Blue Mountain (9 page)

“It is still a
bit
blue,” Mouf said.

“A bit,” Tuk agreed.

Dall said, “We will stay here tonight. At dawn we will make the descent to the bottom of meadow mountain.”

But later, in the quiet dark, the soft click from the device filled Tuk's ear, making it hard to sleep.

In the morning, fog rose like ghostly water around their middles.

“Oh, dear,” Mouf said. “Blue mountain has vanished again. Too bad. I guess we have to go back.”

She turned around as if she would begin the journey back to their old mountain that very moment. As she did, the puma's scream echoed up the mountain loud enough to make a family of partridges fly out of the fog.

“Go back and you will walk right into the mouth of a puma,” Ovis said.

They read the gray air with their noses.

Click.

Tuk said, low and firm, “I must stay behind while you all go on.”

All heads rose in alarm, as if the puma had just walked into their midst.

“No, that was before,” Mouf said. “That was a good plan for a wolf, but not a puma, right, Dall?”

“I can't go with you anyway, Mouf,” Tuk said. “Come close to me and be silent, and you will see why.”

They all inched closer. A thrush called.

“Is this a game?” Mouf asked.

“Shhh. Listen. Listen to my ear.”

They huddled closer. Again the thrush called.

“You have a bird in your ear?” Mouf asked.

“Hush,” Dall said.

Click.

The band jumped back as if the click had been as loud as gunshot. The thrush flew away in a flurry of feathers.

“What was that?” Nai said. “It speaks?”

“No,” Dall said solemnly. Tuk watched as understanding crept into her eyes. “It tracks.”

“You see why I must not go with you,” Tuk said. “We have not made this long journey to escape man only to lead him to us on blue mountain. Since I cannot go, it makes sense that I lead the puma away from you.”

His bandmates stared at him.

“Tuk is right,” Dall said. “He cannot come like that to blue mountain.” She said it as if her tongue were swollen. “For the sake of the herd. For the sake of Wen.”

“You know you love him best, Dall,” Ovis said, his voice quiet and kind.

She nodded. Tuk felt strange to hear this spoken. It was a secret he had always known but had never told himself. It made him deaf to the clicking sound for a moment.

She raised her head slowly, as if her horn buds were heavy as a ram's. “We must go, now, and without Tuk.” She put her mouth close to Tuk's ear. “You see far, Tuk, and you are strong. Maybe—I hope—I am sure you will find a way to come to us. If you trust, the mountain will take care of you.”

With that, she turned to walk away.

“Wen is crying,” Sham said.

“Wen must be brave, like me,” Mouf said, sniffling.

Tuk watched them follow Dall in a line. All but Rim.

“Why should you make all the stories?” Rim said.

 

PUMA

 

Tuk and Rim watched the rest of the band until they disappeared into the scrub and made their way toward the peak of meadow mountain.

With the puma following, it seemed strange to Tuk that the sun should be so warm on his horns, its light so kind that he could look almost directly at it.

“Now what do we do?” Rim said.

“We leave a fresh scent leading south and down,” Tuk answered. “Away from the direction the others have gone.”

Tuk could smell the puma closer now. He could smell her hunger. She had not eaten in a long time. Tuk had not known a puma could smell so desperately hungry.

“Tell me a story, Tuk,” Rim said as they walked. “One to pass the time.”

“I will tell the story of the cat's eyes,” Tuk said.

In the beginning times, Lord Denu saw the suffering of the old and the young and the ill as they fell prey to the big cat. One day he asked the mountain, “Mountain, you have made us happy in every way. Why have you made us suffer when we fall to the claws of the big cat?”

The mountain said, “Go, appeal to the cat and see if he will make the matter more merciful.”

So Denu went back down the mountain to speak to the cat. He said, “I come with permission from the mountain to ask you for a boon. When you come to kill, make it merciful and painless, I beg you.”

The cat smiled. She had longed to meet the great Denu and take a bite out of his glossy, meaty rump. Now here he was.

“I care not about the pain of your kind, only the pain in the bellies of my hungry kittens,” she said.

