“We need to put an end to this!” Grat shouted after her.
Calli looked over her shoulder and was horrified to see Grat step over the line, following her into the women’s side.
* * *
It was just Grat: Vinco could not bring himself to trespass on forbidden ground. When Calli realized she was leading Grat straight to her son she veered sharply away, and Grat followed.
Her heart was pounding and she did not know what she was going to do. She headed back toward the communal area, horrified that everyone was deliberately turning from her. They were going to let this thing happen. Grat was going to kill her son right now, and nobody would help her.
Grat had halted, confused by her change in direction. He turned and looked back toward the women’s side, then straightened in surprise. Calli followed his stare and felt her breath leave her.
Her son was walking calmly toward his killer. The weak terror had left his face, and his broad shoulders had straightened with resolve.
“Good summer, Grat,” he said. “Let us not do this on the women’s side.”
FORTY-EIGHT
As if he had no cares at all, Mal walked right past Grat, who could easily have raised his club and smashed in the back of Mal’s head, but who instead followed Mal. “All is good, Mother,” Mal assured Calli.
This broke her. Sobbing, she trailed after him, her knees buckling, as her son and his enemy crossed over into the communal area.
“So, Grat,” Mal said. His voice was steady, even if his hands were trembling.
Grat stepped forward, raising his club, and Mal braced himself.
“Grat! Vinco!” Urs shouted sternly. Startled, everyone turned. Urs stood several paces away. “The hunt leaves now. Come.”
Grat and Vinco froze in indecision.
“Grat!” Urs shouted again. “We are leaving. Come now!”
The hunt always departed in the morning. No one could remember them ever leaving in the midafternoon.
Vinco reacted first, breaking into a dash. Grat lowered his club. Before running after Vinco, he turned to Mal. “We will be back,” he promised.
* * *
The water at Silex’s bathing place was like ice, reflecting a summer that still had not taken firm hold of the world. He splashed himself hurriedly and then lay on a warm black rock, gloriously alive, his skin tingling. He thought about the times he had seen wolves stretched out on soft grasses, luxuriating in the day. This, he reasoned, was what it must feel like to them—worries momentarily forgotten, bellies full, nothing chasing, nothing to chase.
Silex lingered far longer than he might otherwise, allowing himself a lapse in what he experienced as a daily struggle to ensure the Wolfen’s survival. When finally he reached for his skirt of fox fur and tightened it around his waist, he raised his eyes sharply, feeling a human gaze.
Denix came out of the foliage. Her hair was wet. She walked toward him with a deliberate calm, and Silex flushed, realizing she possibly had been there, observing him, the whole time.
“If you had come before I bathed, you could have watched me, as you did that other occasion,” she remarked.
She was fixing him with the intent stare he so coveted, and naturally it unnerved him. He wanted that look, craved it, but when he got it, the feelings it stirred were like a meal too rich, a light too bright. He turned away from it, his face hot. “I did not watch you on purpose,” he protested weakly.
“You did not glance elsewhere. You stare your eyes at me when I am not looking in your direction, but then when I return your gaze you turn away.” She reached up and ran a hand through her hair, shaking it so that small droplets fell on her brown arms and glinted there like stars. “Why is that, Silex? What do you want from me?”
Silex watched, fascinated, as Denix stepped right up to him and raised a hand to his face. The moisture on her palm was cool on his cheek.
“You are so like my Fia,” Silex murmured. “Your passion.” He felt the strength of that passion now, calling to him, raising his own like a wolf howl.
“I am not like your Fia,” Denix corrected sharply. She let her hand fall and Silex’s face ached to have it back. “She was horrible to me. So jealous and mistrusting.”
“Fia? I did not know this,” Silex said apologetically.
“Everyone knew this. The two of you were so suspicious and jealous of each other. It did not seem a marriage based on love, though I know it felt that way to you. When she died, as life left her, she made you promise to marry Ovi because she knew Ovi would never love you the way Fia did. Even in death, Fia begrudged you any woman who might bring heat to your bed. Ovi is your sister, but she does not love you the way a wife would. The way I do, Silex.”
“Oh Denix.”
“The day you picked me for the hunt, there was but one man for me.”
Silex closed his eyes. “So, then. What of Tok? What you said.”
“I would never fornicate with Tok, Silex. He is your son. I would not have let Brach touch me, either. Nor any man. I just attempted to cause you an aggravation.”
He stared at her. “Why would you want to do that?”
“To get you to do something, Silex! I know you want to!” she shouted, anguished.
Silex licked his lips. “Yet you know I cannot. I, especially, must set the example.”
“But it is killing me, Silex. I tell you this with all my heart—a woman desires a man’s touch. Without it, she is as dry and brittle as old bones in the sun. But it must be the one man who touches her, the one to whom she has silently given everything. I have wanted forever to tease out the longing in you. I have done all that I can.” Tears flowed down her cheeks. “Just one time, Silex. I beg you, please let me know your love just one time. There is no one to see us.” Denix lifted off her simple garment of elk hide and stood before him naked, her small breasts reacting to the cool air, her dark nipples firming. “Please.”
“I cannot do this, Denix,” he choked almost inaudibly.
