"We have each other," Hamr said, resolutely. "And someday we will have the Thundertree."
Cyndell nodded. "Then perhaps we can speak of these things. Now, we four are too small, and these thoughts are as big as everything around us. We will be crushed."
Hamr nodded once, remembering Aradia's admonition and tucked the wheel back in his satchel. He had spoken without forethought, simply wanting to fill his own emptiness from the mighty fullness of stars, wind, darkness, and the hulks of trees holding the many secret lives of the Forest.
Duru and Timov groaned with disappointment, and Cyndell hushed them with a song. Her voice, strained with love, faltered briefly with the fear Hamr had evoked in her. Then her bright song lifted through the fire and wavered against the dark, offering warmth of memories and brightness of hope. Soon the children slept.
Hamr sat facing her with a quiet, chill, and sober stare. Duru slumbered with her head in his lap.
Cyndell placed her hand on his and whispered, "The shadows heard you speak of the wheel. I saw them drawing closer in to hear more. I was afraid, Hamr. But my song has pleased them. Now we can sleep."
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Cyndell cowered with fear. Sometimes at night, even her own breathing frightened her. They wandered alone in the wilderness, with only the Great Mother to watch after them—and She, without the enwombing strength of the tribe, could do little but watch. From the faces of Her animals, what did She see but an old woman wandering the wilds with two children and a crazy man?
Hamr had to be crazy. Only a crazy man would drive a blind horse down a beach against men with spears. That he had returned triumphant frightened her even more.
What spirit possessed this man who could ride a horse, who could face down three spearmen, who could speak blithely before the fire about the emptiness at the center of everything?
She knew that the spirit of the Horse did not possess him. That spirit loved the herd, and this man defied his own kind and now wandered alone. Neither had a tree spirit entered him, which would have rooted him to one place. What crazy spirit owned Hamr?
Cyndell could not see what some of the truly old Mothers had seen from years of fire-watching. She could not identify what type of spirit empowered Hamr. What possessed him had had the strength to prevail against the Eyes of the Bear and to challenge the dark spirits of the north.
Now they would continue on, ever deeper into the Mother's unpredictable body, farther from the well-known foraging terrain, which was Her left teat, and ever farther from the warmth of the tribe, which was Her right teat.
Timov recognized Cyndell's fear of Hamr. He joked grimly with Hamr about it when they hunted: "Mama Cyndell would rather rut with a cave bear than look you in the eye."
Hamr shrugged. "At least the Bear has a den. Every Mother wants a home. But for a man, there is only distance."
They walked down the tunnels of the Forest, leading Blind Side of Life. The horse disliked the mushy ground whispering underfoot, the poking and scratching of undergrowth on every side, and especially the smell of rotting leaves overlaying a darker stink of Bear and Cat.
"Do you think we will find the Thundertree?"
"Not if you keep talking instead of looking for their sign."
"What am I looking for?"
Hamr frowned. "You're a Panther man. Don't you know?"
"I'm not sure. When the Panther men took me hunting, I'd see them reading each other's sign in the grass and on the trees, and I'd look, but I didn't see anything."
"Then maybe they'll find us when we trespass in their domain."
"The Tortoise men initiated you. What did you learn to see?"
"I can read the sign that the Tortoise men leave in the tide litter. You know, where the fish are running, what tidepools belong to which family, where the seals will beach with the tide. The Forest tells me nothing."
As if to confirm that, a quail burst from a hackleberry bush an arm's length from Hamr and flapped into the canopy of the Forest. Her alarmed voice clanged back from out of sight, eerie as an unwrapped soul.
"We've got to catch something," Timov whined. "I'm tired of eating berry mash and tuber broth with lion-tooth grass."
Hamr peered up through the branches at the day's heat piling clouds atop each other. "It'll rain tonight. Tomorrow we'll slog through mud. Even catching mice will be hard. I say we get out of here and take one of the elk we saw in the fields above the ravines."
"Elk? That's a dream for the fireside."
