Danug awoke early. The frigid air had nipped his nose and awoken him. He took a deep breath of the cool air in his empty tent. He tested the air, poking his toes out from the furs and shivered when he did. It was cold. The chill he felt brought on a flashback of the day he found Amara in the swirling snow. It had been unseasonably cold, like today. So much had happened since she had arrived, so much had been learned. He wondered how Amara really felt. Did she feel at home here? He couldn't imagine how it must have felt to her, to awaken among strangers, in a past you could barely fathom. He didn't understand many things about her world, though he knew it was amazing, and far more advanced then his own. But it reassured him to know that they were one and the same. Humans were humans, and the future was based on the accomplishments of the past. He felt the presence of an unknown force for a moment, and then it disappeared again just as quickly.

He finally decided to get out of his furs and stiffly dressed in the cold, throwing on his traveling boots and his fur over his shoulder. When he peeked out of the tent flap he gasped. The sky was full of a red glow. He sniffed the air and quickly knew the reason for the glow. Fire! He scurried over to the hearth that had been made the day before and knelt over the coals. Still warm. He quickly gathered small tinder from the pile they had made the day before, and with a stick stirred the warm coals. He placed the small thin twigs over the coals and blew softly at first, with constant pressure. A flame licked up from the coals and caught the twigs. Danug hurriedly added more twigs and gradually added larger and larger sticks, until the fire was firmly established.

He didn't bother to put water on to boil. He wasn't hungry, just cold. He held his hands out over the fire and stared blankly into the flames.

A white slender hand reached out to him and beckoned. He saw a herd of horses run by and a whisper. "Eternal." A female figure with an indistinct face crossed the empty plain in front of him and turned again towards him and whispered, "Mother is Eternal."

Danug blinked and shivered. The visions were coming more often. Mamut had told him before he left that the Mother was calling him. But he had insisted on going on the journey. It wasn't that he didn't want to serve the Mother, if he could even stop it. But he wasn't sure he was ready to dedicate himself yet. He felt young still, and adventurous. He might even want to mate. But the visions were getting stronger. Especially since Amara had come. "Mother is Eternal," he murmured to himself. "What does that mean?" A log snapped and Danug looked at the fire again. What was Amara doing here? Was the Mother trying to tell him? More and more he found himself intrigued, yet frightened by the feelings and visions he was getting. He couldn’t forget the time when he had journeyed with Amara to see her mother. He shook his head and tossed another log on the fire.

He heard a rustling behind him and he turned quickly. "Latie. What are you doing up so early?" he asked softly to his sister.

"I was cold, and hungry, and I heard the fire. What are you doing up?" she asked quizzically.

"I was cold too. How are you feeling?" he asked affectionately.

"I feel better than ever. I am so grateful that Amara is here. And Lareno. He's been taking very good care of me." She smiled unabashedly at her brother. "Never guessed your little sister would be finding a mate before you eh?" she teased when Danug gave her a look.

Danug chuckled. "Surprised, when I got the prettiest sister around? Never!" he added in jest. He was truly happy for her. And Lareno was a good man. It was very obvious that he cared very much for Latie. Latie, and Amara, Callie blessed. Seemed like everyone had someone but him. Not that he hadn't had his fun with the Sharamudoi women, but he yearned for something more. Something that none of the women he had met could fulfill. He wondered briefly if that was the curse of those who serve the mother. He flinched at the thought for a moment, then shook it off. There was no reason to worry. His destiny would come. And somehow he knew it would come when Ayla and Amara met.

"Hello??? DANUG? You awake?" Latie said loudly waving her hand in front of Danug's face.

"Oh sorry, Latie…what was that?" He had been lost in his thoughts.

"I asked if you wanted some stew? I can heat up what is left from last night," she said, looking at him quizzically. "What's gotten into you?"

"I had another vision. More and more, Latie. I thought I could get away from it going on a Journey. They've only gotten stronger since Amara came. And stew sounds nice," he added absently.

"Visions? Mamut told you. What are you going to do?" she asked as she deftly lashed the poles together to hang the skin pot from. She propped the tripod up over the fire and placed the skin of stew over the fire and added a cup of water.

Danug looked at her work. "I don't know… not much I can do now. I don't have anyone to ask for guidance. I guess I'll wait until, someone can help me," he said, shrugging. "I'm not worried, just...don't know what they mean."

Latie nodded and poked at the stew with the stick. And blinked at the sun as it came up over the ridge and pierced her vision with a bright ray.

Danug laughed again out loud and turned as a groggy Radec stumbled out of his tent. "What is all the racket out here? Ow!" he yelled as he stepped on a twig that flipped up and knocked his shin.

Now both Latie and Danug were laughing heartily, and started to howl when they heard Callie yell. "You!!! Bring back that fur you big oaf!"

Radec grinned foolishly at the two and walked back towards the tent where Callie's head was poking out. "It is cold!" she said, demanding the fur by holding her hand out. Radec handed the fur over and the skip hopped back to the fire. "It is cold! Let's get some food in this big empty belly of mine."

Latie snorted and waved the stick at Radec. "You're always hungry."

At the same time the rest of the camp emerged from their tents at the ruckus caused by Radec, as usual.

After the camp was broken, the band of travelers quickly started out on their way again. Talut had told Radec that Jondalar had expected their trip to take a year, and that was only with two people. He was beginning to worry about Callie. He wanted her to be warm and safe during her pregnancy, and he knew that traveling was hard on pregnant women. He wished he had thought to talk more with Dolando about it, and try to get an estimate of how long it would take to reach the Zelandonii. The last thing he wanted was for Callie to be in any danger.

He knew that there would be a glacier. Jondalar had said that he and his brother had crossed it, and Dolando had said that he planned to cross again on the way home. But did his group have to? Couldn’t they go north, or south? Judging from what he knew, the beginning of the Mother was somewhere near this glacier. He shook his head; he needed to find some more people between here and there that Ayla and Jondalar had stayed with and perhaps shared their plans with. But he had no idea where any of these people might be. He considered all the options quickly in his mind, and decided that they should probably stay near the Mother. People would most likely be found along the river, and he knew that Jondalar had followed the river on both of his trips, so it was the safest bet.

The small band quickly got into the routine of traveling. Mountains had forced the river to turn north by this time, and within a handful of days they would be turning east with the river’s flow. It was hard to talk while walking or riding the horses, so each person had plenty of time to think his or her thoughts through the day. Evening meals were usually quiet, and then when they retired for the evening, the couples usually stayed awake into the night sharing the thoughts from the day. Danug, however, had only himself to talk with. He found himself drawn more and more to Healie, and they ended up sharing their thoughts most evenings. Healie, on the other hand, was drawing more and more into herself. After the incident with crossing the Sister, she was ever more aware of her own mortality, and the realization of her inevitable death was beginning to depress her. She found joy and even solace talking with the young man, and he seemed interested in hearing about her stories from when she was young.

Latie was doing much better. The days of traveling were actually good for her; her legs were strengthening quickly. She found that with feeling better came being happy, and she was actually able to share Pleasures with Lareno, and enjoy them as well. Like Amara, she had begun taking the contraceptive tea. She and Amara both knew that Callie would need all the help she could get in the months to come, and neither of them wanted to be burdened with a pregnancy at such a crucial time. Latie, however, didn’t enjoy the knowledge that Amara did as far as conception went, and thus she felt as Healie had; that the tea just simply blocked a man’s spirit from entering the woman’s body.

The mornings were dawning cooler and cooler, and for the first time, Amara wondered how they would stay warm during the winter. She had always had the comfort of a house with central heat and air, and had never known cold. Admittedly, she had sometimes been quite cold while waiting for her school bus back in Kansas, but she knew that nothing she had experienced at home would be like the cold she would experience here; after all, this was the Ice Age.

“Panec,” she called, jogging to catch up with him. He turned and looked at her, then slowed down his pace so that she could catch up. “Panec, how do you stay warm during the winter?”

He wrinkled his nose and furrowed his brow. “What do you mean? We build fires, and usually one doesn’t travel during the winter, so we stay inside where it’s warm. When we do go outside, we just put on plenty of clothes.” He cocked his head. “Is that what you were meaning?”

Amara frowned. “I suppose,” she sighed. “It’s just that—well, at home, being warm was never a problem.” She pointed to the cart. “When we travel, we rode in things like that, but enclosed, with a top and a bottom, and there was heat inside, so you weren’t really cold. I just…I’m afraid of how cold it will get this winter, and I’m not really used to the cold, not like this.” She frowned again and thought about how much to tell him. “Panec, you know where I come from. Well, you see, it’s very warm, then. The large sheets of ice, we call them glaciers, they don’t exist, not like they do now.” She held her hands out in the air. “The warmth of this air, this is what it feels like sometimes in winter at home. Some places are colder, and some are much colder, but this warmth right now is a normal winter for places just south of where I grew up.” She estimated the air temperature to be about 50 degrees Fahrenheit; for places like Louisiana and south Texas, 50 was the average high in the dead of winter. Kansas was markedly colder, with average highs dipping into the 30s, but very rarely had she ever been in temperatures that were below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. It just didn’t happen that often. And usually when it did, the danger was understood and school had been let out, or delayed; either way, precautions were always taken. But here, she would be traveling, exposed to the elements, in temperatures colder than she could hardly imagine.

It was difficult for Panec to understand a winter as warm as it was at that point. The Mamutoi lived in a land that was nearly always cold, and the permafrost was hardly a few short feet underground. He understood that it would be warmer in the land of the Zelandonii, but this warm? In winter? He shook his head. “It’s all right, Amara, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about the cold too much. Radec won’t want to push any of us. Callie’s pregnant, and Healie is older than the rest of us, and we know that you’re not used to traveling like this, in cold weather like what we’ll see.” He put his arms around her and kissed her head. “Please don’t worry.”

She sighed and nodded. “Do these clothes keep you very warm?” she asked.

Panec had seen the clothes she had worn when she arrived. He had even heard of other people weaving fibrous materials into clothes. “Amara, these clothes that we’re wearing now used to be the skin of an animal. You’d be surprised how warm they can be. How else would the animals stay warm in the winter?” he inquired.

She hadn’t thought about it in that sense before. She sighed lightly in relief, and leaned into Panec’s embrace.

“It’ll be getting dark soon,” Radec announced from up ahead. “We’d better go ahead and make camp for the evening.”

“I was going to suggest the same thing; there’s a herd of aurochs just beyond that grove of trees,” Lareno added as he motioned in the direction he was indicating.

Radec nodded and tried to count the number of days that they had been constantly traveling. He made marks in his mind as he counted, sixteen, seventeen days. Over half a moon. He took stock of their situation and decided that they could make camp for a couple of days here. Perhaps they could get a couple of aurochs and process the hides; they would probably be able to use them before long.

The group was excited about the impending hunt. They quickly set up camp and gathered around a hastily made fire to discuss plans. “Lareno, would you and Latie mind riding around south of the herd on Jolie and check out the landscape over there? See if you can find something that could help us; perhaps a natural fence or obstruction of the sort. Be back here by sundown, and we’ll finalize plans for tomorrow.”

Lareno nodded and grinned at Latie. They jumped up double on the horse and rode off quickly. Radec turned to the others. “Okay, Danug, you and Panec and Amara make sure all of our weapons are intact and in order. Let us know if any adjustments or mendings need to be made. I’m going to ride around north on Ranug and check out that side.”

The youngsters nodded in agreement and Radec jumped up on the other horse and ran off. “Healie, let’s you and I get some sort of meal together. Enough to feed us tomorrow, too, just in case they aren’t successful,” Callie suggested.

Healie nodded and smiled. This would be a welcome diversion from her thoughts.

They were all up early the next morning, ready for the excitement of a hunt. Latie and Lareno had discovered that to the south of where the herd was gathered was a wide but thick grove of trees, thick enough to provide a barrier. Radec hadn’t discovered anything to the north, so they decided that it would be best to semi-surround the herd from the north, east, and west, and drive the herd south toward the trees, picking off a few of them along the way. Latie and Amara would be on the horses and would drive from the northeast and northwest, respectively. Lareno would work from the east, Radec from the north, and Panec from the west. Danug would try to get around to the south of the herd just to keep an eye on things and to signal the others when the best time would be to start the chase.

The hunters took up their positions, far enough away from the herd so as to not disturb them, but close enough to not have to run too far. The aurochs already had an inkling of what was going on, as they were prancing around in a very agitated manner. When the time was right, Danug sent a silent plea to the Mother, and then used a firestone to quickly light a torch that he had made, its purpose only to smoke.

Radec saw the smoke signal first and let out a loud whistle. The others took note, and at once they all started toward the aurochs. Quickly sensing the danger, the aurochs started running any direction they could to get away. A few of them managed to run between the humans chasing after them into safety, but most of the herd ran to the south. Amara reached them first on Ranug, and shrieking wildly, she cast her spear. It was a true cast and sank deep into the throat of a female. It severed her artery, and Amara was thankful for the quick death of the magnificent animal. She set her sights on a second one and glanced around quickly to check on the status of the other hunters. It looked like Radec and Latie each had brought down an animal. Amara wondered how many they would need, and she managed to catch Radec’s eye. She held up her right hand with all five fingers extended, and then pointed to the aurochs that Radec had just brought down. He nodded and shouted, “Five!”

Amara pulled back on the horse when she saw that Danug and Lareno had both killed animals as well. Panec had started for one, but had noticed at the same time as Amara that they had the five that they wished. He turned and jogged over to where Amara had dismounted from the horse, and together they watched the crazed herd figure out which direction to run, and they pounded off to the east, leaving behind a large cloud of dust.

They grinned at each other and then immediately started butchering the animal. Latie and Lareno managed to pull each of the animals that they killed over to Jolie, to whom a travois had been hitched, and they dragged the two animals closer to where Amara and Panec were. Radec was struggling with his kill, and Panec slapped Ranug on the rump, indicating for the horse to head in Radec’s direction, which he did. Panec then jogged over to Danug and helped him to pull his kill over to where the other five now were.

They smiled at the success of the hunt, but they knew there was a lot of work still for them. “Latie, will you ride back to the camp and let the women know that we were successful?” Radec asked. He was still unsure of overexerting her, and he felt that it would be best for her well-being to rest some more. In the meantime, they each tackled one of the dead animals.

“Healie! Callie!” Latie called. “We killed five!”

Callie clapped in happiness. “Great! Do you need to go back to them, or do you want to help us start fires?”

Latie considered for a moment, then decided that she should go back, at least to let the horse assist. “I’ll go back. Don’t worry about building several fires; I think a couple will work just fine.”

Callie nodded and waved as Latie turned the horse around and headed back. She was surprised to see the progress that each person had made on his or her animal, and she quickly dismounted and started helping Amara. Amara wasn’t quite strong enough to crack the body cavity of the animal opened, so with Latie on one side and herself on the other, they both pulled until they heard the sickening crack. Latie then proceeded to climb almost inside the cavity and she started pulling out the intestines. She squealed in delight when she pulled out the stomach and other abdominal organs. “Look! This heifer was pregnant!” she called out joyously.

Amara momentarily wrinkled her nose; she had only tried veal once, and she hadn’t cared for the taste. She felt too bad about killing a fetus to enjoy it, even if she had cared for the taste. But, this was all part of life and death, she thought to herself as she shrugged. She gripped the edge of the hide and started pulling it away. It gave easily, as hoped, and within moments she had pulled away one entire side of the aurochs hide.

Latie bustled about and gathered up all of the intestines, stomachs, bladders, and other entrails, and loaded them on Jolie’s travois. She then hauled them down to the river, close enough to remain in sight of the others butchering, so that just in case some unwanted predator tried to sneak in, she could yell and be helped right away. Fortunately, she managed to wash all of the items that she had taken to the river without mishap. She filled the bladders and stomachs with water, and then tied them to a large pole that she had strung horizontally between two strong tree branches. She quickly started fires on either side of the string to discourage any visitors, and then she took the washed intestines back to the others.

All of the hides had been pulled from the bodies, rolled tightly, and tied with strong thongs. The five people were now working on separating large sections of meat from the lumps of fat and from the other bodily organs. Latie sat down by the pile of fat and started working little pieces of fat into the intestines, after she had cut the intestines into sections about three feet long each. She pinched and twisted the intestine after she had stuffed some of the fat into it, and then continued on another sausage. She had always disliked working with fat; she hated the way it felt, but this was the best task for her to be doing. It was less strenuous and stressful, and was markedly one of the easiest tasks to be done.

Amara was glad that she had thought to tie her hair back before they started the hunt. As it was, the ponytail kept falling in front of her as she worked, and she hated getting blood in it. She was still squeamish about the whole butchering process, but it had to be done, and her stomach had quickly become accustomed to the ‘blood and guts’ work. She sat back on her haunches and rested for a second, and then she continued cutting away at the meat. She, too, despised the feel of the fat, and she was thankful that Latie had taken the task of making the sausages out of fat. Usually before when they hunted, that had been her job, as it was one of the easiest.

They worked well into the afternoon butchering, and the smell of blood had brought the usual array of meat-eaters. Latie was thankful that she had developed her skill with the sling, and in addition to twisting the fat into sausages, she kept away most of the predators. A brave wolverine had managed to get away with one set of ribs, but Latie was more watchful after that incident. Several lynx, wolverines, and even a stray wolf had tried to get their paws on some of the kill. Latie had a soft spot in her heart for wolves, especially stray ones, ever since Ayla had Wolf, but she wasn’t about to give up any more of their hard-earned meat. They would have their fill of whatever the six of them decided to leave behind, anyway.

Dusk was setting in by the time the group had hauled all of the meat and other items back to the camp. Callie and Healie had three very large fires burning, and they had set up several racks on which to hang the meat to dry, and others on which to spread out the hides to be stretched and cured. The hunters were tired, but they still had lots of details to take care of, so they ate a quick dinner of leftover breakfast that had been warming, and then they went straight back to work.

Callie and Healie each took a hide and started working it, as well as Amara and Latie. Amara felt bad; she knew her hides weren’t as good as the others, but she knew that there would be several things that they could use hides for that didn’t need to be cured as well, so she didn’t worry about it too much. The men started working on stringing the meat onto the drying racks that had been carefully positioned close enough to small fires so as to cook the meat sufficiently for drying. By the time the waxing gibbous moon was almost at its zenith, they had finished all they could for the time being.

They were all understandably exhausted. It had been a long day for all of them. Amara smiled wryly to herself; this would be an excellent weight-loss program at home. Hard work all day, very little food; this was definitely one way to do it. She was about to duck into her tent, satisfied of all the accomplishments they had made that day, when out of the corner of her eye she saw something. She quickly spun around, thinking she had seen an animal of some sort trying to get at their meat.

“What?” Panec asked, looking in the direction Amara was looking.

She shook her head. “I thought I saw something…” She squinted into the darkness.

Danug saw the two hesitating outside their tent, peering intently into the night. He quietly walked over to where they were, not wanting to disturb Healie or Callie, both of whom had gone to bed and were undoubtedly asleep. Radec had ducked into his tent just moments before, as had Latie and Lareno. “Is something wrong?” he asked, concerned.

“I thought I saw something,” Amara whispered again.

“An animal?” Danug asked apprehensively. He instinctively grabbed for his spear-thrower and a spear.

“I don’t know…” Amara began, and then she cut herself off with a gasp when she realized what it was she had seen. She laughed to herself at her anxiety.

Panec’s eyes opened wide when he saw it. There, across the sky, streaked a small fire. It sputtered, then went out. “What was that?” he asked, amazed.

“It’s called a ‘meteor’,” Amara informed them. “How beautiful!”

In a flash, there was a second, and a third. The three stood, captivated by the sight. It was beautiful; soon, hundreds of the small fires were streaking across the sky. They all smiled in delight at the awesome show to which it seemed only the three of them were privy.

Danug’s eye was captured by one of them that seemed to be burning brighter, and longer. It seemed almost as if it were coming straight towards them. He pointed at it, and asked, “Amara, do they ever hit the ground?”

She glanced toward where he was indicating and caught her breath. It was stunning, but her heart started skipping beats, as it wasn’t dying out like it should have been. Usually they burned up in the atmosphere, but this one wasn’t burning away. Of course, it was burning, but to have lasted this long; she suddenly gasped when she realized how large the meteor must have been to have lasted this long. And it was still burning. It came closer and closer, until they could hear it. Amara screamed, unable to bear the intensity any longer, and she grabbed Panec and Danug behind their necks and pulled them down. For what seemed like an eternity, they waited, and then suddenly the inevitable crash was heard as it struck the ground. They toppled over as the shock waves, albeit weak, ripped through underneath them.

When the silence fell, Amara jumped up and grabbed a torch. Radec rushed out of his tent. “What in the Mother was that?” he cried.

“A meteor!” Amara shouted as she ran towards where it had impacted the earth.

Danug shook his head and ran after her, Panec close on his heels. “Amara, wait!” he called.

She knew it had to have landed close for the shock to be that much. She wasn’t sure just how far shock waves like that could travel, but she knew that either the meteor, now meteorite, was very large, or it had landed quite close. She ran only a matter of a couple of minutes, stumbling over roots and rocks in the dark, until she reached where it had hit. She gasped at the sight and stopped in her tracks.

The meteorite wasn’t very large; perhaps the size of a softball, but it had made a substantial crater, more than six feet across. The meteorite was still glowing, fiery red hot from its entry into earth’s atmosphere. The glow seemed to ebb, almost feeding itself. Danug and Panec caught up with her and they, too, gasped at what they saw.

Although it was exciting for Amara – she had heard of meteorites before and had always been awed by the stories – Panec and Danug both felt a little afraid.

“How amazing,” Amara whispered, her voice almost inaudible.

At that moment, Danug felt chills rushing down his spine. He felt the premonition he had felt sometimes before, and he shuddered in realization, the beauty and nostalgia of the scene gone. “Something very bad is going to happen soon,” he prophesized.

As soon as Danug finished his prophetic statement, Amara, too, felt shivers encompass her body. She had an unexpected and uncontrollable feeling of despair. She reached for the feeling, thinking that if she tried hard enough, she could find the source, but she wasn’t able to reach far enough. The feeling left as the last faint ebbs of the meteorite died. She shivered again and looked over at Danug. She met his eyes and understood that he had had the same feeling, but much more intense, and sooner than she. She opened her mouth to say something, but feeling caught in her throat. She swallowed hard and blinked. “What?” she asked, not so much a question, but more of a statement.

Danug shrugged. “I really don’t know what will happen, but I know you felt it, too. Something.”

Panec glanced from Amara to Danug and back to Amara. “What do you mean something bad will happen?” he asked, his voice almost panicky.

Danug shrugged again. “I just had this foreboding feeling. I think Amara had it too. Amara, I think you have the same Gift that I do. Maybe if we meditate, we can find out what this means…”

Amara shuddered and shook her head. “I don’t want to know! I’d just rather live life as it is. I’ve had many surprises already, but I think I’d rather have surprises than know exactly what’s going to happen! And Danug, I’m a firm believer that what will happen in the future has already been ordained. Whether you believe in the Mother, or in God, or whatever; whoever that all-knowing being is. They wouldn’t be all-knowing if they didn’t know what was going to happen in the future! So there’s nothing we can do to change what’s already been destined. I already know more than I care to,” she admitted, tears filling her eyes.

Danug nodded in sympathy. There was a time when he had felt the same thing; in fact, that time hadn’t been long ago. But now that he’d met Amara, his entire demeanor regarding being One Who Serves had changed, and more and more he was looking forward to the answers to all of his questions.

Panec shivered as a breeze whipped through. “Let’s get back,” he suggested. “It’s late, and we all have a lot of work to do still tomorrow.”

Amara nodded and leaned into him. She glanced over at Danug who looked oddly complacent and smiled at him. He smiled in return and they headed back to the camp.

Radec was still standing outside of his tent when he returned, and everyone else had awoken as well. “What was it?” he asked apprehensively as the three youngsters returned.

“It was what we call a ‘meteor’ at home,” Amara explained. “It’s a large rock that falls out of the sky and through the air above us. As it falls through, it gets really hot. Kind of like when you rub your hands together, they get warm? Well, it’s like that; the rock rubs against the air, and it warms up, so it burns. Usually they burn all the way up before they reach the ground, but one of them didn’t. It landed over there,” she pointed in the direction, “and it was about this big,” she said, holding her hands up in a circle.

Radec’s eyes opened wide. From what the mamut from his camp had told him, things from the sky like this were always signs. Not necessarily good, and not necessarily bad, but definitely signs. He glanced over at Danug. “What does it mean?” he asked.

Danug shook his head. “I don’t know exactly what it means, Radec, all I know is that…well…I’m afraid something bad is going to happen soon,” he admitted.

Radec paled slightly and instinctively put a protective arm around his blessed mate. He swallowed hard, trying to comprehend their new situation. He shook his head, knowing that there was no way to know for sure, and they would have to continue on their Journey soon. “Well, let’s just all try to be a little more attentive, and pay a little more attention to what’s going on. Maybe if we’re very careful, whatever it is that’s going to happen won’t be so bad.” He hoped against hope, not wanting to jinx their Journey.

Danug sighed and ducked back into his tent. Under his breath, he muttered, “I doubt it.”

Amara barely heard his almost inaudible statement, and she held her breath, hoping no one else had. She had accepted her fatalistic destiny. She knew that whatever was to come would be the way it was supposed to be. Nothing that could happen could be more traumatizing than the experiences she had had recently, could it?

