Then the man tossed his earrings into the sea
And again cried out, Enough!
And soon the water began receding,
And after a time formed the rivers and streams
And retreated to the west where it still remains.
— That must have happened right around this time of year, Loon joked when Thorn was done.
— What do you mean?
— I mean, it didn’t matter what the shaman said or did. The water was going to recede anyway, its time had come.
Thorn stared at him.-Repeat the part I said.
Loon stood and spoke as loudly as he could:
One spring a storm came out of the west,
Destroying the homes of the folk by the river.
They lashed their boats together for safety
And the sea rose up and covered all the land.
They drifted terrified unable to do anything,
In the bitter nights many of them froze
And their bodies were thrown overboard.
Then wind and sea calmed and the sun came out,
It was so intense that some died of its heat.
And so a shaman stuck his spear in the sea
And woefully cried, Enough! Enough!
And threw his earrings into the sea,
Whether as gift or killstone even he didn’t know.
And as the water was already receding
It didn’t matter the land returned
With the rivers and streams we know today
And the great salt sea off where it belongs.
Thorn had raised a fist during Loon’s changes to indicate his displeasure, but the gorge was now cracking and roaring under them very loudly, sounding very much like the cracks and rumblings of thunder overhead. Loon hoped that one day that would happen, that the break-up would come in the midst of a giant thunderstorm, and he had an idea for a poem that hopefully would be ready to tell, if it ever did happen.
Now, in the cloudless sky, with the sound originating below them, it was too awesome a thing to persist in stories, or anything else human, except just to watch and bear witness. The white surface of the river ice was fracturing downstream in a jumble, starting on the outsides of the river’s curves, then flowing downstream from where they began, until big sections of the river were all cracked open, and black open water visible riffling below. Ice plates were detaching from their banks or each other and moving downstream, white rafts crashing into each other and reforming immense masses that flowed downstream until they ran into a bank, or another raft of ice, when plates of ice slid over each other, or broke up and tilted at the sky. Sometimes big ice dams crossed the whole flow from bank to bank, and water built up behind them, floating more ice rafts into them so that they quickly grew, and more water bulged up and pressed higher on them, until with roars louder than thunder the whole white mass roiled down the black chaotic stream, ice plates tumbling and rolling wetly until another dam snagged and held them all again.
Everyone was standing arms outstretched on the downstream side of the Stone Bison, looking down at the spectacle; everyone was shouting and yet no one could be heard. Even Heather was open-mouthed and red-cheeked, grinning hugely. The whole pack of them howled like wolves, and not a voice was heard in the stupendous break-up. When it came upstream, and was happening right under the Stone Bison itself, they danced and hugged each other and spun in circles until they were facing the upstream side, well away from the edge, for it would not do to fall in now; and when the break-up showed under them, and proceeded upstream away from them, they howled louder than ever, and still could not hear themselves in the giant roar of the world.
And then someone spotted a line of ducks in the sky.
Summer was here.
So they had not starved. They had felt the pinch, and as the very first ducks to arrive were never taken, they had a bit more pinching to go. They devoured the last of the winterover nuts and went out to set the snares that would catch the ducks that came in the following days. But it felt different when you knew it was only going to go on for a while longer: sharper, but less frightening.
With the success of the last four winters, their pack was getting rather large. Two score two was a still good number: not so small that they had to worry about defending themselves, not so big that the food required to feed them was impossible to gather.
Still, the way everyone knew everyone else. Relations, habits, likes, dislikes, abilities, weaknesses, tendencies. Everything. Smells, digestive habits, turns of phrase. They knew each other so well that they were no longer interesting to each other. Part of the excitement of the coming of summer had to do with the prospect of seeing other people again.
After the duck snares were set on the still parts of the river, Loon went out with Heather to help her hunt for her special herbs. Some of them grew only down in wet-bottomed hollows, and Loon could help by getting down into places Heather was too stiff to reach.
Heather’s cat followed at a discreet distance. Heather had found it as an orphaned kitten and kept it alive, but at a certain age it had gone off on its own, and now only came back in the winters to skulk around for food. They had several camp robbers like that, mostly jays and squirrels, but also a minx, some marmots and foxes, even a nearby beaver family who made quick raids on them from the river.
Heather used her cat as an herb tester. She would leave some meats the cat liked most with a sprig of a strange new plant in it, and when the cat ate it Heather would watch to see what happened. She didn’t think any plant would kill the cat, because if it did not agree with the little beast it would quickly cough it back up.
When Heather saw this happen, she would shoo the cat away and go to the vomit and inspect it closely, even take dabs of it between finger and thumb and taste it with her tongue.
Now as she did this Loon said, — Heather, you’re eating cat vomit.
— So what? I can taste tastes that are like other tastes I know. It gives me ideas how this flower might be put to use.
— What if it kills you?
— Cats have very delicate stomachs. It won’t kill me.
Loon said, — I dreamed about some lions last night, a gang of them going after some bison.
Heather wasn’t interested.-I don’t know about dreams. Maybe it’s one of those worlds we don’t see very well. We only see snatches of them. I don’t know what they are. It’s this world I know. Well, know. It’s this world I look at.
— So you eat cat vomit.
— Better than eating shit.
— Well sure, but who would do that?
Heather shook her head darkly.-We all have to eat shit sometime.
Loon didn’t know what to say to this.
Heather gave him a look, laughed her brief hag’s laugh.-When you get hungry enough, you’ll eat anything. And the first time it goes through you, not all of the food in food gets eaten. You shit some of it out uneaten. So there’s some food to be had in shit. Second time through is pretty bad, I admit. You get gas, the runs, it tastes like shit, you bet. But you get something out of it. You can tell that’s true because you do it again.
— Again?
— Not with the same stuff. I mean later. A third time through you wouldn’t work. Your body knows that and wouldn’t let it in you anyway.
— So you didn’t have any other food?
— That’s right. Some winters are hard. Heather frowned as she stared at the western sky.-Harder than any you’ve ever seen.
She picked more of the herb sprigs the cat had thrown up, inspecting them for undamaged flowers.-Hopefully harder than you’ll ever see, she added.-But they do seem to come along every once in a while.
As the seventh day of the seventh month approached, they began to sort through their gear and decide what to take on their summer trip and what to bury. They would collapse their big house and the women’s house flat, and cover them with big rocks; leaving them intact always got them ransacked. Even when flattened and covered, sometimes it looked like other people or some bigheads had dug into them, and other times it was clear that bears had clawed some rocks away and rooted around, no doubt interested in the scents. But by their leaving the camp as clean as possible, marauders would find nothing but old hides to eat, and although hungry bears would eat old hide, as they would anything that lived or had ever lived, still their downed camp was often left alone, and could be reconstructed that much easier on their return.