Beneath my left foot, a round stone, no more than a pebble, pokes into the thin sole of my summer boots, and I roll it side to side distractedly as I consider Shava’s mother, Fi. A stout but solid woman, like the stump of a once-tall tree, her face is lined by a multitude of thin creases that form stars around each eye—the eyes of a woman who has spent long stretches of time squinting in concentration. She was a storyteller for our clan before she and Shava left. I remember many evenings when her words carried me away.
And now she has promised to tell a tale of Lo’s clan. Curiosity overcomes hesitancy, and I sit.
I close my eyes. Everyone is seated; everyone is silent. An impatient wind ripples the hide behind my back and rattles in the vent flap, scolding, taunting. The wind moves on, replaced by a deep stillness. Quiet wraps around me like the walls of a cave. Into this space a voice intrudes, the voice of Shava’s mother.
It was winter—the kind of cold dark winter that coats everything in the same pale gray—clouds, water, ice, sky. Haze hung like a drape across the heavens, and behind this drape the Divine hid her face, unwilling to give her warmth to the world.
It was during this hard gray time, two years ago, that the Bosha clan appeared at the far northern edge of the meadow. The last light of day was burning out when they appeared, and as the sun dropped hastily behind the ridges of the western hills, their elders descended the slope toward this camp—dark shadows, purple and blue in the gathering dusk, like a line of ants marching with an unknown purpose. Kol and Pek, the first to see them, called to their father, who in turn called his elders.
All the elders gathered in the meeting place to greet the visitors—each with one hand open and one hand holding a spear.
I remember this visit by the Bosha, of course—Lo and I talked about it just yesterday—but the voice of the storyteller, the quiet darkness, even the fragments of words that are carried by the wind into this space from outside bring the whole experience to life inside me, as if I am facing those elders again. Their gaunt faces lined by hunger, the sunken eyes of a woman who trembled relentlessly, no matter how close she sat to the fire in the hearth. Shava rushing, carrying out mammoth meat that she’d prepared the day before. I remember the reluctance with which they had accepted it, and then, once accepted, the ferociousness with which they’d eaten.
Lo’s father, Vosk, told of his clan’s travels, of their hike to the edge of the Great Ice on a long and fruitless search for bison or mammoth. The elders of both clans sat in the meeting place under a sky black as soot and talked about hunting and herds and hunger. Hunger, Vosk believed, was a challenge from the Divine, a test of patience to pursue the game given to our ancestors for food when the earth was new. He had no faith in a settled life, a camp by the water that took food from both the land and the sea. It showed no faith in the old ways, the sacred ways ordained by the Divine through our ancient ancestor, Bosha. Lo’s father, like Lo, watched constantly for signs, for messages from the Divine. Here in our camp, he believed he found one, in the form of my daughter, Shava.
Vosk was rejuvenated by the meat Shava had prepared. It was the first fresh meat any of them had eaten in a long time. He recognized me and realized Shava was a daughter of his own clan. When he learned my husband—our tie to the Manu—had died, he was convinced that it was the Divine’s will that we should rejoin them. This meat, brought to him by Shava’s hands, was the omen he was looking for.
That night, our family camped with the Bosha clan, and in the morning, we departed. Vosk believed that Spirits of the game—of bison and mammoths—were calling the clan westward.
We ranged farther and farther west in search of the herds. The game was scarce—a few thin caribou sparsely scattered across frozen, unyielding ground—and as we moved away from the sea, we had no fish and few birds to hold us over between kills.
Lo’s father was certain that the answer was to move faster across the open land toward the mountains in the far west. He believed that was where the mammoths would be found. Everyone worked to build overland sleds that we could drag to move more quickly. To make the sleds, we sacrificed tent poles and hides, as nights on the plains grew ever longer and ever colder. Every day we covered great stretches of ground, growing weak with exhaustion and hunger. Still, we followed our High Elder. We pushed farther and farther west. Beneath our feet, the rough gray soil became smooth gray ice.
After days spent descending into a broad, unbroken valley that rolled unending to the horizon, the ice broke up. We traveled across islands of smoke-gray ice that floated in a shallow sea, indistinguishable from the bone-gray sky.
We waded with wet and frozen feet, taking turns pulling one another on sleds that floated like small boats. Lo’s father carried Lo on his shoulders, insisting we press on, until we came to a place where the ground became nothing more than isolated points of ice—islands the size of footprints surrounded by wide pools and streams of water.