Year of Miracles, page 9
part #1 of Collected Stories of the Old Races Series
"You should try," Denali declared imperiously. "Maybe you would have a baby, and I would have a sister."
Stone rattled in its setting with the power of Rekka's laugh, that time. "It takes more than a meal to make a child, child. But perhaps you're right. Perhaps it would be worth trying, if we wish to continue on in this world."
"I'll go fishing for you," Denali volunteered. "With the bears, when the salmon spawn. It's not hunting at all, Mama, not when they just jump right into your hands. They're offering themselves, just as the caribou does when it falls, or the blueberries when they drop from the bush into your hands. Except the berries don't mind if you give the bush a shake."
"The rivers are a long way away," Rekka said, but they both knew it for an excuse. The yeti took Denali to the rivers for the nourishment she required; if they did not, she wouldn't even know about them. Denali shrugged, confident of herself. "Nothing is far away, through the cold between."
"Everything is far away, through the cold between." Still, when the salmon runs came, Denali was allowed to go, accompanied by more than one of the tribe, and when she brought back more than enough to feed herself for the winter, after much quiet discussion, a few among the tribe began to take meals with her. Mostly berries, or tea brewed from spruce needles, and honey from the bees and milk from the caribou; sustenance obtained without the taking of life, even if there was enough frozen fish in a mountain crevasse to feed the whole tribe for a full turn of the seasons. Denali didn't care: her delight in sharing meals with others was palpable, even if she ate different food than they did, and for the yeti, the food itself, after so long an absence, was a curious pleasure.
But there were no children, not that season and not for many after. Denali grew, and grew thoughtful, watching her yeti family and the world beyond, judging one against another. She stepped into the cold between—and cold it was, always: the sun shone unending on white snow there, or the moon sank deep into bare tundra, soft and springing underfoot, and in neither case was there ever any wind, which made the cold bearable. Nor was there life beyond the yeti who traveled there, and the occasional lost mortal: no mosquitoes buzzed, no wolves howled, no foxes yipped or eagles cried, and certainly no talkative ravens bounced around full of commentary. The tundra lay brown when exposed, winter melted away but no sign of spring breaking through yet; that was the cold between, barren but survivable, even when the living world was hostile and murderous. Denali crossed through that cold place time and again, exploring all the land in sight of the Great One, vast distances indeed. She watched humans and bears and wolverines, moose and caribou, following their tracks and studying their ways, and came back, in time, to say, "Animals strike out on their own, Mama. They find mates from other herds and flocks and tribes."
Eyebrow ruffs rose, giving Rekka a comical look. "Are you saying you want a mate, Little Patch?"
"Mother," Denali said in horror. "No. I'm saying you need to find one somewhere else. Through the cold between, to the cold beyond. To the low green mountains or the volcanic peaks, if you want there to be children."
"You want there to be children, my sweet."
"I want my family to live," Denali replied.
"We're in no danger of dying, little one."
"Not dying," Denali said slowly, "isn't the same as living."
She began to watch the humans more after that, perched on some high place the cold between could bring her easily, until Rekka joined her in the twilight of a late summer day, when the sun had fallen enough that their forms couldn't be picked out against the horizon. "What do you see in them, Little Patch?"
"Your future. And mine. You can hide forever, Mama, but even if you do, some of them should know about you. Be ready to protect you. My children could do that. They could help. Not just the yeti, but all the Old Races. The others are less reclusive, you've said so before. They must need help, from time to time."
"That's a great burden to put on your children, to bear them into the world so they can carry a secret? There's no telling who any child might grow up to be. Not all of them will be suited to knowing about us. It could put us in greater danger. We do well enough, hiding in the shadows. It doesn't chafe, not for yeti, at least."
"Not now," Denali murmured. "But the bold among them explore a little farther each year, Mother. What happens when they push all the way into the mountain's heart and discover you? Will you live in the cold between for always, then?"
"We have other recourses," Rekka said uncomfortably.
"Do you?" Denali's voice softened. "Do you, Mama? I know from your stories that others among the Old Races can cast off their immortal forms and appear human to the eye, but I've never seen any of you do that. Can you, still? And if you can, what then? Live among them, in their brutal world, with their short lives? Feed on the beasts they've slaughtered and betray your souls, or on nothing at all and betray yourselves? You'll need something, Mama. Something or someone, to help you hide in plain sight."
Rekka shook her head. "They might come to explore the high remote cold places, but they will never live here, not so long as they have any other choice. We will remain in the mountains, hiding in the cold between when we must, to avoid them. Perhaps this is why we don't have children anymore, Little Patch. Perhaps to bear the world as we old ones have chosen to would be too much for the young, as it is too much for you."
Denali stood, looking down over earth gold and faded green with dying summer; at the twist of a mud-brown river as it found the easiest passage through flat lands, and at the mountains ringing the valley, hundreds of miles distant. "Not all mountains are cold and tall and remote, Mama. Even if they don't come to live in these mountains, they'll go to live in others, where the brown and the green of your people live. If you won't go into the cold beyond to warn them, to at least tell them the distance can be traveled and that the winter mountains can hide them, then I will."
