Author's Note: This story is the first of an anticipated run of three. The next story in the series will be a prequel to this one (tentative title: Under Fall's Lowering Skies), and the third, a sequel. It seems my writing is evolving away from Star Trek and Voyager. (Due in no small part to the fact that the only UPN affiliate station in the state has terminated its relationship with UPN and I am no longer able to see Voyager except by the videotaped kindness of my friends in other states.) This story is a first baby-step toward developing my own universes in which to play.

Disclaimer: VoyagerTM, its characters and universe are the sole and exclusive property of Paramount Pictures. No copyright infringement is intended. All other characters, story situations and ideas belong to me. Please do not re-post without my permission.

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A Winter's Tale

by ragpants , © December 1999

Jik shouldered his way past the hanging hide flap, sending a cold draft of air skittering across the central room of the winterlodge. The breeze set the hearthfire to wavering on its stone. Bii-Jik looked up from her mending and glared at the boy for his carelessness, but said nothing. The boy crossed the room and stood over the fire, warming his hands, rubbing his fingers over and over and tantalyzing the waiting women with his silence. Strangers had been sighted southeast of the villlage--a rarity at this season when the snow was fresh and travel difficult. I was bubbling over with curiosity, as were the rest of the women who gathered around, but propriety required that Na-Jik speak first.

Na-Jik rolled a merry eye toward me and I realized that he knew what he was doing, that he understood the limits of First Wife's patience. "Traders," he finally announced, " A man and boy, both carrying heavy packs." He grinned at the flurry of whispering his announcement provoked, then remembered the rest of his errand."Nabeen Jik says to prepare food and sleeping furs for the travellers. He will offer them hospitality." He stood a moment longer, warming at the fire before pulling on his mitts and leaving to join the rest of the men who were gathering at the village's edge to greet the strangers.

I watched my son go and thought, not for the first time, that he would make a fine tale-weaver if the Nabeen would permit it. I wanted to ruffle his hair and tell him so, but he was too old to accept that easily from me so I turned and listened to First Wife rattle off orders to the women of house.

Bii-Jik sent me to fetch dried moss and seal oil to fill the lamps, and later for the noklik meat cached under the snow from the last butchering. I think she was hoping that I might see something of the strangers and bring back a report to the women inside the winterlodge, but I saw nothing and so could say nothing.

Later as we worked, Wii-Jik ordered me to fetch more fire rock for the hearth and I know she did this from spite and to feel her power over me. She was Jik's newest wife and still in his favor. She wanted me to miss the arrival of the guests so that Jik would be angry at me and she would be able to keep her place as third wife. She hadn't learned yet the Jik did as he pleased and when another woman caught his fancy, she would be moved aside to make room for her-- just as I had been.

I stumbled back with a grimy basket half-filled with fire rock-- enough that Wii-Jik couldn't accuse me of shirking-- in time to see Nabeen Jik usher the strangers through the door of the house. He offered them the ritual words of hospitality and they returned the proper response. As is the custom, we women surged forward to help the strangers with their packs and clothing. It was then a truth was revealed and I was so very glad that I had returned in time to see it.

The boy pushed back his hood to reveal not a boy but a woman! A silence fell over the household while we waited to see how the Nabeen would respond. I saw his eyes tightened with surprise and anger, but he said nothing. He had gifted them with his hospitality and could not take back his word now. I slipped forward to receive Nabeen Jik's jacket. I stood close enough to hear the man introduce himself and also name the woman. He was called Chakotay, and she, Janeway. Odd names. The trader mentioned no honorific before the woman's name and I saw a crafty look of interest creep into Jik's eyes with that omission. Janeway looked unlike any other woman of our people I had ever seen. Her eyes were blue like the ice deep within the glacier and her hair was brown, the exact shade as the garchan moss we braid into wicks. I thought unkindly that Wii-Jik would be learning very soon just how fast Nabeen Jik's interest could wane.

The men arranged themselves around the hearthstone. At the Nabeen's signal, Bii-Jik came forward with two leather bags of fermented noklik milk and Kii-Jik brought steaming bowls of stew and boiled groundnuts. The foreign woman started forward to join the men at the hearth. I tugged urgently at her sleeve to warn her not to presume any further on Jik's word. Jik was a proud man and she had tricked him once already..

