by Maya, Tara
“She?” Brena stopped walking. “Mercy! You know who it is. Tell me!”
“I just found out.”
“Tell me.”
“My sister came to mock me,” the Golden Lady whispered. “She knows of my hurt. She rejoices in my death. Long we have warred, the Blue Lady and I, and many times we have slain one another, each triumphing for a time, but each rising back to life again. So it has always been. But if she slays me this time, I shall not rise to life again. I shall die for all time, and with me, all under my sway, the heart of sunshine and summer and the wild bear, shall wither and weaken and die. The circle will be broken. My cold sister shall flood the world. Yet this would be her own undoing as much as mine. She cannot understand this, for she has not been pierced by the Black Arrow. I have had insight into mortality that no faery should, and I can see my own end.”
“This girl.” Brena forced the words out. “The one who will die anyway. What is her name?”
“You know her name,” said the Golden Lady.
Dindi
Dindi awakened in the dark, under the lee of a rock, flat on her back.
This is bad, she thought, marking the sun’s position in the sky. She had lost the entire afternoon to the uninvited Vision.
Someone stood over her. Gradually, she made out the features…it was Zavaedi Brena.
This is worse.
Brena held out a hand to help her to her feet.
“Thank you,” Dindi murmured. Her head ached. Apparently, she had fallen off the rock where she’d been sitting with Gwenika, and had been left there, insensible, while everyone else moved on. Brena had either stayed with her, or just checked in on her from time to time, but no one had bothered to move Dindi to a mat or tent. The realization made her feel lonely. She was about to ask where the others were, when she saw the campfires. They had pitched camp a short jog further down the river, in what she was sure Kavio would call a more defensible area. Kavio always considered things like that. He took care of his people…
“Mercy!” Dindi covered her mouth with her hand. “Did my fall delay the whole party? Weren’t we supposed to have pressed on to the Tors by nightfall?”
“Kavio decided to wait until he could send a scout ahead,” Brena said briskly. “Hertio is no longer War Chief of Yellow Bear. The new War Chief is our former traveling companion, Vultho.”
“Oh, no!”
“It’s no concern of yours or mine,” Brena said. There was an odd air about her, a disturbing vibe that made Dindi feel uneasy. Well, uneasier than she always did around Zavaedi Brena. “The lesson you need to learn in life, Dindi, is to sweep with your own broom. Stay out of affairs that do not concern you.”
“Yes, Zavaedi Brena,” Dindi said dutifully.
Brena stuck out her hand, palm up. “Give it to me.”
“Give you what?”
“Don’t make me ask you in front of the others,” Brena said. Her demeanor was hard, but her eyes were moist with grief. It reminded Dindi of the expression on the face of Vio the Skull Stomper as he’d told Vessia: They brought it on themselves. Brena said harshly, “Give the hexed thing to me!”
With shaking hands, Dindi pulled off the cord from around her head and handed the corncob doll to Brena. Zavaedi Brena threw it on the flat boulder, as if she couldn’t stand to hold it, even by the sinew cord, one touch longer than necessary.
“I’m not going to ask you to stay away from my daughter,” Brena said. “Because I already commanded you to do that and you defied me. I’m not going to remind you that what you egged my daughter to do resulted in humiliation and disaster, for our peace party and for two entire tribes. Because that should be obvious by now, even to as thoughtless a girl as you. I’m just going to tell you, because you probably won’t want to believe it, that what I’m about to do is not to punish you. It is to save you.”
Brena took a stone hammer from her belt and smashed the corncob doll to pieces.
Rthan
In the tide pools below the tribehold, Sharkshead, the giant blue crabs were molting. Rthan watched the creatures, normally swift and terrible, turned into clumsy puppets of themselves. The molting took all day for most of them, and for hours they lurched like drunks in the effort to scuttle backwards out of their own shells. Warriors guarded the tide pools during this time to keep away predators and poachers. Only a few of the soft shell crabs would be nabbed before their new, larger shells could harden. Those few would be sacrificed, cooked and consumed by the Mervaedi and her Merfae guests. No other humans would be allowed to taste the sacred dish. The rest of the crabs would use the seawater to puff themselves up to their new size, a third larger than what they had been before. Their shells would harden in the water over the next three days, and once they were strong and safe again, they would return to their crab-kivas in the sea.
