Darkness at Daybreak

We headed down to the cove at the first hint of dawn, barely able to see the path. The storm had subsided; the morning was windless, but cold and grey. We hadn't slept since we’d been awakened, and had no idea what could have so shaken the ground and made such a noise. The steep path was treacherous now, slippery in wet shale. With our feet clad only in hides, we felt each sharp rock. We gave up trying to talk over the roar of the waves, still huge from the storm. Their spray drenched us as we finally stood at the shore.

The beach was wrapped in thick fog, but what little we could see seemed impossible. Our path to the boat was blocked by a jumble of rock. What had awakened us, drowning out even the shrieking wind and the deep boom of the waves, was a huge rockslide. As the light grew we saw that half the mountain was gone. Our boat─our only means of return─lay under a vast landscape of boulders. The remains of uprooted trees washed back and forth in the surf. We had feared what we might find, but a mountain falling on our boat, stranding us here, was beyond our worst imaginings.

There would be no returning, not this season. We would have to find a way to survive the winter here.

***

We explored the wreckage of the cove until mid-morning, then returned to the shelter, which now felt drafty and fragile. The sun found only occasional breaks in the high clouds. A flock of geese on their way south passed low over the shelter, talking about the coming winter. The trees high on the hillside were turning red and gold, beautiful against a dusting of new snow.

We had known all along that once we left the mainland the boat was our only way back, and that we should start back before the weather turned cold, but the days remained warm and clear, and we were so content in our isolation that it was easy to defer our departure. We were a month from home by sea, but the overland trip was much longer, if even possible; to the north were high mountains, hidden that day in lingering storm clouds.

We hadn’t stored food during our summer of plenty, and in the winter game would be scarce. We had no winter clothing. We didn’t talk until we returned to the shelter, but I knew he was thinking we should have planned for this. We built a fire and sat beside it as we had for months. It offered scant comfort, and there was little to say. The wind had picked up, and high clouds were scudding across the sky. It looked like it could rain again.

Then we saw two people─a man and a woman─moving carefully down the hillside, she stumbling occasionally, the first people we had seen since we left our village.

***

We had traveled north for months, farther than anyone we knew. We wanted to see what lay beyond the little world near our village, and perhaps find someplace else to spend our lives and raise our children. Saying farewell to our families had been difficult─we might never see them again─but they knew we would never abandon what we had set our hearts on. We had planned for a year, as much as you can plan for the unknown, thinking and talking about little else than our trip. We spent every free moment together, sitting as we always had, facing each other holding hands, knees touching. Even when we didn’t talk, the trip was uppermost in our minds.

Traveling by boat had been slower and more difficult than we had imagined, because on our northward course the wind was so often in our faces. Our little boat had faced rougher seas than we had ever met near home . But the farther we went the higher our confidence mounted, and the more we loved the places we stopped . We were lured much farther north than we had originally planned, always telling ourselves that the return trip would be speedy and smooth, with wind and swell at our backs. We thought ourselves brave and ready to face whatever happened, but we had never imagined ourselves caught here for the winter.

We were also surprised by how early winter was approaching. It would still be warm at home, but this far north the weather was already turning cold, even before yesterday’s early storm. Our summer had been like one long, lazy day, the light lasting until close to midnight. Now the days were already shorter, and changing fast. The trees were turning. We knew that they would soon be bare, and one morning we would find snow on the ground.

We hadn’t thought much about home since setting out. Now I found myself missing my parents─surprising, since this trip was partly to separate ourselves from our families. I feared that when we didn’t return as planned my mother, who had been anxious about our trek from the beginning, would be frantic with grief. The entire village would grieve. We had been part of the village all our lives, never having to make decisions on our own. We had learned all the lore and traditions from the elders and knew all the old stories. We knew that if we were ever to remove that protective shell, ever to make our own story and learn about life and ourselves, it would have to be now. We could have done that nearer home; what brought us so far north was our shared love of adventure. With the boat suddenly gone, that daring seemed as reckless as my mother had said all along.

I moved closer to the fire, hoping its warmth would reach inside. Living under the loving protection of the village was suffocating me a few months before. Now I longed for the guidance of the elders─needed their wisdom and knowledge. The silence that was so welcome only days ago oppressed me. The noise and bustle of our village would have been reassuring. I had given up returning this year, and was struggling to hope we ever could.

***

Seeing other people was a shock after we’d been so long alone, and I felt as much concern as curiosity. We stood to watch them making their way toward our fire. The woman walked with difficulty even with his support. We saw they were hunters, but their weapons─in fact all their possessions─were on his back, and she carried nothing. They seemed to be in even more trouble than we were; she could barely walk. Their clothing was ragged and looked long-worn. And they had so little, compared to us. When we came here it took several trips to bring our goods up from the boat. They had only what they could carry.

We raised our arms in the traditional welcome. When he did the same they seemed more kindred. Reaching the fire, she slumped down before it without a word. We offered them our root tea in our own rude cups. She accepted with shaking hands. He laid his load aside, then stood before us. They were roughly our age, but light-skinned and blond. He was strongly built, a powerful man, shorter than Zoan but heavier. I am Sigurd, he said, and my wife is Inge. Thank you for your kindness. His speech was accented but mostly understandable. She lay down before the fire, and was asleep before she had more than just started her tea. His concern for her was evident. He covered her with a blanket we offered him, looked silently at her for some time, then sat, cup in hand, and spoke─mostly to Zoan, but I heard and understood. When he said they came from the north, Zoan and I looked at each other. They knew how to survive the winter here!

***

I had known Zoan for years─since we were children─before we fell together in an embrace that lasted for life. We would not wait until the accepted time to join as one, but came together early and would not be parted─our first defiance. Then we decided we wanted to leave the village rather than live our entire lives in that predictable mold. The elders had known us as rebellious youngsters, and weren’t surprised when we became headstrong adults, but the combination of the two of us was more than they had expected. They saw that our rebellion would be lifelong and let us choose our own way.

We planned this journey for most of last year and left home in early spring, following the retreating snows northward. We stayed with our boat, moving northward along the coast, camping some places several nights, many only one. We ate roots, leaves, nuts and berries, and caught fish and small game. We had been taught all our lives which plants and berries to eat and which to avoid, and knew how to take care of ourselves. Well into summer, we reached what felt like a natural point to turn back toward home. The coastline turned abruptly east, and went away eastward as far as we could see. Farther north was only open water. But to the west, across a channel we were confident we could cross in half a day, we saw hills─the hills surrounding our cove. We thought it was an island, and decided to explore it before returning home. The cove was beautiful and deserted, and a few days of exploration showed us it was no island. From the tops of the hills to the north, the same hills we had watched our new companions descend, we could see range after range of mountains, and far to the north we could see mighty snow-covered peaks. We were at the southern tip of an unknown land.

We loved the cove immediately and thought of it as ours. At first I imagined we’d found the place we were seeking, where we could live our lives. We decided to stay for the summer. We built a light shelter on the bluff above the beach, next to a clear stream, with a magnificent hearth made of rocks we spent days carrying. It even had a shelf above the fire for our two small earthenware bowls, so we could have hot water for tea. We kept them full of water from the stream. Our boat was beached in the cove.

It was no accident, I thought, that on the very day we were stranded here by the loss of our boat, just as we were losing hope, two people appeared who knew this land and how to survive its bitter winter. They gave us hope─hope that we had not made a fatal mistake, that we could after all make our lives here, away from the eyes of our village, giving up its security for independence.

***

Sigurd made up a sleeping pallet for Inge by our fire. She slept much of the afternoon, and seemed stronger afterward. She and Sigurd were also young and far from home, although she was much younger. They had planned to return northward to winter in a place they knew, but early snows had forced them south. Yesterday’s storm had caught them on an exposed hillside with no shelter. They had not slept at all last night, and today had been traveling cold, wet and hungry. She had fallen and hurt her hip, but they had pressed on. By the time they arrived at our camp she was at the end of her strength.

Zoan and I talked about what to do. Sigurd and Inge had winter experience, but were no more ready for winter than we were. We would need a winter camp, food, and warm clothing, and our people working together would have a better chance than two alone. Their language was not the same as ours, but we shared enough words to understand each other and get started.

The immediate problem was Inge’s exhaustion and pain. My mother was a healer, and Zoan and I shared an interest in healing with plants and herbs, among the most valuable things we had learned. At every stop we had gathered and dried familiar plants. Now I brewed more root tea and began making a poultice to draw the pain from Inge’s hip injury. The tea seemed to revive her, and the four of us talked together in our limited way. We all knew that preparing for winter was urgent, that snow could fall anytime. Inge was trying not to focus on her pain, and believed the poultice was helping. I could see she was exhausted. Her young face was lined and haggard, her skin grey. Her hair was so fair it was almost white, long and fine. She and Sigurd both had blue eyes, the bluest eyes I had ever seen. I was fascinated, and stared at them when I thought they didn’t notice. Even though they were so different from us, even though I knew nothing about them, I knew fate had thrown us together to make our way jointly. Friendship with them was our only choice. We were all glad to be together, and eager to help.

***

That was our first cold night─the first of many, I feared. The men gathered wood for an all-night fire, and I roasted a fat summer rabbit. Sigurd and Inge hadn’t had real food for several days. We had berries and root tea aplenty, and the rabbit tasted good. We talked while eating and long afterward.

Inge wasn’t sure of her age, but was very young, perhaps fourteen. She was slender and small, with striking hair and eyes, and a sparkling smile when she was not hurting. Sigurd had saved her from a cruel fate when she was still a child, when raiders came to her village. They killed many, including her family, and would have stolen her, but he fought fiercely and saved her, and became her hero and protector. Then, last year, they were both surprised when he became her husband. They set out southward to escape the violence of the raids from the north, and had been traveling ever since. They survived last winter─brutal in our village and surely worse farther north─in a cave, and believed we should winter in a cave near here. Sigurd said there would be enough game to keep us alive, that the deer and rabbits remained active all winter. There were also large dangerous bears, who slept all winter but at that time of year were still a threat.

We told them our own story, peaceful in comparison. Inge said our names over and over, as if they were magical incantations─‘Zoan’─‘Quitana’. She was grateful to have met us; otherwise her injury would have left them desperate. He said less than she did, but nodded and smiled often. I could see that he cared deeply for her.

They curled up on one side of the fire, we on the other. We heard them whispering to each other, and heard him laugh. I hoped this night together would be the first of many and was grateful for the fate that led them to us.

***

I too was young then, although older than Inge. Girls became women at fourteen in our village, and I was then four years past the ritual that marked my womanhood. Inge’s story made me appreciate the peacefulness of our village, and the security and love I had always felt there. Zoan and I had never had to worry about violence, or fear enemies. We knew the world outside was dangerous, and that it was the vigilance of the elders that protected us. Many old stories told of violence, and we were always warned it could be possible again. Planning our trek north, we had talked about how we would defend ourselves if we needed to. We had sharp spears and arrows─Zoan fashioned superb points. So far we had used them only for hunting, but we knew we could face danger from humans or animals. Now I was concerned about bears. We had heard of them for years, but had seen them only in paintings on hide. We knew they were huge, and were not certain our spears and arrows would be enough to defend us against their teeth and claws. Stronger means might be required. Zoan, the master carver, was planning to make me a tiny wooden bear for my pouch.

My pouch belonged to my mother’s father. I was still a child when he died, but I remember him, and that my mother cried for over a month and was quieter than usual always after. I never knew my grandmother, but my pouch holds a tiny dog carving that she carried, for safety from wolves. My grandfather asked my mother to give me his pouch when I came of age. That night as I lay awake, the others asleep, the spirits were on my mind. The rockslide that had changed our lives─how could it have been just an accident that it happened as we were preparing to leave? It had forced us to see Sigurd and Inge as allies. How would we have received them if we had been leaving? Because of it we were suddenly a group of four instead of two, planning to fight for our lives together, grateful for our meeting. I had felt the spirit of this place since the day we arrived, and now I saw we were not intended to leave.

We planned to start searching for a cave right away. Inge said bears often use caves for their winter sleep. In the morning I would remind Zoan about the carving.

2. Winter light

I woke to a roaring fire. Zoan had built it up before leaving to go hunting, as he often did in the early morning. The warmth was welcome; the dawn was windy and cold, with fast-moving clouds interrupted only briefly by sunshine. Sigurd brought tea to Inge. They now believed she had no broken bones. She was cheerful, but hobbled painfully, and wouldn’t be moving much any time soon. I admired her toughness. I had always seen myself as tough, but my life had been easier than hers.

Zoan returned with another rabbit. He was very cold, and huddled up to the fire gratefully; we all needed warmer clothes, and soon. Later in the day he would go hunting with Sigurd. Men don’t have to speak exactly the same language to enjoy hunting together, and we had seen deer everywhere. A deer would provide the hides we needed for clothing, and a welcome feast. We could cure a hide in ten days by repeatedly soaking it in seawater and drying it in the sun. It wasn’t too late in the year to hope for sunny weather.

Wearing my grandfather’s pouch made me safer from wolves, gave me a power over them.

I was grateful for that again last night, when wolves howled in the distance, more and more of them answering each other in the still night air. The wolves we had seen during the summer avoided us, but game was plentiful then─easy prey─and in winter the wolves’ hunger could overcome their fear. Even the dog figure in my pouch is no guarantee. We would need to keep a large fire burning and hope they would stay away. Our spears would be effective at close range, but that was not a fight we wanted to face. Once we moved to a cave, we wouldn’t have to think about wolves, who never go into caves. Bears do, but I will be far safer with the bear carving.

We had so many things to do! The most urgent were storing up food, locating a suitable cave, and making warm clothing. If we didn’t do all of those before the snow fell, nothing else would matter. We thought we could count on a month before the first big snowstorm, but not much more. We would have to sit down all together, take stock of our stores, weapons, food, and tools, and decide how to order the work.

***

Zoan and Sigurd killed a fine buck on their first hunt together. They bled him and gutted him where they killed him, and still found it hard to bring him home. His antlers and bones alone would help us, the antlers for handles for knives and weapons, the bone for blades and needles. We would eat fresh meat every day now, and would still end up drying most of it. We would make clothes from his hide, and use his sinew for wraps and ties. Almost nothing would go to waste. We would speak our gratitude to the buck, and sorrow for his death, but we were all happy with having a deer so quickly. Inge was particularly pleased. Working the hide didn’t require moving around, so she could do it while she recovered.

Zoan and Sigurd said it was good luck. I didn’t think so. While they were gone I had taken the tiny deer figure out of my pouch and held it close.

My father was the most successful hunter in the village, and as a little girl I was proud of him. He remained a fine hunter as he got older, but the stories about his hunting successes as a young man were known even in other villages. My mother always said she had thought him a good gamble, because she would never go hungry. When Zoan was small, he attached himself tightly to my father so he could learn to hunt. That was what first brought me and Zoan into close contact. I remember him barely able to draw his bow. Now, with him so strong and such a fine hunter himself, that seemed like another world. My father said Zoan was better than he himself had ever been.

***

Our progress was slow, but there were many days that I felt hopeful, when the sun warmed the earth and the sky was as blue as Inge and Sigurd’s eyes. The color in the trees was more intense every day, but the weather held and the days were fine. We stayed warm at night with a large fire, covering up with the hides we were accumulating. Zoan and Sigurd had killed two more deer, and had begun to think proudly of themselves as the best of hunters. Inge and I looked at each other and smiled. They were like small boys with their first bows and arrows, hunting small game in the bushes. We praised them and told them how brave and strong they were, for we, too, were happy. We had enough hides to make warm clothing for all of us, and nearly enough deer meat to last the winter, drying on racks we had built.

We soon saw that Sigurd had a talent for making tools. Zoan made fine points for spears and arrows, and blades for knives; Sigurd made elegant and useful handles of bone, antler, or wood, and fixed the points and blades to them. Working together, they made beautiful knives that felt good in our hands, and made easy work of cutting up the meat for drying and cutting the cured hides for sewing. Inge spent much of her time working hides, soaking them in salt water and laying them out in the sun to dry, held in place by rocks. When a hide was nearly ready, she pulled it back and forth across rocks to soften it. She left the hair on the hide, as their tradition dictated; at home we stripped the hair off. They said the hair made the hide warmer, but to me it looked strange, as if it still held the animal itself. I spent my days sewing the thick, tough hides, slow work even with Zoan’s fine bone needles. Until we had enough warm clothes, we would depend on a big fire at night, and on the colder days we kept the fire going all day.

We thanked the three deer that provided us with so many materials, and offered bits of meat up to our sky spirits in gratitude. A few nights later I dreamed we were visited by a large buck bearing food to us, their acknowledgment of our thanks.

***

Our late start finally caught up to us. We had food now, and hides, but few warm clothes, and daily it got colder and darker. Now it was threatening snow, and we hadn’t yet found a cave, even though Zoan and Sigurd had been hunting farther and farther afield for a month and a half, always looking. So they left at dawn, using unsewn deerhide wraps for warmth, to explore a distant row of hills. That was the first full day in a long time that I hadn’t been with Zoan, and I was restless and anxious. Inge was good company and apparently not afraid.

Late that afternoon we heard wolves, and the wind picked up, and as it began to get dark there was still no sign of the men. I was alarmed, even though I knew they could survive a night in the woods. They left us with a huge stack of firewood. We built the fire high and sat silently, eating dried deer meat, drinking tea, each of us anxious. Finally it was fully dark, and I had difficulty suppressing panic. Inge was quiet and said she was sure they would be safe. I took the man and woman from my pouch in my hand to bring Zoan to me. The wind rose still higher, and Zoan was away at night for the first time since we left home.

It was Zoan who woke me. I had not been aware of being asleep. He was extremely cold. As he built up the fire I realized that Sigurd was not with him. He said they were separated in the dark. They had found an area of many caves, which drew them farther and farther away until late afternoon, and decided to return at night only because they feared it would snow before morning. Inge was upset but repeated that Sigurd would be safe. I was torn between relief at seeing Zoan and concern for Sigurd. I couldn’t guess how long it would be until morning; clouds completely hid the sky. It was windy now, and colder, and finally we felt the first flakes of snow.

Zoan and I stayed close to Inge, for comfort as well as warmth. I would have been sick with fear if it were Zoan missing, but Inge seemed calm, and confident that Sigurd would return, perhaps even before morning. She seemed to feel it her duty to remain positive. She said simply that she and Sigurd had been through worse weather, that he was a master winter hunter who knew how to live through a snowstorm.

As it finally began to get light, the snow and wind abated. Ankle-deep snow covered the ground, and it was extremely cold. We had no winter footwear, something else we had planned to make from deer hide. Zoan improvised foot coverings out of rawhide thongs and unsewn hide, and set off to search for Sigurd. Inge and I built up the fire. I feared for Sigurd─and for our prospects of surviving the winter.

The morning was well advanced before the men appeared. Zoan had found Sigurd close by, injured and stiff with cold. He had stumbled and fallen, twisting an ankle. He had saved himself by huddling underneath a log, but was unable to move without Zoan’s help. As they arrived Sigurd smiled at Inge, who burst into tears and collapsed.

***

Life in our village was reasonably safe, but occasionally men were lost at sea, or to accident or illness, or simply disappeared. The loss of a man was always treated as a catastrophe. Fires burned all night throughout the village to provide a welcoming sight for the missing man, or for his spirit if he was dead. The elders met daily with the holy man to sing prayers for the man’s safe return. Every family spoke daily of him, and his family was showered with gifts of food. As a child I thought this tradition overdone, since it wasn’t my father who was lost, and I wondered why there was no such ritual when women died, a more common occurrence, usually due to childbirth. The loss of a woman or a child was treated as a personal tragedy for the family, not the whole village. When my grandfather died, every family in the village visited us to tell stories of my grandfather and his contribution to the village. After one of these visits I asked my mother what had happened when her mother died. She explained that the visits were for lost men, that the deaths of women were mourned within the family only. I thought this unfair.

After our frightening experience nearly losing Sigurd, who might have died had Zoan not found him, I saw this issue differently. Sigurd’s loss could have doomed us all, or Zoan’s, but mine or Inge’s would likely not. Men and women play different roles. Men are stronger and are needed for hunting and defense. Women do necessary work too, and bear children, without which there is no going on at all. But children make no difference if you starve to death.

***

The area of caves was a long half day’s walk from the cove if the ground was dry. The way climbed, sometimes steeply. The snow had stopped falling, but what was already on the ground would slow us down. Our meat and hides were so bulky and heavy that we couldn’t carry everything in one trip. We couldn’t leave the meat here alone; it wouldn’t last a day. Sigurd’s ankle was painful and swollen, but he was in good spirits because they had found caves. We decided to leave him alone, recovering and guarding the meat, while three of us made the first trip the next day. We would choose a cave, collect firewood, and spend the night. The following day Zoan would return to the cove for Sigurd and the rest of our meat and hides. Inge was not happy leaving Sigurd alone and injured. He could have difficulty defending himself, if the need arose. But if she didn’t come, I would need to stay alone in the cave while Zoan returned to the cove. She eventually agreed to go with us.

The next day dawned bright and clear but cold, with bitter gusts of wind. Travel would be slow. Zoan and I were well-rested, but feared that Inge would find the walking difficult, even though she was getting stronger. We tried to distribute the loads to make it easier for her, but she was stubbornly determined to do her share and more. We left the shelter soon after sunrise, leaving Sigurd tending a large fire. The cold was biting, but the wind had eased. Sigurd assured Inge that he would be fine, and in truth his ankle looked less swollen. We hiked steadily northward, climbing through the forest, following the course of the stream. Inge strained to keep up, and we soon reduced our pace for her. About midday, as we left the upper reaches of the forest and began climbing in earnest, we stopped to rest and eat. Inge was clearly close to exhaustion. Zoan pointed out the ridge where they found caves; he thought we could reach it by mid-afternoon. Inge ate, napped at length, then stood and gamely shouldered her load. Zoan shook his head, and we unloaded her almost completely, splitting the load between us. She was too tired to resist, but thanked us and said she would try to keep up. We moved slowly uphill. Inge was relieved by her lightened load but still near the end of her strength. As we crested a rise after a steep climb, she sat abruptly, breathing hard. Zoan and I looked at each other, fearing that she wouldn’t be able to go on. We offered her water and food, but I was surprised to see her smiling and pointing to the base of a cliff a short distance away. Zoan exclaimed in delight at the sight of a large cave opening in the cliff.

It was later than we planned, because of our long midday rest and slow pace. The sun was low in the sky. We removed our loads, and Inge stretched out on a large boulder to rest. Zoan trotted off happily to examine the cave. I was relieved, because I thought Inge could do no more, and wondered what we would have done if she hadn’t been able to reach the caves. But remembering her grey face on the day she first stumbled into our camp, clutching Sigurd for support, I realized that she could still have gone on now if she had to. I had always thought of myself as tough and strong. That day I realized Inge was stronger.

***

Strength and toughness were always important to me. I was the youngest of three sisters. My parents had wanted a boy each time, but fate disappointed them; after my difficult birth, my mother never again conceived. Their first child was a son, born in midwinter in terrible weather. He didn’t live to see the spring. I learned these family secrets from the village children, all of whom seemed to know more about me and my family than I did. I was crushed to learn my parents had hoped I would be a boy, and it became important to me to be strong and skilled and independent. I could run as fast as any of the boys my age, and could wrestle most of them down. When Zoan joined my father hunting, I often went along. The girls saw that I was not one of them and spurned me. The boys were envious of what I could do. By the time I was ten, Zoan was my one real friend. He always said we were equal as hunters, that he was stronger, but I was better at planning and solving problems. Since we joined we had been equals. We knew that when we had children, which I had so far delayed by good luck and the use of the right herbs and plants at the right time of month, we would be equal parents, and would treat our children equally, girls and boys. I had been so rude as to tell my mother and father so. My sisters were much more biddable than I. They were not rude and never rebelled, but were not equal to their men─both fine men, whom my sisters were lucky to have, but not for me. To Zoan, I said many times: only you. It became a way of telling him I wanted to be his mate for life. I never heard of another man like him.

***

Zoan returned all smiles. The entrance we had seen led only to a shallow cavern, but as he prepared to return disappointed, he slipped on loose rock and slid down a gravel slope, stopping at the entrance to a real cave, concealed by rocks and brush at the base of the cliff. Its low entrance led to a passageway that went far into the hill before it got fully dark, because openings in the roof above cast a dim light. We would be able to build fires! Zoan had seen no sign of bears. He was anxious to explore the dark part of the cave with torches, but knew that would have to wait. The hillside outside was a jumble of dead trees, large and small. We would not want for firewood. We were all pleased as we carried our loads to the cave entrance, which we couldn’t see until he led us to it.

Inside the cave was a different world. I had lived under the open sky since we left home. In our shelter, we could see everything around us; it was built of branches, solid on only one side, where we had built it against a rock wall. In the cave we were enclosed by rock. The area near the entrance was well lighted, but then the passageway became a slit in the rock, so narrow that we had to edge through it sideways, dragging our loads behind us. No bear could pass through that slit. Beyond it we entered a huge chamber, not quite completely dark, with dim light from openings far above. I was intimidated and anxious in that darkness; the country where Zoan and I grew up had no caves. After my eyes adjusted, and I could see well enough to move around the room without stumbling, I lost my fear. But I am a creature of the light, and I wasn’t sure I would ever feel at peace in a cave.

Inge had lived in a cave the previous winter, and to her the cave felt familiar and safe. It was much warmer than outside, and windless, although it always had a breath of fresh air. It was damp, but I knew a fire would help that. It seemed to restore Inge’s energy, and she was eager to start setting up our living quarters. I knew she would not be happy until Sigurd was here with us, but I was relieved to see her spirit revive. She now focused on how we might arrange ourselves and our things within the cave, pointing out places for private sleeping areas and for communal cooking and eating areas.

Zoan had been outside the cave gathering firewood. When he returned, his face was glowing with exertion and happiness. I could tell he loved the cave, and was pleased to be here for the winter , with the promise of safety and warmth and companionship. I suspected he was relieved that he would have help, and not be solely responsible for our care. He was strong and brave, but we were young, and had never had to survive a winter on our own. Being with people who knew the northern winters comforted us both.

We chose a place for the fire, against a wall and under a hole in the ceiling far above, and set about building a cooking hearth. We dragged the rocks from an enormous jumble of rocks of all sizes, where part of the cave apparently collapsed long ago. Some were so large it took all three of us to move them. Inge showed us how to build a hearth like the ones in her home village. We placed rocks in a half-circle around the fire, against the wall, and stacked flat rocks to make a solid structure, the largest rocks at the bottom. The finished hearth worked better than the one we had been so proud of in the cove, and was far more beautiful. It too had a shelf for our water bowls, so we could have warm water for tea, cooking, and washing, although here we had no stream, only melted snow. We carried the snow into the cave in hide bags.

Our first fire changed everything. It showed us the vast size of the room, big enough to hold a village. We always called it the big room afterward. The flickering firelight revealed beauty too, illuminating dark corners and mysterious structures─a balcony above, with delicate rock formations, like a row of children, sitting watching us, and beautiful formations on the back wall of the cave. Walking toward them I found my way blocked by a frightening pit, a huge crack reaching all the way across the cave floor. I couldn’t see the bottom. I tossed a small rock and heard it bounce down a long steep slope, finally landing with a hollow, echoing sound, as if it had entered another big chamber. The cave was full of mystery. I could understand Zoan’s desire to explore.

Zoan began dragging firewood into the entrance chamber, where we could reach it in bad weather without going outside. With an axe he could have hewn log seats, but for now we would have to sit on rocks, with deerhide covers. He said it was getting dark outside, and colder. Inside the cave we had lost track of the progress of the day. We ate dried deer meat, unpacked blankets, and bedded down for our first night in our new home. The next day would be long for Zoan. He hoped to reach the cove before midday, traveling downhill with almost no load. Returning with Sigurd and the rest of our possessions would be much slower. We all feared Sigurd’s ankle might not be up to the trip, but agreed it would not help to worry. Tomorrow would bring whatever it did; tonight we all needed sleep. Zoan planned to rise and depart early.

***

During the night I dreamt of spirits in the shape of bears and wolves. They came into the cave through the openings in the ceiling. I heard them talking to each other and to me, but couldn’t understand what they were saying. They roamed the cave, sniffing in all the corners and warming themselves by the fire. They weren’t threatening, but they seemed to want something from me, and I didn’t know what it was. I woke in the night to find the dark in the cave absolute but for the small fire still burning in our hearth. I had been so soundly asleep I didn’t know where I was. Then I remembered my dream. I took the small figures of the bear and the dog from my pouch and held them in my hands. I could feel their warmth and could almost feel them throbbing. I could hear the spirit of my Grandfather near me, telling me to hold tight to my talisman and listen to the beat of my heart. I wished he had taught me all the things he knew about the spirit world and the magic of animals. I was too young to care when he tried to give me things he knew I would need someday. Now his voice came to me though the long tunnel of memory─Be brave, he had said. Be brave, Quitana, and listen to your heart.

***

In the dim early morning light, as Zoan prepared to leave, I slipped a small wooden figure of a man into his pouch to protect him. He left us with a roaring fire. He said the trip could easily take two days, that we should stay close to the cave and not fear. We stood outside the entrance and watched him depart. The day was clear and bitter cold, a reminder of the huge difference the cave makes.

Inge and I tried to keep busy and not think about what might happen to the men. We worked while we waited; we had bone needles and prepared sinew, and two deer hides. The men would find warm clothes when they returned. We silently hoped the trip would take only one day. We remained cheerful all that day and even the next, staying inside the cave most of the time, knowing day from night and guessing the weather only by the dim light from the ceiling. We kept a large fire going, but could feel the dampness inside the cave when we weren’t close to it.

