People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past) (36 page)

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

BOOK: People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past)
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“Yes, my Chief.”
Cimmis walked away, slowly, acting as though he had all day to make it back to the safety of his lodge. Every eye in Fire Village watched him.
White Stone grumbled, “Deer Killer, apparently you’re going to live to see sunset this day. But if I were you I wouldn’t repeat my dereliction of duty. Do you understand?”
“Yes, War Chief.” His body was trembling, and Dzoo watched it with a certain glee.
When Cimmis was out of hearing range, White Stone hissed, “I don’t know how you got out of the captives’ lodge, witch, but I’m taking no chances with you. You’d better be very careful.”
She bowed her head and smiled.
As they walked into the lower half of the village, children came racing out from behind a lodge and circled around, shrieking in joy, as barking dogs nipped at their heels. When they noticed White Stone, panic gripped them. Like a flock of spooked birds they retreated to the edges of the plaza to let him pass, eyes like huge dark holes in the world. A strange silence descended.
“It seems, War Chief, that you have a Powerful effect on the small and frail. Would you like to know what the Dead think of you?”
“Just walk, witch.”
She studied the painted lodges in awe. The lifelike renderings of Eagle, Killer Whale, Grizzly Bear, and Owl were the product of a
people who never had to scramble for a living. “How many North Wind People are left in Fire Village, War Chief?”
“You mean pure North Wind?”
“Yes.”
His steps faltered, but he regained his composure quickly. “How many were here when you left?”
“Almost ten tens.”
“There may be eight tens now.”
Eight tens.
“At that rate, the village is losing one a year. In another eight tens of years, there will be no purebloods left.”
Water puddles dotted the ground, muddying their moccasins. She watched White Stone as he considered her words; they seemed to be eating at him like a termite in an old log.
“Did Cimmis order all of the other North Wind People killed?”
“Some of them,” White Stone admitted, “but there weren’t many left to begin with. Six and ten summers ago, when Tlikit fled with her lover, they started leaving. Several have died over the cycles. Astcat begged the North Wind People from the neighboring villages to come and live here. A few did.”
“Does it bother you to serve a dying people?”
“I don’t understand. You’re one of them. A pureblood, but you favor the Raven People.”
“Poor War Chief,” she whispered. “How lucky you are. You need not look past your orders. I envy the simplicity, if not the quality, of your life.”
White Stone’s gaze shot involuntarily back up the hill. She could feel his nerves prickling, see it in the set of his shoulders. When she followed his stare, it was to see Ecan standing outside his lodge like a carved statue. His long hair hung loose around his tall body. His eyes might have been coals glowing through a darkness of hatred.
It didn’t matter; she was going home. Already she could sense the ghosts of her ancestors, hear the whispers of Power coming from the aged wood and bark of the house where she was born.
As she walked up and placed a hand on the familiar doorway, she heard her mother’s ghost crying.
“Yes, Mother. I know.
He
is hunting me.”
M
orning light fell across the ocean, reflecting from the curls of mist that twined along the beach. Rain Bear took another sip from his teacup as he stared out at the islands offshore. Despite the early hour, men were plying nets in the muddy water. Another whale had been harpooned, almost swamping the canoe as it sounded. The hunters had regaled the crowd with the story of their perfect cast—the harpoon skewering the blowhole—and their wild ride while the suffocating whale thrashed.
After the carcass had been towed ashore, people had swarmed it, using large obsidian knives to process the blubber and rich red meat. Not even darkness had slowed them. By torchlight, the whale had been rendered to bone.
Feasting had lasted until well after midnight. And while most of the village still slept, the refugees were up and moving about through the forest.
“ … today you’ll speak … Thunderbird.”
Rides-the-Wind’s scratchy old voice penetrated his lodge.
Rain Bear cocked his head to listen. Rides-the-Wind had been whispering to Tsauz since long before dawn, preparing him for some task. He’d caught only a few words of the conversation. Something about hunting and magical stones.
He clutched his hot cup and concentrated on the warmth that
penetrated his fingers, trying to will it into the rest of his frozen body. Half of a cod was propped on sticks jammed into the charcoal-black earth and tilted so that the chevrons of meat slowly cooked over the fire’s low heat. The odor was sending Rain Bear’s stomach into fits.
Evening Star slipped out of her lodge, her face swollen with sleep, her eyes heavy. She glanced at him first thing, smiling as if just for him. She stood, reached for her cloak, and walked off into the forest to attend to her morning needs.
