The Witch and the Demons
11500 BC, alpha timeline
-o-
Fina woke up at daybreak, as usual. After a snowstorm, the women would not go out gathering, as Fina had yesterday. The day would be spent preserving food, repairing tools, or, for Fina, preparing medicines and ritual materials. There were voices outside, sounding louder than usual. They were probably talking about Zeo and Kurt, or the dispute between Fina and Adan-chief.
Speaking of which, Fina would need to check up on Zeo. Despite her precautions, he might still get wound fever. Even a healthy young man could die if a wound that deep became fevered. She put on her skins and put her head out the doorway. There was a large crowd in the commons, mostly young men with Adan-chief in the center. They all immediately stopped talking and stared at her.
Fina quickly picked her spear up from where it was leaning next to the door. Several people in the crowd shrunk back. Heartened, Fina walked casually toward the medicine hut, trudging through the knee-deep snow. She tried to make it look like she only had the spear to steady herself as she pushed along. It almost seemed like it was going to work, but just short of the medicine hut she heard Adan-chief behind her. "Fina-Witch!"
Fina stopped short, and her temper snapped. "Yes, Adan-Fool?"
"Hear how she mocks your chief!" Adan shouted, and Fina realized she'd made a mistake. She turned around slowly. "See how she wears full white, like a leader of the tribe. Did the people name her chief?" The crowd laughed. "Did the people name her hunt leader, or shaman?"
"They did name me shaman. All but you, Adan-Chief."
"They do not…"
Fina pointed - not with the spear - at someone in the crowd. "You, Rawl, you called me shaman when I blessed your son's spear. Camyo, when I saved your wife and delivered your new daughter alive, you said 'Thank you, Fina-Shaman,' many times. You were nearly weeping." Camyo had been sobbing and dripping snot, and most of the tribe had seen it, but embarrassing a hunter would do nothing for her.
The crowd looked uncertain, but Adan spoke again. "But the people call you that no longer, Fina. They seem to have decided that you are no longer the shaman."
"You are the one who decided that," Fina said. "But your decision makes no sense. Wounds are being treated, babies delivered, hunts blessed and weather read. Who else but me is doing these things?"
"It is not for what you do not do that the people reject you, but for what you do, Fina-Witch. All know that you perform dark rituals at night, attempting to summon Sky-Demons." That was a double lie - not only did she do no such thing, but probably no one had believed such a thing until Adan thought of it, this morning or last night. "And now they have come!"
Fina blinked. "I don't know what you mean. Was the village attacked in the night? Was someone hurt?"
"Hear her speak as though she knows nothing, when the demons stand in the doorway of her own medicine hut!" Fina turned around. Zeo and Kurt were standing in the doorway, with Zeo leaning on the shorter boy. Zeo had his odd grey club and the knife she'd taken out of him stuck through his belt, as though he was planning to fight. Even Kurt was holding his bag so that he could reach inside easily. Fina guessed he had a knife inside.
"This is foolishness!" Fina said. "Zeo and Kurt are only strangers, from a distant place. There are no Sky Demons any longer."
"You told us - you, Fina - that one of the story-skins describes the Sky-Demons as having human shape, youthful, in fine clothes. Did you not say that they did not know the snow?"
This sounded very bad. Apparently, Kurt thought so, too, because Fina heard someone scrambling for something in the hut, moving too fast to be Zeo. "Uh, the skins did seem to say that, but…"
"Would any true member of the White Bear tribe bring Sky-Demons into our huts?"
"I - no, but I did not…"
"Will the White Bear tribe allow this witch and her demons to live amongst us?"
"No!" the crowd shouted. A rock thudded into the side of the medicine hut, and Fina flinched.
"Why is she your enemy?" It was Zeo, leaning against the edge of the hut's doorway. He seemed to be talking to Adan, but the chief didn't have to answer.
"She's a witch!" a hunter shouted.
"Right." The word was an agreement, but Zeo made it sound as though the hunter was a complete fool. "Fina isn't a politician, she doesn't want power except to heal people. All she does is say that 'all the people are one.' Is that the problem?"
"Quiet, demon," a young woman shouted, and she and two others threw stones. Zeo's narrow club blurred from his belt, and there was a resounding clang. The stone he'd struck flew aside; the others hit the hut.
