Beh grips my shoulders, and she yells out more sounds. The man’s eyes narrow and his head bobs up and down once. He takes a few steps toward us, and I crouch lower, readying my spear. His arms reach forward, and he lays Lah down just a short distance from my feet before backing away entirely.
I look to Beh, then to the man, and then down to Lah. The bundled child squirms on the ground and cries out again. Her sounds compel me forward, but I’m scared for Beh and Lee. As Lah’s cries increase, I hold my spear behind me to block Beh and watch the man closely as I take a step forward. Both the man and Beh stand motionless as I take another step. When I am close enough to bend down and touch Lah, the tightness in my stomach and chest disappears.
It is her.
My daughter.
My Lah.
My fingers grace over her tiny cheek, no longer burning with fever. She looks exactly the same as she had, only her lips are a little fuller, no longer chapped and dry. When I pull back on the covering swaddling her, I can see her arms are chubby, and her skin is soft. I reach out and pull her from the ground, holding her tightly to my chest.
I close my eyes, and I can feel the burning behind them as her warm skin meets mine. With my cheek pressed to hers, our warm tears mingle, and I revel in the sound of her loud, angry, healthy cry. I can feel the beat of her heart against my skin, and I take a deep breath to inhale her scent—like her mother’s but slightly sweeter.
Another loud sound invades the moment.
“No!”
Beh’s no sound startles me, and I glance over my right shoulder to look at her. Her eyes are wide and full of fear, and her hands reach out toward me. I hear the thump of rapid footsteps to my left, but I cannot react in time without dropping Lah.
Suddenly, there is a sharp pain in my arm, and everything goes black.
I awake with my head pounding.
I’m surrounded by the familiar scents of the cave, the furs in which we sleep, and Beh’s body near mine. I reach for her warmth automatically and feel another smaller body curled between us. My ears pick up the rhythmic sounds of a suckling baby, but at the same time, I can hear the cries of another.
The sun still shines into the crack from the outside of the cave, and the fire burns brightly, but the light inside the cave is dim. Even so, my head throbs more, and my eyes ache as I open them.
Between us, wrapped in strange, soft cloth and suckling at her mother’s breast is Lah. For a moment, I think I have awakened from a bizarre dream—that maybe she was never taken from us and was never even sick—but the sounds of another remind me that is not so.
Lee pounds his little fists on the fur wrapped around his mother’s lower half as he tries to crawl between us to determine just what this other child is doing with his milk. Through my hazy vision, I watch him try to push his sister away. Beh picks him up with her free hand, smiles, and makes soft noises. She places him against her other breast, which he immediately grabs and shoves into his mouth. His green eyes narrow and glare at the little girl who feeds beside him, and he sucks harder.
I try to move my head a little closer to them, but I become dizzy immediately. I close my eyes again, but it only makes it worse, and I groan. I feel Beh’s hand against my jaw and hear her soft sounds.
“Shh, Ehd.”
I look at her face, and I can see her eyes are red and swollen, but she is smiling. I drop my eyes back to Lah. Her eyes have closed and her mouth has stilled. Lee is still scowling at her but seems content enough with milk in his mouth. Looking back and forth between them, it is obvious Lee is a whole season older than Lah in size. Lah was born late in the summer and became sick at the beginning of the previous winter. She looks to be the same size as she was then, just fatter and healthier than when I last saw her. Lee had been born in the winter, and it is now midsummer again.
Lah should be much larger than Lee, but she isn’t.
My head swims again.
I hear more sounds coming from the other side of the cave. The sounds are deeper in tenor than the ones Beh and Lee make, but I remember hearing the same tone before. The sound was coming from the man.
I raise my head, ignoring the throbbing in my temples and the nausea in my stomach. Across from the fire on the ledge where Beh had lined up her various collection baskets, sits the man—Beh’s father. He wears the same strange, white wrap that hangs down to his thighs, and his legs are covered in leggings like the ones Beh used to wear. They are a lighter color blue, though, and don’t seem to be as form-fitting or thick. The material looks thin as it flows with his legs when he moves around.
He sits with his back curved and his elbows down at his knees. There is something on the ground near his feet, but I can’t tell what it is. My eyes are still having trouble focusing through the pounding ache in my head.
His mouth opens, and sounds similar to the ones Beh makes flow rapidly from between his lips. Beh’s noises follow, and Lee’s eyes open wide as he looks between them both, distracted enough to release Beh’s nipple for a moment.