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Updated: June 20, 2025
So for the first long days, until Kalus understood well enough to continue on his own, they made the journey together to the riverside clearing where he had cut a single trunk of elm. Eighteen feet long, it would be halved and hollowed out, later to be lashed together into a sturdy, double canoe. James Michener had described such a boat in his tales of Hawaii, and Sylviana had never forgotten.
A fear that he could not understand -the fear of losing the things he had found -haunted him now as it had for weeks, seeming to intensify with each passing day. Sylviana stroked his hair, now smooth, and felt him warm against her. They lay thus for several minutes, until she realized he was crying. She took his face in her hands, not understanding.
He sat cross-legged on the floor with the pup in his lap, thinking. She knew that look. After a short silence she asked simply. 'What's wrong? 'Skither should have been back by now. The weather is growing too cold, and still he doesn't come. Sylviana said nothing. He looked at her. 'I know. I feel it too. This place is too small for so many to live.
Sylviana knew he would say nothing more. Again she stroked his arm, felt his hand encircle her wrist, then rose to prepare a meal. That night as they lay together among the furs that made their bed, Kalus moved close beside her and buried his head against her chest. Though they had slept together many times, he had not yet tried to make love to her.
Kalus had finished with the carcass by mid-day -cutting and shaping the skin, sharpening the ribs against the rock to make bone needles -but showed no sign of interest in talk, moving instead to look out from the entrance, apparently deep in thought. Sylviana watched him there in the sunlight, with the wolf sleeping peacefully beside her, as she gently stroked his fur.
For we are all at the mercy of winds and currents we cannot always see or understand, and those who strut about pretending to be in firm control, are usually in such control all the way past the maw of death, and into the belly of unmaking. 'Sylviana, he said finally. 'It may be foolish..... I would like to say a prayer first. She was surprised by the request, but in no way opposed.
But I don't trust that one, and I don't want him near me or mine. He looked squarely at Sylviana. 'If you have any sense left you will stay away from him, whatever you think of me. He means to hurt you, or I know nothing at all. But her gaze was equally unyielding.
Because as he toiled, he too felt the creeping sense of fatalism that told him all was lost, and the meaning gone out of his life. He too felt events pushing toward some dark and bitter climax over which he seemed to have little control. All this though he raged, and cursed, and worked harder still. Because Sylviana would not let him near her, and heeded none of his warnings.
Just hold me, kiss me once, and then I'll go. 'Goodbye, my beautiful Kataya. 'My beautiful Kalus. And with a tear that no longer wounded her, she was gone. Sylviana slithered to the ground with her back against the tree, her sorrow as bitter and unquenchable as any she had ever known. Whatever her sins and follies may have been, she paid for them dearly in those moments.
His body shivered and coughed, and excreted the pain that knew no bounds. Sylviana moved the fire closer to the bed, then tried to seal out the wind that stole through the cracks in the barrier. It was hard and frustrating work.
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