into her arms and hugged her. I’d missed her so much. I was only a child, remember. My mother was hugging me, and I was laughing and crying all at once. She spoke to me in the old way: ‘Yes, yes, little one. I’ve come home. It’s all right. Everything is changed and it’s going to be all right.’
I didn’t know what she meant by ‘changed’. I don’t know if she had any idea then of the troubles that lay ahead, or of how she was going to deal with them. But this I can say: although Nekané has travelled so far and done so many things for our People, although she became Go-Between and could never be with us in quite the way she was before, she’s never again rejected her children or been unfaithful to them. After she came back she couldn’t be the sort of mother I’d had before. But that was all right: I was growing older myself, and I had Alaia, and later on Osané. So no one can say I’ve ever been short of a mother, except in that bad winter after Bakar was lost. I don’t even like to remember it. I think we should pass over all that now, and go on to what happened two Moons later, in Egg Moon, when we were at White Beach Camp.
Nekané said:
Before we do that, I’ll tell you how I left behind the woman I’d been before, and how I was born into a world that was new to me. I can’t say everything because it would destroy you to hear it. But the story I’m about to tell won’t hurt you, so there’s no need to look afraid.
I’d wandered far inland, past the Long Loch and the Boat Crossing Path, and by hunters’ paths into the hills around our Mother Mountain. At River Mouth Camp the Year was already beginning to grow strong and green, but it was too young to have reached the hills. I walked back into the old Year, right up into the high snows. I climbed beyond the oaks, through the birch and scrub willow, past juniper and myrtle, up into the empty places where People are not meant to go until the Year has opened the way for them. There was no food up there. It was very cold. I didn’t care. I was thinking only of Bakar. It was in the old Year that he went away, so only by returning to the old Year could I follow him.
When I reached the bare rock, Mother Mountain was hidden in mist and I couldn’t go any further. I squatted down, leaning forward with my arms between my knees to rest my aching back. I stayed there in the shelter of a little cliff while the cloud swirled above my head, sometimes dipping down to smother me. It was too wet and cold to sleep much. I had no food. If I’d had no purpose I’d have died, but my purpose burned inside my ribs and kept me from freezing.
I waited for days and nights and then a dawn came when everything came clear. The cold Sun struck the rocks and made them gleam. I looked at the little cliff above me and saw a place where I could climb up. Lichen and mosses grew among the boulders, but the bloom of the new Year wasn’t on them. I was glad of that, because my purpose lay in the past. I came to the top of the hill. The air was still and cold. A greater world than I had ever seen glimmered at my feet. I saw beyond the lands of our People and the lands of our People’s kin. I saw range upon range of hills, from our own lands which we know, into the far blue where there are no more names.
I saw the Sun cross the sky and set behind an unknown horizon. I saw the stars move through the circling Year. Yet again I saw the Sun cross the sky. I watched it travel through the high paths of summer and the small paths of winter. I saw the Moons wax and wane. I saw how the Years were born, and how they died and came back again, and how everything that lives follows the pattern of the circling Years through all the births and deaths from the Beginning.
As I watched I died. No living creature can see all the Years and live. I died. My body lay on the hill. Ravens came and pecked out my eyes. They tore my belly open and ripped out my guts and ate them. Lynx drove away the ravens, and feasted on my stomach and my heart. Wolves came and devoured my limbs, splitting open my bones to eat the marrow. And last of all came Bear, who tipped up my skull and licked out the meat inside it.
As the Sun sank into the far-off sea, a Dolphin came out of the water and swam through the sky. He leaped joyfully through the waves all around the high hill where my body had once lain. I heard him call. I sat up. My Dolphin swam so fast I couldn’t look into his eye, but I could see how he was watching me. His glance was kind. I heard him laugh. In my old life I thought the sea Animals spoke without making any sounds that People hear, but now I often hear their laughter.
When my Dolphin dived into the deep again, sadness pierced me through, opening the wound below my ribs which I got when I lost my son. I watched my Dolphin go, and from the ripples of his dive I saw Swan rise into the air, flapping his wings to get free of the water. I’d seen that Swan before. In the world I’d left, I’d seen that Swan rise from the still water at River Mouth Camp. I hadn’t known it was carrying Bakar’s soul out of our world. Now I understood. Swan told me that while Bakar was out of the world Swan would accompany me instead. My Swan told me that he wouldn’t leave me – although there would be many days and nights when I saw nothing of him – until the Moon came when he would bring Bakar back to us.
That’s how Dolphin and Swan came to be my Helpers. I know some of you have seen them just as I do. Not everyone can see them. But every one of you knows them, because, through me, they are Helpers for us all. If we hadn’t lost Bakar, they wouldn’t have found their way to us. I can’t say – none of us can say – how things might have been better or worse. All I can say is, ‘This is how it is.’ And that’s as much about my path to Wisdom as I’m able to tell you.
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