When I came to in the cave, they washed my wounds and dripped water into my mouth from a rag. They gave me small pieces of dried meat and berries to chew. ‘Are you one of us?’ they asked again, and I could only grunt in reply. A small sound, as easily taken as assent as denial.

In the weeks of my recovery, all whom I met asked me the same question. And the next time we met, and the next. At first I thought it a form of greeting, but I came to see that it was never a question they asked each other. It did not seem to matter how I answered. Each response was met with the same silence, the same flicker of something that might have been suspicion or might have been puzzlement, or even amusement.

Perhaps because I wanted to prove something to myself, or to them, or perhaps because I did not want to die alone wandering the trackless wilderness, I stayed with them. Huddled together with them in the dark of the long winters, mingling the warmth of my body with theirs, and basked with them in the weak sun of summer. I mastered the strange inflections of their vowels, became expert at trapping the large rodents that were their main source of meat. I wore the same clothing they did, made of rodent skins and coarse cloth woven from the bark of the thorn trees. I took myself a mate.

And still they asked me, ‘Are you one us?’ And still there was no answer I could give that seemed to satisfy them. In time, I ceased to wonder if they would stop.

Then one spring day, as dusk was leaching the last traces of warmth from the air, I saw the figure of a stranger staggering through the thorn trees toward the camp. I ran to him, catching him as he fell. His limbs were torn and bleeding, his clothing in tatters. His body was gaunt and he was shivering. He looked up at me, his eyes unable to focus on my face. As I held him, I asked him, ‘Are you one of us?’ Then threading my arm under his shoulders, I helped him to the cave.