The Animal Wife (11 page)

We were very happy during the Moon of Grass—we men were. After sunrise we would go to our lookout in a group of scattered boulders at the edge of the ravine. Here we would build a fire and spend the day. If the sun was hot the boulders gave cool shade, and if the wind was cold the boulders gave shelter and warmth as they threw back the heat of the fire. From that place we could see everything that happened up and down the river and out across the plain.

Every morning some of us would gather dry bones or dung or grass or sticks for fuel while others would visit the bear and the mammoths, swat off the great noisy swarms of flies, and cut strips of meat. All day among the boulders we cooked and ate while we worked stones or carved ivory. As we worked we talked of women, of hunting, and of strange things we had seen. Andriki told of Uske's Spring and how he and I had spent a night inside the mammoth carcass. Such talk was exciting, so we laughed a lot. Nothing disturbed us. Even when a man I didn't know came from the east and sat down among us, complaining that we should have waited for him before killing the mammoths so that he too could have earned some ivory for his marriage exchange, we felt no trouble, because he was Kida, half-brother to Maral, full brother to Father. Father said, "Think before speaking! You give ivory to your wife's parents, but now let your mind's eye follow that ivory. Your in-laws would give it for their son's wife, but here her only kin are my wives. So if you had gotten ivory, some would have come to me! This way I have my share already."

"Then you excuse the debt to your wife?" asked Kida.

We all laughed, even Father. "Ah? You want to trick me," he said.

***

So it was with the men—easy with each other, and sure that much good hunting was to come. On the plains to the east of us, Kida had been burning off the grass so that the grazing animals, especially the mammoths, would have to move west toward us, to where the walls of the ravine were high, where the animals would have to use steep trails to reach water, where we could hunt them. From listening to the men I felt sure that this year we would see more mammoth meat at the foot of the cliffs before we left for Father's winter lodge—more meat than we could ever eat, and plenty of ivory. So said the men, and I believed them. Such hunting in years before had left the piles of bleached bones on our side of the river.

Yet because of the women this good hunting was not to be. Matters with the women were not the same as with us. They spent their days working hides in the mouth of the cave, eating meat and drinking water just as we did. But unlike us, they weren't happy together. The trouble started not long after we had killed the mammoths. We began to hear from the cave the raised voices of Father's two wives, Yoi and Pinesinger. Almost every day Yoi found a way to make Pinesinger cry.

As we listened to their distant voices, Yoi's harsh and sure like an eagle's, Pinesinger's plaintive and wavering like a quail's, I would look at Father to see what he thought. At first the quarreling hardly seemed worth his notice, since it stopped when men were in the cave. "A man's wives sometimes fight when one of them is new," Father once said. "Then they get used to each other."

But day after day the irritating screams of Yoi and Pinesinger went on. At last Andriki told Father to take his belt to both of them. Bad advice, I thought. Beating Yoi could be risky, since she might be strong enough to get the belt away from Father, and beating Pinesinger would be pointless, since the quarreling wasn't her fault.

Father seemed annoyed by Andriki's plan—he didn't want to follow it, but neither did he want people to think he couldn't control his women. Under Andriki's accusing stare he set his teeth and scratched his beard and at last found a way out of the hard situation. "We don't know what's wrong," he said. "So I'll ask. Then I'll know what to do about my wives." And he sent me to bring him his half-sister, my Aunt Rin.

I did as he asked, feeling strange in visiting the dim cave with only women in it—women who, except for Pinesinger, I didn't know well. I heard them fall silent when I stepped inside. I caught the scent of them, their hair and skins. When my eyes got used to the gloom, I saw that like a herd of hinds all of them were alert, eyes open and chins up, watching me.

I looked around for Yoi and saw her, proud and serious, sitting with her back against the wall of the cave and her feet out, crossed at the ankles. From her ears hung shell earrings, in her braid was a strip of white ermine, and around her neck hung an ivory necklace. Yoi was at least as old as my mother, but so beautiful that my eyes wanted to cling to her. No wonder Father liked her. She was watching me with an annoyed expression.
What are you doing here?
her look seemed to say.

