Revision of Going Home
Here's the final revision for class. The teacher wanted more resolution.
Ella hated the purple ones. She’d come to terms with the pale green grubs, the long, slimy, pinkish brown worms, and the squiggly centipedes with their sharp, crackly legs. She even liked the soft, chewy caterpillars with their deep green skin and funny stripes, but the purple ones, the ones with the hard, crunchy shells, and wet, gooey centers, always made her gag a little. Her father said that she’d learn to like them when she got older, but she noticed the way he grimaced a little every time he bit into one of the nasty things, and had her doubts.
“Why can’t we have rabbit soup?” she said.
“You know I don’t have time to hunt for rabbits,” her father replied, picking a bit of beetle shell out of his teeth. “I think I’ve almost solved the problem with the temporal converter.” He ran a hand absently over his long, tangled hair, brushing away a flea. “And your mother… She’s gone now. Anyway, the insects give us more than adequate protein.”
Ella wasn’t sure what pro-teen was, but she knew what adequate meant, and the beetles definitely weren’t it.
“I could go hunting,” she said. “I know how to load the sling and everything. Mom showed me how.” Her mother had taught her a lot of things, really useful things, not like the math and spelling her father made her do every morning. She had shown Ella how to make a snare out of hide and brush, and which trail to set it across if you wanted to snag a fat raccoon. She had taught her not to go fishing at dawn or dusk if you didn’t want the big cats to notice, and which among the slivery, speckled fish had the tastiest flesh once you caught them. She even had begun teaching her which plants were good in stew, and which were good for a tummy ache or a fever. Ella just hadn’t learned fast enough.
Her father fixed her with an exasperated stare. “You know it’s dangerous out there, Eleanor. I can’t come with you, and you don’t know how to use the gun. What if you run into a… a bear or something?”
“Bears aren’t that bad. They only want to fight if you get too near their cubs. I’d never do that. You know I’ll be careful.”
“I know you’ll try, but there’s so much you don’t understand, and I won’t be there to help if something goes wrong.”
“I’ll only go as far as the shooting field. If I go now, I can be there and back by mid-morning, and we can have the stew for lunch.”
Her father sighed. “Assuming you catch one. Well, I suppose you are almost an adult. Your mother was planning to do that ritual of hers on you later this year.
“Maybe Aunt Narna can do it when she comes up from the river this summer. Mom said that they went through it together, so she knows how.”
“All right, go ahead. I’ll admit, some stew would be nice. But be careful, and be back well before sunset. You know it’s not safe.
“I will be! I promise, I’ll just go to the field and come right back. I’ll stay off of the deer tracks too.” Mom had always told her that the deer trails weren’t safe because the meat eaters used them too.
“Yes, yes. I suppose you’ll be fine,” he said. “Now, where did …” He wandered back into his laboratory.
As she walked out into the sunlight, Ella sighed in relief. The thick, hard walls of her father’s blocky, white home were good protection against predators and winter storms, but she liked the feel of the sun on her hair and the grass between her toes. The slick tile and rough carpet inside weren’t nearly as nice. Her father said that it wasn’t safe to walk around barefoot all the time, but his feet were pale, fragile things. Hers were dark and leathery, and they covered the ground with ease.
The shooting field was an hour’s run from home. Ella paused twice on the way, once to gather some dandelion root for roasting, and once to climb an old, gnarled oak and gather a nest of jay eggs. She broke them open, eating them as she ran. It felt good to be moving. Her father had kept her near since her mother’d come down with the spotted fever, and the large number of bugs in her diet was only one of the problems with that. Her Mom’s supply of plants and roots was almost gone, and she didn’t know how her father thought they’d get through winter if she didn’t start collecting again soon.
Every since Mom died, Father had seemed strange in the head. He spent more and more time on repairs. He’d explained to Ella that the machine was meant to take them home, that if he could just make it work, they’d go back to a place where you didn’t have to hunt for food, and where you were never cold in the winter or too hot in the summer. To Ella, it sounded like the creation stories that her grandmother had told her the one time she’d come up from the river. When she said so, he told her that those were just myths, but that he was talking about a real place.
