The Reindeer People Read online

  ‘Hey!’ the old man exclaimed in surprise. Heckram forced a frozen grin to his face and dropped the wolf marker into the hand that opened to receive it.

  ‘You’ve caught me, fair enough,’ Heckram conceded. As Kuoljok grinned and scooped the markers and dice into their little leather bag, Heckram rose. He stretched, his fingertips brushing the rafters of the hut.

  ‘Elsa has been gone a while, hasn’t she? I thought she was just going to the spring.’ He idly touched his fingertips to the long fibers of beaten root that she had hung to dry. They came away blue.

  ‘Don’t touch that!’ scolded Ristin. ‘You’ll spoil her work. No doubt Elsa ran into someone and has stopped to talk. Don’t fret so much over her. You’re joined now! Surely you can be apart for a few moments.’

  ‘It just seemed that she had been gone a long time,’ he said lamely.

  ‘So it does,’ said Missa sagely. ‘Put your mind at rest, then, Heckram. Go and fetch her.’ Heckram didn’t miss the conspiratorial look that passed between the two mothers. Had not they once been young women finding an excuse to be alone under the crisp winter sky with a handsome young man? ‘And the two of you might bring some of the good blood sausage from the meat rack. A bite or two would taste good this evening,’ Missa added.

  ‘Mind you don’t kiss her, Heckram. You’d be playing right into her hands,’ Kuoljok suggested wryly, with a look that said that women were not the only ones who played such games.

  Heckram snorted noncommittally and shrugged into his heavy tunic. Since he and Elsa had joined, they treated him more as a child than as a man. He, who was several years past the age when most herdmen wed, was addressed as if he were a moonstruck youth. It was but one more thing that rankled this evening. One more goad he would not respond to.

  Pushing the flap aside, he stepped out into the night. The winter camp was quiet. Evening chores were done and folk were snug inside their huts. The village dogs slept close to the doorflaps of their owners’ huts, savoring the warmth that leaked out. Heckram stretched in the chill night, drawing in a deep lungful of the cold night air. There was a moon tonight, nearly full. The snow reflected its silvering light, painting a world of blacks and silvers and grays. His kneeboots crunched on the packed snow of the path as he passed the crouching huts. Light leaked from some of them, voices flowing out with it to warm the night. One dog stretched and rose to greet him as he passed. A quick pat and a quiet word settled the animal again. He passed his own hut, silent in the darkness.

  The spring was at the far end of the village, set in a tangle of willows. No huts were built close to it, for in spring the ground became soggy muck hidden by a waving forest of reeds and grasses. Only the freezes of winter reduced its flow and tamed it. The cold water welled up from the earth, black and chill, in a still pool no wider across than a man’s two strides. It flowed away in a stream now covered by ice and a layer of smooth snow. But the herdfolk kept open this one circle of water, where they might fill their buckets.

  Elsa knelt by the stream, almost hidden in the shadows of the surrounding willows. Her bucket lay empty at her side, and she stared at the black circle of water. Heckram wondered what could fascinate her so, to sink in the snow, so lightly clad, and stare at the water. ‘Elsa?’ he called softly, not wishing to startle her. She made a guttural sound. Her head swung slowly to face him.

  ‘Elsa!’ he cried, and the cold night swallowed his horrified cry and gaped over him for more. The moonlight was gentle as it touched her, but its shadows could not hide the ruin of her face. Her jaw sagged awry and the darkness that dripped from her open mouth stained the front of her shirt. She lifted a hand to him. White fingerbones flashed an instant in the moonlight; then her hand fell into the white snow beside her. Darkness spread from it.

  There was no way to be gentle enough. She cried out wordlessly as he lifted her and her legs flailed him with her pain. Running would have jarred her, but his soul fled ahead of him, racing between the long row of sod huts. He couldn’t find a voice to call for help, to raise an alarm. They were unprepared when he kicked the tent flap aside and entered the hut. The heads turned slowly, the faces froze as he knelt before them and offered them the broken body their daughter’s soul was trapped in. For a long teetering instant, the world balanced in silence.

  Then it came crashing back against him, like a roar of wind down a narrow valley, like the merciless rushing of a spring-thawed river.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Put her here! Gently, gently! Oh, her hand!’

