The Cold Days: Part One

By James Howerton

I will die up here in the high mountains, she thought. And be like Solanda, Mothers old friend, who vanished as the deer vanish.

(A demon tricked me by looking like a boy).

You climb too high, the hunter said, squatting down on his haunches and leaning against a boulder. Nothing eat up here.

Mira finally got her voice: Why are you here?

I follow you. He smiled.

Mira stared down the great mountain, knowing she was trapped, that she had climbed too high where monsters are. He had stalked her like a deer. And she had been as foolish as a deer.

To kill me?

He gave her a surprised, then puzzled look. Why I want to kill you?

To give the gods their sacrifice.

He looked at her for a long time, and Mira felt strange. He was handsome, his hair and beard night-black, his blue eyes arrogant, confident. A smile that was very close to a smirk. He was a savage-looking boy, but she saw that he was a boy, not two seasons older than her.

His deerskin leggings were well-used and torn ragged, made by skillful hands, but not any of the river tribes. Slung over his back was a very ornate spear thrower. A brace of feathered arrows in a wolfskin pouch flared out of his back. His right fist gripped a long spear crowned with a tooth of flint. Rawhide thongs belted his leggings; on his waistbelt a stone hatchet and long stone knife were strapped. His arms and legs rippled with savage muscles.

Mira clutched her little pointed stick. She edged down the mountain slope, to see what he would do. Why did you follow me?

He was a shadow now, against the boulder, but she could see his white teeth grinning.

You are very pretty, he called out of the evening.

He didnt follow her. He wasnt going to hurt her. She scuttered down the slope, grinning now, heart pounding and sudden blood in her face.

What he said to me!

You climb too high, Pretty One! his voice echoed behind her, making a crazy thrill in her stomach. Run home before it gets dark.

Her face burned red. Why! she called, grinning over her shoulder.

Because a knife-tooth has come to this mountain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462002511

James Howerton

James Howerton is a graduate of the University of Nebraska. He is currently living and writing in San Diego. This is his third book in a series.

Book preview

Contents

Part One…

One….

Two….

Three….

Four…

Five….

Six….

Seven….

Eight….

Nine….

Ten….

Eleven….

Twelve….

Thirteen….

Fourteen….

Fifteen….

Sixteen….

Seventeen….

Eighteen….

Nineteen….

Twenty….

Twenty-One….

Twenty-Two….

Twenty-Three….

Twenty-Four….

Twenty-Five….

Twenty-Six….

Twenty-Seven….

Twenty-Eight….

Twenty-Nine….

Thirty….

Thirty-One….

Thirty-Two….

Thirty-Three….

Thirty-Four….

Thirty-Five….

Thirty-Six….

Thirty-Seven….

Thirty-Eight….

Thirty-Nine….

Forty….

Forty-One….

Forty-Two….

Forty-Three….

Forty-Four….

Forty-Five….

Part Two…

One….

Two….

Three….

Four….

Five….

Six….

Seven….

Eight….

Nine….

Ten….

Eleven….

Twelve….

Thirteen….

Fourteen….

Fifteen….

Sixteen….

Seventeen….

Eighteen….

Nineteen….

Twenty….

Twenty-One….

Twenty-Two….

Twenty-Three….

Twenty-Four….

Twenty-Five….

Twenty-Six….

Twenty-Seven….

Twenty-Eight….

Ever the river flows softly to the south. Ages the seasons and generations quietly pass. One day there is change.

—Shaman Haldana

(For Molly)

Part One…

The COLD DAYS

One….

One night a fire glowed on the Hill of Skeletons and Haldana, the tribe’s shaman, pronounced that a demon may have come there.

The tribe sat outside their mountain caves in the cool summer night watching the firelight on the hill, the light of the demon, and made their prayers against the future. It was death to challenge the gods and to live on sacred ground—only a demon could do it. Forever the sacred ground where the dead were taken to rest in the Cave of Bones had been dark and empty of men. Now something was there making fire and sending smoke into the world. Only the shaman, following the Ceremony of the Dead and with the proper prayers, could carry a dead one over the white stones and place it in the cave; all others would be struck down by the gods. Yet something made a fire up there, on the hill far above the river caves where the tribe lived.

