Starflower (23 page)

I found her cradled in Wolf Tongue's arms.

My heart ceased to beat. For a moment, I believed I had died and fallen into some dark hell. Then, with a gasp, I flung myself across the room to where the High Priest sat cross-legged before a low fire, my sister sound asleep in his lap. He raised cold eyes to me and put up one hand. I stopped at the gesture as though my feet had grown roots. Everything in me urged to take my sister from him, but fear held me in place.

“Do not wake the child,” he said. His voice was low. I thought it would shatter every bone in my body. He lowered his hand to rest on Fairbird's head, stroking her hair softly. “She was exhausted from weeping. She was
abandoned in the dark.” His eyes flashed at me. “I do not abandon my own. I keep them safe. I keep them close.”

I shuddered. Frostbite pressed against my legs, whining softly.

Wolf Tongue looked at me long and hard. Something in his gaze reminded me of the expression on Sun Eagle's face only a few hours before at the commencement of our betrothal. I felt as though something dark and feral had fixed its eyes upon my naked spirit. I wanted to turn and run, to flee this house and this man's presence. But he held my sister. I could not go.

“You have grown, Starflower,” said Wolf Tongue. “You are beautiful indeed.”

My heart leapt in terror. Desperately I swallowed it back. Then, taking a firm step forward, I held out my arms for Fairbird. My eyes said what my tongue could not:
Give her to me!

Wolf Tongue, I knew, understood. To my surprise, he stood. He had to bend his head and shoulders to fit beneath the too-low roof, and he seemed a tremendous figure full of dreadful power. But he held out the sleeping child.

“Take her,” he said.

I sprang forward. But even as I took my sister, Wolf Tongue's hand clamped down on my upper arm. I struggled to pull away, but it was no use. So I stood still, clutching Fairbird to my breast, and felt the High Priest lean down until his breath warmed my ear.

“You have not forgotten your bargain with the Beast,” he whispered. “He gave you back your sister only for a time. Soon he will demand blood.”

I closed my eyes, cringing away from those words. But he took my face in his other hand and forced me to look at him. His eyes were oddly yellow and they glowed in the darkness of the hut. Inhuman eyes, I thought, though their expression was that of the earthiest man.

“The Panther Master knows his sin,” Wolf Tongue said. “If he tries to thwart the will of the Beast, disaster will follow. You will never wed, Maid Starflower. You will not—”

“Wolf Tongue! Unhand my daughter.”

Wolf Tongue's lips curled back in a snarl as he and I turned to the door. There stood my father, spear in hand, panther skin thrown back
across his shoulder. I could not see his face in the darkness, but his stance was ready to attack.

“Eldest,” said Wolf Tongue, and his voice was a growl. “Tell me, what right have you to make demands concerning the Beast's possessions?”

“She is not the Beast's. Nor is she yours, priest,” said my father, advancing into the room, his spear at the ready. The glow of the fire struck the stone, turning it red. “Unhand her and leave this house.”

“One of them belongs to my master,” said the priest. He backed away from me, though his hand lingered upon my arm. “One of them must pay the blood price. And soon.”

“Leave this house,” the Eldest repeated. The head of his spear now hovered just before Wolf Tongue's heart. Wolf Tongue looked down at it. He smiled.

Faster than my eye could follow, he grabbed the stone head. Though it must have torn his hand, he wrenched it from the Panther Master's grasp. Flinging it into the shadows by the hearth, he turned to my father, his teeth flashing.

“I give you warning now!” he cried. “If you insist on giving away what does not belong to you, you and all your village will suffer. The Beast has spoken. He will not be denied!”

Then his voice softened, becoming sinister in its gentleness. “Do not think I speak without concern. Your people are my people, Eldest. I have shielded them from the Beast's wrath for many years now, longer than you know. But the Beast is a cruel god when crossed. I cannot stand in his way. Neither can you.”

My father, empty-handed, stood in the darkness, and still I could not read his face. At last he spoke:

“Get out.”

Once more, the priest growled. But when the Eldest took a step toward him, Wolf Tongue slipped around to the door. There he paused and looked back at us one last time. “You have been warned, Panther Master!”

He vanished.

Silence settled upon the Eldest's House. My father turned to me, but I was afraid and lowered my gaze to my sister instead. I found her wide black eyes staring up at me. I wondered how long she had been awake
and how much she had understood. Tears falling down my cheeks, I pressed her close to my heart.

The day before his passage, Sun Eagle came to me in private. I was in the mango grove just below the Eldest's House, harvesting an early crop, still green, which I would set to ripen in covered baskets away from pests. Though my hands were busy, I struggled to keep my mind from pursuing any of the dark paths before it: the Beast, Wolf Tongue's threats, my father's silence. Most of all, marriage and what it might mean for my sister.

To keep these thoughts at bay, I concentrated on the blistering heat of the day, on the sweat gathered on my brow, on the leathery green leaves tickling my face and arms, on the hard skins of the fruit as I plucked them from their clusters.

A shadow fell across me. I looked up into Sun Eagle's solemn face.

“Starflower,” he said, “I come to beg a boon of you.”

My heart leapt, perhaps with fear, and I nearly dropped the basket balanced on my hip. I cast about for Fairbird, but she was some way up the hill, closer to the house. Only Frostbite was nearby, dozing in the shadow of a silver-branch tree.

