Great Sky Woman

by Steven Barnes

  “They kill us,” he panted.

  “What happened?” asked Hot Tree.

  “We were hunting to the east,” the boy said, “and had speared a fat zebra. We were making a sled to pull it home when they set upon us.”

  “Who?” Break Spear asked. “Who did this?”

  The boy’s torn face tightened with fear. “The Mk*tk,” he said. That word had spread through the bomas in the past year.

  “They killed you all?”

  He nodded, his eyes utterly haunted. “They hurled stones at us. Shot arrows. Killed all but me.” The boy whimpered, finally abandoning all pretense of courage. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “They let me go. I do not know why.”

  “So we would know, and fear,” Break Spear said.

  Break Spear was old for a boma father. That he had kept his position so long was testament to the fact that his men, indeed the entire boma, loved and trusted him.

  Now he called to his young, strong hunters. He was not a hunt chief, not one of the almost superhuman beings who had lived on the mountain, but he was still their champion, still the one to whom all turned in time of need.

  “What do we do?” Deep Dry Hole asked.

  Break Spear threw his shoulders back and stretched to his full height. The other hunters responded to the silent challenge by straightening their spines as well. This was a day for courage! “It is time to call the bomas together. Run to find the clans. At full moon, the hunters meet at the gathering place.”

  Frog watched the folk as they clutched their spears or mates or children, grumbling nervously. The mountain had vomited. The land was poisoned. And now the Mk*tk had attacked the men of a boma openly. Who could need more sign that the end of the world had come?

  “What of the hunt chiefs?” Scorpion said. “Should we go to the mountain?” His voice broke on the last word.

  Deep Dry Hole spat. “Do you wish to lead the way?”

  Scorpion hung his head. They turned and looked at Great Sky. Once again, clouds swirled up around its peak. Although the ground had not trembled in many days, they could see where the white cap had been torn away, so the mountain barely resembled the peak that every one of them had prayed and dreamed and spit to, for lives without counting.

  In teams of two and three, Frog and the other hunters ran to the inner and outer bomas, hyena-running huh-huh-huh to gather the hunters together for a war council, something that had never happened in the memory of any living Ibandi.

  By next moon almost half the Circle’s hunters appeared at the Gathering site, hands of hands of hands of men. To their surprise, five hunt chiefs had survived the disaster. All had been walking the Circle, visiting boma women or teaching wrestling and trapping. All were young men. None carried themselves with the confidence Frog had always attributed to the chiefs. They looked frightened, uncertain.

  There was discussion of war, and dreaming, chanting and dancing. But from the time Break Spear coaxed the first ceremonial fire to wakefulness, everyone knew something dreadful was happening.

  Morning Spring, the bamboo-thin, white-haired father of Wind boma, was the oldest man who still ran with the hunters, and therefore was given a place of respect at the council, even mighty Break Spear bowing to him. The five hunt chiefs sat around him, but by their refusal to seek the fate of their elders on Great Sky, they had lost all authority. Their fear hung about them like a mantle of shame.

  “We have legends of war,” Morning Spring said. “When I was a boy, the hunt chiefs”—and here he spared a disdainful glance at the young men at his feet, who cringed at his displeasure—“said that there were legends, tales of a time when the Ibandi were forced to stand together. We did it then, and defended our land. We will do it again.”

  “How?” Scorpion asked. “How did we do this thing?”

  “Did the gods help?” Lion Tooth asked.

  “They are not dead!” Spring said. “This is a test of our faith. Those who believe otherwise are fools.” The last word brimmed with both venom and hope.

  The old man seemed to blaze with fire. Even Frog felt uplifted by his words, and the others stirred. Could the old man be right? Could there be hope?

  “You will see,” he said. “We must prove ourselves worthy, must stand tall. Perhaps we redeem ourselves by facing this threat. But you will see. The hunt chiefs will return to us, strong and transformed!”

  He raised his voice when he said this. Now he seemed to be inspired. “Yes!” he said. “We saw not the death of heaven but the birth of a new, greater world. And when the hunt chiefs come back to us, clad in feathers such as we have never seen, those of us who are worthy will dance, and sing, and celebrate. Our gods were here before the first of our ancestors were born, and they watch us now to see who will falter!”

