—Where do you come from? he asked.
—From north of here, she said, and saying this caused a little frown to crease her brow, and he saw better than ever the little flower her lips made when she was thinking.
—North? Loon said.—Are you an ice person?
—No, she said, but looked away as if this weren’t the whole story, and added—Not anymore. My pack winters to the sunrise, but we take our caribou north of here, caribou and saiga. What about you?
—We take our caribou two rivers to sunset, and winter down south of the ice caps.
—What’s your clan?
—Raven, Loon said proudly.—And you?
—Eagle, said Elga, looking pleased; it was best if couples were from different clans. Seeing her expression, Loon danced in and pecked her on the cheek with a kiss.
—Well met, eagle woman, he declared, smiling, and when he saw the pleased look still there in her eyes, he smiled for real, he could feel the difference in his face.
—Let’s dance, she said, as if they weren’t already, and raised her hands over her head and shimmied. She was more graceful than an elg, and her loon cloak bounced and flickered in the firelight, and Loon with his owl vision danced with her with his gaze cast down, watching her legs and hips and hands, keeping his gaze from hers as she kept hers from his, except for a moment now and then, when a move made them laugh or they bumped together hard. Right now they couldn’t look at each other, but once in a while they would both look up and their eyes would meet. Are you here too? their gazes asked, and then answered, Yes, I am here. We are here, together in a bubble of our own, which has all of a sudden popped out of nowhere around us. Isn’t it exciting? Yes it is! And then they would look down and dance, almost as if abashed, or a little shocked, needing a little time to take it in.
And there was no hurry. The night was young, midnight had not yet come overhead, the bonfires were still growing their big mounds of embers, with immense heaps of steppe dung piled around them to be burned. Most of the people there were going to dance the night through and then sit watching the sunrise together. This was the eight eight, peak of the year, it was meant to be like this, and Loon found himself comforted by that, it made the strength of the sudden new feeling in him all right. This was the place where this kind of thing happened. He glanced up at her face again, watched her looking into the fire; he knew he didn’t know her, and yet at the same time it felt like the look on her face told him everything about her. Everything he needed to know. A northern woman, she would be tough and hard and hot. She would enjoy the south and its mild air.
On they danced. A pack from the east formed a dance line, each of them holding a stout stick in each hand, and their drummers took over the rhythm and moved it to a heavy four beat. Their dancers began to dance with all their footwork the same, a kick left kick right, while they smacked their sticks together, mostly hitting their own but also trading hits with others in their group when they all spun around at once, a beautiful sight and sound, nimble and clacky and quick. While they all watched, Elga came to a stop beside Loon, and the sides of their upper arms touched, and Loon felt the touch like a beam of sunlight on a cold morning. A big howl of approval went up when the stick dancers brought their routine to a sudden halt, and they clacked their sticks lightly in return and took the ladles and cups of mash offered them. The drummers shifted back into a four-and-five, and the general dancing took off again.
Loon and Elga went back into their bubble and danced with the rest until well past midnight. Loon’s feet were getting tired, and Badleg was asking for relief. When the drummers switched to a big heavy two-three beat, Elga turned to him and put her arms over his shoulders. She was distinctly taller than he was, and in feeling that a sizzle started at his ears and ran down the back of his neck and up around through his guts to his spurt, which began to rise heartbeat by heartbeat. She leaned down to him and kissed him on the ear, and the sizzle turned to a little bolt of lightning running right down his spine to his prong.
—I’m tired, she said,—and I have to pee. Come with me to the stream and then let’s find some place to rest.
—All right, Loon said.—I have to pee too.
—I’ve eaten so much this week, she said as they stumbled across the meadow away from the firelight, to the slow looping river that drained the festival meadow. Down this way were the shitting grounds, and they had to go slowly to dodge the holes and trenches dug into the wet ground. Elga stepped down to the streamside by herself, and Loon went behind a tree and managed to pee successfully through what was more spurt than pizzle, peeing up at the stars as he began, which made him laugh.
That done they wandered back toward the camps, and Elga stopped at hers, and rejoined him with a bearskin rolled up over her shoulder. She was also wearing a long fur coat with a wolverine-fur collar. Off into the night then, upstream into the hills. On the south-facing sides of these hills, low tangles of brush made for many small lay-bys. It was only necessary to find a good one that was not already occupied. During the last couple of eight eights Loon had taken a look at these hillsides in the mornings, wondering if he would ever have reason to want such a shelter, telling himself it might happen, it might happen. And here it was. He could not find the nook he had discovered two summers before, but then Elga saw a knot of white spruce that she liked, a little tuck of stunted trees, such that they had to crawl to get into it. They paused as they did to make sure no one else was already in there; but it was empty.
And then they were inside their lay-by and on Elga’s bear hide, on the thick fur lying together kissing and getting their clothes off, squeezing and caressing each other, and then he was on her and her legs were open to him, and with a couple of thrusts he was up and into her. They were both gasping. Loon, who had mated only with Mother Earth, was shocked at the incredible smoothness and warmth of her, the way they fit together and slid against each other with no drag; it felt so good he couldn’t really tell where he ended and she began, it was just a big blur of good feeling down there, a back-and-forth sizzle of good feeling.
