Children of the Dawn (25 page)

“We’re going to die!” a little one cried.

“No, we’re not,” Tsagaia said. Her soothing voice was sure of itself.

“Keep your heads in the waterfall. Listen to the splashing. Focus on the sound. The water will save us. Think of nothing else.
Listen to the splashing. Breathe the wet air… ”

As she talked, Kai El found himself pulled into watersound, lifesound, foreversound…

Wildfire swept over the gully. Kai El did not look up. Heat seared his back through wet deerskin. He thought he heard animal
screams in the deafening roar.

“Listen to the water,” she kept saying, and he did, and the awful sounds faded.

“The water’s getting hot!” a little one cried.

She had answers for everything.

“As long as you can hear the waterfall, the fire hasn’t boiled it all away.”

But the stench, the choking smoke. Kai El tasted ash in the splashing water. He thought he smelled cooked meat. He prayed
to Amotkan and Skaina and all the spirits who love people:
I
don’t want to die!
His back must be blazing! He rolled over to get it wet.

Looking up at the yellow bottom of the wildfire, Kai El thought no one who had seen such a thing could live. It was so hot!
Flames raced overhead, dropping burning twigs. As fast as the flames moved, more were right behind.

He realized that the wildfire—in its hurry for bigger prey—was jumping back and forth across the gully with its puny willows.
Thank Amotkan for the creek that had carved this gully. Maybe they would survive, after all.

But how long can we stand this?
he thought.

His friends cried in pain, but Tsagaia’s voice controlled their panic. Kai El wet them down, put his head in the waterfall,
and gave himself to her voice.

Everything changed so fast! Surrounded by frightened women and little ones, Ashan
stared at the pulsing orange-brown sky. Wind whipped and howled. Burning things flew through the hot air.

Kai El! Where are you?

The men who had been out hunting burst from the trees.

“Wildfire! It’s coming fast!”

“We know! We see it!”

Voices rose to a clamor.

“We have to run!”

“No!” Tor yelled. “We have to get in the creek!”

“It’s too small! It’s in the path of the fire!”

“We have no choice.”

But some of them—Tlikit and Firekeepers—took off up the slope.

“You can’t outrun it!” Tor yelled. “You’ll die!”

Ashan grabbed his arm. “Kai El is missing!”

“What?” he said in shocked disbelief.

“Kai El is missing, and some others! We have to find them! I think they went down the creek.”

Those who had listened to Tor were in the water, scrabbling at the bottom, making deeper places to hide.

“Little ones are lost!” he said. “Who will save them?”

More than enough men stood.

“I’ll take the fathers and a few more. The rest of you stay with your families.”

Ashan said, “I’m coming.”

“No. The people need you here.”

Tor shouted to the men as they rushed away from the camp, into the wind and smoke.

“The Moonkeeper saw the little ones go down the creek. Stay by the water. That’s where they’ll be. If you find them, throw
yourself over them. If the fire gets too close before you find them, get in the water and save yourself.”

Ashan ran with the men. Nothing had ever kept her from Kai El, and nothing ever would. They searched in fear—fear of what
they would find, and fear for themselves—shouting their little ones’ names, even though they knew the children could not hear
them.

They saw the wildfire’s face.

“Get in the water!” Tor yelled.

“No!” Ashan screamed and kept running. Kai El might be just ahead. She could save him with magic.

Tor slammed into her. She pitched to the ground. He picked her up and carried her. She fought him, screaming.

“Let me go! My baby! I can save him!”

Tor slid down a bank, dropped Ashan on her back with a splash, and threw himself on top of her. The water was deep enough
to cover her body, but not his. He held her face out with his hand. She struggled against him, but she couldn’t move. Her
screams became sobs, and then coughs and gasps as she fought for air in the smoke. She smelled burning hair, saw Tor slap
his head.

“We’re going to die,” she screamed. “All of us. Even Kai El.”

But the wildfire did not bother burning out little gullies.

After it had gone, Ashan and Tor crawled up the bank and looked at a gray, smoking world, with black leafless trees still
burning, and death everywhere.

She stood in dazed horror. What could have survived—

“Amah! Adah!”

