Breakaway: Clan of the Ice Mountains (37 page)

“I don’t know. But tomorrow I must help him repair his boat, if it can be repaired.”

“Why? It was his fault!” Rika moved to settle another log on the fire. Attu could feel her anger on his behalf. It made him feel better.

“I need to keep the peace.”

“We’ve been dancing around these people like they are hot coals ever since we came.” Rika poked at the few coals in their own fire, sending up a shower of sparks.

“Not Paven. The Seers saved us, called us off the ice, but you’d think they were just nuisances the way your father has been throwing his weight around since we came.” Attu heard the frustration in his voice and glanced at Rika, hoping he hadn’t upset her.

“I know,” Rika agreed. She sounded as concerned as he was. “And your father has grown quiet again, stepping back, as he did before, willing to let others lead in his place. Why is he doing that?”

“I think Father is just trying to make sense out of all that has happened,” Attu said, drawing the furs more closely around himself. “Sometimes I see him staring at the trees, or the water, or some new animal as if he can’t believe they’re real, as if they must be spirits in a dream and not the reality of Here and Now.”

“Many of our older ones seem overwhelmed by all the newness, the strangeness of this place, like Ubantu,” Rika agreed. “Your father reacts by withdrawing, and mine by pushing others around.” Rika looked away.

The children of their Clans had taken to this new world like fish to the water in which they all learned to swim so easily. Even the youngest boys could now make snares to catch the long-eared animals called rabbits, and they ran about in the trees and in the streams as if they had lived here their whole lives. Attu’s people had been here for one moon, and the older people of the Clans, except for Paven, seemed as frozen in place as if they were still back on the Expanse and waiting out a blizzard. Both Ubantu and Attu’s mother, Yural, were among those having a hard time adapting.

“Your father seems to think the best way to adjust to our new home is to attack anyone who stands in his way and to act as if he knows everything about this new world when, of course, he knows nothing.”

Rika’s shoulders stiffened at the mention of Paven again. “He blusters when he’s unsure of himself,” she said. “You need to watch him, Attu. That’s when he can be dangerous.”

Their eyes met for a moment. Deep sadness filled Rika’s. Then she turned away.

“I will speak with Ashukat again, reassure him that we’re grateful for the Seer Clan’s help and that Paven doesn’t speak for everyone. And I’ll help Tingiyok rebuild the skin boat I ruined.”

Attu drew Rika close beside him and nearer the fire. She looked up at him, her eyes no longer sad, but filled with curiosity instead. “And then what?” she asked. “What will you do once you repair Tingiyok’s skin boat?

“I’ll build my own, one that fits me, not a Seer.”

“So you’re determined to learn this skill, this hunting by boat?”

“Yes.”

“Father says we should travel east with the Seers and hunt the great curved tusk animals. They’re leaving in the next few days to try a hunt. Are we still going with them if you don’t want to become a curved tusk hunter?”

“Yes. I think we should, to see what it’s like. But in a couple more moons when the herds of curved tusks head east and north with their young ones, I don’t want to go with them, even though Ashukat, as the Seer Clan’s leader, says it’s been their plan all along. We are the last Clans off the ice, and they believe they should travel with us, away from this cold and damp and back east and north where the hunting is good, the weather drier, and the land of grass will support our numbers easily.”

“But it was never our plan to keep the Clans together once we arrived. I don’t want to stay with Paven, even though he is my father.”

“I know.” Attu pulled her closer to him.

“And your father? What does Ubantu think?”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t said.”

“Why haven’t you asked him?”

“I’ve tried, but Father’s not thinking clearly yet. He seems wrong in his spirit, like you said so many of the older Clan members are. He’s struggling to learn the new ways of this place and it’s hard for him. Mother says it’s because the spirits of our Clan are too far away now. It makes the older ones feel lost.”

“That’s possible,” Rika said. “Ashukat says it rarely snows here, and when it does it doesn’t stay. How can Yural be happy in a world where she’ll never see her name spirit, Yuralria, dancing in the swirling snow above the ice on a star-filled night, and none of your Clans will ever see the Ice Mountains again?”

