“I think so. Yes.” Mercifully, he knows what I want to say, despite the fact that fear clogs my thoughts so thoroughly I cannot speak. With Yano leading, we start down the short distance separating us from the ring of huts—Chev leaning on Yano, Nix leaning on me.
“Have Lo and her people withdrawn?” I ask, unable to lower my guard. I turn my head from side to side and search the underbrush as we move through the trees.
“They fled to the beach, at least,” Yano says. “They were injured—our fighters were pushing them back—when word traveled through shouted warnings that one of their boys had fallen from a cliff. You could see the panic spreading. Then Morsk called out that he would destroy their boats if they didn’t retreat. I guess the fear of being stranded drove them all back to the shore.”
We finally climb the last rise and your camp comes into view. The sight of it shocks me; the meeting place is so transformed. I remember your clan gathered beneath this canopy. The shade it gave seemed to represent the protection and prosperity you had found here in the south.
But unlike that first night I came here, when your meeting place was filled with the sound of conversation, your meeting place tonight is filled with moans and cries. Men and women are stretched out on the ground, bloody and broken. Some look up as we pass. Their pleading eyes terrify me. Others lie completely still. These scare me even more.
Am I to blame for this? I was friendly toward Lo, unable to see through her lies. Did I contribute to this pain?
I notice a woman washing wounds on a young girl’s lower arms and hands and I realize she is Yano’s sister, Ela. Yano leads your brother to her and she immediately makes a place for him directly beside the girl she is treating. When the young girl recognizes him, she calls out Chev’s name, announcing to the whole clan that the High Elder is here and alive. As the whole crowd cheers I recognize a familiar voice—the voice of your sister Seeri. I search the crowd and find her beside your sister Lees. They are both near the center of the space, binding wounds.
Seeri, Lees . . . But you are not here.
There’s no reason for you not to be in camp. The fighting is over. As long as you are safe and well, you should be here.
But you are not here.
My ears begin to ring. My vision shrinks down to a small spot directly in front of my feet. Everything else goes dim around me, but I don’t care about that. I need only this bit of focused vision to make it through the mayhem under the canopy. Following this bit of light, this spot of ground right in front of me, I find my way to the threshold of your hut.
The drape that forms the door hangs askew, exposing the shambles inside—the hides that form the walls, hides I’d noticed for their intricate patterns, have been torn loose, their surfaces splattered with tiny droplets of blood.
Outside the hut, I find the shaft of a broken spear at the foot of the path that you led me down earlier today—the path up into the pass to the cliffs and the cave. The sleet is still falling hard and the wind is increasing. Without deciding on a course of action or even letting myself think, I begin to climb the trail.
As the path narrows and heads into the trees, something draws my eyes to the ground—something small and white. Why would my attention be pulled to such a thing—something so simple and plain it resembles a pellet of hail? I bend down, picking up the tiny bead.
I find another white bead, and then another. As I gather them together in the palm of my hand, I can’t deny what I have found. . . .
Pieces of your ivory pendant lie scattered on the ground.
TWENTY-NINE
I follow the trail back up into the trees, ducking into the shadows, gauging my progress up the slope by the feel of the ground under my feet—first spongy, turning to gravel, turning to rock. Here, the underbrush thins, the soil too grudging and meager to support roots. Finally, I emerge above the trees.
In front of me rises a cliff, and above the cliff, a canyon of stone. Shivers—part fear, part cold—ripple across the skin of my arms and back as I make my way up the cliff and into the canyon. Climbing down this trail this morning was difficult. Climbing up now, even as the sleet finally slows, might be impossible.
Did you really come this way?
I scramble up and over boulders, each one more slick and treacherous than the one before, water racing around the sides. I come to the place where the trail splits, rocks rising to my right, up and out of the ravine, leaving the rapids below to my left. Ascending the rocky ledge, my feet test every surface, searching for the safest footholds.
Halfway to the summit, I reach a huge shelf of stone—a hanging boulder as flat and smooth as my mother’s cutting stone. Ice coats the surface. My eyes trace its edges, seeking the safest route. Water runs off the canyon wall, draining into crevices in the trail—small gaps between boulders and knobs of rock—before spilling over the edge and into the ravine far below. My eyes follow the course of the rushing water as it passes beneath this slick shelf of rock.