Evolution

As he let his hands work — shaping this lump of compressed Cretaceous fossils, as the hands of his ancestors had worked for two hundred and fifty millennia — he gazed out to the west, where the sun was starting to set over the Atlantic, turning the water to a sheet of fire.

Behind him, unnoticed, Jahna and Millo crept to the fire, threw on more mussels, and gulped down their salty flesh.

As the days passed, the spring thaw advanced quickly. The lakes melted. Waterfalls that had spent the winter crusted with ice began to bubble and flow. Even the sea ice began to break up.

It was time for the gathering. It was a much-anticipated treat, a highlight of the year — despite the walk of several days across the tundra.

Not everybody could go: The very young, the old, and the ill could not make the journey, and some had to remain behind to look after them. This year, for the first time in many years, Rood and Mesni were freed of the burden of children — save for their youngest, still an infant small enough to be carried — and were able to travel.

Rood would not have chosen the situation; of course not. But he believed they must make the best of their damaged lives, and he urged Mesni to come with him to the gathering. But Mesni wanted to stay at home. She turned away from him, retreating into her dark sadness. So Rood decided to walk with Olith, Mesni’s sister, the aunt of his children. Olith herself had one grown boy, but his father had died of a coughing illness two winters ago, leaving Olith alone.

The party set off across the tundra.

In this brief interval of warmth and light, the ground underfoot was full of life, saxifrages, tundra flowers, grasses, and lichens. Clouds of insects gathered in the moist air above the ponds, mating frantically. Great flocks of geese, ducks, and waders fed and rested on the tundra’s shallow lakes. Olith, taking Rood’s arm, pointed out mallards, swans, snow geese, divers, loons, and cranes that looped grandly, filling the air with their clattering calls. In this place where the trees lay flat, many of these birds built their nests on the ground. When they stepped too close to a jaeger’s nest, two birds dived at them, squawking ferociously. And, though most of the migrant herbivores had yet to return, the people glimpsed great herds of deer and mammoth, washing across the landscape like the shadows of clouds.

Yet how strange it was, Rood thought, that if he were to dig just a few arms’ lengths anywhere under this carpet of crowded color and motion, he would find the ice, the frozen ground where nothing could live.

"It has been too long since I walked this way," said Rood. "I had forgotten what it is like."

Olith squeezed his arm and moved closer to him. "I know how you must feel—"

"That every blade of grass, every dancing saxifrage, is a torture, a beauty I do not deserve." Distantly he was aware of the scent of the vegetable oil she rubbed into her cropped hair. She was not like Mesni, her sister; Olith was taller, more stringy, but her breasts were heavy.

"The children are not gone," Olith reminded him. "Their souls will be reborn when you next have children. They were not old enough to have gathered wisdom of their own. But they carried the souls of their grandparents, and they will bring joy and exuberance to—"

"I have not lain with Mesni," he said stiffly, "since we last saw Jahna and Millo. Mesni is — changed."

"It has been a long time," Olith murmured, evidently surprised.

Rood shrugged. "Not long enough for Mesni. Perhaps it will never be long enough." He looked Olith in the eyes. "I will not have more children with Mesni. I do not think she will ever want that."

Olith looked away, but dipped her head. It was, he realized, startled, a gesture of both sympathy and seduction.

That night, in the crisp cold of the open tundra, under a lean-to hastily constructed of pine branches, they lay together for the first time. As when he took the young bonehead cow, Rood felt relief from the guilt, the constant nagging doubts. Olith meant much more to him than any bonehead animal, of course. But afterward, when Olith lay in his arms, he felt the ice close around his heart once again, as if in the midst of spring he was still stranded in the depths of winter.

After four days’ steady hiking, Rood and Olith reached the riverbank.

Already hundreds of people had gathered. There were shelters set up on the bank, stacks of spears and bows, even the carcass of a great buck megaloceros. The people had marked themselves with exuberant flashes of ocher and vegetable dye. Their designs had common elements, proclaiming the unity of the greater clan, and yet were elaborate and diverse, celebrating the identity and strength of their individual bands.

Probably around five hundred people would come to this gathering — not that anybody was counting. That would comprise about half of all the people on the planet who spoke a language even remotely resembling Rood’s.