The Broken Land (18 page)

Sky Messenger seemed to be frowning at the blue smoke rising toward the smoke hole in the roof. He blinked, then lowered his gaze to the fire. “Bahna is right, Mother.”

“How do you know that? Have you seen it in a Dr—”

“No, but Bahna has.”

Her gaze flicked to the old man. Bahna said, “I am told that your son’s life must be a life of flames, consuming itself as it illuminates the darkness. He understands that.”

“He may, but I do not. What are you saying?”

Bahna placed a gnarled hand upon Sky Messenger’s shoulder. “He must return to the place it happened. The man is waiting. He’s been waiting for Sky Messenger for many summers.”

Koracoo set her cup down hard. “It’s a long way, and though the fighting should decrease as winter deepens, it will still be extremely dangerous. I don’t see the point, at this time, in undertaking such a journey.”

“The point?” Bahna asked with a gentle smile. His wrinkles rearranged into kind lines. “The point is forgiveness, Speaker. A man who hates has no eyes. He is a prisoner of darkness.”

Sky Messenger stiffened. His head turned slowly, and he looked at Bahna with glowing eyes. He seemed to be holding his breath. Listening for more.

Bahna didn’t seem to notice. He continued, “All of Sky Messenger’s life, he’s been hiding from a memory. He may not know it, but he’s been afraid for so long, he doesn’t know how to stop. He lives in a prison. Every day he repairs the chinking, adds new logs, seals himself in. He must stop, or he’ll never be able to truly see the ghosts of grief and desperation that haunt this land.”

Sky Messenger said, “You mean I’m protecting myself from a dead man?”

“He’s not dead, Grandson. Just as you breathe soul into every arrow you create, a man can breathe soul into a memory. You have given him life. And he is just as much a prisoner as you are.” Bahna leaned toward Sky Messenger. “You must set him free.”

A strange almost euphoric expression tensed Sky Messenger’s face, as though at last he understood. “Set him free,” he repeated softly.

Bahna reached out and touched Sky Messenger’s chest with a gnarled hand. “Forgiveness is not born through an act of will, or thought, but in the tears of a single human being. Your tears.”

Sky Messenger appeared to be contemplating the words, struggling with the ramifications, but he said, “I will need the council’s approval, Mother. Can you see to that?”

She gazed into his tormented eyes. He was her son, and she knew him well. While he had accepted the necessity of undertaking this journey, he didn’t relish the idea. But she could also tell that he longed to get out of the village. “I will arrange it.”

Bahna said, “Good.” He reached over to draw a thick cedar splinter from the woodpile by the hearth, then handed it to Sky Messenger.

Sky Messenger turned it over in the light, examining the deep red wood. “What is this?”

“A stiletto to puncture your heart. Some wounds never Heal, but their blood gives life to the world. Remember that.”

Sky Messenger stared at the splinter for a long time before he tugged open the laces of the red Power bundle on his belt and gently tucked the splinter inside. Afterward, he petted the bundle, as though soothing its pain.

“What about his new wife-to-be?” Koracoo asked. “If Sky Messenger must leave on this journey immediately—”

“I am told he must take her with him.”

Simultaneously, Koracoo and Sky Messenger blurted,
“What!”

Sky Messenger threw up his hands. “No, no. I am
not
taking Taya with me. It’s too dangerous. She’s barely more than a child. I will be madly paddling down the river, moving like lightning. Then, when I reach the Dawnland country, I will have to stow my canoe and run overland as fast as my legs can carry me, praying the entire time that I’m not discovered by Dawnland warriors, or Flint warriors in Dawnland country. I’m willing to risk my own life, but not hers.”

Koracoo added, “He’s right, Bahna. Taya has never traveled beyond the boundaries of Standing Stone country. She knows nothing of the war trail. Perhaps—”

“She must go with him.” Bahna stared at Sky Messenger, but his old eyes seemed to be focused on the far distances, seeing something heartrending. “Grandson,” he said gently. “The Spirits of your ancestors tell me she must be there. She is part of the Dream.”

Sky Messenger massaged his forehead. “All right. I’ll be leaving right after the betrothal ceremony. Who will inform High Matron Kittle?”

Bahna smiled. “I will, Grandson.”

Eighteen

Sky Messenger

A
hoarse cry rips from my lungs. I jerk upright in the bedding hides, panting. My sweat-drenched bare skin shimmers in the firelight reflecting from the walls of an unfamiliar longhouse. I don’t know where I am. I … This is the Deer Clan longhouse.
Yes, I’m betrothed.

All down the length of the house, dogs bark, while people grab for weapons. Gitchi, who sleeps beside me, softly licks my hand.

“What’s happening?” a man shouts.

“Nothing,” I respond. “Forgive me. My soul was walking in a f-fog.” It’s the only way I can describe the gray shimmering world I’ve just left. In my heart, I’m still falling, falling … .

“Well go back to sleep!”

Weapons clatter softly as they are returned to their places within reach of the owners, and warriors crawl beneath their hides again.

Taya braces herself on one elbow to stare at me. Long black hair frames her oval face. Her large dark eyes and straight nose glow faintly orange in the light of the dying fires.

“Are you going to wake me every night while we’re on our journey to the Dawnland?” she whispers.

“I certainly hope not.” I blink at the longhouse for a few moments longer, studying the bark walls, the corn, beans, and squash plants hanging from the roof poles … convincing myself this is the real world, not the cloud-sea or the eerie darkness. Then I lie down and pull the hides up over my bare chest.