"Look at the sky, Timov. The wind has banked. It blows down through the Forest for the first time since we began. If the elk are still grazing on those fields above the ravines, we can get very close by crawling along the nearest gully. They won't see or smell us."
Small lightnings flashed in Timov's eyes as he imagined the approach. "We'll have to leave Blind Side behind. They'll see him in the gully."
"That'll just convince them they're safe. Elk don't think of men when they see Horse."
Timov excitedly agreed, and Hamr arranged some stones and gravel into the shape of an elk and lanced its heart with a straw. After a quick petition to the Beastmaker for sustenance in the wilderness, Hamr and Timov led Blind Side of Life through the feathery grass at the Forest's edge. Their eyes watched the needlework of the wind among the clouds, and expectation buoyed them.
On a sloping field of grass between the dark wall of the Forest and the crooked seams of migratory trails, a herd of elks browsed. They glowed almost red in the heavy sunlight. Wind glinted in the antlers of the big males, and the horns of the bucks appeared blue with velvet.
Nervous joy thrummed in the men as they slid down into the ravine and crept closer, bent over, leading Blind Side by a rope about his neck.
The occasional lowing of the females sounded very close as the hunters edged near enough to smell the musk of the herd. Neither man dared to peek over the edge of the gully. They crawled to the end of the trail, to where rains had dumped the silt of the Forest and grass grew in tufts majestic as headdresses. There they lifted their heads.
The man and the boy gazed at bristly white hair in the clefts of hooves and stiff eyelashes, blue lips rippling, pulling the grass. Giddy muscularity tensed the hunters, seeing their own excitement shining back from each other's faces.
Hamr signed for Timov to stay while he went back along the gully to a vantage where they could attack from two sides. The herd shifted briskly. Hamr thought he had startled them, yet when he peered through the brittle weeds, he saw that the herd had sensed another threatening presence. From the Forest, a pack of hyenas loped.
Back at the clogged end of the gully, the branches of a dead tree jutted from the silt. Hamr tethered Blind Side there, then dashed up the rocky slope, carrying two spears and calling behind to Timov, "Follow me!"
On the field, the elk had bunched, the females and young moving to the center of the encircling males. Hamr rushed the herd, heaving his familiar spear. It wobbled through the air and disappeared in the grass. The herd, aware now of the attacking men, stampeded toward the Forest, scattering the hyenas.
Hamr and Timov dashed after them, Hamr hurling his new spear. It arced cleanly and stabbed into the earth. Its haft waved above the limp grass. When Timov handed him the first spear that he had retrieved, the two sprinted again. Now the herd swerved away from the hyenas, and ran obliquely toward the Forest. One of the young stumbled and fell under leaping panicky hooves.
"Forget the herd," Hamr ordered. "Take the fallen one."
Timov balked at sight of the half dozen hyenas tearing at the small elk. When Hamr charged, he mustered his courage and followed.
The hyenas snapped viciously as the men approached. The beasts crouched, growling and barking, dashing forward and circling back to protect their prey.
Hamr threw his newest spear at the most aggressive of the hyenas. It easily dodged the missile and retreated. Timov, hurling rocks, remained several paces behind Hamr, waving and thrusting his spear while both men shouted.
The hyenas withdrew. Fangs bared in their black faces, they stood glowering only a spear's thrust away. When Hamr stooped to pull away the fawn, two of the beasts lunged.
Timov leaped back, and Hamr swung his spear.
"Get over here and help me!" Hamr yelled.
Timov nudged closer, spear warily thrust out before him.
"Grab its hind legs," Hamr commanded. "I'll hold them off."
Timov obeyed. As he dragged away the animal, Hamr charged and scattered the hyenas. Most of them had already conceded their prey and skulked away. Only three remained, gazing sullenly.
Hamr picked up the new spear and backed off. With the spears tucked under his arm, he bent and lifted the small elk's front legs.
At the edge of the gully, they dropped the heavy animal. Hamr took out his flint knife and cut back the hide before the haunches, so that he could unstring several tendons from the back legs.
Timov stood, spear in hand, standing off the three hyenas that paced angrily in the grass. They drew close enough so he could smell their hot stink, even though the aroma of elk's blood bossed the air.
