Bonesetter 2 -Winter- (25 page)

Feeling stupid, Woday said, “Oh… yeah, I forgot.” He leaned over and peered into the opening. “It looks like it should work,” he said, feeling like he was babbling. Surely they could see how he was just trying to cover up his stupidity of a moment before.

Pell grinned at him, “You think we should try it then?”

Woday nodded, feeling sure they were both laughing at him.

***

It was an evening about the fire. They’d eaten a veritable feast of fish, grouse, and crayfish. This despite the fact the day had been so cold that Yadin found it hard to believe anyone had spent much time hunting. Even more unbelievable was the thought that Woday had been wading around in an ice cold stream catching the crayfish!

Yadin was wondering whether they’d caught the grouse like they had caught that rock pigeon a few days ago. Was that an accident, or perhaps some kind of a device purposefully made to catch pigeons?

He sat up a little straighter and looked around at the people in the cave, wondering if perhaps he might see someone that he could talk some answers out of. Instead, his eyes fastened on Gia and Panute. They were working on something over on the other side of the group where he could barely see them.

Agan had asked Gia if she would tell a story and she’d said she could once she’d finished her “project.” Instead, Agan had asked Boro if he would tell how he’d come to be cast out of the Aldans. Boro had agreed and had just risen to begin his tale.

Suddenly curious about Gia’s mysterious project, Yadin stood, trying to see what she and Panute were working on.

Boro had only said, “I’ll start with…” Then he apparently thought that Yadin wanted to tell a story instead because he stopped. Eyes on Yadin, he said, “Did you want to tell a story instead?”

Several people moaned and others laughed. Stepping to his left, Yadin snorted and said, “No, no, I know better than to try to tell one of my stories to
this
group!” He kept moving to the left, having to watch his feet to be sure he didn’t step on anyone in the dim lighting.

Boro said, “I’m going to start with the hunt that killed my father…”

As Boro said that, Yadin lifted his eyes again to see what Gia and Panute could be doing. His heart skipped a beat.

They had
five
rabbits laid out, already skinned. At present they were engaged in cutting the meat off the bones!

Yadin stopped where he stood, staring, his mind racing
. How… How in the name of all the spirits… had this tribe brought in four substantial fish, two grouse, a mess of crayfish,
and
five rabbits?! And what in the hell are they going to do with the rabbit meat. Cutting it up into small pieces was just crazy!
Everyone knew that you should keep your meat in big chunks. It tended to rot on the outside first, but even after the outside had gone bad, you could still find some flesh that wasn’t foul down closer to the middle. His eyes narrowed.
Though, they seem to have fresh meat every day! They’re so successful hunting small animals, I don’t know why they’d try to keep meat at all. They should have just thrown those rabbits out if they weren’t going to eat them tonight!
His thoughts paused to wonder if they planned to make a morning meal out of the rabbits, but there was plenty of food left over from this evening’s meal to fill everyone’s bellies in the morning. Besides, even if they were going to eat the rabbits in the morning, it’d be better to cut them up right before they were cooked.

Yadin didn’t hear much of Boro’s story as he continued picking his way over to where Gia and Panute were working. When he got to them, they looked up at him and he would have sworn they looked a bit furtive and slightly embarrassed.

Perhaps as if they didn’t want him to know just how successful the hunts had been that day?! He glanced behind himself and saw several people watching him. Some of them also looked like they’d rather he hadn’t seen. A couple of others, however, had knowing grins as if they knew how astonished he must feel.

Yadin squatted down next to the two women and, not wanting to interrupt Boro’s story, quietly said, “Why are you cutting up the meat?”

Gia looked up at him and grinned. He closed his eyes in frustration, knowing what was coming before she said, “You’ll have to ask Agan if we can tell you that.”

Yadin snorted, shook his head, opened his eyes, and smiled at Gia. “I guess I’m going to have to. I tried a few nights ago, you know. But then Pell went off on his project to make that new axe!”

