Tsuga's Children Page 22

  Bren and Arel, Fannu and Dona wanted to go with them as far as the northern mountains, but Aguma told them that Tsuga’s words must be followed. Without a doubt, she said, Jen and Arn had been sent to them by Ahneeah, and only Tsuga would know her purposes.

  All of the people of the winter camp came to the place in front of Aguma’s hogan to say goodby. The councillors spoke, even Goatskins and Reasonable Gestures, though the people would never take them seriously again. The old councillor with the furrowed face and no right arm gave Jen a necklace made of the fangs and claws of bears, his own magic against night-fear. The bowyer had made an arrow to replace the one with which Arn had shot the half-wolf in the pine forest, its steel blade the silhouette of a wolfs head. Others gave them the seeds of squash, corn and beans, all known to grow large and fast. For food for the journey they were given shelled beechnuts, butternuts and hickory nuts, smoked shandeh, venison jerky, bannock and dried fruits and berries—all light and full of nourishment.

  Finally Bren and Arel came up to them, carrying the parkas decorated with beadwork in black and white, made of the softest skins and trimmed with the fur of the white winter weasel. “This one was made for you, anyway,” Bren said, smiling—a rare expression for him.

  Jen said immediately, “We’ll trade, Arel,” took off her parka with the red fox fur border and exchanged with Arel.

  Arn said, taking the decorated parka, “Then you must have my knife, Bren. I remember you said it was yodehna. I want you to have it.”

  Bren took a step backwards, his face stiff with surprise. “No,” he said. “You don’t want to give it away. It’s too beautiful.”

  Arn took the sheathed knife from his belt. “You took my place in the sacrifice, Bren. Look, we’ll trade knives; yours has cleaned a deer.”

  Slowly, still perplexed by the gift, Bren took off his plain sheathed knife and handed it to Arn, taking Arn’s knife at the same time. “I’ll always carry it,” he said. “I’ll always call it ‘Arn’s knife.’”

  Then it was time to put on their new parkas, their packs, and turn to go. Fannu and Dona wanted to know when they would return. Runa embraced them both. They stood looking into the eyes of Arel and Bren, wondering if they would ever again see these friends with whom they had been through so much, whose bravery and loyalty had never wavered.

  There were tears at the parting, stinging eyes as Jen and Arn turned to cross the field. At the top of the field they turned once to wave, the hogans and the people small now, the river blue beside the racks of drying shandeh. Many arms waved back at them; then they entered the woods trail to the north and left the winter camp, its fields, its river and its people far behind.

  At noon, when the sun was in the south, they stopped by a small brook to drink and have something to eat. Jen said, “Do you think we can find our way back through the mountain?”

  “I don’t know,” Arn said. “Tsuga said we might have help, but then he said he couldn’t help us. I don’t know.”

  “We’ve just got to go on anyway,” Jen said. “But do you remember Ganonoot’s story? He said there were many passages and only Ahneeah knows the way.”

  “Oh, Ganonoot,” Arn said in disgust.

  Just then came a spidery, scrabbling sound behind him in the brush, and a high cackle. “He he he! And did someone call my name?” Ganonoot scurried lightly out onto the trail, bent over like a crab or a table, and sat down before them. “Why, now,” he said, his long fang pressing into his chin with each word. “It’s Jen and Arn! We’ve met before, I can’t remember when! But kind Jen and Arn, generous Arn and Jen, poor old Ganonoot is hungry, hungry! And I see you’ve been having a nice lunch of bannock and jerky!”

  “Oh, Ganonoot,” Jen said, “you’re always hungry.” She gave him bannock and jerky from her pack and he began to worry the food with his fang and lips.

  Arn got up. “We’ve got to go, Ganonoot. We’ve a long way to go.”

  Ganonoot jumped spryly to his feet, his tilted head still on Arn’s level. He held his bannock and jerky in one hand and his warped old bow in the other. “The thing about a … story,” he said, his tongue cleaning his fang between the words, “is that it always changes when it happens again.” Then he couldn’t resist the bannock and shoved it into his mouth, still mumbling words as it soaked in there.

