too wide, too wet. Sometimes she longed to slap it from his face, make pain chase away the vacuous, idiot smile and the foolish words. But she did not. She knew only too well the consuming self-disgust that would follow such an act. ‘You chose to keep him with you,’ she reminded herself. ‘You could have left him to Carp. You know you cannot beat sense into him.’ To Kerlew she said, ‘That’s silly. Just because you cannot see a trail does not mean that no man has ever walked there before.’
‘On this snow!’ Kerlew explained, smiling at the thought: ‘On this snow, no one has ever walked before, for the tracks would be here. This snow fell new last night, and the first tracks on it are mine. I walk where no one has walked before.’
‘Mmm.’ Tillu kept walking. There were times when the boy almost made sense, when she believed that, to him, his observations and statements followed some mysterious logic of his own. Carp’s shamanic instruction of the boy had made him more vocal; there was that she could say for it. Unfortunately, what Kerlew vocalized was the mystical gabble he had picked up from the old man.
She glanced across at her son. If only he would stand straighter, not drag his feet when he walked. If only his eyes would not wander and stare through things, he would not be such an awkward-looking boy. Not handsome, perhaps, but no worse than some she had seen take wives and build homes. Perhaps she could change the way he moved and spoke. Alone and apart from all others, perhaps he would turn once more to her, listen to her again. She would teach him, and this time it would be different. This time he would learn and grow. He would walk at her side through the forest and learn, not only her herbs of healing, but a hunter’s skills. He would learn silence, and swiftness, and skill with a bow. As he grew, he would stand tall and move as a man should move. And one day she and Kerlew would be hunting, and they would come across strange hunters. Kerlew would be standing straight, having just brought down a fine deer, and the hunter folk would smile at the sight of the tall young hunter, and there would be a young woman who would look at him just a little longer than was quite proper, and she would be the –
‘I’m hungry.’
The complaint broke the dream. Tillu sighed, both at her own foolishness and at Kerlew’s request. She had taken what supplies she could, but already they dwindled. The boy ate so much, so fast. She glanced again at him. Skinny. Perhaps she should give him the worm tea again.
‘I’m hungry,’ he repeated into her silence.
‘Soon.’ One more hill, she promised herself, and then, if the valley beyond it were a likely one, she’d stop for the night. This time she’d set up their tent and stay a few days. Carp’s seamed face came suddenly to her mind. Well, perhaps not just yet. Sleeping in skins was not so bad, it was not all that cold yet. Tomorrow she would push on for a day or so more, or perhaps three. She shivered. If Carp did come after them, with Benu’s hunters, her fate would be sealed. The shaman’s woman, prey to his withered hands and lined face, servant to his commands. To be touched by one such as that…She walked faster. She would not. That was all. She would not.
They crested a hill, and as they descended its other side, they passed abruptly into a forest. Here, for whatever reasons, the ancient forest fire had stopped. They stepped from a region of cottonwood, birch, and alders into the older pine forest. They went from trees that permitted light and snow to pass and settle on the forest floor to mossy-trunked giants that sealed out most of the light and snow. They moved through greenness, the air silent, almost opaque in the dimness. The poles of the travois hitched and bumped uncertainly over the deeper, softer moss and uneven blotches of snow. This part of the forest was older, more silent, generating a soft green gloom that seemed to well up from the dense moss and deep drifts of brown needles that peered from the scattered mosaic of snow that had penetrated the canopy of the forest.
There was a sense of peace to these huge trees. Their trunks rose straight and branchless for many man-heights before extending their needled limbs to block the sky. The underbrush was very sparse. Here, Tillu thought, I could set up my tent and the trees would keep most of the snow and wind away from us. I can see well in every direction; I would know if Carp came to seek us long before he was in reach of us.
‘…and she lay down on the deep moss to rest, but in the night it grew swiftly and covered her over, sealing her eyes and filling her mouth, and a tree, small and green, grew up from where her belly had been.’
Tillu shivered at the words and scowled at Kerlew. ‘What are you saying?’
‘A vision Carp showed me. Of a place like this, and how there came to be one small tree growing in the midst of many great ones. Like that one,’ he added, pointing to a young spruce, its needles pale green in the wash of the forest light.
It did grow from a hummock in the forest’s green floor. Tillu shook off the chill that came over her and set her shoulders more firmly to the chafing leather straps. ‘We have to go on. There’s no water here, and it would be hard for me to come up on game without it seeing me first. And there are too many trees to allow me a straight shot at anything.’ Suddenly the deep forest seemed a very poor place to set a tent.
‘We will go on.’ Kerlew nodded agreeably.
The tongue of the old forest was not wide. They were out of it as suddenly as they had entered it, the snow once more crunching under Tillu’s feet. The mellow green darkness of the great trees was left behind. The light of the young forest seemed too bright, the edges of the trees’ pale trunks too sharp to look at. She struggled up a new hill, the travois bumping against trees as it jerked along behind her. Kerlew walked behind her, taking advantage of the broken trail.
At the top of the hill she paused, taking in great lungfuls of the chill air. The sky, so bright only moments ago, was dimming now. Night would come early and swiftly. She glanced at the low-riding sun, trying to estimate how much farther they could safely travel today. The fire should be kindled before the darkness was complete. ‘Kerlew. Start picking up branches for tonight’s fire,’ she called over her shoulder. He muttered a reply.
‘What?’
‘Woman’s task to gather the wood. Not a fit task for a shaman,’ he reminded her calmly.
Tillu straightened suddenly in her harness. An anger like pain jolted through her. She twisted to look back at her son. Kerlew stared up at her, his eyes suddenly going wide. He shrank from her fury. ‘You are not a shaman!’ She spat out the words. She glared at him, her fury strangling her. No more words would come. ‘Pick up firewood!’ she snarled at last, turning away from him. The straps cut into her shoulders savagely as she jerked against her burden to get it moving again. She could hear him muttering sullenly behind her, but she also heard the snap of a dry lower branch broken from a tree. He would obey. She thought of Benu’s son, who would have run ahead with his bow in hopes of a rabbit or grouse. He had been no older than Kerlew. An alert boy he had been, his eyes large and bright, his hands already clever at carving. He had died of the bear plague. All the women had mourned his death. But Kerlew had lived. They had hated him for living.
The tears that stung her eyes were cold on her cheeks. She wanted suddenly to throw off her harness, to turn to Kerlew and hug him and tell him she was glad he had lived, that she loved him, would always love him, no matter what. But she could not. She had to get to the top of the hill, she told herself, and the boy would only have leaped away from her, struggled against her embrace. He did not need her tears and hugs. He needed her strength. She panted as she drew the travois over the crest of the hill. Standing still to breathe, she heard his muttering.
‘…and I will be treated better there, when I walk among the reindeer-folk. Yes, I will lead them all, and Tillu will be only a woman who must tend to the men.’
The valley ahead of her was