“I don’t know. Attuanin is in the deep waters everywhere.” Attu considered. “I think that’s why I feel best on the water, near my name spirit. I want to stay near the great water that was once the Great Expanse of Ice. I can understand why Father and Mother mourn the spirits they left behind.”

“I don’t see us on the endless sea of grass, hunting the curved tusks and following them, even though my father wants to, and it’s what the Seers want as well. Ashukat says it will work for us, as it has for the other Clans that came off the ice before us. But how do we know it really has? And even if the others are doing well, it still doesn’t seem right for us to simply follow the other Expanse Clans and do what they did, does it?” Rika searched Attu’s face, looking for answers.

“No. We need to think things through for ourselves.”

Ashukat was the white-haired, blue-eyed Elder of the Seer Clan who’d spoken to both Rika and Attu in their dreams, and in visions, and through Elder Nuanu while they were still living on the Expanse, the always frozen ocean and rocky outcroppings they had called home for generations until the Warming time came. Following those visions and dreams, Attu and Rika had gotten their Clans to safety off the rotting ice. Ashukat had been helped by the others of his Clan, the Ancients, or the Seeing Clan, as they called themselves.

Don’t we owe them the respect of their wisdom in this decision as well? But it doesn’t seem right.

“I can’t see us there, Rika. In my dreams, I see us living near the water. I see ice-covered mountains behind us, rocky islands, and trees. You know I’ve dreamed this since we arrived.”

“I know. And you know how much I love the great moving water – I mean, the ocean,” she corrected herself. “It calls to my spirit.”

“We’ve only been here a short time. I don’t know what our people will decide to do. But I must do what I think is best for us and what I believe is best for our Clans. Perhaps we are to split, some going with Ashukat and the Seers, some going north along the coast until we reach a land more like the icy Expanse of our home. I want to lead us north, but I also feel we owe the Seer Clan our thanks. It makes it hard for me to consider our Clan not joining them as they seem to think we’ll do. We would have all gone Between if it hadn’t been for the Seers calling us to this place in our dreams.”

“But you feel wrong here, something deep inside you can’t describe or understand?”

Attu nodded.

“I feel it, too. The Seers are so different from us, with their light hair, and eyes like new grass or sky. Did you see the child with hair the color of fire? Is that what unsettles you? How different they look?”

“The people do look strange. And Ashukat makes me uneasy. We know his Gifts are strong and that makes me leery of him. He and others of his Clan had the power to call people from across the ice! What other powers might they possess?”

“I don’t understand how they can believe in the spirits of animals and places, like the eagle spirit Tingiyok said blesses them, or the water spirit that brings the fish, and yet he says they believe in a Great Spirit over all. When I asked him what this spirit looks like, he said, ‘all things.’ That makes no sense. They wear grass clothing instead of furs, and it makes them rustle when they walk. That’s odd, but now we have to wear grass, too, because in this place our furs are starting to rot. The Seers know so many things we don’t, and that makes me feel like a child, like Tingiyok made me feel in the skin boat. But it’s even more than that. It’s this place in the Here and Now that is most wrong, not the strangeness of the people. It’s reasonable to feel unsettled here because this place is so different from anything we’ve ever seen before, but it’s more than that. Something seems wrong with the land itself, and each day we spend here, my spirit grows more uneasy.”

“So what should we do?” Rika moved from the furs to ladle out fish stew into two bowls. She handed him one.

“I don’t know. We’ll go with the others on the hunt. The Seers say that women must go as well. They wait at a distance while the men kill the game, then come afterward to prepare the animals for eating. One of the Seer women told me it’s because the curved tusk animals are too big to carry in one piece all the way back to our camp here by the great water. And the Seers follow the tradition of the women owning the game and portioning it out as they see fit.”

“At least they know that much.” Rika shook her head as she ate. “Women on the hunt. It just seems wrong.”

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