Ivory and Bone (26 page)
Authors: Julie Eshbaugh
Tags: #Young Adult Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Historical, #Prehistory, #Action & Adventure, #Survival Stories, #Juvenile Fiction, #Love & Romance, #Family
“But in the end, it happened as they say—
you die the way
you live
. They
lived for vengeance. And for vengeance they died.
“Out of all of them, everyone else came back alive. Only those two—only Lo and Orn—lost their lives.”
She drops her eyes. Turning away, she picks up Pek’s hand, as if he were her own son.
As if he were Orn.
Later, I stand in the shallow water, holding the kayak steady as Dora gets in, ready to return to the western shore. The kayak bobs, thumping
against my leg, as Dora moves slowly and methodically, tying the belt around her waist. Chev and Mya are there, climbing into the only canoe with room to sit.
When I wade out of the water and back onto the sand, my parents are talking about the burials. They will be tomorrow, when the sun is at its highest point in the sky.
The rowers wait until Dora is out in front of them. Then they dig hard
with their oars. I watch them recede across the bay, remembering how I’d watched the Bosha cross the bay in the same way. When they are so far away that they are no longer distinct individuals, but mere dark shapes blending into one another, I think I see Mya look back, but I cannot know for sure.
I
am alone in my family’s hut, dressing to do something I do not want to do.
My mother stands at the door. She tells me everyone else is leaving. It’s time to go. I tell her not to wait. I’ll come on my own. Soon, I promise.
“I won’t leave without you,” she calls through the door.
I step outside, barefoot, still tying my pants at the waist. “Just go,” I say. “I promise I won’t
be long.”
My mother raises her hand to shield her eyes from the sun as she looks at me, and the lines at the corners of her lips deepen. She will wait. My mother has had to wait for so many things. For the bay to thaw. For the herds to return. For the first kill of the spring.
For the Divine to provide wives for her sons.
I should not test her patience now. I drop my head and step back into
the hut. I have no choice. This task will not
go away. I lace up my boots, pull the elk-hide tunic over my head, and join my mother outside, where the sun is reluctantly climbing out of the eastern sky.
A two-man kayak waits for us on the beach. The rest of our party is far out on the bay. The wind is in our faces, slowing us, and by the time we land on the western shore, the sun is directly
overhead.
It’s time.
A girl approaches, helping my mother alight from the boat. She is familiar to me; I’ve seen her in this very spot. The day I hiked the overland trail with Lo, she met us right here on the beach.
This is Anki, the sister of Orn.
She glances over at me, and I can’t quite read the emotion on her face. Does she know that I am her brother’s killer? She can’t possibly. If she
did, I doubt she would look at me at all.
“Mya was asking for you,” she says. “She was on the beach earlier, looking for you.”
I hear voices. Up ahead, on a ridge above the Bosha’s camp, a crowd is gathered around two open graves.
Chev stands at the head of the circle of mourners. I try to imagine the conflict he must feel today—reunited with his old clan, but at such a great cost. Beside him
stands a man dressed in black bearskin—the Bosha’s healer. He begins a chant, asking the Divine to pull back the hides that drape
the doors of her land, to open wide the entrance to receive Lo and Orn.
Something inside me flinches. I swallow, and hot anger burns down my throat.
As the chanting continues, two drummers beat a rhythm that rolls out from this ledge, vibrating out over the sea. From
behind me, a dancer emerges. He wears a broad mask made of twigs and vines, bent and twisted into the face of a mammoth.
A wide mammoth hide is spread at the bottom of each grave, and in the center of each one rests one of the dead. Orn is dressed in a hunting parka, a spear clutched in his hand. I can’t help but notice the details of this spear—a thick bone staff hafted with sinew to a black
flint point. It is identical to the one that broke off in Chev’s chest.
Lo is also dressed in hunting clothes, but her hands are empty. Around her neck, she wears the bone pendant, the symbol of her status in the clan.
Up close, I can see how thoroughly both bodies have been rubbed with red ocher—face, hair, clothing—it coats them like the blood that coats a baby as it emerges from the womb.
