The Great Alone

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Against the bold starkness of the sweeping icy valley, a smooth greyness of smoke arose from each primitive hut. There were twelve in all; each inhabited by a single family. Except for one. That hut contained a singular young male. For obvious reasons his deerskin home was smaller. It was also a little further away from the rest. It was less well maintained. The path issuing from it’s door sparsely trod, as if he left his abode with much less frequency than the rest. It was his existence that was the subject of two nearby conversations. And the first of these went thusly… 

‘It is time we drove him out,’ a man called Jayek said to his peers. ‘He does nothing for us. His parents are gone. His sister. The boy can barely hunt.’

There were murmurs of agreement amongst the fourteen strong group. None of them liked the fact that the boy, Kosumi, had refused to join them once again. Lakawa of the red hair spoke up.

‘It is possible we may not need to. The deepening of winter may do that for us. We have all seen how weak he is becoming. He eats little. His eyes have the dullness of someone whose loved ones are calling to him to join them in the afterlife. I say we wait and see what the ancients have devised for him.’

Lakawa was greatly respected – he was the strongest warrior, the most skilled hunter and a craftsman of knives and spears. It was for this reason that the men fell silent on the matter as they walked through the powdery snow, armed with the deadly flint knives and spears that they themselves and their Chief had made. Around them the tall fir trees whispered as if discussing the tribe’s dilema. As the wind stirred them, they creaked and groaned, spilling snow from their barren branches. No birds were roosting there. No squirrels leapt from branch to branch. To an inexperienced eye, it may have seemed as if their hunting party was doomed to failure with no tracks to be seen barring their own. The only signs of life came from them; the steady thump of their hearts in the winter silence, the exhaled clouds of breath. Sporadic, brief conversation, the crunch of their feet breaching the icy crust atop the snow. But for now, they were not relying on signs. They were relying on a wealth of experience. Something that seventeen year old Kosumi did not have.

Back in the valley, in Lakawa’s hut, the fire burned warm and bright. Inside were three women and a child; an infant, still suckling at his mother’s teats but old enough to totter around and get into trouble.

‘Naughty Nuki,’ cried his sister Tayen, scooping him up. She tickled his little round belly to distract him from tugging the feathers from his father’s ceremonial headdress that hung suspended from the second rafter. She sat down with him beside the fire and played silly little games to keep him occupied.

Her grandmother and mother watched, hands darting with caribou bone needles, sewing caribou skin boots by the light of a beaver fat torch.

‘Is there no way that Lakawa will allow her to marry Kosumi?’ Grandmother asked quietly. ‘We can both see she wants her own child and we both know they wish to be bonded. The boy has lost everything. Maybe she can heal his heart with sons.’

The girl’s mother sighed.

‘It is not that simple. He must be able to provide for her. For any children. Lakawa will not give her to the boy until he has proved himself a man.’

The grandmother coughed indignantly.

‘Pah! And what is a man?’

The girl, Tayen, glanced up. 

Knowing the conversation had now been discovered, her mother dropped all pretenses.

‘That boy refused to go on the hunt again today. Lakawa asked him personally,’ she said loudly.

Her eyes flashed at the perceived disrespect to her husband, Chief Lakawa.

‘I would say he is probably hungry then,’ said Grandmother. ‘Come Tayen, we shall take him some food.’

She took Nuki from Tayen and handed him back to his mother.

The mother pressed her lips into a thin line. 

‘You would take food from our stores and give it to a boy who dwells in laziness?’

‘You focus on nurturing your own son and be glad he is blessed with a mother. And a father. And a sister,’ growled grandmother with hooded eyes. ‘Some of us are not.’

Tayen’s mother lowered her gaze in deference to the older woman. She nodded. The memory of thirteen year old Kosumi returning alone and hypothermic from a salmon fishing expedition with his family suddenly stabbed at her heart. 

‘Very well. But you must explain if Lakawa asks where the food is if he discovers it’s gone.’

