THE MANTOOTH, Part Two

Sylviana lay propped on her elbows, her favorite fur half in and half out of the entrance of the smaller cave, looking down on the snow-dusted grasses with misting and faraway eyes. Her mood triggered by the scene, she was thinking of the fragile water domes she had toyed with as a child, all alone in the unused bedroom of her grandmother’s house. Christmas. Her mind conjured the room before her: the massive four-posted bed, the mahogany dresser crowned with photographs of aunts and uncles, the lace-curtained and frosting windows. And she remembered one in particular, a Nativity scene, her favorite. She remembered the way the tiny flakes would sift softly through the water and onto the roof of the manger, only to be swept away again as she lifted the glass dome and shook it. The water would swirl like a sudden wind, then the flakes settle slowly.....

She was aware of movement on the plains below. Her eyes focused, and she saw Kalus walking back towards the mountain through the snow-covered grasses, turning his head from side to side, watching. Though he would never admit it, she knew he was worried over Skither’s extended absence, and about its bearing on their safety and their future. He stood at the edge of the gorge, looked up at her, then descended the steep half-path of stone and was swallowed up in shadow. Her mind returned fully to the present.

They had moved to the smaller enclosure as soon as Akar was able, expecting to be there only a short time; but the Mantis had not returned. Nearly six weeks had passed since his departure, and the girl, at least, had begun to think he never would. But if ever she mentioned the possibility to Kalus, he grew sullen and cold; and she had decided at length to put the thought from her mind, and let Nature run its course. Still, she couldn’t help wondering how it would be if the larger cave were truly theirs. She had grown very fond of, or at least accustomed to, the safety of the ‘mountain’---their word for the higher, tooth-shaped rise in the ridge of granite cliffs---and leaving it now for the uncertainty that lay beyond was not a thought she relished.

Kalus made his way up the slope to the Mantis’ ledge, paused for breath, then continued. Climbing ever closer up the path, he smiled at her with half his face, and reaching the parapet, passed by her and went inside. The pup, roused from its attentions to a small bone, wagged its tail and ran to greet him as always. Akar sat up gingerly on his two furs near the back of the enclosure. Kamela was off somewhere alone. The girl rose after a time, ducked her head and followed him in.

He sat cross-legged on the floor with the pup in his lap, thinking. She knew that look. Something (more than the ordinary) was troubling him. After a short silence she asked simply.

“What’s wrong?”

“Skither should have been back by now. The weather is growing too cold, and still he doesn’t come.” Sylviana said nothing. He looked at her. “I know. I feel it too. This place is too small for so many to live. If he doesn’t return soon I will try to find us another place.” She hesitated. “What about the lower cave?”

“Perhaps. But not yet.” He set down the wolf pup and drew his legs together with his arms, sat gnawing at his knees and looking worried.

The girl moved behind him and began to massage his neck and shoulders. He reached up a hand as if make her stop, but instead took her by the wrist and turned to face her. His deep blue eyes studied her with an unreadable expression. Dropping to one knee in the way now familiar, she stroked his open forearm tentatively.

“Are you angry with me?”

“No.” He shook his head, kissed the back of her hand. He drew back into his former attitude and remained silent for a time, occasionally rocking himself and staring at the floor. Finally, as with great effort, he said the words.

“I’m confused.”

“About what?”

“The Mantis. And you.”

“Why me?”

“You make the world so much closer. I can’t run, or close my mind anymore. Almost, I can’t hide from the questions..... I can’t speak of it now. Not yet.”

Sylviana knew he would say nothing more. Again she stroked his arm, felt his hand encircle her wrist, then rose to prepare a meal.

That night as they lay together among the furs that made their bed, Kalus moved close beside her and buried his head against her chest. Though they had slept together many times, he had not yet tried to make love to her. In his instinctive way he sensed she was not ready, and in fact this voice inside him was correct. He still, in part, represented to her the harsh world from which he came, a world she was not ready to fully accept, or give herself up to. But this was not what held him back now. A fear that he could not understand---the fear of losing the things he had found---haunted him now as it had for weeks, seeming to intensify with each passing day.

Sylviana stroked his hair, now smooth, and felt him warm against her. They lay thus for several minutes, until she realized he was crying. She took his face in her hands, not understanding.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, shaking his head and clearing his eyes. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.” She took a deep breath and rolled onto her back in frustration. But still the warmth that was in her made her reach out and touch his face, his neck.

“The only thing that frightens me is not knowing what you’re feeling. You never tell me. You keep it all inside. I know it hurts, Kalus, a lot. But you have to try. I’m not going to judge you, or think you’re weak..... I care for you very much. In my way. . .I love you.” Kalus gripped the edge of the fur and curled it tightly in his hand, as if needing to use his body over mind. The night was quiet and still around them.

“I don’t know what we’ll do if he doesn’t come back.”

“Well, what are our choices?” She truly wanted to know, and she thought it might give him something concrete to discuss. She knew, or thought she knew, he didn’t deal well with abstractions.

As he spoke the words, Kalus felt reluctance giving way. Almost it came as a relief to let go. And as he spoke it took his mind from the place they were, and into something like a dream, however real, that gave him some escape from himself. Though his worry was not abated.

“I’ve thought about returning to Carak Mesa, where my people live in warmer weather. There are several caves, joined by short passageways, and one chamber that is large enough for all of us. It is dry, and gives some protection against the wind.

“But it is too hard to defend,” he continued. “Even with a man guarding each entrance, we had to keep our fires burning brightly and our weapons close at hand. Barabbas held it more through intimidation than anything. Perhaps we could block all but one entrance. But the rock is like hard white earth filled with pebbles---”

“Limestone,” interjected the girl.

“Yes, and not always firm to brace wooden poles and stones across.” His gaze returned from the low roof. “Do you want to here this?”

“Yes, very much.” Even this brief scenario had given a clearer picture of his life among the hill-people than all the shy, abbreviated accounts which had come before it.

“There are other caves, along the ridge farther north. But they are not large, and too close to the bottom of the gorge. I don’t like to think that other creatures could crawl down on me: being below the level of the land. Then there are the earth-holes dug by the wolves in the Northern Hills. With Akar ---the pack has gone to the South, as I told you---it would be all right for us to live there until Spring, perhaps longer.

“But there also, there are too many unknowns. The great bears come farther south in Winter, crossing the Broad River far to the west, where it is shallower and stony. Their violence, when enraged, is like no other creature. My father was killed by such a bear. . .and the thought of finding you, dragged out across a hillside..... That is what I fear above all else.” He released a troubled breath.

“The sandstone ridge, the caves to the south, are of stone even worse than the Carak. And there the mountain cats rule. I don’t know where else to go.”

“What about Skither’s cave?”

He shook his head. “Even if Skither has gone to another place (the thought that he was injured and unable to return, was something his mind could not accept), the entrance is much too hard to defend. Perhaps we could block up this passage with stones.” He pointed to toward the smaller opening. “But what can we do with an entrance so high as the one below? That is the same reason we cannot stay here. Soon all creatures will know that Skither is gone, and then the shaft becomes the thing impossible to defend.” This was the chance she had waited for, but now she felt reluctant to speak.

“I think..... I know a way we could barricade the entrance, and make the larger cave safe.” His eyes narrowed upon her turned form, silhouetted against the patch of starry sky beyond. “It would be hard work, and you would have to let me help you. But it can be done.” Again, though his own shape was lost against the back of the enclosure, she felt the deep and sullen trepidation inside him. “We don’t have to think about it now.”

“There is a real way? That you have seen?”

“Yes.”

After an interval of silence he moved away, as if to sleep. But soon the great emptiness and restlessness came over him again. Hardly knowing why, he moved closer and put his arm across her, feeling her body against him. He lay still for a moment. His heart beat heavily, and slowly his hand found its way to her breast.

Sylviana felt this, more aware perhaps than he, of the feelings that lay behind it. She felt his gentle, yearning caress, closed her eyes peacefully and yielded to it until she felt the hand stop, tremble slightly, and he moved away again.

“No, Kalus. It’s all right.”

Through the stir of her emotions a feeling of sudden, firm resolve came over her. She stood up, reached down to her waist, and took off her blouse. She unfastened, and slipped out of her faded jeans. She removed her underclothes more slowly, her own heart beating heavily, and lay down beside him. And shyly, and affectionately, and longingly drew him close.

His heart thundering, he pulled away his own garments and surrendered to the torrent inside him. His last words as emotion and sensation overpowered him were strange, yet he spoke them with all his soul.

“I need you. Sylviana!”

And her name flowed like water through the piercing of his heart.

A light snow fell from the silent soft grayness of the sky. Sylviana stood on the parapet with the fur wrapped around her, immersed in a feeling of peace and attachment to her world such as she had seldom experienced. She watched Kalus on the ledge below, unaware of her eyes, studying the high entrance to the Mantis’ cave and pacing uncertainly. At first, as it often did, her mind questioned his mood. How could he not still feel the warmth and purposeful beauty of their love-making, the gentle gifts that Nature was bestowing on them even now?

But as she continued to watch him, a feeling of contented understanding had so overwhelmed her doubts as to make them appear small and mean, a source of reproach and beneath further consideration.

For here, she then expounded, was a creature untainted by civilization or corrupt society, his roots in the earth, his feet sometimes painfully touching the ground beneath him, free (indeed unable to do otherwise) to react naturally and honestly, like a graceful and intelligent animal, to the world and circumstances around him. Therefore, her thoughts continued, his hopes, fears and yearnings were a direct outgrowth of that world. His morals, free from religious preconceptions, were dictated to him solely and directly by the needs of Nature.

Her last thought came to her as a culmination, almost an orgasm, of all the others that had come before it, tying them together and giving them still greater meaning and significance. Her lover lived, the more so because he did not know it, the deepest and purest human existence: that of spiritual yearning, and animal desire.

She pulled the soft fur tighter, massaged one arm with the other, and looked out across the plains. The snow had all but stopped, and far out over the western hills her eyes caught movement against the clouds. It might have been an eagle but for the unnatural, straight ahead motion of its flight..... Her heart sank. Slowly but steadily the flying shape drew on, till there could be no doubt. Dejectedly, she called down to her companion.

“Kalus.” His head jerked towards her. “You’d better come up here.” He turned a quick half circle and drew his sword as if expecting danger. Finding none, he looked up at her with a questioning gaze. Her arm pointed out over the grass- and tree-pocked drifts of the savanna. Seeing what she saw, but not appearing to, he sheathed his sword and began to climb. Not until far past the halfway point did he look up from the stone in front of him. Misunderstanding, she pointed again.

“Put down your arm,” he said in guarded tones. Soon he stood on the parapet beside her, and only then looked out at the lowering sky. The girl spoke.

“It’s Skither.”

“No. It’s not.”

“Then who?” He shook his head.

Soon she too could see that it was not the mantis they had known. It was smaller, and flew with greater speed but less grace. Also, the feel of it was different. It was very close now, perhaps a mile off, and though it struggled in a growing tail-wind, its wing-plates ruffling badly, it seemed determined not to rest until it had reached the mountain, where clearly now it was heading. Finally it crossed the gorge and landed roughly on the ledge, its brownish-green armor looking unnatural against the stone and snow. Kalus, whose tracks showed plainly about the entrance, set his jaw and said nothing. Akar limped out of the enclosure and stood between them, studying the young mantis.

It remained motionless, head down and breath coming hard, oblivious to anything but its own fatigue. Finally raising its head, it studied the tracks briefly, then turned towards the three of them with no outward sign of surprise. At length it raised an unsteady foreclaw and signaled someone, apparently Kalus, to come down. Through her confusion and alarm, Sylviana suddenly noticed that its other forelimb was severed just below the first joint. One of its antennae was also missing, and it seemed to stand only with an effort.

Kalus took a step forward but was stopped by Akar, who took his wrist gently but firmly between his jaws. Kalus relented, and let the wolf pass instead. Akar made his way to the path, and taxing the wounded shoulder only at greatest need, began to descend. But in an angry rocking motion that clearly showed its displeasure, the mantis waved him off. It raised the intact foreclaw once more, this time pointing undeniably at Kalus. He turned to the girl.

“I don’t know what this means. But he will not kill me like this. It is not their way.” He gave his head a severe shake, and made his way down the slope.

Stepping out onto the ledge as he had once done before Skither, Kalus felt less awe but greater danger. Not yet an adult, the creature before him was a mystery. And young and hurt and exhausted, there was no way of knowing..... Stopping at a distance, Kalus began to signal a greeting.

Brushing off his half understood formalities, the mantis came straight to the point. “I am only a messenger,” he began, “Sent by others to relay this news. Skither is dead, killed by a mating pair as he tried to draw them out to the place where others stood waiting.”

Kalus’ heart sank, as if a part of himself had died as well. He hardly noted what followed, and only much later was able to piece it all together in his mind.

The seasonal battle in the desert spawning place had been fierce and desperate. Apparently Skither had half expected such an end, for he left word with his comrades of the man-child and his mate, leaving these instructions for them:

“The cave is now yours, along with everything in it. This, my messenger, will remain here until he is well enough to move on. Be of good hope, and continue.”

But Kalus stood in empty disbelief. He could not believe, for all that he held to be strong and unchanging had been suddenly, irrevocably cut out from under him. Skither had been more than a symbol to him, he had been a living god---strength and courage and wisdom personified. If he in all his prowess could be broken, then what chance did he himself have against the ceaseless ravages of his world? The question was too much for him.

In all his days he would see only two more of the noble creatures. Their time on earth running out, it was perhaps a small comfort to know that the reign of their enemies was also passing. A thousand years of radiation and unlimited carrion had raised the tarantula to its huge proportions. But now, like the mantis, who had grown of Nature’s necessity alongside it, the giant spiders were an archaic and dying race. And though each year the gathering was larger---as if some last instinct called all in desperation to the place of spawning---each time the number of eggs left untouched (by the mammals which had come to prey on them) was smaller. And without the ensuing cannibalism among the hatchlings---out of which several hundred would be reduced to perhaps a dozen---those that survived were more feeble, easier for both the mantises and natural attrition to kill. An era born of the violence of men was slowly passing.

Kalus turned without ceremony or awareness and made his way back to the path. He climbed without feeling, or knowing where he was, and heard a voice inside him say it was all right, he still had the woman.

