Great Sky Woman (13 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Frog’s eyes misted with tears as Cloud Stalker, Break Spear and even Uncle Snake declared him corrupt and evil. Lion Tooth, Lizard, Scorpion, even Ant and Hawk turned their backs. Under point of spear he gathered his meager belongings and wandered into the brush, until he was found, not by dream dancers or hunt chiefs or even bhan, but by leopards who sprang upon him, bore him to the ground just as he had seen one take down a springbok. And then, even as he prayed for Father Mountain to end his agony, they devoured him screaming. Horribly, nothing they did to him, no savaging of fang or claw, brought the healing arms of death and darkness. He lived through all, screaming until his throat tore.

“My brother,” Fire Ant said, shaking him. Frog could just barely make out his sibling’s face in the darkness. “My brother. Frog. Wake up.”

Frog came to waking slowly, like one swimming up through mud. He saw his brother’s face in the moonlight streaming through the air hole. The bits of good-luck bone dangling from the willow branch ceiling swayed slowly in the wind, mocking his nightmare.

His mouth was sour with terror. In his dream, Frog had been unable to defend himself, to change their minds, and nothing could keep them from seeing him for what he really was. Beside him, Scorpion and his younger brother, Wasp, were rolled onto their sides, moaning with early morning visions. Gazelle was still fast asleep, but Uncle Snake’s place at her side was empty. Hunters needed their sleep. Had his anguish awakened his uncle? Guilt added its weight to fear.

He clung desperately to his brother. “I am safe?”

“Safe,” he promised. “What did you see?” Frog’s dreams were still so real that he would have sworn the straw beneath him was slick with blood.

Despite his trembling, he thought clearly enough to ignore the question. “Brother,” he asked, “have you ever been afraid?”

Fire Ant squeezed his shoulder. “I am too strong for fear, tadpole. In time, you also will grow strong.”

Frog gripped desperately at his brother, lowering his voice so that young Wasp could return to sleep. “But I don’t want fear!”

“Fear can be a gift. It makes us strong,” Ant said.

“I do not want this gift,” Frog said. “I will learn. I will grow, and learn enough, and one day I will never be afraid again.”

Ant yawned and rolled over. “Go back to sleep,” he said.

But Frog could not, and instead crawled up and out of the hut, squatting in the doorway and then walking toward the men’s fire, happy for the solitude.

The boma was silent except for soft, burring snores. A hand fell on his shoulder, and Frog wheeled, startled, to find Uncle Snake behind him.

“Your friend is safe now,” he said. “I could not sleep either.” There was more to say, and both of them knew it. And knew just as well that those other words might never be spoken.

“Then why do I still feel afraid?” Frog said instead of the questions he really wished to ask. “I do not want fear, and it seems that no matter what I do, it just grows worse.”

Uncle Snake shook his head. “If you ever learn how to stop it, if that day ever comes, I hope you will teach me your secret.” He rubbed Frog’s head. “You think if you learn enough you will not fear. Not die. Never be alone. It is not true.”

“Why?”

“Because it is not the way Father Mountain made us. We are what we are, Frog. There are things that cannot be changed. Should not be done.”

Frog thought that there was some hidden fire in Snake’s eyes, a warning that he ignored. “Why not? How do you know?”

Uncle Snake shook his head and cupped the back of Frog’s neck with his callused, powerful hand. The gesture started rough but then became more gentle. “Perhaps one day you will be a hunt chief and can brave the spirit world to ask Him yourself.”

The two looked up at the dark, looming expanse of Great Sky. It disappeared in the clouds almost as if there was no top there at all. Did Father Mountain, from his awesome vantage, hate Frog for what he had done? Great Sky had taken Baobab before he could teach Frog to walk or talk, let alone to hunt or tie knots. Was it too much, was it too evil for Frog to cling to a friend?