“You're not afraid of me, are you?”

I startled at Sun Eagle's words and looked up at him quickly. But he wasn't laughing or mocking. He seemed merely curious. Hastily, I shook my head. I set down my basket, then folded my hands, indicating that I was willing to hear what he had come to say.

“As you know,” he said, “I make my passage tomorrow. I shall descend into the gorge and journey into the Gray Wood. When I have killed a beast and returned with its hide, I will be deemed worthy of manhood.”

I nodded. This was an ancient custom. The only time men entered the forest down in the gorges was at this momentous point in their lives. Some had returned with strange creatures, fabulous beasts with two heads or many horns, and even stranger still! One man, it was said, had come upon a goat with panther's legs and a mouth full of fangs. But it had never happened in my lifetime. Most of the lads returned with a squirrel
or a rabbit, though this did not matter. The courage it took to enter the Gray Wood was enough to make them warriors.

“Your father,” Sun Eagle continued, “has told me to keep his name mark and to carry it with me for luck. An honor I scarcely deserve from a warrior such as he!” A warrior who had bested his father in battle. The honor must be a bitter one for Sun Eagle. “But it would honor me still more,” he continued, “were you to let me bear your name mark as well.”

My hand flew to my throat, where I wore the blue bead painted with a white starflower. My mother had made it for me when I was younger than Fairbird. It was a beautiful piece, more beautiful by far than those worn by the other village girls. My mother had been gifted.

Sun Eagle watched me, his dark eyes intent. He must have known or at least guessed what it was he asked of me. He asked for my trust. He asked for my loyalty. To give him this gift meant so much more than a mere wish of luck.

“Please, Starflower,” he said. And there was that look again, that look as though he knew my true name.

My hands trembled as I reached up and untied the leather cord from around my neck. I hesitated a moment, thinking of my mother's hands. I had watched them mixing the paint and carefully decorating the little marker. I had watched them string the trinket on this cord and had bounced with excitement when she held it out to me.

I placed it in Sun Eagle's outstretched hand. He tried to catch hold of my fingers, but I withdrew quickly, though I smiled a little. Then I signed, though I knew he would not understand, words from a song my mother had taught me: “Beyond the Final Water falling . . . won't you return to me?”

I signed it as a blessing. But Wolf Tongue's dark threats lurked on the brink of my mind. I shivered as a shadow of foreboding passed over my spirit. When I raised my gaze to Sun Eagle's, I found his eyes alight. But my own, I knew, held only fear.

“I'll slay a beast,” said he, clutching the bead in his fist. “And I'll bring it back to place at your feet. You shall wear its fur as a mantle on our wedding day.”

The next morning I stood beside my father at the edge of the gorge. It was near the place where I had met Sun Eagle not many weeks ago. I held Fairbird's hand in mine, and she wiggled and squirmed and kept signing to me, “Where is he? Where is he?” She was devoted to Sun Eagle, though shy in his presence.

I told her to be still with a sharp motion of one hand and turned again to watch the scene being played out below. Elder Darkwing and two of his finest warriors escorted Sun Eagle down the narrow gorge path to the river running below. Bear, Sun Eagle's red dog, followed close behind. There was little room to walk on the riverbank. They needed to tread carefully on sharp wet rocks, for to slip would mean to vanish in the white water. So it was a slow company that made its way along the river's edge below us to the place where the Gray Wood began.

Darkwing himself drove a stake into the ground and tied to it a stout-woven rope. The other end of this rope was looped securely about Sun Eagle's waist. A young man who wandered into the Gray Wood without this anchor to secure him would never be heard from again.

The Gray Wood was an unmerciful predator.

Let the rope be sound,
I whispered in my heart.
Let the stake be solid.

Let the threats of Wolf Tongue be empty as the wind.

I could not hear the blessings Darkwing spoke to his son. The river's voice was much too loud and we stood too far away. I saw Sun Eagle salute with his stone dagger. Then he turned to the forest and strode into the shadows without a backward glance.

The moment he disappeared, the mist rose.

It crept from the river like an army of ghosts, white and thick. I saw the men below give each other glances, and then they vanished from my sight. The mist continued to roil and thicken, climbing up the sides of the gorge like some living mass. I turned to my father, but he stood like a rock, staring down into that impenetrable gloom. Fairbird tugged at my hand, terrified, and I picked her up and held her close.

Let the rope be sound!
I prayed again.
Let the stake be solid!

I heard my father's warriors murmuring behind us. I heard the shifting of their weapons. Then the mist spilled over and rolled over us all, a wet blanket over our heads. Fairbird clung to me with a death grip.

I thought I glimpsed something in the smothering gray; a black form clad in a wolfskin, standing on the far side of the gorge, oddly visible at that distance when those standing nearest to me were cloaked in mist. I saw that form, and my hope fled.

As suddenly as it came, the mist dissipated. The sun broke through overhead, and blue sky, hot with summer, relieved our eyes with its brightness. Standing once more, I looked about and saw the faces of the warriors looking as bewildered as I felt. But when I turned to my father, I found him standing as I had last seen him, staring down into the gorge.

I looked to see what he saw. Darkwing was on his knees beside the stake, pulling frantically at the rope, which had gone slack. The two warriors held on to a snarling Bear, who strained against them toward the Gray Wood.