Moonheart (31 page)

"So we did," Sins'amin said. "Yet had we known..." She shook her head. "We will speak of this inside— in full council." She stepped aside and motioned them into the longhouse.

"You guys go ahead," Sara said then. "I think I'll go and sit down by the lake until you're done."

Kieran shot her a dirty look. "What do you mean, 'Until we're done'? You're just as involved as I am."

"Hey," Sara said. "Wait a minute. I didn't ask to come here."

"And you think I did?"

"You're the one who's got it in for harpers, Kieran. Not me."

"Lord lifting Jesus! I—"

"She speaks true," Ha'kan'ta said, breaking in. "This council is your concern. Not hers."

"But—"

"The elders are waiting, Kieranfoy."

Kieran clenched his fists at his sides. He looked from Sara to Ha'kan'ta to the old quin'on'a Beardaughter who stood silently waiting by the entrance of the longhouse. On his face was the look of one betrayed, but Sara ignored it. The lines are being drawn, she reminded herself. Correction: Have been drawn.

"You don't understand, Sara," he said, trying one last time. "If you only knew—"

"I understand enough to know that I can't stand by while you hurt someone that I..." She paused leaving unsaid: someone that I care for.

"What do you know about Taliesin?" he demanded.

"Nothing," she said, knowing it was as much truth as lie, and looked away.

"Sara," Kieran began. He reached out a hand to her, then let it fall to his side as she stepped away from him.
"Nom de tout,"
he muttered.

He followed Ha'kan'ta into the lodge Sins'amin let them pass her, then pulled a flap of deerskin across the doorway, leaving Sara standing on her own outside.

She stood for a moment, looking around the village. The quin'on'a had all returned to their various activities and were ignoring her. Smiling uncertainly, she made her way past the lodge and down to the shore of the lake. There, under the shade of a broad-boughed tamarack, she made herself comfortable and stared across the water. She saw a blue heron wing above the marshes on the far side of the lake, heard the hubbub of nesting redwings and swamp sparrows, above them the clear notes of olive-sided flycatchers.

Despite the peaceful scene laid out before her, she sighed, her thoughts circling back to Kieran. If only there was some way she could get through to him. Maybe if he met Taliesin, he could see for himself... But no. There was too much danger in that. What if he tried to kill the harper? Which he probably would do. God, things could get complicated. What would she do if he convinced the council that Taliesin was a threat and they decided to help him out?

"There is little chance of that," a voice said from behind her, "yet still it would be a good thing to be cautious with that one."

Sara whirled around to face a curious individual who was squatting on his heels not three feet from her. At first glance he looked like a quin'on'a child, but a closer inspection proved that, though he might be another of these Indian elves, he was an altogether different sort from the ones she'd seen so far.

Standing, he'd come up to the middle of her chest, and where the quin'on'a's faces were long and finely boned, this fellow had a broad face that seemed all grin and eyes. His hair was more brown than black, and hung not in braids, but in many thin ringlets like the dreadlocks of reggae singers. As she regarded him, she wondered if she'd been thinking aloud. No sooner had that thought come to her, than her unbidden companion shook his head vigorously.

"Oh, no," he said. "But I hear you all the same."

Then that must mean... she started to think, and again he nodded.

"Get out of my head!" she cried.

"Can't help it," he said mournfully. "You think too loud. It's not my fault that you think so loud. Why can't you keep your thoughts to yourself instead of throwing them at people, hey? And then you get mad."

Sara just looked at him for a long moment. Every time she thought she was adjusting somewhat, something new had to come along.

"I'm not new," the little man said. "I'm as old as... as the land itself."

Sara sighed. "I don't know how to keep my thoughts to myself," she said.

"You should get Redhair to teach you how," he replied. "It's not hard."

Redhair? Remembering what Ha'kan'ta had said, Sara realized the little man meant Taliesin.

"How do you know about him?" she asked.

"We all knew him."

"Well, how did you know that
I
knew him?"

The little man grinned. "This is the first time that you've met me, but not the first time that I've met you. That's how I know!"

"And besides," he added before Sara could ask him to explain that curious statement, "under everything else you're thinking, you're always thinking of him."

And so she was. It bothered her, this fixation she had about the harper. Why was it that she couldn't keep him out of her thoughts?

