Great Sky Woman

by Steven Barnes

  “She is my flesh,” Zebra Moon insisted, as she had every day since their daughter’s birth.

  Water Chant fought to keep his temper. “Every day the pigs and deer are harder to find. My body aches, but I hunt. I bring you whatever meat I find. The fruit of my body is given to the fruit of yours, and it is wrong!” Chant slammed his fist against the ground.

  She flinched away, raising a protective arm over her child. “She is mine!” Zebra Moon held the baby close, and her lips curled away from bared teeth. Chant backed away toward the entrance, already seeing that there would be no easy or happy resolution for this.

  In night’s first quarter, Zebra had backed herself against Water Chant, rubbing her ample buttocks against his groin even before he had fully emerged from antelope dreams. His root awakening before his mind, Chant had taken her roughly but not painfully. Zebra had eagerly accepted him into her body, responding to his thrusts with joyful cries, fevered skin and an enthusiastically arched spine.

  The heat had flared and receded like some ancient body tide. Afterward, they pressed against each other, the hut perfumed with their scent and sweat. After passion came the time for sleep.

  No. That was not truth.

  For Water Chant merely pretended to sleep. He counted the slow rise and fall of Zebra’s inhalations to five over and over again, until certain that his woman was deep in the place where Father Mountain and Great Mother opened the endless caverns of dream.

  Then, being very careful not to awaken her, he slipped the sleeping girl-child from beside his wife’s pendulous breasts.

  Her arms and legs were so tiny, her foot smaller than Chant’s thumb, her skin as smooth as a new blade of grass. Water Chant hardened his heart. As boma father, it was his responsibility to lead the way.

  From childhood he had dreamed of being a hunt chief, as had his father before him. The chiefs could and did have children, but could not raise their families without living in the great Circle…thereby abandoning the path of hunt chief. But there were other rewards in life, such as being chosen boma father. That had been honor and joy enough for Water Chant. He would hold that office as long as he could make the yearly hunt run at Spring Gathering—in other words, as long as the younger hunters wanted him to lead. But never had he imagined he would have to make decisions such as this.

  How could he? How could anyone imagine such a choice?

  Every soul sheltered within the boma’s walls had to contribute, or all would suffer. He loved the lives of all children within the thorn ring. If the other bomas knew his wife had produced a blindling, it might even cheapen the value of his other daughters.

  “Forgive me,” he said to the snoring Zebra, and crept from the hut.

  His cousins’ sleeping sighs wound through the huts, borne by a night wind almost as warm as the day’s. The gate was tied shut so that hyenas and leopards would not sneak in to steal food or babies. If anyone awoke in the night, they might look to the gate, and he did not wish to answer questions tonight. Chant went to the back wall, near the store hut, and unraveled the vine there.

  Thorns tore his hands, but such pains were trivial and distant. All seven eyes remained fixed on the task before him. Water Chant slipped the skin from around his shoulders and laid it on the ground, setting the girl-child upon it. Her eyes seemed to hold his, so that for a moment he thought the infant could see him. For a handful of breaths a brief, hollow flash of guilt was more intense than a leopard’s bite.

  When he realized the infant’s empty, green-flecked brown eyes were merely staring through him, his heart hardened again.

  Water Chant pulled the bush aside and, on his belly, crawled out through the hole. The spines tore his back. The pain, joined with the agony in his heart, distracted him from what he was about to do to his helpless third daughter.

  Once on the barrier’s far side Chant reached back and grasped the zebra skin, pulling it through with the nameless child stretched upon it.

  The baby looked up at him, through him, blindly. Her pouty wet lips curled in a smile.

  Chant felt sickened. He could not do this.

  No. As boma father, he must do it.

  This was what it meant to be a man in the world.

  Spear in his right hand, blind daughter cradled in the crook of his left arm, Water Chant ran. A huh sound accompanied every exhalation, Chant not consciously sucking air in but forcing his body to breathe for itself using the very motion of running. The hunt chiefs atop Great Sky had taught him this hyena running. So long as Chant sang in such a fashion, he would never tire. He ran, the tiny child’s fingers clutching at his chest hair.

