Jafir spun, lashing out at me. “He’s not a beast, Morrighan!” And then more quietly, “Our northern clan arrived. There are many mouths to feed. He must show strength, or we will all become weak.”
I stared at him, dread rushing through me. It was no longer just talk. They would cross the mountains. I kept my voice even, trying to hide my fear. “Will you leave with them?”
“They’re my kin, Morrighan. There are small children—” He shook his head, and in a tone that held both regret and resignation, he added, “I am the best hunter of the clan.”
That was because his kin were lazy and impatient. They wanted what they hadn’t worked for. I had seen Jafir carefully setting his snares, patiently sharpening his arrows, scanning the grasses with the steady eye of a hawk, looking for the slightest rustle.
“Before they leave, you could teach them. You could—”
“I cannot stay in this canyon, Morrighan! Where would I go?”
I didn’t need to say the words. He saw them in my eyes. Come with me to my tribe.
He shook his head. “I’m not like your kind.” And then more sharply, almost as an accusation: “Why don’t you carry weapons?”
I bristled, pulling back my shoulders. “We have weapons. We just don’t use them on people.”
“Maybe if you did, you wouldn’t be so weak.”
Weak? My fingers curled to a fist, and swifter than a hare, I punched him in the stomach. He grunted, doubling over.
“Does that seem weak to you, mighty scavenger?” I taunted. “And remember, our numbers are twice that of yours. Maybe it is you who should follow our ways.”
His breath returned, and he looked up at me, his eyes gleaming with playful revenge. He sprang, knocking me to the ground, and we rolled in the meadow grass until he had me pinned beneath him.
“How is it that I’ve never seen this great camp of yours? Where is it?”
A member of the tribe never gave away the location of the rest, even if caught. Ever. He saw my hesitation. The corner of his mouth pulled in disappointment that I didn’t trust him. But I did—I trusted him with my life.
“It’s a vale,” I said. “Just a short walk from here. A canopy of trees hides the camp from the bluffs above.” I told him I took the narrow ridge just outside the entrance to this canyon to get there. “It’s not far. Do you want to come with me to see it?” I asked, thinking he had changed his mind.
He shook his head. “With more mouths to feed, there is more hunting to be done.”
A knot grew in my throat. His kin needed him. They would take him away from me. “Past the mountains there are animals, Jafir. There are—”
“Shh,” he said, his finger resting on my lips. His hand spread out to gently cradle my face. “Morrighan, the girl of ponds, and books, and knowing.” He stared at me like I was the air he breathed, the sun that warmed his back, and the stars that lit his way—a gaze that said, I need you. Or maybe those were all the things I wanted him to see in my eyes.
“Don’t worry,” he finally said. “We won’t leave for a long while. More supplies need to be gathered for such a journey, and with so many mouths to feed, it is hard to save up. And some in the clan oppose the journey. Maybe it will never happen. Maybe there will be a way for us to go on as we always have.”
I clung to those words, wanting them to be true.
There has to be a way, Jafir. A way for us.
We rode through the glades and the gorges, setting snares, stalking fowl, and waded at the edges of ponds, wriggling corms loose with our toes. We laughed and squabbled and kissed and touched, for the exploring never ended. There were always new ways to see and know each other. Finally, with six rock doves and a bag of corms hanging from the back of his saddle, he told me there was another piece of his world that he wanted me to see.
* * *
“It’s magnificent,” I said. Strangely and bizarrely magnificent.
We stood on the edge a shallow lake, the water lapping at our bare feet. Jafir stood behind me, his arms circling around my waist, his chin brushing my temple.
“I knew you would like it,” he said. “There must be a story there.”
I couldn’t imagine exactly what that would be, but it had to be a story of randomness and chance, of luck and destiny.
On a knoll in the middle of the lake was a door, surely part of something greater at one time, but the rest long swept away. A home, a family, lives that mattered to someone. Gone. Somehow the door alone had survived, still hanging in its frame, an unlikely sentinel of another time. It swung in the breeze as if saying, Remember. Remember me.
The wood of the door was bleached as white as the dried grass of summer. But the part that left me most in awe was a tiny window no bigger than my hand in the upper half of the door. It was made of red and green colored glass pieced together like a cluster of ripe berries.