and entered the hut. The heads turned slowly, the faces froze as he knelt before them and offered them the broken body their daughter's soul was trapped in. For a long teetering instant, the world balanced in silence.
Then it came crashing back against him, like a roar of wind down a narrow valley, like the merciless rushing of a spring-thawed river.
'What happened?'
'Put her here! Gently, gently! Oh, her hand!'
'Cold water. Clean bandages. She's shivering, cover her. Elsa, Elsa. Lie still, little one, lie still. You are safe now. Give me some cold water!'
'I left the bucket by the spring,' Heckram said stupidly. He stared at Elsa. If an avalanche had caught her up and swept her through trees, then she might have looked this way. If she had been caught in the sudden roar of a spring flood and bashed against rocks and debris, then he would have expected this. But she had only gone to fetch a bucket of water, from their own village spring at night. He stared at her, unable to grasp the reality.
Something had struck the side of her head. It had torn her jaw loose from its hinges so that she gaped stupidly at nothing. The flesh had torn from the corner of her mouth up into her cheek. The flow of blood stained her cheek red and dripped on her chest. He had an almost uncontrollable urge to reach over and shut her mouth for her, to put her face back together. A horrid little sound came from it with each breath she expelled. A useless, hopeless little cry. One arm hung unnaturally from a shoulder that sagged in its socket. The hand of the other arm seemed scarcely a hand anymore.
'Heckram!' His mother's voice crashed against him; her hands grabbed his face and shook him. 'You can't just stand here. Go wake Lasse and send him for the healer. Then get Capiam. Report this to him. No bear did this. This is man's evil. Hurry!'
He felt himself pushed from the hut back into the dark and bloody night. He stood, blinking stupidly, taking in the image of Kuoljok hastening from the spring with a bucket that slopped water at every step of the old man's shambling trot. 'Elsa, Elsa,' he was panting as he ran, quavering out the helpless cry. The sound galvanized Heckram.
He found himself running through the night, fleeing before Kuoljok could speak to him.
His pulkor. His mother's harke, a young, strong animal that was still but half trained.
But Britsi was fleet and had stamina. Tonight Heckram was not gentling and coaxing.
When the skittish Britsi leaped away from him, he seized him roughly by his lower jaw.
Britsi tried to rear up on his hind legs and lash out with his front legs, but Heckram was merciless. He dragged the reindeer down to a stand.
The harness went on quickly, the leather collar slung over his neck and the ends pulled down over his breast and between his forelegs. Behind the forelegs it was fastened to the reins, which then ran back between his hind legs to the pulkor. Britsi danced as Heckram leaped into the pulkor and then the reindeer was off, streaking half terrified through the snowy night. The pulkor careened after him, Heckram shouting encouragement.
The keeled wooden sled slid smoothly behind the animal down the packed-snow trail that ran the length of the village. It was slower going when Britsi took to the deeper, less packed snow outside the village. The darkness of the forest closed in around them as they left the village behind. Heckram tried to keep to the more sheltered parts of the hillsides, avoiding the deepest snow where Britsi would have floundered to a walk.
The night was still but for their passage. He struck the vague trail made by their skis the last time they had visited the healer. An image of Elsa struggling to tuck her thick hair back under her cap. He shook it from his mind. Lasse had been to see Tillu twice since then, once for a flux remedy and once to fetch a tonic for his grandmother. The snow was packed enough to take the reindeer's weight. The pulkor slid smoothly and silently in Britsi's wake.
The forest stretched endlessly around him and ahead of him. It was made of the night and his fear, and his unacknowledged guilt lurked in it, as intangible and penetrating as fog.
At the bottoms of the vales they raced through willows and alder that reached scraggling hands toward him. The frosted tips of the branches glistened white as fingerbones in the moonlight. Then up the side of the hill, through a stratum of ghostly birches, naked and grieving, and into the dark and forbidding pines with their lowering branches. The path seemed endless and he cursed Britsi and yanked the reins whenever the animal stepped from the path and faltered. Then they started a long descent of a gentle hill, and the feeble firelight that leaked from Tillu's worn tent was like a beacon of hope to him. 'Tillu! Tillu the Healer!' he cried, his voice breaking against the cold black night.
Sleep had begun to close over her like a soft blanket when she heard the anguished roar from outside her tent. She rose hastily, pushing the hair back from her eyes and belting her nightrobe more tightly around herself as she stepped quickly through the door.
The scene that met her eyes was like a tapestry of some strange fable. A reindeer rushed down the hillside toward her while behind it came a man atop a sliding log. She recognized Heckram's voice, and as he came closer she caught the gist of his words.
'Elsa ... hurt ... must come.' She darted back into her tent and was pulling on her clothes when he burst through the tent flap, still shouting. His hair was wild, his eyes frantic as he caught at her arm. She seized his hands firmly in both of hers and spoke calmly.
'I have to get my medicine bag and waken Kerlew. Calm down. What's happened?'
He let go of her, but the words tumbled from his lips so rapidly that she could not decipher them through his accent. All traces of his former restraint were gone. His shouting awakened Kerlew, who sat up in his sleeping skins and looked about, bewildered. Tillu stepped past him to take down her bag of medicines. She checked quickly through it to make sure she had supplies of the most common herbs. But when she opened a small box to replenish those she was low on, Heckram stepped past her to slam it shut and tuck the whole box under his arm. He grabbed her by the upper arm, dragging her to the door.
'Has he come to take me hunting?' Kerlew asked hopefully, sleepily.
'No. Someone at the village is hurt. Elsa, I think. I have to go to her.' Tillu pulled her hood up against the cold.
'I'll come, too.' The boy kicked off his blankets and reached for his leggings.
For the first time, Heckram became cognizant of the uproar he was creating. He released Tillu's arm and passed his hand before his eyes. He suddenly fell silent and looked from Tillu to her son in worry. He took a deep breath and tried to speak in a normal voice, but he panted out the words. 'Kerlew, you'll have to stay here. No room in the pulkor. Be a good boy?' he asked hopefully.
'Kerlew, stay here and behave yourself,' Tillu instructed him firmly, 'I won't be gone long. Go back to sleep, and I'll be back before you wake up. You're big enough to stay by yourself. You do it all day.'
'Night's different. What if a bear comes? What if Owl-spirit comes to steal me?' His halting words quavered.
'Don't be silly,' Tillu said firmly. 'Those are just old tales. Just go back to sleep and I'll be back by morning.'
'All right!' Kerlew replied savagely. He shut his jaws with a snap, but couldn't keep his lip from trembling.
'We must hurry. Elsa needs healer very much. Kerlew be brave boy. I'll send Lasse back, to keep you company. You show him spoons, okay?' Heckram bartered hastily as he pulled Tillu toward the door. But the boy only turned away from them.
'Kerlew will be safe?' Heckram asked as the flap fell.
'I think so,' Tillu replied, glancing back uneasily. She hoped he would do nothing foolish while she was gone. Whenever he was displeased, he acted it out in strange ways. Well, there was no time for fretting now. She found herself staring at a reindeer tied to a boat. The animal reared up on its hind legs and lashed out at them as they approached.
Heckram seemed to find nothing strange in this. With a swiftness born of practice, he reached, grabbed the reindeer's jaw, and brought it down. 'Get in!' he shouted to Tillu, gesturing at the boat. She stepped up beside it to stare hesitantly down into it. There was a nest of furs inside, and the long trailing leather strips that ran up to the
