Read People of the Longhouse Online
Authors: W. Michael Gear
Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Native American & Aboriginal
People of the Longhouse (21 page)
“F
ind anything?” Towa called from the edge of the meadow to Sindak’s left.
ind anything?” Towa called from the edge of the meadow to Sindak’s left.
Tree-covered mountains rolled like storm-heaved waves across the land, rising and falling in breathtaking swaths of autumn color. High above, unmoving Cloud People seemed to be planted in the blue sky.
Sindak lifted his head from where he’d been concentrating on patterns in the frozen leaves. Towa had plaited his long black hair and tucked the braid into the back of his cape. Standing in the snow-frosted grass with two gigantic pines behind him made him seem taller and thinner. As Elder Brother Sun continued his journey to the west, afternoon light streamed between the pine boughs and landed across the meadow like dropped scarves of pure gold.
“No. You?”
Towa shook his head.
Sindak propped his war club on his shoulder and squinted at Koracoo. She was far ahead, walking through a grove of beech trees. He turned around and glimpsed Gonda bent over, searching what appeared to be a rivulet of snow melt.
Sindak called, “I don’t understand it. The morning went so well. What happened? Where did we lose it?”
“In that elderberry thicket.”
Sindak sighed and propped his hands on his hips. They’d found the trail at dawn, and been able to follow it for a full three hands of time; then it had vanished in the middle of an elderberry thicket. It was as though the children had been lifted straight up off the earth and flown away to the Spirits only knew where. Since the thicket, they’d been floundering, going in circles, finding nothing.
Sindak went back to searching. He carefully stepped through the snow-crusted leaves that lined the shadowed west side of the meadow. There was something here, but he wasn’t sure what yet. The afternoon warmth had melted out patches of leaves and grass, but he felt certain he was seeing more than that. Here and there, leaves appeared to have been turned over, as though they’d stuck to the bottom of a moccasin and been flipped as the man passed. Unfortunately, the pattern wasn’t regular—as a man’s steps would be. He stretched his taut back muscles and stared upward. The shadows cast by the branches kept changing as Elder Brother Sun descended toward the western horizon. Each moment, the meadow looked different.
Towa let out a frustrated breath and walked over to Sindak. “I’m starting to feel like we’re chasing our tails. As I suggested at noon, we should return to the thicket and start over.”
Sindak’s bushy eyebrows drew together. “Koracoo is sure we’re on the right trail.”
“Yes, but why? We haven’t found any sign in over four hands of time.”
As they walked, Sindak said, “It’s that club of hers.”
Suspiciously, Towa said, “CorpseEye?”
“Yes. It’s alive.”
Towa laughed disdainfully.
Frozen leaves crackled beneath their moccasins as they walked around a boulder and onto a trail that fringed the trees. Deer tracks cut perfect hearts in the mud. Ahead of them, a rocky granite slope two hundred hands across covered the hillside.
Sindak continued, “Laugh all you want, but you know that trail we were on at dawn? CorpseEye found it.”
Towa gave him a skeptical look. “Found it?”
“I know you don’t believe it, but I swear upon my Ancestors’ graves, it’s true. Around midnight we were talking when suddenly Koracoo got a worried expression on her face. When I asked her what was wrong, she said that CorpseEye was old and sometimes
he saw or heard things that she did not. When he did, he tried to tell her.”
he saw or heard things that she did not. When he did, he tried to tell her.”
“Her club talks?”
“No … at least I don’t think so.” Sindak made an uncertain gesture with his hand. “She says the club grows hot, sometimes painfully hot—and that’s what happened to her last night. That’s why we started searching in the darkness.”
Towa stepped over a pile of deer droppings and followed the path as it curved back out into the frosty meadow. Deer trails twined through the fallen leaves, creating a braided weave of shadows, but there was no sign that humans had passed this way. Especially not a war party with an exhausted group of children. Men might carefully follow in each other’s tracks to hide their numbers, but children generally failed. They didn’t seem to have the ability to concentrate on the task.
“All right. Let’s discuss this,” Towa said, sounding very logical. “Did CorpseEye actually lead you to the trail?”
“Well, no, not exactly. I found the trail, but—”
“That’s what I thought. You’re an excellent tracker.”
Sindak scratched the back of his neck with his war club. “Maybe, but that pale blue line of stones that we found at the base of the toppled tree? I think CorpseEye led Koracoo to it, and it connected with the trail.”