Nargano picked over the rocks until he found a freshly discarded shell, claws fractured, with the old gills still stuck to the bottom plate.
“For a long time I wondered why the Blue Lady let you remain a slave,” Nargano said. “Why did she not free you, or if she would not be bothered, why did she not abandon one who had been so humiliated by his enemies?”
Nargano sucked the meat from one gill, then held it out to Rthan. The gills were also called “dead man’s fingers” and haphazardly poisonous. It was not Rthan’s favorite delicacy, but it was considered good luck to eat it and cowardly to refuse. The dead man’s fingers tasted tough, slimy and grotesquely bitter. It fit his mood.
Nargano smiled when Rthan emptied the shell. “Then I realized she knew all along what would happen. What needed to happen. You were weak, Rthan, yes. But there was a purpose to it. You had to cast off your old shell before you could grow stronger than ever before. You had to find our enemy’s name.”
“Vultho,” growled Rthan.
Rthan could still hear Vultho laugh as he had boasted about setting fire to the hut with Rthan’s family inside. The worm had laughed.
“Vultho. They’ve made him their War Chief now.”
“I heard the rumor. I didn’t know if I should believe it.”
“My spies have seen it with their own eyes. Do you still doubt the need for war?”
“No.” Rthan hurled the shell on the rocks, where it shattered. “The weakness has passed.”
Kavio
Warriors stood casually arrayed around Vultho, who had decked himself in the feathers and finery of a War Chief. He sprawled on an elevated stool covered with a bearskin under a tree in the dirt courtyard, and it was evident from his unsteady slouch that he’d already dipped into the beer pot beside him more than once that morning. Kavio’s lip curled. How could the elders of Yellow Bear have appointed such a drooling idiot to be their leader on the field of battle?
Many of the elders, those who were not Tavaedies, sat on logs against the hut walls around the courtyard. They also passed around beer pots, which Thrano said Vultho had gifted liberally to his supporters. Kavio scanned them, idly rehearsing their names for future reference, when he saw a familiar face. Deposed War Chief Hertio had not departed in disgrace, nor suffered any grievous bodily loss in the transfer of power. He sat drinking and laughing and cracking pine nuts on a log not a spit’s distance from Vultho’s stool. Perhaps Vultho’s position was not so secure after all, if Hertio still lounged about the main compound on the hill.
Hertio looked up, and, when he saw Kavio, for a moment his façade of mirth fell away, as clearly as a dropped mask, to show naked need, a mix of pleading, desperation and hope. In that single look, Kavio realized that Hertio, like Thrano, hoped Kavio would overthrow Vultho and restore Hertio to power.
Kavio looked away.
He swept past Hertio and led the returning peace party into the center of the compound. Mentally, he counted the number of warriors with spears standing or loitering about. He had a good number of people with him, counting the Shunned, except he wasn’t sure he could count on the Shunned. The warriors with him had proven their loyalty
, but he did not want to pit them a second time against their own kin. It would not be fair. Or prudent.
Never be weak. The weak die.
Kavio heard the voice as clearly as if his father stood by his side.
For a fortnight, Kavio had been wrestling with how to offer Hertio penance for his failure. Now he realized Vultho had done him a favor. He lifted his chin and threw back his shoulders. He swaggered forward, until he stood directly before Vultho, but he raised his voice to address the entire compound.
“Our plan met with success, War Chief Vultho,” Kavio declared loudly. “Our enemy, the fisheater Nargano, is utterly humiliated. We can now proceed with the second half of your plan and he will be powerless to stop you.”
