A Hero's Tale

  "Too hot," I said.

  My voice sounded strange to me, as if it came from far away.

  Someone brought me water. It stung my lips. Although I was thirsty, my throat was so sore and swollen that I found it difficult to swallow. A part of my mind knew that I was ill, while another part seemed not to care. It let my painful body drift away and lost itself in pictures like those we see in dreams. Green hills and blue skies reminded me of home, where in my memory it was always summertime. I drifted there, dreaming of a life I might once have lived, but when the sky began to darken, I looked for the way home in vain. There was no path to guide me. This place was strange to me that had put on for a little while the guise of home. Soon the light was gone.

  I floated weightless in the dark. I drifted, light as thistledown, carrying a tiny seed of life that might fall either on good earth or barren ground. I neither hoped for one nor feared the other. I lay upon the air and let it carry me, until a breath of wind wafted me over the abyss, where in the depths there stirred some nameless thing, an ancient power that knew me not at all.

  As I drifted over the abyss, too light to fall, I felt it reach for me. I was not afraid, just curious, and my mind filled up with wordless questions. The nameless thing that dwelt there in the dark had questions it would ask of me, and promised, if I answered them, to whisper me its secrets.

  Above me a bird of prey glided through the sky and cast the shadow of its outstretched wings over the abyss. The power, like a hunted thing, withdrew. The hawk's soft-feathered wings embraced me. Sharp pains pierced my shoulders where its talons gripped me, as it flew with me, up into the light.

  I woke to the touch of feathers on my naked skin. Smoke tickled my nose and made me sneeze. With a fan made from a raven's wing, Sett wafted more of the sweet-smelling smoke over me, until I had sneezed twice more. Then he leaned close to me and looked into my eyes, looked past my eyes, and his were cold, as sharp as flint. Hawk's eyes.

  69. A Bargain

  As I grew strong again, my journey over the abyss seemed more and more unreal, but as we dream of places that we recognize, I knew I had dreamed of someplace so familiar that for days my waking mind wandered in the dark, searching for a landmark that would help me find my way through this forgotten landscape.

  Sett came to see me often. He never spoke about my journey, though I knew that he had shared it, and I knew better than to speak to him of things that can't be spoken of. Instead he told me winter stories. He mimed the sleeping animals and made me see their dreams, as each created for himself the world that he would live in, a world of warmth and light. Squirrels in the treetops, rocked by winter winds, might dream of soaring leaps from tree to tree. Did they ever dream of falling?

  Worr came to see me too. He seemed to think it was my battle with the wolf that made me ill. Perhaps it was. I didn't think too much about it. Winter sickness can come to anyone. Then I thought of Merin, whose illness had almost let her fall into the soft dark of midwinter's night, and I knew why I remembered the abyss.

  Throughout my illness, Maara stayed beside me. When dreams troubled me, she held me fast. When I woke she fed me, bathed me, carried me outdoors, well wrapped up in furs, to use the privy. She cared for me with a tenderness that told me of her love more than there are words for. In fact she spoke very little. At first I didn't notice. While I was ill, I slept. When I was stronger, she made me sit up with the others around the fire. During the day we were seldom alone, and when I lay in her arms at night, she soothed me to sleep with her caress, though she refused my touch with the excuse that I was not yet strong enough.

  As the days went by, her excuse wore thin. At last, careless of who might overhear, I said, "If you don't want me to touch you anymore, then say so."

  "It isn't that," she whispered.

  "What then?"

  She didn't speak, so I went searching for the answer. My lips questioned her as they caressed her face and found another question in her tears. My hands too questioned her and found her closed against me. This was nothing new, and I was patient. When I finally unclosed her, it was her anger that leapt out at me. She pushed me away, only to grapple me closer, and when her anger burnt itself to ashes, I felt her grief, as if she had already lost me.