"You worry too much, daughter. We can't be followed into the cold between. We're safe there, even from the most ardent pursuers. Do you not trust your own kind?"
"Why would I? I know almost nothing of them. And no. I don't, because if I, who grew up with you and know almost nothing of their ways, can see and think and feel that they would hunt you and fear you, then how much more violently would they, who know nothing of you, respond? I will go," she said with reluctance and eagerness both, "and learn more of them. Maybe I'm wrong. But if I'm not I'll find a way, Mama. I'll find a way to help protect you, no matter what else I might do."
She went into the valley then, traveling by the glimmer of moon and early-rising sun, while the only parent she had ever known watched from far above. Rekka would watch her forever, she knew that, and only hoped she would do it from a safe distance. It was enough, more than enough, for a strange lone human woman to walk out of the scrub forests and bug-infested swamps; for that woman to be accompanied by a nine foot shaggy shadow would be too much.
It had not occurred to her, until she met the first humans, that she would not know a word of their language, nor they of hers. She learned swiftly, claiming the name Denali as her own, and thought nothing of the fascination the People showed when she said she had come from the great mountain. Some few hated her for the name; she knew that, but didn't—not for many years—understand why, and when she did, she regretted the monumental arrogance that taking the name displayed, but it was far too late then. That she did not hunt, or weave bark, or work leather, or any of the skills that were necessary for living, only set her apart from them farther; in retrospect it was no surprise she was given to the shaman, a big-eyed, grey-haired old woman who sniffed at her as if she stank of something strange, but was reluctantly, then eagerly, willing to teach her.
The shaman could very nearly step into the cold between at will: she drew the sick and injured to its very edge, calling spirits through it to guide them back to health, and from time to time, standing on its border, Denali saw Rekka, ghost-like, watching her mortal daughter ford the mortal world. "There are other beings in the cold between," Denali told the shaman, and was rewarded with a look of scathing approval: scathing because that was obvious; approval, because she had seen the obvious. "I know them," she said to the shaman, and the old woman's gaze sharpened until Denali felt she was being seen through.
The longest night came on them soon after that, the sun rising over the horizon for less than a hand of hours, the sky glorious with gold and the white frozen earth reflecting blue shadows for all the time the sun shone. The shaman put Denali in a musk-ox-hide tent at sunset, filled it with smoke and smells and a heated stone, and told her not to come out again until the spirits of the cold between had spoken to her. Denali, freezing, tried twice to step into the cold between before she realized there was magic in the hide, and that she was as tied to the mortal world as she had ever been. Fear boiled up in her, warming her more than a little, then faded again as the scented smoke began to do its work. Her shoulders, then her eyelids, relaxed, every breath growing deeper and slower until she felt that she floated just above herself, looking down at the hot stone and the top of her own head. There were a few white threads at her crown, promise of wisdom to come.
She expected the yeti to come through the fog, travelers of the cold between that they were. Instead a woman unfurled from the earth like a swiftly-growing sapling: in mere moments she stood before Denali, examining her with quiet reserve. Denali studied the woman in return, too hazy to feel surprise at the earth sprouting people. The woman was small, round-faced, and while not wrinkled with age, gave the impression of it anyway. She looked like the elders of the tribe, with straight black hair and brown eyes, clear as water despite their darkness, although she dressed in nothing like Denali had ever seen: a robe of woven material that looked soft to the touch. It shimmered when it moved, as if a river, or perhaps the wind, had been captured in its making, and its color changed with every breath: blue and green and brown, with touches of black deeper than the night sky in its shadows.
The yeti are beloved to me, the old-not-old woman said after a while, and without words. They are the gentlest of all their kind, the least imposing upon the earth and the most forgiving of spirit. They are in some ways right: their discretion lends them a certain lack of vulnerability that some of the others do not share, but you are also in some ways right: humanity has met very little it could not capture and kill when it was minded to. I cannot give you time with which to right that fault in your own people. All I can offer is guidance through the cold between, that they might follow in your footsteps if they should choose to gather, an event you are unlikely to live to see. You need not decide now—
"Of course I'll do it," Denali said with such certainty that the spirit-woman smiled.
Of course you will. Impetuous humanity, so much greater than itself, and so much lesser. Remember that time does not move as smoothly in the cold between, Little Patch, and watch where you step out, that you do not lose yourself in the world.
She faded then, or perhaps she had faded long before the words even began. Denali stared in astonishment at where the little woman wasn't, at where the place she had stood blossomed with forget-me-nots, their delicate blue turning purple as a sliver of rising sunlight forced its way under the hide tent's lip. Denali, shivering, pushed herself out of the hide, all too mindful of the image of a child exiting its mother's body, and followed a dozen steps' worth of blue flowers before the shaman spoke in a voice of power: "If you walk this path, I will not see you again, Child of the Great One. Carry with you the blessing and the strength of the People; tell each shaman that you meet that you have been my student, and ask for their teachings as well, if they will share them. You carry a burden, daughter of the mountain. I do not envy you your task or the sorrows that lie in front of you, and yet if I had the strength I would join you, to see the wonders you will see. Be strong. Return often. Remember all of those who have been your family."