When she asked her Mom about it, she’d said that he really had appeared out of nowhere with his strange, white house. She’d found him less than a mile from here, while she was out on a hunting trip, and taken him home to her people by the river. He’d been half starved, and sick from eating the wrong berries. She didn’t know where he’d come from, but she had grown fond of him in the tending. Slowly, she’d learned a bit of his speech, while she taught him hers. When he left, determined to go back to his cold, white house, she’d gone with him.
Sometimes Ella thought that he didn’t understand how things worked at all. Lately, he just sat there all day in his metal room, scribbling down notes and “adjusting the wiring.” When Mom was there, he’d gone out sometimes and helped gather. Ella’d liked those times, even though he was a hopeless shot with the sling, and occasionally had to be reminded which were the bad kinds of mushrooms. Maybe now he was getting better; maybe if he saw that Ella could help him, he’d want to do things again.
When she reached the field, Ella took out her mother’s worn, leather sling, and fitted it with a rounded stone. It was heavy in her hand; she hadn’t swung it in almost a month. Silently, she crept out into the tall grass of the meadow, crouching to stay out of view. She noted the splayed impression of a deer’s hoof as she crossed the path they usually followed down to the stream at the field’s far end. Further in, she saw the faint, four toed tracks that a lone weasel had left in the wet soil by a rill. About ten paces further down its bank, she found the long back prints of a rabbit in the soft, damp ground. A big one too; it should make stew enough for two meals at least.
She was about to start the slow work of tracking the rabbit to its burrow when a loud, blaring blast of sound broke the morning’s silence. She herself to the ground in an instinctive crouch, eyes scanning the horizon. She held her sling taut in her hands, ready to aim if a target came into view. Then, as the sound came again, she started to run.
“Now Eleanor, I need you to listen to me very carefully,” her father had said. She’d been smaller then, barely up to his elbow, and she remembered his big hands running back and forth across the panel as he spoke. Her hair was still standing on end from the loudness of the sound it had just made. “That was the alarm siren. If you ever hear that sound again, I want you to stop whatever you’re doing and come right back home.”
“But what if I’m washing up, or gathering wood for dinner?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He said, putting a gentle finger under her chin and raising it up so she was looking him in the eye. “Even if you’re stirring the pot for your mother, I want you to run right back here to me. The sound means we’re all going to go home, and we need to be together, inside the house when that happens. Do you understand?”
Ella had nodded, her own eyes wide and serious, and after a moment he had smiled his cautious smile and hugged her very tightly.
“There should be time,” he said, though she didn’t really think he was talking to her at all anymore. “But I can’t stop the process once it starts, and I just don’t want to chance it.”
He’d made the sound again from time to time, to practice, he said, although rarely more than once in a year. Mom never liked him making all that noise. The last time had been months and months ago, before Mom got sick. She’d been off hunting when he did it, and had sharp words for him when she came back without dinner. The noise had spooked a yearling buck that was well within her sights.
Ella ran on, startling a couple of partridge into flight. She paused a second, hesitating between the deer trail and the narrower, safer path she’d come out on. The siren sounded again, and she bolted for the deer trail.
The trail was smooth under her feet, letting her run almost as fast as she could out in the open. Her eyes scanned the woods, watching for trouble, even as her feet carried her forward. At the clearing, she threw up a hand to shield her eyes. Something, something near the house, was giving off a bright purplish light.
“Eleanor!”
Her father’s voice was coming from somewhere near the center of the light. Was he trapped? She hesitated, looking sideways into the glare, trying to catch a glimpse of him.
“Eleanor! Come here! There isn’t much time…”
He was definitely near the middle of it, and now the siren was sounding faster, barely a breath between blasts.
“Eleanor! Ella, please…”
Slowly Ella took a step forward, then another.
Her father was standing in the door, she saw, with one hand outstretched.
Another step, and the light seemed brighter now. The siren was one continuous wail, pulsing and groaning.
One final step, and she was at the threshold.
“Take my hand.”
Ella reached out blindly, eyes closed against the glare that suddenly, briefly was brighter than the sun. She stepped forward, and her hands closed on air.
Slowly Ella opened her eyes, blinking in the light of the midday sun. Where her house had been, a great square of brown earth was pressed into the field, as if something heavy had rested there for a long, long time. A fire still smoldered in the fire pit, and the outhouse stood silent watch over the far corner of the glade. A spare bit of wire, partly stripped of its red covering, lay on the ground. Nothing else remained.
