Lying here on the sand wrapped in Kol’s arms, I try to memorize every detail of this moment—the sound of the waves, the wind in the dunes, Kol’s breath coming quick, his chest rising and falling against mine. When I stand on this beach from now on, these are the memories that will stir in me. This place will no longer remind me of death.
“I wonder,” I say, thinking out loud, “if the Manu-Olen would be the best name.”
“I like that,” Kol says, “but maybe for a clan that’s so new, we should choose new names. Names of the leaders we want to remember every time we say the clan’s name.” Kol slides away from me and sits up. He looks down at his hands, bruised and cut in the battle with the Tama. “What would you think of the Chev-Arem clan?”
Hearing the name of my brother, so soon after standing at his grave, brushes my nerves, and for a moment I’m unsure. But bound together with the name of Kol’s father, it feels solid and strong, like rock beneath my feet. Like something to build on.
“It’s not like we’ll forget Manu or Olen or Bosha,” Kol says. He watches my face closely. He must see that I am happy with the name, because a smile lights in his eyes. “Their stories will be told forever, their songs sung and their dances danced at all the celebrations of the Chev-Arem clan.”
“Yes,” I say. “Beginning with a wedding.”
Four days. At first I say it’s too long, but after the first two days are behind me, I say that we will never have enough time.
“You want the good luck,” Ela says. “You want to be blessed by all that the Divine promises to those joined under a full moon. We could wait for the next one, I guess—”
“No,” I say, my voice so quick and sharp, Ela laughs.
“I didn’t think so.” Her fingers dance across pieces of a tunic—my betrothal tunic—as together we work to increase the intricacy of the pattern into something worthy of a bride.
“It should still look like a meadow,” I say, “but now it needs to have no boundaries. We can add to it a piece of the sea and the beach . . . and maybe a cave on a cliff.”
“All that on this one tunic?” Ela asks. Her eyes reflect the light of the seal oil lamp. It’s far too dark in this hut to do this work, but still we persist. In two more days the wedding will be upon us and we will be out of time. “You may be right,” I say. “What if we simply add a few sections to suggest a bee? Stripes of light and dark and two wings?”
“A bee?” Ela asks. “Why a bee?”
“Because bees make honey,” I say. “Don’t worry. Kol will understand.”
While Ela and I work on my tunic, others work on bringing in the guests. Everyone wants to attend—the Olen, the Bosha, who will soon rejoin the Olen, and the Manu, too—so boats make the trip up and down the coast over and over. With every new arrival from the north the decision to merge is reaffirmed.
Before we told anyone else about the merger, I went with Kol straight from the beach to talk with his mother. We found her in the kitchen after the meal, and I hung back near the door as Kol approached her. My memory echoed with the words she said when she didn’t know I could hear: This is about every Manu who’s ever lived. Every one who’s yet to live.
The words she’d used to tell Kol she opposed a merger.
But when Kol takes her hands in his and tells her we would like to create a new clan, he doesn’t wait for her response. “It will be called the Chev-Arem clan,” he says, “because we know it’s what Chev and Father would want if they were here.”
My fingers curled around the bearskin hanging in the doorway at my back. My teeth bit into my lip. Kol had nearly extinguished my smoldering fear of the future, but now it began to flicker to life again.
But then Mala threw her arms around Kol. “I was so burdened with grief before, I thought that keeping the Manu separate was something we owed to your father’s memory. But I was wrong. What we owe his memory is a strong clan. He would be so happy to hear this. He would be so proud.”
I swallowed my hot fear down and stepped closer. Mala turned to me, and a tremor of joy ran over my skin when I saw her smile.
By the third day, the camp buzzes like a hive. In the morning, groups leave camp to hunt and fish, and in the afternoon, they head out to gather. They come back with overflowing baskets—Shava and her mother, Thern and Pada, Kol’s aunt, Ama, and her sons. Even Noni and Black Dog go along. Ama gives Noni a little extra attention, and her boys give extra attention to the dog. Noni doesn’t seem to mind. She seems happy to be a part of something again. At night, they all sleep under the roof that Morsk erected over the meeting place.
