Wolf Road, page 2
They lit a fire and cooked outside the tents. A couple of Tuuli’s uncles had headed off to hunt when the talo had come to a stop. By the time the tents were up and the fire was going, they were back, with a hare and two rock ptarmigans to share among the tribe. It wasn’t much, but at least it was fresh, which meant they could keep the rations of roasted and dried reindeer meat and rancid fat for the journey. Kuba had finally made himself useful and sharpened a few long sticks to skewer the little carcasses, so they could be roasted over the roaring fire. The meat was shared out among the tribe. Tuuli was lucky and got a hare’s hind leg. She ate all the meat off the bones, stripping them completely bare. She broke the thigh bone in half and picked out the delicious fatty marrow inside with a thin stick. Eventually she had to admit there was nothing more to be extracted, and she threw the greasy bones onto the fire and sat licking her fingers.
After her mother had crawled into the tipi to get an early night with the baby, Tuuli sat outside, leaning against her father’s legs, enjoying the heat of the fire and the lazy chat. She watched the embers glowing, like a living thing. Every now and then there was a pop, and a little flurry of bright sparks would launch upwards, drifting in the cold air for a few moments before losing its hot glow. Talk had already turned to what would happen when they caught up with the reindeer. They knew when this would happen, as their route was planned to intersect the course of the reindeers’ migration, which never varied, year to year. The reindeer always followed the valleys, and the tribe should catch up with them in a half-moon, heading up over high ground to meet the valley snaking back around. There was a perfect meander downstream, where the reindeer would have to cross the river, and where the hunters could lie in wait in the bushes on the far side.
‘I’ll get to try out my new dart-thrower,’ Remi was saying. This invention was already his pride and joy. He’d been working on it all winter, whittling it to perfection during the long evenings.
‘So this is my sixth dart-thrower,’ mused Remi. ‘The others have all had problems, but I could see how to improve them. And this one, I believe, is the wolf’s nuts. It will fly strong and true and deliver us meat to feast on. You’re all going to want one like it, I can assure you.’
On the other side of the fire, Uncle Leon laughed and spat out the piece of hare leg he was eating. Another uncle, Kussa, guffawed.
‘Something funny?’ asked Remi, with a hint of annoyance in his voice.
‘No, no,’ said Leon quickly. And then, quietly, sarcastically, ‘I can’t wait to see it, really.’
Kussa laughed again.
Remi shifted his weight, to sit in a more upright position. Tuuli moved away from him slightly. She could see how this was going. The women had gone to bed – even Wren – and now the men were going to have a row. There was often tension in the air at this time of year, when everyone was a bit hungry, surviving on the remaining winter rations with thin pickings from short daily hunting trips, with nothing much to gather or dig for, yet. Now they were on the move, things were thrown up in the air. Food wasn’t always forthcoming. People were jostling for their place in the tribe. And Remi had lost his great friend and ally, Uncle Maluv.
Maluv had died last leaf-fall, poisoned by the bite of a wounded fox. His final days had been wretched. He’d ranted and torn off all his clothes before eventually staggering out of his tent into the taiga, just as the winter was approaching.
Tuuli stared into the flames of the fire, thinking about Maluv and the sky burial they’d given him. Starra had washed his body, then oiled it with reindeer fat, and all the men had lifted him up onto a timber platform built up among the branches of larches. His body would have been picked clean by ravens, eagles, even kestrels. Reduced to a skeletal essence, dry bones, that would be scattered and lost, returning to the earth. She wiped a tear from her eye, and rubbed her cheeks, feeling sad for Starra, who’d lost her partner, and Wren and Kuba, who’d lost their papa. And for her own papa, right now. His other cousin, Maatu, would have supported him, Tuuli knew, but he’d already turned in for the night.
Leon and Kussa – the lion and the ox – were brothers, both of them tall, with long, black hair and beards. Tuuli was more than a little suspicious of them. They seemed to share a mean streak. She didn’t like the way they laughed at her father. She’d seen them doing it over the last year, when they thought no one was watching. But now that Maluv had gone back to the spirits, they were doing it openly – around the fire, which was meant to be a circle of friends.
