“Only you.”
Peyewik didn’t know why, but the thought of going before the council of elders made the cold creep back into his chest.
“You have bathed today?” Muhkrentharne asked. “Cleaned your body and sung your prayers?”
“I am afraid of the river,” Peyewik said, remembering the water filling his lungs.
“I will go with you. We will sing to the river spirit and wash away all of the bad spirits. You will feel better.”
Later that evening Peyewik did feel better as he followed his grandfather to the house of the chief of the Original People. He had never been inside the chief’s house, which was the biggest in the village besides the Ceremony House, and he felt very important as he pushed through the doorflap.
But then the thirteen elders seated around the fire in the center of the house all turned to look at him, and all he wanted to do was hide. As Muhkrentharne guided him to their place in the circle, he caught sight of Old Woman Menukan, who gave him a reassuring smile. They sat just to the right of the chief, and Peyewik couldn’t help peering curiously around his grandfather at the man the people said was the greatest hunter they had ever known.
Chief Okahoki’s hair stood in a fierce crest on top of his head, and the bones of animals he had killed hung from the skinny braids at the nape of his neck. It was said his hunting skills were so great that animal spirits considered it an honor to have him wear their bones.
With a small shock, Peyewik realized that the chief was looking back at him. To his even greater shock, the chief gave him a wink and a small smile. Then the elders began to sing their opening prayer.
Manito, we the elders of the Original People thank you for the many years of our lives, and all that we have learned,
Though our knowledge of this world and the others is small compared to yours,
Tonight we ask you for wisdom, and that we may recognize it when it comes.
“Honored Elders,” Okahoki said when the prayer ended, “since the time of my grandfathers, there have been stories from the north of a pale-skinned people who sailed across the Great Water. I had seen no proof of these stories until yesterday when some of the Pale Ones came close to our village and tried to harm two of our children. When they went away they left one behind, a girl with hair the color of flames. This girl is a man-killer. We are here tonight to decide what to do about her and about the other Pale Ones who may return,” Okahoki said.
Without waiting to be sure the chief had finished, Old Man Chikinum spoke up. “If she is a man-killer, she has been corrupted by Snakebrother, and we must send her away!”
Some of the elders shifted nervously at the mention of Snakebrother. Peyewik had never heard him spoken of except in stories. Snake was Manito’s brother, and he was jealous of Manito’s love for his children, the People. In the stories, Snake was always trying to make trouble for the People. There had been no new stories of Snakebrother for many generations.
After a polite pause, Muhkrentharne said, “If we send her away now, she will die.”
“This does not trouble me,” Old Man Chikinum snapped.
“Manito does not want us to harm any of his children—plant, animal, or human—without good reason,” Muhkrentharne said.
“We have a good reason!” Old Man Chikinum declared. “She brings Snakebrother among the People. She is dangerous.”
“We do not know for certain that she is dangerous,” Muhkrentharne said. “My grandson saw her in a dream, and she saved his life.”
Peyewik could feel everyone looking at him again and stared down at the earthen floor.
“You were there?” Old Man Chikinum asked Muhkrentharne. “You saw her save his life? Why should we listen to the stories of a boy? Especially this boy, who is visited by too many spirits. Maybe he is visited by bad spirits who spread Snakebrother’s lies.”
Peyewik wished he could sink into the ground. Beside him, Muhkrentharne grew very still. There was a beat of silence, and then his grandfather spoke, slowly and calmly.
“The spirits bring my grandson guidance that the People need. We must listen to him.”
A murmur went around the room. Now the elders were not only staring at him, but talking about him as well, and Peyewik felt the cold ache in his chest again.
“You must tell us your dream, little one,” the chief said.
Peyewik’s tongue felt frozen in his mouth.
“Do not be afraid,” the chief said. “Some of those here have not treated you with the respect due to one who brings a dream before the council.” He gave Old Man Chikinum a hard look. “Dreams often contain messages from the spirits. It is the duty of the council of elders to help the dreamer understand these messages.”