Vultho, who had been braced for a different conversation entirely, stared at him slack-jawed. He tittered nervously. “What…what are you talking about?”
This was the problem when you dealt with stupid people.
“Everything is going according to your plan,” Kavio said. “Your foresight was indeed marvelous, uncle. Nargano has lost spears in many Blue Water clans that once gave him their fealty. The time is ripe for you to send envoys to those clans to side with Yellow Bear in the upcoming war.”
Come on, Vultho. Take the bait. Just one more worm to make the hook irresistible. Though his tongue recoiled against a bitter taste, Kavio forced himself to keep going with the charade. He ducked his head, as if embarrassed by a misstep.
“Forgive me, uncle. I should not have spoken of that in front of so many ears. I know many will vie for the honor of being an envoy.”
The courtyard burst into angry bickering. Many of Vultho’s patrons wanted to know when he had intended to let them in on his plans, while others demanded to know whom he would name envoys. Vultho looked confused and angry.
“There will be no envoys!” he shouted. “Why would Blue Waters clans swear allegiance to me?”
Fa, good question. Kavio pretended to be baffled. “But, War Chief, was it not for this purpose that you had us contact Imorvae in every enemy clanhold and bring these Imorvae here from Sharkshead itself? Can there be any better proof of their loyalty than that they are here, any better sign that many of their brethren are willing to join us as well?”
Kavio gestured grandly to the Shunned. They shuffled their feet in the dirt, uncertain of the role he had given them.
“The Rain Dancer speaks truly!” an elder wheezed at Vultho. “Why would you have invited these Blue Waters tribesfolk here unless you planned an alliance with some of their clans? If you are going to join spears with outtribers, you cannot hide it from the elders! We have a say in which envoys to send! Or do you seek to dishonor us so quickly after we elevated you to glory?”
Vultho shrank back a little. “No, no, uncle, I meant no disrespect, but…”
“Then the Council of Patriarchs will choose the envoys!”
A white-haired woman stood up. “The Council of Matriarchs must also have a say in this matter!”
“What do old women know of making war?”
“What do old men know of making allies?”
The bickering sounded as sweet as music. It was all Kavio could do not to laugh at Vultho’s furious, helpless scowl while the white haired uncles and aunties debated who would go. Vultho may have convinced his relatives to make him a figurehead, but he was no Nargano. He aspired to wrap his fist around the neck of the tribe, but his fingers did not reach yet. His gaze found Kavio, and hate burned there. Too late, he had recognized Kavio’s trap, and though Vultho did not dare say so now, his eyes promised revenge.
Dindi
Perhaps because she had absorbed Kavio’s view of their journey as a disastrous failure, Dindi was taken aback by the reaction of the other Initiates when she and Gwenika returned to their lodges. The young people gathered around them, cheering and buzzing with questions. That evening, the young warriors built up a huge bonfire in the center yard, and everyone sat around it, singing war songs, telling tales of battles gone by, and plying Gwenika and Dindi for more details about the trip.
The Zavaedis watched all this tolerantly, even when the Initiates decided to roast an aurochs calf that was to have been sacrificed to honor the new War Chief. The meat roasted slowly on the spit, which the boys turned while the girls braised the meat with parsley flakes and pepper. As the outer bits sizzled, the Initiates sliced off pieces, and many of these were pressed into the hands of the guests of honor. Dindi could hardly turn down the gift. She sucked on the peppery, almost raw meat. Blood dribbled down her chin, and she wiped her face with greasy hands, leaving a smear. The bites of meat sat heavy in her gullet, as if she had swallowed something that did not belong to her.
Tamio jumped to his feet to lead the Initiates in a war chant. “Do the fish faces think we will not split their gullets? Bring it on! Hu! Hu! Hu!”
“Hu! Hu! Hu!” shouted hundreds of voices. “HU! HU! HU!”
