The Unfinished Song: Taboo (33 page)

How many History
tama
could they exchange?
The New Moon Raid.
The Battle of Lark Creek.
The Burning of the Boats.
The Slaughter of Arrow’s Run.
The Seal Kin Killings.
The Drowning of Far Field.
The Winter Night Attack.
The Rape of River Cove.
They showed no signs of stopping. Every dance by one side provoked the other side to prove they were the true aggrieved party. Back and back it went, each raid a retaliation for the raid before it, with no end in sight and no pointing finger to identify who had truly started it all or when.

He saw something else in the Patterns of magic too, something he had never noticed before. The
tama
performed by each side followed the regulations for human magic, with the dancers moving in straight lines and rows. But the rival Tavaedi troops lost the patience to wait for the other side to finish before they began, so soon both sets of dancers were performing their separate
tama
on the same stage at the same time.

Taken together, the dance lost its crisp linear design. The Blue and Yellow lights woven by the Tavaedies appeared to churn and swirl, like butter stirred in milk. Their unified dance resembled a circle. Two beings, immensely old, unspeakably powerful, shimmered at the rim, shifting shapes with the turn of the seasons: first, the Golden Bear of Summer devoured the Blue Salmon, then the Giant Blue Shark preyed on the Yellow Seal.
An endless cycle, an unbroken circle, a faery dance….

“Nargano, I think I understand now,” Kavio said. “The Blue and Yellow Patterns only make sense when seen together. The circle traps us into a Pattern without change, without exit. We can’t keep wasting lives on raid and retaliation a thousand times around the same ring. We have to be smarter than that. Is that what you meant?”

“No, that’s not at all what I meant. All I see is Blue,” said Nargano. “That’s all I want to see.”

“But our peoples are trapped in a deadly circle,” said Kavio. “When I began the journey that led me to Yellow Bear, I encountered a journey omen, a snake. Then, on the Naming Day for the Year, another serpent omen was found, Snake Eating Its Tail. I did not understand what these
omens  portended
, but now I think I do. The snake that bites its tail is trapped in an eternity of pain. We can behead that snake and escape the circle.”

Nargano leaned forward. “
Kavio,
let me ask you just one question.”

Dindi leaned close to Gwenika on the pretext of reaching past her for another oyster on a stone platter past piles of gourd rinds and lobster shells.

“Gwenika, are you mad? We can’t meet with the Shunned,” Dindi whispered. “Not here, of all places!”

“Dindi, don’t you see, this is exactly where we have to meet with them,” said Gwenika. “This is where we can make a change.”

“I don’t see how.”

“I can heal them,” Gwenika hissed back. “If I can show that they need not be diseased and misshapen, that they can be healed, then the Blue Waters tribesfolk will learn they don’t have to Shun their own sons and daughters.” She pushed away the detritus of leftover food in front of her on the eating mat, to clear her place. Loudly, she announced, “Mercy, I’ve eaten so much, I won’t be surprised if I spend the rest of the day at the piss pit!”

The words rang false, not to mention bordered on rude, but the rest of the feasters were too busy with their own debates and victuals that no one turned a head toward them.

Gwenika stood up. In the same loud, false voice, she commanded Dindi, “Come with me, slave. I’ve had much to drink and need a pair of hands to catch me in case I fall in.”

If the situation had not been so serious, Dindi would have rolled her eyes at Gwenika’s bad acting. However, she guessed her own face betrayed her nervousness, nor did her glances up and down the length of the eating mat help, but she couldn’t stop herself. She’d eaten too much, and of food that had been too salty, and now her stomach felt like an overloaded basket ready to spill. Swallowing hard on a bad taste, she trotted after Gwenika toward the salting racks.

Gremo was already waiting, along with a huddled mass of the Shunned. They stood in the center of several rows of racks of fish hanging by their tails over charcoal fires. The smell was rank, and the smoke made Dindi cough.

“How are you going to use your magic without getting caught?” demanded Dindi. “This is not a hiding place. As soon as you and Gremo start to dance, someone is going to hear it.”

Her stomach made queasy spastic motions because she already knew. Despite her promise to Gwenika, she had not had to use the doll since the fight at Jumping Rock. Gwenika and Gremo had healed Shunned in a few other clanholds, but they’d been able to find an isolated spot to work, and Dindi had only needed to stand guard.

“Now is the time,” Gwenika said. “Invoke your hexed totem. The light from the doll will hide us from prying eyes and from time itself, giving us the opportunity to finish the healing dance.” Gwenika wrung her hands together. “I know I’m asking a huge favor. I know the doll gives Visions of ghosts, and that must be creepy, but I’m begging you to help me help these people. Do you want me to get on my knees?
‘Cause I will.
I can’t stand to see people all covered with bumps and pus and gross things when I know I could cure them. I just need to--”

“Gwenika.” Dindi touched her shoulder to quiet her. “I’ll do it.”

Gwenika exhaled in relief. “Thank you, Dindi.”

She and Gremo began to set up the healing dance.
Dindi recognized the Pattern from one Kavio had taught her called The Bridge. It was considered the most powerful of the healing dances
.

