herds and two other caravan lines. All seemed to be converging at the Cataclysm. She tried to imagine all those people and animals gathered in one place, and couldn't.
Yet as the day advanced, both the Cataclysm and the other caravans drew nearer.
Several times Ketla lifted her head, to smile weakly at Tillu. Each time Tillu gave her water. And each time, she afterward edged her harke forward, to look down on Rolke's grayed face. Rolke did not refuse water; he was impassive to it. Tillu smoothed it over his face and lips. His breathing had a hoarse, wet sound.
'Tonight,' Tillu said softly to Capiam, 'I will make a steam of pine needles and birch cones. It may clear his breathing.'
Capiam nodded wearily. His own breathing was raspy, and his face too flushed for the coolness of the day. Tillu folded her lips and said nothing. Useless to argue with this man. He would not rest until he had reached the Cataclysm. Perhaps then he would behave sensibly. She flicked a tick off her arm, and let her harke ease back into line. She, too, was looking forward to the cool of the Cataclysm and the easing of the insect problem. She stared forward, to Kari's straight little back as she led the herdfolk onward. The thought crossed Tillu's mind, that in the final assessment, Kari was Capiam's daughter. Leading her folk onward, finding the courage to keep her dignity in the face of Carp's insult. Tillu wondered if Capiam could see that. Probably not. He was probably too caught up in the illness plaguing his family to notice the one who carried on. But Tillu did. Maybe tonight she would have time to speak to Kari. And Kerlew.
And Heckram.
'Heckram.' She murmured his name like a charm, let her strange feelings for him rise unchecked. For an instant she saw him again, naked in the sun. She stumbled slightly and the harke snorted rebukingly. She patted his neck and walked on. For many years, it had been others who needed her and took comfort in her skills. She had not known that needing could throb unremitting as pain. A pain to savor.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Two days after arriving at the Cataclysm, Tillu was still not accustomed to it. It was, she thought, like camping by river rapids. The flow of people and sound never ceased.
The reindeer clustered on the sides and flanks of the vast upheaval of earth and rocks, watched over by the young boys and girls of the herdfolk; it was taken for granted that more than reindeer herding was taking place on the mountainsides. Many a joining and lifelong partnership had begun in such innocent trysts.
Folk were equally busy below. Many a joining ceremony was being prepared.
Women were sewing and weaving, comparing garments, and trading bridal trims and gossips, speculating about which couples would be joined next year. Some were assessing animals, their own and others. In a makeshift corral of stone and brush, vajor were separated from their calves. The owner of each calf then moved in, to swiftly notch his mark into the calf's ear. Each small flap of skin was strung on. a tally line to keep the count. Bull calves were bloodlessly castrated. One herdsman would hold the calf down while his partner carefully took the calf's scrotum into his mouth. Two quick nips of white teeth severed free the testicles inside the pouch without breaking the skin.
A brief massage of the pouch, and the calf that had lain down a sarva stood up as a harke, to run back to its frantic mother.
Goods and animals were traded and compared, children fought, screamed, and played, and all folk continually visited one another. Their voices were lifted in a sound as constant as the patter of rain. The whirl of people and activity flowed past Tillu's awareness, washing from her mind any personal thoughts. A blanket of noise and movement insulated her from her problems.
Of Heckram she had seen little; of Kerlew, even less. She was healer now for all of her day, and Tillu only in odd moments. She felt as if her personal life and problems had been set aside, like a piece of sewing that could be completed later. Dimly she was aware that this was not so; that the lives of Kerlew and Heckram and Kari went on without her intervention. But in the herdlord's tents the threads of lives lay in her hands. She was all that held them intact, and she could not let them go, no matter what pain goaded her.
