A man of the Clan has passed many tests. A boy learns to face pain and danger without cringing because life is hard and gives no second chances. Failure is death. Of those boys who become men, some face further challenges. Embedded in Clan memory is the knowledge that those whom the totem spirits choose to test most severely gain the greatest strength.
That knowledge kept Durc alive. It gave him a feeling of purpose, though it could not bring happiness or restore lost lives. The wolves had spoken. Life goes on, they said. He turned away from the river still heavy-hearted. Nearly weaponless, he wore only the light wrap he had put on in the morning, and a well broken in pair of foot-wraps. A waning moon rose to light his path.
He kept moving through the night, partly to keep warm and partly to get farther from the home that was no longer his. As he plodded along, breaking into a trot to generate more heat wherever the ground levelled out, his mind worked on.
Durc had often experienced difficulty learning to do simple things. Uba told him that his mother--his birth-mother, she whose name was not to be spoken where Broud could hear--had also had learning problems. Yet she had become a legend among medicine women. At the last Clan Gathering, people told of the strange woman of the Others who spoke fearlessly to Ursus.
Brun told him of her self-taught hunting skill. He had said that Durc reminded him of her, that odd way he picked up knowledge sometimes without delving into his Memories. The Others, he had said, didn't seem to have Memories. That was like not having eyes, he had said, shaking his grizzled head. But then he spoke of the one-eyed Mog-ur, and a glimmer of an idea came to Durc. He still didn't have it clear enough to explain to anyone, though Ura had seemed to understand better than the other men--even Goov. His ideas disturbed them, so he learned to keep them to himself.
Could a person have two different ways of seeing? One way, the Clan way, to look into one's Memories; and the other, that jostling together of thought out of nowhere that brought forth ideas that worked--but that weren't in the Memories? Like having two eyes that see differently.... That other vision, though, was scary. You looked into the Unknown with that Other Eye.
Dawn found him looking north from a last low plateau reaching out from the mountains. He gazed over the steppe that stretched as far as his weary eyes could see. A clear sky promised fair weather; at least he would stay dry for now. His survival would depend on his finding or making shelter and maintaining a fire. Fire came first; then a spear, when he could find suitable wood. He continued northward, angling back toward the river.
It took a long time to get a fire going, but at last he succeeded. He had chosen a campsite for its supply of dead wood. Now, if he had food... Durc smacked his lips in delight--in all his crazy running around, his sling had not fallen out of the fold he had tucked it into. He prepared his fire to keep for a short while and went off in pursuit of game. His luck held better than expected; it was the season for nesting birds. He dined on fresh eggs that needed no cooking. That was good, because he had only theoretical knowledge of that women's craft, based on observation.
He also found a broken deer skull, which he brought back with him thinking that perhaps he could make use of the hollow cranium. Full of eggs and drowsy, he banked his fire and napped in the warm sun on a bed of dry grass. He dreamed.
"Look," Grod motioned. "You pack the dung in so, and choose a good, solid coal. Then you cover it well with ashes. Now show me with your horn. We will see which one burns out first." The old man's eyes twinkled; he knew how many times a boy needs to practice before he gets it right.
That was how Durc learned to keep fire for travel, in an aurochs horn. He got very good at it, because he never accepted less. Always, he pushed himself to excel; not to impress anyone--Ursus knew nothing would get him anywhere with Broud--but to fulfill his own sense of rightness and solidify his inner vision. He did not lack Memories entirely, they were just less complete and clear.
Not that Durc ever expected to be a leader's second, or anyone with a position of responsibility; he knew his place. He was deformed in body and mind, a freak who owed his existence to unusual circumstances.
In his dream the aurochs horn became a cave, and the glowing ember a hearth. At that hearth sat Uba, mixing medicine in the hollow of a deer skull.
Durc awoke. His fire was nearly out. He fed it up again, wondering how he might preserve it. At least he could prepare some dry tinder to make the next fire easier to start. He could carry a bit in his wrap. While the fire took hold on new fuel he studied the skull. The toothmarks on it were those of a wolf.
It occurred to him that he might at least use the deer skull to carry his tinder. It would hold quite a bit. As he packed in the brittle, dried fibers, his dream flashed into his mind.
To his amazement, it worked. When he camped for the night, he started a new fire from the old. The magic of fire did not need an aurochs horn.
"Spirit of Grey Wolf, this man thanks you for the gift of--of something to hold fire," he signed, unable to put into words the concept of abstraction that allowed him to consider substituting one hollow object for another.
Once the Clan had been more opportunistic, but as their Memories accumulated the patterns locked. Even reaching back to the origin could not free them from their eternal present that had no future.