The Dawn Country (2 page)

Sonon took a breath and let it out slowly.

There were still times when he woke to the sound of screams that existed only inside him. For many summers he’d thought they were the cries of his twin sister, and he’d been ravaged by guilt. When he’d finally realized the voice was his own, the pain had eased a little. The day they were sold into slavery, he’d seen only eight summers. He wasn’t a warrior. There was nothing he could have done to save her—or himself.

He clenched his fists so hard his nails bit into his palms. He had to go down there, into the village. No man wished to admit he was afraid, but …

He forced his legs to walk. At first, only a few bodies lay alongside the trail, but as he neared the palisade the number increased. Desperate villagers must have fought to get outside and run headlong into a line of waiting archers. Bodies, bristling with arrows, had piled up around each gap in the defensive wall. The last few to make it outside probably had to shove their way through a mound of dead.

Sonon carefully stepped around the carnage and ducked through the charred hole in the palisade. The heat struck him first. He threw up an arm and squinted against the glare to see what remained of Bog Willow Village. In less than twenty heartbeats he was sweating, struggling for air. The smoke was so thick it was almost impossible to breathe.

Five paces away an old woman sat on the ground with her face in her hands, rocking back and forth in dazed silence. A few other survivors stumbled past. They moved methodically, searching for loved ones or bending to collect precious belongings: a dropped pot or basket, children’s toys.

I’m over here. See me?

Sonon stopped, and tiny tornadoes of ash spun away from his sandals. They whirled through the firelit shadows. Was it just his fatigue? It sounded like a boy’s voice.

Cautiously, he veered around a collapsed wall and began searching the debris. Twenty paces later, he almost stumbled over the child.

Two small arms extended from beneath a buckled wall.

Sonon knelt and pulled the boy from the heap of smoldering bark. Most of his hair had been singed off. He’d seen perhaps six or seven summers. For a time, he just held the boy in his lap and listened to the crackling roar of the fire. Somewhere in the conflagration, muted voices shouted names … and went unanswered. Occasionally, orphaned children darted by.

When he could, he staggered to his feet and carried the boy between the burning husks of two houses, then stepped through a gap in the palisade wall and trudged down to the river’s edge, where he gently rested the boy on the shore. In the wavering glare, the boy’s half-open eyes seemed to be alive and watching him.

Why do I only hear them when the struggle is over? Are the voices of the dead only audible to those trapped in eternal night?

Sonon tenderly adjusted the boy’s cape, pulling it up around his throat to keep him warm. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll make sure they find you. Your clan will take care of you, and you’ll have no trouble crossing the bridge to the afterlife. Your ancestors will be waiting for you.”

Though he was a man of the Hills nation, he knew the ways of the Dawnland People. They believed that the unburied dead became Ghost Fires, angry fire-beings that could not cross the bridge to the afterlife and were forever doomed to remain around the deteriorating bones. The Bog Willow Village survivors would not leave their beloved relatives to that terrible fate, not if they could help it. That meant someone would come looking for this child. His body would be ritually cleaned and prepared for the long journey; then his family would sing him to the afterlife. Having the boy out here in the open would make it easier for his relatives to find him.

Sonon wiped his soot-coated face with the back of his hand and looked out across the river to the opposite, willow-choked bank. Beyond it, towering black spruces caught the reflections in the water and seemed made of translucent amber wings. The river itself, coated with ash, had an opaque leaden sheen.

He stood up and turned back to the village. For ten heartbeats, he just breathed and studied the palisade. People from distant places did not understand that each log was a Standing Warrior. Among their peoples, the angry souls of dead warriors were excluded from the Land of the Dead, so they moved into trees. They remained in the wood for centuries, until the tree disintegrated and their souls were forced to seek new homes. It was these trees that the People cut down to make their palisades. That meant that every log was a warrior still keeping guard, still protecting his or her people.

He wondered what the Standing Warriors must be feeling. Not so long ago, they’d watched this little boy racing happily across the plaza, seen him playing ball and dish games with his friends, heard his laughter ringing through the village on quiet summer afternoons. Their grief must be unbearable.

Sonon whispered, “No one could have held off such an assault. It wasn’t your fault. You did the best you—”

Voices drifted from the river. He turned.

A birch-bark canoe quietly slipped through the smoke, parting the river like an arrow, heading south. An old woman rode in the bow. She was dressed like a man and wore a long black wig, but a few greasy twists of gray hair stuck out around the edges, framing her deeply wrinkled face. Even if she hadn’t been in disguise, he would have known her. A thousand summers from now, as he walked the earth alone, he would hear her footsteps in his nightmares.

Four children lay together in her canoe, crying. Three warriors with paddles swiftly drove them forward. Close on the heels of the first, another canoe pierced the darkness—with three more captive children.

As the canoes passed, waves rippled outward and washed up on the shore near the dead boy, leaving delicate ribbons of firelit foam at his feet.

Everything about tonight felt strange and surreal. As though Sonon was locked in a trance and could not wake, his heart thumped a dull staccato against his chest.

At least a few of the children had escaped. Earlier in the evening, he’d helped them … as much as he could.

When the canoes vanished into the darkness, he looked at the western mountains. He couldn’t see the pass through the smoke and falling ash. The trail the escaped children had taken was the fastest way back to the lands of the People of the Standing Stone. But there would be many others on that trail: survivors of the village slaughter, orphaned children, and a few wary men who’d left the victory camp early, trying to beat the onslaught of warriors who would crowd the trail just after dawn.

Very softly he called, “Stay strong, Odion, and you’ll be all right. You’ll—”

I’m here. Right here. Please find me?

