Chapter Twenty: Fitting Together

Radovin carried another armload of wood from the dwindling heap behind the tent of his own band to the hearth in front of it. Only a few moons ago he had fetched wood to Ivergan's hut for the last time. Both the shaman and Bodisar were dead, almost in the blink of an eye. Pavolen had been harder to avoid than the bombastic headman. The sadistic younger man had encouraged those who thought it was fun to make trouble for the bad-luck boy. Now Pavo was a fugitive who didn't dare show his face among his own people, and Radovin had a real home, a family. He wanted to carry wood.

"That's enough for now, Rado, thank you," Tevina said. "Sit down a while."

"There's not much wood left in the pile. I could go upstream and get some."

"That's all right," Brinavisti said as she shook a few drops off the stirring spoon and laid it on a stone. "I sent the boys to get some more. You deserve a rest, Rado. You didn't get much sleep last night." Lovaduc's sister brushed a strand of hair out of her face and looked across the campground at nothing in particular. Her sons were young men, not boys, but that was the way mothers talked. He had even heard Tevina refer to Bazenaber and Ottavar as "the boys".

"Neither did Ottavar," he replied, scuffing at the ground with a bare toe.

"He has you to help him now," Tevina said.

"I will, yeah." Radovin's heart swelled like a leaf-bud in the warmth of her smile. He still needed something to occupy him. Since his arrival he had done little but sit on his tail. Now, rested and well-fed--very much so by his standards--inactivity did not suit him at all.

Everyone else had something going on. Tucali was busying herself with the neighbors' children under the watchful eyes of several grandmothers. All the other young people had disappeared for the moment. Davoner sat in a patch of shade, absorbed in his work, scraping steadily with a flint tool at a piece of soft stone that would soon be a lamp. Bazenaber was back at work on a set of spears. There was Garovel, meticulously retouching a flint blade that had gotten dulled. The women were either cooking or sewing or weaving mats.

Radovin had few skills, at least nothing that was required of him just now. A goose in a bevy of swans, a white wolf, the black pebble in a scratch game, he had yet to fall into the pattern of his new life.

"Isn't there something else I can do? Get some water? Shake out the bedding or something?" The women laughed, though not in derision. He flopped his arms against his sides, looking at the ground.

Jesumi spoke behind him. "Come in the tent, ah? I need you to try on some clothes. We might as well get some of that done."

With another shrug, Radovin followed her inside. She made him put on an overlarge tunic, measuring the slack with her fingers. Then she checked a pair of leggings for length. She had a variety of garments laid out on clean mats in a band of sunlight from the open doorway. A shallow basket with its cover removed held her sewing tools.

He watched her begin to trim off a strip of leather from the side of the tunic, cutting on both sides of a neatly stitched seam. "Do you have to cut them?"

"Of course. Everything's too big on you."

"It just seems a shame to cut such good things."

Jesumi gave him a funny look. "You didn't have much, did you?"

He shook his head.

"Well, I don't want one of my brothers looking like a dumpy sack. Even if he is my uncle. All right?"

"Yeah, I guess...." She was pulling his ear a bit, but she was right. It wouldn't do for Ottavar to have a scrapsack tailing him in front of all of The People.

"You can't go around in boy's clothes all the time," Jesumi said, turning over the garment to work on the other side.. "You have to have something nice for the Fire Festival, and for visiting, and--oh, you know. We made so much extra for Ott, he can't wear it all. We'll make you some new when the fresh hides are done, too." She looked up again with a mischievous grin. "You'll be a new man in new clothes. And your girlfriends will be fighting to get at you."

Radovin's cheeks flared. "I don't have any girlfriends," he mumbled.

"What, no, I'll see them swarming over you when we dance around the bonfire."

"I don't know how to dance, I've never danced--like that, with anybody." Well, he had danced around the edge of things with other little ones long ago, but now...ayee.

"Nah! Well, it's about time. You'll have plenty of girls waiting to show you the steps. They'll want to try some bed-dancing too. You're something new, almost like a traveling trader. Fresh meat." She grinned wickedly, then bent to her task again.

