People of the Nightland (North America's Forgotten Past) (14 page)

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Authors: W. Michael Gear,Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: People of the Nightland (North America's Forgotten Past)
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Nashat just stared at him. Ten and two summers ago, the Council of Elders had ordered War Chief Gowinn to attack a Lame Bull village and steal children to serve as slaves. He had failed miserably—lost half his warriors—and the rest had run like scared dogs. In punishment,
the Council had ordered the survivors locked in pine pole cages for moons. Many had died, including then–Deputy Kakala’s wife, Hako. Since that day, their warriors, especially Kakala, had lost few battles.
Nashat looked around. “What did you do with the woman I sent you?”
“Woman?”
“You asked me to get a woman for you. One from the Nine Pipes band.” Nashat frowned, feigning ignorance. “What was her name? Blue Fern, Blue …”
“Blue Wing!”
“Yes.”
“I sent her home.”
“I don’t suppose you could tell me why
?
”
“She was the wrong woman.”
Nashat stared in disbelief. “The
wrong
one?”
“Raven Hunter says it doesn’t matter anymore. The right one will come to me.”
How do I explain
that
to Kakala?
Ti-Bish abruptly leaped to his feet, cocked his head as though listening to someone, and ran across the chamber for his mittens. As he slipped them on, he said, “Forgive me, I must go meet with the Elders.”
“About what?”
Ti-Bush’s gaze darted around the walls as though to check on the darker patches of ice. “I have to tell them about punishing warriors, and the Sunpath souls.”
Gulping the rest of his tea, Nashat said, “This must be done now?”
Ti-Bish nodded. “Kakala has to be in the right place at the right time.” He shot a suddenly worried look at Nashat. “If they put him in a cage, nothing will work right.”
Nashat stifled his desire to wince. “You have told me, Guide. That is enough. The Council does as I wish. No need for you to go.”
The last thing I need is you inciting panic.
“Leave it to me.”
“You’ll see to it?”
“Of course.”
B
y the Guide’s sacred eyebrows, I’m sick of all this.
Kakala filled his lungs, expecting sweet night air. Instead, he drew in the stink of Maga’s rotting guts.
He made a face, turning his head away. To his right, Maga groaned, his right leg stiffening, the heel digging a groove out of the spruce needles.
Kakala stared up through the branches, seeing slivers of a partly cloudy night sky. The waning moon had already lost part of its western curve.
Three of his remaining warriors huddled around a low fire, its glow hidden by the rounded piles of rock surrounding it. The others lay out around the periphery of the spruce-clad ridge, keeping watch for any pursuit.
Maga drew a series of fast breaths, his mouth wide.
Kakala reached down, laying his cold hand on Maga’s sweat-hot forehead. “Easy.”
“S-Sorry, War Chief.” Maga swallowed hard. “More water?”
“Of course.” Kakala reached for the bladder, untied the neck, and
dribbled the cold fluid into Maga’s mouth. The man swallowed wrong, coughing and crying out as his punctured guts spasmed.
“Sorry,” Kakala soothed. “My fault.”
“No, War Chief. Mine.”
Kakala ground his teeth, his fist tightening on the neck of the bladder. Maga had taken a dart low, just above the bony ridge of the hip. The keen stone point had cut straight through, Maga’s abdomen scarcely slowing the long dart.
Five dead. And Maga.
He glanced up at the spruce, thinking how nice it would be to be a tree instead of a man. As a tree, he could just live, his roots deep in the soil, his branches extended to the sun.
But it all has gone wrong.
He couldn’t help but glance back to the north. If he were to walk down the slope, peer past the trees, he could see the distant Nightland villages, their fires winking far across the narrow band of tundra.
When I return, it will mean disgrace. The cage.
He could almost wish he were Maga. Even dying of a pus-fouled gut would be better.
“War Chief?” Maga asked.
“Yes.”
“I am going to die.”
