A Glibertarians Exclusive:  Mog-ee, Part III

Winter

One thing the People and the Diggers had in common was the winter.  For both groups, it was a time of waiting.  It was often a hungry time, as well.  The People relied on hunting smaller game near their camps, and on jerked meat and a mixture of finely chopped venison, rendered bear or goose fat, juniper berries, herbs and nuts stored in the cleaned intestines of reindeer.

The Diggers made their winter fare a monotonous diet of stewed grains and roots.

Both groups were cooped up.  Both groups were subsisting on unappetizing fare (although, to Wolf’s thinking, the Diggers did that all year.)  Both groups took refuge in storytelling, sleeping and sex.

Early in the winter, Wolf had been making a habit of wandering back and forth between the winter camp of the People and the Digger settlement, drawn in by the furious passion Mog-ee showed for him; he was mildly amazed that their nocturnal activities in her tiny wattle-and-bark hut had not elicited comment aside from a few snide remarks from Mog-ee’s brother.  What Wolf found most amazing about the whole thing was that he had, so far, managed to refrain from breaking Yeeklep-ee’s jaw.

But on his last visit, the better part of a moon since, a furious blizzard had sealed the low pass on the ridge that separated the Digger abodes from the camp of the People.  Wolf had been stuck with the Digger girl, eating the stale fare of stewed grains, tending a tiny fire in the back of the hut, with only the biting, scratching, yowling catfights in the bedding every night to break the monotony.

The whole affair had Wolf wondering how bad the scarring on this back would be come spring but being a young man with the normal young man’s appetites, he wasn’t about to try to deter Mog-ee.  Every night when they climbed in the bedding, she reached for him, and every night, he enthusiastically cooperated.

Wolf’s father had offered advice once, and thereafter held his silence; it had happened when Wolf had finally approached the older man to discuss Mog-ee’s offer, just before the first snows.

“I know how appealing a new girl can be,” Clear Sky had told his son.  “I walked many days, to the far west, almost to the end of the land, where they say the great western sea meets the earth.  There were many folk living in the lands I crossed, and all of them lived much as we do.  I met your mother there, across a great mountain range, in a rich, warm land.  It took a year to persuade her to return to the People with me.”

“You never thought of staying there?”

Clear Sky nodded.  “I did.  And she would have liked me to have done that.  But I wanted to come back to the People, and she grew to love me enough to make the journey with me.  But Wolf, one thing you must think on, and think well.”

Wolf raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Your mother’s folk were much like us.  They hunted, they gathered the fruits of the forest, they moved from place to place.  They, like us, were free, not tethered to a patch of earth.  So, when she came here to the People, our lives here were not so strange to her.  You cannot say that of your Digger girl, my son.  Were you to go there, you would not adjust well.  You were raised to live free, to move about the land, to hunt, to fish, to live a free life.  You would not be happy, living in one valley and grubbing in the dirt to make your meals.  And this Digger girl – Mog-ee, you said her name was?  Do you think she would be happy leaving all she knows for a life she would probably see as unsettled?”

“I hope she would,” Wolf admitted.

“And if she should not?”  Clear Sky reached out, laid a hand on his son’s shoulder.  “Is your desire for this Digger girl so strong that you would give up your freedom for her?”

Wolf looked down.  For some days after that, he was withdrawn, contemplative.  He had almost decided to give up his plans for a future with Mog-ee, but when he went to the Digger settlement to tell her, she led him off into a sheltered glade in a stand of trees near the western edge of their fields and exhausted him with sex, until he completely forgot his father’s words.

Then, the snow, his stranding in the Digger settlement.  Finally, on one bright afternoon when it looked as though a thaw might be coming, Wolf was approached by Mog-ee’s father, Yeeteep-ee.

The older man found Wolf standing near the south end of the group of clustered huts, watching the sky to the south, where patches of blue competed with the usual gray snow clouds.  Here and there, a beam of sunlight broke through, dazzling on the snow.

“Before long, it will be time for tilling,” Yeeteep-ee said.  “Another moon, perhaps a little longer.”

“Tilling?” Wolf asked.  He did not turn to face Mog-ee’s father; Wolf liked him about as much as the rest of the family, which was not very much.

“Preparing the soil for planting,” Yeeteep-ee said.  “If you are staying here with us, and as you are sleeping in my daughter’s hut, you are going to help with this.”

The man’s certainty irked Wolf.

“I am?”  Now Wolf turned to face Yeeteep-ee.  “And if I do not?  What say you if, when the snow melts, I walk away to the People and do not return?”

“You will not,” Yeeteep-ee said with great conviction.  “I am the Rain-Bringer for this settlement.  I have spoken with the other elders, and I have spoken with our gods.  They know this to be true.  It is our way, everyone works, everyone tills, plants, harvests, or they do not eat.”

“It seems I was eating very well before I came here,” Wolf replied.  “And I thought you and Ord-ee were both the Rain-Bringers.  What says she about all this?”

“I speak for us both,” Yeeteep-ee said.

Wolf adopted a skeptical expression.  “And yet she is not here to agree to this.”

“Even so, when the time for tilling comes, you will help.  You are a young man, and strong.  You will be able to expand our plantings to at least one more field.  Maybe two.”  He smiled. “You will need your spears no longer.”

“Ah,” Wolf said with a slight smile.  “So, that is it.  You need young men to help you, as you are clearly not so young anymore.”  He cast a pointed look at Yeeteep-ee’s graying beard.

“Don’t be so sure,” Yeeteep-ee snapped, clearly annoyed.  “I’m a young man myself yet.  I won’t be ready to slow down for many, many summers.”  He turned and stomped off through the snow.

Wolf continued his regard of the southern sky.  He heard Yeeteep-ee’s words in his head:  You will need your spears no longer.

He thought of his many days of hunting with his father, his brothers, his clan-brothers, even some of the sisters who, if they wished, would come and hunt.  He remembered the joy of trotting a day, two days in search of the herds; the joy on finding game, the indescribable moment when one would cast a spear, clean, clear, and true, knowing it would find its mark.  The rich taste of fresh liver and the clean fat from an animal’s body cavity, still warm from the fresh kill, and the joy of the People still in the camp when the hunters returned with meat.

Am I willing to give up all that to dig in the dirt, all for the love of Mog-ee?

He knew that, all too soon, the sun would set, he would join Mog-ee in her little hut, and once more he knew his resolve would fade in the face of her passion.

***

I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more

I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more

Talks to servants about man and God and law

Everybody says he’s the brains behind ma

He’s 68 but says he’s 24

I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more