Tsuga's Children (18 page)

Jen knew how hard it must be for Bren to say anything like that, so she knew she had been looking very sad. She had been thinking of the way through the mountain, then the frozen forest, then the small cabin; and then she remembered a time that seemed so long ago, when she and her mother were making butter in the churn and her mother sang the butter song in her clear and happy voice:

Out of night comes daylight,
Out of thin comes thick.
Oka knows how butter grows,
So turn the paddles quick.

Jen turned her face away from Bren’s dark eyes. “But I like it here, too,” she said.

Arel said, “If you can’t find your way back, we’d like you to stay here with us.”

Fannu said, “Arn can play on my side anytime he wants.”

Dona came over and sat on the other side of Jen, and the six children were quiet in the warm sun. They knew they were only children and could not decide things beyond their powers, but they could by their closeness make real for a while their separate world.

The next morning all the people—men, women, children and babies—made ready to travel to the Great Tree, where the council fire would be held. After the council fire they would camp by the warm lake and return to the winter camp the day after. Aguma herself had predicted that the next day would be clear, though it would be cold on the evening of the fire. Each family distributed food, arrows and necessary gear among its members, and each person would have a sleeping skin to roll up in on the cold ground, the fur inside.

Bren’s father had left early that morning, alone, so Bren went with Amu and Runa, Arn, Jen and Arel. Fannu and Dona went with Aguma’s party. It was a long walk across meadow, around swamps and through the woods, and they stopped only once, toward late afternoon, to rest and eat. Bren, who had been silent all the way, took his food and sat apart from them, his unstrung bow across his lap, his back against a spruce.

Arel looked at him worriedly and spoke in a low voice to Jen and Arn. “Bren is upset because he couldn’t go with Andaru. It doesn’t seem right to him.”

“But everybody seems worried,” Jen said. “I can feel it.”

“So can I,” Arel said. Her pale, delicate face was sad. “I heard my mother and father talking last night when we were all supposed to be asleep. It’s the Chigai. The people don’t know what to think about them and their ways, because it is said that the Chigai are never hungry, and the people don’t want to be hungry.”

Soon they rose and continued their journey to the Great Tree. Arn carried his unstrung bow in his left hand, his quiver tied to his pack, in which he carried both his and Jen’s food. Jen carried her sleeping-skin rolled and tied across her shoulders. It was a long walk, but finally they came to the meadow and climbed up the slope to the ledges and the tree. The sun had set behind the western mountains and a half-moon had risen in the southeast. Far above, a few thin coins of clouds still caught the light of the sun and lent a golden light to the valley. The Great Tree rose above the ledges, branch above branch, the sturdy trunk finally disappearing into green. At its base, behind the stone platform, was the black archway of the Cave of Forgetfulness.

The people gathered at the ledges, taking their places on the winter-brown grass around a large pile of branches that would be the council fire. On the stone platform in front of the archway, Aguma and several older people sat waiting for darkness and the lighting of the fire. Bren and Arel, with Fannu and Dona, took Jen and Arn to the front, where all the children sat. The grass was soft, the earth still warm from the departed sun, and all the people waited, speaking to each other in low voices.

Fannu and Dona had heard rumors that the council would be an important one. They were to have visitors from a settlement on the eastern edge of the valley, where some of their own people had visited in the fall. There were rumors of discontent with Tsuga’s teachings. Some people had left early that morning, as had Andaru, and actually visited the camp of the Chigai on the eastern edge of the meadow. It was said that the Chigai had wolves as servants, or as slaves, though that was hard to believe.

“Is Tsuga up there?” Arn asked. They could just make out the outlines of the people on the stone platform.

“He’s there,” Arel said. “He sits on Aguma’s left. You’ll see him when the fire is lighted.”

Bren, who had been silent, spoke to Jen and Arn. “But you had a ‘cow,’” he said. “Was that your servant? And the ‘ox’ and the ‘pig’ and the goats? Was that wrong?”

“They served us, I guess,” Arn said. “But they weren’t wild animals. Without us to protect them and feed them in the winter, they would have died.”

“Then how could they be animals?” Fannu wondered. “Tsuga says the animals live in the world, but we live in our clothes and hogans.”

