“Can One Other make children?” asked Aneka.
It was the wall that towered before the male’s assertion of equality. Nothing with the masculine pronoun could do that! The people of the long houses knew all about mating. They had words in plenty for that. But they had no word like “father.” Haki uttered a guttural sound, half despair, half anger. He walked in silence while the moon climbed the sky. Then revolt again raised its head. “One Other will find out how!”
Aneka knew plants that poisoned and plants that healed. Stooping, she gathered a plant that used one way was poisonous and used another was healthful. Aneka was old and knew much. Throughout life she had had a watchful eye and comparing mind. But it was not her way to tell all that she knew.... She gathered stalk and leaf and moved with Haki in silence.
They were now somewhat deep in the fen. Presently, the path curving like a tusk of Big Trouble, they came to the shield-like, lifted place. The moon bathed it white. Clothed in that silver Gata and Amru lay asleep.
The old Wise Woman and the early Medicine Man stood and gazed. The moon looked very large, the fen very wide. The two interlaced figures seemed large with the rest of the world. Aneka and Haki watched awhile, then turned aside without waking the sleepers. Their path, bending, led them again to the edge of the fen, to the quarter whence they had come. Haki walked perhaps cogitating the pair, perhaps cogitating One Other who had gone into the ground for the night, One Other and his possibly developing powers. But Aneka looked over her shoulder at the full, bright moon.
That moon waned and other moons waxed and waned, and Gata and Amru remained companions and most fond of each other. That was not so usual among the people of the long houses. Only at great intervals arose among them some example of enduring attachment between woman and man. So novel was it that when it markedly happened the group paid attention. It was a social phenomenon of the first importance, and though they gave it no such sounding name, and indeed no name at all, they noted it.
For many days after the slaying of Big Trouble, Gata and Amru hunted in company. The forest received them in the morning; they returned at eve, bearing game or wearing trophies to show that certain four-footed enemies of the long houses were enemies no more. The people praised them. Children were told, “Grow up to be like Gata and Amru!”
Moons brightened, moons darkened. At last it was seen that Gata was making a child. After that, as the custom had grown to be, she hunted no more.... Amru was jealous of the child that Gata was making. He felt a fierceness toward it as though it were a man fighting with him for Gata’s favour. From that he passed to anger with Gata herself. Gata could not like Amru as much as Amru liked Gata. She would be showing superiorities! Savage pride was hurt. Amru and Gata had a loud quarrel, after which they parted as companions.
Gata went to the forest and walked there alone. Amru and other men were making a boat. Boats were a mystery belonging to men. Men had had that notion, had experimented with it, and then had declined to share knowledge and honours. Men went ostentatiously apart when they would make a boat. They kept a thicket screen between them and the long houses, and they stationed watchers. The women heard the thud of the falling tree, and they smelled the smoke when began the hollowing process—but for the rest it was a mystery. When the boat was made, it was held to belong to men.
Amru was strong and skilful and many of the folk had a liking for him, and he tended to become a leader. Now with other young men he was making a boat.... Gata walked alone by the edge of the forest. She could see, between her and the river, the curling smoke where the men worked. She carried a spear, and felt no especial terror of the forest. The forest and its creatures composed an old, familiar pattern in her brain. Within her was aglow another ancient pattern....