1

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“MOTHER! TRAVELERS!”

     I am the first to see them, far below me—four people walking on the river road at midday. They are the first travelers this year, which is well along. Already the days are much shorter, and the trees are turning.

     Mother and Aunt Inge come to the cliff, accompanied by the dog, who is outraged that people she doesn’t know would dare venture into her territory. Her barking catches the attention of the travelers, and they stop, all looking up. Aunt Inge raises her arms, and one of the men below returns the greeting.

     “Inge, is it anyone we know?” Mother strains to see, but as always she remains some distance from the cliff edge, and the road below is out of her sight.

     “Three men and a woman,” Aunt Inge says. “They don’t appear to have weapons.” She runs to the shelters for her bow and arrows and climbs down to the halfway ledge with bow and quiver slung over her shoulder. She has never liked to greet strangers unarmed.Aunt Inge is still the fastest climber, even faster than Geyr, who is taller and stronger and much younger. The cliff face is almost vertical, and as she lets herself down the rope, jumping from rock to rock, you would think she was sixteen, not over thirty. She shows me how strong you can be when you’re older. Aunt Inge loves climbing and walking at the very edge of the cliff. That’s the way I want to be when I’m her age.

     From the ledge she scrambles down to the deserted village beside the river, where she talks to the travelers for a long time. Mother, seedling plants in hand, returns to her work in the garden.

     When Aunt Inge returns, one of the group climbs with her, a young man. I hear the two laugh together as they make the difficult climb, and when they reach the clifftop he is clearly delighted with the view. Aunt Inge leads him up to me. “Ana, this is Olaf. His parents and his uncle will wait in the village. We’ll help them up to the bench.”

     Olaf smiles at me. “You have this view every day! Birds would envy it. You can see all the way to the sea!” He appears to be about fifteen, the first visitor ever who is a boy close to my age. The boys I know are the ones I grew up with. Geyr is always with Angela, my older sister, and pays no attention to me. In any case, he is nothing like me. His little brother Brandr is six, and the only other boys in my life are my brothers Druian and Aramel, and Aunt Inge’s boys Leif and Kyle, who are too young for me. Soon I will be a grown woman, and ever since I was small I have wondered how I would find a husband in a place with no boys. Aunt Inge smiles and says that problem will solve itself someday. I know Olaf is only a temporary visitor, but it’s a nice surprise to meet a boy my age. Even though I already knew he was coming.

 

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BEFORE OLAF’S VISIT, the most exciting time for me was five years ago, when I was eight. I went with Mother, Father, Angela, and Druian to the village of Northpoint, where Mother and Father grew up, to meet my grandparents. The boat trip took almost a month, and I loved every moment. First we had to walk for days to Rivermouth, the fishing village where the river empties into the sea. That walk scared me, because I kept thinking about bears, like the one that hurt Father before I was born. That bear was huge—we still have the skin—and the possibility of being attacked by a bear occurred to me every day of the walk to Rivermouth.

     Tears flowed when we arrived in Northpoint. Both my grandfathers had died since Mother and Father last saw them twelve years before. Angela was a baby on that earlier trip and didn’t remember it, but our grandmothers remembered her and cried, and they were sweet to me. Mother and Father were sad about their fathers, but they enjoyed seeing both my grandmothers and all three of my aunts, with their families. We stayed much longer than we had planned. We lived in the house where Mother grew up, which was beautiful, and I could look out and see the ocean. Northpoint is a fishing village, far south of the Benchland and much warmer. I saw boats every day, and we often ate fish.

     My grandmothers always introduced me as Ana, Quitana’s younger girl. They told me about Mother and Father when they were little, and how Father and Uncle Sigurd saved the village from the raiders, a story I’ve heard all my life, along with the story of the bear.       Really. Saved them from vicious raiders, in a big battle. And Mother and Aunt Inge and Grandmother too, all heroes. My mother.

     I loved Northpoint, which had many children my age. I wanted to live there with my grandmothers, but Mother and Father said no—their mothers were too old to take care of an eight-year-old. So I came back, but I told myself I didn’t want to live my entire life and raise my children in a place that had no ocean, or boats, or fish to eat. What a lucky thing for me that I came back.

 

 

“WE SAW A BEAR yesterday. It looked at us but went away.” Olaf is sitting with me on the old bearskin, which shows its age. The men are busy helping Olaf’s family up to the bench.

     “They’re not as dangerous this late in the year.” I feel foolish telling Olaf anything about bears. He undoubtedly knows all about them. He has blond hair and blue eyes, like Aunt Inge and her family, but he is taller. He has a friendly smile. Star is with us, and Olaf scratches her ears while we talk, which surprises me. She is half wolf and has always been shy around visitors.

     “Where do you live in the winter? Surely not in these shelters.”

     “In the cave. I’ll show you.” We walk beside the stream into the cavern that shades the cave entrance, and he looks up in astonishment at the high ceiling. At the rear of the cavern, we duck through the entrance into the cave. Star prefers the outdoors and doesn’t join us.

