Chapter 18

It was winter and a lone figure lay huddled down in his hunting furs seeking refuge from the blast of icy air coming down from the North. Two Bears sat in his furs, his back leaning against the tree that he'd sought for shelter from the storm. He knew that Wolf Fang had been right to tell him not to go out hunting by himself. It was just that his lodge seemed so empty now. After fifty cycles of the season's together, Bent Willow had gone to be in the spirit world. Even now, almost a full cycle later, Two Bears could not believe that she had just left him like that. He had found her still wrapped in her sleeping furs when he had returned from voiding his bladder in the morning. He was going to tease her about not having his morning meal ready, but she was laying too still, and something told him that her spirit had departed during the night. He had gone to her, more to confirm what he already knew than for any other reason. He held her in his arms and sang her spirit safely on it's journey.

He had spent time alone after that, not wanting to be a burden on his children or grandchildren. How hard it was to get up in the morning without his Willow there at his side. Every day brought more memories of her. It didn't matter where he looked, or what he was doing, her memories were all around him, touching every part of his life. He couldn't look at his children, grandchildren or great grandchildren without seeing his Willow's features staring back at him. How many times had he wished that the spirit's had first come for him?

He had started out by giving away many of the things that he had accumulated over a long lifetime. Each gift that he made was more of him that he was letting go of. His Great grandfather's bow, his father's special process for making bowstrings and nock glue for the arrows. Knives and points that he had made from flint, and from metal, along his life's journey. He seldom went to the hunter's fire and told the stories of his father, Broken Stick or of the hunter's whose stories he'd been entrusted to tell. So few remembered, and those that did were too busy trying to find someone to tell their story once they had journeyed to the spirit world as well. Hunter's fires were not for old hunter's like Two Bears. They were for the young and the strong, not the old and the weak. Two Bears was the oldest hunter he knew.

He had been two days out on his hunt when he'd first known that a storm was coming. If he'd been stronger, he might have started back. Instead, he'd found this wonderful tall tree with branches that reached out fifty paces in every direction. He had a good fire and warm furs. He would sit in his shelter and wait for the worst of the storm to blow itself out. He was hungry, but he had plenty of water, and he had gone hungry for a lot longer than this before. He would keep warm and wait it out.

He slept in fitful starts and stops, getting up to feed more wood to the fire and to check the level of the snow beyond the lowest branches of his tree. The quiet was greater than any he'd ever known, with the heavy snowfall blanketing the sound that the air might carry. It was quiet like this that let him lose himself in his thoughts and memories. Other than living too long, his life had been wonderful as he thought back upon it. Only two wars, hunting that had fed himself and his family, with almost no periods of want. His two children, had each had four children, all of whom had lived to adulthood, and now had children themselves. His village had prospered, making more than they used, and had set up good trade throughout the valley.

It was that second night as he slept in his furs that the dreams came to him, peopled with family and friends, all of whom now walked with the spirit people. At first, he could only see them, and not hear them as they sang to him from such a long distance away. There was his father and mother, looking young and happy to be together again. He saw Broken Stick with Still Shadow, both younger than they had been when last he had seen them. He looked for Bent Willow, but he could not see her in the crowd of people that sang to him. Each time that he stood and went to put more wood on his fire, the faces would fade from his sight. In this way, he knew that he had only dreamed of them. He put down those dreams to the loneliness of a too old hunter. Next, he would be talking to himself, believing that he spoke to the spirits too.

On the morning of the third day, the storm abated and Two Bears looked out on a scene of pristine white. He made some snow moccasins from the branches and vines that he found nearby and started on the long trek back. It wasn't easy because he was weak from lack of food and his thinking wasn't as clear as it might have been because he hadn't been able to sleep for very long sitting there in front of his fire. He moved forward with determined strides, too proud of his woods knowledge, and of his hunting prowess, to ever admit that it had gotten too much for him to go out and hunt alone. Still, when he saw the white outline of the snow covered lodge roofs of his village, it was a time of great relief for him. He walked in alone, proud that he had once again survived a perilous hunt.

That night he ate in front of Wolf Fang's lodge, being fed the choicest morsels from the stew that Icy Stream had cooked. His teeth weren't all that they once had been, and he now preferred the tender bits that were easy to chew and swallow down. All of his family came by to look at him and tell him how glad they were that he had managed to find good shelter and weather the storm within it. His grandsons helped him over to the hunter's fire, and once again he spoke of the challenges of the hunt, and the methods of surviving when caught out in the open. He looked at all the faces standing near the fire, trying to put names to as many as he could. Except for his own family, he was usually unable to place a name with a face. Sometimes, he felt like he should know the names of some of those whose face that he found familiar.