Great Sky Woman (41 page)

And so they went on. Raven was spitting blood, had been since awakening that morning. Her face was ice-flecked, her cheeks cracked and bleeding, but now she and T’Cori shared the same heart, filled with a single unquenchable thirst.

“We go on,” Raven said. “Even if we die, we go on.”

So close. So close. Their inner fire drove them on, even as their bodies began to fail.

All around them were sights no Ibandi, no two-legged had ever seen. Cracked ice towers and mountains of dead water glistened. There seemed nothing alive, save their own footsteps and voices.

Food leapt from their stomachs. Strength and enthusiasm were distant memories. In all the world the only reality was this: one foot after another, slowly, slowly, just trying to survive. The freezing thin air ate at them like a worm that devoured from within.

Frog’s fingers and face were swollen and cracked, but although he could see red in the wounds, blood did not flow. He felt little save despair. He had to rest every few steps just to catch his breath.

“This is death, brother,” Hawk gasped.

But Frog looked at the holy girl T’Cori and realized that there was no way that he could let her climb—that inner fire continuing to animate the ragged remnants of her body, pulling it forward into an unknown and unknowable glory—and not try to follow. Even unto death.

If he had seen no miracles, seen no spirits, demons, gods or goddesses in his life, the sight of that girl never faltering, never giving up, would have convinced him of the possibility of gods. Surely such strength was a sign that Father Mountain and Great Mother were real and lived still. Surely such strength was not entirely human.

Even when resting, his heart raced as if he had just finished a sprint. The five survivors slept no more.
Hawk is right,
Frog thought.
This is death.
They were not in mortal danger. Rather, they were already dead.

“This is afterworld,” Hawk Shadow said in eerie reflection of Frog’s own thoughts. “We died in the tunnel with Scorpion and now are merely climbing to heaven.”

Yet if that was true, why wasn’t Scorpion here with them? Then Frog remembered that it takes time for flesh to melt from the bones. Even cooked flesh. He gagged at the thought.

Perhaps they and not Scorpion had died. Perhaps
he
had turned around, descending safely with Snake, while those who went on had been frozen or burned alive.

There it was again.
Father Mountain.
How often he heard his mind crying out that name. And why not? Surely this, if no other time of his life, was the moment when he would meet Father Mountain, if such a being was there to be met. Surely, shortly, once and for all Frog’s questions were about to be answered.

Surely.

Vents jetted enough foul steam to choke and cloud vision. Bubbling water boiled up through the ice. Stinking gases oozed forth from the ground, and if Frog had been able to eat that morning, he would have lost it then.

A crawl through another ice tube brought them through another wall, and onto a plain devoid of life, only tumbled rocks and fissured ice greeting them.

The sky whirled with dry, harsh, powdery dead water again, and despite their furs, their fingers and toes were stiffening, losing not just sensation but control. The nighttime fire didn’t warm them, and they could not sleep, could only wait for morning’s light.

“I think Hawk is right,” Fire Ant said. “We are already dead.”

“Then we might as well go forward,” Frog said. “We have nothing left to lose.”

Frog found his way to T’Cori’s side. She was with Raven, who was coughing blood now, so close to the fire that her furs were singed, still shivering. He took her aside. “Are you afraid?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Are you?”

“No,” he said.

“Do you always lie?”

“Always,” Frog gasped, and despite his fatigue found the strength to join with her in laughter.

She was weaker than he, Frog was certain of that. And yet it seemed almost as if the more her flesh faded, the brighter her inner fire burned.

Before the sun had lent its puny warmth to the morning air or even gifted them with full light, they continued their climb. The grade now was not much less severe than the ice cliffs, but the hill was of gravelly pumice. For every three lengths they climbed, they slid back two.

“I did not think it would be so terrible to be dead,” Hawk Shadow gasped, climbing past Frog. Frog just tried to concentrate on putting one hand up and then another, pushing, pulling in endless, mindless sequence. They had to keep moving. If they stopped to rest, it seemed impossible to begin moving once again.

He dared not look back. The slope was so steep that looking down triggered Frog’s every primal fear. Still, there was exhilaration as well. All his life he had looked up at the clouds, and now he walked among them. Did that not make him one of the greatest Ibandi of all?

Clouds blotted out the ground, but from moment to moment, it was possible to see the savannah, impossibly far beneath them. They were above the clouds. Yes, this was heaven, or a white hell.

