The Valley Of Horses

18

"Mother said you wanted to see me."

Jondalar could see tension in the set of Darvo's shoulders and the wary look in his eyes. He knew the boy had been avoiding him, and he suspected the reason. The tall man smiled, trying to seem casual and relaxed, but the hesitancy in his usual warm fondness made Darvo more nervous; he didn't want his fears confirmed. Jondalar had not been looking forward to telling the boy, either. He took down a neatly folded garment from a shelf and shook it out.

"I think you are almost big enough for this, Darvo. I want to give it to you."

For a moment the boy's eyes lit with pleasure at the Zelandonii shirt with its intricate and exotic decoration; then the wariness returned. "You're leaving, aren't you?" he accused.

"Thonolan is my brother, Darvo…"

"And I'm nothing."

"That's not true. You must know how much I care about you. But Thonolan is so full of grief, he's not reasonable. I fear for him. I can't let him go alone, and if I don't look after him, who will? Please try to understand, I don't want to go farther east."

"Will you come back?"

Jondalar paused. "I don't know. I can't promise. I don't know where we're going, how long we'll travel." He proffered the shirt. "That's why I want to give you this, so you'll have something to remember the 'Zelandonii man.' Darvo, listen to me. You will always be the first son of my hearth."

The boy looked at the beaded tunic; then tears welled and threatened to break. "I'm not the son of your hearth!" he cried, then turned and ran from the dwelling.

Jondalar wanted to run after him. Instead, he placed the shirt on Darvo's sleeping platform and walked slowly out.

Carlono frowned at the lowering clouds. "I think the weather will hold," he said, "but if she really starts gusting, pull over to the shore, though you won't find many places to land until you are through the gate. The Mother will split into channels when you reach the plain on the other side of the gate. Remember, keep to the left bank. She'll swing north before you reach the sea, and then east. Soon after the turn, she is joined by a large river on the left, her last major tributary. A short distance beyond is the beginning of the delta – the outlet to the sea – but you still have a long way to go. The delta is huge, and dangerous; marsh and bogs and sandbars. The Mother separates again, usually into four, but sometimes more, main channels and many small ones. Keep to the left channel, the northern one. There's a Mamutoi Camp on the north bank, close to the mouth."

The experienced river man had gone over it before. He had even drawn a map in the dirt to help guide them to the end of the Great Mother River. But he believed repetition would reinforce their memory, especially if they had to make quick decisions. He wasn't happy about the two young men traveling on the unfamiliar river without an experienced guide, but they insisted; or rather, Thonolan did, and Jondalar wouldn't let him go alone. At least the tall man had gained some skill in handling boats.

They were standing on the wooden dock with their gear loaded in a small boat, but their departure lacked the usual excitement of such adventures. Thonolan was leaving only because he could not stay, and Jondalar would much rather have been setting out in the opposite direction.

The spark had gone out of Thonolan. His former outgoing friendliness was replaced by moodiness. His generally morose disposition was punctuated by a flaring temper – often leading to increased recklessness and careless disregard. The first real argument between the two brothers had not come to blows only because Jondalar had refused to fight. Thonolan had accused his brother of wet-nursing him like an infant, demanding the right to his own life without being followed around. When Thonolan heard of Serenio's possible pregnancy, he was furious that Jondalar would consider leaving a woman who probably carried the child of his spirit, to follow a brother to some unknown destination. He insisted that Jondalar stay and provide for her as any decent man would.

In spite of Serenio's refusal to mate, Jondalar couldn't help feeling Thonolan was right. It had been drilled into him since birth that a man's responsibility, his sole purpose, was to provide support for mothers and children, particularly a woman who had been blessed with a child that in some mysterious way might have absorbed his spirit. But Thonolan would not stay, and Jondalar, afraid his brother would do something irrational and dangerous, insisted upon accompanying him. The tension between them was still oppressive.

Jondalar didn't quite know how to say good-bye to Serenio; he was almost afraid to look at her. But she had a smile on her face when he bent to kiss her, and though her eyes seemed a little swollen and red, she allowed no emotion to show in them. He searched for Darvo and was disappointed that the boy was not among those who had come down to the dock. Nearly everyone else was there. Thonolan was already in the small boat when Jondalar climbed in and settled himself in the rear seat. He took up his oar and, while Carlono untied the rope, he looked up one last time at the high terrace. A boy was standing near the edge. The shirt he was wearing would take a few years for him to fill out, but the pattern was distinctly Zelandonii. Jondalar smiled, then waved with his oar. Darvo waved back as the tall blond Zelandonii man dipped the double-ended paddle into the river.

