Chapter 3

I awaken very cold. There is someone rubbing the cold on my face, I do not know who. I think it is a woman. Hazily I wonder how a woman? There are no women on the hunt.

Then I remember being struck by aurochs, and being thrown to the ground so hard that I lose consciousness. Have I been unconscious so long that Siefert and the others have brought me back to our dwellings? But then why am I not inside when it is cold?

I cannot think right. The woman says something I do not understand and motions with her hands. She wants me to stand. She is right, I must rise to go from this cold. I start to do so, but my right side is hurt, I feel the broken ribs where aurochs took me. Carefully I use only my left arm to push myself up.

The woman helps, but she is not strong. Is this a child? Even with her weakness the help is enough, and I finally stand to my feet. I am still very cold, and now I begin to shiver. It hurts when I shiver, and I will myself to stop.

No, this woman is not a child, she stands near so tall as I. She is thin, though, and has not strength. I must do most alone. But I let her lead me.

We come to a steep slope. It is too steep for me as I am now, I stop. But she urges me on, lifting her feet, and I see there are like stepping stones before me. I begin to climb the stepping stones with her. After I climb two or three I feel very weak and sick, but she urges me on and I gather such strength as is in me and continue. We come to the end of the stepping stones at a place that is again level.

Where am I? I turn to look and see a sight that I cannot believe.

It is snow! All around is snow, deep snow. Yet there was no snow when we hunted aurochs, it was beyond summer but still not to snow. This cannot be right. I turn my head to look around, but there is snow in all directions.

And I realize I have not been climbing stepping stones and that I am not on the ground. This is wood, but such a wood as I have never seen. And I see there is more wood built up around in sticks, but very straight sticks with close edges assembled together in a regular form.

This is a place such as I have never before seen. Something is not at all right. I do not think I am in the place where aurochs struck me. I speak to ask where I am and what has happened, and I think I speak true this time, my tongue is in my head again, but the woman does not answer, she merely urges me on.

It becomes even more strange when the woman leads me toward a wall, and then reaches with one hand to turn a round boss and makes a breach in the wall that she pushes away before her. She leads me through the breach and then pushes behind her. I hear a noise, and when I turn to look the breach through which we have come is gone and the wall is again solid, but we are on the other side.

On this side it is less cold, and when I turn back I see that there is fire that makes the warmth. The woman leads me to a thing that is perhaps a place to sit, though like none I have ever seen, but I am shivering again and this time I cannot stop, so I pull away to go nearer the fire and to lie. I know I must lie, my head swims badly and I have reached the end of the strength that aurochs has left me.

I lie. I turn to be as easy as I can, my chest hurts badly.

I sleep.