Children of the Dawn (43 page)

Rattlesnake Woman said the Great River slashed through
this mountain range on its way to the endless water. She said the
only
way to get to the home of the Masat was to follow the Great River—a difficult, dangerous journey. Tsilka told of long times
with no shore to walk on; rugged cliffs; deep gorges; vast rock slides; and many wild rivers to cross.

It would be slow to follow the Great River, and Kai El was in a hurry for his revenge. There must be other passages through
the mountain range. He traveled on the high plateau where the going was easy and fast, catching sight of the distant river
now and then. The plateau with its yellow autumn grass rose to hills where scattered trees were losing their leaves. Foothills
rose to forested mountain slopes. Kai El did not see the Great River again. Another, higher mountain loomed beyond each mountain
he climbed. Every day was colder than the one before.

The first snowstorm caught him by surprise—though there was no reason why it should have. His soulmate died on the first day
of the Autumn Feast—ten and seven days ago, as his counted fingers told him many times a day. Winter followed autumn. The
seasons didn’t stop for death, any more than Kai El had.

The snowstorm was not a pretty or a peaceful thing. Wind howled down the mountain, blowing sharp, heavy flakes that stung
his flesh. Head down, leaning into the wind, into the rising slope of the land, he plunged through ever-deeper snow until
he could go no farther in the blinding, shrieking white.

Kai El huddled beneath a cedar tree, shivering in his bison robe. How stupid he’d been in his blind chase after revenge. Maybe
these mountains could be crossed in summer, but not in winter. He would just freeze to death up here, and the evil Masat would
go about their evil ways.

Well, then, he would try Tsilka’s way, find the Great River and follow it… if this storm ever stopped… if this mountain gave
him another chance…

He thought about the Masat to keep his blood boiling so he wouldn’t freeze.

I will kill every man, woman, and little one! Stamp them out as if they were a hill of ants! Chase down every last one!

For now Kai El didn’t worry about how one man would do this. For now it would be enough just to get there.

The blizzard went on. The sagging branches of the cedar dumped snow on him. The wind seemed to go right through his bison
fur. Kai El shivered uncontrollably. His teeth chattered so hard he thought they would break.

With frozen hands and a stick, he dug a hole in a deep drift—a snow cave just high enough to sit in and wide enough to lie
in. He covered it over with a thick layer of boughs, got in, and the blizzard sealed it.

In the dark, silent womb, cold and exhaustion conspired to drain off the rage he needed for revenge. Thoughts of Gaia leaked
through… his beloved Gaia… never to be talked to, touched, held in his arms. Never again. Sorrow filled the hole inside him
where rage had been. Kai El wept, holding her necklace to his face.

He didn’t know how many days he had been in the snow shelter before he dug himself out. The sunshine made him squint at first,
but it was beautiful, sparkling on the white world. The cold air was deliriously fresh after the stale air he’d been breathing.

Not knowing where he would go or what he would do, Kai El struggled back down the mountains through snow that, at first, reached
his chest.

As he walked across a rocky ridge where the snow was as deep as his knees, he found the entrance to a cave. He went in with
his spear ready. In the near-dark, he heard a deep rumble: the breathing of a bear, asleep for winter. He speared the beast,
and it died without waking. He cut up the meat and put it outside where it would freeze. It was much more than he would eat
that winter.

Days slipped by in the snug cave. Kai El did only what he had to do to keep warm and fed, not noticing the passing of time
much more than the bear would have.

Searing rage had turned to sorrow. Sorrow’s unbearable pain had given way to numbness. Now he felt hard inside, frozen up,
like his heart was solid ice. He would sit and hold the necklace Gaia had given him, but no tears got through the ice. So
he told himself that feeling nothing was better than feeling pain.

For all the numbness of his days, Kai El’s nights were busy with dreams. Sometimes he ran and fought, but could not
save Gaia from an awful fate. In other dreams they were together. She would say that it was all a mistake, she wasn’t dead,
and he’d scoop her into his arms and run, not touching the ground. These were the dreams that made him feel the worst when
he awoke—cruel lies that they were.

