Heart of the Sky

 

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Heart of the Sky

A Paleolithic woman must complete a deadly ritual to appease her deity and save her clan.

 

 

My grandmother named me for Ru, the Wind-rider.  At the beginning of time, when the Mother-Bird sculpted the world from tears and bone, Ru rode down from the sky on the back of an eagle and birthed the twelve clans from her first nest.  One day, she will come back if we learn all the secret songs, and give us wings.

But right now, the music of my clan grows soft and slow.  Winter inches closer, and we stare down the long, dark maw of starvation.  Our summer war lasted longer than ever before, and the shell-graves ring the base of the cliffs like a hand squeezing an enemy warrior's neck.  Except it is our neck.

When I wake, my stomach keens.  We have only weeks to prepare for first snow, and not nearly enough hunters left.  Half the clan's atlatls lay still beneath layers of shell with the bodies of their masters.

You don't stir beneath the blankets.  You breathe slow and shallow, and I know hunger gnaws from inside, even as you dream.  This will be your third winter, which is when the grandmothers will name you.  If you live.  I asked Grandmother Steya to name you for your father, because he was strong and quick and you have his eyes.  If you live.

A scratch of fingernails down the deerskin door of our tent coaxes me from the bed.

All the grandmothers kneel in a half-circle outside. Grandmother Steya holds a cup of wingbones in her left hand, and a burned-black robin's skull in her right.  Grandmother Pili stands my spear in the dirt beside her knee, the flaked-stone head pointing toward the sky.

"We've spoken with the Mother-Bird," Steya says, holding the skull up to me.  She nods to Pili, who flips my spear and invites me to take hold of the birchwood shaft.

This is what comes of a bunch of old women sitting around telling each other stories.  My spear isn't meant for hunting the great animals -- but they aren't looking at me as the girl who traps rabbits, who sticks crabs and turtles in the low tide pools at the far northern edge of our lands.  They are seeing my father and my brothers, shouldering home the carcass of a great black bear, the dark blood sliding down their faces, the terrible white of their smiles as they danced in the firelight, daring winter's winds to foil the flight of their arrows.

Well, they have been foiled.  All my brothers have been silenced.  My husband is dead and you will not remember him laughing in our tent at night. We didn't learn the secret songs in time and they'll never have their wings now.

And the rest of us will join them before spring scrapes the snow from the ground.  I am just a girl. The last time hunger breathed down our necks, my great-grandfather and our six strongest hunters took the quest.  They nearly failed.  Seven men.

Pili shakes the spear shaft at me.  "Take it, Ru.  The Mother-Bird doesn't sing in the wrong key.  Yours is the strongest arm here.  If not you, who shall we send?  Do you think Yaio or Gengen more suited to the task?"

My eyes dart to the boys, training dogs in the far corner of the village.  Yaio's skills with trap-nets put mine to shame, but he is young, so young his head only reaches my shoulder.  Gengen is older than me, but slow.  An arbor cat would overtake him in moments.  He is meant to be a trapper like his father before him.

 

The others, left behind when the summer war started, were left behind for good reason: young, small, slow, ill-skilled, those never meant for battle.  Old Felle, who can carve a spear shaft that flies like a hummingbird but who can barely throw a blade of grass; Ultae, who remembers the clan stories better than the grandmothers do, missing half his left leg; and Po, our healer.  Oh yes, we'll send Po, and then the nine warriors who don't yet lie beneath piles of shell will succumb to their wounds, with no one to keep their souls from flying away.

And the women: trappers all, if they know anything of hunting.  I'm the only woman with a spear.  You won't remember, but I begged your father to teach me the atlatl.  Felle carved it from the legbone of a deer your father hunted while you still slept inside me.  Every moment, my fear for you has been a vulture circling above me.  My skill with the spear has grown as you have grown, my son.

Maybe the Mother-Bird makes the only choice she can.  If this curse comes from the Great Bear, then I will either die and he will accept my sacrifice; or I will prevail and the whole clan will drink his blood and wash this terrible fate from us.  His heart or mine.

I surrender to the Mother's demand, and take the spear from Pili's hand.

 

***

 

At this rate, I will starve before I ever come near the Great Bear.  We built the village far from his den for good reason.  Three days in, and my stomach rumbles in agony.  The snake I snatched and ate raw the morning before last is nothing but a distant memory.  My spear and atlatl rest heavy on my back.  The bird skull that sent me on this journey jabs my thigh with each step.  A thin strip of leather winds through the brain stem, out the eye socket, and wraps the beak as though to keep it from singing.  The grandmothers said it would bring me luck.  I told Steya she should have sent it with the warriors at the beginning of the summer instead, then.