Peyewik suddenly became aware of many presences around the chief. They were the animal spirits who honored him. Old Man Chikinum and the elders faded away and Peyewik spoke only to Okahoki and his spirits.
“I have dreamed about the Pale Ones twice. The first time, I saw them through the eyes of Vulture,” Peyewik said, remembering the feel of the wind in his wings, the smell of the rotten marsh and the blood below. “I saw the flame-haired girl surrounded by the bodies of other Pale Ones. She was the only one left alive, and she was hurt. The second time I saw through the eyes of Fox, and I saw other Pale Ones.” He remembered Fox’s sense of urgency and danger. “Fox was trying to warn me that these men were coming and that they were dangerous. These were the men who attacked me and Chingwe. I think Flame Hair chased these men away and saved me from Sky Eyes…from the one who tried to drown me.”
He stopped talking and looked around nervously. When it was clear he had nothing more to say, the chief addressed the elders. “You have heard what I have heard. You are the elders. What do you advise?”
“I dreamed I was eating fish stew last night,” Old Man Chikinum grumbled. “Maybe this is a message from the spirits, and I should tell it to the council…”
“Be quiet, you old turkey!” Old Woman Menukan cut him short. “I cannot tell whether you are talking or farting. They are the same with you. Too loud, too much gas.”
Peyewik stifled a giggle and felt a wave of affection for the tiny, old lady.
The chief’s mouth twitched towards a grin, and he said, “Tell us what you think, Grandmother.”
“We must pay attention to the boy’s dreams,” she said. “I sing to the spirits often, and while I do not hear their reply as loudly as this boy does, my old bones have felt a change coming. The spirits showed Peyewik this girl, and she saved him. She is now part of the story of the Original People.”
Peyewik didn’t know how to feel about this. Some of the elders were nodding in agreement, while others had concerns that they voiced until Chief Okahoki held up a hand for silence.
“Flame Hair has done the People a service by rescuing one of our children from the men who attacked him. We must return that service by allowing her to heal. I propose that when she is strong enough, we send her back to her people with a message never to come here again. That will be her part in our story. She will heal among us, and then she will go and keep the Pale Ones and Snakebrother from us.”
“She does not speak our language,” an elder pointed out.
“People say there are some among the Away People, our brothers and sisters to the south, who speak the language of the Pale Ones,” the chief said. “I will send a message to the chief of the Away People and ask him to send one of them to us. Does the council agree?” He turned to Muhkrentharne on his right.
“Let it be done,” Muhkrentharne replied.
“Let it be done,” said the elder next to him.
Peyewik watched the vote go around the circle. When it got to Old Man Chikinum, he scowled but mumbled his assent. When all had voted in favor of Okahoki’s plan, the council sang prayers of thanks for Manito’s guidance. Peyewik could tell the elders were relieved. He knew that all they wanted was to get back to life as it had been before Flame Hair and the Pale Ones appeared. He kne
w this because it was what he wanted as well. Unlike the elders, though, he felt no sense of relief. All he felt was the cold clutching at his heart.
rib leaned against the outer wall of the old man’s hut to catch her breath. The bullet wound in her shoulder and the sword cut on her leg were both throbbing, and where she wasn’t in pain, she was shaking with exhaustion.
The old man was sitting in his usual place beside the flap that served as a door to the hut. He puffed on his pipe and watched her placidly, offering no help as she struggled to lower herself to the ground beside him, which was fine with Trib.
“I may not be able to swing a sword or even take a few steps without getting winded,” she muttered. “But by ’Dess, I can sit on my own ass without help.” She dropped the last few inches onto her backside, groaning at the jolt.
“’Dess-damned bag of bones,” she said, thumping her uninjured leg impatiently. “I need to be getting stronger faster. I’ve been here too long.”
She turned to the old man and said, “I reckon it’s been what? Three weeks, maybe four?”
