Blood boiled with meat and eaten.
Milk in the udders drunk fresh on the spot.
Body fat prized, dried or cooked or rendered,
And eaten as a sauce on meat;
Saved and carried in a sealskin bag.
The fly larvae found in sores on the skins, eaten.
The antlers used for awls, needles, spoons, platters,
Handles, beads, spear throwers, buttons and tabs
And hooks and all kinds of things.
Hides tanned and used for clothing, also winter boots,
Snowshoe lashings, snares, nets, rope.
Smoking the meat was essential to preserve it, and a lot of them worked at building a long fire, creating a hot bed of embers so that green wood or wet dung would burn and their smoke rise with the heat, passing up and through strips of rib and haunch meat strung on thick hide lines, which were completely covered with meat chunks so that they would not themselves burn. They smoked as much meat as they could carry, while also eating as much as they could. It took a bit of care to keep from making oneself sick by eating too much fat at one time, and they all groaned a bit when they had to go downstream to the shitting ground, and on their return. It was hard on the gut to eat so much meat, hard on the asshole to shit so much shit. Despite that they ate with a real will. There is a hunger inside hunger, as the saying had it. This inner hunger kept them eating long past the point where their bellies were round and hard. They all wanted to get some fat on them for the hard months next spring, which right now they remembered so well. They sent the kids out to the berry brambles around their perch to gather berries to add to their meals and stew into the mash that would get them drunk at the festival.
The new moon of the eighth month came on them fast, and they were all anxious to get to the festival. The festival site was a few days’ walk away, an immense meadow on the southern edge of the caribou steppe, surrounded by a low ring of hills that became part of the encampment. As always, they now had many big strips of smoked meat, also sinews, ligaments, hides, bags of grease and of liquefied fat: they had more than they could carry. But they were going to drag it.
They found alder thickets in the steppe’s shallow river ravines, and cut many three-year-old shoots, long and straight and springy, and lashed them together to make travois, which could haul loads over the steppe much larger than what could be carried on one’s back. When the travois were lashed together and loaded, the young men and women got in the harnesses and did the hauling, while the elders dawdled behind them, joking about how easy it was to get kids to haul when the eight eight lay at the end of the path; which led to the jokes about how impossible it would be to keep up with them, if they didn’t have travois tied to them to slow them down. Same jokes every year, same everything; and that was very, very satisfying.
They came to the festival site from the west, and from a long way off could see the low hills surrounding the site, each hill topped by a cluster of big spruce trunks, stripped of branches and bark and stood top end down, so that their root balls waved at their tops like hair or antlers, with animal skulls hanging from every other root end. Thorn claimed to remember the emplacement of these tree trunks in the time of his childhood. It was stirring to see them first pop over the horizon, and then as they approached become a strange sight, the mark of their meeting, and of their existence as more than just packs out on their own. They could hear the drumming from a long way off, first the low thunk of hollowed tree trunks, a sound which seemed to come out of the ground, and then the hide drums of various sizes, battering the air and quickening the blood. FESTIVAL!
They always camped at the same spot, on the south side of one of the low hills, next to the Eagle pack whose home was two confluences downstream from them on the Urdecha. Wolf people who ran traps often ran into Eagles out on their own rounds, and now some of these men came over and helped get camp set, around the same fire ring as always. Smells of dung smoke and burning fat lay heavy in the warm and buggy summer air, and the people in the camp next to theirs were playing bone flutes, a little band of them playing as loudly as they could, working against the drumming from the meadow and filling the air with several notes at once, creating harmonies and then dissonances in a rapid oscillation reminiscent of wolf howls or loon cries. The sound of it made Loon’s cheeks burn and his blood thump in his fingertips. From the top of their hill, looking down on the meadow from the upended tree trunk, he saw bonfires all over, people all over. There were maybe a twentytwenty people, or even two twentytwenties, anyway far more people than they ever saw together at any other time, which was all by itself astonishing and exhilarating. And then almost all of them were dressed in their finest summer clothes, including many feather capes and skirts; and their faces painted, their hair braided and tied up, and tooth and shell necklaces ringing every neck. Many of them were already dancing around the fires, and those who weren’t dancing moved as if they were. Loon and his friends howled at the sight, and that set off more howls from all over the meadow. EIGHT EIGHT!
