by Jenna Kernan
They did not laugh at his antics now. In fact, they shrank away from Falling Otter and his terrible blessings. Clearly the heyoka of the Low River tribe did not believe that their council had reached the correct decision. He made such a fuss, clanging the pot on his own head and shouting that none noticed as Night Storm made his way through the gawking gathering of Low River, Shallow Water, Wind Basin and Black Lodges people.
But Sky noticed. She followed him and clasped his arm. He looked at her with eyes that seemed already dead.
“Let me go, Skylark.”
“I will not.”
He pulled free.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
Storm paused and turned back to her. “Did you not hear. I am banished from my people.”
“Then come to mine.”
He scowled at her as if she were the heyoka.
“Go away, Sky. Go and have the life that you deserve.”
She reached out for him. “She let you go. You have no other woman. We can marry again.”
He laughed.
She clung tighter. “If you marry me again, you can stay in my lodge. I will make one for us.”
He faced her. “From what? I will not bring you any hides because I cannot hunt.”
“I will trade my medicines for hides. We can live with my aunt and uncle until I have enough.”
It was so tempting, her offer. He wanted nothing more in the wide world than to live with Skylark as her husband. But this was the daughter of the shaman of the Low River People. And he was a man who had lost everything.
He shook his head and peeled her fingers from his arm. “No.”
He had his lost place among his people and the woman he loved, all in one day.
“You have drifted from your path. We will find a new one. We just need to find a new purpose for you.”
“Like painting shields for other warriors or making saddles? No, Skylark. That is not my path.”
He turned to go and then remembered his belongings were in the lodge of her shaman and changed direction. He would take his horse, Gallop, and his weapons. He might last until the deep cold of the Empty Belly Moon.
“You will not stay?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then I will come with you.”
He stilled, turned and drew her up by her shoulders. “I have not asked you.”
Nor would he, because he cared too much for her to let her throw her life away.
She gave him her most stubborn look. “I will follow you.”
They stood at an impasse. He knew she could follow him. She was a very skillful tracker and the most determined woman he had ever met.
“Why?” he asked. “Why will you not stay here in safety with the family who loves you? Why will you not let the shaman claim you as his daughter and then take your pick of the best of the warriors from the Crow people? Why will you not take the life you have always wanted?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Because they do not keep my heart.”
His eyes widened and his fingers slipped from her upper arms. The reason he was sending her away was the reason she would not go and the realization that she loved him changed nothing. He felt his own heart tear into pieces.
“Oh, Skylark. I am sorry...for us both.”
She threw herself into his arms and he allowed himself the comfort of her embrace. Just a moment longer and then he would let her go.
“Skylark!”
She drew away from him and he lifted his head to see the wife of the shaman of the Low River people, Starlight Woman, hurrying toward them at a trot.
“You must come. Our chief’s son is dying.”
“I will get my medicines,” said Skylark.
She stepped away from Storm and then paused as if realizing that he would take this opportunity to leave her. She gave him a pleading stare that cut into his tattered heart.
“You, too,” said Starlight Woman to Night Storm.
“Me? Why?” he asked. Was this some trick to keep him?
“Because my husband told me to find you both even if I had to interrupt the tribal council of the Black Lodges.”
That made Night Storm and Skylark straighten. As far as he knew, no woman had ever interrupted a gathering of tribal leadership. It was not done and showed the seriousness of Starlight Woman’s mission.
“Quick now,” said the messenger, and trotted back the way she had come.
Night Storm and Skylark ran after her and did not stop until they had reached the lodge of the chief of the Low River people, Bright Arrow.
From inside came a moaning of someone in great pain.
“Who is ill?” asked Skylark.
“The chief’s youngest boy,” answered Starlight Woman.
“A boy,” said Skylark, her brow wrinkling. “A child.” She turned to Night Storm. “What did you tell me about a boy who was ill? You said you saw a young child. What did you see?”
* * *
“It might not be that child. The one I saw was barely out of his mother’s cradleboard.”
Skylark called a greeting and the door flap was thrust open by a slim hand. Sacred smoke from both sage and sweetgrass billowed from the opening. Sky ducked in before him. He followed, taking a moment as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. The second inner hide had already been set about the bottom third of the lodge. This would keep the family warmer during the time of cold by trapping air between the inner and outer walls of hide, but it was unusual to have already filled the gap with dried grasses. The result was a very dark interior since the fire was no more than embers.
Sky was already kneeling beside the small prone figure of a boy dressed only in a loincloth. His skin was covered with beads of water as if he were inside a sweat lodge. Sky’s back blocked his view of the child’s face, but he appeared to be only two or three winters old.
Storm looked at the others gathered near. There was Bright Arrow, looking grave and worried. Gone was his usual air of authority and power for he was faced with a foe he could not fight. Beside him was his wife, with her hands pressed over her eyes as she cried. It was her moans that he had heard from outside the lodge for the boy was still as death and pale as the chalk that clung to the muddy places in the river.
