It Wakes in Me (19 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: It Wakes in Me
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HE NODDED, AS THOUGH RELIEVED THAT SHE HAD ARRIVED at that conclusion by herself. “From the moment you first told me he longed to return to being a Trader, I have been wondering that same thing. Why do you think he might have killed himself?”
A thought crossed her souls. She shoved it aside.
Gesturing awkwardly with her cup, she said, “There was something I didn’t tell you yesterday. The night he died, I heard Father come out of his bedchamber, and as he passed by my door, I smelled a strange odor. It shocked me when I realized that the odor wasn’t coming from your house, or being carried in on the wind.”
As the coals in the hearth ate into the branches she’d added, flames licked up around the wood, and liquid amber threads shot through his short black hair. “It was a memory?”
“Yes. I’m almost certain the bitter smell was dried water hemlock.”
For a time the silence was broken only by the distant groan of thunder and the echoes of children laughing.
“Do you think he went back to his bedchamber to get it? So that he could put it in the stew you’d made for him?”
Terrible hope filled her. All her life she had lived beneath the burden of believing she’d killed him. A belief spawned by her mother that cold night in the temple when she’d found Father lying dead next to the broken stew bowl. A belief her mother had perpetuated every time Sora disagreed with one of Mother’s decisions.
“You killed your father. Are you going to kill me, too? Then you could have your way, couldn’t you?”
Sora gazed down into her tea cup and saw her face. Her eyes had tightened in misery. She looked like she was about to cry. “That’s not very likely, is it? Why would Father take his own life? I’m probably making this up to ease my own guilt.”
A fierce gust of wind shuddered the walls, and Sora shivered as though it had gone straight through to her bones. What would she do if it turned out to be true? If Father had poisoned the stew? The knowledge that she’d killed him had become such a part of her, it felt as sure as her breathing or her heartbeat.
Yet, she could imagine him doing it. He would have seen it as a strange irony, adding hemlock to the jerky. In a way, he’d killed the jerky. As the jerky, and the distant vistas it represented, had killed him, filling him with such longing that he could no longer bear it.
Strongheart rose and went to his sleeping bench. He brought back a blanket and draped it around her shoulders. “Can you let it go?”
“Let what go?”
He sat down again on the mats and heaved a sigh. “The guilt. Can you let go of something you have clutched to your heart all your life?”
She drew the worn softness of the blanket around her. Her very identity was founded upon that “fact.” Who would she be if it wasn’t true?
“I don’t know. Honestly.”
He left her alone with her thoughts for a long time before he said, “Do you think your mother really believed you killed him?”
“Oh, yes, I know she did. For several reasons. Firstly, she could never have allowed herself to believe she’d driven him to it; and secondly, every time I was bad, my mother reminded me that I’d killed my father. She said if I wasn’t careful, someone would find out. Meaning, of course, that she would tell them.”
His eyes narrowed, and she wondered if he, too, was thinking about what an effective method that had been of controlling her. Even at the very end, when they’d been standing on the cliff, arguing about sending warriors into the lands of the Red Owl People over what Sora considered a silly insult …
I glimpse her face
—
the last glimpse I will have of her living eyes
—
and see them suddenly go wide with shock just before she careens backward with her sticklike arms flailing, and topples over the precipice, slamming into old tree stumps as she rolls to the bottom of the slope.
“And your sister?” Strongheart asked with worry in his voice. “How did she punish you for killing her father?”
She brushed the cake crumbs from her hands, and he watched the motions with a curious fascination. When she looked down, she noticed that it looked as though she were washing her hands.
Washing her hands of what? Her mother?
“What are you feeling?” he asked. “Don’t think about it. Just tell me.”
“It’s a … a sense of, I don’t know, divine retribution, or righteous indignation. I’m not sure how to describe it.”
“You were glad your mother died?”
“No, gods, no. Not glad. But I admit that I did feel relieved. She hadn’t been well, and she’d been making bizarre decisions that endangered our nation.”
“And when your sister died, what did you feel?”
That same sense of justice filled her, but it was swiftly followed by horror and guilt. She looked at him, and he seemed to read her expression easily.
He said, “She must have made your life miserable. She thought you’d killed her father. Did she torment you?”
An unbearable ache welled in her chest. “My sister was my only friend. I loved her very much.”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s true, but did she torment you?”
Like the silver-silk flashes of minnows, whispers swam up from between her souls. They were not the whispers of broad daylight, but those that nag a person in the darkness long after everyone else is asleep.