Rides-the-Wind’s garrulous voice rose and fell as he regaled Tsauz with some story about Thunderbirds.
Rain Bear was pondering that when Evening Star stepped out of the dew-beaded trees, deposited a scapula comb and something else in her doorway, and walked over to accept the cup of tea he had already brewed for her.
“They’re still in there?” She gave him that smile again, and glanced at Rides-the-Wind’s lodge.
Rain Bear yawned, watching his breath frost. “I think Tsauz has been adopted. He moved his bedding in with Rides-the-Wind. I heard last night after I returned from the island that the Soul Keeper had volunteered to train the boy.”
Evening Star studied the browning cod with hungry eyes. “I hope the boy knows just how lucky he is.”
“Lucky?” Rain Bear smiled at the thought. “Half the world wants to kill him as a means of getting back at his father.”
She considered. “This story about him going blind after his mother died … It seems to me the boy has already paid a terrible price for being Ecan’s son.”
“Do you believe he just went blind? Just like that? Without being hit in the head, or having his eyes injured?”
Her stare fixed on the distance inside her. “Oh, yes, Great Chief. I myself … I just wish I could have gone blind, and deaf, and perhaps mute as well. It’s punishment, you see. The desire to atone for failing my daughter, my husband and mother … my people.”
“Matron, you don’t—”
She held up a hand. “Oh, yes I do. And to make sure I punish myself, I will continue to live, see, remember, and hear their screams. Taking the other route and giving up would be too easy.”
He let her stew for a moment. “I never knew your husband, but I knew Naida. I wasn’t aware that either she or your husband had a reputation for cruelty.”
She glanced at him. “Cruelty?”
“Or that they were petty, or even mean for that matter.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just this: If you had died, and your husband had lived, I am to understand you would want him to punish himself for the rest of his life for your death?”
“Absolutely not!”
“Ah,” Rain Bear added gently. “Then you would want your mother, had she lived, to blame herself for your death?”
She was giving him a suspicious look now. “If I were dead, and they alive, I would be furious with them for blaming themselves.”
“Then what would you want them to do?”
“I’d want them to …” It sank in on her then, her expression getting small, her eyes seeing inward.
“To go on with their lives,” Rain Bear added with assurance. “As the Naida I knew would want her daughter to do with hers. What about your husband? I’ve heard he was a good man, kind and thoughtful. Were he here, sitting in my spot, what would he tell you?”
She took a deep breath. “I need to think about this. I just …” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m angry with myself. Confused.”
“We’re all a little confused.”
Her blue eyes burned when she looked up at him. “I’m feeling doubly guilty. That’s all. They’re dead—their souls barely on the road to the House of Air … and all I can think about is you.” She gestured. “My husband was a good man. What happened to him was wrong. I just—”
“It was an arranged marriage,” Rain Bear pointed out.
She nodded. “We did our duty.”
He used a stick to prod the fire where blue smoke spiraled lazily from blackened branches and puffed around the sizzling cod. “If Tlikit had done her duty, she would have pined for the rest of her life, thinking of me. She never let on, never knew that I knew, but until the day she died she believed she had failed her people.”
Evening Star might have been staring into the past. “If she had stayed …”
“Would the present be different? Perhaps. She might be the North Wind matron in Astcat’s place. Or she might have died in childbirth years ago, or been struck by lightning, or killed in a fall. One never knows how life would be different if one had chosen another path. And for every decision, there is a price.”
She looked up, puzzled. “Was it worth the price she paid?”
“She thought so.” He smiled wistfully. “We balance our lives just like children do when they play on a balancing pole in the forest. On
one hand is our duty to our people, or clan, or family, and on the other is our duty to ourselves. Sometimes certain people get both. Other times they have to choose based on what they think right.”
“And what should I have chosen, Great Chief?”
“You cannot change the things you’ve chosen, Evening Star, only the things you choose now, and in the future.”
For a long time they stared at the blue smoke rising off the fire. The skin on the backside of the cod had begun to bubble. Rain Bear grinned. “While you wrestle with your choices, I suggest that you do so with a full stomach.”
Her expression was thoughtful as Rain Bear removed the succulent meat from the skewers and laid it on a wooden platter.
 
 
P
itch, his arm tightly bound to his chest, picked his way through the camp. The night before, Rides-the-Wind had come and drained his wound. The process had entailed a sharpened wooden skewer that Rides-the-Wind had used to reopen the scab. Then he had carefully massaged Pitch’s arm, squeezing foul-smelling contents into a small wooden bowl.
