Children of the Dawn (11 page)

“Are those women being punished for wrongdoing?”

“No.”

“Why do they have to sleep on bare ground out in the open, when the rest sleep inside the cave? They do the work of others.
They are the only ones who tend the fire. I’ve seen Tlikit women yell at them, and even hit them, yet they don’t fight back.”

Tor had explained what it meant to be a slave. Even though he’d told her before, to actually
see
it shocked Ashan. It had never occurred to her to make people work, to beat them, force them… well, as Moonkeeper, yes, but
that would only be for the good of the tribe. Ashan thought the Tlikit acted out of laziness and meanness.

Tor had been surprised to find the Forest Women living in Teahra Village. Long ago, while searching for Ashan and Kai El,
he had come upon them, questioned them, then left them unharmed. Their home was far away in the mountains near the Hidden
Cave of Ehr. But now, somehow, the Tlikit people had the women, and forced them to work. They ground food for everyone; made
plant parts ready for weaving; hauled water; kept the village fire day and night, so the Tlikit never had to wait, or start
it themselves, which wasn’t easy, since they used firesticks instead of sparkstones. The Forest Women worked wood and stone
into whatever was needed, and did anything else they were told to do.

“They aren’t tied up,” Ashan had blurted. “Why don’t they just go home?”

But even as she’d said it, she knew they couldn’t, unless they were willing to leave their little ones. The slavewomen would
forever be tormented outsiders, but the Tlikit had accepted their little ones as their own. Five of them, from two to eight
summers in age, slept in the cave, were mothered by Tlikit women, and played with Tlikit little ones as equals.

“It makes no sense,” Ashan had said. “Why do they not make the little ones slaves too? They could work. Look at what they
did to Elia, and he was one of their own.”

“It makes perfect sense, if you’re a Tlikit,” Tor had said. “The Forest Children will grow up to be mates of new blood for
Tlikit children. That’s more important to them than a few more slaves.”

“These drylanders seem to be very selfish creatures.”

“It’s because of where they came from. Their homeland was a cruel place. Think of it this way: The Shahala are like a mountain
lion who kills an elk, eats all it wants, and is happy to leave the scraps for whatever hungry creature comes along. The mountain
lion has no reason to be selfish. Now think of the vultures who gather for the meager remains. Those vultures squawk and beat
each other with their wings.”

“I see what you mean, Tor, but these are
people
we’re talking about, not some old piece of meat.”

“I know. The problem of the Tlikit tribe was far more important than you understand. Until we came, they needed new blood
more than anything. They couldn’t mate among themselves without horrible consequences. They were a dying tribe that could
not save itself.”

When he made her look at it this way, she understood—there was
nothing
Ashan wouldn’t do to save the Shahala tribe. But understanding didn’t mean she could allow it to continue.

When her people asked about the slaves, Ashan told them to be patient. She would deal with it when she was ready. She wanted
to understand everything before deciding what to do. So far, one thing she knew was that the Tlikit had
always
kept slaves, if they could get them. They said it was a right given by their gods.

Mani adjusted Yayla’s cradleboard for the path of the sun.

“Have you seen the sadness on their faces when they look at their little ones?” she asked.

Ashan nodded. “It grabs my heart. Losing their children must be the worst. They’re not really
lost,
like drowned in the river, or stolen by savages. But they might as well be. The mothers have no time for them in the day,
and they can’t even hold them at night.”

“These Tlikit are so different,” Mani said. “I’ll never get used to them. Remember when Deyon brought his Outsider to Anutash?
We washed and dressed her? Named her Kalatash, New Woman? We made her our sister. And so the Tlikit are with us, like they
want to be our sisters. Then how can they be so cruel to those poor women?”

“I don’t know. But it’s wrong. I must stop it, somehow.”

“I’m glad it’s you who are Moonkeeper,” Mani said, not for the first time. “Spirits will show you what to do, Ashan. They
always do.”

The women were quiet for a while.

Mani said, “This day is too nice to waste worrying about other people. You should go to that special place of yours and let
the sun work magic on you.”

