Chapter 6

On the wrong side of the river on an unknown planet.

The boy had been very industrious under the blue sky and the few puffy white clouds overhead. Ureeblay quickly gathered six big heaping armfuls of long, stringy bower bird grasses. He used a thicker piece of dead swamp-willow and dug not one, but two small fire pits. He measured by eye and broke lengths of wood for both drying frames. Then he got into his travel pouch and retrieved, wrapped in a small piece of leather, a flint blade that had come out less than his best effort. It was sharp and effective but lacked the grace he hoped all his flint work would display someday. He used the blade to cut cords off the raw pig hide.

He figured he would need five-hands-and-three of the rawhide pieces to bind two frames. Knowing he always needed more ties than he counted on, the boy sliced off as many cuts as he could from the skin until the griping muscles in his right hand started to cramp from the effort.

To take a break from cutting cords, he peeled bark and the inner fuzz from the dead wood he’d prepared for his frames. Making four piles; a pile each of wood for the two frames, one of fine bark, and one of the inner fuzz, which was one of several types of excellent tinder for fire starting, Ureeblay got his meat preparation underway. What fuzz he didn’t use to start his two fires, he would stuff into the leather tinder bag he carried inside his large travel pouch.

Once all his frame material was ready and he finished cutting cord, he had six-hands-and-four of the rawhide cords and had used almost half of the pig skin. Then he began square lashing the frames together. With his first frame done, he went to the creek to check on the carcass. It was still there. He took a good drink of water. And the wolf whined at him from where it lay bound in the grass. It was afternoon by now and had warmed up a good deal.

After lashing together the second frame and admiring his quick handiwork, the boy sank both frames deep into the grass covered damp peat on either side of his first fire pit. Then he retrieved the carcass and put it on the big pile of bower bird grass. Taking out his long flint blade, he started cutting meat. The smell of raw cut pork and ham made his mouth water. He wasn’t surprised when the small wolf whined again when the scent drifted past the animal.

He planned to put three layers of skewer sticks between the frames on the different levels of cross-pieces. He would then rotate the skewers from one level to another as the meat on the sticks smoked. That way he would evenly dry his supply of smoked pig. The boy loosely bound a two-finger-thick stick between the top-ends of both upright racks with dried rawhide from his travel pouch to increase the stability of his drying device.

With all the meat was finally cut and piled on the bower bird grass, he fashioned and stripped the thin lengths of swamp-willow he thought he would need to hold his bounty over the fire. Then he pushed sliced thin hands of pork and ham onto each skewer and rested each full skewer on a cross rail of his rack until that layer was full.

When he had all his cuts of meat on three layers of racks a thrill shot up his spine. He realized to speed the process of curing his catch he would need to weave a large enough mat to wrap around and over his drying racks. A mat would hold in the heat and smoke from the fire he still needed to bring forth from his sliver of frozen lightning.

He was becoming excited as he chose the smallest pieces of his dry wood, lots of the fine thin bark, and a good amount of the fuzz to build a tinder teepee in the shallow fire pit. Then he opened his travel pouch and found the flint nodule he always kept with him in case he might need to knap a small cutting or slicing edge for some reason. But he didn’t have a proper bone hammer, or a hammer stone for that matter, but he had a much better use for the fine flint now.

The boy took a deep breath and held it as he took the leather plait from around his neck and removed his treasure from the thin leather sleeve holding the frozen lightning safe. He quickly aligned the cold hard shard of frozen lightning next to and angled toward the opening in the side of his tinder teepee. Then saying a prayer of thanks to the spirits of the second life who had guided his way throughout his entire crazy journey since he’d picked himself up out of the water on this side of the Toolie, the boy struck along the edge of lightning with his flint nodule.

The two items produced the sparkling miracle of the spirits right there from the labor of his hands as large, brilliant, hot, long-lived sparks shot from the momentary joining of stone and frozen sky into the thick, waiting dry punk of the swamp-willow inner bark.