     Once our eyes adjust to the dim light, we can see the entire length of our sleeping chamber—the stream running through it, our supplies stored against one wall, and our two cooking areas. The cave feels chilly after the warmth of the fall afternoon. “It’s like this year round,” I tell him, “never colder. Even when the stream outside is covered with ice.”

     We walk all the way to the back wall, and Olaf peers up the tunnel that leads to the spirit chamber. “How far back does the cave go?”

     I hadn’t intended to take him to the spirit chamber, but I can see he wants to go. “The tunnel leads into a completely dark room. We’ll need torches.”

     I pick up two torches from the stack beside the tunnel, and the bag with fire tools and tinder. Then we crawl up the sloping tunnel.

     What would it be like to see the spirit chamber for the first time? I grew up with it, and to me it is beautiful beyond my ability to tell. It is huge like the sleeping chamber, but otherwise very different. The spirit chamber is totally dark, but spectacular by torchlight. The stream curves through tall pillars of sparkling rock, hundreds of them, receding into the far distance, and the pool at the near end is deep and still and clear. The spirit chamber looks magical, and it feels like a living thing, aware, watching over me, protecting me.

     The spirit chamber gives me dreams. That’s how I knew Olaf would come.

 

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AUNT INGE TOLD ME that as a baby I cried all the time, except in the spirit chamber. Yrsa told them I must visit there often. She was Geyr’s grandmother; he remembers her from when he was small. I was born there, at midwinter. Most of us children were born there, all except Geyr. I know the spirit chamber by heart—every pillar and passageway. And I know the spirit, as much as you can know anything so big, and it knows everything about me—all my secrets.

     The passage to the spirit chamber slopes steadily upward and comes out in the dark, high above the stream, on a hillside of jumbled rock. I usually climb down in the dark. I plan to light a torch for Olaf, but first we sit on a big rock near the top to wait for our eyes to adjust.

     “It feels like something is watching us,” he says. After a pause, he adds, “I love the sound of the stream. This place is alive. It knows we’re here. I can feel it.”

     All my life I’ve been trying to explain that to the other children, but they simply don’t understand. Nobody does except Mother and Aunt Inge. I thought the spirit was for women. Until Olaf.

 

 

I GREW UP loving my family, all of them, especially Mother and Aunt Inge, healers who share the spirit chamber with me. But I have always been the sort of child who needs time alone and does what she pleases. I went hunting with Father and Uncle Sigurd from the cave’s west entrance. Getting there means climbing a steep scary rock wall, and I loved it. When I was ten I climbed that wall alone, and from the west entrance I hiked to the top of the mountain, where I saw the Benchland from above. Nobody else has done that, and I’m still proud of it, even though I agreed with Father afterward that I should not have gone alone. And over the years, dragging Druian with me at Father’s insistence, I have explored every last passage in our vast cave.

     All my life I have been drawn to the spirit chamber. I have seen it in dreams since I was tiny, and I have been there every day since I was old enough to go alone. I often frightened everyone by going to the spirit chamber without a torch. I don’t need light. The spirit chamber has its own kind of light—I find my way by the sound of the water. Even Mother and Aunt Inge need torches.

     When I light the torch, Olaf surprises me. He catches his breath, and his eyes are wide. “It looks exactly the way it sounds.” He picks his way down the boulders to the pool. I follow, and we sit beside the stream, facing each other. Olaf notices the small hearth we use for ceremonies.

     “We have fires here sometimes. I was born in this room.”

     “The water flows into the stream outside,” he says, “and over the cliff into the river, and into the sea. I can feel it going there. Listen. You can hear it. It’s all connected.”

     I close my eyes to listen. How have I not heard all this before?

     We sit for a long time, hearing the stream going to the light and the sea. I always feel the spirit in this chamber, but now I feel Olaf’s presence as well. I open my eyes to find him looking at me, and as we gaze at each other my world falls away until nothing remains but Olaf, the spirit, and the sound of the stream.

     Am I still breathing? My heart pounds, out of control.

     The torch burns out, but the spirit has forged a link between us that darkness cannot break. I have become part of something new.

 

 

THE DAY IS NEARLY OVER when Olaf and I emerge. The evening is chilly, and everyone is gathered around a fire. Mother is relieved to see us but cross with me. She knew where we were, because she saw I had taken the fire tools. She told Olaf’s parents we were in the cave and would be safe. She wisely didn’t say we had taken only two torches and were surely in the dark, or that I went often into the totally dark cave with no torches at all.

     Mother presents me to Olaf’s parents, Andor and Folke, and Andor’s brother, Ingvar. After Folke presents Olaf, I lead him to the other fire, where Angela and Geyr are feeding the children, and introduce him. That’s when I see how tall he is—as tall as Geyr.

     When we return to the adults, Father is talking with Ingvar, a fisherman. He was only fourteen when he fought under Uncle Sigurd in the famous battle. He is astonished to find himself in the company of its heroes.

     “You’re far from home, Ingvar.”

     “Our father left Andor and me two fishing boats. I came north to tell him. From Rivermouth, I walked north a halfmonth. I passed by here nearly a month ago and had no idea you were up here.”