“But the line of stones was natural. It hadn’t been placed there by someone. And you told me that you thought the line of stones was in a different place than the blue glimmer you’d seen in the night.”
“True, but—”
“Nonsense. It was an accident.”
Sindak shrugged. It was generally useless to talk to Towa about supernatural events since he thought they were all wild flights of imagination. “Think what you want, my friend. You didn’t touch CorpseEye and feel his Power run up your arm like icy ants.”
“Sindak, it’s just a very old piece of wood with a red quartzite cobble tied to the top.”
“And two black spots for eyes. It watches me, Towa. Really.” Sindak stabbed a weed with his war club. No matter what Towa said, he’d
felt
something when he’d touched that club, and he didn’t believe in tempting Spirits. “I’m going to do everything I can to make that club like me.”
felt
something when he’d touched that club, and he didn’t believe in tempting Spirits. “I’m going to do everything I can to make that club like me.”
Towa laughed. “You remind me of my cousin.”
“Which cousin?”
“The one I despise. Neyot.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“Neyot once spent three moons trying to make a dog like him, in the hopes that the ‘woman of his dreams’ would come to agree with her pet.”
“Did it work?”
“No. He was always grabbing the animal by the ruff and talking right in its face. The poor frustrated dog had no choice but to chew off his nose. The incident did not impress the woman of his dreams.”
Sindak dredged up memories of Neyot’s mangled face. The dog had eaten off the flesh and half the bones. “Your cousin is a dull-wit.”
“True. But your wits over the past few days haven’t been any too sharp, either. Do you really believe you can seduce Koracoo?”
Sindak tipped his head. “I’m not trying to seduce her. It’s just very pleasurable to look at her and dream about her. What’s the harm in that?”
“What’s the harm? I can’t believe you said that. You’re going to wake up some night with Gonda’s war club embedded in your skull. He still loves her.”
“Really? He has a curious way of showing it. All he does is whine and shout at her.”
The deer trail wound through the meadow and headed toward the broad granite slope covered with stubby trees. Boulders and broken spalls the size of a longhouse littered the base of the slope. The chances of finding anything up there would be slim. On the other hand, that’s exactly where Sindak would have gone if he’d been trying to hide his trail.
Towa massaged his left shoulder. While he’d been sleeping with his sling on, he took it off during the day. Walking with his arm hanging straight down obviously caused him pain.
“I don’t know why you don’t wear your sling during the day, too. It would be easy to throw it aside if we get into a fight.”
“If the pain gets too bad, I will.” He gave Sindak an askance look. “And you can’t change the subject that easily. Every time you talk to Koracoo I want you to keep the image of a war club embedded in your skull right behind your eyes.”
Sindak paused. Finally, he softly said, “I can’t help being attracted to her, Towa. What man wouldn’t be?”
“Me. But I’m smarter than you.”
They walked out of the meadow and into the cold shadows of the boulders beneath the slope. Lichen-covered and streaked with black minerals, many stood four or five times Sindak’s height. Every place that a tree could take root, it had; stunted saplings grew in the crevices and curled around the bases of the rocks. In places the saplings grew so thickly, they formed a dark impenetrable wall.
As Sindak began climbing through the detritus, still following the deer trail, the earthy fragrance of soaked granite and moss encircled him. In many places, the deer had leaped over the rocks that cluttered the slope. Sindak had to work his way around them while keeping his gaze on the ground, searching for evidence that humans had passed this way.
From behind him, Towa called, “This is going to take time. We have to move slowly through this kind of jumble. I wish—”
“Towa?” Sindak’s breath caught. Something sparkled amid the saplings.
“What?” His moccasins grated on stone as he hurried up the slope. “Did you find something?”
Sindak knelt and pushed aside a clump of saplings to reveal the tiny circlet of copper that had lodged in the grass at the base. It was no bigger than a fingernail.
Towa’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t move. I’ll go fetch Koracoo and Gonda.”
While Towa trotted away, calling, “Koracoo? Gonda? Come look at this!” Sindak stared at the copper. It was a small ornament with a hole punched in the top. Among the People of the Hills, children’s capes or moccasins were often sewn with such decorations. But who knew when it had been lost here?
