Great Sky Woman (7 page)

But that did not change one important fact: there was a line between women’s things and men’s things, a line to be crossed only at peril. Why were the men willing to risk their lives hunting? One thing and one thing only kept them on guard between the lions and the boma: the fact that such dangerous tasks were matters of masculine honor and pride. Women were born to the mysteries of childbirth, and no man, however worthy, could step into that circle. When women began to do men’s things it caused confusion, fear and pain, upsetting the balance that had kept the world as it was since the first Ibandi walked from Great Mother’s womb.

If Stillshadow did not control her dream dancers, Cloud Stalker would have to do it, and that she could not allow. Hunt chiefs provided meat, protection, companionship. Any of these might be withdrawn if Stalker was angry. And what might that do to their relationship? Her love for Cloud Stalker no longer burned with the sexual heat of their youth, but his touch still soothed. What if he declined to sleep with her? True, he would be punishing himself, but he would find young women eager to sleep with him more easily than she would find worthy young men. However much she might hate that truth, truth it remained.

Stillshadow rolled up to sitting and then crawled out of her little temporary lean-to at the edge of the Gathering. Beneath her, the rows of huts stretched as far as the eye could see, faded to paleness by the night and the full moon.

She found her way to the hut where the girls slept. Stillshadow studied them carefully, confident that she would swiftly spy T’Cori’s sleeping form. The girl was so small, even now at ten and two rains, that when she curled into a ball, her thumb thrust into her mouth, she resembled a baby still.

No, she was not there.

Stillshadow felt no alarm. She knew where she would find the girl, and backed out of the hut without making a sound. She walked through the camp, hearing the occasional snore and murmur, a few low grunts and slapping wet sex sounds, some whispered conversations.

The camp was at rest, or at play, save for two. Herself, and…

Yes, there.

The Life Tree tossed in a gentle midnight wind, the topmost branches swaying in a peaceful rhythm deceptive enough to lull one almost to sleep. There at the top, barely visible to Stillshadow’s tired old eyes, clung T’Cori, the nameless one. She had climbed so high that perhaps no one else in all the tribe could have surpassed her. The girl was as light as a child, but as strong as a young man.

In times past Stillshadow had wondered why the girl spent so much of her time in solitude, climbing among the cliffs and trees.

Now, watching the baobab’s branches swaying in the night wind, she understood. There, careening at the very height of the tree, T’Cori raised her arms up to Great Sky. There, at the top of the tree, the foundling called out wordlessly to the mother of all to be the mother of one, to pluck her up and take her to a world where she might find greater peace and acceptance.

Stillshadow found a place to sit, and watched as the Life Tree’s branches bent back and forth, the girl held her arms out to the misty mountain, and the moon looked down on all.

She understood. The climbing was a kind of prayer. Great Sky’s white-shrouded summit must seem so close to the girl, close enough almost to reach out and touch. And that must be very nearly more than T’Cori’s aching heart could bear.

Stillshadow did not sleep that night, watching the girl and the tree with heavy, anxious eyes. At last she heard the old dream dancers singing their sun song, and the first pink flush of dawn painted the eastern horizon. T’Cori climbed back down. She saw Stillshadow, perhaps, but did not speak to her, and crawled into a lean-to of sticks and hide for whatever sleep she might manage before the new day’s songs and struggles began.

Chapter Nine

Two days later, Stillshadow found T’Cori weaving a basket streamside with Far Eye and Blossom. All greeted the old woman, but T’Cori still could not meet her gaze.

With a sigh, Stillshadow sat next to her and plucked up a reed from the side of the stream, her fingers automatically beginning to weave.

“I was thinking of dancing a story tonight at the fire, T’Cori,” she said.

“What story is that, honored one?”

“I think you have heard it before, when you were younger. It is the story of Medicine Mouse,” she said.

Blossom laughed. “That is a good one,” she said. “A good one.”

“I don’t think I know it,” T’Cori said.

“Ah, then you would be a perfect judge for me.” Stillshadow stood, inhaled slowly, and began to dance.

Her hands, her hips, her face and eyes, her song all told the story, and the nameless girl was swiftly pulled into its spell:

Once upon a time there was a hyrax named Medicine Mouse. She was a great healer, and all of the creatures of the forest depended upon her for the herbs and knowledge that kept them well. But she gave more than that. She also taught them the wisdom of life, which she had learned from her mother, who had learned it from hers, and on back until the beginning of time.

One day, Medicine Mouse was walking through the forest and happened upon a black crake. Crake lay exhausted between the trees, a sack tied to her feet. From the tracks, she had dragged it a long long way, and could carry it no farther.

“What are you doing here?” Medicine Mouse said. “You should fly away. A snake will find you and have a fine supper.”

“I cannot move, I am too tired,” Crake said. Her black feathers were crusted with salt sweat, her white bill flecked with dried spittle.

“What happened to you?” asked Medicine Mouse, thinking that perhaps some terrible disease had cursed her friend.

