Chapter 8
At evening council, best thing all round was Donkeys. Yaret was quite touched. Dil obviously meant it – he’d already had a go at grooming them, which Dolm had not appreciated – but the others, she suspected, named the donkeys as best thing of the day only because they knew that Dolm and Nuolo meant so much to her. Even Lo said “The donkeys,” in her thin, hardly-there voice, while Renna gave the merest nod. And the donkeys couldn’t mean anything to Lo.
The two new girls had managed the walk to evening council in the burial ground for four days now. They looked as if they didn’t really understand proceedings, although evening council should have been a mainstay of any family in Obandiro. Even Ondro sat alertly through it with his bland appreciative smile.
Yaret had already had a quick word with Ondro, so when it came to talking about the next day’s activities she was prepared for the plan that he put forward. He got it in first, before Dil could say anything about his own plans for the donkeys, or the others suggest their ideas for the coming winterfest, which they had decided should begin on the next day. It would not be a luxurious winterfest but Yaret hoped it would not be a miserable one either. The return of the donkeys was a cheerful start.
“Tomorrow,” Ondro said to the small semicircle of people in the burial ground, amidst the scattering of snow, “I plan to leave early – before dawn – go back to my hut, and search for my dogs because I still haven’t seen them since they ran off from the darkburns. And I’m hoping to find a sheep or two. Well, I’ll find lots of sheep, but I’ll be looking for a weak one.”
“What for?” said Dil.
“For food,” said Ondro. “There are always one or two weak ones. Kinder to slaughter them before the snow does.”
“Will you need the donkeys?”
“I’ll take the horse,” said Ondro, “and I’ll take someone to ride it as I’m not a great rider. Myself, I’d sooner walk. I thought of taking Charo but I think we shouldn’t have both men leave town at the same time. One of us should stay here.” This phrasing had been Yaret’s suggestion, so she was pleased to see that Charo sat up a little straighter. “I’ll take Shuli,” Ondro said.
“But I – oh well, all right,” said Shuli. That also was pleasing. And when Charo announced that he was going to the south beet field to dig up any beets he could find, and the others all said they’d help, her pleasure was complete. It was what she would have suggested herself but it was better for the idea to come from Charo.
They only had the one spade and one fork – now fitted with new handles – but they had the metal spikes to dig with too. Dil said he could fill up sacks and put them on the donkeys. Lo said that she and Renna could help. Although Yaret could not imagine the new girls picking even one heavy beet, she nodded. At least it would get them out and into the fresh air. Once the snows arrived fully the sisters would be confined to the cellars until they were stronger. But the northern sky, though bulbous with grey clouds, did not yet have the lowering blankness that presaged heavy snow.
“Well, as for me,” she said, “tomorrow I’ll be hunting. From the woods today I saw deer on the south-side. If the deer are returning at last, I think I should try and get us at least one before they disappear again.”
“Where do you think they all went?” asked Dil.
“Somewhere less smoky. But I think wildlife in general is returning. I’ve noticed the odd rabbit too.”
“Is the deer for winterfest?”
“For afterwards. Venison is best hung. That will take a week, or longer, probably, in this cold weather.”
So the first day of winterfest was planned. Although nobody was sure of the exact date, they had all checked the winterstones beyond the burial ground and had agreed that the shadows showed the sun was practically at its lowest. The second and third days of winterfest, on either side of the longest night of the year, would be the actual feasting days when not much work would get done. There wasn’t a great deal to feast on, so they would have to fill the hours of darkness with songs and games and stories.
Yaret felt a weary relief at the general good mood, and made sure to keep her own face bright. It was not so difficult now; she needed only to remember the donkeys and the smile would come. There was a lot to think about, and much of it was hopeful.
After their dinner of beans and roots there was singing that night in the cellar: she had taught them Madeo’s Snow Song, with Dil and Elket adding their own harmonies. They were a musical pair and the sound was sweet. Yaret played her gourd and Ondro nodded along and tapped on a barrel, while Lo and Renna listened intently but did not sing.