It was spring again, and the shooting field was a haze of color, pale gold buttercups interspersed with soft purple clover and brilliant white daisies. Ella followed the path back to the clearing almost without a sound, her slim, leathery feet covering the ground with the confidence of long familiarity. She moved more slowly than she once had; her knees were aching a bit, the way they sometimes did when it was going to rain.
She came to the clearing just as the first drops fell, and ducked quickly into her hut. Its solid, thatched roof kept the rain off, although not as well as the roof of the strange house that once stood just opposite it. Ella sighed and began skinning her rabbit.
The first days after her father disappeared had been hard. She’d built herself a lean-to, like the ones her mother had made for long hunting trips, but it had only half kept out the rain and done nothing to keep the meat eaters away. She’d woken three or four times each night to the sound of them, and built up the fire. Each morning she’d gathered more wood, more food. Sometimes she hunted, but she didn’t like going too far. She didn’t want to miss him if he came back.
Narna had found her there, sitting by the fire and chewing on a beetle, six weeks later when she came for her summer visit.
“Ay Ella,” she said as she walked into the clearing, opening her arms for a hug, “where’s your father…” she stopped, staring at the empty space where the metal house had once been. Ella ran into her arms, trying to hold back the tears that were streaming helplessly down her face.
“Gone, he’s gone! I wasn’t fast enough. I should have come quicker, I should have…”
“Easy child. What happened? Where did he go? And how? That house must have weighed more than Nalphin rock.”
“There was light, purple light, and then he was just gone.”
Narna looked at the depression thoughtfully for a moment, and then looked at Ella. “Ella, you’re almost a woman. Tell me truly, that’s what happened? He just vanished?”
“Yes Auntie. I know it sounds… I know it sounds like a gods-story, but he was just gone.”
Narna nodded. “I think the elders need to hear about this. You need to come back with me to Slow Waters. You can’t stay here anyway, not by yourself, and I’m needed at home.”
“But what if he comes back? How will I hear the alarm if I’m days and days away?”
“That is a fair question Ella, and we’ll talk to the council and see what they make of it.”
They traveled for two weeks, following streams and small rivers downhill, until they came to the great river, the one her mother had called Rith. There they took to the water, traveling downstream by skiff for three days, until they came to the village of the River Folk.
The village consisted of six log houses, each many paces long but only ten paces wide.
“Which one is your house, Narna?” Ella asked.
“I live in the second house, the one with the black and red woodpecker painted above the door, but it is not only my house. Really, it is my grandmother’s house, your great-grandmother’s. Your mother lived there, until she left with your father, and so does my mother, and her sister Lila, and their husbands. My brother Jirit also lives there, because he’s not yet married. When I have a daughter, she’ll live there too, and her daughters will live here long after I’m gone.
“Ay Narna!” A young man with deep black eyes and hair past his shoulders ran up to greet her. Ella stepped back a bit shyly; she hadn’t met many men, only the occasional trapper or fisherman come north for better game, and most of them had been older than her father. “Finally back! Did you find good fishing?” He paused and looked Ella over thoughtfully. “And who is this? Don’t tell me Ferank finally let Mari’s daughter come south?”
“Yes and no Samir. This is Ella, but the rest is a matter for the council. Would you go and tell Idrin that Ferank has gone missing? I’ll tell my grandmother myself.”
“Of course.” He paused and turned to Ella, smiling gently. “I am sorry for what has happened to you, Ella; your mother and I played together as children, and I was fond of her.” Ella nodded quietly and murmured “Thank you,” as he turned and ran off towards the farthest of the houses.
It took until evening, as it turned out, to gather all the council together. Ella hung back as Narna greeted the members of her house. She recognized her grandmother from her one visit, but everyone else was a stranger to her, especially the ancient woman sitting in front of the fire in the center of the house. Even Narna, who moved through the crowd with ease and confidence, approached her respectfully, and Ella was seized with a desire to hide behind her, or even to sneak off altogether.
“Greetings Mother Nali,” Narna said. “There is a matter that needs your wisdom.”
“Who is this?” The old woman spoke softly, but her eyes glinted with a lively intelligence.
