Ivory and Bone(42)

I drop my eyes to the windswept soil, gravelly and dry and so shallow the roots of the trees stand out above the surface like spiders’ legs. Lo jumps down from the trunk and a cloud kicks up from her feet—dry flecks of weathered bark. As she drops down onto the ferns beside me and stretches out, a musty scent of decay washes over me. “But memories can’t support the needs of a clan. The wise chose my father. The rest packed up and pushed off from shore.” Lo turns her face to the sky, sheltering her eyes with her hand. “As much as it hurt to see some of our clan choose to follow them, I didn’t condemn those who left—Chev, Mya—all of them have powers of deceit that rival Halam’s.”

“Halam?”

She squints up at me, her nose wrinkling. “You don’t know his story either? Halam was an ancient ancestor who was so charming and clever he befriended the Divine. He asked her one day if she would give him a gift—he wanted the power to change the shapes of things. She granted Halam’s request, but she warned him that if he used his power to deceive, he would come to regret it.

“But Halam didn’t listen to the warning of the Divine. Instead, he transformed his little girl into the shape of a caribou, and sent her into the herd to deceive the others. He instructed her to speak to the other caribou in their language and convince them to run through a narrow mountain pass where he would be waiting with his spear.

“She did as she was told, but when the caribou came running, Halam realized that he could not recognize his child among the animals. In a hurry for a kill, he threw his spear, but as soon as the animal was struck she returned to the shape of his daughter. She died at his feet.

“There is strong danger in a person who can create such powerful deceit they can no longer distinguish their own lies from the truth. Halam was clever and gifted with the power of trickery. But these gifts led him to ruin, just as they will lead Mya and her family to ruin as well.”

Sitting up, Lo turns to me. “Do you see this?” She leans close enough to show me the pendant she wears—a thin strip of leather is tied around her neck so that a round disk, a medallion of carved bone, rests just below her throat. On either side of the medallion, the strap is strung with round, uniformly sized beads. The carving on the disk is made up of four curved lines, like two crescent moons facing each other, or—I see now—two curved tusks. “This is the emblem of our High Elder. It signifies the Spirit of the mammoth that feeds our clan. Mya wore it as the High Elder’s oldest daughter. When my father became the High Elder, she still had it tied to her throat as they boarded the kayaks the morning they left. My father stopped her. She was told not to take it with her when she left our lands. It was to be passed to me.

“But do you know what she did? She couldn’t bear the thought of giving a symbol of status to me—her lowly friend. So she took it off and in front of my father and everyone else she crushed it with her heel against a rock on the beach. She left the bits and pieces on the ground and climbed into the kayak without looking back. My father had to make me this replica.

“I never thought I would see Mya again until we walked into your camp today. It was like walking up to a ghost.”

Lo lies back again, and I stretch out beside her, propping myself on one elbow. For a moment, neither of us moves. Something flashes in Lo’s eyes—something like an invitation—and I decide to touch her face. But before I can, she sits up and jumps to her feet, checking the position of the sun. “It’s getting late.”

As we descend out of the peaks, the air around me warms and I realize that sitting still in the cool air has chilled me. Or maybe it was Lo’s story. The thought of her alone all night, lost on the windswept grassland, sends a shiver through me even now. At least the rush of anger that rises in me at the thought of your family’s arrogance heats me from the inside out. Your father, you, Chev—it’s nearly universal.

Seeri must take after your mother.

I realize suddenly that I don’t know a thing about your mother, except that she must be dead. You’ve never mentioned her even once in front of me. . . .

The path ends on the beach about fifty paces from Lo’s camp. A boy and a girl are fishing—Orn and Anki, the brother and sister I’d met yesterday, the same pair that Roon met when he first discovered Lo’s camp.

Their eyes skim the trail behind us. “Where’s Shava?” asks Orn.

“She stayed behind. There are other visitors in the camp today—Chev and his family.”

The boy’s eyes briefly widen, but then narrow as his mouth contorts into a scowl. He is stocky and bowlegged, and there’s something about his squared stance and clenched jaw that suggests he finds this news of your family irritating. I would guess he’s about the same age as you. He would remember your departure five years ago.

“They came to visit us,” I say. I drag my eyes away from the boy’s face. His grimace stirs something uncomfortable in me. “They arrived just before you first camped on our shore.” I almost say more—that since you first arrived, our two clans have forged a friendship—but I know that your family is unpopular with the people you left behind, and I don’t want to start anything. Yet I can’t look at the boy. The look of haughty disdain on his face at the thought of your family offends me, though I’m not sure why.

“So of course Shava would stay,” says Lo. “I doubt she even realizes who Chev and his sisters are. She hadn’t yet joined our clan when they left. She and her mother were still living with the Manu until just two years ago. That was when our clan stopped to visit yours, Kol. Do you remember that?”