People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past) (24 page)

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Authors: W. Michael Gear,Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past)
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“Starwatcher,” Hunter said, and bowed. “We don’t know how it happened, but our prisoner managed to untie herself in the night, and we can’t find her ropes.”
Ecan glared into Hunter’s eyes for so long and with such deliberation Hunter knew the Starwatcher must be contemplating exactly how to murder him.
Ecan quietly took the torch from Hunter’s hand and ordered, “Get out of my way.”
Hunter stepped to the side, and Ecan fixed on Dzoo.
Hunter exchanged a glance with Deer Killer. The warrior had his hand on his belted knife and looked like he longed to slit his own
throat before Ecan could order it done. Wind Scorpion was watching Dzoo through narrowed eyes, a slight smile on his lips, as if in anticipation.
Ecan gracefully walked across the lodge. “Dzoo?”
She didn’t move.
Ecan’s brows lowered. “There are tears on her cheeks. What happened in here? Did you harm her?”
“No, Starwatcher!” Hunter flapped his arms helplessly.
Deer Killer shook his head vigorously, but Wind Scorpion just stared at Dzoo as if seeing her for the first time.
Ecan watched a single tear trace a silver line down Dzoo’s cheek, then said, “
Find
the ropes. Retie her hands. Leave her feet unbound. We will be on the trail in less than half a hand of time.” He lifted a finger and pointed. “You, Hunter, search her for the ropes.”
He ground his teeth before saying, “W-why can’t you do it, Starwatcher? You have great Spirit Power. I am just a common warrior.”
Ecan’s eyes blazed.
Wind Scorpion said, “I’ll do it.”
He knelt before Dzoo and spread his huge hands, but couldn’t seem to force his fingers to make the actual contact.
“What’s wrong?” Ecan said.
“Nothing, it’s just … just …” A fierce shiver ran through Wind Scorpion’s body; then his fingers moved lightly up and down her legs, almost caressing, searching for anything amiss. He patted down her back and ran his hands over her arms. He took a deep breath as he faced her, avoiding her eyes, and still shaking, let his fingers trace the curves of her breasts and belly. Finally, he stood up. “She has … Gods! She has no ropes, Starwatcher.”
Hunter watched in awe as Wind Scorpion burst for the door on wobbling legs, his body shaking so violently that he looked sick.
By Old Woman Above, what kind of Power did the witch have, anyway? Wind Scorpion had always set Hunter’s teeth on edge. There was something about him—a dangerous presence about the man—that made Hunter’s skin crawl. And Dzoo had turned him into a quivering wreck?
As Ecan turned to Hunter, his cape swirled in the torchlight. “What happened to the ropes?”
Deer Killer hissed, “Maybe she changed herself into a bird last night and carried them far away before she dropped them? I’ve heard that she—”
“And maybe I’ll fry your heart for breakfast because you took them!” Ecan shouted.
“Me?”
Deer Killer cried.
“Just tie her up!”
Ecan shouted as he swept past Deer Killer and ducked out into the morning.
Hunter waited until he was gone; then he forced himself to breathe for ten heartbeats before saying, “Remove your belt. Use it to tie her hands. And tie them well!”
In the end Hunter had to do it himself. He ducked out of the lodge as the first rays of sunlight bathed the village. To his surprise, Wind Scorpion crouched to one side, his back bent. He held his hands cupped before him, his head down as he sniffed at them as though to catch the faintest of scents. His sweat smelled pungent.
“Are you all right?”
Wind Scorpion stared vacantly at Wasp Village, then whispered, “She wasn’t crying until Ecan entered the lodge, was she?”
“No.” Hunter gave the old warrior an askance look. “But then I feel the same way when he enters my lodge.”
Wind Scorpion rubbed his forehead. “I pray she didn’t stuff those ropes … She is so much more than I thought she was.”
T
he young warrior called Kit Fox stood off to the side, his knees shaking as he watched Sleeper examine Crater’s bloody body. The man lay on his back, blood running from his nose and mouth. Crater’s eyes were wide open, staring blankly at the orange gleam of dawn that sheathed the hills.
They had made camp in the trees on a bench above Wasp Valley. From that vantage point, they had been able to see the fires in Wasp Village where it jutted out into the sea. Now, as the morning sun brightened, they could make out several small villages of Raven People, as well as the slave quarters that served Wasp Village. Finding Crater had been a surprise that shocked each of the remaining warriors to the core.
“His skull is cracked,” Sleeper said. “He was struck from behind.”
“But I heard nothing, War Chief!” Kit Fox blurted. “I only got a glimpse. The light was bad!” He hesitated. “It … it looked …”
“Yes, go on.”
Kit Fox winced, fearing the war chief’s reaction. “It looked like a huge coyote. The head, the ears …”
Sleeper’s hide cape flapped around his long legs as he stood. He searched the faces of the four remaining warriors. When they’d left War Gods Village, they’d been ten. They were being picked off one by one by an assassin who made no sounds and left no footprints. Panic sparkled in each man’s eyes.