It sounded wonderful to Ashan. She took leather-working tools and the hide that Mani had given to her last moon, and climbed
the cliffs behind the village. She reached the sitting stone that she thought of as her friend with a view, and settled into
the curve that fit her backside.

Takoma,
she thought in Shahala, meaning “where spirit lines cross.”
Lu It,
she thought in Tlikit, meaning “sacred place.” It no longer surprised her when thoughts came with two names.

From her sitting rock on the high cliff, the Moonkeeper looked down on Teahra Village. She smiled, remembering the first time
she’d seen it. She had thought,
That can’t be a village
—
there are no huts.
With the work of strong Shahala warriors, Teahra looked like a
real
village now, with several huts finished, and others on the way.

The Moonkeeper’s hut sat in the center. Sleeping warm and dry and having privacy made Ashan happy. When she lived under the
crude shelter against the cliffs, people could
see if she was busy or not, and come to her anytime they wanted. Now they had to ask permission to enter. And if she made
some small lovemaking noise, people wouldn’t hear and think she was speaking with spirits in the dark.

Today, Teahra Village was alive with people enjoying the mild midwinter air. Women were doing their work. Men rested or talked.
Boys and girls played a rough but friendly game, kicking a pouch full of pebbles, and keeping it out of the water. Faint shouts
of fun in two languages reached Ashan.

Little ones,
she thought.
I love them. The first to learn each other’s words. Even before they learned words, they understood play. A good sign for
the future.

A faint greenish yellow color in the air—the color of discontent—drew Ashan’s eyes to the far end of the village, where a
small group sat far enough away not to be heard by others. The Tlikit woman who’d like to be chief was talking earnestly,
gesturing with a finger pointed at the village, pounding her palm with her fist. The others were nodding their heads at whatever
she was saying.

Ashan had a feeling that they were plotting against the Shahala. But what could they hope to do? Most of their people were
accepting, or at least going along with, Shahala ways—except for the matter of the slaves, and Ashan hadn’t yet confronted
them about that.

Was Tsilka just a joke to be laughed at, as she and Mani had done? Or was she like a sickness left untreated by a busy shaman
that grew ever more virulent until it was out of control and the victim died?

Ashan wanted to lead without fear or force. She wanted to leave magic in the past.
Still,
she thought,
magic might prove to be the only way to control the woman.

The Moonkeeper turned her gaze to the Great River of Tor’s dreams. Chiawana, who could wear many colors, had today chosen
deep blue flashed with silver. Ashan admired the magnificent river, then looked to the sere hills on the other side, up to
the pale sky, to the low white sun.

Half closing her eyelids, she let sunrays creep under her lashes. She tilted her head back, ran her hands through her long
hair, down over her stretched throat. Crossing them over her breast, she inhaled, opened the pores of her skin to sun-
shine, filled herself with it, became it. Joy slipped out as praise.

“Spirit of the Sun! I love your light and warmth, most of all in winter!”

Then she became herself again, a woman sitting on a rock.

Ashan took the piece of cured hide from her medicine pouch and stretched it in her lap, leather side down, fur side up. She
stroked the fur: soft; red-brown, white and gray; long and thick around the ears, short on the nose. Once it had shaped itself
around the top of a coyote’s head.

A coyote skin was a strange thing for Ashan to have—her people did not kill sacred animals.

Tor hated the songdog’s hide. He wanted her to get rid of it. She had thought he’d get used to it, but he never had.

Mani had found it when she and some Tlikit women were away from the village gathering nettles for cording. They came upon
an argument of vultures, and drove them away to see if there was anything people could eat. The coyote they found was not
long dead—the vultures had just begun their work. The meat was still good, and the Tlikit women thought they should take it
home.

They didn’t know about sacred animals, so Mani had explained, doing her best to use the proper Tlikit words.

“The coyote, the eagle, and the beetle are the Creator’s favorites. People do not kill these sacred ones, even other animals
do not. You see,” Mani had said, showing them its gray-furred chin, “this songdog died because of too many seasons. To honor
it, we will burn it and bury the ashes.”

