Great Sky Woman (32 page)

Frog traced his fingers over the tiny chest, the rounded tummy, noting the knotted umbilical still projecting a thumb’s thickness from the infant’s belly. It would fall away in time, but now it seemed that his son was a precious piece of fruit, plucked from some divine tree.

“Frog. Frog. Hurt. So weak,” Glimmer said, crying and tossing.

He handed his son gingerly to Flamingo and turned back to his wife. Hot Tree was wiping her forehead with a bundle of moss, whispering healing songs in her ear as she did.

“Save your strength,” he said, and touched his lips to her forehead. “You must heal.”

Throughout the day Hot Tree offered what medicines she could, but she was unable to reverse the draining of Glimmer’s strength. The boma mother shook her head, eyes worried above her wrinkled cheeks. “My herbs and dances are not enough,” she confessed. “We must ask my sister for help.”

“Can you hold on?” Frog asked his woman. “In another moon, our son will have a name. If you can live that long, you might live for many rains. You might live longer than me.”

She smiled, laughed shallowly, but the effort strained her. “I hurt….” Her eyes rolled up, exposing the whites.

“You gave me a strong son,” he said, struggling to keep light and hope in his voice. “How can such a woman be weak?”

“Frog,” Glimmer whispered, “love our child.”

“Always.”

She clutched at his hand. “You are a good man. I do not see what you see, or hear what you hear.” Despite her pain and weakness, she managed to laugh. “My husband talks to the clouds!”

“They do not answer,” he said, trying to keep his words light, but choking on them. “You are a good wife.” Was there nothing more, nothing better he could think to say? His mind, once his pride, failed him utterly.

Glimmer seemed to be mustering her strength for an answer, but then sank down into unconsciousness.

Flamingo had had her third child only two moons earlier, and her milk was strong. Her child and Glimmer’s nursed side by side as if they had shared space in the same womb.

With that stress relieved, Frog could concentrate on nursing his wife.

Twice more during the next night, Glimmer awakened and spoke. For a moment she saw him, looked through him, almost as if the last moments of her life were destined to be the most lucid.

At times they spoke of small, simple things, and she seemed to be growing stronger. But when morning came and he could see her face more clearly, it seemed that the flesh was almost melting away, that he could see the bones beneath the skin.

She spoke again, twice, during the next night, but as time passed it became more and more difficult to understand what she was saying.

She is going to die,
Frog thought.

And for the first time since childhood, he cried.

Chapter Forty-two

The moist black soil on Great Earth’s northwestern slopes was perfect for the multitude of berries and fruits the dream dancers used in meals and ceremonies throughout the year. The nameless girl had been there all morning, picking the fingernail-sized purple fruit Stillshadow used for dye. Her fingers were thorn-pricked and blue-stained, but she had filled two baskets and felt content. Young Whirling Pool waved her arms in greeting as she ran along the eastern trail, and T’Cori stood to greet her.

Pool’s little round face was neutral, hard to read. “The boy who saved you,” she panted.

“Frog Hopping?” T’Cori asked, and straightened, wiping perspiration from her forehead. She thought of his gap-toothed smile, both warmed and worried. “What has happened to Frog?”

“It is his woman,” Whirling said. “Her baby tore her, and she bleeds. They have called for a dancer to heal her, or ease her way.”

T’Cori hesitated. Since losing her special sight, she was no longer confident in her ability to heal. Perhaps it would be better to send another—

“He asked for you,” Whirling said.

“Then I must go,” T’Cori replied. She would go and do her best. And the rest would be up to Great Mother.
Please, Mother,
she thought.
Let me do this good thing. I owe him so much.

And another thought:
And I wished for his woman’s death. I am chosen. This is my chance to undo an evil thing. Let me atone for my sin, please.

T’Cori and Whirling were at Fire boma by sundown of the third day. She stood at the boma gate with their hunt chief escorts until they were seen, and thumped her staff upon the ground. “The dream dancers are here!” she called, and the people gathered around.

Hot Tree herself and a woman named Gazelle took them to the hut, where an exhausted Frog crawled out to meet them.

Frog collapsed to his knees before her in the dust. “Please,” he said, “save my woman.”

“If it is Great Mother’s will,” she replied. It had been almost a year since she had last seen Frog, but not a day had passed that she had not thought of him.

Perhaps this was why Frog had remained so powerfully in her heart. Perhaps what she had thought was love was the urging of her heart, telling her to be strong so that she could repay his kindness and courage as only a dream dancer might.

By saving his woman.

That would be a proper thing for a dream dancer. Surely that would be the gift Great Mother and Father Mountain needed to give her back her sight.

As Whirling Pool stood by silently, T’Cori studied Glimmer’s sweat-streaked face.

Once she had considered this girl her rival. Now she was merely another patient, and by all the oaths of the dream dancers, T’Cori had to consider her a sister.

How satisfying and frightening to hold the girl’s life in her hands. She, T’Cori, could either send this girl up the mountain or heal her and thereby prove her own mettle.

Glimmer was a sister. T’Cori’s own tragedies and needs had no place in this room.

T’Cori inhaled strongly, then let the breath out slowly through her nose, allowing her sense of self to drift away. The human T’Cori had no place in this room. This was a place for Great Mother, and Great Mother alone. T’Cori could be but a riverbed conducting Her healing waters. And here, at last, having no name might prove an advantage.