Nights passed and the fire did not go away. Most in the mountain tribe, called the Tolai, feared now to even look at it. Keane, the old spear-maker, had proclaimed that theworld was changing, that a starving time would now begin. Had a demon come to curse the Tolai, to make the mountains bare of game and the great river barren of fish?

Will the demon come down to our village? many asked. What does this demon want?

Shaman Haldana could not know: No dreams have come to me. Something makes fire on the Sacred Hill; that is all the signs will tell me. It makes fire and it does not fear the gods.

Why haven’t the gods destroyed this thing? It camps on the Sacred Hill!

The demon is there for a reason, Shaman said.

He stared at the faraway campfire that sputtered yellow and red in the night. He smelled the smoke of mountain wood. He wondered what thing could live up there in violation of the gods. It has not come down to worry us, he said. It defies the gods, and yet it lives.

Chieftain Etain said that it would be best to prepare: If it comes down from the hill, we should know quick.

How can you prepare for a demon? Shaman demanded.

Still, Etain said. I will have some of the hunters stand guard.

Mira, daughter of the chieftain, was cursed with the need to know. She feared the unknown, but could not take her eyes off the fire in the distance. Something had come onto the sacred ground of her people and defiled it with fire and smoke. Mira stared at the yellow flame on Sacred Hill. Already in early summer the tribe spoke darkly of a starving time, and Mira wondered how many would live through the great white winter to come, whether she herself would live to see her time of womanhood in the next spring. Now something had come and was making fire inside the white stone border that could not be crossed.

She feared the gods and what they would do, but her eyes could not avoid the Hill of Skeletons that wore grey and green boulders and rose halfway up the mountains towering over the river valley.

Her dog, Wolf, growled against her. She petted him on the back and rubbed at his rough fur. Five seasons ago her father Etain had killed a she-wolf and managed to find the den and gather up her pup. He gave it to his daughter, and now it was a powerful full grown wolf, her best friend and companion.

It’s nothing, Wolf, she said to the dog. It’s not a demon, no matter what they say.

Wolf stared at the hill and howled. Mira petted him. It is not a demon, Wolf. It is something else.

Fire and the faint smoke of pine-wood; a flickering yellow light that made a beacon on the Sacred Hill where always before there had been solemn darkness. The tribe prayed against it, feared the signs. Something was on the Sacred Hill; some magic thing made fire and smoke. Mira stared up into the dark, into the hateful devil light that mocked the gods. She knew that she had to go up to see. Something told her that it was not a demon, but she had to see. Shaman often said that she was cursed with the need to see.

Wolf will be with me. She petted the great dog. Wolf will protect me.

She must not be seen to wander up there, however. Mira spent the fifth day of the demon fire tediously scraping a deer hide, while her mother, squatting next to her by the river, pounded berries and dry meat into pemmican. The day was blazing hot, and they did their work near the river in order to get the cool breeze off the moving water.

The mountain tribe went about their usual day: women in loose deer hide dresses squatted along the banks of the river making pemmican and hanging fish onto aspen wood racks where the meat could dry in the sun and wind. The old ones practiced their skills up under the shade of a great tree, the flint and chert workers and spear makers, the makers of the stone knives and tools, the shapers of the clay and wood bowls, the hide tanners and bone workers. Some men too crippled to be hunters, too old or too young, waded in the shallows of the great river hoping to spear fish. Young apprentices squatted next to the old ones, learning the skills of working the sparkling flint. Mira could see nothing out of the ordinary, it was the same picture she had known since her birth; but she sensed a deep worry. Her mountain people kept fears to themselves, but the fears were in the air. It was a terribly hot day, yet the Long Sun had passed, and now it fell earlier each day, and the specter of snow and ice and freezing cold just reminded the wind at night.

The hunters were in the tall mountains, in their desperate search for game; it was going to be a time of starving, what the old ones called The Cold Days, their eyes calm but troubled, knowing that in the starvation time of the cold days the very young and very old would die.

