Into fire.

I stopped suddenly, dazed. I looked down and saw a darkened place on the ground. It was an abandoned firepit, and the ashes were full of half-burned firestones. Trembling in every part of me, I knelt and pushed my hands into the ash, and lifted out the stones. They still contained unreleased fire and they hummed in my hands, powerfully.

Laughing, I scooped up handfuls of ash and firestones, and threw them high into the air. I jumped up and did a dance all around the rocks, and sang, and blew kisses to paradise. As in a dream I went back and got my boots, and climbed the ridge again.

Above the town I stopped, turned around, and looked back down the valley. I saw the rushing, bubbling stream, the barren, stony earth, the fierce tussock grasses bending in the wind – and I marvelled that in all that rocky valley, in all that windswept, rugged ground, I had found a tiny pit of firestones. And more than found: I had been led. Drawn. I dared not use that other word. But it blazed along the edges of my mind, and filled me with bewilderment and fear, and the highest ecstasy that I had ever known.

Back at the house, my life carried on as usual. I was shunned and ignored, and left to occupy myself. The women made things as difficult as possible for me: they gave me no privacy, no room around their fire at night so I could cook my food, and banned me from their vegetable gardens. So during the day I lived with the Quelled, and I took to them the rooks and ravens Kallai caught, and we ate well there. I no longer made a secret of my visits to them.

Then one day I lost my woman-stone. I did not know until that night that it was lost. I was spreading out my sleeping mat and furs beside the fire, and I felt in my pocket for my woman-stone, because I always slept with it in my hand. The woman-stone was gone. I was frantic, looking for it. I emptied my bag of belongings all over the floor, searching through clay bowls, cups and bone spoons. I shook out my creamy underdresses and my bright outer garments, and felt inside the hoods of my fur cloaks. I shook my bag, my sleeping furs, and even looked inside my spare boots. But I did not find the woman-stone.

The house-owner’s wife watched as I made chaos all across her floor. In the end I stared at her helplessly, and asked, “Woman, have you seen my firestone?”

She looked disapprovingly at my mess. She was about to go upstairs to bed, and was in no mood for trouble. “If I find rubbish lying around, harsha, I burn it. Especially, I burn firestones.”

“You know the one I mean, woman. My special stone. Please. It’s the only thing I own.”

“Then you should look after it.” She turned and went upstairs, leaving me distraught. I looked through all my things again, packed them away, and went to bed. But I knew where the firestone had to be: in the valley, lost the last time I went hunting. And I knew a way it could be found.