Killbird

Although a family would guard its range, there was no malice to strangers, such as we, and we were welcomed everywhere, especially as I began to become known as Eban the Teller of Tales. We dawdled away a summer going northward. Margan began to crawl. Poor Egan was runted and weak, wanting only to sleep on his mother's breast. It was a Seer of the family of Welo the Wise who thought to submit the boy to her bare belly, there to feel the faint but unmistakable tingle of warning from deep within his bones. «The boy has the sickness,» the old woman said. «How can that be?» I asked. «You tell of your travels to the east,» she said. «Perhaps you brought it.» «Would I not feel it in myself?» I asked. I wondered why I had not thought to test carefully both my children, and that night, in the privacy of a hidehouse furnished us as guests, I held both the children to my belly and to my sadness felt the warning tingle in both. However, the spirit was in Mar, and she lived. And Margan was as healthy as a little girl could be. It was not that. No, it was something else, and I knew not what. It was with a heavy heart that I quickened our journey to the north and the east, and when at last I recognized landmarks, knowing the country in which I was born, the country from which Strabo of the Strongarm had led the family, I made long marches and crossed three ridges, and there, below, was the Lake of Clean Water and the hidehouses of a family nearby. I went into the valley with a mixture of emotions. The young ones saw us coming and came out to meet us as we approached the hidehouse along the shore of the lake. They danced and sang and stared. Women stood near their houses, watching our approach. I looked eagerly for a familiar face and saw an old woman who looked familiar. I went closer. They were making signs of welcome. A man came from a hidehouse, the place of the family head, and I recognized Logan, son of Logman. And then the old woman was speaking. «Stranger, you are welcome.» «My thanks,» I said. «We have come far.» She looked very familiar. «Are you not Bla the widow?» I asked. She looked at me strangely. «I was once known by that name. I am, and have been for many moons now, the Seer of Things Unseen.» «Welcome,» said Logan, son of Logman, coming up to us and looking at us with his head cocked. «Gods of man,» he said. «Yes, Logan,» I said. «It cannot be. The killbird got you, along with Strabo and the others.» «No, I fell beyond his death,» I said. Logan's face was grim. «Eban the Hunter,» he said. «Yes. I have done penance. I have traveled far, and the gods of man have seen fit to forgive and give me an opportunity to repay my debt to my people.» «How can that be?» Logan asked. «For you are the bringer of death.» «Honorable father,» I said, giving him his due as family head, «did you not tempt the gods of man as I did?» «You were chosen,» he said. «And then you dived straight toward the dome where the family waited.» «I was merely exercising the right to take evasive action.» «I retract my words of welcome,» Logan said. «Go from us, bringer of death.» «I ask a hearing, and I bring gifts,» I said. I looked over Logan's shoulder, and there stood Yuree, more beautiful than I could remember, her body grown into adulthood, thick, short, desirable. She carried an infant on her hip. «It is his right,» said Bla the widow, now Seer of Things Unseen. «So be it,» Logan said. Before the family, which had not, of course, had time to grow to its former size, I stood. I looked and saw the faces of Yorerie the Butcher and by his side a young woman who, when I left, had not been of age. There were Cree and Young Pallas and all of them, but half the family was missing, and the remaining ones looked glum and unhappy, and there were, in their bodies, in their faces, the looks of hunger and winter sickness. «Speak, haired one,» Logan said. I drew a knife of dragonskin from my clothing where I had hidden it and presented it to Logan. «For you, honorable father,» I said. He examined it and reluctantly let the others hold it. There was much excitement. I saw that some of the younger males had stone axes. Had they looted the dragon which I had slain? From the stock which I had carried—I was rich in dragonskin, with the dragon of the hole to loot at will—I presented each male who had none the material from which to fashion a hardax. «Now speaks Eban the Hunter,» I said, when the gifts had been examined. «I have traveled far and I have prayed to the gods of man and they have told me to come, to share my good fortune with my people, for I have found a land of plenty, and there are dragons, some which I have slain, for looting, for hardax and other treasures. There is game so fat that a man can live well, and there is magic which I, Eban the Hunter, would share with my people to repay a little what I, in my youth, brought down upon the heads of my own family. I have suffered and I have paid penance, and now it is time for me to atone. I beg of you to come with me to this land of plenty and share, with me and my pairmate the gifts of God.» «We be of the Valley of Clean Waters,» Logan said. «We have not always been of the Valley of Clean Waters,» I said. «Had we hunters enough, the game is gone,» said Yorerie, his speech not much improved. «In the land beyond the mountains to the south there are deer so numerous that a chance arrow slays,» I said. «The family of Logan, son of Logman, does not follow a haired one,» Logan said. «The family of Logan the son of Logman hungered during the winter,» Yorerie said. «I, for one, will