The Dawn Country (16 page)

Atotarho glances at the door behind him and whispers, “No. The attack on my Trading party was well organized, and they went straight for my beautiful daughter.” His knobby hand clenches to a fist. “As there was many summers ago, I fear there is a traitor here. So, you see, I would rather trust an enemy who shares my interests … than a friend who may not.”

Koracoo’s gaze roams the firelit shadows for thirty heartbeats. “We will need to discuss your offer.”

“I understand.” As the chief rises to his feet, the circlets of skull on his cape flash. “I’ll leave you the lamp; it will provide a little warmth until the oil runs out.”

The effort of rising seems to have cost him all of his strength. He pants for a time before he adds, “Many of my people believe I am the human False Face prophesied in our legends. The Spirit-Man who will save the world. It has never been an easy title to bear. Especially now when I cannot even save my own daughter.” Without making a sound, he starts for the door. “Let me know your decision as soon as you’ve made it, and I—”

“One last thing,” Koracoo says.

He turns. “Yes?”

“What assurances do we have that you will keep your part of this bargain? Gannajero will not believe me if I tell her you will pay her later.”

Atotarho braces his hand against the door to steady himself. “I will send a man with you who can verify—”

G
onda woke gasping as though a hammer had been swung into his rib cage. He struggled to sit up. A few paces away, Sindak turned to stare at him.

Gonda’s shaking hand rose to the shell pendant he now wore around his neck … and he wondered what his souls were trying to tell him? There must be some connection between the dead girl’s pendant and Atotarho, but he was too exhausted to understand.

He forced himself to lie down again and drew his blanket up around his throat. As his breathing began to slow, his chest tightened. Among the People of the Standing Stone, dreams resulted either from contact with the Spirit World or from the unrequited desires of the souls. To ignore a dream was to risk death. He flopped to his opposite side.

Sindak called, “Gonda? Are you all right?”

“Leave me alone,” he growled. “I need to rest.”

Sindak tucked his war club into his belt and walked toward Gonda. “Well, I was considering not telling you, but since you were just so polite to me … it’s your watch.”

Seventeen

S
ometime in the night, they’d made camp. But Wrass didn’t even remember stopping.

He squinted against the light cast by the small blaze that flickered in the middle of the clearing. Around it, several people lay rolled in blankets. He was the only child still in the canoes. He didn’t see the other children. One guard stood to the south along the bank. Another stood to the north, watching the wide bend in the river.

And … another man stood in the river before him. Had he just appeared? Why hadn’t Wrass seen him immediately?

The man was no more than three paces away, wearing a long black cape. He watched Wrass curiously. For some time, Wrass returned his stare. There was nothing threatening about him. Except that the man never blinked or looked away.
And he wasn’t one of Gannajero’s warriors.

Wrass rubbed his eyes, but when he lowered his hand, the man was still there. If it hadn’t been for his crooked nose, he’d be handsome. His black hair had been carefully plaited into a long braid that draped over his left shoulder.

“I’ve seen you before,” Wrass whispered.

Several times as the canoe passed, he’d seen the man staring fixedly at him from behind trees, or calmly sleeping in the frost—but he’d thought the man a figment of his fever. No human being could outrun a canoe powered by the arms of muscular warriors. But this man must have, or he would not be here now.

“I’m still dreaming,” Wrass whispered, and focused on the night sky. The brightest campfires of the dead shone like fuzzy white balls. Against that background, the bare branches above him painted delicate black brushstrokes. He wondered if his dead father was up there, sitting around the fire joking with his Ancestors. He’d died in the fight that destroyed Yellowtail Village. The People of the Standing Stone believed that each person possessed two souls. One soul remained with the body forever, while the other, the afterlife soul, ordinarily traveled to the bridge that led to the Land of the Dead. The bridge spanned a black abyss. On this side of the bridge, the life side, were all the animals a man had known. Those that had loved him protected him from those that had not, and gave him the time to leap onto the bridge and run for the death side. Oftentimes, a man was chased across the bridge by snarling beasts who tried to shove him into the abyss, where he would fall forever through darkness. Even if he made it across, the trial was not over, for on the death side he met all the people he’d known in his life. Those who had loved him protected him from those who had hated him. If there were more people who had hated him, the mob might drag the man back onto the bridge and cast him over the edge while his loved ones wailed.

As the man in the black cape waded closer, firelit rings bobbed across the water and collided with the shore.

Wrass squinted. “Did you come to take me to the bridge?”

The man smiled sadly.
You’re not dying, Wrass.

“I want to. Please, take me. My family is dead. I want to go to them.”

No. Not yet. You have many things to do.

The man’s body wavered, as though Wrass were seeing him through a wall of water. He waded to the gunwale of the canoe, where Wrass looked up at him. He was very tall. Oddly, the firelight did not flicker from his cape. It remained utterly black, like a hole cut out of the world.

Wrass whispered, “Are you the human False Face? The one who is to come?”

His people had a story about the end of the world. The story predicted the appearance of a human False Face who would don a cape of white clouds and ride the winds of destruction across the land, wiping away evil so that Great Grandmother Earth could be reborn pure and clean.

The young man leaned over and tenderly smoothed Wrass’ hair away from his eyes. His fingers were cool.

No. But you will know him. I promise you will.

There was a long pause, and Wrass heard a sound like the roar of putting a seashell to his ear. He studied the pale translucence of the man’s skin, the smooth line of his jaw. “Are you a
hanehwa
?”

The
hanehwa
were enchanted skin-beings. Sometimes sorcerers skinned their human victims alive, then cast spells upon the skins, forcing them to serve as guards.
Hanehwa
never slept. They warned the witch by giving three shouts.

