A Hero's Tale (4 page)

As the darkness grew, all the fires in the enclosure were put out. The forest people were careful to keep their presence hidden, even when no stranger could be near enough to see their firelight reflected off the cloudy sky.

For the first time, Maara and I entered the cave where the forest people slept. The cave mouth was well hidden. A fracture in the rock, so low and so narrow that we had to slip through it on our hands and knees, opened into a large cavern. Far above our heads I heard a distant moaning sound that might have been the wind echoing in the cavern's rocky vault.

Inside the cave the air was still and smelled of damp. Someone made a fire, which drew in a draft of clean, cold air. A sudden gust sent showers of sparks upward into the dark. Around the fire pit, skins and furs covered the earthen floor. When we sat down, the forest people gave us robes to put around our shoulders while we waited for the fire's warmth to take the chill out of the air.

No one spoke until Aamah crumbled a handful of dry leaves into the flames, making a thick smoke that smelled of cedar, and murmured words that ascended with the smoke to the ears of gods I didn't know. Then, in voices soft enough not to echo, the forest people resumed their conversation.

After the children had been put to bed, the grown-ups sat around the fire for several hours more. For a time their talk was light-hearted. Then someone told a story, a tale darker than I'd heard from them before, about a hunter lost in a land of dreams. The story put them in a somber mood. After the story ended, there was an uneasy silence, as if the forest people knew that the time had come to speak of something disturbing.

Sett began by saying, "Where were they today?"

One of the men answered him, and others added to his story.

Although I caught a few words and phrases, I couldn't quite follow their meaning, but their furrowed brows and worried voices told me that this conversation wasn't for the ears of children.

"Is there trouble of some kind?" I whispered to Maara.

"There are strangers in the forest," she replied.

"People from Elen's house?"

"Perhaps." She touched a finger to my lips to keep me quiet, so that she could listen.

Unlike Merin's council of old women, who could spend all day talking about nothing, the forest people seemed to want to have their serious discussion over with as quickly as possible. Sett listened to what everyone had to say, then thought for a little while before speaking a few words to each one. Then the forest people rose and went to bed.

Maara and I followed their example and crept naked into the bed they offered us. The news of strangers worried me. I was full of questions, but before I could whisper even one of them, Maara put her arms around me. For a long time, being close to her was all I could think about. The love I felt for her made me feel strong, while her love for me made me feel safe. Soon I slept.

The children woke us. They must have been up long enough to grow impatient with waiting for their elders to wake up. I was reminded of the many mornings of my own childhood when I would play almost quietly enough not to wake the sleeping household.

The fire was out. The only light inside the cave came from a little daylight that found its way through fissures in the rock. Two ghostly figures all in white cavorted by the cave entrance. I rubbed my eyes. Then I saw that they were children. Each was wearing one of our shirts. I glanced around me, looking for the rest of our clothing. Every stitch was gone. One boy wore my trousers wrapped around his shoulders, while another wore Maara's on his head, with the legs trailing along behind him like a train. Our tunics were nowhere to be seen.

We still had our cloaks. We had spread them out under us, to keep us from the cold floor. Our fur leggings lay where we had left them, and Maara found our boots, which the children had used to scoop cold ashes from the fire pit. We shook the ashes out and put them on, and wrapped our cloaks around our naked bodies. Then we joined the others, who were gathering around the fire.

No one scolded the children for taking our clothing or tried to take it from them to give back to us. One of the women found a couple of fur tunics for us to put on. Mine covered me fairly well, but Maara's ended above her waist, so that she had to wear her cloak wrapped around her like a skirt.

We breakfasted inside the cave. When I went outdoors to relieve myself, I saw why the forest people hadn't yet gone outside. A heavy snow was falling. The wind drove it under the hood of my cloak and down my neck, and it lay in drifts so deep that my knees above my leggings were soon blue with cold.

