The Animal Wife (41 page)

I didn't like the way the talk was turning. Andriki was letting himself be drawn into an argument, as if he had forgotten where we were. I was getting worried, even if he wasn't. I kept my eyes on the men around Pinesinger, trying to learn from their strange faces what thoughts might be in their minds. I didn't have long to wonder. One of them stood up, and as if he were waving flies from meat, he rudely waved Andriki and me away. Afterward he turned to Pinesinger and jerked his chin at her, motioning her to go back inside the cave. "There," she said, wide-eyed. "You see he wants me to stop talking. And he's telling you to go. You'd better obey him."

"We don't obey strangers, Sister-in-law," said Andriki. "But you know that."

"This time is different," said Pinesinger.

"These hills are in our hunting lands," said Andriki blandly.

"Don't anger these people," said Pinesinger, starting to her feet to show the man that she at least was making ready to obey. "Don't start a fight. There are many of the Ilasi. More men are inside, I warn you."

"We don't obey strangers, and we don't fear them either," said Andriki.

Andriki's matter-of-fact tone was very encouraging, but I still felt worried by the Ilasi men. "We'll go," I said to Pinesinger. "Without you, if you like. But I won't go without my woman and my boy. Ask Muskrat to come out to me, please, Stepmother."

Pinesinger gave me a long, doubtful look, then went back inside the cave. We waited, looking up at the six black-haired men while they looked down at us. They reminded me of ravens, free to go, unafraid, watching. Behind the men came voices from the cave. For a time the men talked back and forth with the people inside. Then at last the oldest man stood up and pointed one of his fingers at me—a gesture my woman used to make, until I taught her not to. "Ah!" he said. "Weh!"

To my surprise, I understood him. He had said, "You come." I had learned these words from Muskrat. Perhaps she had told him what he could say to me that I would understand. "I come?" I asked him, touching my chest.

He glared down. "Ah," he said again, louder and more slowly. "Dza Goie weh!"

Andriki and I stood up together. The man in the cave scowled down at my uncle, and stooping suddenly, he snatched up a stone. This he shook at Andriki, threatening. He meant that Andriki should not take a step farther. "Ah!" he coughed impatiently, staring at me. "Ah! Ah!"

"They mean me," I said to Andriki. "That's what he said, and he's looking at me. I'll do it."

"No, you won't," said Andriki, slowly reaching for his spear. "They won't get you up there alone—not while I live."

When Andriki's hand touched his spear, all the watching men leaped to their feet.

"Io. Io," I said to them, trying to sound soothing. "We respect you. Mi weh, io. I'm coming." To Andriki I said, "Be easy, Uncle. I'll be careful." And to Pinesinger, out of sight, I said, "Well then, Stepmother, here I come. Can you speak the right words to tell these men I come without my spear?"

The mouth of the cave was very low and narrow, just a slit in the tumble of boulders. Pikas had used it—the opening was thick with dung. The six men moved aside as I climbed toward them, but they hardly seemed to see me as I got on my hands and knees to crawl inside the cave. They were watching Andriki so intently that I knew he was doing something that worried them, so instead of going inside, I turned to look at him too. He had moved closer to the cliff, as if ready to climb it, his spear and mine in his hands. His untroubled face was almost smiling, as if he had taken the measure of the Ilasi men and now was challenging them to touch me.

"Uncle," I said in a voice as quiet and soothing as I could make it, "I see a large pile of stones here. If you anger the people, they could stone us. I can hear from the voices that many people are inside. We can't fight all of them with two spears. You're below them, in the way of their stones, and I'll be trapped in here. Sit down. Don't scare these men."

In the same kind of soothing voice he asked, "Is your stepmother there? I want to see her."

"She's not in sight," I said.

"Call her."

He was making me uneasy, and the Ilasi men too. "Uncle, she's gone and we're troubling the people, talking so. Let me go in."

"Your stepmother," said Andriki softly, "must tell them that our people are many, and if harm comes to you, the people here will be hunted down like animals and killed."

"Before we talk of killing, let me see my woman," I said, also softly. "The people up here are watching you, not me."

"Good, then. Go on. Be very careful."

"I'm going in now."

