Allan and the Ice-Gods

“Where did you get that?” he cried. “What a beautiful skin! A wolf indeed, a father of wolves. Did you kill it, Pag?”

“No, Foh, I flayed it. Learn to take note. Look at your father’s spear. Is it not red?”

“So is your knife, Pag, and so are you, down to the heels. How was I to know which of you slew this great beast when both are so brave? What are you going to do with the skin?”

“Bray it into a cloak for you, Foh; very cunningly with the claws left on the pads, but polished so that they will shine in front when you tie it about you.”

“Good. Cure it quickly, Pag, for it will be warm and these winds are cold. Come into the hut, Father, where your food is waiting, and tell us how you killed the wolf,” and seizing Wi by the hand, the boy dragged him between the skin curtains while Pag and the dogs retreated to some shelter behind, which the dwarf had constructed for himself.

The place within was quite spacious, sixteen feet long, perhaps, by about twelve in breadth.

In the centre of it, on a hearth of clay, burned a wood fire, the smoke of which escaped through a hole in the roof, though, the morning being still, much hung about, making the air thick and pungent, but this Wi, being accustomed to it, did not notice.

On the farther side of the fire, attending to the grilling of strips of flesh set upon pointed sticks, stood Aaka, Wi’s wife, clothed in a kirtle of sealskins fastened beneath her breast, for here, the place being warm, she wore no cloak. She was a finely built woman of about thirty years of age, with masses of black hair that hung to her middle, clean and well-kept hair arranged in four tresses, each of which was tied at the end with fibres of grass or sinew. Her skin was whiter than that of most of her race; indeed, quite white, except where it was tanned by exposure to the weather; her face, though rather broad, was handsome and fine-featured, if somewhat querulous, and, like the rest of her people, she had large and melancholy dark eyes.

As Wi entered, she threw a curious, searching glance at him, as though to read his mind, then smiled in rather a forced fashion and drew forward a block of wood. Indeed, there was nothing else for him to sit on, for furniture, even in its simplest forms, was not known in the tribe. Sometimes a thick, flat stone was used as a table, or a divided stick for a fork, but beyond such expedients the tribe had not advanced. Thus their beds consisted of piles of dried seaweed thrown upon the floor of the hut and covered with skins of one sort or another, and their lamps were made of large shells filled with seal oil in which floated a wick of moss.

Wi sat down on the log, and Aaka, taking one of the sticks on which was spitted a great lump of frizzling seal meat, not too well cooked and somewhat blackened by the smoke, handed it to him and stood by dutifully while he devoured it in a fashion which we should not have considered elegant. Then it was that Foh, rather shyly, draw out from some hiding place a little parcel wrapped in a leaf, which he opened and set upon the ground. It contained desiccated and somewhat sandy brine, or rather its deposit, that the lad with much care had scraped off the rocks of a pool from which the sea water had evaporated. Once Wi by accident had mingled some of this dried brine with his food and found that thereby its taste was enormously improved. Thus he became the discoverer of salt among the People, the rest of whom, however, looked on it as a luxurious innovation which it was scarcely right to use. But Wi, being more advanced, did use it, and it was Foh’s business to collect the stuff, as it had been that of his sister, Fo-a. Indeed, it was while she was thus engaged, far away and alone, that Henga the chief had kidnapped the poor child.

Remembering this, Wi thrust aside the leaf, then, noting the pained expression of the boy’s face at the refusal of his gift, drew it back again and dipped the meat into its contents. When Wi had consumed all he wanted of the flesh, he signed to Aaka and Foh to eat the rest, which they did hungrily, having touched nothing since yesterday, for it was not lawful that the family should eat until its head had taken his fill. Lastly, by way of dessert, Wi chewed a lump of sun-dried stockfish upon which no modern teeth could have made a mark for it was as hard as stone, and by way of a savoury a handful or so of prawns that Foh had caught among the rocks and Aaka had cooked in the ashes.

The feast finished, Wi bid Foh bear the remnants to Pag in his shelter without, and stay with him till he was called. Then he drank a quantity of spring water, which Aaka kept stored in big shells and in a stone, her most valued possession, hollowed to the shape of a pot by the action of ice, or the constant grinding of other stones at the bottom of the sea. This he did be cause there was nothing else, though at certain times of the year Aaka made a kind of tea by boiling an herb she knew of in a shell, a potion that all of them loved for both its warmth and its stimulating properties. This herb, however, grew only in the autumn and it had never occurred to them to store it and use it dry. Therefore, their use of the first intoxicant was limited of necessity, which was perhaps as well.

