In Stone's Clasp (11 page)

The young woman Gelsan had spoken with a moment ago now stepped forward. She was an attractive girl, with wide blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, and a soft flower-bud mouth. Thick ringlets of golden hair peeped beneath her fur hat.

“I am Mylikki, Gelsan’s daughter,” she said. “It would be my honor to show you our village. Come with us.”

The group headed back down the hill. Kevla again noticed the strange items strapped to their feet. Some of them had long, flat poles tied to their boots. Others had wide circles that looked to be made out of curved branches interlaced with animal sinew. She made her way downward carefully, stepping sideways to avoid slipping as much as possible. Mylikki slid quickly down the hill on the poles, making a wide, graceful turn to wait for Kevla.

“I hope you will forgive us, especially Olar,” Mylikki said. As Mylikki spoke, Kevla realized that she was starting to grasp some of the stranger words. It was as if the learning was taking place inside her, somehow. “We were not always so unwelcoming to strangers. The killer winter has been hard on us. But ever since the
bayinba
started—”

Raids,
Kevla thought, translating the word in her mind.
The word
bayinba
means “raids.”

“—we have, unfortunately, had good cause to fear strangers.”

The people of Arrun Woods were victims, then, not attackers. Though sorry for their losses, Kevla was pleased to confirm that she was not aiding murderers. Mylikki had said something else, though, that confused Kevla, and she didn’t think it was her not understanding the word. She tapped Mylikki’s shoulder and the other girl looked at her questioningly.

Kevla repeated a word Mylikki had said, cautiously wrapping her mouth around the unfamiliar term. She had apparently gotten it right, for Mylikki said, “Killer? The killer winter? Oh…you don’t know. You must be from a far land indeed.”

Mylikki looked up at the gray sky. “Winter usually only lasts for a few months, even in the most northerly parts of Lamal. Then of course spring comes. But this year, something happened. Something went wrong. Winter never went away.”

She looked at Kevla gravely. “We have had nothing but winter for over a year.”

Kevla stared at Mylikki. No wonder there were so few animals left, and some of the people had begun behaving like animals themselves. If only she could talk to them! Kevla had so many questions. She put a sympathetic hand on Mylikki’s shoulder as they made their way toward the houses in the clearing.

The Dragon had made room for himself, Kevla saw, by uprooting several trees and placing them in a pile. The villagers were chattering happily and pointing to the pile; clearly they appreciated not having to cut the wood. Looking rather pleased with himself, the Dragon had settled down, folding his forepaws like a granary cat, and was lowering his head to talk to the villagers.

Kevla made a small, amused noise. “The people of Lamal are great of heart,” Mylikki said. “We do not fear something for long. Here is our house.”

Kevla turned where Mylikki indicated. In her mind’s eye she saw the ruined house she and the Dragon had happened upon earlier. She blinked, banishing the image. Mylikki opened the door and Kevla was immediately struck by the smell of smoke.

It was dark inside, as the other house had been. Kevla stepped cautiously into a single large, long room and looked around. Hard-packed earth served as a floor. As her eyes became accustomed to the dimness, she saw the source of the smoke. In a pit in the center of the room, a fire burned. A cauldron hung on a tripod hovered over it. Smoke curled upward, escaping through a small hole in the ceiling. Oil lamps also provided some illumination, adding their smoke to that produced by the fire. Kevla’s first thought was to extinguish the fire and simply heat the room with her thoughts, but she realized the flame was needed for cooking. She herself was unaffected by smoke, but Mylikki began to cough almost as soon as they entered.
This cannot be good for them,
Kevla thought.
But it is so cold, they need the fire burning all the time if they are to even survive.

Gelsan looked up as they entered and emptied a bowl filled with chunks of meat into the water boiling in the pot. “It will not take long for the meal to cook, since the sky-monster brought us fresh meat,” she told them.

“Dragon,” Kevla said. She pointed outside.

Gelsan looked out the door where she pointed, smiled, and nodded. “Dragon, then. Whatever he be, we will eat well tonight.” Gelsan had divested herself of her heavy outer garments and now wore a stained, oft-mended overdress in a shade of bright blue. Beneath it, she wore a long-sleeved linen underdress. Her hair, once clearly as golden as that of her daughter’s but now shot through with silver, was braided and pinned to her head. In place of the long poles that had been strapped to her feet, she wore leather shoes.

Mylikki hurried over to her mother and whispered something in her ear. Gelsan’s eyes brightened as her daughter spoke, but then she frowned.

“We should not ask her for such a trivial thing,” Gelsan chided.

