Judith Berman: Lord Stink

Illustration by Laurie Harden

Only when the shadow of Feather Mountain reached her high grassy ledge did Winter realize how late the day had grown. For the last time, she emptied the little basket she wore strung around her neck into the bigger one at her feet. With care she picked up the bigger basket, now brimming with berries, and scrambled sweating along the narrow trail that led down through otherwise impenetrable thickets of scrubby spruce and blueberry. She had come farther than she meant to. Four-Legs used this trail; while yanking her hair from the prickly clutches of a spruce, she nearly stepped into a day-old pile of grizzly droppings.

The other Sandspit Town women had already gathered at the steep meadow where they had left the pack baskets. Winter poured her blueberries into the emptiest one. As she tipped her basket, her hair fell forward, and stuck to her sweaty cheek. She brushed it back impatiently.

“Pick them, don’t paint your face with them,” said old Aunt Wren.

Winter looked at her sticky purple hand and laughed. Then she glanced up and saw her older cousin Thrush, and stopped laughing. Thrush gave her a pretty smile. Thrush was immaculate, as always: glossy black hair falling straight down her back without a snarl or straying lock, cedar-bark cape and skirt spotless. No sweat or dirt or blueberry juice on that perfect face. Her fingers were barely stained. Winter didn’t know how she managed it. Thrush had spent the entire day picking berries, too; she was, after all, a king’s daughter and she had to set a proper example.

“You wandered off,” Thrush said.

“I didn’t mean to,” Winter said quickly, as if she were one of Thrush’s attendants, bound to wait on her every second.

“You should be more careful,” Thrush said. “There are Four-Legs around. Rumble told me one broke into Father’s salmon trap last night.”

Familiar anger scalded Winter and she looked away. Her brother was one of Thrush’s hapless suitors. She did not ask if Thrush had begged Rumble to kill the grizzly, as she had done last year with the king of Round Bay’s unfortunate nephew. Four-Legs had acute hearing and were always alert for hunting expeditions against them. Winter did not want to endanger Rumble any more than Thrush might already have done.

It was time to return to the king’s fish camp. Attendants and slaves heaved the pack baskets onto their backs, adjusting the burden straps across their foreheads. Another of Winter’s cousins lowered her baby’s cradleboard from a tree. And then they all headed down the mountain, single file along the animal trail, chattering and gossiping. To avoid talking any more with Thrush, Winter stayed behind her, watching the walk that managed to be both prim and seductive. Slender ankles, brown, bare, delicate feet; too much to hope for that Thrush would tread on a sharp rock.

Thrush must have been daydreaming, because Winter clearly saw why the line ahead of them snaked to the left and then curved back. Thrush, though, kept walking straight along the trail. There was an instant in which Winter thought about warning her but, out of spite, did not. And so Thrush walked into it, stepping with her delicate foot right smack into a soft wet pile of blueberry-seeded bear shit.

“Aaahhh,” Thrush whimpered. She pulled her foot out, smeared to the ankle with the stinking stuff, and hopped on one leg. A wail burst from her: “The filthy bear!”

The line of women stopped. Every one of them fell silent and turned to stare at Thrush in horror, ragged slaves, commoners, copper-bedecked nobles. Thrush seemed oblivious to everything but her soiled foot. She tried to wipe the shit on a clump of grass, but there was so much of it, on top of her foot, on her heel, thick between her toes. “It’s disgusting!” she was moaning. “Oh, it stinks! The filthy bear!”

Then old Aunt Wren rushed from behind Winter. “That’s enough!”

She grabbed Thrush by the arm, and hustled her down the trail. No one treated Thrush that way—not Thrush, favored daughter of their king, Thrush, who never did anything wrong. “I have to clean it off!” Thrush wailed, as she stumbled along, dragged by Wren. Dirt and leaves stuck to the shit.

But Aunt Wren would not let her stop. Guilt-stricken, Winter ran down the trail after them, and the rest of the women followed. They passed from the blueberry meadow into deep, mossy forest, and the trail grew muddy, pocked with crisscrossing moose prints. She heard a rustle from a tall thicket of devil’s-club, then a crackle; and suddenly a huge shaggy shape crashed onto the trail, directly in front of Thrush, as high at the shoulders as she was. It was not a moose. Thrush screamed in raw terror. Aunt Wren threw herself in front of Thrush, but with a bloody sweep of its claws the grizzly sent her flying. Then it grabbed Thrush, and bared its fangs at her, drooling and growling.

In that terrible instant, Winter realized for the first time just how much she hated Thrush, how much she wanted the grizzly to rip Thrush to pieces. At the same time, Thrush had never seemed more precious and vulnerable. She found herself flailing at a huge, hairy leg, shrieking, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” The grizzly swung at her back-handed, smashing her against a tree. By the time she recovered, the grizzly had already left the trail, and was crashing through the devil’s-club, moving with incredible speed. In the blink of an eye it was out of sight, and Thrush was gone, too, her screams fading rapidly into silence.

Half stunned, shaking uncontrollably, Winter knelt beside Aunt Wren. Blood poured from deep gouges in the old woman’s shoulder and arm. “Run, you idiots!” Wren gasped, struggling up on one elbow. “Hurry and tell her father what happened!”

Winter raced ahead of the other women. She knew this was her fault. She should have known how her cousin would react: when they were little girls, Thrush had once gone into screeching hysterics after stepping on a slug.

She ran down through the immense cedars and hemlocks, across the grassy alder bottomlands, toward the camp on the shore of Oyster Bay. She found the king with her older brother by the river mouth. She could barely sob out the story to them. Rumble, in the midst of repairs to the king’s salmon trap, dropped all his tools and sprang to his feet in horror. “Thrush? Gone? Which way?”

“Not you!” the king said with such hoarse fury that Rumble took a step backward in confusion. His hand shook on his staff. “This is for her brothers!”

Winter did not know until that moment that her uncle disliked Rumble’s attentions to his daughter. Not that she wanted Thrush as a sister-in-law, but the king’s rejection hurt.

“Go find Counselor,” the king ordered, and Rumble turned to obey, bewildered.

Men soon came running from camp, from the beach, from their fishing stations along the river. “We’ll use dogs,” Counselor said in his deep, confident voice. He had already armed himself with his slate-tipped spear and his long copper dagger. Thrush’s oldest brother was the bravest and most skillful hunter in Sandspit Town. He had killed grizzlies before, single-handed. The mere sight of him should have made Winter feel better, but it didn’t. “I’ll take ten armed men, and Orphan will take ten, and we’ll soon pick up the trail.”

“I’ll start on the east side of the ridge and sweep westward,” said Orphan, the second brother. “You start on the west side. We’ll find her.” Like Counselor, he was careful not to mention the grizzly by name or even, now, by respectful title.