Mani was learning the new language faster than anyone else—except Ashan, who’d awakened knowing it. The Tlikit women liked
Mani, so they gathered dry brush and helped her cover the carcass.

Before she sparked a fire, Mani had cut away the coyote’s headskin and put it in her waist pouch. She’d given it to Ashan,
telling her she didn’t know why. It was one of those times when she just
knew:
She was supposed to bring it to the Moonkeeper.

Neither did Ashan know why, but she had accepted it, and was making it into something that had no name because such a thing
had never been made before.

Following an inner voice, she scraped it clean; trimmed it, cutting carefully around the eyes, then sewing them shut; cut
away the nose, lips, and whiskers, until what remained was a shape with three even sides. She burned the remains in a sacred
fire. She left the ears on, split so they would dry straight; worked in brainflesh to cure it, fat to soften it, and wood
ants to sweeten it.

The headskin of the songdog was a fine thing now.

This day Ashan planned to sew a piece of bison skin to the back. She had cut it in the same shape, and changed its color from
golden to brown with root tea, an idea that came from watching a Tlikit woman color grass to weave into a basket.

Twisting and pushing a bone awl, she began making sewing holes.

The hairs on her neck stiffened; her eyes darted; her ears opened.

Here it comes,
she thought, gritting her teeth.

Whenever she worked on the songdog’s hide, fear crept in and overshadowed respect and gratitude. Fear was not a good feeling
for a Moonkeeper.

“But it was so bad,” she said. The memory choked her, filled her with tears. “To see those lights rushing at me. To fall and
fall.”

The bone awl pierced the other side. She backed it out and started another hole, trying to keep them evenly spaced.

“Why would Coyote Spirit throw me from a cliff? Why did I have to suffer that? How can I trust anything?”

She heard only the whine of her own voice.

Because of his twin natures, Spilyea was the hardest of the Animal Spirits to understand. What could not be understood could
not be predicted, and predicting was a Moonkeeper’s work. She had to keep trying, in spite of fear. The headskin in her lap
forgotten, she concentrated on what she knew:

From the Misty Time, Coyote Spirit was a friend to people. He had a quick, stubborn mind. Coyote was the one who suffered
many failures making the First Man and First Woman, but did not give up. Coyote begged Amotkan to give his mud dolls breath—and
speech, which he himself did not have. Through time, he stayed interested in people, teaching them
survival skills, as if he wanted to keep improving what he had made.

“I understand that,” Ashan said. “Coyote made us. So he loves us. Like we love our children.”

She looked at a nearby rock where a spirit would sit if one were here.

“Or do you?” she asked.

No answer.

Ashan would not give up—not this time.

“Spilyea: We know you as Friend, and also as Trickster. You are the Playful Spirit. But what is play to you can be death to
others. How can you play deadly tricks on your friends? People would not indulge in such mean fun.”

Today, because she had been strong and patient, Spilyea spoke in her mind.

You know me as two, Trickster and Friend, but I am many. I am Destiny’s hand. Destiny needs your sacrifices, but you are weak.
Would you have jumped from the cliff?

“Of course not.”

So I pushed you. As a Friend.

“Why would Destiny need me to bear such terror? To be so badly hurt? Is Destiny an unkind spirit?”

No. But only shared crisis kept the meeting of the tribes peaceful.

“I see.”

People
had
come together over Ashan’s almost-death.

After that day, she no longer feared Spilyea. She had a better understanding of him than anyone ever had. No one, not even
a Moonkeeper, could ever know, or trust, Coyote Spirit. But if he harmed her again, Ashan believed that it would be for a
reason more important than one woman’s terror and pain.

T
SILKA SAID TO THE WOMEN, “BOTH OF YOU WILL
pretend to get sick.”

Elia’s mother, Euda, had a sister named Yak. One was as fat in body and sour in spirit as the other. Neither had a mate. Before
the Shahala intruders came to the Great River, they’d spent much of their time arguing with each other. More than once, Tsilka
had had to get between them, and send one up the river and the other down to cool their anger.