People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past) (32 page)

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Authors: W. Michael Gear,Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past)
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“
G
utginsa guards the door to the House of Air. The journey to get there is long and arduous. There are many villages in the Above Worlds, each about a moon apart, through which the soul must fly.The Spirits who live there set traps and snares to try to catch unwary souls, which they eat.
”
My breath rattles in my lungs. I manage to suck in enough air to say, “I know all this. Is there … a reason … you feel you must tell me … the old stories?”
“I want to make certain you understand them.”
He pauses, and I manage to lift my eyelids long enough to glimpse him gazing down at the river, or perhaps at the seagulls that flutter over the deep green water. The scent is powerful this afternoon, rich and earthy.
“Now listen carefully.”
I sigh and nod.
“At the end of the flight, there is one final test. Gutginsa waits at the door to the House of Air, holding a living spear with the head of a serpent. He points his spear at each soul that arrives, because the serpent can tell good souls from evil souls. If the person has done very bad things in his life, Gutginsa’s spear flies from his hand and punctures the heart of the evil soul, killing it. But if the person has been compassionate just once in his life, Gutginsa’s spear hesitates.”
I can feel my lungs flutter, like a bird’s wings preparing to take flight. I have to force them to settle down before I can say, “Then the soul … has a chance to explain.”
“Yes, that’s right. It may do no good, but it may also be your redemption.”
I whisper, “I always thought … Gutginsa’s spear … was too generous.”
“Ah,” he breathes, and I feel his cape sway as he lifts his arm in some gesture. “Then you miss the point. You see, the desire to explain is everything. It is the very heart of deliverance.”
I think about that. I suppose every soul must, at some point, realize that it needs to be redeemed, or redemption is impossible.
I smile. “I want … to explain.”
His gnarled old fingers touch my arm. “I know. I’m praying very hard that you have the chance.”
D
zoo leaned back against the damp bark wall, listening to the rain fall outside. It spattered in front of the lodge door and trickled across the plaza. The Thunderbirds grumbled unhappily as they passed over Fire Village.
As the downpour increased, the villagers moved inside the lodges, but she could still hear them. In the lodge to the right of hers, a warrior told glorious tales of the battles he’d seen in the past two moons. Wooden bowls clacked, as though his wife served supper while he spoke. Occasionally, a little boy stopped him to ask a question.
Across the plaza, in the Council Lodge, women spoke. She couldn’t make out the words, but their voices sounded weary and worried.
The Four Old Women. They should be worried.
Dzoo stared at the faint filament of gray that outlined the door on the other side of the lodge. Guards stood outside. Now and then, she heard them move.
She was alone.
She found it a curious sensation.
No one needed her. There were no wounded or sick to care for. The grieving didn’t beg her for guidance. For the first time in moons she had only herself to think of.
She pushed back her buffalohide hood and examined her prison.
A smoke hole had been cut in the roof, but there was no fire hearth. Not even a ring of stones.
“Perfect,” she murmured, and laughed softly.
A filth-encrusted bark container—for bodily wastes—rested near the door. Prisoners could only sit and stare at the blackness and worry about their futures.
Dzoo leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and conjured the image of the blood-streaked young man. Again she looked into his two stone eyes and felt her soul sway. She clung to that moment, feeling the few tendrils of Power slipping around her.
Feet sucked at the mud outside.
Ecan said, “Has she tried to escape?”
One of the guards responded, “I don’t think she’s even moved, Starwatcher.”
Ecan flipped the door hanging aside and ducked into the lodge carrying a leather sack. He wore a woven bark rain hat and cape. “I thought you might be hungry.”
She studied him as droplets of water sprinkled the dirt floor. “That surprises me.”
“What does?”
“That the needs of another would occur to you.”
Ecan roughly tossed the sack to the floor in front of her. Carved shell and bone jewelry flashed from his arms and ankles. Beneath the cape he wore a beautiful knee-length buckskin shirt dyed red, black, and white. Designs of Killer Whale, made from polished stone beads, winked in the faint light. He’d obviously bathed. His hair hung down his back in a long damp braid.