“It is
not
trivial,” Mylikki retorted. “It is cleansing and healing. We know it is no great thing for her to do it.”

Gelsan sighed. “Very well, Mylikki. Show the Flame Dancer the hut, and let her decide if she wants to misuse her powers for our entertainment.”

Mylikki grinned and turned to Kevla. “Let me take these off first and I’ll show you.”

Kevla leaned against the carved wooden door as Mylikki sat on one of the raised platforms that lined the rear walls of the house. Quickly, she removed the poles from her feet and hung them on a hook, then hurried back to Kevla.

Kevla smiled at the young woman. Curious, how she thought of Mylikki as “young.” The other woman was no more than a year or two younger than she, but Kevla no longer felt a mere two decades old. She felt ancient; she had seen too much. Done too much. Her innocence had died with her lover.

“Come, Kevla!” Mylikki darted out the door, her short legs churning through the snow. Kevla followed, wondering why Mylikki had removed the poles that had helped her glide so easily over the snow. Then she understood—they were heading into the forest.

Kevla had not ventured deep into any of the woods that she and the Dragon had encountered. They were too dark, too dense, to feel comfortable to a woman used to living in a spacious, bright house in a land in which trees were as rare as rain. She reluctantly followed her guide through a well-worn path that suddenly opened up to the banks of a frozen lake.

Kevla stared at the flat expanse of solid water. Most of it was covered with snow, and that part was indistinguishable from the land. But there were some places where the wind had cleared the surface, and there Kevla saw a deep, rich green.

So beautiful,
she thought.
If only
he
could be seeing these marvels with me.

“Here we are,” Mylikki said. Kevla dragged her gaze away from the green ice and saw what seemed to her to be a smaller version of one of the houses in the clearing. Mylikki tugged open the door and Kevla peered inside. There were no windows, indeed, the little building seemed to be well sealed. The interior was entirely black, and for a moment, Kevla thought that the place had been burned.

She looked back at Mylikki and shook her head, trying to communicate her lack of understanding.

“This is the stonesteaming hut,” Mylikki said, as if that explained everything.

Kevla shook her head, still not understanding. “Hmm,” Mylikki said, chewing on her lower lip. “I thought when you heated the stone, you knew about it. How to explain…long ago, our ancestors designed the stonesteaming huts. They’re made of wood and we seal them up well. We light a fire to heat up several stones, just like you did earlier. When they’re hot, we bring them inside and pour water on them to create steam. It feels good—very warming, very cleansing, and very relaxing.”

She pointed. Kevla could now see a cluster of rocks sitting in the fire pit.

“It takes a long time, almost all day, to get the stones hot. And with so few people left, we don’t stonesteam as often as we would like. But this place means more than just comfort to us.”

Mylikki spoke of a sacred place of birth and death, a place of community, where the seasonal changes were celebrated by ritual both practical and meaningful. Kevla nodded as the other girl spoke. She felt the power of the place as she stepped gingerly inside.

“Careful,” said Mylikki. “The benches are safe to sit on, but don’t touch the walls or ceilings, or you’ll get all sooty.”

Kevla, who had been just about to do precisely that, nodded and kept her hands in close. To her surprise, the wooden benches, as Mylikki had promised, yielded no soot to the touch. Their surface was a rich, shiny black, as if somehow the soot had been sealed and baked into the wood.

She looked at the stones in the center of the hut. Gathering up her
rhia
so she didn’t accidentally brush any soot with it, Kevla squatted beside the stones and extended a hand. Pleasure was warm inside her. In her effort to connect with these people without speech, she had inadvertently stumbled upon something they cherished: the ability to heat stone.

Heat,
she mentally instructed.

The stone obeyed. Kevla touched another, and another, until all the stones were putting out a great deal of heat.

Mylikki stood in the doorway, her hands to her mouth. Her blue eyes were wide with shock. “It is hard to believe,” she whispered. “Even when I see you do this with my own eyes.” She suddenly grinned. “Maybe we should have tried to befriend your people long ago.”

Kevla again wondered just what they thought she was. She got to her feet, dusted off her hands, and smiled.

“Thank you, Kevla. You don’t know what this means to us. It’s been so long….” She blinked hard, and Kevla saw tears in the blue eyes. Quick tears of sympathy sprang to Kevla’s own brown ones. Well did she know how it was to live a harsh existence with few luxuries. She recalled a girl who loved to swim in the cool caverns of the House of Four Waters, and how that simple indulgence restored her. If the stonesteaming made Mylikki and the others happy, then it was as good a use of her Dancer’s abilities as any she could think of. And despite Gelsan’s dismissal of Mylikki’s request, the place clearly represented far more than simply a place to relax.

