Return to Eden

even more harshly. Kerrick rolled over and saw that two hunters had joined Arnwheet under the tree and were examining the whistle. One of them, it was Hanath, Kerrick saw, was trying to play it, his cheeks growing red with the effort. He passed it over to Morgil who blew and worked the stem and elicited the sound of a dying mastodon from it. Armun laughed at their efforts. Kerrick rose, stretched and yawned, walked out blinking into the blistering sunshine. Morgil panted and gasped and handed the whistle back to the boy when Kerrick joined them.
    "You have so little to do than to come to steal Arnwheet's toy?" Kerrick said.
    "Hanath… told me of it," Morgil panted. "It makes an awful noise. And was it made by the Paramutan you told us about?"
    "It was. They are very clever and carve bone and wood. They make another thing like this, only bigger that they use to suck water out of their boats."
    "And they live on the ice and hunt fish in the cold and there is snow?" Hanath said with great interest.
    "You must tell us more about them."
    "You have heard the stories, you know as much now as I do. But what do you care about the Paramutan?
    Does not your brewing of porro keep you even too busy to hunt?"
    "Many others hunt. They trade all the meat we need for porro."
    "And we have drunk enough porro for a while," Morgil said. "It is good when it is good, but terrible when it is bad. I think the manduktos do the right thing, drink it only when something special happens. You told us the Paramutan come south to trade. Do they come this far?"
    "No, they hate the heat, they would die here. At the end of the summer, those that want to trade go to the shore to the north where the great river meets the ocean. That is the only place where they go."
    "What is it they want to trade?"
    "They bring cured hides, furs sometimes, rich eating fat. What they want in return are flint knives, spearheads, even arrowheads. They make their own kind of bone fishhooks, certain kind of spearheads, but they need our knives."
    "I have the feeling that I need some furs," Hanath said, wiping sweat from his forehead with forefinger.
    "I too," agreed Morgil. "We think that the time for trading has come."
    Kerrick looked at them both with astonishment. "I think that the last thing you will need here are furs."
    The whistle wailed shrilly as Arnwheet blew it for his attentive audience. Kerrick thought about what they had said and smiled. "I don't think that it is furs that you want, but maybe a long trek, some hunting, cold weather and frost."
    Morgil clasped his hands together and rolled his eyes skyward. "The sammadar sees our secret thoughts.
    He should be alladjex, not Fraken who is young and stupid.'
    "I don't have to be an alladjex to see that you two have not been on the trail for a long time—and want the smell of the northern forest in your nostrils again."
    "Yes!" they said it as one and Hanath obviously spoke for them both. "Tell us where this place is where the Paramutan wait. We will make lots of knives…"
    "Others will make them, we will trade them for porro," Morgil said. "But will these Paramutan come again to trade? You told us that they have crossed the ocean and now hunt and fish on a distant shore."
    "They will come, they told me so. Crossing the ocean is nothing for them. There are those things they need that they can only get by trading with the Tanu. They will come."
    "And we will be there to meet them. Can you tell us of where we can find the furry-faced ones?"
    "You must ask Armun. She knows the place because that is where she first met the Paramutan."
    She came out of the tent when he called her, sat next to Arnwheet and brushed his tangled hair from his face. He whistled happily at his growing audience.
    "It is very easy to find," she said when they had explained what they wanted. "You must know the trail that comes from the mountains to the sea."
    Kerrick felt a sudden excitement as she talked, could almost smell the chill mist blowing in from the ocean, the cold pelting of driving snow. He had forgotten what it was like to be cold. Not that he wanted to freeze to death again, but to eat a mouthful of snow, to walk in the dark pine woods—that was something worth doing. Under eager questioning Armun talked more about the Paramutan and the way they lived on the ice, the many things they made, the rotten fish they liked to eat. The two hunters listened closely to her words, gasping in fascination at their strange ways. When she