Shadow Valley

by Steven Barnes

  “Whether or not they are men, they are horizons behind us.” Snake seemed genuinely confused. “We walk away from them!”

  “Perhaps,” Frog said, “they run to meet us. What then?”

  “I don’t know,” Snake said.

  “I do,” Frog said. “And I have thought about this.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Snake, in your days with the hunt chiefs, what secrets did you learn?”

  “Many dances,” he said, “and ceremonies. I remember so little.”

  “Try harder.” Frog leaned on his spear. Sweat dripped from his forehead and in the dirt like summer’s first raindrops. “I say we talk to Still-shadow, ask if she remembers the hunt chief’s dances. Or anything we might use against the Mk*tk. If we don’t know more than we did, and we meet them in years to come …”

  Snake shook his head. “But they are behind us!”

  Frog gazed up at the clouds. Shapes. Faces. Still. Moving. At one time or another, he had seen everything he had ever known in the sky … and some sky forms he had never seen in the real world at all. For instance, the face of his father—said to be broad and strong like Fire Ant’s but with wider eyes. Frog wished he could have seen his father’s face, felt his kiss, just once.

  Snake had tried to fill that void, and could not. Perhaps his flesh father would not have been able to see the faces and creatures in the clouds, either, or known the voices of the fire people.

  In Frog’s dreams, his lost father could do those things and more.

  This was not fair. Snake was all he had, and Snake wanted to follow Frog. Snake, his elder, should have dispensed wisdom. Frog had never wanted any of this.

  All he had wanted was family, water, a warm fire, a good hunt and a safe night’s sleep.

  Frustrated, Frog screamed his reply. “How can we know what is out there, waiting for us? We cannot. And so we must be ready, or they will eat our children.”

  Snake’s single good eye squinted. “You really believe this?”

  “Yes,” Frog said, “I do. Sky Woman says that there will be blood.”

  Snake bowed his head. Then he lifted his chin, opened his eyes and looked up. “I think the Mk*tk are far behind us, but I trust you, my son, and will prepare for what lies ahead.”

  “I know you will,” Frog replied. “We will all do what we can.”

  And his greatest fear was that, in the end, it wouldn’t be enough.

  From day to day, no one knew what meat the hunters might bring. The women had to be prepared for anything. Today, gathering was more successful than hunting: finding a trove of yams and tubers with a thick, fine yellow flesh.

  Using a flattened rock, T’Cori scraped out a hole as deep as her forearm. She crosshatched brush carefully, struck sparks into kindling and nursed her fire to life, rolling stones into the pit while the flames still crackled. After they died down she laid leaves and grass on the stones, sprinkled some water, then laid down the yams. On top of them she lay more grass, sprinkled more water, then more grass and a thick coating of earth, leaving the yams to cook.

  As a dream dancer, she was more familiar with the medicinal qualities of plants and animals than their value as food. But all Ibandi women knew how to convert any edible living thing into a nourishing meal, if not a feast. She missed the easy comfort of her days walking Great Earths slopes, plucking thistle top, boar weed, and crowfoot. Those spices were good to chew raw or add twisty flavor to a stew.

  Blossom had taught her the best way to prepare wildebeest: singe them, gut and scrape them, then stuff the carcass with hot stones. The carcasses would then be rolled atop a burnt-down fire and sizzling ashes heaped on top. Great Mother! Her mouth watered at the memory.

  Dear lost Small Raven had loved ostrich. They had been in conflict over many things but had shared happy days preparing the great birds for feast— plucking and filling them with smoking stones, leaves and even their own feathers—laughing and singing as they alternated layers of leaves and feathers and ashes atop a stuffed bird so that it roasted from within and without. The aromatic smoke rose all the way to Great Mother’s peak, carrying their spirits.

  Creatures eaten with love surely rose to the top of the mountain, to play the games of love and hunt again and again through all the seasons to come.

  These days, T’Cori usually made do with a few yams and an occasional bird. Her hands shook as she prepared a scanty meal, and it was impossible for her not to think of smoked porcupines and opossums, ducks roasted in mud balls, strips of iguana meat roasted or stretched in the sun, mussels and crayfish and ostrich eggs cooked in glowing coals or hot ashes.

