Children of the Dawn (39 page)

Tahna’s leatherwork wasn’t interesting anymore; the sounds of people annoyed her. Her secret place called. But before she
could sneak away, Gaia came out wearing a clean skirt, a cape, her new moccasins, and a frown.

“I have to get out of here or I’ll die,” she said.

“Well I’m sorry, but it’s
your
turn to watch our mother.”

“I gave our mother sleeping vine tea. She won’t bother you.”

Tahna jumped up. “Sleeping vine in the morning? We are trying to wean her!”

“What’s one more day?” Gaia said without a trace of concern. She turned and walked toward the river trail.

“How much did you give her?” Tahna yelled. “Where are you going? When will you be back?”

Gaia kept walking without a backward glance.

Tahna went in the hut. She left the doorskin open, but the breeze didn’t want to enter the place rattling with snores, and
the hot air settled on her, unwelcome as a bear robe on a summer night.

Tsilka was lying on her back—at least Gaia had made sure of that. Turning her over would stop the noisy snoring, but people
sleeping with the help of the vine must lie on their backs, or they might stop breathing.

Tahna knelt beside her mother, shaking her head. She couldn’t believe what Gaia had done. Should she go for the Moonkeeper?
Listening to the sounds of snores, the spacing of breaths, she picked up her mother’s wrist and found the beating: a little
slow, but strong and steady. There was no need to bother the Moonkeeper. Tsilka would sleep for a long time, but her daughter
didn’t think she was in danger. Maybe a good long sleep would bring relief to them all.

Sunlight came in the open door, enclosing them in a dusty glow. Tahna stared at her mother, who couldn’t tolerate being stared
at when she was awake. The face that a little girl had once thought the loveliest in the world was half-human, half-demon.

“They should have let you die,” she whispered. “It would have been kinder than this.”

Holding her hand up, Tahna made a shadow to cover the scarred half of her mother’s face, and made her beautiful again. The
girl gazed at her mother until her arm was tired. Then she cried and cried.

K
AI
E
L THOUGHT ABOUT THE
B
REATH
O
GRE THAT
attacked Gaia whenever it pleased, and how the Other Moon-keeper said that sage drove the demon away. He smiled as he thought…
he could get a sage plant, and move it to the place in the cliffs where he was making their home. The Breath Ogre wouldn’t
try to get Gaia if its enemy lived here. It was probably a crazy idea that wouldn’t work, but he had learned from Ehr that
crazy ideas were sometimes the best ones.

Kai El climbed to the plateau and searched for a sage plant—a young one, because he thought the young would be stronger and
have more will to live than the old. Some looked good, but he wanted only the best. He found one as tall as his knee whose
round top and bare trunk had the look of a little tree, not a ragged bush like most.

He thought that plants never understood him, but he talked to them anyway.

“You are the best one,” he said.

With his hands around its trunk—the size of Gaia’s wrist—his face full of stiff gray leaves, he tugged gently. The sage tightened
its grip on the earth. Kai El tightened his grip on the trunk.

“Come on,” he grunted. “You want to help, don’t you?”

He twisted and yanked, this way and that.

Like a skunk defending itself, the threatened sage gave off an eye-burning smell.

“I’m not killing you. You’re just going to a new home. My woman needs you.”

He pushed, pulled, wiggled the bush back and forth, getting his face scratched, squinting against the biting fumes.

“You can burn my eyes if you want. It won’t stop me. This smell will save her life.”

Kai El dug in his heels and threw his body behind them. Roots breaking, dirt flying, the sage tore free. He heard a screech,
let go, stumbled backward; then laughed at himself—he’d heard the cry of a hawk in the sky, not the death scream of a bush.

The soaring red-tail screeched again. Kai El’s Spirit Guardian had come to watch. Maybe this
would
work.

Out of the ground, lying on its side, the sage looked hurt and scared. Dirt clods hung on dangling roots. Most of the soft
gray bark was stripped from the trunk. But it still had its branches and most of its leaves.

With roots cradled in his arms, Kai El carried the sage bush to his halfway place, wondering where to put it. Where would
trouble come from? Human trouble would sneak along the trail, but what about the Breath Ogre? Kai El didn’t know enough about
Gaia’s enemy. He would see the Moonkeeper Tenka again. This time he’d ask longer questions and give a better ear to her answers.

