LYNX
By the time we are halfway to the caverns, sunlight glitters through the wind-blown tundra flowers, creating a wavering yellow and blue vista all the way to the line of smoking volcanoes south of us.
It’s a cold morning. Quiller walks with her hood pulled up and red hair streaming down the front of her cape. I smell the perfume of her body, mingled scents of campfires and womanhood, mixed with the faint pungency of zyme. Now and then her cape opens with the sweep of her arm and the blue dolphins painted on her knee-length shirt appear. She clutches her spear in her right hand while her gaze scans for danger.
For a few moments, I watch her in silence, my arms folded across my chest. Then I ask, “Are you well?”
“Well enough.” But she gives me a guarded look.
To say her eyes are green is like saying the zyme is green, so inadequate that the word verges on being meaningless. In the brilliant morning gleam they are deep jade and enormous in her freckled face.
“You don’t sound well, Quiller.”
She hesitates, before responding, “I’m worried about my son.”
“What do you mean? Is he fevered or injured? Perhaps I can bring some spirit plants—”
She shakes her head. “No, it’s nothing like that. He’s been hearing voices and having . . . spells.”
“Spells?”
“Periods where he stares at nothing. Sometimes he shouts at invisible people. Hoodwink says Jawbone is being visited by spirits.”
Veering wide around a glacially smoothed boulder in the trail, I let that sink in. Her eyebrows, slender lines of red gold, pull together slightly, telling me she’s holding some important bit of information back.
“That’s not unusual, Quiller. Children often hear voices just before they climb the quest wall searching for a spirit helper. I did. Didn’t you?”
The lines at the corners of her eyes deepen. “No.”
I give her a few moments before I say, “Why are you so worried about this?”
Quiller gestures her frustration with her spear. “I just have a feeling that Jawbone isn’t telling me everything about these voices. There’s more to this story, and I can’t get him to open his heart to me. One summer ago, he would have told me everything.”
I smile. “Boys on the verge of manhood start to pull away from their mothers, you know? It’s part of the process of asserting independence. After he climbs the quest wall, he’s not going to run into your arms like the boy you’ve known. In fact, I suspect he’ll never do that again, Quiller.”
Sadness fills her eyes. “This is different, Lynx. I have the gut feeling that these voices are hurting him, and if I just understood what’s happening I could help him.”
I place a hand on her shoulder. “Does Hoodwink think he needs help?”
She turns away from me, and I see her jaw clamp. In a clipped voice, she answers, “He thinks the voices will go away once Jawbone finds a spirit helper.”
I reach out to gently tug a lock of her red hair to get her to look at me. “First of all, he’s probably right. Second, if the voices do not go away, it’s because Jawbone is destined to become a very great holy man. Let him.”
I watch something change in her eyes. As if relieved, she lets out a breath. “Even if my husband disagrees?”
A little taken aback, I drop my hand to my side. “RabbitEar doesn’t want Jawbone to be a sacred elder?”
“He thinks we need warriors more than we do holy people.” She frowns and glances down at the spear in her fist, then out to the towering peaks of the Ice Giants that cut a jagged blue line across the eastern horizon.
Carefully, I say, “Jawbone needs to choose his own path, I think.”
Her gaze returns to me. “I’m so glad you came today. I needed to talk with a friend.”
A concerned smile turns my lips. If she doesn’t think her husband or relatives are friends, she must be feeling very alone.
“I’m here, Quiller, and I’m always on your side. Never forget that.”
“Even if I make the wrong decision for my son.”
I slip an arm around her waist and give her a hug. “The instant he reaches for the handholds in the quest wall, it will no longer be your decision. It will be Jawbone’s. Besides, you’ve been my best friend since we were children. In all that time, I’ve never seen you make a decision without first turning it over and over in your mind to see it from every possible side. You’ve done that, haven’t you?”
“Of course. A thousand times.”
“Then I believe you’ve made the best choice for your son.”
Clouds have blown in from the ocean, and erratic bands of shadow and fallow gold flicker over the wet trail at our feet. Releasing her, I step wide around a puddle, and continue on.
Quiller reaches out to catch my hand and squeeze it. “It’s not that easy, Lynx. RabbitEar has a say in what happens, as well. Jawbone is the only son he will ever have.”
When a gust of wind throws her hood back, she shivers and draws it up again. I wait for her to continue. When she doesn’t, I say, “I’ve wondered why you do not have children together yet. Is there—”
“I’ve been with child twice, Lynx.” The words are cold and grief-edged. “My body will not carry a baby. And I’m not the only one. Four babies have been born dead in the past two summers.”
“But Mink and Gray Dove—”
“Yes, they have a new son, but he’s failing. Gray Dove spends almost all of her time in their lodge caring for him. I think they both know what the future holds, though neither will admit it.”
Heartsick, I ask, “Why didn’t Mink tell me?”
“How could he? You’re never here.”
The words are accusations.
To the east, I glimpse the tan ears of a dire wolf. They appear and disappear as the animal trots the dips and swells of the tundra. I try to keep track of him while my soul aches for my brother. She’s right, I’m never there, but I have seen Mink since his son was born. Why has he never told me the boy is ill? Perhaps because each day I am less and less his brother, and more and more a strange hermit living in a cave with a bizarre creature he does not understand.
“I’m tired of speaking about me,” Quiller says with tight eyes. “Tell me about you. Are you well? How is Quancee?”
“She’s failing, too, Quiller.” All the light and color suddenly disappear from the world, leaving it cold and gray and windswept. “I’ve known it for three summers, but as the moment gets closer, I find my blood turning to water in my veins. I keep telling myself it isn’t happening.”
She opens her mouth as though to ask me a question, but then seems to think better of it, and simply links her arm through mine. We walk in step for a long time before she says, “I wish we were children again and I could protect you from the world. I long for those lazy days in the northern Steppe Lands.”
Under the spell of her voice, the tundra fades and the summers roll back, and we’re laughing, running together through tall grass, hunting snowshoe hares with our children’s spears. There is music in the air, drumbeats and flutes coming from a village that is no more, and my parents come walking back, smiling as though they’ve not been dead these many summers.
“I do, too, Quiller.”
When she looks at me, there is a sweet sadness in her eyes that goes straight to my heart. “I wish you’d come home. I miss you.”
“I can’t. Quancee needs me now more than she ever has.”
It’s a beautiful morning, cold but sunny, bright but not glaring, and the breeze off the ocean turns soft as silk.
After another ten paces, a stern expression comes over her. “All right. Tell me about the blue faces. I assume there’s a reason you wanted to bring only me here.”
“There is. Jorgensen ordered me to bring our entire village.”
She mulls that over. “You think he wants to use our village against you?”
“There’s more to his request, Quiller, and he’s smarter than I am. It’s the truth. I thought if I just brought you here, maybe together we could figure out what he’s after. If twenty other people were along—”
“I understand,” she replies with a nod. “Too many opinions. Very well, let’s pick up our pace. I want to see this place and get back before dark.”
She breaks into a run, pounding along the tundra trail ahead of me. I gratefully follow in her tracks as I have done for most of my life.