The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

his side, trying to roll onto his back, but his legs would not obey him. His knees would not straighten. He groaned aloud as he tried to shuffle on his hands down the hill after the Keepers, dragging his useless, fiery legs behind him. Suddenly there were feet beside him, the shocking coolness of water splashed onto his back, a great handful of dripping moss wiped across his face and he sucked greedily at the moisture as firm hands began to slap and grip his thighs. He felt a great softness as someone sat on his legs, trying to straighten his locked knees. His joints blazed with a final pain, and then eased, and Little Moon helped him stagger to his feet and down the hill to the river.

    At his sister’s fire, the Keeper of the Bulls sat watching his newborn daughter gurgle in her sleep. He had taken her to his chest, listened to her heart, acknowledging that she was his, wondering if in some years to come she would grow to resemble her mother, and benefit some future man with her advice as her mother had helped him. The baby stirred, and his sister casually put the infant to her breast.
    “Where will you sleep now?” she asked.
    “Here,” he grunted. Near his new daughter. He owed his wife that much. If she cried, he could always move. All fires were open to the Keeper of the Bulls. He took a twig, peeled it, and began probing at his teeth where some of the fish was stuck. He should have saved one of the fish bones from his meal. That was the kind of thing wives remembered to do.
    “You need another woman now,” his sister said. She gestured at the baby. “Her mother would have been the first to say so.”
    “I know.” He looked into the fire. “I will speak to the Keeper of the Horses. He has a daughter, I hear.”
    “She is young. But comely.”
    “Too young?”
    “Girls are never too young, at least to warm your bed and tend your fire and your meals,” she said lightly, passing her hand softly over the beating pulse in the head of the baby at her breast. “But you want more than that. You want company, like you always talked to this child’s mother, talking and murmuring into the night. You never talked much with the other men, even when you were a boy. You always liked talking with women. And Little Moon is too young for that. She has everything you need except wisdom.”
    “All the better. I can teach her wisdom myself, my wisdom.”
    “You could, but then you’d never know if you were hearing her wisdom or just your own. You want more than that,” she said.
    He considered her, his youngest sister, whose eyes were as cool a gray as his own. She had always been close to him, since he was a youth and she was an infant, accustomed to crawling into his lap and settling there to sleep. He had taken great care over her marriage, entrusting her to the bravest of the young hunters, the one who would lead the hunting pack someday. That had not worked out too well, since her man had come back with a leg mangled after fighting some hungry wolves away from a new-killed deer. He walked with a limp, still the most cunning of the hunters, but he would never lead the pack. He shrugged; men could not order the ways of the beasts.
    “You remember Leaping Hare, my husband’s friend,” she said, almost carelessly. That meant she had something important to say.
    “He died, fighting the wolves. He saved your man,” said the Keeper. He remembered the sad trail of dejected hunters, carrying the corpse, the wounded man, and the reindeer they had saved from the wolves. They were exhausted as they staggered back to the river. He remembered the keening from the woman, the way his sister had run to meet the forlorn little band, her hand to her throat, and remembered the woman with her, who had sunk to her knees and cried the death song over her man in a high, shrieking voice. Not a voice he would want to hear at his fire each night.
    “He left a woman—Silver Eel,” his sister went on. “She has no children. She is a daughter to the fisher clan, and my friend. Still young, but wise. She will be a healer, some day.”
    “This Silver Eel, she has passed her time of mourning?”
    “Long since. And she needs a man.” She paused, considering whether to say anything else. He waited as she pondered. Finally his sister said, “She helped me all day with your baby.”
    “You said she was barren.”
    “No, I said she had no children. Not by Leaping Hare. But Leaping Hare sired no young. Whatever you say, we women