The Animal Wife (24 page)

"Then we'll spear them," said Andriki.

"While they're here," said Maral, "they watch the woods. Better than we, they know what walks there."

I knew Maral was speaking of the Lily, and I quietly lowered my spear. We sat down again, with our hands cupped under our chins, and watched the wolves move from place to place where the six dead deer had lain. The wolves were finding things to eat—the rumens, the gallbladders, and the bloody snow.

In time they sat in a half-circle, facing us. The moon cast their shadows on the snow. We could just make out their gray faces, and see how their green eyes roamed over the meat behind us. I thought of Father and Andriki together at the Fire River, and how they with their pale eyes had sat across the fire from its owner, Uncle Bala, as visiting hunters will. If the wolves had been nearer the fire, they would have been like visiting hunters. Like visitors, they knew us, since these were the wolves who stayed near the lodge. No wonder they had found us, on our well-packed trail. When crossing the trail, they could have learned of Marten on his way home with meat, and then they could have backtracked him to find the carcass.

They hadn't watched us very long before their headman raised his chin slightly and sang a high, clear call that lifted quickly, broke, and fell slowly. As it ended, all the other wolves joined, and all together their voices rose and fell. They sang a long time, some voices high, others low, some steady, some trembling, some breaking. Up to the moon they threw their song, so that the sky filled with it and the woods filled with it—a song so loud, so pure, so perfect that tears stung my eyes from its beauty. These wolves had eaten only shit and rumen, yet they sang. Think of it!

As suddenly as they began, they stopped. Then they were standing on their long legs, on their big feet, they were giving their rough coats a little shake, they were sneezing lightly, they were nosing each other's faces, and they were gone. They were gone, leaving nothing behind but moonlight and the shadows of trees on the trampled snow at the far side of the fire, nothing but the empty feeling that came behind their singing, nothing but the three of us to watch for the Lily.

"Maybe we should have given them something. They might have stayed," I said. "The lungs, maybe."

From the tone of Andriki's voice when he answered, I saw that he too had been much taken with the song. "You thought of that too late," he said. "They're gone. But why did they stop here? They'll have no trouble finding the reindeer that escaped us. They have the trail to lead them, and they'll drive the deer into deep snow. Why would they want lungs? They'll soon have a whole reindeer. Maybe more."

But I hardly heard Andriki. I was wishing we had given the feet to the wolves. There were more than enough feet, and most likely we would be leaving them behind anyway. The feet would be the last things we would put on our loads. "They might have stayed if we had given the hooves," I said. "As it is, they'll probably get them after we leave. Just the chewing would take a long time."

"You must have been talking with your father," said Maral. "He's the one who likes to give the wolves something to eat."

"Perhaps they'll come back," said Andriki. "I would give them the hooves, at least of my deer."

"I too," I said. So we dug through the pile of frozen meat until we found the hooves belonging to me and Andriki. We tossed them into a pile, sure of most of them. But two hooves were in doubt. Both were the right rear, but which was mine and which was Marten's? We added both, ready to throw all to the wolves when they came back.

But they didn't come back. The moon sank low. All night we waited, feeding the fire, cooking and eating, thinking of the Lily but not speaking of him, and when the sky began to turn gray before morning we heard the wolves sing again, but far away.

As the sun came, we sang too, praising the Bear for letting us kill six reindeer and not lose any of the meat.

 

You whose fire burns in the sunrise,
You whose fire burns in the sunset,
You whose fire burns all day across the sky,
As You love hunters,
Know we are hunters.
As we gave You fat,
Now make us fat.
Give us life!
Do not kill us!
Hona!

 

With the sun came the ravens, who seemed disappointed to find nothing to eat within their reach. Even the bloody snow had been eaten. Soon they flew off, searching in the direction from which we had heard the wolves. Perhaps they saw the wolves on a carcass.