While he waited, Sindak searched the surrounding area. The outcrop was wide enough that ten men could have walked abreast up the rocky slope, but if they had, their feet would have disturbed the sand and gravel, shoving it into distinctive man-made lines. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. But who knew what the rain and melting snow had washed away?
“What is it? What did you find?” Gonda called as he scrambled up the slope, breathing hard. He looked like a man awaiting a sentence of death. His dark eyes had a wild look, and his round face ran with sweat.
Koracoo and Towa were close behind him but taking their time, trying not to disturb anything.
“A copper ornament,” Sindak explained, and shoved aside the saplings again.
Gonda dropped to his knees to study it, then, in a trembling voice, whispered, “Oh,” and grabbed the ornament. He squeezed it tightly in his palm, as though he feared it might vanish at any moment.
Koracoo walked up behind him and saw his shaking fist. “What is it?”
Gonda handed it to her.
As she tipped the ornament to get a better look, the copper flashed in the sunlight. Recognition seemed to dawn slowly. “Gonda,” she whispered. “The night of the attack, was Tutelo wearing—”
“Her tan doehide dress.” Gonda’s eyes sparkled with tears. “Yes.”
Koracoo’s gaze moved from his agonized face to the granite outcrop and the forest of saplings that covered it. Puddles of melted snow filled every hollow. On this windless afternoon, they appeared to be a field of calm, glistening eyes.
“May I have it back?” Gonda extended his hand.
Koracoo seemed confused at first; then she gave him the ornament. He clutched it to his chest.
Koracoo turned to Sindak and Towa. “Spread out. Keep searching. There must be more than this.”
Sindak headed up the slope, picking the path through the saplings that looked the easiest for children to travel. Towa went left, cutting across the outcrop, clearly searching for parallel trails.
When Sindak looked back, he found Gonda still sitting with the copper ornament against his chest, rocking back and forth.
Koracoo was kneeling beside him with a hand on his shoulder, speaking quietly.
S
onon crouched on the riverbank, surveying the willows where a collection of bones clung in a tangled embrace, still held together by fragments of cloth and sinew.
onon crouched on the riverbank, surveying the willows where a collection of bones clung in a tangled embrace, still held together by fragments of cloth and sinew.
The river was not quite dark. As the dove-colored veils of evening settled over the land, the water took on a pewter sheen. If he kept his eyes half-closed, the current seemed to move like a phantom serpent, twisting out of its banks and writhing in the air above, keeping the skeletons suspended between Great Grandmother Earth and the Land of the Dead in the Sky World.
The men had been laughing when they’d killed the girls. He’d arrived too late, at the very end, and had watched from the shadows, unable to understand it.
Like them, he had been a warrior. He had suffered wounds, buried loved ones, and been as brave as his own weaknesses had allowed him to be. He knew only too well the hardships of war and the things men did when they thought no one was looking.
But this … this had been monstrous. He suspected the men would have preferred an audience.
As though to remind him of the horror, the bones rustled. Spots of leaden brilliance ruptured the water’s surface, and rings bobbed
away. Occasionally he saw a tail flip. Fish. Feeding on the rotting flesh, cleaning the bones.
away. Occasionally he saw a tail flip. Fish. Feeding on the rotting flesh, cleaning the bones.
He rose in silence and walked forward.
Perhaps more clearly than anything else, he knew the meaning of duty.
Duty was all any man really had. After all, life was warfare, a journey across an alien land filled with pain and devastating loneliness. Humans never really understood it until too late; then the clarity of the realization was like a spear thrust to the soul’s heart. You woke up. Truly. For the first time.
He waded out into the willows and began collecting the bones. Most he could simply rake ashore, but he had to reach deep to pull out a shoulder blade that had become mired in the mud. When he dragged it up, he found that it was attached to a collarbone. He collected every bone he could, then sank down on the shore beside them. Long black hair clung to the skulls. He smoothed it away from their gnawed faces to stare into their empty eye sockets. He didn’t see them in there, but he hoped the girls’ souls were still hovering close by. Soon, he would go searching for them and bring them back to their bodies. Then he would take them to a hilltop and leave their bones facing east, looking in the direction of their Flint families. Perhaps they would recognize the way home, and be able to get there.
He exhaled hard.
Out in the trees, shadows wavered.
A symphony of whimpers, creaks, and birdcalls rode the wind, the music of the forest; it serenaded him as he got to his feet and headed out on his nightly hunt.
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