NWP Whodunnit Writers’ Writings

Selected from virtual meetings 2020-2021

cresswell crags by marjory caine

The cave is smoky, but warm. Under my feet the packed earth is grit dry. Of course, Sami has the best place facing the cave opening – I’ve got my back to it. The wind is off the ice again, lifting the bear skin just enough to make me believe something, maybe one of the hyenas, is just about to enter the cave.

At least I still have the Horse. Not Sami. My thumbnail follows the grooves along the length of the Horse’s rib. The bars of the stockade; the flight of spears. The bristles of its mane are raised as it thunders across the plain. That’s where the others are now. They will have rejoined the rest of the tribe. Where the horse herds are. There are no horses this far north.  We had followed the reindeer herds. And now they too are retreating before the ice. We are still here because it is the auroch that Sami wants. And the hyenas wait with us; for us to kill, or to hunt us.

The Horse is my talisman. It proves I can hunt. Its spirit calms the dying animal, stops it fighting against my spears. Persuades the hare, the deer, the bison, even, maybe, the auroch to give up its life to me, for the tribe. The Horse explains that it will find new life in us. Its bravery, its speed, its bones, its guts. And here, on the rib bone, polished, it stays pinned by my spears, forever galloping. Here I am, it tells the hunted, outstretched neck, flared muzzle, fleeing from a death that will happen, and happen again.

And the Horse has told this to many animals already. It is my spears that finish the hunt. Not Sami. I am the one with the sight, the skill. Once the others have stalked the herd, separated the beast that will give itself to us, it is my role to run it down, to take aim while I am moving with it, in its rhythm of flight, and loose my spear, despatch it cleanly. I know how to fell the beast. And then the others catch up. Now, though, it will be Sami who will separate the auroch from the herd, and he will not be able to keep up. He is too slow, too heavy. But I cannot say no to my chief. He trusts me to kill.

The others retraced the way south, before the cold entered into the bones of the old and the young. They have the hides, the dried meat, the sinews cut to length. The winter will be easier for my tribe, because of me. Sami, though, wants the auroch. So that is why we are still here. One more hunt, he said. Before we can follow the tribe’s tracks south. And that is what we will do, he said. As soon as the auroch joins the Horse. He will take the auroch horns, to show his power and strength. I will take the thickest part of the hide; the warmth of the neck and shoulders.

And maybe, just maybe, we can leave the hyenas here. In the hope of a hunt that wounds rather than kills. A lamed animal that they can pull down. Or the carcase we cannot flay fast enough before nightfall. Or just for the gralloching, the hot steaming innards left on the ice.

The hyenas. That is why the Horse is broken. They have been getting bolder and closer since the others left. We had picked up the trail of the auroch. The herd had turned south – because the snow is blowing off the ice wall. Their bellowing echoed off the crag walls where we had funnelled them. Sami had separated one of the bigger bulls. And I was ready, above it. Greir, my hunting spear, impatient to fly; the Horse in my other hand, balancing life and death. And that was when the hyenas rounded into the valley, the largest pack yet. Their loud barks and yelps echoed off the crags. And they were on the bull, hanging from its neck, its flanks, its flaying hooves. But it was stronger. It pulled away from them. And then the auroch herd regrouped, charged. The hyenas that could, ran from the aurochs. Three came straight over me, knocking me over – and the Horse rib snapped against the rock of the crags.

Now Sami blames me because the auroch will not be able to hear the Horse. It will not know to give up its life for us. It will fight against us, just as it fought off the hyenas. But we will have to stay here until Sami has his auroch horn, that will tell all with its call that he is chief.  I will have the pelt to wrap around me; because I need it to survive the cold that is already in my bones. To keep the ice from our child growing inside me.

I rub the ochre stains into the grooves. I smooth the Horses’s neck. It knows that it has one last task to do. It must tell the auroch that it is needed. Without the death of the auroch, the life inside me will shrivel and die.  

encounter with snow by Katie Kibbler

With the first blurting flurry of flakes
Came a counter-intuitive quiet:
It looked so raucous, it should sound loud.

In the frenzied whirling white-out -
Some flakes funnelled upward
On the chaos, others colliding
To form rough clods of cold -
The world was all muted, all energy subsumed
into the making of this mayhem.

The first few minutes were the best.
Before snow settled into stillness,
When winter raged in a silent
Manic confetti of calm, and it
Smashed softly into our coats,
Latching, glittering, onto lashes,
Hitching lifts on the tops of our trainers,
Flying frictionless at our foreheads,
Numbing pinking skin, stunning
In its capacity to drench despite its lightness.

The fleeting accidental crash
Of flakes in the partings of our hair
Meant the melt-water wet our skulls
By imperceptible degrees of soaking,
So that by the time it stopped
We were wet as breaking waves,
Their roaring raging in our ears.

JANUARY BY THERESA GOODA

Bullheaded storm-rain threatens our fortress
while hovering fog invades our moods and minds.
White skies deride the bricks with heaviness
till clogging cold triumphantly confines.
Then penetrating damp pries crevice cracks;
sleet chills to brittle bones and weakens will.
Their sidekick, gloom, wields firm its deathly axe
striking fear, ending joy, making life stand still.
To resolutions: starting fresh. Thus we
patch leaks, repair, repel and mend and fix,
wrap up, light fires, watch films, create and play,
admire exultant snowdrops win conflicts,
take bookings for the future in safety,
dream long, end siege and know we’re past midway.

ROOKS by Janet ward

Helen  listened for the early morning rook calls to break the patter of  heavily  misting rain. When she stepped out the door for the walk, she expected some rook squawk, jackdaw chatter, or   at least  crow call  but all she heard was a steady rain and Pip’s feet against the stones. Almost merging into the darkening heron grey  she walked towards the lower stream. The sky offered little drama but instead a sombre winter etching of interwoven branches offset by grey filed the sky. The walk was pre-planned to give Pip field running as well as some less muddy hardness underfoot. The field was as expected: muddy, sloshy, slippery; the waterlogged path extended as sludge on both sides.  She was relieved to reach the solid grey tarmac with only a scattering of standing puddles. Scanning the sky she saw the rooks flying above the field. Pip could not chase them there.  No longer protected by the hedge the wind, now rainless, curved steadily into her face, refreshing cold puffs of a north easterly. Pip ran happily on ahead, chasing wind circles while the rooks rode the wind, soaring, lifting, gliding. The sting of cool was becoming colder. Time for rooks, dog, and human to head safely  home.  Instead, motionless on the road in front of her lay a rook, its beak resting on the pebbles, head sideways, leaving the open darkness of its unwavering eye toward the sky, one wing open wide, the luminescent  cape of blue black shoulder feathers  visible,  tail feathers splayed as though it had tried to land. Helen closed her eyes and saw the rook, now black brush strokes across the canvas sky and heard  its raucous song continue into the dusk as she and Pip continued home.