The first time Yara said it feels like it was yesterday was on a spring morning by the river, while they were washing hides.
Aren-Kal was squatting, rubbing a strip of leather against a stone when she said it casually.
"Do you remember when we hunted that boar, the one with the broken tusk? It feels like it was yesterday."
He nodded, because yes, he remembered it as if it had happened that very moon.
But it hadn't been that moon. Eleven winters had passed.
Aren-Kal kept rubbing the hide. The sun warmed the back of his neck. The river sounded the same as always. Yara had gray hair. A lot of it. At first there had only been a few strands at her temples, and he had looked at them with curiosity, the way one looks at something that doesn't belong to you. Then there were many. Now her whole head held white threads mixed through it, like the backs of old wolves.
He still had none.
At first he paid it no mind. Men sometimes take longer to go gray. His father, they said, had kept black hair until the day he died. But his father had died young, gutted by a boar in the Moon of Fruits, when Aren-Kal was barely fifteen winters old. There was no example to compare with.
The second time was during a hunt.
Six men went out, tracking a herd of reindeer northward. Aren-Kal walked in front, as always, because he had a sharp eye and steady legs. At midday they stopped to drink at a stream, and one of the young men, Karr, his sister's son, looked at him strangely.
"Uncle," Karr said. "Do you sweat?"
Aren-Kal wiped his forehead. Of course he sweated. It was hot and they had walked far.
"I sweat," he said.
"But not much," Karr insisted. "We're dripping. You're almost dry."
The others looked. One of them, old Dor, who must have had forty winters and a face like worn leather, stepped closer and put a hand on Aren-Kal's arm. He pulled it away quickly.
"You're cold," he said.
"I've always had cold blood," Aren-Kal said, and kept walking.
But it wasn't true. Before, he had sweated. Before, he felt heat when he had to run. Before, he grew tired. Now… now he didn't know. Now he simply did things, and they were done.
They killed two reindeer that afternoon. Aren-Kal struck the first with a single throw of the spear, from a distance the others considered impossible. Karr looked at him again with those eyes. But he said nothing.
The third time was Yara again, but in another way.
Winter night. The kind of cold that freezes breath inside the hut. The children slept; they were no longer children, almost men and women now. The eldest, Arkhan, had twenty-two winters and hunted alone. The second, Sella, had given birth to a child that very moon. The little one—the one Aren-Kal had carried on his shoulders—had died of fever three winters before. Aren-Kal remembered him every day, but the memory hurt neither less nor more than the first day. It was simply there, still, like a stone in his chest.
Yara shifted beside him.
"Aren," she said softly.
"Hmm."
"Do you see me?"
Aren-Kal opened his eyes in the darkness.
"How can I see you if it's dark?"
"I don't mean now. I mean… in general. Do you see me?"
He didn't understand. He turned his head toward her. In the dimness he could barely make out her shape, the bulk of her body beneath the hides.
"I see you," he said.
"Do you see that I'm old?"
Aren-Kal was silent.
"Because I am," she continued. "My teeth are loose. My hands ache when rain is coming. I don't bleed anymore, Aren. It's been two moons since I bled. That means I won't bear children again. It means my body knows it's ending."
He wanted to say something. He found no words.
"You don't," Yara said. "You have no gray hair. Your bones don't ache. You run like when I first met you. And sometimes I look at you and think it feels like it was yesterday, but it wasn't yesterday. It was more than twenty winters ago. More than twenty, Aren. And you are the same."
Silence filled the hut. Outside, the wind whistled through the branches.
"I don't know what I am," Aren-Kal said at last.
Yara did not answer. But after a while, when he already thought she had fallen asleep, he felt her hand searching for his face in the darkness. Her rough, knotted fingers moved over his forehead, his cheeks, his beard. As if she were seeing him with her hands. As if she wanted to remember his shape.
"It's frightening," she whispered.
"I know."
"I don't mean you. I mean me. It's frightening to think that you will stay and I will go."
Aren-Kal clenched his jaw.
"You won't go."
"Everyone goes."
"Not you."
She laughed. A small laugh, without joy.
"That's what the young say. That the old don't die. And then they die."
Aren-Kal said nothing. He simply held her tightly, as if he could stop her with his arms. Yara let herself be held. But they both knew it was useless.
In the morning, when he stepped out of the hut, he found a group gathered near the great hearth. They were speaking in low voices. When they saw him, they fell silent.
Aren-Kal kept walking. He reached the circle. Arkhan was there, his eldest son, and Karr, and Dor, and others. In the center, sitting on a stone, was the old shaman. Not the one from that night, the one of the light. That one had died many winters ago. This was another, younger, though still old. His name was Ur. He had small eyes and a steady gaze.