Some of them stayed in camp to finish setting up and to keep an eye on things. Everyone else went out to look around. Some went to the music circles, or visited clan fellows they always sought out. Some joined little maker’s circles, where they shared new tricks and told about their winters. The shamans got together to do their yearstick corroborations, sing songs, and tell stories. The eight eight was not a shaman thing, and the shamans obviously enjoyed that, and took the opportunity to get drunk and make fools of themselves. Traders went to a barter circle to offer things for trade and to look for things they might want, under one of the biggest upside-down tree trunks. Away from this barter tree people mostly gave each other things, or made regular annual exchanges of this for that. People from the Flint pack from the basin in the ice cap highlands called the Giants’ Knapsite simply gave away dressed blocks of clean hard flint, the brown gleam of these near-cubes flush with a very handsome dark red. In return the Flints would take whatever people gave them, nodding and smiling to indicate that these return gifts were not necessary but were appreciated, scoops of mash most of all. Good fellowship all around, love all around, human cleverness all around, celebration of their genius compared to the other animals all around; another year passed successfully, the kids mostly fine, no one starving quite. Have another scoop! Eight eight!
Thorn said to Loon,—Come by the corroboree and meet all the shamans as a young shaman. You’ll have to tell a story to them.
Loon shook his head at that.—I’m not ready to tell them a story.
—That’s too bad, you have to do it anyway. You’ve had your wander and it’s time.
—No, Loon said, and walked away as fast as he could. At the eight eight no shaman would want to be embarrassed by having to punish his apprentice, and so he felt like he could get away with it. The eight eight was like that.
Loon wandered from bonfire to bonfire. This was one of his favorite activities of the entire year: wandering at the eight eight. People dressed up, hair braided and top-knotted, faces painted or just red-cheeked with excitement. Just looking was such a feast for the eyes, he reeled as he walked and saw others doing the same, he tried to dance it and halfway succeeded. The young women were showing a lot of skin, and a lot of it was painted red but a lot of it was just bare brown skin, still summer slender but still knocking him back glance by glance.
He came on the area where they held most of the festival games, which was something else he enjoyed watching. Elders from the local packs set up the games for the boys and girls, from the simplest rock-throwing contests to the very popular throwing of javelins through hoops rolling down a slight hill. This last was a frequent camp game of every pack ever, and so now a great number of boys and girls were throwing light javelins through hoops that rolled and bounced down a gentle hill, and the air was loud with their yelling.
Just as popular were the contests in which men threw javelins with spear throwers. This was the basic young hunter’s game,
and every boy had thrown twentytwentytwenties of throws to get used to the way a spear thrower lengthened one’s arm. This extra reach made for throws so strong that the javelins visibly bowed and flexed under the pressure of the sling. To see such a quivering flight lance into a distant musk ox hide stuffed with grass was a beautiful thing, and Loon cried out with the rest when throws flashed through the air and struck all the way through the targets, which were traditionally musk oxen, so much smaller than a mammoth, an easier target to sew but a harder one to hit. When one of these was transfixed from as far away as a javelin could be thrown, a roar went up and the thrower reared in a little dance.
Beyond the throwing meadow rose a steep hill used for hill races, a favorite with all the boys and girls who were swift-footed and strong. Every year the elders set the starting place somewhere new, and from there you could take any route you wanted to the top. The hill was riven by intersecting ravines, so a clever route was crucial to winning the race. Loon with his bad leg could not join this race, though as a boy he had enjoyed it and been good at it. Wistfully he turned his back on the hill and took off in the other direction.
Across the meadow, the bird’s eye view makers were shaping their patches of sandy ground to conform to the festival grounds and various areas around it. Loon didn’t know the lands outside their home or region well enough to appreciate these contests, which were usually dominated by travelers and shamans, or elders who had traveled for one reason or another.
