Ivory and Bone(41)

“Then a day came that Olen and his wife announced a gathering trip. They wanted to travel to the other side of a stream where more shrubs and sedges grew, hoping we’d find a variety of berries and greens. The plan was to gather, but also to scout for a new home. The grassland where we camped at that time was heavily grazed by bison and mammoths, and the greens were growing scarce.”

She tips her face away from me, pivoting her weight so she is facing the sea breeze. Her gaze skims across the tents that make up her clan’s camp before turning to the sky like she’s studying the clouds.

“Mya was my best friend.” This statement pulls my spinning mind to a sudden stop. “We had grown up together. Our fathers were like brothers. I was like a fourth sister to Mya, Seeri, and Lees. So when this trip was planned—just overnight—as usual, I was included. The six of us went—their mother and father, the girls, and me—and in the beginning, I was excited. I was always happy to do things with that family.

“But the day we were gathering, Mya’s father ordered us all to split up. He said we needed to cover as much ground as possible. He wasn’t worried about any dangers. Cats, bears—our scouts had not spotted any on this side of the creek since the last full moon. He said we were safe. We were all given a digging stick and a large basket of our own and told not to come back to the place we had set up camp until it was full.”

I picture the group of you in my mind. I see your father—an older version of Chev—muscular, sharp-featured, intimidating. I see Lo, Lees, Seeri, but most of all I see you, looking much the way I remember you when we first met five years ago. Your hair was shorter then, with pieces that whipped around your face when the wind blew from behind you.

“I was out gathering, and my basket was not quite full when shadows started to close in and become nightfall. I called out Mya’s name, then Seeri’s, then one by one the names of each member of their family. Nothing. No reply came. Darkness fell fast and I was lost, alone.”

Lo drops her head and rubs her forehead.

“How long—”

“All night,” she says, cutting off my question as if the words would hurt to hear. “I spent the night walking and calling out their names. By the time the sun came up, I was half frozen. I curled up in a patch of brambles on the bank of the creek that blocked the wind just a bit. When they found me, I was slipping in and out of dreams. . . .”

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

“When we got back to camp, her family told my father and mother that I had wandered too far and become lost. They put the blame on me. They said that my carelessness had almost killed me. They wanted me punished.”

“But you had been in their care—”

“They have no care. They care for no one but themselves. And many people agreed. They’d seen the way the High Elder and his wife acted. They were becoming too proud to follow the ways of the Divine. Their daughters, too, became proud. They began to treat everyone as if they were beneath them.”

I wish I could doubt Lo’s story. I wish I could believe that your family had never treated her with such callousness. But I know you. I’ve seen you do exactly as Lo says—I’ve seen you treat people as if they were beneath you.

And of course, Lo’s story brings to my mind the story you told me yourself, about a girl getting lost—the story you told me the night Lees took off with Roon. “She told me—” I start.

“What did she say?” Lo’s head whips around and her eyes drill into mine. “She told you about me?”

“About a girl who became lost. She showed me scars she got when she fell, searching—”

“As if those scars are my fault! Those scars are the work of the Divine, to remind Mya of how she wronged me.”

The strength of these last words strikes me. After all, you were only a twelve-year-old girl at the time. But then, I don’t have firsthand knowledge of that night.

“So . . . did your clan send them away?” I try to imagine the pain of that day. My father is our clan’s High Elder. I will be after him. If we were cast out by our own people—

“Not right away. Everyone was either patient or terrified. Mya’s father was erratic. People were afraid of him.” Lo hops to her feet, standing above me on the fallen trunk she’s been sitting on. “But it was in the winter that followed that autumn that the High Elder died—”

“What happened to him?”

“I think the guilt of the wrong he’d done consumed him. He wasted away,” Lo says. I notice a biting satisfaction in her voice but I dismiss it. Lo is too kind to find satisfaction in the death of her friend’s father, no matter how much his poor judgment had hurt her. “My father, Vosk, argued that Olen had died by the will of the Divine. He said that he, himself, should be named the new High Elder. But Olen’s son, Chev, demanded the role for himself, since he was next in line after his father.

“There was a schism within the clan. At the time of his death, Olen had been preparing the clan for a move to the south. We constructed more kayaks for the move, but also for hunting seals and fishing on the water. My father asserted that Olen had led the clan away from the ways the Divine had ordained for us as mammoth-hunters, and for this the Divine had struck him down.

“The arguments over who the Divine wanted to bless with the right to lead were intense. Many people agreed with my father and promised to acknowledge him as their new High Elder. My father encouraged Chev to step aside and follow him, to help make our clan strong mammoth-hunters again. But Chev insisted he would carry out his father’s plan to move the clan south. Some followed Chev, clinging to the memories of his father, the way these trees cling to the side of this eroding rock.”