"I'll be here."

"Be easy, Uncle," I said, and on hands and knees I went in.

A
GREAT SMELL MET ME
and almost choked me. It was the smell of many sweating bodies and much spoiling meat. Rolled up near the cave's mouth was a fresh bearskin. Had these people killed a bear? The skin was huge, that of a very big bear. And I had thought the Ilasi were simple mouse-eaters! If they had killed this bear, how had they done it? With rocks? Surely not. With their little bird-spears? Not possible. How then? I looked around the cave for larger weapons but saw none. Soon the great stench made me wonder if the people could have found a bear already dead. I would have liked to show the skin to Andriki.

Suddenly Pinesinger's voice spoke in the darkness ahead of me. "The people ask you to sit down, Kori. They want to talk with you," she said.

"Where is my woman?"

"Not here."

"But she is," I said. "I heard our child's voice. He spoke to me. My woman is here."

"Never mind her now. The men have something they want to say to you, Kori. Perhaps you should hear them."

"Yes, if it's about my woman," I said. I sat quietly, my arms resting on my knees so that everyone could see my empty, harmless hands.

While standing below the cave looking up at the Ilasi, I had also been looking into the bright sky. My eyes were taking a long time to get used to the darkness. Meanwhile I could only listen to the echoing talk, the booming jumble of men's voices that took turns speaking to me. "What do they say, Stepmother?" I asked.

But although Pinesinger could understand one person speaking slowly and clearly, as if to a child, she couldn't understand many excited men speaking quickly all together in the echoing cave. She had to ask questions. Impatiently they answered her as they repeated themselves to me, as if they thought I should be able to understand. I heard the same words over and over, getting slower and louder. Perhaps these men were as unused to strange tongues as I once had been. In the back of my mind it came to me that this had been the way we had spoken to Muskrat.

As I waited for Pinesinger, my eyes grew used to the dark, and I looked around, hoping to see my woman. But she wasn't there. I saw a ragged crowd of other people, men and women, young and old, almost as many as the people of Father's lodge. They looked like Muskrat—their faces were broad, like hers, and their hair was thick and black. They wore it as Muskrat would have worn hers if Rin hadn't braided it for her: pulled back and wound with string into a bent club that looked like a child's foot in a moccasin. All wore dull, dark clothes trimmed with balding fox fur, like the clothes that Andriki and I had once hidden from Muskrat. The adults had blue scars on their foreheads.

Nearby sat Pinesinger, her back very straight, her face alert, as if she were trying to please, to seem obedient. She had more respect for these dirty people than I did. When an old woman near her plucked her arm and asked her a question, Pinesinger shook her head, then gestured to me and with the same hand patted her breast. She seemed to be telling the old woman that she was my stepmother. I felt a twinge of irritation. What business was it of Pinesinger's to explain to these bobcats about me?

From a dark corner an old man watched me closely. His face was deeply wrinkled, and he braced himself with a long staff. Surely it was this man who had run from the Hills of Ohun on the day I captured Muskrat, the same man who had led Muskrat here. Who was he to her? Her father? I didn't know. Never before had I wondered about Muskrat's mother or father, or any of her family. His face bitter, scowling, the old man watched me until at last he noticed that I was also watching him. Scornfully he looked away.

"Tell me what they're saying," I said to Pinesinger. "Can't you hear?"

"Yes, I hear," she answered, "but I don't think I understand. They're trying to tell me your woman is dead."

"What? That's not what they're saying! Don't her tracks lead here? Didn't I just hear my son's voice?"

"I don't know what they mean. Wait a little," she said, and turning to the Ilasi men, she spoke some more. I could hear from her voice that she wanted to please them. For a time I listened as hard as I could, hoping to catch a word here or there. But Pinesinger's powers with this strange tongue were far beyond mine—I didn't understand much of what she said, let alone what the men told her. At last I stopped trying. Instead, in hopes of seeing something that I knew was Muskrat's, I let my eyes roam through the cave.

