Chapter 2: A Man of the Catori

Tarek laid the mist-hart at Zuma’s feet as the men danced and the women sang. Powerful Zuma, chief of the Catori, broad as a canopy tree and twice as hard, danced a little jig with his infant daughter in one arm, his face split into a grin that let out laughter loud enough to rival thunder. Stoic Shad stood back from the revelry, content to clap a hand to his bare chest to keep the beat, but his eyes glinted with satisfaction and more than a little relief. The tribe’s brief sorrow at losing a new hunter made their joy in his success even sweeter. Tarek stood in the middle of the chaos, letting it fill his starving heart with approval. The only one not smiling was Kanga, and that made him even happier.

“Seems you called the end of the hunt a little early,” Zuma boomed in Shad’s direction over the din. The graying hunter shrugged in bafflement, and the chief laughed again. The sound filled the clearing. Everything about Zuma was big. The sounds he made, the space he filled, the amount he ate, the number of children he’d gotten on his long-suffering wife. He could wrestle any three of his hunters to the ground at once, and he wore a dappled panther-skin cape over his hulking shoulders on even the hottest of days. His good humor was nearly as frightening as his temper, and one could replace the other in a moment. His eyes were those of the raptor, and right now they gleamed with satisfaction.

Tarek held up his hands, and little by little the furor died down. A loose circle formed with Zuma and Tarek in the center. As far as he could tell, all seventy-two of the Catori were in the village’s great clearing in front of the tribe’s sacred ficus tree. He hoped so. He wanted them all to see this. Zuma set his child aside for the moment of ceremony. When only whispers remained in the crowd, Tarek held out the broken ceremonial arrow he’d used to kill the mist-hart, presenting it to Zuma. The knapped chert glinted in a stray beam of sunlight. “My chief, I have returned from the hunt of manhood.”

“Where is the hunt?” the broad man boomed.

“The hunt is here,” chorused everyone in the clearing, men and women alike.

“Who brings the hunt?” cried the chief even louder.

Tarek’s heart filled his throat, but he spoke clearly. “A man of the Catori.”

“A man of the Catori!” Zuma roared, taking the mist-hart and lifting it high for all to see. The women set up a ululating cry, and the men beat their bare chests with hoots of approval. Setting the carcass down, he engulfed Tarek in a crushing hug. “I’m proud of you, boy,” he cried. “If we had more like you, we’d take the Heart of the Song from the Kuruk tribe in a handful of years.”

“Thank you,” he muttered, embarrassed.

“How did you do it?” the big man enthused, speaking loudly enough to include the others nearby. “And with a broken bow? I’d have sworn by my stones it was impossible for one like you.”

Tarek flinched both at the unintended insult and the question itself. He could never tell the truth. He barely even dared think it. Man of the tribe or no, if any of the Catori so much as suspected he possessed the blood magic they’d hang him from a tree, burn his body, and dump the ashes in the Ix River.

“The mist-beast didn’t go far when she disappeared,” he said, hoping his carefully rehearsed lies would sound natural. Everyone was listening. “I circled the area until I found her tracks. I had to move fast before the mists burnt off in the sun, but she was eating dreamberries, so she was sluggish. I crept right up and, and put the arrow in her throat.” He swallowed, suddenly remembering the limpid blackness of the hart’s eyes as she waited for death. “The wind was in my favor, but it wasn’t easy.”

“Without the Song!” marveled the chief, as tactless and blunt as ever.

“Always,” Tarek said softly.

“You expect us to believe that?” burst out Kanga from the edge of the crowd. “I’ve heard better stories from children.”

“I expect nothing from you, Kanga,” Tarek said mildly, “and you never disappoint.”

That brought a hearty laugh from the others, and the hunter subsided into sullen, embarrassed silence. He rarely had more than a single arrow in his quiver when it came to trading barbs.

“And so a new hunter joins the Catori!” thundered the chief, clapping his hands again. “We feared this would be a sad day, but tonight we feast our new man!” He threw a heavy arm over Tarek’s shoulder. “Will we be eating mist-hart around the fire?”