The two brothers pulled into midstream and looked back at the dockful of people – friends. As they headed downstream, Jondalar wondered if they would ever see the Sharamudoi again, or anyone he knew. The Journey that had begun as an adventure had lost its edge of excitement, yet he was being drawn, almost against his will, farther away from home. What could Thonolan hope to find going east? And what could there possibly be for him in that direction?

The great river gorge was foreboding under the gray overcast sky. Naked rock reared out of the water from deep roots and rose in towering bulwarks on both sides. On the left bank, a series of ramparts of sharp, angular rock climbed in rugged relief all the way to the distant glaciered peaks; on the right, weathered and eroded, the rounded mountaintops gave the illusion of mere hills, but their height was daunting from the small boat. Large boulders and pinnacles broke the surface, parting the current into curls of white water.

They were a part of the medium in which they traveled, propelled by it like the debris floating on its skin and the silt within its silent depths. They did not control their speed or direction; they only steered a course around obstructions. Where the river stretched out more than a mile in width, and swells lifted and dipped the small craft, it seemed more like a sea. When the sides drew together, they could feel the change in energy as the flow was resisted; the current was stronger when the same volume of water surged through the constricted gates.

They had traveled more than a quarter of the way through, perhaps twenty-five miles, when the threatened rain broke forth in a furious squall, whipping up waves they feared would swamp the little wooden boat. But there was no shore, only the steep wet rock.

"I can steer if you bail, Thonolan," Jondalar said. They hadn't talked much, but some of the tension between them had dissipated as they paddled in harmony to keep the craft on course.

Thonolan shipped his oar and, with a square wooden scooplike implement, tried to empty the small vessel. "It's filling as fast as I can bail," he culled over his shoulder.

"I don't think this will last long. If you can keep up with it, I think we'll make it," Jondalar replied, struggling through the choppy water.

The heavy weather lifted, and, though clouds still menaced, they made their way through the entire gorge without further incident.

Like the relaxation that comes with the removal of a tight belt, the swollen muddy river spread out when she reached the plains. Channels twined around islands of willow and reed; nesting grounds for cranes and herons, transitory geese and ducks, and innumerable other birds.

They camped the first night on the flat grassy prairie of the left bank. The foot of the alpine peaks was pulling back from the river's edge, but the rounded mountains of the right bank held the Great Mother River to her eastward course.

Jondalar and Thonolan settled into a traveling routine so quickly that it seemed they had not stopped for those years while they were living with the Sharamudoi. Yet it wasn't the same. Gone was the light-hearted sense of adventure, seeking whatever lay around the bend for the simple joy of discovery. Instead, Thonolan's drive to keep moving was tainted with desperation.

Jondalar had attempted once more to talk his brother into turning back, but it led to a bitter argument. He didn't bring it up again. They spoke mostly to exchange necessary information. Jondalar could only hope that time would assuage Thonolan's grief, and that someday he would decide to return home and take up his life again. Until then, he was determined to stay with him.

The two brothers traveled much faster on the river in the small dugout than they could have walked along the edge. Riding on the current, they sped along with ease. As Carlono had predicted, the river turned north when it reached a barrier of ancient mountain stumps, far older than the raw mountains around which the great river flowed. Though ground down with their hoary age, they intervened between the river and the inland sea she strove to reach.

Undeterred, she sought another way. Her northward strategy worked, but not until, when she made her final swing to the east, one more large river brought a contribution of water and silt to the overburdened Mother. With her way finally clear, she could not hold herself to one path. Though she had many miles to go, she split up once again into many channels in a fan-shaped delta.

The delta was a morass of quicksand, salt marsh, and insecure little islands. Some of the silty islets stayed in place several years, long enough for small trees to send down tenuous roots, only to be washed away at the vicissitude of seasonal flood or eroding seepage. Four major channels – depending on season and happenstance – cut through to the sea, but their courses were inconstant. For no apparent reason, the water would suddenly switch from a deeply worn bed to a new path, tearing up brush and leaving a sinkhole of soft wet sand.