The party of travelers all slept in the next morning. It had been a very long night. Amara determined that by the size and placement of the moon, in its waxing gibbous phase – the phase just before the full moon – it had been well past midnight when they had finally retired, and sleep had been fitful for them all. Her dreams had been plagued by images of her mother and this woman, Ayla, whom she had yet to meet. For some strange reason, Healie had been in her dreams as well, but she attributed that to the fact that right now, Healie was the only mother she had.

After a nice, warm breakfast, they all set to work again. The women started on the hides, scraping and stretching away, while the men gathered wood, kept the fires burning, and held a constant watch over the meat that was drying. Thankfully, no animals had tried to brave their way into the meat during the night.

By noon, Amara was hot and sticky, and she had made all the progress on the hide that she would be able to make for a while. She looked longingly at one of the bladders full of water stringing from a pole, and then had an inspiration. “I think I’m going down to the river to take a swim,” she announced.

No one tried to dissuade her. “As soon as I finish this, Amara, I’ll come down there with you,” Latie called as Amara walked away.

Amara waved in response and skipped down to the river. She smiled to herself; at home, no one would dare swim in a river. Whirlpools and swift currents were always problems, and usually most rivers had signs forbidding swimming, unless it was a particularly calm summer day. She stripped and dove in, delighting in the cool river water. She had always been a strong swimmer, and she reached the other side before she knew it. She turned around and swam back to the other bank, and then went for her clothes. She dipped them in the water, rinsing the mud, sweat, blood, and other grime from them. Running her fingers through her hair, she could feel how greasy it was, even though it was wet. She scowled in disgust, wishing for some shampoo. Scanning the river, she did notice some soaproot, and she pounded some between two rocks until it foamed. She dunked her head again, and then rubbed the foam into her hair, being careful to thoroughly clean it. She dunked again to rinse, and shook her head underwater. She smiled in relief when she surfaced again, glad that her hair was clean. On an impulse, she decided to work some of the foam into her clothes. She was happy to see that the soaproot did as it should, and by the time her thick, dark hair was almost completely dry, she had washed her clothes and hung them on bushes to dry in the sunlight. She pulled the thong that she used to tie her leggings off, and she wrapped her hair up on her head. Using the thong to tie it in place, she went back in the water and just floated around for a while, dreamily relaxing in the brisk sunlight and cool water.

“Great Mother, you are gorgeous!” she heard Panec exclaim.

Awakened out of her dreamy stage, she stood up, surprised, and then smiled. “Are you going to join me?” she asked, teasingly.

“I wasn’t planning on it, but seeing you…Amara, you are so beautiful!” He smiled lovingly at his future mate and pulled off his clothes. She giggled when she saw just how beautiful he thought she was. He waded into the water and she greeted him halfway. The contrast of his warm, sweaty body to her cool skin sent shivers through her. She kissed him fervently, and then took his hand, leading him into the water. He followed her lead, then glanced back at the shore. He motioned for her to wait when he saw the soaproot, and he quickly retrieved it, lathering himself up on the way back. He squatted in the water to rinse his body off, and he shivered with excitement when he felt her approach him from behind and start working the foam through his hair. He felt her bare front against his bare back and smiled.

He was completely unprepared for the dunking she gave him as soon as she finished soaping his hair. He came up sputtering. “You!” he cried. She screamed in playfulness and ran, with Panec close on her heels. Splashing through the water, he caught up with her in a matter of moments. He grabbed her arm and spun her around, wrapping his arms around her at the same time. The quick movement unbalanced her, and they both toppled into the water, laughing as they did so.

When the moment passed, he gazed at her beauty. Her hair had been tied up off of her neck somehow with a thong, and she was sitting in water deep enough to reach her shoulders, but clear enough for him to see her nakedness. He knelt down in front of her, and then squatted. He reached out his hand and tenderly he traced her cheek with his finger. He cupped her chin in his hand and he reached down and kissed her cheek. She shivered with excitement. He situated himself in front of her, and leaned over, kissing her neck with searing kisses. She sighed contentedly and looked up at the sky. She felt his arms reach around her as he pulled her to him. One of his hands reached around in front of her, and she moaned in response to his touch on her breast. She was delighted in her response; they had shared Pleasures often, but every once in a while, it was extra special. She felt this would be one of the times. She forced herself to move out of his grasp, and she slid deeper into the water.

Panec frowned, but she smiled at him and took his hand. He followed her over to a place in the river that was more secluded, where the slope was slightly steeper, and trees surrounded them. He kissed her hand and then led her in turn toward the shore. She was prepared to get completely out of the water, and so it surprised her when he tugged on her hand when she was still in water midway up her calves. She grinned at him and he wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace, kissing her fiercely. He explored her mouth with his tongue, and his hand reached down to caress her body. Gently, he pushed her down to the ground, placed so that her head was out of the water, but the rest of her body was mostly submerged. He inched down her body and kissed her everywhere he could. He could feel her goosebumps under the water, and he smiled. He blew tenderly on her breastbone, which was just barely under the surface. She moaned in response, and reached for him. He kissed her again, tenderly at first, then more and more. She wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted her hips to him. He reached down with his free hand and gently spread her legs apart. In the next instant, she felt as if she were back at her First Rites, so much a part of him. She wanted him so badly, and the feeling as he completed her was complete ecstasy. They both felt the pressure rising as they called out each other’s names in harmony. In a flash, they reached their peak, and she grabbed onto his back, digging her fingernails in as she cried out again. He relaxed on top of her, barely conscious, loving her more than he could ever imagine.

Amara awoke to some discomfort under her head. It took her a moment to realize where she was, and she smiled delightedly when she realized that they must have fallen asleep after their Pleasures. She shivered underneath him and sighed, remembering how wonderful it had been. She loved him so much, and she couldn’t believe how happy she was with him. She closed her eyes, wanting to doze off again, but the discomfort underneath her head was getting stronger. She managed to pull her arm out from between them and she reached underneath her. Most of the river bank was sand, but she rolled her eyes sarcastically when she realized that, of course, she would find the only rock on the beach. She tossed it into the river and relaxed again.

Her movements stirred the man lying on top of her. He blinked and grinned at the sight. His head was resting on her chest, between her breasts. He grinned again and slowly pushed himself up, kissing the one that filled his sight. His grin changed to a loving smile when he saw that she, too, was awake. Her eyes conveyed nothing but her immense feelings for him, and her happiness for the two of them. He kissed her gently, then rolled over. He put his arms underneath him so that both of his hands were under his head. He turned and grinned at Amara. “We need to do that again sometime,” he commented.

She nodded. “Yes, we do,” she said, smiling in return. She leaned up into a sitting position, and then frowned when she realized how much sand was in her hair. “Well, so much for washing it earlier,” she said. She untied the thong and shook out her hair.

He gasped as the sun moved just enough so that a bright ray fell directly on her. Seeing her, shaking her hair out, completely naked and absolutely gorgeous, he wanted her again. “Amara,” he choked. “Why don’t we go to bed early tonight?”

She glanced at him and smiled. She flipped over and laid down on top of him, her forearms resting in the sand. She kissed him eagerly, and then traced down to his ear. He shivered as she blew gently. “I think we should,” she whispered. She smiled, then stood up. “But first, I’m going to wash my hair again.” He smiled as she waded into the water and headed back to the beach where they had first gotten in.

He stood up, stretched, still tingling from her kiss and her promise, and dove into the water. He followed her back, and as he did, he suddenly became conscious of the voices. He hadn’t heard them before…or had he? Perhaps he was too in love to hear them.

“Well, where have you two been?” Latie demanded when she saw Amara swim back.

Amara grinned at her and winked. “Sleeping,” she said.

Latie laughed. “Of course! And that’s why Panec has scratches on his back…”

Panec blushed deeply and stuck out his tongue at Latie. Latie in response laughed and splashed him playfully.

Amara still was not used to the idea of everyone swimming together, especially when most of them were completely unclothed, but it was growing on her. As long as she stayed underwater, she was more comfortable. Of course, she didn’t mind when Panec was close, but the thought of ‘group skinny-dipping’ as she had always thought of it still didn’t set well with her.

Callie’s blessing was becoming increasingly apparent. When she had discovered she was pregnant, she had been so for a little over two moon. Since then, two and a half moons had passed, and into the second trimester, her abdomen was showing its little gift. Amara smiled and felt her own stomach. She wanted a baby, badly, but she knew she shouldn’t have one any time soon. Plus, sixteen was young for girls back home, and no matter where in time she was, her body was still born in the Twentieth Century, and she didn’t want to push it just yet. Callie couldn’t have been too much older than she; perhaps close to twenty or so by Amara’s standards, but she knew Callie was in her mid-20s. Amara would have guessed Healie’s age to be in her sixties, but here, she was in her mid to late 30s. The fleeting fear of long outliving Panec brushed her mind again, but she pushed it away and decided to enjoy the ‘now’.

After plenty of splashing and dunking, they decided that it would be better to head on back. Amara washed her hair quickly, then rushed out of the water and put her clothes on, thankful that they were almost completely dry. Her nakedness still bothered her sometimes, but like the ‘skinny-dipping’, she was getting used to it. She rinsed off her feet and put on her shoes and started to head back, and then hesitated. Panec looked back at her. “Is anything wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, don’t worry, I just want to check something; I’ll catch up, you go on back.”

He nodded and turned back. She glanced around her, grinned and then ran quickly to where the meteor, now meteorite, had landed.

In the daylight, the concentrated area of devastation was more pronounced. The blast from impact had burnt out all the ground cover for at least a twenty-foot radius. She looked around and shook her head. Well, she thought, this would definitely have done it. If a meteor the size of the Bay of Campeche hit down near Mexico, that could have definitely wiped out the dinosaurs. If this little bitty softball-sized one could do this much…she trailed off, trying to do some quick math in her head. She knew that something had happened. Whatever it was, it was sudden; animals found frozen in deep Siberia still had green leaves in their mouths. Now what ever could have happened to freeze a mammoth so quickly that it couldn’t even swallow its food? She shook her head at the thought and reached down to pick up the meteorite. It was heavy, very heavy. She looked it over, closely, trying to figure out what the metal was, but to no avail. She hadn’t studied astronomy enough to tell. Part of her wanted to break it open, but another part of her wanted to leave it intact. She shook her head again and put the meteorite back in the small depression it had rested in, within the larger crater. She turned to leave, but then on impulse she grabbed it up again and ran back to the camp.

“Amara, we were getting worried,” Callie chided gently when she suddenly appeared.

“I’m sorry,” Amara replied, “but I wanted to go get this,” she said, presenting the meteorite.

Radec frowned. “Is that safe?” he asked.

Danug considered quickly, then volunteered, “Yes, I think it’s fine. In fact, we should probably take it with us. Jondalar spoke highly of the Zelandonia; perhaps one of them can help us determine its meaning,” he suggested, although he doubted it. Somehow he knew that whatever the secret was that this rock held, it would be determined long before they reached the Zelandonii.

“Danug, I know I can, but should I break it open?” Amara asked.

Danug cocked his head and thought. He felt no premonition approaching, and thus he felt it would be safe. “Let’s go ahead and do that,” he said.

Amara grinned happily. She scanned the camp quickly, and her eyes came to rest on a good-sized, very sturdy rock. She reached over and picked it up, slowly; it was pretty heavy, she realized. She put the meteorite down, adjusted the larger rock, knelt down, and brought it down with a loud crack.

She put the larger rock down and looked at the meteorite. She gasped at the beauty. It was almost like a geode; it had been hollow in the very center. Her aim had been true and she had broken it almost into two equal halves. She picked one of them up and adjusted it into the sunlight to get a better look.

Her eyes were drawn into the dark core of the meteorite. The sunlight danced around the shiny center, and she could have sworn she saw stars inside it. It reminded her vaguely of hematite, but it was darker, and more…she couldn’t think of a word to describe it. It was almost…alive. She shook her head and glanced up into the sky, pondering the universe. There was so much space out there. Where did this come from? From the asteroid belt? Probably, she thought, but who knew for sure? It could have come from the outer reaches of the galaxy, or even of the universe; a difficult thought for her. If the universe was everything, how could it have edges? She remembered one of her teachers talking about an open and closed universe; it all depended on the mass inside the universe. Since there was no way to measure the mass of dark matter, there really wasn’t any way to know. Wait, there was one more…was it critically closed? Was that the term? She closed her eyes and tried to think back to the astronomy sections of her earth science classes she’d had. Open and closed; one meant the universe would expand forever, and freeze, and the other meant the universe would contract, and eventually burn up. Or was it the other way around? The critically closed one…she couldn’t for the life of her remember that one. Whatever the critically closed mass was, that was the mass that scientists thought, in her time, that the universe actually was. What did that mean?

She was interrupted from her thoughts when Latie coughed. She shook her head and focused herself again. She put the meteorite down and smiled at Panec.

“What were you thinking?” he asked.

She sighed. “I was thinking about the universe,” she replied.

He frowned. “What’s the ‘universe’?”

Amara wrinkled her nose. “Well, it’s…it’s everything…out there,” she said, indicating with her hand. “Everything that’s not earth. Everything else.”

Danug cocked his head. It would be interesting to hear what she had to say about what was out there; he was certain that she would know more than they did. But until then, he thought, I’m getting hungry. “Why don’t we eat?” he suggested.

Lareno laughed. “Thinking of your stomach again, eh Danug?”

Danug grinned at the casual banter. “I think about my stomach as often as you think about Latie in those furs,” he teased.

Lareno shrugged and grinned at Latie. “Then you must be very hungry!”

“Amara, you and Panec need to start thinking about when you’d like to be joined,” Callie commented. The men were off gathering wood and doing their own things, while the women were sitting around a nice fire, sewing or mending or whatever tasks needed to be done.

Amara grinned. “Well, of course, as soon as possible, but don’t we have to wait until we return to the Mamutoi?” she asked.

Callie frowned. “I’m sure there’s a part of all of us that would like to see you two joined at a Mamutoi summer meeting, but we all knew when we started this journey that there is a very good chance that we might not return. Especially now that I’m blessed,” she added, rubbing her growing abdomen. “I would hate to be the reason that we didn’t return, but I know you and Panec will want to settle down, and I know that Latie and Lareno would want the same.” Latie didn’t look up, but she beamed and grinned widely at the comment. “We do need to start thinking about what we want to do in the future. I hope that we can get to the Zelandonii before the baby comes, but I can’t be sure. There’s still a long way to go.”

Amara thought for a minute, then glanced over at Latie. “What do you think, Latie?”

Latie looked up and furrowed her brow. “Well,” she said, and blushed slightly, “I want to have children, too. I would hate the thought of never seeing my mother and her mate again, or anyone else from the Lion Camp, or from the Mamutoi as a whole for that matter, but like Callie said, it’s taken us quite a while to get this far.” She looked down at her project and sighed. “I’m really not sure,” she admitted.

The women were quiet for a while as they worked on their things. Each was grateful in her own way for the silence, for it allowed them all to think about the conversation. Healie glanced around at the younger women and cleared her throat. “I have a feeling I won’t be going back,” she commented.

Callie smiled. “You think you’ll like the Zelandonii that much?” she asked. Healie smiled in return.

Latie and Amara glanced at each other, and then returned their attention to their tasks.

“Grab that tree there, Panec!” Radec called. “There’s still a lot of meat to be dried.”

Panec grinned and hefted the fallen tree onto his shoulder. He walked slowly and carefully to the cart, and then dropped the heavier end into it, allowing the top of the tree to drag on the ground. As soon as they had filled the cart with wood green enough to burn hot, but not so green that it wouldn’t burn at all, Radec and Panec each took a strip of strong leather attached to the front of the cart. These strips of leather had been attached in loops, so that whoever was pulling it could put the looped end around their head, on their forehead, so that they could pull the cart. The angle that the two men would make with the ground and with the cart had been idealized so that the men pulling would have to exert as little force as possible. Radec and Danug had figured it out by just measuring with their eyes; Amara had been able to solve for the angle, using an estimate of the weight that would be carried in the cart and some simple physics. No one had been sure of what she was doing when she drew several symbols in the dirt with a stick, but somehow she had been able to tell them how long the strips of leather had to be.

Danug and Lareno each walked slightly behind the cart and on either side, to make sure the branches didn’t get caught in anything. Lareno glanced up at the two men pulling the cart and shook his head. “Danug, what did Amara do? How did she know how long to make those strips?” He had been completely amazed, and part of him was a little afraid of her. He knew there was no reason to be afraid, but he had never seen anyone make marks like that in the dirt.

“She called it ‘math’ and ‘physics’, whatever those are,” Danug said. “She tried to explain it to me, but I don’t think we have the words in our language that she would need. But I’ll tell you what she told me, if I can remember it all the way,” he said. He frowned as he tried to remember what she had said. “She started with what she called the ‘weight’ of the wood in the cart. Apparently that means how heavy the wood is. She figured out a number, I don’t know what that number meant, and she made marks about it in the dirt. I think I lost her after that; we’ll have to ask her again when we get back. I’ll be sure to have her explain everything.”

Lareno nodded, half apprehensive. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to hear the explanation. How in the world could someone put a number down to represent how heavy something was? He shook his head at the thought, and then they continued back to the camp in silence.

“You didn’t need to bring us an entire forest!” Callie exclaimed when they came into view. The women all jumped up to help unload the wood. It didn’t take them long to pile everything up so that it would be easily accessible, and as soon as they were done, they all plopped down, exhausted.

“Amara, could you explain what you did?” Danug asked.

“Huh?”

“Could you explain how you knew how long to make the strips.”

Amara blushed. “Oh, yeah, well, I’ll try, but I don’t know how to make all the words,” she said.

Danug nodded. “That’s okay, just tell us what you can.”

Amara sighed and reached for a twig. She smoothed out the dirt in front of her, all the while trying to figure out how to explain this. All she had wanted to do was help, to avoid having the men break their backs, but as usual, the introduction of her modern ideas just served to confuse everyone. “Okay, I started by estimating how heavy the wood is,” she began. “I looked at how big the cart was, and tried to picture in my mind how many trees and logs you would be able to fit in it.” She gestured toward Radec. “Think of how heavy Radec is. Where I come from, we call that ‘weight’. I guess that he ‘weighs’ about 200 pounds.”

“What’s a ‘pound’?” Latie interrupted.

Amara frowned. “A pound is about this much,” she said, picking up a rock. She passed it around. “I’m guessing that Radec is as heavy as 200 of those. But then I have to change ‘pounds’ to something else.” Oh, my, she thought; this is going to get complicated.

“Change?” Callie asked, curious.

“Well, you see, when you add things, that’s called ‘math’. For example, there are four women, and four men here; that makes eight people. That’s called ‘addition’. Do you see?” They all nodded; everyone had added before, they just hadn’t given the process a name. “Then there’s ‘subtraction’,” she continued. “There are eight people here, and four of them are men. That means that there are four women. Do you see that?” Again, nods. It was a simple concept to grasp. “When you do math, you have to use certain words. You can’t do regular math in pounds; you have to change it to something else. I have to change pounds to ‘kilograms’.”

“So, a kilogram is how heavy something is, too, but it’s a different heaviness?” Latie asked.

“Exactly!” Amara said, smiling. “A kilogram is slightly more heavy than a pound. So if something is 200 pounds, then that means it is about 90 kilograms.” She frowned. If someone had been explaining this to her for the first time, she’d be completely lost.

Danug nodded, captivated. “Yes, I see!” he cried, excited. At first it was difficult, since he didn’t have anything to see, but after visualizing it in his head, he could grasp the concepts.

“Okay,” Amara said, nodding. “Well, how many Radec’s could fit in that cart?” she asked.

They all glanced over at it and scrutinized it. “I would guess about five,” Panec said.

Amara nodded. “Okay, that’s pretty much what I had guessed. So if we had five Radec’s, how heavy would all of that be?” she asked.

Danug frowned. This was getting more complicated. “Well, if one Radec is 200 pounds, then five Radec’s would be five of that?” he asked.

Amara grinned. “Exactly! 200 pounds, five times! If you add all of that up, that’s about 1000 pounds.”

Latie shook her head. “Is that a number?” she asked. She had never heard ‘one thousand’ before.

Amara winced. “Yes, it’s the number in my language, because I don’t know what that would be in yours. But like I said, I can’t do math in pounds, I have to use kilograms; 1000 pounds is about 450 kilograms. Do you see?”

Latie shook her head, but Danug nodded, albeit slowly. “I think I do,” he said.

Amara nodded. “It’s very difficult to understand. I know all of this because I’ve been doing it all of my life.” She directed her attention to Danug, since he was the closest to understanding. “Okay, this is where it gets really complicated.” She sighed and looked up. “Have you ever climbed a tree?” she asked. Danug nodded. “Have you ever fallen from a tree?”

He shook his head. “But I have seen people fall,” he commented.

“Okay, well, do you know what makes them fall?” she asked.

“What do you mean, ‘what makes them fall’?”

“Do you know what makes them go down? Why don’t they go up?” He shook his head. “That’s called ‘gravity’. It pulls you down.”

Healie frowned and interjected, “But what about birds? Why don’t they fall? Does this ‘gravity’ only work for humans?”

Amara furrowed her brow. She didn’t think of it that way. As difficult as this was, there was no way that she’d be able to explain a lifting force to them. “Sort of,” she admitted. “That’s very difficult to understand. But I had to mention gravity because it’s important.” Healie nodded, not quite understanding, but not wanting to ask anything else and confuse herself even more. “Gravity pulls you down,” Amara continued. “So I have to account for that when I work the math.”

By now, she had completely lost everyone but Danug, who himself was struggling to understand. “Okay, you take gravity, I won’t ask why or how you do it, though,” he said.

Amara nodded. “Fair enough. So I end up with this number,” she said as she wrote ‘450’ and ‘9.8’ just below it. She multiplied quickly and wrote ‘4410’.

Now Danug was confused. “Amara, okay, I sort of see what you did, but not really. I know it would be very complicated to explain everything, so why don’t you just sort of explain your reasoning, rather than what exactly you did,” he suggested.

She sighed in relief. She had been afraid that she would have to teach multiplication to them, and she wasn’t sure if they could understand it. “Okay. Well, you see, the heavy wood makes the cart pull down on the ground even more. It’s the same thing you feel when you pick wood up; the cart would feel the same thing. Does that make sense?” He nodded and she continued, “So when you want the cart to move, it would be very difficult to pick it up, wouldn’t it?” More nods. “So you want to pull it to move it, not pick it up. The best way to pull it would be from the same level that the strips were attached. That would make you do less work to move it. But you can’t pull it like that unless you crawled, which wouldn’t work very well. Do you see?” He nodded again, understanding what she was meaning. “So, I had to figure out in numbers how tall Radec and Panec are, and then use math to figure out how long the strips should be so that they do the least amount of work.”

Danug frowned for a moment, but then the bulb went on in his mind. “I see! I think I see what you mean, Amara!” he exclaimed.

She grinned. “Good! So that’s what I did,” she said.

Callie shook her head. “Amara, I don’t know how your people know all of these things, but it’s simply amazing,” she said.

A knowing glance passed between Danug and Amara. He knew how her people knew; they had thousands and thousands of years to figure out what Amara had just tried to explain in the span of a few minutes. He winked at her and smiled. “Well, I’m hungry,” he said, standing up and stretching.”

“Me, too,” Lareno added. He had understood most of what Amara had said, and although it was strange, it hadn’t been frightening. He was slightly more comfortable around her now, especially since he knew that everyone where she came from knew this kind of stuff; it wasn’t just her.

Gladly, Amara smoothed out the numbers she had made in the dirt. She shook her head sadly. She had to be pragmatic about these things; she doubted there would ever be anyone here who could ever completely understand her. She shook her head again, and then a cool breeze whipped by, raising the gooseflesh on her arms. She looked up to the sky and grinned. Well, perhaps there is someone after all, she thought.

Amara had stayed awake well into the night, thinking about the things she had spoken about that day. Panec had been worried, and had himself woken up intermittently through the night, only to find that she was still awake. He was relieved when the sun peeked over the horizon to find his beautiful woman fast asleep. He thought it best not to wake her, and he quietly slipped out of their furs and into the morning sunlight.

“Good morning!” Callie called from the small fire. It looked as if she was warming something up, but he couldn’t be sure. “Are you hungry?” she asked.

He grinned. “I’m famished!” he replied. “What do we have today?”

Callie held out a pelvic bone full of small round cakes. “I took what was left from dinner last night and boiled it. Radec found some lovely little dewberries this morning when he went to pass his water; he ran right in to the thorns!” she chuckled at the thought. “So he brought me some of them. I figured that since we had them, that I could make some of those little cakes Latie is always talking about. I gathered some of the grain in the field over there, pounded it, then mixed it with the leftovers from last night. I mixed that up really well, then spooned little bits onto hot rocks to bake. Then I mashed some of the dewberries up into a nice juicy pulp, added some honey, and spread that on top of the cakes.” She held one out to him. “Here, try one.”

He took it from her and bit into it. He was amazed! It crumbled in his mouth, and the taste was phenomenal. The dewberries added just enough bitterness to be almost tangy, and the honey helped to sweeten it. “How many did you make?”

She pointed over to a large flat rock where she had put them all, still warm. He smiled mischievously and reached for more. She leaned over and smacked his hand playfully with a stick. “Now don’t eat too many! Save some for Latie and Amara!”

He smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said as he grabbed three of the cakes, “I’ll leave a few.” He walked toward the small river, munching on the cakes. Callie chuckled to herself as she watched him go.

