meat on our rack that I knew had not been there the night before. I knew it was done out of kindness, but it was -'
'I know. Some I shall take as payment for Lasse. She also had a bag of herbs there, and seemed to know the mixing of them. It has been long since there was a healer among the herdfolk. I am sure there are medicines that would be useful to us and that she might make. I will leave her pride intact.' He had spitted the meat pieces and now set them to cook over the revived flames. The fat sizzled and his stomach rolled yearningly.
Ristin nodded thoughtfully. 'Sometimes it is all one has left to lean on. You might talk to Elsa as well. She had some bone work and ribbon weaving she wanted the traders to take. She might be willing to trade some of it for something to ease her shoulder when the days are cold and wet. It has never been the same since that fall.
Perhaps you should even take her along when you go to pay the healer. The girl works so hard, and this chance to trade might be a bit of a rest for her. Is it far to the healer's hut?'
'Not by skis. If we had not been on foot, hoping to drag a vaja home alive, Lasse and I would have been home by noon. And now that I know where it is, I should be able to get there in a short time. I will tell Elsa I am going. If she wants to come along, I'm sure she will.'
'You might treat her with a little courtesy.'
'I do. With as much courtesy as I give to Lasse, or Jakke. Or any of my friends.'
'Heckram ...'
'Are you hungry? The meat is nearly ready.'
Ristin noticed the tone of his voice with a sigh. 'Yes. But I'll remind you once more that you aren't getting any younger. Nor I.'
'Nor Elsa. I know. But I won't have a hungry child at my hearth, mother. I won't look for a wife until I am sure I can care for one.'
'If you wait until you're ready, you'll never be wed.'
'Mother.'
Silence fell. Heckram drew the still sizzling meat from the flames, portioning it into the wooden trenchers his mother set beside him. She brought juobmo as well, sour milk preserved in a small keg and flavored with sorrel leaves. With cheese and blood sausage, it made a pleasant meal, although it was a quiet one. The meat was more flavorful than tender. Heckram chewed the fine-grained chunks, watching the fire and thinking. After the dishes had been cleared away, Ristin took up a half-finished basket.
She seemed to give much thought to which fibers to choose and then abruptly set it aside. She stared at him until he lifted his eyes to meet hers. She spoke softly.
'Heckram. Your father and I ... we never intended to have a hungry child at our hearth.'
He shrank at the pain in her voice, 'I know that,' he said gently, 'I did not mean my words as a rebuke to you.'
But she spoke on relentlessly. 'We never expected the plague, and I never thought to lose him while you were just a boy. But for all that, Heckram, even knowing all that was to come, I would do it again. I'd take him as husband again.'
A small silence was planted in the hut and grew. Ristin took up her belt weaving and knelt to fasten it to the center pole. Drawing it out taut, she knelt and took up colored root fibers for the pattern, some stained red from alder bark, some yellow from wild onion. She sorted out a handful.
'When I feel that way about Elsa,' Heckram offered, 'I'll ask her. But only when I feel that way.'
Ristin looked up from her work, holding her son with her eyes for a long moment.
Then she slowly nodded. 'That's fair,' she said softly as her head bent over her work again. 'That's fair to both of you. But let us hope she still feels that way about you when you get around to asking her.'
CHAPTER EIGHT
The ptarmigan were small. She hefted them by their feathered feet, studying the scarlet eyefeathers that had betrayed them. But for that shot of color, she would never have seen them in the willow thicket. But even two of them weren't much more meat than a hare. Well, she would be able to skin them carefully and keep the feathered skins. And their succulent flesh would be a welcome change from all the hares they had eaten lately. She would spit one and cook it over the fire, and stew up the other with herbs and lichen to thicken and flavor the broth. Two dishes might make Kerlew feel as if there were more to eat.
The long shadows of the trees crossed her trail in a bluish network against the snow.
Evening was seeping up the hillside, rising about her as if darkness began in the hollows and shadowed places of the land and welled up to meet the night. Already the brightest stars were beginning to show in the deep blue of the sky. The sun itself had but peeped over the horizon today and sidled along the skyline. Soon it would dip out of sight again. She'd best hurry.
Tillu ducked under a branch, careful not to disturb its load of snow. She moved silently, always watching for that flicker of movement that might give her one more target for her bow. She was getting better with it. She grinned to herself; soon she'd have as much skill as one of the children in Benu's band. But the landscape around her was still. The slowly encroaching twilight was darkening the green of the pine boughs into near black, merging the ranked tree trunks to either side of her trail into a curtain of grayish bark and shadowed snow. Perhaps if she had not wasted so much time watching the herd of reindeer and trying to think of a way to kill one. Her mind swung back to that challenge. She had already proved that her crude arrows from her flimsy bow did no more than bounce off the animals' thick hides. All she had accomplished was spooking them. A flung spear would do no better, for she hadn't the skills to make a good one. And even in the deep snow, the reindeer would easily flounder away from her before she could get close enough to use a jabbing spear. But there had to be a way, and she would discover it soon.
She tried not to think of the long nights of winter that still remained. She should remember that the darkest part of the cold time was behind her now, and they were still both alive. She sighed lightly, promising herself that things would get better. Look how Kerlew was changing. In the three days since the strangers had stayed with them, the boy had turned out twelve spoons. True, some were cruder than others, but each one seemed improved. And, in typical Kerlew fashion, now that he was confident of one implement, he was not inclined to try to carve anything else. She would let him enjoy his success for a while, and then persuade him to try something new. The point was, they were surviving, and Kerlew was growing. She wouldn't worry any further than that. Tillu crested the last rise and started down into the sheltered dell that held her home.
The strange tracks cut across her path, the twin lines of them looking almost blue against the snow in the evening shadows. Tillu froze, looking up and down the line of the trail's passage, but seeing nothing. They vanished into the snow-mantled trees, with no sign of what had made them.
She crouched down to study the track, to touch its clean edge with her mittened hand. She had seen nothing like these before. The tracks were long and narrow and continuous, almost as if a man had dragged something long and narrow through the snow. But there were no footprints beside them. Indistinct dents in the snow alongside the long narrow tracks at irregular intervals puzzled her. Nothing about them resembled the footprints of any creature she knew. She strained her ears, but heard nothing. She couldn't even tell if the mysterious tracks were going or coming. But as she continued on her way home, she found her tracks paralleling them. As it became more and more obvious that her tent was either their destination or source, she hurried.
She was panting when she arrived at the clearing. Her eyes followed the strange trail right up to the edge of the beaten snow that surrounded her tent. She approached cautiously, heart thumping and ears straining. Four long, narrow planks of wood with strange leather fixtures rested on the snow outside her tent. The tips of the planks had been warped up at one end. Four staves stood in the snow beside them. Tillu had never seen anything like them. Muffled voices came from within the tent, Kerlew's piping one and the deeper voice of the stranger. Worry squeezed her stomach as she ducked into the tent.
Within, the fire burned merrily, casting its dancing shadows on the skin walls.
