by Meredith
“She’s gone into the woods,” he told Iwa. He chuckled. “But where’s she going to go? She has no food. She doesn’t even have a robe to keep warm. Looks like it’s going to rain today,” he said. “She’ll be back.”
Iwa said nothing. Igalu whimpered in her pallet of blankets and robes.
“Let’s send Zanda out to find her,” whined Iwa. Her lips were swollen, her tongue cut, and she could barely speak the name of Noney’s older brother.
“No need. Noney will be back. Give me something to eat.”
8
From outside the hut, Su-Li a-a-arked. Sunoya stayed half asleep as she let him in. Part of her mind wondered what was wrong. The buzzard loved the sky and hated to be cooped up in the house. Why would he come back in the morning, when he loved to ride the warming currents of air?
He let her hear his thought. Noney is running away, up Willow Creek. She has no food and nothing to wrap herself in.
The medicine woman shook her head and woke up. “Up Willow Creek?”
Yes, too fast and hard for a woman carrying a baby. Maybe hysterical.
Sunoya murmured, “Toward the Soco village.”
A storm is coming, Su-Li told her. Take care of the unborn child.
“Yes.” She considered. “Yes, all right.” She’d have to move fast.
She trotted to her uncle’s hut and gave him the news. “Can you go find out what people know?”
“Yes, but old bones are slow in the morning.”
Sunoya rushed back to her hut and started packing.
In a few minutes Kanu came to the door and confirmed it. People had heard Inaj’s family have another fight this morning, a big one. Some saw Noney run out of the hut bare-headed and bare-handed.
“He doesn’t care,” Sunoya said, “he lets her go, dares her to go. Inaj doesn’t know his daughter.”
The girl was running blind to nowhere.
Rolling dried meat into an elk hide, Sunoya told Kanu, “Don’t tell anyone what I’m doing. Let’s not stir Inaj up.”
She told Su-Li, Go watch Noney. When I’m packed, I’ll start up Willow Creek. Come back and lead me to her.
Su-Li showed Sunoya his fear.
She was scared, too. Two lone women trying to walk all the way to the Soco village in the winter? With a thunder-storm gathering? And rain that would turn to snow tonight?
“You got any other ideas?” she asked the buzzard.
Kanu spoke first. “Catch up with her and stay in a cave during the storm.”
Yes, said Su-Li.
“All right then,” Sunoya said. “Go!”
Su-Li did.
Kanu wrapped another elk hide full of dried meat. Together they lashed the rolls on each side of Dak’s back. “Praise the spirits, the dog is big and he’s tough,” Sunoya said.
Kanu threw a buffalo robe around her shoulders and plopped a rabbit skin hat on her head. Sunoya tucked an extra pair of moccasins down her dress, between her breasts. She couldn’t risk ending up barefooted, not in the winter.
She could hear the rain on her roof. “Everyone’s inside,” she said. “I’ll sneak out of the village, no one will see.” She gave Kanu a peck on the cheek. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“Surely the spirits will be with you and Noney,” said Kanu.
“And with the child,” said Sunoya.
“You’re sure Su-Li thinks the child is important?”
“More than important.”
Just as Sunoya lifted her door flap, the entire sky flashed white. She felt like her eyes were seared. Almost instantly, thunder banged her ears.
“Ahsginah, the evil one, is afoot,” Kanu said in a quaver.
Sunoya sucked breath in, held it, let it out. “I’ve got to go!” They held each other’s eyes. Each sensed the end of something.
Kanu shook his head sadly.
“You’re right,” said Sunoya, “I have no eyes, no ears, no brains—I just go!”
Sunoya pushed Dak out and stepped into raindrops hitting her face like pebbles. “Move!” she said to the dog. He padded forward. She smiled to herself and took heart in her dog’s loyalty. She put one foot in front of the other and spoke to Dak in the rhythm of her steps, “Willow Creek, Willow Creek, Willow Creek.”
She kept her face down, out of the pelting drops. The dirt path got muddy, and she moved onto the grass. Dak led the way. The mountains that were her homeland stood in her way now. She loved the smell of the pines on hot summer days, the muggy evenings, the sparkling fireflies, the swift relief of sudden rain. She loved the great crags, and liked to clamber in them. Now all of those turned into enemies.
