“All right,” I said. “To begin with, tell me what the names of these flowers are and what healing properties they have.”

We spent the afternoon walking through the shrubbery and trading information. I told her that there were substances called metals which could make better tools than the stones and flints the clan used. She explained her wildflower apothecary to me. Gradually I began to lead the conversation toward a discussion of the other clans who came to the valley and the tribes who were their enemies.

“Do all the clans have hair the color of yours?” I asked.

“No, not at all. Some have dark hair, such as your own.”

“And the color of their skin? Are they all the same as ours?”

She nodded. “In the summer sun the skin gets darker, but in the winter it lightens again.”

“Have you ever seen a man whose skin is the color of the ashes that remain when a fire burns out? A man who is almost as tall as I am, but much wider, with enormously strong arms and eyes that burn red?”

She backed away from me. “No,” she said fearfully. “And I hope I never do.”

“Have you ever heard of such a man?” I pressed. “Sometimes he is called Ahriman. Sometimes he is called the Dark One.”

Ava was clearly afraid of the very idea. “He sounds like a demon.”

“He is a man. An evil man.”

She looked at me with a new suspicion in her eyes. “A man. Just as you say you are a man.”

I let the matter drop. She did not press it. Instead, we began talking about the valley and how much the clan enjoyed spending their summers here. I casually mentioned that they could spend the whole year here, if they prepared for the winter properly. She was instantly curious, and I began to describe how to make warm winter clothing from hides and fur pelts.

She knew about that. But: “What would we eat during the time of snows? All the game animals move to the warmer places. We follow them.”

“Instead of killing them,” I explained, “you could trap some of them and keep them in fenced-off areas. Let them breed young for you, and you will have meat all year round, without moving away from this spot.”

Ava laughed. She knew a crack-brained theory when she heard one. “And what will the animals eat during the winter? The grass dies.”

“Cut the grass and grain that the animals eat during the summer, when it is high, and store it in huts during the winter to feed to the animals.” Her laughter stopped. She didn’t accept the idea; it was too new and fantastic to be swallowed at one sitting. But she accepted the possibility of thinking about it. And that was more important.

We had walked to the face of the cliffs that formed the base of the double-peaked volcano. I decided it was my turn to ask a question. “Does the mountain have a name?”

“Yes,” Ava replied, squinting up into the bright sky to scan its rugged, snow-covered peaks.

“Is the name too sacred to be spoken?”

She turned her gaze back toward me, a new respect in her eyes because I understood the concept of sanctity.

“The smoking mountain can make the ground tremble when its spirit grows angry. The elders tell us that many, many years ago, before they themselves were born, the mountain spilled fire upon the people who lived in this valley and drove them away.”

“But they came back.”

“Not until long years had passed. They feared the mountain, and they taught that fear to their children and their children’s children.”

I glanced up at the snowcapped peaks. For them first time since I had originally seen them, no smoke came from the volcano.

“It seems to be resting now.”

Ava grinned. “Yes, sometimes it rests. But it can still breathe fire when its spirit grows angry.”

“Would it make the mountain’s spirit angry tell me its name?” I asked.

Her beautiful face pulled itself into a slight frown. “Why do you want to know?”

Smiling, I replied, “Like you, I am curious. I seek answers to questions.”

She understood that, the drive to learn, to know. Ava took a step closer to me and whispered the name of the mountain:

“Ararat.”

Dal was not happy with us when Ava and I returned from our long walk. And he grew increasingly unhappy over the next few days as the two of us spent more and more time together.

At night I took Ava away from the lights of the clan’s fires — each family had its own small cooking fire in front of its hut now, instead of one single campfire. Off in the darkness I showed her the stars and began to teach her how the constellations formed a vast celestial clock and calendar.

She grasped the concept quickly, and even noted, after a few nights, that at least one of the stars seemed to have moved slightly out of place.

“That’s Mars,” I told her. “It is not a star like all the others you see. It is a world, something like our own world here, but incredibly far away.”

“It is red, like blood,” Ava murmured in the darkness.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Its soil is red sand. Even its sky is pink with reddish dust, almost the color of your hair.”

“The people there must be angry and warlike,” she said, “to have made their whole world the color of blood.”

My heart sank at the thought that I was helping to invent astrology. But I consoled myself with the notion that such ideas did not occur only once, in a single time and place. Concepts as obvious as astrology would be invented time and again, no matter how ludicrously wrong they may be.

That night we stayed up until dawn, watching the stars wheel across heaven in their majestic cosmic clockwork. And when Venus arose, the Morning Star shining as brilliantly beautiful as anything human eyes could ever see, I heard Ava’s sigh of pleasure in the predawn darkness.

I wanted to take her in my arms and kiss her. But she must have sensed what was in my mind, and she moved slightly away from me.

“I am Dal’s woman,” she whispered. “I wish it was not true, but it is.”

I wanted to tell her that I loved her, but with a shock I realized there was no word for such a concept in their language. Romance was yet to be invented. She was Dal’s woman, and women did not change mates in this early era.

We walked back to the huts and the embers of the cook fires. Dal sat on the ground in front of his hut, looking miserable, angry, worried and sleepy, all at the same time. He scrambled to his feet when he saw us, and Ava smiled at him and took his arm. They ducked through the low entrance to their hut without either of them saying a word to me.

I stood there alone for a few moments more, then turned and went off to my own dugout, which Dal had insisted the clan build for me — a good hundred yards away from the nearest hut of a clan family.

When I stepped down to the entrance and ducked through it into the shadowy interior of the single room, I immediately sensed that someone else was already inside. Dawn was just beginning to tint the eastern sky, and there were no windows in the hut — nothing but the open doorway to let in light or air. But I knew that I was not alone in the inky shadows of the dugout. I could feel a presence, dark and menacing. I could hear a slow, deep, labored breathing.

“Ahriman,” I whispered.

Something moved slightly in the darkest corner of the room. My hand went to the stone knife at my waist. A silly, useless gesture, I knew, but my hand moved of its own accord.

“You expected me to be here, didn’t you?” His harsh, tortured voice sent a chill along my spine.

Stepping to one side of the doorway, so that I would not be silhouetted against the growing light outside, I replied, “You’ve been trailing us for many weeks.”

“Yes.”

I could barely make out his form, bulking darkly in the shadows. “You plan to bring harm to these people?” I probed.

He moved slightly. “What harm can I do? I am only one man, against your entire race…”