Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

She and Marek, who'd sworn that she felt the baby helping, had taken a full eight and four days to climb out of the rubble, to find a lonely female zwoot, a few empty waterjars, and enough fabric to fashion a saddle, some clothes to cover them from the sun, and enough bandages to cover Shen Shen's leg, much of which they'd actually brought with them as they dodged dead bodies under the rubble. There was also a dagger, something Rayek must have lost during the quake, but it had already proven its worth.

“The water must be boiling,” she told Marek, as they built the fire, zwoot dung, and the remains of trees. “The dagger must be red-hot. Wrap your hands before you touch it.”

Marek nodded, following her words, which were actually her mother's words, from stores of wisdom that had been put away after Leetah's birth.

The dead flesh was cut from the living with the hot knife. Then, as Shen Shen clung to a waterjar, and screamed through her teeth, Marek laid the blade, red hot, on the wounds.

“Well done,” Shen Shen praised the little mother. “Well done. I feel much better.”

Then, shamefully, she had fainted.

She'd come to find Marek smoking a pig, several lizards, a few quail, and a rabbit on the fire, and filling both waterjars.

“I don't know how I did it,” Marek admitted, when asked. “I would just lie there, as still as I could. I was lucky with the bristleboar, a rock fell on it. I waited until the others came close to me, then I just stabbed them.”

“We're lucky you did,” Shen Shen sighed. Marek had also found the time to fashion a crutch from an old tree, and she used this to get around, trying not to think of the ache in her foot, which was still buried under a mountain.

The trail went north, zwoot prints and elf prints.

“When do you suppose they left?” Marek asked, wistfully.

“Not too long ago, I suppose,” Shen Shen sighed.

“They might have waited, just a bit longer,” Marek fretted, hands on her belly. “Poor Ahkren.”

She burst into tears directly after that, and, unable to think of what else to do, Shen Shen joined her.

Leetah, was she buried under this stone? Was she out in the desert, grieving for her sister? Mother? Father?

Did Rayek live, or had he perished?

The world felt flat and colourless, after they finished. Shen Shen made Marek drink some water, and took some herself, to fight the headache sure to follow.

Marek stood up, and began to roll up the blankets.

“We should go tomorrow,” she said, wincing.

“I think we should wait,” Shen Shen said, thinking of Marek. “I'm worried about the baby.”

“If we wait, we risk losing them,” Marek objected. “I'm fine. I'm sure baby will be alright, too.”

Shen Shen nodded. After all, what choice did they have?

...

The wind was soft, and almost cool, as they piled blankets, quickly stitched together, with leather laces, on top of the zwoot, a relatively small, sweet creature. The water jugs were put in make-shift bags on either side of her. Enough to last a while, at any rate, padded in by the smoked meat. Marek gave the knife to Shen Shen, who took it mindlessly.

They had a small supply of herbs from the mountains. Ache-heal and mother-weed, for Shen Shen's leg, and in case Marek's milk shouldn't prove sufficient.

In any case, they couldn't delay any longer.

The trail was broad and easy to follow. Shen Shen watched for any foot print she might recognize, or the sign of a trailing robe or skirt, but everything was too mixed up. Every so often she and Marek would find odd bits of detritus. Ruffel's earring, making Shen Shen think of her childhood play mates, one of Ahnshen's needles, that Marek thoughtfully packed away, a piece of cloth that neither of them recognized, that went to lengthen the reins. Other bits and bobs, the remnants of a small, but resilient civilization.

They were making better time than the others, passing their old camp at the sun's three quarter height, Shen Shen noticed with a strange pride. Leetah and Mother and Father would be so proud of her. They did stop to snag a few more pieces of salvage, still mostly small things, including an old bracelet of Ahdri's. There, Shen Shen saw a pair of broad footprints, together with a small round circle.

“Father's staff!” She pointed them out excitedly to Marek, who laughed.

“The Sun Folk will be with him,” she giggled. “And soon we'll be with the Sun Folk!”

But optimism proved immature. The next day the sky darkened over, the sun turned orange, and a heavy wind began to sweep.

“Sandstorm!” Marek yelled over the wind, pointing to the west.

It took them less time than she would have thought possible to set up the tent and hide with the zwoot in its shadowy interior. It was some what hot, and Marek drank cupfuls of water, while Shen Shen gave it to the zwoot in handfuls. Supper would be a handful of dried meat, each, and one last glass of water.

But Marek suddenly grabbed her belly, and moaned, even more so than she had done in the past few days. At first Shen Shen paid it no mind, thinking it was another false contraction, but they came stronger and faster.

“I think-” Marek gasped, but Shen Shen interrupted.

“I know!” She helped Marek to a makeshift birthing chair, little more than a pile of cloth. “Think how wonderful it will be, to bring the Sun Folk new life.”

“New life,” Marek looked, suddenly, unexpectedly, sad. Then she winced, and moaned through another pain.

It was a hard birth. Had Shen Shen not been so ill herself, she might have noticed, but she was pre-occupied between this, and too much hope. Then, too, it seemed that all had gone well, a little girl coming into the world with relative speed, as Shen Shen laid in her in her mother's arms, and neatly bit through the life cord.

“There,” she sighed happily, then turned and began to drop herbs and hot stones from the fire into a cup of water. One never knew when mother-weed was needed, and it still made a sweet refreshing drink.

“I'm going to name her Ahleki,” Marek said, staring at the baby as if she could never see enough.

“”Light In The Rocks”?” Shen Shen asked, grinning. “It's perfect.”

“Yes, perfect,” Marek sighed, and waved away the tea. “You drink it, Shen Shen.”

Mothers weren't the only ones to drink the tea, as it also eased aches and pains, and Shen Shen's leg was sore enough that she didn't refuse.

Before long, warm, with the wind howling outside, the zwoot snorting and occasionally farting in her sleep, and Marek singing a lullabye to Ahleki.

“Sleep well, all night, and play all day...”

It was as old as the village itself. Leetah had sung it to Shen Shen when she was small, and had used to run from their parents' hut to her sister's after nightmares. It sent her to sleep as easily now as it had then, and she dreamed that she found Leetah inside a cactus that she had somehow made a home of.

The next morning, the storm had stopped, and she knew she would have to dig their way free, and said several things that she suspected would have made Rayek blush.

“The trail is probably gone by now, Marek,” she sighed. “I suppose we'll just have to keep travelling north. See where it takes us.”

The only answer was the sound of the zwoot.

“Marek?”

Marek was lying on the pile of blankets she'd given birth on, long, black braid lying beside her. The baby sighed, little sleeping noises.

Marek's lips had already begun to lose colour. Her face wasn't peaceful, as Shen Shen had been told it should be. It was slack, as if it were a badly painted portrait. Then, she had never seen anyone die.

Shen Shen confirmed the truth with a touch. Marek's skin was cold, her breath gone.

Mother-weed, taken again, would start the flow of milk, Shen Shen knew this. She couldn't wait, the baby was stirring.

She only made the smallest shroud. Ahleki would need all the rags she could get, they wouldn't be able to wash anything for who knew how long. She took her jewelry, too, for when Ahleki might have need of her mother, and bundled it away with Ahnshen's needle and Ruffel's earring. She dug the grave with her bare hands, and laid Marek in with dry eyes. For Marek, at least, it was over. She could be with her lifemate.

She didn't make a sound as she changed the sobbing baby, and laid her against a still empty breast. It wasn't until the tent was struck, and the zwoot loaded, and she looked out into the bare, empty desert, which now looked as if no elf had ever set foot there, let alone an entire half village, trekking who knew where, that the lonely enormity of their situation hit her, as if the emptiness of the desert had entered her soul.

...

“Well, that's when I found you,” Shen Shen smiled absently over her shoulder.

Osek wondered if smiles were habitual for her. It had been so long since he had smiled, himself, or seen an elfin smile, he had begun to wonder if they were mistaken, and there had never been such things as smiles and laughter.

Not since Mekda-, Well, not for many years, had he had such charming company. Shen Shen could be melancholic, but buried herself with fussing, over him, or Ahleki. She seemed happier distracting herself, losing her own grief in other people's needs.

As for Ahleki, Osek wasn't well acquainted with babies. He'd been captured before having any of his own, and as the years passed, Greymung kept him and Ekuar well segregated from the trolls, until Osek had begun to suspect their very existence was some kind of royal secret.

But Ahleki, only a few days old, was possessed of shining dark eyes, an oddly solemn, contemplative look, and a soft cap of feathery black hair. He and she couldn't do much together, so they mostly lay still in whatever shade Shen Shen could find, or make for them, while she steered the zwoot, or made camp, or cooked dinner, and watched each other. He would send to her, nothing important, just thoughts on the sky, or the sand, or on how fresh and good the air smelled.

“Osek, look!”

Shen Shen was sitting up straighter, even drawing her one knee under her. She pointed excitedly ahead of herself, to a shadow in the cliffs.

“It's an opening!” She crowed. “By the sun, it's an opening! The Sun Folk must have gone through there, surely.”

She urged the zwoot on carelessly, until they were at its edge, then more quickly into its shadow. Within, the walls were narrow and winding, with whistling little winds. It was beautiful, with purples and reds, sandstone in ribbons.

They came across a stream, to Shen Shen's delight, and, after refilling their water jugs, Osek shaped more water to the surface, and created a run off that they could use to wash themselves and their clothes.

“How exciting!” Shen Shen exclaimed, over and over, clearly delighting in the novelty of immersing one's self in cool water, as opposed to hot. “Osek, you are a wonder!”

Ahleki was less enthused, making her displeasure known when bathed.

After some time, they left the stream behind, with Shen Shen's insistence that her people were most likely just around the corner pulling them on, wet clothes drying damply on the zwoot's back. Shen Shen's optimism was contagious, and he found himself looking ahead as well.

“And Leetah, she'll patch us both up in no time. Just wait, she's like no healer you've ever known. Savah's lifemate was a rockshaper, too, she'll be so glad to meet you. And my father, Anatim, he'll be so pleased to see us...”

They were dangerously low on food. The water sloshed perilously under the swift pace of the zwoot. None of that seemed to matter to Shen Shen, as she raced the sun across the sky in the little canyon, to meet the ghosts around the corner.

Finally, when the sun began to duck dangerously low, leaving long, trailing shadows as a clue to the true time, they emerged from the canyon, onto a low, long plain, rimmed by hills to the east south, open and golden to the west and north.

It was empty. Even far off, in the great distance, only small patches of trees broke the starkness of the yellow plains and the blue sky.

It was the time of year when the night still brought chill to the air, Osek thought, idly, and they were probably just in time for the new green.

Shen Shen stood up on the zwoot, who did little more than flick her ears irritably over it, and scanned the horizon, silently.

There were no tents, nor smoke in the distance. There were no footsteps, no ripped pieces of scarf, or robe. They were alone, in a rapidly darkening, alien land. The air was far colder here, damp and with a rising wind.

“They're not- They're not here,” Shen Shen stuttered. She fell in a graceful slip off the back of the zwoot, and stumbled a few clumsy steps. “They're not here.”

She kept walking, limping on her crutch, but finally dropped onto her knee, staring away from him and Ahleki, out onto the plain.

The baby fussed in her sleep, and Osek rubbed her little back gently, cooing into her perfect little ears. He was looking away when he heard it.

It seemed to come from the earth itself. In fact, Osek reached with his shaping when he first heard it, sure it had come from the ground.

...

Shen Shen almost didn't recognize her own voice, coming from her chest, deep inside herself. It was an almost unelfin groan, that rose in volume until she was screaming, a loud, long wail that only died with her breath.

Then again.

And again.

She stopped when she heard Ahleki crying. Osek was trying to hush her, rocking her to and fro. He wasn't very good at it yet.

She saw a bit of mother-weed out of the corner of her eye, and cut it. Most likely she wouldn't need it again until Ahleki was weaned, but it never hurt to be careful.

Ahleki quieted as Shen Shen began to nurse her. It was nearly dark.

“We'll camp here,” she said, tonelessly. Osek was determinedly wriggling down from the zwoot, who had decided this was a good place to lie down. It might have been funny.

They built a fire, and pitched their makeshift tent. Strange, unknown animals made chirping, clicking sounds at the edge of light, and Osek, missing an eye, teeth, one ear, and several fingers, looked like a story from the time before the village.

After some time, the story came out. Three young adventurers, sneaking away in the night. The discovery of the High One's lost home, the Palace. The sudden attack, capture. Defiance, torture. Escape and a promise

“My people,” he sighed. “They lived far to the north. We might still find them. Or their descendants.”

Shen Shen thought about it.

“Osek,” she said, finally, feeling as if she shouldn't. “You said, you and your friends, you met the High Ones?”

“A few,” he shrugged. “They were old, even in our time, but gentle. At the same time, though, they weren't like us. They were distant, always far away.”

“Savah was the oldest elf in our village,” Shen Shen put Ahleki in her cradle-swing, made from an old blanket, and some sticks. “She was tall, twice the size of anyone else. But the High Ones have all been dead since long before she was born.”

“It may all be in vain,” Osek agreed, drawing further into his cloak. “They may have died, or been slaughtered and scattered by trolls, or humans.”

Just as her people may have been left behind, under a sandstorm, she thought.

“But they, or their descendants, may be somewhere beyond the plains,” he continued. “They may have reclaimed the Palace by now. Or they may have forgotten it. Or perhaps there are others. Elves beyond our knowledge.”

She sighed, and looked upward, into the stars. Other elves. Trolls, humans, animals.

“We have no choice,” she agreed. “We'll go North.”

...

After some moons, Ahleki had gone from an almost shapeless baby(Shen Shen had delivered enough to know they were all like that) to a giggling, gurgling little thing that Shen Shen would leave behind long enough to go hunting with her little dagger. She was good enough to bring down little fat rabbits, and diggers, and once, happily, a deer that had stumbled too close to her hiding place. The hide, cleaned and stretched, made sandals for her and boots for Osek. Less elegant than Shanseh's delicate slippers of silk and doeskin, but her shoes had long since worn out, and Osek claimed that his had been gone for years. Osek himself made snares, which also caught small game, so meat at dinner became meat at breakfast. Shen Shen saved as much as she could, drying it on racks on the zwoot's back. The rabbitskins were saved, too, to make warm blankets that Osek swore would be more than welcome in the coming White Cold.

Shen Shen, used to the desert heat, wiped her hand in the warm, wet air of the plains, and wondered if she would ever be cool again. Even night brought no respite, with the heat only growing more oppressive.

It seemed that the plains agreed with Osek, however, or perhaps that was just freedom, and food. He was filling out, bit by bit, both by meat, and the roots and plants, the few that they recognized, which supplemented their diet. There were no longer so many lines on his face, although his hair showed no signs of filling in. He was stronger, too, and had begun to make them nightly shelters of whatever stone was available, which they left each morning. He simply told her other travelers would come their way, and perhaps need their little homes.

The plains stretched out before them, and behind them, broken by little copses of trees. At first Shen Shen had been fascinated, by their size, by the hard, sharp leaves, and the long, soft ones, by the diversity, but now they were only a brief respite from the hot sun.

They wove hats from grasses that grew taller than Shen Shen, and even made Alehki a sun shade. The zwoot shed so much fur that Shen Shen made a crude spindle and began to spin a rough yarn.

And yet, day and after day, nothing. Not even a glimmer of old magics, or a whisper of smoke.

Everything changed one evening, after Osek had erected his rock house, and the fire had been lit to boil a rabbit and some roots. They had settled in, with the stone bowls that, like the house, they would likely leave behind in the morning. The sun had finally set, and a blue twilight haze had settled over the world.

Ahleki was settled on a bed of wildflowers and rabbit fur, playing with a doll that Shen Shen had wastefully sewn from a few scraps of cloth. Shen Shen watched the baby with an idle pride. She had never been fond of children, her passion lay with the bringing of the baby into the world, but Ahleki was different from most children. Or possibly she wasn't, and she was the first baby Shen Shen had spent much time with, but it was still a joy to watch her grow, and change. Already she was speaking her own little words, and making motions to try to tell them which direction to go in.

Suddenly there was a great flurry of noise, and the zwoot honked a warning. Shen Shen caught her crutch under one arm, and drew her dagger with the other, while Osek wrapped Ahleki up, pulling her, and himself to the back of the hut.

The people in the door way stopped, and gaped at her for a moment.

Shen Shen's first instinct was to stab at them. It was clear, from their round ears and small eyes, what they were. Humans, the same that had driven Savah and the Ancestors from their little home in the Green Growing Place. They would as soon eat an elf as look at her.

But they were a maid and a lad. No, man and woman, and the woman's belly was swollen with child. She was caught up in the man's arms, and crying out.

Shen Shen made her choice in a moment.

“Hot water, Osek,” she commanded. “And shape us a stool, will you?”

She urged the humans in with signs as she did so. They entered, the man with a quiet skepticism that disappeared as she popped a bowl of soup into his hands, and sat the woman down.

“Shen Shen,” she pushed herself into the woman's field of view, and smiled as broadly as she could. “Shen Shen.”

The woman, sweat pouring down her face, smiled, and tapped her own chest.

“Naksima.”

“Well, Naksima,” Shen Shen pulled the woman's leather skirt up. “Let's see.”

