Mammoth Boy by John Hart Page B

indeed. His nose and cheeks smarted so much that he did not think to ask why the tracks had suddenly ended nowhere. His nostrils cracked and the chapping of his cheeks made life miserable for days till they healed under the goose-fat plasters Agaratz employed to soothe the frostbite.
    Urrell’s confinement brought out kinder aspects of Agaratz’s character. He lit lamps in a small recess, hung hides across it and they spent hours carving wood, horn and stone with animal designs. Urrell’s skills developed under Agaratz’s tuition. During those days he became aware that he had passed another unspoken stage of acceptance in Agaratz’s esteem.
    With each design, each beast, Agaratz recited stories. They were new to Urrell, familiar only with the simple folktales of his own people. In Agaratz’s recitals, often made in the high tone of story-tellers, Urrell learnt of an age long past when great beasts jostled and conferred. Men were puny by comparison, tolerated by the beasts as jesters. In those tales humans often played tricks on the animals. None minded. Sometimes the animals had the upper hand. No one hunted for food as it abounded in yon times before the great cold. The lad’s imagination was nourished and enchanted by these legends summarised by Agaratz as best he could in Urrell’s language.
    Indeed, Agaratz’s grasp of Urrell’s speech improved that winter. A word or turn of phrase new to him and he seized upon it, repeated it once or twice for Urrell to correct, and consigned it to his faultless memory. Sometimes Urrell half wondered if Agaratz made play to learn his language to please the growing lad, able as he seemed to follow wordlessly much that Urrell thought but did not say. Urrell, too, improved his store of words in Agaratz’s tongue but could not fluently master its structure, so different was it from anything he knew. It seemed to him of unbelievable complexity, designed to express much he could only dimly perceive, or not at all, let alone understand. He preferred to turn his attention to carving, to making hunting gear, working leather garments, to a background of stories about insects, birds, plants, beasts and their lore. He discovered inner skills of which he had been unaware. Agaratz smiled at his delight in carving mammoths and told him of the wisdom of that greatest of beasts.
    During this time Agaratz dipped into their stores to vary their daily fare, devising meals with the skill and invention he displayed in all he did.
    A favourite of Urrell’s were collops of bison meat, rolled round nuts and garlic before being baked in embers. “Rakrak like too,” said Agaratz.
    As a treat Agaratz took combs from their honey pouches. Some honey he placed in wooden beakers with water and herbs, where it lay for days till the water bubbled and they sipped it by the fire, rolling the scented liquor round their mouths and feeling it warm their veins.
    Urrell’s face healed, the cracks closed, his skin grew smooth again. He felt well; down hung a finger’s width on his upper lip and cheeks; his body muscles and hair were becoming a man’s.
    “Soon you grown,” said Agaratz.
    “Good, then I can hunt better with you, Agaratz, and help you more.”
    Agaratz remained silent. Then he said, as if coming back from a distance: “Soon you need woman.”
    The notion had not occurred to Urrell, although there were times when he thought of the youngest woman of his tribelet, she of the chaplets of berries and the small breasts beneath her summer cape. The memory did agreeable things to him; but nothing more.
    “Me? But you have no woman, Agaratz.”
    Again silence. That remote expression that betokened an area of Agaratz’s life not open for revelation.
    “Where are women, Agaratz?”
    “When hot weather, we go to mor , to place tribes meet. There girls.”
    “Where?”
    “Far, far. We take things for trade.”
    “Don’t you want a wife, Agaratz?”
    Deep silence. Urrell shifted uneasily. But then, as