By the third day we had to admit our fears. We were rested and warm, but the men had been outside in the cold, especially difficult at night. They were surely exhausted by now, feeling the cold even more cruelly. By nightfall I found it hard to avoid panic, and I slept almost not at all. The fourth day was cold and grey, threatening snow, with strong, gusty winds. We went outside often in our anxiety, scanning the distance and the hillside for the men. It was past midday when we finally saw them coming out of the woods. Zoan had made a harness and was pulling a sledge made roughly of branches, carrying our hides and meat. Sigurd was hobbling alongside, carrying no load, and we learned later that he had ridden the sledge some of the way. They were struggling with the final climb. We ran to them with the new deerskin wraps. They were happy to see us but extremely cold; Sigurd was in good spirits despite his pain. Inge and I took the sledge between the two of us and pulled it up the hill, while Zoan helped Sigurd into the cave and to our fire. By the time we had everything inside the cave it was late afternoon, and snowing. Inge said she had not worried, but her tears of relief told another story.

Zoan would not admit he was exhausted, but I could read in his face that he would not have been able to go much farther. The cave remained comfortable, but snowfall had increased outside; from the entrance I could hear howling wind that reminded me of my dream of animal spirits. Now the ceiling openings they had used hinted at the storm outside, as wisps of snow drifted down toward our fire.

Our spirits were high as we talked that evening, despite the men’s exhaustion. Zoan and Sigurd had found shelter the first two nights, once under a large overhanging rock, where they built a fire, once within a thick copse where they hung hides from trees and huddled together for warmth. By last night they had left the woods and begun the climb. With no shelter, they had dug into a snowdrift to escape the wind, and covered up with every skin they had. They both laughed as they told the story.

***

The storm lasted three days. Inge and I concentrated on sewing hides, challenging work in dim light. During the short winter days the light from the overhead openings was barely enough to move around the cave without stumbling, and at night we had only the illumination of the firelight. On some days we dressed warmly and sat near the cave entrance to sew, but our hands were soon too stiff with cold to use a needle. Even so, we had sewn more than half the deer hides we cured. We would need them all, and more, to stay warm outside, hunting and gathering wood; it was colder every time we left the cave. We needed larger fires to keep the dampness and chill out of our living chamber, and to warm us when we came in half frozen.

Inge’s expertise with a needle was surprising in one so young. I thought I was good at sewing until I watched her. She took great care with her stitches but still always finished before me. At first the two of us alternated cooking days, but we soon realized we enjoyed cooking together, because we could talk, and we soon learned about each other’s lives. She was raised by loving grandparents who taught her how to take care of herself, but also how to love. Inge had a generous heart and was happiest doing things for other people. She cared for Sigurd with touching devotion, and after she came to know us she cared for us too. As she recovered from her hip injury, her smile became brighter and more frequent. She was a helpful and cheerful. companion, talented in many ways. When I looked at Inge I could see my mother, another wise woman of many skills, and my heart missed my people.

Life makes no promises, and by setting out on our own Zoan and I risked any number of mishaps. I would never have chosen to live in this stone enclosure, but now I appreciated its comfort. All of us knew we were lucky to be where we were, warm and with enough food, no longer having to fear the winter. We were grateful for each other’s friendship, and as we sat talking around the fire our shadows flickered like ghosts on the cave walls behind us.

3. Exploration

Cold clear weather followed the storm. We needed firewood, but the snow outside lay too deep for easy walking. We sank in at every step, sometimes into drifts, above the knees, needing help to get out, getting cold and wet, and quickly retreating to the cave and the fire.

Sigurd’s ankle was healing now. Gathering firewood was a big job for one man, and it was a relief to Zoan when Sigurd could again share the work. Now they were deep in conversation. They drew lines in the dirt on the cave floor, inspected our unused bits of hide, bone, and sinew, and went outside, returning with green branches, which they stripped of twigs and leaves. I saw everything they did but still had no idea what they had in mind. They tied branches and bone together, went outside to try something out, and returned for more drawing on the floor. Then they sat working at great length, stringing hide and sinew over what they had made. They were busy, heads together, from morning until late afternoon. Finally, as Inge and I were braiding strips of hide to use as belts and weapon carriers, we heard a clatter, and looked up to find the men standing next to us, smiling. They had bent split branches into long ovals that held a web of strips of hide and sinew, spaced at the edges by short pieces of bone. They had made four, and lashed them to their feet with strips of hide. At the mouth of the cave, we watched them step carefully out onto the snow. They did not sink in! The webs kept them on top of the snow, even on deep places we had learned to avoid. I didn’t understand why they worked, but they would obviously be useful.

They returned to cave without even wet feet, and wanted us to try the webs. The sensation of walking on the top of deep snow was new to me. Inge hugged Sigurd with a huge smile. Zoan and Sigurd had created something new. They spent the rest of the day outside, collecting firewood. That night they repaired their webs and changed a few details, but were pleased with the result. We asked them to give their webs a name. Snow feet, said Sigurd. Snow feet they became.

***

Our sleeping areas were alcoves along the wall of the big room, partly open. We chose small nooks to reduce drafts; the cave always had moving air, not quite a breeze. As much as I enjoyed the company of our friends, I always looked forward to nightfall, when Zoan and I could be alone. We built a small fire in our sleeping area and talked─about the day, about how we felt, our hopes, our love. We stopped thinking about our work to think about our life. Surprisingly, our conversations stayed private; the room was so big that it muffled voices, and quiet words didn’t carry far.

If I woke at night I was always surprised to find myself in a cave, and wondered if I could ever accept this place as home. Last summer, in the cove, each day had dawned brilliantly and warmed quickly. Morning was beautiful, a time of sparkling light. Zoan usually woke before I did, and I would often open my eyes to find him smiling at me. I knew he had been watching me sleep. We would dress quickly, then I would prepare root tea and we would break our fast to start the day. Here in the cave our routine was much different. Work outside waited until there was at least some sunlight. Inside, Inge and I prepared food and kept our living spaces in order. We worked on the remaining hides, making them into tunics and leg coverings; by now all four of us were warmly clad, with capes and hoods for outside work. Zoan and Sigurd spent their time working on tools and weapons, making new arrows, arrowheads, spear points, knives, and needles, and inspecting every weapon each day, against the time we would need them for hunting. When the weather was good, they had outside work─gathering firewood, and always hunting.

***

Except for the entry area and the big room, we still knew almost nothing of the cave, and although we didn't know it in those first days, we had seen only a tiny portion of its full extent. We knew there was more; the pit in the back part of our room─a giant crack in the floor, opening into a steep canyon─looked like it led to a lower level. Zoan badly wanted to explore the cave; we had simply been too busy. I had no such desire. I grew up in houses made of thatch and hide, where I could hear the wind and the rain. In the cave there was no no day or night, no weather, no sounds but our own and occasional dripping water. I sometimes felt trapped in that endless night, and went to the cave entrance just for a glimpse of outside world. Zoan liked the security and solidity of the cave as much as he liked its mystery. At bedtime he always patted the walls around us and smiled.

Zoan also wanted to climb the cave’s steep walls, including the high ledge at the back of the chamber, beyond the pit. I saw him look up there many times with curiosity and wonder. I had seen that look before. When we were traveling north in our boat we saw ranges of tall mountains, some with snow even in the summer months. We were both amazed, but it was Zoan who longed to see the mountains, climb them, look down on the land below─another desire I didn’t share. Our home land is gentle with small knolls and rolling hills. I loved being able to see across long distances with nothing but trees to obstruct the view. I didn’t need to be any higher. I liked to look up, not down.

The biggest barrier to exploring the cave was that most of it lay in total darkness, the darkest dark I had ever imagined,so dark that it made the dim light in our big room seem like a gentle twilight by comparison. To visit the dark part of the cave, we needed torches for light. Before we actually went to the lower level, I had imagined that we would be able to feel our way back if our torches all burned out, but I soon realized that returning without light would be impossible. The lower level was a spiderweb of twisty, interlocking passages going every which way, including up and down. And there were deep pits. We would have to have light.

Luckily, Sigurd had some experience with caves. We needed torches, he explained, of wood that would burn steadily. Exploring alone would be unsafe, because somebody who fell and was hurt when alone was likely to die. We needed long braided ropes to help us up and down the steepest slopes, such as the descent into the pit. And we needed to leave markers for ourselves as we walked into the cave, to help us find our way back out.

It took us days to get ready. Sigurd found torch wood not far from the entrance, and now when the men went out for firewood they also collected branches of torch wood, until we had a large stack of torches. Inge and I braided hide into rope. We now had enough hide for ropes; the men killed two more deer before we had been here half a month. We didn’t have saltwater available now for curing, but Sigurd showed us how to cure hide with ashes from the fire. It took longer and smelled terrible, and was more work than using ocean water, but it worked. After the two new hides were cured, we cut strips and braided three long ropes. The men also brought two rabbits, whose luxuriously soft skins we would add to our growing stack.

Finally the morning came that Zoan had been waiting for since we arrived. He and Sigurd took two ropes and a hide sling full of torches, and started down into the pit, each carrying a flaming torch. At the top they passed the rope around a large rock and tied it around itself. They then backed carefully down the steep slope, one at a time, and disappeared into the darkness. We could hear them talking for a short time, but soon their voices became muffled, then disappeared entirely. I was anxious, and I suspect Inge was as well.

They were back by mid-afternoon, excited. The torches had worked well. They had easily pulled themselves hand-over-hand back up the steep slope out of the pit. The rope would remain there. At the bottom of the pit, they had found a bewildering ant’s-nest of passages. They eventually found a way through it, leaving stacked rocks as markers, into an area that was lovely and mysterious in torchlight, with many large glistening stone formations. They were most excited about a running stream within the cave, with small waterfalls and a pleasant sound. They had drunk from a cold clear pool; it tasted pure. They couldn’t see how the water left the pool, but thought it flowed out through a passage beneath the surface. The stream in the cave would help us, because water supply had been one of our problems. We had been using hide bags to carry snow into the cave, where it melted. This was difficult when the snow surface was frozen, and we didn’t know where we would get our water when the snow melted in the spring. We would need a way to bring the steam water to this room, hauling it up from the pit. We would need larger hide bags for that.

I think we were the first visitors to this cave; the only footprints we found were our own. Now that we were established, the cave seemed less like a trap to me, although still not like my home. I was happy that Zoan wanted me to see the lower part of the cave, a place that has never had visitors and has never seen sunlight.

I found it hard to believe we had been in the cave only a little over a month. I kept track of passing days by making marks on a flat rock with burned sticks, with a circle around every five marks. A month was just about six circles. We saw the moon every night after Zoan left to get Sigurd, brand new then, a tiny crescent at first. Now it was a half moon that set in the middle of the night, a month and several days from when we arrived. The stars looked like we had gone beyond midwinter, but the days were not yet noticeably longer. I wished I had paid more attention to the elders, who knew so much about the moon and stars. Zoan knew far more than I. The stars and moon are important for knowing the best times for planting seeds; the weather alone is not enough because it can vary so much from year to year. And the count of days is important to me because we women have our own body calendars. Just then, however, the stars and moon were important because they told us we had a long winter still ahead of us.

***

The men killed still another deer. After we cured that hide, there was enough that we could all sleep on softer beds. We did the curing in the entry chamber, as usual. The smell normally stayed there, although there were times times when the air blew from the entrance into the cave, and the reek of curing hide fouled the normally sweet-smelling air of our sleeping area. The entry chamber also had times of fog, where the frigid outside air met the warm moist air of the cave. The fog never came into the big room, but it made the entry chamber look misty and unreal, especially if a ray of sunlight touched it. This sometimes happened on cold clear afternoons, because the entry chamber faced the midwinter sunset. Now that we had passed midwinter the sunset was finally shifting northward, but ever so slowly.

In their trip into the lower level of the cave, Zoan and Sigurd saw many passages they wanted to explore. Some went steeply upward, perhaps to the level of the balcony above us, so we could reach it without climbing the dangerous-looking wall at the back of the cave, as high as ten tall men. Cave exploration had to wait until all the essential work was done─hunting, gathering firewood, and curing and sewing hides. Even so, Zoan and Sigurd couldn’t escape the lure of exploration, and were talking about visiting the lower level again soon, with all four of us. I was not enthusiastic about this. We had so much to do! I was hoping to try making pots and dyes like those in my village, but hadn’t had time to begin. Nonetheless, Zoan and Sigurd were excited about the cave, and I would go with them on their next trip.

Inge seemed happier than she had been since we met her. One day as we were working on deerhides she started singing. I continued working so she wouldn’t realize how stunned I was to hear her song. I couldn’t understand the words, but I knew she was telling the story of her people. In our village, the old stories were not sung, but chanted to a rhythm. Sometimes one of the elders would start telling a story that had been told many times, one we all knew, and would go into a kind of trance. He would almost sound as though he were singing. Sometimes another elder would beat out the rhythm of the story, on a hollow log with a large stick. Inge’s song was beautiful. It floated through the large cavern, swirling around in the air and drifting back down to us. Her voice was high and pure, the voice of a young woman remembering the ways of her people, with a sadness and longing that made me want to cry. When I looked up, I saw tears on Inge’s face. I had never asked her about her family, but I knew they had been taken from her when she was young. She had never known her people as I knew mine.

Zoan and Sigurd had been outside gathering firewood. When they returned, Inge stopped singing. I think she had forgotten where she was. Sigurd had heard her, and went to comfort her and dry her tears, kind and protective toward her as always. As she had regained her health, she had leaned on him less, and was so determined to do her share of the work that she usually did far more.

I came to love Inge as a sister as we worked together, enjoying each other’s companionship, appreciating the easy talk and sharing of chores. It made my heart heavy to see the pain in her face as she remembered the tragedy in her young life. If I couldn’t take away her pain, I could at least try to make her life with us a source of happiness. Being here at the whim of fate did not mean we couldn’t fashion happy memories. We were warm and among friends, and our cave felt safe. How was I to understand, youngster as I was then, that nobody is safe in an insecure world?

4. Sneechen

On nice days─still cold, but sunny, with light winds─I enjoyed exploring on snow feet. I knew there were risks outside, so I stayed close to the cave. The outdoors renewed me. I was not meant to be closed away from the world. My eyes craved the trees and the sky, my ears the sound of the wind in the trees. I needed to get away from people as well. I loved my times alone, and as comfortable as the cave had become, it offered no solitude.

On these adventures I looked for plants I remembered my mother using to make dyes. I knew I wouldn’t find them in wintertime, but looking in likely places I sometimes found evidence of plants from last summer. We women are not satisfied making plain things, and it had always made my heart glad to mark the things I made as my own. When I was small I watched my mother painting on the inside of the hide walls of our house, telling stories of our family in ancient symbols. She made the dyes from forest plants; they were mostly red and black, our family’s traditional colors as far back as she knew. When I make dyes next summer, they will be red and black.

Inge would surely know other kinds of dye plants, and would choose colors from the traditions of her own family. We would make the cave our own, combining the stories of our pasts with stories of our life together. Perhaps the cave would show our grandchildren how we had expanded their world beyond our home villages, and given them them a new history.

Thinking of my mother reminded me that my parents would by now surely be mourning our loss. It would be hard for them to hope we could survive the winter. I hope I will see them again. Zoan and I had planned to return home at the end of the summer, even as we had increasingly hoped to settle elsewhere. We never wanted to leave our families forever. We thought we could travel to visit them occasionally, while making our lives in another place─although not, I should add, in a cave.

***

Alone outside the cave I was always aware of some risk─of being hurt, or encountering a bear or other people─but didn’t think there was any likelihood that anything threatening might actually occur. When something did happen, I was taken aback and unprepared. My mind went numb, and I didn’t fully comprehend what I saw.

I had gone to a dense grove of large trees at the bottom of the steep slope below the cave entrance. I loved the trees for their peacefulness and majesty. Now I saw that the grove had been used by other people. The remains of a fire were cold but recent─since the last snow, only three days before. It looked like there had been a fight; the shrubs were trampled and torn up. And a large dog lay nearby, apparently dead.

My first reaction was fear: whoever had been there might be still nearby, watching me. I shrank back behind a tree. The woods were completely still. Looking up the slope toward the cave, I wondered if our fire might cause smoke from the holes in the roof to give us away, lead attackers to us, place us in danger. I saw no smoke, nothing to suggest that our cave was nearby. I knew a large fire was burning in the cave. I was puzzled, but put that aside for later. I was quite sure whoever had been there was now gone, but still waited until I got so cold I simply had to move. Then I returned to the grove to investigate. It was nearly midday.

Looking around convinced me there had been a fight. I found a broken arrow, and saved it in the hopes that Zoan or Sigurd could tell who made it. A trail of blood led downhill from the grove. I realized that it might lead to an injured or dead man, that I should return to the cave and get the others, but I found myself compelled to follow it, at least for a little way. I started downhill from the grove, but the trail of blood was heavier as I walked, and I soon lost my nerve. I feared what lay at the end of it, and didn’t want to find it alone. So I turned back toward the cave. On the way, I stepped again into the grove to investigate the dog.

The dog was alive, but badly injured, unconscious, probably clubbed. Not a wolf; a large black dog with a woolly, heavy coat, like the dogs herders used near home. She was obviously a nursing mother. It didn’t take me long to find her puppies. There were three, no more than a day or two old. I thought they were dead, but turning them over I realized that one was still alive, although it wouldn’t last much longer. Rescuing this poor half-frozen puppy immediately became my first concern. I carried it to the unconscious mother dog and put it against her stomach, but the puppy was unable to nurse. So I put it under my cloak, next to my heart. The puppy felt like ice, but was breathing, if shallowly.

The puppy was still breathing when I brought it to the others, bringing an abrupt end to their discussion of a second exploration of the cave. While I quickly told my story, we put the puppy near the fire on a hide, moistening its mouth with water from our fingers. Inge crushed some rabbit meat in water. When the puppy warmed up and started sucking our wet fingers, Inge put her fingertip into the meat and then into the puppy’s mouth. The puppy sucked vigorously.

While Inge and I fussed over the puppy, Sigurd and Zoan quickly put on wraps and set out to examine the scene. They returned carrying the mother dog. It was a challenge to get a large limp dog down the entry slope and into the cave. We laid her near the fire. It looked as if she had been clubbed; her shoulder was cut and badly bruised, and her head was bloody. She was still unconscious, but when we put the pup to her nipples it knew what to do. We moistened the mother dog’s mouth as we had the pup’s.

We feared the mother dog would not recover, but hoped for the best. Our hopes where higher for the puppy, who seemed healthy enough and sucked vigorously. Investigation showed it was a she. We hoped she would live, but knew she was so small that she would probably die if her mother did. It would still be many days until she even opened her eyes.

We named her Sneechen, ‘Little Snow Creature’. We decided we would name the mother if she lived another day.

Gathered at the fire, we talked about what had happened. Something important had changed: people were near enough to be a danger to us. The arrow I had picked up was more like Sigurd’s than Zoan’s, but neither had seen exactly such an arrow before. The men were agitated, already getting ready for a trip outside that might involve a fight. They would carry bows, arrows and knives, and each had a spear. They left the cave in the early afternoon to trace the blood trail. The day was windless, sunny, and bitter cold. Inge and I comforted the puppy and kept her close to the mother. Eventually she dropped off to sleep.

***

Compared to Sigurd and Inge, Zoan and I grew up almost without violence. Most deaths in our village were from accident, illness, or childbirth. We knew everyone in the village, knew their parents and their children, and the rare killings were not just sad, but horrible. Meeting Sigurd and Inge, whose lives were shaped by violence, showed me how lucky we were to grow up without it. They were thrust together by vicious raids years ago and were fleeing them again when they met us. Sigurd was a warrior, always on guard, much more so than Zoan. Sigurd liked the narrow slit entrance to the big room right away, because it would be easy to defend. He was concerned that our smoke or our tracks could lead attackers to us. Until he and Zoan found the water in the lower part of the cave, he worried that an attacker could block us in the cave without access to water. He did not like my going out alone, and Inge never went out alone. And yet Sigurd, scarred veteran of many battles, was kind and caring toward Inge, and loyal and relaxed in our group of four. Zoan, gentle soul, was a fearsome fighter─I saw him fight a few times in the village─but he had never killed a man. Two more different men I could not imagine. But now, facing a fight, they reacted in exactly the same way. As they urgently gathered their gear, I couldn’t see the softness I loved in Zoan. I knew he was doing what he had to do, but just then he seemed like a stranger.

Now that violence had come to us I realized anew what a risk we took by leaving the village. Groups of people living together are safer for it. They work together in many ways─gathering food and hunting in groups, defending each other, caring for the women, children, and old people, and smaller ways as well. I saw that Zoan and I had been naive to believe we would not suffer violence traveling alone, and lucky that we had not. The elders had said as much, but our inexperience had led us to believe we could overcome anything. Sigurd’s and Inge’s story made me see the world through their eyes─see it as the violent place it is─and I too began to appreciate the isolation and defensibility of our cave.

***

Zoan and Sigurd were gone until almost nightfall. They arrived tired, cold, and hungry. Our fire and food must have been welcome sights, and the men were happy to be back. We heard their story as we ate.

I was unsurprised to learn they had found a dead man, apparently overcome by several attackers, who had taken his weapons and possessions. Zoan and Sigurd buried him where they found him. Sigurd spoke his prayers for the man’s spirit, and Zoan ours. I was glad I had not followed the trail of blood myself.

The dead man and his killers all left large tracks in the snow, longer and narrower than the tracks of our snow feet. Sigurd and Zoan followed the tracks southward down the slope, the direction from which they had all come. They concluded the killers had followed the dead man northward for quite some distance before attacking him. They clubbed the dog when the dog attacked them. They then returned to wherever they had come from. But where could that be? From our cove? Some other point on the coast? Did they have a boat? Or did they come from a village south of us that we didn’t know about? Had they come on a mission of vengeance and murder? Or did they attack simply because they found somebody alone? Most importantly, would they return?

The cave suddenly seemed riskier. Sigurd had been right: our tracks, or our smoke, could draw violence to us. We had thought ourselves isolated and safe. Now we saw that we weren’t secure, even in winter, with its difficult travel. Perhaps someday soon we would have a guard dog to warn us of intruders. Meanwhile we had no choice but to take turns watching the entrance. Our days of believing ourselves invulnerable had ended.

***

That night Zoan insisted on taking the first watch. He and Sigurd were to share the night watches, and Inge and I would arrange our work so that one of us could always be on watch during the day. We would have a dog to care for, perhaps two. Our days would be more full than ever, and the men would give up sleep to guard the cave. Thankfully, we had almost finished working on the deerhides. I knew our most important job was protecting the cave, but my mind was on caring for our foundlings. It hadn’t taken me long to fall in love with the puppy, and I hoped against hope that the mother dog would recover.

I awoke in the morning to the whining of the puppy, Zoan was soundly asleep beside me. Sigurd and Inge were just returning to the main room from the entryway, where he had spent the last part of the night. I found the puppy nursing and the mother dog feebly licking her, barely able to hold her head up. Inge prepared some deer meat and water. The mother dog licked the dish, but was so weak that we still feared for her life. I found it touching that she used most of her limited strength to lick the puppy. I wanted her to live. I started calling her Angel, victor over death.

After Zoan woke we talked about how our situation had changed. I would no longer go outside alone. We agreed that the killers were unlikely to return immediately, but might in the future. Our tracks in the snow made it obvious where the cave was. After the next snow, we would start obliterating our tracks behind us when we were near the cave. Once we started doing that, we thought it would be almost impossible for our cave to be discovered, because the opening was so well hidden.

Still concerned that our smoke might give us away, later that day Sigurd and Zoan laboriously climbed to the top of the cliff above the cave to search for the openings in our ceiling. From there a jumble of rock led upward toward the distant hilltop, hiding the openings to the cave. Inge and I kept a big fire going, but they could neither see smoke nor smell it. Later we learned that the smoke didn’t leave the cave through the ceiling at all. Air came in through those openings, and left the big room through a high passage leading back into the cave, carrying our smoke with it. We never discovered where it eventually left the cave, but we stopped worrying about smoke revealing our location.

At day’s end, as Zoan and I were starting outside, the mother dog lurched unsteadily to her feet, wanting to follow us. She had eaten now and then during the day but had not been on her feet before. We realized she simply needed to go outside because she didn’t want to foul our common area. We thought we would need to help her, but she walked with us, less unsteadily as she went. Outside, she sniffed the wind and the snow, found a spot to relieve herself, and came wagging back to us happy but obviously exhausted . We led her back into the cave, where she flopped gratefully beside the puppy, who had slept the entire time. The mother dog slept until nightfall, then ate her first substantial meal. The next morning she was gone when I woke. She returned shortly afterward; she had gone outside by herself.

She would live! We would have an Angel! My heart was lighter for it. We hoped she would relieve us of nighttime guard duty as soon as she was fully recovered. Sneechen was active and healthy, but still tiny. Angel’s eyes were yellow, like wolf eyes. Sneechen’s eyes surely would be as well .

***

In memory I associate the arrival of the dogs with my realization that I was pregnant. I had missed my monthly cycle, and felt unaccountably sick in the mornings. Even so, it was many days before I was sure. I had hoped it was not true. This was not the time to have a baby, and the cave was certainly not the place. In the village I would have been cared for by women who knew what to do. I had no idea what to do to take care of myself and the baby. I realized then what a protected life I had led. I had been more interested in going hunting with my father and Zoan than staying home listening to the women talk and helping with household chores.

In our village, new life was a cause for celebration. Many people had a part in the preparations. My mother helped with many birthings. Many village women served as midwives, and others sewed soft fleeces into wraps for the babies, while the craftsmen made cradles. If a new mother couldn’t suckle her babe, other new mothers would. Even children helped, by carrying messages. People gave generously of their time for new babies, knowing that they would be helped in turn. Here, I felt alone, and frightened. I wasn’t afraid of a tragic end; it was simply that I didn’t know what to do, or what to expect.

None of this made any difference. Even though this was not a good time, with us caring for ourselves and now two dogs, even though we were suddenly unsure of our safety, I was going to have a baby, and would have to figure out what to do and how to do it.

My first thought was to tell Zoan; he was already busy, and I wasn’t sure how he would feel. Then I realized that the baby would keep us from traveling next summer. The baby would be due in late summer, and until then I would be increasingly pregnant. We had not discussed what we would do when winter ended. Stay in the cave? Return home? Find someplace else with Sigurd and Inge? Now it seemed likely that we would still be in this cave next winter, with a baby to care for.

***

Once Angel began to move around she recovered quickly. She didn’t like living in the cave. She didn’t need the warmth; her black coat was thick and curly, almost like sheep’s wool. She tolerated the cave for our company. She was happiest in the middle of our group of four. During the night, when one of the men was in the entry chamber to keep watch, Angel joined him. In the daytime, when we were all in the big room, she joined us there. It wasn’t long before she spent the nights in the entrance chamber, watching the entrance, whether the men were there or not. One night when Zoan and Sigurd had been out hunting late, in bright moonlight and fresh snow, Inge and I were alarmed by a vicious-sounding growl from Angel. We went to the entry chamber to look into the moonlit night, but saw nothing. Angel continued to growl. Moments later we heard the men returning, brushing out their tracks as they came. Angel broke into a fury of barking. She wouldn’t be pacified until the men arrived, removed their hoods and cloaks and snow feet, and showed us their kill, another deer. We had a guard dog! After that we never worried about anybody sneaking up on us, and the men returned to sleeping all night. This is what finally won Sigurd over. He had been reserved in his affection for Angel, perhaps resenting the meat she ate. Once she took over guard duty, his warrior self succumbed to her charms, and he often gave her scraps of meat from his own meal.

***

Inge was excited about my pregnancy, and much of my anxiety evaporated when I heard that she had helped her midwife grandmother with many births. Zoan was excited too, but afraid as well. He said he’d be happy if only I would emerge healthy, and delighted with either a son or a daughter. Zoan had two older sisters, but the younger─his favorite─died in childbirth two years ago, and her baby as well. It was her first, and she was about my age. The pain of that loss reminded us that life makes no promises, and any of us might be gone tomorrow, without warning, that we mustn’t defer our lives. That’s one thing that led to our trip. The night I told him of the baby, Zoan sat outside the entrance in the full moon, in the cold, to carve a beautiful little wooden figure for my pouch, a mother and nursing baby. I was moved and happy, but I knew in my heart that this baby and I would both be fine─especially since Inge would be there to help.

Sneechen grew fast, and as soon as she didn’t need Angel all the time, Angel wanted to be with me. She was not young. Her muzzle was almost white, and her teeth were discolored and worn down. I knew she was an experienced mother, and I was convinced she knew I was pregnant. Sneechen’s coat would be woolly like Angel’s, and she looked like a tiny bear as she followed her mother ─ puppy-like , clumsily at first and then playfully energetic. How did we manage before we had these two friends? In the village we took dogs for granted. They were working dogs ─hunters, herders, guarders. They did not usually become close family members. Here, our numbers have suddenly gone from four to six, and the devoted big dog and her comical puppy, with her terribly sharp teeth and challenging yip, were welcome full members of our group.

5 . Discovering the familiar

Zoan and Sigurd were again discussing cave exploration. They wanted to go beyond the pool they had found on their first trip and discover where the stream emerged, and they wanted to explore the passages that led upward from the stream. They were unwilling to leave the entrance unguarded, and so planned two trips─one for Sigurd and Inge, one for Zoan and me. I was eager to see the cave, but anxious about climbing. So far I had hardly felt the pregnancy, except sometimes feeling sick in the morning, but high places made me feel dizzy and insecure, and I avoided them when I could . When I hunted with Zoan and my father, I followed them wherever they went and never held back. That’s how I learned I was afraid of heights.

Sigurd and Inge departed in the early morning. Angel became agitated, and as Zoan and I stood at the edge of the pit watching the two torches disappear into the darkness, she paced back and forth, whining. Sneechen wiggled and squirmed in my arms, wanting to join them. We had to tie her, or she would have been down the pit in an instant. Inge was finally fully recovered from her hip injury, and skipped from rock to rock like a mountain goat , much quicker than Sigurd. He had gone first, and as she descended we heard him growl at her from the bottom to slow down and take care, but she reached the bottom in half the time he had taken. I could see that Zoan was sorry to miss this trip. We listened to their sounds until we could no longer hear them, then went to the entrance, where storm winds were harrying dark grey clouds before them . In the distant southeast, toward the cove, we saw a hint of sunlight, then in an instant it was gone, blocked by falling snow. The wind was cold, and we returned to the cave, grateful once more for its protection. Angel was happy to be with us. Sneechen hated being tied up and chewed through her deerhide tie. I picked her up and talked to her, and she went to sleep in my arms as I was making another collar and lead. We had plenty of hide now, more than we needed.