"Get Blind Side," Hamr said. He punched holes in the flaps of skin at the elk's torn belly and strung the tendons through, tying back the hide to keep the viscera from spilling out.
When Timov brought Blind Side along the gully, Hamr picked up the hind legs, Timov the front, and they slung the animal over the horse's back.
They marched off with their prize, Timov hooting a triumphant song, laughing at the hyenas—foolish night creatures daring to hunt by day and catching a meal for men!
Hamr let him sing, glad for his help. Inside he felt measureless silence. It filled him with the quietude of his awe, which no song could dispel. They had failed today. If not for the hyenas, which usually prowled alone at night, they would bring no meat to the fire. Surely, the Beastmaker provided for his chosen.
Mountains of clouds cast shadows over the land. The hyenas' threatening cries grew long and lonely. And the syrupy smell of blood twisted like mischief in the wet wind.
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Well fed and exhausted from dressing the fawn after a long day's work, Cyndell and Duru curled up together beside the fire while the sun still smoldered among the trees. When they slept and the fire burned vigorously, Timov climbed the knoll and found Hamr gazing into the nomadic fires westward.
"Why did you smile when Father was laid out?"
"I did what?" Hamr asked, distracted by the constellations hardening in the darkness. He pondered his blunders during the hunt today, and caught sight of herd-patterns in the stars.
Timov sat down beside him, emboldened by their success at the hunt. Large emotions moved in his chest: the joy of achievement and the fear of the next hunt seething above the constant sorrow of having lost everything—family, clan, and tribe.
Kinship blazed in the boy for this man he had once feared. Now Hamr alone remained of the male mysteries. Timov stared hard at his bold profile, wondering at the malice he had learned from that face. He found only the carved silhouette of the Tortoise clan, the features set wide apart from generations of facing out to sea. "You always smile whenever the dead are laid out. Why?"
Hamr turned. Shadow filled his rapt gaze. "I will always laugh at death."
"Why?" Awe and fear clashed in Timov, and he had to look away, at the purple ethers in the sky, struggling to keep the largeness of his feelings from breaking into tears. So much had been lost. Did Hamr feel none of this? "Death is terrible."
"To return to the Beastmaker is terrible?" Hamr put a firm hand on Timov's arm and squeezed till it hurt. A smile glinted in the dark. "You've got it backward. Dying is all right. Living is terrible."
Timov flinched. Hamr saw the fear in the boy and let his arm go. He looked back into the dark to calm himself. Timov's questions had reminded him of his grief, and he did not want to feel that anymore. Out here, grief felt as dangerous as the Wolf. The boy had been good today, and Hamr would need him to be good again tomorrow. When he faced Timov, his voice had fallen almost to silence, "Death makes it okay to laugh."
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Duru beamed with pride for Hamr for days after he brought back the elk. Aradia had chosen him, so she knew he would attach excellence to all his deeds. Aradia would not have wanted him otherwise. She had always had the best of what the Blue Shell could offer for her renowned beauty—the best of Mother's love, the choicest cuts of meat at the feasts, the best shells and pelts from her suitors, and, surely, the best of all men for her husband. And now he belonged to Duru, and she shone with pride, no matter that Mother Cyndell feared him and thought him possessed by a crazed spirit.
"You know why I've come, don't you?" Cyndell had told her several times since they had lost their chance to go to the Eyes of the Bear. "Your mother was my friend. Among the Mothers, death does not loosen any bonds. You will be glad for the Mother mysteries I will teach you—if we survive."
Cyndell told her nothing more. They foraged together every day, sought fresh water and edible plants for hours, and the older woman told her nothing new. They reminisced about the Mothers and children they remembered. They sang old songs, repeated many beloved stories, and discussed various ways of preparing available plants.
As they traveled, they found less and less familiar in the land. The farther north they journeyed, the stranger the plants became. The wide-branching trees of the south became rare, replaced by pines, enormous cedars, and goliath evergreens whose cones stood straight up on their branches. Firs.
