careful the teepees could be snowed over before the winter’s out.” She shivered, imagining tiny pockets of warmth lost in the snow, the humans within suffocating, cooling, calling to each other.
“The Sun will recover,” Damen said wearily.
She said urgently, “But we don’t have to wait here to die. Teal said—”
“No.” He shook his massive head, his gray beard scraping over his chest.
“But he told us there was a way out of here,” she insisted. “The Eight Rooms. He found them, saw them. Your grandmother believed him.”
“Allel was a foolish old woman.”
“And Teal returned there. He said he’d leave a trail for the rest of us. Maybe if—”
He wrapped both arms around her. “Erwal, my brother was crazy. He hurt you, fought with me… He lost his life for nothing But now it’s over. He’s gone, and—”
“What if he survived?”
“Erwal…”
She sighed, pulled herself away from him, and began to haul her leggings over her still-cold feet.
Damen sat in silence, staring at the fire.
As she pushed through the snow Erwal heard odd snatches of song. The melodies, soft, harmonized and sad, were fragmented by the wind, and at first she thought she was dreaming. Then Sura’s teepee loomed out of the snow. Before it she made out a series of low mounds about as tall as she was. Occasionally a trunk would lift out of a mound, the two very human hands at its bifurcated tip twisting together, and slowly the songs grew clearer.
At last Erwal recognized the ancient chants of the mummy-cows.
Five cows, almost the village’s full complement, were grouped in a tight circle about a sixth; the latter lay at the center of the circle, and Erwal saw that some viscous fluid had leaked from its bulk into the snow. She pushed back her hood. “Sand? Are you here?”
One of the mummy-cows lifted her head; under a cap of snow a squat, cylindrical skull rotated on a neck joint and plate-sized eyes fixed on Erwal. “…I amm-m hhere, Err-waal…”
Erwal fixed her fingers in the shaggy fur covering Sand’s muzzle. Since Erwal’s childhood, Sand had been her favorite. “What’s wrong? Why are you gathered here?”
Sand moaned and scuffed with delicate fingers at the snow before her. “It iss-s Cale. We are… s-singing for her…”
“Singing? But why?…”
Sand closed her eyes.
Erwal turned to inspect the body at the center of the group. Cale was silent, utterly motionless, and when Erwal pushed her fingers through the fur she felt only a diminishing warmth.
How could this have happened? The mummy-cows rarely reproduced these days — there was too little fodder for them to generate the growth required — but they were virtually immortal. She walked around the fallen cow to the patch of moisture she had noticed earlier. She bent and touched the stuff. It was blood. Crouching, she probed upwards at the mummy-cow’s belly, exploring the soaked and matted fur. There was a tear in the flesh, a gash at least two feet long that was sharp and clean; performed by a stone knife.
She took deep breaths of the chill air; then she forced herself to reach forward, lift aside the flap of cut flesh, push her hands into the glistening stuff inside the cow.
She found a still, cold form. Snakelike entrails had coiled around the body in a hopeless attempt to keep it warm. Exploring by touch, Erwal found the tiny buds, hard as gristle, which had begun to grow to replace the child’s lost hands.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
Erwal withdrew her arms, rubbed snow over them to clean them, tucked them once more into her clothes. Sura stood beside her, her arms loose at her side. “…Yes, Sura. I’m sorry.”
“It worked for your husband, didn’t it? Teal, I mean. That mummy-cow he took to the Eight Rooms kept him alive by opening herself up… I suppose you despise me because I have killed a cow.” Sura sounded resigned, no longer caring. “Will you punish me?”
Erwal stood. “No, Sura. I understand.”
“You do?”
“You were trying to save your child. What more can any of us do? What else is there? Come on.” She took Sura’s unresisting arm. “Let’s go to your teepee.”
“Yes,” Sura said.
On the first clear day of the tepid spring the villagers filed in silence to a low hill a mile from the village. After months in the fug of the teepees Erwal took deep breaths of the cold, fresh air, and felt the blood stir within her. She looked around with renewed interest. It was a still, windless day; above her the lakes and rivers of Home shone like threads in a carpet. The ruddy light of the Sun was almost cheerful, and frosty snow crackled beneath her feet. She tried to imagine what it must have been like in the days before she was born, when the Sun was yellow and so hot that, even in spring, you could discard your furs and leggings and run like a child in some huge teepee.
At the top of the hill orange flowers were struggling to blossom through the permafrost. The villagers gathered in a rough circle around the flowers; some clasped their hands before them, others dropped their heads so their chins rested on their shirts of fur. Damen stepped into the middle of the circle. “We’re here for those who died in the winter.” His voice was flat and lifeless. Without ceremony he intoned a list of names.
