in the womb. But when the hide is lifted from the door you can see across the world to where the sea meets the sky. And sometimes in the winter Moons it’s the same when you look into the sky: everything is sharp and clear and bright, and there are more stars in the sky than you’d ever see on a summer night.
I looked into the stars, and I saw the shape of my son Bakar. I saw him stand above the River of Milk with his bow over his shoulder and his knife hanging from his belt. Red spirit-lights flickered round his head. His wolfskin cloak streamed across the sky, green as the sea. And I knew that I must search for him in places more different than I’d ever dreamed of.
On every cloudless night after that, I went up Look-out Hill and watched the stars. As the Sun got tired the nights grew strong. One by one new stars peered over the Morning hills, ready to begin their winter journey. Each night they climbed higher before they dropped into the Deep Sea under the Evening Sun Sky. Slowly the Hunter shook himself free of the horizon. Soon the timid Marten followed him, crouching low, ready to run back to his cave before day came and put him out. As the Sun grew weak the dark grew strong. I was glad. Like the winter stars, my journey belonged to the night, and the braver the dark grew the more I welcomed it.
One day a Dark Moon will come when the nights will swallow the days for ever, and when that happens our world will end. Every person who was ever born must have wondered if the last Dark Moon would come in their lives, but it never has, and now I have travelled far enough to know that there is much more still to come, and many more lives to be lived, before the Sun dies.
But that winter my eyes were on the dark. The days were an empty waste. I lay in the sleeping place and turned my face to the wall. When my family all danced in the melting snow to greet the light I wouldn’t raise my head. They thought I was ill, and so perhaps I was, for what is ill? I don’t know if I ate or drank or slept. I only know that slowly the days passed, and each one was far too long.
Each night, when the dark came, my man lay down in his usual place beside me. I ignored him, and when his breathing told me that he slept I slid from under the thick bearskin and crept away from my family, where they lay in their bed places round the hearth, all fast asleep. I pushed aside the hides that covered the door, and stepped into the freezing night. Did I wrap a fur round me? Did I put on my sealskin boots or my hood? I don’t remember. Perhaps I stood under the icy stars with no protection at all. Perhaps not. But the small things we do every day to protect ourselves – the way we take care to be warm and dry in winter, cool in summer – the way we eat when we’re hungry and drink when we’re thirsty and sleep when we’re tired – the way we enjoy and comfort one another – none of these things seemed to matter any more.
In Thaw Moon Esti was born, and her father recognised her. I should have been very happy to see my daughter a mother and I still as strong as ever, and able to travel as far as I liked. I knew that much of my life still lay before me. Ever since I’d seen Bakar outlined in the stars, I knew that the next direction would be new and strange. As the Sun recovered its strength, I did too. I began to go out in daylight again, and to eat and drink with the others. I could see they all hoped that whatever illness had struck me down in Dark Moon had gone away for ever. I knew I hadn’t been ill. I came back into the world only for a breathing space. I had to gather my strength for what lay ahead.
Alaia said:
Slowly the Sun came back. The days grew longer and milder. Most of the gulls had gone to sea, but we were woken earlier every day by the blackbirds in the thicket, telling us that spring was on its way. Catkins dangled from the hazels; birch twigs took on the purple tinge that promises green leaves. Rising sap filled birch bark and pine bark with the delicious flavours of spring. Celandines lay like stars along our paths, and the trees overhead were filled with song. The oaks were black and bare against blue sky, but even their buds were beginning to swell if you looked closely enough.
The Marten disappeared below the High Sun Sky, but even though the stars were telling us it was spring the dark still brought the frost with it, and we spent many evenings by the inside fire. One evening, when my mother appeared to be sleeping, my father said to Amets, ‘We won’t go to Flint Camp this Year.’
My hands were still. Not go to Flint Camp? Not meet our cousins, and gather flints, and fish for saithe among the islets in the loch, and build big fires with fresh firewood, and feast in the dusk on sea-fish and seal meat? I’d been thinking about Flint Camp all through Limpet Moon. I’d been holding on until the meltwater spate was over so we could launch the boat and paddle towards the Morning Sun Sky, round Hidden Shelter Point, along the Sunless shore to Flint Camp.
I’d been scraping an otter pelt in the light of the fire. When my father spoke I pressed the soft red fur against my cheek as if that could bring me comfort. Esti lay sleeping; I felt her warm skin against my back. In the silence after my father spoke we heard the rain swishing on the wet ground outside, soaking our already-sodden walls. Daylight filtered in at the smoke hole, mingling with the firelight. The fire ate away at the end of a long oak branch whose cold end stuck out way beyond the hearth circle. The flames licking round the wood sounded like water trickling across the floor. Haizea dropped her scraper, and the bone made a little clunk against one of the hearthstones. With our hearts in our throats we waited for Amets to speak.
‘What about firewood?’ said Amets at last.
‘It’s spring,’ said my father. ‘The sea will let us through. You and I can take the big boat along the shore and fill it with wood from further off.’
Amets moved the oak log further into the fire. After a while he said, ‘We’ve only three flint cores left. I doubt if there’s more than a hand-full of good blades left in them.’
‘Flint won’t go away,’ said my father. ‘We can get it later. There’s an old Flint Camp at Boat-Hazel River. We can go there and find what we need for now.’
Amets was silent. Then he said, ‘I could get us much more meat at Flint Camp. I wouldn’t have to hunt alone.’
‘We are few,’ said my father. He held his left hand up with all five fingers spread, and his right forefinger. ‘That’s all. The brown trout are rising already. We can catch those. We can set more eel traps. And if we stay here Alaia and Haizea can still get roots from the marsh. And now the days are longer there’s nothing to stop them getting sea-roots from the shore, and more shellfish.’
Amets looked at the ground. I felt my heart beat in my chest, but I couldn’t speak. To be eating eels and shellfish and sea-roots right through the Moon of Rushes, when a bare day’s paddle away our family would all be feasting together, with plenty of meat for everyone! I didn’t want Esti to learn the Moon of Rushes as a season of wretched hearths and scanty food. I didn’t want to go on living in our own dirt – it’s unhealthy to stay in one place too long. But much more than that, I wanted to see my aunts and cousins. I wanted something done about my mother. There she lay, even as we sat by the hearth, with her face to the wall, pretending – in my anger I was sure it was all pretence – to be asleep.
‘To fish for eels and river trout will be more work,’ said Amets. ‘I could take the boat and get sea-fish – I could get plenty for all of us – but you know how far I’d have to go to reach the grounds. The Moon of Rushes will rise tomorrow: we’d do better if we camped by open water.’
‘Amets,’ said my father, ‘I’m thinking of Nekané when I say this.’
I lifted my head. ‘Father, I know you want to help my mother. But it might be better for her – for all of us – if we get away and leave this sad winter behind us. My aunts and cousins are expecting us! We agreed when we left Gathering Camp that we’d all meet again at
