When Anuniaq was only just become a man and had not yet taken a wife from among his people, his mother, Nauja said to his father, Chulyin, “Why will my son not take a wife?  Husband, speak to Anuniaq, else our family will end with him and we will have no daughter-in-law to care for us in our old age.”

“Fine, fine, I will speak to the boy,” said Chulyin and he went out to his son so he would not have to hear Nauja’s complaints against the boy.

Far out on the sea, Anuniaq was trying out his fine new tanned hide sail on his kayak.  Chulyin looked at the low gloomy sky and left his son to his foolishness and went to sit by his friend Oogrooq’s fire.”  I will talk to the boy when he returns,” He thought.

The fire was fragrant and the talk was good, so Chulyin sat long with his friend Oogrooq discussing this and that.  The crackling fire and their laughter drowned out the beginnings of rain on the sides of Oogrooq’s tent.  It was a gust of wind that reminded Chulyin of his mission.  “I beg your pardon Oogrooq, I was to talk to my son about a wife. . .”

Oogroo, knowing both Chulyin and Nauja, commented, “Are you sure you are the one to advise him, Chulyin?”

“Probably not,” said Chulyin as he climbed to his feet, “But how could I tell Nauja that?”

“Mmmm,” said Oogrooq.

When Chulyin staggered out of Oogrooq’s tent, the wind was howling and driving the rain into his face.  He turned his back to the gale and looked out to sea.  Annuniaq’s kayak was nowhere to be found.  Chulyin looked up and down the slippery pebble beach.  There was no sign of the boy.  “Anuniaq!” he shouted.  The storm grew worse until he could only return to his tent and collapse by the fire.

           *  *  *

Anuniaq did not realize his danger until a great gust of wind nearly tore his sail from his grasp.  Only then did he look toward where the shore had been and see nothing but sheets of driving rain.  “Uh oh, here comes a storm.” he thought.

Anuniaq was very proud of his sail, the great drum that catches the wind, that he had fashioned.  So before he tried to paddle home he took the time to carefully collapse and tie down his sail.  Then, taking up his paddle, Anuniaq pulled hard into the wind and rain where he thought his village would be.

Soon the sea was a frothy confused range of colliding mountains tossing him about like a seal float.  Up he rose on the crest of a storm torn wave only to fall into the trough between white capped breakers trying to bury him in the deep.  The hope of home faded to be replaced by a terrorized fight to survive the ravening sea.

At some point, imminent danger became so incessant that thought was buried in instinct.  Anuniaq reacted to each new threat and without thought survived it.  Pain had no more meaning to him than did the past he could not then remember or a future he could not imagine.  And then when instinct told him his life was not threatened, he collapsed across his paddle and slept.

When he woke, stiff and cold, his kayak rocked upon an undulating sea beneath a gray sky.  The water was smooth, but rose and fell, and every new glass mountain peak showed nothing, but a world of other such mountains off to the gray horizon, unbroken and lonely.

There was a dim gloaming lightening the overcast, so with only a very general idea of direction Anuniaq began to paddle northward where he hoped to find land.  It was torturous at first, but as time passed his body warmed and with that his spirits rose.  As dim glowing light only just lightened the the overcast to his left Anuniaq continued to use the waves to surf him forward.

Anuniaq prepared for another night on the sea.  With his sail and provisions from his kayak he prepared shelter and a meager meal.  He hoped the morning would reveal land.  By now he was worried that the storm had driven him farther than he could have imagined, but worry pushed him no nearer to home and weariness made his kayak and the rocking of the waves a good enough bed.

A strong breeze ruffling his tented sail woke him.  The world was still gray, but the morning sun seemed brighter and the wind made him hope that he might sail more than paddle and so rest while he travelled more than his weary body would allow on its own.

So it was that Anuniaq nearly forgot his plight while he danced between wind and wave.  It was nearing mid-day with holes burned through the overcast that Anuniaq saw a dark blue serration along the horizon when he rose upon a swell.  The breeze bore him toward land he had never seen.

