Ivory and Bone(7)
I run the whole way, my feet splashing in puddles that dot the ground where winter ice has melted, the early summer wind chilling my ears and my nose. When I reach camp, I head straight to the kitchen, a long tent at the western edge of our close circle of hide-covered huts. Inside I find my mother sitting on the ground, working alongside her siblings and cousins. My mother has always been thin—strong in the way vines are strong—while her face, in contrast, has stayed full and rounded like a young girl’s. But today, in the speckled light of the kitchen, her usually soft-edged face appears gaunt.
“Kol!” She drops the fist-shaped stone she uses to grind greens and roots in a bowl made of the hollowed-out skull of a bison. A smooth, flat rock lies in the hearth surrounded by burning coals, the remnants of a fire. The kitchen assaults my senses: my nostrils fill with the oily scent of cooking fish, and the tips of my ears sting as they thaw in the sudden warmth. “What news do you have?” My mother studies my face. Hope is trying to creep into her eyes, but wariness crowds it out.
“The hunt is a success,” I say, and her stiff lips twist into a smile.
The kitchen tent is crowded—all available hands have been called in to help prepare what is usually a simple midday meal cooked by two or three people. As soon as the words have left my lips a cheer ripples through the room. At the back of the tent a flap in the wall has been opened to allow a second hearth to vent. Two figures bolt to their feet when I mention the kill. Though they are mere silhouettes against the light pouring through the open vent, I recognize my younger brothers before they even move.
“We’ve brought down a mammoth. The butchers are needed. But they must come quick. A cat was also killed as it stalked the same prey. Only I left the kill to bring the news; all the others stayed to keep watch.”
My mother regards me closely. I know the questions she wants to ask—Who brought down the mammoth? Who slayed the cat? But she doesn’t dare ask here. If the answers do not give credit to her sons, she doesn’t want the others of the clan to hear. At least not yet.
“You need butchers?” My youngest brother, twelve-year-old Roon, rough-hewn and awkward like an unfinished stone tool, moves toward the front of the kitchen, clambering over seated figures. Kesh, lean and lanky at fifteen, follows right behind. “We’ll come—”
“We have butchers,” my mother says, as Ness, Mol, and Svana climb stiffly to their feet from the dimly lit center of the tent. These three are all siblings—cousins of my father who are experienced and wise with regard to butchering a kill. Still, they don’t move with the energy and speed of my brothers.
“Let them come along, Mother, please. They’ll be needed to help load the meat and pull it back to camp.”
So the six of us go, pulling three empty travoises—overland sleds made of poles of birch and mammoth bone. I lead the way, enduring my brothers’ relentless questions about you and your sister. “You’ll meet them soon enough,” I say. I step up the pace a bit. I feel an urgency to return to the kill, and I need a break from questions about what happened on the hunt.
When we finally come to the head of the rocky trail, everything I’ve described stretches out before us—the dead mammoth, the cat, my father, and Pek in the company of three hunters who were all but strangers before today. Kesh and Roon drop the travois they’ve been pulling and race each other across the grass, leaving me and the butchers to bring the three sleds the rest of the way.
The butchers set immediately to work, moving with such practiced precision they hardly need to speak. One uses an ax to divide the carcass into sections, separating the limbs from the torso. The other two employ sharp knives that remove meat from bone. The process is like a dance to the three of them—no one calls out the steps; experience has taught them to anticipate each other’s moves. My brothers busy themselves with collecting the cut portions and securing them to the sleds with long cords made from the stalks of fireweed and stinging nettle, while you, Pek, and Seeri truss up the cat. My father and Chev stand off to the side, speaking in low tones like old friends, only looking up from time to time to call out some instructions.
With so many hands set to the task, I feel unneeded, superfluous. What could I possibly contribute? I would only get in the way. So I let myself wander, roaming to a spot just down the hill, a remote stretch of tall grass drenched in sunlight. I lie down and close my eyes, focus my ears, try to relax—try to catch that distinct whir of honeybee wings—but my thoughts thrum too loudly in my mind. Voices mix in—Roon’s high buzz overlapping with Kesh’s lower hum. I try to block them out, but it’s useless—the longer they work, the louder they become.
After a while, I stop trying and sit up.
Before me, the valley the mammoths fled to opens at the bottom of a gentle slope, and from the angle where I sit the wide expanse of undulating meadow gives me the same odd sensation of movement I feel when I sit at the edge of the bay. The land rolls out from me unbroken, the wind rippling the sea of grass like waves upon the water.
It’s then that I spot you—kneeling in the grass at the base of the hill, you and your sister Seeri. Are you gathering? Your heads are bent, your focus on the ground. I hurry over to ask if you will need help carrying what you’ve collected. As I approach, I catch the sound of your voices trailing off, words spoken in unison. Seeri gets to her feet, but you remain kneeling in the grass, your head bowed, your fingers tying a cord around your neck. There are no roots or greens to be gathered up.