Powers that Be

Chapter 8

A scratch on the door heralded Sinead's arrival at some O-dark-hundred hour. Yana was on her feet instantly and opened the door, dancing about on tiptoe as the cold of the floor ate through her bedsocks.

"I'll stir the stove," Sinead said, loosening her outer garments. "You'll need something warm in your belly today. Sometimes I think it's colder just before spring than it is midwinter. Good day to check the traplines though."

As she busied herself, pouring water from the thermos into a pot to heat, shaking down the ash from the embers, Yana inserted herself into the layers she felt she would need on this expedition.

"Wha… arrrre… we trapping?" she asked, her teeth chattering. She wondered that everyone in Kilcoole seemed to have whole teeth. She was certain one morning her front ones would crack off.

"Whatever's willing," Sinead said with a droll grin.

"Which leaves me no wiser."

"It's a good time to see what's available," Sinead repeated. "The time of year when some are more happy to die than live."

"How can you tell which is which?"

"You'll see. Here, drink this!"

Yana was quite willing to, cradling the cup in her hands and occasionally, carefully, holding it close to her cheeks to warm her cold face. As carefully as she wrapped her quilts about her prior to falling asleep, her face insisted on being out in the open, and was always cold in the morning.

Sinead had made a single serving of porridge, as well. "Aisling fed me," she said with a grin. "Can't get out of the house in the morning without being stuffed."

Yana grinned back, for a moment envious of Sinead, who had a caring partner who saw to her comfort. Then, warmed by the hearty meal, she was ready to go. Sinead had damped down the energetic blaze so that there would be coal to start up again when Yana returned. Clodagh's cat went out with them and whisked away on some business of its own.

"D'you have one like that?" Yana asked Sinead as she settled in the sled.

Sinead gave a snort. "No one has Clodagh's cats. They have you."

Yana agreed heartily and pulled the fur up to her face just as Sinead shouted to her lead dog, a big shaggy brindled female she had named Alice B.

There was no one else about as the dogs pulled the sled quickly down the main track of Kilcoole, though some houses showed lights. They were soon out into the forest, and Sinead urged her team to the left, down a long slope and then onto a wide expanse of white. Here and there Yana saw what looked to be the tops of square fence posts jutting up from their winter blanket and wondered if this was where the village grew its crops in the short summer season.

When she saw the leaders suddenly drop off into nothing, she just had time to take a firmer hold on the driving bow before the sled abruptly nose-dived down the steep slope.

They crashed past more of the spired vegetation she had seen on her first ride on Petaybee; then the surface became smooth again. Another one of Petaybee's many rivers? As they then traveled up a slope on the other side, she decided her notion was correct. Frozen bushes shortly gave way to trees, growing thicker as they progressed along the trail Sinead was following. The track led slightly uphill and then dipped downward again, across another clearing and into more forest, with Sinead pulling ever left, toward the slowly brightening eastern sky.

A time or two Yana's sharp eyes caught the glimmer of lights through the trees, and she smelled woodsmoke. On and on the dogs ran, barking now and then, evidently from sheer joy. Sinead would laugh and urge them on.

They had been traveling upward of an hour, in and out of forests, when Sinead called Alice B to a halt by a small shack. More of a lean-to actually, Yana thought, rising from the sled, rather pleased to find that she wasn't as stiff as usual. Nor had cold half crippled her. Was she actually becoming acclimated to this frigid planet? Probably she would become accustomed to the cold just as summer arrived, and by that time any temperature above freezing would roast her.

She helped Sinead unhook the dogs, check their feet, and set up their picket line. Then Sinead swung to her back the pack that had been Yana's cushion on the trip out. She passed a second, smaller pack to Yana. From the sled she took a long bundle, which she unwrapped to display three spears with sharp pointed metal ends and one with a wicked-looking barb and hook that Yana thought might be a harpoon, though she had never seen such an instrument before. Two bags and a large Y-shaped affair, which she could identify as a hefty slingshot, had also been packaged with the weapons.

"Ever use one of these?" Sinead asked, passing over the slingshot.

"I spent much of my childhood in domes where something like this would have been frowned on," Yana said, testing the feel of grip in her hand and the give in the slings.

Sinead gave a snort. "You handle it like you know anyhow."

Yana grinned. "One learns." She took the bag of small stones that Sinead handed over. "What's the other? Your slingshot?"

Sinead hefted the bag. "A variant-matched stones attached to long strings. You get them swinging in circles in opposite directions like this. When you've got enough momentum going, you twirl them overhead until the tension's right, then loose them to tangle the feet of whatever you want to bring down."

"I've seen that sort of thing a time or two. And where you'd least expect it."

Her pack settled, Sinead entered the lean-to and emerged with two sets of snowshoes, handing a pair to Yana. She knelt to attach hers and then they were both ready, Sinead leading the way into the dense forest, only slightly illuminated by the rising sun.

