Wolf’s Brother

In the evenings folk came to Tillu, for a salve for a blistered heel or a rub for a wrenched knee. Her healings were seldom more complicated than that. The herdfolk were a stout and healthy people, given to little worry about minor ailments. The runny noses of the bright-eyed children were ignored, as accepted as their ruddy wind-chafed cheeks and the bumps and scratches from their tumbling play. The work did not tire Tillu; she took pleasure in the chance to better know the folk she had joined. Of Capiam she saw nothing. He seemed content to trust her to perform her own tasks, or perhaps he was too busy to be bothered with her. Several times Joboam brought meat to her, the portion allotted to Tillu by the herdlord. He spoke little but the few words he said sounded both superior and threatening. The tension Tillu felt in his presence did not abate; it was like a slowly swelling abscess that must eventually be lanced or burst of its own pressure.

At those times she took comfort from Heckram’s nearness. Whenever Joboam came to Kari’s fire, Heckram, too, appeared. His errand was always an innocent one; to borrow some grease for a harness strap, or to ask the loan of a larger cook pot. He did not confront Joboam, but his very presence seemed to restrain the other man. But as soon as Joboam left, Heckram did also. He smiled at her, he was courteous, but he never lingered for a word with her, nor tried to be alone with her. Tillu could not understand the man. At first she tried to believe that it was the public nature of the caravan. The clustered tents and flat tundra offered no quiet rendezvous, even if the two could have eluded Carp, Kerlew, and Kari. But she noticed other couples left the arrotak, to “fetch water” or “hunt eggs.” Yet Heckram never invited her on such an errand. If he had decided to reject her because of her son, why did he still offer Kerlew shelter and food? Because of Carp? She did not understand, but as the days marched past she persuaded herself she did not care. He was a man, like any other man. Her body had wanted a man, that was all that was between them. But that did not explain why she could not interest herself in the other men in the caravan, nor why it was his image that lingered in her mind in the twilight.

The one variance in their lives was the changing land they crossed. It became increasingly unfamiliar to Tillu, but the others accepted the wide emptiness of the sky as natural. The foothills dwindled behind them, leaving the world a flat and daunting place. The horizon moved away to an unattainable distance. The sun’s warmth thawed the top few inches of the tundra, but couldn’t reach the permanently frozen soil beneath it. Water did not soak into the earth, but stretched in wide flat ponds and pools, or flowed lazily across the near flat surfaces. The thawing earth and running water brought burgeoning life. Birds appeared, ones Tillu had never seen before, and in an abundance she had never imagined. They settled in the wildly sprouting grasses, and mated and fought and made hasty nests on the earth. Their muttered conversations filled the dusky evenings, and their cries of challenge and courtship filled the days. Eggs were added to the herdfolk’s diet.

Plant life sprouted in a bewildering array, familiar plants in dauntingly unfamiliar shapes. But willow ossier, Tillu found, for all its dwarfed and twisted shape, had the same properties as willow. And fireweed greens were as tender whether they stood tall and slender, or writhed flat across the earth.

Not in weeks, but in days the colors of the tundra ripened and deepened, here brown and gold, there purple and mauve, there a green of unbelievable intensity. Even the coldest stone was coated with lichen of white or yellow or dun, while the mosses bloomed frantically in their haste to rise, live and reproduce before winter returned. Heather vied with butterwort, the bells of linnaea rang in contrast to the daisies of arnica. Tiny blue forget-me-nots were trodden underfoot, while cloudberry and tangles of arctic raspberry promised later bounty. Everywhere there were new plants to be crushed and sniffed and tested against the tip of her tongue for healing virtues.

Kari proved an able assistant, and was full of questions. She did not yet help Tillu with the healing, but her bright black eyes took in every detail of mixing and application. After the salved or bandaged folk were gone, Kari would question her: why this herb and not that one? Why a salve and not a tonic? Why had she lanced that abscess, but put a poultice on the one she had seen two days ago? The girl’s mind was quick and retentive, her questions betraying an intellect seldom used. But the wildness never faded completely from her eyes, nor the strangeness from her movements. Her interest could shy suddenly from a pragmatic discussion of bandaging material to her latest dream of Owl. She was so like, and yet unlike, Kerlew.

Kerlew she watched from afar. He was changing in ways she could not understand or control. He was learning and growing, and, she grudgingly admitted, discovering himself as a person apart from her. She watched his relationship with Heckram, and finally accepted that Heckram’s affection for Kerlew was not feigned. He always had time for the boy. Tillu watched from Kari’s fire as Kerlew shifted between Carp and Heckram, testing the reality of one man against that of the other. He shadowed Heckram at the evening chores, eventually carrying one of the water scoops, and even helping prepare the meals, despite Carp’s scornful derision of men doing “women’s work.” He ate at Carp’s side, receiving whispered instruction about the spirit world. An hour later he would be at Heckram’s elbow, watching him mend worn harness or holding the ends as Heckram braided a new leadrope from long, thin slices of leather. She sensed the struggle in him. She longed to help him but during those rare moments when he sought her out, she refrained from advice. Pushed, Kerlew would resist. She hoped he would eventually find Heckram’s attraction the more powerful one.

Yesterday Kerlew had come to her, bringing his shirt to be mended. He had torn out both shoulder seams. She had measured the worn garment against him, and found that the fault was not in her sewing, but in the boy’s sudden growth. She had given it back to him, minus the sleeves, to wear while she pieced out a new shirt for him. For a quiet time he had crouched beside her, watching her select leather for the shirt. She decided to make it from the calf-hide, now scraped and supple ivory-colored leather. Drawing her knife, she cut out the needed pieces quickly. She styled it after the herdfolk’s way, a collarless, loose-fitting garment that could be belted at the waist and worn alone, or over leggings. She had held the leather against him, swiftly marking the length of tunic and sleeves he would need. He moved docilely to her commands, holding out his arms obediently as she checked the cut pieces against him. Then Kerlew had crouched beside her, watching intently as his new shirt took form. With a sigh he leaned against her, and the heavy warmth of his small body was so poignantly familiar that Tillu’s throat closed. She turned her eyes away from her stitching, to watch the light of the fire make hollows and curves of his face. He was losing the rounded chin of a little boy, his cheeks narrowing and flattening as he grew. The firelight gave his skin a sallow cast, and suddenly she saw the faces of the race that had fathered him, the black-haired, hard-eyed men that had killed her mother and carried her away from her home. Fierceness washed through her, and she cried out aloud as her bone needle plowed a long gash in one of her fingers. She jerked the needle free of her flesh, and the blood followed it, rushing from the gouge and staining her work.