His people lived on the ice and, in summer, gravel beaches, sometimes there would be a low cinder cone peak above the shingle, but this land was stony peaks rising from the sea.  “This must be the iron mountains of the Rus of which the whale-talkers sang,” He thought.

There was a darkening threat, fearsome looking clouds to the West so Anuniaq feared another storm.  What approached on the wind he knew he could not bear again, so he rode the wind and the waves toward a new land.  Anuniaq began to realize that he may have traded one danger for another, but his fate was settled and he must go onward.

*  *  *

Chulyin sat by Oogrooq’s fire and thought more than he talked.  It seemed that Anuniaq was gone.  As a father he felt sad for the loss, but as a husband of a quarrelsome wife he felt a much worse.  Nauja had not taken the loss of her son, her only means of procuring a daughter-in-law, at all well.  It was Chulyin’s fault, of that she was sure, Nauja missed no opportunity to remind him, so he hid here with his friend.

Chulyin sighed loud enough to stop Oogrooq in the midst of a tale, meant to cheer him up.  Oogrooq commented, “I would not be surprised to find out that Anuniaq is fine, somewhere.  A very resourceful boy that son of yours.”

“I think so too.  I should be mourning him, but I don’t feel that he is dead, just gone and I miss him.  It was nice when there was someone else for Nauja to talk to.”

“Be careful what you wish for, eh Chulyin?  Every boy in the village was in love with your Nauja once.”

“Yes, and it was my good fortune to win her,”  Chulyin sighed, “I’m a lucky man.”

Oogrooq pondered awhile and then spoke, “Cheer up my friend, you don’t really need a son, you need a daughter.”

“Oh aye, but Nauja is not going to give me one of those, more like she’ll give me a knot on the head or poison.  Besides, she is passed the years of life giving.  Besides, we tried, but Anuniaq was very hard on her.”

“Look on the bright side, Winter is coming, someone always dies.  Maybe you can take in an orphan to care for you when you are old.”

Chulyin grinned, “You know, I’m sure you are right.  Someone is bound to die and leave a nice girl child for Nauja.  All I have to do is survive the Summer.”

“Perhaps we are not too old to go whaling?”

“Maybe.  More like we are not too old to go camping and watch the young men do the whaling.  Let’s get everything ready and I’ll tell Nauja when we are ready to shove off,” said Chulyin.

The men started their preparations in silence, but after a time Oogrooq spoke up, “You know Chulyin, I was one of the boys who loved Nauja. . .”

“I know my friend.  Once every boy in the village wanted Nauja.”

The night was dark save for one star.  I breathed and felt much pain.  My voice echo in the hollow earth when I cried out.  I had fallen into a sidhe and there I lay atop a mound of broken timbers and sod.

There was no flying out of this, nor could I climb up the walls as if it were a well.  Panic gripped me, I confess, my breath came too quickly and as sod was still drifting down I breathed so much I began to cough.  I struggled to my hands and knees.  The fight to breath focused me.  I was not dead, nor even that injured.  I was in the home of my friend, the girl who had laughed, Jella.

At first this was small comfort.  I was in darkness and knowing that none of my folk would ever find me here brought rising panic again.  I tried to remember the place in my dream, it had been lit in the middle and around the perimeter. In truth it wasn’t that large.  I walked down off the pile I had ridden to the floor and promptly tripped over something hard and sprawled on stone flagging covered with more of the result of my descent.

I rose again, walking like a blind man, arms waving, I headed off in what I thought a straight line toward the wall of the place.  Eventually I must find it, surely.  Before I did, I found a wall of stone.  I followed it to a quick turning and felt along one side to the back.  Reaching, I found a screen richly carved with images my fingers could not puzzle out, but I followed it to stone again.  Now I hurried, trusting this was a back wall and was rewarded with slamming my knee into something hard.  I fell into more hard edged items and then the stone floor.  In agony I clutched my knee.

