Authors: John Hart
He had been in this plight a while, his pace down to a weary trot as exhaustion and cold began to affect his movements, when he thought he saw a shape close by, startling him back to alertness. Another appeared on his other side. He could almost have touched them. His first jolt of fear at the apparitions subsided when he realised they were escorting him. Together the wolves swung half right, and he swung too, letting himself be herded, too tired to care where he went. Much farther on, through driving snow, a dark bulk showed up in the whiteness. He saw shapes around it as he drew nearer: the fallen bison. Agaratz was holding the short spear with the long beautiful blade, bloodied halfway up the shank where he must have finished off the cow where she fell, brought down by the bane or by the wolves. Round the kill silvery-white wolves milled.
Tears of exhaustion, mixed with snowflakes, blurred his vision. He felt inadequate, a weakling, deserving the clouts and shouts that Blueface and the others would have given him had they been there. But instead Agaratz said, “Good, Urrell, you good,” and then, “now share with wolfs.”
He relieved Urrell of his load of knives, axe, pouches and thongs to proceed with carving and parcelling the carcass, ready to transport the best cuts home.
Exhaustion overtook Urrell and he sank to the snow, warm from the sweat inside his quilts. He was shaken awake:
“No sleep, Urrell, no sleep, or die.” Agaratz spoke with unaccustomed urgency. “You look,” he said, and gripping Urrell’s shoulders fixed his eyes on his. A surge of energy ran through Urrell; his fatigue vanished. “Now help,” said Agaratz in his everyday matter-of-fact voice.
Urrell did. He pulled at a flap of the bison’s hide while Agaratz cut under it to detach skin from flesh, a long and strenuous task for two. But for Agaratz’s phenomenal shoulder strength, and seemingly depthless energy, Urrell knew the work of flaying a bison and butchering it into transportable joints was far beyond any two men, let alone a crookback and a youth. He knew this from hunts in his own clan where its seven-strong group of hunters had work enough with a big kill, when they managed one. Yet he did not doubt Agaratz, someone who bade wolves fetch him and whose gaze delivered strength.
A man who could call up wolves to help him hunt could do anything, so Urrell helped with a will.
Around them, in the stained snow, their allies were feasting on the gralloch, Agaratz having only kept back the suet and some liver for them to gnaw as they toiled. Urrell saw Rakrak happy to chew gut with her own kind. When he called her name she raised her head, acknowledged him, and went on eating.
There was much to learn from watching Agaratz carve with a skill none of his clan could match. He cut round muscle and sinew with speed and precision, sharpening flint blades with a few taps, only using the axe on major joints. Urrell watched and memorised. The haunch came away in one piece.
The beast’s shoulder was removed with equal skill followed by the best rib meat. That done they struggled to turn the carcass over in the failing light. Only with Agaratz’s strength did they manage. Their problem was to skin this side so as to pull the hide away in one piece. Agaratz sawed though the skin of the massive neck and round each leg, resharpening his blades constantly, showing Urrell how as he did so. The wolves sat watching.
“What are the wolves waiting for?”
“
Oetsemeken
wait we finish, then eat.”
“How do you know?”
“They know. I tell.”
A last huge effort and the hide came free, dragged from under the carcass. They sat down to recover and chew suet.
“Now cut last leg and go.” In the gloom, by touch, Agaratz cut out the second shoulder. The second haunch he left ‘for wolfs’.
They packed the three joints with several rolls of flank meat in the pelt, rolled the whole into a parcel, and bound it with the thongs that Urrell had lugged all day and whose purpose he now saw. They made two tump lines and when ready to go Agaratz uttered a low sound to the wolves, one unfamiliar to Urrell, which released them from whatever thrall Agaratz held them in. They leapt forward to finish the bison they had helped to bring down.
“What about Rakrak?”
“Rakrak come later.”
Urrell took up his line and Agaratz the other. With their gear piled on the parcel, they set off to haul home enough meat to last them weeks, cached in the snow.
