Bonesetter 2 -Winter- Read online

  Gia giggled, “Eat people?”

  Woday nodded.

  “She’s bitten people who were attacking Pell,” she raised an eyebrow, “so if I were you…” she continued in the ominous tone people used for frightening stories, “I’d be nice to the Bonesetter.” She sat back and grinned, “Actually, I’m just teasing. Do you feel up to telling your story?”

  ***

  Tando felt bemused as they walked up Cold Springs ravine and approached the little meadow in front of what Tando still thought of as “Pell’s cave.” The fact that Ontru had chosen to come with him made him very happy. He’d always considered Roley’s younger wife to be the most attractive of the women in the Aldans’ tribe. The fact that she was Roley’s younger wife had made her completely unobtainable, but hadn’t moved her beyond his longing. Even when he’d been wed to Tellgif, he’d sometimes fantasized about having her for his second wife.

  With Roley gone, he’d found himself unable to keep his eyes off her. When he’d realized she was looking back, his heart had done a little flip-flop. She’d actually followed him when he’d gone out to check his snares and when the first snare held a fat hare, she’d come up to admire it. Her touch on his arm as she expressed her high regard for his trapping skills felt… hot. Before he’d finished running his trap line, they’d been talking like old friends. Then they’d started kissing…

  Tando had felt a few moments of guilt, since Tellgif had only died a few months ago. The guilt hadn’t lasted though. It’d been overwhelmed by the onslaught of his feelings for Ontru. A cynical voice in the back of his mind had told him that Ontru was thinking of the Aldans’ numbers. With three hunters, but five women—actually six if you counted Gurix who was blossoming into a woman as they watched—the Aldans were quite imbalanced. She probably hadn’t liked being the second wife before Roley died, even though she’d been mated to a particularly powerful man. Now, a suspicious voice in Tando’s mind argued that, rather than being an extra woman in a tribe with too many, Ontru was angling to be a first wife. As he’d previously been the most respected hunter in the Aldans, Tando had thought he might be sought after. Though, he thought, no man can truly understand what women want!

  Even though Tando’s rational mind cautioned him about Ontru’s motives, he found himself so strongly attracted to her that it became hard to worry about her motives. By the time she said she’d like to return with him to Cold Springs, he’d already been planning to ask her.

  As they’d been packing up to leave, Ontru had wanted to collect some of what she considered to be “her share” of the fruits of the Aldans women’s gathering that summer. He’d had a warm feeling at her surprised reaction to his revelation that they didn’t need her share because the Cold Springs tribe already had enough food to last the winter. During the long walk back to Cold Springs, he’d been grateful they weren’t hauling her share. Instead, they’d meandered easily along, stopping to make love several times.

  They’d taken two days for a trip which was easily walked in a day. But they’d stopped overnight in a tiny cave Tando knew about. He’d even put out a few snares and caught a rabbit that they’d roasted for their breakfast.

  Thinking about snares, Tando realized they were close enough to Cold Springs that he might set out a few snares to check tomorrow. They’d just passed a thicket where he’d had good luck in the past. He turned to glance back at it.

  Someone on the trail behind them ducked behind a tree as he turned! “Who’s there?!” he called.

  Whoever it was said nothing, evidently hoping that Tando hadn’t actually seen them, but Tando could still see a little bit of clothing.

  Tando said, “Come on out. I can see you back there on the right side of the trail.”

  After a moment, the person slumped and stepped out from behind the tree.

  “Gurix! What are you doing here?!” Ontru asked in an appalled tone, though Tando suspected he already knew.

  For a moment Gurix looked indecisive, then she straightened her shoulders and strode bravely down the path towards them. “I’m moving to Cold Springs,” she said decisively. “I’m in love with Pell.”

  At the same time that Tando said, “Do your parents know where you are?” Ontru asked, “Does he love you?” Which, Tando reflected, showed what each of them thought was most important.

  Gurix answered Tando, “Yes. I told Odran to tell them after we’d been gone for an hour or two.”

