Broken Rock Bay (Clan of the Ice Mountains Book 3)

by C. S. Bills

  “Good. Thank you.” Attu dropped his load off in the shelter. “I’m going out for more,” he added and headed back into the forest. The trees were whipping in the wind as the storm bore down on them. Attu hurried to gather as much wood as he could before the rain hit.

  A short while later, he returned to their shelter again, his arms loaded with another load of firewood, deadfall from the ground since he’d not wanted to take any time cutting. The first drops of rain slanted across the beach and up into the trees as he stepped inside with his bundle of wood and dropped the shelter flap behind him.

  It rained for three days and nights.

  Chapter 21

  The only good thing to come from the storm was the chance to practice with Keanu. Once Attu got over his initial fear of attempting it, he found it easy to enter Keanu’s mind. Once he slipped in past her guarding, and Attu couldn’t help but feel a slight thrill upon finding himself in the complex world of Keanu’s thoughts and feelings. The next moment she’d booted him out with the equivalence of a mental kick.

  Soantek had laughed as Attu yelped, holding his head from the pain of Keanu’s mental thrusting. That was the only time Attu got in. After that, Keanu repelled him as soon as he tried.

  Attu felt his fear lessoning even more as Keanu worked with him.

  “But being able to get into my mind and having me be able to repel you is just the beginning. Remember that,” Keanu reminded him. Then Attu had to sit as she tried the same thing with Soantek. Attu swore that occasionally Keanu was letting Soantek into her mind for a moment before repelling him, but he couldn’t be sure. He just saw a look pass between them now and then...

  Outside, the rain fell in torrents and the trees tossed in the wind from the ocean. Huge waves rolled up the beach. The massive pines overhead dripped but cut the rain, so they stayed as dry as could be expected.

  Attu walked out on the morning of the third day, when the rain had let up for a while, but the waves still crashed on the beach. Many others were out for a moment, some searching for wood dry enough to burn, others for shellfish. A few cast their lines out. No one could venture out in the skin boats yet, and another mass of dark clouds was headed their way.

  “The children grow restless. The women, too,” Ubantu said. He walked with Attu along the shore, looking out at the breakers and the next line of storms. “It’s like the Seers’ camp only the storms are more violent,” Ubantu said. “Do you think it’s always like this?”

  “The Nukeena said they saw storms that lasted more than a day only in the spring and the early fall times, like now.” Attu bent to pick up a piece of driftwood. Sheltered under an overhang of rock and high up on the beach, it had remained drier than most of what he’d been able to find.

  “We need to keep heading north,” Ubantu said.

  Attu grinned at his father’s petulant tone.

  “I know,” Ubantu added. “I sound like a child. But lately, your mother has been...” His father stopped. Attu knew Ubantu hadn’t meant to speak of Yural like that to his son.

  “Rika is, too. More...”

  “I know.” Ubantu looked to the line of storms heading their way. “And I worry about her. We best get back to our beautiful if somewhat difficult women who will soon bear us both strong children.”

  They turned and headed back toward the shelters. “How does your training go with Keanu?” Ubantu asked.

  “Slowly,” Attu said.

  “You said it would take much practice.” Ubantu reached for a dry branch under an overhanging limb near the edge of the trees.

  Attu tried to hide his frustration from his father, but he knew he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. “It will take much time. I’m thankful to the spirits that the rain has given Keanu a chance to learn her defensive steps these last few days, but right now it’s really her training herself. All I do is try to enter her mind and get kicked out. And Keanu says that’s me making progress...” He shook his head and glanced at his father.

  “What is it like, my son? I’m curious to know.” Ubantu sat on a fallen log at the edge of the forest. “We have some more time before the next storm hits. And...” he paused, “I’m really in no hurry to return to your mother’s shelter. I know she is fine, and she’s probably glad I’m gone for a while.”

