Children of the Dawn (21 page)

What a warrior I’ll be! They’ll talk around fires forever of the boy who caught a fish longer than a man when he was only
ten summers!

Kai El had never held his breath this long.

I have to have this fish. I will not let it go.

With incredible strength, it swam
up
the river.

The current helped one of its own, trying to sweep the boy off. Rocks scraped him. But he would not let go. The fish plunged
in a twisting spiral. Kai El thought he saw many red eyes on the bottom of the river… he didn’t know what kind of eyes, just
eyes.

Out of air, he thought,
Maybe I will let go.

That was the moment when the mighty sturgeon died. It went limp, turned belly-up, flipped Kai El under, and floated downriver,
grinding him on the bottom. Kai El kicked with all his strength, rose through lighter-colored water, and burst through the
water’s skin into air. Gasping, coughing and spitting, the current swept him downriver, slammed him into a mass of boulders
and wedged him. Water roiled and splashed. Somehow, he still had the speared sturgeon.

He heard yelling. Hauled upriver, then down, he had ended up almost where he started, only farther out in the water than anyone
had ever been.

“Kai El! Kai El!”

The riverbank crawled with blurred people, screaming, crying, shouting his name.

He heard his father’s voice. “Stay there! We’ll come out to you!”

Men waded in up to their chests. Tor and a few others hurled themselves out to farther rocks, but they couldn’t reach Kai
El. Men could swim if they had to, but not here: The current was too swift; it would sweep them away.

“Stay there!” his father yelled again—as if Kai El could go anywhere. “We’ll get a rope to you!”

He saw his mother pacing back and forth.

“Hurry, Tor! Hurry!”

Kai El yelled. “I’m fine! I could stay here all day!” But still she paced.

They tied strong grass fiber ropes together to make one long one, and attached a rock to its end for weight. After several
throws, it caught in the boulders. Kai El took the rock off and lashed his spear and his fish to the end of the rope.

“Let the fish go,” Tor yelled.

Kai El laughed. “You won’t say that when you see it. I’m not letting it go now.”

Holding on to his treasure, Kai El was dragged through water one more time.

Oh, the ground felt good.

People were amazed by his bravery and strength. No boy had ever tried to catch a sturgeon. This was the largest one ever caught,
heavier than three boys. What Kai El had done seemed impossible.

Women carried the slippery monster back to the village, cut it into steaks, and cooked them over hot fires. Everyone ate at
the same time.

People went on and on with their praise.

“Best sturgeon I ever tasted, Kai El.”

“Probably because it was so old.”

“It must have been smart and strong to grow so old.”

“Believe me,” Kai El said. “It was all of that, and more.”

Girls fussed over his wounds. It was a strange feeling. He didn’t know what to make of it, but he thought he liked it. It
made him feel proud to say, “It doesn’t hurt.” Although it did—every single part of him felt what he’d been through.

That night the warriors around the village fire asked him to tell his story again. He didn’t just tell them, he showed them,
becoming both the sturgeon—twisting, turning, thrashing—and himself—scraped on rocks, dragged on the bottom, holding his breath,
hanging on.

Kai El had watched warriors tell stories of their great hunts. Now he knew why they loved it so much.

Later Tor took him aside.

“You know, son, when you came back from your power quest, and I thought… I said… well, I was… ”

His father made a gulping sound. He just couldn’t say he was wrong.

Kai El said, “I know. You were angry. You didn’t understand. I forgave you a long time ago.”

“I’m proud of you, son. What you did today was brave. What you did three summers ago was maybe even braver.”

“It was,” Kai El agreed.

L
ITTLE ONES OF DIFFERENT AGES SAT ON A KNOLL
above Teahra Village, listening to Kai El’s story again. He couldn’t tell it enough for some of them, especially boys. He
spoke in the new way: mostly Shahala words, some Tlikit, a few from the Firekeepers. The mixed language of Teahra had come
about naturally, though there were people in both tribes who refused to use any words but their own.

“And then,” Kai El said, “they told me to let go of it! After all I’d gone through for that fish!”

Tsagaia—a Tlikit girl of seven summers, Tsilka’s daughter, Tsurya’s twin sister—listened with a drifting mind. She wondered
if people would get tired of hearing the story of Kai El’s big fish before he got tired of telling it.