  Noticing that she hadn’t answered Ontru’s question, but deciding to ignore that issue, Tando said, “‘We’ hadn’t been gone. Ontru and I left, and you followed after.”

  “Sure,” Gurix shrugged, as if the distinction made no difference to her. “Anyway, we’re here now. It can’t be much further, let’s keep going.”

  Ontru said sympathetically, “Gurix, you saw that girl Pell’s with. She’s gorgeous.” She shook her head, “You can’t compete with someone that beautiful… No one could.”

  Gurix got a sullen look on her face, “Maybe I’ll be that pretty when I’ve finished changing into a woman.” Her eyes began to glisten and she looked away. Tando thought she knew she had no chance. After a moment more, Gurix said, “I’ll be his second wife if I have to. I just have to be with him.”

  Ontru turned to look at Tando and he was worried that she’d say they had to walk Gurix back to the Aldans right then. Instead, she shrugged, “There’s no point in trying to convince her otherwise. Best she find out for herself.”

  Ontru turned as if to continue along the path they’d been following. A moment later, Tando did the same, waving Gurix to come along with them.

  When they entered the small clearing between the Cold Springs stream and the cave, Tando saw Pell and his old friend Boro kneeling to one side. “Ho, Pell,” he called out.

  Pell rose smoothly to his feet, a big smile on his face. As Pell strode toward them, Tando wondered at the many changes that had come over the young man in such a short period. At the end of last winter, he’d been a little tall, but so skinny that he’d seemed small, and he’d been clumsy beyond belief. Seeing him with his old friend Boro, who still looked scrawny and small, made Pell’s changes stand out. Now, at the beginning of this winter, Pell was taller than any man Tando had known, excepting perhaps the massive Roley. And his movements… they were no longer clumsy. Instead they seemed… graceful and smooth, with hidden, unleashed-power in every action. It seemed as if they had none of the wasted motion inherent to the way other people did things. He moves like a big cat, Tando thought as he and Pell clasped arms.

  “Hello Ontru,” Pell said, as if completely unsurprised to find her there. “Welcome to Cold Springs.” He turned to Gurix and arched an eyebrow, saying, “Do Belk and Lenta know where you are?”

  Eyes cast down and blushing, Gurix nodded.

  “Well then,” Pell said, picking up Ontru and Gurix’ packs, one in each hand as if they weighed nothing, “let’s introduce you to the people of Cold Springs.”

  When Ontru first stepped inside the Cold Springs cave, she wasn’t surprised to find that, like the Aldans’ cave, it was a large shallow cave that had been walled in with sticks and mud. What did surprise her, was how neatly organized everything was. She recognized stacked baskets of roots and grain, but there were also baskets containing other things that she suspected were food, but didn’t recognize.

  There were two fire pits, both near the mud wall and relatively close to the smoke hole. One had a bare area for people to sit around it as well as various cooking utensils and pouches. The other fire pit, farther from the cave opening, had neatly laid out bedding around it.

  A high stack of firewood was along one wall, and as she looked around, a young boy came in with an arm load of wood that he piled neatly onto it. She saw bales of reeds such as you might use for weaving baskets. There were bundles of spear shafts, a pile of flint nodules and an enormous stack of small animal skins.

  Most impressive to Ontru, however, was the fact that everyone was busy. Donte had b
een outside weaving baskets until she recognized Ontru and took it upon herself to show Ontru and Gurix around. An old woman with arthritic hands had been grinding herbs and Pell’s beautiful young girlfriend had been scraping bark that Ontru thought probably came from willows. She’d been introduced to a man named Manute who was working a skin into leather and been told that another man named Deltin was out hunting, apparently by himself. No one lounged about like the members of the Aldans so frequently did.

  They even had a woman with a hand having only two fingers and a thumb tending the cook fire! While Ontru was in the cave the woman deftly lifted a hot stone out of the fire and dropped it into a cooking pouch producing a fragrant sizzle.

  Ontru turned to Donte and asked, “What do you have in those baskets?” She pointed to the baskets stacked near the roots and grains.

