Pain washed over Ant like a rain-swollen river overrunning its banks. His mind had spun into the dream world, where the thorn walls preserving the flesh world shredded as if in a windstorm.
Tears streamed from his left eye, and he struggled to blink away the blur. To his numb surprise, he saw that a Mk*tk sitting by the fire seemed to have grown a stalk of some kind. Something was projecting from his neck. Without a sound, the guard slumped to the side.
Fire Ant struggled to make sense of it.
Then he felt hands upon him and a soft word in his ear. “Quiet,” Moon Runner whispered.
Fire Ant felt the tears flowing from his good eye. Some of his hunters had survived and they had not forgotten him!
Moon Runner sawed at the rawhide cords binding Ant’s wrists. If Ant leaned his head back over his shoulder, he could see two more hunters spiriting Sparrow away into the darkness.
And although at first he could not walk, as the blood returned to his legs Ant was able to run. The air was as thick as mud in his throat.
The world contracted to effort. He could run and run toward the north, and it was not until he had staggered on for almost a quarter that he heard the first angry howls.
The hunters led him along rocks and through streams, struggling to obscure footprints. They traveled northwest and then swung back north, aware that the Mk*tk had picked up their trail and were nearly in sight behind them.
The fugitives walked carefully around two hands of elephants, grazing like four-legged gray boulders. The big ears watched them mindfully, blowing warnings and moving between their young and the human invaders. The ground shook as they moved. If only we were elephants, the Mk*tk would fear us, Fire Ant found himself thinking. If only …
Even in his dazed state, Fire Ant’s fractured and exhausted mind birthed a notion. “Hunting,” he said. “Fire. Drive them.”
They stared at him for a moment, then grasped his meaning. Moon Runner struck flint and iron to make sparks in a pinch of tinder, nurtured spark to flame and set the grass crackling. His brothers spread out and did the same and fanned their flames to greater life.
Father Mountain be praised! Within moments the wind rolled from a soft burr to a flurry of dust devils, as if the gods themselves had awakened to aid their children.
The funnels of smoke and flame whipped through the brush, spreading their hungry light.
Leaning against a tree and trying to steady his trembling legs, Fire Ant held his breath. Could such a ruse succeed?
By the time that the great long noses recognized the threat, the fire had eaten through a wide swath of brush, and the shouting humans drove the elephants south in a fire frenzied stampede.
The ground thundered as the elephants panicked and ran, crushing trees and brush before them. Through the dust and flame Ant glimpsed the Mk*tk. Their enemies had been too close behind them, far too close. Their pain-filled, panicked shouts gladdened his heart.
Long before the herd had slowed to a walk once again, the Ibandi were long gone.
Chapter Twenty-one
While the hunters dragged Sparrow on a sled of branches and leather straps, Ant walked most of the distance back to Fire boma. He remembered little of the next days. He did know that he and Sparrow were taken to Water boma’s healing hut, walls rebuilt in straw and sticks, the roof still open to the stars.
Quiet Water handed Ant a water gourd, so that he was able to wet the dust from his throat. Young Sparrow was beyond such comforts.
His voice stilled, Sparrow’s eyes pled for relief. The stench of pus and putrefying flesh thickened the air.
Fire Ant crawled to him. “What do you need?”
Sparrow’s lips moved, but Ant heard only moist gasps.
The leather flap on the hut ruffled, and Quiet Water entered again, accompanied by one of her sisters.
“Help him,” Ant said to her.
Face placid and without emotion, Quiet Water inspected Sparrow’s wounds, then consulted with the other woman in whispers. “We have herbs for this,” she said. The women whispered to each other again. He heard the whispered words “last gift” and “strangleweed.”
“You can heal him?”
“We have herbs,” Quiet Water said again. Their eyes contained an unspoken truth. “We can end his pain.”
He swallowed hard. “I have heard such things.” He knew that an elephant-trampled hunter from Wind boma had been eased to the next world with such herbs.