  ‘Cold water. Clean bandages. She’s shivering, cover her. Elsa, Elsa. Lie still, little one, lie still. You are safe now. Give me some cold water!’

  ‘I left the bucket by the spring,’ Heckram said stupidly. He stared at Elsa. If an avalanche had caught her up and swept her through trees, then she might have looked this way. If she had been caught in the sudden roar of a spring flood and bashed against rocks and debris, then he would have expected this. But she had only gone to fetch a bucket of water, from their own village spring at night. He stared at her, unable to grasp the reality.

  Something had struck the side of her head. It had torn her jaw loose from its hinges so that she gaped stupidly at nothing. The flesh had torn from the corner of her mouth up into her cheek. The flow of blood stained her cheek red and dripped on her chest. He had an almost uncontrollable urge to reach over and shut her mouth for her, to put her face back together. A horrid little sound came from it with each breath she expelled. A useless, hopeless little cry. One arm hung unnaturally from a shoulder that sagged in its socket. The hand of the other arm seemed scarcely a hand anymore.

  ‘Heckram!’ His mother’s voice crashed against him; her hands grabbed his face and shook him. ‘You can’t just stand here. Go wake Lasse and send him for the healer. Then get Capiam. Report this to him. No bear did this. This is man’s evil. Hurry!’

  He felt himself pushed from the hut back into the dark and bloody night. He stood, blinking stupidly, taking in the image of Kuoljok hastening from the spring with a bucket that slopped water at every step of the old man’s shambling trot. ‘Elsa, Elsa,’ he was panting as he ran, quavering out the helpless cry. The sound galvanized Heckram. He found himself running through the night, fleeing before Kuoljok could speak to him.

  His pulkor. His mother’s harke, a young, strong animal that was still but half trained. But Britsi was fleet and had stamina. Tonight Heckram was not gentling and coaxing. When the skittish Britsi leaped away from him, he seized him roughly by his lower jaw. Britsi tried to rear up on his hind legs and lash out with his front legs, but Heckram was merciless. He dragged the reindeer down to a stand.

  The harness went on quickly, the leather collar slung over his neck and the ends pulled down over his breast and between his forelegs. Behind the forelegs it was fastened to the reins, which then ran back between his hind legs to the pulkor. Britsi danced as Heckram leaped into the pulkor and then the reindeer was off, streaking half terrified through the snowy night. The pulkor careened after him, Heckram shouting encouragement.

  The keeled wooden sled slid smoothly behind the animal down the packed-snow trail that ran the length of the village. It was slower going when Britsi took to the deeper, less packed snow outside the village. The darkness of the forest closed in around them as they left the village behind. Heckram tried to keep to the more sheltered parts of the hillsides, avoiding the deepest snow where Britsi would have floundered to a walk.

  The night was still but for their passage. He struck the vague trail made by their skis the last time they had visited the healer. An image of Elsa struggling to tuck her thick hair back under her cap. He shook it from his mind. Lasse had been to see Tillu twice since then, once for a flux remedy and once to fetch a tonic for his grandmother. The snow was packed enough to take the reindeer’s weight. The pulkor slid smoothly and silently in Britsi’s wake.

  The forest stretched endlessly around him and ahead of him. It was made of the night and his
fear, and his unacknowledged guilt lurked in it, as intangible and penetrating as fog.

  At the bottoms of the vales they raced through willows and alder that reached scraggling hands toward him. The frosted tips of the branches glistened white as fingerbones in the moonlight. Then up the side of the hill, through a stratum of ghostly birches, naked and grieving, and into the dark and forbidding pines with their lowering branches. The path seemed endless and he cursed Britsi and yanked the reins whenever the animal stepped from the path and faltered. Then they started a long descent of a gentle hill, and the feeble firelight that leaked from Tillu’s worn tent was like a beacon of hope to him. ‘Tillu! Tillu the Healer!’ he cried, his voice breaking against the cold black night.

  Sleep had begun to close over her like a soft blanket when she heard the anguished roar from outside her tent. She rose hastily, pushing the hair back from her eyes and belting her nightrobe more tightly around herself as she stepped quickly through the door.

