Dagna Boulderback's Arc

Chapter 15 of 17

One record stood in stone. Dagna stared at it in the dim hollow. Nora's grey stone held every mark true to the cave. But the block was heavy, and it sat in one place. A rockfall could crush it. A thaw could bury it. Fire could crack it. If it broke, everything died with it. Dagna needed the knowledge in more than one stone. She turned her head toward the young man kneeling by the frozen blue block. "Mikhael," she said. "How many stones can Nora cut before the snow melts?" Mikhael looked up. He had come to her hollow uninvited, seasons ago, carrying furs so her ice would not split. He had stayed and learned the marks better than she ever cut them. "One," he said. "Maybe two. Her hands are torn. The grey stone is hard." "Then we spread it thin." Dagna's voice cracked. "One stone here. One stone far. If a peak buries one, the other lives." Nora unwrapped the fur from her bleeding knuckles. Behind her round glasses her eyes stayed steady. She had learned the marks by reasoning, not tracing. "I can cut a second," she said. "But not tonight. My hands won't hold the line straight. A crooked mark is worse than no mark." Dagna knew she was right. A wrong stroke would spread a lie into stone forever. "Then rest," she said. "But we do not keep both stones in one place. That is the mistake I nearly made." Mikhael stood. "I'll carry the finished stone. Nora carves the next here, from the cave hide. Two records. Two roofs." "Two carvers," Dagna added. "You cut too. Not from memory. From the hide." She looked at the marked hides curling in the shadowed rear, where the cold held only a while longer. "The hide decides. Always the hide." He nodded once. He wrapped the grey stone in furs, the same way he had once wrapped her sculptures. He hoisted it onto his back. It bent him low. He did not complain. Outside, a raven with white-streaked wings dropped onto a snowbank and watched. The arctic wolf lifted its head from the rear of the hollow, then settled again. Mikhael stepped past the wolf and stopped at the mouth of the hollow. "Where do I take it?" he asked. Dagna thought of the deep places where the cold never left. "North. The high hollow past the ridge. Cold that never breaks." She could not go with him. Her heart gave her one winter, maybe less. "Set it deep. Come back. Then we cut the third." Mikhael went out into the dusk with one record on his back. Nora slept by the second stone she would cut at first light. Dagna lay still and counted. One stone leaving. One stone staying. One more to come. The knowledge would not sit in a single place now. If one stone cracked, the rest would hold.