"Maybe you love him."

"Maybe I do," she said, though it seemed to have happened very suddenly. Maybe that was the way it happened in magic lands— in the Otherworld. She was certainly attracted to him as she'd never been before to anyone else. Maybe he'd put a spell on her...

"What's your name?" she asked the little man.

"Pukwudji."

Sara smiled. "It suits you."

"It should, as it's my own."

"My name's Sara."

"I know," Pukwudji said and grinned.

Well, we'll let that pass, Sara thought. "Are you quin'on'a?" she asked.

The little man shrugged. "I am what I am."

Sara had to smile as a picture of Popeye came into her head. Pukwudji frowned as he caught the image.

"Not me," he said. "A honochen'o'keh I am— one of Kitche Manitou's little mysteries. When Grandmother Toad first smiled, I was there. I am always alone, but never on my own. The otter is my friend, and the heron. I run with the fox and sleep in the badger's sett. I am Pukwudji and all the world is my home."

Sara laughed. "And what are you doing here?"

"Here?" Pukwudji looked about himself with exaggerated care. Then leaning forward, he said in a stage whisper: "I've come to see if you'll walk with me."

"Where to?"

"Anywhere." He pointed to a pine that stood taller than the others on the ridge behind the quin'on'a village. "There."

"Okay," Sara said. "Let's go."

"And as we walk," Pukwudji added, bouncing to his feet, "I'll tell you a secret."

"A secret? About what?"

"Not yet, not yet. First we walk, then we talk, hey?"

Her curiosity piqued, her heart feeling lighter than it had in ages, Sara scrambled to her feet.

"Lead on, MacDuff," she said.

"Pukwudji MacDuff," he said. "That's me, hey?"

He did a cartwheel, landed with a thump, and turned to face her. From a hidden place amongst the stones, he brought out a small reed flute and tootled a quick tune on it before sticking it in his belt. "Don't forget your music-maker," he said.

Sara shrugged and picked up her guitar case. "And now?" she asked.

"Now we walk, hey?"

"Now we walk, hey!" she agreed, and followed him up the hill.

It was dark and smoky inside the lodge and it took Kieran a few moments to adjust his eyes to the dim light. Looking to Ha'kan'ta for guidance, he sat down cross-legged in the place she indicated and looked around himself. Sins'amin had taken a seat across from the fire that burned in the center of the lodge, ranking herself between the four silent figures who were already there. From the reed mat in front of her, she lifted a wooden mask carved in the semblance of a bear's features, and slipped it on.

"It is because of the bear totem," Ha'kan'ta explained in a soft voice, "that this tribe of the quin'on'a are so close in spirit to my own people, the rathe'wen'a, and so we are all kin to the Great Mother's spiritual vitality— sen'fer'sra. Something-in-movement. That is what your craftfather has termed your 'taw.' "

While the council sat silently communing with each other, she gave him the names of the other elders. To the left, in the long mask of a moose with spring antlers, was Hoth'ans, Elk-Sister, who was the tribe's Creator. On her left, wearing a shorter mask decorated with a doe's small horns, was Shin'sa'fen, She-Who-Drums-Healing, the tribe's Healer. On Sins'amin's right was a broad-shouldered man in the mask of a wolf. His name was Tep'fyl'in, Red-Spear-of-the-Wind, and he was the tribe's War Chief. Lastly, in the mask of a heron, was Ko'keli, Lake-Wise, who was the tribe's Shaper.

By the knee of each elder was a small drum. Lying across their knees were totem sticks. Ko'keli's was bound with blue feathers. Hoth'ans's had a length of curved bone carved with ideographs. Tep'fyl'in's was a tomahawk with wolf claws twined in the leather where the shaft was attached to the head of the small axe. Shin'sa'fen held a length of polished birch, hung with bone beads and three white feathers. Sins'amin's knees were bare, but around the brow of her mask was a headband of bear's claws.

The firelight flickered on the crudely carved and painted features of the masks. There was a sensation of power in the air, as though an invisible presence had settled among them. As the inner silence of his taw flooded him, Kieran found that the masks took on life, as though he faced a council of the beasts that the masks represented.