“Leave,” the medicine woman said. “The rest is ours.”
“Treat him gently,” Fire Ant said, crawling backward to exit the hut. “To life’s very end, he was brave.”
Once outside, he lurched upright and stumbled out of the boma, down to Fire River, and vomited. On hands and knees, he watched bile and bubbles of half-melted food float away in the current. His head pulsed.
Nothing made sense. Nothing was real. The world was woven of threads, and the threads were made of nothing at all.
His dead eye socket pulsed, pushing black blood back into his brain. Tears streamed from the corner of Ant’s single living eye.
Ant could not sleep. All through the nights, he thought only of the terrible thing that had happened and what he had done to cause it. What had gone wrong? Was he cursed by the mountain?
He did not know and had no one to ask. If only Stillshadow had not abandoned them, things might have been very different. Perhaps he was not a ghost after all. In that, he may have been mistaken. But he was not wrong about the Ibandi’s need to be strong. He was not.
Why then, did he seem woven of nothing but agony made flesh? He rocked back and forth, cradling his head. “What happened?” he moaned again and again. “What happened?”
“I lost my father,” Moon Runner said. It might be days before Runner ran again. He still limped, favoring his wounds. “That is all.”
The world was a blur. Fire Ant blinked his good left eye. “It is too late. Word spreads to the other bomas. The people flee into the grass and up into the mountains. We are broken: the Ibandi are no more. Father Mountain! What did I do wrong?”
He held his knees to his chest. He struggled in vain to summon his former strength and certainty. The men and women who believed in him were desperate for something he no longer seemed to possess.
“He sent you back to us,” Moon Runner said, “surely not to see us die. There had to be a purpose to my father’s death.”
“The mountain’s shadow no longer shelters us,” Rock Climber said. “If only the great dancer were still here.”
Ant closed his eyes, and in that darkness dreamed of what he must do. From that void the jowk whispered to him:
Find Stillshadow …
“What do we do?” Moon Runner asked.
Now at last Fire Ant sprang to life. “We find Stillshadow. We bring her back.”
“But she followed Sky Woman. Perhaps she will not return.”
Fire Ant was certain. “She will come. I will bring her. No matter where they are, no matter how far. If she lives, I will find her.”
“She is with your brother,” Rock Climber said.
Always Frog. Always, I knew I would see you again. Always.
When the others turned away, he whispered the next words: “And you, nameless witch. You have done this. All this. Your heart. My knife. Soon.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Fire Ant gathered two hands of hunters, and set out for the plains and mountains north of Great Sky, a single song in their minds: Find the refugees. Bring back Stillshadow.
On the fifth day, humans were silhouetted against the horizon. They bristled as the strangers drew closer, then relaxed when it became clear that the approaching men and women were Ibandi.
The leader was a bald man with rainbows of keloid scar tissue above his brows. Ant remembered him as Zebra Shadow, youngest brother of Water boma’s former leader, Water Chant. He and Ant had gone walkabout in the same year. They had hunted together many times since then.
“Zebra!
” Ant called. “Hold!”
“Fire Ant!” Zebra called. Ant’s old hunting companion dropped to the ground, trembling with fear and wonderment. “Sky Woman told us you died on the mountain!”
“Yes … yes I did,” Fire Ant said. His men watched him carefully. He wondered if they could see beneath his skin, perhaps even read his num-field as did the dream dancers. When he closed his left eye, the dead right socket pulsed red-black, like a cricket chirping in the night. Could they see its heartbeat?
He continued, “But Great Sky had plans for me. Things for me to do in this world. I am not yet finished.”
“We are returning to the Circle,” Zebra said. “The way is too hard.”
Fire Ant nodded. “Is the old woman still alive?”
No need to ask who Ant meant. “She is very weak. Blind. I think she may be mad.”
“Mad?” Fire Ant asked. “How did it happen?”
