Children of the Dawn (34 page)

Turning the drop of pitch over in his hands, Tor imagined the long-ago attack: the beetle crawling up the tree, stopping to
sleep in the sun. The drop of pitch creeping down. Wing tip caught. Legs trapped one by one in a frantic, hopeless struggle.

“We’re not so different,” Tor said. He expected no answer, just wanted to talk about how he felt. But who knew? Maybe its
spirit heard him.

“Like you, I get a thick, glazy crust that smothers desire, and leaves slowly swirling pain. And I get heavy, and tired, and
it would be so easy to give up.”

Tor’s food would soon be gone. Hunger knew better than to bother him. To die by starving would be so easy, it tempted him.

As a young man, Tor had fought self-destruction more than
once. He beat the demon, but he never destroyed it. No longer powerful enough to make him kill himself, it still tormented
him. He would fight this fight as long as he lived, and die the moment he stopped fighting. Like the beetle.

“How long did you fight destiny before you gave up?”

He thought he heard an answer:
As long as I could. Then longer.

“Too long,” Tor said. “Sometimes it’s better just to give up, when you know what the end will be. I think of it, you know.”

But you promised.

“Yes,” he said, forced to remember. Whether he had promised the spirits or his mate, he couldn’t recall, but it didn’t matter.
He had promised.

“A warrior’s promise can be trusted,” Tor said, and went to sleep with the piece of pitch in his hand.

In the morning, he was ready to head home, where someone would make sure he kept living.

Tor would never be free of his glazy crust, but the beetle could be. He crushed the pitch and the bug, made a fire, and threw
the dust into it.

“You are free.”

On the way home, he lost most of a day sitting on a hilltop, angry at himself. Kai El would have loved the drop of golden
pitch that was like his name. It was a sign sent to Tor to give to Kai El, and he had destroyed it. Why did the son always
come last in his father’s thoughts?

In the late afternoon, Tor came down a trail into the canyon of the Great River, Chiawana. Heat pressed on Teahra Village
like an unwelcome fur robe. Nothing stirred. He walked by his father’s hut. On the shady side, Arth and his last living mate,
Tashi, rested on a grass mat.

Tor greeted them in passing.

“My father and his mate, are you well?”

“I am,” Tashi answered. “And you?”

“Very well,” Tor lied. People didn’t want the truth if you were less than well—and the man whose soulmate was dead would never
be well again.

His father said nothing. Tor wanted to keep walking, but he stopped because of the guilt called “respect.”

“Are you well, Arth?” he repeated.

Arth’s grunt could have meant “yes” or “no.” He had lived fifty-four summers—much longer than most men—but his father had
never learned to say what he meant. Tor had spent his whole life guessing.

Without looking up, the old man spoke in a surly voice.

“It’s not that I need younger men to take care of my hut. I’m strong as ever.”

“So you would like us to think,” Tashi said.

“I could do these things if I wanted to, woman, but they do it out of respect for my age! Should I steal their good feelings?”

Arth’s anger is for me, not her. What have I done now? Or forgotten to do?
Tor couldn’t think. If the old man had something to say, why not just say it?

Arth looked at his son with eyes as wounded as his voice.

“You, Tor? You, of all men? I told you this was the day. Everyone came. My other sons, my friends, men I hardly know. Even
my grandson Kai El came down from his high place. Tashi made everyone gifts of dry-smoked salmon. The piece behind the head
she made for you. She picked out every bone.”

What are you talking about?
Tor almost asked. Then he smelled new leather. He stretched his eyes to see more than usual.

He sighed.
New skins on the old man’s hut. I have defeated myself again.
His webby cocoon returned. His vision narrowed back to the ground in front of him. Arth’s accusing voice came from a distant
place.

“Where were you that was more important than the roofing of your father’s hut?”

Tor could have said, “Finding pine trees,” but that didn’t seem important anymore.

“Nowhere,” he said. “I forgot. I’m sorry.”

Arth sighed, huge and sad. “I know, son. I too have suffered losses.”

Tor nodded.

Tashi went in the hut, brought out a bundle wrapped in grass and handed it to him.

“I made this for you, son of my mate.”

Tor shook his head.