Late in the morning Marten came back with all the women except Waxwing, Truht, and Pinesinger—they who would soon give birth. Much as the women must have eaten the night before, they sat down to cook again right away. Muskrat held back, looking at me. From the belly meat of one of my deer, the hunter's own portion, I cut many strips for her and put them on the fire. Even before they were cooked she took some and began to eat hungrily. Afraid she might choke, I frowned at her and tried to take the strips back, to feed them to her slowly. She thought I was refusing her, and looked at me almost with terror. Her fear shamed me. I wondered if she had eaten the day before, if people had shared with her. I suppose there was no real reason anyone should have shared. I would have liked to ask her quietly, inconspicuously, but without Pinesinger's help I couldn't, since I would have to use loud, simple words and big gestures.

When the women had finished eating, they brushed the fat and ashes from their hands and faces and stood up. We helped one another make large packs of the meat, and then helped one another lift the packs into place on our backs. With so many of us, we didn't have to leave meat behind, not even the hooves. Maral's son, Ako, carried almost a man's load, and even Andriki's little daughter, Pirit, carried a small pack with one round reindeer hoof sticking out of it. In single file, over the well-trampled trail, we went home.

***

That night, with the mounds of meat stored safely in the coldtrap but with only a small supply of wood, which Ako, Muskrat, and I had had to gather as best we could at the end of the day, we cooked meat again, using only one fire. As the fire was in the owners' end of the lodge, I felt comfortable sitting close beside it.

"Woman!" I called to Muskrat at the far end of the lodge. She stood up and came to see what I wanted. I told her to cut belly meat from my share so I could cook.

"Knife," she said. So I gave her my knife. She was gone a long time. At last I saw her standing behind everyone, trying to catch my eye, and when she did, she gave me a handful of frozen strips over the heads of all the people. I put them on the fire, and when they were cooked I called her again. "Woman! Come and eat." Again she stood behind the people. I passed her the cooked strips on the end of a forked stick. "For you," I said, smiling at her.

Before taking the meat, Muskrat made a fist and hit herself on the breastbone. Then she hit herself between the eyes. Then she bent a knee, lowering her whole body. "Sank," she said.

It reminded me of her word "tashe." "Stepmother," I said to Pinesinger, who was sitting right beside me, "do you remember Muskrat's word 'tashe'? Did you find what it means?"

"Yes," said Pinesinger. "It has no meaning."

"No meaning? Then why did she use it?"

"Perhaps it has meaning to her, but not to us. Her people call a place on their bodies 'tashe.' There's no such place. They think there is, though, here in the middle, on the chest and belly. If her people feel warmth there, 'tashe' is what they call the warmth. A woman says 'tashe' when she holds a baby. The warm feeling of the baby is 'tashe.' It makes people happy. When your woman said 'tashe' to you, she meant you felt 'tashe' while you slept in her bed. The 'tashe' came from her body. She's glad you became happy from that, because she's pregnant. You frightened her when you became angry, when you hit her. She told me how you hit her. She thought because we had so little food, you would drive her away. She wants to go, but if you forced her out now she would die in the snow."

Later, as I lay in bed with my arms around Muskrat, under her breasts, with my belly against her back, as I listened to her quiet, even breathing, I was too joyful to sleep. The woman in my arms was pregnant! And by me. A child gotten in the fall is born the next summer—she would bear this child on Father's summergrounds. I remembered the sound of children's voices echoing in Father's shadowy cave. Soon my child might be among the others. That pleased me.

Yet Muskrat wanted to leave. That worried me. I told myself I wouldn't let her, I'd stop her. But I didn't want to have to stop her. I wanted her to stay willingly. If she learned our speech, I told myself, if she saw how well I treated her, if she learned how to live as we live, with people's ways, not animals' ways, she would stay willingly. My woman. My child. I was happy!

T
HE LODGE MOON
passed slowly, with much cold and snow. The meat of the six reindeer, piled frozen in the coldtrap, helped us live, but we kept hunting. We worked to keep the trails open, only to find wolves using them to reach the deer before we could. When wolves find deer, they choose one to kill and eat to the last scrap of offal but scatter the others widely and make them wary and shy. Thinking to make warm clothes for Muskrat, she and I set snares for the wolves. Then we learned that people had been trying for years to snare them. Maral said that in the past people had snared wolves, and the year before a snare of his had caught a young wolf, but the older wolves seemed to have learned about snares. We wouldn't succeed, he told us.