Ella glanced at Narna, hoping she would speak for her, but she merely nodded encouragement. “I am Ella, Mother Nali.” She said, fidgeting with the sleeve of her tunic. “Mari’s daughter, Jana’s great-daughter.”
“Yes, Jana has spoken of you. Where is your father? Did he send you to study our ways?”
Ella’s lip quivered and she looked down. Not wanting to cry like a child in front of strangers, she took a deep breath and twisted her hands together.
“He is gone, Mother Nali. There was a strange light, and then he disappeared. I think he went back to the place that he came from. Aunt Narna says that it is a matter for the council?”
Mother Nali raised her eyebrows slightly and looked Ella up and down, her eyes piercing but kind. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “Yes, that is indeed a matter for the council. I will call it to session this evening, if Idrin agrees. You have told him?” She asked, turning to Narna.
“I sent Samir, Mother.”
“Samir’s a good boy. Someday you really should marry him like he wants and give me some more great-children.” Her eyes glittered with mischief, and Ella bit back a startled laugh.
“If he’s so wonderful, you could marry him, no?” Narna countered.
“I have outlived three husbands, little girl, and I am done. Now, go get the girl settled. She can have her mother’s old fire, or share yours if you’d rather.”
That night, the council had gathered to hear Ella’s story. The old men and women listened quietly and intently, and afterwards they spoke amongst themselves. Ella caught snatches of their speech, as she sat by the fire, waiting for their judgment.
“But she’s just a child…”
“…has the ring of truth to it.”
“perhaps when she’s older?”
Their discussion lasted long into the night, and Ella fell asleep listening to their soft, thin voices on the wind.
The next morning, Mother Nali called her to her.
“Ella, the council has made their judgment, but first I have a question for you. Do you wish to stay here, or would you rather return to your father’s home?”
Ella hesitated. “Mother Nali,” she said, “I know that I can’t live there by myself, but my father told me to stay near. If I don’t return, what if he comes back? How will he find me?”
Mother Nali nodded to herself and muttered “Very well.” Then she looked Ella squarely in the eye and said “The council’s judgment is this: your father was clearly a thunder spirit, come down to Earth for a purpose. Since he married one of our people, he obviously meant for you to be a part of our clan. However, he also told you to stay near to him, and that he would take you with him.”
Ella nodded nervously, unsure of what to make of this. Her father wasn’t a god or a spirit, after all. He had holes in his trousers where he forgot to patch them.
“Because you are part of us, you will live with us here three seasons of the year, in the hot, the cold and the dying. Because you are a spirit’s daughter, you will learn from me to honor the spirits, and to know the names of the plants and animals, and their uses.”
“However, because your father said that he’d bring you with him, and because we do not want to anger a thunder spirit, every year in the season of birth, you will return to the place of your father. We will help you build a sturdy hut there, and you will spend the season gathering plants for the people and honoring the spirits of that place. If your father wishes to reclaim you, surely he’ll see that you are there and come for you.”
Ella nodded in submission. Although she still didn’t think her father was a spirit, she knew that she could not stay alone in his place if she wanted to survive. Perhaps the elders were right at least in this; perhaps if he came to find her, it would be in the same season that he left.
The rabbit was almost skinned, when Ella began to hear the noise. It started as a faint whirring, a strange sound in this peaceful place. Her daughters teased her that she came here more to escape the clamor of her grandchildren than to appease the spirits, and there was some truth to it. She looked up, and saw a strange light pouring through the rain and into the hut. The sound got louder, changing from a whirring into a humming, and then growing slowly louder until it was a cycling wail. Ella got to her feet and walked to the door. There in front of her, through a sheet of rain, she saw a great purple star, filling the space where her father’s hut had once stood.
Ella quickly gathered her few possessions; the carved stone her first lover had given her, the blanket woven by her eldest daughter, her young grandson’s painting of a tree. She strode to the door, wrapping a thin sheet of oiled cloth around her to keep off the rain. The star became brighter, until she almost couldn’t bear to look at it, and the wailing became one long stream of sound.
“Ella! Ella, are you there?” Her father’s voice called from the center of the light. She could see him now standing there, only a shadow really, an outline against the purple glow. Perhaps he was the thunder spirit everyone said he was. It didn’t matter, though.
“Ella…?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice clear and strong. “I’m coming father.”
