Great Sky Woman (12 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Occasionally, the men of Fire boma hunted as a group. Twice during these times, Frog saw Deep Dry Hole’s wife, Wind Song, sneaking off into the brush with Lizard Tongue.

Once he followed them, hiding behind a tree as they laughed and groaned for a time, then returned to the boma by different paths. He asked Lizard about it, but his friend only smiled.

Such dalliances were not strictly forbidden but could cause fighting between the best of friends. For a boy not yet a man to do such a thing was begging an invitation to the wrestling circle. A boy without the protection of father or uncles risked broken bones.

Still, the risk was one Lizard seemed happy to take.

Could sex be so wonderful that it was worth a sore head? Frog did not know, and could not wait to know, but such delicious speculations seemed a distraction from the pale, serious discussions conducted at the firesides, at the hide-scraping rocks down by the rivers, in the huts before sleep time.

There had been more attacks on bhan: bomas destroyed to the northeast. Men had disappeared on the hunt, their bones never found at all. The elders began to speak of things that had never happened in living memory—the Ibandi joining into a single unit in preparation for slaughter. Not two tens of men, but tens of tens. The idea was almost beyond Frog’s imagining.

Uncle Snake used a word Frog had never heard before.

War.

“See this skull!” said Break Spear at the men’s fire. Fire boma was hosting a group of southern hunters who had discovered yet another slaughtered family on the plain. He held up an orb of splintered bone, the skull of a slain bhan.

The men had the seats closest to the fire, ranked by age. Frog and Scorpion stood at the back, watching avidly. Frog could hardly wait until he had years and honor enough to sit next to the fire itself.

But even from such distance, he could easily see that a chunk had been torn or broken out of the skull. He shivered at the thought of such violence. “This is what the beast-men do.”

“We fight again, kill more,” said Snake, “or they will take our land. Fight!”

“We can talk with them,” Thorn Summer said.

Fire Ant spit toward Great Earth. The Between was rarely criticized for his lack of scars, but speaking so at such a serious council was very nearly a transgression.

“You speak like a woman,” said Water Chant, father of Water boma. He was a tall, lean man with the saddest eyes Frog had ever seen. They were touched with green, he noticed, much like those of the girl T’Cori. “They do not talk. They kill. And they will kill us unless we kill them.”

“How can you say this?” Thorn insisted. “How do we know? Perhaps Father Mountain is angry, wants us to welcome new children. Our land is rich. We can share.”

Break Spear snorted with derision. “They will kill us all. My father’s father spoke of beast-men from the east. They did not speak our tongue. They did not look like us or share our ways. We let them come into our lands, and this is how they repay us.”

The men drummed their feet against the ground.

“But—” Thorn began, voice plaintive.

Break Spear cut the Between off. “Where are the great hunters of my father’s day?” Break Spear said. “Have the Ibandi grown weak and soft? Are we women, to let them come and take us? Perhaps
you
wish them to kill your daughters and bugger your sons, but we are men, and we will fight!”

They continued to discuss the ripe and rotten of the ideas until the moon began to sink below the horizon and the new sun was born in the eastern sky.

Later that moon, Little Brook left their boma with Lion, to join her new husband’s family in Wind boma. Despite her harsh words and stinging slaps, Little Brook was his sister, and Frog was sorry to see them go. He had come to think of Lion Tooth as another brother. But Wind boma was only two days’ run to the north. He would visit, and when he did, he could play games with Lion, and once again have the pleasure of ignoring Little Brook’s commands.

She took his hands. “You will bring water, and scrape the skins well, and do everything Mother says, or I will come back and beat you,” she said, tears sparkling in her eyes. Frog hugged her.

“I will miss you too,” he said. She brushed her lips against his forehead, then turned to leave the boma with her husband. She seemed so sad, and yet so filled with hope for her future. Frog had a sudden, terrible premonition that he would never see her again, and blinked back tears. His only consolation was that, as yet, none of his premonitions had ever come true.

Of course, there was always a first time.

Chapter Fourteen

The following winter brought the worst days of Frog’s life. Hard rains were followed by a terrible plague of flies tiny enough to crawl up his nose and into his ears. It was not so bad in the boma, but as Frog, his uncles and brothers walked out on a five-day hunt, it got worse. Flies everywhere, in their mouths, biting at night. They encountered bhan in the outer circle completely overwhelmed by the buzzing plague, small, sickly men and women huddled in the corners of their boma, shivering, unable even to move.

