It Wakes in Me (13 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: It Wakes in Me
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WINK BOWED TO THE ENORMOUS CARVING OF BLACK FALCON that hung above the entry to the Chieftess’ House, ducked beneath the door curtain, and strode down the torch-lit hall. She barely glanced at the doors that led to the council chamber and the temple where the Eternal Fire burned.
At the very rear of the house stood a small bedchamber. As a child, Sora had shared the room with her sister, Walks-among-the-Stars.
Wink breathed in the rich fragrance of burning cypress that filled the quiet house, hoping it would help to soothe her raw nerves while she considered the things Sea Grass had said last night. If the old matron was right and the jade brooch had belonged to Sora’s great-grandmother, where had Grown Bear gotten it? Who else knew about the sealed box of jewelry? If Sora hadn’t even told Wink about it, who would she have told?
“She might have told Flint,” Wink murmured. “Or he may
have seen it among her possessions. After all, they lived together for fourteen winters.”
That still did not explain how the brooch had come to be in the hands of an enemy war chief.
When she stood before the door curtain to Sora’s childhood bedchamber, she flexed her fingers. Sora allowed no one to enter this room. Not even her husband, Rockfish. It was more like a shrine than a bedchamber.
Though Wink had entered it a few days ago, at Priest Teal’s request, to find an object that had belonged to Sora’s mother for use in the Healing Circle, she still felt ill doing it again.
Wink pulled the door curtain aside and stepped into the chamber. It was dark and cold. Only the light of the hallway torches penetrated the gloom. She waited for her eyes to adjust.
The chamber measured five paces square. Pots and baskets filled each corner, and buffalohides draped the sleeping bench to her right. In the torchlight the fine black hairs shimmered.
Wink looked up. A shelf filled with cornhusk dolls adorned the wall near the doorway. Old and faded, they had been made by Sora’s father. But made for Sora or Walks-among-the-Stars, she did not know.
The big black-and-red basket that stood near the sleeping bench held Sora’s most precious possessions. Eight hands tall and four wide, it had been decorated with red and black zigzagging lines. Wink went to it and pulled off the lid.
A wealth of rare treasures met her gaze: brilliant feathered headdresses, copper breastplates, strings of pearls—but on the very top rested three items that really drew her attention: a shell pendant that had belonged to Walks-among-the-Stars, Yellow Cypress’ copper bracelet, and a wooden box filled with copper jewelry Flint had made for Sora. A master copper-worker, Flint had created stunning pendants for his wife.
Magnificent copper falcons, elaborate Birdmen, antlered snakes with human faces; they all stared up at Wink from the box.
Wink closed her eyes for a moment. This was Sora’s one refuge, the place she kept everything that told her who she was. Just opening the basket was the supreme violation … .
“I have no choice.”
Wink shoved the basket hard, and it spilled across the floor like an overturned jewel box. Bracelets rolled in every direction, while pendants cartwheeled as though alive.
“Forgive me, Sora,” she said as she knelt, emptied the remaining items from the basket, and began sorting through them.
There were a dozen wooden boxes, ranging in size from barely a finger’s width across to boxes four hands long. On the biggest box exquisitely carved images of birds with large curved beaks had been painted. The smaller boxes were crudely made.
Wink grabbed the exquisite box first and pried off the wooden lid. Her breath caught. It was filled with feathers. Brilliant red, blue, and green feathers, the likes of which Wink had never seen. Where had Sora gotten them? They must have come from a bird that lived far away. Had her father, the Trader who’d ventured over half the world, given them to her? Perhaps he’d gotten them from one of the mythical islands he’d claimed to have visited?
Carefully, Wink set the box aside. How strange that Sora had never had the beautiful feathers made into a headdress or used to decorate the bodice of a dress, as Wink would have done.
Perhaps they’d been too precious to think of using.
A tiny box lay canted in a pile of copper pendants. Made from cypress, it had surely been carved by a child’s hand. Wink reached for it.
The lid stuck. She had to wrench it hard before it squealed and came off.
Inside, a tight coil of human hair lay beside a small deer-bone hairpin.
For several instants Wink just stared at the hairpin; then tears filled her eyes.
She touched it gently.
Sora hadn’t spoken for a full moon after her father died … until Wink had brought her this hairpin. Wink remembered the day perfectly. A frail smile had touched Sora’s lips, and she’d clutched the hairpin in her desperate little fist, whispering, “Thank you, Wink.”
After that, she’d started getting better.
Wink forced the lid back on, placed it on top of the exquisite box, and reached for another. She’d just gotten the lid off when she heard footsteps coming down the hallway outside.
They stopped in front of the door curtain, and Rockfish called, “Wink?”
“I’m in here.”
Rockfish drew back the curtain, but he remained standing in the doorway, as though afraid to enter his sick wife’s sanctuary. He wore a dark green knee-length shirt and bright red leggings.
He made an awkward gesture. “Sea Grass passed me on her way out of town. She told me you needed to see me. Wh-what are you doing?” His gaze went over the sparkling wealth that scattered the floor.
Wink sank back and sighed. “Rockfish, do you remember seeing a wooden box sealed with pine pitch?”
“You mean something Sora had?”
“Yes. The box would have been very precious to her. I suspect she probably kept it hidden, but you are her husband, surely you must have seen—”
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “If it was precious to her, I never saw it.”
