Shadow Valley (8 page)

“Praise God Blood,” its killer said. “We eat.”

The Mk*tk were poor gatherers. They knew little of netting trout or stickleback or trapping rabbits as did the weaklings to the north. A Mk*tk preferred to fill his belly by hunting and raiding. In truth, raiding
was
hunting. Humans of other tribes were merely prey—not to be eaten, of course. Human flesh was for God Blood’s teeth alone. But their bodies might be used in any other way. The Mk*tk used human skin for leather, their bones for spears and decorations.

“What happened to Fire Gut?” Flat-Nose asked, pointing at the wounded man on the ground.

Hard Tongue shrugged. “We chased a wildebeest and stirred a one-horn with her calf. She chased us.”

Now
they had caught his curiosity. “And Fire Gut was caught?”

“He took the horn because he was shitting behind a bush. He was running and shitting at the same time. Even the one horn laughed!”

The Mk*tk roared with mirth. Even Fire Gut tried to laugh with them. Then blood gushed from between his lips, ending his ghastly spate of mirth.

“I am sorry,” Fire Gut said. “It hurts.”

“Soon,” Flat-Nose said.

Hard Tongue ignored his cousin’s agony. To acknowledge it would shame Fire Gut, encourage him to beg for mercy, which would deny him entrance to the next world. “How went the hunt?”

His brother Rain Hand shrugged. “Our spears are strong but cannot kill what does not live.”

Flat-Nose shifted his balance. He felt something hard beneath his bare heel and ground down until it cracked. “I know where better hunting can be found.”

“North?” Hard Tongue asked.

“Yes. North. We need but take the land.”

Flat-Nose hunkered down, staring off to the north. “Hate their smell,” he growled, “their weakness. So many of them. But they are weak. We will break them.”

“We had many wounded,” Hard Tongue said. “Many killed. Must be careful.”

Flat-Nose’s arm blurred, knocking the other man to the ground, then stood over him with his short stabbing spear. “Careful?” he roared, spittle flying from his thick, scarred lips. “Are we women, to be
careful?
No! We are men! And God Blood gave men courage! Gave men spears and claws. We will feed our god until His belly bursts.”

At night, when Flat-Nose lay his head down, God Blood sent him visions of his children and grandchildren hunting in the northlands, eating their fill, slaughtering their enemies, plundering the women on the bloody ground.

He shook the pleasant images from his mind. “It is time.”

Fire Gut spit blood and raised his chin. “I am ready.”

Flat-Nose gazed toward Great Sky. The gigantic god mountain was invisible beyond the horizon, but sometimes, on some days, it seemed to waver mistily in the heat, floating above the horizon. “Tell God Blood to make us strong. Soon, we give him new land.” Starting with the boma the Ibandi monkeys called Rock.

Flat-Nose plunged his spear into Fire Gut’s wound.

Fire Gut bit through his thick lower lip, struggling not to cry out. If Fire Gut’s screams were silent, God Blood might answer his prayers. Despite his wish to die with courage, at last both flesh and spirit failed. Fire Gut shrieked, his body curling back away from the shaft.

Flat-Nose wrenched the spear back and forth. As the light in Fire Gut’s eyes disappeared, Flat-Nose leaned over and whispered to him. “Your children will sing your death song. God Blood will savor your flesh.”

Then he wrenched the spear free.

Through a forest of dung-colored anthills, one slow, heavy step at a time, Leopard Eye and Leopard Paw dragged Stillshadow’s sled toward the horizon. They each had one leather strap hitched over their right shoulders. They relied upon elephant breathing’s slow, powerful strokes to postpone fatigue.
“Huh! huh! huh!”
they grunted, one exhalation timed to each drive of their right legs.

Stillshadow felt every season she had walked, which she now reckoned as six tens of winters. Perhaps more. Her memory was not what it once was, even if her old heart still felt strong.

