The Broken Land (27 page)

Tutelo dried her eyes on her cape and rose. “I miss her already.”

Koracoo stroked her hair. “Thank you for staying with her.”

“She was never alone, Mother. She always knew someone who loved her was close by. I’ll be back to help you prepare her for the journey.”

“No. Go home.” She kissed Tutelo’s forehead. “Your own daughter is ill. Take care of her. Eat. Spend time with your wonderful husband. Your family needs you. Your cousins will care for our matron.”

Tutelo nodded. As she walked away, she wiped the tears from her cheeks with her hands.

Koracoo gazed down upon her dead mother. From long experience, she knew the pain would come, once the shock wore off. Once her duties and obligations were done. Once she’d tended to the new refugees, and stopped worrying about Hiyawento and the message from the Hills Ruling Council … once she had the luxury.

Twenty-eight

Sky Messenger

T
he sound of the rushing river fills the cool morning.

I turn to examine the faint lavender halo that swells over the eastern hills. As Elder Brother Sun nears the horizon, the old abandoned village seems to come alive, shadows stretching like dark fists from the overgrown piles of earth. Long ago, Bog Willow Village contained one hundred or more houses. All that remains are hillocks sprinkled with broken potsherds. Occasionally a charred log thrusts up through the leaf mat, saplings, and brush. There are many ghosts here. They roam the ruins as though still hunting for the bodies of lost loved ones.

To the west, dark blue mountains rise. I remember them. I remember everything about our rescue, and our flight from the battlefield. A desperate sense of guilt fills me when I think of that night. Baji, Tutelo, and I ran with all our hearts. We escaped, leaving Wrass and Zateri in the old woman’s clutches. For days, while our party searched for them, I lived their horror in my souls.

At this point in my life, I realize there was nothing I could have done to save them, but strangely that truth doesn’t alter the guilt. Sleeping deep inside me is the overwhelming sense that I should have tried to save them. Today, standing here, that desperate sensation returns to haunt me. My belly knots. My fists clench. I have to
do
something. Yet I am delaying marching into the meadow where the huge warrior camp sprawled.

Gusting up from the river, the cold breeze carries a mass of whirling leaves and smells sweetly of dew-soaked earth. I concentrate on the fragrance as I bend to grasp a potsherd, study it, and replace it in the exact location where I found it. Gitchi follows me with his ears pricked, listening to the morning.

Ten paces away, Taya sits on a rock with her knees hugged against her chest. Long black hair falls over the front of her cape, fluttering in the wind. When she catches me looking at her, she sucks in a breath, expels it in a disgusted rush.

I ignore her. Standing here … burns. My blood is aflame. Despite the cold, I’m roasting from the inside out. Gitchi feels it, too. He stays right at my heels, whimpering when he knows I’m on the verge of lashing out.

Like a knife in my heart, Taya calls, “I thought you said we were on an urgent mission to find a dead man. Why aren’t you looking for him?”

My heartbeat begins to slam against my ribs. She’s right. I force myself to turn to the meadow.
It’s empty. Most of those men are long dead. Look around. They are not here. They’re not hiding waiting to capture you again.

But my ears ring with the hideous laughter that filled the night twelve summers ago. The celebration songs almost drown out the childish sobbing of the new captives … and Zateri’s cries. Through the stench of burning longhouses, I smell clams boiling and dogs roasting.

Seeping up from inside me, Wrass orders,
“Hide in those leaves, Odion. If they find you, swing that club as hard as you can, and don’t stop swinging. No matter what you hear or see, keep swinging. Do you hear me? I’m going to lead them away. I’ll meet you …”

My aching fingers go tight around a war club that rotted to dust long ago. I hear shouts, men calling to each other, chasing us down … .

“They are not here,” I whisper to that terrified little boy who still huddles inside me. “Look. They are not here.”

Taya cups a hand to her mouth and shouts, “When are we going home?”

“But Wrass, I’m scared. I want to go with you! Let me—”

“I told you to hide. Now do it!”

I shake myself. I have to force my cramping fingers to release the imaginary club I hold. My hand stings.

Dreams tormented me last night. I was back here. It was dark and cold, and I was sure Wrass was dying. They’d beaten him badly. He’d tried to protect me from the old woman’s wrath. He shouldn’t have. He …

When I jerked awake, I rose and went down to the river where I hurled rocks at the water until I killed it … or killed the reflection of me that I saw there.

I order my feet to move, to walk. My long cape slurs softly over the old leaves. Even now, upon the very ground where it happened … the black hole in my memory persists.
He took me by the hand, dragged me out into the forest …

The rest is gone.

While I struggle to figure out why, I pick up a mud-caked arrow point, wipe it clean, turn it over, and gently put it down.

“What are you doing?” Taya demands to know.

I call, “I’m thinking.”

I’m sure this isn’t how she expected to spend the moons before her joining. She must long to be home putting the finishing touches on our place in the longhouse. Not out in the middle of the wilderness scrambling after winter-starved rodents and dodging war parties. Underlying her impatience and irritating demands, I realize she is on the verge of blind panic, and has been for days. I’m fairly certain she would bolt for home if she thought she could make it alone. I can’t let her. She’ll almost certainly be killed or captured.

There is a flash on the horizon. Gitchi’s gray head turns, and he wags his tail. As Elder Brother Sun rises from his resting place in the branches of the celestial tree, an amber gleam spreads across the old village and hundreds of arrow points glisten. They are everywhere—testaments to the intensity of the long-ago battle that devastated Bog Willow Village.

Taya climbs down off the rock and trudges through the village ruins toward me.

I reach down and grasp a stone tool, an old scraper used to process corn husks, and hold it to my ear. I close my eyes, listening for the voices of people who might have seen what happened to me. The tool is quiet. I replace it in the exact spot in which I found it, and move on. Gitchi smells the stone before following.

