Hunters and Gatherers Read Free Page A

east, the Goddess of the water,” and waded into the frothy edge of the waves, knelt, and flung up some foam.
    “The ocean’s freezing,” Martha whispered, proud to know one thing Hegwitha didn’t. “Plus there’s a killer undertow. I’m a pretty strong swimmer, and I lasted about five minutes.”
    But the cold and the undertow were only part of why Martha had got out of the water so quickly. She’d had a depressing fantasy about accidentally drowning and everyone, including Gretta, assuming she’d killed herself.
    Martha said, “Naturally, I was an idiot for thinking I’d found my own private beach, for not knowing that everybody was swimming elsewhere for a reason—”
    Hegwitha said, “I love this ceremony, don’t you? If men had invented it, the ritual would probably involve dismembering tiny babies and tossing them into the ocean.”
    “Oh, I don’t know…” said Martha. “I mean…” The awkwardness that made Hegwitha seem supercilious and censorious, together with her great eagerness to be informative and helpful, so intimidated Martha that she could hardly speak.
    “Get real,” said Hegwitha. “You know you wouldn’t have just wandered into a group this size of men.”
    Isis was waving an eagle feather, saluting the Goddess of air. Finally she raised a fetish that looked like a bandaged drumstick and turned out to be a torch she ignited with a silver lighter. The torch flared up with a startling whoosh. Isis turned to face the north and invoke the Goddess of fire.
    Now Isis motioned to the white-robed women, who again picked up the scarecrow dolls and waded into the ocean, along with four more women, each of whom carried in her arms a light balsa-wood canoe. They set down the boats at the edge of the sea and laid the scarecrows in their hulls. The women knelt in unison and gave the boats a push. Isis, still bearing aloft her torch, followed the boats into the ocean.
    Soon the soaking hem of her robe dragged against her legs, which, along with the undertow and the resistance of the water, made Isis falter. The crowd barely breathed as she paused, rocking gently with the waves, then regained her balance and trudged farther out.
    The balsa boats and their scarecrow passengers had floated beyond her, but Isis pursued them doggedly, plowing through the water, while the breeze played mischievous games with the torch and her hair. There was a flurry among the boat-and-scarecrow bearers, clearly asking themselves and each other if they should go help Isis. But, as if she’d sensed this, Isis turned toward shore, her face a stony gargoyle of rage and concentration. She grasped the torch in both hands. No one took a step.
    Her hesitation had given the boats even more of a lead, and once more Isis charged after them into the mounting waves, which by now were waist-high and strong enough to knock her backward. Martha was struck by the zeal with which Isis pursued the boats: courageously, unflinchingly, unworried by how she must look.
    Then one of the women cried, “Blessed be,” and a murmur went up, “Blessed be,” because the waves had died down, and the boats bobbed in place, as if waiting for Isis. With an eerie gull-like shriek, Isis cut through the water, reached out and grabbed the boats, and set the scarecrows aflame with her torch.
    As the effigies and then the boats caught fire, a cry went up from the onlookers, the shrill warbling with which Arab women send their men into battle. Perhaps the difficulty of making this noise was what distracted the women and made them slow to realize that the waves had started up again and were tossing the boats in toward Isis, who was dodging and leaping backward to stay clear of the fiery ships.
    Once more Isis shrieked, more genuinely than ceremonially. The women gasped as they watched her sink beneath the water. An instant later she resurfaced, a billowing red flower, then vanished and reappeared again, farther out to sea.
    Before anyone else seemed to