So they came into the festival valley in a completely different mood than in summers past, clumped tightly together, with the men at the fore and all the kids tucked in among the women, who were dressed to kill, their hair braided and tied up in a way they usually would be only for the eighth night dance. The men’s spears were prominent in a way they wouldn’t normally be at festival. Schist and Ibex and Thorn took the lead, with Hawk and Moss and Nevermind and Spearthrower flanking them, and even as they proceeded to their usual campsite they called out to the corroborators that they had arrived and needed a judgment.
And it was true they did, for the northers were already there, at the northern end of the meadow in their usual spot, if they came at all, and their men had spotted the Wolves and were even now crossing the camp, spears in hand. This made it clear to the corroborators that their presence was required, and they too converged at speed from wherever they had been. All this hurrying and shouting drew everyone else at the festival too, of course.
The ice men were roaring,—There they are! Thieves, murderers! We want justice! We’re going to kill them if we don’t get it!
But Schist was good at projecting an immovable resolve, and he stood at the point of the Wolf men holding his spear in both hands across his chest. All the Wolf men stood the same, spears up and ready. Loon’s heart was thumping hard in his throat. He stood right next to Elga.
The big men among the corroborators bulled to the center of the growing crowd, and one of them shouted for order. Festival protocol demanded compliance to this command; any fighting now would cause the fighters to be beaten ferociously and then kicked out of the festival, and perhaps not allowed to come back. Most of the corroborators were from the packs who lived closest to the festival grounds, and they wouldn’t abide any challenges to their rule; if they sensed that their right to rule was being questioned they would swell up like toads and mass together like lions at a kill, their eyes fixed and round. They were like that now, bristling, ready to leap and pummel. Seeing them like that made it clear that the northers and Wolves were by no means the most dangerous men there, even if they were the angriest. And some of this anger was a pretense, it had to be; the crimes causing the anger had happened many months before.
The corroborators’ spokesman threw up his hand. The crowd went silent.
—Speak, he said heavily, glaring at the northers in a way that made it clear he meant, Speak and speak only.
One of the jende from one of the other houses spoke for them, a man Loon had worked for a few times in the ravines, and at the sound of this man’s voice Loon’s stomach shrank to the size of a nut.
Some of the corroborators knew the jende tongue, and one of those gave a short version of the norther’s statement in the southern tongue most of the people there spoke. It was as expected: Loon’s pack had stolen one of their women three summers before, and the following summer they had taken her back, and prevented Loon from stealing her again. Then Loon’s people had invaded their camp and with Loon’s help burned down a house and kidnapped her again. The attack had hurt a bunch of people, a woman and child had died by scalding, and one of their biggest houses had been destroyed.
—The woman in question came to us on her own three summers ago, Schist declared as soon as the translator had finished.—She was never a part of these ice men’s pack. She doesn’t even speak their tongue. She came from the east, and joined us at this festival of her own free will. You all saw it. She married into us and we took her in. Then the ice men stole her. Then we got her back. We did what had to be done. It’s too bad some of their people got hurt, but we didn’t start it.
Lots of shouting from the jende men followed this statement, and Schist’s fierce retorts cut right through them. Louder and louder insults led to the shaking of spears, and at that the corroborators swelled even bigger, and hefted their thick sticks over their heads, ready to strike. Again their spokesman raised his hand, in a fist this time, and the noise wavered and then died down.
Suddenly Elga stood forward between Thorn and Schist, with Lucky in her arms. Hastily Loon stepped up behind her.
—I came from the east, she declared loudly,
From a pack on the other side of the mountains east of here.
Most of my people were killed in a spring flood,
And the rest of us went to find our brothers
Who had married to the west of us, among the Horse pack.
They took us in, and they came here to this festival.
These ice men heard what had happened to us, and captured me.
I got away from them after a time
And came back here and joined this Wolf pack.
The women of Wolf pack took me in,
And I married this man Loon, and had his child.
Then the next summer the ice men stole me again.
I was a captive of theirs and they treated me badly.
They keep captive wolves to do their hunting,
And maybe that’s what gave them the idea to do the same with people,
Because they have captives they don’t treat like real people.
But I say, anyone who keeps captives,
THEY are the ones who are not real people.
I’ll never go back to them. I’d kill myself
If you made me. It’s too bad some of them got hurt
When I was rescued by my husband and my pack,
But it’s their fault. They started it
And so now THEY DESERVE NOTHING AT ALL.
She said these last words in a voice so choked and furious that everyone jumped back a little. Loon and the rest of the Wolves were amazed, their eyes wide, mouths agape; they had never heard their Elga say even half as much as this, and never in such a strangled angry voice. But now was the time. Elga who always slipped aside; this time she had gone straight at it. Now she stared around at the crowd, and they could not take their eyes from her. She had won the day.
