DIFFERENT WAYS

  Tuuli wandered around, looking for Wren. At last she spotted her, on a shingle beach just downriver of the camp, in a large gaggle of teens from the other three tribes. Wren was one of the youngest in the group. Everyone seemed busy with something or other. A few Fulmars were scraping the hide of the bison that had fed them all so well the evening before. Others were knapping – hitting lumps of flint to break off flakes to make into new scrapers as well as points for spears and darts. There were several small fires burning, and Tuuli knew they would have placed flints in them to bake, to make them stronger. One girl was fitting a new tip on a dart, setting it with melted resin and sinew. Some others were making reed baskets. They were all laughing and joking with each other.

  Tuuli held back. She was more confident with adults than with those only a few winters older than her. She didn’t feel ready to enter their world just yet. It made her feel nervous, on edge.

  Wren, she knew, had been looking forward to catching up with friends from other tribes at Spring Camp – friends who were spending more time together, away from their families. Wren had always been more gregarious than her; she was happy to be part of this large, vivacious group. Tuuli felt more comfortable being with just one or two people at a time. But sometimes Tuuli wished she was more outgoing, like Wren. Especially at Spring and Summer Camp, when everyone came together.

  Wren had seen her, and extracted herself from the group to come over. She’d been helping with the bison hide, and was wiping her fatty, oily hands on her leggings.

  ‘How are you this fine morning?’ she asked Tuuli merrily.

  ‘I’m… okay,’ she said, sounding like she didn’t mean the word. ‘What are you so happy about?’

  ‘Nothing really. Just chatting with friends,’ Wren said, adjusting to Tuuli’s mood.

  ‘Did you catch Aski’s report?’ Tuuli asked.

  ‘I was down here,’ replied Wren. ‘But we’ve heard about it.’

  ‘So, we’re leaving in three days. But Papa wants to go sooner. He’s packing up today.’

  ‘I thought he might,’ said Wren. ‘My mother said he’s been itching to go. Most of the older Eagles – Remi’s sisters at least – want to leave. I think the Snow Geese do too. That’s why we’re trying to get this done…’ She gestured back at the hide and the knapping.

  ‘I can’t leave,’ said Tuuli. ‘Not today.’ She dropped her voice, even though they were some distance from the others, and the river was louder than their voices anyway. ‘I want to go and find Andar,’ she said. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I do… But there’s a lot to get ready. Especially if we’re to head off today.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Tuuli pleaded. ‘This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to us. Ever. A real adventure. And you’re… hide-scraping?!’

  Wren bit her lip.

  ‘What were you thinking?’

  ‘Going back to the cave, I suppose. Or at least – heading up in that direction.’

  ‘All right.’ Wren glanced back at her friends. ‘Let me just go and tell them that we’re heading off. And if we take baskets we can say that we’re foraging for the trip. If you go and get ready, I’ll meet you by my tipi.’

  While she waited, Tuuli helped Starra to roll up furs into tight bundles. Lupa had found one still unfurled to lie on.

  The hide for the tipi was off and laid on the ground, and Kuba was folding it up.

  ‘Do we need to take the poles?’ he asked.

  ‘Not this time,’ replied Starra. ‘We’ll travel light. We can just make small tents on the way now. And actually, it’s warm enough to sleep out some of the time. We’ll leave the tipi skeletons here for our return in the Fall.’

  ‘It’s getting late in the day,’ said Tuuli, squinting up at the sun, which was almost at its highest. ‘Do you think we really will be heading off today?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ replied Starra. ‘I think the Eagles and the Snow Geese are pretty set on it. But I think the plan for us is to get all packed up, sleep around the fire tonight and then get an early start tomorrow.’

  ‘What does Aski think?’

  ‘She’s okay with it. In the end, it’s up to Jutsa, isn’t it?’

  Wren arrived, with a large basket at her hip and a new spear in her hand.

  ‘Ready to go foraging?’ she asked Tuuli.

  ‘More than ready,’ came the reply, as Tuuli tried not to sound too frustrated. Wren had taken her time. Tuuli had everything to hand. She tied a basket round her own waist, and picked up her bundle of darts and Remi’s old spear, which was hers now.