The baby was coming, but not too quickly. She would have time, then.

“Boil that water,” she ordered, tersely, washing her hands. “And give me wet cloths.”

The man stood up, asking questions with words that Shen Shen didn't understand, but in a tone that made her roll her eyes.

“Fire,” she took the man's arm, and made motions to the fire. “Must be BIG. Understand?”

It took a few minutes, but he soon had the idea, and was out searching for wood. Naksima was laughing when Shen Shen returned to her, and they shared a look that needed no translation.

It took all night. The man, Amrok, bumped his head once, and Osek reshaped the ceiling. Shen Shen had to nurse Ahleki once, and the zwoot tried to poke her head in to see what was going on.

Naksima gave birth near dawn, a healthy boy, already as big as Ahleki. The afterbirth passed in moments, and at Naksima's consent, Osek put it in the dirt.

Amrok brought in blankets of hide and fur, and stared in wonder at his mate and son, long after Naksima fell asleep. He wiped at his eyes, and looked so much like every father Shen Shen had ever had to shove out of a hut that she wanted to cry, too.

They all fell asleep not long after the birth. Elf, or human, it hardly seemed to matter, anymore. There was new life and exhaustion.

...

“Rayek!”

Maleen stood on one of the stones that dotted the vast plains, pointing out into the distance.

“Dashers,” she said, biting her lip in concentration. “And buffalo, looks like a little watering hole.”

“Ah,” Zhantee sighed. “Everyone needs to come to the watering hole.”

“And something huge,” Maleen added, shading her eyes. “Great Sun, it's bigger than the zwoots.”

Rayek floated himself up to her side. It was still difficult, but was becoming easier the more he did it. They were right, trees intermingled with the animals, a sure sign of a pond, or one of the small lakes that seemed to spring from no where.

“Maybe we could just wait by the lake for prey,” Halek was having trouble with the heat, which was wet and heavy on them, like a steam bath. He'd eschewed robes and tunics for a light leather shirt that tied over one shoulder, of the Wolfrider Moonshade's making, and had tied a scarf tightly over his long black hair. He looked like an uncomfortable cross between a Wolfrider and a Sun lad.

“Stop moaning, Halek.” Maleen leapt gracefully off the rock, looking no more burdened by the sun now, in her black silk laces, than she had in the Sun Village. “We do too much near the lake, now, and they won't come near it again for a long time.”

“You come up here,” Rayek held out his hand, and helped Halek climb up. “We need someone keeping watch.”

“My thanks,” Halek murmured, sighing.

“Take this,” Zhantee passed up a woven shade. “Ahnshen's worried about you over heating.”

“Halek would need to move to overheat,” Maleen teased. “Lazybones!”

Halek made a rude gesture, which only made Maleen laugh more, until Rayek hushed her.

The grass made a forest of its own. It was nearly a half elf taller than the tallest of them, and when Maleen grasped handfuls of the strongest blades she could climb them, putting herself just high enough to sight their target and slide down.

Zhantee was in poor shape today, rustling through the leaves and grasses. Rayek wished he had taken Halek instead. He tried to be patient, and it was easier than he had expected, until they parted the grass, and Zhantee snapped a twig.

In an instant, the dashers were off, and the shagbacks followed, shaking their horns. The new creature, a slow, stinking beast, showed off its claws lazily, roaring in a low, rumbling tone.

“Curse it, Zhantee, your feet are as much clay as your pots!”

It was unfair, and he knew it was unfair as soon as he said it. Zhantee wasn't naturally talented at the hunt, but his willingness to work and learn usually carried the day over those with an inborn talent. But they hadn't seen meat in seven days, and he refused to humble himself before the Wolfriders, who had the temerity to visit the village and make “helpful” comments on their skills.

“Shut it!” Maleen had already raised her spear, aiming at the beast. “Come on, you two!”

They almost had it. It was slow, horribly so, and Maleen's spear was gut deep in it, when a lucky blow of its claws cut through both her ribbons and her side. She dropped to one knee, groaning, and Zhantee and Rayek were distracted long enough to go flying.

The beast turned its attention back to Maleen. Rayek watched with horror as it raised its hand to a killing blow. Maleen raised her head, and clutched a dagger pounded out of an old shovel.

The blow never met. The beast's hand snapped backward in mid-air, and Maleen leapt as it cried out in agony, driving her knife deep into its eye.

It took a few minutes to die, shuddering out breath painfully. Rayek took Maleen's torn ribbons and part of his own loincloth to make a make shift bandage.

“Run to the village,” he ordered Zhantee. “Bring Leetah, and tell them we need help to carry our kill back.”

Zhantee nodded, and raced away.

“Wonder what snapped the beast's hand?” Maleen asked, idly.

Rayek shrugged. “Wasn't me. You?”

“I think I'd know if I was doing magic. Oh!” She winced as he tightened the bandage.

They lay still, the day pouring hot sunlight over them.

Maleen was his mother's cousin, and Rayek noted, sitting beside her, that they had the same long black hair, and heart-shaped face. Hers was meditative now.

“You weren't fair to Zhantee,” she said, after a few minutes of silence.

He winced. “I know.”

“Do you?” She asked. “Zhantee worships you. More than anyone else in the village. He's always been too shy to even speak to you, the great Rayek, the Hunter, the magic user.”

“I'll apologize to him,” he assured her.

She sat up, grimacing in pain, and held up the end to her ribbon shirt, where it had been torn by the beast.

“Rayek, can you sew this back together?”

“Yes,” he answered slowly. Her wounds hadn't looked that bad, was she sick from loss of blood?

“So, when you do, will it be as if it never was torn.” She held the pieces together. “Is that it?”

“No,” he ran a hand over her forehead. Hot, but Maleen tended to run that way.

Maleen pulled his hand away from her face, and looked into his eyes. “Words are like those claws, Rayek. They tear holes. You can mend them, but the stitches show where the holes were. That can never be changed. Do you understand me?”

“I told you I was sorry,” he grumbled, feeling as if he were a child, being scolded for shirking chores.

“You have always been special,” Maleen sighed, looking to the beast. “Just as Zhantee and I have always been ordinary. Being special, magical, a hunter, it's made people give way to you. Even when they probably shouldn't.”

She didn't speak after that, and not a few moments passed before Leetah burst out of the grass on the back of the huge beast that had adopted her, followed later by a zwoot, and enough villagers to carry two of the beasts back. And two Wolfriders, the sandy-haired Woodlock, and the chief.

“You went after a tree-eater?” Woodlock was obviously shaken. “The High Ones themselves must be watching over you, to get away with a scratch like that!”

“A scratch?” Leetah drew herself up sharply, glaring at Maleen. “Those cuts were to the bone, Maleen. A few minutes later and you could have been in serious trouble.”

“Leave her be, lifemate,” Cutter laughed. “A little blood in a hunt is something to celebrate, whether it's your prey, or yourself.”

The youth grinned at Rayek, then, unexpectedly, hugged him tightly enough to cut off his breath.

“You'll be fed for a moon on this,” he crowed. “And you'll howl over the tale forever.”

“We were just too stupid and stubborn to go home empty-handed,” Maleen said, self-deprecatingly.

Rayek smiled, still distracted by their earlier conversation.

It turned out they weren't the only stupid ones. Halek was in triumph over his own kill, a shagback that he had leapt upon while it scratched itself on his rock.

“Jumped down, stuck the spear in, jumped up,” he illustrated with his hand over a bowl of stew. “Almost got thrown.”

“Idiot,” his lovemate, Kiri, said, fondly.

“Idiot who brought home dinner,” Halek corrected him, then sighed, and reached for his own long, black braid. In moments, and with the slice of a dagger, it was off in his hand, and he shook his head with a sigh. “Much better.”

Kiri rolled his eyes again, and Rayek excused himself.

Zhantee was at the edge of the gathering, with Ruffel at his side. She was still dressed in her Wolfrider gifted tunic, and left as he approached, glaring at him.

“Hello, Rayek,” Zhantee murmured, as he sat down beside him. He was staring at his knees in a way that made Rayek distinctly uncomfortable.

Even more discomforting was the awareness that he would not have noticed Zhantee's unhappiness before the quake. In fact, he would have been hard-pressed to remember the boy's name.

“Zhantee-” He began, but Zhantee burst in before he could finish.

“I'm sorry, Rayek!” Zhantee looked close to tears. “I should have stayed back, not Halek. I wrecked the hunt!”

“If you'd stayed back,” Rayek snorted. “We'd never have taken a tree-eater. And you're not as fast as Halek, so we probably would have lost one of our best hunters.”

Zhantee stared at him as if he'd grown another head.

Now it was Rayek's turn to stare at his knees.

“I'm sorry, Zhantee. I shouldn't have said it.”

Zhantee stammered a bit, but Rayek spoke over it.

“You're not the best of us, but you will be, one day. You work harder at hunting than any of the rest of us.”

“Ah,” Zhantee blushed, and wrung his hands. “I don't work harder than anyone. Everyone has to work hard, here.”

“Don't underestimate yourself,” Rayek told him. “You're no less important than anyone else. You're a good hunter, and you hunger for knowledge. Wait and see, you'll be among the best of us, soon.”

A soft laugh interrupted them.

Leetah, dressed in the soft tunic that Ahnshen had made for her, and also the leather breeches of a Wolfrider, was standing just outside the light from the fires and lamps.

“I came to see if you had any aches and pains from the hunt, Zhantee,” she said. “But I see Rayek has done my job for me.”

She turned to go back to the fires, and her Wolfrider, winking over her shoulder as she did. “You should listen to him, Zhantee. Sometimes he knows what he's talking about.”

...

As it happened, Naksima and Amrok were headed in the same direction they were, and, some days after the birth, when she was strong, Naksima signaled to Shen Shen that they should travel together.

Shen Shen was, at first, unsure. Naksima was nice, and Amrok was gentle, if shy, but they were still her people's ancient enemies.

A voice that sounded exactly like Osek's echoed in her head.

**They'll never be friends if we don't give them a chance.**

She whirled, to where the elder was loading the zwoot.

He saw her stare, and a look of profound sadness overtook him.

It was magic, she realized, that had put his voice in her head. That had been his thoughts, thrown between them as if it were nothing.

She would ask him how to do it, she decided. And she would take his advice.

“If you come with us, you must ride the zwoot,” she ordered Naksima, firmly, leading her to the animal. “Up, now, up!”

The woman looked petrified, but she gathered her strength, and even helped Osek up. Ahleki stayed in her sling on Shen Shen's chest, walking with the zwoot lead in her hand, to lighten the poor creature's load.

The humans had their own animal, a cock-eared, bright eyed creature, something like the jackals in the desert, but sweeter, both in face and manner.

When Amrok saw the curious look that Shen Shen cast on the animal, he cleared his throat diffidently and, pointing, said, “Dog.”

Shen Shen followed him, and repeated it several times until she was certain she had it. However, once she had it, he pointed at the animal again, and said, “Nali dog.”

This, also, took time, until she understood he meant this as the animal's name.

The Amrok pointed behind them, to the zwoot.

He was a little disappointed when she had to explain that the animal was nameless, but he managed the word well enough. Then he picked up a blade of grass, and began again.

They exchanged little words like that all day long. At the end of the day, while Naksima tolerated Amrok's fussing, Shen Shen went to help Osek with the unpacking.

“That thing you did,” she murmured, as she tied the zwoot's harness to a loop he always shaped in the wall of their night-huts. “Where you put your thoughts in my head.”

“Sending,” he smiled, sardonically. “All elves can send. I never thought it would fall out of use.”

“It's been many eights of eights years since my folk needed such tactics to keep ourselves secret,” Shen Shen pointed out. “I think Savah might have been able to do such things, but I rarely saw it.”

Osek sighed, eyes distant. Shen Shen let him think himself out.

“I'm, going to teach you,” Osek said, finally, firmly. He held up his hands to put off an objection she had no desire to make. “I know these humans are nice, but they might not all be. And there may be trolls, or wolves, or something like that.”

Shen Shen reached out and took his hand. “Thank you.”
“I'm selfish,” he laughed. “I'm as lonely for my past as you are, Shen Shen.”

She stared at him, realizing that she had never considered it. He was as lost as she, and had lost much more than she had. There wasn't just distance between him and his people, but time. He had been born long before Savah. If there were any of his people left, they might no longer know him.

“Oh, Osek,” she embraced him, nearly in tears.

He hesitated, then wrapped his arms around her.

“There, there, little one.”

She wasn't sure if he was comforting her, or that younger self, who had thought he could retrieve the lost home of those long ago ancestors. Possibly both.

...

“You're sure they aren't spirits?” Amrok watched the two little people nervously. They were seated crosslegged, face to face, and if one got too close, the air around them seemed suffocating.

“I don't mean to say they're human,” Naksima finished changing the baby's mosses for clean, and kissed him. “Or that they don't have powers. But why would a spirit have a missing leg, or fingers?”

“There's the Bitten God, Nosho,” Amrok reminded her. “He has only one leg.”

“He's a god, Amrok,” Naksima laughed. “There was an old woman in my mother's village, you know. By the sea? She used to call whales out of the water when it was fishing time, to herd the fish into nets.”

That had been so, Amrok remembered. He had known an old man who could direct hunters to where a deer would be, and it would be there within minutes of their arrival.

“Well, what do you suppose happened to them?” He asked her, taking the baby so she could brush her hair.

“I don't know,” Naksima looked at their little companions. “Whatever it was, it must have been terrible. The little woman cries at night, when she thinks we're sleeping. And the old man looks as if he was captured by The People Who Fight With Us.”

...

Trollhammer had adopted her with a calmness that surprised Leetah. He still tended to a meloncholic air from time to time, but he seemed to have found peace in the village. Just as his former bond-mate's father seemed to have, especially in the newborn forges that Telah and Nani had decided to make, hoping to recycle old jewelry and broken tools into new.

“We could trade with the trolls for some of their metals,” he was suggesting, now. “Right, you lot don't know trolls.”

He rubbed the fur on his face, thoughtfully.

“They live under the ground.” He illustrated them with his hands. “Arms and legs this big around, skin as green as leaves. They love metal, use it to deck themselves and their maidens.”

“And you trade with them?” Nani shook her head, tossing her hammer in her own thick hand. “What could they possibly need from you?”

“Furs, feathers, berries,” Cutter piped up, from where he was lying with Leetah, between Trollhammer and Nightrunner. “Things that grow on the surface. I'm sure they'd like your fruits, especially the ones that burn like fire.”

Cutter had made acquaintance with the fire-fruits only yesterday, in Toorah's rabbit stew, which he had swallowed gamely, only the sweat on his face, and his near choking on water betraying his agony. Leetah remembered feeling impressed, in spite of herself, by the young Wolfrider's manners.

Now she was only contented. The wolf at her back was warm and soft, just like Cutter's hand on her leg.

Chores were done, little ones were playing. Ahnshen was weaving a cage for the moths he had brought there in small cocoons, Minyah was watching her new friend make trading plans with a pleased smile, and Savah was leading a group of small pupils out of the woods, with Rainsong, Woodlock, and their little ones at her side.

There was a hole in her side, the exact shape and size of Shen Shen, but she was content.

...

Rayek... Liked Maleen.

He hadn't really liked anyone. Not until Leetah was born, a true equal, a magic user, intelligent, beautiful. Even most of his memories of his parents were overshadowed by his contempt for them. A contempt, he had been forced to admit recently, was not as deserved as he had thought.

Yet Maleen was also intelligent, he could see now, behind her giggling, and sensible. So he had begun to like her.

It was as if he had opened a door in liking her. Zhantee, always a shadow, had sprung into life, gentle, but ready and willing to hunt and even try his clumsy hand at the old magics. Ruffel, who could find nests even in the tallest long grasses, and who always had a kind word for her fellows. Even his parents, he had begun to see many good traits in them, their fierce will, their willingness to work, their pride in him, that he had not seen before.

Rayek had friends, to his utter shock. Not just friendly acquaintances, but friends, who came to him for advice, offered their own, who understood him, and who he understood in return. Not just hunters, now, either, but Ahnshen, and Ahdri, even little Shushen.

It was as if he had been welcomed in from the cold to a friendly fire, only the fire had been there all along.

**I don't see why you called me out here if all you plan on doing is staring at the grass.**

Rayek closed his eyes.

Strongbow. Was not a friend. Wasn't truly more than an acquaintance, but his ability to send was the best that Rayek, who hadn't ever sent until he met the other elf, had ever seen.

He had the feeling that Strongbow didn't like the village, or anyone in it. His lifemate, the maker of the leather clothes that the Wolfriders wore, had struck up a kinship with Ahnshen, though, and Ahnshen's little brother Shushen and the boy, Dart, were inseperable. Strongbow and Rayek had happened to be going the same direction, which was why Rayek had asked him out here, both for his marksmanship, and his powers.

**You look at one patch of grass, you've seen all of it,** Strongbow continued, rubbing at his bow discontentedly. **Why did you even ask me out here?**

“I told you,” Rayek said, trying to be patient. Maybe if he pretended he was speaking with Shushen. “I want to test the range of this “Sending”.”

