The Wanderers Read online

  And then, suddenly, they were at the edge. Below, water smashed and boiled over the feet of black cliffs. A few crags and broken spits of rock scattered out from the cliffs but, beyond them, there was no more land, only chill grey water and floating ice.

  “The end of the earth!” Yfan-wyn breathed.

  He filled his lungs with the heady smell. The wind tugged at his parka, snuck underneath to lift it from his shoulders and fill it with cold air. Beside him, his mother laughed aloud. Behind them, to either side, lay all the earth that was theirs to walk.

  “The sea,” said his mother. “It is the sea!”

  Movement in the water caught Yfan-wyn’s eye. Tall black fins broke the surface, piebald backs curved out of the water and under again. A blunt snout broke the surface, jaws agape to show pointed white teeth.

  “What are they?”

  “Hunters,” said Rhy-lee. “What their name is, I do not know.”

  Yfan-wyn took a big, shuddering breath. “What will we do now?”

  “Now?” She smiled. “Now we will wait for the clouds to lift and darkness to fall. Then we shall see.”

  They lit a fire, back a way from the lip of the cliff and somewhat out of the wind, and huddled up together to wait. Yfan-wyn dozed on Rhy-lee’s shoulder while she chewed mutton jerky.

  It snowed, briefly. Then, just on sunset, cracks appeared in the grey blanket to show a pink and mauve sky. Rhy-lee watched the sun touch the horizon, turning orange, then red, before sinking below. She glanced at the sky behind her, then nudged Yfan-wyn awake.

  “Now,” she said and turned him around.

  Yfan-wyn gasped.

  Curtains of light rippled across the northern sky. Ghostly, dancing, never still.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It is the souls of the dead,” said a deep voice, “dancing before they are reborn into the world.”

  They turned. Inanakurekuri approached, leaning on his spear to climb the last stretch of slope. This time, Rhy-lee felt no fear.

  “You forgot your snares,” he said, laying a handful of rabbit corpses by Rhy-lee’s knee. He sat.

  “Thank you.” She turned her gaze back to the sky. “My people say it is the birth light of the world.”

  Inanakurekuri rumbled deep in his chest. “It is that, as well.”

  “You followed us,” said Yfan-wyn, peeping around Rhy-lee.

  The bear smiled at him. “I did. I found I had a notion to see it again, too.” He was quiet for a time, then said, “I am not one who finds sport in hunting little folk. Some do. Wolves I hunt, for necessity and satisfaction, both.” Another pause. Rhy-lee looked up at him, sitting as still as a mountain, his eyes on the lights in the sky. His black tongue came out and he licked his teeth.

  “Years ago, I was badly injured and starving, unable to hunt or even gather herbs to clean my wounds. A fox found me. By then I was mad with pain.” He touched a ragged scar on the side of his belly. “This wound had turned sour, and the sickness was in my blood. In my fever, I tried to drive her away. Or kill and eat her, I do not know.

  “Rather than leave me to my fate, she brought me food, herbs to cure my sickness and lime to clean and seal my cuts. When I had the strength, again, to walk, I followed her to her campsite, but when I reached it she was gone and had covered her scent. She left me a last gift of salmon, caught from the river. I left a token in exchange. When I came back, it too was gone.”

  He held out something to Rhy-lee. The half-jawbone of a wolf, she saw, its teeth still attached. Angular letters were etched into its surface. “It is the Word of Inanakurekuri,” he said. “While you carry it, no bear will harm you. Most wolves will think again. Perhaps you will find another wanderer who carries my Word. I cannot say that she will be your mother, but she will be a kindred heart.”

  Rhy-lee felt her ears tremble. It was known that, on a rare occasion, a white bear might carve their name as an honour gift, a mark of respect when a fine deed had been done. But what had she done?

  Her tail curled as she asked, “Why?”

  Inanakurekuri shrugged a huge shoulder, as if not quite certain himself. “Because I like the thought of a fox who hunts wolves,” he said. Another shrug became a shake of his shoulders and head and he added, “Because my heart, too, is often distant. It would please me, if your quest was successful.”

  Rhy-lee felt tears come, unexpected. A great balloon of a sob rose up from the pit of her belly, squeezing her heart on its way through her chest and bursting out between her teeth. Another followed and a third. Yfan-wyn held onto her hand with both of his.