  The Ibandi beat their heels upon the ground, stamped and cheered.

  “Now is no time for weaklings,” Break Spear declared to the group. “This is the day you have prepared for.”

  “I am ready,” said Hawk Shadow. “All my life, I have prepared.”

  “And I am ready,” Fire Ant joined in.

  “We will wash our spears with blood,” said Uncle Snake. But it seemed to Frog that he was not so confident as he wished them to think, as if he possessed some secret knowledge.

  Morning Spring, perhaps, knew what Snake was not saying. “Their spears will drip red as well! None of us has known war! War is not trees standing still so that you may cast your spears into them. You have slain lions and leopards. Lions and leopards cannot kill at a distance. They do not think as men, or attack in waves, or call the fire people. War is not antelope who seek only to run, to survive. I am old and remember my father’s stories, stories that his father told him, about a time when a tribe came and tried to take our land, a time when we were forced to fight. War is death, and pain, and fear.”

  Their young men began to murmur.

  Fire Ant seemed angry. “Are we not strong?”

  “Morning Spring is right,” Uncle Snake said, throwing aside his uncertainty. “Strength is not enough. Brave hearts are not enough.”

  Fire Ant stepped in. “Tell us what we must be,” he growled. “What we must have, and that is what we will give to you.”

  Lion Tooth seemed to quail before Fire Ant’s courageous speech. Was the Lion afraid? With such a mighty totem, who could fail to stand proud?

  Wind boma’s father stood again. “It is good for you to speak so,” he said. “You must go to fight as if already dead. We do not ask for your muscles, your skin. Give us your bones.”

  This triggered an even more disturbed murmur.

  “What do you mean by this?” Scorpion asked.

  “Many will die, even if we win,” Snake said. “If you try to save your life, you will turn and run, and you and your brothers will be slain. I want no one at my side who seeks to live.” His eyes flamed. “Seek to die for your tribe. All others stay with the women!”

  To Frog’s pride, not a single Ibandi hunter turned away from the bloody task ahead. All joined the line to climb up Great Earth to seek blessing from Stillshadow and the dream dancers. All day they ran, and long into the darkness. They reached the dream dancers near noon of the third day, but it seemed that the women had been awaiting them.

  Frog was shocked by how weak Stillshadow appeared. Always she had seemed aged to him, but now she seemed beyond ancient, as if the last moon’s terrible events had drained her flesh. She seemed animated now by nothing save spirit.

  Her eyes were clear enough, in fact they burned, but she did not speak. Her every inhalation seemed, to Frog, a small miracle.

  His Butterfly Spring stood to the crone’s left, while Small Raven stood to her right. Both dancers bowed their heads slightly. So: as he had anticipated, the girl he had rescued on the plains had risen high among the dancers. This, he thought, was a good thing for the Circle in its time of need.

  Stillshadow seemed almost half asleep. Twice, as he watched, she reached into a pouch at her waist
and extracted a small pellet, pushing it between teeth and gum. Soon afterward, she seemed more alert and aware. She heard their plea: that in the absence of the hunt chiefs, Stillshadow herself would ready them to fight for the Circle.

  She had not spoken a word in all of this, but after they finished she simply said, “Yes,” in a harsh, weak whisper. “Come to us at dusk. Prepare to die.”

  Then she hobbled away, a dancer at each arm.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  “War comes?” T’Cori asked after the hunters retreated.

  “Yes,” Stillshadow said.

  “What if our men die?” asked Raven. T’Cori watched her rival from the corner of her eye, careful not to show that she was watching. Did Raven’s hand tremble? Was she afraid? Yes. So she and Raven were sisters in fear, if nothing else.

  “Then,” said Stillshadow, “all of you will bear children for the Others.”

  “I wish I was a man,” Blossom moaned.

