The warmth coming from the hastily assembled camp fire provided the only comfort for Ivory and her mostly silent companions as they anxiously awaited the outcome of the Chief’s conference to which Glade was the only woman other than the Chief’s wife who was privileged to attend. They had been gone for such a very long time and Ivory, like everyone else, hoped that whatever came of their discussions would at last bring direction and purpose to the villagers’ wandering.

Ivory’s only distraction from her fears was the execution of her communal duties. During the day she foraged in the forest with the other women for vegetables, nuts and mushrooms while the men hunted boar and deer. Ivory was pleased to find that although the Mountain Valley might not be her final destination, it provided enough food, shelter and fresh water for the moment.

As the shaman’s assistant, Ivory also had to provide care and succour to the sick and injured. She appreciated Glade’s training in the skill of bandaging limbs in leaves, patching scratches with berry-juice, and chanting incantations to the suffering. The ailments that most troubled Ivory were the broken limbs and old wounds that were slowly healing but still needed attention. There were also the shivers, fatigues and fevers best treated by poultices, herbs and prayer, but there was also the need to carefully manage the dwindling medicine supply. When would she and Glade again gather the fungi, herbs and weeds that gave such magical relief? Could they even be found in the mountains as they were in the forests and savannah?

It was well after the North Star had reached its apogee that Glade at last emerged from the shadows of the sheltered encampment where Chief Cave Lion and his closest confidantes remained. Ivory sensed anxiety in her determined smile. She slipped under the furs that Ivory had pulled over her shoulders to ward off the night’s icy chill and the harsh wind that rolled down the mountain slopes.

“What’s been decided?” Ivory asked.

“We spoke for a long time,” said Glade. “Not just the Chief and me, but all the elders and senior huntsmen. Even Ptarmigan was in attendance but as always she had nothing to say.”

“What are we going to do?”

“There were many options put forward,” said Glade who was not to be hurried. “The essential question is whether we stay or leave. This valley is rich in forest and there is much game, but it is small and there won’t be enough to feed everyone in the long winter months. We have followed the Wide River until it is no longer either wide or a river, but we don’t know where else to go. If we retrace our steps we may not find a valley better than this and we’ll have lost precious days before the worst of Winter arrives. The only alternative is to follow the tracks up the cliff-side which the scouts have verified are well-used. There must be habitable lands at the top and maybe beyond, but we don’t know how far the lands extend or whether those who live there will be well-disposed towards us.”

“And the Chief decided…?” persisted Ivory.

“The Chief and I will ascend the hillside with some of the hunters and follow the paths to wherever they lead. After we’ve scouted the hills beyond, we shall return with report of the nearest hunting grounds where we can settle. You shall stay in the Chief’s tent with Ptarmigan and provide the village with necessary spiritual and medical succour. We shall leave tomorrow when the sun rises. I hope that we shan’t be long.”

Ivory had slept by Glade’s side almost every night for many moons now and she dreaded the prospect of separation.

“How long will you be away?” she asked.

“As long as it takes. Maybe days. Perhaps more.”

Ivory wept. “I don’t know that I can bear to be parted from you for so long,” she choked.

“Relax, child,” said Glade, nuzzling her beloved apprentice. “I’ve known worse than this and I’ve survived. It won’t be long until we’re together again.”

——————————

It was true that Glade had known much greater peril. One such occasion on her arduous trek with Demure beyond the northernmost sands of the Great Desert was when she was pursued by a hyena.

Glade and Demure were always in danger of attack by predators, but they generally presented less of a threat when the two women were together. Most animals maintained a wary respect for humans especially when they carried sharpened sticks and a toolset of flints. However, this was a day on which Demure was ill. She’d eaten something that disagreed with her and was now lying in a pool of vomit and diarrhoea in the shelter of the cave they shared. The hyena that pursued Glade was young and inexperienced but most certainly hungry.