Reaching out her hands, she stepped forward into the light.
Ella hated the purple ones. She’d come to terms with the pale green grubs, the long, slimy, pinkish brown worms, and the squiggly centipedes with their sharp, crackly legs. She even liked the soft, chewy caterpillars with their deep green skin and funny stripes, but the purple ones, the ones with the hard, crunchy shells, and wet, gooey centers, always made her gag a little. Her father said that she’d learn to like them when she got older, but she noticed the way he grimaced a little every time he bit into one of the nasty things, and had her doubts.
“Why can’t we have rabbit soup?” she said.
“You know I don’t have time to hunt for rabbits,” her father replied, picking a bit of beetle shell out of his teeth. “I think I’ve almost solved the problem with the temporal converter.” He ran a hand absently over his long, tangled hair, brushing away a flea. “And your mother… She’s gone now. Anyway, the insects give us more than adequate protein.”
Ella wasn’t sure what pro-teen was, but she knew what adequate meant, and the beetles definitely weren’t it.
“I could go hunting,” she said. “I know how to load the sling and everything. Mom showed me how.” Her mother had taught her a lot of things, really useful things, not like the math and spelling her father made her do every morning. She had shown Ella how to make a snare out of hide and brush, and which trail to set it across if you wanted to snag a fat raccoon. She had taught her not to go fishing at dawn or dusk if you didn’t want the big cats to notice, and which among the slivery, speckled fish had the tastiest flesh once you caught them. She even had begun teaching her which plants were good in stew, and which were good for a tummy ache or a fever. Ella just hadn’t learned fast enough.
Her father fixed her with an exasperated stare. “You know it’s dangerous out there, Eleanor. I can’t come with you, and you don’t know how to use the gun. What if you run into a… a bear or something?”
“Bears aren’t that bad. They only want to fight if you get too near their cubs. I’d never do that. You know I’ll be careful.”
“I know you’ll try, but there’s so much you don’t understand, and I won’t be there to help if something goes wrong.”
“I’ll only go as far as the shooting field. If I go now, I can be there and back by mid-morning, and we can have the stew for lunch.”
Her father sighed. “Assuming you catch one. Well, I suppose you are almost an adult. Your mother was planning to do that ritual of hers on you later this year.
“Maybe Aunt Narna can do it when she comes up from the river this summer. Mom said that they went through it together, so she knows how.”
“All right, go ahead. I’ll admit, some stew would be nice. But be careful, and be back well before sunset. You know it’s not safe.
“I will be! I promise, I’ll just go to the field and come right back. I’ll stay off of the deer tracks too.” Mom had always told her that the deer trails weren’t safe because the meat eaters used them too.
“Yes, yes. I suppose you’ll be fine,” he said. “Now, where did …” He wandered back into his laboratory.
As she walked out into the sunlight, Ella sighed in relief. The thick, hard walls of her father’s blocky, white home were good protection against predators and winter storms, but she liked the feel of the sun on her hair and the grass between her toes. The slick tile and rough carpet inside weren’t nearly as nice. Her father said that it wasn’t safe to walk around barefoot all the time, but his feet were pale, fragile things. Hers were dark and leathery, and they covered the ground with ease.
The shooting field was an hour’s run from home. Ella paused twice on the way, once to gather some dandelion root for roasting, and once to climb an old, gnarled oak and gather a nest of jay eggs. She broke them open, eating them as she ran. It felt good to be moving. Her father had kept her near since her mother’d come down with the spotted fever, and the large number of bugs in her diet was only one of the problems with that. Her Mom’s supply of plants and roots was almost gone, and she didn’t know how her father thought they’d get through winter if she didn’t start collecting again soon.
Every since Mom died, Father had seemed strange in the head. He spent more and more time on repairs. He’d explained to Ella that the machine was meant to take them home, that if he could just make it work, they’d go back to a place where you didn’t have to hunt for food, and where you were never cold in the winter or too hot in the summer. To Ella, it sounded like the creation stories that her grandmother had told her the one time she’d come up from the river. When she said so, he told her that those were just myths, but that he was talking about a real place.
