by Gabi Moore
Or maybe it was because, as Taren believed, they were meant for each other.
“You can marry now,” he murmured, hushed.
Laova groaned and pulled her hood over her face.
“I’m serious, Laova!”
“That’s the worst of it.”
She peered with one brown eye out from under the hood; he was trying to look serious, and maybe he was succeeding, because she felt it impossible to joke at a time like this. Taren was closer to her than anyone. Her lust after Nemlach was insatiable, but she really knew Taren. His likes and his needs and his life. Perhaps too well, Laova thought, looking into his brown eyes, so much like hers.
Taren inched closer. “We’ve never been able to talk about it seriously.” He brushed a lock of dark hair out of her eyes. “Even I haven’t been able to stay serious. But do you really think it would be so bad? To marry? Me?”
Wasn’t that the question! Laova had been asking herself for months, would it really be so bad? The answer, of course, was no. She did love Taren, but what she felt for Taren and what she felt for Nemlach were two opposite creatures. Neither would depart, but where one felt like the comfort of a loyal pup, always near and happy, the other felt like the insistent press of a wolf at her door.
It would be easier to speak freely of this if she could at least decide which man was which.
Taren moved closer still, and Laova allowed it. She was curious, always curious, and her scalding dreams of Nemlach had left her wanting. Taren was a different sort of man, younger and slimmer, lighter of skin and hair, with nothing of the beard that Laova imagined brushing against her skin, coarse and intimate.
Taren’s hand lined her jaw, his long fingers melting into the hair at the base of her skull. Laova’s heart picked up a sprinting beat, gaining speed, sending blood pounding through her ears. She’d never lain with a man, but she’d kissed before, and she knew she liked it. And Taren’s kiss was just as she expected: smooth and fast and dizzy with need.
Inside the little tent, it was growing warm, indeed. Taren held her close—no easy task, with both of them padded with thick hides—and rolled her onto her back, propped on his elbow next to her, not on top of her, not yet…
That possibility was eminent, and it shot through Laova’s mind, what was left of it, as she moved her lips to Taren’s jaw, clutched her fingers in his hair. The sounds he made brought out a wild and feral instinct in her, primal as the hunt, primal as a fresh kill.
For a moment the clouds seemed to roll away, and Laova saw how happy her life with Taren could be.
And then she recalled the other hunters just outside the tent. Sex was a natural part of life, and no one would do more than tease the two of them come tomorrow. Except Nemlach. He wouldn’t tease. He would just go about his morning respectfully, sadly, or worse, with utter indifference.
Like cold water to the face, this image broke over her and Laova drew away from Taren.
He frowned, puzzled. Rightfully so, Laova thought ruefully. Why had that thought come to mind now? Why had she thought of Nemlach now, of all times?
“What’s wrong?” Taren asked, panting.
“It’s just… I’m just… I’m… I’m… anxious,” Laova stammered. “I… I can’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”
But Taren knew. Laova couldn’t bear to look at him, afraid he’s see the truth in her face; but not-so-deep down she knew it was herself she was trying to spare, because Taren always knew what she was thinking.
He waited, but she had nothing more to say. Taren drew nearer; Laova flinched and didn’t know why. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, but didn’t try for more.
A moment later the tent flap shifted, a wash of cold burst in as Taren stepped out, and then Laova was alone again. Alone.
Tears welled up in her eyes, and Laova huddled into her skins.
Chapter 2
The world of Laova’s dreams was black as still water. She was not afraid; she didn’t feel oppressed or lost in the darkness, but welcomed by it. Part of it. Nothing here meant to harm her. A cloying breeze snaked against her back, urging her forward, and Laova began to walk through ankle-deep snow.
And now, the lights. As her steps trenched on, the colors of the lights of the spirit realm would spin out like ribbons in green and crimson and purple overhead. They rippled and stretched and crossed one over the other, veiling the stars and backlighting a shape up ahead. She knew the dream well, up to a certain point. If she continued to walk through the snow, she would make no progress, but something anchored in her chest would approve, as if a rope pulling her forward had slackened.
Onward she marched. The wind and the spirit lights and her own feet were the only movement. The world below, the ground under her boots, Laova’s own body, all were wreathed in shadow, and before her loomed the colorless specter of the mountain. It had taken her some time to understand which mountain, but tonight, as before, the next phase of the dream commenced.
The lights that shone from the realms of gods and spirits gathered together and their brilliance joined. Some feeling—not sound, not quite—echoed out into the night, and the lights touched down at the crest of the peak. It was Star-Reach. Laova had seen it from afar only, but there was only one place that the god lights met the earth.
It was the highest place in the world, the Grandmother said. Looking up at the impossible height, Laova believed it.
She was being summoned to there. By god or spirit or demon she was expected to climb to the top of the mountain, where no mortal had ever reached—or if they reached it, no one had ever returned.
In the dream world she hesitated. It was too high. She’d been walking for what seemed like hours, and she was hardly any closer. It was too far. It was too high.
To her shock, Laova noticed trees around her. Those had never been in the dream before.
The wind dove deep through the needles and boughs, rustling the branches and making the music of the wild world. After such silence, Laova listened for a while, still, drinking in the sounds she loved best.
