Children of the Dawn (41 page)

Now what? The savages, used to traveling on water, stood on the raft with legs planted like tree trunks in a windstorm. She
couldn’t kneel without falling off. How could she overpower them?

The spinning of the raft slowed as the men pushed it out of the strong current toward calmer water near the shore. Once they
got it under control, they’d be able to concentrate on the women. Gaia’s chance would be gone.

She would give them something important to worry about—right now. She attacked the ropes that held the raft together—nothing
but woven grass stems—working her fingers in, jerking, pulling, ripping them apart. A large piece of wood broke loose, then
another.

Struck from behind, she tumbled into the water between the pieces of wood. A man caught the rope around her waist and pulled.
Her head, shoulders, and arms came up.

But Gaia didn’t climb onto the raft. She took a huge breath,
grabbed the savage’s neckpiece, and dived. Down he came, into a world with no air, a world Gaia understood.

She wrapped her hand around a rope dangling from the bottom of the raft. The water churned as he kicked and clawed her, but
she barely noticed the pain. She tightened her grip, twining fingers and wrist through the leather strap around his neck.
His eyes popped with terror. Looking into them, she thought,
I know about staying alive without air. Do you?

She shoved under his chin, banging his head on the bottom of the raft. His thrashing in the roiling water became aimless,
crazy. He didn’t have a chance. Panic would drown him.

Just a little longer… I can do it
…
the Breath Ogre taught me.

The raft thudded into a tree that had fallen over the river. Gaia saw black branches through dark water. She let go of the
rope she’d been holding, and locked herself around a branch.

The struggles of the drowning man weakened.

Air, Gaia! Get to the air!

She felt him being pulled from above.

Dung! He was almost dead.

Her body begged for air, but she held on tight.

The pulling stopped. The other man hit the water. Through the branches, Gaia saw the river sweep him away.

They pushed him in! We’re free!

Under the raft, entangled in branches, she kicked the limp savage, but her hand was trapped in his neckpiece. She clawed at
the strap—

With her last breath, Gaia cried out in the dark water.

“Kai El—”

T
EAHRA WARRIORS AT HIS HEELS
, K
AI
E
L BURST ONTO
the sandy beach. He saw three women—crouched, naked, weeping loudly.

“Gaia!” he cried.

The women moved away. Gaia lay on her back, eyes closed, pale flesh battered and bruised.

Kai El thrust his fists to the sky and howled.

“No-o-o-o—”

He fell to his knees, put his arm beneath her shoulders, and lifted her. Her head fell back. She was so cold. He ripped off
his leather shirt and covered the nakedness that she wouldn’t want others to see. Clutching her to his chest, he rocked back
and forth.

“No, no, no,” he wept, his face buried in her wet hair.

Jud put his arm around Kai El’s shoulders.

“Let’s go home, brother.”

Kai El picked up the body of his woman and did as he was told. His dreams were dead, his life over. He felt as dead as the
woman he carried in his arms. He barely heard the cry that went up when he walked into Teahra Village.

“Bring her to my hut,” Tenka said. “She must be prepared to meet the spirits.”

He didn’t want to give her up, but Tenka took his arm and led him to the Moonkeeper’s hut.

The wailing outside sounded like the moaning of spirits.
Kai El placed Gaia on the furs of Tenka’s bed. He knelt beside her and laid his head on her breast. Silent tears ran from
his eyes.

He felt Tenka’s hand on his shoulder.

“Kai El, I need to be alone with her now. Do you want to keep her pledge band?”

“No. She’d want to take it with her to the otherworld.”

He kissed Gaia’s hand and laid it across her breast. He gazed for the last time at her beautiful face. His heart broke. The
pieces fell out on the floor of the Moonkeeper’s hut, and he left them lying there.

Shocked, confused, in unbearable pain, Kai El wanted to be alone. But it was the way of his people to comfort one another,
and he wasn’t strong enough to resist their efforts. They surrounded him, wept with him, talked to him.

“Gaia died to save the others. She’s the bravest woman we have ever known. She will never be forgotten.”