“Just once,” she insisted. She took a step forward and he watched her as if fascinated. “I promise, I will then leave you alone. Just this one time.”
He felt his resolve give way to a desire stronger than any hunger. His limbs were trembling as he reached for her. It was sudden and irresistible and he gave into it with undeniable joy. They eased themselves down on the warm sand, their mouths pressed together, panting. Denix made to roll over on her hands and knees, but he stopped her, and, lifting his skirt, showed her what he had learned from the Kindred, that they could look into each other’s eyes as he moved on top of her.
She opened her legs to him but Silex, despite the urgent calls from deep inside, held back. This would be her first time. He put his lips to her breasts, kissing them, letting his tongue play there until she moaned and closed her eyes, seizing his head with her hands to pull him up for a rough, frantic kiss. He took a gentle finger and felt down between her legs, touching her until she was slippery and thrusting her hips up at him insistently. Then they finally came together, and she gasped.
Her tears flowed again, but inside the interior of their kiss, she was smiling.
* * *
Mal was safe only a single day. The morning after the hunt left, Calli went to Bellu’s family cave and found the council mother crying, her head in her hands. “Bellu. What are you doing? Why are you hiding? Albi has called for a meeting of the women’s council. Albi.”
Bellu would not look at her.
Calli bit back her frustration. “Bellu, you must come out of your cave and address this. Only you may call a meeting. Do you see? By hiding up here, it is as if you are saying that Albi is now the council mother.”
Calli reached for Bellu, who shook her off.
“Bellu. Albi means to have the council vote to have Mal…” Calli swallowed. “She wants to kill him, Bellu.” It sounded ludicrous, but Calli could picture how it would happen. Albi and a few of her closest allies on the council would approach Mal and, though he was a man, he w
ould not fight them off—it was prohibited for any Kindred male to raise his hand to a woman not related to him. The women would do to him what Grat had intended.
“I have tried. But it is too hard,” Bellu whispered. “I cannot be council mother when there is a curse.”
“What?” Calli cried.
Bellu raised red eyes. “I am sorry,” she choked.
“Bellu. Do you realize what you are saying? You no longer want to be council mother? You give up your position, you give up your baths, your favored place in the meals, your ability to protect your husband from the conspiracy to make Palloc the hunt master? You give all that up?”
Bellu’s eyes were glazed, as if Calli had said too much to think about.
“The only way you can remain council mother is to come to the meeting,” Calli urged. “You need be there for yourself, and I need you there, too. I need you to speak up for Mal. Please, Bellu. Save yourself, your husband, your family—and my son. Please come with me now.”
Something briefly glowed in Bellu’s eyes, and then the light faded. She shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “I cannot.”
* * *
The rest of the women were already assembled in a circle when Calli arrived, Albi strutting in the center, unable to restrain herself from exuding pure glory. The other women eyed Calli as she took her seat.
“Is Bellu coming?” Renee asked anxiously.
Calli wordlessly shook her head.
Albi snorted. “We have a lot to talk about,” she stated, firmly seizing control of the meeting. “We must do something about the curse that has followed the Kindred, the curse that has taken our game and our men and even the warmth of the summer from us. The curse we have tolerated far too long.”
Calli looked around the circle. Not a single woman would meet her eyes, now. They stared at Albi as if transfixed. Calli had lost. They were going to go through with this.
Calli was out of options. She stood, and immediately she had their attention. “Yes,” she said simply, nodding. “You are right. It is time to do something about the curse.”
Every woman in the council stared at Calli in silent shock. Nothing she might have said could have surprised them more. Even Albi was mute, her eyes slitted.
“I have spoken to the council mother,” Calli claimed. “I come from her cave. She is in agreement. A curse has been placed on the Kindred, and that curse has found its way into my son’s leg, which it has poisoned.” Calli looked at the women sitting around her. “And we must deal with the curse in a way that ensures it will never return.”
“What we must do…,” Albi began, finding her voice.
“What we must do,” Calli echoed loudly, nodding, “is what the council mother says. If we were to try to rid ourselves of the curse by killing Mal, could we be sure the curse was truly defeated? Right now we have the curse where we can see it, but if Mal was dead, who knows where it might land next? Clearly the curse started with Hardy, our brave hunt master, who had it put in him by the lion. Remember how crippled he was? And then it moved on to my unborn son. Who else will it take? Whose child?”
“That is enough,” Albi declared.
“What the council mother says is that the curse must be driven out of the Kindred and sent into the forest. We must banish Mal from our camps.” Calli wiped her eyes. “Can you see? Only by forcing the curse to leave can we be safe.”
Albi thumped her stick into the ground, and several women reacted to the sound with a wince. They were, Calli realized, remembering exactly what it was like when Albi ran things. “This is not the will of the council,” Albi stormed.
“And you speak the will of the council?” Calli demanded, as much scorn in her voice as she could muster. Albi’s face flashed hot.
“Yes,” Albi hissed. “Yes!”
“No,” came a soft voice.
Everyone turned. Bellu had come up quietly from behind.
“I am the council mother,” Bellu said. “What Calli says, I think she is right. Mal should take the curse and go off into the wilds with it, take it back to the lions.”