A girl named Nissa said, “Tsagaia, tell your part again.”

Startled, she jumped.

Others had been at the Great River that day, but Tsagaia was the only one who’d been looking when the sturgeon flew out of
the water like a bird. The shy twin, she’d talked more in the last few days than she had in her whole life. She was beginning
to enjoy it.

“My sister shoved me under, and I came back up. Just as I went to push her, I saw a monster leap high in the air, with Kai
El hanging on. It seemed like they were up there for a day, but they hit the water before anyone could turn their head to
see what I was screaming about. I ran for the village,
yelling all the way, ’A fish got Kai El! A fish got Kai El!’ People heard me and came running. They almost knocked me down.”

Her sister, Tsurya, said, “When they got there we pointed to the water. It was still red. We said, ’A monster fish! It got
Kai El! Save him!”’

Kai El said, “Quiet, Tsurya. You didn’t see anything. Tsa-gaia, what did I look like, hanging on up there in the air?”

She could tell that he wanted to hear handsome or strong.

“You looked like a boy who was going to die,” she said.

Everyone laughed.

“Kai El is too brave to die,” said a boy named Bot, who was seven summers, and about to go on his power quest. “Kai El is
so brave that he told his guardian spirit that he was going to keep his old name.”

“I am brave, but that’s not what happened. My guardian spirit told me he wanted me to choose my own name.”

“What’s a power quest like?” Bot asked.

“You’ll see,” Kai El said, “if you don’t get lost, and wolves don’t eat you.”

“Kai El!” Bot’s older brother, Elkin, shouted.

“Just joking. It’s nothing to be scared of, Bot.”

Tsagaia couldn’t think of anything scarier than being all alone in the wilderness for days and nights. Even the Breath Ogre
who sometimes choked her couldn’t be scarier than that. She liked Shahala people and their ways, but they could keep their
power quests.

“You twins,” Kai El said. “You’re seven summers, aren’t you? Are you going on a power quest?”

“We are seven summers,” Tsurya said. “But Tlikit people don’t make their little ones do stupid things.”

Nissa said, “How boring to keep the same name all your life. I loved it when I got my new name… Sunrise with No Clouds.”

“Sure you did,” Tsurya said. “Your old name was ugly.”

Tsagaia wished her twin would learn to be nicer.

“It was not ugly!” Nissa said with her nose in the air. “Tsurya—now there’s an ugly name.”

Elkin said, “They’re just afraid to go out and meet their guardian spirits.”

Tsurya stood, hands on hips, and glared at him.

“I’m not afraid of
anything.
I just think it’s a stupid thing to do. Come, Tsagaia. Let’s go.”

“You go.”

Maybe the others would want to know what the fish looked like. They were interested in what Tsagaia had to say, and it felt
good. So what if they thought she was afraid?

Her twin stamped off, with boys yelling after her.

“Water bug! Water bug!”

The taunts made Tsurya want to run, but that would show weakness. Shoulders straight, head up, she strode away. When the dung
piles were out of sight, she ran for the place where she hid when things made her
so mad!

No one knew about her secret place—not even her twin. The river trail left the water’s edge to skirt a rock outcrop. A path
led down to a brush-sheltered finger of land called the women’s washing place. Tsurya crawled along an animal track that left
the path. Her secret place was just a hole in thick brush at the edge of the river. Boulders forced the current around a little
pool.

Lying on a low rock, staring at the water, thinking about her twin sister—who stayed with
them
instead of coming with her—Tsurya grumbled to no one.

“Always the lucky one, from birth. Our mother gave her the name Tsagaia—Big Tan Cat. People love cougars. I get named
Tsurya
—Graceful Water Skimmer. A fancy name for a bug! I hate it!”

Tsurya watched water skimmers stride across the pool, from one side to the other and back again. Spring through autumn, they
would stride and stride, going nowhere, until winter swept them away. They didn’t seem to have mates or families, or any purpose
for living other than being fish food.

She caught one by its skinny body, held it up, watched it struggle between her thumb and finger. It wasn’t even a pretty bug—just
a black stick with four spidery legs, and tiny flat feet that never broke the water’s skin. She pulled off a leg, and threw
the crippled bug back in. It thrashed on its side. A water spider shot out from under the rock and took it.

