Chapter 10 #4
“I guess. I still think it’s spooky. Do we know who was here before us, then? Did they leave any clues?”
“A few,” Jo-see says. “I’ll show you when we get to your house. Come on. We’re almost there. You’re going to be next to Maddie and Hassen.”
“I like them,” Stay-see says in a quiet voice.
“Psh. You like everyone.”
It is true. My mate does not have an unkind bone in her body.
I am pleased that Jo-see leads us up through the main section of the cave—I will always somehow think of our home as a cave, even if it is not—and am doubly pleased to see that the howses here are firm and steady.
The stones are neatly stacked in their little rows as they make up the walls, and Jo-see points out Mah-dee and Hassen’s dwelling, which is already covered with a large hide that seems to be sa-kohtsk and a few dvisti hides sewn to it.
A small plume of smoke rises from their dwelling, and I watch a curl of it rise, only to be carried away by the wind.
Smoke in my eyes is one thing I will not miss about the cave.
But with no protection from the weather, I do not see how this will be safe for my Stay-see and my son.
“Here we go,” Jo-see calls out. “Home sweet home.” She gestures at the doorway of the howse next to Mah-dee and Hassen’s dwelling. “Georgie picked you out a good one.”
“I’ll have to tell her thank you,” my mate says, letting go of Jo-see’s arm and wandering into her new home. She touches the wall. “The bricks are tight together.”
“Mortared,” Jo-see says. “No cracks to let the wind in. You might have to plug a few, but otherwise it’s pretty snug, which is nice.”
“It is.”
“The stone helps keep the heat from the fire in, too. It’s pretty spiff.”
Stay-see brightens. “That seems nice.” Her hand caresses the bricks again, and I realize both she and Jo-see seem very small next to the wall. This is not a human-size dwelling, then.
“Was this made by sa-khui?” I ask.
“I don’t think so,” Jo-see says, stepping farther into the howse.
“You guys crashed here, like, 300 years ago, right? This is way older than that. It’s so old that the roofs rotted off.
” She gestures at the open air. “Ariana said she was studying archaeology in college and that a lot of the ruins would look like this. The roof was made out of something that rotted away and all we have left is the stonework.”
Curious. I follow them in and notice the stones on the floor are even and hard here, too. The walls are all covered with a thin layer of ice that will make things slippery and cold. “This ice will have to be removed.”
“Yeah, it’s not on the floors because they stay warm. If you take your shoes off, you’ll notice it. Well, I don’t know if you’ll want to take them off right now. Kinda needs sweeping in here. But in general.” Jo-see gestures at the wall, stepping over to one side. “But let me show you this.”
Stay-see glances over at me and follows Jo-see over. “What is it?”
“Carvings,” Jo-see says. “All of the houses have a few. Some of them are more detailed than others. You can just barely make it out under the ice.” She slides a hand over the ice, as if trying to wipe it away.
Stay-see leans in and squints. I move to my mate’s side, curious if it looks anything like Aehako’s carvings.
Aehako likes to carve swirls and soft shapes into bone.
These carvings are nothing like his—hard and angular, it seems to be made of all sharp edges just like this vee-lage.
I do not realize what I am looking at until Stay-see gasps. “Is that a person?”
I lean in and stare at the carving a bit closer. It does not look like a person. It looks like blocky lines. Blocky lines leading to more blocky lines. “Where?”
“Here,” Stay-see says. “It’s pretty stylized, but I guess these are legs, and the head, and…” She gestures at four of the lines. “I guess these are arms? Four arms?”
“Unless they’re two tails,” Jo-see says, amused. “And they grow out of shoulders. It’s hard to say considering it’s little more than a stick figure, but it’s kinda cool, huh?”
“Weird.” Stay-see runs her hand along the ice, peering at the wall. “These down here aren’t people, though. They almost look like trees. Human trees.”
“Yeah,” Jo-see says, and there’s a wistful note in her voice.
“We’ve been talking about that. There’s a couple of critters that no one’s ever seen drawn on another wall.
Big, round, roly-poly things with long noses.
Which kind of made us speculate if we’re in the middle of an ice age here.
Maybe these people lived here in warmer times and left when it got too cold. ”
“But where did they go?”
She shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
None of this conversation makes sense to me. Ice has always been here. “There is no place anyone can go that does not have ice,” I point out.
“I believe you,” Stay-see says. She turns to Jo-see and clasps her hands. “All right. Show me the toilet.”
Stay-see seems very pleased with the howse.
She exclaims happily over the toy-let, the small area in the back with the lip of stone she says will be perfect for a kit-chen, and does not seem to mind that there is no top to her cave yet.
Hemalo comes by to speak to us, and we discuss the number of hides needed and the bones that must be used to support the dwelling’s lid.
Then, suddenly, it seems as if the entire tribe stops by to say hello. People stream in, hugging Stay-see and myself, and my mother takes little Pacy, declaring that we need time to unpack and relax and she will take care of him. Kemli does not realize that I will not be staying with Stay-see.
Even though things are no longer uneasy between us, my mate still has not asked me to come and live with her.
She has not invited me to her bed. She has not accepted me as her mate once more.
Until that time, I must wait patiently, and if it means living with the unmated hunters until then, so be it.
But I will make sure my mate has everything she needs to be comfortable. I will not neglect her again.