Zadayi Red (26 page)

Toma nodded.

“He left in his panther shape.”

“Y-e-e-s.”

“He gave Zeya a mission.”

Toma nodded.

“To gather eagle feathers.”

Another nod.

“Why?”

Toma shrugged.

“You didn’t hear that?’

Inaj gave the ripped skin a vicious little tug.

Toma wailed. Tears ran down his face. “No,” he said in a quaver.

“He’s supposed to gather the feathers alone.”

Nod.

“No guard.”

A shake of the head.

“What’s he supposed to do with them?”

A shrug.

Zanda said sharply, “Why are they doing all this?”

Another shrug.

Inaj said, “I don’t think you’ve told us everything.”

He started a new cut, this time straight across the knee cap.

A good while later, having shed a lot more blood but learned nothing more, Inaj stood up and handed Wilu the obsidian blade. “Entertain yourself with him, then kill him.”

“Let’s just kill him,” said Zanda.

“I want to watch Wilu play with him,” Inaj spat out. He sat on a small boulder.

Wilu made a cut under one of Toma’s nipples. By now the man was too weak even to whimper.

Zanda smiled at his father.

As Inaj, Wilu, and Zanda walked back to the Tusca camp, Inaj said, “To be hideous to your enemies”—this was one of his favorite lines—“what would be more enviable?”

Wilu paid attention. His admired his father and followed him in order to learn. And he felt slighted. When Inaj stepped aside as Red Chief of the Tuscas—he wanted to give himself entirely to fighting—he had not supported Wilu as the new Red Chief. He had spoken for Zanda, and Wilu’s younger brother was elected. Wilu pretended not to mind.

Sometimes his father’s fierceness made Wilu quail a little, and he was ashamed of that. A warrior’s greatest strengths were to be relentless and fierce.

Inaj smiled at the night. “You know,” he said, “Sunoya and Ninyu have just made their big mistake.”

Zanda and Wilu nodded.

Inaj seemed to be thinking out loud. “I will send four men against the whelp who pretends to be a medicine bearer.”

“Father, let me kill him,” said Zanda.

“Maybe,” said Inaj. “I will send three other men first. We know where the nests are. Our warriors can find him.” They walked several steps while Inaj thought.

“You and I, though, we will go on a visit to see my brother in the Cusa village. Hah! The sanctuary village.”

Cusa was well known as a peace band. If any person committed a crime, the victim’s clan brothers would go after him. But if the man reached the Cusas before they caught him, even if he was from another tribe, he was given sanctuary. Then the wrong would have to be set right without a beating or bloodshed. Inaj despised the Cusas. They lived deep in the southern mountains, far from the enemies to the east or west. According to Inaj, they let the other bands do their fighting for them.

“Hah! Won’t my brother be surprised.” Inaj had never visited the Cusas. “And a fine irony. When the pretender brings the feathers there to seek a blessing, if he lasts that long, you will make him a gift of death.”

E
arlier that same morning Zeya, the man once called The Hungry One, now Dweller-in-Clouds, packed his travel gear in two slings, on one side a hairless elk hide and two pairs of moccasins, on the other a wrap of dried deer meat. He was his own pack dog, but it was a modest load—Zeya meant to move fast.

Zeya adjusted the slings on his shoulders. He paid no attention to his mother, who could tell stories about old times forever. He picked up his spear and his war club from where they leaned against the brush hut.

His mother hugged him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t forget. From here to village edge your name is Dahzi. Every step after that, it’s Zeya.”

“Yes, Mother.”

She held him at arm’s length. “People will see you leave. You never know what . . .” She avoided speaking of Inaj by name. “People don’t know who Zeya is. Pays to be wily.” One last hug. “Go.”

Zeya held out his arm. It was a delicate moment. “Su-Li,” he said.

“When you’re out of the village,” she said, “I’ll send him after you. It’s good to keep some things secret.”

Zeya strode away smiling. He liked his new name. For several days he’d been calling himself Dahzi Zeya jokingly. He liked it.
Hungry Citizen.

He intended to hunt feathers and not deer. He could gather wild onions, rose hips, chestnuts, acorns, and other wild food as he went. He didn’t need to take the time to stalk deer, butcher them out, and dry the meat, so he told himself. Zeya would hunt feathers on a thin belly, he would use the urge in his stomach to drive himself harder. He would have 108 feathers before anyone knew it—he would stun Tsola with the breakneck speed of his triumph.

His fellow villagers looked at him as he walked past. A few nodded, no one spoke. He had been disgraced when Jemel’s family marched out of the village to keep their daughter away from him. Probably they thought now that he was headed to the Cusa village to try to see her, and be humiliated again.

Let them think so. Deception is good.

But cover his trail? Walk the hard way through the forest instead of taking the trail? He didn’t think so. He didn’t expect anyone to follow him. If they did follow on such a well-traveled trail, they wouldn’t be able to pick out his moccasin prints from scores of others. And when he crossed the river,
he would lose them. He chuckled. The imaginary “them.” His mother was a worrywart.

