The Animal Wife (27 page)

The waning Blackfly Moon brought a warm spell that lowered the snow. The new moon—the Goose Moon, as Father's people called it—brought more melting, so that the stream from Narrow Lake became a torrent. At night we heard it roaring. We also heard the ice moving on Narrow Lake. The air was fresh and wet with vapor from the snow—the air of spring. The new moon, the spring wind, and the long evenings opened my mind, so I no longer thought of the lodge and the people in it but of far places, different people, and other times. Strange to say, I often found myself thinking of my mother's son, my little half-brother. By then, if he was still living, he would probably have a name.

Rin too thought of people and places far away. One evening when we had built our cooking fire outside the lodge to let a strong, fresh wind blow away the biting flies, she looked up at the yellow sky. It made her think, she said, of a place far down the Hair where long ago her widowed mother, Akima, who was also Father's and Kida's mother, had married Father's father, my grandfather. Although Rin was just a little girl at the time, she remembered meeting her stepfather, my grandfather, and the wife he had already. Rin's mother and the other wife became the mothers of Father, Maral, Kida, and Andriki, and of other children who died. Rin remembered the birth of every one. She also remembered things her half-brothers were too young to remember, or things that had happened before they were born. "I used to lie in the grass and watch the nesting geese," said Rin. "I wanted to steal the eggs. But the geese were so fierce they drove me away."

"I remember the geese!" said Andriki.

Rin shook her head. "You're thinking of other geese," she said. "We left that place where the geese nested before you could walk."

"We did?" asked Andriki.

"Yes. And when we left, your mother was so sick she made me carry you. She died on the way. I was sorry. She was a good woman. She was my stepmother, but she was good to me."

"It's strange," said Andriki. "I remember the place and I remember you, but I don't remember my mother."

"You couldn't remember the place. You were too young," said Rin.

That evening the south wind brought us the sound of geese talking far away. We all fell silent, listening. The geese seemed to be flying into the Hills of Ohun, to the open water of the warm spring in Leech Pond. I turned to look at Muskrat, sitting on her heels alone behind our circle around the fire, since her people had been camping by Leech Pond when we had found her. I caught her looking eagerly toward the sound. Did the time of year make her too think of far places? I remembered the strange animal Muskrat had tried to describe to us, the animal like a wolf but also like a deer and like a person—the tai tibi. How far would someone have to travel to find such an animal? Only the geese, who travel so far in winter that no one has ever seen even one of them—only they could imagine how far.

"Would you like to fly with the geese, to see where they go?" I asked Andriki.

My question made people laugh. "Yes," he answered. "If I got hungry, I'd reach out and catch one."

I shouldn't have asked. I knew better. But Pinesinger looked at me and said, "I'd like to travel with the geese. I'd visit my parents."

"I too," said Hind.

"I too," said a voice behind us.

We turned and stared. It was Muskrat. Had she been listening? Had she understood what we said? She smiled and nodded, her flat face with its blue buttocks mark all wrinkled up as she tried to seem agreeable. Still we scowled, puzzled by her speaking. So again she smiled and nodded, then softly called
kakakar
like a goose and pointed at the sky.

***

By the time the snow had melted enough to show patches of dead yellow grass, the reindeer had gone. The wolves had long gone. Now and then we might see one of them, or find the tracks of one of them, but never all together as we had in winter. Somewhere, they were probably trying to raise a litter of pups in a den. The tiger was still around, though. Sometimes we found his tracks in the fresh mud by the water. Sometimes at night we thought we heard his voice deep in the woods. He stayed away from us, for which we were grateful. One night when we were speaking of him, very respectfully and not very loudly, we reasoned that he alone ate as much as we ate, perhaps more. By then we were not finding much to hunt but were eating whatever our snares caught, even foxes. We were also eating winter-killed carcasses and any dead fish we found floating near the shore of the lake. What was the tiger eating?

Another night we heard something breathing at the door of the coldtrap. When the sky grew light in the morning, we found the tiger's footprints in the soft earth. From then on we were even more careful, knowing that the tiger was nearby and thinking of us.