Kakala smiled down in the darkness. “I wouldn’t think that. You know old Gataka, don’t you? He was gutted worse than you, and still lived. No, Maga, you’re as tough an old crow as the next man. Tougher. You’ll make it.”
“Lying has never served you well. You’re not good at it.”
Kakala smiled. “This time, I’m telling the truth.”
“You’re better than the rest of them.”
“Better than who?”
“Nashat, Karigi, Hawhak. All of them.”
“Thank you.”
Maga swallowed hard, panting to cool his burning body. “I would ask a favor of you.”
“Anything.”
“Bring me the medicine bag.”
Kakala’s heart skipped. “I don’t think it’s—”
“I have watched too many men die from wounds like mine. I will not go the same way.”
Kakala bowed his head, his heart beating slowly in his chest.
“War Chief? Did you hear?”
“I did.” He rose to a crouch and ducked through the low-hanging branches. When he walked down to the fire and lifted the hide bag with an image of Raven drawn on the side, the three warriors watched with wary eyes.
No one spoke as he walked back, ducked under the branches, and carefully removed the herbal teas, the poultices, and wrappings they used for bandages.
“Are you sure, Maga?”
The man laughed weakly. “I can already feel my soul floating in and out of my body, War Chief.” A pause. “I have no fear of death … only the manner of it.”
“I know.”
“Tie it tightly, War Chief. I don’t want to draw this out.”
“I will.” He paused. “If you change your mind, just call out. I’ll hear you and remove the bag.”
“I know, War Chief. My decision is final.”
Kakala steeled himself, slipping the thick leather bag over Maga’s head. The greased leather had been double stitched, waterproof, and had served this purpose too many times for a sane man to remember. Kakala settled the leather around Maga’s neck, folding it, and then drew the cord tight, knotting it snuggly.
Kakala waited. He was still waiting, even after Maga’s heaving lungs stilled and the body began to cool.
 
 
S
kimmer peered between the boulders, searching the moonlit forest for Nightland warriors. Since their escape from the Nightland villages, she had run like a worried hare. Mostly they traveled by night, keeping to the low spots, holing up in the morning.
How long had it been? Time no longer had meaning. More than once, she had noticed that her hands shook. And she dared not let her soul drift, or she was back in the pen, the corpses of the dead piled atop her, and even the fall of a spruce cone sounded like a heavy stone mallet crushing a woman’s skull.
To her surprise, more than once, she had wilted to the stony ground and burst into uncontrollable sobs.
“Mother?” Ashes asked. “What do you see? Are they coming after us?”
“Not yet. They probably think we all died.” Her hands were shaking again. She stuffed them into the front of her dress, knotting her fists.
The stink of the dead still clung to the dress, impregnated in the stains left by whatever had been leaking out of the corpses.
My world is death. It hovers around me like a mist.
In the distance, the Ice Giants swelled like a vast white mountain range that went on forever. Their groans and rumbles carried on the cold air.
“Where are we going, Mother? The Nightland warriors burned our village.”
“I’m not sure. Once I know we’re not being followed, I’ll make a decision.”
Ashes toyed with the fringes on her cape, twisting them around her fingers. “The Guide is going to send his warriors after us, isn’t he? No matter where we go?”
Skimmer didn’t have the strength to lie to her. “Probably.”
“Can’t we go away and hide along the lakeshore?”
Skimmer knelt and reached for her daughter’s hand. “Ashes, I want you to do something for me. Can you try?”
“What is it?”
“Remember your grandmother’s clan?”
Ashes frowned. “Of course. She was Trickster Clan.”
Skimmer took a deep breath of the icy air and squeezed Ashes’ fingers. “If anything happens, and we’re separated, I want you to—”
“But we
won’t
get separated, Mother,” she whispered in panic. “You won’t leave me
alone
!”
“No, I won’t. Not unless I have to. But if the Guide captures me, or I’m killed, I want you to run to the closest Sunpath village and tell the people you’re Ashes from the Trickster Clan. Can you remember not to say the Redtailed Hawk Clan?”
