the sita before the wind really comes up.’
Heckram reached out to put a hand on Lasse’s shoulder. It made the demand of friendship as it shook the boy’s stiffened shoulders. ‘What is it?’
The boy’s voice came thickly. ‘She heard that Joboam had accused me of stealing milk from reinder that were not mine. A stupid accusation! Is a vaja going to stand still while a stranger milks it? Only a fool could believe that. And my grandmother is no fool, even if she thought that I would steal. But she is proud, in the old way, and she was angry. So she chose to show her pride and anger in the old way, to shame him with a gift. She sent three cheeses to his tent. “He will see these,” she said, “and he will know what I think. I think that if Joboam is so poor a man that he worries about the milk of a reindeer, then we should give him cheeses to ease him through his hard times. When folk see the cheeses from my molds, they will know we have shamed him.” She still lives in the old days.’
Heckram winced for his friend. The cheeses alone were a gift the family could ill afford. But, worse than that, Lasse’s grandmother did not understand how deep the changes in the herdfolk went. The cheeses she had sent as an insult to one who accused her grandson would be seen as an effort to pay back a theft. She had as much as admitted Lasse’s guilt to the rest of the herdfolk. The older people would know the meaning of her gesture. But it was the younger ones that Lasse had to contend with every day. In her pride and anger, she had shamed him deeply.
‘It is as you say,’ Heckram said with false heartiness. ‘Those who know you know the truth. And those who remember the old ways will understand that your grandmother knows you are not a thief. Who cares for the rest of them?’
For a long moment Lasse was silent, and a wind laden with ice crystals rushed between them. ‘There’s a good fire in my tent,’ he said at last. ‘How about a game of tablo? You owe me a chance to beat you.’
Heckram managed a grin. ‘This time, I’ll be the Wolf,’ he offered. He put a mittened hand on the youth’s shoulder and they started down the pingo.
The sun had not risen. Nor would it, for the next twenty days or so. Yet there was not absolute blackness, but a diffused grayness of moon and stars and white snow shining. It was a shadowless light that filtered through the outstretched branches of the trees and rested coldly on the snowy ground. Tillu moved through the dimness, a shadowy figure that left crumbling footprints in the powdery snow. The cold had turned the snow to dust and crystals. At least it no longer clung to her boots and leggings, to melt and sog her clothing against her. Now there was only the absolute of water turned to dust, of cold so intense it made the hairs inside her nose prickle and her eyelashes stick together momentarily whenever she blinked her eyes.
She was carrying a dead hare. She gripped it by its hind legs, letting its skinny body swing. Ordinarily, she would have tied her kill to her belt with the thongs at her hip, to have her hands free to shoot if she saw other game. But her fingers had been too numb to manage the laces, so she carried the dead animal in one mittened hand. She had drawn her other hand and arm out of her sleeve and into her coat. Her arm hugged her chest, her hand in her armpit for whatever warmth it might find there. If she saw game, she wouldn’t be able to shoot, but it didn’t worry her. She was too cold to worry, and too tired to believe she’d see any game within the range of her crude bow.
The dead hare slipped from her fingers. She heard it hit the snow and she stopped, to look down at it dumbly. She had to move her whole head to see it, for she had tied the drawstring of her hood so tightly that the opening was just enough for her to see straight in front of her. She breathed shallowly through the long fur that edged her hood, feeling the frost form and melt with every breath. After a long pause, she pushed her warmed arm back down her sleeve and out into her mitten. Then she wriggled and tugged until the other arm with its numbed hand was inside the tunic with her body. Stooping, she picked up the hare and trudged on again.
On days like these, she regretted leaving Benu’s folk. Among them, she had not had to hunt for her meat. Her skills as a healer had fed them both and kept warm clothing on their backs. Now she was alone again, dependent entirely on herself. She had never been a skilled hunter. She had grown up among farming folk.
As she walked, her thoughts wandered back to the village beside the wide river. She remembered cutting the ripe grain with a flint-toothed scythe. The heat of those days had glazed everyone’s body with sweat. But in today’s cold, the heat of those days seemed but a child’s dream. So was it all, no more than a child’s dream. She stumbled over a buried snag and dragged her mind back to the present. She wondered if they would survive the winter. The boy grew so thin, and she herself grew so stupid with the cold and the ever-present twinges of hunger.
She crested the last hill and looked down into the little glen where her worn tent was pitched. Nearly home and safe, she told herself. Useless to think of those lost days in that far-off place. As useless to think of Benu’s folk, a hundred hills and valleys from here. She started down the long hill, nearly stumbling in her weariness. Her lips were dry and she longed to lick them, but knew they would only crack in the cold. Nearly home. Halfway down the hill, she halted and stared. Something was wrong. Her heart slowed its beating.
No smoke rose from the tent’s smoke flap. Frost was heavy on the flap, showing that no residual heat clung there. The pieces of broken branches she had left by the tent for firewood were undisturbed. The still gray tent reminded her of scraped hides swinging in the wind. Dead and empty.
She ran. Her numbed feet felt the shock as they hit the frozen ground and plowed on through the loose snow. ‘Kerlew!’ she called, but her voice was dry and cracked as a dead leaf. It floated weightlessly away from her. A wolverine, guessed a part of her. A wolverine was afraid of nothing. It would not hesitate to enter a human’s tent and attack a ten-year-old boy. Or perhaps he had gone outside the tent to relieve himself and wandered off. He never paid attention to tying his hood tightly, or putting on extra leggings. In this cold it wouldn’t take long. The cold could do it, even if he didn’t run into the wolves she had heard this morning. Hadn’t she herself assured him that they were on the other side of the ridge, and no threat to them? Would wolves kill a child? They’d kill a calf that wandered from the herd. What about a calvish boy, all long awkward legs and flapping helpless hands?
It took her forever to reach the tent and burst inside. Her lungs and mouth hurt from the frozen air she dragged in with every breath. No matter. Where was the boy? ‘Kerlew?’ she asked breathlessly. The ashes were gray on the hearth stones. Nothing moved. Her life thudded to a slow halt in her breast, fell endlessly into the cold pit of her belly. The only sign of the boy was the bundle of hides on his pallet. Thoughts of bears and wolverines, of wolves, and of bands of wandering hunters sometimes more brutish than any animal rushed through her mind. And she had left Kerlew alone to face such things. Her throat closed. The dead hare slipped unnoticed from her hand.
‘Kerlew!’ she cried again, the sound ripping the stillness of the tent. She slipped her bow from her shoulder and gripped it. Tracks. Perhaps he had left some tracks. But as she lifted the tent flap, a tiny clucking came to her ears. She turned her head sharply, saw the pile of furs on his pallet stir. Stepping forward, she jerked the furs back, to reveal Kerlew on his side, talking softly to a smooth stone in his hand. Relief was overwhelmed and lost in the sudden rage she felt.
‘What are you doing? Why is the fire out?’ she demanded angrily.
‘I forgot to put wood on,’ he replied, not stirring. He stroked the rock in his hand, not even looking up at her. ‘But it doesn’t matter. I got under all the hides and stayed warm.’
Tillu
