Wolf Road, page 11
There were clumps of heather around them, and Wren picked some stems and pinched them in her fingers with the reindeer meat to pop in her mouth. Tuuli did the same – the clean taste of the heather went well with the dark, rich flavour of the dried meat. They sat in silence for a while, crouched down on their haunches, nibbling heather and meat, and looking over the trees towards the camp, which was mostly obscured by the woods from this perspective. But they could just about see some thin skeins of blue smoke rising into the air from campfires – people were up and about.
‘Which way do you want to go?’ asked Wren.
Tuuli bit her lip and looked up and down the valley. Her ankle was aching.
‘I really don’t know. Upriver a bit, maybe, over the top? That’s closer to where he found me. But he could be anywhere. He could be days away from here.’
She paused, looking dejected.
‘Perhaps it was foolish even to try, to hope.’
‘Tuuli! This isn’t like you! Come on, this is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to you – to any of us. You can’t give up yet – we’ve only just walked up onto the hills! And who knows, he could be here. If we go back now, you’ll regret not trying.’
Tuuli smiled.
‘All right, then. Let’s go explore. Let’s head upriver but stay high in the hills.’
They stood up and moved off, once again turning their backs on the campsite. They’d left the forest behind and below them now, and were tramping through alder brush, then out onto the high, rocky heathland. The plants were springy underfoot, and there, scattered across the mat of snow-willow were patches of waxy, dark green leaves and the eight-petalled white flowers of the avens, heralding spring. On gravelly slopes, they stepped over mossy mounds which would be covered in pink flowers in another moon’s time.
They skirted the margin of a large vernal pond, where groups of black grouse with spring-shiny feathers had gathered to fight each other. The birds were so focused on their lekking, it would have been easy to send a few darts in and come away with plenty of food. Lupa rushed in among the grouse and sent them all tumbling, flying away, across the heather, clucking and cackling in alarm. She snapped at their tailfeathers but came back empty-mouthed – still excited and pleased with herself. Tuuli and Wren laughed at her.
They pressed on, through the alder brush and onto the high heathland, where they saw plenty of ibex and more wild horses at a distance. Most of the horses still had their long, thick winter coats, tawny with black legs and hooves. But some were paler with dark spots. The herd charged across the hillsides, full of joyful energy.
‘I love the horses up here,’ said Tuuli.
‘Not as good as deer,’ remarked Wren.
‘I didn’t mean to eat. I just like them. They’re free spirits. They run as fast as clouds.’
Wren smiled at her. ‘You do say weird things, Toomi-Tuuli. You’ve got a bit of Aski’s way-of-seeing in you. Perhaps you’re going to be a shaman when you grow up.’
‘I am grown up,’ retorted Tuuli. ‘Grown up enough to know that I don’t want to be a shaman. It sends you mad, that calling.’
‘Aski’s not mad!’
‘She fights it, though, doesn’t she? It’s as much a curse as a gift.’
They journeyed on. The sun had swung right around in the sky and was heading back down towards the horizon.
‘If we turn back now, we’ll be home just as it gets dark,’ observed Wren, a note of caution in her voice.
‘Just a bit further?’ pleaded Tuuli. ‘Just over that hill?’ She pointed ahead of them.
‘Okay, but no more than that. We can come out again tomorrow.’
‘But then we wouldn’t get any further, would we? We set off as early this morning as we possibly could’ve.’
‘Unless we bring kit and make a camp up here,’ suggested Wren.
‘We could do…’ agreed Tuuli. ‘But let’s just get over this rise. Please. Then I promise we can start heading back.’
‘All right, then, just this last hill. Then home.’
* * *
They reached the crest of the ridge and were looking down into a small, hidden hollow. As they started to scramble down the rocky slope, Tuuli suddenly gasped.
‘There’s a cave,’ she whispered.
‘Looks like it,’ said Wren, peering down into the base of the shallow gully where there was a dark opening.
They used their spears as staffs to help them clamber down to the bottom of the cleft. They approached the mouth of the cave and crouched down to peer in. It was as black as the darkest night in there.