Tarek nodded enthusiastically. It was his responsibility to prepare the meat by himself after the manhood hunt, and he’d given it a lot of thought on the walk back to the village. “I’m going to notch the flanks and loin thin and layer in sweetleaf before roasting it.”

Zuma swooned and clapped a hand to his broad, rock-hard belly. “I can’t wait! And we’ll have plenty more meat besides, so long as these other layabouts haven’t been sleeping the day away.” He gestured good-naturedly to the other hunters, most of whom made mock protestations of worthiness. Zuma was a leader who knew when to threaten and when to joke. He pointed at Tarek. “Best not dawdle about it – I imagine there’s more than a couple of folks anxious to talk to the new man.” The chief winked at him, and Tarek tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed.

The gathering began to disperse, with many of the villagers both young and old reaching in one at a time to touch Tarek’s head, welcoming the new hunter home with a soft word and a smile. Of them all, only Shad had anything of substance to say, and he waited until most of the others had gone.

“I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

Tarek shrugged uncomfortably. “I doubted myself plenty. I can hardly blame anyone else.”

“You’ve done a remarkable thing. You’ll have to teach me how you’ve learned to move so silently even… well. It would be a good thing to learn.”

Tarek gave a sickly smile. “I can’t imagine I’d teach you anything.”

“You stop learning when you die,” Shad said stoically. “I look forward to our hunts.”

The older man turned away to the skinning hut at the edge of the clearing, and Tarek had a moment alone. He wants to know how I did it. I will never be done lying. The thought of hiding his dark deeds and evil heart for the rest of his life was exhausting. But what was the alternative? Disgrace? Banishment? Death? He was a man now – it was time to shoulder a man’s burden.

But with a man’s burden came a man’s opportunities. A warm hand trailed across the small of his back, sending a pleasant chill up his spine. “Too many people around here,” a low voice murmured in his ear. “What’s a woman have to do to get a moment alone with her betrothed?”

Tarek’s heart spilled honey all over his insides and his face split in an idiot grin. “Hi,” he said stupidly.

Yaretzi circled around to his front. Now that she was in front of him where the few elders remaining nearby could see her, she kept her hands to herself, as was expected of a young woman betrothed. Many of the Catori elders were quite harsh about keeping the proper distance between young men and women, and her mentor, the cranky old healer Mahela, was one of the worst. One had to be standing as close as Tarek to see the mischievous heat in her eyes that spoke of much warmer thoughts. Slim, honey-skinned, and cool as a breeze on a river, Yaretzi wiped her long fingers in a wet cloth left over from her medicinal duties and gave him her secret smile, inclining her head ever so slightly in a polite greeting. No one but him knew it was a smile. Many of the other young men thought her distant, but her reserve hid a quick mind, a wicked wit, and a warm heart. The dip of her head made her long, glossy black hair cascade forward over her face, shading her eyes. With a quirk of her full lips she tucked the hair behind her ears. Her eyes shone in the late morning sun. Most of the Lost had dark eyes, but hers were the clearest sky-blue he’d ever seen.

“I’ll trip you behind the great ficus if I have to,” she admitted, “but it would be nice to have more than a moment’s privacy. You’re a big, manly hunter now, and you and I have unresolved business to discuss.”

Tarek’s heart thumped hard and his stomach squirmed with anticipation. “Business,” he repeated breathlessly.

“Of the most urgent sort,” she whispered, coming half a step closer than propriety allowed. He could smell the lavender and resin of the healer’s tent wafting from her. She was intoxicating in a way that Ryki’s tuber beer could never match.

“Uh,” Tarek said, trying to gather his thoughts. His fingers itched to touch her, to tangle in her hair and pull her close. “Well. I’m supposed to go gut my kill and prepare the meat. By myself. Commune with the Ones Beneath and consider manhood.”

“Hmm, that’s a topic I might want to consider as well,” she said with an arch look.

