T
hroughout his life, Wulv had lived intimately with nature. Later he told Repana, “I've seen every weather there is and every sort of cloud too. But never one like that one. It was unnatural.”
“How can a cloud be unnatural? The Rasne believe that clouds are nothing more than heated water, rising as steam.”
Wulv looked shocked. “The Teumetes know that clouds are the exhalations of our gods.” His voice trailed away as he gazed, awestruck, into the heavens once more. “The gods spoke to me from the clouds. I swear it. And that one cloud in particular sailed away in the direction of my home. I am to take you both there as soon as possible. Do you think your daughter will be strong enough to leave here tomorrow?”
Repana of the Silver People was not about to argue with one who had a message from the gods, his or anyone else's. “We will see how she feels in the morning, Wulv.”
As it happened they had to wait a few more days until Vesi was able for the journey. Childbirth combined with her injuries had weakened her more than she would admit, but her mother's keen eye would not be fooled as to her condition. “When my daughter is strong,” she argued with Wulv, “she will be able to travel faster. As it is, we would have to stop too often to let her rest, we would hardly make any progress. So go and bring us some fresh meat. I will make her a nourishing broth. You will eat some too; you look as if you need it.”
On the morning before they set out for Wulv's home, the Teumetian carefully demolished the little hut in the glade, smoothing away every trace of its existence.
“This is a sacred place,” Wulv pointed out. “We must leave it as we found it.”
Repana nodded. The Rasne understood all too well the importance of keeping any sacred space undefiled ⦠unlike the brutal and warlike Romans, who were said to burn other people's temples and throw down their gods.
Carrying her baby close to her breast, crooning constantly to it, Vesi followed Wulv with her mother at her back as they made their way along the narrow forest trails. Even at High Day it was very dark beneath the primordial oaks. Repana kept glancing over her shoulder, convinced she could hear something behind her. But there was nothing she could see, only a few thin shafts of light slanting down through the canopy of the leaves overhead. Yet each time she looked back she felt certain there was more undergrowth than she remembered and the forest had a more pungent, fecund odor.
As he followed the little party, the
hia
energy that Pepan radiated left its mark on the forest. Branches dipped greedily to absorb some of it; leaves burgeoned and grew glossy with their share. In Pepan's wake, roots clawed through the soil, clutching after the last tendrils
of the nourishing force. The
hia
of the dead fed the living, who in turn would die, decay, and feed new life-forms in a never-ending cycle. The integrity of the whole depended upon the death and rebirth of its parts.
The only constant was change.
Pepan's strength was continually dissipated and then restored by the surging emerald energy of the living forest.
Just when it was most needed, Wulv called a halt. “I'll find some drinking water for Vesi,” he said. “You sit here with your back against this big tree and close your eyes and rest. I'll be only a shout away.” Not for the first time, Repana was impressed by Wulv's consideration.
When weariness began to take its toll on Vesi, he volunteered to carry little Horatrim. She demurred. “What can he know about babies?” she hissed to her mother, her whisper loud enough for Wulv to hear. “You carry him,” she said, thrusting the child into Repana's arms.
But Repana was weary as well. When she stumbled and almost dropped the infant, Wulv caught her and steadied her, then gently eased the babe from her arms. “I won't hurt him,” he insisted. “I like babies.”
Repana raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever held one before?”
The Teumetian thrust forward his lower jaw in a way she was coming to recognize. “I like babies,” he repeated stubbornly.
“But have you ever ⦔
“I've held bear cubs and fox kits, day-old wolves and orphaned fawns. I know what to do,” he said, wrapping the baby in his bearskin mantle.
Too tired to argue, the women gave in. For the rest of the journey their guide carried Horatrim as carefully as any mother could wish. From time to time he even murmured to the baby and was rewarded by a gurgle that
pleased him inordinately. “I think he likes me,” Wulv confided shyly.
Shortly before sunset the forest gave way to a marshy expanse fed by a tributary of the Tiber. Wulv stopped and pointed. At the marsh's lowest point a lake glinted; a tiny islet was barely discernible in its midst. “My home,” he announced with shy pride. “I built it myself. Piled up earth and rocks until I had a raised place that was always dry. Made that causeway leading to it too, so I can get home even in time of flood.”
Repana was too tired to be interested in the details of the place. It looked appallingly primitive, but at least it was a sanctuary. “How much farther?” she wanted to know.
“We'll be there before dark. Take care to follow in my footsteps. If you step off the path you could find yourself neck deep in water.”
Now Repana was doubly glad that Wulv was carrying the baby.
The path twisted and turned, dipped and doubled back on itself in an ever more intricate pattern meant to confuse invaders. Beyond the forest marsh grass took over, slender, supple leaves that gradually grew higher and higher, until they were walking through a verdant tunnel. The ground underfoot was boggy in places, making every step an effort. The Teumetian moved with confidence, barely glancing at the route he followed. He was concentrating on the baby in his arms. Finally, he stopped and allowed the women to catch up. “Welcome,” he said simply, stepping aside at the neck of the narrow causeway that ran out to the artificial island in the center of the lake. Several thatched huts stood on the island. “All this is mine,” the Teumetian added, indicating the little compound with a wave of his hand.
Gratefully, Repana and Vesi stumbled along the causeway and collapsed together on the bed inside the largest hut. As Repana's eyelids drifted closed, the last
thing she saw was Wulv carefully handing Horatrim to his mother.
