Shadow Valley (29 page)

As the morning shadows retreated, she glanced up at the eastern edge of the ridge and shaded her eyes and saw a single stick-thin figure staring down upon them all.

It waved. T’Cori waved back as the stick figure clambered down toward them. At first T’Cori merely wondered who this person was. Then something in the walk, the angle of the head seemed … familiar.

Impossible.
It could not be.

Could it?

T’Cori pushed herself up and walked east. Disbelieving, she climbed up the slope, touching each rock and bush to assure herself that this was no dream.

A miracle of miracles. Dehydrated, exhausted, half starved, the stick figure collapsed, then rose again.

T’Cori climbed as quickly as she could and embraced Sister Quiet Water.

“How did you find us?” she whispered into Quiet Water’s warm, braided, dusty hair.

“How could I be anywhere else?” Her sister sobbed. “You filled my dreams.”

For a long time they cried together. When T’Cori looked up, Frog and Leopard Paw were beside her. “Who?” Frog asked, confused.

“It is Quiet Water.” T’Cori sobbed, wiping the tears from her eyes.

They came down from the ridge, gathering tribesmen as they went, until they were flooded by children and fathers and mothers, all excited by the dancer’s arrival even if they had no idea exactly who she was.

By the time Sister Quiet Water crawled into Stillshadow’s hut, the great one was already awake and sitting erect.

For a time they did not speak, just sat opposite each other, breathing in rhythm. Then Quiet Water leaned forward and kissed the dry-leaf skin of Stillshadow’s forehead.

“It is good to see my daughter,” the old woman said. A wan smile warmed her face. She turned to T’Cori. “You needn’t have gone so far, and through so much, to feed the strangleweed to a lion. You needn’t have feared I would kill myself. I think that Great Mother will take me when she is ready.”

In every spare moment, from dawn till dusk and later by firelight, Frog practiced with his spear. But he was no longer alone. Now ten Ibandi lined up to practice with him. They thrust, twisted and danced bravely at the chalked Mk*tk silhouettes.

“What are they doing?” Stillshadow asked.

“What do you hear?”

“Sticks clattering against stone. But it is not what I hear. It’s what I
see.”
Her blind eyes opened wider. “Their
num
flares. Threads form vines. The color is not green or blue but red, like fire blossoms. I see anger and fear.”

“They’re practicing, Mother. I cannot see their
num
as clearly as you but think that you are right. I think Frog is afraid.”

Her mentor nodded. “Some things in this world are worthy of fear. Something crouches in my darkness, something to do with—” she closed her milky eyes “—lions.” She turned to T’Cori. “Was there something about the Vokka and the lions? Something you should tell Frog?”

T’Cori closed her eyes. Within that divine darkness she watched the glowing
num-threads
spin off her body out into an umbilical connecting her to the coming years. Her body was a hollow gourd, filled with light. The soul vine whispered of courage and cowardice, purpose and ability. When all those
jowk
walked toward the same horizon, it was a magical thing.

T’Cori thought about that, and dreamed. The next day she went to Frog, telling him of the way the Vokka had fought the lions.

And that very night, he went to their new friends, asking that they show him their hunting ways.

The lion dance was a three-man ritual, with one man playing the part of the cat. The other two practiced staying in time and distance with each other so that no matter how the lion attacked, their weapons were perfectly poised to strike. They moved like mated eagles, turning and diving in harmony.

For days Stillshadow listened to the sound of the men thrusting and dancing, until finally she shook her head.

“What is it, Old Mother?” Quiet Water asked at last.

“The stick sound has no
music”
she said. “I know little of hunting, but something of dance and drum. There is something that the hunt chiefs had that the Vokka lack. That Frog and Snake lack. There is no
music
in their step. Teach them,” she said. “Teach them our dances.”

“Our
dances
?” T’Cori said, shocked. “But hunting is a man’s thing….”

“Once, it was,” Stillshadow said. “Once, Cloud Stalker held the men’s secrets, as I did those of the women. But that time has passed. Teach them what you know.”

And obeying, T’Cori had tried to teach, and the men struggled to learn.

Stillshadow listened to the clatter of sticks and did not hear what she wanted. The men stumbled over their feet and crashed into one another and banged one another with sticks. And inevitably, they grew frustrated that they could not learn in days what it had taken years for dream dancers to master.

“I have an idea,” T’Cori said. “What works for women might work for men. Here in the valley are the makings of dance tea. I have seen the mushrooms, the leaves, and … even a bit of strangleweed.”

Stillshadow laughed. “But just a bit,” she said. “Just a spice of death. Enough to crack their egg.”

The next day the women—with many guards and an eye for lions— picked the spices and herbs and even the spotted mushrooms necessary to make the dance tea.

The brew stank, and it tasted even worse than it smelled. At first Frog thought that it had no power. Then after a time he realized his feet were numb, as if he was floating a fist’s width above the ground. The air pulsed as if he were floating within a living heart. As the dream dancers moved around him, they left glowing pathways in the air, and he had but to move within those paths, like walking in tall grass behind an elephant.

Never had he felt the
num
so clearly. He danced with both hunters and dancers. All night they gyrated. When they lifted the spears again, it was as
if the weapons moved by themselves. The women taught them the dance moves, and they crouched and leapt until their sweat dried and it was long past dawn.

And it was good.

And so as days passed, they taught and shared the ways of men and women, the ways of Vokka and Ibandi. T’Cori gave everything she had to every dance up until the time that, half a moon before anyone would have expected it, she felt a warm slickness upon her thighs, and knew that her water had broken.

Frog’s sister, Little Brook, and T’Cori broke water upon the same day, which many considered a sign of very good luck indeed.

