The Reindeer People Read online

  ‘They came while you were gone, to pay for your healing the arrow-shot man.’ Kerlew’s explanation limped along in his usual halting way. ‘I’ve been showing him the spoons I made. He likes the goose one best.’

  Kerlew waved the ladle at her as he spoke. This was his latest creation, with the long curving handle possessing two knots and a stub at the end that suggested a goose’s eyes and bill at the end of its long neck.

  ‘Tillu the healer,’ Heckram said. ‘Elsa my friend.’

  Tillu nodded to the introduction, not moving. She had not expected him to return and pay her. Their village must be closer than she thought. She covered her confusion by unloading the game bag from her waist and hanging her bow and quiver from its hook.

  ‘Lasse is better?’ she asked as she turned back.

  ‘Much better.’ Heckram’s teeth were very white in his wind-bronzed face.

  ‘Good. Good.’ Her profession came to the forefront, rescuing them both from awkwardness as she asked, ‘New bandage? Swell, bleed, hot?’

  ‘New bandage,’ he assured her. ‘Wound closed. Arm moves, little pain.’

  ‘Good, good.’ She bobbed her head like a courting duck.

  ‘You sound like you’re talking to a baby,’ Kerlew said in disgust.

  Heckram caught the gist of his words, for he laughed as he replied, ‘Makes easy to understand.’

  And you, don’t be rude. It’s better to be quiet and learn manners when you are young,’ Tillu suggested firmly.

  Kerlew hung his head and retreated. Heckram hid a grin at the familiar rebuke. Even if he had not been able to decipher most of Tillu’s words, he would have known what she said. It was a rebuke he had often heard himself when a child. Tillu sensed that he shielded the boy from further scolding with a change of subject.

  ‘Pay healing,’ he said to Tillu. He gestured to a hide that had been rolled into a pack. Stooping, he unfastened the knots of sinew and unrolled it, revealing various smaller bundles within. Their wrappings were cloth of woven fiber, some dyed in bright colors. He tapped each as he spoke. ‘Fish. Cheese. Reindeer.’ He paused and looked up at her as if asking her to make her choice. Perhaps he wanted her to choose what she would take for the healing. She didn’t hesitate. She and Kerlew both had a permanent craving for fat of any kind.

  ‘Cheese.’ She smiled as she copied his inflection, remembering his word for it from the last time he had been here.

  ‘Cheese,’ he agreed uncertainly, trying to understand why she had repeated it. Then he shrugged, rolled up the hide with its smaller packages, and offered it to her.

  ‘All?’ she asked, stunned by the size of the offering.

  ‘For Lasse,’ he explained.

  ‘Too much,’ she refused quickly.

  He shrugged innocently at her words, but she was suddenly certain that he was pretending not to understand her. ‘For Lasse,’ he repeated slowly. ‘You healed him. I pay.’ He kept his eyes from hers as he set the bundle down on her pallet.

  Tillu hesitated, but Kerlew’s eyes were on her with mute appeal in them. ‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly, but Heckram grinned at the boy as if they shared a secret. All stood about silently for an awkward moment.

  Then Elsa spoke. ‘I come, trade?’

  ‘Trade?’ Tillu asked, puzzled. She had not expected the woman to speak. Was not this Heckram’s woman? She glanced toward Heckram to see his reaction. She was accustomed to men handling all such negotiations. But Heckram seemed engrossed in some talk with Kerlew.

  ‘Old hurt.’ Elsa was not paying the least attention to her man. Tillu turned back to her words. ‘Fall into river, hit rock. Long time ago.’ The young woman put a hand to the small of her back, then to her shoulder, miming pain.

  ‘Cold, wet day? Swell?’ Tillu asked.

  Elsa nodded quickly at each of Tillu’s questions. Tillu pointed to her knuckles and wrist. ‘Swell, hurt here, also?’

  ‘No.’ Again she touched the small of her back, and her shoulder. ‘Only shoulder, only back. Fall down, long time ago.’

  ‘Elsa work hard? Lift heavy loads?’

  Elsa laughed ruefully. ‘Yes. Elsa herdwoman. Hard work, heavy loads.’

  Tillu nodded back. ‘Tillu see?’