  Donte gave her a grin and walked over to get a chip of something out of one of the baskets. She returned and handed it to Ontru, “Go ahead, taste it.”

  Ontru nibbled the corner of the chip, thinking it was perhaps wood. She didn’t know why you would taste a wood chip, but didn’t want to insult. It had a dry leathery texture rather than being hard like wood, but it had a tart flavor like an apple! She turned wonderingly to Donte, “Is this a… a chip of wood from an apple tree?”

  Donte grinned again, “No! It’s a slice of apple that’s been dried in the sun!” She shrugged, “Apples keep for quite a while as long as you keep them cool, but eventually they go soft, mushy and moldy. I think these will keep a lot longer. I know they’re not as good as a fresh apple, but I think towards the end of winter we’ll be thinking they’re a lot better than no apples at all. We have dried berries, onions, and grapes as well. Later this winter we’ll have a better idea which ones were worth drying.”

  Ontru found she just couldn’t imagine what it’d be like to have fruit during the hungry months, dried or otherwise…

  After Tando had turned Ontru and Gurix over to the other women, he turned to Pell and said, “Let’s go see what you were working on over at the other side of the clearing.”

  Pell stood and started that way, looking a little frustrated. Boro got up to go with them. Pell said, “I’ve been trying to come up with a way to snare grouse.” He gave Tando a sly grin, “Gia really likes grouse.”

  Tando tried to envision a bird running into one of their nooses. “How would you do that? Birds don’t usually follow paths… since they can fly. How would you get them to run into a noose?” He frowned, “And even if they did, their necks taper down to their heads. I’d think they’d just be able to pull back out of it.”

  Pell said, “Yeah, the shape of their necks is a problem, though I wonder if the way their feathers point back along their necks might make it hard for them to pull their head out of a noose.” He shrugged, “I did have an idea for a ‘basket trap’ that doesn’t need a noose and Donte wove one for me, but we haven’t tried it yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’ve got these two visitors, Yadin and Woday. They’re out spear hunting with Manute today because we weren’t sure we should teach them our snaring tricks yet. Do you think we should?”

  Tando shrugged, “I know I tried to tell you who you could share your secrets with before, but like I said, I’ve decided that they’re really your secrets. You should share them with whoever you want to share them with.”

  Pell looked off into the distance, “I think they belong to the tribe. We should all talk about it.” He glanced down, where they’d arrived at his newest project. He indicated it with a wave and said, “This is my other idea for a bird snare.”

  Tando squatted down to look at Pell’s set up. A springy branch had been bent over. It had a long slender thong noose tied to the end of it with the noose stretched out into a big loop on the ground. A heavy rock with a thong tied around it sat on a knot in the thong keeping the bent branch from straightening.

  Frowning, Tando said, “I don’t understand. How’s that going to catch a bird?”

  Pell sighed, “I don’t know. What I’ve been thinking is that if the bird were standing in the middle of the noose here,” Pell stuck a twig into the dirt in the middle where he’d pointed, apparently to represent a bird’s leg, “and I pulled the rock off the noose.” Pell pulled the thong around the rock and the rock rolled off of the knot. As soon as he did so, the freed branch sprang into the air thus jerking the noose into the air. As it went up, the noose closed on the twig and jerked it out of the ground so it flailed wildly about in the air.

  Pell reached up and grabbed the twig. “If the noose closes around the bird’s legs, I think it won’t be able to get free like it might if it was around the bird’s neck.”

  Tando gave him a doubtful look, “Why would a bird decide to stand with its feet in the middle of your noose?”

  “Oh.” Boro said, “That’s the easy part. He scatters a little grain in the middle.”

  Tando turned his eyes back to the trap, envisioning some grain there. He knew birds loved grain. Shrugging, he said, “Okay, I can picture that happening. But I think as soon as you pull the cord to the rock and it starts to move, the bird’ll fly away.”

  Pell was looking unhappily at the setup. Quietly, he said, “Yeah, I think so too. Besides, I don’t want to sit out here for hours waiting to pull the string either. Have you got any better ideas?”

