Zadayi Red (11 page)

She crashed to one knee and nearly crushed Dahzi in the muddy track.

The two dogs ran on a dozen strides, stopped, looked back, and whined.

She got the aching knee propped underneath her and checked on Dahzi. The poor creature was whimpering but not squalling.

“Good boy, good boy,” she said. The poor child hadn’t had a sip from Mother from dawn till now, midmorning. He dozed sometimes when she walked, but most of the time Sunoya trotted and Dahzi squirmed.

She hoisted herself and trotted forward. “This is stupid,” she rasped.

She tripped on a rock and splatted down again.

Su-Li circled high overhead. She didn’t have to look up to see him. She could feel him. She rumbled forward.

He landed on her shoulder.
The Soco men are coming
, he said.
They will protect you.

“Go back and look for Inaj and his devils,” she told him.

Don’t have to,
said Su-Li.
I just saw them from overhead. Right behind you.

She started to fall and caught herself. She ran a dozen steps, put off asking, and ran fifty steps. Then she decided not to ask at all. What did it matter how far back her enemies were? She would run until she fell into the arms of the Socos or collapsed onto the hard earth and waited to be pierced by a penis or a spear. She ran, ran, ran.

You will survive,
said Su-Li.

She shook her head violently. That wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

The child will survive.

The cry came from behind. “Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”

Sunoya tumbled straight to the ground.

“Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”

It was the Galayi war cry, famous far beyond these mountains and feared everywhere. Strong and determined soldiers of enemy tribes, even when they had superior numbers, heard this cry and quailed. One or two would run. The Galayis would charge, hurling the cry at men’s hearts. A half dozen more would run, and then entire phalanxes would break out of cover like hunted birds and flee.

And the Galayi men would kill them from behind.

Yes, they can see you,
screamed Su-Li into her mind. She confused it for a moment with the wild hissing that came from his throat.

She got up and staggered forward.

“Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”

The cry made her blood turn to snakes. The first syllable was low and mysterious, the second high, eerie, ululating, the last a short woof. Then four roars of terror.

She ran but she wobbled.

“Change to an eagle! Take the child!” The words were a plea.

This is your mission
, said Su-Li.

She ran crookedly.

“Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”

Su-Li launched off her shoulder and wing-flapped high and fast.

The Soco men are coming, too,
he said.
Not far.

Sunoya started to ask which crew was closer. Then she cackled at herself. She knew.

She weaved sideways, banged a shoulder into a tree, got her footing back, and ran.

Why not die running?

The child of prophecy, the medicine bearer . . .

Dak stopped and cocked his head. Suddenly he sprinted back, barking like an entire pack.

“Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”

Dak barked louder and sprinted harder.

Sunoya started to turn and look but caught herself. As she forced another step forward, pain ripped through her right thigh.

A spear plonked into the wet earth in front of her, quivering.

Sunoya grabbed its shaft to cushion her fall.

Now, even more fierce with elation, “Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”

Sunoya crashed onto a hip, protecting the child, and then spraddled onto her back.

Su-Li landed on his mistress’s belly and faced Inaj. The Red Chief was out in front and in full charge. “Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”

He raised his war club. A few strides and he would crush Sunoya’s head.

Su-Li hissed a warning.

Inaj laughed. “Her damn buzzard!” The words swirled with mad laughter in his head. “When I rape her, that will get rid of you. Then I can watch her die at my leisure.” He cocked his war club.

“Ow!” The buzzard had grabbed his forearm.

He planted his feet and knocked the buzzard away. Except the damn bird didn’t go.

Inaj dropped the war club and snatched it out of the air with the other hand, a trick he’d practiced hundreds of times. He roared in Su-Li’s face and swung.

He found out how hard it is to hit a bird with a club.

On the ground Sunoya laughed out loud. “You can’t even whip a bird!”

“There’s one easy way, bitch!”

He jerked loose the knot that held up his breechcloth and leggings, and stood naked.

“Look at that!” Sunoya shouted, pointing. “Su-Li, eat it! It’s barely a snack, but eat it!” Even to herself her laughter sounded insane.

Beyond Su-Li she saw Inaj’s other three men charge up, bearing the certainty of death.

Su-Li swooped and pecked at Inaj’s manhood.

Inaj hopped around and hollered.

Sunoya yawped out her own version of the Galayi war cry.
Why not?
“Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”

An answering cry came—“Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”—from the other direction.

Wilu, Zanda, and their companion veered off the trail and into the woods. Inaj took a look and scrambled after them.

In a moment Sunoya was surrounded by a score of Soco soldiers.

Tensa bent over her. “Sunoya, are you all right?”

She giggled.
Hell, no, I’m probably bleeding to death.

She sat up, lifted Dahzi, and said, “Tensa, I present you a great gift. Your son. We call him Dahzi, the Hungry One.”

Tensa took the child and held him up. The new father’s face transformed, as from moon to sun. He hoisted the baby high overhead.

“Father,” said Tensa, “this is my son!”

“Noney’s child?” asked Ninyu.

Sunoya sidestepped the question and its terrible answer. “Look,” said Sunoya, “the fingers of his left hand are webbed.” Ninyu came and peered. All the men’s eyes fastened on the webbed fingers.

In the forest Inaj grabbed Wilu by his breechcloth and hauled him down. He wrenched his son’s spear away and spit out a fierce whisper. “Silence!”

He crept downhill. Cataracts of rage heaved him forward.
I will kill Sunoya.

From the trees he saw the girl who pretended to be a medicine woman still sitting on the ground, surrounded.

Tensa—goddamned Tensa!—stood over her and held something high.