After making sure his long hair was out of the way, it was so easy to blow gently on those gifts born from the spirits and the night sky. He gently blew their glowing into the tinder which burst into small flames. Now he had sacred fire so quickly, and he still could not believe it.

So after all of that labor and more, his frames were up with racks between them and all of the pork was sliced or jerked and hung at various heights over the low, managed flames. He had brought back three more big loads of dead wood. He’d found several coarse-sage bushes when he was looking for more bower bird grass to plait. So now, from time to time, as he watched his drying rack and wove mats he would put a handful of the pungent green leaves on the low fire under his pork. The resulting fragrant smoke rose up in additional fine aromatic billows that kept the gnats and bugs away and would add a very fine flavor to the meat.

After Ureeblay had finished his drying mat and secured it around and over his rack, he had started a second fire in the other pit for cooking. He also planned to use its light as he continued to weave his grass mats later in the evening. He picked out and stripped four thin lengths of wood then stuck the liver, heart, and both small kidneys on them and angled the results up over his cooking fire. The boy noticed the breeze seemed to be moving the smoke from both fires down the stream and not right up into the air, so that was good also.

Next, he unearthed four huge bog apples from the middle bush in almost less time than it took to choose a spot away from the withering widow-snare vines. He had washed and then spitted one of the magnificently huge tubers and the other three he just admired from time to time as he went back to weaving matting.

The roasting organ meats and the bog apple over his second fire began to fill the air with mouth-watering aromas. The small wolf perked up again and used its free left paw and leg to turn its head toward the delicious cooking food as the youngster whined. It actually sounded to the boy like the skinny thing was begging. When he looked into the wolf’s beautiful blue eyes he swore to himself the animal was first looking at him wistfully and the over to the meat and then back at him!

He pondered that problem off and on while he finished the job of cleaning and washing out the pig intestines one more time in the water of the stream. After the third good cleaning, he cut the intestines into six equal lengths, then pegged them to the stream bank and left them alone to wash in the flowing water.

When Ureeblay returned home with the frozen splinter of lightning, and now that he had learned to summon the fire-sparks from it with his flint, the clan would have to believe almost anything he told them about his journey he figured. Moreover, if he had the pelt of the honey-colored young wolf, they would also have to believe this part of his tale.

But a voice in the boy’s mind reminded him that without the wolf’s sacrifice he would be dead by now, or dying. So that part of him argued that it didn’t seem correct to reward such a life-debt with death just so he could prove he’d seen a wolf the color of dark honey.

With a coat of fur of such unheard of color and with those brilliant eyes, perhaps this young wolf was actually a spirit animal, he told himself. He had seen the white bison calf two full turns of the seasons ago. The calf had been with a wandering herd down on the plains. Many of his clan had been able to observe the miraculous young beast at a distance after a few of the hunters had returned to camp and reported their discovery of the spirit animal.

He was beginning to feel as if he might have been touched last night while he’d slept. Touched by the Swongli dust Jaypai was said to sprinkle sometimes into the up-turned ear of a person in slumber. Everyone in all the clans knew that would lead to lunacy as otherworld spirits sometime overcame the unlucky person’s being, like a sudden fever. Sometimes the spirits would creep into a person, like a nap could come upon you in the afternoon sunlight.

Those who Jaypai dusted were mostly harmless afterward. Some might only shyly talk to themselves and the invisible forest sprites, which sometimes caused naughty mayhem among the young girls who were soon to become women. Some of those who were dusted might run away to live like animals in the wilds and to be seen by others of clan only fleetingly. Some of the dusted were as normal as Ureeblay and his mother, but would go into a fit at the oddest time. While in the depths of their Jaypai dust seizure, they might tell of visions that over a period of days or a season came to pass exactly as foretold. It was said that the longer the vision took to become, the greater were the things the vision contained.

Any clan member dusted by Jaypai became sacred in the eyes of all. The clans gave them space for the fruits of Jaypai to produce whatever crop the small contrary one had seeded with his dusting of the star powder.

