‘But you know the way. How?’ Olikea suddenly seemed uncertain.
‘Lisana. Lisana shared many of her memories with me. She made this journey scores of times, first as a young girl and then as a Great One. I rely on her memories.’
They were quiet again and I felt Olikea relaxing against the warmth of his body. His arms were around her, holding her close to me. I felt sorry for her. Behind Soldier’s Boy’s closed eyelids, he was thinking of Lisana. My thoughts drifted towards Amzil. If only she were the woman in my arms now. Olikea exploded that fantasy.
She spoke softly. ‘You are not one of us. To some, that will be a problem. They may even be angry that you have come there.’
‘I know. It will not make my task easier.’
‘You will have to prove yourself to them before they will accept you as part of our kin-clan, let alone as a Great One.’
‘I was thinking of that.’
She drew a deeper breath and let it out slowly, a prelude to sleep. ‘How long will it take us to reach the Wintering Place?’
‘We could be there tomorrow. But I do not wish to move that swiftly and arrive there depleted of power. We will move more slowly and stop sooner.’
‘That makes sense,’ she agreed, and then said, ‘I need to sleep now.’
‘Yes,’ Soldier’s Boy agreed. But it was some time before he closed his eyes. I sensed he was weighing his options and planning a strategy. But I could not find a way into those thoughts and suspected he deliberately kept them from me.
Soldier’s Boy was the first to waken. I’d been aware for hours, alone in his darkened skull and feeling oddly helpless. I knew that he was planning something, something that would affect both of us forever, but had no idea what it was or how I could influence him. I’d again attempted to move the body, to ‘sleep walk’ it while he was unconscious and succeeded not at all. All I could do was to wait.
He stretched slowly, mindful of the two sleepers who flanked him. Awkwardly, he disengaged his body from theirs. They both burrowed into the warm space he left, now sharing the blanket more comfortably. He walked a short distance away from them before he relieved himself. Overhead, a narrow stripe of blue sky showed. I tried to decide if the mountains were leaning closer to one another overhead, or if distance only made it seem that way.
When he went back to Olikea and Likari, the two had cuddled together. In the semi-darkness, Olikea embraced her son, and both their faces looked peaceful. I wondered who the boy’s father was and where he was. Soldier’s Boy understood far more of Speck customs than I did. I found my answer in his mind. Only rarely did Specks select a mate and remain with one person for life. The kin-clan was the family who would raise the children born to the women. Usually, mates came from outside the kin-clan, and often the journey to the Wintering Place or the Trading Place was when young women met males from other clans for those liaisons. It was not necessary for a boy to know who his father was, though they usually did. Often fathers had little to do with sons until they were old enough to be taught the hunting rites. Then a boy might choose to leave his kin-clan to join that of his father, or he might decide to remain with his mother’s people. Women almost never left their kin-clans. It was not the Speck way.
‘It’s time to travel again,’ Soldier’s Boy said. His voice sounded odd.
Olikea stirred and beside her, Likari grumbled, stretched and then recurled in a tighter ball. He scowled in his sleep. Olikea opened her eyes and then sighed. ‘It’s not night yet.’
‘No. It’s not. But I wish to travel now. The nights grow colder. I don’t want to be caught here when winter bites hard.’
‘Now he worries about it,’ she muttered to herself, and then seized Likari’s shoulder and shook it. ‘Wake up. It’s time to travel again.’
We did not quick-walk. The light from above reached down to us. It was the strangest natural setting that I had ever experienced. What had seemed like a pass between two mountains had narrowed to a crevasse. We walked in the bottom of it, looking up at a sky that seemed to grow more distant with every step of our journey. The sides of the rift were slaty, the rock layered at an angle to the floor. Rubble that had tumbled down into the rift over the years floored it, but a well-trodden path threaded through it. Moss and little plants grew in the cracks of the walls.
By late afternoon, the crack that showed the sky had narrowed to a distant band of deep blue. We came to a place where water trickled down the stony walls. It pooled into a chiselled basin, overflowed it, and ran alongside our path for some distance before it vanished into a crack. We re-filled the waterskin there and everyone drank of the sweet, very cold water. Plants grew along the stream, but not luxuriantly. It was evident that they had recently been picked down to the roots. Olikea muttered angrily that nothing had been left; tradition demanded that some leaves must always be left for whoever came behind. Soldier’s Boy, his stomach grumbling loudly, lowered himself to his knees. He put his hands in the cold water, touching the matted roots of the plants lightly.
I felt the magic flare up in him and then ebb. Then he took his hands away and slowly stood up. He shook icy water from his hands. For a distance of six feet or so, the plants had pushed forth new foliage. Olikea exclaimed with delight and hurriedly began to harvest the fat leaves.
‘Remember to leave some,’ Soldier’s Boy cautioned her.
‘Of course.’
They nibbled on the leaves as they walked. The food was not enough to satisfy Soldier Boy’s hunger, but it kept him from focusing on it. They did not talk much. The crack of light above us continued to narrow. The cold was a constant, and I think they all suffered from it, but no one spoke of it. It was simply a condition they had to endure.
My eyes had adjusted to the dimness. As she had the day before, Olikea began to gather the stub ends of torches and bits of firewood. Soldier’s Boy said nothing about this but kept the pace slower so that she could manage it without being left behind. We came to another trickling wall stream. This time, the catch basin was obviously man-made. It was the size of a bath tub, and the sides were furry with a pale moss. The water that overflowed it ran off into the dimness in a groove that had probably been originally cut by people and smoothed by the passage of the water. Again Likari filled his waterskin and we all drank. ‘We should have brought torches,’ Olikea fretted as we left the water.
In a very short time, I saw why. The crack overhead that had admitted a bit of indirect light vanished. I looked up. I could not tell if it was overgrown with foliage or if the rock had actually closed up above us. I suddenly felt a squirm of great uneasiness. I did not want to go any deeper into this crack that had now become a cavern. If Soldier’s Boy or any of the others shared my discomfort, they gave no sign of it. I felt Soldier’s Boy kindle the magic within him to make a stingy pool of light around us. We walked on, Likari and Olikea close beside him.
At first, I assumed that the darkness was temporary. I kept hoping that the overhead crack would reappear. It did not. The stream that paralleled our path added an element of sound and humidity to our passage. The cold became danker, with an organic smell of water and plant life. Our