There was only one thing he could think to do. One day, he would climb to the top of Great Sky itself, and ask his father. For if his own flesh and blood was angry with him, that was even worse than if the great god who made them all saw young Frog as unfit. In that case, he didn’t know what he would do.

Or…perhaps there
was
no Father Mountain. Perhaps there were no spirits. Perhaps…perhaps…

Frog climbed back into his mother’s hut and tried to sleep. But as he turned restlessly on his straw, he renewed his promise that one day he would climb the mountain. He could not quiet the part of him that whispered:
There are no gods.
Surely, such a thing as had almost happened to Lizard could not happen if Father Mountain watched and protected. No. No matter what the hunt chiefs said, there might be nothing, nothing, except darkness and death.

On the other hand…was it possible that he was Father Mountain’s tool? Had he been fated, perhaps
intended
to save Lizard? All his life, he had felt that there was something different about him. Could this be it?

His head hurt. Could the hunt chiefs be lying? They knew so much. Everything that the hunt chiefs taught kept the Ibandi alive, kept flesh in their pots. They seemed so wise, so good.

Then why the pretense?

Frog vowed that he would not die without learning the truth of this, without climbing Great Sky to see if Great Mother and Father Mountain were things as solid as wood. Or were They more like shadows? Did the dream realm genuinely exist, or was it merely some strangeness in their heads, with no connection to the world of flesh and stone? There was no one he could say such things to, no one he dared ask.

So all he could do was swear to make the climb, as Uncle Snake had done, and learn for himself. At the top of the tallest mountain in the world, where, the wise ones said, their ancestors danced in dead water.

Chapter Sixteen

In their dusty, cautious hands of hands, the herds had begun to return to the brush-dotted plains surrounding Fire boma. By their lameness or slowness or pretended unawareness some revealed their desire to return to the spirit world. Slowly, song and dance returned to Fire boma. No one spoke of what had occurred, but once again smiles appeared on people’s faces. What remained unsaid was as important as what was spoken aloud.

Lizard seemed more pensive, laughed less often and stayed as far as he could from Dry Hole’s wife, who limped for most of a moon after the trial.

The rest of the boma seemed to accept Lizard, and in so doing forgave themselves for sins real or imagined.

We did what we had to do,
they said.

We saved our children. Who can say we were wrong? The hunting is good. The flies are gone.

Life has returned.

Then one day Frog went looking for his brother Fire Ant and could find no trace of him. He looked by the men’s fire, in the storage hut and down by the banks of Fire River. Nothing.

“Where is my brother?” he asked his mother, Gazelle. She smiled wanly and turned away. He sought Uncle Snake and could not find him either. Anxiety blossomed.

“Where is Fire Ant?” he asked Hawk Shadow. None of the adults would speak to him about it, and it was later that he realized that Lizard, too, was gone.

“And where is Lizard?” he asked, and was given no answer. He was afraid. Had his actions been discovered? Had Deep Dry Hole or Cloud Stalker fulfilled the will of the gods after all? Could Frog have been so terribly wrong about the thing to be done? Hawk would not respond to him save to say: “Do not ask.”

So Frog sat in a shaded nook behind his hut, knuckled his chin, furrowed his brow and tried to think. He remembered that the same thing had happened to his eldest brother, Hawk Shadow, the year before. Hawk had been gone for two hands of nights, returned briefly, then disappeared again for two moons. When he returned, he carried a gutted warthog across his shoulders. There was great celebration, and soon afterward he was declared a hunter. When Frog asked about it, he was told not to question.

Was this the unnamed mystery by which boys became hunters? Sometimes he thought that everyone knew the answer except poor Frog.

Fire Ant returned after a few days with a single scab-crusted scar on either cheek and a dazed look in his eyes. Frog felt great relief: Fire Ant had not suffered for Frog’s sin! His joy was almost uncontrollable when Lizard appeared only a few breaths later, similarly scarred and dazed.

What had happened?

