Chapter 1

Ivory tugged aside the curtain of mammoth hide that was all there was to secure the relative warmth inside the tepee from the chill wind. She crawled outside and stood upright in the bulky furs that muffled her body from hooded top to swaddled toe. She needed reprieve from the dark distress that was overwhelming her during her bedside vigil. Inside the tepee lay prone the fur-covered body of her mother who was exhaling her last few painful dying breaths.

There had been no warning, of course. No one had noticed the cave lion before it pounced. Despite the villagers' courageous onslaught on the predator, the only remaining consolation was that Ivory's mother had now lived long enough to die in her own bed. Ivory was fully aware that her mother could never survive such a mauling. Even the shaman's considerable medical skills were no match for the savagery of a lion's teeth and claws. The sudden loss would be especially distressing now that Ivory was her mother's only surviving child. There had been other brothers and sisters, but they were now all dead and most not even surviving childbirth. Ivory's father was also dead. He'd been gored to death by an aurochs during a disastrous hunting expedition two winters ago.

Ivory surveyed the chill steppes. It was Spring: the season most celebrated by her tribe. Game was plentiful on the grasslands. There was a rich harvest to gather from the woods. Ivory's face burnt in the glow of the sun which, however bright, was never warm enough to counter the chill wind that blew from the mountainous glacial cliffs not that far to the North. She bent her neck to follow the transit of a flock of storks flying west. In every direction were the wide steppes that were her Summer home. It teemed with game of every species: woolly rhinoceros, antelope, deer, horse, bison, aurochs, and, the mainstay of her tribe, mammoth.

It was for this reason, of course, that her tribe was universally known as the Mammoth Hunters.

Ivory made a silent prayer to the spirits of the wind whose sharp chill was what she now felt most keenly. She soon knew that the spirits hadn't answered her prayers when a cacophony of wailing and ululation erupted inside the tepee from the neighbours gathered by her mother's bedside.

Ivory now realised how unprepared she was for the shock of her mother's death. It was no longer hypothetical. It was real and actual. Ivory was now an orphan. No father. No mother. And, in addition, no husband. She was wholly and utterly at the mercy of the village's generosity. And in these straitened times, with mammoth migration increasingly unreliable and the winters worsening each year, such charity could not be taken for granted.

"The Shaman needs an apprentice," remarked Aunt Partridge several days later when it was deemed that Ivory had grieved for long enough to be approached. "She's says she wants a young girl. I'll put in a word with the chief."

Overwhelmed by grief as she was, Ivory understood the need for shelter and security for an orphan in an unkind world. She grasped at this straw of comfort with all the enthusiasm she could muster.

"I'm sure I could help the shaman in her duties, Auntie. I've always wanted to be tutored in the mystic arts."

This last was a lie, but Ivory had faith that the spirits would give her dispensation in her hour of need. And anyhow, as her sorrow gradually subsided over the following days, this promise of relief awoke in her a desire she'd never noticed before. She'd be more than happy to take instruction in the arts of divination. She'd be honoured to partake of the wisdom dispensed by the only person in the village from whom even the chief sought advice. It also frightened her. The spirits were fickle and cruel. Surely it was only after great sacrifice and labour she could hope to acquire the skills possessed by a shaman.

The shaman was a mysterious figure. She'd not been born in the village. She hadn't even been born to the Mammoth Hunters' tribe. She came from a distant Southern land. These were lands where not only the language was different, which was to be expected, but where a person's skin and hair was of a different colour. Because the shaman's skin was brown, like clay or river mud, she was known as the Dark Shaman. There was no one else in Ivory's experience who had such dark skin. It was a pigment utterly alien to a tribe of pale-skinned, fair-haired people. The shaman's hair was as black as the night. Her lips were thick, her nose was small and her dark eyes were spaced wide apart. She seemed so strange that Ivory sometimes wondered whether she was a spirit or an animal rather than a person. But Ivory knew she was a person because she spoke the language of the Mammoth Hunters and was reputed to enjoy sex as much as a normal person might.

Ivory knew little else about the shaman. She was best known from her public appearances which were usually on such auspicious occasions as the Chief's Birthday, the Anniversary of the last Chief's death, the Equinoxes, the Summer Solstice, and, most important of all, the Winter Solstice. The Dark Shaman didn't often appear in public. She was even excused the foraging duties that was such a necessary duty for all other women in the tribe.

Who knew what evils might befall the village were the shaman not there on those auspicious days to utter the right incantations, dance the right steps or bestow the right intoxicants? Perhaps the spirit of the last Chief would bring evil on the tribe if he was not revered with due dignity? Maybe the Sun would sink deeper still after the Winter Solstice and never be seen again? The village was envied by all others in the tribe for the privilege of having a shaman whose mysterious provenance was from beyond the Southern Mountains and further south than even the Great Sea. She was a woman who'd travelled from beyond barriers once supposed impassable through which no Mammoth Hunter had ever ventured.

However, it was not just the spirits that Ivory would have to contend with as another aunt explained to her while Ivory and she scrabbled in the woodland dirt and soil for truffles and tubers. Aunt Sycamore rested her hand on Ivory's equally filthy wrist and smiled at her niece with sad sympathetic eyes.

"Although the shaman is a woman, to be her apprentice is like being wed," she said.

"I know," replied Ivory carelessly, whose mind was too fogged by bereavement to contemplate her future clearly. "I vow to pursue the shaman crafts with the same dedication and selfless devotion that I shall give my husband when I wed."

