Wolf Road, page 15
* * *
The small tribe followed the river, pulling poles and pulks over the mud and shingle on its banks. The river was still surging and swollen with meltwater, but it was wider and deeper here; there was no white water rushing over stones. They made good progress. Jutsa and Aski were carrying their babies in slings. The talo was only as fast as the shortest legs – Vinta’s. She was walking with determination, and when she got tired, Remi and Maatu would each take one of her hands and swing her up and along between them.
Tuuli noticed that Remi was working hard at being cheerful, but Jutsa was unusually quiet. Tuuli looked up at a huge flock of migrating geese above them – the birds would beat them to the estuary. A huge bank of cloud was moving across the sky; as they travelled sunset-wards, it was coming to meet them. The wind was whipping up. Here was the change in the weather that Aski had spoken of. They’d need to make shelters to sleep under tonight.
They travelled far that day, past one old camp and on to the next one, but they still didn’t catch up with the Fulmars. Tuuli was quietly grateful. With the Eagles and Snow Geese around at Spring Camp, the tensions between Swans and Fulmars were somehow defused or, at least, suppressed. With those other two tribes gone, the fractures between the remaining two became more obvious; there was no avoiding them.
* * *
Last night, around the campfires, there had been no scenes, no outright rows. But the edginess of exchanges, the odd cross word or sarcastic comment, left Tuuli feeling unsettled. She hated the fact that two of her uncles and one of her aunts had strayed away from their partners. It meant that only Jutsa and Remi remained paired. Starra had lost her own man to the fox-bite-madness last year; now Garan, Aski and Maatu were also left on their own. Except they weren’t on their own, Tuuli thought, they were surrounded by family.
‘What are you daydreaming about?’ Wren asked, catching up with her cousin and disturbing her thoughtful reflection.
‘Just… people,’ said Tuuli.
‘People are weird,’ said Wren.
‘You’re weird,’ said Tuuli.
Wren laughed. ‘Not half as weird as you, though, Toomi-Tuuli!’
Tuuli smiled and hugged Wren.
‘You’ll always be with me,’ she said to Wren.
‘I will,’ said Wren. ‘We’re sisters.’
Tuuli dropped her voice to a near whisper, even though the river was loud enough to drown her words for everyone except Wren, at her side.
‘Do you think we’ll ever see him again?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Wren. ‘I wonder if he moves around as much as we do, or whether he just lives in that gully all year.’
‘He must have a tribe somewhere,’ mused Tuuli.
That afternoon, the sun disappeared behind the thick glowering cloud. It was like a huge, grey wolf pelt had been dragged over the sky. And then the rain started. Tuuli quickly unrolled the woven-grass cape and draped it over herself and her pack. She pulled on the leather hood. Everyone else was putting waterproofs on too – some of woven grass, others of oiled skins. When they stopped to camp that evening, they made simple, low shelters with hides pegged down to the ground and propped up on just a couple of sticks, with thin ropes for tension. They lit fires in the openings of the shelters for warmth and protection. The whole talo could now fit into five small shelters. Tuuli and Wren shared one. Maatu joined Aski and Nika that night.
The interminable rain pattered on the hides.
‘It’s a nice sound, don’t you think?’ Tuuli commented to Wren, when they were tucked up under their furs. ‘It’s comforting somehow. That all this water is falling from the sky but we’re dry under cover.’
‘I like it too,’ said Wren sleepily. A moment later, they were both fast asleep.
Tuuli woke up in what must have been early morning. But it was hard to tell because it was so dark and grey. Her lower belly was full of water that she needed to get rid of, so she extricated herself from her pile of furs, trying not to wake Wren. Lupa rolled over, opened her eyes a fraction, groaned, stretched her legs out, and closed her eyes again.
Tuuli walked alone up into the taiga, barefoot on the damp moss. Birds were only just starting to wake up and greet the damp day. She added her own wet offering to the sodden ground.
Just as she started to make her way back down to the little camp, she heard a sound that made her heart stop. She froze absolutely still and strained to listen. It was gone. But she was sure that what she’d heard wasn’t a bird. It had sounded like Andar’s song. Just a little fragment, a couple of notes, of his music from the cave. She turned around slowly, still listening hard. Nothing.