When she asked her Mom about it, she’d said that he really had appeared out of nowhere with his strange, white house. She’d found him less than a mile from here, while she was out on a hunting trip, and taken him home to her people by the river. He’d been half starved, and sick from eating the wrong berries. She didn’t know where he’d come from, but she had grown fond of him in the tending. Slowly, she’d learned a bit of his speech, while she taught him hers. When he left, determined to go back to his cold, white house, she’d gone with him.
Sometimes Ella thought that he didn’t understand how things worked at all. Lately, he just sat there all day in his metal room, scribbling down notes and “adjusting the wiring.” When Mom was there, he’d gone out sometimes and helped gather. Ella’d liked those times, even though he was a hopeless shot with the sling, and occasionally had to be reminded which were the bad kinds of mushrooms. Maybe now he was getting better; maybe if he saw that Ella could help him, he’d want to do things again.
When she reached the field, Ella took out her mother’s worn, leather sling, and fitted it with a rounded stone. It was heavy in her hand; she hadn’t swung it in almost a month. Silently, she crept out into the tall grass of the meadow, crouching to stay out of view. She noted the splayed impression of a deer’s hoof as she crossed the path they usually followed down to the stream at the field’s far end. Further in, she saw the faint, four toed tracks that a lone weasel had left in the wet soil by a rill. About ten paces further down its bank, she found the long back prints of a rabbit in the soft, damp ground. A big one too; it should make stew enough for two meals at least.
She was about to start the slow work of tracking the rabbit to its burrow when a loud, blaring blast of sound broke the morning’s silence. She herself to the ground in an instinctive crouch, eyes scanning the horizon. She held her sling taut in her hands, ready to aim if a target came into view. Then, as the sound came again, she started to run.
“Now Eleanor, I need you to listen to me very carefully,” her father had said. She’d been smaller then, barely up to his elbow, and she remembered his big hands running back and forth across the panel as he spoke. Her hair was still standing on end from the loudness of the sound it had just made. “That was the alarm siren. If you ever hear that sound again, I want you to stop whatever you’re doing and come right back home.”
“But what if I’m washing up, or gathering wood for dinner?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He said, putting a gentle finger under her chin and raising it up so she was looking him in the eye. “Even if you’re stirring the pot for your mother, I want you to run right back here to me. The sound means we’re all going to go home, and we need to be together, inside the house when that happens. Do you understand?”
Ella had nodded, her own eyes wide and serious, and after a moment he had smiled his cautious smile and hugged her very tightly.
“There should be time,” he said, though she didn’t really think he was talking to her at all anymore. “But I can’t stop the process once it starts, and I just don’t want to chance it.”
He’d made the sound again from time to time, to practice, he said, although rarely more than once in a year. Mom never liked him making all that noise. The last time had been months and months ago, before Mom got sick. She’d been off hunting when he did it, and had sharp words for him when she came back without dinner. The noise had spooked a yearling buck that was well within her sights.
Ella ran on, startling a couple of partridge into flight. She paused a second, hesitating between the deer trail and the narrower, safer path she’d come out on. The siren sounded again, and she bolted for the deer trail.
The trail was smooth under her feet, letting her run almost as fast as she could out in the open. Her eyes scanned the woods, watching for trouble, even as her feet carried her forward. At the clearing, she threw up a hand to shield her eyes. Something, something near the house, was giving off a bright purplish light.
“Eleanor!”
Her father’s voice was coming from somewhere near the center of the light. Was he trapped? She hesitated, looking sideways into the glare, trying to catch a glimpse of him.
“Eleanor! Come here! There isn’t much time…”
He was definitely near the middle of it, and now the siren was sounding faster, barely a breath between blasts.
“Eleanor! Ella, please…”
Slowly Ella took a step forward, then another.
Her father was standing in the door, she saw, with one hand outstretched.
Another step, and the light seemed brighter now. The siren was one continuous wail, pulsing and groaning.
One final step, and she was at the threshold.
“Take my hand.”
Ella reached out blindly, eyes closed against the glare that suddenly, briefly was brighter than the sun. She stepped forward, and her hands closed on air.
Slowly Ella opened her eyes, blinking in the light of the midday sun. Where her house had been, a great square of brown earth was pressed into the field, as if something heavy had rested there for a long, long time. A fire still smoldered in the fire pit, and the outhouse stood silent watch over the far corner of the glade. A spare bit of wire, partly stripped of its red covering, lay on the ground. Nothing else remained.
