The Dawn Country (20 page)

“We’re going to stop it.”

Relief surges through me. “You can do that?”

“I’ve known how to cure ghost sickness since I was ten summers.”

“Why? Were you sick?”

“No, my mother was. A fever went through our village, killing many people. She was helping carry the dead to a place behind the houses when she took sick. Our village Healer brought ghost medicine to cure her.”

He opens the two leather bags and pours small amounts of powder from each into the chipped cup. Then he dips up a little water from the river and uses a piece of driftwood to stir in the powder. He adds more water, and stirs again. “All right, drink this slowly.” He hands me the cup.

I drink. It has an earthy bitter flavor. “Did she live?”

“My mother? Yes, she lived a long happy life.”

The other children are watching us. Tutelo’s eyes are wide, but Baji wears a suspicious expression, as though she fears the Dawnland Healer might be trying to kill me. Our people have been at war for so long, there is no trust between us. That’s why the slightest, unintended insult becomes a reason for battle. Hehaka’s beady eyes are fixed on my face like a hungry dog’s.

I tip the cup up and swallow the last dregs. By the time I hand the cup back, I’m breathing better. The creeping numbness is fading.

Wakdanek examines my face. “Are you feeling a little better?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“You are most welcome, Odion.” He begins tucking the bags back into his belt pouch. “In another hand of time, you should feel just fine. But if not, tell me, and I’ll make a stronger potion.”

He starts to rise, and I touch his hand. “Wait. Why did you help me? I am not of your people.”

A smile warms his face. “As I told Sindak earlier, we all have an amnesia of the heart. We’ve forgotten that we were once the same people.”

“We were?”

“Yes, our legends say it was a long time ago. But I believe we are still bound together by blood memory. You are my relative. It is my duty to help you.”

As he uses the driftwood to push the coals back into his fire-starting pot, I rise to my feet. My legs are stronger. They no longer tremble with weakness.

“Is it all right if I go back to my friends now?”

“Definitely.”

I tramp up the bank and slump down beside Tutelo again. My sister chews on her lower lip for a while before she asks, “What did he do?”

“He said I had ghost sickness. He gave me ghost medicine.”

“Are you sure?” Baji asks. Her waist-length hair dances around her body like slender black arms. She appears to be waiting for me to keel over or fall into a frenzied fit.

“I feel better, Baji.”

We all go silent when Wakdanek climbs back up the bank and passes us. Without a word, he returns to searching the ground for tracks.

“We’ll see if it lasts,” Baji replies skeptically. “I’m not sure about him yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, it’s just … something. He’s odd.”

“He’s from the Dawnland. They’re all odd.” I fill my lungs with a deep soothing breath.

Baji swivels around to watch the people roaming the abandoned camp. “I don’t know why we have to stay on the riverbank,” Baji says in frustration. “We were here last night. We might be able to help them.”

Tutelo says, “Mother’s afraid we’ll disturb the sign. The fewer feet out there, the easier it is to track.”

“Look around, Tutelo!” Baji waves a hand. “There’s nothing to track. The ash makes it impossible.” Her long black hair shimmers softly in the smoke-filtered sunlight. She wears an annoyed expression. “They need to start talking to us about the old woman, about how she thinks. They’ve hardly asked us any questions.”

“They will. When they need to. Mother just …” I halt when the strange sound erupts again. Like a baby crying. “Do you hear that?”

I cock my head to listen. Baji and Tutelo instantly go still.

After several heartbeats, Tutelo says, “Maybe we should go see if we can find it?”

Baji turns all the way around to look up the bank toward the canoe landing fifty paces away. Hehaka doesn’t move. He continues frowning down the river, as he has since just after dawn. It is as though he’s waiting to see a canoe coming back for him. I don’t know how to feel about this. I don’t understand him. Does he want to be a slave? Does he like being hurt?

Tutelo says, “It’s whimpering.”

I rise to my feet. “Come on. I can’t stand just sitting here. Let’s go find it.”

Baji points. “I think it’s coming from the landing.”

Tutelo scrambles to her feet. “I do, too.”

Baji turns to Hehaka. “Are you coming, Hehaka? We’re just going to walk to the landing.”

“No,” he says. “I’m waiting right here.” His eyes are glued to the river.

I stand awkwardly for a time before I say, “Hehaka? She kept you as a slave for seven summers. Why do you want her to find you again?”