Light was gone from my world.  I was lost.  Lost in a big room, not much more, but it was frighteningly strange for a boy who had always lived with not much more than some leather between himself and the sky.  I felt stiffled in the dusty hole.  I cried out for the only friend who I thought could help, “Jella!” Echoes died quickly and silence mocked me, “Jella, where are you? I need you now.”

I felt my way back to the wall and was too wounded in spirit and frightened by the dark to try to find my way.  I leaned back against the wall and stared, marvelling that eyes opened or closed it made no difference.  “Jella!” I closed my eyes.

The sun was rising where she was.  I saw it color the clouds before it mounted into the sky.  There were herd deer everywhere.  The north deer all have antlers and they are all colored alike, I could not tell which was male and which female, I was in a sea of tawny, antlered, steam breathed herd deer.  There were snorts and a bellow and the creatures shied from where I was.

This continues:  Concerning the Deer Riders from the second installment, Deer Riders Continued

It was dim when I woke,  the deep shade of a forest, not of night.  I could see, so, since it was my job to search and seek, that is what I did.  I walked along the path in the dimness, not really knowing what time of day it might be or what direction I was going.

I believed that the water and the valley I had seen was on my left, but I knew little more.  I hoped to come out to where I could see the sky, but I walked longer and then twice longer than I thought I should have.

I was frustrated.  I felt sure I had not missed a turning, but it seemed that I had.  I remembered walking past the steps rising out of the stream-bed and went back, now looking to my right where I expected to see the open vale.

This turning was more secret, but there it was, over grown and laid so that it could easily be missed by someone who didn’t know the way.

Then too, it was overgrown and I had to pick my way through invading brambles.  Slowly and painfully I made my way until fighting through a particularly thick stand of ropey, spine studded, whips I stepped out into a riot of flowers.

I wondered why I had not smelled them, but one moment there was only green leaves and pain, then the next I was beneath the sun, it was past mid-day, and surrounded by wild flowers of so many kinds that I could not ever remember seeing their like.

I looked back along my way and saw only a green wall of bramble-thorn.  I had a queasy feeling, I feared a magic other than that of growing things, but soon enough I found where I had come.  I tore at the brambles and pulled them aside to mark my way.  I looked around a little to get my bearings so that I could find this path again.

The green wall ran off, bending away each way.  Whereas I had come out into flowers, one way seemed blocked, or rather filled in with a riot of big leaves and huge yellow flowers. The other way was walled off with smaller trees and the brambles had made inroads, out from the green wall was a tall grass like plant that was above my head.

I tore out a few of these big stocks with what seemed to be grain pods on the sides instead of at the top like the oats and wheat with which I was familiar.  I placed my uprooted stocks against and holding open my path.  I marked the smaller trees and my hole into the bramble. 

I guessed the water was through the tall stocks and having marked well my exit in my mind I began to make my way through the tall grass.

In truth the going was easy.  So big were these things that they seemed to dominate looked at in depth, but they were not solid like a field of grain.  The big leafy, yellow flowered plants grew around and even climbed upon the stalks and everywhere there were flowers.  There were other plants I knew, rooting plants, and there were pod plants that climbed the big stalks like the yellow flower plants.

All chaos and randomness, but it dawned on me that most or all of these plants might well be good for food.  I looked around me and could see nothing, but the big stalks and slight sign of my passing behind me.  It seemed I was lost in some mad man’s garden.  Not many steps later the the tasseled stalks thinned and I could see ahead to a stacked stone wall.

Beyond the wall was turf, some of the plants I had seen were growing, widely dispersed, in what I guessed were pats of old manure.  And beyond that, cat-tails and then the water.  Now I could see the fall down a rocky tumble of the stream I had navigated.  At the top of the cascade was the grill-work, the first strangeness, I had recognized as such.

I looked along the bank, following the line of cat-tails to where. . .

. . . I gasped, there across a section of lake was the hill I had seen in my dream, my dream flight, my seeing.  I remembered myself, I was in the midst of some one’s place, I knew not who or whether they would want a visitor.  I quickly slipped over the stone fence.