Zoan and I sat by the fire as we had before many others, knees touching, heads together, silently enjoying each other’s company, lost in contemplation of our lives, our loving, the comfort of the cave, our first child, our new friends, our dogs, the danger of being attacked, the danger of bears. Our separation from home and family loomed larger in light of my pregnancy. I appreciated Zoan and our companions, but wished I could tell my mother, and wished I were home to have this baby. Eventually Zoan brought our bedding from our sleeping space and we slept by the fire. Both dogs slept with us.

I am in a huge airy space, roofed like a cave but sunny, warm, and dry, with large trees and a profuse and colorful garden of flowering shrubs, small flowering trees, large areas of wildflowers, and many birds and butterflies. I am alone. I realize acutely how much I miss the outdoors and the light. I weep, brokenhearted, for losing the part of this solid earth that I love most. Zoan appears, walking toward me from some distance away, carrying a small child─not an infant, but less than a year old. I am anxious to know whether he is bringing me a boy or a girl. As he approaches I see a beautiful laughing child, with curly dark hair and dark eyes, but about boy or girl I can’t tell. I know I have seen a sign. I know now it isn’t time for me to know about boy or girl, and that all will be well. I am euphoric.

When we woke, Zoan quietly asked me the questions uppermost in his mind since he learned I was pregnant, about the dangers of childbirth, whether I was afraid, what I expected to happen. I laughed, not at his concerns, but that he would ask such a question when I had just awakened from a dream of prophesy. I then related the entire dream, and until this day have not forgotten even one detail.

We sat quietly for some time. Zoan finally said the dream was the best we could hope for. I could see that he was encouraged and relieved. Then he stood in the entrance and looked outside, and I realized he was weeping.

***

Sigurd and Inge navigated the maze at the bottom of the pit, guided by the rock piles Sigurd and Zoan had placed there, and by Sigurd’s map. Sigurd had a remarkable memory, and after their previous trip had drawn a map of the cave as he remembered it, first in the dirt on the cave floor, then scratched onto a piece of hide. Inge told me every twisting passage and every rock stack was exactly as he had remembered it. When they came to the stream and the pool, Inge felt a powerful spirit presence. Sigurd’s map showed four upward-slanting passages; they chose one and started climbing it. Eventually they explored two climbing passages. Each led to a beautiful area, with spectacular rock formations; they said it was most beautiful cave they had seen. In most places they could walk; sometimes they had to crawl. In each of their two side-trips they turned around because they were running low on torches; they had stored most of their torches by the stream. They returned about nightfall, exhausted. They had walked and crawled all day, mostly through new parts of the cave, places that had never seen people before, where their torch light was the first light, like at the creation of the world, when the sun and moon first appeared. Everywhere they went they encountered yet more branching passages begging for exploration. This cave is vast, said Inge, much bigger than we had imagined, and has an ancient spirit of great power. Angel came to them and cried with great joy at their return, and Sneechen chewed on Sigurd’s leggings.

T he next day I told Inge about my dream. She said dreams like mine sometimes occur among her people, that her grandmother told her pregnant women are unusually sensitive to the spirits of the mountain areas, and their prophetic dreams are usually borne out in fact. She said my dream was a blessing, and asked if she could tell Sigurd. I agreed, and learned later from her that Sigurd was concerned about my pregnancy, worried about an extra person to feed and protect, completely helpless. I wasn’t surprised, or offended. From a practical standpoint he was right. Soon enough I would have to cut down on my work level, forcing the others to do more. All of us would lose sleep when the baby cried. I was sure Sigurd recognized that I had proved myself, proved my strength and desire to contribute, and that he knew I would do my best with the baby. I hoped he would eventually be glad at the thought of a new life─a good omen in any society.

Pregnancy changed my view of everything. To Zoan and me, the trip north had been a lifetime adventure, and once we decided on it we were as excited as children. Building our shelter at the cove, setting up housekeeping together out of sight of the village, where joining and starting a family meant taking on obligations to the the whole community, felt delicious and defiant. We had joined much younger than most couples, and had not been ready to give up being children. I would do it the same way again, but now everything was more serious, and we could no longer think just of ourselves. Long before the baby was born, our lives were already no longer just our own. We had duties to our community, just as we would have at home. I smiled at that. You cannot run from adulthood.

***

As much as I wanted to see the rest of the cave, I dreaded the descent into the pit. Clinging to the rope and walking backward down a steep incline did not appeal to me. When it occurred, it didn’t bother me, because─following Zoan’s instructions─I never looked down. Zoan went first and was waiting for me at the bottom. I saw his torch before I backed off the lip at the top, then didn’t look that way again until I felt his arms around me when I reached the bottom. I was surprised it was over so quickly. Looking upward, I could see the pit edge we had just come from, dimly illuminated by one of the ceiling holes far, far above.

I was carrying a hide sling bag with 20 long torches, more than enough for a full day, and food for both of us. Zoan had more torches, extra rope and a knife, his flint and fire rock, and a water bag. I was carrying Sigurd’s map. I felt like an adventurer in an old tale, setting out to conquer fearsome creatures. The single passage that led out of the bottom of the pit promptly split into three passages in different directions. Each of those split further, into a bewildering tangle of passages that diverged, rejoined, and diverged again. Passages crossed over and under each other, turned back on themselves, ended abruptly at solid walls. Some looped back to the passages they came from. Others opened downward into deep pits. We followed the trail of stacked rocks left by Sigurd and Zoan, but even so I was soon disoriented, and my feeling of adventure was replaced by anxiety. I was relieved to escape into a huge passageway, with roof and walls of enormous slabs of rock─a downwardly sloping canyon so long that ahead of us we saw only darkness. We walked its length, torch light casting flickering shadows on the rock, passing through the mountain’s very foundations, then climbed over a jumble of big boulders into another passage.

From the first glimpse I knew this enormous chamber was a place I would never forget.

We had entered what afterward we called the spirit chamber, a dreamlike landscape of water and rock. The stream wound between sparkling ceiling-high columns, with polished floor surfaces and sparkling jewels in the walls. The floor sloped slightly downward; the stream was noisy with white water and small waterfalls. The columns had a presence, like guardians watching over us. I have never felt such spirit presence as in that world of glistening rock. I knew I had entered a holy place of power.

Sigurd’s distinctive large footprints in shallow mud looked like they were fresh, not a month old. We walked beside the stream on glistening, smoothly polished rainbow rock. The walls were decorated galleries of intricate rock formations, like the ledge above our camp, but smaller, like dwellings for tiny spirits who spend the lives in the dark.

We sat, our knees touching. Zoan prepared tinder and flint for lighting a torch, then extinguished our torches. In total darkness, I realized how much we had been intruding by bringing light here. I closed my eyes to listen to the stream, although it made no difference to what I saw. The large chamber we lived in had not prepared me for the emotional impact of this sacred cavern. I felt completely protected, surrounded by a vast presence.

Until I came here I would have been able to turn my back on this area and return home without regret. Now I wanted to bring my baby here. My spirit responded to this chamber, and I could no longer abide the idea of leaving it forever. We sat for a long time in the soft darkness, touching, hearing the stream, feeling the power of spirit all around us. When I finally opened my eyes, I felt renewed.

Looking around, I was startled to see a faint glow at the far end of the chamber.

***

Zoan and Sigurd had had not extinguished their torches, and so hadn’t realized that daylight penetrated feebly here. Once Zoan lighted our torches we could no longer see the glow, but at the end of the chamber we saw a cliff of solid rock, with a jumble of large rocks in front of it; the stream plunged into them and disappeared. The light had come from high in the rocks. We began to climb. As we topped the highest rock in the pile, we saw the upper end of a tunnel-like passage, sloping downward into a dimly lighted space. Crawling down it, we emerged into another large chamber, as big as our big sleeping room. It lacked the huge columns and power of the spirit chamber. The stream emerged from the wall to our left. We wouldn’t need the torches here; the light was brighter than in out sleeping room, coming from an entrance at the far end that appeared to lead into bright daylight. We looked at each other in astonishment and extinguished our torches. We had found another entrance to the cave!

When we reached the brightly-lighted entrance we saw that it led not to a hillside but to a well-lighted enormous cavern with a high ceiling and a huge mouth at the far end. Seeing sunlight streaming in from the right, I realized with delight that the chamber faced east. We had been moving in a straight line through three huge chambers, always eastward! We had passed completely under the mountaintop. The shaded daylight in the cavern looked wonderful to me. After spending all morning seeing nothing brighter than our torches, we found the sunlight blinding, almost painful.

We stooped low to pass through the entrance opening, and found ourselves in frigid winter. The stream passed through the same entrance we had, but was frozen here, at least at the surface. Because the water had been flowing vigously in the spirit chamber, we guessed that it was still flowing here, under the ice. We weren’t dressed for the cold, and retreated to the warm cave, where we found a place to rest and eat beside the stream. Then we headed back outside to explore briefly, heading toward the huge cavern mouth, walking fast to stay warm. We passed into the sunlight, and followed the stream through a snow-covered area of shrubs and trees to a cliff edge overlooking a river far below. The ledge frightened me, and I didn’t come too close, but the view eastward across the river was spectacular. Far away, we could see hills dropping away to the distant sea. In summer the stream would drop off the cliff as a waterfall. We were on a bench above the river, a huge shelf in the rock, below high sheer cliffs towering far above us. Just south of us the bench ended abruptly against the cliff, but it extended far to the north before meeting the high cliff there. Here, the bench was narrow; we were only a short walk from the cavern mouth. The bench was much wider north of us, and to walk its entire length would have taken us half the afternoon.

We were too cold to stay outside any longer, and turned reluctantly back toward the warmth of the cave, and our long trek to our camp. We startled two deer at the cavern mouth, and watching them bound away I looked about me for a moment more before returning to the cave, relishing the sunlight and blue sky, the rugged beauty of the cavern mouth and the cliff above it. Then I stopped in shocked astonishment. Despite its snow cover, despite the lack of flowers and birds and butterflies, I recognized what I saw as the terrain of my dream.

6 . Healing light

Sigurd was a serious man who didn’t often express excitement, but when we told him how the eastern entrance led to a large benchland that seemed to be accessible only through the cave, he jumped to his feet in delight, the only time I had seen him do such a thing. He had always dreamed of finding the perfect place, he said, isolated and defensible, with water and wood and game. In our description of the benchland he imagined he’d found it.

We were talking to Sigurd and Inge as we ate our evening meal. Inge smiled at Sigurd’s excitement, but she was more interested that I had recognized the scene from my dream, and in what I had felt in the spirit chamber. Afterward she and I talked while the men worked on Sigurd’s map, adding the chamber we had found east of the spirit chamber, and the entry cavern east of that. They even roughly sketched the benchland and the river below.

Inge told me she knew the coastline we had seen to the east. She and Sigurd had followed it for months of their southward journey before climbing westward into the mountains, where they were camped, not far from our cave, when they were caught by the storm on the night of the rockslide in the cove. They had no shelter, and didn’t sleep at all. They set out at first light, the storm still raging at their altitude. Walking though cold wind and rain, she slipped on wet ground and fell hard on her hip. She insisted she could go on, and tried to hide her pain. They both knew that if they stopped she could die of exhaustion and chill. Sigurd removed her pack and added it to his own. The storm abated as they descended the foothills, but she got weaker as the day went on, struggling to keep her balance as they slipped and slid across wet rocks and shale. After they saw our fire, Sigurd held her arm to keep her on her feet. By the time they reached us she was beyond the end of her strength. She didn’t remember arriving in our camp.

Sigurd and Inge had been walking south while Zoan and I had been sailing north, all of us headed to our meeting at the cove─two coastal journeys with a common end point. My mother believed that nothing happens by accident, and I remember her father, whose pouch I wear, telling me the same thing. My life had changed in the past months, and now I saw the likeness of the two journeys, and our meeting they led to, as a sign that I was on the right path.

Inge had walked on a badly injured hip, all the way from near here to the cove. Once again I admired her courage and grit, and wondered whether I could have done as well. I also saw once again how lucky the four of us were. Inge finally added, in a low voice, that she would always be grateful for the good fortune of finding us. She fell silent, and I saw tears in her eyes. Angel had spent this time curled up at my feet, while Sneechen played around her. As our conversation ended, Angel moved to where Inge sat and laid her huge head on Inge’s foot.

***

Since I discovered the killing I had been anxious about our vulnerability to attack. I saw that anxiety clearly now in the light cast by its sudden absence: the prospect of moving to the east entrance made me light-headed with relief, like waking from a nightmare. The pit would make it all but impossible for anybody to follow us. We would have year-round running water and a protected outside area for summer use. The chamber with the entrance, just downstream from the spirit chamber, would be an ideal site. It was like our current sleeping chamber, but brighter, with daytime twilight. I would not have slept easily in the spirit chamber. Its huge watch-columns and spirit power didn’t feel threatening, but I felt that power keenly. Sleeping there would be like sleeping underneath a huge overhanging rock. Knowing it probably wouldn’t fall might not give me peace of mind.

The men were enthusiastic too, and we all agreed that if we moved it should be soon, before my pregnancy made it hard for me to get around. Sigurd wanted to see it all for himself before he made up his mind, although he expected to like it. He and Inge set out the next day to explore the bench, taking warm clothing and food for an overnight stay outside.

Zoan and I had the next two days to ourselves, now a rare pleasure. We spent the time dividing our stores into bundles and planning the mov e, talking as we worked. We would need several trips to move four people and two dogs, with all our meat, hide, clothes, weapons, and tools. Sigurd had suggested we carry the dogs into the pit in hide slings, and offered to carry Angel, a heavy load. Zoan appreciated Sigurd more daily, and although Sigurd didn’t need approval, he was pleased when one of his ideas worked out. Zoan and Sigurd worked well together and had developed an easy friendship, more like brothers than men from different worlds. My friendship with Inge was more complex. I was older, but in many ways she had more experience, and had seen more hardship and tragedy in her young life than most people do in a lifetime. She hid her sadness, probably even from Sigurd, but sometimes needed an older sister to comfort her, although we usually treated each other as equals. Inge was proudly strong and independent. She often laughed away thanks for something she had done, and could not understand the depth of my gratitude that she had the experience to act as my midwife.

That night Zoan and I pulled our sleeping pallets to the fire and curled up there with the puppy. Angel eventually joined us, although she had lain disconsolately at the edge of the pit all day after Sigurd and Inge left, waiting for their return. We rubbed her ears and talked softly to her, while Sneechen darted happily in and out through her legs. Angel was not yet at ease, but accepted our reassurance, and finally curled up beside us. Sneechen snuggled near her mother and fell asleep in an instant.

Zoan wanted me to make only a single trip, though I felt as strong as ever. He and I would take the dogs on the first trip. Once they were safely down the pit we would put Sneechen on a lead to keep her from wandering off. Angel would follow us wherever we went. At the new site, I would stay with the dogs while Zoan returned for another load. He would eventually carry several. On the last one he planned to pull the rope down into the pit and bring it with him; leaving it dangling invitingly down the pit wall could lead others to us. To climb the pit wall when we returned, he had picked a simpler climbing route, after much inspection. He would have to climb without a torch, because he would need both hands, so that climb would have to be done in daytime, when the pit was dimly lighted. He marked the bottom of the the easier climb with a rock stack.

Zoan had learned to climb young, hunting with my father, who shared my distaste for climbing and high places. He would shake his head when he told me of what Zoan did, but Zoan’s ability to scale walls was valuable on a hunting trip. Once Zoan had climbed a wall, he would loop a rope around a tree or rock at the top so my father could climb it. This worked so well that my father told other hunters about it, and Zoan taught his techniques to several other boys. They even climbed for fun, something nobody in our village had done before, seeking out steep faces and climbing them for practice and amusement. Zoan was never hurt climbing, although two boys who had learned from him fell and were badly hurt. The villagers suspected Zoan was not sound of mind. I thought he was the man I wanted to be the father of my children.

***

Sigurd and Inge planned to explore the entire bench, and we didn’t expect them back before nightfall. We were all restless─Angel fretting because our group was incomplete, Zoan and I wondering what Inge and Sigurd had found, and wishing we were with them. We didn’t relax until they returned in the late evening. They were tired, pleased with what they had found, and excited about moving. They had walked the length of the bench twice, first along the base of the cliff, all the way to the north end, then southward along the cliff’s edge, overlooking the river. North of the cave entrance, at the base of the cliff, they found a seep spring and big pool, not completely frozen now, a popular watering spot for game. They camped there, and by that night’s full moon saw more deer at that pool than they would have seen in half a month near the western entrance. In the morning they found the trail the deer used to descend to the bench from the cliff top─a narrow rocky ledge, perfect for deer but impossible for anything less agile, including people and bears. The outer edge of the bench dropped precipitously toward the river along its entire length. Sigurd thought the bench an ideal fortress, completely secure. They found several forested areas along the bench, with dead trees lying everywhere. We would have water, food, firewood, and security. We would also have plenty of space; the bench was larger than Zoan and I had guessed. Their exploration took most of the day. It was late afternoon before they started back.

***

Our move began well. Passing through the spirit chamber, I was once again acutely aware of its presence, and went beyond it only reluctantly, knowing that I must return there soon. In the stream chamber I waited with the dogs as planned, arranging our goods, tying both dogs until Zoan was well on his way back. I laid out our sleeping pallet not far from the entrance, and lay down to rest. Angel lay near me. Sneechen scampered around us both.

I was startled out of a light nap by a scream, obviously Inge’s, then silence. The scream came from the spirit chamber. I didn’t know what to do. I knew she wouldn’t be alone. I went to the tunnel leading upward to the stream chamber and found Sigurd sliding down the tunnel feet first on his back, with Inge in his arms. They were both covered in blood. Zoan was right behind them. Sigurd looked white with panic. Inge was unconscious but breathing. Zoan put down his load of hides and started to lay them out for her, but I insisted they carry her to the sleeping pallet I had made, because it was close to the entrance and had good light. Once they laid her there I saw an ugly gash above her right ear. Sigurd said she had slipped on one of the many glistening rocks that banked the stream in the spirit chamber. Her heavy load pulled her off balance. She fell and hit her head on a projecting sharp rock.

I had tended many wounds, and was afraid for Inge; people die so easily of head wounds. I pressed a hide against her cut to stop the blood. Sigurd covered her, then went outside for firewood. Zoan brought water to wash her face and comforted Angel, who was beside herself with worry. Even Sneechen was sobered. Sigurd and Zoan quickly built a fire, and we made Inge as warm and clean and comfortable as we could.

***

Inge had told me that Sigurd’s greatest fear was losing her, as he almost had when he rescued her. Sigurd had been wounded and bleeding. She had been young and terrified and unable to help him, but he somehow found the strength to snatch her up and bludgeon the two men attacking her, killing one and driving off the other. They hid together for several days with nothing to eat, while the raiders searched for them. Sigurd killed a rabbit, and they avoided starvation, but he was wounded and weak. Eventually they found a safe place to camp. She tended his wounds and helped him recover. Sigurd’s family had been killed in a similar raid years before, when Sigurd was a child; he had seen his parents and his brother and sister die. He had survived since then by becoming a fearless and feared warrior, but his heart had remained closed and locked until he rescued Inge. Her tenderness with him won him back from the brink; he could have been a heartless warrior for the rest of his life. From then on he provided for her needs and loved her as his daughter. That changed two years ago when she became his mate, something he had never expected. Since then he had softened beyond her hopes. But he still woke up at night trembling with fear that something might have happened to her.

***

Inge’s eyes flickered open later that night, as Sigurd was washing her face. She was badly hurt and not quite herself, but Sigurd began to relax when their eyes met and they smiled at each other. Inge wanted to sit up, but was too dizzy, and couldn’t see clearly out of her right eye. So she lay back while I helped her sip hot tea. Sigurd went outside to be alone. I suspected he was offering relieved thanks to his gods, with a prayer for Inge’s recovery.

Sigurd and Zoan retrieved the rest of our belongings the next day. We had planned for two trips to carry the last four bundles, but they did it in one. Sigurd lowered each bundle to Zoan, at the bottom of the pit. Then they worked together to erase the evidence of our camp, even disassembling our cooking hearth and the fire rings by the bedsites. The residue from our fires remained, but only a close inspection would find them. Finally they descended the pit for the last time. Zoan pulled the rope down, and the two men ridiculously overloaded themselves for the final trip.

Zoan said that climbing and descending the pit reminded him of how effective it would be at cutting off access from the western entrance to our new quarters. With the eastern entrance protected by cliffs above and below the bench, we now felt secure for the first time since I had discovered the killing. We were all more relaxed but Angel, who did not consider her duties as our protector to be ended. She continued to lie at the entrance to the stream chamber every night as we slept, instantly alert at any noise. I wondered whether Angel ever slept when we did.

Inge slept all night and most of the next day. When Sigurd returned, he cradled her in his arms and fed her. She didn’t remember the accident. We had to tell her again and again what had happened. She had an headache and was dizzy and tired, but her color was better, and she ate a little. Sigurd assured us that she was strong and would recover quickly, but the look of concern on his face didn’t match his words. Angel spent most of the day at Inge’s side. Sneechen discovered the stream, and was in and out of it many times. Zoan and Sigurd collected firewood, and I stayed with Inge. We talked softly from time to time, but mostly she slept. Because Inge might need help anytime, we continued to sleep near the fire, and didn’t yet set up separate sleeping areas. We were all tired from the move and the stress of Inge’s injury. I was glad we had time for rest and healing.

It took me some time to get used to the new area. The old camp had been dead silent and totally dark at night. Now we lived our lives to the sound of the stream. The air smelled different here, because we occasionally got a whiff of the outside world. The biggest difference─the first thing I noticed on waking─was the light; we no longer lived in perpetual darkness. I felt as dislocated as when we first moved into the cave. The dogs had been upset by the move and were glad to have us stay in one place, but Angel was concerned about Inge. She would nudge Inge’s hand, knowing Inge would scratch her ears if she were awake. If Inge didn’t, Angel would lie next to her until she opened her eyes, and only then go off to make her rounds of the chamber. Both dogs loved running in the open air, and we occasionally took them outside onto the bench. We knew Angel was a herding dog, trained not to chase game, but we were concerned that Sneechen might discourage deer from coming to the bench. We needn’t have worried; the second time the dogs were outside, they startled two deer. Sneechen would have immediately given chase, but Angel headed her off with a snarl.

***

A half month after Inge’s injury, when I had privately despaired of her recovering fully, she spoke to me while Sigurd and Zoan were hunting. She had been afraid she might die, not because she feared death but because she didn’t want to leave Sigurd alone. Her memories of the days after the accident were vague, but she clearly remembered Sigurd’s fright. By now she realized she was nearly recovered, and was grateful. She thanked me for helping take care of her, but what she really wanted to talk about was prophesies. We put on cloaks and walked outside. The day was sunny and the cold had lost its wintertime bite. Against the rocky wall above the bench, the sun had exposed bare ground and brought plants out in bud. We sat on a downed tree there and talked. When she was still insensible, she said, she had seen a vision, of the kind people sometimes see when they almost die. She had seen her grandmother, who told her she would not die, but would recover and bring children and peace to this place. Later she remembered my dream. To her, the two were related. Both involved this place, and both came from the spirit presence she had felt in the spirit chamber. She asked whether I had not felt it also, and nodded when I said I had. This is the place I must live, she said, this place where I almost died. From our seat on the log we looked out over the river and the distant hills to the sea, and the dogs slept at our feet in the sun.

***

The days were longer now, and we spent more time on the benchland enjoying the warmth of the sun. Inge’s head injury still sometimes left her with days of pain. I didn’t have the plants and herbs my mother used for pain like Inge’s; all I could do was brew root tea and make her comfortable. On those days Inge preferred the darkness of the cave; bright sun hurt her eyes and worsened her pain. Meanwhile I needed more and more to be outside. I loved walking along the bench near the base of the cliff. Inge and I spent less time together as a result. S he was conserving her energy so she could heal. I was feeling the energy of new life inside my body.

One day outside I walked farther than usual. It was warm with a light breeze, and I saw tiny leaf buds on the bare branches. From season to season it is easy to forget the thrill of seeing new life come to the earth. It was then, standing in the forest thinking about how the bench would look in the fullness of summer, that I felt the first stirrings of the life in my womb, like a small flutter of wings, easy to miss unless you’re paying attention. My hands flew to my stomach, wanting to feel it again. I waited, and soon it was there─so small, but distinct, and I knew what it was to be a mother.

The bench was as open to the world as the cave was closed in. Standing near the edge where the bench dropped to the river─I could not force my body closer than about one full step back─I could see the longest view of my life, to the distant seashore. Where Zoan and I grew up the hills were not nearly as high as the benchland. The views over the sea were lovely there, but with no landmarks. Here the hills and distant shoreline gave the view scale. Sunrise from the bench was spectacular, the sun rising slowly out of sea mists to blaze over the hills, skimming the bench, lighting the cavern, sometimes even shining through the entrance into our stream chamber, revealing it to be a beautiful place in its own right. We began to think of the stream chamber as the sunrise chamber. Its entrance was wreathed in fog on cold mornings─the nights were still very cold─where the warmer moist air of the cave met the frigid outside air. In those springtime sunrises the entering sunbeams lighted the fog, creating glowing shafts and rays of light. To me and Inge these seemed further work of the spirit of the place. At sunset, the growing dark crept out of the sea from the east, eventually obscuring the coastline, then the hills. The rise of the full moon was also beautiful, as was the view from the bench in moonlight. I was sorry I would never show this place to my mother, but it seemed to me the perfect place to raise a child, free from attack. We would need a way to keep our child away from the cliff edge. Zoan planned to build a log barricade. He would have plenty of time. The days of a walking child were still more than a year away.

Inge continue to recover, but slowly, and I feared she might never return to the active young self I had seen skipping goat-like down the wall of the pit. Another half month had passed, and Zoan and I were talking as we prepared to sleep. Sigurd and Inge were outside on the bench, where they planned to sleep that night to see the midnight rise of the last half moon. It was just fully dark, long before moonrise, when Inge burst into the cave in great excitement, carrying a torch for light. I hadn’t seen her move so quickly since she had been hurt, and was glad for her. Angel and Sneechen, who had been outside also, came barking joyously into the cave, excited by the unaccustomed nighttime activity. Inge urged us to get warm cloaks and join them outside, that they had something to show us. The three of us found our way through the entrance using her torch. It was still totally dark, but in the sky outside the cavern mouth was the most extraordinary sight of my lifetime. As we walked toward the cavern mouth I saw that the sky was alight in huge curtains of iridescent colors, slowly shifting and changing color. It was not of this world. I would have been frightened if Inge hadn’t been so excited. These were the northern lights, she told us. They hadn’t seen them since meeting us. but in the north they had seen them often.

It has been many years now, but I still vividly remember that first sight of the northern lights.

Watching them was deeply moving. We sat outside transfixed until they were dimmed by the rising moon. Returning to the cave and sleep, I could still see them when I closed my eyes. And something about those soaring veils of light─perhaps their familiarity─gave Inge the push she needed to recover. They infused her with energy and a vitality I hadn’t seen in her before. She got up early each day and immediately went outside to walk in the early morning mist. Recognizing that this place was where she belonged filled her with determination to make it a real home. Like my wonderful dream, and Inge’s vision, the northern lights were a sign of the spirit of this place, a good omen for the birth of a healthy baby.

***

Knowing they were leaving their homeland permanently, Inge and Sigurd had brought seeds of fruits, vegetables, and grains, hoping to find a place they could settle. Inge was eager to plant a garden. The four of us knew four different ways of growing things, plant lore from our elders. With the snow now almost gone and the earth soft enough to dig in, Inge laid out a plot not far from the cave entrance, near the cliff edge. It got good sun until mid-afternoon, and was normally protected from wind. Zoan and Sigurd made bone digging tools, something we had not needed before, and would turn the soil for us. I was sorry we hadn’t brought our own store of seeds, and resolved to correct that if I ever had the chance. I admired Sigurd and Inge for protecting their seeds even when they were in their desperate fight with the storm, when they came to the cove.

I soon found a favorite spot on the benchland, almost straight out from the cavern mouth, most of the way to the cliff edge where it dropped to the river. If I looked east, I looked out over the distant shoreline, with ridge after diminishing ridge of hills in between, a magnificent and expansive view. To the north I saw our garden plot. But looking west toward the cavern mouth I saw the view I had seen first in my dream, of the tree-grown area roofed by the cavern roof. The trees under that canopy were large, but looked small under the enormously high ceiling. Last summer, in the shelter, we had cooling ocean breezes. This summer, I thought, could be hot. I suspected that the cavern would be a welcome and cool refuge.

I wanted to look down the cliff to the river below, but couldn’t bring myself to step to the edge. I finally crept to the edge on hands and knees and looked down. The sheer drop took my breath away, and even so did not reach all the way down to the river, but only to a ledge part way down the cliff. I was not intended to look down from high places, especially almost five months pregnant; my growing belly now affected my balance. After I had retreated from that dizzying edge, Zoan walked to the edge and looked down carefully. I almost couldn’t bring myself to watch. I could see he wanted to get down to the ledge below. It looked impossible to me, and I hoped it did to him as well. Angel and Sneechen trotted to the edge to see what Zoan was looking at. Sneechen made a comical sight, trying to get close enough to the edge to see down while she tried to hold back for fear of the huge drop. She was nearly four months old now, growing fast, vigorous, loving, and smart.