She must have tilted her head, or given him some indication that she was hearing voices, because Strongheart asked, “What’s she saying to you, Sora?”
She closed her eyes. “I don’t hear words.”
“But you hear something. What is it?”
“Anger. No. More like hatred.”
“Her tone of voice?”
Before she’d realized it, tears had leaked from the corners of her eyes and flowed soundlessly down her cheeks.
Gray mist rolls in over the water, and a great darkness rises to swallow the eastern horizon; the trees on shore vanish, replaced by huge waves that batter the canoe. Walks-among-the-Stars is shouting at me, but the roar of the wind is so loud I can’t hear her. We both have oars in our hands, but we are not rowing … .
“Why did you go out in the canoe that day? Couldn’t you see the storm moving in?”
“She asked me to go fishing with her. I wanted to go.”
“Did you see the storm moving in?”
As she slowed her breathing, she heard drips falling from the thatched walls outside. She hadn’t even realized it had started to rain. The voices in the plaza had ceased. People must have moved inside to eat their suppers.
“As we climbed into the canoe, I remember saying, ‘Do you think we should do this? That looks like a storm is coming.’ Walks-among-the-Stars told me to stop being such a baby and get into the boat.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Yes. I remember being afraid.”
And sinking down in that terrible blackness, the water like heavy arms dragging me under.
“Feather Dancer told me that when they found your sister’s body washed up onshore, her skull had been crushed. Do you remember how that happened?”
“No, I—I …” She was defending herself, and she didn’t understand why, or against what. She took a deep breath and held it to steady her nerves. “Are you asking if I killed her? If I crushed her skull?”
In the kindest voice she’d ever heard, he said, “Did you?”
A wave of heat flooded her body. She let the blanket fall from her shoulders and coil around her slender waist. “After we stood up in the canoe, I don’t remember anything until—”
“You stood up in the canoe? During a storm?”
She realized with a start how odd that sounded. The waves were crashing against the boat, tossing it in every direction. Why on earth would they have stood up?
Or … was it only she who’d stood up?
“I remember standing up. The next thing I recall is looking up through the water at Walks-among-the-Stars floating above me.” Sobs constricted her throat. It was difficult to force herself
to go on. “Her eyes were wide open, and she—she had blood … streaming from her mouth.”
Strongheart reached over and tugged on her tea cup to get her to release it. He dipped it into the pot again, and handed it back. “Drink this. You’ll feel better.”
She lifted it to her mouth. The tea tasted warm and soothing. She concentrated on the sound of the wind groaning through the trees outside.
Strongheart said, “Do you think it’s possible that, as Priest Teal surmised, your sister was thrown from the canoe onto rocks and that’s how her skull was crushed?”
“I don’t remember any rocks. Just. Water. Waves. Huge waves.”
A fist seemed to tighten around her heart.
Strongheart leaned forward and touched her fingers where they gripped her cup. “That’s enough for tonight,” he said. “I want you to finish your tea, eat as much as you wish, and go to sleep. Try not to dream about what we just discussed. Think about the
andacwander.
About how, if you hadn’t been here in this village, it would have been one of the best days of your life.”
She jerked a nod.
Strongheart touched her arm gently, walked to his door, and ducked out into the rain.
This time, he didn’t speak to the guards. He just walked away.
She listened to the sound of his steps receding and curled onto her side to watch the windblown flames. Her hunger had vanished. She was desperately tired.
When she drifted into the uneasy borderland of dreams, the air quivered with an eerie sensation of screaming, of words railed just beyond the grasp of her ears and souls.
FEATHER DANCER WAS LEANING HALF ASLEEP AGAINST the wall of the Captives’ House when he heard the guards say, “She’s not here. She’s in the Priest’s House.”
“I know that, you fools,” Flint responded. “I’ve been with her all day. That’s why I can barely walk.”
The guards laughed.
Flint continued, “I need to speak with one of the other captives.”
Uneasily, the guard said, “Which one? Our orders are to let you take Chieftess Sora whenever you wish. We have no orders about the others.”
“Do you have orders forbidding me to speak with someone else?”
“Well,” the guard said, “no.”
“Then they can’t punish you for it, can they?”
Flint pulled back the curtain and stepped inside. He was wearing his black cape again. It blended with the darkness so
perfectly that the only thing Feather Dancer could make out was his pale face.
When the captives saw him, they leaped to their feet and rushed to surround him, hugging him, asking him questions. “Flint, what’s happening?” “Flint, when are our people coming for us?” “My cousin, please, I can’t stand much more of this!”