Only three days from the village, and the world changes.  The further I move from our cliffs, the less I can hear the crash of the sea on the beach below.  Maybe I'm not hearing it at all; maybe I wish so hard for the sound of home that I imagine the crash of waves, the quick-quick-slow beat of your feet on the bare earth of our tent.

The sand beneath my feet becomes dirt, rich and dark and thankfully silent to walk upon.  Above me, the trees hang silent, stilling the song of the wind far from my ears.

Not many birds here: a few sandgrouse nested closer to the coast, and a couple of robins dove past my ear when I started east again this morning.  The smaller four-legged creatures seem to enjoy the cover of the tree line: squirrels rustling and bats chirping, raccoons scratching at the ground and deer crunching on fugi, tree-lizards and bark-rodents scurrying, all adding little complementary melodies.

When the sun reaches its zenith, I follow the sound of water to a shallow, rocky river.  Several handfuls of the cool, clean water eases the pain of my stomach.  I lay back for a moment, draping my forearm across my eyes to guard against the burn and sting of the bright sun.

Complete silence falls.  Slowly, carefully, I move my arm away from my face.  Without moving my head, I sweep my eyes around.  To my left, across slow-moving water, a black bear ambles up to the riverbank, lowering his muzzle to drink.  My spear and atlatl are just beyond my reach.  I must be quick; when I move to get them, he will see me, if not before then.

I will probably die here.  Three days from taking hold of my spear outside my tent to this moment, just a heartbeat away from facing the Great Bear.  I exhale once.

I roll right, toward my spear and atlatl in the grass.  I hear the bear's head lift from the river, the long stream of water trickling down from his jaw.  The forest holds its breath.

My palm lands on the shaft of my spear.  I halt my rolling motion and come up on one knee facing the river bank.  The bear stares back, his head cocked to the side as though trying to determine exactly how a girl of the bird clan, all tangled hair and fragile bones, came to be in his part of the world.  Keeping my eyes on the bear, I reach down for the atlatl in the grass, swinging it up and into the crook of my elbow.

Another breath.  I slide the spear into the atlatl, feel the weight of it in my bones, and swing it back over my shoulder.  I jump to my feet, and with a skip I take off full tilt toward the bear.  My yell would make your father proud, and, digging my heels into the sweet mud of the riverbank, I launch.

The spear soars across the water like an eagle.  It whistles, and lands in the soft flesh of the shoulder.  The bear roars and charges forward into the river, straight at me.  My only weapon is embedded in his dark, bleeding fur.  I didn't bring bow and arrows, or even a skinning knife.  The spear and atlatl were my only chance at a killing blow.

This is going to end exactly as I expected: the Great Bear, devouring me.  I can only hope that my sacrifice will appease his anger, and he will settle with the Mother-Bird to lift the curse of death from my clan.  I close my eyes as the bear splashes towards me.  I hear the far-away sound of the sea, and the silence of the forest behind me; I smell the sweet fish stench of the river and the sweat of my skin; I feel the earth echo with each impact of bear against ground.

When I open my eyes, the Great Bear stands before me on his hind legs.  His hot breath washes over me like a forest fire, and my bones seem to shatter and writhe beneath my skin at his bellow.

A snap of the bear's jaws, and his front paws fall heavy across my shoulders, bowling me over into the mud.  I try to gasp; between the impact with the ground and the weight of him between my breasts, my lungs will not expand.  His claws swipe across my face, leaving four trails of fire and pain on my cheek.

He sniffs at my exposed belly.  Yes, I think.  Take the offering.  My heart for your mercy.

One great claw slashes at me; my mouth opens and no sound comes out.  He pushes up into the air and with both sets of claws gouges and scores me from shoulder to hip.  My whole existence is pain ebbing and flowing with my heartbeat.  His snout roots around in my belly and then his head lifts.  My liver dangles from his teeth, drip-drip-dripping blood on my face, in my eyes.

I look at the sky.  Around me, the music floods my whole body: the sun singing, the forest singing, the animals singing, and from far away, the music of the village, and the sea, the sand, and you, laughing with the grandmothers.

Pain.  Pain so deep for a moment I can't hear or see or think.

I imagine you, years from now.  You will not remember me, or your father.  I hope Grandmother Steya gives you the right name.

Yes, I give freely of my body.  Take what you will, and spare my people.  Spare my son.

The song skips a beat.  In the silence, my soul, my body, the whole universe expands.  By the time the music sorts itself out, not even light can reach me.  The pain doesn't end.  I drown in blood and you will never hear my fate; I will never know yours.

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