Bare feet stomped, sweaty hands clapped, spears thudded the ground, all in time to the battle chant. The reverberation made Dindi imagine how a pixie would feel trapped inside a drum. She could see luminous strings of sound tying all the young people together, tightly, like the waterproof weave for a drinking basket, like gut cords braided together for a bow. She heard her own voice mingling with the rest, but she hardly recognized it. It was as if she was another person entirely, and her body was a clay pot filled not with herself, but with the liquid excitement of the crowd as a whole. The same strands of light that threaded the others connected her to them, wove her into them, into the mass, into the beat, into the song. Dizzy, drunk, head pounding....
She didn’t like the feeling.
Somehow she pulled back into herself. Stopped clapping. Stopped chanting. Hands sticky in her lap, jawed clenched, she turned into a quiet pool of darkness skipped by the weaves of light and sound. No one noticed.
She glanced at Gwenika, who had stopped clapping also. Her face was pale and waxy.
“I think I’m going to throw up.” Gwenika mouthed the words soundlessly over the noise. She’d had some beer.
Dindi helped her friend stand up and they escaped the crowd. No one cared that the two guests of honor staggered away from the revelry to hide in the shadows behind one of the lodges. Gwenika vomited in the piss pit. Then they found a mat against the rough log wall of the lodge.
“It’s like they’re happy we’re going to war,” Gwenika said. “Don’t they get it?”
“They haven’t seen what we have,” Dindi said.
“They are so sure we will win. But you saw the warriors in Blue Waters. They’re all as big and strong as Rthan. And now I guess he’ll be helping them.”
Dindi rested her chin on her knees. The stars looked like thousand thousand thousand bonfires, as if the whole sky were preparing for war, just like the Initiates.
“Dindi?” Gwenika sounded nervous. “About what my mother did?”
“You don’t have to say it.”
“But I do. I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It was my fault you didn’t destroy the doll sooner. It was my fault you got in trouble. I tried to tell my mother that, but as usual, she didn’t listen.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“At least it’s over now,” said Gwenika. “At least the hexed thing is gone from your life. You don’t have to be in danger any more. You can leave that to the Tavaedies from now on.”
Sometimes Dindi wished Gwenika knew when to stop talking.
She stood up, telling Gwenika, “I think I’m going to go to bed now. You should go back to the fire. You’re the guest of honor, after all. Just don’t drink any more beer.”
Gwenika laughed weakly.
Dindi hurried away and ducked into the lodge, but as soon as she saw Gwenika’s shadow returning to the mass of Initiates, Dindi slipped out again. She couldn’t stand to be inside the smothering lodge any more than she wanted the company of drunk revelers. What she missed most since the ye
ar of her Initiation had begun, she realized, was time to herself. Here she was always with someone. The journey to Blue Waters had been even worse. Even if she enjoyed the company of the person she was with…Gwenika…or Kavio…she missed the long hours she had once spent with no one but willawisps for companions. All she wanted now, she decided, was a few moments to sit by herself and have a good cry.
She knew of a nice rock against the palisade, as far from the lodges as one could get after curfew. She headed to it now. Already tears pricked the corners of her eyes. To herself she could admit that she would miss the doll, miss Vessia.
Torches burned in stone bowls at intervals around the palisade. The sitting rock jutted out like the back of an aurochs beneath one flickering puddle of light, just illuminated enough to see that something had been placed on the flat spot of the rock. Dindi wondered if someone else had come here already, perhaps a couple who wanted to snog, or someone so smashed he couldn’t find his lodge. The object was small, like a flint scrapper or a mutton bone or…
…a corncob doll.
Dindi froze.
It was the corncob doll.
Her doll.
There was no mistaking it: the blank face, shabby clothing, worn cob, palpable radiation of dark power. There could not be two, not like that. And she knew, as clearly as if the doll had spoken to her directly, that it was waiting for her.
Chapter Two
Beast
Dindi
Dindi reached the corncob doll sitting on the rock and in a single motion lifted and smashed it back against the stone.