  Arn and Jen put on their packs and began to walk on. They didn’t want to be rude, but Ganonoot never quite seemed to hear anything they said anyway. Evidently he felt that he hadn’t finished what he wanted to say, because he followed them, scuffing and tripping and running along behind in his scuttling way.

  Near dusk they came upon a small field with a bog at one end of it where a kind of heavy grass grew and was green even in the winter. Then they saw the wolves lying on the field, their bellies distended with food. Nearby was the carcase of a cow, its red and ivory ribs arching over its hollow body. Its coat lay torn and bloody, partly inside out. The wolves saw Arn and Jen and Ganonoot, but merely raised their heads, ears upright, to look at them with lazy curiosity.

  At the edge of the bog, several black shaggy-haired cattle grazed on the winter grass, not bothered by the sated wolves.

  In the midst of the grazing cattle was a slightly smaller animal with a smoother, browner coat, with a large white spot on the side of its neck.

  Jen grabbed Arn’s arm and pointed. “It’s Oka!” she said. “It is! Oka! Oka!”

  The cattle raised their heads to look for the new sound. Their wide black muzzles all turned, slowly, their hairy ears alert, black eyes glittering beneath curls of shaggy hair. One large bull stamped his forefoot into the ground as a warning, and all the cattle came closer together, ready to run or to make their circle of defense. Oka stood still in the hock-high grass, making the children remember how often they had seen her standing this way in the small summer pasture at home, grass sticking out from each side of her wet, slowly chewing jaws.

  Jen started toward Oka but Arn held her back. “Wait a minute,” he said. “We don’t know what the others will do.”

  “I must go to Oka! Let me go, Arn!” Jen struggled with him, trying to pull her arm away.

  “Jen! Wait a minute!” He turned her around toward him to try to talk to her, but her face was wild and disorganized, her blue eyes not willing to see him. All she did was struggle to get away. Her unreasonableness made him so angry he let her go, knowing that he shouldn’t have. He felt in his mean places the words serves her right!

  He watched her run through the high grass, a small child growing smaller as she approached the bulky black cattle. As she stumbled forward through the grass the big bull lowered his head, his thick curled horns directed toward Jen. He snorted and pawed up chunks of grassy turf that tumbled into the air along his sides. Suddenly Arn was running too, shouting as loudly as he could. He was scared and concerned for Jen and still angry. She had made a terrible mistake this time because she was not listening, not to him or to the animals the way she could when she opened her mind to them.

  She fell in the tall grass and disappeared for a moment, then got to her feet again. He was beginning to catch up to her, but he had no plan at all. He just ran after her as fast as he could. He did what he thought he had to do, knowing that the bull would charge and if it did neither of them would get away. They would both be gored and trampled in the open field.

  But as they came up to the cattle the bull saw them more closely and smelled them. It raised its head and stared; all the cattle stared—curious, a little nervous, but not really afraid. Jen, no longer running, went up to Oka, who gazed at her calmly and continued chewing the long stalks of grass. The other cattle went back to their grazing.

  Arn came up beside Jen; she felt him at her shoulder, but all she could do was look into Oka’s soft dark eyes. Oka blinked and went on chewing, slowly, evenly, her lower jaw sliding in the rich creamy green of grass and saliva. The thick odors of cow and sweet grass surrounded her. The evening light shimmered on her glossy hide.

>   She was a cow in a field, ingesting the richness of the world, making sustenance, content among all the natural dangers. The wolves lolled over there in the same dying light, and would again turn hungry.

  “Oka?” Jen said. When she tried to put her hand on Oka’s warm neck, the cow shook herself and moved away.

  “Oka?” Jen asked, hurt and puzzled by her old friend’s skittishness. “I’ve come to take you home.”

  Oka masticated the creamy grass; a green-white, foamy run of drool slipped from her lips and fell into the lush grass below. Jen could not hear her friend’s thoughts, just the one contented hum of life from deep within her chambered body.

  Why should Oka want to go home to the dark barn, to that hungry winter of ice? Perhaps here she might have a dark calf, bony and strong, with shaggy black hair. At home, back through the mountain, in that other world, she would be protected from the wolves and the winterkill, but she would be a prisoner there, no matter how much she might be respected and loved. All this Jen heard in Oka’s deep, basal hum.