As he did, Latie ducked out of the small tent she shared with Lareno. “Where is everyone?” she asked sleepily.

Callie turned and smiled at her. “I think the guys are all down at the river. Healie went to go gather some herbs or something, and Amara is still asleep.”

Latie nodded, yawning, and made her way over to the brush to pass her water. As she did, she stumbled over the basket of dewberries that Radec had gathered. She gasped, “Blackberries!”

“No, dewberries,” Callie corrected. Latie shrugged the correction off and grabbed a handful of the berries. She ate them and grinned with a very satisfied look on her face. Callie laughed and shook her head. “I’ve never seen someone like those berries so much,” she commented.

Latie laughed. “Then you need to meet Ayla! Wow, did she have a weakness for berries!” She smiled at the memory and continued to the brush to pass her water. When she was finished, she walked back over and sat down by Callie. Noticing the cakes, she reached for one and savored it. “Wow, these are wonderful, Callie!”

Callie beamed with the praise. “I’m glad you like them! Since Radec found the berries, and I had some time, and there was some grain nearby, I thought I’d try to make them. I think it worked pretty well, considering this was my first time to make them.”

Latie nodded. “You did! They’re amazing!” She grinned and chewed slowly, then swallowed with satisfaction. She grabbed a couple more then stood. “I’m going to go look for things to decorate Amara’s tunic with,” she said.

Callie nodded. She and Healie had been working as hard as they could to make a beautiful matrimonial tunic for Amara. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the supplies here that they would have had at home, so they were both disappointed that the tunic wouldn’t be as beautiful as they knew they could have made it. Healie had done most of the sewing, while Callie had spent most of her time dyeing it. She had tried to make a rainbow of colors, and had succeeded in making some sort of lavender color from some small purple flowers she had found. Red was rather easy, and yellow was fairly simple as well. As much as Amara liked nature, Callie was working on trying to make a green and a blue, but so far she had been unsuccessful. Most of the tunic would be a pale yellow color, like the sun, but the sleeves would be different, as well as the decorations. But so far, they had nothing to decorate with. They had mentioned to Latie yesterday their problem, and she had promised to go looking for things. Small shells could be used for decorations, as well as several other things. The problem would be finding them.

Latie skipped down to the river, where all they men were enjoying an early morning swim. She laughed at their playfulness toward each other, and then she started searching up and down the beach for any kind of shell or unique rocks. A few small mollusk shells were all she could find, and soon the sun started beating down on her. She sat down on the beach and watched the men. She smiled gently when Lareno looked at her, and he returned her smile. She glanced over at Danug, and then something started to nip at her mind. She suddenly remembered seeing Ayla’s matrimonial tunic, with the amber beads on it. That something kept nagging, and she frowned, trying to put her finger on what she was trying to think of. She ran her fingers through the sandy beach, and then vaguely remembered Amara saying that the lightning had made some sort of different material out of the sand. Suddenly, it hit her. “Danug!” she called.

His head popped up. “What?” She gestured for him to come to her, and he reluctantly made his way through the water. “What do you need?” he asked.

“Danug,” she said, excited, “do you think we could use some of that, oh, what did you call it…um…the, oh, yeah, the glass…do you think we could use small pieces of it to decorate Amara’s matrimonial tunic?”

He frowned, thinking. Some of the edges were sharp, but if was made of sand, couldn’t they smooth the edges with sand? They could make some small pieces, and perhaps Radec could bore holes in them using some of his tools. He grinned at his sister. “Latie, that might just work!” he said.

She jumped up, excited, and hugged him. “Great! I can’t wait to go tell Callie and Healie!” she cried. He smiled at her as she raced back to the camp, so pleased with herself for thinking of the idea.

Latie plopped down heavily next to Callie and Healie who were kneeling secretively over something. "Ummhmmm," Latie said to get their attention without spoiling whatever it was they were fawning over.

"Latie!" Callie exclaimed with surprise. She smiled warmly then and beakoned her to where they were kneeling. "Look at the tunic for Amara." She sighed with feigned exhaustion.

"It sure is beautiful…oh you'll never guess. I thought of the perfect thing for decorating it! You'll never guess it!" Latie exclaimed with girlish excitement. Lareno and Panec looked over with raised eyebrows from where they were butchering some of their recently killed meat.

Latie ducked to the ground with a flush, the tunic was sort of a surprise, at least for Amara and Panec. She whispered to Callie and Healie with her fervent grin, "Danug said we could use some of the…glass…we just need Radec to bore some holes in them, and sand off the sharp ends!!" She looked expectantly at the two older women for approval.

"Well that is a good idea, since there isn't much of anything else around here. Do you really think that Radec would be able to bore through it? It seemed awfully hard, much harder than bone or ivory, but with those "glass" beads on her tunic, it would increase her bride price. Latie, it is a wonderful idea!" Healie commented slowly but with a genuine smile. She wanted Amara to have the best chance possible, she came with nothing, but she knew in her heart that the knowlegde that Amara had in her mind was worth more than anything that could determine her bride price.

Callie nodded agreement and then hollered, "Radec!!! Come here for a moment, I have a question."

Radec rushed over from wherever he had been hiding and nearly skidded to a stop in front of the women, "At your service my mate," he grinned at her lovingly.

"Latie thought we could decorate Amara's tunic with the glass, seems fitting since Amara knew what it was, but do you think you could bore some holes in it? So we could sew it to the leather? I don't know how else to do it."

Radec looked at Latie and the women inquisitively, then shut his eyes, as if imagining something. "I think so…I'd have to see the piece though…I don't know how hard it would be. I could certainly try." He smiled warmly at his mate and Latie and Healie, "I knew you were up to something…"

"Now don't go spoil the surprise for Panec or Amara, keep your big mouth closed, you hear?" Callie admonished smiling warmly at her mate, and she instinctively rubbed her swelling abdomen and sighed. "Latie, why don't you get the glass for Radec."

Latie nodded quickly and jumped to her feet and raced off again to where Danug was. "That girl is so full of life, I'm so glad she recovered so well, and so quickly from her accident. It would have been a terrible loss if she hadn't…" Healie said quietly, she felt the ache in her bones more pronounced daily, and was quickly tiring. It felt good to rest and sit in the sun for a change. She shook her head barely perceptibly. "I'm getting too old, I remember when I was her age like it was yesterday…it wasn't that long ago was it?" she said wistfully.

Callie looked at Healie with concern, and then put an arm around her warmly, "Healie, don’t you worry, you are loved and cared for, we won't let any harm come to you, anything you need is yours. Latie is young and full of energy, but you are full of wisdom and experience and love, she has much to learn still."

Healie nodded and smiled, and held Callie's hand, she directed her gaze at her growing middle, "You must take care of yourself too, Callie, I hope I will be able to see the birth of your first child, that would make me so happy."

Callie sighed and nodded, she wasn't sure why Healie was so preocupied with her age, but it worried her. It was better when she was distracted doing things, "Let's get the finishing stitches on this, so we can move on to the decoration." Healie smiled and nodded.

Latie quickly came running back with a small pouch in her hands. She obediently placed it in Radec's hands "Here, Danug said to use as much as you'd like, only save him a big piece." She grinned again at the group and sat down again.
Radec pried the pouch open with a finger and poured some of the pieces into his hands; they sparkled in the sunlight like dewdrops. He nodded and brought one up to his eye between his fingers, "Yes…I think it could be done. I'll get right on it!" he said as he plopped the glass back into the pouch and walked back to his resting place.

Radec rummaged through his pack looking for his tool kit, and mumbled to himself as he did so,
Panec came up from the river and stopped when he reached Radec, "What are you looking for so fervently Radec? Can I lend you a hand?"

Radec looked up surprised, "No, oh no, Panec, I'm just fine, just looking for my tool kit. See here it is!" he said, holding up the pouch triumphantly.

"What are you up to? Lareno and I are heading down to wash and wondered if you'd care to join us," Panec said slyly, as if he knew that Radec was up to something.

Radec grinned at the young man, "You’re the ones who are all bloodied up, I'm fine thanks. I've got some work to start." He shooed him away with his palm as he hunkered down at the base of a trunk of the tree.

Panec shrugged, "Well, if you’re sure, you don't need any help? I just got some new blades from the Sharamudoi, if you need, you don't have to make your own."

Radec looked up briefly and then back down into the pouch, "No, no blade, boring. I've got to bore holes in that gl…oh, no, no help needed friend, go wash up…you smell like a dead bison!" he said taunting Panec in reaction to his near slip of the secret.

Panec looked at him strangely and then shook his head. "As you like it, Callie's up to something...and I think you are in on it. Hmpphhh," he mumbled as he wandered off.

Radec watched as the young man walked away. He certainly didn't want to spoil the surprise of a spectacular matrimonial tunic that Panec’s soon-to-be mate would astonish him with. He was sure that Amara would look absolutely stunning. She had looked awfully pretty in Latie's dress at her first rights, but this was going to be even more amazing...and somewhat more fitting, carrying pieces of the mysterious glass that Danug had discovered.

He drew out his boring tool and a small piece of the glass. He tried to fit them together, but the borer kept slipping. "Hmmm, this might be more difficult than I thought. Maybe..." he thought for a minute. He smiled broadly to himself and then set the materials down, ran down to the river.

"So you decided to join us after all!" hollered Lareno when he spotted Radec.

"Actually no, just need some sand," he said quickly, gathering up a handful and then trotting back to his resting place.
He then placed a bit of sand between the borer point and the glass and found that sure enough it was starting to wear through.

He worked steadily for about an hour and finally bored through the small piece of glass. Beaming and pleased with himself he jogged over to where Callie and Healie were now cutting up some roots and tubers.

"Look! I think I did it!" he exclaimed as he held out the treasure.

Callie held out her hand and examined it critically. “That...looks...very nice. Do you think it will be too hard to do many more?"

Radec smiled and hopped, "For you my dear, nothing is too difficult. I'll have to work on it in secret so the others don't see, so it may take some time to get all that you want, but consider it DONE!” He chuckled and patted Callie's head affectionately.

"Well, good, don't let anyone see. We want it to be a surprise!" she whispered audibly. Just then they heard a squeal and peals of laughter. They all turned to see Panec holding Amara in his arms, dripping from head to toe.
Panec laughed and placed Amara back on her feet. " A little clumsy my love? What happened?"

Amara giggled again and began to squeeze the water from her hair, she began breathlessly, "I was running…to get some soaproot...and I...I tried to cross on the log,” she pointed to a wet and algae-covered log that looked precariously slick. "I slipped...and down I went!" she said with a flourish and a giggle.

"Well, sounds fun, but you should get changed love, night will be here soon, and you'll get cold."

"You're right...let's go," she said taking his hand and planting a kiss on his cheek, leading him away.

Callie looked at Radec and beamed, it was so nice to have young happy people around them. She winked at him and Healie knowingly as Panec and Amara walked into their tent.

Radec worked on the small beads late into the night. His largest problem was sanding down small pieces of the glass; quite a difficult task. He discovered quickly that the glass was sharp, but he had figured out a good way to avoid that. Using a scrap of hide to protect his fingers, he picked up the tiny fragments of glass and then ground them down into a pile of sand that he had put on a small plank. It was tedious, but it seemed to work well, and after spending the entire day on the project, he now had a small collection of the tiny beads. He wasn’t sure how many there were, and at this point he didn’t want to count them all. Tomorrow, he thought, I’ll bore the holes in them. I’m sure Callie and Healie will do a marvelous job on that tunic. He yawned and poured the beads into a leather pouch, and then placed them carefully beside his furs. Callie was already asleep, and he smiled softly down to her. He was so proud; after so many years, she had finally become blessed. A wave of fear washed over him when he thought of the distance they still had to travel. With Callie blessed, they would need to find someplace to winter. As he settled into his furs, he wondered if they would ever go home, back to the Mamutoi.

Amara awoke to a low rumble of thunder in the distance. Part of her wanted to curl back in fear after their last episode with thunder, but the rest of her wanted to enjoy it, as she had always done. She pushed back the furs and breathed in deep, then quickly threw on some clothes. The sky was overcast and it looked like it might rain, but it didn’t look stormy in the slightest. She sighed in relief when she realized that the low thunder had just been imbedded, and she skipped down to the river, smiling to herself. She took a quick dip and then lathered her hair with the soaproot that was sitting on the beach. She smiled to herself again, realizing that Latie must have gone after it after she fell off the log. She was so happy to have Latie around; she had never had a best friend like that at home. Jacob had been her best friend. She frowned as she thought of him. Thoughts of home hadn’t entered her mind for quite a while. She smiled gently as she thought of her brother, wondering what he was doing now. Did they miss her? Had her parents told Jacob everything that happened? When he was confused about something, he had always made the funniest face, and she could never help but laugh. That face popped into her head and she laughed aloud. He had been such a character!

She was brought out of her thoughts when a sprinkle fell on her face. She put her clothes back on and went back to the camp. Latie was up and she had managed to build a fire and warm leftovers from dinner the previous evening before it started to sprinkle. The two young women smiled at each other and Amara helped herself to a small plate of the food. She thought, and then added some more for Panec. This looked like it would be one of those days where everyone would most likely stay in their own tents. Well, she thought, I can get some more writing done, if I can get Panec interested in doing something else.

She ducked into her tent and noticed that Panec was just waking up. “Good morning!” she said, cheerily.

Panec grinned at her. “Good morning,” he returned. “My, that smells good. Did you happen to grab any extra for me?”

She smiled and nodded. “It’s starting to sprinkle outside, so I figured you’d appreciate having breakfast out of the rain.”

They shared the plate that Amara had brought in, and then Panec stood. “I’m going to get all the dishes from Callie. As long as it’s raining, maybe I can get some of them clean, and anything to help her is always good. Do you want to come?”

Amara shook her head and gestured over to her things. “I would, but there are a few things I want to finish up. I need to mend the rest of my clothes, and yours, plus some other odd jobs.” Panec nodded, kissed her quickly, and then opened the flap. It was still sprinkling, but not hard. Amara smiled in relief as she reached for the small box.

“My back is starting to kill me,” Radec commented as he bored the eighth bead. “This is tough work!”

Callie smiled at her mate and reached over to massage his shoulders. He relaxed and moaned slightly. “How’s that?” she asked.

He smiled. “It’s wonderful, my mate; anything you do is wonderful.” They kissed and smiled at each other, and then Radec bent back down. His method of using a grain of sand to bore the hole was working well, although slowly, and he began to wonder if they could implement this process with anything else. They usually didn’t come across many naturally sharp objects like this, and he had never thought of sand to dull something. But if sand can dull something, he thought, can it sharpen things? Perhaps they could try using sand to help shape knives. He had heard of Wymez’s process with firing the blades, and knew how useful that had become. Wymez could probably do something with this, he thought; he was the best flint-knapper in the Mamutoi. That would be wonderful to show him! Oh, but we may never see him again. His thoughts dulled as he drilled into the tiny beads. His fingers were getting sore from holding them so tightly; it was obvious his hands were not made for small tasks. On an impulse, he put the bead down and went outside.

Radec ducked his head into Latie’s tent and found her working on some leggings. “Latie, would you like to help me with the beads?” he asked.

Latie looked at the leggings and shrugged. “Sure! Why not?” She had never really enjoyed sewing much, and this would give her a break. She followed Radec into his tent and sat down beside him. “Okay, what are you doing?” she asked.

“First, I pick up one of the beads, and put a single grain of sand on it,” he said, demonstrating. Latie nodded as she watched. “You have to be careful; these things are so small, they fall right out of your hand. Anyway, then I take the borer and just start twisting back and forth, trying to push the little grain of sand through the bead. It takes quite a while to do, but after you get the hang of it, it doesn’t seem so bad. My problem is that I really don’t have small enough hands to hold the beads very well, so I thought that maybe you could do some and see if you can do them better.”

Latie frowned and picked up one of the small pieces. Callie had a small fire burning at one end of the tent, and Latie looked through the glass to the fire. She couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. She grinned widely. “These are going to be so lovely on her,” she commented. She then inhaled and exhaled deeply and looked at Radec. “Okay, give me one of your borers, and we’ll see what we can do.”

He looked over his tools carefully and handed her one of his borers. His tools were all made for him, and of course different size borers would be appropriate for different jobs. However, he wanted the tips of the borers that they were using to be the same size, so he gave her one that was smaller and more manageable for her smaller hands, but that had the same size tip as the one he was using.

Latie placed a grain of sand on the small bead, which she held between her thumb and forefinger of her left hand. Watching the grain of sand to make sure it didn’t fall of, she picked up the borer and placed the end right on the grain. Carefully, she readjusted the bead in her hand so that she had a good grip, and then with proud determination she started the process.

By the time the natural light faded, Radec and Latie had managed to bore holes in every single bead. Callie had helped a little, between doing the tasks that she needed to do, and even Danug had bored a few holes. Trying to count the number of beads, however, was a problem. Latie frowned, and then decided to pile the beads in little groups of ten. It only took a few seconds to separate them, and when she was finished, she counted five piles of ten, with four extra beads. She shook her head; she didn’t know the number, but she knew it was a lot.

Callie came over and sat down, admiring the work. “You two did a fantastic job!” she exclaimed. Latie and Radec beamed at each other. “Wow, there are so many of them! I think these will work well!”

“Some of them kind of look like they’re different colors,” Latie commented. She picked a couple of them up. “This one doesn’t have any color,” she said, putting it aside. She fingered through the groups, trying to find all the ones that looked clear. After she had done that, she picked up one with a different shade. “This one looks kind of brownish; like sand.” She piled all of those up together. Then she made a pile of grayish beads, and another smaller pile of beads that had the tinting of the sky in them. There were even a couple that were a pale greenish-yellow shade. Latie smiled to herself when she saw the piles, but then frowned. “You know, now that they’re round and smooth, they’re not as sparkly. Do you suppose that there’s anything we could do to make them sparkle more?” she asked.

Radec furrowed his brow, thinking. He grinned at her, then teased, “You should have asked me before I made them all round.” They laughed, and then he started thinking. “Well, I suppose you could do kind of what I did; you could take the sand and flatten out some parts of them; maybe they would shine more that way,” he suggested.

Latie thought, then grinned. “That would probably work!” She stood up and stretched fully, then yawned. “But I think we can try that tomorrow. It’s getting a little late.” Radec and Callie nodded in agreement. “When are we going to need to leave?” she asked.

“We need to ask Panec and Lareno how the meat is doing; I put them in charge of it today since I’ve been in here. As soon as it’s finished drying, hopefully by the day after tomorrow, then we’ll leave,” Radec answered. Latie nodded, said goodnight, and then headed for her own tent, satisfied at the progress they had made.

Amara had taken breaks from writing only to eat and pass her water. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to write, but she had decided not to write much about her life at home; she figured that they would know as much about that as they had wanted to. She focused on how she got here, and then her life with the Mamutoi. Half-heartedly she wondered how much stock the modern scientists would put into this; how would they know that this was all the truth? How would they know exactly when and where she had been? She sighed in frustration and then decided to stop thinking about the ‘what if’s.’ Just write; that’s all she had to do.

She had written up to the first hunt she had been on when she heard Panec say goodnight to Danug and Lareno. She quickly rolled up her novel and put it and the pen back in the small box. Panec came in just as she was putting the box back in her pack. “Did you get the things done that you needed to do?” he asked.

She shrugged and nodded. “Most of it, I think, but there’s still a lot left that I have to take care of.” It was the truth; she still had a lot to write, and the mending to do. “But I’m getting pretty tired now. I want to go walk around a little and stretch my legs some – I’ve been sitting in here all day long – and then I’ll come back and we can go to bed.”

Panec nodded and wrapped his arms around her. “I love you Amara,” he whispered as he kissed her ear.

She smiled and hugged him tightly. “I love you, Panec,” she said, returning the kiss. She smiled at him and then went outside. It was still cloudy, and it had rained intermittently through the day, but now it was just some light drizzle. She passed her water and then stretched. There were still a few coals in the fire from when Healie had made their dinner, and Amara warmed her hands over them. As she stared into the coals, she almost let herself fall into her thoughts, but she thought better of that. She sighed and made a note to herself to not try that any more; it seemed every time she did, something strange happened. She stood up as a breeze went through, and she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “Something very bad is going to happen soon…” she thought. What did Danug mean by that? What was going to happen? She shook her head and went back to her tent, where Panec was already asleep in the furs. She smiled, undressed, and crawled in beside him, snuggling up to his back. She kissed his shoulder, put her arm around him, and then quickly fell asleep.

“How would you feel if we leave tomorrow?” Radec asked as they all gathered for breakfast.

“I don’t mind; the meat is finished, and we’ve taken care of all the things that needed to be fixed,” Callie offered.

Panec shrugged. “It’s okay with me.”

Latie eyed Radec closely. “Are we finished with…well, with what we were doing yesterday?” she asked.

“For the most part, yes,” Radec replied. His eyes twinkled with the secret. “We’ll be making more stops along the way, I’m sure, but for now, since everything is done here, we might as well put it aside.”

“Put what aside?” Amara asked.

“Nothing,” Latie commented, smiling, but trying to avoid letting Amara know that they were doing something for her; hence the reason why they weren’t talking about it openly.

“It’s settled then,” he said. “We’ll pack everything up today that we can, and we’ll head on tomorrow.”

The rest of the breakfast was eaten in silence, each person lost in his or her own thoughts.

“Is that everything?” Danug asked as they put the last pack in the cart.

“I think so,” Latie said, rubbing Jolie down. She talked to the horse quietly, then rested her head on the horse’s neck.

“Then I think we can leave,” Panec said.

They were all eager to be on their way. The short break had given them a much-needed rest, but as always, Radec was worried about how long it would be before Callie gave birth. She needed the breaks; she also needed people around when she gave birth. He knew that Jondalar had talked about people on this side of the glacier he said he and Ayla would have to cross; perhaps they could stay with them for a while. Radec doubted that they could make it all the way to the Zelandonii before Callie’s time; it all depended on how well things went along the way. He did not want to travel with an infant, but he also didn’t want to winter with people that he really didn’t know. Could they get to Jondalar’s home before the baby arrived?

They traveled steadily in exceptional weather for the next few days. They stopped only when necessary, and they were all pleased at the good time they were making. They were joyous when they noticed that the river was changing direction again; they were now going to begin following the Mother west instead of north. They were also in more mountainous terrain now; they had left the cold, isolated steppes between the mountains of the Sharamudoi and these. From what Jondalar had said, the mountains to the south of the river were quite large, and so it was best to stay on the north side as much as possible.

Soon, Amara realized, they would be reaching the place that would someday be Vienna. She wasn’t sure exactly where it was, but from what she remembered, Vienna was roughly a third of the way from the bend they just passed to the head of the river. Part of her wished she could see a map; GPS software would be wonderful now, she thought wryly to herself. She shrugged, realizing that there was no way for her to know for sure exactly where Vienna would one day be. But what if…what if…was there a chance that she could look for that cave? Would she find it? And if she did find it, what was on the other side? Would she be in modern-day Hungary if she tried it? She shook her head violently. Of course not; I can’t even think of such things. This is where I belong, with Panec, with Radec and Callie and Latie, not there. A tear tried to fall, but she glanced over at Panec, remembering how much she loved him, and the tear remained in her eye. She looked around at the others. Radec and Callie were so wonderful. Latie and Danug and Lareno were like brothers, and a sister she never had. She was grateful for how kind they were, how open and loving they were. Faintly she wondered if Lareno ever missed his home. Undoubtedly he did, but how much? She knew how he and Latie looked at each other, and realized that his place with Latie was like hers with Panec; they belonged together, and it didn’t matter where it had to be, as long as they were together, that was what was important.

As if her mood was reflected in nature, the clouds above them began to let out their feelings, as well. She smiled when the light sprinkles hit her face, but she hoped that this was as intense as the rain would get. They continued on, in nothing but sprinkles, and Amara thinking about how much she loved Panec.

She was brought out of her thoughts when she heard Radec shout. “Whoa!” he called out, stopping.

“What is it?” Danug yelled, jogging up to where Radec was at the front of the group.

“Be careful here,” Radec replied. “It’s nothing serious, but the mud is awfully slippery; I almost fell myself. Just be cautious as you walk through here,” he cautioned. The mud looked almost like it was a stream bed, but the sprinkles that had lasted for several hours now had slickened it. It was wide enough to cause a problem, about as wide as Radec was tall, but not deep enough to get caught in. It sloped downward enough to cause a problem, however, until it ended in the near distance in a small pond. At the other end of the pond was an outlet, with water running slowly out of it, creating yet another stream of mud.

Radec gingerly stepped through the mud, holding Callie to make sure she didn’t slip. They made it across easily enough, and Latie and Lareno followed, each leading a horse. They were afraid that the cart might get stuck, but once again, the cart proved its worth and rolled right across the mud bed. Healie and Danug went across next, while Panec and Amara were to cross last.

“Here, Healie, hold my hand,” Danug said, extending his arm to her.

She smiled gratefully and reached for him. His hand steadied her and allowed her to cross the muddy bed without mishap.

Panec and Amara followed gingerly. With mud on everyone’s feet and legs, Radec suggested that they stop for the night down near the little pond so that they could clean. It didn’t take them long to wash the muddy clothing, and after a quick dinner, the tired party of travelers was soon fast asleep.

Amara woke up nauseous, and noticed that Panec was already awake. Her head spun when she sat up. Quickly she laid back down, swallowing hard. Within a few moments, she had dozed back off again.

