Van Meets Tohma and Finds Tsupi

Van Meets Tohma and Finds Tsupi marks a turn from wary solitude toward companionship: an appeal for help brings Van to an injured northern youth, and the search for a missing pyuika leads to a new bond and a proposed journey into Oki life. The episode also makes an animal’s behavior—rather than a human call—the key to the reunion, while Tsupi’s possible pregnancy gives Van’s practical knowledge a future purpose.

The Call in the Woods

Van first hears a faint voice from beyond the trees asking whether anyone is there. The speaker uses Aquafaese, not Zolian, and has the northern lilt of the border clans. Van initially takes that sound for a sign that one of his own comrades may be nearby, but the voice soon turns from a question to an urgent plea: the caller has twisted his leg and cannot walk.

The appeal does not immediately dissolve Van’s suspicion. He knows that a supposed injury in the woods could be a trap set by thieves, and he would normally keep moving rather than risk an ambush. Yet he becomes certain, for reasons he cannot explain, that the person is alone and only a youth. A mental image associated with the smell of smoke seems to him almost like something witnessed, and he follows that intuition toward a hollow among moss-covered rocks.

Tohma and the Missing Pyuika

Under a huge spruce, three rocks shelter the hollow where the young man sits with his back against one of them and his injured leg stretched forward. He is pale and close to fainting from exhaustion. Beside him stands a reindeer cart of the kind used by northern Aquafa’s nomads, but the reindeer that should be harnessed to it is missing. The youth is roasting meat over a campfire and wears reindeer hides; his narrow eyes and flat nose strike Van as Zolian, leaving Van unsure how to place his mixed features.

The missing animal is Tsupi, the youth’s pyuika. The circumstances of her disappearance make Tohma dependent on help: injured, he cannot readily search for her or travel alone. Van, meanwhile, needs a way to enter the local hunting economy. He explains that he can live by hunting with his bow but cannot return to his homeland; he is heading to Kazan in search of work and hopes a fur trader there can explain the area’s hunting rights and regulations. Such traders, he observes, tend to guard their territory and may not welcome a stranger.

A Bargain Becomes a Shared Journey

Van asks whether Tohma will introduce him to a fur trader in Kazan if he brings Tsupi back. The request gives the search a practical exchange, but Van reads Tohma’s hesitation as a sign of responsibility rather than bad faith: the young man is considering the risk of introducing an unknown hunter to an important customer of reindeer herders. After finishing his portion of boar, Van plants his makeshift roasting stick in the ground, brushes off his knees, and rises to search.

Before leaving, he asks Tohma to look after the little one. Then he draws out the lead line from beneath the cart and tells Tohma he can decide about the introduction on the way: Van was heading to Kazan anyway, and Tohma cannot make the journey alone with his leg. The proposal changes their arrangement from strangers sharing shelter into prospective travel companions. The chapter transition, from “Pyuika in the Mist” to “Rite of Love,” carries their immediate problem into the encounter that will clarify Tsupi’s situation.

Finding Tsupi and Reading the Herd

Van returns leading Tsupi, to Tohma’s astonishment. The animal nuzzles Van’s armpit as he strokes her nose and tethers her in the trees’ shadow. Van explains that a clucking sound can bring a pyuika to a person; Tohma had relied on calling Tsupi by name, following the advice of the Okuba who sold her. The difference is small but consequential: Van’s attention to the animal’s response succeeds where the expected call did not.

Van has also witnessed two bulls fighting for dominance, one forcing the other’s head down and finally driving it off. The victor does not pursue the loser; after the weaker bull retreats limping, the victorious bull and the pyuika mate in the late-afternoon light. This observation informs Van’s belief that Tsupi may be carrying a calf. Tohma recognizes the stakes at once: none of his people has seen a pyuika give birth, and Van has said that a mating with an elk makes the birth more difficult.

An Invitation into the Oki Clan

Because Tsupi may need special care, Tohma asks Van to live with his people and help ensure that she delivers safely. He pleads for Van’s help, saying that they cannot afford to lose Tsupi, and offers to persuade his father and the others. In making the request, he gives his full name and affiliation: Tohma yu Oki, Tohma of the Oki clan. Van accepts Tohma’s hand and gives his own name in return.

The reunion therefore resolves more than the immediate absence of the pyuika. It gives the injured Tohma a companion for the road to Kazan, offers Van a possible opening into the region’s hunting networks, and creates a reason for him to enter Oki society. Tsupi’s possible pregnancy makes the invitation urgent, while the exchange of names turns a practical rescue into the beginning of a relationship. The scene ends with rain-soaked trees lit by shafts of late-afternoon sun, as Van recalls a stream in his homeland and a leaf swept away by rushing water—a return of memory at the moment his path begins to join Tohma’s.