“Take it,” Arth said. “You wouldn’t make one good meal for a man-eater.”

Tor said, “Thank you, Tashi. I know how good it will taste.” He took the gift and went home.

People still called it the Moonkeeper’s hut, though now it sheltered only a man and his son. He opened the doorskin, stepped
into the round space dug knee deep in the ground, rested his spear near the door, and tossed the food bundle on the work shelf.

Evening light, broken into pieces by a skeleton of branched wood, showed dimly through the covering of old horsehides in need
of patching. Kai El had offered a deerskin made into leather by some girl—not as good as horsehide, but there were no horses
anymore.

“Fine,” Tor had told him. “Do it before winter.”

Of course, a boy of seventeen summers had more exciting things to do than work on his father’s hut.

Tor ate as much of the salmon as he could. It should have been a blend of delicious flavors: smoke, white rock, and honey,
almost covering the taste of fish. But it tasted like the dry grass wrapping. Not worth the effort of chewing. The fault was
in his mouth, not in Tashi’s work. He disliked food—no, he hated it. How could he enjoy eating, knowing Ashan would never
eat another thing? Tor had been denying himself for so long, his mouth had forgotten how to taste.

Too bad his nose didn’t forget how to smell. The hut he and the boy shared stank of old sweat. When Ashan lived here, it smelled
of herbs, medicines, all kinds of things that changed with the seasons as she dried and stored the plants needed by the tribe.
Tor refused to change anything, trying to keep the illusion that she might come home. But he couldn’t keep her scent.

He pounded his palm with his fist. He
could not
remember her scent! Time should lessen his sense of loss. Instead, he lost more of her each day. What would go tomorrow?
The depth of her eyes? The whisper of her sleep-breathing?

Stripping off his moccasins and loinskin, Tor lay on their raised earth bed. He didn’t bother with the oil lamp—easier to
sleep than to keep the darkness away.

Ashan
… Tor sighed, aching as he always did when her name ran through his mind. Ashan had slept on the inside. Danger would have
to come past a fierce Shahala warrior to reach her. Now Tor lay in her place, imagining that he felt the shadow of her shape
beneath him in the hard-packed dirt covered by skins, the indentation of her hip, her shoulder, from all those seasons of
resting there.

The bed was too wide now, and too empty, but he lacked energy to haul the extra dirt away.

“To-or! I see you!”

Tsilka peered through the open doorway.

Exactly what he did not need!

T
OR PULLED SOMETHING ACROSS HIS NAKED MIDDLE.

Tsilka stepped into his hut and stood there staring: A slim dark shape against the lighter sky of the open door; lines of
long legs, short skirt, hair wild as the woman herself; the details of her face hidden in shadows. Turning slowly, showing
herself from the side, she closed the doorskin.

Tsilka had a body that would always tempt men.

Tor was ashamed that he could even think of a woman’s body.

“It’s like a cave in here,” she said. “I don’t know which is worse, the dark or the smell, but the dark I can cure. Where
is your oil lamp?”

Too tired to argue, he pointed to the shelf he had made for Ashan’s work—a large, flat piece of wood thrown out by the Great
River, held at waist height by two wood chunks. When her back got sore from sitting bent over, she would go to her shelf and
continue to work standing up. Underneath the shelf, she kept things needed for another season. Tor’s idea was so admired that
other women asked their mates for a working shelf.

Crossing the hut as if she owned it, Tsilka struck the spark-stones over the lamp of hollowed stone. The firefish oil flared.
In the sudden glow, Tor didn’t like seeing her there among Ashan’s things.

“I want you to go,” he said.

Tsilka sauntered toward him carrying the oil-filled lamp. She placed it carefully on the end of his bed. Bright flames danced
on the wad of fiber in the center. Comfortable shadows fled before the light.

She sat on the unswept floor, looking up at him.

“There! That’s better!”

“Tsilka, I have no interest in—”

She laughed. “Don’t be stupid. We’re too old for that.”

“Then what do you want?”

She held up a white feather, its quill wrapped with thin leather for tying in the hair.

“It’s time to be friends.”

The war between them was old and tired, but Tor knew she enjoyed it. Why would she want to end it? He hadn’t trusted Tsilka
since she speared him through the leg and kept him for a slave. Why should he trust her now?