The dancer completes circle upon circle upon circle around the graves, as the sun slides slowly into the west. All the while I feel Mya’s presence. I want to look up, but I can’t. Sweat trickles down my back, yet I shiver with cold.
Beneath my feet, I notice the shifting of my shadow, bending toward the east, toward home. Still, the drums play on and on, the music rising, carrying the Spirits up,
bearing them to the Land Above the Sky.
Finally, the last note is struck. I turn quickly, striding off into the meadow to the east, not wanting to speak to anyone.
Voices die away, until only the sounds of the meadow remain—the thrumming of insects, the whisper of the wind. I lie down, surrounded by tall grass and clusters of tiny blue flowers.
I try to listen for bees. Eventually, I hear footsteps.
Someone lies down beside me. I don’t have to look. I’ve been in the dark with her enough to know her by the cadence of her walk, the sound of her exhaled breath. . . .
She slides her hand over and wraps my fingers in hers. I don’t pull away. Warmth floods through me, like it did that first time in the cave, the night she saved my life.
We lie still for a long time. “You were right,” Mya says
after a protracted silence. “Summer has returned. This parka is too heavy for this day.”
“It’s also too big for you,” I say. “Why do you wear it?”
“It belonged to my mother.”
And just like that, one of the many mysteries of Mya is solved.
We fall silent again, content to listen. Eventually, I hear
it—the whir of wings. She does too. We both sit up. Without a word or even a glance, we focus
on the bee. We both climb to our feet and follow him.
He joins another, then another. They move with purpose, following their secret pathways over a sea of blue and violet blooms. After following them for so long I’m convinced we’ve gotten confused and will never find the hive, we discover it in a grove of withered spruce, tucked beneath a ledge beside the sea.
I slide down onto the ground in
the scant shade of the trees, staring out over the water. Mya sits facing me, her back to the sea. Before I can shift my gaze, she lifts her hand to my face.
I turn to her, and I’m startled to see her cheeks damp with tears. I wipe them away, and she kisses me.
This kiss is different from our first. Mya’s lips are warm and urgent, sending heat like white light through the very core of me, chasing
away all my darkness.
Slowly, we stretch out our bodies, easing onto the ground. I pull her close to my chest, encircling her in my arms. At first she doesn’t move, but then silent sobs come, her damp, hot face buried against my neck. When her body finally stills, I kiss her again—the slowest kiss I can stand.
I pull back and look into her eyes. The sun forms a tiny fire in each, a signal fire,
a light far away, but bright enough to guide me into the future.
I cannot go into the past. I cannot stop change. Change is coming. But lying here beside Mya, I realize, for the first time since we carried Lo’s lifeless body down the cliff, that the future may hold some good.
My eyes drop to the pendant around Mya’s neck, the pendant of ivory, the twin to the pendant of bone still wrapped around
Lo’s neck in her grave.
Absently, my finger touches the flat disk at the center, carved with the image of two mammoth tusks. “You fixed it,” I say. “I found pieces of it scattered at the foot of the trail where you and Lo—”
“This was my mother’s,” Mya says. “Hers was ivory; mine was bone. When we moved—when she died—hers became mine.”
This simple story indicts me. I unfairly judged Mya, assuming
she wanted ivory since Lo had a pendant of bone.
“It hurt me to do it, but I broke it on purpose and left it there. It was a clue for you. I knew you would find it, and you would know where to look for me.”
“You knew—” I pull my hand back, tucking it under my head so I can steady my gaze. “How did you know I would look for you?”
“Because . . .” She rolls onto her back and her eyes fall shut.
“Because I trust you.”
I trust you.
A breeze stirs the leaves above our heads, and cut-out shapes of light and shadow move across us like
ripples on water.
I trust you. . . .
The words echo, fade, and return to echo again through my mind. Since the morning of that first hunt, I have longed to hear those words.
Mya kisses me again, and her hand slides up under my tunic and glides over my chest.
Her skin is warm. The sun disappears behind a cloud, and shade encloses us like the walls of a hut.
“Mya.”