  Attu laughed and sat beside Ubantu. “Keanu explains it like using your mind as if it were a bubble on the water. You take that bubble, and with your spirit you move it up and into the animal. Your spirit doesn’t stay with the bubble, however, or you would die. It returns immediately to your body, keeping you alive while your mind moves with the animal. You are within the animal, but sill within the bubble of your mind.”

  “How can a bubble keep you safe?” Ubantu asked.

  “Perhaps a bubble is not a good way of explaining,” Attu said. “Think of it like a hide ball. Your mind is in the ball, and the ball protects your mind from moving out into the mind of the animal fully, becoming one mind with it.” He scratched his bare toe in the sand, making patterns as he talked. “But like a bubble, your mind can see through its protection and can use the animal’s eyes and ears to see what you need to see.”

  “Can you control the animal?” Ubantu’s face took on an uncommon expression of desire. It unsettled Attu, but he explained what Keanu had taught.

  Ubantu popped his lips. “That is why Keanu wouldn’t use her Gift to tell her brother where to find the animals...”

  “And one of the reasons she wanted to come with Suanu. Some of her people were always pressuring her to call the tuskies to their hunters. She tried to explain to them that if somehow the animals sensed they were being called to their deaths, they would no longer allow themselves to be taken. Not even in a regular hunt. It would be punishment for their kind being dishonored. They must come of their own will.”

  “And if they stopped coming, her people would starve.”

  “Yes.”

  “I must admit, my son, for a moment that’s exactly what I was thinking,” Ubantu said. “Using the Gift to call animals in the hunt.” He lowered his head. “I thought how easy it would be to hunt animals when you could enter their minds and make them come to you.”

  Attu saw the shame in his father’s eyes. “I think any hunter would have the same idea, at least until they knew why they must not.” Attu didn’t add that he’d never thought of it himself. When he’d been one with the falcon, he’d had the falcon’s desires, not his own. He’d tried to explain this to Keanu, but Attu was beginning to think that Keanu had never experienced what he had. She had naturally kept herself safe within her mind bubble.

  Attu shrugged. “Of course I haven’t had a chance to try any of this, and won’t for a very long time.”

  “But still, it is amazing,” Ubantu said, and grinned at his son. “You must be patient.”

  “We all must,” Attu said as the first raindrops hit again. “At least until after the storm passes. Then we can be on our way again.” Attu tried to sound cheerful, as his father was. There was no reason to wallow in self-pity. There was much to do, and he would do what he could as Elder Nuanu had always told him, and trust in the spirits for the rest.

  On the fourth day the rains stopped and the sky shone a crisp blue from horizon to horizon. But the waves still broke in huge masses on the shore and there would be no traveling. Attu spent time in the morning with Keanu and Soantek, practicing what they’d learned during the storm.

  “I have made faster progress in defending my mind than I thought I would,” Keanu said. “I feel ready to have you each take turns entering my mind and practicing holding your thoughts within the mental bubble I’ve explained about.”

  Soantek motioned for Attu to go first. Each of them took several turns entering Keanu’s mind, working to hold their thoughts within their mental bubbles.

  “No, Attu,” Keanu said a while later. “Keep your thoughts observing only. Inside the bubble.”

  “Ouch!” Attu yelped as Keanu kicked him out of her hea
d. To his surprise, part of their instruction had been to try and see what Keanu was seeing and hearing.

  “Just my senses,” she said. “No further into my mind. Do you think I’d let you roam around anywhere inside my head?” She’d snorted. “This is the only way I can tell if your defensive bubble is working and if you’re observing without leaking.”

  Leaking is what Keanu called Attu’s or Soantek’s thoughts slipping out of the bubble and into her own thoughts. Leaking was a very bad thing. Soantek hadn’t leaked his thoughts at all. “But you leak everywhere!” Keanu said. And every time Attu did, she had a way of spearing his thoughts, making them retreat back into himself as a sharp prick hit him behind his eyes. After the first few times it made him angry, both at himself and at Keanu.