When they had arrived Renna had moved like an old woman. She seemed younger now, younger even than her seventeen years, although still silent. Lo had offered to make spice cakes tomorrow evening, although the only spices they had found in the cellars were of dubious age and smelt of dust. But nobody would complain about that.
Yes, there was much to be cheerful about. Yet that night, when Yaret lay down on her heather-filled sacking, feeling the inadequate warmth radiate from the hot stones, hearing the others breathing themselves into sleep, all that she could see were her omissions and mistakes lined up to reproach her.
I don’t need any shining walls, she thought: I can’t forget them. The things I should have said to Elket today and didn’t. The Ulthared I shouldn’t have said and did. I ought to have been paying more attention to Charo. Thank goodness for Ondro, although I burden him with too much work as well. I should have started digging beets three days ago. And I think I’ve been feeding the new girls the wrong things.
I promised Shuli a bow, yet I still haven’t managed to make a decent one. Ash or hazel? Neither that I’ve made so far is good enough. I can’t get the tension right, one’s too stiff and the other’s too slack. And they’re both too basic, because there’s nothing to shape them with apart from my knife and Ondro’s little hatchet. Have to adjust one somehow, give it to Shuli for winterfest. And then start on a longer one for Charo.
And we need arrows. I ought to try and knap some arrowheads, if I can remember how. Still haven’t sorted out the other gifts. Dil’s easy, he’s got the donkeys. Charo and Elket can have the new cloaks from the woollen cloth out of the dye-pit, if I can get them finished. Have to do that the second day. Try and get the spindles for the girls rubbed down tomorrow. Haven’t even thought about Ondro. I’m so tired. Need to sleep.
But all my errors and omissions. No end to them, standing in the corners to accuse me. Will I have to face them all over again, once I’m dead? I hope not. It’s bad enough now. Not worth dying just yet. Have to make things better first. The Ulthared doesn’t help there: I never learnt it all. No time.
All the Ulthared that Gramma Thuli or her friends ought to have told me when I reached thirty, I’ll never know it now. Such a huge gap… such a lonely, empty space. Sometimes they seem to all stand at my shoulder but at other times, too often, there is no-one there, just the vastness of eternal silence. No Ulthared. No words. But I must not forget. My worst omission would be to forget them.
She listened to the dark, the sleepers’ breath against the endless night. At least they were alive, she told herself. They held her to life because otherwise there would be nothing here to live for.
Next day arrived, as it always did; and Yaret was grateful. While the sky was still grey she performed Haedath with the others, and hoped Shuli was performing it in the second cellar with the new girls as she’d been asked to do.
Shuli was already at the trapdoor minutes later, ready to leave and waiting impatiently for Ondro to pull on his boots. Yaret gave them each a slice of porridge and some biscuit and apples for their day. Shuli was about to grab the food and go, when she hesitated.
“I meant to tell you,” she said, “I found another cellar on the north-side.”
“Well done. Any good?”
“Could be,” said Shuli, grinning. “I thought I’d give it everyone for winterfest.” Then Ondro was ready and they left to fetch the horse and set out on their trip.
The others put on all the clothes they had and went out to the south-side field. Although the beet tops were whitened with frost and thin snow, ice had not yet bitten very far into the ground. Below the crust the earth was hard but not frozen solid as it would be deeper into winter. Charo and Elket attacked it with the spade and fork; thankfully the new handles seemed to hold. The others used metal fencing spikes to loosen the ground around the beets. Even Renna tried to dig although her spike barely made a mark on the unyielding soil.
Yaret left them to it and walked further south, over a small rise. When she paused at the top and looked back at the beet-diggers, they were all bent towards the ground, pointing, wielding their tools, Lo with skirts hitched up. They looked almost picturesque against the snow.
Yaret studied them for a long moment, fixing the image in her mind. She had a sense that everything was just about to change but could not imagine how.