"How does your chief want to divide the people?" Zeo asked, weapon still in hand. "Does he want to reward his friends, deprive his enemies? Does he want to make war?"
Adan flinched, and shouted, "Nonsense! Lies! Be si-"
"Or maybe," Zeo said, drowning him out, "he just wants you to stone out anyone who argues with him." There was a silence.
"Begone, demon!" Adan shouted, red with rage. "Take your lies and your witch and never return!"
"Sure," Zeo said contemptuously, putting his club back in his belt. "Just remember this when Adan sends you to start a war. And don't complain too loud about it." Kurt stepped up behind him and draped a skin from the medicine hut's bedding over his shoulders. Kurt had a skin of his own, and was carrying a package that seemed to contain medicines and other objects he'd grabbed from the hut. He held it out to Fina, and when she hesitated, he shrugged and laid it in the doorway. He put Zeo's arm over his shoulder, and they started to slowly leave the village.
Watching them go alone out into the snow fields, where they would certainly die in their ignorance, Fina's temper broke free again. "Are you all such fools? Are you all so rich and fat that you do not blink at casting out two young and healthy people? You saw Zeo wield his club, can't you imagine how strong he would be with a spear, how much food he could have brought to our fires? Kurt is the student of a great tool-maker, he could have made great things for us, and changed the lives of every tribesman. You superstitious fools!
"I cannot think you really meant to cast out your shaman, when no girl in the tribe has enough knowledge to step into the medicine hut. But if you would say that I am not your shaman, then I will not be. I will go with the two men who have more courage than all the hunters of the White Bear together." She picked up the parcel Kurt had made for her and stomped off after him and Zeo.
She nodded them when she caught up. (They weren't moving very fast, of course, with Kurt half-carrying Zeo.) Zeo smiled at her, and Kurt nodded back. "We're sorry you lost your home," Kurt said politely, "but we could use your help."
"That's why I left," Fina said, glaring over her shoulder at the huts.
"Barbarian idiots," Zeo scoffed. "Might as well have been a democracy, the way he was using the mob. This place needs a king."
"Right," Kurt said dryly, "because that little confrontation would have gone much better if Adan had a private army."
"It certainly would have helped if Fina had one," Zeo said. "It would have helped if she'd been able to argue laws instead of vague traditions."
Fina stared. "What on earth are you two talking about?"
"Just an old argument," Zeo said. "Kurt is a horrible treasonous democrat and I'm going to have to execute him someday." He was obviously joking, but aside from that Fina still didn't understand.
Kurt sighed. "Basically, we're arguing about whether leaders should be the sons of the last leaders, as they are in our country, or whether they should be chosen by the people. Since Zeo is the son of the current leader, he's a little biased."
"It seems a foolish argument," Fina said. "The people choose the old chief's son anyway, most of the time."
"Yeah," Kurt agreed, "if they had an election tomorrow back home, it would be Zeo's father that got voted in, unless it was his mother. We just like to argue about it." The two of them were like a hunting partnership, comfortable and trusting with each other. Fina looked at Zeo, wondering if the two of them were intimate, as hunting partners sometimes were. Then she wondered why she cared.
"I will lead you to the place of the Grey Seal tribe," she said. "Hopefully, their chief is not such a fool."
"That's great," Zeo said. "But first I'd like to see the place where we showed up. Maybe we can get back home."
"Not too likely," Kurt sighed, "but it's worth a shot."
"Once again," Fina began.
"What are we talking about?" Kurt scratched his head. "You'll think we're crazy."
"Nah, she's smart," Zeo said confidently. "Fina, you know how we don't come from here?" She nodded. "Well, that's not quite right. It's more like we don't come from now." She blinked. "We're from the future, about twelve or thirteen thousand years from now."
"Spirits protect us," Fina breathed. She had convinced herself the Dark Man had been a dream, or a vision of some spirit. "'Men who dare the span and flow of time.'"
"I guess," Zeo said, "if you want to get poetic about it. So you believe us?" This with a triumphant grin at Kurt.
"Yes," Fina said, "it explains a great deal. Is - I mean, do you know any other time travelers?"
