“From my father. He is — was — a great hunter.”
Pa’alu yanked the spear from the ground and handed it back to Nianki. “Keep it. It doesn’t seem to bring bad luck to you.” He eyed her many injuries. “Or perhaps bad luck is finished with you already.”
Nianki sat down cross-legged, laying the short spear across her lap. Pa’alu offered her a hollow gourd with a long thong tied around its neck. She shook it, heard sloshing, and sniffed the open neck. Water.
She drank deeply, gulping rapidly to prevent any spillage. When she was done she handed the empty gourd back to Pa’alu.
“A handy thing,” she said.
“I made it,” he replied. “Haven’t you seen a water-gourd before?”
“I’m not from these parts.”
Little by little Nianki relaxed. Pakito was good-natured and devoted to his brother. Pa’alu was a bit harder to fathom. He had the quick reflexes and keen eyes of a hunter, but he also seemed clever in the way her brother Amero had been — always making things and thinking of new ways to do things. Cleverness like that made her uncomfortable.
They shared their breakfast with her — raisins, salmon jerky, and soft white mush Pakito called “cheese.” It smelled spoiled to Nianki, and she declined to eat it.
“What happened to you?” Pa’alu asked. “Who attacked you?”
“Animals. A hunting pack. Never seen their like before.”
“Wolves?” mumbled Pakito through a mouthful of raisins.
“No.” With painful economy, she described the beasts who had destroyed her family. “I alone survived,” she said. She bit off a piece of jerky and chewed in silence.
“What will you do now?” said Pa’alu.
She shrugged. “I’ll live the best I can.”
“You can come with us,” Pakito said, looking to his brother for confirmation.
Pa’alu’s expression was unreadable. “You are welcome,” was all he said.
Nianki stood up. “I will go where the wind takes me.” She lifted her head, watching the clouds stream to the southern horizon. “Alone.”
Pakito was crestfallen, but Pa’alu nodded solemnly. He placed a few pieces of salmon in a bark box, tossed in some raisins, and handed it to Nianki, saying, “May the spirits of the sky and plain favor you.”
“They haven’t yet,” she replied.
The brothers departed westward, laden with their food and implements. Nianki couldn’t understand why two hunters would burden themselves in such a way. Why carry so much food when it was all around, waiting to be picked or caught? Still, she couldn’t fault the brothers’ generosity. On the strength of their food and water she felt reborn.
That evening she reached a broad river and found it teeming with birds — ducks, geese, cranes, herons. Raiding a few nests, she added four eggs to her provisions. Afterward, she bathed her wounds by swimming out to midstream and floating on her back for a while, letting the current carry her downstream. Curious minnows followed her, nibbling at her fingers and toes. It was an odd, teasing sensation that she half enjoyed, half ignored until it called up memories of the stormbird gobbling down whole elk. Everything in the world fed on something else. The mouse ate the grub, the fox ate the mouse, the vulture ate the fox — humans ate nearly everything and were eaten by still larger predators. Even the mighty elk were just morsels for the stormbird.
And who ate him? What did the stormbird, he who breathed lightning and flew on the crest of a tempest — what did he fear?
Her eyes closed. She lay, bobbing gently, until an errant wave sent water into her nose and she jerked upright, coughing and spitting. The minnows vanished into the depths.
The broad red orb of the sun was setting, so she swam to the south shore. The other side of the river was a cacophony of birds quacking and trumpeting as they came to roost for the night.
Nianki climbed a sandy hill overlooking the river and bedded down for the night, her back against a sturdy vallenwood tree. It was just a sapling by vallenwood standards, yet still bigger around than she could reach. She laid Pakito’s broken spear against her chest and slept deeply. Only once did a noise in the night alarm her — a panther prowling nearby let out a scream. The high, almost-human sound brought Nianki rolling to her feet, spear ready. When next it screamed, the panther was farther away, so Nianki resumed her place under the tree and slept undisturbed.
Chapter 4
For Amero, the trip to Duranix’s home passed in a dream, one he would recall often in later years. He was flying through the air. There was wind in his face, pulling at his hair. Stars raced by through gaps in the clouds. Amero had dreamed of flying before, but never so vividly. Once he struggled to awaken so that he could see where he truly was, but sleep, like a blanket of fog, enclosed him again.
His first impression after the odd dream was of noise — a low rumble, loud, yet not painful to the ear. The cool air was heavy with the smell of water. Amero opened his eyes.
High above him was an arching expanse of rock streaked with red and black minerals. A pulsing, bluish light filled the air. Amero sat up. He was in a shallow, scooped-out hollow in the floor. The depression was full of fir boughs and freshly torn-up grass; some clumps still had dirt clinging to them.
Around him was an enormous cave, a hundred paces along each of its three walls. The curved ceiling must have been sixty paces high. Light entered the cavern from three points. The first was a hole in the ceiling below the apex and facing outward, not straight up. The second was a large circular opening in the outside wall on the extreme left; it was well off the floor, and anyone entering there would have to do considerable climbing just to get down to the cave floor. The last was a small opening on the far right, at floor level, just the right size for a grown man to use. A wall of plunging water screened the view. A waterfall. That accounted for the persistent rumble.
Amero climbed out of the bough-filled pit. His right leg where the yevi had clawed him was still painful, but much less so than before. He forgot his injury as he examined his new surroundings.
The cave walls were unnaturally smooth, without stalactites or stalagmites. The floor in the wide part of the cave — the waterfall side — sloped gradually upward. In the rear, a level platform at least eighty paces wide filled the comer. The only other noteworthy feature was the smell. The cave smelled vaguely sour, like overripe fruit.
Not seeing anyone, Amero limped to the lower, smaller opening and looked out. A column of foaming water thundered down the mountainside, concealing both entrances to the cave. To his astonishment, he found the cave was hundreds of paces above the ground, set in the side of a vertical cliff face. His head swam, and he lurched back from the precipice.
How did I get up here? he wondered. Where was Duranix? There had to be a trail, a passage ascending from the river basin below.
Recovering his nerve, Amero mounted the slope to the rock platform. The face of the platform was curiously notched with long, parallel scratches that served as handy footholds. After scrambling up, he found the upper floor was also hollowed out in the center. And there he found Duranix, lying in this upper-level bowl.
His strange benefactor was curled up in a strange position, his knees bent backward in a way Amero had never seen a human’s legs bend before. Even odder, the floor was littered with peculiar objects, like large tree leaves, only these were stiff and shiny. Amero picked one up. A little bigger than the palm of his hand, it was oval- shaped, heavy, hard, and the red-gold color of autumn leaves. What could it be?
“Rubbish.”
Amero flinched and dropped the object. It rang loudly when it hit the floor. Duranix had rolled over and was watching him, his head propped up on one hand.
“Wh-what?”
“I answered your question,” Duranix said, eyes narrowing. “Those things — they’re rubbish.”