“Oh, it is a sad story,” Crake said. “I was flying through the forest and struck my head upon a branch. It hurt so much that I promised myself I would never do that again. And the best way I could think of to make certain that would never happen is to break the branch off and carry it with me, so I did.

“I flew away, carrying the branch, and although I wasn’t able to fly quite so quickly, my heart was gladdened, knowing I would never strike that branch again. But it made me clumsy, so that I struck a tree trunk. Angered, I swore I would never strike that trunk again, and tore the chunk of bark away, placing it in my sack for protection.

“The sack was heavy by this time, and I could not fly, but that is all right, because I run very well! I ran and ran, carrying my sack, until I tripped over a rock. I put the rock in my sack, which was by now very very heavy, and dragged it behind me. By now, I seemed to hit my head and stub my feet on everything, and even though I put everything that hurt me in the sack, there were more and more mistakes. And then I was exhausted, and the sack was too heavy to carry, so I wait here. I will catch my strength,” Crake said. “And then I will go on.”

Medicine Mouse thought about all that she had heard, and finally said, “I have an answer to your problem. I have here a sacred knife, and with it I can cut away the bag, and bless the contents, so that none of them will ever bother you again.”

“Oh, would you?” Crake said, and lay quietly as Medicine Mouse did her magic. She cut and cut, and then blessed. Her friend Crake thanked her, and then shook out her wings and flew away.

Medicine Mouse buried the sack, as Crake should have done from the beginning. Then, singing a healing song, she continued on her way.

“What do you think of the story?” Stillshadow asked, breathing hard as her dance ended.

T’Cori stirred her finger in the water and then met her eyes squarely for the first time in days. “I think it is a very good one,” she said. Tears flowed from her eyes, and she threw her arms around her teacher’s neck, giving her a hug.

Then Stillshadow went away, leaving Blossom and Far Eye and T’Cori at the riverside. And as she did, she heard laughter behind her, and knew that it was good.

Two days later, Uncle Snake and a few of the men took Frog and other boys out from the Gathering to teach them the ways of hunting and surviving in Great Sky’s shadow. This was a tradition, another sign that Frog was traversing the invisible meridian between child and man. The plan was to stay out for several nights, traveling southwest.

He struggled to match his own small stride to Uncle Snake’s long, easy steps. Scorpion stayed even with them, perhaps jealous of any time Frog and Snake spent together. Snake’s own wife had died the year before the lions had killed Baobab, and after his wounds healed, he had married Frog’s mother and hunted for his nephews and nieces, folding his own son and daughter into the extended family.

Scorpion, Frog believed, had always resented them.

For the last quarter of the second day, Snake had seemed unusually alert as they walked through a patch of shrub-spotted sand. “What are we looking for, Father?” Scorpion asked.

“Earlier this year I made friends,” Snake said, turning his blind left eye to them. “We hunted together, and all ate well. I promised to return.”

The sun was near the western horizon, where a tiny dot appeared on the plain before them, slowly swelling into the aged walls of a small, dirty boma, a disorganized web of mismatched branches and uprooted thornbushes. “Ho!” Snake called, repeating his cry again and again until three short, knobby folk appeared in the gateway.

By Frog’s reckoning, these bahn could not have been good hunters. To his young eyes they looked hungry and not well. Their skin was too tight around their skulls, their eyes huge but cloudy, their skin pocked with boils and disease scars. It felt strange to be near them, almost as if they were not even bhan, not quite people at all. As if they were smaller than but similar to the hulking beast-men Frog had occasionally glimpsed at the edges of a festival, crouched and hairy and ugly, gathering the Ibandi leavings and then scampering away rather than challenging or interacting.

Through a series of postures and hand signs, Uncle Snake communicated his desire for parley. The bhan children seemed fascinated by the deep, beautiful scarring on the left side of Snake’s face and were too simpleminded to pretend otherwise.

Scorpion shied away from them, his shoulder brushing Frog’s. “They stink,” his stepbrother said.

“Shhh,” said Frog. “They have ears.”

“But do they have noses? They stink!”

And it was true. The boma smelled bad, as if they were too ignorant to shovel dirt over their scat. Their bones jutted beneath the skin, and their teeth didn’t seem to fit in their jaws properly, and the bones in their fingers were twisted. Tiny blue flies crawled on the whites of their babies’ eyes.

The village leader’s name was Silent Warthog, a twisted man barely Frog’s height. Warthog was hospitable enough but had little to share save lizards and rats that any child or beast-man might have caught. Frog noticed that Uncle Snake managed to actually leave more food than he took. A good trick, he thought. Snake’s single good eye saw more than most men’s pair.

They were offered space within the rude thorn walls, but Snake declined.

“I thank you,” he said. “But these boys need to sleep beneath the sky, learn to build fires and shelters. I will return to enjoy your hospitality another moon.”

After additional polite conversation, their little group moved out into the gathering darkness. Frog was grateful. The stench would have made sleep impossible.

