People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past) (12 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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Had his enemies bet that her very presence would be enough to make him drop his guard?
T
hough it was well past midnight, neither Pitch nor Dzoo could sleep. Snow gusted out of the darkness in glittering white veils to soak Pitch’s cape and the tangles of hair that crept out beyond his conical hat. They had left Antler Spoon’s village immediately, trudged through the snow for four hands of time, and finally made camp in this grove of alders near Black Rock Creek. Water trickled beneath a thin crust of ice two body lengths away, sweet and melodic.
Pitch smoothed his fingers over his wet teacup and studied Dzoo. She sat across the smoking fire from him, eyes focused on their back trail as though she expected to see a war party at any instant.
An exotically beautiful woman, she drew a man’s eye. Pitch couldn’t say why exactly, but he caught himself staring at the curved hollow of her cheek, at the full red swell of her lips. A man might flounder in those large dark eyes. Her brow, high and smooth, balanced her upturned nose, pointed chin, and delicate jaw. But her long hair was her crown. In bright sun, it was a deep red with golden highlights, but in the firelight tonight, it glinted like polished red cedar. Though Dzoo had seen two tens and nine summers, she had never borne children; her body was still perfect, her breasts, small waist, and long legs the stuff of male fantasy.
Pitch smiled at that, aware that he liked to fantasize about her. Dzoo was a perpetual enigma, more a creature of other worlds than
this one. He could see it in the way she walked, almost floating above the soil, each step placed with a feline grace. An unsettling energy flowed through her, around her, and into her. Something she could project through a look or a touch. In her presence, no one was complacent. Being close to her reminded Pitch of sitting on a peak during a lightning storm. He could feel his skin prickling and his hair starting to stand on end.
“I am not lightning,” she whispered as she remained motionless.
Pitch swallowed hard, wondering where that had come from. “Did you hear my thoughts?”
She just gave him the vaguest of smiles. The silence of the night began to press down around them.
“Who do you think this ‘Coyote’ is?” Pitch smoothed his hand over his wooden cup. As the snowflakes struck the warm surface, they melted and ran down to pool around his fingers.
Dzoo’s eyes fixed on some point out in the snow and held, motionless. She might not have heard.
Pitch took a long drink of his tea, then tugged his cape more tightly about his shoulders. “Do you think he’s one of the Raven People?”
Dzoo shook her head. It was a bare movement, as if, over the decades, she had grown weary of extravagant gestures. “He’s of the North Wind People.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He has their long, narrow head and pale skin.”
Pitch’s cup froze midway to his mouth. Like him, the Raven People had broad, flat faces on round skulls, but the North Wind People were characteristically long-headed, with sloping foreheads and thin faces. “Are you telling me that you … you
saw
him?”
Dzoo turned her gaze on Pitch, and a tingle went through him. Looking into her large black eyes was like gazing into the eyes of a Spirit Raven. He could almost feel his soul begin to drift.
“I’m almost certain he lives in Fire Village,” she said. “Or at least he was born there. He is broad of shoulder and has a curious scent, like the moss that grows at the base of the lava cliff above Fire Village.”
Her hand lifted to the pendant she wore, and she gently smoothed her fingers over the red spear point. “He wears one of these.”
Pitch stared at the pendant. The fluted points were magnificent, as long as his palm, and so finely flaked they had a vitreous glitter. They were called fluted points because the very last thing the maker did was to “flute” the base: that is drive a wide, thin flake of stone down the long axis of the point. Only North Wind People were allowed to
possess them. The points were part of their Power as a people. They claimed their ancestors had made them from the blood of long-dead monsters. It was considered a grave offense to even be found trying to copy them.
“Then,” Pitch said, “Cimmis probably sent him after you.”
“There is more to Coyote than even Cimmis understands.” Her smile was cold and crystalline. “Oh no, Pitch, he is more dangerous than a desperate chief, or his soul-sick Council. He has touched blackness. It lingers on his soul, taints the very air with his every breath.”
