one thing, for life, unless you have tried others?’

‘So when they are married, do they …’

‘When you take a husband, then it is different. You stay with him and him only. As does he with you.’ Gaka paused and a glint came into her eyes. ‘But at least you remember and, on nights when your husband does not please you, you can dream of bear meat, moose meat, beaver …’

Humour and coughing shook her again, till the tears ran down her face.

Usually Anne found she could not help but join in Gaka’s laughter but a memory held her, the look in a maiden’s eyes. Somewhere in this village, the man she’d followed from France was struggling to be born again. All his desire was to be part of his tribe once more, in every way. So when someone like Blue Feather, raised her eyes to him and moved them toward the forest …

She felt herself flush again. But it wasn’t embarrassment this time, and it surprised her with the violence she suddenly felt, a fury directed at all the bare-breasted young women of the village.

The older woman had been watching her. She put down her bowl and took Anne’s hands in her own.

‘I think our ways are not for you, White Cedar. You came to us too late. By my eighteenth summer, I already had three children.’

‘Good,’ Anne said, the bitterness clear in her voice. ‘So I am already too old for any man to look at me.’

‘That is not what I am saying.’ Gaka shook the younger woman’s hands gently. ‘I am saying you do not need to look for love. You have already made your choice.’

Anne looked away. ‘And the man I want no longer wants me. If he ever did.’ She felt warm tears cut down her face as she spoke the words she’d only thought before.

‘I think your fear is making you read the signs wrongly. It is not that he does not want you. It is that he cannot want anyone – yet. Because he does not know who he is. He is like a bear cub whose mother has been killed in the hunt. He wanders in a huge, strange forest. He can see his reflection in the water so he knows he looks like a bear but he knows nothing of a bear’s ways. He cannot hunt like one. He cannot sleep all the winter long like one. And he cannot choose a mate like one.’

Anne returned the pressure in the hands, gripping the older women’s urgently. ‘So what can I do, Gaka?’

‘Wait.’

‘But there is no time! Your whole nation is under threat. Tagay may be reborn one day only to go to war, maybe to die, the next. How will he find the time to know his heart?’

Gaka whispered, ‘You think wisdom is only there when many moons have come and gone? I say it can come in one clear, bright moment. Tagay was born to a wise mother, part of the wisest clan. His uncle, Donnaconna was the Hunter of the Sunrise. And the sunrise takes just a moment to show us the world.’

Anne tried to smile back. ‘I hope you are right.’

‘I am sure I am. I am sure Tagay loves as you love. The signs are clear in his face. But if he needs one moment of power to make him realize it … well, that is what wise old aunts are for!’

Before Anne could reply, shouting could be heard, sounding like it came from the edge of the village.

Gaka squeezed Anne’s hands again, held onto them as she rose. ‘Come,’ she continued, ‘shall we go and see what this noise is about?’

It had been a week to sap the strength of even the strongest man. And those who tested him took as of no account that he had spent so long cramped on a ship, nor that his life before at the French court had been lazy and indulgent. They knew nothing of such matters and cut him off when he tried to speak of his former life. To them, it was very simple. He was a lost member of their clan. He needed to be found. And because of what threatened the whole tribe, he needed to be found swiftly.

There was also the matter of his death. All those who had sailed away with the French Captain, Donnaconna and the other hostages, including Tagay’s mother, all the Hunters of the Sunrise, were dead. Though their bones had not been wrapped in beaver skins and buried in the pit outside the village, ceremonies had been conducted, they had been mourned. Fortunately, there were precedents for the situation; warriors feared captured and killed would sometimes escape, or a hunting party, trapped by flood or fire would have to survive a winter away and return with the spring. Each of the resurrected would have to go through a ritual of rebirth.

Thus he’d spent the first night at his native village lying naked in a birch bark canoe filled with river water and lumps of deer fat. Though it was summer, the water chilled and shrivelled his skin, and he shook till he thought he’d split the frail craft apart. In the morning, every member of his clan, men, women and children, had gathered to watch him held under the water until he thought he was drowned, until the sides of the canoe were stoved in and he was spilled forth, flapping like a tickled trout, onto the river bank. Four men then threw him into the torrent, where the fat was cleansed from his skin. Then the same men – his cousin, Sada, among them – carried him, shaking uncontrollably, to a small hut made of saplings, covered in deer skins. From the intense cold he was plunged into its opposite, for large stones had been kept in the hearths all night and the heat hit his face like the slap of an open hand. More and more of the men crammed naked in behind him, till every space was filled with sweating flesh. Pipes were filled with sweet scented tobacco, clouds of it obscured even the man next to him. His shaking calmed, only for nausea to replace it, and he had to be taken outside to vomit. Gradually, though, the heat started to feel good, the tobacco making his mind conjure strange images in its smoky layers; images added to by the stories the men told, tales of talking beasts, flying men, the birth of a people, of warfare and hunting as well as the absurdity of being alive. Laughter rose on the swirls of smoke, visions shimmered in heat haze, and the day passed till, near sunset, the deer skins were stripped from the hut and the whole clan was revealed outside it. Tagay was picked up again and, along with all his companions from the hut, found himself once more in the river. When he emerged, he walked between two lines of his clan, while every man, woman and child touched him.

The sleep he had that night was deep, full of joyous dreams. It was also short. Long before dawn, he was woken by a rough shaking of his shoulder. Sada stood above him and curtly ordered him to rise and follow. About forty others – the full fighting strength of the clan, it transpired – awaited him outside the longhouse. A breech cloth was all the dress he had against the chill, that and the hide moccasins that covered his feet. Sada led them from the village and up the barely visible pathway of the cliffs, across the gaming field and into the forests beyond. They walked swiftly, silently, without pause, till morning found them high on another bare plateau.

