Luck

Luck
Jim Patrick Kelly
2002 by Davis Publications, Inc.
First Published in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June, 2002.
Thumb sat on a rock, soothing his sore feet in the river, in no hurry to
get home. The stories the shell people had told filled him with
foreboding. Meanwhile, he was certain that the spirits had taken
Onion's soul down into the belly of the earth while he'd been gone. The
sun was still two hands from the edge of the sky. There was plenty of
time before dark. Before he reached the summer camp of the people.
Before they would tell him his lover was dead. While he tried not to
think of her, a dream found him.
In his dream, a great herd of mammoths tracked down from the stony
northern hills through the pine forest all the way to the river. There
were five and five and five and five mammoths and then more, more
than Thumb could have ever counted, even if he used the fingers and
toes of all of the people. They were huge, almost too big to fit in the
eye of his mind. They trampled trees like tall grass, dropped turds the
size of boulders.
Old Owl told a story about the spirit who became a mammoth. He
called the beast a furry mountain of meat. Owl had been the last to see
a mammoth, years ago when he was just a boy. The rest of the people
knew mammoths only from the drawings in the long cave.
An animal the size of a mountain -- how could that be?
When Thumb's herd of mammoths reached the river, they dipped their
trunks into the water. In a dream moment, they drank the river dry.
Turtles scrambled into the reeds for shelter. Fish flopped in the mud

and died.
After her last baby had been born dead, Onion flopped on her mat like a
fish.
Ruc-ruc-ruc-ruc-ruc!
The dream turned to smoke at the sound. Thumb leapt up and almost
fell into the river. His feet had gone numb in the cold water and he
couldn't feel the ground beneath them. He pulled on his boots, snatched
his spear, fit it to his throwing stick.
Ruc-ruc-ruc!
The rumbling came from upriver, around the bend. Thumb had never
heard anything like it. An earth sound, like the crack of a falling tree or
a boulder crashing off a cliff, except it was wet and hot and alive. A
sound that only an animal could make.
He crept deeper into the thicket before he started upriver. Hunting
courage pounded in his chest. He strained ear and eye and nose after
the quarry. He was ready to jump over the sky. It was hard to make
himself go quietly but he parted branches and slid through the leaves.
Man. Come out, man.
The whisper rasped inside his head. He felt it on the tip of his nose, on
the hair of his scalp, at the root of his cock and on the bottoms of his
tingling feet. It had to be the whisper of a spirit. This was his luck then,
whether good or bad. He had no choice. He must obey. Thumb rose up
and pushed through the undergrowth toward the water. He knew that he
might be about to have his soul stripped from his body. The thought did
not much bother him. If Onion were really dead, he would be with her
in the belly of the earth.
I am, man.
Thumb was not surprised to see a mammoth standing on the opposite

bank. It must have sent the dream and whispered to him in a spirit
voice. The surprise was what he felt as he gazed into its round, black
eyes. This was no monster that could break trees and drain rivers. It
wasn't much taller than he was. Yes, the trunk snaked like a nightmare
and the tusks were long and curved and dangerous, but as Thumb took
its measure, his confidence surged. The people had no weapon that
could wound a mountain or strike at a spirit. But this was an animal
that men might dare to hunt and bring down. Thumb let a laugh bubble
out of his chest.
"I am Thumb," he shouted across the river at it, "keeper of the caves!"
Then he danced, five hops on the spongy bank. He finished by striking
the butt of his spear against an alder.
The mammoth raised its trunk and trumpeted in reply. The piercing cry
sent a shiver through Thumb. But he was not cowed. He had heard the
death scream of a bison and a cave bear's roar.
"This is the valley of the people." He struck the alder again.
At that moment, something at the far edge of his vision