It brought her pleasure to watch her boys pulling the sled. It was a shame that neither of them had been chosen for hunt chiefs, but that had been Cloud Stalker’s decision, and she had often wondered at it. Now she wondered if some part of her lover had known what would happen on Great Sky, known that Father Mountain would slaughter his sons in such a fashion. Could he possibly have denied Paw and Eye entrance into the brotherhood to spare their lives?

Thank Great Mother she had them now. Good boys. Good men. Either of them would have made a good husband for Sky Woman, were she not in love with Frog. She did not understand Frog, but the
num-field
about his head shimmered with a yellow-white radiance unlike that of any other man.

He was not something she understood. But she approved.

T’Cori walked at her side. As Stillshadow’s twin sons labored, the girl kept one hand on her swollen belly, striving to control the ebb and flow of
her own breathing. A stew of emotions simmered on her apprentice’s face:
fear, fatigue, despair.
All fought for her heart, a fight she dared not allow them to win.

“I have tried,” T’Cori said, “in every way I know, doing everything that you have taught me to do.”

Stillshadow’s wizened hand slipped into the girl’s smooth strong one, a contact comforting to both.

“This last thing is not learning,” Stillshadow said. “It is the opposite. It is letting go of what you think you already know.”

“Of what?”

“Of life,” Stillshadow said. “Of life itself.”

T’Cori looked back over her shoulder, and Stillshadow glanced back as well. Behind them, tens of families followed. Most seemed merely struggling with the body strain. Some sang songs or made games to entertain their children. The young ones ran ahead of their parents or wandered behind. Stillshadow could not see Snake, but she knew he would be near the back of the line, ensuring that no stragglers were lost.

So many lives in their hands. Such gentle, loving trust. It was not enough to earn it. One had to feel
worthy
of it. And since the Mk*tk had taken Sky Woman, her greatest student had felt worthy of little save disdain. There had to be some gift to give the girl. Something. She could think of nothing.

But if Stillshadow’s mind was empty, her husk almost ready to return to the earth, she might still find one last miracle. “I know what must be done and how to do this thing that must be done. One closer to death than life sees these things more clearly. I go now.

“Paw. Eye.
Stop,”
Stillshadow said. Her order obeyed, the old woman levered herself up off the sled.

Stillshadow’s legs wobbled, and T’Cori caught her arm.

“Where do you go?” T’Cori asked.

“I need my vision,” Stillshadow said. “There is truth, and I cannot see it.”

“What will you do?”

“It is a secret thing,” the old woman said, “one that I may show you when I return. Perhaps.”

“And what will this thing help you to do?” T’Cori asked.

“I must dig deep,” Stillshadow said. “Find the heart of the world, its drumbeat. Do not fear.”

“Mother,” T’Cori said, “there is a thing that I have not spoken of before. I think that you already know what I must say.”

“Perhaps,” Stillshadow said. “Perhaps. Regardless, speak as you will.”

“There is so much you do for us, more than I think I even dream. Mother, if anything happens to you …” She dropped her eyes.

Darling child. You think you are the only one who doubts?
“And you fear you cannot?”

T’Cori turned her eyes away, but not before Stillshadow glimpsed the fear within.

“You climbed Great Sky!” the old woman said. Her deeply wrinkled hands cupped the girl’s chin. “Listen to me. When I think you are ready, you
will be
ready. Today is not the day. This is not the time. This is the time for me to go, alone, to do what must be done.”

“But you might die!” T’Cori protested.

Stillshadow smiled, her deepest, softest smile. “And you will not?”

As Father Mountain’s countless eyes emerged from a darkening sky, the people prepared evening meals, lashing branches and hides together to make their simple shelters.

As Frog’s sister, Little Brook, brought Mouse to him, Bat Wing wandered near. In better days Bat Wing would have spent more and more time with his father or uncles. They would have taken him away from the boma on their hunting trips, teaching him the twists of strange streams and the rise of untrod hillocks. Now, each day brought new horizons, new lessons, lessons passing too swiftly for even the keenest mind to absorb them all.

