He grinned at her. “Good summer! I hoped I would find you here. It was not easy; I had to make a long path to avoid the Kindred camp.”
She looked around wildly. Her expression was anything but welcoming. “You should not be here!”
He blinked past his hurt. “What do you mean?”
“Grat and Vinco often wander down here looking for me.”
“Oh.” Mal shrugged. “I am not afraid of them,” he claimed, prevaricating only a little bit. He did not want to talk about Grat or Vinco, he wanted to talk about himself and Lyra. His heart was beating a little, thinking of what he might say to her.
Lyra came up to him, her eyes searching his face. “You have gotten taller.”
Mal drew himself up. “I have?”
“Yes, and bigger.” She gestured to her own shoulders.
“What happened to your hair?” he asked. Somehow, her hair was both short and blunt, ending in an outlandishly uniform fashion.
Now it was her turn to look hurt. “You do not like it?”
“I have just never seen this. What do you call it?”
“I do not call it anything, it is just my hair. I lay down on a flat rock and Felka poured wet sand around my head. Then she laid a flaming stick on the dry hair and burned it off. See? It is not as long and I like that the ends are all even.”
“Do all the women do this now?”
“Why would that matter?”
He frowned. She seemed angry at him. “I think it is very beautiful,” he finally said.
A smile twitched onto her lips. “Thank you. My mother is not happy with it, though.”
“Well. You do not often seem to care what your mother thinks.”
Her smile grew broader. “And you look … well, you look well. Mal, I have been so very worried about you. How are you able to eat?”
“I, uh, hunt.” Mal surprised himself by lying. “I killed a lion, too.” Doubt crept into Lyra’s eyes as she sensed duplicity, and Mal was angry at himself. Obviously she thought he was untruthful about the lion and honest about hunting, when the reverse was true. But to explain would be to waste time. “I wanted to see you,” he said simply.
Her look softened. “I wanted to see you, too. But the women’s council has decided we cannot.” Lyra glanced involuntarily at Mal’s leg.
“Yes, I know. The curse,” Mal agreed flatly. “But I think of you, Lyra, I think of you often, and I, I…” Words fled from his mouth and he stood there unable to say more.
“It is so strange to contemplate you living by yourself. But I believe your mother did the right thing—Albi is an awful woman with a powerful obsession.”
“Do you believe I am a curse?”
“I do not, no.”
“Then perhaps I do not need to live by myself,” he suggested boldly.
He hated the look in her eyes, read it as pity, as a woman telling a man that his affections were hopeless and unrequited. He glanced away. “I suppose I should leave. Good summer, Lyra.”
“Wait.”
He turned to her. Her eyes were grave. “Think of what you are suggesting, Mal. Are you telling me that this is what you would want for me? That I would leave my family, my parents, and the Kindred? That I would be safe and happy?”
Mal sighed deeply. “You have always been so forthright, Lyra. I admire you for it. No, I cannot promise any of those things. But I will not always be banished. I will think of a way to return.”
“What you should do is follow us a day behind when we migrate.”
He shook his head. “Why does everyone assume I cannot survive on my own? You forget—with no one else to feed, a single kill of a hoofed animal can last me a long time.” Of course, he did have a voracious young wolf to feed, but he was not going to tell her that.
“I did forget,” she admitted.
“When I return to the Kindred next summer, everyone will be astonished I have prevailed over winter and I will be accepted as a true hunter.”
She pressed her lips together, presenting a fragile smile. “Do you have the rope I gave you?”
“Yes. It has been very helpful to me.” He wondered how Lyra would react if he said, I use it to restrain my wolf.
* * *
With summer ending soon, Mal took stock of his preparations. As he had told Lyra, an entire elk was a lot of food, so much that he felt rich with it. It gave him time to accumulate other provisions—he found the dark berries that would dry well in the sun, eating his fill as he pulled them from the bushes. Dog saw him putting food in his mouth and stared expectantly, but when Mal tossed her a berry, the wolf spat it out, wrinkling her nose and looking so disgusted Mal had to laugh.
The acorns proved to be more problematic. Calli had shown Mal how there were similar-looking nuts that were actually poisonous, so he knew which ones to gather. But the act of building a pile, soaking them in water made scalding by adding sizzling rocks from the fire, then cracking off the thin shells with his fingernails, took many days and when he was finished he had so little to show for his labors he finally understood why the Kindred always quickly went through their supply of nuts every winter. Mal had always assumed it was because the women harvesting the small acorns were lazy—now he understood just how hard they were working. At least Dog ate the nuts, though, crunching them up eagerly. If he ran out of meat, the nuts would give them something to eat.
Until he ran out of nuts.
Mal allowed Dog off rope more and more often, guiding her not with the leather strap but with voice and hand. It gave both of them more freedom to explore the northern wilds.
In search of more elk in ice, Mal and Dog climbed a steep hill not far from the white wall where he had found the frozen animals. Once at the peak, he gazed in astonishment at the terrain: despite the many days of summer, he had found a place of winter. As far as he could see, ice lay on the ground, much of it cracked and jumbled. To the left, a forest of dead trees grew out of the ice, most of the trunks canted at a steep angle, as if arrested in the act of falling over. A cold wind blew off this desert of frozen water, though that was not the only reason Mal felt a chill—this was a bad place, a place where neither sun nor summer could defeat evil. As quickly as he could, the two of them climbed back down.
