He pulled a piece of jerky from his pack along with the locator, gnawing a bite off the former and noting the remaining 165 days on the latter. Could Harith convince the Temporal Span Authority to send another vehicle back? Doubtful. Even if they did come back they probably wouldn’t have half a ton of Viagra with them. He looked down into the space behind the filled entrance to see what was there. It was a roughly teardrop-shaped area the size of a small house with the filled entrance at its small end. The floor sloped gently toward the opening and was covered with human tracks.
Gordon lowered himself down the wall and studied the tracks. Different sizes, all smaller than an adult’s. Charred sticks from old fires and more recent fires. There was something else there, as welclass="underline" the thoroughly chewed remains of a certain kind of white root. He took a piece of charcoal and wrote on the wall, “Ekav knows.” He then removed all other traces of his passing, climbed down the cliff trail, and returned to the village seeking his son the medicine man.
Jatka was at Tonton’s cleaning out her fireplace, the naticha away in the eastern forest collecting oak moss. “Have you found your answer?” Jatka asked as he offered Gordon a corner of his own bed tucked in among the shelves.
“I want you to help me find the answer,” said Gordon. “Explain to me the Gift of Many Summers.”
“White stingroot. It grows along Avina’s banks and its juices end most pain.” He pretended to lick his thumb. “The Gifted Ones hold root in fist and rub scraped end with thumb. Then lick thumb.”
“You ever try it, Jatka?”
He earnestly shook his head. “No. Ekav the Healer reserve stingroot for gifted in years.”
Gordon nodded slightly. “Is it remembered why the sun reserved the stingroot for only the gifted? The young also have pain.”
“It is forbidden,” was all the answer Jatka had.
“Do the young sometimes break the ban and use the root in secret?”
Jatka shrugged, glanced down, and nodded. “At times. If caught they would be punished, family disgraced, terrible things.”
“More than they know, my son.” Gordon nodded in satisfaction. “Thank you for your help, Jatka. I’m going to test an idea. If I am correct, you will have earned a third of the gifts the people have been piling outside Pela’s door.”
“If you are wrong, Father?” asked Jatka.
“We may have to move.”
The Clan Father was outside his door watching the new snowfall on the river, the ice white beneath the frozen crystals. The flakes were fine and dry, drifting before a slight breeze. Mahu nodded at Gordon, then faced the west as he touched his thumb to his tongue. “See that coming, God’n. Little flake storm. Snows come hard now, deep and cold. Sweep tomorrow if we want to walk, then winds fill in paths and we sweep again.” He held the edge of his hand level with his waist. “This much each time maybe. Sometime more. Bears come down from north to steal children and fatten up before they sleep.”
Seeing Gordon’s alarmed expression, Mahu grinned and slapped Gordon’s shoulder. “Happen once many winters ago in legend. Keeps little ones minding their mothers.” Mahu remained with a hand on Gordon’s shoulder. He raised his other hand and wiggled his finger, a question on his face.
Gordon held ten rigid fingers straight up in the air.
Mahu’s eyes widened as he raised his left hand, thumb extended, to give it a lick, but Gordon reached out and caught Mahu’s hand.
“In your hand, Mahu. What?”
The Clan Father frowned. “Stingroot,” he answered as though only a fool would not know what he was holding. “Gift of Many Summers. Good for aching bones. Chase away tired, make strong.” Mahu opened his palm, revealing what looked like an icicle radish. The skin on the wide end had been scraped off and was gray from repeated rubbings by Mahu’s thumb. He thrust his arm forward. “God’n try?”
Gordon took the root from Mahu’s hand and immediately his fingers began tingling, warmth moving up his arm, easing then eliminating the remaining pain in his head and shoulder. He sniffed it but the root was odorless. He tossed the root toward the river.
“No root,” said Gordon. “It is the root that is stealing your gift of youth. Put the root down. Become strong again.” He held up a stiff index finger.
Mahu looked at Gordon as though he had just lost his mind. “Root good!” he protested. “Father of Mahu taste root. Father’s father!” Mahu pointed at himself as if to say his father’s use of stingroot and his own existence refuted the connection between impotence and using the substance.
“Your father taste the Gift of Many Summers when young or old?” Gordon inquired.
Mahu wrestled with the truth. “Thirty-two summers. Then taste root. Young forbidden to taste root.” He held his hands out. “Root feel good!”
“Clan Father, this is the answer I have for making you strong.”
“Stingroot Ekav’s Gift!” Mahu protested. He looked down at the gathering snow, leaned back against the wall of his house, cocked his head to one side, grimaced, and shook his head. “You have sore muscles, ache in joint?”
“Yes.”
“What you do?”
“For some aches there is medicine. For others I say ‘ouch.’”
“Root always make better,” insisted the Clan Father.
Gordon smiled. “Your wives, Mahu,” he said. “Think of them.”
“Certain are you, God’n?”
“No. But I ask you to do what you asked me to do, Mahu: try. Do without the root. See what happens.”
A haunted look in his eyes, Mahu took a small leather pouch from his waist, opened it, stared into the leather bag. “I cannot ask you to do what I would not do myself,” he said. “I will try.” He then emptied the pouch on the ground. Turning away, Mahu walked up to his dwelling, entered, and shut the bark and leather door behind him. Five of the pale white stingroots lay in the new snow.
“One day at a time, Clan Father,” Gordon said quietly to the closed door. He turned to go home.
Whoever’s rooster it was made the first announcement the next morning. Next came a swooshing sound. “Much snow last night,” whispered Pela into Gordon’s ear. She put her hands above the covers and acted it out in pantomime. Sweeping. Her neighbors were using brooms to sweep clear their paths. Shortly thereafter came a third sound: a trio of female voices doing that curious screaming-singing yodel. Mahu’s wives, Keila, Suna, and Min, were spreading the news about what a few hours away from stingroot had done for their husband.
“That didn’t take long,” remarked Gordon. He dressed, grabbed his pack, and followed Pela to Mahu’s house. The three wives were in the snow dancing with their brooms and yodeling out the news. Mahu had gotten sick, complained about aches and pains, then very early in the morning came a great uprising. Driven by desire, the Clan Father had managed to overcome his aching joints three times.
As Gordon was about to return to Pela’s house, he saw a delegation from Cleft Mountain with Kag Ati in the lead stop in front of Mahu. He watched as Mahu stood in the falling snow and talked to Kag Ati, gesturing and explaining the miracle. Soon the remainder of the miracle seekers and clan delegations—some hundred or more—were gathered to hear Mahu talk about strength, weakness, and the Gift of Many Summers. Some of the men emptied their pouches of the root while others waved their hands and growled in protest.