Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson

Author:Kim Stanley Robinson [ROBINSON, KIM STANLEY]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780316235570
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2013-09-03T04:00:00+00:00

It turned out Elga and Loon’s child had been born in a bad spring. The freeze-no-more moth never showed up, and not long after the child was born they ran out of their winter stores, all the nuts and skin bags of fat, the frozen ducks and smoked fish, the edible roots and dried caribou meat, everything in the final weeks measured out in pinches or one by one. Schist again took on this task, and Hawk and Moss did not presume to interfere or criticize. The shortage was damaging enough to Schist, they did not have to refer to it or add to it, and indeed they could not have done any better themselves: a bad spring was a bad spring.

It meant the men needed to be out hunting more than ever, hoping their snares and traps would catch someone to eat. But this winter the land was bare. In some winters there were enough snow hares to feed an entire pack, all the snow-white little people getting fatter as the rising snowpack lifted them to higher and higher forage on the willow bushes. Snow hares actually got fat in winter, and they were easy to trap. Wait, I see something: two eyes in a bush, caught in a trap.

But this year there were no snow hares to be found. Some years were that way, Heather said. They would be better off looking for ptarmigan and grouse. Wait, I see something: black sticks moving. Walk around in the early morning with a net in hand, ready to cast it as the white birds burst out of their snow beds. You had to be fast, but if you were ready there was just enough time. But this year, no ptarmigan or grouse.

Loon went out with his friends on the hunt, and he went out on his own or with others to check traps, ranging as far as he could. After the stag he found with Moss, no one else seemed to be around. Sometimes he found broken traps, and once a vixen, once a muskrat. Without the snow hares all the little hunter people were just as hungry as the big hunters, and easier to catch. Anything at all was worth bringing back to camp; once he found a dead mouse and brought it back, and no one laughed. But there were two score and four people in the pack, and finding enough food for all of them every day was becoming the only thing anyone thought about. It was the only thing one felt, a sucking of the stomach up and in, until it pressed hard against the backbone, and deep into one’s thoughts.

But it stayed cold. The hunters began to lack the strength to range as far as before, they had to conserve their efforts and save them for what really mattered. The other men considered Loon lucky because Elga could breastfeed him from time to time, to give him a little help keeping going. And it was

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.