There was a trumpeting from the forest and the first of the mastodons came into view. The sammads had come to the island.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Armun heard the mastodons well before she saw them and clutched the baby to her with excitement. There they were, tearing at the leaves as they came, hunters leading them between the trees. Not only hunters, for the first one was a woman — and someone familiar.
“Merrith!” she cried, again and again until the older woman heard her, turned and saw her, waved and hurried over.
“Armun! You are here, you are safe. You have a family. You were only a girl, now a mother — such a baby of great beauty. I must hold her.”
“Her name is Ysel,” Armun said, smiling with happiness as she passed her over. “And her brother has grown, you must have seen him, he went to meet you.”
“Look at her eyes, just like yours.” Merrith glanced up when the tent flap moved aside and Darras looked out shyly. “And another daughter as well!”
“She is like a daughter to us now, but not our daughter.” Darras clung to Armun’s leg, reluctantly coming forward to meet this new woman she had never seen before. “This is Merrith, who I have known since I was only a little girl, when I was even younger than you are now, Darras.”
Merrith smiled and touched the girl’s hair, felt her shiver beneath her fingers. Then the girl twisted away and ran over to look at the mastodon who stood placidly chewing a great mouthful of leaves.
“She was alone when we found her,” Armun said. “Just her and a mastodon. The rest of the sammad killed by the murgu. She has been with us ever since. She has dreams that wake her at night.”
“Poor baby,” Merrith said, then passed Ysel back to her mother. “Do you know what sammad it was?”
“Sorli, sammad Sorli.”
Merrith gasped and clutched her hands to her breasts. “Then she is dead, my daughter is dead! She and her hunter, they went with sammad Sorli. Melde. Dead now, like her sister.”
When she heard this Armun went rigid, holding the baby so tightly that she began to wail. She controlled herself, caressed the infant until it stopped crying, until she could talk. Yet her voice still trembled when she did.
“At first Darras would not speak when we found her, could only cry. She had watched them all being killed. Later I could talk to her, she told me about it, how she had been alone in the forest. Told me her name. Darras. Told me her mother’s name as well.” Armun hesitated, then forced herself to speak. “She spoke her mother’s name. It was Melde.”
The two women looked at each other in shocked silence and it was Merrith who managed to speak first.
“Then this child — my granddaughter?”
“She must be. I must talk to her. She never told me, but she must know her father’s name.”
At first Darras did not know what was happening, could not understand it. Only when the relationship had been explained over and over again, often enough to make it clear to her, only then did the long-hidden tears come as she clung to her grandmother and wept.
“You will live with me,” Merrith said, “if that is what you want to do. If Armun says it will be all right.”
“She is your daughter’s daughter. She is yours now. You must put your tent close by so we can be together always.”
Her tears changed to laughter and Armun joined in and, after a little while, even Darras managed to smile through her tears.
The days that followed the arrival of the sammads were the happiest that Armun had experienced in her entire life. The murgu who had fought against them fought no longer, they did not have to be considered or feared. The coming of the sammads had changed life completely on the island. The tents stretched away under the trees and smoke rose from many cooking fires. Children ran and screamed between them and their cries were echoed by the trumpet of the mastodons from the field. Game was abundant, their stomachs were full — while the dried meat hung heavy in the smoking huts. A large hardwood tree had been cut down, trimmed of its branches and floated to the shore near the tents. Here, under Herilak’s direction, it was being hollowed out by fire. When it was finished they would have a boat to go into the marshes with, to trap the feeding birds that now had grown very wary of the hunters. Arnwheet and the other boys of the sammads had watched this being done and were now hard at work making a smaller version for themselves. There were some burned fingers and tears, but the work progressed.
In her newfound happiness Armun realized how much better off they all were for the joining of the sammads. Herilak had come and spoken to Ortnar, and while none had heard what was said it was clear that the rift between them was closed, the bond restored. Ortnar’s tent was now beside the sammadar’s and he sat next to the fire in the evenings with the other hunters, even managed to laugh with them. He no longer talked of going alone into the forest.
Now, when he wasn’t working on the boat, which was a sporadic thing indeed, Arnwheet was playing with the other boys his own age: Harl went with the hunters. Life was as it should be and she was very happy. She sat in the sun before her tent, the baby kicking and crowing on a soft skin laid in the grass before her. Malagen knelt and watched her with wide-eyed pleasure.
“May I pick her up?” she asked, speaking Sesek. Armun could still remember the language; it was the greatest pleasure for Malagen to hear it and speak it again. She cradled Ysel in her arms, the baby’s fair hair a contrast to her dark skin. She never ceased being amazed by it. “And her eyes, look, as blue as the sky! I have made something for her, it is here.”
She reached inside her clothing and took out a length of dark ribbon which she passed to Armun. “When her hair grows longer you can use it to tie about her head, in the Sasku manner.”
Armun ran her fingers along it with admiration. “It is so soft, but it is not the cloth you weave — what is it?”
“It is something very important and I will tell you about it. When we left the valley I brought my loom, you have seen it, and I have woven the charadis fibers into cloth. But none of the charadis is left, I have used it all up. Then I looked at your waliskis and when they permitted I touched them. This was very wonderful.”
Armun nodded agreement. She knew that waliskis, the Sesek word for mastodon, were somehow very important to the beliefs of the Sasku. Malagen could sit happily for the entire day and admire them.
“I touched them and they let me brush them and they liked that. Then I discovered that when they were brushed some hair came off and I saved it for it is very precious. Then one day I twisted it, as we do with the charadis fibers, and discovered that it might be possible to weave into cloth. And I did! And this is it.” She laughed and leaned close to whisper. “I made the headband to bring to the manduktos one day. But I can make another. And this is so small. I think it will be better now for Ysel.”
The Sasku could do many things and Armun was very glad that Malagen was here. Malagen had searched the island, then made Newasfar go with her to the mainland before she found the right kind of clay she needed. The hunters would not help the women with the work, but they at least stood guard against wild creatures when they went to dig the clay. The women had loaded Merrith’s mastodon and returned with baskets of it. Now a proper oven was being built and soon they would have the hard-as-stone pots to use, just like the Sasku.
So many things were happening that Armun no longer minded when Kerrick went to see his marag. She noticed that he went alone most times, that Arnwheet was busy with the other boys, and that pleased her very much although she did not say it out loud. Kerrick was her hunter and he could do things that no other hunter — or sammadar — could do. One thing he could do was talk with the murgu. If he had not talked to that one on the island when they killed the big sea beasts, none of this would be taking place. All of the sammads would be dead. Everyone now knew what he had done, and how he had done it, and they never tired of hearing her tell about it. And about the Paramutan, and crossing the entire ocean, and all of the other things that had happened to them. They listened in respectful silence when she spoke, and not only because Kerrick was her hunter but because she had done these things herself. She no longer hid her cleft lip from sight — nor even thought about it. Life was full, the sun was warm, the endless summer far better than the endless winter had been. Some of the women talked about the snow, and the berries you could find only in the north and other things. She listened but did not speak herself for she had no desire to see any of these things ever again.