Zadayi Red (41 page)

Then, suddenly, she was brought back here without any explanation. She might as well have been a pack dog. She had to go where she was told, no choice—“Just do what we say.”

She was fierce to be finished with living this way.

She clung to one thread that kept her sane. She thought about Zeya. She fantasized about the passion of their reunion. She imagined the birth of their child, with Zeya properly there and performing the Going to Water ceremony. She pictured husband and wife hovering over the baby, cooing, enjoying seeing
it learn to turn over, sit up, take a first step, speak a first word. She thought of herself and her husband getting up in the morning, starting the fire, eating breakfast together, and telling each other their dreams. Even more often she imagined what she would do with Zeya in the blankets. Thoughts like that were her salvation.

She allowed herself no doubt that they would be husband and wife. She was a Moon Woman, she had found her passion—she had found her life.

She shut out all challenges to her conviction except one. At night sometimes, in tatters of dreams or half-dreams, she saw Zeya dead. From the time Zanda’s head was dropped into the village, these dreams romped through her sleep.

That day Inaj went wild with fury, and she exulted. But tales raged like fire through the treetops. They were only bits and pieces that came to nothing, but they twanged her fear.

Inaj had sent men to kill her lover. She wished she could kill him.

What Jemel did, in her dilemma, was build a dam against her emotions. She went through the days aloof, pretending. In the evenings she sat with Awahi. He was good to her, he knew her heart, he was a friend. Unfortunately, he had no information that would help.

Sometimes she found herself angry at Zeya. Yes, she knew that was stupid, and acting stupid only made her more angry. Sometimes she circled back in a bad temper to the old questions: When her lover visited the village to see Awahi, why hadn’t he talked to her? As far as she was concerned, no explanation mattered. He should have found a way. She would have.

At night she lay in the blankets telling herself she’d been snubbed, perhaps abandoned. Fury volcanoed in her chest. Her passion pendulumed from love to hatred.

Now she wandered along the stream bank further than she
needed to. Finally she peed, and emptied the gourd holding the pee she’d made all day. But she needed more time out of the house. She hated the custom of confining child-carrying women to their dwellings. She wanted air. She knelt by the water, scooped it up with both hands, and bathed her face.

Just then a war eagle lighted in a dead tree nearby. She was surprised. The great birds usually stayed away from people. She stared. And then the bird spoke.

“Unfaithful,” said the bird. “False-hearted. Deceiver.”

The bird made its words more savage by using the voice of her lover. It went on cruelly.

“Traitor. Betrayer. Villain . . . .”

Jemel wailed to keep herself from hearing. She slammed her forehead to the grass, stopped her ears with her fingers, and screamed. Other words rasped forth, but she drowned them out.

When other women came running to see what was wrong, the bird flew off.

She told them nothing.

Zeya lifted himself high into the air. The winds were gentle, his emotions turbulent. He flapped away from the Soco village hard and fast. Then he hesitated and glided. He wanted to visit with his mother and Su-Li. He wheeled about and coasted downwind toward the village. He yearned to talk to them more about what he’d seen and done in the Land beyond the Sky Arch. It was the most extraordinary event of his life—that was a wild understatement—and who could he talk to about it except for Sunoya, Su-Li, and Tsola?

Far off his eagle eyes saw Jemel clomp the last few steps to her parents’ house. He hated seeing her struggle along with the burden of another man’s child in her belly. She ducked into the house. He hated the thought that his rival, his conqueror, would soon be moving into that house—or already had moved in.

He executed such a sharp turn that he swerved down a few feet. He’d be damned if he’d go down into the village. What if he saw Jemel again? What if he saw her with her lover? What could he do, squirt droppings at the man’s head? Or worse, at his back while he topped Jemel?

He set his beak toward the Emerald Cavern and flapped upwind. Tsola would console him. Maybe she would help him make a life there. Maybe he could become a sort of hermit, like herself.

W
ith the Cape bundle tied to her back, Tsola swam to the Emerald Dome. There she hung the feathers up to dry, smudged them with cedar smoke, and waited. Every inch of her body prickled with eagerness. She hadn’t worn the Cape in twenty years.

She cooked a meal and drank all the water she could. While wearing the Cape, she would eat nothing, drink nothing.