They’d expected to be the hunters, waiting for an opportunity to kill Ecan, not the prey.
In the beautiful valley below, Ecan’s warriors moved along the trails that encircled Wasp Village. Could one man be doing this? One of Ecan’s warriors? Why send one man when he could simply turn his entire war party loose to hunt them down? And more to the point, after all the care they had taken to reach this place, how had the killer located them? It was enough to send shivers through the most hardened of veterans.
Sleeper frowned at the corpse. “When it’s fully light, we’ll try to track him down. We’ll find him. I swear it!”
The warriors glanced uneasily back and forth. A quick look was all that it took to see their flagging courage. If he pushed, they’d break and run.
Sleeper walked a few paces away, and his gaze moved over the leafless alders, as though imagining every dark branch where a man might hide. A magnificent vista of dawn-tinted hills veined by dark drainages stretched before them. He looked eastward up Wasp Valley toward the rolling base of Fire Mountain, two days’ run away.
Through gritted teeth, Sleeper hissed, “Very well, Ecan, you and your mysterious Coyote win this time. But we’re coming for you.You just wait and see. When we do, I’m going to have a hand in bringing you down.”
He turned to his men. “Come. We’re going back to report to Chief Goldenrod.”
 
 
D
ogrib and five guards surrounded Pitch and Roe, monitoring the crowd and giving them the privacy they needed for the ritual preparations. Pitch supervised while Roe pulled up the edges of the worn hide and deftly stitched it closed around the headless body of Matron Weedis’s son, Flying Squirrel.
People clambered over the mountaintop, and more kept coming. Many of them had been traveling for days or even moons, by foot or canoe, to get here for the ceremonial. Despite the devastated village around them, the War God pillars still stood tall and massive—and that’s what they’d really come to see.
As Roe sewed, Pitch felt ill. Horror was such a powerful weapon. Every person who looked upon a headless body quaked deep down in his soul. Didn’t Cimmis realize that horror engendered wrath the
likes of which none of them had ever experienced before? Even Roe, ordinarily a calm-minded woman, had her teeth clenched; it set her jaw at an odd angle.
“Are you all right?” Pitch gently asked and reached out with his good hand to touch her long red hair.
She looked up. “I want every one of them dead, Pitch.”
He let his hand fall. “Your lineage is North Wind.”
“The Council declared my mother Outcast when she fell in love with Father. I will make certain, when the time comes, that Stonecrop is adopted into Father’s clan. That way he never has to suffer because of my mother’s blood.”
As though embarrassed by the vehemence in her voice, she lowered her gaze and continued working the bone needle through the hide. The young man’s neck gradually disappeared as Roe sewed the shroud closed.
When she’d finished, Pitch straightened and stretched his aching back muscles. The pain in his shoulder wound had grown fiery.
Roe eased his shirt down to study his bandage. “Oh, Pitch, it’s bleeding. Let’s stop for a while.”
“No.” Pitch gestured to Matron Weedis’s headless body a few hands away. “I want to finish the Healer’s purification first. Then I’ll rest. I promise.”
Pitch rose and led the way to Matron Weedis. As he crouched by her side, Dogrib stepped forward, moving around in front of them as if to form their personal barricade. His long white hair glistened in the afternoon light. No matter how many times Pitch looked at Dogrib, he felt awe at the man’s snowy white hair and pink skin.
Roe tenderly touched Matron Weedis’s withered arm. “She was a great woman. A fine Healer. I’ll miss her.”
Pitch removed a small paint bowl from his waist pack. “If you will paint rain on her legs, I’ll paint stars on her arms.”
Roe dipped her forefinger into the bowl and carefully painted wavy red lines down Matron Weedis’s skinny legs.
“Take your time,” Pitch said. “We want Gutginsa, who guards the entry to the House of Air, to know that she is truly one of the North Wind People, a relative of the Star People.”
Roe’s brows lowered. “What do you think would happen if we sent her soul to the Underwater House where the Raven People go? Would her ghost come back to harm us?”
Pitch tilted his head uncertainly. If the Council ever discovered that he’d Sung one of the North Wind People to the Underwater House, they would leave no stone unturned until they found Pitch
and killed his entire family. Sending a dead person’s soul to the wrong afterworld ensured it would be shunned and abused for eternity.
Pitch said, “I don’t think we have the right to decide, Roe. All of her life, she has expected to go live in the House of Air with her relatives. We should respect her wishes.”
Roe petted Matron Weedis’s arm. “Yes, you’re right. It’s just that I would like to spend time with her in the afterlife. I’m sorry we will be in different houses.”
“That’s the way it has always been. They have their places, and we have ours.”
Pitch finished the stars on the matron’s arms and awkwardly removed a coil of twine and six feathers from his pack. “Here are the feathers.”
