Chapter 20

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

The remains of the three burning logs within the stone fire ring settled with a long crackle, sending a shower of hot orange and red sparks jetting and dancing up between the two forked uprights that Ureeblay used for his roasting spit. The bright sparks shot aloft through the shimmers of heat and into the Swongli-spangled night sky. As he took a break, Ureeblay had his bare back to the warm granite wall three steps away from the cooking fire. His fine evening meal was finished, he was full, and the young man now was nearly done with his latest campfire craft—as his sire had called this kind of work.

He knew other men called it women's work.

Leaning forward again in the firelight, he decided he needed to cover and put away the remains of his supper after he finished. Using his now wickedly sharp utility blade, held with his grass knapping grip, he returned to cutting this last section of scraped babbit gut into long, thin strips against a thick piece of driftwood resting in the sand between his knees. He had other long, sticky pieces he'd already cut wrapped around a thin, hand-length stick. One stick of cut gut was already in his travel pouch.

It was while he was slicing that he realized he still needed to check the length of intestine he'd taken from the flats pig to see if it had started to spoil. He had forgotten to turn it inside out and scrape the inner layer off the long tubing before he'd lightly smoked the intestines up on the terrace of the bog apples. However, he was currently busy with intestine that he had remembered to scrape.

Besides the pieces he was cutting now, he had two remaining body-long lengths of scraped babbit gut. Those were laid out flat under a layer of firewood on the pile over in the corner where the encircling wall of boulders were piled up and, joined the cliff face to his right. Ureeblay hoped he soon would have enough fat rendered to pour into at least a hand length of one of those sections of intestines. Tomorrow he would need to turn the babbit stomach inside out and scrape it, too. Now he understood why the water in his small water carrier tasted as it did. He shook his head at his wasted effort as he concentrated on slicing the next length of intestine against the driftwood chunk pushed into the sand between his knees.

However, in the back of his mind, he could hear his first-life sister's voice chastising him, "With all the mistakes you make, you clod, I would think you would be learning something by now." In addition to what his sister would say to him, the growing young man was also aware of the supple, shellbark hickory sapling he'd harvested and stripped earlier. It was resting down in a thumb-wide gap between the two nearest stones of his ring protecting the sacred fire.

Ureeblay had the furthest end pushed into the coals. He had already fire-hardened the end closest to him. The growing young man had used the surface of the granite boulder behind him to grind the char on that end to a rounded tip. Once he finished hardening the remaining end, his new hide prod would be ready for use tomorrow, assuming he would have it ready by tomorrow everything else he would need, he reminded himself.

Across the fire from him, the young wolf rested on her stomach in her patch of grass, lazily gnawing on an arm bone from their early morning kill. Behind her, at the base of the boulder that was part of the stone corral, Ureeblay could see the long Red Deer leg bone the wolf had retrieved from the kill site that she used as her chew bone at times. Looking back down, he continued to cut thin lengths of gut and contemplated his day.

Returning from their successful morning hunt, the travel-drag had easily cleared the opening in the line of boulders encircling the front half of their camp. The growing young man turned his burden to his right, not seeing anything amiss as he scanned the enclosure. Crossing between the tallow tree and his bundles of weaving grass near the teepee-covered smoking racks, he made a small looping turn and faced toward the beach. Over the top of the stone corral and beyond the bright sand, he could see the water of the lake sparkling under the mid-morning rays of Father Sun. It was dazzling enough to make him squint.

I am a man now, Ureeblay thought—the fresh memories of his successful hunt still filling him with a flush of pleasure and pride—every one of my people ought to consider me a man when they hear of this. He tried to project a manly air, squaring his shoulders as he lifted the weight of his two travel-drag poles higher up his sides, causing his spear and caster, which were resting across the limbs, to roll back against each of his wrists that gripped the front of the drag when his elbows came up. With the front ends of both poles above the top of the big, stomach-high rock right in front of him, Ureeblay stepped up close to the wall of the stone corral protecting the lakeside of his camp.