Ant barely spoke to Frog. Instead, he went to the straw nest built onto the side of the family hut and lay down to sleep. The next day Frog saw him speak to Uncle Snake, but again he had no words for Frog. He left the next morning, carrying nothing but a knife. No food. No spear. But he did rub Frog’s head on the way out of the boma. That, at least, was a sign that he still knew his brother.

Lizard avoided him as well, did not meet his eye, would not reply to his questions. Frog could not understand, and at last went to his straw with unanswered questions in his mind. His stomach was as queasy as in his fifth spring, when he had almost died with fever.

Late that night, just before dawn, a stick poked through the side of his hut, scratching Frog’s head and waking him up. At first he was disoriented, wondering what had happened, then realized someone had called for him, and crept out.

The older boy looked haunted and terrified. The single scar on either cheek had scabbed but still oozed fluid.

“What happened to you?” Frog asked.

Lizard shook his head.
I cannot say.
His lips twisted in a sad sort of smile. “Don’t ever let them know.”

“Know what?” Frog asked.

“Your mind.” His fingertip brushed Frog between his eyes, a touch like a feather. “They would fear you if they knew you.” He sighed, a huge, heavy sound. “All my life I have been different, as you are different,” Lizard said. “All my life I have feared this day, and now it has come.”

“Then stay,” Frog said, feeling himself grow desperate. “You can be a Between, like Thorn Summer.”

A flash of panic flared in Lizard’s black eyes. “Dry Hole would find a way to kill me,” he said. Then he straightened, perhaps trying to be brave for his young friend. “No,” he said. “You should not have done it. Even if they had banished me, I would have found my way. There would have been something for me. I can feel it. I would have found another boma, or survived on my own. You have angered the gods.”

It was a lie. Word would have spread to the outer bhan. Knowing he had been shunned, desiring the goodwill of the Ibandi, it was likely none would have taken Lizard in. So this was what their friendship had come to: a dance of lies. “I go, but Father Mountain goes with me,” Lizard said. “They say that the night itself is the mountain’s shadow.”

There was a long pause, and for a time Frog feared that there would be nothing more to say, that those would be the last words they ever shared. Then a thought occurred to him. “Some say that the stars are the campfires of all the dead. I think them wrong.”

“What are they, then?” Lizard said, so full of hope that Frog almost wept.

“They are Great Mother’s eyes, I think. And they will see you wherever you go.”

Lizard hugged Frog. “Only you would create a story just to comfort a friend. Only you could.” He kissed Frog’s forehead so softly it was like a whisper of wind. “Remember what I said. Never let them see. Stop speaking of faces in clouds. Don’t ask so many questions. You have a mother, and an uncle and brothers to protect you, but still…” He was trembling now, and Frog did not think it was from the cold. “Fear kills,” he said.

Then without another word, Lizard crawled through the gap in the boma wall and was gone.

In the days to come Frog hunted, kept his weapons clean, wrestled in the circle until he was exhausted. He helped the men burn the brush back from the boma walls, so that the leopards and lions could not sneak close. And as he did, the smoke blew back into his eyes and Frog was happy, because it meant that he could cry in front of his fellows, and no one would know.

Almost a moon and a half later, Fire Ant hobbled back into camp, leaning on a branch, his right leg badly cut and infected, the skin hot to the touch, swollen and running with pus. But despite his wounds and sore condition, a freshly slain antelope was draped across his shoulders. His chest was scarred. A deep wound bloodied his left arm.

The entire boma turned out to see the young man as, with one pain-filled step after another, he limped through the gap in the thorn walls.

Uncle Snake took his burden from him, and the other hunters helped him to the fire pit, where he was given water as they all clustered around.

Ant drank as if no water had touched his lips in days, his eyes sunken and haunted. When he had drunk his fill, he began to speak.

“I saw them,” he said. “They were not beast-men.”

Break Spear leaned in closer.

“What did you see?” he asked.