Tarek laughed, feeling more at ease than he had in days. “You say that, but I seem to recall someone feeling a little shy last time it came up.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Careful how you phrase that.”

He grinned. “I was.” His hand twitched toward her, but he restrained himself. “I’ll be under the big rockwood a fingerspan’s walk from my family’s hut toward the river, and I’ll be out there for at least two handspans. Plenty of time for your… unresolved business.” His heart quickened at the thought of getting some time alone with her without the eagle-eyed Catori elders watching.

“I’ll see if I can sneak away from Mahela for a bit,” she promised. “Mostly we’re just steeping herbs today.”

He put two fingers to his heart, then his lips, then his brow. It was the most he could do in public. Yaretzi, always the more restrained one, merely twitched her lips in the suggestion of a kiss. No one could have seen it but Tarek, and that was just how she liked it. Ones Beneath, what a woman.

She turned back to the healer’s hut where Mahela, the aged healer for the Catori, waited impatiently for her apprentice. “I passed by your mother as she was running off in the confusion. She said to tell you to go to your house. She was too excited to wait, but you know she’ll want to talk to you.”

“Of course.” He bowed formally for the benefit of the scattered, watching elders. “Good morn, my betrothed.”

“Not yet,” she said over her shoulder as she walked away. “But it will be.” Yaretzi looked back at him only once, but it was enough. This was why he risked his soul on blood magic. He could imagine no life without that woman.

His family’s hut was sixty-two strides from the central clearing in a westerly direction. He draped the prized mist-hart carcass in the crook of a nearby tree before entering his home. Like all Catori houses, it perched high on its man-sized stilts; this one stood in the middle of a copse of young sourfruit and chicle trees. The broad leaves served as a second roof over the top of their dried thatch and kept the home dry inside even during the flood season that turned the village into a submerged swamp and brought the river within two handsbreadths of the floorboards. The Month of the Otter was always a long one, what with everyone getting around by canoe and having to guard their door to keep water vipers out of the blankets.

It was still half a turn of the greater moon before the rains began, though, so the split-log ramp leading up to their door was still in place, with the same familiar sway and creak it always had. Two quick steps from the big knot on the left to the rough-scraped spot in the center that had never worn down, then a big bounce on the springy section in the center that took him most of the way to the top, rattling the boards where they were tied to the doorposts. Two more stutter-steps near the top and he was through the door. He could have done it in his sleep.

His mother Mecumsta was hovering near her foul-smelling stewpot under the chimney as always, but she was watching for him. “The hunter returns!” she crowed, raising her arms in triumph.

Tarek laughed and bounded over to her, where her arms dropped to fold him into a fierce hug. “I was so scared, pa’al,” she admitted sheepishly, using her pet name for him. “I prayed to the Ones Beneath all morning.”

“You weren’t the only one,” Tarek admitted.

“When they came back without you…” she shook her head, a bleak frown creasing her weathered brow. “I thought I’d bring the floods all on my own.”

“It’s all right, mamah,” he assured her. “My kill is right outside. I’m going out to the big rockwood to prepare it.”

Mecumsta’s round face beamed, and she put her hands to his cheeks. “I’m so proud!” Then she swatted the back of his head sharply. “Next time do it faster so your mamah doesn’t nearly die of worry.”

Tarek heard the tell-tale creak from the corner by the window and turned to face his father as he rose from the stool where he always built his traps. Tenoch was taller than any of them, spare to the point of gauntness, and had a face of flint.

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He came close and peered into Tarek’s eyes. “How was it done?” he asked quietly.

“Not like that,” Tarek replied firmly. If ever he was found using the blood magic, his father would be at the head of the line of those clamoring to cast him out. He would tell no one what he had done. Not sweet, soft Mecumsta his mother, not Yaretzi, and certainly not Tenoch.

“Then how?” demanded Tenoch.

“With luck, determination, and skill. I learned from the best.”

The glint in his father’s eyes said he did not believe, but the flattery quieted him. “Good. Your road will be hard enough with your deafness. Don’t make it worse.”