  Stillshadow shook her head sadly. “And many of them wish that they were women, that they would not have spears twisted into their guts.” She leaned so hard upon her staff that T’Cori thought it would splinter. She knew that the old woman was still burning with fever, the spirits of life and death warring in her veins. She should have been lying in her hut, to await the outcome of that battle. Instead, Stillshadow had dragged herself forth to meet with the hunters. Soon, she would perform ceremony, draining herself of the precious num all men and women needed to heal.

  “We are afraid,” Raven said.

  “You think they are not?” Stillshadow pounded her walking stick against the ground. “They piss themselves with fear. They fight for you! For your smiles, hoping you will think them brave. And what would you have them see in your faces? Fear? If so, they will know you think them too weak to win, too weak to protect you.”

  Stillshadow’s daughter shivered. “I cannot help it. I know what they did to T’Cori.”

  “You do not hear me!” Stillshadow’s eyes narrowed. “Women put the strength into men or rip it out of them. Any one of you who cannot be strong, tell me now! I will not have even one of our men go to battle without knowing their women’s hearts are with them.”

  The young women exchanged sick, worried glances. Raven trembled. T’Cori saw her moment and pushed herself up to full height.

  “I will stand with you,” T’Cori said. “I will be strong for our men.”

  Raven glared at T’Cori, furious that she had spoken first. Finally she nodded. “I will as well. It is my place.” She whispered to T’Cori: “Sit down, ugly.”

  T’Cori’s hands crooked into claws. “Sit me down,” she said.

  Raven was larger, stronger, but her eyes only narrowed. “In time,” she said.

  “Now,” T’Cori said. “For years you have ruled me. If you have something to say to me, make it now, in front of our sisters.”

  “You are not sister,” Raven snarled. “You are bhan. Mother found you where your own parents had thrown you away.”

  T’Cori’s face burned, but she refused to back down. “Perhaps we die soon. Today is as good a day as any. If so, I am ready. I will not lie awake nights waiting for you to find my back.”

  “Silence, both of you!” Stillshadow hissed, as if emptying herself. “Is this what you wish the men to see? The women they love, the women they dream of, fighting among themselves like monkeys? You are why they are willing to die! Be prizes worthy of that sacrifice, or we have nothing.”

  The two girls fell silent.

  “As you say, Mother,” said Raven, lowering her head.

  “Yes, wise one,” T’Cori agreed, angry and ashamed, and angry for feeling ashamed.

  “Go and prepare yourselves,” the crone said.

  Together in single file, those fertile dancers currently not with child walked to North Stream, the largest body of running water within a day’s travel. North Stream flowed from the heights of Great Earth in the wet months, slumbering in the dry.

  T’Cori and Raven strode in the lead, and the others followed them as they doffed their leather waistlets and breast flaps and bathed themselves in the cool waters.

  The other dancers looked at T’Cori. Once she had been special because of her sight. Now she was special because of the way she had lost that sacred gift. She had, after all, been a Mk*tk captive, raped by beasts. She had killed one with her own hands. She was the only one who knew what their men would face.

  “Tell me of the Mk*tk,” one girl requested.

  “Were they fierce?” asked another.

  “Like two-legged lions,” T’Cori answered. When she said that, she thought what she did not say: that her body remembered their smell, and the taste of their blood.

  Her sisters whispered and murmured among themselves, frightened.

  “I knew it,” the first said.

  “But I killed one, and I am only a woman!” she said. “Do you understand? Ibandi women kill Mk*tk men!” They cheered her, lifted her up on their shoulders and carried her around in the river.

  Small Raven watched as the others celebrated, nodding. Finally she slapped her hands together. “Enough! We must prepare!”

  They cleaned and washed one another, scenting one another with juices and fixing one another’s hair. Then they walked in line from the river, each one passing Raven in turn. When T’Cori passed Raven, there was a moment when the older girl’s disdain wavered. She licked her lips and said in a low voice: “You really killed one? It is no tale?”

  “Yes,” T’Cori said. “And Frog Hopping slew another. The Mk*tk hunted us. And then we hunted it.” Raven searched her face, seeking lies, finding none. “I believe Stillshadow. Our hunters will be as strong as we make them. As strong as we are.” She hesitated a moment, then spoke her truth. “And you are strong, Raven.”

