Wolf's Brother

by Megan Lindholm

  Too late Tillu recalled her promise not to speak of Kari's apprenticeship. Now she understood the reason for the promise. 'How can she be happy in a life she doesn't choose, with a man she doesn't love?' Tillu asked recklessly.

  Capiam's eyes were cold. 'Choose? Haven't you lived with her? How can you talk of her choosing? She makes no sense, she runs about like a little child, she has no pride, no ambitions, none of the hopes a young woman should have. She would choose ridicule and poverty for herself. And so I choose for her. I chose Pirtsi for her, who will make her a woman and a mother. She will learn to be happy. She will.' He turned aside from Tillu's unbelieving face with a gesture of rejection. 'Do not talk about it. Don't ask me about what you cannot understand. She is my daughter, and I won't see her throw her life away.'

  'Please. Please stop!' Ketla sobbed suddenly, clutching at her temples. It seemed to Tillu that it was not the pain in her head that grieved her now, but the pain in her heart. The healer turned aside, dippered up boiling water from the pot, and set out her herbs and roots and grinding tools. She said no more of Kari. How could her parents be so blind? Kari would never be happy with Pirtsi. As she chopped roots and crumbled leaves into steaming water she tried to imagine Kari with children clinging to her, needing her attention. Would she suckle a babe at a breast marked with Owl's claw? Tillu shook her head as she mixed and measured. They should let Kari go, let her be what she needed to be. She was not an animal to be broken and harnessed.

  When the ingredients steeping in the hot water had released their benefits, Tillu dipped up a measure of the tonic.

  'Help her sit up,' she told Capiam. Without a word he slid an arm under Ketla and wrestled her to a sitting position. She wailed in discomfort as the covers fell away from her fevered body. 'Come now. Drink this. It will help,' Tillu coaxed, and got her to sip at tonic. As Capiam eased her down Tillu added, 'Bring her an empty bucket. Just in case.'

  He had barely handed it to her before it was needed. Ketla coughed, gagged, and rolled up suddenly onto her knees. Tillu thrust the bucket before her just in time to catch the spew of vomit. Gush after gush of foul liquid and chunks of half-digested food spewed from her nose and mouth. Tears rolled down her cheeks with the force of the paroxysms that wrenched her. Sweat burst out on her face. For a moment the spasms eased, and Ketla took great, shuddering breaths. Then, again, it hit her, and once more her body ejected gouts of vomit. This time she continued to gag long after her stomach was empty. Tillu damped a handful of moss in water and gently sponged her face.

  She eased the quivering woman down. Pirtsi took the bucket away, his nose wrinkled with disgust. Ketla's eyes were already closed, her breathing deepening. Tillu touched her face. The fever was lessened. A few moments later Ketla pushed irritably at her burden of skins. Tillu took some away. In moments she was sleeping, her lips puffing in and out with each breath.

  'She'll sleep now,' Tillu told Capiam. 'If she awakens and is feverish, come and get me right away. But I think she'll be fine now. Perhaps she ate something spoiled? Was there anything she ate last night that no one else shared?'

  Capiam shook his head in bafflement, glancing from the healer to his peacefully sleeping wife. 'Nothing. Nothing I know of. She cooked some ducks that Pirtsi brought, and we shared those. Then later Joboam brought a dish of new greens and chopped meat that we shared. I did not care for it, but we all ate it, and juobmo and cheese. Sometimes she eats again, later, after our meal, but I do not recall that she did last night. She will be fine now?'

  Tillu shrugged. 'After she rests. Whatever poisoned her, her body has thrown out. I will leave a packet of herbs with you. When she awakes, brew her a tea from them. It will cleanse her body, and renew her strength. And let her sleep, as long as she likes. All day, if she will.'

  Capiam shook his head slowly. 'Soon, the folk will be waking, and preparing for the day's travel.'

  'Cannot we stay one day in one spot, while she rests?' Tillu asked incredulously. 'What harm is there in one day's delay?' She held the packet of herbs out to him. He took it absently.

  Then Capiam shook his head, his decision hardened. 'The stinging flies will come soon. I am surprised they have not come already. They come in clouds, they bite the reindeer and drive them mad. Many will die, or race away and be lost unless we are at the Cataclysm by then. We cannot delay, not even for a day.' Then, in a gentler voice, 'Did you think I would refuse to wait for your lost son, but halt the caravan for my sick wife? I know some speak against me, but no one would say I am as poor a herdlord as that.' He glanced over at Ketla, and worry creased his face deeply. 'If she cannot walk,' he said, more to himself than to Tillu, 'I will make a drag for her to ride on. It won't be a pleasant journey for her, but she will not be left behind.'