  With a little laugh Tando said, “Not unless you want to make Boro sit out here for you.” He shrugged, “You’re the idea man.” But then he looked back down at the snare for a moment, and said slowly, “What if you put the grain on a stick… so that when the birds pecked at the grain it wiggled the stick and somehow the stick…” He ran down, not sure where to go from there.

  Pell said, “And the stick moved the rock?”

  “Yeah,” he said disgustedly, “but if the rock’s heavy enough to hold the noose down, a few bird pecks aren’t going to move it.”

  “What if the rock’s balanced so it’s about to fall?”

  “I think… if the rock’s balanced that delicately, the pull from the springy branch will tip it over.”

  “Yeah… you’re right.” Pell said sadly.

  Tando hadn’t been surprised to find Yadin there at Cold Springs. After all the man had said he wanted to visit. He was, however, bemused to learn about Woday. “So you traveled for… hands of days, to come here and learn at the foot of the Bonesetter?”

  Woday nodded uncertainly, perhaps suspecting that Tando was having a laugh at his expense.

  “And,” Tando said, no longer suppressing his grin, “how did you feel, arriving yesterday to find that you were trying to apprentice yourself to a boy?”

  “Well,” Woday said slowly, “he’s not a boy. I would say… more a very young man.”

  “Still, much younger than you are,” Tando said, barely keeping from laughing.

  “I know,” Woday said, a faint blush creeping into his cheeks as he looked down. “But… everyone says he’s really good at bone setting.”

  Relenting, Tando put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’m older than you and I’ve felt much the same as you do while I’ve been learning from Pell.” He held out a slightly thickened wrist, “I had it easier than you because I was one of the first people that Pell did a bone setting on. Having experienced the results of his skill, it was easier to accept him as a master, not a boy.” Tando looked away for a moment, then turned back. “And he is a master, there’s no question about that. Not just of bone setting either.” Tando shook his head wonderingly, “He has… so many ideas and… so many of them work, it’s just hard to remember them all or to remember how our life was before he started having them.” Tando turned his eyes back to Woday and said, “I’m here to tell you that you shouldn’t be embarrassed to learn from Pell just because he’s younger than you. Hah! I’m older than you and it seems like I learn something from him almost every hand of days! He’s… I don’t know what he is, but he could teach… anyone! Go ahead
and apprentice yourself to him,” Tando’s voice sounded a little hoarse, even to himself. He shook his head one more time before finishing with a rasp, “you won’t be sorry.”

  Chapter Four

  Woday lay awake early the next morning. Despite being closed into the Cold Springs cave by the big door flap, it was cold. He’d tucked his sleeping furs around him, glad for the grasses they had piled in the sleeping area which kept him off the cold ground. He considered for a moment getting up and putting wood on the fire, but worried that someone would think he was taking liberties.

  He wondered how cold it might be outside. If it’d snowed again, that would make it more difficult for him to give up his apprenticeship idea and try to go back home. When he’d traveled east to come to Cold Springs, they’d given him some roots and grain as well as enough meat for his first couple of days, not wasting more meat since it would have spoiled before he got farther than that. For the trip back though, he wouldn’t have friends and relatives willing to give him some food for the trip.

  To tell the truth, many of his tribesmen had probably been happy to give him a little food for the trip in order to have him leave just before winter. His absence meant that the rest of their stores would last them longer during the hungry months. His mother had made this point to him several times as she tried to talk him out of the trip.

  Woday knew he wasn’t a good hunter. Making a trip of hands of days back to the Falls-people without any food would be problematic. The people here at Cold Springs certainly wouldn’t have enough food to spare for him to take some on his return trip. The chances of him making a kill while traveling were slim… actually, nonexistent. The only food he knew he’d be able to find on his way back was a beehive where he’d managed to steal a honeycomb coming this way. It was about half a morning’s walk from here. Walking that long-distance back home in snow… honey or not, he likely wouldn’t survive. I had to be crazy, deciding to make this long trip just before winter, he thought. It might have been reasonable at the beginning of summer when the land’s fat. Mother was probably right; I may have just killed myself.