“It was after the first moon,” Fire Ant said. “I had made myself a blind to hide, near a water hole, and I saw them come. They were big, bigger than us. They were faster, and stronger.” For the first time that Frog could remember, Ant looked scared.

“What happened?”

“I watched them run down a springbok. They had not stabbed or poisoned it. They were that fast. It was quick, but they ran it down. Never have I seen the like.”

“How did you hurt your leg?”

“After the night came, I crept out and ran away. I fell down a ravine and hurt my leg. I thought I would die, but at last it began to heal. One of my traps caught an antelope, and I came back.”

They were amazed. Wounded, possibly hunted, frightened, and still he had waited to trap an antelope before returning. This was a hunter indeed, and Frog felt stronger just knowing Ant’s blood ran in his veins.

To Frog’s dismay, fortune was not with Lizard. He did not return, and after much argument and voting, the men decided to go in search of him. The nights after they left were filled with blowing dust, and Frog felt in his bones that their efforts would be in vain.

When Uncle Snake and Break Spear returned, their faces told the story. “We searched,” they said. “And were almost lost in the storm. We were separated from each other, and knew that Lizard was gone. We came back.”

Frog heard what they said, and suspicion burned in his heart. Had they really looked? Or worse…had Dry Hole found Lizard, quietly, privately, and…

Frog stared at him. Friend, neighbor…and something else? “But we found
these,
” Dry Hole said, and laid out several crude arrows. The arrows were different from Fire boma’s: longer, of thicker branches. He’d never seen such clumsy, almost childish workmanship. They were far too heavy for Ibandi bows. Except for the crudeness, they might have been constructed for Father Mountain Himself.

He crept away to where Fire Ant rested. Boma mother Hot Tree had tended to the wound and already sent for a dream dancer. Frog sniffed the mangled leg: the bad, rotten smell was not there, and for this he was glad, despite his brother’s pain.

Fire Ant opened his eyes. “Frog,” he whispered, and reached out to take his hand. Frog was relieved to find his brother’s grip as strong as ever.

“Did you see the creatures clearly?” Frog asked.

He nodded. “They were not Ibandi, or bhan…. they were a type of beast-men we have not seen.”

“Why?”

“They were larger,” he said. “Larger than us.” He turned his face away. “I was afraid,” he said. Then exhaustion claimed him, and he spoke no more that night.

After two days, the compress of sweet grass and herbs had eased the pain in Fire Ant’s leg. With the help of his brothers he was able to hobble out to the men’s fire.

There, Snake and Dry Hole laid out the arrows once again.

“These arrows are crude,” Break Spear said. “Perhaps the beast-men use them, and we have not seen.”

You slaughtered them and lost not one of our own people. There is something else out there, something more dangerous than any beast-man. You slaughtered the beast-men for nothing,
Frog said to himself, wishing that he could scream aloud.

Fire Ant nodded. “I could not see. There was no moon, and the clouds stole the stars. But once there was light, and I saw…something else.”

“What?” Snake asked.

Frog strained to hear.

“I saw one of them jump, and he was like a monkey. He went farther than even a hunt chief can leap.”

Did they leap like his own totem jumped? Frog wondered. He envisioned them springing in the moonlight on all fours.

Fire Ant bowed his head in shame. He was battered and bruised and scraped. “I should have followed them. Learned more. I was afraid and ran away.”

Hot Tree laid her comforting hand on the youth’s head. “There is no shame. You lived to bring us this knowledge.”

Frog wanted to scream,
Let me go! Lizard may still be alive!
But Frog knew it was hopeless. His heart said that his friend was dead, and his mind knew his heart was right. He curled up that night and cried for his own sins. Cloud Stalker’s stone had been black on the outside but white on the inside. Lizard’s life could not be saved by human intervention.

Stupid Frog.

Stupid, stupid Frog.

He cried himself to sleep that night for his lost best friend, Lizard.