Let the nameless one be gone. Let Great Mother manifest.

If Frog cannot be my man, he can be my brother. Then his woman is my sister, and I have chosen the path of love. Please, Mother. Give me the strength to be weak, to step aside and let Your wisdom flow.

For the next three days and nights sleep was but a distant memory. She danced, she waking-dreamed, with the greatest of difficulty she read the
num
-fire flickering above and around Glimmer’s body. But no matter how she pled, what she tried, how she massaged Glimmer’s hand- and foot-eyes or how she pressed her own body against the girl, trying to share heartbeats, Frog’s wife’s continued to weaken. Her chest’s rise and fall grew more and more shallow, and then imperceptible, and then she simply stopped breathing.

At first, T’Cori couldn’t quite believe it. It simply could not be. Great Mother would not, could not fail her in such a way. Certainly her prayers and songs and shadow-play had reached the depths of Great Earth and the top of Great Sky. Surely the gods would reward their daughter with this most precious victory.

No.

Glimmer was gone, cooling even as T’Cori’s tears welled and fell. A vast emptiness opened in the nameless girl, an abyss so deep and wide it recalled her terrible days with the Mk*tk. She clutched her fist over her heart and wailed.

T’Cori closed her eyes, picturing Great Sky’s summit, as she had seen it just the last dawn. Mighty, beautiful and a bit strange now, oozing plumes of cloud-stuff. Was this where the girl would go? Despite what Stillshadow said, some whispered that the dead remained beneath the earth. Others swore that they danced atop Great Sky. She prayed that one day, however distant, she might learn the truth.

But what were these new clouds? Were all clouds born from a mountain womb? But…why not Great Mother, then? Were clouds more like Father Mountain’s seed? Then…where did clouds go to mate? Her head spun.

She felt an overwhelming sadness, knowing that these thoughts existed for but one reason: to distract her from the pain of failure, her anguish at Glimmer’s death. Frog had saved T’Cori’s life, and she had rewarded him by letting his woman die.

Namelessness was not her greatest curse. She was also useless, and worthless.

She had once prayed that Glimmer would die. And now she had. Surely Frog would see her complicity in her eyes. Surely he would hate her now, as she so richly deserved.

In defeat and misery, T’Cori gathered her tools and herbs together and left the hut.

The people of Fire boma stood outside the hut, forming a double line for her to pass through on her way from the boma. She faced them, found it difficult to swallow, even harder when they drummed their feet against the earth: their dance was one of loss, but they sang of gratitude, gratitude for T’Cori and Whirling Pool, who had tried to save their kinsman’s wife.

T’Cori stood between the lines for a time, so numb with fatigue and sorrow that she could barely feel anything at all. Then one step at a time she walked toward the gap in the boma wall.

At the end of the line stood Frog, his tearstained face glowing. For just a moment, a barest moment, she saw his
num
-fire shining about him, and it pierced her to the core. There was nothing but bright, clear yellow there. Nothing but gratitude.

Just for a moment she saw it, and then it was gone, as if the gods, in one moment of kindness, had lifted the obscuring mists enough to give her the knowledge she so desperately needed.

Following his people’s custom, Frog dug a trench with his hands and, after wrapping Glimmer in skins, laid his mate within it. He burned sweet herbs atop her grave, then added twigs and finally built a fire atop it, so that the heat would drive the flesh from her bones.

Fire Ant and Hawk stood beside him, Uncle Snake and Gazelle behind him. Little Wasp held Snake’s hand, his eyes never leaving his adored big brother. Scorpion chanted and danced the funeral dance in a little circle, voice sad and strong.

Flamingo handed Frog his son. The boy had no name, would have none until at least another moon had passed. Then Hot Tree or the dream dancers would throw the bones and find his totem.

But now…

Poor boy, Frog thought. Poor boy. No name. No mother.

His nameless son’s wrinkled face seemed impossibly small. How could a hunter grow from such a small and helpless thing? The tiny eyes opened, focused on Frog’s face, and held it for a moment before wobbling off. Frail moist fingers clutched at him, gripping at Frog’s arm.

My mate is gone,
Frog said to himself.
But my son lives.

His son, who needed both a name and a father. Frog swore that the boy would get the very best of both, if his life or skill had any say in it at all.

Frog was afraid of crushing the boy as he clutched him, but the smell and feel, the small strong heartbeat, the wet pursed lips, all combined to create a shock like a kick over the heart.

This is life. Not the worst of your nightmares or the best of your dreams. We live. We love. We die.

Above him, Great Sky’s slopes rose slowly up from the plain, so huge that the incline could barely be felt until you suddenly realized that the bomas lay impossibly far below. Today no clouds cloaked its white-shrouded peak. Today he could see it clearly, and to his eyes, nothing lived atop the great mass of rock and mysterious white.

Perhaps there were no gods. There was nothing.

And yet…and yet…

As never before, Frog hoped that he was wrong. How wonderful, he thought, it would be to be wrong. If gods there were, then perhaps his father was there. And grandfather. And his good friend Lizard. And his beloved Glimmer.

Frog stood, handing the baby back to Flamingo.
You never tasted your mother’s love,
he thought.
But you will know your father’s.

I swear.

Then, his family singing the death song, Frog returned to the boma.