**Could have done that at the Holt. Or your village, Moonshade and Dart have a liking for it. Don't know why.** Strongbow looked suspiciously as if he were pouting. **Wouldn't even be here if they hadn't wanted to visit Cutter and Treestump.**

Pretend he's a child.

“I want to test how far you can reach with it.”

**Can't do that in one night,** Strongbow snorted.

Rayek felt a bit overwhelmed.

“You can't-In one night?”

**I can send up to a night's ride away from the Holt,** the Wolfrider said, carelessly, drawing his bow, and sending an arrow off into the twilight, nodding when it hit something. His wolf friend ran to collect the kill, coming back with a ravvit that it proceeded to devour in front of them with sickening snaps of bone. **Takes too long to go and come back, though.**

“A night's ride.” Rayek frowned. “Have you never tried to send farther?”

**What for?** Strongbow shrugged. **Everything good is at the Holt.**

“What for?” Talking to Strongbow sometimes felt like talking to a bird, completely alien. “To see if you can!”

Strongbow looked at him as if he were ill.

**Why?** and there was the taste of reluctance in the sending, as if he didn't quite want to know the answer.

Rayek was thrown by it.

“Be-Because,” he stammered, then drew himself up. “To test yourself, to see your limits, to know yourself!”

Strongbow shrugged. **I already know myself. What's sending going to do to change that?**

Rayek had spent his entire life using and perfecting his powers. Once, he had even thought he had reached his limits, before the ground-quake had proven him wrong.

He was his powers, his knowledge, he was a throw back to an elder age, a true child of the High Ones. He had always measured himself against what he could do, not for others, but for himself.

**You act like this is magic,** Strongbow drew his bow again, and fired another arrow. **Anyone can send. I can send a little further. So what? That little one, Ruffel, she can talk a little louder.** A memory of Ruffel, but louder, much louder than she was in life. Ruffel as Strongbow heard her. **That's not magic. You should talk to Redlance, or that rockshaper.**

**Well,** Rayek wasn't used to feeling clumsy, and tried to keep his irritation from colouring his thoughts. **Why do you send? I've never yet heard you speak.**

Strongbow took the rabbit that the wolf brought back this time, shrugging.

**You can't lie in sending,** he explained. **Sendings have only truth. And when you send to someone, you know them better. You're closer to them. It's better than speaking. Elves lie when they speak, hide, make things different. In sending, there's only truth, and no one hides.**

Rayek had never considered this before.

“But haven't you ever wanted to test it?” He felt uncertain, strange.

“Tell you what,” Strongbow actually looked amused. “I'll test it with you, but you have to send the whole time.”

Rayek glared at him, then gathered all his concentration.

**Deal.**

...

“I wish you weren't going.”

It had been the longest time he had ever lived with his parents, since he was a child, but thanks to Korek's builders and Ahdri's rockshaping, he had a hut of his own.

“I feel as if this is the first time we've ever known you,” Jarrah continued, putting some of his clothes in a bag. “And now you're leaving again.”

“Well,” he felt somewhat awkward, and nodded to her swelling belly. “You'll have the new little one to ease that.”

“I know,” she sighed, laying her hand on her stomach. “And I'm grateful, but it isn't the same.”

“You were special.”

His father stood in the doorway, looking a little sorrowful.

“We didn't always understand you, but we understood that.”

“I thought you might be a rockshaper,” Jarrah continued. “So from the first time you kicked, I named you for the stones.”

“But you were so much more,” Ingen hugged him, for first time since he was small. “I'm sorry, we didn't always understand that.”

“We didn't always understand you, my son,” Jarrah added, embracing them both. “But we have always loved you.”

Rayek extracted himself as slowly as he could, and nodded goodbye around a lump in his throat. Then he left his parents' home. Again.

...

They traveled with Amrok and Naksima for two dances of the moons. Shen Shen walking beside Amrok, Naksima up on the zwoot with Osek. At night, they all ate together and rested in the same home, with the babies sleeping in the same bed. Ahleki seemed to like her new companion, who took her babbling and kicking with phlegmatic stoicism.

Amrok had been making something for the past few eights of days. He would tell Shen Shen what the individual parts were, but not what they were altogether. There was a small cup, at the top, a piece of wood, thin as the shaft of a spear, in the middle, and a flat, flexible piece at the end. It was cleverly made, so carefully fitted together it might have been one piece. Shen Shen often admired it, touching the soft wood, and playing with the end.

Her sending lessons with Osek were coming along well, too. She would send to him while they were walking, or when she went hunting with Amrok, and sometimes at night when she wanted company.

“Shen Shen!” Amrok came running to her, excitedly.

“What is it?”

“Here!” He held the strange thing he'd been working out to her. “Shen Shen, foot! Leg!”

“What?” She took it gingerly, and stared. It took a moment for her to understand what it was.

Then she laughed, joyously.

He had added two straps. One to go around her leg, the other to go around her waist. What she thought was a cup had been padded with leather and grass.

Amrok helped her put it on, and she daringly took a few steps, and landed on her face.

She felt everyone stand stock still in shock behind her, and rolled over, giggling.

“I think I'll keep my crutch for now,” She told Amrok, as he helped her up, stuttering his apologies.

And keep it she did. For a moon, while she and Amrok worked together on the new leg. Finally, as the greater moon began to wax again, she stood on her own two feet.

“Need walking stick,” she commented to Amrok, in his own tongue. “Better than crutch, though, yes?”

“Much better!” He looked as proud as if he had made both her legs instead of one. “Wait and see, Shen Shen, we'll perfect this leg.”

The sun had lessened its hold on the world, and the nights were beginning to grow chillier. Ahleki had begun to crawl across the floor of their night-huts, and talk a little. “Shen” was easy for her, “Zek” was next. “Nakama” and “Amok” followed.

“Baby” was Naksima and Amrok's unnamed little boy.

Then one day, the land began to change.

“Ah!” Amrok grinned. “The hills. We'll be in the mountains, soon.”

“Mountains?” Shen Shen tasted the unfamiliar word, warily.

“Big hill, big!” Amrok urged them on, grinning hugely.

This must be their home, Shen Shen realized, wistfully.

Gradually, the hills grew bigger and bigger. The land changed even more. The trees began to turn from green to yellow, to orange, to brown. The nights weren't just chilly now, actual frost, a rare occurrence in the Sun Village, appeared each morning.

Then they turned around a mountain, and came face to face with a cliff.

“This way,” Amrok urged them.

It was hard climbing, directly by the face of the cliff. At first Shen Shen used her crutch, then she began to crawl. Amrok finally picked her up and put her on the zwoot, who, bizarrely, seemed to barely notice the inclines.

“Amrok!”

A young human girl jumped down from the cliff, which had begun to grow smaller.

“Amrok, Naksima!” She ran to them, laughing, her twin braids trailing behind her like wings.

“Amrok and Naksima are home!” A young man appeared out of nowhere, laughing. “Everyone, come!”

In moments, they were surrounded by humans. The laughter was raucous, the joy infectious. Even Ahleki and the baby boy were giggling, in Shen Shen and Naksima's arms.

They spoke too fast for Shen Shen to follow, and a touch to Osek's mind told her the same. She felt shy and small, in this great crowd of five fingers.

Suddenly, Amrok appeared and drew them forward.

“This is Shen Shen, she helped Naksima when the baby was born, and this is Osek, he has great power.” He pointed to Ahleki. “This is little Ahleki.”

The crowd erupted into noise again, this time directed to Osek and Shen Shen, who smiled uncomfortably. Apparently they would simply have to endure.

Suddenly the crowd parted, and a tall human, with a streak of grey in his beard, came forward. He held out his hands and drew Amrok to him.

“My brother.”

It was all he said. Shen Shen suddenly had a flash of long auburn hair, and strong arms drawing her in, a memory like fire, and burst into tears.

...

Naksima sighed, letting the woven mat of grass fall over the door. Shen Shen had claimed embarrassment and exhaustion, which was true. It was also true that she carried a heavy burden on small shoulders.

Osek was amusing the children with small toys that he made for them out of stones. He did this between sips of soup.

He and Shen Shen, and Ahleki, really, were such odd, almost ugly little creatures, with eyes like bugs and ears like bats. Really, they looked almost childlike one moment, then unearthly the next. If not for their kindness and gentle ways, one might have been afraid of them.

“Is the little healer alright, sister?” B'rak asked.

“She is and she isn't,” Naksima sighed. “She almost never weeps before others, but I have often heard her cry at night.”

B'rak looked at Osek, and shook his head.

“I would think, one missing leg, that would be an accident.” His face grew sorrowful and grim. “But all the pieces taken from the elder, that is something else.”

“I don't think they're from the same nation, chief-brother,” Amrok commented. “From their clothes, their skin, they seem very different.”

“Are they wife and husband?” B'rak asked. “He seems so much older than she.”

“They aren't,” Naksima began to nurse the baby. “She treats him like an elderly father, more than anything.”

“Poor things,” was all B'rak's wife, Nilma, had to contribute to the conversation.

...

It was while she was examining Clearbrook for abnormalities. The elder of the Wolfriders mainly complained of boredom and her mate hovered near, like an oversized hummer bird.

Leetah let her mind drift a bit as she examined the developing child. No abnormalities besides a slightly larger brain than usual, and a mild injury to the lungs that she headed off without a twitch.

“Get off, Pike, Pike, get off me!” Rainsong roared, then twisted, throwing her brother into the creek.

“You'll be sorry for that,” Pike warned, following up with a splash of water. Rainsong shrieked, and hid behind her lifemate, who shook his head and leapt for the branch above him.

Newstar, sitting on a Sun Folk woven blanket with her brother, giggled madly.

“Watch this, little one,” Pike had managed to escape the water, and caught up his sister in one arm. “This is how to deal with annoying bugs.”

“Don't you dare!”

Too late, Pike had dropped his sister in the creek with almost no effort.

Leetah went hot, then cold with rage.

It had no rhyme or reason, it was simply there. She thought no one had noticed and excused herself to Clearbrook with an assurance that all was well, and a promise to see her in an eight of days.

She settled in a small thicket with Trollhammer, who laid his head in her lap for a good scratch, and settled in.

“Leetah?”

It was Cutter, crawling in beside her.

“Is everything okay? I felt something.”

She looked away, into Trollhammer's fur. She thought there might be a tick there.

“You don't have to talk about it,” he said, softly. “Do you want me to go away?”

She shook her head, and moved so he could sit next to her.

They were still like that for a long time.

Finally, she sighed, and spoke.

“I was angry with Rainsong and Pike.”

“Eh?” He was confused. “Did they do something to you?”

“No,” she sighed, wondering if he would understand. “I was jealous. Because they're together. And I am not with Shen Shen.”

“Ah,” he sighed, deeply. “I remember after my parents died. I was angry at all the parents in the tribe. I didn't even want to see families.”

“It feels so unfair.” She complained. “And yet, I'm wicked. I should be happy for them.”

He shook his head. “I don't think it's wicked. It's just the way people feel sometimes.”

She turned and buried her head into his fur vest.

“I miss her so much,” she wept. “I cannot live through this! How could anyone live through this?”

He hummed an agreement and held her more tightly.

She wept herself out, and left feeling lighter.

However, not long after, a sense of ennui seemed to take the village. The second harvest had come in already, and a third was planted and waiting. The houses were all made, between Korek and Ahdri. Everyone had new clothes, and a second set besides, that Ahnshen and his weavers had made ready, and they were warm, from spun zwoot hair, so even Wolfriders commented on them.

Those who had worked the hardest, striven the most fiercely, to live and to thrive, suddenly became morose and languid. Some wouldn't leave their huts, some wouldn't leave their beds. Leetah feared it was an illness at first, but her touch told her nothing was wrong.

It was sorrow. Kept at bay until now, when it burst past the barriers in place and silently flooded the village.

Toorah, until then one of the pillars of the village, was among the worst affected. Leetah would leave off her eight days in the Holt, and come in on Trollhammer's back, only to find her mother hadn't left her bed all day.

“Is there nothing you can do?” Ahdri asked, later, in the hut she shared with Savah.

“This is not an illness of the body,” Leetah explained, later, feeling as drained as her patients. “It's a sickness within the soul.”

Almost all those affected were those who, like her mother, had been at the forefront of the re-settlement. As if they were candles that had burned themselves out, they now stared, listlessly, out at their new home.

“It's as if we've become a village of ghosts,” Ahdri mourned, opening the door to stare out into the centre. The well she had recently shaped was only half finished, where she and Korek had left it that afternoon.

...

Shen Shen came out from behind hanging mat, rubbing her eyes sheepishly.

“Sleep well?” Nilma asked, handing her a bowlful of dried fruit and a hot drink.

“Yes, thank you.” Shen Shen sat down, and winced at the spicy taste of the juice. It was sweet, but hot on the tongue. Not bad, though.

“Good,” Nilma stirred a pot and smiled at the scent that rose from it. “Naksima and Amrok's baby will be named today.”

“Oh?” Shen Shen asked. “Why so wait?”

“Oh, they had to come back here,” Nilma laughed. “Of course they couldn't name the baby in the middle of no where. Who knows what might happen?”

Shen Shen had no idea, but she had some understanding that this was a naming ceremony.

Later, she didn't understand much of what was said, but the naming ceremony was much like the Sun Folk held. The baby was adorned with jewelry and paint, passed from woman to woman, save those like Shen Shen, with babies of their own, and cooed and fussed over. Then he was handed to the chief, who held him up in two strong arms.

She didn't understand much of what was said, just “name” and “baby”, but then B'rak proclaimed, “Shenkir” as if it were very special, and everyone looked at her, grinning.

It took a moment to register, then she understood.

“Name me?” She asked Naksima, disbelieving. “Name baby me?”

“Of course, little one,” Naksima hugged her tightly. “Who else would I name him for?”

Shen Shen stared at her. So tall, and with such strange ways, but these five fingered people had welcomed her and Osek and Ahleki.

The legends of the Rootless Ones weren't just of humans killing elves. Elves had killed humans, too.

Yet here she was, and Osek, and Ahleki, celebrating a baby that she had helped birth. A baby named for her.

It was as if the world was being reborn.

...

Strongbow clearly thought Rayek was a bit mad, but indulged him, if only out of boredom. He would obligingly leave Ahnshen's hut as soon as Rayek arrived, nodding over his shoulder at his shy, sweet-featured lifemate. She, on the other hand, was always hip deep in fabric, leather, newly spun threads and silk, and conversation with Ahnshen and his helpers.

They'd drop young Dart off with Shushen's parents, who seemed overjoyed that their little troublemaker of a child hadn't just found a friend, but that that friend was apt to talk sense into Shushen when even they couldn't.

Strongbow, it turned out, wasn't just a hunter, he was an elder among the Wolfriders, a fact that astonished Rayek when he sat down to try to calculate the other's age, coming up, finally, with a number that seemed to barely equal half of Rayek's.

Strongbow, on the other hand, seemed somewhat appalled at what he saw as Rayek's lack of maturity.

“I suppose it makes sense,” Rayek said, after he calculated out Strongbow's years. “After all, your people live hard lives, it stands to reason your lifespans would be shorter.”

**And yours hardly seem to do more than mushrooms in the shade of a tree,** Strongbow retorted, then smiled thinly at Rayek's glare.

That was how Rayek learned that Strongbow gave as good as he got.

He complained about it later to Maleen and Zhantee, who nodded with suspiciously solemn faces until they finally burst into laughter, and he had to leave them, feeling ill used.

**That's it,** Strongbow's voice came softly to him, after a full night of waiting for the archer's voice to fade. His mental words were still clear, though softening, as clear as they'd been at half the night, and as clear as they'd been at his side.

Rayek had spent his night floating above the Shagback Rock he'd left Halek on that afternoon, days ago, when he and Strongbow had made their pact.

**Try sending more strongly,** he sent back, wondering if the archer would hear him.

The absolutely foul language he received in return reassured him.

**Why not try?** Rayek asked, feeling his body begin to sink as he divided his energy.

**What use is there for it?** Strongbow sent part words, part feeling, memory, image. Hunting, eating the heart out of a kill while it steamed, the cold snow against one's cheek, a well-loosed arrow and a painless death, being entwined with Moonshade in the heat of the day, seeing one's child walk for the first time, the scent of home, of tribe.

Rayek took a deep breath, overwhelmed, as always, by Strongbow's contentment with the minutiae of home and family and the every day. Wolfriders, if one followed Strongbow's views, seldom caught themselves up with tomorrow, or maybe, or yesterday, or if. The sense of “Now”, as Strongbow called it, was intoxicating.

The past was a loose pit of sand, where one's feet were caught in if and only. Rayek understood that, but he had always thought of tomorrow as a place to grow towards. Tomorrow, when he could float other things, stun animals for a longer time, do who knew what else. Tomorrow, when Leetah would finally answer yes, when a little one with green, or gold eyes, with long, red hair, or black curls, might finally appear. Tomorrow, the free world of the future, where anything might happen.

Strongbow, he thought, would stay in “Now” all he could. Stay in the “Now” and never grow, never reach. His powers were as much a tool to him as his bow, something he took pride in, but only so far as it would make the tribe happy and safe. “Now” was life, and tomorrow a dim brightness that one could never focus on quite rightly.