At the head of the gathering was Spirit Bear. He held a turtle rattle in one hand and a smoking bundle of sweetgrass in the other. He ceased his prayers as he noted Night Storm and bowed his head to him in a way that one would use to honor an elder. His actions confused Storm mightily. He did not know why he had been summoned here. He had no healing gifts and had no idea what use he might be.
Sky asked several questions to the wife of the chief. How long had he been ill? Where did he take ill? Did she see a snake? What had he eaten and drank? Had he complained of any pain before losing consciousness?”
Sky folded at the waist and listened to the boy’s heart. Then she quickly removed the boy’s loincloth and searched him for any sign of injury or bite. Storm moved closer as Sky smelled the boy’s breath and then checked inside his mouth. There she found something partially eaten, but the greenish mash on her finger was unidentifiable.
She looked to him, but he shrugged, helpless as all the rest.
“Is it poison?” Skylark asked him.
He looked from her to the boy, seeing his face for the first time. He did not know him. But in that moment it was as if someone struck him in the head again. Everything around him vanished as he again experienced the dream he had seen twice in two different falls. A boy, this boy, playing in a shady grove. His mother gathering wild cherries for drying. This child found a grove of berries, too. White ones, each with a black spot so that they resembled an eyeball. The boy picked one and tried the fruit, smiled and then hurried to gather a handful, plucking the tiny
beads from their bright red stems and eating one after another. He collected another handful and returned to his mother to tell her of his find, but then he pressed a hand to his chest and dropped to his knees. The berries he had gathered for his mother fell from his hands and disappeared into the tall yellow grass.
“Storm!”
He blinked his eyes. Skylark was beside him, gripping his shoulders and shouting.
“It’s him.” His words were slow and strange to his ears.
“What?” she said.
“I saw him. The boy from my visions.”
Sky straightened and turned to the shaman. “He sees things when he falls.”
“Yes,” said Spirit Bear. “I know. He has the aura of a farseeing man.”
Had their shaman known all along? But now Night Storm’s mind refocused. He knew this boy and he knew why he was summoned. What he did not know was how to save him.
“He ate berries in the woods.”
“Cherries,” said his mother.
“No. White with a single black mark growing on a deep red stem.”
Sky gave a little shout of terror. “Baneberry!”
Both the shaman and Skylark shot into action. Skylark rolled the boy to his side and shoved two fingers down his throat, while Spirit Bear scraped charcoal from a burnt log into a horn cup and mixed it with water. The boy gagged and vomited as the remains of the berries in his stomach came up and out.
The boy was gasping now, his eyes fluttering. He looked about and called for his mother. The shaman gave the cup to the woman and she held it to her boy’s lips. He drank, wretched and threw up again. This time the shaman gave him water and then Skylark made him vomit again. At last the boy was weeping and clinging to his mother. But he was awake. Sky listened to his chest from his narrow back.
“Slow,” she said.
“He will be sick,” said Spirit Bear. “But he will not die. Thanks to this healer and this farseeing man.”
Storm found all eyes staring at him with looks of wonder.
“I just...he was the boy from my dream.”
The shaman laughed and Bright Arrow dragged Night Storm into a fierce embrace. When he released him, the chief said, “I am in your debt, Night Storm. You need only ask and I will do all I can for you.”
Night Storm looked to Skylark, who lifted her gaze at him and nodded.
“I don’t understand any of this,” said Night Storm.
Now it was the shaman who spoke. “We do not always choose our path. Sometimes the path chooses us.”
Skylark rested a hand over Storm’s.
Spirit Bear spoke. “You are not a warrior, Night Storm. You are a shaman. And, in time, you will be a very powerful one. But first we must teach you to call the visions, instead of letting them call you.”
“Is that possible?”
“Anything is possible. Skylark says that she already kept you from falling by covering both eyes. We know that the visions are summoned by flashing light. We will find the answer with time. Come, you and I must talk.”
They left the lodge together—Bright Arrow, the Shaman and Night Storm. Skylark remained to help watch over the boy who had ceased his crying and was now sleeping in his mother’s arms.
* * *
Night Storm emerged into sunlight to join the two leaders of the Low River people. He thought he should tell them what had happened in the council of the Black Lodges. He cleared his throat and then formally told them of the decision of his tribal council to banish him. When he was finished, the men exchanged a look and then Bright Arrow spoke.
“You are welcome in my camp. We would be honored to have such a powerful seer among us.”
Spirit Bear took charge of Night Storm and as they walked together, the shaman said, “We must find you a new name, one that suits your status as a shaman and one that you perhaps already have chosen?”
Storm nodded, remembering his vision quest and the first creature he had seen. The one he had tried to deny ever since that time.
“I see owls. I hear owls and I am followed by owls.”
The old shaman did not draw away in horror. “It is a powerful spirit animal and appropriate for one who speaks to ghosts.”
