Authors: W. Michael Gear

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Native American & Aboriginal

People of the Longhouse (6 page)

BOOK: People of the Longhouse

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Over his shoulder he said, “And you’d better hide CorpseEye somewhere. Everyone knows that club and wants it. They’ll steal it for sure.”

“I will.”

He’d taken another ten steps when he came to a deep pile of leaves. He kicked his way through them, launching several wet clumps high into the air … and stopped dead in the trail. Hot blood surged through his veins, and he suddenly felt light-headed.

In a shaking voice, he said, “Koracoo?”

“What?”

He aimed his bow at the bare patch of ground. “Look.”

It had been raining that day. Dozens of small feet had sunken into the mud and the imprints had been preserved when the ground had frozen. Later, leaves had blown over the top.

Gonda whispered, “It is … isn’t it?”

Koracoo came up beside him, saw the tracks, and sucked in a sudden breath. For the first time in days, she looked directly at him, and their gazes locked. He saw panic in her eyes to match his own. For a few brief instants they shared their fear and grief, and he could finally get a full breath into his lungs.

Koracoo knelt, brushed at the leaves, and scrutinized the tracks. “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s definitely the trail of a group of children, but we have no way of knowing whether they are our children or not.”

“Nonetheless, we should follow this trail now. Surely you know that. Forget the baby!”

Koracoo hesitated. Her eyes clung to the small moccasin prints in the mud. Then the baby let out a soft cry, and she squeezed her eyes closed.

“You know I’m right,” he said. “Our children are worth more. I wish we didn’t have to make a choice, but we do.”

In the tawny halo of the light, her beautiful tormented face seemed to be carved of amber. After five more heartbeats, she finally opened her eyes and rose to her feet.

“No, Gonda. I’m taking the child to Atotarho Village, but I’ll be back here by dawn tomorrow. I’ll catch up with you.”

She slogged through the deep leaves and started up the trail.

Gonda stood for several moments staring at the tracks with his heart bursting in his chest. He could see his children’s faces, hear their voices calling out to him, “
Father, where are you? You’re coming for us, aren’t you?”

The pain in his chest was suffocating.

He opened and closed his fists. When he could stand it no longer, he tore his gaze away from their trail and stumbled backward, breathing hard.

It took another ten heartbeats before he could order his legs to trot after Koracoo.

Six

O
dion

A baby cries.

I lift my hands and cover my ears. The wail seems to seep through my skin and drifts on the pine-sharp winds that swirl old leaves up into the oak boughs before blowing them away through the chill golden afternoon. Why can’t I get the cries of Agres’ sister out of my heart?

Tutelo sleeps in the dead grass beside me. I keep glancing at her. Worrying. We are all shaky from the days of marching without food. We have rarely been on a trail. Usually we march through trackless forest, meadows, or over rocks, which has made the travel even more exhausting. Today our guards ordered Tutelo and me to climb through trees, then across an outcrop of eroding granite where stunted saplings grew as thickly as river reeds. It took two hands of time. I don’t know where the other children were at the time. Gannajero has assigned each of us a guard during the day. The guard can take us wherever he wishes if he arrives at dusk in the prearranged location. Often, the men carry us on their backs so they can travel faster.

I look around.

The camp is large. Many warriors have come to see Gannajero. But
these men did not bring children to sell. They came to gamble. Fifteen men sit around a small fire, playing the stone game. There are three teams, each composed of five players. The gangly warrior, Kotin, holds a round wooden bowl. Six plum pits clack inside the dish. The pits are gaming pieces, ground to an oval shape, then burned black on one side and painted white on the other. He shakes the bowl and tosses the stones across an elk hide spread over the cold ground. Whoops and cheers go up from his friends, and howls of dismay from the strangers. Kotin throws his head back and laughs as he pulls in the glittering pile of stone knives, hide scrapers, and copper jewelry. The new warriors grumble and cast evil looks at Gannajero’s team.

The wealth being won and lost stuns me, and I wonder if they are not wagering on more than tangles of necklaces and stone tools.

My eyes move to where the old woman sits alone in the middle of the clearing. Her head is back. She stares up at a flock of crows drifting on the wind currents above her. Her breath frosts as she speaks to the birds and makes strange signs in the air with a black feather. Is Gannajero performing some evil magical ritual? Or just praying for the crows to bring her team good luck?