Often one of the shamans of his clan would go up to a high top of a foothill or sacred ridge clear of trees and make a sanctified place to sleep. Come the night, they would arrange themselves on their side with their long hair tied back or even completely shaven, so Jaypai could dust their upturned ear for the good of the entire clan. If that was Jaypai’s will.

The boy had been tending his smoking fire under the drying racks off and on as he weaved matting for the bog apple basket. As the evening was starting to come on stronger, transforming the terrace of the swale, he figured it would soon be time to see what his dusting luck might yield. So he took the nicely cooked organ meats and the skewered bog apple off the low fire and put them aside to cool. Then while the evening light held, he gathered a heaping mound of pulled grass and made a nest near his smoking fire under the matting-wrapped drying racks.

He retrieved the stomach and intestines of the flats-pig from the stream and the stream bank. He hung the intestines up to dry over the outside of his rack matting. He folded over and tied off as tightly as he could the bottom opening of the stomach with one end of an arm’s length of rawhide cord from his travel pouch. Then after washing the stomach out again three times, he filled the stomach full of stream water and tied the top off with the other end of the rawhide. He’d use the cord as a strap. He hung the stomach under a quickly rigged tripod over the top of his drying rack. He slightly opened the top of his wrapping mat under the bulging water-filled stomach, so the smoke could work on preserving the outside of the stomach.

It was full evening now, as he approached the entwined wolf with his best spear. The young animal just laid on its right side in the crushed grasses. Now the small wolf just followed him with its amazing eyes and didn’t growl. Overgrown in the thick green blades of grass around the dead widow-snare vines the boy could see scattered skeletal remains of past prey. The vines had mostly brought down mersal rats and babbets by the small skulls and other overgrown bones he saw.

Looking at the ensnared small, amazing, honey-colored wolf, the boy just couldn’t bring himself to thrust the flint spearhead into the youngster’s throat. It even appeared that the young wolf was trying to roll onto its back and show him its belly!

The boy told himself again, that if it hadn’t been for this mysterious animal, he most likely would be dead or dying by now. He imagined himself crushed to suffocation, or strangled by the vines of passing. He told himself the spirits must have guided this small wolf to risk its life in order to protect him from the widow-snare. Well, the boy didn’t know if he really believed the spirits would heap another miracle on his already miraculous adventure. He told himself he would not shun any participation of the spirits either.

As he stood by the small wolf with his best spear, the wolf looked up at him with what seemed to the boy to be apprehension, but not really fear. As he eased the razor sharp edge between the squirming wolf’s thin chest and the vine-of-passing that bound the young animal, the boy knew he couldn’t just kill the wolf and take its magnificent fur.

He carefully started to cut through the hide-like bark around the young wolf’s thin chest until he had severed that part of the plant. Some of the remaining thick sap got on the honey-colored fur of the animal causing it to whine. Then the boy worked his sharp flint edge until he’d freed both hind legs and the hips of the small wolf. As that tangled creeper parted the wolf rolled onto her back—the surprised boy saw the animal was a female—and exposed her stomach fully to his will.

Now Ureeblay had to decide. Did he cut free the docile-appearing wolf’s right leg and neck, or did he free her muzzle? Figuring the sharp teeth were the wolf’s best weapon, he cut the vine tangling the animal’s neck as she whined. He cleared her front leg with his flint spearhead. The wolf just lay there and whined and the boy realized her upset was that more from the sickly sap which was fouling her amazing fur as he severed the remaining vines.

The young female wolf was almost totally free now, and it could have easily bolted. If she had, what was left of the vine around her muzzle might stop her escape, but that would most likely pull loose from around her jaws with a healthy tug the boy figured.

