Calamity's Child (3 page)

He cupped her breast, she
ran a light hand down his chest; he bent and put his lips around
one pert nipple. She gasped, back arching, and it came to him
that
erifu
would have required that she also drink the Choosing drugs,
to be ready to welcome the new husband in fullness...

"Slade," she said huskily, and her
hands were in his hair, drawing his face up, her gray-green eyes
looking deep into his. "We -- should lie down."

A good
idea
, he thought,
before one or the other of us falls into the
fire.

He stretched out beside her, and she
touched him, tentative fingers warm now, and indescribably
exciting. He moaned, and pulled her to him, exhaustion burning away
into the brilliance of passion.

*

Slade opened his eyes to a tent wholly
unfamiliar, a heavy weight pinning his arm to the sleeping mat.
Carefully, he turned his head, and discovered his wife, Arika,
deeply asleep, her head on his shoulder, hair tangled with last
night's passion, lashes sooty smudges on her thin cheeks. In the
spill of morning light from the fire hole, her face was achingly
young.

Surely,
he thought wildly,
surely a child of this age ought to be with her tutor and not
roistering about in the darkness, soliciting strange men into the
service of her tent?

He drew a hard breath. The Sanilithe
came quickly to adulthood, and quickly to old age. Gineah, revered
grandmother that she was, with two daughters and a hunter-son, all
grown and mated -- Gineah had between fifty and fifty-five Standard
Years. On the planet of his birth, she would have just reached the
height of her powers, with another thirty to fifty years before
her...

The planet of his
birth
, he thought, suddenly bitter;
which he had wished with all his heart to escape -- and found his
wish well-granted.

Carefully, not wanting to awaken the
girl-child asleep on his shoulder, he drew a breath, and looked
about him.

It was not the largest tent he had
seen among the Sanilithe, nor the tidiest, though it might,
considering the numerous patches in the skin walls, make some claim
to the shabbiest.

Scattered around, in no order he could
discern, were baskets, pots, robes, and rugs. Poles lined the
walls, and from them hung familiar clusters of dried herbs and
medicinal plants.

Gineah had divided her
tent into sections -- a place which was
erifu
and off-limits to
ham-fisted sons of the tent, a place to store foodstuffs and water,
a place for that same ham-fisted son to keep his weapons, his
skins, and his bedroll. The center was common area, where meals
were made and where grandmother and son might dawdle over their
warmed beer, talking far into the night.

Well, and Gineah's tent was as distant
from him as his mother's house, now that he was married.

He sighed and brought his
gaze back to the child's sleeping face. The stripes of paint
adorning her cheeks were smeared and faded. The Sanilithe did
decorate their faces -- certain signs were
erifu
, others were, as far as
he understood, nothing more than exuberance. It seemed to him that
he had seen stripes like these before -- white, yellow, red, in
alternation -- and suddenly, he remembered.

Mourning stripes. Someone of this tent
had died -- recently. The stripes were worn only for three days
after the deceased had been commended to the fire.

Outside, a woman's voice rose in the
welcome-morning song. The girl asleep on his arm stirred, and
opened her eyes, face tensing. He smiled, deliberately.

"Good morning, Arika," he said
softly.

Her face relaxed, though she did not
go so far as to smile. "Good morning, Slade," she returned,
seriously, and looked upward to the patch of sullen sky visible
through the smoke hole.

"We must rise," she said abruptly,
snaking out of their tumbled bed and rolling to her feet. "There is
much to do."

Naked, she hesitated, staring about
the disordered tent, then darted to one side, where she found a
tunic. She pulled it over her head; emerging, she frowned at Slade,
still slugabed.

"Rise!" she snapped, and reached for
the pair of leather leggings hanging over a cracked storage
pot.

Sighing, he rose, found his kilt on
the dirt floor by the edge of the fire, picked it up, shook it out,
and wrapped it around his loins, feeling even more foolish, now
that there was no kindly drug diluting his perceptions. Quickly, he
knotted the leather, wishing for shirt and leggings.

"Slade."

He turned. Arika held her hands up,
showing him the blade in her right, and the comb, in her left. "I
will cut your hair, now, and we will go to the smith. Then we will
go to the tent of Grandmother Gineah and bring away those things
she allows to be yours." She smiled, very slightly. "The sooner we
do these things, the sooner we may eat."

Eat. His stomach, reminded of its
fast, set up a complaint, and he moved sprightly indeed and sat on
the floor at her feet.

"Be still now," she said, and plied
the comb, surprisingly gentle; and then the knife, in long,
practiced sweeps.

Slade closed his eyes as the weight of
his hair fell away, leaving the back of his neck chill.

"Done."

He lifted his hands to his head,
feeling strands barely two fingers long. Gods alone knew what he
looked like, but at least he was rid of the braid, which had a
penchant for becoming entangled in twigs, and flirting with
fires...

"Come." Arika was already unlacing the
flap. "The smith."

Indeed, the
smith
. He rolled to his feet and
followed his wife out into the new day.

*

Some while later, earlobe stinging and
stomach rumbling, he stood two paces behind his wife, before
Gineah's tent.

A shadow moved and the grandmother
stepped out, plump and grizzled, her arms encircled with the many
bracelets of her station.

Before him, Arika spread her arms wide
in the traditional greeting to one of the Wise.

"Grandmother," she murmured,
respectfully.

"Daughter," Gineah replied, and moved
her eyes, pinning Slade with a bright blue glance.
"Hunter."

He bowed, which the Sanilithe did not
do. "Grandmother."