They had traveled about half an hour, Yana judged, when Sinead stopped to kneel by a heavy evergreen bush. Hauling the skirt of branches to one side, she pulled out the oddest-looking wicker contraption Yana had ever seen, with the smaller end turning back inside itself. It held two gray-furred long-eared animals of good size.

"Thank you, friends," Sinead murmured, and then with a deft twist of strong gloved hands she wrung their necks.

Yana was startled. "They weren't dead yet?" she asked, surprised more by that than by Sinead's quick dispatch of them.

Sinead shrugged. "They came to die." She hummed-though Yana was certain she caught the sounds of words, as well-while with quick movements she wound cord from an outside pocket about their hind legs and secured them to a hook protruding from her pack.

Then, continuing her odd humming, she put a handful of pellets in the oddly shaped trap and replaced it under the bush. By then Yana had figured out that the trap let the creatures in through the clever inverted neck, which, apparently, couldn't expand as an exit. Like a fish trap she had once seen, where fish could swim in, but not out.

"You don't trap them dead?" Yana asked when Sinead fell silent. She had the oddest notion that Sinead had been singing some sort of a ritual requiem.

Sinead shook her head. "No, we live-trap. It is our way. But it means I must run the trapline every three, four days, or they would also starve."

Yana shook her head, surprised. "You said it was a good time to die? Were those rabbits waiting here for you to kill them?"

"So it would appear." Then Sinead rose and started off to the left again.

They had emptied ten similar traps, and Yana now carried a share of the catch, when Sinead, holding up her hand for Yana to tread more warily, stole toward a thicket. Parting the branches so carefully that only a few grains of snow fell, she motioned for Yana to look into the small clearing. A large buff-colored reindeer stood there-on three legs, the fourth broken at the knee and hanging at an obscene angle. The deer had been cropping the bushes around it, and the snow had turned to muddy slush where it had trampled the clearing in its food circuit.

Sinead moved back, holding up one gloved hand to indicate Yana was to stay put. She slipped out of her pack, laying it quietly in the snow, and with spear in hand, she crept around the thicket. Yana watched as she disappeared into another portion of the undergrowth. Then she heard a grunt, a whirring noise, and a thunk as the spear found its target, and then an uninhibited crashing of bushes.

"Okay, Yana," Sinead called cheerily, and Yana pushed through the thicket and saw the spear sticking out of the deer's head, right between its eyes. "Grand pelt on this buck," Sinead said, running her hand down the side and back of the dead beast.

"This isn't one of your humane traps, is it?" Yana asked, looking about the clearing as she hunkered down beside the hunter.

"Not a trap, but I've seen does have their young in places like this."

"You're a mighty hunter, Nimrod," Yana went on, observing how much of the spear's metal point had entered the beast's skull. "That was some throw."

"The idea is to cause as little pain as possible. Skull's thinnest right between the eyes. Minute the point hit its brain it was dead. Which it wanted to be with a break like that," Sinead said, pointing to the broken leg. "Hadn't done it but a day or two ago, either. Bone ends not frozen through. 'Mother thing about a head kill is the skin isn't marred. C'mon. We got real work to do now."

To Yana's surprise, Sinead had her help drag the carcass from the little clearing. "Doe might need it come spring, and it don't do to leave death scent around."

They gutted the animal, a procedure Yana found somewhat less distasteful than dissections of alien creatures she had witnessed during her search-and-discover days with company expeditionary parties. Sinead demonstrated the technique with almost ritualistic care and put the offal in a sack she had obviously brought for the need. She kept out the liver.

"Lunch," she said, "but I'll just put the rest of this-which we can use-where nothing can reach it." She hung the sack high on the branch beside the carcass, which was already stiffening with cold. "We'll come back for it. Gotta finish the line."

Then Sinead beckoned Yana to follow her as she took up her trapline again. They had acquired several more animals, two already dead in the live traps, when Sinead decided it was time to eat. She built a little fire and, with sharpened twigs, skewered slices of the liver.

The cooking smelled as good as the eating tasted. Yana licked her fingers, shoving them into her parka to dry them on her shirt when she had finished eating. Sinead heated a pan of water and made some tea, which they took turns drinking.

"So," Yana said. "So far these all seem to be fairly standard critters, the kind that would have occurred in the northernmost parts of Earth back in the old days. I had kind of hoped for something a little more unusual."

Sinead looked across at her, a slight smile on her face. "Day's early."

"Do you ever catch those freshwater seals?" The shock of Sinead's reaction to that casual question made Yana try a hasty apology. "What'd I say wrong? You're the one asked me had I seen them."

"You see a seal, dama, and you be respectful." And there was no question of the menace in Sinead's manner.

Yana held her hands up in surrender and laughed shakily. "Sorry. Didn't mean to put both feet in my mouth. Are seals special?"