  Stillshadow’s daughter studied T’Cori, still seeking evidence of dissembling or mockery. Finally she nodded. “You are fit,” Raven said.

  T’Cori walked on. You are fit. She savored those words, the first kind ones that had passed between them in many springs.

  As the sun died in the west, the hunters from Earth, Wind, Fire and Water bomas hiked double file up the narrow trail on Great Earth’s north face. “Tell me of the dream dancers,” Fire Ant said to Boar Tracks.

  The young hunt chief seemed shrunken. Once Frog had thought him a giant, one of those human gods who had thrashed him with such contemptuous ease. Now his eyes were hollow and weak, unable to long avoid the sight of the transformed Great Sky. This question changed his aspect, so that he suddenly seemed to remember who and what he was. “How do you mean?” he asked.

  “As women,” Fire Ant said, and Hawk Shadow laughed. All found themselves listening to this conversation. “How are they as women? You have been with them.”

  “Yes,” Boar Tracks said, suddenly seeming to remember who and what he was. “I have.”

  “And?” Fire Ant asked.

  “Worth dying for,” he said.

  Hawk Shadow thumped the butt of his spear against the ground. “I will be a great hero,” Hawk Shadow said. “They will seek me out and give the gift of their fire.”

  The other boys and men spoke in turn of the great deeds they would do, and for a time Frog’s heart was lifted. For a moment he thought he could see T’Cori’s face in the clouds surrounding Great Sky, there among the gods and ancestors. Was that sunbeam the slant of a broken tooth?

  Then the faces began to drift and dissolve. The clouds roiling around Great Sky’s peak seemed dark and heavy, whipped by the wind, crawling even as he watched them.

  His stepbrother Scorpion noted Frog’s expression and looked back over his shoulder. “Are our ancestors in those clouds?” he asked. “Do they speak to you?”

  Frog shrugged. “They are just clouds,” he said.

  Sometimes, when the sun was just right and the clouds had parted, Frog could see up to the very top of the mountain. The shape of the summit had changed, as if unimaginable quantities of t
he strange dead white stuff had been torn away.

  “Father Mountain is angry,” Fire Ant said.

  “He has much to be angry about,” Lion Tooth said. When Hawk looked at him sharply, he shrugged.

  “He took our hunt chiefs,” said Hawk.

  “No,” Snake said nervously. “I say the Others did this.”

  “Then they are too powerful to fight!” Hawk said, and shuddered.

  “Not so,” Snake replied, brushing a fern frond out of his way. The path to the dream dancers’ boma was well trod but still overgrown. “Magic is like water. You can sip or guzzle from a skin, but there comes a time when the skin is empty. If they did such a powerful thing, surely their water sack is now dry. After all, Frog killed one. The nameless girl killed one. They are men, not spirits.”

  “They are beasts,” Lion Tooth said, glancing at Fire Ant, who knew.

  They are beasts, and they are men, Frog thought. One of them, just one Mk*tk, poisoned, stabbed and slashed, was still stronger than any hunter he had ever known. And now they faced an entire tribe?

  In response, Fire Ant shook his head. “Father Mountain is enraged,” he grunted. “Angry with the Mk*tk. Angry that they would challenge us on our own ground.”

  “Silence,” said Snake. “We are almost there.”

  The narrow trail wound across a sharp rise, and then they arrived at the dream dancer camp.

  Snake seemed to shake himself out of some kind of trance and began to speak. “When I was with the hunt chiefs, and we went to the mountaintop—”

  Suddenly, Stillshadow was there, leaning heavily on her bamboo walking stick, flanked by her daughters Blossom and Raven. Blossom seemed to be carrying most of the old woman’s weight. The crone’s face was ashen, her eyes sunken in her skull. “Why come you to me?”

  “You know why we come,” Snake said. Both hope and grief shimmered in the air between them.

  Though she seemed unable even to stand without help, her eyes burned. “I see only dead men before me,” she said with satisfaction. “This is as it should be. Come,” Stillshadow said. “Present yourself to your tribe’s dream dancers.”