  The next morning, for the first time in many days, the sun was shining. Still too weak to warm the wintry air, its pale light made the world feel a little warmer. Maara shaded her eyes against it as she measured the height of its arc through the treetops.

  "Midwinter is past," she said.

  "How long past?"

  "It's hard to guess. A month perhaps."

  While the promise of spring lifted my spirits, at the same time I felt a touch of melancholy. I wanted to ask her how long it would be before we would have to leave the forest people, but I hadn't the heart to mention it. To speak of leaving would make it real. I made up my mind to remain in the present moment for as long as possible.

  For some days I had been well enough to go outdoors. When the weather was mild, Maara took me out walking, a little longer every day, to help me regain my strength. We had not yet gone as far as the hollow tree. On this first sunny day, I asked her to take me there.

  She smiled at me, a shy smile. "Was last night not enough for you?"

  "Last night we didn't talk," I said.

  She nodded, but when we were sitting beside our fire in the hollow tree, I couldn't think of anything to say. She too was silent. While I tried to think of how to question her, she gazed into the fire, her thoughts so far away from me that I watched her for a long time before she felt my eyes.

  "What?" she said.

  I couldn't put my question into words. I didn't try. My heart knew the answer. What more could she have told me than her body had already told me in the dark? Weren't her tears eloquent enough? Could I have misunderstood her anger? Or her grief?

  "It didn't happen," I said.

  "What didn't happen?"

  "Whatever you're so afraid of."

  "You know what I'm afraid of."

  I took both her hands in mine. "Someday we will lose each other. I fear that too, but I refuse to let it spoil the time we have together."

  Maara wasn't listening. "I wish I could persuade the gods that if some dreadful thing must fall upon us, to let it fall on me."

  Hadn't we settled that between us long ago? Could she doubt that whatever fell on her would fall on me too?

  Before I could protest, she gave me an unexpected smile. "Of course if I could persuade the gods of that, I might do better to persuade them to leave us alone altogether."

  I took her words more seriously than she had intended them.

  "What gods do you believe in?" I asked her. "The way you speak of them frightens me. They frighten me."

  Maara shrugged. "I don't know whether I believe in them or not. I think I speak of them as I do just to have someone to blame. Better to blame the gods than blame myself."

  "Perhaps no one is to blame," I said. "I don't know why the world is as it is, but I doubt that it's my fault. Or yours. Neither one of us is as powerful as that."

  Her eyes smiled at me. "No?"

  "No."

  Her skin looked very soft. I touched her cheek. She took me into her arms and rocked me.

  "Why the world is as it is," she whispered.

  When I heard my own words echoed back to me, I wondered who on earth could answer such a question. Could Sett or Aamah? Could Namet answer it? Could Gnith? I had never heard any of the wise ones attempt to answer it. I had never heard it asked.

  As we walked home that evening, I tried to feel the way I should have felt after we had spent an afternoon together, but that night, when I lay beside her in the dark, I had to look at something that disturbed me, knowing I would not be left in peace until I faced it. That afternoon, when I made love to Maara, there was a part of her I couldn't reach. I felt that she had hidden something from me, just a small thing, as tiny as a grain of sand and as worrying as a pebble in my shoe.


  I went over in my mind the talk we'd had that day. Short as it was, much had been said, and now I saw what I had missed. I had thought that her fears were the same as mine -- that we would lose each other, that something would come between us, either time or distance or the abyss of death. Although she told me that wasn't what she feared, it had taken me all day to understand her. More than losing me, she feared what might befall me, leaving her to bear, not just the grief, but the guilt of somehow having caused it.

  A new fear ran through my blood like ice. Had Maara struck a bargain with her gods? It was clear that she had no faith in their benevolence. Simply asking wouldn't be enough for them. There would have to be a sacrifice.