‘You are one of the Tahontaenrat, one of the Deer people again. But you are not yet a Bear.’ Handing him a bow, a quiver of arrows and a small pouch with grains in it, the clan began his education.

For two days and nights, they treated him harshly. There was no time, it was said, to do anything else but test him to his limits. He was never struck, for Sada said that would be an insult to him as a person. But any failure or shortcoming would be greeted with scorn, insult piled on insult as to his skills, his manhood and his origins among the lesser, scavenging animals. And afterwards, Tagay still had to perform again whatever task he’d failed.

Each night he would sit in solitude, sometimes dozing, often awake, staring at the sky, dwarfed by its enormity, by the challenges that faced him. Sometimes, he’d weep. And often, when he did, he’d see a vision of Anne reaching out to comfort him. He wanted her touch, her soothing caress. Later though, when the tears had dried, he’d resent her part in his weakness.

Dawn of the third day on the plateau was glorious. He had stayed awake nearly the whole night, dazzled by the number of stars that shot across the heavens. And his mood of wonder continued on the journey back to the village. He even found he was joking with the other members of the party, joining in some of their tussles.

And then, at last, he discovered something at which he was better than them.

They had just arrived at the edge of the plain that would lead to the playing field. Tagay was, as usual, at the end of the line of men.

‘You are slow, Tagay, your feet drag across the ground,’ Otetian, the tallest of the warriors, had said. ‘You are like a porcupine, you move like this.’

He squatted down and shuffled forward, his bottom raised in the air. There was laughter from the others.

‘And Otetian is like a heron. Clumsy in flight and walking with its big legs like this.’ Tagay impersonated the bird, his own long legs jerking forward.

There was more laughter. Otetian stepped up to Tagay. He had been one of the most provocative of all Tagay’s ‘tutors’.

‘So you think a porcupine can beat a heron? One flap and I would be at that tree across the grass before you had got your prickly arse off the ground.’ He pointed to a tree that stood about two hundred paces away.

Sada called out. ‘Beware, Tagay. Do not bet him anything. Otetian has beaten every member of every village in the foot races.’

Tagay looked into the preening face of the warrior. ‘Not every member,’ he said, quietly.

There was a chorus of jeers. Otetian stuck out his chest. ‘You would race me, Little Bear?’ There was no mistaking the colour he gave to the word ‘Little.’

Tagay leant in, till their faces were just a hand’s breadth apart. ‘I would.’

Bows, quivers and pouches were handed over. Sada stood before them, a hand on each of their chests. The others ran ahead to the tree. When they reached it and had formed a rough line, Sada said, ‘On my word, fly.’

Tagay crouched in readiness. Beside him, Otetian gave a lazy grin and barely took a stance.

‘Go!’

They took off together, matched pace for pace. Then Otetian began to lengthen his stride and a slight gap opened between them, with half the distance covered.

Tagay had let that happen. The man was fast and, with fifty paces to go to the cheering men, the gap between them was five paces. At twenty-five, Otetian saw a shape reach to his shoulder, then watched that shape surge past him. Despite his desperate pumping, Tagay beat him to the line by three full strides. He was surrounded immediately, hands patting him on his back, grasping his forearm. It was the first time his clan members had given him praise and Tagay revelled in it.

A voice broke into the cheers. ‘So, Little Bear, you tricked me there.’ Otetian was trying to keep a smile on his face and failing. ‘I do not think you would be so clever a second time.’

Tagay, flush with victory, said, ‘The heron wishes to race again?’

‘Yes,’ came the reply. ‘But not such a paltry distance. Will you race to the gates of the village?’

Tagay thought. They were on the plateau that led to the game field. He could see the great oak where he’d first watched the game in the distance. They would get to it in perhaps another quarter hour of walking. The trail of the cliffs led down from the small forest there. From their base, it was a short run along the stream bank into the village, maybe another half-league.

‘Yes, I will race you there.’

‘And I too,’ yelled another warrior. ‘I am a man for that distance.’

‘And I! And I!’ called the others, all equally fired by the race they’d just witnessed. ‘Let us go now.’

‘Wait,’ said Sada, his low voice commanding instant silence from the forty warriors. ‘Such a race is a matter of honour. Why should not our people join in and pay tribute to the victor?’ He turned to one member who had seemed less keen on the race, probably due to his stoutish stature. ‘Run ahead, Ganogieh, and let the Bear clan know of what we do. When you disappear into the trees, we will be coming.’

This warrior nodded and, without further words, set off at a pace that belied his shape. As the others yelled encouragement at their departing friend Sada took Tagay aside.

‘Listen well, Tagay. Otetian is fast and tireless. He is one of those who runs between villages bearing news and “the sticks that summon”, when all our scattered tribe must gather. Since becoming a man, he has never lost a race. That may also be because he is rumoured to cheat.’ Sada grinned. ‘So watch for him on the cliff path.’

Tagay nodded and retrieved his bow and quiver from the man who’d held them for him during the first race. Each would have to carry their own during this one.

They watched the running figure recede toward the cliff-top forest. Soon he was a mere plume of dust to all eyes save for one of the younger warriors who had climbed up and balanced on the lower branches of a walnut tree, shading his brow from the sun’s glare.

‘He gets close,’ he called down. ‘Ten breaths and he will be there.’

He dropped down, took his place in the single rank of jostling men. Tagay deliberately walked up and squeezed into the space next to Otetian. The taller warrior leaned down and shoved Tagay hard, shoulder to shoulder.