The sound of laughter and splashing water woke her up again, with sunlight was streaming into the tent. She sat up cautiously, hoping that the wave of nausea wouldn’t return. She was thankful that her head was clear this time, and she got up. Quickly she dressed and ducked out of the tent. Latie and Lareno were swimming in the small pond, laughing and splashing at Danug who was lying, clean and previously dry, on the small beach. Amara grinned at the scene and then walked over to where Callie and Healie were sitting next to the small fire. “Good morning,” she said.

The women both looked up and smiled. “Good morning,” Callie replied cheerfully. She picked up a plate that had been sitting by the fire and extended it to Amara. “Would you like some breakfast?”

Amara thought quickly, trying decide whether she wanted to chance food. But it smelled good, and she couldn’t resist the hunger pangs in her stomach. She smiled and nodded, and reached out for the plate. She sat down beside the two older women and started eating her breakfast. “Callie, what are you going to name your baby?”

“Well, I don’t know yet if it’s going to be a boy or a girl,” she replied.

“Yes, I know, but at home people usually pick out two names, a boy name and a girl name, that way they’re prepared when the baby arrives. I was just curious to see if you had done that.”

Callie cocked her head and thought for a moment. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. Let’s see, I’m positive that this baby is of Radec’s spirit, and I would like to name him or her after the man of his or her hearth, if I can. But I’m not sure what kind of name I would prefer.” She frowned in her thoughts. “What do you think?”

“Me?” Amara asked. She shook her head, “No, I’m no good at naming children, especially children here. I could come up with several names from home, but I’m not sure about names that would fit from your family.”

Callie was intrigued. “What kind of names do you have where you come from? Is Amara a common name?”

Amara shook her head again. “No, not at all. Common names are, for example, ‘Jennifer’, or ‘Mary’, or ‘Samantha’, ‘Melissa’, ‘Katie’, oh, there are lots of them.”

“That’s a pretty name, ‘Katie’,” Healie commented. “It almost sounds Mamutoi. What other names do you have that sound like that?”

Amara frowned. “Well, I suppose, names with that sound, or that ending sound…let me think…ends in ‘i-e’…” she bit her tongue and furrowed her brow. “Well, ‘Amie’ would work, or ‘Angie’, or ‘Randie’, or ‘Sandie’, or ‘Cindie’, ‘Lizzie’, ‘Lindie’, ‘Carrie’, ‘Mindie’, there are lots of them, if I thought enough, I could come up with several, several names.”

“Those are pretty,” Callie commented. “That would be neat for a girl to have such a foreign-sounding name. What about boy names?”

Amara thought again…boys were harder. Radec ended in ‘e-c’, Danug in ‘u-g’, she had heard of Talut, probably a ‘u-t’, and she was sure there were others. “Well, ‘Frederic’ might work, but that’s a pretty long name. I can’t really think of any other male names right now, but if you want, I’ll try to remember to think about them some more,” she offered.

Callie nodded. “Sure, that would be wonderful.” She was quiet for a moment, and then asked, “Amara, didn’t you say you had a brother?”

Amara frowned at the memory of him. “Yes, Jacob was his name.”

“I thought so,” Callie said. “I sort of remembered that name; it’s a very nice one.”

“It is; I’ve always liked it myself,” Amara commented.

“Amara, honey, you can think about this as much as you would like, but…would you mind if I considered ‘Jacob’ as a name for my child, if it’s a boy?” Callie asked timidly.

Amara’s eyes glistened. “Oh, Callie, no, I wouldn’t mind at all! That would be so wonderful…to have a memory of my brother…he was a wonderful, wonderful person.” She smiled at the older woman, and then blanched as another wave of nausea overcame her.

“Amara, are you all right?” Healie asked, concerned.

Amara nodded and swallowed. “Yes, I’m fine, just a little nauseous,” she admitted.

“Nauseous?” Healie asked. She leaned forward and felt Amara’s forehead. “Do you feel sick?”

Amara shook her head. “No, not really…I felt like this a little this morning, but nothing before that, and this is only the second time.”

Healie and Callie glanced at each other. “Amara, just out of curiosity…you have been drinking that tea every morning, right?” Healie asked. Amara nodded. “When was your last moon time?”

Amara’s eyes opened wide. “Healie, you don’t think…” she hesitated and then brought her hand up to cover her mouth.

“I don’t know, honey…now when was your last moon time?”

“Um, I’m not sure,” Amara thought for a second. “My last one ended about a cycle ago, so I haven’t missed one.”

“Well, just keep an eye on it…we’ll know in a week or so, right? Are your moon times fairly regular?”

“Oh, yes, that’s always been something great for me; every single time, it’s 27 to 28 days, exactly.”

“You count the days?” Callie asked. “That’s a lot of counting.”

Amara nodded. “Yeah, that’s what young women are taught to do where I come from, to count the days from the beginning of one moon time to the beginning of another.” She frowned for a second and counted with her fingers. She gasped when she had the total. “Oh, my, I can’t believe I haven’t been keeping track of this…it’s been 32 days!” she exclaimed.

“Well, if you’re always 27 days, that puts you five days off,” Healie said with a smile. “Why don’t the three of us go into my tent and examine you?” she suggested.

Amara nodded faintly, in complete shock. She couldn’t believe it! Could it be possible? So much for that tea, she thought sarcastically. Part of her was more excited than she had ever been before, but another part of her knew the risks, especially with her age and the travel. She followed the two women into Healie’s tent.

“Here, take off your leggings and lie down on my furs,” Healie instructed. Amara nodded and did as she was told. Healie ran her hands over Amara’s abdomen, pushing lightly here and there. “Does that hurt?” she asked. Amara shook her head. Healie then squeezed Amara’s breasts slightly, and Amara jumped. “Did that hurt? Are you tender there?”

“Yeah, a little,” Amara admitted. “Is that a good thing?”

“Well, it tells me that it’s very likely that you are blessed, Amara.”

Amara smiled slightly to herself and sat up, and then gasped as the realization hit her. “Blessed,” she whispered. She stared at the two older women. “But I can’t be! I’ve been drinking the tea, and now isn’t a good time to get pregnant!”

“Amara, honey, it’s okay,” Healie said, stroking her hand. “You can’t prevent these things all the time, and it’s a wonderful, wonderful experience. We’ll work it out,” she promised.

“But I’m too young!” Amara protested.

“No, you’re not,” Callie returned. “You’re 16, aren’t you? That’s usually when a woman has a first child, sometimes even a second by then.”

Amara shook her head. “No, at home, 16 is too young, usually, it’s not safe.”

Callie shook her head and shushed the panicking young woman. “Amara, you’ll be fine. You’re strong, you’re resilient, and I don’t think you’ll have any problems. No more than I would, anyway. The hardest part will be travelling.”

Amara shook her head again. “Two of us! Pregnant at the same time! Two babies to take care of; one will be hard enough.” She had tears in her eyes as she spoke; pregnancy had been the farthest thing from her mind, and she had been confident that it wouldn’t be an issue. As much as she loved Panec, she now regretted the time they had spent together.

“We’ll be fine, Amara, please don’t worry,” Healie reassured. “Just think…you’re blessed…in a few moons, you’ll have your own tiny baby, a little life that came from you. It’s such a wonderful feeling…just remember that, remember the end product, remember how wonderful babies are, and how much you’ll love your child…remember that, and I promise everything will work out just fine.”

Amara sniffled the last of her tears away and considered what Healie had said. Had she been home and this had happened, she didn’t know what she would have done. The options available were plenty; but she knew she wouldn’t have gotten into this situation. Or would she have? She shook her head. There was nothing she could or would do about it; she was pregnant, a little life that sprang forth because she and Panec loved each other. She smiled gently, thinking of how much seeing her child would remind her of how much she loved Panec. She calmed somewhat and breathed deep. She smiled again, and remarked, “So this is what it’s all about.”

Healie nodded. “Yes, Amara, and it’s the most beautiful thing a woman can go through.” Amara smiled again. “Now, will you be all right?”

Amara nodded. “Yes, I think so…I…I just have to get used to the idea.” She shrugged slightly, “And who knows? I may not even be pregnant. I may be just simply late.”

Healie nodded. “I doubt it, but there is the possibility.”

Amara smiled again. “You know, it’s funny,” she gave a small laugh, “now that we’ve talked about it, I want to be pregnant; I don’t want to be just late.”

The two older women smiled and nodded. “It’s a wonderful feeling. Pregnancy is hard, and painful at times, but with a loving mate, and enough help, you’ll soon forget about the difficult parts,” Healie prophesized.

“Do you want to tell everyone now, or do you want to wait a while? Until we’re positive?” Callie asked.

“We should probably wait. I might tell Panec; after all, it’s his child too.”

“His child?” Healie asked. “You mean probably a child of his spirit.”

“Oh, yes, yes, his spirit, sure,” Amara said. She stood and put her leggings back on. “I’ll tell him tonight.”

Amara was almost shaking with delight, hardly able to wait for Panec to end the evening and join her in their furs. After a lot of thought, she had accepted the idea of a pregnancy, completely, and now she was ecstatic about the idea. She giggled to herself intermittently and couldn’t have been still if her life depended on it. Every set of footsteps that walked by outside she hoped to be his.

She had gone off into a daze thinking about having her own child when the tent flap was finally pushed out of the way and Panec ducked in. He quickly undressed and was about to slip into the furs when he noticed a strange look on her face. “Amara, are you okay?” he asked, somewhat concerned.

“Yes, I’m quite okay,” she replied, then smiled lovingly at him.

“Then why do you have that strange look on your face?” he asked, unable to avoid her grin.

“Because I have something absolutely wonderful to tell you,” she said, stretching her arms out to him.

He crawled in the furs beside her and slid one arm underneath her neck. He kissed her gently and caressed her face with his index finger. “What do you have to tell me?” he asked.

She smiled at him, took his hand that was stroking her face, and moved it down to her stomach. “Panec, I’ve been blessed,” she whispered.

He looked at her quickly, first in surprise, then in shock, and then in an emotion somewhat akin to amazement. “You’re…you’re…you’re blessed??” he asked, stuttering. She nodded and kissed his cheek. He rubbed his hand over her abdomen. He lied down and put his forearm over his forehead, breathing in deeply. He thought for a moment, and then grinned, bigger, he was sure, than he ever had before. He turned and looked at Amara, his beautiful mate, now blessed, bringing a child to their hearth already. “I love you so much!” he exclaimed happily. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face into her neck. He laughed gently, then squeezed her tightly as he started crying.

“Panec, what’s wrong?” Amara asked.

He looked up and grinned at her through his tears. “There’s nothing wrong…nothing at all, my wonderful, beautiful Amara!” His voice cracked with emotion. “I just can’t believe it…this is so wonderful! You’re so amazing, my love!”

Amara once again awoke with a wave of nausea. She jumped up and managed to get outside the tent and to a bush before she lost the last bit of dinner from the night before. She walked to the pond and rinsed her face, noticing that the sun had not yet risen. She jumped and spun when she felt a hand on her back. “Oh, Panec, I’m sorry, you scared me.”

He shook his head, “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. Are you all right?” he asked, concerned. “Do you need anything?”

She shook her head. “Yes, I’m fine, just the morning sickness, and no, I don’t think I need anything. I just wanted to rinse my mouth out and go back to bed.”

He nodded and stroked her back as she rinsed again, then stood. They walked back to their tent and crawled back into their furs. She nestled in beside him, her back to his front, and she sighed in pleasure as she felt his hands gently rubbing her back. She dozed off again before long, completely relaxed, and completely in love.

It was difficult to get started the next morning; after the day of rest, Radec was anxious to be on the way again, and wasn’t quite sure why Amara was taking so long. He had his ideas, and he was sure that Healie and Callie knew something, but of course, for some reason, they weren’t sharing the information. He did his best to not get irritated, constantly reminding himself that sometimes women needed a little extra time…especially if his assumption was correct. Plus, the strange grin that had plastered itself on Panec’s face helped Radec to guess the reason for Amara’s less energetic personality that morning. He still had that grin himself.

The sun was almost to its zenith when they got started again. Amara felt awful; partly because of the nausea, partly because she had delayed their start that morning. She was positive now that she was pregnant; she was now at 33 days, and the morning sickness was hitting her full force. Plus, she felt different. Every once in a while, she felt a strange butterfly sensation in her stomach. It made her feel good that although she was miserable, there was a very good reason for it. Panec had been wonderful and was carrying most of her belongings so that she could take it easy, although “easy” wasn’t exactly the word for how she was feeling. She kept swallowing, hard, to avoid vomiting again, and after a couple of hours of walking, the nausea was beginning to dull.

Latie had her suspicions as well, but she was more convinced. Being a woman, she had been around several other women at the beginning of their pregnancies, and she was accustomed to the attitude shifts. She was just curious as to why Amara hadn’t said anything to anyone else. A fear kept crawling in the back of her mind that maybe something was wrong, and that was why Amara hadn’t said anything yet, but she pushed it out of the way and tried to be positive.

They traveled until the sun had almost set, and then Radec stopped the party near a small river to make camp for the night. They unpacked and set up their tents, while Healie and Latie prepared a small dinner. Amara was able to eat most of what was on her plate, and it tasted wonderful, but her stomach just wasn’t into it. She was also very tired; she said early good-nights and crawled into her furs. She was dying for a candy bar…or just one Hershey’s Kiss…that was all she needed. Some watermelon would have been wonderful, too. She frowned to herself and wrinkled her nose, thinking sarcastically about her cravings. Her mouth watered at the thought of chocolate, and she was afraid that she’d never be able to get to sleep, but her body’s fatigue soon took over.

After Amara had gone to bed, Latie couldn’t help herself. “Callie,” she whispered to the older woman as they were rinsing off the plates in the river, “tell me the truth. Is Amara blessed?”

Callie sighed. “Well, it didn’t stay a secret for long, did it?” She grinned to herself. “Yes, she is, we’re pretty sure, anyway.”

“Why hasn’t anyone said anything?” Latie asked. “I’ve been kind of worried…is everything all right?”

Callie nodded. “Yes, she’s fine. We just weren’t sure about saying anything until we were positive that she’s blessed. But,” she let out a small laugh, “after today, I’m sure everyone, except maybe Danug and Lareno, are convinced. The poor girl; she’s having a rougher go at morning sickness than I did.”

Latie smiled. “How much longer until you have your baby, Callie?” she asked.

Callie thought for a moment. How much longer would it be? “Well, I think I’ve been blessed for four moons now, and it’s the middle of summer…so I should have the baby sometime in middle to late winter.”

Latie nodded and smiled, then let out a small sigh. “She’s so lucky. I wish I could have a baby,” she admitted. “But, I think three blessed women on this trip would be a problem; two is going to be tough enough!”

Callie nodded in response. “Yes, and Amara was very worried about that. She was afraid of the Journey and how her body will handle being pregnant. She mentioned that where she came from, 16 is pretty young to be blessed.”

“Oh, she’ll be fine. Ayla had Durc when she was only 11,” Latie commented.

“Really?” Callie asked. She shook her head. “My, that’s extremely young. I’m surprised she lived through it; plus since flathead…er…Clan babies have such large heads…” she shuddered at the thought. “It’s difficult enough as it is; it’s a wonder a head any larger can get through.”

“Yeah, but Ayla’s a strong woman; she could do anything.” Latie rinsed off the last plate. “I’m sure Amara can, too. Is she excited?”

Callie grinned. “I think so. After the initial shock, I think the idea has set in, and except for the morning sickness, she’s as happy as can be.” She started laughing then. “And to look at Panec’s face…you’d think he was the one who was blessed! He’s so smug and contented about it!”

“Yeah, he did wear a silly smile all day long, didn’t he? I didn’t really notice.” Latie giggled at the thought. “Oh, I can’t wait to see that silly smile on Lareno’s face, though.” Her eyes glazed over and she drifted off in a daydream. “I can’t wait to have my own little baby.”

Callie put her arm around the younger woman. “It will happen soon enough; just give it some time.” The two women smiled at each other. “But for now, I agree; you should keep drinking that tea; three blessed women would be very difficult.”

Latie nodded and gathered up a few of the dishes. Callie grabbed the rest, and they walked back to the camp in silence, both ready to turn in for the evening.

Over the next few days, Amara’s body became more used to the morning sickness. She’d have a slight bout first thing in the morning, but then after some more sleep, by sunrise she was fine. She hated throwing up; it was the absolute worst sensation in the world. But, it’s what went along with the miracle of life, so she figured that since there was nothing she could do about it, she may as well see the bright side, if there was one.

Once everyone learned about her pregnancy and understood why she had been sick so much lately, the group was simply ecstatic. Radec of course was always worried, but it spoke well for them, in a sense, to have two blessed women. Depending on when they reached that glacier, it might actually be an asset for Amara to be pregnant as well; any group of people that they stayed with would probably see it as good luck to shelter them, so even though there was the concern, there was a silver lining.

Amara and Panec had gained a new look on their relationship. They were both more in love than they ever thought possible. She was of course inevitably irritable at times, but Panec was amazingly understanding. He was just so thrilled that she was blessed that he would be willing to do anything for her. Every stop they made, he gently massaged her back, especially her lower back, where she complained of aching most often. He was concerned at first, but after speaking with Callie and Healie about it, he understood that it was normal for a woman to have those pains; her body was changing, a little life was growing inside of her, and the rest of her had to accommodate for it. Callie had sat down with him and explained to him what she herself was going through almost halfway through her pregnancy, so that he’d know what to expect. She and Radec had been together for so long, and had been around so many others, that Radec was completely used to the idea. But Panec, until he met Amara, had been an active, doing things with other young men. Every time she looked at him, Callie couldn’t help but chuckle; love can do strange things to men like that. She was gladly impressed that he was so concerned and caring about Amara’s condition; unfortunately there were many men who didn’t understand pregnancy in the least, and who didn’t make an effort to learn. She was so proud of the men in their group; all four of them were wonderful, and she knew that they as women were fortunate to have such amazing men as their mates.

After another set of several days of traveling, Radec decided that they should take another break. He could smell fall in the air, and although he wanted to hurry and get to their destination, he knew that a nice rest would do them all some good. Plus, he had been thinking of several ideas for those beads he and Latie were working on, and he wanted the chance to get to talk to her about it so that they could continue their work.

After they set up camp, Latie, Radec, Healie, and Callie disappeared into Radec’s tent. Danug and Lareno had an inspiration and decided to go fishing in the small tributary to the Mother that they had stopped along. Panec suggested that he and Amara take a walk, and she heartily accepted; it would be nice to be alone with him in the middle of the day. Hand in hand, they walked down the riverbank.

“Why don’t we stop here and rest for a few minutes?” Panec suggested when they reached a clearing where a recently felled tree would be a perfect seat. Amara nodded and smiled, and allowed herself to be led to the tree. He kissed her cheek and then ran his fingers through her hair. “I love you so much, Amara,” he said.

She smiled at him. “I love you too, Panec.”

He grinned and knelt on the ground next to the tree where she was sitting. She furrowed her brow at him, trying to figure out what he was doing. He reached up and lifted up her tunic, then kissed her stomach above her belly button. “I love you too!” he yelled at her stomach.

She couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing, and almost rolled right off the log. He didn’t think it was that funny, but seeing her laugh so hard made him laugh. They both had tears in their eyes when the moment passed.

“Well, I do love him! Or her!” Panec defended.

Amara smiled. “I know you do; it was just so funny the way you did that.” She giggled again and was afraid for a minute that she’d lose it again, but she managed to control the laughter that was trying to well up inside her.

They were both now sitting on the river bank, and he gently pushed her down. He lifted up her tunic again and rested his head, very lightly, on her stomach. He reached his hand up and rubbed her stomach gently, then kissed her again. “I can’t wait to meet you,” he said quietly. “You do realize how happy I am that you’re here.” He kissed her stomach again, winked at Amara, and then whispered, “Your mother is the most wonderful woman ever. You are one lucky child, you know.” He grinned and kissed her stomach again. Then he looked up at Amara. “Do you think it’ll be a boy or a girl?” he asked.

Amara shrugged. “I really don’t know. I don’t have any preferences, do you?”

He shook his head. “Well, every man wants his mate to bring a boy to his hearth, but it really doesn’t matter that much.”

“A boy to his hearth?” she asked, confused about the phrase he had used. Then she remembered; these people don’t think that a man has anything to do with conception. She smiled at Panec. “Panec, listen,” she said, clearing her throat. She sat up with her back against the felled tree and looked at him closely. “I don’t want to bring too much of my world into this world,” she began, “but, you do realize that there are things I know that people here don’t.”

He nodded, slowly, not quite sure what she was getting at. “Yes…” he said, enunciating each part of the word.

She reached out and took his hand. “Panec, I know how you feel about the Mother here. I know you believe that it’s a man’s spirit that enters a woman.” She cocked her head and tried to figure out how to say it the best way. “Panec, that’s not what happens.”

He frowned at her and sat up. “So what does happen?”

“Well,” she cleared her throat again. “When we make Pleasures…that’s when a woman becomes blessed. The man gets the woman pregnant when they share Pleasures.”

Panec shook his head. “No, that’s ridiculous! A woman doesn’t get pregnant every time she shares Pleasures with a man!” he said.

She nodded. “Yes, I know that. You see, a woman has her moon times, right?” He nodded. “Well, in order for her to get blessed, she has to share Pleasures with a man at a certain time between her moon times. Otherwise, she usually can’t get pregnant.”

“But men and women share Pleasures lots of times during the month; you’d think that women would get pregnant more often.”

Amara nodded again. “Yes, but everything has to be just right inside the woman, where the baby grows, for her to get pregnant. It usually has to be at the right time between her moon times, and several other things have to be right as well.”

Panec scratched his head, thinking. “So, you’re saying that a woman gets pregnant only if she shares Pleasures with a man?”

Amara nodded once again. “Yes, that’s the way it works. A woman cannot get pregnant without sharing Pleasures.” She wasn’t about to mention to story of Immaculate Conception; whether or not she believed in it was irrelevant.

“Oh,” he said. He watched the river for a few minutes, and then gasped. “Amara!” he cried.

“What?” she asked, startled.

“That means that that baby, you’re baby…it’s really our baby, yours and mine!” he exclaimed.

She grinned at him. “Yes, Panec. My baby is your baby too; we created this baby together.”

He stood, lifted her up, and spun her around. She had to swallow to keep from losing her breakfast, but it was a wonderful feeling to know that he was so happy. “I love you so much!” he exclaimed as he hugged her tight.

“I love you, too,” she said. “Thank you for giving me a baby.”

He grinned widely at her. “No, thank you! You are so amazing!” He hugged her again, and then they heard someone calling them from the camp. He frowned and sighed. “I guess they need us for something. I suppose we’d better go.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Amara replied. They started walking back, and she did some quick math in her head, trying to count days. She had always been good with dates and numbers. After her last moon time, how many times had they shared Pleasures? Not too many; only two or three. Any one of those times could have been it. They were all within a week of each other, and all within a week of her period, so the most she could be off on trying to figure a due date would be a week. Let’s see, she thought. That would put me, now, about six weeks pregnant. That’s a little over a month. Callie is four months; she’ll give birth mid to late winter. That means my baby will be born in the spring. She smiled to herself; she had always wanted a spring baby. She leaned against Panec’s arm as they walked, and had never been happier in her life.

“How many do we have now?” Radec asked Latie.

She glanced over the several piles of tiny glass beads and shook her head. “I don’t think we can count them, we have so much!”

She and Radec had shown Callie and Healie how to make the little beads, and by the evening of their second day at this camp, they had sanded down little beads of all the glass Danug had allowed them to have. Most of them had the holes bored in them as well, but there were still several that needed to be bored.

Radec stood and stretched, yawning as he did. “How much longer do you want to work on these?”

Callie grinned. “Well, I’m awfully tired, but I’m so absorbed in doing this…I just want to keep working until they’re done!”

Latie laughed and nodded. “I know what you mean…we’re so close!”

Radec shrugged. “Well, then, let’s keep working. How are you holding out, Healie?”

She looked up from the tiny round piece of glass she was holding, trying to bore a hole into. “I’m fine; we can keep working for a while. But don’t worry, I’ll let you know when I’m getting tired.”

Radec nodded and sat back down, and Healie continued trying to bore the little hole. She had actually found a better way to make the holes; rather than using one small grain of sand, as soon as there was a depression deep enough, she added a second grain, and so on, so that that the hole through the bead was only as wide as a grain of sand. Callie had started doing her method as well; they figured the beads with smaller holes could be strung with more delicate thread, whereas the beads with larger holes could be strung with more durable thread. That way they could decorate the outfit in quite a bit of detail, which of course Callie and Healie were thrilled about. Callie had even remembered seeing holes in Amara’s ears as many other Mamutoi women had; perhaps they could string some of the beads on a hardened and sharpened piece of sinew that would fit through the holes, to match the outfit. Healie smiled to herself thinking of how beautiful Amara would be, and even more beautiful since she’d been blessed. The Matrimonials wouldn’t be until the next summer at the absolute earliest, so she probably would have had the baby by then. This spared Callie and Healie from having to add material to the tunic to accommodate Amara’s pregnancy. She smiled again, thinking of when she was that young. She looked closely at her hands and noticed how wrinkled they were becoming. Her knuckles were all swollen and they were often painful, but seeing the product of the intricate work was well worth any pain her joints put her through. The end result would be a gorgeous young woman, happier than happy could be, being mated to the man she loved more than anything. Healie’s eyes glistened, remembering when she was in that very situation. And for some reason, she felt connected to this child Amara was carrying. Amara had been like a daughter to her since she had arrived and she felt that Amara reciprocated, although nothing was ever really said openly. For some reason, she was content; she felt right about this child. But there were things to do in the meantime. She took a deep breath, brushed away the thoughts, and started twisting down on the borer.

