People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past) (4 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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With that, the old man pitched the stone out, over the cliff. In the purple light, it arced down, shattering into slivers as it struck the rock below.
T
he droplet formed on the damp rock. It hung in front of her eyes, clear and crystalline in the soft light. She tried to shrink back into the stony recess in which she hid. Angular shale gouged her back.
She froze, refusing even to breathe, when a warrior stepped out of the ferns and bracken opposite her. He wore a woven sea-grass cloak and had a conical rain hat on his head. His spears and atlatl were clutched in one callous hand. He knelt, keen eyes on the damp soil next to the small forest pool. He found her tracks immediately, stepping over to crouch and run the fingers of his free hand over delicate imprints. Like a wary panther, his eyes began to take in the damp ferns and thick grass surrounding the pool.
She dared not stare straight at him, willing her gaze to fix on the bent grass to his right. Each beat of her heart thundered like a pot drum. Gods, he could hear it, couldn’t he?
He rose on stealthy legs and inspected the bruised grass. Yes, that was it. Follow the sign. She had carefully lain a false trail, walking across the grass to a slope of bare stone beyond.
Soundlessly he slipped through the ferns and brushed back the fir branches to the rocky slope. She could just see his partially hidden form as he started along the slope, searching for signs of her passage.
She dared to take a shallow breath, her chest rising as cool air entered her burning body. How could she feel so hot when chilly water was seeping into her deerhide dress?
If she closed her eyes, horror played behind her eyelids, conjuring images of the last two moons. The wail of her dying daughter still echoed in her ears. She could see her husband’s face, streaked with blood and disbelief. The stench of burning lodges clung in her nostrils.
So much lost. How did a soul bear it? Or the humiliation of her captivity? Even now, so much later, she could feel the pain as, one after the other, Ecan, and then Kenada, pried her legs apart to drive themselves inside her. Her skin crawled with the memory.
Perhaps it is better to die.
Her fingers tightened in the gritty moss carpeting the hollow. Hot tears began to leak past her eyes, a painful knot forming under her tongue.
Her daughter’s high-pitched wail rose again in her ears.
But if you die, Cimmis and the Council will have won. They will continue to kill, enslave, and murder, until nothing fine and beautiful is left.
She swallowed hard. It would be so much easier to die.
Movement.
The warrior eased back through the trees, stepping softly, crouched, eyes alert. A hunter on silent feet, he slipped back to the place where her tracks could be seen. Then, patiently, carefully, he began to search the pool and the fern-covered shale wall behind it.
Evening Star’s heart began to race again.
The droplet of water rounded, elongated, and fell. A silver streak before her eyes, it spattered on the stone, a finger’s width from her cheek.
The warrior cocked his head, a foot lifted, as he listened to the forest. Then, with the faintest of grunts, he turned and eased back into the tangled vines before trotting off between the swaying fir trees.
 
 
W
ind Woman whistled down the mountain and batted at Cimmis’s long gray braid as he walked the starlit path through Fire Village. This place, Fire Village, was the home of his ancestors. It nestled high on the southwestern slope of Fire Mountain, the great volcano that dominated the land. From the cliff that lay just behind the village, a sweeping panorama of the surrounding country could be seen. On those heights, the Soul Keepers and Starwatchers could greet the morning sun and chart the track of the stars across the sky. The expanse of ocean to the west—dotted by thousands of islands—could be seen in the shimmering afternoon. Here his people lived among the clouds, forever blessed by moist ocean breezes ameliorated with the damp scents of the surrounding forests. The village itself was surrounded by a twenty-hand-tall palisade of cedar that wound around boulders and trees, creating a serpentine oval that protected not only the Council, but the four tens of bark lodges where the most powerful of the North Wind People lived.
Cimmis glanced over his shoulder at the three old women ducking out of the Council Lodge. They wore buffalohide robes over their shoulders. The fine brown hairs twinkled in the light of the Star People. Old Woman North hesitated and shot him a look of irritation. Of them all, she was the most recalcitrant and insidious. By force of will, she dominated the others and insisted that her senseless notions be adopted as policy.
Even as he walked away, the memory of her shrill voice grated on his ears:
They shall pay! Of course there’s food! There’s always food! They owe it to us.
No matter what insane orders the Council gave, he would enforce them. If Old Woman North was mad, so perhaps was he to follow her? He glanced down in the darkness to his strong right fist. Throughout the known world, people trembled and quailed at that fist. Gods, how had that come about?
Looking at it, he saw only muscle, bone, and sinew wrapped in age-leathered skin.
“You will regret this decision you have made tonight,” he grumbled to himself.
He cradled his weak left arm against his chest. He’d seen fifteen summers since the buffalo had charged him during the hunt. He’d tried to leap out of the way, but the big bull had slammed into his arm, flinging him four tens of hands before dashing away in a cloud of dust. The arm still worked; it was just weak and much smaller than his right.
The beaten path curved around the plaza fire and continued up the slope. Bark lodges created a perfect circle around him. Each was made from a large pole frame covered with bark; life-size paintings of the gods decorated the exteriors. The enormous white eyes of Buffalo Above flashed as he passed Old Woman North’s lodge.
“A pleasant evening to you, my Chief,” a young slave woman called.
“And to you,” Cimmis replied sourly.
