Ivory and Bone(49)

My father had intended to move the clan—over sixty of us in all—in two groups. But when he died . . .” You fall silent, drawing a line in the dirt between clumps of grass with your finger. “In the end, we took thirteen kayaks and moved twenty-five people. The others—my extended family I’d known all my life—we never saw again.

“But the trip was slow; we didn’t know the way, and we were not strong paddlers. At the end of every day on the sea, exhausted and hungry, we had to find a safe place to camp. We had to find food to eat. That was why, when we landed on your shore, we were so relieved. That was why my people were so anxious to go on a combined hunt. We needed safety, shelter, and food, and you offered us all these things.”

As I listen to your story, a gust of sharp, cool wind flattens the grass and prompts me to tighten the laces at my throat.

“The first night, we all slept under the stars in the center of your camp. In the morning, before first light, the hunting party gathered. They wanted to head out early, knowing the mammoths were gathered here, in this very place. My brother never forgot it—a place where rocks rose up from the ground like the inverted hull of a boat. He recognized the spot as we passed through here with your parents the day we first arrived, hiking out to the meadow to find you.

“He leaned close to me and whispered in my ear. ‘The rocks. There.’ He didn’t say any more. He didn’t have to. I’d heard the story so many times. I knew that this was where she fell.”

Before I can tell you that you are again speaking in riddles, you lift the stone at the head of the line in your hand.

“This is Chev,” you say, leaning forward on your hands and knees and positioning the stone as if it were on a trek toward the rocks. “He was near the front of the group. The mammoths were huddled against those rocks in the morning mist, and he and the others were following your father.”

You lift the second stone. “This is a man of your clan. A man known to be an excellent hunter. A man known for excellent senses.” You set the stone back in its place, along a straight line leading toward the outcropping. “This is my mother,” you say, lifting the last stone in the line. “She had dropped back after the man from your clan had heard something following behind. Dire wolves, he thought. My mother . . .” You trail off, setting the stone at the back of the line. “She hung back, watching, alert for movement stirring in the watery mist that shrouded the tall grass.

“No one knows exactly what happened as the hunters progressed, but this is what Chev remembers: there was a cry—my mother’s voice. A flash of movement, a sudden lunge forward. The man from your clan . . .” You lift the middle stone and let it drop. It falls hard against the stone at the back, the one representing your mother.

Your mother . . .

You reach forward and grab the stone that represents your brother. “Chev reacted to violence with violence.” You stand, and with a flick of your wrist, you slam this strange, rigid symbol of your brother to the ground. It crashes against the middle stone and a loud crack shatters the air, sending tremors along my spine.

I shake with the shock of a sleeper suddenly woken from a dream. All at once, each character in the tale has a name. Each stone at your feet has a face. The truth of what happened that day—I see it all, as if the haze of that day has finally burned away.

I look out toward the ridge of protruding rocks, darkening to blue-gray silhouettes against a fading blue-gray sky, and my mother’s words echo in my ears: One of our men . . . I see him there, just twenty paces ahead of me—Tram’s father—his spear flying from his hand at the dire wolf he imagines he sees stirring in the mist . . . killed one of their women . . . And there, ten paces behind—your mother. An older version of you, crouching low, black hair falling over her shoulders, stirring the morning fog.

One of their hunters responded by killing the man who threw the spear. The hunter who responded, who killed Tram’s father—Chev. My mind conjures the image of him—younger, slighter, but already possessing a heavy, measured gaze—as he turns to the sound of his mother’s voice, sees the empty-handed hunter, his pierced mother, and reacts, pulling the obsidian blade from his belt and cutting down the hunter where he stands.

“It was your mother,” I say. “I never knew. . . .” Absently, I lift the stone at the back of the line from the ground, enclosing it in my fingers. “You never told me—”

“Well, I’ve told you now.”

You kneel down beside me, taking the mother stone from my hand. Your fingertips brush my palm. Your hair swirls in a circle in front of me, a momentary storm of darkness. “The hunters were spread out. There was confusion as to what had happened. Before your clan could organize, Chev scooped up our mother’s body and rushed to camp. He roused us, shouting a hurried confusion of words. I remember that I understood nothing except that I had to get up, had to run for the boats.

“We were almost there—we had almost escaped—but the wife of the man Chev killed was close behind. She had been on the hunt; her spear was in her hand. She caught up to us on the beach and took her shot. She missed my brother but struck the boy beside him, my betrothed. Chev managed to pull him into the kayak before we pushed off, but his wound was bad. I remember the trail of red as his blood ran into the sea. We landed later that day in the place we now camp, but he had already died. Like my mother, he never saw the land where he would be buried.