When I went back inside, Maara was standing naked, surrounded by the women, while the men watched and gave advice. Beside her lay a pile of furs and deerskins. One woman held a deerskin up to Maara's waist, while another wrapped it around her thigh and marked it with a bit of charcoal.

All afternoon we stayed inside, while the women made Maara a complete suit of clothing. In only a few hours they had made her a pair of deerskin trousers, decorated with clay beads colored blue and black and baked hard in the fire. By the end of the day, they had made her a tunic of rabbit fur, greyish-brown in color, with bits of red squirrel worked in for decoration. I thought she looked quite splendid.

We stayed with the forest people for several days. By the time we left for home, both of us had new clothes -- trousers of soft deerskin, leggings that covered our legs to above the knee, long-sleeved fur tunics, and fur caps with flaps that turned down over our ears. To replace our heavy boots they made us moccasins of elk hide lined with fur. We would have been satisfied with our own cloaks, but the forest people insisted on making us capes of deerskin, tanned with the hair on it to repel the rain and snow.

My new clothes felt strange to me at first. Instead of the scratchy wool that I was used to, the forest people's clothing felt like a second skin, so much so that I could almost believe I wasn't wearing clothes at all, except that I was warm. No cold air leaked in, even at the seams, and they were a delight to travel in. Bramble thickets let me pass. Falling snow caught in the fur of my cap as in an animal's pelt and was easily shaken out before it melted and trickled down my neck. I felt like a creature of the forest as we made our way home, silent and invisible in animal guise.

As much as I enjoyed the company of the forest people, I was glad to come home again to our hollow tree. I missed spending time alone with Maara, and for a week, while snow continued to fall, I had her undivided attention. Her conversations with the forest people had awakened memory, and she told me more stories of her childhood. She even spoke a little of her time in Elen's house, although those memories were more painful. When we ran out of things to talk about, we lay in each other's arms and let our bodies speak of love.

Sometimes I felt her thoughts stray from me, and I knew what she was thinking.

"You miss them," I said to her one day, when I caught her gazing at the entrance of our hollow tree as if she awaited visitors.

She admitted that she did.

I surprised myself by saying, "I miss them too."

Not only did I miss the forest people. I missed what I saw in Maara when we were with them. When she was the center of their attention, she seemed half pleased and half shy, as if having the attention of others was something new to her, which I suppose it was. I missed watching her in conversation and in banter too quick for me to follow. I missed seeing her unguarded, as I had never seen her in company before. I surprised myself again by suggesting that perhaps we should spend the winter in the village of the forest people.

Maara nodded, as if she had already thought of it.

"Would we be welcome?"

"Aamah has dropped a hint or two," said Maara. "I think it would be wise. We endanger them whenever we travel back and forth."

It was true. We risked being seen by strangers, and we had begun to wear a path between our home and theirs. Maara's other reasons I let her keep to herself.

The next morning we took up our packs and left our hollow tree. I felt a bit nostalgic about leaving our cozy home. On an impulse, without Maara knowing, I left something of myself behind. I slipped one of my arrowheads from my pouch and left it in the crevice where I had found the offering of the forest people.

Not far from the forest people's village we came upon the fresh tracks of a family of deer. Beside them were the pawprints of a wolf. Maara knelt to examine the tracks. At the same time, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something moving through the trees. When I turned my head to see what it was, there was nothing there. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck.

Slowly, careful not to make a sound, Maara slipped her pack from her shoulders and set it down. Then she relieved me of mine. She made a sign to me to take out my bow and string it.

Another movement caught my eye. This time I thought I knew what it was, and all my childhood fears blew like a cold wind through my heart.

"Wolves," I whispered to Maara.

"No," she whispered back. "Men."

My fear of wolves yielded to a fear of something yet more dangerous.

"Strangers?"

"No."

Before I could say more, she put her finger to her lips and drew an arrow from my quiver. When I offered her the bow, she shook her head. She handed me the arrow, then fastened the quiver to my belt.

