They walked a long time in silence, small rocks crunching under their feet, water on their right side, forest on their left, as they traveled the sometimes narrow, sometimes wide and curving gravel beach in between.
Ahead, the rocks gave way to a long patch of yellow in the early morning light.
Another one of Elder Tovut’s stories coming true,
Attu thought. Attu stopped and looked at the strange ground before he took a step into it. His foot sank down to his ankle.
“Watch out!” he yelled and fell back, causing Rika to fall as well, landing on her backside and scraping her bare hands on the sharp rocks behind her as she tried to catch herself.
“What did you do that for?” Rika asked, frowning and wiping her injured hands on her fur pants as she stood up.
“It’s not solid,” Attu said. He grabbed his spear and began testing the ground ahead, pushing his spear butt into the yellow granules that flowed away from it as he pushed.
“What is it?” Rika said, fascinated. She knelt and picked up some of the yellow material, and it slipped through her fingers, flowing like water. “I think this is sand, like Elder Nuanu told me about.”
“But they didn’t say anything about it being like rotted ice,” Attu grumbled.
“Look,” Rika said. She scraped away the sand in front of her, revealing a harder surface of more sand below it.
“I think it’s just flowing on top, but gets harder underneath. It has to be rock further down, if you dig deep enough, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know.”
Attu had a sudden thought of being caught in this sand, pulled down, drowning in the yellowness of it, having it pour like scratching water into his eyes, his mouth... he shuddered.
“I think it’s fine to walk on, just loose on top,” Rika decided and took a few quick steps out onto the sand before Attu could stop her.
“No!” Attu protested, but Rika was now jumping up and down in the sand.
“See, it’s fine,” she said, “except it’s getting into my foot miks.”
Rika plopped down in the sand and pulled off her foot miks and unwrapped her fur foot linings. As she stood up, Attu saw the much paler skin of her feet and ankles sticking out below her fur pants. Sand squished between Rika’s toes, and she giggled.
She is crazy,
Attu thought,
and braver than I am.
“Try it,” Rika said.
Attu took a step, then another. The sand felt solid enough under him, down just a spear point length or so.
“Take your miks off,” Rika said as she moved around him. “It’s easier to walk without them.”
Attu took off his own miks and foot wraps, marveling at how warm the sand felt and laughing at his own pale feet. They were sensitive to the sand slipping through his toes, and he tried not to laugh at the feel of it.
“See?” Rika asked.
“Feels good.”
Tying their foot miks together with their foot wrappings, Rika and Attu added them to their packs and walked across the sandy beach.
Rika kept sprinting ahead,
almost like Meavu,
Attu thought. Attu’s heart clenched at the thought of his little sister and his parents.
They must be devastated, thinking we are dead. They’ll be traveling south, too. Once we go through the pass, we’ll go back for them. They’ll be overjoyed to see us still alive.
Rika seemed to grow tired of the sand after a while and came to walk beside Attu. She was sweating, her hair damp around her face, curling tighter wherever it was wet.
“Let’s rest a bit,” Attu said.
Rika plopped down on her pack. “I’m thirsty.”
Attu grabbed the last water pouch from under his parka and handed it to Rika. “We’ll have to melt more snow when we make camp tonight, and the farther south we’ve traveled the less snow there has been.” He looked around. The only snow he saw nearby was a few dirty clumps in the shadows of the pines. The floating ice chunks were mostly fresh water, but the only ones he’d seen all day were far from shore.
What will we do for water once the rest of the snow melts?
“It’s warm,” Rika remarked about the water. “Almost as warm as our bodies.”
She took another drink and passed the water pouch to Attu. He gulped a few mouthfuls and wished the water were colder; he was so hot. “I’ve never needed water to cool me before. Everything about this place is strange.”
They rested awhile in silence, looking around them at the trees and sand and growing expanse of open water, now truly a sea with ice chunks floating in it near the horizon.
“I know we started out without talking or planning-”
“I just wanted to get away from that place,” Rika said. “Away from where Moolnik drowned and where Elder Nuanu’s body fell into the water.”
