Last Plane to Heaven (17 page)

Smallish Boy crouched underneath the rhododendron alongside his older brother Dog's Breath and watched the water pass by beneath them. Their vantage point was a wooded bluff still dusted with snow. The four-hundred-foot drop in front of them granted both a visionary viewpoint and a modicum of security.

Down below, on secret paths through the woods, Rotten Trunk, Blue Ears, and half a dozen other warriors from their steading made slow and careful progress toward the water's edge. The men carried Angry Eyes's baby with them, that wouldn't have lived long anyway, so was a good sacrifice.

“Doesn't River want them whole?” he whispered. “What good is a crippled baby that can't see nothing?”

“Shut up.” Dog's Breath didn't really mean that, Smallish Boy knew from the distracted tone of his voice. It was just the way his brother talked. “Besides,” he went on, “it's the beating heart that counts.”

“Then why don't we sacrifice a chicken?”

“Not the
same
. Stupid.”

Which, Smallish Boy had long since realized, meant that Dog's Breath didn't know the answer either.

Their job was to watch for Angry Eyes. Everybody was afraid of her temper, even the Old Men. If she wasn't such a good healer, and made the best birchbark beer anyone in the steading could remember,
she
might have been the sacrifice, years ago.

She was a pain in the stick.

Smallish Boy wasn't sure what that meant exactly, but he'd heard Blue Ears say it one night when the warriors were drunk after a difficult elk hunt. He knew it must be true, though. His mother had slapped him hard for repeating the words later. She generally just looked sad when he was stupid or wrong. She only got mad when he was right about stuff he wasn't supposed to know yet.

“Look!” hissed Dog's Breath.

Smallish Boy followed the line of his brother's pointing finger.

A clump of logs was emerging around River's upstream bend, visible now past the rocky knees of Wind Mountain. It seemed oddly sideways to the current, until he realized the whole business was spinning.

Smoke rose from the mass of wood.

“Fire?” he whispered.

Dog's Breath sounded both horrified and impressed. “No one goes on River.”

No one did. Ever. River was jealous of Her flashing, beautiful skin, and all too often claimed the life of any person who marred it. Storm might churn the gleaming smoothness, but that was just the way of nature. Flood might scar and pock it with debris, but that was the land offering its own sacrifice to River, who drained the heart of the world into distant Ocean.

But people?

Never.

Even Smallish Boy knew that, and had not been slapped for saying so.

“By the seven and the twelve,” his brother swore. Now
there
was a beating waiting to happen, to speak of the mysteries so. “That's Angry Eyes on a … a…”

“Log?” offered Smallish Boy.

“No, one of the old words. We talked about it in men's circle.” Dog's Breath scrunched up his face as if he was trying to squeeze out a difficult turd. “
Raft.
That's the word. Like a fishing platform that floats on the water.”

“I guess she's so mad she forgot to be afraid of River.”

“Nobody gets that mad.” His brother stood up out of cover. “Or at least nobody gets that angry. She has to be mad to do this, though.” He cupped his hands and began the coyote bark that you never heard during the day. It would echo down the distance to Rotten Trunk and Blue Ears and the rest who carried the baby.

They would know the boys had spotted something.

“Come on,” Dog's Breath said once he'd seen the answering wave from below. “We got to get down there.”

“Aren't we supposed to watch for anything more?” asked Smallish Boy, who found himself afraid to face Angry Eyes. “Or worse?”

“What could be worse than this?” His brother managed to sound both scornful and excited at the same time.

They scrambled down their faint backtrail, even in their haste careful as always not to leave too much evidence of their passage behind.

*   *   *

By the time the brothers reached a decent overlook within a stone's throw of the forbidden shore—here a shallow, rocky beach littered with recent floodwrack—the log
raft
had drifted into view from this vantage as well. Smallish Boy could see the men spread out along the bank. Most of them crouched in cover, their bows and axes ready as if Angry Eyes was going to swarm ashore like some raiding party come over the mountains from the Helens tribes.

