It Sleeps in Me (9 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: It Sleeps in Me
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“No, don’t. I want to feel what you like.”
He reached up to tenderly touch her face. “All right, but tell me if I hurt you.”
He tried to start slowly, but his movements quickly built to fierce thrusts that jolted her body. The sensations were overpowering. He lifted his head to stare into her eyes, watching as the waves of pleasure shook her. When she cried out and fell back in the grass, his seed spilled inside her.
As she’d stroked his hair, Sora had whispered,
“Teach me everything, Flint. I want to know how to please you …
”
Grief cramped her stomach. Sora doubled over, light-headed, and watched the water that splashed onto the shore three paces
away. The pungent scent of damp wood permeated the air. The wind had died down a little, but the oak branches behind her continued to saw back and forth, producing a sound like huge cricket legs being rubbed together.
As she lifted her head, she heard steps coming up the lakeshore path. Familiar steps.
In a worried voice, Rockfish asked, “What are you doing out here? Far Eye said you went for a walk in town. I looked everywhere for you.”
“I needed to be alone.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m just worried about the things that were said in the council meeting.”
He sat down on the log beside her, and his gray hair blew around his wrinkled face. “Nothing has been decided, Sora. There’s no sense in worrying until Blue Bow actually accepts the council’s invitation to come here and discuss the matter. Which I suspect he won’t.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “It’s too risky. If I were Blue Bow I’d be nervous that you wanted to lure me into your territory to kill me.”
She stiffened. “Why would he think that?”
“As you pointed out in council, he’s not a fool. He must realize that once we know the way to the quarry, he will be an impediment. We won’t need him or his warriors.”
“But we don’t know the way to the quarry, Rockfish.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I was going to discuss this with you early tomorrow, but this is actually better. We’re alone out here. No one can overhear us.”
Her suspicions roused, she slid around on the log to face him directly. He looked oddly like a dog with a fresh bone. “I’m listening.”
“I’ve decided that you’re right. An alliance with the Loon People is unwise.”
She blinked. “But I can tell from your voice you haven’t given up on getting the stone. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that we could still catch Grown Bear on the trail. He brought back the jade. He knows the way. With the proper persuasion, I’m sure he would tell us—”
“Absolutely not.”
He lifted both hands in a consoling gesture. “I just want you to consider it. We have until midmorning before we must dispatch the war party. After that, he will be too close to home for our warriors to safely apprehend him.”
Moonlight shadowed his wrinkles, but his eyes had an inhuman glow. As though seeing him for the first time, Sora noted the web of lines that crisscrossed his fleshy nose, and the way his withered lips curved downward.
“Do you want the stone so badly that you would torture an innocent man to discover what he knows?”
He leaned forward. “Sora, I swear to you that once we know the way, I can gather enough warriors to undertake the journey. Then the stone will be ours alone. We won’t have to split the Trade with anyone.”
“Except with your people, you mean. They will get half of everything.”
“Well, yes, of course, but that’s just a two-way split, not a three-way split.”
She sat there staring at this man she had thought she knew. “I can’t believe you’re suggesting this.”
He opened his hands to her. “If this truly bothers you, let’s discard the idea. I give you my oath I won’t mention it to anyone.”
Wind flapped his cape around his legs. From his fanatical expression, she could tell he wasn’t going to let this go so easily. He’d become obsessed with the stone.
“Good,” she said. “Then let’s drop the idea.”
“Fine, but”—he rushed to say—“please consider one last option.”
An owl sailed over the lake, its dark wings flashing in the moonlight. She let it distract her for a few moments before she asked, “What option?”
“We may also be able to find the way by ourselves. If we just follow the coastline for sixteen days, as Grown Bear said he did, we may stumble upon the Scarlet Macaw People.”
“And we may stumble upon their enemies. What if they have discovered that the Scarlet Macaw People made an alliance with northern barbarians to come and steal their jade? They could be lying in wait for us.”
“Well”—he waved a hand dismissively—“that’s possible, but I doubt—”
“If you want to throw away lives, my husband,” she said without thinking, “you have my permission to go home to your own people to try and pull together this raiding party, but leave the Black Falcon clans out of it. I value the lives of our warriors too much to sacrifice them for a few boatloads of stone.”
Rockfish folded his arms tightly across his chest. “Will you give me a few days to consider this?”
She nodded once.
