“Always. Every time. From our first trip to retrieve the eggs, we were told that it was instant death if we got too close to it, but that just meant it was more interesting to us. We never went close to it, but we always looked at it as we ran past.”
Alex’s shoulders sagged.
If it had always been there and now it’s gone, that probably means it doesn’t appear and disappear. It’s just gone.
Sekun-ak laid a hand on Alex’s shoulders. “Let’s search the area. It may have just moved.”
They did just that, climbing up and down the sandy dunes covered with swaying, tall shoots of grass.
“If you find it, don’t get too close,” Senta-eh said. “Just call Manta-ak.”
Monda-ak put his nose to the ground and sniffed industriously, as though he had some clue what he was looking for.
Alex found a series of boulders at the water’s edge and climbed up them until he stood on top of the tallest rock. From there, he had a sweeping view of the entire area. Water, rocky sand, dunes, grass, the beginning of the hill that led into the valley and back to Winten-ah.
Absolutely no door.
He hopped back down to the sand and walked to Senta-eh. “I could see everywhere from up there. It’s not here.”
Solemnly, she held his gaze. “What do you want to do?”
What I want to do is go home. To Amy.
“There’s nothing else to do except go back to Winten-ah.”
Alex searched her face, wondering if he might see some slight sign of happiness that he would be staying in Kragdon-ah after all. He saw nothing but sorrow and pain for him.
She tipped her head back and made the odd, yodeling sound that was the call of her family. “Come back,” she called to the scattered troops. “Let’s go home.”
Home. No escaping it. Winten-ah is home.
LIFE SETTLED INTO A set schedule for Alex and Monda-ak. They were part of every hunt, and with winter approaching, there were many of those. He still had it in his mind to make the journey to Rinta-ah again and ask the young chieftain Rinka-ak to show him where the salt deposits were, but the days moved quickly. He didn’t want to travel too far from the cliffside in the unpredictable fall weather.
Ganku-eh had once told both him and Dan Hadaller that they would never be true members of the Winten-ah, but that had been while she was chief. Alex was already included in most councils the tribe held, but he was purposefully excluded from one that occurred shortly after they returned from looking for the door. After that Alex-less meeting was finished, Sekun-ak had sought him out and told him that the tribe had chosen to make him not an honorary member of the tribe, but an actual, full-fledged member.
This effort was not spearheaded by Sekun-ak, who was Alex’s closest friend, but by Lanta-eh, The Chosen One, who held more influence in these things than anyone. More, even, than Sekun-ak, who was a good and fair chieftain, respected by all in the tribe.
The ceremony took place at the mid-point between the summer and winter solstices, one of the four most important days in the Winten-ah calendar.
Alex had never witnessed the ceremony of becoming a tribe member because no outsider had been accepted in as many generations as anyone could remember.
The ceremony coincided with the final karak-ta egg hunt of the year, so they included a feast and the indulgence of the mind-altering egg.
When Alex had first arrived in Winten-ah and taken a small piece of the egg, he had laid on his back for more than twelve hours and watched the formation and destruction of the universe in his mind’s eye.
Before the egg was ingested, Sekun-ak asked Alex to stand up before the tribe.
“Who puts this man, this Manta-ak forward?” Sekun-ak asked.
Lanta-eh, only a few inches shorter than Alex already, though she had only seen eleven summers, stood beside him and said, “I do. I have witnessed Manta-ak through all aspects of life. Preparation and planning. Executing those plans. Taking great risks with more concern for others than for himself. He has always carried himself the way we would want any Winten-ah to do. He was not born to us, but time and again, he has proved he is more than worthy to be one of us. I am proud to welcome him as my brother.”
Sekun-ak’s gaze swept across the gathered population of Winten-ah. Everyone was present except the guards in the trees on the edge of the forest. “Does anyone want to speak out against Manta-ak? Speak now!”
No one’s going to speak out against me now. Not after I’ve rescued the tribe’s Chosen One and led us to victory in war. But I remember a time, brother, when that opposition would have been led by you.
The only sound in the huge room was the crackling of the fire.
“Manta-ak. Come to me.”
Alex stepped forward. Sekun-ak put both hands on his shoulders and said, “Now and always, you are my brother.”
One by one, every man, woman, and child in the tribe—even those too elderly to walk on their own—stood in front of Alex and did exactly the same.
Senta-eh, who Alex felt so much for, smiled gently at him as she welcomed him as her brother. In the intervening months since the failed trip back to the twenty-first century, he had flitted around the edges of moving toward more of a relationship with her, but had not accomplished much. Both he and she were accomplished warriors who knew no fear in battle, yet were frozen in other areas of their lives.
Will I ever find a way to be more than a brother to you?
Alex hadn’t known what to expect, or what he would feel when this moment arrived. But, now that it was here, and he was a full-fledged Winten-ah, his heart swelled.
I may not ever return to the twenty-first century and I may never see Amy again, but I