It did not occur to Rayek that he had never in his life thought so deeply about another person's view of the world, albeit from a perspective of the superiority of his own.

**Think of it,** he was suddenly inspired. **As a tool. If you can send more than a day's ride away, you can send to others on hunts that take you far from home. If someone travels away, you can send to them, keep an eye on them. Or what if someone were lost? Wouldn't it be a good thing to touch their mind, find them in an instant?**

The answer was a thoughtful though. Not words, for once, consideration, like watching the rain from an overhanging tree as it brought a fish to the surface. A young girl, with that self same fish in hand, grinning widely, followed by a silent assent from Strongbow.

Rayek grinned, unaware that he had begun to float higher again.

...

“Perhaps I should stay,” Leetah fretted, watching her mother. Toorah had decided to retire to bed early, but Leetah could feel her, still waking, staring at nothing.

“It would make your mother happy to know you aren't unhappy,” Sun Toucher said, sighing quietly as he helped her put the dinner things away. Cutter, banished after dropping a bowl, was outside speaking with his uncle about trolls again, making plans.

“I just wish there was something I could do,” Leetah sighed. “It seems for everything given, something is taken from us.”

“Your mother's grief takes her where we cannot follow,” Sun Toucher agreed. “Your new life, with all its joys and challenges, takes you where I cannot follow. That is life. Time is the great road, where we meet and leave one another. For now, we leave one another. I think we will meet again, on time.”

Leetah smiled at the advice, and rolled her eyes at her father's terrible humour.

“I suppose we'll introduce those smiths to old Picknose,” Cutter was laughing, a soft, Wolfrider laugh. “He's going to lose his pick, though.”

Treestump laughed, a rolling belly laugh.

Cutter saw her approach and smiled.

“Picknose guards the Troll Caverns,” he explained. “We've only been deep inside once. Greymung, the Troll King, he had cheated us out of our goods, so I went inside to growl them out of him with Skywise. That's where he got his necklace, the lodestone.”

“His piece of the stars,” Leetah nodded. “I remember.”

It would have been impossible not to. Skywise recounted the story to anyone who would listen, particularly Ruffel and Maleen, who had decreed the young stargazer “charming” and a “delight”.

Treestump seemed to understand what she was saying, and nodded.

“I'll take Nani to see them tomorrow. She says they know how to work gold, silver, that red metal, copper, but they've never worked brightmetal. I'd like to see if they can hammer that out.”

“It'll be exciting, anyhow,” Cutter shrugged. “I don't think we've had a good trade with the trolls for a while. Moonshade says she has some furs lying around that we won't need for the White-Cold, Nightfall has a few tallows, and the red-bits are in season. We'll offer them, and some of the garden fruits.”

The cavalier fashion with which Wolfriders handled other people's possessions was still somewhat discomforting to Leetah, who made a note to make sure she was there to smooth over any misunderstandings. While the other elves could be generous to a fault, the Sun Folk might not appreciate the loss of the food, so close to a time when they had been so hungry.

**Is your mother alright?** Cutter asked, after they had bidden Treestump good bye.

Leetah sighed. **There is a sadness within her. She was shielded, in a way, from the true loss of the old village, and Shen Shen. Now the shield is gone, and the sadness has infected her entire being. So she retreats from it.**

**I wake up thinking that Dewshine is outside,** Cutter admitted. **Even though I know she isn't. I think if it weren't for you and the cub, I'd do the same.**

**Duty is a powerful helper when one has sorrow,** Leetah agreed, removing her dress and beginning to put on her nightgown. She had only one now, a simple tunic cut from an old tent. Soft enough, and warm.

Cutter stopped her as she laced up the front, and growled.

**I hate this,** he told her, loosening the laces. **I miss your skin when we're in your village.**

She sighed, but let him pull off the gown.

**I'll get cold,** she warned him.

He shrugged, and pulled her under the blankets, nuzzling at her shoulder.

**I'll warm you up.**

...

“You and Strongbow?” Maleen squinted at a garishly painted target and threw her dagger at it. The new throwing knives, from a trade with the odd, ugly creatures who lived below the earth, flew swift and true, and Maleen made it look effortless, conscious of Ruffel watching her from behind nearly completed basket. “The one who always looks like he's eaten sour figs around us, and the hunter who didn't know Halek's name until a moon ago. It's a good match.”

“I knew Halek's name!” Rayek protested, looking stung. “I knew every villager's name.”

“Of course,” Maleen agreed, trotting off to collect her dagger. “You just thought everyone named their child “dirt-digger”.”

It had been his preferred epithet, and he knew it, so all he could do was fume silently at her.

When he did that, he looked all of eight and four years old. Maleen, who had been born a full eight times eight times two after him, wondered if that young Rayek looked at all like her friend did now, or if he had been softer, swifter to smile, and perhaps more in joy and less in self satisfaction.

“He's just teaching me Sending,” Rayek explained. “That, and patience.”

“Anyone dealing with him would need patience,” Maleen groaned. “He's so... ugh. He behaves as if the whole village were an inconvenience with him, as if we were all clumsy calves, in his way.”

“Still,” Rayek shrugged. “He's the most powerful sender the Wolfriders have.”

“Hm,” Maleen grunted agreeably, and pulled him down with her beside Ruffel, stealing a handful of dried fruit from her lovemate's bowl. “Have to say, might be handy to learn that.”

“I'll teach you,” Rayek offered, taking some fruits.

Ruffel moved the bowl closer to herself, and offered them a mock glare.

“Get your own fruit,” she snipped, teasingly. “Or hunt yourself another tree-eater, mighty huntress.”

“Ah, you're never letting me live that one down, are you?” Maleen ignored Rayek's eyeroll , and leaned back on her lovemate's pillows. She touched the basket, running an admiring hand over the delicate pattern woven into it. “That's lovely.”

“Rainsong taught it to me,” Ruffel said, nodding across the target range at Rainsong, who smiled and waved back, where she was helping Minyah shuck child's teeth for drying and grinding. “The red is the roots of a tree that grows near here. They strip it small, with knives, and dye it with berries.”

“It's pretty,” Rayek offered, inadequately, but since he wouldn't have even spoken to them a year ago, Maleen accepted it, and Ruffel shot him a bright smile.

“Strongbow teaching you sending,” Maleen commented. “Rainsong and Woodlock are always here, helping garden, or weave. That little stargazer learning from Sun Toucher.”

“And Leetah and Cutter's baby on the way!” Ruffel added, cheerfully not noticing Rayek's wince.

Maleen expected some cutting remark, but Rayek surprised her by growing silent, eyes slightly distant.

“It's like we're weaving ourselves together,” He murmured. “I wonder what will come of this new cloth?”

...

Toorah sighed, sitting at Leetah's side. She seemed barely awake, and her smile was subdued, nearly invisible.

Everyone was there. Even the Wolfriders, politely curious, had come, with Clearbrook seated on three layers of furs and cushions.

“It will be a celebration, like Flood and Flower,” Ahdri had decided. “On the day that well is finished. A celebration of new life, new hope.”

All the lifebearers, including Nooran and Dekirah, who had just Recognized their long time lovemates days apart, were seated on the new dais, built only days ago with help from an amused Redlance. Savah had a new throne, of carved wood, sanded with fine sand from the edge of the lakes.

Ahdri stood by the well, with two other maidens, and three youths. She clapped her hands, and they all turned, pulling on ropes secured to the tiny brick wall around the precious water. As if in ancient rite, the first water was drawn from the small hole, and poured into pitchers.

“Drink, my children,” Savah proclaimed, standing up, and accepting a glass of water. “Drink the fresh water from the springs deep within the earth. Drink in joy, drink in new life. Drink hope, new hope, from our new land.”

The water wasn't as sweet as the spring that ran through the Holt, Leetah thought, as she accepted a cupful from Ahdri, but it was good, cold, clean.

“We once dwelt in the desert, in the place where sorrows ended, or so we thought. We forgot that, in life, if you live, there are always sorrows.”

The Wolfrider Elders, particularly Treestump and Clearbrook, nodded at that, looking thoughtful.

“Yet, even when sorrows come, there is another gift they bring,” Savah held out her hands. The darkness had come in a moment, she was nearly invisible, then, suddenly, the torches and the lanterns sprang into life.

“This is hope. We who were once of Sorrow's End, who found our sorrows did not end, we have found this gift. This is our village, our home, this is New Hope!”

The villagers began to cheer. Even Leetah found herself clapping and shouting, though her mother's weak rejoinder didn't go unnoticed. The Wolfriders howled, and laughed and it made music of their joy. Soon, anyone who could was dancing, or making music, or singing.

Leetah couldn't. Her mother had fallen asleep, and she needed to help her father take her back to their hut.

...

Five Months After The Groundquake..

The moons hung heavy and yellow in the sky, waxing. Leetah watched them from a low branch of the Father Tree, as high as she could climb yet, with Trollhammer below, playing with Silvergrace's cubs.

The creek laughed and gurgled below. Leetah thought Shen Shen would have liked this small, hidden home, deep in the Green Growing Place. Leetah was becoming fond of it, fond of the Wolfriders, fond of the wolves. Her hair piece was now left behind in the village, so Cutter would pin her hair back with flowers, and she wore a short leather tunic of Moonshade's making, as well as soft leather shoes. The flowers didn't completely catch her hair, and her curls spilled wildly out around her face.

She wondered if anyone else felt this way, as if the moons had come closer to admire the changing leaves, and the small puffs of mist at one's breath. She leaned back against the tree, and sighed. Toorah had grown worse since the celebration, living as often as not in a world of her own making, misty and distant, even when Leetah and Sun Toucher were there.

“Here!” A basket landed in her lap, and she looked down, seeing Nightfall in the dim, yellow moonlight. The younger maiden gestured for her to come down.

“I'm going to pick spikeberries,” she explained, once Leetah was at the foot of the tree. “It's just Woodshaver and me, so I thought you and Trollhammer might come.”

Which explained why she had been ordered out of the tree, Leetah thought, and cast her friend an arch look. Nightfall giggled.

“Alright, but you've been up there all night, and it's making Rainsong nervous. She's the type to get sick when she has a cub. And if you don't do something, I know Moonshade is looking for someone to help at the tanning pools.”

“Well, in the interests of avoiding that,” Leetah agreed, and they walked through the woods to where Redlance had shaped the spikeberries, close enough easily gather them, far enough that bears and whatever else might like to eat them woudn't be disturbed by elves.

After finding deer in the garden, Minyah had had Ahdri make a high fence around the outside. The Wolriders, particularly Strongbow and Redlance, had found it disturbing. Redlance might shape plants into being, but the Wolfriders didn't then own them, and if a deer, or a bear, or any other animal wanted to eat them, well, as long as no one was hurt, that was alright.

The Sun Folk relied on their harvest to prevent starvation, unlike the meat centred diet of the Wolfriders, and found the idea that they might expect to share the difference between eating and starvation utterly horrifying. It had taken a full morning of arguing before a perplexed Cutter and Treestump had been allowed to take Nani and a zwoot-load of vegetables to the Caverns.

Picknose, gruff, green, and completely alien, had argued briefly at the door, while Leetah had politely tried not to stare. Then he, Nani, and Treestump, had gone inside. Nani had come out with two armloads of metal bars, and a babbling tale of golden stairs, and jewels bigger than one's head, and a forge larger than three elves.

“Here they are! Right on time, the half-full Mother Moon,” Nightfall took held a berry up to Leetah. It was small, and covered with spikes, that stung when she tried to take it.

“Ouch!”

Nightfall blushed. “Sorry, they do that. The shell is hard. We smack them with one of Pike's stone hammers, or slice it with a knife, then the fruit comes out, soft, and we eat it from bowls. Your people will like it, too, and we have enough to share.”

It took some doing, but Leetah learned the art of picking them, from the stem, avoiding the spines. At first she and Nightfall chatted, little things, how was Toorah, no better, was Redlance still well, yes, much so, the moons were lovely, they were like this every Leaf-change, then they fell into a comfortable silence, albeit one that panged Leetah, as she remembered Shen Shen and she doing chores like this.

But the pain fell into a comfortable ache, and soon she was smiling, picturing Shen Shen picking berries, complaining of stings, and asking her to heal them.

Nightfall didn't. She was too hardy, or maybe too used to doing without. Rainsong had walked by Leetah yesterday with Newstar. The little girl had had a scrape from elbow to wrist, and the two had been shocked when Leetah healed it. It hadn't even occurred to them she would care, as it wasn't life threatening, or even very painful. They all thought like that, that Leetah was too busy to be bothered with every little thing, as if her power needed to be hoarded against disaster.

It was interesting. Unlike in New Hope, where she was inundated with requests as soon as she arrived, the Wolfriders let her inspect Clearbrook in peace. Only in the case of broken limbs or smacked heads was she summoned.

Or to pick berries.

“Do you keep them?” she asked Nightfall.

Nightfall shook her head.

“You have to eat them fresh,” she explained. “They don't dry well. My mother used to put them in clay pots and heat the pots in a fire. But I only have one pot left, and I hate the thought of breaking it.”

Leetah, who didn't even have a pot, understood.

“My people might be able to help there,” she offered. “Zhantee and Korek have been making pots for winter storage.

“That would be wonderful,” Nightfall sighed.

Trollhammer chuffed suddenly, and Leetah, beginning to understand the wolf's language, followed his gaze, and saw nothing.

The wind blew through the trees, and they whispered to her, but this language she still didn't speak.

Then the earth began to shake.

“Nightfall!” Leetah threw herself on her friend. “Groundshake!”

She lay on top of her, feeling the earth rumble, and tightening her grip everytime the other maiden tried to move.

Trollhammer nosed them, whining, and Leetah thrust out her leg to shove him down. She realized after a moment that she was screaming, and she tried to-

-save her necklace. Rayek had given it to her, and she'd been cleaning it when the quake hit. She turned back to pick it up, and the mountain came down.

“Shen Shen!”

She seemed to awaken, as if from a nightmare, to her own voice. Nightfall had pushed her off, and was staring at her, shocked.

“I'm sorry, Nightfall,” she stammered, sheepishly. “I just-”

Nightfall raised her hand, and pointed behind her.

“Curse you, elf, fill that hole faster!”

She turned.

A trollmaiden, exotically lovely, with green skin, lumpy flesh, full lips, and golden, tightly curled hair stood, staring at with as great a shock at Leetah as Leetah was at her. There was a powerfully built, mysterious figure in a cloak, a small, delicate, disjointed creature in a ragged tunic, and-

“Picknose?”

The troll warrior whirled, glaring at her.

“Don't just stand there,” he snarled at them. “Go get that fine chief of yours! There's a war underneath us!”

...

“They'll give the children to the new mothers,” Oddbit sighed, wrapping a lock of golden hair around a meaty finger. “The maidens will go to whatever warrior pleases themselves to have her.”

It was horrific. Had she not spent hours healing Ekuar from the tortures visited on him by Oddbit's former king, Leetah might have felt more pity.

He'd been starving.

He'd been dying.

Cutter's protective instincts had been triggered by first sight of the elderly elf, just as Leetah's healing instincts had, but, like her, he'd been rendered helpless. Picknose swore he'd known nothing of Ekuar, that he'd stumbled across him while rescuing the two she trolls, Maggotty and Oddbit, from the northern troll army. Leetah had done all she could, coaxed back fallen hairs, restored skin to youthful tautness, eased pain in aching bones, but in the end, Ekuar was still less a hand, a finger, and a leg.

Ahdri had ensconced the elder in her hut. Rockshapers, it seemed, had to stick together. Then she'd accompanied Picknose and Cutter to seal off every known exit to the outside world.

She returned with a sad, weary look.

“We sealed off every exit we could find. There's no other escape.”

Oddbit sighed, and returned to looking out the window.

“Stay here in the village, for now,” Savah urged Picknose. “Your expertise would be much appreciated in our forges.”

“Yes, Picknose, Stay!” Nani coaxed him. “We could use an expert at the anvil here. We have too many clumsy apprentices.”

Treestump, one of those clumsy apprentices, first harrumphed, then laughed.

“Hm, much obliged,” Picknose said, gruffly. “Much obliged.”

Ekuar, Leetah assumed, was still silent.

...

So was Toorah, who smiled weakly when her daughter came in.

“I thought you were Shen Shen,” she murmured, sheepishly. “For a moment, I saw your hair.”

Leetah, sensitive after a healing, couldn't bear it, and turned around, mounting Trollhammer.

**I'm going home,** she sent to Cutter.

She wasn't given to self reflection, and so didn't wonder when she had begun to think of the Father Tree as home. She clutched Trollhammer's fur, and felt her body move with his, his powerful legs, his long flanks. She matched herself to the drop of elf blood within him, and they moved as one, although five moons ago she hadn't known there was such a thing as a wolf.

They stopped by the same pond where Leetah had watched the fireflies dance, moons ago. Only one year ago, a blink of an eye to a lifetime like hers, she had been in her hut, with a half finished embroidery destined for a dancing veil, and her little sand cat, with Shen Shen urging her to gather lizard eggs, or try new gowns on, or to eat a little more. Only a year ago.