The discussion about the dart-thrower and the barbed comments went on. Tuuli watched the flames flickering and dancing, and half-listened in.
‘All I need is a strong arm to throw a dart swift and true,’ said Leon.
‘I can throw much further with this, though,’ said Remi, turning the dart-thrower over in his hands.
This is what the new dart-thrower design was about. A simple dart or javelin worked perfectly well on its own over a shorter distance; Remi had brought down plenty of reindeer and other animals with his darts. He was a skilled hunter.
‘It’ll turn you soft,’ said Kussa. ‘What’s wrong with a javelin anyway? Why do you always have to try to improve on what the Ancients gave us?’
‘I just think we can build on what went before,’ Remi replied. ‘We don’t have to do the same thing, year after year, generation after generation.’
He continued whittling the notch at the end of the dart-thrower.
‘You know Jutsa thinks you’re wasting your time,’ said Leon.
Remi ignored this remark. But Tuuli knew it was partly true. Jutsa had said as much. She didn’t understand Remi’s drive to endlessly innovate. Jutsa believed in a world where every sort of living thing had its place, and humans were just another living thing, alongside the willows and the hawks and the reindeer, and the cycles of the seasons, and the circle of life and death. And everything was the same, always; their own lives were echoes of the lives of the Ancients, and their children and grandchildren would live in the same pattern, migrating with the reindeer, playing out their repeating destinies. It was comfortable and familiar and balanced.
Tuuli knew her father believed something different. He thought humans were set apart from the rest of nature, in a special way. He believed that there was a unique creative urge that separated people out. And he was always looking for ways to improve weapons, sleds and tipis. Jutsa preferred things to stay the way they’d always been. But she didn’t complain when Remi made her beautiful polished stone and ivory beads. Years ago, he’d carved her an ivory swan, in flight. She, in return, had made him a tiny mammoth. They’d exchanged these small, beautiful gifts when they declared their love for each other.
When Tuuli was tiny, Remi had carved things for her too. In the long winter evenings – after making sure weapons were fixed and ready, with plenty of replacement tips – there would still be time to make other things: objects which would never be used merely for survival, but were somehow even more important. Remi had made Tuuli the small bone bird that she always wore on a thin sinew-string around her neck. ‘A little hawk for my wind-hawk,’ he’d said. Tuuli instinctively felt for it now, under her layers of furs. A talisman in the dark night.
Sparks were flying up into the charcoal-black sky again. The fire had burned down into glowing red embers. Tuuli had fallen asleep and her father was gently nudging her awake. The ground underneath them was cold and the chill had crept into Tuuli. They both crawled into their low tipi, pulling reindeer blankets over and around themselves. Tuuli heard Ketki stirring, waking for a feed. Remi rolled over and started snoring. On the opposite side of the tipi, Tuuli drew her knees away from the cold hide, dragged the edge of a blanket over her head, and drifted into a deep sleep.
FOX BITE
Next day, they woke late, as there was no rush to get the day started before the sun had got itself up and begun warming the valley. The families were cosily tucked up in five shelters – three stout tipis and two domed tents made from young willow, bent and lashed together.
One of the first to rise, Remi had headed off to try to find something for breakfast. Kussa and Poz, working as a father-and-son team, had managed to cut down some larch branches and gather some brushwood. By the time Tuuli emerged from her tent, they’d already got a fire going. Poz liked making fire; it made him feel manly, grown up. He waved a branch at Tuuli and grinned.
‘Me MAN. Me make fire!’ he yelled, and danced around.
Kussa sighed. ‘When you really are a man, Poz,’ he said to his son, ‘perhaps you’ll stop behaving like such an idiot.’
Poz only grinned at him, then went off to wave his flaming branch at Kuba and Wren. Kuba thought his cousin was hilarious. He grabbed another branch out of the fire and joined in. ‘This is how we do the fire dance!’ yelled Poz, theatrically, and the two of them stamped in a circle around the fire, waving their branches.
