Forbidden Land Page 18

  And it was so, for as the river swelled and began to overrun its banks, they followed the mammoth into the pass. It was high and broad, with good footing and grass well above the river. Although the high ice peaks talked back to the wind and the sound of spring thaw filled the world below, they felt no danger in this place, for they saw no sign that they were reaching the edge of the world. By day, teratorns, which had always been a sign of good luck for the People, circled in the sky far ahead of them. Wherever the giant condor like scavenger flew, always there was game ahead.

  At the end of the third day’s journey from the riverbank, after skirting the stony bank of a broad, iceberg ridden lake whose northeastern shore was rimmed by soaring cliffs of ice, they came to pause atop a long, flat-topped ridge at the far end of the pass.

  “The wonderful valley!” cried Summer Moon. No one argued with her. The mountains fell steeply away before them.

  Two broad, river-cut canyons cleft the tumbled mass of the stony range. One canyon opened directly east and south, offering a clear route down into the enormous valley below; the other was aligned toward the north and was blocked by the glacier that they had feared. Now, for the first time, they could see it clearly: It was a vast, vertically aligned alpine glacier. Its upper reaches extruded onto the far side of the ridge to form the high, crenellated white cliffs that they had seen walling the northeastern shore of the highland lake. Its lower reaches were like a vast white scab wedged between the precipitous stone walls of the north-facing slopes.

  Brother Dog whined at the treacherous prospects that it offered to his fellow travelers as he looked down and across its bleak, crevasse-scarred surface into the perpetually shadowed, ice-ridden gorge that held it captive.

  The band had already turned away to look to the southeast now, scanning the depths of the second, much less precipitous canyon that tumbled downward into the valley. It was ice-free and thick with mixed hardwoods and fragrant spruce.

  “Mammoths .. . many mammoths!” exclaimed Grek, for as they stared down, the trumpeting of the tuskers came up to them out of the shadowed, wind-sheltered forests. “It seems that our great mammoth spirit is not wandering off the edge of the world to die alone,” he said, winking broadly at Simu. “You may put aside your fears, my brother, for our Life Giver knows where he is going. Listen! His women and children are waiting for him, as the game awaits us in that fine, good valley that lies ahead!”

  And fine and good it was. Surrounded by hills and mountains all around, it was breathtakingly beautiful, and game was everywhere they looked. Not just caribou-thousands of caribou, so many that the smell of them had masked the smell of other game—but bison and horse, camel and elk, all feeding on new grass and drinking from willow-choked outwash streams and marshes along the shores of dozens of small lakes that lay along the curves of a great ox bowed river. The people stood in silence, enthralled, until Grek finally said: “We must thank Father Above and Mother Below for allowing us to come safely to this place.”

  “And all the forces of Creation for allowing Life Giver to lead us,” added Simu.

  “And our magic man!” piped Summer Moon. “He promised us that the wonderful valley lay ahead!”

  Thanks were offered, and praises were sung to Father Above and Mother Below, to Life Giver and Magic Man and all of the forces of Creation. And when the last chant was done, Torka nodded, grinning.

  “There is one whom we have forgotten,” he told them. Although his tone was low and serious and full of respect for his intent, amusement sparkled in his eyes. “We must thank the son of Zhoonali, for if Cheanah had not forced us to move on, we would never have left the far country and found this valley in the Forbidden Land .. . this wonderful valley .. . that he will never see or know....”

  PART IV. SPIRIT WIND

  Now was the time when the people of Cheanah celebrated the rebirth of the time of light. The wind was soft with spring, and the far country sang the song of the awakening land. Rivers roared, and lions answered. Leaping cats ventured from the willow scrub to hunt within marshes, where grazing animals ventured from the ever-greening steppe to drink. It was the time his people called the Moon of the Green Grass Growing.

  It was the time for hunting, for renewed joy in the chase and in the kill, for men and women to come together with new enthusiasm—the males sharing one another’s females until at last they were sated—while young boys, watching and learning, wondered how they themselves would claim a woman when they were grown. For in all of the fire circles of the encampment of Cheanah, only Honee, the fat, homely little daughter of the headman, was a female child.