He looks at me with an agonized expression. His triangular, batlike face and big ears have a reddish hue. “She sucked out my soul,” he whispers, and glances around. “Don’t you remember? She sucked it out with that eagle-bone sucking tube and blew it into the little pot that she carries in her pack.”

“I remember. So?”

Gannajero does this to punish children. She places her eagle-bone tube against their temples, sucks out their souls, and tells them that when they are far, far from home, she’ll let their souls out of the pot. This is a terrible fate. It means that their afterlife souls will never be able to find their way home. They’ll be chased through the forests forever by enemy ghosts.

Tears leak from the corners of Hehaka’s eyes. “I have to find her. She promised that if I stayed with her, she would blow my soul back into my body before I die, then take care of me so I can find my way to the Land of the Dead to be with my ancestors.”

“She’s an old fool, Hehaka. She can’t trap souls,” Baji says and turns, expecting me to support her.

I hesitate before I say, “That’s right. She’s just an evil old woman.”

“She’s coming back for me,” Hehaka says. “I swear it! I’m staying right here until I see her.”

I shift my weight to my other foot, then say, “All right. We’ll be back in a little while.”

Tutelo leads the way, trotting down the bank with her long black braid swaying across her back. Baji and I walk side by side. Her jaw is clenched hard, and it makes her beautiful face appear misshapen.

“Why is he so concerned about the river?” Baji asks.

“I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t make any sense, Odion. Don’t you recall when we heard Gannajero’s men say that she hated to travel the waterways because there were too many towns, men fishing, and other canoes? She feared someone would recognize her.”

I step wide around an old lightning-riven stump. Its hollow interior is charred black, and charcoal stripes its bark. The only answer I can think of is, “Maybe Hehaka knows something we don’t.”

Baji stops dead in her tracks. I stop, too. Tutelo runs on ahead.

“You mean … you think she had a plan? And maybe Hehaka overheard her talking about it?”

“She always had a plan, Baji, and she talked openly in front of him.”

“Then he may know many things that we don’t.”

“Probably.”

When we start walking again, Baji stares at the ground with her brow furrowed, deep in thought.

The bank around the landing is strewn with refuse. I have seen this before. Warriors with packs of new plunder have to do something with their shabby old belongings, so they toss them out of the canoes just before they shove off. Threadbare packs and capes, blankets with too many stitched holes, and hide bags filled with who-knows-what litter the shore. The bank is marked with dozens of depressions where canoes rested last night.

Tutelo stops in the middle of the refuse. “Do you hear it?” she whispers.

Baji and I listen. The rushing of the river is loud. It’s hard to hear anything else.

Then a soft muffled “woof” erupts.

A short distance ahead, I see a sack wiggle. “There’s something alive in that sack.”

We all run up the bank and encircle it. The sack flops over; then whimpering starts again.

I kneel by the sack. “It’s a dog.”

“Hurry, open it and let him out,” Tutelo urges. “There’s no telling how long he’s been in there. He may be dying of thirst.”

I take a few moments to gently pet the warm body inside. Barks erupt and the sack writhes as the dog frantically struggles for freedom.

“Hurry, Odion!”

“All right.” I work to untie the tight laces. “But get ready. He might try to bite us.”

Baji takes Tutelo’s hand, preparing to drag her away if necessary. The sack is flopping around like a big dying fish. Yips and panicked barks fill the air.

“Easy, boy,” I say.

As soon as I loosen the laces, a soft gray nose pokes up through the opening, then scrambling begins as the frightened puppy tries to force his way to freedom. “Wait!” I cry. “Let me get the sack off before you—”

The dog wriggles the top half of his lean body out into my lap and looks around with curious yellow eyes. I pull the rest of the hide sack off him and toss it away. He is young, maybe four or five moons old, and looks like a wolf pup.

“He’s probably half dog,” I say.

“Well, if he is, he doesn’t look like it,” Baji observes.

“He’s a wolf puppy,” Tutelo says. “Not a dog.”

The puppy examines each of us, cautiously sniffs our scents. Finally, he wags his bushy gray tail.

Baji releases Tutelo’s hand and leans down to examine the puppy. “Look at those yellow eyes, Odion. Tutelo’s right. He’s all wolf.”

When the wind blows a lock of Baji’s long black hair, the puppy lets out a surprised yip, leaps up, and clamps it in his jaws. As he tries to rip it out by the roots, he growls ferociously.

