'I am always careful. Akar will come with me.' He took a lock of her hair in his fingers, and would have kissed her if he knew how. He whistled for the wolf and started down. 'Kalus?' He turned. 'Won't you need an ax to cut the wood?' He could not hide his smile in answering. 'I don't have to cut it. I steal it from the beaver.' The two hunters met on the broader ledge and descended into the shadows of the gorge, leaving the girl with only the large rabbit pelt and Kalus' jagged knife, in truth not much improved from the museum relics she had studied as a child. She moved to a small, relatively smooth stretch of stone just inside the entrance, and laid out the fur upon it. She sat down and tried to work, but after several tentative starts had only succeeded in shredding one corner and cutting her finger on the knife. There seemed no safe way to grasp it, no soft or unsharpened place anywhere on it. 'Oh, this will never work.' She sat there on the stony ground, angry and frustrated, sucking her finger and cursing this backward, half-animal world. But then an idea came to her. She tried to suppress it, but again the strange and uncharacteristic stubbornness crept over her. She moved to the dark fissure of the shaft and looked down, deliberating. After several minutes of internal bickering, she reached her legs out over the side, lowered herself to the first shelf, and began to descend. * Kalus and the wolf returned late in the afternoon. Sylviana had not been idle. As the man-child laid five straight and sturdy poles on the floor by his accustomed sleeping place, he found there waiting for him four long and curving strands, spiral cut from the skin to assure greatest length and thickness. The girl returned his questioning gaze, held up a long hunting knife it its leather sheath. 'If you can steal a sword, I can at least take a few things to make my life more bearable.' He looked past her on the floor to see one of the furs from her former bed, folded over and half filled with treasures she thought to keep. He asked to see the knife. He withdrew it from its sheath and gazed at it admiringly, not at all upset. Instead he nodded his approval. 'You have done well. He said we could take one other weapon, and I see that you have chosen the best.' He gave it back to her. 'What are the other things? Will he miss them?' 'I don't think so. It's just a few books, some bowls, and a flask for carrying water. And this.' She pulled the fur closer, fished around inside it for a moment, drew out a small whet stone. 'It's for sharpening steel.' Again he smiled. 'You have done very well. I will make a hunter of you yet.' She put out her arms to embrace the wolf, who pulled away, though gently. Akar went again to the entrance. 'How did it go with you?' she asked Kalus.