‘I do not think he will miss a few strips of reindeer and a handful of dried gilder berries.’

And as it turned out, he did not.

The fourteen men returned triumphant with a small Burcado (a type of goat) and a buck reindeer. There was much work to be done to process the pelts and preserve the meat. The encampment was alive with laughter and chatter, the smell of blood and fires being stoked in readiness for the smoking.

All this was still audible to Kosumi as he left the valley unnoticed in search of the river. His once shrivelled belly had ceased it’s vicious gnawing, thanks to Tayen and her kindly Grandmother. After days and days of darkness he had finally seen some light and had found the smallest of sparks. He saw for certain that Tayen wanted him now and he could see the life that could be unfolded before him. Hand wrapped around his salmon fishing spear, he struck out on his own in worn out furs and boots. He would catch many salmon – the king of fish and bring them back as gifts to Lakawe, Tayen’s father. He smiled for the first time in a very long time as he thought of kind, beautiful Tayen being his. Of being alone no more. Of having family again. Sons, daughters and of joy around his hearth instead of emptiness.

The next day rolled in slowly for the Oramenos people. They had worked hard, eaten their fill and had sung songs of thanks into the night sky. 

‘Has anyone seen Kosumi?’ Tayen asked her father around midday.

His brow knitted together.

‘You know he likes to keep to himself daughter. He will appear when he is ready. No doubt he is a little ashamed because he did not take part in our successful hunt.’

Upset, Tayen sought out her Grandmother.

Even she agreed that perhaps Kosumi wanted to be left alone for a while. 

For a few hours everyone but Tayen was satisfied. Until, Jayek noticed an absence of smoke from Kosumi’s hut. Then another conversation ensued. Male only.

‘Who was the last to see him?’ someone asked. They were using the Chief’s hut as a meeting place.

‘I believe that would be my daughter and wife’s mother,’ the Chief said. ‘They took him food.’

There was a loaded silence at this revelation. 

Jayek, as ever impetuous, broke it.

‘So where could he be? Maybe he has left. I say this is a good thing.’

‘It is not a good thing when my daughter lies in her bed crying!’ said Lakawa. ‘We must look for him. He is of our people, no matter how weak.’

There was a little dissension, but before long the men were scouring the valley, looking for tracks. A man called Siva found some. A single person on foot carrying a spear; the imprint of all pressed into the crisp white.

‘He is headed to the river for some fishing,’ he declared.

Lakawa and the others agreed and followed, their minds busy with equal parts regret and observation. As expected they tracked him to the river. There they found a hole in the ice, the thickness of a man’s forearm; probably broken with the rock they found mere feet away. There was a single salmon lying also, mostly bones, having bathed the ice in it’s scarlet life force.

They called out his name. The limestone cliffs and clear, almost blue ice of the river bouncing it back, turning it into a playful game. 

Then he was discovered.

Blue as the ice that captured him, he was locked beneath their feet. In his hands he still held the fishing spear, the one that belonged to his father. The one that he had almost died trying to retrieve on that fateful fishing expedition several years ago. Frozen bubbles were visible coming from his mouth, as if he had tried to say something in his last moments. His eyes were open too, robbing his tribesmen of all words.

‘We should get him out and honour him,’ said Jayek, finally pressing his hand to the ice.

The wind whistled in protest and a fitful blizzard began.

Lakawa looked around, listening, his eyebrows laden with snow.

‘No. We will leave him here. He is with his family now. He has proved himself – to himself. And to us, his people.’

So the Oramenos erected a cairn of stones upon the thick ice that never melted in either summer or winter to mark the spot and to enable them to honor him once a year. Each year they uncovered his last resting place and spoke to him as they should have done during his life but never did to their everlasting shame. 

And Tayen wept for the husband, sons and daughters that could have been and brought him gifts of berries and kisses through the barrier that stood between them. She never married in the fifty nine years that ensued but remained alone till she saw out her final days in the unforgiving valley of Sligeachan.

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