"Sure," Kurt said. "My teacher, Mistress Lucca, and Zeo's parents went on a great adventure when they were teenagers, zooming up and down the timeline and saving the world. We grew up on the stories."
"Plus there's the two who showed up at the castle last night," Zeo added. "A thief in white, who took my father's sword, and a wizard in black who destroyed the royal tower and half the throne room roof. Those two, I'm going to hunt down, if my parents will let me." Fina blinked.
"They won't," Kurt predicted. "If they weren't going to let you fight the Mystics, they certainly won't let you chase down time-traveling magic-using criminals."
"Probably not," Zeo sighed. "Look, there's the tree we slept under." The tree grew, wide and gnarled, from the side of a hill. Fina could see a snowdrift where the Nu slept, covering it completely.
"The place we gated in should be on the other side of the hill, less than a mile from here," Kurt said. "We should be able to get close to it, at least, though finding the exact spot might be tricky."
As it turned out, finding the exact spot wasn't tricky at all. There was a blue and black sphere hanging over the spot, fading from faint to dark and back again. "Yes!" Zeo shouted when it came into view.
"A gate," Kurt said. "It's gotta be a gate. But why wasn't it here yesterday? And why is it fading in and out like that?"
Zeo looked at empty space beside him, as though listening to a short invisible person. "What does that mean?"
Kurt stared at him, clearly thinking him mad, but Fina simply asked, "Do you hear a spirit, Zeo?"
"Yeah. Mune, the spirit of this half of the dreamstone knife. He says the gate is fading in and out because it's a 'maybeso,' whatever that means. We can see it now because he's helping us."
"That's great," Kurt said, "but we still don't have a Gate Key. Does he know a way to open it?"
Zeo listened again. "Use you? What do you - oh." He drew the red knife, with Fina's beaded leather still wrapped around the base for a grip. "Are you sure this'll work?" Zeo listened, and looked utterly confused. "I'm just going to take that as a yes." He turned to Fina. "Thanks for all your help. You saved our lives. If you ever need anything - well, actually, I doubt we'll ever see you again, but…"
"Take me with you," Fina said suddenly. "If you want to repay me, take me with you. All my life, I believed that all the people were as one, but now I am an outcast. I could go to the Grey Seal, but they have their own shaman, they would mistrust me as an outsider. It would be years, maybe, before I was truly welcomed. I would see your home, Kurt, with its many tools, and the work-place of your learned teacher. I would see the people you will lead, Zeo, and especially I would ask your mother to teach me magic." And maybe, she thought but did not say, she would meet a man she had thought she would never see again.
"She wants to learn," Kurt said approvingly. "I say bring her."
"Of course!" Zeo grinned, as though it had never been in question once she asked. "Mom's not the only one who knows magic, either. Dad and Mistress Lucca and Uncle Mechior do, too. They said they couldn't teach us, but maybe since you're so close already they can do something."
"It is a better chance than I'd have any other way," Fina said firmly. "And even without magic it would be worth it."
"It's not like this would be forever," Kurt said. "Mistress Lucca said the gates lasted a full year, last time, much longer than the quest took. We could get the Gate Key and bring you back, if you wanted."
"Then why should I not come?" Fina asked. "I risk almost nothing, and gain much. Open your gate, Zeo."
"With pleasure." He hopped forward.
Kurt motioned for Fina to step back. "Don't stand too close, it may be dangerous. A roughly opened gate can arc electricity." Fina understood not a word after "dangerous," but the first part was clear enough. "Once it opens, we'll have a few seconds to get in. Don't get left behind."
"I won't," Fina said firmly.
"Ready?" Zeo said over his shoulder. At their nod, he fell onto his good knee in the deep snow. He reversed his grip on the knife, holding it overhand, and with both arms drove it straight into the center of the gate. He then slashed the knife back and to the side, as if gutting some great beast. The sphere collapsed to a point and then expanded again, wavering red and black, until it was at least three yards across.
"Red?" Kurt said, sounding confused, but Fina remembered his warning, even if he did not. She was already moving, and Kurt didn't hesitate long behind her. They each grabbed one of Zeo's arms, and then the three of them leapt toward the future.