Shadows in the Cave (21 page)

“No.”

Tsola grimaced. Meli, had she lived, would have made sure her children knew the old stories. Shonan thought they were the ghosts of the past. “The seekers of wisdom who come to me, each one gets to know some of these figures and the spirits
they represent. Seekers make different discoveries in different paintings—sometimes, in fact, within the same painting. Each seeker takes home his own wisdom, and usually they come back several times to learn more.”

Aku considered Rabbit for another long moment and passed on to Wolf. “That seems strange to me,” he said.

“What?”

“His fangs are showing, but his eyes, his eyes, they’re …” Aku rummaged through his mind. “Compassionate.”

“Very observant,” she said. “Wolf was the companion of First Man, the lucky hunter.” This was mere information—she could talk about that.

“That’s why no Galayi will kill a wolf,” said Aku, “except for the one man in each village who is given that power.”

At least her grandson knew some of the old lore.

Aku stopped in front of the drawing of Panther. Behind them Bola thumped his tail. “Look at the eyes,” Aku said. “They see in darkness but …” He considered the strange luminescence in the orbs. “Bola,” he said, “do you also see into the darkness of the spirit?”

“If you want the knowledge,” Bola said, “you have to take the journey.”

Aku turned and looked Bola straight in the face. “Can you see into the Darkening Land?”

Bola snapped out a roar.

Aku’s knees shook as he turned away. He pretended to study the next figure, Bear, for a long time, but fear lashed every thought out of his mind. Finally, he said, “Grandmother, why is Bear white?”

“If you walk with him, you will know.”

Aku cocked his head at Bear. “I think he looks like an uncle.” Among the Galayi, a boy’s maternal uncles were his particular guides and teachers.

He walked onward to look at Great Dusky Owl.

“Don’t gaze at him now,” said Tsola. “That’s for later.”

“Will these paintings last forever? Down here away from the weather?”

“I don’t think so, not on this limestone. I’ve already repainted some of them. Besides, I’d hate to think that in a hundred generations, when no Wounded Healer might be here, people would come and use the power of the paintings without guidance.”

Aku sidestepped to look up at War Eagle, the highest of all the paintings, curving with the wall so that its head and its amber eye glared down from the ceiling.

This was not the white-headed, white-tailed eagle, but the dark red-brown bird with the red-gold throat. He was sacred to the Galayi for two reasons. He carried messages between the people and the Powers who lived in the Land Beyond the Sky Arch, and they thought him the perfect warrior, the essence of courage. When a Galayi warrior acted bravely, the Red Chief gave him the feather of a war eagle to tie into his hair.

Tsola watched Aku keenly. He tilted his head far back and stared into the great eye. Quietly, she reached for a cup of special tea she had brewed.

“I could fly into his eye,” said Aku, drone-like.

She handed him the tea. “Drink this.”

Beyond thought, he drained it.

Tsola reached for her drum and began a gentle tap,
tum
-tum,
tum
-tum, like a heartbeat.

Aku felt a wobble inside, and in the next moment he was flying.

The wind was cool and bracing, its damp edge intoxicating. He swiveled his head in every direction. A jolt of fear thrilled him. His first measure of height was the distance the tops of the mountains rose above the plains. His second, equally helpful, was a thin gauze of clouds that shadowed the mountains. Aku glided to that height again, three mountain measures above the earth. His wings were spread, and he was floating, effortless.

What’s it like, wing-flapper?

Tsola’s words, without a voice.

Where are you?

His own words, without a voice.

In your mind.

Inside my mind?

I can see out your eyes.

The drumbeat insisted a little, and for the first time Aku noticed it.

This is our connection, the beat. It binds you to the world of Earth and lifts me to your world.

Some tricks you play.

What if this is reality? What if your ordinary world is the trick?

Jabber-talk.

She laughed.
What do you want to do?

Fly!

Pay attention!

In fact, he could feel it now, he was not only flying, he was rising without any effort on his part. Somehow the invisible hand of the air itself was lifting him.

So, wing-beater, how does it feel to be a soarer? A high-flier? A cloud-dweller? Scary?

It feels supreme
. He didn’t add that a portal in his mind had been kicked in and a new world of infinite vistas spread before him. Aku was a man was an owl was an eagle was a life-fire.

Good,
said Tsola.

He felt a pang.
Grand
, he thought out loud,
but lonely
.

Power is always lonely. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a little company.

Wing tip to wing tip he flew alongside another war eagle. They met eye slit to eye slit and knew each other. Mates, life partners, male and female.

Aku’s spouse arced her beak downward, folded her wings, and dived. Aku zoomed beak to tail behind her. Down, fast as any living creature could go, plummeting like drops off a high waterfall.

After shrieking down forever, his mate suddenly stuck out her wings and glided.

