Free The Animal Wife by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

me. I must have started. He pointed with his lips to the far side of the pool, where something was moving.
    In my dream I grew very excited—the start of a hunt, when the game is in sight. Carefully I crept outside. Father quietly followed me. We stood up. The trails, the water, and the grass were dark in the shadowy, moonlit haze. I saw that the animals across the pool were horses—the same little herd of the night before, now with a mare missing. In single file they moved up to the water. Then some of them dipped their mouths, while others kept watch nervously. I knew they were remembering what had happened to them the night before. They were thinking about me.
    Then I saw that something else was standing among them—a human figure, a small woman, her body naked, her head and shoulders hidden under thick, loose hair. While the horses took their places at the water's edge to drink, she turned her pale face toward me. She alone seemed to see me. The horses and the woman were very quiet. I heard only the drops of water falling from the horses' mouths when they raised their heads.
    Soon the woman dropped to one knee and, bending low, put her lips to the water and drank too. Then the horses left in single file through the moonlit haze, their shapes growing thin as they moved deep into the mist. In silence, the woman followed the horses as the grass and the distance swallowed them.
    In my dream a drifting scent of sweat reached me, telling me that the horses were made of warm flesh. But the woman? The sight of her had kept me standing still, made me forget my spear and all about hunting. Who was she? I looked around to ask Father. Then the calling of a curlew woke me, and I saw the hazy, slowly brightening sky. Father wasn't there.
    ***
    In camp I found people ready to travel. Pinesinger was sitting on her pack, looking impatient. They had been waiting for me. We soon left, going slowly, looking carefully for the lions. Andriki led us, watching the brush ahead. Behind him came Pinesinger, who kept watch to the right. I came next, watching to the left, and behind me came Father, keeping watch behind, where most likely we would see the lions.
    When the day grew hot and we were far away, I slowed my pace so that Father and I fell behind the others. I wanted to tell him my dream.
    He listened calmly, and when I had finished he said, "Just so. It's a strong place, Uske's Spring, a shaman's place. The animals go there. People go there, just as we did. Birds go there. And spirits go there. All go there to rest and drink. Our trails meet at Uske's Spring."
    By then it had come to me that the woman I had seen was Uske. I said so. But Father said, "Uske is another name for Ohun. The woman with the horses was a spirit—maybe one of the people whose camp you found, maybe just a horse."
    "The yellow mare I killed?"
    "Who knows?" said Father.
    Well. All day as we walked I thought of Uske's Spring and the things I had seen—the horse's teeth and feathers left behind by strangers, the huge hands and feet of the mammoth, and the dream-woman who might once have been a horse. We had seen much there and might have seen more if we had stayed. So it was sad to leave, but how could we not? Pinesinger wanted to leave, and at the time Father's love for her was so great that he couldn't refuse her.

6

    W E WENT NORTH from Uske's Spring to the Hair River, going straight, taking the shortest way to water. Father's cave and all its people were several days' travel downstream from the place where we came to the Hair. If Father, Andriki, and I had been traveling without Pinesinger, we would have kept right on going. But Father was feeling very thoughtful of Pinesinger, who had rolled around noisily with him in his bedding every night since we had left Uske's Spring. For that, of course, he was grateful. He made us stop at the river to let her rest.
    We spent an afternoon there. We stripped and scrubbed ourselves with sand, then undid our