Faery Worlds - Six Complete Novels (11 page)

The memory still irked her. One of her so-called friends later became her husband. Even then, all he’d cared about was that his wife not outshine him.

“But Mama, you became a Zavaedi eventually,” said Gwena.

“That’s just my point,” said Brena. “Not until after your father…” She caught herself. She’d never told the girls the full story. “…died in battle,” she revised in mid-sentence, “did I really focus on honing my skills. I don’t want you two to make the same mistake. When you reach the tribehold, there will be hundreds of young people. Search for the best dancers and make them your friends. Then you will be encouraged to be the best too. Don’t make friends with people who are likely to fail the Testing.”

“Well, of course,” said Gwena. “Why would we want to spend time with failures?”

“Maybe they might have other qualities besides just being able to dance well,” said Gwenika. She cuddled a chipmunk, her latest inseparable pet.

Brena fought the same helplessness that always welled up in her whenever faced with her youngest daughter.
Gwena is tough, like her father, but Gwenika is too much like I used to be. A weakling.

“Maybe I should hold you back until next Initiation.” Brena combed her hand through her hair, considering that possibility. “You’re too young.”

Gwenika brightened. “Yes! I can stay here with my pets and Gramma, while you and Gwena go off for seven moons to the tribehold.”

“Never mind.” Brena punched another sticky ball of dough on the rock until it was flat. “You’re coming.”

By noon, Brena saw to it reed mats laden with food were arranged in a square around the performance platform in the center of the dome-shaped houses. Tall structures of a wooden lattice leading to a disk of beaten gold, the Ladder-to-the-Sun symbol of Yellow Bear, surmounted many of the mud-and-dung houses. Brena noted with pride the awe of the Rainbow Labyrinth tribesfolk as they eyed the beaten gold. The Rainbow Labyrinth excelled in many things, but no one surpassed the gold smiths of Yellow Bear.

The two Taveadi societies held an impromptu Vooma, a dance war. They took turns displaying their cleverest tama while the aunties of Sycamore Stand served roasted pigeons, acorn porridge, onions, carrots, celery and rhubarb in addition to corn pishas and corn beer.

“Tama Tama,

Tae Tae,

Vooma Vooma

Tae!”

The chanting and the drums thundered and the Tavaedies flipped and kicked on the plantform. Zavaedi Brena won the Vooma against her counterpart, but Abiono took defeat with good grace. As they returned to the feast, his eyes twinkled and he gestured vaguely toward the gold ornaments and paint she wore which indicated her widowed state.

“You still haven’t remarried? Neither have I. My offer stands . . .”

She smiled, despite herself, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “I remain as flattered as always. But I have no desire for a man to complicate my life.”

“I wish you would let go of your grief for your husband, Brena. It won’t bring him back.”

“It isn’t grief,” she said. “It’s anger. He brought his death on himself. He had no need to join his cousin’s clan’s war, he just wanted to win glory. He could never forgive me for having a Shining Name when he didn’t. But he would have found more glory protecting his own children than swallowing a spear. What good did a Shining Name do for him then?”

Her eyes slid to her daughters. The elder, Gwena, had already attracted the attentions of several of the new Initiates. She laughed and tossed her hair, looking completely at ease and so like her father Brena’s breath caught in her throat. The younger, Gwenika, on the other hand, wagged her tongue at one newcomer after another, always with the same result: after a moment or two the other person’s smile began to twitch, and her partner abandoned the spot next to her to escape her chatter. Gwenika ended next to the last girl in the line, a pretty but mousy thing who looked twitchy to begin with, certainly not like someone capable of teaching Gwenika to better herself. Brena couldn’t say why, and she told herself she was being foolish and unfair, but she took an immediate dislike to the girl. There was something unsettling about her. Brena’s mouth thinned to a line.

“Who’s that?”

Abiono’s sigh held a basketful of untold woes. “That one would be Dindi.”

Only then did Brena recognize her from the dream as the girl who had shot the bear and destroyed the world.

Dindi

During the feast and dancing, Puddlepaws escaped Dindi’s pack. She worried in case the kitten tried to steal foods from the feast mats, but found Puddlepaws preoccupied behind her. Head low to the ground, eyes glowing with intent, small furry rump stuck up in the air, tail lashing, the kitten stalked a scurrying rat.

Puddlepaws pounced and caught the rat, which he didn’t know quite what to do with.