She walked further up into the taiga, losing sight of the camp. She couldn’t go too far. She didn’t even have her spear with her. Never leave camp without a weapon in your hand, Remi had always taught her. She had her flint knife tucked into her tunic. Did that count? Not really.
She stopped and listened again. And was suddenly aware of something else approaching. She sank down to her knees, against the trunk of a larch, heart thumping in her chest. And a huge lynx appeared, right in front of her. With their great padded paws, lynxes could move so quietly. It was a beautiful, young one – still fluffy in its winter coat, grey and spotted. Tufted ears, amber eyes. What a creature. She’d only ever seen two before - and never this close. She’d been completely unaware of it until it was almost upon her. But clearly the lynx was just as surprised as she was. Tuuli sprang to her feet, threw her arms up in the air and hissed at the cat.
‘Aaaaah!’ she cried.
The lynx took one look at her and scarpered. Racing off up the hill, it was gone in a flash.
Tuuli blew out her cheeks. That was too close. What if it had been a lion? Reluctantly, she turned and headed back down the hill. She paused closer to the camp to drink some water and wash her face in a tiny stream. In some small way, she regretted not taking her spear with her that morning. The lynx would have made a beautiful coat. And then, she thought, the lynx looked better in its fur than she would have done.
‘Morning,’ said Wren, uncurling from inside their shelter and stretching out her arms as she yawned. ‘I see it’s still raining,’ she said, as a raindrop fell right into her eye.
‘All the snow’s gone,’ said Tuuli, sitting down and poking at the fire. There were some embers buried under the damp, charred wood. It would be easy to get it going again. ‘And… I thought I heard Andar up in the woods, singing.’
‘Did you go and look?’
‘Well, yes, but then there was a lynx. And I thought I’d better come back.’
‘I love lynxes,’ said Wren. ‘They’re so fluffy!’
‘This was a particularly fluffy one,’ agreed Tuuli.
‘You didn’t fancy another pet, then?’ asked Wren.
‘Mmm. I’d love my own lynx,’ said Tuuli. ‘But I don’t think Lupa would be too pleased.’
She rubbed the little wolf behind the ears. Lupa growled with delight.
‘You vicious beast,’ Tuuli cooed at her.
Wren sat up.
‘So,’ she said, sounding serious all of a sudden. ‘What do you think? Was it Andar?’
‘I think so,’ said Tuuli, somewhat doubtfully.
‘Or,’ said Wren, crawling up to Tuuli on her hands and knees and getting very close, looking right into Tuuli’s eyes, ‘was it a bird?’
Tuuli laughed.
‘Honestly, it could have been,’ she said. ‘It was very quick. But,’ she added, ‘there is always a possibility that he’s following us.’
‘Well, he’ll have to get a move on, then,’ said Wren. ‘Remi was saying last night that he wants to do a two-day walk in just one day – again.’ She groaned. ‘I, for one, do not understand the rush. Summer Camp will still be there, whether we reach it in a quarter-moon or a half-moon.’
‘He likes to be settled,’ said Tuuli. ‘But I think he’s also worried that summer will be short this year. That it’s come late and that the snows will come early.’
‘Ama will do things in her own sweet time, and there’s no guessing what’s in her mind,’ said Wren.
‘Well, now you’re sounding as mysterious as Aski,’ said Tuuli. ‘I prefer Papa’s way of thinking. You can look at what’s happening around you, and learn from it. If changes are coming, I’d rather be prepared.’
A DEER HUNT
It rained all day. They trudged on and on, following the wide bends of the river. Around midday, they stopped and found shelter among the larches.
‘Come hunting with me,’ Remi said to Tuuli.
She was surprised. He’d been so wrapped up in camp politics lately, off with Maatu. And Tuuli, of course, had been absorbed in her own adventure. In just the last half-moon, her whole life had changed – expanded. There was a world beyond the river valleys that was stranger than she could imagine; a world that contained Andar. But here was her father suggesting they go hunting together, the two of them, for the first time in moons.