She stepped forward, her eyes on
Arika. "You could have come to me."

Arika bit her lip, and shook her hair
back in what Slade was beginning to understand as a nervous
gesture. "I swore to Keneple that the tent would endure," she said,
her voice not quite steady.

"And a tent must have a hunter."
Gineah sighed. "Child..." She stopped.

"Please," she said, after a moment,
"allow your hunter to enter my tent and collect those things which
have been made ready for him."

"Yes..." Arika whispered. She
straightened shoulders that had begun to sag and looked to him,
chin up.

"Slade, you may find what Grandmother
Gineah has left for you and bring it forth."

"Yes," he said in his turn and slipped
into the tent that had been his home for two full turns of
season.

Inside, all was neat and familiar; it
smelled of herbs, and leather; smoke and the scent of Gineah
herself. Tears rose to his eyes. Blinking them away, he turned
toward the corner which had been his.

There were several bundles there, as
well as his spear, his knives, and the unfinished length of braided
hide he had been working on as he sat at the fire with Gineah in
the evenings.

He knelt and examined the bindings of
each pack, in no hurry, wanting to give Gineah as much time as
possible to share what wisdom she might with his girl-wife. It came
to him that it was Keneple who had died, and who Arika mourned. The
name meant nothing to him, but that was not unusual. Well as he
knew the names of those with whom his tent traveled in the seasons
of gathering, little did he know the names, or the faces, of those
who traveled other routes.

Kneeling on the mat among his bundles,
his Choosing became real to him: he was now tied to a tent that
would follow a different route, come the Light Season, and which
held allegiances and debts that he did not understand. The ones he
would hunt beside would not be the same men he had come to know --
who had come to know and accept him, with all his incomprehensible
difficulties -- as a brother.

He gasped. This time, the tears
escaped to moisten his cheeks. To be taken from everything and
everyone he knew -- and, yet, what did it matter? He was the alien
here, shipwrecked and dead to all he had been. To lose one tent,
one old woman, half-a-dozen savage brothers -- what was that,
against the magnitude of his other losses?

Crouched beside the small pile of his
belongings, he wept, then wiped his face with his forearm and
forced himself to his feet.

He draped the bundles about himself as
Verad had taught him to do, slipped his knives, carefully, into the
waist of his kilt and hefted the spear.

Outside, Gineah embraced Arika, and
stepped aside. "Take care of my son, who is now your hunter,
daughter."

"Grandmother, I will." Arika
swallowed, and Slade saw that her cheeks were also damp. "You are
welcome in my tent, always."

Gineah smiled upon them, and raised
her hands in blessing above their heads. Then, wordless, she
re-entered her tent.

Arika licked her lips, nodded to
Slade. He followed her across the camp, to their shabby and
disordered home.

*

Kneeling on the dirt floor next to the
fire pit, Slade unrolled his bundles. The first held his hunting
leathers and boots, as well as a vest sewn of kwevit hides with the
fur attached. He dressed quickly, rolling the kilt and putting it
with the vest, then turned his attention to the rest, chewing on a
strip of dried meat Arika had given him.

She was at the back of the tent; he
could hear her moving things, possibly attempting to impose order
upon the clutter, a project of which he heartily
approved.

Opening the next bundle, he found the
furs and skins of his own bed, and several sealed medicine pots. He
smiled, profoundly warmed, for Gineah took care with her potions,
which were genuinely soothing of bruises, cuts and strained
muscles.

Another bundle gave up his second pair
of leggings, three sitting mats, and pots containing dried legumes,
jerked meat, and raisins. Too, there was the bag ritually made from
the skin of the very first kwevit he'd taken and meant to carry
what Verad called "the hunter's touch," which was the only property
besides his weapons and his clothes that a hunter could be said to
own. The knot was undisturbed, and inside, among the scent-masking
potions, feathers, and special stones that he had been given by his
brother of the hunt, was his paltry supply of Liaden nutrients.
Slade smiled again, and thanked Gineah in his heart.

"Where do those things come from?"
Arika's voice was shrill. He spun on his knees and looked up,
seeing her face twisted with anger, her eyes blazing green
fire.

"Gineah gave them," he said, keeping
his voice gentle.

She was not soothed. "Return them! I
am the mother of this tent -- and this tent is not in
need!"

Very slowly, hands loose at his sides,
Slade rose. Deliberately, he looked about him, at the clutter, at
the tatters, at the soot. He looked back to her angry
face.

"The tent must eat," he
said.

"The tent
will
eat," she
snapped. "The hunter will see to it."

"Yes." He moved a hand, showing her
the bounty Gineah had sent. "These were given by the grandmother,
to the hunter. I have seen that the tent will eat."

She glared, lips parting, then turned
and stomped away.

Sighing, Slade looked about him for an
uncluttered corner to call his own.

*

They worked in silence, he on his
side, she on hers. It was not so large a tent that they were
unaware of each other, and had they been in charity, Slade thought
ruefully, they might have made a merry time of it. And, really, it
was wrong that they continued thus in anger. Unless he did
something very stupid on a hunt, they would be partners for -- some
time. They needed each other's goodwill and willing cooperation --
the tent could not function, else.

Sighing, he straightened from tidying
away his sleeping roll, and turned.

Across the tent, Arika stood with a
pot cradled in her arms, her head bent, hair obscuring her
face.

Biting back a curse, Slade crossed to
her side, and put a careful hand on her arm.

She gasped, and started, eyes flying
to his face, her lashes damp, the remains of the mourning paint
running in long, smeary lines down her cheeks.