Then all at once he felt the fullness of what he had learned, and knelt down and leaned forward against the cold indifferent stone. His arm gave his eyes no comfort.

Skither was dead.

Sylviana watched him with apprehension. She had felt an unreasoning terror as he stood before the wounded insect; but now a fear more akin to reality, and therefore duller and deeper, presented itself. She could not know what was said to him, but she knew him well enough to understand at least a part of what he was feeling. Some grim news (or threat) had been passed on to him; and because he had been weak, because he had surrendered to emotion, because he had made love, he was being punished, and blamed himself. Such were the scars that his life had left upon him.

When at length he looked up at her, she knew that her fears had been realized. The closeness and love that had been in his eyes so few hours before, were gone. All feeling had left him, and he was again trapped in the world he did not understand.

His guiding star was gone.

The next morning when Kalus woke, he felt, through the pain and loss, a resurgence (and need) of life and hope. The cold had crept beneath his fur while he slept, and all around him hung a chill moist air that called for action. He still cared for the girl, there were other lives linked to his own, and he knew he must continue. Skither had told him he must.

So he rose and walked out onto the parapet. Sylviana was there ahead of him, her eyes tearing from the cold and lack of sleep, wrapped in the same fur that now seemed more a refuge than a friend. And though he was sorry he couldn’t, he did not touch her. She turned to him a face that understood, but hurt the more because of it. He pretended not to notice.

“Has the mantis come out yet?”

“No. Akar tried to go to him. I think he hurt his shoulder again. You can see him---” She pointed just inside the larger entrance, to the place where the wolf waited on its haunches.

“Yes, but it was not done foolishly. We must move there anyway, and secure it for ourselves as soon as possible. We will have to work very hard, and you will have to help me.” Again his emotions had become an unreadable maze. Sylviana lowered her head and sighed, and the breath the wind blew back through her disheveled hair was clearly visible.

From this, as well as other tokens, Kalus knew that the first real storms of winter were not far off, and tried to gird himself for the arduous labor to come. He was ready to break his back and his heart to construct the shelter Sylviana had described, but all pleasure had gone out of the thought.

It was still morning when the young mantis emerged, looking little better than it had the day before. From the long ripple in the underside of its abdomen, both Kalus (who had descended) and the wolf could see it had not eaten. But when Akar, as best he could, asked if he would not stay a day longer and partake of the food that Skither had left him, he was curt to the point of menace.

“I will not dishonor his memory in that way.”

“But surely---”

“I will not dishonor his memory!”

And so, without formality or warning cry, without perhaps the proper preparation, the creature opened its wings, raised itself into the air, and left them forever. Its form grew small and disappeared into the west like a drowning branch carried past by a river. And the river flowed on, unchanging.

Then Sylviana climbed down and stood beside them, trying to be a part of, or at least to understand, what had happened.

“What did he say to you?”

“That he would not eat, or remain another hour. He seems determined to prove that he needs nothing and no one.”

Trying to think in the vernacular of that world, she put in timidly. “He will be very strong someday.”

“If he lives.” She said nothing more.

As if in imitation, Kalus determined to begin the work at once. Using one of the poles from the neglected frame, he carved a handle for the rusty ax-head the girl had found. He sharpened its cutting edge as best he could, and with the sun at its height, set out to begin felling trees.

Sylviana went with him, along with Kamela, for warning and added protection. He cut and pieced an entire tree before he would let himself rest. Then together he and the girl carried a twelve-foot section back to the cave, he bearing most of the weight on his shoulder, asking only that the girl come behind and steady him.

And so the long toil began.

Sylviana’s plan, which he modified only slightly, was to build a three-sided barrier of interlocking logs, like an open letter C. Its ends would rest just inside the arch, gradually narrowing as they rose, nearly flush, against the inner walls of the entrance. It was to be reinforced from within by stout beams, and by the strength of these, as well as by its own girth and weight, to form an impenetrable barrier against both the elements, and the fiercest predators. A single, windowless door would pierce the forward wall, and the entire structure be sealed inside and out with mortar, and at the edges, with bricks of stone. Sylviana had read a book as a child in which a family of pioneers had built a log cabin, using only the materials provided by Nature. And now the memory of it served her well.

So Kalus cut, and they both carried, till she thought her back would break and Kalus die, where he stood, of exertion. She could not know that what pained him far more than the ceaseless labor (he had worked as hard before) was the fact that he was using all his spiritual, as well as physical reserves.

Because a man can work as hard and diligently as he must, to the extreme limits that mind and body will endure, so long as he has a reason, and a need to do so. And when it is done to provide food and shelter for the lives entrusted to his care, he can work harder and more selflessly still. But take away his reason, his hope for some kind of betterment, however distant, and the strongest, most determined man becomes rootless and lethargic. Tasks and dangers he thought little of before, become as tedious and harrowing as a literal fight for life. Kalus continued because he knew, as every animal does, that he must continue. But as the work sapped his strength and the emotional wound caused by the death of Skither bled unchecked, he became first weary, then angry, then through the ceaseless, hopeless repetition, empty and indifferent.

Sometimes when he felt weakest he would look at the girl, and remember the beautiful thing they had shared. And for a time these memories of warmth and desire would sustain him. But soon all fantasies of a peaceful and prosperous future became nothing more to him than a carrot dangling at the end of a stick, though he possessed no such metaphor to help him understand. And he had no psychologist to tell him that by submerging his grief and distancing himself from the girl he was hurting himself, and stifling the healing forces of time and close companionship. He cut, and carried, and shaped and fitted, sometimes in blinding snow, stopping during daylight hours only to hunt, or to look over what had been done. Because he had no choice.

And slowly the shelter went up. Pine and birch and gnarled oak, he laid them down and made a refuge of their bones, as dark thoughts tormented him.

But the shelter went up. And the night the frame was completed, and all work done save the filling in of cracks, the heaviest storm of the season moved in and piled three feet of snow outside it, blocking them in with drifts up to twice that high. Without warning or ceremony, their new home had been christened.

The next morning Kalus had not the strength to force open the frozen door, and sat alone by the fire for hours, speaking to no one, feeling nothing but weak and shivery exhaustion. The Cold World, which he had said he loved, was upon them.

That night the two slept together for the first time since word of Skither’s fall. Kalus had no strength even to touch, and was moved not at all by his lover’s gentle caresses and quiet words, nor even by the tears he wiped apologetically from her eyes as she said, “I understand.” From this more than any other token, he knew that the blows absorbed of a lifetime had finally taken their toll. He was like a hurt fighter, hanging on, half waiting for the knockout blow.

He woke feeling little bitter, his emotions still dazed and floundering, to find the girl reading quietly on the stairs that led to the silent altar. The sight reminded him of their first meeting, when he had nearly died a physical death. Perhaps this dull anguish was not as bad.....

Then he saw Kamela, and his hopelessness returned. It was almost as if she longed for death, in any form. There was no other way to read the blank despair of her eyes. Akar rested stoically beside the girl, his own thoughts hidden from view. Only the pup was stirring, poking impatiently at her mother’s underside and whining plaintively for food. None had eaten meat for several days, and the she-wolf’s undamaged breasts were dry.

Sylviana rose and came closer, gently brushing his hair with her fingers. “I have to hunt,” he said flatly. Then suddenly as she turned away he pulled her close and buried his head against her.

“Forgive me,” he said. And with those words a flicker of feeling came back to him.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Let it out.” But he could not let it out. His body would not allow the expenditure. “... When do you have to hunt?”

“In the afternoon, when the sun is warmer and I am stronger. I feel so weak.” He shook his head to fight off a tear of exhaustion. “Is there any water left?” She brought it, along with a half-filled bowl of sebreum. He ate readily, though his body cried out for meat.

She sat beside him on the bed, speaking softly and brushing out his hair. It did not matter what she said. Her voice was like music, and her nearness and touch a therapy no money could buy. And like a sleeper woken by a lover’s kiss, he began to respond. His body was still very weak, but Kalus was a creature whose heart held the key to all survival.

And he began to remember that he was, in fact, a survivor. The fiery vigor of his soul spoke words of endurance and starting again. In the middle of a sentence he reached over and kissed her with his lips, teeth and tongue, and half playfully, half longingly, bit her cheek.

As he drew back, knowing he had not the strength, he was struck by the look she gave him, her face so close. And he was jarred to his very bones by the realization. . .that she wanted him. WANTED him.

All his life, the best he had hoped for was a companion who would tolerate him, and be grateful for his strength and affection. But in Sylviana’s eyes there was a longing as deep and real as his. Perhaps she even loved. . .HIM. In his current state it was almost too much, and he became afraid. Again, through the wild hopes she inspired in him, he felt the fear of losing her, or of being killed himself. His face could not hide the intensity of what he was feeling.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I..... You know that I am weak now. Is that all right?”

She took his head to her chest in an outpouring of emotion as primal as any she had ever known. “Yes. It’s all right.” And in that moment of honesty and total surrender, she did love him. But she too backed away, because they were not yet in a place to feel love all the way. She cleared her eyes, breathed in and stood up straight.

“Right now you’re going to eat again, and I don’t want to hear about rationing. You’ve been putting out for weeks, and it’s time you took something back in. Then you’re going to lie down and rest. Understood?” He nodded, and touched her hair. Then she took his bowl and went into the back.

He too felt the need to surrender, and to trust, as Skither had told him. He remembered his words. “Do not carry the weight alone. It will crush you.” Yes, he felt nearly crushed. Whatever end would come of it, this day at least he must let go.

So when he had eaten he lay down on the bed, and asked Sylviana to sit beside him. She did, and to pass the time he asked her a question suggested to him by the altar, the dulled mirror, and the memory of his first days in that place.

“How did you come to befriend Akar? I’ve often wondered.”

“You’re not asking just to make me feel better?”

“No, truly.”

She was more than willing to recount the one glad memory of her long vigil, alone in a strange land with danger and confusion all around. “Well. To say that I was distraught those first few weeks..... Try to understand. The first thing I saw when I finally mustered the courage to go out onto the ledge, was some kind of big cat dragging down a horse at the very edge of the ravine. I got so scared I didn’t know what to do. The cave seemed little enough protection, but at least there I could hide. I know you must have thought me a coward.”

“No, you were wise. And the big cat did you a favor.” There was no sarcasm in his voice.

“Anyway. Once I figured out that sebreum was something I could eat, as much as I cursed myself for it, I just couldn’t make myself go out into that world. Then there was the Voice, telling me to stay there, and wait for some kind of sign.

“I was alone and scared and miserable. That anything at all could walk through the open entrance and tear me apart was obvious, and it really started getting to me. The few animals I saw when I stood just inside it seemed reluctant to venture too close, but that wasn’t much comfort. And of course I had no idea why.

“But one night, just as the sun was setting, I caught a glimpse of something slip down into the ravine from the far side, which had always before been the line they wouldn’t cross. I hoped my eyes were playing tricks on me, and I didn’t see or hear anything else for a while. But some kind of other sense told me I was in danger, and that whatever it was I had seen was coming closer. I got so scared I ran to the bed and hid beneath the furs, as if that was any protection, and found myself shaking like a leaf.

“I couldn’t just lie there, and when I realized how stupid and helpless I was being, I got angry. So I decided to go into the back and dig out some kind of weapon. It may have been my one real moment of courage.”

“There have been others,” he said quietly. She turned towards him, and wondered why these simple words meant so much. “Go on.”

“All right. I went into the back and found the hunting knife. I was so determined and angry that for about thirty seconds I forgot to be afraid. It was a wonderful, defiant feeling.”

“Yes.”

“Unfortunately it didn’t last. I walked back into the front to find a big, gaunt wolf staring me down, bristling and snarling. It was Akar, but he didn’t look at all the way he does now. His ribs practically stuck through his skin with hunger. His side was gashed and caked with mud and dried blood..... It was horrible.

“I screamed and practically threw the knife across the floor. I just couldn’t take it. I dropped to my knees, shaking and crying like a mad thing. I fell forward on my arms and just lay there, covering my head..... I thought my life was over. But Akar never moved.” She gazed across at her first companion, eyes glistening.

“Do you know what it’s like to expect death and find friendship? He was hurt, Kalus, badly. And half starved, I’m sure. He could have killed me so easily, to save himself..... I looked up after maybe five minutes, to find him just watching me, with all the hatred gone out of his eyes. He came closer and I thought I would scream again, but he stopped.

“The rest doesn’t need to be said, I guess. But you have to know, I’ve never been so moved in all my life as when he finally came up to me, and I realized he meant no harm. Just to have a friend, to hold and touch, after all that fear. To not be alone anymore. You can’t know how much that meant to me.” She lowered her head and cried silently, and Kalus found to his dismay that a tear had escaped his eyes as well.

“I know,” he said. “That is how I felt when Barabbas saved me.” He wanted to say that she would never be alone again, but he couldn’t.

Kamela could not block the images from her mind; they rose in their full intensity before her. The death of Shaezar, whom she had learned to love. The brutal rape by Shar-hai and his guard. Then the murder of her two sons, too small even to understand what was happening. A line of horror had been crossed inside her, from which there was no returning.

They struggled together through the snow, these two whom life had wounded, the wolf mortally, the man to within the balance of a hair, though he still had hope. Kalus, knowing her pain, cut the best swath he could, and
Kamela followed behind him. The wind had distributed the snow unevenly, so that in some places movement was relatively easy, in others, nearly impossible. The thick overcast of the sky threatened further storm, and the white of the accumulated snow could not fully illuminate the darkened landscape.

They traveled north where Kalus hoped, though his heart was sickened by it, to find a frozen deer among the outlying forests. They really had no other chance. The plains animals were gone, live deer were too swift, and no rabbit or fox would be stirring in the extreme cold of this day.

So he trudged northward, chilled and sweating, using strength his body did not have to give. His stomach felt hollow and sickly; his muscles trembled with fatigue. But he knew (or thought) the alternative was despair, and his mind was not clear enough to perceive the danger. So he continued.

And as he pushed on, farther and farther beyond the limits of endurance, it was as if he passed through a veil and walked, literally, into another world. Time and distance became confused. . .and still on his feet he dreamed of straggling columns of men, plodding through a frozen countryside. Ragged blue uniforms clung to their backs, to his. Wounded
and sick, with helpless eyes searching both sides of the road, fearful of ambush. A comrade addressed him in French.....

