Chapter 2 - Escape

When he arrived, his father Jorl was busy repairing a plow that was designed to be pulled by a camelops. It was easy to tell that he was related to Jandell - tall, with reddish brown hair tied back, and a greying but still reddish beard. He wore the thick black buffalo hide of a toolmaker. He greeted Jandell with: “Ho son! I missed you at the feast last night. Are you OK?”

Jandell had meant to have a calm, adult conversation about his state of emotion, but instead he immediately burst into unmanly tears, crying: “How could Meenah’s father marry her to that … farmer! He has no bravacho at all. We were making plans …”

“I know you’re heartbroken, son,” replied Jorl with his arm around his son’s shoulder, “but you know that Meenah is well into her flow and ready for marriage, whereas you’re not. And actually, Gleb’s a very good man – kind, smart, and a hard worker providing corn and squash to the village. He’ll make an excellent husband.”

But his words did not alleviate Jandell’s pain. He continued sobbing for many heartbeats, and then asked: “Is there anything we can do father? Could you talk to Meenah’s father to see if he might reconsider?”

Jorl just shook his head, saying, “No son. Once Mazgar has sanctified the union before the village and Lord Markanova, it’s not reversible except by a death …” He looked sharply at his son and said “ … but don’t even think of it!”

Jandell admitted to himself that the thought of violence to the farmer had briefly crossed his mind, but he had immediately rejected it even before his father’s admonition. There must be some other way, he thought. 

“Jandell – let me tell you a story,” his father said. “When I was your age, I was also smitten with a pretty young girl, and she liked me too. We hid in the forest together and kissed and made plans for our future as man and wife – I’d only to wait until my eighteenth winter to ask her father and apply for a pairing. But just like you, my love became promised to another man when she reached her flow – a hunter with great bravacho in fact. I could do nothing, and I decided I hated hunters and would pursue a toolmaker’s trade. I hope you understand a little better now why I discouraged you from becoming a hunter.”

That story brought Jandell out of his funk a little, and he asked: ”Where’s the girl now, father?”

Jorl chuckled a bit and said, “I really shouldn’t tell you, but to cheer you up, I will. She’s been married to Drigga for all these winters – and neither of them is very happy with the arrangement if the gossips are right. And the best part is that the next winter, I met my true love – the woman who’s now your mother!”

Jandell cheered up a bit with that story and stopped weeping. He steeled himself to suffer through seeing his love marry a farmer, and wait it out until time healed his deep pain.

_____

For the next few suns, Jardell spent his time mostly with the other hunters, sharpening weapons, fletching arrows, and planning their next hunting trip, which would commence in another ten suns. Only once did Brak tease him about losing his girlfriend to a farmer, and Jandell’s reaction was fierce. He jumped on Brak and hammered him with fist blows until the other hunters pulled him off. Nobody said a word about it after that. Later, he met with Brak, and they apologized to each other. After all, they were best friends.

Jandell was just beginning to feel that he was recovering from his gloom one sun when, on the way to meet with the hunters, he heard a whispered shout from between two huts, “PSSST! JANDELL!”

He looked over, and it was Meenah beckoning him to follow her. He trailed her along a narrow pathway among huts until they came to a secluded spot in a stand of bushy trees. She then turned and grabbed him, hugging him with all of her strength and crying on his shoulder.

Meenah had all the most desirable characteristics of beauty by the standards of the Ren. Tall for a female, slim and graceful with golden hair that cascaded in curls over her shoulders. She wore a comely, light tan fawn skin in a manner that accentuated her precociously full breasts. Jandell wasn’t the only man in the village who had long been smitten.

“Oh, Jandell! I can’t marry Greb!” she cried. “He’s nice enough, but he’s old and ugly – and a farmer! And besides, I don’t love him. I love YOU! My father won’t listen to me at all – I hate him!” 

Jardell’s fervor for Meenah returned completely, but somehow his reason prevailed over his emotions, and he said: “What’s done is done, Meenah. Your father has made his decision, and the priests have sanctified it. You’re to be married five suns from now, along with the other pairings. It's Ren law.”

“But I won’t marry Greb, Jandell! I tell you, I’ll kill myself first. I know how to do it, and I’ve already stolen some of the arrow poison from your hunter’s hut during the feast, while none of you were looking.”

That broke Jandell’s resolve. He hugged Meenah tightly and said: “Oh, don’t do that, my love. We’ll find some other way!”

