When he saw that the little spurt of flame was holding, he began placing the littlest and driest twigs over it, in a way that would catch as much of them alight as possible without harming the blaze below. It was a delicate balance, but one very well known to him; something he was good at, Thorn having forced him to practice it twentytwentytwentytwenty times. Oh yes, fire, fire, FIRE! Almost everyone was pretty good at fire, but Loon thought of himself as exceptionally good at it, which was part of what made the previous night’s failure so galling. He was going to be embarrassed to tell the story of that first night. He would have to emphasize the terrible power of the storm, but then again, as his pack had spent the night just one valley over, they weren’t going to believe much of an exaggeration. He would just have to admit he had had a bad night.
But now it was morning, and he had a fire started, and the first twigs were catching and adding their burn, so he could add more, including some bigger ones. Soon there were ten or twenty twigs alight in a fiery stack over the first burn, and their flames were a tangible yellow. Very soon the moment came when it was safe to put a pretty large handful of dry twigs gently atop the little blaze, and they would all catch almost immediately. He did that and said—Ha! Ha! and put on some larger branches. Finger sticks, then wrist branches. Happily he watched as the growing flames blackened the rounded sides of so many twigs and branches. A fire makes all right with the world.
Smoke now flew up, and the hiss and crackle from the wood showed how hot the fire was getting. The heat smacked his naked chest and belly and pizzle, which burned horribly as it warmed, in the usual agonizing tingle. He squeezed it in one hand to hold the pain in, and felt that it was a good pain, so good it was easy to feel it as a harsh form of pleasure; ah, the too-familiar burn of numbed flesh coming back to life, the itch deep under the skin, the painful tingle of being alive! Now he was going to be able to warm up even his feet! They would burn like mad as they came back to him. Ah fire, glorious fire, so friendly and warm, so beautiful!
—Such a blessing, such a friend! Such a blessing, such a friend! One of Heather’s little fire songs.
Now things were really looking good. The previous night was put in its place as a mere problem, a dark prelude. With a fire lit, the storm still blowing overhead did not matter anything like as much. He could keep this fire going for the whole fortnight, if that seemed best, or he could take it with him a certain distance, if he wanted to move, and reestablish it elsewhere. He could focus his efforts on food, shelter, and clothing, and no matter how those went, he would always have the most important thing. And it was only the first day of his wander!
He sat on the windward side of the fire and stretched out his legs around it, held up his arms over it. Hands catching the heat from right in the smoke. Oh the tingle of life coming back:—OW! It was a very different howl than the ones of the night before. Like the wolves, like his namesake the loons, he had a whole vocabulary of howls. This was the happy one, the triumphant one:—OWWW!
When he was warmed right to his toes, and had several big logs burning on a broad bed of red-hearted gray embers, he walked the perimeter of his little grove, then spiraled in through it, inspecting it. There was that cracked cedar at the edge of the little meadow, and in the shallows of the creek he found a block of flint with one sharp end and a length of rough edge, so that it resembled a massive clumsy burin. It would make an adequate chopper. He took it back to the cracked cedar and began to hack at the split in the trunk, detaching the bark and then peeling off the inner layer in sections as big as he could make them. Some of the strips were longer than he was.
When he had stripped the tree of all the inner bark he could get off, he took it back to his tuck, added some branches to the fire, and then in its glorious warmth sat down to tear the inner bark into strips. This was slow and meticulous work, but very satisfying as the strips grew to a considerable pile.
By midday he had more than he thought he would need. After tending to the fire again, he arranged the strips on some snow-free ground near his tuck. He had four or five score of them. He laid six in a line on the ground and then wove six more across them, pleased at the simple but effective over-and-under pattern. He used longer strips for the ups, and shorter ones for the arounds, and he offset the starts of the arounds each from the next, so that the resulting tube would not have a weak line down it. Finally he reached under and pulled the weave up the middle, then wove more arounds around the back, bringing the ups that had been farthest apart together; and after that he had a tube. A legging.
He did that again, and had leggings. Then a triple-stranded length to serve as a belt to hang the tubes from; then hangers, and a simple crotch strap to cover his cold pizzle. He stepped into the leggings and tied them to his belt, and felt them catch his warmth immediately.—Ha!
After that a vest; then a hat; lastly, out of the remainders, a ragged short cloak. In rain these clothes would get wet and then tear easily, but meanwhile, in his shelter, they would give him some warmth, and when it stopped raining they would give him some protection too. What he needed for proper clothes was fur skins, of course, but that would take some getting. For now his bark suit was the best he could do, and far better than being bare, or so he hoped.
Now, being warm, he felt a real pinch of hunger. He had spotted some berry patches back in the meadow, so after putting three more big branches on the fire, he ventured out in his clothes to relocate them.
It was still windy, but the rain had stopped, and the clouds were breaking up. The verge of the meadow was furred by a bramble of duck’s eye berries, and he reached in carefully and pulled some of last year’s dead berries off the ground. These were black and flat, but they would give him something.
Then he went to the place where the creek left the meadow. As often happened, he saw trout in the water there, tucked under the last curve of the bank above the outlet. He was not far from his grove; through some trees he could see his fire blazing merrily away.
He walked downstream until he saw a shallow spot that would work. He heaved rocks from the bankside into the stream until he had made a little dam across it. The creek poured through the gaps in this dam so easily that the water didn’t rise the slightest bit behind it; but a fish of any size could not get through. Then he hurried back upstream to the meadow.
There he took off his new clothes, stepped into the creek, and walked downstream. When he was upstream from the last meander, he pulled a big rock from the bank and threw it hard into midstream, at the same time jumping up and down and shouting. No fish flashed by headed upstream, so quickly he sloshed downstream, still shouting. He saw there were no fish under the bank at the last turn; presumably they had escaped downstream.
He waded downstream toward his dam, a rock in one hand, a stick in the other. He hit his rock against rocks in the water, yelling as he went.
Then he came to where he could see his dam. Ahead of him in the water, caught between him and the dam, were three trout. He dropped his rock in the stream and reached up onto the bank and as quickly as he could pulled rocks into the water and built another dam. As he finished he had to fend off a couple of upstream rushes by one of the fish, but even that one was too frightened to try to flash past him, and the other two didn’t even try. With the second dam built up well above the level of the creek, he had them in a little fish pen.—Ah! he cried.—Thank you!
He sloshed upstream to give a quick look to his camp. His fire was still burning well. He got out of the creek and walked downstream and stepped into his fish pen. He stalked one fish, he thought the one that had rushed him, moving into a position where he could reach down with both hands, very slowly, until they were next to the fish, which was trying to hide by staying still. With a single scoop outward he splashed water and fish together up onto the bank, where the fish flopped till it died. He stifled his shout, to keep from scaring the other fish, and moved slowly to the next one, tucked under the bank. He stuck his hands down very slowly, scooped again, and the second fish flew up in its mass of water and thrashed out its life.