Read It Sleeps in Me Online

Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear

It Sleeps in Me (3 page)

BOOK: It Sleeps in Me
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Rockfish turned away and gazed out over Blackbird Town. As Mother Sun rose into the bright blue sky, her light streamed through the trees like shafts of honey. A dappled patchwork of shadow and light played over the mounds.
“Well, it’s probably nothing. War chiefs visit other towns and villages routinely, just to keep up with what’s happening.”
Relieved that he’d let it drop, she said, “Yes, I’m sure he …”
Her words died when Wink trotted to the top of the steps and marched forward with a dark expression. She took Sora’s arm in a
strong grip and pulled her toward the door to the house. “Please come with me.”
When Rockfish started to follow, Wink called, “I must speak with her alone, Rockfish.”
“Of course.”
Sora glanced over her shoulder before she ducked beneath the door curtain. Her husband stood quietly. The slant of sunlight cast shadows over every wrinkle in his elderly face. It made him look a thousand winters old.
THE CHIEFTESS’ HOUSE WAS DIVIDED INTO SIX CHAMBERS—the four small chambers in the rear were for personal use, and two large chambers in the front served as community rooms. The council chamber stood on the left, and a temple dedicated to the worship, of Black Falcon stood on the right.
As Sora turned left and ducked into the council chamber, she swung around. “Tell me, Wink. Quickly. Why is Skinner here?”
The lines around Wink’s mouth deepened as her lips pressed into a tight white line. Twenty torches stood in holders around the walls, casting a molten amber gleam over her round face. The gray and black wisps of hair that fringed her cheeks glistened.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. I knew you’d seen him speaking with me. The Loon People sent a war chief to watch our game today. I had to talk with him first. He is very eager to—”
“I want to know about Skinner.”
Wink inhaled a breath, as though to fortify herself. Through a taut exhalation, she said, “He came to tell us that Flint is dead.”
“D-dead?”
She slowly eased down to the log bench that ran the length of the wall. Deep inside her a voice cried, No, no, he can’t be!
She could barely hear her own voice ask, “How? What happened?”
Wink sat down beside her and took her hand. Her dress looked startlingly white against the dark wood of the bench. “I know you never stopped loving him. I’m sorry. I don’t know much about it. Skinner said he found Flint in the forest three days ago. He wants to tell you the details himself.”
She felt like she’d been punched in the belly. She couldn’t seem to get any air. “Was he wounded?”
“No, I don’t think so. Skinner found him just moments before he died. Apparently, Flint asked Skinner to deliver a message to you. It was his last request.”
Sora watched the flickering patterns of torchlight dance over the cold hearth in the middle of the chamber. Fragments of burned logs lay in a gray bed of ash. The rich, pungent smell from the burning cedar bark torches filled her nostrils. Flint smiled at her across a gulf of time, and her heart ached for him.
He had always been a lightning bolt waiting to strike. Everyone who’d ever stood beside him had felt it. In a crowd of hundreds of warriors, he’d stood a head taller, but what attracted the eye was his face. Stunningly handsome, his expressions were always fierce and bright. In the fourteen winters they’d been married, he’d killed three men for looking at her the “wrong way.” Each had been a fair fight, but that didn’t change the fact that three men she’d barely known had died for nothing.
“Tell Skinner I need some time. He’ll understand. I will see him tonight.”
Wink rose to her feet. “What about the Loon war chief?”
A bone-numbing grief was spreading through her. She had to force herself to think. “I’ll meet him before I meet with Skinner. Is that acceptable?”
“Yes, of course. Do you want me to be there?”
“No.” She shook her head emphatically. “Whatever he wants, it will give us more time if I tell him I have to discuss his words with you.”
Wink placed a hand on Sora’s hair and petted it lightly. “You should bathe and rest before you see anyone. I’ll send in two slaves to help you. I suspect tonight is going to be more difficult than you imagine.”