They walked until the boma was out of sight, and then Snake stopped them and they cut thornbushes, built fire and prepared for sleep. Beneath the open sky Frog tossed uneasily.

With the unconscious cruelty so common among children, he chuckled to himself at the poverty and weak-mindedness of the hapless bhan. Why had Uncle taken them there? His people had no need for their food or shelter. Why? And then he thought he understood. It was so he might thank Father Mountain for creating the Ibandi with such power and beauty. Feeling deep shame for his prior thoughts, Frog rolled over onto his back, staring up into the clouds, promising himself that he would give extra thanks to Father Mountain come next ceremony.

And then he slept, his last fuzzy thoughts of the boma’s stink.

If he’d known then that he would never see most of those bahn alive again, dreams might not have come so easily.

The next morning, Uncle Snake gathered them into a circle after their wrestling and breakfast. “Our bows are strong,” he said. “But when we climbed Great Sky, Father Mountain taught us to make our arrows stronger still.”

He lowered his voice. His empty eye socket and the web of scars over the stump of his left ear gave his words an eerie authority. “You must be careful with what we will teach you. One touch, and you can die.”

Uncle Snake’s lion-scarred eye was a knot of dead tissue, but his keen right eye missed nothing. He seemed a flowing fountain of knowledge, constantly pointing out plants and spiders that could be used to make death medicine, reminding them over and over that everything they saw, everything they touched, was alive. Still, none of the plant or animal death-spirits in this place was quite strong enough; none was the kind used by the Ibandi.

He sang endlessly of grubs and toads but only became truly excited when they came upon a dry river wash. There, growing at a lean, was a bush as high as Frog’s chest with straggly black branches festooned with little green berries. “The poison-grub plant.” Smiling, he crouched to scratch at its roots.

Swiftly, Uncle Snake found several brown cylinders resembling curled dried leaves. “Poison cocoon,” he whispered. “Don’t wake them. If they die sleeping, they go directly to Father Mountain and bless His arrows.” The boys all gathered closely around. Very carefully, he plucked up a cocoon, squeezing it between thumb and forefinger. The pinkish pulp oozed over the arrow’s tip.

“This is the weakest poison, but still better than nothing,” he said.

“How do we make it stronger?” Frog asked.

Uncle Snake scrubbed Frog’s head. “We learn that soon. Now, put the pulp just behind the arrow’s point.”

“Why?” Frog asked.

The other boys laughed.

“So that if you nick yourself, you will not die!” Snake answered.

So all of them did this, and Snake squeezed sap from the poison-grub plant and mixed it with the insect pulp. He taught them different ways to do it, and how to add certain red-jawed beetles to increase the effectiveness. As he ground them together with the gray, sour-smelling bark of what Snake called a stinger bush, he told them what he knew of its effects. “If you are struck by your own arrow, you will get fever but feel cold. You will have thirst no water can quench. Your piss will turn brown.”

Frog felt as if he could sense the poison in his blood even then.

“Your head hurts, and you will grow hungry for air,” Snake concluded. “And then you die.”

“Is there a cure?” Frog asked.

“The dream dancers have cures, if you can reach them. Better not to be stuck,” he said, and then rolled the tips of his arrows in a brownish paste.

Snake led them on a hunt, and within a quarter day hushed them and pointed through the bamboo at a large spotted deer. In absolute silence, he notched an arrow, drew his bowstring, and fired. The deer bucked as it felt the strike, turned, and ran so quickly that Frog hadn’t time to blink.

To Frog’s surprise, it did not die at once. Was not the poison strong? He had been warned so many times not to touch it, and the things his uncle had taught chilled his blood. Always, he had imagined that a single touch would bring death at the gallop. But the deer was disappearing into the brush.

Disappointed but game, the boys began to sprint after it. “There is no need to run,” Uncle Snake said. “Save your wind.”

So they tracked it, slowly and steadily, and before the sun touched the horizon came upon the numbed and dying deer. Its sides heaved as they approached, gazing at them with eyes that, even as they watched, grew more glazed and distant, duller and less reflective of light. It was too weak, frightened, or resigned even to resist as Snake sliced its throat with his sliver of black stone.

“Thank you, my brother,” he whispered in its ear. “May your spirit fly to the mountain. May you have green grass and look down on your rutting grandchildren with pride. Thank you.”

Its flanks grew still.

There was time for the boys to explore, always with at least one partner, more often in threes. Frog found himself partnered with Scorpion, who led them back to the poison-grub plant.

“See what I can do,” he said, and as Frog watched, Scorpion sharpened a stick and ground several of the poison grubs into a mass, tarring the tip with their guts.

“What are you going to do?” Frog asked. At times, his stepbrother seemed cruel merely for the sake of cruelty. He had seen Scorpion burn beetles with a flaming stick, just to watch them struggle.

“Just watch,” Scorpion said, pointing at a small green lizard. Fast as his namesake’s striking stinger he was on the hapless creature, stabbing it through the tail. Frog had seen lizards shed their hindquarters and run away, and he hoped that this would be one of that variety. It was not.