No answer is also an answer.
The next day he stayed in his nest, and either slept or chewed on the deer’s legs. Same with the day after. Gibbous moon, oh yes. Nights mostly lit by the pale fuzzed light of the pregnant goddess. He supposed there would come a day when the deer’s legs went too off to eat, too smelly to stay near. Until that happened, he had no reason to move. And getting down from the tree was going to be painful. He was content to rest, and hope for healing.
Thus four days passed, and the moon swelled fatter every night. Big pregnant belly, soon to give birth. Give birth to a new shaman.
On the fifth night in the tree, however, the rustling below resolved into a catlike shape, and he stood in his nest and shook his big branch at the black shape with its scarily wide-set, starry eyes. A big head on a big cat. Lion, or worse yet, a leopard. Dappled in the moonlight in a way that suggested leopard. Either way, disaster. Again his heart pounded so fast he burned. He had to seem bigger than he was, so he stood on the highest branch he could balance on, deerskin blanket over his shoulders. When he had a clear view he threw a few thick branches he had cached down at it, and saw it dodge some, even get hit by one. All the while he cursed the cat viciously, waved Prong overhead as he made all the bad sounds he knew, animal or human; not the fearful sounds, but the angry sounds, the hungry sounds. He cursed in a rage till his throat was raw.
When dawn finally came, the cat seemed to be gone. He waited until midday, but never saw it again. He climbed down the tree, letting his left leg hang mostly free. It seemed both that he had just arrived a short while before, and that he had been up in the tree for years. Either way, it was over. Crouch was quieter now, but still hanging around. It would be a long time before Crouch left, he could feel that.
As soon as he started walking he had to stop and shit, and after that effort he felt a little sick, but emptier, and then better, and ready to limp on through the day. Wash in the creek, find some berry patches in the sun, eat as many old berries as he could. Newly awakened bears would be doing the same, he knew. But better bears than cats. Bears will keep cats away. Still, Loon didn’t stay long at any berry patches. The berries were nearly goners anyway.
He came on a bare knob of rock protruding from a low ridge crossing the plateau, and he went to it and found a break on its far side that served as a way up it. The broad top of the knob gave him a view down into a short curve of the river in its gorge, and some canyons dropping to the river on its other side. He could see where the two big loops in the river seamed the plateau; his pack’s camp was hidden beyond them, on the other side of the Stone Bison, also invisible from this vantage. The plateau behind him was revealed from here to be a snowy moor, its point-and-bowl edge dropping toward the river. Many of the most dangerous animals would not go up onto the moor. And there were big boulders up there scattered about. Almost certainly there would be one he could crawl under, into a space too small and low for wolves or big cats to fit. It would also be possible to cross the moor westward, uphill toward the Ice Tits, a particular pair of the ice caps out that way, and then descend into the western head of Upper Valley, and from there drop down to his pack’s camp, when the time came.
So he walked north onto the moor. The snow on it was old and hard, and held his weight even in the afternoon. Up there he could look back south across many ridges and valleys, like gray hands cupping the river gorge. Lines of green, patches of white. Crouch was really barking now, crying Hi! Hi! Hi! with every step. Loon had his deerskin cape rolled and tied around his waist, Prong in one hand, a clutch of needled branches in the other. He limped along, looking at the hollows under each big boulder he passed.
In the sunset he found a hollow that he liked the look of, and crawled under the boulder into it, through a gap just big enough to let him pass. The open space under the boulder was just taller than his prone body. The boulder rested on the stone ground on four big points, like a giant tooth. He pulled his branches in after him and arranged them into a bed. It was going to be cold up here. Prong was now a spear to defend him in his rocky burrow. The moon was full gibbous, bright in the mid-twilight. It cast distinct shadows.
Wolves howled somewhere again that night, and his sleep was often disturbed by them; but when he woke and listened, he liked hearing how far away they sounded. He also liked how much their presence would discourage other hunters, especially old ones. Old ones mostly stayed off the moor anyway, people said. He believed it, as the moor had very little shelter from the wind. So, taken all in all, this was really the right place for him on this night.