Meenah stopped sobbing and fixed her sky-blue eyes on his, asking: “What other way?” 

“We can run away together,” he claimed.

She thought for a moment and said, “We can’t do that, Jandell. How would we survive? If we didn’t starve to death or freeze, some wild animal would get us.”

“I thought about it, Meenah, and I’ve a plan,” he answered. “I’m now a fully qualified hunter – I can provide food for us and hides for clothing and bedding. I also know how to make a camp and protect us from animals. Plus, my father has taught me much about making tools from bones and stones and found pieces of metal that the gods dropped. I assume that you’ve learned hide stitching and food preparation and such from your mother?”

“OK, I see where you’re going. We might survive for a while, but we can’t live for a long time without … friends, family, healers, feasts …”  

“That’s the second part of my plan, Meenah. On the hunt, we drank blackberry wine and talked around the fire every night – those of us not on watch. I learned from one of the older guys that we’re NOT the only people.”

“What do you mean, Jandell?” she asked, looking quizzical.

“The priests tell us that the Ren are unique and that we must keep our numbers below twenty two hundred. But one of the older hunters – one who has ranged more than four or five days away from the village – told me that he has met other people who look just like us, except they don’t speak our human language and they wear different clothing. There are other villages, Meenah! We can find one and be together there.”

“But where are these other people, Jandell? How would we find them? And if we did, how do we know they’d accept us and not kill us or something?”

”The old hunter Frell told me that he saw the other people on a trip to the south several winters ago. He said that they acted friendly and even traded some artifacts with him. He said he didn’t dare tell anyone about it because he was afraid that the priests would banish him for heresy. He swore me to secrecy.”

Meenah began to warm to the idea and smile a little. “Well, it seems extremely risky, but if it gets me out of marrying Greb … when would we go?”

“The sanctification of your union is happening four suns from now, and then our next hunting foray is supposed to be a few suns after that. We should leave after sunset in three suns. But we need to prepare secretly starting now.” He declared.

“What do we need to prepare?” she asked.

“I’m sure that as soon as we’re discovered missing, a hunting party will be sent to track us down and bring us back,” he claimed. “We’ll need to travel by sun and by moon for at least three suns to stay ahead of them – no time for me to properly hunt for food, and we won’t be able to make a fire. So we should take three suns' worth of food. Also, gather two different outfits, an extra pair of moccasins, and a light hide for sleeping – luckily, it’s summer, so it’s not too cold at night. One skin of water should do – we can find more water on the way. I need to collect sufficient weapons, including arrows, knives, and an axe.”

“I have a good knife and an axe too,” she remembered. “I also have a sling for rocks, and I’m pretty good with it – even killing squirrels and rabbits.”

“That’ll be great!” he said as he began to be excited about the adventure. “I’ll bring an extra bow and teach you to shoot arrows, too, once we’re far enough away. Hmm … I’m thinking …”

“What’re you thinking, Jandell?” she asked.

“Some of the hunters are excellent trackers – especially Drigga,” he said. “I’m afraid they won’t stop until they catch us, unless we can throw them off from the beginning.”

Meenah looked concerned and  asked, “How can we do that?”

“We need to practice our escape on the moon before our real run, that’s the moon after tonight,” he asserted. “But for the practice run, we don’t need to take everything, just some weapons for protection and water for a long walk. My idea is for us to head north for the length of time of a campfire – making obvious signs for tracking along the way until we come to a certain shallow stream I know of. When we reach it, we’ll return on the same track, careful not to leave footprints faced toward the village. We’ll be back home before sunrise, and we can sneak back into our sleeping hides. Then, when we disappear for real the next moon and the hunters start to track us the next day, they’ll quickly find our trail to the north and follow it for half a sun to the stream and beyond. Drigga’ll think that we walked in the stream to avoid further tracking and hopefully waste a sun or more looking for where we emerged. By the time the hunters return to the village, they’ll either have given up or they‘ll be at least four suns behind us. That’ll give us time to slow down a bit, sleep, and do some hunting to replenish our food before moving on.”

“That’s a wonderful plan, Jandell! You’re so clever. But how can we walk safely through the forest in the dark?” she queried.

He answered, “I’ll bring some tallow candles and a flint on the practice run. The tallow droppings will be easy for Drigga to find and will help with our deception. On the real run the next moon, we’ll have to traverse south very carefully in the dark for some time so that we don’t leave any markings to follow – at least for a while. There’ll still be a quarter moon for some light.”