The man’s brown eyes softened.
We are all husks, Wrass, flayed from the soil of fire and blood. This won’t be over for any of us until the Great Face shakes the World Tree. Then, when Elder Brother Sun blackens his face with the soot of the dying world, the judgment will take place.

“I—I … ,” he stuttered. “I don’t understand.”

The man tilted his head.
Don’t worry about it now. You must sleep and heal.

He gently stroked Wrass’ hair again.

Wrass heaved a sigh of relief, and his gaze wandered across the camp. The Great Face was the chief of all False Faces, and he guarded the sacred World Tree that stood at the center of the earth. Its flowers were made of pure light. The World Tree’s branches pierced the Sky World where the Ancestors lived, and her roots sank deep into the underworlds, where they planted themselves upon the back of the Great Tortoise floating in the primeval ocean. Elder Brother Sun nested in the highest branches of the World Tree.

Get well, Wrass.

The man waded away through the water, and Wrass called, “Wait. Don’t go. K-Keep talking to me.”

The man didn’t even slow down. He faded as he walked away, until he was transparent, then gone. At the place where he’d vanished, Zateri appeared, and walked toward Wrass. Her chipmunk face glowed in the firelight. She seemed to be floating, weightless, like a milkweed seed on a warm summer wind, noiseless and beautiful. A smile turned his lips. As she got closer, she started looking over her shoulder, as though she feared one of the guards would try to stop her. When she climbed into the canoe, it rocked as she walked down to sit beside Wrass. She wore a blue-painted deerhide cape. He didn’t recall ever seeing it before. Had one of the warriors given it to her?

“Did you see him?” Wrass asked. “The man? Did you s-see him?”

Zateri frowned. “What man? One of the warriors?”

“No. The Forest Spirit. He was just here.”

“I didn’t see anyone near you, Wrass. I came because I need to talk to you. And I brought you these.”

She pulled freshly cut willow twigs from her legging and slipped them into Wrass’ hand.

As he nibbled on the bitter twigs, his thoughts drifted. He tried to imagine Elder Brother Sun blackening his face with the soot of the dying world … and wondered if it was warfare that was going to kill Great Grandmother Earth. Fighting had gone on for so long that no one in Yellowtail Village could remember a time without war.

Zateri said, “I heard Gannajero tell Kotin that Toksus is halfway home.”

“Halfway? To Bog Willow Village?” Elation warmed his veins.

“I guess so.”

The more Wrass thought about it, the more unlikely it seemed. “It’s not possible. Even if he ran f-flat-out the entire way in the darkness, he couldn’t have made it that far.”

“I thought the same thing, but …”

Zateri wet her lips, and her front teeth stuck out. She glanced at the guards again. “Just after we made camp, she walked away into the forest and pulled the dead boy’s eyes from her belt pouch. She held them up over her own eyes, as though she was seeing through them. Then she talked to them for a long time.”

In a hushed voice, he said, “The eyes talk to her?”

Zateri lifted a shoulder. “I didn’t hear them say anything. But I guess she did.”

Zateri twisted her hands in her lap. The gesture was more forceful than any of her spoken words. They both feared that all the evil creatures in the world gathered around Gannajero. How could they fight an army of Spirit creatures?

“Wrass, I’m really scared,” Zateri said. “Someone is coming for us, aren’t they? Odion, Baji, and Tutelo found their families, and they organized a search party to find us … didn’t they?”

Wrass held her desperate gaze for a time. Trying to comfort her, he said, “Baji promised she’d return for us with a war party at her back.”

“Yes, but who can say what might have happened after she got away? She might have tried, and no one would listen to a twelve-summers-old girl.”

Wrass smiled. “Baji is not that easy to ignore.”

“Then … you do think someone is coming?” Her voice shook.

Wrass carefully considered what to say. If he sounded too optimistic, she wouldn’t believe him. Zateri had been a slave as long as he had. She knew the way of things. On the other hand, hope had kept them alive this long. “Yes. Someone is coming. But I don’t think we c-can rely on them to rescue us. Figuring out our trail isn’t going to be easy. It could take them another moon to find us, and too much can h-happen.” Her eyes tightened. Wrass continued, “We have to do this ourselves, Zateri. And soon.”

She expelled a breath and glanced at the guards again. Both men seemed to be ignoring them, studying the forest shadows and the river. “Do you have a plan?”

He shook his head. “I’ve been too sick to think, but I’m starting to feel a little better, so I’ll—”

“I have a plan.” Zateri leaned very close to him and whispered, “They don’t know it was us who poisoned their stew pot. Maybe we can do it again. I just need a few days to collect the plants.”

Wrass nodded. “Do it. I’m not sure we’ll have a chance. Gannajero has been watching her p-pots like a hawk. But it won’t hurt to have the plants just in case we have an opportunity to use them.”

“I’m pretty sure she thinks it was one of her own warriors who tried to kill her.”

“To take all the children for himself?”

“Yes. She picks her men because they’re slit-eyed thieves with no honor. She can’t trust them.”

Zateri pushed black hair behind her ears, and they sat for a while in companionable silence. The sound of the river seemed louder. Wrass let his gaze wander to the smoke that wreathed the treetops like gauzy shreds of mist. In the firelight, the treetops seemed to flicker, as though lightning lived in their hearts.

Finally, Zateri frowned. “Wrass, there’s one other thing.”

“What?”

“One of the new guards … the one named Akio?”

“What about him?”

She made an uncertain gesture with her hand. “I think he’s from my village.”

Blood surged through his veins, and his headache pounded. “From Atotarho Village? Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. My father didn’t allow me to spend time with warriors, but I know I’ve seen him.”

“Do you think he’s a spy? Is he here to help us? To r-rescue us?”