“She sang the sun to life and was so taken with its beauty that she did not look away. Her face-eyes dimmed. Now, she speaks to the jowk all night.” His face lightened for a moment. “But Sky Woman saved her. She is a mighty dream dancer.”
Fire Ant’s eye narrowed. “She is not the blessed one. Sky Woman did not give us names. She did not dance at our births, did not teach us the sacred songs. She was not Cloud Stalker’s mate. Sky Woman is not worthy. We must bring Stillshadow back or lose our lives and lands.”
“We see the same truth,” Zebra said.
“How long ago was this?” Ant asked.
“Less than a moon.”
Fire Ant squatted, motioning for Zebra to come beside him. He pointed at the earth. “I swear by Father Mountain and Great Mother,” he said. “Come with me, and we will return them to the Circle.”
Chapter Twenty-three
South Wind boma was just three huts within a vine and bamboo circle, nestled between a creek bed and a stand of thorn trees. Dry most of the year, the creek now ran with water and blood.
On most days the children’s play shrieks were the loudest sounds. Tonight, the young ones screamed, but their cries were not those of pleasure and discovery. Tonight, their parents screamed as well, with diminishing strength and increasing despair.
Flat-Nose listened with interest as Dove translated the families’ groans. His third wife kept a thick face as she did her job, speaking as a creature without emotion, sensation or thought. She was learning to be a good female. In time, he might send his second wife to his youngest brother, High Step, and let Dove take her place.
When she was done, Flat-Nose told her to return south to the Mk*tk enclave with one of his hunters as protection. She cried and clung to him, begging to stay, to go with them, but he shook his head.
He cuffed her, bringing water to her eyes. Then he told his brother to take her back.
“But what if you need me?” She sobbed. “You cannot hear their tongue.”
“I am done with talk,” he said. “This next part is not for you.”
Flat-Nose did not look back as they walked on. When he was almost over the next rise he turned, and saw her standing there with High Step. She was half a head shorter than Mk*tk women, narrower of shoulder, smaller in breast and thigh. Mk*tk women braided their hair in a single club worn down the back.
When first captured, Dove had hands of little braids all over her head. After some moons she had begun to unwind them, perhaps intending to wear her hair in the Mk*tk fashion. Flat-Nose had told her no. With her frail features and narrow cheekbones, the strong, blunt Mk*tk hairstyle would have made her look like a child, and Flat-Nose did not sex children.
Ibandi women were so small and weak. Perhaps they were spirits of some kind, and not human beings at all. When he was inside her, he found her slick softness pleasing. When he spent, he found that the emptiness within his loins was no less satisfying than with his own women.
So, perhaps Ibandi men were weaklings, but their women were …
Flat-Nose did not have a word for what they were, but the thought of them, the memory of their scent and skin, made his root swell.
She was a decent woman, who had recognized a true man the first time he entered her. She knew to make pleasing motions with her hips. In time she might bear his child, and then she would be a Mk*tk woman forever.
But it was time to put all thoughts save vengeance from his mind. This was his time. He would travel far and do mighty deeds. And the song that his sons would sing of him would take him past the terrible fangs and down into God Blood’s mighty stomach for all time.
Chapter Twenty-four
Fire Ant walked north.
Hands of days behind him, Flat-Nose traveled north as well.
Frog, T’Cori and the Ibandi had cut west and now were headed back south, following Stillshadow’s vision. Instead of increasing their margin of safety, now every day the distance between them and their enemies decreased. No one knew, or could have known.
But every step any of them took, no matter how fast or slow, now brought all closer together….
Frog bit a chunk of the dried smoked zebra. He took his time chewing it, grinding the tough fibers into mush. They were low on fresh meat again, but to his relief, the travel south had brought slightly better hunting. Families of the striped four-legged grazed a few spear throws away, and a hunting party would set out tomorrow morning, after they had rested.
T’Cori walked at Frog’s left as they followed the banks of a wide, rippling stream deep enough to hold crocodiles and muddy enough to conceal them. They were careful that the children didn’t play too close.