Now Meenah was getting very excited about the plan. She asked, “My parents will notice if I begin gathering weapons and hides and such; where can we hide them before our journey?”

He replied, “I know just the place – it’s a small, secret depression in the earth, nearly a cave, hidden by bushes just outside the village where I sometimes hide to be alone. Come – I’ll show you now! Let’s go carefully and try not to be seen together.”

It was all both Meenah and Jandell could do to maintain their appearance of nonchalance and depressed resignation over the next sun and a half while secreting supplies out to their hiding spot for both runs. As a hunter of full age, Jandell’s parents had stopped worrying about him if he left the hut at night – sometimes he did so to have local adventures with his friends. Meenah, on the other hand, was watched more closely as she was just beyond childhood.

The night of their deception run, Meenah could hardly lie still as she pretended to sleep soundly in her hides. Unfortunately, her parents chose this night to host Greb’s mother to discuss pairing arrangements far into the night, drinking root tea, and gossiping. Finally, the guest left, and her parents retired. Meenah waited until she could hear them snoring softly, and then she crept out of the hut as quietly as she could. The moon – which was now far across the sky – was waning, but still a little more than half full, so she had plenty of light to pick her way to the hiding spot.

Jandell was there waiting for her. He hugged her and whispered, “What took you so long?”

“My parents had Greb’s mother over to plan our marriage – far into the night before they went to bed. It was pure torture for me. But now I’m here, so let’s go!?”

Jandell helped her strap on a bundle including water, weapons, and an extra pair of moccasins, and then motioned for her to follow him quietly. They would have to hurry to make it to the stream and back before dawn. They picked their way very carefully under moonlight for the first few hundred spans – they didn’t want to alert the village guards – and then, when he judged that they were far enough away, Jandell stopped and struck a flint spark at a tallow candle. The light from the candle allowed them to pick up the pace, following some well-marked northerly trails. Walking rapidly until the moon had completely set, they finally reached the stream. 

Jandell made sure that they walked into the stream, leaving clear footprints headed upstream on the bank. Next, he helped Meenah out of the stream onto a rock, where they dried their feet and changed to dry moccasins. They walked carefully along rocks and fallen redwood trunks until they were many paces clear of the stream, then they made their way back to the trail on which they had arrived. Jandell looked carefully at the path as they traversed back toward the village, and wherever he observed their footprints or might leave some, he and Meenah walked backwards, placing their feet in the same depressions. It was slow going, but they made it back to their hiding spot just as the first rosy glow of dawn began to show. They re-stowed their gear in the hiding spot – along with many more provisions for the real run – and then crept quietly back to their separate huts.

Meenah was able to sneak back into her sleeping hides undetected, but Jandell’s mother sprang up the moment he entered his hut, asking, “Jandell! Where’ve you been all night? We were worried that you might’ve done something stupid because of that girl …”

Jandell managed a little laugh, quietly declaring, “Nothing so dramatic, mother! Brek and I just wanted to do a little night frogging at the pond. We were unlucky and didn’t catch any, but we had a lot of fun trying. Now I need to sleep in if that’s OK.”

He awoke when the sun was at its highest and wanted to run to see how Meenah was doing, but he dared not. He realized that they had been too tired after returning at dawn to plan their rendezvous for this moon, and he hoped that she would figure out that it would be at the same hiding spot as soon as she could escape undetected from her sleeping parents.

Meenah was not so fortunate. Her mother, thinking that her daughter had had a good night’s sleep, had a full day planned for her involving fitting a new pairing outfit and helping to prepare special food for the guests. At one point, Meenah declared, “Mother, please! I’m emotionally exhausted thinking about this big life change. I’ll be much brighter and happier for the pairing ceremony tomorrow if you’ll just leave me alone in my hides for a while; is that OK?” 

Luckily, her mother relented, and Meenah was able to get a few hours of deep sleep before the evening meal.

Jandell and Meenah had found no opportunity to see each other the whole sun or evening, so each of them was highly anxious to see if the other would show up at the hiding spot. This time, they both managed to sneak out of their huts undetected at almost the same time, and they met at their rendezvous point without incident when the half-moon was most of the way to the western horizon. They said nothing, but hugged and kissed each other and cried. They wept for many, many heartbeats, sometimes looking back at the village – their home with all of their family and friends  – that they expected never to see again. They were sure that they would either find these other humans or they would die.