She stopped him with a hand over his mouth.—Don’t come in me, she said.
—Oh. All right. But I’m about to.
Indeed at the very thought the glow of pleasure flooded back from his spurt all through him, his whole body one great thrusting mass of pleasure, he was thrumming with it, and then bursting. Her knees were up to each side of his ribs and she was squeezing him between them, and as he felt himself begin to spurt he pulled out of her and thrust himself convulsively against her belly, and feeling that she grabbed him by the hair and kissed him again and again as he moaned.
They lay there for a while and then she rolled over onto him. He grew hard again faster than he had realized was possible, but she rubbed her vixen over the top of his spurt this time, kneeling on him and kissing him as she did, until she too moaned and pressed herself down on him, crushing him down into the bear fur and the lumpy ground under his back. The female covering the male! He had never seen any animals do that, so it had never occurred to him. Now he thought it might be the best way of all.
They lay there and kissed and petted. Her belly was gooey with his mushroomy spurtmilk but she did not care, she rubbed it into her skin and into his skin, she kissed him and caressed him, rubbed herself against him, humming; when he got hard again she kissed his chest and his belly and then took his spurt in her mouth and sucked on him until he came again, feeling it more powerfully than ever. She hummed approvingly throughout, and then stretched out and kissed him again, and he tasted his own seed there in her mouth, shocking to his tongue and then he wanted to taste it again. She turned and rolled and presented her vixen to his face, all wet and musky, and he licked her in the way he had seen wolves lick their mates, it was obvious what to do, but also shocking in the new way it felt, the slick smoothness of that interior skin, the tight curl of the hair around it under his tongue, the taste of her.
They lay there again, wrapping up to stay
warm. They kissed, they made love. The sky turned gray in the east, then the red flush of dawn lined the horizon.
—No, Loon protested.—I don’t want this night to end.
She hummed her agreement, burrowed her face into his neck. She appeared to fall asleep for a while, and Loon lay there feeling her breast rise and fall on his arm, her leg thrown over his middle. He was not even the slightest bit sleepy; in fact he wanted to wake her up and slip inside her again. He did not, however. He let her sleep, and watched sunrise with his head lying right on the ground, cradling her head and feeling her body’s weight and warmth, smelling her, soaking her in. This was what he wanted. He had never wanted anything the way he wanted this.
In the warmth of the morning sun, he too fell asleep for a while. When he woke she had her loon cloak rolled and tied with a thong. She looked him in the eyes, in a way she hadn’t during their dance.
—Can I come with you? she said.
—What do you mean?
—I just joined my pack last year. I ran away from the one before, because they took me from the one I grew up in. But I can’t find that first one anymore. I lived like a woodsman trying to find them, but when I couldn’t, I joined the pack I’m in now. But I don’t really fit there, and a lot of them wish I wasn’t there. It makes some problems I guess. Anyway I don’t like it.
—Sure you can, he said.—Sure you can come with me.
They went to his camp together, and he went straight to Heather and told her about it. She hissed and said,—You wait a minute before you talk to Thorn.
After a quick hard look at Elga, she turned her back on them, clearly displeased with the situation, and dug around in her traveling selection of baskets and bowls and gourds and boxes. No one carried more around in her backsack than Heather did, it was always taut with its internal weight, and hung from a tumpline that pressed a livid mark on her forehead when she hiked. Now it looked like she was having trouble finding what she wanted, knocking things around like a jay beaking through leaves.—I knew this was going to happen, she muttered.
When Thorn came into camp he was mashed and smoked, red-eyed and roaring. Loon might have chosen some other time to tell him, but Thorn immediately saw Elga and stared at her and said,—Who’s this then?
—We’re getting married, Loon said.—She’s joining us. Her name is Elga.
—No, Thorn said, and with a snarl he leaped at Loon and hit him on the ear and then in the gut. After that Loon held him off with straight-arms and shoves, until during one shove Thorn grabbed Loon’s right hand in both of his and quickly twisted Loon’s little finger. Loon felt the bone break, and after that it hurt so sharply that he stepped back and kicked Thorn hard in the belly. Thorn fell back and picked up a burin and was about to attack Loon with it when Heather screamed,—STOP IT!
She was slightly crouched over Thorn’s stuff, and peeing on it.
—Hey! Thorn shouted in outrage, and turned to leap at her, raising the burin; but instantly she was holding up her little blowdart tube to her lips and aiming it right at him.
He stopped in his tracks.
Tipping it slightly away from her mouth, she said,—Stop it or I’ll kill you right now. You’ll die inside twenty breaths. You’ve seen me do it before, don’t think I won’t do it to you, because I will, and you know it.
—Fucking hag.
Thorn stood there, eyeing the blowdart uneasily. The little darts were tipped with a poison Heather made which definitely killed animals fast, even lynxes and hyenas, her chief victims. They had all seen it. And when she was angry she was capable of anything. Thorn knew that best of them all, and he stood there pushing his lips out into a disgusted knot. He said sidelong to Loon,—You’re on the shaman path and you can’t get married now, you have too much to do, it would be wrong. You didn’t even come to the corroboree!
