Aur Child

Alai-Tiul asked Sann-Na, “Is that a village?” It was the sixth night of the journey that took them from Dragon’s Snout north towards the caves of giants. They glided off the trail down onto the flat surface of a large lake. A pale glow filtered through the wide bands of cloud cover, but the lake was not the panel of reflected light that it had been on previous nights when the sky was clear. Alai could see the flat expanse continued ahead far beyond the local gloom, and he could see many lights along the edge of the lake where it seemed to pinch down into a narrow strait.

“That’s the Tors clan. Several families. The lake and trails around it belong to them. To go around would require another night. If this cloud cover holds, the lake is the fastest route. But,” she pointed her pole far ahead, “we must be quiet when passing by that narrow point and stay in the middle of the cut. We should slip by unnoticed. Fortunately, the breeze is against us, so at least we won’t be heard until we’ve passed.”

With this, she lunged forward. Alai recognized this to be a serious hazard because there could be no other explanation for the large quantity of words Sanna had produced. He took a deep breath, digesting her instructions thoroughly. Dragging the pulk behind him, he set his pace to match Sanna’s and focused on silence.

They used their first half hour to perfect the approach, moving slightly faster than usual, and before he realized it, they reached the narrow point in the lake. Cabins spotted either side along the lake, windows aglow with the varying temperature combinations of candle and solid-state light. The sound of muffled voices rose, the first heard for many days, tumbling across the snow from the cottages.

Alai attempted a whisper to Sanna, “They are so loud.”

“They rejoice in the full moon,” she said.

As they passed through the cut, Alai noticed Sanna silently pull ahead with more powerful strides. Then he saw why. The clouds were thinning, leaving them more exposed. Alai’s speed was metered by his twitchy rhythm. He could feel the heat turning into sweat deep within his layers, but he could not slow down now. Twenty minutes north of the cut, the sounds of the village were well behind them, but the clouds opened to a clear sky, and the full moon exposed them like two ants in a bowl of sugar. Although sneaking glimpses over her shoulder regularly, Sanna finally reduced her speed. Alai regained his breath.

Not ten minutes more, and Sanna’s increased glances backwards interrupted her rhythm. Alai, too, looked behind him. He spasmed involuntarily at the sight of two large objects soaring across the lake like eagles upon a thermal. Beneath these gliding wings he discerned two people on skis. They raced along the ice on opposite, oblique angles to one another. A crack of the wings reached his ears as their shape reformed after an upwind tack. Below, the intermittent scraping of skis barely touching the lake blasted waves of crystalline dust into the air. With his second look, Alai confirmed these were not birds. They were like kites children might fly, only much bigger.

Sanna slid beside him. “Clan patrol,” she said. “They’ve spotted us. We won’t escape them.” She seemed to be thinking out loud, sharing her logic with Alai so he better understood the situation. “They must fly upwind, but they will catch us once we turn northeast, unless we take to the forest. But with the pulk and ... well ... it’s impossible. Let us maintain our pace and try to avoid conflict through dialogue.”

This troubled Alai. Dialogue was not one of Sanna’s strengths.

“What do they want from us?” he asked.

“Us?” she scoffed, “They don’t want anything from us. They come for you.”

Sanna quit her efforts and turned to face the two skiers, who were on opposite tacks and still downwind from them but converging very quickly on their location. As they arrived, each skier successively came to a halt in a massive spray of ice crystals that rained down on Sanna and Alai-Tiul. Two large men powerfully cranked the thick bars they held so that the kites settled down behind them onto the frozen lake in a gentle flop, deftly arranging the kites in such a manner as to prevent them from blowing away. They unclipped their harnesses and approached Sanna and Alai with an air of authority.

The first man, a face full of a bushy, sand-colored beard, a mustache thick with chunks of ice hanging beneath his nose, and a visor over his eyes, called out in a cheerful tone that surprised Alai. “Gave us quite an upwind hike there, little Sann-Na! You could’ve easily stopped in to say hello, but now you’ve got FarFar Tors all suspicious. We were just getting ready to toast the full moon when Kjell and I were ordered to don our gear and fight this sharp breeze upwind on your account. I hope you’ll make all our efforts to join you out here worth it.” He was slightly taller than the other, but they both clearly exceeded Sanna’s height. They towered over Alai.

“I have no business with you, Lars-Tors. I’ve paid for the season.” she replied.

“No, you’re paid in full, you are. But your silent friend here doesn’t look familiar.” Lars-Tors turned to the other man. “I don’t think he’s on our books, now is he, Kjell?”

