The Animal Wife (33 page)

I raised her shirt as high as it would easily go. There, lying pressed against her breast, lay a small, thin baby. Its knees were drawn to its chest, its tiny ankles were crossed, its face was dark and wrinkled, and its eyes were squeezed shut. Between its legs was a great hairy pad of moss, which I lifted. A penis. He was a little boy—a son. Perhaps he was tiny, but he was mine. I, who hadn't wept since I saw the last of Mother, I felt my eyes burn with tears, I felt a swelling grow inside my throat so tight that I couldn't swallow, for this child was mine as surely as he was Muskrat's. I had gotten him on my woman. He was the child of my body, and the pulse that beat at the top of his skull, the pulse that made his black hair gently flutter, was the pulse of my life.

The cold air on her bare skin partly wakened Muskrat. She scowled and clenched her teeth, and grasped her shirt to pull it down again. Her hand meeting mine woke her fully, and she looked up at me over her shoulder. For a moment she stared, then took in the fact that I was crying. My voice was hoarse, but I whispered "Muskrat" and touched her forehead, brushing her straggling hair as gently as possible from the blue tattoo on her face.

"Ah. You see," she answered, pulling up the deerskin to cover herself but turning on her back and lifting her cold hand to my cheek. Her face was relaxed, and her eyes were tired but contented. At last she smiled.

For a long time we looked at each other, then at the baby, now lying rump up under the deerskin on her chest. "He's small!" I said at last.

"Io. Small," she whispered.

I was still weeping. "He's ugly!" I said through my tears.

Now Muskrat smiled a little smile in the gathering light of the sunrise. "Hi!" she said. "Not ugly."

Very happy, I stroked my thumb over her eyelids, closing her eyes, letting my touch tell her to sleep. Cupping the baby in one hand, she held him against her chest while she turned toward me, so she lay on her side with him between us. Before I knew it she was asleep again, now smiling faintly. I pulled the upper deerskin over her head so she wouldn't see the day.

***

There was no question of our traveling until the following morning, or not in my mind. Although the people were surprised at themselves for not having guessed why Muskrat had left us, most of them grumbled when I said that if they didn't wait for her, if they didn't let her rest before traveling, they would travel without me. Perhaps they could have gone without Muskrat, but it went against them to go without me. This was especially true of Father, who as headman would have to arrive at the Hair River, perhaps to meet Graylag's people, and tell them that he hadn't kept his group together, that he had left his own son and newborn grandson behind.

Yet if even for one day we failed to go as far as possible, we would run out of water before we reached the Hair. Crossing the plain took six days, or the time it would take us, drinking sparingly, to empty both of our waterskins. But we had been using water thoughtlessly, and by night we would have all but emptied one of them. We solved the problem by emptying the skin I had carried, drinking it dry, even waking Muskrat so she could drink a full share, then giving it to Maral and Andriki, who set out at a fast stride for Narrow Lake. They would fill the skin there and come back to us, traveling twice the distance that they had traveled when forced to be slow by women, children, and the weight of their packs.

Everyone grumbled at the change of plans, but what could be done? The sun was bright and the day was growing warm—it was too bright and warm for hunting, especially on a short-grass plain with no way to hide. And there were no ripe berries. Sorting through the bones of the colt, seeing how little meat was left on them, we decided to look for more food while we searched for the dung and bushes we would need to keep our fire going one more night. Too far from the lodge to know well, the plain was strange to us, except that we had traveled through it. Not even Rin could walk straight up to something worth eating, so we spread out and went slowly, searching for bitter-root sedge and birds' eggs. The roots of this sedge pucker the mouth and the eggs were tiny, but we found enough of these foods to bring to camp.

There the breeze brought us the smell of grass and the drone of bees trying to drink from our waterskin. Bored, most people slept, but I was too happy and too excited. Instead I begged some string from Father, found three stones, and made a throwing snare. When I tested it, it flew like an eagle, so I went out to find its prey. It was too small for the bison that grazed in the distance; a bison would have kicked it aside. It was too big for the larks that flew up under my feet; the larks would have flown between the strings or would have been crushed by the stones. Yet my throwing snare was just right for a bustard I saw picking his way across the grass, his head tipped back so he could keep his eye on me, his long whiskers swaying.

