At the far end of the second ledge he came to the entry of a little cave, a vertical notch in the white stone. Yes, this was a spot he knew. His father had first showed it to him. The notch incised the cliff to a certain depth, where there was a short drop to a little platform. Beyond that the cave was unfortunately bottomless, a hole dropping into blackness. In a crack at the back, beyond the hole, a little water trickled down.
His father had showed him this cave to warn him about it; the hole inside it went right down to the river. His father had found this out, he said, by dropping a walnut etched with a sign down into the blackness, and then finding the walnut later down in the river, turning in an eddy.
Now Loon sat on the platform, in the dark, behind a rock. He could still look out the cave opening, which gave him a view across to the south wall of the gorge, its moony white all mottled with lichen streaks and ledges of its own. Black sky over it pricked with stars, faint in the milky moonlight. The night was young.
From behind and above him, on the first ledge, there came a clatter. Loon, shivering now, feeling like he did after getting stung by a bee, crawled to the hole at the edge of the platform and reached down into it. The wall of the hole was damp, but broken. There was a knob sticking out he could step on. No way to tell what else might be down there. But now there was a snuffling from the second ledge, outside the cave, so Loon slithered feet first into the hole and stepped with both feet on the knob he had felt. He toed into the rocks below the knob, really felt them. At this point Spit was his best scout, being sensitive even when cold. More snuffling from above caused him to grope around faster. He found another knob he could grab, squeezed it as hard as he could, lowered himself farther into the hole. He would have to remember where all these knobs were, and with his eyes closed he painted the two knobs he knew of in their positions. With his right foot he toed down, hunting for another knob. There was one, though it was a bit too far down; by the time he had the arch of his foot on it, his left leg was so bent his knee was above his hip. This wasn’t good, the ankle hurt more than it had in a while, but he ignored that and searched for a lower handhold. If he could find another good one, he could take the left foot off and seek something lower for it. There was a crack, discovered blindly by hand, a good crack; he could make a fist in it and the fist would not come out no matter how hard he pulled. That was a hold he could swell or shrink as he wanted, so he let his left foot slip off and probe around next to the one already down there. In the end he discovered that both feet fit well on the same knob, which now felt more like a shelf.
Now he was well down in the hole. He would not be visible even from the little platform, unless the thing hunting him could see in the dark. Or if it smelled him. A lion’s head on a man’s body, with owl eyes, with antlers: no way to guess how well it could smell. A thrill of terror bee-stinged through him again, as he remembered what it had looked like looking up at him. Well, but even if it smelled him, even if it saw him in the pure black, would it climb down into this hole? Without fingers, with paws on its forelegs, would it be able to descend? Maybe not. This was all he could hope for. He could see on his eyelids his way back up, left right, left right. He didn’t want to descend farther. Maybe he would if the thing snuffled at the top of the hole. But in fact he heard nothing but his breathing, and the tock of his heart at the back of his throat. No way to know what the antlered owl-eyed lion man was doing. If it didn’t have a bear’s nose too, possibly it would have lost him. Lions hunted mostly by eye, owls too.
He hung there. It got cold, and his legs grew stiff. He couldn’t feel his feet, except for a little burn from Spit. He let go with his right hand and carefully untied his deerhide cape and arranged it over his head and around his shoulders. He eased his body up and down, up and down, and shifted which hand he had in the fist crack, and hung from each as long as he could. Inside himself he called on the third wind to help him. But that one always came late, if at all. He rubbed himself against the dark rough rock. He was down in a cave. Small though it was, it was still an earth womb, a passage to the spirit world. In their painted caves, one pressed one’s hands through the walls into the underworld, and saw the animals’ spirits dance. So he tried to believe now, but really it was just a cold hole at the back of a little whitestone cave, a hole his father had warned him to stay out of. It was too cold to be a womb, too cold to birth him through to the other side. He could only hang there and endure.
