Shadow Valley (11 page)

They blessed their rock garden with smoke and spit, setting a fire at the very center. Then they sat, awaiting the hunters’ arrival.

For almost a quarter the hunters had sat in a circle: smoking their bone pipes, speaking of sex and building huts and hunting.

Frog felt odd, and oddly sad. Accepted as a hunt chief, or the closest thing the Ibandi had to one, he had failed his people. He had not the training or skill to be a real hunt chief, and he possessed that honorary title purely because of his climb up Great Sky and the fact that he was beloved of Sky Woman.

They trusted him to guide the hunters, to read sign and smell water in the wind. More, they needed to trust
someone—
and to have someone to
blame when things went poorly. At this moment, blame for the failure of their hunts sat directly on him. Now his woman was attempting to compensate for his failings. He hoped, he
prayed
that she would succeed, but he did not know what he would feel if she did.

He searched to find even one space within his heart free of guilt or fear, and he failed. If T’Cori’s ceremony did not succeed, what would become of them?

Before his mind could travel further along that path, Sky Woman appeared.

Only six dream dancers had accompanied Frog and T’Cori on their travel north. All but Blossom, T’Cori and Sing Sun had turned back. Now only T’Cori and Sing Sun remained. But in the moons since their departure, Stillshadow and her apprentice had been sharing the secrets with a few of the women who had dared the walk north.

This is a great medicine journey
, Stillshadow had once said.
And those who dare all, win all. The woman who follows me, follows Sky Woman, has a dancer’s heart.

And Frog thought that might have been the truth. The six women swayed toward the hunters balancing ostrich-egg water bowls in their palms, singing as they stepped. Their faces and shoulders were painted to resemble blue and yellow flowers, their hair twisted up with mud and bits of shell and bone, lips painted bright red.

Their songs were not in human tongue. They babbled bits of animal talk, their mouths formed wind and rain sounds, shifting and changing from step to step so that thought fled Frog’s mind. Fled from words and toward pictures, memories, away from reason and toward sensation.

“Come, men of the Ibandi,” T’Cori called, beckoning them.

The two tens of hunters knelt or sat cross-legged, forming three rows. They stared at the dream dancers, too entranced even to blink. If before, the women had seemed little more than dusty traveling companions, now they seemed to have regained a precious fragment of their former glory.

Leopard Paw’s lover, Sing Sun, dipped her finger in cool water and drew a symbol on Frog’s forehead. “Blessings unto you, hunter,” she whispered, her mouth close, her breath warm, sweet and moist. “You are our life. It is your strength, your courage, that keep us alive. You fill our bellies, feed our children. You are the muscle, the sinew, the brain. We are your heart.”

She brushed her lips against his ear, depositing upon his nervous flesh a single, precious kiss. A promise? A taste of the world unseen?

There was no other world. No gods. No
jowk.
Frog felt as if she had peeled away his skull and licked his brain.

Fire.

Flames raced through his bones, consuming his marrow as she moved on to the next hunter in line.

From the corner of his eye he saw that a different symbol had been painted on each hunter’s forehead, although he could not see what the symbols had been.

“Close your eyes,” T’Cori said to them. The last thing he glimpsed before he obeyed was Stillshadow, sitting behind her on a rounded, brown-speckled stone, whispering to herself, seemingly watchful despite her blindness. She nodded approval as the women passed from man to man, drawing fingers over their faces, shutting the hunters’ eyes.

Finally T’Cori herself approached Frog. Her cool soft fingers against his cheek soothed him. In the last instant before darkness stole his sight, her face, wreathed in ceremonial shells and paint, was barely recognizable as the woman he cherished. He realized that the truth was as she had said:
Sky Woman was not his.
She belonged to the tribe, and, as painful as it might be to admit that, it behooved him to remember, lest she be forced to remind him herself.

He closed his eyes.

One of the women—he didn’t know which one—pressed against his chest, reclined him until the sand pressed against his back. Strong, small hands uncrossed his legs and stretched them out straight.

“I need you to hear me,” she said. He knew the voice: Sing Sun. “You, the men of the tribe, the hunters, must listen to a weak woman. But the hunt chiefs, who once did such things, are with Father Mountain now and cannot help us. You must listen to me, because there is no one else to hear.”

Sing Sun chanted her words, and slowly they were echoed by other voices. Who was there? Judging by the footsteps tapping lightly around him, it was possible that half the tribe had gathered around.

“Your face-eyes are closed,” she said, “but I want you to open your hand-and foot-eyes. They will guide the bow, the spear. They will follow the meat trail, you must find and ask your prey the great question.

“And that question is:
Will you die for us? Are
you willing to feed our women and children? Will you yield in blood, knowing that in time all things return to Father Mountain, that all souls are equal in His mighty eyes? Knowing that in the beginning, all things came from Great Mother and that they are all Her children?

“Because understand: all existence is
num
, but all life is
jowk. Num
makes
jowk. Jowk
has
num.
All
jowk
is
num
, but not all
num
is
jowk.
All life is only
jowk
, wearing uncountable skins. As water can be poured into skins and
eggshells and cupped palms,
jowk
is found in many shapes. But do not mistake the skin for the
jowk.
You and your prey are the same
jowk
, wearing different skins.

“It is the nature of life to rise and fall. We ask that if this is your time, you fall for us and not for the jackal who waits in the shadows. Submit to the strength and courage of our hunters, and we will sing your praises, where the jackal only laughs as his jaws crack your bones.

“Breathe for me,” she said. “Push the air out. Then relax, trust Great Mother to give you air. Just exhale and relax. Again and again.

“When you call your woman to you, do you not feel your seventh eye yearning? And when you call the antelope, is it not the same fleshly hunger?”