He stumbled forward in the snow, recovered himself. The world was quiet and deathly still. Kamela stood beside him, tense and erect, ears raised and eyes searching. They had wandered into a recession between wooded hills, where the snow was thick and visibility difficult. A pine branch released its burden of white, and suddenly he felt it too. They were being watched. He had led them into an ambush.....

A dark shape flitted between trees on the eastern slope. A low, impatient growling was heard. Kalus drew his sword to make a stand, but Kamela would not let him. She bolted toward the slope even as a rush of movement erupted there. Two thin and ravening wolves, along with three hyenas, broke from cover and began to converge upon the line she made, straight for them.

Her motive was simple. Her own life meant nothing, and the man-child need not die. Also, there was the chance for revenge. She ran toward death free and unafraid.

Kalus hesitated, unsure of enemies behind, and by the time he turned and made up his mind to follow, it was too late. They were upon her, harrying and tearing in a scene made horrible and slow-motion by the snow. Yet somehow she snarled free and lunged at one of the wolves, who had stumbled. The others tore into her side and back legs, but her teeth had found their mark, and her last desire was fulfilled. The brutal Armus, black wolf of Shar-hai’s guard, fell gasping and bleeding, his throat cut. As Kamela surrendered willingly to death.

She was gone, and Kalus knew it, and the worst part was that his mind had already begun to accept it. Raging at his weakness and cowardice, he rushed toward the scene of her bloody debauch.

But for all his reckless will and hatred, his body simply would not respond. He had not gone twenty paces before his heart and lungs screamed in revolt, and all strength left him. At the same moment the hyenas left their kill and savagely blocked his path. Their bristling, snarling warnings said as clearly as words. “Be gone, or we will kill you, too.”

And as he stood helpless, mustering all his courage just to stand and look imposing, the remaining wolf rushed past them and would have attacked. But the others would not follow, and he was reluctant to face Kalus’ sword alone. By her final act of defiance, Kamela had saved his life.

The hyenas returned to the still body of the she-wolf, and bickering among themselves, began to drag it back into the forest. The companion of Armus stood for a time beside him, as if expecting him to somehow shake off the stroke and rise again. But soon he saw that the wound was mortal, and knew his own life was in danger if he stayed. The hyenas would turn on him next, and he had no illusions about what would happen to the body of his friend. He turned to the northwest, and disappeared beneath the silently whispering pines.

Kalus was left alone with the dying wolf. And as he watched its terrified eyes grow dull slowly like a fire that had burned itself to nothing, he felt he watched his own death as well. He had failed again, miserably, and felt all chance for survival, and the will to continue, evaporate. He fell to his knees in exhaustion, and heard the lone wolf at its distance release a long howl of despair. Night fell, and darkness was all around him.

Kalus revived (or came to) the next morning, but could not at first remember where he was. The events of the day before had struck so suddenly..... Again he lay in the bed of cool moss, covered with furs, his wounds being treated by the soothing hands of a woman-child. He turned as if in a dream to look upon the face of his redeemer.

But no, that was long ago. Now the woman-child was his friend, his mate. Was it possible? Why was the chamber so cold? And what of the wolf-cub that lay nestled beside him? As the cloud of amnesia, like a blow to the head which jarred him to another time, slowly cleared, he remembered. And understood. The images of Kamela’s death came back to him with feverish clarity. He shivered, and a burst of physical panic made him bolt upright, scattering the furs and startling the cub. The girl took him by the shoulders and forced him back down. Unprotected, his skin felt icy cold, and his body ached with a dull, yellow pain.

One by one the furs were replaced on top of him. He did not fight, but clung to them as if to life, and tucked the edges beneath him to block out the cold. The need to struggle back to warmth was so great, and so immediate, that his mind had no time for despair, or the full realization of his plight. He shivered, and sucked his aching teeth and thought of nothing. At length he slept, though fitfully and full of dark dream.

He woke to find his worst fears come true. He was weak and ill, trapped in Winter, physically unable to fight for his survival. There was little food, and now no chance of getting more. The woman-child he loved, and the pup whose life was now his responsibility, would perish alongside him. All was ended. He had failed.

But all was not ended. That would have been too simple and absolute. They still had the reserves, though tapping into them so soon went against all his instincts, and roused the already powerful voices of fear inside him. And though to one who has never had to survive, literally, day to day, these emotions may seem mere words, to Kalus they were as powerful and menacing as the physical threat of a lion. How much more of this could his spirit endure? To rise, again and again, from the decimations of this world, to go on without hope for so long, never seeing the end of the tunnel.

Because a man who finds the tight-rope of his existence drawn so fine, the abyss below him so deep and terrifying, can never see the natural and benevolent forces that may (or may not) come to his aid. But the dangers and possible means of his downfall, wrapped with fear and based on past experience, are as clear to him as the struggling flesh he inhabits. For truth and fear exist only inches apart, and fear, by its very nature, will always seem the stronger voice. Men have faced this same darkness for thousands of years, and many fallen before it. And the darkness never ends.

Kalus felt, as he always had in times of deep struggle, the eternal desire for life that calls a man to action in the face of danger, and courage in the face of despair. But he also felt something altogether new, or at least, never before felt at this level of intensity. He felt a flat and empty indifference that told him all such effort was futile, even laughable, in the eyes of the gods who tormented him. Just as a laboratory animal that can endure no more torture will simply stop eating and slowly die of shock, he too felt that he had been punished long enough, that any reasonable bounds of endurance had been long since passed, and that the hopeless games of this world no longer held any meaning for him. He saw only death: his father mauled by a bear, Shama torn open by Shar-hai and his guard, who had themselves been dragged back to earth. Skither, who had died alone in a stinking hole at the hands of mindless brutes, protecting others who were heedless. And at the last, when his spirit had nothing left, Kamela, who had perished to save his own, meaningless life.

The truth now seemed so clear to him that he was amazed he had not seen it before. All the useless struggles ended in death, either quickly, or in humiliating sickness and old age. All earthly bonds were passing, torn asunder by the whims of Nature and uncaring Time. And therefore all life was futile. Still worse, it was absurd. A man who possessed real courage only wasted it in endlessly trying to continue. Let him take that courage
instead and say, “Enough! This torture must not be allowed to continue. If I cannot choose the manner of my life, I will at least choose the manner, and time of my death.” Kalus knew nothing of existentialism, or the other fashionable philosophies of men. He knew nothing of the religious fears of mankind, or of his angry, despairing pride in himself. He knew only that his heart was broken, and he wanted to die. The dull and hopeless look that had fixed itself in the eyes of Kamela, became his as well.

He no longer cared, and had lost all fear of death.

The wind howled outside them and the chamber held no warmth. His body shivered and coughed, and excreted the pain that knew no bounds. Sylviana moved the fire closer to the bed, then tried to seal out the wind that stole through the cracks in the barrier.

It was hard and frustrating work. But rather than crumble to see Kalus laid so low, and become cold and distant, she sensed that responsibility for their survival had been shifted onto her, and she responded. Through all the trials, all the highs and lows that she had endured the last year of her life, she would have thought she’d have nothing left, and that such a crisis would be her final undoing. But she was wrong. A quiet strength and maturity had been growing inside her, and now she put it to the test.

Forming the mortar to fill the cracks required effort and endless perseverance. The hard earth below them, packed solid for so long, was reluctant to be uprooted and mixed with melting snow beside the fire. And the straw that was called for was simply unavailable. So she took dry pine needles, ground them up, and mixed them in by hand. The only large ‘bowl’ they possessed---a curving palette of stone---held only a small amount compared to the number and size of the cracks she must fill, and it was heavy and awkward. Then the mortar itself seemed not to want to stay where it was put. It took constant adjustments in the mix and in her technique just to find a half workable formula. Her hands were cold and ragged and pricked by countless needles, and there was no one to encourage her or appreciate the effort. Kalus was oblivious, in sleep or in waking, and Akar was off somewhere alone. The pup followed her with its eyes and occasionally whimpered for food. That was all.

But that was not what mattered. The man she cared for, and who had
done the same for her many times, was sick and helpless. She stayed with the task all through the night, until the work was done. Then at last, wearily, she made her way to the bed and knelt beside him. His fever still burned, and the cold drafts that pulsed down through the shaft still troubled him.

She thought to make up his bed somewhere else, but realized that laying him on the cold floor might be worse. She looked over through the shadows at the dais beneath the altar, but could not think how to bring the fire close enough..... The pup, lonely, hungry and confused, moved beside her and looked up at her with pleading eyes. She comforted it as best she could, then gently roused her companion.

“Kalus?”

“Yes.” His voice was flat, though he shivered.

“Later today I have to go to one of the reserves of meat, for the pup at least. Then maybe move you to the dais, if that will help. Where is the nearest of the reserves?”

He shook his head without a sound. Misunderstanding, she got angry.

“Why not? Don’t you even care about the pup?”

Again he shook his head, and said in a hoarse voice. “Too dangerous.”

“Damn,” she said. “Damn it all.” True, bitter frustration had caught her at last, a destructive anger which found no release. She stood up and paced wildly around the room. He knew what she was feeling, and it troubled him.

“Where is Akar?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied, her anger turning swiftly to concern, then bordering on panic. “He’s been out since last night.” It would be the last straw if something had happened.....

She stiffened, hearing a scratching sound at the door. Fearing the worst, her mind made no connection until she heard a sharp bark, and Kalus said. “It’s the wolf.”

As she forced open the door against the onslaught of snow-laced wind, she slid down, shivering in the cold and wet. Akar slipped past her. When at last she recovered herself and rose and closed the door, she leaned back against it to face him, her emotions strained to the limit.

When she saw what he carried she knelt down and embraced him and wept. Though weak and injured himself, his mobility hampered still further by the snow, somehow he had done it. A large rabbit lay on the floor beside
him.

“How did you do it?” she stammered. “When we needed it most.” Again she buried her face against him, in her exhaustion unable to stop crying.

“Because he has the heart of a champion,” said Kalus, himself both moved and ashamed. The help unlooked-for had arrived, and they would live a little longer.

The next day Kalus felt a little better. The small portion of meat he had been able to push past his swollen throat had calmed his delirium, and seemed to help his body generate a little warmth of its own. But he was still very sick, and any attempt to get up and move about was met with failure and a stern rebuke from the girl. She didn’t realize, and possibly shouldn’t have, that to Kalus being helpless was the equivalent of being dead. This attempt at the least physical exertion, walking, was his way of rejecting fear and trying, impossible as the task seemed, to turn away from the inner darkness that told him his life was over.

Because Kalus, too, had great heart. No matter how many times he was broken, he had always been able to rally somehow and go on. The problem now was that he had lost sight of that faith and hope, the belief that no matter what happened, he would always find a way to survive, and keep the spirit alive inside him. His confidence in himself, at best of times uncertain because of the severity of the roads which led to manhood, was all but extinguished.

There had been so little margin for error in his life, and worse had come to worst so many times, that he could not help but wonder if he possessed some terrible flaw, some shortcoming which made failure inevitable. But when he looked at this more closely, he knew in his heart that he had always done his best: that he had taken the only paths open to him, that he had never quit, or expected anything to be easy or free.

What was it then that defeated him? To this he had no answer, only frustrated rage that having no release, turned inward upon itself. The bitter maze of his emotions had joined together into a tightly knotted and irremovable clot, blocking out all light and making life, even the simplest continuance, seem utterly impossible.

And yet another element had been thrown into the balance. He had discovered, almost suddenly, the depths of his love for Sylviana. And while this might have comforted him and been a source or quiet strength, two nagging fears had risen alongside it, which in his present state seemed undeniable. First, though he knew she cared for him, and in her way even loved him, that was now, when her need was greatest and there was no one else to choose from. What if someday there were others? And secondly, of more immediate concern, he felt he could not take care of her, or give her the things she needed to live. His every attempt had ended in failure and near disaster, and he clearly saw the price it cost her. He felt for this reason, and others like it, that he had no right to think of her as his own, a belief which galled his animal self to no end.

As all of this passed inside him, Sylviana continued to work quietly away, doing everything she could think of to stabilize the temperature of the enclosure. First she took pine branches they had used as a blind outside the barrier, and placed them in a careful thatching pattern inside the shaft, here
at the bottom where it was narrowest. This still allowed the smoke to pass up through it, if more slowly, but also kept out much of the wind, especially the sudden gusts which seemed to trouble him so.

Then she made a canopy of the projecting altar above his bed, stitching together a patchwork of smaller skins to hang down from it. She also heated stones beside the fire, and placed them by his side when he slept.

But perhaps the wisest and most beneficial thing she did for him in those days, beside not giving up herself, was to read to him. It occurred to her that one of the things that made his life so difficult was the fact that his deepest thoughts remained isolated: he didn’t know that other men felt the same emptiness, and confronted the same unspoken fears. So she dug into the long, enclosed bookshelf that lay half buried in a corner of the treasure room, until she found works of fiction and philosophy which seemed appropriate. She then read to him fragments of each, asking which he preferred.

He was cold to the idea at first, not understanding, and expressed no preference. But she noticed that his eyes became puzzled and alert at the first chapter of “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” and that he seemed to want to ask questions, but did not.

So she read him several chapters each day, until at last he began to open up, and to ask her. Had men really lived that way? Why did Robert Jordan not take the woman he loved far away from the war? And was it really possible to feel the earth move beneath them when they made love?

And slowly, as always, quietly, the profound pain and beauty of true literature began to work its haunting and healing magic upon him. His thought no longer bounded by the physical reality around him, he found in books a way to escape and look beyond himself, into worlds he had never dreamed of, and to empathize with struggles and disillusioning he had imagined did not exist outside himself. Simply put, he became connected to the souls, singular and collective, of humanity.

And to know the woman held all these things in her mind and in her heart, put him almost in awe of her. And in truth, she herself received more from the living pages than she had ever done before. Now that her own life had become so real, she discovered (probably something she knew, deep down) that the truly great writers did not exaggerate the intensity of human drama, or the power of their own emotions, but only spoke honestly and
without dilution of the worlds that they had known. Dickens especially she loved, because he made her feel the joys and terrors of children, who from the outset of life had experienced sorrow and loss, when her own childhood had been so safe and full, the death of her mother notwithstanding. And she, too, began to see Kalus differently, and to understand some measure of the invisible pain he felt.