M
idnight or later they reached home ground, through the ceaseless falling snow, now mid-shin deep, soft and hampering, piling in front of their burden as they dragged it along, so they had to stop every few dozen steps to clear it away. With unerring accuracy Agaratz headed straight across the featureless expanse, in the whitish obscurity of the arctic night, and brought them safely to their gulch. Whether by design on Agaratz’s part or by chance, the kill had been fairly near their home ground. Urrell was too tired to wonder about that, too weary to talk. The haulage took so long because of the parcel’s bulk and weight, plus the impediment of soft snow. When the snow froze Urrell knew movement would be easier, despite the greater cold.
They left the meat in its wrapping at the foot of the cave, Agaratz only slicing off two fat collops of rib meat to take up. The climbing pole he left in place ‘for Rakrak’.
“Now eat. Need foods. You work well, Urrell. Learn much and be strong. Good.”
Never before had Agaratz commented on his efforts or uttered such overt words of praise. That day Urrell knew he had pushed his stamina to the utmost, to exhaustion. He had felt failure, loss. Then to be praised by this being of mysterious talents and powers, not reprimanded, suffused him with gratitude. The visit to the mammoth cave, the hunt with wolves, these had been acceptance tests and after Agaratz’s words he felt that he had come through with credit.
The fire seemed to blaze more brightly that night as they waited for enough heat to build up for their steaks. Meantime Agaratz showed Urrell how to toast handfuls of grains they had spent so long collecting in the river meadows: he parched them on hot stones, releasing a nutty flavour that delighted the boy’s palate.
Scuffling sounds heralded Rakrak’s return up the pole. Urrell jumped up to greet her as though they had been parted weeks rather than hours, Rakrak placing her forepaws on Urrell’s shoulders to sniff and lick his face.
That night lad and wolf slept huddled together for warmth and companionship more closely than ever before.
The trio would now see the wisdom of Agaratz’s campaign to lay in winter supplies. Snow fell endlessly for days, monotonously, adding silence on silence. Urrell had seen nothing like this in all his winters spent farther south, at the end of the clan trek to the same stretch of coastline that his group had used as wintering quarters for as far back as oral accounts went. Other groups, with speech much like theirs, camped not far off. The sea-shore was rich enough in shellfish and carrion flotsam to sustain larger populations than the summer hunting grounds.
During lulls in bad weather groups met and mingled, a time Urrell liked. Among these strangers he felt less of an orphan. They accepted him as another boy from a neighbouring camp who showed more keenness to learn than usual. Old men were pleased to have an audience, even of one. By being a good listener, Urrell learnt from an old hunter of the great bears that had once lived in those caves. A forebear of the old hunter had been a boy when the last of them had been slain. There were stories that they still roamed in the mountains to the north, towards the land of Old Mother’s childhood mammoths.
“Agaratz, have you ever seen the great bears of the caves?”
“None now. They gone, like my peoples.”
“Gone where?”
“Gone.”
Urrell knew Agaratz would not elaborate about his kin, so he carried on about the bears: had they gone to the mountains, to the mammoth mountains?
“Not mammoths now. Not cave bears. Not my people.”
“But there are bears in the mountains. The old hunters said so, and Old Mother spoke of the mammoths.”
“They not know. I know.”
“But how can you be sure, Agaratz?” Urrell felt emboldened by the cosiness of the recess, half buried in hay, hugging Rakrak. He noticed how Agaratz’s aloofness when questioned was slowly mellowing the longer they abode together, while Urrell increasingly performed his share of tasks and become better company. He could now flake flints, kindle fires, cure hides and cook with almost the deftness of the master himself, coached by him with sly approval, something none of his home hunters would have done for a half-grown youth.
Agaratz did not answer. He remained silent so long Urrell was no longer expecting a reply when Agaratz suddenly spoke out in a high-pitched voice. First hesitantly, as if translating from his own or another language events remembered from the long ago, he gathered fluency in the rhythmic manner of reciters that Urrell had heard from old men down by the sea.
“I tell,” began Agaratz. “I tell you. Long time past, long, long time, big bears,
mammurak
, long-tooth cat, and big animal with one horn live in these lands.” He paused to search for words in Urrell’s language to convey the subtle, more complex original language of the recital.
“Great ice come, all down mountain and never melt.”
