I dipped the paddle in the water. My first stroke was shallow.

“Is that the best you can do?”

“Give me time,” I said. “I have not done this for many years, and I will not remember how to do it if you make me uneasy.”

He made a barking noise. “All right.”

The canoe moved out into the river. I glanced back once and saw Tanajin standing on the shore: a dark figure, motionless. Her tent was behind her. Smoke rose from her fire. It was still thick and dark.

“Don’t look back,” said Ulzai.

I turned my head and concentrated on paddling.

After a while Ulzai said, “You are beginning to falter. Give the paddle to the man without hair. I’ll watch him and tell him what he’s doing wrong. You watch the river for logs.”

Derek took the paddle. I rubbed my injured shoulder and looked around.

We were in the main channel: a broad expanse of water, empty except for an occasional bit of floating debris—a branch, a leaf, a mat of vegetation, a tree.

On my left was the eastern shore, covered with forest. The valley wall rose in the distance. It had not changed: a row of bluffs, made of soft rock and deeply eroded, pale yellow in the sunlight.

On my right were islands and sandbars and patches of marsh. Most of the islands were covered with trees. I couldn’t make out the shoreline. There was no neat line between solid ground and water, no way to tell a large island from the riverbank.

Beyond the marsh and forest rose another line of cliffs, marking the western side of the valley. A lot of water must have run through here at some time in the past. Was this evidence for glaciation? A question for the planetologists. I wondered if they’d ever get down here, ever get to see this valley.

Midway through the afternoon Nia opened the food sack and handed out pieces of bread. We drank sour beer.

“There’s our storm,” Derek said.

I looked west. Clouds billowed above the cliffs: cumulonimbus, tall and grayish white. Other clouds—high and thin—extended to the middle of the sky. The sun shone through them, its brilliance barely dimmed.

Ulzai said, “You take the paddle back, o hairless woman. We are going to need whatever skill you have.”

I followed orders. A wind began to blow, and the river grew choppy. Ulzai said, “Turn in.”

“Where?” I asked.

“The island ahead. The big one.”

We paddled toward it. Driftwood was piled on the upriver side: gray branches and roots, trunks worn smooth by water. We skirted the driftwood and came to shore on a little sandy beach. I climbed out. There was a low rumble of thunder in the west.

“Get the boat up on land,” said Ulzai.

We unloaded the boat and pulled it out of the water, then carried it to the edge of the forest.

By this time the sky was dark. Ulzai made the gesture that meant “come along.” We gathered our supplies and followed him into the forest. A path wound among the trees. Above us foliage rustled in the wind. The air smelled of damp earth and the approaching rain.

We reached a clearing. There was a pool in the middle, three meters across, clear and shallow. I could see leaves on the bottom. Last year’s, maybe. They were dull yellow and gray. A dark blue mossy plant grew at the edges of the pool, and orange bugs skittered over the surface.

At the edge of the clearing was an awning, large and made of leather, stretched between four trees. All the debris of the forest floor had been cleared out from under it, and a pile of driftwood lay in the middle of the bare ground.

“That is my home,” Ulzai said.

“Spartan,” said Derek in English.

There was a crack of thunder. I jumped. Raindrops splattered down through the forest canopy.

Ulzai made a gesture.

We crowded under the awning, and the rain began in earnest. It drummed on the awning, dripped off the edges of the leather and fell into the clearing like—what? A gray curtain. A mountain torrent. I huddled, my arms around my knees. Wind blew water in on me. Lightning flashed. There was more thunder.

“This won’t last,” said Derek.

“I hope not,” I said.

Again lightning. Again thunder. There was no pause between them. The lightning was close. I shivered, not from fear. The air was cold, and I was getting wet. Nia was closer to the edge of the awning than I was. Already her tunic clung to her body. Her fur was matted down, and she had a look of grim endurance.

“There has been a lot of rain this summer,” the oracle said. “I wonder who is responsible.”

Ulzai said, “One thing I have learned since I came up the river. The weather here is never reliable. To me it looks as if there are a lot of different spirits who take a hand in making the weather. They don’t get along. They refuse to work together, and that explains why there are so many kinds of weather here and why the weather is always changing.”

I looked at Nia. She was frowning. “You grew up on the plain, Nia. Is he right about the weather?”

“I do not know what causes the weather here, but in the country of my people—” She paused.

Hail fell with the rain. The hailstones bounced and rolled. A few ended under the awning. They were the size of gumballs.

“Everything comes from the Mother of Mothers,” Nia said. “All the spirits are her children, and she has mated with a lot of them. This kind of behavior would be absolutely wrong, if people did it. If a man encounters his mother in the time for mating, they ride away from each other as fast as possible. But spirits are different. And who else did she have to mate with, the Great One? Every spirit came out of her body.” Nia wiped the fur on her forehead, getting rid of some of the water.

“She mated with the Spirit of the Sky. They had four children in one birth. All were daughters. Each was a different color. When they grew up, they moved away from their mother and became the four directions. The pale yellow daughter settled in the east. The dark orange daughter settled in the west. The black daughter became the north. The last daughter was blue-green like her father. She became the south.”

“This is a story I’ve never heard,” Ulzai said.

The oracle made the gesture of agreement.

The hail piled up, turning the ground white. Nia went on.

“The Spirit of the Sky visited each daughter in turn, and each of the women gave birth to a son. They were the four winds. They grew up to be fierce and quarrelsome. They all laid claim to the land between the four directions. None would back down. They fought for the land, never ceasing, and life became impossible for everyone. Even the demons began to complain. They lived underground, but they liked to come out from time to time and cause trouble. How could they do it now? They had no idea what they’d find. A flood to put out their fires. A deep snow in the middle of summer. Hail like this or a heavy rain.

“At last the Mother of Mothers took a hand. She called the four cousins. They came and stood around her. That must have been a sight! Each one was a different color, and each one was as tall as a thundercloud. The wind from the east was yellow like his mother. The wind from the west was orange-red like fire. The wind from the south was the color of the sky, and the wind from the north was iron-black.

“They towered over their grandmother and glared at one another.

“ ‘You naughty boys,’ she said. ‘Why can’t you stop fighting?’

“The north wind answered her. His voice was deep and rumbling. The breath that came from his mouth was cold. ‘We are all big men. Not one of us is willing to back down. How can we let another man have the land in the middle? Each one of us wants the women. Each one of us wants the animals.’

“ ‘Look around!’ said the Mother of Mothers. ‘You have destroyed everything that you have laid claim to. Your floods have washed away the villages. Your sudden frosts have killed the vegetation. The animals have fled. The demons are talking about leaving. What is left that is worth fighting over?’