Children of the Dawnland (North America's Forgotten Past Series) (12 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear,W. Michael Gear

BOOK: Children of the Dawnland (North America's Forgotten Past Series)
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F
OR AS FAR as I can see, darkness floods outward, rippling to the ends of the sky. My skin gleams blue-white in the eerie light.
Runs In Light stops suddenly and points. “Do you see that, Twig?”
At the end of the blue web, a forbidding wall of ice rises.
Runs In Light trots forward.
“Wait! Where are you going? Don’t go out there!”
“Let me show you. Hurry. Come this way.” He races up to the top of the cliff and stands looking down into the massive crack.
“Stay back!” I shout. “It’s too dangerous!”
“Not if you follow me,” he says, and leaps down.
I’m sobbing when I reach the place where he has vanished. But deep in the bottom, I see him. He is standing on a trail that runs between the steep ice walls.
“Come on, Twig. Follow me!”
I’m terrified, but I leap … .
And I land as softly as a feather. High above me, a clear patch of night sky shines.
“It’s this way,” he says.
As we run, the sky vanishes, and we enter a black tunnel.
“Through here.” Runs In Light drops to his knees and scrambles forward. “This is the way, Twig.”
I crawl through behind him. Darkness weighs down on me, heavy, taking my breath away while it pounds on my eardrums and presses on my eyelids.
But far ahead, I see a tiny spot of light. It grows larger as we near it.
I step out of the tunnel into the sunlight and inhale a deep breath of the chill, bright air. This world smells strange, as though moss and chokecherry had been steeping together for a thousand summers.
“Come, Twig. It’s just a little farther.”
Runs In Light clambers through the maze of boulders where Father Sun blazes on his black braids. “Up here, Twig. Let me show you what happens when a dreamer fails.”
I jump to the next boulder, following him. When I reach the top, I see herds of curious, hump-backed animals with long necks. Their ears and tails switch away flies while they inquisitively study us. Ice-capped mountains thrust up like teeth behind them.
“What are they?” I ask.
“Those are camels. They’ve only been gone for a short time.” He lifts his arm and points to the south. “Do you see the people?”
I look, and there, I see people hunting. They have their prey trapped against a towering cliff. It might be a buffalo calf, but if so, the distance between the tips of its horns is three times as wide as the buffalo in my world, and it is much taller. The animal stamps its hooves and charges, trying to kill its attackers. People dodge and run, using their atlatls to launch long spears into its sides. The animal lets out a roar that sounds like a dying saber-toothed cat. Then, again, it makes a feeble run to scatter the humans. But they just circle and keep throwing their spears.
“Where are we?” I whisper.
Runs In Light crouches down. “This is the land of Giant Bison and Cheetah. That big buffalo down there is an orphaned bison calf. It’s the last giant bison alive. Humans killed its mother less than a moon ago. Now they’re killing it.”
“It’s the last of its kind? Why don’t you stop them?”
“We tried to. But when the One Life has been turned upside down, only a living dreamer can make it right again. Power finds the best dreamer it can—but sometimes the dreamer fails.”
I kneel beside him, watching as the giant bison calf wails and drops to its knees. Even from this distance, I see the blood that froths at the animal’s mouth. The calf shoves itself up on trembling legs, but stumbles and falls on its side in the snow field. All of the people shout happily and hug each other as the bison calf’s huge head sinks into the drift, and the snow runs red with its blood.
“How could they do that?” Tears make my voice tight. “Didn’t they know it was the last giant bison alive?”
“No. But even if they had known, it wouldn’t have made any difference. They are hungry. They need its meat.” Runs In Light exhales hard. “That’s what happens when the One Life is knocked out of balance. Earthmaker created the universe to have equal portions of light and dark, pain and happiness, birth and death, heat and cold. But sometimes the world gets knocked out of balance … and the One Life falters.”
Tears blur my eyes as I watch the hunters begin the hard work of butchering Bison Calf. With sharp stone tools, they pull back the hide and carve off the rich red meat.
“You see that man on the far right? The one with Owl’s face painted on his shirt?”
I wipe my eyes and nod. The man stands with his shoulders slumped forward, a hand braced on the head of a thin little girl who bounces joyfully up and down as she watches the piles of meat growing.
“His name is Tusk Boy. Power placed all of its strength and hope in him. He had Owl as a Spirit Helper from the day of his birth. But in the end, when Power called him to the river that runs before the Land of the Dead, so he could learn how to set the One Life straight again, he couldn’t do it. He was afraid to cross.”
My mouth has gone dry. “Afraid he would drown?”
“Yes. He knew his starving wife and children needed him, and they meant more to Tusk Boy than Bison Calf did. Only a few dreamers are willing to sacrifice themselves, and their families, so that yellow butterflies may continue to flutter over the
wildflowers in springtime. It is those few that Power seeks out. But not even Power can know for certain who will succeed and who will fail.” Runs In Light gives me a sad smile. “No one really wants to be a dreamer, Twig. Not even you.”
The grassy plains before me change, glittering like a swarm of gnat wings before fading into a new vision … .
T
HE LONG, DEEPLY blue twilight of the Moon-When-Thunderbird-Walks settled over the land, bringing with it Wind Woman’s fury. The gale had come up early that afternoon, roaring, blasting everything in its path, blowing the snow into deep drifts along the trails.