But then… something unfamiliar lurked among the treesong. There were no animals, no people, none that Laova could see. It wasn’t quite a sound, but a feeling. It wasn’t quite the trees, now, but the ghost of a voice. If it spoke in her words, she couldn’t make them out.
Understanding was not necessary. Laova simply knew. Like the wind and lights and the very snow easing her path, whatever swooped and flew with the wind through the trees was urging her gently, firmly, forward.
There was no snowfall in Laova’s dreams; always, it was ankle-deep thin, effortless to move through. She could have run, if she liked, but Laova only walked, looking upward in awe and fear at Star-Reach.
The lights coalesced and burst upon the peak of the mountain, as they had in nights before. In green and red, violet, and now gold, colors Laova had never seen so brilliantly, they waved and spun as if in a frenzy of divine storm.
And tonight, for the first time in many nights, something new. A full and phantom moon cast down a silver glow upon the mountain’s white face, bathing all the winter night in sharp blues and blacks. And upon this lonely world of two colors, the gods’ lights offered a respite, a gift of glorious hues and vibrant energy.
And Laova looked down to finally see that the path she was following was scarred by the steady stride of another pair of feet that had gone before her, through the snow.
Chapter 3
“Morning, Bamet,” Laova sang, ruffling his hair where he was scrubbing out the fire.
He huffed. “Don’t know what’s so good about it. Don’t know what makes it morning, either.”
It was morning simply because they were starting the day’s work, nothing more. The barest smudge of light was shining feebly through the pass of mountains in the south, without hope for it getting any brighter. In fact, over the next few days, that bare smudge of purplish, bruise-colored sky would stop appearing altogether, and for perhaps seven or eight straight cycles of thei
r daily routine there would be only the yawning azure-black of the night.
It happened every year. There was no reason to expect that the sun wouldn’t reappear at the end of the long night, just as it always did. Still, Laova crossed her mouth and eyes, the silent prayer to the gods that what she might see or say would not offend them.
As Bamet smothered the last coals, the tents were tightly rolled, the provisions stored, and packs strapped together. For the most part, their travel was light. Each member carried perhaps two stone or three upon their back. Each were armed with their stone daggers; Nemlach and Ghal carried thick sharp-wood spears. Laova and Khara and Taren were armed with bows. Bamet preferred a short club of knotted hardwood.
Rell, as Hunt-Leader, had inherited the Scim.
There were tales and legends of how it might have been crafted, stories about fire hotter than the sun, and the crushing force of giants—no matter how it had come to be, Laova cherished every time Rell drew it from the hide wrapping that swung at her side. Normally, only the battered handle was visible. Rell rarely drew the Scim, fighting and hunting with spear and bow and knife almost without exception.
Laova shouldered her gear, day-dreaming. When she was initiated as a Hunter, she would be in the running to be Hunt-Leader someday. Maybe someday, the Scim would ride her belt, at her side.
Maybe… if she had the chance to live longer than Rell. Laova looked up through the night that hung thick between the trees.
Looming large and gray above them were the Stormjaw Mountains. It was a literal name, taken from the jagged, fanged line of peaks and cliffs and spires that huddled together, near its base. True, the crags were good for hunting mountain sheep and the foothills that the hunting party had long passed were rich with wool-heavy snow buffalo. But further up, there was no hunting. Nothing mortal lived or breathed there.
And yet, the base of Star-Reach grew closer with each spent day.
Laova felt them watch her with unease. Bamet’s grouchy attitude was the most plain, but Laova saw it in Taren’s nervous smiles, Khara’s giving each new arrow a few extra swipes of her blade, to make sure each point was sharp as a crack when its turn came.
And Nemlach—
“Laova, might I speak with you?”
Her breath stopped, and Laova struggled to draw it back in without him seeing. Nemlach stood at her side, drawing her aside. She nodded, concentrating on thawing out her frozen tongue, and let him take her elbow and walk a short distance away, around a ridge of stone punched upward through the hill.
Was this real? Laova couldn’t be sure.
“What is it?” she asked as he came to a stop. The camp was not far away; just on the other side of this stone ridge. It might as well have been on the moon; Laova felt their isolation with exaggerated and unreal gravity.
“Laova,” Nemlach began. He twisted his lips behind the thick hair of his beard. The part of her that was still a child wanted to hope… “Laova… Rell and the others asked me to speak to you. They are curious… and worried.”
Laova’s heart sank, but she kept her face still while he continued. “You know what lies close by. You know our people don’t come to this place. We are afraid, and not ashamed to admit it.” He smiled at her grimly. “Mortals are meant to fear gods.”
The night turned slowly, endlessly on its side as Laova hustled to imagine something, anything, to explain. She’d known they would notice. She expected them to notice. But why did it have to be so soon? And of all the people to confront her, why did it have to be him?
“I…” What was she going to say? Laova’s tongue felt like a rock. Was she about to admit she’d followed the lead of dreams to bring them here? Prophetic visions usually didn’t lead to good hunting; Laova doubted fully that the members of her new extended family would appreciate being drug from their purpose to chase the wishes of the spirit or the divine.