‘I haven’t got a lamp with me,’ said Tuuli.
‘I’ve got my fire-kit. But no lamp or torch. We could come back with one tomorrow if you really want to look inside. We can’t risk it without fire – there could be a lion or a bear in there. We’ve got to be careful,’ urged Wren.
‘But there’s no spoor,’ remarked Tuuli. And it was true. There were none of the usual warning signs of a lion, bear or even a hyena around – no shredded bark, no faeces, no crunched bones. Getting down on her knees, Tuuli stuck her head just inside the entrance, sniffing the air. Lupa was right beside her, doing the same, pushing her nose in, inhaling in noisy gulps. Wren tried to peer in around them.
‘Hey,’ said a strange, deep voice behind them, and the girls both spun round and stood up, quick as a flash, spears in hand. They’d both been on edge, alert to the signs of a predator – but here, standing in front of them, was their own quarry. The lone boy with his piercing blue eyes and his honey-brown hair lying thickly around his shoulders.
‘Hern’s horns!’ exclaimed Wren. ‘You’re REAL!’
FRIEND
‘Andar!’ cried Tuuli. ‘I knew we’d find you!’
But Lupa had tucked herself beside Tuuli’s knees, growling at the boy, her hackles raised.
‘Lupa, it’s all right,’ said Tuuli, reaching down to place a hand on the wolf’s neck. Lupa tried to lunge forward, but Tuuli managed to hold her back.
Andar backed away from them. Wren stepped forward, holding her spear in both hands.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
‘Friend,’ he said simply, laying the palm of his right hand against his chest, and kneeling down to place his own spear on the ground.
‘Wren,’ said Tuuli, urgently. ‘It’s all right. He’s not going to hurt us.’
Wren glanced at her cousin then back at Andar again, then took a deep breath, but kept her spear in her hand.
‘I wanted to come and find you, before,’ Tuuli turned to Andar, ‘but I couldn’t leave the camp. I had to wait for my ankle… It’s much better now.’
Tuuli reached out to put a hand on Wren’s shoulder.
‘This is my cousin, Wren. She wanted to meet you too.’
The tension was lifting. Even Lupa had stopped growling.
‘Have you been up here all along?’ asked Tuuli.
Andar smiled again, then made a sweeping gesture across the hills around them.
‘Here,’ he said.
Wren still looked amazed, wide-eyed. It wasn’t that she hadn’t believed Tuuli. But there had clearly been some doubt in her mind. She regained her composure.
‘Who are you? Where are your people?’ she asked Andar.
He looked at her questioningly, raising his eyebrows again.
‘Andar?’ he said.
‘I don’t think he understands,’ said Tuuli to Wren.
‘No kidding,’ said Wren, under her breath. ‘He’s not exactly chatty, is he?’
‘She doesn’t mean it,’ Tuuli apologized to the boy whose name seemed to be Andar, but the gentle jibe had passed him by.
Tuuli turned to Wren.
‘Have you got any reindeer meat left?’
‘A little,’ she replied, and took out the now diminutive parcel, unwrapping it and following Tuuli’s implicit suggestion, offering it to Andar. He took a piece, sniffed it, then ate it – whole, hardly bothering to chew it.
‘Good!’ he said.
‘Have some more,’ said Wren, holding out the parcel. Andar took a few pieces then offered the remaining scraps of dried meat back to them.
He looked at Tuuli and then at Wren.
‘Friend… friend,’ he said.
‘Where do you come from, Andar?’ asked Wren, speaking more slowly this time.
Again, he looked at her with his heavy brows furrowed, as if he was having to concentrate extremely hard to make any sense of what she was saying.
‘Here,’ he said, gesturing around them again.
‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ said Wren to Tuuli. ‘If he – if his people – lived around here, we’d have met them before. We know all the other talos in these parts. And he’s so… completely different from everyone else.’
There were plenty of other talos among the river valleys. At Summer Camp, when they reached the wide estuary, people would come from far and wide to gather by the dunes, to feast on reindeer – and party. The girls had seen people of all shapes, they’d thought. But they’d never seen anyone like Andar before. His difference seemed to go deeper.