Glade had no time to plan a sophisticated course of evasive action. As soon as danger came pouncing towards her, she sprinted towards the nearest tree. Hyenas were strong and vicious but they couldn’t climb trees.

It was not the first panicked flight in Glade’s life. She’d been pursued by a lion, another time by a rhinoceros and on another occasion by a leopard. There were other less memorable but also potentially lethal encounters, where Glade escaped by darting up a tree or by splashing over a stream or by returning to the protection of her tribe. Glade hoped she would be just as fortunate this time.

Glade couldn’t outrun the hyena for long and she could hear the approaching yelps as he steadily gained on her. Her skin was saturated by perspiration and every stride stabbed her lungs. Her feet thundered painfully on sharp pebbles and blades of grass. She was nearly at the woodland ahead of her, the hyena not quite yet on her, and she’d identified which tree to climb.

Glade couldn’t recall how events followed each other in the next few minutes. She scrambled up the trunk of a tree only to drop backwards in her haste and fall beside the hyena who was startled to see the prey he’d been yelping at from below suddenly land beside him.

Glade picked herself rapidly, but not fast enough to escape the graze of the hyena’s claws across her thigh. Now with blood as well as sweat coursing down her body, Glade ran towards another tree across the tangled brushwood plain when all of a sudden her feet gave away beneath her. This wasn’t the stumbling that came from exhaustion or by tripping over a branch that she’d not noticed in her haste. This was the ground beneath her giving way under her weight.

She fell forward onto the slope of a hole that was deep enough to hold a buffalo or even a small rhinoceros. Her leg was caught on stakes placed deliberately upright in the hole that shot a spasm of intense pain through her body from an ankle badly sprained by her fall. She was thrown onto pebbles and stones that scratched her flesh and scored her scalp.

And then Glade lost consciousness. But not immediately. For a time measured in moments of anxiety and fear, she hovered in a state midway between uneasy sleep and wary wakefulness. Above her, the hyena stared down into the hole startled but apparently unharmed. During her moments of consciousness, Glade watched the snarling and yelping hyena circle the newly formed hole. He was weighing the rewards of jumping into the hole for the meal of human flesh awaiting him against the risk of not getting out again.

“Go away! Please go away!” Glade begged pathetically as the hyena’s muzzle peeked over the rim. Saliva was dripping through his sharp teeth and below his calculating eyes.

Glade’s awareness ebbed away and she collapsed awkwardly on the pit slope, her hair entangled in brush and her leg squeezed between stakes while ants and flies crawled over her prone body.

This wasn’t a memory of misery Glade wanted to relate to Ivory. She wanted her apprentice to be optimistic. There were many stories Glade could recount of her northward wandering from the Great Desert to the Great Sea. There were stories of near-death and stories of love and triumph. And in all of these there was Demure: sometimes a saviour and sometimes a bane. On this occasion, Demure was a saviour.

When Glade’s consciousness fully returned after several days of fever and delirium it was Demure who greeted her with a face of unfeigned delight at her lover’s recovery.

And Demure wasn’t alone. She was accompanied by several warriors with straight noses, long straight black hair and brown skin. They wore fur around their crotch and shoulders which was a bizarre sight for Glade, as it was for Demure. Neither of them had encountered a tribe before who were attired in such a way. And more bizarre still was that they wore clothes irrespective of how warm the day was.

When Demure realised that Glade had been missing for an unusually long time, despite her illness not only did she trace her lover’s whereabouts from the trail she and the hyena had left behind but she also found the tribe who’d built the trap into which Glade had stumbled. And then she somehow persuaded them to rescue her.

Glade soon discovered that this was a tribe that hunted game and knew nothing of fishing although they lived fairly close to the sea. They were as promiscuous as any tribe that Glade had met apart from her own. The clothes they wore served less to cover the genitals than to enhance them. They were delighted to welcome two new women to their orgiastic ceremonies. And Glade and Demure were soon not so much just participants but pretty much the star attraction.

