Beyond the Fearful Forest

I am a hunter. My father was a singer, and his mate also; but I have a poor voice, good for little except to shout across the valleys to my friends, so my father, affectionately calling me Bear-throat, counseled me to become a hunter; and this I did.

I am strong, of course. My arms are brown as a deer's hide and they swell with muscle. My legs are sturdy and, though not thickset, can carry me at a run for the space of a day without tiring. I do not boast when I say this, for after all I am a hunter and my arms and legs are my tools as much as my lances and arrows and metal knife. My name is Ahmusk, though I am more generally hailed as Bear-throat, the nickname my father gave to me. I have eyes the color of Blue Brook where it runs into a deep pool. My hair, the pale golden hue of the earliest corn of autumn, is cut short in the fashion of hunters, falling scarcely to my shoulders in back, in front sliced off evenly just above my eyes. And I think this is all that need be said concerning the person of Ahmusk the hunter.

The day of which I would speak first was a day of cheerful sun and small breezes, with that crispness in the air that makes a man stand tall and blink once or twice, and perhaps shout for joy. I did just that, after I had wakened, and then I sat on the edge of my platform and looking down the tree's trunk at the grass below I was astonished at its bright new-seeming greenness. I sucked in a great chestful of air and shouted again. In the tree nearest mine there were two platforms, and now someone sat up on the higher and rubbed her eyes and grumbled. "What is it, Bear-throat?"

"The morning, girl, the morning," I said heartily.

"Need you be a herald of the dawn every day?" she asked, mock-petulantly. And I laughed.

"Throw off your furs and smell the wind, Lora," I told her. "In the changing of the moon to nothing and back to fulness, the snow will fly. Today is the best day of the year."

"To you, every day is the best of the year, or at least you say so each morning." She put back her sleeping furs and stood up, naked and young and beautiful. "When we are mated," she said, "I will see that you wake silently, and slide down the tree to find my breakfast while I sleep as long as I wish!"

"What a shrew," I said happily. "What a ruler of men."

"You will see." She slipped her light garment over her head. "I will quiet you down, young Bear-throat!"

"I hope the day is soon, then, for your mating," growled her father from the lower platform of their family's tree. "Perhaps good folk will then be allowed to rest."

Grinning, I hung by my hands from the edge of my platform and dropped to the ground. Fifteen feet from toe to turf is no drop at all to a skilled hunter. The watchers were coming down the glen from their posts of the night, yawning and rubbing their eyes. I hailed them and they answered with waves of their arms.

"Any disturbances?"

"You would have heard, Ahmusk of the keen ears," said their leader. "No, we glimpsed a knifetooth bear traveling his solitary way to the Gray Brook, but if he killed thereafter we were too distant to hear it. No noises save the small animals going and coming, going and coming all night long."

"It is nearly a moon's change since old Halfspoor ranged near the valley," I said. "He will be coming back soon, if I know his ways; and then there will be disturbances in the night."

The leader of the watchers shivered. As far apart as we stood, I saw him shudder. "But do not lose your day's sleep over him," I shouted reassuringly. "This very moment I go to look for his track. If he ranges within our lands I shall know, and a pair of hunters will watch with you."

"Watching is our duty, not yours," he answered a little sullenly. "Beware of Halfspoor, or he will be using your pelt for a sleeping fur, Ahmusk."

I was angered, I suppose. A hunter's pride is a powerful thing. "Halfspoor is only a knifetooth bear," I told him. "He is not, after all, one of The Nameless."

They looked at me in horror; and then they turned and went to their trees without a word. I felt ashamed of myself. It was an evil thing to use that terrible name so lightly. Then Lora had clambered down her tree and was standing near me, looking up into my face, so that I forgot all that I had been saying and knew only that every day this girl became more lovely.

"Good morning, Lora," I said.

"Are you really going to look for Halfspoor?" she asked me, her eyes, that were like the purple bells of the burrowflower, all wide and wondering.

"I am."

"Perhaps he has left our lands."

"I have known Halfspoor for five years, Lora, or it may be six. I know his rangings and his times for killing; I recognize his track though it be on the hardest ground, and I could tell you which snuffling grunt was his if a full score of knifetooth bears were all talking at once. He is due to come back today, or tomorrow or the next day. He is old and wily, but set in his ways."

"I hope he has died on the banks of the Wide River," she said, brushing a strand of her onyx-black hair away from her face. "I hope his bones are gnawed by jackal-rats."

"And I hope your wish does not come true," I said lightly. "Because I have chosen his hide for our mating rug, young Lora."

"Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly, her great eyes going wide again. "I had forgotten to tell you. I was asleep when you returned last night."

"I trailed a wounded deer far down the Blue Brook, and caught him late. What had you forgotten, sleek Lora?"

"The guardian Laq asked me to be his mate. It was in the afternoon, and he asked me in the presence of my father. When I reminded him that you were to be my mate, he asked my father for me."

I was shocked, then angered above any anger I had ever known. "He asked you, and then your father!" I roared. "What had your father to do with it?"

"Laq says that in the far olden times it was the custom to ask a woman's parents. My father was enraged and told him that we were not living in the far olden times. Laq said it was a pity we were not, as then the people had respect for their guardians. And my father, fuming and rumbling until I thought he would begin to give off sparks like Ruddy Mountain, told Laq that even a guardian had no right to ask for the promised mate of another man. Laq then departed, saying he would ask me again after Halfspoor had killed you, dear Bear-throat. Halfspoor again! His cruel words had slipped my mind until I spoke them now. Must you go looking for Halfspoor?"

"I must." Taking my bow from my shoulder, I tested it from habit, and counted the arrows in my quiver to ascertain that there were fourteen of them, for fourteen arrows are accounted lucky for a day's hunt. "I do not understand Laq," I told her. "He has broken two of the strongest customs. To ask you when you are promised ... and then to ask your father for you, as though you were a bone hammer or a sleeping fur! Laq must be losing his wits."

"Perhaps he was drunk on tree fern juice." She dismissed Laq and all his works with a shrug. "The sun has lifted over the hills, Bear-throat. If Halfspoor is so much more attractive than I am, why then go to him, young hunter with blind eyes."