And now, she was on the back of a wolf, wearing leathers that a moon ago had been on a deer, mated to a mortal elf, lifemated to a mortal elf, bearing a child. Not Rayek's child, someone she hadn't met a year ago. Someone who would be like a breeze in her hair, and yet, was more alive than anyone she had ever met.

She put her hands on her belly. It had begun to swell, the child moved quickly. In almost two years it would be born, and it wouldn't know, unless she told it, that there had been such a thing as Shen Shen in this world.

...

Shen Shen found a new teacher in Nilma, and found herself able to teach in return.

“We put like this,” she moved the half decayed fruit to another clean pot she had placed in the fire, then added some water, and the powdered milk rock to it. “Now seal, and wait eight day. Put on hurt, keep bad blood away.”

Nilma had already taught her her recipe for willow tea, and red-root salve, and smiled at her thankfully.

“I have this, when leg hurt,” Shen Shen laughed. “I not need nice foot from Amrok!”

It was a weak joke, but Nilma understood that kind of necessary humor, and laughed with her.

She and Osek had found an easy home with B'rak's tribe, which she had begun to understand as the Red Mountain People, a large nation, with four settlements, overseen by B'rak himself. Osek helped to build them a home, and soon people were coming from all over for his “building magic”. Nilma had no sooner heard of Shenkir's birth than she had marched over and demanded Shen Shen as an assistant.

Humans were nothing like Shen Shen had imagined, even after moons of travelling with Naksima and Amrok. They could be cruel, but, she privately thought, no more than elves were. Despite whispered child tales of humans eating their own young, anyone caught mistreating a child was instead ostracized, quarantined as if they were ill, under an elder's supervision, and the child taken into Nilma and B'rak's home, or the home of some other high-ranking person, until the parents were able to take them back, if that ever happened. They weren't always kind to one another, but their unkindness wasn't the sum and whole of them, existing in equal part with gentleness, as it often did in elves.

Even their so-called stink was nonsense. They bathed fastidiously, and when Osek brought a clean basin of hot water to the surface, taming a liquid fire beneath it to keep it so, he was showered with gifts from the entire village, save the very old men who insisted it was healthier to bathe everyday in the creeks that melted off the ice on the top of the mountains.

“You know, that ice never fully melts,” Naksima told Shen Shen one day, as they rested in front of Shen Shen's hut, watching Shenkir and Ahleki play their baby games.

“Never?” Shen Shen stared at the mountain, with its white cap.

“Never.” Naksima seemed proud. “They say it used to be much bigger, but it's been smaller in the past, and it's never disappeared.”

Shen Shen thought of it, and talked it over with Osek later.

**A glacier,** the elder sent. **It's from the very cold time in my youth. Back then it would have covered the entire mountain.**

A memory, being cold, hands aching with the recent loss of another finger. All they had to eat then was ice, carved from the glacier, but it was better than nothing, and Mekda was faint.

Shen Shen didn't realize she was crying until Ahleki made a protesting squawk. Osek looked embarrassed.

**My apologies, dear one,** he looked away.

**Never, Osek,** She hugged him tight. **I promise you, we'll only stay for a time.**

**When Ahleki's grown,** he sent, and she nodded.

**When Ahleki's grown, we'll find other elves. Then we'll rescue Mekda and Ekuar. Eyes will see and hands will touch with joy again.**

**Or what's left of them, anyhow,** his mind touched hers with their shared wryness, and she giggled through her tears.

...

Ekuar gradually regained himself, with Ahdri's help. The two rockshapers grew close within a matter of days, Ahdri finding in him the father she had never known, as an orphan, and he seemed to think of her as a daughter.

In a moon's time, the sky was grey more often than not, and what had been an uncomfortable nip in the air had become an easy chill. Zwoot's wool had proven more than useful, forming new tunics and soft breeches that, under leather, made the Sun Folk, unused to cold, warm as if they had been home. Still, Leetah found herself dealing with odd complaints, what the Wolfriders called chillblains in worried tones, colds, and occasionally dehydration, as, without heat spurring them on, the Sun Folk forgot the body's need for thirst.

As for her, she found her time spent more often than not in the Holt. Moonshade had made her new leathers, a fur jacket, and soft, fur lined breeches, delicate boots of cat fur, and promised gloves to cover her hands, and a hood for the jacket.

Cutter spoke to her of snow, and ice. He promised her that even the lake would become as solid as rock, and clear as a summer's day. One Eye was excited, in between smoking fish(and eating it raw, which meant an embarrassing complaint of worms) and wishing for his new cub to be born in the White-Cold that he assured Leetah was fast approaching and not a moment too soon.

“He's like this every turn of the seasons,” Clearbrook told Leetah, smiling bemusedly as her lifemate urged their nearly grown cub out to go catch more fish. “As if he were a cub again.”

Leetah laughed a little at the thought of One Eye as a child. He was so much an elder, wise, but hard and stubborn as stone, that it seemed impossible.

Clearbrook's womb was worn out. There had been more than five pregnancies, Leetah though, privately, but held her tongue. She had learned to let her patients have their little lies, which seemed to comfort them. This pregnancy would be the last, the very last. In the eight of days since she had seen Clearbrook, the womb had faltered in its burden somewhat, and the baby's growth, so fine and good, had slowed.

“How is your mother?”

Leetah stared at Clearbrook. The elder had a wise, gentle smile on her face, and she looked as patient and kind as Toorah had used to look.

“Your friend Rayek said she was ill when he came to fetch Strongbow,” Clearbrook sighed, and laid her hands on her swollen belly. “It's hard, to lose a cub. Is she any better?”

Leetah sighed and shook her head.

“Weary, angry. She'll cry all day, then rage all the next. More often than not she loses herself in memories. I go in and she pretends that she's seeing Shen Shen. Sometimes she won't even get out of bed,” Leetah tried to keep it a calm recitation of memory, but a gradual bitterness crept in. “Father says she is like that whether I am there or not. She seems to see only spirits, all those lost in the past.” Leetah had spent the first three hundred years of her life in the light of her mother's eyes, the only one in that light. She had, grudgingly at first, then joyfully, spent the second half of her time sharing that light with Shen Shen. To be out of it completely was new, and hurtful.

“When I lost my cubs, it was the same,” Clearbrook admitted. “For years. I was angry, at the world, I suppose. I didn't see the point in so many fine, lovely young things being born, only to die.”

“Time will heal it, I suppose,” Leetah muttered, losing all pretense at healing, and curling up beside Clearbrook with her arms wrapped around her knees.

Clearbrook, with the efficient, absentminded affection familiar to all her kind, moved aside a bit, and wrapped an arm around Leetah.

“Time,” she agreed, then smiled slyly. “And a kick in the rump from time to time.”

Leeah laughed, trying to picture herself kicking smooth, dignified Toorah in any part of her anatomy, let alone that portion.

“Look!” Clearbrook pointed through the bare, grey branches of the trees, and the last few brown leaves. “Snow!”

Leetah stared, open-mouthed, at the small, white dots that drifted down, disappearing into the ground.

“First snow!” One Eye put Scouter over his shoulder, much to his son's chagrin, and ran around the Holt, hollering. It was early still, though dim, and other Wolfriders stuck their heads out, first making complaining noises, then falling into a hushed silence.

“It's like magic,” Leetah whispered, touching it, only to have it disappear under her hands.

“The first snow always is,” Cutter yawned. “Wait a few moons, then you'll be sick of it.”

“Yes, but we whine for it in the hot times, so don't complain for now,” One Eye followed his commentary up with a handful of snow, and Cutter leapt down to take his revenge.

Leetah laughed, wondering how the Sun Folk would respond to the white blanket spreading itself over the woods.

...

Maleen woke up shivering, and huddled closer to Ruffel for a moment.

“Did you forget to bank the fire?” Ruffel whined. “It's freezing!”

Maleen poked her head out of the blanket and eyed the stove, then sighed, and went to open the small door, sliding it over to look inside. Little red coals glowed brightly in the ashes, and she built it up before jumping back into bed.

“It's still dark,” Ruffel murmured.

“I'm so cold,” Maleen moaned, and curled up tighter. “Don't let's wake up-”

“Maleen, Ruffel!” A burst of cold air preceded Vurdah's entry into their hut. “Come outside, quickly!”

Maleen sighed, and rolled over. Ruffel laughed, weakly, and began pulling on the many layers of clothing they'd begun to wear in the cold.

“Hurry, hurry!” Vurdah actually held out their coats and helped put them on, as if they were children.

“What is so exc-Oh.” Ruffel's laughter fell away in a hush of awe.

The outside was lightly coated in what almost looked like clouds, come down to rest on the walls and roofs. The stubbled remains of the gardens poked through the stuff, and it fell, in a soft, dancing way to a silence that was somehow more muffling than anything Maleen had ever heard.

“What is it?”

Maleen stooped and picked a handful up, only to have it melt in her fingers.

“It's water!” She exclaimed. “Frozen water.”

They knocked on doors, and shouted into windows. Picknose and Maggotty told them off, but Oddbit, fetching in a fox fur dress and bearskin boots, came out to flirt and play. Ahnshen passed out hand coverings that he and Moonshade had apparently been working on, “gloves” and “mittens”. Minyah and Darah put their heads together and made a hot breakfast of cured meats and bread and porridge. Even Savah, swathed in furs, with only her head free, came out.

Treestump, Rainsong, and Woodlock laughed at their wonderment.

“It's just snow,” Rainsong told them, wrapping a fur blanket more tightly around Wing. “And enjoy it now, you'll be sick of it before long.”

Hot drinks were passed among them, and Treestump led the children in a complicated game that involved shaping the snow into balls and throwing them at each other. Before long, the grown ups had started playing as well, and it devolved into a free for all.

“Still wish you'd stayed asleep?” Vurdah teased them, as she rubbed snow into Ruffel's hair.

“No,” Maleen said, signaling for Rayek to dump his floating load of snow, so she could rescue her lovemate.

...

Shen Shen's leg ached in the cold, along with Osek's, well, everything, but Nilma's willowbark tea had proved a miracle, if a slightly bitter one that no amount of honey could disguise. At this point, they didn't even bother, just reached for it at the first sign of weather, and drank it as quickly as possible.

“Snow!” Amrok came running first thing in the morning, carrying a leather strap with small copper spikes on it. “Shen Shen, don't go out yet.”

“I no go out until snow go away,” she told him, glaring at the carefully covered windows, and huddling closer to the fire.

“It's not so bad,” Amrok laughed. “I brought this, to make it easier.”

“This” turned out to be an attachment for her false leg, strapped on the bottom to catch on the ice and snow.

“Oh, so many thanks, Amrok,” She sighed. “Have to go to Nilma, now. No more excuse.”

Despite her grumbling, she smiled at him. Truly, it had begun to wear on her, the thick, falling snow, and the hot, closed atmosphere of the hut. Nilma and she went from home to home, checking on patients, making sure there weren't any new ones. Grandmothers and grandfathers smiled at them, and accepted willow powder and dried berries for their homes, filled with generations of children. Mothers with coughing children accepted breathe well, and took the berries to bribe stubborn children. The young women who tended the Mother's Fire, a hearth at the centre of the village that was never permitted to die, thanked them for breathe well by giving them copper pots they had made themselves. One of their number was coughing too much to tend the hearth, and Nilma told Shen Shen that arrangements had been made for her to become one of the attendants of Osek's new bath. Shen Shen wondered if the girl would like it, with her thin chest, and small size.

“She was born two moon-dances early,” Nilma explained. “The lungs didn't get a chance to fill correctly. I doubt she'll see twenty-five summers, but she's stubborn, that Lekshmi.”

Shen Shen had had mothers nearly drop their babies that early. All it took was a touch from Leetah, and all was well, but the mothers waited with bated breath after that, some refusing to leave their huts, some remaining in their beds.

Lekshmi's mother hadn't had that choice, Shen Shen realized. She must have been just as frightened as any elfin mother, but she'd done what she needed to do, and now her daughter was a priestess of her people.

Shen Shen wondered what, exactly, a priestess did.

...

Moonshade didn't usually touch Strongbow's arrows, but the thick cord that Ahnshen had given her, in thanks for her furs, along with some thick fabrics, and thin silk thread, was soft and the same colour as a Leaf-Fall moon. She'd watched the Sun Villager weave, but the slow, steady work had been of no interest to her.

“I don't know if it will be of use to you,” Ahnshen commented, putting it on top of the pile of things he was sending back to the Holt with her, while Dart hugged Shushen, and Strongbow glowered silently with Rayek. “One of my apprentices spun it. It's nice, but no use for weaving, or sewing.”

It wasn't, but it felt soft as mouse fur, and she wanted to touch it. She couldn't remember how the loom worked, and didn't have the room for it, anyways, but she wanted to use the thread.

The arrows would form the frame, she decided.

That was the original plan, but, having wrapped the thread around one arrow, the kind they used against rabbits, with a wooden point, she realized she had no idea how to continue.

She would use the other arrow, she decided, and pull more loops through the first. That would work well.

Day later, she put down her work, and smiled.

There were places where the weave was slightly loose, but it looked intentional, and all her pulling couldn't take it apart. She'd even figured out a way to weave the end together, so it came off the arrow in one piece.

You couldn't cut it, or sew it, she thought, but it was pretty enough. Though what use it would be, she didn't know.

Ahnshen did, when she showed it to him.

“Wrap it around the body,” he demonstrated on her. “Not your colour, of course, but still a pretty thing.”

She blushed wildly. “Really?”

“Of course,” he said, easily. “Like you, Moonshade. It looks delicate, but it's strong and warm.”

**I like that Ahnshen,** Strongbow told her later, looking at the thing. **He's smart.”

“Coming from you that's high praise,” she teased him, looking at the lacy, golden thing. “I'm going to give it to Nightfall.”

**It'll match her eyes,** Strongbow agreed, looking as proud as if he had made it himself.

Nightfall adored it, and went to show it off to Leetah, who was in the village. The next day, Sun Villagers sent word that they would love to learn the new technique.

“You don't have to come,” she said, irritably, as Strongbow bundled Dart up in winter clothes and popped him on Briersting's back, grumbling the whole time. “I can go by myself.”

**And leave you alone with those ravvits?** Strongbow asked. **They'll kidnap you, and we'll have to tan our own leathers.**

“Maybe you should tan your own leathers,” Moonshade murmured. “It's not as easy as you all seem to think.”

**I know it's not easy,** Strongbow stood up, and looked at her, with the piercing gaze that had once cut through to her deepest self, in a moment of Leaf-Fall brightness. **Is that why you like going there so much? Do they appreciate you more?**

Moonshade felt ashamed, then angry at both herself and Strongbow for making her feel that way, but his next words disarmed her.

**I think it's good you have Ahnshen,** Strongbow looked at Dart, mouth easing. **Ahnshen knows what it's like to make things for many people.**

Strongbow, who usually couldn't see anything outside of his target, still had the power to astound her.

...

Fourteen months after the Quake

It was months too early, and they had come for her as quickly as they could, but the return trip was just a bit too long.

Clearbrook lay in her lifemate's arms, already nearly as pale as death. Leetah ignored everything else and nearly threw herself against them, already feeling her power blaze within her.

The body, the womb, yes, she had been correct and so had Clearbrook. The only way to stop the bleeding was to still the womb, fully. There might be grand-children, great grand-children, but this would truly be the last child.

As she awakened from her trance, she realized someone was missing.

“The baby?” She asked One Eye, fearfully.

“Scouter has her,” he said, softly, running a hand over Clearbrook's cheek. “She's so tiny, we lay her with Silvergrace's new cubs, to get their milk in her.”

“I must see her,” Leetah stood, and went to Silvergrace's little den. “Scouter?”

“Sh,” the little elf-lad came out, arms wrapped tightly around a bundle of fur. “She's sleeping.”

Leetah smiled, but held out her hands for the baby.

At four moons too early for the air, the little cub's lungs were small, and uncertain. She was tiny, too, and Leetah found herself doubtful that the child would reach her mother in sturdiness or height.

The lungs were simple, though they might still cause troubles later in life. For now, she simply imbued the organs with the strength to do their duty. The height less so, but it wasn't life threatening at all.

There was something else. The brain, Leetah realized. It had been forced to defend itself from attacks by its own mother during formation. This was a taut little organ, but odd. As if it were mirrored within itself.

But she could not alter it, not at all. This was simply its own form,there was nothing to compare it to.

“She needs her mother's milk,” Leetah returned the baby to Scouter. “Take her to your parents.”

“Yes, healer,” Scouter hurried away, cooing under his breath to the infant.

It took a few tries before the baby latched on. Clearbrook was still weak, and looked at the child as if it were some foreign thing, not hers at all. One Eye was focused on helping Clearbrook to sit up, take some broth.

Only Scouter displayed the pure, unbridled joy typical to elfin births.

“She took milk from Silvergrace right away. I'm going to tell her all about it when she's old enough. Doesn't she have the sweetest little fingers? Her hair is darker than Father's, but not so red as mine. Her eyes are grey like yours, Mother.”

Clearbrook blinked down at the baby, who glared back at her, indignant over this sudden entry into a loud, scary world.

“Her eyes are like fog,” Clearbrook murmured.

“Let's name her Fog, then,” Scouter said. “There's fog all over tonight, even in her eyes. She's a cub for rainy nights. I'm going to show her how to jump in puddles, and make mud balls.”