At times it was almost too much, for both of them, to look at life so closely in the midst of danger, and he would ask her to stop, or she would set down the book she read silently to herself. Such was the power of those days. With the intensity of Nature’s relentless backdrop, emotions were tested like ship’s rigging in a gale. And both knew, despite the woman’s stubborn optimism, that it would take more than all their courage for the ship to still float brokenly at the morning of calm sea’s return.

Invaluable time was passing, and Kalus’ illness refused to heal. His body had been pushed beyond its limits, and a virus for which he had no defense (for it was carried by the girl) had entrenched itself in his lungs and intestines, spreading pain and chill weakness throughout. An unfair battle had been joined inside him, one in which will alone was not enough.

The man-child’s hand was forced, and all power to choose taken from him. He must learn patience in the face of starvation.

Two weeks passed, following much the same pattern: Kalus trying to fight back against sickness and despair, his inner fire burning ever lower, a continuing downward spiral. And the girl, trying to hold on to hope enough for both of them. But despite the books and her new-found courage, she too began to feel numbed by the incessant howling of Winter, that raged like a mindless brute outside their doors, reaching in with deadly fingers at the slightest opportunity. She was puzzled also by Kalus’ inability to recover from what seemed to her a simple, if severe, virus.

But if she was puzzled, Kalus was devastated. His entire existence, from youngest boyhood, had been based around hardihood and the ability to overcome wound, sickness and depravation. In his world those who could not do so perished. All the hard lessons he had learned, centered around one simple and unalterable necessity: self-reliance. And here he was, flat on his back, unable to fight or recover, unable to support even himself, let alone those he cared for. He was less than useless, a drain on their efforts, on their need to reject him and go on. Never had he known such helplessness.

But here the words run out. It was not a single catastrophic event, nor a succession of smaller devastations, which led him to his moment of destruction, but a lifetime of endless conflict, broken dreams and dark, twisted, hopeless roads. There was nothing left to say or feel. He simply could not go on. As Sylviana read to him the last chapter of Hemingway, the futility of life congealed into a single, inescapable blade that no longer hovered at a distance, but stood poised like a needle above his heart. All was black, and like Kamela before him the very throbbing of his heart, with its surges of love and hope was the final, crushing despair.

He waited until the girl was asleep, then put her knife into the soft flesh beneath his ear and began to cut downward, a sinister, sweeping smile.

But the pain was greater than he imagined, and something yet stronger stayed his hand. It wasn’t that he lacked the courage. But if felt so very, very wrong. After all the battles he had fought and the hardships endured, all the times that death had been beaten back. . .to be his own undoing..... The instinct to survive had been too deeply ingrained. He dropped weeping and bleeding on his face, writhing in unquenchable anguish.

He still might have bled to death, but for the constant miracle that lived on unnoticed in their midst: the blind desire and yearning of youth, embodied in the new and emerging life of the pup. His elbow landed hard on one of its paws as it slept, and knowing nothing of hopelessness and death, it simply did what its senses told it to. It cried out.

Roused by the sound the girl came closer, lifted aside the canopy, and after a moment of helpless terror, turned Kalus onto his back and with shaking hands worked to stop the bleeding.

Sylviana heard a scratching sound at the door, then something that sounded as if the night itself had been given bitter voice. Akar was not with them, and the only image stark enough to penetrate her malaise, and therefore seem real to her, said that it was the wolf, wounded and probably dying. She went shaking to the door, worked free the bolt, and thrust it open. There she saw something large and unfamiliar, heard (whether in reality or delirium) something akin to a vicious growl: the voice given teeth. She took a step back, and screamed.

It was perhaps the one sound which could have roused him. Kalus sat bolt upright, weak but stable, and called out to her.

“Sylviana!”

He felt the cold wind rushing past. The door was open. She was in danger. He stood with difficulty and made his way towards her, holding on through the dizziness that sought to rob his will. He stood beside her, leaning heavily against the door-frame, and stared out into the night. She had regained her rationality, and now looked down upon a wounded and half-starved predator.

Pity stirred at last in Kalus’ heart, as if a sign had been given and understood. There was no time to question, or debate whether his own life was worth saving. Here was a creature, young and without guilt, who would die if he did not act.

“Sylviana. Help me carry him in.”

“Are you all right?” She looked hard at him, and he answered honestly.

“I’m not the one who matters now. Will you help me?”

She nodded vaguely and together they lifted the tiger as best they could, bringing it inside. Though fully six feet long, in its ravaged condition it couldn’t have weighed more than two hundred pounds. But it was limp, lifeless weight, and the best they could manage was to lay it just inside the barrier.

“It’s all right,” Kalus panted, head down. “This is a snow tiger. He won’t need much more heat than this. It’s more the mangled leg, and starvation.” He looked across at the woman-child, and perceived for the first time the dismal state into which she herself had fallen, a malady of the mind, which had then spread to the body.

He felt ashamed, and frightened, and glad all at once. He was needed, and his desire to live had somehow returned from its shallow grave, embodied in the weakened, but far from dead creature at his feet.

And his own body, he knew from deepest instinct, was not yet ready to surrender. On the contrary, it had made a small recovery. The two-day fast and stubborn, death-like sleep had emptied his throbbing intestines, and given his natural defenses time to adapt and regain some measure of their innate strength. He was still very sick, but maybe now.....

The words, “Forgive me,” played upon his lips but had an empty, useless feel. He went to the door, closed it, and though cold and aching he said to her. “Please don’t lose hope. I’m going to make it all right for us, somehow. Some way. You stood by me these past days, and I..... You are a woman. I will earn your trust, and repay my debt in full. I am yours.”

He embraced her and asked her to lie down in his bed. He then wrapped the buffalo robe around him, tended the fire, and brought her food and water. “Sleep,” he told her. “In comfort and in peace. I feel a little stronger, but I will do nothing foolish. I must tend the tiger’s wounds, and if Akar returns with meat, feed us both. Then you and I will sleep together. I love you. Be well in your heart.” He shook off all emotions of weakness and sorrow, and set out to do what must be done.

Akar returned a short time later. After studying the tiger uncertainly, and looking hard at Kalus, he set down his burden, part of a kill stolen from a badger. It was not much to look at, but from it Kalus was able to carve and cook a pound or two of meat. He divided portions for all the company, then placed the remainder in a bowl, along with the cooked blood, beside the big cat, still unconscious. He then cleaned, repaired and wrapped its wounds as best he could, laying it more comfortably on the floor. He knew that in taking it among them, and especially in binding one of its limbs, he risked confusing and provoking a creature capable of doing them great harm. But he had an unspoken faith that it was not yet old and hard enough to hate without reason, or to see as enemies all those unlike itself.

Not wishing to squander the unexpected turn of his fortunes, or the quiet courage that had risen inside him, he lay down without further exposure beside the girl, wrapping the furs thickly around them both. Waking, she said in a soft and pleading voice.

“Don’t leave me here. Please don’t ever leave me.” He answered without words, holding her close and caressing her tear-stained hair.

Again they had found each other, and Kalus knew that in their bond lay the one real hope of his survival. She made him want to live.

When the snow tiger woke from its perilous sleep it found cooked meat in a dish beside it, warmth all around it, and the burning ice gone from its fur. But it also saw strange creatures, an unnatural barrier, and the calculated stare of a wolf. He tried to lift himself quickly, felt something catch at his leg. He was overcome by the same intense dizziness, then yielded against his will to the pull of gravity. He lay helpless on his side, looking at the others with wide-eyed fear and uncertainty.

“No one move,” said Kalus, rising cautiously from his seat beside the fire. Sylviana took hold of the pup, which had begun to growl and yap, and silenced it as best she could. Akar might have been a stone in between, but for the narrowing fire of his eyes.

Kalus moved slowly to the door and opened it. It was cold and black outside, but the wind had subsided. He began to move carefully towards the tiger. It growled at him and curled its upper lip, but the great head would not be supported. It lowered to the earth as before.

“It’s all right,” said Kalus reassuringly. “I won’t hurt you.” He took a piece of meat from the bowl, and set it a few inches from its mouth. Then feeling the cold, he moved back to the door and began to close it. Again, as he thought it might, the tiger reacted. It felt trapped and closed in. He began to move away, but then thought of something else. Going to the opening, he went outside and brought in a piece of crusted snow. This he placed as close to its mouth as he dared, then closed the door and returned to his place beside the fire.

“Snow is the most constant part of its existence,” he explained to the girl. “And I think it needs water even more than food.” Together they watched, hoping for the best.

As the man-child hovered about it, the tiger’s eyes had followed his every movement. Now it turned its senses, heightened by physical extremity and need, toward the objects placed in front of it.

The big cat hesitated, then reached out its tongue and licked the hard snow. Again. Then stretching out his neck, he took the blessed substance in his teeth and brought it closer. And chewed off a small piece.

Kalus smiled quietly, remembering a time not so very long before, when he had shared his meat with Akar. And this time there was no one to angrily question his will, or rebuke him for showing compassion. This in turn gave him a cautious feeling of pride and independence. He looked around him, seeming to remember that all of this was now his, and that if he could but live to see it, the world still held much for him. In that swift moment of emotion, he felt an almost exaggerated desire coursing through his limbs, as if in compensation for his illness. His thoughts returned to find the girl watching him, eyes glistening. She spoke.

“You’re thinking that you finally have something to call your own.”

“YES. How did you know?”

“Because..... I’ve been waiting since I’ve known you to see that look. To see you look at ME. Don’t you know what you have?” At that moment the tiger, seeming to revive a little, stretched forward and rolled one forepaw beneath its head, and with a last glance at the others, began to study the proffered meat more closely. As Kalus looked on, understanding at the last, it took the first piece in its jaws, chewed tentatively, then swallowed.

“Yes, Sylviana. I have hope.” As the tiger moved itself weakly over the bowl and began to eat, he wrapped the fur up around his eyes, overcome.

“I love you,” was all he could manage.

Sylviana rose the next morning to find Kalus standing in the open doorway, looking out across the snow. The big cat had somehow gained its feet, and lumbered toward him uncertainly. She started to warn him, keeping her voice down only with an effort. But when he turned towards her, his eyes were calm. He took a step back and away from the entrance, and the tiger soon stood in his place. Its gaze moved back and forth between the Wild and the man. Clearly it was not much recovered. Unable to maintain the effort, it slid down to an unnatural sitting position, with the bandaged leg splayed wildly. It let out a growl of pain, and struggled to rise again. Succeeding only partially, it clawed and clutched its way out into the snow. From there it could go no further, and lay where it had fallen, pulling itself to a more natural position and breathing heavily. Kalus said something in a steady voice, then reentered and closed the door.

“Won’t he die out there?” asked the girl.

“No. Not from the cold at least. He’s so hurt and confused, I wanted him to know at least that he is free.” He came closer, and she saw that he was shivering. She put another fur around his shoulders and made him sit by the fire, which she then repaired.

“He means a lot to you, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. Perhaps even more than Akar did to you.”

She sat beside him. “How do you mean?”

“In him I see myself, and I can love..... It’s not his fault that he’s helpless now. He’s only trying to survive, friendless and lost.”

“But you’re not friendless.”

“I know.”

She saw that he wrestled with strong emotions, and said no more. At length he took her hand, kissed it, and asked her.

“If Akar is not successful today. . .or even if he is. Could you go to the second reserve again?”

“Yes. But why, if Akar brings us meat?”

“He hunts for you, myself until I am better, and the cub. That is burden enough. Please believe it is best. The tiger needs meat, and he must take it from me.” Again, though she did not understand, she knew that deep currents were at work in him.

A short time later Akar did return, carrying in his mouth some kind of field-bird. As Kalus let him in the wolf took it not to the girl, as was his custom (he had not even acknowledged the man-child’s presence), but instead went to a corner by himself and lay down with it, plucking out the feathers with his teeth, and eating as if he were alone in the chamber. The pup, upon waking, jumped down from the woman’s bed and approached him, her tail wagging in eager solicitation. He did not rebuff her, but made her wait until he had eaten his fill. Then he rose and went out again, passing Sylviana without gesture or affection, bristling slightly as he drew a sullen half-circle past the tiger. The woman closed the door again, confused.

“What was that all about? What was he trying to say?”

“Something he’s been telling us for weeks, since the death of Kamela, and before.”

“What?” She knew, deep down.

“That he must leave us soon. That his place is with the pack, his real kindred. They need him now as much as we do. I think that only his shoulder---”

“It’s not TRUE.” She sat down on the floor, a forlorn bundle in a world made suddenly colder. “He wouldn’t leave us like this.” She tried to rationalize, arguing with whom she did not know. “You’re not able to hunt.”

“No, but I will be soon, with as much chance as he. And you can live on sebreum.”

“But Alaska,” she insisted (the name she had given the pup).

“He knows I will not let her starve. I’m sorry, Sylviana. But his place is with his own kind.”

“It’s not fair.” Her eyes would not stop filling.

Kalus picked up the fur she had discarded, and gently replaced it around her shoulders. He put his hand on her head shyly, feeling unworthy, and unable to do more. But beneath his breath he made this vow.

“So long as there is life inside me, you will never be alone.”

He moved away, unable to face the apparition of Winter’s resistance to his life and to his dreams. To love so deeply, and with so little hope.....

The next morning Akar rose early, and in the darkness of first morning, stood above the sleeping form of his mistress. Her soft breathing, the smell of her..... He would not have believed he could feel so much. And as the light grew slowly, calling him away, still he remained there, wistful and sad, wishing only there was some way to tell her. At last she stirred, reaching out for him in a troubled dream. Not finding him she sat up quickly, fearing he had already gone.

She saw him, and sank back into herself. She began to cry, feeling their imminent parting as only a woman can. She covered her eyes, ashamed of her weakness and unable to face him.

This was too much for him. Knowing no other gesture, no longer caring if he betrayed himself by emotion, the wolf pushed at the arm with his snout, and as she lowered it in surprise, nestled his forehead against her. She said his name, embracing him and pouring out her heart. All the pain of this new world, all the loneliness and fear, found outlet and meaning in his love, which now she clearly felt.