One step at a time, every breath an ordeal. Frog coughed, covering his mouth, and then examined his hands. Blood dappled his numbed fingers.

They settled in for sleep before the sun had gone down, so exhausted that they barely had strength to scrape the fluffy dead water from the ground before laying down their furs. A tumble of rocks to either side would protect them from wind, but only shared body heat would help them through the night. T’Cori was pressed against Frog, who groaned in her ear, “I know we still live.”

“How do you know that?” T’Cori asked.

“Because I wish I was dead. And you can’t wish you were dead if you’re already dead, can you?”

She stared at him. “Your mind is strange,” she said, and he rolled over.

Raven chattered with terror, her eyes rolling, her long lashes tinged with frost. “So cold. So cold. I cannot be warm. I will never be warm again.”

“Hold on,” T’Cori said. “We will make it, and we will see the new sun.”

“I was wrong about you,” Raven whispered through cracked lips. “Always I hated you. Because you were the one who was not afraid of me. Why were you never afraid of me?”

“I was, and then one day I was not. I saw who you were,” T’Cori said to her, holding her rival’s hand. “I saw that you were afraid you would never be as great as Stillshadow. And that you wanted so much to be.”

“And weren’t you afraid?” she asked.

“I know I cannot be Stillshadow. I can only be myself.”

“I was wrong about you,” Raven said again. She paused, her breath rasping in her chest. Each liquid rasp seemed weaker than the one before. “I want a favor from you,” she said.

“Yes?”

“If you make it back and I do not, I want you to be a daughter to my mother.”

“What are you saying?” T’Cori whispered, and the tears started from her eyes.

“You are my sister. You should always have been my sister.”

T’Cori was so stunned that she could not speak.

Raven closed her eyes. “We should never have come,” she whispered.

“Let her sleep,” Frog said.

“She will die,” T’Cori said. And wept for the sister she had always wanted, and had at last, and now would lose.

In the morning, Raven was dead.

With crooked fingers, the freezing air howling around them, they straightened her limbs and scraped some frost together to bury her, and went on. T’Cori felt the tears rising in her eyes, their heat and the chill of the wind suddenly in curious contrast.

“Was she your friend?” Frog asked.

“No,” T’Cori said. “But she was my sister. Sisters fight.” T’Cori wavered as if she might fall, but looked up the mountain. “Here, so close to heaven,” she prayed, “I know your
num
will find the way. Lead us all, my sister,” she said. “Make us proud.”

“I cannot go on,” Hawk Shadow said, his voice shaking. “I am not strong enough to go higher.” He pulled away his furs, which had been wet and were now stiff. His feet had an odd look to them, as if burned in a cold fire. The flesh was cracked and split, and pinking beneath.

Fire Ant seemed stricken. “We cannot leave you here. There is no shelter. No wood to build fire. You’ll freeze.”

“Going down,” Hawk Shadow panted, “is easier than going up. I can make it back to the last shelter. Can you find it?”

Fire Ant thought. “I think so, yes. Are you sure?”

“I am sure,” Hawk said. “I must go back.”

“I could send Frog back with you—”

“No!” Hawk said, his voice momentarily regaining its force. “Brother, remember why we are here. This is more important than my life. Than any of our lives. Go. There is food, and dead water I can melt with fire.”

“It is hard to make fire in this cold,” Frog said.

“Who made it last night?” Hawk asked. “Who summoned fire in the ice tunnel? I should be worrying about you!”

Fire Ant paused, weighing his choices, and finally nodded. “All right,” he said.

So Hawk embraced him, and then Frog, and then the girl. “I should not touch a dream dancer so,” he said, but managed to smile. “I don’t know if it is right, but I think of you as a little sister.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, tight against his chest. “I never had a brother.”

After a time he headed back down, and Frog found that there was a large part of himself that wished he could go with Hawk. That was not the surprising thing. The surprising thing was that there was a larger part of him that did not.

On and upward they pushed, picking among the rocks, climbing around ledges and up embankments, over stone and ice, leaning on their spears when their staggering legs failed them.

Late that day they finally broke through the clouds to a place of peace. The air was so shallow that Frog’s chest seemed empty no matter how he heaved. Strange lights danced at the edges of his vision. He was beyond exhaustion now, pushing on by sheer will.

He clawed his way up the ash and frozen gravel of yet another slope, fearing to look down, as if the very sight of the clouds from such a height might pull him back.