One evening we noticed a brown thing in the open water on the far side of the lake: the back of a moose browsing for plants on the bottom. We reached for our spears, ready to circle the lake and hunt the moose. The moose raised her head to draw breath. We stood motionless, waiting. Peacefully she breathed for a time, her ears dripping, then she put her head under water again. We started to run. But just then, on the far side of the lake, the red, striped, flamelike tiger suddenly burst from a thicket and in two great leaps fell with a huge splash on the moose. A fearful struggle followed, with much flying water, roaring growls from the tiger, and one loud bellow from the moose. Quickly the struggle grew less frantic. For a moment we saw nothing but the rippling surface of the lake, and then we saw the sleek head and folded ears of the tiger swimming for shore.

Out onto the stones he climbed, then shook so that a great cloud of water stood out all around him. He finished with a whiplike shaking of his tail. Then he turned to the lake and noticed us watching. For a moment he stared, then he gave a great, booming roar that filled the basin of the lake, echoed from the trees, and seemed to shake the ground under our feet. Even at that distance I felt the roar inside me. My chest felt full of the sound. Strangely, though, I wasn't as frightened as I might have been. This was partly because the tiger was far away. But partly it was because he suddenly seemed small. There he was, soaking wet, looking much thinner and smaller, yet as if he didn't know he no longer seemed frightening, he was trying to scare us just the same. I could have laughed at him.

Then, from all parts of the forest, ravens called. Whether their god was wet or dry, when he spoke they answered. "By the Bear," said Maral. "What now?"

"Look there," said Andriki. We looked. Something brown and hairy had broken the surface of the lake. Around it floated something dark and thick that stained the water. It was the she-moose, with blood. With his ears raised and his forehead wrinkled, the tiger also looked at her. Quickly, as if he had forgotten all about us, he plunged again into the icy lake and swam to her carcass, sank his terrible teeth into her, and gave her a good tug. Suddenly he vanished. He had pulled himself under.

He must have let go, since he quickly bobbed up. In low voices we told each other that he now would swim ashore again and perhaps come to try to hunt us, but instead we saw his wet face and raised chin, like the face of a beaver, as he swam around the carcass of his moose. On the far side of her, his ears showed as he tried to pull her from another direction.

By now the ravens were sitting in the trees on the far side of the lake, cheering for the tiger as people will cheer for wrestling men. As if their calls encouraged him, he began to move the carcass. Soon he and his moose were in shallow water, and soon after that he was dragging her ashore. While she lay half in, half out of the water, the tiger shook himself again and looked up at the ravens flying excitedly above him. Then, biting the moose through her spine just before her shoulders, he raised his head as high as he could, and half straddling her forequarters, so that most of her body dragged beside him, he hauled her into the woods.

"By the Bear!" said a deep, strange voice behind us. "We'd need three men to move that carcass!"

Astonished, we turned. There stood a big, bearded, light-haired man, wearing a pack, carrying two spears, and dressed in a fur-lined parka. It was Father.

"M
Y YOUNGER WIFE
," he explained calmly, "was much on my mind. I saw her in a dream. Then I knew I should visit her. So I traveled two days for each of my fingers. Now I'm here."

"You'll find her well," said Andriki. "The child too."

"A girl?"

"A boy."

"Ah," said Father.

"Your journey," said Andriki. "Did you travel easily?"

"I left as the ice was breaking on the river," Father answered. "And I came northwest, through the spruce forests east of here. If you must travel through a spruce wood, spring is the time to do it. I ate ptarmigan, mostly. And winterkills. I found the deer weak after such a bad winter. They're still dying because of the snow."

"So," said Andriki. "Welcome."

"Why are we standing here?" asked Father. "Have you no food to offer me after my journey? Have you let the tiger eat everything?"

We laughed at that, of course, but it was not lack of food that made us hesitate. We were thinking instead of the sights that would greet Father—the baby that was not his, and the strange woman.

"Come then, Brother," said Andriki at last. "There is much for you to see."