Rika brushed her hand across her face, dashing away a sudden rush of tears. “We didn’t say the proper words over Elder Nuanu’s body.” She slumped down on the sand again.
“I think Elder Nuanu will understand,” Attu said, “and tonight, when we make camp, we’ll speak the burial words for her.”
And I’ll thank her for somehow using her body to trick Moolnik into falling off the ice,
Attu thought.
Would Elder Nuanu truly prove more powerful in death than she was in life?
Attu felt the hair on his arms rise at that thought, for as the embodiment of Shuantuan, Elder Nuanu had been a potent force in the clan.
The sun had been growing even warmer as the day progressed. When he breathed, he couldn’t see his breath.
Attu stood up and slipped off his fur vest, shivering as the slight wind evaporated the sweat from his chest and back, now exposed. It felt strange to be warm enough without layers of heavy clothing.
Attu reached out, taking Rika’s hand in his own and lifting her onto her feet. “Your turn.”
“What?” Rika asked. She was staring at Attu’s chest.
Attu grinned at her.
Rika looked up at him, flushed, and looked away.
Attu pulled at her arm again. “I was just wondering how this warm air might feel on the rest of your skin. If it gets any warmer, you’re going to have to take off your vest or die sweating,” Attu teased.
“I should,” Rika said, her boldness suddenly returning, and Attu’s mouth dropped open as she turned away from him, whipped her short-sleeved inner vest over her head and grabbing one of her foot wraps, quickly tied it around herself, covering her chest and leaving the rest of her upper body exposed to the sun and breeze.
“Wonderful,” Rika said, lifting her arms and letting the wind blow across her bare skin. Turning back to Attu, she grinned wickedly up at him.
“Yes, wonderful,” Attu said and reached for her.
“Time for that later.” Rika stepped out of his reach, picked up her pack, and started walking across the sand again. “Let’s walk and plan.”
Attu grudgingly picked up his own pack, and they headed south again. But he couldn’t help watching Rika, seeing how her hair brushed over her bare shoulders and how the wrapping stretched over the curves of her body.
Growing tired of walking through loose sand, Attu and Rika moved closer to the water. The sand, where it had gotten wet, was firmer and much easier to walk on. An occasional wave touched their feet, and the water was freezing, but used to the frigid temperatures of The Expanse, neither of them grew cold.
––––––––
“W
e’re far enough away from where Moolnik...” Rika paused. “Why don’t we just wait here until the rest of the clans catch up with us?”
She stopped and dropped her pack for a moment. Taking a string of hide from her parka front and turning into the wind coming off the hills, she slicked her hair back, re-braided it over her shoulder, and tied the string on the ends.
Beautiful,
Attu thought.
“Better,” Rika said. “So why don’t we just wait?” She asked her question again.
Attu cleared his throat, working to focus himself back on their conversation. “I think we need to find the place first, because-”
“Attu, what’s that?” Rika interrupted, her voice a fierce whisper. She pointed a trembling finger toward the edge of the trees.
A huge brown creature had detached itself from the pines and was moving slowly along the edge of the tree line. As Attu watched, it stopped, raised its head, and looked in their direction.
“I
t’s as tall as a large shelter,” Attu whispered. “Higher than I could reach.”
“Do you think it sees us?”
“It should, but it doesn’t look alarmed.”
Attu saw and felt no immediate threat from the beast, and as they watched, the creature started walking again, its head down, tearing and chewing at the knee-high plants that grew in a boggy area between the open water and the trees. When it raised its head again, water and green plants dribbled from its fat lips, and it made slurping sounds as it turned its head slowly toward them while it chewed.
“It sees us,” Attu breathed. “Don’t move.”
The beast stared at them for a long time before it ambled toward the trees again, walking with an awkward gait, feet sucking in the wet sand, short tail flapping side to side as it walked. Its ears dangled off both sides of its elongated head, flicking first forward, then back.
“It’s so ugly,” Attu breathed.
