'Tillu?' he repeated, but the crunch and squeak of boots over damp snow was right outside the tent now. She shook her head wordlessly without looking at him. Heckram fell back onto the pallet with a sigh. She knew how he felt.
'Heckram?' The old man's querying voice cracked as he called, is the face better?' He ducked into the tent, squinting his eyes as he came from the brightness to the dimness.
Heckram was silent, looking to Tillu for an answer. Kerlew bustled into the tent and up to Heckram. it doesn't look so bad to me!' he exclaimed.
'It wasn't as bad as it looked at first. It was mostly swelling,' Tillu filled in.
Heckram was staring at Kerlew. Even with sharp anticipation fading into aching disappointment, he was not blind to the change in the boy. The difference was like that between fall and spring. Kerlew's narrow shoulders were no longer bowed in on his chest. There was confidence and self-importance in his face as he met Heckram's gaze squarely. But there was also an unworldly translucence to his gaze. As if Heckram were not as substantial as whatever it was that Kerlew saw behind him. His face was evasive, dreaming. A chill rose in Heckram, as if he had seen the boy sucked down and swept away by a river. The contacts he had made with the boy were gone, the ties unbound.
The certainty that he would never reach Kerlew again rose in him. The boy he had begun to know was gone. Gone, in one afternoon. Carp was smiling also, a smile with cutting edges for Tillu. A smile of triumph and vengeance. Tillu withered in that gaze, shrinking in on herself. Heckram sat up slowly.
'Get your shirt on,' Carp directed him calmly. 'Time for us to go.'
'Go?' Kerlew asked in sudden bewilderment, and in that instant Heckram glimpsed the vulnerable boy he had known. 'Go away, Carp? Why? Where?'
Carp laughed his cracked old man's laugh. 'Not far, Kerlew, don't worry. I am staying with Heckram. He has a fine warm hut, with much food and many soft skins. I am very comfortable there. And I must see the Herdlord Capiam, to tell him I will be shaman of the herdfolk now. But I will be back tomorrow, to teach you. And soon we will all be traveling together.'
'No.' The firmness of the word was spoiled by the sharp note that broke Tillu's voice.
'No,' she repeated, gaining control. 'You may go with the herd, perhaps. But not Kerlew, and nor I.'
'Oh?' the najd asked coldly. 'And is that so, Kerlew?'
The boy turned his face to Tillu, and in that moment all in the tent knew she had lost.
His small jaw was set. His eyes were distant as he spoke, 'I go, Tillu. I am a man now, and the decision is mine. For a few days more, I stay here with you. But when the herdfolk follow the herd, I will follow Carp.' The words were Carp's, spoken carefully.
But the decision in his voice was all Kerlew's. Tillu stared at him.
Here, before her, was what she had dreamed about. Her boy, standing as a man, making his own decision. Speaking with confidence, standing straight before her. And here, beside her, watching her face with sympathetic eyes, was a man such as she had imagined. A man to make part of her life, part of her own life, separate from Kerlew's.
Bitterness filled her mouth. 'No,' she said again softly. But it was an internal denying, a forbidding of tomorrow to come. The new day had already dawned in her son's eyes.
Something long fastened within her let go. Weariness was a part of it, the sense that she could no longer battle to keep Kerlew safe from the world he had chosen. But there was also a certainty that if she fought Carp for the boy, she would destroy him. The self-confidence that set his shoulders was too new and shining a thing to crush with bitter words. Better that he walked straight without her and failed than that he huddled forever in her shadow, safe but without substance.
'You are going,' she said, looking deep into her son's eyes. Kerlew nodded. 'And so am I,' she said aloud, and the surprise was loud in her voice.
There was too much to read in Tillu's eyes. Heckram pulled his eyes from her face.
Rising awkwardly from the low pallet, he found his woolen shirt and pulled it on, holding it away from his face. Next he dragged on his skin tunic, its heaviness suddenly unwelcome in the soft spring air. As he cautiously poked his head out the collar, he found Tillu standing in front of him, looking up at him. Reaching up, she took him firmly by the chin and turned his face to the light again. Her brow furrowed slightly as she studied the gash.
it looks better. It may heal itself now. But' - she paused, a ghost of a smile in her eyes
- 'you should come back tomorrow and let me check it.'
He nodded slowly, but she turned aside hastily, leaving him to wonder if he had understood what she hadn't said. 'Come on, come on,' Carp was urging irritably. 'The walk back is long and already I am hungry. And I have yet to see Capiam today. I have important things to tell him.'
'As have I,' agreed Heckram, and followed him out into the early spring evening.
KERLEW: THE SEEING
It had taken long for Tillu to fall asleep. Kerlew had had to lie awake and still, distracted by her shiftings, her sighs and mutterings. Bur now she lay still on her pallet, her arm flung across her eyes as if to blot out the sight of what must be. Foolish woman.
Still she thought she could change it. Still, she did not understand that Kerlew had been born to the magic, and the magic to him. One and the same they were, intertwined. She had sought to separate him from the magic, but that was like separating the warp from the woof of the herdwomen's weaving. What was left was not cloth at all. Nor was Kerlew to be Kerlew without the magic. Someday, she would see.
Now that she lay silent and did not distract him, he rose from his bed. He slipped clear of his body and slowly climbed the thin spiral of smoke that drifted up from the banked fire. Up he climbed again, always going up when he should be going down. But he had a feeling someone was waiting above to speak to him.
Outside the worn tent, the wind was rising, swirling snow within its belly, reminding the herdfolk and forest that spring's grip on the land was still a feeble one.
Kerlew felt the chilling of night air, saw the snow reclaiming the forest for its own.
Briefly he frowned; this was not good for the herdfolk, for his new people. Then he looked farther and felt Carp's hand in the sighing of the wind and the drifting of the white flakes. There was a reason, then, behind this late storm, and all would be well.
Carp was shaman of the herdfolk now, their najd. He cupped their fates in his wizened old hands; his clouded eyes would guide them now. Satisfied, Kerlew let go of his worry and climbed higher.
He broke free of the storm suddenly, standing with his bare feet atop the wind and churning clouds. Blackness arched above him; there were not stars or moon, but only the light of his own eyes to see by, yet it was enough. He sat down cross-legged atop the clouds to await the one that must come.
As if from afar, he heard Tillu rise and put more wood on the fire. A part of his mind wondered that she had not asked him to rouse and do it. Another part of him asserted that he was too far away now, too far beyond her, to ever do any task for her again. The pallet and hides beneath his body were more distant to him now than the sky over his head.
She knew he was gone, and it grieved her. She was a narrow, earth-bound person, unable to see the true shapes of the world or how she fitted into them. He pitied her. He could see her grief, like a fine stain running through the thread of her life, bleeding darkness into the color. Tillu, he realized, was but a thread, as was Heckram, yes, and even Carp.