Tears glimmered in her daughter’s eyes, and her mouth trembled. “Mother, I don’t—”
“Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Ashes put both hands over her mouth and started to cry, the soft sobs like a mewing lion cub. “Mother?” she asked in a choking voice. “Where’s Father? Is he dead?”
Skimmer couldn’t answer. Somewhere in the past few days her own
unbearable anguish had faded. How did one find the energy to mourn after what they’d just survived? She’d forgotten whatever tale she’d told Ashes when she found her among the Nightland captives. But even if she’d remembered, there’d been no time to discuss Hookmaker’s death.
“I think he … he may be.”
Tears filled Ashes’ eyes. In a choking voice, she said, “Are you sure? You said he got away.”
Skimmer gathered her daughter in her arms and held her tightly. “Let’s go hide. The spruce boughs hang low to the ground. Then we’ll try to make our way through the moraines to Headswift Village. Lookingbill may turn us down again, but maybe we can get food there … clean clothes. Lookingbill will have news, and then we can decide where to go.”
And what if Lookingbill won’t even give us that?
T
i-Bish pulled his hood down over his face to block the wind, and gazed out at the open treeless landscape that bordered the ice. Most of it consisted of jumbled piles of rock and gravel, and travel through the rubble left by the retreating Ice Giants was hazardous unless a person stuck to the established trails that wound through the boulder fields. The Ice Giants had been melting since the beginning of the world. In their wake, they left boulders, gravel, and filthy islands of ice behind.
Beyond the rock belt, the tundra stretched southward until it connected with spruce forests, then to a lush world of pines, oaks, hickory, and walnut trees that lay another ten days’ travel beyond that.
As he walked, he examined the ugly shore of the Thunder Sea as it stretched off to the east. A low fog hung perpetually over the lake, cold air draining off the glaciers reacting to the warmer waters. He could see patches of cracked ice, the summer melt beginning. Locked among them were bergs that had broken off. Even as he watched, one tilted and flipped over, breaking the thin lake ice. He could see waves buckling the rotten ice around it.
Equinox was but days past. Summer was coming.
He tipped his face up and sighed at the feel of Father Sun’s light. He had not been out of the caves in a moon. Though it hurt his eyes, the bright gleam felt wonderful.
Early this morning, he’d taken a lamp and walked down to the deep ice tunnels. He knew the ones that led to the surface. He’d sneaked out of the caves without anyone noticing.
A cold northerly wind blew, flapping the hem of the grimy cape he wore. Nashat always insisted that he be dressed regally when he left the caves, but Ti-Bish hated painted shirts and jewelry.
On the shore ahead, several women had gathered to wash clothing. They dipped the hides into a meltwater lake, then pounded them with rocks to loosen the soil, and dipped them again. Upon finishing they would carry the clothing home and place it on racks near their small fires to dry.
For as far as he could see, hide lodges curved around the lakeshore. Bull boats—made from moose hide—rocked on the water. He could hear the fishermen calling to each other.
The Nightland People moved back and forth across the tundra six or seven times a summer. Each time they would bring fish, meat, birds, and berries to place in the caves to freeze for winter. In early fall, the villages began packing up to move here for the winter. Through the winter they ate from the foodstocks until spring brought the migratory fowl back. Hardy souls would walk out onto the winter-frozen Thunder Sea, and chop holes to fish through.
Then as the plants greened, they moved southward again, into the spruce forests that bordered the Sunpath nation. That was the problem. The Sunpath nation held the vast nut forests of walnuts, oaks, and hickory trees. The Nightland People’s numbers were growing. They needed those forests. It had begun to create problems many summers ago.
A shout rode the wind.
Ti-Bish turned to gaze at the ice maw that led into the Nightland Caves. For generations his people had retreated to those shelters. Living in a cave in the ice was preferable to being out here, at the mercy of the deep cold and terrible winter winds.