  There seemed nothing for Tillu to say. She nodded gravely, and crossed the tent to lift the door flap. Just as she ducked down to leave, Capiam's voice halted her. 'About Kari.'

  Tillu paused, looking up at him blandly.

  'I am glad she has had this time with you. Whatever you have taught her will not go to waste. You must understand that you cannot know her as her own father does. You may think me cruel, but I am not. It would be crueller to let her go as she has. I will die before her. I don't want to die knowing that she will grow old alone. Kari will always need a family to care for her. If not a father and mother, than a husband and children. Ten years from now, she will not be able to imagine a different life. She will be happy!' He spoke so fiercely that Tillu dared not dispute it. She only looked down at the trampled wild grasses that poked up between the skins flooring the hut. She heard him sigh. 'And I am glad that Kerlew was found. You might tell Heckram that a younger man than I might be angered by one who sidestepped the herdlord's authority. I am not.'

  Just as Tillu softened toward Capiam, the man added, 'I will take his willfulness as a warning. Such sly dealings do not restore my trust in him. They make a leader wonder if he has not judged him too gently in the past. I must be wary of him now. I regret that, for his father I would have trusted with my life.'

  She lifted her eyes, to stare at him without speaking. Finally, she took a deep breath. 'I did not know his father. But I would trust my life, and my son's, to his son.' She let the door-flap fall behind her.

  Outside, in the still, cool air, the world teetered on the brink of true dawn. A misty rain was settling on everything. The clustered tents and shelters of the herdfolk created a sense of closeness that the wide gray sky above her denied. Beyond the immediacy of the temporary village, the tundra rolled away in a merciless wave of flat land. A low gray smudge, perhaps clouds, marked the edge of the sky. She stared at the far horizon; the edge of the world fled away from her. The hills and forests of the winter had faded to a dark green smear along the edge of the sky. The world flowed vast around her, and she was in the center of it. If she chose to leave the herd now, she thought, she would go alone into all that openness. She thought of herself and Kerlew trekking across the flat vastness, like two tiny water-bugs on the surface of a wide pond. She shivered.

  As she hugged herself against the chill, she caught a furtive movement from the corner of her eye. She clutched herself tighter, and hurried away from the herdlord's tent. She did not look back, but she wondered why Joboam loitered outside Capiam's tent so early in the day. Had he heard of Ketla's sickness? Then why did he not go in? She shrugged the question away and hastened through the wet grasses. She should be grateful he had not seized the chance to bother her. The rain fell harder and Tillu shivered in its chill touchings.

  At Ristin's shelter, Heckram and Kerlew slept on. Of Kari and Carp there were no signs except their rumpled bedding abandoned in the shelter. Tillu wondered with distaste if they were together. Little she could do about it if they were. Ristin sat by the fire, poking at coals that sent up a thread of white smoke into the damp air. She looked up at Tillu's light step. Their eyes met, two mothers whose sons had come home from the cold and the dark. What they felt was bigger than
a smile, and Tillu found herself dropping her bag to embrace the older woman. They stepped back from each other, and both glanced over to where Heckram and Kerlew slept. The heaviness of their sleep was almost tangible. Tillu wanted to go and kneel by them, to touch them both, to feel the reality of their safety. She sighed away her impulse, knowing how much they needed whatever rest they could steal.

  'Find a bit of fuel for us,' Ristin suggested, 'and we'll have a quiet meal.'

  'That sounds nice,' Tillu agreed, and set out to scavenge fuel for the fire. The tundra did not offer trees and fallen branches, but here were handfuls of twigs, clumps of dead moss and grasses and dry pellets of reindeer dung to burn. Tillu built up the fire while Ristin sorted through her food supplies. She set six goose eggs in a pot of water on the fire.

  'I found a new nest yesterday, by that lake,' Ristin said. 'There's nothing I like better than a fresh egg or two.' She added small cakes of the moss-bread to the meal, warming them on a flat stone near the fire. 'Where did you go, so early this morning?' she asked casually.