Kjell-Tors’ broad forehead and strong nose appeared like the profile of an axe handle over his thick, red beard. He had lifted his visor up to reveal blue eyes that twinkled in the moonlight. He differed little in poise from Lars-Tors, other than being slightly shorter, but he stared at Alai with a forward tilt to his head so that he appeared more intimidating.

“He sure doesn’t look familiar, Lars, but then, I can barely see him!” Kjell’s eyes shifted from Alai’s face to the pulk. “I would venture to say the man is liable to be carrying contraband. What do you say, Lars?”

“I would agree. Hey man, have you paid tariffs on the goods you pull along?”

Sanna interjected before Alai could speak. “He carries no contraband. The goods for trade in the pulk all belong to me. If you were to waste your time inspecting, you’d find them nothing more than the typical parcels I’m regularly commissioned to deliver. You can see it’s my pulk, Lars. We’re obviously carrying no more than what I typically transport.”

“Won’t the man speak for himself?” Lars grinned with an open mouth that showed a fence of teeth.

Again, Sanna preempted a response from Alai, “I speak for my own goods, not him. Tariffs have already been paid, as you’ve said. Anything else?”

“Well, at least we can learn the man’s name.” Kjell stepped towards Alai with his palms shown, an accepted sign of peace and openness in this region that Alai did not understand. “I am Kjell of the Tors clan.” He stood there in silence, looking directly into Alai’s eyes.

This time, Sanna did not interject. After a moment of looking up at the man, Alai replied, “And I am Alai of the Tiul clan.”

“Have you bare palms, Alai-Tiul?”

Alai looked down and struggled to remove his mittens. He flipped his hands over several times in a panicked gesture to prove he was unarmed. Kjell chuckled through his dense beard.

“Outlander Alai-Tiul. From where do you hail?”

“I come from the southern continent.”

Kjell turned to Lars, “Small and dark they cook ’em in those hot places, hey?”

Lars smiled and said to Sanna with a laugh, “I hadn’t imagined the courier business profitable enough to hire draught animals.”

“Indeed,” said Kjell, continuing the banter, “Times change! We must needs speak with Farfar-Tors about upping your tariffs, huh?”

“Boys,” Sanna said in reply to this pointless harassment, “how and with whom I choose to travel is my own business. I suggest you pay mind to yours.”

Kjell’s smile faded away. His face became obscured behind the facial hair except for the eyes which revealed his desire. He said, “But why must it be two separate businesses, Sanna? Your hesitations are unfair. Won’t you at last agree to make this our business? For how long will you ignore my offer?”

Sanna was silent. She repositioned her poles to imply she wished to leave.

“Come along, Kjell,” said Lars-Tors as he turned back to his kite. “You know it’s best not to take up that subject. These Na folk never were much for a neighborly chat anyway.”

Kjell smirked and turned to Sanna. “Prove him wrong. Say something.”

Sanna only shook her head, making the final preparations for departure to her mittens.

Kjell’s eyes narrowed, he pointed at Alai. “Is this little tumor really what you want?”

Lars turned back around to Kjell. “Let it go, cousin.”

But Kjell did not quit his post. He stared at Alai, strange and silent, seemingly given free pass in the encounter, but there was nothing more to do with him. “Well, there’s always your sister,” he continued, “a bit feistier, but nothing that I couldn’t handle. Only, I suppose you’re more available nowadays.”

Sanna had already leaned towards the course they had been skiing, but with these words she snapped around and skied past the two large men in a blink of an eye, circumscribing an arc that seemed to pen them in. She stopped behind them, forcing both to turn in an awkward position in their skis to see her. She jeered angrily at Kjell, an expression Alai had only seen once before when she had held the puukko in her hand.

She said, “You tell Farfar-Tors that if ever again I hear a hint of disrespect towards my sister from either of you clowns, I will gladly add the day to ski around Tors clan grounds than pay his tariffs or ever see you again.”

Lars threw a scolding glare at Kjell and held his palms towards Sanna to plead with her, “Sann-Na, that’s not what he meant. You know he loses his senses around you!”

“Just tell Farfar-Tors what I said, Lars,” Sanna said, her fiery voice pushing clouds of vapor into the air before her. She turned to Kjell, whose great head sulked in the realization of his indiscretion.

“Rik-Na is right about you, Kjell-Tors,” Sanna continued, “Too much wind for me.” With that, she swept her pole beneath the cables that attached to Kjell-Tors’ kite, lifting it with a jerk so that the stiff breeze caught up underneath it and quickly filled in. Unattached to Kjell, it rose with a snap and immediately began tumbling down the lake back towards the clan cottages.