On a south-facing sunny bank near the bird’s eyes, the shamans were having their corroboree, waving their yearsticks at each other and arguing loudly, as usual. Anytime you got more than two shamans together it was not going to be a shaman thing, so it quickly became a drunken mess. So here, by tradition, they tried to get the year straight before they got crooked, as people said.
A good number of the shamans at this eight eight were earless old snakeheads like Thorn, thus either apprentices to that same Pika who had taught Thorn, or to other shamans who had used the same memory strengthener. Heart sinking a little, Loon spotted Heather and a number of other women sitting among the old snakeheads; some of these women were shamans to their packs, others were herb women with an interest in the corroboration, or friends with the shaman women.
—Anyone can end up being a shaman! Thorn had once explained to Loon.—It comes on you and you have no choice! The question is, who can escape it? And the answer is, no one! Nor man nor woman, elder or child, human or animal. Becoming a shaman is a fate that can strike anyone. Even you.
Remembering that remark and Thorn’s scowl, regarding all the earless old crazies laughing and hitting at each other with their yearsticks, Loon turned and walked away. Such a bunch of rasty old men, he couldn’t stand it. Because of his wander, at some point during this festival he was supposed to join the shamans and receive their congratulations at having become an apprentice to Thorn, and he was then also supposed to recite one of the old stories, as Thorn had demanded. Maybe the swan wife, but he didn’t have a line of it in his head. Best to walk away before Thorn saw him.
So, he couldn’t run the hill race, couldn’t make a bird’s eye view, couldn’t talk numbers of moons per year, or recite a story. Best to go back to the throwing range and try a few throws with his new spear thrower. This one he had carved in the shape of a ibex’s head, and it had a great cast; he felt like he might be able to enter the throw at the longest distance and have a good chance of hitting the musk ox.
Or better yet, he could sit down with the drummers and drink some mash and beat on his drum with the others. That he could always do, it was thoughtless fun, and one of the best parts of the festival. Drink, smoke, drum, laugh right through a beautiful smoky sunset; then, when night fell, go to the bonfires and dance.
At the bonfires in the first dark, some men and women held a contest to see who could make the prettiest fire spectacle. Many circled around to see these players take up very long travois poles and tie little sachets of cloth or leather to the thin end of the pole, then hold their sachets out away from them, into the highest flames of a bonfire, at which point many of them turned their heads away; and all watching would wait, until the sachet caught fire and flared green or blue or purple, sometimes with a quick splash of fire, or a crack like a little touch of thunder. Since everyone spent every night looking into fires, the sight of something new and unexpected flashing out of a blaze was enough to make them laugh with surprise and delight, and when the whole crowd did that together and as one, it was exhilarating. All the firebangers saved their biggest ones for last and poled them into the fire together, and the quick sequence of bright loud colorful cracks was enough to hurt the ears and provoke a huge cheer.
After that it was drinking, drumming, and dancing. Loon wandered over to a bonfire circled by dancers. Because of Badleg, as he had started naming it during the trek north, he first sat with the drummers and put his little wood and hide drum between his knees and drummed. The farther people traveled to get to the eight eight, the smaller the drums they brought. These little drums took the fastest parts, and Loon quickly got into the groove of the fives, and then switched between the fives, fours, and threes, as the spirit of the piece moved them all around to different emphases. These drum sessions were led by no one and yet could make quite sudden shifts in pace and flow, like flocking birds in the sky. Those moments were really something to be part of, to feel so clearly that there was a group spirit that could seize them all and take them off in a new direction. Time after time it happened. That it could be so easy was astonishing to feel, right there in hands and ear and body. And they drummed this astonishment too! And so it would go, all night long.