And at length as she released him, she felt drained but no longer empty and wounded. A breach had been mended in her soul by his sudden expression of warmth, and though Akar might have said it differently, he felt much the same. Stepping back, he gestured toward Kalus’ sleeping place, then reluctantly, toward the door. Understanding, she got up and ascended the steps of the dais, pulling aside the patchwork of furs and waking the man-child.

He was not asleep, nor had been for some time. But he played the part assigned to him, feigning ignorance of what had stirred him to the root.

“Akar has to leave,” she said quietly. “He wanted to say goodbye.”

Kalus stepped out from the low shelter and went to bid farewell to his friend. He went down on one knee before him, and looked into his eyes. There was no need for words between them. Both had given life to the other, and would do so again. No debt was owed or felt, only the bond of true allies, and their common love for the woman-child, which no words could express. Still, Kalus felt moved to make some sign. He reached over and touched her throat, then said with his hands:

“With my life.” Understanding, the wolf simply lowered his head in acknowledgment. Then he gestured toward the door.

“I guess he really has to go,” said Sylviana. Again she embraced and caressed him, so reluctant now to let go. Then straightened resolutely and went to the door. She opened it herself, and without further ceremony he went out into the Wild, leaving a stream of memories behind him.

The young man and woman remained silent in the doorway, watching him disappear slowly into a mist of half-lit snow, lost in thought. Because they realized that a page had been turned in their lives, just as one day their lives would end and the book continue. And feeling this to its depths, all veils torn aside, they knew what it was to be human. Sylviana recalled the poignant line from the Shakespeare sonnet:

“To love that which you fear to lose.”

Then their thoughts once more focused on each other.

“You’re not going to try to hunt today?” Kalus had begun to dress heavily, and even now wrapped the sword-belt around him. Though his eyes were determined, as they had been on the day of Kamela’s death, there was something in his manner that was not at all the same. He was less tense, and his breathing more regular. Small comfort that it was. “You’re in no condition.”

“No, but I’ve been thinking. Last winter I tried setting traps, different kinds for different animals. They do not bring in large game, but are more..... I don’t know how to say it. Less aggressive and dangerous. And with the reserves almost gone, we must live one day at a time. I do not like living without some cushion, no matter how small, especially when it is not my life alone I have to think of. But I have done it before, and never failed utterly. Fear and despair are my enemies now.”

“It’s good to hear you say that, Kalus, it really is. There’s only one thing wrong with that whole line of reasoning.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t misunderstand me. I feel for the tiger, too, and I want him to survive. But how can you possibly feed him and us too? He must eat more than the three of us put together. Akar was right in that, at least.”

“I don’t misunderstand, but there is something I haven’t told you. I think Akar knew it also. It is part of the reason he left when he did. Two males, natural competitors---there would have been friction between them.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Well. It is true that the first and deepest thing I feel for the tiger is compassion. But if that was all I felt, I would not take him among us. Love cannot exist without survival.”

“Then why?”

“I take a small chance in feeding him, and treating his wounds. You have seen that I make it a point to feed him myself. I am not being entirely unselfish. I know something of the ways of his kind.”

“Go on.”

“You see, they do not live in packs like the wolves, or with their mates like the saber-toothed cats. But they are not completely alone, either. They coexist, if that is the right word, and keep loose contact with others of their kind.”

“Yes,” said Sylviana, beginning to understand. “I remember something about that from zoology. They’re a much more social animal than was first believed.” He nodded, though the words were unknown to him.

“So you see, since this one is still young, and has lost touch with his kindred---or he would not have come so far to the east---it is not impossible that since I shared my meat with him, he would do the same for me. He would not bring it here, any more than one tiger would take its kill to another. But if another comes on the scene, they are willing to share. And Sylviana, never have you seen such a Wintertime hunter.”

Once more she began to feel a quiet respect for his experience, and knowledge of his world.

“But how long before he’s able to hunt?”

“He is young and strong, and unless I misread him, very determined. There are no broken bones. Perhaps ten days, perhaps twenty. In any case, you see that I cannot let him die.”

“Yes.” She squeezed his arm, seeing that he was about to go. “Be careful.”

“Yes. I will take the wolf. It is time she learned of the world beyond these walls.”

It felt strange to her to hear him speak of the pup as a wolf. She herself called it Alaska, and he had always before used pseudonyms such as ‘cub’ or ‘pup’. But looking at her now, standing and watching them quizzically, she saw that the slight creature Kamela had brought them, was indeed a babe no longer. Her limbs had begun to grow long, ahead of the body, and her gaze, though still childish, was growing keener and more aware. And she remembered that this was in fact a wolf, and not a dog.

“When you come back, will you tell me why Akar didn’t take her with him? If you know. I have an idea, but I’d like to know what you think.”

“When I return, I will be glad to speak of it.” He became suddenly shy. “And to be with you.” He went to the door, called to the cub, and went out. Sylviana closed the door behind them.

His thoughts being thus absorbed, Kalus did not realize until he reached the end of the ledge and saw the broad, irregular tracks leading downward, that the tiger was gone. At first this upset him, both for his sake and its own. But as he entered the ravine and began to mentally prepare for the lands beyond, he had no choice but to let it go. It was beyond his control.

“So be it.” But this did not keep him from noting that its tracks went southward down the gorge, and that if they rose again to left or right, it was beyond the edge of his sight.

The cub stayed close to him instinctively, and they made their way first up the steep slope, then out across the rolling white and camel-hair lands.

Kalus returned to the gorge as the sky grew dark and ominous. There was no sign of the tiger, and his own time in the cold had been devoured. He shivered and coughed in the growing wind, and the voices of caution would not be gainsaid. The rules of this new affliction he had learned the hard way. The rules of the Cold World he knew by heart. And as he lingered a moment, straining his senses for any sight or sound, even the cub seemed anxious, looking about it and at the threatening sky.

“All right,” he said gruffly, as much to the nameless as to anyone. “Chase me back into my hole again. Tomorrow I’ll be back.” He gained the
ledge, and the doorway beyond.

Sylviana greeted him with an embrace that surprised him. He had not expected it, for one thing, and had forgotten how much this simple contact was worth. And he remembered too, for all the day’s frustrations, his deep affection for her. If only he could bring them all to some safe place.....

“Are you well?” he asked her.

“Well enough, now. I don’t like the look of that sky, though, or the sudden drop in temperature. I’m worried about Akar.”

“And I for the tiger. He’s gone off, you know.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

He shrugged his shoulders unconvincingly. “There’s nothing I can do about it now. I couldn’t make him a prisoner.”

He took off his warm wrappings, refitted the one-piece garment, then sat down on the steps of the altar and began sharpening his sword. But all at once he cast away the whet-stone, a hard and bitter edge on all his features.

“It’s not fair,” he said. “I wanted him to live..... I wanted him to be my friend.”

Sylviana studied him wordlessly, touched and taken back, as ever, by the power of his primal emotions. And when he looked up at her, she saw again the restless and hungry expression that so haunted her. She turned away, drawn to him as on a chain, yet afraid. Why did he move her so?

“I didn’t want to lose Akar, either. Sometimes if you love someone, you have to let them go.” Now it was she who was unconvincing. And all at once, he wanted her.

Kalus rose, all his sorrows and reawakened desires now focused with total singularity upon the object, the living being of his love. He moved closer, and took her by the shoulders, and turned her towards him. There was nothing else in all the world.

“I want to make love to you.”

He kissed her, and stripped away the barriers between them, and touched her with the roots of his being, overflowing like a well-spring upon the earth. She had not the strength to resist him, and soon lost all desire to do so. He led her to his bed, and together they breathed deeper air than they had for many days.

Thus began a period of relative calm for the reshaped company. Slowly the tiger’s wounds healed, and slowly, as he became wiser and more proficient at setting them, Kalus’ traps became more productive. The reserves were emptied and there was never much to spare. Their existence was strictly one day at a time, and face tomorrow when it comes. But what was absolutely needed, the bare-bone necessities, were through constant effort and exertion, one way or another obtained.

And though Winter was hardly on the wane, neither could it increase or outdo the storms it had already hurled against them. The fortress they had made of Skither’s cave, as well as the yet dearer fortresses of mind and body, continued to withstand and endure. And their collective will remained unvanquished.

And in late afternoons and evenings, when the day’s work was done and nothing more could be bought by their labors, there was time for reading, conversation and quiet thought. The tiger, once it learned it was free to do so, often went out into the night, if only to rest just beyond the safety of the lair; and this, along with Akar’s absence, left a natural void which must be filled with more human pursuits. Even the cub would turn peaceful, either tired out by the day’s doings, or engaged in some quiet pursuit of its own, chewing at a bone or piece of leather, or simply working out in dream the wonders and perils of its world.

For Sylviana it was both comforting and painful to recall herself through books, and to reveal to Kalus for the first time, the beauty and torment of Man’s elevated walk upon the Earth. That it should now be all but extinguished was to her an unspeakable and inexpressible tragedy. Yet she had learned from Ursula LeGuin years before (though at the time she had not understood it), that the only way to deal with the horror of a shattered past was to face it, and call it by its true name. And she told herself that in her heart, if nowhere else, lived the memory of much that was noble and good.

For Kalus the various narratives, histories and philosophies, continued to open a whole new world before him. And though it was at times a pleasant and enlightening escape, on the whole his reactions to modern society were not unlike the woman’s first impressions of the violent world outside their door. It held wonders, yes, and on occasion, profound beauty and wisdom. But the accounts of civil war, totalitarian regimes, torture, famine, real and effectual slavery, environmental pollution and industrial greed, excited in him the same horror that the imagined swarm of giant ants had once roused in Sylviana.

Sometimes these responses troubled her, and she felt called upon to correct his deficiencies in perspective and defend her race. But at other times his naive and disbelieving comments cut frighteningly close to the truth. He accepted and took for granted none of the vast pretenses and self-important doctrines in which humanity clothed itself, and was therefore able to see a larger picture, or certainly a different one, than that which she was accustomed to.

For to him Man was not the only, or even the most important species on the planet, let alone the center of the Universe, and sole concern of the Nameless. It was perhaps for this reason that he had not been shocked when Sylviana told him that the Earth revolved around the Sun, and not the other way around, or that the stars were themselves suns, parenting similar worlds of their own. To him Man was not the separate creation of a God unhappy or impatient with Nature. To his mind, if she understood him correctly, evolution was quite miraculous enough, and brought him closer to, rather than farther from, believing in a Universal being. And he assured her that nearly every animal was capable of some measure of thought and feeling, as real and meaningful to its existence, as the painful dreams and aspirations of men.

At first he offered few opinions of his own, only gut-level reactions when they would not be silenced, which the woman-child must then decipher on her own. Not only did he feel unqualified to do so---the very word ‘philosophy’ intimidated him, seeming a thing reserved for larger and more important persons---but also, some other sense told him that it was unwise to speak or pass judgment upon things he did not fully understand.

But after a time, having whole days to mull over what he had learned (when hunting, trapping and working did not require his full attention), he began to speak and question at a level which surprised her. Not only would she have believed him incapable of such subtle thought and inquiry, but she had always assumed that he would consider such pursuits frivolous, and beside the immediate point of survival. Such was not the case. His mind and spirit hungered, just as the body did, to be nourished and fulfilled. And in some ways this spiritual hunger was more acute, since it had been so long denied.

His two favorite writer/philosophers, to judge by the number of times he asked her to read them, were Ernest Hemingway and Lao Tsu. And this apparent contradiction puzzled her. She could not imagine two more directly opposed outlooks, or approaches to life. But when she asked him about this, he answered more simply and clearly than she would have believed possible. It was a cold night, but warm beside the fire, somewhere near the apex of winter. Even the tiger remained indoors, sleeping in its accustomed place just inside the barrier. The cub rested quietly beside the man-child, while he gently stroked her chest and side. Life was all around him, and he felt it deeply.

“I think that the two ways, if I can call them that, are just the two sides of a man’s life: like day and night, summer and winter. They both spring from the fountainhead of Life, both are necessary; they only seem different, as Lao Tsu said. He understood the need to yield to Nature, and Hemingway the need to fight back. They make me think of Skither and Barabbas. There are times when one is right, and times when the other---”

“To everything there is a season,” she broke in suddenly, understanding and taken back by the apparent ease with which he had arrived at one of man’s profoundest insights. “And a time to every purpose under Heaven.”

Upon hearing this he became so animated, and insisted so fervently that she read to him the entire passage from which this was taken, that despite misgivings she brought out a tattered Gideon’s Bible and read to him the verses from Ecclesiastes.

Kalus was awe-struck. “Are all the things in that book as true and wise?” he asked. “Who is its author?”

This was exactly what she feared. More than one newly opened and vulnerable heart had fallen into the trap of blind acceptance of this, and other religious works. Whether Christianity was the true faith or not, whether one true faith existed, was not the point. The religious doctrines of humanity were simply too broad and powerful to impart to one in his position: sensitive, struggling and searching. And in this she showed wisdom or her own.

“I’m afraid not, Kalus. And it doesn’t have one author, it has many. There are people who believed everything in it to be the truth, suppressing all other voices, even to the point of overriding their own experience and common sense. But I’m not one of them.”

“There are really people who would do that? Contradict the lessons that Nature has taught them? I don’t understand.”

“That’s because you don’t know what was at stake to them, or how deep such feelings run.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say it in just a few words, and I don’t want to try. If you really want to learn about different religions, I’ll teach you what I can. But it really should be done slowly. Or you could be hurt.” She spoke now from first-hand experience.

He was silent for a time, his thought roused and his curiosity almost unbearable. But he too had learned caution, and he respected her judgment. One last question.

“Can you tell me one thing at least? How could any book make a man not listen to his heart?”

She took a deep breath. “Well. What if I told you that you could live forever, and never be separated from the ones you love. Wouldn’t that make you willing to listen, and learn how if you could?”

“Of course! But no one lives forever..... DO THEY?” The gleam in his eyes was unmistakable.

“No one knows, Kalus. And that’s why men cling to religion. That, and the desire to do good. But that’s enough for tonight, really. All right?”

At first her words had no effect, then. “Yes,” he answered absently. For his mind was submerged in questions that had drowned far more learned souls than his.

