“Lah,” she says softly, and points toward the man.
I look back to him and focus on what is in his arms. I see a bundle, wrapped in strange material tucked into one arm while the other hand grips a big, black, square…thing. I don’t care about the thing, though. My attention is captured by the bundle that suddenly squirms and then cries out.
I recognize the cry.
It has haunted me since the day he took Lah.
The man takes another step closer, and I can see a tiny face encircled by the white cloth in his arm. The whole bundle moves, and the little mouth opens up again in a long cry. It’s not the weakened cry I remember from the last days she was with us, but the strong, healthy cry that filled my ears on many nights when Lah would wake hungry or cold.
The man is holding my daughter.
“Lah.” Her name-sound drops out of my mouth and falls into the air. My stomach feels like it does if I eat something that has been sitting in the back of the cave too long, and I can feel it rolling around inside of me, threatening to expel breakfast. Beh is pushing against my shoulder with warm, damp hands, trying to get around me. I don’t know what to think.
It has been more than an entire set of seasons since the stranger took Lah away, but she looks exactly the same. She’s the same size, and she makes the same cry. I know it’s her—I can feel it in my heart. I don’t think Lah is still sick either. She had been so weak when he took her, and now her cry is much stronger. I look at the man holding my daughter, and I narrow my eyes at him.
He took her. She was sick, and he took her away from us.
A low growl comes from my chest as I grip the spear a little tighter. If I step away from the cave, Beh will get out from behind me, and he might take her, like he did Lah. He could take Lee, too. My stomach roils again. I can’t move away without putting the rest of my family in danger, but the man isn’t close enough to use the spear on him. I glance around at the ground near the cave, looking for rocks to hurl at him instead.
I feel Beh’s breath on the side of my neck, and she grips the top of my arm tightly as her chest presses against my back. The man in front of me makes sounds, and Beh makes sounds at him in return. His eyes stay on mine, and I do not look away from him. His sounds get louder as do my growls.
Beh grips my shoulders, and she yells out more sounds. The man’s eyes narrow and his head bobs up and down once. He takes a few steps toward us, and I crouch lower, readying my spear. His arms reach forward, and he lays Lah down just a short distance from my feet before backing away entirely.
I look to Beh, then to the man, and then down to Lah. The bundled child squirms on the ground and cries out again. Her sounds compel me forward, but I’m scared for Beh and Lee. As Lah’s cries increase, I hold my spear behind me to block Beh and watch the man closely as I take a step forward. Both the man and Beh stand motionless as I take another step. When I am close enough to bend down and touch Lah, the tightness in my stomach and chest disappears.
It is her.
My daughter.
My Lah.
My fingers grace over her tiny cheek, no longer burning with fever. She looks exactly the same as she had, only her lips are a little fuller, no longer chapped and dry. When I pull back on the covering swaddling her, I can see her arms are chubby, and her skin is soft. I reach out and pull her from the ground, holding her tightly to my chest.
I close my eyes, and I can feel the burning behind them as her warm skin meets mine. With my cheek pressed to hers, our warm tears mingle, and I revel in the sound of her loud, angry, healthy cry. I can feel the beat of her heart against my skin, and I take a deep breath to inhale her scent—like her mother’s but slightly sweeter.
Another loud sound invades the moment.
“No!”
Beh’s no sound startles me, and I glance over my right shoulder to look at her. Her eyes are wide and full of fear, and her hands reach out toward me. I hear the thump of rapid footsteps to my left, but I cannot react in time without dropping Lah.
Suddenly, there is a sharp pain in my arm, and everything goes black.
I awake with my head pounding.
I’m surrounded by the familiar scents of the cave, the furs in which we sleep, and Beh’s body near mine. I reach for her warmth automatically and feel another smaller body curled between us. My ears pick up the rhythmic sounds of a suckling baby, but at the same time, I can hear the cries of another.
The sun still shines into the crack from the outside of the cave, and the fire burns brightly, but the light inside the cave is dim. Even so, my head throbs more, and my eyes ache as I open them.
Between us, wrapped in strange, soft cloth and suckling at her mother’s breast is Lah. For a moment, I think I have awakened from a bizarre dream—that maybe she was never taken from us and was never even sick—but the sounds of another remind me that is not so.