Shin'sa'fen tossed a handful of crushed bark onto the fire. The flames leaped up, two feet high, then settled down. Ko'keli in her heron mask took up her drum and began to tap out a soft rhythm.

"Kieranfoy," Sins'amin said, "craftson of the spirit-waker Toma'heng'ar. We will hear you speak."

Kieran glanced at Ha'kan'ta and she nodded encouragingly to him. He swallowed dryly and tried to think of where he should begin. He wanted a cigarette very badly. In fact, given his druthers, he wanted to be anywhere else except here, trapped in some Otherworld, Mother Mary only knew where, surrounded by beings that his own mentor had warned him against angering, trying to explain why he wanted to put an end to someone they already thought was dead. Someone further whose memory they appeared to hold in high esteem. He wiped his brow, then clasped his hands together on his lap to stop them from trembling.

What right did they have to demand this of him anyway? Power, he supposed. He was in their power.

"No," one of the masked figures said.

Kieran looked up to see it was Ko'keli who spoke. Her heron mask dipped as she acknowledged his attention.

"Not by the right of power," she said, "but by right of kinship. Taliesin Redhair was drum-brother to A'wa'rathe, who in turn was our brother-in-blood. Just as your own craftfather is." Her fingers continued to tap out a rhythm on her drum, low and insistent.

"We would know," Tep'fyl'in added, fingering his tomahawk, "what war there is between our drum-brothers."

"How can there be war when Taliesin drums in the Place of Dreaming Thunder?" Hoth'ans in the moose mask murmured. She picked up her own drum, adding a counterpoint rhythm to Ko'keli's.

"Let him speak," Sins'amin said.

The others inclined their heads and the masked faces turned back to regard Kieran, eyes glittering bright in their slitholes. Kieran swallowed again, then began to relate in a husky voice all that Tom had told him of Taliesin and Maelgwn's druid and the troubles that had begun on Gwynedd's shores.

"Pinta'wa sleeps," Pukwudji said.

Sara looked down at the lake and nodded. They were sitting on a carpet of pine needles, under the tall pine tree that topped the ridge behind the village, and for the moment she'd put all her troubles aside.

It wasn't hard to do in Pukwudji's company.

"I suppose it does," she said lazily.

The simple walk to the pine tree had been lengthened by the roundabout route the little man had chosen that entailed as much cavorting and impromptu dancing as it had walking. Never one to be overly dignified herself, Sara had fallen in with his mood, laughing at his antics, racing to catch up with him, then running back to pick up her fallen guitar case and hurrying to catch up again.

Pukwudji grinned at her response. "Pinta'wa's always sleeping, hey? Except in a Storm," he added. "Then she rises and speaks with anger against the shore." He scratched his chin. "Sometimes I wonder if that anger comes because she is confined and the storm reminds her of that."

"You were going to tell me a secret," Sara reminded him.

"I was. I will. Watch."

Rolling up the sleeves of his buckskin shirt and looking like some stage magician, he brushed away pine needles until he'd uncovered a small bit of earth. He dug a shallow hole in the ground, then cupped his hands over it. He blew across his hands and, when he opened them slightly, water began to trickle from his empty palms, filling the hole. When it was full, he blew on his hands again, and, theatrically, opened them wide. They were dry.

"Nice trick," Sara said, impressed.

"No trick,"

"Okay. What's next?"

"This."

He spread his hands over the tiny pool of water and it grew dark and still as a mirror. As Sara leaned forward, images formed on the liquid surface. First she saw a heavily forested slope and nothing more. But then, in amongst the pines and larches, she could make out shadowy shapes, thin as the limbs of spiders. Pukwudji made another motion with his hands and the image's perspective narrowed until one of the shapes was brought into sharp focus, filling the image area.

It had skin that resembled a cross between black scales and a boar's bristled hide. Two tusks protruded from either side of its upper canines and a flat, pushed-in nose added to its piggishness. Its body was comprised of spindly limbs and a stocky powerful torso. But it was the eyes that drew Sara's fascinated gaze. They had all the mad cunning of a weasel, but seemed disconcertingly out of place, as the creature had none of a weasel's sleek grace. They reminded her of something, these spidery creatures, though she couldn't place just what. The face, now that she looked at it again, had an ursine quality to it as much as a pig's features— more a wicked cross between the two.