He paced before the door curtain. “You’ll find a water sack and several seaweed cakes in the bag. Enjoy them or starve; I don’t care.”
Dzoo opened the bag. She pulled out the elk-bladder water sack first and took four swallows. Trickles ran down her chin and dripped onto her cape. After days of almost no food or water, she had to ration it or her stomach would rebel. She set the water aside and reached for the seaweed cakes. They’d been wrapped in thick layers of bark to keep them warm. She gave Ecan a wary look. Why this strange kindness?
He kept pacing.
Dzoo took a bite of the cake and chewed it slowly. It tasted salty and delicious.
Grimly, he said, “You are fortunate. Both Chief Cimmis and Matron Astcat remember you. I think if you offer to help them overcome
the present crisis with the Raven People they might be inclined to spare your life.”
Dzoo watched him as she chewed. She hadn’t noticed before: raindrops coated his pointed face. “Why would I do that?”
“Cimmis has ways of making people do as he wishes, Dzoo. I wouldn’t toy with him if I were you. Staking a person down, cutting a slit in his belly, and pulling out a length of intestines to roast in a hot fire is currently considered the most gruesome manner of—”
Dzoo laughed softly.
Ecan stalked across the room and knelt in front of her. He smelled fragrant, like cedar bark. Did his slaves store his clothing in a cedar box? “Your lack of humility is liable to get you killed before I can—”
“What?” she asked. “Use me for your own purposes?”
Ecan hesitated; then, as though it had just occurred to him, he touched the hem of her buffalo cape. “If I thought I could use you, Dzoo, believe me, I would.” He moved his fingers tenderly over her cape. It was an intimate gesture, like stroking a lover’s hand.
Dzoo leaned toward him and whispered, “Go ahead. Take me here in the dirt. A man’s soul is never as vulnerable as when he is panting atop a woman. After you lay spent, I shall have more of you than just your seed.”
Ecan stared at her, but drew back his hand. “Will you help me, or not?”
“What would you have me do? Witch your enemies? Or give your son wings so he can fly back to you?”
“Both.”
Dzoo wiped the crumbs from her fingers onto her leather leggings. “Are you really surprised that Cimmis isn’t already organizing a war party to run down the mountain and bring your son back?”
Ecan smiled. “Not exactly. Apparently, Cimmis fears I will betray him to get my son back.”
Dzoo drew her knees up and braced her arms atop them. She finished her cake and reached for another. “Perhaps we have something in common after all.”
Ecan’s handsome face turned stony. “Don’t even think it, Dzoo. He would kill me in less than a heartbeat if he even suspected I might do something like that.”
“Then you must work very hard to keep his trust.”
Ecan glanced at the door and listened for movement, afraid they’d been overheard. In the plaza, someone laughed. The guards shifted. One of them murmured something he couldn’t hear.
Dzoo whispered, “You look like you just met Gutginsa’s spear, Starwatcher.”
His green eyes narrowed. “I believe Gutginsa’s spear is pointed at us now, in this world. Not after we die. I believe it more today than I ever have.”
He turned suddenly, and a thin sliver of light glinted on his water-slick rain hat. Before he exited into the pale gray gleam, he gripped the use-polished doorframe. “You understand, don’t you, that I will do whatever I must to save my son?”
“You even lie to yourself, Ecan. You will do whatever you must to save yourself.”
“That, too.”
He pulled the curtain back, but just stood in the entry. Around his tall body, she saw the rain-soaked plaza and part of the large Council Lodge. Smoke curled from the roof.
Dzoo leaned back, waiting.
 
 
E
can stared coldly at Dzoo as the rain began to slow.
She looked at him with those stunning midnight eyes, and he wondered if she was drinking his soul. Long red hair streamed over the front of her cape. Every move she made, every word she spoke, had a dangerous, sensual quality. She was at once frightening and frail, a combination that drew him like a wolf to a rabbit burrow. She had begun their game of dog and rabbit.
But he would finish it.
He stepped outside, where Wind Scorpion waited beside Horned Serpent. “Guard?” He motioned to Horned Serpent.
Horned Serpent trotted over and bowed. He had his brown hair tucked up beneath his rain hat. “Yes, Starwatcher?”
