Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6) (44 page)

“Give it time to work! Come back when your head sways.” Pell saw with dismay Pont putting more hemp in his own mouth!

Pell wandered about the camp chewing his own mouthful until his head began to swim and then returned to Pont.

“You’re gonna have to wait a bit!” Pell said crossly, “even the Healer has to piss once in a while.” He heaved himself to his feet and made his way unsteadily out of the cave.

Pell stood uncertainly, swaying a little until Pont returned. “Let me see it,” Pont said reaching out.

Pell tendered his finger and Pont grasped it, pulling mightily. Despite the cold and the effects of the hemp it hurt savagely and Pell crouched, howling in agony. When Pont released the finger Pell turned to look at it hopefully. His finger looked the same! He looked accusingly at Pont but the healer had already turned and begun rummaging through his herbs. “What now?” Pell asked with some trepidation.

"A poultice to stop the swelling.”

"No! That's what you did for Kana! She died! Cut my finger off, like Tando's!"

"I
can't
cut your finger
off
, you ginja fool!" Pont ducked his head a little in embarrassment at his slip of tongue.

Pell stared at him aghast—ginja (useless) was a common swear word or insult, but not one that you would use on someone who might actually become ginja! Pell felt the hemp making his world slow down. Rather than making everything feel better as it had on the other occasions that Pell had given him hemp, a black rage built from deep inside him and rapidly swelled—he felt his face flash hot. "I'll take it off myself then" he shouted, his voice breaking into a squeak at the end. He gripped his finger with his left hand and bent it even farther backward, as if to break a green stick by wrenching it back and forth—as he bent it back he pulled mightily in order to rip the offending digit from his hand. His hands flew apart with a violent jerk—for a second he thought he had succeeded in pulling off the finger. He peered at his left palm but to his disappointment there was no dismembered fingertip resting in his left hand.

Then he stared in shock at his injured right pointer finger. It remained swollen, but it had been restored to a normal shape! He tried to move it and it wiggled! As he watched, its dusky color flushed pink—then brighter red than his other fingers. He worked it some more in growing amazement.

A foul odor bit his nose and then he noticed the healer standing in front of him with one of his poultices of half rotted leaves. Pont stared at the relocated finger, eyes wide with surprise but his expression quickly turned to calculation. "See, boy, I told you those herbs would work!"

Wide eyed Pell stepped back. Then he shouted, "Your cursed hemp didn't fix my finger!
I
fixed my finger!" Pell could hardly believe he was screaming at any adult, much less the tribe’s healer, but he was drunk with the effects of the hemp.

Pont cuffed Pell brutally to the ground.

His shout brought other members of the tribe crowding around. They had all looked aside uncomfortably when Pell entered the cave earlier with his injured finger evident. Now they stared in excitement and amazement at his finger. Pont boomed, “My mixture of the special herbs put his finger back! Does he offer his gratitude? No!"

Pell opened his mouth to protest again but Tando, the respected hunter who’d lost his own small finger grasped Pell by the shoulder, “Don't argue with your healer, boy. Just be glad your finger is better. It may still turn out badly, look how swollen it is."

Pell stumbled back, holding his finger in his other hand and slurring. “It wasn’t the hemp!
I
fixed it! I don’t want your ginja poultice either!” The finger was warming up and the feeling was coming back with a vengeance despite the hemp he’d ingested. The finger was throbbing and tingling but Pell somehow felt that that was good. He stumbled over to the pile of leaves and furs where he and his mother slept. There he collapsed and slept.

When Pell awoke the next morning, only the urgency of his bladder dimmed the pain in his finger. It throbbed with each beat of his heart as if he were striking it with a knapping stone. After he had stumbled out of the cave to relieve himself, he quickly began to wish for more hemp. However he was sure that he would be unable to face the healer with a request for the mind addling leaves. He sat a while cradling his injured digit. Eventually he resolved to beg the healer’s forgiveness when he awakened.

Pont awakened in a surly mood however. He beat Lessa for some offense even before going out to relieve himself. When he returned he immediately began rummaging in his baskets and chewing on a mixture of his herbs.

Pell considered this a good omen, as Pont chewing on herbs usually became Pont in a good mood. After some time passed, Pell sidled over and, in a timid voice, asked if he could have some more of the hemp.

“Ha, what is this? Is this the young ginja who proclaimed my medicines useless last night? Get out of here!
You’ll
get no more of the blessed hemp!”

Pont had spoken in the booming voice he cultivated for important ceremonies, so everyone in the cave heard. There was scattered laughter, which brought a flush to Pell’s face, but as he looked around he saw horror on the faces of many in the tribe. Pell realized with dismay that the healer may have sealed his fate as an outcast. He had been worried before because he was a poor throw, and therefore a third-rate hunter. His father had predicted his inferior hunting skills. Pell’s mother had consoled him with stories about how Roley himself had been clumsy until after his adolescent growth spurt. However, a gnawing fear that he would never prove to be an adequate hunter was always yammering in the back of Pell’s skull. Pell’s long dead father couldn’t teach him the secrets of flint knapping, a skill Garen had been so good at that the tribe had kept him despite his small, twisted foot which, in addition to his natural lack of hunting skill, had left him useful only as a beater during large hunts. Pell had tried working some flint in hopes that his father’s gift had somehow passed to him naturally and would blossom without training. Unfortunately, the points Pell had made so far had been no better than the untrained efforts of any of the other tribe members and worse than many. To get good points the Aldans were forced to trade with other tribes at the summer gatherings.