Sora looked up, and their gazes met. Wink squinted slightly, as though wishing she hadn’t said that.
“Why? Did Skinner say something else? Something you haven’t told me?”
Wink let her hand fall to her side. At the end, just before Flint divorced her, Sora had spent nearly every day in Wink’s lodge, desperate to talk to her, to beg her old friend for advice.
“There was just … one other thing.” Wink’s gaze lifted, and for a time, she seemed to be examining the brain-cakes that hung from the massive roof beams. They resembled festoons of dark green bread. Their people preserved brains, for use in tanning hides, by smearing the brains on hanging moss, molding them into round cakes, poking a hole in the center, and hanging them up to dry on hooks or sticks. Buffalo brains were considered the most valuable, but bear and deer were also used. When the time came, they would pull down the cakes, soak them in water until the liquid was thick and soapy, then add their hides to the pot.
Wink looked back at Sora, and her fists clenched. “Skinner said Flint died with his own hands wrapped around his throat. He had to pry Flint’s fingers loose to hear his last words.”
LIKE A LOST SOUL, SORA WANDERED THE SMALL CHAMBER at the very rear of the Chieftess’ House. This had been her childhood bedchamber. She touched precious belongings, things she’d long ago put away so that she could concentrate on adult concerns. A fire burned in the hearth, fluttering yellow light over the pine-pole walls.
The chamber measured five paces square. Baskets and pots nestled in every corner. Buffalo hides draped the sleeping bench along the wall to her right. The fine brown hairs glittered as though sprinkled with gold dust, but she knew her slaves had really scattered the hides with the powdered flesh of a fisher bird. The musky odor of the bird’s flesh drove away moths and insects.
She reached up to the shelf of cornhusk dolls that stood to her right, near the doorway, and touched them gently. They were old and brittle—their painted faces had faded; the red mouths were now a pale pink, the black eyes gray—but she didn’t care. Her father had made them for her. She’d barely seen seven winters when he died.
She let her hand fall and looked around. After she’d bathed and
eaten a meal of roasted turkey and persimmon bread smeared with palm fruit jam, she’d come here to open the big basket on the rear wall. She’d been wandering the chamber for a full finger of time, but hadn’t faced the basket yet.
Her clean white dress rustled as she forced herself to cross the room. She’d unbraided her long hair and left it to fall loosely about her shoulders. In the firelight, the thick waves shone blue-black.
The basket stood eight hands tall and about four wide. It was a beautiful thing, red zigzagging lines alternated with black from lip to base.
She knew each item by heart, even where it rested in the carefully organized basket; the brilliant headdresses, breastplates, anklets, bracelets … The basket was more a shrine than a collection of belongings.
Light-headed, she pulled the lid off.
On the left, a shell pendant that had belonged to her dead sister rested beside one of her mother’s copper bracelets. On the right sat a wooden box filled with pendants. Magnificent copper falcons, an elaborate Birdman, images of antlered snakes, and deer with human faces stared up at her. Flint had been a master copper worker. People had come from a moon’s walk in every direction to Trade for his artistry. He’d breathed his soul into each one, giving them life. Over the past three winters, Sora had frequently heard them calling to her—but she’d never been able to face them.
She murmured, “I’m sorry I’ve been away so long.”
As she lifted the Birdman pendant, its soft voice whispered to her. It still had a leather thong attached. She tied it around her neck and said, “I’m here now. Everything is well. Don’t worry.”
The size of her hand, it hung to the middle of her chest. The copper had tarnished, but the image was crystal clear; a Dancing Birdman strutted forward, one foot lifted, a war club in his right hand and the severed head of his enemy hanging in his left. He was half man and half falcon. His human face had a bird’s beak, and behind his human arms, gloriously detailed wings spread.
Flint’s warmth and strength seemed to ooze from the pendant. It filtered through her chest, and she could almost feel his powerful arms around her.
