Authors: Jane Lindskold
She padded in Bruin’s wake into the large, multipurpose room that comprised the entire ground floor of the cabin. One corner framed by long tables had been set up as a cooking and eating area. Another area, fronting a second fireplace, was furnished both with chairs and built-in benches. A plank ceiling not only helped hold the heat, but a ladder leading to the upper area indicated useful space, probably both for storage and as a sleeping loft.
A few of Lynn’s associates—Adara was fairly certain she recognized Lynn’s husband, Hal, among the men—had come with them. Most had ostentatiously returned to whatever duties had occupied them before the travelers’ arrival. To Adara this deliberate lack of fuss, especially since it was likely that the community had seen few strangers since the previous autumn, made a statement of its own.
Lynn motioned for the new arrivals to make themselves comfortable near the second fireplace. She herself took a seat on a straight-backed chair. It was evident that most of the inhabitants made do with stools, benches, or, in the case of the children, with the packed earth floor. When Lynn stretched her crippled leg out in front of her and leaned gratefully against the chair back, it was evident why this extra effort had been made on her behalf.
“Where do I start?” Lynn asked, perhaps more to herself than to anyone present.
She certainly seemed surprised when Fred said, “Kipper! Where is Kipper? Is he well? You can start with that.”
Bruin made a vague rumble of agreement and Lynn sighed. “Yes. We might as well settle that. You’ll be too distracted to listen otherwise. Robby?”
A young man with rusty brown hair scampered up the ladder. The heavy planks that made up the ceiling effectively muffled most sound, but Adara’s keen ears caught scraps of conversation. Not long after, Robby returned, followed by a smaller boy.
Kipper looked to be seven or eight, the age when a boy has lost his baby fat but hadn’t yet started shooting up. His thick, wheaty hair stuck out at angles, suggesting that he might have been asleep. He examined the gathering with a somber, noncommunicative expression, but his features brightened as soon as he saw Fred.
“Fred! Fred!”
The two words spoke volumes, about fear, about joy, about loneliness and uncertainty.
No matter what anyone tells us later,
Adara thought,
I will not believe that Kipper left Fred willingly.
Fred gave the boy an uneven grin. “It’s Fred. Good to see you, Kipper lad.”
“Go on over to Fred, Kip,” Lynn urged. “See for yourself he’s all right.”
Kipper raced over. While the boy was distracted, Bruin said softly, “Fred’s all right, though not for any great care on the part of you and your friends, Lynn.”
“I wasn’t actually there,” Lynn replied. “This leg of mine means I don’t get about as well as I once did.”
“You’re evading,” Adara cut in. She didn’t know Lynn well, but what she did know had always given her reason to respect the other woman. Finding Lynn involved with kidnapping, uttering cryptic accusations, seemed completely out of character. “How do you explain hanging Fred in a tree?”
“Later I’ll introduce you to Ring,” Lynn said. “How to explain Ring? You and I and Bruin have eyes that see well in the dark. Ring, he sees, too, but not with his eyes, so much. He was with the group that went out when we got rumor of Kipper. The others would have left Fred to come around on his own, but Ring wouldn’t let them. He’s not very good at explaining what he sees, but what he saw was enough to make him frantic until Fred was gotten clear of the ground. And Fred lived, didn’t he?”
“If we hadn’t come when we did,” Terrell replied, “Fred might not have.”
“But he did,” Lynn insisted, “and if Ring is to be believed, he would not have. I’ve reason to trust Ring’s impulses. So did those who listened to him that day.”
Clearly, Terrell wanted to argue further. As clearly, he saw there would be no purpose to it. While Terrell had been speaking, Fred had introduced Kipper to Bruin. The little boy was tongue-tied with awe and delight, so apparently Lynn had done nothing to lower the boy’s estimation of his new teacher.
Lynn waited patiently until the introductions were over, then she said, “Fred? Bruin? Now that you’ve reassured yourselves that Kipper is here and unharmed, would you mind if the boy went out with my Robby? We’ve a lot to talk about and not all of what I need to say is suited for young ears.”
Bruin considered. For a moment, Adara thought he would refuse, that he would insist on gathering up Kipper and getting them all out of there. Then he sighed and settled himself.