Denali looked back, but the cold between rose around her, taking her as it might take a truly lost soul, and in it there was no one but herself.
Herself, and a trail of greenery, of blossoms, that led a path across the barren between.
They changed, those flowers, from forget-me-nots to pink dogwood, from dogwood to daisies white and yellow, and to dozens, blooms of innumerable colors, as Denali followed them through the cold between. When the flowers changed, the trail stopped and she left the cold, sometimes to find herself on the outskirts of another settlement or roving tribe, others, to stand in the heart of a camp full of yeti who vanished, panic-stricken, into the cold between themselves. The first few times, Denali chased them into the cold, only to have them pop back into the world again; after a while, she learned to sit down and wait quietly, as eventually someone would come back.
It helped that all the world over the yeti spoke the same tongue, and that once they were no longer running, they could listen and understand. It helped, too, that in the cold between they saw the singular track of flowers that guided Denali, and that the curious among them followed those tracks a little distance until they themselves came upon others of their kind. Denali often left with the conviction she was offering them a stronghold in the cold between, a place to gather in safety and remain forever if humanity pressed them too hard, but even that, she thought, was better than losing them to knives and slings and spears.
The humans were harder: their languages changed from tribe to tribe, and her purpose with them was more difficult. Study with their shamans, yes, but more, to find among them those who might be trusted with the yeti's secrets, that the people might be guided away from the mountains and the monsters said to lurk in them. She stayed long enough to learn languages, to learn all the human magic they had at their fingertips, and moved on, always searching, never satisfied. From time to time she lurched back to the shadow of the Great One, sometimes to visit her mother, always unchanging, and others to search out the shaman's heirs, for the old shaman had been right: Denali never saw her again. Only when adults with children of their own recognized her as the spirit of the mountain who had visited when they were children did she begin to understand that she lost not just weeks or months in the cold between, but years and even decades.
The world changed around her, subtly, as she traveled: for a time it grew much colder, the years harsh even for the yeti, who spent many of them nearly asleep; she woke more than one tribe from a near-hibernation with her visit, and not even the most adventuresome among them chose to follow the flower-laden path through the between, not during those cold years. Human tribes became scarcer for a time, until the cold between had taken her so far south that even the frozen expanses could no longer touch them. In some places she found yeti who weren't even mountain-bound: they dwelt in deep jungles and had short soft fur like a cat's, rather than the long hollow hairs that Rekka's tribe had. Those warm-weather tribes used their human forms on occasion, either to avoid humans or, once in a while, to trade with them. Had they been unable to walk into the cold between, Denali might have thought them some other kind of Old Race entirely, but the one thing all the yeti, no matter how disparate, had in common was the ability to reach the between.
She was not yet old, but neither was she young, when the flowers at last stopped blooming, stopped leading her along new paths. For the longest time she hardly understood what it meant, that she could stand in the between and have trails of greenery behind her but not in front. She retraced her footsteps then, never stopping to see how the world outside changed, intent only on returning home, spirit of the mountain. There were footprints along the way now, much larger than her own: the yeti traveled amongst themselves, sharing, visiting, making their large world smaller, and every step accompanied by the evidence of others making the same journey made her smile.
She had not, in the end, been able to trust humanity enough to tell them of the yeti; not even the shamans and the dreamwalkers, though the latter traversed something so close to the cold between that Denali wasn't sure they didn't already know. But there were witches in the world, too, human magic born of unfiltered evil, of hate and fear and anger whispered as secrets into the earth until the earth itself gave birth to a witch. Witches hunted magic, be it Old or human, and Denali feared too much what might happen to the gentle yeti if a witch should hear of them. So theirs was a secret that would go with her to the grave, but at at least they could reach one another now; that was a worthy lifetime's work.
Rekka met her in the cold between, so close to the shadow of the mountain that its weight could be felt even in the between. Rekka, who had not changed at all over the years, save for a sadness in her gaze as she looked at what time had done to Denali. Denali settled onto the tundra beside her mother, nestled as small as she'd ever been against the yeti's warm white fur. "Perhaps I'll have a sister," she said after a time, and felt her mother draw her closer.
"More likely now than ever before," the yeti murmured. "We are able to be together now, our people, few as we may be. Perhaps you will."
"You shall," said a voice, half-familiar, as if from a dream, and from the blooms rose the old-not-old woman again, more vibrant in the cold between than she had seemed in the musk-ox-tent so very long ago. "You will, but if you return to the world you won't live to see her, as she'll be a long time coming. The Old Races have asked a great deal of you already, Little Patch. Whether they may ask more is your choice, as always."
"As long as there's breath in my body," Denali said.
Rekka made a sound of protest, but the other woman smiled. "Impetuous humans. The cold between will hold you, unaging, as it has done all the time you've traveled in it. You may go out of your mind with boredom; that is always a risk. But your yeti family will visit, and you can…rest." The word itself was nearly a gift, sending a wave of weary relief over Denali. "Even humans can nearly hibernate, in the darkest months of winter, and it is never anything but winter in the cold between. You may be roused, from time to time, to eat, to speak, but you may rest here, and if you're willing…"