In the blackness before him, the rectangular grids of red dots turned slowly into squiggles, into blobs, into side views of bison and mammoth and horse and ibex, all there hanging before him just as clearly as if they had been snatched off a ridge in the sun. His brothers and sisters. Maybe he had passed through the wall of this hole. Only the three points of it that he touched still seemed real to him. It was as if he held three cold hands, clasping him as he hung in the starless skies of the animal spirits. They pulsed as they floated before him.
He grew weak. I held him to the wall of that hole for a while.
I am the third wind
I come to you
When you have nothing left
Some twentytwentytwenty breaths later, it seemed lighter above. It was as if the blackness now had one drop of white diffused in it, like blood dripped into a river. More drips of gray followed, and then there was a tint, a gray somewhat like the blood in his eyelids when he squeezed his eyes shut hard. He seemed to see the trickle of water that had been dripping down the wall behind him, when he turned his head to look.
Ah yes: he could remember the way up. First the knob he had had to raise his knee above his hip to get his left foot onto; then the other handhold; and the higher foothold; and then he could grasp a knob at the very edge of the hole, and reach over and curl his fingers like hooks of cedar root, into cracks on the cave floor. And pull himself up, up into the fist before dawn. Crawl out to the ledge, look down into the gray gorge. It was empty except for the iced river, which snaked through it like the big live thing it was. On this quiet morning it was slipping along under its blanket of ice and old snow. Black leads flowing flatly. Nothing else moving. A squirrel, talking to itself: nothing big and terrible could be prowling around this morning. The sky had lost its stars, and was that gray that could be either clouds or clear sky, in that brief time before you could tell which.
Down the gorge a touch of pink indicated the sun was coming soon. Suddenly it could be seen that it was a clear sky, a cloudless sky. Loon clenched the right fist, the one that had held him the most, and felt its flesh groan. He stretched the hand open, wiggled the fingers, twisted one hand with the other. That right hand had gotten him through the night. And as the day grew brighter, the lion man with the owl eyes seemed less and less likely to be out and about; or even to be real. Although in the night it had most definitely been real.
Now that he could see, the ledges he had used to get to his hole were scarily narrow. Stiff as he was, he crawled over them like a lizard, a red water lizard, every limb plopped deliberately in its place. Then up the bushy cleft to the gorge edge. Now he could walk back to the ridge trail, and down into Upper Valley. He needed to take the whole day to get to camp, so he could come in after dark, at full moon. There was lots of time. He knew right where he was.
Daylight chased off the night’s fears. The air was cool and clear. He felt a buzzing in all his skin, all his flesh and bones. Trees were leafing right before his eyes, and the colors of the day flooded him as they grew brighter. A breeze bounced everything up and down in the air, and something inside him opened. He knew he would survive to be a man, a man on Mother Earth, so big and beautiful. There was terror out there too, oh yes, but this day was huge, bigger than terror. Clouds in his chest swelled like thunderheads. Squirrels celebrated the day with their chitters and chirps, and Upper Valley’s creek clattered and splooshed down its icy defile, sunlit moss greening its banks with bright spring greens, vivid against the old snow.
He passed a trickle of snowmelt in the sun, and c
rouched to drink, and Crouch crouched with him. Crouch was in a bad mood. He had retrieved Prong from above the first ledge, and now it and another walking stick he picked up became part of his arms. He had become one of the four-legged animals again, with very long, double-jointed forelegs. Snowmelt cold in his empty belly, flooding him from the inside, stilling the buzz in him until he could float again, could walk as lazily as a leopard, flowing with the bump and tilt of the rocks underfoot. He moved so slowly that he didn’t move, and the sky’s blue billowed and lofted over him, higher and higher, bluer and bluer. What clouds there were that day were all inside him.
It was a day for animals. Fourteenth day of the fourth month, the days getting longer fast, the sun higher in the sky, the warmth of spring finally burnishing the air of the world. Snow melting everywhere it was left. Everyone felt good on a day like this, they all came out to forage and look around. The gods inside them pushed out into their pelts.
