She put her feet on the mountain path, and there was a great gush of water from her body. She rested, climbed a little, rested once again. Far in die west the moon was sinking toward the broken line of mountains.
She climbed again, turning as the pathway turned itself slowly across the face of the sheering hill. She grasped needles from a tree and chewed them, concentrating upon the bitterness. She rested again, climbed again. The moon fell, and below her in the valley she heard the clamour of men and dogs, not loud, almost as though they were trying to be silent. She could see the flare of torches moving south from the village toward the forest’s edge where die hut stood. She sobbed and climbed once more. The pains were close together now, and she had to stop more frequently.
Fire blossomed in the valley, and the sound of dogs belled out as it did when they hunted by scent. She still climbed upward, stumbling at last between two strange, squared pillars of ancient stone, feeling an odd tingle through her body as she did so. Then the pains were so great that she could not move. Her body would not obey. Above her the stars began to swing in long arcs of fire, singing, and the music she had heard in the month of harvest was around her once again.
The men found her body there, almost between the squared pillars, or at least they found what the dogs had left of it. There was no sign of whatever it was she had carried in her belly. They took the body in the cloak and carried it to the place where the frame of the hut still blazed. By morning there was only a pall of smoke and the smell of burnt flesh around the place. Someone whispered that wife Widdek wept.
When the Keepers came, in their flapping black robes with their strange hairless faces and high, shrill voices, they were Well satisfied. They listened as the Speaker told them of two ‘questionables,’ both women, who had been burned. All in the village were examined and Sealed. The Keepers took six young people away with them. No one mentioned the strange music they had heard in die valley the year before.
CHAPTER TWO
JAER
Years 1153-1158
‘What will you name the child?’ asked the old man. The villagers would have found him horrifying, with his yellow skin and unfolded eyelids. When he had come through the village six years before, he had worn a mask and gloves.
‘Ah well,’ the other replied, rubbing his black hand fretfully across the white wool of his head. ‘How does one know? How does one know, even, that it was wise to save him? Poor little bird, lying there all bloody between his dead mother’s legs.’
‘You needn’t have gone scrambling down the hill like a goat.’
‘I know. I know. But there was such anguish in the signal, such pain…’
‘Ephraim. Ephraim.’ He smiled, affectionately.
‘I know.’
They sat for a time silent, watching the fire as it leaped and played, throwing shadows across the bundle beside the hearth. The bundle stirred, whimpered, was quiet once more.
‘So. What will you name him?’
‘Oh, something after his mother, poor child. She was, I think, about sixteen. Outcast these last two years.’
‘What was her name, then?’
‘They called her Jaera. What they meant by it was something else again.’
‘I haven’t studied the language.’
‘Why should you? It’s only spoken here and in one other valley. At one time there were thousands of them, but they get fewer every year. Look across the valley. You can see outlines of fields that haven’t been tilled in generations. A few hundred years of killing everything that looks or acts a little different –’
‘What do you think they meant by “Jaera”?’ he interrupted.
‘Well, jae is three. When it’s written as a pictograph, the three feathers, it means the third month. The third month is called the month of wings returning, which is “ovil v’nor.” But, wings returning is also a metaphor for spring. Then there’s raha, – which is written as a water jug – which, when spoken, means either that or “life,” but it can be a metaphor for “joy” or even “fulfillment.” Her sad little mother could have meant “Springtime life” or “Third month baby” or “Spring joy.” The rain that falls after the snow is called “ra’a v’nor,” which could mean either “rain returning,” or “life returning.” In my mind I called her “Renewal.” She had hair like flame.’
‘Mutation?’
‘Who knows. Maybe they were right to call her atavist. Some lingering genes of the old, mixed-up times.’
‘I wish we’d gotten there sooner.’
‘It was no matter. The blood poured out of her as though out of a pitcher. She was smiling. I wonder who the father was.’
‘Any one of them, I suppose.’
‘No. There was something more to it than that. Something happened last summer while you were away south. Strange.’
‘Tell me about it in the morning. Where shall I put this?’ He held up the strange flute and die pouch.
‘Let me see those once again, Nathan. See. There where the symbols are scratched in? “Raha,” but it’s broken. If it’s broken, it becomes “Rana”: death. I think the Wanderer did this. I know she was there, then gone. This could be her work, done hastily. It’s a kind of flute. You could have heard her playing it any time the moon was up.’
‘Put it away for now. If we’re to keep the small one, we’ll be up and down in the night a dozen times.