  The scene that met her eyes was like a tapestry of some strange fable. A reindeer rushed down the hillside toward her while behind it came a man atop a sliding log. She recognized Heckram’s voice, and as he came closer she caught the gist of his words. ‘Elsa … hurt … must come.’ She darted back into her tent and was pulling on her clothes when he burst through the tent flap, still shouting. His hair was wild, his eyes frantic as he caught at her arm. She seized his hands firmly in both of hers and spoke calmly.

  ‘I have to get my medicine bag and waken Kerlew. Calm down. What’s happened?’

  He let go of her, but the words tumbled from his lips so rapidly that she could not decipher them through his accent. All traces of his former restraint were gone. His shouting awakened Kerlew, who sat up in his sleeping skins and looked about, bewildered. Tillu stepped past him to take down her bag of medicines. She checked quickly through it to make sure she had supplies of the most common herbs. But when she opened a small box to replenish those she was low on, Heckram stepped past her to slam it shut and tuck the whole box under his arm. He grabbed her by the upper arm, dragging her to the door.

  ‘Has he come to take me hunting?’ Kerlew asked hopefully, sleepily.

  ‘No. Someone at the village is hurt. Elsa, I think. I have to go to her.’ Tillu pulled her hood up against the cold.

  ‘I’ll come, too.’ The boy kicked off his blankets and reached for his leggings.

  For the first time, Heckram became cognizant of the uproar he was creating. He released Tillu’s arm and passed his hand before his eyes. He suddenly fell silent and looked from Tillu to her son in worry. He took a deep breath and tried to speak in a normal voice, but he panted out the words. ‘Kerlew, you’ll have to stay here. No room in the pulkor. Be a good boy?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘Kerlew, stay here and behave yourself,’ Tillu instructed him firmly, ‘I won’t be gone long. Go back to sleep, and I’ll be back before you wake up. You’re big enough to stay by yourself. You do it all day.’

  ‘Night’s different. What if a bear comes? What if Owl-spirit comes to steal me?’ His halting words quavered.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Tillu said firmly. ‘Those are just old tales. Just go back to sleep and I’ll be back by morning.’

  ‘All right!’ Kerlew replied savagely. He shut his jaws with a snap, but couldn’t keep his lip from trembling.

  ‘We must hurry. Elsa needs healer very much. Kerlew be brave boy. I’ll send Lasse back, to keep you company. You show him spoons, okay?’ Heckram bartered hastily as he pulled Tillu toward the door. But the boy only turned away from them.

  ‘Kerlew will be safe?’ Heckram asked as the flap fell.

  ‘I think so,’ Tillu replied, glancing back uneasily. She hoped he would do nothing foolish while she was gone. Whenever he was displeased, he acted it out in strange ways. Well, there was no time for fretting now. She found herself staring at a reindeer tied to a boat. The animal reared up on its hind legs and lashed out at them as they approached.

  Heckram seemed to find nothing strange in this. With a swiftness born of practice, he reached, grabbed the reindeer’s jaw, and brought it down. ‘Get in!’ he shouted to Tillu, gesturing at the boat. She stepped up beside it to stare hesitantly down into it. There was a nest of furs inside, and the long trailing leather strips that ran up to the reindeer’s neck. Yes, it was a boat, made of planks of wood bent and pegged together. ‘Get in!’ Heckram roared again, and she clambered in.

  She was scarcely settled before he seized the reindeer’s harness and they started off at a run up the trail. Tillu’s head was snapped back by the suddenness and she gripped the sides of the sliding boat. Pulkor, Heckram had called it. Trees, snow, and darkness slid past her at a frightening speed, all the more unnerving for the smoothness of the movement. The hind legs of the reindeer flashed very close before her, flinging up bits of snow that stung when they struck her. There was the creak and rush of the pulkor, the crunching footsteps of man and reindeer on the trail, and the black night pressing down. Tillu shivered deeper into the nest of furs.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Tillu had thought she was immune to screaming. She had heard so many kinds: the screaming of a woman in her first childbirth, cries swiftly forgotten when the babe was put in her arms; the screaming of a child, more frightened than hurt, when Tillu had to pry his grip loose from his mother to treat a badly cut lip; the startled scream of a brave man, the sound bursting from him when the broken ends of a bone grated together. Yet they were nothing compared to the constant mewling that flowed from Elsa’s torn mouth with every breath she expelled. Heckram’s panted words had not prepared Tillu for this.She shivered with apprehension and chill as Heckram thrust her before him into the sod hut. His faith in her was pathetically apparent as he pulled her toward the injured woman. His face was red and white from his run, his chest still heaving with exertion. There was hope in his dark eyes. She dreaded it. ‘The healer is here; all will be well now,’ it seemed to say. She hoped he was right.