This intermingling of bodies—men and women fucking together like bonobos—was a key part of the tribe’s rituals. Almost all sexual activity took place in public. So enthusiastically did Demure participate in the sex (and Glade too when she recovered) that the couple earned the privilege of being able to live with the tribe for a whole year.

Glade and Demure soon discovered why the tribe had adopted the habit of wearing clothes. In the warm sun, clothes were nothing more than ornamentation, although they were useful in that stone or wooden tools could be tied to them and their hands left free. It was when it was cool that clothes were most useful. Glade and Demure discovered for the first time in their lives that north of the Great Desert there were seasons in which it was sometimes warmer than it ever was further south and other seasons when it was decidedly cold. It was sometimes so cold that the rain fell from the sky in soft white flakes. Outlandish though it was to Glade, she also chose to wear furs to cover her skin, although not necessarily her crotch.

Demure’s scheming inevitably caused trouble for the two women again. This time it was a result of her attempt to inveigle herself with the village matriarch who, although a passionate participant in the ceremonial orgies, was far more attracted to men than women. Demure’s attempts to become one of the matriarch’s lovers backfired when the outcome was that two of her regular male lovers transferred their affection to Demure and her exotic skin colour. This aroused jealousy and then rage in the very woman whom Demure should have known better than to upset.

So, Glade and Demure were once again wandering vagrants. This time their travel northwards was between the ocean on one side and a range of mountains on the other, although the distance between the two was so great that it was only on days when the air was extraordinarily clear could that they see both these glorious sights at the same time.

The spectacle of the mountains looming from the far distance was at first as strange as the ocean had once been. Just as they had known rivers and lakes before they’d first seen an ocean, the two women were familiar with hills. However, no freshwater lake had prepared them for the ocean’s immensity and nothing had prepared them for the majesty of the white peaked mountains. This was particularly so because this was the first time either woman had ever seen a permanent covering of snow. These mountains were as impassable a barrier as the ocean or desert. The glaciers spread over the valleys and the windblown air was sometimes very cold.

The couple meandered across the fertile plains sometimes within sight of the snow-covered mountains and sometimes of the ocean’s open expanse. The species of animal they encountered varied according to the mountains’ proximity. The closer the mountains, the more sheep and goats. Towards the balmy shore, the more antelope and giraffe. But wherever the women roamed so too did lion, leopard and hyena.

The couple stumbled upon many different tribes and villages in their northward trek. Some tribes they lived amongst and others chased them away. Most often they were treated as outlandish curiosities: most especially Demure, whose skin colour was a matter of ceaseless wonder. It was fortunate indeed that Demure was unperturbed by this. However, as the months and years passed she became steadily more humble, more conciliatory and far less prickly and proud than when she was a Lady amongst the Knights. The need to survive took priority over everything else and one thing categorically true of Demure was that she was a survivor.

Glade was conscious that it was she rather than Demure who shouldered the greatest share of the daily chores required to stay alive. It was she who did the most gathering and hunting food. It was she who mostly assembled, stitched and repaired the furs they now wore against the evening chill. And it was she who learnt the languages and dialects in the villages and settlements they passed through. But Glade’s resentment was forestalled by Demure’s flattery and lovemaking. Glade could forgive her lover anything as long as she was blessed with compliments and passionate love.

Demure was expert in inveigling herself into any community in which she got a toehold, although she was often also the reason why this affiliation didn’t last for long. Demure’s machinations almost always conflicted with the jealous womenfolk who didn’t appreciate the fact that their men were fucking the foreign black-skinned woman.