The view awaiting Frog was that of a level, ice-covered plateau. The flatness was broken by a few spires, and distantly something that looked like a minor rise, but there was nowhere left to climb.

They had reached the top.

Frog gripped his spear shaft for dear life, trying not to fall. Blackness wavered around the edges of his vision. “Where…is…Father?” he asked. “Where is Scorpion?” There was no strength left. He could feel nothing anywhere on his skin, but deep within his body, Frog ached. Never had he even imagined fatigue such as this.

He had been wrong, and could barely find the strength even to think the thought. This
was
another world. They had come where no living men should go. He heard voices in his head; lights danced in his dimming vision.

Where was Lion Tooth? Had his flesh not melted yet? Where were the others who had died?

Fire Ant leaned close to Frog. “Brother,” he said, “I see nothing.”

The two brothers leaned against each other as T’Cori collapsed to her knees. She seemed only a bundle of bones and fur.

Frog thought he had never seen a more frightening, wonderful thing in all his life.

What did she see? Where now did her spirit fly?

There is a place beyond contentment, beyond thoughts of knowledge or joining or even peace. A place where the mind no longer defines itself in opposition to the outside world. T’Cori had found that place. It was a world of light, the world she had known as an infant. Her eyes were open, wide, unfocused, her tears freezing upon her cheeks. As had happened once before, long ago, she was not blind; she saw
everything.

Father Mountain? Great Mother? Everywhere around her. Within her. She was beyond words, even words so fine and powerful.

“We have been fools,” she whispered. “Fools to think our gods live atop the mountain. They are everywhere, or nowhere at all.”

Frog thought that perhaps they were destined to stay here, to lie on the ice and rock until the wind sucked the life from them. There was no air to breathe. Certainly they were now above the stars.

T’Cori placed her foot against the ground, pushed at her knee and managed to rise part of the way before sinking back down. Frog knew he should help her but could not move. The girl tried again, and this time rose and staggered to them, her face a death mask. “I have seen,” she said. “I know. We must…return…to the living world.”

They were too exhausted even to reply to her, just nodded, and staggered back to the edge, slid down the ashy slopes, climbed down far faster than they had ascended.

Chapter Fifty-six

T’Cori’s eyes were wide but sightless still. Without the help of Fire Ant and Frog she would have fallen to her death.

After a half day of walking and sliding downhill, movement as mindless as branches waving in the wind, the air thickened, and Frog found himself able to think, to speak, to understand that he had acheived something that none of his people had ever done.

Cloud Stalker had never been to the top of the mountain. Nor had Boar Tracks, or Uncle Snake, or any of the other hunt chiefs. Only the sons of Baobab, and the strange girl without a name. The reality was more wondrous than anything that had ever been sung or danced around the fires. The demons were stranger, more illusive and dangerous. They masqueraded as natural things, and slew in ways no man or dancer could defend against.

T’Cori seemed not wholly human to Frog. She was…something different. As Stillshadow was, as Raven had tried to be. There was no doubt in Frog’s mind that this was a holy woman. From Ant’s expression, Frog could see that his brother was in such supernatural awe of the girl that he barely wanted to touch her.

White flakes began falling from the sky into her blind, open, staring eyes. The powdery dead water was covering their tracks. Even Frog’s numbed mind realized the dangers. “How will we find Hawk Shadow?” he asked.

Fire Ant studied the ground and then the rock formations. “I know the signs,” he said.

They kept moving, not daring to stop for almost a full day, until they reached the tree line. If they stopped, they would freeze. They would die.

As creatures devoid of human thought they came gratefully to a niche in a rock wall, a notch wide enough to protect them from the weather, where shared body heat and furs might get them through the night. Even dead, the spirits of the hunt chiefs protected them—the niche was stocked with firewood.

“One more day to Hawk Shadow,” Ant said. Ant labored frantically with his fire-bow there in the rock crevice, seeking to create warmth. They had nearly surrendered to despair when the first curl of smoke rose, and flame blossomed.

They groaned with pain as the flame began to drive the cold from their bones. They fed the fire until it roared, and Frog and Ant gave thanks all night long to the hunt chiefs they had cursed while climbing the ice wall.

Frog moved so close to the fire that he could smell his furs singe.
Please, Father Mountain,
he said to himself,
ancestors, whatever there is…let us not be too late to find Hawk. Let him be safe.

