Chapter 27

Ivory was consumed by the flames of jealousy.

All through the night her moist vagina was repeatedly stimulated by Glade's fingers. She shuddered many times over with the warm pleasure her older lover had orchestrated and it was into Glade's arms she collapsed, but the object of her jealousy wasn't the shaman. It was Ptarmigan who at that moment was in the chief's company and no doubt also in the throes of passion. Now that Chief Cave Lion had returned his wife would from henceforth sleep by his side only and her love for Ivory would become just a memory.

When Glade at last collapsed into exhausted slumber, a restless Ivory stared into the dark shadows and reviewed her situation. She recognised now how happy she'd been during the time Glade and Chief Cave Lion were absent. She'd enjoyed the regular evening camaraderie with the other villagers around the blazing fires. She'd risen well to the challenge of being the village shaman and Ptarmigan had done well as the Chief's deputy. And now what did the rest of her life have to offer? Would she and Ptarmigan once again be compelled to share the Chief's semen together? Would Glade continue to share her body with whomsoever she fancied? Was this the best she could ever expect in her life?

When Ivory's fitful sleep was broken by the milky suggestion of daylight from the morning sun, she became aware that Glade had already arisen and was no longer by hers side. Ivory slipped out from under the blanket of furs that shielded her from the icy cold and grasped her clothes tightly to her bosom as she ventured out into the open air. Snow was coming down thick and fast. The bushes, shrubs and rocks that had been peeking through the shallow snow the day before were now hidden beneath a deep white coat.

Where was Glade?

Ivory stomped through the snow as she sought her lover and soon spotted the shaman in the well-constructed shelter the Cave Painter had erected in the shadow of a cedar. She was lying peacefully beside Ochre whose arm was slumped over her shoulder.

Despite her pain of rejection, Ivory knew better than to make her presence known so she strode over to the shelter where she and Ptarmigan had slept every night when the Chief and his warriors were exploring the hillsides above the Mountain Valley. Chief Cave Lion was sharpening flint blades by a small fire while Ptarmigan was caring for her children. A pang of resentment stabbed into Ivory's chest. It was obvious that the Chief's wife had made love with her husband during the night. Could she bear to look her lover in the face?

"Good morning," Ptarmigan said sweetly before Ivory could take the opportunity to slip away unnoticed. "Did you sleep well?"

"Not at all," Ivory admitted. "All night I was thinking about you and the Chief."

"The Chief is my husband," said Ptarmigan.

"Did you make love together?"

"He tried to," Ptarmigan confessed. "He wasn't very successful. My husband is very ill."

"And yet he wants to march us up the hills to the new hunting grounds."

"What choice have we got?" said Ptarmigan. "My husband says that there will be an abundance of game, nuts and berries. We are privileged to be granted such lands and honoured by the presence of the Cave Painters' ambassador. My husband sees only good fortune ahead."

"The shaman isn't so enthusiastic."

"Really?"

"She doesn't believe that the hunting grounds allocated to us by the Cave Painters will be enough to sustain the village."

"How can she say that in total contradiction to my husband who is as much her chief as he is yours and of all the villagers?"

"She can speak the Cave Painters' language," said Ivory. "The Chief can't. It was Glade who negotiated with the Cave Painters. Not the Chief."

"Oh."

The snow fell unceasingly through the rest of the day. From now on, the trek through thick freshly fallen snow to the new hunting grounds could only be arduous. Ochre was the only one who knew the route and he displayed no enthusiasm to head out in such conditions. However, as Grey Wolf reminded the Chief, it was necessary to make haste before the worst of Winter set in.

"It will be much more difficult to establish our camp when the snow hardens and the flowing water freezes," Grey Wolf said. "We must hurry. Too much time has been wasted."

"Wasted?" Chief Cave Lion wondered accusingly. "Who's been wasting time?"

Grey Wolf was flummoxed by the riposte. It was unusual for the Chief to be so sensitive. As usual, it was Glade who rescued the situation. "Your good friend, the great warrior Grey Wolf, is right to advise haste, my lord. There is several days trek to the plains of the Great Tongue Glacier. Any delay will be costly. If we tarry, we risk greater misfortune than if we stride forth."

"Can we all climb the hillside in this snowstorm?" the Chief asked as he gazed up at what could be seen of the hills.

Ivory guessed the Chief's main concern was his own physical ability, but also that he didn't want to admit to any weakness.

"The snowstorm will soon subside," said Grey Wolf. "Then we can set off. We are all ready, my lord. As soon as you say, we shall leave."

"The Chief is right to be cautious, Grey Wolf," said Glade diplomatically. "The trek will be arduous and long. There are many in the village who won't survive the journey."

"Such as?"

"There are some who are ill and injured. There are babies, young children and their mothers. There are women who are pregnant."

"Pregnant? Who's pregnant in the village?"