"A man—" he said out loud in the full sunshine, pulling backward on the main poles to push the drag ends down into the sand so the weight of the load would not cause the poles to slide when he rested the front up on the big rock. His fine hunting companion trotted to a stop on his right and looked attentively up at him, her tongue lolling out the right side of her mouth.

"—does not squint, or raise one hand to shade his eyes; he refuses to be uncomfortable under Father Sun's glare and forego the use of one good hand—" he announced to the sky, trying to sound like Barcolay, Achinay's somewhat pompous sire. He could feel a big grin bloom on his face as he added words he knew would never come from the short, stout man's mouth, but would have come from out of his sire's smiling mouth, "—when he is able to weave himself a passable conical hat."

If my sire could only be here, Ureeblay suddenly thought. He felt a twinge of sadness color his buoyant mood as he rested the raised front of the travel-drag on the top of the boulder. The large, smooth limestone block was two steps beyond his smoke racks to his right and close to his three thick sheaves of weaving grass.

Still standing between the two poles of the drag, Ureeblay knew his sire was proud of him in the third life. The new young man moved his caster and second-best spear off the two main poles in front of him and put them to his right on the top of the wide limestone block. Next, the strap of his quiver, which held his best spear, came over his right shoulder and then his head. He put the quiver and spear next to his other weapons. Then he removed his travel pouch from his woven belt and placed it alongside his quiver.

Ureeblay knew his sire would have cuffed him hard on the shoulder for his impression of Barcolay—he'd cuffed him for it before. However, his sire had put his hand up to cover his mouth as he coughed to hide his own grin, and his sire had not been able to hide the mirth in his eyes.

"You did well, girl," Ureeblay told the wolf standing alertly there beside him. 'You have my thanks and my confidence," he said, looking into her shockingly blue eyes, hearing his sire's words echo in his own.

"I am proud of you."

The young wolf started wagging her tail as she looked up into his eyes. Then she hurried off, going around the camp, sniffing here and there.

Knowing that his successful hunt wasn't over until he finished the work he had created, Ureeblay decided to go under rather than over the angled, waist-high drag poles leaning against the big rock. As he ducked under the pole on his left, the young man was happy with how the design of the drag had handled the load through the sand and gravel as well as over the various-sized stones and rocks in the creek bed. The back-end of the load bed easily cleared all the big rocks he didn't go around. The growing young man was even more pleased with what made up his load—the large babbit carcass and its hide along with the fine, big flint nodule; the organ meats; the stomach and intestine sections, as well as the head of the second giant babbit. He even had greens for his evening supper that he'd quickly harvested on the way back to camp.

Ureeblay started removing his haul from the travel-drag. He put the four big handfuls of watercress on the limestone block by his other gear for now. Taking the babbit hide that he planned to use to create a cover for himself, he walked over to the two bison hides taut on the stretchers that leaned against the back wall of boulders in the shade of the tallow tree. Several convenient rock ledges and gaps were between the huge, unevenly spaced stones that formed the back wall of the camp. He rolled the hide onto a stomach-high, arm-deep, rock shelf and left it there.

Returning to the travel-drag resting at an angle in the bright sunlight, Ureeblay got the big flint nodule out of the chest cavity of the carcass. The size and weight of the nodule, as well as the silky texture of the exposed flint that showed at the tip of the otherwise chalky stone, excited him. However, the young man realized he had other chores he must accomplish before he could even think about how to proceed with fashioning the points and edges he wanted from this gift provided by the spirits. With a sigh that got the young wolf's attention, causing her to trot over to him again, he put the hefty nodule down in the sand by his three bundles of weaving grass. Ureeblay left the wolf sniffing at the stone and got back to his work.

He retrieved a skewer from his supply for the babbit heart and liver as his traveling companion trotted by him, heading toward the opening in the semicircular stone corral that protected the lakeside of their camp. Pulling back one flap of the woven grass teepee around his stacked smoking racks, he pierced the organs on the skewer before placing them on the lowest rack over the smoking remains of wood on the coals. He put two small, hardwood pieces into the fire pit and closed the teepee.

