They lay there again, wrapping up to stay warm. They kissed, they made love. The sky turned gray in the east, then the red flush of dawn lined the horizon.
— No, Loon protested.-I don’t want this night to end.
She hummed her agreement, burrowed her face into his neck. She appeared to fall asleep for a while, and Loon lay there feeling her breast rise and fall on his arm, her leg thrown over his middle. He was not even the slightest bit sleepy; in fact he wanted to wake her up and slip inside her again. He did not, however. He let her sleep, and watched sunrise with his head lying right on the ground, cradling her head and feeling her body’s weight and warmth, smelling her, soaking her in. This was what he wanted. He had never wanted anything the way he wanted this.
In the warmth of the morning sun, he too fell asleep for a while. When he woke she had her loon cloak rolled and tied with a thong. She looked him in the eyes, in a way she hadn’t during their dance.
— Can I come with you? she said.
— What do you mean?
— I just joined my pack last year. I ran away from the one before, because they took me from the one I grew up in. But I can’t find that first one anymore. I lived like a woodsman trying to find them, but when I couldn’t, I joined the pack I’m in now. But I don’t really fit there, and a lot of them wish I wasn’t there. It makes some problems I guess. Anyway I don’t like it.
— Sure you can, he said.-Sure you can come with me.
They went to his camp together, and he went straight to Heather and told her about it. She hissed and said, — You wait a minute before you talk to Thorn.
After a quick hard look at Elga, she turned her back on them, clearly displeased with the situation, and dug around in her traveling selection of baskets and bowls and gourds and boxes. No one carried more around in her backsack than Heather did, it was always taut with its internal weight, and hung from a tumpline that pressed a livid mark on her forehead when she hiked. Now it looked like she was having trouble finding what she wanted, knocking things around like a jay beaking through leaves.-I knew this was going to happen, she muttered.
When Thorn came into camp he was mashed and smoked, red-eyed and roaring. Loon might have chosen some other time to tell him, but Thorn immediately saw Elga and stared at her and said, — Who’s this then?
— We’re getting married, Loon said.-She’s joining us. Her name is Elga.
— No, Thorn said, and with a snarl he leaped at Loon and hit him on the ear and then in the gut. After that Loon held him off with straight-arms and shoves, until during one shove Thorn grabbed Loon’s right hand in both of his and quickly twisted Loon’s little finger. Loon felt the bone break, and after that it hurt so sharply that he stepped back and kicked Thorn hard in the belly. Thorn fell back and picked up a burin and was about to attack Loon with it when Heather screamed, — STOP IT!
She was slightly crouched over Thorn’s stuff, and peeing on it.
— Hey! Thorn shouted in outrage, and turned to leap at her, raising the burin; but instantly she was holding up her little blowdart tube to her lips and aiming it right at him.
He stopped in his tracks.
Tipping it slightly away from her mouth, she said, — Stop it or I’ll kill you right now. You’ll die inside twenty breaths. You’ve seen me do it before, don’t think I won’t do it to you, because I will, and you know it.
— Fucking hag.
Thorn stood there, eyeing the blowdart uneasily. The little darts were tipped with a poison Heather made which definitely killed animals fast, even lynxes and hyenas, her chief victims. They had all seen it. And when she was angry she was capable of anything. Thorn knew that best of them all, and he stood there pushing his lips out into a disgusted knot. He said sidelong to Loon, — You’re on the shaman path and you can’t get married now, you have too much to do, it would be wrong. You didn’t even come to the corroboree!
— I’m not going to do it the way you did it, Loon said.-I’m going to do it better. You had a bad shaman, and I didn’t. So I know better than you what to do.
He held up his right hand up to Thorn and straightened the little finger with his left hand, feeling the bone in there grind against itself, a gut-wrenching moment that caused a wave of light-headedness to pass through him, but after that the finger only throbbed, and his head came back to him, though his forehead was dripping sweat. He would have to make a splint and get someone to tie it on for him. He kept his voice steady and cold as he said, — I’m going to marry Elga, and be a married shaman. There’s no reason not to. Lots of packs have them.
— They’re not real shamans.
— Yes they are.
— As to the girl, Heather put in sharply, — it’s the women’s decision whether she joins the pack or not. Neither of you have anything to do with that, or with who marries whom in this pack for that matter! Those are women’s decisions.
Thorn stood there glowering. His boxes were wet with pee, he had to wash them soon. Meanwhile Loon stood there nursing a broken little finger, which was the new leader of all the hurts in his body, although he could tell already that it was not a serious thing like Badleg, because a little finger could be splinted and left alone to heal. The pain itself didn’t matter now that he had his head back. The main thing here, he saw, was that Elga be accepted by Heather, which now she seemed likely to do, even if it was just to put Thorn in his place. And so Loon began to feel happy.
Of course it was complicated, Heather having peed on Thorn’s stuff and threatened to dart him to death. Their ancient reverse-marriage would no doubt snarl worse than ever. On the other hand, how much worse could it get? And Loon didn’t care anyway. Indeed the worse Thorn and Heather were getting along, the less time either of them would have to tell him what to do. They would focus on each other, and Loon would slip to the side. And he would have his Elga.
He looked at her, smiling to try to convey all this to her. She had been staring at him uncertainly, but when she saw the way he was looking at her, she relaxed. She glanced around at the Wolf women with a beseeching look.
At that moment Sage came back into camp.-Who’s this? she said.
All eyes fell on Loon.-This is Elga, he said, moving to her side.-She’s going to join us, if the women agree. We are to be married, if the women agree.
That gave Sage a start, and for a moment her eyes flashed. Elga meanwhile was looking serenely at something in the sky, as if not really there. Loon saw suddenly that this would be her way, that she would slide away from trouble if she could. That the struggle might be to keep her around.
In the last days of the festival, around the eighth month’s full moon, many had been celebrating for so long that they now lay prostrate right through the day, and the drumming and dancing was mostly taken up by boys and girls. Many men stretched out in camp or with clan friends, stuffed with mash and steak, and even the women sat around preparing the meals a little stunned. They had proved yet again that too much feast is worse than famine, that enough is as good as a feast, and so on. But there were very few who could resist throwing off all restraint just once in the year. Sometimes you just had to let go.
In the wreckage of that particular morning’s light, Loon built himself a finger splint, and with Heather’s help attached it to his hand. She said he hadn’t set the bone between the two knuckles straight, which he could see, and feel too, but he didn’t want to do the pulling and twisting it would take to straighten it properly, knowing how it would hurt. Heather offered to do it, but he shook his head.-It will be all right.
— It will heal crooked.
— That’s all right. That will mark this fine occasion! And he smiled at her, feeling the prospect of Elga staying with him.
Here and there among the exhausted celebrants, some hoarse arguments were breaking the peace that had finally descended after the drumming had been reduced to a few boys trying a slow four beat. Mash headaches made people irritable. But the arguments were only put-down contests, even if people were truly angry. Curses lashed the air, and shocking insults were traded, but blows were not. Because fights were too dangerous to indulge in. Everyone had seen the battles of the male antlered animals in rut, all the clashing and kicking and blood, and although these too were supposed to be put-down contests, accidents often happened, and animals got gored, or broke a leg, and many later died or were killed. From time to time men would fall into the same kind of folly at a festival, usually when drunk, but these too ended in dangerous injuries, and only served to prove how stupid fighting was. Life was dangerous enough; everyone got injured accidentally one time or another, no matter how careful they were. As the saying put it, every path leads to misfortune. Also: when you’re injured, your pack is injured. What it came to was that everyone had enough experience of injury to want to avoid it.