  T’Cori remembered the splash of cold stream water against her thighs as she and her sisters beat the river with hides, driving fish toward the nets. Hearing the water-children squeal and cry with fear like scaly birds.

  What wonderful times those had been!

  She smeared tears away with the back of her hand. No. Such memories would break her, and she had no right to break. She must be strong. More than strong. To be anything less than Great Sky Woman, the hope of her people, would be a complete betrayal.

  T’Cori was so absorbed in her work that when a gray-haired man touched her shoulder, she hadn’t even realized he had been waiting behind her. Her visitor was stooped now. Her medicine woman’s eyes told her his bones ached, but she knew he never complained, and he never walked in the rear.

  He was Water Chant, her father, the man who had abandoned her as a child. The coarsely knotted hair above his narrow face had faded to white. She had heard that he had once been the strongest, fastest hunter in Water boma. She had never known him, had not even suspected that he still lived, until he came to her just before the Ibandi left the shadow of Great Sky, pleading for her forgiveness.

  Forgiveness she had given happily.

  “I would have words,” he said.

  “Of course,” T’Cori answered. For a moment she considered adding father, but in the time it took for the thought to form, the moment flew.

  “In days past,” Water Chant said, “our speaking shamed my heart. Once upon a time I feared my daughter’s blindness, blindness I now know was a sight beyond my own. I know my sin cost your mother her life in childbirth. Great Mother has never let me love again.”

  T’Cori did not want him to say these things, did not want to open that pathway. She knew that lurking at its end was the lonely girl she had once been. Like the kernel of an ancient baobab, that child would always live within her. That girl had often dreamed that somewhere, someone loved her as a father or mother loved a child, and would hold her close and call her precious.

  With nothing and no one to fill that void in her life, only Great Mother and Father Mountain offered solace.

  She honored Water Chant but could not love him, and she hoped he would never ask if she did.

  T’Cori took his hand. “I believe you are my father. If that is true, and you are a good man, then I am sure that you did only what Great Mother told your heart to do. Because of you, Stillshadow found and taught me—”

  He blinked, holding back tears. “I don’t know why Father Mountain or Great Mother gave you to me. But even if you could not call me father, I think you should know your sisters.”

  “Sisters?” She blinked in shock. In all these moons, she had not gone to him and asked if there were brothers or sisters who might have accompanied him. Had she been afraid to ask? To hope? Had that been another piece of herself she had abandoned to be Sky Woman?

  Just twice ten tens of Ibandi, walking for moons now, and she had not known that her sisters walked among them. What mists had wreathed her mind? What manner of leader was she?

  She turned just in time to see two girls approaching along the shallow streambed leading from the camp. From glimpses of her own reflection, she knew they resembled her. Two or three years older, perhaps, with the same high cheekbones, beautiful dark-clay skin. Their hair hung in ringlets instead of braids, but was the same brown as hers, a few shades darker than
their eyes. They had slender bodies, with full breasts. Unlike T’Cori, those breasts were exposed: a dream dancer’s sexuality was reserved for Father Mountain’s chosen hunters.

  Her sisters could have been her, living different but very familiar lives. Strange. She knew them to be lovely but had never thought of herself in such a way. A clutch of children dangled from their arms and followed at their backs.

  Both women noticed her swollen belly, touching it and clucking approval.

  “Sisters?” T’Cori repeated, stunned.

  Water Chant pointed. “This is Flower, and this—” he said, pointing to the shorter of the two “—is Morning Thunder.”

  “Such a strong name,” T’Cori said.

  Flower smiled. “She was a very loud baby.”

  “Louder than me?” T’Cori asked.

  “I think so, yes,” her father said.

  The two girls were her people’s future. Great Mother … if her people had any future at all. She could not allow her private terrors to intrude. Had Water Chant waited for her to come to him? She had never done it, nor reached out. Now, Chant had risked his heart to present his daughters, her sisters, whom she had never known.

  Their eyes welled with wonder and with hope.

