Wolf Road, page 20
The darkness was gathering around them and Tuuli shivered. Under this clear sky, it would be a cold night. She could cover Andar up in sand, but it would be far better to get him back to the camp. She knew she couldn’t drag him all that way, though.
‘Andar, we need to get you warm,’ she said.
His eyelids flickered open. He sighed deeply.
‘Do you think you could stand up? Can you do that?’ she asked him. He looked at her sideways and raised his great eyebrows.
‘I need to get you back to the camp. To Aski. She can help you,’ she said.
Very gradually, Andar raised himself up, by pressing down on his left arm. He moaned in pain.
‘Good,’ said Tuuli, putting her arm around and under his uninjured shoulder. ‘Let me help.’
Andar was able to shift position, until he was kneeling on the sand, head bowed.
‘Come on,’ said Tuuli, and she lifted his arm over her shoulders and helped him up to standing.
Slowly, very slowly, the two of them staggered back over the dunes, towards the camp, following in the jumbled tracks that Leon, then Tuuli had left. Lupa ran ahead, but kept looping back to Tuuli’s side. Twice, Andar sank to his knees, with a terrible groan, and then Tuuli helped him stand back up and continue.
‘I’m sorry I can’t carry you,’ she said. ‘Like you did for me.’
She kept talking to him all the way.
‘Listen to the geese. They are very noisy tonight. Look at the stars, at the moon - so beautiful. We’re nearly there.’
She just wanted him to stay with her, to pour his remaining strength into this trek back to the camp, to keep him present.
Eventually they were down among the smaller dunes, and close to the camp. Tuuli could see the many campfires burning, like an earthbound constellation. There was still a noisy crowd congregated between the Snow Geese and the Eagle’s tipis. But Tuuli was relieved to see that all was quiet around the Swans’ new tents. She went up to the opening of one of them, and could see a small fire burning in the central hearth.
‘Aski?’ she called, quietly.
Her aunt came out.
‘You found him! Quick, come in.’
Inside the tipi, Andar collapsed to his knees and Tuuli helped him to lie down on his left side.
‘It’s a bad wound,’ said Aski. She ripped his tunic around the wound. Fresh blood was starting to pour from his flesh again. Aski wrapped a pebble in a skin and pushed it into the bleeding hole.
‘Keep pressure on this,’ she instructed Tuuli. ‘I’ll fetch some hot stones to make some tea for him’. Aski stepped outside the tent, leaving Tuuli kneeling over Andar, pushing down on the pebble with all her strength.
* * *
She realized she was crying; hot tears were running down her cheeks. The blood wouldn’t stop coming. It was oozing up around the pebble, around her hands. Tuuli’s tears fell onto her hands and onto Andar. His chest was heaving with deep, slow breaths; his eyes were closed.
‘Can you hear me, Andar?’ Tuuli pleaded.
His breathing suddenly became more rapid. Was this a good sign?
‘Andar,’ pleaded Tuuli. ‘Andar.’
His eyes flicked open.
‘Dying,’ he whispered.
‘No. No, you’re not. You can’t. You’re safe now.’
She kept pushing down on the pebble with her left hand, moving the other to hold his right hand, up by his cheek.
Andar looked into her eyes. His breathing was fast but very shallow now.
He shut his eyes.
Three more breaths.
And then he was gone.
SAYING GOODBYE
In the middle of the night, Tuuli stepped outside the tent. She walked around the edge of the camp until she reached the water’s edge, and there she washed Andar’s blood from her hands and her forearms.
Then she returned to the edge of the dunes and sat there for a while, feeling a light breeze on her face. The moon was almost full, shining on the estuary. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called, and another answered. Tuuli gazed up at the stars through her tears. The great Sky River flowed above her. Fiery points of light in the darkness. The spirits of ancestors, perhaps, as Aski would say. The constellations looked the same tonight as they always had. But where was the goodness in people, the goodness in the world below?
‘He was my friend,’ said Tuuli, to the sky and the distant, unhearing stars.
The Bear and the Lion, the Hunter and his Wolf-star glimmered but did not answer.