  Elsa nodded and bent to draw her heavy skin tunic off over her head. She glanced once at Heckram and the boy, and then turned her back on them to pull off her undershirt of woven wool. Stepping to her side, Tillu ran a careful hand over the shoulder. There was no indication of an injury. She hesitated, then pressed gently and finally probed at the joint. A smooth layer of muscle coated the young woman’s back. Lift heavy loads? Tillu didn’t doubt it. Her diminutive size was belied by the musculature of her shoulders and back.

  ‘Not hurt now,’ she reminded Tillu as the healer manipulated the shoulder. ‘Only cold wet days. Then ache, stiff.’

  Tillu nodded, satisfied. This was a thing she had seen before, and often. Her mind was working swiftly. She had some herbs that would make a tea for that kind of pain. She had others that would work even better if they were blended with fat into a greasy ointment. But fat was something she didn’t have.

  She made a sign to them to wait and went to the back of the tent for her medicine box. Elsa pulled her shirt back on as Tillu mixed the herbs and placed them into a pouch of dried intestine. ‘Mix a little of these with hot water and let them soak, oh, just until the leaves are soft. Then drink, but only one cup, no more. Too much can be bad.’ Tillu suddenly realized that she was making no effort to make herself easily understood. She glanced up, but Elsa was nodding, seeming to understand the directions. ‘You have bear grease? Wolf fat? Glutton fat?’ she asked her.

  Elsa nodded slowly, looking puzzled.

  ‘You bring some. I make medicine to rub on. Better kind, help more. Put where it hurts only. Understand?’

  ‘Next time,’ Elsa suggested, and Tillu nodded. Next time. So there would be a next time, with people coming and going. Perhaps that was a good thing. Elsa seemed kind, and Heckram did not cuff Kerlew and push him aside. Perhaps it would work out, this limited contact.

  ‘You take for medicine?’ Elsa asked. She was offering a piece of carved horn, incised with figures painted red and black and blue. She didn’t look to Heckram for permission before offering the trade. If a woman had behaved so in Benu’s group, her man would have beaten her for her forwardness. But Heckram was not paying attention to them. Tillu took the horn slowly and turned it over in her hands.

  ‘Open here. See?’ Elsa took it back, to pull off the fitted cap. She spilled three bone needles into her hand. They were new and sharp, made by skilled hands. Tillu nodded in appreciation, and reached to touch one shyly. Elsa smiled. ‘I make them, and case. My father, no sons. Teach me to carve instead. Now he says I am better than most men at carving. I makes knives, needles, arrowheads, harness rings. Mine are not just strong. Mine are pretty.’

  Elsa recapped the carved needle case and offered it back to her. Tillu took it cautiously, to examine the carved and painted surface. The tiny decorations pleased her more than the new needles inside. After a moment, she remembered her guests.

  ‘You stay, eat?’ Tillu offered.

  Heckram shook his head as he rose from where he and Kerlew had been conferring. ‘Dark nearly here. Hurry back to talvsit. You come talvsit, sometime? People welcome healer, much work for healer. You come, sometime?’

  ‘Sometime, maybe,’ Tillu agreed slowly as Kerlew bounced in excitement at the prospect. She followed them to the door of the tent, watching in consternation as they strapped the long flat pieces of wood to their feet and took up their staves.

  ‘Skis,’ Heckram explained, smiling at her confusion. ‘Go over snow fast, not sink. You, skis?’

  Tillu shook her head, eyes wide.

  Heckram grinned at her. ‘You come talvsit, I teach you. Teach Kerlew, too. Good way to hunt, on skis. Go fast, quiet. You come to talvsit, visit, learn skis. Maybe tell about your people, your lands?’

&nb
sp; The request and offer took Tillu by surprise and she found herself flushing in confusion. Heckram smiled down at her and nodded assurance at Kerlew, who was capering with excitement.

  Elsa settled her hat firmly on her head and glanced at Heckram with annoyance. ‘Time to go,’ she suggested, a trace of irritation in her voice.

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ Tillu said awkwardly, wondering if she had somehow offended the woman. But Elsa’s smile seemed warm as she promised, ‘Next time, bear grease.’ With a wave of her hand she pushed off, sliding her feet in long steps as she coasted over the top of the snow. Tillu marveled at this strange method of traveling. There was no denying it was swift. Already Elsa had reached the base of the trees and was starting easily up the hill. Tillu expected her to have to struggle to ascend, but Elsa leaned into the walk. It looked so easy.