“This is your son?” the boy asked.

“Yes,” Frog said. “He is Medicine Mouse.”

“A fine boy.” Bat Wing prodded at the infant. Mouse clamped his tiny soft fingers over the tip of Bat’s finger as he waggled it gently. “He has strong hands and feet. He will walk far and kill many zebra.”

Bat Wing pulled back on his hand, teasing, and seemed genuinely delighted as Mouse gurgled and held on more tightly.

“Where is your father?” Frog asked.

Pain flashed across Bat’s face. “He died fighting the Mk*tk.”

A flash of shared pain, like dry lightning in a summer sky. The boy’s grief ripped open the memory of the war, of that terrible night of blood and blindness, when men struggled with monsters for the land they loved and the families they cherished.

So many had died that night. More Mk*tk than Ibandi had died, to be certain. Frog felt a fierce surge of pride: that night men had broken beasts!
True, Ibandi had outnumbered the giants three to one, but they had triumphed. Didn’t that count? Didn’t that mean anything at all?

If the death of this young boy’s father could hold some small meaning, the world itself might not seem so empty and cold.

Frog clasped Bat’s shoulder. “Then he is atop Great Sky.” What harm in such a small lie?

Bat Wing scratched at the bald spot over his right ear, as if deciding whether or not to answer. “Yes. I know. Sometimes I see his face in the clouds.”

Frog’s ears tingled with disbelief. “What did you say?”

Bat Wing poked at the dust with his toes. “I am sorry.” He started to turn away. “I am a fool.”

“No!” Frog said. “Tell me what you said.”

The boy stared at the ground as if searching for a lost toy. “I should not have said it.”

“Listen to me,” Frog said. “I want to hear you. Your words were good.” He cupped the boy’s chin in his hand. “Never be ashamed of your thoughts. I spent too many winters fearing what I heard in my head—” he tapped his temple with a finger “—what I saw in my dreams. Tell me.”

Within a heartbeat, the boy’s face melted from doubt to cautious optimism. “I … it is just that when I look at the clouds in a certain way …” He trailed off, perhaps still doubting Frog’s sincerity. “I can see an ear
there—
” he pointed at a rounded, fluffy edge “—and the shape of an eye.”

Of all the strange things that Frog might have seen or heard that day, this was the very last he might have expected. “Have you always seen this?”

Bat nodded and then drew back. “Am I bad?”

Frog seized Bat Wing under the armpits and lifted him up to the sky. For as long as he had drawn breath, he had been the only one who saw the faces in the clouds or heard songs in the wind. Frog felt as if a stone had been rolled from his heart. “No! This is very,
very
good. Now tell me … what else can you see?”

“There—” Bat Wing pointed at a cloud squatting near the horizon “—a mountain.” His finger shifted toward one that nearly eclipsed the sun. “A deer.”

“Yes,” Frog said, his heart full and warm. “Yes, I can see it.”

“You can?” The boy squinted doubtfully. “You’re laughing at me.”

“No,” Frog said. “I laugh because my heart is happy. You have no father. Do you have an uncle?”

“Two. But both remained in the shadow. Only my mother walks with me,” Bat said.

Frog hugged the boy, felt Bat Wing’s strong young heart dancing against his own. “Then if you will have me, you are now my nephew.” He rubbed the tips of their noses together. “Those who see strange things should be family together. From now on, you will walk with me, if you wish. Would you have me?”

The boy’s eyes gleamed. “Uncle” was the only word he could say.

The evening shadows had merged into a dusky mask. The air had cooled, and the dry, sharp tang of hot sand yielded to the whispered perfume of night-blooming cactus. Quietly, without drawing any attention to herself, Stillshadow hobbled out to the camp’s edge and then beyond. She did not seek to meet or hold the eyes of any that she passed, nor did they seek to meet or hold hers.