If any woman ever born could do that, it would be Angry Eyes. But even he knew that she was not a problem you solved with a fist.

She'd never married, though she was beautiful, because no man wanted that temper inside his cabin every day. Smallish Boy knew that her beauty still drew them to dance the night dance, one then another, until their wives and mothers and sisters hated her for her power over men. The other women whispered that her power was the power of Storm, moving across the steading and then was gone. Not the power of River, that was always here.

That had never made sense to him, though. Storm was the way Ocean sent her water back to River. To say their power was different was like saying the power of a man's foot was different from the power of his hand. Not quite the same, surely, but they were fed by a single beating heart.

When he'd said that to his mother, he'd been slapped again, so he knew he was right.

Words meant things, he'd always thought. People should watch what they said.

Except now people were watching the approaching raft. It was a mat of fallen trees, limbs tangled and already gone brown and dead, so the wood must have been snagged a while farther up River. He wondered how Angry Eyes had gotten it moving, or if she even controlled it at all.

A fire burned in the middle. So far as he could tell, the flames were fed by the wood itself. Angry Eyes was destroying her raft even as she rode it. She danced at the edge, covered in clay and nothing else.

That
would distract the men on the banks. Especially those who had snuck over to feel her storminess in the dark of night. He wasn't sure exactly why the night dances worked the way they did—people mounting one another mostly looked like they were in pain, and it always seemed to be a mess afterwards—but he'd realized that all boys and girls eventually discovered that secret for themselves, in time.

He sometimes wondered if Angry Eyes would still be sharing her beauty when he grew old enough to ask. He couldn't figure out if that was to be desired or feared.

Below them, Blue Ears stood out on the stony beach, a long, slim throwing spear at his side, its butt grounded against his right foot. That message was unmistakable. Gray Face stood with him, holding the baby in the crook of his left arm and the steading's one good steel knife in his right hand. That message was also unmistakable.

Angry Eyes drifted closer, the logs heading for the bank now. “Is she steering the raft?” Smallish Boy asked.

“No, log-wit. River is doing it.”

“Why does River care?”

“Wants Her sacrifice.”

He could hear the quaver in his brother's voice. Dog's Breath was afraid.

Smallish Boy realized that he wasn't afraid. He wondered why. Perhaps because he knew he was watching something that would likely be a teaching story for his grandchildren. It must have been like this to be alive during the days of the cities and the fire. A person could be a part of a thing to remember, that no one later would ever quite understand.

“You have gone too far this time,” bellowed Blue Ears. He was shouting over the water at Angry Eyes, but the boys could hear him just fine from their overlook.

She ignored him, still dancing. Her body swayed back and forth, her arms swinging wide then close, her small breasts and narrow hips shifting with the uncertain rhythms of her step. Angry Eyes's face was turned up toward the sky, mouth open as if to catch the rain, her feet unseen but still sure among the matted branches of the logs.

“She dances Storm,” Smallish Boy blurted. “Look, those are the rhythms of wind and rain.”

“Shut
up,
” snapped Dog's Breath, who was staring out at Angry Eyes.

Smallish Boy glanced over to see his brother panting. “You want to do the night dance with her,” he said, giggling.

That time he got a punch in the shoulder. He slithered a few more feet away from Dog's Breath, still giggling, and turned to watch again.

River was making more noise now. Water crept up the stone beach to lap at the feet of Blue Ears and Gray Face. No one spoke after the echoes of Blue Ears's shout had faded, but the baby began to squall, as if it could sense the approach of its mother.

Her dance grew stronger, stranger, faster. Wind whistled around Smallish Boy, and where moments before had been a blue sky only a little ragged with clouds, fat raindrops flew hard and fast from west to east, stones slung by Ocean to be borne by Storm to this place.

Still the men watched, more of them leaving their cover to stand ankle-deep in water on the stony beach. Angry Eyes's dance had turned to something deeper and stranger. Her hands covered her breasts, reached below to her sweetpocket, opened up to implore the men to come to her.