"Come, let me show you where the women eat, " I told her, dragging on her arm

Janeway came away with me, but before she did a strange look passed between her and the man Chakotay. I have seen such a look before, used by the Hunt-leader when he wishes to give orders without words. I was wrong about this, of course, but I thought it very odd.

I settled her by the cooking fire, in the place of honor, where elderlies and new mothers sit, and placed a bowl of Second Wife's good stew in her hands. She sat crosslegged with her hands curved around it, waiting. I thought at first she wished to act the woman's role and wait until the men had finished, but she was guest. I motioned that she should eat. She looked at her bowl, then up at me again in puzzlement.

"I need a spoon," she said.

I looked and saw that it was true. She wore no beaded and painted pouch bound at her waist. Where, I wondered, did she carry her necessaries? Her spoon, her flint and tinder, her awl and sinew, her colored beads and herbs that are a woman's tradegoods?

When she saw where I was looking, and saw my own lumpy and pendulous pouch hanging from my belt, her face grew red, as if Hortchan, the North Wind, had slapped her cheeks.

She started to her feet, but I placed a restraining hand on her arm and stopped her. She was a stranger here, that much was clear, and farther from home than the Wide Straits pattern embroidered along the hem of her tunic suggested. I reached into my own bag and drew out my old bone spoon, the one with the chipped handle from prising open spring clams. This I placed into her hand. She smiled with a gratitude that was much too kind before her smile narrowed into worry.

"What about the men?" she asked, "Will they...do they too?"

I nodded yes to her unformed question. Her lips pressed together with anger and embarrassment. She muttered an imprecation against a spirit she called Harikim and turned toward me. "Would you have another spoon that I could borrow?" she asked me. "For him," she said gesturing with her head toward the group of men who crowed with raucous laughter over their drink and hunting tales at the main hearth.

I like to think that I hesitated only a moment or two, though I am sure it was longer, before I reached again into my woman's bag and brought out my carved ivory spoon. I smoothed my thumb over its bowl and traced the grinning seal's head on its handle. Nabeen Rauk had gifted it to me when I lay our first son across his knees. It was a foolish and a generous gesture, but typical of Rauk, who with the boy now walks in the Land Beyond the Mists. It has been four winters since the Coughing Sickness carried off their spirits. The spoon was a fine piece, too fine a thing for a fourth wife to own, and, had Jik known about it, that ivory spoon would now dip stew into that Nabeen's mouth.

The strange woman could not have known all this, yet she seemed to understand. She touched my unwilling fingers and I released the spoon into her hands. "This is lovely," she said. "Did you make it?"

Mutely I shook my head. Was she from such a far land, then, that women carved and men cooked? I wanted to tell her about Rauk and the spoon, about how the spirits guided his hands when he whittled bone and tooth, but the words crowded in on top of themselves in my throat and I could not speak.

"It's a work of art, " the stranger said with reverence, turning the spoon over and over in her hands. "Too beautiful to eat with. Let me find something from my pack." She lay the spoon back into my hands.

"No, wait," I said, finding my voice at last, "I would be honored if your companion used it. And " I added slyly, "it would lend believability to your tale. This is just the thing that a wealthy trader might own."

I watched as knowledge bloomed on her face, watched fear, then caution settle in those peculiar-colored eyes as she realized that I knew her subtrefuge. She nodded slowly at me, then rose to carry the spoon to her companion.

Shamelessly, I spied upon her as she moved, her stride too long for the clothing she wore. But she was as carefully observant as I and slowed her pace as she approached the men. She knelt correctly at her man's right shoulder and waited for him to acknowledge her with a tap upon her arm. She handed him the spoon and made many gestures of apology. The circle of men all laughed at her foolishness. No one at the main hearth noticed when she leaned closed to her companion, rested her hand upon his shoulder and spoke quietly into his ear. He glanced quickly over his shoulder at me, squinting to see my features clearly through the smoke that curled inside the lodge. He turned back and listened to more of her quick speech, then nodded agreement to whatever she proposed.

I wonder even now what she said, though I will never know.

Janeway returned to her place beside the cookfire and, without a word, took up her unfinished meal. "Thank you," she said quietly.

I tilted my head in acknowledgement. "You are welcome, Janeway." Her name felt cumbersome in my mouth--it was too long, difficult to pronounce-- but I said it anyway, wanting to see how she would react.

