Kim Robinson - Shaman

Loon glanced at Elga; he could feel all of a sudden that his mouth was hanging open. She returned his gaze, swallowed. Loon closed his mouth, swallowed too. He was salivating. He had to pee, and his mouth was running at the thought of cooked meat.—I have to pee, he said.

—Go that way, Thorn said, and pointed away from Click.—Then leave me alone. And he tromped through the new snow toward where he had stashed Click’s body, blade in hand.

Loon got up and went out the other way to pee. The air was frigid. He could feel the hunger in him. The worst of it was not the weakness in the muscles, but the light-headedness. The world around him was depthless, washed out. Trees on the higher slopes bounced in the wind, he couldn’t look at them, he had to turn his head or he would lose his balance. He couldn’t tell how far away things were. This was the real danger that hunger brought, that and the sheer lack of strength.

Back at the fire he found Elga sitting up, wrapped in her hide and tending the fire. New branches were bursting into flame. She looked up at him and they shared a glance, and Loon could see what she was thinking: nothing to be done. They would back each other in the time to come, tell the same story. Nothing to be done. Now it was time to live.

He sat down beside her in a little collapse, and they wrapped both their hides over their shoulders, over their heads. They huddled together like kits when the vixen is gone.

Thorn came back with his leather patch wrapped around a mass he held before him with both hands. He sat by the fire and took up a slender old branch, stripped of its bark, and broke off its end. He pulled open his wrap and took a chunk of meat from it, about the size of his fist; rump, by the look of it. Still frozen. He had to poke a hole in it with his blade to get the sharp end of the branch to stick into it. When it was securely stuck on the branch, he held it out into the fire. First right in the flames, to sear the outside; then beside the flames, to thaw it; then above the flames, to cook it. It sizzled a little when fat and blood dripped from it into the fire, but hearing that, Thorn pulled it back and let it steam in the air. A few ticks of snow fell down from the trees over them, pushed by the wind. He tested the meat with his lips, exposed a fang tooth like a cat and bit into it; chewed off a piece, examined the meat where the bite was: pink. It was done. He chewed and swallowed the piece.—Ah, he said.—Thank you.

He handed the cooked piece, branch and all, to Elga, who thanked him and bit into it matter-of-factly, as she would any other cut. Loon’s mouth was flooded with saliva, and he was glad when she handed him the stick and gave him a bite. The meat tasted a bit like bear meat. Very tough. It was as if Click’s whole body had been made of heart muscle. Briefly Loon’s face spasmed and he cried, but Elga and Thorn ignored that.

Thorn cooked a second chunk, and as they ate that, he cooked a somewhat smaller third cut, possibly the back or front of a thigh. They passed the stick around and ate in silence. When they were done, Thorn passed around his water bag. He watched the sky for a while; the clouds were still low, scudding quickly east, but they were breaking up too, into dark gray masses separated by bright white filaments, like seed threads.—Lie with that good food in you, let it spread out in you, he said.—You know how it is, after a while your stomach is so empty it forgets how to eat. We shouldn’t go anywhere today anyway, the snow will be too soft. After a while we’ll eat again, and then tomorrow we’ll go.

And it was true, what he had said about food on an empty stomach; for a time Loon felt sick and hard-bellied. It was easiest just to lie there and watch the fire, clutching Elga by the arm. After a while he felt better: warmer, stronger, clearer in his sight. Later he had to go out in the snow and shit, and back by the fire again, warming back up, he felt better than ever.

All day the three of them lay there, soaking in the fire’s radiance and warming from the inside as the meat from Click gave them strength. Each went out into the gray windy day from time to time to relieve themselves, or just stomp the feeling back into their feet. Loon was worried to find that Badleg no longer had any feeling in the foot. It didn’t seem frostbitten, but it was largely numb. It was better than pain, but he didn’t see how he could walk.

Next morning dawned clear and cold, and after one last big build-up of the fire, and another small meal of Click’s cooked flesh, his calves, they stood and gathered their things together, packed their sacks. Quickly they were ready to leave.

Thorn stopped them.—We’re taking Click with us, he said.—We’re going to need him.

He held up a rope that he had made out of Click’s coat. He had knotted all the strips he had cut into a line. It was longer than Loon would have thought the coat could stretch, and looked strong. Thorn went out to where he had left Click, and came back hauling the body feet first, wrapped in its bearskin along on the ground, the hide tied at each end by lengths of leather, so that it made a kind of sled which could be pulled over the snow. The rope was long enough for Thorn to be able to wrap it around his middle twice in a quick harness, and return it to the bundle to tie off on the foot tie. He pulled the bundle out of their grove and onto open snow, then came back for his snowshoes and sack. He strapped on his snowshoes while in the sled harness.

They began walking. The snow was not yet completely settled down, but the snowshoes were once again a big help, holding them ankle deep on snow their boots would have plunged deep into.

But on the first downhill, Loon fell to his left and could not get back up. Badleg wouldn’t bend at ankle or knee, and he couldn’t feel its foot. He cried out and struggled, got up to his knees, straightened the snowshoes, used his arms and the walking poles to stand, then at the next step fell left again. He stared up at the others helplessly.

—I told you we would need Click, Thorn said grimly.—Loon. Crawl over here and sit on top of the sled. Lie on your side on it. It won’t make any difference to Click. And we have to move.

—I’ll pull it, Elga said.—You find the way, she told Thorn.—I’ll pull them.

—All right, Thorn said.—That’s good. As they got the rope arranged into a harness around Elga’s chest, he added to Loon,—I like your wife.

Briefly they all laughed.

It was like lying on a fallen log. They all had done that at one time or another in the forest, lying down for a nap on the flattest surface around. The bearskin wrapping Click covered him completely, and Thorn had it well tied at toe and head. And Click was frozen hard. With her snowshoes on, and two walking branches to propel her, Elga hauled the sled over the snow without many problems. When the snow softened later in the day it would get more difficult. But under the layer of new snow the old snow was rock hard, so Loon and Click would only sink in so far and then stop. And in a day or two the new stuff would get harder too. And Elga was strong.

When they went downhill, she had to let the sled slide down before her, and had to be careful not to be pulled off her feet when it got steep. Loon could help at these moments by putting Goodleg and one of his poles into the snow to slow them so they did not pull her down. Lying on his side he could look right at Elga’s face on these downhills. On the steeper slopes the creases between her eyebrows formed a deep wedge on her forehead. Her eyes were sunk deep in her head, her top ribs stuck out; the pads of fat behind her eyes and around her ribs were gone.

Once or twice Thorn led them on traverses down slopes, and she tried to follow, but the sled was always hanging straight downslope from her, so she had to stomp her snowshoes down several times, balancing just so, then stride down and stomp the next step down, leaning back fast if the snow gave way. Loon was frequently astonished by the fluid balance and power of her moves; he did not think he could do what she was doing, even if his leg were fine. Suddenly he saw that she was an ice woman, had grown up in snow. His wife came from a different world, just as Thorn had suggested by the fire with his talk about the swan wife story. She stood there huffing and puffing in the difficult moments, face red, eyes squinted to slits, but her moves were sure. And she kept on making them.