  Morning Thunder was the first to lose her shyness. “Is it true you are our sister? Could our greatest dancer share our blood?”

  Be what they need. “We all share blood,” T’Cori said.

  Disappointment clouded their faces. Swiftly, T’Cori added, “but I think that we three may be closer than any. We can make our own small circle within the greater one. Bring your food to my fire tonight. We will eat and then walk together.”

  And for those words, they gifted her with eager smiles.

  By the time Frog returned from his morning exercises, T’Cori and her sisters were laughing and talking like childhood friends.

  She met him before he reached their fire, taking his warm, strong hand in hers. “Come,” T’Cori said. “Meet my other family.”

  “Family?” Frog protested. “What is this? I am your family. The dreamers are your family.” At first she feared he was serious, then saw the mischief a-dance in his eyes.

  Ah. That was her dear Frog.

  “There is more.” She smiled.

  “Then let us celebrate more fully,” he said and thumped his spear butt against the ground. “Another miracle!” he called. “Let me bring Little Brook and Wasp and Mouse and call my mother and Ember and Flamingo. It is a good night: our circle has grown again.”

  Chapter Six

  Frog, Uncle Snake and Leopard Eye crouched at the watering hole’s edge. The afternoon sun peeled Frog’s back, the sharp, spiky grass cut his skin and tiny, black gnats sipped the tears from his eyes. Half a moon had passed since T’Cori’s father had revealed her sisters and Stillshadow had declared the reunion a good omen, one promising happy days to come.

  In truth, it seemed to Frog that the old woman used any opportunity to tell them good days were soon to come. But for once, he wondered if she might be right.

  Because here, right before his eyes, was a miracle.

  Hands of hands of leopards, lions, ibyx and warthogs lazed sleepily as if all one happy winged, hooved and clawed family. With glazed and groggy eyes they stared at one another, as if barely aware that some were fang and the others flesh.

  The pond was the largest they had seen since leaving Great Sky. It might have been fed by rains or perhaps an underground spring. Although there was no sign of a stream leading into it, the waters were deep and clear. Slender trees with broad-leaved branches lined its banks, offering shade. But the water’s source was not what puzzled Frog.

  The meat-eaters and the leaf-eaters barely noticed one another, too fascinated by the flies buzzing around their snouts. What matter of dream was this? “They lay side by side,” he said. “I do not understand why the lion does not kill the antelope. Are they too tired even to eat?”

  Beside him, Uncle Snake had ceased peering stealthily through the grass and was sitting cross-legged in plain sight, scratching the dead skin on the left side of his face. “I have heard,” Snake said, “that only the hungry lion frightens the antelope.”

  “And how does the antelope know the difference?”

  “For that—” Snake grinned “—we must ask an old antelope.”

  They crept closer. Frog’s belly gnawed at him. For far too long, he had eaten little, save tubers and jerky. Slings had killed birds, and traps had netted moles and monkeys, but it had been moons since a real meat gorging, when sated hunters and their families groaned with bursting bellies, rolling onto their backs to belch and fart thanks to Father Mountain.

  And now, as in a starving man’s final dream, meat beyond reason lay within arm’s reach. “What are they doing?”

  “Drinking,” Frog said, “and sleeping. Strange, but they seem happy.”

  “Happy?” Snake was dubious. “Perhaps it is not water for men or animals. Perhaps it belongs to the gods, and they will be angry with us.”

  Magic. There, that word. Frog had stood atop Great Sky and had seen nothing. The world he knew contained many things, things that he could not explain, but no gods. And he had been to their home.

  Even if he was the only one who knew it, who could or would speak such truth, truth it remained. “We should be careful, I think. Perhaps it takes away the hunger. I have never seen this. It is … a new thing.”

  “Like fill grass?” Snake asked. “Is this what you think?”

  Frog felt certain. Dark fruit twice as thick as his thumb clustered on the branches and scattered on the ground near the water. “Perhaps. I have never seen that fruit. Perhaps it is like fill grass. It falls in the water, they drink … and their hunger goes.” Hunters used fill grass to kill hunger pangs on long hunts. Not magic, just a gift of the plant people. If this oasis was such a gift, his mind could grasp it eagerly.