* * *
Lyra did not understand why she cried so brokenly when Mal left her. She saw herself as a smart person—her father, Valid, had always praised her wit and intelligence. She knew that there was nothing that could be done for Mal at the moment—the “curse” was a wicked and guileful manipulation by a wicked woman, but the others on the council lacked either the courage or sagacity to challenge Albi’s assertions. Yet that did not mean she should leave her family fire and, at age fifteen, go to live with Mal.
Her father would never approve of any relationship with a cripple. Her mother would declare against it in council. Her affections for Mal were familial, originating with the assumption that she would marry his brother, and she often sternly reminded herself that he could never be more than a childhood friend. She was smart enough to know this.
So why was she crying?
When she heard her mother, Sidee, calling for her, Lyra hastily wiped her eyes. “Here, Mother!” she responded, running down the path. “Coming!”
Sidee was standing with her arms folded. “What were you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“I have come because the women’s council has decided it is time to migrate. We leave in three days.”
“But, it seems so early!” Lyra looked around her at the trees, which were not yet even beginning to change colors.
“Bellu is nervous about having her baby during our journey, though we all know it is too soon. But Albi says it is not worth the risk.”
“Oh Albi. I see.” Lyra looked in the direction Mal had gone.
“Grat tells me you come to this area all the time.”
“Grat,” Lyra repeated contemptuously. She made to move past her mother and head back to the settlement, but Side
e stopped her.
“Lyra. What are you doing here?”
“Just…” Lyra shrugged.
“Show me.”
“All is good,” Lyra agreed. No one knew about her cave drawings but Mal. It would be nice to include her family—they would all be so proud of her. She led her mother to the cave mouth. Inside, the torch was still burning, and it brightened when Lyra added some grasses and blew on it. She gestured proudly, the flames dancing across her deer, her rhinoceros, her mammoth. “I put the images on the wall using char from cold fires.”
“What are these things?” Sidee demanded stiffly, her face cold.
“They are animals. See?” Lyra traced her elk with a finger.
“This is horrible.”
“What?” Lyra replied, dumbfounded.
“I have never felt so betrayed.”
“Betrayed? What do you mean?”
“We must leave this place and you are never to come here again. Do you hear my words? These treacherous, despicable marks are unforgivable.” Sidee’s eyes were hard. “You make your garments different from anyone else’s. You wear”—Sidee gestured at Lyra’s necklace—“decorations. You burned your hair! You are disrespectful and deceitful to your mother. From this point forward you may wear nothing different than what I wear, you will stop burning your hair, and you may not put flowers in it unless I have first done so. You will stop acting as if you are better than me.”
For the second time that day, the tears were flowing down Lyra’s face. “No, no,” she pleaded. “I have never said I was better than anyone else.”
“Your name is derived from the day you added words to a wedding sing. Now every wedding has these words. It is humiliating to be your mother.”
“Mother,” Lyra begged, weeping.
“I will be glad to have you leave our family area to live with your husband.”
Lyra froze. “What do you mean?”
“That is the other news. It is decided. This winter, at the weddings, you will be married to Grat.” Sidee turned her back on her daughter. “You are his problem, now.”
FIFTY-FIVE
The Kindred’s journey south progressed well, Albi remarking casually that the main difference was that the boy with the cursed leg was no longer with them.
Calli cried brokenly as they left camp. No one spoke to her, or tried to comfort her. She was in pain, but they all knew it was for the best.
Grat, as a stalker for the hunt, was up toward the front during the day, but when the Kindred halted he sought out his betrothed, Lyra, who responded to his conversational gambits by fleeing to her family fire.
“He is following me, Father, everywhere I go,” Lyra hissed to Valid.
“As he should. You are to be his wife,” Sidee interjected. “Go back out there and sit with him.”
“He is a cruel man and I will not.”
Valid pursed his lips unhappily. “He was cruel to you?”
“Not to her,” Sidee corrected angrily. “She means to the cripple.”
“I am sure it will be soon that he will do the same to me,” Lyra asserted.
Valid straightened. “He may not do that.”
“Oh Valid, you are letting her lie to you. He will not touch her in any way not appropriate and we all know this to be true,” Sidee snapped.
Valid’s eyes were warm with sympathy for Lyra. Sidee wanted to scream at him. Instead she called to where Grat lingered at a respectful distance. “Grat! Please come join your family.”
Smiling broadly, Grat trotted over. “Mother,” he greeted. “Father.” He took a breath and turned to Lyra. “Wife,” he said softly.
Lyra turned from his grin and stared north, back in the direction from which they had come.
* * *
While Silex and Denix were searching for the missing she-wolf with the handprint marking, a storm swept through, and they had holed up in a small cave for shelter, kept warm by a fire and each other. Separated from the rest of the Wolfen, it reminded Silex of when he and Fia were together—a comparison he could now contemplate without guilt or guile.