When the time came, she drank the sacred tea and donned the feathers. And again the ecstasy came. The universe began to sing. Though her predecessor had said he experienced the wisdom of the Cape in rainbows of light, it always came to Tsola in sounds. The music was extraordinary. It was made entirely of human voices, but voices that sang much lower and much higher than in the ordinary world. They made a floating, ethereal music, not of great harmonies, but individual voices each with its own melody. Somehow the voices melded into one vast song of infinite sweetness. It was not a music that could ever end. It was whole, entrancing, infinite, and exquisitely beautiful at each of its moments.

Sometimes she imagined that the voices belonged to every one of the stars, singing simultaneously of the limitless delights of the universe. Sometimes she heard the voices as the utterances of all human beings, every person of every place who walked the Earth now, everyone who had ever walked it, and everyone who ever would. And they all sang of love.

She sat and listened for several days, until the music felt complete. Then she gently slipped the Cape off, wrapped it in its bundle, ate and drank a little, sat quietly for several more days to steep herself in what she had heard.

When she had absorbed it, even though without words, she asked her wisest self to tell her what action to take in the world where she lived her daily life. She got an answer. Then she took the way that only she knew back to her home, her family, and beyond the mouth of the Cavern, her people, all human beings, and all the peoples of this planet, animal and plant.

By her own fire Klandagi waited for her, as always.

Whenever she came back from the experience of the Cape, she needed silence, not talk. Sound felt like an intrusion on her experience. But now she whispered to Klandagi. “What moon is it?”

He spoke softly, knowing her feelings. “The quarter moon, waning.”

Her voice, even having a voice at all, felt strange to her. But she murmured, “Go to the Cheowa village. Tell the chiefs that I have the greatest news they will hear in their lifetimes.

“Then ask the White Chief to send messengers to the other three villages. All the people will convene at the next full moon.” She paused, her voice tiring. “They must do exactly this. Each of the villages, including the Cheowas themselves, will camp a day’s walk away from the great council lodge, and the three chiefs of each will come there with only ten escorts for protection. They will enter the council lodge
without escorts and unarmed. Repeat that—without escorts and unarmed.”

Klandagi started to ask a question, but she shook her head no. “Do exactly that.”

He nodded, raised his purr into a low growl of assent, and padded off.

Zeya dragged in, his spirit shredded. Tsola could see dejection radiating from him. She suspected what had happened.
Welcome back to human life
, she thought.

He told her the pathetic story. She didn’t ask the obvious question—“Why are you sure the child isn’t yours?” She thought he had to struggle with that one himself. Instead she said, “You are creating your own troubles. As you did in the Land Beyond. You know how to stop.”

“When you consider . . .”

“Why don’t you consider that Jemel is free? She’s a woman of great passions, and she does what she pleases.”

He hung his head.

More gently, she said, “Think about what
you
are doing.”

He grimaced.

“You know.”

Spending the words carefully, one by one, he said, “In the Land Beyond I fought enemies that I imagined. I created what I feared and fought to the death with it.”

“Yes.”

“Not smart.”

“Correct.”

“I’m jealous. Very jealous.”

Tsola nodded.

“Why don’t I stop? I know better.”

“Because you’re a human being.”

“I
know
better.”

“Zeya, over there you got big insights. But knowing doesn’t solve problems. Use the knowledge to fight your demons.”

“I have a big one that’s outside.”

“You do. But most demons are inside.”

Zeya circled high over the Soco camp. The morning was young, and he had updrafts to ride.

His mother was in one of those brush huts. He had not seen her since the catastrophe with Jemel, and he yearned to talk to her. His friend Su-Li was probably there, too—maybe they could fly together today. But Zeya couldn’t bear to go into the camp, not yet.

He spoke to Su-Li in his mind.
Want to fly?
He got no answer, and wondered why. Maybe the buzzard was far away.

These last three-quarters of a moon had been a bad time. Klandagi was on his mission to gather the bands together. After his talk with Tsola—“Why don’t you consider that Jemel is free?”—Zeya had nothing to do but fret. Live a hermit’s life like hers in the Emerald Cavern? Tsola dismissed this idea in less than a breath. She let him live with her daughter’s family at the Healing Pool and make himself useful for a short time, and reminded him, “You are the one of prophecy.”

He hated those words.

He liked helping the people who came to the Healing Pool. Every moment he wasn’t working, though, his mind was on Jemel and his humiliation. He spun through the days attending to the ill and injured, and despairing through the nights.

When the camps began to assemble for the great council, Tsola called Zeya into the shadows of the Cavern. “I have a job for you. Fly above the three Soco chiefs as they walk to the council lodge. Make sure they’re safe from enemies.”