One night Kai El dreamed that he was standing on a rock-strewn cliff above the Great River. He dreamed he saw his mother walking
toward him, holding out her arms. They hugged long and hard.

“Look,” Ashan said.

Kai El looked down. Ice covered the Great River.

His mother’s voice was sad.

“The river is blocked. It can’t move.” She picked up a rock. “We should break the ice and get it moving again.”

She lobbed the rock over the cliff. It dropped slowly, hit the ice and cracked it. She picked up another rock and handed it
to Kai EL He threw it, and a crack jagged off from the first. They stood side by side, raining rocks down on the frozen river.
The ice broke up and floated away.

Mother and son picked up the last rock together, and cast it over the side together. The last of the ice was gone. The river
flowed free again. She hugged him, then turned and walked away.

Kai El remembered the dream with perfect clarity. He knew what it meant. His mother was telling him that the hardness inside
him—the ice—was bad. She would help him break it up, help him get moving again. But he would also have to help himself. He
would have to allow himself to feel, even the bad things. If he would not feel pain, then he could never feel pleasure.

Kai El held Gaia’s necklace to his face, closed his eyes, and called up pictures of her into his mind. He felt something wrap
around him, a slight warmth, and he imagined that it was his mother’s arms. Tears came hot and blinding. After they stopped,
he felt washed.

When the snow melted for the last time and green things burst to life outside the bear cave, Kai El felt life within himself.

His feet yearned to travel. But where?

Not through the great mountain range and on to the endless water. Winter had killed autumn’s passion for revenge.

Not to Teahra Village, where everything would remind him of Gaia.

Kai El thought about the ancient home of his people. The Shahala homeland lay in the direction Colder, on the other side of
a smaller range called the tabu mountains. He’d left there as a little one too young to remember. All he knew was what people
said, and it sounded like a good place.

He wondered if other people lived in the Valley of Grandmothers now. He knew he would never mate—his soulmate was dead, and
Kai El was like Samar, the goose who mates for life—but he might find a new tribe to belong to. There would never be another
Gaia, but there was still life to be lived.

When hummingbirds told the coming of spring, Kai El set off to find the home of his ancestors, leaving much of his burden
of grief in the bear cave. Opening up to the lustiness of spring, he carried his furs on travel poles instead of wearing them,
walked barefoot on green grass, found himself singing with throngs of returning bluebirds. Traveling purposefully, eating
well, his young body responded with strength.

His thoughts of Gaia were less often about her loss, more often about good things he remembered, happy things, the sweetness
of the love they’d known. He talked to her, and didn’t mind that he sensed no answer; spirits led very busy lives.

Not that he didn’t miss Gaia, and long for her. But it felt as though he could live without her. He told himself that they’d
be together again in the otherworld.

K
AI
E
L FELT HE WAS BEING GUIDED BY AN UNSEEN
force—the same force that had led him, as a little one on his power quest, to sacred ground. Now it pulled him in a straight
line, to the direction between Colder and Where Day Begins, across the spring-green prairie, into the tabu mountains.

On a mid-spring morning, Kai El crested a hill. Before him spread the valley of the grandfather Ehr, where he had lived with
his mother so long ago.

“I don’t believe it!” he shouted, jumping around like an excited child.

He ran down the hill to the river he and Ehr used to fish in, crossed it on a log that was still there, walked up the creek
that ran into the river, past the pool where he used to feed animals. He climbed the slippery rocks to the waterfall and splashed
into the Home Cave.

Kai El smelled the old good smells, saw the rays of light coming from above, heard the water dripping into the pool…

He saw movement from a dark recess and readied his spear.

A man stepped from the shadows.

“My son?”

“Father?”

Kai El dropped his spear, rushed to Tor, and threw his arms around him, hugging him so hard he lifted the old man off his
feet.

“Father! How can this be?”

Tor gasped. Kai El put him down.

“I thought you were dead! I saw a horse carry you into the sky!”

“A horse? No, son. I… I just walked away one night.”