She glanced up at the sky – ice-blue – and then headed on towards the copse where she had seen the deer. It had not been touched by fire, and was still thick with dead leaves and twined with bramble stems, their withered berries small and black. There would probably be cobnuts in there if she could only reach them. She could hear movement; an irregular rustle from within, so she stepped back again to stand behind a lone tree a short distance away. The beet-diggers were just out of sight downwind. She nocked an arrow to her bow and waited.
Time passed. She thought about the coming cold, the need to gather in more wood before it snowed again. Make warmer bedding. Find more heather. Ask Ondro about fleeces.
There was another sudden rustle and a crackle of twigs. Yaret drew her bow. A thrush called in strident, sharp alarm – and out from the copse bounded a deer, a young stag, coming fast towards her. She stepped out from behind her tree, aimed, shot. In the side of the neck. The stag stumbled for a few paces but stayed on its feet. As it veered away, still running, she nocked another arrow and began to run after it.
And she stopped again, after only half a dozen steps, because something else was happening in the copse. The trees were swaying, and there was a crash. That was no deer, she thought, in alarm and puzzlement, but something much more massive and less shy.
Then, with the sound of rending branches, a huge, bulky figure emerged to shamble towards her on all fours. It was a bear. A big one. Grey.
Her mind began to bounce around, thinking, What’s it doing here and not up north? Luckily her body had had the instinctive sense to freeze instantly. She stood still with bow half-drawn; the bear paused, standing squarely on all fours, its huge feet turned in, and frowned at her.
Shoot it, she thought. Big target. Can’t miss.
But she knew one arrow would not kill a bear unless she could get it in the eye. Probably not even then. It would just become enraged and charge.
And if she simply ran away it would charge after her. She knew she ought to shout and make a noise – bang something – but she had nothing to bang and she was not big enough to impress a bear.
There was one noise she had to make. Without moving, she gave the Week, week signal twice, and hoped the beet-pickers would hear it over the rise.
She needed to stop the bear from going that way. It was still studying her, deciding if she was a threat. If she kept still it might turn round and leave. If it decided to attack her she would have to shoot at it, then run.
The bear shook its head as if annoyed by invisible flies. Then it began to walk unevenly towards her. Its body rolled in a huge swagger.
Don’t run yet, she told herself. When there’s no choice, run to the right – away from the beet-pickers. But the foot will slow me down. Can’t outrun an angry bear in any case. Likely to get mauled. Better me than them.
Was it, though? They needed her. How could they do without her?
Then don’t get mauled.
But such a reprieve did not seem likely. There could be no good outcome: for the bear was still advancing, its nose pointing at her, its gait heavy and intent. It began to pick up speed. She could smell it now, a rank, meaty, pungent smell.
So this is it, she thought, the change that had to come. She raised her bow.
The bear lifted its head. But now it was looking not at her, but at something to the side, behind her. It shook itself: slowed its pace; and then stopped altogether.
A second later there was a clamour from the rise behind her – raucous shouts, thumps, clangs and bangs. When she risked a glance over her shoulder she saw all five of them in a row, at arm’s length from each other, yelling and clattering together spikes and tools and stones. Their arms were high in the air as they advanced, stamping the ground.
The bear looked at them and considered. They kept coming. The bear kept considering. Its head flicked aside once; twice.
Then it slowly turned round with a lot of grunting and – in no hurry – ambled with its heavy rolling tread back to the copse. There was more tearing and crunching of wood as it gradually disappeared into the thicket.
Meanwhile the beet-diggers kept noisily moving forwards. They held their line until they were level with her. Dil was in the middle, wide-eyed but shouting bravely. One of the new girls was on either side of him. She had never seen them look so animated. Charo was nearest her, and Elket at the far end, looking furious.
Charo lowered a hand and they all stopped.
“Now we all walk backwards,” he said, “slowly. If it comes out again we shout and bang until it goes away.”