Gitchi props his head across my stomach, just letting me know he’s close. His yellow eyes blink sleepily at me. I stroke his soft neck.

Taya whispers, “Your screeching is probably going to get us killed on the trail.” She flops over, turning her back to me.

The words make me long to say something unkind. I do not, of course. She’s probably just beginning to realize that she’s going to be alone with me for many days. She may be worried sick that her grandmother has gotten her into more than she can handle.

As her relatives begin to slumber again, I inhale the smoky air and listen to the dogs circling until they flop down and heave deep sighs.

Since I returned, the Dream has started coming more often. Two or three times a night. Why?

There’s something I’ve forgotten. I have to remember.

With my hand still on Gitchi, I shift to study the back of Taya’s head. Her long black hair spreads over the deer hides in a glossy wealth. The time is coming when all shadows die. How can I ever explain that horror to her?

Nineteen

H
igh Matron Tila clung tightly to her granddaughter’s arm. She propped her walking stick, took two steps, breathed, then took two more, forcing herself to keep moving across the cold plaza.

“We’re almost there, Grandmother,” Zateri said as she guided Tila around small rocks and indentations. Short and skinny, her granddaughter had a flat face with a wide nose. She’d twisted her long black hair into a bun at the back of her head and secured it with a polished tortoiseshell comb.

“This will be a hard day for you,” Tila said weakly. “But it will be an important day.”

“Grandmother, please tell me. What did you see in your Dream when the False Faces came to you?”

Tila leaned on her walking stick while she wheezed. She could never seem to get enough air these days. Elder Brother Sun had just awakened. A faint blue gleam painted the eastern horizon. High above them, the brightest campfires of the dead continued to sparkle. “You wore the same white cape you have on today.” Blue wolf paw prints encircled the bottom of Zateri’s cape. “You looked pretty. Calm. You made the right decision.”

“Which was?”

Tila smiled and gingerly took another step toward the Women’s Council house, a round structure less than twenty paces from the Wolf longhouse. This morning those twenty paces seemed to encompass the entire world. Tila made soft pained sounds as she moved. The cool morning breeze didn’t help. It fluttered the hood of her wolfhide cape and blew thin strands of short white hair into her eyes. She didn’t have the strength to shove them away.

“Wait just a moment while I pull back the leather door hanging, Grandmother.”

Tila braced both hands on her walking stick and took the moment to survey the village. They’d moved to a new location, as they did every ten or twelve summers, just six moons ago. The four longhouses looked fresh and clean, their bark walls still brown, not gray with age. Arranged in an oval around the plaza were the smaller clan houses, which served as a meeting place for the individual clans: Bear, Wolf, Turtle, Hawk, Deer, and Snipe. Three other houses nestled to the north, the large village council house, the slightly smaller Women’s Council house, and the prisoner’s house.

The palisade, forty hands tall, and made of upright pine logs, had an imposing presence. Before Tila had become too ill, she’d personally selected each log by touch. The afterlife soul of those who died violently could not find the Sky Road that led to the Land of the Dead. They were excluded from joining their ancestors in the afterlife and doomed to spend eternity wandering the earth. The souls of such men and women moved into trees. It was these trees with indwelling warrior spirits, that the People cut to serve as palisade logs, thereby surrounding the village with Standing Warriors. When she’d run her fingers over the wood, she’d felt the souls of the warriors that inhabited the logs, and knew each had been very powerful and dedicated to protecting his or her people. There were no better guardians in any world than such men and women.

“Are you ready, Grandmother?” Zateri asked as she held aside the leather curtain.

“Yes, child.”

Zateri steadied Tila’s arm as she ducked beneath the curtain and entered the firelit warmth. Fifty women, or so, were already here, standing about talking softly beneath the great hollow-eyed False Face masks that lined the walls. Each had recently been rubbed with sunflower oil. Their crooked noses and wide mouths shone, framed by long hair.

“Thank you, Granddaughter. You may go to your proper place now.”

“Are you sure you don’t need me to help you—?”

“I must walk the last steps by myself. A high matron can’t afford to look weak before the other matrons, or they will crush her bones with their teeth. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Grandmother.”

Zateri hesitantly released Tila’s arm and walked straight ahead to join the group of “little clan matrons”—village clan leaders who had not risen to the status of village matron, the woman who led all the clans in the village. Most cast vaguely hostile looks in her direction. Zateri was young and too strong-willed for their tastes. They thought her impulsive. Which she was. Only a recklessly impulsive young woman would, after an argument with the chief, strike out to form her own village at the age of fourteen summers. And that, of course, would be today’s main topic. But Tila was prepared for it.

She blinked her dim eyes at the darkness. The sweet tang of hickory smoke filled the house. She was trembling as she propped her walking stick and carefully made the last five steps to the central fire. The other great-grandmothers, Inawa and Yi, respectfully dipped their heads to her. She nodded in return. As she lowered herself to the bench, a slave girl rushed to dunk a tea cup, made from the skull of an enemy warrior, into the boiling bag that hung on the tripod near the fire, and bring it to her.

“This will help warm you, Matron.”

Tila took it, said, “Thank you, girl,” and placed the cup on the bench before her fingers shook it empty.

Now that the great-grandmothers—the leaders of the Wolf Clan
ohwachiras
—were all settled, conversations hushed. Every eye turned to Tila, matron of the Wolf Clan, and high matron of the Ruling Council of the People of the Hills. She quietly scanned the assembly.