He knew T’Cori was weary, but he was proud of the fact that she rarely showed it. The Leopard twins pulled their sled-bound mother, Stillshadow, behind them. Ten and five tens of Ibandi straggled along behind, low in spirits.
In former days, old Stillshadow could be counted upon to cajole or inspire. Now she barely seemed aware of where they were, or perhaps even of who she was. She could not see, but she cocked her head sideways as if to catch the stream’s rushing voice.
Frog called for rest, then took the twins aside. “We must be careful,” Frog said. “Spearmen! Hold your places.”
“So,” Leopard Eye asked, “this place is shallow enough for us to cross?”
“Yes,” Frog said, “but I think the river has teeth. Be careful.”
T’Cori stared. “You remember what I said happened to Fawn?”
“The crocodile. I remember,” he said. “We will take care.”
They decided not to ford the river there, and traveled on some time, pushing through fear and fatigue, until clearer waters promised safety. A quarter farther along, the stream joined its source river, and here the waters were not muddy. The hunters took their positions at the riverside. Frog watched carefully as his people sloshed to the opposite bank. He noted every shadow, every eddy. The fan of branches floating past… were those merely wood? Or did something with fangs and claws live within or beneath?
Either the predators were absent, or Father Mountain was kind enough to keep them sleeping. No children were lost that day.
Together the Ibandi crossed the plains, the grasslands. Up ridges and through mountain passes T’Cori marched, wheezing with each breath of thinning air.
Each new dawn, T’Cori felt the life within her stir more vigorously. On days when they struggled through the higher passes, between stands of yellow-green brush and fields of grass so spiky it cut through her leathered soles, every step seemed to leech more of her remaining strength … but thinking of the life within drove her on.
“I breathe and breathe,” she groaned, “and still I taste no air.”
“You are strong,” Frog said.
“It feels as if we are on Great Sky again,” T’Cori said. “Remember when even the fire did not warm us?”
“That was a bad time, but Great Sky is far away. We’ll make it. Always.”
Despite the depths of her fatigue, his faith wrung a smile from her. “Because of Frog?”
�
��No,” he replied. “No. Because of Great Sky Woman. Look at their faces. They believe in you, not me. They follow you, not me.”
T’Cori turned her head. Behind them, their people were tired and discouraged but still trudged onward toward an uncertain future. If possible they were even more fatigued and discouraged than she. “They … believe in me?”
“Yes, every one. I more than any other.”
“Without you,” she said, “I could never have climbed the mountain.”
“Listen to me.” His fingers gripped her shoulders. “It was not me. It was not ‘us.’ It was you. You asked me to climb with you. I believed in you and did a thing that I could not do. You say that we must travel north, and I believe you. Stillshadow says we should turn west and south, and every person here looks at you to see if we should believe. You are our strength, don’t you see?”
He placed his hand on the curve of her belly. “You are his strength as well.”
“Hers.” She smiled. “And you are wrong. I am not my daughter’s strength. She is mine.”
Placing one foot before the other and then pushing as hard as he could, Frog hiked up the rise, refusing to listen to his aching legs. Young Bat Wing climbed on ahead, up a wall of hills that ran from east to west almost as far as the eye could see.
Perhaps they could go around this barrier, but Frog was too tired to think, too tired to do anything but keep going and hope that somewhere amid the twisted trees and thornbush there might be something to keep them going.
Around them, some of the more energetic boys and girls ran and laughed, somehow making a game of it all.
Bless them. Had he suddenly become old? Where had his youthful num gone? His legs were straw. As the way steepened the vegetation grew sparser still, rocks poking through the earth to form ridges almost like gray flower petals.
Gray, like his people’s increasingly dusty faces. Like his hopes for the future.
As they crested the hill, the last light of day shone down upon them from the west. The sun was dying, taking with it his dreams. They needed a place to rest, hoped for flat ground to camp upon.
Shadow Valley Page 13