Sunoya’s arms yearned to embrace Noney. What young girl could stand being beaten by her father? What young girl wouldn’t flee to the father of her unborn baby?
Sunoya quailed, though, when she pictured in her mind what Noney was trying to do. Their own village poised on the eastern edge of the huge sprawl of mountains that made up Galayi territory. It took a family about ten days to walk across these mountains east to west, and twelve from north to south. In the middle of the sprawl, several high ridges away from them, the Soco River drained most the mountains to the south and then southwest. If you went north on the Soco for two days, you came to the Cheowa village, where the big ceremonies took place. If you went south, you came to the Soco Village, and then far on to the southwest the last Galayi village, Cusa, the village of sanctuary.
In good weather a family needed five days to walk through the mountains to the Soco River and two more days down-stream to the Soco village. For two women and a dog in the winter? Longer. For a lone, pregnant woman without food? Never.
This rain was nasty. With the part of her brain that could still think, Sunoya asked herself, What does it mean? Rain was a supreme gift brought by the messenger of the South Wind, who was called the Light Magician. Lightning was the greatest of dangers, brought by the messenger of the West Wind, the Dark Magician. Ahsginah, the Evil One of the Immortals, tried to kill First Man by throwing lightning at him.
Why do they come together at us? What does it mean?
A medicine person was one who asked such questions, and somehow found wisdom.
She put the hand with the webbed fingers on her zadayi, red on one side for victory, blue on the other for defeat, both part of the same disc, the same life. She thought again, Is my life blessed or cursed?
Su-Li appeared suddenly in the whirl of raindrops and landed on her shoulder. Sunoya looked at him fearfully.
You’ve got to hurry, Su-Li told her.
Medicine woman, buzzard, and dog forged their way into the storm.
Midmorning, noon—Sunoya lost track of the time of day. She slogged up the path, wondering if Dak felt as wet and cold as she did. Though she was scared for Noney, Sunoya felt alive. She was doing something that mattered.
The rain was easing up. Sunoya could see the winding creek ahead, the path as it left the stream and angled toward the ridge line. Above that she could make out the dark humps of the treeless summits on either side—the “balds,” as people called them. The track to the Soco River crossed mountain ridge after mountain ridge. She caught no glimpse of Noney.
She glanced at Su-Li on her shoulder. The bird lifted off and wing-flapped up the mountain. If he couldn’t see the girl in the rain, he’d be able to smell her. Though he had the eyesight of an eagle, a buzzard’s real power lived in his nose. He could smell flesh at the level of a mountaintop, and decaying flesh at twice that height. This was Thunderbird’s joke on Su-Li—during his time on Turtle Island he wanted to eat carrion.
In another hundred steps the rain lightened to a drizzle. Dark clouds bunched up near the top of the balds. Sunoya spotted Su-Li circling near the saddle, the low point of the ridges, where the path aimed. The buzzard slid down the winds toward Sunoya again.
She held an arm out straight and Su-Li lit on it. She’s angling up to the saddle now. She’s struggling. Something’s wrong. Maybe Inaj injured her.
&n
bsp; “Bastard,” said Sunoya, peering up. “Wait, I see something.” She couldn’t see Noney, not really, but she glimpsed movement, and who else could it be?
She’s almost to the ridge, Su-Li said.
Helpless, Sunoya yelled, “Crawl into a cave and get warm and dry!”
KA-BOOM!
A blinding flash, then a mind-numbing bang.
“Ahsginah is attacking her!”
Dak barked fiercely at the storm.
“Immortals, help us!”
Su-Li didn’t let Sunoya see into his mind.
The young medicine woman pumped her legs as fast as they would go. She panted, “The Evil One is upon us.”
Noney was spread-eagled, limp, and unconscious. Her hair was scorched, her ear and neck burned, and her dress torn open on the upper left side. Sunoya pulled the burned edges back but saw no bleeding. Her breast showed an angry red burn, forked like lightning.
