Authors: John Hart
Mammoth Boy (20 page)
To amuse Urrell, Agaratz mimicked the calls of birds, getting them to flutter over his head, even settle on his shoulders. Urrell also tried, imitating the calls as truly as Agaratz and yet, for lack of some quality of sound, he only roused the curiosity of fowl but not their trust. They drew near but not near enough. It peeved him not to match Agaratz’s powers.
“When shall we reach the great ice, Agaratz?”
Their river valley and its green-black current seemed to go on for ever, a world of its own, where wild creatures unsure of humans did little to avoid them. Bears, often fishing, they avoided. Rakrak’s presence was enough to deter the curiosity of panther-like cats and leopards, and to startle away deer. Once they nearly bumped into an auroch, alone in the woods, but he was as surprised as they. Neither Urrell nor Agaratz unsheathed a weapon all day, as berries and fruit abounded and the nests of waterfowl were easy to find. Some evenings they fished in the fast stream. Their two companions fended for themselves from the endless provision of small animals they caught. At night they camped under a fir, dry even after heavy rain, lit a fire to light the tracery of branches above, liernes of an arboreal vault, and slept in peace.
In this way they had travelled unconcerned for about a dozen days, in short stages, when the valley began to narrow. In a mist of rain and drizzle, round a turn, they came to the ice. It blocked their way. No fragments, no moraine littered the glacier’s approaches: it was a total surprise, to Urrell at least…
W
hat next? Urrell, from behind, could not see Agaratz’s face to discern his reaction to the wall of ice. Without a change of speed, pouches swinging, spears at the trail, Agaratz carried on ahead, impenetrable though the ice looked to Urrell. Nor did there seem to be a way up the sides of the valley and over the ice.
They were near enough to the wall for Urrell to feel its coldness before he noticed that the river, issuing from under the ice, had carved a tunnel somewhat larger than its flow needed, as though it had been bigger in the past. It was to this that Agaratz strode.
“Leave travois here, Urrell. Take things.”
They loaded themselves with bags, skins, food, weapons and their stock of ornaments and their pipes. They had food enough for men, wolf and lioness for several days. Beyond that Agaratz would know. “Rakrak carry some,” he said and called the wolf.
With thongs he tied a load on her back, whispered in her ears, and all were ready to move on, Piura, unburdened, padding last. “Too old for load,” said Agaratz.
The river had worn the ice smooth and left a gravelly bank the width of a javelin along its edge. This they entered, lit dully at first from outside but soon utterly dark.
“Rakrak go first. You hold this, Urrell,” and he handed him the end of a thong tied at the other to his own belt. He hitched another to Rakrak’s pack as a leash and spoke to the wolf, who pricked up her ears and set forth leading the tiny caravan into the blackness.
Old Mother
. Urrell’s boyish fears welled up, but soon evaporated. It felt warm under the ice, almost snug, in the total dark. Only the footfalls of their moccassined feet on the gravel, and the occasional purl of the river water, broke the silence. He had full faith in Rakrak and Agaratz ahead; behind him he could touch Piura’s ears as she followed close, a rumbled purr in response to caresses. Soon he was sweating under his burdens.
The air, unless he was imagining things, seemed not so much milder to Urrell as denser. Far from being completely still, as in caverns, he thought he felt movement in it.
Perhaps the current drew air along as it ran. The sensation increased the farther they went till Urrell felt sure something unusual lay ahead. When they stopped for a rest and snack Urrell voiced his curiosity.
“You see, Urrell, soon see.”
Soon was relative. They stopped twice more before the darkness began faintly to lighten. Rakrak pulled at her leash and the pace of the file hastened. The light increased from translucence in the ice, thinning as they advanced into warmer air at a stumbling, eager gait, till they burst into a wide ice-free area, a bowl with ice-walls all around.
Their river, now more a big stream, ran across it, wisps of mist rising from its surface.
“You touch, Urrell, touch water.”
He did. The water was luke-warm, and the mist was vapour condensing like a man’s breath on a frosty morning. Urrell’s astonishment so amused Agaratz that he went into one of his rare chuckles. Sitting on a boulder, he was shrugging off his packs and pouches as he shook with mirth at Urrell’s reaction. Urrell, a trifle abashed and puzzled, loosened his as well, then unburdened Rakrak. She, to add to his surprise, ran about, frolicking, tail erect, in a joyful release under the effect of this strange place, so he joined in and they scampered about over the gravel and among the boulders till tired out.