Standing at a spot on the edge of the sitting place where the dirt was soft, Kai El dug a hole with his spear, pushed the
wad of roots into it, and packed dirt around them with his feet.

He stood back. The sage stood up straight, but it was shorter. At its home on the plateau, it had reached his knee—now it
only came to his shin. Trying to do a good job, he’d made the hole too deep.

“Well, maybe it will keep the wind from blowing you over.”

He walked around, admiring it from all sides.

“You look good,” he said. “How do you feel?”

It wasn’t that he expected an answer, but to acknowledge the spirit of the plant.

There he was… sweaty, streaked with dirt, wearing nothing but his oldest loinskin and moccasins, and talking to a bush… when
Gaia came up the trail.

Kai El stared at her, breathless.

She wore golden doeskin too clean to have been worn before: A skirt, tight-fitting at the top, fringed from thigh to knee;
a cape, painted with symbols of the four directions; knee-high moccasins with neat, crossed laces. White and blue beads at
her throat. The breeze pulled strands of long, black, untied hair across her pretty face.

Kai El felt his legs under him, the ground under them. No, he wasn’t dreaming.

“Look at this!” she said with delight.

He breathed again. “Isn’t this beautiful? Wait until I’m finished.”

“I can see that!”

He explained anyway, and it helped bring his spinning mind under control.

“This flat part here—I’m making it bigger by taking rocks out. Then I’ll use dirt to make it smooth.”

He pointed to the sharp-edged rocks, from huge to small, stacked on the river side—the start of a low wall.

“I put the extra ones there, so people in the village won’t see up here.”

“Hmm,” she said.

“When it’s finished, the flat place will be for sitting in good weather.” He knew women liked a nice place to do their outside
work.

She gave him a curious look. “You really
are
going to make your hut up here?”

“I am. Over there.”

He swept his arm toward the cliff wall, where it curved around the back of a knee-deep hole, as long as three men lying head
to foot, and wide as two. Kai El had spent days digging with a pointed stick and a stone ax, muscling out the rocks, carrying
or rolling them out of the way. Cuts and bruises showed how hard some of them fought. Then he brought in smaller rocks, beat
them into place, and filled the holes with tamped dirt.

“That will be the floor,” he said with pride, pointing to the large, smooth-bottomed hole.

“Very large,” she said, sounding impressed.

“I don’t like to be crowded.”

“I don’t know anything else,” she said, laughing.

He cleared his throat. “See how that stone slab hangs out? Underneath will be the sleeping place. Even the best skin roof
lets rain in, but it never gets wet back there. I will never wake up with drips on my head.

“But it won’t be like a cave, all dark and smelly,” he said. “The front will be like any other hut, with walls of branches
covered with stretched skins. My door will face Where Day Begins, for first light and warmth.”

“I have never seen a more wonderful home!”

Kai El felt light-headed.

“You like it? You really do? There’s nothing to see yet, but—”

“You made a good picture inside my head. Of course I like it. Who wouldn’t?”

Kai El released the breath he’d been holding—a loud, unintended
whoosh.
He swallowed for courage.

“I want to show you something.”

He took her to the not-yet doorway, reached under her arms, and helped her down to the floor.

“I’ll put a flat rock here for you—for people—to step down on.”

They stood side by side in the center of the soon-to-be hut, the cliff wall at their backs, a view to forever before them.
He looked down and saw her lush hair falling smooth over her shoulders, without a whisper of wind to disturb it. She was small
enough to hide under his arm. She smelled of soap leaves and new-made leather. As his senses swelled, Kai El almost forgot
what he was going to show her.

“What do you notice?” he asked.

“How
big
it is.”

“Not that.”

“Urn… the floor is very smooth.”

He shook his head. “Your hair.”

She looked up at him. “My hair?”

“It’s not blowing. The cliffs keep the wind out.”

“Oh, Kai El! How nice that will be in winter! Yet the wind can blow across the sitting place outside, and that will be good
in summer!”