“If the boy will go, then he may, but he’s not to vanish.”
Lynn laughed, a genuine, heartfelt sound. “As if anyone could be made to vanish with you and Adara so close at hand—and doubtless a bear or wildcat or so outside the walls. You have my word. Kipper will be yours to claim when you wish—and if he wishes.”
“I do!” piped the boy. “Like I told you before. Bruin is to be my teacher.”
“Then he will be,” Lynn agreed. “Go out now and help Robby. We adults have dull things to discuss.”
With a quick hug for Fred and a bounce that might have been a bow for both Bruin and Lynn, Kipper scampered after the older boy. There was a shifting among the gathered adults as well. Some of the men went out, though Lynn’s husband, Hal, remained. A quite old lady came in, a basket of eggs over her arm. She began to mess about in the corner that served as a kitchen. The others who remained seated themselves at a long table where they could both assist with the food preparation and listen to the conversation.
Lynn surveyed her guests. “And these? I recognize Adara, of course, but I don’t know the rest.”
“Terrell the Factotum,” Bruin said, “recently of Shepherd’s Call. He and Adara are escorting this other man—Griffin Dane—to Spirit Bay.”
Adara thought Lynn might ask more, but at the words “Spirit Bay” her eyes widened, then narrowed.
“How long is it, Bruin, since you’ve been down to Spirit Bay?”
“It has been a few years,” Bruin admitted. “Five years? Eight? I’m not as young as I was, you know. Long trips don’t suit me as once they did. Even when I don’t have students, I do have business to occupy me.”
“So it has been at least five years since you’ve seen the Old One?”
“Maybe closer to eight,” Bruin replied thoughtfully. “We do write letters though, quite long ones, sometimes. I’d gathered all was well.”
“I suppose it is,” Lynn replied, “for him.”
Bruin frowned. “You’ve gone to great trouble to bring me here—even though you know where I live and could have come to me. Now will you explain why you’ve set bait to lure this old bear?”
“For that,” Lynn said, “I need to go back in time, to when I was our mutual teacher’s youngest protégée and you were his most admired. Although I didn’t know it then, that was when the trail that brought you here today had its beginning.”
Interlude: Uneasy Sensations
Grumbles, rumbles, deep down beneath,
there where darkness does yet keep.
Drowsy drumbles, peep, peep, peep,
bounces off, for hearer sleeps.
Aching, itching along the spine
of a backless synthetic mine.
Stirring, waiting, call not come.
Blood oozes slowly,
under-hum.
10
Lynx’s Trail
Up to this point, Griffin Dane had felt all but invisible. When Lynn turned her pale gaze upon him, he almost wished he was.
“How much do you know about the Old One Who Is Young?”
Griffin remembered Adara’s admonition to stay as close to the truth as possible. “Not much at all. I came to Bruin with a problem. He admitted that he had no answers for me, but that perhaps his old teacher could help.”
Lynn’s lips twisted in an ironical smile. “That’s Bruin. It’s a wonder he didn’t bond with wolves rather than bears, for once someone has led him…”
She stopped. Bruin was rumbling out a low growl that shaped into words. “Lynn, I’ve had enough of your taunting. Either tell me what your complaints are against my old friend or shut your trap and we’ll get on our way.”
“Are you sure you want this stranger to hear what I’ve to tell? Are you certain you want the others to hear?”
“More than ever. If there is reason for Griffin to reshape his journey, then he must be the one to decide. If the others are to guide him, then they must hear as well.”
Griffin thought that it was probably good that Lynn was so focused on her own intrigues that she didn’t think to wonder why anyone would end up in Shepherd’s Call asking for advice.
Or perhaps I’m the one who is missing something. She’s gone to great trouble to get Bruin here. Perhaps he is a more important person than I realized.
Griffin had taken a seat on one of the benches that lined the walls. Now he leaned back and half shuttered his eyes, doing his best to efface himself into nothing but a listener. It was a tactic that had worked very well when his family fell to arguing.
Lynn returned her focus to Bruin. “From the very start my relationship with the Old One differed from yours. To you he was a great wisdom leavened with kindness and shaped by compassion for the strange. For me? I also felt the impact of that wisdom. However, although the Old One was never unkind, as I grew from a sexless sprout into something resembling a woman, I realized that the man I had thought of as a second father viewed me in a completely different light.”