“Ahsginah!”
Sunoya felt her neck—no sign of a beating heart.
She shook her cousin. “Noney! Noney!”
She’s dying, said Su-Li.
“Noney, come back to us!”
You’ve done all you can. Save the baby.
Sunoya felt frozen in place. “Noney! Noney!”
She’s gone, Su-Li told Sunoya. Get the baby out before he dies, too!
Eyes wild, Sunoya stared into Noney’s face.
Now!
Frenzy seized Sunoya. She slipped her knife out of its belt sheath. She lifted Noney’s dress, then hesitated. She breathed deep and made a firm, vertical cut from belly button to pubic bone.
In brutal haste she sliced until she could grab the baby with both hands and wrestle it free. The child wailed. A boy. A lot of hair. Ten fingers and…
The fourth and fifth fingers of the left hand were webbed. Her breath caught. The child of prophecy, the one of legend.
Before she could hold the fingers out for Su-Li to see, the buzzard said, Yes.
Sunoya’s thoughts clicked into place. This was why Su-Li urged her. She shivered. The child of prophecy.
Su-Li told her, Hurry up!
“Find us a cave,” Sunoya said out loud.
Straight over there!
Sunoya cut the cord. Dak tried to lick up the blood, but Sunoya shooed him away.
9
Sunoya was drowning in troubles. Yes, she was grateful for the shelter and for the warmth of the little fire. But she had a bawling child in her arms—a hungry child born before its time—and not a drop of milk. The body of her cousin lay in the open on the rough mountainside, open to the ravages of rain, snow, insects, worms, ravens, wolves…. Worst of all, she had no way to give Noney a proper burial.
The child comes first, said Su-Li.
Sunoya pursed her mouth. Su-Li hated mortality, and had no patience with ceremonies for the dead.
But what about the baby? They couldn’t go back to their own village, that was for sure. Even if Inaj wasn’t enraged enough to kill his own grandson, he might kill Sunoya, and would certainly take the boy away from her. This medicine child the Immortals gave me.
Yet the infant wouldn’t last until they got to the Soco village—not without milk. His screaming was about to drive her crazy. The child of prophecy, she thought, is noisy. Since before the memories of the grandfathers of the oldest men, the tribe’s legends told of a boy child who would be born with the last two fingers of his left hand webbed. That had been a good omen for generations, but it happened only among girl children. When this boy was born, said the tale, he would save the people.
Sunoya had a sudden impulse, pulled her dress off one shoulder, and put her dry nipple in the boy’s mouth. The only child I’ll ever suckle, she thought. The child all our people have waited for, and I have no milk.
I have an idea, Su-Li said.
She raised an eyebrow at him.
I’ll go to the village. He shielded the rest of his thought from her. For this I have to change shape.
Su-Li hopped to the mouth of the cave and looked back at her with a gleam in his eye. He backed up and started to transform himself. It was a work of imagination, visualizing himself in detail as a different creature. A new form took a little time. His feathers darkened. His wings lengthened. His head turned from red to orange. Backing up again, he spread his wings and extended them hugely—each wing as long as a man was tall. His body swelled, like an arm becoming a leg.
Sunoya had never seen such a creature.
Condor, Su-Li told her.
She had the impression that her spirit companion was tickled at himself, but with him she could never be sure.
With a whoosh of wings, he lifted off.
Cautiously, in the recess of the cave, Sunoya inspected the infant boy’s left hand. Webbed, truly. She kept rubbing the skin between his fingers, lost in thought, tumbled by conflicting currents, the confusion and guilt of her own life and the promise of the fulfillment of prophecy.
Clarity, she told herself. Her mind tonight was on the miracle in her lap. She fingered the webbing. A boy, she told herself for the thousandth time in joy and trepidation, and the left hand.
Flashes of fear jolted through her arms and legs, glimmers of terror she hadn’t felt in years. Not since she’d accepted, genuinely, that the two people who knew her secret were dead and no one could expose her.
Now, if the old tales were true, Sunoya had arrived at her moment of truth. Am I a half moon waning or a half moon waxing? Her spirit rebelled. I am too young for everything to be decided now.