Although Ketla was feeling better, she was not well. Even a few steps made her lose her breath, while Rolke did little more than breathe and moan. The fine bones in his hands and feet stood out clearly, and his skin burned under Tillu's hands. Capiam refused to admit his illness, but Tillu added ground willow bark and birch root to his tea at every opportunity. She stayed in the herdlord's tent, Rolke's constant nurse, though there was little she could do for him. She trickled tea and broth into his lax mouth. She rubbed water and oil into his papery skin and endured Ketla's predictions that any hour now he would be better. Hadn't the najd said so? All the boy needed was rest.
Rest. She would have liked to take it for herself. But there were always distractions to claim her energy. Capiam's najd and healer had attracted attention in the summer settlement. Folk from another herdlord brought her a boy with a broken arm. Her setting it unleashed a stream of visitors to Capiam's tent, most with minor ailments, but some with bad teeth, infected cuts, or injuries from the scuffles in the reindeer pens. The warm weather brought tick bites, many of them infected or abscessed. Some complained of a fever and headache that came and went. The symptoms were too like Rolke's and Ketla's for Tillu's liking. She treated them all, and wondered when she could sleep. Despite his feverish headaches, Capiam seemed to welcome the attention his new healer attracted. Even Ketla sat up in her robes by the fire, and chatted with the folk that came for healing.
Evening brought the najd with his incessant drumming and chanting before the herdlord's tent. Then folk came in threes and fours, to gawk at Capiam's najd and whisper of other najds they had known. A fire would be kindled for the najd, and savory offerings set out on wooden platters. There would be a spread of soft hides where he might sit or stand, and a sweep of clean earth where he might dance. At those times Tillu might get a glimpse of Kerlew. He squatted at Carp's bony knee, swaying with the rhythm of the small drum he patted in time to Carp's chanting. Carp attired himself in Joboam's best tunics and his neck and wrists hung heavy with strings of amber and ivory beads. From time to time he drew strange and grisly objects from his pouch and chanted to them softly, or made mysterious passes that brought the flames of his fire leaping at his command or sent gouts of yellow smoke pouring up into the night. Then the gathered folk hummed and muttered to themselves and stared fascinated at the najd who chanted for Capiam's son.
Tillu watched only Kerlew. The boy would be near naked but for a twist of leather about his loins. His hair was longer and unkempt, hanging about his narrow shoulders.
His pale-brown eyes seemed overlarge in his gaunt face. His chest was ribby, his knees and elbows painfully large in his thinness. Only once had Tillu tried to speak to him.
During a lull, when Kerlew's fingers whispered against the drum as Carp muttered to a tangle of teeth and feathers, she had crept closer to him, reached a hand to brush his back. Her fingers had felt the knobs of his spine, the high warmth of his skin. 'Kerlew,'
she had whispered.
Carp had sprung at her, shaking his talisman at her frantically as his chanting rose to an angry scream. A man from another herd had dragged her roughly back into the crowd, but for long moments Carp had pranced his stamping dance and rattled his talisman angrily at an awe-stricken crowd. Kerlew had given no sign he was aware of her. She had crept back to Capiam's tent, hiding her thoughts from herself in the chattering of the women who clustered about Ketla's hearth, drinking tea and sewing.
Later Capiam had observed, 'A boy of Kerlew's age is not a child anymore. Parents must know when to let go of their children.' Tillu had only stared at him, hard and silent.
She could have turned his rebuke back upon him. She could have asked why he and Ketla forced Kari to this joining. But she did not. She didn't want to do anything to make the girl any more miserable. When they had arrived at the Cataclysm, Capiam had ordered his daughter to move back into his tent. Tillu had expected her to protest angrily, but Kari had obeyed with uncharacteristic meekness. The fire had gone out of her eyes since the day Carp had gone with Joboam. Nothing seemed to interest her anymore. Kari spent most of her time staring into her mother's hearthfire. Tillu's efforts at rousing her were ignored; she no longer asked questions about healing. She reminded Tillu of a mother who had lost a new-born child. She had that same baffled look of shattered expectancy.
