Great Sky Woman

by Steven Barnes

  That night he ate well, and was satisfied with himself. No mere berries and nuts tonight! Young Frog was off to a very good start indeed.

  Two days later, Frog smeared his flanks with zebra dung to hide his scent, and crouched out of sight in the brush. If the animals came down here, then he would kill with his spear. He had made two more spears, but the firehardening was not yet complete. Still, it just might be enough.

  In a moon he would return in triumph, as a full-fledged Ibandi man, and earn his second scar. His root was still sore but improving with every passing day. He could run without lightning bolts of pain lancing through him. Then at the next Spring Gathering, one of the eligible women might ask her father to pick him, and his life would begin.

  For two days Frog had seen no other human beings, just endless horizons of brown and green grasses, low bushes and flat-topped trees below a fleece of thin white clouds. Against that placid background loped giraffes, herds of zebra and the occasional waddling warthog. In midday he passed a lake pink with storks and white with lazy, sleeping ibis. Although he was more completely isolated than he had ever been in his life, Frog was too excited to feel lonely.

  A sound tickled his ear. Antelope? No. Nosing its way over the crest of the ridge came a single pig, dark gray against the predawn. It snuffled the air carefully, perhaps searching for predators. To his delight, Frog remembered that that was what he was. A predator. One who brought death to the unwary.

  His heartbeat quickened.

  “Come, little pig,” he whispered, so softly that in the tremor of a breeze that stirred the grasses, his words were lost. “Come to mighty Frog. My spear is thirsty.”

  The pig wandered down, snuffling to itself, and finally reached the pool. It looked around again. Did it smell the zebra dung? If so, did it wonder where the zebra itself might be? He wondered if leopards ever rolled in dung to mask their scent, and thought it unlikely. Frog had seen the cats hunting, at rest and at play, and they usually seemed fastidious, pausing to lick themselves or groom each other whenever any kind of soil mucked their fur.

  So his plan might work. Only a few steps closer, and the pig would be near enough for a cast. Frog held his breath, as he had been taught, making his breathing shallow enough that he himself could not hear it. Some of the old men said that pigs could smell your breath, but he didn’t know if he truly believed that.

  It was closer now, and soundlessly, he drew his spear back.

  He could hear Uncle Snake in his mind. There is great magic in the casting of a spear. The hunter must feel the connection between himself and the prey. He must find the animal heavy with life, ready for death. And when the animal’s heart hears the prayer spoken by the hunter, it decides whether this is the time and place for it to return to the mountain.

  He remembered all of this, acted out at the fireside by his uncle and cousins. They would perform pantomimes in the boma, and at Spring Gathering, when the tribe’s experienced hunters shared their tales. The young men listened and dreamed of the days when they would have their own stories to tell.

  If the hunter’s heart was true, and he made a true request of the prey, and the prey was ready to die, then a line of light connected them. One needed only to guide the spear along that shining path, and the prey was food for the boma.

  But as Frog very carefully, very slyly pulled his arm back, the shaft brushed against the grass, making a sshhhhing sound. Instantly, the pig glanced up from its drinking. The sudden movement of his target startled him, rushed him, and the young hunter cast the spear just a moment too soon.

  His prayer went unheeded, or his heart was weak, or it was not the cursed pig’s time to die. Frog’s spear grazed its side as his prey reared around and bolted. He was out of his hunting hole instantly, but not fast enough.

  The pig was charging back up the hill, madly pumping its absurdly stubby little legs. Frog threw another spear, this one sighting by eye and not by heart. Predictably, it didn’t even brush his target’s flank. With a shake of its delicious rump, his dinner disappeared into the brush.

  Frog’s arms and legs trembled and he sank to his knees, drooling disappointment into the soil beneath his knees. Retrieving both spears, he trudged back to the little rock crevice that served as home.

  At least he had what was left of the antelope. He had wrapped the smoked meat in its own hide, and then rolled rocks atop it….

  As soon as he reached the rocks, Frog knew that something was wrong. The rocks had been pushed aside, the dirt scrabbled up in a rooting frenzy.