Other than his mother, Boro was Pell’s only friend. It often seemed as if that friendship was only a result of the fact that Boro’s social standing was as low as Pell’s. Both clumsy, they were social outcasts bound together by their unspoken fear of becoming ginja. Once Boro and Pell had, in a fit of emotion, pledged to leave the tribe together if either of them were cast out. Pell looked over at Boro. Boro stared into his own lap and avoided Pell’s eyes—as did pretty much everyone else in the cave except his mother Donte. Pell returned to his bedding and collapsed to nurse his misery.

Pell found that if he kept his finger high in the air it didn’t throb as much. It remained swollen but he could move it still, as he proved to himself over and over, despite the pain involved. He found himself holding it next to his middle finger so that that good finger could protect it. There was nothing but a thin gruel of roots to eat that day. Pell didn’t have the courage to get any himself the way people had been looking at him but his mother brought him a bowl of it and sat behind him grooming his hair while he ate. He felt comforted by her actions but his stomach sank again when he saw the way people looked at him. He could tell that many of them were already thinking of him as “ginja.” They didn’t want him eating their food if he would be cast out to die soon anyway.

The next day, having tired of holding the injured pointer finger and its neighboring middle finger together with his other hand, he bound them together with a thong. At first he wrapped the two fingers together but had difficulty tying the fingers together with only the one other hand to work with. Finally he managed to tie a small noose in a thong and slipped the loop around the base of the fingers. Then he wrapped a few turns and cinched a couple of half hitches about the fingers. He found that his hand could function almost normally with a short wrap of thong between each of the joints. He decided that he should go out on a hunt so that the Aldans would see him
trying
to contribute. He looked about for Boro but couldn’t find him. Eventually he embarked on a hunt all by himself.

As he trudged up a little side valley toward the plateau above he knew in his heart that this hunting trip would be a farce, but he waited until he was far from sight of the cave to try throwing with his injured hand. As he had feared, the pain in his bound finger made him even clumsier than usual. He practiced throwing for a while but soon realized that there was even less chance than usual that he would hit anything that day. Nonetheless he trudged on. It was a clear, windless, cold day without a cloud in the sky but in his tired and hungry state, he had no appreciation for its placid beauty. Instead, he cringed from its cold bite, trying to draw into his furs.

Suddenly a white snow hare exploded from under his feet! Daydreaming, he hadn’t noticed it until he had nearly stepped on it! Pell was so frightened that he dropped the stone he held in his injured hand and nearly fell again. The hare shot across the floor of the little ravine and disappeared. Pell followed it half-heartedly to the spot where it disappeared and stood, looking around disconsolately.

Suddenly he recognized that he was standing beside a hole! The rabbit had its own little cave! He crouched down and reached into the hole as far as he could—no rabbit. He sat by the hole and pondered. If he waited long enough, would it have to come out? Might he catch it then?

Who was he kidding? He wasn’t fast enough to catch a rabbit!

Perhaps if he covered the hole with a fur? No, then the rabbit just wouldn’t come out at all. As he sat contemplating the problem, he unwound one of the thongs from his finger—the finger remained swollen but pink. He could still wiggle it. Daydreaming, he played with the thong a bit, tying the knots that he had learned. While practicing the slip knot that he had used to start the wrap on his finger, he fumbled and dropped the thong. When he picked it up, the loop in the end caught on a small stump next to the rabbit hole. When he jerked on the thong the little noose that he had formed cinched tight around the stump. He had to scoot down next to the stump and work it loose.

The idea came to him that he might make a similar loop catch around the rabbit somehow, and thereby slow it down enough that he could catch or club it. He tied one end of the thong to the little stump next to the hole. Then he propped the slip loop about the opening of the rabbit’s hole with bits of brush and twigs so that the opening in the noose was somewhat bigger than a rabbit’s head. He got up and walked away from the hole while getting out another thong and rewrapping his fingers. He stepped behind a boulder almost fifteen paces from the rabbit hole. He picked out a stick to club the hare with and knelt down in a sprinter’s crouch to watch. He envisioned the rabbit coming out and becoming briefly entangled in the loop. While it was freeing itself, he would make a mad dash in with his club.

He waited almost an hour. His excitement had faded and he was leaning on one haunch against the boulder when he saw several vultures circling to the east. With a groan, he got up and started that way hoping that whatever held the vultures’ interest remained edible.

When he got to the area the vultures had been circling he found nothing. Either the vulture had been deceived or some other scavenger had already dragged it away.

He thought disgustedly that the rabbit hole was out of his way back home. Pell debated a minute but decided that he should at least salvage the thong he had left there. There probably remained enough daylight. He trudged back that way.

As he came around the corner he saw a puff of white about two feet from the hole! He picked up a stone and crept closer—it was the rabbit!

He threw but missed as usual. The rabbit didn’t move though! As he came closer he saw the thong biting deeply into the rabbit’s neck. After being caught, the rabbit’s violent thrashing had apparently broken its own neck or strangled it.

Pell was beside himself with excitement. He had never successfully hunted before. He’d contributed to group kills, sure, but he’d never killed an animal by himself. He would gain status in the tribe when he brought home this rabbit! Status was something he desperately needed. He never considered trying to eat the rabbit himself. No matter how hungry he was, the value of the nutrition in the rabbit could not
compare
to the value of at last being recognized as someone with the potential to become a hunter.

Pell threw the rabbit over his shoulder and started back jauntily. He contemplated in his mind his reception back at the cave and how he would describe his hunt. An unerring stone that struck the rabbit dead in its tracks? Suddenly Pell stopped on the trail as he realized that the hare’s carcass showed no evidence of being struck by a stone.

He took it down from his shoulder and looked at it for a moment then ran his fingers over it, pondering his story. For an instant he considered describing how he had actually ensnared the animal. But, no one would believe him—besides, the prestige of his “perfectly cast stone” would be lost forever. After more contemplation he lay the animal down, backed up a few paces and cast a stone at its prostrate form.