Oh Amotkan! Kai El and the little ones were running toward her!

“Kai El!” she cried, and beat Tor getting to him. She swept him in her arms, covering him with weeping kisses.

No one died in the wildfire. It seemed as if the spirits came together to tell them what to do. The creek saved the little
ones and those at the camp who trusted its wet shelter, though many had blisters and painful red skin.

The Tlikit and Firekeepers who had run were even luckier. Fire swept up the huckleberry field after them, but with little
to burn, it lost power. They made it over the top of the ridge. That’s where the wildfire died.

The people from Teahra spent a few more days in the gray-and-black place. A few swelled up and had fever. The Moonkeepers
treated burns with beaver fat and herbs to soften skin and ease pain.

People needed rest. They needed to talk about what they’d been through.

Good friends Kai El and Jud were usually together. But on
that terrible day, when Kai El had taken the little ones for a walk, Jud had decided to stay in camp. He was interested in
Yohee, who would be picking berries.

Jud had said, “I will get her to sneak away, for some—you know—kissing.”

“Blah,” Kai El said, sticking out his tongue. “Why would you want to do that?”

Jud shook his head. “Are you ever going to grow up?”

“Not if it means kissing girls.”

So Jud had stayed in the camp, surviving the fire in a hole he dug in the creek bottom to share with Yohee, her sister, and
her mother.

Kai El told Jud what it had been like for him, leaving out the moments when he’d felt like deserting his friends and running
for his life.

“Of course
I
was brave,” Kai El said. “But Tsagaia surprised me. I thought I knew her, but she changed into someone different.”

“What do you mean?” Jud said. “She looks the same to me. Same old Tsagaia, too shy to look in anyone’s eyes, too scared to
speak.”

“She was different out there. She took over and told us what to do, talking all the time in this soft voice almost like magic.
It was like she sucked fear out of us and turned it into a blanket to protect us from the fire.”

“You don’t make sense.”

“I know, but that’s what happened. Tsagaia saved our lives.”

“Maybe you should think of kissing her.”

“Blah! Don’t make me throw up.”

Kai El told his mother what Tsagaia had done. His mother thought everyone should know about her bravery. But the girl was
her old, scared self again. She said she hadn’t done anything but save her own life. And that’s what she would tell anyone
who tried to make a heroine of her.

A
MEAN SICKNESS STRUCK
T
EAHRA
V
ILLAGE THAT
autumn, forcing many people to their beds. They ached in every part of their bodies; guts cramped and they threw up food;
waste came in uncontrollable rushes of stinking brown water. Weak as newborns, feeling horrible, some thought they were dying.

The Moonkeeper danced, sang, and shook rattles over the sick, gave them some kind of tea, and comforted with promises of recovery.
No one refused the shaman’s medicine—even the few Tlikit whom Tsilka could always count on to stir up trouble begged Ashan
to help them.

Tsilka, who didn’t get sick, prayed that some would die. Then maybe people would see that the Moonkeeper’s medicine was useless,
that the woman herself was a fake. Tsilka never stopped hoping to destroy Ashan by destroying people’s belief in her.

But after a few days the sick began to get better. Today some had come out to sit under the pale autumn sun. Watching them
heap their gratitude on Ashan, watching her accept it as her due—Tsilka couldn’t stand it. Boiling with rage, she stamped
away from the village.

I hate my life! I hate my fate!
she thought, tramping along with her head down, not knowing or caring where she was going.
I hate the way everything works against me!All I want and cannot have, all my misery
—
it’s all Ashan’s fault!

Tsilka’s poisoned thoughts were not unusual. Hatred filled her all the time, spilling onto everything she did or thought about.
Almost equal to her hatred for Ashan was disgust with herself: In five turnings of the seasons, Tsilka had not been able to
harm her enemy in any serious way.

I have failed to turn my people against her. Maybe I will never get her position or power, but I
can
try harder to get Tor. Without him she’d be nothing.

Oh, Tor…

Pain stabbed Tsilka like a twisting knife. Hot tears ran down her face. She fell to the ground, pounded her fists, and howled.

“Oh, Tor! It’s so unfair! You are mine, not hers! Mine!”