Wink frowned at him. His shoulder-length gray hair stuck to his forehead in wisps, as though glued by sweat. Had he run to get here? “How can you say that?”
“Oh, Wink, you of all people know how secretive she was. She forbade me to touch anything that belonged to her. I couldn’t even go through her clothing basket, let alone anything in this room. If I’d come in here and so much as gazed at that basket, she’d have ripped out my heart with her bare hands.”
Wink got to her feet and tucked a lock of graying black hair behind her ear. “She was secretive, and with good reason. Like every leader, she had things to hide, so I can understand her forbidding you to
open
certain boxes. All I’m asking is if you saw an old box, very old, sealed with pine pitch?”
The nostrils of his fleshy nose flared, like a dog scenting the wind for danger. “No.”
“You’re certain?”
“Absolutely. I never saw an old box sealed with pine pitch.”
The tone of his voice set her on edge. It was light, flippant, as though he was making an effort to get this discussion over with so he could move on to something else.
“Rockfish, you sound … Did Sea Grass say something else?”
He clenched his fists at his sides. “She told me to ask you about Red Warbler and the jade brooch. What was she talking about?”
The old witch.
“Let’s go across the hall. We can talk while I continue my search.”
Wink rose and took Rockfish by the arm, led him out into the torchlight, then crossed to the bedchamber he shared with
Sora. A fire burned in the hearth in the middle of the floor. It sent curls of blue smoke up to creep across the ceiling before they escaped through the roof’s smokehole. Straight ahead, above their sleeping bench, weapons hung on the wall: axes, copper-studded war clubs, lances … .
To the left of the bench stood Sora’s clothing basket. Rockfish’s comment that Sora had forbidden him to touch it had given her an idea.
She walked to the basket and, as she lifted off the lid, said, “I think Sea Grass is lying, but she said she had seen the brooch before, that it had belonged to Sora’s great-grandmother, Red Warbler. She told me that Red Warbler had put it, and several other pieces of jade jewelry from the Scarlet Macaw People, in a box sealed with boiled pine pitch that was only supposed to be opened in an emergency.”
Rockfish’s wrinkled face slackened. “Blessed gods, are you telling me that somewhere in this village is a box filled with more jade pieces like the brooch?”
“No, I’m not. I suspect there is no box. But I can’t figure out why Sea Grass would say it exists if it doesn’t. How could such a lie benefit Water Hickory Clan?”
As Wink sorted through the beautiful lavender, yellow, and deep blue dresses in the basket, the silence seemed to swell.
“Wink, I”—he blinked, as though he couldn’t believe he was saying it—“I may know the box you’re talking about.”
She straightened. “Where is it?”
Without taking his eyes from hers he pointed across the hall, back toward Sora’s childhood bedchamber. “In there.”
She strode past him, threw back the door curtain, and went into the chamber again. The strewn jewelry glittered as she draped the curtain back over the peg on the wall, allowing the hall’s gleam to pour into the room. “Show me.”
Tentatively, he pointed to the sleeping bench covered with
buffalohides. “Under there. There’s a basket. The box is inside.”
Wink gave him a disbelieving look, walked to the bench, and flipped up the hides that draped almost to the floor. A cypress-stave basket had been shoved all the way to the back. Wink got down on her knees and dragged it out. As she pulled it onto her lap, she saw that the basket’s lid had once been sealed with pine pitch—but the seal was broken.
“Did you open this?” she demanded to know.
“Of course not. The seal was already broken when I saw it.”
Wink’s eyes narrowed. The only way he could know about this basket, and what it contained, was if he’d searched this chamber very carefully.
Before she opened it, she said, “Tell me what the basket contains.”
Rockfish shrugged. “A sealed wooden box, some pieces of clothing, jewelry, not much more than that.”
“How many pieces of clothing?”
“I don’t know,” he said irritably. “Why do you ask?”
“I was just wondering how much time you had. Did you rush in here one day after Sora left for a council meeting and quickly go through her personal things? Or did you have days to pore over each item? Perhaps when she was gone to Eagle Flute Village?”
He spread his arms, as though trying to convey innocence. “Iron Hawk, Sora’s favorite slave, who cleans the house, told me that Sora said she was never to touch the basket, because it contained Flint’s things.”
Wink tilted her head. “You mean things he forgot to take when he divorced her three winters ago and went home to his people?”
“Apparently.”
“Then you came in here to … ?”
Rockfish clenched his jaw and ground it before answering, “Yes! I admit it. I was curious. I’ve been living in Flint’s shadow. I wanted to know about him! I opened the basket, but there’s nothing in there of any interest except the sealed box.”
Wink examined him. He seemed to be telling the truth. But the fact that he’d discussed the box with Iron Hawk raised more questions than it solved. Iron Hawk was truly a loyal servant, and she loved Sora. She would never have revealed the whereabouts of the basket unless … Had she caught Rockfish in here one day and told him the chieftess said never to touch that basket?
Wink tugged off the lid and looked inside. She recognized the shirt on top: a dark forest green garment decorated with circlets of conch shell. Flint had worn it the day he’d married Sora. He must not have wanted to take it with him—and she’d cherished it too much to throw it away.
She dug deeper. In the very bottom of the basket, she found a wooden hair comb, several pieces of exquisite copper jewelry, and the box.

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