He was right. Instead of getting caught, as all other animals seemed to, these wolves sprang our triggers, ate our baits, and often ate our sinew nooses as well. If they didn't eat the nooses, they bit through them, ruining them, since a noose with knots doesn't work. Muskrat knew much about snaring, but these wolves stopped her. If she set out a line of snares, the wolves tracked her to get the baits or the animals caught in the snares. Then they took to tracking her anyway, just in case she was snaring. Where she would urinate, they would urinate. Why?

The wolves didn't seem to care that they were angering us. They camped near our lodge as always, digging deep holes in the snow and letting more snow bury them, so that they slept within hearing distance but sheltered from the wind and hidden from our sight. At night we sometimes heard their claws scratching on the roof, then heard them at the smokeholes, sniffing, digging, whining. But by the time we could get through the coldtrap with our spears, they would be gone. We had to watch Frogga and Pirit carefully, especially at the latrine. Small children crouching down put themselves in danger.

Yet we weren't completely sorry that the wolves chose to live where we lived. When they were near, they gave warnings. To be sure, their warnings were meant not for us but for each other, yet when we heard the warnings we took care.

In the Hunger Moon, the Lily came back to Narrow Lake to hunt the deer. At first we didn't know it, and we were more than surprised to find his footprints on our trails. After that we began to hear him roaring at night, frightening us and keeping us awake. He then took to squirting urine on the snow, as if he were trying to tell us something. He left enormous hairy scats beside his terrifying footprints on our trails. We were so frightened of him that we used our own trails with great care.

The ravens loved him. Whenever they found him, they showed their happiness in the sound of their calls and in the way they flew, as if they were playing. They even flew upside down. Often we could tell where he was because of ravens—if we saw two or three circling, or waiting in trees, or following something, we stayed away from that place.

Like the ravens, the wolves also seemed to keep track of him. If he came near the lodge when they were camping there, one of them might bark just once. The bark had a sound of its own to it—"Hi! Look there!" it seemed to say. We understood the meaning of that bark as well as the other wolves did. If we heard it, we guessed that the Lily was near.

When the Hunger Moon was new, Maral, Andriki, Marten, and I saw two reindeer crossing the ice on Narrow Lake, which the wind had cleared of snow. They were making for a trail on the north bank. We hurried to meet them, reached the trail before they did, waited in the snowdrifts, and speared them both. That night we ate heavily. When we could eat no more, we burned fat for the spirit of the lodge and sang to praise the Bear.

Because Andriki and I had together speared one of the reindeer, and because we couldn't be sure which spear had killed, we divided the hunter's portions. This meant we had to cut the hide. Thus Muskrat got some reindeer skin after all, since Lilan and Frogga already had skins to scrape and soften and didn't at the time want part of a cut skin. Muskrat surprised us by making strips of the hide.

As the Hunger Moon grew round, the sky became hazy without growing warm, and we saw that more heavy snow was coming. The full moon wore a hood of fox fur, and the next day we looked up to see two suns. Rin said they were the Woman Ohun and Her stillborn child, come to warn us that the Bear was no longer helping us but hunting us and that we should pay close attention to the food in our coldtrap, eating it sparingly lest we starve.

That night, in cold silence, snow began to fall. By morning the trees and the lodge were covered. By night of the next day we could hardly find the trails. The deer left. Perhaps they had known the snow was coming. The wolves and the tiger must have followed them. Where the animals went we didn't know, because the falling snow covered their footprints.

After that we heard no voices at night but the
hruhu
of an owl. Then we began to see a large gray owl hunting in the daytime, even though he was afraid of the ravens, who hated him. The women asked each other what it meant, this daytime hunting. They said the owl could be waiting for the death of one of us, searching for one of our spirits, as if he wanted to guide a spirit to its lineage in the Camps of the Dead. That the women should have such thoughts showed they were frightened.