I dropped my eyes, then glanced around for Pinesinger. In the gloom I saw her apart from the others, her shoulders hunched, her hair escaping her braid, and her face swollen and streaked with dirt, as if she had been crying. Her prettiness was gone, like a wet bird's. She raised her large, sad eyes to me, her mouth sullen.
How pitiful,
I thought.
How lonely she must be.
I gave her an encouraging smile, which she did not return. My smile turned stiff, then faded. Embarrassed by the silence and feeling that whatever was wrong here had to do with me, I picked my way to Aunt Rin.

Aunt had been scraping bits of dry flesh from a red fox's skin, and she paused in her work to look at me. Quickly I sat down on my heels. It wouldn't have been right to stand above her while speaking. Far from it—I hugged my arms to bring in my shoulders, lowered my head, and waited for her to encourage me. When she nodded, I whispered respectfully, "Aunt."

"What is it?" said Rin.

"Will you come and see Father?" I whispered. "He'd like to talk to you."

"Now? Why?"

"I can't say, Aunt. He didn't tell me."

She gave me a look to learn whether matters were serious, and when she couldn't tell from my face, she rolled the fox's skin around her scraper and sighed. "I'll get water when I go out," she said, and called to Frogga to bring her a waterskin. From her parents' sleeping place little Frogga tugged a dry skin bag and dragged it to Rin obediently, daring to give me a pouting look as she passed by. I didn't like that. Another time I would have said something. But not that time, not in that hushed place, with all the women watching, waiting for me to leave before they would go on doing whatever they had been doing before I came. Gladly I followed Aunt Rin into the sunlight. What was wrong with these women?

Aunt Rin trudged up the steep trail to the rim of the ravine, one hand absently feeling her thin gray braid as if somewhere in her mind was the thought that her hair should be neat for the eyes of the waiting men. At the top of the trail she turned to me, handed me the waterskin, and told me to fill it. I would have liked to hear what she and Father said to each other, but what could I do? I went.

By the time I got back to the men's lookout, Aunt Rin and Father were sitting far from the others under a birch tree, and I could tell from the men's faces that something surprising or important had already been said. I looked at Andriki to learn what it had been. In the low voice that he saved for matters of great meaning, Andriki told me, "Your stepmothers are fighting. Yoi says Pinesinger must go back to her people."

"Why?" I asked.

"Jealousy," said Andriki.

That Yoi would be jealous surprised me, since in every way she seemed sure of Father and his fondness for her. I said so.

"True," agreed Andriki. "But she's childless. She may always be childless. And now Pinesinger is pregnant."

I must say, I seemed to have noticed that Pinesinger's belly was beginning to swell, so the news didn't come as a surprise. "Then Father will be happy and won't care what Yoi wants," I said.

"But the pregnancy is showing too soon," said Andriki. "Yoi says the baby's father is another man."

My long-ago adventures with Pinesinger in the willows by the Fire River, the image of her cold, bare skin with gooseflesh from the spring wind, seemed to have nothing to do with what was now happening, nothing to do with the angry women in the cave, with Andriki's serious tone, or with the distant figures of Father and Rin sitting on their heels in the birch grove, their heads together. Even so, the image of Pinesinger in the willow thicket stayed with me, and suddenly I felt my face burn. "By the Bear!" I cried. "How can this be? Who else could be the father?"

For a long time Andriki watched me steadily, and then, as if he saw the truth but didn't mind it, he smiled. As long as I live, I will remember him with thanks for that smile and for what he said after. "Who knows the hearts of women?" he asked, as if thinking aloud. "Anyone could be the father. I suppose he was a man at the Fire River."

W
OMEN'S BUSINESS
! How like a woman to come here as Father's wife only to cause great trouble!

So I thought that night as I lay in my deerskins near the mouth of the cave, listening to the river and to the low voices of two of my uncles and their wives still cooking and eating by the women's fire. Those voices were peaceful enough; I tried to let their soft tones soothe me. But the thought of what Pinesinger and I had done wouldn't leave me. I told myself we weren't the only people to have made love secretly. I told myself that I ought to forget our misdoing, since no one, not even my mother, would have had much to say if we had been found out.