Of course they did not want visitors.  I lay next to the wall thinking hard on my next move.  I had found the watch place above the stream, the cunning back cut trails, the circling, bramble girdled, wood all of these spoke of secrecy, not welcome.  But I had wandered far, I had stumbled around and met no resistance save deception, and the watch place, well that was moldering in long abandoned disuse.

I had given myself a shock.  But this place seemed to me, abandoned, and yet a wonder that needed exploration.  I determined to press on, but more carefully.  If there were jealous defenders, I would try not to arouse them.

I moved back into the mixed planting where I could see the wall but not much else.  Moving along it brought me through into places that seemed even less cultivated and more wild. I found another stand of trees like the ones I had seen at a distance.  These were heavy with fruit, but beneath them there were wasted fruits and a whole forest of seedlings springing from the fallen waste.

Just beyond this the water widened still more, coming right to my wall with no margin, and beyond it was the large central mound.  Right near to me was a smaller mound.  I determined to see if I could find my way into it.  I was nervous being so exposed, but passing around the bulk of the thing I found a stone lined cut with intricately decorated beams bracing them.  Looking closer I saw that the stone wall had carvings as well, here and there, but the wood was completely covered.

The cut was stopped at the back with more carved wood and more dressed stone.  There seemed to be two great doors positioned in the middle of the space, but in one of them was a much smaller portal and this one was ajar, whether the wall was just a wall or in truth a huge gateway, I could not tell.

I stepped into the cool interior, it was dark and I could not see anything but a little of the stone floor lit by the opened door.  The stone was very well dressed, tightly fit, there seemed to be gouge marks that ran from stone to stone as if they had been scoured by the same heavy hand.

Leaving the entrance I examined the walls.  The drawings there were marvelously fascinating.  There were pictographs of things I could make out, salmon, boar, deer, and there was much more that I could not imagine what they might be.  These carvings, all together on the rocks and carved into the heavy beams, meant nothing to me, I could make no sense of any of it, and finally gave it up.

I looked around the small hollow from my vantage at the front of the cut.  Here and their were sections dominated by trees bearing fruit.  The rest seemed strangely random.  Not far from me was the hill.  I gazed about me for signs of habitation I had missed, but finding none I walked toward the hill that I felt must be central to explaining this strange place.

I came on a hedge of sorts, low lying and dense.  I inspected it for thorns and finding none, I pushed through it.  Again I was presented with a variety of plants that looked like food plants I had gathered myself.  Seeing what looked like a sweet root plant, if perhaps a bit larger than the wild ones I knew and loved, I pulled it from the ground and found what I’d expected.  It tasted sweet and earthy and I promised myself I would keep my eyes open for more.

I glanced over at the hedge and was surprised to see clusters of mushrooms at its base, shaded by the hedge.  They looked good to eat, but I left them alone.  Near at hand was a big plant with small white flowers like the eating tuber plants we found when I was younger.  Lately they had not been seen and I confess I missed the lumpy things.  I grabbed hold of the bushy plant and heaved.  I fell, showering myself with dirt, but when I had recovered I examined the plant I had uprooted.  Around the base of it were many small red tubers.  I dug around in the disturbed earth where I’d uprooted the plant and found more and larger tubers. 

If only I had some wild onion, I thought, and there, not many steps away, were spikes of green just like what I sought.  Though young and small they were indeed what I’d hoped to find.  I stowed all the delicacies I found and started thinking about fire and a way to start one.

The day was fading fast in the tree ringed hollow so I made a dash for the top of the hill to have a look before all the light was gone.  On top of  that grassy knoll was a low circle of stones.  I looked around and could only marvel that such plenty seemed abandoned.  I remembered my need for firewood.  The orchard with the spoiled fruit might have something but I crossed the stone circle to see if there might be something even closer that would provide the needed wood for my feast.  I saw how a little stream bent around the hill and where it widened out into another little pond.