Even at this time of night slaves scurried about, dressed in brown sea-grass capes, carrying food or firewood. Most just bowed as he
passed. Others felt obliged to speak. As he walked in front of the plaza fire, its light threw his monstrous shadow over the lava cliff behind the village; it danced like a leaping ghost.
He ignored it, his mind on the Council. If they kept making the sort of decisions they had made this night, that’s what they would all become: dark, lonely shadows. He could feel the truth knotting his belly.
His North Wind People had been here since the beginning of the world. Didn’t anyone remember the old stories? About the Creation? About Singing the World into existence? About the coming of Wolf and Coyote, Eagle, and Killer Whale? About Raven, the Trickster, and his dark-haired children?
He tugged his lynxhide cape closed and glowered.
“I remember the stories,” he whispered. “I remember them well.”
Around the winter fires, his grandmother had told many stories of the Beginning Time when their people first arrived here. Glaciers had covered most of the world. The people, guided by the North Wind, had paddled their canoes down the icy coastline, looking for a sanctuary, and found it on the islands off the coast. Everything they could have wanted was there—a paradise of fish, sea mammals, berries, tubers, algae, and kelp. In the springtime, the islands had been rich with tender shoots and greens. In summer and fall, the raspberries, blueberries, cranberries, and others had filled the baskets.
Generations passed in peace and plenty, and the people split, becoming Cougar People, Buffalo People, and Elderberry People who moved off in different directions. Finally the Raven People had appeared in the north, wearing their black hair in buns, reddish brown of skin, with round heads and high-cheeked faces. Few in numbers, they drifted down the coast. They’d been timid, awed by the North Wind People.
At first, the North Wind People gladly shared their fishing and gathering grounds. There was plenty for everyone. But the elders hadn’t realized that the Raven People bred like meadow vales. Within a few cycles, they had begun moving east, south, and north. The Buffalo People retreated farther eastward to the grassy plains; the Elderberry People headed south along the shore. The Cougar People had retreated into the rugged mountains, crossing the passes and heading inland. Others had made their homes on distant islands to the north.
With the burgeoning population, it didn’t take long for the resources to run short. The Raven People no longer wished to share. Fights broke out. Many died.
The North Wind elders decided to move their villages inland to Fire Mountain. A strange choice for a maritime people, since the terrain was steep and uneven and there weren’t many resources, but they’d been trying to get away from the greedy Raven People. Every summer for tens of tens of tens of cycles, the North Wind People had moved higher and higher up the slopes. Ever closer to their ancestors, the Star People.
The Raven People sought them out. It was little wonder. The North Wind People had been in this world longer; they knew the best places to gather berries, tubers, nuts. They knew the best fishing coves and where to find elk and buffalo, even in the worst winters. And most importantly, they knew the Healing plants.
Seven tens of cycles ago, when Cimmis’s mother had led the Council, she’d started to demand payment for such valuable knowledge. They’d exhausted their own mountain resources and needed supplies. She’d told the Raven People they could come to the North Wind villages twice a cycle, on the solstices, and ask anything they wished, but they had to bring “tribute” or they would not be allowed to return.
His mother had never dreamed what a wealth of food, exotic shells, furs, and other precious things would pour in—including slaves. When the Raven People could not afford to send food or other valuables, they sent some of their children. Many Raven People served here as cooks, wood carriers, basketmakers, weavers, and warriors. Lately, others had been captured in raids and brought back as additional slaves.
“May the gods curse you, Mother. You made a terrible mistake. We are at war because of tribute.”
After seven tens of cycles, tribute had freed the North Wind People from the drudgery of finding food every day and had allowed them to pursue grander things. Nearly every elder here was an accomplished Dreamer, Healer, painter, carver, or weaver. They could cure many diseases, and when they couldn’t, their Dreamers could fly to the House of Air where the ancestors lived and seek the advice of ancient holy people who’d been dead for cycles.
As Cimmis walked around a massive lava boulder, he glimpsed old Red Dog talking to the guards at the western entry—a gap in the circle of lodges—and Cimmis continued up the trail. The runner could find him sitting before his fire just as easily as standing out here in the cold night wind.
When he neared his lodge flap, he heard his only surviving daughter, Kstawl, say, “Oh, Mother, please try to eat.”
Cimmis took a deep and despairing breath before he lifted the lodge flap and stepped into the soft yellow glow.
The lodge measured four paces across. The interior wood had been smoked to a deep brown, and the dark walls provided a stunning background for the white buffalohide shields that hung from the lodgepoles. Each had served him in battle over the years, but they still looked new. He constantly repainted the images of the gods who had blessed his weapons: Wolf, Cougar, and Bear had given him strength for the land battles he’d fought; but out on the ocean, he’d relied upon Killer Whale, Dolphin, and Sea Lion. Their painted eyes seemed to follow him as he removed his lynxhide cape and hung it on a peg beside the door.
His wife, Astcat, the great matron of the North Wind People, leaned against a pile of hides to his right. Kstawl had dressed her in a bright yellow wrap. Ascat’s jaw gaped, and her beautiful green-brown eyes jerked from place to place. Gray hair framed her long, narrow face. He thought he saw the slightest flicker of a smile on her lips when she looked at him.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Not well, Father.” Kstawl had seen three and ten summers. Her whiplike body was still a girl’s, with only the first hint of womanhood beginning to bud on her chest. She wore her long red hair in a bun coiled over her right ear and fastened with a beautifully carved buffalo-bone pin. “The Matron hasn’t eaten since this morning when you left for the Council meeting.”

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