There was great diversity between one tribe and another and those from south of the Great Desert. Not all tribes gathered in villages. Sometimes a tribe gathered in units of no more than a handful of individuals where maybe two or three families lived together and relied on a wide hunting range and a small cave to survive. Other tribes lived in villages of thirty or forty people; although sometimes the numbers were nearly double that. Their homes ranged in sophistication from huts of straw and mud via tents of animal-hide to wooden frames bound together by vines and animal intestines. There were tribes that Glade and Demure encountered who had no permanent settlement at all. They endlessly wandered the savannah on the trail of antelope or buffalo herds. They would pick stragglers off when the need arose and kept predators such as lions at bay with their long spears.

The customs and spiritual beliefs of the tribes were as diverse and various as the languages they spoke. Most tribes were relatively peaceful. They would offer hospitality to the strange pair and were sometimes surprised when the women demonstrated their gratitude by the free gift of their bodies. Nevertheless, the two lovers soon learnt that the warmth of the welcome faded over the length of their stay although this could sometimes be stretched out for several moons.

Some tribes were aggressive and even violent. On a couple of occasions Glade and Demure suffered the humiliation and shame of forcible rape and beatings. However, although the women were treated brutally, they were at least abandoned to their own fate and not killed or eaten. Glade’s experience of rough-handling by Demure’s tribe had prepared her for the worst, but her lover was inconsolable long after the blood had dried up, the semen washed off and the bruises healed. Glade was ashamed to admit that the extent of Demure’s distress gave her a certain degree of secret satisfaction.

Further and further north the couple wandered: the summer months long and hot and a chill descending in the winter months. These were the months when the lovers saw the virtue of wearing furs against the blasts of cold air that descended from the mountains, but the women were so unacquainted with the custom that their attempt at covering themselves was forever a source of amusement to the tribes they encountered who had far better dress-sense. It took Glade a long time to master the art of securing furs together so they didn’t slip apart. Her crotch and legs were never properly covered which scandalised those tribes whose principal reason for covering the body was for modesty.

This wasn’t always a problem for the women. There were days, sometimes half a moon or more, when the women saw nobody. There were other occasions when the communities they encountered were densely packed together. This was especially so along the rivers that tumbled and crashed down from the white-peaked mountains. The many villages strung along the river banks often shared the same language, the same customs and ate the same kind of food.

It was on one of these rivers that Glade first encountered a tribe who could travel across water not only by swimming, as did the Ocean People, but on rafts of wood held together by the same vines and animal sinews that secured the wooden frame of their huts and shelters. It was an extraordinary sight to see men and women row from one shore to another, past the occasional crocodile and hippopotamus, propelling themselves forward by long branches that were used either to push against the river bottom or, even, and this was stranger still, used like the paddles of an otter or a seal to drive the rafts forward. This was sometimes done in tandem where two people on either side used flattened branches to push the raft forward even against the prevailing current.

“Can there be anywhere in the world where people are more clever and ingenious than this?” wondered Glade with amazement as she and Demure sat by the riverbank.

They were in open-mouthed awe at the traffic of rafts up and down the river. Here was a place where people not only lived by the riverside but on its very surface. What next? Perhaps one day people could even learn to fly!

“You’re too fanciful,” said Demure as her lover speculated. “Humans can do much but without the intercession of the spirits how could they ever fly or cross the great ocean?”

“If we can build a craft of wood and rope and sail the rivers, maybe we will one day conquer the air and the ocean.”

“The spirits have created us and the other animals of the firmament,” said Demure, no doubt recalling the lessons of the priests and shamans of her youth. “The bird and the bat have the sky. The monkey has the tree. The fish has the waters to swim through. Humans have dominion over the land in harmony with the lion and elephant. We have our place in this world and that is where we should stay.”

“Was it on such a raft that you came to the lands of the North?” Ivory wondered when Glade told her about these strange people.

“Indeed it was,” Glade told her. “There is a Great Sea between the warmer Southern lands and the Northern lands of snow and ice. But it wasn’t by choice that Demure and I crossed these waters. Who would have chosen to exchange the warmth of the Southern sun for the permafrost and savannah of the North? But rest now. It will be a difficult day tomorrow. We must sleep.”

