The Sacrifice (8 page)

She dashed the bone to the ground in horror, trying to choke back a scream, but it blazed from her throat, and in an instant was drowned in a roar that made urine run down her legs. Thirty paces away reared the grizzly, ears flattened, massive jaws snapping, lips snarling back from dripping teeth. The big beast's eyes froze in a glare as he dropped to all fours and charged.

11

Her legs buckled. She fell facedown into the dirt, and tried to curl into herself to protect her guts. Almost before she hit the ground, ivory claws as long as her fingers flashed past her face, and the roar seemed to burst her ears as the bear reached over her body and slammed a paw into her shoulder.

Then there was quiet.

Could it be over so quickly? Her spirit-soul must have slipped away for a time. But she was still in her body, still alive; she smelled the dirt pressed against her face and felt pain in her arm. Was the bear still here? She dared not move, dared not even relax an eyelid to peer through.

Suddenly a low growl vibrated close to her ear. She clutched her breath inside her chest. She could feel her skin prickling and tried to smooth it with her mind. The bear's breath was foul and his saliva dripped onto her neck and ran under her chin. He shoved at her with his muzzle, but, screaming inside, she did not twitch a muscle. The bear jabbed a paw under her hip and rolled her onto her back.
Keep rolling, protect your belly,
she told herself. Everything her father had tried to teach her from the story of his battle with the she-bear rose to the surface of her mind and body. As if from the force of the bear's shove, she rolled back onto her face, coming to rest on the corpse.

She could not hold her breath much longer. Her lungs ached. Still the bear grunted and shuffled around her.

Finally the air burst from her lungs, and instantly she sucked in another gulp and held it, hoping that the heave of her ribs and the tiny rushing sound had escaped the bear's notice.

He let out a bellow and smashed a paw down on her ribs with a crack. Her hands flew to cover the back of her neck just before the bear's jaws closed around it. She screamed as the teeth pierced her hands. She wrenched one free and grasped blindly for her knife.

Seemingly confused by the thing caught in his mouth, the grizzly twisted his jaws and tried to shake her hand from his teeth. With her free hand she found the knife, and fumbled for a grip. She had it. With all her might she drove the blade into the grizzly's throat.

The bear howled with pain. Blindly, she thrust again and again. Blood spurted from the golden fur. She stabbed again and the blade broke off in his neck. The bear shook her hand loose and she jerked it back, scrambling for some other weapon as he bore down.

The girl's hand closed around something—the corpse's broken shinbone. She wrenched it free of the knee and plunged the jagged end into the bear's gaping mouth, goring the back of his throat. For an instant he stared in surprise and pain, then began choking. He sent up a wailing like all the spirits of the dead, retching and clawing at his face, trying to scrape the bone from his throat.

She tried to scramble toward a nearby pine tree, but the bear lunged after her. In another breath he would crash down on her; she could not possibly escape. Crazily, she tried to burrow into the ground. Her hands struck the corpse and she clutched at it, squirmed under it, dragging it on top of her. The maddened bear screamed and swatted the corpse with such force it knocked her breath out. Snorting and choking, he dragged and batted the body about as if it were a fish, then crushed it in his jaws.

He retched again, spraying blood, and staggered backward.

He had put some distance between them. She leaped for the lowest branch of the pine and clawed her way up. The grizzly bounded to the tree, but she had climbed beyond his grasp. She kept climbing, higher, higher, before she dared stop and cling to the slender trunk, gasping in relief.

The bear's roar seemed to shake the tree. To her horror she realized the tree
was
shaking. The beast was shoving it with his great paws. She clutched the trunk as he rammed it with his bulk. The tree lurched, ripped up at the roots. She screamed as it began to fall. It crashed against some other pines, and she grabbed at one of them and grasped it to her breast, wrapping her arms and legs around the trunk.

Her eyes clenched shut. Above her terrified whimpering she heard noises that sounded like the bear digging. She heard the scrape of his claws, a sputtering in his throat. She heard the thud of his massive body when his legs collapsed under him, and the long rasp that was his last breath.

