by Meredith
Dahzi watched for light creeping in, anything that would indicate another way to the surface, maybe close to the trail, maybe offering a sly angle toward striking at Inaj. They saw one huge opening in the earth. Paya threw a stone up, and millions of bats swarmed into the air and up the shaft. The booming made the roar of river rapids seem tame. Paya cackled, and a hundred steps beyond was still cackling.
That night Paya seemed too tired or irritable to tell stories. He gobbled up his food, brewed some tea, and again didn’t offer Dahzi any. With his cup he scrambled outside. Dahzi followed, but the Crab Man ignored him.
Then Paya made a high-pitched moan of ecstasy. Dahzi followed his eyes to the sky. After some moments he saw two falling stars at once. Paya moaned higher and louder. Dahzi sat beside him and watched in silence. It was a rain of falling stars, and it seemed to go on half the night.
Finally Paya turned to crawl back to the cave. He said, “Tomorrow this un’ll be going away for a few days. Must trade some mushrooms. Planting Moon time, the shamans want ’em. Must trade.”
He was gone when Dahzi woke up. So what am I going to do today?
He looked at the entrance—Whoops, said his head, both entrances, one to the world of light and one to the world of darkness.
He knew he was going to go into the cave alone.
I can slide down the vines, take a torch, and walk down the river to the lake. I know how to do that. Yes, I do.
He wanted to have an adventure, and he wanted to check out a suspicion.
He worked his way down the vine a half dozen steps and jammed his torch into a crevice, just as Paya had. He looked over the drop. It seemed a lot darker this time.
He eased down the vine, clamping hard with both hands. Step down, good ledge, foothold, big step now, down and down.
Until he fell.
He blinked his way back to the world, flat on his back, his head smarting. He could see the flicker of the torch above.
He chuckled.
He thought about it and decided that he hadn’t fallen any farther than from tree branches that were just out of reach. He just happened to land smack down on his back, and his head took a rap.
He laughed. He guffawed at himself.
He found Paya’s embers, half seeing his way, half sensing, and finally kneeling down where he felt the warmth. He built the fire up and looked around.
It seemed like this was Paya’s home, more than the cave entrance above. He had a good supply of firewood, a deer stomach suspended from a tripod for cooking, a hide wrapped full of wild onions, rose hips, lots of mushrooms in another wrap, a little dried meat, and some shriveled-up fat tucked away in a pouch. Paya also had some clay pots, bowls, and cups here, a couple of spare knives, extra moccasins, plenty of elk and buffalo hides with the hair still on, and some tanned deer hides. Looked like he really did trade something to someone.
Dahzi lit a torch and followed the familiar way to the chamber filled with slender stone columns. When he got there, he was again stunned by now lovely the columns were. The world below the ground truly was as beautiful as the world above.
He found his way to the stone that draped like cloth, and this time he ran his hand down it sensually.
Soon he got down to business. He walked to where light came through the crack first, set his torch down, and climbed up toward the fissure. He was dazzled by what he found. The stone near the entrance was covered with lichens in a rainbow show of colors, orange, chartreuse, purple, yellow, and other hues. He looked carefully into the crevice where Paya had stuck his knife. More lichens, with a patch scratched bare. Dahzi craned his neck to get the best look possible at the bare spot. From the hints of color around the edges, it looked like Paya might have scraped away some scarlet lichens.
“Hah!” Dahzi said aloud. He was pleased pink with himself. If Paya wanted to keep his secrets, he shouldn’t have done his gathering in the sight of one of the few people trained in the magic of plants.
Then Dahzi reined himself back. Suspecting isn’t knowing for sure.
He wanted to get some of these red lichens for himself. But where? They were called u-tsa-le-ta, and both Zadayi and Ninyu used them to take dream journeys.
Shamans drank the u-tsa-le-ta in tea. That’s probably the tea Paya hadn’t offered to Dahzi. The stuff was forbidden to anyone but medicine men.