The morning of the wedding comes, though my bridal tunic is far from ready and I know it never will be. “It’s beautiful,” Ela says.
“Beautiful,” echoes Mala, who has joined us in Ela’s hut to help.
Today I let Mala do my hair. Like Ela did for my betrothal, she threads ivory beads into my braids, but today she adds tiny purple flowers gathered from our meadow, and tiny white feathers. “They will glow in the moonlight,” she says.
I think of this—the moon will soon catch in the beads and feathers in my hair. And I know that by the time that happens—by the time the sky is dark and the moon is out—I will already be Kol’s wife.
The ceremony will be held on the beach. It’s the only open space in camp that has enough room for everyone to gather. Weddings call for a large fire, and when I smell the smoke floating on the breeze, my stomach swims. Mala must see my nerves in the way my eyelids flutter and my fingers rub the trim at my tunic’s hem.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “Today, you can do no wrong. Today, everything is right.”
When the sun is just beginning to set, painting a wide path of gold across the sea, Kol comes to the door of my hut to ask for me.
Pushing back the bearskin, I look out and see him framed by the twilight sky. His face glows in the fading sunlight, a star burning in each eye, and I’m transported back to the first night we met. The night he came to the door of my hut to offer me a pouch of honey. The path we stepped onto that day has led to this door. His lips curl—not into a half smile but into something much warmer and brighter, something I can’t help but return. “Would you walk with me?” he asks, holding out his hand.
I place my hand in his, and together we walk the path to the beach. Kol leans his head toward my ear.
“Are you happy?” he asks.
“More happy than I’ve been since . . .” I stop myself. No. That’s not right. “More happy than I’ve ever been.”
When we reach the fire, we are greeted by our healers, Urar and Yano. Ela is hidden out of sight—she will soon appear in a mask. But for now we are compelled to sit while all the others of our clan stand. A drum plays an urgent beat, a beat that makes my heart quicken, and from Kesh’s flute a melody floats over our heads, carrying our joy to the Divine.
When it’s time, everyone takes a seat on pelts that have been scattered on the ground, and from behind us a dancer emerges in a wolf mask—Ela. She circles me and Kol, then winds between the two of us and the fire, bending low to look into our faces. I see her eyes, but behind the mask they seem distant and strange. I feel the power of the mask, transforming Ela into the thing it represents.
A wolf. To remind us of the bonds of the pack, a bond that can’t be broken. I can’t help but think of Black Dog and of Noni, and of all the ways that a pack is more than family or even clan. Ela’s wolf eyes prick my heart, but I don’t turn away. Not until she does. When she finally drops her head and turns, I shiver and look over at Kol. He smiles, but I can tell by his eyes that he saw the wolf in Ela, too.
At the end of the ceremony, Kol and I share a cup of mead. I catch Kol watching me as I peer over the rim of the cup. The liquid burns down my throat and warmth rises up through me, lightening my head. I place the cup in his hand. His head tips back and he drains the last of the liquid. I watch the muscles of his throat as he swallows and I know it is done.
We are wed.
Later, the musicians gather to play and lots of people press closer, ready to dance. The first song is the song of Manu—Kol’s favorite. Kol leads me to a spot in the circle that forms.
“I don’t know this dance,” I say. Shame sends heat up my neck and I feel my ears burn. I would know it if I hadn’t run away to hide in my hut the first night we met.
“Don’t worry; it’s easy,” Seeri says. She and Pek push into the circle next to us, just as the first line is sung.
Manu was a hunter lost in a storm, wandering far from home . . .
My sister tries to teach me, but she makes so many mistakes, Pek tells her she needs more lessons herself. Their laughter fills me up, so much I feel it overflow my edges.
After the dancing has gone on for a long time, Kol leads me to a place a few steps away from the crowd. He brings an elk skin, and we wrap ourselves in it as we lie back against a dune.