“Now we eat, Urrell.” Agaratz drew out strips of dried bison meat, the jerky kept in the bottom of bags as iron rations, or to celebrate. All four gnawed their way through this bark-hard food, sucking the nourishment that no berries, no roots or shoots could provide for exhausted bodies.
This done they unrolled pelts on the ground between two boulders and slept pell-mell the sleep of the weary for a full twelve hours.
It was dark when Urrell woke. Agaratz was sitting on a boulder, outlined against the ice-wall beyond. Rakrak poked her head from under a pelt and crept out. She licked Urrell’s nose, a new familiarity. Piura, last as ever, rose and stretched.
“Urrell, we eat and go on. Follow river.”
They chewed dried berries, nuts and a few strips of jerky.
“Soon plenty foods, Urrell.”
Skins rolled up, bags slung they set off, the wolf leading. The gloom had a clarity of its own, setting off boulders and stones against the paler bed of shingle and pebbles that lined the combe floor. They followed the waterway, as before. On either side towered the cliffs of ice, in places closing in, even arching overhead. In this silent world the only sound came when the current swirled round an obstruction.
“Growing warmer, Urrell.” They dipped their fingers in the stream, the water now quite warm. “Soon be there.”
By first light – less dawn than decrease in dark – the ice-walls had widened and they entered a shallow basin-like expanse, dotted with pools and lakelets. Vapour rose from several.
“You watch, Urrell.” They had stopped to look. Urrell did as bidden, expectantly, but observed nothing unusual except for steam. Soon, however, he was to be rewarded: a pool bubbled, plopped and fell still again. He glanced at Agaratz to see what manner of trick this might be, accompanied by its tell-tale grin, but Agaratz was watching the pool as steadfastly as he had been, so he resumed his own scrutiny.
Agaratz plainly knew something was afoot. Urrell’s expectancy turned to unease. Tales of water-beasts told round the fires in the cold nights by the sea which had made him shiver with fear in his boyhood tugged at his mind now. Even Rakrak and Piura were attentive.
He was therefore taut with alertness when the bubbling renewed itself and whatever lay beneath the water, angered, impatient, tore itself free and hurtled into the air, hung cliff-high in the pale light, and as suddenly collapsed in a froth of foam and seething water before Urrell’s astonished eyes, and vanished below. Urrell glanced at Agaratz. The golden eyes were gleaming with excitement. That instant Urrell knew, and knew with perfect insight, that Agaratz had never viewed this thing, in life or vision, and had not known quite what to expect. His all-seeing companion, who had known the route hither, unerringly following a memory from another time, nevertheless crouched in awe before this wonder.
Urrell’s love of his mentor was nowise diminished, but grew. Master and pupil had shared an event neither understood.
As though continuing a previous conversation Agaratz spoke:
“Old mens come here long, long time past. Here
mammurak
come. Place have much…” He searched for a word to convey what he meant, for which perhaps no language had a word, certainly not Urrell’s. “Is like caves; great
poodooec.
Like when you see mammuts, Urrell.”
Meaning half-dawned between them. The silence of this eery, empty spot, its pools, the ice-walls hemming it in, weighed on Urrell.
Old Mother, was this your land of the mammoths?
Agaratz said: “Catch food.”
Nothing catchable met Urrell’s eye but he followed Agaratz to a big boulder, of sarsen-stone size, in the lee of which Agaratz set down his bags to camp. Urrell did likewise. Piura, thirsty, was sniffing at a pool but loth to lap.
Agaratz selected salmon spears and a leister and led Urrell to their nearest pool where Piura was now suspiciously sipping the surface.
“See, Urrell.” The pool was ice-water clear, each pebble of the shingle bottom visible. “Touch, Urrell.” The water was agreeably warm. As he touched it he jumped back – the water had moved and a swarm of creatures twitched and swam away.
“Good to eat, good to eat!”
Good or not, Agaratz was not in pursuit of these. Instead he made for a larger pool which acted as headwater of the stream they had followed all the way. Here Agaratz showed Urrell large grey fish swimming against the current. With ease he forked one, then another with the leister, tossed them on the bank and brained them with a stone, reciting the words, in his own tongue, he used whenever he slew a living thing from need. The surviving fishes ignored him.