That sent a shiver down Pitch’s back. Chief Cimmis and the Council of Four Old Women was scary enough. The Four Old Women had felt no pity, suffered no mercy in their decisions to punish those who defied them. Reprisals had been immediate. All along the coast Raven villages lay in charred ruins, and refugees filled the trails, fleeing their wrath.
And Coyote was more dangerous than that?
Her lips parted slightly as she studied him. “He and I will meet in the end. One of us will possess the other. I wonder who will be the stronger? He … or I?”
“Dzoo, you don’t have to deal with him alone. There are a great many of us—”
She raised her hand, fingers a golden brown in the firelight. “Listen to me. Power is shifting, Pitch. People are being swept up in the passion and madness of the gods. Our souls hang in the balance.”
“How? I don’t understand.”
“The future,” she whispered as she fixed on the night beyond their camp. “We will decide that in the coming weeks. The Raven and North Wind Peoples will begin their Dance together, shuffling … step by step … .”
An owl hooted out in the forest. Pitch tipped his head, letting the water drip off to the side as he studied Dzoo. “How will the Dance end?”
For a long time she seemed oblivious; when she finally spoke, she said, “In the end, we all make love with Death. We wrap ourselves in the most intimate of embraces. As we thrust ourselves inside Death, so does Death thrust into us.” She paused, eyes alight, lips parted as if on the verge of ecstasy. “And then the release comes, tingling through us like a burning delight.”
“I’ve never heard Death described that way before.”
She glanced at him as if she hadn’t quite understood him. “Pardon?”
“Death,” he added, “as a lover.”
Her only reply was a sad smile.
Pitch tossed another branch onto the flames and watched the sparks twirl upward through the dark filigree of alder branches. Snow frosted the tops of the limbs, but the bottoms remained as black as night, creating a stunning interplay of light and dark set against a background of scudding starlit clouds.
“Broken Sun must have been waiting for me to leave the cave,” Dzoo said.
“That’s when he took Sweet Grass?”
“Yes. He Traded her for these.” She reached inside her cape, took a small leather bag from her belt pouch, and tossed it across the fire to him.
He hefted the bag, finding it heavy and decorated with beautifully painted red paw prints.
“Open it.”
Pitch set his teacup aside, and poured the contents out.
Two tens or more obsidian fetishes glittered on his palm, and his skin began to crawl. Magnificent things: coiled serpents, bears, howling wolves, eagles with spread wings, and several images he couldn’t discern in the dim light. The longer he looked at them, the more he felt it. Strange Power filled the fetishes, as though the master flint knapper had breathed part of his Spirit into the objects.
But there was something else—a voice, frail, childlike, but there. Pitch held them for as long as he could, studying them; then he shoved the fetishes back in the bag and set it on one of the hearth stones.
“Hallowed Spirits.” He shivered. “Who made these, Dzoo?”
A cold smile touched her lips. “He’s Powerful, isn’t he?”
Pitch wiped his hands on his cape, but he could still feel the man’s presence, a fetid prickle, like hungry maggots crawling around his bones. “Who is he?”
“Coyote, I assume, but I’m not certain.”
Pitch washed his hands in the freshly fallen snow. “Where did you find them?”
“Broken Sun offered them to me.”
In a heartbeat he saw the entire thing on the fabric of his soul. Broken Sun must have known the instant Dzoo found him that she had seen everything.
“Where did he get them?”
“That was the bargain. Coyote gave them to Broken Sun in exchange for me.”
Pitch flinched. “Dzoo? What did you do with … I mean, Antler Spoon searched …” He made a face. “The warriors backtracked you through the snow. They found blood, but no body. No other tracks but yours.”
The wind shifted, and snow plummeted out of the sky, creating a thick white veil between them. The fire sizzled and popped.
Dzoo answered, “He would not have been welcome at the Underwater House. I just spared his ancestors the trouble of telling him so.”