It was a refrain he could repeat in his sleep, but there was only one answer he could give. “Of course, tata. I won’t forget.”

Tenoch nodded, his hands firmly at his sides. He never touched his son unless a beating was in order. “Be about your duties, then.”

Tarek wondered how he could have come from such a man.

“I have something for you,” Mecumsta said, anxious as ever to lessen the tension.

Tarek turned to her, grateful for the distraction. “A little soup?” he asked brightly. Mecumsta was a terrible cook, and they all teased her for it. No matter what went into the pot, the sour stews that came out never tasted much better than the deer scat he’d put in his mouth that morning. The family always ate the stuff regardless, picking out bits of bone and suffering through the film of grit their poorly-fired pot left behind. It was better than starving, and joking about it made her soups something that drew them together instead of apart.

“Be nice or soup’s exactly what you’ll get,” she said as she fetched a wicker box no bigger than her palm from the hearth. “Here, pa’al. For your special day.”

He opened the top of the box and saw three fat grubs nosing about on shredded leaves within. They were no longer than the last joint of his pinky, and they glowed a bright green in the dimness of the hut.

His breath caught. “Are these…?”

“Moon moth larvae,” Mecumsta confirmed. “For your celebration tonight.”

Tarek goggled at her. The luminescent moth larvae lived deep in the wood of the soft gum trees near the northern border of Catori lands a full day’s walk from the village. The grubs only came to the surface to pupate in the midnight hours when both moons were dark. They could be mixed and eaten with some of the sacred plants that only the healer and a few others knew of to spark visions and dreams, but when made into a paste and applied to the skin they gave off a bright green glow for hours. It was said to make the skin tingle and give a sense of euphoria and lightness. He’d never experienced it himself. In fact, he’d only seen the green glow a handful of times in his life. The vision grubs were vanishingly rare and required constant care once caught until the time came to mash them.

Mecumsta saw his expression and smiled. “I got them two moons ago on a long forage. I hoped we’d be celebrating tonight.”

Tenoch grunted sourly from his stool, his hands full of the half-woven-together branches of one of his wicker traps. He did not look up when Tarek glanced at him. Thinks she shouldn’t waste the grubs on me, most likely. He firmed his jaw and ignored the man.

“It’s a lovely gift, mamah,” he said, handing them back. “More than I could have asked for.”

“I’ll make the paste later so it’s fresh,” she promised him. “Mahela has the right herbs; I already asked.”

“Do I get some too?” came a voice from the nook near the door.

Tarek turned in surprise. “Have you been sitting there the whole time?” he asked.

His young brother Tavi looked up from the scroll of beaten bark he was marking on with a stylus, his hair sticking up in wild thatches. “Some of us have work to do.”

Tarek laughed and went to his brother, giving him a hug as the lanky boy protested. “Only you think scratching on bark is work, Tav.”

“Careful!” the boy admonished, holding the scroll out of his reach. He sounded much more mature than his twelve years, and sometimes Tarek thought he had the eyes of an old man. He teased the boy for it, calling him little elder and saying that he’d replace Locotl as the tribe’s numerator by the time he was twenty. Tavi never bothered denying it. He had many gifts of the mind, but modesty wasn’t one of them.

“You’ll get gifts when it’s your time of manhood,” Mecumsta told the boy. “Touch the vision paste tonight and I’ll shave you bald.”

“Do it anyway,” Tarek told her. “Look at that hair. Is it a bird’s nest? Take a bath, wise one.”

“I’ll bathe later,” Tavi said. “Before tonight, I promise. I have to fix Locotl’s mistake first.” He glowered at his scroll as if it offended him.

“You’re correcting the numerator’s mistakes now?” Tarek laughed. “Best not let him hear you talking like that.”

“Well if he doesn’t like it, he shouldn’t give me weather calculations that are missing variables. Look,” he said, gesturing at the bark disgustedly. “Right there. I’m supposed to account for Gurobo’s pull, but do you see Gurobo anywhere?”

Tarek blinked at him. “Is that a pet name for one of your friends? There’s no Gurobo in our tribe.”

