Despair was on his face, his breath coming in short sobs, but she lifted the tent flap and went out into the darkness.
The cold of a subarctic winter night snapped against her flushed cheeks. It made her realize she was sweating, that her anger had put heat back in her body. She trembled still with the force of her fury. Why did he always do these things? Why?
Then, as her anger died in the cold blackness of the night, shame came to warm her cheeks. She could hear the steady rasp of the fire drill from the tent behind her, and Kerlew’s voice as he sobbed and ranted to himself. The world loomed large and empty around her, but there was nowhere she could flee to escape that small mumbling voice and the angry confusion in his eyes. Tillu’s angers seldom left Kerlew repentant for his misdeeds. Instead, he would offer her his childish sullenness, and the wincing fear of her touch that cut her soul.
She had pitched her tent in a clearing in a small vale. At the edges of the clearing the forested hillsides rose. Pines were darker in the darkness, their swoops of branches laden with snow. Sometimes she felt a deep peace welling from the trees and snowy hills, felt cupped and sheltered in the palm of the forest. She heard the soft whicker of an owl’s wings as it drove into the clearing, the thin cry of the seized prey as it rose. The sound scraped her raw nerves and she shuddered. Tonight she sensed only the deep and eternal struggling of life to master its harsh environment. The most blind of newborn mice was better fit to survive than her son. Why could not she admit the futility of trying to make him learn? Kinder by far to let him go on as he was, until he met his eventual end. What good did she do him by forcing him to learn, by throwing him into the struggle and insisting he try?
He was as he was. Beating him would not cure it, as well she should know by now. Neither her tears nor her pleading had any effect. He was as he was. The most she could do for him was to let him take what small pleasures he could find in this world, and to bury him when he had finally blundered his way out of it. But what she was doing to him tonight was no better than beating him. Hadn’t he had enough punishment in his life? Had not other children and sneering adults given him enough misery to last him until the end of his days? Her heart swung in its orbit, and she felt her anger rise against those who mocked his differences, who pointed out his lacks. Who were they to judge? Who were they to say that what made him different also made him wrong and weak? Her anger burned hot at the women who shook their heads over him and turned away, at the men who looked at him with distaste and cuffed him aside. And she herself? She was no better.
She thought of his red stone and shame stung her. Futilely she turned to where it had landed. Whatever dent it had made in the snow cover when it landed was hidden from her in the dark. She stood indecisively by the area for a long time. She longed to get down on her knees and paw through the snow for the rock, as if this useless endeavor would somehow prove her love for Kerlew.
Tears stung the corners of her eyes and she brushed at them with the back of her mittened hand. Tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow, when the day was lightest, she’d come out here and find it for him. And now she had better go back inside the tent and make the fire and cook some food.
The surging storm of anger and frustration had passed, leaving her feeling only empty and tired. Vaguely she wished she had hugged him more when he was a baby, cuddled him more. But the thought brought back the memory of his small body rigid in her arms, his infant face red as he fought her embrace. She remembered the painful thudding as he banged his over-large head against her bony adolescent chest, over and over again, battering her with it as she carried him so that by nightfall both his face and her breasts were black-and-blue. When she had put him down, he screamed. When she picked him up, he went rigid. But perhaps she could have tried harder. Maybe if her mother or aunt had been there, someone could have told her what she was doing wrong.
But they hadn’t. She wondered if they had even survived. The raiders had carried her far from her home on the river. When her swelling pregnancy made her an unattractive bed partner, they had abandoned her, with less thought than they had given to abandoning a lamed horse. She had never even known which of them had fathered the boy. When she thought of them now, she could not even remember them as individuals. Their coarse black hair and sallow faces blended into one nightmare of a smelly, heavy male pinning her down and hurting her. Trapping her against the rocky earth, all hot breath in her face and heavy weight on her torso and laughter all around as she struggled. She jerked her mind from the memory, shuddering.
She was shaking, she realized suddenly, shaking with the deep tremors that were the body’s last effort against cold. She had stood still too long, and the night had sucked her warmth away. She had to have fire and warmth now, if she were to live. And she had to live, if Kerlew were to live. She turned to the tent wearily. She would take the bow and make the fire. She would take up once more the weight of their survival. Then from the tent she heard his shrill voice cut the night and the cold, his triumph ringing brighter than the stars.
‘Fire! Tillu, Tillu, it burns, it burns for me!’
Cold air moving against her face. As cold as it would be outside, not inside, the tent. Tillu released her grip on sleep and stirred slightly beneath the hides that covered her. Had the fire gone out? She dragged her eyes open and peered out from her huddle of skins. No, the fire was still aglow, though it would need more fuel soon. The draft came from the open tent flap, where Kerlew stood in his long nightshirt, staring out into the darkness. ‘The wood is right by your left foot,’ Tillu pointed out. ‘You don’t need to chill the whole tent to find it.’
‘Not looking for wood,’ Kerlew mumbled. Cold air flowed in past him, misting slightly as it met the warmer air inside the tent. Kerlew stood motionless in the swirling fog as it eddied past him.
‘Well, put some on the fire anyway,’ Tillu instructed him grouchily. She pulled the hides up to her chin again. Kerlew still stood in the doorway, staring out into the snowbound darkness.
‘I heard Carp.’ He swayed slightly, as if he were still asleep. ‘Calling me.’
A chill ran over Tillu and the hair on the back of her neck hackled. Stupid! she chided herself for her reaction. But there was something in the boy’s slow words and unseeing gaze that spooked her. In the dim light from the dying fire, he turned his face to her. His eyes were black holes beneath the straggle of his hair, no trace of sleep in them. His intentness reminded her of a great wolf sitting, ears pricked, as his prey moved into his range. Not for the first time, she said, ‘Carp isn’t coming, Kerlew. You dreamed it.’
‘I know.’ The boy spoke in his hesitant way, as if each word had to be found before it could be uttered. He strung his words on the threads of his thoughts, visibly manufacturing his sentences. ‘But it was one of the real dreams, like he taught me. I saw Carp, walking through the snow of the forest.’ Wonder transformed the boy’s face. ‘He looked up at me and smiled so I could see where his teeth are gone. He was leaning on the staff we carved together. And I knew he was coming for me. He said, “You are mine, Kerlew. And I will come for you, because the spirits will it. Be patient, but do not forget.” Then it started snowing and it fell between us until everything was white and I couldn’t see him anymore. But I thought I heard him calling me, so I woke up and got out of bed to see.’
‘Kerlew.’ Tillu kept rigid control of her voice. ‘Carp is not coming for you. He doesn’t know where we are. And we have come a very long way since we left Benu’s people. They don’t come this far west. We are out of their territory now. I don’t think we will ever see Carp again.’
Kerlew stood silent, his brow crinkled, nodding slowly. Then he let the tent flap fall, shutting out the night and the greater darkness it sheltered. The tent became a small, safe place again, and Tillu could look at Kerlew and see her child. His bare legs stuck out from under his soft leather nightshirt. His thick black hair was tousled, some dangling before his strange eyes. For an instant she saw all his vulnerability and loneliness, and her conscience smote her. In all her travels, Carp was the only adult male