“It isn’t how or when you die,” they said. “It is how you lived your life.”

But Kai El could only stare into the nightfire, thinking,
If I had run faster…

They covered him, and stayed with him, and finally he slept.

He awoke to keening from the ceremonial ground.

It’s true. She is dead.
Raw pain shredded him, choked him, crushed him. He wanted to run to her, hold her one more time.

No. He couldn’t bear to see his beloved lying on blackened stone, wrapped in white leather, waiting to be burned.

Jud tried to stop him from leaving Teahra Village. He failed.

“Good-bye, my spirit brother,” Kai El said. “I don’t know when you’ll see me again. If ever.”

He went to the home in the cliffs that he’d made for Gaia. He packed food, skins, furs, and weapons, and started out across
the prairie in the direction Where Day Ends.

W
HEN THE SAVAGES ATTACKED THE WOMEN’S WASHING
place, Tahna fled without looking back. She slipped on the riverbottom, but didn’t fall; scrambled over rocks and through
bushes, running for home.

“Tahna! Help!”

Gaia’s scream stopped Tahna’s blind dash. She turned, and froze. Her sister and friends had been caught. Two men were forcing
them down the trail.

As Tahna stared in horror, Gaia’s captor punched her. He turned and glared at Tahna, as if he might come after her, then shoved
the stumbling women ahead of him.

Overwhelmed with panic, she thought,
I
can’t fight two men! I’m lucky I got away!
She told her legs to run, run,
run
for home, but her feet were stuck to the ground. She stood there watching until they were out of sight, then control of her
body returned, and she ran screaming to the village.

Teahra warriors went after the stolen women. Tahna wanted to go with them, but she couldn’t. She had to take care of her mother.

Tsilka went berserk.

“My baby!” she screeched. “My Tsagaia!”

“The warriors will find her, Mother. They’ll bring her back.”

Tahna tried to sound calm, but her insides quivered like a clutch of frog eggs. Her eyes were ready to spout tears. Her
throat felt squeezed; it was hard to breathe…
Like when the Breath Ogre gets Gala,
she thought.

Oh please let them find her!
Tahna prayed to Sahalie.
Please bring my sister back!

Howling, “My baby! My baby!” her mother, who had not been out of her bed in moons, leapt up and threw on a robe.

“Mother, stop!”

Tahna tried to hold her. Tsilka pushed her away and dashed out of the hut. Running to a group of women who were consoling
each other, she broke in yelling.

“It’s the Masat! I know where they live! Give me a spear!”

Tahna ran behind her, grabbed her arm, tried to pull her away.

“Mother, come back!”

Tsilka slapped her.

“No! They took my baby! I’m going after them! Give me a spear!”

The Moonkeeper Tenka came, seized the crazed woman by the shoulders, and shook her violently.

“Tsilka! Go back to your hut and wait. You’re too weak even to be standing here.”

As if remembering that it was true, Tsilka slumped. Tahna caught her under an arm and helped her back to the hut.

And they waited.

Tahna knew the moment her twin died. Deep inside, part of her tore loose and was wrenched out with agonizing pain, leaving
a gaping hole, all bloody and raw; as if an invisible hand plunged through her chest and ripped out her heart. She cried out
and fainted.

Tahna felt crazy for a time. She was not alone. Shock and fear ran wild in the village. To think that such a thing could happen!
Warriors guarded the village by day and night. Even so, people did not feel safe.

Tahna blamed herself for Gaia’s death. She should
not
have panicked, should
not
have left her sister. She
should
have gone after the savages herself, not run to the village for help.

Horrible memories stuck in her mind. She couldn’t think of anything else. The savages bursting from the bushes, leaping for
the screaming women. Fleeing in terror. Gaia’s cry for help. Looking back, seeing her twin being kicked and
stumbling down the river trail. Over and over, Tahna remembered how she’d stood there stupefied, how she could not move. If
she had moved sooner, would Gaia still be alive?

People said it wasn’t her fault. The Moonkeeper Tenka had a talk with her. Even Tscilka, who was drowning in a mother’s grief,
did not blame her. But Tahna could not stop blaming herself; her guilt was a crushing weight.

