The Animal Wife (14 page)

"Listen to my sister!" shouted Father at last, rather desperately.

"It's so late that darkness will catch us in a place without shelter," said Rin. "For tonight, let's stay here. I want to talk quietly with my sister-in-law. We can find a way around this."

"Let Rin talk with her," agreed Andriki, relieved, as if he felt sure his stepsister could mend matters. Some people grumbled, but at last they began to untie their packs and unroll their bedding. Maral's two wives went down near the rotting mammoth corpses in the darkening ravine to fill waterskins and gather dry bones to burn. Rin sat next to Pinesinger, as if to start talking. But Pinesinger raised her chin higher and squeezed her lips and eyelids tight. She wouldn't say a word.

Pinesinger! From my sleeping place near the far end of the cave's mouth, I watched her small shape against the evening sky, sitting on her heels, not moving. I couldn't help but admire her, so recently nothing but a weak young woman, damp with tears, wrongly pregnant and dangerously close to serious trouble—I couldn't help but admire how with a few words she had managed to defy Father, to shame Yoi, and to bring the travel of a whole group of near-strangers, half of them men and most of them older than she, to a dead stop. Whether she had meant it so or not, her act had been neat, quick, and surprising, like an osprey seizing a fish. It was as fine a trick as our second misdeed, by which she had stopped me forever from talking about our first misdeed to Father.

We didn't have much fuel that night, and the adults had to crowd around a pile of coals where strips of the bison meat flamed in their own fat. At the cave's mouth, Pinesinger sat in the dark. She didn't move, so I suspected she was listening. She wouldn't get anything to eat there, I knew, but she was scorning food and fire and every comfort, and I admired her for that too. As I sat by the fire, squeezed between Father and Andriki, waiting for a share of the meat, however small, I wondered if some of the others might also feel a grudging respect for Pinesinger. Anyway, people now saw how unhappy she had been.

"Quarrels burn like grass," said Maral's elder wife.

"A quarrel between two becomes a quarrel among many," said Maral. "No one wants to spend the winter in a lodge with people fighting."

The rest of us were silent for a while, thinking of winter. Surely each of us could remember long stormy nights in a crowded lodge with anger eating at people's hearts—anger as terrible as sickness, felt but not seen. People have killed themselves because of fighting in winter. People have walked off into storms, to be found later naked and frozen to death in the snow. These people were so deeply angered and shamed by fighting that they finally chose to die rather than to fight more. That is why, when we first reach a lodge after being gone all summer, we burn fat for the Woman Ohun and pray that She will give us food and patience until spring.

"I didn't foresee such trouble," said Father, standing up. "Before I married Pinesinger, her uncle promised me that she was good-natured." To his brothers he said, "Come with me. I want to speak privately." Taking his spear, he left the cave, followed by his brothers. From the trail he called, "Kori, Ako, you come too." So Ako and I stood up and, brushing past Pinesinger on the way, followed our fathers and our uncles to the men's lookout.

***

We had no fire in the lookout, and there was no moon. I sat down beside Andriki in the dark. No one spoke—the men were looking into the ravine. Below us, an animal was looking up. Its two eyes were shining faintly green in the starlight. It must have been big to have eyes large enough for us to see at such a distance on a starry night. We watched the eyes for a time as they shifted this way and that; the animal was trying to make out our outline against the sky. We didn't like its doing that. With both hands Andriki threw down a large stone. The stone missed the eyes and bounced off a rock, but the zoom and crash must have frightened the animal, because the eyes vanished suddenly.

"So what will I do with my younger wife?" asked Father.

"It's your elder wife who causes trouble," said Maral.

"Yes," said Father. "And I have an idea. I'll take Yoi to her kin on the Char River and leave Pinesinger behind with you. Yoi will be happy, Pinesinger will be happy, and I'll be happy, because I won't have to watch Pinesinger's belly grow while knowing the child isn't mine." To me Father said, "I spent three winters hunting reindeer with Graylag on the Char. He's the headman. We joined our groups, he and I. I married Yoi, from his second wife's lineage. His sons married women from my lineage." To Kida Father said, "You should come with us. Your wife would like to visit her old home. Her parents will want to come too. Her brother too. And his wife! Meri will want to go—Yoi's lineage is Meri's lineage. This is a good thought, this idea of mine. Let's see, there's me and Yoi, Meri and White Fox, his parents, and Junco. And Kida. That's many. And their son too. That's very many. Even so, Graylag's lodge is big enough."