  ‘You come talvsit, soon,’ Heckram suggested as he pushed off to follow the woman. His leg muscles worked and the skis carried him forward effortlessly. Tillu watched him go. With his longer stride he would catch up with Elsa easily. She must have known that, for she showed no sign of waiting for him. Still, it was strange to hear a woman announce it was time to go, and stranger still to see a man follow her. Kerlew peered from the tent flap after them.

  ‘Skis,’ Tillu told him, pointing after them. ‘Would you like to do that?’

  ‘Someday I will. See my knife?’ He held up a bone knife in a sheath of woven fiber. As Tillu reached for it, he pulled it close to him. He drew the blade from the sheath and flourished it dangerously near his own face, not letting her touch it.

  ‘Where did you get that? Did the man forget it?’ she asked, hoping Kerlew had not somehow stolen it.

  ‘He didn’t forget it. He wanted the goose spoon, so we traded.’ Kerlew spun away from her touch, eluding her. ‘Now I am a man indeed!’

  ‘A knife does not make a man!’ Tillu scoffed. ‘Let me see it.’

  ‘Look, but do not touch,’ Kerlew told her with tolerant pride. ‘Carp told me to never let a woman touch my own tools. A shaman can hide his strength in his tools. I put good luck in the goose spoon for Heckram.’

  ‘Carp!’ Tillu snorted, but put her hands down.

  He held the blade steady for her inspection. It was a fine piece of work, with the handle wrapped in a leather thong to keep the grip from slipping. Away from the cutting edge, decorative lines had been etched shallowly into the blade and stained black. It was worth far more than a crudely carved spoon and Tillu chewed at her lip, pondering. What made Heckram treat Kerlew so kindly and pay her so generously for the simple healing of Lasse? She could not understand it. It made her uneasy. ‘I shall find a way to make it even with them, when next they come,’ she promised herself softly.

  ‘She will not come again.’ Kerlew spoke in a voice that was next to a whisper, but deeper. He stood suddenly still, staring up the hillside. The point of his new knife touched the base of his throat.

  The two skiers had appeared on a bare shoulder of the hillside, limned against the darkening sky. Colors had fled from the earth, taking refuge in the sky on the horizon. Branches and trunks of trees had turned black against the pale snow. The people on the crest of the hill were no more than dark shapes against the violet streak on the horizon.

  ‘She has to come back, to bring the bear grease so I can make the ointment for her shoulder,’ Tillu pointed out. ‘Move out of the way and let me back in the tent. It’s getting cold out here.’

  ‘She will not come back, for he is going to kill her. Even now the blackness swallows her down, and she is gone.’

  A chill not from cold racked Tillu’s body. Kerlew stood in the entrance of the tent, the knife held before him like a finger pointing at the far figures at the top of the hill. His eyes were full of the setting sun and the violet light made his face look like a corpse’s. Tillu could not keep herself from following his gaze. The woman’s form went over the crest of the hill, appearing to sink into blackness. The sunset splashed the surrounding snow with spreading pink and shadowed purples. As Tillu watched, the figure of the man plunged after her. A chill wind rattled branches, dropping plops of snow like irregular footsteps. She started at the sound. When she glanced back to Kerlew, he smiled up at her ingenuously.

  ‘Let’s eat all that food tonight!’ he suggested happily and vanished into the tent, his treasured knife waving in his clutched fist. * ‘Wait!’ Heckram called. Elsa had cut across the smooth face of the snow on the downside of the hill and was nearly out of sight in a thicket of willow. He gave a final glance at the lonely tent with the woman and boy standing before it, then pushed off to follow her. She was right to hurry, with the sun setting and the light changing, but he suspected she was feeling playful as well. They had always competed as children, on foot, on their skis, or in their pulkors as they raced over the snow in winter, shouting wild encouragement to the bounding harkar that pulled them. As a youth, Heckram had strained to stretch his wolf hides tighter as they dried, so they might appear larger than those of his slender young neighbor. In summer they had compared strings of fish and each measured their new calves against the other’s to see whose reindeer prospered most. Elsa was a strong herdfolk woman, competent and independent. But he had enjoyed her challenges more when they were younger.

  ‘Wait,’ he called again, and she gave in, sinking her poles at the sides of her skis as she paused.

  A sting of evening wind kissed Heckram’s cheeks as he caught up with her. The same wind, and effort, had reddened Elsa’s cheeks. Some of her thick hair had escaped from her bright cap. She shook her hands free of their mittens and tucked it back in. She had dark, liquid eyes that flashed like those of a proud little vaja. She pulled her fingers from her cap, but her hair snagged on them and spilled out worse than ever. Heckram grinned as she ruthlessly stuffed it back.