As Zoan walked back and forth along the cliff edge, looking downward, I saw him suddenly stiffen, like a dog that had sighted a bird. He looked intently down and to the left, then walked some distance to the left and looked over the edge from there. Then he went to find Sigurd, and the two of them looked over the edge together, pointing and talking. Finally they came to get me, sitting in my spot, and Inge, working in the garden. They led us to the edge without a word. Inge stood on the lip and looked down without the slightest concern. I got down to my hands and knees to look.

There was no mistaking what we saw. On our side of the river, directly below us, where we could see it only by looking directly over the edge, was a small village.

7. Bequest

The village below us had quite a few houses─perhaps ten─and one larger structure, probably a gathering house, but there were no people in sight on this spring day when everybody should have been planting. There may once have been a path alongside the river, but we couldn’t see it now; it was either overgrown or washed out. There was a area that could have held a field for growing crops. To the four of us the village looked abandoned.

I knew without asking that Zoan and Sigurd would investigate the village. They would be gone for days, and would risk danger. Inge looked at me and I saw that she too knew it. We all looked away from the village and at each other. No word was spoken, but I knew as surely as when I heard the rockslide in the cove that our lives were about to change.

The men spent the afternoon preparing. That evening we finally talked about it. When they climbed the hilltop above the west entrance to look for telltale smoke, they noticed a canyon leading downward to the northeast. Now they hoped it would lead them to the river, north of the village, out of sight behind the high wall at the north end of the bench. Zoan and Sigurd would camp one night in the canyon and reach the village the following morning, then camp again in the canyon the second night before returning to us - gone three days, their longest absence since Zoan’s trip back to the cove. It was spring now, with no danger of freezing. But they could meet people, and was no telling what they might find in the village.

They left before dawn. They had many torches. Zoan would climb the pit wall, carrying our double-length rope. He would lower the rope for Sigurd to climb, then haul up the rope and hide it, with the remaining torches, in our old sleeping chamber. They would carry hide bags for bringing back anything of value from the village, although abandoned villages were usually stripped clean. They would take their weapons, digging tools, food for five or six days.

We said goodbye to them at the tunnel to the spirit chamber, and tied the dogs. I felt alone. Inge had tears in her eyes. We went outside and set to work in the garden. Sneechen helped by digging holes. Angel shadowed me, upset because the men were gone. We worked until the sun was low, then sat and talked until long after dark, in the splendid light of the first half moon.

***

Inge was more accustomed than I to time alone. Sigurd had left her alone often during their year of traveling before they met us, sometimes for several days, while he hunted or investigated possible routes. He had always left her in a secure and well-hidden place; he called her his little fawn, since a doe hides her fawns in a thicket while she browses, and the fawns know to stay where they’re left. Inge found these times nerve-wracking. Once, raiders delayed him days beyond his planned return. Once he was slightly wounded in a fight, hit by a thrown rock, and returned spattered with his own blood. Once while he was gone she had seen bears, a mother with a cub. Inge was afraid of being attacked, but the bears simply went away. Inge was particularly upset by the bears, because she was haunted by the image of Sigurd devastated after returning to find her dead. Sigurd always made light of her worries when he returned. She told me shyly that she found this time easier than those because she felt as if she were with her older sister again. She then fell silent, and as she looked at me I saw something was wrong. I went to her. When we embraced she collapsed in my arms crying uncontrollably.

Her sister’s name was Gerde. She was my age, several years older than Inge. They never knew their parents, but grew up with their loving grandparents, deeply loved. Gerde was Inge’s protector and leader, carving out the hero role that Sigurd now filled. She was beautiful, wise and strong. The two girls worked together to help their grandmother as a midwife. Gerde showed Inge what to do. She taught Inge about life.

When the raiders came to the village Gerde and Inge were away from their home. Two men found both girls hiding, grabbed them, and tied them. Sigurd appeared and fought for them, killing one of the men. The second escaped with Gerde, who was screaming in terror. Inge was sure her grandparents died that day, but never learned what became of Gerde. By the time she finished telling me this story she was pale and shaking. It was nearly dark. I led her into the cave, started a fire, and made tea. Angel lay down with her head on Inge’s feet. Sneechen ran back and forth between our fire and the entrance, trying to induce somebody to play with her. We sat together silently. There was nothing to say.

***

The next morning in the garden. Inge said quietly that she was sorry for burdening me with her story, that she never before had spoken of that day to anybody, even Sigurd, and hoped that she could now put the story out of her mind, now that once again she had an older sister. We embraced and went back to work, Inge walking often to the edge to look at the village, hoping to see Sigurd and Zoan.

We saw the men approaching the village in the late morning. Inge called me to the edge, and again I crept cautiously to where I could see the river. The men were walking fast, still some distance from the village, on the sandy banks of the river. They looked tiny from our height. Zoan’s dark curly head and Sigurd’s blond one made them easy to identify. Zoan had found a walking stick, and I could tell from the way he was walking that he was in high spirits. I thought about shouting to them but realized that we could never be heard over the sound of the river, which we could hear clearly even from our height, and must fill their ears. As they neared the village they stopped and looked up, spotted Inge, and waved.

When they reached the village they became more cautious. They looked into the first house, then moved on. They did the same for every house, then entered the larger structure. After a long delay they emerged and walked away from the river, toward the hill. They stopped to closely examine some heaps of dirt or rocks. They then moved out of sight toward the base of the hill, and were out of sight for most of the rest of the afternoon. When they finally returned, their packs were obviously heavier. They set them down and looked up. When they saw us, Zoan pointed downward repeatedly, telling us they would spend the night where they were. They then moved to the nearest house and entered it; it had no roof, so we watched them go through it and look closely at everything within it. Sigurd picked something up and added it to his pack. We watched them move from house to house until it got too dark for us to see them. Just at dark, we saw that they had built a small fire just north of the village.

The following morning we returned to the cliff edge at first light. The men had left their camp and were back in the village, looking carefully through every house, not wearing their packs. From time to time they appeared to pick something up and carry it to their packs, near the gathering house. In one house they spent considerable time. It looked as if they might be digging. Eventually, almost midday, they returned to their packs and sat, apparently eating. Then they shouldered their loads, looked up at us, waved, and set out northward on their return trip. Their packs were bulging. Soon they disappeared from sight around the bend in the river, one full day behind their plan. We expected they would camp in the canyon that night. We talked briefly after dinner and went to sleep early near the fire, the dogs sleeping between us.

***

I was awakened by vicious-sounding growling and barking from Angel. I didn’t know how long I’d slept. Our substantial fire was down to coals, but they were still hot enough to light torches. Angel and Sneechen were barking furiously at the tunnel to the spirit chamber. As we approached I heard Zoan’s voice, then Sigurd’s. They slid their heavy loads down the tunnel. Zoan again carried the rope, and they both had torches, in addition to everything they had brought from the village. They emerged from the tunnel dirty and exhausted. They had traveled all night. When they had reached their camping place in the canyon, the first half moon was high in the sky and provided good light, so they continued. They reached the cave just before moonset, about midnight. Zoan had fumbled through the cave in the dark to find the torches they had left there. It took time to light torches, lower their packs, rig the rope, descend the pit, pull the rope down, and make the long walk here. They were excited, and Inge and I were happy to see them. It was a glad time.

We returned to the fire, Angel and Sneechen cavorting around the men in delight. I built up the fire and heated tea. The men put down their packs, and Zoan reached into his load. I couldn’t see what it was he brought to the fire. He laid it down across the rock. It looked like a dagger, but was not stout enough to be an effective weapon. When I picked it up I was puzzled. It was surprisingly light. The handle was of carved wood. The blade was held into the handle by sinew wrap, just as ours were, but was like no other blade I had seen. It glinted in the firelight. It was thin, smooth, hard as stone, and perfectly flat. The point was so sharp I pricked my finger. Inge and I handed the dagger back and forth.

We looked at the men, who were happy and smiling. We didn’t know what it was, the new thing they had brought back. Zoan pointed to the cave entrance; outside, we could see the first glow of dawn.

***

Sigurd called it sunrock. He had heard of it, that it could be worked into ornaments and strong, sharp blades. Beside the dagger, the men had brought many miscellaneous bits of sunrock, plus two arrow points, a ring, and a bracelet. We were lucky to have the completed pieces. They were in one of the houses, lying in a clay bowl of foul-smelling liquid, the only things of value within the village that had been overlooked by the raiders, who had slain the villagers many years before and stolen what they possessed,. The grisly aftermath of the raid had long since been scattered by scavengers, but the occasional still-intact skull told the tale. The houses were now mostly collapsing.

The sunrock had apparently been worked with hammers and stone, and the ring and bracelet showed that the makers had used sharp engraving tools as well. The men had found a huge flat stone in the gathering hall, and three sizes of hammers. The head of the largest had been hollowed out, and the hollow packed with stone to add extra weight. There was a hearth near the working stone. They found many sunrock scraps in this work area, all discolored. Sigurd and Zoan looked carefully and decided the sunrock was put into the fire, and worked hot.

Outside the gathering hall, they followed an obvious path leading toward the base of the cliff, where they found a large clay oven, constructed in a peculiar way. They examined it closely, finally realizing that it was built to make the fire hotter by taking advantage of the high winds that blow down the canyon at river level. The wind had blown hard that afternoon, and the oven funneled the wind into its fire chamber, below the oven compartment itself, which had a downward-flaring clay skirt, to catch hot air rising from the fire. The floor of the oven compartment was a clay bowl. With a hot fire underneath, it would get very hot indeed.

They found mounds of gravel near the oven, of a striking green. They couldn’t yet guess what part it played.

The men took the oven apart, moving aside the heavy clay slabs forming its front and sides. To their astonishment, the bottom of the clay bowl contained a solid pool of sunrock. Above it was a thin layer of fine ash. The sunrock and the bowl were stuck firmly together. Unable to get them apart, they brought them back intact. The combination of clay bowl and sunrock made a heavy load. Sunrock in substantial quantities was heavier than a comparably-sized stone. The lightness of the dagger came from the thinness of the blade. Even a thin sunrock blade was stronger than a thick stone blade, and far sharper.

At the base of the cliff, behind the clay oven, they found a hillside that had been partly dug out. Below the surface, the soil included a great deal of green gravel. The mounds they had seen were of green gravel, with all the other kinds of dirt and rock sorted out. Near the oven they found a large stone whose top was a shallow dish. Stone hammers and grinding rocks were nearby, apparently used for crushing the green gravel. They guessed that the crushed gravel is what went into the oven. This innocuous-looking hillside was the source of the sunrock.

Farther upstream they had encountered a swampy area of clay soil. These villagers had had everything they needed within walking distance.

Zoan and Sigurd brought back samples of everything─green gravel, clay slabs, clay soil, tools, fragments and completed pieces of sunrock, and the solidified sunrock in the clay oven floor. The staggered under the resulting load. They didn’t yet understand the details yet of how the sunrock was worked or made, but hoped to figure it out. One thing they were sure of: the village’s one great treasure was the entire hill of green gravel behind the oven. The raiders paid no attention to that, but wanted only the finished sunrock goods. The villagers had died, but their treasure, their great secret, had been safe and undisturbed until now.

***

As fine as Zoan and Sigurd’s workmanship was on their weapons of stone , the sunrock dagger was sharper and lighter. For days the men talked of nothing but sunrock─how it was made, the superiority of sunrock weapons, what they would do with their large lump of sunrock, and whether they could learn to make more themselves. Meanwhile Inge and I marveled over the two ornaments they had found. The ring fascinated me. It had a beautiful graven design that looked like interlocked figures of animals, or people. It fit my finger perfectly, as if it had been made for me, and the light sparkled and danced off it as I stood in the morning sun at the cave entrance. Inge stood beside me wearing the bracelet on her slender wrist. It was wrought in a coiled design, like snakes twisting around her arm. Both pieces were beautiful, more wonderful than anything we had ever owned. In daylight, the sunrock glowed with a golden-red color. When we walked back into the dim light of the cave, the color changed before our eyes, darkening and glimmering with the light from our fire. At night I lay sleepily admiring the ring as it reflected the firelight. Its beauty and the cruel violence of the raid that killed the villagers were both part of it, and now the strange happenings of the past year had brought it to me.

***

Zoan and I slept outside the cave on the night of the full moon. The night was clear and unusually warm, with insect song and a slight breeze. We sat up half the night watching the spectacle of moonlit distant view. Earlier in the evening, when it was first fully dark, we saw moonlight glinting across the distant sea. At midnight, with the moon directly overhead, the benchland was nearly as light as day, and the moon’s reflection in my ring sparkled golden-red. Usually the nights were still too cool for us to move out here for the summer, but that warm full moon night gave Zoan and me time alone. We talked about the baby, the coming winter, and whether it would be next year or the year after when we could start home to bring our child to its grandparents. Since the last time we discussed our lives there had been a big change in my heart: this place had now become my home, with its growing plants, the dogs sleeping at our feet, and friends. I finally knew where I wanted to live my life and raise my children.

I had not talked much to Zoan since his trip to the village. He and Sigurd had spent many days immersed in the world of sunrock. They were building a hearth to heat the sunrock so they could work it, near a large flat stone at the base of the cliff, some distance from the cave. They had broken the pottery away from the sunrock mass and had tried to reshape it with their hammers, but to no avail; it needed heat to be worked. Inge and I worked in the garden daily, tending small plants, watering them from the stream, and pulling weeds. The benchland was a riot of wildflowers, and the butterflies and birds of my dream had come true. Game was abundant; the men killed deer regularly. For me and Inge, curing hides and drying meat for winter took half of every day.

The days warmed earlier now. The sun was full on the benchland from sunup through early afternoon. We shed our heavier clothes. When the sun went down it quickly became chilly outside, and we appreciated that the cave never varied much. As soon as the nights became warmer we would move to summer quarters on the bench, building light shelters and spending our nights outside. I looked forward to that time. I smiled, remembering the warm evenings last summer in the cove.

I was five months pregnant. I had felt good during those first months, with only a few mornings of sickness. The baby was more and more active. Zoan often put his hands on my growing belly to feel the movement. Inge’s experience as a midwife did not erase Zoan’s concern about the risks of childbirth, but I was confident. I was sorry my mother wouldn’t be with me for the birth, but I knew her spirit would guide the baby to a safe birth. We had begun getting ready. For something soft to wrap the baby in, I had been smoothing our rabbit skins with stones to make them soft and supple. Zoan had been planing wood with stone blades and fitting pieces together to make a cradle, with carved designs. The cradle was beautiful and would be big enough to be used for a long time. We would be ready, and I longed for the day when I could hold my baby in my arms.

We had seen four seasons since we arrived in the cove. Last year in early fall the great rockslide in the cove crushed our boat. I found it hard to believe the year had passed so fast, with so much happening to all of us.

***

Zoan and Sigurd finished their hearth. It had an oven compartment over a burning chamber like the larger oven in the village, but was made of flat stones rather than clay. I sat near the oven and watched for days as they tried many different ways of heating the sunrock hot enough to work. They fired the oven with hot-burning softwood from the bench, and fanned the flames vigorously with snow feet clad in deerskin. This tired them quickly, and they still needed a hotter fire. They didn’t have strong local winds as the village oven did. They tried hinging two snow feet together with hide straps so they could fan more efficiently, clapping the snow feet together like large hands. When they saw that most of the air between the snow feet escaped to the sides, I sewed deer hide with sinew to enclose the sides. Then, after long discussion involving drawing pictures in the dirt that reminded me of the day they first made snow feet, they enclosed the entire open back side of the pair of snow feet using deer hide, and lined the hinge with hide too, except for one area in the center, where they left an opening for the air to escape. I stitched the deer hide for them. Now, when they opened the hinge, air was sucked into the hole in front. When they pointed the open end toward the fire and closed the back side forcefully, a powerful stream of air spurted out of the hole and into the fire.

With every improvement, the fire got a little hotter and the solid sunrock lump softened. It was now finally glowing red hot and had become soft and somewhat pliable. They used a thin sheet of stone to carry the hot lump from the oven chamber to the rock, where they flattened it and divided it into two pieces, dividing it with a stone blade. They put one of the pieces back into the oven, and flattened and divided it too, once it was hot. They ended up with long thin sheets of sunrock, roughly flat, that could be shaped into individual objects. Zoan discovered that he could work the sheets cold, with hammers. He made one piece into a wonderful spear point. He shaped it roughly with the biggest hammer, reheated the point to trim its edges with the stone blade, then, using the smaller hammer, worked the edges until they were very sharp. The point was crude compared to the arrowheads they had brought from the village, but it was his first, and both men were delighted with it. They minutely inspected the ring and bracelet to examine how they had been made, shaking their heads over their masterful workmanship.

The men wanted to make the oven hot enough to melt their green gravel into more sunrock, but failed at that even with the blower. They didn’t have a fire hot enough to make the sunrock run like water until they later found the deposits of fire rock in the cliff above the village.

All this work took time. Both men became intensely involved, and thought of little else for more than a month. They would rise at first light and head for their work area. They weren’t just working at the oven; they also spent a good deal of time cutting and hauling firewood. At one point they stopped working on the oven long enough to finally make sharp stone axes, with Zoan’s blades and Sigurd’s handles, for cutting trees for wood, and cutting up dead logs. Since we had joined, Zoan had never been so distracted from our home and our life, and with me pregnant too. I knew the sunrock was important and the intensity wouldn’t last, but was not pleased with seeing so little of him.

***

The weather warmed quickly now, and the men built shelters outside alongside the stream, with a common cooking hearth. The dogs loved sleeping outside. I believe Angel never liked the dark and felt closed-in within the cave, as I had originally. Sneechen’s delight couldn’t be repressed. She ran at high speed between the shelter and the men’s work area until she was exhausted, then flopped near Angel, which was usually near me. I continued to work in the garden with Inge, and had started to carry clay dirt to the shelter area from the seep spring, to begin experimenting with pots. I had never made a pot, but had often watched the older women in the village make beautiful pots They decorated them with designs using colors made from plants, then baked them in fires built inside huge rock chimneys. They would sometimes crack during the baking , and the process would have to be started over. Even now that I had clay soil, I wasn’t sure I could successfully make a pot. But I was determined to try.

Zoan often prowled the cliff edge, looking down carefully. I knew he was seeking a way down to the ledge we had seen below the cave entrance, but the rock face was sheer. Where the men had built their oven, some distance north of the cave, was the narrowest point on the bench; from the oven it was only a short walk to the cliff edge. A lower ledge was visible from there as well, and Zoan said he could climb down to it following a large crack in the rock, if he had a guide rope, as we did in the pit. The ledge ran out of sight below a large overhang. Zoan planned to lower a rope and use it for security both descending and climbing, tied to a large tree at the cliff edge. Without the rope, he said, the climb would be unsafe, but the rope made it no more difficult than many he had done near home.

To me, there was a big difference. The climbs near home were on much smaller hills. A fall might break a leg. Here, a fall would be the end, and the baby would be fatherless. He made a beautiful carving for my pouch, a tiny man, woman, and nursing baby. I did not ask him not to make the climb, but I could not watch.

Sigurd was fascinated by Zoan’s climbing ability. He said Zoan had descended slowly and carefully. Once he reached the ledge, Zoan had walked north along it until he was out of sight, and Sigurd returned to their work area. Zoan was gone a surprising time, from mid-morning until midday. He returned excited. He had found a canyon that led steeply down toward the village on an obvious path, which villagers had apparently used to reach an area of strange crumbly black rock. Zoan had brought some fist-sized samples. The rock was soft. Everything it touched was blackened. Sigurd and Zoan puzzled about why the villagers might have wanted the rock, which seemed too soft to be of much use. To see if it changed when they heated it, they put it into their fire. To their astonishment it caught fire. It burned slowly and was extremely hot. When they used the blower on the hot rock it glowed red. Neither had ever heard of it. They called it fire rock.

They realized they had found the fuel the villagers used to melt the sunrock out of green gravel. That evening we discussed how to proceed. We needed much more of both fire rock and green gravel. They planned to haul up several loads of fire rock in Zoan’s deerhide bag, already ruined for any other purpose. Inge─lighter and more agile than Zoan, and a fine climber─would descend to the ledge and load the bag, and Sigurd and Zoan would work together to haul it up. The path to the village would make it easier to reach the green gravel deposits. They would first bring the green gravel to the ledge, with Sigurd above and Zoan below, then to the bench. We would not need a rope long enough to reach all the way from the bench to the village.

Inge now began work on a heavier rope, heavy enough to haul these heavy loads, and long enough to reach from ledge to village, with enough extra to tie around a stout tree at the ledge. I brought more clay soil to the shelter area from the spring, north of the work area. I would mix clay to make shallow bowls to catch the liquid sunrock the men hoped to melt out of green gravel. I would also make the large earthenware bowl we had needed for so long. I would bake them all in Sigurd and Zoan’s oven. That night we had visions of our summer bench growing up to be a full-fledged village for working pottery and sunrock.

***

After Inge told me of her sister we were closer, and she began confiding personal things to me. She was envious of my pregnancy, and wished she and Sigurd could have a child. This was new for her; previously she had thought their lives were too rootless to raise a child. Now they hoped they could make a permanent home here, and that we would stay too. Sigurd liked this place for its security. He had been running from violence and danger for many years; Inge had seen him relax a great deal since we came here. She said she particularly enjoyed his laughter as he worked with Zoan, that she hadn’t realized how little he laughed. Inge was a dedicated gardener, and her work would give us greens and vegetables soon enough. Inge believed the spirit of the cave was at work in her garden as well. We always talked while working together. Now, while she braided rope and I mixed clay, I found out for the first time that her grandfather was a potter who made all the household cooking pots and also figurines, fetishes for her pouch. This is the first I have heard of her pouch. Unabashedly, she took it off her neck and showed me its contents, something I had never done with my own pouch. She had a bear, as I did. She had several figures of people, including a beautiful pregnant woman that her grandmother gave her. She also had a small and intricate carving Sigurd had made for her just this summer, showing four people sitting in a circle around a small child.

***

Our elaborate plan to bring gravel and fire rock to the work area proceeded almost uneventfully, although not as fast as we had thought, because we had overestimated the amount of gravel and rock we could haul in a single load. The second time we pulled a big bag of fire rock over the cliff edge, the rope broke and the heavy bag of rock crashed down all too close to Inge where she stood on the ledge below. Zoan lowered our pit rope over the edge and descended it, retrieved the broken rope, and he and Inge climbed back to the cliff edge using the pit rope for support, Zoan carrying a much-reduced bag of fire rock. The next day they tried again, with a repaired hauling rope and a heavy piece of bark over the cliff edge, so the rocks wouldn’t cut the hide rope again. We also reduced the size of the load. That day the three of them brought 12 heavy bags of fire rock to the work area. The following day they brought 10 bags of green gravel to the ledge, and up to the work area the day after that.

That was the day I was ready to bake my clay bowls. I was at the work area talking with Sigurd about baking them while Inge, on the ledge, was loading bags of gravel, and Zoan, on the cliff, was hauling them up and bringing them to the work area. Zoan had just left after depositing another bag of green gravel onto a growing pile near the oven when I heard his shout of alarm. Angel and Sneechen, who had been following him back and forth, were now standing at the cliff edge barking furiously. Sigurd and I hurried to the cliff. We saw the dogs and Zoan, looking intently down toward the village. Walking cautiously to the edge─it was not so precipitous here─I saw Inge, on the ledge, looking in the same direction, at three people, north of the village, and west of the river. As they walked toward the village they were looking upward, and pointing at Inge.

8. Warrior Goddess

I was shocked. The four of us were the only people I had seen since Zo an and I left home. In a ll the time of knowing Zoan I had not seen him move so fast, sprinting to the work area for his weapons, then back to the cliff edge, where he climbed rapidly down toward Inge. When he reached the ledge Sigurd would have started down, but Zoan motioned him back and sent Inge up the rope. Within a short time Zoan too had climbed back to the bench, bringing the rope with him. We waited on the cliff edge, Angel growling nonstop.

The men stood armed and on guard on the cliff top, ready for battle. We had to make a decision. Going down to see who the travelers were and what they wanted would be risky. These three might be a scouting party, and there might be more behind them. On the other hand, the four of us had talked about the possibility of expanding our numbers by taking in other refugees from the bands of marauders who had been burning villages to the north. Watching from the cliff edge, it was impossible to know if these travelers were friendly. Zoan and Sigurd assumed the worst. To Inge and me they appeared to be unarmed, their behavior seemed non-threatening, perhaps even desperate, and they were not dressed as warriors. We told Zoan and Sigurd what we felt, and the men relaxed slightly. Still, Zoan felt that if they were part of a raiding party, he and Sigurd could be overwhelmed if they went to meet them. As the three approached the base of the cliff, however, we saw that the group contained one man and two women. We could see no weapons, and the man had his arm raised in greeting. Raiders would not send a small unarmed party with two women on a scouting expedition.

Suddenly one of the women collapsed. The other rushed to her and held her. The man stood, looked up at us and raised his arms in supplication. Zoan and Sigurd could hold out no longer. Zoan climbed down, using the pit rope, and quickly reached the ledge below. Sigurd followed, carrying the haul rope. By the time Sigurd reached the ledge Zoan was half way down the canyon, unassisted by the rope. Sigurd tied the long rope to the tree on the ledge and descended behind Zoan.

The men had already decided both of them should go. Zoan had argued that in case something should happen to him, Sigurd should stay to protect Inge and me. Sigurd argued that no matter what they found, two of them could take care of it better than one. Also, if the people were alone and friendly, it would take both of them to get the three people back up the cliff, especially if one was ill.

I watched anxiously as the men descended. Once they reached the village level my attention shifted to the three strangers. Inge had gone to the work area for her bow and quiver of arrows. Although she seldom used her bow, I had seen her hit a rabbit from a distance that astonished me. She said she knew they were beyond shooting distance but she felt better having it with her.

As Zoan and Sigurd reached the ground and turned toward the three strangers, the man left the women and turned to them. They must have been an imposing sight─two warriors, well armed with spears and bows, young and strong─but it was the welfare of the women that was clearly uppermost in the man’s mind. We could see Zoan and Sigurd relax as he approached. They raised their arms in greeting. The man returned their greeting and spoke to them. Zoan told me later that the rapid flow of words between Sigurd and the man amazed him, that he had never heard Sigurd speak so fast. Zoan understood much of what they said, and realized these people were countrymen to Inge and Sigurd.

We saw Sigurd move closer to the man as they talked. After a few moments, he gestured to Zoan to join them, and the three men went to where the women were on the ground. They looked up at us. To care for the sick woman, we first had to get her up to the bench.

***

That night, telling me the story, Zoan said Sigurd had introduced him as a brother. Sigurd said later, with a characteristic growl, that they had become brothers. Sigurd and Inge were spending that night on the ledge with the three travelers. The sick woman had revived. She was exhausted, despairing, and ill, but not injured. She had lost her husband four days earlier to the raiders they were fleeing. She was pregnant. We could see their fire on the ledge. Inge had carried tea, water, and food down to them. We would learn later that they had not eaten or slept for three days. They slept that night exhausted, but we could see Sigurd sitting by the fire, watching the path beside the river.

I had spent most of the afternoon making a deerhide harness for hauling the sick woman up to the bench. We thought Zoan could help the others up on a second rope. Zoan had climbed the pit rope at day’s end, bringing the heavy rope, which he lowered to the ledge. He had visited the ledge himself one last time, taking additional food. Then, after long discussion with Sigurd, he had returned to our shelter. He didn’t sleep much. The man had said the raiders were not far behind them. Zoan and Sigurd expected a fight.

The man’s name was Bjorn. The women were Yrsa and Heidl, his wife and daughter. Bjorn and Yrsa had fled their ravaged mountain village with their daughter and her husband Brandr almost a month earlier, and had been running ever since, following the river southward. Brandr had been killed in a fight early in their flight, in another ruined village. There was no opportunity for a traditional ceremony. Bjorn had buried him where he was killed, said the prayers, and they continued their flight. The river was high, still roaring with melt from the heavy snows from the highest mountains.

Bjorn had reached the point of no hope. He had expected they would be killed, and soon. He saw our appearance as intervention by fate.

Angel spent the night pacing nervously between our shelter and the cliff edge, where she could see Sigurd’s fire. Sigurd stood watch all night, and it was he that spotted the approaching armed party early in the morning. His shout of alarm brought Angel to the cliff edge barking, Sneechen with her. Zoan sprinted toward the cliff edge. By the time I reached the cliff edge he was already on the ledge.

I hated being on the cliff edge while the others were about to fight. I removed the figures of two men and a woman from my pouch, holding them tightly in my hand. The rising sun was just touching the ledge. Beside the river I saw a large group of men─perhaps ten. They had stopped short of the village and were looking at the group on the ledge. On the ledge, I saw Zoan and Sigurd take the three travelers back out of sight, where I couldn’t see them at all. I realized that they thought Bjorn too weak to fight. Returning to the ledge, they squatted behind a low rocky outcrop, Inge between them. They had every arrow we possessed, including three with sunrock arrowheads, the two fine ones from the village, and one the Sigurd had made two days before─less elegant, but wickedly sharp.

In the end the sunrock arrowhead was decisive. The raiders charged as a group. They were young, strong, fresh, and well-armed. The climb was wide enough at the bottom for four men. The front row of four included two with shields, held high. The entire group ran uphill screaming, slowed by the steep slope. Sigurd, Zoan, and Inge waited until they were close, then all three rose and shot. One arrow struck a rock harmlessly; another struck a shield. The raider with the other shield fell forward, struck in the leg. As a companion turned and bent to retrieve the shield, Sigurd’s second arrow pierced his neck, and he slumped to the ground streaming blood. The sun had just reached him. Before he slid and rolled down the steep slope I clearly saw the arrow protruding from his neck, Sigurd’s sunrock arrowhead catching the sun just as my ring did, a dazzling deadly thing. The raiders saw it too. They froze, looking at the arrow whose head looked like the sun itself. As they stood transfixed by the sight of the gleaming arrowhead, Inge took careful aim and shot, as deliberately as if she had been shooting at a practice target. A third man screamed and rolled bodily downhill. Inge was already fitting another arrow to her bow, looking like a warrior goddess, her sunrock bracelet shining on her wrist, but the fight was over. The raiders turned and scrambled downhill, one crawling with an arrow protruding from his leg, leaving a heavy trail of blood.