Latie finished boring holes through her pile of beads and took stock of what they had. The other three were almost finished with their piles as well. Thinking of how to make the beads sparkle, she picked one up and held it to the light of the fire. They had talked about this before; if they could wear down some of the edges, maybe that would make them sparkle. To round them, all they had done was rub the glass around in sand; it hadn’t taken too long. To bore them, they had used solitary grains. But to flatten some of the roundness down…she wasn’t sure exactly how to do that. She glanced around the tent, trying to see what options she had. She glanced quickly at the small flint knife in Radec’s belt, then reached for it. She used the end closest to the handle to try to scrape the glass, but she only succeeded in chipping the knife. Radec gave her a look when he noticed that she had chipped it, and she grinned sheepishly at him, then sighed. She couldn’t for the life of her think of anything else that would work. Well, she thought, back to the sand.

Using the same technique that they had used to round the little beads, she rubbed one side of the bead across the sand that was imbedded in a small piece of wood. She smiled when she looked at the bead and saw that she had been successful. She then gripped the bead at another place to flatten a different part of the bead. In a few moments, she had a three-dimensional hexagonal shape rather than a round one. She dropped the bead in her hand and moved her hand around so that it would roll in her palm. Watching it in the firelight, she oohed when she saw the sparkles. “Look!” she exclaimed, quite pleased with herself. “Look at how it sparkles! It looks like the stars at night, when there’s just a thin layer of clouds high in the sky. It’s beautiful!”

“Latie, that is beautiful!” Callie returned. “Look at this Radec! This is perfect! So suiting for Amara!” She hugged Latie across the shoulders and kissed her head. “Beautiful, Latie!”

Radec leaned over and marveled at the sparkling bead himself. It was stunning; he had never seen anything man-made sparkle so. “It’s like there’s a little fire inside the bead,” he commented.

Healie nodded and smiled gently. “Amara will look so beautiful with her dress decorated with these beads.”

“She will at that,” Radec agreed. He smiled, satisfied with their work. “Well, how about we put these up for the evening? I just finished boring holes through the beads in my pile; we can finish the holes tomorrow, and then we can work on flattening the sides like Latie did. Do we want them all to look like that?”

Callie nodded. “Yes, I think so.” She glanced around to try to figure out how many beads they had. “And we’ll have plenty to decorate with; we just don’t know yet what we want to do!” She sighed and bent her head from side to side, stretching the muscles. “But I agree. Let’s put these away and work on them again tomorrow.”

Healie agreed, and although Latie was excited, she knew that they all needed their sleep. They put all the beads back into their color-respective leather pouches. Latie extended an arm to help Healie up and said good-night as Callie and Radec started undressing. They ducked out of the tent and both stretched outside.

“I’m just so happy for Amara,” Latie commented quietly. “And I’m so happy that she’s with us. I’ve never had a friend like her.” She frowned slightly and looked at Healie. “Although I do sort of wish I was the one who had gotten pregnant.”

Healie smiled in return. “I know, Latie, but don’t worry. Your day will come. Amara is very lucky, but so are you. You’ve both found men to love you love you more than life itself. You’re both young, strong, beautiful women.” She ran her fingers through Latie’s hair. “And you both are loved by all of us.”

Latie smiled. “I know that. And I can’t think of any two young women luckier than Amara and myself.” She leaned over and kissed Healie on the forehead. “Good night, Healie,” she said.

Healie smiled at the young woman. “Good night, Latie.” Healie then ducked into her small tent and secured the flap.

Latie looked around at the night. A wisp of smoke was still coming up from the fire, and the sky looked exactly how she had described it looking only minutes before. The thin cirrus clouds high in the sky, almost transparent, were moving incredibly fast, creating the visual effect of sparkling stars. It was a beautiful sight. The moon was just beginning to climb over the horizon, and she could have sworn that she had never seen such a large moon. The contrasts between light and dark made her wonder what, and where, exactly the moon was. She was sure Amara would know. She smiled at the thought of her friend, the best friend she had ever had. They needed to do something together soon, just the two of them. She couldn’t wait until they reached the Zelandonii…she and Ayla and Amara, she knew, would all get along wonderfully. She smiled again and stepped toward the tent that she and Lareno were sharing, where he was most likely already fast asleep. He and Danug had fished all day long and had then prepared a meal for everyone. As she reached to move the flap, a breeze whisked by, making her shiver. She stood up and turned around, squinting her eyes. Something about this night seemed so familiar to one not too long before. She shivered again and then ducked into her tent, not able to wait for sleep to remove the phrase that kept repeating itself in her mind.

“Good morning!” Amara called when she saw Lareno and Danug sitting over the fire, cooking another batch of fish. “Do we get fish for breakfast today?” She wrinkled her nose; she had never really liked fish before, but everyone here seemed to love it. She had made an honest attempt to try to like it, but especially now…there was just no way. At this point, it was difficult for her to even smell it without her stomach churning.

Usually Danug teased her about it, but he knew that now wasn’t the time. He shook his head in response. “No,” he said, holding up a plate, “we warmed the little that was left over of what Callie and Healie had this morning for you.”

She smiled at them, genuinely touched. “Thank you for doing that,” she said. She held her nose and walked over to where they were.

“Okay, okay, that’s enough. We’ll be nice to you because you’re blessed, but not that nice!” Danug said, grinning. He handed her the plate and then swatted at her rear with a stick. “You may not like our fish, but we do!”

She grinned at him and stuck her tongue out. She sat down on the other side of the fire, more upwind, so that the smell wouldn’t permeate the air she was breathing, and started eating. Callie was a wonderful cook, she thought to herself, shaking her head. As much as she was having problems with food, she had no idea how Callie had been able to handle it.

She was in kind of a strange mood that morning; for some reason she felt weirdly giddy. She figured it was probably just that her body was adjusting to being pregnant. She wondered how her mother had handled it; of course, there they had pre-natal vitamins and the like. She and Jacob had always teased about that, telling the other that their mother hadn’t been taking her vitamins properly while pregnant, which would explain the accused weirdness of the other. She giggled to herself quietly, thinking of the verbal exchanges she and her brother had gone through. One of their favorite pastimes was quoting silly movies; their favorites had been the Mel Brooks and Monty Python movies. It hardly seemed real anymore, where she was now, but then, oh, was it funny! Thinking of it made her giggle some more, and Danug and Lareno looked over at her, trying to figure out what was so funny. Then out of the corner of her eye she saw something and glanced in that direction. She then literally rolled on the ground, laughing; it had been a rabbit hopping by. The rabbit, naturally, had been the object of many a dialogue between the two of them; specifically the “holy hand grenade” scene. Seeing the rabbit reminded her of that, and she simply lost it. She laughed and laughed and laughed, and when Danug and Lareno asked what was so funny, she laughed harder. Tears were rolling down her cheeks like crazy, and her sides were beginning to hurt. She laughed so much that Lareno and Danug started laughing as well, simply because it was so contagious.

“What’s going on out here?” Radec asked, grinning and he stepped out of his tent. He saw the three of them clutching their sides, laughing until they cried. “What in the world are you laughing about?”

“She’s laughing!” Lareno managed to get out, pointing to Amara.

“You are too,” Latie put in, sticking her head out from Radec’s tent. She couldn’t help but smile as well.

“No, no!” Danug cried, unable to stop laughing. “She was laughing…I don’t know why…and it was just so…so…funny!” he said, bursting into laughter again.

Panec woke up due to the ruckus and stepped outside of his tent. He, like Radec and Latie, had no clue what was going on, but the scene of the three of them laughing was so hilarious that he couldn’t help but laugh himself. Soon, he was rolling as well.

Latie and Radec looked at each other and grinned, both shaking their heads. They chuckled as they waited for everyone else to regain their composure.

“What were you laughing at, Amara?” Danug asked, wiping his eyes.

She stifled another bout of laughter. “I was laughing because I saw…the rabbit…and I…” she lost it again.

“What’s so funny about a rabbit?” Panec asked after she regained her composure.

She smiled at him. “Well, I was thinking of my brother, and how he and I used to tease each other so much…and one of the things we always teased about was a rabbit…” she giggled again. “You wouldn’t understand. But it was always so funny!”

Latie shook her head, rolled her eyes, grinned quickly at Amara, then stooped back into Radec’s tent. Radec followed her after just another moment, leaving the rest of them sitting by the fire.

“Your brother sounds like a really great person,” Lareno commented.

Amara smiled. “He was…is…a great person. He was my best friend until I met Latie and Panec.” She looked down at her hands. “I guess he still is one of my best friends, even though he’s not here.” She grinned, and was then inspired. “I have a few things to do,” she said to the young men. She got up and went back into the tent she and Panec shared. She heard them start talking about fishing as she reached for the box. Since everyone was still there, it would probably be best for her to go somewhere else. She tucked the small box under her arm and went back outside, smiling lovingly at Panec as she went by. She wanted to write a message to her brother, telling him how wonderful he had always been, and explaining to him that even though he wasn’t there, he was still the person that made her laugh the most. And she wanted to be alone to do so.

Amara sat up and stretched, twisting her hands. She knew it wasn’t good for her wrists, but it made them feel slightly better. She bent from side to side, trying to get her back to realign, but to no avail. Oh, well, she thought, I might just have to go back and get Panec to give me a quick massage. She smiled to herself, thinking of how wonderful it felt for him to massage her. She loved feeling his hands on her skin, and he was so gentle, especially now. She recapped her pen, rolled up the tape, and replaced them both in the small box. She felt wonderful; she hadn’t realized before that talking about her brother was actually quite calming and relaxing, not to mention uplifting. She giggled again to herself, then shook her head and stood.

As she turned, she stepped in between two trees, and unfortunately for her, a spider had happened to make its web right there. She yelled out when she ran into it, and then had to pull the strands of spider web from her hair. She didn’t really mind spiders, as long as they weren’t where they weren’t supposed to be – not that they knew where they were or were not supposed to be. But she hated running into spider webs…she was always afraid that the spider would fall on her, and perhaps bite her, and that’s what she was afraid of. She shuddered as she checked herself over, sighing in relief when she noticed that the spider was on a portion of the web that had remained intact.

“Sorry to destroy your house,” she said to the spider. “I really didn’t mean to.”

Panec then came running into view, almost out of breath. “Are you okay?” he asked, taking hold of her shoulders, and looking her up and down.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she said, startled at his sudden appearance.

He sighed in relief. “Oh, good. I heard you yell and you wouldn’t believe what thoughts went through my head.” He embraced her tightly. “Thank Mut that you’re okay.”

She smiled and returned his embrace. “I’m fine; I just yelled because I ran into a spider web, and I hate doing that.”

Panec grimaced and nodded. “That’s understandable, I hate it too.” He hugged her shoulders again, and then they started walking back. “What’s that?” he asked, motioning to the box.

“Oh, it’s…it’s nothing, really. Just something my mother gave me,” she stuttered.

“May I see it?” Panec asked.

Amara stopped and considered. He didn’t know what writing was, so would it do any harm? “Well, I suppose so, but just don’t ask me to explain what’s in it…I don’t know if I can.”

He nodded as she opened the box. His eyes opened wide when he saw what was in it. A large white circular thing with markings all over it, and some sort of stick, that was partially clear. “What is that?” he asked.

“This is called a ‘pen’,” Amara said, picking the pen up. “It’s used to make markings on things, like this,” she demonstrated by making a mark on her hand with the pen.

“Oh, that looks like it might be handy,” Panec said. He wasn’t going to ask her about anything else in the box; he had to respect her wishes. “You could draw maps or count animals by making marks on something with that, right?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly! That’s exactly what it’s for!” They smiled at each other and she replaced the pen, then closed the box. She bent to one side again, still noticing that something wasn’t aligned correctly.

He grinned at her. “Do you need a massage?” he asked, holding her hand.

She smiled at him in return. “That would be wonderful. I was sitting there too long; my back is aching a little.”

“Well, then, how about we get back, I heat up some water, and I can dip some leather scraps into it to help with your back. Warm things like that tend to make my muscles relax nicely.”

Amara closed her eyes and sighed. “Mmm, that would be wonderful!”

The massage and warm water Panec had used had worked wonders on Amara’s back. She still had a slight ache, but it was almost nonexistent. After deciding they could make it an early evening, she was now lazing comfortably in their furs, waiting for him to join her. Outside, she could hear the others laughing and conversing as usual. She snuggled down into the furs, hardly able to believe how happy she was. She had almost dozed off when she heard the tent flap opening. She felt Panec undress, settle into the furs behind her, and then he wrapped his arms around her.

“How do you feel, my love?” he whispered in her ear.

“Amazing,” she replied, pushing her body closer to him. He kissed her neck and then her ear tenderly. Then he reached around with his left hand and caressed her abdomen. It was such a wonderful feeling, to feel him touching her. Part of her wanted to feel more, but she was a little apprehensive about how Pleasures would feel early in pregnancy. She decided not to encourage him for now, and she’d ask Healie and Callie tomorrow. She fell asleep again a few minutes later, his hand still resting gently on her stomach.

Panec lied there awake for a while. He kept running everything in his mind, over and over again. He was incredibly happy, and for once he now understood what other men went through. He had never understood before why the men would usually be wearing smiles all day as well as the blessed women. Now he knew. Just because he wasn’t the one who was pregnant didn’t mean it was any less amazing for him. Especially after what Amara had told him, about him making the baby inside her. He squeezed her gently, thinking about how miraculous the whole process was. Maybe that was what Pleasures were all about; maybe that’s why Pleasures always felt so wonderful – because sometimes you were starting a new life. He smiled to himself and kissed Amara's shoulder. He could tell from her breathing that she was already asleep. He leaned up on his elbow and watched her in the dim light that filtered in from the fire outside. She was so beautiful, so perfect. And just when he thought it couldn’t get any better, she got pregnant. He couldn’t believe how much more beautiful she was! She positively glowed with happiness and beauty. He was so proud, so lucky. He just wished his mother could meet her. He lied back down, thinking. He had a suspicion that they would never return to the Mamutoi; they would probably stay with the Zelandonii, even become Zelandonii. It had been a difficult choice for him to make, but was he ever glad that he had made it! If this was his destiny, his reward, he would leave the Mamutoi any day. The people he was with were his family now.

He sighed to himself in his happiness. He reached his arm around her and pressed it gently against her abdomen. For a split second, he felt a slight flutter. It was probably just her stomach digesting something or something like that, but everything in him hoped that it was the child. It was an amazing process. He couldn’t wait until Amara gave birth; until he could see the little life that they created. It would be such a beautiful moment. Usually men didn’t assist in the births, but he insisted on it, and Amara didn’t seem to mind one way or another; in face she had mentioned that she would prefer him to be there. Apparently that was how it was done where she came from; the woman’s mate was usually there while she gave birth. He couldn’t imagine holding an infant that was part of him. He shivered under the furs as his gooseflesh rose, thinking about it. He smiled in utter happiness, held her close to him, let out a deep breath, and dozed off.

“How are you feeling, Healie?” Callie asked as they sanded down more of the beads.

“I’m feeling really well,” Healie replied. She had been wearing a smile all day long, and Callie figured it probably had something to do with Amara’s pregnancy. “These are going to look spectacular on her dress,” she commented.

Callie and Latie both nodded vigorously. “It will!” Latie exclaimed, grinning widely, especially since it had been her idea.

“I don’t know if I can get the hang of this,” Lareno muttered, frustrated. They had managed to talk Danug and Lareno into helping them with the beads, but neither of them had worked with such small objects before. Radec had an eye for the delicate, especially when it came to tools, and of course it wasn’t difficult for the women at all. But for the young men it was a much more difficult task; they weren’t used to working with such tiny things or with such detail.

Callie laughed at him. “You’ll do just fine, Lareno…you just have to get used to it. It isn’t all that bad.”

“Well, I suppose I’ll live, but I’ll warn you…if Latie’s dress isn’t this beautiful, I’m going to yell at someone.” He winked at his future mate, and she blushed slightly.

“Well, Lareno,” Latie said, clearing her throat a little, “I already have my Matrimonial dress. A woman’s mother is supposed to make the dress, and then “surprise” her with it just before the Matrimonial, but since I was going on a Journey, my mother went ahead and gave it to me, although it’s slightly against tradition. But she figured that if I did meet someone during the Journey, she wanted me to have a dress that she made, even though that probably meant she wouldn’t get to see me in it.” She sighed, thinking about her wonderful mother. She really missed her, and she wondered if she’d get to see her again.

Lareno grinned in response. “So you already have one?” She nodded. “That’s great! Can I see it?”

“No!” Healie said, grinning. “You aren’t supposed to see it until the day of the Matrimonial, you know that! And Latie, no matter how much he smiles, don’t you give into him!”

Radec’s booming laughter rang out. “Ah, Lareno, give it time! Before long you’ll be mated and Latie will bring children to your hearth, and part of you will wish you hadn’t ever seen that dress!”

Callie slapped him on the arm. “Don’t you tell him that!” she exclaimed, grinning. “Lareno, don’t listen to him. Joining with a woman is the smartest thing a man can do!”

Danug laughed and shook his head. “You’re only saying that because you’re a woman!” He winked at Callie and chuckled, then started working on his bead again.

“I wonder why Amara and Panec went to bed so early,” Radec commented with a sly grin, changing the subject.

“He gave her a back massage earlier…she was feeling pretty wonderful after that. We can only guess what they’re doing now,” Latie said, grinning.

“Well, whatever they may be doing,” Healie said, clearing her throat loudly, “we have a lot still to do.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Danug returned, bowing to her slightly.

Healie and Callie both rolled their eyes, chuckling.

Amara awoke when she heard laughter coming from one of the other tents. She smiled to herself, partly wishing she was in on the joke, but thankful she was able to get some more rest. Her back was still aching slightly, and she wondered if turning over would help. She hated to turn, afraid that she’d wake Panec up, but she wanted to try to get rid of the ache. Slowly, she turned from her side to her back, and when she did, she felt a sharp jabbing pain. Unable to keep quiet as the pain spread, she cried out softly.

Panec was awake immediately. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Something hurts,” she said, grimacing. The ache in her back was suddenly throbbing now, and pains were shooting through her body. She cried out again as another sharp jab coursed through her torso. Tears welled in her eyes as the pain intensified quickly. “Panec, go get Callie and Healie,” she whispered through her grimace and gritted teeth.

Panec jumped up and ran to the other tent. His sudden entrance threw the others off guard and they rushed to hide the beads. But something in his appearance told them that he wasn’t trying to snoop. “Callie, Healie,” Panec rushed, “Amara needs you, now! Something’s wrong! She’s in a lot of pain! Please go help her!” he cried, fear and panic taking over.

The two women exchanged glances. “Latie, come with us,” Callie said, getting up, Healie and Latie following.

They ran over to Panec’s tent, Panec close on their heels, where they found Amara gripping her stomach, bent into the fetal position, her entire body shaking. Callie knelt down beside her and gasped. “Panec, out!” she commanded.

He went white when he heard her gasp. “But…” he began.

“OUT!” she yelled, quickly giving him a stern look. Tears filled his eyes as he backed out of the tent. He headed slowly back to Radec’s hearth, but collapsed just as he had stepped in when he heard another comment from Callie.

“Oh, Mother, please, no!”

The four men sat in Radec’s tent in silence. Panec was beside himself in despair. He had no idea what was going on, but he knew it had to be bad; very bad, for Callie to have yelled at him to leave. He wanted to be there, wanted to be by her side, wanted to be there for her. His heart pounded in his chest and every once in a while a tear would escape.

Radec was miserable. He couldn’t imagine what Panec was going through. He kept glancing over at the young man who seemed to be all nerves. Radec shook his head; he was so thankful that Callie was doing well in her pregnancy. He had seen other women who had had problems, and usually the worst fear for their mates was not only losing the baby but losing the woman. Hadn’t Jondalar said that his brother’s mate had died in childbirth, or due to a complicated pregnancy? He shook his head again…but Amara had been just fine! What had gone wrong? In frustration for her and Panec, he hit his knee with his fist.

Danug looked up as he did so, then looked back down at the ground. He had his hands clasped, waiting to hear what would happen. Part of him wanted to meditate…perhaps he could see what would happen. But he was afraid of what he might see. He didn’t really want to go looking. He sat there, staring at his hands.

Lareno was terrified. He remembered Jetamio; she had been such a nice woman, and he had liked Thonolan too. Everyone had been wracked with grief when she died…the last thing he wanted was for Amara’s life to be in jeopardy. Especially after the scare they had had already with her and Latie and the lightning.

The four men all jumped up when Latie opened the flap, watching her expectantly. She shook her head slightly. “We don’t know yet; I just need to get something for Callie.” The men all nodded their heads and sat back down. Latie rummaged through Callie’s things and found what she was looking for. She gave Panec a weak smile, then left.

“Please, Mother, let her be okay,” Panec whispered, putting his head in his hands. His body started heaving with sobs.

Danug got up and sat over by Panec, putting his arm around his back. “I’m sure she’ll be fine, Panec,” he said.

Panec looked up through teary eyes. “Do you really think so?”

Danug nodded. “Yes, I do.”

Panec’s mood seemed to brighten somewhat. “Do you think…do you think the baby will be okay?”

Danug shook his head. “That I don’t know…I really don’t know anything about pregnancy.”

Panec sighed and frowned, and then suddenly remembered something Danug had said recently. “You said that something very bad was going to happen soon,” he reminded him.

Danug thought for a minute, then nodded. “I did say that, didn’t I?” He shook his head and sighed. He put his hand on his forehead and shook his head again.

Panec put his face back in his hands and sighed. He prayed harder than he had ever prayed before, pleading for her life. The other three exchanged solemn glances and remained silent, preferring to say their prayers as such.

After what seemed like an eternity, Callie opened the flap and stepped into the tent. The four men sat up, anxiously awaiting her words. She seemed tired, and there were streaks down her face from where tears had fallen.

“Wha…what happened?” Radec was the first to say anything.

Callie sat down and sighed, shaking her head. “It was too late,” she said, quietly.

Panec’s eyes watered. “Too late…?”

Callie nodded. “I really don’t know what happened. I’m not sure what went wrong. She was doing just fine.” Her throat thickened as she felt tears threatening again.

“Is Amara all right?” Panec asked, apprehensively.

Callie nodded, but slowly. “Hopefully soon she’ll be okay, physically.”

“Physically?”

Callie sighed again. “Yes, physically. It will probably take a while for her to get over this, emotionally. Most women that have unexpected miscarriages usually take a while to recover.”

“Miscarriages?” Panec asked, his voice cracking.

“Yes, Panec, I’m so sorry. She lost the baby.”

Panec buried his face in his hands again. He sat silent for a moment, then slammed his fist into his knee. “Why?!?!” he cried.

Radec reached over and put an arm around him. “I’m sorry, Panec,” he said.

“The good part is that as long as no complications can arise,” she paused, sending a silent prayer to the Mother that no complications would show; her confidence was a false front for the sake of Panec, “Amara will recover, physically of course, rather quickly, and she’ll still be able to have children, we’re pretty sure,” she said. “This was very early in the pregnancy, and there was little risk to Amara this way. It was much better for it to happen now than later.”

“But why did it have to happen at all?” Panec asked.

“Panec, who knows what the Mother was thinking, or why She chooses to do what She does,” Danug offered. “But we can’t question it; what happens happens, and there’s not really any way of preventing it.”

Panec scowled in frustration, then looked down at the ground. “She was so happy…”

“I know, Panec,” Callie said. “You can go in and see her, but listen to me first,” she said. He looked up at her. “Do not say anything that would make her feel like this is her fault. She feels bad enough as it is, afraid you’ll be mad at her because she lost the baby. I know this is difficult for you, too, but in this situation, you have to be the strong one. Do you understand?”

Panec nodded slowly. “It isn’t her fault. And you’re right; we’ll have more children later.”

Callie nodded. She felt miserable, wishing that it didn’t have to be this way. Seeing the look on Amara’s face when she told her that she had miscarried was awful. She never wanted to see that look from any woman again. And the last thing Amara needed was to see everyone else as upset as she herself was. She got up and walked over to Radec and sat back down, leaning her head on his shoulder. Panec stood up stiffly, shaking somewhat, and went to go see Amara.

“Radec,” Callie whispered. “I think we should stay here a few more days,” she suggested.

Radec nodded. “We’ll stay as long as we need to,” he promised, hugging his mate.

Panec stepped out of the tent just as Latie was leaving his. He smiled to her, weakly, as she stood there, just quivering. She reached out and hugged him quickly. “I’m so sorry,” she choked out. He patted her back and nodded. She could feel his chest heave some, and she whispered, “Be strong for her, okay?”

They released their embrace and he nodded again, then watched as she went into Radec’s tent.

Healie must have heard them out there, for she stepped out of his tent the next instant. He was shocked at how old and tired she looked. She couldn’t even smile at him. Tears were streaming down her face as she reached out and gripped his upper arm. Then she turned and joined Latie and the others in Radec’s tent.