Usually, Ibandi women gave birth surrounded by their closest female family. Bhan often birthed alone, day or night, whether or not the bush was dangerous with lions or the spirits of the dead.

Often a bhan woman would not even say that she was about to give birth, unless it was her first child, in which case her mother or aunt might help her.

But whether surrounded by family or alone, it was both Ibandi and bhan custom that a woman might clench her teeth or let the tears flow, but never cry out or show her pain. A test of womanhood, perhaps a preparation for times when an enemy or predator might lurk near a hiding woman in the throes of childbirth.

Stillshadow offered up her own shelter as a birthing hut large enough for five to sit in comfort. Despite its generous length and breadth, with two women sitting with legs wide, and four more clustered to help, it was hot and dank.

Little Brook clutched T’Cori’s hand until her nails sank through brown skin to draw red blood. When the pains became very strong and very close together, T’Cori’s sisters and Frog’s mother, Gazelle Tears, prepared a bed of grass for them and helped them stand so that they could crouch over the twin beds.

Little Brook gave birth first, moaning and biting her hand so that the blood ran but never screaming. Her son emerged into the world onto his bed of grass, and after the cord was sawed off, he was cleaned and placed in her arms to suckle.

T’Cori watched as Gazelle Tears gathered the stained grass and tissue, and carried them out of the hut. She would find a place in the brush and
bury them, marking the spot with a cairn so that no hunter would step upon it and lose his power to hunt.

Then T’Cori’s body clenched like a fist, driving all thought from her mind.

The muscles deep within her danced in a rhythm older than thought. Although she made little sound, inside her head she screamed. It felt as if her body was tearing itself apart, and she clutched at Sing Sun’s arm until her sister’s flesh tore.

“Push!” they whispered to her, and she bore down as strongly as she could. “Push!” they said again, mopping the sweat from her brow. And then …

She heard a cry, a newborn cry, the sweetest sound she had heard in her life. At that moment, she could have died, and been happy to do so.

“A girl,” Sing Sun said.

“Give me my child,” T’Cori said, and the baby was given to her. T’Cori gazed into her daughter’s eyes, which stared blindly out into the world …

And then …

They fixed upon her mother’s face. She cried, howled, announcing her birth to the world.

When the Ibandi first laid eyes upon the towering, thick-rooted fig tree in the valley’s center, its branches already buzzed with tiny, winged life. To celebrate the first births in Shadow Valley, the men decided to raid it for honey.

Like hunting, honey gathering was men’s work. The lowest hive was located in a branch higher than ten men standing on each other’s shoulders. Both Vokka and Ibandi had been stung upon even casual approach.

This
, Frog thought,
was a good thing.
Stinging bees always guarded the best honey!

Gathering the sweet, sticky stuff was a painful pursuit, but the rewards were well worth it. A hand of volunteers from each group, Ibandi and Vokka, offered to brave the stingers.

At dusk, ten men crept to the tree and boosted one another up the trunk. The Vokka were slightly better climbers, and Tall One was the first to reach the fist-wide crevice in the tree trunk. Within that darkness hung the chosen cluster of pale combs. They looked like rows of huge grubs nestled together side to side.

Tall One gestured to Frog, and Frog climbed up beside him, carrying a leather pouch of embers and green grass. Together they blew on it until the sparks flared, wafting smoke into the crevice. Frog winced as a bee stung him on the cheek and another on the hand.

God Mountain, that hurt!

But those were the only stings, and after a time the bees grew sleepy and
uninterested. With two swift slices the Vokka cut the hive open, pulled out sections of honeycomb and threw them down.

The tribesmen on the ground caught the chunks with their hands wrapped in broad palm leaves. They ran off, slapping at the waking bees. If they could get away before the bees recovered from the smoke, all would be well. But otherwise, it was going to be a long and very painful day.

The groggy insects were everywhere, clinging to the comb, sticking to their skin, but the thieves were away in time: a few welts on arms and legs could not diminish the sweetness of victory.

The brew of honey and herbs was delicious and potent, thinning the wall between the dream and human worlds. The Vokka smoked and danced with them until dawn, welcoming the new children into a new home, beneath a new sky.

T’Cori held their new child to one breast, and Medicine Mouse to her other. Her milk had descended and she was happy to nurse her children at last. Frog stretched his arms around the three of them. Perhaps they could not have the marriage ceremony, but he would have life with her, here in Shadow Valley. He would gladly step into the circle with anyone, man or giant, who denied that T’Cori was his woman or that this was his family.

The Vokka were so different: strange in custom, broad-faced and bleached-bone ugly. Frog heard all his people saying these things, but he also realized that the Vokka probably thought similar things of them.

Soon, Frog hoped, would come a naming ceremony. With luck, Still-shadow would decide to remain in this world long enough to give T’Cori’s newborn girl a name. But that was for her to decide, not Frog or any other man.

He was very tired, and glad for the time to stare up at the dark clouds. He wondered if the Vokka could see things that the Ibandi could not. They knew different things … and if the Ibandi seemed to learn the Vokka ways faster than the Vokka learned the Ibandi’s, still, perhaps …

He pointed up into the sky. “Cloud,” he said. “Face.”

Tall One frowned. “Cloud. Face? Where face?”

Frog sighed. Then again, perhaps not. Not like him, not like Ibandi, not like Mk*tk. The Vokka might almost have been monkeys, the way they never seemed to tire of grooming each other. Or of entertaining their fellows
with mimed stories of hunting and screwing and spirits of the dead, falling over and rolling on the ground in fits of laughter as long as the fire threw sparks into the night sky.

Tall One loved to dance, and that night walked on all fours, miming great size and strength, pretending to have twin tusks and a long, agile nose.