The old man gave her the same response he gave her every time she spoke to him, gazing at her calmly and saying nothing. Trib knew he didn’t speak her language, but she found it helped her work out her thoughts, as well as pass the time, if she talked to him anyway.
“I have to get back to my people,” she explained. “I need to get word to the Scath about that ambush I told you about, the one that gave me these injuries. She doesn’t know there are Puritanics here in the south.”
The old man exhaled a puff of smoke and looked away from Trib to the large, fenced-in garden nearby.
“When we sailed down here from the north, we left some people on the bay where our ship landed. Warriors, manservants, and some priestesses. They were supposed to be building an encampment while we were gone on the mapmaking expedition. If I could get back to them, they could get word to the Scath, and help me track down the bastards that killed my friends.”
The old man was watching some women and children harvest beans.
Trib waved a dismissive hand at the garden. “Where I come from men do all that kind of thing,” she said. “Leave the important work to the women…”
A woman carrying a basket of vegetables left the garden and headed for the center of the village. As she passed the old man’s hut, the old man raised a hand in greeting. The woman looked at Trib nervously and hurried by without returning the wave.
“Not very friendly, is she?” Trib observed. She turned once more to the old man. “Reckon you could give me back my clothes and sword soon?”
She had been provided with a robe and leggings made of animal skins. While she was glad that it covered her completely, since many of the Natives, women included, went around bare-chested, she would’ve preferred her waistcoat and breeches.
“Just so you know,” she added, “I ain’t leaving here without that sword. It goes against the Scath’s warrior code to lose a weapon. I’ll tear this place apart to find it, if I have to.”
Unperturbed, the old man took the pipe out of his mouth, knocked the ashes from the bowl, and stood up far more nimbly than Trib could’ve managed.
She squinted up at him. “I reckon you did a good job of patching me up,” she said, “but you got no talent for conversation.”
The old man headed for the garden without a word or a backward glance.
Trib watched him go and half-wished her hallucination of the Scath would come back, just so she’d have someone to talk to. She sighed and leaned back against the hut. From where she sat she had an unobstructed view of the garden and the outer edge of the village. She watched the Natives going about their daily business and wondered what the Scath would make of them. There were Natives in the north, but Trib had never seen them up close. There had been rumors about the Puritanics forming alliances with the northern Natives, but no one took them seriously. The northern Natives were too peaceful and few in numbers to be a threat to the New Murians. These southern Natives didn’t appear any different.
Trib thought there were about a hundred of them, living in thirty or so huts of various shapes and sizes. She wasn’t certain about the number because the Natives all looked the same to her—coppery skin, dark hair and eyes, minimal clothing—and she wasn’t sure which ones she had already counted. That, and she wasn’t good with numbers over twenty.
The huts were surrounded on three sides by trees, but the concealing underbrush had been cleared away. There were no fences or palisades, and the lack of defenses made Trib nervous, her palm itching for her missing weapon. The Natives, whose only weapons appeared to be hunting bows and tools, appeared to feel perfectly safe as they moved to and fro with children or baskets on their hips. The only thing that seemed to bother them at all was Trib herself. She had gotten the sense that they were avoiding the old man’s hut. Even his grandson, whom Trib had recognized as the boy she fished from the river, only turned up every now and then to cook meals and to sleep. When he had first appeared in the hut, she had been relieved to see that he was alive and well, but despite the fact that she had saved his life, he never seemed very glad to see her in return.
Trib’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of whispers and giggling. Three plump, naked children were peering around the corner of the hut at her.
“Where’d you come from?” she asked gruffly.
One of the kids pointed at Trib’s head and laughed out loud. Trib reached up and patted her hair self-consciously. It was turning into a rat’s nest at the back of her head.
“I lost my comb,” she said defensively. She tried to frown and look scary, but this just made the kids laugh more. She was about to try growling at them when she noticed a fierce-looking man striding towards her.