  Inanakurekuri looked at the sky. “The birth light of the world,” he said.

  Yfan-wyn touched the carved jawbone. “Will we go home?”

  Rhy-lee felt it, too – a longing for her father’s reassuring stillness, for Aoin-rhys’s comfortable warmth in her arms. “Yes,” she said. She wiped her eyes. A slow smile tugged the corners of her mouth. “Yes. But we will go the longer way.”

  Part Two: The Long Way Home

  The bull elk stood over them, hoofed fingers planted on either side. He bent his head to peer at the half-jawbone, etched with sharp-angled letters, that Rhy-lee held up for him to see. Rhy-lee’s heart battered the inside of her ribs. Antlers as wide as tree branches fenced her and Yfan-wyn in. One swipe would be enough to kill both of them.

  The elk snorted. “The Word of a white bear,” he said. “Though this elk does not read such marks. This elk has little time for bears.” He growled deep in his throat and lifted his head to bellow, “Bears kill young elks!”

  Rhy-lee flinched as he shook his antlers. Yfan-wyn squirmed underneath her. He had tripped when the elk charged suddenly out of the river – having watched them, seemingly unruffled, for several minutes while they filled their flasks. What had triggered the elk’s sudden change of mood, Rhy-lee had no idea. Hearing Yfan-wyn’s cry, she had turned and flung herself over her son just as the elk reached the shore.

  “It is the Word of Inanakurekuri,” said Rhy-lee.

  “‘The death of all wolves’”, said the elk. “This elk knows of that name.” He harrumphed and withdrew a short way. Cautiously, Rhy-lee got her feet under her and stood.

  “It is a good thing to kill wolves,” the elk mused.

  The gigantic head lunged back towards Rhy-lee. She yelped and fell over Yfan-wyn. “This elk sees that this fox, too, is the death of wolves,” said the elk, nudging his nose at the wolf tails sewed to Rhy-lee’s parka. He withdrew once more. “This is unusual for a fox, who this elk knows is littler than a wolf.”

  The elk shook his head again and grimaced, as though trying to dislodge a stuck thought.

  “Mother…” Yfan-wyn gasped.

  Rhy-lee hissed at him to be quiet.

  “A bear kills elk. Wolves kill elk,” the elk said. His voice rose with each sentence. “A bear kills wolves! A fox kills wolves!” He punched the pebbled beach. “A fox is a friend to bears! A fox–”

  Rhy-lee cut him off, “You said you knew the name of Inanakurekuri.”

  “Hmm?” The elk blinked at her. “Yes. This elk has seen the Word of this bear before. Or at least,” he frowned, “this elk recalls that was what the fox said who carried the bear’s Word.” He looked hard at Rhy-lee. “Perhaps this fox was that fox.” He nodded to himself. “Yes, that must be the case, for bears do not give their Words freely, this elk knows.”

  “No,” said Rhy-lee, getting her feet under her again. “That wasn’t me–”

  “This fox was that fox,” the elk declared. He turned and splashed back into the river. “Though this fox had no youngling with it when it was that fox.”

  “Which way did she–” Rhy-lee began, then stopped. Her mouth worked silently while she reframed her question. “Which way did this fox go, when it was that fox?”

  The elk dipped his muzzle into the water and snorted, making bubbles. He lifted his head again and answered, “East. And now this fox has returned from the west. This fox
is going in circles.” The elk chuckled to himself. “Perhaps this fox is not so clever.”

  Rhy-lee stared at him for a moment, then stooped to haul Yfan-wyn up by his collar. She hurried him across the pebble beach to the edge of the trees.

  “Mother,” he exclaimed. “He’s seen her!”

  “We don’t know that it’s your grandmother,” she replied, gruffly. “Inanakurekuri didn’t promise us that. And we don’t know how long ago.”

  She was not inclined to press her luck by asking the elk any further questions. But still, her mind burned with the same need to know that she saw lighting Yfan-wyn’s face. Need, but also fear. What if it was her mother? Did she really want to meet that woman who had left her behind so long ago? Who had not thought to wait for her, as Rhy-lee had waited for Yfan-wyn, before she let her wandering heart take her.

