Part 25
I awoke to blinding sunlight streaming through the small window by the cabin door. Tse-ni-sa and I were clasped so tightly in each other's arms we were almost one entity. The dog was curled around our feet. It was cold in the little cabin – very cold. My breath smoked into a dense cloud that precipitated glimmering ice crystals almost immediately at each exhalation and the ceiling above us was rimed with frost.
It was easy to see where the cracks in the cabin walls were. Powder-fine snow had drifted into a white delta at each one. The fire had gone out long ago, and a small pile of snow rested on the ashy hearth. I suddenly realized that the wind had ceased to howl, and the silence was absolute. My heart thrilled even as my stomach cramped. The blizzard was over.
My wife stirred in my arms, she opened her eyes, blinked, and turned her face up to me. I noted with alarm that her lips were cracked and bleeding, her complexion was ashen, and her lovely blond hair dull, matted and tangled. "Do we still live, Tse-k'?" she whispered feebly. "Or have we passed into another dream?"
I soon determined that she had little or no memory of the previous 10 or 12 hands of time, and I explained to her about the blizzard and our trek through the snow to the little cabin we currently sheltered within, which I had discovered while hunting some months before. At the time I had wondered if we might be best served to use it as our winter home, but our mud hut had seemed sufficient, the food store was next to it, and moving everything promised to be an enormous task. I should have paid more attention to the signs given me by the animals, birds, insects and persimmon seeds.
Now the log cabin was definitely going to be our winter home, and food was going to be a serious problem. I wondered how deep the snow outside the cabin would be. In the plains the snow might have drifted to ten or more feet high in places, but here in the dense cedar forest we would have less on the ground, although the larger cedars would dump their massive loads of snow as soon as they got warm enough. If the snow was not too deep to walk through, I might set snares for small birds, mice and rats. They could be coated with a thick shell of clay and baked in the coals. After sufficient slow roasting, the clay could be broken away, taking most of the feathers or fur with it, and the tender contents eaten whole, bones and all. My stomach gurgled at the thought of it. But even if I was very lucky, this would probably not be enough to keep us alive. And Tse-ni-sa was going to need a full meal of warm food very soon. I could already feel her souls loosening from their moorings within her body, and I knew she would not last long unless I could feed her.
"I will go outside, my love, and gather wood for a fire," I said, carefully sliding out from under the pile of blankets to avoid exposing her to the bitter cold air. She smiled at me weakly. "Hurry back, Husband. You still have a story to finish." The dog struggled briefly to get to its feet and slithered out from under the blankets to stand next to me, wagging her tail dejectedly.
"That dog," Tse-ni-sa said, "Has finally earned her keep. But she still smells." The dog wagged her tail a little harder at this complement.
I pried open the frozen front door and the sun reflecting off the deep snow nearly blinded me. It was worse than I had thought. There were a few sticks of firewood visible under the foot-deep snow on the sheltered front porch, but beyond that the snow was at least three feet deep. My heart sank. There was no hope of food any time soon.
The dog shouldered past me, crossed the porch, and squatted to relieve her bladder, then began snapping up mouthfuls of snow. I watched her as I relieved myself. She was gaunt, her fur dull and patchy. She was as near starvation as we were. Yet...if one of us had to die so the others could live...I fingered the knife at my belt. No. First I would build a fire and heat some water. At least I could give her a warm drink before she gave me her body.
I kicked a few logs loose from the ice and carried them into the house, put them on the hearth and took out my fire pouch. But the logs were encrusted with ice, and I had no kindling. I looked at the stools under the small table, pulled one out, and smashed it into kindling. The woven rush seat should be the perfect fire-starter. I separated the logs on the hearth and carefully arranged my kindling materials between the two largest ones, then struck a stream of sparks into the small pile with flint against sparkling pyrite. Soon I had the kindling burning brightly, and I carefully placed some smaller sticks over the logs already in place. When I was sure the fire was established, I whispered a short song of thanks to water-spider, and took a clay pot outside. I packed snow into it as firmly as possible, but the snow was light and fine and it would take a great deal of it to produce much water. I put the pot near the fire and found another one which I also filled with snow. While I waited for it to melt I freed more firewood from the ice on the porch and brought it inside. The dog had sniffed around the edges of the cabin and on my last trip through the front door she crowded through with me and slumped down near the hearth, the picture of dejection. I patted her scabrous head. "I thank you for the gift you are about to give us," I told her, and her tail thumped the floor twice.