Four-pointing down the valley, floating a little. There was a narrow lane in Upper Valley, above the creekbed so choked by alder, below the valley wall so rocky and snowy. Loon descended to this lane, he floated down onto it. When he got to it, he sat and rested, and felt Mother Earth spin a little under him, undulate up and down with her breathing. The narrow lane was mostly grassy, and where side creeks tumbled across it, the darker greens of sedge and moss striped it. Every creature walking up- or downvalley used this lane, and in the muddy patches Loon saw hoof and paw prints of all kinds.
Around noon he came to a broad open flat, a meadow where the creek slowed down and snaked through grass-green reeds. Loon kept against the eastern wall of the valley, which was here a stack of setback cliffs, with trees on every ledge. He felt safe here, and when a little herd of bison appeared at the top of the meadow and wandered downstream, he hid behind a tree and watched. They were wary and skittish, as if being hunted, and soon they passed out of sight downstream. The bison was Thorn’s animal, which was just right, they were so big-headed and full of themselves.
Now the valley was peaceful again, and the squirrels chirped and dashed about. Overhead a hawk spiraled lazily, one of the few birds to be here so early in the spring; a sprucetopper, seeming too high to be on the hunt, though it wasn’t true. They sometimes dove from so high they only became visible as a dot already diving. A quiet warm afternoon, not as clear as the morning had been, but almost cloudless still. His stomach pinched, and he felt a little weak. He floated not so much from relief as from light-headedness. With every heartbeat the trees moved away and then back at him, and a cloud of bees around a beehive roared in a way that told him he did not want their honey. Although some honey… if he threw rock after rock, blasted them away, knocked the hollow tree apart, splashed them and smoked them… but no. Only smoke would do it. Otherwise they would get angry and attack him in a swarm, he had had it happen before. One more bee sting added to the buzzing already in him and he would burst out of his skin.
Regretfully he left the beehive alone and continued downstream, slower than the water flowing through the meadow. After the stream left the meadow and fell down a forested slope he moved from tree to tree, resting against them as if against friends. They propped him up the way friends did.
The afternoon shadows lengthened in their leisurely way. He was close enough to the pack’s abri that he could stop and crawl under a log. His sleepless night suddenly caught up with him, and he had to give in to sleep, hoping that nothing hungry would come upvalley while he did. On a journey of twentytwenty days you can still fuck up on the last step. Yes, but there was nothing for it, he was helpless to hold it off. Sleep with one eye open.
When he woke it was just a fist above sundown. He pulled himself up, brushed himself off. He went to the river and washed his face, then spotted a chunk of earthblood in the stream and plucked it out happily. A little scraping with a harder rock would yield enough red for some facepaint. He still had his deer tooth necklace, and his knot carved into a lion man, which now gave him a little shiver of dread as he pondered it; also his deerhide clothes and cape. He would use the earthblood to spot his hide cape like his cheeks and forehead. Make a leopard pattern on both, come into camp in style. He would be thin and weak and injured, but clothed and well. Alive. He considered casting aside Prong and the other pole; but if he did he would have to limp, because Crouch was now objecting loudly to every single step he took. He could lose the poles at the last moment, and stop himself from limping for his walk in, if he chose to.
In the last light of the sun he crossed Loop Meadow and slowly climbed Loop Hill. From its top he could see down into the bowl of land they lived in, and up the river gorge to the ridges all round, to the sunset and the moonrise. Camp was down there under the abri that seamed Cave Hill. When night fell he could walk right down to it. It was all coming together just as he had planned in the sleepless nights of his wander. Looking down he saw the smoke from their campfire, curling up through the trees. Ah yes.
In the last part of that day, sunlight slanting down the gorge of the river, there was a motion on the first ridge to the west of him. He saw it was a black horse, standing there looking around. The sacred animal, the most beautiful animal.