"Can I go now, please?"

"If you want," Jesumi said. "I have your measure now--hai, wait--"

He pivoted and rushed out. Realizing too late that he should have gone out the back, he dodged aside before anyone could get in a word and raced around the tent.

He slowed as he neared the muckhole. It was his best excuse for hiding back here, and he did need to pee. Loosening his breechclout, he looked down.

Girlfriends, ha. The only friend that floppy little thing ever had was his hand, and only when he was certain Ivergan wouldn't catch him. One of the worst beatings he'd ever had was for messing his bed with a horny dream.

He'd done his best to quell the demands of his maturing body, but the urge came whether he liked it or not. The only way to keep it from happening in his sleep was to take care of it regularly, in secret, when he was awake. Ivergan had forbidden him to even think of spending his juice in a woman--not that he had any opportunities.

The prohibition involved a contradictory mix of avoiding waste of magical power--which didn't make much sense, he knew other shamans took mates--and defiling womankind with his unworthy touch. Ayah-kayah. One didn't question Ivergan's rulings. The hard discipline was a fact of life. So was the jeering of Pavolen's followers.

It was different now, wasn't it? He was apprenticed to Ottavar, who did not believe in abstention. Neither had Kayotar--look at the proof of that standing here twiddling his untried spear. Any fellow his age would have had a go at it as soon as he could spurt, would have had one in every camp at a Summermeet, so they said.

Sure, he could now, and he wanted to. But--what to do? He couldn't imagine women chasing him, or himself chasing them. He could hardly imagine speaking to one, even those he knew, outside of asking her if something hurt. Any of them would laugh at Ratovin the Runt. Was Sumi having fun on him too? With a sigh of frustration, he tucked in and straightened his breechclout.

The morning sun warmed his shoulders. It was a beautiful day, everything green and growing, flowers everywhere. Animals were fattening on the lush grass. Hunting was good, they said, even fairly near the camps. That was another thing in which he had no experience. Rabbits, hamsters, pah! A man hunted with a spear or a bow, he didn't throw rocks. He meandered on where the land sloped toward the creek. Funny how a person was never satisfied.

He heard footsteps behind him, deliberate, then hesitant.

"Hai, Rado."

Radovin turned around. "Hai."

Davoner moved closer. "I needed a break, stretch my legs a bit. You want to walk upstream with me a ways?"

"Sure, why not?" Radovin looked up at the man he barely knew. All these relationships that he had through a previously unknown father, all these familiar strangers. Life is full of wonders. He fell in at Davoner's side and they sauntered along the edge of the meadow, bare feet picking their way with care. Neither one spoke for a while. They exchanged a few glances.

The man was taller than Radovin, of course--who wasn't--and with the heavier build of maturity. Ottavar looked a lot like him; not much of a beard on either, a little different in the eye color. Radovin thought he could see a resemblance to Kayotar in both. Neither of them seemed very concerned about appearances. Still, Davoner always looked freshly groomed--though not stiff about it--even in nothing but a breechclout, while Ottavar had a...comfortable slouchy look.

Davoner's skill at carving, whether common bowls and stone lamps or elegant knife hilts and graceful figurines, was well known. Even Ambelda owned some things he had made, as much as she looked down on his band. It was the spirit of the man that determined the quality of his work. Although Davoner had not followed his father into the shamanic circles, he was as much Dedicated in his own way, to Radovin's way of thinking.

The silence grew heavy. Davoner broke it. "You know you can talk to any of us, about anything." Radovin grunted, ducking his head into his shoulders. Davoner continued, "It's funny, ah? Your being my brother, and a son to me as well."

"Mm, yeah."

"I used to wish I had a brother. Not that I didn't have anyone to play with, or to hunt with as I grew up. I had cousins aplenty, and friends, but there's something...closer about a brother. I was the only child of my mother that lived. Mama wasn't very strong. They stopped trying to have more children after a while. That was one reason Kayotar went with other women so much in the summer." He smiled wryly at Radovin. "Vina had bad luck with a couple of babies too. She likes having an extra son now. Sort of makes up for it all."