During each interval of wolfsong he would wiggle all his muscles, starting with his numb toes and moving up to his jaw, and thus fall back asleep with the weird singing of the wolves as his lullaby, often before he had wiggled his muscles even as high as his rump.
Once, however, the wolves’ chorus woke him and he found himself confused. His father was sitting just outside the entry to his hollow, howling along with them quietly. Come out with me, my son, he said, come out and let me show you which star I am now.
Oh but it’s too cold, Loon protested, and I’m tired. I don’t want to leave the warmth I’ve made in this hole.
It’s all right, I’ll make you warm, his father promised. Loon recalled that his father had said these very words to him once before, when he had hauled Loon out of the river under the Stone Bison, spluttering and terrified after he had fallen through thin ice. His father had held him upside down by the ankles and whacked him on the back, as if he were being born, and as Loon retched and wailed in fear, he had laughed and said, It’s all right, little one, I’ll make you warm. So it really was him.
So Loon pulled himself out from under the boulder and rewrapped himself in his deer hide. The stars were dim in the moonlight, the whole sky as white as the Spurtmilk in summer. His father stood over him, a little transparent, his head touching the sky, his face overlaid on the lopsided grin of the moon. Come walk with me, he said.
Should I bring my things? Loon asked.
No, I’ll bring you back by dawn.
Will you take me to mother?
Yes. She’s where we’re going.
They flew over the moor, down the etched land to a deep valley with a moonbright river. At a tight spot in its canyon the river ran under an arch of stone; it was the Stone Bison, the bridge of rock near where Loon had fallen in as a child.
This is where you saved me, he said.
Yes, his father said.
I have to return to the pack on the night of the full moon, Loon explained. I’m on my wander. I’ve only got three-he looked up at the moon-three or four nights more.
I know. That’s why I brought you here now. Soon you’ll be here again. I wanted you to know that I’ll be here with you. And your mother too.
Show her to me.
And then he saw her, standing on the stone arch over the river, the water sweeping under the black shadow of the bison arch and rippling moonily downstream. She was naked and her arms were outstretched to greet him.
Mother! Loon cried.
That caused him to wake, and he was surprised to find his father had tucked him back under the boulder in the time it had taken him to cry out. He had frightened their spirits with his cry. Thorn always said you had to speak calmly to spirits when you had the chance. They didn’t like noise or hurry; they were beyond that, it offended them.
— Ohhh, Loon said, angry with himself; but then he heard a snuffling around the boulder. Something big, checking it out. Possibly a bear; anyway, too big to get under the boulder. Whatever it was snuffled off, and he was left to sleep again.
When he woke he found a knot in his hand, a twist of hard wood that looked like it had spent quite a bit of time free of its tree. A knob at one end gave it the look of a lion’s head; he could see the indentations between the shoulders and the clean bulk of the neck; it was a male lion, there was the little bump of its spurt lying against its underside, but it was standing upright like a man. It would only take a little carving to bring all that out. This was his father’s gift from out of the dream. Lions were fearless. From his deerskin belt flap he took the flake of flint he had broken off when he made his choprock. It would be better to set the flake in the end of a shaft, but for now he could scrape away at the knot, make the first cuts. There was just enough dawn light, and just enough warmth in his fingertips, to make it possible to do the work, lying on his side with the knot and flake right in front of his nose. The ragged tip of the flake was almost like a little burin. He scraped away, looking deep into the bloodless white flesh of his fingertips, which would take impressions from the flake and hold them until he rubbed them away. Crouch was humming sleepily, Spit was pulsing with his heart, but only right at the broken skin itself, almost outside of him, not in him. These people were not his friends, and needed to be ignored. What hurts you has to be forgotten. The lion man was emerging from its knot quite nicely.