The ice men had their answers for her, of course. They contested what she had said, and insisted that people had not just been hurt, that a child had died by scalding, a woman too later on. And a house had been torched, and things stolen, and so on. Even without the translator it was clear what they were saying. It was beginning to seem like the two languages being spoken shared more words than anyone had realized until now.
Schist didn’t concede any of their points in any way, but only began to grate out more insults. Then Ibex joined him in that. This began to enrage some of the ice men, and the toad-swollen corroborators turned toward Schist and Ibex; they didn’t like it either. The young Wolf men were not shouting with Schist and Ibex, they were letting their leaders stand to the fore, and this was encouraging more abuse from the ice men, while also making Schist more vehement.
Thorn finally cut in front of Schist and Elga and raised his hand, which held one of Loon’s new pair of snowshoes, tied together with red cords. When silence fell, Thorn said,
I took back our people from these kidnappers.
I went in like an otter into a beaver’s den
And wreaked some havoc so we could make our escape.
The man they took is my apprentice,
A young shaman in the making, pretty good as a painter.
His wife came to us from somewhere else,
Maybe even from these ice men,
I don’t know and it doesn’t matter.
She’s part of our pack now, she chose us herself
And our women took her in.
So what we did has been right all along.
But listen, for the sake of the eight eight,
We’re willing to make some compensation
For any damage we did when we rescued her.
We took four pairs of snowshoes with us,
And now we’re willing to give them back,
To make up for whatever their losses happened to be.
And these new snowshoes are better than theirs,
They’re the best snowshoes ever made.
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These ice men couldn’t make snowshoes this good
Even if they knew how to do it,
Because they don’t have the right kind of trees in their frozen-butt land.
So they should be happy and the whole matter over,
Over for good and no more claims,
No more sniveling like babies that don’t get their way,
No! No! No! (shouted loudly) We make good any bad we do,
Like any pack that knows how to get along,
And then it’s simply over, that’s all.
The last part of Thorn’s speaking was aimed mainly at the corroborators, who liked being appealed to. They liked it also when Thorn gave them the four pairs of snowshoes to pass along to the northers. Loon and the other Wolves passed them forward, each pair tied together bottom to bottom by red leather cords. Loon found himself holding his breath, as if in the crucial moment of a hunt. He forced himself to breathe.
The corroborators, and the crowd too, were pleased that Thorn and his pack had thought to bring compensation. The ice men were of course still very unhappy, but they were also eyeing the new snowshoes that the corroborators held in the air, interested despite themselves. Their men conferred briefly; it looked like their headman was urging his hotheads to be satisfied. And indeed, when they were done they spoke in low tones to the corroborators’ translators, and those men nodded and spoke briefly among themselves. Their spokesman leaned into the discussion, and after listening for a time nodded with a satisfied expression. He and his helpers took up the four pair of snowshoes and walked with them held overhead to the northers, and gave them to four of the norther men with a ceremonial flourish. Then the spokesman for the corroborators held both his hands overhead, palms out, as he rotated in place and blessed the crowd.
—This matter is settled, he announced loudly.—No more fighting over this, be warned! It’s exile for good to anyone who disturbs the peace about this any more.
—And Elga is ours, Heather added loudly from the center of the Wolves.
—Yes, the festival spokesman said, looking pointedly at the ice men.—The woman Elga belongs to the Wolf pack. Know that, all of you!
Briefly the crowd cheered or howled, then dispersed. Twentytwenty people at least were standing there in the broad meadow, and now they all wanted to trade and dance. It felt good to think they could douse such a fire with words alone. Everyone knew that when packs fought people got hurt, even killed, after which it could go on for years. It was not that uncommon. But not this time. The dispute would give them something to talk about for a while, which was another pleasure, but mostly it was time to forget it and start dancing.
So then the eight eight went on as it always did. The Wolf pack stuck together more than usual, and Loon never left Elga, who never left their camp, so that it was a subdued festival for them. Everyone avoided the jende, and the northers stayed away from the Wolf camp. No one got in any fights. Even the young men who wanted to fight didn’t want to fight there. In the end the jende left two mornings later, without either apologizing or accepting apologies.
So all was well. But Heather scowled when Loon said that to her in the camp, when only she could hear.
—We’re just lucky your shaman was there, she said,—because bad as he is, he’s not as stupid as Schist.
—What?
—It was Schist’s task to make peace, and instead he was throwing fat on the fire. Thorn had to step in and save him. Schist has gone foolish trying to match Thunder and Bluejay, and it’s dangerous to have a fool as your headman. He was never that good, and Ibex is worse. And now Hawk is making him so nervous that he’s worse than ever.
—Hawk?
Heather stared at Loon.—There is a curse on this pack, she muttered to her right hand as she turned away.—All its men are stupid. All but the unspeakable one, and he’s unspeakable.
—I don’t know what you mean, Loon said.