Dahzi looked around the crack. He saw a lot of lichens, but not the scarlet. If Paya was trading u-tsa-le-ta to the shamans, he might have picked a lot of the cave clean. It would be valuable stuff. Still, lichens grew back.
So Dahzi would search the big air shaft that opened onto the lake.
Dahzi carried a torch down the underground river this time. He didn’t need to repeat Paya’s version of the thrills of walking in absolute blackness. Soon he began to hear the shush of water moving faster, and then the cacophony of it crashing over the waterfall. He would never forget the scare of Paya shoving him over, or the great surprise of the soft landing in the pool below.
Soon he stood at the top of the falls. By torchlight he could see that they were barely taller than he was. He fidgeted at the top. He eyed the route he and Paya had climbed back up two days ago, but he didn’t think he could manage it holding the torch. No choice then.
He held the torch high and jumped.
He blubbed to the surface of the water with a roar in his ears and absolute blackness for his eyes. Gingerly, he touched the end of the torch. Hot but wet. He muttered at himself and groped his way forward. The Immortals gave people eyes for a good reason.
This time he came into the light from the air shaft gradually. It made the entire lake an impossible shimmer, perhaps a mirage. He thought of the blind fish and the stone flower and wondered what other miracles he would find if he explored. But he had a job to do.
He splashed toward the air shaft, one time stepping in suddenly over his head. He clambered out of the water and up the incline toward the surface of the earth, what he’d always thought was the real world. Near the entrance the rock turned into a garden of lichens, colors brighter than usually seen outside.
He found his way to the exact spot where Paya had scraped. There was the same evidence. The residue was red. Paya was gathering u-tsa-le-ta.
Dahzi thought, Naughty boy.
Now to find some. Maybe, being watched, Paya hadn’t searched thoroughly.
In fact, Dahzi found the red lichen almost at the mouth of the shaft. It was a nice piece, half the size of an oak leaf.
He had a strange feeling about it, a sense of hypnotic pull. He looked toward the world outside, with its sunrises and sunsets and green plants and skies full of birds and woods full of leaves and berries and animals. He had a job to do there, too. Maybe he should climb out of the cave and check it out as a possible location for an attack on Inaj. Find out where the trail was, and where the Cheowa village was. He didn’t even know what side of the mountain this entrance was on. It could be in the wrong direction, or it could be exactly what he needed for his revenge.
He put his palm on the u-tsa-le-ta. He felt power in it. He could go to Paya’s fire and make tea.
All right, Dahzi told himself, one job at a time. He started scraping at the lichens.
29
The tea was sweet and tangy and made him sleepy. Why not? he said to himself. He stretched out and relaxed.
Before long he woke up and realized that he was lost. A forest. This forest was dense, heavy, overhanging—it turned the world to twilight and shadows. He was at a fork in the path, and he didn’t know which way to go. Down each byway he could see another fork, beyond that another. Suddenly his mind raised high, and he could see miles of dense forest, the way a raven, a buzzard, or an eagle did. With his strange vision he could see through the thick canopy of branches and leaves, could see all the paths and all the choices in the paths one after another, as many choices as there are days in a lifetime. No end to it, and no way, ever, to be sure what way to go.
He was back under the
canopy of trees, back on a single path. Where was he trying to go? He couldn’t remember. A great pang tore through his chest. Then he told himself, I don’t remember, but I will. I’ll remember, or I’ll recognize it, or…
But he doubted that, doubted himself. Almost forgot himself as a self.
He tried to think, but every thought was cut off by the word lost. It echoed throughout his being, like that was the first breath he ever breathed, and every breath after.
A thought slapped him. Running from somebody, I’m running from somebody. Or was he? He wasn’t sure.
His legs moved willy-nilly in some direction or another. He didn’t tell them to move—he was only a passenger on the boat of his legs. This way he floated, that way, any way. Everywhere the forest was oppressive. It hung over him like clouds of catastrophe. It created darkness that kept him from seeing where he was going.
