‘They wouldn’t have come this far into the forest,’ Iwa said, more in hope than anything else. ‘And we’d be bound to hear them long before they saw us. I can hide.’
‘Maybe,’ he said, as he blew on the kindling again and saw the faint trace of some hidden ember catch. ‘They stick close to the river mostly, but a few have come into the trees, along the old fur-trappers’ path.’
So he’d been talking with the others. ‘Did many get away?’ she couldn’t help but ask. But the boy just shrugged as he sat back down.
‘A few, nobody knows for sure. We’re picking up strays, many of them in a bad way. But there’s enough to keep an eye on the camp.’
Iwa sharpened a few twigs into stakes, on which she speared the fish, pulling out their spines with practised ease and opening their sides like wings. Then she crucified them and placed them over the fire.
‘There,’ she said as she sank back on her knees to admire her handiwork, ‘and if you want to do any better you’ll have to go and ask Krol Gawel for a knife.’
There was a pause as Jarel wondered who she was talking about. ‘Or maybe you could sneak up and steal one away,’ he said, deciding not to bother to ask. ‘You were always good at that sort of thing,’ he muttered into the flames. ‘Though no, best not to trust you. Send you out for a knife and you’d probably come back with half a broken pot, or worse.’
He smiled. It wasn’t much of a joke but it was enough. Then he sat back and stared blankly at the flames, his lips trembling as he saw the flame take hold.
‘Half a broken pot would be more useful than anything you could sneak from the camp.’ She cuffed him playfully on the shoulder and saw his face dissolve into giggles.
‘Half a broken pot if we’re lucky,’ he smirked, as the first juices dripped from the fish and splattered into the fire, ‘or maybe a few glass beads, now that would be useful. You women are always thinking of things to wear.’
Suddenly she got up and began to dance round the flames, her voice caught up with the song in praise of Zorza Utrennyaya and the morning dew. Jarel sank back next to the fire, his face drawn into a thin smile.
At first the song came awkwardly to her lips, the words halting and the cadence uncertain as the weight of all that had happened bore down on her. But then she caught the tempo, the words moving freely as she began to trace the steps, her hips moving slowly. Not that she could dance, not like Alia who was always so swift, so sensual, but it felt good to be able to feel the earth under her as she moved her feet in a slow circle around the flames and felt the mud press gently between her toes.
She could almost have been back at the camp, her stomach filled with the first taste of freshly caught deer and getting ready for the dance which the women gave to Marzanna in celebration of the thaw and the setting of the camp. Sometimes they dedicated the dance to the morning dew that would tell them that, at last, the thaw was on its way. Alia would lead the younger girls whilst the old ones would keep the tune with hand-held drums or reed flutes. Even old Stefina would be there, keeping the tune with tiny hand bells that jingled from strands of rainbow-coloured threads that she wound about her fingers.
Years ago and it would have been Stefina to lead the women in the dance. Now her hips were too old and her knees pained her. ‘I have only so much movement left in me,’ she’d say, ‘and what I have is saved for berry-picking or working on skins.’ So she clung to the edges of the fire and watched, the bells jangling round arthritic fingers.
Yet, as the firelight played across her wizened flesh and the hard calluses of her misshapen knuckles, her hands would regain some of their youth as her wrists twisted in perfect time to the sway of the young girls’ hips. The light played across the polished silver so that the bells hung like stars from her fingers. In her youth Stefina had enjoyed the songs of the sun and daybreak, but now she felt more at home with the last rites of the day when she could sit by the great fire and ease the warmth back to her aching limbs. Far easier to remember youth in the cover of night and the crackle of the fire.
Lately she’d begun to teach some of the young girls how to use the bells. Iwa had spent ages, sat on the edges of the group as Stefina showed the younger ones how to jingle them, her wrists moving swanlike as they glided over one another, the bells clinking like tiny droplets.
For Iwa it was better even than playing with the spiders, and she found that at last there was something she appeared good at, even Alia and the others had to admit to that. But there was only one set of bells in the camp and, on the rare occasions that Stefina let them out of the polished leather bag, everyone wanted to have a go. What Iwa wouldn’t have given to have them now, to feel their weight pulling reassuringly under her fingers.
More than anything she wanted to dance. This might not be the great clan fire, little more than a pathetic excuse for some smoke, but it was all that was left. I should bless
