Transcendence(102)

Lee pounds his little fists on the fur wrapped around his mother’s lower half as he tries to crawl between us to determine just what this other child is doing with his milk. Through my hazy vision, I watch him try to push his sister away. Beh picks him up with her free hand, smiles, and makes soft noises. She places him against her other breast, which he immediately grabs and shoves into his mouth. His green eyes narrow and glare at the little girl who feeds beside him, and he sucks harder.

I try to move my head a little closer to them, but I become dizzy immediately. I close my eyes again, but it only makes it worse, and I groan. I feel Beh’s hand against my jaw and hear her soft sounds.

“Shh, Ehd.”

I look at her face, and I can see her eyes are red and swollen, but she is smiling. I drop my eyes back to Lah. Her eyes have closed and her mouth has stilled. Lee is still scowling at her but seems content enough with milk in his mouth. Looking back and forth between them, it is obvious Lee is a whole season older than Lah in size. Lah was born late in the summer and became sick at the beginning of the previous winter. She looks to be the same size as she was then, just fatter and healthier than when I last saw her. Lee had been born in the winter, and it is now midsummer again.

Lah should be much larger than Lee, but she isn’t.

My head swims again.

I hear more sounds coming from the other side of the cave. The sounds are deeper in tenor than the ones Beh and Lee make, but I remember hearing the same tone before. The sound was coming from the man.

I raise my head, ignoring the throbbing in my temples and the nausea in my stomach. Across from the fire on the ledge where Beh had lined up her various collection baskets, sits the man—Beh’s father. He wears the same strange, white wrap that hangs down to his thighs, and his legs are covered in leggings like the ones Beh used to wear. They are a lighter color blue, though, and don’t seem to be as form-fitting or thick. The material looks thin as it flows with his legs when he moves around.

He sits with his back curved and his elbows down at his knees. There is something on the ground near his feet, but I can’t tell what it is. My eyes are still having trouble focusing through the pounding ache in my head.

His mouth opens, and sounds similar to the ones Beh makes flow rapidly from between his lips. Beh’s noises follow, and Lee’s eyes open wide as he looks between them both, distracted enough to release Beh’s nipple for a moment.

“Da-da-da-da!” Lee turns back to the nipple after making his noise and closes his eyes as he latches on and returns to eating.

Still dizzy, I try to push myself up, but Beh’s hand against my chest sends me back into the furs. When I try to move my legs, they do not want to cooperate. I feel as if I have been running for an entire morning or that I haven’t slept all night. I might be able to push Beh away and make myself stand, but her soft hands on my skin and whispers of my name-sound calm me, and I lay back down.

I glance at Beh’s father and watch him warily as Beh takes both sleeping children from her breast and lays them together in a pile of furs next to me. I grab for her hand as she moves to stand, and she grips my fingers briefly before moving to the side of the cave where her father is seated, pulling her leather wrap up around her shoulders as she goes.

For a moment, I want to follow and take her farther away from him, but I realize I may have been asleep for some time, and if he had wanted to take them all away, he would have already done so. Also, as her father, he wouldn’t want to harm her, I believe.

So I do not move when she goes to his side, but I watch closely as she curls her legs underneath her body to sit near his feet. I try harder to focus on the object there and realize it is much like the thing he was carrying in his hand when he first appeared, but it looks different now. He reaches inside of the thing—the container—and pulls out a small, cylindrical object. It makes a strange noise when he shakes it, and he makes sounds with his mouth. Beh’s head bobs up and down, and he places the object back in the container.

Beh’s father repeats his actions with many strange-looking things, but my mind is still fuzzy, and I am having trouble keeping my eyes open. I roll slightly to look at the forms of my two sleeping children. Lee’s hand has reached out and grasped his sister’s arm, pulling her fingers to his mouth where he sucks at them in slumber. I reach over and lay my arm across them both protectively.

Finally, my entire family is together, and I smile.





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO





Beh and her father sit at the fire and make constant noise. It hurts my head, but it makes Beh smile and laugh.

Leaning down, I scoop up a rapidly crawling Lee under one arm and bring him near the fire. Beh has finished preparing our breakfast, and Lah seems to have finished hers already. Beh lays her down on the strange, soft material Lah was wrapped in when Beh’s father brought her back and gently checks the other, smaller cloth that is wrapped around Lah’s bottom to see if it is wet. Lee has one as well, attached in the front with a small, shiny stick that is so sharp at the end it goes right through the covering. Beh’s deft fingers are able to attach and remove the little shiny stick quickly, but I end up with a bleeding finger when I try it.