‘I’d like that,’ Tuuli replied to her father.
She fetched her darts from her pack, which she had propped up against a tree trunk where it would stay dry.
‘Let’s go,’ said Remi, striding off, holding his long spear in his hand. Four darts and his dart-thrower were tied on his back.
Tuuli waved to Wren as she headed off. Wren was playing with baby Nika, who was just starting to roll around if you put her down on a fur. Wren was tickling her.
‘Bring us back something nice!’ Wren called after Tuuli.
Remi and Tuuli walked up into the taiga, over the hills that rose gently away from the river.
‘How’s the ankle?’ asked Remi.
‘Oh, much better,’ she said. ‘I think it’s almost completely healed.’
‘Well, be a little careful with it,’ said Remi. ‘You can think something’s good and sound and put a little too much stress on it – and then it goes again.’
‘You sound like you’re speaking from experience,’ said Tuuli.
‘Of course,’ said Remi, smiling. ‘Don’t forget how much older and wiser I am.’
Tuuli grinned. Her father was back to his old self, even if just for a while.
They crested a hill, turned sunset-wards again and saw, down by the river, a small herd of mammoths. One older and two younger females, and a little one, maybe just two winters old, down at the water’s edge.
‘They’re here late,’ said Tuuli. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen mammoths after Spring Camp.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Remi, a grim note in his voice. ‘They should have gone away to the colder lands by now.’
They spotted a huge elk with magnificent antlers. And then a herd of roe deer, moving slowly over the heathered hillside. The wind was still blowing against the river.
‘We need to get downstream of them,’ said Remi. And they dropped down into the larch taiga, half-running to get ahead of the deer. Lupa trotted at Tuuli’s heels.
‘Will she stay with us?’ asked Remi.
‘I hope so,’ said Tuuli.
Very soon, they were in the right place to intercept the herd. It was still raining, but not hard enough to obstruct their view. They tucked in at the base of a small cliff, which offered some shelter from rain. They nestled down among some boulders, which helped to conceal them.
‘It won’t be long,’ said Remi.
There was a lengthy pause. Despite the shelter from the overhang, rain dripped down Tuuli’s hood and onto her neck, under her cape. She shivered. Lupa was sitting quietly, occasionally licking wet rocks.
‘Papa,’ said Tuuli quietly, breaking the silence. ‘How many tribes are there in the world?’
Remi looked at her quizzically.
‘In the world we know of?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘About twenty. Everyone that gathers at Summer Camp… In the world beyond, I have no idea. It could be endless.’
‘The world beyond?’
‘Yes, the world beyond. I’ve travelled far enough – before I met your mother – to the edges of the river valleys and the foot of the mountains of the sun, and the cold plains where the mammoths go in summer. And the world just goes on and on. There’s an edge to it at the coast, at the Great Ocean. But in other directions… it may have no end, no edge.’
Tuuli was silent for some time, taking in the scale of what Remi was describing. Then she framed a question.
‘When you travelled… did you find other people who we don’t see now? People who don’t ever come to Summer Camp?’ she asked.
‘I did,’ said Remi. ‘And they have their own paths, their own gatherings.’
‘Were they very different?’ she asked.
‘In some ways,’ said Remi. ‘Just as we have our ways of speaking, they have theirs. And they have different ways of marking their bodies. They wear some different things and they make fire in different ways to us.’
‘But you could understand them?’
‘Yes, of course. Because there have always been people travelling to make those more distant connections. We are all different, but we are all one people in the end.’
Tuuli fell quiet again for a bit. They studied the hills above them for signs of the roe-deer herd. Nothing yet.
‘All the people you’ve met, did they look like us? Apart from their body-marks and clothes, were they like us?’ She paused for breath.
Remi looked at her, surprised.
‘There are differences, of course,’ he said. ‘Some are shorter, some are taller. Some have lighter skin, others darker. I’ve heard of rare humans born with blue eyes and white hair, though I have never seen such a person.’