A girl swooped down and picked up Puddlepaws. “Fa! Go! Leave her alone! Oh, you poor little thing, are you whole? Did that meanie cat bite you?”

The girl was cradling the rat. No, now Dindi saw it clearly, it wasn’t a rat but a chipmunk. Puddlepaws scrambled away and peeked out from behind one of the huts.

“That’s my cat,” Dindi said. “Don’t chase him off, he might get lost.”

“He terrified my chipmunk!”

“I’m sure he meant no harm,” Dindi said. “He just wanted to eat an arm or two. Maybe a leg.”

The girl snorted. In her looks, she was typical of Yellow Bears folk, solid and healthy, with cropped, thick dark hair and sun-warmed skin that shone golden brown. Her dress was beaded with polished acorn caps and quail feathers, and she wore a single gold ring in her nose.

“My name is Gwenika.” She coughed and plunked herself down next to Dindi, displacing Jensi, who had been chatting with Yodigo on her other side and not noticed her.

“Hey!” protested Jensi.

“Be careful not to sit too close to me,” said Gwenika morosely. “I have Drowned’s Man’s Lung.”

Jensi scooted away. Now Dindi and Gwenika were isolated at the end of the mat.

“Drowned Man’s Lung!” said Dindi. Normally, anyone with a contagious, fatal disease such as that was asked to join the Deathsworn rather than risk infecting the rest of her clan.

Gwenika chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. “I may have the wrong diagnosis, I’m still not sure. My symptoms are fever, coughing and chest pain, which could indicate Drowned Man’s Lung. But it might also be the Black Boil Plague.”

Either possibility seemed quite dreadful to Dindi. Several of her clanfolk—two younger siblings to Jensi and Hadi’s mother—had died from disease a few years ago, because Uncle Lobo had angered a troll.

“I’m sorry,” said Dindi. “How were you hexed?”

“I’m still not sure. My mother refuses to help. She thinks I’m not really sick.”

“Oh,” said Dindi. “What does your clan’s Healer Tavaedi say?”

“My mother is our clan’s Healer.”

“Oh.”

Dindi didn’t know what else to say, but Gwenika talked, and very rapidly. She asked a lot of questions but didn’t wait for answers.

“So you have a cat? Where did you find him? What do you feed him? Other than chipmunks. I’ve never met anyone else with an animal. That wasn’t a horse, I mean. Or goats, but those aren’t really pets because you eat them. Some people do eat horse, though, which makes sense because there’s a lot more meat on a horse than on a chipmunk. No one has horses here, but I’ve heard all of the clans in Rainbow Labyrinth do—is that true? This is my chipmunk. I found him when he was hurt and helped him heal.”

Dindi nodded.

Encouraged by this response, Gwenika continued, “I was the lucky one. I had Stomach Upheaval at the time, and Stripe—that’s my chipmunk—helped me through it.”

The rest of the meal, Gwenika merrily continued to discuss the various illnesses she had endured in her short life. For some reason, the more diseases she mentioned, the less Dindi worried about catching Drowned Man’s Lung.

“You must be our guest tonight,” Gwenika said after the dancing ended and the revelers began to totter to the huts to sleep.

Dindi followed her to one of the beehive shaped houses honored by a golden Ladder-to-the-Sun top piece. There was no way that either girl could reach the round window-door from ground level, and there appeared to be no ladder.

“Hey!” shouted Gwenika. She slapped the side of the house.

Another girl, Jensi’s age, appeared in the window-door.

“That’s my sister, Gwena,” said Gwenika. To her sister: “Let us up!”

Gwena shoved a dark bundle over the ledge of the window. A rope ladder with wooden slats snapped down to knee’s reach. Gwenika scrambled up, followed more slowly by Dindi. As soon as both had crawled over the sill, Gwena silently rolled the ladder back inside and pushed it into a nook next the door.

It took Dindi a moment to adjust to the dimmer light inside the beehive house. Smoke stung her eyes.

Two adobe steps led down from the window to the interior floor, which was raised compared to the ground level outside. A fire flickered in the hearth at the center of the round room, while about the edges were adobe platforms for sitting, sleeping and eating. Everything looked clean and well swept.

