because Bakar’s lost, and now her mother’s gone too. That’s why she forgot. She’s only little. So be kind and forget, won’t you? Won’t you?’
I could hear my mother’s voice very clearly inside mine, telling my father what he should do. I quailed in my heart, but I stood facing my father, and met his eyes. I knew how my mother stood up to him, and gave as good as she got. She never quailed for any man. When my brother and I were little we used to cower under the furs in our sleeping place as the battle of words stormed over us. And here was I, speaking to my father in my mother’s own voice, as if I had her power inside me!
He must have heard it too, because suddenly he threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘What a pack of women we have about us, Amets! Where did they learn to order us about like this? How did they get to be so unruly? I hope you’ll keep your family in better order than I’ve been able to do, young man! Look at how my women behave, telling us what to do, and speaking out of turn! I’ll come with you to the traps, Amets, and let’s hope they’ll rest their tongues and do a bit of work for a change while we’re gone. Or maybe they’ve grown too uppity to want to feed us any more!’
Amets grinned, and held back the skins for my father to go out. Before he followed him outside Amets looked back at me, and winked. I knew the wink was for Haizea too, and that when the men came back everything that she and I had said would have been forgiven. I also hoped that, although my father would never refer to the matter again, what I’d said to him about my mother would not be entirely forgotten.
Amets said:
As the winter Dark slowly gave birth to another Year, I thought about what I should do now Bakar was gone. ‘Next winter,’ I thought, ‘if Nekané comes back, I’m building a separate winter house at River Mouth Camp for my family. Never mind if we have to keep two hearths. Alaia and I will have a child of our own, or so I hope’ – I stretched my arms up to the spirits even though I’d not spoken aloud – ‘if I have Alaia and a child, then I’ll certainly build another winter house for us here. And if … if that’s not going to happen, and it’s the worse for me’ – I could hardly bear to think of it – ‘supposing Alaia is gone and I have to take Haizea …’ I didn’t finish the thought. Already I greatly missed Bakar. My wife’s father was a good man, but he was getting old. Bakar had been my friend, but he’d been gone too long – three Moons now – for me to hold out any hope for him. Alaia was my woman. I didn’t want the child Haizea – if I had to take her I couldn’t do anything with her until she was grown, but I’d have to feed and clothe her all the same – and I certainly didn’t want to be the only young man in the Camp.
I can’t say I’d been thinking much about my wife’s mother. The days had been quiet without her. There’s little for a man to do in the long dark except sleep, and if his sleep is disturbed – well, maybe that’s a sign of too many women in a house.
One evening we sat by the outside fire. It had been a clear day with the smell of snow in it, and hoar frost glittering on the grass. The bare oaks were black against the sky. I’d found a young pig in my trap that morning. Dark fell as we feasted. While I sat chewing the meat off the bone, I thought about everything in a way I never had before. I now belonged to a winter Camp with one old man, my woman and a girl child. ‘If that’s how it is next winter,’ I decided, ‘I won’t come back. Even if I have Alaia and a healthy child of my own, I won’t come back if I’m the only hunting man. Alaia works better than two of most women put together’ – yes, that’s what I thought about my wife then, and I still do. I saw how well Alaia looked after everything even before I took her. In fact that’s one of the things … But not the only thing, I’ll give my word on that! But this is what I was thinking: ‘My wife’s father still brings home meat. He set traps, and he shoots small game. He still fishes from his coracle. But he can’t trek far inland after deer or boar, and certainly not bear or wolf. Next winter he’ll do even less. No,’ I decided, ‘without Bakar this Camp makes no sense. Before next Gathering I’ll speak to my wife’s father. Either we bring in others from Alaia’s family – she has plenty of cousins – or he must find a man for Haizea – one who’ll be prepared to wait for Haizea to become a woman in return for having a place in this family.
‘If my wife’s father says no … He can’t say no!’ It dawned on me that I was now the one who’d say how things were to be. If I refused to come back, this family would have to give up River Mouth Camp and let others take it over. Now that Bakar was gone, I was the only hunting man. They couldn’t live here – they couldn’t go anywhere in fact – without me.
Now I’d started thinking, a host of new ideas crowded into my mind. ‘Unlike some men,’ I thought, ‘I don’t talk a lot about what I can do. I don’t need the whole Gathering to tell me I can hunt, or fish, or dance, or make love, or sing or do anything well at all. I’ve never fought other men if I could help it. Even when I was a boy I didn’t squabble or fight much. Since I took Alaia, and lived in this family, I’ve watched them argue but I’ve never said much myself. But the fact is, now Bakar’s gone, I’m the one who’s in charge here. Of course I’ll not shame my wife’s father in front of his daughters. I’ll show him proper respect, but’ – this was another new thought – ‘he must know as well as I do how matters stand.’
I glanced at my wife’s father, who was splitting the pig’s thighbone to suck out the marrow. His eyes were downcast and he seemed absorbed in what he was doing. I was staring at him without realising it. When he suddenly looked up and caught my gaze my eyes dropped at once. Even so I’d seen the look he gave me. Old he might be, but his eyes were as piercing as ever. I felt the hot blood redden my cheeks, and hoped it didn’t show in the firelight. Because in that look I read that not only did he know exactly what I was thinking, but he’d thought of it all himself, long before any of it had occurred to me.
Nekané said:
All winter I searched in every place I knew, right to the edges of our hunting grounds. I went down Long Strait beyond Boat Crossing Camp. When I got to my sister Sorné’s winter Camp the men were away hunting in the hills. But Sorné sees everyone: she told me that no one for far around had seen my son that winter. I realised by now that I wouldn’t find Bakar alive, but I needed to know what had happened to him. If only I could know it would be easier, or so I felt.
The others seemed to have let him go. At first they mourned almost as much as I did, but as the ripples fade and vanish after a fish has leaped into the Sun then disappeared again into deep water, so too did the memories of Bakar fade from the minds of his family. Only I, his mother, never ceased to think of him.
In Dark Moon the nights become dangerous and powerful and almost swallow up the days. For half a Moon the days were so starved and shrunken it seemed as though they could never recover. Day after day the wind was from the Sunless Sky. Blizzards and hail came down with the wind, and blotted out the weary Sun. For seven nights we saw no stars. On the eighth night the wind died. The snow lay still at last; it had grown so thick it reached almost to the top of the door. We’d piled thick logs across the doorway to keep it out. The clouds died with the wind, and when Amets dug away the snow so that we could step outside everything was quiet. We heard a big branch snap under its weight of snow. The sky blazed with stars.
I trudged over the frozen snow. Once more I climbed Lookout Hill. I read the shape of the hills in the darkness where there were no stars.
I looked up at the River of Milk that spurted from the breast of our First Mother – the white River that spans the sky and dims the farthest stars. I saw it as a sandy strand where a man might easily walk. Although the air was freezing I stood staring, and I saw how the stars were as many as the grains of sand on the shore. It was as though the hide of an immense beast had been