  ‘Can I come?’ said Kuba, leaving the half-folded tent hide on the ground.

  ‘No. Stay and help me,’ said Starra.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ sighed Kuba. But he went back to folding up the hide.

  Tuuli and Wren headed off, Lupa trotting along near them, up into the hills again.

  * * *

  They knew the way now, and made swift progress, up through the larches and spruces to the red alder scrub and onto the moor. They picked some leaves of wild celery and sorrel and put them into their baskets as they went, but didn’t stop for long. Lupa ran off after deer a couple of times but soon gave up the chase and looped back to them.

  They crested the ridge above the cave – and there was Andar, down in the gully, busily knapping some flint and singing softly to himself.

  ‘Hey there!’ Tuuli shouted, excitedly.

  Andar looked up at them and grinned his big toothy smile. He didn’t look in the least bit surprised to see them. In fact, he looked like he’d been expecting them.

  Tuuli and Wren scrambled down the side of the gully to him.

  ‘That’s some weird knapping,’ said Wren, immediately.

  ‘Rude!’ observed Tuuli. But she held out her hand to Andar. ‘Can I see?’ she asked. He was working on a large flint nodule, a mother-stone, bashing it with a pebble to release its offspring. He knocked off a roundish flake and handed it to her.

  ‘That’s a nice little knife,’ she remarked, carefully feeling the sharp edge.

  ‘More like a scraper,’ said Wren, taking the flake.

  ‘Can you make something like this?’ asked Tuuli, showing Andar the tip of her spear.

  He laughed and nodded, putting the large mother-stone that he’d been using on the ground, and fishing out a smaller flint nodule from a leather bag. He began tapping the edge of this nodule with his pebble-hammer, working out where to land his blows. Then he made up his mind and swiftly dealt three hits at one side of the flint. The flakes came away underneath it and he turned it over to inspect the new surfaces he’d created. Turning the flint again, he hit it, and let the resultant flake drop into his hand. He presented it to Tuuli: it was a triangular point, a perfect spear-tip.

  ‘Look at that!’ Tuuli said, impressed.

  ‘That would do the job,’ said Wren. ‘But look at mine.’

  She pointed her spear at Andar, who made a show of backing off as if in alarm.

  ‘Argh! No, no!’ he exclaimed. It was the first thing he’d said, all this time. They laughed.

  ‘Look at it,’ said Wren, again, proudly pointing to the tip of her new spear.

  It was a beautiful, long, leaf-shaped point.

  ‘We bring the half-made points from Winter Camp,’ Wren told Andar. ‘Then we finish them. I used an antler tine.’

  Andar was stroking the spear point.

  ‘I don’t think he understands what you’re saying,’ said Tuuli.

  ‘No, neither do I,’ agreed Wren. But she carried on telling him about the point, of which she was immensely proud.

  ‘It’s made of the best flint,’ she said. ‘You don’t even need to fire-harden it.’

  Then Andar said something – but it was a very strange-sounding something.

  Wren and Tuuli looked at each other. Andar said it again.

  ‘Ack?’ said Tuuli, trying to recreate the sound.

  Andar smiled and repeated the sound. Wren and Tuuli both tried to copy him this time. But the hard sound at the end of the word, if it was a word, wasn’t something they were familiar with. It almost sounded more like a click.

  ‘Is it “point”?’ asked Wren, holding up her own leaf-shaped spearhead. ‘Point. Point?’

  Andar nodded, repeating the word that sounded a bit like ‘ack’.

  ‘We say “point”. Point,’ said Tuuli. Andar looked at her, and as she repeated ‘point’, he was soundlessly trying to copy the shape of her mouth.

  ‘Mmmont?’ he finally said, questioningly.

  ‘Point,’ said Tuuli and Wren, together.

  ‘Bont,’ said Andar decisively.

  ‘That’ll do,’ said Tuuli, laughing. ‘I think you’re better at our language than we are at yours! A-k?’

  Andar laughed too, and pointed at Wren’s spearhead again. ‘Bont.’

  Then he grasped the shaft of Wren’s spear with one hand and gestured up onto the moors with the other.

  ‘You want to go hunting?’ asked Tuuli.