Sometime before midnight Loon came out of his drumming trance and could see everything from all the way around. It was like the way owls must see, with the distance to everything much more exact than usual. And so much more than usual was dancing before him: the flames in the fire, the sparks and smoke pouring up, the dancing people dressed like birds. The scene flowed in bumps tied to his pulse, a palpable bump moving one fire-flick moment to the next. Mother Owl was inside him, it seemed, and he watched the dance flicker in a way he had never watched before, not just at this eight eight, but in his whole life.
There were young women dancing, of course, wearing their furs and feathers, their necklaces and bracelets and anklets, all bouncing up and down barefoot in time to the drums, across the flicker of the firelight, snapping hand clacks and weaving circles with each other as they circled the fire. Red and white body paint had been applied to their skin in dots or snakes or weaves, and their birdskin hats or cloaks usually came from the most beautiful parts of birds, such as the heads of mallards or the chests of flickers, many such sewn together so that the cloak or headdress was much bigger than any actual bird’s. There before him spun a cloak of flicker chests, rising over breasts painted white with red nipples. The sight flickered like a flicker. Another dancer wore a cloak of loons’ backs and necks, and that dense superb weave of black and white was so striking and beautiful that Loon could not look elsewhere.
The young woman wearing it was someone he had never seen before. She was tall and heavy-boned; the elg would be her animal, and her dancing was correspondingly slow and simple. Slimmer faster women were dancing circles around her, she was ungainly in that company, and this was precisely what snagged Loon’s eye and quickly became her most beautiful feature, the thing that arrested him and compelled him to watch. She knew what she could do, and did it. She was enjoying the dance. She was big and slow, but had excellent proportions, long legs, strong rump, nice tits, broad shoulders. Hair the color of the flints from the Giants’ Knapsite, gleams of firelight glancing off it. Thick triple-braid of it down her back, tied with a strip of loon neck feathers at the tip: her friends had done well by her hair. She clumped around and slapped at people freely as they passed her. She had a carefree smile, unselfconscious and relaxed. She had no cares at that moment, she was herself and wanted nothing. So i
t seemed looking at her.
Loon hung his drum on its loop on the back of his coat and stood up. It was time to dance.
He joined in next to her. Even favoring Badleg a little he could dance rings around her, and he did.
—Hi there, he said to her,—my name is Loon, so I like your cloak. Who are you?
—I’m Elga, she said.
—Ah good, he said.—That’s good.
—It is good, she said, drawing herself up with elgish dignity and taking a neat little turn.—And Loon, is Loon good too?
Though no human could really imitate a loon’s arching of its wings to the sun, Loon put his arms out and stretched, stretched, stretched, and Elga laughed to see it. It was actually quite a fun dance style, and fit the firelight’s blink-blink-blink, so Loon kept it up for a while, thinking about how birds courted, the cranes, the doves, yes even the loons, such a display! He relaxed to get it to a more human style as he circled around her. She rotated inside his circles with a dreamy smile, like an elg chewing on a sunny day. She was taller than Loon, and heavier too. Her loon cloak was gorgeous, and yet the body it was draped over, the shoulders, collarbones, breasts, ribs, belly and hips, arms, back, legs, all of them were much more gorgeous even than a loon’s back. With his owl sight he could see that her face was a perfect image of her self, just as it was with all the people in his pack. People’s faces were three-liners of their nature, that was all there was to it; somehow their essential natures got stamped on the front of their heads, as if it was a game Raven played when he put them all in their mothers to be born. Their natures were there for all to see. And now Loon was seeing with owl sight, and here dancing before him was a woman calm, straightforward, maybe a little dreamy and withdrawn, all right there to be seen in her eyes and the set of her mouth, and the whole shape of her face, oval and big-eyed. A little mouth, lips thick and rounded when in repose or suppressing a smile, but now she was smiling, so he only caught glimpses of her mouth at rest, as she thought over a dance move or looked out at the night thinking about something. Her teeth when she smiled were neat and small, more otter than elg, which was nice too. No, she was herself; he loved the way she looked, loved her slow neat dancing inside his circles. And she seemed content to stay there, she danced to face him and circled the fire at a speed that accommodated his looning around.