The animal came closer, and it was a wolf with a luxuriously thick coat, gray above the eyes and in the ears, mostly white below. The eyes were unblinking. Gordon extended the hand holding the meat, the animal backed away slightly, then returned. It took another step and another. With each step its gaze at Gordon’s eyes wavered not a millimeter. Closer the muzzle of the animal came to Gordon’s hand, closer still. Its tongue licked at the meat, brushing Gordon’s fingers. The wolf took the meat, carried it away a few steps, then settled down to eat, its powerful jaws crushing the bone.
Gordon looked to see Ghaf’s hand stealing toward his stone knife. He said to the hunter, “I have invited my sister to eat with us, my friend. Attacking her would be inhospitable.”
“I hope those furs Pela made you don’t belong to anyone your sister knows,” the hunter quipped as he fell back to sleep chuckling.
Gordon looked over to the wolf and she was licking her front paws, the meat gone, the bone splintered and clean. He watched her until his eyelids grew heavy and he slept.
In his dream the wolf spoke to him. She said, “Nascha is at peace now. Our mother is healed of her sickness and now walks in Beauty. All of them walk in Beauty.” He saw his mother, Hosteen Ahiga, and Phil Andreakos together in a world of green and blue, soft lights and gentle winds.
He awakened and the wolf was gone. Ghaf the hunter and Ta Avi still slept. Sitting cross-legged in front of Gordon was Jatka, the boy who had brought him tea in the clanhouse.
“Why does your face have no hair?” asked Jatka. “Do you cut it?”
“The people I come from don’t grow face hair.”
“Not even gifted?”
“No. Answer me a question, Jatka. You seem older than Ta Avi. Why do you still sit upon the high tier?”
“I have no one to feast me up to this ledge, God’n. No parent to offer me to the clanhouse.”
“What happened to your parents?” asked Gordon.
Jatka glanced down, then back at Gordon. “Both dead. Tchama, my mother, was Black Mountain. A singer. She died in childbirth.”
“Your father?”
“Also a singer. He was Yellow Claw.” Jatka looked into a shadow. “When I had ten summers, he tried to kill me.” Jatka looked back at Gordon. “He died with my flint in his neck.”
After a long silence Gordon asked, “Did he blame you for your mother’s death?”
“Every day.” The boy looked into his shadow once more. “Some villagers blame me for my father’s death. He was very popular, a great singer.”
“Do you miss him?”
“I miss having a father.”
“Jatka, my father left us the day I was born. My mother was Coyote Pass People. She was sick until she died.”
“You took care of her?” asked Jatka.
“Yes. She walked in bad dreams but many in my village thought she was a witch and feared her. Because of that I was not a part of life. There was a Gifted One who spent time with me, though. I loved him.”
Jatka shrugged, stood, and looked down at Gordon. “I just wanted to know why you have the face of a boy.”
Gordon nodded. “Are you a singer?”
“No. I do things around the village, mostly for Tonton Annajaka. In return she teach me about herbs, roots, and powders. Thank you for speaking with me.” Jatka turned and walked toward the western end of the ledge, vanishing into the shadows. A pair of unblinking yellow eyes looked back at Gordon.
“Is that the path you would tease me onto, Coyote?” he asked as he closed his eyes and snuggled into his furs. “What would your lesson for that be, I wonder?”
Jatka had been more respectful than Gordon had been at his age when he had gotten into Hosteen Ahiga’s face. To belong nowhere, caught between fear, scorn, and indifference, condemned to loneliness and to carry the guilt of his father’s death. Perhaps Coyote was showing the boy how much he could bear without breaking.
He wondered if Ibrahim Taleghani had thought for even a second about how he would keep himself sufficiently detached from the people he found at the base of this cliff to make it possible to leave them to their fate. Or had they not been people at all to his mind? Perhaps to the scientist they were only subjects from textbooks, theories, drawings of heavy-browed, dull-witted Neanderthals hunting, eating, grunting, killing, and making little Neanderthals.
Gordon pulled the furs more tightly about his neck and closed his eyes against the sight of the mountain. As he drifted back to sleep, Gordon reminded himself that—even if Dr. Taleghani spirit was watching with the aid of another dimension—the scientist’s regard or lack of it for these people no longer mattered. Gordon’s feelings did.
At the sound of loud shouting, Gordon jumped up, wide awake, the sunlight hurting his eyes. It was Ghaf doing the hollering. The hunter was on full yodel down to the village, bringing news of their night on the ledge with their new man, Ta Avi Beadsigns, who cut beautiful red-and-gold beads and would earn enough from last night’s trading to set himself up smartly. Ta Avi, who bravely slept right through a visit by God’n’s sister, a female great wolf who ate from God’n’s hand and licked his fingers and left them attached to his hand all the same.
After Ghaf had finished reporting the news, Ta Avi walked over and looked at the paw prints in the snow at the west end of the ledge. When Ta Avi returned to the fire, he squatted before Gordon and asked, “Do you command wolves?”
“I command no one, Ta Avi. I have many brothers and sisters, though. Wolves are Coyote People.” Gordon saw the ones who had left the ledge as the night grew colder now returning to claim their places next to the living legends of the sleeping bead maker and the wolfman. One of them, an old shaggy-headed mat weaver called Doven, ended the ceremony by making a prayer to the sun. He took barely warm ashes from the edge of a fire, washed his hands and arms in them, then took a smoking brand from the fire, turned and began making marks on the cliff wall. He began with what looked like a large numeral 6 followed to its right by a smaller o. Doven continued writing, from left to right, until there were five lines of characters, each line apparently separated into words. Once written, Ta Avi began reading the prayer out loud.
“Ekav, in the name of Wuja, god of men...”
It was a prayer that listed the functions and responsibilities of manhood as individual, husband, father, exchanger of value, producer, and contributor to the common defense. It stated that Ta Avi, under the supervision of the gifted and the Great Bear, had fulfilled the requirements and asked the sun god for his blessing. Ta Avi and the gifted then left the ledge as Doven once again scrubbed his hands with ashes, Gordon watching him.
“Doven,” said Gordon to the mat weaver, “what is that sign?” He pointed at the 6.”
Doven stood, shook the ashes from his hands, smiled, and nodded. “Sign of Ekav.” He pointed at the sun’s edge peeking over the eastern horizon. “Sky traveler, bringer of light and life, healer, father of crops, father of all clans.” He retrieved his piece of charcoal, went far to the left of where he had written his prayer, and drew another 6 on the wall and pointed to his ear with his left hand. “Also is eh sound sign.” To the left of the 6 he drew what looked like a T with the right half of the crosspiece missing. “Sign of Pash, goddess of forests. Also is p sound sign.” To the right of the 6 Doven drew a chevron with the point downward. “Sign of Loka, guardian spirit of ehlodomak.” It took some signing and drawing pictures in snow, but Gordon learned ehlodomak was the physical underworld of caves and caverns. To the right of Loka’s v sign Doven drew a short horizontal line—a dash. “Avina’s sign,” he said. “Avina is goddess of river. Sound sign ah.”