He squeezed his eyes closed. If a person’s body was not properly cared for, the soul became a homeless ghost, wandering the earth forever, trying in vain to speak with people, watching loved ones die. Most homeless ghosts went mad and took out their vengeance on the very people they loved most.
“What he did was wrong, Dzoo, very wrong, but he thought he was saving his village. I wish you had—”
“A man who will sell a sick woman’s life for a handful of trinkets is capable of anything. I couldn’t let him go.”
It sounded like something Pearl Oyster would have said:
Who will he sell next? Hmm? You? Me? His own daughter?
Pitch asked, “What does Coyote want with you?”
“Possession.”
“Possession? Of what?”
“My body. One of us will devour the other. We will embrace each other, and one of us will suck the other dry.” Dzoo stood, and her black buffalo cape billowed in the gale. “Why don’t you try to sleep? I’ll take the first watch.”
Pitch finished his fir needle tea and placed the cup beside the tripod. “I think you should sleep first. In two days, you are supposed to lead the Moon Ceremonial at War Gods Village. You will need …”
Dzoo turned suddenly, eyes searching the storm.
He followed her gaze to the trees five tens of paces away. “What is it?”
The reflection of the firelit snow wavered over Dzoo’s beautiful face. She said nothing, staring in knowing silence.
An elusive wink of light flashed in the alders.
Pitch grabbed the fetish bag, stuffed it into his pack, and gathered his things.
“Back away. Slowly,” Dzoo said. “When you’re two tens of paces up the trail, turn and run. I’ll be right behind you.”
“But it might just be a messenger from Antler Spoon, or Rain Bear. Perhaps we should—”
She turned.
“Go. Now!”
E
vening Star picked her way carefully down the path, placing each foot so that she didn’t slip and fall among the exposed roots and rocks that clogged the trail leading to the beach. She glanced back to see her two young guards following carefully, half of their glances for her, half for the surrounding forest, and a couple stolen for themselves, as if to express their unease at escorting a matron of the North Wind People.
Evening Star stepped out from the lowest trees that masked the beach and strode forward. She wore a bulky bark hat, a rain-slick grass cape, and a snug badgerhide dress that one of the women had supplied her. It was really quite cleverly made, strips of badgerhide having been twisted and then woven together to create a warm but light garment.
Through the gray drizzle, she could see Rain Bear bent over the gunwale of his canoe, placing long slender poles into the craft. As she walked closer she made out the painted red grizzly bear that decorated the canoe’s side; the head had been carved into the bow, where the eyes could look out at the water. The clawed paws rose up, following the tall prow as if about to pounce on whatever lay beneath the waves.
Rain Bear caught movement from the corner of his eye and looked up. She saw surprise quickly replaced by curiosity, and then a sort of dread.
“Matron? Can I help you?”
She came to a stop beside him, looking out over the gray water. A pair of gulls wheeled and dove over the surf. “Are you going out?”
“I am.” He was eyeing her two guards, who had stopped several paces short of the canoe.
“May I accompany you?” She met his penetrating gaze as he tried to divine her motive. “Chief, I have been locked in that tiny lodge for too long. You said I could go where I wished.” She nodded at the boat. “I can think of no safer place than in a canoe with you. I certainly can’t spy out secrets, let alone communicate them to my bastard uncle.”
He shifted, his moccasin-shod feet sliding on the gravelly sand. “It’s a cold, gray day. This drizzle isn’t going to let up. It’s not likely to be pleasant.”
She knotted her fists, tilting her head to see him better from under the bark rain hat. “I want some time to be myself. I can’t do that while these guards follow at my heels. Nor can I find a moment’s relaxation when I am the center of everyone’s attention. Wherever I go, people stare, and I see fear in their eyes as they whisper behind their hands about me.” She pointed at the water. “No one will stare out there.”
He considered, his craggy expression betraying a deep-seated indecision.
“What?” she demanded. “Surely you’re not afraid of me.” She batted her sides with fists of frustration. “Search me if you like. I carry no hidden stilettos, no war clubs or spears. I give you my word, as matron of my clan, I won’t try to brain you with one of your paddles before fleeing to the far ends of the ocean.”