“What happened, Flint?” she whispered in a tortured voice. The old heartache spread across her chest, as painful today as it had been three winters ago.
When he’d divorced her, she’d placed every precious thing he’d ever given her in this basket and never opened it again. Wink had asked her many times why she didn’t give them away, or ritually bury them.
She should have.
She just couldn’t.
Having them close was like having a part of him close.
The copper was cold beneath her fingers as she traced the lines of Birdman’s wings. She often dreamt of coupling gently with Flint. Other times, when the responsibilities of being chieftess seemed overwhelming, those dreams became fits of dark passion.
In the past few days the dreams had intensified dramatically, waking her three or four times a night. It was as though her souls were desperate to be with him. Perhaps the gods had been trying to warn her … .
She clutched the pendant as tears welled hotly in her eyes.
Her people believed that each person had three souls: The soul that traveled to the afterlife lived in a person’s reflection. Another soul lived in the shadow, and still another could be seen in the pupils of the eyes. It was the shadow-soul that walked in dreams.
One of the Black Falcon People’s greatest fears was that they might catch a dying person’s last breath, because it was at that moment that the reflection-soul and shadow-soul slipped out together. If a living person was too close to the breath, the shadow-soul, desperately looking for a new home, could shoot like an arrow into the living person.
The shadow-soul was terrifying because at death all the evil leached from the other souls and settled in the shadow-soul. That
left the reflection-soul pure, fit to live among the blessed ancestors, while the cleansed eye-soul stayed with the body forever.
A sudden chill went through her. Wink said he’d died three days ago. The evil shadow-soul wandered the earth for seven days after the body died, then it usually disintegrated into the air. Unless it sneaked into a new body.
What
had she been loving in her dreams?
She stared wide-eyed at the wall.
… The “fingers beneath the nostrils” greeting.
Before they’d married, they’d had to undergo six moons of preparation: sanctification rituals, ceremonies of purification and absolution. In the midst of one of the rituals, surrounded by dozens of priests and family members, the greeting had been his way of saying,
Meet me at my canoe. I’ll show you how much I love you.
“No,” she murmured to reassure herself. “No, it’s not possible.” A swallow went down her dry throat. “Is it?”
Footsteps sounded in the long hallway outside.
Rockfish called, “Sora? The Loon war chief is here to see you.”
“Please tell him I’ll meet him in the council chamber.”
“He’s already there,” he said, but he didn’t walk away. She could hear him shifting outside; his woven palmetto moccasins scraped the hard-packed dirt floor.
Sora slid the lid back onto the basket and turned. As she walked toward the door curtain, Rockfish asked, “Do you want me to go with you?”
She ducked out into the torchlit hall and stared up into his soft brown eyes. He looked like a faithful sad-eyed old warrior. Clean gray hair fell around his triangular face.
“Of course I do. What would I do without you?”
He smiled and slipped his arm through hers. As they walked down the hall, he explained, “War Chief Grown Bear comes as an emissary of Chief Blue Bow.”
She frowned. “I just spoke with him. Why would he send me a messenger so soon after our meeting?”
“Apparently he has important news.”
She heard the subtle irony in his voice. “What do you mean?”
“Grown Bear brings a gift.”
“What gift?”
“He wouldn’t show it to me. Which means he’s either afraid I’ll deem it too paltry to grant him an audience with you, or he wants to see your face when he reveals it.”
Sora looked at him from the corner of her eye. “My belly already aches.”
She ducked beneath the door curtain into the council chamber and walked toward the central hearth, where the war chief sat. He leaped to his feet and rushed to meet her.
Sora held out her hands, palms up, and he put his hands atop them, then knelt before her.
“Chieftess Sora, I thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”
The central fire hearth blazed. Those flames, along with the torches that lined the walls, gave the air a honeyed glow.
“I am here to serve, War Chief. How may I help?”