  The water flowed from his mouth. Father Mountain, if this was not a wondrous feast, such a thing had never existed at all!

  They crept closer to the tree, spears tilted at the ready. He had never been so close to a lion before, barely three paces from the tip of the killer’s languidly lashing tail. Its sleepy yellow-green eyes blinked at him, but it didn’t move. Hunger, fear and curiosity all battled in Frog’s mind, and curiosity won.

  The greenish brown fruit was clustered in bunches along the branches. They plucked several up from the ground, then crept back away while keeping an eye on the drowsy cats.

  Once he and his men had retreated to safety, Frog bit through the skin, exposing sweet, pulpy flesh. He nibbled, then gobbled.

  “Are you still hungry?” Snake asked after they had waited awhile.

  The very word turned his belly into a fist. A sour belch affirmed its emptiness.

  “I smelled that,” Snake said. “A good answer. But very bad fill grass.”

  “Maybe it is the water.”

  Again, they crept up to the pond’s edge and sipped. The taste was a blend of sweet and spoiled, a bit like figs rotting on the ground. Frog wrinkled his nose.

  Beside him, Leopard Eye sipped. “It is not good,” he said. Another sip. “But not bad either.”

  He lapped some more. Two other hunters crept up next to him and sipped, keeping their eyes on the lions, who merely watched them woozily

  Frog’s head felt hollow, his belly snarled and sour. He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes. In the darkness, his heartbeat seemed to slow and deepen. Around him, sounds seemed both muffled and intensified.

  Around him, his fellows were drinking the water, laughing, joking, as if casting aside moons of worry and woe. Laughter bubbled up from deep within him, and he could not stop it. The world behind his closed eyes began to whirl. He remembered being a boy, spreading his arms and spinning around and around until he tumbled to the ground, the world atilt, nothing in all creation save giggles and soft grass.

  He was that child again. He felt… good.

&nbs
p; “I am a great hunter!” Leopard Eye called. Frog opened his eyes to see his friend slapping both broad hands on his muscular chest. “Yowwww!”

  A spotted gazelle lurched clumsily to its feet, staggering a few steps before its front legs folded. It collapsed onto its side, thick saliva bubbles welling from the corner of its mouth.

  The hunters roared with laughter and beat on their chests. They ran and fumbled and tumbled as if their legs had fallen asleep.

  Leopard thumped down beside Frog, his face alight with a huge and foolish grin. “I must tell them!” Leopard Eye said, his voice slurred. “I will run and tell them all of this great thing. This great, sacred, wonderful thing.”

  Leopard Eye pushed himself up and stumbled off toward the east. Frog smiled. A miracle indeed.

  Now this was a new thing!

  By the time that others arrived, dragging Stillshadow on her sled, T’Cori at her side, most of the animals had wobbled away, annoyed if not alarmed by the raucous humans.

  Stillshadow sipped and wrinkled her nose. Then she drank more greedily. After a while, she was heel walking in slow circles, chanting and singing to herself. She raised her wrinkled arms. “I foresaw this place,” she declared. “This is the place of my vision.”

  “We have meat!” Snake crowed. An ibyx hung loosely across his shoulder, its slashed throat drooling blood onto the ground. “We have meat! It did not even try to run!”

  Stillshadow raised her hands to the clouds, the loose flesh sagging from her arms’ undersides. Her eyes were as bright as a child’s. “Of all signs that you might have given us, this is the strangest and surest.”

  The people ate and drank and danced, shouting up at the half-moon. Those with no partners pranced with their shadows. “This place could be our new home.” Frog said, watching as they hooted and pranced.

  “Let us make camp,” Stillshadow said. “Perhaps Great Mother will give us signs.”

  “There is meat here,” Frog said, “and the magical water. What greater sign could there be?” Oh, he thought, why not call it magic? If anything had ever deserved the name, this was it. And if it was not magic, if it was some wonderful gift of earth or sky, where was the harm in letting the others believe it divine?