"Very," Sinead said in an unequivocal tone. Then she, too, lightened up, the tension draining out of her body. "Petaybean seals are one of the more unusual beasts: on the surface they may look like the ordinary Earth species, but they're very much a product of the planet and they must be protected. Not many people ever get to see a Petaybean seal." Unexpectedly Sinead grinned, her eyes intent on Yana's face. "You see one, you be respectful," she repeated pleasantly.

"You can count on that!" Yana said fervently.

Sinead rose and neatly covered their small fire with snow; and then they were on their way again.

Nine traps later, with some carcasses whose pelts had caused Sinead's eyes to glisten with pleasure, Yana realized that Sinead was swinging to her right. Maybe they were on the homeward leg. Yana hoped so. Her back and calf muscles were beginning to protest: individually the dead animals weighed little, but she had fifteen dangling from the pack now, and her legs were feeling the strain of unaccustomed snowshoeing.

There was no way she would complain, but she was tiring. Still and all, she had surprised herself with the day's work. Far cry from what she had been like first off Andromeda. A healthy life in the outdoors, with untainted air to breathe and decent food to eat, was certainly providing cures never found in an Intergal medical cabinet.

Yana heard the cracking sound almost as soon as Sinead, who dropped to her knees. Yana did likewise and watched with bated breath as Sinead crept forward. She motioned for Yana to come up, but also signaled her to proceed quietly. Yana had done her share of stalking-of beasts in her expeditionary days, of people in her days as an investigator-and moved appropriately. The cracking continued, a cracking and a thumping. Again Sinead moved forward, stepping with extra care, inserting herself into one of the ubiquitous thickets that grew everywhere. Yana let the branches close around her as she followed Sinead. Instead of peering up over the thicket, Sinead began to part the lower branches, crouching down to look through. She waved Yana to a point beside her, and Yana realized that she could almost see through to what looked like a riverbed. With exquisite caution, she slowly made an obscured peek hole in the branches and barely stifled her gasp of astonishment.

Animals that she first thought were some of Scan's curly-coated horses were standing about on the frozen river. One was butting at the ice, obviously determined to make a hole from which it and its companions could drink-and it was butting with a short, stumpy curled horn that grew out of the end of its nose bone. The critter was putting its all into the exercise, sometimes dropping to its knees with the force of its blows, then heaving back to all fours and springing from powerful hindquarters to beat again at the ice. The rear view exposed some obvious male appendages; checking the others of the group, Yana came to the conclusion that the horn seemed to be a perquisite of the male of the species. Suddenly it gave a triumphant bellow and began rearing up, coming down hard to stomp at the ice with its sharp hooves. The others in the small herd did likewise and then backpedaled as a black hole appeared in the white surface.

Sinead turned to grin broadly at Yana and then signaled her to withdraw. They jogged quite a ways down the track before Sinead stopped.

"Was that a unicorn I saw?" Yana asked, panting and wheezing just a bit from the exertion.

Sinead grinned with humorous malice. "There ain't no such animal and neither of us is virgin, though me more than you, 1 guess."

"I didn't see any in Sean's herd. And he showed me the stallion."

"This is a wild curly. They need the horn to get water in the winter."

"Does the horn fall off in the summer then?"

"Don't know. Never saw a horned curly trying to break ice in the summer." Sinead was off down the track before Yana could press her for more information. Well, she had been promised unusual animals-and she'd got 'em.

To Yana's surprise they were back at the lean-to much sooner than she had anticipated. She helped Sinead hitch up the team to the sled and deposited the frozen small animals on the sled bench, and then they made a straight line back to where the deer was hung. Nothing had touched it.

By the time they reached Kilcoole, Yana taking turns with Sinead to ride the sled runners, it looked the same as it had when they left: no one about on the frozen track and lights coming up in the cabins as they passed.

"Need help skinning any of these?" Sinead asked as she deposited a fair half of the produce at Yana's feet.

"I wouldn't mind," Yana admitted. "Though I could probably figure it out, I've never really done it before. I have done a little trapping and hunting, but seldom for food; mostly it was for specimens that needed to remain intact for examination and analyses."

Sinead took charge, demonstrating the technique of placing the slits and peeling the coats back, stripping away connective tissue. "Ruining the hide wastes part of the critter's gift to you, so you want to do it right. Sharp knife helps." She helped Yana skin out her share, watching until she was satisfied that Yana had the knack. Yana found she learned skinning with a lot more ease than she did cooking.

Sinead pointed up to the crossbeams. "If you tie your catch up high out here on the porch, nothing'll get 'em. I'll bring back your share of the reindeer when we've butchered it. And its hide. You have more need of it than we do."

With Yana's profuse thanks trailing after them, Sinead and her dogs went on up the track to the cabin she and Aisling shared.