She’d picked this place—had started aiming for it—a hand of time ago, because a series of shallow rock shelters scalloped the face of the first river terrace here. Cloud Girl cried in hunger on Kestrel’s back, but Kestrel could do nothing about that now. The brutal cold had killed all sensation in her hands and legs. She could not find the thong of the rabbit-fur sack, because she could not feel it.
She forced herself to stand up, and her legs went out from under her as though they were dead meat. Cloud Girl shrieked, and Kestrel hung her head and sobbed wearily.
“Please, Spirits, help me!”
Even if her hands had frozen, she could still run. But her legs… her legs! Panic held her riveted for a brief period before she marshaled enough courage to get on her hands and knees again. She had to reach the closest rock shelter. If she didn’t, she would die here. The cold would leach into her soul, and her heart would stop.
She crawled, shivering so violently that her teeth clattered like gourd rattles. Body length by body length, she made her
way across the rounded cobbles, strips of sand and thick mats of brown grass.
The rock shelter wasn’t much, only a place where the river had undercut the sandstone ledge. Eight hands high and ten hands across, it sank about fifteen hands into the terrace. An old pack rat nest filled a wide crack on the southern wall. Firewood… if I can ever make my hands work.
Kestrel slid as far back as she could to avoid the shrieking wind that raced down the river channel. Just being out of the gale relieved her. She braced her shivering shoulders against the rough rear wall and let her head fall forward. Outside, a transparent, ash-colored sheen spread across the sky. The most brilliant of the Star People already sparkled on the eastern horizon. “Please… Above-Old-Man, let the night be warm.”
Kestrel had to lift her knees with her hands and position them so that she could hug them to her chest. Tremors shook her so violently that she cried like a little girl. When had she been so helpless and lost?
Long ago, when she’d been nine summers old, she’d seen a woman named Yuccabud fall through the ice of a frozen pond. Before anyone could reach Yuccabud, she’d gone under the water and stayed there for a perilously long time. After her husband had finally pulled her out and started her breathing again, he’d thrown off his clothes—right there in the icy willows—and hugged his wife to his naked body to warm her. She’d been shivering like Kestrel was now. And Yuccabud had lived.
The thought encouraged Kestrel.
She had regained some sensation in her hands—they had begun to ache dully. She used her right arm like a stick, slipping it through the leather thong of Cloud Girl’s sack and tugging it around to her chest. By hunching into a ball, she found that she could pull the sack over her head. Her pack, with its supply of tools, fire sticks and dried tapir meat, made a support for Cloud Girl’s head, propping her up so that she could see the river beyond the shelter. Her
daughter stopped crying to watch the birds swooping and diving over the roiling brown water. Hoarse caws echoed through the evening.
Kestrel rubbed her cheek over the rabbit-fur sack, feeling for dampness. The bottom of the sack was saturated, but most of the upper part felt dry. “Are you all right, baby?”
She put her cheek on top of Cloud Girl’s fuzzy head, moved it down the side of her daughter’s face. The baby’s smooth skin radiated warmth. Blessed warmth. Cloud Girl had started chewing on her fist. Her eyes were bright, despite the tears.
Fearing that her own condition might worsen as night deepened, Kestrel slipped her pack off of the rabbit-fur sack. She used her teeth to work the laces loose, then sifted through the contents for her fire sticks. When she found them soaked, her tears fled as though they’d never been. Cold terror filled her. If she couldn’t start a fire Kestrel scrambled around Cloud Girl and crawled to the huge pack rat nest. Pack rats scoured the countryside for any kinds of sticks they could carry to their nests, even paddles of spiny cactus. Then they packed them into crevices. This nest filled a floor-to-ceiling crack in the rock, which spanned the width of Kestrel’s shoulders. She couldn’t tell how deep the nest extended into the rock, but she guessed that it went as far as ten hands. Her numb fingers fumbled aside lesser woods until she found a good hard stick of choke cherry. Above-Old Man must have heard her prayers, for a beaver had chewed it down to a point. Next, she selected an old, punky slab of pine.
Using her hands like tongs, she picked up her pieces of wood and hurried back to her pack. Shivers racked her again, and she blinked, already having forgotten what she was supposed to be doing. Body-numbing cold did that—it made a person even forget who she was.