She looked into the eyes of the boy, which looked back at her, imponderable. It all depends on whether I save the life of this new being who bears strong medicine into the world.
She looked down to make sure her zadayi was red side forward. At that moment the boy tugged hard on her nipple. “Well,” she said to him, “the least I can do is give you a name, the one you’ve earned, Dahzi.” In the Galayi language it meant “hungry.”
Su-Li hovered in the air just outside the cave, wings flapping hard and loud. Gently, he set down a dog. A bitch, Sunoya saw—a bitch with swollen tits. He covered the animal with his huge wings, and she was too scared to run off.
Sunoya said to the Immortal, “Su-Li, you’re smart.” She said to the child, “You want some of that?” She went on, talking to Su-Li, “I gave him a name, Dahzi.” She pulled hard to get him off her nipple. “Later I hope he craves something more spiritual.”
She set the child down, grabbed the dog, flopped it into position inside the cave, and put Dahzi to the tits. “Come now, suck a dog’s milk. She’s an animal, just like you and me.”
If the dog will let the boy feed, said Su-Li. After he spoke, he pulled himself back into buzzard shape. Sunoya let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.
Dak padded forward and sniffed the new dog. The bitch suddenly realized where she was and started to get to her feet. Sunoya put a stop to that and shoved Dak away. She set Dahzi back in the right position and pushed his head forward. When he tried to grip her nipple in his lips, the mother dog growled at him.
“It’s all right,” Sunoya told the dog, stroking her head. Then she took thought. “We’re going to call you Mother. That’s your calling, to mother.”
Sunoya got out some dried meat and gave Mother some. The dog chewed on it nervously. “You’re scared, poor thing,” Sunoya said. She rubbed the dog’s ears gently. “Who wouldn’t be scared, kidnapped by a bird monster?”
The young woman also gave pieces to Su-Li, Dak, and herself. “Everybody has to eat.” She gave Mother some more. “You, soon your tits hurt. You’re too full. Then Dahzi gets all he wants.”
And he did.
Sunoya wept. She wept as hugely as the skies wept yesterday. On this beautiful, sunny day she laid her hands on Noney’s cold body, raised her face to Grandmother Sun, and sang.
Nothing lives long
Not on this Earth
Nothing lives long
Nothing but the Ea
rth
Nothing lives long
lives long
lives long
When her voice disappeared on the wind, she was left with only wishes. She wished that she could hold her cousin and trade the warmth of her own body for Noney’s cold one—it was the young mother who should live, who should raise this child. Sunoya wished she could sing with a more beautiful voice. She wished she had her drum, to give her song a heartbeat. And she wished most of all that she could bury Noney properly.
Tradition called for a mound of stones on the side of the mountain that faced east, the direction all good things come from. Tradition asked Noney’s women relatives to wrap her in a winding cloth they had woven themselves from the inner bark of the mulberry tree. It required them to send her favorite possessions along with her, and a little food.
Except for the food, Sunoya could do none of this. She and Su-Li had tried to move the body, but it was too heavy, even with Su-Li at condor strength. They had no winding cloth and little meat to spare. Noney had fled from the village with no possessions but the clothes she wore.
Since Su-Li was checking their back trail, Sunoya started gathering enough stones to give the body a light covering. She picked up rocks as big as she could manage with both hands and started making a mound on top of Noney. It was a terrible job, laying stones directly on her cousin’s body—Sunoya started with the feet and didn’t think about covering her face.
In a few minutes she sat down to rest beside the sleeping child. Dahzi, the Hungry One, whimpered, and she held and rocked him. She looked across the rocky mountainside and faced her own situation glumly. She wasn’t strong enough to build a mound high enough to protect Noney properly, and she didn’t have time. Inaj would come soon and find his daughter. He would be furious about her death, incensed at the desecration of her body. She looked at her cousin’s body and felt a shiver of helplessness.
So she wrapped Dahzi tightly, set him in tall grasses, and went back to carrying what stones she could. As she worked, she got her mind clear about what she truly had to accomplish, only one task, a great one. Save the life of the boy child.