Kai El was furious.

“How could you? I needed you!”

“I just couldn’t stand it anymore.”

“If you’d been there, maybe Gaia would still be alive!”

“Gaia?”

“She’s dead.”

Moaning, “Oh, no… ” Tor put his head in his hands, sunk to his knees, and sobbed. The depth of his despair took Kai El’s anger
away. They held each other and cried for Gaia. Tor exhausted himself and slept. Occasional sobs shook his body but didn’t
wake him.

How old he looks,
the young man thought.
How frail.

How crushed to hear of Gaia’s death.

Kai El didn’t sleep that night. As first light peeked through the roof of the Home Cave, he made a fire. He took dry berries
and honey from the storage place—impressed by all the food his father had stored—and heated water with stones to make berry
mush.

As he stirred the mush, his eyes feasted. His mother had called it the Home Cave. He always thought of it as Ehr’s cave, though
the beloved old grandfather died when Kai El was only three or four summers.

The sloping sides disappeared in shadow. The roof, taller than four or five men, was pierced by several holes that let in
shafts of light, and gave smoke a place to go out. Water trickled from a hole in the center into a small pool. The water came
from a creek that ran along the ground over the cave. His mother called it Silent Creek because it made no sound until it
dropped over the waterfall that hid the cave entrance.

Kai El loved the sound of the waterfall. It was as much a part of Ehr’s cave as the roof or floor, a soft splashing that had
soothed him as he went to sleep.

Morning light touched the painting place, a smooth wall covered with pictures that Ehr had spent a lifetime making. Pictures
that looked like the animals whose spirits they cap-
tured, their lines so graceful it seemed they might leap from the stone. Horses, wolves, and bears. A woman with lightning
streaking from her head, holding a snake in one hand, releasing a bird from the other.

There was the picture that Kai El, perched on his mother’s shoulders, had finished after Ehr’s death—a cougar had killed the
old man before he could complete it.

Tor awoke in the soft morning light.

“My son,” he said in a voice full of wonder. “You really are here.”

“I am.”

The old man’s face fell as he remembered the rest.

“And Gaia is dead.”

“I’m sorry, Father. She is.”

Tor crossed his arms over his chest, breathed deep, and blocked the flood of emotions that wanted out. Kai El didn’t know
why Gaia’s death had so devastated his father, but the devastation was obvious. Tor tried to gain control of himself. Kai
El saw that he was still a strong man, in the way that mattered.

Face set in grim lines, Tor asked, “How did she die?”

“It was the first day of the Autumn Feast. We would have become mates that night.” Kai El sighed. “Gaia was at the women’s
washing place with Tahna and some others… ”

He told the story, finishing with, “… and then she dived from the raft, taking the savages with her. She swam to the bottom,
and held them until they died. But it took too long. She—she couldn’t make it back in time.”

Both men sucked in air to think what Gaia had felt.

Tor spoke after a long silence.

“The other girls—what happened to them?”

“They got the raft to the shore. They were saved.”

“So Tahna is safe?”

“Tahna got away at the beginning. She ran to the village for help.”

That night, Tor did the comforting. Kai El hadn’t cried all his tears after all.

“I loved her so much. Why was she taken before we even began?”

“I’m sorry, son. I have no answers. For myself, I learned to stop asking questions. It becomes easier after that.”

“But I’ll never have a family. No mate, no sons, no daughters. We were soulmates, like you and mother, and when your soulmate
dies… ”

“I know, Kai El. I am sorry.”

That night the son, exhausted from crying, slept in his father’s arms.

The Spirit of Ashan entered the Home Cave, chasing out stale air, bringing in freshness and energy like a thunderstorm.

Tor’s skin tingled as she slipped over him. How he loved it when she came to him like this.

“My love,” he said softly.

He felt the sweet expanding as she came inside him. With his son in his arms and his mate a part of him, Tor felt complete
as he had not for so long.

He whispered, “Thank you for bringing our son to me. Now I can live out my days in comfort and peace.”

…
I
brought him for you to heal. Then he must return to the people
…