“What did you do to her?” the man demanded. “She means no mischief. She’ll have offered you hospitality, that’s all. Out here, most are glad of it.”
Rem said, “I don’t know why she cried out.” The hills were slowly moving, not a vision now, only vertigo.
“You must’ve hurt her. Did he hurt you, Berinda?” the man asked her with urgent tenderness. “Tell me if he did. I’ll do for him.”
The hills steadied. The sky was cut above them as if by a knife.
Rem walked toward the man.
“She surprised me. I may have looked angry. Not meant. She’s gentle, isn’t she?” It was the dulcet Lannic word for simple, and the man, accepting its use, grew less belligerent, though no less protective.
“Well, so she is. But she’s been a good woman to me. She’s given me children, a host of them. Nothing wrong with their wits, either.”
Rem went closer. He offered a handful of coins.
“My apology.”
The man brushed the coins away. Money was not always wanted in the hills, barter was more use, but the symbol he allowed.
“See, Berinda,” he said, “a mistake. Smile now, sweetheart. Smile for me.”
And Berinda looked up at the man, smiling.
All these years, searching for her. And he had not known her. Though she had known him, some dark shadow from her unhappy past. Yes, that would be the cause of her terror. Rem was the fall from the ship, the cruel water, the unloving coast—And now, contentedly here, loved and valued at last, a day’s ride from Amlan. All these years—
“Berinda. That’s a Karmian name.”
“Ah.” The man did not care.
They walked together toward the cot where she had borne the host of children, all alive. Was one of them—
No. No, this much the gods might give, but no more.
“Berinda,” said Rem. She glanced at him, and he smiled at her, without recognition, but friendly, and saw her mislay who he had been in her life.
“We have wine,” she said, “honeyed wine from soft fruits.”
The man smiled, too, showing off her housekeeping. “She’s a rare one for hospitality.”
Rem had forgotten the wolf, the hunt, forgotten Yannul’s son.
He sat in the clean little house, where two small children came in and out—strange he had not heard their voices, as now he did, ringing round the slopes—and one more crawled on the rugs, and a fourth purred at the breast.
He had seen her last, this way. Feeding a child. Not that child now. None of them were that child.
There was not much talk, the time went thick and slow and timelessly. They made no move to indicate the door to him. Of course, he did not go. The man and he exchanged a few commonplaces. Rem mentioned he was up hereafter wolves. Something odd, then. The man casting a look at his wife. “Yes, they’re wolves round about. We get no harm from them.”
As the sun began to go, the man asked for supper, and laughing she put down her sucking child and ran about preparing a meal, like a child herself playing with toys. But it was tasty when it came, if Rem could have got any of it down his throat.
“Eat,” said the husband. “We’ve plenty.”
But he could not eat, as he could not leave them. Just as he could not ask her for the past.
Shadows began to come, and a brown candle was lit.
The husband fell asleep. The woman rocked her youngest child, the other children, who had settled indoors like pigeons for the food, grouped sleepily at her skirts.
“Tell us,” said the elder girl, “the story about the wolves.”
And Rem, a mature man who had lived by three or four trades of death and by the hard edges of his brain, felt his heart stop.
She told them.
As she spoke, in the way of her child, he pictured it. The images came, conveyed by her murmuring. And sounds, and scents, all of it. All.
When the white wolf appeared like a thing of snow on the rock above her, she had screamed and help had been far away, unhearing.
After a while, the wolf came toward her, and she tried to run, but the wolf and its fellows caught her up. They loped around her, shutting her inside a wall of their own bodies. All through this she held the baby, and all through this, as she shrieked and wept and ran and fell to her knees, the baby remained quiet. Finally, the wolves nudged Berinda. They nudged her in such a way that she knew she had to get to her feet. So she did. Then they began to nudge her again, and she discovered they were unroughly pushing her toward some other place.
In abject horror, she obeyed. After a distance of rocks and uplands, twisting, climbing, the heat of the wolves’ mouths soaking through her clothing every time they nosed her on, there was a cave. It was a wolf cave, and it stank of wolves and the things wolves had killed. But it had begun to rain, and the cave was out of the rain. Berinda went into the cave and here she sat down for sheer fatigue, and dropped into a sort of dreadful doze.
When she woke, the wolves lay against her. She watched, some slept. The warmth of their bodies was a comfort. The stench in the cave seemed less now that she was more accustomed to it. Berinda, who had grown up in squalor at Xai, had spent her earliest years among the stink of humans, where disease had augmented poverty. The wolves themselves did not smell bad, for they had health. There was the difference.
Later, other wolves trotted in. Berinda was afraid, as if these newcomers might not show the same consideration as the first wolves. But they seemed indifferent. More, they had brought in a kill. Growling, the pack savaged the bloody carcass into parts. At length, a piece of the raw meat was brought to Berinda. She could not stomach it the first day. But the next, when again she was brought something, she did eat it.
By then, she was feeding the child, sitting there in the midst of them. They seemed to respect this duty, and some would stare, wagging their tails like dogs.
With nudgings and tuggings and pullings and whines they managed to conduct her where there was a stream. When the spring began to open the land, she found fruits under the ice and ate them. She offered them to the wolves also, and the wolves ate from her hands.
She was grateful for their warmth in the cold of the nights. She was solaced by their bodies’ liveness against her. She had long ceased to be afraid.
For Berinda, “gentle” as she was, was also a wild thing. To her it came, with more facility than to most, to be at one with the wolves. She reacted with the straightforwardness of a child.
And the child too, accepted and accepting, bloomed in the midst of the cave, or slept in Berinda’s lap in the weak sun of the hillside. She would even leave the baby among them for short intervals, as she wandered with the wolves or by herself.
When the summer came, four of the wolves showed her that they were leaving the cave and she and the baby were to go with them.
She was sorry, but the call of the summer running of the wolves infected her, and she did not hang back. They went south. She did not say this, but it was apparent. Also the impressive distance.
All the way, the wolves fed her and companioned her, as ever. Perhaps she had unremembered mankind. It seemed so from her narrative. Certainly the wolves had generally been nicer to her than men.
Thus, when one of the wolves urged her to a spot where a village could be seen among grain fields, Berinda evinced no special wish to approach it.
But the wolf wanted to approach the village, so they went together, playing through the tall stalks of the young grain. The child had been left behind on the slopes.
All at once the wolf and Berinda emerged into a thicket of people, who shouted, either retreating or hurling things. The wolf ran, and Berinda turned to run—and the people took hold of her, rushing her to the shelter of the village.