  “She will have her pick of the best, and I will teach her how to please them!” declared Zhoonali as she came to stand before her son. Seated on a lichen-stuffed pillow of horsehide, with his wide back supported by a fur-softened bone backrest, Cheanah was lost in thought. He was taking his ease in the full light of the sun. “Cheanah, have you heard your mother?” the old woman pressed him soberly. Her tone indicated that she had long been preparing to make this speech and was irked that her intended audience obviously was not interested. “From this time until a time yet to be determined, the people of Cheanah must allow all fit and strong girl babies to live . whether or not their fathers and mothers want them.”

  Cheanah frowned. Annoyed, he looked up at her. Zhoonali was standing in his light, but this was not what irritated him. Her statement emphasized the concern that had brought him to sit here alone before his hut, moodily reflecting that he had sated himself on every woman in the camp—with the exception of his mother, of course, and old Frahn, who was beyond the interest of even her own man. The hunters had not objected to the woman swapping; indeed, they had welcomed his suggestion. The ancestors of Cheanah’s people contended that such sharing made a band a closer, stronger unit.

  All had enthusiastically taken up the old custom of plaku now that Torka was no longer here to frown upon it. Mano, his eldest boy, had laughed with pleasure to hear him speak derisively of Man Who Walks With Dogs, and old Frahn, Teean’s woman, had been the first to strip, grease her naked body, and festoon herself with feathers and beads. She had stomped and sung. She had rolled her hips and flicked her brow ri-nippled, bladder-skin breasts at potential partners. But in the end she had seated herself on the perimeter of the gathering, sucking her gums and slapping her thighs, destined only to watch the others couple—even her own man. Of the adult females, only Zhoonali had elected to remain aloof from the enthusiastic ruttings of her people. Cheanah had respected her wishes. It was Zhoonali’s right to stand apart, not only because of her advanced years but because she was the mother of the headman. He knew his mother well enough to understand that she would never put herself in the position of Frahn, who had allowed herself to be humiliated by rejection.

  As though any man would want to mount and pound such old, dry bones when there are young, moist women for the taking! he thought. Now, nearby, a woman scolded a child sharply. Cheanah’s eyes sought the source of the sound. It was Bili, Ekoh’s woman. Her boy, Seteena, had evidently snatched a skewer of meat from the fire and burned his hand.

  Cheanah’s glance lingered on Bili, whose narrow back was to him as she bent over her little son, no doubt rubbing fat into his pudgy fingers. As Bili worked and scolded, she turned just enough so that Cheanah could make out the side of her ample left breast as it quivered against the soft doeskin of her tunic.

  Someone called out to her, taunting her about Seteena’s clumsiness. Cheanah, realizing it was Mano, felt a surge of pride in his son. The boy had not yet seen the passing of thirteen summers, but already he was displaying a restless and intensifying virility that endeared him to his father. The women of the band were always here for Mano whenever he felt the need for release. All except Ekoh’s woman. Bili did not seem to like the boy. Now, as she turned and taunted him back, Cheanah knew that the anger flashing in her dark eyes would only incite Mano to further teasing, which would not end until Ekoh ordered the youth to
find another female to annoy.

  Cheanah’s predictions were soon proved correct.

  But since there was no woman or girl nearby to harass, Mano turned to his favorite leisure pastime: teasing his little brother, Ank. Cheanah watched his youngest son jump to his feet and, braced on skinny, knob-kneed legs, hotly demand that Mano leave him alone.

  Ank rose to the baiting of his brother much too easily, the headman observed. The boy would have to learn control, or when he was grown he would be useless as a hunter. The headman’s gaze drifted across the encampment. The other hunters and boys were lounging in front of their huts, dozing, working at weapons, gnawing at bones, or playing at games of bone toss. The women worked together over the newly taken skin of a camel. They had feasted upon the prime portions of that fatty-humped animal the night before, leaving the bulk of the meat and bones for the carrion, as they often did in times of plenty. Although camel skin was not of much practical merit when compared to the hides of more thickly pelaged animals, the dull-ocher fur had a vaguely spotted appearance that the women fancied; thus, the hunters had taken it. Now the hide was stretched and secured to the ground with bone pegs as the women fleshed it.

