Chapter 28

As the moon cycled through the winter season, especially on those days when snowstorms kept the villagers shivering inside their shelters and unable to venture out into the deadly cold, Ivory often returned to her memories of Glade. The shaman's apprentice remembered her not only as a lover, but also as the woman revealed to her by the stories she'd told her of her life. What puzzled Ivory most was why Glade had chosen to abandon her husband and two children. Ivory couldn't imagine that she could ever do anything so heartless. This was especially so since Glade had told her how happy she'd been living amongst the Cave Dwellers. How could Glade have been so stupid? And to do so for the love of such an evil bitch?

The village where Glade and Flint lived was one of many such settlements scattered about the region where the tribe lived. Most settlements were situated further north in the flanks of the mountain range that Glade could see covered in white in the far distance on a clear day. She now understood that this whiteness was the same coating of snow that settled on the ground through the winter, but snow that persisted on the mountain peaks during even the hottest days of Summer.

The Cave Dwellers' villages kept in close contact with each other and especially so during the Summer feast days when the men would woo eligible women from other villages. These were joyful occasions on which many a marriage was arranged. They were also much more restrained than similar festivities Glade had witnessed in other tribes. There was no public display of lovemaking. The dancing was formal and restrained. The suitors were normally accompanied by their family. Nevertheless, the whole affair had to be conducted in haste because any wedding that resulted from the courtship would have to take place before the visiting suitors returned home.

Glade frequently accompanied Flint to these other villages together with the suitors and their families. Flint needed to be escorted on a stretcher carried by two strong men because his legs were so short that he couldn't otherwise expect to keep up with everyone. His presence was required if there was any likelihood of a wedding. It was customary for a shaman to preside over the matrimonial ceremony.

Glade and Flint attracted much curious attention wherever they went. The villagers were astonished by Flint's short stature and Glade's brown skin. Although they believed that the shaman and his wife had been cursed at birth they also believed that it was the duty of every Cave Dweller to express sympathy towards those less fortunate than themselves.

It was during one such excursion to another village that Glade heard about another woman who also had unusually dark skin.

"Her skin is much darker than even yours," said the shaman of this other village. "It is as black as the shadow the sun casts upon the snow."

"Where does she live?" asked Glade. She wondered with both hope and fear whether this black woman could be Demure, her southern lover.

"Several days north," said the shaman. "She lives in the mountain caves. I met her once only briefly. Although she is growing old she is still unmarried. She presented herself as eligible for marriage, but of course no one would wish to marry someone whose skin is so dark and sinister."

"No, indeed," said Glade who'd also experienced such prejudice. "Was she born in the mountains?"

"No," said the shaman. "I was told that she was discovered on the sea shore. She was saved from almost certain death by the kindness of the mountain Cave Dwellers."

It was just a matter of time until Glade's suspicions were confirmed, but she was initially sceptical. She didn't forget her conversation with the shaman, but she knew that there were many black-skinned people in the southern lands (and, for all she knew, in the north) and this dark woman might not necessarily be Demure. And even if she was, Glade had to consider the love of her husband, her duty to her two sons, and the respect she owed to the village.

But all this responsibility was, of course, soon to be forgotten.

Glade wasn't as surprised as she thought she would be when she was told that a strange woman had appeared in the village. This was when she was returning home from the woods with the other village-women where they'd been foraging for herbs, roots and mushrooms.

It was unusual enough that the strange woman was unaccompanied. Although she dressed as a Cave Dweller, she was otherwise just as alien as Glade or the Red Haired People, with which the Cave Dwellers had a cordial association. Her skin was dark. Her lips were thick and broad. She spoke the Cave Dwellers' language with a very peculiar dialect.

The strange woman was, of course, Demure.

Glade was more shocked than surprised. Demure had changed a great deal. It was true that the few years of separation had changed Glade also. Her breasts were fuller. Her thighs and buttocks were thicker. Lines creased her once smooth face. But Demure had changed much more. It wasn't just age that had changed her. A deep scar was cruelly gashed across her left cheek and forehead. Her left eye was dull, grey and sightless. She was limping on the same side. Her right arm was twisted and viciously scarred.

But when Demure smiled at the shaman's wife she radiated a look of love that was rare enough even in the days when they slept and made love together every night and often through the day. Glade choked and burst into tears. Even though it was not the Cave Dwellers' custom, she ran into her former lover's arms and pulled Demure to her bosom. Tears streamed uncontrollably down her cheeks. Her words were spluttered out through strangled sobs.

The other Cave Dwellers were bewildered and scandalised by Glade's behaviour. The two women spoke to each other in a language that no villager had ever have heard before.

"I heard that you were living in the south," said Demure who had discovered this by the same chain of communication by which Glade had heard about her black lover's presence. "As soon as I knew you were here, I followed the shore south to your village."

"And you came alone?"

"The villagers were pleased to see me go," said Demure. "They were never hostile, but I was unhappy and lonely. I was wanted by no man except for a few moments of discreet fucking. No one ever trusted me. But it is you I love. It is you I have always loved. And in the many years we've been apart I now know for sure just how deeply and passionately I love you."

"Who is this woman?" Flint asked when Glade took Demure back to the small cave where she and her husband lived. He looked at her with wary suspicion, mostly because of the immodesty of two women holding one another's hands.

"She is my friend from the southern lands," said Glade who had told Flint an expurgated and sanitised version of her travels in the southern lands. "She's the one who drifted away from me on the great sea."

