The pillars of creation

The chickens retreated from the growing light into the deep shadows at the back of the cave. Betty's ears stood at attention as she watched Jennsen for any signs that another carrot might be forthcoming. Her tail wagged in hopeful fits.

The opening in the mountain was simply a place where, in some distant age past, a slab of rock had tumbled out, like some giant granite tooth come loose, to plunge down the slope and leave a dry socket behind. Now, trees below grew among a collection of such fallen boulders. The cave only ran back about twenty feet, but the overhang of rock at the entrance further sheltered it and helped keep it dry. Jennsen was tall, but the ceiling of the cave was high enough that she could stand in most of it, and since Sebastian was only a little taller than she, his spikes of snow white hair, now a mellow orange in the firelight, didn't brush the top as he went to the back to collect some of the dry wood stacked there. The chickens squawked at being bothered, but then quickly settled back down.

Jennsen squatted on the opposite side of the fire from Sebastian, with her back to the rain that had started, so she could see his face in the firelight as they both warmed their hands in the heat of the crackling flames. After a day in the frigid damp weather, the fire's warmth felt luxurious. She knew that sooner or later winter would return with a vengeance. As cold and uncomfortable as it was now, it would get worse.

She tried not to think about having to leave their snug home, especially at this time of year. She had known from the first instant she saw the piece of paper, though, that they might.

"Are you hungry?" she asked.

"Starving," he said, looking as eager for the fish as Betty was for a carrot. The wonderful smells were making her stomach grumble, too.

"That's good. My mother always says that if you're ill, and you have an appetite, then it can't be too serious."

"I'll be fine in a day or two."

"A rest will do you good."

Jennsen drew her knife from its sheath at her belt. "We've never allowed anyone to stay here before. You will understand that we will be taking precautions."

She could see in his eyes that he didn't know what she was talking about, but he shrugged his understanding of her prudence.

Jennsen's knife wasn't anything like the fine weapon the soldier had been carrying. They could afford nothing like that knife. Hers had a simple handle made of antler and the blade wasn't thick, but she kept its edge razor sharp.

Jennsen used the blade to slice a shallow cut across the inside of her forearm. With a frown, Sebastian started to rise, to voice a protest. Her challenging glare stopped him cold before he was halfway up. He sank back down and watched with growing concern as she wiped the sides of the blade through the crimson beads of blood welling up from the cut. She very deliberately looked him in the eye again before turning her back on him and moving out closer to the edge of the cave where the rain dampened the ground.

With the knife wetted in blood, Jennsen first drew a large circle. Feeling Sebastian's eyes on her, she next pulled the tip of the bloody blade through the damp earth in straight lines to make a square, its comers just touching the inside of the circle. With hardly a pause, she drew a smaller circle that touched the insides of the square.

As she worked, she mummured prayers under her breath, asking the good spirits to guide her hand. It seemed the right thing to do. She knew that Sebastian could hear her soft singsong, but not make out the words. It occurred unexpectedly to her that it must be something like the voices she heard in her own head. Sometimes, when she drew the outer circle, she heard the whisper of that dead voice call her name.

Opening her eyes from the prayer, she drew an eight-pointed star, its rays piercing all the way through the inner circle, the square, and then the outer circle. Every other ray bisected a comer of the square.

The rays were said to represent the gift of the Creator, so as she drew the eight-pointed star, Jennsen always whispered a prayer of thanks for the gift of her mother.

When she finished and looked up, her mother was standing before her, as if she had risen from the shadows, or materialized from the edge of the drawing itself, to be lit by the leaping flames of the fire behind Jennsen. In the light of those flames, her mother was like a vision of some impossibly beautiful spirit.

"Do you know what this drawing represents, young man?" Jennsen's mother asked in a voice hardly more than a whisper.

Sebastian stared up at her, the way people often stared when they first saw her, and shook his head.