Maara gestured to me to stay close behind her, as she followed the tracks into the forest, moving with a stealthy gait that was faster than a walk, yet not quite a run. I imitated her as best I could, and for once I moved as quietly as she did. The moccasins cushioned my step. In my new clothing, I was as silent as an animal in its skin.

As we traveled farther from the brook, the trees closed in around us. The shade was so deep that even the snow-covered ground failed to lighten the gloom. What little light entered here hung in mist that baffled the eye.

On either side of us, others were moving through the trees. Their ghostly figures drifted at the edges of my vision. Whether they were wolves or men, I couldn't tell. In the snow and mist, their coats of silver-grey disguised their form, but more than once I imagined I caught sight of a pricked ear, a snarl of teeth, a gleaming eye.

Maara stopped and crouched down beside a tree. Against the trunk, in her cap and tunic of mottled greys and browns, she was almost invisible. She motioned me down beside her.

Some distance ahead of us I heard the sounds of the hunt, of the pursued and the pursuers, running through the forest. Too late now for the deer, in peril of their lives, to stand silent in a thicket while the hunters passed them by. Too late now for the hunters to stalk their prey in silence, to take them unawares. Some of the hunters must have lain in ambush, because the deer had been turned back and now ran toward us.

Closer they came, and closer still. The sounds of their flight, muffled by the snow and mist, deceived my ears, making me believe they were farther from us than they were. A doe flew by us, so swiftly that I had no time to nock an arrow. Next, the stag rushed past, and this time I was ready. I loosed my arrow. At the same moment two more arrows flew. Mine sailed over the stag's back, but the others found their mark. One struck the stag's flank. The other found its way between the ribs, behind the shoulder.

The stag ran a few steps, then stopped and stood, stiff-legged, his tongue protruding from his mouth, his hot breath white as the mist, then red with his heart's blood. Still he stood, defiant.

A grey shape sprang up from the snowy ground. Its jaws closed on the stag's throat and dragged him to his knees. Another wolf sprang out of the mist and took hold of the stag's hind leg. Together the two wolves brought him down.

Another form leaped up, a wolf that ran on its hind legs for several steps before it transformed itself into a man. He ran to where the wolves held the stag, still living, and cut its throat. Blood spilled into the snow, and the man scooped up a handful and tasted it. Two more men emerged from their hiding places and ran to join him.

Now I could make some sense of what I'd seen. Each man wore, over his ordinary clothing, the entire pelt of a wolf. The head, complete with ears and eyes and teeth, covered their heads like a cap, while the forelegs dangled down over their shoulders and the long tails trailed behind them in the snow.

The men paid no attention to the wolves, who had dropped to their bellies and slunk away when the men approached. Wielding knives and axes, the hunters went to work on the carcass, while the wolves waited, watching the men through narrowed eyes. More wolves, still panting from the chase, joined their fellows, until I had counted eight of them.

I stared at the scene before me, hardly able to believe my eyes. The men opened the stag's belly and spilled its organs out, and the wolves rushed in and tore the mess to pieces. The men dragged the carcass a little distance away and began to butcher it.

While the wolves fed, the wolf-clad men skinned and dismembered the stag. One man took up the skin and antlered head. Another motioned to Maara and me to come and help carry the meat. We took with us both hindquarters, the ribs of one side, and a shoulder. We could have carried more, but we left a generous portion for the wolves.

Maara and I had to take the long way home, so that we could fetch our packs. When we arrived at the village, everyone was waiting for us. Women relieved us of the meat we carried. The hunters, still wolf-clad, motioned us to join them where they were resting by the central fire.

Sett came to greet us and handed me the arrow that had missed its mark. One of the hunters must have found it and brought it back. I should have looked for it myself, but in the excitement of the hunt, I had forgotten all about it.

"What is this?" Sett asked me. "A hunter wishing?"

I turned to Maara for an explanation.

Maara answered for me. "A hunter," she said.

Sett smiled. "She needs to wish."

Before I could ask him what he meant, he turned away and went to sit with the three hunters by the fire.