“How can you know this, Daughter?”

“I know them better than you do! I have lived among them. I bore a child to one of them.” She looked defiantly at Feather Cloak. “They are not like us. They will never make peace with us. My son was raised as an outcast among them, and even so they seduced him to their ways.”

“Better to have raised him in our ways,” said Eldest Uncle, “instead of abandoning him there.”

“So you would say! But it was decided to try the course of appeasement by birthing a child who would mix their blood and ours. That plan has failed!”

“Has it?”

“Do you believe otherwise? How can you know? You have not walked on Earth since the old days, and the old days are forgotten by humankind. They recall us only in stories, as an ancient enemy long banished and defeated. Or is it the memory of the Bright One that blinds you, so that you do not wish to war against them?”

“It is ill mannered for a daughter to speak so disrespectfully to her own sire,” commented Feather Cloak. “Your words may carry truth, but your behavior gives us cause to doubt you.”

“You are fools!” The Impatient One snapped her fingers, and one of the young warriors, loitering by the passageway that led out of the cavern, came to attention. “Still, it is possible—-just possible—if they are not dead but only caught between the worlds. …” She grinned, leaped up the steps, and vanished into the darkness, the young man at her heels.

“Who is dead?” asked White Feather.

“We are caught between the worlds,” said the elderly woman known as Green Skirt. “What mischief is she up to?”

“She’ll try to get pregnant again,” said White Feather. “She’ll want the Eagle Seat. She’ll wrest it from you, if she can.”

Feather Cloak had weathered many trials in her life. They all had, who lived in exile. She smiled, feeling the familiar tug of weariness at her heart, leavened only by a memory of laughter she had once shared with The Impatient One when they were girls together. “In the old days,” she said as the last of her council gathered around her, “we did not acclaim a leader solely on her fertility. It is a shame it has come to this.” She patted her belly. Muscles tightened under her hand. The skin rippled as the child within rolled like one of the fabled merfolk underwater.

“How has the world changed?” she asked the others, marking each one with her gaze: Eldest Uncle, Green Skirt, the old warrior Skull Earrings, and White Feather, who would act as midwife. These were the ones she trusted most because they were honest, even and particularly when they did not agree. They were her spring, winter, autumn, and summer. “We do not know what we will find when we return to Earth, for none among us has walked in the other land as it is now. None except The Impatient One.”