Gia smiled sweetly at him, then whispered, “Then you’re just going to have to try again, aren’t you?” She glanced over at Boro, then back at Yadin, “Now shhh, I want to hear Boro’s story.”

When Boro’s story was done, Yadin had found it heart-wrenching. Boro’s father dying after being tusked in a hunt. Being tusked, according to Boro, because of the cowardice of the chieftain’s son who was too frightened to spear a boar that had focused all of its attention on Boro’s father. When Boro accused the son of cowardice, the son had him cast out of the tribe.

There was no doubt in Yadin’s mind that there had been evil in the Aldans then, but it didn’t escape his notice that Pell wasn’t a part of the Aldans clan during the time that evil reigned.

Cast out of his tribe, with winter bearing down, already thin because the Aldans tribe as a whole had been eating badly, Boro’s chances of survival appeared nonexistent. Everyone thought he’d die, but his mother advised him to travel to Cold Springs and see if he could join Pell, who’d been cast out earlier in the year. Though on the face of it, this sounded like a terrible idea, Boro had made the trip in a bout of desperate last-ditch hope.

Tears streaming down his face, Boro talked about arriving at the Cold Springs cave. Arriving and finding not, as he expected, another group of hungry individuals loathe to take him in, but a small tribe of healthy, well fed people.

While telling how they’d agreed to take him in, Boro became so choked up that he couldn’t continue. Gurix and Pell, friends from his childhood stood up and both hugged him. They patted and consoled him, taking him over to one side and sitting with him as he tried to get himself back in control.

Everyone sat silently for a while, as if in respect for Boro’s emotional distress. Yadin found himself thinking about how Lessa had told essentially the same story regarding the evil affecting the Aldans. Evil yes, but not coming
from
Pell. Rather it came from the chieftain’s son and much of it directed
at
Pell. A pernicious evil, spreading from the chieftain’s bully of a son to ruin the lives of Pell, then Boro’s father, then Boro. Insidiously it seemed to have nearly destroyed the entire tribe.

A tribe which was then
rescued
, not harmed, by Pell!

Most notably for Yadin, Boro’s story several times counted Pont culpable for some horrible things that had happened.

Pell’s not the source of the evil, but Pont might be…

Agan broke the silence. “That’s a heartrending story you’ve told Boro. I hope we all take the lessons it contains into our own hearts.” She turned her head slowly about, surveying her small, but growing tribe. “Now, before we all go to our beds, I’d like to resume a conversation Yadin and I were having a few nights ago.” She looked at Yadin, “I believe we were interrupted when someone…” she glanced at Pell, “had an idea about an axe.”

Apparently everyone had heard about the success of Pell’s axe idea, because most of the tribe laughed, then began hooting excitedly. Yadin stood back up. Uncertainly, he said, “Would you like me to get out my flint tools again?”

Agan smiled, “No, I’d like to ask the Cold Springs people if anyone would object to having you join our tribe.” She winked at him, “Selfishly, we want even more flint than you have in your bundle, so we want you to stay and make
more
tools. Besides, then you can learn the answers to
all
those questions you’ve been asking.”

To Yadin’s relief, the people around him began hooting excitedly about this idea as well. No one ventured an objection. For just a brief moment, he wondered whether he should accept. Should he go back and visit the Oppo tribe in order to be sure he really wanted to leave? In good conscience, shouldn’t he spend the winter with the Oppos rather than adding another mouth to a tribe that wasn’t prepared for the hungry months to come? But he so wanted to learn their secrets!

He looked around and his eyes caught on Donte. A feeling of certainty swept over him and he turned back to Agan, “I’d…” he swallowed around a sudden frog in his throat, “be honored, to become a member, of this tribe,” he managed to choke out. Another round of hooting, stomping, and slapping the ground broke out. Donte stood to walk around and give him his first welcoming hug…

Though Donte had been first to welcome him into the Cold Springs tribe, one by one, each of the others came around to embrace him as well. He found himself uncharacteristically emotional at this enthusiastic reception, unable to speak more than an occasional croak and frequently having to pretend to scratch a welling eye.             