In the morning, while Vesi was nursing Horatrim, Repana allowed Wulv to show her around his little domain. Although it was very crude, Repana was forced to admit to herself that Wulv had achieved a surprising level of domesticity.
“The spit over the firepit rotatesâlook, I'll show you; it works with this foot treadle I madeâso meat roasts evenly,” he explained proudly. “And in this shed here, where I smoke fish, I've arranged flaps in the roof so I can control the amount of smoke.”
“Is there only one way onto this island of yours?”
“Only one. And I can barricade the causeway if wolves or bears get too close.”
“What about two-legged predators?” wondered Repana. “What is to stop them from swimming across?”
“Nothingâexcept for the pointed stakes I sunk into the mud around the margins of the lake. And the water here is full of eels. I feed them on blood and scraps of meat. If any attacker were to jump into the lake and injure themselves, the eels would be drawn by the blood and do a bit of attacking of their own.”
“Eels cannot kill a man,” protested Repana.
“No, but it would take an extraordinarily brave man to attempt to swim through a swarm of biting eels,” Wulv told her with a grin.
Repana subsequently commented to Vesi, “He is a resourceful man and more intelligent than he looks. In fact, if I did not know Wulv was a Teumetian I would not take him for a savage.”
“Perhaps the Teumetes are not savages,” Vesi suggested.
Repana's eyebrows flew toward her hairline. “Of course they are! You heard what Wulv said about being
descended from bears.” But privately she was beginning to have doubts as to just what constituted a savage.
In the days and moons and seasons that followed, Repana's good opinion of Wulv continued to grow. She and Vesi found him unfailingly courteous according to his own standard and gifted with a sense of humor that made their exile more bearable. When winter closed in, he brightened the long nights by telling rambling jokes that had no point but were somehow very funny and singing bawdy, equally funny songs in a husky voice.
Repana tried to pretend she did not understand their meaning, but sometimes she blushed.
Wulv found her blushes beguiling. At night he lay sleepless thinking about them, and when spring came he brought her armloads of wildflowers. “There are more flowers around the lake than I ever saw before,” he commented.
“What am I to do with these?” asked Repana, bending her head to sniff their fragrance.
“I don't know. I just thought you would enjoy ⦠something beautiful, after looking at my scarred old face all winter.”
“I stopped looking at your face a long time ago,” Repana said quietly. “My people worship beauty in all of its forms, but you have taught me that there is a deeper beauty, a beauty of spirit. I think our people lack that, and we are the poorer for it.”
Wulv bowed, his cheeks flushed. He did not entirely understand what Repana was saying, but he understood the emotion behind the words.
“You like him very much,” Vesi remarked.
The older woman shrugged and concentrated on gathering the flowers together. “He is good to us.”
Pepan also was aware of a burgeoning affection between Wulv and Repana. In the Otherworld the emotional attraction was expressed as a lyrical strand of melody whenever their eyes met. The former Lord of the Rasne was astonished that Repana could so react to a primitive woodsman. He was not exactly jealous; the longer he was in the Otherworld, the more such emotions seemed irrelevant. Rather he felt a fading, wistful envy. Life was going on without him. How strange.
Yet he remained involved, watching with something akin to paternal pride as the infant Horatrim crawled, then stood, then took his first precocious steps. There was no doubt the boy was developing with astonishing rapidity. One could almost see him grow.
Meanwhile Vesi's youthful face took on more matronly plumpness, and a sheen of silver frosted Repana's hair.
Because in the Otherworld Pepan had no sense of time, each change took him by surprise. The swiftness of the changes surprised him even more. During his life in the Earthworld, had things altered so quickly? Had time passed with such extraordinary rapidity? Perhaps it had ⦠and perhaps he had been too busy to notice the changes.
Eventually he realized he was having his own effect on the Earthworld. The energy of his
hia,
remaining in one place as it now did, was causing an explosion of growth most clearly demonstrated by the vegetation surrounding Wulv's lake. Ancient marsh willows that had been on the verge of dying reclothed themselves with new leaves. Spindly seedlings developed into luxuriant shrubbery in less than a season. Vivid, fleshy orchids of gold and azure blossomed along stems the length of a spear shaft, while from early spring until late autumn the air was perfumed by masses of white roses.
And day after day, Wulv brought Repana flowers. When she took them from him, their hands touched and
lingered. In the morning there would be more blossoms for the Teumetian to bring to Repana.
Horatrim continued to grow with astonishing rapidity. The first words he spoke were, “Give me!” as he reached for his grandmother's flowers, displaying early the Rasne passion for beauty.
The three adults laughed with delight.
In the Otherworld Pepan laughed too, a rich warm sound.
Laughter was not irrelevant, for while it lasted the sound of joy acted as a shield that kept dark forces at bay. The musical chord of Horatrim's spirit had the same effect, Pepan observed. In the immediate vicinity of the child no
siu
lurked; no corrupted
hia
sniggered. But he knew they were not far away, circling, stalking. Rapacious.
There were other watchers as well. He was aware of them as vast shapes on the horizon emitting a sound like the ringing of silver bells, a barely perceptible tintinnabulation that underlay all other sounds: this was the song of the
Ais,
the music of the gods. Their looming presence made Pepan uneasy. He was willing to challenge a siu but he had no illusions about his strength compared to one of the
Ais.
They could crush him without a thought if they chose, if his actions displeased them. So far they had not interfered, but he had no way of knowing what they might do in the future.
He wondered why they were also taking an interest in the demon-sired child.