In the coming battle he retained only one advantage. His life had been too hard, the beginnings of his dreams too dearly bought, to be long deceived and pacified by illusions. His feet were too painfully aware of the road beneath them, and his hands too calloused from the Herculean labors of survival.

But this could not protect him from Fear, when cast in this new, metaphysical light.

Several days, perhaps a week, passed in much the same outward manner. But Sylviana, with her now practiced eye, began to observe a subtle change in him, and this troubled her. Always now when his attention was not required for some physical task, his eyes and mind seemed to rove about him, as if expecting the walls to come suddenly to life and undo him. She began to fear that despite all her caution she had given him too much to think about, too many questions to grapple with. And she wondered what hidden Pandora’s box she had opened inside him.

Her concern was well justified, and her guesses not far from the truth. Two things had occurred simultaneously which had made him very uneasy. And in his mind, once more isolated, they seemed indelibly linked, a kind of hard message from the nameless God, which he must unravel and accept.

The first thing that troubled him was the rebound of harsh winter weather. For a time the days had turned relatively mild, and he had secretly hoped that the worst was passed. But his optimism was premature. The Cold World was a long way from spent.

The second occurrence, inevitable though it might have been, was the discovery, real or imagined, of a spiritual world to parallel the physical. Always before the wind had been simply wind, the sun, sun, and his environment, with its natural currents and disturbances, just and only that. If forced to give a name to these patterns and fluxes of life and death, he would merely have said ‘Nature’, or ‘the ways of the Valley’.

But with the introduction of religion into his thoughts and observations, came its often inseparable counterpart: superstition. Was there an intelligence behind the winds and storms around him, the dangers and trials of his world? For if so, clearly they bore him no good intention, and possibly considerable malice. Why now, when he was hurting and most needed mild weather, was he confronted by the harshest Winter he had ever experienced?

But this was just the tip of the iceberg. If there truly was a God, then why the innumerable and inexplicable tragedies of his life, both great and small? And most poignant of all to him: WHY WAS SHAMA DEAD? All the other deaths and injuries he had known could perhaps, with an effort, be rationalized. But why a mere child, healthy and intelligent, with his whole life ahead of him?

He did not forget the other miracles of his life: the fact that he had been born at all, that he had survived the many pitfalls of his existence, and come against considerable odds to find the woman-child, whom he loved. He remembered the Voice, but could not make its words correspond to those of the Bible.

And why, now, did he feel as if some tangible force resisted and sought to undo him? What was his sin? Was it because he refused, out of ignorance, to acknowledge the power and supremacy of the one true God? If he obeyed His rules and precepts, would He then smile upon him, and make his life more bearable? And the final nail, as it always has been, was the burning question that neither Sylviana, nor anyone or anything else could answer for him. Was the spirit eternal, and if so, was there a way to come to paradise after death, and be reunited with the ones he loved?

It was for him a crushing burden, feeling that his decision, his answer to God, held the key not only to his own spiritual salvation, but to that of those he loved more than his own life. It was for this reason that he could not open his heart to Sylviana. She did not believe; she had said so. But what if she was wrong? Surely if such a being existed, He must be obeyed and appeased. God the Father. Was he then like Barabbas, a stern and forceful leader?

It was all too much for him. How could he, an ignorant hunter and trapper, come to grips with the maker of the stars? Perhaps God was right to curse him and laugh at him. He was small, foolish and evil.

Kalus was on the verge of despair. His body would not heal, and the Cold World would not relent. How much longer could he trick himself into going on, when he was eternally being resisted and punished because of his ignorance?

It was a cold and cheerless night, as he climbed slowly up out of the gorge with his meager prize: a small rabbit, that by some fluke had not died immediately in his snare, but had to be killed after hours of torment and fear. He had all but decided that he could no longer live this way, that he must hunt as a man or perish. But even this small dignity was not afforded him, since still the others must eat.

He stepped back onto the ledge with the cub beside him. The tiger was gone. He knocked wearily on the door, his body aching, and after a short time which seemed far longer, Sylviana opened it. Her face was full of concern, but he had not the strength to pretend that things were better than they were.

He cooked the rabbit without a word, and divided out the portions. The three ate silently, and even the cub seemed subdued, sensing her master’s mood. Kalus placed the tiger’s share outside the door, wrapped his fur tighter, and sat like a troubled stone before the fire. Sylviana could stand it no longer.

“Kalus, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“I can’t talk about it,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you shutting me out again?”

“Sylviana, please.” Her tone changed when she saw his eyes. Pain she had seen in them, and anger. Even resignation to death. But this pleading, tearful sorrow, as if his spirit was cornered and in torment.....

“It’s all right,” she said softly, kneeling beside him. She wanted to comfort him with caresses and kind words, but something held her back. Better to let the dam burst on its own.

“Well, can we talk about something else?”

“If you like.” He mastered himself, became calm.

“You never told me about the wolves: why Kamela was so bitter, and why Akar left the cub behind.” Here, he thought, was a chance to escape his own feelings.

“It’s a long story,” he began, “And many parts I don’t know for certain. But from things I have learned, and from things I knew before, I think I can tell you this much.” He shifted positions, trying to lessen the discomfort in the small of his back.

“For Kamela, I believe her tragedy was two-fold. First, if I read the signs right---I knew something of the pack before the coming of the Changed One---I believe that Akar was her first love. He had chosen her to be his mate, and she him.

“But the pack must be ruled by a single master, and that master, Akar’s brother, had also chosen her. There are many things a leader must consider, and emotion is not the first concern of wolves. Shaezar claimed her, and she yielded to his will.

“Akar could not, would not cross his brother, but he was deeply hurt. In bitterness he left the pack for a time, and it was then that Shar-hai made his move. He killed Shaezar, fairly or unfairly, and took his place as leader. For Akar the result was true banishment, and unforgiving self-reproach. For Kamela..... Shar-hai must have made her life a living Hell. You have seen the long scar on her underside.”

“NO.” She spoke truly.

“She did her best to hide it..... I believe that she was brutally raped, probably more than once. Also, it is very rare to have only one cub. I think that Shar-hai and his guard must have killed the others. He let Alaska live because she was no threat to him, and might provide further amusement.”

“My God, that’s awful.”

“Yes. That is why she was not afraid to die. She still loved Akar, of that I am sure. And he loved her. But she could never overcome the shadow that was left on her soul. You cross a line, Sylviana. . .and everything becomes so black.”

She sensed that he was close to breaking. But for all her pity, she knew what she must do. One last push.

“But why did Akar leave the cub with us? It seems so cruel.”

His eyes flamed at this. “The true wolves do nothing out of cruelty. It was for her own safety, and to leave a part of himself with you.” He got up and began to pace, an uncontrollable rage rising inside him. “CRUEL?” he fumed, throwing off the fur like an unwanted burden, and waving his arms as if struggling in a net. “I’ll tell you what’s cruel.....

“Skither lives his whole life, an unselfish warrior for the good, and dies by violence far from his home. Kamela does what is expected of her, Akar does what he feels in his heart, and both are punished and bereft. An eight year old boy---” He wept. “An eight year old boy, Sylviana, makes the one mistake of his life..... And he is KILLED for it. While your God.....” All at once he let out a roar.

“WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!” he shouted at the walls. “What gives you the right to make hard rules, and pass out life and death in judgment? You are not wise, you are not strong. YOU ARE NOT GOD! I reject this fear! I reject this lie! I will not serve the fearful creation of MEN!”

And suddenly the burden was lifted. He stood shaking, his face wet. But in that brief moment when the life inside him had shouted back at the Night, rejecting it and all its works, he was free, and once more true to himself, to the God that was in him. His doubts remained, but he would not follow that tortured path one step further.

Sylviana went to him and embraced him, this time without reservation. His grateful arms wrapped around her. He dried his eyes against her neck and shoulder, then stepped back, looking down.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I feel as if I’ve condemned us all.”

“Or saved us. Don’t you see?”

“But if you don’t believe, and I don’t.....”

“I never said I didn’t believe in God, Kalus. I just don’t believe in religion. Faith is about Faith. Religion is about control.”

“But---”

“Listen to me, Kalus. You don’t have to punish yourself to believe in something positive, something larger than yourself. You don’t have to choose between Hells.”

“But the Bible---”

“Was written, translated, and ALTERED by men. Saint Paul may have been a good man, but he never ever met Jesus; and I believe that ‘Saints’ Jerome and Augustine distorted Christ’s words almost beyond recognition. Between them, and with lots of help from the Catholic Church---Jesus never said anything about chastity, or that the bodies God gave us were inherently evil---they set loose a fear of devils and damnation that was the scourge of the western world for two thousand years: from the slaughters of Charlemagne, to the Inquisition and the Holocaust.

“‘You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ THAT’S what Jesus said, and THAT'S what I believe. There is truth everywhere---in Shakespeare, in Dickens, in YOU. You know as much as anyone, about your own life, infinitely more.” She softened, and put a hand to his cheek. “Trust your heart, Kalus. That’s what it’s there for.”

He looked into her eyes, and the light of day came back to him. “You are very wise. I should have come to you sooner.”

“Some lessons we have to learn for ourselves. You taught me that.”

“Do you think.....” He struggled again, before the question that lay behind all others. “Do you think that you could ever. . .love me, Sylviana?”

“I’m beginning to think I could. Now go wash off that grime, and I’ll show you.”

“Aren’t you afraid---”

“Tonight you have to be afraid of me. Now go wash yourself, before I do it for you.”

He went to the basin, and as the water splashed across him, felt both body and spirit cleansed. From here forward, he vowed, he would choose life over spiritual death, love over fear. This life was the only one he knew, his mind and heart the only guides he would ever have in it. And as he half-tearfully dried himself, he felt moved as he rarely had been. He went down on his knees, clutched his hands before him, and said to the nameless God.

“Thank you for my life.”

Again the two made love, and for Kalus the beauty and release were no less than on their first such communion. Sylviana knew only warmth and pleasure and affection, and as she drew him near, rejoiced to feel the life and strength that were in him, even now.

And in the heart and essence of their love, was the essence of true God: the Universal, and unnamable spirit within all Life.

The tiger padded silently through the forest, eyes and ears keen for any sign of game. The hunger in his stomach drove him, as well as the hunger of his heart. His hind leg, he knew, was not up to an extended chase. But stalk he could, and hunt he must. The man-child fed him and gave him shelter, but more and more his restlessness grew. For he was a creature of the wild forests, and he heard their primal call. Even now, amidst the cover of thickening pine and mottled oak, he felt yet too exposed, and longed to plunge into some limitless wood where clearing and field were the exception, and not the rule. Such a place had once been his home, and must be again.

A black bear he had already passed, but this was neither prey nor foe. If it had confronted him he would have fought it, and almost surely have won. Yet he was glad when it saw him coming and moved away. This forest was not his: there was no need to stake a claim. And seeing it he recalled his fight with the grizzly, when in youthful ignorance he had stood his ground against a more powerful foe, then been a step too slow, or too proud, in retreating.

It had nearly cost him his life, as wounded and almost lame he had been pursued by the raging beast for miles on end. In his crippled state he could barely keep ahead of it, and this seemed to goad it on. Till at last he gained an unknown, freezing river and half stumbled, half swam his way across it. Even now the sounds of cracking ice, the final break and splash into the death-like waters, swimming desperately, clawing out again and scrambling forward..... Without his broad, padded feet to spread his weight upon the ice, without his clinging claws, alive with the frightened desire of youth, he would surely have perished.

But now that the brush with death was past, he was not afraid. Those who learned fear from such a trial quickly lost the will they needed to live. Those who learned caution and still greater determination, these were the hunters, the great cats who survived.

Coming to the crest of a long hill, he looked down upon a gentle valley, at the center of which lay a clearing along both sides of a swirling stream. Just at the edge of it on the far shore, beyond which the forests rose once more to dominate, stood a tall buck and his troop, three females and their half-grown young. Engaged in eating bark and pawing through the snow for saplings, at that distance and with their eyes they could not have seen him.

Immediately he crouched, and in his wordless way, formed a plan. The wind blew from right to left, with the stream, and to cross it silently..... He snaked out of sight among the trees, and began to descend at an angle to his left. Coming to a place where the stream bent towards him, he followed it a short way further, then quickly and quietly waded across. He heard the buck sing out as he reached the farther shore and scrambled up, and feared that his chance was lost. But stubbornly he dove among the trees and made his swift, circling way towards the spot.

From ahead of him now came the sounds of conflict, a muted knocking and scraping of antlers and the angry, conch-like cries of the bull. Drawing hard upon the clearing he discovered the reason. It was not because of him that the herd-leader had spoken in warning. Another buck, younger but nearly equal in girth, had come upon him, and thought to steal away his harem. In this he was premature, since neither doe nor female fawn would be ready to mate until Spring. But such mistakes are often made, born of the cold and bitter isolation of a solitary male in Winter.

Nature plays no favorites, nor does the hungry predator. The females had seen the big cat’s approach, and with their young fled swiftly and silently into the wood, leaving the two bulls locked in oblivious combat. The tiger leapt over a fallen tree, forgetting his pain, and charged across the open space toward them.

The herd leader saw him coming, and stepped back. The young male in his blind fury did not, and perceiving hesitation on the part of his opponent, thought to charge again. It was his last mistake. The tiger leapt full upon him, knocking him to the ground, and before the buck knew what had happened, his throat was held fast and his life’s blood ebbing.

The herd leader turned quickly to see what had become of his charge, then with a last look at the predator and his fallen foe, moved to join them. He did not run blindly, nor fully turn his back. But neither did he dare a brave show. Not for nothing had he lived to sire offspring.

The yearling stood poised above his kill, looking about him cautiously. He felt neither sadness nor elation, only the openness around him, and a sullen determination not to surrender his prize. Taking it firmly by the scruff of the neck, he dragged it back among the timbers. Lifting it across the same fallen trunk he had leapt in pursuing it, he set it to rest in the hollow just beyond, and once more looked around him. No sight or sound broke the silence of the afterkill.

It was only then that he let himself rest, and remembered his hunger and his pain. His leg ached dully and his muscles tried to knot. But these could be denied. His hunger could not. Licking a spot on the carcass as he would a bosom friend (the feelings were not dissimilar), he lay down and began to eat, and once more to feel pride and confidence in the strength he possessed.