listen to the tales of Eban the Hunter.» I told of my land, of the sweet valley. I did not tell of the magic of our cave, but hinted that I had magic to feed a family in time of need or in the dead of winter. I could see that some were interested. Yorerie, for certain. Cree the Kite. Young Pallas was obviously tempted, but Logan's old running mate, Teetom, was sneering. We ate. The fare was meager. «It was a young deer,» Yorerie said, «small and of little meat, and I was lucky to find him.» I told them that we could, by leaving soon, arrive in my land of plenty with time to build, to set up camp before the snows. «And we would be without food for the winter, with no time to hunt, to kill, to have the butcher do his work, to dry the meat,» Logan said. «We kill and dry along the way,» I said. «And I have ample stores to feed all the family for the winter should we not accumulate enough.» «I hear promises,» Logan said. «You hear the word of Eban,» I said. «For I have never lied.» «We will speak, each to his own,» Logan said. «Teetom, how say you?» «I stay,» Teetom said, with a scowl at me. «Cree?» «I would hear more.» «Yorerie?» «I will go with the Hunter,» Yorerie said. «You will do as the family decides,» Logan said. And he went around the fire. Young Pallas would go. But of all the rest of the sadly diminished family, no one spoke in my favor. «So be it,» Logan said. «All but Yorerie and Young Pallas vote to stay in our homeland, in the Valley of Clean Water. Thus, we all stay.» «I beg to have a hearing and a decision by the elders,» Yorerie said, «for that is my right. Every man has the right to leave and start his own family.» «Every man has a duty to his family,» Logan said, «and you are the last of the Butchers. I ask the elders to consider this and order you to stay and do your duty.» «I, too, would have a hearing,» Young Pallas said. «The family's in great need of hunters,» Logan said, «To lose one hunter is more than the family can bear, since many of our great hunters were slain by the killbird which Eban the Hunter brought down to us.» The elders withdrew from the group around the fire and talked among themselves. The new Seer was the spokesman. «It is sad,» she said, «to take a man's freedom which is his right by custom, but the family head is right. To lose the strong arm of Young Pallas and the skills of Yorerie would not be in the best interest of the family.» I stood. «I beg you,» I said. «I did not come to plant the seeds of division among my family but to lead all to a land of ease and plenty. Logan, I offer you my services. I am no mean hunter. Come with me. All of you. You will see.» «If you are willing to serve, you may build a hidehouse near us—» «But not as a member of the family?» I asked, my face burning. «And earn your way back into the family by serving,» Logan said. «Not even a great hunter could serve well in this place,» I said, «for it is as Yorerie says. The game is hunted out, as is often the case when a family stays in one place too long. You will have to move on soon, so why not follow me to the best hunting range of all the mountains?» «It is for the family head to decide when it is time to move a family,» Logan said firmly. «And I say that the game is not hunted out, that the Valley of Clean Waters is our home.» «So be it, then,» I said. «I will seek elsewhere, among the families to the south, who will listen and who will follow me to the land of plenty. I grieve for you.» There was only one more incident before we withdrew from the family to camp far away along the lake. I went to Yuree and, prostrating myself at her feet, said, «Yuree, honorable mother I beg, before I leave forever to have your forgiveness.» She took a long time to answer. I looked up. She was weeping silently. She spoke at last. «If it were only me I would forgive, and gladly. You were the bravest of the brave, Eban, and you did not willingly bring death to my father and mother and the others, but…» «Cannot you say it? I care not for the others now. But I would like your blessing, your forgiveness.» «I cannot,» she said. «So be it,» I said. We slept apart and traveled with the sun, leaving as we had come, alone, just our little group of four. Now we were both eager to be back in our sweet valley as soon as possible, so we did not dawdle, and thus it was several days before I heard, as we made camp, the sound of approach and a voice crying, «Ho, the campfire.» «Come near, friend,» I said, standing with my longbow at the ready, expecting to see a stranger, for we were crossing the range of a family with whom we had visited on the trip to the north. Instead it was Yorerie the Butcher who came into the glow of my fire. «Ha, Eban, you travel swiftly,» he panted. «Welcome, Yorerie, my friend,» I said. «What brings you?» «I have exercised my freedom,» he said. «My pairmate and my child are on the trail behind us, along with the group of Cree the Kite. We will join you, Eban, if you will still have us.» «Gladly,» I said. «But did the elders reconsider their decision?» «No,» he said, looking somewhat shamed. «To go against the wishes of the family is a serious matter,» I said. «Have you considered the whole of it? You can never go back, Yorerie.» «Logan is a bad family head,» Yorerie said. «He takes the best portions of the meat for himself, unlike the old days when Strabo the Strongarm shared and shared alike with the entire family. And he is lazy and frightened, scared to move the family to new range lest he be wrong and be challenged for his position by one of the men in the family.» I was saddened to see