The Gathering Night Read Online Free

flatfish, and dug for roots among the reeds. They cooked the food and roasted the nuts, and fed the men when they got home. My man and Amets hunted small game, and sometimes went after the deer who come down to graze in the marshes when the days grow shorter. No one needed me. Never before had I taken more than I gave.
    Day after day I searched for my son. I slept alone under the stars, and in the mornings my cloak was stiff with frost. I didn’t stop to find food, but I felt no hunger. I journeyed far from River Mouth Camp. I followed the shores that faced the Evening Sun Sky. I borrowed a boat and crossed to Cave Island; my sister Hilargi’s family hadn’t seen my son. I followed the shore of Mother Mountain Loch and asked at every Camp I came to. No one had word of my son. I crossed Mother Mountain Island to the shore that faces the Morning Sun Sky, and I walked the coast of Long Strait. None of our kin at any of the winter Camps had seen my son. The tides had washed the sands clean, and I found no trace of him. I turned inland towards the Long Loch. As I wandered among the oaks I found the tracks of deer and pig, bear and beaver, fox, lynx, marten, cat and wolf. But there were no human tracks among them. I never found a trace of Bakar.
    Swan Moon came and went. Now it was Dark Moon. The snow came. The days were too short for travel. I was forced to go back to River Mouth Camp.
    I heard the ring of stone on stone long before I reached our clearing, and when I got there I found Amets using a wedge to split birch logs from the tree the beavers felled, and Alaia, with her big belly, stacking firewood under the shelter. A fresh deer hide, a seal hide and two beaver pelts were stretched on frames to dry. My husband and Haizea were sitting together on a log by the door, their heads bent over some work.
    They all stopped what they were doing when they saw me. My man smiled at me kindly; Amets and Alaia seemed subdued. Only my younger daughter jumped up and hugged me. No one asked about my journey. Haizea has never been able to give her mind to more than one thing at once. She dragged me over to where my man was sitting: ‘Mother, look! See my new bow! I made it! Actually Father helped me make it. We went upriver to find juniper yesterday, and we carved it and greased it with ochre – see! And today we strung it. Now we’re making arrows – we’re just gluing the arrowheads. I made the glue myself – look!’
    It was warm and dry inside the winter house. While I’d been gone they’d stripped the walls back to the bark during a dry spell, and built fresh turfs over it. Amets and Alaia had laid new birchbark round the smoke hole, and lined the inside walls with hides. Haizea had cleared out the old pine twigs and strewn new ones across the floor. She and Alaia had climbed into the hills and brought back juniper to lay under the birch boughs in our sleeping places. The beds on both sides of the hearth were covered with winter furs. Firewood was stacked almost to the roof, and there was even more under the shelter between the oaks outside. Haunches of deer and beaver meat hung from the roof, and a string of saithe dangled in the smoke above the fire. Baskets of reed-roots, lily-roots, roasted hazelnuts and orange earth-mushrooms were lashed to the walls. I saw Alaia’s hand everywhere. I wanted to praise her, but somehow the words came out wrong. She seemed angry that I should mention her work at all.
    It was the season when an old woman should make herself comfortable by the hearth. I had the promise of Alaia’s child to rock in my arms before the winter was out. But I cared for none of these things. I was starved with cold and hunger from my long wanderings. You’d think I’d be glad of food and shelter and the warmth of the fire.
    But it was all ashes in my mouth, because Bakar was lost, and I’d found no trace of him.
    Young men must die.
    When we meet at Gathering