‘It’s great, you two, really great,’ chipped in Wren, with undisguised sarcasm. ‘But it does make it a bit difficult for any of the rest of us to get near the fire. There’s not much point in lighting it, is there, unless we can actually sit near it to get warm?’
She sat down, interrupting the circle of their dance. But they didn’t stop stamping round until the branches, with so much waving, went out. Throwing them back on the fire, Poz and Kuba collapsed in a heap, breathless and happy.
‘I think we’ve invented a new ritual,’ said Poz to Kuba, digging him in the ribs. ‘It could really catch on. We’ll be the Fire People. Tribes all around will quake in their furry boots at the mention of our name, and bring us splendid offerings. We’ll be famous!’
‘Famous fire people! Famous fire-starters!’ echoed Kuba, lying back in the snow.
‘Why would they bring you offerings?’ asked Wren. ‘Any fool can make fire. And only a real fool boasts about it and dances around it.’
Poz sat up and turned to look at Wren, and Tuuli saw a hint of something she didn’t like in his gaze. She felt a chill deep inside her, not just from the morning air. Poz didn’t blink. He kept staring at Wren. And eventually, quietly, under his breath, so that Tuuli only just caught the words, he murmured, ‘Better to be the fool who feels the heat of a fire than the one who feels the cold teeth of a fox.’
Those were wounding words, as sharp as any stone point, and they sank in. Wren couldn’t answer. Her beautiful brown eyes filled with tears. She stood up and walked away from the fire, away from the small circle of tents. Tuuli ran after her. Catching up with her, Tuuli hugged her. But the older girl stood there stiffly; she didn’t want to be hugged right now. She pulled away from the embrace, turned and walked off.
* * *
Wren was quiet all that day, and for two days after. As the little band of hunters made its way along the valley like a drawn-out skein of migrating birds, she was an outlier, keeping herself deliberately separate. Tuuli knew she needed time alone and gave her space.
It seemed that Kuba hadn’t heard the words that had cut into his sister so deeply. He hung around Poz, messing around with him, apparently oblivious to the cruel slight.
Tuuli was upset for her cousin and felt something like hate towards Poz. She went over and over the exchange in her mind, as she trudged along through the snow, pulling her pulk behind her.
Wren had clearly touched a raw nerve. And Poz had bitten back, so viciously.
It was a side of Poz that Tuuli didn’t think she’d ever seen before. He’d always been fun, the camp clown. Perhaps not exactly kind, though. Like Kuba, he enjoyed playing practical jokes, often on his younger sister and brother, Vinta and Numil, and sometimes they backfired badly. There had been a day this last winter when he’d engaged his little siblings in a game of hide-and-seek – just far enough from the camp to distress them both when they finally emerged to find themselves completely alone, as dusk fell. Aunt Garan had been absolutely furious with him. Tuuli had given him the benefit of the doubt that time. But his words to Wren were something different. Something malicious; something designed to hurt.
* * *
On the fourth day of their trek, just as the light began to fade and they were looking for a good place to put up their tents, they heard a blood-chilling sound. A wolf, howling. Everyone stopped moving, listening hard. There it was again, and then another, answering howl. Tuuli knew they’d all been hoping to get to the river-bend with the caves and rock-shelters in the cliffs on both sides before they heard wolves. That spot could only be a day away now, but it may as well have been a whole season’s trek.
As the sun set, they cautiously crossed an icy river that flowed in here to meet their own. The ice creaked underfoot and Tuuli was very glad when she reached the far bank. The howling grew louder.
They had to stop for the night, and there was nothing for it but to halt and camp in this wide, shallow part of the valley. They had nothing at their backs and it felt very exposed. When Jutsa announced that they would be camping here for the night, Leon and Kussa argued. It felt like dissent was spreading but Jutsa was firm in her decision. They’d coped with these conditions before, many times. Setting up their tents right out in the open would at least mean they were away from the edge of the sparse woodland which could give cover to the wolves. They’d group the tents more tightly than usual, and for additional security, they would find stones to weigh the skirts of the tents down, rather than just tucking the hides into the snow as they’d been tending to do. They’d also light a fire in the centre of the tents, and this would have to be kept going all night. The dissenting uncles eventually agreed. Tuuli was proud of her mother. She was a strong leader.