  She turned to Arn with hurtful tears in her eyes. “She won’t come back with us.”

  “It’s all right, Jen.”

  “We’ll never see her again.”

  “We had that choice too—to stay or try to find our way home,” Arn said.

  Oka lowered her head and took another mouthful, smoothly wrenching the grass from the earth. The other cattle, sensing some change in the weather or the wolves, or the distant presence of some other stalking carnivore, moved off toward the woods, and Oka followed. The largest bull took up the rear in order to guard the cows as they slowly moved away.

  Ganonoot waited for them on the trail, holding Arn’s bow that he had dropped when he ran after Jen. “I presume the cow was an acquaintance of yours,” he said. His old eyes watched them brightly, but he said nothing more.

  They camped that night in a spruce grove, near a spring of dark water that emerged from beneath a granite boulder, flowed silently for a few feet and then sank back into the earth. Ganonoot was still with them, still greedily appreciating their food. After he had eaten he pulled his ragged, stained old buckskin tunic around him and began to snore, whistling and grunting and making drowning noises, each of which sounded like his last breath in this world.

  When they had wrapped up in their sleeping-skins on the soft spruce needles, Jen whispered,” Do you think Tsuga meant Ganonoot when he said we’d have someone to help us?”

  “Someone to help us eat our food, anyway,” Arn said. One of Ganonoot’s snores might possibly have been a chuckle just then, but they weren’t sure. They were certainly tired, though, and soon were asleep.

  When Arn woke up, at the first light, something was wrong. His sleeping-skin was so tight around him he couldn’t move. What he first thought he saw was two of the spruce trees that grew near him, but he followed these two trunks up and they were the heavy legs of a big man who stood with a foot on each side of him, the feet holding his sleeping-skin tight to the ground. High above was a red face, and near the face was the glinting blade of a broadax. It was Gort, smiling a cruel and triumphant smile.

  “Now I’ve got you, you little viper, so breathe your last!” Gort said, gritting his teeth.

  “Run, Jen!” Arn shouted. He struggled, but couldn’t move. Jen was waking up and didn’t understand.

  “She can run up a tree like a squirrel, for all I care,” Gort said. “You’re the little snake that gave me a limp for life and stuck me full of holes, that skewered my poor carcase till my life’s blood filled my boots!”

  All Am could do was stare up at the big man’s face, seeing in it revenge, a strange hard joy. He knew he was going to be killed. Jen couldn’t help him. There was no help now.

  Except that the broadax didn’t come down; it stayed on Gort’s shoulder while he went on talking. “Days and nights I’ve been waiting to get hold of you—nights of pain and days of hurt, and when it wasn’t hurt, it was the itch you can’t scratch, or the pain in the gizzard you don’t even know where it’s coming from. And now I may walk with a gimp and a lean, but I’ve got you where I want you, you nasty little stabber, so say goodby!”

  Arn just stared at him. What could he do? Jen was struggling out of sleep, now, but it was too late even if she could have done something.

  “Say something!” Gort said. “Say something!”

  When Arn said nothing, Gort cursed and said, “I’m going to slice you thin as a jerked deer—make one piece out of you sixteen yards long and half an inch thick!”

  Arn could only stare up at the big man who stood over him, now raising the broadax from his shoulder.

  “Gort,” a voice said. It came from the direction of Ganonoot, but it was low and clear, the one word moving surely into their attention with an authority that altered everything—the slight wind of the forest, the presence of the dark trees, the violent stance of Gort and the helplessness of the children.

  “Gort,” the voice said again. Jen had cried out once, when she had first seen Gort, but now she looked over at Ganonoot, and so did Arn and Gort. From under Gano-noot’s ragged tunic where it was spread over his knees a long arrow protruded, nocked to his strung bow and half drawn. But it was the old eyes that drew theirs; no longer were they the shifty, somewhat vague eyes of Ganonoot, though the face was the same, with the long yellow tusk sticking down.

  Then an old hand came up, took hold of the long tusk and carefully removed it. The bent old neck straightened, and next the bent body rose to its feet, to straighten and grow tall.

