So, he couldn’t run the hill race, couldn’t make a bird’s eye view, couldn’t talk numbers of moons per year, or recite a story. Best to go back to the throwing range and try a few throws with his new spear thrower. This one he had carved in the shape of a ibex’s head, and it had a great cast; he felt like he might be able to enter the throw at the longest distance and have a good chance of hitting the musk ox.
Or better yet, he could sit down with the drummers and drink some mash and beat on his drum with the others. That he could always do, it was thoughtless fun, and one of the best parts of the festival. Drink, smoke, drum, laugh right through a beautiful smoky sunset; then, when night fell, go to the bonfires and dance.
At the bonfires in the first dark, some men and women held a contest to see who could make the prettiest fire spectacle. Many circled around to see these players take up very long travois poles and tie little sachets of cloth or leather to the thin end of the pole, then hold their sachets out away from them, into the highest flames of a bonfire, at which point many of them turned their heads away; and all watching would wait, until the sachet caught fire and flared green or blue or purple, sometimes with a quick splash of fire, or a crack like a little touch of thunder. Since everyone spent every night looking into fires, the sight of something new and unexpected flashing out of a blaze was enough to make them laugh with surprise and delight, and when the whole crowd did that together and as one, it was exhilarating. All the firebangers saved their biggest ones for last and poled them into the fire together, and the quick sequence of bright loud colorful cracks was enough to hurt the ears and provoke a huge cheer.
After that it was drinking, drumming, and dancing. Loon wandered over to a bonfire circled by dancers. Because of Badleg, as he had started naming it during the trek north, he first sat with the drummers and put his little wood and hide drum between his knees and drummed. The farther people traveled to get to the eight eight, the smaller the drums they brought. These little drums took the fastest parts, and Loon quickly got into the groove of the fives, and then switched between the fives, fours, and threes, as the spirit of the piece moved them all around to different emphases. These drum sessions were led by no one and yet could make quite sudden shifts in pace and flow, like flocking birds in the sky. Those moments were really something to be part of, to feel so clearly that there was a group spirit that could seize them all and take them off in a new direction. Time after time it happened. That it could be so easy was astonishing to feel, right there in hands and ear and body. And they drummed this astonishment too! And so it would go, all night long.
Sometime before midnight Loon came out of his drumming trance and could see everything from all the way around. It was like the way owls must see, with the distance to everything much more exact than usual. And so much more than usual was dancing before him: the flames in the fire, the sparks and smoke pouring up, the dancing people dressed like birds. The scene flowed in bumps tied to his pulse, a palpable bump moving one fire-flick moment to the next. Mother Owl was inside him, it seemed, and he watched the dance flicker in a way he had never watched before, not just at this eight eight, but in his whole life.
There were young women dancing, of course, wearing their furs and feathers, their necklaces and bracelets and anklets, all bouncing up and down barefoot in time to the drums, across the flicker of the firelight, snapping hand clacks and weaving circles with each other as they circled the fire. Red and white body paint had been applied to their skin in dots or snakes or weaves, and their birdskin hats or cloaks usually came from the most beautiful parts of birds, such as the heads of mallards or the chests of flickers, many such sewn together so that the cloak or headdress was much bigger than any actual bird’s. There before him spun a cloak of flicker chests, rising over breasts painted white with red nipples. The sight flickered like a flicker. Another dancer wore a cloak of loons’ backs and necks, and that dense superb weave of black and white was so striking and beautiful that Loon could not look elsewhere.
The young woman wearing it was someone he had never seen before. She was tall and heavy-boned; the elg would be her animal, and her dancing was correspondingly slow and simple. Slimmer faster women were dancing circles around her, she was ungainly in that company, and this was precisely what snagged Loon’s eye and quickly became her most beautiful feature, the thing that arrested him and compelled him to watch. She knew what she could do, and did it. She was enjoying the dance. She was big and slow, but had excellent proportions, long legs, strong rump, nice tits, broad shoulders. Hair the color of the flints from the Giants’ Knapsite, gleams of firelight glancing off it. Thick triple-braid of it down her back, tied with a strip of loon neck feathers at the tip: her friends had done well by her hair. She clumped around and slapped at people freely as they passed her. She had a carefree smile, unselfconscious and relaxed. She had no cares at that moment, she was herself and wanted nothing. So it seemed looking at her.
Loon hung his drum on its loop on the back of his coat and stood up. It was time to dance.
He joined in next to her. Even favoring Badleg a little he could dance rings around her, and he did.
— Hi there, he said to her, — my name is Loon, so I like your cloak. Who are you?
— I’m Elga, she said.
— Ah good, he said.-That’s good.
— It is good, she said, drawing herself up with elgish dignity and taking a neat little turn.-And Loon, is Loon good too?
Though no human could really imitate a loon’s arching of its wings to the sun, Loon put his arms out and stretched, stretched, stretched, and Elga laughed to see it. It was actually quite a fun dance style, and fit the firelight’s blink-blink-blink, so Loon kept it up for a while, thinking about how birds courted, the cranes, the doves, yes even the loons, such a display! He relaxed to get it to a more human style as he circled around her. She rotated inside his circles with a dreamy smile, like an elg chewing on a sunny day. She was taller than Loon, and heavier too. Her loon cloak was gorgeous, and yet the body it was draped over, the shoulders, collarbones, breasts, ribs, belly and hips, arms, back, legs, all of them were much more gorgeous even than a loon’s back. With his owl sight he could see that her face was a perfect image of her self, just as it was with all the people in his pack. People’s faces were three-liners of their nature, that was all there was to it; somehow their essential natures got stamped on the front of their heads, as if it was a game Raven played when he put them all in their mothers to be born. Their natures were there for all to see. And now Loon was seeing with owl sight, and here dancing before him was a woman calm, straightforward, maybe a little dreamy and withdrawn, all right there to be seen in her eyes and the set of her mouth, and the whole shape of her face, oval and big-eyed. A little mouth, lips thick and rounded when in repose or suppressing a smile, but now she was smiling, so he only caught glimpses of her mouth at rest, as she thought over a dance move or looked out at the night thinking about something. Her teeth when she smiled were neat and small, more otter than elg, which was nice too. No, she was herself; he loved the way she looked, loved her slow neat dancing inside his circles. And she seemed content to stay there, she danced to face him and circled the fire at a speed that accommodated his looning around.
— Where do you come from? he asked.
— From north of here, she said, and saying this caused a little frown to crease her brow, and he saw better than ever the little flower her lips made when she was thinking.
— North? Loon said.-Are you an ice person?
— No, she said, but looked away as if this weren’t the whole story, and added-Not anymore. My pack winters to the sunrise, but we take our caribou north of here, caribou and saiga. What about you?