“And we have fire,” Arel said.

As the light died the people grew silent and tense, and the children felt it. When Jen shivered, Arel reached for her hand and took it in hers.

A dim figure rose from among the people on the right and came to the base of the pile of wood. A few flickers from flint and steel, then a small red flame from within the pile, showed that the fire-lighter was Amu, Arel’s father. He stood silently in his buckskin clothes as the fire grew and began to crackle as it climbed within the black branches, turning the inner ones gold and red. Then Amu returned to his place. The crackling turned to a roar as the fire rose through its fuel. The ledges, the faces of the elders, and above them the high green branches of the Great Tree were lighted as if by daylight for a while until the fire fell back within itself to feed quietly on the larger wood. Faces, hot from the fire’s first surge, cooled in the new embering silence.

Jen and Arn had been watching the person sitting on Aguma’s left. They saw an ancient, wrinkled face below pure-white hair. The face was thin; the skin over the sharp cheekbones shone red. Now that person rose to his feet, and he was tall and wide-shouldered, like their father, though thin with age. His collarbones stood out at the neck of his deerskin tunic, angular and shiny. His black eyes were sunken, yet they reflected the firelight like shiny black stones.

“Let the council begin,” he said. His voice was sad and old, penetrating yet dry as a dying wind. “I am Tsuga Wanders-too-far, and what I know I will tell you.” He sat down again, waiting with an expressionless face.

From the left, out of the darkness, came a man in a deer mask with great antlers. Jen was afraid, and squeezed Arel’s hand.

“It’s all right,” Arel whispered in her ear. “It’s just the beginning of the council. Now they’ll choose who’s to make the gift to the stag.”

On the platform, Aguma rose to her feet. She held a loaf of bread in her hands. When she spoke she almost sang the words in a deep voice. “Arel and Bren have been chosen.”

Jen looked at Arel, who was nothing but proud and excited at having been chosen. Bren was proud, too, though he tried not to show it. They both got up and went to the old woman, who broke the loaf in two and handed half to each. Arel and Bren turned and went solemnly to the man in the deer mask, who nodded his great antlers as he received the bread. Then Arel and Bren turned and came back to take their places before the fire.

Jen wanted to ask Arel about this ceremony, which was almost like the one they had at home on Christmas Eve, but so much unlike the horrors she and Am had witnessed here before.

Tsuga rose to his feet again. He stood leaning on his long, unstrung bow as if he were very tired. The people were silent, waiting for him to speak.

“I am old enough to call you my children,” Tsuga began.

“Too
old!” someone shouted from the darkness beyond the firelight. There were gasps of dismay from the people, who turned their heads to search for whoever had spoken so rudely.

Aguma stood up heavily and spoke in her deep voice: “Who speaks to the council? Come into the light; only liars shout from the dark.”

“Come forward! Come forward!” the people said.

Soon a flustered though angry young man made his way to the council fire. He wore a long knife and carried an unstrung bow, his buckskin tunic decorated at neck and cuffs with wolf fur. “All right!” he said. “Here I am!”

“What do you want to say to the council, Lado?” the old woman said.

“The people of the eastern foothills have meat, while we nearly starved last winter!”

“We were hungry, but we did not starve,” Tsuga said.

“But they had all the meat they wanted!”

Tsuga sighed before he spoke again. “Yes, I know. And you would also have us keep these strange wolves, these creatures who kill their own kind …”

“The Chigai have shaggy cattle they can kill whenever they are hungry!”

“Prisoners,” Tsuga said.

Some of the people groaned at that word, in horror of it, but at the back, in the darkness, a different sound arose. It was a harsh murmur of defiance against Tsuga and the councillors. Someone shouted, “That’s what
you
say, but the Chigai increase!”

“They increase in numbers,” Tsuga said. “But why do they need numbers? Does it make their councillors feel more important?”

“They
are
more important!” Lado said.

“I cannot stop you from emulating them,” Tsuga said. “Knowledge is all I can give you. I have lived a long time and I will tell you what I know.”

“You’re a doddering old fool!” came a shout from the dark. “You and your tree! Can we eat wood in the iron month?”