She seemed neither angered nor surprised by my use of her name, as if this familiarity were a commonplace among her people. I stored the knowledge away in case it might prove of later use.

She dipped up a mouthful or two of stew, eating as if this meal too were a commonplace. "May I ask your name?"

"I am called Rii-Jik."

She frowned for a moment, as if my answer were somehow wrong. "Fourth Wife Of Jik? That's it? No other name?"

There was pity in her voice, and understanding, and disapproval. She said nothing else. Perhaps she realized how far she betrayed her ignorance of our customs. Perhaps the sorrow that filled my heart when I recalled my other names showed on my face. Regardless Janeway fell silent and I busied myself stirring up the embers of the sullen coal fire.

The stranger ate in silence. It is rude to watch another eat, so I feigned busyness with the meal preparations while I secretly studied her. She wore a woman's leather tunic, not quite new, but without any obvious repairs, over a boy's plain, worn leggings. It was not hard to see how the watchers had mistaken her. She was tall for a woman of the people, and her embroidered tunic would not have a been visible to the watchers, only the leggings and the sturdy boots that any traveller might wear. Hands tell much about a woman and her life. Hers were smooth, unmarked by scar or callus; her nails were clean, even and unbroken. These were hands that had never scraped a skin, nor butchered a dead finwhale, nor hacked loose the fibrous bark of a krumholtz pine to brew a fever soother. So strange. No honest woman had hands like those.

"Ensorceltress." The word slipped out unbidden and I was sorry as soon as I had said it. I'm not sure what I expected to happen then--to be struck blind and mute, perhaps, or to be changed into a storm gull as always happens in the tales that elderwives tell to frighten children. Instead, the stranger laughed. I had not expected that. Her laughter was honest, without guile or meanness.

"I've been called a lot of things in my life, but never that," she said in her throaty voice. "Tell me, why do you think I'm a witch?"

"I meant no insult," I told her earnestly, hiding my terror and ducking my head so I didn't meet her eyes."None. I misspoke myself." The strange woman had the ear of her man. If she told him, and he told Jik, then I would know the feel of the Nabeen's dog-whip across my back before the stars rose higher.

"I'm not insulted, just curious, " the stranger insisted. "What made you think I'm a sorceress?"

Without raising my head, I peeked at the woman through my lashes. The stranger didn't seem angry, only somehow vastly amused. I risked lifting my face to look at her. "Your hands, Hamam, " I told her, reverting to a child's word for the lodge's senior wife, because it was the only one I could think of and because there was something about this woman that compelled a title. "They are too pretty. Soft and ummarked, as if you have slaves to do your chores. Only a ensorceltress would have such pretty hands...or a winter wife," I suggested diffidently, unwilling to offer yet another insult to this guest.

She cocked her head to one side for a moment when I had finished speaking, as if listening to some other voice, one that I could not hear. "A winter wife? I don't know that term."

I considered her odd manner of dressing and her strange behavior, and made a guess. "I'd heard that they do such things in the Southern Isles, " I said, leaning forward to keep our words in confidence between us. "There, a wealthy man may take a woman for the winter-- to entertain him when the nights are long and his bed in need of warming." I lifted my eyebrows and nodded toward the other traveller who drank still with the other men around the fire. The flames lit the trader's profile. He was a handsome man, tall and broad, with hair untouched by silver and all his teeth. I wouldn't mind spending a winter in his bed. He had large hands, I noted as he gestured to illustrate a story, and wondered if the rest of him were made so too.

"Ah," said the blue-eyed stranger, understanding, "a mistress, a courtesan." She looked toward the trader, with a smile of fond possessiveness that warred with the faint wistfulness in her eyes. "No," she said a little sadly, "no."

might have asked her about that, but Na-Jik came cadging food. He had waited with perfect stillness at the outside edge of the men's circle while the newly stoked fire burned low, was replenished, and burned low again, waiting to be acknowledged, waiting to be invited into the men's circle, but the invitation never came. Na-Jik was a child of my body and born to Rauk. Although Jik had agreed to raise the boy when he took me into his winterlodge, he had never looked at Na-Jik with any kindness. Perhaps the boy reminded him that he had no body-sons to walk in his shadow and vie as village chief.