Pitch hadn’t been aware that the human body could withstand a pain like that. His voice was still raw from the screams. But the fever had broken. Last night, he had been exhausted by the ordeal, relieved that the swelling was down, and overjoyed that the sour smell of the leaking punctures had dissipated. He had actually slept.
As he approached the little triangle of lodges where Rides-the-Wind, Rain Bear, and Evening Star lived, he remembered his reaction to the sight of the blood-clotted pus.
“It’s all right,” a solicitous Rides-the-Wind had told Roe when Pitch threw up. “He needs to be cleaned, inside and out.” The old man had frowned as she carried the wooden bowl out to the roaring bonfire and tossed it into the center of the flames.
The old man had smiled as the corruption was consumed. “You’ll heal now, Pitch.” He had hesitated, a question in his eyes. “I wonder, would you do something for me tomorrow?”
“Yes, Elder?”
“Tsauz was awakened in the night by Thunderbirds.” His eyes began to gleam.
“You want to prepare him to climb the Ladder to the Sky?”
“And I would like your help.” The Soul Keeper had looked around. “This isn’t the best time or place, Singer, but the boy is being called.”
“He’s very young. Climbing the Ladder, Elder … well, I wasn’t sure I was ready when I did it last year.”
The old man had only shrugged. “When you are called, Pitch, you are called.”
So here he was, still light on his feet, his arm smarting in its sling, as he made his way across the damp morning camp.
The old man ducked outside. His long gray hair and beard shimmered. Tsauz came out behind him. The boy always stood so straight and tall, he reminded Pitch of an alder sapling. He wore the beautiful black-and-white cape he’d been captured in. It had been freshly washed, and the white spirals around the collar made his shoulder-length black hair seem darker.
“Good morning, Soul Keeper,” Pitch called.
“How is your arm?”
“Better today. My family and I send our thanks.” He glanced at Tsauz, seeing the hesitation, fright, and worry in the boy’s eyes. “Have you prepared yourself, Tsauz?”
“I—I think so. Rides-the-Wind had me in a sweat lodge most of yesterday. I stayed up all last night listening for the Thunderbirds and praying.”
Rides-the-Wind took Tsauz’s hand. “We had best be on our way.” He looked out at the gray skies and the shredded bits of misty clouds that clung to the trees. “It’s a good day to go hunting.”
Pitch fell into line behind them and checked the guards. A shadowy crowd silently flowed through the forest, moving as they moved. “Will the guards interfere?”
Rides-the-Wind shot him a glance. “They are an unwelcome necessity.” He turned to Tsauz. “I want you to concentrate on the lightning bolts that woke you in the middle of the night, Tsauz,” Rides-the-Wind instructed. “Remember every detail.”
Is he ready for this?
Pitch wondered as he studied the blind boy. Pitch wasn’t sure but that he’d rather go through the ordeal of having his wound drained again rather than face the Ladder to the Sky.
Rides-the-Wind said, “Remembering is like shooting the bolts back at the Thunderbirds, Tsauz. If you’re fortunate, you’ll hit one and knock him out of the sky.”
Tsauz’s blind eyes searched for Rides-the-Wind’s face. “But … won’t that make him mad?”
“Certainly. It will make him angry enough to blast you into small pieces, and that’s exactly what we want.”
“I want my soul to be blasted by a lightning bolt?”
“Absolutely.”
Tsauz cast a blind glance over his shoulder to where Pitch walked. The boy’s expression was anything but sure.
They took the western trail that climbed steadily toward a series of low foothills. At this time of the morning, the firs whiskering the hills cast oddly shaped shadows.
Rides-the-Wind kept his pace slow and guided Tsauz around the rocks that littered the trail. The scent of damp firs was strong. They passed through a grove of white-barked alders and emerged into a grassy meadow.
Pitch took a moment to appreciate the beauty. The trail wound across the meadow and up over the top of a gray cliff that stood perhaps ten tens of hands in height. Low clouds hovered around the rim rock. In the distance, Mother Ocean’s waves rose and fell.
“We’ll climb to the top of the cliff and stop,” Rides-the-Wind said.
As Old Woman Above carried the sun higher into the morning sky, bright yellow light flooded the cliff, and the clouds shredded into tufts of mist.
“This is high enough?” Pitch wondered as they topped the cliff and the land opened on a small meadow. His eyes fixed on the patches of cloud that blew through the jagged firs across the meadow from them.
Rides-the-Wind lowered himself to a square chunk of stone, breathing hard. The guards shuffled through the forest around them, watching with curious eyes but keeping their distance.

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