"I am," said Ptarmigan suddenly and unexpectedly.

"You are?" asked the Chief who seemed as astonished as anyone by this news.

"Yes, my lord," said his wife. "I meant to tell you but I forgot to do so in my great joy at seeing you again. I am pregnant. I may be too weak to accompany you on the trek."

"You can't stay here," said Grey Wolf indignantly. "The Chief's wife should stay always by her husband's side."

"The question is not the duty of the Chief's wife, but the welfare of the Chief's unborn child," remarked Glade. "We know that the Mountain Valley doesn't provide enough game and sustenance for the whole village and for this reason we need to trek to the new hunting grounds. However, the valley is sufficient to sustain half the village. It would be a safe refuge for those who are ill, injured or pregnant and who may not survive the ordeal of several days' slog through thick snow and freezing wind. We risk taking up the hill those who are least able not to their salvation but to their grave."

"Should my wife stay behind?" wondered the Chief.

"It is advisable, my lord," said Glade.

"She can't survive by herself."

"She would be attended by the injured, the ill and the children. There will also be the River People who shan't be accompanying us anyway."

"The pregnant, the ill and the wounded all need the ministrations of a shaman," objected the Chief. "You more than anyone must accompany us on our trek."

This confession of weakness regarding the need for a mere woman perceptibly shocked those who heard, but no one dared comment.

"You are right as you always are, my lord, to be mindful of the spiritual and material wellbeing of the tribe," said Glade. "You are right to be anxious that when I come with you to the plains with the Cave Painters' Ambassador that those left behind in the Mountain Valley will suffer. However, you need have no such fear. My apprentice has proven her worth in the days when we were parleying with the Cave Painters in the mountains. She can deputise for me in my absence during the long winter months."

"She can?" asked the Chief who hadn't considered this option before.

"I have heard nothing but good report of the care she took in our absence of the tribe's spiritual welfare, my lord," said Glade. "She treated the ill. She placated the spirits that protect us all. She will be able to care for your pregnant wife and even act as midwife when she gives birth to what I predict will be a son you shall be proud of."

"You propose that one in three of the village remain behind in this valley whilst the rest of us march onwards into the mountains?"

"It is what I recommend, my lord," said Glade. "It is not advice I give lightly. A village should stay together and a wife should stay with her husband, but these are perilous times. It is better that the village survives as two parties than that one party should perish in the bitter winter snows."

Ivory said nothing during the debate. As the shaman's apprentice, it wasn't appropriate for her to do so. Glade was only permitted to speak because she was the shaman and also because she was the only person able to communicate with the Cave Painters on whose mercy the village's survival now so humiliatingly depended. Ptarmigan had been allowed to speak because of her privileged position as the Chief's wife, although this wasn't a privilege she'd ever taken advantage of before. However, Ivory could see that it was Glade who was really directing the debate and that Chief Cave Lion was uncharacteristically feeble. The Chief could state no opinion that Glade couldn't overrule. Neither could any of the warriors who'd accompanied the Chief on his initial expedition. Grey Wolf was the only man with a more robust opinion and he was clearly irked at being so consistently ruled against.

"I didn't know you were pregnant," said an indignant Ivory when she was later able to snatch a hurried word or two with Ptarmigan.

"I'm not," said her lover with a conspiratorial smile.

Ivory shook her head in disbelief. "Then why did you say you were?"

"I spoke to the shaman," Ptarmigan replied. "I was troubled by what you said about the wisdom of the village settling in the hunting grounds allocated by the Cave Painters. She said that her reservations were very real and that she seriously questioned whether the village could survive at all. She told me that she thought that perhaps one in three villagers would die within the cycle of a single moon and that most of those would die on the journey. She said that the hunting grounds mightn't be adequate for even one half of the village. She said that she didn't trust the Cave Painters to give land to our village that could adequately sustain us."

"That's rather more than she said to me," said Ivory. "At least not in so many words. So the shaman suggested that you should claim to be pregnant?"

"Yes," said Ptarmigan. "It was her idea. She said that a mother needs to be with her children and that my children should remain in the valley."

"Well, it's not advice the shaman's ever taken seriously for herself," said Ivory who recalled with bitterness that Glade had abandoned her children when she left her husband.

"Sorry?"

Ivory bit her tongue. "I believe that the shaman's advice is sound," she said. "That's why the Chief has agreed to it so readily. It is better that the village break into two for it to survive. If neither the distant hunting grounds nor the Mountain Valley are able to support us all separately, then the best decision must be that one large village becomes two smaller ones."

"And that you and I can stay together," added Ptarmigan who again flashed her conspiratorial smile.

Ivory was torn how to respond. "Yes," she said. "We shall stay together, but only until your husband and the shaman to whom we are both attached return again in the Spring and we trek back to our ancestral home in the north."