First Wife was barren. Second Wife had given the Nabeen two living sons, both strong and clever, whom Jik pointed out to visitors with pride, but both had been drawn below the waves two summers past when their skinboat overturned while fishing. I had laid twin daughters upon Jik's knees my second year in the winterlodge. He called their birth ill-omened and exposed them both upon the ice. Perhaps he spoke the truth about their spirits: I have not quickened again, nor come into my season. That left Wii-Jik with her plump and swaying hips to give Jik the body-son he craved. It was why he moved me aside as Third Wife when he brought her to the lodge.

I wondered if Wii-Jik of the swaying hips too proved barren, would Nabeen Jik allow Na-Jik to be his son, or would he find still another wife to bear him sons? Perhaps it would be better if Jik simply cast out the boy and let him find his own way in the world. It seemed to me it would a kinder thing than keeping him close at hand as a kind of second-best, a beholden in his own home.

I sighed and pushed away those thoughts as I filled Na-Jik's bowl with the last of the noklik stew. It would be a hungry night for the women. First Wife had taken a third and a fourth skin of golgarr to the men, and Second Wife had twice refilled their bowls. And now Na-Jik claimed the last remnants of the meal. I stirred a doubled handful of dried fish into a skin of meltwater and set it beside the fire to warm. It would make a meager meal, but it would have to do.

The stranger watched my preparations with stealthy disapproval and no small amount of guilt, it seemed, if the way she worried her empty bowl, turning around and around in her hands, were any indication. Several times she drew breath as if to speak, but no word ever left her mouth. Finally annoyed, I snatched the bowl from her, as I would from a sulky child. I was tempted to rebuke her for her useless guilt--one does not regret what simply is, but her obvious distress stopped me.

At that moment, Kii-Jik hurried back toward the storage that lay beyond the cooking hearth. She looked at me with a tightness in her face. "The Nabeen has asked for the Summer Wine."

I understood her fear. She still wore the bruises on her face and back from the Nabeen's last skin of wine. I touched her wrist. "I'll get it, " I told her and saw relief flash in her eyes.

I left Second Wife to tend the soup and carried the bulging wineskin to Nabeen Jik. As I did, I passed First Wife who'd gathered the empty bowls and was bringing them to the woman's hearth for cleaning. Bii-Jik nodded knowingly at the sack I carried. We were deep into the winter season with many hands of days to go before the sun rose more than a finger's width above the snowy plains. At this time of year, there was no hunting, trading or fishing to occupy the men, and they often turned to drink to find an easing of their boredom.

Wii-Jik knelt at the expected place, to the right and little behind our Nabeen. She'd been there since the feasting had begun and it looked as if Jik had no intention of dismissing her anytime soon. There were sometimes disadvantages to being the favorite. I hoped the girl-woman had been clever enough to slip some of the stew and groundnuts for herself as she served the men or she would likely find herself even hungrier than the rest of us tonight.

I knelt beside Wii-Jik and held out the proffered wineskin. It was heavy and I hoped that Jik would take it from my outstretched arms soon, though that depended on his whim. This night he must have been eager to start the drinking games because he took the winesack from me almost as soon as I had offered it. I inclined my head to acknowledge him and edged back into the darkness beyond the fire's light. Wii-Jik looked tired and I had a moment's pity on her. I wrapped my fingers around her wrist and, as I silently eased away from the men's circle, I drew her with me. We had nearly made good our escape when Wii-Jik's foot found a half-repaired rabbit snare that Na-Jik had left carelessly on the floor. Jik's hand shot out and grabbed Wii-Jik above the elbow, yanking her back to her place. She looked slantwise at me as if to say it was all my fault and that if she were punished, I would share her punishment--and she would see to it that I did. So I knelt down beside to join her in the tedious waiting.

