It Sleeps in Me (24 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: It Sleeps in Me
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THUNDERBIRDS CRACKED, AND EERIE LUMINESCENT FLASHES blasted the rainy night sky. The roar that followed seemed to shake the entire world.
Sora lunged through the downpour with branches raking her arms and face. She’d awakened alone in the dark forest with the Midnight Fox trembling her limbs. When she’d been able to rise to her feet, she’d started running wildly through the forest, trying to find her way home. Exhaustion weighted her feet like granite leggings. To her right, warriors scurried along the lake trail. Blackbird Town was in an uproar. Almost every house was lit. She kept hearing shouts.
Something dire has happened.
Feather Dancer and several warriors had raced by her about a hand of time ago. She’d called out, but with the constant growls of Thunderbirds, they hadn’t heard her. To make matters worse, her woven bark cape and hat blended with the night, making her virtually invisible.
Teal’s mound stood less than one hundred paces away. If she could just make it there, he would tell her everything.
His house looked dark. But he must be awake. How could he not be awake with all the noise that filled Blackbird Town?
She trotted up the mound steps in such a rush she barely noticed the line of colored sand that coiled around the house like an enormous snake. The sand broke in front of Teal’s doorway, leaving a gap between the snake’s head and tail.
Sora passed through the gap, calling, “Teal? It’s Sora. May I speak with you?”
While she waited for him to answer, she ducked beneath the overhanging roof and gazed out at the shifting veils of rain that drenched Persimmon Lake.
The last thing she remembered was exchanging clothes with Iron Hawk so that she could go out and meet Far Eye one last time to make sure Flint’s soul was not inside him. Everything after that was a blank.
She squinted up at the clouds. No stars were visible. How long had she run aimlessly through the storm? Wink must be worried sick about her. And Rockfish—
if he was Rockfish
—would be frantic, fearing the worst.
“Teal?” she called louder.
A muffled voice responded, “What? Who’s there?”
“It’s Sora. May I speak with you?”
Sleepily, as though he’d just woken, he said, “Just a moment.”
Fabric rustled; then she heard him let out a long, tired sigh. “Please enter, Chieftess.”
Sora ducked under the hanging. The fire had burned down to coals. A faint red gleam tinted the air above the fire pit. She could see a tea cup on one of the hearthstones, but the rest of the chamber was very dark.
“Teal? Where are you?”
Drenched and cold, she shivered as she searched the darkness.
Something moved straight ahead of her where the doorway to the charnel chamber stood.
A faint glow outlined the curtain.
“Teal?”
“I’ll be right out. I’m conversing with the dead. They’ve been calling to me all night.”
She tilted her head inquiringly. “Why? What’s wrong?”
The curtain lifted, and a pale rectangle of light splashed across the floor. He stood like a frail skeleton in the doorway. He had a cup in his hand. When he let the curtain fall closed behind him, the house sank into darkness again.
He carefully walked across the floor. She heard his steps approach. A bitter scent rose as he lifted the cup and put it in her hand. “Drink this,” he ordered. “You’re shivering. It’s hot tea.”
Sora clutched the cup. The warmth penetrated the pottery, seeping into her hand. It felt good. “Teal, what’s happening in Blackbird Town? People are running everywhere. Warriors fill the trails around the lake. Did we receive news that we’re about to be attacked?”
“No, Chieftess,” he answered in a gentle old voice. “Please, sit here on the mats by the fire. Drink your tea and I’ll tell you everything.”
Sora sat down cross-legged on the closest mat. A few coals gleamed redly beneath the white bed of ash. She sipped the tea. It had an acrid flavor, but it was warm. She took another long drink.
Teal pulled a blanket from his sleeping bench and wrapped it around his bony shoulders. “Where were you tonight? We’ve had people out searching for four hands of time.”
“Four?” she said in surprise. “I’ve been gone for four hands of time?”
“As near as we can tell. Iron Hawk said you exchanged clothes with her around midnight.”
“Yes, I did. I had to get past the guards, to see Far Eye. That’s the last thing I remember.”
The crimson glow in front of her started to eddy. Like mist touched by a cool autumn breeze, it swirled and spun into eerie shapes. “Why are people racing around Blackbird Town, Teal?”
“Feather Dancer and young Long Fin went out tonight to meet Chief Blue Bow and his party.”
“Yes. I knew he was arriving tonight. What happened?”
Teal sighed. “Blue Bow was lanced through the throat. He’s dead.”
Scattered images flickered across her souls, things she thought she remembered, but faintly:
a shining copper breastplate … warriors calling insults … Far Eye’s muted laughter.
Teal asked, “You have a strange expression, Chieftess. Have you already heard this news?”
Such hope filled his voice that he seemed to deflate when she answered, “No. No, I haven’t. Where are Blue Bow’s warriors? Did we take them captive to keep them from attacking us in revenge?”
He shook his bald head. “Long Fin let them go. They are on their way home.”
Sora felt suddenly sick to her stomach. Grown Bear would never just leave. He couldn’t. If he arrived home and told his people that Blue Bow had been murdered and he’d done nothing, they would flay the skin from his living body and string it in the trees as decorations.