Cyndell had heard of these green monarchs, these grand, silver-green giants, from an ancient song remembered by the Grandmothers. Those old dames had sung of their Grandmothers, whose Grandmothers had come from a place in the north where pinecones stood tall on the trees and rivers of ice nestled between mountains even at the height of summer. They had called that domain taiga.
Cyndell became yet more frightened of their fate as she reminisced about those childhood songs. The Grandmothers of the Grandmothers had remembered a land of tusked panthers, voracious lions, and ghostly fires in the night sky. No point terrifying Duru and Timov, she reasoned and said nothing.
The children felt proud and hopeful traveling with Hamr. The elk he had scavenged had fed them well for many days, and they had used its hide to replace the sandals worn out in their wandering. Though he had yet to kill any further creature in the hunt, even a hare or a squirrel, he carried their strength.
What would become of them in this unknown land, where the trees stood like spears, where each leaf stood sharp as a needle? Every day, at dawn's first sting of color, Cyndell made an offering to the Great Mother, thanking Her for sparing them from the hungers of the night beasts and begging Her to take them back to Her bosom, to nourish them again from the tribal warmth of her right teat.
Duru helped with the offerings. She moved quickest to find a moss-bellied rock, a pregnant root bole, or a vulval tree cleft that had the correct shape to suggest the Mother's ubiquitous presence. There in precarious light, they fashioned offerings of leaves or chaff-wings to suggest an animal or insect favored by the Mother.
For Duru, this ritual enthused her like play. But Cyndell believed their survival depended on these prayers, that she had to focus her will strongly or death would gain on them. So, the rain-threaded morning when she crouched before the sacral shape of a hollowed stump and a gust of wind broke the acorn doll she had meticulously crafted, she knew her trespass in the wilderness had led to danger.
Hamr and Timov slouched past as she knelt to retrieve the broken acorn puppet. "Get out of the rain, Mama Cyndell," Timov said. "It doesn't look like it's going to clear anytime soon. You'll be damp all day if you get soaked now."
Cyndell knew Timov spoke sense, and she stood up. What would be, she could not change. She looked for Duru. After finding the pelvic-shaped stump, the girl had gone back to the shelter of the hawthorn covert.
Under the wall and overhang of the spiny shrub, she sat plaiting hemp a
nd feeding twigs to a small fire. The remnants of the acorn and berry mash that she had prepared for the men to take on their hunt lay beside her on the sheet of bark, where she had crushed them with a rock.
Under the arbor, the ground stayed dry though the rain pattered brightly among the glossy leaves. Cyndell sat beside Duru. "I've seen signs," she said to the girl.
"Panther signs?"
"No. Mother signs. Bark scratchings, leaf folds. Tiny marks. Nothing a man would notice. I've been seeing them for two days now. Other women have foraged here during this last lunar quarter."
"You've told Hamr?"
"Not yet. I can tell they're not Panther women. They're some other clan—I don't know what totem. But I think they live in the fir forest. Hamr won't want to go there until he finds Panther signs. It's too difficult for his horse."
"Maybe these people can help us find the Panther."
"Hamr will fear that they will make us slaves. A worthy fear. Every tribe wants new hands."
"We should tell him, though."
"First, I had to tell you. We should decide what we need to do before we tell Hamr—or he will decide for us."
"He is leading us, Mother Cyndell. He must decide."
"He is just a man, Duru. He can lead men, if others, like Timov, will follow. We are women. Only we know our needs. We must lead ourselves. You are still a girl, and as you get older you will see that what I am saying is true."
"What are our needs as women?"
"Above all else, the Mother. She sustains the whole world. Look about you. The land is Her body. See how strange Her body has become?"
"We are far from home. This is the taiga. The land of the Grandmothers of the Grandmothers."
"Yes, this is the taiga, but only its beginning. The land gets stranger yet, farther north. See this hawthorn arbor?" Cyndell opened her arms to the enclosure of tangled thorn boughs. "Why did we camp here and not over there, where it is just as dry?" She pointed across a thicket of birch to a dark den of fir trees.
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