Then Trib realized that along with her grief was a growing sense of elation. The battle had been avoided after all. The People would not have to fight and die. She was looking around for Kwineechka when she heard it. The familiar sound of Aoifa’s singing.
Her elation was instantly replaced with dread. Aoifa was using her siren on someone. She looked around to see who it was and realized with horror that Natives, Puritanics, and New Murians alike were raising their weapons against each other. Then she felt the siren taking hold of her own body and mind.
This time the siren was different from her past experiences of it. It wasn’t soft and soothing, intended to quiet her into inaction. Instead, images and sensations came to her unbidden, of her mother and sisters’ bodies, of her friends dying in the marsh, of Peyewik being drowned, of Kwineechka being molested, of Kinteka going mad…It was an unending barrage, and Trib felt the Rage rising in her like never before, a fury so hot and strong it threatened to destroy her from the inside unless she took action.
Without a thought, she stood up and raised her weapon. All around her, New Murians, Puritanics, and Natives were doing the same. A sickening realization swept over her. Everyone around her had hurt her at one time. She had no reason to spare any of them from her hatred and anger. Trib struggled against this impulse, and against Aoifa’s siren, but it was too strong. She watched powerlessly from deep within herself as her body lunged for the nearest enemy. It happened to be a New Murain, and she heard the woman’s responding shriek of fury. The last thing she knew before the Rage-siren took over completely was the feeling of hot blood splattered across her face.
wineechka watched helplessly as Crow Woman’s spell song overtook everyone. He was the only one who remained unaffected. He had finally managed to overcome her, only to be forced to watch as she made everyone he cared about fight to a bloody end. Every way he turned people were fighting. Fighting Women, Pure Men, the People, and the vacant eyed men Crow Woman had brought with her. Even the women, children, and elders of the People were fighting. It was a horrific scene, and Kwineechka was sorry that it was what he would carry with him across the River of Death. For it was only time before someone turned on him. He was sorry it was how they would all die, enthralled against their will by Crow Woman’s anger and spite. He put his hands over his face, despairing.
“Storyteller.”
Kwineechka looked around to see Peyewik and Morrigan standing with him. They had both managed to resist Crow Woman’s spell as well. As he looked at them, he knew neither one of them had called to him.
“We must stop this,” Peyewik said.
“But how?” Kwineechka asked hopelessly.
“Storyteller,” he heard again and recognized the multitude of voices.
“Please!” he cried. “I do not know how to stop this.”
“It is time, Storyteller,” the ancestors said. “You learned how to take your story back from Crow Woman to save yourself. Now you must use this strength and power to save the People.”
“It’s not enough!” Kwineechka said. “She is feeding off the fear and anger of every person here. She is too powerful.”
“Peyewik and Morrigan will help you.”
“How?” he asked.
“I feel the rage and grief of every person here as if it were my own,” Morrigan said. “I also feel their hope and their love. It’s buried deep, but it’s there. She can’t take that from them.”
Then Peyewik spoke. I feel the spirit animals of every person here,” he said. “Even the men whose spirits have been trapped by Crow Woman. I can feel their longing to be free. They may look different and speak different languages and pray to different gods. But they each have a spirit, just like the trees and the animals and each other. You too know everyone here, Storyteller, but in a different way.”
And Kwineechka realized it was true. He didn’t feel their feelings, or sense their spirits, but he heard the stories of the People, the individual stories that joined together to become The Story of the People. More than that, he could hear the stories of the Pure Men and the Fighting Women. It didn’t matter what language the story was being told in. He heard and understood them all. And he heard Crow Woman’s song reaching deeply into everyone, summoning their worst hurts and fears, accessing the well of grief and anger surrounding every loss they’d ever experienced, and turning these into the main events of their lives. Their stories became about nothing but grief, violence, and revenge, unmitigated by love or compassion of any kind.
“You know what needs to be done. We will help you,” the ancestors said.
“And we will help you too,” Peyewik said.
Kwineechka was scared, but he knew what he had to do. He began to sing. He felt the ancestors join him, just as they had in the past, but this time they did not take over. Instead they sang with him, allowing his song and story to join and harmonize with all the stories of all the People who had gone before. Kwineechka felt himself transported to a new place, a place where the past and present coexisted. As he sang from this place he felt Peyewik join him. Or rather he heard Peyewik join him, the boy’s voice adding a harmony that was the sound of summoning every spirit, all at once. The way he had summoned the thunder spirit, he now called to all spirits, and Kwineechka knew that he was also calling to Manito. Then a new voice joined them, adding a harmony that sounded and felt like nothing Kwineechka had ever experienced before. It was Morrigan, using her powers of empathy to connect deeper than Crow Woman’s spell could go, diving beneath the anger and violence to the vulnerability of every living person present. She sang of their pain but instead of inciting them to violence, her song was about the underlying sadness and loss they all felt. Loss of friends, family, home, religion…Her song went deep enough that the differences disappeared. The differences between the Fighting Women and the Pure Men, and then, as she sang on, the differences between the People and the Pale Ones as well. For a while, Kwineechka could shift his attention and hear the songs and loves and griefs and joys of everyone on the battle field. Then he realized he could extend his awareness further…And then, suddenly, the harmonies matched and the song was huge and sublimely complete. It wasn’t just a sound—it was a vibration that went beyond sensory perception and resonated with everything and Kwineechka lost himself to it entirely.
