Mammoth Boy Read Online Free PDF Page B

as a boy chancing upon hunters’ rites might transgress, unwittingly? He had once seen a boy speared through the legs for this.
    The rank smell, the hidden den. A secret place.
    Then, with the same finality as earlier, Agaratz stated: “I accalarrak. Eat spirit food, fish food, fungus food. One day you be accalarrak . Eat spirit foods.”
    Agaratz raked the embers from the glowing hearth stones and arranged several big white mushrooms, of a kind unknown to Urrell, on them, having first smeared them with grease. When one side was done and the aroma began to tease Urrell’s nostrils, Agaratz turned the mushrooms over with two sticks to sizzle thoroughly. Not till he deemed them done did he spear one for himself and another for Urrell.
    The flavour was something quite new to the boy.
    “You like, Urrell?”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “You eat before?”
    “Not this kind, not cooked.”
    “You eat not cook?” That impish grin again which told Urrell he had said something odd, boyish. Perhaps eating funguses raw was taboo among Agaratz’s people, like fish among his.
    “Where is your camp?” he asked.
    “This my camp.”
    “But where are your kinfolk?”
    “I no kinfolk. Alone.”
    He said this matter-of-factly.
    “But I saw smoke, before the bison hunters, before you. Who were they?”
    Agaratz looked up from the second toadstool he was spearing for them both. The yellowish eyes fixed on Urrell’s again, making him feel important, he, a boy, the bearer of important information. “I saw it from the clifftop, like mist, but it was smoke.”
    Agaratz pondered the information, nodded to himself but made no comment. Perhaps it explained his wariness in the woods.
    “Now we sleep,” he said.
    Before he could do so, Urrell knew he needed to relieve himself. In his home camp it was no problem. Men stepped out a little; women a little further the other way. Here there was no stepping out, not even to climb down the pole as Agaratz had hauled it up. He wondered what Agaratz would do. He had not long to wait. Agaratz drew aside a curtain of pelts to reveal a recess piled with pine branches and bracken, on top of which were spread several hides including a bison’s. Urrell had never seen the like. “Here sleep,” said his host. “First follow.”
    Taking a brand from the fire as a torch he led Urrell into the gallery till it forked then took the lesser opening, which led to a side chamber. Its use was obvious to Urrell, its earthen floor absorbing the result. A heap of moss and grasses lay nearby, their use evident. Agaratz stuck the torch in a crevice for a sconce, a familiar place, and left Urrell to his needs.
    When Urrell made his way back by the light of the dying brand he found Agaratz hunched by the fire waiting his turn. Urrell wondered at such behaviour, why the crookback should wish to be alone for that.
    “Now we sleep,” said Agaratz on his return. He banked the fire and they both crawled into the recess, Urrell to the back, snuggling into the bracken and pine branches and drawing a pelt over himself. He was asleep in seconds.
    When he awoke, Urrell knew with animal immediacy where he was.
    Agaratz was gone. Raising the curtain of skins, he crept out but his host was not in the cave either. He saw that the climbing-pole had been lowered: Agaratz must be outside. Finding Agaratz seemed the first thing to do so he scaled down the pole and set about exploring the little gulch. He soon found a freshet rising from the foot of the cliff, forming a natural basin that overflowed and meandered into the vegetation. Signs showed that the basin was someone’s drinking place, Agaratz’s no doubt, as well as other smaller creatures. He lay on his face and drank from the surface, seeing his face, brown with dirt and sunburn, reflected in the still pool. A fuzz was beginning to darken his upper lip. He ran his finger along the down, pinched it, made faces into the water.
    Thus engaged in self-exploration, he had not heard anyone