Jik lifted the winebag above his head and swallowed a long draught from it neck. He lowered it and belched loudly. Even from where I was, I could smell his pungent breath. I hoped he did not choose me to share his bed tonight. Jik handed the skin to his right, to Nabeen Naal, who stood second only to Jik in the influence among the village men. Naal was vain man, slightly younger than our Nabeen, who wore his long hair oiled and tightly plaited into a elaborate queue. Naal's eyes had already grown glazed from the earlier golmarr and his neat braid had tufts of hair escaping. He took a enormous gulp of wine, larger I think than Jik, and looked tempted to take another before he passed the skin to Nabeen Kzin. Kzin was the oldest lodgeman I had ever seen, nearly old enough to be Jik's father. He was short and barrel-chested, missing most of his teeth and all the fingers on left hand save for his thumb and little finger. He put around that a yearling bear had gnawed his fingers off when he sheltered inside its den to avoid a blizzard. But I'd once heard Bii-Kzin tell First Wife that her Nabeen had lost his fingers to coldrot, not some fierce bear. Despite his age, Nabeen Kzin was very strong and could still out-wrestled men half his age. And he held his drink much better than did Naal. The skin passed next to Nabeen Jal, the newest lodgeman in the village. He was young and of little influence, already fidgetty to go home to his plump wife. I wasn't sure why the Nabeen had invited him to join the men's circle, except, perhaps, to make the number lucky. The last was the trader, Chakotay, who sat in the guest's place just to the left of Jik. When the skin came round to him, he lifted it, but only pretended to drink the summer wine inside.

The wineskin went round and round, growing lighter and flabbier with pair of hands. The stories went round and round, becoming louder, bawdier and more boastful with every tale, until I was sure that none of them were true. Finally, the wineskin came round to Jik again. He held it up and sloshed the contents.

"Almost gone," he said regretfully, slurring his words. "One last drink and one last trade and it's agreed that in the morning that Jal will guide you to the place you seek." He nodded toward the trader who nodded back. All around the fire came nods and murmurs of assent. The wineskin passed from hand to hand all around the circle and this time the trader swallowed.

Jik staggered to his feet. With that, First Wife and Second Wife hastened to the main hearth and knelt beside Wii-Jik and myself. "Choose," he told Chakotay, making a dramatic sweep of his hand.

Surprise shone on the trader's face, though he was quick to hide it. "Your wives are all too beautiful, Nabeen Jik. I cannot choose," the trader replied diplomatically. "I thank you for your offer, but I can't accept."

Naal hooted with laughter. "Too much travel or too much wine, Nabeen Chakotay?"

Many ribald jokes and catcalls followed, but the trader accepted them in good humor and still steadfastly refused Jik's offer.

"Ah, no matter," said Jik finally after he grew tired of the jesting, "Call your woman and I'll take her off to bed and show her what a man is good for."

"Sorry, no, " the trader answered mildly.

Jik's mouth gaped open with shock at this refusal, but he was not too befuddled by wine to close it and try to smooth over the situation. He was village chief and knew how to use to words as well as weapons. "Ah, you will be travelling in the morning. Don't worry, the woman will still be able to walk...just a little slower."

The other men guffawed loudly at Jik's wit, nudging each other and rocking their hips back and forth. Jik started past Chakotay.

The trader grabbed Jik's arm. "I said no."

ik bristled at being balked. "You'll still have a woman, " Jik said with an edge of anger and defensiveness coming into is voice. He reached behind him and yanked Wii-Jik forward so roughly that she stumbled and nearly fell into the fire. "Take this one. She's younger than your woman and willing in bed. And she has enough flesh on her than a man won't cut himself her bones." Jik chuckled as his own cleverness. "Or take this one." Jik pulled me into the fire's light. "Take both if you wish." He shrugged elaborately to show that it made no difference to him.

Jik must have wanted the blue-eyed stranger far more than he'd let on. He'd never offered Wii-Jik to a guest before, nor more of his wives than politeness required.

I stood absolutely still, almost afraid to breath, while Nabeen Jik and the trader stared at each other, neither willing to back down. Beside me Wii-Jik's face had turned pale with shock. I promised myself that if she fainted I would shake her until her teeth fell out. The lodge grew silent, so much so that the fire popped and startled everyone with its sound. I saw a movement in the darkness from the corner of my eye. I turned my head slightly until I had a better view. It was Janeway. She stood just beyond the fire's light, hunching in the dark, but not in fear as I first supposed. She was readying herself to fight, just as would a man, to defend her companion and herself should Jik decide on force.

"It's not our custom to share our women," the trader said quietly but with such resolve that no one there could doubt he spoke the truth. "I am honored by your hospitality, Nabeen Jik, but I cannot accept." Nor will I hand over my woman to you---that wasn't spoken, but the trader's meaning was clear.