  “East takes us towards home,” Yfan-wyn said.

  Home, Rhy-lee thought, where she had left Aoin-Rhys with her father. Aoin-rhys, who did not share her wandering heart as Yfan-wyn did, preferring the sameness and solidity of stone walls around him, like his grandfather. Like his father, Culm-mane, had done, she thought with a pang.

  “Mother?”

  She nodded, dragging herself back to the present, and chucked him under the chin. “We will go east,” she said. “Perhaps we will build ourselves a raft and make our journey easier for a while.”

  She was pleased to see him smile at that. Yfan-wyn fidgeted with his parka. His wrists stuck out further from the sleeves than they had done when they set out from home. “You have grown,” she said.

  Building the raft took most of the rest of the day and when it was done it was a rough and rickety looking thing. But it took their weight well enough to keep them dry. Rhy-lee cut long poles to push them along the shallows and fashioned rough paddles of bound twigs for when they reached the deeper water. They poled down to where the forest river emerged from the trees and camped there under the leafless eaves, looking out over the still-white plain. The forest river meandered out to join the greater watercourse that looped across the plain, both rivers fat and smooth with the first snowmelt of spring and reflecting the darkening blue of the sky.

  A breeze had come up by morning, that wrinkled the water and sent bits of cloud scudding overhead. Rhy-lee and Yfan-wyn poled the raft out onto the great river. Rhy-lee could feel the strength of the flow underneath, but the current was not fast. She unwrapped the fish they had smoked a couple of days before and they ate that for breakfast as they drifted along.

  Around noon, Yfan-wyn stood up and pointed at a triangular ripple that was spearing across the current towards them. “What’s that?”

  Something swimming, Rhy-lee thought, but not a fish. The river had curved away from the forest and the country was too open for beavers. Her fingers had just closed around the haft of her spear when a blunt, brown furred head popped up at the side of the raft. Stout fingers caught hold of the logs. Long whiskers and small, round ears twitched. Black eyes fell on the spear in Rhy-lee’s grasp.

  “Foxes on a raft,” said the creature, with a little chuckle. “I am alone. May I share your perch a while?”

  Keeping her eyes on it, Rhy-lee nodded. “You may.”

  The creature laughed and pulled itself up from the water, revealing a long, sleek body and short, thick limbs and tail. It – he – wore shorts made of some hairless animal hide and had a heavy wooden club slung from a thong around his neck. Other weapons were strapped to his thighs. An otter, Rhy-lee realized, but far larger than any she had ever heard of, almost wolf-sized in his length of body and breadth of chest. She wondered if allowing him aboard might have been a mistake.

  “Where are you from, friend otter?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light.

  The otter grinned, showing sharp, black-stained fangs. “From the sea.” He took an oilskin parcel from his pocket and unwrapped it to reveal dark-coloured leaves. The otter squeezed some together and stuck them into the corner of his mouth to chew. “And what of you, little fox?”

  “We are wanderers,” said Rhy-lee. “Returning home.”

  The otter’s interest sharpened. “Oh? And where is home?”

  “The downs,” said Rhy-lee. With the sudden intensity of his stare, she felt oddly uncomfortable to share even that much.

  He stretched himself up to peer that way, to the ridge of bare hills in the distance beyond the forest. “Ah,” he said. “A pity.”

  Rhy-lee frowned, wondering what he meant. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Yfan-wyn’s ears were flat to his head.

  The otter shivered suddenly, but not from cold, Rhy-lee thought. “But east,” he said. “You are headed east, where the river wills?”

  Rhy-lee shrugged warily. “For now.”

  The otter nodded back, seeming pleased by that. He leaned forward to hawk a black gob of spit into the river.

  Rhy-lee chewed her lip, considering, then reached into her parka and brought out the etched half-jawbone. The otter’s eyes glittered, watching.

  “It is the Word of Inanakurekuri,” she said.

  The otter scratched his throat. “Is that your god, little fox?”

  “God?” Rhy-lee repeated, confused.

  He chuckled. “I do not know this Word. It looks like a wolf’s jaw to me.” With a sharp bark of amusement, he slipped back off the side of the raft, making it wobble. The otter clung to the side a moment longer. “Go east, little foxes. Let the river take you and you will find the sea.”