Roe reached over and pulled his obsidian knife from his belt. She cut the twine into several lengths and replaced the knife in its sheath.
As she tied a feather to Weedis’s thumb, Pitch said, “These feathers will give her the ability to fly through the three Above Worlds, and finally to the House of Air.”
Dogrib glanced over his shoulder and said, “I don’t know why anyone would wish to turn into a star. Spending eternity in darkness sounds depressing to me.”
Pitch smiled as Roe tied feathers around the matron’s ankles and wrists and then slipped a length of twine beneath her back and tied the last feather over her heart.”
Pitch said, “When Sister Moon rises between the stone bodies of the war gods tonight, these seed feathers will sprout, and in a blink her whole body will be covered with feathers. She will have soft gray wings, just like Mourning Dove who gave the feathers, and she will soar away to the first Above World.”
When they’d finished, Pitch touched Roe. “We must now care for our own souls. Follow me. Do as I do.”
They pulled their clothing off and stood naked in the cold. Roe looked beautiful, perfect. In comparison, Pitch looked as skinny as a drowned pack rat, with trickles of watery blood running down his thin arm from the bandage.
Pitch led her to the fire, where a large basket of shredded cedar bark sat. He sprinkled a fistful over the fire and as the purifying smoke rose, said, “Make sure you scoop the smoke over every part of you, to wash away any evil Spirits who have been attracted by the smell of death.”
As the fragrant smoke bathed him, Pitch felt better. He reached for a clean knee-length shirt and dress that lay folded on the ground.
He handed Roe the beautiful leather dress covered with circlets of shell.
Roe slipped it on and smoothed it over her hips. Pitch stared at her with longing before reaching to stroke her hair.
“Before you put your shirt on, Pitch, let me tend your wound.”
He nodded wearily and tossed their old clothes onto the flames. “We must not couple for three days.”
Dogrib’s head jerked up in horror. “That doesn’t include me, does it?”
“It does. And the other warriors in your group as well.”
“Are you joking?” Dogrib gaped in alarm.
“No women for three days.”
“Blessed Ancestors, why not?”
“It’s a final precaution against roaming evil. If some malingering Spirit sees you coupling, it might take the opportunity to sneak into your penis and live there. Once there, the Spirits eat away at the flesh, leaving a mangled, shriveled-up—”
“I understand!” Dogrib’s knees seemed to turn inward, and the muscles in his legs tightened. “Why didn’t you tell me that before we started? Algae is expecting me tonight.”
“Well, just explain to her.”
Roe added, “She’ll understand. Women are naturally predisposed to distrust a man’s penis—let alone one festering with pus.”
Dogrib walked away with his shoulders hunched, as if something were bothering him.
 
 
T
he moss-covered stones that lined the trail to War Gods Village looked like bright green fur balls. White Stone stepped around them as he led Red Dog up the trail to War Gods Village. From their position, near the crest of the mountain, White Stone could gaze out to the ocean. The late-afternoon gleam painted an orange swath across the slate blue water. He could see the islands in the distance. Some of the islands he had camped upon as a boy had vanished in his lifetime. His favorite, Little Snake Island, was now awash, visible only as a break in the irregular line of swells.
It was the first time he truly understood that the sea level really was rising. It made the stories of the world changing suddenly and brutally real. His heart skipped.
“I don’t think this is very wise, War Chief,” Red Dog whispered,
and stepped around a mossy boulder. “Wouldn’t it be smarter to wait until the bulk of the crowd passes before we go to the village?”
“We are trying to look like worshippers,” White Stone answered, annoyed. “Keep moving.”
White Stone shouldered his way through the crowd. Every refugee for a half moon’s walk had to be there. It astonished him. They packed the burned village and filled the narrow trail that followed the spine of the mountain. He turned and could see a serpentine line of people all the way down to the far shore. It didn’t seem to matter to them that they had to tramp through the charred wreckage of lodges, or that the sickeningly sweet scent of burned human bodies clung to the air. They all wished to be as close to the sacred pillars as possible.
Yes, the end of the world, indeed.
Like many of the faithful, White Stone and Red Dog had painted their faces in elaborate designs. Red Dog had yellow circles around his eyes, and one half of his face was black, the other white, symbolizing Sister Moon at midcycle. White Stone had chosen to paint his entire face white, then place red and black dots on his forehead and cheeks. The dots represented the Star People who would guard Sister Moon’s ascent that night. Few people would recognize them beneath the heavy paint, but they also wore their hoods up to help shield their faces.
Red Dog slowed to allow White Stone to catch up, and whispered, “Rain Bear is taking no chances.”
Warriors stood on every high point, on cliffs and boulders; they even perched in the tops of trees. Others worked through the crowd, their red headbands marking them as ceremonial guards. Spears and war clubs filled their hands, and bone stilettos hung from their belts.

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