Stepping back to the drag, Ureeblay got the intestine sections and laid them out on top of a black basalt boulder in the direct rays of Father Sun. He could feel the heat already radiating off the black rock. He used a few hand-sized stones to weigh the gut sections down.

Looking out over the stone corral protecting the camp, the sparkling surface of the cool lake was starting to look refreshing in the growing heat of the day. Shaking his head at the thought that water could ever be tempting after his experience on the Toolie, he turned and took the severed babbit head, gifted to him by the sunagle, over to the hides in the shade of the tallow tree and put it back in the cool shadows of a large stone nook. Had he actually, he asked himself, been that close to one of the giants of the sky? By the Spirits, he thought, he could join the storytellers' guild with all the new tales he was taking with him when he found a way across the Toolie—not that he wanted to be a storyteller.

He went back across the sand to the carcass on the travel-drag in the rays of Father Sun. Using his flint knife, he finished cutting through the neck and severed the spine, removing the now mostly skinned, large head. Carrying the sticky, scalped babbit head over to the nook that protected the first head, he was surprised at the weight of each of the grisly items, but he was pleased at the amount of brains he'd collected on his hunt.

His first successful hunt for a large meat animal, he told himself. A thrill ran all though his body again—and this time the prey had not been dying, stuck up on a pile of boulders. Once more, Ureeblay thanked the spirits of the departed babbits, the World Mother, as well as the amazing sunagle for the parts each played in his hunt. Vivid images and impressions ran through his mind to the—

—the almost ache in his right foot, up to his ankle in the cold stream as he snuck peeks through the tall grass at the mob of babbits out on dewy meadow. The musty scent of the dominant male in the misty air. The first rays of Father Sun, reaching his bare back through the rising, cool haze. How well he and the young wolf worked together to stalk their prey. How perfect his spear cast felt throughout his whole body as the shaft pierced his target right where he'd aimed! His confusion as the air seemed to compress against him as that wide shadow, and then the huge, outstretched wings swept over the creek bed. The colors of the magnificent sunagle's feathers glinting in the angled warm rays of Father Sun after it snatched that babbit right out of the air!

Ureeblay took a deep breath and sighed where he stood, finding it hard to believe just how amazingly well his first successful big game hunt had gone. He also began feeling humbled at all the good fortune the spirits had sent his way, and he was glad he'd been ready to take advantage of each situation. It was now a fact that he could provide for himself and his traveling companion, even if that companion was an animal.

Talking with Crosof and Achinay over more than a few seasons, Ureeblay had begun to wonder where he'd find his bounty of fortune and fame, for his two friends were sure each one of them were destined to find theirs. When he was alone, Ureeblay had questioned how he would gather his fortune—his sire had not been what the members of their camp considered wealthy, although everyone knew he was an excellent hunter and provider. Ureeblay and his family always had enough good food to eat, and his father saw to it that any widows and their children that might be in Sweet Water camp had meat. Ureeblay's family had a very nice, big shelter at whatever campsite the leaders of Sweet Water camp picked, when it was time to move to the next spot in their territory. He and his sister, as well as his mother and sire, had some of the nicest furs, and the best-made clothing to pick from when they got out of bed and dressed for each day.

Even though he knew in his heart that his sire was dead and in his third life, Ureeblay smiled as he thought about the terrace bog apples inside his backpack. Those bog apples answered any questions he'd had as a boy about his fortune. If anyone would believe his recounting of the huge sunagle swooping into his hunt, well, then fame would come once he returned home—not that he cared all that much for fame, he told himself. Actually ... it might be nice, he realized ... if his people recognized him as an accomplished young man who returned with a treasure in bog apples. He was tired of everyone assuming he was just another lackadaisical youngster, like his friends. Most of his camp probably figured he was dead by now, anyway. He shook off those thoughts and got back to work.