  He watched them as they knelt, leaning forward and then pulling back again and again, drawing the wide bladed scrapers rhythmically across the hide. Their backsides moved in a way that would have been erotic to him once—but no more. He sighed. With the exception of Frahn, his mother, and Honee, his own little daughter, he had lain with them all. He thought of his own women, Xhan, whom he suspected was pregnant, and Kimm. Used meat and, in Kimm’s case, boring meat and much too much of it.

  It was a sad thing for a man to realize that the challenge of future seductions was gone for him, at least until new females were raised up from among his own people to an age when they might become sexually interesting.

  That won’t be for a long time, he thought. A very long time, at least nine years. Maybe less, but not much less.

  Again he sighed. Only Bili could still rouse much interest in him. Perhaps this was because she made very little effort to hide the fact that she did not want him. A smile pulled at Cheanah’s mouth. There was still a bit of challenge left with her. “Cheanah! Listen to Zhoonali! When the boys of this band become men, they will fight over who is to take Honee, our beautiful, beloved child, to his fire. Share her they will have to do, but although she is strong and good to look upon, she cannot be expected to satisfy all of the men of this encampment in future days, and it will be forbidden for her to go to her brothers.”

  Cheanah’s brow expanded across his forehead. Zhoonali was blind in both eyes when it came to Honee. The girl was strong, but she was no beauty, and he doubted if any man would ever fight over her. Zhoonali continued emphatically: “As the women in this camp grow older, Honee must have band sisters to help her. It would be a bad thing for her to grow old in a camp with no younger women.”

  He stared up at her, annoyed. Since Man Who Walks With Dogs had been sent away, his mother seemed to be growing stronger, nourished from the pride that one of her own was headman again. She nagged him constantly, and he did not like being nagged.

  “Cheanah, are you listening?”

  “All of the encampment will listen if only my mother will nag a little louder!”

  Her eyes flashed, but she lowered her voice. “Someone must nag at you! I have come from your hut, where Xhan is grumbling that if she bears a girl child, she will kill it!”

  So his first woman was pregnant. “Xhan will do as she is told. Male or female, she will be glad for whatever life I put into her belly.”

  The wind that gusted quietly through the encampment at that moment was warm and sweet with the promise of ever-lengthening days of light. Cheanah breathed it in and found it as rich and sweet as raw meat.

  “Cheanah, we must kill no more of our girl babies until the number of females among us is sufficient to assure the future of our people!”

  Cheanah, however, was thinking of the past, remembering the women and girls of Torka’s band. The tall, antelope-eyed Lonit; the lovely, gentle lana; the adorable girl-woman Mahnie; the pretty, bounteously bosomed Eneela; and the little ones .. . the strong and beautiful little ones .. . Demmi and Summer Moon.

  Summer Moon. Now there was a child who would one day set a man’s loins pounding. And in the meantime, a man could be teaching her, guiding her, opening her body gradually to-He stopped. Just thinking of the girl’s potential made him restless and hard with need.

  If only the women of Torka were here now, he would begin to work with Summer Moon. But first he would take the mother, and then lana, and then Mahnie, and then suckle the milk-swollen, wondrously copious breasts of Eneela and’Cheanah!” Zhoonali’s tone was sharp with impatience, and Cheanah was cut by it.

  He snapped to his feet, uncaring that his mother stared at that which was now thrusting boldly upward beneath his lightweight tunic, moving with reawakened need. “This man should not have permitted the women of Man Who Walks With Dogs to leave this camp. Or his girl-children. Were they here, your tongue could take a rest!”

  Her face twisted with anger toward him as her eyes met his. “Forget them! We have women of our own. The sky has not burned, the earth has not shaken, and since Torka was driven from this land, the voice of the wanawut is far away.” Her expression suddenly changed, becoming as avaricious as a hunting bird’s as she boldly stared at the erected column of his manhood. “Look at you! You do an old woman proud! If I were not old and dry and beyond the making of life, and were it not forbidden by the custom of our ancestors, I would open myself to you. Ah, the children we would make together!”