It was the strongest declarative statement Bellu had made as council mother in a long time.
“Calli is right,” Bellu repeated. “Mal must be banished.”
FORTY-NINE
Mal stared at his mother. “I do not understand,” he whispered.
Calli bit back her tears. “This is the only way, Mal. Albi has convinced the women you are the reason so many bad things are happening to the Kindred. She wanted to see you … to see you killed.”
“Do you think I am the reason?” Mal blurted, anguished.
Calli looked at him and once again saw not the man he was becoming but the child he had been, so wounded and vulnerable it was everything she could do to prevent herself from pulling him to her in a protective hug. “Mal. Neither you nor your leg has anything to do with anything,” she replied in a low, even voice. “This is an attempt by a wicked, wicked woman to twist things to her own advantage. Understand me?”
“Then why must I go off by myself? It’s ridiculous. No one can go off by himself.”
“It is the only way you can escape the danger,” Calli pleaded, swallowing down her feelings. If she thought about her son out there alone, it made her wild with fear. “Until I can talk to Urs. Until things are better for the Kindred. Or until…” Calli gestured with a hand. “Until Albi dies. She is an old woman now; when she falls into death there will be no one remaining to argue that a curse exists. But until then, you must live away from us, Mal.”
Mal shook his head stubbornly. “I want to speak to my father about this.”
“Mal…”
“I said I want to speak to my father!” he yelled.
Calli blinked in the face of his sudden fury. She understood it, though. Her shoulders fell. “Your father will do whatever his mother says,” Calli told him quietly. “You know this, Mal. You know the kind of man Palloc is. I am sorry.”
Mal did know. Slowly, the anger faded from his face. He lowered his eyes. “All is good, then,” he muttered resignedly.
Nothing had ever hurt Calli as much as the way her brave boy accepted his fate now. The unfairness of it all made her sick.
She told him to take food and weapons. “There is a place upstream, beyond the boundary, where large boulders meet a flat bank covered with grasses. On the third day, after the midday meal, I’ll bring more food to you there.” Calli realized that she was trying so hard not to sob aloud that her voice sounded strange, as if caught in a hiccup. She forced herself to take a breath. “Mal? Do you understand me?”
* * *
Mal found Lyra exactly where he knew she would be: at her painted cave. He could hear her singing to herself in there, and for a moment he lingered outside and simply listened. The words were something about eating food by the fire.
Her head emerged, smiling, when he called softly past a thin scent of smoke into the space under the rock. “Mal,” she greeted, climbing out on her hands and knees.
“Good summer, Lyra,” he replied.
She picked up something in his voice, and her eyes widened when she examined his face. “What is it? What is wrong, Mal? Why are you carrying both club and spear?”
He swallowed. “There has been a decision by the women’s council,” he began, relating in a halting voice what his mother had told him.
Lyra grew more and more dumbfounded as Mal spoke. “I was not told of any meeting, and I spoke to Bellu immediately before I came here,” she protested.
“Albi convened it.”
“Albi?” Lyra sputtered. “There is something seriously wrong.”
“My mother says this is the only way.”
“But Mal. No one can live alone.” Lyra turned and looked north, contemplating what it meant.
“I will miss you, Lyra,” Mal whispered hoarsely.
Lyra’s mouth trembled. “This is like the day Dog died. Hearing it does not make it something I understand. I just cannot imagine t
his thing happening.”
“I know.” Mal now also looked north. He needed to get moving.
Lyra read the resolve in his face. “Wait,” she said. She ducked into her cave and was gone a few moments, reappearing with a braided leather thong that easily measured three times the distance from the ground to Mal’s head. “Here. I just finished making this.”
Mal examined the tight weave. “This is a fine rope, Lyra.”
“Take it. You may need it for something.”
“All is good,” Mal agreed. He coiled the rope and tied it to the one around his waist. “Thank you, Lyra.”
He stood and stared at her. There seemed to be so much to say to this woman, but he could not find any words within him.
Lyra wiped at her eyes. “Mal.”
“Good-bye, Lyra,” Mal said. I love you, he did not say to her.
“Good-bye, Mal,” Lyra replied.
She watched his retreating back. His asymmetrical gait was so familiar to her; she had seen it her whole life. Heartbroken, Lyra fell to the ground with her face in her hands. This was exactly like the day Dog died. The pain was the same, the nightmarish sense of unreality was the same. And now, as then, she felt she would give anything for just one more moment to be with him.
But she did not run after him, and soon any opportunity to catch up with Mal had passed.
* * *
Mal found the area his mother described just as the sun entered its fatal battle with the night, gloom rising up from the forest floor like a fog. There were two large boulders a person could squeeze through, and he built a fire in front of these, hunkering down in the cramped space. He wanted to feel confident—he was a man, no matter what the Kindred said—so it surprised him when he began sobbing, wanting nothing more than to be back at his mother’s fire. He could not do this. No one could.
He was going to die out here.
The next morning Mal moved farther north, spear ready to take any game. He would spear an elk, or even a bear! In a few days’ time, he would return to the Kindred with furs and food and prove there was no curse.