People of the Fire (28 page)

 
          
 
All in all, the rock shelter made a snug home.
Unlike the hide lodges he'd lived in as a youth, the shelter stayed warmer,
radiating heat absorbed during the day until late at night. In summer, it
remained cool. The shelter would have been perfect had it not been for White
Calf's constant and irritating presence. This place belonged to her—and she
dominated it in every respect. He couldn't help but wonder if her soul hadn't
leached into the very rock along with the soot of her fires.

 
          
 
He turned to meet her burning eyes. If
anything, she'd shrunk in the last couple of years. Now her hair glistened in
the firelight as white as the deep-winter snow. Her face had evolved into a
shriveled caricature, the flesh of her neck sagging like the wattle of a
misbegotten turkey. She looked so frail a sneeze might have broken her like a
stem of winter grass bent too far. At least, he could think so until he faced
the shining challenge in her passionate eyes. Now they caught the ember-tinged
light of the fires, gleaming of Power, seeing through him as if he were nothing
more than morning smoke. The familiar tingle of premonition teased his uneasy
gut.

 
          
 
“You can't hide from yourself forever,
boy." Her words came at him softly, almost like drifting fog. “Deny your
Power all you want—but you can't escape it like some hawk from a torn net. It's
you, boy. You're the one."

 
          
 
He said nothing, resentment and frustration
building.

 
          
 
“Why do you always deny me, boy?"

 
          
 
His mother's words echoed inside: "I
forbid it!" The horror of her death lingered—as tangible in his mind as
the hard earth under his physical self. Every time this argument reared. he
could feel his mother's dark eyes staring down, watching him, a constant
reminder of that hideous moment he'd felt her death, found her bloodless body.

 
          
 
"Why, boy?" White Calf persisted.
"No matter u hat your mother said, you can't change your nature. You're a
Dreamer . . . it's in your eyes." A pause. "Look at me. Tell me
you're not. And mean it when you say it."

 
          
 
He refused, biting back the seething anger her
words always brought. He wanted to shout at her, revile her for the meddling
old sage hen she was. How sweet it would be to spit in her face and tell her to
leave him alone for once. What a precious reward it would be to strike back at
her for the last years. For the moment, he dreamed of kicking her packs apart,
reveled in the fantasy of throwing her prize possessions into the fire. What a
joy it would be to stomp them into the coals as they caught fire and
incinerated themselves to wispy ash. That would show her. That would teach her
to leave him alone. He could pay her back for all the endless harassment and
all the little games to bend him to her will.

 
          
 
Except, he never would. He had been born of
the People. With the very milk from his mother's breast, he'd sucked up the
manners of the Short Buffalo folk. The young never acted disrespectfully to the
elders who had come before. No one would dare take such a liberty. No matter
how she might goad him, twist him, and eat away at his resistance, he could
never scorn her, or shout his anger. And that made the anger and frustration
even worse.

 
          
 
“Boy, you've got to listen to the voices in
your head. You got-"

 
          
 
"I'm going to find my father."
Unable to look at her, familiar with the pained expression on Two Smokes' face,
he ran for the door hanging and exploded out into the night.

 
          
 
"One of these days," Two Smokes said
into the sudden quiet, "you will drive him too far. Chokecherry warned you
before she died."

 
          
 
"She never understood my role."

 
          
 
"Maybe. But she knew this boy. I know
this boy. White Calf, you can't keep pushing like this. You've alienated his
father. Hungry Bull's lost himself . . . lost his way through life, and doesn't
know what to do except stay away. He won't argue with you on account of the
debt he owes you. He's afraid of Power. But when you badger the boy, it tears
at him. It's another strand pulling apart between us. If you keep this up,
you'll-—"

           
 
"Yes, yes ... I know."

 
          
 
"Do you?"

 
          
 
She looked at him, keen black eyes smoldering
with a curious desperation. "I do. I just can't seem to reach Little
Dancer.''

 
          
 
“He'll find Power himself. He can't ignore it
forever."

 
          
 
White Calf seemed to deflate as she sighed
from the depths of her soul. She nodded absently. "Yes, old friend, I
suppose. But I don't have much time. And there's so much he needs to
learn."

 
          
 
Little Dancer trotted down the trail, keen
eyes picking out the undulations and rocks in the darkness. The red flush of
anger began to dissipate, leaving in its place a foreboding depression, thick
and gloomy as the cloud cover over the night sky.

 
          
 
“Why don't they leave me alone?" He swung
a halfhearted fist at a fir branch, oddly relieved by the action. He continued
slashing at the tall grasses that had gone brown and brittle with the first
frost. Already the air carried a promising tang of coming cold. A person could
feel it; the subtle bite of winter cloaked itself in the crisp mornings, or hid
in the gust of the afternoon breeze. Like a ghost, it waited, ready to slip out
of the memories of summer and bear down on the land in full-fledged cold.
Daylight had begun to dull the belly of the fall sky as Father Sun retreated to
the southern trail across the heavens.

 
          
 
And what would this winter bring? More
stifling days around the smoldering fire as White Calf retold the old stories?
More of her constant harping, the endless questions and ceaseless picking
comments about Power?