The two continued to face each other in challenge--for it was that--for a few long moments more. The lodgemen of the village watched intently to see what Jik would do. Jik threw up his hands. "I never favored boys anyway, " he said playing on the woman's odd dress and mistaken identity. The men all chuckled uneasily, and shifted from foot to foot, anxious to be away. They knew Jik's temper as well as we did and did not wish to be around him in his ill humor.

I shoved Wii-Jik to wake her from her daze and get her moving. Jik would require much soothing tonight. He'd lost face before the village men when his plan to bed the foreign woman had been thwarted. It would be best if everything in the lodge were arranged the way he liked.

While Jik spoke in low and ingratiating tones with each departing guest, First Wife laid out Jik's sleeping furs and sent Wii-Jik back to fetch bedding for the strangers. I

passed Janeway as I returned the empty wineskin to the storeroom. "Sleep closest to the wall," I warned her. "And sleep lightly." She nodded that she understood. I didn't think that Jik would break his host oath. He had too much honor, but he'd had a lot of golmarr too.

As I expected, after the last of the village men had gone, Jik call Wii-jik to his bed. He fucked her noisily. To prove his virility to all who might be listening.

I listened for the strangers. After the confrontation with Nabeen Jik, I was sure that Chakotay would use his woman to prove that she was his. But if he did, he did so quietly, because I heard nothing. I feel asleep listening. I

t was late, long after Jik's grunted pleasures had changed to echoing snores, after Wii-Jik has crept back to slip into the sleeping furs to share body warmth with us other wives, after the embers had burned to sullen cinders that I heard them, the travellers. Whispering. Their voices were too low for me to make sense of their words. But I heard them, the rhythm of their speaking: his deeper voice, then her lighter one. Back and forth. Back and forth. Not the cadence of lovers, but something else. Like sisters, when they share their girlhood dreams and secrets, but different. I envied her, the stranger, and I wondered about her world.

****

The morning came and, with it, chores. Second Wife had already stirred the cooking fire to life and was heating tea and soup for morning meal. Bii-Jik was in the storeroom sorting through packets, no doubt looking for the ingredients to make her headache soother. Jik's temper would be foul this morning from the after effects of golmarr and wine, even had the argument with the trader had not happened. Na-Jik was nowhere to be seen. If the boy had any sense, he would take himself into the wilds and stay there until Jik's ire cooled and the strangers were long gone. Wii-Jik slept still. I nudged her with my toe. Her face was smudged with tears and I felt a flicker of compassion for her. While she was arrogant and manipulative, she was also young and still innocent of the fickleness of men. To be offered--and then rejected--must have been a hard lesson for her pride. I nudged her again. Harder this time. There were still chores to do. She awoke grumpily and Bii-Jik set her to rolling up the sleeping rugs.

Nabeen Jik snored loudly from his furs near the main hearth, but as I passed the place where the strangers' bed had been laid out, I saw that they had already gone.

I hefted the night slops jar and headed out to dump it at the midden.

In truth, I didn't mean to spy upon the strangers, though when I rounded the skree and saw them talking together, I didn't make myself known as polite behavior required. I stood there and listened to them.

"Any luck finding a guide?" I heard Janeway say.

The trader shook his head. "No. Jal won't go unless Jik says it's all right--and I doubt he's in any mood to be cooperative this morning."

"How about one of the other men from the village?"

"Already tried. No luck there either. Everyone is afraid to get in dutch with the village headman."

Janeway twisted her face up in frustration. "I talked to the ship. Harry said that they've lost visual communications with the shuttle and are restricted to intermittent audio only. During the last contact, Tom reported that the batteries were almost drained. Life support's failing." She reached out and touched Chakotay's arm, as if she could soften what she said next. "It gets worse. Seven reports that a high pressure system is building near the pole initiating a katabatic wind pattern. If that storm reaches them before we do...." She shook head regretfully.

I must confess that I didn't understand most of the things the stranger said. Her words were foreign and held no meaning for me. But she had said one word, storm, and that I understood well enough. Thought the sky overhead was clear and the wind no stronger than was usual for the season, Hortchan was restive at this time of year and his storms vicious. To be caught out during one meant death.