One step ahead of his foot a crack opened in the earth. As he gaped at it, it opened wider, to four times the size.
He leapt and landed on the far side.
The crack groaned and doubled again in width.
Now he wondered if he was on the wrong side. No way back now.
He turned forward to try to see where he was going. He would always be lost unless he could see.
Then he noticed. Low bushes of every kind lined the path, and in the closest one on his left nested a black snake.
No, the black snake was one of the leaves.
No, all the leaves were snakes, their heads weaving, their tongues flickering in and out.
All the bushes turned into snakes, thousands or millions of black snakes. Every twig of every tree became a snake, heads undulating back and forth, eyes wild with malice.
He thought for a moment, Black snakes are not poisonous—their bite doesn’t kill.
As the thought formed, though, so did the answer. Their weapon was not poison—it was terror.
The snakes struck. They didn’t touch Dahzi, but only darted their heads toward him and snapped their fangs in the air inches away.
He screamed.
He turned and started to run. The crack in the earth had turned into a canyon, and it was full of snakes.
A snake wrapped itself around his neck and wound its head to glare directly into his eyes. Its muscles oozed around his throat.
Dahzi gazed into the snake’s eyes hypnotically. He saw a dance of…
The world lurched.
Dahzi felt himself seized bodily and hurled through something, not air, maybe through realities.
He materialized next to a fire and a couple of figures. He bellowed. All in the world he could do was bellow.
Tsola said to Klandagi, “Praise the spirits, he’s still alive.”
FIVE
A Dangerous Mission
30
Maybe Dahzi slept for days, except that in the Emerald Cavern there were no days and no nights. From time to time he sipped some broth. When Tsola got him to eat soup with a little meat, she began to talk to him.
“You’re lucky to be alive.”
“Ummm.” He could barely bring his mind to focus on what was around him.
She fed him some more soup. “You were about to be killed.”
The snakes, he remembered. The snake around his neck, the snake in his face. “Yes.” He was surprised at the faintness of his own voice.
“Not only your body killed, your spirit killed.”
“Ummm?”
“Perhaps we’d better wait to talk.”
She fed him in silence, and he dozed off.
When he felt strong enough to sit up and stay up, he looked around. A fire. Meat spitted over it. The ordinary tools of living. The walls of a cave. The face of a beautiful old woman looking into his face. Lying next to her, a black panther.
She put her hand gently on the panther’s head. “Don’t be afraid of Klandagi. He’s on our side.”
Dahzi began to form a dim realization. “Where am I?”
“In the Emerald Cavern.”
He nodded. That meant something to him, the great shrine of the Galayi people, so this must be…
“Let’s start over. I am Tsola, the Seer.”
Dahzi nodded. “And Wounded Healer,” he murmured. It was coming back.
“Yes. And this is my son Klandagi. Today he’s presenting himself in his panther form.”
Dahzi knew. Sunoya had told him, others had told him. But it was a jolt to see.
“How did I get here? I was lost.”
“You did a very foolish thing, went to a very dangerous place, and I had to bring you back.”
Dahzi tried to sort that out and failed. “Did something dumb.”
“Yes. You made tea from u-tsa-le-ta and drank it. You knew better. Ninyu and your mother taught you better.”
“Wasn’t clear, felt confused.”
“You’re not a child anymore. It’s time you get some clarity and act like you have it.”
“I, uh…”
“Here’s how we start. How did you get into the cavern, and how did you find the u-tsa-le-ta?”
He realized he needed to tell the whole truth. He started all the way back with how he sought a vision and failed. Then he told how he fell in love with Jemel and was denied her, how he ran away from the village. As he went along, the story got less jumbled.
“I had a crazy idea of what I was going to do. I was going to kill the murderer of my mother and father, the man who has brought twenty winters of misery to the people. My grandfather, Inaj.”