Sonon squeezed his eyes closed for several long moments. It was a girl’s voice.

He clenched his fists again; then he tramped back up the hill, ducked through the gap in the palisade, and trotted into the roaring inferno to search for her.

Two

Odion

I’m alive … .

I pull my knees up beneath my woven moosehide blanket and gaze out at the night-dark forest, where frozen trees glitter in the starlight. An eerie elation washes through me. I have survived eleven summers and never felt this curious brew of terror and utter joy before—the odd euphoria of a captive suddenly freed from horror.

As I was just a few hands of time ago.

Hope vies with the flashes of hideous memory. I squeeze the terror into a black place hidden deep inside me and blink at the camp.

Our tiny fire glimmers in the depths of a narrow valley that cuts through a rocky mountain ridge. Clumps of trees surround the small meadow. The staghorn sumacs—scrub trees—grow four or five times the height of a man and have dark smooth bark that reflects the dancing shadows cast by the flames. Beyond the sumacs, a thicket of thorny plums spreads fifty paces in every direction. Frost covers the fallen fruit and makes the forest floor seem as though it’s paved with round white rocks.

Frigid silence reigns in the night, punctured only by my companions’ breathing and the occasional popping of the flames. Though I know Mother and Father guard me—and five other people sleep nearby—I jump every time Wind Mother rattles the trees, or flames leap as they chew through the sweet-smelling plum branches. My ears strain to hear enemy steps in the night.

I look first at Mother, then turn my eyes to Father. They guard opposite sides of the camp, and for a long time I’m not sure they’re real. So many times in the past moon, I imagined them standing just like this only to be shaken out of dreams and back to horror.

Is it truly different this time?

When Father turns to smile at me, tears of relief silver my vision. My anxiety drains away, leaving me exhausted. No matter how long I live, my best memory will be the sight of Mother and Father running out of the forest with their war clubs swinging, killing the men who held us captive.

As I live it again, the strange euphoria intensifies, sharpened to a deadly edge by the fear that this freedom can’t last. They are coming for me. I know it.

My little sister, Tutelo, sleeps beside me. She rolls over and heaves a sigh. I turn to make sure she’s all right. She has a doehide pulled up over her head in the manner of a hood. Only her pretty oval face with its turned-up nose gleams in the firelight. She has seen eight summers pass.

Behind her, Baji is stretched out on her back. I can’t be certain, but I think she’s staring up at the campfires of the dead that sprinkle the night sky. Every so often, I smell the acrid scent of the burning village that clings to my moosehide blanket. Is Baji thinking about what happened earlier tonight? About the gigantic warriors’ camp outside of the flaming village, the screams and cries of orphaned children … the laughter of warriors covered in blood?

Baji has seen twelve summers. Long eyelashes fringe her dark eyes. Her small nose and full lips are perfect. Long black hair spreads across the blanket around her. She was captured in a raid and sold into slavery the day after I was.

Images flash behind my eyes:
Girls thrown to the ground by brutal men … suffocating sobs … Gan—

A terrified cry climbs my throat. Barely audible. No one else seems to hear. Except Baji.

She rolls to face me and mouths the words,
Are you all right?

I shake my head, aware that the terror has broken loose inside me. Will I ever be able to completely wall it away down in that black space between my souls? For the moment I can only blink at the hot tears and try to control the fear.

Baji wraps her blanket around her shoulders, rises, and tiptoes over to kneel beside me.

“What’s wrong?” she whispers.

I stare up at her. “I dreamed there are warriors coming.”

“Warriors? From the victory camp? Or
her
warriors?”

“I don’t know. Maybe hers.”

She shakes her head violently, and long black hair flies around her shoulders. She’s just as afraid as I am. “No, I—I don’t think so. Why would they come after us? She bought new children from the destroyed village. She doesn’t need us any longer.”

The evil old woman who buys and sells captured children is a powerful witch. She can hear conversations from a day’s march away. I’m afraid she’s listening to us right now.

I whisper, “They’re coming, Baji. I swear it. I feel the warriors’ footsteps in my heart.”

For a long time Baji looks out at the firelit shadows that sway in the trees, as though searching for hidden men. Then she curls up beside me and stares at me. “Even if she is coming after us, we have a good head start. And your mother and father, and the two Hills People warriors they brought, will protect us.”

“I know.” I want so desperately to believe it’s true.

Baji wets her lips and whispers, “I’m more worried about Wrass and Zateri. Do you think they’re all right?”

A deep ache fills my chest. Our friends, Wrass and Zateri, are still the old woman’s slaves. Somehow, I think it’s my fault. We were separated when the rescue happened. I should have called out to them, or gone to find them. Instead, I just ran away with Mother and Father. I ran as hard as I could.

“It’s not your fault,” Baji says, as though reading the tracks of my soul. Is she feeling the same guilt I am? After the horrors of the past moon, we are closer than friends, closer than family. “It’s a miracle that we escaped with our own lives.”

“I know, I just—”

“And we’re going back for them. Tomorrow morning. Your parents promised. They wouldn’t lie to us, would they? We
are
going back to rescue Wrass and Zateri, and the other children, aren’t we?”

I have to think about this before I answer. “ … My parents wouldn’t lie to us.”

But I’m not sure that’s true.

My gaze drifts to where Mother stands. Most people know her as War Chief Koracoo from Yellowtail Village of the Standing Stone People. My Father, Gonda, is her deputy. Women war chiefs are rare, and being honored with the title requires unusual courage, intelligence, and skill. Mother is a powerful and respected leader. She’s a tall woman, muscular and long-legged. Her war club—the legendary weapon known as CorpseEye—is propped on her shoulder.