I took a slow, calming breath and tried to speak in the somber manner they would expect of a demigod.

“I grow weary of solitude,” I said. “I wish to be among you for a while.”

That sent a murmur through them. Dal got to his feet and stood slightly behind Ava.

“I will teach the ways of hunting that I use. I will show you how to catch more game than you ever thought possible.”

They remained unmoving, Dal and Ava standing, facing me, the rest of them still sitting in a semicircle around the crackling, hissing fire. I could see the conflict warring in their grimy faces. They were scared half out of their wits by me. Yet, to be able to hunt down animals like that! It was a tempting offer. Which would it be, their fear or their bellies?

Ava stepped closer to me and studied my face in the dancing firelight. I suppose I was none too clean myself, shaggy and unkempt.

“Are you a man or a spirit?” she asked boldly.

She was as beautiful as I remembered her. Tall and slender, almost my own height, taller than most of the men of the clan. Yet her strong, lithe body was completely female; the skins she wore could not hide that. Her bare arms and legs were dirty, scratched here and there. A scab covered one knee. Her matted filthy hair was reddish, like the others, instead of the darker tones I remembered. But she was the same woman — beautiful, intelligent, courageous — the woman I loved.

I made myself smile. “A man,” I answered. “I am only a man.”

Dal moved from behind Ava to examine me more closely. There were no weapons in his hands, but he was clearly being protective of her.

“You look like a man,” he said. “Yet…”

“I am a man.”

“But you do things that no man can do.”

“I will teach you how to do them.”

Ava asked, “What clan were you born to, if you are a man?”

“My clan lives far from here. I have traveled for a long, long time.”

“Can everyone in your clan hunt the way you do?”

“Some can,” I said. “Some hunt better than I.”

For the first time, a smile curled her lips. “They must be very fat, then.”

I laughed. “Some of them are.”

“Why are you alone?” Dal asked, still suspicious. “Why have you come to us?”

“My clan is far away, and I have been separated from it for a long time. I was sent here to help you, to show you how to hunt and to protect you from your enemies. I have been alone for more days than any of you can count, and I am weary of loneliness. You are the clan that I have sought. You are the people I wish to be with.”

As I spoke the words, I realized the truth that lay in them. I had been alone all my life, except for those few brief months with Agla, so far in the future of this time.

“It is not good for a man to be alone,” said Ava, with surprising warmth and understanding in her voice. “Even the mightiest hunter needs a clan and a family.”

Like all humans facing a difficult decision, they finally settled on a compromise. Dal spoke earnestly with the two elders of the clan, then with all the adults, male and female. They agreed to let me join them and show them my tricks of hunting. But they insisted that I had to sleep by myself, away from their campfire. Many of them were not convinced that I was not some form of a supernatural being, and they wanted to take as few chances with me as possible.

I accepted their decision. I had to. No one brought up the question of what to do about me after I had shown them all my techniques of hunting. These people did not think much about their future; they lived in the present, like all animals, and only dimly perceived that tomorrow might be different from yesterday.

I was content with their decision, for the time being. It fulfilled Ormazd’s command. And it brought me closer to Ava.

Dal and Ava stayed close to me at all times as the clan continued its migration across the green, flowering land.

Dal was a good leader, who took his responsibilities seriously. Nearly as tall as I, although much slimmer, he was well-muscled and had keen, alert eyes. He watched me carefully every minute of the day. Dal had no fear that I might be a spirit who posed a supernatural threat to the clan. His worries were very practical and matter-of-fact. He feared that I might be a spy from another clan, an infiltrator who would somehow lead the clan into an ambush.

At first I didn’t realize this. But after a few days of his suspicious, wary watch over me, I began to piece it together. At night, when the elders told their tales around the campfire, I heard enough singing over blood and battle to realize that even in this demi-Eden, where human clans were so thinly spread that contact between them was rare, war and killing were still common enough, and still glorified.

Apparently they met other clans on these migration routes, and when they did they generally battled over control of the hunting grounds. Although to me it seemed that the territory was teeming with game, to these nomadic hunters, territorial rights were vital to their survival. It took many square miles of ground to provide enough game to feed even the smallest of clans, because they depended on hunting for most of their nourishment. And the hunting was never good enough to support them very well.

From what I heard from Dal and the others, several clans that were related by marriages generally lived in the same area during the summer. We were heading for the summer camping grounds now, up in the hills that lay close to the big double-peaked volcano that dominated the landscape. The clans would spend the summer together, close enough to each other for regular visits, courting, marriages, and exchange of stories and information. In the autumn they would break up and go their separate ways toward their winter campsites, far to the south.

Ava had her suspicions about me, also. But her fears all centered on the supernatural. She was the clan’s shaman, a combination of herbal physician, priestess, psychologist, and advisor to Dal, the clan’s leader. It almost amused me to realize how early in human history the roles of priest, doctor, and power-behind-the-throne had come together.

She walked beside me nearly every day, but her interest in me seemed purely professional. She wanted to make certain that if I did turn out to be a demon, she would know about it and be able to do something about it before I could hurt the clan. She questioned me endlessly about where I came from and what my clan was like. I didn’t mind; I was happy to be with her, even though I knew that each night, when I had to move far from the campfire, she bedded down with Dal.

I had expected that the clan’s shaman, or witchdoctor, would have been an old woman, a crone who had either outlived her mate or never attracted one. It surprised me, at first, that someone as young as Ava would fill the role while she was mated to Dal. Then I realized that there were no old women in the clan. No woman over thirty or so, as far as I could see. The two elders, both men, could hardly have been much more than forty; their shaggy beards were just starting to turn gray. But there were no gray-haired women in the Goat Clan. And of the eight children, only three were girls, one of them an infant still being carried on her mother’s back. I asked Ava what happened to women as they grew older. “They die,” she said calmly. “Their spirits leave their bodies.”

“How do they die?” I asked.

She shrugged her slim shoulders. “Many times they die in childbirth, or soon afterward. Some become too sick or weak to keep up with the clan as we march.”

“And you leave them?”

Her gray eyes flashed at me. “Of course not! We let out their blood so that their spirits can remain with us. We would not let the spirit of one of our people roam the world all alone.”