He shuddered. “When we found her, she was staring at the sun. She did not move. Did not even blink.”
T’Cori nodded. “Why would she do such a thing?”
Frog had no answer, and closed his eyes.
T’Cori tried to imagine what he was feeling. Frog already felt unable to act or decide or do anything other than follow her lead.
Was he now imagining himself sightless? Wondering what use a blind hunter would be to his people? Did he think that if he lost his eyes it would be best for him, for her, for all of them if he walked out into the brush and kept walking until Father Mountain took his bones?
Yet somehow, Stillshadow seemed undiminished. In fact, there were ways in which the old woman now whispering to the spirits seemed more alive than she had even a moon ago.
Almost as if she heard the blasphemous thoughts, Stillshadow pushed her way up to a seated position. From behind her herbal wraps, she seemed to be gazing through T’Cori’s flesh. The ancient eyes saw bone.
Her dust-parched throat was capable of little more than gravelly whispers. T’Cori offered her a water gourd. The medicine woman sipped and swallowed.
“Bring ten pebbles,” Stillshadow said finally.
“Pebbles?” Frog asked.
“At once!” she snapped. Then Stillshadow lay back again, seemed to shrink to the size of a child.
Frog retreated from the lean-to and ran off to do as she had asked, returning swiftly with two handfuls of stones.
When he had placed them on the ground before her, Stillshadow smoothed her hands over them. She plucked up a purplish one and rolled it between her palms. Then, one stone at a time, she laid out a circle, only deigning to speak when the circle was complete. “Every year,” she said, “the herds go north in spring and return in fall. They travel to Father Mountain’s favorite grounds, to amuse him with their feeding and fleeing and rutting. They grow fat on Great Mother’s sacred grasses, on the four-legged flesh. They go out—” her hand traced up and then cut across to the left “—and they return. To find them we must travel west. There, we will find hunting lands as fine as our own, where the herds travel as they return home.”
“Always,” Frog said, “we thought that the animals went out, and returned the way they went, in a line. You say they travel in a great circle?”
Stillshadow ran her fingers along the earth, fingers brushing the freshly grooved soil.
“What would that mean?” Leopard Paw asked.
Stillshadow tried to push herself up to her elbows. “What serves the four-legged serves the two-legged as well. Find them, and we find our way.”
“It will be done,” Frog said.
Chapter Ten
Bracketed between her brothers Leopard Eye and Leopard Paw, Blossom escorted their mother back to her lean-to.
Blossom’s heart beat like a hummingbird’s wings. She craved and cherished any moment spent with Stillshadow, struggled not to resent the fact, obvious to all, that the chief dream dancer preferred Sky Woman to her own flesh and blood.
Blossom was four hands older than the girl now called Sky Woman, and in fact had been the foundling’s wet nurse. But despite her purity of heart and strength of blood, Blossom had never risen high among the dancers.
Blossom had helped her brothers build their mother’s shelter, wedging it between a dead ant nest and a cactus tree. Twice the size of most Ibandi hutches, it was lined with zebra skin and roofed with branches and leaves, large enough for an audience of three or four. Rude it might have been, but Blossom was proud.
“Mother,” asked Leopard Eye after they had set her comfortably on a bed of grass, “is there more we can do for you?”
“Not now,” Stillshadow said. “Please go. But, Blossom, please remain with me.”
As the twins left, Blossom crawled into the shadows with her mother.
The old woman stretched out her arm until Blossom reciprocated. They linked hands.
“I am happy with the others,” Stillshadow said. “But I see my womb daughter is sad.”
Blossom sighed, struggling to keep the fear from her voice and failing. “How can you see anything?” she asked.
“Only my face-eyes have closed. I have five more, and all speak your sadness.” Stillshadow smiled. “Then again, perhaps it is Cloud Stalker who tells me your mood.”
“You speak to my father?” Blossom asked. Stillshadow umm-hmmed, the corners of her mouth turning slightly upward. “In the dream world?”