He smiled, trying to make light of their discussion. “Now that we’ve settled that, why don’t you walk back with me, Sora? You’re tired and worried. You need to sleep.”
“I’ll be along shortly,” she said in an icy voice. “You may go.”
Surprised at being dismissed, he stared at her before rising to his feet. “I’ll wait for you.” He leaned toward her to kiss her cheek.
Sora pulled away. “Don’t. I may be here a long time.”
Rockfish appeared to want to say something else, but he just sighed and reluctantly walked up the shore.
She waited until he was out of sight; then she slumped forward on the log and squinted at the wind-blasted lake.
It took another hand of time, sitting in the cold, before she realized she was waiting for someone who wasn’t coming. A man who couldn’t come.
He’d been dead for days.
“I WAS UP HALF THE NIGHT RELIVING THAT AWFUL COUNCIL meeting,” Wink said, crossing the floor to greet Sora as she ducked into the Matron’s House the next morning. “I should have known old Wood Fern would wind up shouting and waving her fists in everyone’s face.”
“Especially mine,” Sora said unhappily.
“Yes, I know. I’m sorry about that.”
The room smelled of burning cypress and damp wood. Sora had run through a downpour to get here. Her black-and-white feathered cape shimmered with raindrops. As she removed it and shook it out, she asked, “Is that why you sent for me? You want to discuss the council meeting?”
“Partly. Our runner also returned. Let’s go into the council chamber and talk about it.”
Sora followed her down the hallway to the chamber. “The one we sent to Blue Bow? How could he be back so quick—”
“The runner I sent to Matron Wading Heron in Minnow Village.” Wink ducked beneath the door curtain and gestured to the four benches around the central fire pit. “Come and sit down.”
Wink walked over and sat on the closest bench with her back to Sora. The posture unnerved Sora. Wink had coiled her graying black hair on top of her head and fastened it with a carved deer-bone pin. Oval pieces of pounded copper glittered across the back of her blue dress.
Sora removed her woven mulberry bark hat and hung it on a peg by the door, next to her cape. “What is it, Wink? You’re scaring me.”
Wink waited until Sora sat down beside her; then she turned and gave her a somber look. “Didn’t it surprise you when Skinner told you that he and Flint had gone out to scout the perimeter of their territory for raiders?”
Sora frowned. “Yes. Ordinarily a war chief would dispatch low-level warriors to complete that task. He wouldn’t go himself.”
Wink nodded. “Wading Heron said that Skinner was panicked, drenched in blood, when he carried Flint into her village. He kept spouting nonsense about being ambushed by someone they were supposed to be meeting.”
“Why is that nonsense? Maybe the Lily People—”
“Didn’t he tell you he woke in the middle of the night and found Flint’s blankets empty?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Wading Heron said he stumbled into her village in the late afternoon.”
Sora shrugged. “We don’t know how far from Minnow Village they’d camped. Maybe it took him several hands of time to get there.”
Wink’s gray-shot black brows slanted down. “They weren’t out searching for raiders, Sora. They had gone to meet someone.”
“Perhaps they found the raiders and set up a meeting with the leader of the war party. Who knows?”
The lines around Wink’s mouth deepened when she pressed her lips into a thin, disbelieving line. “You and I think too much alike for you not to have thought about the same possibilities I have.”
“What possibilities do you mean?”
“I mean, what if Chief Fireberry dispatched Skinner and Flint to meet one of the Loon People? Blue Bow may not have come to us first about the jade.”
Sora warmed her cold hands before the fire, remembering the thoughts that had roiled her souls last night on the lake. “I did think of that, but I dismissed it.”
“Why? What if Water Hickory Clan has a secret alliance with Blue Bow? Do you know what that could mean to us? To Shadow Rock Clan?”
“If he already had an alliance, he wouldn’t have sent Grown Bear to try to convince us to join him.”
Wink leaned forward to prop her forearms on her knee. The copper bangles on her blue dress glittered. “Unless it’s some kind of diversion. Maybe while we’re arguing about his proposition, he and Water Hickory Clan are plotting to overthrow us.”
“Wink, stop. I think we’re seeing evil Spirits where there are none.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it.”
Water dripped in the far corner, creating a dark spot on the hard-packed floor. Last night’s ferocious wind had probably torn loose a portion of the thatch roof. They would have to repair it before the next storm.
“Sora, what did you and Skinner discuss yesterday before I had him dragged off?”
“I think he knew my soul had slipped inside him … . We talk often.”