The room shifted suddenly, the colors melting, flowing into each other in a watery blur of red, black, and deep amber. She grabbed for the floor to steady herself and peered down into her tea cup. The ghostly presence of a Spirit Plant seeped through her.
“Teal? What’s in this tea?”
“It’s all right. Don’t worry. I’m here. I’m not going to leave you.”
“It tastes like a mixture of … nightshade seeds … and ground nuts.” Flint had schooled her way in the flavors of Spirit Plants. “Is that what you gave me?”
My vision blurs, then …
I see them.
Though I know it must be the curtain to the charnel chamber, they seem to emerge from a long black corridor, a tunnel plunging into the heart of Grandmother Earth, into Spirit Worlds I have never seen and never longed
to see. As they bob across the floor like swamp lights, eyes wink and glint. The hissing of their sandals uncoils like a huge lazy serpent.
“Don’t be afraid,” Teal says.
“What are you doing to me?”
“Nothing bad. Everyone here cares very much about you.”
Sora blinked at the phantoms. Their fingers and toes seemed tipped with tiny balls of flame.
As they encircled her, a glittering swarm of sparks flitted across her vision. She almost cried out when she saw, a hand’s breadth from her face, the blinding features of a man, his black eyes bulging from their sockets in fear or hatred. Beneath those eyes, full lips smiled.
“Remember me?” he asked.
“No. Who are you?”
“I am White Fawn’s father. I walked at the head of the marriage procession.” He knelt and spread a beautifully beaded headdress at her side: a wedding headdress.
The polished bone and shell beads shimmered.
“Why are you giving me this?”
He backed away, and Rockfish slipped from the shadows. He had his jaw clenched, as though he did not wish to participate in this charade, but had no choice. He leaned down and whispered, “I know you didn’t do these things. If you were the person they imagine, you would have tried to kill me as well. No matter what you’ve done, I love you with all my souls.”
She searched his eyes, trying to determine if it truly was Rockfish looking out at her.
He placed a copper bracelet in her lap.
She touched it. “This was my mother’s. Where did you get it?”
He must have gone through my big black-and-red basket, through all of my personal things.
Rockfish sank back into the shadows, and a short burly man came forward. She knew him instantly. War Chief Grown Bear. He hadn’t gone home, after all. He rested a magnificent copper breastplate at
her feet. “He wanted nothing but peace, Chieftess. He’d planned to give you this himself.”
The breastplate looked molten in the fire’s gleam. She had vague memories of having seen it before.
As Grown Bear stepped back, Sea Grass marched from the darkness, her withered mouth pinched in hatred, and placed a bundle of cleaned human bones at Sora’s feet. Skinner’s bones.
“I have only just learned that my son agreed to this because he wanted to help you. He loved you, and you killed him.”
As if her body were not her own, her legs trembled and jerked, and for a horrifying instant she feared the Midnight Fox had returned. Then she watched a thin crystalline serpent move up her thigh, to her belly, where a fiery tongue flicked out to taste the drops of blood on her cape.
Sea Grass pointed to the drops. “Whose blood is this, Chieftess?”
“I—I don’t know,” she whispered.
“Weren’t you with someone tonight?”
“I was with Rockfish.” She looked at his black form standing on the far side of the chamber. “He went to sleep. I sneaked past the guards to see Far Eye.”
“Why did you need to see Far Eye?”
“I—I thought Flint’s soul was living inside him,” she cautiously answered. “I wanted to see Flint before he had to go to the Land of the Dead.”
“Did you see him?”
“No. I looked. I couldn’t find Far Eye.”
Sea Grass glanced at Teal. The old priest just motioned for her to continue with her questions. Sea Grass said, “Then what happened?”
“I took a walk in the forest, out toward the burned-out tree. I thought he might be waiting for me there.”
The strange sensation of teeth against her neck made her whirl around. In the far corner, dark eyes stared at her, wet and glistening.
“Who’s there?”
He looked at her so steadily she felt as if she were gazing into the dark heart of the world.
Just above a whisper, he said, “You know who I am. I once believed you had known me before I was born, known my souls before they came to inhabit my body.”
A blurry image of a tall man with long black hair formed. But she didn’t need to see him to know who he was. She would recognize his deep voice a thousand winters from now in the Land of the Dead.
She stammered,
“F-Flint!
They told me you were dead!” Relief and gratitude swelled to such overpowering proportions inside her, she longed to weep.
Angrily, Sea Grass said, “I also thought he was dead.”
“I drank a potion that made me appear dead, Matron.”
“Why did you do that?” Sora pleaded. “I was crazy with grief!”
Flint came forward, placed Far Eye’s conch shell pendant on top of the copper breastplate, then swiftly gathered her in his arms in a tight embrace. “It’s all right, Sora. I’m here.”
Her body relaxed in a way that it had not in three long winters. It felt so comforting to be held by him; for he knew her, inside and out, good and bad … and still loved her.
Teal began the sacred Song:
A long way to go,
A long way to climb,
A long way to Skyholder’s arms …
Flint and Grown Bear picked up the words; their voices added a haunting resonance:
But no evil can enter that embrace.
Skyholder, never let our chieftess go.
Keep her close to your heart,
As we will. Always.
We will keep Chieftess Sora close to our hearts
And no evil will enter her.

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