Ivory and Bone(2)

I run my eyes over Pek’s face, still somewhat soft and boyish at sixteen. He favors our mother—he has her easy smile and eyes that glow with the light of a secret scheme. “Is this a game? Are you playing a trick on me—”

“Why would I bother to run all the way out here—”

“I’m not sure, but I know that there’s no such thing as a boat made of the trunk of a single tree—”

“Fine. Believe what you want to believe.”

Pek rolls his spear in his right hand and peers off into the empty space in front of us, as if he can see into the past, or maybe the future. Without warning, he takes a few skipping steps across the grass and, with a loud exhale of breath, hurls his spear—a shaft of mammoth bone tipped with an obsidian point—at an invisible target. He had the wind at his back to help him, but I can’t deny it’s a strong throw. “Beat that,” he says, picking up my own spear from where I’d discarded it on the grass earlier.

My spear is identical to my brother’s—a shaft of mammoth bone—but instead of obsidian, I prefer a point of ivory. It’s harder to shape, but ivory is stronger. I grip the spear, tensing and relaxing my hand until the weight of it feels just right. I take three sliding steps and roll my arm forward, hand over shoulder, releasing the spear at the optimal moment. It is a perfectly executed throw.

Still, it lands about two paces short of Pek’s. I may be his older brother, but everyone jokes that Pek was born with a spear in his hand. He has always been able to out-throw me.

“Not bad,” he says. “That should be good enough to impress the girls.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” I say, forcing a laugh. There are no girls our age in our clan, something Pek and I try to joke about to hide the worry it causes us. But it’s not a joke, and no one knows that better than Pek and I do.

Without girls, there will be no wives for my brothers and me. Our clan could dwindle, even end.

“You won’t have to remember for long.” Pek’s gaze rests on something past my shoulder as an odd smile climbs from his lips to his eyes. Suddenly, this doesn’t feel like a joke anymore. My stomach tightens, and I spin around.

At the southern edge of the meadow, at the precise spot where Pek had appeared just moments ago, two girls come into view, flanked by our father, our mother, and a man I don’t recognize. “What—”

“Do you believe me now about the boat?”

I have no reply. I stand still as ice, unsure how to move without risking falling down. It’s been so long—over two years—since I’ve seen a girl my own age.

My eyes fix on these two as they approach, a certain authority in their movements. They practically saunter toward us, each carrying a spear at her side. One, dressed in finely tailored hides, walks slightly ahead of the group. Her parka’s hood obscures her hair and her face is half-hidden in shadow, but there’s no question that she’s a girl—the swing in her shoulders and the movement in her hips give her away.

The second girl is you.

From this distance I can’t quite see your face, so I notice your clothing first. Your parka and pants must have been borrowed from a brother—they’re far less fitted than those of the first girl—yet there is femininity in the smaller things, like the curved lines of your long, bare neck, and the golden glow of your tan skin in the sunlight. Your hood is back and your head is uncovered, letting your black hair, loose and unbraided, roll like a river on the wind behind you.

You come closer, and I’m struck by the beauty in the balance of your features. I notice the strong lines of your eyebrows and cheekbones tilting up and away from the softer lines of your mouth. Your eyes—dark and wide set—scan the meadow, and I’m startled by the way my heart pounds as I wait for them to fall on me.

This may be the most startling and marvelous day of my life.

As the group advances, however, I notice you drop back. The closer you come, the more certain I am that you are miserable. Your expression—tense jaw, pursed lips—makes your annoyance plain. I imagine you’ve been dragged along on this journey. Your head pivots, your eyes sweep from side to side, taking in what must appear to you to be no more than a wind-beaten wasteland. To me, the meadow is like the sea, life teeming below the surface. But to most people—to you, clearly—it’s just empty grassland.

My mind clogs with questions, but before I can ask Pek a single one, the five of you stop in front of us.

“Son,” my father starts. There’s tension in his voice. A stranger might not notice, but I can tell. “This day has brought us good fortune. These are our neighbors from the south, from the clan of Olen. They visited us once several years ago, when they were traveling from their former home north and west of here, to the place they now call home.”

I remember this, of course. Our clan has such infrequent contact with outsiders that when a group passes through, I don’t forget. It was five years ago; I was twelve. I remember young girls of about my age. I realize, standing here now, that I remember you.

You were traveling by boat, a small clan moving south in kayaks made of sealskin stretched over a frame of mammoth bones, just like the kayaks my own clan uses to fish and gather kelp and mollusks.

I think of the boat Pek described—a canoe dug out of the trunk of a single tree. I’ve never even seen a canoe, though I’ve heard stories of them—open boats made of wood instead of hide and bone like our kayaks, long enough to carry several people at once. My own father tells of wooden canoes he saw with his own eyes, on a scouting trip he made south of the mountains, long before I was born.