Loving her excitement, Kai El could barely control his own.

He shook out his rumpled sleeping skin—an old antelope missing most of the hair that someone gave him after the fire—and spread
it over the dirt shelf he’d been using for a bed. It was a good place to sit, with smooth rock to lean against.

“You must be tired,” he said with a sweep of his arm. “Will you sit?”

“I’m not tired. It’s an easy trail.”

It was not an easy trail, but he didn’t say so.

She went on. “It would be nice to sit and… just talk.”

He couldn’t agree more.

Gaia sat cross-legged, leaning back—a pretty, young contrast to the ancient, lichened stone behind her.

Kai El sat across from her, in what would be the doorway of their hut. He remembered the time when they’d sat almost touching.
Since then, it seemed like everyone and everything wanted to keep them apart.

“What were you saying to that bush?” she asked.

He wouldn’t have talked about the bush; it might remind her of her weakness. He answered without mentioning his real reason.

“I love the way sage smells. I thought it would be nice to smell it all the time, so I tried something. I took this plant
from its home on the plateau and moved it here. When you came up the trail, I was talking to it like you would a frightened
child—you know—telling it not to worry, it will be happy here.”

She laughed. “I don’t think a plant would want to move.”

“You’re right.”

“I hope I’m wrong,” she said. “I love the smell of sage, too.”

After a silence, she said, “I didn’t know you were one who speaks with plants.”

“I speak, but they don’t understand. I know the sage was laughing at me.”

She laughed, and he realized he was trying to say things in a funny way just to hear the tinkly sound.

“My mother tried to teach me,” he said, “but plants knew me better than she did. I can hardly remember which mushroom not
to eat—the red-spotted ones, or the ones that turn blue if you scratch them.”

She giggled. “I’m not good with plants, but I do know that red spot kills you and blue streak makes you see things that aren’t
real. I don’t eat either one.”

“At least you know their names.”

“Tahna is the one who knows about plants. She would have been Moonkeeper someday if your mother had lived.”

Kai El didn’t want to talk about her sister. He wanted to talk about Gaia, about love, about the life he had planned for them,
but he didn’t know how to start.

“What do you think of all this?” he asked with a wave of his hand.

“It will be very nice. I can see that. But why up here? Men make their huts in the village. People wonder why you don’t.”

Kai El had good reasons. He believed Gaia would be healthier away from her mother and sister. And it would be safer to live
up here. If savages attacked the village, they wouldn’t know about the hut in the cliffs. There had been no attacks since
people moved to the Great River, but stories told of earlier tragedies.

Those aren’t things you say to a girl,
he told himself.
You don’t want to scare her.

“Well… ” he said, trying to think of other reasons.

“Is it your mother? You loved her very much. This is near her favorite place.”

She
knows
me,
he thought.

“That’s part of it,” he said. “It’s because this is a takoma.”

She said, “A takoma is… where spirit lines cross in the sky?”

“Exactly.”

“I listened when your mother talked about spirit lines, but I never understood.” She looked at the sky. “I don’t see anything
up there.”

“They’re trails used by spirits, so we can’t see them. Only
Moonkeepers know where they are. When many cross, like here, the land underneath is… ” It was hard to explain.

“Blessed?” she said. “I can feel it. It has something to do with peace.”

He nodded, glad that she felt it too.

“But some people wouldn’t like living way up here,” she said. “It would be hard to visit their friends.”

“It’s not far. I go to the village almost every day.”

“Other people think too much time is wasted visiting that should be used for work.”

Other people? Did she mean herself?

He blurted, “Would you like living here, Gaia?”

Laughing nervously, she looked at her hands.

“Mmm,” she said.

Hoping that meant “yes,” Kai El took his waist pouch from behind a rock. He fumbled inside with the pledge band he’d finished
yesterday.

Mixed with the hard work of digging dirt and carrying rocks had been the sweet, easy work of making a pledge band for his
beloved: collecting bits of antler, shell, and stone; cleaning and polishing until they pleased the eye; braiding them in
with the strands of his hair. Finished with leather ties that ended in a puff of hawk down, Kai El’s pledge band was every
bit as beautiful as the one his father made for his mother to wear.