He backed away from the animal with the idea it was time for him to enjoy his first cooked meal in over two whole double-moons, and into the darkness with this weird little spirit beast that had saved him. He was giving a life back for a life saved, the boy figured. What adventure tales he would have to tell around the community fire in the evenings, if he could find a way across the wide dark-blue Toolie to its far shore. The boy decided this part would make for an even better tale without the honey-colored hide.

He would have a wealth of bog apples to show for it.

Then the enormity of what he was doing, and how close he was to a living wolf, even a small one, hit Ureeblay!

The wolf perked up as the boy retreated. She rolled back over on her belly with her paws and front legs forward and her back legs set to spring. The small wolf was now watching him in the dark long evening shadows as the illumination from his exposed cooking fire was the dominate source of light in the little stream-drained terrace.

When the boy reached his food, the wolf shook herself and then with a burst of motion, backed up as fast as she could, away from the vine still on her muzzle. When the vine reached the end of its travel, with a sharp tug the wolf pulled herself free. She growled at the vine on the grassy peat, bearing her surprisingly long canine teeth. And then, she launched herself over the dead vines.

In two long bounds, she landed right into the stream with a splash almost bigger than she was. There she began to roll over and over in the flowing stream, which sort of floated her down the peat bed away from the light cast by the boy’s fires, her soaked honey-colored fur still showing up against the dark of the streambed.

The young, drenched wolf picked herself up and sort of jump-splashed to the bank of the stream where she smelled her fur in different places. She must have found another bit of sap on her coat, because she launched herself into the water again.

This time she got out on the other side of the stream and started rolling in and pushing herself through the thick grasses. When she was done, she stood up on her legs and vigorously shook a fountain of water drops all around her. Then she shook again.

The whole time the boy sat there by his food and his second fire with his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide in amazed wonder.

Then the young wolf trotted up the stream across from the boy and looked over at him and whined, eyeing his cooked organ meats and then looking back at him.

Without even thinking about it, the boy picked up the skewered pig’s heart by the end of its cooking stick and tossed it across the streambed. The wolf jumped up, snagging the skewered meat out of the air before she disappeared upstream into the gathering darkness.

The boy slowly came back to himself. Because it was almost completely dark, and since he had two fires, he decided to wash out his dirty clout. He stripped it off and took his cover to the stream where he washed the soft inside leather and the outside fur. Then he wrung the clout out and whipped it around his head several time trying to get more water from out of the fur. He found himself wishing he could shake the clout as effectively and as violently as the small wolf had shook her fur.

Then, with the cold wet clout under his right armpit, he washed his traitorous young man parts and his butt. Then he washed his hands again.

He took the only clothes he had back to the drying rack. He opened the top of the matting even further. Adding three separated sticks across the top of his drying frame, Ureeblay spread out the clout, soft leather to the heat, on the new addition to his rack. Between now and when he’d go to sleep there was quite enough heat and smoke to dry the soft leather, and he thought the smoke would some how help the leather. However he wasn’t sure why, that he could remember. Then he partially closed the top matting and checked the pig stomach full of water suspended from the tripod over the smoke hole and his clout.

His mother produced excellent leather, furs, and hides along with all her of her other skills. She’d gifted him this very clout. The boy had always considered those skills of hers to be women’s work, so he hadn’t paid much attention to the details. Now he saw he had been greatly mistaken not doing so.

There had been no even half-friendly women around anywhere on this journey he’d accidentally taken. If something was to get done, he was the only one to do it. He needed to know how to do things correctly, he’d come to realize. He now was aware just how his labor was valuable, both in time spent and from the products produced.

Ureeblay promised himself, if at all possible, he would not waste his efforts ever again. Especially in the life-threatening situation he was faced with presently. Look what he’d accomplished, he told himself even today. The boy wondered how much more he might be able to do if he knew the proper way of doing things.

Ureeblay watched the smoke seep out of his matting as most of it rose up inside through the drying racks and the hanging cuts of meat, and then over his stretched out clout before it curled around the suspended pig stomach. He picked up another handful of coarse-sage leaves, opened the skirt of his matting and tossed it on his drying fire’s bed of coals.