Mylikki cleared her throat. “Let’s go get the others.”

Within the next few minutes, several of the women who had not so long ago been eyeing Kevla with suspicion now clustered around the stonesteaming hut. Mylikki filled a bucket with snow, which she placed inside near the hot stones. Kevla’s eyes went wide with shock as the women quickly divested themselves and stepped, quite naked, into the building. They handed their clothes to one of the younger girls, who carefully wrapped them into small bundles and put them into a large sack.

Mylikki, whose pale skin and rosy breasts looked to Kevla like something out of a storyteller’s tale, noticed her discomfiture.

“If you don’t want to participate, it’s all right, but I think you’ll enjoy it. It’s thanks to you that we have this at all. It would mean much to us if you shared this with us.”

Kevla looked at the dozen or so women, all fair-haired, all pale-fleshed, sitting on the benches and talking quietly. They were thin…so very thin. She could clearly see the outlines of ribs underneath their pale breasts.

Kevla swallowed, knowing that it would be a good gesture to join them, her own cheeks hot at the thought of being naked in front of so many strangers.

When she had been a handmaiden to the
khashima,
she had slept in a room with the other women. And she had often enjoyed a bath in the caverns that made the Clan of Four Waters the envy of all other clans. But she had worn a sleeping
rhia
at night, and timed her visits to the caverns when she could be alone. To disrobe in front of so many—

She forced a smile and tugged off the
rhia.
The women fell silent and Kevla’s blush deepened as she realized they were scrutinizing her body, with its bronze skin and dark-tipped breasts, as she had earlier scrutinized theirs.

I suppose I ought to be grateful there isn’t mixed stonesteaming,
she thought.
I could be sitting naked with everyone in the village.

Mylikki moved over so Kevla had a place to sit. Gingerly, Kevla perched on the bench. Gelsan pulled the door closed, and suddenly the only light came from the glowing stones.

Kevla relaxed as the dry heat began to penetrate her body. She was comfortable in the heat, around flames or embers, and in the darkness, she could not see the other women. But she could hear them, moving softly, speaking in quiet tones. It was a soothing sound, and Kevla closed her eyes and sank deeper into the warm, anonymous darkness.

She was walking on the snow, her feet sinking into the white stuff, and she was not alone. Beside her walked the Stone Dancer. Though she was comfortable clad only in her red
rhia,
this man was wrapped warmly in layers of thick woolen clothing and a green cape. He was speaking, and she turned her head to listen to him and smile at something he said. He was tall, taller than she, and she was no small woman. He was as she remembered him: handsome, yet sad, with golden hair and eyes as blue as the sky.

Beside them both, regarded not with fear but acceptance, even affection, walked the blue, black-and-white-striped
simmar.
It was an enormous beast with thick, shaggy fur and golden, knowing eyes. It walked over the snow with fluid grace, its shoulders and hips rolling in that smooth movement granted to all cats, large or small.

The three crested a hill. Behind her, Kevla heard the beating of powerful wings, and knew her friend the Dragon was flying behind and above them. The thought gave her comfort.

Her skin prickled. They were being watched. The thought ought to alarm her, but instead she felt warm and taken care of…loved. She reached out her thoughts and tried to—

A sudden hissing sound chased away the vision. Kevla gasped and started up. Mylikki laid a gentle hand on her arm.

“It’s the
hamantu,
” she said. “Gelsan has just put some water on the stones to make steam. You’ll notice that it’s getting hotter now.”

Indeed it was, though it would have to get much hotter than this for Kevla, who had acknowledged her true identity in the depths of a boiling pit of molten earth, to feel any discomfort. The moist heat felt strange to the desert dweller; it clung to her skin like her own sweat. She closed her eyes again, hearing another splash of water on hot stone, feeling the heat rise in a moist wave to caress her. A wonderful lassitude stole over her. She had never felt this relaxed, not even when bathing in the caverns at the House of Four Waters. Now she understood why. She was Fire. Water felt good on her human skin, and she enjoyed the cleansing coolness. But sitting in this place of darkness and deep heat, of smoke and steam—this called to her soul more than the baths did. Perhaps these people were not as alien as they seemed.

She drifted, and for a while time stood still. She hoped she would sink back into the vision, but it did not come a second time. There was only the heat and darkness, and the soft sounds of women moving, and for now, Kevla thought, that was enough.