Inge would have followed them and killed them all, but Sigurd stopped her. He had seen the looks on the faces of the raiders as they watched this slender young woman rise and shoot, and as they saw one of their number killed by an arrow they must have thought was magical. He knew the story of the gleaming arrow, and woman warrior in the bracelet that reflected the sun, would be told and retold until it grew into a legend, and that we would never be attacked by anyone who heard it. The group did not hesitate long in the village. They ran, leaving three of their party dead or dying, and were soon out of sight to the north, the direction from which they had come. The sun had even then not yet reached the village.

***

Our village had never been invaded. Even though Zoan had been trained for battle, as every young man was, this fight─his first battle─had left him stunned, for in Inge’s face he had seen his own desires. He, too, would have killed them all. Sigurd, veteran of many battles, remained calmer, and reminded Zoan of their immediate duty to get the entire group safely up to the benchland. They also needed to retrieve their arrows, check the dead bodies for any weapons they could use, and dispose of the bodies, which would receive no sacred rites, but would be sent down the river on logs to whatever reward fate dictated.

Zoan climbed to where I was standing. Battle heat was still upon him, and his jaw was clenched tight. As I handed him the harness I had made for lifting the sick woman, I touched his arm and looked into his eyes. I saw the man I loved struggling to calm himself and do what he must. As we stood looking at each other, Zoan began to relax. When I took his hand and placed it on my belly, he smiled. He had learned a valuable lesson about himself.

Zoan descended with the harness, and helped Bjorn get Heidl into it; the harness went under her arms. Zoan tied the heavy rope to it. Sigurd and Inge then climbed to the bench using the pit rope for support, and began lifting Heidl, just as they had hauled gravel and rocks. Zoan climbed beside Heidl, supporting himself on the pit rope one-handed while he kept the harnessed woman away from the rock wall. They worked slowly and carefully, but had no guarantee of success; we were simply doing our best. Bjorn and Yrsa watched anxiously from the ledge. Finally the three of them working together brought her to the edge of the cliff, where Sigurd could reach the harness and pull her to safety. When we tried to help her out of the harness we saw that she could not stand on her own. She sagged into Sigurd’s arms and he gently lowered her to the ground. I brought her the root tea that had been brewing. She could barely swallow; I held her head and tipped it back slightly to pour a tiny amount of the liquid into her mouth. She had no strength to help or to resist. I sat on the ground and held her in my arms.

Zoan and Sigurd repeated the lifting process with Yrsa, then finally Bjorn. Both were strong enough to stand and walk, but neither could have climbed the nearly-sheer face. We brought the three of them to the shelter area, Sigurd carrying Heidl. All three looked wasted and weak to death. When Inge and Sigurd first appeared in the cove, I thought she might not last though the night. Now I saw that these people might easily die. I knew nothing about them but their names, but now, by saving their lives, we had become responsible for them.

***

It was ten days before we knew they would all live. Bjorn and Yrsa recovered within a few days, although they remained thin and weak. Yrsa was a healer; she knew the medicinal properties of every plant on the benchland, many of which were new to me. I believe she saved her daughter’s life, tending her every day, all day. The dogs loved the two women and accepted Bjorn, if reservedly. Angel sat with Heidl day and night. Sigurd and Zoan visited the village on the afternoon of the battle, recovered their arrows, and sent the bodies downriver, after taking their bows. Their fleeing comrades had taken their arrows and quivers. It surprised us that they didn’t take the sunrock-tipped arrow. Sigurd and Inge explained that their old stories commonly featured magic shining weapons that could not be vanquished and would kill anyone who touched them except their rightful owners. The sunrock-tipped arrow was in plain sight. The raiders would not come near it.

9. Heidl

T he arrival of Bjorn, Yrsa, and Heidl brought us three more mouths to feed and a second pregnant woman to care for. When they first came to the bench, on the day of the battle, the three were so thin, tired, dirty, and defeated that we couldn’t guess their ages. As Bjorn and Yrsa recovered I saw that they were in their middle thirties, Bjorn perhaps even forty. Heidl was sixteen, not much older than Inge. She was tiny─short and slim, smaller than Inge. Her pregnancy─about four months along, she thought─was not showing yet. Their harrowing flight, narrow escape, and near-starvation, plus the crushing loss of her young husband, had taken a toll on her body and spirit. She recovered slowly, and I feared for her and for her baby. Without her mother’s love and care, Heidl would not have lived.

In their village Yrsa had been a renowned healer. She taught healers from neighboring villages and could heal people when no one else could. Her arrival here was a gift, and I was grateful for her knowledge of plant lore. Inge and I both wanted to learn from her about the plants on the benchland. They could help keep all of us healthy and ease delivery for Heidl and me. I had learned much from my mother, but there were plants here that I had never seen. Before Yrsa came I had no hope of knowing which were helpful and which dangerous. Yrsa was eager to explore the benchland to identify the plants. She and her family had left their village with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. She had had no time to gather the herbs and dried plants she had spent years growing, harvesting and drying.

Bjorn and Yrsa fit easily into our group as elders. They were wise and eager to help, and we needed their knowledge. Heidl wouldn’t be able to help until she recovered her health and strength. Before winter we would have two new lives to care for, and Yrsa was already preparing the plants that would help Heidl and me with birthing and nursing. Yrsa loved dogs and became particularly attached to Sneechen, now six months old, nearly the size of her mother, and far more energetic. Angel quickly decided that all three newcomers were part of her herd, but remained particularly close to Heidl, as always going where she was needed most. At night Angel positioned herself between the shelters and the cliff edge, growling at every sound of deer browsing in the trees.

I was now six months pregnant and finally feeling it. I had less and less energy, and we all had more work to do. I learned to save my strength for the most important things. I worked in the garden, worked on pots, and helped with the cooking. Later those too would become more difficult, especially being on the ground pulling weeds. If I sat on the ground long it was difficult to stand up. The pains in my back worsened as my belly grew bigger. I remembered expectant mothers from home working right up until the day the baby was born, not seeming even to slow down. I was beginning to understand what that must have cost them. They must have felt they had no choice. I felt the same: we all had to share the work to help our new village survive.

***

The battle had changed my view of Inge. I could not put aside the image of her standing alongside the men in battle, a heroic warrior figure, slaying out of vengeance and in defense of her home. I had not seen this power in her before. Inge came into my life injured and was hurt again in her fall in the cave. She had shyly and slowly become my close friend. I admired her for overcoming the loss of her family to become a loving wife to Sigurd and a full equal in our group, always determined to do more than her share despite her small size and her injuries. Now I saw her determination and toughness as the work of a powerful inner self, and admired her for that as well. Nothing could have shown it more clearly than her bravery and determination in battle. Zoan too was astonished that she had stood with them to fight without flinching.

The arrival of the newcomers meant that we needed another summer shelter. The outside was now far warmer than the cave, and we retreated to the cave only when it rained. The three men built the new shelter as a joint project, in which Bjorn showed himself to be an experienced and masterful builder. When the shelter was complete, he simply kept on building. Using Zoan’s stone axe to hew planks, he made seats for all of us in the shelter area, with a wall with hewn spike tops, for hanging deerhides. He fitted planks together to make a bed for himself and Yrsa that made our sleeping pallets seem crude.

Inge and I worked in the garden, as we had since spring. We were now taking leaf and root crops from the garden regularly. While we worked I told Inge how much I admired her heroic behavior during the battle. A change came over her face. She had not known that part of herself, she said. The fight had helped her see herself as stronger, a better mate for Sigurd. Amidst the battle, standing between the two men, she had realized she was suddenly somebody new, somebody she didn’t know at all. I saw that she had thought about it a great deal.

It is this place, she said. The power of the spirit of this cave, within me, because I have made this my place where I will live my life. For that short time it let me become my strongest self, and I was a warrior. She smiled, but I saw tears in her eyes.

***

It was a month before Heidl began to revive. She finally started spending more time with us, working when she could, sitting in the sun watching us when she got tired. In the beginning she had felt comfortable only with her mother, whom she knew had saved her life, staying with her night and day until the danger was past. Even though Heidl’s health improved steadily and her baby seemed to be doing well, her spirit remained crushed by the loss of her husband. I felt we needed to find something for her to do. Keeping busy is good medicine.

I had hoped Heidl could be close to Inge because they were almost the same age, and to me because we were both expecting babies, but nothing had engaged her attention until she asked about the sunrock ornaments Inge and I wore. Inge took the bracelet from her arm and handed it to Heidl so she could look at it closely. Heidl said she had never seen such beautiful material. She was fascinated by the design and spent a long time looking at the bracelet, twisting it around and around, holding it up to watch the sun glint off of it. I could see she was wondering how it had been made. I told her that Zoan and Sigurd had begun to make things from sunrock, that it was their sunrock arrow that had turned the battle. When Heidl showed her first spark of interest, Inge and I led her to Zoan and Sigurd’s work area.

T he men had a hot fire going and had been shaping strips of sunrock into rough arrowheads. I asked Zoan to show Heidl what he was doing. He picked up a thin strip of sunrock, one thumbnail wide, the remnant of a wider strip from which he had cut arrowhead blanks. He used a long stone tool to put it into the oven. While it heated he told Heidl what he wanted to do, peering frequently into the hot oven, which was partly open on one side. When the strip was glowing hot he put on the double-thick deerhide mitttens I had made for him, lifted the hot sunrock piece out with his stone tool, and placed it onto a sheet of thin shale. Nearby were long round stones he had taken from the cave, some the size of very long fingers, others as thick as a wrist, and larger ones as well. These were all once cave formations. Zoan had seen them in the maze area and returned to break several at the base to use as tools for sunrock work. Now he selected one a bit larger than my wrist and laid it on top of the hot sunrock piece, then used the thin shale under the sunrock piece to lift the hot strip, which was soft enough that it wrapped easily around the cave stone. Zoan rolled the cave stone away from him as he worked. The strip was almost long enough to wrap fully around the cave stone. He then slipped the still-hot sunrock circlet off the end of the tapered stone and into water bag hanging from a tree branch, to cool it. When he removed it from the water he rubbed it with deerhide to remove soot and other residues. The result had the shape of a simple bracelet. It was undecorated and had some rough edges, but gleamed and was attractive even so. Zoan handed it to Heidl, explaining that he could reheat it later to smooth the edges with wood.

Heidl had watched the entire process with wide eyes. She turned the sunrock piece over and over in her hands, examining it closely. When she finally handed it back to Zoan, he shook his head and said he had made it for her, that it was hers to keep. I still remember the look on her face, as if she had been given a holy object. She held it to her chest, then slipped it onto her wrist, and was so overcome with emotion that she couldn’t speak the gratitude we could see in her eyes. Then she turned and ran back to the shelter area, in obvious excitement, to show it to her mother and father. Later she told Inge it was the most wonderful thing she had ever had.

That ended Heidl’s isolation. She still spent times alone and still grieved, but she had happy moments too, and as we got to know her better we saw she was naturally high-spirited. She made the bracelet her own by improving it for months. She asked Zoan and Sigurd to show her how to use their hammers, and worked near them to shape and decorate the bracelet every day, even after her baby was born. Later, after we had glarestone blades, she began─ever so slowly and carefully─to engrave designs into it, similar to the designs on my ring. Heidl was an artisan by nature, and her bracelet became more and more beautiful as she worked on it. I never again saw her without the bracelet on her wrist.

***

Yrsa attributed the improvement in Heidl’s mood to the spirit of the place. Inge had shown Yrsa the spirit chamber. They had sat beside the stream half a morning, on deer hides Inge had brought; Yrsa was not comfortable sitting at length on stone. Inge had shown Yrsa where she had fallen, and the scar on her head. They had extinguished their torches, and had felt the power that had so affected Inge and me. Yrsa emerged deeply moved, and told Inge that the power of the place was the reason for their rescue, the reason they were alive.

Bjorn now regularly joined Zoan and Sigurd hunting. Deer and rabbit were both plentiful on the bench. They talked of many things, as men do when they’re hunting. Bjorn spoke of the flight from the raiders, of Brandr’s injury and death, of the cruelty of the raids in their village, which had cost him and Yrsa their two sons, older than Heidl. He told them that two nights before the battle they had camped near the river. Bjorn had climbed a side canyon in gathering darkness, in search of game. Climbing a hill, he suddenly had a view of the river below, and had seen a campfire not far upriver with many men around it. He realized it was the camp of the raiders, and that they were close behind, much closer than he had thought. In panic he abandoned his hunt, returned to camp, and quickly smothered the brand-new fire the women had just built. They had no food to eat. The night was dark, with no moon at all, but at the first hint of light the next morning, the day before the battle, they set out downriver, hoping to find food and a place to hide. That was the day they met us.

He paused. The three men had stopped walking as he told this story. Zoan and Sigurd listened to every word, thinking of the day of the battle. Then Bjorn mentioned that the final hill he climbed, whose top gave him a view of the raiders’ fire, was formed completely of glarestone, the entire hillside, with many large pieces, the size of a dog’s head. He did not want to burden them with heavy stone, but he vowed to himself to remember where the hillside was.

At that the conversation stopped. Glarestone─smooth and glossy black, with chipped edges far sharper than any other stone, and faces shiny enough to reflect sunlight.─was rare and precious. It made the finest blades. It was all but unknown in our home village, but Zoan had worked with it. He learned to flake it into points and blades from an old man, a master carver with his own supply of glarestone, whose source he kept secret.

Zoan told me that he and Sigurd had looked at each other then, both thinking of the inevitable future trip to collect glarestone. I was excited, but of course I didn’t know then how grave the consequences of that trip would be.

10. Life and Death

My relationship with Yrsa began when she appeared in my life exhausted, fleeing from horror. That lasted only for a short time, while she recovered and then oversaw Heidl’s recovery. After that she gradually became my teacher, and remained my teacher as long as she lived. She knew the plants I needed for healing, and in following her around the benchland I learned of many that had been strangers to me previously.

Yrsa also knew the dye plants, and I was happy to learn that the benchland was rich in reds and blacks. I had made some successful clay pots, and was ready to try making larger pots, and would decorate them with simple designs, but what I most wanted the dyes for was to paint the walls of our cave. I wanted our sleeping chamber to be decorated with symbols of our homeland, and those of Inge and Sigurd’s homeland as well. I wanted to leave a record of our lives in this place, paintings showing our two cultures here, living in peace and harmony where fate had brought us together. In my family, reds and blacks were important symbols. The paintings on the walls of our homes told stories, red symbolizing the living, black the dead. We were taught from early childhood to honor our elders. They were our mentors and our guides through life. Even after an elder died, his words would live on, to help us teach our own children the ancient stories of our people. We painted pictures of the dead as well as the living, so that our children would know them. We also painted pictures of the animals that were important in our lives for food and warm clothing.

Inge and I had been busy ever since we met, but still found time to tell each other our old stories. Inge’s people had their own traditions, and different ways of honoring their elders, as well as different traditional colors. I would look for dye plants for her to use too. All our beliefs would be represented on the walls.

***

Following Yrsa around the benchland, I was amazed at the depth of her knowledge. She showed me the plants and herbs she knew, pointing out small differences in leaf shape, color, or number, that differentiated the healing plants from the poisonous ones, which we pulled and destroyed so they couldn’t endanger dogs or children. Yrsa wanted me to be sure about what each plant could do. There were many more plants than I could remember easily, but she was patient with me when I forgot. She was as delighted as a child when she found a plant she had heard of but never seen, especially if it could be used in one of her medicinal brews. Thanks to her we added something new to our diet, the delicious roots from a wild plant whose leaves were not useful. She was continually looking for tubers, because they could be planted to grow more and would last a long time if we kept them dry.

Yrsa also said the reeds in the pool were the best type for making baskets, but would need to be dried before we could use them. She was eager to make baskets, for drying and many other purposes. Yrsa had started accumulating large bundles of different plants and herbs, and was hanging them upside down to dry on a structure Bjorn had made for her. He had used slender limbs from dead trees and constructed something that would hold many drying bundles. He had built these structures for Yrsa back in their village, each one sturdier and more elaborate than the one before, with carved decoration. Yrsa had told him they didn’t need carving, but Bjorn was a craftsman, and it was important to him that everything he made was beautiful. Bjorn was as talented and wise in his own way as Yrsa, and as natural a teacher. Zoan and Sigurd were learning a great deal from him. He didn’t make an effort to teach them; he simply let them watch him, and answered their questions about what he did and why he did it.

Yrsa was quiet, and I never knew whether that came from the sadness in her life. She had been forced from her home, had lost her two sons and almost lost her daughter, yet found what happiness she could in each day. She was gentle and good tempered and full of love for Bjorn and Heidl. She looked forward to the birth of her grandchild; even thinking about it made her smile. She watched Heidl working with the sunrock, concentrating on learning how to make some new design, and smiled to herself to see how well she had recovered. Heidl’s hair had almost the color and glint of the sunrock she worked on. Her pregnancy had made her glow, and she had come from the edge of death to be a beautiful young woman. Yrsa had saved the life of her child and grandchild, and would have to do so again what that time came.

***

My baby had begun to dominate my life. She was suddenly much more active. I sometimes had to catch my breath when she kicked hard. Yes, I was convinced she was a girl. By then I had made several useful larger clay pots, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to much longer. I was already so large that I needed help getting up from sitting on the ground.

The large pots were harder to make than the small bowls I had made earlier. I worked near the oven. Zoan carried clay and water from the pool. I started with a round, flat base made of clay, then rolled out long ropes of clay and carefully coiled them around the base, working upward one coil at a time, using water to keep the clay workable. The bowls were shallow, only five or six coils high. I used a flat bone to smooth the ropes together on the inside and outside of the pot. After the pot dried Zoan or Sigurd would bake it in the hot oven. When it was finished it would be almost as hard as stone. Some pots cracked in the oven, or even shattered. Then we had to let the oven cool, clean out the broken pieces, and start over. On the days when I was more comfortable and could work longer, I used black and red dyes to paint designs on the outside of the pots. Baking dulled the colors of the dyes, but the pots looked nice and the symbols told everyone that I had made the pot. My pots were not as smooth and perfect as my mother’s, but they would serve us well.

***

We had depended on the dogs for friendship, warning, and amusement for so long now that I had forgotten nothing lasts forever. When I woke in the shelter to find Sneechen nosing my hand I was surprised. Angel had always been anxious for me to leave my bed long before I was ready. Sneechen was unhappy, and I immediately knew something was wrong.

I hauled myself painfully to my feet. It didn’t take me long to find Angel, where she loved to sleep, between the shelters and the cliff edge. She had spent her final night in what she thought was the best place to stop any attack on us, as she had every night since she first joined us. I knew she was an old dog, but her death shocked me into terrible grief. Zoan found me sitting beside her body crying, Sneechen lying next to me. He sat beside me without a word, and I realized he too was weeping. It wasn’t long until we were joined by Inge, who sat silently beside me stroking Angel, and soon after by Yrsa. Sigurd arrived and stood behind Inge, his hands on her shoulders. When Bjorn and Heidl arrived, Heidl screamed in horror and fell to her knees, burying her hands and face in Angel’s woolly coat. Bjorn stood next to Sigurd, behind Yrsa. Our entire group was assembled to say farewell to our dog.

Yrsa bent and whispered something to Inge, and Inge rose and followed her back toward the shelters. Sigurd and Bjorn went to the work area, returning with a stone shovel. We didn’t need to talk about where we would bury her. Zoan started digging her grave close to where she lay, in the spot where she had slept all summer. We all helped dig, even Sneechen. As the grave neared completion, Inge and Yrsa reappeared. They had lighted torches and gone to the spirit chamber, where Yrsa had said prayers for Angel. They returned with a hide of water from the pool in the cave.

When we were ready to lay Angel in the grave, Zoan went to the shelters and returned with a deerhide Angel had slept on when Sneechen was a tiny puppy. We had still spoken no word. Zoan lifted Angel and wrapped her in the deerhide, and we laid her in the grave. Yrsa sprinkled her body with water from the cave and spoke a prayer in a language I didn’t understand. Sigurd, the last of us to warm to Angel when she first arrived, placed one of his sunrock arrowheads into the grave. We took turns filling the grave. When it was complete, Yrsa emptied her bag of cave water onto the mound. Inge had brought flowers she had picked on the way back from the cave, and decorated the grave. Zoan said our prayer for lost animals, the first words he had spoken.

We built a small fire next to the grave, the first fire to be built there. We brought food and spent most of the rest of the day at the grave, eating and talking quietly about Angel─about the circumstances that brought her to us after she had been clubbed unconscious by vicious men, about her friendship toward us all, her excellence as a mother, her fearsome snarl and bark, her dislike of the cave, her discomfort when any of us was absent. We gathered stones and build a cairn over her grave. When the day ended we left sadly to prepare our evening meal, but Sneechen lay on Angel’s grave until sunset.

***

The full moon rose huge over the eastern horizon just at sunset, a fitting sign to mark the passing of our friend and protector. Later it was exceptionally close and bright as I lay in bed sleeping fitfully, grieving. The night was warm and still. I got up and walked toward Angel’s grave to feel the cool night air. I have always loved the soft sounds of the night, when it’s so quiet you can hear the smallest rustle in the grass. Sneechen joined me, anxious for company, missing her mother. Her woolly presence in the brilliant moonlight comforted me.

Looking at the sky, noticing how the stars were dimmed by the light of the moon, I was startled to see that the moon was no longer perfectly round. The slightest piece was missing at the top. Perhaps a cloud, I thought, that would move across the moon and drift quickly away. As I watched in curiosity I was startled to see the the dark area was now larger, and was growing, creeping downward across the face of the moon, although too slowly for me to actually see any movement. I looked around at a sound to find Zoan. He had awakened and had come to look for me, but his eyes were on the moon. Neither of us knew what was happening. We talked quietly, trying to recall what we had heard from the elders of the darkening of the moon. Zoan decided to wake Sigurd, whose old stories often included unusual things in the night skies. Zoan found both Sigurd and Inge awake. The others were also coming out of their shelter. We gathered at Angel’s grave, watching as the moon disappeared little by little. No one spoke. We were awestruck.

The moon finally disappeared completely, leaving only a reddish hint of what it had been, and the earlier bright moonlight was no more. It had become the darkest of nights, with brilliant stars. We were silent and somber, gathered by Angel’s grave where we had spent most of the day, witnessing an event we might never see again. The dim red moon remained visible, ghostlike. Some primitive part of me feared the end of everything, but I knew better. Bjorn said he had seen the full moon darkened once before, but only partially. The wolves howling along the river below us sounded mournful, and we knew that this darkening of the moon on such a day of grief was an omen.

Finally the smallest sliver of moon appeared, the top edge that had first disappeared. Look, said Yrsa, reborn. Gradually, the moon reappeared, returning to its usual brilliance, again dimming the stars. The feeling of powerful magic remained, and the extraordinary events were not ended, for as we watched I had become aware that I was having birth pains, and knew my time had come.

Zoan and Sigurd gathered wood for a fire. Yrsa brought out a bag of herbs she had made ready. She insisted I should give birth in the spirit chamber, protected by its power and magic. I hardly remember that time of pain and fright, and eventually of relief and joy. I remember being helped down onto a soft pallet in the center of the great hall of columns, near the stream. I heard Zoan’s voice in the background, and Inge and Yrsa reassuring him that I would be fine. Yrsa had given me herb tea to help me relax. I could feel the warmth of the fire Zoan built, but the huge chamber was cave-damp even so. Inge covered me with a soft hide and stayed with me while Yrsa made her preparations. Mostly what I remember is the pain, seemingly lasting forever. Time stopped. Finally out of the fog of pain I heard the blessed wail of a baby─a lusty cry that told me she was healthy. Zoan knelt beside me, brushed my hair away from my face, and smiled at me. Yrsa wrapped our baby in the soft rabbit hide I had made for her and placed her in my arms.

We named her Angel.

11. Fedr

Almost a year since the rockslide in the cove now, and another full moon. Angel was a month old. The days were shorter and the trees were turning, but it was still warm and clear, with no hint of early winter, no early storm like last year. We were still outside in the shelters. Angel rode everywhere with me in her hide sling, gravely watching our lives unfold. We were rarely alone, for Sneechen had appointed herself Angel’s companion. She had changed since the death of her mother, assuming responsibility for guarding us, frequently trotting importantly around the shelters, to the cliff edge and the mouth of the cave, making her rounds to ensure nothing could threaten us. She allowed no deer closer than the sunrock work area. She was cheerful, energetic, and devoted. When Angel slept in the cradle Zoan had made, Sneechen never left her.

Zoan was a happy man, with a beautiful daughter─truly beautiful, with perfect tiny hands and feet, a tousled head of dark curly hair, and eyes that were light at first, now already darker. Zoan had been too worried about the risk of childbirth to let himself feel enjoyment. Now he glowed with pleasure as he watched her.

So far the men had postponed their trip to the glarestone deposits Bjorn had spoken of. They spent more time hunting, for the deer were fat and we needed food for eight, including a nursing mother. I was eating more than I had in my entire life. When they weren’t hunting, Zoan and Sigurd were at their work area. They had long since used all of the original lump of sunrock, and were now working at melting green gravel. But as winter drew closer they felt more and more urgent about collecting glarestone before snow fell, so with Angel getting chubby and obviously healthy, the postponement ended. They planned to camp one night, near the glarestone deposits. I disliked having Zoan gone, and was tortured by my imagination, in which he was attacked by raiders, but didn’t bring it up. I should have.

I wouldn’t know the awful story of the glarestone trip if it weren’t for Inge. The day they were due to return, Inge went to the far north end of the bench to watch for them. She reached there by mid-morning, and sat down to wait, enjoying the view of the river and the hills beyond, where the trees were turning red and gold. She was gazing far east to the sea when she became aware of movement below her. Looking closely, she realized that what she saw was a large brown bear.

Inge was horrified, knowing that the three men were expected any moment. She was powerless to interfere. The bear was walking north along the river, probably fishing. The men would be walking south. Inge wouldn’t be able to see them until they r ounded a curve not far from the bear.

As Inge watched, many things happened at once. When the men appeared, the bear stood up, looking at them. They saw the bear and stopped. Then, to Inge’s astonishment, two additional men appeared, farther back, hurrying. They caught up just as the bear charged .

All five men had bows and arrows. Sigurd, Zoan, and Bjorn had spears, Sigurd’s and Zoan’s tipped with sunrock, as were many of their arrows. Sigurd also had the sunrock dagger they had found in the village. Bjorn faced the bear and planted his spear. The other four waited until the bear was close, and then shot arrows. The bear evaded Bjorn’s spear, knocking him down with a swipe of a paw, then ran for Zoan, knocking him down and attacking him. Sigurd actually leapt onto the bear’s back─Inge stopped breathing, she said─and plunged the sunrock dagger into the back of the bear’s neck. The hurt and enraged bear turned on Sigurd, attacking him, knocking him down. One of the two new arrivals grabbed Bjorn’s spear, where Bjorn had dropped it as he fell; the other grabbed Sigurd’s, and they attacked the bear. Once again sunrock made the difference; Sigurd’s sunrock-tipped spear penetrated the bear’s massive chest and the bear collapsed, after swiping at the two men with its huge paws. One of the men grabbed frantically for Zoan’s spear, lying on the ground, but as he turned back toward the bear he saw the bear was dead. One man was left standing. Four lay motionless on the ground, the bear between them.

Inge said the entire fight took only moments, barely enough time for her to catch her breath. She sprinted toward camp and the climbing route to the village, retracing at a dead run the entire distance she had covered while walking north. She already had her bow and arrows. After the men had descended the cliff the morning before, Inge had pulled the rope back to the cliff edge; she now lowered the rope and climbed to the ledge. Zoan had hidden our pit rope there, but she ignored it, half-sliding down the canyon. She passed through the village on the run, and headed up the river, in a state of panic, not knowing what she would find.

When Inge arrived, flushed and winded from her long run, she found the lone uninjured man helping the other stranger. Both were young. The scene was covered in blood. The dead bear was enormous. Zoan lay as a dead man, his leg torn and bleeding. He had apparently hit his head when he fell. Bjorn’s arm was torn open and bleeding severely. Sigurd had bites and claw wounds on his upper leg. He had retrieved his dagger from the bear’s neck and hobbled to Zoan to inspect his wounds. Inge found him kneeling beside Zoan, cutting off his deerhide leggings to fashion wraps for his cuts. Inge got them both to the river, and washed and bound their cuts. Zoan was stirring but not fully aware. Working with the uninjured young man, Inge and Sigurd took Bjorn and the second stranger to the river to clean them up and bind their injuries.

Beside the river, as Bjorn and the injured young man saw each other, both smiled in surprise despite their injuries. Bjorn called him Fedr. The young man called him Master Bjorn, and presented his friend Aldi, the uninjured man, with obvious deep respect for Bjorn. Aldi and Fedr were cousins, although from different villages. They had been traveling together since midsummer, trying to reach the sea, where they had heard there was a village of fishermen. They had seen the three men walking southward ahead of them, but didn’t join them, not knowing how they would be received, until they saw the bear. Their journey had been hard. They had escaped raiders twice. Fedr had once been Bjorn’s apprentice, and remembered Yrsa and Heidl. He was shocked to hear of the death’s of Bjorn’s sons and Heidl’s husband.

The six of them sat beside the river, Inge using a wet hide to cool Zoan’s forehead. The men’s packs were heavy with glarestone. They ate deer meat from Sigurd’s pack. Fedr and Aldi were thin and ravenously hungry; they hadn’t eaten for two days. Zoan slowly revived as they ate, and they discussed how to get four injured men, three heavy packs, and the carcass of the bear all up to the bench. Bjorn invited Fedr and Aldi to stay with them on the bench at least temporarily, to the displeasure of Sigurd, who saw every addition as a risk, and didn’t yet trust Fedr and Aldi.