And then, what was she hounding, anyway? What if it was a malevolent spirit?
“I…” Laova was still staring into Nemlach’s blue eyes, and she was thankful he could not read her, as Taren could. Perhaps Taren would keep her secret. But if anyone else found out about the dreams, there would be no more hunts. The Grandmother was ever-watchful for children with the sense or the touch, young ones that could be schooled to succeed her in the spiritual ways.
Laova was not spiritual. She wanted to hunt.
“I…” She couldn’t even consider telling him.
Nemlach watched her, timelessly patient.
“Actually, I have a question for you,” Laova said softly. She took a step, then two, and suddenly she was just where she’d always dreamed of being: so close to Nemlach that the front of her coat pressed slightly into his chest. She looked into his face. “Am I too young?”
Of all the things he might have expected, Laova saw with a dizzying thrill of white-hot, jittering nerves that this was not one of them. His mouth gaped open, speechless.
“Laova… Too young…?”
The worst thing he could do was reject her. Laova’s entire body shuddered with the horror, the sickening dread of that thought, but it was clearly the lesser evil. Nemlach was what she wanted; her new life as a hunter was what she already had. Possibly throwing away one was worth preserving the other. Possibly…possibly…
He hadn’t moved away. Not yet.
Where had she ever found this courage? She held his eyes. “You know what I mean,” she told him, resting her gloved hands on his chest.
It was Nemlach’s turn to be speechless. He searched her face for what seemed like a long time, too long. This close, Laova had time to admire the startling blue of his eyes. They were like ice pools in spring, light and cold and deepening to rich sky blue in the center. The fairest of lines framed his eyes and nose and scored his forehead—leather that was not old, but well-worn.
Her boldness was disappearing the longer she waited. The only sound was the spiteful, cackled whistling of the wind, and the distant noises of their group, their fellow hunters. She couldn’t keep it off her face; any moment, he would see she understood, and then he’d pity her. Laova knew he would; he was kind and good, and she hated that even in rejecting her, she would love that kindness. Laova took a step backward.
Finally, Nemlach moved. The confusion and concentration had fled.
“In the eyes of the clan, you are an adult now,” he answered finally. “If I thought you were too young, I would be wrong.”
Giddy, in disbelief, Laova watched him as he loosened the ties of his glove and slipped his hand free into the sharp-toothed cold of the mountain winter. As if nothing could be more natural, he took her hand, and tugged the knots open until her glove, too, was removed.
His open hand closed around hers, and Laova remembered suddenly that she’d never even touched Nemlach’s skin before. The thought came to her from a distance, as if someone far away was shouting it back to her. His hand was rough, of course, as hers was. Rough, and deliciously strong, and warm in the thin, frigid air.
She watched, and could do nothing but remain still as he lifted her hand to his lips, their eyes connected by something powerful and without name. Laova couldn’t look away, and feared if she tried to move she might simply tumble apart. He gave her a lifetime, it seemed, to pull away or protest. Laova could not and did not; there was nothing in this earthly plane for which she’d make him stop.
He kissed the back of her knuckles. He kissed each finger, her thumb, and the sensitive patch of skin just inside it. Nothing could have prepared her for it; Laova’s anxious shivers turned into a trembling deep in her core, where the root of who and what she was grew fast. His eyes closed as he turned her hand over and ran his lips over her palm. Laova nearly closed hers as well, but the sight of him was melting her. She wanted every moment of it.
His eyes glanced back to hers, and he glided to the edge of her coat, to the nervous patch of soft skin on the underside her wrist. Laova’s pulse thudded in her ears; Nemlach smiled, a small, sly smile, and closed
his teeth gently across the veins that lived close to her skin.
It was electric, and Laova wanted him to continue. But Nemlach released her hand, as if finished.
Laova was not. She reached up, finally, finally, burying her fingers through his hair, and pulled his face to hers.
Lips met, and there was storm. He freed his other hand, and suddenly both were cupping Laova’s face, pulling her closer, tracing the edges of her jaw as if he were blind and she was the only thing he wished to see. Laova forgot the long night, forgot the dreams, forgot Star-Reach. She clutched Nemlach and dug her fingernails into his scalp, wishing there was even another inch closer they could be, needing to be closer, needing there to be nothing between them.
“Nemlach,” she gasped around his lips.
He didn’t seem to need directions. His large hands clasped her torso, and even through the layers of hide and fur Laova could feel their strength. He brushed his thumbs over her breasts; suddenly Laova didn’t care how cold it was. She started to tug at the neck of her coat.
“Wait,” Nemlach stopped her. His voice was hoarse. “Wait. You’ll freeze. We’ll both freeze.” He chuckled, breathless. He rested a hand, more carefully now, around the back of her head and looked into her face. Laova’s entire being felt twisted too tight, and she needed him to finish what he’d started. What she’d started. What they’d started together.
Nemlach looked back towards the others, as if he could see them through the rock. “The others are waiting to leave. But tonight… tonight I will come to you.”
Her head spun at the thought. All the night’s she’d dreamed, and now he was promising to make it real.
Nemlach kissed her again. “Tonight.”