* * *
‘He must be buried,’ said Aski the next morning.
The whole talo was gathered around the fire, burning in the centre of their tipis. The sun was just up. Some of them were drinking broth from birch-bark cups.
‘Not a sky burial?’ asked Jutsa.
‘No,’ replied Aski. ‘It was a bad death. And he was young. Ama must be appeased - he must go back to her.’
‘Does it even matter?’ said Tuuli very quietly.
Jutsa squeezed her hand. Sitting on her other side, Wren laid her head on Tuuli’s shoulder.
The discussion continued. Remi and Maatu both wanted to confront Leon, but Jutsa urged him to wait until after Andar had been buried. They decided that they would carry Andar’s body downstream, along the shore of the estuary, until they were out of sight of the camp, and make the grave there. Tuuli pulled her hand away from Jutsa’s clasp and stepped away from the circle.
She went into Aski’s tipi, where Andar’s body was covered in reindeer hides, and pulled back the fur to see his face. It was ashen, almost white. She stayed there for a moment, willing him to open his eyes, even though she knew he wouldn’t. Then she covered his face back up, and went to sit on the other side of the tipi. Lupa settled beside her, head resting on her paws.
Tuuli felt as though a great blackness had appeared inside her, like the night sky devoid of stars, filling her belly, right up into her chest, with emptiness. It was panic and chaos and horror all at once. She thought about Leon, and felt a burning, sharp point of hatred, like a fiery flint. An emotion so real it felt physical. She could imagine pushing that point into him - into his ribs. She stopped herself. She’d never known she could feel such hate, and it terrified her, dark and dangerous. She thought about her mother giving Andar the hood to wear on his head, to hide himself. If she hadn’t done that, perhaps he would have stayed with them. Perhaps he’d be here now.
She lay down on a pile of furs and looked up at the criss-cross of the poles where they cut the patch of sky above her into pieces. She wound her fingers into Lupa’s soft fur, her eyes filling with tears again. She listened to the murmur of voices around the campfire, birdsong, and children playing down by the water’s edge. The sounds of summer camp. How could that all be going on when he was dead? There should be silence.
* * *
Aski woke her gently. Andar’s body was gone. Tuuli rubbed her eyes and looked questioningly at Aski.
‘We’re ready to go,’ she said kindly. ‘Are you coming?’
Tuuli nodded.
They walked through the camp. Remi and Maatu carried the stretcher with Andar’s body on it, covered in reindeer hides. Jutsa, Tuuli and Aski walked behind them, Aski wearing her shaman-cloak. The rest of the talo followed.
People fell silent as the small procession passed by, but no one else joined them. This was just something for the Swans to do. Remi bristled and set his jaw grimly as they passed the Fulmars’ tents, even though none of that talo were anywhere to be seen. Tuuli stared down at her feet, stepping one in front of the other. She felt hollow and numb.
They walked and walked until the camp was far behind them. They made their way onto a rise above the estuary, the water shimmering to their right, a herd of reindeer grazing along its edge, and the great sand sea stretching off to the horizon on their left. A few straggly pine trees stood here on the tundra. And the ground was covered in white cloudberry flowers.
* * *
‘Here,’ said Tuuli simply.
They laid the body down, and set to work, clearing the vegetation away with their hands, then using antler picks and deer shoulder-blade shovels to dig the grave. It had to be deep enough to stop bears and wolves digging it up.
Remi and Kuba carefully lowered Andar’s body into the grave. He was still in his clothes, the right side of his tunic dark with his blood. Remi put his spear in alongside him and Kuba dropped a hide bundle full of Andar’s stone knives beside the body. Others put pieces of raw ivory, dried reindeer meat, a parcel of herbs in the grave. Aski tore an ivory amulet in the shape of a swan from her cloak and placed it on Andar’s chest. Then she reached into a deep leather bag she’d brought with her and brought out a handful of crushed ochre, sprinkling it over his body. She handed the bag round and they each took some of the red mineral, scattering it into the grave. And they sang the hymn to the earth-mother,
We are the children of Ama
We were born of the earth
In the springtime of the world
As life unfurled
We were born of her
She holds us in her arms.