“You are praying,” T’Cori said to Frog. “I see the red in your
num
-fire.”

His eyes flew open with shock. “How do you know?”

“The
num
-fire flared around your head,” she said, and laughed delightedly. “It has returned!” She clapped her hands together, joyous as a child. “Great Mother, thank You, thank You! I can see again.”

And although in the confined space the wash of sound seemed slightly uncanny, she could not stop laughing and giving thanks, far into the night. The two brothers looked at her askance, and huddled together for warmth, staying as far away from her as they could get without retreating into the storm.

Frog and Fire Ant awoke to see T’Cori crouched there in the cave mouth, eyes fixed on the dead white water falling from the sky, drawing symbols in the ash and ice.

She drew and then she curled into a ball and began to tremble, her eyes rolled back. There was nothing that they could do to help her, could only wait and pray that she survived.

“Soon, my brother,” Fire Ant whispered. “She will come to herself, and tell us what the gods told her. We will slay the Mk*tk. I will lead our people to victory, with you and Hawk at my side. And the sons of Baobab will be the most honored of all.”

There was a dreamlike quality to Ant’s words, a fervent belief that surprised Frog. Perhaps Ant had had his own vision at the mountaintop, a vision neither he nor T’Cori had glimpsed.

A vision of power.

When the girl rolled up to her knees, both brothers were watching in respectful silence.

“They spoke to me,” she said finally. “They told me what we must do to preserve our way.”

“How do we fight the Mk*tk?” Fire Ant asked.

“Father Mountain says,” T’Cori told them, “that we must find a new home in the north.”

Frog could barely believe his ears. What? Leave Great Earth and Great Sky? What would they do? Who would they be?

Ant’s voice was husky with shock. “What does this mean?”

T’Cori spoke as if to a frightened child. “That we must leave this land and find a new place.”

“No!” he screamed. “This is wrong! It is all nonsense! Not after all we have done! I am a man! A man does not give up his dreams because a woman scribbles in dead water.”

Frog tried to object. “No—”

Ant whipped his head around, pointing with his finger as if it were a spear. “Stay out of this, little brother,” he said fiercely. “It is not your affair.”

Unmoved by his wrath, T’Cori replied, “I say only what Father Mountain told me to say.”

Ant snarled, fingering his obsidian knife, “Then perhaps I should cut out that lying tongue.”

“Fire Ant, no,” Frog protested. “She is a holy woman. You must not say such things.”

“I speak as I will.” He pounded his chest with his fist. “
I
am boma father now. Our brother did not make the climb. The hunt chiefs did not make the climb—and they are dead.
We
are the new hunt chiefs! We will make the law!”

“My brother—” Frog began.

“Be silent!” he screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. “No! We have been tricked. She was with the Mk*tk, gave her body to the Others. She is
their
woman, not ours. I say she speaks for them!”

“That is not true,” Frog said.

“No?” Fire Ant snarled. “No? She says to leave without a fight. Our women are strong! They believe in their men. What filth and cowardice is this?” Ant turned back to her. “You should die for your lies,” he snarled.

“Stop this,” Frog pled.

T’Cori locked eyes with them, her expression bleak. “I will speak only truth, even if it costs me my life itself.”

“Listen to me,” Frog said, and stood between Ant and the holy girl. “I am sure you will be boma father, and one day will be the first of the new hunt chiefs. Wherever we are, whatever we do. And the tribe will follow you if you have done what must be done, seen what no one else has ever seen.

“Ant,” he went on, searching his mind desperately for the right thing to say, “whether we go or stay, we need both the dream dancers and the hunt chiefs, together, or our people will die, for we will have nothing to cling to. Stillshadow may be dying. This girl is the leader now. If we must leave this place to save our people, you will be the savior, you will be the greatest leader we have ever had, and songs will be sung to you by your grandchildren’s grandchildren.”

“But leave here…” Ant seemed almost ready to cry. “This is our home. We cannot leave the mountain.” He paused. “I would like songs,” he said finally, voice weakening. “I just want to be a great leader. Perhaps she is right….”

The girl T’Cori crouched behind Frog. “There is fear in his fire,” she murmured.

For many breaths they stood staring at one another, the wind howling outside the cave. Fire Ant’s tongue wetted his cracked lips. He closed his eyes and groaned. “The dream is ending,” he said. “If not for that fall, I would have been a hunt chief.”