With both babbit heads safely put out of the way, he went to his big pile of firewood and found a long, smooth stick that didn't have any bark on it and would suit his needs. He went back to the travel-drag and got the cleaned stomach out of the carcass. He carefully put the stick through the top and bottom openings of the good-sized stomach and made sure equal lengths of bare wood stuck out on each side. He walked over to the thick green leaves almost hiding the branches on the end of the lone, lowest tree limb he used to climb up into the tallow. Lifting the stomach-on-a-stick that would be his new water carrier, he lodged the stick in one of the branches surrounded by leaves and out of the way.

Going back to the wall and the travel-drag, the growing young man knelt and used sand to clean off his knife first and then his sticky hands and forearms as best as he could. He decided he would wash out the stomach again and then take another bath in the lake at some point, realizing he was actually looking forward to getting into the water up to his chin. It would not only feel good to be clean, but now he was beginning to enjoy the feel of silky water enveloping his skin.

He also had noticed that now it felt to him as if the water were trying to lift him up sometimes. He wondered if the water of the Toolie had done that when he fell in, but didn't notice because he was terrified he was going to drown. It sure seemed to him at the time that the Toolie was trying to drag him under the surface. Now that he was getting comfortable with having water all around him when he was out in the lake, he might try getting into the Toolie when he reached it—if he knew how deep the water was first—and see if the water of the Toolie was different than this lake water. He hoped it wasn't, because he was really starting to enjoy soaking and the feel of all that water surrounding his skin.

He suddenly realized one of the reasons why his mother might like bathing so much. She didn't hide the fact that she enjoyed the feel of a soft fur against her skin. He chuckled aloud, thinking that when he returned to his family his sister would be shocked that he no longer had an aversion to baths.

Reaching into his travel pouch and digging around, he got his utility edges and his new retouching tine out. Ureeblay placed the tools on the top of the limestone block close to the right, slightly longer pole of his drag. He was happy with the edges he'd put on his tools earlier, but he would retouch them as needed now that he had that fine big nodule of flint.

Feeling that everything he would require was at hand, Ureeblay began skinning the bottom of the babbit carcass, starting with the hide on the tail. With wickedly sharp edges restored to his tools, the work went smoothly, and the young man felt a small sheen of sweat slicking up his skin as Father Sun beat down on him.

Before he started skinning the rest of the hide off the legs, Ureeblay really looked at the big feet, the big, sharp claws were trophies at least, the young man decided; they might be a good gift to his mother—or perhaps to a young woman, or to her family as part of a bride price. If nothing else, Ureeblay thought, the tips were sharp enough to use as spear points. That decided him, and the young man took the time to cut through the bone joint of each toe, making a pile of the trophies next to his quiver.

Then he skinned each leg, harvesting the hairless sections from the inner thighs separately, before he stashed the rest of the furry hide on a stone shelf behind the tallow tree. He kept one section to cut into rawhide. Ureeblay next used his knife and utility tools to start cutting off the meat he wanted to preserve, as well as harvesting lengths of tendons from the back legs. He put each shriveling tendon segment over the left pole of his drag to dry in the bright, hot rays of Father Sun.

He sliced hand-sized cuts of fresh meat from the tail of the babbit carcass he'd shifted up on his stone work-surface, careful of the flint edge on his knife. He placed each hunk of meat on the grass mat envelope he'd woven the night before. It rested over two of his bundles of weaving grass, next to the teepee surrounding his smoking racks. Tendrils of whitish-colored smoke leaked through the weave of the teepee, up into the clear blue sky. Fortunately, there was an almost ever-present, slight breeze coming from the Eve that dissipated the thin smoke down wind and across the lake.

The young wolf returned from her wandering, and she sat in the sand near Ureeblay while the young man worked on reducing the carcass. She finally walked under the travel-drag and then jumped up on the top of the next limestone boulder out of the way to the left of the draw poles. The honey-blonde wolf sniffed at the tendons on the left draw pole before she decided to rest on her stomach, her amazing blue eyes intent on the movements of his hands. Ureeblay sliced off a piece of babbit meat and tossed it to her from time to time as he butchered the babbit. She snapped each morsel out of the air.