As he closed the mat skirt, the boy realized his mother’s labor was just as valuable as he’d found his own labor to be. In fact, his mother’s labor was more valuable than his own labor because her knowledge and experience allowed her to produce items of much better quality and with less effort.

As a cloud of thicker white fragrant smoke puffed out of the top opening of the wrapped matting, Ureeblay decided he would add leather-working skills to his growing body of knowledge--he told himself. He would ask his mother to teach him all she knew when he returned across the Toolie. He might not produce items as good as his mother for some time, but if he ever were out all alone like this again, he would know how to process his own clothing and coverings from some animals’ backs. He had been lucky that this whole dare-gone-bad adventure had started as the days had neared the end of spring when the weather was turning warmer, and not at the end of the fall when the cold came quickly.

After all those realizations of what he wanted to start paying attention to and start learning, he decided he wanted food too. Picking up his favorite cooked organ, he started to chew a bite off the great tasting liver. Now, he thought, if he had just come across some meadow onions, eating this would be a feast.

Once his first bite was in his watering mouth, he slowly chewed as long as he could, savoring the warm, rich flavors. Then he swallowed, his stomach almost rolling over with joy. He watched the darkness where the small female wolf had faded into the shadows of the growing night. He reached around to his side without moving his gaze from the darkness upstream, until he found the heavy, cooked bog apple skewered on a thick length of wood. It was the size of both of his growing feet!

The biggest bog apple he’d ever seen before this one was just under the size of a grown man’s full fist. That was the winner of the solstice bog-apple hunt at the last congregation. Although it had not been the largest seen on the clan’s side of the Toolie in living memory, it was still considered huge in comparison to any of the normal-sized bog apples found during that hunt.

The taste of the initial bite he cut off almost made him cry. First the crisp tang; then the full sweet creamy flavor; and as he swallowed, the satisfying spiciness. The range of flavors took him back to that evening his mother had cooked two bog apples that would have both fit in his sire’s palm for the four members of her family.

His mother and sister had come upon a bush while gathering mush-tubers and told no one about their fortuitous find on the clan’s trek back from the last congregation. The two had kept their discovery a secret even after their sub-clan had returned to their home camp. That was the first and only time he’d eaten the delicacy in the privacy of the family shelter. That was also two nights before his father had been killed by a huge female snarlcat while he’d been out with three others of their clan hunting in the early morning.

His sire had left their shelter very early in the dawn for the hunt while the rest of the family slept.

Ureeblay was introspective now, while he finished the rest of the liver and a full quarter of the huge bog apple, which he sliced off piece by piece with his hand-long flint waist knife. He’d forgotten how filling bog apple was, and now feared staying awake would be difficult with such a full stomach. He had to remain awake and busy while the meat dried and smoked--he told himself. He still had two grass-mat carriers to finish weaving and then put together so he could pack away not only the sliced, smoked meat, but also the bog apples he would dig up tomorrow.

He had to stay awake, there was no one else to guard the meat, tend the fires and do the tasks that needed to be finished before he could even hope to nap, let alone sleep.

He built up his cooking fire and put a few more broken lengths of dry wood on his pork-drying and -smoking fire, as well another small handful of course-sage leaves. He envisioned the white smoke as it billowed up and over the meat and his drying clout inside the wrapping mat covering the racks. Happy that the meat preparation was going well, he got up and went for a long drink from the stream. Next he went downstream, well clear of the widow-snare vines, and peed on the grasses going up the hillside.

Ureeblay reinforced in his mind what he needed to prepare before his upcoming work. Once again, he reminded himself that with his over-full belly it was going to be an evening in which he needed to keep extra vigilant. He did not dare to nap while watching over his drying slices of flats-pig.