  Then he was gone.

  Rhy-lee watched the ripples of his passage speed ahead of them downriver. She suppressed a sigh of disappointment and looked at Yfan-wyn.

  “He was very strange,” said Yfan-wyn. “I didn’t like him.”

  “Mm,” said Rhy-lee. She showed him a lopsided smile. “It seems it is a day for strange meetings.”

  They had no more unusual encounters on the water, although they passed by wading herons and a herd of caribou, paused to drink at the water’s edge. The caribou eyed them with dumb incuriosity, having not even an elk’s simple intelligence. The river curled back towards the forest and, by evening, they were close enough to the trees that Rhy-lee decided to pull the raft ashore and make their beds up in the branches.

  They had just dragged the raft up out of the shallows and onto a stretch of sloping bank when the wind shifted for a moment. Rhy-lee whirled to see tall, grey-furred figures stalking out of the trees.

  “Wolves!” cried Yfan-wyn.

  It was too late to flee. Rhy-lee reached slowly into her parka and brought out the Word of Inanakurekuri. The wolves fanned out, a dozen of them including two old grandmothers with white in their fur and a trio of half-grown cubs. They wore vests and kilts of roughly tanned hide, sewn together with gut, and carried spears and round hide shields. At their belts were stone axes and looped leather slings.

  One she-wolf strode forward ahead of the rest. Rhy-lee’s hackles went up when she saw that this one’s vest was made of fox skin. In her hand, the she-wolf carried a rusted iron axe.

  The she-wolf circled them. Rhy-lee turned with her, keeping her back to Yfan-wyn’s.

  “I see you are a wolf-killer,” said the she-wolf.

  “And you a fox-killer,” replied Rhy-lee. She was amazed that her voice was steady.

  Several of the wolves growled. The she-wolf sneered.

  Rhy-lee held up the etched jawbone. “It is the Word of Inanakurekuri.”

  The she-wolf stilled, glaring at the jawbone with yellow eyes. A wolf’s jawbone. Her fingers tightened around the haft of her axe and for a moment Rhy-lee thought she was about to attack.

  The she-wolf snorted. “This Word is known to me,” she said. “The name of this bear is known to be true.”

  “The bear is far from here,” said a large male, with a ridged scar from his right eye across the top of his scalp and over his left ear.

  The she-wolf rounded on him, baring her teeth.

  “The ears of a bear hear
far,” said one of the grandmothers.

  The scarred male growled at her but was shouted down by the rest of the pack.

  “There is no sport here,” the lead she-wolf declared, turning back to Rhy-lee and Yfan-wyn. “We will trade. You will give us metal.”

  Rhy-lee worked her tongue around her mouth, trying to generate some moisture there. Carefully, using only her forefinger and thumb, she pulled her skinning knife from its sheath. “I will give you this,” she said. “If you will answer my question.”

  “A question?” The she-wolf’s ears came up in surprise. She eyed the bright blade of the knife. “Ask it.”

  “Have you seen another fox who carries the Word of Inanakurekuri?”

  Rhy-lee’s heart thudded as the she-wolf gave a quick nod. “There is one who has returned to these parts for many years – since I was a cub.” The fingers of the she-wolf’s free hand twitched. “She often shelters in the forest in the winter.” She thrust out her hand. “Give it to me.”

  She. Rhy-lee handed the knife over. “Has she been seen this season?”

  The she-wolf grinned slyly. “One question, for this blade,” she said. “More metal for more questions.”

  Several of the pack yipped their appreciation of her cunning.

  Rhy-lee took a deep breath, gathering her thoughts. She. “I will give you wire snares to trap rabbits,” she said.

  But the she-wolf’s gaze had shifted beyond Rhy-lee. Her brow furrowed. Rhy-lee started to turn. The she-wolf’s eyes snapped wide. Behind Rhy-lee, Yfan-wyn cried out in alarm.

  She spun to see long-bodied figures burst out of the river, heavy clubs raised over their shoulders. Otters! Several of them lifted narrow tubes to their lips. The wolves howled and charged. Rhy-lee grabbed Yfan-wyn and lifted him bodily, away from the fight, then pushed him ahead towards the trees.