“I’d laugh if I wasn’t so scared,” Rika agreed. “It doesn’t seem to know how to walk using four legs.”
The creature lifted its head high, sniffed the wind, and pierced the air with a shrill call. Attu’s whole body trembled at the eerie sound.
An answering high-pitched cry came from the north, back the way they had come.
Another one.
The creature spun around.
Attu gasped as it leaped out of the low area and began running toward the sound of the other creature, a shelter-sized wall of fur flying above the plants and disappearing into the trees.
“Well, I guess it knows how to use its legs well enough,” Attu said. He added, “Do you think we could eat it?”
“You kill it, and I’ll tan its hide and cook its meat. An animal that big would feed our whole clan for several days.”
“It wouldn’t be easy to kill.”
Attu turned from the place where the huge creature had disappeared into the trees. The animal had been so large, and it ran so fast.
How am I going to feed and protect Rika here?
He felt like a child in this place, ignorant and afraid of what he didn’t understand.
Rika touched Attu’s bare upper arm, sending new shivers down it.
Attu shifted his own pack and readied his spear in his hand, and trying not to think of how much Rika’s touch affected him, he said, “I think there’s a lot about this world our elders never told us.”
“I don’t think they knew. All they had were stories of the spirits and the ancient people. What was remembered and passed down.”
“Let’s hope something doesn’t kill us before we figure out how to kill it.”
Rika nodded her agreement before changing the subject. “As you were saying before that crazy brown creature came by-”
“We need to keep moving,” Attu said. “I’ve been waiting to tell you, because we were, well, kind of busy trying to save ourselves and all...” he paused.
“Tell me what?” Rika looked at him, curious.
“There is a pass we must find through the mountains before the rest of the clans catch up with us. We must be the first two to go through the pass.”
“How do you know this?” Rika asked.
“I saw it in a dream. The one I told you I couldn’t talk about. And there’s more.”
“What?”
“I think the reason Elder Nuanu passed into the Between of unconsciousness just before we made it to land was because, somehow, someone else spoke through her. It was her, but a man’s voice. And her face changed... it was... a man. He said the same thing he’d said in the dream. We must go through this pass first.”
“Why didn’t you tell me someone spoke through Elder Nuanu before she passed into the Between of sleep and couldn’t get out?” Rika stopped walking and turned to face Attu. She looked angry.
“Because the others were there and you had been in the dreams, too, and-”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“And just when were you going to tell me all this?”
“I’m telling you.”
“And before? On the ice sheet? With Elder Nuanu?”
“I was trying to save us. I’m telling you now, aren’t I?” Attu could hear his voice rising in frustration.
I’m trying. Can’t you see that?
“I dreamed of the bear before it attacked. You know about that.”
Rika nodded.
“But what I didn’t tell you is I also dreamed of you being separated from me by a crack in the ice, before we even met. I didn’t know it was you, at first...” Attu rushed to explain, then paused when he saw the look of disbelief on Rika’s face.
“Before we even met?” She asked.
“Yes, and when I thought I would never see you again, I thought I was wrong, I thought I was just dreaming like your father said, what I desired and could not have, not what was prophetic. But then, it happened. We are together, and-”
“How do you know it’s me who goes through the pass with you?” Rika pulled Attu down beside her so they were sitting, facing the water.
“Because the white-haired man said I must go through the pass with the one who will bear my sons and daughters.” Attu looked down then, his cheeks reddening.
“Oh,” Rika said, then again, “Oh... I will have sons...and daughters...?” She looked at him in amazement.
Attu suddenly realized he had never considered what the man had said in his dream past the fact that he must be bonded to a woman before he went through the pass.
Sons and daughters?
He thought.
Rika is right. We will have sons and daughters. How could that be? At least four children? It was unheard of amongst his people. A miracle...
They sat in silence for a while. Then Attu took Rika’s hand. “In the dream of the pass,” he explained, “we head south until we come to a rock shaped like a nuknuk spearhead. The pass is there.”
“And you saw that, too?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any idea how far it is?”
“No.”
“Or how far ahead of the clans we might be?”