The Great Mother River – eighteen hundred miles and two glacier-covered mountain ranges of water – had nearly reached her destination. But the delta with its hundreds of square miles of mud, silt, sand, and water was the most dangerous section of the entire river.

By following the deepest of the left channels, the river had not been hard to navigate. The current had taken the small log boat around its sweeping northward turn, and even the final large tributary had only pushed them to midstream. But the brothers didn't anticipate that she would break into channels so soon. Before they realized it, they were swept into a middle channel.

Jondalar had gained considerable skill in handling the small craft, and Thonolan could manage one, but they were far from being as capable as the expert boatmen of the Ramudoi. They tried to turn the dugout around, retreat back upstream, and reenter the proper channel. They would have done better to reverse the direction they were rowing – the shape of the stern was not so different from the shape of the prow – but they didn't think of it.

They were crosswise against the current, Jondalar shouting instructions to Thonolan to get the front end turned around, and Thonolan becoming impatient. A large log with an extensive root system – heavy, water-soaked, and lying low in the water – was washing down the river, the sprawling roots raking along everything in their path. The two men saw it – too late.

With a splintering crash, the jagged end of the huge log, brittle and blacker where it had once been struck by lightning, rammed broadside into the thin-walled dugout. Water rushed in through a hole punched into the side and quickly swamped the small canoe. As the snag bore down on them, one long root finger just below the water's surface jabbed Jondalar in the ribs and knocked him breathless. Another barely missed Thonolan's eye, leaving a long scratch across his cheek.

Suddenly immersed in the cold water, Jondalar and Thonolan clung to the snag and watched with dismay as a few bubbles rose while the little craft, with all their possessions lashed firmly to it, sank to the bottom.

Thonolan had heard his brother's grunt of pain. "Are you all right, Jondalar?"

"A root jabbed me in the ribs. Hurts a bit, but I don't think it's serious."

With Jondalar following slowly, Thonolan started working his way around the snag, but the force of the current as they were wept along kept pushing them back into the log with the rest of the debris. Suddenly, the snag caught on a sandbar under the water. The river, flowing around and through the open network of roots, pushed out objects that had been held under by the force of the current, and a whole bloated reindeer carcass rose to the surface in front of Jondalar. He moved to get out of its way, feeling the pain in his side.

Free of the log, they swam to a narrow island in midchannel. It supported a few young willows, but it was not stable and would be washed away before long. The trees near the edge were already partly submerged, drowned, with no green buds of spring leaves on the branches, and, with roots losing their hold, some were leaning over the rushing flow. The ground was a spongy bog.

"I think we should keep on going and try to find a drier place," Jondalar said.

"You are in a lot of pain – don't tell me you aren't."

Jondalar admitted to some discomfort. "But we can't stay here," he added.

They slid into the cold water across the narrow island bar. The current was swifter than they expected, and they were swept much farther downstream before they reached dry land. They were tired, cold, and disappointed when they found themselves to be on still another narrow islet. It was wider, longer, and somewhat higher than the level of the river, but soggy with no dry wood to be found.

"We can't make a fire here," Thonolan said. "We'll have to keep going. Where did Carlono say that Mamutoi Camp was?"

"At the north end of the delta, close to the sea," Jondalar replied, and he looked with longing in that direction as he spoke. The pain in his side had become more intense and he wasn't sure if he could swim across another channel. All he could see was surging water, tangled pockets of debris, and a few trees marking an occasional island. "No telling how far that is."

They squished through the mud to the north side of the narrow strip of land and plunged into the cold water. Jondalar noted a stand of trees downstream and made for it. They staggered up a beach of gray sand at the far side of the channel, breathing heavily. Rivulets of water ran from their long hair and soaked leather clothing.

The late afternoon sun broke through a rift in the overcast sky with a wash of golden brilliance but little warmth. A sudden gust from the north brought a chill that quickly penetrated wet clothes. They had been warm enough while they were active, but the effort had sapped their reserves. They shivered in the wind, then plodded toward the scant shelter of a sparse stand of alder.

"Let's make camp here," Jondalar said.

"It's still light. I'd rather keep going."

"It will be dark by the time we make a shelter and try to get a fire started."

"If we keep going, we could probably find the Mamutoi Camp before dark."

"Thonolan, I don't think I can."