They all obeyed him. Yaret joined the end of the line, her bow fully drawn and aimed towards the copse. They walked steadily backwards up to the top of the rise without needing to shout again – and then, as they descended on the other side, the line broke up. They retreated to the safety of the beet-field in more haste.
“Why didn’t you just shoot it?” Charo asked Yaret. His face was flushed and angry, although not, she thought, with her. Angry at his own fear, maybe.
“One arrow won’t kill a bear,” she answered. “And it won’t give you time for two.”
“We saw the deer run past, and then I heard your alarm call, so I ran up the hill to see what it was for.” The wounded deer was lying on the ground beyond the beet-field, vainly floundering in its endeavours to get up.
Yaret hesitated. She ought to tell Charo sternly that he shouldn’t have come to look. They should have all found somewhere safe to hide.
Instead she said, “Thank you. You probably just saved my life.”
“It was Lo who told us what to do.”
“We had a bear once that got in with our sheep,” said Lo. She looked almost feverishly excited.
Yaret nodded. “Thank you, Lo. Thank you all.” She bowed to each of them.
Then she walked over to the struggling deer and put an end to its struggles. Her heart was thumping as she said Oveyn. The others could so easily have been saying it now for her. Yet everything was the same. Nothing after all had changed, except for a bear still lurking in the thicket.
But although her heart would not stop pounding, her hands were steady as she gutted the deer on the spot. She kept the liver and heart to eat that evening. The rest of the offal she buried deep in the holes dug free of beets, fearing that it might attract the bear again – or even wolves. If a grey bear had travelled all this way south, who was to say that others wouldn’t follow? Or that wolves wouldn’t come prowling from the wastes?
She did not tell this thought to the others, however, merely advising that they should all dig and gather as many of the beets and greentops today as they possibly could.
“Why? Will the bear come back?” asked Elket.
“It’ll probably roam around for a while. We’ll have to be careful, and on no account should we leave any food out in the open – either here or back in town. We don’t want to encourage it.”
So they set Dil on the rise as look-out while they dug and packed the sacks with beets, and urgently ferried them on the donkeys back and forth to town.
By the time the light was beginning to fall, the bear had not been seen again, and the smaller cellar was stacked high with beets all along one wall. It made the place smell strongly of earth, and Yaret feared that Lo and Renna would complain. But Lo said she did not mind, and Renna of course said nothing.
It was Shuli who grumbled when she and Ondro returned shortly afterwards.
“It’ll be like sleeping underground! I’ll go and spend the night in my new cellar.”
“Not on your own,” said Yaret. “If it’s on the north-side it’s too far away.”
“All right – I’ll stay here tonight. But tomorrow I want to show my new cellar to everyone. You can see what you think then,” said Shuli.
“Very well. You seem to have had a successful day.”
For Shuli and Ondro had returned with two sheep – one dead, for eating (“It was nearly dead anyway,” said Ondro philosophically) and one that was heavy with a lamb that would be born too early and would die if it were left up on the hill.
So they cooked and ate that evening with a heavily pregnant sheep for company. It huddled in the corner of the fireplace house, while they roasted the deer’s heart and liver and broiled a pan of wintergreens.
Ondro chopped up some roots for the sheep and gave it an armful of grass, having brought a sackful home on the horse. He had failed to find his dogs, but otherwise seemed happy. It was useful to have somebody always so good-humoured. Even at the news of the bear Ondro merely raised his eyebrows and nodded. So perhaps it was not the momentous event that she had thought it was.
Since the night was fine but cold they held the evening council where they were, by the glowing fire with the sheep mooching disconsolately in the background. The others seemed to expect Yaret to lead the council. Although her mind was busy reliving the bear over and over again, she kept her words brief and simple.
She suggested a shorter version of the council for tonight: no news was necessary, just best thing and giving thanks, which was traditional before winterfest. There were no plans for tomorrow, again because it was winterfest; and they all knew what winterfest should be.
And so much of it, thought Yaret, would be missing.