Crystal Gorge (The Dreamers 3)

“What’s your name?” Tlantar asked her.

“Tleri,” she replied.

“I’m called Tlantar Two-Hands.”

“That’s a peculiar sort of name.”

“It wasn’t my idea.”

“That happens quite often, I’ve heard. Parents seem to come up with peculiar names sometimes.” She took her sling out from under her belt. “Maybe we’ll meet again sometime,” she said, and then she abruptly turned and ran on out across the grassland.

For some reason, Tlantar couldn’t seem to get the young huntress Tleri out of his mind. There had been a certain directness about her that was very much unlike the women who lived in Asmie. It had always seemed to Tlantar that the women of Asmie went out of their way to be complex and never once to say anything that got right to the point. Of course, the village women weren’t hunters, and Tleri was. That was also most unusual. The women of Asmie grew beans, and once planting was finished, they didn’t have much to do until harvest time. They talked all the time, but it didn’t seem to Tlantar that they ever said anything that got right to the point. Tleri, on the other hand, hadn’t said anything during their brief encounter that wasn’t right to the point.

The young women of Asmie continued to flutter their eyelashes at Tlantar, and to carefully arrange their schedules so that they could encounter him three or four times a day, but Tlantar generally ignored them. He had other things on his mind now.

Then, a few days later, he came out of his lodge and saw Tleri, still garbed in leather, walking along the narrow path at the center of the village.

“I see that you’ve decided to pay us a visit,” he said with a broad smile.

“Us?” she asked.

“The village is what I meant.”

“No. I just came by to see how my aunt was doing. She wasn’t feeling too well the last time I was here.”

“Aunt?”

“My father’s sister. You probably know her. She’s called Tlara.”

“Oh, yes,” Tlantar said. “I’ve known her since I was just a boy. I hadn’t heard that she’s been sick.”

“It’s a woman’s ailment. We don’t usually talk about those when there are men anywhere in the vicinity. Did you want any details?”

“Ah—no, Tleri, I don’t really think so,” Tlantar replied, feeling more than a little embarrassed.

“Are you blushing, Tlantar?” she asked with a kind of wide-eyed innocence.

Tlantar felt his face flame even brighter.

Tleri laughed with glee. “Did you want to play some more, mighty leader?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Tlantar replied. “I know when I’ve been beaten.”

“Aren’t you the darling boy?” she said, patting his cheek with one small hand.

Tlantar and Tleri went through the mating ceremony two weeks later, and the entire tribe turned out to watch as Dahlaine joined the pair.

In general, the tribe of Asmie was quite pleased about the joining of Tlantar and Tleri, but Tlantar noticed that several young women and a couple of slightly older men seemed just a bit resentful as the ceremony concluded.

It took the newly joined pair a while to become adjusted to each other. Tlantar had never paid too much attention to the time of day. When the sun was up, it was daytime. When it went down, it was nighttime. Tleri, however, was a bit more precise. She’d taken over the kitchen in Tlantar’s lodge, and she wanted him to be there when the meals were ready, and she didn’t make her discontent a secret.

It wasn’t long after their joining when Tleri conceded that she hadn’t been quite as indifferent as she might have appeared to be during their first few meetings. She’d known exactly who Tlantar was, and their first encounter had been well-planned in advance. “There wasn’t really a hare scampering around out there in the deep grass, Tlantar. I made him up as an excuse for our little talk that day.”

“I’m shocked!” Tlantar lied. “How could you have done such a thing?”

She gave him a sudden, stricken look and saw his broad grin. “You knew that already, didn’t you?” she flared.

“Can you ever forgive me?” he said, trying to conceal his knowing smirk.

“I’ll get you for this, Tlantar.”

“We might want to talk about that a little later,” he said rather blandly.

It was late in the following summer when Tleri began to put on quite a bit of weight, and she advised Tlantar that it had nothing to do with how much she’d been eating lately. All in all they were both very pleased that they’d soon become parents.

Strange things began to happen that autumn that Tlantar didn’t fully understand. It seemed that every time the sun came up, Tleri started to vomit. She refused to talk about it, and Tlantar became more and more concerned about his mate’s illness, and he told the elder Tlerik about it.

“It’s nothing to worry about, Chief Tlantar,” Tlerik replied. “All women go through this when they are with child. It’s very common.”

“What causes it?”

“I have no idea, Chief Two-Hands. It’s one of those things that women refuse to talk about.”

“Some kind of secret, you mean?”

“I don’t think I’d call it a secret, My Chief,” Tlerik said with a faint smile. “Women aren’t put together the way we are. Many things happen to them that never happen to us, but I’d say that’s all right. Life wouldn’t be at all pleasant without women, wouldn’t you say?”

Tlantar continued to worry about Tleri’s peculiar illness, but after a while it went away, and things were all right again—except that she now wore a dress instead of her customary leather clothing. Her belly grew larger and larger, and that seemed to embarrass her, for some reason.

By early spring, Tleri’s belly had grown so large that it seemed to Tlantar that it might be easier to jump over her than to walk around her.

Then there came the night when she started screaming, and it wasn’t long after the screaming began that several of the women of the tribe entered Chief Tlantar’s lodge and quite firmly told him to go away.

“But—” he began to object.

“Out!” a stout woman of middle years told him. “Now!” she added, pointing at the entryway of Tlantar’s lodge.

Tlantar didn’t know very much about the process of giving birth, but it seemed to him that Tleri was taking much longer than the other women of the tribe had when they’d produced children. After two days of listening to her screams, Tlantar was beside himself.