After mating Silex and Denix would remain locked together, her legs around his back, his arms hugging her shoulders, their breath warm on each other’s faces, his beard brushing her cheeks. “When I was a boy my father and some men went hunting and found nothing for a full six days,” Silex confided to his lover as they lay thus embraced one afternoon. “I have never been so hungry, and when we at last found some fat geese who could not fly and chased them down, we cooked the meat and burned our lips on the food. I was compelled beyond reason to feed myself, consumed with it like a fever. This is like that. Meeting you here. Lying with you.”
Denix smiled into his eyes. “So in this telling, I am a fat goose who burns your lips?”
Silex laughed gently. “Your kisses scorch me, yes. But I crave them all the same.” He traced her lovely mouth with a light fingertip. “Your kisses are perfect because your mouth is perfect,” he murmured.
They gently decoupled, the cool air rushing to fill the space they had emptied between them. Silex reached for their furs.
“Silex,” Denix said in a low voice. “It is very important to you to keep this secret, is it not? Us, to keep us secret from the rest of the Wolfen.”
Silex regarded her gravely. “You have brought this up before, and you know it is. I have made much of the need to keep wedding vows inviolate. If we were to be found out, it would be seen as a great hypocrisy.”
“And then what would happen? No one would challenge you, Silex. You would still be our leader.”
Silex sighed. “We have cause for optimism, but we are not yet of sufficient numbers to survive as a tribe. So few children live to the age where they can hunt. I believe that if people’s faith in me should falter, it might be the one thing to defeat us. Every pack needs a dominant male—when he becomes old or sick, a new leader is required or the pack fails. Cragg is not yet old enough to lead, and I see no one else to take over should I falter. Well, except you.”
“What?” Denix responded, astonished.
“You are still my best hunter. I do believe that if something were to happen to me, the Wolfen would be best with you as leader.”
“You are serious,” Denix stated.
“Of course.”
“You have always seen more in me than anyone, Silex. This is just one of the reasons I love you so.”
He reached out and stroked her hair. “And I love you, Denix.”
Her expression turned serious. “Yet if, as you speculate, people found out about us and it led to them losing faith in you, they certainly would not turn to me instead.”
“No, that is true,” Silex agreed. His gaze was intent. “What is it you are leading me to, Denix? I feel as if you are stalking a subject but have not yet pounced.”
“I have not bled for some time, Silex. I believe I am pregnant with your baby.”
* * *
Dog had come to build such a strong association with the utterance “Dog” that when she thought of herself she heard the sound in her mind. Dog. She was Dog.
She did not like it when the man took the lion-thing and wrapped it around himself. Dog had become accustomed to seeing him put on and take off animal hides and it no longer mystified her—he had furs and sometimes carried them around all day on his back. This, though, was different, causing her mild distress—she was made uneasy with the smell of dead lion, especially when it moved with him. Nor was she pleased when Mal looped the rope around her neck: of late, she had been spending more time off leash, playing the game where she tried to figure out what Mal wanted her to do and, when she was successful, he gave her a morsel of meat. On leash, they did not play the game as often.
For Dog, even more rewarding than the food was her man’s affection and approval. She would squirm with pure pleasure when he put his hands on her and stroked her fur and brought his face to hers.
“I am going to my home, to see the Kindred,” he told her.
“To convince them I am no threat, before they migrate and we are left behind.” He shoved aside the heavy rock blocking the exit and together the two of them crawled out into the early morning sunshine.
The man carried the thick branch with the rock at the end. “I will approach them as if I were a member of the Blanc Tribe. I will offer to trade this dried elk meat for some nuts.” He patted the pelt at his side and an enticing flood of odors met Dog’s nose. “They will see me wearing lion, and that I have meat—I am a man, not a boy. A man who walks with a wolf, though I will not reveal that today, but will have you remain nearby. I will stay only a moment, so they understand I do not need them. They will realize the extent to which they underestimated my ability to survive. And they must allow me to see my mother. And Lyra. And eventually, after many visits, they will let me back in. I will be unbanished.”
They walked a path, and Dog could smell the animals that had been there before, and the scents her man had laid down. Sometimes the stream was close, and other times it went away, but Dog could always smell the water. When she stopped to take a drink, her man stopped with her, and she sensed him caring about her and it made her want to stop for water more often, just to feel his affection in those moments.
After the better part of a day, Dog felt her man’s rising anxiety, and it made her tense. “Why are there no fires in the air? What are we walking into, Dog?” Her man looked up at the sky. “It is too early for them to have left on migration.”
They came to a place where many dead fire smells mingled with people odors. “No!” her man shouted. Dog yawned nervously, panting, unsure what was happening, why he was so distressed.
“They left, Dog. They are gone. We are now truly on our own.”
* * *
Silex awoke at dawn. His first thought was of Denix and her unborn child, the pregnancy that was only beginning to pronounce itself. He would have to tell Ovi soon.
He yawned. During the night he had been aware of his sons returning to camp, and was looking forward to hearing about the wolf pack. The young men had gone out with the intention of seeing if the massive female with the white markings above her eyes had brought her young to the howling site.