I must say, Father surprised me. I had thought the birth of Pinesinger's baby might anger him. Instead, in the dark lodge he gravely opened Pinesinger's parka and looked into the baby's small face. I had thought he wouldn't want to touch it. Instead he held out his arms. Pinesinger too was surprised by Father. She hesitated at first, looking to see if he meant what she thought he meant. When it seemed he did, she hurried to give him the baby. He took it carefully, but the baby noticed his strange face, pulled down its lips, trembled, and began crying. As if Pinesinger feared that this would anger Father, she hurried to take the baby back. But Father rocked him and spoke to him in his rumbling voice. "Yes," he said gently. "Be easy. Don't be afraid." The baby fell silent and stared up at Father as if he had realized his mistake.

Father turned to Pinesinger. "Well then, Wife," he said. "I've come." She looked from the baby to Father anxiously. Smiling faintly, he slowly handed her the baby. The rest of us had been watching in silence. When Pinesinger took the baby, many of us let go our breath.

All this time none of us had thought of Muskrat. Just then she came back from the forest where she had been gathering wood and began to crawl into the lodge, her bundle of sticks scratching the sides of the coldtrap. A puzzled expression crossed Father's face. If all of us were in the lodge, what was scratching? He gave a start when he saw her, with her pregnant belly and the blue buttocks mark on her face. "Waugh!" he said softly.

Muskrat's head snapped up and her eyes flew wide. She stared for a moment, taking in his beard, his size, his age, and his parka. Then her eyes found mine. She gave me a long look and sat down, leaving me to explain her to Father.

So I tried. As I began telling how I had noticed the sound of chopping in the hills, I heard my own voice echo, and soon realized that Father was not the only person listening. The others must have been holding their breath, so quiet the lodge became. With all ears straining to hear each word I said, I knew better than to try to hide the truth or to lessen my part in Muskrat's capture, a part that Father might take to be a large one. For a time I thought someone might help me—Andriki perhaps—but no one did, so I struggled on, trying but not always managing to keep my eyes on Father's. Meanwhile his hard, pale gaze made me think of the tiger. Trying to finish my story with encouraging thoughts, trying to put the best face on the matter, I reminded Father that the winter had passed without Muskrat's people trying to find her. To my way of thinking, I told him, her people were afraid of us, and we were safe from their revenge.

I stopped talking then and waited for Father's answer. Time passed. The lodge stayed very quiet. Father shifted his weight but didn't speak. At last he cleared his throat. The sound reminded me of a tiger growling. I tried to tell myself that I was grown, not a child but a man, or nearly so, and that I shouldn't wait anxiously for a word from Father. I tried to hold up my head and look him in the eye. But I couldn't. I knew what he thought.

So did everyone else. In time the other people began to talk quietly. Father said nothing to me, and I said nothing at all. I pretended to search in the ashes for pine nuts. Rin and Pinesinger talked together of a piece of meat they planned to cook for Father. Meanwhile Father began to tell his brothers of his long walk. Late at night, we who were still awake heard a number of sudden booming roars from the Lily on the far side of the lake. Perhaps the wolves had come upon him on his carcass.

***

"How can I speak freely when I don't know what the woman understands?" asked Father the next day, speaking of Muskrat. We were sitting on our heels at the foot of one of the round hills, where Father had brought the men of his lodge to dig out a wolf den. In fact it was the den of the wolves we knew. Father had found it on his way from the Char. Long, sparse grassblades marked it, as they seem to mark most wolf dens. Behind a screen of low-growing juniper bushes high on the hill, one of the wolves watched.

We had chopped away the earth to the depth of my forearm. Peering into the hole, I could see from the length of the tunnel that our work had hardly begun. Inside the earth was perfect silence, although each blow of my pick sent little stones hopping downhill.

"You ask how we can speak freely in front of Kori's woman," said Andriki. "And I ask how we can speak freely in front of the other women. Kori's Muskrat doesn't understand us. The other women do." Maral and Andriki laughed noisily. I smiled, encouraging Father to laugh too.

But he didn't. "I can't see why my son would snatch a woman from strangers thinking that no one would avenge her," he said. "What has happened here? Aren't my brothers two grown men? Isn't the good of the lodge important to them? How could they let such things happen?" Father spoke these words to the lake and the woods and to any person who might happen to hear him.