Kjell released a shriek of protest when she lifted the cables, but it was too late. The kite raced away without him. He fumbled clumsily in his skis, but even with poles he would have had trouble keeping up with the lofty kite billowing and tumbling in the wind, lines dragging along in the snow, twisting and tangling into knots as it went. Lars-Tors watched the quick series of events and burst out in uproarious laughter. He approached his own kite with a kind of exaggerated laziness, enjoying tremendously the trouble Sanna had caused his relative. He laughed in huge howls at the sight of Kjell leaping down the lake after his jumbled kite.

Alai leaned forward to get some momentum and pushed ahead to chase after Sanna. As Lars clipped himself into his own kite, he yelled back up the lake towards Sanna who was just within earshot, “He’s not a bad fella, Sann-Na!” With some more convulsions of laughter, he yelled at her once more as loud as he could, “And you’d always have the upper hand with ’em too!” With that, Lars yanked on the thick bar connected to the kite’s bridle and hoisted the broad craft into the air. He slid casually down the lake, stalling the kite, trying not to overtake Kjell-Tors, so that he could continue laughing alongside his cousin as that man loped along furiously in pursuit of the runaway kite.

Sanna assumed a pace that made it impossible for Alai to get beside her. He followed, the pulk dragging him back, and considered the events that had just taken place. Sanna had managed the situation amazingly well. A sister! Sanna hadn’t mentioned that before. His accidental association between Sanna and Digambar returned to him. The evidence was there - the similar cloaks, the voice, the resemblance - to suggest that Sanna’s sister could be Digambar. But she didn’t seem to know the name Digambar at all when Alai had said it aboard the Odyssey. Could she have pretended not to recognize it?

That evening, at the campfire, Alai searched for an angle to ask about Digambar. The jovial full moon smiled down upon them, unblemished by clouds, illuminating the snow-covered ground in a blue, spiritual transcendence. Alai raised his cup of pine needle tea.

“To our full moon,” he said.

Sanna smiled, dimples shadowed by the firelight, a deeper level of friendliness come from shared experience momentarily revealed. They had overcome much in those few days. Alai had overcome much. She raised her cup, fixed seriously on his dark eyes.

“To our full moon,” she repeated. They held their cups high and looked up to the glowing white disc held above them in the frigid heights of blackness. After a well-practiced moment of introspection where those toasting the heavenly satellite are expected to consider all the good that has come to them since the previous full moon, they each returned their cups to their mouths and sipped of the forest flavor.

“We’ll start a steeper climb tomorrow,” Sanna said. “We’re past clan lands, so there’s no need to ski by night anymore. We can sleep through the night now and depart at sunrise. We should arrive at the caves well before nightfall.”

She returned her gaze to the moon.

“A dynamic opposition,” she said, “We gain much energy while we sleep.”

“Those men,” Alai started, “Their bark was worse than their bite.” He smirked timidly.

Again, Sanna smiled. “The Tors clan is lazy,” she said. “They profit off traders who avoid the mountains by traveling across their lands; it’s a nominal tariff for an easier route to Dragon’s Snout. And yes, they’re mostly harmless.”

Alai leaned forward. “Well, I thought you were incredible, the way you handled those two.”

Sanna shook her head humbly, “It would have been best to get through unnoticed, but the clouds refused.” She glanced off to the side and seemed to speak more freely, “Perhaps I should have opted to lead us around the lake, but as I said, they could catch us even three hours away if they had found our tracks. Most important is that they didn’t uncover your strange box.” With a nervous chuckle that allowed her eyes to twinkle in the firelight, she added, “I’ve no idea how I would have explained that.”

“No,” Alai said, with a complementary laugh, “better it remains a secret.”

Between the crackle of the small fire, Alai attempted to keep the momentum he had gained.

“It’s a big clan, the Tors?” he asked.

“Many generations of three families have stayed together here in the forests.”

“That’s unusual for a clan. At least where I’m from, there are rarely clans made up of so few families anymore.”

“Yes, it’s the same here.”

“And who is Farfar-Tors? Is he an elder?”

“No. There are no male elders.”

“That’s why I asked,” Alai continued, “It seemed odd to me for an elder to be a man, but you referred to him as a ‘he’.”

“Farfar-Tors is a he,” she said. “It’s just that in the Tors clan, that old man kind of makes all the decisions.” She looked up to the sky and said, “He was born under the oak moon, like tonight, so he gains much respect from the clan.”

Alai nodded in acknowledgment. “Under what moon were you born, Sanna?”

She looked at him with a turn to her head, her eyes narrowed. “The death moon,” she said quickly.

“A-ha,” Alai said, and tightened his lips.

Sanna furrowed her feathery brows. With a small laugh through her nose she said, “A-ha, what?”