Only Cold Spring and Adder remained sitting against the far wall to Feather Dancer’s right. They’d been whispering most of the evening, but Feather Dancer hadn’t been able to make out any of their words.
They watched Flint hesitantly.
And Feather Dancer found that
very
interesting.
Flint waded through the crowd and called, “Feather Dancer?”
“Here. In the back.”
Flint patted the hands of several of the women who clutched at his arms, said something comforting, and made his way to Feather Dancer. He must have told the women he needed privacy, because they drifted back to their former positions and watched him with wide, curious eyes. Several whispers passed back and forth.
Flint knelt in front of Feather Dancer. He sounded exhausted as he whispered, “We must talk.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
Flint cast a glance over his shoulder, made certain the others were keeping their distance, and said, “I want to know what happened the night Skinner died.”
A soft laugh escaped Feather Dancer’s lips. “What makes you think I know?”
“You are the war chief of Blackbird Town. You knew your chieftess was in danger. You
must
have been keeping watch on her.”
Feather Dancer leaned back against the wall and surveyed Flint’s grave expression. “Yes, I was.”
Flint edged closer to Feather Dancer. “Tell me what you saw. I have to know. Did you follow Sora when she went to Teal’s house?”
In a gruff whisper, Feather Dancer answered, “Of course I did. I sneaked in the back entrance to the charnel house and listened to her discussion with Teal.”
“Then you knew that Teal had given Sora a bag of poison to put in Skinner’s drink?”
“Certainly.”
As though he didn’t really want to hear the answer to his next question, Flint’s hands clenched into fists. “Did you see her give it to him?”
Feather Dancer scrutinized the man’s tortured face, and shook his head. “You don’t really want me to answer that, do you? You would much rather believe that Chieftess Sora killed your lover, than …” He let the words dry up.
Flint searched Feather Dancer’s eyes. After what seemed an eternity, he whispered, “You were watching them, weren’t you? You were in the forest watching?”
“I am war chief. I owe it to my matron and my nation to keep our chieftess safe. Of course I was. It was not an easy thing, either, let me tell you. I waited until I was sure he wasn’t choking her as a way to enhance her pleasure before I moved. As it was, I was almost too late.”
“You’re certain,
absolutely certain,
that Skinner was trying to kill her?”
Feather Dancer leaned forward until his nose was less than a hand’s breadth from Flint’s. “When I came out of the forest, the first thing he did was grab his war club and strike her in the head. She was already unconscious. He didn’t strike her
because he thought she was dangerous. He was trying to make sure she was dead before I got there.”
Flint squeezed his eyes closed as though in pain. “Then it was you who gave him the poison?”
“I had to knock him senseless first. He was a fierce fighter. But, yes, after I clubbed him into submission, I poured it down his throat and forced him to swallow it. The difficult part was rearranging the bodies. I had to make it look like he’d been choking her when he’d died from the poison. After I finished, I went back to the village. It wasn’t long before Teal grew concerned and came to wake me. He told me to go find the chieftess. I took
your kinsman,
Far Eye, with me and let him find the bodies.” Holding Flint’s gaze, he added, “I would have killed you, too, if I’d known you were in Blackbird Town.”
Flint blindly stared at the floor, as though contemplating how much easier his life would be if Feather Dancer
had
killed him that night.
“Now”—Feather Dancer pulled back and let out a breath—“tell me why you came here to ask me about Skinner.”
Flint slid over to the wall and sat beside Feather Dancer like a friend of many battles. In a faint voice, he said, “I need your help.”
“My help?” Feather Dancer scoffed. “What makes you think I’d help you?”
Flint turned, and true horror glinted in his eyes. “Because I think we’ve both been betrayed.”
That got Feather Dancer’s attention. He glanced around the house, judging the expressions of the other captives. Cold Spring and Adder had gone utterly silent, obviously trying hard to listen to them.
Just above a whisper, Feather Dancer said, “Matron Wink?”
Flint shook his head. “No. At least, I don’t think so.”
“Then who?”
“I went to talk with Grown Bear tonight, to ask him about the jade brooch. All he said was, ‘You’re a member of Water Hickory Clan. Don’t they tell you anything?’”
Feather Dancer went rigid. “What did he mean?”
“I—I’m not sure,” Flint stammered, and ran a hand through his hair. Then, in exasperation, he said, “Gods, why are they doing this to me?”
Feather Dancer scowled, leaned toward him, and hissed, “Why do you think everything is about
you
?”

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