Grown Bear was a burly man, of medium height. One long slash of white scar tissue cut across his cheek and nose, making it appear that his face had two halves. He wore a rabbit-fur shoulder cape over a knee-length yellow shirt. No jewelry adorned his wrists or ears, but elaborate geometric tattoos decorated his face.
He mouthed the ritual greeting, “I pray our ancestors fill the room around us, to help guide us.”
“As do I.”
He stood up. “I must tell you I was deeply grateful you won the game today. I knew I’d have to run for my life if you lost.”
Sora smiled faintly. “Even if we’d lost, I would have given you safe passage back to your people, Grown Bear. We are not monsters.” Sora gestured to the six log benches around the fire hearth. “Please, let’s sit down and talk.”
He bowed and followed as she led the way to the benches. Rockfish sat to her left, as was appropriate for the chieftess’ husband.
Grown Bear sat to her right and pulled a small, elaborately painted box from his belt pouch. He clutched it to his chest.
“My husband tells me you bring important news.”
“Yes, Chieftess.” He nervously wet his lips. “Chief Blue Bow apologizes for the recent confusion surrounding the death of your warrior Walking Bird and asks that you hear and consider his proposal. He offers this gift as a token of his loyalty.”
“Loyalty?” she said suspiciously. “He’s holding eleven of our people hostage. He told me he was going to roast them over a slow fire if I didn’t—”
“He regrets his words, Chieftess. Truly, he wishes nothing but friendship with the Black Falcon People. He says if you agree to his proposal, he will return your hostages and you may cross his lands freely, without payment, at any time.”
He held out the box, and Sora took it.
“And in return, he wants … what?” she asked.
Grown Bear gestured to the box. “Please?”
She opened it.
Rockfish sucked in a surprised breath.
The enormous brooch was stunning. Rimmed in pure glittering gold, it was the size of her two hands put together and made of a green translucent stone that very few people among the Black Falcon Nation had ever seen before.
“I feel like I’m looking into the richest depths of the Lake Spirit’s heart. What is it?” Rockfish asked in awe as he touched the stone.
Grown Bear smiled. “It’s called jade. My clan paddled south along the coastline for sixteen days until we encountered the Scarlet Macaw People. They are idolaters, with strange ways, but we Traded with them.” He pointed at the brooch. “They consider this common. They’re willing to fill our canoes with this stone.”
Sora glanced at Rockfish. His natural Trader’s instinct had been roused. His brown eyes sparkled, but it was with a mixture of suspicion and desire.
Rockfish cocked his head. “Who is
‘our’?”
Grown Bear leaned forward. “Whoever has the strength to help the Scarlet Macaw People defeat the owners of the quarry.”
Rockfish sank back on the bench and exhaled hard. She could see thoughts roiling behind his eyes.
Sora said, “I’m not sure I understand. Are you asking us to commit warriors to a war party you will lead south to attack the enemies of the Scarlet Macaw People?”
“Yes. Chief Blue Bow promises you half of everything we obtain.”
Rockfish gestured derisively to the brooch. “Is this paltry jade all they have to offer? Or will they Trade more valuable things?”
Eagerly, Grown Bear answered, “You won’t believe the things they have to Trade. Their fabrics are extraordinary. And the things they do with gold! I could barely believe my eyes! If you will commit just two hundred warriors—”
“It sounds like a fool’s errand to me.” Sora halted the discussion with a wave of her hand.
For more than six thousand winters, the Black Falcon People had ruled this land. Though she had never seen a Scarlet Macaw Trader, her grandmother had told her many stories about them, none of them complimentary. More than three centuries ago, they’d begun showing up with beautiful pieces of jewelry—gifts for the clan matrons.
“Every time one of the Scarlet Macaw People leaves our village we find things missing. They steal our sacred art and stories! They rob our graves! They are idolaters who want nothing more than to strip us bare before they send their warriors in to conquer us! Have no dealings with them. Ever. They are not trustworthy.”
BOOK: It Sleeps in Me
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