Panec gingerly opened the flap to his tent. It smelled strange, why he wasn’t sure. Amara was lying on her back with her face turned away from him. “Amara?” he asked quietly. She stayed still, but he could see that she was crying. He walked over to her and knelt down beside her. “Amara?” he said again, touching her hair.

She turned and looked at him slowly. His heart broke when he saw the expression on her face. She had to fight for control. She was so afraid that he’d be mad at her, but her heart knew he wouldn’t be. She was more hurt than she had ever been before; she couldn’t describe the feelings running through her. Her baby, her own child, was gone. She didn’t know what she had done wrong, and it just wasn’t fair! Why?! As she thought these things, the emotions took control and she started heaving sobs.

Panec reached out and held her as she cried. A few tears fell from his eyes as well, but he kept remembering what Callie had said. Amara needed to get this out of her system; after all, she was the one who had just gone through the trauma, not Panec. She choked and cried in pain, frustration, and emptiness. As much as it hurt to think of the family she had lost, nothing was like this.

“I’m…I’m so s…sorry, Panec,” she cried.

“Shhh, no,” Panec said, stroking her hair. “It’s not your fault. These things just happen.”

She looked up at him through tear-filled eyes. “But why? Panec, we were so happy! It was so right!” Another round of sobs took over. “Oh, God, why my baby?” she cried.

Panec frowned at her terminology…God? What was that? He thought it better to not ask her right now; perhaps that was a word used at her home. He just sat there, stroking her hair as she cried into his shoulder.

After what seemed like an eternity, she finally cried herself to sleep. Panec sat there, still stroking her hair, his mind empty. He didn’t want to think anymore. He just wanted to go to sleep as well. He looked down at his beautiful woman and smiled tenderly. He adjusted her body so that she would be more comfortable, and it was then he noticed that Callie and Healie had packed several layers around Amara’s midsection. That was odd, he thought. He glanced over to a corner where furs and other scraps had been piled temporarily, and then suddenly he realized what the strange smell had been. He paled and had to put his head between his knees to keep from vomiting. In addition to the smells of the strong teas Callie and Healie had made, unfortunately in vain, to try to save the baby, and Amara, was the smell of blood. His head between his knees didn’t help any. He jumped up and ran outside, then emptied the contents of his stomach into a bush.

Latie came running out to check on him. “Panec?” she asked as she gently rubbed his back.

Panec was sobbing himself now. “Latie…there was so much blood! Why is there so much blood?” He put his head in his hands again. “Oh, Mother, is Amara going to be all right?” he asked through his sobs.

Latie sighed. “We think so, Panec, but you’re right, she did lose a lot of blood. I’m sorry, none of us thought to get the soiled things out of there.”

“Is that what happens?” He shook his head in disgust. “Why did she have to go through that! Oh, Mother, please let her be okay!”

Latie sighed again. “Yes, Panec, and unfortunately, there is a risk that something might happen to Amara. That’s why we have to keep a close eye on her, but it’s all up to her now. We can’t let her feel that she might want to give up. We have to make sure she stays strong, no matter how upset she is. If we don’t, Panec, she could die.”

He looked up at her in shock. He had never realized that miscarriages could be so dangerous. “If something happens to her…” he began.

Latie looked him straight in the eye. “Nothing will happen to her, Panec! Not as long as we stay confident and keep her healthy. Do you understand how important this is?”

He nodded and ran his hands through his hair. “I’m scared, Latie, I don’t want to lose her.”

“We won’t lose her, Panec. But someone needs to be there with her all the time, just in case something happens. If she gets feverish, we have to attend to that immediately. If she starts having pains or anything…there are so many things that could happen.” She debated on telling him the things that Callie and Healie had told her. If a woman gives up, there usually wasn’t much anyone else could do for her. Especially if an infection developed, or if she didn’t stop bleeding. The risks were great, and Amara had to be watched constantly for symptoms of any of the several things that could happen. “I’ll go in there and take care of the soiled furs and everything. You go in there and be with her. You have to be strong, do you understand?”

Panec nodded absently. Everyone kept telling him that…why couldn’t someone else be strong for a change and let he and Amara grieve? He pushed the thought away and followed Latie into their tent. She picked up all of the blood-stained furs and scraps, everything they had used to stop the bleeding. Panec laid down by Amara as Latie left.

He had never felt so drained, so helpless. He watched her as she slept, and he could tell that her sleep was restless. He wasn’t sure how much pain she was in, both physically and emotionally. Callie’s words had sounded so much more optimistic than Latie’s, and he wondered just how much risk there was in this. He would never be able to live if something happened to her, especially since now he knew that he was the one who had gotten her pregnant. Had he not done that, none of this would be happening! He berated himself again, angrier than he had ever been with himself, for putting Amara through this pain. His head was hurting from all the crying, but that didn’t stop the tears from making their presence known. He wrapped his arms around Amara, then, much as she had done, cried himself to sleep.

The others sat in Radec’s tent, quiet. Latie had left only for the few moments, but as soon as she put all the furs in cold water to soak, she returned to the tent. Every once in a while someone would cough or sniffle, but there was no conversation.

Danug kept thinking to himself, over and over again, about the events of the day. He kept shaking his head, telling himself that this was it; this was the bad thing that would happen. But something else was nagging on him. His fear for Amara’s life was quickly climbing, and he felt that he had to get the details. “Callie,” he blurted, startling everyone. “Tell me, do you honestly think Amara will live?”

Callie sighed and glanced at Healie. “She lost a lot of blood, Danug. For the next couple of days, it will be crucial. If something goes wrong now, yes, she could die. We think we got the bleeding stopped, but all it would take would be an incorrect move on her part to get it started again. It is absolutely essential that she remain still, and as calm as we can keep her. If we can keep the bleeding stopped, and keep giving her medicine to prevent infection, yes, she will live, easily, and will be able to have children again.”

Danug nodded, sighing. “Why do you think this happened in the first place?” he asked.

Callie shrugged and glanced at Healie again. “Danug, we really don’t know,” Healie offered. He, too, noticed that she seemed overly tired. “It could have been a number of things. I don’t think it was the traveling…activity is usually good for a pregnant woman. I doubt it would be something she ate; Callie hasn’t had a single problem.” She sighed again and glanced around the tent. “No, what I think the problem was is that her body grew and matured at her home.” She shook her head slowly. “I really don’t know what the difference might be, but I think that’s exactly where the problem is; something about here is so different that her body didn’t have time to adjust in order to be able to support pregnancy.” She shrugged, “But I really don’t know what would be so different.”

Danug nodded, finally understanding. Of course! No one else in here knew what he and Panec knew. Her body was used to medicine, lifestyles, food, everything, from where she was born, where she lived. She had commented that she was too young for pregnancy; perhaps that had something to do with it. Or perhaps there was something more. Part of him wanted to ask Amara, but the rest of him didn’t want her to have to face such a questioning. He feared for a moment that their medicine, the teas that Callie and Healie knew of, might not work in Amara’s body. In which case, she had been extremely lucky that nothing of this intensity had happened to her yet. Yes, she was weak when they found her and they nursed her back to health. Yes, there was the lightning incident, but he was sure that both of those things had more to do with her own strength than their remedies. He shook his head and sighed in frustration. He was almost positive that Amara would heal, but only time would tell.

“I’m not sure what to do,” Callie said, disheartened. “She’s doing much better as far as her health goes, but I don’t think she should get up yet. Her body needs more rest…too much movement could cause her a lot of pain, and it could be risky.” Callie shook her head. “But the more she lies there, the worse she feels. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard her crying in there just today, and the sun isn’t even above us yet!”

Healie nodded in agreement. “She needs to be doing something, but you’re right…too much activity right now, before she’s completely healed, could be a real problem. But all she can do in there is think, and we don’t want her to think.” She sighed and looked at the ground. “I don’t want to think, either, but no matter how horrible I feel, I can only imagine how much worse Amara feels.”

“Maybe we can get one of the guys to pick her up and bring her out here,” Latie chimed in. The three women were sitting near the circle of stones that held the fire, basking in the sunlight, working on Amara’s matrimonial dress. None of them really wanted to do the work on it, but they wanted to keep their minds occupied. Amara’s miscarriage had been a tragedy for everyone, but none so much as Amara herself, so they were constantly trying to think of ways to keep everyone occupied. Radec had spied a herd of deer off in the distance, so the men had all gone out to hunt, although Panec mostly wanted to stay with Amara.

Since the beads were now completed, Callie and Healie had been working on a design for the decorations for the dress. Using a stick to draw patterns in the dirt, they had come up with a preliminary design, and now they were working on sorting the beads and making strings out of various materials to match the design. But none of the women’s hearts were in it just yet. They were sitting there, working idly, making small conversation every once in a while.

“That is true,” Callie said. “I don’t know if she’d want to, but we can get one of the men to carry her out here, and maybe even down to the river so that we can get her cleaned up.” She sighed to herself. “There’s only so much you can do with rags and water, especially since she’s so upset still.”

As if on cue, the four men returned from their hunt, with two deer strung on long poles, each between two men. The women rushed to hide the beads and other items so that Panec wouldn’t see them.

“You were successful!” Latie cried.

“Yep, we sure were!” Radec replied. He had been working hard all day to make sure that everyone had stayed happy and optimistic.

“Well, good,” Callie said. “Now you men can clean them, too, but only after Radec does me a favor.”

Danug frowned at Callie. “That’s no fair!” he said, sticking his tongue out at her. “Why do we have to clean them? We did the hunting!”

Callie grinned at him sweetly. “Because I said so,” she said, simply, and then turned to Radec. “I want you to come with me to get Amara. We need to get her out of the tent and bathed, but she needs to move as little as possible. Will you carry her down to the river so that we can get her cleaned up?”

“Sure,” Radec said. He followed Callie as she opened the flap on Panec’s tent.

“Amara?” Callie asked quietly, letting her eyes get used to the darkness.

“I don’t want to talk to anyone,” Amara replied, almost a whisper.

“I don’t care,” Callie said with determination. “You’re going to come with us so we can all take a bath.”

Amara sighed, still too upset to resist. Radec reached down and picked her up, gently, so that he moved her as little as was possible. She hadn’t moved for a couple of days now, and although Callie, Healie, and Latie had been keeping constant watch over her, it was impossible to keep everything clean.

Amara squinted and covered her eyes as Radec stepped outside. She didn’t want to see anyone, and didn’t want anyone to see her. Her depression had set in not long after the miscarriage, and nothing had been able to bring her out of it. She had lost all will to eat, sleep, anything. She didn’t smile, didn’t laugh; mostly she just lied there, staring at the sides of the tent. Every so often she would start crying, and just when she thought she would run out of tears, she cried more. She had no appetite, and every time someone tried to comfort her, she shunned them, preferring to be alone in her misery. The pain in her abdomen was gone; now there was just an ache in her heart, and an emptiness in her soul that she had never felt before.

She felt the rhythmic movement as Radec carried her down to the river. Latie had grabbed fresh clothes and had run down to the bank and was already pounding the soaproot as Callie and Radec walked down with Amara. Healie instructed Lareno and Danug to collapse Panec’s tent so that they could air it out, to remove the smells, and so that she could clean all the soiled clothes and rags in there. She supervised as they did so, watching the meat as well. Panec sat beside her, staring off in the direction of the river. He wanted to go to her, but he was afraid of what she would say. Understandably, he wasn’t as upset, per se, as she was, but from what she had said before, it was his child, too, and it had broken his heart when his beloved Amara wouldn’t respond to him either.

Amara gasped as she felt herself being set down in the cold water, just deep enough to reach her ribs. Radec put her down, clothes and all, and then Callie nodded to him in thanks as he left. “Now, Amara, we need to undress you, okay?” she asked.

Amara shrugged. She really didn’t care. She knew her hair was a mess; the few times she had reached up to move it out of her way, she had felt how greasy and disgusting it was. But she didn’t care. Callie lifted off Amara’s tunic and then held her still as Latie gently pulled off the leggings and the couple of layers of fresh rags that they had wrapped around her this morning in case the bleeding started again. Latie then took them over to a different part of the river where she started working the soaproot into them to clean them. She looked up and saw Healie coming down with the rest of the clothes and rags that were in the tent. Healie glanced over at Callie and Amara, then joined Latie, washing the clothes.

“Amara, you have to help me out a little here,” Callie said, slightly frustrated. “I don’t want you to move much, but it would be a little easier if you would help a little.” She didn’t want to sound so harsh as to upset the young woman, but she wanted to be harsh enough to zap Amara back to reality.

Amara nodded nonchalantly. She used her arms to slide herself into the river a little deeper, and then rooted herself there as Callie worked the soaproot into her hair. “Close your eyes and hold your breath,” Callie warned. She did so, and then Callie dipped her head under the water to rinse the suds. Amara sat back up, and Callie repeated the process, just to make sure that her hair was clean. Then she pushed Amara back up again into the shallower water so that she could wash Amara’s body.

“Callie,” Amara whispered.

Callie stopped washing and looked at her. “Yes?”

“Will I be able to have any more babies?” she asked, fearing what the reply might be.

Callie smiled softly. “Yes, Amara, you will be able to have more children. I guess your body just wasn’t ready for this,” she admitted.

Amara looked down at the water. “I guess not,” she said, then breathed in and out deeply. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m young.”

After a few moments of silence, Callie resumed her washing, and then Amara spoke again.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” she repeated. Callie looked at her strangely, but Amara paid no attention. Unbeknownst to herself, she had lapsed into English. “I didn’t have any prenatal care, and I didn’t take any vitamins. I really have no idea how healthy the food is that I’ve been eating here, or the water. Maybe there was something in it that caused it. I guess my body just hadn’t adjusted all the way to this kind of lifestyle.” She half-smiled to herself. “It could be because of any reason. But one thing’s for certain; there is a reason for it, I’m sure. Why else would this have happened?” She frowned to herself and continued in her monologue. “I guess I had better just accept it and move on with my life. I can never go back and try to figure out what went wrong, so I might as well put it behind me, right?” She nodded to herself. “Right!” She glanced up at Callie who was just standing there watching her. She could feel her lower lip quivering, and then the tears came. “So why do I feel so awful?” she cried.

Callie leaned down and embraced the young woman. “There, there,” she said, comforting her. She wasn’t sure what Amara had just said, but she had an idea. “It’s not your fault, honey. These things happen. We can’t prevent them and we can’t predict them. This is just one of those things.” She smoothed Amara’s hair with her hands and shushed her as she cried into her shoulder. “No one blames you, Amara. There was nothing you could have done. The way I see it, the Mother decided that she wanted that baby with her a while longer, that She didn’t want that baby to be born yet.” Amara nodded absently, still thinking in English and in terms of her modern life. “You can’t keep driving everyone away, though,” Callie warned. “We love you, we’re here for you. No, we haven’t gone through what you have, but Amara, think of Panec, at least.” She held the young woman out at arm’s length. “Grieving is healthy, it should be done, it’s part of the healing process, of both your mind and your heart, but you shouldn’t do it alone.”

Amara looked at Callie through her tears. She was right. It was Panec’s child too, and everyone here would have loved it. She smiled slightly and blinked back her tears. “Okay,” she said, reverting to Mamutoi. She nodded to herself. She knew that she wouldn’t get any better, physically, until she had set her mind to do so. And plus, she needed to think of the bigger picture; there was still a long way to go on this Journey, and Callie was pregnant. Amara smiled again and then reached out her hand and touched Callie’s stomach. Callie jumped slightly when she felt Amara’s cold hand, but she didn’t protest. Amara pressed firmly against Callie’s stomach, and all of a sudden, she felt a kick from the child within. Callie and Amara both gasped at the feeling; this was the first kick Callie had felt. The two women grinned at each other in excitement, and then Amara reached down and touched her own stomach under the water. “I can have more children?” she asked apprehensively, still not believing what she had been told earlier.

“Yes,” Callie said, nodding. “Healie and I are sure of it.”

Amara smiled again, determined. “Okay,” she said. She could still grieve and mourn, but she was through feeling sorry for herself.

“Can I get up now?” Amara whined to Callie.

“No, you may not,” Callie replied firmly. “Not yet, anyway. Now stop squirming so that I can check and see how you’re healing.”

Amara frowned and sighed. She wasn’t in any more pain, hadn’t been for a couple of days now. She sighed again and spread her legs slightly so that Callie could check and see how she was doing. Callie prodded around her abdomen, nodding in satisfaction when she decided that everything felt normal. Amara’s uterus was back to its original size, and both of her ovaries seemed to be in good shape. Of course, Callie had no idea what these organs were; she just knew what the lumps in a woman’s abdomen were supposed to feel like. “Good!” Callie exclaimed. “It feels like everything’s back to normal.”

“So does that mean I can go outside now?” Amara asked.

Callie squinted at the young woman. She hated to keep her cooped up in the tent, with no sunshine or anything, but she wasn’t sure if they should risk letting her move around yet. But Amara’s pleading eyes helped to convince her. Some more socialization would probably do her some good, Callie thought. Amara had been doing remarkably well the last couple of days, after she and Callie talked, and she was almost back to her old self. Every once in a while, however, the pangs of loss could be seen in Amara’s eyes. Callie sighed and nodded slowly. “I guess, but let me go get someone to help you. I don’t want you doing all the walking by yourself, do you understand?”

Amara nodded, grinning. She wanted to get out of this tent. It was so full of horrible memories, and she hated being in there alone with nothing but her thoughts to keep her company. She just wanted to forget everything that had happened. She sighed to herself and then grinned when she saw Danug lifting the flap to the tent.

“So I hear you get to come outside now,” he said, his eyes twinkling. Amara nodded and he chuckled. He leaned down and gently helped her to stand, then put her arm around his neck and his arm around her waist and helped her outside.

It was a beautiful day. Her eyes weren’t used to the sunlight and she was sure she’d have a headache before too long, but it was worth it. The sun was shining brightly, framed by a deep azure sky with a few cotton balls of cumulus clouds. The leaves on all the trees were still green, but she could tell that the colors were trying to change. Fall would be upon them before long, and she could hardly wait to see the gorgeous yellows and oranges of the changing seasons.

Danug helped her to sit down on a log that Callie had piled a few furs on. Radec had found a large stump and had placed it behind the log so that Amara could lean back on it. The stump, too, had been covered with furs so that it would be more comfortable.

“How are you feeling?” Latie asked excitedly.

“I feel pretty good. It doesn’t hurt any more,” Amara said. She glanced down at her feet quickly. Well, most of it didn’t hurt, anyway.

“Amara!” Panec called. He and Lareno were walking up from the river when he saw her. He rushed over to her and embraced her, squeezing her gently, but with emotion. He kissed her cheek and ran his fingers through her hair. “You look wonderful, my love!” he whispered.

She smiled at him tenderly and returned the embrace. She wanted to talk to him, but not in front of everyone. “Can we talk tonight?” she whispered in his ear. He nodded his response, then let go, grinning, ecstatic that she was up and out of the tent.

“Are you hungry?” Latie asked.

“I’m starving,” Amara replied, and thanked her profusely when she was handed a plate of piping hot venison and some choice vegetables that had been cooked with it. She hadn’t eaten like this in days; mostly she had been eating broths. Solid food was a welcome addition to her diet. She pulled off a strip of the meat and sighed as she savored the flavor. “This is amazing!” she commented.

Latie beamed with pride. “Thanks! I did it all by myself!”

Radec boomed with laughter. “You’d think this was her first time to make a meal!”

Latie blushed slightly and slapped him on the upper arm.

“Where’s Healie?” Amara asked.

“Um…she’s…she’s in her tent, working on…something,” Danug stuttered. Everyone but Amara and Panec knew what she was working on.

“Oh,” Amara returned. “Isn’t she going to eat?”

“I’m sure she will, but later…she was pretty absorbed in her work, and she didn’t want to interrupt what she was doing,” Callie answered.

Amara nodded. That was understandable. She ate another strip of the venison slowly, delighting in the taste. “Can we go down to the river and wash my hair again?” she asked Callie.

“Sure, that will give me an excuse to make these men clean up after the meal,” Callie said, winking at Danug. He wrinkled his nose and shook his head at her.

Amara grinned at the interplay between them. “I wanted to get it clean and then get it out of my face; I haven’t been able to do anything with it for such a while, it’s starting to annoy me.”

Callie nodded in understanding. “That’s fine,” she replied as she handed her plate to Latie for seconds.

“How much longer do we need to stay?” Amara asked Radec.

He frowned and glanced up at the sky. “I’m not sure. We should probably leave before too long, but only after you’re ready, and I’m not sure how long that will be. I don’t want you to be traveling if it’s going to cause you problems.”

“Oh, but it won’t,” Amara said. “We can leave in a couple of days; I can ride in the cart, like Latie did, if Callie and Healie are going to be mean and not let me walk by myself.” She grinned at the older woman.

Callie feigned shock. “Me? Mean? Never!”

Radec grinned at her and put his arm around his mate’s shoulders. “Well, how much longer do you think we should stay?” he asked.

“I hadn’t thought about her riding in the cart. It should work, but I don’t want to leave right away, because the jolts and bouncing could still cause her some problems. I want to check with Healie about this, but I think we should stay here two more days, and then we’ll check and see how she’s doing. We can probably leave the third day, as long as Amara behaves herself between now and then.”

Amara rolled her eyes and grinned, then handed her plate to Danug. “Here you go. I’m full.” She hadn’t been able to eat as much as she would have liked; days of lying in the tent, eating only the broths and using virtually no calories had shrunken her stomach slightly.

Danug made a face at her. “Fine! I guess I’ll just take care of your mess for you, then!”

Callie laughed and then handed her own plate to him. “Come on, Panec, help Amara down to the river, and then you can come back and help Danug,” she said as she stood. She grabbed a few skins that they used as towels out of her tent, and then signaled Latie to follow the three of them down to the river to help her give Amara a bath.

“Thank you, Panec,” Amara said, kissing him lovingly.

He hugged her again, tightly, and kissed her forehead. “No problem,” he replied. “I guess I had better go and help Danug.”

Amara giggled and nodded. “I guess so.” She and Callie grinned at each other and watched him walk reluctantly back to the camp.

Callie helped Amara into the water and then dipped her head back to soak her hair. Latie came over with a small bowl of pounded soaproot, and Callie scooped out some with her hands and started rubbing it in Amara’s hair.

“I have an idea!” Latie exclaimed. Callie continued to lather Amara’s hair as she watched Latie run down the river bank and yank a few small flowers out of the ground. She then ran back and crushed the petals, then sprinkled them into the bowl with the pounded soaproot.

“Mmmm, that smells good!” Amara exclaimed. Latie grinned and held out one of the flowers to her. It looked and smelled like a violet, but she wasn’t sure if that’s what it was. She really didn’t know much about paleobotany; she hardly knew anything about modern botany. She could identify several trees, thanks to a leaf project in school, but that was about it.

“That’s why I got them,” Latie said. “There are a whole bunch of them over there,” she pointed to where she had picked them, “and every time I walk over there I can smell them; they’re so strong! And they smell so good…I thought that they might make your hair smell nice, too.”

Amara smiled and then held her nose as Callie dipped her head in the water and rinsed. She lathered her up a second time, and then handed the bowl to Amara to wash her body with. “I think I’m going to go for a swim,” Callie commented. “And then I’ll wash my hair, too.”

Amara watched, partly jealous, as Latie and Callie swam leisurely in the river. When they were finished, they came back over to where Amara was sitting. Callie grabbed the teasel off the bank and handed it to Amara, then took the bowl from her to wash her own hair. Latie helped Amara to scoot up a little ways so that her hair wasn’t in the water any more, and then she joined Callie to wash her hair as well.

Amara watched the two other women as she ran the teasel through her hair. She hated brushing her hair while it was wet, but lots of times it was easier to do it that way, rather than wait until the mess dried. She preferred her own brush from home, but she refrained from using it around anyone but Panec, usually.

As soon as the tangles where worked out, she tossed the brush back on the bank. She had been wanting to get her hair out of her face for the longest time, but she hadn’t been able to think of a good way to do it. She had tried tying her hair back in a ponytail with a thong, but it hadn’t held. When she finally thought of a French braid, she felt like hitting herself for not thinking of it earlier.

Using her index fingers, she pulled a triangle of hair from the top of her head, and then separated it into three sections as even as she could do. She started a braid, wrapping two of the pieces around the middle, and then she held it with her left hand while she used the index finger of her right hand to separate another piece of hair, just above her right temple. She added that piece to the piece she was about to fold over the middle, and then she smoothed it out. She repeated the process on the left side, separating, smoothing, and adding it to the larger braid, until she had reached the nape of her neck. She hated this part; her arms were always so tired by this point, and it was impossible to braid all the way down by reaching behind her. Thus, she had to pull the braid over her shoulder to finish, which seemed to always result in pulling the entire braid to the side. But, without someone else there to help her, that was what she had to do. Usually, without a mirror, she confused herself when she brought the braid over, because she was in effect having to braid backwards, and she almost always messed something up. She concentrated as she felt the three sections, and then managed to pick the correct one the fold over the other. She was gentle enough to avoid pulling the braid to the side, but she pulled enough to keep the braid tight. When she finished, she tied it off with a thong that she had grabbed, and then whipped the braid around again to her back, satisfied with herself.

The sunlight felt wonderful, and she wanted to lie down. Callie and Latie were still washing, so gently, Amara scooted herself to the bank, trying her best to avoid getting sand all over her, and then laid down on her back on one of the skins to be used as a towel. She smiled in relaxation as she let the warm sun dry her body off. She brought her forearm over her eyes and sighed contentedly.

