Chapter 14

The snow had finished melting a couple of days ago, and I was out of water. It was still pretty fucking chilly out though. I pulled my black furred cloak tighter around me as I made my way to the river. I’d found a tree that overhung the bank and was shortly sitting up in its branches over the flowing river that was no longer choked with ice.

I lowered my bucket by a long makeshift rope made of braided chokevine that I used pretty extensively. The stuff was extremely tough, it was almost impossible to pull it off a tree while it was alive, but in winter when it dried up you could get a lot of it easily this far into the woods. I had a ton of it back at camp and regularly spent my evenings making more rope. Just one of my many projects these days. Still hadn’t managed a crossbow though. I had created a crude bow, but I sucked with it. Making perfectly straight shafts for arrows seemed to be beyond me, and I’d pretty much given up at this point. My sling did the job just fine anyway, and there were more productive things I could spend my time on.

I’d somehow managed to eat better this winter than any winter previous. Constant hunting had made me an absolute dead shot with my sling, and I had so much meat in my larder I was going to have some of it go rotten pretty soon with the warming days. I’d even managed to take out a wolf once while I was hiding from its pack up in a tree, caught it right in the eye and cracked its skull, killing it instantly. The wolves hadn’t bothered me much since then either, I guess they associated my scent with a superior predator after that. I was still tanning its skin back in my tipi, nearly pure white with several black stripes running its full length. My bed was lined with a big sheet of death panther fur these days, and I was feeling pretty good about myself. I was also starting to fill out, having enough food for a change made a big difference and I was putting on a lot of muscle. Well a lot for a ten year old anyway.

I dragged up the full bucket. Watching warily as a large, pink, saber toothed croc monster circled hopefully below. Fucker had to be thirty feet long, easy. I’d wait until he left before making my way down the tree while trying to spill as little as possible. I got ahold of the bucket and took a deep swallow. Ahhh, ice cold and pure. That’s some tasty water right there.

I sat and watched the golden sunrise for a while from my perch. Eventually, the croc got bored and made his way downriver looking for easier prey. I scanned the river and the surrounding woods for any potential predators and made my way, slowly, down the tree. Once I was down, I walked as quickly as possible away from the river while keeping an eye out for any other crocs. I remembered reading somewhere that crocodiles can run at a pretty good clip over land when they want to, and I was prepared to climb a tree at a moment’s notice, but nothing came after me.

Once I got a bit farther away I slowed to a stroll and whistled quietly to myself as I walked back to camp. When I got there I found Hammer and Knick staring aghast at the wolf head and death panther skull on sticks out front. I’d ended up skinning the cat’s head and sewed it into the hood of my cloak. I thought the cat ears looked pretty cool actually. “No way he killed it,” I heard Knick saying as I came up silently behind them. I moved quietly by habit at this point, it made hunting a lot easier, and if I spotted a predator before they noticed me I could usually get away without having to climb a tree. “He must’ve just found it somewhere and brought it back. Grandfather says he probably died out here somewhere and got eaten, and I’d find his camp empty, just like we did.”

“Father said much the same thing, but his fire is still going so he’s obviously been here very recently,” argued Hammer.

“Gonna hafta side with Hammer on this one, Knick,” I said loudly from right behind them. They visibly startled and spun around. “Cutter’s a very smart man, but nobody’s right every time.” I set down my bucket and threw back my hood with a big smile. My adult teeth had grown in over the winter so I had a proper bright white smile to offer this time

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They both winced as my hood came back. “Your face…” said Hammer, staring at my new scars.

“Yeah, that bastard most assuredly wasn’t dead when I found it. Or, I should more accurately say, when HE found ME. Fucker came out of a tree like a bolt of lightning from the gods and nearly took my head off.” I laughed as if it was no big deal. “Spent another month healing up from that one,” I rubbed my hand along my scars as I smiled. “Lemme tell ya, living off death panther meat for a month was pretty gross, and that’s coming from a guy that used to eat garbage for a living. Speaking of which, you boys want some breakfast? I got a bird cooking on the fire that should be about ready for eatin’.” I removed the large flat piece of wood that served as a door and waved them in behind me.

