of root, too. I’ll show you how to make a colic medicine from it.”
Kari knelt on the forest debris to dig for the root. Tillu continued to peel bark from the branches in long ragged strips. Beyond a thin fringe of trees, the wide blue surface of the lake glinted. Behind them, they could hear the reindeer and folk on the traditional path. The folk did not hurry today. No one minded if a harke paused to nip new buds from a tree, or snatch up a mouthful of moss. Tolerance and good fellowship warmed the air with the spring sun. The adults had stripped back to sleeveless jerkins of light leather and short trousers or skirts. The children were all but naked, their skins soaking up the sun’s warmth. Tillu folded her long strips of bark into a bundle and stuffed them into the shoulder pouch. Already it bulged gratifyingly. They would have to hurry ahead to Lasse and change this pouch for an empty one.
Kari shook the clinging soil from the network of roots. Willow roots were tough, and she had had to use her knife to get this chunk loose. She wadded up the tangle of roots and stuffed it into her basket. She smiled up at Tillu. Dirt smudged the side of her nose and the look of distance and mystery had left her eyes. Her face was shining as she said, “You meant it, then. I thought perhaps you only needed me to help with the gathering. But you will really teach me the healing herbs.” She reached into the hole and dragged up another hank of willow root.
“Of course I will.” A reckless enjoyment of companionship settled on Tillu. “If Carp is to have an apprentice, I see no reason why I shouldn’t.”
Kari dropped the root she was cleaning, and reached up to seize Tillu’s hands in a pinching grip. Startled, Tillu tried to pull free, but Kari did not release her. Her black eyes were wide and shining. “This is true? You are not making a joke of me? You would take me as your apprentice?”
“If it is what you wish,” Tillu replied, confused by her intensity. The young woman let go of Tillu’s hands and sank slowly back on her heels.
“Ah!” she sighed slowly with quiet satisfaction. “We shall see what my father can say to me about marriage when I tell him this. We shall see.” Then, suddenly grabbing at Tillu’s sleeve again, she added urgently, “But not yet! We shall not tell him until we are closer to the Cataclysm. Not until after you have begun to teach me.”
Tillu did not understand Kari’s fierceness. “Yes. All right, I shall not tell anyone that you are my apprentice, until you wish to tell them. But as for teaching you, well, we have begun that already.” Stooping, Tillu took up the cleaned root and put it back into her apprentice’s hands.
Kari looked down on it. When she spoke again, her voice was thoughtful. “It is what you know, Tillu, that lets you be as free as you are. A woman with no man to bind her, no one to fill her with children and weight down her days.” She glanced up suddenly, her bird-bright eyes pinning Tillu’s. “Was that why you became a healer? To be rid of men?”
“No.” The question puzzled Tillu. “I became a healer because it was what the women of my family knew and did. Just as my father tended animals and crops.” She sighed softly. “I never, as a child, imagined I would live so often alone.”
“Then take a man.” Kari’s voice was as careless as if Tillu had spoken of fashioning a new garment for herself. “Heckram would have you, if you let him.”
“Heckram…” Tillu hesitated. “I know so little of him, Kari. And I wonder so many things…”
“He is a good hunter,” Kari told her, as if that were all of a man’s worth. “And a generous man. Even with Elsa, for whom he felt only friendship. When she asked his protection, he gave it to her, and the gifts of joining as well.”
Tillu was silent, staring at her, praying she would go on. Kari smiled slowly. “I hear many things, when folk come to gossip with the herdlord and his wife. And Elsa, too, was not shy of speaking to me. She was as close to a friend as I have ever had…and we shared at least one thing. We both wished to be rid of Joboam.”
Kari rose slowly and began to drift after the moving line of reindeer and folk. Her voice was soft, and Tillu hurried behind her, almost ashamed to be so anxious to hear her words.
“Some have said that Heckram only took Elsa to wife because Joboam wanted her. It is not secret that those two hate one another. So many have said in the herdlord’s tent, saying it was a shame Elsa was given to one who loved her with friendship but not with passion. Some say Joboam would have cared more for her, kept her within and safe…”
“And what do you say?” Tillu prodded gently.
Kari turned bottomless eyes back to her, stared through her as the girl continued walking. “I say that Elsa knew more happiness in her short months with Heckram than Joboam would have given her in a lifetime. Heckram showed no lack of concern. Elsa but went to the spring at night, to draw water, such as any herdswoman might do. It is not Heckram’s shame that she was not safe there. Whatever attacked and killed her within her own talvsit is the shame of all the herdfolk!”
Her words were suddenly fierce. She rounded on Tillu, madness in her eyes, coming so close to her as she spoke that her breath was hot on Tillu’s face. “It is not right that any herdfolk should fear to walk by night. The world, both day and night, is given to all of us. Why should one exist who can say, ‘Beware, Elsa, the night is death’?”
“No. It isn’t right.” Tillu put calming hands on Kari’s shoulders. The girl steadied under her touch. The wild shaking passed. “What did you see?” Tillu asked gently, sure of her suspicion.
“I?” Kari gave a shaky laugh. “I saw nothing. I was within that night, inside my father’s tent. But Owl saw, and he knows, and what he knows, I know.” She pulled suddenly free of Tillu’s hands. “Take Heckram, Tillu. You could heal him, could purge him of the worm that gnaws at his soul. He looks to you to save him.”
It was Tillu’s turn to pull back. She shied from the idea, throwing out words to turn Kari’s mind from the thought. “And you, Kari? Have you never seen how Lasse looks at you?”
“Lasse?” Kari’s voice set suddenly, her face going hard. “Lasse is a child. He has no idea what he wants, but I do. And soon I will tell him. He wants a girl who plays yet in front of her mother’s tent, a pretty little thing with wide eyes and easy laughter. A girl who will come to him like a calf sipping clear water for the first time, with wonder and surprise at the goodness of it. That is what he wants…what he deserves…” Her voice had gone softer and softer as she spoke. Now she suddenly lifted her head. “Foolish talk! We had best hurry, Tillu, if we are to exchange our full baskets for empty ones.” She turned suddenly and began to hurry up the line.
THE DAYS FELL into a pattern both restful and enervating. Tillu awoke with interest to each dawn, and lay down at night in weary peace. Animals and folk left the lakeside and its brushy banks and emerged onto the wide flats of the tundra. She and Kari gathered herbs and roots by day, and Kari learned the uses for each. Then came the sweet evenings when the folk halted and campfires were kindled and sleeping skins spread on the ground. Heckram’s shelter was never far away. Kerlew migrated in happy circles from the fire Carp shared with Heckram to the one Kari shared with his mother.
Yet she saw less of her son than ever before in their lives. She felt her guilt as an uneasiness, a sense of a task uncompleted. Hidden from herself was the relief she felt at being freed from his constant presence. Tillu began to live a separate life of her own. If Kerlew felt neglected or missed her, he did not show it. The boy was more confident than she had ever seen him. But for his dragging speech, and the strange topics he chose, he might have been a normal boy. His circle of tolerant adults was larger than it had ever been, and his status as Carp’s apprentice gained him a small measure of acceptance by the other children. They did not play with him, but they did not taunt or beat him either. Another boy might have felt his isolation as loneliness. Kerlew only felt relief. He moved through the camp without