He had treated all of the cuts of meat the same, slicing thin, hand-sized sections or jerking the long meat from the bone where possible. Ureeblay knew the fattier sections of meat would take longer to dry and smoke. He would start eating those first, cooked over his campfires as he made his way toward the Toolie. The boy knew there was still some meat that could have been cooked off the small carcass. The smell of the drying meat would be problematic enough, and he didn’t want to add to that scavenger draw by cooking what was left of the pig during the night. He’d kept his spear-caster and both shafts near at hand wherever he was this evening.

Ureeblay considered trying to construct another sling from the pigskin if he had the time, even if he didn’t have any stones to hurl here on the swale. There would be plenty of water-smoothed stones to choose from as he neared the banks of the Toolie. It would be good to have another weapon, especially one using an easily renewed resource such as stones. He still was upset with himself that he’d left his leather sling with his sleeping fur and other items on the far riverbank when he’d climbed out to the end of that log on the dare that started his whole adventure.

After all that thought, Ureeblay reminded himself of the remains of the pig carcass, which had started him off on his consideration of his armaments. In the end, he just stood up, swung it around and then flung the slippery picked-over carcass of the pig over the crest of the little rise on the other side of the streambed. Then he washed his hands well in the water and wiped them in the deep grasses to wipe off any remaining greasy fat.

He found himself wishing he’d have had a quick way to save all that tallow in a short length of intestine. He realized his mother was so right about her waste-not attitude.

As he plaited grass cordage to help with his packing project, and then continued weaving two thick grass mat carriers for tomorrow, Ureeblay came up with his plan.

He intended to get back on his trek by mid-morning. So, he would keep his cooking fire blazing to ward off wild animals. The boy would also increase the heat of his drying fire, rotate the skewered meats between the levels of his drying racks, and use lots of coarse-sage leaves to create smoke. Maybe coarse-sage smoke would help hide some of the smell of his curing meat.

When the course of Jaypai was three-of-a-hand above his shoulder, the boy would start packing his smallest woven carrier with the coiled, smoke dried intestines and the rolled remains of the pigskin. When that was finished, he would build up his cooking fire, bank his meat-smoking fire and put lots of coarse-sage on it and sleep.

As soon as he woke, he’d start digging bog apples. Ureeblay would dig until he harvested all of them or until it was full noon. Then he would pack and leave, eating as he went from the already cooked bog apple and the small pork kidneys. They weren’t the boy’s favorite, but having eaten sparingly since he’d washed up on this side of the Toolie, he’d discovered pork kidney was already sounding very good for breaking his fast come morning.

Third Mission, outbound aboard the Federation space vessel DSE Glenndeavor, 2401 CE

Waking up in the dim, reduced lighting of my quarters, with a warm woman snuggled up on both sides of my naked body, I realized it had been another night of restorative sleep-with-the-angels as far as I was concerned. Noticing the crusty condition of the sheet over my middle, I tapped on the headboard of the bunk and the light-blue illumination of Ship’s time appeared on the overhead above me. I had about 40 minutes before the wake-up alarm would jingle, jangle, jingle in the compartment. And in spite of the two lovely, desirable women against me, I needed to pee. It was my very own water-clock alarm, and I carried it with me everywhere.

After managing to extricate myself from the two pairs of magnificent naked breasts weighing me down, and without waking their owners, I made it to the head and relief. I padded barefoot back into the darkened compartment and started my nude stretching exercises, listening to my wives breathing in their sleep. Something was different, and tickled at the back of my lizard brain. I tried to shrug it off so it wouldn’t interfere with my exercises. And then I realized. I had a commitment ring on my left ring finger!

I spun it around my finger, using my left thumb for luck and smiled to myself.

After completing the long series of muscle stretches, I went through my Koh Doh Keewa empty-hand forms. Then I finished my morning meditation with the blade forms. Even without a blade or wand to hold, I still worked up a really good sweat.

I usually got up about two-and-a-half hours before I needed to report to my duty watch. That gave me time to do my exercises, get cleaned up, find something to munch on to break my fast, and maybe do an errand or two before rolling into the Data Systems Department fresh and alert.