As I walked slowly toward the bustard he walked slowly away, keeping a certain distance, never thinking that I had something to throw at him. As I whirled the throwing snare around my head, though, he grew frightened, spread his wings, and began trotting, and when he took to the air I let go. The snare wrapped itself around the bird and brought him down. He was too badly hurt to fly anymore, but I wasn't taking chances—I ran to him and stamped on his neck. I had to give the legs to my in-laws and the muscles of one wing to my kin, but since I was the only person of my lineage north of the Fire River, the muscle of the other wing was mine. So I killed meat for my woman. "It will be good for her milk," I said to Father as I cooked it.

***

Dressed again, with her hair combed and quite well braided, Muskrat came to sit on her heels between Rin and me. Father nodded a greeting. Muskrat nodded to Father, then opened the neck of her shirt to show him the baby. Moving very slowly and carefully, Father looked down at the little face, at the shapeless nose, the swollen eyes, the fine black hair.

"He boy," said Muskrat. "Kiu Ngarr."

Father looked at me for an explanation. "What does she mean by 'kiu ngarr'?" he asked.

"He name," said Muskrat. "What I call him. Kiu Ngarr."

"A name?" asked Father.

"What's she doing, naming an infant?" asked Rin.

That had been my thought too. It wasn't right. In fact, it's very dangerous to name a child before its legs are strong enough to run. In the Camps of the Dead, people hear the name and believe the child is grown. Then they set tasks the child can't manage. It's almost sure death to name a child too young. But after all, because Muskrat knew so little of the way of things, perhaps we were expecting too much of her to know better.

"That's not to be his name," I told Rin.

"You must tell her," said Rin. "Get your stepmother."

Although her eyes were still swollen from the crying she had done the night before, Pinesinger sat obligingly on her heels between me and Muskrat, listening carefully to Muskrat's stream of words. At last she said, "This is quite bad, what she's telling me. She knows what you want, but she refuses."

"Tell us what she says."

As Pinesinger began to do it, Muskrat broke in. "He must have name," she insisted. "How we know him, no name? All child have name. He name Kiu Ngarr." Muskrat thought a moment, started to speak to us again, then changed her mind and, turning to Pinesinger, began to talk in short bursts of her own language.

"She says a child must be named," said Pinesinger. "How else can people know him? All children have names, she says. Our children have names too, she says. We wait to call our children by name, but her people don't wait. She says it is useless to wait. She asks why we wait. Are we trying to hide who our children are? Is something wrong with the names? Do they shame us? As for her, she isn't ashamed of the name of this child: Kiu Ngarr. That is his name. So says your woman, Kori."

I hadn't expected so much force from Muskrat, and my anger came. Turning to Muskrat, I took her by the chin. "By the Bear," I said, "you won't name my son."

She jerked her face free of my grasp. "I name," she said. "Kiu Ngarr, Kiu Ngarr. He mine, and he name Kiu Ngarr. You want to talk him, Kiu Ngarr what you call him. Io!"

 

"Don't worry," said Father that night, after Muskrat and all the women had gone to sleep and after Maral and Andriki had come striding into the firelight, bringing water and a clutch of swans' eggs from the bank of the stream. "Don't worry. That word she calls your baby, that isn't a name. Let her say what she likes. Anyway, it's her lineage. Perhaps her lineage knows what it wants by way of names."

I didn't think so, but I saw no gain in arguing with Father. I planned to save my voice for Muskrat, whose show of strength had come as a surprise. I couldn't remember a time she had ever refused to do as I said, at least as far as she understood me.

Later I sat on my heels by her bed, and as best I could I explained the danger in talking too much or even in thinking too much about a new baby, let alone in giving it a name. I explained that in the Camps of the Dead, people hear the talk and take notice of the baby. If they like it, they want it. Then they send a sickness to kill it and a bird to find its soul.

When I finished, Muskrat looked at me impatiently. "True for you childs, may be," she said. "Not for mine."