"How bad is it?" Thonolan asked. Jondalar lifted his tunic. A wound on his rib was discoloring around a gash that had no doubt bled, but had been closed off by water-swelled tissue. He noticed the hole punctured in the leather then, wondering if his rib was broken.

"I wouldn't mind a rest and a fire."

They looked around them at the wild expanse of swirling muddy water, shifting sandbars, and an unkempt profusion of vegetation. Tangled tree limbs attached to dead trunks were pulled by the current unwillingly toward the sea, digging in wherever they could find purchase in the fluctuating bottom. In the distance a few stands of greening brush and trees were anchored to some of the more stable islands.

Reeds and marsh grasses took hold anywhere they could root. Nearby, three-foot tussocks of sedge, whose clumps of sprawling grassy leaves looked sturdier than they were, matched in height by the straight sword-shaped leaves of sweetflag, grew between mats of spike rush that was barely an inch tall. In the marsh near the water's edge, ten-foot-tall scouring rushes, cattails, and bulrushes dwarfed the men. Soaring over all, stiff-leafed phragmite reeds with tops of purple plumes reached thirteen feet or more.

The men had only the clothes on their backs. They had lost everything when the boat went down, even the backframes they had traveled with from the beginning. Thonolan had adopted the dress of the Shamudoi, and Jondalar wore the Ramudoi variation, but after his dunking in the river when he met the flatheads, he had kept a pouch of tools tied to his belt. He was grateful for it now.

"I'm going to see if there are some old stalks on those cattails that are dry enough for a fire drill," Jondalar said, trying to ignore the pain in his side. "See if you can find some dry wood."

The cattails provided more than an old-growth woody stalk for a fire drill. The long leaves woven around an alderwood frame made a lean-to, which helped contain the heat from the fire. The green tops and young roots, baked in the coals along with the sweet rhizomes of the sweetflag and the underwater base of the bulrushes, supplied the beginning of a meal. A slender alder sapling, sharpened to a point and hurled with the accuracy of hunger, brought a couple of ducks to the fire as well. The men made flexible mats of the large, soft-stemmed bulrushes, then used them to extend the lean-to and to wrap around themselves while they dried their wet clothes. Later, they slept on the mats.

Jondalar did not sleep well. His side was sore and tender, and he knew there was something wrong inside, but he couldn't think of stopping now. They had to find their way to solid ground first.

In the morning, they seined fish out of the river with wide mesh baskets made of cattail leaves and alder branches and cords made of stringy bark. They rolled the fire-making materials and flexible baskets inside the sleeping mats, tied them with the cord, and slung them over their backs. Taking their spears, they started out. The spears were only pointed sticks, but they had provided one meal – and the fish baskets had supplied another. Survival depended not so much on equipment as knowledge.

The two brothers had a small difference of opinion over which direction to go in. Thonolan thought they were across the delta and wanted to go east, toward the sea. Jondalar wanted to go north, sure there was yet another channel of the river to cross. They compromised and headed northeast. Jondalar was proved right, though he would have been much happier if he had been wrong. Near noon they reached the northernmost channel of the great river.

"Time to go swimming again," Thonolan said. "Are you able?"

"Do I have any choice?"

They started for the water, then Thonolan stopped. "Why don't we tie our clothes to a log, the way we used to. Then we won't have to dry clothes."

"I don't know," Jondalar said. Clothes, even wet, would keep them warmer, but Thonolan had been trying to be reasonable, though his voice betrayed frustration and exasperation. "But, if you want…" Jondalar shrugged acquiescence.

It was chilly standing naked in the cool damp air. Jondalar was tempted to retie his tool pouch around his bare waist, but Thonolan had already wrapped it in his tunic and was tying everything to a log he had found. On his bare skin, the water felt colder than he remembered, and he had to grit his teeth to keep from crying out when he plunged in and tried to swim, but water numbed the pain of his wound somewhat. He favored his side while swimming and lagged behind his brother, though Thonolan was pulling the log.

When they crawled out of the water and stood on a sandbar, their original destination – the end of the Great Mother River – was in sight. They could see the water of the inland sea. But the excitement of the moment was lost. The journey had lost its purpose, and the end of the river was no longer their goal. Nor were they yet on solid ground. They were not quite across the delta. The sandbar where they stood had once been in midchannel, but the channel had shifted. An empty riverbed still had to be crossed.