  He could not understand why she did not cry.

  He ran until half-night, starlight guiding him, heart too sick to find pleasure in the familiar slap-slap-slap rhythms of heel striking ground.

  Descending into a cactus-spotted gully, he lay the baby down. She gazed up at him, blind eyes wide. Suddenly they seemed to focus, for the first time to mark him out from the surrounding web of light and shadow.

  Too late. Too late…

  No. Not too late. Did awareness live behind that empty gaze? Did she know he was there? Did she know anything at all?

  Now, at last, his tears came. Now, at last, Chant gave voice to thoughts he would never have shared with Zebra.

  “My daughter.” He knelt beside the child. “If you see, show me now. Please. This is a bad thing I do.” The wind rustled the trees. Their moon-shadows stretched like souls climbing Great Sky.

  She looked directly at his chest, and the sense of connection swelled within Water Chant’s gut. On a hunch, he stepped to his left.

  The infant continued to stare straight ahead, fixed on Great Earth’s misty, horizon-filling expanse. Chant felt dizzy, but the sickness was a quiet thing, a thing he could survive. For a while Zebra would hate him, but then eventually she would forgive. Life would go on.

  Water Chant peered northward. Invisible from here, a day’s run beyond Great Earth, stood her titanic mate, Great Sky. The two mountains were the twin hearts of their people.

  Great Mother had lived beneath Great Earth until courted by Father Mountain, who had impregnated Her. She had birthed all life, then gone to live with Him atop Great Sky.

  When mortal life ended, the flesh went into the ground, and the spirits climbed Great Sky, there to be gifted with new sacred bones crafted by Great Mother’s mate Himself. Some said the stars were their hearth fires. There atop Great Sky—unclimbed by living men save the great hunt chiefs who lived on its slopes—their ancestors lived again in a vast, eternally cloud-shrouded boma, dancing in dead water. And dwelling at the very top were He who had created the world and She who had filled it with life and love.

  Hunt chief Cloud Stalker’s magic was unfathomably powerful. From this awesome one, Water had heard the stories of the death demons that haunted Great Sky’s heights, of the dead water that rotted the flesh from bone and made strong hunters too sleepy to walk, then stole their num and turned them to stone. What manner of men could resist such evil he did not know, did not want to know. They were the hunt chiefs. They kept the bomas safe. They held council with the ancestors. That was enough.

  Only hunt chief magic had enabled men to reach the top, to speak to the dead or even the Creators themselves. He, Water Chant, had spent moons training on Great Sky’s slopes but had never been invited to join the climb to speak to the ancestors or sit at the feet of the gods. He hadn’t sufficient num to survive such an experience.

  “Father Mountain,” he whispered, “Great Mother, if this is your child, come take her. If not…”

  He spat. The specks produced by his dry mouth never reached the ground, whipped away by the wind. In the distance, a hyena chuckled.

  “If not, forgive me.”

  Jaw trembling, he pressed his lips against her forehead, trying not to inhale her scent for fear he would lose his purpose. Chant folded the skin over her naked body and ran back toward Fire boma. Fast. Faster. Fastest. Swif
tly enough for the wind to dry his eyes before the tears ripened and fell.

  Chapter Six

  Morning mists pooled in the east, paling the night sky even before the mountain women sang the new sun to life. At times the blazing infant orb rose as swiftly as a hawk in flight. On this morning, dawn blossomed with terrible slowness, and Water Chant was awake long before those first rays wormed their way through the hut’s interlaced straw wall.

  Zebra Moon was still asleep. Chant merely pretended to be. He often was out and about his tasks by now, making arrows or sharpening spears, preparing poisons or setting snares: the hunter’s eternal chores. This day, he could not. His heart would burn if he let Zebra discover her tragedy alone. That was a coward’s way. Many bad names Chant could be called, but coward was not among them.

  His woman awoke slowly, as if pulling herself from some deep quagmire of fatigue. On previous nights the infant had disturbed her sleep frequently, draining her of both milk and num. An unbroken night’s slumber had dragged her effortlessly down into its depths.