When her weeping was done, Tsilka saw that she was in a meadow sheltered from the wind by a rocky ridge. The grass was nipped
short. All around were piles of bison dung, unnoticed in her blind approach. She wondered that she hadn’t plopped down in
one.

Little mushrooms grew from the edge of a nearby dung heap. She picked one. Holding the thin stem, she stroked the light brown
pointed top. The flared underside was dusted with black. Rubbing black powder between her finger and thumb, she inhaled an
odor like fresh-dug dirt.

Shimnawa mushrooms?

Shivering with excitement, she scratched the top with her fingernail. The wounded place turned blue.

Yes!
These were powerful mushrooms that caused strange, overwhelming feelings—mostly wonderful, occasionally horrible—visions
of the impossible for eyes and ears and mind. Though very rare, they had grown in the Tlikit homeland. When someone found
shimnawa mushrooms, the whole tribe would eat them, and for a day and a night abandon itself to whatever might happen.

Tsilka loved these journeys of the mushroom trail. Real colors were never so bright, or smells so sharp, or touches so intense.
She loved, too, the thrill of risk, for mushrooms could turn against you, creating ugliness and fear not to be matched by
real life, and not to be escaped until the mushrooms were finished with you.

She sighed as she remembered making love… pleasure
almost too fierce to be survived… explosions that stopped her heart and made her wonder if it would start beating again.

Shimnawa mushrooms had not been found in the new land.

Tsilka doubted the Shahala even knew about them.

It came to her suddenly: The gods had brought her here.

She yelled, “These mushrooms will help me get Tor!”

Tsilka put a handful in her waist pouch and headed back for the village, bubbling with triumph instead of hate. As she walked,
the mushrooms tempted her. Not wanting to wait, she found a friendly place and marked it with a circle of rocks. The afternoon
shadows were long; she would not be herself again until morning. She thought of the twins; they were alone, but used to spending
occasional nights by themselves.

Tsilka chewed and swallowed nine little mushrooms one at a time. They tasted the same as they smelled, like dirt—not dry,
dusty prairie dirt, but moist, mossy dirt found by a spring. Leaning back against a rock slab, she waited for the mushrooms
to possess her.

Puffy clouds wandered across the pale blue sky. She stared at them as they drifted along, wondering if she should eat a few
more, wondering if maybe they weren’t shimnawas after all-She smiled as the sky became bright sunflower yellow. The clouds
transformed from white fluff to roiling amber liquid. The sky went murky orange, the clouds blood red. Darkening red splotched
with dirty orange, pulsing greenish yellow spots—swirls and globs—merging, separating, dripping, running—the colors made her
sick. They were the colors of her hatred for Ashan. She forced her eyes away from the sky, but the sickening colors followed
wherever she looked. Her head spun. Her stomach twisted. Gagging, she fought to keep from throwing up.

Tsilka saw someone coming—Ashan! Struck by terror, she pushed herself back against the rock.

No, it wasn’t Ashan, wasn’t anyone at all—just churning mist in the shape of a person. Tsilka shivered, and willed herself
to stop, but it intensified to violent shaking. The vapor person solidified, growing and shrinking, growing and shrink-
ing as it came toward her. Tsilka tried to push herself inside the rock.
It is not real, is not real, is
—

Another shape approached the first—a man who looked like Tor. The ghosts embraced, fell to the ground, and made wild love.
She heard them gasping and moaning and crying each other’s names.

Tor and Ashan… they followed Tsilka everywhere, flaunting her failure in her face.

I
hate you, Ashan!
she tried to scream, but made no sound. She seethed with rage. Her stomach cramped. She vomited violently.

Lying back, everything was black behind her closed eyes. The sick feeling passed.

She saw Tor in her mind, opened her eyes, and he was still there before her. Naked. Bathing in the grass that turned into
a river. Head thrown back, wet strands of long hair sticking to skin that glistened with sun-gold droplets, he stroked his
muscled thighs with his large hands.

Tsilka’s body—the
woman
part of it—came alive. On hands and knees she crept toward him, a cougar stalking a fawn, aware that she had left the protection
of her stone circle, wanting him too much to let fear stop her, telling herself that there was enough power in her lust to
overcome anything.