It wasn’t hard to guess which platform belonged to Gwenika. Two rabbits snuggled on the blankets, under dangling birdcages. Other cages sat on the platform, which held a prairie vole, an opossum and a dozen lizards. A large, ventilated pot sat behind them all from which came the distinctive, and most unnerving sound of a rattle snake. Each of the animals that Dindi could see had an injury that had been lovingly bandaged—the birds had broken wings, the lizards lacked tails, one rabbit had a hurt paw, the other suffered a mite-infected ear. She wasn’t sure about the rattlesnake and didn’t care to investigate.

Puddlepaws, who had returned to Dindi’s pack and was peeking out, looked extremely interested in the rabbits.

Gwena and Gwenika’s mother turned out to be none other than the rather intimidating Zavaedi Brena. Her greeting was accompanied by a critical cross examination, with particular focus on Dindi’s family background.

“So there are no Tavaedies in your family?” Zavaedi Brena asked several times, several different ways.

“No, Auntie.”

“Hrmf.” She glanced significantly at her daughters, with a tiny shake of her head.

Gwena avoided close conversation with Dindi after that, but Gwenika appeared not to take her mother’s hint.

“You’ll guest with us,” Gwenika informed Dindi.

Late as it was, Dindi wanted nothing more than to sleep, but the platform barely had room for a single human, definitely not two.

“Gwenika, sleep on the floor,” said Zavaedi Brena.

“But her delicate health—” said the grandmother.

“She will survive one night.”

“I can sleep on the floor,” Dindi said.

“You’re our guest, it wouldn’t be right.”

Gwenika unrolled a mat of rushes and lay down beside the platform; while Dindi tried to accustom herself enough to the strange place enough to sleep. The animals shifted in their cages, except for the cat and bunny, which snuggled her. Once she closed her eyes, it almost felt as though the warm bodies breathing beside her was Jensi, and the smell of animal fur was the smell of goats milling in the pen below her loft.

Dindi

Wailing awakened her. Dindi sat up, her heart pounding as it had when she’d been kidnapped. The sky, visible through the smoke hole in the ceiling, showed the face of night freckled with stars. She identified the source of misery as Gwenika. While her grandmother patted her back helplessly, Gwenika threw up into the hearth. The burning vomit stank up the whole hut.

“Is Gwenika sick again?” asked Gwena, rubbing her eyes. She sounded less concerned than Dindi would have expected. “What is it this time?”

“I’m going to die,” sobbed Gwenika. “This time, I know I’m going to die.”

“Fa, then, can’t you just die quietly for once and let the rest of us get some sleep?” demanded Gwena.

Gwenika gagged and retched again, although nothing came out this time. She looked terrible. “One day I will die, and then you’ll be sorry you were so mean to me.”

“I’ll be too busy catching up on my rest,” said Gwena.

“Gwenika, don’t jest about such things, you’ll invite the Deathsworn. And Gwena, just focus on resting yourself,” said Zavaedi Brena. “You know your sister isn’t like you, but you mustn’t ruin your own chances at you-know-what.”

“Yes, Mama,” said Gwena.

“She can sleep on my bed,” said the grandmother. “I’ll brew her a soothing tea.”

They all returned to bed, except the grandmother, who stayed up long into the night, brewing tea and humming songs of healing.

Dindi

The next day, the Initiates from the Rainbow Labyrinth tribe were joined by another dozen Initiates from Sycamore Stands, as well as their chaperon, Zavaedi Brena. Among the new Initiates were the sisters Gwena and Gwenika. The new Initiates wore grass skirts and wood disk headdresses painted yellow instead of a woven wrap, but they also painted symbolic bands of kohl like blindfolds over their eyes, and stenciled rope designs around their wrists and ankles.

Gwenika clutched Dindi by the elbow for the day’s trek. Dindi felt uncomfortable, like a leashed goat, but also pleased, just a little, someone besides the fae wanted her company. Also, Puddlepaws liked Gwenika, and that sealed it. The furry little traitor took to riding on Gwenika’s shoulder. As she pet Puddlepaws, she explained she’d had to leave her pets behind in the care of her grandmother.

“Though perhaps it’s for the best.” Gwenika hunched under the weight of her backbasket. “With the number of Upper Back Bloat Spasms I’ve been suffering, I won’t be around much longer to care for them.”

They stopped an hour before sunset to eat evening meal and camp by a river. The two groups of adults were too busy talking amongst themselves to bother about enforcing the No Talking rule among the Initiates. The boys had gone hunting together.