As they spoke, Denu saw the cat's eyes up close for the first time. He saw their unearthly stare, and for a moment he forgot himself and was lost in her gaze.

Denu shook himself, then said, “It is good that I was able to break the spell of your great green eyes, cat. If they had been only a little more staring, I might have lain down before you and allowed myself to be eaten. Good day.”

Denu walked away, but looked back to see the cat run to mountain, just as he had hoped.

Not long after, the cat came down from the mountain and called to Denu. He went to her, knowing her intent. As he approached her, he saw that her eyes were even larger than before. He felt as though he was falling into the cat's great green eyes as he might into a bay of the river. He saw that she crouched to pounce, but staring into her eyes, he was unafraid. She pounced and sank her teeth into his neck, but he felt no pain.

Just then the mountain came and tossed the cat away from Denu.

“You asked me for more beautiful eyes,” said the mountain, “and I came today to find what you have done with my gift. Now I see.”

Denu, coming to himself, arose and said to the mountain, “Do not be angry. It has been as I wished. This time I felt no pain, nor any fear, because of the cat's eyes.”

The mountain saw the love Denu had for his kind and healed Denu and made it as if he had never been bitten.

Tuk stopped.

He and Rim had gone south a long way and down some, and the ground had been uneven and stony, the trees wizened and thin. Now the forest ended, and so did the earth. Wrapping east around the mountain was a steep, high cliff.

“Trust the mountain,” Tuk said to himself.

A voice from behind them hissed, “You think the mountain loves only you.”

Tuk turned to see the puma, her long, silky muscles and the bowl of her ribs visible beneath her coat.

“Jump, Rim,” Tuk said evenly.

In a spray of leaves and dirt, Rim jumped and found a perch on the bare rock of the cliff. Tuk followed and perched on a narrow shelf of stone.

The puma did not jump. She slunk slowly to the border between trees and cliff. “This time it is not a kitten that hunts you.” She stepped onto a ridge in the rock wall as sure-footed, almost, as a bighorn.

Rim and Tuk moved higher.

“You pushed,” said the puma.

Rim stepped carefully to a new, higher notch in the cliff. Tuk followed just behind him.

“The mountain gave me tooth and claw to kill anything I find here. The mountain made me also to climb.”

Slowly Rim began making his way across the cliff face, picking his footholds carefully, and slowly Tuk followed. At times it seemed the way ahead was smooth as a river pebble, but the moment they needed it, they would find a spot just the size of a bighorn's foot.

The puma snarled and swiped at Tuk, ripping a clump of fur from his flank. It floated into the emptiness below. Rim startled and jumped down to a wide ledge on the cliff.

“Not down!” Tuk cried. He glanced back to see the puma go completely still.

“Go higher, Rim!” Tuk said.

Rim looked about him but didn't move. “I can't see any footholds.”

“You I will kill for hunger,” the puma said to Rim. “The other for revenge.” Tuk saw the muscles in the puma's shoulders ripple into pounce position.

“Rim, you can jump to where I am,” Tuk called. “You don't have to see the footholds. Just jump to where I am. There's room.”

“What if we can't both fit—”

“Now.”

“No!”

“Switch!” Tuk called out, and he leaped down to Rim's ledge, forcing Rim at the same moment to leap up.

Tuk quivered on his ledge, every muscle straining for balance.

In the next moment the puma jumped to the ledge below. Tuk faced her.

He was overpowered by her scent, surprised at her size and strength, seeing her now so close. Her eyes were as green as a spring leaf.

“Tuk,” she said, “will you fight me as you did my kitten?”

She had almost all the ledge now. In Tuk's left eye was the rock of the cliff, and in his right eye only blue sky and cloud.

“No. My kitten you would fight, but not me. I will kill you, and then your friend. And then I will follow the others.”

“The others?” Tuk whispered. “No others. Just me and my friend.”

She grinned, and he could see each tooth in her mouth—each one yellow and finely pointed. He bowed his head at the same moment that the puma lunged for his throat. Her teeth, instead of closing on his throat, closed on his ear.

