lay still, and together Bakar and I let our spears drop before the dead weight broke them.
We eased our spears out of the boar’s flesh. The dogs licked up the blood round our feet. The barbed point of Bakar’s spear was broken, snapped into three pieces by the boar’s straining muscles. Bakar shrugged and said, ‘So there’s work for tomorrow, as if I needed it.’
I went to my old dog and rolled him over. His body was limp, and there was a great wound in his stomach where the boar had gored him. The soul had gone out of his eyes. The other dogs watched, tails down.
Bakar and I put our hands into the wounds we’d made, and smeared each other with the hot blood. We cupped our hands where the blood flowed, and drank. The Boar’s spirit was with us, and our hearts were his.
I took embers from my pouch, unrolled the damp moss and blew sparks on shavings of birchbark. While I got our fire going, Bakar slit the boar down the belly-line and pulled the guts aside. He cut out the liver and heart. We cut strips, held them in the flame to seal the blood, then wolfed them down. We threw the lungs to the dogs. The hunt had made us hungry, but as soon as we ate, the life-warmth of the Boar flowed into our veins and made us strong.
Bakar knew I grieved for my dog. He helped me weave a platform out of saplings and lay the dog high off the ground where the spirits would find him. We did that as if he were a man, because I knew the soul of that brave dog would wish to be among People, just as his life with me had been.
Bakar cut another sapling and we lashed the boar to it. It had taken less than half a morning to walk uphill to the Boar’s Thicket, but it took from before midday until sunset to carry the dead boar back to River Mouth Camp. Although it was downhill, we had to rest often. We changed places, and shifted the weight from one shoulder to the other. He was as great a boar as two men alone could kill, let alone carry, but that day Bakar and I did both.
When we got back, the women had known – though how you women always seem to know these things is beyond me – to line the pit and heat stones in the fire. The dogs ran ahead, barking our success. The women came out to meet us. They noticed at once that my dog was missing. Alaia cried out, wanting to know what had happened to him. We took no notice. To tell the truth I doubt if we could have carried our load another step, but we wouldn’t show weakness in front of the women. So we marched right up to the fire without speaking, and dumped the dead boar beside it.
Alaia glanced at me once, and didn’t say another word about my dog, then or ever. Alaia is a good woman.
Bakar looked at the cooking pit and the hot stones waiting in the embers, and scowled. ‘So you thought someone would bring back meat, did you? Ah well, you’re sadly mistaken, as you see. All we’ve got is this puny bit of a pig for you. That won’t do you much good.’
‘Ah well,’ Alaia grinned back at him, ‘that’s very sad. But I think if you scrape the bottom of the cooking pit you might find some old limpets. You must be hungry for your supper, after such a disappointing day.’
‘Not so hungry as your man here. I had nothing to do but carry the pole. That was easy, because as you see all we had was this poor half-starved pig. But you should know it was your man who caught it on his spear first. Not that I’m jealous, since there’s hardly enough meat to flavour a limpet, now I get a chance to look at it. Are you going to take first cut, Amets, or are you too ashamed of this small day’s work to set your knife to it?’
I smiled. ‘I’ll conquer my shame,’ I said. ‘But admit it’s your shame too, Bakar. Because I think that little needle-prick on the other side is your work. If we can call it work. These women might have made a better job of it, but they won’t say so, because they’re too kind. Isn’t that right?’ I was addressing Alaia, but I could see Haizea giggling at her side. I was fond of her, but of course I couldn’t speak to my wife’s little sister directly. ‘You won’t shame us by pointing out what a miserable supper we’ve brought back for you, will you?’
Haizea giggled. ‘I don’t mind eating it,’ she said to Bakar. ‘But then there mightn’t be any left for you, if I eat all I want!’
So we went on, while Bakar and I laid the boar on its back. Bakar cut away the jaw while I cut the ribs apart. Alaia put the brain and kidneys to roast quickly in the ashes because everyone was hungry. I threw a hind leg to the dogs. Alaia put the hot stones at the bottom of the pit and laid the cut ribs and shoulders over them. Bakar and I hung the rest of the carcass in a tree. Alaia covered her pit with turfs so the meat would roast slowly. It soon began to smell good! One thing about being by ourselves at River Mouth Camp: we didn’t have to give any of our meat away. That night we feasted by firelight while the stars swam towards the Evening Sun Sky, until the first streaks of dawn spread across the Morning Sun Sky. There was Moon enough to eat by, and on a night of plenty, who needs more?
That was the last hunt, and the last feast, that I shared with my wife’s brother Bakar. It was a great boar who gave himself that day. See these tusks – the ones I wear round my neck – these are his. If I spread my fingers wide – see – the long tusk reaches right from my first finger to the fourth. See that mark, that’s where his skin came to. Look how worn they are – sharp as an arrowhead! Go on, you can take them if you like – go on, pass them round – I don’t wear these tusks because I’ve anything to say about my own skill. I did very little that day. I wear them so as to remember my good dog – the bravest dog I ever had. Look! See how the dogs are listening to me! They remember. They know.
Nekané said:
My son Bakar went out alone at the end of Yellow Leaf Moon. He wanted to train the young dog, so he left the other dogs behind. He had his bow and nine arrows. No spear. His spear had been broken the day Bakar and Amets killed the boar by the High Lochan. Though he’d started to make a new one, he still had to finish the barbs. That last hunt had been worth breaking a spear for! We were very happy that evening when Bakar and Amets came back to River Mouth Camp with the dead boar slung on a pole. We had the cooking pit ready, so they singed the skin at once, butchered the meat by firelight and gave it to us to cook right away.
After that it rained for three days. We cut up the rest of the boar and hung the strips of meat to dry in the shelter. Bakar and Amets cleaned the boar’s skull and wedged it into the crook of River Mouth Hazel. We all stopped what we were doing while they told the Boar how we’d eaten his meat, and now we were happy because we were his children. Then Alaia and Haizea went back to tending the fire of rotten birch logs that smoked under the drying meat. Bakar walked over Breast Hill to collect pine branches. We have to walk a long way from River Mouth Camp to get pine. He was soaked through when he came back; I hung his leggings and tunic to dry in the meat shelter.
Bakar propped up the tent flap to make himself a shelter, and squatted under it, wearing nothing but his loincloth while his clothes dried. Raindrops dripped off the door flap and ran down his back. The marks of Auk and Wolf and Bear written across his shoulders gleamed as if they were alive, prowling in the secret hunting lands of a man’s dreams. Bakar untied the bundle of pine lengths, chose the straightest, and stripped off the bark. He took a flint core from his pouch and chipped off a new blade. My son nearly always got just the blade he wanted at the first strike – nothing wasted. He flicked out the knife blade he’d used for cutting the boar meat, and carefully glued in a new blade. Then he shaved his pine lengths into supple wands; at the tip of each he carved rounded heads. As he finished each bird arrow he balanced it on his finger, testing the weight. He fletched each one with crows’ feathers. He looked up when Haizea came back, dripping wet, lugging a big eel in a basket.
‘Is that my dinner? It looks as if it’s been in a fight!’
‘It has. I had to bash its head right in to get it out of the trap. Are you making new arrows? What will you do with the old ones?’
Bakar was always teasing his little sister. But he was kind to her as well, in his way. ‘Now why would you be asking me that? Surely you don’t want any? All right’ – Bakar shook three old arrows out of his quiver – ‘here! You can try to mend them if you like.’
‘My