The man’s hair stood up in a spiky tuft on the top of his head and he wore nothing but a flap of animal skin. He looked angry, causing Trib’s palm to itch for her sword again. She was still too weak to summon a rage, and she was calculating how much damage she could do without a weapon when the man’s face suddenly broke into a smile. He scooped up a round-bellied little girl and tossed her gently into the air. The girl shrieked with glee until he set her down again. With a wary glance at Trib, he began herding the children away.
Trib stared after them, stunned by the children’s adoring clamor, and by the fierce-looking man’s obvious delight as he laughed and tossed each one in turn. Interactions like this never happened in New Murias. The men of the settlement—houseboys, manservants, and farmhands—weren’t allowed to interact with kids, especially their own. Like all other New Murian children, Trib had been raised not knowing or caring who her father was.
A woman approached the fierce-looking man, and Trib watched curiously to see how they would interact. The woman embraced the man and then bent down to tickle and tease the children. Unlike most New Murian children, Trib hadn’t known her mother either. Or at least not very well. She had a few vivid memories of her mother, before she died, but for the most part her childhood memories were of the warriors’ barracks and of the Scath. With a twinge of longing, Trib realized how much she missed the Scath and her fellow apprentice-warriors. The twinge turned into a stab of grief when she remembered that she would never see many of the apprentice-warriors again.
Replacing her grief with the thoughts of revenge, she climbed to her feet, ready to force her body through more exercise. Just then another group of children caught her attention. This time it was some older boys playing a game at the edge of the forest. Two boys were squaring off, right arms clasped. It looked like a grappling game Trib had often played with Cuss. The image of Cuss’s bullet-riddled body sinking into the marsh flashed through her mind, and she pushed it away by focusing on the boys.
She recognized the smaller boy as the one she’d pulled from the river, and watched him face off against a much taller opponent. The contest was over quickly, the smaller boy landing on his back in the dirt while the other boys cheered.
“Ge
t up,” she muttered.
The boy stayed down. Trib had spent years getting knocked on her ass by Cuss, until one day she figured out how to unbalance her taller, heavier opponent.
“Get up,” she said again, willing the boy to stand up and keep fighting. She had failed Cuss when she let her friend die in the marsh. But she had saved this boy. Cuss and the other apprentice-warriors would never stand and fight again, but the boy still had a chance.
eyewik picked himself up and held a hand out to Chingwe. His former friend’s hesitation hurt him much more than the taunts of the other boys. Finally Chingwe grasped his forearm and mumbled, “Good match.”
They both knew it hadn’t been a good match; Chingwe was too much taller for it to have been fair. When they were still friends, Chingwe had always let Peyewik win. But the other boys had put Chingwe up to the wrestling match, challenging him to prove that Peyewik wasn’t anything special or dangerous.
“See?” One boy thumped Chingwe on the back. “You are the one the chief should have asked to the council, not him. You are the one who is strong and fast. You are the one who ran to the village for help.”
Chingwe dropped Peyewik’s arm, and Peyewik turned away.
“Yes,” another boy said. “If you had gone to the council, the man-killer would have been sent away. She does not belong here. Peyewik and his moth-eaten grandfather have been contaminated by bad spirits.”
Peyewik paused, ready to turn and fight the boy. But it was Chingwe who came to his grandfather’s defense. “Be quiet!” he barked. “You would have died, Pukwes, if Muhkrentharne had not cared for you when you were sick last winter. And you, Asxuktet, your arm would be crooked if Muhkrentharne had not set it for you when you fell out of the tree. You should not be so disrespectful.”
A stunned silence followed, but Peyewik didn’t turn around. He hadn’t been included in Chingwe’s defense. He walked away from the boys and the village, into the forest. Once among the cool shadows he climbed a fir tree and waited for the ache in his chest to subside. He had been coming into the forest a lot lately. It was the only place he felt safe and welcome anymore.
The Rage Page 3