The Thunder Sea, however, was a dangerous place in warm weather. The tides that rose and fell were tricky enough, but even more nerve-racking, occasional chunks of ice split off, splashing down and sending fierce waves that washed away everything in their path. For the most
part, that happened later in the summer, after the warm winds blew hot from the south.
Other frightening things had been happening. Several times last winter Father Sun had risen as red as blood and had no light.
Omens. Signs and portents. He’d asked Raven Hunter what they meant. His eerie answer:
“The end of the world is almost upon you … .”
Ti-Bish walked around the curve of the Thunder Sea and saw four women kneeling around a crying infant. The boy seemed to be sick. One woman was holding his head up, letting him drink from a shell cup, while the others Sang and fanned him with eagle feathers.
Ti-Bish walked forward. The boy’s soul was hovering above his body. As Ti-Bish approached, one of the women looked up, worry bright in her eyes. It took a moment before she recognized him. She gasped, slapped one of the other women on the shoulder, and said, “It’s him. It’s the Guide!”
All four women jerked around to look with startled eyes.
“A pleasant morning to you,” Ti-Bish said as he knelt beside the boy. “How old is he?”
The woman who held the boy’s head, replied, “Two moons, Blessed Guide.”
“How long has he been ill?”
“Since the day he was born.” She looked up at Ti-Bish with moist eyes. The young woman was pretty, perhaps ten and five summers, with long black hair. “I’ve tried everything to Heal him, Blessed Guide. Nothing has worked. Every day his fever gets higher.”
Ti-Bish reached out. He touched the pale blue soul hovering just above the small body. Slowly, carefully, he pressed the soul down until he could feel it enter the infant’s body.
“There, little one. That’s your home now.”
The baby’s cries stopped, and he blinked his eyes open, brown and soft. A drooly smile curled his tiny pink lips.
The women watched in stunned silence.
Ti-Bish said, “The child’s soul is invisibly linked to an object in the Spirit World. I must cut the cord that connects him to it.” He closed his eyes and concentrated on the silver filament that stretched up from the child’s blue soul. He could sense it, long and thin before it disappeared high in the air. He used both hands to tug it apart.
The boy let out a sharp cry, then blinked and peered up at Ti-Bish with wide eyes.
Ti-Bish smiled and rose to his feet. “He’ll be all right now. But for four days you must Sing frog songs over him. Frogs travel through the Spirit worlds all the time. If you pray to them they will send his soul home the next time they see it hovering over his body.”
The young mother blinked, tears of relief welling in her eyes. “Thank you, Blessed Guide.”
Cries erupted when the women washing clothes realized who he was. In mere heartbeats the shore came alive with running people. A man shouted, “He’s Healing!” and people dropped what they’d been doing to hurry toward him.
A weeping woman in a torn, bloodstained cape grabbed his hand. “Guide, I beg you! My husband was wounded in the fighting. Come and Heal him. Be merciful. Heal him. Please! He fought for you.”
“Bring him to my chamber tonight at sunset. I will tell the guards to let you in.”
She dropped to her knees and kissed his moccasins. “Thank you! Thank you!”
From behind, an old man jerked the hem of Ti-Bish’s robe so forcefully, he stumbled backward.
“Guide!” the man cried. “My daughter was drowned out on the water. Bring her back to life. I can’t live without her!”
“I can’t make the dead live again. Forgive me.”
“But people have seen you do it! Why can’t you do it for me?”
The crowd kept growing. There were so many. He staggered, helpless and frail beneath the weight of their needs.
“Raven Hunter?” he called over their heads. “Raven Hunter, I beg you: Help these people.”
“Guide!” a filthy woman in ragged hides shrieked, shoving against him. She fairly threw her child into his arms. “Guide, cure my little girl next. Please, she’s—”
“No, my son is sicker!” A dark-haired crone crowded into the circle.
From every corner, every lodge, they came, shouting, pleading, shoving him.
