“By then almost everyone will have returned to the Wintering Place! The best trading will be done, and all that will be left there are the things that are not quite perfect or have no newness to them!”
“There will be other trading days in years to come. You will have to miss this one.”
Olikea filled her cheeks and then puffed the air out explosively. She had caught two more of the creatures, and she flung them down on those already heaped on the stream bank so hard that I heard the crack of their small shells as they hit. She was not pleased, and I was dimly surprised by how easily Soldier’s Boy dismissed her feelings on the matter.
She looked at him at last and surprise almost overcame her sullen glance. “What happened to your forehead?”
“Never mind that,” he said brusquely. “We need food. Busy yourself with that.” With his foot, he stirred the sleeping Likari. “Up, boy. Gather food. Lots of it. I need to fill myself.”
Likari sat up, blinking, and knuckled his eyes. “What sort of food, Great One?”
“Any food that you can get in quantity. Go now.”
The boy scuttled off. Olikea spoke from behind me. “Do not blame him if he cannot find much that is good. The time for the best harvesting is past. That is why we go to the Wintering Place.”
“I know that.” Soldier’s Boy turned and walked to the stream’s edge, upstream of Olikea. With a grunt and a sigh, he hunkered down and then sat on the ground. He reached over, pulled up a handful of water-grass, rinsed the muddy roots off in the flowing stream and then peeled the slimy outer skin off them. He bit off the thick white roots and, as he chewed them, uprooted another handful of the stuff. The flavor was vaguely like onions.
By the time Likari returned with an armload of shriveled plums, Soldier’s Boy had cleared a substantial patch of water-grass. He ate as methodically as a grazing cow. Olikea was busy with her own task; she had steamed the leggy creatures in layers of leaves and was now stripping them of legs and carapaces. The curl of meat from each one was scarcely the size of my little finger, but they smelled wonderful.
They ate together, with Soldier’s Boy taking the lion’s share of the food. The plums had dried in the sun’s heat; their flesh was thick and chewy and sweet, and contrasted pleasantly with the little crustaceans. When the food was gone, Soldier’s Boy commanded them both to find more, and then lay down to sleep. When they woke him, they had roasted a pile of yellow roots that had little flavor other than starch, and a porcupine was cooking on the fire. Likari had killed the creature with a club. Divested of its fur and quills, it showed a thick layer of fat. “You can see the kind of weather that soon will come!” Olikea warned him.
“Let me worry about such things.” Soldier’s Boy dismissed her.
Night was deepening when that meal was gone. They slept in a huddle, Olikea against his belly and Likari cuddled against his back. Soldier’s Boy used a tiny bit of magic to hummock the moss into a nest around them while Likari had gathered armloads of fallen leaves to cover them. Over the leaves, he spread the winter blanket from my cemetery hut, even though both Olikea and Likari complained that it smelled odd. He had discovered that they had disposed of the clothing he had worn when they found him. Olikea had cut the shining brass buttons from his uniform and kept them, but the rest of it was gone, dropped somewhere in the forest when they were moving him. So all that he carried forward from my life was a winter blanket and a handful of buttons. It seemed fitting.
As they settled together in their bed with Olikea’s warm back to his chest and her firm buttocks resting on his thighs, Soldier’s Boy felt an insistent stirring of lust for the woman, but set it firmly aside. Later, after he had regained some of his flesh, he could enjoy her. For now, he must not expend any effort save to gather and eat food. As for Olikea, she showed no such interest in him at all, and Likari seemed blissfully unaware of any tension between the adults.
For the next two days, that was the pattern. As long as there was enough light to see, Olikea and Likari gathered food and Soldier’s Boy consumed it. They moved twice, following the stream, as Soldier’s Boy systematically harvested and ate every edible item that it could provide for him.
There was a freeze on the third night. There had been twinges of frost before, enough to hasten the turning of the leaves, but that night, the cold reached beneath the forest eaves. Despite the mossy nest and deep blanket of leaves, they all shivered through the night. Soldier’s Boy awoke aching, and Olikea and Likari were both grumpy. In response to Olikea’s complaints, Soldier’s Boy told her, “We will travel tonight. I have regained enough reserves that we will go swiftly. For now, go about your gathering. I will return shortly.”