Wren and Tuuli continued to bombard Andar with questions.
Where exactly had he come from, today?
Where was his camp?
He looked at them, listening carefully, but he barely spoke.
And then suddenly it felt much cooler. Tuuli shivered.
‘Oh – we need to head back,’ said Wren, standing up, suddenly aware of how late it was. The sun was very low in the sky.
‘But we’ve only just found him!’ hissed Tuuli, as she got to her feet.
Andar stood up too, and now Tuuli turned to walk a few steps away from him, in the direction of Spring Camp – then turned back and beckoned to him. ‘Come?’ she asked. ‘Come back with us?’
This Andar clearly understood. But he stood quite still.
‘No,’ he said sadly, shaking his head.
There was a pause.
‘Please? Come?’ said Tuuli.
‘No,’ Andar said again, this time more firmly.
Tuuli sighed and shrugged, looking at Wren.
‘I’m sure we can come up here and find him again,’ said Wren. ‘But we have to go back now, or they’ll send people out looking for us.’
Tuuli sighed again, melodramatically blowing her lips out, just as she had when Lupa had run off.
‘I can’t believe we’ve just found you and now we’ve got to go,’ she said to Andar, who once again seemed oblivious to the meaning of her words. But there was a sparkle, perhaps even mischief, in his eyes. This time he was beckoning to her – and he turned towards the cave entrance.
‘Come,’ he said, leading her to it. Tuuli walked back towards him.
‘Tuuli!’ exclaimed Wren. ‘We can’t do this now. We’ve got to get back. Your mother will kill me if I don’t get you home safely, you know that. You’re still limping!’
‘Oh, come on, Wren,’ Tuuli exclaimed. ‘You’re never usually one to turn down an adventure!’
Andar was kneeling down and reaching inside the mouth of the cave. He fetched out two, round hollowed-out stones. Then he opened the bag that hung at his waist and took out a small leather pouch, tied up tight with a thong. He laid it on the ground, untied the thong and spread out the patch of leather to expose its contents – a large, sticky lump of animal fat. With two fingers, he scooped up a generous glob of the fat and smeared it into one of the stone bowls; then he did the same with the other.
Tuuli realized what he was doing, and she picked a clump of lichen from the rocks, and some twigs from a stubby juniper bush growing in a crevice, and offered them to him. He grinned at her, taking the lichen and pulling it into two pieces, rolling them between his fingers, then pushing a piece into each of the bowls, together with some of the juniper twigs. Then he picked up a piece of bark that was lying near the cave, and took another pouch from the bag at his waist. From it, he drew out a lump of grey stuff, a flint and a shiny rock.
‘A fire kit!’ whispered Wren, who had come over to see what they were doing.
Andar took the grey lump – which they recognized as tinder-fungus – and scraped the surface of it with a flint to make it rough. Then he set it down on the bark, and took up the flint and the silvery stone, striking one against the other until tiny sparks leaped away and landed on the fungus. Tuuli had grabbed some more lichen and handed it to him. After a few sparks had settled on the tinder, Andar wrapped the smoking fungus in the lichen and blew on it gently, in cupped hands. Wren had gathered some more small twigs – she had decided she might as well pitch in with this adventure – and they made a small fire with the glowing fungus and lichen at its heart. A few small flames licked up around the twigs. Andar presented the wicks of the two lamps he’d prepared to the little yellow flames. He looked up at the two girls, grinning widely again, and offered one of the now-smoking lamps to Wren.
Lupa was half-hiding behind Tuuli’s legs. Andar reached out towards the wolf, but Lupa pulled her lips back to silently show him her teeth. He raised his large eyebrows again and gently laughed.
Then he turned away and crouched down again by the cave mouth, twisting round to grin at them both one last time, then crawled inside, lamp in hand. In no time, he was gone. Tuuli was peering in after him.
‘Well, go on, then,’ said Wren.
‘It’s a bit dark,’ replied Tuuli.
‘That,’ said Wren, ‘is the thing with caves. Go on. Get in there!’
