Heather, however, was not interested in such things, and Thorn didn’t like Loon’s marriage to begin with. So it was a matter of Elga’s ability to put the other women under a telling, and she did this without looking like she was trying; it was just her being herself. And so in her last few months the other women helped her in the way she helped them. And a pregnant woman in the end of her time was the focus of all their efforts.
The short days, the cold; the storms rolling in from the west, low and snowy. Ice on the river and the creeks, snow over that. The white world. The midday sun just peeking over the southern gorge wall. All the birds gone except for the snow birds; all the animals sleeping or hiding under the snow, or caught in the people’s traps, quietly enduring. White fur. The pack in its house, sleeping away. They were used to snow, they liked snow. They had their stored food and the daily tasks, the long nights sleeping like bears. The long stories told around the fire.
Heather would be the midwife for the birth, as always. She grumbled about this in the way she did about every task she performed for the pack, but in this case she seemed to really mean it. She didn’t like being the midwife.
— It will be fine, she told Elga gruffly.-You’re a big girl, there won’t be any problems. I’ll give you the right teas and infusions and we’ll have that kid out of you before you know it. There’s some work you have to do to push it out, of course, but we’ll help you. Mostly the work does you. You just have to ride it out.
And so the end of the winter passed with something for them to think about, and to watch happening. Tucked in their house or under the abri, they ate their food and watched the sky, went out on clear windless days to check the traps. The strike of the sun’s warmth on a body cut through all but the coldest days. But even the sunniest days were short, and in the afternoons they scurried back to their big house like muskrats or mice.
One morning Loon went out with Moss to look at some of their traps downriver, set in the ravines off the canyon one loop downstream.
They made good time on the trail climbing the ridge between the two loops, and were on the ridge by sunrise. All the sky to the east was orange, and they agreed this meant it would probably snow two mornings later. Then Moss laughed and said, — Does it ever happen that way?
Loon laughed too. Moss’s laugh was particularly infectious. He was slighter than Hawk, with a narrow handsome face under a thick tangle of black curls. His face was very flexible and expressive, one moment as sharp as if knapped, the next slack-lipped and foolish.
— I do think snow comes after the sun shows its ears, Loon said.
— Or the moon, Moss agreed.-It’s the snow in the air getting lit up. The light bounces off the snow in the air just like off any other snow.
The light was definitely bouncing off the snow on the ground. They pulled down their caps to their eyebrows and tilted their heads down and to the side to hike up the ridge into the low winter sun. Loon’s cap was edged with marten fur, Moss’s with wolf.
When the snow warmed up in the sunlight enough to soften a little, they stopped and tied their snowshoes to their shoes and continued on to the first traps, set in the ravine mouth where Steep Creek ran into the main creek of Next Loop Down. There was a giant rock called the Robin’s Nest standing in the little meadow at the confluence of these two creeks, sticking out of the blanket of snow so tall that its top was still over their heads as they passed it. The creeks under the dips in the snow were frozen, the land silent. No birds, no animals; snow everywhere, except on the rock faces too steep to hold snow. These ragged gray walls breaking the snow blanket here and there were just begging to be painted, Loon felt, and two or three they passed were: the sight of the sacred animals in red or black, vivid in all the white and blue of snow and sky, caught his breath in his throat. The air was cold, and Moss was singing a little hunter’s ditty to himself. In places the snow was so feathery they sank knee deep even with their snowshoes on. Big lumps of soft snow balanced on every bunch of pine needles in the trees around them.-You should bring some of this feathery snow back for Elga, Moss said.
Drinking water melted from such snow would make her child light-footed. Loon laughed and said, — Good idea.
They came to the first trap, which was a pit Moss and Nevermind had dug the summer before, down into the soft dirt of the meadow. At the bottom of the pit they had put sharpened sticks and blades of knapped rock, and then covered the hole with light poles and leaves. It was only under a blanket of snow that this kind of trap was likely to catch an animal, and now as they snowshoed into the meadow, they could see that something had crashed through the roof of the pit, leaving an odd hole in the land. They rushed to the edge of the hole and looked down. A big red stag had fallen through and broken a foreleg at the bottom of the pit, and after that frozen to death. Now its dead eyes looked up at the sky as if the beast’s spirit were nearby, and using its old eyes to get its bearings.
— What is he doing here! Loon exclaimed.
— Helping us out. Thanks old man! But couldn’t you have jumped out of this pit and died up here?
Moss clapped Loon on the arm. It was an excellent bit of luck, though it meant a hard afternoon for them, first getting down safely into the pit, and then hauling the stiff body onto a frame made of trap poles that held it barely chest high, from which position they could get under it and shove it up together, out of the pit. They were just strong enough to push it up, and in their first try the stag’s body crashed back down into the pit and they had to skip away through the stone shards like squirrels to get out of its way. It stared up at them with its fixed cloudy gaze. The second time they were more careful and it went better. All the while the beast kept looking at them.
— What do you think he was thinking at the end? Loon asked.
Moss shook his head and frowned. Loon only said things like this when he was alone with Moss; the others would just joke at such questions. But Moss regarded the stag’s big weird eyes, which somehow conveyed so clearly its mute endurance, and pushed his mobile face through any number of expressions to show he was thinking, before venturing, — Maybe he was just thinking he should have been walking one leg at a time to test the snow. That’s probably what I would be thinking.
— But not only that.
— No. No, he was probably sad. Maybe thinking of his wives. It’s strange how deer have rectangular pupils, isn’t it? They look like they’re from somewhere else.
— Thorn says animals’ eyes show they don’t have human souls. There’s no flutter or movement, they’re always just stuck there in one position looking.
— So our soul is in the whites of our eyes? I don’t believe it. This deer looked at you just like you looked at him. There’s no difference except the square pupils, but even so you can see just what he’s thinking, I mean look at him! Hey, we’re sorry about this, brother, he said to the frozen deer, — but we need to eat. So thanks for helping us out!
And with that he plunged his spear between two neckbones and began to slice between them. After that they took turns in the low sun skinning the body and cutting it up with their spears. Under the spear tips the frozen meat had its usual hardness, crystalline yet flexible; they thrust between joints, bent them apart with twists from the end of the spear, cut back and forth at the meat. The blood still frozen in the beast’s veins was going to be much prized by their women back at camp. It took hard work for most of that short day to get the body into pieces they could carry in their sacks and haul behind them through the snow, using its own halved skin as a rough rope to drag them along.