She did not open her eyes. For a long while she did not move, only clung to the tree like a frightened child to its mother.

Finally, slowly, she let herself down the pine trunk, a little drop at a time. When her feet touched the ground her legs were trembling so violently she crumpled to the dirt.

The bear lay in a heap nearby, motionless and massive as a mountain. A slight breeze ruffled the long grizzled gold hairs on his back. Above the blood-matted fur of his chest his frothy mouth hung slightly open. His eyes stared dully.

She knew the human corpse also lay nearby, but she refused to look where she might see it.

Her burned arm stung where she had cracked the skin bending it. Her side stabbed at her with every breath, and her hands were so bloody she could not see how much was left of either of them.

She crawled to the grizzly and dug her fingers into the bear's blood-soaked throat, searching for the blade of her knife. She could feel a horrible pain in her hands now, but she must have that blade. Gradually she worked it out of the bear's throat.

With the broken blade she sliced off a large piece of her shirtsleeve and wrapped it clumsily over her left hand to staunch the bleeding. The hand must be badly damaged, for she could not feel her fingers.

With her right hand she cut into the bear's side. There was still a thin layer of last fall's fat under his skin, and she scraped some off and shoved the bloody stuff into her mouth. How sweet it tasted. Food! Food! She had all the food now that she could ever eat.

She pressed her hands and face against the bear gratefully. “I am sorry,” she gasped into his thick fur. “I am so sorry. Thank you for giving your life to preserve mine.”

She gobbled down more of the fat, half choking, trying to swallow too much at once. She could hear herself moaning, and the sound was good, it was precious. It was the sound of still being alive.

12

Squinting unhappily at the ragged gray blanket draped across a shallow ravine, she wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of a bandaged hand. It was not much of a burial. Underneath the blanket, alongside the remains of the unfortunate man, she had tucked a package of bear meat and what bits of the man's camp she had been able to find: a black pot that smelled of stew, an otter-skin hat, and a pair of hard, black moccasins.

She could help him no further. She did not have the strength to bury him properly so that his body would be protected from scavengers.

But as she frowned at the makeshift grave, an idea came to her. There was one more thing she could do for him. With clumsy hands, she wriggled out of her medicine necklace, and laid it across the blanket.

“You are gone, do not turn back,” she said. “We wish to fare well.” And she turned to trudge back up the hillside, back to her work.

She no longer needed the necklace. She had more powerful medicine than half a charm. All doubt had fled: Born-great's death had been an accident, and she was the Great One, the one who would number among the greatest Apsaalooka ever to live.

Who could doubt it, after she had killed a grizzly bear! Alone, half-starved, half-crippled, with nothing but a knife she had killed it. No, she was not Weak-one-who-does-not-last. She could do anything now.

Reaching the edge of the ashen, burbling valley, she knelt at the rim of a hot pool, unbound her hands, and eased them into the water. She had lost her little finger and the side of her left hand almost to the wrist, and both hands were purple-blue and riddled with punctures. She leaned into the pool to submerge her burned arm, too. She could still barely believe she had fought with this arm, forgetting the burn, and had not even felt the pain until she had happened to see the deep red splits in the flesh.

It would take time, but it would all heal; she would soak her hands and arm every day, and use them, and before long they would feel almost normal. Her ribs would heal, also. Now that she had food, she would be well again. She was already gaining strength rapidly. Her wounds from this ordeal would fade away.

But her pride would live forever.

It was not the kind of pride she had always expected to feel. It was not loud and showy, but quiet, infused with regret. The bear was male, not fully grown despite his massiveness. He had been struggling to survive with no territory of his own. It would have been shameful to boast of killing the beast. She understood now how her father had felt about the killing of the she-bear that had attacked him. Before, she had always thought him foolish for his reluctance to tell the story.

“I have earned a new name, have I not, Father?” she asked joyously into the sky. “But what shall it be?” She squatted over the boiling pool, letting her hands dry in the breeze, trying new names aloud to hear if one had the ring of greatness. Grizzly-fears-her … Kills-the-bear. Kills-the-bear felt good on her lips, but the name was too much like her father's. She wanted something different from his name, a name all her own.