I
T ISN'T GOOD
to think too much about a very young child, or to plan for him until he is named, yet when I was awake, unless I was doing something that needed all my thoughts, like hunting, I would find myself thinking about the child born to my woman, perhaps in the same way that I once thought about her. At night, if I sat looking at the fire, I would find my son in my thoughts without knowing how he came to be there, like waking from a dream.

In this way I planned what I would do with him as he grew. I saw myself teaching him snaring, then hunting. I saw myself making spears for him, at first a child's spear with a bone point, later an adult's spear with a point made of flint or some other good stone that I would find. I saw myself in the hills behind Woman Lake, the place where Uncle Bala and his people went for flints. In my mind's eye I went there, although the journey took more time than I liked to think. That daydream made me wonder if perhaps Father knew of flint somewhere close by. Then I saw that I still had much to learn from Father. I would start soon, with the flint.

I saw myself taking my boy to far places, so he would know the world. I saw myself teaching him the hunting lands at Woman Lake and the Fire River, the lands I knew, the lands where I could hunt alone and not get lost. I also saw myself teaching him Father's hunting lands—Father's, my son's, and mine—the heaths and forests that I had just begun to learn but that Father and my uncles would teach me by the time my boy was old enough to hunt.

I saw myself taking him to Uske's Spring and showing him where Andriki and I had spent the night inside a mammoth carcass. I saw him at the Fire River, learning how to catch whitefish with his hands and how to move the old lion away from meat, if the old lion still lived there.

My mind's eye saw danger too. I remembered a place on Woman Lake where an underwater spring weakens the ice. I had always been drawn to that place, because unknown to the adults, the other boys and I had played a game there: with hands joined, we would run at the weak ice, then stop suddenly, so that the boys at the end of the line slid over it. This made the ice groan. It once had seemed very exciting, but I wouldn't let my boy do it! In fact, just thinking of that place began to frighten me. My son was too dear to me—I couldn't let him play dangerous games.

I would find him a wife. Young as he was, named or not, it was not too early to think of a wife. People planned marriages for children as yet unborn. With this in mind, I tried to remember the many little girls. At first when I thought of girls I thought of lineages, until I saw that as Muskrat's child my son had no lineage. So lineage didn't matter. That was good, because any girl could marry him. It was also bad, because the girl's parents might not want to give their daughter to a boy who had no lineage, to a captive woman's child. I saw that I might make up for this lack with ivory. We might have to offer twice the wedding gifts, enough for the mother's side as well as the father's, but if the wedding gifts we offered were very good and very many, the girl's parents might be willing. Her relatives might also like the fact that they would be asked to give only half as many gifts.

I saw how I should find a girl soon, before some other family found her, as Father had found Frogga for me. In this way I began thinking of ivory and hunting and how the next time we killed mammoths I should take care to get my spear into one of them, to earn a share of the ivory.

I also began to think of other fine things, beautiful things, such as the breast feathers and wing feathers of Woman teals. As far as I knew, these small birds nested only in the reeds of Woman Lake. I couldn't remember ever having thought about their feathers before, since I myself had no use for them, yet I knew people loved the shining rainbow colors. People tied the feathers in necklaces or hung them from their ears or braided them into their hair. People accepted them as gifts in marriage exchanges. Then I wished I was back at Woman Lake, where I could set snares, since I knew just where the nests were. Ah well; as my Uncle Bala used to say, "To every good place, a trail leads." He meant that if you need something, a way to get it becomes clear. I guessed that sooner or later I would find a trail between me and those feathers.

I even thought of amber. Now amber would not be found easily—not even Uncle Bala would find too many trails leading to amber, and I knew of nowhere to get any. Even so, I had heard of it and even seen it—I seemed to remember that some kinswomen of my mother's had owned amber. Then I remembered the first time I had seen Father, and how he had given a necklace of lion's teeth to Uncle Bala. Although I had paid it little attention at the time, I remembered that an amber bead had hung from the necklace. Father had given an amber bead to Uncle Bala! Would he know where I might get such a bead? He would. I suddenly felt as sure of getting amber as I did of getting teals and ivory. Knowing that something such as an amber bead might make the difference between reluctant in-laws and willing in-laws, I began to feel hope for my son.