The sky blazes pink and gold, edged in the red of blood and of flame. The sun’s light fades from the sky as the moon rises behind us. Stars are coming out. Not bright white like in winter, but the dim shimmer of the stars of the summer sky—the sky that never goes completely black.
“It’s a blessing,” I say. Only the thin elk skin separates us from the cold sand, but I don’t shiver. Lying next to Kol warms me. “It’s a blessing that the Divine lets us look up and see the hearthfires of the dead. To know they are so close. Watching us. Waiting for us to join them.”
“That’s why I like the blackest nights—the darkest, obsidian skies of winter. When the world is coldest and darkest, the stars shine brightest.”
I think about this. I have never liked winter, when the cold could kill so easily. When game is harder to find. I’ve always hated the short days, and the long, dark nights.
But this is a new way to think of the winter, with its obsidian night sky ablaze with stars. Certainly I have been through my share of loss, my share of darkness. And I’ve hated it. But maybe Kol is right. Maybe the darkness can connect me to the past—to those who’ve left me and lit their fires in the sky. I turn to Kol. His eyes sweep the sky, flitting from one star to the next like a honeybee flying flower to flower. I draw closer to him, and he wraps the elk pelt around the two of us and pulls me against him. His warmth is irresistible, and I stretch out along the length of his body.
I turn my face to the darkening sky. Darkness connects us to the past—to the dead—but the darkness I’ve lived through connects me to the living—and to the future—as well.
I have to let go—of my mother, of Chev, of everything that’s behind me. Kol has to let go too. We are both the High Elders of this new clan now, and we have to keep our eyes on the way forward. The stars in the obsidian sky may be beautiful, but they show the past, not the future. I know I need to begin to let go of the past. It’s the only way I can really take hold of Kol.
The musicians stop to catch their breath and the dancers reluctantly sit. Urar adds wood to the fire, promising to read the flames. The night air snaps and hisses. The blaze spreads and grows. Soon, this spot of the beach is as bright as day as the smoke billows and coils, stretching a thick rope into the sky.
I watch it—we all watch it—and no one speaks for a long time. When the sliver of sun is completely gone, and the moon is high in the east, Lees jumps to her feet. “The moon is up and the sun is down—it’s time to dance again.”
I have never heard of this custom, and I suspect it’s something Lees has only just made up. She pulls Roon to his feet, and others who never seem to tire join them.
I’m surprised when Kol pulls his warmth away from me and gets up, too. “Yes,” he says. “I haven’t danced the wedding dance with my bride yet.”
I don’t know how this dance was overlooked. Perhaps with all the songs and dances of three clans, no one has remembered to ask for it. But Kol has remembered. “Waiting for this dance helped keep me alive,” he whispers in my ear.
A broad smile lights Kol’s face, much brighter and more enchanted than the stars in the sky. They are pale and weak, too far away to offer heat. But Kol’s smile holds the heat of a thousand suns.
Kol reaches out a hand, and I take it.
Kesh’s flute is the first instrument I hear. The others join him, and we begin to carve a path in the sand, moving slowly around the circle with Seeri and Pek, Lees and Roon. The music quickens and they dance faster and faster, but after a few turns Kol and I slide out of their circle and make one of our own. Kol’s leg is still healing, and we want to take our time.
But then Kol wraps both my hands in his. His grip is strong, his balance surprisingly sure. He tips his head back, looking up at the stars draped overhead, and he begins to spin—not quickly, not recklessly—but spinning all the same. He turns in place, holding me at arm’s length, letting me whip around him like a stone tucked in a sling.
I look up to see what he sees, and I catch my breath. The stars—small, distinct, pale—smear together as we turn. They blend into a circle of light, a beacon, right above our heads. My mouth opens to drink in a deep breath of night, and tears spring to my eyes as a sound bursts from my throat.
A sound something like a sob, but also like a cry of joy.