“Is that what I do?” he asked.
“Ghosts or perhaps to those who have crossed. The veil between these worlds is never parted for long. But I have seen it lift for those who are close to crossing the spirit road. Most of these souls I have sung to their death. Some have told me what they saw before crossing, but none has ever come back from the ghost road except for you.”
Night Storm felt the rightness of what this holy man was telling him, but still he suffered the tug of what might have been.
“I was going to be like my father, the head of my medicine lodge and a warrior with many coups.”
“But that is no longer your path.”
He slowed and the shaman stopped beside him.
“I do not know how to be a holy man.”
“I will teach you and you will teach me. When I go to the Spirit Road, it will be good to have you sing me to the other side.”
His predecessor, Night Storm realized. Spirit Bear was offering to make him shaman of the Low River people.
“But I am not Low River.”
“And neither was I until I took a wife.”
“I have no wife,” he said, the regret tightening his stomach.
“Ah, well. I may not be a farseeing man, but I see that you will not be without a wife for very long.”
Storm’s eyes widened as he realized that Sky could now be his. If he were a shaman, if he could learn from this holy man, he could take a wife. Not just a wife—he could marry Skylark, the daughter of Spirit Bear.
“I have to go see her,” he said.
The shaman took hold of his elbow and set them in motion in the opposite direction. “Soon, soon. But first we shall have some tea.”
It was more than tea, of course. First there was much talk and then his education began, and well before he saw the winter camp again, over a moon had passed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The drums pounded as the men danced around the central fire. Skylark attended the gathering to celebrate the making of meat. The hunt had been good. The tribes of the Crow people had worked together to bring down many buffaloes. The men had been very brave and only two horses had been killed by the horns of the sacred bison. Hides had been collected, meat made and eaten and dried. The frost had crept over the land as the Winter Camp Moon turned to the Story Moon.
Only one moon ago she and Storm had saved Bright Arrow’s boy from death. Then, the following day, her father had claimed her publically. His words were bittersweet, for as she stood at the shaman’s side, she saw the tears of Falling Otter. Just this once she thought that instead of joy, she saw some sorrow there in his eyes. Since that day she was the target of many calf eyes from many of the single warriors. But the one man she craved had not come to court her.
Skylark wished she could share her aunt’s triumph at this turn of events, but instead she felt only a deep sadness, punctuated by disquiet. Perhaps she was heyoka, after all.
It all stemmed from Night Storm. After Spirit Bear had claimed her as his child, he and Night Storm had left the winter camp.
When would he come back? Was he all right? How could Storm go on a vision quest when he was ill and the weather was so cold? These questions spun like dried leaves in her mind at night, keeping her from rest. She lost her appetite but not her purpose. In the absence of Spirit Bear, she was very busy with the injuries and illnesses of the Low River people and even saw some of the Black Lodges women. Now that she was the shaman’s daughter, some of the Black Lodges people sought her out, including an annoying number of young warriors who had no real injuries at all bu
t requested salves and tinctures for aching muscles and twisted joints. Some offered to play their flutes for her. Her aunt urged her to step out into the night with several young men, but she remained in her sleeping robes and in the lodge of her aunt.
She had broken her link with the moon twice since Night Storm’s departure, so she knew she did not carry Storm’s child. The realization only added to her sorrow.
This night there was a celebration for their hunt and she sat with her aunt watching the married women dance in a slow proud circle. Finally the drums ceased and another song began. She watched the wives leave the circle before the great blazing fire as the maidens took their place. Sky sighed and looked at the heavens above.
“Enough moping,” said her aunt. “Get up and dance with the unmarried women. Let them all see the shaman’s only daughter.”
Winter Moon poked her in the ribs until Skylark rose to her feet and joined the assembling circle of maidens. But as she danced, instead of seeing the smiling faces of the single men, she saw the married women, sitting with their children. Would he ever come back?
The dance went round and round, like the days and the seasons and the circle of a woman’s life. Finally the drums ceased and she could safely return to her place beside her aunt. The warrior dance was next and she watched the men leap and spin, showing their prowess. Among them was one small woman, Snow Raven, the chief’s sister. Snow Raven pounded the ground with her feet. In her hair were the coup feathers that marked her right to join the others, for she was a fearsome warrior and a leader of great experience. She showed Skylark by example that it was possible to follow one’s heart and be what she wished. Beside her danced her husband Iron Wolf. Somehow Snow Raven had become a warrior and made her warrior one of the Crow people. This was no small task as Iron Wolf had been born to the enemy Sioux. All knew the story and Sky had heard it many times. How Snow Raven’s grandmother had adopted this man to replace one who was lost in battle and how their shaman had washed away all his Sioux blood making him one of the Crow people. They were not like any other couple among them, and it was that very thing that made them important. Somehow that warrior was willing to leave the people of his birth to be with the woman he loved.