He gave the guards a wave of dismissal. “It’s all right. I’ll take the matron out. If she wants to suffer in cold misery, I do not object.”
The two youths nodded, gave her one last suspicious glance, and helped them push the heavy canoe into the waves.
Evening Star leaped in as the craft surged seaward with the receding surf only to buck as it met the approaching wave. She clambered to the bow and took up one of the pointed paddles, throwing herself into the task of driving through the breakers.
She grinned, let out a whoop. Her muscles corded and pulled as she took bite after bite with the paddle. It had been years since she—as the pampered daughter of Matron Naida—had been able to exert herself thus. As they cleared the last breaker, she found herself slightly winded, a warm tickle playing through her muscles.
Rain Bear’s canoe was made of split cedar planks. Caulked with pine pitch, it cut the waves straight and true, without listing to either side. She tilted her head, drawing the salty smell of the ocean into her lungs.
“Feeling better?” he called from behind.
“I am.”
“That was some war whoop you let loose.”
She turned, grinning, then glanced at the long poles on the canoe floor. “Where are we headed? Fishing? Are those spears?”
He chuckled. “I suppose you could say it’s fishing of a sort.”
“Do you always go out alone?” She cast a glance over her shoulder in time to catch the irony in his expression.
“Actually, I’ve been spending every waking moment building this alliance between the clans. It looked like a lull, so I thought I would get away before the next runner comes in to report Ecan’s whereabouts.” A pause. “I needed time to think without interruptions.”
“And then I came along.” She considered that, knowing full well what time alone could be worth to a leader. “Perhaps, Chief, I could help you think. And if not that, I would be willing to listen.”
“Listen?”
She watched the gulls as they glided past, craning necks to see if the long canoe offered any chance of food. “Sometimes Mother just needed me to listen. She would talk, rehash the problems she faced, while I just sat there weaving or twisting cordage. Sometimes I would ask a question and send her thoughts in a different direction. She used to tell me it helped.”
“It probably did.”
“I miss my mother. I miss the life that was taken from me. All of the lives.”
They paddled in silence then. She perched herself in the bow, easing into the rhythm of stroking with the paddle. She found solace in the constant motion of the sea, in the rise and fall of the murky brown swells and the soft whispers of water splashing off the bow.
“I fear that we are never going to live like we did,” he finally said. “Something has gone sour in our world. The council has given up wisdom for terror. The Four Old Women are afraid, and in their fear, they lash out. Now, in order to save ourselves, we must plunge our world into chaos.”
“Fear?” she asked.
“That’s what Dzoo told me. And after dwelling on it for half a moon, I suspect that she’s right.”
“What do they have to fear? They live behind the palisaded protection of Fire Village, surrounded by the finest warriors that have ever lived.”
“It’s the future, Matron. It’s ‘what if’ that frightens them the most. They see the world they knew becoming something different. Of all our deep-seated fears, the fact that the future will be different frightens us the most.”
They continued for another half hand of time, Rain Bear steering them toward a gap between two small forested islands that rose above the surf. He shipped his paddle, standing in the stern to study first one shoreline and then the other.
“You fish here often?”
“Yes.” He squinted at the rocks. “This looks pretty close. We’ll know when we put the poles in the water.” He glanced at her. “Would you like to help?”
She shipped her paddle and carefully picked her way to the center. Rain Bear raised what looked like a flexible three-pronged harpoon from the floor. He handed it to her while he pulled out one of the long poles.
The odd harpoon was like nothing she had ever seen before. Its prongs were blunt, and it had an unreasonable amount of spring to it.
“You’ll never get this to stick into any fish.”
“Here, watch this.” He shifted closer, took the harpoon, and fixed it onto the end of the long pole. “You are about to see something I don’t think any North Wind person has ever seen.”