When we made camp two hands of time ago, she pulled aside the three Flint girls and forced them to put on beautiful doeskin dresses. Then she carefully combed and braided their hair. The elaborate red-and-yellow porcupine quillwork on their dresses flashes when they move. The girls kneel together twenty paces from the game, whispering.

I am the only Yellowtail child awake. I roll to my back and study the bare oak branches. The farther east we go, the fewer leaves there are, and the colder the nights become.

I am feverish and sick to my stomach all the time. I think it’s the baby. Her cries are often so loud I cannot hear anything else. I swear her soul is inside me. I have glimpsed it, flitting behind my eyes like blue falling stars.

Her soul is flying. I feel it. It is the flight of the alone to the
Alone
.

At the game, Gannajero’s men leap to their feet and shake their fists. Kotin has lost, and passes the bowl to the next team.

The baby shrieks inside me. I glance around, terrified.

“Stop crying!” I whisper. “Please, stop crying.”

I must have spoken too loudly. The other boy, who sleeps to my right, rolls over and stares at me. His brow furrows. He appears to be my age: eleven or twelve summers. He has a starved face—all the bones stick
out—and hollow brown eyes. His flat nose and big ears make him resemble a bat. He is lucky, for he wears a heavy moosehide cape with the fur turned inside for warmth.

I whisper, “What’s your name?”

I just barely hear him say, “Hehaka.”

“I am Odion.”

Wrass wakes and looks at us, then glances around to make sure our guards are both paying attention to the game before he crawls over to me. His beaked nose glows orange in the firelight. Dirty black hair frames his narrow face. His mouth is moving. He’s trying to tell me something.

“I can’t hear you, Wrass.” The baby’s cries drown out his words.

He crawls closer, cups a hand to my ear, and I feel his warm breath, but I hear nothing.

“I’m sorry, Wrass. I can’t hear right now.”

Hehaka mouths,
What’s wrong with him?

Wrass pushes back slightly, blinks at me, and looks around again, studying the guards. Both men are smiling at the game.

Wrass turns my head to look at my right ear, then my left, and he frowns. Very slowly, his mouth forms the words,
We
… then a word I don’t understand …
run
.

I shake my head. “We can’t run! There are too many of them. They will just hunt us down and kill us, like they did Agres.”

Wrass clenches his jaw. He looks desperate. He tries again, very slowly.
We … need … plan.

Plan. Not run.
We need a plan.

I prop myself up on one elbow and whisper, “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Wrass stretches out beside me in the grass with his back to Hehaka. He clearly doesn’t trust him. Hehaka gets the message and crawls away. Wrass waits until he’s gone before he says, “ … don’t like him. He … Gannajero.”

He came with Gannajero?

I can tell Wrass is terrified, but courage shines behind the terror. Faintly, I hear him say, “We … can’t … too long, or we won’t … find … way home.”

I try to make myself fill in the words I can’t hear: We can’t wait too long, or we won’t be able to find our way home?

I nod. “We should try to—”

Wrass suddenly jerks to look at the fire, and I see the men rising. The winners slap each other on the backs. The losers scowl and walk away.

Out in the clearing, Gannajero rises. Her hunched back makes her resemble a buffalo walking on its hind legs. She goes over to the three girls, and as she leans over them, her greasy twists of graying hair sway in their faces. She uses the black feather to stab at their chests. The girls nod.

The winning team of five men circle the girls like a pack of starving wolves, and smile. One of the girls is shaking badly.

The team leader—a skinny man wearing a black shirt—hands over the heavy bag of his winnings. Gannajero takes it, gestures to the girls, and walks away to examine her payment.

The three Flint girls rise as though they’ve been told to and huddle together.

One of the girls starts crying when she is dragged from the group. The man does not even try to hide his brutality. He slaps the girl, forces her to walk to a tree, and undress. When she is standing naked in the firelight, he shoves her against the trunk. He pulls up his warshirt, spits on his hard penis, and thrusts himself inside her. She screams. Her mouth is wide, her pretty face twisted in shock. She tries to fight, and two warriors grab her arms and pin them. The last two men pick out their own girls.

My gaze jerks back to Wrass. His jaw is clenched so hard his head is trembling. Rage lights his dark eyes. His fists are working, opening and closing as though gripping imaginary war clubs.