  He didn’t reply, but packed away his flint mother-stones, picking up useful flakes and leaving the others, and putting it all into his leather bag, which he then stashed just inside the entrance to the cave. And from the cave he brought out his simple wooden spear.

  ‘Let’s leave the baskets,’ Wren said to Tuuli. ‘We can pick them up later. Come on. Hunting’s more fun than foraging.’

  They tucked their baskets inside the cave as well.

  Then they followed Andar up onto the high moor, to see what animals might be around.

  There were plenty of grouse and ptarmigan, as usual. They spotted a large herd of horses in the distance. Lupa chased a boar but it got to its burrow in time. She poked her head in then clearly thought better of it and gave up.

  Up here on the moor there were very few trees and they could see for miles. They followed deer-paths through the heather, walking in single file. They saw, in the distance, some aurochsen and chamois. Eventually, they reached a high point and stopped to catch their breath and look around them at the view. Someone had made a small cairn, a tower of stones.

  ‘I can’t see Spring Camp,’ said Tuuli.

  ‘It’s down there,’ said Wren, pointing to a green crease in the landscape, full of larch and birch. Now Tuuli could see a few very thin skeins of smoke rising from the valley. She picked up a small stone and added it to the cairn.

  Andar was scanning the hills. Suddenly he pointed, and said another unintelligible thing.

  ‘What is an “oo-un”?’ Tuuli asked him, trying to repeat the word, and looking at where he was pointing. She couldn’t see anything.

  ‘I think… it’s a red deer,’ said Wren, squinting into the sun.

  Andar was already moving – crouching a little and walking swiftly down the hill. Wren and Tuuli followed. When they’d just dipped out of sight of the deer, they paused and Andar gestured to them in such a way that they knew he wanted them to split up. He would go off to the left around the hill, and they were to go round to the right.

  At the point when they’d almost lost sight of each other, Andar started moving up the flank of the hill, and Tuuli and Wren did the same, crouching low in the heather. Tuuli had a dart ready in her right hand, her long spear in her left. As they crept higher, they caught sight of the deer. It was a doe – and now they saw she had two fauns with her. They were downwind. She hadn’t spotted them nor smelt the humans.

  Suddenly, Andar leaped up from the bushes and launched his spear – it flew fast and true and took down one of the fauns. The doe spun away and raced towards Tuuli and Wren, her other faun following. Then she suddenly spotted them and pivoted away – plunging down the steep side of the hill. Tuuli had made a lightning-quick decision not to launch her dart at the other faun, or its mama. She let them go. Lupa had no such restraint, and ran at full pelt after the deer. Andar was by the dying faun, pulling his spear out and cutting its throat with a stone knife.

  ‘You don’t even need a stone-tipped spear,’ said Wren, ‘if you can throw like that.’ There was an undeniable note of admiration in her voice.

  Andar picked up the little deer by its back hooves and started to walk back down towards the gully and the cave. Once there, he skinned the deer, then Wren and Tuuli helped him butcher it, taking off the legs. Andar sliced the belly open, reached in and pulled out the liver, which he separated into three parts, offering a piece each to Wren and Tuuli. Tuuli grabbed the baskets from the cave to add some green leaves to the meal. Wren lit a fire, but Andar seemed very happy just eating raw meat.

  Then Lupa reappeared, not with a deer, but a mouthful of grouse. At first, she slunk away from them. But then, having weighed up the options, she dropped the grouse and came over for a piece of deer. Andar picked the head up and offered it to her. She gingerly opened her mouth and took it from him, then once again slunk away into a corner of the gully to gnaw at it.

  ‘What did you say it was?’ asked Tuuli. ‘ “Oo-un”?’

  Andar nodded. ‘Oo-un.’

  ‘So “ack” is spear-point and “oo-un” is red deer,’ said Tuuli, feeling quite smug at her grasp of this new language.

  ‘Or “ack” is just stone and “oo-un” is just meat,’ said Wren.

  ‘Or “ack” is just “pointed thing” and “oo-un” is “something with legs”!’ said Tuuli.

  Then she tried to talk to Andar.

  ‘Andar, will you stay here?’ Tuuli asked, using her hands to try to illustrate what she was saying. ‘Is your talo somewhere around here? Because we’re moving away. We’re going that way…’ She pointed off into the distance, in the direction of the sun – which was now very definitely sinking towards the horizon.