  Attu knew Keanu was frustrated with his inability to hold his thoughts in a tight protective bubble. She blamed it on the first time he’d blended with the falcon, and Attu thought part of her anger was at herself, for what she’d done in his dream to make him blend.

  “But you didn’t know I’d be able to receive the Gift,” Attu had argued with her.

  “I should have done a better job of protecting you,” was Keanu’s reply.

  “Do it again,” she ordered, and Attu pushed himself, in spite of the turmoil of his own thoughts, to order himself, coat himself with a protective layer like he coated the seams of his skins boat with the pine tree’s sticky clear blood, and push his mind into Keanu’s.

  I’ll never learn this, he thought. “Ouch!” he cried.

  “Then stop leaking!”

  “I got one!” Ganik pulled in the large sunset fish, the smaller children around him squealing with delight at his catch.

  “I’ll take it to Mother.”

  Attu smiled as Ganik and his little sister, Tishria, haggled over who would carry the prize to their mother. Attu’s head ached from his practice with Keanu. He’d been relieved when Keanu had called a halt to the day’s practice a short while ago. It was good to be out in the afternoon sun.

  “The women are in charge of the meat once it’s been caught.” The little girl drew Attu’s attention again.

  “The hunter brings the meat back to the shelter and gives it to the woman.” Her brother grabbed the fish from Tishria and wrested it from her grasp. The little girl fell backward onto the sharp gravel.

  “Ooow,” she cried, and dissolved in tears.

  Attu moved forward but Tingiyok, who’d come up beside him, laid his hand on the small boy’s shoulder first. “Always keep the women in your shelter happy.” He held out a hand to Tishria, helping her up and smiling at her before turning to the boy once again. “Remember. Like your father does,” he added, giving Ganik a serious look before winking at him.

  Ganik frowned. “Mother has not been happy since–” He snapped his mouth shut and glanced sideways at his sister. Ganik had apparently remembered he was not to speak of the baby gone Between in front of her. He took in a deep breath and said, “Yes, Elder Tingiyok.”

  Ganik turned to Tishria. “You may help me carry it.”

  Tishria brushed the dirt off her scratched hands and smiled broadly.

  Attu watched as the two of them balanced the huge fish between them and worked their way up the beach and back to their shelter, praying that soon all would be right with Veshria again. She needs to be in the Here and Now, Attuanin, for these two precious children. May her name spirit help her put her grief and guilt aside.

  “We leave tomorrow,” Tingiyok said, looking out at the ocean. “The waves will be down.”

  Attu wasn’t sure the Elder was right, but he nodded anyway. “I will tell the others to prepare.”

  Always keep your Elders happy, too. Attu smiled at his joke.

  I heard that, Tingiyok grunted.

  I let you, Attu lied.

  A short while later, Attu was working on a small tear in the hide of his skin boat when a woman’s scream pierced the air.

  “Ganik! No!” It was Veshria, and she was running along the edge of the beach toward an area of high rocks jutting far out into the bay to the north.

  “What is it, what happened?” Rika yelled as she began running as well, cutting Veshria off and grabbing her.

  “You shouldn’t be running, yet. Not so soon after–”

  But as Attu reached the two women, Veshria ripped away from Rika and plunged into the water. “He’s fallen off the rocks! I told him not to climb them. He’ll drown!” Veshria screamed as a huge wave knocked her down into the roiling mass of water and sand near the shore.

  Attu raced in after her, pulling her to her feet as Veshria beat on him, trying to get further into the water to save her son.

  Attu saw the young boy desperately trying to swim among the rocks. Any moment he could be thrown up against one and pulled under.

  Help! Attu felt Rika’s mental shout in his mind as he let Veshria go at the edge of the water and ran for his skin boat. He saw Tingiyok running for his as well, further up the beach.

  Veshria collapsed to the sand and sobbed uncontrollably. In his peripheral vision, Attu saw other women running toward her.

  How can we reach Ganik in time, in these waves? He mind spoke to Tingiyok as the two of them launched their crafts into the bay, fighting the rolling waves to get away from shore. And what do we do if we can reach him?