He looked into Tsola’s eyes, wondering, and saw that she was waiting. He let the spasm of rage pass.
“I thought if I did that, Jemel’s family would let me marry her. They’d have to. I would have been a great hero.”
Klandagi snorted with contempt.
Tsola spoke softly but firmly. “You would have been a great fool. Instead of saving the people, you would have pitched them to greater misery.”
“I wanted to be a hero.”
“You speak like a boy. It’s time to act like a man.”
“I’m not a man yet. I don’t have a vision, I don’t have a name.”
“Yes, well, by madness and luck you’ve ended up where you can get both. And become a hero.”
She saw the light animate his eyes for a moment, then give way to fatigue. “Get some sleep. Then we’ll talk more. A lot more.”
While Dahzi slept, Tsola and Klandagi discussed the problem. They needed a great mission accomplished, and had only a boy to do it.
“I have to prepare him and I have to motivate him.”
Klandagi said, “If we don’t launch him now, we probably won’t see him again.”
Tsola pulled at her chin. “He has to choose the mission. We can’t force him into it, or trick him.”
“His mind is on the girl, not on saving the people.”
“He has powers he doesn’t know about.”
“No way for him to know.” Klandagi said. “Also, he’s thinking with his do-wa, and he’s going to keep thinking with it.”
“I sense something more there. He really loves her. Maybe she really loves him.”
She sounded touched by the idea. Man-woman love, to most Galayi, was a piece of bad luck. But Tsola had always been intrigued by the idea.
Klandagi jumped up and started to pace. He forced himself to stop and looked across at his mother by the fire. He made himself go back, lie down, and speak. “Here’s one thing I’ve learned as a panther—human beings overthink things. When you’re an animal, you know inside yourself what has to be done and you just do it, right now. Leap on that deer. Get away from that buffalo. Kill that mother coyote and get the pups. You act. You might be fine, you might get hurt, you might die, but you act.”
Tsola regarded him thoughtfully. “In this case that would mean?”
“Light a fire in the boy and send him out. Now.”
“What if he fails?”
“Then he was never the medicine bearer. But I believe he is—look at
his left hand again. He’ll find a way.”
Tsola nodded. “All right.”
“How many days have I been in here?” said Dahzi.
“We don’t pay attention to days and nights in the Cavern,” Tsola said.
“Is the Planting Moon Ceremony going on now?”
“We have more important things to think about.”
He was getting strong. She’d taken him on a good walk in the Cavern yesterday. Klandagi kept saying it was time.
“Here’s what happened to you. You had a big piece of good luck and bad luck. You wandered into the Emerald Cavern, without knowing it. Paya found you—he goes everywhere here, everywhere but one. Like a fool, whether he meant to or not, he showed you the lichen. As far as I know, this is the only place it grows.
“You recognized it—you’d seen Ninyu and your mother with it. You made the tea and drank it, and you didn’t just have dreams. Ninyu gave you the apprentice’s version of what happens. You traveled to the Land beyond the Sky Arch.”
Disbelief flushed into his face. “The Land beyond the Sky Arch doesn’t look like that.”
“Actually,” said Tsola, “it doesn’t look like anything. Its form is spirit, not flesh. But we’re human beings, and when we visit there we see it as physical. That’s the way our minds are.”
“Until I got there, I pictured it as the most beautiful place in the universe.”
“It’s whatever is in your mind is at the time. You were scared, so the Land was scary.”
She watched Dahzi turn that over in his head.
“You are afraid of snakes, so you were attacked by snakes. What you saw tells us nothing about the Land beyond the Arch and everything about you.”
Now he shook his head. He didn’t think so.
“You need to remember this. You have remarkable powers. You were born with them. If an ordinary person drank that tea, someone who isn’t a shaman, he would have awful dreams and wake up with a bad fever. You took the journey—only a few of us can. I brought you back.”
Dahzi made a face, but she could tell that being special pleased him.
