It isn’t long, though, before she returns. I hear her speaking my father’s name, in a loud whisper designed to wake him but not the rest of us. “Her mother,” she says. “She wants to speak with you. You better wake up because I believe it’s serious.”
My first thought is that she is talking about Seeri—that Seeri is the “she” my mother refers to. But she said her mother wants to speak, and Seeri has only a brother. Whose mother wants to speak to my father?
After an extended exchange, my father finally asks in a voice loud enough to be heard by the entire hut, “Well, what’s so important that she has to wake me before dawn?”
“She wants to discuss a betrothal. Not Pek this time, of course, poor girl. She’s had her taste of that disappointment, and she sees what’s going on with Seeri. It’s Kol she wishes to discuss with you.”
At these words I sit bolt upright. They can mean only Shava. Shava’s mother wishes to discuss the possibility of a betrothal to me.
I’m on my feet and pulling on my pants before my father has a chance to frame an answer. “Excuse me,” I say from the side of the hut I share with Pek, Kesh, and Roon—all of whom appear to be sleeping soundly. “May I please add my thoughts to this discussion?”
My mother pulls back the hide between the two rooms and stares at me with a look of disapproval. “You’re awake early,” she says. “Awake and listening at doors, I see.”
This reprimand reminds me of the night I offered you the honey and you accused me of the same thing, even said the same words. “I wasn’t listening. It couldn’t be helped. It’s possible Shava’s mother heard you herself. Where did she and Shava sleep last night?”
“The kitchen. There was nowhere else, since I had ten elders from the Olen to find room for. But it’s comfortable enough, and warm. I assure you they slept fine—”
“They must have,” says my father. “They managed to wake early so they could greet you with this proposition.” My father smiles and leans back on his bed with his arms crossed behind his head. I can see the thoughts darting around in his eyes. He’s considering the idea.
“Don’t bother,” I say, and now it’s my turn to be heard all the way in the kitchen. “Don’t bother considering it, because I will not do it.”
My mother turns to me, and her stare carries the weight of a mountain of disapproval. It presses me back into the doorway, but I will not allow her to intimidate me, not on this issue. Not on something as life changing as becoming betrothed.
“Who are you,” my mother starts slowly, “to be choosy about a wife? Do you have a line of possible choices leading to this door? If you do, now might be the time to make your father and me aware of them. Because you are the oldest child of the clan’s High Elder, Kol. Your brother may marry Seeri and help us form an alliance with the Olen, but it is you who is to inherit your father’s position and your child who is to inherit yours. If you never marry—if you never have a child—”
“Then Pek’s child will be the next High Elder—”
“That might happen. Or the clan might start to question the will of the Divine. The clan might decide that the Divine has ceased to favor us and has chosen another family to lead. Or worse. The clan could splinter apart. That cannot happen, Kol. This clan may move, but it must not end.”
“So if my child is to ensure the future of this clan, doesn’t it matter who my child’s mother might be? You would have me marry Shava? A girl who is so fickle she shifts from devotion to Pek to devotion to me in one afternoon?”
“What makes you think this is about Shava’s devotion? Her mother may simply be trying to find her the best match—”
“If her mother is acting on her own, then I pity Shava. But it doesn’t matter. Mother, I know Shava is a girl of good intentions. I believe her mother means well, too. But it doesn’t matter. Shava is not at all the type of girl that I would hope to marry—”
“When did you and Pek become so incredibly arrogant?” The voice comes from behind me—it’s the voice of my brother Kesh, standing beside his bed, pulling a parka over his shoulders. I turn to see him shove the hair from his face and I almost don’t recognize him. His eyes, narrow with reproach, preside over features that seem to have aged overnight. His boyish roundness has been replaced by the angular lines of a tightly clenched jaw. “You are both so blinded by arrogance that you have become incapable of judging the value of a girl.” These last words he says as he slides his feet into his boots. Without another word, he heads out the door into the brightening day.