He had made, with help, the long climb back. He would endure.

It was perhaps midday when he stood at the top of the same long hill, looking down with lesser eyes upon the valley and the clearing by the stream. He had begun to despair of his chances, knowing it would take nearly the rest of the day just to make his way back to the warmth and safety of the cave. Almost he had let the hill turn him back. But he, too, felt the stubborn need to persevere.

Here, if the read the signs right, the cat had suddenly crouched and begun to stalk. His shielded eyes strained against the blinding white, up and down the stream, searching for any further sign. But all such effort was defeated by the hard glare of the noon sun. Perhaps if he made his eyes like a quiet pool, in which any movement would be as a pebble dropping into glassy waters.....

Movement. His eyes shifted to the source. Again. The branches of a leafless tree, no, the tree itself, moved under the weight of some large animal, disturbing the snow-layered pines around it. At the edge of the clearing, on the far side of the stream. A short distance in front of it the snow had been mangled and stained, as by a recent kill.

He cut a swath straight towards it, risking much that the creature in the tree was his own, self-named Avatar, proud hunter of the frozen woodlands. He came to the stream, and lifting both his garments and the startled cub, waded across. The shaking of branches had not ceased, and now as he gained the far bank and set down the cub, a muffled growl was added to it. He froze, spear lifted. But the sound had been neither sudden, nor seemed in any way to correspond with his movements. And at last, his eyes describing the scene, he lowered his spear with a surge of pride and gratitude. It was his ally, the tiger, struggling to lift a large buck into the crotch of a trembling beech.

“Avatar!”

The great cat gave a sudden snarl, and dropping its prey, loosed its hold on the tree and leapt down to face him. All done in an instant, and with such angry determination that the man-child’s eyes went wide, and he took a step back in spite of himself.

The tiger, too, felt a moment of confusion. For here was something not stamped into the racial memory of instinct. Kalus it knew, as the creature who fed and protected him at need. He felt an association to him, even a kind of closeness. But he was also the first creature to disturb him at his part-eaten kill, and those feelings were strong and immediate.

Kalus seemed to understand this, because he stood silent and made no further move, staying the cub, who would have stepped freely to the meat her friend had provided.

The tiger looked at the tree, then at the man. He vaguely recalled his mother, coming upon the scene of another tiger’s kill, and the way it had first snarled, then yielded, allowing her to eat..... At last he solved the puzzle. Searching the forest behind him for any sign of danger, he moved away from the buck and remained standing, patient but alert, leaving the other to eat his fill.

Kalus came forward steadily, and with a further greeting, began to cut away at the untouched back legs (which a more experienced predator would have eaten first, but which were ideal for his purposes). He worked hard and diligently with the hunter’s knife, trying at the same time not to jerk the carcass, which might arouse the tiger, at intervals shooing away the cub.

He felt as he did so an almost irrational need of haste, which went beyond his concern for the tiger or the long journey home. He could not have explained it. There was time to meet his ends. No, it was more the
aggressiveness of the act itself which put him on his guard. After so many days of caution and yielding, to have been so bold, and come to such a reward..... And whether superstition or sixth sense, his one desire at that moment was to take his portion and be gone.

As the last stubborn tendon surrendered its hold of the second leg, he straightened his back with a sudden glow of pride and happiness. He wanted to walk right up to his companion, a thing which he had never done, and box his ears in relief and brotherly affection.

But in the same instant the shadow behind his fears took flesh, as with a mad crash a large grizzly split through a wall of bushes, not forty feet away. And as it growlingly surveyed them with but a moment’s consideration, the tiger recognized his old enemy.

Fear rose instantly in the man-child, but stronger was his cornered rage. A mindless brute, who knew nothing of his struggles and yearnings, blindly sought to steal what had cost him so dearly, and in so doing, rend or even kill both himself and his closest companions. Knowing that to run would be the greater danger, and goaded by his passion, he lifted his spear and cried out in fury, standing his ground and preparing for the inevitable charge. The tiger seemed to feel much the same emotion, for it too snarled threateningly, and even began to move forward.

But in the dim perceptions of the monster there also burned dark fires. This land was his, as was any in which he walked, and he would not be defied. His victory over the tiger still lived in him, and the man-child was beyond his experience. He was a prince of power, and aggression his only creed. Coming close in short, growling breaths, he raised up his quivering bulk for battle, and on his hind legs advanced toward the tiger.

Whatever the poetic or philosophical may say, in Nature, as well as in Man’s darkened nature, strength is often (and only) by cornered strength defeated. As the full eight-foot carriage of the bear began to lower toward the mortal and extinguishable flesh of his friend, Kalus felt the terrible white fire that lives in every creature whose dearest are threatened, take hold of him. And as the tiger drew back and raised its extending claws in answer, he drove his spear deep into the grizzly’s brawny neck and shoulder. Nor did he draw away in the face of its fury, but drove in against the scruff, pinning its head while the tiger’s slashing blows fell unmercifully.

Pulling back the shaft as the spearhead lost its bite, he drove it this time into the bristling shoulder, and with a strength he would not have thought in him, from both point of pain and pressure, drove the thousand pound menace onto its side.

This was all the tiger needed. Slashing and biting, braving the peril of its roaring jaws, he tore away at the vital streams of his foe until they spilled recklessly, and the raging heart that drove them was betrayed in a self-defeating carnage of red. The bear lurched forward, dying.

Kalus stepped back, panting, his heart near exploding with the effort and fear, while the tiger yet leered over his fallen enemy, unsure of its end. Then the bear’s eyes faded, and all was silence.

The cub whimpered out from its hiding place, looking to Kalus for some sign of reassurance. He knelt down and caressed her head against him, feeling much the same need himself. Then turned to face his ally, feeling a fierce kinship as deep and true as any he had ever experienced.

At last the tiger stepped back, and raising its head, gave a growl of pride and possession that told any who cared to listen that this land was his, and his alone. Kalus stepped back, acknowledging this, and with a surge of bittersweet emotion, realized that his friend had ascended to the magnificent
freedom of a creature of the Wild. . .but also that it no longer needed him.

“You’ve done it,” he said quietly, and with such feeling that the pent-up emotions burst forth in a flood of tears. Then he shook off all weakness, lifted the legs of the deer, and looked one last time at his friend.

“Fly well, my Avatar. My spirit is always with you.”

Kalus turned sadly toward home, and followed by the wolf, was away.

It was a quiet morning, and for the first time in weary days uncounted, a truly mild one as well. The sun shone warm and wet, there was little breeze, and this time, Kalus knew, it was no illusion. Winter was on the wane. If he had possessed a calendar, the day might have been called March 12.

And though the inexorable changing of the seasons brought with it new concerns and dangers, he resolved this day to feel some small satisfaction in his victory over the Cold World. Perhaps victory was not the right word, since the primal elements knew no intelligence, and felt no pain. Still.....

Sylviana came out to join him on the ledge, which through the softening snow, was once more discernible as the same from which she had first surveyed the confines of her new existence, and the untamable world that was to be the only home of her adulthood. Putting her hand through Kalus’ arm and nestling against him, both felt emotion stir inside them, as sleeping dreams and fears alike, awoke to the possibilities of the coming Spring.

The two looked at each other. And without speaking, both knew that the mountains they had been forced to climb were too high, the valleys they had endured, too abysmal and black. Somehow a quieter space must be found, where they could rest and recover their spirits, and climb no higher feeling than gentle warm affection and peace. Such, at least, was their desire.

“I miss the tiger,” said Kalus quietly. “I knew he would have to go. But still.”

“I miss Akar,” she began. Then suddenly striking upon the heart of her emotions. “I miss my FATHER.” Tears welled in her eyes. “He never
knew, because I didn’t. . .how much I loved him.” She lowered her head and cried silently. “How could I have been such a fool?”

Feeling awkward, for all their time together, he gently took her hand and rubbed it. For a time neither spoke. Then he said sincerely.

“If there is a God, he knows now.”

She looked up at him, so grateful, then embraced him with all the mingled love and sorrow for persons and places forever lost, and others found. He held her warmly, and after a time he added.

“At least the season is mild and safe. Perhaps the safest of the year. We will be free to move about with less worry.”

“And a month from now?” she could not help asking. Then she looked up quickly, hoping she had not repaid his kindness unfairly.

“It’s all right,” he said, knowing her enough by now to read this in her face. “In a month I will think of something else. I ask only this: that you don’t punish yourself for what is gone, and what can never be..... Don’t worry for the future, at least today.”

“All right.” She turned toward him, taking both his hands in hers. “Did I ever tell YOU, Kalus? That I love. . .you?” She looked into his eyes, her spirit naked before him.

“Yes, my sweet Sylviana. Though you never said the words like this, you told me many times. You showed me.” He struggled. “You know that I would die for you---” She put a finger to his lips.

“Live for me, instead.” And they quietly embraced.

A moment later, Sylviana saw beyond his shoulder the outline of what appeared to be a stalking predator. The image yet unresolved through her tears, it dropped slinking down into the gorge.

“Kalus. Something’s coming this way.” He turned quickly, and she pointed. He drew his sword, and put her behind him with his arm. He was about to tell her to withdraw, when something in the shadowy movements struck a familiar chord inside him. His eyes brightened, then he smiled outright. Once more the mad happiness engulfed him.

“It’s Avatar!”

“Yes.”

“And there’s no trace of a limp. He’s moving the way a great cat should. See him climb!”

But as the striped form drew on, showing no sign of either fear or recognition, she felt a tremor of doubt. Surely the tiger they had known was not so large and supple. Yet as it slowed its movements and broke again into sunlight, she recognized the eyes and striped markings of their friend. Before she could ask, Kalus answered her.

“He’s nearly full grown now. A few more months and no grizzly will dare to stand up to him.” Looking at the powerful creature so close at hand, she found this easy to believe. For all her familiarity and trust, she could not help but feel a certain awe and fear. Even the muscles in Kalus’ arm tensed involuntarily, as it came to a halt perhaps a dozen feet away. But the tension was not lasting. Sheathing his sword, he spoke its name and began to advance toward it.

But at this the tiger turned away curiously, as if to retreat. Once more he gestured and spoke to it, but upon trying to come closer the result was the same.

“I think he wants me to follow him. I don’t understand his urgency, but I think that I should. Will you be all right?”

“Yes. Be careful. What about Alaska?”

“Keep her here with you, until I find out what he’s trying to tell me.” Turning one last time. “I love you.”

“Go on, will you? And watch where you’re going, you’re going to break your neck.”

“All right. Goodbye.” He slowly disappeared among the shadows of the gorge.

The tiger had begun by leading him southward along the bottom of the gorge. He kept waiting for it to turn away westward, or double back upon its tracks, since the sandstone hills that formed the southern border of his world were the unsleeping realm of the mountain cats. And though the tiger was the match of any unaltered creature of the winter forests, these powerful, saber-toothed throwbacks were not to be tested. And at the point where the sandstone and granite ridges met..... He could not even think about that. With every step he became more leery, and whispered as loudly as he dared for the tiger to stop and turn back. But to his utter dismay, it held fast to the deepening gorge until the end.

Like a nightmare Kalus’ felt his fears surround him, and all hope and safety slip behind. The walls at either hand became too steep to climb. His messenger and guide, who for its own sake he dared not abandon, refused to heed his warnings. The shadows grew deeper, and up ahead he began to describe, half in fearful imagination, half in stark reality, the outline of the darkest shadow that yet lived in all the Valley. Like a hole broken in the side of some ancient subterranean dungeon, straight ahead of him, larger than natural life, he saw the yawning blackness of the Commodores’ cave. Only once before, as an adolescent, had he observed it, from the high western wall. And when the side-winding, forty foot reptile had sauntered out, tasting the hot summer air with its tongue, he had run like the fleetest antelope, oblivious to the singular (and dangerous) spectacle he made, his one desire to be as far from the killing serpent as possible. His more recent encounter had only galvanized his fears.

Yet here he was, after years of struggle on the brink of a personal victory, with love and hope in sight, being drawn irresistibly to the one place above all others that he was loathe to go. Indeed, it was the peril of these Winter-sleeping creatures that made him most uneasy in thoughts of the coming Spring.

His anger and fear merged into maddening exasperation, but still the tiger plodded forward, heedless. It reached the dark overhang of sandstone and gazed back at him. Yet again he repeated the gestures of withdrawal, made unable by the consequences to speak. The tiger nodded its understanding, or seemed to, but then to his horror and final consternation, dove headlong into the grinning maw of death.

Once again Kalus was faced with the terrible choice: loyalty to one he loved, or survival for himself. He stood trembling on the threshold, frozen with fear and burning with inner conflict. He looked back upon the sunlit world and thought of his home: of his woman, and the cub. But what kind of home would it be if he abandoned his friend at greatest need? Swallowing hard a cry of rage to deaf gods, he drew out the ready steel of his sword, and plunged into darkness.

How far he walked he could not say. But suddenly, or perhaps only made sudden by the final acceptance of a half believed message from his eyes, he became aware of a soft light in the distance. This morning-like glow held fast at the edge of sight, and as he drew closer, began by slow degrees to reveal its source. Ahead of him the funnel reached its narrowest point, a squarish hole still broad enough for five men to pass abreast, that opened into a deepening expanse. Coming toward the rising, hard-rock lip of it, he went down on his belly, crawled forward, and looked over into the heart of the thing he feared.

There are times when a man’s worst fears are justified, and when he cannot, with any hope of survival, confront them. But often through patience, perseverance, and the fullness of time, the antithesis of his life can be worn down, altered, or made in the end less terrible. And while it is the height of foolishness for any man to laugh in the face of death, neither must he deify the many smaller deaths of Fear.

There in the sunken center, the stage, as it were, of this vaulted subterranean amphitheater, stood the tiger on a patch of sandy earth, among a tangle of living scrub. A soft and warm light shone down on him through a broad opening in the stone overhead. Nor was it a mere hole to the world beyond. Through one of the many wonders of Nature, a vein of crystalline quartz interceded, allowing the sun’s light to pass, while gathering and holding a fair measure of its warmth.

All these things he observed in the time it took for his eyes to adjust to what seemed a blinding glare, though in reality it was many shades lighter than the unfiltered sunlight. He had not yet seen the shadows: the tiger was not alone.