  I felt more hopeful in the morning. More than she herself, I knew the wounds in Maara's heart. Grief uncomforted, hopes unfulfilled, unanswered dreams -- I had stumbled over almost all of them at one time or another. I dared to hope that with love I had begun to help her heal them. Perhaps foolishly, I believed that the darkness that yesterday resisted me would yield to me tomorrow. In the meantime, I decided not to talk to her about it. Sometimes to speak of such things makes them come true.

  Soon I was quite well and strong enough to hunt. As the weather grew warmer, game became more plentiful. The snow melted in all but the most sheltered places, and the deer came out of their snug nests to feed on the tender new leaves. Whenever we hunted, I kept an eye out for the wolves, fearful they would join us, yet disappointed when they didn't. One day I asked Worr why we had seen no sign of them.

  "Our brothers have gone ahead of us, up into the mountains," said Worr. "We will follow in a little while. We may see them there, but we won't hunt with them again until the snow falls."

  It was the first I'd heard that the forest people would soon be leaving their winter encampment, but Maara already knew.

  "They're waiting for the new moon," she said.

  "Will we go too?"

  Maara only looked at me.

  "Oh," I said. "We're going home."

  "Isn't that what you want?"

  I nodded, knowing that what I wanted was impossible. I wanted home to be all in one place.

  As the time of the new moon drew near, I tried to cling to every moment. I wasn't ready to accept the loss of these people I had grown to love. Whenever Sett told a story, I wondered if this might be the last tale of his I'd ever hear, and I wished the telling could go on forever. When I sent an arrow into a boar's heart, I took into my own heart the hunters' praise, knowing that no one would ever again see me with their eyes. When a child fell asleep in my lap, I thought it must be true that the last time for anything is the sweetest.

  The forest people too were sad at the thought of our parting, though they had something to look forward to. They lived all winter in small bands of a few dozen people, but in summertime the clans would come together, and they had begun to speak the names of friends they hoped to see. I wished I could look forward with as much pleasure to seeing my own friends again. Instead fear cast its shadow over the thought of our reunion. What would I find on my return to Merin's house? What had become of those I loved? Would I find them well? Would I find them all still living?

  On the last day, late in the afternoon, Aamah sent for us. We found her sitting by her fire in the covered shed. She gestured to Maara and patted the ground beside her. Maara sat down there, and I sat across the fire from them, so that I could see their faces.

  Aamah took Maara's hand in hers. "I will be sad tomorrow," she said.

  Maara glanced away, to hide the look of pain that crossed her face. My own loss seemed small when I compared it to what Maara would be losing. This might have been the home she wanted when she left Merin's house the first time. Perhaps, if not for me, she would have found it. I had never thought of that before. And now, despite the dangers I would face there, I was going home, while she would have to leave a place where she belonged for a place where she would always be a stranger.

  Thinking of Maara's loss made me so sad that I missed much of their conversation. When I heard Aamah ask Maara which way we planned to go, I began to pay attention. I had assumed that we would go back the way we came, but Maara said, "Through the forest is, I think, the safest way. If we can reach the river, it will take us where we're going."

  "The forest may be safer," Aamah replied, "but it's easier to lose the way. Do you know how to find the river?"

  Maara shook her head, and Aamah drew with her finger on the ground between them.

  "This is the brook," she said. "It joins a wider stream here, but don't follow it. If there are strangers in the forest, they too will stay close to the brook, to keep from getting lost. Go this way." And she drew a path that crossed several ridges before descending to the stream that would lead us to the river.

  "Do you know where the stream and the river flow together?" asked Maara.

  Aamah nodded and traced a twisting way that followed what appeared to be a tangle of streams that flowed together until they became the river. She marked places that were impassable and places where we might encounter strangers, tracing paths that would let us go around them, until she had shown us as much as she remembered. Much of it came from her own experience, but some also came from others who had wandered farther or from stories that had been passed down through the generations. I hoped her people had remembered well, or we might find ourselves wandering forever.

  "Why not go back the way we came?" I asked.

  Maara was patient with me. "What will we find there, this time of year?"