Tuuli ducked down and crept through the entrance. Wren followed, holding her own smoky lamp to light the darkness as they disappeared out of the growing twilight outside – into the black inside of the cave.
The lamps were very dim, but their eyes soon adjusted to the gloom. After crawling down a low passage, Andar cautiously stood up, feeling the ceiling above him with his free hand, to avoid cracking his head on it. As he moved forward, Tuuli and Wren followed his lead, carefully standing up and moving forward too. The lamps flickered in a faint draft, illuminating the rippled walls of the tunnel. Small curtains of stalactites hung down from the ceiling above them. The tunnel began to shrink in size, and they all had to stoop down, then drop onto their knees to finally crawl along.
Lupa had reluctantly followed them this far, but she refused to enter this low tunnel. She whined a little, and Tuuli called to her, but she stayed put.
‘Stay there, then, Lupa!’ Tuuli called back to her. ‘We’ll be back soon!’
She didn’t blame Lupa one bit for staying behind. Caves were dangerous places – even with no signs of predators outside, there might be other entrances; there could be a bear or a hyena in here.
Tuuli shuddered. Don’t think about it, she told herself. But, wedged in between Andar and Wren, with no lamp of her own, she was suddenly very nervous. Despite the coolness of the cave, she was sweating – not so much with the exertion, but with anxiety.
Just as she felt panic rising within her, she saw that Andar had stood up again in front of her, and she crawled after him out of the low, narrow tunnel into a huge chamber. Wren emerged too, and now there were two small lamps fighting against the black. The ceiling soared off into the absolute darkness above them, and in the dim light they could make out great stalactites and tiers of stone curtains hanging down from the walls, which sloped inwards as they rose. Tuuli stubbed her toe on a stalagmite projecting up from the cave floor, and as she peered around, she could see many more stalagmites. She held onto one, stepping around it, and Andar suddenly put his arm out to stop her.
‘Look!’ he said urgently, pointing down and holding his lamp low so that Tuuli could see the large crack in the floor which she’d almost just stepped into. She could hear a river down there, in the black depths of the crack. She gave a low whistle, relieved. She’d been so close to stepping into oblivion. The noise of the rushing water was transformed by the cave – it seemed to linger in the damp air, an eerie, otherworldly noise. Wren touched her arm.
‘This is incredible!’ she whispered, her eyes wide and her pupils huge in the darkness.
ANDAR’S SONG
Neither Tuuli nor Wren had ever been in such a deep cave. They’d heard stories from elders – and Aski – about vast caverns and sacred, subterranean rivers, but couldn’t imagine anything so extraordinary. The caves they used as homes at Winter Camp were more like hollows in the cliff, not a completely different world like this cavern.
Andar guided the girls away from the dangerous gully and, stepping over broken stalagmites, sat down on the silty floor, placing his lamp down next to him. Tuuli and Wren did the same. They looked around them, their eyes adjusting to the low light. They were sitting in a circle of broken stalagmites and stalactites that had clearly been deliberately arranged like this, marking out the space. And as they looked around them, silently, at the flickering light playing on the sculpted stone, Andar opened his mouth and began to sing.
He had a beautiful, low voice. Andar’s song didn’t seem to have any words – just hollow sounds, broken only when he took a breath. The notes flowed together and around the cave, filling up its hollows, bouncing back off its walls. It stopped sounding like a human voice. It was as though the stalactite curtains were singing – an ancient music that poured out of the earth itself, its caverns and its secret passageways. It wasn’t anything like the songs that Wren and Tuuli had learned to sing around the fire at night. It wasn’t even like the old tunes that some of the elders would play on bone flutes, the tunes that roused the ancestors from their sleep and ensured their protection. It wasn’t anything like the chants that accompanied shaman flights. This music was something completely different: deep and earthy; strange and beautiful. And somehow sad as well.
The last note of Andar’s song faded away, and the flames of both lamps guttered in a sudden small draft, but then came back brightly.
‘That was beautiful,’ Wren whispered, for once so moved that she didn’t make a joke.
‘Wonderful,’ said Tuuli, equally quietly.