Before they could begin, or Dindi had a chance to invoke the doll, Svego strolled out from behind the rack of smoked fish. His sleek, boyishly muscular body was nearly nude, yet he was strikingly adorned with strategically placed bangles of dyed feathers and shells. His long hair fell down to his calves behind him, held back from his face by a beaded headband.

“Gremo!” Svego planted his hands on his hips. “Do you think I don’t know what you are doing? What you’ve been doing all during the journey? You are insane to think you can violate our most sacred taboo right here in the middle of Sharkshead.”

Gwenika gasped. Gremo, however, strode boldly to meet Svego.

“I’ve been called mad most of my life,” said Gremo. “But never with less reason. This is the first truly sane thing I’ve done with my power.”

“Do you really believe you can heal the mutilations of the Shunned?” asked Svego.

“I do.”

“In that case,” said Svego. He gathered his long hair in his hands and twisted his back. Hidden under the hair before now, a long scar of boils and scabs disfigured the skin down his spine. He let his hair fall over the ugly mottling. Now he hesitated, vulnerable. “Could you… heal me too?”

Gremo stroked his arm, a strangely intimate gesture. “With all my heart.”

The other Shunned murmured in surprise, but Gwenika took charge again (she was more like her mother every day) and told everyone where to stand, sit or wait. She ordered Dindi to the periphery, as a shield.

Dindi sat down with the corncob doll, took a deep breath, and invited in the Visions of ghostly yesterdays.

As the Bone Whistler’s army neared the Rainbow Mountains, Nangi announced she would go on ahead
to
report to her father. The four of them, Nangi and her husband Vumo, his brother Vio the Skull Stomper, and Vessia, had been eating roast quail around a campfire.

“We’ll be there in two days,” Vio said. “What’s the rush? Why travel at night, alone, Nangi? I don’t like it.”

“I’ll take Gidio with me.”

“Even so—“

“My father will want news of the campaign in Yellow Bear as quickly as possible,” said Nangi. She lifted the corner of her lips into a snide smile. “Are you reluctant to report your failure to him, Vio? He won’t be happy to learn that the only thing we seemed to gain from our foray against the Yellow Bear tribe was a toy for your bed furs.”

Vio’s eyes narrowed. “Go, get ready for your trip then.”

Nangi flounced away. Vio watched her leave the circle of firelight.

“She suspects,” said Vio. “Or worse. She knows.”

“Not possible,” said Vumo. “She’s so busy gnawing on her jealousy of Vessia that she doesn’t have time for worrying about a full fledged conspiracy against her father’s rule.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Vio said. “You forget, we have seven minds to guard against stray thoughts now. I saw her hanging about the prisoner’s cage, and she has also been watching Vessia and me far too closely for my comfort. And now she suddenly wants to leave the camp early? Why take Gidio and not you, if she wants to keep you apart from Vessia? I think she’s going to warn her father.”

“Nangi is just being Nangi,” Vumo said uncomfortably. “She wouldn’t do that.”

“Wouldn’t she? As much as she hates him, she still loves him. He
is
her father.”

“Should we stop her from going?”

“By force? That would give away the game away for sure.”

“Then—?”

Vio pulled his quail off of the s
pit over the fire.
He didn’t say anything, yet Vumo seemed to get the message all the same.

“No,” said Vumo flatly. “Not that.”

“Vumo, you always knew this day would come.”

“I won’t kill her, Vio.”

“I’ll do it, if you can’t.”

“That’s not what I mean!” Vumo said. “I won’t let you or anyone else kill my wife.”

“She’s an evil woman, Vumo. She’s sent countless innocent people to their deaths.”

“Some would argue, so have we.
”

“Only when we couldn’t help it.”

“She couldn’t help it either,” said Vumo. “She couldn’t help it that her father shaped her into his weapon.”

“Maybe not when she was a girl. But she’s not a child anymore. She’s old enough to choose.”

“Then let her choose. Let’s bring her into the conspiracy.”

Vio looked at his brother pityingly. “Do you really think she would choose you over her father?”

Like a deflating water skin, Vumo sagged into a miserable hunch. He clutched his face in his hands.

“Your bird.” Vio pointed to the spit in the fire that Vumo had forgotten to turn. One side of the roasting
fowl
was still raw, while the other had crisped to black.

“Huh? Oh.” Vumo turned the spit.

“Have you really come to care for her, little brother?  I thought it was all just part of your routine? This is
Nangi
we’re talking about.”

“She’s different when we’re alone. There’s a part of her she doesn’t show to anyone else,” said Vumo. Over and over, he twisted the spit in the fire, not seeing his burnt meal. “I guess I have come to love her, in a way I never expected.”

“In the way of not actually being faithful to her, for example,” said Vio dryly.

“You can mock me all you want,” said Vumo. “But if you kill my wife, I’ll kill you.”

Vio offered half his own roast bird to Vessia, who accepted it and nibbled delicately.

“Is that it?” Vumo demanded. “No more argument?”

“That’s it,” said Vio. “Our lives are in Nangi’s hands.”

For the first time, when Dindi felt the weird, shimmery light of the Vision thin around her, she tried to extend the experience. Push it, pin it, grab it, hold it. Nothing worked. She might as well have tried to pull salt out of the sea with her bare hands. All she was left with was the taste on her fingertips.