§ Banjir & Teret §

The long trek across the Northern Wastes has left her feet sore and numb. Cold winter has regaled the plain with impenetrable blowing snow. A distant plateau can be seen through the haze of swirling white as she stumbles through knee deep drifts. Exhaustion is taking its toll as her legs wobble with each step. She's losing her battle to remain upright; skimming the snow with her finger tips as if that fragile surface could somehow bolster her.

Her neck feels bruised where the raider had wrapped his fingers. Her voice and breath comes out rasping and rattled. Her vision is blurred from that constant blinding whiteness.

"How much farther, Teret?"

"I don't know. I can't tell with this blizzard. Maybe another hour until we reach that plateau and get out of this Norther."

Banjir glances side-long at Teret; a giant of a young man two winters her senior. Always very shy and reserved he was never popular with the marriageable girls of the tribe. She can't ever remember having a conversation with him.

An hour passes and they reach the plateau. A face of rock, pock-marked with caves and crevasses. They retreat to a nook that is relatively out of the wind.

"Stay here, Banjir. I don't think you could take another step if you wanted. We need to find a cave. Someplace better than this. I'll be back."

As he turns to leave she catches his sleeve, "Thanks, Teret. Thanks for what you did for me back..."

His brow furrows as he nods, turning away to find better shelter. As he disappears into the white void she sinks down on her haunches closing her eyes.

Time. Awake. Asleep. Tired. Awake. Whispers.

She lifts her head and squints through blowing snow. There was a voice. A womans voice.

Hello! Help! We're going to die.

She's staring up the trail that Teret had taken. Rocks and boulders litter the path. She sees what look like fingers. Crab-like, black and unnaturally long fingers curling over the edge of a rock.

She's being shaken gently, "Banjir. Banjir."

"Uh? Teret?"

"I found a nice deep cave. C'mon"

Her exhaustion and despair are taking over. She can't rise. She just wants to sleep. Teret shifts to and fro assessing what to do and then lifts her over his shoulder.

§

The hiss and pop of the fire awakens her. If not for the twisting pangs of hunger the golden glow on her warm face would have been greater comfort. Teret is asleep curled up to her backside keeping her warm. The fire is built into a natural depression in the cave floor. The wood is the warped, dried and dead stuff that is the only available fuel in these climes. Steppe grass and kindling are twisted into bundles and carefully laid into a corner along with what little twisted brush Teret could manage to scavenge in the waning daylight.

She blinks and glances about the cave. There are paintings on the ceiling. She can make out the scene of a hunting party pursuing a herd of malouk or maybe kuom and another scene where a single man is standing with what appears to be a long stick in both hands held over his head and a group of people are kneeling before him. The stick is on fire casting a light and long shadows behind the supplicants. Cocking her head she notices that there is writing as well but she can not read it; she never learned to read nor had she ever needed to know how to. Reading and writing are for shaman.

"Bringer of Light."

Startled, she nearly rolls into the fire, "Teret! I thought you were asleep!"

Teret hoists himself onto an elbow, consternation crossing his brow, "Sorry." Yet he can't contain the slight uplift of a prankish smile.

"Bringer of Light? What are you talking about?"

He pretends to clear his throat, "You were looking at the painting. The writing; the message states 'Bringer of Light'. I thought..."

"You can read, Teret?"

"Only Buuroch. Shaman-sign. That's what's written up there. It's old and a little hard to..."

"You can read, Teret."

Teret shrugs and bobs his head, "Well, yeah."

"I mean how...can you read? How did you learn to read...that?"

"Pruadathe."

Teret brings himself to a sitting position, reaches for his right sleeve and slides it up his arm revealing the tell-tale tattoo of his status as novitiate shaman.

"In three moons Pruadathe and the elders were going to announce it to the tribe. My...the tribal Shur* was to be celebrated on the winter solstice. It was..."

And then it sinks in. His hands fall palms up helplessly to his lap. His shoulders slump and begin to shudder. Through her own glazed, wet eyes she sees his head begin to sag, his face contorting. They hold each other. Shaking, sobbing, grieving until the shock of a horrible realization was spent.

*a ceremony or celebration among the northern tribes by which a new shaman is introduced.