Mira pushed that thought away. She looked up at the caves of her people, where they had always escaped the cold days. The family caves were above the twisting river beyond a stretch of pebbled and moss-stained flatland. Slabs of flat granite looked out from the side of the mountain, and below them rounded boulders. Within the caverns of granite were the homes of the mountain people. Mira loved the caves; they were the dark safeness against the murderous gods of the earth and the bristled monsters that roamed the mountains, the slinking wolves and crafty knife-tooth and the great bears that stood so tall they darkened the sun. Mira had seen wolves, and had one for a companion, but she had only heard tales of the other muscled killers that roamed the high mountains. During the long time of winter, in the flickering yellow of the tribal fire, Mira had sat fascinated listening to the tales of the old hunters—of fanged monsters and clawed creatures beyond any human size, of the white-bearded goats that sprang down the sides of the high peaks, of the evil hyenas and the fearless cave lions and the stately giant-crowned elk.

The caves of the Tolai were like a warm fur that she could curl up in and listen to the wind outside, the storms and blizzards and all the other monsters of the world: The bright bellowing spears that gods hurl at one another when in their anger the sky attacks the land, the white snow-wind of the North-God, the wet sheets of the god of rain that made the river swell and rage. It was safe in the caves, in the family place; safe in the dark stone sanctuary.

She glanced again at the Sacred Hill far above the caves, the home of the spirits of her people. This time her mother caught her and paused in her work.

The hill is still there, Mira, Odele said. It has not moved.

Mira looked at Odele and blushed. What, Mother?

Where the demon now lives.

Mira felt a strange sweaty chill. Everything was the same, the mountain tribe performed their daily tasks, the sun was hot, there were many days left until the great cold swept into the mountains. But already winter doom seemed to be unspoken on the lips of the old ones. Mira often saw them staring into the sky, gauging the future. And there was a great excitement when the hunters returned, and then a great disappointment. They could not find the deer; they could not find the mountain goats. Squirrels and rabbits hung dismally from their belts.

Why would a demon come here? Mira blurted out.

Odele stared up at the sky. Only the gods know that, Mira. But the world is changing. I believe what old Keane has said—I feel that the world is changing.

How, Mother?

Too hot, Odele said to her daughter. The heat is chasing the deer away.

Will there be enough food, Mother, when the cold days come?

No. Odele risked a glance at the Sacred Hill above the wrinkled spruce trees and yellowy aspens. We will not have enough food.

Vanda says it is the demon that chases away the deer, Mira said. But she didn’t believe that. Vanda, leader of the hunters, was making excuses. She did not believe it was a demon up there. A demon would not need campfire.

It could be that, Odele said, returning to her work. It could be that we have angered the gods in some way and they have sent a demon to destroy us.

No! Don’t say that, Mother. Would a demon not just come down and destroy us in the caves, when we sleep?

There are many things we can’t understand, Mira. But do not go up there to see.

What, Mother?

I know why you stare at the Hill of Skeletons. You yearn to see, to see a demon. You must not go up to see it. Let Shaman make the spells against it, but leave it alone.

I have always burned food for the gods, Mother. And I have always obeyed their will. If I stare at a demon, the gods will protect me—or not.

Don’t challenge the gods, Mira. Odele glanced fearfully into the blazing, cloudless sky. When I was young, many seasons ago, my friend was Solanda, a girl of my age. But she was too curious about the world, and she would slip away and wander into the mountains, believing she was a hunter. I never went with her because there are monsters living there, creatures beyond our power. But Solanda had to know, and one day she wandered into the mountains and she never returned.

Mira shivered, scraping the fat and meat from the soft golden deer hide. But her eyes flickered up to the Sacred Hill. Beyond it were the high mountains where only the hunters ever ventured. Mira imagined them climbing the cold stone tablets above the clouds, stalking the clever goats and frightened deer, spears cocked and patient, to shoot out of a muscled arm into the heart of game.

The hunters don’t fear monsters, she said to her mother.