“He says that he loves you.”
“I wish,” Blossom said wistfully, “to see the world you see. I will never be so strong, and I know it. And I know that as long as I help my people survive, I have purpose. All that you ask, I have done.” She wiped at the corner of her eye. “You asked me to nurture Sky Woman, and I did, before she ever had a name. You asked me to step aside for her. I did. To leave the only home I have ever known and come with you.” Here Blossom paused. “How could I not? You are all I know and love in this world.” Tears blurred her vision as she squeezed her mother’s hand. “Perhaps I am not the dancer Sky Woman has become, but I love our people and our path. When I thought we had lost you, I died.”
Stillshadow sighed. “My child—”
“Please.” For the first time she could remember, Blossom interrupted her mother mid-sentence. She could hardly believe her own daring and wondered at the desperation that had driven her to it. She fisted her trembling hands and thrust them against her thighs. “Let me speak. I do not know if I will be able to say it ever again.” She took a deep breath and began. “I remember the days only Small Raven and I could call you mother. I was not the prettiest, or the best, but I could call you mother, and the others could not.” Despite her low spirits, the memory brightened her. “Even as I suckled that little nameless child, I knew she was special. But I never dreamed that one day she would rise above me.”
“Blossom,” Stillshadow tried again. But Blossom’s flow, once begun, would not be stemmed. If she did not spit the venom from her heart, it would destroy her. “So my suckling stands above me. Empty One climbed the mountain with Small Raven and returned alone.” Her brow wrinkled. “Where was the right in that? Where?”
Her brow smoothed again. “I am told that Empty One is the holiest of women and that I should love her.”
“Her name is Sky Woman,” Stillshadow said.
Blossom crossed her arms, defiant and silent.
“You do not love?” Stillshadow said at last.
“I loved my sister” Blossom screamed. The tears burned her cheeks. “I loved Small Raven, the one who shared my flesh. And I love you. But I do not love Sky Woman.” Her lips twisted as if the words burned them. “I have danced every role you asked. Lived my life as a lie. But if I had known what she would be, what price I would pay, I tell you, Mother, I would have crushed her skull as she slept.”
“Blossom! Do not say such things!”
For a few breaths there was no sound in the hut. Then Blossom sighed and reached out and took Stillshadow’s hand. However withered it might have become, it remained the most precious thing in all the world. “But I did not, and I do my best to honor her. Am I a bad thing?”
“None of us can tell our hearts what to feel,” her mother said. “I hope I’ve never asked you to be anything other than what you are.”
“No,” Blossom said. “Never. You have been mother to all of us, but most of all to me.” She leaned her head against her mother’s thin shoulder. “I am not clever. My voice holds no magic. But I loved Small Raven. And I love you.”
Had it really been so long since childhood? Blossom remembered so clearly when her mother could lift her with a single arm, could carry her everywhere. When had the daughter grown so large that the mother could no longer carry her? If only Blossom had known such a day would ever come, her last day cradled in Stillshadow’s arms would have been more precious. More …
Words died before they could be fully formed.
Great Mother. What has bec
ome of the world?
“What if I cannot love her?” Blossom asked.
“It is not about you. Or Sky Woman. Or me. It is about our people and what they need. And what they need is to love Sky Woman.”
Blossom felt as if she were falling, had grasped at her mother’s protective hand and come achingly close to safety.
But in the end those fingers had brushed past her and moved on. Only the people mattered. And the people needed Sky Woman.
In the end, Blossom’s bleeding heart did not matter at all.
Dust devils capered in the tall yellow grass as the Ibandi wound their dusty way north. As they had for four moons now, weary children held their mother’s hands, dark-rimmed eyes gazing out at the horizon.
The Ibandi were stretched into a thin line, but groupings within that line changed many times a day, so that they could while away the time talking to family or friends. They shared their food and water, and what hope remained.