We sat around the fire on fur pillows I’d made from rabbit skins. I didn’t really need them for clothing anymore. Everything I wore now was pure black fur from the panther, from my pants to my long sleeved shirt to the cloak I hung on the wall behind me. “So, how was your winter guys? I did pretty well myself. Haven’t eaten this well in my entire life!” I smiled at their slightly perplexed faces.

They were examining the interior of the tipi; it had changed quite a bit over the winter. I'd used the stones I'd dug up that were too small for my sling to create a small series of abstract mosaics around its perimeter. I'd also drawn a lot of pictures into the mud walls, mostly animals I'd hunted or been hunted by. Combine that with bits of writing in English, things I wanted to remember, math equations, a tally of days spent here, and there was a lot to look at.

“Fine I guess,” said Knick, finally. “Managed to cut Grandfather once.”

“Damn, I’m impressed," I said, honestly. Knick nodded matter of factly. I looked to Hammer.

“Oh, uh, I guess it was ok. Just worked the forge like I always do. I was mostly just wondering about you, but I guess you’re good.” Hammer went back to examining the walls.

“Yup,” I smiled. “Seems I’m pretty hard to kill.”

“Cool,” said Knick, smiling himself now. He and Hammer had definitely picked up some of my speech patterns over the years. “When we get older, we should go kill people together.” But, Knick was still Knick.

I chuckled, “Sure, sounds fun, we’ll call that our long term plan then.”

“You guys are so weird sometimes,” sighed Hammer. We looked at Hammer, then looked back at each other and started laughing.

“Oh, that reminds me. I got you guys some belated birthday presents.” I dug behind my bed and came out with a big piece of panther hide with the fur still on it. I’d roughly sewn it into a bag with chokevine, I reached inside and pulled out a much smaller bag of the same material and tossed it to Hammer, I tossed the larger bag to Knick.

Knick looked inside and found it was empty. “Pretty nice bag I guess,” he said somewhat questioningly.

I shook my head, “Naw, that’s just part of it. The bag is to hold the death panther skull. I thought you’d think it was pretty cool.”

Knick’s eyes widened, “You’re right,” he smiled, “That IS pretty cool, thanks!” he grinned.

Hammer dug into the much smaller bag and pulled out a couple of large death panther claws. “Whoa,” he exclaimed. “Are you sure? Death panther claws are really valuable. I’ve never even seen one before,” he was holding one of the black claws out and comparing its size to that of his finger. Hammer had big fingers and the claws were just about the same length. Personally they reminded me a bit of a velociraptor’s biggest claw, but they were pretty much all equal length except for the shorter thumblike claws.

“All yours, bud. All twenty of ‘em. Frankly, they aren’t really useful to me out here, and I thought you might be able to make something cool with ‘em. Besides, I ended up killing the critter with that hatchet you made for me, so I literally couldn’t have done it without you,” I laughed.

That led to me telling them the story of how I killed the beast while we ate the big plump bird I’d killed the day before. It was delicious, and reminded me a bit of turkey. They stayed for an hour or so before they had to make their way back. Knick said he’d be stopping back tomorrow to do some training if I wanted the coin, and I readily agreed. Knick bagged up the skull, which fit rather neatly since I’d made the bag with that express purpose in mind, and they made their way back to town, waving as they went. I'd given them directions to my larder and told them to help themselves since I had more than I could eat anyway.

I looked over at the wolf’s head on the occupied stick, I’d need to take the flesh off it before it started to rot as it warmed. “Happy spring, Wolfy.” I said cheerfully and then pitched my voice lower, answering for the unmoving head, “Happy spring, Nameless.”