‘Like a snow fox,’ said Tuuli. ‘A snow fox that stays white all year.’
Suddenly they saw a deer appear on the hillside, then another. They fell silent. Tuuli reached for a dart; Remi had his dart-thrower and a dart ready. But he also held his hand out to her, palm down, in a gesture that said ‘wait’. Tuuli, in turn, laid a hand on Lupa’s neck. The wolf had seen the deer and was ready to spring into action, but Tuuli needed her to stay in place, for now.
Then Remi looked at Tuuli, raised his eyebrows and nodded. That was the signal. He rose to his feet and raised his right hand, clasping his dart-thrower together with a dart, ready to throw. Tuuli was poised, ready with a dart in her hand too. They both took a few steps forward and then launched their darts into the herd, each targeting their own deer. Remi’s lightning-fast dart found a victim. Tuuli’s missed and fell to the ground, but she was already reaching for another. Lupa had set off in a great curving arc, running right around the deer, and she was now turning back – the panicking deer were more scared of the small wolf than the armed humans.
The whole herd pivoted and started to thunder towards Remi and Tuuli. Tuuli aimed and loosed another dart at one of the leading deer. It found its target. Then, all in a rush, Remi pulled her to the ground, and threw himself on top of her, as the entire herd hurtled right at them – and over them, hooves flying, jumping up and over the small cliff.
Then they were gone. Remi and Tuuli slowly got up. Remi groaned.
‘Hern’s horns,’ he muttered. ‘That wolf should’ve told us she was going to do that.’
Tuuli was relieved her father was still able to joke with her.
‘Are you okay?’ she said. ‘Let me look at your back…’
She lifted up his oilskin cape and his tunic. His back was covered in red gashes. The hooves of the deer had cut him even through those layers.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It would have been much worse without your rain-cape. But there will be bruises. Big bruises.’
‘Are you okay?’ grunted Remi.
‘I’m fine,’ replied Tuuli. ‘And we shot two deer – look.’
Sure enough, two of the herd had been left behind. One was dead. The other, pierced by Tuuli’s dart in its chest, was stumbling around, unable to run, dying by the moment. Tuuli walked up to it, held its head and looked into its beautiful big eyes, then swiftly cut its throat with her flint knife, muttering a prayer despite herself.
‘Ama, let your creature depart in peace.’
And then it was done, and the brown eyes saw no more. And Tuuli laid the deer gently down.
They tied up the deers’ feet in pairs, quickly cut down and trimmed two larch saplings into poles, slipped the paired hooves onto the poles, then lifted the two poles onto their shoulders to carry the deer back. Remi groaned as he bore the weight.
‘We could butcher them here,’ offered Tuuli.
‘No. I’m fine,’ grunted Remi. ‘Let’s get them back to the camp. It’s not far.’
It wasn’t far, but Remi’s injuries meant that progress – carrying extra weight as well – was slow.
Tuuli picked up the thread of their earlier conversation.
‘Have you ever seen someone with sand-coloured skin?’ she asked. ‘Like the dunes at Summer Camp?’
‘No,’ grunted Remi.
‘Or someone with yellow hair?’
‘No,’ grunted Remi, again.
‘Or someone with blue eyes?’
‘No,’ said Remi. ‘Neither have I seen anyone with red, purple or pink eyes.’
Tuuli was quiet. They made their way down off the heathery hillside and into the sparse larch forest, feet sinking into damp moss. It was still raining, but less heavily now.
‘I’ve seen someone like that,’ said Tuuli.
‘What?’ replied Remi.
‘Someone with amber skin, amber hair and blue eyes.’
‘You’ve had too much mushroom tea,’ said Remi, disapprovingly.
‘Wren’s seen him too.’
At this, Remi stopped in his tracks. They lowered the deer to the ground. Remi turned to face Tuuli.
‘What are you saying?’ he asked, suddenly sounding deadly serious.
Tuuli felt hot under his interrogative gaze. Her face, and weirdly, her knees, suddenly felt very warm indeed. She hadn’t meant her secret to escape in quite this way.
‘We saw a boy,’ she said quietly.