"I'd like to go," I said.

"You can't," said Father. "We're already too many for Graylag."

"And our lodge will have too few," said Maral to me. "Graylag's lodge will have plenty of men for hunting. But we will have only you, Ako, Andriki, Marten, and me. Andriki's wife hunts, but not well. No woman really hunts well. And look at the women we must feed this winter: my wives, Marten's wife, Andriki's wife, and your little Frogga." Maral laughed. "And Rin and Pinesinger," he added. "No, Nephew. You can't go to the Char. You must come with me."

"So it's decided?" asked Andriki.

"My part is decided," said Father.

"Your way is far, though," said Maral. "If you had left when the moon was new, snow wouldn't find you traveling."

"Haven't we traveled to the Char before?" asked Father. "I'll follow the rivers instead of crossing the plain. The way will be longer, but we'll be in spruce woods, where we can set snares and find shelter and fuel." Father thought for a while, perhaps about the journey. At last he said, "Or maybe there's no need to take every step beside a river. Maybe I'll cross the plain as far as the Grass River. I'll cross the plain to Graylag's summergrounds. Then I can follow the river."

"You'll get snow and strong winds on the plain," said Maral.

"A little snow is better than so much walking," said Father.

"You could ask what the others would like."

"They don't need to come if there's something they won't like," said Father.

***

So it was decided. In the dark cave Father told the others of his new plan. Most people seemed pleased with it, especially Yoi and her niece Meri, who were eager to visit their kin on the Char. Everyone seemed glad to have the fighting stopped. Only Pinesinger seemed unhappy. She had been outwitted and also punished, since her co-wife had been favored while she herself had been given no choice but to travel to a strange lodge without any people of her own, there to wait for Father, perhaps for a long time. She had been sitting so that when we came into the cave we would notice her high chin and her straight back, but when Father told his plan she turned aside. Her will didn't weaken, though. She lay down at last, but made no sound all night.

A
LMOST AS SOON
as we left the cave our two groups lost sight of each other, since the people with Father went east and we went west. In single file, getting more into our stride with each step, we followed the lanky form of Andriki along an unused game trail that traced the ravine's rim, walking into winter.

I was last in line. What would the winter bring us? I wondered. Which of us would be alive by spring to eat the fern fronds uncurling under the melting snow? Whose spirit would have left for the Camps of the Dead, to eat the sun with members of his lineage? Whose corpse would be stored in a tree, waiting for the thaw, for burial?

I remembered how Uncle Bala at the Fire River used to call his people "the hands of the lodge." "We need two strong hands to live through a winter," he would tell us.

With Father and Kida and all the others, we had been very strong. Twice two hands and more, we had been. Were we still strong? Were those who followed Andriki enough? Counting me and Maral's son, my brother-in-law, Ako, who was still young, the men were five—a right hand, as Bala would have seen it. But were we a strong hand? Maral and Andriki were the thumb and forefinger, strong enough for any group, and Maral's tall, thin brother-in-law, Marten, was the long finger, also strong. But because I was new, and wouldn't know where I was in Father's hunting lands without someone with me to show me the way, I saw myself as the third finger, the stiff finger that can't move far unless it takes another finger with it, a finger that is strong but sometimes helpless. And since Ako was small, I saw him as the little finger, never helpless but not strong. Uncle Bala wouldn't have reckoned Ako as a man at all, but would have counted him with the children. Yet if Ako wasn't a man, our group wasn't a hand, so I counted him as a man.

There was also the left hand, the women's hand, with Rin as the thumb—Rin, whose brothers and stepbrothers were the owners of the lodge. Next to her was her daughter, Waxwing, who was Marten's wife. The other fingers were the wives of the owners: two women for Maral—his dark-haired Truht and his pale-haired Lilan, tall like her brother, Marten; and one woman for Andriki—his bold wife, Hind. There was Pinesinger, too—Father's wife. Yet she wasn't joined to the group, and I didn't think of her as one of the fingers. Even so, she belonged with us, as we were the right and left hands of the lodge, we who feed our group, clothe our group, and keep our lodge warm in winter.