He lay down beside his parents, and played with the baby's hands. Clearbrook smiled at him, then seemed to see the baby for the first time.

“Hello, little Fog,” she cooed. “Look, One Eye, she likes the name.”

“Good thing,” he said, agreeably. “She'll be keeping it for a while.”

Leetah sighed, contented in relief, and laid her hands on her belly, over the little secret she had recently become aware of.

“We're going to have a whole crop of cubs,” she sighed, happily. “Here and in the village, too.”

The Wolfriders, gathered shyly outside the den, took a collective sigh of relief when they finally got a chance to view the little family again, but then they left them alone. All except for one.

Leetah saw Skywise, sitting outside the little home, watching Clearbrook sleep. He stayed there until the moons were half-high, then clambered up into the treetops.

“His mother,” Cutter shrugged. “It was before I was born. Humans killed his father, captured his mother, and took his mother. My father told me they found Skywise in the river. They think his mother- The birth went wrong.”

Leetah thought of it later, long after Cutter had gone into the trees, to join Skywise.

**I hope you know what kind of a world you are coming into, my children,** she sent. **We have such a wonderful family waiting for you.**

...

Two Years After The Quake

Rayek woke easily, a product of years spent in the hills alone, when he was the only hunter. It was therefore not surprising, not to him, at least, that he was at the door before his parents even knocked.

“Shade and sweet water to you,” Jarrah began.

“-Our son,” Ingen finished.

Rayek rubbed his eyes, and glared at them and at the dark night.

“It's not morning,” he complained.

“Oh, no,” Jarrah agreed, pushing past him with an armload of blankets. “You're very right there.”

“As you are in all things,” Ingen carried a cloak, which he wrapped solicitously around Jarrah. “We just thought you might like to meet her.”

“Who?” Rayek squinted into the darkness. There was no one else, just an empty village square.

“Here,” Jarrah pulled aside a corner of the cloak, and unwrapped her bundle.

Rayek approached, and looked down.

She was still asleep, a handful of blanket clutched in her fist. Her mouth was pursed agreeably, and curved at the corners, and thick, black lashes rested like feathers on her cheeks. A small shock of black hair poked out of the bundle of blankets. She was small, and altogether lovely.

“H-how?” Rayek asked, feeling as if he'd been sun-shocked. His parents laughed.

“I presume you understand the mechanics,” his father teased him, gently.

“She came earlier tonight,” His mother yawned. “When the moons shone through my window.”

“We're going to call her Rayah,” Ingen said, happily. “And sleep all day, or at least as soon as the bed is made again. Children come messily into the world.”

With that, he slipped outside again, presumably to make the aforementioned bed. Rayek stayed by his mother, staring down at Rayah, feeling as if he could never get enough of her.

“You could hold her, if you like,” his mother offered.

“Really?”

Jarrah nodded, and held the baby out to him.

“Support her head,” she murmured, and he put his hand awkwardly behind her little skull, until his mother was satisfied.

Then the baby opened her eyes.

She had golden eyes, just like his. Yellow and liquid as a snake, or a cat. She stared up at him, then, as if recognizing his likeness, she gurgled something contented, and fell instantly back to sleep.

“She looks just like you,” Jarrah sighed, and leaned back into the chair. “Typical. I do all the work, and your father gets all the credit.”

She didn't wait for him to answer, but fell asleep. Rayek stayed where he was until his father returned, watching Rayah sleep.

...

Rainsong was busy, Toorah was still sick, and Moonshade turned slightly green when asked, so Leetah told Cutter to wait and catch what dropped, and used her powers to ease the way.

“In a way, it's better like this,” She told him. “Just the two of us.”

“Four of us, soon,” he said, cheerfully.

In her younger days, Leetah would have been aghast at the idea of giving birth on the ground, on a clean deerhide, with her lifemate at her side. Now it was part and partial of her life, as much as gathering, or cleaning hides, or smoking meat.

She felt the twins inside her, both reluctant to leave and eager to make their mark in this strange new world.

**Come, my dear children,** she sent. **Come into the bright world.**

**I'm waiting for you,** Cutter added his voice to hers. **I can't wait to see you.**

Ember came first, and Cutter named her for the shock of red hair. Suntop followed, but Leetah chose his name, had had it chosen long since, and then Moonshade returned with Rainsong, just a few moments too late.

“T-two?” Skywise stammered, his usual quick with having deserted him.

“Uh huh,” Cutter smirked, for once having the upper hand.

Leetah let Rainsong help her to the creek, to wash away the sweat and blood, then up into the tree, to wait for Cutter to finish introducing the cubs to the tribe. A chief's cub wasn't like other cubs, she knew. But she did ask Rainsong one thing.

“My mother?”

Rainsong shook her head.

“I don't know what's wrong,” she sighed. “It was like she didn't understand what was happening.”

Leetah swallowed her disappointment, and nodded.

“We'll take the twins to see her later,” she said, as if it were inconsequential to her. “Rainsong, I don't meant to be rude, but I'd like to rest.”

Rainsong, being a mother, understood.

...

Seven Years After The Quake

“Shenkir! Ahleki!”

If she had once longed for babies to birth, Shen Shen thought, then she had had more than her share, and more than that, besides.

Between her and Nilma, there were almost no illnesses or injuries they couldn't cure. Things that had been legend once, especially after Leetah's birth, including distillations of molds, mother-weed, and things like that, had proven useful among her adopted nation, and Nilma had introduced her to things that only humans had, including willow powder, baby-not(Shen Shen knew she would never need that, but she thought humans, with their many births, needed a chance to breathe). Akrom made hands, as well as feet, for her and Osek, and for others, humans that, hearing of his skill, came looking for help. Osek had built more houses that their human people would need, she thought, sometimes simply because he wanted to try new things.

They had brought prestige to their adopted people. If only they could bring Ahleki and Shenkir to do their chores.

“Sh!” Naksima held a finger to her lips, giggling softly, and pointed up.

There was a rustling and a giggling above them. Shen Shen sighed.

“I wonder where Shenkir and Ahleki could be,” she said, leaning back on her wooden leg. “I sure hope they aren't behind me-Got you!”

“Aw, Auntie Shen Shen,” Shenkir complained, not as swift as his friend in escaping.

“Don't “aw” me,” she snapped. “Ahleki, come down from there.”

Ahleki floated down, already pouting, mouth opened to complain.

“Not now, Ahleki,” Shen Shen said. “Seven is old enough to gather berries for dinner. I see empty baskets, and full bushes. You'll both pick double the berries, now, children.”

Naksima nodded in agreement, and the two sat down on the ridge with a sigh, watching the pouting children fill their baskets.

Ahleki's floating was the only surprise. She shaped rocks from an early age, watching “Papa Osek”, and sent because her family did. If not for a disastrous fall at an early age, Shen Shen supposed her floating would never have awakened. But fall she had, climbing out of her cradle-swing, only to start screaming while suspended halfway off the floor.

Having watched her sister and Rayek struggle in their lives, in all things not magic, Shen Shen had decided to treat Ahleki as if the magic were secondary. It helped that, rather than being worshipful, the human village simply wanted to know what use the floating was, and otherwise pretended it didn't exist.

“Oh, would you look at that?” Naksima shaded her eyes to the afternoon sun.

“What is it?” Shen Shen followed her eyes. “Oh, visitors! Probably for Nilma's healing.”

“I'd say traders,” Naksima said. “I can see heavy packs and a loaded animal.”

“Traders would be nice,” Shen Shen sighed. “We have more copper than we need right now, and not enough flint.”

“Maybe they'll have pearls,” Naksima suggested, wistfully, fingering her necklace. “I'd like some matching earrings.”

“Or amber,” Shen Shen loved the yellow stones, so seldom found around the Sun Village, and had managed to trade for a small bracelet two turns ago.

A pouting Ahleki slammed two baskets down beside her. Minutes later, a repentant Shenkir had done the same.

“See how easy that was?” Shen Shen asked. “You could have been done this morning, and played without guilt this whole time.”

“Yes, Mama Shen Shen,” was the mutual chorus in return.

Naksima helped Shen Shen up, and handed her Ahleki's baskets.

“Now, look out for bears, you two,” the human woman advised. “Dinner will be when the sun is lower than the eagle's nest. Look out for eagles, Ahleki, don't go above the trees.”

“We will,” then the two were back in the trees, playing childish games that Shen Shen recalled from her own long ago infancy.

She and Naksima laughed together, then began the short trek home.

...

“Concentrate, Rayah.”

The small elf-girl stared at the fire. It had eaten of grass, lumps of buffalo dung, and charcoal, and was bright and fierce. As she stared, it began to shrink, fade, then it sprang back to life, as she yawned and rubbed sleepy yellow eyes.

“Oh,” she sighed, and slumped, putting her head on his knees. “I'm so tired, Rayek.”

His first instinct was to tell her not to complain, and to try again. Fortunately, in the past few years, he had learned some patience.

“We'll put the fire out with water,” he agreed. “This time.”

Having doused and buried the flames, he picked her up to begin the short walk home. They passed Ahdri and Ekuar, shaping a new storehouse together, the young rockshaper and her mentor sharing giggling stories. Picknose and old Treestump, each with a load of ingots, nodded cheerfully at them as they went into the forges. Minyah, waiting outsider her home with her and Treestump's tiny daughter, greeted them cheerfully, and pushed a basket of morning fruit to them with her foot.

“I told your mother the first ones were Rayah's, of course,” she refused to take any back. “Since she loves them so much and helps me with my harvests so nicely.”

“Rather go hunting with you,” Rayah admitted, once they'd passed her. “But if mother asks you, you know.”

He didn't, but he nodded as if he did. He wasn't sure where Rayah's easygoing nature had come from. Perhaps a forgotten grandparent. She was as calm and smiling as Rainsong, as ready to play as to learn, and her magic was neither an embarrassment, nor a pride. She took it in the same course she took the rain, and snow, and sun.

“Oh, Ember's here!”

“Ayooah! Rayah!” the little redhaired girl ran up to them, trailed by her parents. “We're going to stay for an eight of days! Suntop is here to have lessons from Savah and Rayek.”

Leetah, in a short green skirt with a fringe of darker green, and a bodice of the same shade as the fringe, and the ever present Trollhammer, looked more like a Wolfrider than Rainsong and Woodlock, who had abandoned the forest nearly completely, along with their two, soon to be three, children, and now gardened and wove and dared the sun with the best of them. She looked solemn, but smiled gently at him. Cutter was wearing a jacket and the same old breeches, and abandoned him and Leetah for the cubs almost instantly.

“Hello, old friend.”

“Leetah,” he put Rayah down. “Did Strongbow come with you?”

He and Strongbow were, finally, friends, especially as the archer actually came more often to New Hope than Leetah did, purportedly because his lifemate and son dragged him there, not because he actually wanted to come.

“He and Moonshade are in Ahnshen's hut. Shushen and Dart are at the Holt,” she winked at him. “Taking care of the treeden.”

“Ah,” he sighed. “Come Rayah, Mother will be wondering where you are.”

Rayah sighed, but nodded. “Goodbye, Ember.”

“See you tomorrow,” the little Wolfrider said, cheerfully.

Rayah stayed awake long enough to eat a soup of beans, then fell asleep with a smear on her face. Rayek fled and met the archer in the doorway to Ahnshen's hut.

“Long night?” Rayek asked.

**Never let me be alone in a room with those two,** Strongbow said, grimly. **If you're not careful, they start draping things on you.**

Rayek, having recently been fitted for a new robe, sympathized, especially as Strongbow's memories of mothcloth(itchy, and too little pressure to be comfortable) flitted at the edge of his sending.

The plains were, especially on the shagback rock, bright and open and full of stars.

And stargazers. The wolfrider Skywise was down in the grass with Ruffel and Maleen.

**Maybe they'll leave?** He suggested to Strongbow, uncertainly. The archer snorted.

**Doubtful.**

They found an outcrop of rock, next to the lake. The waters were so still it looked as if there were four moons, two in the sky, and two in the water.

The first time they had done this, Savah had scolded them and Strongbow had sworn it would never happen again, that it went against the Way and he didn't know how he had allowed Rayek to persuade him.

Dart had apparently persuaded him to return. Probably used his big brown eyes, Rayek didn't care.

They stepped out of their bodies carelessly. Rayek shielded his spirit-eyes out of habit, as Strongbow shone with a brightness that rivaled the moons, always accompanied by a strange follower in the form of a wolf, until the Wolfrider dulled his blaze.

Rayek led the way, as was his habit. Strongbow followed indulgently, as was his.

They were across the plains in a thought, in a new, swamplike woodland. They left this and hovered over a lake so vast one couldn't see the other side. They left that, and, Strongbow muttering imprecations on his line for doing this, entered a void, a place without time, or light, or, really, anything. Occasionally Savah and little Suntop joined them, but Rayek more often preferred to go as a warrior into the darkness, with another warrior at his side.

They never found anything, though. No matter how long they stayed, there was only the darkness.

**Ugh,** Strongbow drew closer to him.

**What is it?** Rayek asked, idly.

**Something touched me.**

**Your body?**

**No,** Strongbow made a face. **Something here.**

**Really?** Rayek almost laughed. **What was it?**

**It felt like a snake,** Strongbow snapped. **Let's leave.**

**No, let's see what it was.**

**It wasn't good, Rayek.**

Rayek scoffed at Strongbow.

**Don't be a coward,** he taunted. **We've barely begun.**

Strongbow called him all sorts of names that he wouldn't be able to repeat in front of Rayah, but went with him as he shot off into the void.

There was a voice. Soft, gentle, calling him on. It was sweet.

Strongbow tried to turn him back.

**It's not real,** he insisted. **I know what it sounds like, but I know what I felt. It was evil.**

Rayek ignored him after a while, driven on by curiousity. The void began to glow, a pearly shimmer of light.

**Ah, welcome!**

A maiden's voice. She stood in a field of wildflowers, with large, hazel eyes raised to them. She held out her white hands, and smiled gently.

**Welcome, my brothers,** she looked over joyed, as if she had been waiting a lifetime for them. **I have been so lonely here.**

**Rayek, no!**

**Why so afraid?** her eyes grew wider. **After all, in sending there is only truth. You are welcome here, dear new friends.**

Rayek reached out to take her hand, curious and delighted all at the same time. He touched the tips of her white fingers.

**Away!** Strongbow threw him backwards, and the hand became a snake with huge fangs, that struck the archer's spirit form. **Get away from him!**

Rayek was thrown back into his body so hard he fell onto his back, the sight of Strongbow, with the snake pumping poison into his shoulder, still vivid in his eyes.

He leapt up. Strongbow lay collapsed to one side, face slack. Rayek touched him, confirmed his breath, then sent, as deep and as far as he could.

Nothing.

...

They were traders, and they had pearls, amber, and a supply of flint, although they didn't carry it themselves. They told B'rak that they came from the land of Olbar The Mountain Tall, and the people of the Waterfall.

They also stared at Osek, Shen Shen, and Ahleki a great deal, even more than most new people did.

Gardek, the unofficial leader of the traders, blushed brightly when Naksima confronted him.

“We don't mean to be rude,” he explained. “It's just, some years back, my brother brought his wife to our village. But our chief rejected them, and exiled them, because the wife worshipped spirits from the Blue Mountain.”

“I don't see what that has to do with our little people,” Naksima objected. “They aren't spirits, they're just people.”

“I know!” He held up his hands, defensively. “But Nonna, the wife, the spirits she described were like these ones. Winglike ears, four-fingered hands. They have the ability to change stone, and to float, too.”

It did sound suspiciously similar, and she spoke of it later to Shen Shen.

The little woman looked down at Ahleki, asleep in a pile of furs, and reached out to brush the hair out of the little one's face.

“People like us,” she sighed. “I always thought we could look again, after Ahleki was grown.”

Naksima shrugged.

“I don't know, Shen Shen. You said that your people lived in a-an oh-way-siss, far from everyone, in the middle of the desert. Osek told us his people lived in the long ago days, far from here.”

“Oh, yes,” Shen Shen nodded. “Sorrow's End.”

Naksima smiled and ignored the foreign words.

“But if these people are making the people of the Blue Mountain worship them, then they aren't hiding, or just living there. They're tricking those people, lying to them.” She shook her head. “That's wrong, Shen Shen.”

Shen Shen drew another fur over Ahleki. The mountain air was always cold at night, even in the hot summer.

“My people, and humans,” she sighed. “We've always fought each other. Humans attacked us from the first time we landed on this world. Then we elves never seemed to be able to stop it, or we made it worse, like the battle my people's mothers fought when we left the woods.”

“That doesn't make lying alright,” Naksima tried to keep her voice gentle, but Shen Shen cut through it.

“It makes it wrong,” she raised her head, and looked Naksima squarely in the eye with her two huge, inhuman eyes. “If these past few years have taught me anything, it's that humans and elves can live in peace. That we can be brothers and sisters.”

“It is wrong to lie. It is wrong to say you are one thing, when you are not.”

Shen Shen's eyes softened somewhat. “It was because they were afraid. You have no idea how afraid. But it was still wrong.”