  'Ketla was sick. Spoiled food, I think. She vomited, and I think she will be better now. But her fever was high. Capiam would be wise to let her rest for a day or so.'

  Ristin slapped at a mite buzzing in her face. 'He can't. In another day or so, we'll be at the Cataclysm. Then she can rest all she wants, to the end of summer if she desires it. But if we stopped here, we'd soon be sorry.'

  'So Capiam said,' Tillu confirmed softly. 'But I thought he was just being stubborn.'

  'There's a lot about Capiam I don't like,' Ristin said bluntly. 'But he has reasons for what he does. Good ones, usually.'

  'What is it, this Cataclysm that everyone speaks of?'

  Ristin looked at her, startled, and then gave a snort of laughter. 'Strange, to think that there are folk that do not know the Cataclysm. And then, I have to think, 'well, of course, she doesn't know.' Come here. Come over here, and look over there. A little more east. There. See it?'

  Tillu nodded uncertainly, staring in the direction Ristin pointed. The rain dotted her face and clung to her lashes. All she saw was a bluish shadow on the horizon, vague in the drizzle.

  'That's it. That's the Cataclysm. It doesn't look like much from here. But as we get closer, you'll be surprised. It's as if the giants of the earth crumbled and stacked the tundra. Like a smooth hide suddenly pushed together so it wrinkles up.' Ristin watched Tillu's face for understanding as she made vague gestures. 'Or the ice of a stream, when it thaws and breaks and floats downstream to pile up in jagged layers.'

  'You mean it's frozen?' Tillu asked hesitantly.

  'Yes. That's part of it. There are great sheets of ice trapped in the upheaval of the Cataclysm. The reindeer go up onto the sheets of ice to escape the insects. But it is more than that. There are steep cliffs, tall as the sky, of bare gray and black stone. Cracked pieces of the world, stood on end ...' Ristin's voice trailed off and she gestured helplessly. 'You will have to see it. There is no other place like it in the world, I think. And it is a place of power. All the najds have always said so. It is a place for beginning and endings. A lucky thing to birth a baby in its shadow, and a good place for an old one to set aside life. A place for joinings, too.' Her voice broke suddenly. She leaned forward to poke at the fire.

  'Capiam says that Kari and Pirtsi will be joined there.'

  'Does he? Of course. I had nearly forgotten, for they do not act like a couple anxious to be joined.'

  'They aren't. Not Kari, anyway,' Tillu said softly.

  For long moments, Ristin stared into the fire. Sighing, she roused herself, and took the bubbling pot of eggs from the coals. She set it on a stone to finish cooking. 'The things we do to our children, all with loving hearts.' She glanced at Tillu. 'It can't be helped. If you try to intervene, you will make it worse. Pirtsi will go through with it, to be husband of the herdlord's daughter. They will be joined, and for some short time, he will have to share her tent. Maybe even father a child. But he hasn't the strength to stand up to her for long. She'll drive him out. What will happen then, I don't know.'

  Tillu nodded slowly. Ristin dippered up the eggs from the hot water and set them to cool on the moss. She paid no attention at all to the drizzling rain. She scooted the moss-cakes away from the fire before they scorched. She looked up suddenly at Tillu. 'We mothers can be so anxious for our children to be safe that we don't consider what will really endanger them. The wrong mate can be as dangerous to a person as a cornered wolverine.' Tillu had the uneasy feeling that she was no longer speaking of Kari. 'Sometimes,' Ristin said awkwardly, 'we should allow them to make their own choices, and then welcome whoever they choose. No matter how strange that choice might seem.' She turned aside abruptly. She tested the eggs' shells with her fingertip, then passed one to Tillu.

  They were shelling the eggs when Carp and Kari returned to the shelter. 'Bring me two eggs and two of the cakes,' Carp told Kari as they passed the fire. He retreated from the rain into the shelter. Seating himself, he tugged one hide up to cover his crossed legs, and pulled another around his shoulders. Kari hastened to fetch food for him, while Ristin sat silently with compressed lips. When the old man was settled and casually dropping fragments of shell on the hides that floored the shelter, Kari came to sit with them. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement, and her leggings were damp to the knee. She took the moss-cake that Ristin offered, but shook her head to the egg. 'I may no longer eat eggs,' she said, blushing with pride. Tillu and Ristin exchanged puzzled glances. Kari looked from one confused face to the other, and unleashed a laugh of pure joy. 'Oh, Tillu!' she exclaimed, leaning forward to clutch her shoulder fondly. 'I would tell you if I could. I really wish it were a thing I could share. But it is forbidden, so I can only say that today I am happy and complete. As you should be, for has not Kerlew returned from a long and dangerous journey?'