Bruin made a gesture eloquent of disbelief. Lynn laughed softly, as if she’d anticipated this response.
“No, this was nothing as romantic as love nor as crude as desire. It is more difficult to explain … You certainly recall how the Old One looks, don’t you? How although there is no doubt that he has lived for several hundred years he never seems much older than a youth of, say, twenty-five?”
“I do,” Bruin said. “I suppose that is why, even though I know he has a name, it has always been easier to think of him as the Old One Who Is Young. It is a reminder that, although I now look old enough to be his grandfather, he could be my grandfather’s grandfather.”
“Then, too,” Lynn went on, “the Old One never did invite the intimacy of names, did he? When we were children, such distance made sense. To children, adults are more titles than names: Mother or Father or Teacher or Coach. But when in age we came to resemble the Old One, we were not invited call him by name. We had called him Old One or Mentor or Teacher. We continued to do so. Even when we began to seem older than him, still, he was the Old One, we—by contrast—the children.”
“As we were and are,” Bruin retorted. “When I met Adara she was about five. I was over forty. Thirty-five years is a near insurmountable gap at those ages. Later, as first the body matures into adult competence, then experience gives wisdom, the years melt. Teacher and student can become friends, even equals. So it is with humans.”
“But not with the Old One?” Lynn asked teasingly. “That is what you are saying, yes?”
“Precisely not with the Old One!” Bruin replied. “How could we become adults in common when he starts with so many years, even centuries, of wisdom over us all? Our small triumphs and failures—the things that age us as much as does the passage of time—are as nothing to him. The Old One has seen it all, experienced the permutations. He must look at us as we do a toddler when it moves from uncertain, staggering steps to the freedom of an all-out run—moving faster, but still children.”
“So you see him,” Lynn said. “So the Old One intends us all to see him. Many years ago, I began to wonder if long years of experience equaled wisdom. This led me to wonder if the Old One possessed the experience of his years.”
“I don’t understand,” Adara said softly from where she had curled up on one of the many fur rugs that interrupted the cold dirt floor. A litter of kittens had appeared from somewhere and now crawled over her as if the woman were one of their own. “The Old One has lived those years. How could he not have the experience of them?”
“Because the Old One has ceased to do anything but pursue one course,” Lynn replied. “He has lived in Spirit Bay since my grandfather’s time. I would not doubt he has lived there since Bruin’s grandmother’s time. He lives in that same vast building on the same peninsula that juts out into the bay. He does the same … No, Bruin! Hear me out.”
Bruin leaned back but, from the firm line of his mouth, Griffin did not doubt he intended to have his say.
“The Old One does,” Lynn concluded, “the same thing. Now Bruin, you will say…”
“What the Old One does is not the same,” Bruin replied. From the narrowing of Lynn’s pale eyes Griffin knew he had not surprised her. “The Old One established himself in that building because it was one of those that the seegnur used when they came from the High Orbits to the planetary surface. That building is one of the few places where the seegnur’s moratorium on technology was not applied.”
Griffin had to fight to maintain his casual posture. No wonder Bruin wanted him to go to Spirit Bay! That landing facility might well hold the technology he would need to contact his orbiter.
When Bruin continued, Griffin caught the same cadence that had filled Adara’s voice when she spoke from the lore. “It is believed that, in the days when destruction came to the seegnur, the facility on the banks of Spirit Bay was not ruined. This may have been because the conquerors wished to use the facility themselves when they made their return. Therefore, after the seegnur had been slain, the building was sealed. True, the machinery within no longer functioned. True, many of the records could no longer be accessed, but still much can be learned if one is patient enough.”
Lynn took up the tale, but although she mimicked the cadence, Griffin heard mockery in the inflection. “And somewhere in the course of the long journeys that filled his first century or so of life, the Old One Who Is Young heard of the facility on the shores of Spirit Bay. Many years were spent reaching Spirit Bay and many more in learning how to open the seal that the seegnur had put upon the facility. However, at last the Old One penetrated into this fastness. Therein, for lifetimes of mortals, he has sought to learn all he can of the ancient ways.”