It was spring again, and the shooting field was a haze of color, pale gold buttercups interspersed with soft purple clover and brilliant white daisies. Ella followed the path back to the clearing almost without a sound, her slim, leathery feet covering the ground with the confidence of long familiarity. She moved more slowly than she once had; her knees were aching a bit, the way they sometimes did when it was going to rain.
She came to the clearing just as the first drops fell, and ducked quickly into her hut. Its solid, thatched roof kept the rain off, although not as well as the roof of the strange house that once stood just opposite it. Ella sighed and began skinning her rabbit.
The first days after her father disappeared had been hard. She’d built herself a lean-to, like the ones her mother had made for long hunting trips, but it had only half kept out the rain and done nothing to keep the meat eaters away. She’d woken three or four times each night to the sound of them, and built up the fire. Each morning she’d gathered more wood, more food. Sometimes she hunted, but she didn’t like going too far. She didn’t want to miss him if he came back.
Narna had found her there, sitting by the fire and chewing on a beetle, six weeks later when she came for her summer visit.
“Ay Ella,” she said as she walked into the clearing, opening her arms for a hug, “where’s your father…” she stopped, staring at the empty space where the metal house had once been. Ella ran into her arms, trying to hold back the tears that were streaming helplessly down her face.
“Gone, he’s gone! I wasn’t fast enough. I should have come quicker, I should have…”
“Easy child. What happened? Where did he go? And how? That house must have weighed more than Nalphin rock.”
“There was light, purple light, and then he was just gone.”
Narna looked at the depression thoughtfully for a moment, and then looked at Ella. “Ella, you’re almost a woman. Tell me truly, that’s what happened? He just vanished?”
“Yes Auntie. I know it sounds… I know it sounds like a gods-story, but he was just gone.”
Narna nodded. “I think the elders need to hear about this. You need to come back with me to Slow Waters. You can’t stay here anyway, not by yourself, and I’m needed at home.”
“But what if he comes back? How will I hear the alarm if I’m days and days away?”
“That is a fair question Ella, and we’ll talk to the council and see what they make of it.”
They traveled for two weeks, following streams and small rivers downhill, until they came to the great river, the one her mother had called Rith. There they took to the water, traveling downstream by skiff for three days, until they came to the village of the River Folk.
The village consisted of six log houses, each many paces long but only ten paces wide.
“Which one is your house, Narna?” Ella asked.
“I live in the second house, the one with the black and red woodpecker painted above the door, but it is not only my house. Really, it is my grandmother’s house, your great-grandmother’s. Your mother lived there, until she left with your father, and so does my mother, and her sister Lila, and their husbands. My brother Jirit also lives there, because he’s not yet married. When I have a daughter, she’ll live there too, and her daughters will live here long after I’m gone.
“Ay Narna!” A young man with deep black eyes and hair past his shoulders ran up to greet her. Ella stepped back a bit shyly; she hadn’t met many men, only the occasional trapper or fisherman come north for better game, and most of them had been older than her father. “Finally back! Did you find good fishing?” He paused and looked Ella over thoughtfully. “And who is this? Don’t tell me Ferank finally let Mari’s daughter come south?”
“Yes and no Samir. This is Ella, but the rest is a matter for the council. Would you go and tell Idrin that Ferank has gone missing? I’ll tell my grandmother myself.”
“Of course.” He paused and turned to Ella, smiling gently. “I am sorry for what has happened to you, Ella; your mother and I played together as children, and I was fond of her.” Ella nodded quietly and murmured “Thank you,” as he turned and ran off towards the farthest of the houses.
It took until evening, as it turned out, to gather all the council together. Ella hung back as Narna greeted the members of her house. She recognized her grandmother from her one visit, but everyone else was a stranger to her, especially the ancient woman sitting in front of the fire in the center of the house. Even Narna, who moved through the crowd with ease and confidence, approached her respectfully, and Ella was seized with a desire to hide behind her, or even to sneak off altogether.
“Greetings Mother Nali,” Narna said. “There is a matter that needs your wisdom.”
“Who is this?” The old woman spoke softly, but her eyes glinted with a lively intelligence.
