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Now, Rhane was one of the best huntresses of the clan, still fierce, still small, still doing what had to be
done. Just like me.
    ‘When are you off out, then? In the morning?’
    ‘I’ll go at dawn. It’s been good to me, this clan, this family, you. I’ll miss you all.’ I said it reluctantly. I don’t like sentiment, all those southern
poets’ ways.
    ‘I know. We’ll miss you, too.’ Rhane gave me a slanted glance. ‘It won’t be the same without you telling me what to do, old woman.’
    ‘Or without you ignoring my advice, chit of a girl.’ We laughed, and then I said goodnight.
    I didn’t sleep well. Too many feelings, whisking round the chamber like birds, and none of them settling. I was glad when the thin light started to creep through the paper pane and I could
honour my decision and get up. I wasn’t planning to take anything with me; it was a pleasure not to have to pack, like going on migration. I told myself that this was all it was: just another
migration, my fourth, although this time it was to Eresthahan, to the nowhere-land of the dead. But I’d been there before, before my birth, before the one before that.
    I did not take weapons, and in that respect it was nothing like a migration. Even when you’re in the bloodmind, it still helps to be armed. Instinct will carry you a long way, further than
claws or teeth. But this time, my death would come to meet me and take the form it was destined to take, perhaps at the mouth of visen or altru or wild mur. Or perhaps it would be the cold –
I confess, I was rather hoping for that. They say it’s a quiet death, though I’ve never been one for peace and quiet. I wasn’t afraid of pain, but I didn’t court it, either.
I’d no wish to go down fighting. Who are you proving yourself to? It’s your death; no one will know how you died, nor care. Perhaps it’s part of the men’s mysteries, though,
some old tradition. Perhaps you’re supposed to end up in some particularly appealing part of Eresthahan, with dancing girls and a lot of drink. I’d just be happy when it was over and
done with, but I admit, too, that part of me was looking forward to the chance for this one last trip. I hadn’t been out in the winter world for years – it hadn’t been my time to
die, before, and why court lung fever or worse? But now the time had finally come, no more excuses. I was off.
    The fire had burned down in the grate overnight and the hall was cold, smelling of ashes. I did not look back. I closed the doors behind me, with the shock of morning air in my lungs and the
scent of blood coming from the murs’ stable. They’d brought the mur off the mountain pastures only a week ago, and already the snow had crept halfway down the slopes. The mountains
blazed in the new light, all glacier gold. I walked slowly to the end of the clan house and the moat twitched and tingled to let me through. I wonder sometimes whether the moats know when we are
leaving for the last time, earth-consciousness, whether in their own way they bid farewell. But it’s probably just a fancy, nothing more. I stepped over the invisible line of the moat and
felt the world shift a little. Then on, across the bridge that crosses the roaring waters of the Sarn, down the stepped streets to the town wall, with the morning town silent around me. We rise
late in winter, go to bed early, are glad of the rest.
    The walls, and then the town gates. I pushed the gates open, felt again that twitch and snap, of the town moat this time. Then I was pushing the gates shut behind me and walking up through the
thorn path that leads to the pastures, the hunting grounds. By now, the golden light had spread to the bottom of the snowfield, though the narrow valley and the torrent were still in shadow.
    I knew where I was going. Some people don’t. They just wander about, following this line or that line, listening to the energies and patterns below the earth just as they’ve always
done,