“…Borst, husband of Sura. Brought down by fluid in the lungs. A girl, daughter of Borst and Sura; the frost attacked her flesh in the blizzards…”
Numbly Erwal counted the names. Twenty-two in all, mostly children. She glanced around the silent group; there were surely no more than a hundred souls left. Already, she knew, the outer portions of the village had been abandoned, so that their homes were encircled by silent, ruined teepees.
There were hardly any old people left, it struck her suddenly. In fact, she and Damen were the old people now. Who would be the last to go? she wondered morbidly. Some child, crying over the cooling bodies of its parents?
At that moment her resolution crystallized. With or without Damen, she had to leave this place.
Damen finished his list. After a brief, gloomy silence, the group broke up and returned to the teepees.
Twenty-five adults decided to commit to Erwal’s plan. With their children, thirty-seven people would travel with her.
They gathered at the edge of the village. The split families and parting friends found little to say in the way of farewells. Erwal, with the assistance of Sura, made final adjustments to the harness around the neck of Sand, the one mummy-cow they were to take. To the harness was attached a broad pallet piled with furs, blankets and cow-tree buds. The rest of the expedition, spare clothes heaped on their bodies, looked on in subdued silence.
“I don’t know what to say.”
Erwal turned. Damen, thick arms folded, stood watching her. “Damen, don’t even try.”
He frowned. “Pride’s an odd thing,” he mused. “I should know. I’ve been proud, and stubborn. Pride can make it hard to admit you’re wrong, no matter how misguided you come to realize —”
Erwal laughed, not unkindly. “I should swallow my pride, admit my mistake, should I?”
He looked hurt. “Erwal, you could die out there.”
“But I believe we’d die here.” She touched his arm, ruffling the mat of thick black hair which grew there. “This expedition needs you—”
“But I need you.”
It was as if the Sun had broken through cloud. Struggling to keep her voice steady, Erwal said, “You’ve picked the damnedest time to say such a thing.”
“I’m sorry.”
Deliberately, with a sense of pain, she turned her head from him. “It’s time to go.”
“Where?”
“You know where. To the north. The way Teal described. A journey of a few days, following his markers and directions, to the Eight Rooms.”
He snorted. “Following the babble of a mummy-cow and a madman?”
“Damen, don’t spoil this.” She studied him, desperate to hold on to these final traces of warmth. “I know what I’m doing.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Erwal; we’ve been over all of this before, haven’t we?”
“A hundred times.” She smiled.
“…I wish you well.”
She hugged him, feeling the rough fur of his shirt under her bare forearms. “And I you, love.”
“I won’t see you again.”
“…Perhaps if I find what I’m looking for I’ll be able to return for you.”
He held her away, his face hard. “Sure you will.”
With that, they parted.
With gentle encouragement the mummy-cow began its lumbering motion, the laden pallet scoring tracks into the hard ground. Erwal walked arm in arm with Sura. She turned back until the village was out of sight; for long after she was gone, she suspected, the dark bulk of Damen would be stationed at the edge of the village, hoping for her return.
A short, round-faced man called Arke walked with Erwal. “This winter,” he said, “I lifted the body of my wife out of the teepee and into the snow. I had to wait for the thaw before I could bury her in the cow-tree stand. I barely know what you’re talking about with your stories of stars and ships, Erwal, but I know this. If I’d stayed at home I’d surely have died. At least with you I’ll die trying to find a way out. And,” he finished doubtfully, “you never know; we might even succeed.”
Many of her fellow travelers, Erwal suspected, had been motivated to come by much the same mixture of desperation and doubt; and yet they had come. And, as they walked, Erwal sensed a mood of optimism generated by the very fact of their motion, that they were doing something.
But winter came early in the north.
The winds hit them first, so that the children, wailing, were forced to stumble along clinging to the fur of the cow, who sang them simple songs. Then snow followed, and the march became a grim haul across a featureless plain punctuated by nights huddled in a single, shivering mound under a layer of blankets.
Erwal had memorized the list of directions which Teal had given to the village, and she was as sure as she could be that she was not leading her party astray. But on the more difficult days she was constantly aware that she was hardly equipped to serve as the leader of such an ambitious expedition; and when they entered the mouth of yet another blizzard she found tears leaking from her freezing eyes, and she wondered if she was guiding these people to their deaths.
Then, one day, Sura came pushing through the snow drifts. She grinned, excited, holding up a faded rag. Erwal, tired and bemused, pushed snow-speckled hair from her eyes and took the object from the girl. It was a strip of mummy-cow hide. Roughly cut and uncured, the strip had been frozen before it had a chance to rot; and it was tied with a double knot.
“Teal,” Sura said. “This is one of his markers, isn’t it? I found it tied to a dead cow-tree, just over that ridge.”