Skinning and dressing the bear was an enormous task, and she had to do it quickly, before the meat spoiled. She handled the body with unaccustomed reverence. To preserve the hide in one magnificent piece she had to slit it down the belly and legs, then roll the bear back as she split the hide from his flesh. Though she shoved and leaned with all her weight, she could not so much as send a tremor through the carcass. She decided to butcher out as much flesh as she could, then try again. In this way she was able to roll the body slightly, exposing another section of hide, which she sliced away, exposing more meat.

It was a grueling process, and she was forced to rest often, but she worked as quickly as she could. If she left the carcass for an instant, coyotes and ravens crowded in. She staved them off by piling scraps for them at a distance, and by waving a sharpened pine lance that leaned always within arm's reach, ready to defend against bolder animals. But she feared another bear might smell the carcass and come to claim it from her. Great One or not, she never wanted to battle a grizzly again.

When finally she had removed the heavy skin, she bundled it up, and with great effort prodded it into a tree crotch to be tanned later. She butchered the meat into small sections, and draped the pieces over drying racks she had built of lodgepole saplings.

She turned the strips of meat several times a day, positioning them carefully, for any spot that touched the wood twice might spoil. Each evening she peeled the strips from the racks, wrapped them in her leggings, and trampled on them to squeeze out any remaining blood.

Her days were filled with hard work and pain from her hands and her side, but she relished the pain. It was a constant testimony to her great deed, like a song of glory humming through her day and night.

She ate as much bear meat as she could stomach each day, and with every mouthful she could fairly feel the power of the grizzly seeping into her limbs.

Now that the threat of starvation was gone, her most pressing concern was a good weapon. She climbed back up the bald hill to the place where the water had burst from the earth. She planned to peel the guide feathers off the broken ends of her arrows and use them on a new set of arrows. Though nearby hills and valleys had softened and filled in with greens, this place was still as barren as winter; only lodgepole pines dared approach the summit. She bent down and picked up what remains of her arrows she could find, then stood and peered over the crest at the angry spring, which was spurting mildly. The gray earth was healing where she had crashed through its crust, but her shape was still visible, as were Bull's chaotic hoofprints. What had become of Bull, she was afraid to think. Swallowing hard, she turned away.

With a rock she shattered the bear's pelvis and among the pieces found several shards suitable for arrowheads. These she honed, lashed to willow shoots with moistened bear sinew, and sealed with pine pitch. When the old hawk feathers had been mounted on their new shafts, she had seven arrows.

The bow was not as difficult to make, but it demanded strength. It took her three days to shape and another to dry, and it probably would not shoot with much power. Though day by day the skin of her burned arm grew more pliable, she could not bend it far enough to draw the bow without fear of splitting open the old cracks, so she did not know whether her new arrows would fly true.

Between tasks, as her strength returned, she set about tanning the bear hide. She made a flesher of one of the bear's foreleg bones, grinding notches in one end to form teeth. She stretched the hide across the ground with stakes and scraped her flesher across it until the last bits of fat and meat had been torn away. Each day the hide grew softer as she scraped and kneaded in the bear's liver and brains, and each night she dampened and folded it up to keep it soft.

The days began to grow pleasantly warm, and longer. Now when she soaked her hands and arm at the hot spring, she sometimes withdrew them early, sweating under the combined heat of sun and water. Her wounds were healing, though her left hand was slow to respond to her commands.

She worked with a joy she had never known before; she was working on the thing she had ached for and dreamed of all her life.

Evenings she lay back in exhaustion, planning and dreaming of her triumphant return to her village. She must work hard on her robe and her necklace; she needed a new shirt—there was so much yet to do. And of course a name; she must have a new name. Of all the ideas that came to her, none had yet inspired her. Lying there, she would decide that the right name would suggest itself at the right moment, and eventually she would slide into a pleasantly impatient sleep.