Getting enough wood to keep a fire alight would be a challenge, though. They’d gathered a little firewood on the way that day, as they always did, but it wouldn’t be enough.
While the tents were being set up, Remi asked Tuuli, Wren and Poz to help him cut and gather firewood. He was surprised when Wren went to help her mother, Starra, put their tent up instead.
‘What on earth is the matter with that girl?’
Tuuli glanced at Poz, who knew perfectly well what was up with Wren. But Tuuli couldn’t say anything in front of him, and didn’t want to break her cousin’s confidence anyway. If Wren was keeping this rift to herself, it wasn’t for Tuuli to bring it out into the open.
‘She’s just a little sad,’ said Tuuli.
Remi shrugged his shoulders.
‘It is only four moons since Uncle Maluv…’ Tuuli tailed off.
‘I know,’ said Remi. ‘She mourned then; we all mourned. But his spirit has gone now and we must all move on.’ He paused and sighed. ‘Sadness,’ he said, ‘can drag a person under the ice as surely as any river.’
Poz went off to hack in a haphazard way at a fallen larch with his axe. Remi and Tuuli got to work on the lower branches of another tree.
‘Can you help her?’ asked Remi.
‘Maybe,’ said Tuuli.
Back at the camp, they ate another meagre meal of two freshly killed capercaillie and a hare, divided among them all, supplemented with some of the roasted and dried reindeer meat they still had in their packs. The wolves were still howling and sounded even nearer now.
For the first time in days, Wren joined the group around the fire that evening. She sat down between her mother, Starra, and her young aunt Aski, who was breastfeeding little Nika. Though Wren was part of the circle, she was still distant, quiet and self-absorbed, staring into the trembling flames. Jutsa’s twin sister, Starra, sat chatting to her cousin, Garan. The fire would gutter from time to time, as the blaze tried to devour an icy, wet branch. But there was a good pile of larch, including some decent-sized logs, to keep it going.
Tuuli looked up, and caught Wren’s eye across the fire. She got up and made her way around to her friend, squeezing in beside Aski. She was about to try talking to Wren when Aski turned to her.
‘Can you take Nika for a bit?’ she asked.
Tuuli took the baby, swaddled up in layers of soft fox fur and reindeer fur, in her arms. Aski stood up and stepped away from the circle.
‘Shh, Nika-baby, shh,’ said Tuuli, softly, rocking the baby. Nika’s crying got more persistent. How could such a small thing – named after the serene, silent moon – yell so loudly?! Tuuli looked up at the larch taiga nervously, hoping that the baby’s wailing wouldn’t bring the wolves closer. The sun had just dipped behind the mountains.
At last, Aunt Aski came back and gathered up Nika – who stopped crying immediately.
‘Don’t worry,’ Aski said. ‘It’s just that she misses me when I’m not right by her. She’ll grow out of that soon.’
‘Ah, she’s lovely,’ said Tuuli. ‘And look how contented she is now, little moon-goddess.’
Then she shifted a little towards Wren, who didn’t move away. Tuuli put an arm round her. They sat like that, in the flickering firelight, for ages. At one point, Tuuli glanced up, across the fire – and Remi was looking back at her. He smiled and then looked back down at the piece of antler he was scraping and scraping. This one wasn’t a carved bird or a mammoth or a hare. It was just a toggle for the straps on his pulk, to replace an old one that had finally fallen apart. He held up the toggle in his rough fingers.
‘Look at this. It’s not much but it’s still a made thing,’ said Remi. ‘A human-made thing. No other being makes such things.’
‘Your papa is strange,’ said Wren softly, to Tuuli, with affection in her voice.
Tuuli gave her cousin an extra squeeze.
