Return to Eden

hesitated. "But I must tell you, one of the males from the city is close by, on an island by himself."
    "One of those who lived through the fire in the city?" He frowned and unconsciously lifted his weapon.
    "The same. There were two, the other… died. I know you think that every marag should be killed, you told me that. But this one is harmless."
    "Are you saying that if we come to this place—the marag must not be disturbed? That is a hard thing to ask."
    "Hard, perhaps, but that is the way it must be. I talk with him. And because I can talk with the murgu I did what had to be done to save the valley, to make them stop the war. To bring you this knife."
    "I have not thought of these things before. To me, always after the death of my sammad, murgu were there to be hated and destroyed. All of them. You have said that some of them are different, but I cannot understand that."

"This one is harmless, a male, locked away with other males all his life. It is the females that make war. I want this one to live."
    Herilak frowned, but finally nodded his head. "It will be as you say. I will not go near the beast.
    "And the others?"
    "They must each say the same thing—or they cannot stay here. The island where this marag is will be forbidden, that is the best way. Tell us which island it is so each Tanu will make an oath not to go there.
    The children as well. I do not like this. But it is you who we owe our lives to, we can at least do this thing for you. The creature will be safe."
    There was a trumpeting from the forest and the first of the mastodons came into view. The sammads had come to the island.
    CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    Armun heard the mastodons well before she saw them and clutched the baby to her with excitement.
    There they were, tearing at the leaves as they came, hunters leading them between the trees. Not only hunters, for the first one was a woman—and someone familiar.
    "Merrith!" she cried, again and again until the older woman heard her, turned and saw her, waved and hurried over.
    "Armun! You are here, you are safe. You have a family. You were only a girl, now a mother—such a baby of great beauty. I must hold her."
    "Her name is Ysel," Armun said, smiling with happiness as she passed her over. "And her brother has grown, you must have seen him, he went to meet you."
    "Look at her eyes, just like yours." Merrith glanced up when the tent flap moved aside and Darras looked out shyly. "And another daughter as well!"
    "She is like a daughter to us now, but not our daughter." Darras clung to Armun's leg, reluctantly coming forward to meet this new woman she had never seen before. "This is Merrith, who I have known since I was only a little girl, when I was even younger than you are now, Darras."
    Merrith smiled and touched the girl's hair, felt her shiver beneath her fingers. Then the girl twisted away and ran over to look at the mastodon who stood placidly chewing a great mouthful of leaves.
    "She was alone when we found her," Armun said. "Just her and a mastodon. The rest of the sammad killed by the murgu. She has been with us ever since. She has dreams that wake her at night."
    "Poor baby," Merrith said, then passed Ysel back to her mother. "Do you know what sammad it was?"
    "Sorli, sammad Sorli."
    Merrith gasped and clutched her hands to her breasts. "Then she is dead, my daughter is dead! She and her hunter, they went with sammad Sorli. Melde. Dead now, like her sister."
    When she heard this Armun went rigid, holding the baby so tightly that she began to wail. She controlled herself, caressed the infant until it stopped crying, until she could talk. Yet her voice still trembled when she did.
    "At first Darras would not speak when we found her, could only cry. She had watched them all being killed. Later I could talk to her, she told me about it, how she had been alone in the forest. Told me her name. Darras. Told me her mother's name as well." Armun hesitated, then forced herself to speak. "She spoke her mother's name. It was Melde."
    The two women looked at each other in shocked silence and it was Merrith who managed to speak first.
    "Then this child—my granddaughter?"
    "She must be. I must talk to her. She never told me, but she must know her father's name."
    At first Darras did not know what was happening, could not understand it. Only when the relationship had been explained over and over again, often enough to make it clear to her, only then did the long-hidden tears come as she clung to her