Ivory laid her head on her lover’s bosom, her face burrowing into the thick fur that sheltered all but her nose from the cold that permeated the already chill air. And Glade was right. The following day would be hard. How hazardous would it be for her lover and the Chief to explore unknown territory?

——————————

The following morning, Ivory stood beside Ptarmigan and the Chief’s entire family, with the village gathered anxiously by, as in the company of Chief Cave Lion and hand-picked hunters Glade began her ascent of the narrow paths up the hillside. This select company seemed so strong and vigorous at the foot of the hill that it was inconceivable that harm could fall their way. As the small fur-covered figures receded into the distance, now dwarfed by the height of the hills, they seemed much more vulnerable.

Ivory held Ptarmigan round the shoulder and squeezed her hand for comfort, but the Chief’s wife could see that it was Ivory who needed the most reassurance. At first the streak of tears warmed her chill blue-veined face, but they soon became a slowly cooling reminder of her loss. Ptarmigan and she stood at their post for far longer than the rest of the village as their eyes followed the distant furry dots as they mounted the winding path. Ivory could identify Glade by her thick silver musk-oxen fur, which contrasted with the bear- and wolf-skins worn by the hunters. Chief Cave Lion’s leopard-skin mantle stood out best against the rubble-strewn moss of the hill. Soon even he couldn’t be told apart from the rest of the company.

Then the distant figures reached the highest part of their ascent when one by one they disappeared over the top of the hill. An undistinguished wolf-skin was the last to disappear. And with this final sight of her lover now past, Ivory burst into uncontrollable sobs and chokes while Ptarmigan attempted to comfort her.

“They will soon be back,” the chief’s wife reassured her.

Ivory was sure, confident, definitely certain, that Ptarmigan was right, but the wrench of separation was harder to bear than she had imagined possible. It was like, but different in kind, to the loss she felt when her mother died, but it wasn’t bereavement that haunted her but fearful apprehension.

It was by Ptarmigan’s side that Ivory was to sleep in Chief Cave Lion’s absence. With the Chief absent, only his most trusted lieutenants could guard Ptarmigan from the predatory attention of wild animals or wild men. The Chief instructed Ivory to stand as Ptarmigan’s final line of defence, even if the two women would need to live together as close as sisters.

Although Ptarmigan and Ivory did indeed sleep under the same furs—legs entangled and warm breath on each other’s cheek—there was no sexual exploration on the first night or so after Glade and Chief Cave Lion had departed. The comfort they gave each other was genuinely like that of two sisters.

In any case, their days were scarcely idle. The pursuit of food and the many other duties required for the tribe to survive ensured that everyone was tired when the sun descended behind the hills. Ivory was also preoccupied with the need to chant the sacred incantations and sing to the spirits. Although she mostly followed Glade’s instructions, she subtly adapted the rituals to express the esteem that the spirits really deserved. She also didn’t use those prayers and songs that had words Ivory didn’t understand. She believed it would be disrespectful to make offerings in a tongue whose meaning was lost to her.

Ptarmigan was attentive to the care of her children, but she wasn’t expected to help in foraging for food or even to help in its preparation. In fact, she had neglected such duties for so long she probably wouldn’t have made a very good job of them. When she could leave her children, Ptarmigan was always in Ivory’s company. She watched the shaman’s apprentice perform her duties and occasionally assisted in the care of the wounded and suffering.

Ptarmigan might sit beside a child who was hot with fever and rest the child’s head on her lap while the mother anxiously watched Ivory prepare the herbs that Glade would prescribe for such a fever. She might grasp another woman’s hand while Ivory wrapped a bandage of finely beaten leaves around a scar on the chest.

The women would talk together, but not as much as Ivory would with Glade. Ptarmigan preferred just to sit with Ivory and observe, rather than chat. And what conversation there was related to daily concerns rather than the growing and sickening dread that gripped Ivory as each day passed by and there was still no sign that Glade would return.