People of the Nightland(42)
Tears glimmered in her daughter’s eyes, and her mouth trembled. “Mother, I don’t—”
“Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Ashes put both hands over her mouth and started to cry, the soft sobs like a mewing lion cub. “Mother?” she asked in a choking voice. “Where’s Father? Is he dead?”
Skimmer couldn’t answer. Somewhere in the past few days her own unbearable anguish had faded. How did one find the energy to mourn after what they’d just survived? She’d forgotten whatever tale she’d told Ashes when she found her among the Nightland captives. But even if she’d remembered, there’d been no time to discuss Hookmaker’s death.
“I think he … he may be.”
Tears filled Ashes’ eyes. In a choking voice, she said, “Are you sure? You said he got away.”
Skimmer gathered her daughter in her arms and held her tightly. “Let’s go hide. The spruce boughs hang low to the ground. Then we’ll try to make our way through the moraines to Headswift Village. Lookingbill may turn us down again, but maybe we can get food there … clean clothes. Lookingbill will have news, and then we can decide where to go.”
And what if Lookingbill won’t even give us that?
Sixteen
Ti-Bish pulled his hood down over his face to block the wind, and gazed out at the open treeless landscape that bordered the ice. Most of it consisted of jumbled piles of rock and gravel, and travel through the rubble left by the retreating Ice Giants was hazardous unless a person stuck to the established trails that wound through the boulder fields. The Ice Giants had been melting since the beginning of the world. In their wake, they left boulders, gravel, and filthy islands of ice behind.
Beyond the rock belt, the tundra stretched southward until it connected with spruce forests, then to a lush world of pines, oaks, hickory, and walnut trees that lay another ten days’ travel beyond that.
As he walked, he examined the ugly shore of the Thunder Sea as it stretched off to the east. A low fog hung perpetually over the lake, cold air draining off the glaciers reacting to the warmer waters. He could see patches of cracked ice, the summer melt beginning. Locked among them were bergs that had broken off. Even as he watched, one tilted and flipped over, breaking the thin lake ice. He could see waves buckling the rotten ice around it.
Equinox was but days past. Summer was coming.
He tipped his face up and sighed at the feel of Father Sun’s light. He had not been out of the caves in a moon. Though it hurt his eyes, the bright gleam felt wonderful.
Early this morning, he’d taken a lamp and walked down to the deep ice tunnels. He knew the ones that led to the surface. He’d sneaked out of the caves without anyone noticing.
A cold northerly wind blew, flapping the hem of the grimy cape he wore. Nashat always insisted that he be dressed regally when he left the caves, but Ti-Bish hated painted shirts and jewelry.
On the shore ahead, several women had gathered to wash clothing. They dipped the hides into a meltwater lake, then pounded them with rocks to loosen the soil, and dipped them again. Upon finishing they would carry the clothing home and place it on racks near their small fires to dry.
For as far as he could see, hide lodges curved around the lakeshore. Bull boats—made from moose hide—rocked on the water. He could hear the fishermen calling to each other.
The Nightland People moved back and forth across the tundra six or seven times a summer. Each time they would bring fish, meat, birds, and berries to place in the caves to freeze for winter. In early fall, the villages began packing up to move here for the winter. Through the winter they ate from the foodstocks until spring brought the migratory fowl back. Hardy souls would walk out onto the winter-frozen Thunder Sea, and chop holes to fish through.
Then as the plants greened, they moved southward again, into the spruce forests that bordered the Sunpath nation. That was the problem. The Sunpath nation held the vast nut forests of walnuts, oaks, and hickory trees. The Nightland People’s numbers were growing. They needed those forests. It had begun to create problems many summers ago.
A shout rode the wind.
Ti-Bish turned to gaze at the ice maw that led into the Nightland Caves. For generations his people had retreated to those shelters. Living in a cave in the ice was preferable to being out here, at the mercy of the deep cold and terrible winter winds.
The Thunder Sea, however, was a dangerous place in warm weather. The tides that rose and fell were tricky enough, but even more nerve-racking, occasional chunks of ice split off, splashing down and sending fierce waves that washed away everything in their path. For the most part, that happened later in the summer, after the warm winds blew hot from the south.