The other two Flint girls are thrown to the ground, and the men fall upon them. One flails her arms and tries to kick her attacker, but he slaps her into submission. The other girl lies limply, as though dead.

When the man who has the girl against the tree finishes, he pulls away and another man takes his place.

Wrass’ expression suddenly slackens, as though in understanding.

And then I understand, too.

Gannajero is a Trader. But she Trades in things men would be killed for in their own villages. These are children, not women. To couple with a girl before she exits the Women’s House is considered the most insidious of crimes. Only incest with a child is worse. If a man forced a girl to couple with him in any village in the country, he would be hunted down and murdered.

But here in the wilderness, they simply have to pay enough.

Hehaka glances at the men, then crawls back over. As though my ears have opened up, I clearly hear him say, “Sometimes the men want boys. You should be ready. They’re going to hurt you.”

“Tonight?” Wrass asks.

Hehaka shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

There is a tornado building inside Wrass. I see it spinning, forming. His dark eyes have a wet savage glitter. He seems to sense my agony. He says, “Hehaka is just guessing. How could he know that?”

Hehaka crawls closer and whispers, “I know. Believe me. There are a few men who keep coming back just for me.”

The pride in his voice shakes me to the bones.

“What do they make you do?” Wrass asks.

“Sometimes they just want to lie with me. Other times, they burn me with sticks, or they tie me up and cut my flesh with stone knives. See these scars?” He pulls up his sleeves, and Wrass and I gape at the white lines that crisscross his tanned skin. I swear there are hundreds of them, small and thin. Some appear to be punctures.

Wrass licks his lips nervously. “Gods! What’s the matter with you? Why don’t you run away?”

Hehaka pulls his sleeves down. “I’ve run away many times. The old woman always finds me and brings me back. Once, about four moons ago, I tried to kill myself.” He turns so that we can see the scar that slashes his neck. “I took a chert flake and ripped open the big artery in my throat.”

I shrink away from Hehaka, but Wrass leans closer for a good look. “Why didn’t you die? You should have bled to death in a few hundred heartbeats.”

“Yes, but she’s a witch. She stopped my bleeding with a wave of her hand; then she turned herself into a crow and flew out into the forest. She found my wandering afterlife soul and shoved it back in my body. She won’t let me die.”

I start swallowing convulsively. A thin wail is leaching up through my lungs … .

Tutelo’s cold hand snakes through the grass and grasps mine. I did not know until this moment that she was awake. I feel as if my insides are melting. I whisper, “I’m right here, Tutelo.”

“Odion? I—I’m afraid.”

I squeeze her hand. “Try to sleep. We need to rest as much as we can, so we’re strong enough to fight them when Mother and Father get here to rescue us.”

Hehaka snickers at this, and Wrass grabs him by the hair and punches him solidly in the mouth.

Hehaka shrieks and scrambles away. Our guards turn. In a bored voice, Ugly says, “Why did you strike Hehaka?”

Wrass mumbles, “I don’t like him.”

“You want me to hit you?” Ugly waves his war club.

“No.”

“Then stop causing me trouble, boy!”

Wrass lowers his gaze and seems to be staring submissively at his moccasins. Ugly turns away to gleefully watch what’s happening to the Flint girls, and Wrass whispers, “When I have the chance, he’s the first one I’m going to kill. Then I—”

A hoarse roar goes up, and we both spin around. Two of the gamblers have gotten into a fight over the girl by the tree. They circle each other with their knives held low, grinning and calling insults.

“She’s mine, Hodigo! You told me I could have her after you were finished!”

“Yes, but I’m not finished, you worthless cur! Wait your turn!”

Hodigo lunges with such swiftness his opponent has no time to evade the blade; it sinks deep in the man’s belly. Hodigo whoops in victory and dances back.

Gannajero says, “
Stop it
! No fighting. You know the rules!” She rushes toward them as fast as her old legs will carry her. The feather is clenched in her right hand.

“You stabbed me!” The man wipes at the dark blood that drenches his hide shirt. “Blessed Spirits, you punctured a gut!”

Hodigo laughs, and shouts, “Your heart is next, Cattara!” and charges forward for the kill.

BOOK: People of the Longhouse

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