But I do hide. I hide inside myself, even when I’m in plain sight.
The sun slides west against a pale blue sky, but it seems to stay fixed in one place—the evening goes on and on. Finally, the sun hovers above the treetops on the western hills, and the crowd begins to thin. Urar, the Manu healer, comes and sits by me. He tells me he has been to the shore. He has chanted over the body of my brother, which still lies along the bottom of the canoe. He asked the Divine to watch over Chev until he can be buried when we finally reach our home.
“The Spirits in the sea are caring for him now,” Urar says. “He is cradled by the sea. The Spirits will keep the body cold and well until he can be buried.”
And then Urar reminds me of a thought I have been hiding from. “I could rub the body with red ocher,” he offers, “unless you think the Olen healer would like to prepare the body himself.”
The Olen healer—Yano—the man my brother loves. Loved. The man he loved until he died.
All at once I feel as if the ground has slid out from beneath me. As if I’ve been standing on the edge of a cliff of shifting rocks and now they are tumbling to the sea. A wave crashes up, pulling me under. I feel it, feel myself drowning, even as I sit here and calmly stare into Urar’s face. “I think it would be best if you did it,” I say. But my voice is wet and choked, like I am speaking underwater. “I would appreciate it so much if I could take him home already prepared.”
“Of course,” Urar says. His eyes reach out to Kol, calling to him from across the meeting space. I can see what his expression says. She needs you. He can’t know that I have hurt Kol too much for him to want to come and comfort me.
To my surprise, Kol does come to my side. “My mother wishes to speak to me, but it shouldn’t take long,” he says. “After, would you walk with me?”
A light behind Kol’s eyes flickers for just a moment, like a flame flaring up in a breeze, then just as quickly dies down again. But the brief moment it was there is enough. “Yes,” I say. “I would.”
While Kol is gone, a woman of his clan approaches me. She is maybe a little older than Mala, her hair a mix of black and gray. She stretches out her cupped hand, and in it she holds an obsidian spear point. I can tell instantly that it was carved by Chev.
“This was given to me by your brother,” the woman says. “I had admired the workmanship of the one on his own spear, and the blade on his knife. He thanked me, and we talked about other things. But the next time he came to our camp, he brought this one as a gift for me.”
This story surprises me. It doesn’t sound like something Chev would do. But then, as I turn the spear point in my hand it catches the light, and for an instant, I see my brother’s eye reflected back at me. I see him in every careful cut made to the stone, and I realize I am being too hard on my brother’s memory.
He enjoyed attention, yes. He liked to be admired for his craftsmanship, and he liked his work to be acknowledged. But he also was frequently generous. He insisted we bring a feast for Kol to this camp when he realized he’d been rude. And he’d painstakingly worked this spear point for a member of another clan, simply because she’d admired one of his own.
My throat goes dry, even as tears fill my eyes. I lay the point in the palm of the woman’s hand, and she folds her fingers over it carefully. She pats my hand and walks away, straight into her hut, presumably to tuck away this gift my brother made for her.
With no one else hovering to speak to me, I decide to take advantage of the chance to duck out of sight for just a moment. But as I pass the door to Kol’s hut, I hear his voice and then his mother’s, and my steps slow.
If I hadn’t meant to listen, that changes when I hear my own name.
“This isn’t about Mya.”
“You’re right,” his mother answers. “It’s about you. And your father. And every other Manu—every Manu who’s ever lived, and every one who’s yet to live. It matters that much.”
I stand still a moment longer, but when Kol replies he’s too quiet to hear, and Pek and Seeri are coming close. I can hear their voices. They are heading to the door of Kol’s family’s hut, and I try to appear to be going there, too.
“Are you all right?” Pek asks. I remember the tears in my eyes.
“Yes. Just taking a moment—”
“There you are.” It’s Kol’s voice. He’s just pushed back the hide that hangs in the doorway of his hut. His mother steps out behind him. Her face glows in the sun that still hangs in the west. Still, her expression stays cool. “I have a few items of clothing I think will fit Noni,” she says. “She can change out of those torn pants.”
“She’ll like that,” I say. We all turn to see Noni and Lees in the center of the meeting place. Black Dog is putting on a show, retrieving sticks. Mala walks toward her as Pek and Seeri duck inside the hut.
Kol and I are alone.
“Are you still willing to walk with me?” He smiles, and my blood crackles and sparks. My heart jumps as if it’s startled by his voice.
Without a word about where we would go, we both head up the trail to the meadow.
As we walk, I’m reminded of the tunic I still wear—my betrothal tunic. A strip of trim has loosened at the hem, but the pattern on the front is unchanged. “Do you recognize it?” I ask, just as we reach the field of grasses and flowers that inspired the tunic’s design. “Did you know—”
“I knew. Of course I knew. I recognized the colors, and the shapes of the blades moving in the wind.” His finger alights on the tunic just below my chest and traces a seam where a section of caribou is stitched to a piece of otter. His hand stops just below my navel and his fingers fan across my stomach. “It’s beautiful.”
We both stand motionless, as all around us the sun sets the whole meadow ablaze in light. The north wind gusts loud in our ears, every stalk of grass flattens under its weight, and yet the stillness of Kol’s eyes staring unflinchingly into mine is all I know. A tumultuous silence. An unruly stillness.
Then Kol drops his hand to his side, I slide my eyes to the sky, and everything comes back into motion.
“My mother and I talked,” Kol says, leading me farther up the path, walking into the wind. I think of his father. The last time either of us passed through here was the day he died. “I told her you and I had discussed a merger of our clans.”
I stop. The words I heard through the walls of the hut come back to me. It’s about every Manu who’s ever lived. Every one who’s yet to live. “She’s against it,” I say.