  Attu thought they might be able to get a rope to the boy if he was still above water when they got to him. If Ganik had already gone under, he would probably be lost. Attu could flip his own boat and try to dive for the boy, but he had little hope of finding him in this swirling current. They’d probably both drown.

  But we have to try. Attu paddled harder.

  Then Attu saw a mental image of Keanu falling limp in the sand near the other women. What is she doing? he mind spoke to Rika, who had shown him what was happening.

  I think she’s getting help, Rika answered him.

  Attu approached the last place he’d seen Ganik’s hand above the waves. The boy was nowhere in sight, but Attu felt a mental push in his direction and turned in the skin boat to see Ganik clinging to a seal’s flippers, trying to climb on top of it in his desperation not to drown.

  Keanu!

  Ganik was fighting so hard to stay afloat that it was all the large seal could do to hold the boy up.

  A wave crashed across the bow of Attu’s skin boat, and he felt the stern of his boat lifting him high. He barely maintained his balance, scrambling to keep the skin boat from overturning.

  Tingiyok came up on his other side and thrust his paddle out for Ganik to grasp, but the boy was too scared to let go of the seal.

  The seal turned in the water and began swimming slowly toward shore. As it swam, the water in the bay seemed to calm, the waves lessening some, and as Attu rode the crest of the next one he could see that the entire bay was calming even though the wind still blew and out in the ocean the whitecaps still rolled.

  What’s happening? he asked Tingiyok.

  It must be Soantek, the Elder answered, or a miracle of the spirits. Or both.

  The seal was making mewling cries as it swam. Its eyes were white around the edges, and it seemed to be trying to both swim toward shore and turn away at the same time, making its progress now angled away from the shore instead of straight for the beach.

  Clearly the seal was terrified. A human was riding it, and two others were far too close. Attu remembered what Keanu said about the free will of all life and knew she would soon have to release control of the seal or it would wrest control back from her anyway and pull out of Ganik’s grip, diving to escape. If Ganik went under again, he might not come back up.

  Attu leaped out of the boat before Tingiyok decided to try for the boy first. He dove and came up between Ganik and the seal, pulling Ganik’s hands from the animal. Ganik cried out when the seal dove and he lost contact with the animal. Ganik turned and began clawing his way up Attu instead, dragging him under the water.

  Attu was afraid to push Gan
ik away, so he allowed himself to go under, counting on the fact that Ganik would loosen his hold and fight to stay above water. It worked. The boy let go of him as they went under, turning from him and fighting to paddle hard enough to push his head back out of the water. As Attu came up as well, Tingiyok was holding out his paddle.

  Ganik grabbed on to it. He pulled at the paddle, attempting to lift himself up, as if to climb into the boat.

  “No!” Attu shouted as he swam near Ganik, careful to stay out of the boy’s reach. “Calm down,” he said, his voice as full of authority as he could make it. “Hold the paddle. Rest.”

  Whether Ganik had heard him or was just growing too weak to fight anymore, the boy held on to the paddle and stopped trying to climb in. Ganik’s eyes were as wild as the seal’s had been, but he was no longer gulping for air or flailing.

  “Good.” Attu moved closer to Ganik, ready to grab him if the boy’s hands slipped off the paddle. Several other skin boats headed in their direction, Ganik’s father, Rusik, in the lead. The man’s boat was large and had an outrigger. Attu just had to help the boy stay calm for a few moments longer, and they would be able to get him out of the water.

  “Now this is what we’re going to do,” he said.

  Chapter 22

  Attu sat across from Veshria and Rusik in their shelter later that night. Ganik was sleeping soundly as the fire burned low and Rusik held Veshria’s hand. Attu sipped the warm beverage she’d made for him.

  “She entered that seal’s body, didn’t she?” Veshria said. “She made the seal keep my boy from disappearing down to Attuanin’s kingdom forever.” Veshria shuddered, clasping Rusik’s hand even more tightly. “Attu, I need to tell you some–”