  His two other daughters were still unmoving, curled against each other for comfort, not warmth. The nights were always warm, even when the night sky wept with joy and the clouds flashed with Great Mother and Father Mountain’s love-play. When Zebra awakened, she stretched her arm out and found…nothing. Her eyes snapped open.

  Her fingers scattered the straw. “Where is she?” Zebra searched the hut quickly, and then shook her man’s shoulder. “Wake up! The baby is gone.” She stared at him accusingly. “Where is my baby?”

  He pretended not to hear her, yawning and scratching as if not entirely awake.

  “Where is my baby?” She struck at Chant with her flat palms, scratched at him with her nails.

  He hunched away from her, then turned cobra-swift and grabbed her wrists. Water Chant snarled, his eyes but a thumb’s length from hers. “I don’t know where the baby is,” he said. “Perhaps Great Mother took her home.”

  Rage and defiance and guilt sizzled like the air after a summer storm. Finally Zebra turned away, raspy hiccoughing sobs stirring their daughters from sleep.

  Outside, some of their neighbors had heard the sounds of distress, but pretended to pay their argument little notice. In private, of course, tongues would wag.

  He passed the village women, busy with their morning tasks, using round stones to pound sunfruit and yams into breakfast mush. A quick trot took him to the muddy, trickling brook, where he washed himself, singing to the water in accordance with his name. When the boma women learned the baby was gone, they would wail with his wife and try to comfort her with delicacies such as ostrich egg and tortoise meat. They would groom her and sing with her and rub her wrinkled belly with stone-pressed nut oil.

  Distantly, out across the veldt, a leopard coughed. Water Chant shuddered, remembering the terrible, necessary thing that he had done, and then wrapped thorns around those feelings. They served nothing. He could allow himself to feel nothing.

  His mate was a woman and therefore straddled the realms of dust and dream, not living in the hunter’s world of flesh and fire. She did not understand the things that men must do, just as he did not comprehend women’s ways. Water Chant straightened his back, disowning all softness.

  But still, later, when he returned to the boma, he brought Zebra special fleshy pieces of yellow sunfruit. As he anticipated, she threw them to the dust at his feet. The next day he would do the same, and so would she. And the day after that. But eventually, he knew, she would take the fruit and eat its peppery-sweet, pulpy flesh. And eventually, she would join bodies with him again.

  And they would make another child. A healthy child.

  A child who would not force him to kill his heart.

  Chapter Seven

  Stillshadow had always loved the mornings. She rose to begin her walks before the new sun was sung to life, just to treasure every moment. Morning shadows were the darkest, the crispest. She could almost hear the morning dew as it dried, smell the first wisps of perfume from the morning glories as they opened, feel the cool sand crunching beneath her naked feet as she walked.

  Two guardians following respectfully behind her, Stillshadow sought the herbs, barks and six-legged creatures she smoked or ate or drank to elevate her mind. Some might be dangerous, but it was her place to lead the way in all things. These plants she dug herself, or were dug by her students, scraped from the walls of the sacred caves or bartered for at Spring Gathering when the bhan entered their circle and danced the dream alive for another year.

  Eventually, Stillshadow would dance with her ancestors atop Great Sky, and in that mighty time the clouds would part and all would be known. On that day, she hoped to tell those wise and mighty grandmothers that she, too, had faced the mystery with courage.

  Suddenly, at the very edge of her vision a small, soft shape appeared, forcing her to stop and look again.

  Laid out beneath the red flowers and spiky branches of a fever-bush was the scraped reverse of a zebra skin. And in the precise middle of the skin, an infant lay on its back. The soothing eddies of its bluish num-fire proclaimed the infant a girl, but there was something oddly intense about that first impression that took Stillshadow aback. The child’s little body was wrapped in a soft, beaten antelope skin, the small dark head poking out. The face was of extraordinary sweetness, displaying an uncommon calm. The unblinking eyes stared up at Stillshadow almost as if the old woman had been expected.