Another of the councillors, a man of middle age who wore a cape of white mountain-goat fur, stood up and motioned for silence.

“I, too, have visited the Chigai,” he said, “and I am of mixed mind. I was taught to cultivate the earth and to hunt. But the hunting is harder than it was in my youth. We, too, grow in numbers; to have meat that is always available, and even the half-wolves to help us hunt… how can that be bad?”

Cheers came from many of the people. Those sitting around the children spoke excitedly to themselves.

“We must take a vote!” the young man shouted. “Let the Chigai show us how to fill our bellies!”

Another man came from the darkness to stand next to the young man. He was much more sure of himself, and when he spoke his voice was steady and his hands made reasonable gestures.

“I, too, have studied the Chigai and their ways,” he said. “They are numerous and wonderfully large and strong. They keep their cattle in wide fields and in long covered pens made of wood. The cattle are fed on grass and grain; they are protected, and multiply. Only a certain few of the people do the killing; the others never have to soil their hands with blood and fat, but partake of the meat and are never hungry. Others have taught the half-wolves to protect the herds and also to hunt down boar, bear and deer. The people are warm and fat in the coldest winters.”

Amid the resulting shouts and cheers, Tsuga stood, his arm in the air, asking to be heard. From his belt he took a small green branch and held it out before him. Finally the people grew silent, watching.

He spoke slowly, in his sad old voice. “I will not tell you the future because it is not mine, but yours—for better or for worse. All my life I have been a tiller of the earth, a caretaker of the fruit trees, and a hunter. We know each other and are equals, the creatures and I. They know my need and I know theirs. That is neither good nor bad; it has been my life.

“But before I go into the silence I will tell you what I know: it is evil to own another; it is evil to kill a prisoner; it is evil to teach betrayal; it is evil to have clean hands and eat meat, for ignorance of death is the greatest evil of all.”

When Tsuga had finished, the people, who were used to believing his words, were confused. Low murmurs arose as they asked questions among themselves. “What does Tsuga mean?” “Is it not necessary to wash your hands?” “Can anyone be owned?” “No one is taught to betray us.” “What did he mean?” “What did he mean?”

The young man, Lado, and the man who had made the reasonable gestures climbed to the stone platform next to the councillors.

“People!” said the man of the reasonable gestures. “Let us show you what man may do with a wolf, whom you now fear!” He signaled to the darkness, and a large man came to the platform leading something low and gray on a thong.

The man was a stranger, taller and more muscled than anyone else. His broad arms shone red in the firelight; his nose and mouth seemed small in his wide, oiled-looking face. He wore a broad shirt made from the glossy black skin of the shaggy cattle. He led a wolf, its white teeth and wide eyes gleaming with fear and hatred. “Now,” the big man said. “This is how we have our wolves.” He jerked the thong until the wolf, its gray fur ruffled, the hairs along its back stiffly rigid like a brush, came to the man’s feet and sat trembling, at one moment lowering its head in submission, at the next snarling defiance that was all white teeth and show.

The big man took a short, thick leather whip, or knout, from his belt and held it above the wolf, which cowered, grinning and snarling and fawning. “Are you my servant, animal?” the man demanded.

The wolf cowered yet snapped its long wet ivory teeth as if at an insect that had appeared in front of its jaws.

“That is not good enough!” the man said. He shortened the noose until the wolf choked and gagged, then beat it with the stubby knotted whip. The animal rolled over on its back to expose its tender underside to the hissing blows of the whip. It cried, whining and barking in short sharp chirps, almost like a bird, before the man stopped. Then the half-wolf, still submissive on its back, licked the man’s moccasined feet and ankles, whining and salivating, its tail tucked along its belly.

From the people came expressions of fear and wonder; even, from some of them, cries of satisfaction that a man could so dominate the feared wolf.
“That
one won’t steal our meat!” someone shouted.

“Nor ever chase a man up a tree,” the big stranger said. “Our people own the earth they walk upon. Everything is ours. We own the forests and the meadows and all the creatures who live in them. Our servants hunt for us. We have no need to run, or to use our noses and eyes and ears like animals, or to freeze silently in the chill before dawn. We are the masters!”