     Olaf sits with his mother, across the fire from me. Like Geyr, he has blue eyes and light blond hair, but there the resemblance ends. I have seen Geyr almost every day of my life, but after one visit to the spirit chamber I know Olaf better, and when he looks at me this evening it feels as if we share a secret.

     Aunt Inge catches one of those looks and understands everything. “We went to the pool,” I tell her. “He sensed the spirit. I had already taken him there, in a dream.” Aunt Inge knows the spirit chamber better than anyone except me.

     “Ana,” she says quietly, “dreams are important, but you must make decisions about your life in your waking mind.”

     “I could feel his presence even in the dark. The feeling came from the spirit. Our thoughts joined. He heard the water going to the sea.” I know Aunt Inge understands. I also happen to know that she was my age when she and Uncle Sigurd were married, so she isn’t likely to tell me I am too young.

 

 

“I’M HAPPY to move south,” Olaf’s father says. “I’ve had enough of bitter weather.”

     Father raises his eyebrows. “It’s late in the year for a long voyage.”       “Ingvar is a master seaman. He knows how to deal with bad weather.”

     I barely hear. I am thinking of my discussion with Aunt Inge, and I never take my eyes off Olaf. I don’t know what will happen, but the spirit would never betray me.

     The guests sleep in Angela and Geyr’s shelter, near the garden, while Angela and Geyr camp near the edge of the cliff. The evening is beautiful, with a perfect full moon, and as I lie on my sleeping pallet I can feel Olaf’s presence, as if we were still sitting facing each other in the spirit chamber. I can think of nothing else.

 

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I WAKE IN THE MORNING full of happiness. That lasts only until I join the group around the fire, because Olaf and his family are preparing to depart, as if nothing had changed.

     The reality of their departure falls on me like a deadly illness. I have trouble breathing and can’t speak. Around me, everything seems normal. The adults talk with each other as usual. For me, the world has stopped.

     At first I don’t dare look at Olaf, for fear of bursting into tears. Then we exchange a glance of desperation. We walk to the edge of the cliff, but no words come. After the spirit chamber, we hardly talked; we didn’t need to. Now, with the memory of that time swirling around us, I realize that I know almost nothing about Olaf. I don’t know what kind of man he is. Would he be a good husband and father? Would he fit into our group? Does he even feel the way I do?

     I can’t look at him. He would see my anguish.

     “Ana—” he begins, but doesn’t finish. Finally he says, “I could hunt for our food,” and in that moment our lives are set.

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2

 

WHEN WE REJOIN THE GROUP, Olaf’s father snaps, “Get your pack. We’ve been waiting for you.”

     “I’d like to stay longer.” Olaf speaks quietly. “Ana and I don’t wish to part yet.”

     I expect shock and anger from Mother, but Aunt Inge must have warned her when we walked away. When I am an adult I hope I will have some of Aunt Inge’s understanding and wisdom.

     The shock comes from Olaf’s father. “This once, you’ll do as you’re told.” He is instantly in a fury—red face, bulging neck veins—and he advances menacingly on Olaf. I feel a jolt of fear.

     Olaf does nothing to defend himself. His mother steps in front of him, and Olaf’s father slaps her brutally to the ground. Her bloody face horrifies me, and Olaf turns to kneel beside her. Olaf’s father turns angrily on him, but Uncle Sigurd stops the fight by stepping forward and lifting Olaf’s father off the ground from behind. “Your wife and son are guests and under our protection. I will not let you harm them.” Uncle Sigurd is over forty but still a powerful man, and Olaf’s father cannot free himself. When he stops struggling, Uncle Sigurd sets him down.

     Olaf’s father whips around, his face contorted with rage. A short dagger appears in his hand.

     “Andor, NO!” Olaf’s uncle seizes his brother’s arm and wrenches the knife away. Star rushes into the fray, and her barking makes a bad situation worse. Olaf’s mother is on her feet, crying in Olaf’s arms.

     “You must leave,” Uncle Sigurd says. Star stands at his side, bristling and growling.

     “Oh, yes, we’ll leave.” Olaf’s father gestures angrily to his wife and son, but she shakes her head, and Olaf draws her to the other side of the fire, safely beyond reach. I fear this will bring another attack, but Olaf’s father sees Uncle Sigurd watching him and thinks better of it. “Stay, then, and be forever cursed.”

     At the edge of the cliff he glares back at Uncle Sigurd. “You will regret this.” Then, his hand on the rope, he turns to me, and his face is one of pure hatred. “You—you put him under a spell. You hexed him. We know how to deal with people like you.”

     We all stand in stunned silence as he starts down the rope. He is no climber, and his clumsiness only makes him angrier. His brother is obviously embarrassed. He spreads his hands and apologizes. Then he too goes to the rope and starts down the cliff.

     I feel as if I have been slapped in the face—my cheeks burn, and my heart races. Olaf’s father doesn’t even know me. Why does his anger wound me so?

     Beside the river, Olaf’s uncle grabs his brother’s arm and swings him around, and the two argue heatedly. We can barely hear them, and we cannot understand their words. They start down the river road, still arguing, and pass out of sight before the sun reaches the village.