  I knew the answer well enough. "Cattle raiders," I said. "And the warriors of Merin's house, who are now just as much our enemies as the warriors of the northern tribes."

  Maara nodded.

  "Or we might not encounter anyone at all."

  "But if we do, where can we hide in the wilderness?"

  She was right. No matter how difficult the journey through the forest and down the river, it was less dangerous than the swords of our enemies.

  In the evening, when everyone had gathered around the fire, Sett told a story I hadn't heard before.

  The world was a vast and empty place, until the spirit of the moon came down. Drawn by curiosity, she set her small, silver foot on the bare earth and felt something move beneath it. Where she had stepped, a fissure opened in the earth, and a tiny animal sprang out of it, a creature no bigger than a thumbnail. With skin of shining green, enormous eyes, long fingers, longer toes, he hopped here and there over the surface of the ground.

  "Who are you?" asked the spirit of the moon.

  "My name is Frog," the creature said.

  "Are you alone here?" asked the spirit of the moon.

  "We are many, who have lived within the earth since time began," said Frog.

  "Are the others as beautiful as you?" asked the spirit of the moon.

  "They are," said Frog. "All different, and all beautiful."

  The spirit of the moon took another step. Beneath her foot, the earth opened, and a tiny animal flew out. Clad in feathers of the deepest blue, she soared into the air, then came back down again.

  "Who are you?" asked the spirit of the moon.

  "My name is Bird," the creature said.

  The spirit of the moon took another step. This time the earth released a seedling that thrust its green stem toward the sky, unfolded branches, clothed them in leaves, caught the wind, and yet remained deep-rooted in the earth.

  "Who are you?" asked the spirit of the moon.

  "My name is Tree," it said.

  The spirit of the moon traveled far and wide, and everywhere she went, her step released new life. Everything now living on the earth she set free that night.

  When dawn came, the spirit of the moon faded from sight, and all earth's living things had to learn to live in sunlight. The day was long and hot. Some creatures slipped back underground, awaiting the return of night. Others loved the daylight and learned to fear the dark. Soon all forgot that they had once been brothers in the bell
y of the world.

  70. Going Home

  On our last morning I awoke alone. My heart was heavy, and I was in no hurry to get out of bed. I hoped Maara would forgive me for not helping her prepare for our departure. There was little left to do. We had made up our packs the day before, so that we could see the forest people on their way. Neither Maara nor I could bear the thought of staying on in the encampment once they had left it.

  We shared a silent breakfast with the forest people. Afterwards, as is the custom everywhere, we exchanged gifts with them. Although I had little skill with the needle, I had made a few small things -- dolls for the children, cut from scraps of Maara's woolen tunic and stuffed with moss, and for Worr a beaded quiver. To Sett I gave what remained of the healing herbs I had brought from Merin's house.

  Each of the hunters gave me an arrow that bore his own distinctive markings, so that the sight of the arrow would bring to mind an image of its maker. When I understood the purpose of the gift, I gave each man an arrow of mine.

  Aamah handed Maara the women's gift, a bundle wrapped in deerskin. Maara seemed to know what it contained. She thanked Aamah and the women sincerely, but she set it aside without opening it. Then she offered Aamah the gift she'd made, a carrying bag much like the one she gave to Breda, but made of half a dozen white weasel skins, the best of what we'd trapped all winter.

  We accompanied the forest people as far as the brook, where they turned north, to follow it to its source, while we would go the other way. Our parting was even more painful than I feared. The children cried and clung to us, until their elders coaxed them away with the promise of a new adventure. By evening I hoped the children would be cheerful again with the anticipation of seeing other friends, but it would be a long time before I got over missing them. The women embraced us, and each one whispered a word or two -- wishes for a safe journey and fine weather, curses on our enemies and blessings on all who would befriend us. The men had Sett say their farewells for them, which consisted mostly of good, though obvious, advice. No fires at night. Keep a watch. Beware of strangers.