Then Ant met Frog’s eyes squarely, softened his voice. “Let us kill the girl, and then you will tell them that they died, they all died, on the mountain. You will tell them Father Mountain said that we are to stay, and that I am to lead. You will say these things.”

Frog saw how Ant’s eyes burned. He saw that Ant would not allow this girl to steal his power, and he would do anything, anything at all. Frog himself had found the title of grand hunt chief intoxicating. How much more so had Ant?

“She would betray us, brother. Betray all our people. Betray you, and me, and Hawk. We can lead, brother! Her throat is soft. Slit it, so I can see you will not betray me. Then we will find Hawk Shadow, and the sons of Baobab will lead our people.” He was almost pleading. And Frog understood why.

Fire Ant loved Frog and did not wish to harm him. But he would. If he must, to save his people, to secure his own destiny, yes, he would.

Fear and love and duty all warred within Frog. Where were his loyalties? To brother? Tribe? Father Mountain?

And where was a small, nameless girl in all of this?

“Kill her,” Fire Ant begged.

Suddenly Frog grabbed T’Cori and pulled her frantically through the mouth of the cave. They ran, Fire Ant racing after them.

Then Frog spotted a stone just smaller than his fist. He dove, grabbed it, rolled, sighted and threw all in one motion. It soared true, striking directly between Fire Ant’s eyes with a hollow
crack.
His brother roared and fell back.

“Run!” he screamed to T’Cori, and she needed no urging.

Furs flapping in the wind, they fled out into the drifting dead water, leaving tracks that any child could have read.

Down the mountain they tumbled. And now he was profoundly grateful that Fire Ant had lost some of his speed and that the girl was fleet of foot.

They gained some distance, enough that they were able to scramble over rocks and find a hiding place.

The snowfall covered their tracks rapidly. In most environments, Fire Ant would have found them within moments, but this was still a strangeness.

But…what was this hiding place?

“Look,” T’Cori said, and pointed to the wall. A few paces away a ring of stones poked through the powdered ice: another of the shelters found and marked by the hunt chiefs in their efforts to climb Great Sky. Again, even in death, the hunt chiefs protected them.

They huddled together, and distantly they heard Fire Ant’s frustrated roar, his angry calls as he searched for them.

And then, silence. The great hunter Fire Ant was stalking.

“Will we die?” she asked.

“We might live,” he said.

But the night passed, and the cold began to gnaw at them. They knew they could not start a fire.

She reached for him. “Once before, I offered myself to you,” she said, and in the dim light he saw her lips curl in a smile. “Now I don’t think you can refuse.”

Fear. Awe. So much regret and confusion, all happening at the same time. He didn’t know what to think or to say, but did know that he didn’t have the strength to say no. Nor did he have the inclination.

T’Cori’s hands flowed over Frog’s furs, beneath his furs, seeking his body.

She urged him to sit upright, and she wrapped her legs around him, sitting in his lap. His root was already firm and ready for her. She took a deep breath and settled upon him, a great rush of warm air leaving her lungs as her body swallowed him.

“Don’t move,” she said, wrapping her arms around his chest. “We must make this last. There is a breathing way I was taught. Follow my lead,” she said, and deepened her breathing.

He could feel the heat flowing through her and into him, and his shuddering ceased. He felt her breathing, long and deep. Like the hyena breath? Similar, yes, and he began his own breathing. The two melded and the heat grew stronger, so that her own eyes widened.

“How do you know this?” she asked.

“Men have their own secrets,” he said, and managed a smile.

He dared not spend, for fear of freezing. Still, there on the edge of release a delicious heat cycled through him, and they remained there for quarters, until the sun rose, and they finally allowed themselves to find release. It was not a powerful orgasm, as if the night-long lovemaking had drained some of the exquisite intensity. It was more of a flowing, a gentle current sweeping them up and taking them over the edge together, into a moment of almost unendurable brightness…and then a comforting warmth.

Swaddled in their furs, they shared their heat.

“Where did you learn that breathing way?” he asked.

“It is a way to burn the poison from our bodies,” she said.

“It is a way to run without tiring,” he said.

They laughed, and held each other. With the warming air they tried to get a bit of sleep. But much to Frog’s surprise, his body was swiftly ready again, and he found T’Cori an eager partner. And if the second joining was not so long as the first, it was even sweeter, and more intense by far.