Having drunk, he closed the skins that hung over the hut en trance, pinning them together with a bone that passed through loops in the hide, and sat down again upon his log.

“What said the gods?” asked Aaka quickly. “Did they answer your prayer?”

“Woman, they did. At sunrise a rock fell from the crest of the ice field and crushed my offering so that the ice took it to itself.”

“What offering?”

“The head of a wolf that I slew as I went up the valley.”

Aaka brooded awhile, then said:

“My heart tells me that the omen is good. Henga is that wolf, and as you slew the wolf, so shall you slay Henga. Did I hear that its hide is to be a cloak for Foh? If so, the omen is good also, since one day the rule of Henga shall descend to Foh. At least, if you kill Henga, Foh shall live and not die as Fo-a died.”

An expression of joy spread over Wi’s face as he listened.

“Your words give me strength,” he said, “and now I go out to summon the People and to tell them that I am about to challenge Henga to fight to the death.”

“Go,” she said, “and hear me, my man. Fight you without fear, for if my rede be wrong and Henga the Mighty should kill you, what of it? Soon we die, all of us, for the most part slowly by hunger or otherwise, but death at the hands of Henga will be swift. And if you die, then we shall die soon, very soon. Pag will see to it, and so we shall be together again.”

“Together again! Together where, Wife?” he asked, staring at her curiously.

A kind of veil seemed to fall over Aaka’s face, that is, her expression changed entirely, for it grew blank and wooden, secret also, like to the faces of all her sisters of the tribe.

“I don’t know,” she answered roughly. “Together in the light or together in the dark, or together with the Ice-gods – who can tell? At least together somewhere. You shake your head. You have been talking to that hater of the gods and changeling, Pag, who really is a wolf, not a man, and hunts with the wolves at night, which is why he is always so fat in winter when others starve.”

Here Wi laughed incredulously, saying:

“If so, he is a wolf that loves us; I would that we had more such wolves.”

“Oh! you mock, as all men do. But we women see further, and we are sure that Pag is a wolf by night, if a dwarf by day. For, if any try to injure him, are they not taken by wolves? Did not wolves eat his father, and were not the leaders of those women who caused him to be driven forth to starve when there was such scarcity that even the wolves fled far away, afterward taken by wolves, they or their children?”

Then, as though she thought she had said too much, Aaka added:

“Yet all this may be but a tale spread from mouth to mouth, because we women hate Pag who mocks us. At least he believes in naught, and would teach you to do the same, and already you begin to walk in his footsteps. Yet, if you hold that we live no more after our breath leaves us, tell me one thing. Why, when you buried Fo-a yonder, did you set with her in the hole her necklace of shells and the stone ball that she played with and the tame bird she had, after you killed it, and her winter cloak, and the doll you made for her of pinewood last year? Of what good would these things be to her bones? Was it not because you thought that they and the little stone ax might be of use to her elsewhere, as the dried fish and the water might serve to feed her?”

Here she ceased, and stared at him.

“Sorrow makes you mad,” said Wi, very gently, for he was moved by her words, “as it makes me mad, but in another fashion. For the rest, I do not know why I did thus; perhaps it was because I wished to see those things no more, perhaps be cause it is a custom to bury with the dead what they loved when they were alive.”

Then he turned and left the hut. Aaka watched him go, muttering to herself:

“He is right. I am mad with grief for Fo-a and with fear for Foh; for it is the children that we women love, yes, more than the man who begat them; and if I thought that I should never find her again, then I would die at once and have done. Meanwhile, I live on to see Wi dash out the brains of Henga, or, if he is killed, to help Pag poison him. They say that Pag is a wolf, but, though I hate him of whom Wi thinks too much, what care I whether he be wolf or monster? At least he loves Wi and our children and will help me to be revenged on Henga.”

Presently she heard the wild-bull horn that served the tribe as a trumpet being blown, and knew that Wini-wini, he who was called the Shudderer because he shook like a jellyfish even if not frightened, which was seldom, was summoning the people that they might talk together or hear news. Guessing what that news would be, Aaka threw her skin cloak about her and followed the sound of the horn to the place of assembly.