He said, “I have many reasons
not
to be your friend.”

“I know, Tor. It’s for our children that I came.”

He didn’t believe her. Tsilka was here for her final triumph over Ashan. She must think it had been long enough, that by now
any man would be starved for lovemaking.

“Go away,” he said, turning his back.

The stirring he thought was the sound of leaving was Tsilka creeping onto his bed.

“You and I, Tor, each of us with half a family. It’s not right. I live in a tiny hut with two girls. You live in this fine,
large hut, with only Kai El. Look at all this space not being used.”

Tor had an urge to strike her.

She sighed loudly. “And our young ones. You must know how Kai El and Tsagaia feel about each other.”

He had an urge to
kill
her.

“Sahalie made those two for each other,” she said. “What could be closer than a mate who is also your brother?”

Without thinking, Tor came up swinging. His fist smashed her jaw.

Flying from the bed, upsetting the lamp, flinging oil everywhere, Tsilka crashed into the work shelf. She yelped, swatting
at spots of burning oil as though they were attacking bees, but they spread faster than she could slap them out. Her clothes
ignited. Her hair, oiled for beauty, flared into a hideous orange flower. She ran blindly, shrieking, hands tearing at her
face; hit a wall, flung herself around, ran the other way.

Tor dived for her and rolled her head in a sleeping skin, muffling the ear-rending shrieks. He beat the flames with his hands,
gagging on the smell of burning flesh.

Fire spread along Ashan’s shelf, igniting bunches of dried herbs, leapt to her feather collection woven with dusty spider-webs,
roared up and across the wood and hides of the roof. Red-orange flames raced toward the doorway, consuming the air that was
so hot Tor could barely breathe.

He threw the thrashing woman over his shoulder and plunged through the fire, past the people coming to fight it. He ran to
the edge of the Great River, dropped her, and poured handfuls of water on her. Howls came from the blackened sleeping skin
wrapped around her head. He peeled it away. A strip of flesh clung to it. His stomach tried to come up his throat.

Tenka came running.

“She fell into the lamp and got all burned!” he babbled.

“Silence, brother!”

By the light of Tor’s blazing hut, the Moonkeeper forced the struggling woman to swallow a handful of crumbled plants, made
her drink the water of the Great River, bathed her seared flesh with it.

The sleeping vine did its work. Tsilka, sure to die, would sleep until she did.

The Spirit of Ashan was deeply troubled when she returned to Teahra Village.

No one would ever again make the mistake of calling Tor’s home the Moonkeeper’s hut, for nothing remained of it but stinking
rubble and ash. Most of what Tor and Kai El lost could be replaced; but the tribe could never replace the sacred relics still
kept there because Tenka’s new hut wasn’t finished.

As if he had worn a robe of magic, Tor suffered only blistered hands. And crushing guilt.

Tsilka was charred on the side of the heart. Face, shoulder, arm, and hand looked like meat forgotten over a cooking fire.
Her other side was the glazy red of flame-dried salmon.
Swelled-up flesh oozing, burning with fever, she moaned and cried, even though Tenka kept her groggy with the sleeping vine.
Everyone thought she would die.

Ashan’s spirit took Tenka to some pale blue mold growing in a damp place. After several days of drinking mold tea made without
heating, Tsilka’s fever cooled, the swelling went down, and she stayed quiet with less sleeping vine.

When a baby was born, Ashan guided Tenka to take some of the birth sac before giving it to the mother for the ritual called
This Place Will Always Know Me. Tenka put strips of the birth sac on Tsilka’s burns, keeping the extra pieces soft in water
for later use. She thought it was disgusting, and was glad no one asked her about it.

Because of their success, two new medicines were added to the tribe’s knowledge. Blue mold would save many lives from fever.
Birth sac encouraged the growth of new skin underneath it that in places looked as good as the old.

But one side of Tsilka’s face would always terrify children. The fire had consumed a swath of skin from her chin to the top
of her head. Eyebrow and lashes were gone, and some of her hair. The flesh of her cheek rotted away, leaving a hollow of lumpy
scars. Trying to span what it couldn’t, new skin stretched and pulled into ropy lines and hard, shiny patches.