  The dirt was a blur of four-toed hyena tracks. He knew exactly what had stolen his food, could almost hear the scavenger’s yipping laughter as it dug up his prize.

  Frog changed his lodgings that night, cursing his carelessness, his stupidity. Most of all, he cursed the rumblings of an empty stomach.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  As his campfire crackled and cast leaping shadows in his little alcove, Frog sipped water from his gourd and thought back over the day’s events. “What did I do wrong?” he whispered. “Fathers, tell me. Was I not fast enough? Not strong enough?” His thin arms’ weakness haunted him. “I must try harder tomorrow. Harder,” he whispered. “I cannot fail.”

  Beyond the mouth of his little resting place, he watched the stars as they emerged in the night sky. Each of them did seem to be an eye. Perhaps what he had said to Lizard had not been so false a tale as he had feared.

  The ancestors gazed at him. Measured him, and found him wanting.

  All of his doubts and fears, kept at bay by his fire-making, rushed back to plague him. “Perhaps I am not good enough. Not a real Ibandi. Perhaps I am only bhan.” He paused. “Perhaps not even bhan,” he said. “Perhaps only beast-man.”

  This, at last, caused a chuckle. But the sound lost its humor rapidly and he quieted. Frog crouched closer to the fire, and despite the warmth, he shivered.

  With all his will Frog bore down. He refused to allow despair even the tiniest victory. “I must do better tomorrow,” he said, and resolved to do so.

  In the morning Frog performed a few monkey stretches and baboon rolls to work the knots out, and ate his remaining food: a handful of nuts. He needed to hunt, and the hunt needed to succeed.

  The idea of returning home in empty-handed disgrace did not sit well with him. He remembered what happened to failed hunters. He had watched Thorn and some of the other Betweens at Spring Gathering sitting with the gray-hairs, weaving and repairing tools. It was not a pleasant thought, and the women who sexed with such men were far from the most desirable.

  The thought of Fawn writhing atop him, drawing fire from his eggs, doubled his resolve.

  So after he soothed the knots from his bones, Frog spent the day making deadfalls and snares. While unlikely to reap a large meat animal, such traps just might keep him alive long enough to learn whatever it was he needed to learn to survive. When his empty belly growled at him, Frog reluctantly chewed pinches of fill-cactus pulp, and hunger’s cries softened into whispers.

  He would hunt. He would trap or fish. He would learn.

  As the sun climbed in the sky, Frog moved cautiously across the plain, stopping frequently to sniff the air, filling his nostrils with a heady blend of scents. He smelled green, live plants as well as their rotting parents and cousins. In addition, the air roiled with the scent of live and dead animals…but leaf-eaters, not the strong nose-wrinkling meat-eater’s scent. Frog was a meat-eater as well, but his fangs and claws were smaller than those of the great cats. He strove never to forget that. That mistake had cost the lives of far too many good hunters.

  That very mistake may have cost his father, Baobab, his earthly existence. Cost Uncle Snake the left side of his face.

  Frog came to a place where the water trickled up out of the earth and ran down to a clear, cool, rock-rimmed pool. He knelt close to the earth, looking slantwise so that the light would best reveal the footprints: antelope, gnu, baboon, the tiny elephant hyrax.

  T
he thought of a juicy baboon haunch made his mouth water. The hooting manlike beasts were especially tasty, one of his very favorites.

  A hunter had to decide what to hunt. If he came across other acceptable prey, only a fool declined the gift of fresh meat, but only a fool hunted without knowing what he was hunting for.

  “Could this be a place to wait?” he asked himself. It did, indeed, seem a good place, a place Uncle Snake or Fire Ant might have chosen. He stopped to see if he could hear their voices in his head; he could not, but he did see the lean and honorably scarred faces of his forefathers.

  By the warmth of their smiles, he knew this to be a good place.

  So Frog dragged branches, scooped earth and made himself a hunting trench. He lined it with his antelope skin and burrowed in, covering himself over. Here he would wait. Here, he hoped, he would finally find what he sought.

  And if not, his two hands of snares might yield a hare, doves, or a small pig. Tonight he would eat fresh meat and, in continuing to learn about this area, find a way to hunt and kill even larger creatures. It would be good.