Naksima felt an inevitability roll over them.

“You're leaving,” she realized.

Shen Shen looked away, as if she were ashamed.

“It's been eight years,” she murmured. “Since I last saw elves. Even if they're different from us, from me, I have to see them. I have to know. For Ahleki's sake, for Osek's, and my own.”

“Gardek says they ride birds as large as whales,” Naksima told her. “And they have metal spears, but the metal is so hard that even a rock cannot break it.”

“You think they mean to hurt me, Naksima?” Shen Shen shook her head. “Elves don't hurt elves.”

Shen Shen's naivete could be infuriating.

“They're not going to be like you, Shen Shen, or Osek,” Naksima wanted to shake her. “If they're making people worship them as gods. Even if they let you come in, what's to stop them from taking you prisoner, or worse?”

“Elves aren't like that,” Shen Shen insisted. There was a look in her eyes that Naksima had seen before, when Ahleki had first floated, when they had first arrived, when Naksima had entered a tent, Shenkir almost in the world, and Shen Shen had welcomed her in.

“At least leave Ahleki here,” Naksima pleaded. “She's a sister to Shenkir. She might not be safe on a long journey.”

“What?” Shen Shen stared at her, shocked, and laughed. “Of course I won't take Ahleki. Or Osek. They're not strong enough to take such a journey.”

“I won't be gone too long,” she told Naksima as they packed a bag for her. “Gardek says it takes a quarter of a moon's dance to reach the Waterfall people, then another day's travel to reach the Blue Mountain.”

Naksima sighed. “I have this feeling, once you go, we won't see you again.”

“So pessimistic!” Shen Shen laughed. “I could never be so cruel to leave you alone with Ahleki.”

At first Ahleki was sulky and sullen over the trip, hiding on top of houses, and in trees with Shenkir, who was only too willing to follow his age mate into risky refuges from adults. Then the morning Shen Shen was going to leave, the little girl burst into tears, and refused to let her go.

“I'll do all my chores! I'll do everything, I'll clean, I'll go hunting! I promise. Just don't leave me, Mama Shen Shen, don't leave me!”

“Oh, kitling,” Shen Shen gathered the tiny girl into her arms. “I would never leave you for long. I'll only go to meet with these elves. In two moon dances, I'll be back.”

“Don't go, Mama!” Ahleki just clung tighter. **Don't leave me!**

**Ahleki,** Shen Shen extricated herself from the little girl, putting her on the ground, and took off her golden headband. **Do you know what this is?**

Ahleki nodded.

“Your sister gave it to you, in the old village.”

“Yes.” Shen Shen got down onto her knees in front of Ahleki and held it out. “How often do I take this off?”

Ahleki took it, staring at her.

“Never.” She whispered, clearly awed.

“But it might get lost, or broken, on this journey,” Shen Shen said, sadly. “So, you need to keep it safe for me, just until I return, alright?”

“Alright,” Ahleki nodded, looking very solemn. “Don't worry, Mama Shen Shen, I'll take good care of it.”

“Good,” Shen Shen bent it a little more, and put it on Ahleki's head, to hold back her long black locks. “I know I can depend on you, little one.”

Osek blinked back his tears as he hugged her.

**Tell the new elves, tell them-**

**I will,** she assured him. **Mekda and Ekuar will be safe in your arms before the year is out.**

Naksima and Nilma had a belt pouch full of herbs, and a few precious beads of copper.

“Be safe, my little friend,” Nilma said, blinking back tears. “Watch out for poison ivy, you know it itches you terribly.”

“Praise the sun you'll soon have a baby to fuss over, instead of me,” Shen Shen teased her, then embraced them both. “May the High Ones keep you both.”

Naksima recognized the blessing, and sighed.

“I hope you find them keeping you on your journey, dearest.”

“Don't be afraid,” Shen Shen touched her friend's face. Odd that legend had called humans ugly. Naksima and her kin were beautiful, like a sunset, or a waterfall. “I'll return before you can blink.”

Then she gathered her few things, and her walking stick, and left.

...

“We were in the spirit world,” Rayek told Savah, while Moonshade begged her lifemate to awaken, sometimes gently, sometimes by shaking him. “Someone-Someone struck his spirit.”

“You!” Moonshade whirled, snarling at him like her she-wolf. “You did this to him!”

Rayek wanted to cry out his denials, to save pride, but all he could do in the face of her grief was stay silent.

“Mother,” Dart had tears running down his face, and shook his head. “Mother, you know father never does things he doesn't want to do.”

Moonshade burst into tears again, and sent, down, down, into Strongbow's shell.

“It was my fault,” Rayek said, finally. “Strongbow wanted to go back, but I saw-felt-heard something.”

“Like the fluttering of a moth's wing,” Savah entered the room, looking sorrowfully thoughtful. “Then a whisper drawing you on.”

“I thought I had imagined it,” she continued, staring mournfully at Strongbow. “But this is all too real.”

Leetah ran her hands over Strongbow's face.

“I can slow his body, to keep strength and life in it for a time,” she said, softly. “More than that...”

She trailed off, shaking her head.

“Do not blame Rayek,” Savah told Moonshade, and the other Wolfriders who had gathered in Rayek's austere home. “He was deceived by one well practiced in seduction.”

“Broths,” Sun Toucher came by, tapping carefully around with his staff. “And water. It will keep the strength in his body until he is well enough to return to it.”

“And if he doesn't,” Moonshade's hand drifted to her knife.

“No, Mother,” Dart touched shoulder. “Don't even think of it.”

“There's hope yet,” Rayek sat beside Strongbow. “I won't leave him. I'll go after him, Moonshade.”

“How?” Moonshade asked. “Strongbow sent of that place. A black emptiness. The one who took him could be anywhere.”

“I'll find him,” Rayek insisted. “I'll grow stronger, and go after him.”

“I wish I could believe you,” Moonshade sighed. “But I reach and reach for him, and I find nothing. Only one thing can silence a sending.”

...

To be sure, the archer, animal-blooded cur that he was, was not the greatest prize. There had been the soft-hearted elder, the proud mystic, even the child. Any one of them would have been better.

Still, he was an amusing enough distraction, one that might take time to unlock, especially that odd, bright shield. His mental powers would have been nearly the equivalent to hers, were they not governed by that odd, animalistic side of his.

She had to reserve part of her mind to work on him, but if she seemed distracted, what matter?

It would only serve the Gliders to think of more ways to gain her attention. All the better.

...

Shen Shen found she liked travelling, now that she knew there was a place to go back to.

Gardek was kind, even fatherly, and his fellow traders, a woman named Dimit, a man, Mak-isees, and another man, Talbo, were cheerful, more often than not, and willing to answer questions about Olbar, his people, and what little they knew about the Blue Mountain people.

Olbar had lost his daughter to tiny, winged spirits that lived in a place called “Forbidden Grove”(Shen Shen thought it sounded more like he didn't like his daughter's choice of lovemate), and was easily influenced by his tribe's shaman, a bone reader by the name of Ulma. His people had dwelt by the waterfall, the Deathwater, since before anyone could remember. He was superstitious, and fearful of the people of the Blue Mountain, who named themselves the Hoan G'tay Sho, and had come from far away, many generations ago. At one point they had ruled over a vast empire, and demanded tribute be given in the form of humans, which they sacrificed to the Bird Spirits of the mountain, until the many nations of the area had banded together, and overthrown them. Then they had turned on themselves, sacrificing their own.

“You see, when one of their elders nears the end of their life, instead of honouring them in the proper way,” Talbo said, solemnly. “They make them sacrifice themselves to the Bird Spirits of the Mountain.”

“More than that,” Dimit added. “They sacrifice children, too. I have seen it.”

“You have?” Shen Shen asked, skeptically.

“They dress the children up in their finest clothes,” Dimit said. “Regalia for a chief's child. Then they send them to a cave at the base of the Blue Mountain. The sacrifices are forced to walk inside, and they are never seen again.”

Shen Shen sighed. “These are nothing like my people. Or Osek's.”

“I think you will not find your task an easy one, little sister,” Gardek said, later that night. “I find that once a person tastes power, they do not readily give it up.”

“I know it won't be easy,” Shen Shen sighed. “And these elves aren't like any I've ever heard of. But I still have to try. What else can I do?”

“It's not just for me,” she explained. “But Osek is searching for any trace of his people. And Ahleki should know her own kind, as well.”

“Ah,” Gardek sighed. “But it's easier to say than to do.”

“Like all things,” Shen Shen agreed.

...

The moons were full and heavy when Cutter's people arrived. They and their wolves milled around the village nervously, whispering among themselves.

Rayek had very seldom had to explain himself. He found himself the centre of attention as the whispers died and the Wolfriders turned their eyes toward him, some sorrowful, some sympathetic, some accusing.

“What happened?” It was Cutter, eyes fierce and brow furrowed. “Was it a-a bad magic pool?”

“We've seen those before,” Clearbrook added, hands on her tiny, even for a Wolfrider child, daughter, who was intent on pulling her own breeches apart into tiny shreds. “They've even sent.”

“It was,” Rayek swallowed, then raised his head. “She was an elf.”

He described it, how she had started out, then how she had changed when Strongbow had stepped between them.

“You just left him there?” Cutter exclaimed, clearly outraged. Rayek felt himself bristle, but Skywise stepped between them.

“What was he supposed to do?” Skywise said, smiling wryly. “You heard him, Cutter, Strongbow threw him back here, like the stubborn old son of a she-wolf he is.”

“It would have been dangerous to go back, beloved,” Leetah touched Cutter so easily that Rayek had to turn his eyes away, even after seven years. “Rayek did right by bringing Strongbow's body back here, where we could help, and gather together to find a way to return his spirit to his body.”

Cutter turned away, clearly still enraged, but lost some of his fearsome bulk.

“Can that elf-thing come here?” Skywise asked, clearly as much to distract as to gather information, but Rayek took the bait gladly.

“I don't think so,” he thought about the way she had shimmered and wavered in the spirit light. “I had the feeling she was at the furthest edge of her range, just as we were.”

“Do you think she could watch us?”

That was the treeshaper, Redlance. He held his toddler in his arms carefully, as if afraid she would be snatched away.

“If she did, and there were others where she is, they might try to come here and attack us,” Clearbrook suggested, in the exact same tone as one suggesting that that autumn's rain might be a tad cold and it might be best to bundle up against the weather. “Should we have weapons ready?”

“Maybe Scouter should be eyes high,” Rainsong said, hands on her heavy belly. “Just in case.”

“I'm going to be eyes high, too!” His sister insisted.

“Fog, you cry when I take you up on the second branches of the Father Tree,” her brother retorted.

Fog, aptly named for her grey eyes, which ought to have been as clear and fine as her mother's, but which were instead dull and distant, frowned a bit more deeply than she usually did, and returned to destroying her clothing.

“I don't know if she was alone, or not,” Rayek told Skywise. “I don't know if it matters.”

“Might matter, might not,” Skywise shrugged. “We can't do anything about it.”

He nodded at Cutter, standing stock-still, hands in fists, and sighed.

“Suntop's got that gift, to leave his body,” Skywise explained. “That's why Cutter's being such a bear about this.”

Maleen had gathered the hunters while the Wolfriders crowded the village, and they stood, swords and spears ready. Zhantee was urging villagers to stay inside and be calm, not easy in the face of hunters and Wolfriders.

“The first thing we need to do is stay calm,” that, unexpectedly, was Cutter. He waited until everyone had turned to him, then continued. “Rayek and Savah are going to work on returning Strongbow to his body, and learn more about whatever it was that took him. The best thing for the rest of us to do is to make that as easy for them as we can. We'll help with all Rayek's duties in the village,” he smiled at Maleen. “You just have to show us how.”

“Rayek is the finest magic user I have ever known,” Leetah added. “Between him and Savah, Strongbow will be back before we even miss him.”

The Wolfriders, cheered already, went to join forces with Maleen and Zhantee, who looked mildly overwhelmed. Even Dart was smiling and offering his services.

Rayek looked back into his hut. Barely lit by the glow of the lamp, Moonshade was still lying on Strongbow's chest, eyes distant. When she saw him looking, she turned away.

...

“But Nonna, I keep telling you, I am not a spirit!” Shen Shen felt as if she were speaking to Ahleki on a particularly stubborn day. “I'm a woman, just like you, an elf woman.”

“You are but testing my faith,” Nonna said, smiling calmly. “I am not afraid. I believe.”

Shen Shen wondered if something were wrong with the woman, and that was why Olbar had exiled her and her man, rather than her beliefs. She clung steadfastly to the belief that the elves in the mountain were spirits, and that Shen Shen was as well. Shen Shen wondered how that faith held up in the light of her obvious mortality, her wooden leg, and her scars, but it did.

Adar, fortunately, had more sense, and felt that Nonna's beliefs were immaterial, as long as Shen Shen could convince his chief to let him and Nonna stay in the village.

“But why have you not simply joined Nonna's people, if you think she's lonely?” Shen Shen asked him one day.

“Nonna's people don't allow outsiders to live with them,” Adar explained, sounding a bit bitter. “They had a man for Nonna before I arrived. If she returns, she'll have to marry him, and leave me.”

For a moment Shen Shen was horrified, then she recalled Recognition, which was somewhat like that, and wondered what Adar might think of that.

“So, we have stayed here.”

Shen Shen privately still thought that Adar was more lonely than Nonna, but kept that to herself and to Gardek.

“Probably,” the older man admitted, over a bowl of spiced rabbit. “He's always been the stubborn sort, never would admit when he was lonely, or sad. He told Olbar off right before he left. Probably hurts his pride to have to come back, so he makes it about Nonna.”

“Poor Adar.” Shen Shen sighed, then looked to the west. In one more day, they would be in the village of Olbar the Mountain Tall. Then, she would continue alone to Blue Mountain. What then?

High Ones, she thought. Let the elves there be only afraid. Let them see reason. Let them be what I hope they are.

...

Ulma was a bone-reader, like her mother before her, and her daughter's daughter would be after her. Said apprentice was fast asleep, curled on her side like a squirrel, with a satisfied smile. Ulma looked at her with a tenderness that would have seemed strange to anyone outside her tribe.

The bones read strangely tonight. The pelvis of a weasel, a young woman, pointed eastward, a young woman coming from the east. The tooth of an elk, pointing north, news that seemed bad, but would be good. The jaw of a wolf, pointing south, a family reuniting.

And outside the circle of the bones, the skull of a squirrel, pointing west. Bad news from the west.

From Blue Mountain.

...

Strongbow knew pain. He'd been clawed by bears, broken countless bones, had a brush with nettles more than once, been bitten by Briersting's cub teeth..

This wasn't precisely pain.

It was close to Madcoil's vicious sendings, but without a body, there was no way to manage it. His head didn't hurt, it was open before him, brains spilling out. He was numb, as purposeful, cold tendrils of thought slipped into him, winding around his spirit-form.

He deliberately pushed his thoughts away from home, family, lest the snake taste them, and want more.

**Such a primitive way of thinking, little wolf.**

He snarled at her, and she laughed.

He thought he was somewhere. Not in the void, but somewhere. Sometimes, when she was distracted, he could catch glimpses out of her eyes. Caves, intricately carved, and elves, all pale, all with sad, distracted expressions.

He ran as a wolf, in the void, leg caught in a trap. He slipped into Now. Now, he was in her claws, Now, he was running in the darkness, Now, he was biting her, lashing out the only way that he could.

Now, she broke his soul's name in two, and stepped over the pieces, into him.

He screamed, into the void.

...

“There!” Mother finished tying Suntop's jacket closed. “You look so handsome, my little one.”

“Thank you,” Suntop fingered the sun shaped patch that Moonshade had so recently presented him with, beaming with pride as she told him he had made her think of it, and that she was making him a new jacket. Moonshade's leathers were almost never told of in advance. Instead you found them hidden in your den, or she scolded you and made you put them on while she fitted them.

“Mother?” He waited until she finished helping Ember tie her shirt.

“Why is Strongbow sleeping?”

Father was nearby, and he and mother exchanged those long, grown up looks that made Fog scream in irritation. Suntop wasn't like Fog, so he waited.

“Who told you Strongbow was sleeping?” Father asked.

Ember answered, while she tussled with Trollhammer and Nightrunner.

“Dart said his father was sleeping,” she rolled over, as Nightrunner was pulling her shirt.”He said he can't wake up, and that's why we have to stay here, and he's staying with Shushen. I saw Dart and Shushen last night. They were wrestling in the water.”

Father hid a smile, and Mother turned to Suntop.

“We went to see Savah to teach you how to “go out” safely, right?” She asked, and waited for him to nod before continuing. “Rayek and Strongbow “went out” together, but something happened. Strongbow's spirit is stuck, and Rayek and Savah must work together to bring it back.”

“So we're going to stay in New Hope until they finish,” Father said. “Because wolves don't abandon their pack.”

“It's nothing to worry about,” Mother finished, and hugged him tight. “We'll be home again before you know it.”

Suntop waited outside Mother's hut until he saw Rayah leave her hut, with an armful of plates and bowls, and a jug.

“Want some help?” He offered, jogging up beside her. She smiled gratefully, and handed him the jug.

“Thanks.”