“Is that why you’re always so quiet?” he asked.

Sanna smiled, only revealing a line of her teeth, but it was wider than Alai had ever seen before.

“We’re all quiet, to conserve energy.”

Alai nodded his head. “We’re close, you know. I was born under the mud moon.”

Sanna smirked, “A-ha,” she said.

“A-ha, what?” Alai asked.

“Is that why you’re so dark?” she said.

Alai laughed at this rejoinder. The fire snapped softly between them. Flickers of orange light projected shadows across their faces.

“They have no elders?” Alai asked after some minutes.

“Who?” Sanna asked.

“The Tors clan.”

“Oh, they do. Of course, they do. But Farfar-Tors controls things. The elders meet in council, but he’s the final word on business and, well, family matters. It is something with the blood relation. Family and progeny are more important than the more traditional clan priorities of legacy and wisdom. They are good people, though, just different priorities.”

“Our clan, the Tiuls, is a mix of many families. Few Tiul clan members have more than a dozen from the same family. And the women always lead, as elders, after their tenth decade.”

“That’s the usual way here as well. Although, up this far, clans don’t live so close.” Sanna reached forward and pushed the fire with a new wood split. In a groan, she continued, “That’s the thing about a forest at the fringes of the world. Normal rules seem to fray.”

“We break the rules sometimes too. I began my preceptorship already in my third decade.”

“Oh, that is early. Did your parents approve?” She leaned back from the fire, her eyes and face mostly out of view.

“My parents both set off losting when I was quite young. I’ve often wondered whether their losting, you know, going off to pursue their own things, helped or hurt me. Others learned things by good advice that I had to discover by trial and error. But then again, not having those things given to me made me more observant and, I guess, more aware of what I wanted and didn’t want to be when I grew up. My clan elder, Gallia-Tiul, has told me to see this as an empowerment.”

Sanna was silent, she had slunk back from eye contact. There was a peacefulness in that desolated patch of forest that brought with it comfort. Alai didn’t notice himself speaking thoughts as if he was alone. “Even for my son,” he said, “I wanted to be there for him. I wanted to give him everything I could. I was prepared to be there for him for as long as he would allow me.”

The fire hissed as a pocket of water was exposed from within the burning wood.

“Aren’t you going back to him?” Sanna’s question startled Alai. He had lost track of where he was and now, he realized he had said too much. When Alai looked up, Sanna appeared different. Her eyes were somehow warmer. She held her mouth tightly shut as if she shared his angst.

“I can’t.” he said, hoping to be done with the subject.

“Why not?”

A perfectly innocent question, but Alai was not prepared to share that much with her. A modest attempt to build trust had gone too far. Had she called his bluff? Anyway, he would have to back down.

“I just can’t.”

“Why do you tell me these things?” she asked.

“I, I’m sorry. You’re right, it has nothing to do with you.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I mean, how are you able to share these thoughts with someone you hardly know?”

“Don’t you ever share your thoughts with others?” he asked.

“It usually just takes more time,” she replied.

He laughed in a friendly way. “Six days alone in a forest together seems like plenty of time. There are shortcuts, you know.”

She returned the smile, but said nothing more.

Alai reached to his hip and removed the puukko from its sheath. As he brought it forward, the blade flashed orange in the firelight.

“The owner of this knife,” he said. “Were you close to him?”

Sanna shifted her body so that only one side of her face was illuminated.

“I knew them,” she said.

“It means a lot to you?”

“It reminds me of those who have disappeared.”

Alai leaned forward, stretching his arm past the small fire.

“Take it, if you want it.”

Sanna seemed to impulsively reach for the knife, but she stopped before grabbing it.

“No,” she said, pushing back against the fingers that gripped the knife. “You must hold it for now.”

Alai renewed his offer, reaching closer to Sanna. “Take it,” he said.

Sanna guffawed condescendingly. “Haven’t you learned anything?” She waved her hand out towards the dark forest. “You think you can continue without it?”

Alai lowered his arm and looked down as he rotated the knife in his hands. “No,” he replied. “I guess not.”

After a pause, Alai attempted to breach the topic he had circumvented all this time. “Kjell mentioned your sister. Where is she?”

Sanna looked down at the fire and stayed silent. Alai sensed by her hesitation that this too was a difficult subject.

“My father used to say, ’Siblings are the most important relationship.’”

She said no more. Was it an admission? An apology? Alai couldn’t know. But before he could attempt to go any further, Sanna aggressively pushed the embers with a branch and lifted its smoking tip up towards the north.

“Our cottage is over there.” She swept the branch in a broad arc until it pointed over Alai’s head and said, “We’re going that way.”