He looked down at the girl. Her battered head lolled limply. “What happened to her?”
“She was climbing the rocks this morning and fell. She hit her head many times.”
Ti-Bish brushed her dark hair away from her face. “Raven Hunter? Heal this child?”
Behind him, a clamor of voices rose, fiery and indignant. He didn’t understand the sudden enmity until he heard Nashat’s voice ordering, “Get back!
Back away!
”
The woman shouted, “No, don’t take him from us!”
Nashat strode up surrounded by guards, grabbed the girl from Ti-Bish’s arms, and thrust her at her mother. “Take her home. The Blessed Guide has done all he can.”
“But … but …” Ti-Bish stammered.
The woman clutched the little girl to her breast, pleading eyes on Ti-Bish. He started to reach out for her, only to have Nashat pull him back.
“Surround him,” Nashat ordered the guards, and the men started hitting people with their war clubs, knocking them back to form a ring around Ti-Bish.
“But …” Ti-Bish reached out, desperate to reach the injured girl.
“Guide, we love you,” a one-legged man propped on a walking stick implored. “We need you! When are we returning to the Long Dark?”
Nashat waved to the guards, and—tugging insistently on Ti-Bish—started back for the mouth of the big cave that led into the ice tunnels.
Nashat said, “Were you trying to get yourself
killed
? Tell me the next time you wish to go out Healing, so that I can make sure you’re safe.”
Ti-Bish wet his lips and nodded. “They
need
me!”
“We
all
need you.”
He stared at Nashat, longing to tell him that he wanted to go out alone. But he couldn’t. The words just stuck in his throat.
Can’t I just have peace and tranquility around me?
Finally, he managed to bravely say, “I
wanted
to be with them, Nashat.”
“Well, you mustn’t do this again. I know you trust everyone, but not everyone deserves your trust. The Sunpath People have assassins everywhere.”
“I—I looked for you this morning. I couldn’t find you.”
“I apologize. We captured one of the Sunpath conspirators, and I had to question the—”
“Skimmer?” Ti-Bish took a step toward Nashat. “She’s here?”
“Skimmer? Who is Skimmer?”
“The Nine Pipes woman. I asked you to bring her to me.”
Nashat gave him that old familiar look of irritation. “You said to bring you
a woman
from Nine Pipes Village. You didn’t say which one!”
Ti-Bish frowned, his thoughts reeling. “But I must have Skimmer.”
“She plotted your murder with Lookingbill.”
He smiled. “But she’s
necessary
!”
Nashat glanced sidelong at an empty square of tall posts. He shook his head, thinking, then said, “Well, we’ll look for her.” But Nashat hid something behind his words.
Ti-Bish sagged in Nashat’s grip. He remembered Skimmer. She was very beautiful. And she’d given him food when no one else would.
“I need to speak with her.” Then he remembered. “But you needn’t worry after all.” He smiled. “She’ll come to me.”
Nashat gave him a hooded, amused look, as if somehow that was very funny.
“I’m sure she will.” Nashat put a hand on Ti-Bish’s back and shoved him through the entrance before turning to the guards. “Don’t let anyone in until I have the Guide back in his personal chambers.”
“Yes, Elder.”
To Ti-Bish he said, “You always get carried away. Try thinking without your heart. Those people out there could kill you just by trying to touch you all at once; then they’d panic and trample each other. They’re like a frightened herd of mammoths.”
“I—I’ll ask Raven Hunter to keep me safe.”
“Ti-Bish, really. Raven Hunter has other things to do than hear our petty cries every day. We need to handle this ourselves.”
“Are you saying that you don’t believe Raven Hunter will protect me?”
“No, no, of course not. It’s just that I don’t want to burden the Spirits with things we can take care of ourselves. Too many requests over insignificant—”
“He’s never come to you! That’s why you doubt.”
“Of course I believe, Ti-Bish. Don’t get upset.”

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