  'That he has,' she agreed, unable to keep from smiling as she glanced over to her boy. But as she looked back to Kari, her smile became more fragile. 'I do not know what has brought you such happiness,' she said carefully. 'I only hope it is something that will last more than a day or two.'

  'Forever!' Kari promised her, glowing. 'Forever.'

  'Forever is a long time,' Ristin said in a pragmatic voice. 'I'm afraid all I know of it is today, and the day that will follow it. But only if we get this day started. I hate to wake them, but I must, unless we wish to be last in the caravan.'

  She tossed her eggshells into the fire, and rose stiffly. Tillu jumped up to follow her. She felt almost shy as she knelt beside Kerlew and shook him gently. He stirred and complained, and opened his eyes. For a long instant he regarded her sleepily, his long silky lashes framing his odd, deeply set eyes, reminding her of a wondering babe. Then his eyes widened, he sat up, and flung his thin arms around her neck. Tears stung her eyes as he choked her with his hug. She held him tightly, feeling his thinness, the warmth of his small body through his light shirt. How close she had come to never holding him again. Her son. She loosened her grip when he released her neck, and leaned back to look into his face. Like Kari, he glowed with suppressed amazement.

  'Mother, I have seen so much! I know so much more now, I have been so far! And I have come back, alive! He said I would, and I have done it! Carp, where is Carp? I have so much to tell him, there is so much he must explain now.' And in one wrenching instant he scrabbled clear of her, crawling across the hides to fling himself on the old man with cries of delight. Tillu looked after him in disbelief. She felt gutted. She stared at them, watched the old man's heavily veined hands pat her son's back as they embraced. Then he was sitting at Carp's side, taking the food that Kari offered, stuffing it into his mouth without thanks or hesitation, and talking to Carp, heedless of the food that muffled his words. He spoke in a rapid, excited whisper she could not decipher, his thin hands waving egg and bread in wild gestures. His eyes never left the old shaman's face.

  But Carp's eyes strayed. His gaze lifted over Kerlew's head in
a flash of vindictive triumph. Tillu recoiled as from a physical blow. For one brief instant she had held her son in her arms. Now he was gone. She could see him, she could touch him, but they no longer walked in the same world. He was Carp's now. She stared at him with hungry eyes, unable to turn away even though she knew Carp gloated at her. It was no comfort to see Kari sitting patiently, close enough to hear any request of Carp's but not so close that she intruded on the najd and his apprentice.

  Strong hands fell on her shoulders, pulling her to her feet and turning her to face him. She had to tilt her head back to look into Heckram's eyes. They mirrored her loss.

  'Why don't you walk with me today?' he invited her quietly. She nodded dumbly.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Kari led the harke that Carp sat upon. Tillu watched them as they moved into place in the caravan line, heard the greetings the folk called as he passed them.'So the young apprentice found his way back to you! Good luck upon us!'

  'I told his mother there was nothing to worry about, didn't I? Glad to see your boy is safe and fine.'

  'Look, there, the najd's boy is back.'

  Carp grinned his gaping smile and nodded down on his well-wishers, while Kerlew trotted beside his knee unaware of the attention. The sprinkling rain misted Tillu's eyelashes and made rainbows as she longed after him.

  She walked beside Heckram, listening to the creak of the harness leather and the deep thrumming of his voice. The rain damped her face and gradually soaked her clothing until the weight dragged on her. Tillu felt that she must be staggering along like a gut-wounded animal. The oddest part was that no one else noticed any change. Carp had taken her son, wrenched Kerlew from her as she had occasionally wrenched a rotted tooth from a man's jaw. He had said he would, that Kerlew would be his when the migration of the Herdfolk began, but somehow she had not believed it. She had been deceiving herself all these days of traveling, pretending that because she could see Kerlew and speak with him he was still hers. It wasn't so. She tried to tell herself there was no difference between this day and other days when Kerlew had walked beside Carp instead of her. But there was. Today she knew what the others had recognized long before. Kerlew belonged to Carp. He was the najd's boy, not the healer's son. He would not be coming back to her tonight, or any other night.