Odele sighed and wiped the sweat from her forehead. "It is different with us, Mira. How many times have I tried to tell you this? I am a woman. You are a girl, soon to be a woman. In the spring you will be mated and then you will go away and become a woman of another tribe, and you must then learn to be a woman. Men can enter the mountains and see the monsters, women never can."

I don’t see why.

It is what the gods command. The gods command that women be the servants of men. Men can fight demons—women must not.

Mira looked up at the Sacred Hill. What if one day we have to?

Her mother shot her a stern look. All that we have to do, Mira, is accept the will of the gods.

Two….

You ask the gods too many questions, Mira. Old Keane, the spear-maker, looked up from his work and gave her a wrinkled smile. You have too little fear.

Do you not ask them questions, Keane? Mira demanded. Doesn’t Shaman?

The old man chuckled. He lifted a shaft of ash wood and sighted down it with a practiced eye. He ran it down a spear-straightener made from an elk pelvis. It was a short spear to be used with a thrower; a long dart for small game.

Our people will not cast their eyes at the Sacred Hill, at the fire, he said. But you do, I notice. They all fear the demon that now lives there.

It could be that it’s not a demon, Mira said.

It could be that. Keane cast an irritated look at his apprentices, Mataii and Kal; two brown-skinned boys who were learning his craft of fashioning spears and knives. They squatted in their deerskin trunks under the shade of the tree. They did not like the Master speaking to this bold and skinny girl. Stop listening and tend to your work, he snapped at them. Your flints are dull and your spears of low value!

The two boys cast Mira dark looks then returned to their craft, shaving with sharp flint blades the wooden shafts that Keane would skillfully turn into hunting spears. Mataii and Kal were Mira’s age, and would become men next spring when Mira would become a woman. They resented her and thought that, as daughter of the chieftain, she was too fondly allowed to speak of the gods.

Mira ignored them. She petted Wolf, who squatted at her side; she rubbed at the dense fur that covered his back. Mataii and Kal, she knew, were jealous that she possessed a wolf, and that she dared speak so plainly to the master spear-maker, oldest of the tribe of Tolai.

Keane, my father will not talk to me of the times, she said. But you have spoken of the changing of the world. And now Shaman has said that a demon is here.

Keane frowned at her bold voice. But then his eyes softened. He could not be angry with this girl, no matter how hard he tried. He saw in her intense green eyes a need to know the world, terrible as it may be: Mira, you want to know too much, he said.

But why is that wrong?

Keane pinned his old eyes on the river and the great mountains that rose beyond it, impossible in the dying summer sun. Maybe a demon has come to the Sacred Hill, he said at last. You should not speak of it.

Why?

Your father will not speak of these things. Shaman says that a demon has come, Vanda says that we have angered the gods and they have sent the deer away, the elk; that we are to be punished for angering them. You should not speak of this. You should keep your eyes from the fire that burns up there.

Always we burn precious meat for the gods, Mira said. Always we pray to them. Nothing we’ve done could have angered them.

Keane lifted his tired eyes skyward. You anger the gods by even questioning them, Mira, by questioning Haldana and your father.

Mataii and Kal both looked up from their work, giving her identical sour looks, as if Mira herself might have brought a demon into their world. She glared back at them. She was a girl soon to be a woman and they were boys soon to be men. But she could not bring herself to bow to them. They had fear in them, and she knew that she did not.

She bent over the old spear-maker and lowered her voice to a whisper: Keane, why can’t one of us sneak up to the Hill of Skeletons and see?

He gave her a startled look. See what, young one?

If it is a demon or not.

Keane sighed and cast sad eyes into the tall mountains. "You want to go and see. Your curse is having to see, Mira."

Wolf would be with me, she said. Wolf always protects me.

Keane looked at the great dog that lay at her side. How can this animal protect you from any demon sent from the gods?

"I don’t believe it is a demon," she whispered to him.

Keane stared away a long while. He loved this young girl as if she were his own daughter. He loved her spirit and energy and bare courage, and that she longed to see the terrible things of the world. He had never loved anyone more than this bold girl.

Why do you believe this? he whispered back at her.

Keane, would a demon need fire?