"Aren-Kal," said Ur.
"Ur."
"Sit."
Aren-Kal sat. The others formed a circle around him. He felt their eyes on the back of his neck, on his hands, on his face.
"Tell us," Ur said. "Tell us what happened that night. The night the sky came down."
Aren-Kal took a deep breath. He had never told it completely. He had told parts to Yara, to no one else. But now he looked at the faces around him and saw fear. Fear in the eyes of his own son.
"I saw a light," he began. "It came down from the sky and rested in the plain. I went down. I touched a stone that burned cold. I saw things. I heard things. Then I woke."
"What things did you see?"
"I can't say."
"Try."
Aren-Kal closed his eyes. He searched inside. The images were there, clear, as if he had seen them yesterday. But he had no words.
"I saw the valley," he said. "But it wasn't the valley. There were great stones like mountains, but placed there by someone. There were lights that flew. There were eyes. Many eyes. They were watching me."
"And what else?"
"I heard a voice. It said things. It said… chosen. It said seed. It said look."
Ur nodded slowly.
"The old shaman—the one who died—spoke to me about you before he left," he said. "He said the spirits of the sky had marked one man. He said that man would live longer than the others. He said he would be a witness."
"A witness to what?" Aren-Kal asked.
Ur looked at him with those steady eyes.
"To everything."
A murmur passed through the circle. Aren-Kal looked at Arkhan. His son's face was tense, his fists clenched. It wasn't fear in his eyes. It was something else. Anger perhaps. Or pain.
"Father," Arkhan said. "I have twenty-two winters. You have… how many?"
Aren-Kal did not know what to answer. He calculated. When Arkhan was born he had been… eighteen? nineteen? Before that he had already lived. He had hunted. He had paired with Yara.
"Forty-something," he said. "Perhaps forty-five."
"You don't look it," said Karr. "You look twenty-something. Like me."
"It's not my fault."
"We're not saying it is," Ur said. "We're saying it's true. You do not age, Aren-Kal. You have lived more than twenty winters among us since that night, and you have not aged a single day. We see it. Your children see it. Your wife sees it."
Aren-Kal lowered his head.
"I don't know why."
"The spirits of the sky have their reasons," Ur said. "It is not for you to understand them. Only to live them."
The circle broke apart. Some left; others stayed whispering. Arkhan came to his father and sat beside him. They remained silent for a while, watching the fire.
"Will you watch me die?" Arkhan asked at last.
Aren-Kal felt a blow in his chest.
"Don't say that."
"It's true. I will grow old. You won't. You'll see me old. You'll see me dead. Then you'll see my children grow old. Then the children of my children."
"Arkhan…"
"It's not your fault," his son said, and for the first time his voice trembled. "I know that. But it hurts. It hurts to think you stay and we go."
Aren-Kal wanted to embrace him, like when he was a child. But Arkhan was a man now. Men do not embrace that way. They sat side by side, watching the fire burn down.
That night Aren-Kal dreamed of the eyes.
They were there again, watching him from everywhere. And the voice—that voice that was not a voice—said something new.
Not yet. There is still much. Keep watching.
He woke with a start. Yara slept beside him, breathing deeply, with that soft snore she had now, which she had not had before. Aren-Kal watched her for a long time. He saw the wrinkles around her eyes, the looseness of her neck, the knotted hands resting on the hides.
He thought about what Arkhan had said.
You will watch me die.
He thought about what Ur had said.
Witness to everything.
And for the first time since that night—the light, the stone that burned cold—Aren-Kal felt fear.
But not fear of dying.
Fear of the opposite.
Fear of staying.
Days passed. Moons passed. The tribe treated him the same, but not the same. There was a new distance, a respect that hurt. The children looked at him with curiosity, the way one looks at strange animals. The old looked at him with envy. The young with something close to fear.
Yara aged.
With every passing moon, Aren-Kal saw her more bent, slower, smaller. One night she sat beside the fire and watched the flames for a long time.
"Aren," she said. "I want you to know something."
"Tell me."
"I don't regret it. Pairing with you, I mean. Even if this happens. Even if you stay. I don't regret it."
His eyes grew wet, a strange thing, something that hadn't happened since he was a child.
"Neither do I," he said.
"Well," Yara said, and smiled with the few teeth she had left, "then we are at peace."
That night they slept holding each other, like at the beginning, like when everything had been simpler. And Aren-Kal thought that perhaps, if he had to be witness to everything, at least he could keep this.
The warmth of his woman. Her smell. Her voice.
But he knew it wasn't enough.
It was never enough.