Even so, I saw that Father might feel differently. He had made much of getting a child from Pinesinger's lineage. If she was already pregnant he would have to wait for years before he could get his own child on her, and the thought of such waiting wouldn't please him. If he knew what I had done, what would he think of me? I saw that I would have to speak to Pinesinger.

At first the thought of doing this went against me. It would only remind her of something long ago, something best forgotten, something as good as forgotten but for her pale hips in my mind's eye like a dream.

Then I heard Father get up to join the people at the women's fire. Cupping his hand under his chin to shade his eyes from the light, he looked over the fire at me. Seeing me awake, he beckoned to me. "Come sit with us. We're cooking, Kori," he said.

So I got up and sat on my heels beside him. While I chewed the meat he handed me, I looked around the fire at the bearded faces of my uncles, at the quiet, peaceful faces of my aunts; I looked behind Father at his sleeping-skins, thrown back to show Pinesinger fast asleep inside them, and I knew I had been childish to hope that my misdeed with her would go away. I made up my mind to talk with her seriously in the morning.

***

Perhaps the women were as tired of the quarreling as the men. In the morning they went in two directions to gather berries on the plain. Pinesinger joined one group and Yoi joined another. I knew I had no hope of seeing Pinesinger until evening, so I waited in the men's lookout, planning what I would say.

That evening the men went to the river to wash and drink. I stayed in the lookout, hoping that when the women came by I could catch Pinesinger's attention without catching anyone else's. I remembered her tear-stained face, her cowering manner. By now I believed that if I could get her alone, I would soon have the truth out of her.

At the river the men had taken off their clothes and were slowly washing themselves. I heard a woman's footsteps on the trail and shrank against a boulder so I would see this woman before she saw me. It was Rin who passed, carrying Frogga. Although Rin's eyes were on the trail, Frogga noticed me. Her round brown eyes grew bright, and her mouth opened, showing her even little teeth. "Kai!" she shouted. I thought she was trying to say "Kori." But no one pays attention to such calls from a baby. Rin never turned and soon disappeared around the bend of the trail. Frogga's shouts faded as Rin carried her away.

Just as I was about to give up and go to the cave myself, I heard the footsteps of a second woman. Again I waited, pressed against the boulder, and this time Pinesinger went by. I threw a pebble at her shoulders. She felt it and turned.

She too had been at the river. Her face was clean and her hair was combed. "You!" she said.

I stood up so that I would be looking down at her, not she at me. "I must talk with you," I said.

"Well, here I am," she said crossly. "What is it?"

"People say you're pregnant," I began. "Is this true?"

"What is my belly to you, Stepchild?" she asked.

This talk wasn't going quite as I had planned. Gone was the tear-stained girl I had expected, and in her place was a woman I seemed to have annoyed. And I didn't like her calling me Stepchild.

I said, "What I want to say is important, but I can't say it here. Father and my uncles will soon be back. I'm going to a more private place. Follow if you like." I turned and took the trail east, screened from the river and the bathing men by the blueberries and juniper that grew on the rim of the ravine. I thought it better to pretend to pay no attention to Pinesinger, but out of the corner of my eye I watched for her shadow. I noticed that it ran ahead of me as we went, and felt relief that she was coming.

Beyond the juniper the trail forked. One path was well traveled, the path we all took when we went to the plain; the other was so faint it could barely be seen. Andriki had once taken me along the faint path—it led to a grove of birch trees. Andriki had told me how spirits sometimes came there, and when people danced, they danced there. In the grove were the ashes of their dance fire and the circle worn by their feet. Also in the grove was the huge bleached skull of a mammoth. The tusks had been drawn and the lower jaw was missing; the skull rested on its molars, which were pressed into the leaf mold. The domed forehead had been rubbed with ocher and decorated with drawings of people and birds. This skull, Andriki had told me, belonged to my father, and in a way it stood for all the men who owned the cave.

Pinesinger didn't seem to know where the trail led. I felt her coming closer behind me, as if she had guessed that we were going somewhere strange. When we saw the skull, she drew in her breath sharply.