Inge and Aldi were uninjured. Sigurd and Fedr were only slightly injured, and could climb and help hoist the heavy loads to the bench. Bjorn could walk, but would need help climbing. Zoan would have to be hoisted. They knew if they left the bear carcass unattended, it would be attacked by the wolves we so often heard near the river. They retrieved all their weapons, butchered and skinned the bear crudely, and took the rest of the day to bring everybody and everything as far as the village. By this time Yrsa and I were at the cliff edge with Angel and Sneechen. We had seen Inge’s desperate dash and were afraid. I was relieved to see Inge and Sigurd climb to the cliff edge, but feared for Zoan. Inge came to me, took me by the shoulders, and told me what had happened, that Zoan was badly hurt but would recover. She told Yrsa that Bjorn’s arm would need her care, but that he too would recover. Inge and Sigurd took food and returned to the village, spending the night with the rest of the group.

***

The men’s injuries were all serious. Zoan had deep bites in both legs, and Bjorn to his left arm. Sigurd and Fedr had painful lacerations from the bear’s claws. Yrsa treated all of them every day, always in the spirit chamber. She treated Zoan first, even before Bjorn, keeping him there nearly a half day. In all the time I had known Zoan he had never been so seriously hurt, and even though Yrsa said he would recover, I had some days of fear for him, and terrible dreams in which Angel was fatherless. Yrsa’s dedication helped all the men. A half-month after the bear attack, they were all recovering, and none of the cuts had festered. The bear meat was drying on racks in the autumn sun, and the skin was curing outside on the bench. We had almost thirty large chunks of glarestone, which had yet to be flaked into blades. The men had used their limited energy, as they recovered, to hunt. We now had ten mouths to feed.

The night after Yrsa treated him in the cave, Zoan was fully aware for the first time since he was injured. We talked about the bear attack. He remembered the bear charging, but not being knocked down or bitten. He told me of a vision, or a dream, that he saw when he was hurt. He had seen monstrous bird-like creatures. They suddenly swooped down onto us. There was a bloody battle in which we were all injured, and many of the monsters died. When it was over, he saw me pick up one lone bird feather lying on the ground. When I related this to Yrsa the following day, she pointed out that Fedr means ‘feather’.

I remember that day clearly, because it was the day Angel first smiled at me.

***

The chunks of glarestone that had nearly cost our men their lives became Zoan’s focus as he recovered his energy. He had asked whether the glarestone was safe as soon as he was completely aware. I had taken him to the work area when it was still painful for him to walk, to show him the large heap of glarestone chunks, and he started working the glarestone long before he was fully recovered. He began by making a tool, with handle of bone and point of antler, wrapped with sinew. He used that to chip away small pieces of glarestone, which naturally breaks into sharp edges and points. He worked slowly and carefully, and on his first full working day made the finest and sharpest needle-like point I had ever seen. He was pleased with the result, and started immediately on a more substantial project, a broad piece with a sharp point that Heidl could use to scratch designs into sunrock, working deeper with successive scratches. Heidl, by now heavy with child, was intensely interested in Zoan’s glarestone work, which I could see would take up many days of the coming winter.

***

The trees were almost bare, but the weather had remained so good, with warm clear days one following another, that we were all surprised when it turned wintry, and the cold north winds forced us inside. Moving back into the cave required some effort. We had five more people this winter, plus a new baby and another on the way. The cave had plenty of space, but, it took planning to arrange sleeping areas so that everyone would be comfortable and have enough privacy. Angel was happy most of the time, but a crying baby in close quarters would keep everyone awake. Zoan, Sigurd, and Bjorn discussed the layout of sleeping quarters at length, walking back and forth across the huge stream chamber, finally deciding to put all the bedsites on the south side of the stream, where our bedsites had been before, and locate the latrine in a nook in the northwest corner, under the only ceiling opening that room had; it gave the latrine area the feeling of a separate room. It had a deep, narrow pit and an enormous hillside of soft soil that we could use for filling. Finally we brought in all the supplies and equipment from the shelters. Zoan and Sigurd carried in the large bed platform Bjorn had built for himself and Yrsa; Bjorn’s arm─the most serious damage the bear had done─had still not fully recovered.

The move aggravated the tension between Fedr and Aldi that had been obvious since they first arrived. Fedr was quiet and steady, a craftsman who had learned building from Bjorn and became a fine builder in his own right. His cousin Aldi had never learned a craft. He was a pleasant young man and a good hunter, but had little interest in helping with our daily lwork. When he wasn’t hunting he spent most of his time sitting in the sun watching other people work. He was particularly interested in what Heidl was doing, and in Heidl herself. Fedr always stayed busy and resented Aldi’s laziness. He felt they should both be grateful for a safe place to stay and should work to earn the food they ate.

Fedr also resented Aldi’s attentions to Heidl. Both boys were about Heidl’s age, but Fedr had known Heidl for years, and Heidl’s husband had been Fedr’s friend. I could see that talking to Fedr made Heidl seem more alive. Heidl spent many days working on her sunrock bracelet and on a second bracelet Zoan had made for her, slightly wider than the first, which she intended to decorate using glarestone. She spent her days working near Sigurd’s and Zoan’s work area. When we moved to the cave they built her a small oven near the mouth of the open cavern, where it was cold but protected from rain, snow, and most wind. On many cold days she could be found sitting there wrapped in deerhide, patiently working on the bracelets. I could see this was good for her. Fedr could too, and interfered with her work only rarely, even though he enjoyed talking to her. Aldi developed the habit of sitting near Heidl while she was working, talking to her. She didn’t stop work, but this didn’t discourage him. Sometimes she even left her work area to return to the cave─obviously to end a conversation with Aldi, but Aldi didn’t notice.

Fedr watched this interaction with growing irritation. Finally he took Aldi aside and told him to leave Heidl alone, that he was bothering her. I was watching, but could not hear what they said. Fedr said later that Aldi turned his back without a word and went right back to Heidl. Heidl got up from her work and walked away. Fedr pointed out angrily that Aldi had disturbed her. Aldi turned and punched Fedr, knocking him down. They fought briefly but fiercely, Fedr ending up atop Aldi, holding him down, demanding that he yield and leave Heidl alone. I had not before seen Fedr in such a rage, nor ever afterward. Both had bloody faces. When they separated, Fedr went to the stream to wash his face. Aldi stalked angrily toward the cliff edge. Heidl, who had walked away from Aldi, had turned to watch this encounter, shocked and wide-eyed.

That night Heidl and Fedr sat talking by the fire far into the night. We never saw Aldi again. We searched for him in the morning. He had lowered our rope, climbed down to the ledge, and departed. Three large pieces of glarestone were missing as well.

***

Heidl was near her time to delive r, and Yrsa began preparing in earnest. Others participated as well─Bjorn made a cradle, and Inge sewed rabbit skin wraps with Yrsa. Heidl herself seemed detached, in a private world. She spent her days working on her bracelet and learning sunrock work from Sigurd and Zoan, showing no interest in anything else. She made no preparations for the baby, barely acknowledging that she would soon be a mother. Yrsa, already worried that the birth could be difficult because Heidl was not strong or particularly healthy, became extremely concerned, although she tried to hide it from Heidl. When Yrsa talked to Heidl about what to expect during the delivery, and about taking care of the baby, Heidl just looked at her mother without responding, obviously anxious to get back to her work with the sunrock.

We had been settled in the cave for a half month when we were awakened in the middle of the night by Heidl’s screams. She was in pain and frightened. Yrsa was quickly at her side, trying to comfort and quiet her. Inge brewed Yrsa’s herb tea for Heidl, hoping it would calm her. We doubted that her earliest pains could be so severe, but Heidl could not be calmed and would not stop screaming. Everyone was awake, Sneechen barking and Angel crying. I had to tend to Angel, so I couldn’t help with Heidl, but her mother and Inge both knew what to do. I encouraged the men to go back to their sleeping pallets and keep out of the way. Zoan and Sigurd did, but Bjorn and Fedr built up the fire and sat off to the side so they would be near if needed.

What followed was hard on all of us. Heidl would not calm down. She was inconsolable, sobbing like a child and occasionally screaming with fear. She was exhausting herself and would have no strength left by the time the baby was ready to come. Yrsa’s face showed the strain of having to stay calm even though she was desperately worried about what would happen. Inge tried to help as much as she could, so that Yrsa could focus on her daughter. By the middle of the next day, Heidl had been in labor so long she could no longer even cry. She was completely spent. By nightfall, we had all almost given up. I think Yrsa had no hope at all left for the baby and little hope of saving Heidl. Yrsa had not slept; she had been cradling Heidl and talking to her since the beginning. Heidl sometimes slept, or perhaps fainted, but woke often with the pain. Yrsa could not convince Heidl she needed to push to help the baby come and Heidl had no strength to do it. Yrsa pressed on Heidl’s belly, trying to feel where the baby was, and finally realized the baby was not turned properly. She had seen this before, and once had been able to get a baby to turn. That night she worked feverishly, even though she was exhausted, trying to get the baby into position. At last, with a final weak scream from Heidl, her baby was born, a boy. He was small, limp, and blue, but Yrsa was able to breathe life into him. Fedr was there with warm wraps. Yrsa turned her full attention to Heidl; she and Inge had to pour sips of tea into her mouth. Heidl was too tired and had endured too much pain. She was past caring whether she lived or died. Her face had no color at all.

Yrsa was utterly exhausted refused to give up. She kept working with Heidl, talking to her, encouraging her to open her eyes and fight for her own life. Inge wanted to take over from Yrsa several times, but Yrsa would not leave Heidl. Fedr brought the baby to Heidl, hoping to revive her, but she showed no interest. Fedr sat down beside Heidl and her mother, holding the baby to keep him warm. We all knew Heidl would need to feed the baby soon, but that didn’t seem possible. I realized it would be up to me to nurse Heidl’s baby if she could not. Angel nursed enthusiastically, and I wasn’t sure I would have enough milk for another baby, especially one that needed so much just to survive.

By morning Heidl was a little more alert and some color had come back into her face. Yrsa finally let Inge take over so she could get some rest, knowing that she would do Heidl and the baby no good if she collapsed. I had nursed the new baby twice. I had plenty of milk; he was so weak he could nurse only a short time. I worried that if Heidl didn’t start nursing him herself, both could die, but Heidl showed no interest in even looking at her baby. When we brought him to her, she would turn her head and close her eyes. I couldn’t understand. Seeing Angel was the first thing I had thought about as soon as I was aware that it was over and the pain subsided. I feared for both Heidl and her baby.

The next day Yrsa insisted Heidl try to nurse the baby. Heidl refused to do it herself, so Yrsa placed him at Heidl’s breast. Yrsa hoped it would encourage Heidl to at least show some interest in the beautiful child she had given birth to. What little hair he had was so blond it was almost invisible. His eyes were pale blue; he was small and delicate, so much the opposite of my healthy, dark haired little girl. His cries were still weak but we no longer feared for his life. Unlike his mother, he was a fighter. It was Heidl who was our biggest concern. What would happen to this tiny baby if he had no mother to care for him?

In the end it was Fedr who saved Heidl. He had known her since they were children, and since coming to the bench had fallen in love with her. He was one of the first to hold her baby, and was overwhelmed by the feeling of cradling a brand new life. Because the baby was Heidl’s, Fedr loved him immediately. After he was born, it was days before Fedr slept, or left Heidl’s side. He held her hand and talked softly to her when she was at her lowest ebb. When she showed signs of rallying, he helped care for both her and her baby. He won Yrsa’s heart with his tenderness toward her daughter and grandson. As Heidl became more aware of those around her, his was the face she turned to. He was the first person she smiled at when she was able to focus on something other than herself.

Heidl regained her strength slowly. The baby was a month old before she was able to tend him herself. During that month Fedr was constantly there to help, encourage, and love her. Thanks to him she began to show more interest in her baby. Fedr urged her to hold the baby, cuddle him─and name him. She decided to call him Geyrr, which means spear. Nursing him became more comfortable and natural for her, and Geyrr began to thrive. He gained weight and his cry became all too loud. Yrsa had again saved her daughter’s life, and Geyrr’s as well, but not Yrsa alone. Heidl and Geyrr would both have been lost without the love of a gentle man who would become her husband, take Geyrr as his own, and take his place as a permanent member of our group.

12. Journal

The first snow found us recovered from the bear attack and settled into a winter routine. Angel was two and a half months old and growing fast, full of laughter. She made even Sigurd smile. Geyrr was still tiny at one month, but now nursed vigorously; I still nursed him when Heidl could not. Heidl, still extremely weak but slowly getting stronger, had rejoined our group, taking energy from her relationship with Fedr, who provided most of the care for Geyrr. Sigurd and Zoan had shown the snow feet to Bjorn, and the three of them were making more. Inge and Yrsa had become frequent visitors to the spirit chamber, where Yrsa was training Inge as a healer. Sneechen now had eight adults and two babies to watch over, and took her duties seriously.

It was as I started planning what to put on the walls of our living chamber to tell our story that I realized how much territory Zoan and I had covered. It had been more than two years since we began planning our trek north, like children deciding what games to play that day. Had we seen where we now were, would we still have done it? I liked to think so, but the question made no sense. How could we have imagined the rockslide, the bear, the battle with the raiders, Inge’s tragic history, the difficult birth we had just been through? We thought we were taking a summer trip to find out what life was like outside the village. Now, as I watched Angel sleeping with Sneechen by her side, Fedr fussing over Heidl as she nursed Geyrr, Sigurd and Zoan with their heads together discussing an improved sunrock oven, I saw that we were children no more, but adults in our own right, within our own village. Looking at my ring glinting in the firelight reminded me of the beauty of sunrock, the northern lights, the spirit chamber, the huge view eastward to the moonrise. Fedr had shown us that love could conquer the most dangerous adversity; Bjorn and Yrsa had shown us that our trek had just begun, that life is more than a simple passage from childhood to adulthood to old age; and all around me I saw the beauty of companionship.

How could I put it all on the wall?

Book Two: Yrsa

1. Midwinter

I lie awake after the others are asleep, watching the play of moonlight on the land outside. I can feel the presence of the cave. Does it feel the moonlight? Does it know of the night sky, the stars, the northern lights? I see our companions. Do they know it is midwinter, and that the approaching full moon is the midwinter moon? I will tell them in the morning. The babies are both sleeping. Only Fedr stirs, to tend the fire that warms Heidl and Geyrr.

For myself, I know at this year’s ending that I must now finally face the horror, or it will never leave me. Please, may I never have another such year. Even so, I am grateful for what it has brought me. A year ago I had Bjorn, two sons, and a daughter with a fine husband. I am lucky that any of that bounty remains. Even last month Bjorn and I could have lost everything. Now a miracle, a gift of this cave─Heidl restored, a good man, a healthy babe. A year ago I feared what finally came to pass, or worse, feared losing everything. Now I am a needed part of a community of loving friends and good providers. I have Inge, star-child, who will surpass me, who sees deeply and is young enough to carry my grandmother’s wisdom forward many years more. A half year ago I feared it would be lost. I have Bjorn, Bear, survivor of so many terrible events, whose arm would have been lost anyplace but here, and even the power here was almost not enough. Above all I have you, the spirit of this place, always present. It is to you that I speak these words in grateful acknowledgment of your generosity, of the warmth and healing power of this your cave. I never thought to find such a place, although my grandmother had said I would. You bring her to life in your power, remind me that I first heard of you though her.

Today I asked Quitana why she was decorating our sleeping chamber rather than the spirit chamber just upstream, your dwelling. She smiled her beautiful calm smile and said she was intimidated by what she felt there, and also preferred working in dim daylight to working in darkness with a torch. Her way would not be my way, but her paintings are moving and beautiful. She has drawn herself and Zoan as children, hunting. I was surprised to find out she is only nineteen, only three years older than Heidl; she seems so much older and wiser. I think it is loving Zoan for so many years that has made her so. He shows it too. As I watched her work, her baby asleep in a sling in front of her, I hoped Fedr and Geyrr could bring some little part of Quitana’s wisdom to Heidl.

She has drawn their boat journey, months on the water, camping on the shore, ending up not far from here, expecting to return by boat. The rest of their story, and my story, turned on the destruction of their boat by a terrible rockslide. Accident? I don’t care. Fate works however it does. Only the result counts. Now she has moved on, and is beginning to show the story of their meeting with Sigurd, his concern for the injured Inge, how they suffered the cold of winter, and would have died had they not found this cave. I am watching her pictures and learning from them, not only her story, but also what kind of woman she is, from what she remembers.

***

I will not record my own story on these walls, preserving forever the horrors that drove us from our village. I don’t want to think about them, but until I do I will never be free of the terrible dreams. I have been ready since we started sleeping in the cave, cradled in your power, but I’ve been preoccupied with the birth, and with Heidl. Now, on the year’s longest and darkest night, I know I must tell the story. Without it, my life here makes no sense.

It started in the early morning on a day we knew would be hot. The night before had been so warm we couldn’t sleep inside, so we made a sleeping pallet on the ground outside our house and slept under the starlit sky. For a long time before I fell asleep I watched the clouds drift across the sky and wondered at the mystery of the profusion of stars. We both woke early; Bjorn planned to start building a house for Heidl and her husband, and that day he wanted to cut down a large tree he had found in the forest nearby, straight and tall, for roof beams for the house.

We had started our day’s work while most of the village still slept. It was quiet, without the sound of children laughing, playing on the grass in the middle of the village; otherwise I might not have heard the sound of many running feet. I don’t know why, but I instantly sensed danger and knew we must act quickly. Brandr had just rounded the corner of our house, there to help Bjorn begin the work. I grabbed his arm and asked where Heidl was. He told me she had gone to get water from the river. I knew we must all leave immediately, but Bjorn and Brandr didn’t understand. I half dragged them along, heading toward the river to get Heidl. She was just filling her vessels with water. I grabbed her hand and we ran for the forest as fast as we could. Seeing the look on my face, Heidl didn’t ask why. We hid in a dense copse not far from the edge of the fields near the village, where our sons would be working. I wanted to go find them, but Bjorn wouldn’t let go of my arm until I told him what was wrong, why I was so afraid. Then we heard shouting and screams from the village. The four of us froze in fear and shock. There was nothing we could do. We had no weapons and no way of reaching our houses without exposing ourselves to the raiders, who were destroying our village and killing its people.

Brandr worked his way around the edge of the forest to a place where he could see the fields. By that time of morning there would have been people working there; our crops always needed water, and there were always weeds to be pulled. Brandr came running back, breathless,with a horrified expression. He didn’t need to tell us what he had seen happening; the noise and panic from the fields carried clearly to our hiding place. I sat on the ground with my hands over my ears, repeating ‘no’ to myself. I couldn’t let myself think about what was happening to my family and the village people I knew and loved.

It was only a short time before the noise and screaming stopped, but to us it went on forever. The silence was even more awful. We knew the village was gone. We would have to stay where we were until dark, and then get as far away as possible. The only way we knew was south. We feared the raiding party might go that direction, but we had no other choice. I wouldn’t have been so desperate to get away if Bjorn and I had been alone, but Heidl and Brandr were so young and full of plans that I couldn’t let anything happen to them. They had just started their life together, and Heidl was pregnant with our first grandchild.

We stayed in the copse until it was fully dark, one of us keeping watch all the time. Bjorn and I talked about the best way to escape the area. We both knew some of the villages south of us─Bjorn had helped build houses and taught his methods, and I had taught healers how to grow, dry, and use medicinal plants and herbs. We feared that the raiders would go to those villages soon. If we got there first we could give a warning. From where we were hiding, we could see the fires as our village burned. We didn’t know where the raiders were, but we had to leave.

The first village to the south was a half day’s walk down the river. Even though the night was dark, with clouds blotting out the stars and moon, we feared traveling by the road. Cutting through the countryside made the trip longer and more difficult, and we were still far from the village when dawn broke. We couldn’t be seen from the road, but still didn’t feel safe traveling by day. We found a forested area where we could rest in safety for the day.

We had left our house with nothing─no food, no clothing but what we wore, and no weapons. Bjorn had left his tools and I had left left all my dried plants and herbs, years in the collecting and preparation. We had no way to defend ourselves, no way to hunt food, and nowhere to go. Heidl’s pregnancy was not far along, but she was not strong and tired easily. We knew we couldn’t go much farther without food. Bjorn and Brandr talked about how they might catch one of the rabbits we had seen in the forest. I looked for edible berries or perhaps a nut tree. I had looked for plants all along the way, but unsuccessfully. I had thought I recognized one or two plants but I couldn’t be sure, and couldn’t risk making any of us sick.

We were sickened at heart as we saw flames rising to the south. We knew the worst then, that we could no longer hope to help, and many would die. If we had reached the village overnight to offer a warning we would have died too. It started to rain, a cold steady drizzle.

Late that night, as we finally approached the smouldering remains of the village, we saw that it was empty. The raiders had moved on, probably toward the larger village that lay westward, in the hills; farther to the south, as far as we knew, the river valley was steeper and unpopulated. The houses here were burned, but not totally destroyed─the rain had doused the fires. It was deathly quiet. Bjorn and Brandr decided to risk investigating the remains of the village in the hope of finding weapons or food. We had eaten nothing except a few berries for two days, and unless we found food we would soon be too weak to walk. Heidl and I hid in the forest outside the village, near the river, while the men were gone.

I can hardly bring myself to tell what happened, the most terrible part. The men had planned to be gone only a short time, but it was full daylight before Bjorn appeared, and alone. He carried a hide sack and had a bow and a quiver of arrows. He slumped down next to me without saying a word, finally lying face down on the soggy grass, as if to avoid seeing the world.

Brandr was gone, slain. The moon had broken through while they were in the village, and two men had seen them─probably not raiders, but they took Bjorn and Brandr to be enemies and pursued them. Brandr had led the pursuers northward through the village, at a run. Bjorn, unable to keep up, had dropped to the ground behind a watering trough, and in the dark the men passed him without seeing him. He heard sounds of a fight. He saw the two men departing to the north. He found Brandr beside the road, beaten, dying. Brandr could not speak, but knew Bjorn was there before he died. Bjorn returned to the ruined village to find a shovel. He found instead a bow and arrows, fire tools, and some deer hides. He returned to Brandr’s body and dug a grave with rocks and his bare hands. He buried Brandr covered in hides, spoke the prayers, and returned to us through the village, where he caught and killed two hens. He brought them to us in a hide bag.

Bjorn fell silent. Neither Heidl nor I had said a word, and could hardly look at each other. We were beyond weeping. We had known and taught people in this village. Now they were gone, and Heidl’s husband with them. Bjorn did not say what else he found in the village. I know that he never will, that he will carry those memories to his own grave unspoken.

Bjorn finally slept. Heidl and I did not. Toward midday I built a fire and cooked the two hens. We ate silently, then walked to the river and started southward. We continued south along the river even after the road dwindled to a track. We no longer tried to hide, but put our lives in the hands of fate. We traveled that way, eating what food we could find─nuts, berries, roots, and a few rabbits Bjorn shot─until we came here. By that time I thought we were lost, but now I see that this is where we were headed. I have come to you and this cave, this chamber of your power, as my grandmother said I would.

I will never get over the loss of my sons. No mother should have to outlive her children, but we can’t always choose the courses of our lives. I came to this magical place to renew my spirit and rebuild my life. You gave me the ability to save my daughter’s life, and she gave me a beautiful grandson. I have Bjorn and a way to grow plants that heal, and finally, in your powerful presence where I belong, I have spoken the horrors that have troubled my nights for so long, and on this midwinter’s night I am at peace.

2. The Spreading Plague

A full moon rose splendidly only a few days after midwinter. After such a year I knew that our good luck obligated me to hold a traditional ceremony, in honor of the blessings of the cave, the new babies, Heidl’s recovery, and our rescue from death at the hands of the raiders. As the sun began its journey northward into the new year we would move farther from the times of terror, and the ceremony could be a marker that we would all remember.

I knew Sigurd and Inge would recognize the traditional midwinter full moon feast and celebration. I had spoken to Inge about it, and her eyes lighted with pleasure at the thought; her last midwinter feast was when she was a child. Quitana says her people’s midwinter celebration is not too different from ours, with presentation of the new babies, memories of those who had died, prayers for the coming year, and a feast. She and Inge and I would work together.

Now I look around and see the happy results. The three of us prepared the food. We have ample stores of berries and late-season tree fruits, as well as deer and rabbit. A year from now we will have flour; this year’s garden included enough grains to produce a respectable amount of seed, and Inge and I planted a field of grains this past fall, which we will harvest next summer. For now we have meat and sweet dressing made from our fruits and berries, a special meal indeed, compared to our everyday plain fare. I spoke the ceremonial prayers before we began eating, remembering Brandr and our sons, and offered a prayer for the coming year. Now everyone has eaten his fill, and it is a time of pure enjoyment, with everybody gathered talking, nobody working. Both babies are awake and wide-eyed at the happy excitement. Geyrr has discovered smiling; I see him cradled in Fedr’s lap, exchanging smiles with his mother, sitting close to Fedr. Angel wants to crawl, but can’t yet manage it; she has her small fists deep into the fur of Sneechen, her constant companion. Zoan and Quitana are sitting together, touching as always, happy. Sigurd and Inge are sitting with me and Bjorn, talking of other midwinter celebrations, before the terror. We are all happy with each other’s company, and as a family group we are still new enough that there are no harsh words. After the meal we will carry the babies outside to present them to the full moon, and give them the carvings Zoan and Fedr have made to protect them, for their mothers’ pouches and someday their own. Then I will speak the prayers for their health and growth in the coming year.

Tonight, before I sleep, I will light a torch and make my daily pilgrimage to the spirit chamber, where I will say a special prayer for my husband and daughter and grandson, and give thanks for all of this, so far beyond whatever few hopes I might have had during the dark times.

***

Heidl’s resurgence is a tree with four tap roots─Geyrr, Fedr, sunrock, and the power of this cave. The cave is timeless, but I sense power in sunrock too, the marvelous material of the bracelet she so loves. Sunrock is new to me, but I sense ancient mysteries within it. Hard as stone, but workable into arrowheads and bracelets, not like stone at all; out of the ground but with the freshness of the sun, and changeable, different daily. It shines like the sun today but in ten days is crusted over with a greenish tinge. That brought Heidl to despair, because it took patience and energy to scrub it with hide until it again reflected the sun─until my dream.

I see Heidl scrubbing the bracelet, but suddenly know that it is suffering from separation from its native ground. I take Heidl by the hand and lead her to the spirit chamber. We have torches, although I don’t remember lighting them. We head away from the beautiful streamside into a grotto of small formations. I’m aware of a foul smell, the first I have encountered in the cave. We kneel beside a sludgy pool that is the source of the smell. We lower the bracelet into the pool on a twig we brought for the purpose ─ how did we know to bring a twig, I wonder?─and bring it out covered with sludge. We carry it to the stream and wash and rub the sludge away, using deerhide. The bracelet is restored, and reflects the gleam of the torches! Another blessing of the cave. I am overcome with gratitude.

Not wanting to give Heidl false hope, I ask Zoan if I may experiment with an arrowhead. The one he gives me is a dull green. I come to the spirit chamber. I know it well, for I come here every day. I turn away from the stream, walking up a slope I don’t remember from the dream. I duck low under an overhanging rock formation and emerge into an adjoining chamber that is completely new to me, huge and mysterious, as awesome as the spirit chamber, with tall formations half-seen in the darkness, but nothing like my dream. I am discouraged, but as I turn back toward the stream I catch a whiff of the foul smell.

When I show the arrowhead to Zoan he exclaims at its brilliance, and shows it to Sigurd. Heidl is working at her small oven, face glowing in its heat, blowing on her fire of fire rock with the men’s blower, preparing to heat her second bracelet to smooth its edges. When I show her the arrowhead she turns it over and over in her hand. Show me, she says. Show me how you did it. Seeing her excitement, remembering how her bracelet had broken the back of her grief and isolation, I know she will be whole.

As we enter the sleeping chamber, shedding our wraps in the warmth of the cave, we meet Fedr, coming out with Geyrr, bringing him to be fed, wrapped in three layers of soft rabbit fur. Heidl laughs happily to see them, and shows Fedr the arrowhead as she takes the baby. Can this be the same woman who almost died, first of grief, then of childbirth? Her laugh is music to me, another gift from the power of this place.

***

Until now the weather has been moderate, with several snowstorms but nice days as well. Now we suffer the power of a big storm, with heavy snow and a driving bitter wind from the south. The cave is unchanged, but the frigid outside air at the entrance creates a curtain of fog there, freezing on the rocks to make delicate spiderwebs of frost. Heidl has given up working at her oven until the storm ends, and is sitting near her sleeping pallet with Fedr and Geyrr. Sigurd, Inge, Zoan, and Quitana are discussing last year, when they slept in a much darker chamber near the cave’s other entrance. Fedr had guessed the cave had another entrance, but Sigurd was unwilling to discuss it. Now that he has come to trust Fedr, the two of them are often deep in discussion with Zoan about the layout of the cave. They talk as Zoan chips glarestone, making blades and points from the pieces he was carrying when the bear attacked them. Glarestone work is good wintertime activity, painstaking and slow. All the men are learning from Zoan, who learned from an old craftsman in his home village. Fedr intends to make carving tools for Heidl. The four men all want glarestone blades for tools and weapons. The end of this winter will see many new things of glarestone.

By the time I arrived here mid-year, Sigurd and Zoan were already working sunrock into points and ornaments. Their oven is fired with fire rock, a black rock that burns hot. Later they melted sunrock out of green gravel, plentiful near the village below, as fire rock is as well. Tonight they are talking about improved ways to handle dangerously hot clay bowls of molten sunrock. They would like to pour the molten sunrock out before it solidifies, into clay molds. This catches Heidl’s attention, and now she and Quitana are discussing making small clay molds of pendants. Quitana carried a mound of clay into the entry chamber during the summer, and mold-making is suddenly another compelling wintertime pursuit, using Heidl’s small oven to bake the pieces.