  By late afternoon the blazing sun was sinking toward the horizon. A quarter of daylight remained, but…

  Then Frog caught the first meaty, acid whiff and froze in the trench. Hands of hands of heartbeats passed, and then spiky sheaves of grass parted and an immense, wedge-shaped yellow head thrust slowly through. The hungry eyes scanned the water hole, blinking slowly as they slid back and forth and back again. For a dreadful moment the eyes seemed to fix on him. Frog was certain that the lioness had seen him, but then the great head turned away.

  He was frozen, unable to move; he felt like a stone. His nose still wrinkled at her rank, meaty scent.

  Frog felt the wind blowing against his face and beseeched it. “Please, wind. Do not change. Please, do not bring my scent to the lion,” he whispered. “Please. Please.”

  She lapped languidly, perhaps thinking to wet her throat before a fine meal of fresh young Frog. She seemed about to turn toward him, but then came a gobbling cry from over the rise. Baboon. The shelion looked directly at Frog. No question now: she saw him. He was quite certain that she was going to circle the water hole and eat him, but instead, with a single languid switch of her tail, she turned and stalked away.

  Drained by tension and relief, Frog sagged in his trench. If a ripe deer had appeared at that very moment, Frog couldn’t have summoned the strength to spit.

  “Father Mountain,” he whispered, trembling, “you let me live. You must give life for a reason. Let me die, or help me find my way.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Two days had passed.

  Blood seething with fill-cactus, Frog felt no hunger but remained desperate for nutrition. Despite his best efforts, his traps were as empty as his belly. He began to consider walking home. Five days’ walk, without meat for strength, but he would find plants as he traveled, and perhaps turn up logs for grubs. He would survive. Shame was better than starvation.

  Wasn’t it?

  He lay in his hunting trench, the heat of the day broiling him so that from time to time he had to creep out like the frog he was and lap water to replenish his strength. Then he would creep back and take his position again. And wait.

  During that time, although he lay in the shade, the very heat nudged him into an odd place between sleep and wakefulness. And in that strange time, he found himself dreaming of many things, among them the girl he had once called Butterfly. He found himself thinking of her hair, tied in those exquisite dream dancer knots. Of her green-flecked eyes and delicate hands.

  And how she had climbed, that day on the tree! He remembered now, but in that memory he found himself gazing at her legs and the play of the long, powerful muscles of her thighs.

  He shook his head.

  “Why do I think of the nameless one?” he asked the clouds, but although they had faces, their mouths remained silent.

  Frog struggled to remember one of his brief interactions with T’Cori, so long ago. He almost never saw her except at Spring Gatherings, of course, but he had seen her at those for as long as he could remember.

  What had she said to him?

  Make a picture in your head. A picture. He closed his eyes, and the dark space in his head shimmered. Something began to stir in that darkness. Something. But what?

  Was his mind just bringing him images of something he had already heard? Or smelled? Or…?

  There was the image, bright in his mind, clear at last, as if smoke had blown away from his mind. A fat, juicy warthog, trotting in his direction. His mouth watered at the thought. Oh, if only. He remembered a great feast at last Spring Gathering, when a tasty hog had been rolled into a cook-pit lined with glowing stones.

  After the men had eaten, oh, the steaming flesh that had been his to enjoy! What he wouldn’t give for another feast such as that one!

  Frog opened his eyes, and…

  Snuffle, snuffle.

  Waddling down the path toward him was the plumpest, tastiest pig Frog had ever seen. Its coloration was different from what he had imagined: almost black, instead of light brown. Still, he was dizzied by the sudden sense of power and magic. Certainly, if gods there were, then Father Mountain had given him a vision, and this was the fulfillment of that vision. And when such a blessing occurred, it was up to the hunter to be sure that his arm was strong and his aim true.

  “Come to me,” he whispered. “Come to me. Wet my spear. If you will die for me, I will honor you always. I will tell my children and my children’s children that you were only the second to come to me, who gifted me with blood and flesh that I might become a man. Please.”