  ‘Why not just let it hang out?’ he asked as she struggled with it.

  And spend all evening picking the snarls out of it? No, thank you. Why didn’t you tell me about the boy?’

  ‘I did. I’m sure I did. I told you the healer had a son.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. Why didn’t you tell me how strange he was? Lasse said something about it, but when you said he had imagined it, I believed you. But when we first went in there, before his mother came … brrr. It was all I could do to keep from turning around and leaving. The way he looked at us!’

  ‘He’s just a boy,’ Heckram snorted, feeling more annoyed than her remarks merited. ‘Lonely, probably, and a bit hungry all the time.’

  Elsa dropped her hands from her hat and began pulling her mittens back on. ‘You actually believe that, don’t you? I guess you haven’t been around children that much. That boy is … well, he isn’t like other children. Look how he behaved when we first got there.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  Elsa shook her head at him. Taking a firm grip on her poles, she pushed off, Heckram following behind her and slightly to one side. ‘When traders from the south come to the talvsit, what do the children do?’ The rhythm of her words matched the rhythm of her pumping arms as she chose their trail through the woods.

  ‘They rush out, chattering like magpies, making the dogs bark and pester them with a thousand questions,’ Heckram replied grumpily. He felt as if she were lecturing him and he didn’t enjoy it.

  ‘That’s right. But what did that boy do when strangers came? He didn’t even come out of the tent, although he must have heard us talking outside. Not until you shouted to ask if anyone was home. Then he came silently to the tent flap and let us in, and sat down by the fire and invited us to sit, as if we had come all that way just to see him. He didn’t run to find his mother, or call for her, or even mention her until you asked where she was. And the way he showed those spoons he had carved, as if they were some kind of treasure. You know that spoon you took wasn’t worth the knife you gave him. I wonder that his mother allowed it.’

  ‘I doubt that she even knows of it yet. It was ju
st between Kerlew and me. And it wasn’t the spoons he was showing me, so much as that he had learned from what I showed him last time. As to his manners … Elsa, they aren’t herdfolk. They’re bound to have different customs. Perhaps among his people it is unseemly for children to be noisy. And I suppose, living alone as they do, he has learned to behave older than his years.’

  ‘That’s not it at all.’ Now her voice was mirroring his annoyance. ‘That boy is not right. He’s … well, not a half-wit, but only a step from it. Listen to how he talks!’

  ‘He doesn’t speak our language!’ Heckram put in irritably.

  ‘Even when he speaks to his mother in their own language, he sounds like he doesn’t speak the language! Why are you getting so upset? You act as if I were criticizing Lasse or your mother! He’s just the healer’s boy.’

  ‘Because I … I don’t know. Because, maybe, he is a bit different. As I was a bit different, with no father to teach me a man’s skills. My mother hunted and herded and fished and wove, and I worked alongside her where I could. But there was always that secret worry for me: What if something happened to her? And always the knowledge that our life was different from those around us, in ways they could never understand.’

  Elsa had gradually slowed, as Heckram’s words and pace had picked up. She was alongside him now, staring curiously at him. He clenched his jaws tight against any more words, feeling embarrassed that he had said so much. And angry. Angry at the past for the way it had been. He could not go back and change how it had been for himself. The most he could do was change how it was for Kerlew now. He glanced across at Elsa.

  ‘There’s no talking to you, is there?’ she observed. ‘A person can’t say a word to you without your taking it personally. Is everyone supposed to tiptoe around your feelings? I’m the one who should be hurt. That knife you so casually traded for a crooked spoon is the one I made for you. Remember? At the last herd sorting, I borrowed one of yours to mark a calf after mine broke. And then I broke yours, too. So I had to make two new knives, and I gave the best one to you. But look at me. Am I carrying on about it as if I am insulted because you traded it away? No. But I make one little comment, and you are mortally offended. Over such a silly thing. And Heckram, you were nothing like that boy, and you know it. As well as I know it. I was around when you were a boy, remember? And you were never as strange as that Kerlew. But if you want to carry on about someone else’s child, it’s your business. I won’t stop you. All I was trying to say is that he’s not normal. But you’ll find that out for yourself soon enough. I don’t know how Lasse can bear to hunt with you. Everything has to be so grim with you!’