“Kessa…” I asked after a little while. “What is… spirit-walker.”
“Old story,” Kessa answered. “The world around us is ancient, but when it was young, it was… damaged by fire and earth. The world shook and the people cried in fear. The Great Mother cried for her children, for their fear and pain, so she lay with her lover and bore another child. The Spirit Walker. The Sacred Daughter who came and walked the earth with her guardian spirits until it lay quiet and healed, and the Great Mother could watch her children live in peace and strength.”
“What a beautiful story,” I murmured. “We do not have a Great Mother where I come from. We have… a Great Father.”
Sira snorted. “A father may spark life, but he does not create it, grow it, nurture it. He protects, guides, teaches, provides as does the mother.”
“Where is your mother, Ellie?” asked Cera softly. I opened my eyes and looked over. She was smiling, but her eyes were sad and I wondered if her mother had been killed when Broken Ridge attacked, or whether she had been taken, just as I was supposed to be.
“My mother… she lives no more,” I said, ignoring the pricking of tears in my eyes.
"In old times," Sira said softly as she worked, "women who joined from other packs, they came with nothing. No family. No protection. So we became their mothers. Their sisters." Her fingers moved steadily, never faltering. "You have no mother here, Ellie. Or you Cera. So we are your mothers. All of us."
This time there was no holding back and my tears fell silent and hot down my cheeks. Kessa tutted and dabbed at my face with a soft cloth.
When Sira finally sat back, one of the other women brought forward a small dish of red ochre paste. Sira dipped her fingers into it and drew a single line across my brow, then down the bridge of my nose.
She met my eyes as she worked, her gaze steady and knowing. "We honour what you lost," she said quietly. "And we welcome what you become."
Kessa gestured to one of the younger girls hovering near the entrance. She was maybe twelve, her dark hair loose and eyes wide with excitement. "Ellie, you know Mira?"
“I do. She taught me skin rabbit. Nice see you Mira,” I said, trying to swallow down my emotion, and smiling warmly at her. Mira smiled back shyly.
"She wants you to braid her hair," Kessa said, placing a carved comb in my hand. "It is... done. The one who is blessed, she blesses another. She shares what she receives."
My hands trembled as I took the comb. Mira sat, her back straight, her shoulders tense with the gravity of the moment. I swallowed hard and began to work through her hair. I could not mimick the patterns I'd felt Sira weave into mine, but I added several tiny braids that fell prettily among Mira’s thick tresses.
"Not so tight," Sira coached gently. "Let it breathe. Yes, like that."
I was clumsy. My braids weren't as neat, my fingers not as sure. But Mira didn't complain. She sat perfectly still, and when I fumbled with a bead Kessa guided my hand, showing me how to secure it.
"You do well," Mira said softly when I finished, her voice shy but pleased.
When she turned and threw her arms around my neck, pressing her face against my shoulder in a fierce, wordless hug, I hugged her back, my vision blurring again.
By the time we left Kessa's hearth, the sun had climbed higher, though the early spring sky stayed pale and cold. My breath misted in the air as we walked through the camp, children ran past, shrieking with excitement, and a few of the hunters nodded respectfully as we passed. One older man called out something that made the women around me laugh.
"What did he say?" I asked.
"He says Daska is very lucky man," Kessa said with a grin. "And also very stupid to wait so long."
My face heated. "I... we only met—"
"We know," Sira said dryly. "But bond does not wait for man to be smart."
“Oh, but there isn’t a-”
The drums started, cutting me off. Low and steady, a heartbeat rhythm that thrummed through the ground and into my bones. I felt it in my chest, in the base of my skull, resonant and ancient and impossibly heavy. Kessa walked beside me, her hand light on my elbow, guiding me along and up a narrow path that wound its way up the side of the valley. The rest of the pack followed behind us, fanning out where the land opened into a wide clearing. On one side, the valley opened out below us, and at the far end of the clearing, a huge boulder sat, hanging at a strange angle over the edge of the cliff that fell away beneath us. It looked as though it might topple at any moment. The Hanging Rock, I realised.
The clearing was larger than I'd expected, ringed by ancient stones half-buried in the earth, their surfaces worn smooth by time and weather. The pack had gathered in a loose circle around a central fire pit, and the flames were already roaring, sending sparks spiralling into the pale sky.
It looked like the entire pack was here to watch Daska and I be mated.
The drums grew louder as we approached, joined now by voices, low chanting, rhythmic and hypnotic that made my heart speed up, whether from fear or anticipation, I wasn’t sure.
And then I saw him.
Daska stood on the far side of the fire, his back straight, his shoulders broad and steady beneath the fur cloak draped across them. He wore dark leather trousers decorated with simple beadwork, his arms and chest bare despite the cold, and there were red ochre marks on his skin like mine, painted in lines and spirals across his chest and upper arms.