Inaj peered, commanding his brain to understand.

A naked baby. A boy. His damned grandson.

His rage cocked his arm and snapped it forward. The spear hurtled out from the green pine needles.

It pierced Tensa’s back, slammed through his body, and sprayed blood out of his chest.

Tensa stood still for a moment, held by nothing more than sunlight. Then he collapsed onto Sunoya’s legs. She screamed, and caught Dahzi in her arms.

I
t was unspeakable. The Soco soldiers bore Tensa’s blood-drenched body into the village, singing a song of grief for a fellow soldier.

Sunoya was limping from the rip in her thigh and woozy with fatigue. Ninyu carried his tiny grandson. Sunoya’s heart sang a bass grief for Tensa and a treble rejoicing that she and the baby had set out on a difficult journey and arrived alive. As she asked the Immortals to guide the spirit of the fallen young man to the Darkening Land, she thanked them for the miracle of saving the life of the medicine-bearing boy child. Her emotions poured up and down, waterfalls going opposite directions. Her legs wobbled.

Tensa’s sisters rushed out of their house and raised up cries of grief so intense Sunoya couldn’t bear to listen.

A neighbor woman three times as old as Sunoya saw that the medicine woman could barely stand up and led her into her own house, helped her lie down, poulticed her wound, and gave her some food and water. Then she went out and came back with the child and Mother, and put Dahzi at the dog’s tits.

When Sunoya was a child, this crone had been a neighbor, and she was gabby. Sunoya liked gossipy women and mustered up the energy to get her to chatting. “Five daughters in a row, then finally a son, one only son, now he’s gone, ain’t it awful?”

The woman wandered in her talk. From the blessed comfort of a borrowed pallet Sunoya asked what kind of adolescent Tensa had been. “One of them boys with high ideas, the kind people call noble and lotta families hope for. This un thinks maybe Ninyu hoped his son would become a White Chief.” Of the three chiefs, most people thought White was the highest station.

The crone shook her head, as though people were foolish to want such high things and meddle in such impertinences as government.

Mother pulled away from Dahzi and wandered outside.

Sunoya forced another question from her weary throat.

“Yes, one of Ninyu’s daughters is nursing. She has a boy nearly two. My grandchildren, they’re grown already. Got me two great-grandchildren, one on the way, and I hope a passel more to come.”

Bleary with fatigue, Sunoya snuggled Dahzi closer and gave herself up to sleep.

The baby sucked at the dry deer hide that covered her breasts.

Time had never jangled so hard against itself. In the afternoon Ninyu and his family buried their only son properly. In the evening they enclosed themselves in their house to mourn. They grieved the loss of a
yuwi
, a being of spiritual energy, a unique life.

The next morning, hesitantly, the family gathered around their home’s center fire and marveled at the new grandson in Sunoya’s arms. Each of them felt the finger-webbing, each murmured, “The child of prophecy,” and added phrases of hope.

Sunoya took a risk. “The Immortals have given him to me to raise,” she said. “When they gave me Su-Li, they forbade me to have children. Because they intended me to bring up
this medicine bearer, and train him for what he should become.”

They studied the medicine woman uneasily. Ninyu took three or four deep breaths and settled it by saying, “Of course, you will be his mother.”

So they made the other practical arrangements. The younger wife, Detala, was already giving Dahzi a breast. “And that boy is as hungry as his name,” she exclaimed. Everyone agreed to tell Dahzi, when he was old enough to talk, to call Ninyu “Grandfather” and address his wives Detala and Nuna, which meant “awl” and “potato,” as “Grandmother.”

“And he’ll call you ‘Mother,’ ” said Detala to Sunoya.

Su-Li rasped from the smoke hole at the top of the hut. Ninyu looked up at him. The buzzard didn’t like to be confined, but he wanted to hear.

“Naturally, you and the boy will live with us,” said Ninyu.

Sunoya felt a sting of fear. She opened her mouth for a quick refusal when Su-Li interrupted in her head.
Accept. Too dangerous for us to live alone.

Sunoya considered, but she was still uneasy. “Ninyu, I cannot let any man . . .”

“We remember the old stories. If you have a spirit animal, no man touches you.”

Su-Li a-a-arked.

You will be a virgin and a mother!
Thunderbird’s words rang in her head.

Sunoya felt the tears come and then ordered them back. To weep with joy in a household drowning in grief—that would be thoughtless.

She looked at Ninyu’s bleached face. She felt a swirl of fear and joy. From childhood Ninyu’s face had scared her. “Thank you,” she said. “I am honored, greatly honored, to be mother of the medicine bearer, the child of prophecy. Also honored to be taken into the home of the Red Chief.”

No one spoke for a moment.

Sunoya checked the zadayi disc inside her dress. In the action it had flipped over. She turned it red side out.

Then she reached over and put her hand on Ninyu’s arm. “How are you?” she asked him. It was out of line to ask, except that medicine people had certain privileges.

The chief’s face rippled like darkening water. “Our family lost one
yuwi
and gained two.”

She knew that he was only putting the best face on things. In any man’s heart a newborn grandson would not make up for the death of a grown son.

After the week of intense mourning, the family took Dahzi to the village’s Medicine Chief, who gave the boy a special blessing, carried him in a circle around the village, announced his name as Dahzi, the Hungry One, and led an honor song for the child of prophecy. The family joined in first, then all the people. They had heard rumors of the miracle child, but now they saw him for themselves, and smiles were broad. Most were glad that they, the Socos, and not the Tuscas, were given this boy. Su-Li flew slow loops above the celebrants.