Obsidian and Stars (Ivory and Bone #2)(10)

Could this be true? I wonder. Could it be the Divine’s will that I am here with Ama this morning, to bring some good to Kol’s clan?

To the clan that will soon be my own clan?

I say nothing, but I follow Ama to the boat. She offers me the rear seat. “We’re heading out to a rocky island outside the mouth of the bay. A colony of black shags nests there every summer—hundreds of them. Just to the south beyond the point.”

Once we are out on the water, my head clears of every thought that doesn’t concern action. I focus on the movement of my paddle. I look ahead to the hunt, rehearsing in my mind the motion of my arm as I swing the sling, the feel of my fingers as I release it at just the right moment.

Two long rocky ridges enclose the bay like two cupped hands. As we paddle out we hug the ridge to our left—the one that forms the southeast boundary. Beyond it lies the open sea. I look up at the rocky cliff—gray stone worked smooth by the wind, crisscrossed by floes of ice—and I notice people walking high up along the crest. They carry tools—long poles and axes—tools for digging a grave. My eyes drift over the figures, and among them I recognize Kol’s brothers Roon and Pek. At the front I see Kol, walking alongside Urar.

I think of the gashes across Kol’s knee. I hope he showed them to Urar as he planned, and that the healer has treated them and offered chanted prayers.

The tide is coming back in, and the crash of the waves against this cliff creates a steady rhythm that ripples through me. My hair stirs on my shoulders. The wind swirls across the fur of my tunic.

Ama digs harder and faster at the water, and I match her strokes, pushing the kayak farther out to sea and leaving Kol behind.

For the first time since Arem died, I don’t see his bleeding body when I let my eyes fall closed. Instead, I see a cloud of birds with broad black wings—the game I will help bring in for Kol’s extended family. When I open my eyes again, Ama is slowing. We pull within sight of a flat, bare rock that wriggles with black shapes like a giant hill of ants. These are the birds we’ve come to hunt. Before we draw close enough for them to sense our presence, Ama twists in her seat, signaling me to stop.

“You’ve never hunted shags?” she asks.

I shake my head, squinting against the icy spray that pricks at my cheeks and eyes.

“They’re nice big birds—lots of meat on each one—and this island is covered with them. Since they’re nesting, we can bring the boat right up on the beach. They won’t fly away. But many will take off and hover over our heads. Those will be our targets.” She swivels in her seat and points with the paddle to the island’s western shore, where the rocky surface crumbles into a pebbly beach. I follow her lead, paddling until the water beneath us is shallow enough to allow us to jump out. My sealskin boots keep my skin dry, but still, the cold cuts through to my feet and ankles. The bright knife it sends to my mind clears out all my lingering, murky thoughts, and I’m grateful for it. Dragging the kayak ashore, we gather up our supplies. Ama and I each untie the slings wrapped at our waists. She pulls six heavy chunks of ivory from her pack and hands me three.

Before us, dotting the ground from one edge of the island to the other, are rows and rows of birds squatting on mound-like nests. As we approach, they honk and squawk, and those closest to us take off. Just as Ama promised, though, they don’t fly away; they won’t desert their chicks.

They care for their offspring, and it will be their undoing.

I block these thoughts from my mind. To a hunter, these birds are not individuals. They are game. Game that live in relationship with the clans, just as the Divine ordained it.

The game give their lives so that we can live. And in return for feeding our children, the Divine gives them food for their own children to eat. This is the relationship between the clans, the game, and the Divine. It has always been this way, since the Divine made the first woman, and told her to reach her hand into the sea for the first fish. And from the bones of the first fish, she made the first spear point to shoot the first deer as it grazed on the grass the Divine had given it. This was the plan of life the Divine gave to the first woman, and it has held the world in balance ever since.

Ama loads her sling as I stand back, studying her. “Watch me once first, all right?” she says, though she doesn’t even turn toward me to check if I’m listening. All her attention is on the birds and on the weight of the chunk of ivory in her sling. Her wrist flexes, the sling bobs up and down, and then it’s spinning over her head.

Above us, the shags fill the sky like a cloud of gnats over the grassland when the air first warms in the spring. They are so thick, their broad wings overlap like layers of clouds. Their black bodies block the glare of the sharply angled rays of the rising sun.

The sling whips at the end of Ama’s arm, sailing over her head, whirring with a loud whoosh . . . whoosh . . . whoosh . . . as it cuts through the air near my ear. Then her hand twists and she releases one end of the sling. The ivory stone flies.

The birds rise up, as if they float on an unseen wave of air. All but one. One bird falls, soundless except for the thud of his body on the ground. Ama hurries to him. With one jab of her spear through his neck, she is sure he is dead.

When she returns with the bird and the retrieved piece of ivory, a wide smile spreads across her face. “You are very good luck, I see. Now it’s your turn.”

I push down all the thoughts that try to float up—that I am not good luck, that her kill had nothing to do with luck at all, but only skill.