He was impressed with her patience and her manners as the wolf stayed on her stomach, but ready to lunge with her shoulders and neck to catch any tossed bits of meat. Up on the boulder, she allowed Ureeblay to butcher the slightly fatty meat without being a pest. As the mound of cut-meat he piled on the top of the grass envelope grew, the less the young wolf seemed to look for small handouts. She raised her rear end, stretched out her front legs and paws, and then sat up—looking out over the beach and all around from her stone perch. That action on her part comforted Ureeblay, as he knew from the reports of the hunters and storytellers' tales that her senses were keener than his own senses of smell and hearing.

His butchering proceeded. Having watched his mother enough times, he filleted the tail, removing the bones. Choosing a prime section of tail, he stuffed the fillet with cress, placed a thick skewer through the center as well and wrapped the babbit meat inside three layers of wide, thick plakgee leaves he'd collected along the way back to camp. He worked four long, hardwood slivers through the leaves and meat to keep both pinned together while it roasted.

He'd harvested the heaping handfuls of tart, juicy watercress from just up the slightly larger creek he passed on his way back to the beach. He'd gone eight or so strides upstream to check and saw no animal droppings in the water. In addition—he'd told himself—the sacred fire should destroy any evil spirits that seemed to associate with dung of all types when it came to fouling water or fresh food items taken from streams.

He shook his head at his precautions. Then he told himself, when he was around them, he listened to his mother as she often talked to her good friend, the camp healer—especially when it came to any of their discussions about food—esoteric or not. He was even surprised that he'd learned the meaning of that word from listening to his mother and her good friend having conversations.

While not realizing it as it happened, there were things he had managed to learn and retain in spite of his well-noted, supposed inattention. Ureeblay had to admit to himself, more and more useful tidbits were revealing themselves to his awareness at the oddest times.

Soon he had the long, thick skewer holding the fillet of babbit tail ready. Moving it over to his cooking fire, Ureeblay rested each end of the big skewer on the upward forks of the thick uprights forming his spit. The two uprights were now a part of the stone ring surrounding the sacred fire pit. In the large stack he'd collected, he found the hardwood he wanted on the fire to cook his babbit tail. Ureeblay built up a low fire on the existing coals under his wrapped roast. Then he went back to butchering.

From time to time, he'd stop what he was doing and rotate the skewer on his roasting spit. Watching meat as it roasted on the spit was one task he'd never shirked as a youngster. Ureeblay was very confident in his ability to produce quality-roasted meats, and didn't care if some of the boys in camp had said it was woman work. Crosof had said that to him once, but after his friend ate some of the roast, Crosof would even ask Ureeblay to tell him the next time he had to watch a roast. His sire even used to comment on how good a meal tasted whenever Ureeblay had been in charge of roasting for his family's evening meal.

Happy with how his roast was cooking, he went to his sheaves of grasses where the woven mat bag supporting his big mound of babbit cuts almost covered two of them. There, he knelt down and Ureeblay quickly wove another large envelope of wide grasses, again using the edge-fold technique his sister had taught him during his second life the night before. He was pleased with the results, so he quickly wove a smaller bag to store the babbit claws, thinking he would roll the bag in a cylinder and place the claws to one side in the bottom of his quiver. Thinking about the claws made him think about the babbit's powerful legs. That line of thought made Ureeblay think about the leg tendons, so Ureeblay wove a second small envelop to hold the tendons he'd collected.

With the claws in a rolled mat bag and down inside his quiver, and the tendons put away in a mat container next to the babbit heads, the young man felt he was making progress. Back at his smoking racks, he pulled back the mat teepee and then started to swap the smoked bison on his skewers for cuts of babbit meat while keeping an eye on his roast. He filled his new, bulky envelope with succulent, smoked bison as the pile of babbit cuts on his other woven envelope shrank. From time to time, he would nibble on the first perfect piece of smoked meat he took off the second skewer—just to take the edge off his hunger. Ureeblay's taste buds reveled in each smoky, meaty bite. The smoke from the frenal and hardwood gave a zesty seasoning to the rich bison meat. Since he killed the flats pig, the young man had not gone hungry a single day, as he'd done often since he came ashore on this side of the Toolie. This day it was his decision not to eat until now.