A high wooded bank, with exposed roots dangling from the underside where a swift current had once undercut, beckoned from the other side of the vacated channel. It had not been vacated long. Water still puddled in the middle, and vegetation had barely taken root. But insects had already discovered the stagnant pools, and a swarm of mosquitoes had discovered the two men.

Thonolan untied the clothes from the log. "We still have to get through those puddles down there, and the bank looks muddy. Let's wait until we get across before we put these back on."

Jondalar nodded agreement, in too much pain to argue. He thought he'd strained something while swimming, and he was having trouble standing up straight.

Thonolan slapped a mosquito as he started down the gentle gradient which had once been the slope leading from the bank into the river channel.

They'd been told often enough. Never turn your back on the river; never underestimate the Great Mother River. Though she had left it for a time, the channel was still hers, and, even in her absence, she left a surprise or two behind. Millions of tons of silt were brought down to the sea and spread over the thousand or more square miles of her delta every year. The vacated channel, subject to tidal inundation from the sea, was a soggy salt marsh with poor drainage. The new green grass and reeds had set roots in wet silty clay.

The two men slid and slipped down the slope on the fine-grained sticky mud, and, when they reached level ground, it sucked at their bare feet. Thonolan hurried ahead, forgetting that Jondalar was not quite up to his usual long-strided pace. He could walk, but the slippery descent had hurt. He was picking his way carefully, feeling a bit foolish to be wandering through the marsh naked, making an offering of his tender skin to the hungry insects.

Thonolan had gotten so far ahead that Jondalar was about to call out to him. But he looked up just as he heard his brother's cry for help and saw him go down. Pain forgotten, Jondalar ran toward him. Fear clutched when he saw Thonolan floundering in quicksand.

"Thonolan! Great Mother!" Jondalar cried, rushing to him.

"Stay back! You'll get caught too!" Thonolan, struggling to free himself from the mire, was sinking deeper instead.

Jondalar looked around frantically for something to help Thonolan out. His shirt! He could throw him an end, he thought, then remembered that was impossible. The bundle of clothes was gone. He shook his head, then saw the dead stump of an old tree half buried in the muck and ran to see if he could break off one of the roots, but any roots that might have come free had long since been torn off in the violent journey downstream.

"Thonolan, where is the clothes bundle? I need something to pull you out!"

The desperation in Jondalar's voice had an unwanted effect. It filtered through Thonolan's panic to remind him of his grief. A calm acceptance came over him. "Jondalar, if the Mother wants to take me, let Her take me."

"No! Thonolan, no! You can't give up like that. You can't just die. O Mother, Great Mother, don't let him die like that!" Jondalar sank to his knees and, stretching out full, reached out his hand. "Take my hand, Thonolan, please, take my hand," he begged.

Thonolan was surprised at the grief and pain on his brother's face, and something more that he'd seen before only in infrequent passing glances. In that instant, he knew. His brother loved him, loved him as much as he had loved Jetamio. It was not the same, but as strong. He understood at an instinctive level, by intuition, and he knew as he reached for the hand stretching toward him that, even if he couldn't get out of the mire, he had to clasp his brother's hand.

Thonolan didn't know it, but when he ceased struggling, he didn't sink as fast. When he stretched out to reach for his brother's hand, he spread out into a more horizontal position, displacing his weight over the water-filled, loose, silty sand, almost as though floating on water. He reached until they touched fingers. Jondalar inched forward until he had a firm grasp.

"That's the way! Hold on to him! We're coming!" said a voice speaking Mamutoi.

Jondalar's breath exploded, his tension punctured. He discovered he was shaking but held Thonolan's hand firmly. In a few moments, a rope was passed to Jondalar to tie around his brother's hands.

"Relax now," Thonolan was instructed. "Stretch out, like swimming. You know how to swim?"

"Yes."

"Good! Good! You relax, we will pull."

Hands pulled Jondalar back from the edge of the quicksand and soon had Thonolan out as well. Then they all followed a woman who prodded the ground with a long pole to avoid other sinkholes. Only after they reached solid ground did anyone seem to notice that the two men were entirely naked.

The woman who had directed the rescue stood back and scrutinized them. She was a big woman, not so much tall or fat as burly, and she had a bearing that commanded respect. "Why do you have nothing on?" she asked finally. "Why are two men traveling naked?"