The horse stood alone, watching the sunset just like Loon. Loon took the chunk of earthblood from his belt flap and scraped its friable surface with his foreclaw until he had some of it nubbled in his palm. He spit on it and rubbed it around until he had a paste, then applied it in streaks across his forehead and under his eyes. Then he bowed to the horse, and the horse bowed back, nodding his head and lifting it up, nodding and lifting. The god animal was lit by the sun almost from below. Long black head, so etched and fine. The land’s witness to the end of his wander, pawing once, then nodding and lifting. Throwing his great head side to side, his black eyes observing Loon across the gulf of air between them. Black mane short and upright, black body rounded and strong.
Then without warning the horse tossed his long head up at the sky, off toward the sun, and this movement popped in Loon’s eye and bulged out across the space between them, scoring his eyes such that he could close them and see it again; Loon’s eyes spilled over, the tears ran down his face, his throat clamped down and his chest went tight and quivered. He put his hands on his heart. The horse turned away and cantered over the ridge out of sight, disappearing with a final flash of sun on its black upright mane. Loon looked away, still blinking out tears, and for a time he was almost afraid to look west again. He squeezed his eyes shut, saw it all happen on his eyelids. The head leading the body through its turn away, so graceful, so smooth. Last of the sun flooding the gorge, gleaming off the black body as if off a crow’s wing. Rounded shoulders and long legs.
The sun touched the horizon and began to set. At the same moment a spot on the eastern horizon gleamed brilliant white, spread left and right: the moon was rising. In the same time the sun took to set, the moon rose; watching the two, looking back and forth, Loon felt himself expand between them, felt the sky rolling over Mother Earth. Sun down, moon up, all part of one big flight. So it must indeed be the night of full moon.
And as the moon cleared the horizon and hung in the blue sky, it showed the brilliant white glow all the way around it, confirming the true full. It was a huge one, much bigger than the setting sun had been. The last sunset of his wander; as he realized that, a pang pierced him, the world grew to something more immense than he could grasp. Oh that it had to end! Would he ever be this alive again, would the world ever again be so beautiful as in this moment?
No. Never. It was not possible. This was his moment, his alone, the end of his wander, the peak of his gyre. It would never come again. Now he was a man, and a horse had blessed him. Tomorrow he would be back in his pack, Thorn’s apprentice. This huge new feeling, could he hold to it then? Could he remember it?
It seemed very unlikely. He would see when it happened. He had to go home. And it was true he was hungry.
In the dusk he arranged his things, and repaint
ed his face and the palms of his hands. He pronged down the slope of the hill to camp, the full moon pouring its light over everything he saw. At the last moment he decided to discard only the second walking stick. Prong was too much of a friend, sturdy and reliable, stained at the top with the sweat of his hand, the wood at its bottom perfectly rounded by all the times he had stuck it onto the stony ground. He would come in showing how he had got along despite Crouch, showing that nothing had stopped him on his wandering way.
He saw the fire almost the entire hike down the hill. They had made it big to welcome him back. The bee buzz filled him again, and he burned as he floated down the hill, adjusting his clothing and hoping that his facepaint had been applied neatly. If not he might only look as if he had been recently murdered. If so, that too would be fine. He had indeed died, and was returning as someone else. He felt that so strongly he was sure they would see it.
The black trees marking the curve of the meadow’s loop were pulsing upward as if trying to float away, held to the earth by their trunks, but tugging up against them with all their branches. He himself was floating with a nearly perfect buoyancy through the air, pegging down with Prong in a perfect balance for his feet, halfway between landing and flying into the sky. Crouch said to him, I am all right, I will do whatever you ask, I am not really here tonight, good-bye for now. Pleased at that, Loon focused on keeping the three points of his walking in a smooth flow, a dance down to his pack in their camp. The fire flickered through the trees, trying like everything else that night to fly up and away. The moon over the trees was still immense, and superbly white all around its edge: a fuller moon could not exist. Full moon of the fourth month: here they were again. The hunger month was over, summer not that far away. The rabbit in the moon, stirring her bowl of earthblood with which to paint the dawn, was putting her whole body into the stir, and though her head was in profile, he could see she was looking to her left to watch him walk down the hill. She would indeed paint the coming dawn for him, for they would stay up all night to celebrate.