Dog's Breath slid down the embankment to join the others below as they waited calf-deep in the rising water.

“No!” Smallish Boy shouted, but he knew he could not catch his brother. He knew he could not bring his brother back even if he did scramble after him.

Besides, these fools could plainly see the river was rising fast. Unnaturally fast. Yet they stood, caught by the dance of Angry Eyes.

The log raft was almost to shore now. The fire blazed higher, untroubled by the driving rain. Her dance carried her to the forefront of the mass of wood, until she was looking down at the men hip-deep in River, and Dog's Breath now up to his belly beside them.

Her mouth opened. Whatever words she said to them were lost in the sizzling crack of lightning just in front of Smallish Boy, as the world erupted in blue-white glare and deafening noise.

*   *   *

He had not been asleep, but insensible. Once Smallish Boy managed to open his eyes, he realized that not much time had passed, either. The squall was still visible retreating to the east now, fleeing farther from Ocean with its burden of rain. Smallish Boy blinked away the tears of pain from his newfound headache.

The beach was empty of both water and men. River had gone back to Her banks. Blue Ears, Dog's Breath, and the rest were just gone. The raft had passed a bit farther down the current, bound for Ocean and whatever fate the world held for drifting logs.

Only Angry Eyes stood there, her baby in her arms. She had not kept the good steel knife.

The woman looked up at him. Even from this distance, he could see Storm in her eyes. She frightened him.

Still, Smallish Boy understood the demand. He scrambled down the embankment, following his brother's careless trail, wondering what he could possibly say back at the steading. They had lost eight warriors and Dog's Breath just now to the wrath of one woman and the might of River. He already knew the steading would likely starve this winter for lack of hunters. Even if they escaped that fate, they'd be victims to the next good-sized raiding party that happened along.

He wondered if he should go home at all. He wondered why he was not crying, or cutting his skin in grief. The Old Men were nubbled with scars from their losses down the years. Some might bleed to death from this day.

But still he walked toward Angry Eyes.

The brief rain had washed most of the clay from her. Now she was just a beautiful, terrible woman naked with a baby in her arms and River at her back.

Smallish Boy had never been so afraid in all his life.

“They have made a great sacrifice,” she told him. Her voice was hoarse. He was surprised at how ordinary it was.

“River can't give us enough for losing them,” he muttered. It was what his mother would say, he was certain.

She showed him the baby. It blinked. The formerly milk-white eyes, now cleared of their caul, were a rich brown like its mother's. Smallish Boy saw that its legs were straight and true as well, which they had not been before.

Her voice was steady, strong. Thrilling. “I believe this is a great gift indeed.”

Not so great as the lives of Dog's Breath and Blue Ears and all the rest, he thought but did not say. This woman could drown him with a word.

But his brother. All of them … They weren't nice, mostly, but the dead were men of his steading. As he would be too someday soon, if he survived this day.

Summoning what was left of his courage, Smallish Boy raised his small stone axe. “You cannot take their lives!” he shouted, and rushed toward Angry Eyes.

She simply held the baby in front of her, like a shield between them. His steps faltered at the last. He could not strike with those wise eyes staring at him in innocent fascination. Smallish Boy stumbled to a halt, then collapsed, sitting on the rocks of the beach. His axe fell beside him, and he began to weep.

He could do nothing worthwhile now.

Angry Eyes leaned close, the baby clutched to her chest now. “Come, we have much ahead of us,” she told him, and began walking east along the beach.

For a little while he sat as she strode farther away from him. Did he go with her? Or back to the steading, bearing the unlikely tale of this day? He could run, carry the word, and then … what?

As she walked, he saw her pert, rounded bottom, as that was all there was for him to see. Things in the middle of his body began to stir, and Smallish Boy realized that soon he would need a new name. The night dance had begun to make sense to him.

Drawn, he stood and trotted after her. When he caught up, he asked, “Where are we going?”