Taya calls, “You are so
odd
.”

As I open my mouth to respond …

“Odion?”

The Voice calls.

Blood freezes in my veins. Where is he? I turn, trying to find him.

He kneels in the meadow in the distance, his black hood blowing around dark emptiness. My senses become heightened, as always when he appears, and I smell old blood on the breeze. It infects his clothing like a foul miasma.

I stride straight through the ruins, headed north along the riverbank with Gitchi trotting at my heels.

In a childish whine, Taya says, “You never answer me!”

I’ve forgotten her question.

As I stride toward Shago-niyoh, the tangy smell of the river drifts up, displacing the taint of corruption. Bright autumn leaves pile along the shores, creating moldering borders that mingle with the fragrances of dead grass and moss. Birdsong fills the trees.

Taya trots through the meadow behind me, shouting, “What’s wrong? Did I do something again?”

By the time she reaches my side, I am standing two paces from Shago-niyoh. He is not looking at me. His head is bent, and he seems to be studying something on the ground, something hidden in the colorful blanket of leaves.

I whisper to him, “There’s one part … I don’t … I can’t remember. Do you know what happened to me?”

Taya stands breathing hard, staring at the place my eyes focus. Clearly she sees nothing. A thread of alarm enters her voice. “Who are you talking to? Are you talking to me?”

Shago-niyoh looks toward the eastern horizon, where a honeyed glow arches into the sky.
“What is the first thing you recall about this place?”

“The black blizzard. Swirling. Covering the trees and the ground.”

“A black blizzard?” Taya asks. After several heartbeats without an answer, she turns to look back at the destroyed village. “You mean, from the burning village? Was ash falling?”

I prop my hands on my hips and turn to her. I do owe her answers. She is not here voluntarily. Of course, neither am I. But we are in this together. “Yes, we arrived just after the attack.”

“We? Who else was with you?”

Their faces appear just behind my eyes. And my anxiety lessens. I can breathe again. They’re here with me. “Tutelo, Wrass, and others. My only friends.” I don’t wish to name the other children. They are from “enemy” peoples, and I don’t wish to endure another lecture about my treasonous inclinations.

I gaze out at the wide river, where water burbles over rocks. Dark green spruces and pines dot the brilliant scarlet maples on the opposite bank. “I don’t know why I can’t remember everything. The images should be burned into my souls. Every other moment is.”

“Maybe you were you struck in the head?” Taya suggests.

“Maybe. I recall beatings … and my flight through the forest with my Spirit Helper is perfectly clear.”

Shago-niyoh shifts, but does not look up. His black cape waffles in the wind.

I add, “As is the instant when Mother and Father, and the two Hills warriors, Sindak and Towa, burst from the trees with their war clubs and killed the Outcast warriors who held us captive.”

I realize my lapse too late.

Surprised, Taya says, “There were two Hills warriors with the party that rescued you? Two
enemy
warriors? Your mother allied herself with our enemies? How is it possible that I’ve never heard this part of the story?”

I lift a shoulder. I’m waiting for Shago-niyoh to speak to me. He called me here for a reason.

Taya says, “How did you make it home?”

Gitchi walks to my side and looks up at me with adoring yellow eyes. I stroke his warm throat. “My friends. They were just children, but they risked their lives to make sure we escaped.” I gesture. “Three or four hundred warriors were camped here. The smell of roasting dogs and clams filled the night. There were hundreds of campfires. Sometimes, in my Dreams, I return here, and I … I hear that voice. The man’s voice. That’s where the gap is in my memory.”

Shago-niyoh whispers,
“Gaps are thresholds. Step over.”

Taya tucks windblown long hair behind her ears. She’s so young. I keep forgetting. “Who is he?”

For an instant, I’m confused about whom she means; then I rub my hands on my cape, cleaning them of the filth. Filth that has not existed, except in my souls, in a long time. “He was a war chief.”

Taya’s dark beautiful eyes seem larger. “What was his name?”

“He’s dead. I cannot speak his name.”

Taya flaps her arms against her sides. “Sky Messenger, think about this. You obviously have a ghost sickness and need to see a good Healer, not someone like old Bahna. In Bur Oak Village, Genonsgwa is the best. She says …”

It’s hard to concentrate on what she’s saying. Shago-niyoh is brushing away leaves, searching the ground. Absently, I murmur, “Healers can’t help me now.”

“There is a way through. A way out. The doorway to freedom is right here. Step through.”
Shago-niyoh’s hood tilts to the side, waiting for me to understand.

“A way through?” I don’t understand.

Taya stalks forward and brusquely says, “If we came here to find a dead man, let’s do it! Tell me where to look. I want to get out of here as soon as possible.”

I stare at Shago-niyoh. Is he speaking about the “prison” Old Bahna says I’ve constructed to protect myself?
There is a way out … .

“Sky Messenger, talk to me!”

I tear my gaze away from Shago-niyoh to study Taya. Her expression is wild with barely suppressed terror. She gazes at me as though I am not human, but one of the monsters that stalked the primeval world of the creation.

I point to the ground. “He’s here. I think.”

Shago-niyoh rises in a sort of weightless drifting and turns to face me expectantly.

I lower my eyes to the ground, where the leaves are still parted, revealing dark black soil. Gitchi sniffs the grass, and a low growl rumbles his throat.

“What’s the matter with your wolf?” To Taya it looks like dead grass and leaves.

“I think this is where … Her campfire was here. I’m sure of it.”

I turn around in a complete circle, examining the trees, the location of the burned village, and the river. For a long time, I stare at Shago-niyoh, who stands no more than two paces distant, his hood absolutely still in the fierce gust of wind that sweeps the meadow.