If she told Wink the truth, Wink would order Skinner hunted down and clubbed to death.
“He asked me to give him three days.”
“Three days to do what?”
“Talk to me. He said there are things he must tell me.”
“Do you still think Flint’s shadow-soul might be hiding inside him?” When Sora hesitated, Wink ordered, “I want the truth.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think he’s evil.”
“Oh, well,” Wink said with exaggerated politeness, “that’s very convincing.”
Sora searched Wink’s face. “Why did you give him that satisfied smile after he told you he just needed a few more days?”
Wink scowled at her. “Because I
did
feel satisfied. I was looking for him and I found him. What surprised me was that I found him in your house. I thought you said you were going to stay away from him.”
Sora waved a hand. “I was in the temple when he walked out of the council chamber and came up behind me. I didn’t know he was there. If I had, I wouldn’t have gone home.”
Wink’s expression softened. “I’m sorry. I should have ordered the guards to search there first. It never occurred to me he would be that bold.”
“It doesn’t matter now. Did Wading Heron say anything else?”
“Yes. Apparently the thing that worried her most was that Skinner was drenched in blood, but neither of them seemed to be wounded. She said her own personal Healer looked each man over carefully and found no injury that would explain the blood.”
“Skinner may have killed someone trying to protect Flint.”
“Did he say that?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Did her Healer have any idea what caused Flint’s death?”
“Not really, though he suspected poison.”
“Poison?” Sora whispered. Her heart fluttered. “What kind of poison?”
“Wading Heron didn’t say.”
Behind her eyes, images passed as though painted in sequence … From the time he’d been a boy, Flint had longed to be a Healer, not a warrior, as his grandmother insisted. He’d always experimented with Spirit Plants, and become quite fond of nightshade berries and buckeye nuts—both deadly poisonous to the uninitiated. She’d found him lying in the forest on numerous occasions locked
in visions, his arms and legs trembling while he stared at the sky with huge black pupils. Usually, he would linger in that state for about six hands of time; then his soul would return to his body, and he’d spend the rest of the night throwing up. He’d even gone to study with the renowned Healer Long Lance, whom many called a witch; but Flint had come home after a single moon, saying the old man had already taught him what he needed to know. He’d tried very hard to find a Spirit Helper, but none would come to him.
Sora squeezed her eyes closed.
Wink said, “What’s the matter?”
“I was remembering the time Flint ate too many nightshade berries. Do you remember that?”
“How could I forget? The convulsions lasted most of one day; then his soul was lost for another two days before Teal found it wandering alone in the forest and brought it home to his body. Do you think that’s what happened?”
Sora opened her eyes. “Just before he divorced me, he started eating more and more Spirit Plants. On several occasions, I thought he was dead. He told me he could feel his Spirit Helper’s wings beating just beyond his reach. If he could just fly a little higher, he knew he could climb onto the giant bird’s back.”
“The idiot.”
“I begged him to seek guidance from Teal. He told me he didn’t need another old fool whispering ignorant comments in his ear.”
“That sounds like Flint. He always hated to have people interfere when he was set on destroying himself.”
For all his strength and audacity, Flint had never figured out exactly what he wanted. He’d used Spirit Plants as much to fly away from himself as toward a Spirit Helper.
Sora flushed. Suddenly, she knew beyond a doubt where he was waiting for her. The one place, the one event, she would never forget. Her body wouldn’t let her.
Sora rose to her feet.
Wink said, “Are you going to give him another two days?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“You’re such a liar.”
“I am not,” she protested.
Wink rolled her eyes. “If I were sure it was just Skinner who was interested in you, I’d tell you to go do what you’ve both always wanted to do. Just be discreet. I’ll protect you as best as I can.”
Wink was giving her that
look
, as though she could see straight to Sora’s adulterous heart.
But if anyone ever found out, the truth was that Wink would have no choice but to banish her. Sora responded, “I won’t need your protection, Wink, but thanks for offering it.”
Wink gave her a hard stare. “Don’t say that until you know for sure.”
“I
do
know for sure.”
Wink shrugged and looked away; then she said, “Before you go, there’s another matter I want to discuss with you. I’ve set the Healing Circle for tonight, just after sundown.”
“Does Touches Clouds suspect he’s being followed?”
“His uncles don’t think so. They’ve been very careful. Everything is prepared.”
Sora nodded and headed for the door.
Before she left, she said, “Come and get me when you’re ready.”

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