  The crone crept closer, holding her breath. Was this a bhan child, an infant from the outer bomas, parents slain or impoverished? Could this possibly be a trap of some kind? A snare, perhaps a disguised hunting pit?

  But who might want to hurt her? And what demon or witch would bait a trap with a child?

  Even more strangely, why did the infant make so little fuss? She couldn’t imagine it. The girl should be howling.

  Whoever had left the child here, southeast of Great Earth’s foothills, had abandoned her within the shadows of a fever-bush. Stillshadow came closer, less afraid now, more fascinated. The old woman lifted the child to her eye level. The infant’s lips were dry, but there were no other signs of dehydration such as sunken eyes or rapid breathing; she checked the soft spot at the top of the skull and was relieved to find it unsunken. Good, but when the sun blazed at its full power the precious remaining shadow would disappear. By night, the little one would be dead.

  The infant’s lips curled up. That smile was like the birth of a second sun, pure and broad enough to rock the old woman back on her heels. When the baby’s eyes slid past her, Stillshadow realized that the foundling wasn’t really looking directly at her. More…through her. What in Great Mother’s shadow was this?

  She unwrapped the antelope hide, confirming her intuition that the child was female. Well…

  She waved her fingers before the infant’s face, watching to see if the face-eyes would focus. They did not. But they did follow. The attention was directed not on the fleshly fingers but rather the num-fire surrounding Stillshadow’s body. Never had the old woman seen the like.

  Stillshadow examined the infant’s stubby feet. She gazed at them with her eyes wide and focused tightly, and then rolled her eyes up in her head until all went dim, except a glowing after-image.

  The girl’s foot-eyes were bright: this one would walk far. Stillshadow went through the same process with the infant’s hands. Not surprisingly, her hand-eyes glowed even more brightly.

  Who was this child?

  Stillshadow’s hunt chief escorts stood respectfully away from her, shifting uneasily.

  Nothing…then, after a moment, the girl gurgled. Stillshadow squinted and sat, whuffing down next to the scraped zebra skin. The old woman reached into the deerhide pouch at her waist. Extracting the leaf-wrapped medicines, humming a recipe song, she mixed and rolled them together into a ball, then crushed the pellet beneath the infant’s nose, releasing a strong minty aroma.

  A moment later, the baby blinked hard. Her eyes wan
dered away…and then back. And then away…and then back. And remained on the crone. Not exactly focused, but…

  Stillshadow moved to the side, and this time the infant’s eyes followed more closely. Back the other way. They followed.

  Strange. She had initially assumed the foundling was blind. With this new development, it seemed almost as if the girl had been waiting for Stillshadow before deigning to focus on things of this world.

  The medicine woman gazed up at Great Earth’s misty expanse. “Who is this baby?” she asked.

  There was no response. She raised her voice. “Do you know this girl-child?”

  If the wind was the mountain’s voice, Great Mother chose to whisper her reply, and Stillshadow’s old ears could not hear. She held the infant up higher. “Who are you?” she asked. “Can you see me? What do you see?”

  The child thrashed her arms and legs. The little round brown face wrinkled up tightly. With a faint liquid sound, greenish curd flowed out of her behind and plopped onto the ground. Stillshadow squinted.

  “You shit like a man-child,” she said.

  The baby smiled at her with infinite satisfaction.

  Stillshadow’s blood bubbled like water running over rocks. Not two moons ago her waking dreams had whispered of a coming. Could this child be the crucial One she and the other dream dancers had anticipated? But…there were other stories, tales that Stillshadow had heard from her teacher, who had heard them from hers.

  We change, the old stories said. We are not as strong as once we were. But there will be more. There will be new people. And the old people will die. In time even the gods themselves will die.

  There will be two, and one will be a girl with no name.

  Sighing with a strange contentment, the crone enfolded the infant in her arms and rose to carry her home.

  Originally, Stillshadow had planned to travel farther south to Water boma, but now decided to return to Great Earth. While her guards maintained a respectful distance, she walked with spine erect, carrying her new charge in arms suddenly as strong as they had ever been. “My girls! My girls! I am back, and I have brought a new sister with me. Come out, lazybones!”