Ella glanced at Narna, hoping she would speak for her, but she merely nodded encouragement. “I am Ella, Mother Nali.” She said, fidgeting with the sleeve of her tunic. “Mari’s daughter, Jana’s great-daughter.”
“Yes, Jana has spoken of you. Where is your father? Did he send you to study our ways?”
Ella’s lip quivered and she looked down. Not wanting to cry like a child in front of strangers, she took a deep breath and twisted her hands together.
“He is gone, Mother Nali. There was a strange light, and then he disappeared. I think he went back to the place that he came from. Aunt Narna says that it is a matter for the council?”
Mother Nali raised her eyebrows slightly and looked Ella up and down, her eyes piercing but kind. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “Yes, that is indeed a matter for the council. I will call it to session this evening, if Idrin agrees. You have told him?” She asked, turning to Narna.
“I sent Samir, Mother.”
“Samir’s a good boy. Someday you really should marry him like he wants and give me some more great-children.” Her eyes glittered with mischief, and Ella bit back a startled laugh.
“If he’s so wonderful, you could marry him, no?” Narna countered.
“I have outlived three husbands, little girl, and I am done. Now, go get the girl settled. She can have her mother’s old fire, or share yours if you’d rather.”
That night, the council had gathered to hear Ella’s story. The old men and women listened quietly and intently, and afterwards they spoke amongst themselves. Ella caught snatches of their speech, as she sat by the fire, waiting for their judgment.
“But she’s just a child…”
“…has the ring of truth to it.”
“perhaps when she’s older?”
Their discussion lasted long into the night, and Ella fell asleep listening to their soft, thin voices on the wind.
The next morning, Mother Nali called her to her.
“Ella, the council has made their judgment, but first I have a question for you. Do you wish to stay here, or would you rather return to your father’s home?”
Ella hesitated. “Mother Nali,” she said, “I know that I can’t live there by myself, but my father told me to stay near. If I don’t return, what if he comes back? How will he find me?”
Mother Nali nodded to herself and muttered “Very well.” Then she looked Ella squarely in the eye and said “The council’s judgment is this: your father was clearly a thunder spirit, come down to Earth for a purpose. Since he married one of our people, he obviously meant for you to be a part of our clan. However, he also told you to stay near to him, and that he would take you with him.”
Ella nodded nervously, unsure of what to make of this. Her father wasn’t a god or a spirit, after all. He had holes in his trousers where he forgot to patch them.
“Because you are part of us, you will live with us here three seasons of the year, in the hot, the cold and the dying. Because you are a spirit’s daughter, you will learn from me to honor the spirits, and to know the names of the plants and animals, and their uses.”
“However, because your father said that he’d bring you with him, and because we do not want to anger a thunder spirit, every year in the season of birth, you will return to the place of your father. We will help you build a sturdy hut there, and you will spend the season gathering plants for the people and honoring the spirits of that place. If your father wishes to reclaim you, surely he’ll see that you are there and come for you.”
Ella nodded in submission. Although she still didn’t think her father was a spirit, she knew that she could not stay alone in his place if she wanted to survive. Perhaps the elders were right at least in this; perhaps if he came to find her, it would be in the same season that he left.
The rabbit was almost skinned, when Ella began to hear the noise. It started as a faint whirring, a strange sound in this peaceful place. Her daughters teased her that she came here more to escape the clamor of her grandchildren than to appease the spirits, and there was some truth to it. She looked up, and saw a strange light pouring through the rain and into the hut. The sound got louder, changing from a whirring into a humming, and then growing slowly louder until it was a cycling wail. Ella got to her feet and walked to the door. There in front of her, through a sheet of rain, she saw a great purple star, filling the space where her father’s hut had once stood.
Ella quickly gathered her few possessions; the carved stone her first lover had given her, the blanket woven by her eldest daughter, her young grandson’s painting of a tree. She strode to the door, wrapping a thin sheet of oiled cloth around her to keep off the rain. The star became brighter, until she almost couldn’t bear to look at it, and the wailing became one long stream of sound.
“Ella! Ella, are you there?” Her father’s voice called from the center of the light. She could see him now standing there, only a shadow really, an outline against the purple glow. Perhaps he was the thunder spirit everyone said he was. It didn’t matter, though.
“Ella…?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice clear and strong. “I’m coming father.”
Reaching out her hands, she stepped forward into the light.