— Do you spurt inside? he asked.
— I clutch.
She grabbed his arm in her hand and squeezed rhythmically to show him, and at that his spurt started to harden again. Women bison and deer clutched like that when they wanted a bull or a stag, their kolbies pulsing pinkly. The way Loon and Sage would fit together was extremely clear: finger in glove, antler in cleft, heron and vixen. But Sage was very strict, having recently been red-dotted in the women’s house. She would never allow his spurt into her. So they only kissed some more and then sat talking in the sun, feeling pleased and generous. The glitter of the current off the river sparkled in his eyes and he could feel himself glowing in his afterglow. He knew he was healing fast. Even Crouch was healing.
— Did you hear Schist is going to give some of our food to the Lions?
— No!
— He is. Bluejay is really mad at him. He says there’s enough, but he didn’t ask anyone else about it, he just did it.
— But we’re down to eating ten nuts a day!
— I know. Bluejay and Thunder are really mad at him. His sister Moony married into the Lions, they say it’s all because of her, that he doesn’t care about us.
— The ducks better come on time.
— No lie. If they don’t they’ll be cooking him over their fire.
And they laughed. The ducks would come.
So that was good, but meanwhile his friends were going out hunting, and he couldn’t go with them, not yet. He would make up for it later.
But he could see that Hawk was growing fast. At the end of almost every hunt Hawk came back with something, even now in the hunger month. He was getting good at it. When they were kids, Loon had been better than him at all the things it took to be a good hunter. They had raced and chased together, played and wrestled, threw rocks and little javelins they made, and he knew he had been better at these things because they tried them so many times. Hawk knew it too. But now, maybe not. Now Hawk was broad-shouldered and lean around the waist now that all his fat was gone; he stood tall and had a fine head with tightly curled hair and a squarish set of teeth, very handsome. Very strong and graceful.
Then one night across the fire he saw Hawk and Sage slip away in the night, and his throat went tight and his feet cold. Well, she wouldn’t let Hawk do very much either. Still, it meant what it meant. He would have to fool around with Ducky and make Sage jealous too. Little looks, bad jokes, sharing food or braiding hair.
Stuck in camp, he helped Heather and Bluejay make shoes. This was meticulous work, and Loon plied the bone needle slowly, following Heather’s awl punches, which were all at the same angle and distance from each other, in a curving line that would sew together the bearskin bottoms and the deerskin uppers.
One day when Bluejay wasn’t around, Loon muttered something about Sage going off with Hawk.
— So what’s your problem? Heather asked.
— I guess I’m jealous.
— Jealousy is when you don’t want someone else to have what you have. Envy is when you want something that someone else does have. So it sounds like you’re feeling envious rather than jealous. Because Sage is not yours.
— It doesn’t matter what you call it, Loon muttered unhappily.
— Yes it does. You’d best know all the words and what they mean, or else your thinking will just be mush.
Heather returned their attention to the shoes. She thought marmot fur uppers were worth trying for winter boots. She liked to try out new things that occurred to her. She made things backwards sometimes, especially for Thorn. She seldom spoke directly to Thorn, and looked at him as she would look at a hyena or one of the other worthless animals.
He would glare back at her as if looking at a wolverine.
Now when he walked past she grinned horribly at him and said, — Here, unspeakable one, have this gift from me!
It was a pair of shoes made of porcupine skin. Porcupine mothers had the easiest births of all, so little toy porcupines were slipped carefully down the front of a pregnant girl’s dress for good luck. Now Heather had made shoes of a porcupine’s skin, with the smooth side outward and all the needles pointing into the foot. They were finished, so had to have taken a fist or two of work, and yet completely useless except for this moment of her sharp laughter.
— All yours! she cried to Thorn.-May they lend wings to your travels!
Thorn glared at her, then took the shoes from her and looked inside them.-Wait, I see something, he said.-You made your vixen into shoes for me!
He fingered one of the bear claws on his necklace and thrust it in and out of the shoe in a copulatory manner.-That was us, he said, and threw the shoes back at her.
— At least you got the size of your prick right, she said as she dodged the shoes.
— I was just keeping it proportionate, since you shrank your mammoth kolby as much as you did.
And they glared at each other before Thorn stalked away.
Another morning in the sun, grinding earthblood. Thorn sitting nearby, sewing something or other. When not biting off ends of the sinews, his face a mere thumb away from the hides as he needled them, he talked as always. From time to time he told Loon to recite one of the stories he was supposed to know.
— Start with the seasons to get your mind going. You’ve known that one since before you had a name.
Or not known it. Loon sighed and tried:
In autumn we eat till the birds go away,
And dance in the light of the moon.
In winter we sleep and wait for spring,
And watch for the turn of the stars.
In spring we starve till the birds come back,
And pray for the heat of the sun.
In summer we dance at the festivals,
And lie in twos on the ground.
— No no, Thorn said.-It’s,
In summer we dance at festival,
And lay our bones in the ground.
— Why would you get that part wrong, of all things? Also, it’s
In winter we sleep and watch for spring
In the turn of the nighttime stars.
— Try it again.
Loon repeated it, keeping it the way he had said it the first time.-Summer is when people lie in twos, he pointed out.-I like it better that way.
— But that’s not the way it goes!
— I’ve heard it that way lots of times.
Thorn gave up and went back to talking to himself.-Ah, see how this shirt I’m wearing is something I made the year before last, it was in the ninth month and we were back home, and I was sitting right in this very spot. So I can know an action from the past. And here it is now. And when I come back here next summer, the shirt will be here again. So now is now, but in this now there is some mix of the past and future, right there inside things, and blowing around in our thoughts. Everything keeps rolling around. Because there will be a now next year at this same day of the year. Nineteenth day of the fifth month. We know that. So every day is the birthday of all the days in the years to come that are this day.
— I don’t understand you, Loon said.-Have I got enough powder here yet?
— No, Thorn said without looking.-Of course you understand me. Because I’m talking to the you in you that is the birthday of the yous that will follow. So if you understand me then, you understand me now. By then I’ll be dead and just a white point in the night sky. I’ll wolf your heels, boy, like Fools the Wolves wolfs the Firestarter.
— So I’m going to be the Firestarter? I thought Firestarter was Firestarter.