“
Poodooec,
Agaratz?”
“No. Fish not see. Look.” He showed Urrell the rudimentary eyes of his catches and it was evident they were blind.
“Live like in cave, Urrell, under ice. Eat those things when they leave pool.” He wiggled his forefinger in and out to imitate a shrimp swimming. They were the creatures, translucent in the water, that Urrell had disturbed. The shrimps teemed in the warmer pools, whereas the fishes, explained Agaratz, preferred cold water so they swam upstream to the outflow to catch unwary crustaceans.
Urrell stared round their stony surrounds for any sign of fuel with which to cook their catch. He caught Agaratz’s eye and its mischievous twinkle. “Follow, Urrell.” He went to the pool where they had witnessed the geyser. He was unconcerned, so Urrell followed with Rakrak. There Agaratz ran a thong through the gills of the fishes and dropped them into the water.
“Urrell, water cook fishes.”
It was true. The water in the pool was seething hot, quite still on the surface and bottomless, shimmering below as if constantly welling up yet never overflowing. They had been there a while parboiling their fishes when the bubbling began in the centre. Urrell started up and backed off, with Rakrak, eyes fixed on the phenomenon, while Agaratz went on crouching, his stiff club leg a little askew, holding the thong.
“Not danger, Urrell – not yet.”
Only when the bubbles subsided, as though gathering strength from the deep, did Agaratz pull up his fishes and join Urrell, a full spear’s cast away. If Agaratz felt this was safe, Urrell decided he would too. They had a good view of whatever was to happen. As they waited they gnawed their half-boiled fishes, one apiece. Rakrak was eating the heads and remnants by the time the pool bubbled again, built itself up and whooshed a column of water and steam into the air, held it aloft the time of Urrell’s pent up breath, and let it crash back, foam a while and lie still once more. It was the replica of the first blow they had witnessed.
“Like this all the time, Urrell, since…” he rolled his hands over and over, “since olds, olds. Ancients come here, for
mammurak
. Before ice.” As if to remind Urrell, he took a few steps of his mammoth dance.
“Did your people come here, Agaratz?”
The wistful expression, the one he had seen at the burial island, was answer enough. It was always so when he asked Agaratz about his origins, his forefathers and his singular existence. Perhaps these were things that could not be uttered, as men’s things might not be witnessed or spoken of by women; nor, as he knew from boyhood eavesdroppings, might men see such women’s things as where and when they gave birth, or the ceremonies with which they accompanied their moon-bleed.
Suddenly, as if to compensate for his evasiveness, Agaratz volunteered: “Soon see
mammurak
,
mamu-mammurak
, Urrell.”
“
Mamu,
Agaratz?
“
Mamu
. Like deads, Urrell, but not deads.”
“Is that
poodooec
?”
“No, not
poodooec
. Is like dead but not dead – is
mamu-orrak.
”
There must be no other way of saying that. He would have to wait and see what it was.
Now it was time to catch more fish, for Piura, for Rakrak, for themselves, for a fish feast by the seething waters of the magic pool.
T
he pools, Urrel discovered, varied in temperature, from scalding hot where the geyser leapt at intervals, something to which Urrell grew accustomed but never indifferent, through to near seething, hot, warm, luke-warm and cold. As the air near the pools never fell below freezing, despite the ice of the glacier, they went about their fishing, resting and exploring at ease. They bathed in the warmer water, Urrell naked, Agaratz with the breechclout he never removed and Urrell never thought to ask why. Rakrak and Piura, loth at first, entered into the spirit of the fun and disported themselves in their own ways.
Here Agaratz taught Urrell how to dive deep and find shellfish, crabs and crayfish under rocks in the bottoms of some of the pools. He had been right – there was food galore for all.
This way they spent days. “Get strong, Urrell. Eat much.” Meanwhile they explored every part of this enclosed place, hemmed in by high ice walls, its bottom strewn with stones and boulders. The only other living things, above water level, to share the place with them were flocks of waterfowl that came and went, feeding on whatever it was they caught in the pools. Their calls and honking from beyond the ice announced their arrival, the only sounds in the silence. They were nearly tame and some answered Agaratz’s mimick calls so well that they came and ate from his hands.