Here, on a flat piece of ground at a distance from the huts that lay about two hundred paces from a cliff-like spur of the mountain, all the people, men, women, and children, except a few who were in childbed or too sick or old to move, were gathering together. As they walked or ran, they chattered excitedly, delighted that something was happening to break the terrible sadness of their lives, now and again pointing toward the mouth of the great cave that appeared in the stone cliff opposite to the meeting place. In this cave dwelt Henga, for by right, from time immemorial, it was the home of the chiefs of the tribe, which none might enter save by permission, a sacred place like to the palaces of modern times.

Aaka walked on, feeling that she was being watched by the others but taking no heed, for she knew the reason. She was Wi’s woman, and the rumour had run round that Wi the Strong, Wi the Great Hunter, Wi whose little daughter had been murdered, was about to do something strange, though what it might be none was sure. All of them longed to ask Aaka, but there was something in her eye which forbade them, for she was cold and stately and they feared her a little. So she went on unmolested, looking for Foh, of whom presently she caught sight walking in the company of Pag, who still had the reeking wolfskin on his shoulders, of which, as he was short, the tail dragged along the ground. She noted that, as he advanced, the people made way for him, not from reverence or love, but be cause they feared him and his evil eye.

“Look,” said one woman to another in hearing, “there goes he who hates us, the spear-tongued dwarf.”

“Aye,” answered the other. “He is in such haste that he has forgotten to take off the wolf’s hide he hunted in last night. Have you heard that Buk’s wife has lost her little child of three? It is said that the bears took it, but perhaps yonder wolfman knows better.”

“Yet Foh does not fear him. Look, he holds his hand and laughs.”

“No, because – ” Here suddenly the woman caught sight of Aaka and was silent.

“I wonder,” reflected Aaka, “whether we women hate Pag be cause he is ugly and hates us, or because he is cleverer than we are and pierces us with his tongue. I wonder also why they all think he is half a wolf. I suppose it is because he hunts with Wi, for how can he be both a man and a wolf? At least, I too believe that report speaks truth and that he and the wolves have dealings together. Or perhaps he puts the tale about that all may fear him.”

She came to the meeting ground and took her stand near to Foh and Pag among the crowd which stood or sat in a ring about an open space of empty ground where sometimes the tribe danced when they had plenty of food and the weather was warm, or took counsel, or watched the young men fight and wrestle for the prize of a girl they coveted.

At the head of the ring, which was oblong in shape rather than round, standing about Wini-wini the Shudderer, who from time to time still blew blasts upon his horn, were some of the leaders of the tribe, among them old Turi the Avaricious, the hoarder of food who was always fat, whoever grew thin; and Pitokiti the Unlucky with whom everything went wrong, whose fish always turned rotten, whose women deserted him, whose children died, and whose net was sure to break, so that he must be supported by others for fear lest he should die and pass on his ill-luck to them who neglected him; and Whaka the Bird-of-Ill-Omen, the lean-faced one who was always howling of misfortunes to come; and Hou the Unstable, a feather blown by the wind, who was never of the same mind two days together and Rahi the Rich, who traded in stone axes and fish hooks and thus lived well without work; and Hotoa, the great-bellied and slow-speeched, who never gave his word as to a matter until he knew how it was settled, and then shouted it loudly and looked wise; and Taren, She-Who-hid, with N’gae the priest of the Icegods and the magician who told fortunes with shells, and only came out when there was evil in the wind.

Lastly there was Moananga, Wi’s younger brother, the brave, the great fighter who had fought six men to win and keep Tana, the sweet and loving, the fairest woman of the tribe, and killed two of them who strove to steal her by force. He was a round-eyed man with a laughing face, quick to anger but good-tempered, and after Wi the Hunter, he who stood first among the people. Moreover, he loved Wi and clung to him, so that the two were as one, for which reason Henga the chief hated them both and thought that they were too strong for him.

All these were talking with their heads close together, till presently appeared Wi, straight, strong, and stern, at whose coming they grew silent. He looked round at them, then said:

“I have words.”

“We are listening,” replied Moananga.

“Hearken,” went on Wi. “Is there not a law that any man of the tribe may challenge the chief of the tribe to fight, and if he can kill him, may take his place?”

“There is such a law,” said Urk, the old wizard, he who made charms for women and brewed love potions, and in winter told stories of what had happened long ago before his grandfather’s grandfather was born, very strange stories, some of them. “Twice it has chanced in my day, the second time when Henga challenged and killed his own father and took the cave.”