  He stared, appalled, because before he could turn away, she grasped him, her old, bony, high-veined fingers fastening around him right over his distended tunic.

  She laughed aloud at the look on his face as she worked him with firm, sure, experienced fingers and then, feeling his response, stepped quickly away, releasing him. “What need of Torka’s women has Cheanah? Go! Go now, I say! We have women enough in this camp. Do not waste the man fire! It will make new females for this band!”

  And in the days and nights that followed, when he lay on the women of his band, he knew that they were good women and, all except Bili, willing. But they were not Torka’s women. Nor would they ever be.

  Leaning forward on her knuckles, the wanawut looked on the world that lay far below her fine new aerie and shook her head, huffing low and growling. Since the weather had cleared and the bright, eye-hurting hole in the sky had begun to stay longer overhead, the beasts had been venturing ever closer to the base of her mountain, far from the distant place where they gathered in a pack before skin nests close to fires that tainted the wind with the stink of burning flesh and bones and dung.

  For many comings and goings of the bright hole in the sky, the wanawut had been content to remain on the misted heights, snatching and eating unwary marmots and voles and nursing her cubs while the dog bite on her shoulder festered and made her ill and then slowly healed as she listened to the song of the ever-constant wind. She had gradually regained her strength, comfortable with the knowledge that the beasts with their attacking dogs and throwing sticks were far away.

  But now the wanawut watched them from high on the’ cliffs that overlooked a broad steppe land and the northernmost edge of the beasts’ valley. Salivating with hunger, the wanawut frowned. The beasts were being greedy and wasteful. As always. They were now abandoning the carcass of a giant ground sloth, just as they had abandoned the bulk of a camel only days before. Why had the beasts killed the great, shaggy, lumbering sloth if they were not going to feed on it or at least hack it up and carry away the best parts, as they had done with the camel, back to their fires?

  She squinted down. Distance and altitude made the beasts appear to be no larger than the tiny winged things that had begun to swarm since the rocky face of her south-facing cliff had warmed just enough to transform ice-filled crevices into pools of algae-th
ick water. The wanawut did not like the winged things any more than she liked the beasts. Even now they were buzzing around her eyes and trying to bury themselves in her nostrils and ears. She swatted at them, smashed them flat against her massively muscled forearm and thigh, then picked them up on the tip of a moistened finger and ate them as she continued to watch the distant movement of the beasts, scowling at their odd noises and their wastefulness.

  Yesterday she had not felt quite strong enough to leave the aerie to compete with other carrion eaters for the remains of the camel. Nor had she wanted to leave her cubs unguarded, although here, high on the mountain wall, she could perceive no threat to them. They were not yet crawling, let alone walking. Were they growing as weak with hunger as she? Though her milk still flowed, it was thin and no longer as rich with the smell of fat as it had once been. For days now there had been no close flying birds to catch, or rodents of any kind. She had probably eaten them all.

  She turned and went inside the cave. At the rear, where the light never quite penetrated, the bald little beast cub stirred fitfully beside her own offspring in their shared nest of twigs, lichens, and bones. The beast baby was almost always fussing. It was cool here in the gray shadows; the wanawut could see her breath. She looked down to see that her own cub had kicked away its covering of dried leaves, feathers, and scraps of skins. Warm within its coat of thick gray fur, the strong, compact little form lay curled fast asleep on her side. Beside her, the beast baby lay on his back, shaking his little fists and squirming against the cold, his body as bald and pale as a newly hatched bird.

  The wanawut was troubled. The beast ling was always cold and crying unless buried under a thick layer of insulating feathers and leaves within his nest or cuddled close in the thick fur of her arms. He was shivering violently now, and his skin was turning blue and was covered with tiny bumps. He was growing quickly, but compared to her own cub, he was still small. With the exception of the thick tuft of black fur on his head, he was as hairless as the day she had found him. Several of the tiny multi legged winged things were crawling on him. Snarling angrily, the wanawut waved them off, then bent over, close to the beast cub.