"Sounds like you're really far back." Paul's voice sounded in stark contrast to Hannah's wonder and excitement. He was clearly bored. Amused, resigned, but bored.
"And-there's a girl beside me and she looks like Chess. Like my best friend, Chess. She's got the same face, the same eyes. She's wearing skins, too... some kind of skin dress."
"Yeah, and it has about the detail of most of the past-life regressions in this book," Paul said wryly.
Hannah could tell he was flipping pages. "You're doing something to something with a rock. You're wearing some kind of skins. The book's full of descriptions like that. People who want to imagine themselves in the olden days, but who don't know the first thing about them," he muttered to himself.
Hannah didn't wait for him to remember that he was talking to a hypnotized patient. "But you didn't tell me to be the person back then. You just told me to see it."
"Huh? Oh. Okay, then, be that person." He said it so casually.
Panic spurted through Hannah. "Wait-I..."
But it was happening. She was falling, dissolving, merging into the scene around her. She was becoming the girl in front of the cave.
The First Time...
Distantly, she heard her own voice whispering, "I'm holding a flint burin, a tool for drilling. I'm boring holes in the tooth of an arctic fox."
"Be that person," Paul was repeating mechanically, still in the bored voice. Then he said, "What?"
"Mother's going to be furious-I'm supposed to be sorting fruit we stored last winter for the Spring, Gathering. There's not much left and it's mostly rotten. But Ran killed a fox and gave the skull to Ket, and we've spent all morning knocking the teeth out and making them into a necklace for Ket. Ket just has to have something new to wear every festival." She heard Paul say softly, "Oh, my God..." Then he swallowed and said, "Wait-you want to be a paleontologist, right? You know about old things..." "I want to be a what? I'm going to be a shaman, like Old Mother. I should get married, but there's nobody I want. Ket keeps telling me I'll meet somebody at a gathering, but I don't think so." She shivered.
"Weird-I've got chills all of a sudden. Old Mother says she can't see my destiny. She pretends that's nothing to worry about, but I know she's worried. That's why she wants me to be a shaman, so I can fight back if the spirits have something rotten in mind for me."
Paul said, "Hannah-uh, let's just make sure we can get you out of this, all right? You know, in case that should become necessary. Now, when I clap my hands you're going to awaken completely refreshed.
Okay? Okay?"
"My name's Hana." It was pronounced slightly differently: Hah-na. "And I'm already awake. Ket is laughing at me. She's threading the teeth on a sinew string. She says I'm daydreaming. She's right; I wrecked the hole for this tooth."
"When I clap my hands, you're going to wake up. When I clap my hands, you're going to wake up. You
will be Hannah Snow in Montana." A clap. "Hannah, how do you feel?" Another clap. "Hannah?
Hannah?"
"It's Hana. Hana of the River People. And I don't know what you're talking about; I can't be somebody else." She stiffened. "Wait-something's happening. There's some kind of commotion from the river.
Something's going on."
The voice was desperate. "When I clap my hands-"
"Shh. Be quiet." Something was happening and she had to see it, she had to know. She had to stand up.
...
Hana of the Three Rivers stood up.
"Everybody's all excited by the river' she told Ket.
"Maybe Ran fell in," Ket said. "No, that's too much to hope for. Hana, what am I going to do? He wants to mate me, but I just can't picture it. I want somebody interesting, somebody different. . . ," She held up the half-finished necklace. "So what do you think?"
Hana barely glanced at her. Ket looked wonderful, with her short dark hair, her glowing slanted green eyes, and her mysterious smile. The necklace was attractive; red beads alternated with delicate milky-white teeth. "Fine, beautiful. You'll break every heart at the gathering. I'm going down to the river."
Ket put down the necklace. "Well, if you insist- wait for me."
The river was broad and fast-flowing, covered with little white-capped waves because it had just been joined by two tributaries. Hana's people had rived in the limestone caves by the three rivers for longer than anyone could remember.
Ket was behind her as Hana made her way through new green cattails to the bend in the river. And then , she saw what the fuss was about.
There was a stranger crouching in the reeds. That was exciting enough-strangers didn't come very often.
But this stranger was like no man Hana had ever seen.
"It's a demon," Ket whispered, awed.
It was a young man-a boy a few years older than Hana herself. He might have been handsome in other circumstances. His hair was very light blond, lighter than the dry grass of the steppes. His face was well-made; his tall body was lithe. Hana could see almost all of that body because he was only wearing a brief leather loincloth. That didn't bother her; everybody went naked in the summer when it was hot enough. But this wasn't summer; it was spring and the days could still be chilly. No sane person would go traveling without clothes.
But that wasn't what shocked Hana, what held her standing there rigid with her heart pounding so hard she couldn't breathe. It was the rest of the boy's appearance. Ket was right-he was clearly a demon.
His eyes were wrong. More like the eyes of a lynx or a wolverine than the eyes of a person. They seemed to throw the pale sunlight back at you when you looked into them. But the eyes were nothing compared to the teeth. His canine teeth were long and delicately curved. They came to a sharp and very non-human point.