“Oh, Amara!” Latie said. Amara squinted up above her. “What did you do with your hair?” Latie asked.

Amara stretched her arms up. “Here, help me sit up and I’ll show you,” she said.

Latie pulled her into a sitting position so that she wouldn’t have to use her abdominal muscles to do so, and then walked around behind her to look at her hair. “Amara, that’s gorgeous!!! Where did you learn to do that?” she asked.

“Oh, that’s something I learned a long time ago. My mother used to do it on my hair all the time,” she said.

“Will you do mine?” Latie asked.

“Sure!” Amara replied, handing her the teasel. “Brush it out and then I’ll do it.”

Quickly, Latie brushed out her hair and sat cross-legged in front of Amara. Amara frowned, trying to decide what she wanted to do. Her mother had been creative with French braids and had come up with several designs. When Amara was old enough to do her own hair, she learned how to do them all, and without a mirror. She nodded when she decided on a design, and then used a stick that was lying on the beach to part Latie’s hair down the middle, from her forehead to the nape of her neck. Her hair was pretty long; down to her waist. Amara brushed out each side, and then tossed the left side to Latie’s front and began working on the right. She did a braid all the way down to the nape of her neck, and then tied it off. She repeated the process on the left side. Once she had finished that side down to Latie’s neck, she untied the right side and then gathered and held the two sides together. She used the teasel to brush it out, and then she finished the braid by braiding the rest of it all together, down to her waist, and then tied it off.

“There you go!” Amara said.

Latie reached up and felt it. There were two braids on either side, and then they were connected in the back to form one long braid that went the rest of the way down. “Amara, this feels amazing!” she cried.

Callie had come up and sat down beside Amara while she worked, and then reached out to feel Latie’s hair. “Amara, wow! This is beautiful! Will you teach me how to do this?” she asked.

Amara grinned. “Sure, no problem.”

“Oh, Amara,” Latie said as she turned around. “Will you do Callie’s hair too so that I can watch?”

Amara giggled and nodded as Callie and Latie traded positions. Callie’s hair was shorter, only down to her shoulder blades. She would have liked to have started at one ear and braided along the top of Callie’s head, but she didn’t want to be jumping up and down to do so. She decided to do a braid that was similar to her own, but backwards, so that the braid looked like it was on the outside. This one was the hardest to do on her own hair, and she had never gotten the hang of it, but she could do it with other people’s hair. It didn’t take her long to complete it, but by the time she was done, her arms were sore. Callie and Latie both oohed and aahed over the design, and then helped Amara up. It would be getting dark soon, and dinner would need to be started.

Callie walked quickly up from the bank followed by Latie supporting Amara as she walked slowly. Danug glanced up non-commitally at the women and then did a double take as he looked at the fancy designs laid out in the women's hair. He stared and Callie flashed him a wicked smile, "What's the matter Danug?"

Danug blushed slightly, embarrassed because he realized he'd been staring, "Uh…your hair…it looks…nice."

"Why yes it does…thank you…Amara did it, she has a real talent for working with her hands."

Danug looked at her quizically, Amara wasn't so good with sewing and weaving when she arrived, but maybe she just had to learn…maybe it was talent after all. He got to thinking about her Matrimonail tunic, and all the handiwork that was going into the beads and decoration. Surely she would appreciate it. He looked at Amara, who, he thought and blushed, looked awfully beautiful at the moment, with her back and smile lit up by the setting sun. Panec sure is lucky he thought to himself. He wondered if he was ever going to find some woman to love, he was still skeptical as to whether or not it was in his destiny at all. He was getting old, and not that he might not have left his spirit at another woman's hearth in a small child, he wondered if he was meant to be part of this world. Maybe he was destined to partner the Mother in service to her.
He looked at Amara and Latie, smiling side by side again, and sighed, nothing can be done about it now anyway he thought. He blinked and when he opened his eyes he saw Panec glowing and rushing towards Amara with his arms full of wood. When he reached her he dropped his load carelessly and grabbed Amara and lifted her into the air with a giant sweep and twirled her around with a great grin. Amara squealed in delight and surprise. Healie looked up at the pair in surprise. The load of wood had landed practically in her lap. She had been sitting by the small fire and had asked Panec to get her some more wood for the evening. He dropped it literally at her feet and startled her from her task of chopping roots.

Callie glowered at Panec for a moment and said, "Watch where you’re going Panec, you nearly buried Healie. I know you’re happy to see Amara, but have a little bit of patience, don't you think?" She said sternly, but not without affection.

Panec and Amara tore their eyes away from each other and he blushed sheepishly, "Oh, I wasn't even looking." He set Amara down gently, and kneeled down to Healie, "I'm sorry, are you okay?"

Healie smiled, "I'm fine, but don't let me hear you complaining about splinters in your food," she said with an ounce of her old spirit shining through. She grinned at Panec and he grinned back. She must be feeling better he thought. He had been worried about her…up until Amara had become blessed…and unblessed again. He patted her shoulder, "Sorry, can I help out with anything else?"

Healie shook her head, "No no, see to Amara now. Callie and I will take care of the rest. She needs you more than I at the moment," she said gently, tossing a warm glance and soft smile to Amara, who was still standing where Panec had set her.

Amara smiled to Healie, "Maybe later I can braid your hair too, if you'd like. It feels good to have it off your neck when it is so hot. You'd like it."

Healie nodded, "Of course, dear Amara, I'd appreciate it." She nodded as she turned back to her chopping quietly.

Amara took Panec's hand and sat by the fire snuggled close together.

"How are you feeling love?" he said quietly in Amara's ear.

"Actually, really good. The bath felt really nice." She sighed with pleasure.

"You feel much better too, don't you?" he said with a small inflection, and she immediately recognized what he meant.

"Yes I do," she said quietly, not totally convinced once she remembered, but she was getting better. "I'm still very sad about it though, sometimes. I wond…"

"It wasn't your fault Amara, please don't feel bad."

"I know…I love you Panec," she said softly and gazed into the fire as the sky darkened.

“Good morning!” Latie cried.

Amara opened her eyes, squinting at the sunlight streaming in. “Huh?” she asked groggily.

“Look at my hair!” Latie exclaimed as she tossed her hair around her shoulder. She had undone the braid in an attempt to feel how Amara had done it, and she was delighted with the crinkles in her hair.

Amara grinned at her enthusiasm. “Isn’t it pretty?”

“I love it! I didn’t know that it would do this!” Latie ran her hands through her hair and smiled. “Does yours look the same?” she asked.

Amara sat up slowly. “I think so,” she replied. She reached around and untied the knot, then unbraided her hair. Latie squealed when she saw that Amara’s hair was also curly.

“She’s been like this all morning,” Danug said, eyes rolling, as he poked his head into the tent. “I must admit, it is pretty, though.”

Amara laughed. “Yes, it is. Now do something useful and help me up so that I can get some breakfast. Now that you’ve waken me up, I’m starving!”

Danug and Latie both assisted her as she stood, and then Latie helped her into some clothes. Then, leaning heavily on Danug, Amara walked gingerly out of the tent.

“Callie made some more of those cakes for breakfast,” Latie commented.

Amara’s mouth watered. “Oh, wow, those were so good last time! It’s food like that that makes me love to eat!” She sat down on a log and gratefully accepted a plate of the warm round cakes that Lareno handed her. “Where is Callie?” she asked.

“She and Healie are working on something,” Latie replied.

Amara frowned. “What in the world are they doing? They’ve been working on this ‘something’ for what seems like forever! What is it?”

Latie wrinkled her nose. “Well, it’s…it’s something you can’t see yet.” There really wasn’t a good way to put it. She was sure Amara would eventually figure out that it was for her, but hopefully she wouldn’t figure out what exactly it was.

“Oh, okay,” Amara said. She blushed slightly, realizing she shouldn’t have been so curious. She hadn’t added two and two together yet, but now it was obvious it was for her and she wished she hadn’t said anything. She didn’t want to ruin the surprise, whatever it was.

“Latie, look at this!” Panec cried as he came running into the area. He was holding something in his hands, covering it and holding it against his chest. He stopped and grinned when he saw Amara. “Oh, Amara! You’re awake!”

Amara smiled and gestured toward his hands. “What do you have?” she asked.

“I found it down by the river,” he said, opening his hands.

Amara and Latie both gasped when they saw the tiny bird he was holding. “Oh, Panec, where did you get it?” Latie asked.

“The poor thing was down by the river, flopping around in circles. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but he wasn’t able to fly away when I approached, although I’m sure he was frightened. There must be something wrong with his wings.”

“Oh, the poor thing!” Amara exclaimed, petting the small bird with her finger. “Let me see,” she said softly. She carefully lifted up each wing and was dismayed to see what looked like a break in the left one. “Oh, it looks like he has a broken wing.” Tears filled her eyes as she thought about the little bird. “He may never be able to fly.” She sniffled and spoke softly to the bird, “Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you. We just want to fix your wing and make you better.”

“What in the world is all the fuss about?” Healie asked as she came out of Callie’s tent.

“Look, Healie, maybe you can help,” Danug said.

Healie walked over to where Panec was standing and gasped when she saw the bird. “Oh, goodness, what’s wrong with him?” she asked.

“Amara thinks he has a broken wing,” Latie said. “Is there anything we can do?”

Healie frowned. “Well, I suppose we could wrap the wing, but I don’t know if it would work. It might just be best to let nature take its course.”

“Oh, Healie, can’t we please try?” Lareno asked. “It’s such a little bird; he’d have no chance of surviving with a wing like that!”

Healie grinned. “Well, let’s see what we can do, then,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” She turned and went quickly into her tent, and then returned moments later with a small basket of scraps. She hummed as she gauged the bird’s wing size, and then selected a piece. “Hold him still, Panec,” she said. He nodded and held the bird securely but not too tight. Healie carefully wrapped the leather around the wing, and then used several small strips to tie it in place. The bird looked quite odd when she was done, but she was hopeful that the makeshift cast would work.

“Here, we can crumble up part of my cake to give him,” Amara suggested. Healie nodded and Amara crumbled a small piece. She then put a crumble in Panec’s hand. They watched as the bird looked around and then down, and then very slowly the bird stepped toward the crumb. Sighs of relief were heard all around as the bird pecked at Panec’s hand, eating the crumble. “He must be hungry,” Amara mused as she put some more crumbles in Panec’s hand.

“Here, let me put him down,” Panec said. “Here you go, bird.”

Amara put a small pile of crumbles in front of the bird. Eagerly, the hungry animal pecked several of them.

“He’s so cute!” Latie cried. She looked around quickly and found a shallow bowl and poured some water in it. She gently set it down in front of the bird. “Here, bird, have something to drink.” They were all delighted when the thirsty bird drank out of the small bowl.

“Were you thirsty, bird?” Danug asked. He nodded to himself. “Not a bad name, is it? How ‘bout it? Bird?” He was rewarded with a quick chirp. Danug laughed and nodded again. “Okay, Bird, so be it.”

“Why don’t we go look for some seeds?” Lareno asked. “I’m sure Latie and Amara will take care of him while we’re gone,” he said, smiling at Latie.

“Get some nice worms too,” Latie said, wrinkling her nose at him. She leaned back down and petted the bird gently as they left. “Don’t be scared, Bird, we’re going to help you.” She smiled gently at the tiny creature. She and Amara grinned widely at each other when the bird chirped again.

Latie sat idling by the morning fire, with her bowl of parched and ground grains cooked into a warm mush sitting in her lap. The mornings were cold now, and she didn't feel much like moving from the small aura of warmth that radiated from the fire. They were planning on leaving that day, but her heart wasn't in it. She wasn't sure why, she just felt tired...and sick of traveling. She thought to herself that they were extremely lucky to have the horses to help, but they hadn’t seen anyone else besides the Sharamudoi. She smiled to herself then, remembering how she met Lareno. What a lucky stop that had been. She sighed and closed her eyes remembering.

Suddenly she felt a small weight hop upon her leg and felt it move up closer on her thigh. She cracked her eye open to see "Bird," as they had taken to calling the injured bird that Panec had found, pecking his little beak into her bowl of uneaten mush.

"Hey! Look! He likes grain mush!" she exclaimed to no one in particular but herself. Nonetheless her cry sent several people to her side.

Danug looked on in fascination as the little bird fearlessly perched upon Latie's arm and pecked away at the soft grains. "He does...wow! Look at that!" he said astounded as the bird twittered at the pair.

Panec drew up next and smiled, "Looks like he likes grain mush more than you Latie!" he said teasing her.

“I'm so sick of mush!" she exclaimed again, startling the little creature who clumsily flopped to the ground as the bandaged wing prevented flight. "Oh Bird, sorry! Here,” she said offering the bowl fashioned from a knot of wood slowly. She set the bowl down and watched as Bird again, timidly this time, pecked away at the mush. Latie turned when she heard Amara giggle.

"Hi," she whispered deliberately, to avoid startling her friend again.

Amara smiled and giggled again, "You startled him, he sure does like that mush though." She looked lovingly to Panec for a moment and then pursed her lips and began to whistle. Bird twittered and turned his little head to the side. Latie, Danug and Panec's eyes all widened when the little bird trilled in response to Amara's whistling.

Danug looked frightened for a moment, and then whispered, "That is amazing..."

Latie whispered back, "Ayla used to do that..."

Panec smiled at Amara and then asked, slightly less hushed, "How do you do that?"

Amara stopped whistling and smiled, "Easy, just blow air through your lips like this," she demonstrated. Promptly all three spectators pursed their lips and blew. Panec managed a very faint tone, Latie, a spray of saliva and Danug a short but loud tone.

Amara giggled at the three and nodded to Danug, "That's it, just blow for longer, with a steady breath."
The three tried again, slightly better this time, but Latie was obviously struggling.

"I can't get it Amara," she said disappointed.

"Here, try it this way, it sounds different, but you can make more sounds too," she said and demonstrated by clasping her hands around each other, leaving a pocket of air between them, her thumbs together with a slight opening between them. She held her hands out for Latie to see. Latie nodded and followed suit, and then Amara held her hands to her lips and blew, opening and closing her hands to change the pitch at will. Latie blew and got no sound. Panec and Danug looked on in amazement, and Callie and Lareno jogged over.

"What is that noise?" Lareno asked.

Danug pointed to Amara who started blowing again. "Just like a flute, but with her hands!!!" he exclaimed.

Callie smiled and put her hands together. She got no sound, but not a second later, Latie emitted a long steady tone from between her hands and jumped up in excitement, "I did it! Oh, that is so neat Amara, now we can play music!"

Lareno scooted closer to Latie, "Show me?" Latie smiled and began demonstrating to Lareno, with some difficulty at first, and then by adjusting her hands she was able to repeat the sound. Soon the whole crowd was creating a chorus of wind tones through their hands and Bird, forgotten in the excitement, trilled in agitation.

"What in the name of Mut is going on here?" Radec hollered from across the camp. He had been loading the cart and had heard the commotion.

Callie laughed and trotted over to him, "Amara is talking with the bird, she showed us how too!" She clasped her hands and blew for Radec, who smiled fondly and then grabbed Callie by the waist and lifted her into the cart.

"That's lovely dear, but it is time to get out of here. We've been stopped too long I fear. It is getting too cold in the mornings. I hope we find someone to winter with soon. I’m starting to worry, for you and the baby, Amara already..." he stopped, not sure if he should say it.

Callie nodded primly and agreed, "Yes, you're right. Now that we are all healthy and rested, we need to go, and quickly."

Healie, Callie, and Amara with Bird rode on the cart, while Radec and Danug walked along with the horses in front. The rest of the group trailed behind in silence. It was late afternoon, and bitterly cold. The sun hadn't seemed to warm the air at all since the morning and a frigid wind was beginning to toy with blades of dry grass and the humans’ mood. No one was feeling all that great, but yet no one dared mention what everyone was thinking. Winter was coming...and quickly.
Soon the silent group came to a small river. The horses crossed with no problem with the three women on the cart. The rest on the other hand debated about how to cross. It was so cold, no one wanted to take off clothing, but leaving it on to get wet was even more dangerous. Amara and Callie watched from the other bank while Healie dozed on the cart, unaware of dilemma.

"I think it would be best to take off the leggings; you'll warm up quickly once you put them back on and start moving," Callie mentioned. "I know it is cold, but cold clothes won't dry now, I know. And we don't need anyone else coming down with something," she said firmly. The men and Latie nodded grimly and began to take off their warm boots and leggings.

Latie, eager to get to the other side and dressed again hopped into the water quickly, "Ooooooooohh," she hollered. "It's really cold!" she said as she struggled to move across the freezing stream. When she emerged from the water on the other bank, her feet and calves were bright red. She shivered violently and quickly redressed. "Hurry, the faster you do it the faster it will be done."

The men hurriedly splashed through the water and dressed quickly on the other side. Panec shivered and held on to a shivering Amara, "I don't know about the rest of you, but it is getting to cold to be out. I think we should make camp, we've got water and it is late enough to stop. Callie is right, we don't want anyone else to get sick."

Radec nodded silently and pulled the cart further from the river bank. With silent acquiescence, the group began to pull apart the belongings on the cart and put together a rough-hewn camp.

Panec steered Amara away and said, "We're going to get fire fuel." The rest of the group barely noticed as the two walked away.

Amara and Panec walked close together, and quickly, to keep warm. "I can't wait to get a fire going...I can't believe it got so cold...so fast!" Amara said.

Panec nodded, "I know, that is how the winter is, around here, one day it just shows up, the day before could have felt like the warmest day of summer, and the next it’s snowing like the dead of winter. Here, over there, there are some dead branches under that willow," he said as he pointed.

Amara scrambled over and began gathering as much as she could carry, making sure some of the branches had small twigs for starter.

When the arrived back at the camp and dropped their load they immediately began to set up their mutual tent while Healie started the fire. By the time they were done, the fire was going and a skin pot of starchy roots and meat was heating. The pair sat down by the fire, surrounded by the rest of the shivering group.

"This fire isn't helping at all!" Lareno complained. "It’s just too cold!"

Everyone nodded agreement, but did nothing. Everyone shivered and their teeth chattered. Amara thought about getting up and running in place, but then did nothing. She was too tired to move anymore anyway. Callie thought it was time to dig out winter furs from their packs. It would make them lighter anyway, and people would stay warm. "I think we should all get our winter furs out. I don't know if this weather is here to stay, but it is bound to come sooner or later." Panec nodded and ran to the cart to get Healie's furs. He draped it around her shoulders and gave her a warm hug.

“You must be freezing," he said.

She nodded and smiled at him, "Thank you, that helps some. I feel this cold in my bones. I'm aching all over," she said wistfully.

Amara jumped up then, "I’ll be right back." She jogged slowly towards the stand of willow that she and Panec had gathered wood near. She reached for her knife and began to peel away the bark of the willow. When she thought she had enough, she stashed her knife and trotted back to camp.

"Here, Healie. I brought willow bark, maybe it will help."

Healie nodded, "Good thinking Amara," she said as she pointed to a pot of boiling water. Amara tossed the bark into the water and then quickly sat next to Panec again to stay warm.

Finally after what seemed an eternity, the food was warm and everyone ate. They ate quickly and quietly, ready to retreat to their tents and furs for the evening. No one was in the mood for singing or stories or discussion about anything. Amara and Latie quickly rinsed the bowls in the river and ran back to the fire. Amara looked up at the sky momentarily and her eyes went wide. The sky had blackened over with heavy clouds. She sucked in her breath and pointed. "Do you think it will snow?" she asked Latie, who looked up as well.

"Ohhhh, it looks likely, but sometimes it rains first."

Amara nodded, "Seems pretty cold though."

Latie nodded in return, "True." She smiled and waved at Amara when Lareno signaled to her from their tent.

Amara walked quickly towards her own to find Panec sitting waiting for her. "Oh Panec, I think it might snow! Have you seen the sky?"

Panec nodded and smiled, "Snow or no, it's cold, let's get in the furs and stay warm," he said with a sparkle in his eye.

Amara giggled and quickly climbed into the furs and took off her clothes. Panec quickly followed and lay next to her.
"This is better,” he said softly in her ear.

"Much better," she agreed as she leaned over to kiss him.

Healie awoke stiff in her furs. She was warmly insulated by the pocket of warm air surrounding her inside the furs, but when she poked her face out into her dark tent it was cold! Frigid in fact, and her joints were telling her so, in no uncertain terms. The willowbark that Amara had brought her last night helped some, for a while, but this was getting to be too strong for the mild properties of willow bark. She moaned slightly and tried to roll over. She thought briefly about getting out of her furs to start and fire and some breakfast; she was usually the one to do it anyway, but she changed her mind. She would wait for someone else today. The cold wasn't going to allow her in her aging bones to get up so easily. She closed her eyes and sent a silent prayer to Mut.

"Mut, as one of your blessed I have honored you my whole life, lend some kindness on an old woman. My bones can't take the cold, hold off winter just a bit longer. At least until we find a cave to winter at."

Healie sighed again and listened. It was silent outside. As she listened closer she heard a few bird songs, she wondered where Bird was. Maybe that was his song, she thought as she drifted back to sleep.

Latie awoke with a start and realized her nose was ice cold. She buried her face back under the furs and snuggled closer to Lareno. She wondered at the sudden cold. It reminded her of that freak storm they had experienced at the beginning of the summer, the one that they had found Amara in. Had it really been a whole summer already? She had thought they would have traveled further, but they had had to stop several times, once with the Sharamudoi, once when she was hurt, then Amara. She shook her head. No use wondering about the past. Might as well get started on the day. She rolled over and gazed at the sleeping Lareno. She sighed and smiled at him. He looked so peaceful, so beautiful like that. She leaned over and placed a gentle kiss on his forehead. At that his eyes fluttered open, "Wha…oh Latie," he smiled lovingly and snuggled closer, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her into him.

Latie smiled back at him, "Good morning Lareno," she said and kissed his lips.

Lareno returned her kiss with fervor and then said, "It sure is cold this morning. I didn't realize that winter was so close."

"Neither did I," Latie added thoughtfully. "Should we go out and start a fire? I know everyone will appreciate it, and I don't think anyone else is up," she said cheerfully.

Lareno groaned, "Why us? Let's just stay in the furs and keep warm," he said smiling slyly.

Latie nudged him, "Oh come on, lazy," she said as she flipped the furs back and exposed herself to the frigid air. "Oh my!” She reached quickly for her leggings and tunic, and then thought better of it. She reached for her pack and began rummaging around.

"What are you looking for?" Lareno asked from beneath the warm furs.

"My fur lined leggings, and my parka. It is COLD!!" she exclaimed with a giggle. She reached into the pack and held up her leggings triumphantly, "Ah ha!" She quickly pulled them on, and pulled her tunic over her head, then followed with the parka.

"You look so funny!" chuckled Lareno, "Like…a bear!" he said laughing at himself even harder.

Latie rolled her eyes, "Better a bear than an iceblock!” She tossed back at him with a grin.

Lareno shook his head as she headed towards the opening. She held on flap, and slowly pushed it back. She peered outside and exclaimed, "SNOW!!! Lareno, look! It snowed!" She giggled with delight and quickly crawled out of the tent and jumped up once or twice. She giggled ecstatically and then ran around in a circle around what had been the fire ring the night before. She knew starting a fire would be a challenge this morning, but she was up to it.

"Lareno, come out, it is so beautiful…"

"I'm out, I'm out…" he said cheerfully as he watched Latie skip around. "Looks like the fire pit is gone. I'll clear it out, can you find me some dry kindling, Latie?" he asked as he kneeled down over the pit and began scraping away the layer of snow that had accumulated with a mittened hand.

"Sure, there is some in my pack, in my fire kit. You have a firestone? I'll bring the whole kit, never mind," she said, talking as she walked back to her tent.

Lareno cleared the pit out and stomped on the ground to keep warm. When Latie emerged she handed him a leather pouch which held a firestone and a small supply of dry twigs and cattail fluff just for occasions like this. He smiled warmly to her, and said, "Well let's get started, and get warm!"

Lareno leaned down over the pit and sprinkled some of the kindling in a dry depression he had dug out of the otherwise wet pit. He struck the firestones together and watched as the spark landed on the kindling and flamed up. He blew gently on the struggling flame and then added some small twigs. The fire sputtered and struggled for quite some time, but finally he was able to get some of the drier logs from the bottom of the pile to light. Soon enough the fire was roaring strong, melting a muddy puddle around it where the snow was melting. Latie filled a pot with snow and set up the tripod to hang it from. The snow quickly melted and she had to add more to get enough melt water for breakfast for everyone. As soon as the water boiled she tossed in some grains and some of the dried apples that they had left. She backed away as the grains cooked and put her arms around Lareno. "Thank you."

He smiled down at her and nodded. "Thank you, can't wait to eat!"

She laughed and then headed towards the horses picking up a bowl and filling it with raw grain. "They'll be hungry too," she said mostly to herself.

She poured some of the grain into each hand and held one out to each horse. “Hey you guys, what do you think of all this snow? Pretty isn't it, but cold. And you can't find any hay can you? Well I have grain for you. You like grain don't you?" She laughed as Jolie nudged her hand when she had greedily licked all the grain that Latie had offered. Latie filled her hand again and leaned up against the horse as she ate. Ranug, on the other hand, while Latie was distracted, found the bowl of grain and was munching away happily. When Latie turned, her eyes opened wide and her mouth formed a surprised O. "Ranug! Don't be greedy!” She quickly reached for the bowl and started walking away with it. She giggled when Ranug followed her and tried to eat over her shoulder. She poured the last of the grain into her hand and offered it to Jolie while she offered the bowl to Ranug, who proceeded to lick the bowl in search of more grain.