“Hey!” Baji tugs to get it away from him. “Let go!”

“Puppy, no!” I say. “Stop it.”

He knows the word “no.” Puppy immediately drops the hair and looks up at me with hurt eyes.

I stroke his silken gray head. “He’s smart.”

Baji tentatively extends a hand, lets him smell it, then pats his side. “He’s also pretty. I’ll bet one of the warriors stole him from Bog Willow Village last night and was carrying him home to his children.”

“But why didn’t he just tie a rope around his neck and lead him? It would have been easier.”

Tutelo’s pretty face is tight with concentration. “I’ll bet the puppy was supposed to be dinner.”

Roasted dog is delicious, and among our people, it is the special meal cooked for victorious warriors when they return home. There’s nothing better than tender puppy.

“Maybe, but it’s also possible that the puppy attacked the warrior when he killed his master, and the warrior was on his way to drown him,” I suggest.

“I don’t think so.” Baji shakes her head. “If I were the warrior, I’d have just clubbed him to death. I wouldn’t have taken the time to put him in a sack and carry him down to the river.”

Tutelo edges forward and pets the puppy’s silken back. “He’s the color of a ghost,” she says. “Maybe his name was Ghost.”

“Or Oki,” Baji suggests.

We both turn to stare at her.

Oki are Spirits. They inhabit powerful beings, including the seven Thunderers, rivers, certain rocks, valiant warriors, even lunatics. The most powerful oki is Brother Sky, because he controls the seasons and the waves on the sea. Oki can bring either good luck or bad. People who possess supernatural powers—shamans, witches—are believed to have a companion Spirit, an oki, whose power they can call upon to help them.

“He definitely has some special power,” I say, “or we’d never have found him. He called us to him. Oki sounds like a good name.”

Tutelo shakes her head vehemently. “I don’t like that. What if somebody thinks he’s an evil Spirit? If somebody’s having a bad day, that name could cost him his life.”

“Well … then think of something else.”

Puppy licks my hand and staggers down to the river. He drinks with his eyes half-closed, as though deeply grateful for the water.

“I wonder how long he was in that sack?” Tutelo looks up at me.

“I don’t know. Bog Willow Village was attacked yesterday. So maybe twenty or thirty hands of time.”

“It’s a wonder he has the strength to walk.” Baji studies him carefully. “Odion, what’s going to happen to him if we show him to the others?”

“Mother and Father will let us keep him,” Tutelo says with a happy smile. “I’m sure they will.”

I am not so sure. Tutelo wants the puppy. Probably, we all do. After the horrors of the last moon, the puppy is like a special gift from the Faces of the Forest.

I rise to my feet. “Before we get too excited, let’s see if he’ll follow us.” As I start to walk down the shore, I call, “Come on, Puppy. Come.”

The puppy cocks his head, listening carefully to my voice, as though trying to detect anything threatening. He takes another drink from the river, and the dim rays of sunlight that penetrate the haze catch in his fur. He seems to be outlined with white fire.

“It’s all right, pup. We’re not going to hurt you. Come on, boy.” I pat my leg and walk away again.

The young wolf wags his tail, but he’s still not sure about this.

“Puppy, come on, boy.” I clap my hands.

When he hasn’t moved, Tutelo says, “Maybe he wants to go back to the forest to find his pack?”

Baji scowls at the puppy. “No, he doesn’t.” Sharply, she says, “Puppy. Get over here!
Right now!
”

The puppy’s ears prick. He trots forward to stand at her side, wagging his tail sheepishly. Baji gives me a pleased look. “He belonged to a woman.”

I study the puppy. He’s gazing up adoringly at Baji, waiting for her next command.

“Can you get him to follow you, Baji?”

“Come on, dog,” she orders.

As we walk down the shore toward Hehaka, the wolf happily trots along at Baji’s heels. Whenever he lags, she scolds him, and he catches up in a heartbeat.

Tutelo runs forward and slips her hand into mine. I clutch it tightly. Love swells my chest. Without my sister’s bravery, I could not have survived the past moon. I would have given up. So many times, all I wanted was to lie down in the forest and die. As I think about it, Manidos’ smile flits behind my eyes—
Lie down, boy
—and my steps falter. I release Tutelo’s hand and lift my palms again. The numb stinging has returned. “No, it never happened,” I repeat, barely audible, even to me.