It had never occurred to Radovin that he lacked a brother. The other boys of the Raven band had been close enough with him. He didn't know whether his mother had wished for more children or not. She would surely like seeing Tevina stuff him with second helpings.

They followed a vague trail between stunted trees that spread farther beyond the watercourse north of the camps. Davoner stopped. "This is a good place to fish, sometimes," he said, gesturing toward the hidden stream. Falling water whispered an alluring song through the foliage.

"Uh-huh." Radovin watched his toes grasp a grass stem and tug at it.

"Rado, can you tell me what's bothering you? If it isn't spirit business. You don't have to keep everything to yourself. I took you as my son before I had any idea you were my brother. Either way, we're family, and that means we share both the bad and the good."

Radovin hung his head low. He felt Davoner's strong, calloused hand on his shoulder; this stranger, his brother, who had accepted him with an unquestioning heart.

"I think you need a father that you can talk to, ah?"

"Yeah, I do," Radovin whispered.

They sat together on a stone ledge by the low waterfall, dangling their toes in the water. Tiny fish flashed in the shallow edges of the pool and darted back into the depths. If there were any big ones, they stayed hidden. Radovin began to stammer out his doubts and enumerate his inadequacies. Davoner listened, one arm over his shoulders.

"Nah, Rado, Sumi didn't mean to poke fun at you. She told me you were hit wrong by something she said. She wants to help, not hurt, see, but she doesn't know how it was for you, ah? Not all of it, anyway."

"I'm sorry. I--I'm not used to--any of it, I--"

"It's all right, it's no fault of yours. You're starting new with us, we know that, but we're used to our own ways too." Davoner tightened his one-armed embrace for a moment. "We're going to have to get used to one another, that's all. Only way to do that is to speak what's on your mind."

For a while, they listened to the laughter of the water and the sigh of wind. Dappled sunlight in constant motion played over the mossy banks. Radovin fiddled with a twig, nicking bark off with his thumbnails. He stopped when Davoner spoke again.

"Now. You're not the first fellow in the world to be a bit shy about going after a woman for the first time. Nah, I know, you've been held back...but you want to, ah?"

"Yeah." Radovin's shoulders crept toward his ears. "But--I dunno. I dunno if I can. I just--ah, shit. And what if--what if...."

"Rado, you can do it. There's nothing wrong with you. You have the tools. You can spurt, ah?"

"Yeah, but...."

"You know that there are women who like to help young fellows learn the way of the bed-dance, ah? They know how to make it easy at the start, and they're patient with you. Not going to expect you to be...experienced, y'know."

"Uh-huh. My mama used to do that." Radovin tossed his twig into the water and watched it circle in a slow eddy.

"I remember your mother. A fine woman. I never saw too much of her. Just at Summermeets, trading, y'know."

Radovin nodded. Anyone with skill worth talking about put as much time as possible into making surplus things for summer trade. His mother had explained to him that she gathered extra herbs to trade. Shamans received food, clothing, and tools without having to hunt or work with their hands, because of what they did for people. He gave his fine belt an uncomfortable look; he hadn't done anything yet.

"I remember this one time, quite a few years ago, her trading for a special set of small wood bowls that I made. Funny how a memory like that comes back. She asked about Kayotar." Davoner shook with quiet laughter. "I guess I know why, now." He twisted his head around to look into Radovin's face.

"I remember those bowls," Radovin said, unable to resist smiling at the clear image from so many summers ago, before all the loss and hardship. "They nested together, she let me play with them for a while." He considered Davoner's hands, that had shaped the bowls, and his own. The long fingers were much alike. Smaller hands had played with the medicine bowls, but the memory still fit. Everything fit--his life all reconnected in a complex web of pain and pleasure, nested like the bowls. Nothing was out of place, merely unfinished--a bowl, open to the future.

He wanted to thank Davoner, but he couldn't find the words for why or what, or stop smiling long enough to talk anyway. Davoner smiled too, reflected sunlight rippling on his face like laughter made visible.

"Vina should know who's best to ask, or Sheri...." Davoner gazed off into the trees. Somewhere nearby, a bird rejoiced in song.