The Present by Nancy Springer Page A

brown eggs nestled, and wildflower-hued clusters that swirled apart and together as people greeted one another.
    “Grandmother is here already!” Saffron could tell, by the looms standing outside distant tents, that her father’s mother’s clan had arrived.
    “So I see.” But Father did not smile, only jerked his chin at the treacherous path winding steeply downward. “It will be dark soon. Follow me and be careful.”
    What was the matter with him? If I had a mother who was yet alive, I would be rife with joy to see her again, Saffron thought, but she said nothing. Her father, named Auroch after the wild bulls of the mountains, had made his mark in his wife’s clan, the Clayglazers, by sheerest stubbornness. When he wore a hard face, as he did now, it was wiser not to speak. Men! So loathe to show what they are feeling. Rolling her eyes only a little, Saffron shouldered her pack and trailed after Auroch. But surely his mask will crack when he sees his mother again.
    Only a brief time later she would have taken back the wish if she could have.
    Only a brief time after they descended the valley wall to greet and be greeted by the others, Saffron followed Auroch to the Loomcloth encampment.
    In front of the largest, most elaborately woven tent, in waning daylight the matriarch hunched amid her own encircling skirts—lavender, leaf green, dusky blue—like a turtle in its shell not moving as the newcomers stood before her.
    “Mother,” Auroch said, kneeling, ducking his tall head to look into her face.
    A diminished face, Saffron saw with an unexpected ache beginning to clot in her heart; Grandmother’s was a face shirred tight and small. Into their orbs of bone her eyes seemed to have withdrawn like shy glistening fish into caves.
    “Mother,” Auroch repeated, touching her crinkled cheek to coax her gaze toward him.
    Saffron saw how all in a long-awaited moment her father’s mother grew aware of him, how her turtle head tried to lift, how her face creased all its wrinkles into the widest, most joyous of smiles. Her trembling, knotted hands faltered toward him.
    “Greetings, my mother,” Auroch said, and yes, Saffron knew by his voice how his mask had cracked—
    “Leon, my brother!” Quavering, the matriarch yet spoke all too clearly. “Dear Leon, my great black-maned lion of a brother, where have you been for so long?” Her skewed hand grasped Auroch’s arm.
    He stiffened under her touch. “No, Mother, it is I, your son, Auroch.”
    But she seemed not to hear him. With her shrunken eyes alight she teased, “Have you yet succeeded in taming the trout-speckled gray horse, Leon?”
    “I am your son, Auroch.” But father’s voice had gone soft and flat like trampled clay.
    Scarcely able to take in what was happening, Saffron had not noticed others gathering until a woman spoke. “There is nothing you can do, Auroch. Mother lives backward in time now, toward the beginning and the end.”
    “Roe!” Auroch turned away from his mother. As her father stood up and went to embrace his sister, Saffron hurried to kneel in his place before the matriarch. I am indeed foolish to have thought such ancient hands could yet spin thread. But still… Some invisible strangler seemed to squeeze her throat so that she spoke with difficulty. “Grandmother, look what I have brought you.” She offered the spindle whorl on both outstretched hands.
    Onlookers of many different clans murmured in admiration of the red clay circle with its decoration limned in yellow and glazed blue. But Saffron did not look to them, only to her grandmother.
    With her soft face pleated in pleasure, the ancient woman studied the spindle whorl. “Sweet little Ilex, how did you learn to make such a pretty thing?”
    Ilex?
    Saffron felt jagged stone take form inside her chest. She could barely speak. “Who is Ilex?”
    “My dear little sister,” Grandmother said, although not in answer, “you are so good to me.” Again Grandmother’s