“See them,” T’Cori said, taking Sing Sun’s place. “See them. See your women in your minds. Feel their soft skin against yours. Feel your heat rise.”

Nervously at first, the men grasped their roots.

“No!” T’Cori’s voice rose sharply. “Do
not
touch yourself.
See
the touching, but do not touch.”

Confused, Leopard called out, “What do you ask of us?”

“See it in your mind! As if you were dreaming. Before you fall asleep or just after you awaken, there is a moment when the worlds of man and dream are very close. There, I know, you have thought of hunting and sexing and other things. Use that same dream mind. See yourself. Touch yourself… but
only with your mind.”

Finally grasping her meaning, the men spread their arms and gripped at the ground with their fingertips, eyes tightly closed.

Slowly at first, then with greater and greater fervor, their hips gyrated. They bucked and arched, barked and howled as if trying to mate with the clouds above them.

“Now,” T’Cori said, “that same yearning, that same connection … extend your soul vine to the prey In your mind, see the animal you wish to hunt, as if imagining your lover.”

“Yes!” one hunter screamed. “By Father Mountain!”

They were shouting and writhing and coming now. In all his life, Frog had never heard such a thing. Had anyone?

His breath sang in his throat. As the pace quickened, his body hummed on and on with unrelieved tension. The women’s clapping grew louder. They hummed and sang along with his breathing.

T’Cori’s bright, quick voice winged above the others’. His mind-eye saw
her clapping her hands and stamping her feet, driving them on with her
num.

Frog’s own breath somehow turned
inward
, so that he was riding a river that blazed through the darkness behind his eyes, taking him away and down and away.

Once again, Frog Hopping stood upon Great Sky, gazing down at the plain. Upon it grazed uncounted hands of impala and giraffe. He had but to climb down and claim them. A hand at his shoulder seared his skin. He turned around to see his beloved brother Fire Ant’s skeletal fingers clawing at him. Ant’s eyes and cheeks were hollow. At Frog’s left shoulder stood Hawk Shadow, his eldest brother. Both Hawk and Ant were dead men, all maggot and shriveled flesh.

“Brother,” they spoke as one, “mourn not for us. All two-legged die. And so must the four-legged. If they do not perish upon your spear, it is not because they were so swift or clever. It is because you have given your flesh, but not your bones, to the hunt. Give yourself. Give …”

Their bodies unraveling, they disappeared.

There were no bones beneath their flesh.

Frog saw many things then: earth and fire and water. He watched clouds melt and re-form into the faces of men and women. From their cloud sitting stones they mocked the petty affairs of men. Around him the breathing dwindled to lustful calls and groans. Sparks drifted in the wind like fireflies. Flames seared the darkness behind his closed eyes. They were like falling stars, only these flew
upward
from his groin, as if he was self-pleasuring. His root grew firm. With every breath those sparks grew fatter. He was no longer trying to direct his breath. The strange thing happening in his body was no longer under his control. It was like running down a hill that gradually grew steeper and steeper. At first, you control your feet. Then, the earth itself pulls you, and you can do nothing save run or tumble.

He was tumbling.

The light seared his eyes. In the midst of it stood a great antlered deer, a buck who had climbed atop a doe. He humped his hips, thrust as if burning with seed. The buck’s vast dark eyes met his own.

“Mate, my brother,” Frog whispered. “Make your children. And then … die for me.”

The buck’s eyes clouded, and he nodded his crowned head. Then the fire within Frog erupted, and his body was rocked with
num
enough to char his hair.

• • •

Frog’s eyes fluttered open. All about him, the ground was littered with the hunters’ curled bodies. Each had experienced his own powerful changing. Frog’s hand brushed his root. His fingers came away dry: there had been fire but no spend.

Truly, this was a miracle.

As dust devils danced amid the thornbushes and scrub, seven hunters prowled in search of prey.

“I am strong. I am fast and brave. I hunt for my people.” Uncle Snake’s good right eye narrowed fiercely.

“We will kill many!” Leopard Paw said.

“Quiet,” Frog said. “The prey approaches.”

“Truly,” Leopard Paw said, “Sky Woman is a mighty dancer.”

The brush on the far side of the clearing rustled, and a hog’s bristly head poked through. They froze: the pig was still beyond spear or arrow range. It sniffed the air. Would the breeze betray them? Curse it, they were upwind and had not masked their scent.

“You are thirsty, so thirsty,”
Frog coaxed.
“The water is cool. Come to the water …”

Instead, perhaps sensing danger, the hog backed away.

The shadows lengthened and then shrank once again. Although they waited with both patience and skill, they gained nothing.

“Let’s go back,” Frog said. “Perhaps some of the others were more fortunate.”

“If not,” Leopard Paw said, “I will be eating fill grass tonight.”

“If only we could
find
fill grass,” Frog said.

“If not,” Leopard Paw grunted, and spit toward the south, “then plain grass will have to do.”

• • •

The hunters straggled in quietly that night. The most successful of them had been Leopard Paw: three hares swung limply from his belt.

Gazelle Tears took the fattest and hefted it by the ears, clucking with disapproval. “This won’t feed many,” the old woman said. “I thought you were a great hunter.”

She laughed, and the old toothless ones chuckled along with her.

“A few hares change nothing. This is worse than it was before,” Uncle Snake said. “We cannot live like this.”

The afternoon sunlight glinted from the thin, oily stream running a spear’s throw from their camp. Wispy black monkey thorn trees and a single stunted baobab shadowed the water, vied with the thin grass for its moisture. A few hands of Ibandi children romped in the shallows, splashing and rolling and pushing each other as their mothers filled gourds and skins.