  “Well, Gort,” Tsuga said. “Is revenge worth an arrow through your middle?”

  Gort stared at the tall old man who had been Ganonoot. Not moving, his ax still poised above his shoulder, he stared with an expression of wonder that seemed far beyond the threat of Tsuga’s long arrow. He seemed paralyzed in place, unable to attack or to surrender. Finally he shook his head as if to clear his vision, then tossed his broadax aside.

  “Ganonoot!” he said. “Ganonoot!”

  “Yes,” Tsuga said, glancing at Jen and Arn. “Tsuga is old Ganonoot, whose stories no one really believes until they come true.” Then to Gort, “You can step off Arn’s sleeping-skin now and move over there.” He made a quick gesture with his arrow.

  Gort looked down at Arn and said in a surprisingly calm voice, “You don’t happen to want to reach for your knife, now, do you? I mean I don’t feel like getting sliced open again.”

  “I never wanted to hurt anybody,” Arn said.

  Gort, still keeping a wary eye on him, stepped aside and let him up.

  Then Tsuga did a strange thing. He laughed, unnocked his arrow and unstrung his bow. “Gort,” he said, “I knew you years ago as a good man, and I saw just now you could not bring yourself to kill a child.”

  Perplexed, Gort scratched his head with both hands but said nothing.

  “The boy was just trying to protect himself,” Tsuga said.

  Gort thought for a long time, looking at each of them in turn. Finally he said, “I guess he’s brave enough, at that.” Then he sat down cross-legged and rubbed his head, staring at the ground. After a while he said, “I never should’ve joined up with Mori’s guards anyway. I used to be a hunter and a woodsman, not like those types that left me bleeding there at the river crossing. It was the pain that wouldn’t let me think.”

  “All right,” Tsuga said. “The time of hatred and murder is over—for a while. So let’s have breakfast and do some thinking for a change.”

  Both Tsuga and Gort brought food out of their packs and pockets and they ate well. Tsuga told Gort, who had been alone in the woods during the battle at the Tree, most of what had happened, how Mori had died and the guard been disbanded.

  “Well, that’s good news to me,” Gort said. “I wanted to quit that outfit, and now they won’t come after me as a deserter and remove my tender skin.”

  “Go back to the Chigai, Gort. You can help them.”

  “All right, but first
I’ll help these children find their bat cave. I was there years ago. There’s a trail along the rim that skirts the beaver dams and the blueberry bogs.”

  When they had finished eating and packed their gear, Tsuga said to Jen and Am, “I’ll leave you now. When you reach the bat cave, Ahneeah will provide you with a guide. She called you here, Jen and Am, and you were worthy of what she asked of you. You lost a cow, but what you’ll bring back to your mother and father may make up for that. Remember that Ahneeah is not all-powerful, but she is grateful, as all the animals are grateful.”

  He reached into a pocket of his ragged tunic and brought out two small leather bags, which he put in Arn’s pack. “These are for your father, Tim Hemlock. No one can cure his sadness or his seeking, but in one bag is the powder of the needles, medicine for the sickness of his body, and in the other are seed cones of his name tree, which is the Great Tree on the meadow by the Cave of Forgetfulness. Plant them in your world, and when he sees them grow he will feel more at home. And tell him …” Here Tsuga laughed and shook his head ruefully, “Tell him that his great-great-grandfather sends him greetings.”

  “You, Tsuga?” Jen asked.

  “Yes, you are all my children—the children of old Gano-noot, the buffoon. Tell your father to think on that.”

  Then Tsuga took Ganonoot’s warped old bow, waved, and strode back along the trail. He turned once and waved again, a tall old man with white hair to his shoulders, dressed in stained and ragged clothes. Then he was gone.

  Gort took them in a day, a night and a day to the entrance of the bat cave. “Jen and Am,” he said, “I’m sorry I scared you out of a year’s growth back there in the spruce, but I was still out of my mind with pain and anger. Now I’ll leave you. Ahneeah’s guide won’t show himself or herself or whatever it is to me, because I’m just an ordinary man. But here you are, and there are your funny-looking iron shoes the like of which I never saw before, so this must be the place.”