—I know.
Elga laughed at Loon’s stickiness during the rest of the festival, so like Lucky’s all the time, and she looped a long knitted horsehair scarf around all three of their necks to mark their bond. They walked around always together. Part of Loon was giddy with relief, while another part of him was still twisted to a little ball of apprehension, and the two feelings mixing together made him unsteady, a little sick-drunk, even though he drank none of the mash. The gorgeous attire of all the people passing their camp was more than his eye could take in, and everything blurred as if beyond the rising heat of a fire, or in the side vision of a dream. At the big bonfire on the eighth night, he watched the bursts of colored fire that spilled out of the firemasters’ sachets, and looked around at the dancers, and the stars overhead, and it seemed to him that everything was made of banners of colored fire, shimmering in their burn from one moment to the next. He held the scarf running from his neck to Elga’s, felt her tugging him here and there like a child, realized the tug itself meant he was not dreaming, because it was all too much right there tugging at his neck, too real to deny.
On the morning of the last day, he and Elga and Lucky went to the broad sandy bank of the meadow’s river, where there was a group of men in the sun busy at work on their bird’s eye views. As always it was mostly an old man’s game, and the more they had wandered in their lives the better they were at it, and the more interested. It was a traveler’s game. Now a lot of old men, and a few old women, maybe two score in all, were strolling about watching those who were actively making views.
The makers crouched and tiptoed about on the edges of their patches, stretching far out to smooth and shape the sand to what they thought some part of the world would look like from the sky, if shrunk to the size of their patch. The areas they portrayed were sometimes big, extending from the festival grounds and the caribou steppe to the mountains to the south, and the great salt sea to the west. Others portrayed smaller areas. There were distinct styles, which Loon thought were somewhat like the way wall paintings were either three-liners or fully detailed: some views were made simply of wet sand molded into the shapes of the land by hand and stick, so that one saw the stripped flesh of the land, so to speak; others used moss for meadows, twigs for trees, pebbles shoved into the sand to look like the gleam of water seen from on high, even some little toy animals and shelters and people, taken from kids’ camp games. Someone had even packed down snow to represent the ice caps on the central highlands, and in one old woman’s view, even the great ice wall of the north, here ankle high.
It was funny to see these little worlds as if one were an eagle at the highest point of its gyre, and some of the decorated views were quite beautiful. But what the makers mostly discussed was how accurate they were. Long sticks were used to point out features; traveling stories were related, with lots of argument about what a day’s walk meant in terms of a stretch of land. This last argument was impossible to resolve, both in principle and in relation to the shrinking they had done to reduce a big part of the earth to three strides on a side; but it obviously gave many of them immense pleasure to discuss it at length, with sand hills and canyons to point to:—I was in this valley you mark as shallow, but it’s deeper than that, I passed through it twelfth month and the sun never came over the southern ridge, so you need to have it deeper.—Maybe so, here I’ll scoop it down a bit.
And so on. At the end of the session they would all declare their favorites, and a best of day would be declared, and the winner given a bucket of mash and a chance to brag for a fist or two, and then they would all stand around the edges of the view, observers and makers both, and leap out onto the little worlds and tromple them to a chaos of torn sand, worse than the mud at a caribou ford. Gods destroying worlds: and while it lasted it was the best dance of all, they shouted and laughed as they leaped and kicked, it felt glorious.
Still, Loon only really began to relax when the festival was over and they had dragged their dried meat and new goods back home to their abri over Loop Valley.
In autumn we eat
till the birds go away,
And dance in the light of the moon.
Loon began to feel like his life was real. Ever since his wander, it had not felt real; it had felt as if in some instant of the wandering days he had wandered into a different world and never come back out. Wandered into a dream and not woken up. That happened to people; some of Thorn’s stories told of it happening, and Loon fully believed it, because it had happened to him before, as a child, when his mother died. And then again during his wander.
And now, yet again. He had walked into a different dream, stepped through the place where all the worlds meet, into the next world over. In this one the clench slowly left his belly, and he could laugh without a catch in his throat. Elga sat there by the fire, big among the other women, fattening up on the autumn’s bounty, growing big around the new child inside her, soon to be born; still not much of a talker, and eyes hard as pebbles, always watching; but always there, too, listening to the other women and nodding patiently, asking questions that kept them going. The questions made her sound skeptical, but Loon noticed that her eyes would be on Lucky, or the skyline, as she talked with the other women, and with a simple—But why? she could have the other woman talking for most of the next fist, while Elga continued to eye something else beyond their talk. She could do several things at once. She was harder than before, no doubt about it. But she still had a warm spot for Loon, he could see that in the way she looked at him, feel it in her hands and the way she kissed him at night. She seemed to give him the thanks for her rescue, although Loon didn’t think he deserved it, as he had had to be rescued himself; and in the end it was Elga who had hauled him home.