 
          
 
These days Hungry Bull stayed out of sight
except during the coldest of weather when he might suffer frostbite. What good
was a frostbitten hunter? If the flesh froze too severely, his father's only
pleasure in life might be denied him. And if Hungry Bull lost that one solace
of the hunt, he'd be as good as dead.

 
          
 
Hungry Bull had changed. That sparkle of fun
had gone from him, leaving him dull. He wouldn't even meet White Calf's eyes.
His spirit had fled someplace the day he'd walked in shock from Heavy Beaver's
camp. Then, not even a year after they'd come to White Calf's, Chokecherry had died
in her robes. Without her to share the past, no one understood him anymore.

 
          
 
What had happened to them? Once again Little
Dancer asked himself the old worn-out question. From the day he'd Dreamed the
antelope, everything had changed. Existence had turned inside out and lost
itself in a tangle of hurt and confusion. Power had entered his life— and it
wouldn't leave.

 
          
 
The Dreams continued to haunt him. The old
woman was right. He could deny all he wanted, but that didn't change the truth.
Like this night's Dancing fire, the Dreams spun around him with the power of
Crafty Spider's
Starweb
, ensnaring him, holding him
captive. Once he'd tried beating himself with a quartzite cobble, seeking to
drive the visions from his head. Outside of swelling bruises and a wretched
headache, he'd received a tongue-lashing from White Calf that ended in a fight
that had ensnarled Two Smokes and his father for months until White Calf
finally relented.

 
          
 
"Let him beat himself half to
death!" she'd finally agreed. "That's fine with me." Then she'd
hesitated for a brief moment before adding, "I'll bet Heavy Beaver would
love to hear about that!"

 
          
 
And he'd never tried to harm himself
thereafter. At the thought, the knowing, satisfied smile of Heavy Beaver would
form sickly sweet in his memory.

 
          
 
With no pattern or hint, the Dreams would come
on him. And the old woman never seemed to miss it. So what if she really had
been his grandmother? She didn't have to watch him like that. At times he felt
like a mouse scurrying under a coyote's nose. The huge jaws always gaped open,
ready to snatch him up. He never knew when those heavy paws might pounce and
smash him flat in the grass to leave him dazed and dying before being swallowed
by something he didn't understand.

 
          
 
Two Smokes hadn't been any help either. He
didn't talk much anymore—he'd never forgiven himself for the insult to the Wolf
Bundle.
Berdaches
lived between the worlds. Not only
did they function as the mediators between men and women, understanding each,
they had been fashioned by the ways of Power so they could feel the spirit
realm as well as the world. Two Smokes had felt the desecration of the Wolf
Bundle to the bottom of his soul. The experience had left a hole, a lack of
purpose in his life.

 
          
 
I'm just miserable, that's all. Mother? Why
did you go away and leave me to this? Why did you give up? Where are you,
Mother? Come back to me! Take me away!

 
          
 
Moving out from the mountain, Little Dancer
could see the western horizon where the clouds had drifted east. Pinpoints of
light from the exposed portions of the
Starweb
twinkled and danced. Overhead and to the east, the sky remained masked by cloud
and darkness. He could imagine the blackness over
Moon
River
and his old childhood haunts. Did Heavy
Beaver look up this night, too? Did he stare at the same blotted heavens and
wonder?

 
          
 
Little Dancer kicked at a low sagebrush,
satisfied with the tangy odor as he bruised the seed-heavy stalks rising above
the aqua leaves.

 
          
 
They'd made him a prisoner, keeping him like a
child kept a baby bird in a stick cage. White Calf, the Power and Dreams, the
Curses of Heavy Beaver, everything worked against him.

 
          
 
Viciously, he kicked at the sage, happy to
hurt back for once. So much for Heavy Beaver. So much for Dreams and White Calf
and everything else that left him miserable and harried. The anger rose again,
relentless, burning. He struck out at the world, seeking to hurt it, to pay it
back for the frustration he lived.

 
          
 
With a stick, he laid into the sagebrush,
thrashing it as hot tears rolled down his cheek. He attacked a small fir tree
with his flail, imagining it to be White Calf and Heavy Beaver rolled into one.
He screamed as his muscles rolled under the attack. A cry of rage rose to his
lips, fueling his assault.

 
          
 
The stick broke, cracking under the violence
of his tantrum. He bent to pluck rocks, pelting the tree, watching the branches
whip under the impact. He screamed his anger, exulting in the triumph flooding
his charged body. Wild rage keened and sang in his veins.

 
          
 
Finally exhausted, he sagged, chest heaving,
completely spent. A tremor scurried through the muscles of his arms and legs.
In the passing fury, his mouth had gone dry and his throat burned. A welling
pain began to throb in his torn fingers where he'd shredded the skin trying to
lever rocks from the resistant dirt. The chill of the night-dark air began to
seep into his sweat-flushed cheeks.

 
          
 
Around him the night waited, silent, patient,
eternal, knowing the futility of young boys and their spells of impudent
misbehavior.

 
          
 
Little Dancer blinked owlishly at the tree
before him. His vented wrath didn't seem to have made an impact. The shadowy
fir stood resolute; the veil of darkness obscured any scars he might have
imparted on the supple branches. In defeat, he lowered his head, rubbing the
back of his neck, aware of the quiet pressing down like a smothering robe.