At that Lareno laughed out loud. "I never seen horses do such funny things. They really are wonderful, so useful, helpful, and funny!"

'I know," Latie nodded as she headed back towards the fire where Amara and Panec were sitting, both with steaming bowls of mush, bundled up in parkas and mittens looking as silly as ever.

"I can't believe it snowed!!" Amara exclaimed between mouthfuls. "It is so pretty!"

Panec looked at her perplexed. "I'm surprised you find it so, when last time it snowed….you…well, you nearly died."

Amara stopped for a moment, "Well, true, but, I know I'm safe, and can take care of myself now. When that happened…well…you know," she said emphatically to Panec. He knew what had happened to her, she had told him how she had arrived here, how she had been so confused and grief stricken that she couldn't think straight.

He nodded and smiled and continued eating his mush. "Good food! Good that it is hot. I wonder if winter is here to stay. I've never been this way, wonder how different the seasons are here."

Lareno nodded, "We are pretty close to winter here, this probably won't stick, but it will stay cold I think."

"More reason to get going then!" Radec boomed behind the crowd of young men and women. Everyone moaned, they knew Radec was eager to get moving, especially if it was winter. He wanted, needed to find a place for them to stay over the coldest part of the year. They couldn't travel for long in the winter, and he was beginning to fear they wouldn't find a place.

Healie glanced behind them and smiled to herself at all the prints in the snow. She laughed quietly, imagining the face of anyone who came upon their tracks. The footsteps weren’t so bad, but the horses added quite a bit of confusion, and if that wasn’t enough, the two wide trails in the snow from the wheels of the cart finished it off well. She turned back around and snuggled herself further into her parka. Bird, who was snuggled inside her parka, objected to some of her movements, and she absently petted him. She had been so grateful when Lareno suggested letting her ride in the cart; she wasn’t sure how much longer she could have kept walking. Her pain from her arthritis was excruciating, but she hated to complain. She just couldn’t wait to find camp for the night so that they could have a warm meal. It was a cloudy day, so her perceptions could have been wrong, especially with all the snow, but she was sure sunset would be soon.

As if reading her thoughts, Radec held up his arm at the front of the line. Everyone trudged up to him so that they wouldn’t have to let the hoods of their parkas down in order to hear him. “Why don’t we stop over there for the night?” Radec asked as he gestured towards an area of evergreens. The only response he received was a bunch of nods and low murmurs. He shivered quickly; it was amazingly cold, and if he was this cold, he could only imagine how everyone else was feeling.

They made their way over to the evergreens and quietly unpacked their tents. Amara and Latie left Panec and Lareno to set up their tents, and the two young women cleared a space for a fire, Bird watching as if the process intrigued him. Latie rummaged around in her pack for kindling and then while Amara was starting the fire, retrieved several fallen branches that still seemed fairly dry, despite the snow. Soon they had a warm fire cracking, and then joined Healie in preparing a meal. Danug had offered to set up Healie’s tent so that she could relax some more; it was obvious to him that she was in pain, but he didn’t want her to feel like she wasn’t being productive. She had mentioned starting some food cooking, and he had agreed with fervor. They were all hungry, and were more than happy when the smell of cooking grains and rabbit permeated the air.

“Lareno, could you three go gather some more wood?” Latie asked. “This still has a while to go yet, and we didn’t gather much, only what we could see right around here. We might want to keep a fire burning tonight, as well,” she added.

Lareno nodded in agreement, and the three young men turned in search of wood.

“I am starving!” Callie remarked as she rubbed her hands in front of the fire.

“Me too,” Amara added. “This smells so good!”

Healie laughed, “Hunger is always the best seasoning.” She dipped her finger into the large basket of water to test the temperature. “I think this is good enough,” she said. Callie reached over and handed her a few nutty-flavored pine cones she had gathered, and Healie meticulously started pulling them apart, adding the edible parts to the hot water. Callie added some grain and the last of the dried apples that she had cut up.

“Amara, can you check on the rabbit?” Callie asked. Radec had seen the rabbit out of the corner of his eye earlier and had managed to kill it by pure luck. However, one rabbit wouldn’t feed the entire group, so Callie had decided to just throw everything together in a warm stew.

“It’s almost done,” Amara said. “It smells so good!” She reached out quickly and pulled off a small piece of the cooked meat and shoved it into her mouth before Healie could protest. “Mmm, it tastes good, too!”

Healie rolled her eyes and grinned, then poured a little pile of grain on the ground next to Bird.

They were quiet for a minute, just long enough to hear the laughter of the young men off in the distance. “I wonder what they’re doing,” Radec commented. “Should I go check on them?”

Callie laughed. “No, let them play. They’ll be sorry for it soon enough; I guarantee that when they come back they’ll all be soaked straight through their parkas.” She shook her head. “But, as long as they bring us some wood, I won’t complain.”

“This is annoying; nothing is dry!” Danug wailed as they searched.

“Well, Latie and Amara found some dry wood; if we can’t find any you know what they’ll say,” Panec said, grinning.

Danug chuckled. “You’re absolutely right. We can’t let those two girls beat us at gathering wood, can we?”

Lareno rolled his eyes and shook his head at the antics. “And think of what I would have missed if I hadn’t come along,” he commented sarcastically.

Danug squinted his eyes and cocked his head. “Oh?” He shrugged. “Well,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “you definitely would have missed me pushing you in the snow!” With that, in one quick movement Danug shoved Lareno into a snow bank.

Completely caught off-guard, Lareno stood and shook the snow off. “Yes, and I would have hated to miss that.” He nonchalantly reached behind Danug and yanked him backwards into the snow, pulling his parka off just enough to allow the cold wet snow in.

Danug yelled in surprise, then gathered up a handful of snow and threw it at Lareno. Panec was now laughing so hard he could hardly stand, and for the heck of it, Danug threw a handful of snow at him, as well, hitting him right in the face. Panec ducked another handful from Lareno, and then scooped up one of his own. Before long, they had a full-fledged snowball fight. Each of the three young men was ducking behind a snow drift, peeking out long enough to fling a snowball at one of the other two.

Danug was right in the middle of a shout of protest when a snowball from Lareno landed right on his mouth. He coughed out the cold snow and leaned down so as to avoid any other missiles while he coughed out the rest. As he did this, he saw a slight movement out of the corner of his eye. Quickly, he reached his hand up from behind his drift to signal Lareno and Panec. The snowballs stopped and Lareno crawled over to where Danug was sitting. Panec joined them seconds later.

“What?” Lareno asked.

“I saw something,” Danug said.

“Where?”

“Over there.”

“I don’t see anything,” Panec whispered. A second later, all three of them saw the movement Danug had seen.

“What is that?” Lareno asked.

Danug shrugged. “I don’t know. I say we go find out.”

Panec and Lareno looked at each other and shrugged. “Why not?” Lareno said.

“How much longer does that need to boil?” Latie asked. “I don’t know how much longer I can wait!”

“Be patient, it’ll be done before long,” Callie said. Then she immediately perked up. “Did you hear that?” she asked.

“What?” Radec said, glancing around.

Callie furrowed her brow. “Well, I guess I should say did you not hear that. The boys stopped yelling.”

“Oh, they probably got tired of their game,” Radec said. He chuckled. “Do you want me to go check on them?”

Callie smiled sheepishly. “No, that’s fine, I guess it’s just needless worrying. This cold seems to have me on edge.”

“I agree,” Healie said. “This is definitely strange weather, but we’ve seen stranger. Do you remember that winter several cycles of the seasons back when it was so warm that almost all the snow melted in one day?” She shook her head at the memory. “Two days later, we had wind and snow like you’d never seen before.”

Radec nodded. “Yes, that’s true, I had forgotten about that. I suppose we’re almost as far north as some of the southern Mamutoi camps. This is probably to be expected. Didn’t Jondalar say something about the ice to the north extending further south near here?”

Latie cocked her head. “I think so, but I don’t think he knew that from experience, I think someone along the way told him about that.”

“How close do you think those people are, the Losadunai?” Healie asked.

Radec sighed. “I don’t know. I wish I could say. I hope that we’re close; I don’t want to be traveling too much longer. You’ve only got a few moons left, haven’t you, Callie?”

“Well, I guess I have! It’s hard to believe how fast the time has gone!”

“Speaking of time being gone, I believe this is almost done,” Healie said.

“Well, good, now as soon as those boys get back, we can eat, and then get into our tents and out of this cold!” Latie said with a giggle.

Quietly, the three young men made their way toward the area where they saw the movement. They were sure that whatever it was had heard them during the snowball fight, and that it had probably bounded off already. But they were all hoping to be able to track it and hunt it; fresh meat would be a welcome treat for them all.

“What kind of tracks do those look like?” Danug asked when they came upon prints in the snow.

Panec scratched his head. “Huh, I don’t know. They look almost like…well…I don’t know what they look like.”

The three men stood there pondering what they were seeing, shaking their heads. They all jumped, startled, at the sound of what almost sounded like a sneeze.

Lareno’s head snapped up and somehow he managed to make eye contact with a young woman hiding, very well hidden, behind a bush. He could see the young woman shrinking back in fear. He nodded quickly in her direction, and Panec and Danug looked up.

Danug grinned widely and extended his arms in greeting to the frightened young woman. “Hello! I am Danug of the Mamutoi,” he began.

The young woman stood slowly, and walked very cautiously out from behind the bush. He glanced at her foot coverings and smiled to himself; so that was what made the strange tracks! The small snowshoes were made by bending a small branch into a teardrop shape and lashes were crisscrossed to hold it in place. Then they had been attached to leather so that the person wearing them could just slip their foot into the leather encasing, and walk on the snow with ease. Danug grinned widely at the young woman and nodded. She smiled timidly in reply.

“I am Danug of the Mamutoi,” he repeated. He was sure that she didn’t understand what he said, but that she did understand the meaning. He smiled and wondered how far east they were. Perhaps she might understand Zelandonii. “I am Danug of the Mamutoi,” he repeated in Jondalar’s language.

The young woman brightened and smiled again, very timidly. She blinked and in very broken Zelandonii, she replied, “I Caloa, S’Armunai, greet.”

Lareno looked wide eyed at the woman, where had she come from? How could they not have heard her, or had she been here all along? He smiled tentatively at her, letting Danug take the lead, since he was not as familiar with Zelandonii as Danug. He turned to look at Panec who looked about as thunderstruck as himself. Lareno waved him to come closer and whispered, "Where do you think she came from? I hadn't noticed tracks or...anything?"

Panec nodded and smiled to the woman, "Yeah, I know, " he whispered to Lareno. “ She appeared out of...nowhere it seems."

Danug kept smiling at the woman, not quite sure what to say next, so he turned to his friends murmuring behind him and gestured to them and spoke in Zelandonii, "In the name of Mut, Caloa, I greet you and you are welcome. These are my companions, Panec of the Mamutoi, and Lareno of the Sharamudoi," he said pointing at each in turn. He waited for the others to make proper greeting.

"I greet you Caloa of the S’Armunai, you are most welcome here," Panec said formally in Mamutoi.

Lareno smiled genially and said in his broken Zelandonii as well, "Caloa, welcome in the name of Mudo, the great mother of all. Where did you come from? We didn't see you. We had been collecting wood."

Caloa smiled and nodded. "Wood...and snow," she said timidly and giggled. Apparently she had seen their tussle in the snow. "I hear man voices, I hide, not know who is, not know talk," she said struggling through her sentences. It reminded Danug of when Amara had been learning Mamutoi. But this woman was clearly one of them. In addition to her handcrafted snow shoes, she wore a heavy horse-hide parka, tall boots that tied just below her knees and fur covered leggings. Her mittens hung from her left hand and a spear was held, now idly, in her right. Danug assumed she had taken up arms for her protection, but now realized that there was no need. Her eyes sparkled with curiosity and a touch of anxiety. Danug admired their dark hazel color and noticed the soft flush in her cheeks from the chill of the air. A small gust of wind blew and tousled the wisps of hair that had escaped from her elaborate bun on the back of her head. She shivered involuntarily.

Danug smiled warmly at her again. "Caloa, you are among friends here, it is very cold. Won't you join us for an evening meal and warm yourself by the fire?” He offered his hand in a show of trust.

Caloa nodded and took it. "I go, yes friend." She smiled a little more freely.

Danug grinned to his friends and said as he walked towards the camp again with Caloa, "Can you get the rest of the wood?" Panec and Lareno nodded complacently and turned to their task.

"Now that certainly is interesting," Panec said.

"How so?" asked Lareno.

"Didn’t you see the way Danug looked at her? Where did she come from though? Have you ever visited the S’Armunai?"

Lareno shook his head as he bent to break some of the twigs off the bottom of a tree. "No, we haven't heard from the S’Armunai. I'd heard that they lived northwest of us, but they never traded or made themselves known, to us at least. She seems different..."

Panec nodded in silent agreement and gave an involuntary thanks to Mut. He wasn't sure why, but he felt a chill and wanted to get back to the camp as soon as possible. He stooped to break off some twigs and then turned, "Lareno, I think this is enough. Let's get back. I'm starving anyway!"

Lareno nodded in agreement and they set off following Danug and Caloa's tracks.

Danug led Caloa through the trees and stopped. He pointed through the trees to where the camp was visible. "Here is our camp, we are on a Journey."

Caloa's eyes widened; there were several people, one huge man with red hair, an older woman and one pregnant woman. There were also two younger women, probably near her age. They were all huddled around a fire dipping bowls of a steaming porridge into their bowls. That all seemed normal enough, but there was also a huge...she didn’t even know what to call it. It was a box that held all of the packs and gear. And near that...was...a pair of horses! She gasped.

Danug noticed her gasp. "Caloa, we travel with horses, they are our friends, Jolie and Ranug. You don't need to be afraid. They are tame."

Caloa looked at him with wide eyes. "Horses, woman Ayla have horses. Mother horses..."

Danug looked at her for a moment, confused. What was she trying to say...then he realized she had said a name he recognized. "Ayla! Yes, you know Ayla, she had horses too!"

Caloa looked Danug, and back to the horses in awe. "Ayla come horses, Z'Elandon horses."

Danug looked at her and smiled, not sure what she meant, but he was sure that she had known Ayla. And that meant a lot! He nodded to her and pressed on slowly into camp.

“Ho there, we have a visitor!" Danug called as they emerged from the tree cover.

All five of his companions turned at the same time with wide eyes. Danug was back, with a young woman. She was beautiful, in a dark sort of way. She was tall, almost as tall as Danug was, and very slender. She had dark hair, pulled back into an elaborate bun. It appeared to be a bit disheveled, indicating some time had passed since she had made it. Had she been travelling too? Amara wondered.

She noticed the young woman take a deep breath and cling a little tighter to Danug's hand. She seemed timid, a little uncomfortable and Amara wondered why. They were all friendly, all were smiling.

Callie popped up suddenly and sort of run-waddled to her side. "In the name of Mut, I, Callie of the Mamutoi greet you. Please, come... sit, eat," she said proffering her hand to Caloa in greeting.

Caloa smiled and nodded. She didn't know Mamutoi, but she knew she had been greeted, most warmly. "I thank you, Callie. I Caloa, S’Armunai," she managed in Zelandonii.

Danug smiled and added. "She doesn't really know Mamutoi, but manages Zelandonii quite well.”

Callie nodded and led the girl to the fire. Caloa slowly sat down between Callie and Latie and smiled. Their food certainly smelled good. Callie worked quickly to prepare Caloa a bowl of porridge. She handed it to her and smiled, "Eat." She then handed Danug a bowl of porridge as he sat down, weaseling his way between Latie and Caloa. Latie moved over, smiling generously to Danug, "Where did she come from?" she whispered.

"You'll see, she's S’Armunai."

Just then Panec and Lareno walked into camp with armloads of wood. Healie nodded with relief, as the fire was beginning to die down. She gestured for them to bring the wood. She poured another small handful of grain on the ground for Bird and stroked his broken wing softly. Caloa oohed softly and Healie smiled at her, "Bird," she said in Mamutoi. Caloa swallowed and then began to eat with gusto.

The men brought the wood and in exchange for the load of wood that each dropped she offered a large portion of porridge and mug of steaming tea. Lareno settled himself next to Latie and Panec next to Amara.

“Caloa, do the S’Armunai live near here?” Danug asked.

She shook her head and paused as she finished chewing a bite of the delicious meal. “No, S’Armunai, north. I, other people, come south.”

Danug furrowed his brow. He hated to ask so many questions, but he was curious. “Are you making a Journey with some other people?”

Caloa paused to interpret his words, and then half-nodded. “Journey, small, yes, find man.”

“Find man?” Danug asked, confused.

Caloa sighed in frustration. “Man, for woman…mate?”

Danug brightened at that. “You’re on a Journey to find a mate for a woman?” She nodded. “Do you not have many men?”

“Yes, men, but woman, new man…she loves,” she replied.

“Oh, I see! One of your women fell in love with a man from a different people, and you’ve come to get him, right?” Caloa nodded. “Where is this man from? What people?”

Caloa thought, and then struggled with the word, “Hadumai…not know well…Hadumai.”

“Danug, didn’t Jondalar mention that he and Thonolan met the Hadumai on their Journey?” Latie interrupted.

“They did!” Danug cried. Caloa jumped at his outburst. “Caloa, can we meet this man?”

She frowned and then shrugged. “Yes, camp, there,” she gestured in the direction of her camp. “You come, our camp?”

Danug stood in excitement. For some reason, he felt that this was an extremely important decision that they had to make. He knelt by Radec. “Radec, let’s go to Caloa’s camp. We can speak with the other S’Armunai there and find out how close we are to the Losadunai…I would imagine that someone there knows. It’s obvious that Caloa knows Ayla and Jondalar, too; perhaps we can speak with more people there, people who might know Zelandonii better, who could tell us more about them, and how they were doing!”

Radec fingered his beard and glanced over at his pregnant mate. It might be good for her to meet some more people, especially if there is a healer among them; then the healer could check on Callie’s progress. And Danug was right; someone would inevitably know more about their geographical position with respect to the Losadunai. He nodded in agreement. “That’s a good idea, Danug. Ask Caloa if she thinks we might all be able to come.”

“Caloa,” Danug said in Zelandonii, “can we all come?” He gestured around to everyone else.

She nodded. “Come, camp, tomorrow.”

Danug returned the nod. “Would you like to stay with us tonight?”

She frowned and glanced up at the sky. The sun was beginning to set and there was little daylight left. However, she knew that if she didn’t return to her camp, everyone would worry about her. She shook her head. “No, must return, not worry.” Danug nodded his understanding. “Tomorrow…meet tomorrow, as today?”

“You want us to meet you tomorrow where we met you today, right?” Danug asked.

Caloa nodded. “Tomorrow, sun,” she pointed straight up, indicating that she would meet them when the sun was at its highest. “Bring camp?”

Danug turned to Radec. “Do you want to move the camp, Radec?”

Radec nodded. “Yes, I’d rather take everything with us rather than leave it and run the risk of animals getting into anything. Then we can just leave the next day, or perhaps the day after that, after we’ve spoken with everyone there.”

“Yes, Caloa, we’ll bring everything with us, and we will meet you where we met you today,” Danug translated.

She nodded, feeling confident. The strangers were nice, and she was positive that the other S’Armunai would more than welcome them, especially with all the stories about Ayla and Jondalar they could share. She set her empty bowl on the ground next to Danug. “I go?” she said, standing.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Danug asked, standing with her.

Caloa shook her head. “No, I find, no problems, you find me tomorrow.”

“Are you sure? It’s getting dark?”

Caloa nodded. “Tomorrow, see you.”

Danug sighed and nodded. He extended his arms to her, which she gratefully accepted in an “until next time” gesture. She then went around the fire, repeating the gesture to the others, smiling warmly. They all watched as she walked in the direction of the footprints in the snow.

Danug sat down dreamily. Amara glanced at Latie and grinned, and Latie winked at her. Caloa was a beautiful young woman. Danug caught their eyes, grinned, and then returned to his food.

“But I don’t know Zelandonii!” Amara protested with a pout.

“Don’t worry, Amara, we’ll translate,” Latie assured her. She felt badly about the situation; she hadn’t even thought before that they would be going to the Zelandonii, and perhaps Amara might need to know their language. As it was, she and Danug were both fairly fluent, and Panec, Radec, Callie, and Healie could speak and understand well enough to get the meaning across. Lareno spoke broken Zelandonii from the time Jondalar and Thonolan had spent with the Sharamudoi, but no one had even considered teaching Amara.

Amara sighed. “Well, I suppose I’ll figure it out soon enough, but you’ll help, right?”

Latie nodded fervently. “Yes, I promise, we’ll help you out. You learned Mamutoi quick enough, with absolutely no background, so hopefully Zelandonii wouldn’t be too difficult to understand. There’s a lot of similarity between Sharamudoi and Mamutoi, and between Sharamudoi and S’Armunai, so Lareno said from what he’s heard, and I would assume that Zelandonii and Losadunai and S’Armunai are close as well.” She frowned for a minute. “Do you have different languages where you come from?”

Amara brightened and nodded. “Yeah, we do! My language, English, is pretty similar to a lot of other languages that I’ve heard. In fact, lots of English words come from other languages.”

Latie smiled and nodded. “Well, good, then. Hopefully you’ll be able to see the similarity and you can catch on quickly. But we’ll still translate for you.”

Amara smiled and nodded as she packed her things together. “I’m almost done. Will you need any help?”

Latie shook her head. “But you might ask Healie when you’re finished. I know Danug was going to help her with her tent, but I don’t know about her other stuff.”

Amara nodded as she tied the last thong around her belongings. She then placed her bundles in the pile beside the fire and walked over to Healie. “Can I help you with anything?”

Healie smiled at the young woman and nodded. “Yes, please, honey, my old hands can’t hold this together and tie it. Would you please knot this for me?”

Amara nodded and tied the knot. For the first time she looked at the older woman’s hands, and her heart sank. Healie’s knuckles were swollen so badly that her fingers were bent involuntarily. Amara reached out and took one of her hands and held it in her own. “Oh, Healie, is there anything I can do?” she asked.

Healie smiled and patted her on the cheek. “No, dear. It’s just one of those things that happens when you grow old.”

Amara shook her head. It reminded her of her own grandmother. The difference was that her grandmother could rub ointments into her knuckles and take medication to relieve the arthritis pain. She shivered as she wondered what it would be like to grow old. She glanced over at Panec, smiled to herself, and then frowned again. Healie was alone.

“Are we all ready?” Radec boomed as he loaded everything onto the cart.

Amara smiled tenderly at Healie and then hoisted Healie’s pack over her back. She took it to Radec, who put it in the cart as well. He piled a few furs up in one corner and then reached his hand out to aid Healie in getting in. She accepted the hand gratefully and settled herself in for her ride.

Latie secured the horses carefully and rubbed them down while speaking to them softly. She giggled as she withdrew two old apples from the pocket of her parka. She had taken the apples from Callie’s stash and handed one to each of the horses, both of who gratefully accepted the treat. Amara noticed the mischievous look on Latie’s face and shook her head. But the horses deserved the treat, so she smiled and winked at Latie, who returned the grin.

Radec did a final check of their camp to make sure that they had left nothing, and then he and Panec and Lareno covered the smoldering embers of the fire with snow until there was no steam left. He then slapped the horses flank and they headed out.

“You guys went far looking for wood!” Callie commented when they reached the designated place.

Lareno blushed. “Well, we weren’t exactly looking for wood the entire time. It sort of became…well…lots of snow.”

Callie laughed. “Yeah, we heard you! You were sure loud enough!”

Lareno blushed again and mumbled something. He was about to retort, but he was saved when Caloa and a couple of other people came into view. One was a woman, perhaps Callie’s age, and the other was a young man, hardly more than a boy, a few years younger than Panec, Danug, and Lareno, who walked with a slight limp.

Danug waved and called out, “Ho!”

Caloa grinned and spoke to the two other people, gesturing toward their group. The older woman walked to Radec, who Caloa had told her the leader of the group, and extended her arms in greeting. “Greeting, Radec,” she said in broken Zelandonii, much like Caloa’s. Radec smiled and was pleased that Caloa had told the woman his name. “I Epadoa of the S’Armunai. Greet in name Mother.” She then gestured to the young man. “Doban of S’Armunai.” The young man walked up to Radec and greeted him as well.

Radec motioned to Danug to translate as he spoke, “Greetings, Epadoa of the S’Armunai. I am Radec of the Mamutoi, and I greet you in the name of the Mother.” He then gestured to each person in turn, stating their names and ties. Epadoa nodded at each of them except Amara’s. “Amara of the America, adopted by the Mamutoi,” he said. Amara furrowed her brow; she hadn’t expected him to mention her home, and she wondered why he did.

Epadoa smiled and greeted each person as Radec introduced them. “Please, you all come, our camp,” she said. “Caloa spoke us of you, we welcome you here.”

Radec wanted to ask about Ayla and Jondalar, but he knew that now wasn’t the time. He was partially surprised that Epadoa and Doban didn’t react to the horses, but then he figured that Caloa had probably told them. He smiled warmly at Epadoa and nodded. She returned his smile, and then they followed her as she and her two companions led them to their camp.