Tuuli wiped the tears from her face. She knelt at the graveside, reaching down to place handfuls of cloudberry blossom over Andar’s body. And then they covered his body with the earth, sealing him in, returning him to Ama’s embrace.
* * *
Later that day, Tuuli and Wren were sitting together on the edge of the dunes. The sun was setting and the stars were just starting to appear in the eastern darkness.
‘I can’t stay,’ said Tuuli.
‘What do you mean?’ said Wren, putting her arm around her cousin.
‘I just can’t be here any more.’
‘But we’re all here for you. I’m here for you.’
‘I know,’ Tuuli screwed up her eyes. ‘But I can’t just… pretend that it didn’t happen. I can’t pretend – he wasn’t here.’
Wren sighed deeply.
‘It’s hard to believe he’s gone,’ she said, then paused. ‘I don’t know what will happen to Leon.’
‘I can’t deal with that either,’ said Tuuli, her voice hardening. ‘And whatever happens, it doesn’t matter. Andar’s gone.’
‘We’ll get through this,’ responded Wren, soothingly.
‘I don’t want to get through it. I want to go away.’
Wren sighed again and hugged Tuuli harder.
‘I’ve told Aski,’ said Tuuli. ‘She’s helped me pack’.
‘You’re really going, then?’ Wren was crying now.
Tuuli nodded.
‘Will you tell Jutsa and Remi?’ Wren asked.
‘I don’t think I can. Will you tell them for me?’
It was Wren’s turn to nod.
* * *
Very early the following morning, just as the sky was just beginning to lighten, Tuuli emerged from Aski’s tipi, Lupa at her side. She hefted her heavy pack onto her shoulders and tied the hide thong tightly around her waist. The camp was quiet. Skeins of blue smoke from a few smouldering fires were rising into the still air. The huge flock of geese on the estuary were just starting up their morning racket.
Tuuli took a deep breath and strode out away from the camp, skirting around the edge of the dunes, heading back to the valley where she’d harvested wood with Wren and Andar just three days ago. Before he left… The world had been different then.
* * *
Soon, she’d climbed up onto the hills above the wooded valley and was among the heather, where clumps of rosebay and moss campion were just coming into flower, purple and pink. A startled hare ran across their path. Lupa was alert but stayed at Tuuli’s side.
Tuuli paused and lifted her eyes to the higher hills and beyond them, the snow-capped mountains, glowing like fire in the morning sun. She reached down and stroked Lupa’s neck.
‘That’s where we’re going,’ she said. And she strode off into the vastness of the tundra.
THE END
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
The world in this book is a real one. The story is set around thirty thousand years ago, during the Ice Age, in Western Europe. The people in the book are Ice Age people, of the old Stone Age or Palaeolithic era. They are people like you and me – experiencing happiness and sadness, friendship and love, fear and excitement. But they live very differently to us, in a landscape which is bound in snow and ice for many months of the year. They are nomads and hunter-gatherers – they don’t stay in one place for long. Over the course of a year, they migrate to and from the coast, following large herds of reindeer. The reindeer retreat to sheltered inland river valleys in winter and move to the coast in summer, where they calve – just as reindeer still do in the Arctic today. The people hunt the reindeer, but also many other animals. And they eat a great range of different plant foods too.
The landscape and the animals described in Wolf Road are based on what we find in the Arctic today, but also on archaeological and geological evidence that shows us what the environment was like in Western Europe during the last Ice Age. In winter, which lasts around eight or nine months, the river is completely frozen. In the spring, the ice thaws and there is a dangerous period when the water flows very fast and pieces of ice are rafting on it. As spring gets going, vast numbers of salmon swim up the river to spawn; there is another salmon run in the Leaf Fall or autumn. An engraving of a fish in a cave called the Abri du Poisson, dating to around twenty-five thousand years ago, is one of the oldest images of a fish in the world, and suggests the Ice Age hunters were fishing in the river as well as hunting on land.