He went on, speaking to himself in a low voice from his couch in the hay, in words Urrell did not understand, till, satisfied he had recollected the story aright, he resumed, “Winters colder, colder. Very long. Summer short. My people live here then. Living in caves, make snow houses, hunt bison, snow-ox, reindeers. Plenty eat for all. Share with big cat, big bear, and that time they learn to speak bear, long-tooth tiger, wolfs. They hunt together.”
“Then ice melt and go back up mountain. Not good for big cat, not for bear. New people come and hunt. Hunt much, so big cats go and bears go.
Mammurak
go. My people stay to keep caves, but they few, then fewer. Now all gone down caves. I last. When go, close cave. No-one find way.”
Urrell had listened in utter silence. It was the longest sustained statement he had heard Agaratz make. He, Urrell, the waif, was being introduced into another reality, one in which Agaratz moved with ease, examples of which Urrell had glimpsed. Was Agaratz, its last guardian, testing him, this youth from another people, so that he, the waif Urrell, might become the tradition bearer of such knowledge?
Urrell asked: “Agaratz, can you teach me how to speak to bears?”
“I try.”
“Can we go to the land of mammoths, to find them?”
“None now.”
Old Mother had spoken of them. She had been in no doubt at all.
“Agaratz, the Old Mother came from that land. She knew the mammoths.”
“When summer come, Urrell, we go find
mammuraka.”
Urrell snuggled down happily with Rakrak, to dream of mammoths.
With winter closing in there was little to do but cure hides, sew garments and keep warm. Urrell grew to asking Agaratz about his people and seeking to be taught anything Agaratz was willing to reveal. Often it meant returning time and again to the same theme.
“Agaratz, why did your people not move when the cold came?”
“They…” he wavered, deciding which word to use “…look after caves.” Urrell noticed the explanation did not satisfy Agaratz’s sense of what he sought to convey.
“Did they look after paintings?”
“After paintings, yes.”
“Who did the paintings?”
“Olds, olds, from old times.”
Urrell watched him roll hand over hand to show time long past.
“Were they your people, Agaratz?”
“Before, olds, other kin, all gone.”
“Gone where?”
“To
mamu.”
“
Is that where the dead go?”
“Land of
mamu…
”
More he would not say, nor where this land lay, except to wave vaguely into the earth beyond the depths of their cave. At this time Urrell noticed how little Agaratz ate – a few nuts, a handful of seeds. He grew lethargic, he who was so active, slept bouts of many hours in the hay-filled recess whereas his own and Rakrak’s appetites remained undiminished. Urrell ensured the fire was kept up.
For many days and nights blizzards drove snow across the open lands, filling their gulch until they could step out of the cave entrance straight on to the drifts. No need for the climbing pole, left poking up through the snow. Before the drifts grew too deep Agaratz had hauled up their cache of bison meat in its hide, and the store of fish, to the lip of the entrance. The emptied bison hide they had dragged into the cave, thawed, scraped, and hung across its mouth. This lessened the worst gusts. Then Agaratz had surprised Urrell by getting him to help to scrape up snow against the hide, tamping each handful till they had built a snow wall, leaving only a small, blockable entry hatch.
“Now less cold.”
It left the cave in gloom, but livable, lit and warmed by the fire. As their fuel had dried well, little smoke was produced. Even so, Urrell’s hands became black with ingrained grime, his face sooty from the fire.
It did not bother him till his fingers began to itch and the tips split, then he showed them to Agaratz.
“
Ishll.
Bad. Eat plants.”
He gave Urrell dried herbs to chew, roots and garlic to eat and the chilblains vanished within days. Such winter afflictions Urrell had known among his own people. He recalled children and women weeping helplessly at their kibed fingers and foot sores.
A
s the spell of great cold deepened Agaratz grew torpid. He did not waken for two days, his breathing slowing, till Urrell grew fearful and with difficulty shook him awake. Agaratz woke, unconcerned, merely saying, “I sleep bear.”
“Sleep bear?”
“Sleep like bear, when cold. You sleep bear, Urrell.”
“I can’t sleep like a bear.”
“Yes. I show.”
“But Rakrak can’t. She is a wolf. Wolves don’t sleep in winter.”
“She sleep. I show.”
Agaratz made Urrell lie curled up and still, breathing slowly, emptying his lungs and mind. At the same time he held the lad’s shoulders and looked intently at him till he dozed off.