Thomas - Reindeer Moon

Copyright 1987 by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall, date.

Reindeer Moon.

A Peter Davison Book.

Bibliography: p.

I. Title.

PS 3570. H 56253 R 4 1987 813'.54 86-18530
ISBN 0-395-42112-8

e ISBN 978-0-544-40988-0
v1.0315

The poem on page is reprinted with permission of Macmillan Publishing Company from In These Mountains by Peter Sacks. Copyright 1986 by Peter Sacks. Originally appeared in Seneca Review.

Map and kinship chart by Leslie Evans.

TO STEVE
LORNA AND MARION
ROBERT AND STEPHANIE
JOSS AND RAMSAY
INGRID, DAVID, ZOE, AND THE TWINS

Even if all the hawks in the world were to vanish, their image would still sleep in the soul of the chick.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL

The Way of the Animal Powers

Master, you know that I sit waiting for the moon

to turn back for me, that I may return

to my place. That I may listen again

to my peoples stories, which come from

a long way off....

PETER SACKS
In These Mountains

Graylags Family

G RAYLAG , headman of the lodge on the Char

I NA , Graylags elder wife

T EAL , a shaman, Graylags younger wife

T IMU , a young man, son of Graylag and a deceased wife

E LHO , a young man, son of Graylag and Teal

O WL , Timus sister

C RANE , Owls husband

R AVEN , son of Graylags deceased brother

B ISTI , Ravens wife

W HITE F OX , a young boy, son of Raven and Bisti

J UNCO , White Foxs sister

Ahis Family

A HI , brother of Graylags wife Ina

L APWING , Ahis wife

Y OI , Lapwings sister and co-wife

Y ANAN , daughter of Ahi and Lapwing

M ERI , Yanans sister

K AMAS , The Frog, son of Ina and her first husband, Marmot

H ENNO , The Stick, The Frogs brother

Mammoth Hunters

S WIFT , headman of the mammoth hunters

R IN , Swifts half-sister

A NKHI , Swifts young kinswoman

E THIS , Ankhis sister

People at the Fire River

B LACK W OLF , elderly woman, sister of Sali Shaman

E IDER , Black Wolfs daughter

O TTER , Yois second husband

K AKIM , The Frogs stepson

Spirits

M ARMOT , a spirit-helper, elder brother of Graylag

G OLDENEYE , a spirit-helper, younger brother of Graylag

S ALI S HAMAN , Teals mother

M Y STORY ISNT BIG like the stories some of the mammoth hunter men could tell. Mine doesnt end with a huge pile of meat. My story has no captured women, only the gifts of a marriage exchange, and no battles, only arguments about the gifts. My story isnt very long, and perhaps lacks wisdom, since the beginning was told me by other people and the end came sooner than I wanted. I was still a young woman when I left the world of the living and became a spirit of the dead.

So there was much about life I never learned. Still, I knew where all the berries grew, and how to find the seeds hamsters store in their burrows. Better than most of the men, I knew the animals who eat grass and the animals who go hunting. I remember the children who lived and the children who didnt, the women who bore those children bravely or in fear, and men I liked and men who scared me. I was scared by some of the mammoth hunters the first time I saw themby those with pale eyes and grass-colored hair. To me, they looked in every way like lions. I was shocked the first time I met such people. My aunt agreed to marry one of them before she saw him, and then was very rude because his looks gave her such a surprise.

Thinking of his pale eyes watching me, I remember a big pile of meat in my story after all. And a big swarm of flies. But when we got the meat we already had plenty of other food, so I dont think about the pile as often, say, as I think about a scrap of marrow from a tigers kill we found when we were starving.

I

M Y NAME WAS YANAN and my story began where it ended, in Graylags lodge on the highest terrace above the north bank of the Char River. The lodge was big, with two smokeholes instead of one, and very well made, the best Ive ever seen. Graylag built it with his three brothers before his brothers died, while they were all still young. The pit of the floor was dug deep. The walls were braced with the legbones of mammoths, which in turn were braced with boulders and wound with spruce branches tied on with strips of reindeer hide, which shrinks when wet, so wind didnt move the lodge and rain didnt make it leak. Water drew it tight.

The arch of the roof was made of cast antlers forced together as if the deer were fighting, and was so high that only a few of the men had to stoop when they stood up. Over the spruce branches and antlers were hides, and over the hides were strips of sod. The lodge was so strong that people, or any amount of snow, could stand on it without breaking it, and so thick that weather came in only through the smokeholes. Thieving animals never came in, since we kept a dead spruce to pull, butt end first, into the door of the coldtrap.

On top of the lodge Graylag and his brothers put a wonderful thing, a group of very long antlers from huge spotted deer almost never seen around the Char. Each antler was almost as long as the lodge, and standing on it, they looked like a grove of birch on a low hill, or like a herd of spotted deer lying down. The antlers stood out against the sky and could be seen far up and down the rivera sight that always told us we were reaching home.

Behind the lodge, a low cliff rose to the plain, so storms from the north blew over us and the south-facing rock cast sunlight on the lodge all day. Below the lodge, other terraces fell away to the floodplain of the river, where roe deer and sometimes horses browsed the willow scrub. The river was fast and shallow, and rushed around boulders so, except in the coldest part of winter, holes of open water showed in the ice. From our lookout in front of the lodge, we could watch for red deer or horses or reindeer following their trails down the terraces to drink.

On the south side of the river grew a wide spruce forest where bearded lichen hung from the little trees. In winter we hunted the reindeer who sheltered among the trees eating the lichen until The Woman Ohun sent them on their long spring walk back to the open plains. The forest was crossed through and through with trails, those made by reindeer and also by us, since in winter Graylag made the young people of the lodge gather firewood every day.

In the east, where the river rose, stood a range of hills with larches and pines on their south slopes. The hills were far, almost half a days walk from the lodge, yet when Graylag and the other men could not kill reindeer, we went to these hills to gather pine nuts and to look for the dens of sleeping bears. When we dug out a bear and killed it, its meat fed us for a long time, perhaps the length of a moon.