Jondalar and Thonolan looked down at their nude, mud-caked bodies.

"We got in the wrong channel; then a log hit our boat," Jondalar began. He was feeling uncomfortable, unable to stand straight.

"After we had to dry our clothes, I thought we might as well take them off to swim the channel, and then to cross the mud. I was carrying them, ahead because Jondalar was hurt, and…"

"Hurt? One of you is hurt?" the woman asked.

"My brother," Thonolan said. At the mention of it, Jondalar became acutely aware of the aching, throbbing pain.

The woman saw him blanch. "Mamut must see to him," she said to one of the others. "You are not Mamutoi. Where did you learn to speak?"

"From a Mamutoi woman living with the Sharamudoi, my kin," Thonolan said.

"Tholie?"

"Yes, you know her?"

"She is my kin, too. The daughter of a cousin. If you are her kin, you are my kin," the woman said. "I am Brecie, of the Mamutoi, leader of the Willow Camp. You are both welcome."

"I am Thonolan, of the Sharamudoi. This is my brother, Jondalar, of the Zelandonii."

"Zel-an-don-yee?" Brecie said the unfamiliar word. "I have not heard of those people. If you are brothers, why are you Sharamudoi, and he this… Zelandonii? He does not look well," she said, briskly dismissing further discussion until a more appropriate time. Then she said to one of the others, "Help him. I'm not sure he can walk."

"I think I can walk," Jondalar said, suddenly dizzy with pain, "if it's not too far."

Jondalar was grateful when one of the Mamutoi men took an arm while Thonolan supported the other.

"Jondalar, I would have gone long ago if you hadn't made me promise to wait until you were well enough to travel. I'm leaving. I think you should go home, but I won't argue with you."

"Why do you want to go east, Thonolan? You've reached the end of the Great Mother River. Beran Sea, it's right there. Why not go home now?"

"I'm not going east, I'm going north, more or less. Brecie said they will all be going north to hunt mammoth soon I'm going ahead, to another Mamutoi Camp. I'm not going home, Jondalar. I'm going to travel until the Mother takes me."

"Don't talk like that! You sound like you want to die!" Jondalar shouted, sorry the instant he said it for fear the mere suggestion would make it true.

"What if I do?" Thonolan shouted back. "What do I have to live for… without Jetamio." His breath caught in his throat, and her name came out with a soft sob.

"What did you have to live for before you met her? You're young, Thonolan. You have a long life ahead of you. New places to go, new things to see. Give yourself a chance to meet another woman like Jetamio," Jondalar pleaded.

"You don't understand. You've never been in love. There is no other woman like Jetamio."

"So you're going to follow her to the spirit world and drag me along with you!" He didn't like saying it, but if the only way to keep his brother alive was to play on his guilt, he'd do it.

"No one asked you to follow me! Why don't you go home and leave me alone."

"Thonolan, everyone grieves when they lose people they love, but they don't follow them to the next world."

"Someday it will happen to you, Jondalar. Someday you'll love a woman so much, you'd rather follow her to the world of the spirits than live without her."

"And if it were me, now, would you let me go off alone? If I had lost someone I loved so much I wanted to die, would you abandon me? Tell me you would, Brother. Tell me you'd go home if I was sick to death with grief."

Thonolan looked down, then into the troubled blue eyes of his brother. "No, I guess I wouldn't leave you if I thought you were sick to death with grief. But you know, Big Brother" – he tried to grin but it was a contortion on his pain-ravaged face – "if I decide to travel for the rest of my life, you don't have to follow me forever. You are sick to death of traveling. Sometime you have to go home. Tell me, if I wanted to go home, and you didn't, you'd want me to go, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, I'd want you to go. I want you to go home now. Not because you want to, or even because I do. You need your own Cave, Thonolan, your family, people you've known all your life, who love you."

"You don't understand. That's one way we're different. The Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii is your home, it always will be. My home is wherever I want to make it. I am just as much Sharamudoi as I ever was Zelandonii. I just left my Cave, and people I loved as much as my Zelandonii family. That doesn't mean I don't wonder if Joharran has any children at his hearth yet, or if Folara has grown up to be as beautiful as I know she will be. I'd like to tell Willomar about our Journey and find out where he plans to go next. I still remember how excited I was when he returned from a trip. I'd listen to his stories and dream about traveling. Remember how he always brought something back for everyone? Me, and Folara, and you too. And always something beautiful for Mother. When you go back, Jondalar, take her something beautiful."