t was pain that brought Trib back to herself. There was nothing but fire and blood, and then she became aware of the tiniest pulse of discomfort, somewhere in her body. She could still hear someone singing, but it was no longer Aoifa’s voice. Her vision began to clear and she remembered where she was. She wondered if she had been wounded. She watched the people around her struggling against each other, heard them yelling and choking and crying. As she watched, she realized that the pain she felt didn’t come from a physical wound. As the fear and fury of her friends and enemies washed over and through her, she realized the pain came from her heart.
The singing grew louder and she recognized Kwineechka’s voice, gasping as she felt his pain just as clearly as she heard the notes of his song. Then his voice changed, became the voices of many, singing as one, and the pain became nearly unbearable. She felt the pain of everyone present as if it were her own.
The fighting around her began to die down, and she understood that everyone heard what she heard and felt what she felt. It was impossible to sustain Rage and violence in the presence of such sensations. It was as though she could hear the hearts and minds of every person on the battlefield. Her father, Peyewik, Kwineechka, the Reverend, Okahoki, and every other New Murian, Native, or Puritanic present. There were unique melodies, different words and images for each person, but the feelings and impulses beneath them all told the same story. Love, fear, and longing created a universal harmony that took Trib’s breath away.
The song resolved into a single voice again. It was not Kwineechka, as she had expected, but she knew the voice. She had heard it before, in a dream where the Goddess had spoken to her and to Peyewik.
Then the so
ng ended. The sound stopped, but she could feel the vibration of it still humming through her body. Everyone around her stood with looks of rapt and reverent attention on their faces. Weapons had fallen on the ground, Aoifa’s siren to battle long forgotten.
Trib looked around, searching for the Storyteller. Instead she found Aoifa, sitting hunched and weeping over her sister’s body.
Trib found herself walking towards the priestess, with no idea what she would do when she got to her.
“You should kill me for what I’ve done,” Aoifa said as she drew close. Her eyes were red and swollen in her pale face. In breaking her final siren, Kwineechka had broken all of Aoifa’s spells. She was no longer flawlessly beautiful, but looked as scarred and aged as her dead sister.
“I ain’t going to kill you,” Trib replied, surprising herself.
“My power is gone, but if you let me live I will try to get it back, and I will hurt more people.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“It has become my nature,” Aoifa replied. “I no longer have a choice.”
Trib thought again of the dream in which she had heard the Goddess speak.
“The choice is yours,” the Goddess had said. “Love or fear. You decide.”
Trib realized she had repeated the words out loud. When Aoifa did not respond, Trib left her to go in search of her father.
All over the battlefield people were slowly returning to themselves. Their expressions were a mixture of fatigue, confusion, and awe. Many were injured and needed help. She found Jongren talking to the Reverend.
“What happens next?” she asked them both. “You reckon this peace will hold?”
“It will on my account,” the Reverend replied. “Now that Aoifa’s siren has been broken once and for all, many of my brethren will be returning to their senses, some for the first time in many years. They will be wondering what happened, where their families are. My men and I will seek them out and offer assistance.”
“I imagine the People will want nothing more than to rebuild their homes and go back to living in peace,” Jongren said.
Trib’s heart sank as she thought of Kinteka and the lasting effects the Rage might have on her. “Will they ever be able to go back?” she said.
“Manito knows,” Jongren said sadly. “As for the New Murians…”
Trib looked around the battlefield at the warriors, milling about in a daze.
“They are used to following orders,” Jongren pointed out. “They’re lost without a leader.”
Trib realized that New Murian warriors and civilians alike had lost their leaders. The Scath was dead and Aoifa was broken. The future of the settlement was nothing if not uncertain. Before she could think more about it, she saw Kwineechka walking towards her. His golden eyes still had the faraway look he got when he told stories, but they refocused as he looked at her. He was no longer lost in the story, just as she was no longer lost in her Rage. There were many things to do, many questions to answer, but all of it could wait. Trib smiled at Kwineechka and when he smiled back at her, it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. “Kwineechka!” a woman cried, stepping in front of him. She threw her arms around him and from the look he gave her over the woman’s shoulder, Trib knew who she was. It was Hinutet, his wife.
Kwineechka looked anguished but there was nothing Trib could do. It was more than she could have hoped for that he had survived the day, that most of the People and the New Murians had as well. Everyone on the battlefield had lost something, and the future was uncertain for all of them. But they were all still alive to face that future. She turned away from Kwineechka and his wife, back towards her father and the daunting task of rebuilding so many lives.
The Rage Page 26