  ‘Hern’s horns, it’s actually quite late,’ said Wren. ‘We should go. We do need to pick some greens, or there’ll be questions.’

  ‘Let’s stay a bit,’ pleaded Tuuli. ‘Have some roasted deer, then let’s head off.’

  Wren acquiesced, and they roasted the legs of the deer, straight on the hot coals of the fire. It wasn’t too long before they could brush off the ash and tuck into the delicious, tender meat.

  Andar had a bit of cooked meat too. He looked at the contents of the baskets suspiciously, but tried some of the leaves.

  ‘We’re leaving… tomorrow,’ Tuuli said. ‘Will you come with us?’

  Andar shook his head sadly. Tuuli sighed.

  ‘You’re our friend,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to leave you here.’

  Lupa had made short work of the head, eating every bit of meat off it that she could. She’d even managed to pull the jaw off and eat the tongue. Coming back over for more, Andar gave her the intestines.

  ‘She’ll be your friend for life!’ said Tuuli, as Lupa wolfed down the soft guts.

  ‘Right, that’s it,’ said Wren decisively, gathering her stuff and getting up. ‘We’ve got to go.’

  They tied the baskets around their waists again, and wiped their greasy hands on their leggings.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Tuuli, touching her chin in the universal sign language that all the tribes knew. Andar made the same gesture. Did he know it, or was he just copying her? Tuuli wondered.

  ‘So, we’re leaving tomorrow,’ she said again. ‘But we come back in leaf-fall, in two moons.’

  ‘He has no idea what you’re saying,’ said Wren.

  ‘He might,’ said Tuuli. ‘I have to try.’

  ‘And we really must go. Goodbye, Andar,’ said Wren.

  ‘Goodbye,’ echoed Tuuli.

  ‘Bye,’ echoed Andar, quite clearly. And he grabbed his leather bag and took out the stone point he’d made earlier, pressing it into Tuuli’s hand.

  ‘Friend,’ he said, as a final goodbye.

  And so the girls left Andar on his own again, in the gully, and headed back down to the camp, filling their baskets to the brim with sorrel, wild onion, and crowberry leaves on the way.

  Lupa followed them, bringing her precious grouse with her.

  THE RAIN

  Wren and Tuuli returned to a camp that was reduced to just a few tipi skeletons. Everything else had been stacked and packed. The Snow Geese and Eagles had left the previous afternoon. And now the Fulmars got off to a head start, as the Swans packed up the last of their things.

  That night, they all slept out in the open, around two big campfires, ringed by large cobbles. In the morning, they woke early, as the sun rose. They rolled up the furs and were ready to set off.

  A family of bears was fishing for salmon on the other side of the river. Further upstream, a herd of shaggy horses had come down to the water’s edge. A few aurochsen – great cattle with enormous, curving and dangerous horns – had also congregated there. They were all completely safe from the hunters this morning, and seemed to know it.

  Tuuli had most of her stuff in a large leather bag slung on her back. She considered making a small pulk to carry her sleeping furs, but decided she’d really had enough of pulks. She wondered where her old pulk was, a half-moon on from the accident. Maybe all the way down the river and out into the Great Sea. Little fish would be tucking into her pickled salads. Her half-formed flints would wash up on a beach some time in the future, and people would wonder who made them.

  In the end, she rolled her furs up as neatly as she could and tied them into a bundle with a long hide strap. Then she tied the bundle onto a light frame she’d made of willow whips, with straps that could go over her shoulders. She rolled up a woven grass cape and a leather hood and tied that to the top of the pack, then lifted the lot onto her back – it wasn’t too heavy at all.

  In other years, Tuuli had always left this camp with a light heart and a spring in her step, sated with salmon and joyful with rekindled friendships. She would look forward to the last trek along the river to the estuary, anticipating the festival feel and the warm glow of Summer Camp. Her memories of Summer Camp were bathed in sunshine.

  But this year was different. The tribe was diminished. Poz was gone. And then there was the ache of leaving her new friend, up in the hills. Would she ever see Andar again? She peered up at the purple slopes. He was up there, somewhere. But would he be there when they returned in leaf-fall?

 

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