I stepped again into the middle to look once more for fallen wood.  I felt the ground give a little.  Sometimes one can find a burrow of coneys in that way and a whole group will erupt from their ruined home.  I stomped down a bit harder, with the intent to cave in what had given but slightly.  I heard a crunching and a dry snap and felt myself falling.  I desperately tried to spread myself to catch at the edge of the cave in I realized I had caused, but it seemed to me that the whole of the top of the hill, at least as far as I could reach, was falling into darkness.  There was a roaring as of a great wind and then I knew nothing for some time.

I guess this isn’t the conclusion yet.  Stay tuned for the Deer Riders, the Conclusion, part 2.

This continues a story titled:  The Deer Riders

“The first time I watched outside myself I put down to a dream, but it was not the last time. Always I saw true, so I think now these are no dreams, but true seeing though it be without eyes.”

The boys looked solumnly attentive, this was an admission of a fact that they knew, that their grandfather was a seer, that he knew things, had seen things that only a seer could have beheld. “What did you do Grandfather?”

“In fact, when I looked down on the wooded vale from the stone knob that morning, I did not see the glitter of water. This reassured me somewhat that I had dreamed, not flown out of my body. Still, there was a hump, a rounded hill, in what appeared to be clear land within the circling wood and though I could not see them, I knew the wood was surrounded by brambles.

I remembered the little stream I’d stumbled into in the dark. Now, if I had known that my dream was true I would have feared to go, but because it seemed a little different my curiosity was fired, not my caution. The stream seemed a likely approach so I decided to see if I could explore the vale and look for food or other material that we could use.

The stream gathered small rivulets as it went and the stream bed sunk into a bit of a gorge. I followed it down the ridge and into and then under the bramble-wood.

The little gorge became a tunnel, roofed over with bramble vines. I was becoming nervous because everything seemed so un-natural. Still, I went on to see what was around the next corner and the next until having waded a broad silty section I rounded a tight turning and found my way barred by something undoubtedly un-natural, a wooden grill-work.

This was no accidental crossing of roots. The grill was of evenly sized and spaced timbers neatly joined, though old and somewhat rotted at the bottom. I edged close enough to peer into the valley. I could see the sky and sunlight and trees in the distance, but nothing of the grill-work’s makers.

The stone work that held the grill was mortared stone, finely worked and solid.  I strung my bow. If not before there was no doubt now, this place was crafted, not a place of nature at all having been shaped by someone’s hand. I did not know them, nor them me, so it seemed prudent at that moment to retreat.

As I recrossed the pool of silty water, I noticed a branching off the way I had come. It may have been that I had not seen it at all, but I could easily have thought it was just one of many jointing of small rivulets along the way. As I drew closer and faced, as I was, to see into it, I saw it for what it was, a path up out of the gorge. Some of the work, stair and wall, looked like the mounting that held the grill.

What to do? I confess I stood for a long time in the muddy pool staring at that passage. When I began to shiver I was moved to action. I decided to get out of the stream and see if the passage presented emediate danger. It did not, to me it seemed abandoned, clogged with old leaves.

I was uncomfortably wet, there was no place in the stream to take off and dry or even reason to do it. I followed the stairs or the side path up and out. The path through the wood split, one way going toward the valley, the other to an old campsite. It was clearly long abandoned, with a fallen shelter against a dressed stone hearth. It could have served as a lookout watching the gorge approach from above, but nobody had stayed here for a very long time. The wood pile, for there was one, was rotted. There was a spring flowing from a pool well dressed and very clean. I tasted and then with confidence filled my water skins. All was overgrown giving me confidence that I  could rest there and let my things dry.

I slept, and longer than I had intended. It was the dark of night when I woke in pitch blackness beneath the trees. I could feel the hard stone beneath me else I would have feared even more. I was sure my things were dry, but I could not navigate blind. I let sleep claim me once more.

This is the end of the second part of “The Deer Riders”