“I am nothing like you! Nothing!”

But Tlikit people died with the same name they were born with. Tsurya would always be the bug.

She thought of going on a power quest and getting a new name, like Shahala little ones did. Her mother would fight the idea,
but the Moonkeeper, Ashan, would stand up for her. The Moonkeeper liked her, and she had backed Kai El when he changed old
ways.

But… to go out and be hungry, and maybe be killed, just to get a new name… she wasn’t afraid to do it, it was just
stupid.

On another day, in a better mood, Tsurya went to her secret place to eat some red berries she’d found—very sweet, too few
to share, with juice that didn’t stain, so no one would know.

She was sitting there, making up sounds and saying them out loud just to hear herself, when it came to her…

“Tahna.”

She loved the strong sound with a soft edge. It had no meaning in either language.

’Tahna, tahna, tahna… ”

It was the sound of herself. She wanted it for her name. How could she have it?

Thinking up a story, she asked to speak with the Moonkeeper.

“I want to be like a Shahala and take a new name.”

The Moonkeeper looked surprised. “It’s more than just standing up in the Naming Ceremony and getting a new name. Have you
thought of all it means? To go on a power quest? To have a guardian spirit? Have you thought of what people will say? Tlikit
people?”

“I have thought of all that.”

“What does your mother say?”

“I have not told her yet.”

“She may be afraid for you to go on a power quest. Tlikit little ones have never done it.”

“I don’t want to go on a power quest.”

The Moonkeeper stared at her. Tsurya thought it must take a lot to silence a chief, but she had done it.

“I don’t need a power quest,” she said. “I met my guardian
spirit at the Great River. He is the Water Giver, Wahawkin. My father.”

The Moonkeeper’s mouth fell open.

“He told me my new name. Tahna. My name is Tahna.”

The Moonkeeper found her voice.

“But that doesn’t mean anything. People are named for things.”

“Wahawkin told me it means Daughter of a God.”

“But you are Tlikit, little one,” Ashan said, shaking her head. “I don’t think you know what this means.”

Tsurya stood firm. “Why am I any different from Kai El? You said that just because things have always been done one way doesn’t
mean they can’t be done another.”

The Moonkeeper cleared her throat.

“You’re right. That’s what I said… Tahna.”

The little girl smiled and sighed in pleasure at hearing her name spoken by another. She realized just how beautiful it was.
But her pleasure didn’t last long.

The Moonkeeper said, “You are going to need my help. Shall we go and see your mother?”

Tsurya—who would be Tahna if she lived through this—bit her lip, swallowed, and nodded.

Kneeling by the fire in the Moonkeeper’s hut, Ashan stirred with a stick in each hand: herbs, water and hot rocks in one basket—medicine
for a man with fever—and in another, fish mush for Tor. She had just come from Tsilka’s hut, and her blood still boiled. They
had shouted, but just being with the woman would have been enough. Ashan couldn’t stand Tsilka. She stayed away from her—until
a child with a wild idea had forced her to do otherwise.

The Tlikit woman had been in Ashan’s way from the beginning. At first Tsilka was a real danger, encouraging her people to
resist everything Shahala, including the Moonkeeper. Ashan knew how close she’d been to losing control. But Elia’s death had
helped to heal the rifts between the tribes. No matter how Tsilka tried to keep people stirred up, they blamed her for the
events that led to the boy’s death, and eventually stopped listening to her.

Tsilka was no longer a spear about to be thrust. She was
more like a sharp stone in Ashan’s moccasin. She hated Ashan, showing it in moments gone in a flash, by a narrowing of her
eyes, a twist of her lips, a color that rose in her cheeks. There was no reason for it.

And then there was the way Tsilka acted around Tor… giving him sly, hungry looks. She did not have a mate, but she had lovers
to satisfy her. She had no right to look at Tor that way.

Or did she?

Ashan stirred angrily, flipping out bits and splashes. She’d heard it said that Tor had once been Tsilka’s lover. But Tor
said it wasn’t true, and Ashan chose to believe him.

What could she do about the woman?