Greyhawk stood outside Screech Owl’s cave, gripping his atlatl while he surveyed the drifts, and beyond them, the smoke that billowed across the western sky in a great purple smear. If he had his directions right, that was about the location of Clearwater Village.
It was burning.
Yipper kept sniffing the air, whimpering, and gazing up at Greyhawk as though to say,
“Why are we still here? We have to go home.”
Greyhawk stroked Yipper’s black head, but in the back of his mind, he was going over and over every lesson he had learned in warriors’ school. How to hold his atlatl, how to make a good sharp spear point, how to cast, how to track an enemy across bare stone … how to survive when you were being chased by killers.
Screech Owl ducked out of the cave and followed Greyhawk’s gaze. “Come back inside, Greyhawk. It’s too cold to stand out here. Besides, there’s nothing you can do.”
Greyhawk turned to face him. The old man wasn’t nearly as scary today. Instead, he looked frail and worried. Greyhawk pointed to the smoke with his atlatl. “Can you see that smoke?”
Screech Owl nodded. “Yes. I see very well far away.”
“Do you think that’s Clearwater Village?”
“Probably.”
Greyhawk’s stomach muscles knotted. “The Thornback raiders must have attacked just before the storm.”
Wind Woman whipped long gray hair over Screech Owl’s eyes. He squinted through it. “Yes, I pity the poor people who escaped the raid. The snow is so deep. They won’t get far.”
Greyhawk gripped his atlatl more tightly. He longed to be home near his father. The people in Buffalobeard Village must have seen the smoke early this morning. They would be packing up everything they owned, getting ready
to abandon Buffalobeard Village as soon as the trails melted out.
Screech Owl asked, “Did you ever find out what happened to Puffer? At the Buffalo Way ceremony all I heard was that she was dead.”
Greyhawk looked westward to where the Ice Giants gleamed in the dawn light. Cobia’s cave was there somewhere … but Puffer had never even gotten close. “Puffer and her war party were ambushed near the ruins of Starhorse Village. The warrior who escaped, Searobin, said that he never saw men, just black shapes floating through the trees.”
“For black shapes, they cast their spears with deadly accuracy.”
“Yes, and I—I have to get home, Screech Owl. Someone has to stop the Thornback raiders. Our village is going to need every warrior, even boys just learning to be warriors.”
“Well, you can’t go anywhere today. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll take you and Twig home.”
“You mean if Twig wakes up.”
“Yes,” Screech Owl softly answered.
Greyhawk leaned his shoulder against the ice-crusted boulder. All night long, Twig had moaned and thrashed; then she’d gone absolutely still. She hadn’t moved at all today. She just lay lifelessly on the litter. Early that morning, Greyhawk had panicked and demanded that Screech Owl do something, so the old man had checked for a heartbeat, then had placed a mica mirror beneath her nose. Nothing.
Terrified, Greyhawk said, “Is Twig dead? Did you kill her? You killed my best friend!”
Screech Owl ran a hand through his matted gray hair. “Greyhawk, I just wanted her to see the tunnel. I never thought she’d be able to—”
“To dream her way to the skyworld? She’s a great dreamer! Didn’t you know that?”
His words were torn away by Wind Woman and blown into the white distances.
Screech Owl tiredly folded his arms across his bony chest. The old man hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. Every time Greyhawk had awakened, he’d seen Screech Owl sitting in his protective circle, staring at Twig. Throughout the long night, his face had grown more and more frightened.
“I thought she might just be able to peer over the edge into the darkness,” Screech Owl explained. “It takes even the greatest dreamers many summers to gain the skill and courage to actually plunge into the spiraling black throat that carries them up to the skyworld.”
“But she did it, didn’t she?”
“Maybe.”
The old man had been half-crazy all day, rushing around the cave, turning first one way then back the other way, as though he were lost in a maze.
“Maybe Twig just decided to stay longer, to talk with her dead grandmother, or maybe her father?” Greyhawk suggested.
Screech Owl hesitated for a long time before he said,
“It’s possible. Many dreamers stay in the skyworld for days, talking to Spirits, visiting with old friends. But Twig is so young … .” Guilt twisted his face.
A kestrel soared through the sky high above, shrieking before swooping low over the boulders. Screech Owl shielded his eyes to watch its flight. He didn’t seem to recognize the bird. For good measure, Yipper growled at it.
“Can’t you try to wake her?” Greyhawk asked.
“If she hasn’t awakened by tomorrow morning, I’ll try brewing a Spirit tea to bring her home. But danger lurks in even the slightest interference. If Twig is struggling against some Spirit creature and I so much as call her name, the distraction could cause her doom. But if she had an accident, if her litter overturned and she’s drowning … well, she would be running through a country that has no landmarks … a country haunted by horrors you cannot even imagine. In that case, my voice might help lead her home.”
“Why can’t you just go after her and bring her back?”
Screech Owl’s hands dropped limply to his sides. “The skyworld is vast. Every dreamer enters at a different place. It spreads out infinitely in all directions. Finding her would take a miracle.”
Greyhawk’s gaze returned to the streaks of gray that drifted across the heavens. What was happening out there? Elder Halfmoon must already be in war council, planning what to do. The snow would slow the raiders down, but …
“The Thornback raiders will be coming for us next, Screech Owl. We have to stop them.”

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