There, stretched lengthwise amid recessions in the descending, stair-like levels, as if the whole of a deceased family among the layered shelvings of a crypt, a full score of the dreadful reptiles lay sleeping. It was a sight to freeze the blood, but for one odd detail which their considerable girth clearly illustrated. THEY DID NOT BREATHE. Or if they did, it was so infrequently that in the considerable time he watched he never saw it. No heave or swell of the elastic ribs and dry, loose-fitting skin could be seen, even where an entire flank stood out against the unshaded light from above. BUT SURELY THEY WERE NOT DEAD. No sign of decay could be seen on them, nor any apparent cause of death.

Sylviana had told him of the aquatic lizards of the Galapagos Islands, who when diving for the sea vegetation which sustained them could hold their breath for an hour or more, even stopping their heartbeat to do so. But even this did not fully explain the phenomenon by which these enormous, cold-blooded creatures could remain suspended for the nearly six month period when the world outside became to them untenable, or reveal the inner clock that told them to wake once more, and slowly revive into a living state.

The tiger, who had discovered this place on that first, bitter wandering from the man-child’s cave, being drawn by its warmth and shelter, had no need for such questions, and simply accepted the fact. He had returned one time since, and in his animal way reasoned that these, like all hibernating creatures, would not be stirring until the weather turned warm. And now that the time had come for him to return again northward, to the long forests where Winter hardly waned, he desired to give some last gift to his friend, who had helped bring him back to the world of the living. This gift was the magic of the green, budding cactus which on that troubled night had opened his mind to show him that his own feelings, as well as the strange company who had taken him in, could be trusted. He looked up at the Kalus placidly, waiting for him to come down.

Kalus stood regarding the scene some moments longer. Though he slowly reasoned that the danger was remote, or at least not immediate, a den of dragons, be they live, dead or sleeping, is not to be entered lightly. And he could not imagine why the tiger had brought him here. At last he began to descend, though warily, all the time watching the silent shapes for any sign of movement or consciousness. There were none. He came to the dry, earthy disc in the bowl’s center, and approached the tiger. His expression and body language were taut as he said. “Why, Avatar? Why, of all the places you have ever been, did you bring me here?”

In mute reply the tiger carefully took one of the buds in his teeth and plucked it free, as on that night he had done, seeking the moisture and sustenance within. Then began to chew, curling his lip and tongue in reaction to the bitter taste. But the taste had been bitter on that first night as well.

Kalus knelt to examine the plant, and the special part that his friend had eaten. YOU BROUGHT ME HERE TO TASTE THE FRUIT OF A GNARLED DESERT? he thought curiously. For so it seemed to him. But looking into the deep, mysterious eyes of the tiger, and again at the strange plant he had never seen, he wondered. Using the hunting knife he carefully cut away several of the buds, placing them in his pouch. He was tempted to put the last in his mouth, but something warned him off. Not until I am free of this place, he thought, and the tiger seemed to understand.

Together they withdrew, to ride the dragon’s wing.

It was evening before Kalus said anything to Sylviana of the morning’s adventures. First there had been work to do, then he felt reluctant to worry her. Finally, as they sat side by side on a flat stone before the diminishing fire, she asked him.

“Where did Avatar take you?” For an answer he reached into his pouch and took out the cactus buds, and laid them on the stone between. “Did you ever see these, or hear of them? They come from a desert plant that is like but unlike others I have seen. He was very intent on my eating them---he risked much---but I wanted to talk to you first.”

She took one in her fingers, and held it up against the light. “If I didn’t know better..... They look like peyote buttons.”

“What are they?”

“A hallucinogenic cactus, used by the Native Americans in dances and religious ceremonies. It’s a kind of drug, if that’s the right word for something found in Nature. It’s supposed to open the mind, and let you see things beyond the physical reality.”

“Is it a kind of magic, then?” He was fascinated and intrigued that the tiger had experienced this elevated state, and wanted him to feel it, too.

“I guess you could call it that. But one very dangerous to the young, or to anyone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.”

“Have you ever eaten them?”

“No. I’ve smoked marijuana, which is safer..... But Kalus, these can’t possibly be peyote.”

“Why not?”

“Because if the tiger had eaten them he’d have gone crazy: he wouldn’t have understood. He wouldn’t have been able to think it through.”

“And maybe for that same reason he wasn’t afraid. You still don’t see it, do you? An animal’s mind isn’t less than ours, only different. He lives in his world as clearly, and understands it as well, as you and I. He is not a half-wakened child.”

“Well, assuming all that’s true, and that this is peyote. Do you think you’re ready for it? Because I promise you, it would take your mind to places it’s never been. It could be very frightening..... Now you’re scaring me.”

Indeed, he had all but stopped listening, gazing instead with fixed intensity upon the mystical substance before him.

“I want to try, Sylviana, if only for the pains it cost me to bring it here.” He looked at her intently. “Where Avatar leads, I want to follow if I can.”

“I can’t stop you, but..... Oh, Kalus. I’m so afraid you’ll hurt yourself. And after all we’ve been through.”

He saw the wisdom of this, and her deep concern. “What if eat just one, and you are here with me?”

The endless conflict between safety and wild freedom once more presented itself. Both felt it clearly. She hesitated, then said.

“If we do it, we do it together.”

“All right.”

Kalus put a bud in his mouth. Sylviana did the same.

“This is amazing.”

Roughly an hour had passed, and these words so broke the stillness that it seemed as if Kalus had then and there invented speech. And indeed, so far as concerned the virgin sea on which they now sailed, eternal and boundless, these were the first words, and he and the woman-child, the true Adam and Eve.

For some time now he had remained as a near statue, only his eyes and forehead working, studying in alternate wonder his hand, the circle of stones, then the altar and mirror behind it. Sylviana watched him, feeling the same awe of the experience, and perhaps to a greater degree, the accompanying danger. She answered simply.

“Yes.”

Her voice, like a pebble in a pool, touched the glassy waters of his spirit, sending out ripples of thought and feeling which seemed as endless as the pool itself. Regaining his center, he became placid with the wisdom of silence, until the shoots that stirred within him were ready to blossom once more in true speech. Sylviana was becoming concerned, but he had not forgotten her.

“All my days,” he said finally, “I’ve judged life by the pale shadow of it in which I’ve often been forced to live, never guessing that the heart. . .the very bones of it. . .are ALIVE.” He paused.

“It seems to me now, as it did when I was a child, that no hope, no dream is ever fully lost, so long as the least fragment remains alive inside you. It becomes like a seed---sleeping, dormant. But not dead. Until, if we can endure, and fight our way to a better place where sun and water yet flow, it is called gently back to life.”

He looked at her, tears streaming down his face. “I am alive! And you, my endless miracle. Are alive, and here with me.”

She took his hand, so close, and pressed it to her lips.

“Be gentle, my loving Kalus. Be gentle. There are still so many wounds.”

Never, it seemed to him, had she spoken more truly. For he now felt in the wrenching of his heart, as surely as if the flesh itself ached and bled, the many scars that lay across him. He became quiet, and put his head against her, knowing that for all his yearning, patience alone would heal him, and make those forgotten dreams possible.

Time passed.

At length Kalus raised himself, understanding, and better able to handle the heightened state of his senses, feeling once more like a peaceful sea from which the gale has passed, softened and grateful.

“Thank you,” he said to her. He took a deep breath.

“Are you all right?”

There was something more than womanly concern in her voice. An intense curiosity had taken hold of her, as if she too pondered some great riddle of her past. The questions twirled like serpents about the object she now surveyed.

“Yes. What are you thinking?”

“I’ve been looking at the mirror,” she said, gazing at it still. “All this time we’ve taken the altar, and the visions of that night, for granted, perhaps because the questions were too deep, and they frightened us..... But what does it all mean, Kalus? What's BEHIND it?”

Turning toward the singular apparatus, which like her he had left aside until this night as simply too much to contemplate, he was again drawn by its silent mystery. But in his more earthy, less ethereal way, he took the question literally. What lay BEHIND it? And stirred at last to physical action, he took from his pouch the round hammer-stone and approached the blue-black mirror, which seemed to waver in strange patterns before him.

As the woman watched, he tapped first along the rock immediately surrounding the glass, then above, and around the altar. There could be no doubt: the sounds were hollow. Some hidden chamber lay beyond. He turned to his companion.

“Shall I break the glass?”

Again she felt an inner turmoil. But her need to know was so great..... “Yes.”

He shielded his eyes with his arm, much as he had on the night when together they heard the Voice. . .and hurled his stone into the heart of it.

With a crash the mirror burst. And when she dared to open her eyes again, her first reaction was disappointment. Only a hole remained, lined about the edges with jagged bits of glass. But forbidding and tooth-like as these appeared, they could with care be removed, and the passage rendered safe. This Kalus set out to do, protecting his hand with a small skin and pulling out the pieces one by one, unable yet to penetrate the gloom of what lay beyond.

“Bring me the torch,” he said to her.

But now the girl became suddenly timid. Seeing the result of her handiwork, she wondered if in her restless curiosity she had not tempted the undoing of all Faith.

“It’s all right,” he said, somehow knowing her thoughts. “If a belief can be so easily destroyed, by the least physical reality, it is not worthy of the hope we place in it. I would rather put my faith in something that can be trusted.”

Her eyes pleaded.

“I know,” he said more quietly. “Nothing is that simple. But the miracle of the Voice is not banished yet. Bring me the torch, and we’ll see what lies beyond.”

Slowly she calmed the surge of religious fear, and took from its mount on the wall the torch that they had made. She handed it to him as he continued to reach across the polished granite, removing or brushing aside the broken glass that remained. He then moved the torch from side to side, trying to see.....

“There is a room, about the same size of the upper cave. But it is higher, and filled with objects I don’t know.” Taking the fur canopy from his bed, he folded it and used it to line the edges, still rough, of the opening. Then tossing the light in gently ahead of him, he mounted the altar. And passed within.

“I’m coming, too,” came the woman’s voice after him. Perceiving no immediate danger, he wedged the torch into an opening, and helped her through the empty, oval space. Upon regaining her feet, the girl looked around her. . .and gave voice to her dismay.

“Computers.” And so it was. One entire wall of the square-cut chamber consisted of nothing but the sterile MACHINES: voice and thought analyzers, communications and memory, species, mythology, and logic sequencers. The woman felt used, betrayed.

“All that time in the cave, alone and afraid. My only hope was the voice that spoke to me through the glass. To know that it was reading my thoughts and secret hopes, and telling me to remain there..... Just MACHINES. All a terrible hoax.”

“Not all, my sweet Sylvie, and not terrible. The warnings they spoke were true, and may have saved your life. And in the end, I did come to you.” He put his arm around her.

“And is it not a miracle after all? Think of it. I was born fully human, on a night when stars fell from the sky. Then Akar comes to me in Barabbas’ cave: I see a terrible vision, and am made an outcast. The Mantis finds you in the mountains of the North and brings you here. We are brought together.” He turned towards her. “Even if machines could accomplish all or part of that, so many miracles had to come first. Life on Earth. The Universe itself, rather than a great, formless void.

“What are the odds of it?” he continued. “That you and I should be standing here now, alive and still young, with love and hope, and the chance to make a better life. Is that not miracle enough?”

“I know what you’re saying. And of course you’re right. It just felt better. . .I don’t know. . .to think that God was watching me. That He loved and cared about ME..... I’m going to miss that.”

“When I was a child, I thought as a child,” he quoted. “When we are young we need such illusions, such security. And who is to say what does and does not exist in the world beyond our sight? Not I. Here I stand, surrounded by wonders I could not dream of. To think that a light from a machine could reach inside my mind, and give me the power to speak.”

At this the woman suddenly stirred, and drew away from him. She examined the machinery more closely, confounded, overwhelmed. It wasn’t possible.

“What is it, Sylviana?” Still for a time she could not speak, trying to follow the rapid, and incredible chain of thought.

“My father was a scientist,” she said finally. “And I knew something of on-going research. This technology: the fire that burned from nothing, the ability to read my thoughts..... And the violet beam, GIVING YOU THE POWER OF SPEECH. Kalus, unless I’m dead wrong. This equipment, and the altar. . .weren’t left here by men! We haven’t advanced nearly this far.”

With this her weary despondency left her. She was consumed instead by the eager, questioning thought that her father had passed on to her almost without her knowing it: Science, the study of the visible God.

Examining the back of the chamber, she found a steep passage carved into the rock, after a single bend to the left, leading in a straight line upward and eastward. But surely ‘carved’ was not the right word. The walls were smooth as glass, the floor rippled, as if to accommodate some creature which had used the uneven surface to enter and return..... The slanting tube rose far out of sight---to the top, she imagined, of Skither’s fifteen-hundred foot mountain. A score of masons couldn’t have done the fine work in twenty years.

“What does it mean?” asked Kalus, lost in the wake of her discovery and unable to follow.

“The oldest question of all, Kalus. Is there life among the stars? But here, let’s follow the passage and see where it leads. I’ll tell you more when I know more.”

Now it was he who became trepid, not understanding. She couldn’t help herself. She laughed.

“Oh, did I look as foolish when you broke the mirror? There’s no reason to be afraid. I’m sure there’s no one here now. Machinery this advanced could have been working completely on its own for centuries.”

She took his hand, and together they made their way up the long, arrow-straight passageway, pacing their steps and resting often, so as not to exhaust themselves in the climb and have nothing left. And yet at each pause their sense of wonder, as well as the now tenable magic of the peyote, only seemed to increase.

For so, too, do Science and the indescribable beauty Nature walk---the study and living manifestation, respectively, of the enigmatic Spirit of the Universe.

And as they stepped out at last onto a high platform open to the stars, both felt it so clearly. The sabled dome of sky, scattered with living diamonds, throbbed and pulsed, undeniable: Eternity’s Breath.

And though they found nothing more alien or fantastic than a smooth, half-crater floor, opening unbarriered on the East, still, this was more than enough. The vastness of the sky reached like a limitless ocean, islanded by countless suns and unseen planets.

And on the nearer, more tangible horizon, its pounding surf just audible in the distance..... Kalus’ heart caught in his throat. How it called to him! Earth-mystical, everlasting, unvanquished by the follies of men. . .he saw it as for the first time. Endlessly living.

The Sea.