Angelica (52 page)

“Toteyosi,” he said as she placed the bowl on the ground between them.

“You're welcome,” she said, as she always said. Even when he had been too weak to speak, or even to notice if she spoke to him, she had talked to him. He had never responded, making her wonder from time to time if he might
be deaf—or if he perhaps could not comprehend that the noises she was making represented language.

But today he looked over at her in curiosity when the sounds tumbled out of her mouth. “Ska?” he said.

It sounded like a question. “You're welcome,” she said again.

He watched her a moment more with interest. His eyes were blue enough to seem vivid even here in the semidark-ness of the tent. He had a fine coppery stubble all along his jawline, but it was not the full beard that a mortal man would acquire if he had gone this long without shaving. Maybe men of his tribe did not grow beards; or maybe he was so young that he could not produce a beard if he tried.

He spoke again, a long string of incomprehensible syllables that sounded like a mix of questions and statements. Miriam laughed and spread her hands, wondering what that gesture might mean to him.

“Ska?” he said again, more insistently, and now he pointed at her. “Ska?”

She had thought it meant merely
what?
, but perhaps it meant
who?
or
who are you?
or
what's your name?
Her name was what she would give him, in any case. She put her hand to her chest. “Miriam,” she said.

“Ska?”

“Miriam. Meer-ee-um.”

“Meeri
muh
,” he said very carefully.

She could feel a smile of great delight throw dazzling lights across her face. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “Miriam.”

“Meerimuh,” he said again.

Good enough. She put her hand out now and pointed it at his chest, not quite having the nerve to touch him. She had bathed and tended him while he was unconscious, and she had seen every inch of his naked skin, but she did not know how the healthy man would feel about casual contact. “Ska?” she asked.

He seemed startled that she had used the word, so perhaps she had used it incorrectly; but then his face sharpened to even more interest. He touched his collarbone and said, “Jossis.”

For a moment she thought he said
Joseph,
and a little
shiver went through her, that the name of this utter stranger could sound so much like a name from the Librera. “Ska?” she asked, merely to hear him repeat it.

“Jossis.”

“Jossis,” she said, and he smiled.

He had not smiled before. She had not thought about it, what a smile might mean. Not only did it transform his severe, sharp face, it conveyed emotion—emotion that she understood, happiness or approval or pleasure—and it made him look, for a moment, familiar. It made him look, even more than the shape of his body, like he was one of them, a clansman from a far distant tribe.

Who are you?
she wanted to demand.
Where did you come from, you and your brothers? Are you like we are, children of Yovah, brought here from a distant world? What do you want from us? Why do you hurt our people? If we can make you understand us, will you stop hurting us? Or will you peacefully go away?

But she did not know how to say any of it, and so she merely smiled back at him. Then she picked up the bowl of food that sat on the floor between them, and handed it to him.

“Eat your food, Jossis,” she said, in a language he clearly would not be able to understand. “Regain your strength. We will have much to talk about in the coming days.”

Three days later, the Lohoras were ensconced in their winter home. It was a good campground, right up against the mountain in a shallow bowl of valley through which a thin stream of heated water made a wandering pass. Eleazar and Adam grumbled a little about feeling closed in, surrounded by stone, but Miriam liked the feeling. She had grown up sheltered by mountain, after all. She liked the sense of walls and ceiling holding her close at night.

The problem with settling in one place for any length of time, of course, was food. When the tribe was on the move, it could catch a little wildlife here, harvest a few fruits and grains there, and move on before everything was picked clean. But if they were to stay here for two or three months, they would, within a short period of time, dig up every root
and tuber and scare away all the game. Not only that, it would not take them long to gather all the firewood within easy reach. Thus virtually all their waking hours were dedicated to laying in food and fuel for the winter.

Hunting parties went off for days at a time so the men could bring back sizable hauls of game, and the women would spend the next week drying and salting the meat. The older children were sent out to scour the countryside for timber, and Amram made quite a stir the day he tied himself and two other boys to a huge fallen tree that they dragged all the way back to the camp. When the women weren't dressing meat, they were out on gathering expeditions, digging through the snow and hard earth for edible products below the surface of the soil.

Miriam was a little amazed at how much could be accomplished during the day when the sole goal was survival. Until now, the Edori had expended much of their energy on moving from place to place, and although she had thought they were efficient and productive then, she saw that the travel itself had been a task, and one that ate most of their time. Now, as the Lohoras readied themselves for winter, they became a different people altogether: focused, practical, and disinclined to waste time or energy.

Miriam threw herself into all the camp tasks with great willingness. She still was not good enough with a rock to bring down more than the unluckiest game hen, so she concentrated on gathering the roots and tubers that she had become good at identifying. She preferred this work to cutting and drying animal meat—she even preferred the task of gathering up the week's laundry and carrying it down to the hot spring for washing, so she often took care of this task for her tent. The water was so steamy, even when the air was raw, that she would climb right in with the laundry and immerse herself to the chin. Sometimes these dips in the stream were the only moments all day that she was truly warm.

She did so much washing that her hands became red and chapped, but Bartholomew made her a salve of animal fat and herbs, and it helped put some of the suppleness back into her skin. It smelled dreadful, of course, but after a while she didn't even mind that. Between digging in the dirt and
slapping around dead animal carcasses, none of them smelled too good by day's end, and not everyone was as fastidious as Miriam was about cleaning up every day.

Jossis, too, could often be found down at the river, bathing.

