Ivory and Bone(82)

“Are you hungry?” my mother asks. “You’re welcome to be our guest at the evening meal.”

The hut falls silent. It’s as if everyone is holding their breath, waiting for Dora’s reply. Do they hope she will decline? Would it be too much to ask for the injured to share a meal with a Bosha elder while the scent of smoke still lingers in the air?

“Thank you,” Dora says. “You are so kind to offer, but I need to return to camp. I just wanted to deliver these pelts, and to offer the apologies of the Bosha elders. We didn’t know. . . . That doesn’t excuse what happened, I know, but the elders . . . We didn’t know what Lo and Orn . . . She was trusted—the High Elder. And Orn was my son. My own son . . .” She trails off. Her eyes move to my mother’s face before she wobbles a bit on her feet again. This time, my father is the one to reach out and catch her.

“Please sit,” he says.

“I couldn’t.” But even as she protests she wobbles again, and my father, his hand under her elbow, leads her to a rug beside Pek’s bed. She sits, and as she does, she continues to speak, though her voice is quiet, as if she is speaking to no one in particular. “Lo was such a lost girl. She made terrible mistakes; she and my son led many people the wrong way.”

My father gestures for all of us to sit. Sweeping my eyes over the bare patches of dirt I’d noticed this morning, I scatter the pelts I’m still holding on the floor. Dust swirls in the shaft of light that falls through the partly opened vent overhead. All at once the room grows stiflingly hot. Sweat beads spring up on my lip and the back of my neck.

“When the elders returned before first light this morning, we found the entire clan awake. Even the small children, who of course had stayed behind, were out of their beds, helping clean wounds. The whole camp was in chaos—everything smelled of smoke and blood. I found my daughter Anki. She had stayed behind with the children. I asked about her brother. Where was Orn? It was then that they told us all that had happened.

“They told us about the fire, about what Orn had done here in your camp. They told us about the attack on the Olen’s camp in the south.

“And they told me my son had died.

“No one knew for certain what had happened to Lo, though they suspected that she . . . But it wasn’t until I came here . . . It wasn’t until I saw her in the boat . . .”

She quiets. Her hand goes to her mouth, and I know she is remembering not just the sight of Lo’s body, but of her son’s, too.

“They were so close—Lo and Orn—almost like twins. They would think and act as one.” Her face contorts into something between a grimace and a shattered smile. “They were dangerous together, because they each fed the worst within the other. Yet something about them drew people to them. They ignited hope. They read signs about a prosperous future that the Divine was planning for us. Many people found them impossible to resist—”

“I’m sorry. I have to ask . . .” I can feel my mother’s glare. Does she find it rude that I’ve interrupted? That I intend to question Dora? My mother may feel that way, but then, she wasn’t there. She didn’t chop through the shaft of a spear protruding from Chev’s chest. “Why didn’t anyone stop them? Couldn’t you—couldn’t someone—stop them?”

Dora tilts her face toward me, her eyes meeting mine. I see now that she is not as old as I had thought, just very weary and worn.

“They planned it well. For so long, the elders had tried to convince Lo that we should settle on the water—that we should stop following herds as her father had always done.

“Finally, she began to yield. She focused on building new kayaks. She announced she was sending the elders on a scouting expedition. She was very cunning. We went away so pleased that morning, heading west along the coast in search of a suitable bay, convinced she would soon agree with our own plans for the clan. While all along, they were preparing something different . . . something much darker . . .”

My mother leans forward, placing herself between me and Dora. She’s noticed, as I have, Dora’s voice growing thinner as she speaks, fading into a whisper. “Why don’t you let me bring you something to eat? I could bring it in here—”

“I’m not saying we were innocent,” Dora says, completely ignoring my mother, her eyes wide and unblinking. “We know the weight of our guilt. We know there will have to be consequences for what happened. Lo and Orn didn’t act alone.

“But in the end, it happened as they say—you die the way you live. They lived for vengeance. And for vengeance they died.

“Out of all of them, everyone else came back alive. Only those two—only Lo and Orn—lost their lives.”

She drops her eyes. Turning away, she picks up Pek’s hand, as if he were her own son.

As if he were Orn.

Later, I stand in the shallow water, holding the kayak steady as Dora gets in, ready to return to the western shore. The kayak bobs, thumping against my leg, as Dora moves slowly and methodically, tying the belt around her waist. Chev and Mya are there, climbing into the only canoe with room to sit.

When I wade out of the water and back onto the sand, my parents are talking about the burials. They will be tomorrow, when the sun is at its highest point in the sky.

The rowers wait until Dora is out in front of them. Then they dig hard with their oars. I watch them recede across the bay, remembering how I’d watched the Bosha cross the bay in the same way. When they are so far away that they are no longer distinct individuals, but mere dark shapes blending into one another, I think I see Mya look back, but I cannot know for sure.