They walked in a companionable silence for a ways. Suntop could do that with Rayah. They were the only two cubs in the entire two tribes that both had magic. Savah had told him that was very special. Rayah's magic, fire starting, was even more special, and last Festival of New Green, she had been permitted to light the bonfire. Sometimes Suntop was jealous of her, but not today. Today his magic was important. It was the magic that would bring Strongbow back.

“Here, Rayek!” They sang in chorus, as Rayah's brother opened the door. He looked very tired, with shadows under his eyes, and faint lines between them.

“Hello,” he looked at the food as if he didn't know what it was, and Rayah t'sked and pushed their way in.

It was dark inside, and cool. There was a single lamp, beside the bed, where Strongbow lay, looking not as if he were asleep, but as if he were an empty waterskin. Suntop shivered.

“Look what I can do!” Rayah announced, and took one of the lamps on Rayek's table. When they were older, Suntop would ask her if she had known what he was planning to do, but she would only blush and tell him she just thought it was dark and wanted to show off.

Strongbow was slack, and still. Suntop knew Ahnshen had come and taken Moonshade to go bathe, and to put on a thick, mothcloth night-dress. Dart was somewhere with Shushen, doing older cub things. He was alone, for a precious few moments.

It was all he needed. He took a deep breath, laid his head next to Strongbow's, and followed the faint thread of the spirit trail into the darkness.

...

Shen Shen had a headache, which was what she would later blame her next action on, but there was little time, and the crowd was beginning to look frightened. And frightened humans, like frightened elves, were dangerous.

“Stop this!” She had to shout to be heard over the Bone Woman. “Do I look like a spirit?”

Everyone was shocked into silence, and they stared at her. She could feel them, cataloguing every inch of her, every scar, the nick out of her left ear, the lines on one cheek, the other scars on her arm, her missing leg.

“I am a woman,” she continued, tartly. “An elf-woman. We're beings of flesh and bone, just like you. We bleed, birth, and die, like you.”

“Lies!” Ulma shook her bone rattle. “Lies, we know what the spirits of the Blue Mountain do! What they demand of their followers! I remember the raids! I saw my sister, and so many others, carried off to become the food of the bird spirits!

“No!” Nonna shouted, but Shen Shen interrupted her.

“Well, they aren't spirits, either.” She crossed her arms, and glared at Ulma, one of the few humans she didn't have to raise her head to look in the eye. “And I'm going to Blue Mountain to tell them that. But I won't do it, if you don't let Adar and Nonna stay.”

There was a soft rumbling. Apparently these raids were recent enough to live in the memories of elders. Nonna was weeping, and Adar was glaring at the people, who glared back.

But Olbar the Mountain Tall had a curious, unafraid look on his face, and he came to stand in front of Shen Shen, arms crossed, and stared at her.

Shen Shen looked back, and tried not to show that she was afraid.

Suddenly, as swift as an elf, he reached out and picked her up, tossing her in the air, and catching her as if she were a child.

“What did you do-”

He was laughing.

“Well,” Olbar put her up on one shoulder, holding her there by one hand. “Am I struck by lightning, Ulma?”

“Oh, great chief,” Nonna babbled. “You must not treat the honoured one so.”

The Bone Woman glared at them suspiciously, then tossed some bones in the air. One landed in front of them, the pelvic bone of a small animal, and the claw of a bear. Ulma's eyes widened, and she stared at Shen Shen.

“You!” She pointed. “You are the young woman from the east!”

Shen Shen sighed. “That's what I've been trying to tell you, now-”

“Olbar the Mountain Tall!” Ulma pointed to the chief. “This young woman must be given food, water, and you must take her yourself down the Deathwater cliffs, through the Forbidden Grove, to the land of the Hoan G'Tay Sho. There, she will end the reign of the Blue Mountain Bird Spirits!”

Olbar paled, a shocking sight in such a bear of a man.

“The Forbidden Grove?”

“Mother Life and Father Death have spoken through the bones,” Ulma said, holding up a hand to forestall any objection. “Your nephew, Gardek, will be chief in your absence.”

Shen Shen clutched Olbar's hair, and leaned down to whisper into his ear.

“Didn't go the way you planned, did it?”

...

Starjumper chuffed happily, and took the leg of a deer, turning back to the village. Briersting watched him with a strange kind of indulgent fondness.

“It's for Nightrunner,” Skywise explained to the curious Zhantee. “He can't lead the hunt anymore, so the pack brings food to him.”

“I never thought an animal could be so caring,” Maleen said, watching Starjumper's silver tail through the grass.

Skywise grinned at her.

“I can be kind, too,” he offered.

Maleen laughed.

In truth, the Sun Folk hunters didn't need the Wolfriders with them, Skywise thought. They agreed out of kindness, knowing that the Wolfriders wouldn't be leaving until Strongbow was back.

If he ever was.

Skywise banished the thought. A world without Strongbow, glowering, complaining, and growling, was an impossibility. The archer was annoying, rude, and stiff as rawhide, but he was there, like the stars, and the Father Tree. Nothing could destroy him.

Skywise ignored the flickering light in Rayek's hut.

...

“Savah! Savah!”

Savah ran from her hut, weary from meditating over ways to help Strongbow. She had tried to follow his spirit, to retrace the path that he and Rayek had traveled, to no avail. Perhaps now it was too late, and he had flown for good.

“Savah!” Rayah was standing in the doorway, weeping. “Savah, it's Suntop.”

“I'm coming, little one,” She paused to pick Rayah up and carry her, knowing her long legs would take one step to the little girl's ten. “What has happened?”

“Suntop went after Strongbow,” Rayah wept. “He won't wake up.”

Rayek's hut was full. Leetah, Anatim, Cutter, little Ember. Moonshade, Dart, and Rayek were near the door, watching with a horrified sympathy.

“Wake up, Suntop,” Ember pleaded.

None of them dared touch him, she saw, and setting Rayah down, she went to examine him.

“It's my fault,” Rayah sobbed. “I was showing Rayek that I could light the lamp, and he just, he just climbed up.”

“It isn't your fault, Rayah,” Moonshade said. “Suntop did it himself.”

Savah ignored him, and entered a deep trance.

The spirit-thread binding Strongbow to his body was alight with Suntop's trail. What had been a faint path, ending in nothingness, was now a windstream that she could fly down, into the black spirit void.

In the end, she did not even need to call to him.

He was on one side of a great cage, with spiked bars, and Strongbow was on the other.

“You have to go!” Strongbow's spirit whisper was a hiss of breath. “You have to go, now! Before she hears you, before she comes!”

“Who?” Savah picked up Suntop, who fought desperately to return to the archer. “Who is she, Strongbow?”

Savah had not known spirits could suffer wounds. Strongbow's was covered with cuts, bruises, punctures. He shook desperately.

Then he sent.

An elf, a woman, a cruel, cruel woman. Other elves, flimsy as leaves, or as birch bark, that she twisted and played with. A mountain. Humans, bowing down, as if in worship. Birds, and a-a child.

“A child?” That was Rayek, joining them with a flourish.

“Show off,” Strongbow rested his head against the bars of the cage, and sent again, just to Rayek, who began to look ill.

“I've told you all, now go!”

“Not without you,” Rayek objected, but Strongbow shook his head.

“Savah and Suntop,” he pleaded. “Rayek, take them back.”

That was all it took, and Rayek pushed both her and Suntop back.

“Suntop!” The boy's parents were on him,and Savah stood aside, gracefully.

Rayek was already headed for the door. Savah ran to catch up with him.

“Dear one, what was it that Strongbow told you?”

“She doesn't know that he's beginning to know her, just as she is him,” Rayek murmured. “I must go speak with Old Maggotty.”

...

“A half troll, half elf?” Maggotty swirled the dreamberry juice around her mouth as she thought. “Old Two Edge, more than likely.”

“Two Edge?” Rayek stared at her, as if in shock. “Who is that?”

“A master smith,” Picknose sighed. “The maker of brightmetal, inventor of a thousand techniques. A mining genius, he was the one who thought of taking birds down to check for poison air.”

“Completely mad,” Old Maggotty added. “Out of his head.”

“He would be,” Rayek agreed, staring into his own juice. “High Ones help us.”

He stood up, and left it at the table.

“Many thanks, Maggotty.”

She drank his juice, along with her own.

“Anytime, elf.”

...

The waterfall was the biggest that Shen Shen had ever seen. It spilled from a great lake, and became a river, flowing through a huge, forested valley.

“There is Blue Mountain.” Olbar pointed. “Home of the Bird Spirits.”

Shen Shen had to agree the mountain was blue. It was the biggest around, and bare from about halfway up, grey-blue stone rising into the clouds. Huge caves on the southern face made it look a bit ominous, and she could see birds, big enough that she could make them out from here, flying around the peak.

“High Ones,” she breathed.

“Do you truly think you can bring an end to the Bird Spirits just by talking, little bird-bones?” Olbar sounded skeptical as he spoke, tying a harness about his waist and hers.

“If I can't, then I may have to come back this way, and I've had enough of talking to you, old bear,” she replied, tartly. She was lying, of course. Olbar was, for all his bluster, remarkably decent and kind. He'd even opened his home to her over night.

He laughed now, then grew solemn as they began the climb. Well, he was the one climbing, really. She was clinging to him and trying not to look down.

“The raids ended when I was very young,” He told her. “When all the nations drew together it was under my mother's spears, and they made the Hoan G'tay Sho swear to never make war upon any of us, or we would destroy them.”

“Hm.” Shen Shen remembered what Nonna had told her. “Nonna said it was an honour to be sent to live with the Bird Spirits.”

“That kind of honour you prefer to give your enemies, rather than your friends,” Olbar said, wryly. “They stopped sacrificing us, and turned on themselves. Gardek says there are fewer every year. They used to be the biggest nation around. Now they're the smallest, and smaller every year.”

He took off the harness, and stared into the woods, looking less like a proud ruler of the Deathwater, and more like a frightened old man.

“That is the Forbidden Grove,” he said. “My men and I were chased from there by winged spirits, like angry butterflies. That is where I last saw my daughter.”

Shen Shen thought it looked like a forest. A quiet one, but still just a bunch of trees, and moss, and spiderwebs.

Lots of spiderwebs, she realized, but then, she had never been afraid of spiders, so she squared her shoulders and started marching in.

“If a one-legged elf can go in, I'm sure the powerful Olbar the Mountain Tall can, too,” she taunted him, over her shoulder. “Unless you'd rather be a coward forever, and never know what happened to your daughter.”

“One day you're going to say the wrong thing, bird-bones,” he threatened her, but followed.

It was deathly quiet inside. No birds, no bugs. Nothing making noise. Just stillness, green, and plenty of cocoons.

“They're all different sizes,” Shen Shen realized, after they had walked half the day.

“So?” Olbar asked, clutching his spear.

“So, they probably aren't eggs,” Shen Shen drew her dagger. “I'm going to open one.”

“Don't do that!”

Olbar tried to reach for her, but even with one leg, she was swifter, and she cut through the threads effortlessly. They had no sooner sprung open, than a bird came fluttering out, and sang scoldingly to them, as if they were not the ones who had rescued it.

“Well,” Shen Shen stared at all the cocoons around them. “At least now we know why they call it the Valley of Endless Sleep.”

...

Petalwing stared at the little high-thing. It had come with a big-big-thing, and started cutting open the cocoons. The cocoons were not for big-things, or for strange high-things! The long-dark-hair high-thing had told Petalwing and all the others to go and prepare food, and this they had done, and now the one-leg high-thing was ruining it.

Much vexed! Petawing would fix them!

...

“Ah, well,” Shen Shen yawned, and sighed. “We'll be in the land of the Hoan G'Tay Sho tomorrow, just as well as today. Might even get a better welcome if we get there in the morning.”

“We might as well be in the land of the Hoan G'Tay show now,” Olbar commented. “They were a great nation, once. They took tribute before they made raids. Always for their Bird Spirits.”

Shen Shen looked miserable, for a moment.

“I'm sorry,” she said, then sighed. “It's nothing to do with me, I suppose, but I'm sorry.”

Olbar sighed.

“It wasn't your fault the Bird Spirits are what they are,” he said. “Anymore than it's our fault the Hoan G'Tay Sho are what they are. It is what it is.”

Shen Shen nodded.

“There's a pool over there,” she pointed. “I'm going to go bathe.”

Olbar nodded. “I'm going to build a fire.”

“Good luck finding dry wood,” Shen Shen looked around. “This place is muggier than a hot spring.”

“Go have your bath,” Olbar said.

As he worked, Olbar dreamed that his daughter and her lover were just beyond the trees. They built a little hut for themselves, safe from the different nations, safe from him.

If he and Shen Shen just went around another twist in the path, Selah would be there, with a grandson, and the young man, and he would tell them to come home. He was sorry, but all would be well, now.

Shen Shen screamed.

...

“Get off me!” Shen Shen batted away the butterfly-creature, which screamed, and twisted back around. She ducked under the water when it spat, which left the mass floating at the top.

“Bad high-thing!” It screeched when she came up for air. “Bad!”

There were dozens of them, with delicate, brightly coloured wings that nearly glowed in the darkness. They swarmed like bees, and she fought the terror that rose as she left the water, and her clothes, naked as her birthing-day.

Olbar came, roaring, and the creatures changed their attacks. But the one she had batted was a bit slow, dizzy, perhaps, and she was able to grab it.

“Leave him alone!” she yelled. “Leave him, or I'll cut this ones wings off.”

She was ready to do it, for all that they spoke like elves. She would have, had the tiny creature, screeching its distress, not called off the rest.

“What are you?” Shen Shen asked, and got a faceful of webs for her trouble. She tightened her grip on the creature and it squeaked.

“Don't hurt Petalwing! Don't hurt Petalwing! Poor Petalwing!”

“Stop spitting webs at me, then.” Shen Shen reasoned with the creature.

“No more webs,” it tried to smiled at her winningly. “Petalwing promise.”

“You speak this thing's words?” Olbar asked.

“It speaks my people's tongue,” she told him. “But strangely.”

“Let Petalwing go,” Petalwing pleaded with her. “Petalwing be so happy, let Petalwing go!”

Sympathy nearly loosened her grip, but she forced herself to hold on tightly.

“Three years ago, two humans came to this place,” she said, as patiently as she could. “A she-human and a he-human. He” she pointed at Olbar. “Chased them. Where did they go?”

“Go?” Petalwing laughed trillingly. “Big things no go. We make safe, in wrapstuff.”

“Wrapstuff?” Shen Shen looked around. “All these webs, that stuff?”

She began to feel a bit sick.

“Where did you put them?”

Her grip on the creature had loosened, just enough, and it slipped free, with that same trilling laugh.

“Never tell!”

She used several words that she had learned from Rayek, and turned to Olbar.

“She's here.”

“What?” He stared at her.

“Selah's here!” She looked around, and began to put her clothes back on. “Olbar, which way were you chasing her?”

“Uh,” he looked around. “That way?”

“Are you sure?” Shen Shen looked hard at him. “Are you sure?”

“I recall that tree,” he seemed more confident. “And those bushes. Yes.”

They ran along a long overgrown path.

“There!” Shen Shen pointed. “Olbar, that cocoon!”

It was huge, and looking at it, she began to see the shape of a woman in it, entwined with a man.

“High Ones,” she whispered. It was huge.

“Selah!” Olbar leapt on it, using his huge, obsidian blade to cut the webbing.

The butterfly-creatures tried to seal up the holes, but Shen Shen fanned them away with a branch, and gradually, the form of a lovely young woman and an equally well-formed young man became apparent.

At first, they stayed sleeping. Then they moved, stretched, and changed. The girl sat up, yawning.

“M-Malek?” She looked to her lover, and her face was unspeakably tender. “We have slept but little, I-”

She saw her father, and leapt to her feet, holding up a dagger of quartz. The kind one might give to an exceptionally skilled warrior-child. Then Olbar spoke.

“Selah.”

There was a weight of sorrow, remorse, and joy in his words. He wiped his eyes, and held out his arms.

“Oh, Father!”

Selah was a young woman, and she ran to him. He embraced her, then held out his other arm to the boy.

“Malak, come to me!”

The boy was still for a moment, then he went.

Shen Shen couldn't watch, and turned away, overwhelmed.

Petalwing was perched on a small branch, watching her with large, thoughtful eyes. Shen Shen sighed, and held out her hands, beckoning. The little creature hesitated, then flew to her, joyfully.

“Petalwing miss high things,” it sighed.

“Oh, alright,” Shen Shen tucked it into her jacket. “But no more webs on big things, alright. Or high things, for that matter.”

“Petalwing promise.”

It looked so happy that she almost wished she had done this sooner.

“We have no more trials of adulthood,” Olbar was saying, calmly. “There will be no more. And Shen Shen will stop all sacrifices. We will have no more raids, ever.”

“Shen Shen?” Selah looked over her shoulder. “But she's so small.”

“And she has one leg,” Olbar agreed.

“And I'm going to stop all the madness,” Shen Shen told Selah.

There was an opening in the trees. They were at the western foot of the mountain. On the other side, the Hoan G'Tay Sho were waiting.

....

Petalwing remembered belonging time. When preservers and high-things worked together.

Petalwing remembered.

...