He was walking his own path. Awahi had said to try the nests right around here first. But Zeya had a burning to go back to the spot where he had sought a vision and been shamed.

He’d seen feathers in the nest below. There he would turn shame into conquest.

That evening Inaj, Wilu, and Zanda followed Awahi away from the ceremony. The old man loved to sing to the eagles—it was his calling—but it wore him out. The dancing would go on far into the night. The custom at the Planting Moon Ceremony was to dance all night and sleep half the day. Right now Awahi would wrap himself in a robe and doze a while, and at dawn walk back to his camp with his relatives.

He padded over to a place where he could drink from the river easily, and where thick tufts of grass would make his rest good.

As he lay on his belly slurping up the sweet, cool water, hands grabbed his arms. He stood up of his own accord. He had no fear of enemies—who would attack the Galayi when all the warriors of all the bands were gathered together?

When he saw Inaj’s face, his stomach knotted. Everyone knew the former Red Chief, the man who had kept the people at war all these years.

“What do you want from me?”

“You told Zeya, the Soco, how to gather eagle feathers.”

“I taught him how to do it in a sacred manner.”

“What will he do with these feathers?” asked Wilu. The son’s voice didn’t have the menace of the father’s.

“He’ll bring them to me for a blessing.” The old man thought it best not to mention Tsola, who had humiliated Inaj at the great council nineteen winters ago.

“When?”

“During the Harvesting Moon.”

“Where is he hunting nests first?”

Awahi hesitated. So far what he had said was entirely to Zeya’s credit. This question sounded dangerous.

Inaj knocked him flat, sat on his chest, and began to choke him. “Quick, old man, don’t think how to fool me.”

Awahi looked into Inaj’s eyes and saw evil. He held up his hands in a plea, and Inaj eased his grip.

Awahi turned his head back and forth to soften the pain in his neck. The end of his life? He was old and rickety. Death did not seem like such a bad idea.

“Old man, I know how to inflict pain, a lot of pain.”

Awahi decided. Quickly, weakly, he squeaked out, “I gave him a map of some nests near my village. He’ll go there first.”

Inaj got up. Awahi lay still, afraid even of Inaj’s eyes.

“Old man,” said Inaj, “if you are wise, you’ll tell no one that we asked you these questions.”

Awahi nodded. Far inside himself he said,
I sent you the wrong direction and got away with it
.

Twenty steps away Inaj murmured to Zanda, “The old man is lying. The boy knows the nests near the Soco village. That’s where he’s gone.”

Z
eya was boulder-hopping along a ridge on a fine morning. He wore a necklace of eleven eagle feathers under his shirt, each dangling from a leather thong. The ones on the necklace were beautiful, and they were grouped into four on the right side of his chest and seven over his heart. The four
represented the four directions, and the seven stood for the directions understood more fully—east, south, west, north, above, below, and the center, which is in the heart.

He was feeling very good about himself. At the nest below the spot where he’d tried for a vision, he’d found thirteen good feathers altogether, one for each moon in the Galayi calendar. That site now seemed to him a place of special blessings. He located two other nests not far away. They would have been within easy walking distance if the route hadn’t been straight up and down, using hands and feet.

Then he had walked ten days to the mountains surrounding the Cusa village. He had a feeling that was the right area to try next. On the walk he’d gotten to know Su-Li much better. Every night they huddled in a cave and had a one-sided dialogue. Zeya couldn’t hear Su-Li’s half of the conversation, but he could guess it. He spoke his thoughts, watched Su-Li’s eyes, and supplied the answer in his imagination.

“You’re grumpy, aren’t you?”

No answer.

“Is it because we spend every night in a cave?”

No answer.

“We’re called the People who Live in Caves.”

“A-a-ark!”

“I like caves.”

They’re full of snakes, spiders, and other poisonous creatures.

“The fire is cozy.”

The sky has the warmth of the sun.

“It’s safe in here.”

You can’t even stand up, and I have to walk to get out. Walk!

“You don’t like doing this with me, do you?”

It’s my duty.

“Well, these long years with my mother, away from the other Immortals, they’re also your duty, and you don’t like that.”

Su-Li made a rasping sound, and Zeya wasn’t sure what it meant.

“Except, you’ve actually gotten fond of her, haven’t you? You love my mother.”

Su-Li jumped onto Zeya’s arm, put his beak right in front of Zeya’s nose, and flapped his wings violently.

“Okay, that’s a big no. I get it.”

But he still thought Su-Li did, secretly. Maybe secretly from himself.

Zeya was out looking for the nests near his own village. At the ridge top Zeya climbed an outcropping to get the best view. He thought he knew where he was. He looked up at Su-Li and saw that the buzzard wasn’t signaling him anything.

Then he spotted the nest. It was huge, and built on a rocky spire that stood out from the cliff. He didn’t see a bird on it. Even if the eaglet was too small to spot, one of the parents would have been on the nest, guarding the eggs, easy to see.