By the time they were ready and on their way, the sun was low in the west, casting long black shadows over the snow, which was hardening quickly back to a surface they could walk on without snowshoes. They were a long way from home, and when the sun went down behind the hills to the west, the air quickly got much colder. But there’s always heat in hurry, as the saying had it, and without discussing it they picked up their pace and cronched over the snow side by side. It was only when it was this cold that they could hike this hard without overheating. It came on them again; they were made to run in cold like this.
Behind them the moon rose. It was the first night after full, and the fat moon turned the sky a thick twilight blue, which then infused the white snow under their feet. A world of blues: when they came to the broad ridge between loops, and could see far up and down the gorge of the Urdecha, and over the hills on both sides of it, the sky and the land were still so lit by the blue moonlight that they felt they could see everything. It was Mother Earth at her most beautiful, her every curve and declivity glowing distinctly; though blanketed by snow, it was in these moony nights that she looked most naked, the bare blue flesh of her hillsides smooth and curvaceous.
Before the last drop to Loop Meadow they stopped and looked around wordlessly at it for a while. Nothing moved, no wind, no sound. It was like a spirit world, a world beyond the sky, where the stillness quivered with a mystery. The few stars were fat and blurry, and they swam about as Loon blinked and blinked in the cold. They stood inside a black starry bag, on a white body, and everything was much bigger than could be grasped. So many times they had gone out at night during full moons to see things look like this, all the way back to when they were little boys, slipping out of the big house when most of the women were in the women’s house and there was no one to catch them. Loon and Moss were the two who liked it most.
Now they glanced at each other, smiled and nodded: time to go. The cold air was chilling them quickly. They dropped toward camp almost at a run, skidding down the hard snow where it was steepest. As they came into Loop Meadow, Loon smelled the fire, and realized he was returning to Elga, who was pregnant with their child, and they were bringing in some unexpected meat, so that most of them would stay up late, eating some meat while the women worked on the rest of it. The cold air expanded in his chest, and he let it out of him in little loon cries that Moss laughed to hear.
Late that winter Elga got huge, and her time came one morning and the women took her off to their birthing hut, which was a shelter they had built next to their monthly house. They all gathered there and shooed the men away, and Thorn gathered the men around the fire and started a round of smoking his pipe, even though it was not yet noon.-New kid in the pack, he explained with his snaky grin, — our duty to welcome it.
He did not congratulate Loon as the father, but he didn’t glower at him either. Loon took up a blade and stick and carved it with nervous precision, making a little birthday toy for the newborn, in this case an ibex, which used a couple of knobs at one end of the stick for its horns. From time to time they heard the women singing, and then for a while they heard some yelps, which were hard to believe came from Elga; Loon’s scrotum tightened and he felt a flash of pain in his gut, as if his body were feeling what Elga felt.
— Getting the head out, Thorn said.-It’ll be over soon.
— So, what clan? Hawk asked.
Thorn stood.-The new one should be from the eagle clan. That will give us an eagle in a few years, and we need one. And Elga is an eagle. So eagle it is.
— Don’t the women have to agree? Hawk asked.
— No, Thorn said, glaring at him.-I’m the one who sees the clans in this pack. I had a vision the other night that showed me which one this one was.
— I’m an eagle too, Moss offered.
— That’s right, but you and Schist are the only adult eagle men in the pack. We need younger ones. You and Schist will have to get together to choose the newborn’s clan name, if it’s a boy.
Moss laughed and came over to give Loon an embrace.-Now I’m your kid’s clan uncle. Did Heather ever say whether it will be a boy or a girl?
— She wasn’t sure, but she said probably a boy, Loon replied.
— Either way, we’re brothers more than ever now.
Loon nodded, his stomach still tight.-That’s good.
He finished the birth stick, which as it turned out was only the ibex’s head, to take advantage of a whorl that could be made into its eye.
It was Sage who came down to give them the news, with a sly smile.-Elga’s child is born. It’s a boy.
The men cheered.
Later Heather said to Loon, — It was harder on her than I expected, because your child has a big head. I had to scare her into pushing him out. There’s a point that sometimes comes, where if the babe doesn’t come out, there’s going to be trouble. The mom’s getting tired, losing heart, and the babe’s neither in nor out, which is a bad place to be caught. So before I have to do anything worse, I try to scare the mom into pushing harder than she has up to that point. I tell her what will happen to her and to the babe if I have to get drastic, and how wrong that could go, and usually by the time I’m done telling them that, they’re so scared that they are really pushing hard. That’s what happened with Elga.
Every once in a while when out on a hunt, they would run into hunters from the packs that lived nearby. The Lions were downstream where the Urdecha ran into the big river, and the Lynxes were up under the ice caps, the Foxes and Ravens south and west of that. Meeting any of them was cause for a quick little party. They would share some food and a pipe of smoke, and sit by a stream and drink and talk for a while before heading on their way. If they were both trailing the same animals they would sometimes join forces to finish the hunt, but that seldom happened. The Lynxes were very easygoing and even a little sleepy, more like cheetahs than Lynxes, and they liked to travel with little sacks of mash to tipple from, so some said it was because of that.
Once Loon was out gathering plants with Heather when they encountered two Ravens, who had been walking along hand in hand on the plateau’s edge trail. After they had gone on their way, Loon said, — I’ve seen those two before.
— They’re always together, Heather said.
— What do you mean? Loon said.
— They’re a pair, like swans.
Loon looked through the forest after them.-Really?
— It’s just their way, Heather said. She gave him a look.-Like Hawk and Moss, right?
— What?
— Or Thunder and Bluejay.
— What?
She stared at him. Finally she said, — You and Elga are lucky, right?
— Yes.
— A lot of people feel that way.
— But…
She dismissed his puzzled frown with a wave.-We’re deeper than we can see. There are other people down inside us doing things. We get carried along by what they do. That’s what it looks like to me.
— I was in love with a deer once, Loon confessed, blurting it out with a sudden flush of relief, even pride.
Heather nodded.-Once I loved a bison, when I was a girl. It didn’t work out.
Loon stared at her.-Thorn?
Heather shook her head.-No, Pika.
Now Loon was even more amazed.-Old Pika? Thorn’s shaman?
Heather nodded.
— What was he like?
Heather considered it.-Well, he was kind of like Thorn. Only more so.
— Mama mia. That must have been…
— It wasn’t good. Like I said, it didn’t work out. And Thorn was there too, so it was messy. She looked at her hand, sighed a sigh.-But I was there when Pika first started painting in the cave. We went in there and mated and then he jumped up and said he was going to paint me, paint what we had done. I was supposed to be Mother Earth. But then he turned it into the bison man again. He had that bison in him. No, what Thorn says is mainly right. We had a bad shaman.