He felt her teeth go through the ear with the device. She jerked at his ear, trying to unbalance him. He heard Rim cry out to him.

Tuk clung to the mountain, held to the rocks beneath his feet while the puma ripped at his ear.

His ear began to tear away from his head. The cat jerked at him, and he held on to the mountain.

He was a bighorn. He endured. Endured the cold and the storms of the high places. Endured the pain of puma teeth ripping off his ear.

Tuk felt his back feet slipping, slipping, slipping—

And then they found a small protuberance in the rock face. He braced against it, and it held.

The puma jerked one more time with all her strength, and lost her balance

and the puma and the ear

and the ear and the puma

and the device fell—

all fell into the emptiness

all to the bottoms below.

The puma snarled and screamed as she fell, and the mountain echoed her cries even after she was silent.

 

BLUE MOUNTAIN

 

A day of steady walking through deep alpine herbmats brought them halfway down meadow mountain. A second day brought them to the bottom. On the third day they crossed the valley, lush with alfalfa and vetch and yarrow.

Finally they climbed the lower slopes of blue mountain.

Tuk believed ever after that blue mountain healed him, that the cold, clean air, untainted by man or any scent of predator, was the reason his wound scabbed over quickly. It didn't hurt as much as the constant click of the device had when it had been attached to him.

Tuk and Rim made their way up blue mountain, stopping only briefly to graze. On the dry rocky slopes, they saw creeping juniper and larch and cliff brake—all clinging to the stone, thriving at the heights, just like the bighorn. Tuk felt that this place and everything on it was proof that the mountain meant for them to have a part of the world as theirs alone.

The next day they came to the foot of a steep-sloping meadow that reached to a high rocky ridge, with clefts in it for shelter from spring storms. Near the top of the meadow, just below where the rock burst out of the soil, they saw their bandmates, and at the same time the band saw them.

They ran and leaped, and one by one they touched noses, except for Mouf.

“Is that really you, Tuk?” she asked.

“It is me.”

“Are you sure? Because you know you have only one ear.”

Sham, swollen and taut as a ripe berry with her lamb, said, “Yes, it is strange that he has one ear, but Wen would recognize Tuk anywhere.”

“But—does the puma follow?” Ovis asked.

“Tuk would not have come had the puma followed,” Dall said.

Rim said, “If you will listen, I will tell you the whole story.”

And so, with the blue of the afternoon sky deepening to the color of crocus, and the daytime moon poised like a white dandelion ball on the tips of the trees to the south, and the wind blowing warm from the west, Rim told the story of what had happened to them and the puma.

At the end of the story, the band huddled together and nudged Tuk and praised him. Dall did a low-stretch bow.

“You brought us to blue mountain, Tuk,” she said. “And when you came you brought peace with you.”

Then they ran to explore and play as they had not since they were lambs. That night when they bedded down, Tuk thought an ear a good trade for the gentle way Dall licked his wound just before she fell asleep.

The next morning Sham went to the lambing cliffs alone, for Wen's opinion was that it was time for him to be born.

 

WEN

 

During the days that Sham was away, the herd had nothing to do but feast on bromegrass and timothy, sweetgrass and wild oat. They found delicate columbine between the rocks and nibbled on meadow parsnip.

A few days later Sham brought Wen to join the herd, and the ewes greeted him with soft nudges and licks and grunts.

“He is so fine a lamb,” Nai said. “So handsome. He has the look of Dos about him.”

Mouf moved around him slowly so he would not be frightened away.

“May I keep him?” she said.

“We will share,” Sham said.

When Dall approached, the herd turned aside for her.

“Wen,” Sham said. “This is the matriarch. Stand tall.”

Dall sniffed at him, examined his eyes and ears and feet, and then stood back with a look of approval.

“Welcome to the herd, Wen,” she said softly. “Look about you and tell me what you see.”

Wen took a long time. He looked at the meadow and the grass and flowers in it, and the great boulders that erupted from the earth, and the cliffs beyond and the valley below.

Finally he said, looking east, “I see a mountain.”