—I’m not going to do it the way you did it, Loon said.—I’m going to do it better. You had a bad shaman, and I didn’t. So I know better than you what to do.
He held up his right hand up to Thorn and straightened the little finger with his left hand, feeling the bone in there grind against itself, a gut-wrenching moment that caused a wave of light-headedness to pass through him, but after that the finger only throbbed, and his head came back to him, though his forehead was dripping sweat. He would have to make a splint and get someone to tie it on for him. He kept his voice steady and cold as he said,—I’m going to marry Elga, and be a married shaman. There’s no reason not to. Lots of packs have them.
—They’re not real shamans.
—Yes they are.
—As to the girl, Heather put in sharply,—it’s the women’s decision whether she joins the pack or not. Neither of you have anything to do with that, or with who marries whom in this pack for that matter! Those are women’s decisions.
Thorn stood there glowering. His boxes were wet with pee, he had to wash them soon. Meanwhile Loon stood there nursing a broken little finger, which was the new leader of all the hurts in his body, although he could tell already that it was not a serious thing like Badleg, because a little finger could be splinted and left alone to heal. The pain itself didn’t matter now that he had his head back. The main thing here, he saw, was that Elga be accepted by Heather, which now she seemed likely to do, even if it was just to put Thorn in his place. And so Loon began to feel happy.
Of course it was complicated, Heather having peed on Thorn’s stuff and threatened to dart him to death. Their ancient reverse-marriage would no doubt snarl worse than ever. On the other hand, how much worse could it get? And Loon didn’t care anyway. Indeed the worse Thorn and Heather were getting along, the less time either of them would have to tell him what to do. They would focus on each other, and Loon would slip to the side. And he would have his Elga.
He looked at her, smiling to try to convey all this to her. She had been staring at him uncertainly, but when she saw the way he was looking at her, she relaxed. She glanced around at the Wolf women with a beseeching look.
At that moment Sage came back into camp.—Who’s this? she said.
All eyes fell on Loon.—This is Elga, he said, moving to her side.—She’s going to join us, if the women agree. We are to be married, if the women agree.
That gave Sage a start, and for a moment her eyes flashed. Elga meanwhile was looking serenely at something in the sky, as if not really there. Loon saw suddenly that this would be her way, that she would slide away from trouble if she could. That the struggle might be to keep her around.
In the last days of the festival, around the eighth month’s full moon, many had been celebrating for so long that they now lay prostrate right through the day, and the drumming and dancing was mostly taken up by boys and girls. Many men stretched out in camp or with clan friends, stuffed with mash and steak, and even the women sat around preparing the meals a little stunned. They had proved yet again that too much feast is worse than famine, that enough is as good as a feast, and so on. But there were very few who could resist throwing off all restraint just once in the year. Sometimes you just had to let go.
In the wreckage of that particular morning’s light, Loon built himself a finger splint, and with Heather’s help attached it to his hand. She said he hadn’t set the bone between the two knuckles straight, which he could see, and feel too, but he didn’t want to do the pulling and twisting it would take to straighten it properly, knowing how it would hurt. Heather offered to do it, but he shook his head.—It will be all right.
—It will heal crooked.
—That’s all right. That will mark this fine occasion! And he smiled at her, feeling the prospect of Elga staying with him.
Here and there among the exhausted celebrants, some hoarse arguments were breaking the peace that had finally descended after the drumming had been reduced to a few boys trying a slow four beat. Mash headaches made people irritable. But the arguments were only put-down contests, even if people were truly angry. Curses lashed the air, and shocking insults were tr
aded, but blows were not. Because fights were too dangerous to indulge in. Everyone had seen the battles of the male antlered animals in rut, all the clashing and kicking and blood, and although these too were supposed to be put-down contests, accidents often happened, and animals got gored, or broke a leg, and many later died or were killed. From time to time men would fall into the same kind of folly at a festival, usually when drunk, but these too ended in dangerous injuries, and only served to prove how stupid fighting was. Life was dangerous enough; everyone got injured accidentally one time or another, no matter how careful they were. As the saying put it, every path leads to misfortune. Also: when you’re injured, your pack is injured. What it came to was that everyone had enough experience of injury to want to avoid it.
So festival fights were almost always shouting matches. This was part of what made Thorn’s attack on Loon’s hand so shocking. It was almost as if Thorn had been trying to end his painting, to take away the part of being a shaman Loon wanted the most. It didn’t make sense to Loon, and he sucked down bowls of Heather’s spruce tea, and rubbed the finger with a salve she gave him, and thought it over.
To get what you want, get what you need. When the fire is hot enough, there is no smoke. No fear when in your place. Do not allow anger to poison you. Each person is his own judge. It is not good for anyone to be alone. Everyone who does well must have dreamed something. The one who tells the stories rules the world. Burnt child, fire dread. A starving man will eat the wolf. A wily mouse should breed in the cat’s ear. Naught venture naught gain. A friend is never known until a man have need.