You’re a little confused
, warned Tsola. There was a tease in her voice.

Aku followed his mate into the glide, and they coasted toward the top of a mountain with sharp, jagged promontories, peaks pointed like the tips of awls, or the splinters of broken bones.

Where do you think you are?
said Tsola.
Earth
?

Aku was busy noticing something else. He was the bigger eagle, length greater, wing span wider, body heftier.

His mate floated to a landing on the rim of a nest, presumably their home.

Tsola’s drum
tum
-tummed,
tum
-tummed, holding him in this strange world yet connecting him to Earth.

He knew something but he didn’t know. He glided to a half-awkward landing on the nest, a bed made of thick limbs and soft, yellow grasses, waist-high to a man and further across than a man was tall.

Suddenly Aku’s mate was on his back. Aku had a wild thought that he was under attack. He turned his head directly backward, but his mate’s head was too far away to peck. And she didn’t look mad. In fact, her eyes had a look that seemed familiar—and he felt it! He was about to get … !

He writhed free, clawing.

What the hell are you doing?
He hurled the words at Tsola.

Tsola cackled.
Don’t give me that, just don’t. You knew it. You’re bigger—you’re the girl.

Damn it!

Actually, you know, it feels good.

Aku and her mate—Aku was the “her” now—bounced around the edges of their nest, trying to figure each other out.

Did Bola see that?

He can’t see you. Only I can.

Good. Don’t tell me sex is a learning experience.

Suit yourself.

Aku’s mate sailed away. Aku didn’t think he was mad.

Why don’t you take a nap?
said Tsola.

Aku, She Eagle, nestled comfortably on two black eggs. She was content. Grandmother Sun was hot for a spring day, and the rock walls squared around the nest radiated warmth. She wanted to nod off.

Oh, Grandson,
said Tsola,
you think this is being a mother?

Aku didn’t answer.

He Eagle let out a little yawp, caught Aku’s eye, and pointed down with his beak. A red fox slinked along the hillside, hunting. Its handsome coat was silky, its belly white, the tips of its ears black. Aku liked the nimble way it moved.

Her heart beat a little faster. A fox was a lot of meat, and this time of year, when trees were budding but not leafed out, one fox probably meant two.

She admired the elegance of the fox’s strut for a moment, a fellow hunter.

She looked around the nest and saw no threats to her eggs. The two eagles stayed close to the nest while the eaglets were growing inside their shells, but for a prize like this … Once they hatched, mother or father would sit on the nest all the time.

Caution or daring?
said Tsola.

Aku looked down. The fox was poised, paw in the air, searching for something. Aku made eye contact with her mate. He swooped off to the side, away from the nest. Yes, the fox was worth a little risk.

The game of life and death began. He eagle drifted down toward the fox, further and further down, until he saw he’d caught the fox’s eye. The wily one pranced up the hill, toward the jumble of rocks. When He Eagle turned off toward the river, the fox started hunting again.

Aku stepped to the edge of the nest and looked back at her shiny black eggs.

Now He Eagle wheeled and made a fake dive toward the fox. The sly one skittered sideways about fifty steps, an extraordinarily graceful maneuver. Now it was at the base of the rocky slope, and could slip into a crevice.

He Eagle turned away and hovered over the river. The
fox watched the eagle with sharp eyes, wary. As He Eagle drifted downriver, the fox’s gaze followed it intently.

This was the moment. Aku launched off the nest and hurtled downward at a speed that made her blood pump. She hit the fox from behind with both talons, and in an instant had it high in the air, legs flailing. She squeezed its neck and felt the body go limp.

She laid the carcass on a flat stone near the nest. She ripped open the belly, and again felt a hollow clang in her chest. She took several pecks into the liver. Something in her felt odd and glorious at once.

Her mate lighted beside her. After a few more sharp strikes with her beak, Aku scooted onto her eggs and watched He Eagle feed. The clang still resonated in her chest.

Something must die?
said Tsola.

Someone must be born,
Aku answered.

A week later two white eaglets were eating hungrily. Aku could hardly believe how much they consumed. She and her mate no longer spent any time perched in the tops of pines watching the world turn. One of them hunted every moment, and the little eagles screeched for more morsels. Sometimes, when the sun told her to sleep, Aku’s belly howled for more food. The mother and father took turns, one hunting while the other fed and guarded infants, and then switching jobs.

Her own offspring dazed Aku. Soft and downy as they were, the babies weren’t a bit dainty or innocent. They ate voraciously. The older chick, the girl, often twisted around to get her gaping mouth under the meat as Aku brought it down to her brother, guzzling the drops of blood. In his previous life Aku the human being had thought animals should
be more like plants, and not devour each other in crimson gore. Aku the eagle knew better.