Because of the overhang, the narrow entrance, and the fact that the cave faced east, by this time of day no sunlight came into it. And although the cave was near a wood where there was plenty of fuel, the people didn't seem to have bothered with a fire. So it was very dark. Yet as I was looking around at the people's piles of sticks, I saw something that I had taken for firewood—a stick bent from being tied with sinew, just like the stick of Muskrat's foul magic bundle, the stick she had hung with a horse's teeth, an owl's feather, and my son's umbilical cord. As soon as I noticed one sinew-bent stick, I noticed several others stuck into cracks in the rock, lying on the floor, or propped against the wall of the cave. Some were hung with teeth, others were hung with feathers, and all were dark, as if rubbed with fat. So I saw that whatever they were, they were common things that came easily to hand, not things of the spirits but things of the people—tools like digging sticks, perhaps. Muskrat had played a song on hers. Perhaps all the Ilasi played music. The thought was soothing. For just a moment it seemed that people who would play music would not make trouble for my woman and my child and me.

But the next moment I began to worry. The talk was taking far too long. I knew Andriki would be anxious. Perhaps his concern would make him restless. I didn't want him to frighten the people or in any way to alarm them. For all I knew there was a back way out of the cave, where my woman could escape from me again. I could have taken Pinesinger by the throat and shaken her for jabbering away with Muskrat's people as if she were no wife of Father's. I also didn't like the squinting faces of the people watching me. Very slowly I started to stand up.

"Stop," said Pinesinger. "These people are angry. They want to tell you something."

"Then speak, Stepmother. What trick are they playing on me?"

"I don't know just what they mean, Kori," said Pinesinger, her voice barely above a whisper. "I don't know what they want you to think. They say your woman is dead, but I can tell you, she's not. But that is what they tell me to say to you—she's dead. I don't like it."

Neither did I. I looked around at all the dark, quiet faces, at the watching eyes, and although I didn't believe I was in real danger, I sat down again while Pinesinger tried to talk some more. "It's this," she began again, doubtfully. "Even if she isn't really dead, she's dead for you. You harmed her when you captured her, they say. You made her pregnant. Then you harmed your child when you took away his hunting power—the bundle your woman put into the thatch. Your child could starve because of what you took away from him, they say. So they won't let you see the child or the woman. She's not yours." Pinesinger listened to one of the men, whose voice was beginning to sound excited. "It's this," she said, her eyes wide. "He says that only if you and your uncle leave right now can you leave here alive. If you go now, the people will spare you, although some of them want to follow you a way to make sure you're gone. They'll spare you and your uncle because your woman has asked them to. They want you to touch your mouth, so they'll know I told you what they wanted and that you understood me. To them, touching your mouth is a sign."

I don't know what I had expected, that these words should astonish me so. I suppose I hadn't thought that the Ilasi, who were as simple as animals, and intruding on our hunting lands too, would say such things. I tried not to let my face show my astonishment. "But the woman is mine now. She belongs with me," I said. "And the child wants me. He's mine too."

Pinesinger gave me a long look, a look of warning, and thought for a while before she repeated my words for the silent, carefully listening Ilasi. One of the men answered her with a short, quick burst of speech. "He asks what child," said Pinesinger. "No child of yours is here."

"Hi!" I said, too loudly. "I heard my child. Didn't he call me? Where is he?"

"Your voice, Kori," said Pinesinger in alarm. "In the name of Ohun, keep your voice low."

But my anger had come. "Where is he?" I asked. "He's here. He's in this cave somewhere, in these hills. Our hills. These are our wintergrounds, our hunting lands. Muskrat is my woman, and the child is my child. I took her before, while her people ran like hares. I'll take her again. Do these people think they can keep her? She comes now, or all our men come for her with spears. With spears!"

"Be quiet, Kori!" warned Pinesinger. "I don't dare tell them that. Go now, quickly. Get up and thank them. I'm going to tell them you thank them." And she began to speak soothing words in the Ilasi language.

But it was no use. On the cliff was a commotion. I hurried out. With his hafted ax between his teeth, Andriki was scrambling up the rocks to the cave. The Ilasi men began to shout in high, excited voices. Then, behind me in the dark cave, everyone began to move quickly, grabbing things, bumping each other. Over and over Pinesinger tried to speak, until her baby began crying. Then even he was drowned out by the echoing noise in the cave.