Blossom decided to walk with Ember and little Flamingo, sisters by marriage to Frog Hopping. They spoke of clouds and sun, their hopes for the future and other things. Then finally the conversation fixed upon past days.
“Blossom,” Ember said, “you suckled Sky Woman.”
“Yes,” Blossom said. The memory made her nipples itch.
“I … it may be sin to say such a thing,” Flamingo said, “but I am afraid. Stillshadow says that Sky Woman is ready to lead us. You know her better than we.”
“Better than anyone,” Blossom replied.
“I was sure of it.” Ember seemed relieved. “Tell us, is she really ready to lead us? Should we believe?”
“She is strong,” Blossom said. She weighed her words with care. “Mother Stillshadow believes it, and I believe Sky Woman to be a great dancer. Even when the Mk*tk took her seventh eye, it did not diminish her strength.”
Ember gasped, stricken. “What? What do you say? The Mk*tk what?”
Blossom turned her face away. Curse herself for letting that slip out! “I … I say more than I should. Please. Tell no one I said this.” The knowledge that Sky Woman, their savior and salvation, had been taken like any common bhan could not pass outside the ranks of the dancers.
And yet it had. The words had been an accident, of course. An accident.
Ember backed away along the dusty line, staring at Blossom in disbelief. Which had been more alarming—Blossom’s words or the fact that she had spoken them?
Blossom held Medicine Mouse against her breast; the boy’s small, moist mouth sucking. Despite the fact that Ibandi women often shared wet-nurse duty, Mouse fed in her arms more often than most. He was a dear child, a sweet child, but his smiles did not heal her heart. Despite his contented sounds and small, warm graspings, her tears fell.
Blossom had seen almost four tens of summers. She had given birth to only four children, and none of them had been chosen for either dream dancers or hunt chiefs. The babies had been taken away and given to women of the cardinal bomas.
But after her first child, delivered when Blossom had danced ten and five summers, her milk had continued to flow. As a consequence, she had been given a child to feed, a child chosen by Stillshadow from among all those born in the circle.
Blossom’s body was strong, could feed children, and she had nursed more hungry mouths than she could remember. Some had remained within the dancers; others had found the life of service too rigorous and returned to the circle.
They came, they went, but Blossom remained. Even if her own mother, the greatest woman who had ever lived, could not see the depths of her, Blossom was special. She was blessed.
No matter what anyone said or felt or thought. Now or ever again.
Chapter Eleven
T’Cori and Frog huddled together around the fire that night, cuddling Medicine Mouse between them. The rest of their people were scattered, eating the last of the fresh meat. There was sufficient jerky to last several days, but if hunting did not improve soon, bellies would grumble.
Frog took great comfort in embracing his boy Mouse, feeling his small strong wiggles, kissing his forehead’s soft, leaf-thin skin and smelling the fresh milk on his breath. Blossom had complained that her breasts were tired, had brought them another wet-nurse, begging a few days rest to let the milk rise again.
His child. His flesh, his only reminder of his lost wife, Glimmer.
Young Bat Wing ran to him, small feet kicking up the dirt.
“What?” Frog asked.
“Some families crept away in the night,” Bat Wing told them.
“How many?”
“A hand of families,” the boy said. “They go home?”
“I hope,” Frog said, “that there is a home for them to go to.” He sighed. Over the moons a few had straggled off, but never so many at once.
“And there is more,” the boy said. “Stillshadow’s daughter, Blossom, is gone.”
T’Cori’s eyes went wide and round. “No! It is not possible.”
“I do not lie,” Bat Wing said. “She and a few others left before dark. Should we go after them?”
Frog ground his knuckles against his eyes. What to do? What was there to do in such a world?
“Does Stillshadow know this?” T’Cori asked.
The old woman’s lean-to was paces away, too far for hearing, but in the silence following her question, a plaintive sound rose from its depths.
At first Frog did not recognize the sound. He had never heard it before.
But it seemed that T’Cori had heard it, perhaps more often than any of them had ever suspected.