Soon he had filled the smoking racks with a mixture of fillets of babbit tail, cuts of loin, tenderloin, and other choice cuts, as well as the heart and liver. He didn't know what he was going to do with the ribs.

Once he had the wrapped bison meat safely put away up in the tallow tree, he finished cleaning up the carcass on top of the wide, flat limestone block as the tail slowly roasted over his cooking fire. There were many of cuts of meat he didn't know what to do with, as well as fatty meat still on the bones Ureeblay hadn't cared to remove, The young man took the time to weave a hasty mat to wrap up the remains so the wolf would have something to chew on before he dumped the rest in with the remaining turtle meat to render down for fat. Soon, Ureeblay had created a meat larder for the wolf, back in a cool fissure between three boulders in the back wall.

Using the section of the hairless babbit hide taken from the inner thigh and not put away, and an almost flat piece of driftwood to support his work, Ureeblay sliced rawhide cords to replace all those he'd used from his travel pouch. He only had a few of his seasoned rawhide cords left. It took a while to reduce the odd-shaped piece of bare hide to various lengths and widths of cord, but his retouched single-edge blade was a joy to work with. When he finished, Ureeblay put his new supply into his pouch, along with his flint tools and the retouching tine and his new steady-stone.

Now it was late afternoon, with the bright orange ball of Father Sun slowly dropping toward the Eve. Ureeblay put his travel pouch on his woven belt, took the stomach-on-a-stick down from the tallow tree, dropped his clout near his cook fire after checking his roast, and headed for the beach with the wolf following him. He dropped the stomach-on-a-stick on the sand near the water; the wolf was immediately there sniffing at it. Watching her, he carefully put the blade of his flint knife between his teeth, then removed his woven belt and travel pouch, and placed them on the sand. He shooed the wolf back out of the way and then picked up the stomach and removed the stick.

Ureeblay confidently waded out into the cool lake water, the stomach in his left hand and the stick in the other with his knife between his teeth—keeping his tongue out of the way while the wolf splashed in after him. He was thankful a nice breeze moved down the lake all afternoon and had helped evaporate some of the sweat his labors worked out of his bare body. The water resistance against his ankles increased as the water deepened, and he was certain he'd grown taller on this adventure, and he was stronger and leaner, too.

Ureeblay used the stakes holding down his remaining bundles of grass to guide his steps. When he figured he was far enough out and the water was to his knees, he looked to his right and left into the lake. The young wolf found what he was looking for when she bounced forward and up out of the water. Landing back on the surface, the water only came a quarter of the way up her legs. Drops of water dripped off the wet fur on her belly.

Ureeblay brought the stout stick up to his face, careful not to hit himself. Grasping the elkan-horn handle with three of his fingers, he took the knife out of his mouth, holding his knife handle and the stick awkwardly in his right hand.

"Good girl!" Ureeblay called out to the young wolf as he pushed his feet and calves through the water toward her. "You found it."

At the large, flat rock he'd seen just under the surface of the lake from up on the crest of the talus ridge, he slowly pushed the slightly flexible stick deep into the lakebed. The wet wolf watched his every move as he put the knife carefully back between his teeth, and then started to turn the stomach inside out without ripping the short section of esophagus at the top of the organ he intended to use as a spout.

Up on the submerged rock, the young wolf turned her head, clamped her jaws on the stick pointing up to the clear blue sky, and tried to pull it free. Ureeblay kicked water at her and she started to growl as she worked harder, shaking her head and neck, to free the stick.

As Ureeblay worked on the stomach, the wolf worried the stick out of the lakebed. Freed, the skyward end of the stick dropped as she righted her head. Before that end hit the water, she took a bounding jump off the submerged rock, away from the young man, her tail held high. The young wolf started splashing in a circle around him with the stick not quite balanced in her jaws. She would come closer to him and then splash farther away when he turned in her direction. Finally, he had the slippery stomach inside out and he was able to take the knife from between his teeth with a deep sigh.