I see that the creative energy behind the glarestone and sunrock work springs from the four of them in equal measure. Quitana and Zoan are similar, independent and impulsive with no fear of risk─they give off energy by their loving, and acting together are hard to resist. Being near them feels like being warmed by the sun. Inge and Sigurd are different as fire and water─Inge’s strength and spirit set off Sigurd’s power and depth. All four are dreamers and thinkers, and Sigurd and Zoan work together with such ease I forget they’re from different places and languages and customs. It was their risk and energy, flourishing within this powerful place, that rescued the three of us.

***

Sigurd has lived with the threat of raids for twenty years, since he was a small child. Originally they occurred no farther south than his home, far to the north. Sigurd then came south, and grew up near Inge’s village. It was raided five years ago, and our own village, still farther south, was raided last summer. Sigurd and I drew a map showing where and when the raids occurred, and saw that they are expanding southward fast. We had to put our heads together to see that; alone, neither of us knew enough. Zoan, listening, went for Quitana, and she joined us. They are alarmed at our conclusion, concerned for the safety of their home village. They fear the raids are occurring east of the sea as well as on this west side, perhaps in alternate years. If the raiders expand southward east of the sea, they could be in Zoan & Quitana’s home village this coming summer.

Zoan and Sigurd think they should go to the seafaring village that lies downstream, at the mouth of the river, as soon as possible, which means early spring. They hope to learn more about the raiders from the seafarers, and possibly arrange for a boat to carry them south next season, to warn Zoan and Quitana’s village.

Now I am once again in the spirit chamber, seeking guidance. Quitana and Zoan argue that in all three raids we know of, Sigurd’s village, Inge’s, and ours, what made the raids so devastating was surprise. They think they could reach their village soon enough to warn them, to give them time to prepare to defend themselves, and to ally with neighboring villages. They hope they could trade sunrock and glarestone for a boat, in the fishing village. This sounds risky, especially with a baby, but here in this holy place I see that they are right, that they must do it, or risk the later torture of knowing their friends and families died as our friends and families did, because they weren’t warned.

My heart is sorry for my conclusion, and I pray that I live long enough to see their safe return.

3. Reconnaissance

I am awakened by Sneechen’s barking as Angel once again tries to escape. The upcoming full moon will be Angel’s seventh; how well I remember her birth, one day after the darkening of the moon, two events I will never forget, back to back. She is an active baby, already crawling, faster daily on all fours, looking like a bear cub. Sneechen’s work never ends. She blocks Angel by lying in her path, or nudges her back to the group, or simply grabs her hide wrap so that she wiggles helplessly within it. Angel never gives up, but Sneechen is always on guard, and always warns us by barking. Beautiful and cheerful, Angel has inherited her parents’ love of adventure. At the slightest opportunity, she scuttles off toward the bright light of the entrance, to see how far she can get before Sneechen or one of the adults catches her. This morning she has gotten as far as Heidl’s sleeping pallet, where Geyrr is awake. Angel sits by Geyrr, laughing. The two babies have been fascinated with each other since they first became aware.

It is clear and warmer today, although the bench is still snow-covered. It has been ninety-two days since midwinter. The day is finally equal to the night, the gateway to spring. In two more months winter will be only a memory. At the full moon a few nights from now I will say the spring prayers, and we will each speak our hopes. Mine is never again to see anything as awful as this last year. A year ago Bjorn and I were still in our village, but living in fear. Inge tells me that a year ago it was still like midwinter at the day of mid-spring; they hadn’t yet moved to this part of the cave. She told me earlier of her fall in the spirit chamber and her vision of her grandmother, when she learned that this place is where she will live her life. I also know that she hopes for a child of her own, but I believe a year from now she will still be childless.

Much has come from this winter. Heidl has made her second bracelet exceptionally beautiful, with designs deeply engraved by glarestone blades, interlinked figures of sun and moon and river, with many tiny symbols whose meaning she will not explain, but which I know tell of her escape from darkness. She has carved a tiny figure of wood, with glued-on bits of sunrock and glarestone, using hide glue─a mother and baby with two men, for her pouch. It makes me weep. She has made another with one man, holding a woman and child in his arms, surrounded by a circle of sunrock chips, and has given it to Fedr for his own pouch. I know privately that her heart is torn, that she cannot yet give it completely over to Fedr, but I also see that in time she will. Fedr knows this too, and is happy with his two charges.

Quitana has continued her painting all winter, and now Inge has joined her. Their pictures show their first months in the cave, finding Sneechen as a tiny pup and saving her mother, who gave her name to Zoan’s and Quitana’s baby; their move to this part of the cave; Inge’s fall; their garden, and the discovery of the sunrock village. They are nearly ready to show our rescue. They sketch each picture first, using blackened sticks, sometimes many times, so that it is just as they want it before before they paint it with colors. Quitana paints in a glossy black and a startling red, the traditional colors of her family. Inge paints in blue, green, and yellow. Where their pictures overlap, they laugh as they interchange colors. They have known each other only a year and a half, but they act like sisters.

The men have spent the good days hunting, walking on snow feet. Bjorn has shown them how to improve their snow feet, to ease their making. Our supplies of meat and hide have grown as the winter progressed; we now have hides over most of the floor in our living area, and Angel likes to roll on the skin of the bear. The men have made two trips to the cave’s western entrance; on one they were away two nights. Bjorn did not accompany them, because they went to explore the cave, and Bjorn is too stiff to climb. Zoan is an expert climber, and has shown Fedr how to climb walls that seem impossible; they practice in this chamber, on the north wall. At the other entrance Zoan and Sigurd were startled to find that others had camped in their former sleeping chamber, but apparently not for long. Sigurd still believes that the route leading here from the other entrance will be too formidable for anybody to cross.

Hanging over us all is the weight of coming separation. Sigurd and Zoan will visit the fishing village at the river mouth as soon as weather permits, too early in the year for danger from raiders. They hope their things made of sunrock and glarestone will be useful for trade. That trip will only be the beginning; the men talk every day of the quickness of the southward spread of the raids, and Quitana and Zoan are anxious to warn their village of the danger. They will plan that trip after the men return from the river mouth.

***

Sigurd and Zoan are back at work at their large oven long before the snow is gone from the bench, Heidl with them, leaving Fedr tending Geyrr in the cave. They built new tools over the winter, including a large clay catch bowl with a socket, so they can use a long cave stone to lift the bowl out of the oven, still at its hottest. They will tip the catch bowl with another stone to pour the molten sunrock into clay molds. Quitana and Heidl have made catch bowls, and clay molds for creating thin strips of sunrock. Last year they started with a single large lump, hardened in the catch bowl itself. It took days to repeatedly soften the lump and pound it out, until they could separate it into the strips from which they make arrowheads and spear points. This year the strips will require much less effort.

After inspecting Quitana’s ring closely, Bjorn says it was poured into a mold, probably made by carving a wooden ring and pushing it down into a bed of hardening clay. When the clay is baked, the wood burns away, leaving a space the shape of the ring. After the molten sunrock hardens in the mold, the mold is broken away from the sunrock, and the top edge of the ring is smoothed and polished. Heidl is excited by the possibility of making full-circle rings and bracelets. She has prepared one mold, of a bracelet carved by Bjorn, to test the idea.

The first day the oven is hot, they begin baking the clay catch bowls and molds. There is room in the oven for one catch bowl and several molds. In the first load, the catch bowl breaks with a crash, destroying one of the molds, and the rest of the day is taken up cooling and cleaning out the oven. The second load has a catch bowl by itself, with the same result. After four loads they have a single finished catch bowl, and begin baking molds. After five days of this hot, tiring work, they have finished five molds, including the bracelet. The next day they melt a load of green gravel, and carefully tip the molten sunrock into all five molds. Heidl is sharing the work, learning how to do it herself, since she expects Sigurd and Zoan to leave soon for the river mouth village. We all gather in the work area to watch. Fedr and Quitana stand back at a safe distance with the babies, Sneechen with them. Bjorn, Inge, and I crowd around. Tipping the hot catch basin requires two people. One of us will have to help Heidl while Sigurd and Zoan are gone. The process works splendidly, although one of the molds cracks as the hot sunrock is poured into it. The other molds yield excellent and workable strips of sunrock, while from the bracelet mold comes a bracelet that reproduces every detail of its wooden model, including carving marks. Zoan drops the bracelet mold into cold water still hot, causing the outer clay to crack loudly and fall away. Inside the bracelet, the clay cracks but stays in place; Heidl easily digs it out piece by piece.

Heidl and the men are delighted with the results. The work has taken them six days, during which we had spring weather, but at the end of the last day we are chased inside by a blustering snowstorm. Our mood is jovial as we eat. Heidl is already working on the new bracelet.

***

Sigurd and Zoan left on the night of the first half moon with Fedr, at his own request. They descended the cliff at dawn and were out of sight, heading south beside the river, while the sun was still low. We stood at the cliff edge and watched them, Sneechen barking in frustration. Inge pulled up the rope, and the five of us took the two babies and the dog back to the cave. Now it is midday, and cold, although the last several days have been warm. Patches of snow remain on the bench, but along the river the snow seems to be gone. The men took their weapons and a few sunrock and glarestone pieces to trade. All three are fast walkers, but the seashore looks far away. They will be gone some time.

In the spirit chamber last night seeking guidance, dreaming, I saw them return, accompanied by a fourth man. I will tell the others they will return safely, but keep the rest to myself.

With Fedr gone, I am a busy grandmother. Geyrr is five months old and has grown faster than any of us expected. He is almost as tall as Angel, although much lighter. Angel is a robust eight months, crawling at high speed where she pleases, causing Sneechen continual worry. She wants to stand, and watches us walk with a look that says she’ll join us the very day she can. Zoan and Bjorn are planning a log barricade to keep the children away from the cliff edge, and Bjorn goes out daily to select and cut tall young trees for the purpose, stripping the branches, cutting them into workable lengths, and notching the ends so they will stack. Bjorn loves this work, and is happier than I have seen him since we came here. By the time the men return they will find the logs ready to haul and assemble.

Heidl is clearly miserable without Fedr. Silly child, didn’t you see this coming, all these months that you held yourself away from him? Inge and Quitana chatter like sisters and share care of Angel, but underneath I see that they too are lonely, and will be relieved when the men return.

***

Sneechen announces the men’s return nine days later, at the end of the day. They have a fourth man with them. Inge descends quickly to the village to greet them. The fourth man needs help to get to the cliff edge. He is Djuri, Bjorn’s age at least. He grew up in the sunrock village below us. He escaped the raid that devastated the village because he was at the river mouth on a trading mission. That was twenty years ago, when he was young. Since then he has lived in the river mouth village, surviving by helping build boats. When the men arrived in the village with samples of sunrock wares he was astonished, and approached them. He admired Heidl’s second bracelet, but said the men’s spear points and arrowheads were crude. He said the bracelet had great worth in trade goods in the village, and asked what they would want in exchange. When he heard they wanted a boat, however, he paused, saying the bracelet probably would not be enough. He led them to the waterfront and introduced them to several builders. They admired the sunrock pieces but shook their heads at the thought of trading a boat for sunrock.

That was when Sigurd brought out the glarestone points. Nobody there had seen such glarestone work; Zoan learned techniques from his long-ago master that are apparently unknown in this area. They showed arrowheads, spear points, needles, and carving blades. What finally tipped the balance was a weapon Sigurd had made, a fearsome thing, with many glarestone blades embedded in a long narrow club. They agreed on an exchange, to be conducted later. Djuri spoke for one of the village boat builders, who accepted a fine glarestone point as a token of the deal.

The men learned a great deal about the raids. The situation is worse than we had thought. West of the sea, raids like those on our village, Inge’s village, and Djuri’s sunrock village, have always been sporadic. East of the sea, on the mainland, the raids have recently come farther south every year, and have already begun this year. A fast-moving party of raiders could easily reach Zoan and Quitana’s village this year.

As the men prepared to leave on their return trip, Djuri spoke a last time. I would like to join you, he said. I could teach you what you don’t know, and die closer to home.

4. Separation

Quitana says that since Djuri’s arrival she and Zoan feel they can take Inge and Sigurd south with them. With fewer of us to do the work, Djuri will be helpful. He can work with Heidl on sunrock, hunt with Bjorn and Fedr, and help them erect the child barrier. Bjorn’s logs are already in place. All five men dragged them to the shelter area. The barricade will be a continuous low wall around the shelters and the cave entrance. We will simply step over it.

Djuri is a kind man, diminished by years of hard physical work building boats. He rarely laughs. He is grateful to us for taking him in, and astonished that our benchland towers above the village where he grew up; the villagers had no idea the bench was here. They came often to the ledge below us for fire rock, which he calls black fire, but had no way to scale the sheer cliff above the ledge. He wonders how we got here, but Sigurd is so far unwilling to tell him of the other entrance. I often see Djuri standing at the cliff edge gazing down at the village; I wonder what he feels? In the spirit chamber he told me that he sees terrible things in his dreams. I believe the power here can help him, but it will take time.

When Zoan approached Sigurd about traveling south with him, Sigurd laughed, saying he had been planning it all along, that this was not the time for Zoan and Quitana to go alone. They would have liked more time to make Djuri part of our community, but the trip south must not be delayed. Zoan believes they can reach their home village by midsummer. The return trip will take at least two months; their original northbound trip took four months, but they stopped often and long. We could have early snows five months from now. If they are to return this season, as they want, they must leave soon.

I have been to the spirit chamber many times, preparing myself for our time without these young people. I am grateful that Fedr will remain. Bjorn and Djuri─already friends─are willing, but no longer young or strong, and Fedr’s strength will be needed. Besides, Heidl is much happier now in Fedr’s company. I think his time away from the bench made her realize that she has come to love him. Heidl also realizes how much she depends on Fedr for help with Geyrr. I’m glad Heidl so enjoys working with sunrock, but she needs to spend more time with her baby. When Geyrr cries he reaches for Fedr, not Heidl.

***

The day of their departure is finally here. Quitana has told me she is anxious, although excited about seeing her family again and showing Angel to her village. She knows the trip will be hard. When she and Zoan traveled northward in their boat they had no one to think about but themselves. Angel has made Quitana feel more responsible. Inge will be there to help her, but Quitana knows that ultimately she is the one responsible for Angel’s care and safety.

Quitana checks one last time to make sure Angel is securely strapped into her hide sling. Angel is getting heavier, and Quitana has shifted the sling to her back. Angel wiggles and fusses at the unfamiliar constraints. Sneechen is already distressed by the unfamiliar preparations over the past few days, and Angel’s unhappiness is more than she can bear. She begins howling. If a dog can cry, Sneechen is crying. This upsets us all, and both babies cry, a hectic beginning.

Zoan takes Angel’s sling on his back to make the descent down the cliff to the village. Quitana has never made the descent before; the men lower two ropes, and Inge guides Quitana, then returns for her pack. When Quitana is safely down, Zoan transfers Angel’s sling to her, and returns for his own pack. They are carrying food enough for their trip south, weapons, trade goods, and hides for warmth, all divided into three heavy packs. Inge is strong for her size, and can carry almost as much as the men. Their first trip to the seagoing village took the men about four days, but now with the heavy packs and the baby it will require more.

The five of us stand at the edge of the cliff edge watching as Zoan, Quitana, Inge, and Sigurd gather by the river. They wave to us and then turn southward. We watch until they disappear. We are all quiet as we return to our work─all except Sneechen, who continues to stand at the edge of the cliff and howl.

I will miss Inge the most. She has become my companion in the spirit chamber, my most frequent co-worker every day. She has also befriended Heidl, and I understand Heidl better through Inge’s eyes. May she return safely and soon.

***

We are now five and a baby, a smaller group than before the travelers departed, and only two of us young. We miss their energy, but there are pleasures in this new company as well. We talk in the evening as a single group, sitting on our hide-covered floor around our fire. Geyrr crawls between us laughing, always ending up with Fedr and Heidl. I believe he is puzzled about Angel’s absence; I wonder if when she returns he will even remember her? Sneechen lies in our midst. She mourned for two days, but Geyrr’s mobility gave her a new task, and she is once again her lively self, trotting back and forth to be sure nothing sneaks up on us, making sure Geyrr doesn’t stray.

Heidl is unrecognizable as the hopeless woman of the past winter. She has opened her heart to Fedr, and the energy of his caring has melted her. I still occasionally see her staring quietly into the fire, and I know she sees Brandr in Geyrr, as I do, but those times don’t last, and when she and Fedr talk quietly I hear Heidl’s soft laughter as a gift of the spirit. Sitting quietly in the spirit chamber, I see that Heidl will soon ask me to join them as one. I will plan to do that at the midsummer moon, a little more than a month from now.

We are ready to move to the outside shelters. Last year, Bjorn and I kept Heidl with us in our shelter. This year she will use Zoan’s and Quitana’s shelter, with Fedr and Geyrr. Djuri will use Sigurd’s and Inge’s shelter. Bjorn and Djuri have been repairing the shelters and getting them ready for the move. The log barricade is nearly complete already; it won’t be long before Geyrr will need it.

I have discovered that the spirit chamber is a place of powerful dreams. I have taken two hides there and made a dreaming pallet for myself. Today, in the afternoon, I dreamed of Quitana nursing Angel, safe and happy, with a fire burning. It was sunset; I could see the western sky. The other three sat nearby talking. This was not an ordinary dream; it was as if I were present, could almost speak to them. When I woke I felt I had visited them. It was sunset as I emerged from the chamber into our sleeping area; I could still see the last daylight through the entrance. I knew they were safe, seeing the same sunset, another gift of the spirit.

***

I have taken Djuri to the spirit chamber almost every day. He speaks quietly of the raid that changed his life. He had been away half a month. Raiders had attacked the village, coming down the river, in smaller numbers than today’s large raiding groups. They had then moved downriver to the river mouth, where boat builders joined forces and defeated them, killing most of them. Djuri returned to his village in despair, already knowing what he would find. His house was empty, his wife and young son dead near the river, with many others. He said the prayers and launched them all down the river on logs, one by one. He then turned his back on the village and returned to the river mouth. He has lived there for the years since, working with wood instead of the sunrock he loves. There he spoke often with seafarers. He learned much about the raiders, and knows how fast the raids are spreading south. The raiders no longer attack in small groups, but with a hundreds men or more. The boat builders in the river mouth village are afraid, but for now these large raids seem to be only on the mainland.

Djuri says the raiders are of a different culture, with alien beliefs and a completely different language. They came originally from somewhere in the distant east, moving westward to the coast, then settling in the north. They are a people of snow and ice, cruel customs, and long winters. After they settled in the north, they did not venture southward for many years. They know nothing of boats, and before the raid on Djuri’s village had been known only on the mainland. Djuri understood that they must have reached the high-mountain headwaters of the river directly from the mainland, far to the north. I told Djuri of my conversations with Sigurd, how Sigurd’s village in the north─on our side of the sea─had been raided twenty years ago. We realized these raiders must be the same ones who raided Djuri’s village, and died in their failed attack on the river mouth village. We also saw that Sigurd and I had been wrong to guess that the raiders would not be on the mainland unless they had boats. Djuri told me that raids on the mainland had been occurring farther and farther south. I see that they are indeed a threat to Quitana’s and Zoan’s village. I can only hope the raiders will not threaten our friends.

Dreaming again In the spirit chamber, I see them safe, although not dry, and troubled as well. They are at sea, traveling fast. Their boat is sturdy. It is late in the day, as it is here. They are seeking a place to camp on the mainland shore. In the distance to the northeast, along the mainland, is a large fire. I see Sigurd and Zoan watching it, speaking urgently. I see they are all safe, but know, as they do, that the raiders are on the mainland, not far north of them.

***

Now that we are sleeping in the outside shelters, Djuri and Heidl spend many days working at the large sunrock oven. Djuri admires the oven and the blower, but says we should be using wet sand for molds, not clay. He has made and baked a hollow ball of clay the size of two clasped hands, with a hole in the top. The ball is in two halves. Now Heidl and I watch as Djuri packs the two half-balls with wet sand, brought from the river by Fedr, then takes a small wooden figure of a man from his pouch, lays it on the sand in one of the half-balls, and closes the other half around it. When he carefully separates the halves and removes the figure, a depression remains in the sand where the figure had been. Then he again closes the ball. The empty space in the sand is visible through the hole in the top of the ball. He braces the closed ball between four rocks, with the hole up.

Now he heats a small amount of green gravel. When it is hot, with Heidl’s help, he carefully pours molten sunrock into the top of the ball. He lets the ball cool briefly, then pulls the rocks aside; the ball falls apart into its two halves, the sand falling away from the still-hot sunrock. He scoops up the hot piece on a piece of shale, drops it into water to cool, and then hands it to Heidl. It is a perfect replica of the small wooden man.

Djuri glows with pride. He says the clay ball can be used many times, and that he can make the finest points, and long, straight blades, by beginning with carved wooden models. Heidl’s eyes are wide with admiration, and with anticipation of what she will make next.

***

As the full moon is rising in the east, I am optimistic, thinking about our traveling group. I dreamt of them again this afternoon, already camped for the night, with a surprisingly warm wind. They were tired but appeared safe. I then flew, in my dream, rising above the trees. To the north I could see darkness, even though it was still daylight; fires flickered, and I sensed the horror of the raid on our village. To the south, not far away, I saw a deep bay surrounded by hills, and across the hills I saw a large village, in full sunlight, surrounded by green fields. I believe they have nearly arrived, and that they will arrive safely, but that grave danger lies to the north.

Djuri has told us of hemp and hempen rope, which he says has changed boat building completely, and is far superior to our braided hide, which stretches abominably. The boat builders grow hemp, and twist its long fibers into thread, which they twist into rope that is strong and long-lasting. He says that any boat built in the river mouth village will have hempen rope. He adds that hemp grows wild on the river, that he can easily find some there to start on the bench, but fears the descent and climb. Fedr can seek the hemp, we agree; by the time our travelers return, perhaps we can have an improved rope. I do not say to Djuri that Sigurd and Zoan plan to return via the west entrance, landing at the cove where Zoan and Quitana camped, rather than the river mouth, because it is only one day’s climb from there to the cave, and will bring them here at least ten days earlier than the route up the river. I believe Djuri is trustworthy, but I continue to keep the west entrance secret, as Sigurd wanted.

Heidl came to me today and shyly asked me to join her and Fedr. I feigned surprise, but my pleasure was real. We will conduct the ceremony a month from now, at the midsummer moon. I was pleased that she brought Geyrr. Fedr has spent more time hunting with Bjorn and Djuri recently, as Heidl takes care of Geyrr more and more. She asked me what I felt about the traveling group and the raiders─I can see that she has been talking to Djuri. I told her I had seen their safe arrival in a dream. She showed me a figurine in her pouch that she and Fedr had carved jointly, showing four figures walking in a line, one of them carrying a baby.

***

The evening of the midsummer moon has brought with it a warm breeze. As the moon rises, I stand and take my place in the large circle of flowers that Fedr has spent the afternoon carefully arranging. It brings joy to my heart to know these two young people will spend their lives together. Fedr has won all our hearts with his love for Heidl and Geyrr. He will make a fine husband and father, and Geyrr will have many brothers and sisters. I am joyful too because this afternoon in the spirit chamber I saw that our friends are full of happiness and will return to us safely, and this season. I am again grateful to the cave and its spirit, and in awe at its power

Fedr leads Heidl, who is carrying Geyrr, into the flower circle, and they stand before me. Heidl is wearing a circlet of flowers in her hair, and her face glows with happiness as she faces Fedr to hear the words he speaks. Our rites of joining are ancient and sacred to us. We repeat each word knowing it will be heard not just by those around us, but by all the people who have ever had a part in our lives. As Fedr tells Heidl of his love for her, I hear the voices of all those who have spoken their love through all the ages and all the time to come. I hear the music of the heavens in the wind through the trees as I lift my arms to the skies and proclaim these two people joined forever. The light from the moon is reflected in the eyes of Fedr and Heidl and I realize I have tears on my cheeks. It is the brightest and most beautiful moon we have seen since coming to this place we call home.

Heidl and I have spent two days preparing a wedding feast, and the celebration lasts well into the night, long after Geyrr has been put to bed. Even Sneechen joins in. The four of us talk of our homeland, and I sing ancient melodies that I haven’t sung in many years, remembering when Bjorn and I joined so many years ago with all our dreams for our future together. I sing songs of sad remembrance for our sons, but mostly I sing for the life we have together and the happiness of our daughter. Looking toward Djuri, I realize he is crying, and know he too is remembering. All of us have lost people we love, but we know we are fortunate to be here, and that the life we are building together will be a good one.

Before the evening ends I tell everyone of my dream, that I have seen our travelers returning to us safely before the weather turns cold again. We talk and celebrate far after the full moon passes into the west and darkness falls on the bench. The night breeze is warm through the shelters, and Sneechen is busy keeping browsing deer at bay.

Book Three: Inge

1. Voyage

As we walk I am thinking over the last year and a half, astonished at how much the bench has become home and these people family, grieving that we might not return, but rejoicing in my friendship with Quitana that soothes the pain I thought would never abate. We walk side by side, ahead of Sigurd and Zoan, so Angel can watch them, and now once again Angel and Zoan are laughing at each other. The day is cool. We are picking our way down a steep canyon with high walls, and the river sound makes it hard to talk. We we will camp where the river opens into a flat valley. Sigurd expects it will take us all day to get there.

Our loads are heavy, but I am strong and healthy now, and feel light-footed. We move fast, and arrive in the valley long before dark even though we make several stops, to rest and for Quitana to take care of Angel and feed her. Angel has slept often, rocked by the constant motion. Now that we have stopped she is ready to explore. Zoan watches her as she investigates the area around the hides we have put down for her, unaccustomed work, for we are all used to Sneechen watching over both babies and letting us know when they stray.

Angel has no idea what lies ahead, but the rest of us know the trip will not be easy with a baby to take care of. But for the threat of raids, Zoan and Quitana would have waited another year before taking Angel to meet their parents. But go now we must. We are racing before a spreading forest fire, and Zoan and Quitana have heard enough of my story, Sigurd’s, and Yrsa’s, to know what will happen if we fail.

Sigurd and I wonder how Zoan and Quitana’s people will receive us. Our languages and customs are different, and communicating will be difficult, as it was at first with Zoan and Quitana. We speak easily with them now, in our own shared language, and with our own customs, but to their people Sigurd and I will be foreign. I am not worried, because Quitana has told me about her mother, and I know I will like her. Zoan and Quitana saved my life─helped me and Sigurd when we needed it most─and we love them. In our hearts, their people will be our people.

Our first night away from home passes without incident. We are all tired. Angel is restless and fussy but soon falls asleep on her soft pallet and wakes us early in the morning with her happy chatter. Soon after we have eaten, we are loaded up and ready for another day’s walk. We will stay in this valley area for most of the day, following the river, so the walking should be easier. I am glad Sigurd and Zoan have made this trip before, so we know what to expect.

***

By the fifth day we are used to the routine, but footsore and tired. It has been easier than I feared. Angel enjoys the walking, napping frequently in her sling, and at night seems happy no matter where we are. My worries about bears in the daytime and wolves at night have come to nothing. What if we had had to protect ourselves and Angel from them? The thought makes me shudder. I’m sure the idea has crossed all our minds, but we all know we will just have to deal with whatever comes.

Finally t oday, as the sun begins its downward arc, the village comes into view. Quitana and I are glad, but worried about the boat trip. Zoan and Quitana know it will be harder than their trip northward, but our boat will be bigger than theirs, and crafted by a master boat-builder to weather rough seas. This gives us more confidence. Boats are part of everyday life in the north, but I never went to sea as a child, ,and this will all be new to me.

As we walk into the village, men recognize Zoan and Sigurd from their previous visit, and crowd around us, asking about sunrock and glarestone. Sigurd smiles and waves them off, and we arrive at the house of the boat-builder just as he is coming out the door. He is surprised to see us so soon, but the boat is ready. He leads us into the boat yard, where the boat is floating beside a wooden walkway that this boatyard shares with the neighboring yards. Two other boats are tied to the walkway, some distance from us.

The boat is bigger than I had expected. Quitana says it is more than twice as long as the one they came north in. It is narrow, and deep in the center. We will be able to store our provisions below the seats. It has one large sail, made of tightly woven hemp, far lighter than hide, and a surprise, although Djuri had prepared us for the hempen ropes. Zoan and the builder discuss handling the boat. Zoan’s boat was flat-bottomed, and unable to sail into the wind at all. This boat will be able to sail across the wind and even slightly into it. The builder tells us we can beach the boat at night, that the hull is strong. I can see that Zoan and Sigurd are pleased.

Zoan says that t he walkway and the wooden seats built into it are Djuri’s work. He and Sigurd leave with the boat builder to conclude their bargain. Quitana and I remain at the boat with Angel, sitting comfort ably on one of the seats, glad the walking part of our journey is over. Angel crawls to the edge of the walkway and would have crawled right off into the water if Quitana had not intervened.

A sudden commotion erupts nearby, beyond the two boats tied in the neighboring boatyards. Another boat has appeared, carrying several men. They are met by excited men on shore, and an urgent exchange takes place. Neither of us can understand the language. As we watch, Sigurd, Zoan, and the boat builder join the excited group. Eventually they detach themselves and return to us. Zoan says w e are invited to eat and sleep in the house of the boat builder, Karl. When we ask about the excitement he says he will explain later. So we pick up our packs and Angel, and return to the house.

We are greeted by Karl’s wife Hildr, a large woman. She and Karl have many grandchildren. Their speech is kin to the speech where I grew up. Later in the evening, I ask Hildr where she and Karl are from. From the north, she says, before the raids. They too are refugees. She is grateful to have a safe place to live, she says, and they are both grateful that Karl has sold a boat. She shows us the glarestone arrow point Karl took as a token last month, one of Zoan’s best. Marvelous, she says, I have seen none like it. Karl arrives, with Zoan and Sigurd; all are pleased that the bargain has been made. Karl offers them more hempen cloth, for shade, and a spare sail, and spare rope; for this they give one additional glarestone piece, a long and deadly-looking spear point. There are good feelings all around.