You should speak to your father about this, he said. You should speak to Haldana.

You know what they would say.

Yes. They would say that you are a foolish young girl who wants the gods to destroy her. That you have always been cursed with the need to see what you should not see.

I believe the gods have given me the courage to see, Mira said.

You are a young girl. You have weak arms and spindly legs and courage that cannot be matched by your size. You have always wished, Mira, that you had been born a man and could grow the great arms and legs of a hunter and go into the tall mountains as they do, your brother and father and the other hunters. But you are not a hunter, Mira, you are a girl. You have a great wolf to protect you, but there are things in this world that no big dog can protect you from. To look at a demon is maybe to die.

It is no demon, she whispered. I tell you this because I know that you believe it.

Haldana has spoken, Keane said, flashing her a look. Most of the tribe will not even cast eyes at the Hill of Skeletons now, they fear angering the gods. Why would you risk angering the gods? Just to look upon a demon?

To know, she said, glaring at Mataii and Kal, who were giving her fearful, even hateful glances.

To know the truth.

Three….

Chieftain Etain entered the place of Shaman, the dark recess in the caves that marked the holy man’s domain. Deer and elk and wolf skins covered the smooth granite walls. Amulets and odd stones and painted feathers adorned the side of the cavern. Shaman’s fire was small, yet in the faint yellowy flickers of the fire Chieftain Etain could see the painted animals on the walls. Shaman squatted over clay bowls of pigments, pounding and rubbing them with an oblong stone. He glanced up at the chieftain and nodded.

Mira’s father squatted in the narrow sliver of cave the holy man called home. The granite walls climbed in broken shadows up to a stone ceiling beyond the fire. Woven baskets of herbs, of grasses and dried flowers and time-hardened mushrooms (the magic things of the earth), sat along the crooked rock walls.

The deer have vanished, Chieftain said, almost in a whisper.

Shaman Haldana glanced at him and went back to his grinding of pigments. I will put the souls of the deer on the cave wall and show the gods that we honor their gifts.

Etain saw how the old man had almost completed painting a deer on the cave wall. The elk, the sheep—all have vanished.

All will be painted before I can sleep. Shaman stared at Etain, and the eyes beyond earth told him Haldana had eaten a magic thing and was going into the souls of the animals. He had taken something to let him enter the world of souls.

You have taken a magic thing, he said.

The old man nodded to him. The souls will all be there. Haldana pointed to a flat slab of blank granite on the wall. And the souls of the hunters. Only the gods can send game back to our hunters.

What of the demon?

Shaman frowned and went back to his grinding. He dipped his hand into the primitive paint and studied it, his eyes becoming strange. The demon is only here to tell us that we have angered the gods. That is not what is chasing away the game. It only tells us that we have done wrong.

What wrong? Chieftain asked.

That I hope to find out. Haldana gave him a meaningful look, and Etain nodded respectfully and lumbered out of the shaman’s cave.

On one side of the crevice outside Shaman Haldana’s cave was a boulder that bulged from the cave wall. Mira and her friends laughingly referred to it as the Woman with Child. It cast a shadow to the cave floor, and Mira had crouched down there, listening to every word.

When her father passed and entered the main cave, Mira scampered out of her hiding place and climbed up to her home, a rounded recess on a level above many of the other homes. It was long but not tall, and her brother Elat, a hunter, would have to stoop down under the granite doorway to enter the family home.

Mira found her place, her deerhide blanket that she could wrap herself in and be safe. Wolf gathered beside her, and Mira rubbed at his face.

Her mother squatted at the fire toasting bugs for the little ones, Kem and Pak. Mira watched her little brother and sister stare at the bug speared on Odele’s wand as she waved the insect over the fire until it was properly toasted. Wait, she said to the twins. Just wait, this is hot, it will burn your mouth.

How they crunched and grinned as they ate the toasted insects that had flown into the caves toward the firelight, the wings burned off and only a plump fried morsel left. In the starving time, the old ones die and the little ones die. Shaman spoke of the demon on the Sacred Hill. What will you find in your mushroom dream? Mira wondered.