Tears came to my eyes as I thought of the love and devotion this simple creature held for me. Few humans could equal it, I thought. I would do all I could to see that she was reincarnated as one of her wild kindred, so that she could run wild and free with her tribe, and not waste her love on humankind in her next life. I was weak emotionally as well as physically, and I wept bitterly. But I poured the first of the melted snow into a shallow bowl for her, and when she had lapped it up gratefully, looking up at me with trusting eyes, I picked her up and took her outside. She was so insubstantial in my arms...I thought of how fat and active she had been as a puppy, and how she had quickly grown to be a strong and loyal companion...I knelt, holding her with one hand as I felt for my knife with the other. She whined, her sensitive nostrils flaring and her ears alerting, then bounded out of my grasp and into the snow. A thin crust under the top few inches of light snow was enough to support her weight for the most part and she streaked away to the east, floundering in deep snow from time to time but making progress nonetheless. I had neither the heart nor the strength to go after her, or even to try to call her back. I put my knife away and stumbled back inside. The fire crackled merrily, but it was no warmer in the small room. Most of the snow in the pots had melted, so I gathered more, and eventually I had a small bowl full of hot water. I carried it to the bed. Tse-ni-sa had appeared to be dozing, her steaming exhalations slow and meager, but she opened her bewitching eyes when I approached and smiled at me with cracked lips. "I should make tea," she said.
"I can make it if you tell me where the herbs are," I said. "You should rest."
"It's not right, Husband, but I am so weary..." she fumbled under the blankets and withdrew a leather pouch. "Make it strong, Husband. It needs to steep for at least two fingers of time." She closed her eyes again.
I filled my palm with herbs from the pouch and put the bowl close to the fire. When the liquid darkened and was steaming steadily, I picked up the bowl and tasted the contents. The warmth inside me was strengthening, and after I sipped a little more and it began to cool I took it to the bed, helped Tse-ni-sa sit up, and supported her as she drank it to the dregs. "That is much better, Husband," she said. "Now come to me and we will stay warm together." I stacked more wood on the fire, refilled the snow-pots, and crawled into bed with her.
"We will die, Husband, won't we?" she whispered.
"Yes," I said. "Perhaps we should sing our death songs now, in case we become too weak to do so later."
"Not yet," she whispered against my chest. "Finish the story of Se-lu and Ka-na-ti first. Then we will sing. And our souls will break free together."
I adjusted the pile of blankets above us and began. "So when the boys saw how Se-lu got corn and beans from the corn-crib, they became frightened because they thought she was a witch. "We have to kill her in case she decides to eat us," Wild Boy said to his brother. Little Boy was very sad to think of this, because he loved his mother, but he knew that witches had to be killed, so finally he agreed.
Se-lu took the basket of corn and beans to the house and when the boys crowded in behind her holding their war clubs, she knew their thoughts. "So, now you want to kill me," she told them.
"You're a witch. We have to kill you," Wild Boy said impudently.
"Well then," Se-lu said, "You must do as you think best. But when you have killed me, you must clear a large patch of ground near the house and drag my body around the outside of the circle seven times in the sun-wise direction. Then you must drag me seven more times around the inner circle and cut off my head and put it on top of the house facing west. Then you must stay up all night and watch, and in the morning you will have plenty of corn.
The boys then killed her with their war-clubs and cut off her head, putting it on top of the house. But they did not feel like clearing a large patch of ground, so they only cleared seven little spots. We know this is true because now corn only grows in a few places instead of over all the world.
They then dragged Se-lu's body around the circle, but it was hard to drag over the uncleared ground, so they only did it twice instead of seven times. And everywhere a drop of her blood fell, a cornstalk sprouted. They sat up all night and watched as the corn grew, and by morning they had plenty of corn. Ka-na-ti had spent the night near the cave weeping sorrowfully, but soon he arrived back at home and could not find Se-lu anywhere. "Where is your mother?" he asked the boys.
"We killed her," Wild Boy said proudly. "She was a witch. Look up on the roof and you will see her head."