She had wild thoughts, like,
Isn’t it nice that half of you can experience death without the other half dying?

And,
Now I’m not even half a person,

Sometimes she thought sorrow would kill her. She would drown in tears or die from pain. Tahna missed Gaia, wanted so much
to be with her again.

Spending most of her time in the hut, brooding and grieving, near her mother but not
with
her, Tahna barely noticed as crisp gold autumn changed to cold gray winter.

The first snowflakes drifted through still air. Ignoring her mother’s angry, then pitiful, protests at being left alone, Tkhna
went to a sheltered place against the cliffs. Watching the snow waft down, she thought peacefully of nothing, until darkness
made her go home.

In the morning, the snow was still falling. It was ankle-deep, and light as powdered herbs. Tahna made a fire and took care
of her mother’s needs.

Dressed in warm furs, she fluffed through the snow toward the sheltered sitting place, swept off a rock, put a fur down, and
sat gazing at the village. The skin around her eyes felt stretched, as if other eyes watched through them.

All the colors were gone under white, except for dark splashes here and there—people, bits of sheltered ground, edges of rock
slabs. The huts were smooth white mounds with smoke coming from their tops.

With puffs following them, little ones ran among the huts through the fresh snow; sliding, making sharp turns, diving face
first, shrieking and laughing. They used the pebble-pouch in a different way—one throwing it, the others going after it. Their
fur boots were caked, their skin red from cold, but they were having too much fun to notice. People came out to watch them
play for a while, then went back inside snow-heaped huts to get warm.

Phoomf!

The roofskins of Chaka’s hut gave way, dumping snow on his family. They were frightened, but not hurt. Women helped his mate
get the snow out of her hut. Men helped him restring the roofskins. They swept snow from other roofs.

Tahna watched everything, but she felt separated from it… as if she were watching it from another time, or another place,
or… she couldn’t explain it.

The snow fell and fell. In the afternoon, when it was up to their knees, the last of the little ones had had enough, and went
in their huts.

Only Tahna was left in the white silence. The air was still and very cold, but something that didn’t want to leave kept her
warm. It was very bright, as if the sun were out. The sky was almost as white as the snow. The flowing river was shiny white…
everything so still…

Gaia appeared before Tahna.

She gave off golden light… pulsing, shimmering light so bright that the white world around her paled to gray. Her face beamed
joy and peace. Black hair flowed over her shoulders. Golden leather draped her tall body. Her bare feet floated above the
snow. She held out her arms in love.

Tahna held her breath. She had never seen anything so beautiful.

Gaia spoke in her mind.

“We were one before we were born. Now we are one again.”

Tahna felt the empty place inside her filling. The vision of her twin faded.

The last wisp of Gaia spoke.

“You are whole, Tahna. At last, you are whole.”

And Tahna knew that she was.

People missed Gaia’s shy sweetness, but they hadn’t known her well, because she wanted it that way. More than grief, they
felt wonder at what she had done to save the others, and a great love that they’d never known during her life. Three young
women were still with their families because of her sacrifice.

The memory of Gaia’s brief, heroic life was on its way to becoming tribal legend.

Kai El—who had left after Gaia died, and had not been seen since—was another matter. The tribe had come to need him more than
it realized. It was true that he’d spent too much time by himself, but what could they expect from the son of Tor? The Moonkeeper
Tenka had relied on Kai El to help make decisions and settle arguments. He had his father’s hunting skills, and more of his
mother’s wisdom than he knew. He could tell when herds would move, when weather would change, and many other things the tribe
missed now that he was gone.

That Kai El was gone by choice angered and hurt them. They thought the son of Tor and Ashan cared more for them than that.
Men argued about when and where to hunt. Sometimes they didn’t hunt at all, but sat in their huts glowering, making their
mates bring them this and that. A fistfight between two men threatened to spread to others. The Moon-keeper’s words didn’t
stop them. She had to throw her body between them. Not since Elia died had men of Teahra Village struck each other.

Cold weather sickness swept through the village. Bodies ached, heads throbbed, tempers flared.