The lower hills around the river valley are covered with sparse ‘snow forest’ or taiga – with larch, spruce, birch and pine trees. In the taiga, the ground is covered with green mosses. Along the riverbank, there are small birches and willows.
Heathland with bell heather and red alders cloaks the higher hills. There are plenty of edible plants including bilberries, crowberries, cloudberries, blackberries, hazel nuts and mushrooms, as well as clover, nettle, sorrel, birch and wild onion. The coastal tundra around the estuary, where the tribes gather in summer, is a boggy plain with sedges and grasses, mosses and lichens and bog cotton. The hunter-gatherers eat plenty of plant food during the brief two months of summer – and gather supplies to last through the winter.
Archaeologists and geographers have looked in detail at ancient animal bones dug up from sites across Western Europe, which tell us about the species that lived in this area during the Ice Age. Reindeer and horses are the most common overall, particularly in tundra and grassland environments near the coast. In the mountains, there are ibex, chamois and marmot. In the woods, there are roe deer, red deer and wild boars. But there are also others animals which would later become extinct, including aurochsen (ancient cattle), Irish elk (or giant deer), cave lions and hyenas, leopards, woolly rhinoceros, and woolly mammoth. Some species such as musk ox, reindeer, Arctic fox and lemmings are still found today in the Arctic. The European bison or wisent was hunted to extinction in the wild by the twentieth century, but has been bred in captivity and successfully reintroduced into eastern Europe. Other species in the Ice Age environment include beavers, otters, red squirrels, wolves, wolverines, voles and shrews, Alpine hares and rabbits.
I was able to imagine these Ice Age landscapes as I have made many trips to different places in the Arctic to make television programmes. I have stayed with reindeer herders – Evenki and Nenets people – in Siberia. I have slept in a chum (pronounced ‘choom’ – and similar to a tipi) in the snowy taiga when the temperature outside was -40°C. I have helped to set up a chum and I have even lassoed a reindeer. I have found out for myself just how warm you can be in a reindeer fur coat and reindeer fur boots in seriously sub-zero temperatures. Those experiences filled me with admiration for the people living in the tundra and taiga today. I was also very lucky to meet anthropologist Piers Vitebsky, who spent many years living with reindeer herders, and wrote a fantastic book about the people he stayed with, and their way of life: The Reindeer People.
The reindeer herders of the Arctic may travel around in the landscape more than many people; they may live in chums some of the time. But they are modern people, like you and me. They have satellite TV, PlayStations and social media. But they also have amazing survival skills and their way of life has ancient roots that can help us understand how our ancestors survived through the Ice Age.
During the Ice Age, we know that people were living in rockshelters or shallow caves along the Dordogne in France, and other rivers. They visited the rockshelters seasonally, presumably during an annual pattern of migration, following the reindeer herds. These hunters would have built shelters against the shallow caves in the rocks to enclose them and keep them warm and cosy. You can see a reconstruction of a camp like this at Laugerie-Basse near the village of Les Eyzies in France. The hunters would also have made free-standing shelters, using wooden posts and covered with hide. These would have been somewhat similar to the chums still used in northern Siberia, and Sami people make a similar conical style of tent known as a ‘lávvu’. I’ve chosen to use the Native American word ‘tipi’ as it’s more familiar to English readers – but the tents I have imagined Tuuli and her family making are more like the lávvu dwellings still used by Sami people today; they are smaller and lower than the traditional North American tipi. The tribe also make rounded tents, which I have called ‘yurts’, although they are smaller and simpler than the traditional yurts used in Central Asia today. In the depths of winter in Norway, I’ve seen young silver birches weighed down so much with snow that they’ve bent into a U-shape – those trunks would be perfect for making into a shelter like a small yurt.
The tools and other objects that the hunters make and use are all based on real Palaeolithic archaeological finds from the tail-end of the last Ice Age. I’ve learnt a lot about this period of time from many people, including my friend Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist who specialises in the Palaeolithic. I’ve also tried to imagine what it would have been like to invent new tools – like Remi’s spear-thrower. Experimental archaeologist James Dilley is an expert in making ancient tools – you can see him making all sorts of stone-age tools on YouTube.