  He could feel it now, the naked yearning to earn his scars so powerful that it dizzied him.

  Sniffing the air, the warthog came closer….

  Frog’s hand tightened on the haft of his spear. He felt his own heartbeat, imagined extending his num until it touched his prey’s. Then, as it lowered its head to drink, he threw his first spear.

  Struck in the left front leg, the hog squealed in pain. Frog leapt from his blind, putting everything he had into the charge. Only at the very last instant did he remember how dangerous warthogs could be.

  At that moment Frog swiveled aside. The hog charged at him, drawing a line of blood from his belly with its left tusk. But Frog did not feel fear, as he would have expected; rather, those endless days of practice saved his young hide. He weaved and leapt simultaneously, driving his second spear into the wattled black flesh of its throat.

  Yes!

  It reared back, squealing in agony. Frog snatched at the first spear, wrenched it out. Blood gouted, spraying the pig and Frog as well. In almost the same breath he stabbed it again, alongside the first wound.

  The pig was not yet done. Blinded by its own blood, it spun. Pain split Frog’s world like a bolt of lightning in the summer sky as the pig’s tusks ripped into his right hip, tearing skin. Panic flared, but Frog’s mind clamped down on it: now he understood the pig’s movement, realized that he was faster than his foe, and the joy blossomed in his heart.

  It tried to run, but its stubby legs gave out and it collapsed. Exhausted and dying, it gazed up at Frog. Its front legs scrabbled at the dust a bit. Then it just lay there, blinking, ribs expanding and contracting, blood running from its side.

  And then, as Frog stabbed it again, its breathing stopped.

  That night, Frog gorged on flesh that was half raw and half burnt. Between mouthfuls he bounced to his feet, waving his spear at the sky, prancing in total joy, shouting his pleasure to the moon. “Who is the greatest hunter beneath the sky?” he called. “Who is the greatest? I! Frog! Frog of the Ibandi!”

  He screamed and swayed. From far across the savannah came an answering scream, baboons perhaps…or men pretending to be baboons.

  Hunting calls.

  Fear shivered away Frog’s joy. He dampened his fire, and squatted down in the darkness beside the cooling embers.

  Perhaps Frog w
as a great hunter. Perhaps not. Either way he was certain of one thing: the night held creatures far more frightening and dangerous than Frog, and it was an incautious hunter indeed who ignored that sobering reality.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  T’Cori and her sisters had spent the first days away from home gathering as they hiked, then finally they set up camp in a fissure in the side of a ravine. Yellow and red vines strangled the wall. Fat black-and-yellow bees busily traveled from flower to flower but didn’t molest the humans who made their camp in the shelter of the granite gap.

  It was Sister Quiet Water, graceful and placid as her name, who had carried the coal from the eternal fire. She and T’Cori shared the honor of awakening and fanning it to greater life. This was a holy process: removing the coal from its leather sack, awakening it from its bed of clay and leaves, blowing on it until it glowed, feeding it until it smoked, building it up until the flame sprouted forth once again.

  The nameless one was absurdly happy in both work and leisure. Whenever her eyes rested on Owl Hooting, her heart raced in her chest.

  This was her chance, and she knew it. It might well be the only opportunity she would ever have. Stillshadow would be angry, the gods and her ancestors likewise, but T’Cori wanted to pick her own first time. And if she dared to take her fate in her own hands, to decide when her seventh eye was to open, then she would choose this fine young warrior. The only question was when.

  Both guards were strong and tall and excellent with their spears and bows, the pride of the hunt chiefs. Owl Hooting and his brother Leopard Claw were two of Cloud Stalker’s many sons, sired with women of Wind and Earth bomas. It was widely thought that Owl might well follow his father in leadership of the great Circle.

  The males kept their distance from the dream dancers, occasionally pointing out sights of interest or tracks that portended danger. They remained alert, but as day faded slowly into evening, they kept to their own fire, hunched low and singing together of snares or tracking or whatever concerned young hunters in their prime. T’Cori did not know, but longed to have such a man in her own hut, one to share her life with, to listen to as he told his stalking stories. A man to share sex with, making love and children together.