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.'