As I stood there, I made a decision, and to this this day I cannot say exactly why. I only know she was a woman, a woman like myself for all that was strange about her, and that she sought someone she cared about. I stepped boldly out from behind the rocks. A look passed between Janeway and Chakotay. They knew I had been eavesdropping and they expected trouble.

"You need a guide, " I said. It was not a question and I was proud at how sure my voice sounded.

Janeway looked at her companion and back at me. "Yes, " she anwered forthrightly. "We have a description of a place, but we don't know where it is. Only that it's near here. To the north. It's urgent that we find it. Some of our...kinsmen are shipwrecked there."

I wondered how she could know a place she had never seen, but I didn't ask about it. There were already so many strange things about this woman I didn't understand, one more made not a whit of difference.

"Can you lead us?" she asked me. I

shook my head. I could show her the best place to gather fire rock, or where to find the black lichens in the spring, but I had been never more than a day's walk outside the village. I knew nothing about how to find my way across the ice, or the guidemarks that the hunters knew. But my son did. "My son can take you," I told her.

"No," Janeway said.

She answered much too quickly. She spoke as a woman, as a mother might. I looked

"Na-Jik has travelled with hunters many times. He knows the way. And he is old enough to be a man. Some born in the same season have already earned their names. Na-Jik hasn't only because the Nabeen does not wish it."

Janeway looked uncertain, but uncertainty was better than her earlier rejection. I pressed onward. "No one in this village will guide you. And it would take four day's travel to reach the next. Even there you might not find a willing guide this far into the storm season." Her face grew more uncertain."Your kinsmen are in danger."

She knew there was no other option, but she wanted to find a reason not to take my son. "There's a storm coming," she told me.

"So I heard you say," I replied.

"Your son will be in danger," she warned.

"All life is risk," I answered.

"He could be killed."

"Then I will see in the Land Beyond the Mist."

She let out a sigh, which I took for acquiesence. "Six days, " she said resignedly. "We'll have your son back in six days. As soon as we find our friends, I promise, I'll bring your son back to you." She spoke woman to woman, mother to mother, and I saw the cost and honor in her words.

She started to turn away.

"No, " I said, "I have not named my price."

The stranger eyed me warily and smoothed all expression off her face in preparation for bargaining.

I thought about what I had learned about the stranger and her mate and made a choice. "Take my son with you when you return to the Southern Isles." My price was not as reckless as it seemed. These people had their own honor and their own ways, even if they were different than our own. Perhaps in the Southern Isles my son would find his way to the manhood that Jik seemed ready to deny him here.

The woman's face fell. "I can't. Ask for something else."

Disappointment flooded me. I had expected her to agree. She had seemed so kind. I stepped back and, as I did, the woman moved forward and clasp my hands in her own. Here strange light eyes bore into my own.

"I'd take him with us if the choice were mine, but it's not, " she said, willing me to believe her. When she spoke, she never once looked to the man for permission. It seemed the choice was not his either. I didn't understand how she, who seemed to have so much power, could be bound by such obligations.

She squeezed my hands in an attempt to reassure me. "I promise to do the best for him that I can." She spoke with great sincerity and practice. It seemed to me that she had made such promises before. I had no choice but to trust her. She saw that I had chosen and released my hands.

"Go," I said, and described how to find the place where my son would meet them. Then I left to find Na-Jik.

Two days later, just as the traveller had foretold, a storm came. A terrible storm. Worse than all but the Oldest among the villagers could remember. The wind stirred the air to stifling whiteness that choked the breath out of a body and stole the senses of any foolish enough to venture outside the winterlodge. The storm lashed at the village for a double hand of days. When it was over, three were dead, Nabeen Hos and two women, and Nabeen Tarl had lost eight of his best sled dogs when he could not find them to gather them into lodge for safekeeping against the storm.

During the long dark nights, when the storm screamed madness and death outside the lodge's walls, I often thought of my son and Janeway and Chakotay. I imagined what it must be like for them, outside, facing the full brunt of the storm. I know that they could not possibly have survived it; yet, I cannot imagine them dead. I like to believe that they are safe somewhere, somewhere where there is life and hope and a future different from my own. I cherish this hope in my heart. It gives me the strength and courage I need to rise each morning and begin another day.

The End

A Naming Glossary:
Na- foster son of
Bii- first wife of
Kii- second wife of
Wii- third wife of
Rii- fourth wife of






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