Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75650 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75650 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
It is all very strange. I do not feel like a hunter who has nearly died. I do not feel like a male who survived a cave-in. I feel…normal. I just do not remember anything that has happened. When they first told me, I thought it a joke. A cave-in? At the tribal caves? Everything lost? Old, peaceful Eklan dead?
Surely I would remember that.
But I search my mind and search my mind, and there is nothing there.
Yet the fact that there was a cave-in cannot be denied. My people are here in the snow before the Elders’ Cave, homeless. I have seen many tears and much frustration since I awoke. I have seen people carefully doling out soup to make meat last. And I have seen the Elders’ Cave, flung onto its side, resting in a gorge that was not in my memory, either.
It feels as if I closed my eyes and have woken to a strange new world, and it unsettles me.
Most unsettling of all?
The human females.
I can remember the first dvisti I killed, and the first time my father took me hunting. I remember my sister’s birth and what a squalling, strange thing she was. I remember how my first taste of sah-sah burned the tongue. But I do not remember the humans.
I am told that they came to our world on a strange black cave, not unlike the Elders’ Cave. That Vektal mated with the curly-haired one, and she brought him to the others. Now, everyone else in the tribe has mated one. Several have young, and at all times, there is the sound of a kit wailing in distress.
And I am one of the ones that is mated.
The strangeness of it curls in my belly and makes me sick. Not that I am mated to a human, but that I cannot remember it at all. The humans have been here for three seasons—two bitter, one brutal. Long enough for the human that is ‘mine’ to bear my kit. They are a welcome, happy part of the tribe.
How can I not know of this? How can my mind betray me so?
I scan the smaller forms huddled near the fire and see two humans talking. The one they say is my mate has a flat face with no bumps, a very tiny nose, and no horns. Her mane is a strange furry brown. Other than that, I remember nothing about her. Normally I recognize her amongst the tribe because she carries her kit—our kit—on her back in a strange pack. I do not see a human wearing that today, so I squint at the females by the fire. Not the small one—the other. It is Stay-see. The one that is my mate.
Was my mate.
She is pressing something between rocks and talking to the tiny one who waves her hands and speaks angrily. They seem strange to me, with their pasty pale coloring, lack of horns, and small build. If I were to stand next to Stay-see, she would not come to my shoulder. She bends over to pick something up, and there is no tail, a sight I find unnerving.
The other female says something, and then they both look over at me.
I busy myself with my spear again, not wanting to be caught staring. I have tried talking to Stay-see a few times since I awoke in the healer’s tent, but each time it goes badly. It always ends with her weeping and running away, and I do not wish that today. Perhaps her tears should upset me more than they do. They upset me, but only because when she cries, I feel confusion. I do not like to cause distress in another. I want to comfort her, but I have no words of comfort to give.
“Are you sure they will let you out of the camp with that, brother?” Salukh drops to the ground next to me, crossing his legs. He pulls out his favorite sharpening stone and his knife, and begins to scrape it. “If Mother sees it, I am sure she will come running.”
I snort. My mother has been coddling me as if I were a fussy kit and not a grown hunter. “It is a spear. Surely they cannot stop me from making weapons if I am not allowed on the hunt.”
“I suspect you will be allowed soon,” my brother says. “All hands are needed to gather food.” He scrapes his stone along his knife, unruffled. Salukh is always calm. Always possessed. He does not look as if worries over mates and the brutal season ever cross his mind, though I know he has a human mate now, too, and her belly is big with kit.
“I am tired of lying about, doing nothing. I am glad to be out of the furs.”
“I am glad you are out, too.” My brother gives his knife a long scrape and then offers the sharpener to me. “How is your head?”