When at last the last of the well-wishers had spoken to him he found Gia smiling at his elbow, “Now, shall I tell you why we cut the meat up into such small pieces?”

Though he felt as exhausted as if he’d chased and speared a bison by himself, Yadin couldn’t pass up a chance to get the first answer to one of his many questions. “Yes! Yes, please.”

Gia knelt and put a splinter in the fire. Once it’d caught, she held it over a rock she held in her other hand. To Yadin’s astonishment, when she took the burning splinter away, a small flame persisted above the rock. In the light of that flame he was able to see that a twist of some material sank into something that had congealed in a cavity on the upper surface of the rock. “What’s that?!”

“This?” She said lifting the rock a little and focusing her gaze on it. “We call it a lamp.” She shrugged, “It’s nothing but a piece of limestone with a cavity pecked out on the upper surface. The cavity’s filled with marrow fat and a wick of juniper fibers is dipped into the grease. The fat climbs up the wick to burn in this steady little flame.” She turned and knelt, picking up one of the rabbit skins that had all the cut up meat lying on it. Standing, she started picking her way through some of the bedding toward the very back of the cave.

Yadin followed. He’d never been to the back of the cave, partly because it was so dim back there away from the cave mouth, and partly because the floor and the ceiling rose in the region Gia was heading towards. Though most of the smoke from the fire neatly exited from the hole in the wall above the hearth, some of it always seeped back into this particular back region of the cave. The farther back one walked, the smokier it got, so Yadin had avoided the area.

Part way back, Gia stopped and knelt which had the advantage of lowering their heads out of the worst of the smoke. She set her lamp on the ground where its light made evident a frame of lightweight straight shafts of wood all bound together. Gia proved it wasn’t fastened down by turning it a little towards herself. Then she began deftly picking up strips of meat hanging them over the wooden shafts.

Yadin restrained himself from asking what she was doing. Instead, he said, “Would you like me to hang some strips of meat as well?”

Her head turned toward him, and in the dim light from the lamp he saw a gleam from her teeth suggesting a smile. “Yes, thank you. That would be very helpful.”

Yadin picked up a handful of the meat and began picking off strips and draping them over the shafts on his side of the frame. It didn’t take them too long before all the meat, even from five rabbits, had been hung over the frame.

Gia turned to him and said, “Would you carry the lamp?”

Yadin gingerly picked it up as Gia took a deep breath and lifted the frame in both hands. Now she walked quickly even further back and higher up into the cave. The smoke got thicker and Yadin soon wished he’d taken a deep breath as well.

Gia set the frame on a high spot in a niche at the very upper back of the cave and quickly turned to begin walking toward the front. “I hate breathing that smoke,” she said and coughed.

Eyes tearing up and coughing himself, Yadin said, “So do I! Are you going to tell me why in the world we did it?”

She placed a hand on his arm and said, “Yes, it’s finally time for some answers.” She fished in her pouch and held something out to him. In the dim light, Yadin couldn’t see what it was, but it felt like a stick. He only felt puzzled for a moment, then suspicion dawned. He lifted the stick and licked it. “Spirit meat!” he exclaimed. He turned to look behind him, then back to Gia, “Is that how you do it?! Hanging little pieces of meat up in that smoky recess?”

Smiling, Gia nodded at him.

Suspiciously, Yadin said, “And, does someone have to pray to a spirit?”

Gia gave a small laugh, “No. Apparently Tando had the idea to call it ‘spirit meat’ when they first sold it at a trading area. He wanted people to think that something special had to be done. Something different from just hanging the meat in a smoky area. So, we call it spirit meat when we’re talking to other people, but really, nothing special needs to be done. If you leave it in the smoke for a few hours, it adds flavor and makes it so it keeps for a few days. Usually, however, we leave it back there for days and then it seems to keep… well…” she shrugged, “we don’t know how long it keeps. We do have pieces of it that Pell smoked early this summer that still seem to be good though.” She glanced up at Yadin with a smile, “So, we hope we’ll have meat to eat all winter long, even if our hunting’s poor after snow covers the land.”