"And she isn't dead?" said Flint, who made a brave attempt to display a more usual welcoming face. "This is good news indeed. She is welcome to stay for as long as she likes."

This wasn't a generosity of spirit, however, that could last for long. Even on the first night that Demure stayed with them, he confessed to his wife as they lay together that he wasn't sure he trusted the black-skinned woman. She had a way about her which didn't engender trust. She wasn't open in her conversation. She was unusually careful with her words and her questions were too probing. Flint was also deeply uncomfortable with the degree of physical intimacy the two women expressed towards each other.

"That is the custom in the southern lands," explained Glade.

"It is a bad custom," said Flint. "I hope she doesn't stay in our cave for long. We must build her a shelter so she can sleep elsewhere."

There were many ways that Demure had changed since Glade had last seen her. It wasn't just the years of living with the Cave Dwellers that had taught her a degree of humility and consideration for others that had been totally absent in the proud woman Glade had known before. She was still a woman who was an uneasy fit with the modest and incorruptible Cave Dwellers. Glade could well imagine the degree of Demure's effort to moderate her natural instincts during the years she'd lived among them.

Demure was more in love with her than Glade thought possible for such a self-centred woman. She wasn't sure whether Demure just loved the idea and memory of her long-time lover rather than the older woman Glade was now, but Demure's confused, unfocused but intense passion very much matched Glade's own. It was love for Glade that had sustained Demure for all these years. It was love that persuaded her to leave the security of her village for the long, risky trek south to Glade's settlement.

Although Demure was never really accepted by the Cave Dwellers, she was tolerated by them and allowed to share in the village's repast as long as she contributed towards it. That last duty was the most humbling experience of her life so far. Never before had she had to shoulder so much responsibility in collecting food, preparing meals and working for the welfare of the village where she lived. Previously, there had always been someone, most often Glade, to help her do the necessary tasks for which her life in the savannah had so poorly prepared her.

It was a leopard that had inflicted on Demure the wounds that now disfigured her. She was savaged just after she'd made landfall by raft, naked and hungry, on the pebbly beach of the northern coast. The attack happened after she staggered towards the forest from the shore where her raft had carried her. She was too exhausted to find somewhere completely safe. She was shivering in the chill wind and solely focused on the need to find somewhere to rest. It is, of course, when most distracted by weariness and cold that a person is most vulnerable. And so it was with Demure. It was almost as soon as she'd slumped down on a patch of grass by the forest edge that without warning a leopard pounced on her and grabbed her arm between its jaws.

Demure had always been a resourceful woman. Her immediate instinct was to fight back and this she did with a sharp flint-tipped spear that the Raft People used to hunt tuna and dolphin. She thrust it swiftly upwards with her free hand and felt the familiar resistance of living flesh as it stabbed into the leopard's flank. The animal's response was a startled growl. It immediately scurried back into the forest from whence it had come with the flint-tip still embedded in its neck. Nevertheless, considerable damage had been done in that brief violent encounter. Demure collapsed on her side under the forest's shadows while blood seeped out from across the left side of her body where the leopard had bitten and scratched her. She had only just landed on the shore and already she was at mortal risk of slow death.

Demure would almost certainly have died had she not been discovered by chance a day or so later. Her saviours were women from a Cave Dwellers' village in the nearby caves in the mountainside. They were scavenging along the shore for flotsam that the village could eat or otherwise employ. As was the case when Glade first encountered the Cave Dwellers, the women were initially more shocked by Demure's nakedness than by the sight of the wounds she had suffered. Demure was in no position to care what they thought. She'd lost a great deal of blood. She could no longer see through her left eye. Only a persistent stabbing pain prevented her from sinking into eternal oblivion. All the while she clasped a flint knife as her only means of protecting herself from any other predators, but her grip was so tight that as much blood dripped from her palm as it did from the wounds inflicted by the leopard.

It was several days until Demure was fully conscious of her situation. After this, she was cared for by the village shaman who instructed her in the traditions of the Cave Dwellers. She had to accept that she would have to remain fully clothed irrespective of how warm it was. She began the slow and essential steps towards learning yet another new language and adapting to a new set of customs. It was soon obvious that this wasn't a tribe where Demure was likely to flourish. Modesty, moral probity and a strict observance to tradition were attributes of to the Cave Dwellers that were impervious to Demure's skills in scheming and taking advantage of people's weaknesses.

But, as Demure told Glade, she was a changed woman. All she wanted now was to be reunited with her lover.

Demure's arrival on the northern shores was more than a year after the time Glade had arrived and been adopted by the Red Haired People. This wasn't because she'd been drifting by raft for that much longer, but because she'd originally made landfall somewhere else entirely. Her passage to the pebbly shore was rather shorter than that which washed Glade ashore. In fact, the shore from which she'd sailed was much nearer and could be seen on a clear day across the blue waters of the Great Sea.

When the two lovers' rafts drifted apart on the restless waves, the two women's immediate fortunes were much the same. Like Glade, several days passed by in which Demure increasingly lost faith in her ability to survive. She rediscovered a faith in the gods of her tribe, but they served her no better than the spirits of Glade's forest when the dark storms rained down on her. As she drifted over the waves, Demure only survived because, like Glade, she'd tied herself to the slats of the raft. And Demure likewise eventually drifted onto a sandy beach after many days of being aimlessly buffeted about by the elements.