After we eat, we hear the news that arrived this afternoon from the north, the news that had caused such excitement. Three mornings ago, the boat we saw had barely escaped destruction in a raid, north on the mainland. There were over a hundred raiders. The boat brought away three villagers and its crew of four fishermen. They were lucky to depart safely, then horrified as they watched the village burn. Many villagers had fled southward, but yesterday, from the boat, they had seen the smoke from a second destroyed village, south of the first. We talk for some time about the raids, about how the raiders are moving southward earlier and faster this year than ever before, and attacking in larger groups. Hildr is thankful that the raiders have no boats, and are east of the sea, on the mainland. I think of Sigurd’s story, and mine, and Yrsa’s. All those raids were west of the sea, but I say nothing. Angel sleeps peacefully on Quitana’s shoulder, and we thank our hosts graciously and retire to a separate room in their house.

In our room Zoan and Quitana cannot contain their anxiety. The evening’s conversation has confirmed their worst fears: the raiders are on the mainland, moving south, and fast. If we could reach Zoan and Quitana’s village in a month, so could they. They are still well north of us, but they can move as far in a day as we can, or farther. There are only a few small villages between us and Zoan and Quitana’s village, the first large village we will come to. We are in a race, and the lives of their families and friends depend on the outcome.

***

Today began with an exciting mid-morning departure, but by mid-afternoon we are miserable, doubting the wisdom of our choice to undertake such a voyage. We have a fine northerly breeze, and have been speeding along all day. By midday I felt I would surely die, and Quitana’s and Angel’s green faces told me they felt the same. Angel cried weakly, exhausted from vomiting. We are headed south along the sea’s western shore, with the mainland still far east of us, but coming closer as the day wears on. Luckily, I remember my herbs, my grandmother’s remedy for upset stomach. Sigurd extracts my pack from beneath the seat, the boat tipping precariously as he moves about, and hands me my hide sack of herbs. I remove three sprigs, chew one, and give two to Quitana, who chews one and crushes the other between her fingers, offering Angel her finger to suck. I have almost no hope, but little by little I feel better. I thank my grandmother silently, as I have so many times. Angel is asleep now, and Quitana weakly smiles her thanks.

We beach the boat very late in the day in Quitana’s and Zoan’s cove, the place I met them, where their boat was destroyed. The sea is still east of us. For the last part of the day we have been approaching the southern tip of the land, where the cove lies. We would not have made it to the cove but for the late summer light, and almost did not even so. Zoan is ecstatic at how far we have come. In twenty such days, he says, we could be home. Quitana and I look at each other bleakly, thinking of twenty more days like today. We all get wet beaching the boat. The tide is high, so the boat will be safe where it is, and it will be high again in the morning, making it easy to launch. We climb Quitana and Zoan’s path to their shelter in the last light. I remember it well. It is almost intact. It has been almost a year and a half since we were here. I think nobody has used it since. I think of Sigurd nearly frozen to death, of his ankle injury, of my own hip injury, and rejoice that we are only seasick. My rejoicing ends as Quitana and I join the men on a slight hill above the cove, with a good view both west and east. To the west we see a tiny crescent moon just ready to set. To the east, far away on the mainland, we see a large fire.

***

Today we give ourselves half a morning of rest. We didn’t start until mid-morning yesterday, and still sailed a great distance, but to the south, with the breeze behind us. Now we will sail eastward, across the channel to the mainland. We don’t have as far to go as yesterday, but it will be rougher, because the wind will be blowing across our course. As it happens the wind is so strong, out of the north, that we slant southward toward the mainland instead of trying to sail directly east. The seas in the middle of the channel frighten me. Huge rolling swells from behind bring heavy spray crashing on board regularly. Despite the rough seas, I am less sick than yesterday, perhaps because my grandmother intervened earlier in the day. Angel sleeps today; Quitana is slumped over as well. Again we sail until nearly dark, eventually beaching the boat in a deserted bay. We have seen no villages and no people. We have a fine view westward.

Zoan is again optimistic about arriving in only twenty days, but in the morning Angel is obviously sick, and we decide that after two remarkable days we will have to take a day off. We make ourselves comfortable. The men work on the boat, then go hunting. Angel sleeps all day and wakes cheerful. I feel restored by napping much of the day. Zoan and Sigurd return with two rabbits. Roasted rabbit tastes excellent compared to dried deer meat, and that night, with Quitana nursing Angel as we talk, we are again feeling optimistic. We are far ahead of the raiders, and if all goes well should be at our destination well before midsummer.

***

This has been our eighteenth day since leaving the village, our fifteenth day on the water, and we are nearly arrived, but at what a cost! We are all exhausted by the relentless pounding swell and howling wind that has given us such a fast voyage. Angel is the only one of us who looks cheerful. She has discovered that fish swim in the water and wants to lean over the boat rail to watch them. She also enjoys the sea birds that follow us. We have been tossing them bits of deer meat, since it seems impossible that we could consume our remaining twenty-five day food supply in the next four days. The sun has burned Sigurd and Zoan dark, while Quitana and I and Angel have spent most of our days underneath Karl’s shade awning. Zoan and Quitana took four months to cover the same distance we will cover in nineteen sailing days, if we arrive in four more days as the men expect. Zoan says that if the wind had been as strong two years ago, they would have given up and returned home, and never would have reached the cove. Again tonight we have a fine fire, and are relaxing and talking. Once again we are discussing the raiders; we have seen the fires of burning villages twice more, closer to us each time. The raiders are moving southward faster than we are. This reminds us that we are doing this for a good reason. It’s still difficult.

The moon is beyond full, so the early evening is dark. The men are working on the boat’s rigging by firelight. They must constantly replace bits of rope, torn by the wind, and our sail has torn twice. Quitana and I have stitched spare cloth to mend it. The boat is steered by a paddle attached to a leathern hinge, which tore several days ago, and Sigurd had to devise a temporary way to steer for the nearest beach, while Zoan used the boat’s oars to try to assist. The men spent the next day attaching a new hinge, fashioned from spare leather from Karl. They are always busy, and always tired. They appear to love it. They are like boys on an adventure. They are happy, sitting by the fire working on the boat. Zoan remarks that the reward for succeeding on this trip is the opportunity to return home to the bench later this summer, sailing most of the time against the wind. We talk of Bjorn, Yrsa, Heidl, Fedr, Geyrr, and Djuri, who seem a world away, They must be watching this moon rise in the east. I am envious.

***

Tonight we’re spending a second night in what would be a lovely place if it weren’t for the fire we can see north of us, another burning village, the closest we have seen. Zoan and Sigurd think the raiders are only a few days north of us, but we are now in territory that Zoan knows well, and he says that before the raiders can reach the village they will be forced to take a two-day detour, to go all the way around a long narrow bay. We will be able to sail across the mouth of the bay in half a morning. He thinks we can camp just north of the bay tomorrow night, and should be in the village by midday the next day. He said exactly the same thing last night, but this morning the men discovered that their new steering hinge was broken again. They have spent the day making a stouter hinge. We should be underway early. It will be none too soon for Quitana; the rigors of caring for a 9-month old baby are wearing on her. Angel remains good-natured, but we will all be glad when this journey ends.

2. Reunion

The shouts of unbelieving joy begin before we are even arrived. Zoan and Quitana left here over two years ago as youngsters, and have obviously been given up for dead. Now they arrive, sunburned and with a baby, in the company of people who are clearly foreign. First they get some curious stares, then shrieks of recognition, then an excited group. Before we are off the boat there are perhaps twenty people crowded around us.

After nineteen days at sea it feels wonderful that this trip is over. The village waterfront lies behind a spit of land that protects it from the sea. It has a long walkway for tying up boats, much longer than Karl’s walkway, with four fishing boats tied up even now, in the middle of the day. We tie the boat to a log put here for the purpose, and Zoan and Quitana are bodily lifted from the boat by people who love them. Angel is overwhelmed. She has never seen so many people, and clings to Quitana tightly, hiding her face. Sigurd and I are momentarily forgotten, but Zoan quickly remembers us, sweeps me out of the boat and into the crowd, then Sigurd, and introduces us as his brother and sister, which gets a general laugh. Everybody has questions, and everybody is happy, until Zoan holds up his hand to speak.

This joy must wait, he says. We must see our families, then we must ask the elders to hear us. We have bad news, which we have traveled almost a month to bring you, and we are barely in time. We will soon have to fight, all of us, and for our lives. We must not fail. We have two years of adventures to tell, and many joys, including our daughter, but there will be plenty of time for that afterward, unless we do fail, and then there will be no afterward for any of us.

The change that comes over the crowd is so complete that they don’t even seem like the same people. They fall away from the five of us as if we are diseased, looking at us in shock and disbelief. Sigurd and Zoan sling our packs onto the walkway, tie the boat securely, and Zoan leads us toward the house of Quitana’s parents.

They don’t believe us, Zoan says.

They will have to, says Sigurd, adding that they will soon enough, one way or the other.

***

Quitana’s parents are napping when we arrive. Their house is much more elaborate than the houses in my home village. It has a frame of hewn logs, wall covering of hide, and thatched roof, as ours did, but is much larger, with four rooms, divided by hewn posts that stood up out of the ground, a large room in front and three small sleeping rooms in the rear. The floor is covered completely in skins. Our houses had only two rooms, no matter how large the family. I love the way the house feels. It has a large front window that opens to the sea, with comfortable seats made of hewn wood and soft pillows. The breeze comes through the window, and the smell of the sea. The village is built on a hillside, so the window looks out over the neighbor’s roof, not at his walls. It is wonderful.

Quitana and Zoan talk quietly in the large front room, while Sigurd and I sit and watch the light on the sea. We hear stirring in the back room, and Quitana goes to stand in the open doorway, Angel asleep on her shoulder. Soon there comes a predictable shriek, and she and her mother are in each other’s arms. Quitana’s mother can’t believe her eyes. She had long since decided that her daughter was dead and had spent months mourning her loss. Now here she is, standing in front of her, with a beautiful grandbaby. Even though she could see her, she has to touch Quitana to make sure she is real. Quitana puts Angel into her mother’s arms, and tears stream down her mother’s face. Angel puts her tiny hand to her grandmother’s cheek and pats it gently.

Carrying Angel, Quitana’s mother turns back to their sleeping room and rouses Quitana’s father, who stumps stiffly out of the room and looks around in astonishment. He hugs Quitana and clasps Zoan’s arms, and then Quitana brings her parents to meet Sigurd and me. Their eyes are full of questions. Sigurd and Inge are our closest friends, Quitana tells them. We have lived with them for almost two years. Inge delivered Angel. We have helped each other and learned to live as a family. They have just traveled with us for a month, because we need them.

At those words they see us as family, and all reserve melts away. They are both curious about us. I imagine they have never seen people so fair. Everyone here has dark hair and eyes and beautiful olive skin like Zoan and Quitana, and they are all curious, although they try not to stare. Quitana stays close to us so everyone will know we are here together.

Quitana’s parents have more questions, but Zoan is eager to see his own family before beginning the task of persuading the village to fight. He and Quitana had decided that he would first go to his parents’ home alone, to let them get over the shock of his return. Then Quitana, Sigurd and I will take Angel and go meet them, with all the same explanations for our being here. Bringing them a beautiful granddaughter will soften them. After Zoan leaves, Sigurd and I and Quitana tell her parents the kernel of our story─we came from the north in a boat. It took us nineteen days of sailing, after five days of walking. Yes, we are tired of the boat, but eventually we will need to return in it. We live together in the north, in a beautiful place. Yes, the winters are hard, but we spend them comfortably in a cave. Yes, others live with us too, we are eight adults and two babies. And we have a dog.

Not a word yet about why we’re here, about why Quitana said they needed our help. Are they afraid to ask?

We are ready to leave, but now Zoan appears with his parents, who had the same reaction as Quitana’s parents─first disbelief, and then joyful acceptance that their son is alive and standing in front of them. Now that they’re all together, they accept us with open arms, and are instantly in love with their baby granddaughter.

The time has come to speak of the raiders. Zoan and Quitana tell their fathers what they know about the raids, and of the large group coming this way, not far away. The mothers pretend to be paying attention to Angel. The fathers don’t want to accept the truth. They say there have been warnings of raids from the north all their lives, and none has been borne out as true.

We don’t have much time, says Zoan. They could be here in a few days. We must speak to the elders. Will you come with us?

Reluctantly the fathers agree, but the day is nearly over. Zoan, Sigurd and the fathers go to the village meeting house to ask for a morning audience. They encounter one elder, an old man who has known Zoan and Quitana all their lives. He rejoices to see Zoan, asks about Quitana, greets Sigurd, and asks their business. Zoan speaks unreservedly about the danger of raider attack on the village within days, and adds that they have traveled for a month to bring this warning, seeing village after village north of them go up in flames, the most recent one quite close. The old man’s eyes cloud over. Zoan would want him to muster all the fighting men in the village? Yes, Zoan says, and in the two adjoining villages as well. They are over a hundred strong.

The old man sits down heavily and is silent for some time, then looks up. You ask much, he says, and what proof do we have that this warning is not like all the others? He shrinks from the looks on Zoan’s and Sigurd’s faces, and agrees to bring the issue to the elders in two days. Tonight most of the elders are in a neighbor village, and will not return until tomorrow night.

It is the best they can do, and, if they can really get approval in two days’ time, probably good enough. They return here to Quitana’s parents’ house, where we are to spend the night.

***

After the parents retire, we talk together in our own group of four, as we have for so long. Tomorrow Zoan intends to seek out a few close friends and go to the hilltop north of the village, to learn where the raiders are. Sigurd wants to join him. Quitana and I and Angel will spend our day with the four parents.

The next day is one of relaxation, as much as you can relax knowing that men will try to kill us all in a few days. We visit Quitana’s sisters and meet their families. They too react with shock and delighted tears to see their youngest sister, whom they had thought dead. Quitana’s mother shows us the entire village, introduces Angel to friends who knew Quitana as a little girl, and is kind to me, although some of her friends look at me strangely. Quitana’s mother introduces me to everyone we meet as Inge, Quitana’s friend, whom Quitana is lucky to have, because Inge delivered her baby. In a cave . That opens their eyes, but they soften toward me. We walk to the waterfront and show Quitana’s mother the boat. You traveled for a month in this ? With a baby? We had to, Quitana says. Sigurd’s and Inge’s families were both killed by raiders, and we live with another woman, a healer, who lost her two sons, and with her daughter, who lost her husband. I didn’t want you killed, so I had to come. I think that is the moment when her mother understands. I see a look in her eyes exactly like Quitana’s determination. We have one believer now, at least.

That night, Zoan and Sigurd haven’t returned, and don’t eat the evening meal with us. Out looking for raiders, Quitana’s father remarks sarcastically. Quitana’s mother silences him with a deadly look, and later I hear sounds of a long discussion in their room. Even when we finally go to bed, Zoan and Sigurd are not there. They arrive in the middle of the night and silently join us. We have seen them, Sigurd tells me. We have two more days.

***

The meeting with the elders begins poorly. They had already discussed the matter among themselves and decided not to act. They are explaining this when five young men arrive, Zoan’s friends, who spent the previous day and most of the night with Zoan and Sigurd. Zoan asks permission to speak for the group, and tells the elders that last night they saw a large encampment just north of the bay, with many campfires. They estimated at least a hundred were camped there. From that campsite to the near side of the bay is two days’ travel. The raiders could attack the village two days from now.

The elders look at Zoan’s friends, all five nodding agreement. The elders are thrown into confusion, arguing among themselves.

Sigurd asks permission to speak. Slowly and carefully, he tells them that he knows the raiders. He watched them kill his family when he was young, rescued his wife from them when she was young, and has fought them many other times, most recently last summer, with Zoan at his side. He has just spent a month in a boat, seeing village after village in flames. Last night he saw their encampment, a two-day hike from the village. They are coming. He hesitates, then adds that he believes that unless the raiders are stopped, this village will be the next to burn. They will come here at daybreak day after tomorrow, and many will die. He has joined Zoan in a long voyage to try to stop them. We can help you stop them, he says, but we can’t do it alone. Will you join us?

The elders can hold out no longer. Their decision is unanimous. The village will fight.

The village can muster eighty fighters. They will need fighters from the two neighboring villages, but time is short. Zoan knows men in both villages; he will go there, deliver the decision of the elders, rouse the fighters, and bring them back. To reach the village the raiders must cross the hilltop; Sigurd and the eighty fighters will meet them there. If Zoan and the men from the neighboring villages arrive in time, there is a good chance of victory.

The elders are now alarmed, and urge Zoan on his way. They take Sigurd to the center of the village and introduce him, then begin a muster, in which each man brings everyone he knows who is strong enough to fight. Sigurd is an imposing man, the picture of a warrior. The men from the village see that, and accept him as battle leader; perhaps his accent and foreign appearance even add to his authority. Sixty men are assembled by mid-afternoon, and more join after the fishermen return at day’s end. In the evening Sigurd tells them how the raiders attack by surprise in the early morning, killing and burning, and where they are now. We will stop them at the hilltop at sunup day after tomorrow, he says. He tells them to meet in the center of the village in the morning. Then, with ten chosen men, He walks to the hilltop in the last light. They see the raiders camped at the far end of the bay, as expected. The villagers will have one more day to prepare.

Returning to Quitana’s parents’ house late that night, Sigurd tells me of the day. He will spend the entire day tomorrow with the villagers. We can’t expect too much, he adds. These men are hunters, not fighters. They haven’t fought here for generations.

***

In the morning─the last day before the raiders come─Sigurd talks to the village fighters as a group, then one at a time. He clasps every man’s hand, looks at every weapon, and makes sure every man knows what to do. They will leave before dawn tomorrow morning from the center of the village, and be at the hilltop by first light. Sigurd is busy all day.

There is no sign of Zoan. He sent friends to one of the two neighboring villages, and will visit the second himself. By now they will be preparing in both villages, but they will need to race if they are to reach the hilltop by tonight ready to fight.

Once again, with a select group of fighters, Sigurd climbs to the hilltop at last light. The raiders are beginning to arrive at the south side of the bay, making camp. Sigurd and his men don’t stay long, because they fear being seen; Sigurd is sure scouts will come to the hilltop soon. When he returns to us, Sigurd looks grim. He tells Quitana and me that the raiders are active, moving around their fires. The night is overcast and very dark, so he doesn’t believe they can attack until early morning. Zoan too, wherever he is, will be unable to move men on this dark night. Even if he reaches the area first thing in the morning, he will probably be too late to help. Sigurd leaves again, returning to the local men, who are gathered in the center of the village.

I see Quitana sitting with her mother. They are watching Angel, who is sleeping. Both are torn with anxiety. It seems peaceful outside, but we all know that this peace is thin and deceptive, that this could be our last night. Here is my own decision: this time I will not run. I have been running from the raiders since I was a child, and I would rather die tomorrow facing them than live my entire life running.

Quitana walks outside, and I join her. We stand silently, listening to the night sounds. Then she turns to me with a look of sudden determination. I know what we must do, she says. She beckons to me, and we hurry toward the center of the village, seeking Sigurd.

3. The Battle of the Norns

It is close to dawn, the darkest part of a dark night, with steady light rain. The three of us have spent a good part of the night getting here, picking our way slowly uphill in total darkness. Quitana’s mother knows the area well; for her the hilltop is holy, and she has comes here often at night. We have three sunrock-tipped spears. Sigurd was reluctant to part with them, but was persuaded when we explained why we wanted them.

The village fighters are behind us, following Sigurd, who knows the value of rest to a fighting man, and let them sleep until long after the three of us had left. They will remain in the forest. Quitana’s father and the rest of the older men remain in the village. If eighty strong young men aren’t enough, adding thirty old men won’t make any difference. Quitana’s crippled father didn’t object to remaining in the village, but bluntly told Quitana’s mother she was not to join us. She took him aside and spoke with him privately. He remained adamant, but she is here anyway, while he watches Angel. I can see where Quitana got her independent spirit. Her mother is essential, because without her we couldn’t have come here in the dark.

There is no sign of Zoan. We will have to fight this battle without him.

The rain picks up as we finally emerge from the forest onto the hilltop. We can barely make out the outline of the cliff, and know that the sea lies beyond only because we can hear the waves crashing on the rocks below. Out over the sea, to the west, is total darkness. East of us, the forest reaches almost to the hilltop, a darker patch against the night. Dawn will break slowly; the clouds completely hide the sky.

Finally the darkness begins to give way to a misty first light. We stand at the highest point of the hill, only a short distance from the edge of the forest we climbed though. We have all let our hair down. The wind comes up as the light grows. When we can finally make out the cliff, we walk right to the edge. Twenty paces south of us, and twenty east of us, is the edge of the forest. South of us the hill drops steeply to the village, which we can make out over the treetops in the dim light. To the north, running five hundred paces down to the bay, is a grassy open sward, not so steep. This is the way the raiders will come.

We have not slept, but are full of the energy and danger of what we’re doing. My heart is pounding. The light is growing slowly. We hear a rumble of thunder, and wind whips our hair. Rain spatters around us.

The raiders appear suddenly, running fast uphill, near the cliff edge, six abreast, silently, without shouting. We face them, three abreast, and raise our spears high. They see us and hesitate. Three women, at dawn, on the hilltop; they expected to surprise us asleep in the village and were not prepared for this. I think of the old stories and know they see us as the Norns, the weavers of destiny. Then a shout arises behind the front ranks, and the raider group overcomes its fear and seems to gain energy. They are two hundred paces from us now, more determined than ever, and begin screaming as they continue up the hill.

We do as we had agreed─Quitana and I delibrately face each other, raise our spears, and plant them near the cliff edge with their tips crossed; her mother plants her spear in front of ours. We turn and walk south into the forest, without looking back. We immediately see Sigurd, who smiles and waves. His men are at the edge of the the forest, south and east of the hilltop. Sigurd has his bow and the club with embedded glarestone blades. We hear louder thunder, and the rain falls harder. I hear hail hitting leaves in the forest canopy above me. Conversation is impossible; the noise from wind and hail and frequent thunder drown us out.

The first rank of raiders reaches the hilltop and runs directly for the spears. Sigurd signals his men to hold. The light is brighter now, and we can all see the brilliance of the sunrock points. The raiders hesitate, and are run down by the men behind them. They too stop short of the sunrock spears, afraid to touch them. The back ranks don’t realize the front ranks have stopped, and men pile up in confusion. An enormous man behind the front ranks is angry at the delay, enraged because the men in front are afraid of our spears. He vaults over fallen leaders and grabs the upright spear, yanking it out of the ground. He holds the spear aloft with a scream of triumph, his hands spanning tip and shaft.

That is when lightning strikes him.

He is momentarily illuminated, as a tree when it is struck, then falls. Thunder is continuous now. The rain has become a downpour, and lightning strikes repeatedly all around the hilltop. In an instant the raider attack becomes a panic; men scramble desperately away from the brow of the hill. Some run toward the forest. Sigurd drops his upraised hand. A volley of arrows comes from the forest, then another, and a third. The raiders have enemies on two sides and a cliff on the third. Many fall in this deadly hail, and panic mounts. The brief thunderstorm passes, and Sigurd and his men charge into the confusion. Battle rages, and men fall on both sides. Many raiders in the rear, forty or more, turn back toward the bay, running downhill in the rain to escape being forced off the cliff, hoping to regroup and fight at the base of the hill.

They are met by a storm of arrows from the forest to the east, and Zoan appears with a large fighting group, blocking the raiders’ escape. We learn later that Zoan and his men arrived last night, saw the raider encampment, and hid in the forest between the bay and the hilltop. Now they charge up the hill at a dead run, with a shrieking battle cry, head-on into the fleeing raiders. This fight is one-sided; Zoan’s men outnumber the raiders two to one. Many men are struck down, but more are pushed off the cliff.

Suddenly it is over, and after such violence the silence is enormous. Time has stood still since the three of us planted our spears and walked back into the forest. Not one raider remains standing. The silence holds as Zoan strides through fallen bodies to the hilltop, his men following. He and Sigurd meet and embrace. Quitana and her mother and I leave the forest and join them. A shaft of sunlight illuminates the hilltop and blazes from the sunrock tips of the two crossed spears, undisturbed since Quitana and I planted them. Only when Zoan and Sigurd turn back toward the assembled men and throw their arms high in victory is the silence is finally broken, as an enormous cheer erupts from two hundred men.

We have done what we came to do, and midsummer is still a half month away.

Epilogue: Quitana

The battle of the Norns was many years ago now, but remains as vivid in my memory as this morning’s walk to the hilltop. The spears are still here, almost exactly where Inge and I placed them, and I can still feel my astonishment and pride at the ceremony of the midsummer full moon. The elders had organized it to celebrate the victory, to dedicate a memorial to the fifteen local fighters who died in the battle, and to honor Sigurd and Zoan. The two heroes were to walk down a flower-strewn aisle, a midst every one from all three villages─elders in front, old men, women, and children behind them, fighting men in the rear. The elders had planned speeches, songs, and prayers, but they did not know Zoan well enough to realize what he would do, nor did I. Everyone stood as the heroes came forward. When they reached where I stood with my family and Inge, they stopped and knelt before us, holding out their hands to Inge and me and my mother. I handed Angel to my astonished father, and we joined the men in the aisle, standing between them, my mother in the middle. We walked slowly to the hilltop five abreast, stepped hand in hand into the ring of fifteen stones on the memorial mound, and turned to face the assemblage, the crossed spears behind us glinting in the moonlight . In the long history of the village, no woman had ever before been honored in such a ceremony, and the villagers stood silent as stone. Finally a loud and rising cheer from the fight ing men broke their reserve, and they joined in with touching enthusiasm. I was overcome then, as I am now. That evening─the same night Heidl and Fedr were joined, as we later learned─was the high point of my life.

Since then we have heard of no villages burning. I suspect the raiders are still there, in their villages in the far north, but after the battle they were no longer a menace. May we all be forever spared the violence of the raiders from the north.

Angel brought me here this morning, and I see that her hair too is now grey. Her children remain on the bench, but after the death of her husband , Heidl’s son Geyrr, she and I decided to return here; the bench is crowded now, and no place for old women. We were brought here in comfort on a boat far larger and more comfortable than the one I remember from so long ago, by Angel’s son Bjorn and Inge’s grandson Zoan. The hardest part of that trip was the ten-day walk to the river mouth village. We live in my parents’ house, now mine. I miss the bench, and the cave, where Inge and I drew our entire history, even showing the two of us standing with my mother on this very hilltop as the raiders charged uphill to their deaths. More than the place, I miss the people─Inge, Sigurd, Yrsa, Bjorn, Heidl, Fedr, my parents─all gone now. Most of all I miss Zoan, whom I think of every day and every night. Old age brings the cruelty of losses that only the old can bear, and then only because they must, but as I stand here this morning in this place of triumph they all come to life, and I know they will surround me for the rest of my days.

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About Neolithic technology

The cave painters of Chauvet, 33,000 years ago, had language, fire, stone-tipped weapons including bows and arrows, and little else . That portfolio of technology didn't change substantially for a very long time - until about 10,000 years ago, when people began to live together in villages and started planting their food so they no longer had to scrounge every bite, a transition known as the Neolithic revolution. Then a great surge of technolog ical progress changed human history with astonishing speed. Many advances occurred in different orders in different places, collectively producing, in a few thousand years, many foundation technologies - agriculture, metallurgy, textiles, fired and glazed pottery, plaster, navigation, sailing, mapmaking, astronomy, animal husbandry, and others, plus ancillary technologies such as charcoal, the bellows, snowshoes, irrigation, manure use, grain milling, brewing of beer and ale, dairy farming, and spinning, leading directly to the iPod, Facebook, and 3D TV.

Agriculture wasn't the root cause of this burst of prehistoric invention, but it was the trigger technology, the one that enabled the others by providing a reliable food supply for a growing population. What brought it all about was probably population pressure: in hunter-gatherer cultures, once people were too numerous for everybody to have his own hunting pitch, conflict resulted, and people began to live in villages for common defense. Other plausible causes for the transition to village living are being studied actively as well. Whatever the cause, it was a short step from the village to the commons and a communal harvest, then to agricultural advance and diversification. The people of the time were on the cusp of the historical era, and it is ironic that by the time of the earliest historical records, most of the technologies on which civilization depends were already in place, but only just.

None of the technologies in our story is far-fetched - in fact the story includes only a small sampling of technologies that flourished at the time, and doesn't mention some of the most important, such as brewing, bread, irrigation, charcoal, plaster, smelting copper ores with reducing agents, and abstract developments such as art, calendrics and pictorial writing.

Rough map of benchland

Rough map of story area

Timeline

Departure March 15

Cover 400 mi = 100 mi/month (25 traveling days at 4 mi)

Arrive in cove July 15

Slide Sept 30

Departure for cave 11/22

New moon ref'd in story 11/27

Full moon 1/8

6 weeks in cave at midwinter

Conception Late December, due date Mid Sept

Arrival of dogs 2/7 (Full moon)

Full moon Mar 8

Full moon Apr 6─S&I camp on bench. Pup 8 wks old

Inge’s fall Apr 9

First signs of spring Apr 29

Full moon May 4

Northern lights May 11

Sighting of the village May 20

Village expedition May 21-24

Full moon June 2

Full moon July 1

Battle with raiders July 15

Full moon July 30

Full moon Aug 28, with full lunar eclipse

Birth Aug 29.

Full moon Sep 27

Bear attack Sep 29

Full moon Oct 26

Move to cave 11/1

Geyrr’s birth Nov 14

Full moon Nov 26

Full moon Dec 26

Full moon Jan 24

Full moon Feb 22

Full moon Mar 23

River mouth village reconnaissance trip Apr 14

Full moon Apr 20

Reconnaisance group returns Apr 23

Full Moon May 19

Departure of Quitana et al May 1

Battle of the Norns June 2

Full Moon June 17

Miscellaneous data

Cave elevation─W entrance 4000'

Pit depth 150'

E entrance 3800'

Cliff edge 3800'

Ledge above village 3500'.

Village 3000

River 2800

Distance from cove 20 miles

climb from cove 3% = 150'/mile