“Keep a close watch. Let no one pass. She is very Powerful, and she—”
“Oh, I know, Starwatcher. I have heard stories about her strange gods.” The youth wiped rain from his broad cheeks.
“Stories? What stories?”
“Well …” He glanced at Ecan, then at the door hanging. “It is said that while she was a girl, the Striped Dart People taught her how to fly, and at night her soul takes the form of a bird and soars into the Underwater House to sit on the branches of a great tree hidden deep inside the Cave of First Woman. While there, she speaks
with strange half-human half-buffalo men and drinks the blood of dead children.”
“For the sake of … ,” Ecan said in exasperation. “Just let no one pass, Horned Serpent. We can’t stop her from visiting the Underwater House if she wishes, but we can stop someone from trying to rescue her.”
The warrior nodded vigorously. “Yes, Starwatcher. As you order. I promise to guard her with my life.”
Wind Scorpion stepped forward, an eyebrow lifted. “Starwatcher, if you would prefer, I would be more than happy to stay here. The witch’s wiles don’t scare me.”
Ecan saw the faintest flicker in the grizzled warrior’s eyes, and shook his head. “No, I want you with me. I trust you like no one else.”
Wind Scorpion nodded, the slightest quiver at the corners of his mouth.
Ecan stalked away from the captive’s quarters. Nothing was working out as he had anticipated. By Gutginsa, why? What had he done to affect his fate this way?
The slaves still out working—pounding octopus meat on stone slabs, smoking fish on racks over the plaza fire—watched him pass in silence. Rain glistened on their hats and capes. None would dare speak to him unless spoken to first. Instead they covered their faces when he neared—especially the young women—and nodded respectfully. Only other North Wind People met his eyes, but even they did so with trepidation.
Ecan walked up the slope to his lodge, which stood just inside the palisade at the base of the lava cliff. He threw aside the leather door hanging and ducked inside. Wind Scorpion took up his position outside the door.
Home. He experienced a sudden sense of relief. Three body lengths across, the vaulted ceiling rose two body lengths over his head. Baskets filled with fragrant Healing herbs lined the walls. Skulls hung on the roof poles, four tens and four of them. They watched him from empty sockets, hollow with the memory of their death and his victory over them.
When no one could see, he leaned heavily against the wall and glared down at the flickering fire a slave had kindled in the hearth. Panic threatened to engulf him.
He clenched his fists and looked up at the skulls. Soot blackened the curved surfaces of the braincases, brow ridges, sockets, and jaws. As the warmth of the fire rose, heat wavered around them, and their fixed grins began to deepen, as though trying to tell him something.
In the wake of the panic, a slow-burning anger stirred deep in his veins.
“Yes, my precious gods, give me rage,” he whispered. “It will wipe away everything else.”
The need to kill was almost overpowering. He turned, calling, “Wind Scorpion! Go and find me a girl. Someone young, untouched by another man. Someone that no one will miss. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Starwatcher.”
Ecan listened as the man’s steps faded, and then he turned his attention to the things he suddenly wished he could avoid.
His bedding hides lay rolled on the far right, next to his son’s. Baskets stuffed with toys sat atop Tsauz’s hides, and his tiny spear leaned beside Ecan’s near the door.
Ecan reached for it and smoothed his fingers down the wood. He could feel Tsauz in every nick and scrape. His son’s smile lived in these walls, these toys.
His fault. All of it.
If he hadn’t agreed to White Stone’s plan …
“Enough!”
He balled a fist and slammed it into the lodgepole.
“Stop this!”
A tripod with a tea bag hung near the flames, scenting the air with the tart fragrance of dried cranberries.
As he bent down for a wooden cup, reaction to the strain set in, and he began to shake. He stared at the blood welling on his skinned knuckles.
He got up again and started walking, shedding jewelry and garments as he went. Shell bracelets and rings slipped from his hands and bounced across the floor as if alive. When he pulled his shirt over his head and violently threw it at the wall, the garment fluttered down like a many-colored feather. Sweat glistened on his naked chest. He tried to unlace his moccasins, but his fingers could not seem to find the knots.

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