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Prologue Silver Cloud

SNOW HAD COME IN during the night, a fine dusting of it, thin ason the western wind It was snow that reat distance The scent of the sea was still on it, rising now fro sun began to go to work on it

Silver Cloud had seen the sea once, a long tio, when he was a boy and the People still hunted in the western lands The sea was huge and dark and resdess, and when die sunlight struck it in a certain way it gleae liquid fire To enter it was death, but to look upon it onderful He would never see it again; thatthe sea were held by the Other Ones now, and the People were in retreat, steadilycloser and closer each year to the place where die sun is born And even if the Other Ones were to disappear as suddenly as they had come, Silver Cloud understood diat he would have no hope of returning to die coastal territory He was too old, too lame, too close to his end It would take half a lifetime for the tribe to retrace its eastward path, perhaps more Silver Cloud did not have half a lifetime left Two or three years, if he was lucky: mat was more like it

But that was all right He had seen the sea once, which was more than anyone else in the tribe could say He would never forget the scent of it, or its great surging strength Now he stood on the high ground overlooking the enca his nostrils wide, breathing deeply, letting the musky odor of the sea rise to hi snow For just a ain

For just a moment

A voice behind hiht e made camp, Silver Cloud"

It was the voice of She Who Knows Why had she followed him up here? He had come up here to be alone in the quiet time of the dawn And she was the last person he wanted to be bothered by in this private moment

Slowly Silver Cloud swung round to face her

"Is snow so unusual that I need to give warning every time it's on the way?"

"This is the fifth week of summer, Silver Cloud"

He shrugged "It can snow in the summertime as well, woman"

"In the fifth week?"

"In any week," said Silver Cloud "I remember summers when the snow never stopped, when it caht suh it, and still the snow fell And that was in the western lands, where the summers are warmer than they are here"

"That was a very long ti better everywhere, so they all say, and it seems to be true -You should have let us know that snoas co, Silver Cloud"

"Is that so very , She Who Knows"

"We could have put out the sleeping-rugs"

"For such a little dusting? Such a trifle of snow?"

"Yes Who likes awakening with snow in the face? You ought to have told us"

"It didn't seem important," said Silver Cloud irritably

"You should have told us anyway Unless you didn't knoas co, of course"

She Who Knows gave hi a very annoying woht He could reirl Falling River, with cascades of thick dark hair and breasts like summer melons Everyone in the tribe had desired her then: he too, he would not deny that But now she had passed her thirtieth winter and her hair had turned to white strings and her breasts were eer looked at her with desire, and she had changed her na on lofty airs of wisdoh the Goddess had entered into her soul

He glared at her

"I knew that the snoas co I felt the snow in h, where the old wound is, where I always feel the onco snow"

"I wonder if you really did"

"Am I a liar? Is that it?"

"You would have told us, if you kneas co over you as much as anyone else Even more so, I think"

"So killI failed to feel the snow on the way Therefore I failed to give the warning and you woke up with snow on your face It's a terrible sin Call the Killing Society, and have them take me behind the hill and hit me twelve times with the ivory club Do you think I'd care, She Who Knows? I've seen forty winters and a few more I'm very old and very tired If you'd like to run the tribe for a while, She Who Knows, I'd be happy to step aside and-"

"Please, Silver Cloud"

"It's true, isn't it? Day by day you grow ever row old Take my place Here Here" He undid his bearskin mantle of office and thrust it brusquely in her face "Go on, take it! And the feather cap, the ivory wand, and all the rest We'll go down below and tell everybody My time is over You can be chieftain now Here! The tribe is yours!"

"You're being foolish And insincere as well The day you'll give up the feather cap and the ivory wand is the day we find you cold and stiffen the ground in the , not a moment before" She pushed the estures I don't have any desire to take your place, now or after you're dead, and you know it"

"Then why have you come up here to bother me about this miserable little snowfall?"

"Because it's the fifth week of summer" "So? We've already discussed this Snow can come at any time of the year and you're perfectly well aware of that"

"I've looked at the record-sticks We haven't had snow this late in the year since I was a girl"

"You looked at the record-sticks?" Silver Cloyd asked, taken aback "This , you mean?"

"When else? I woke up, I saw the snow, and it frightened me So I went to Keeps The Past and asked her to show ether Seventeen years ago it snowed in the fifth week of summer Not since -Do you knohat else happened that summer? Six of our people died in the rhinoceros hunt and four were killed in a stale summer"

"What are you tellingyou if you think this snow's an omen"

"I think this snow is snow Nothing ry with us?" "Ask the Goddess, not me The Goddess doesn't speak much with me these days"

She Who Knows' mouth quirked in exasperation "Be serious, Silver Cloud What if this snowin wait for us here?"

"Look," he said, gesturing grandly toward the valley and the plains "Do you see danger out there? I see a little snow, yes Very little And I also see the People awake and s forth on another good day That's what I see, She Who Knows If you see the anger of the Goddess, shohere it lies" Indeed everything seemed wonderfully peaceful to hiirls were building theabout nearby, rus and bits of withered sod to be used as fuel Off to the left in the doiven theirmeal-there was Milky Fountain, that inexhaustible wo the toddlers in a circle ga now to comfort a small boy-Skyfire Face, it ho had fallen and barked his knee Behind the place of the Mothers, the three Goddess Women had built a cairn of rocks to serve as a shrine to Her and were very busy at it: one of the priestesses setting out an offering of berries, another pouring onto the bloodstone the blood of the wolf that had been killed yesterday, a third kindling the day-fire Over on the other side Ma out flint blades, which he still made with perfect work his lihters sat behind hi hides to h to turn into cloaks And far off on the horizon Silver Cloud saw theout over the tundra, spears and throwing-sticks at the ready The uneven long line of their footprints still showed, a bare suggestion of them, anyway, the dark oudines of heels and splayed toes proceeding outward fro snow

Everything seeular, a new day dawning in the life of the People, ere as old as time and would endure until the end of days Why should a little midsummer snow cause any concern? Life was hard; snoas a co and alould be, all the year round; the Goddess had never promised anyone that the summer would be free froard in recent years

Strange that he hadn't felt it coh Or had he, and not paid close attention? There were so many aches and pains these days; it was harder and harder to interpret each one of them

But all seemed well, nevertheless

"I' do," he said to She Who Knows

"I just came up here for a little quiet ti to be allowed to have it"