Frog and his brothers inhaled clouds of insects, spitting them out when they could, choking on masses of them until they found a cave and set fires in the mouth, preferring to gag on smoke than that revolting living mass, dreading to become like the bhan, living there in the crawling cloud, their wailing children with maggots in their eyes.

They were forced to return home with empty hands, and it was of little comfort that the other hunters had fared no better. Indeed, it seemed that the flies had driven away all game, and as stomachs emptied, the Ibandi began to grumble.

And then finally, the word
curse
was spoken. It was Deep Dry Hole who used it.

“A witch!” Deep Dry Hole called, and pointed his finger at Lizard Tongue. Frog’s friend recoiled. At times Lizard had been an object of mockery or suspicion, but never of direct accusation.

Dry Hole’s wife, Wind Song, shrank back. Everyone knew that when Dry Hole hunted, she had slunk into the bush with Lizard.

“My hunt was for nothing,” Dry Hole said. His eyes glittered with malice. “For days I hunt, and find only rodents and snakes.“

Hot Tree tried to be reasonable. “This happens,” she said.

“Not to me!” Dry Hole roared. “But I know why hunting has been bad. There is only one reason.” He wheeled dramatically, fixing his eyes on the hapless youth. “Lizard Tongue! I saw him touching my spear. He pointed at me and mumbled.”

Shock burned through Frog’s bones. His friend was in trouble. Touching a hunter’s weapons without permission was rude, even for a two-scarred hunter. But for one without a single stripe to do such a thing was a terrible breach and insult. And a bhan boy as well? Frog groaned.

“What is it you say?” Break Spear asked.

Dry Hole sneered, knowing that at last he had their full attention. “This is not a boy! Not a man, not even an Ibandi,” he said. “This is a witch. He brings bad luck.”

“No! It is not true!” Lizard said, panic in his voice. “I have lived among you since I was a baby. You know me!”

Dry Hole was scornful. “Any witch might protest as much. Witch, I say!”

Horrible silence followed, its own damnation.

“I say test him!” Dry Hole clenched his fists and screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. “Test him, or I will take my children and join another boma. I will not live in the same thorn ring with a witch, to wither my root and starve my spear!” Some of the others took up that call. Frog wanted to run and stand beside his friend, but Fire Ant’s hand clamped hard on his shoulder. Despite his dismay, Frog was secretly glad for the restraint.

Fire boma’s elders took to the meeting hut, where the door was closed and the children were warned to stay away. They remained, chanting and singing, until late into the night, when a grim-faced Break Spear emerged and said: “Accuser and accused must be tested.”

Runners were sent racing toward Great Sky. Two days later, Cloud Stalker himself appeared. Although his spine was not so straight, Stalker was still the tallest Ibandi Frog had ever seen. His skin was more weathered than it had been just two springs ago, his hair now streaked with gray. But his muscles were still strong and full as a young hunter’s, his eyes still sharp enough to drive an arrow through a hawk in flight. And he could still outrun most of the younger hunters.

Frog saw him speak to Uncle Snake. The hair on the back of Frog’s neck burned. Earlier he had seen Dry Hole hand Snake a sliver of black rock wrapped with leather: a knife, and a good one, gained in trade with one of the eastern bomas. Frog’s belly twisted. He knew that soon “the gods” would pass a decision, and without a word spoken he knew exactly what that decision would be.

“This is a serious thing you say,” Cloud Stalker told them after he had rested awhile. He listened to their concerns, spoke to Deep Dry Hole and Lizard. Then after a smoke, he began to dance.

Lizard Tongue and Dry Hole sat in the men’s circle, with the women forming another, looser ring outside them. Although Lizard was not fully a man of the tribe, with such a serious accusation all within the boma walls were granted protection of their laws. Challenger and challenged alike were equal in Father Mountain’s eyes.

“I call a trial,” Stalker said. “Earth, wind, water”—as he said them he danced to their directions—“and fire.”

Lizard trembled. It seemed to Frog that Deep Dry Hole was hard-pressed to conceal his smirk.

“The fire trial,” he said. The tribe moaned and swayed, agreeing, eagerness simmering beneath the surface. All the hunters had struggled recently. Ever since the washing of the spears, their luck seemed to have gone bad. Any change of luck was sincerely prayed and danced for. And if that called for the sacrifice of one terrified boy, then so be it.

First, as the elders beat the leather-headed drums, the men’s fire was built into a blaze, then the coals and glowing ashes raked out in a long bed. Dry Hole and Lizard each had to scoop up a coal and then walk barefoot out on the glowing bed.