  The two older women in the room parted and moved aside, surrendering Elsa to her. Their faces were expectant and waiting. Tillu tried to appear calm as she knelt down by Elsa. Her medicine bag slipped from her grip to the floor beside her. Heckram stepped forward to set the chest of extra supplies beside her. He staggered as he stood upright again. Tillu felt the eyes of the women drilling into her like the spiral seeds of summer. With an effort she forced her attention to Elsa.

  It was difficult to recognize the fit and capable woman who had come to trade with her. Elsa was a huddled wreck. Tillu wondered what merciless instinct kept her conscious. Whatever had savaged her had been thorough. Tillu touched Elsa with her eyes only, cataloging those injuries she could help, and the order in which to work. There was little she could do for the broken jaw and torn cheek other than to place them into their former positions and hope the body could heal itself. Whether she would ever again speak normally, Tillu could not tell. From the way one arm lay, it was dislocated at the shoulder. The hand on the other arm was a puzzle; it looked both sliced and broken. Later, when the broken pieces of Elsa’s knife were found by the spring, Tillu would realize that these injuries had been caused by her desperate struggle to keep her weapon, to no avail.

  Her torn clothing might hide other injuries, but these were the wounds that most frightened the others. Spilled blood and broken bones were a fearsome thing to look on. But healers learned to fear most the secret hurts, the ones that damaged the hidden places of the body and defied healing. Places where the eyes could not see, or the fingers touch. Tillu would wait to be sure before she told them of her own fear. She had not seen it all that often. Once, it had been a child who had tumbled down a hillside and struck his head on a rock. Another time it was a man who had received a glancing blow from a rival’s club. Tillu did not like to remember them. They had been long in dying. First there was the slight bulging of the eyes, such as she thought she detected in Elsa. Later the pressure within the skull would build, distort
ing the face with swelling. No healer could cure it, though she had tried, with cold compresses and bleeding and warm poultices on the wound. It was a killing thing, mysteriously caused by a blow to the head. An unseen, unhealable injury.

  Heckram sank slowly down beside her, kneeling on the hides right at Tillu’s elbow. His body blocked her light, his quick panting breath distracted and unnerved her. As she reached a hand toward Elsa, he gasped, anticipating his woman’s pain.

  Tillu turned to him and gripped him by the shoulder. ‘Heckram. You’re in my way.’ She spoke kindly but firmly. He didn’t hear her. She turned to the women, glad to distract them. ‘Take him away. Soup. Sleep. Or he’ll be sick.’ Her eyes caught on an old man in the comer who rocked himself wordlessly, helplessly, his eyes vacant. ‘That one, too. Take away from here, out of my way. Big help to me.’

  The alacrity with which the men were seized and urged from the tent was an indication of how helpless the two women had felt, and how badly they needed to help. As soon as the flap fell behind them, Tillu turned back to Elsa. She must work swiftly now, to get the worst of her pain-causing done while they were not here to witness it. ‘Elsa? Elsa?’ she asked, but there was no sign the woman knew she was there. There was only the sound that welled from her agony. Tillu debated whether to give her a soporific before she began. Reluctantly, she decided against it. The semiconscious woman would have been more likely to choke than to swallow.

  Her jaw was broken in more than one place. Tillu’s deft fingers manipulated the swelling flesh, trying to align the hidden fragments of bone. She eased the jaw back into an approximation of where it belonged and smoothed the ragged edges of torn flesh together. Someone had had the sense to leave water warming by the fire, and snow water melting by the door. Tillu chose the warm water for this. She wiped the wound carefully, ignoring the sounds of the woman she worked on. A careful binding held flesh and jaw in place. There. She looked better now, but a glance at her eyes told Tillu it would make no difference. Elsa was going to die.