Four…

I’m making a necklace for the spring celebration, Mira, Adela said. Around the first bend are beautiful shells and I found another of the soft yellow stones that glow in the sunlight.

Mira smiled at her friend. You shouldn’t wander out of sight of the village, not alone.

You do.

I have Wolf with me.

Anyway, I’ll have a new necklace and two new bracelets for the spring ceremony, and lots of colored feathers.

The spring ceremony is long away, Mira said. Beyond the cold days.

The cold days are long away. Why are you so glum, Mira? And why do you keep looking up at that hill?

I wonder what is up there making fire.

A demon, everyone says. Best to leave it alone, as Shaman tells us, and not to keep looking up there.

How can it hurt to look?

It might take your eyes. The gods might be angered. I don’t know, Mira!

Mira watched Adela carve a bowl from a slab of wood. Adela was a skillful wood carver, learning the art from the old women of the tribe who knew all the woods of the

mountains and how to shape them with the flint tools into bowls and spoons and pestles. Adela was scraping a mass of ash wood, splinters falling to the pebbled land along the river.

I have no skills, Mira said to her. I make nothing.

Adela looked up from her work. You gather the berries and heal-herbs. You find the magic things, Mira. You tan the hides.

I have nothing that would tempt a mate, Mira said. My body is small and bony. I have no breasts to feed children with.

You have a pretty face, Adela said.

Little ten-year-old Coala trotted down the river bank to join them. The girl gave Wolf a hug and rubbed at his face. I caught a fish today, Mira, she said, smiling shyly.

You did? Good for you!

Wolf is bigger than you, Coala. Adela smiled up from her work.

Coala grinned. She was a tiny girl who worshipped Mira, also a small one. She was nick-named ‘chipmunk’ because of her red freckles. Everyone is talking about the demon on the Sacred Hill, she said. It makes me afraid.

Maybe it’s not a demon, Mira declared. She stared at the Hill of Skeletons.

Mira, stop looking up there, Adela said. What else could it be?

Mira petted little Coala’s peat-brown hair. What do you think it is, Coala?

The little girl gazed at her in adoration, then turned red and shrugged. I hope it’s not that.

What else could build a fire inside the white stones and survive, Adela said. What else has the power to defy the gods?

The world is changing, Mira muttered. Keane says that the world is changing.

No, Adela said. Mira, it’s all the same. Don’t talk like that.

What if the world is changing, Adela?

No! Don’t say that. You’re scaring Coala.

Mira gazed up at the Sacred Hill. Someone should go up there to see.

What! And risk its anger? No, best to leave it alone. It hasn’t bothered us. Why are you so crazy, Mira?

Everyone is hungry, Mira said. When the cold days come and there is the starving time, you know what will become of Wolf.

No one can hurt Wolf. Coala giggled as the big dog lapped at her face.

He’s a dog, Mira, Adela said. I know you love him, but Wolf makes nothing for the tribe. He can’t make tools or weapons or robes. Vanda won’t even take him with the hunters he’s so useless. A wolf always eats more than it’s worth.

And he’s always so hungry.

I can feel his ribs, Coala said, rubbing the dog. Poor Wolf.

When the cold days come, said Adela. We will have food. The hunters always have found enough food.

I see their eyes this season, Mira said darkly. I hear my brother whispering to my father at night.

Well, when babies cry for food, how can you feel sorry for a wolf?

I’ll die before I see Wolf killed.

"Mira! Don’t ever say that. Maybe the demon has come to curse us. Adela frowned and paused to wipe the sweat from her brow. The game vanish, and now a demon comes into our valley."

Mira gazed at the Hill of Skeletons. Then she smiled down at the little girl Coala, who was giving her a fearful look. Someone should go up there and see what it is. She tousled the child’s hair, and Coala grinned joyfully.

Adela frowned up from her work. Remember your mother’s tale of Solanda, she warned. The girl who went too far into the mountains, who wanted to see too much.

Solanda didn’t have a wolf, Mira said.

Five….

Mira followed Wolf up the mountain, her eyes searching for the