His strong brown hands pulled a cord tight, binding the pronged head to the long pole. Next he picked up a round stone about the size of her two clenched fists and tied it a hand’s length above the binding. This done, he slipped the harpoon over the side and let it sink until only a forearm’s length of pole extended. “Very carefully, without tipping us over, pull out another of the poles.”
She worked a second of the narrow poles free and maneuvered it around.
“Can you lift it upright?” he asked. “This is the tricky part.”
Tricky indeed. She managed to raise the pole, holding it against the slight breeze. “You wouldn’t want to do this when the wind was blowing.”
“No, you wouldn’t. In fact, you can’t.” He grinned in a boyish way. “The stone acts as a weight to carry the entire length to the bottom. Without it, the wood buckles and floats to the surface.” He maneuvered the end of her pole into a hollow carved atop the first and fitted them together. This, too, he tightly bound, adding, “The
lengths have to be tied together. If it comes apart, you still need to be able to retrieve all the pieces.”
“I see.” She reached for yet another of the endless lengths of pole. “How deep are we fishing?”
“You’ll see.”
“Are there crabs or clams that live so deep?”
“Oh, yes. We sink our traps very far down and catch crabs. As to clams, we haven’t figured out how to dredge for them at these depths.” He stared at the murky water. “If we could, it might alleviate some of the hunger in the camps.”
One by one she helped him tie the lengths of pole together and watched them vanish over the side. Water slapped at the hull, and the gentle drizzle fell from the sky.
Finally, as he was lowering the long contraption, she saw it stop, the shaft quivering. He looked up at her, one eyebrow cocked inquisitively. “There we go. Bottom. And perfect for our purposes.”
“How do you know?”
“By the feel through the wood. It’s sandy, soft. If it were rock, we wouldn’t find what we’re looking for.”
“And just what is that, Chief?”
“Well, let’s see. You ready?”
She glanced around, taking in the five bald eagles that perched on a dead fir tree on the island across from them. “Sure. Ready for what?”
He smiled at the tone in her voice and began pulling the pole from the depths. One by one, he laboriously untied each pole as he drew it from the water, and Evening Star maneuvered the unwieldy length back into the canoe without capsizing them. Finally, Rain Bear lifted the pronged head with its stone from the murky depths.
“And there it is. Two of them in fact.” He shot her a dazzling grin. “You’re good luck, Matron.”
She bent down, aware of his warmth as she knelt by his shoulder. Two white slivers were caught between the prongs. Rain Bear wiggled the first loose and handed it to her.
She took the thin white shell in her hand, immediately recognizing it. “Dentalium.”
“Dentalium,” he agreed, and stared at the murky water. “The only place they come from is down there. If you lay the poles out on the beach, it’s about the same distance that a strong man can throw an egg-sized rock. They live that deep.”
She sat back on her haunches as the canoe rocked and studied the delicate shell in her fingers. “That’s how you’ve done it. That’s how
you’ve survived this long. You’ve used dentalium to buy food and tribute for Sandy Point Village.”
He nodded as he withdrew the second denticulate white shell and placed it in a pouch at his belt. “In the past we’d get lucky and find a dentalium shell lodged in a deep water crab pot or fish trap. They wash ashore so very rarely, and even then they’re usually broken.”
She nodded. Of all the wealth, dentalium shells were the most sought after. The ten that ringed the collar on her good dress had been part of her bride price. Toget had offered them on the night of their marriage, fully aware of the fact he was marrying into the Ash Fall Clan, the most prestigious of the North Wind clans. His clan had scraped and sacrificed to be able to accumulate that wealth.
Her vision blurred as she thought back to that night, to the world that was no longer hers.
“So, now you know,” Rain Bear said as he began fitting the poles back together.
She shook herself to clear her head, and lifted the next of the poles up and into place for him to bind. “Why me?”
“Excuse me?”
“Why do you show this to me?”
He sighed. “I’m not sure, really. Perhaps it is because you have placed your trust in me.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Of course it does. How do you know I won’t turn you over to Ecan in return for something like dentalium?”

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