Then, of course, there were also the children, they whom the two hands cradled. Our lodge had only two small children: Hind's daughter, Pirit, who walked at Hind's heels unless Andriki carried her, and my wife, Frogga, who rode on Lilan's pack. Last among the children were three babies still unborn but also traveling with us—winter children, to be born in the lodge, to honor the Bear with their animal names someday if they should live. One lay in Truht's belly, one in Waxwing's, one in Pinesinger's.

Never before had I thought so much about a winter, or found the future worrisome, or wondered who would live and who would die before spring. I looked ahead at Frogga's brother, Ako. Still young, he seemed carefree, as I had once been carefree. I wondered what Andriki was thinking as his long legs carried him westward. What did Maral think? Or Father?

At the trail's first bend I turned to look for Father, but he and most of the people with him were already hidden by blueberry bushes. I saw Kida's trouser legs under his huge pack, on top of which, holding tight to one of his braids, his little son was riding. Not for this child were fears of winter—just as the blueberry bushes seemed to swallow Kida, the little boy shouted with joy, and suddenly I remembered being very young, and the excitement of starting a journey.

***

Because the plain fell slowly, we walked downhill all morning. By afternoon our trail was almost as low as the river. We came to a place called Bison's Ford, where the hooves of scrambling bison had cut great notches in the sandy banks. We crossed the river there, taking off our moccasins and trousers to wade through the fast water on a bed of smooth round stones.

On the north side of the Hair the plain became a rolling heath where cloudberries grew in their red-brown leaves as far as the eye could see. We threw down our packs and began to pick and eat. Just before dark I looked around for the others but couldn't see them. I stood up. At last I made out the faraway form of one person, then another, then another, all scattered widely, all crouched low and busy eating, almost lost in the brown landscape under the wide yellow sky.

After that our way turned due north and we walked for six days, following Maral's easy strides over a brushy plain. We looked for sheltered places to camp at night, places beside rocks or in heavy thickets; we burned what we could—grass or heather, bones, dung, or wood, if we found these things. We watched for ravens in the sky, who might show us the way to carcasses, but on that trip we found no carcasses. Every evening we set snares for small animals and birds. All in all, the trip was easy. Cloudberries and black crowberries were in season, and we carried with us strips of dry meat.

One night Andriki said we would see the Breasts of Ohun by noon the next day. Beyond those hills was Father's lodge. I thought of Father as we walked, and how our journey was almost over while his journey, because of the great distance between the Hair River and the Char River, had hardly begun.

The Breasts of Ohun! My mind's eye saw two pointed hills, and I looked for them as we traveled. By noon we saw a few low, rounded hills that ran east and west with ridges between them, and I thought that among them we would see two peaks that would mark Father's lodge. The country rose toward the hills, and up we went, through a mossy wood of spruce and birch, out onto a sunny, red-brown heath of blueberry and crowberry shrubs. But from the heath we saw no hills like breasts, only mounds with a thick, red, rolling scrub of low-growing bushes on their sides. Among the bushes I saw sedges, and here and there a lonely black spruce, wind-shaped so that its north side grew no branches. The heath was sunny and warm and very quiet. Far away in the stillness a willow-tit sang its pure, sweet song:
Di! Di! Chibidi!

Most of the people dropped their packs and made for some crowberry patches, where they squatted on their heels to pick and eat. Andriki pointed with his lips. "At the end of this trail, beyond the ridge, is the lodge," he said.

"Will we see it from the ridge?" I asked him.

"We could, but we won't," said Andriki.

His answer puzzled me. Was he going to shut his eyes on the ridge? "Don't we climb there?" I asked. "Is it so high?"

Andriki pointed with his lips again, and I saw how our trail would run west to go around the hills, tracing the edge of the heavy scrub. "Why would we climb the ridge?" he asked. "Were there no berry heaths where you lived on Woman Lake? The bush is thick and heavy. Some of the leaves are poisonous. Nothing eats them. Except for bears, who eat berries in the fall, there's nothing there to hunt. Birds and mice go there. Foxes go there for the mice. Women go there to pick berries and set snares. So that's all it is—woman's country."