“My mother is crying,” T’Cori said. “She knows.”
“What do we do?” Bat Wing asked.
T’Cori closed her eyes. “Let Blossom go,” she said. “Let any who would leave, follow her.”
For days more they walked, past herds of elephants, too big and strong and smart to be prey A hunter was almost always killed or crippled trying to take one of them. Reluctantly, bellies growling, they passed the great beasts and hoped for meat to come.
Occasionally they glimpsed other four-legged, usually at a distance, but they dissolved into heat dreams before the Ibandi reached them.
Some of the grasslands were brown from drought, others blackened and twisted by wildfire. There was no place that called to their hearts, that felt like a patch of sand and soil where they might set down roots.
More discouraged with each fierce new sun, they walked on. For the time being they were not sick. Their children did not starve, their ribs did not protrude through shrunken skin.
But that day might soon come.
Chapter Twelve
T’Cori found Stillshadow staring blindly up into her lean-to’s thatched roof. Since Blossom’s departure ten days ago, some fire in her mentor’s heart seemed to have died. All day and half the night the old woman muttered endlessly, conversing with her dead lover, Cloud Stalker, with the jowk, perhaps with her long-dead mother and teacher, Night Bird.
Who knew such things?
“Mother,” T’Cori said, “I need your wisdom.”
“What can an old blind woman do for you?” Stillshadow’s mouth moved, but in the deep shadow, her expression remained unchanged.
“Mother … the hunters grow weary and afraid. Is there a ceremony I can give them? Anything that might help?”
“In my dreams,” Stillshadow said, “I still see Cloud Stalker. Often, we spoke of hunting. Of the soul vine stretching out from our men to their prey.”
“The same soul vine that connects a man and woman during sex?” That was a small miracle she had experienced many, many times.
“Yes. It is a thing that connects all. It is also what connects the healer to the wound or sickness. If you can open your own senses, go more deeply within yourself, you might open the way for them as well.”
“How do I do that?” the girl asked.
There seemed genuine regret in Stillshadow’s reply. “I cannot give it to you. You must find it within you
rself, and then give from there.”
T’Cori thought hard. Medicine had been her path since childhood, one harder than an outsider could ever have believed. First know all things. Then understand the One, from which all things arise.
So confusing: one and many. The living and the nonliving. The jowk: a burning lake or a spirit arising from that lake or the living spirit animating a sack of skin. Too many truths. Some minds fought against the knowledge. Hers had surrendered, and now she saw truth everywhere, even if she could not convey that truth to others.
What their hunters needed, she thought, was a bit of magic. If she could show them more of what she saw, if only they knew what she knew, their children’s bellies might not rumble.
“Once, you taught me a seventh eye dance. Shouldn’t a hunter’s eyes be as open as a dancer’s?” Two face-eyes. One on each hand. One on either foot. And the sex organs. Seven eyes. The soul vine extended through the sex organs and connected human beings to one another and to all the world. They saw what came before we were born and knew what would be after we were gone. They were the straightest path to the dream world and the world beyond.
Stillshadow nodded, suddenly more engaged and animated than she had been in days. “We are speaking well together. Yes.”
“Then this is what I will try.”
T’Cori and two of her sisters spent the next morning gathering hands of hands of stones that looked or felt alike, that sang to her, that possessed some sacred similarity of grain or color. With those she created a small ring and around that another and beyond that another still.
They blessed their rock garden with smoke and spit, setting a fire at the very center. Then they sat, awaiting the hunters’ arrival.
For almost a quarter the hunters had sat in a circle: smoking their bone pipes, speaking of sex and building huts and hunting.
Frog felt odd, and oddly sad. Accepted as a hunt chief, or the closest thing the Ibandi had to one, he had failed his people. He had not the training or skill to be a real hunt chief, and he possessed that honorary title purely because of his climb up Great Sky and the fact that he was beloved of Sky Woman.
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