By the time they had settled in to the mountain camp, Jossis had recovered well enough to move on his own and care for himself completely. Miriam suspected he was not up to full strength, but he was able to walk for most of a day, his hand often resting on the cart for support, and he was no longer a burden to his caregivers. He surprised everyone by putting up his own tent the day they arrived at the mountain encampment. He must have been watching Dathan and Bartholomew more closely than they knew to be able to reproduce the complex actions of intertwining pole and guy.

That same day, he joined the others at the central campfire, instead of waiting in his tent for Miriam to bring him food. There were five cauldrons set up, two holding meat stew, one a vegetable medley, and two some combination of ingredients that the cooks had decided to try for the night. Miriam walked with him from pot to pot, helping him avoid the foods that might make him sick.

“Yes,” she said, pointing at the vegetable cook pot. She had been at some pains over the past few days to teach him “yes” and “no,” and while she wasn't positive how he had translated the words, he did seem to associate the meanings
good
and
bad
with the appropriate syllables. “Yes. No. No. No.”

“Toteyosi,” he said, and spooned up food from the cauldrons that she had indicated were safe.

As he always had while in the seclusion of his tent, Jossis observed a ritual before eating his food. But he was not oblivious to the Edori rituals, either. That first night he ate with them, he appeared to listen closely as Bartholomew sang the prayer of thanksgiving. The next two evenings, he did not begin to eat his own meal until this song had been performed by some member of the tribe. Miriam was not sure that anyone noticed this but her.

When they had been camped under the mountain for three days, Miriam went down to the little stream to wash a mound
of clothes—and herself—with the strong soap that Tirza had been hoarding all season. It was a chilly day, but not as bitter as it had been, so Miriam only minded a little that the dripping clothes held tight against her chest were soaking her right through, and making her even colder. She had just made it to her own tent and dropped the clothes to the ground, when Jossis materialized beside her.

“Tatsiya?” he asked, emphasizing the last syllable, as he so often did.

“Ska?” she replied, pushing back her damp hair and looking up at him. He was so tall, and still so bony, that it was almost painful to look at him. His eyes never ceased to startle her, often though she looked into them.

“Tatsiya,” he said insistently. He pointed down at the wet clothes, then reached out a hesitant finger to touch her wet hair. “Notebie? Tatsiya?”

“I don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about,” Miriam told him, spreading her hands. Between them, this gesture had come to mean
I don't know
.

He looked around as if to find a prop, but whatever he wanted was not immediately visible. Instead, he cupped one hand before him, and with the other, mimed the action of pouring something into it. “Tatsiya,” he said firmly. Then he pointed, first to the clothes, then at Miriam's hair. “Tatsiya.” Now he pretended to be splashing air into his face, and scrubbed his hands down his cheeks. “Notebie?” he added, and looked at her hopefully.

“Do you mean
water
?” she demanded. “Yes, water nearby. Come and I'll show you.”

The stream wasn't far, but hard to see if you weren't looking for it, so she was not surprised that Jossis had not stumbled across it. It hissed and bubbled up from a cracked hole at the base of the mountain, paused to make a little stone pool about a quarter mile from the camp, and then wound away past the outflung fingers of Mount Galo. The Lohoras got all their drinking water from the stone pool, so they washed themselves and their clothes some distance downstream.

They had to clamber over a few pointed boulders to make it to the edge of the stream, but then they were practically
standing in the warm water. “Tatsiya?” she asked, pointing down.

But Jossis was already on his knees, no doubt cutting his thin flesh on those quartz-studded rocks, and happily dipping his hands into the steaming water. He leaned over and practically thrust his face into the stream, using his hands to gouge up great sprays of water to cover his head and his hair. Miriam could sympathize. She wished she had thought to bring soap with them, and a change of clothes so he could fully savor the experience of getting thoroughly clean.

She touched him carefully on the shoulder, and he looked up from his hedonistic union with the water. Drenched and flat to his head, his copper hair looked brown and unremarkable, but his eyes glittered out from a falling veil of water.

“Yes,” she said, aiming her finger at the water where he now splashed. “No,” she added, pointing upstream to the place where they drew all their drinking water.

“Yes,” he said, mimicking her actions. “No.”

She smiled and touched her finger to her chest, and then gestured back at the camp. “Miriam go,” she said, though she was not sure he had deciphered the word
go
yet.

“Toteyosi,” he replied.

“You're welcome.”

She left him at the water's edge to give him some privacy and headed back to tell Tirza the news. At first, when the rhythms of the camp had dictated that Jossis would be left alone for a little while, Miriam had fretted. “What if he leaves?” she had asked.

Tirza had shrugged. “And what if he does? He is not our prisoner. He is our guest.”

“No, but he could get lost, he could get hurt—”

“He could find his friends and direct them back to us,” Tirza had said. “I cannot do anything about that. I have too much to do to sit and watch a stranger every day and make sure he does not bring harm or come to it. And so do you.”

But it was still hard for Miriam to leave Jossis alone at the pool and not worry about what might happen next.

He was fine, of course. He returned in about thirty minutes, soaking from head to toe and smiling so widely that no one who saw him could help smiling back. He came up
to Tirza and Miriam where they stood around the cook pot and loosed a torrent of unintelligible words. The women could not help but laugh, for he was so clearly explaining how good it felt to be clean, how miserable it had been to be so dirty for so long, how fresh the water felt, how kind the god was.

“Yes,” Miriam said, for she knew no other syllable of approval that he would understand. “Yes. You're welcome.”