The mention of familiar names filled Jondalar with poignant memories. "Why don't you take her something beautiful, Thonolan? Don't you think Mother wants to see you again?"

"Mother knew I wasn't coming back. She said 'Good journey' when we left, not 'Until you return.' It's you who must have upset her, perhaps more than you upset Marona."

"Why would she be more upset about me than you?"

"I'm the son of Willomar's hearth. I think she knew I'd be a traveler. She might not have liked it, but she understood. She understands all her sons – that's why she made Joharran leader after her. She knows Jondalar is a Zelandonii. If you made a Journey alone, she'd know you would return – but you left with me, and I wasn't going back. I didn't know it when I left, but I think she did. She would want you to return; you're the son of Dalanar's hearth."

"What difference does that make? They severed the knot long ago. They're friends when they see each other at Summer Meetings."

"They may be just friends now, but people still talk about Marthona and Dalanar. Their love must have been very special to be so long remembered, and you are all she has to remind her, the son born to his hearth. His spirit, too. Everyone knows that; you look so much like him. You have to go back. You belong there. She knew it, and so do you. Promise you'll go back someday, Brother."

Jondalar was uneasy about such a promise. Whether he continued to travel with his brother or decided to return without him, he would be giving up more than he wanted to lose. As long as he made no commitment either way, he felt he could still have both. A promise to return implied that his brother would not be with him.

"Promise me, Jondalar."

What reasonable objection could he make. "I promise," he acquiesced. "I will go home – someday."

"After all, Big Brother," Thonolan said with a smile, "someone has to tell them we made it to the end of the Great Mother River. I won't be there, so you'll have to."

"Why won't you be there? You could come with me."

"I think the Mother would have taken me at the river – if you hadn't begged Her. I know I can't make you understand, but I know She will come for me soon, and I want to go."

"You are going to try to get yourself killed, aren't you?"

"No, Big Brother." Thonolan smiled. "I don't have to try. I just know the Mother will come. I want you to know I'm ready."

Jondalar felt a knot tightening inside him. Ever since the quicksand accident, Thonolan had had a fatalistic certainty he was going to die soon. He smiled, but it wasn't his old grin. Jondalar preferred the anger to this calm acceptance. There was no fight in him, no will to live.

"Don't you think we owe something to Brecie and the Willow Camp? They've given us food, clothing, weapons, everything. Are you willing to take it all and not offer anything in return?" Jondalar wanted to make his brother angry, to know there was something left. He felt he'd been tricked into a promise that relieved his brother of his final obligation. "You are so sure the Mother has some destiny for you that you have stopped thinking of anyone but yourself! Just Thonolan, right? No one else matters."

Thonolan smiled. He understood Jondalar's anger and could not blame him. How would he have felt if Jetamio had known she was going to die, and had told him?

"Jondalar, I want to tell you something. We were close…"

"Aren't we still?"

"Of course, because you can relax with me. You don't have to be so perfect all the time. Always so considerate…"

"Yes, I'm so good, Serenio wouldn't even be my mate," he said with bitter sarcasm.

"She knew you were leaving and didn't want to get hurt any worse. If you had asked her sooner, she would have mated you. If you had even pushed her a little when you did ask, she would have – even knowing you didn't love her. You didn't want her, Jondalar."

"So how can you say I'm so perfect? Great Doni, Thonolan, I wanted to love her."

"I know you did. I learned something from Jetamio, and I want you to know it. If you want to fall in love, you can't hold everything in. You have to open up, take that risk. You'll be hurt sometimes, but if you don't, you'll never be happy. The one you find may not be the kind of woman you expected to fall in love with, but it wont matter, you'll love her for exactly what she is."

"I wondered where you were," Brecie said, approaching the two brothers. "I've planned a little farewell feast for you since you're determined to leave."

"I feel an obligation, Brecie," Jondalar said. "You've taken care of me, given us everything. I don't think it's right to leave without making some repayment."

"Your brother has done more than enough. He hunted every day while you were recovering. He takes a few too many chances, but he's a lucky hunter. You leave with no obligation."

Jondalar looked at his brother, who was smiling at him.