The rules were simple: they could throw the coals into the air again and again, but the first to drop it, or leave the bed of coals, would be he for whom Father Mountain felt no love.

Lizard scanned their faces, seeking compassion, and found it only within Frog’s eyes. Even his lover Wind Song would not look at him.

For tens of breaths the two, Lizard and Deep Dry Hole, sat as the hunt chief danced before them with such liquid motions that Frog grew sleepy just watching, nearly entering the world of the dream even though his eyes were open.

Hot Tree and Thorn Summer brought forth ostrich shells filled with water. Dry Hole and Lizard were allowed to sop their bare feet.

Then with no apparent discomfort Cloud Stalker picked up two dusty, glowing coals from the bed and placed one in each of their palms.

“Dance,” he said.

They stepped onto the coals and began their dance and chant. The steam hissed from their hands and feet. The water swiftly evaporated, and their chants grew louder, tinged now with pain as smoke rose from hands and feet.

Every eye in the boma was fixed upon them. All but one pair. Frog crept away, into the hut where Cloud Stalker had left his sack. And there, in the darkness, he opened Stalker’s sacred belt, and committed a great sin.

By the time Frog returned, tears streamed down Lizard’s swollen face. He screamed and stumbled from the coals, sobbing uncontrollably, pouring water on his burning feet. Dry Hole stepped off, sat on the ground with a thump and almost casually dribbled water on his toes, lips curled in a contemptuous smile.

Lizard rubbed water into his feet, trembling like a gazelle in a leopard’s jaws. “Please,” he whispered.

Cloud Stalker frowned. Did he want to condemn Frog’s friend? Frog could not know. But he guessed that the knife that had passed from Dry Hole to Snake could now be found in Stalker’s pouch. “I see stones in your body,” he said, peering deeply at Lizard’s chest.

Stones? Stalker turned and left them to go to the meeting hut, the flap closing behind him. Would Stalker discover what Frog had done? And if he did, would Uncle Snake’s dead left eye light on Frog, blasting his soul? Frog shivered.

Stalker emerged, draped in his lion skin, wearing his gorilla skull. White bone marks were painted upon his face, as though his skin was transparent.

He did not walk back to them, he danced, one step at a time, singing a death song.

He held out a ball of dried herbs, opened Lizard’s mouth, and forced it in. As the drums thundered, Lizard and Cloud Stalker danced together, Lizard struggling to match Stalker’s movements as the hunt chief transformed himself into snake, and eagle, and lion, and gorilla. The herbs began to take effect, and Lizard fell to the ground, bucking and writhing, and calling out to the gods for mercy.

As the people screamed and sang, Cloud Stalker hunched over, seeming to reach into Lizard’s abdomen. Did he, really? Frog could not see clearly enough to be certain, but the hair on the back of his neck itched, and his eyes opened wide, imagining such an intrusion into his own body. The boma folk screamed, and some of the women fainted, as Stalker howled and held his bloody arm aloft, holding—

A black stone, signifying life.
Cloud Stalker’s eyes widened with shock.

Frog sidled behind his mother, afraid to let Stalker see his face, lest his guilt betray him. What must the mighty hunt chief be thinking? Of a miracle, of the hand of Father Mountain in men’s affairs? Or would he know that human will had determined hunt chief justice?

Frog snuck a peek at Uncle Snake, who looked at him, mouth thin with anger.

He knew. But would he speak, betraying Frog?

Cloud Stalker threw the stone down at his feet. “The boy is not a witch,” he said.

“No!” said Deep Dry Hole. Frog saw his lips twitch, trembling. Finally, with venom enough to kill a man at ten paces, he leaned over Lizard, who was still curled, moaning on the ground, wiping flecks of foam from his lips. “You are a weakling. You will never be a hunter. The jackals will kill you for me.” And stalked back to his hut.

Cloud Stalker’s face was set grimly. “It is done,” he said, and without another word turned and began his walk back to the mountain.

Dry Hole washed his burned feet with water, and glared at Lizard and then at his wife. Frog knew: regardless of Lizard’s fate, Wind Song had earned a bone-rattling.

Had Frog sinned terribly against the gods in doing what he had done? For replacing the white stone held on the left side of the belt with a second black one? Was this an inexcusable sin?

Or worse…

What if there was
nothing
atop Great Sky? What if there were no gods at all? The thought hit him like a rock to the base of his skull, a thought so terrible and enormous that he dared not even whisper it to himself.

What if there was nothing?