"You misunderstand me, my dear," continued Aunt Sycamore. She brushed the back of her hand, which was less thickly pasted by soil, on her niece's cheek: almost the only part of her face not shielded by musk ox fur. "It will be exactly like being wed in the ways that best characterise matrimony. You'll need to be faithful not only to the shaman's craft, but also to the shaman herself."

"What do you mean, Auntie?" wondered Ivory as she gazed into her aunt's light blue eyes.

"The shaman is a woman reputed to prefer the flesh of young girls to those of men," Aunt Sycamore said with as much objectivity as she could muster. "To be the shaman's apprentice, you will also have to share the shaman's bed."

"How do you know? The shaman has never needed an apprentice before. She is a woman of advanced years. How do you know she desires female flesh? How do you know she's even interested in sex at all?"

"It's true she is old," conceded the Aunt. "She could be a grandmother now. She is more than old enough to be your mother. But a woman's needs last a long time. She may not be as young as you or as fit for a night of uninterrupted passion, but she has the desire for it. There are women in the village who have whispered to me, and I shan't mention their names, that the shaman has made love with them and that she is uncommonly passionate."

Ivory paused in her scrabbling in the soil and sat upright. The furs that bagged about her knees were pulled taut. She balanced her weight on her heels and let her aunt's news sink in, while all around was a cheerful cacophony of woodland birdsong.

"So, I am to be a spouse without being wed," she said with hesitancy. "And worse: a spouse to a woman many seasons my senior and not to a man my equal in age. It is not right. It is a husband I seek: not a lover bereft of cock and balls. I want a man to fuck me, not a woman to stroke my hair."

Aunt Sycamore took Ivory in her arms and showered her face with kisses and tears. "I understand your desires. What woman wouldn't want a man's cock inside her cunt? What woman wouldn't relish a man's sperm? What woman doesn't need a man to comfort, guard and care for her? But the shaman is such a woman. She has entertained many a fair woman in this village and beyond. If it is of comfort to you, the reports I have heard is that she is a fair and compassionate lover and exceeds most men in her ability to bring pleasure to her companions."

"She wants an apprentice for sex and I am to be her sex doll?" asked Ivory.

"No. It may seem strange to you, being of tender years, but she has had little trouble in satisfying her need for female flesh. She is discreet. The husbands need never discover the infidelity. There is no risk of pregnancy. Many a woman prefers sex with another woman than no sex at all."

"No sex at all? What about the husbands?"

"A man doesn't always stay faithful or kind or even alive."

"But it is a man I want to wed. Not a woman."

"I wish it were not so," said Ivory's aunt, removing her arms from her niece's neck to suggest that they return to foraging in the forest mulch, "but at this moment there is no man in the village looking to wed. You must eat and sleep, but you have no immediate family and there is no man to offer you shelter. Your aunts and uncles have discussed your future with Chief Cave Lion and he has decided that the best solution for you is to be the shaman's apprentice."

"Why does the shaman need an apprentice?" Ivory asked as she crouched down to better forage through the tough soil. "She's managed without one for many years. Why does she need one now?"

"It's best to ask her yourself," her aunt replied.

It was agreed by the villagers that Ivory should observe a proper time of mourning which the Chief decided with the advice of the shaman would be as many days as fingers on two hands. This was a leisurely time of sorrow, but despite the grumblings of Ivory's aunts and uncles that they would have the burden of feeding another mouth for these ten days, the Chief's word was law. He was blessed with the wisdom of the spirits that had guided the village through many years of seasonal migration. To disobey was to risk the wrath of the spirits of the forest and the steppe.

It was almost with relief that Ivory awoke on the morning of the day on which she would become the shaman's apprentice. The kindness of her aunts and uncles had been appreciably stretched. The children were moaning to their parents how much they resented having to share food with their orphaned cousin. Everyone is generous when a hunt on the wide-open steppe results in success, but not every such expedition is rewarded with a feast of mammoth or woolly rhinoceros. On lean days, everyone had to make do with the herbs, seeds, tubers, nuts and berries that the women of the village gathered in the woods, supplemented with the meat of hare, lemming and forest fowl. The hunters who earned the tribe their fame as Mammoth Hunters were the ones who provided the meat for the feast. Every last part of the animals they butchered was used. The fur clothed the villagers. The bones were fashioned into tools to supplement those made from quarried flint. The sinews made thread and bow-string. However, despite their incontestable bravery and dedication to the chase, the hunters were never certain to bring home enough to feed the entire village every day.

Ivory was mournful as she prepared to leave the tepee. It was the last time she would sleep in the Summer home she'd always shared with her mother and her immediate family. Her married cousins, Woolly Rhinoceros and Bluebell, would take occupancy now that Bluebell had a child on the way. From now on, Ivory would have to share her bed with the shaman.

Ivory knew the shaman's abode well. After all, she passed it every day. It was positioned just beside that of Chief Cave Lion and his family. Ivory had always thought it rather large for just one woman. It was assembled from wood and aurochs-hide and was very nearly half the size of the Chief's home.

The Chief escorted Ivory to the shaman, as common people weren't normally privileged to enter the confines of a Holy person's abode. Chief Cave Lion was almost the oldest person in the village but by no means was he frail. The hunting scars on his face were testimony to his bravery. It might be years yet until he would need surrender his chieftaincy to his chosen successor. As they walked to the shaman's tent, the Chief impressed on the young girl the importance of her new role and how the whole village expected her to take good heed of the shaman's instruction. This would not, however, excuse her, as it did the shaman, from the duties expected of a tribeswoman such as the daily forage in the woods.