Tavi flapped a hand at him. “Gurobo, the Wandering Star. I know you’ve heard the stories, even if you stare at Yaretzi the whole time.”

Tarek grinned, shrugging. “Is this the year for the Wandering Star to be in the sky? I’ve always wanted to see it. I’ll have to take Yar out by the river to look tonight.”

Tavi shook his head. “You two are disgusting. And it would be pointless, anyway. I’ve been working on the star charts for the last three nights – Gurobo is nowhere to be seen. Locotl must have gotten the year wrong, and now he wants me to calculate flood strength with a variable in the equation that shouldn’t be there.”

Tarek glanced at the scroll. “Why are there letters in the middle of your math?”

“It’s… they represent variables… never mind. It’ll just confuse you. Trust me: Locotl made a mistake.”

“No mistake,” Tenoch said from his worktable. “It’s the year of the Wandering Star.”

“Are you sure, tata?” Tavi asked.

Tenoch smiled gently at him. All the warmth he withheld from Tarek he lavished on his younger son. The one that isn’t broken. Had Tarek and Tavi been less close, he might have hated his little brother for that.

“The last time the Wanderer passed in the sky was the season your older brother was born,” Tenoch said. “Twenty years ago. I’ve been hoping the star would bring us better luck this time around.” He pulled on his wicker trap from one direction, then another, testing its soundness. He grunted with satisfaction and set it aside.

Tavi looked at the scroll, consternation growing on his face. “You’re certain?”

“Completely,” Tenoch said. “It first showed in the sky the night he was born.”

“Then it should be here now,” Tavi muttered. “Its path doesn’t vary. Every twenty years, reliable as the sun. That’s what Locotl has always said. But that means…” he trailed off, scribbling at his scroll furiously.

Tarek knew that look. His brother would be lost in his own mind for handspans as his mind made leaps and connections Tarek could only dream at. He put a fond hand on Tavi’s ratty hair and stood. “I’m going out to prepare the kill,” he told his parents. “I’ll be back by dark.”

“Make sure of it,” Tenoch said, not looking up from his work.

“We’ll be ready,” Mecumsta said. “Food before you go?”

Tarek shook his head in mock horror and fetched his journey bag from his shelf on the far side of the room. The tightly-sewn layers of capybara hide overlapped each other on all sides except the top, which had a flap secured by a rawhide thong. Undoing the closure, Tarek peeked inside and was satisfied to see that he had plenty of journey meal left. The mixture of dried, pounded meat, melted fat, nuts, and berries was filling and nutritious, and compared to his mother’s soups, it tasted like heaven.

Next to the bag was suspended the handwork Tarek had labored over for the last three moons: Yaretzi’s veil. It was a beautiful piece. He’d worn his fingers nearly to the bone trying to get the garment finished before his manhood hunt, and his efforts had not been in vain. The cloth was so thin he could see through it from three paces away – which was, after all, the point of a veil. He’d pounded the guaro fibers out flat on a rock to make them supple and then twisted each and every one by hand before dipping them in rendered fat to turn them translucent. Then came the weaving, strand after strand, over and under and over again around the loom stick before cinching the whole row tight. He’d worked the fringe with beads of every color which he’d bartered, begged, and worked for over the last three years. Every young man was expected to have a handful of beads when it came time to weave his betrothed’s veil, but Tarek had managed to collect more than twenty – and not a single one of them was of dull or unstained wood. Now he just had to wait for her to formally demand an end to their betrothal, as was the Catori way. He couldn’t wait to see the veil draped over Yaretzi’s face.

Mecumsta came up behind him. “Soon,” she said, seeing him staring at the veil.

“Not soon enough,” he sighed, but his heart was happy as he walked out of the family hut. His manhood trial was behind him, a life with Yaretzi lay before him, and the whole tribe would feast in his honor tonight. No disapproving father or sneaky, sullen Kanga could dim his mood. I’m a man of the Catori.

He hoisted the mist-hart carcass and loped out into the jungle. He had a party to get ready for.

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