Her other hand finds my wrist. She guides my hand up under the hem of her own parka until it’s resting against the warm skin of her back.
She kisses me again, and half sighs, half whispers my name. “Kol.”
That’s when I know. I know we will survive. I know that we will move and there will
be fierce, hard, startling changes.
I will feel lost.
But I won’t be lost. We will be together. And together, we’ll find ourselves again.
I let both hands glide across the soft skin of Mya’s back, and I know.
I know.
Wherever Mya is—a cave or a hut or a boat out on the sea—wherever she is, I’ll be with her, and I’ll be home.
The characters and events of
Ivory and Bone
would still be stuck in my head and heart if it weren’t for the efforts of so many wonderful people who helped bring them to life on these pages.
I want to thank Alexandra Cooper, who understood this story from the beginning. I owe you so much for shining the light of your editorial talents on an early version of this manuscript,
and helping me see the better book within it. Thank you for asking all the right questions, and for working alongside me as we uncovered the essence of Kol’s story. Your input has been invaluable.
Of course, Alexandra would never have read this book if Josh Adams had not read it first. Josh, I am quite sure that no other literary agent could have done what you did for this book and for me as
an author. I cannot thank you enough for sharing the power of your vision. You have set me and my stories on the best possible path, and I am so fortunate to have benefited from your talents.
Along with Alexandra Cooper and Josh Adams, I want to thank all the people who worked with them to bring
this book into the world. At HarperCollins: thank you to Rosemary Brosnan, Alyssa Miele, Erin Fitzsimmons,
Jessica Berg, Olivia Russo, Patty Rosati, and Kim VandeWater. At Adams Literary: thank you to Tracey Adams and Samantha Bagood. To everyone else whose work has contributed to this book, thank you. I am indebted to each of you for your enthusiasm and efforts. Thanks also to Sean Freeman for your contributions to my beautiful cover.
So many other writers have helped me along the way, but I must
thank Amie Kaufman first among them. It would take twenty pages to properly acknowledge the difference your help and friendship have made in my life. Thank you for your constant encouragement, for taking the time to read, and for sharing your talent with me at the time I needed it most.
Kat Zhang, you have been with me almost from the beginning of my writing journey. You are so talented and supportive,
and I am so proud to call you my friend. Thank you for reading and giving me your thoughts, and for the text messages, progress check-ins, and emails that assured me I was not toiling alone. I couldn’t have made it through without you.
Thank you, of course, to all the Pub(lishing) Crawl contributors and readers. Your enthusiasm is simply more than I could ever have expected or imagined, and it
has made a huge difference in my life.
Thank you to all the scientists whose research and writing fed my imagination, and helped me understand the world of my characters and the lives they lived.
The goal of writing this book could never have been accomplished without the support of my friends and family. Naming all the friends who have laughed, cried, and laughed again with me along the way
would be impossible, but please know that I appreciate all of you so much. To my sister, father, and stepmother, I can’t thank you enough for your inexhaustible faith in me and your constant encouragement. I also must mention the unconditional love and support I received from a special cat and dog, Sylvester and Memphis, who kept my lap and feet warm. Thank you for instinctively understanding that
the best writing is done while peering around a furry head and between taking breaks to throw a ball.
Thank you to my son, Dylan. You are simply the purest light in my life. You never give up, and your example makes it impossible for me to give up. Your talent has always been an inspiration to me, and you never fail to make me laugh. Your sincere concern for me and my art is one of the truest
gifts anyone could ever give me.
Thank you to my husband, Gary. I never knew an artist until I knew you. You live a life devoted to the art of your music, and being a part of that life has taught me how to live a life devoted to my writing. How could that gift ever
be measured? You came into my life (or, rather, I dragged you into it), and you filled it with music, laughter, and love. I have
the life I have because I have you.
I couldn’t thank all the people who have blessed my life without thanking God for bringing them to me. God has worked so many miracles in my life. This book is not the least of those miracles, but it’s not the greatest, either. I believe that God is Love, and all the people listed here prove that to me every day.
Thank you all so much.
