Children of the Dawn (10 page)

Tsilka dug through her tribe like a mole through soft ground, coming up here and there in places secret from Shahala ears,
talking to one or several. She scattered her thistle seeds as questions, knowing it would take time for them to grow.

“Why must we share our home and our food just because Tor—who used to be our slave—speaks words about some Creator’s Plan?”
she asked. “Why are we being so generous? What do we get from it?”

“It’s not so bad,” they said. “We have enough to share.”

“These Shahala think they are better than us,” she said. “Doesn’t that insult you? What’s wrong with our ways, our language,
our gods? Where is our Tlikit pride?”

“We still know our gods. What does it hurt to hear about theirs?”

“You’re afraid of them,” she taunted.

They grumbled, and said they were not afraid, but it was obvious that they were. And why shouldn’t they be? Of the Moonkeeper,
and whatever magic she might have. Of Tor—who might be the god Wahawkin. Of the number of intruders who had claimed their
home—there were nearly two Shahala for each Tlikit.

Tsilka said, “I’m not saying we should raise weapons against the intruders—at least not yet. I’m saying we should stand up
for ourselves like men and women, and not lie down like slaves.”

Tsilka found little support. Most people didn’t mind—and some enjoyed—having the Shahala here. Even Tsilka had to admit that
it was good to have so many children of new blood.

A few agreed with her. Two men, Tlok and Chalan, seemed to hate the Shahala almost as much as she did. She asked them to meet
her away from the village.

“This is our home,” Tsilka said. “Life was good before these strangers came. What do we need them for?”

Chalan said, “They are noisy. They fill the place up. You can’t even walk without stumbling over one of them.”

Tlok said, “They eat our food.”

“They think we are stupid and dirty.”

“They insult us. They think they’re better than we are.”

“We must rid ourselves of them,” Tsilka said.

Chalan said, “Have you forgotten how many there are?”

Tlok said, “How would you get rid of them, woman? We can’t throw rocks and see them run like a herd of animals.”

“I know. We’ll have to be more clever than that. I think we must work on our own people first. The three of us will find times
to talk to them alone. We’ll show them that this isn’t right. The Tlikit are a proud people, and there’s nothing wrong with
the way we are. We don’t need new gods, new laws, new
chiefs.”

They agreed.

“Now go convince our people,” Tsilka said.

W
INTER
…
IN SPITE OF
T
OR’S HOPE, IT CAME
. T
HE SUN
deserted Teahra Village. The clouded sky varied from gray to grayer. The nights were moonless, starless black. Wind whipped
the rivertop to froth, and slanted the rain, which never stopped.

Drip. Drip.

Splash. Ashan awoke with wet hair stuck to her face. One corner of their rough shelter had come loose. She shook Tor awake.
He put on his leathers, and tied the flapping hide up again.

“On, no!” she said. “My medicine pouch!” She picked it up. Water dripped from the fringe. She looked inside.

“My herbs are all wet! They’ll get moldy, and make people sick instead of well. What am I going to do? If I had a hut, I’d
just hang them up by the fire.”

She couldn’t help sounding like a little girl with a broken doll.

“I’m sorry, love,” her mate said. “I’ll make you a fire, and you can heat rocks to dry your herbs on.”

“You’re sweet, Tor.”

He headed off to get coals.

As she always did when she had that lost little girl feeling, Ashan thought of Kai El and wished she could hug him. But Shahala
little ones had been sleeping in the Tlikit cave since
winter got serious. And besides, she was the Moonkeeper, not a little girl.

Hunched under the stretched hide with water dripping from its edges, she separated wet clumps of herbs.
Winter in Teahra,
she thought,
is as different from winter in Anutash as a cougar is from a rabbit.
She remembered gently falling snow, slowly piling up; bright days, starry nights. Rain, certainly, but it came and then it
went, and people saw blue sky for a while before it returned. Cold, yes, but not like this. In this wet cold, it hardly mattered
what people wore. They froze anyway, unless they stayed by a fire.

At least there was plenty of wood here. From branches to whole trees, it washed up where the land jutted into the water. The
Shahala had never had wood just
come
to them like this.

“What a wonderful gift from the River Spirit who already gives so much,” some said.

Others said, “It’s a good thing the river brings us wood, since this barren place doesn’t grow any trees.”

That wasn’t quite true. Trees grew here and there along the Great River and up on the plateau—junipers, spruces, others the
Shahala had never seen—but compared to the lofty giants of their homeland, these were hardly worth mentioning.

“That big oak,” Ashan once heard a man say of the single large tree in Teahra Village, “would make many huts.”

“Leave it alone,” she’d said.’ ’How can you think of killing something that has lived so long? Even the Tlikit, whom some
of you consider savages, have saved that tree.”

Though a village fire was tended day and night by the women who lived under the oak, the Shahala used riverwood to keep a
fire of their own blazing against an overhanging cliff where they liked to gather.

They saved the best pieces of riverwood for huts. On days like today, when it drizzled instead of poured, they worked on them—one
for each family.

A family included a warrior, his mate, and their little ones. Girls moved out when they grew up. Boys brought mates home,
and added little ones. If a hut became too crowded, a young man might have to make one of his own. Eventually, parents moved
to the old people’s hut. With repairs by each generation, Shahala huts lasted forever.

Tor returned to their crude shelter against the cliff wall. He carried two flat stones in his leather-wrapped hands.

“Here,” he said, dropping them.

Ashan spread her herbs on the hot stones. She set a loose-woven basket upside down over them, to keep the heat in while letting
the water out as fog. Tor made a fire with coals from his clamshell carrier. She placed stones around it, to take the place
of the ones he had brought when they cooled. They chatted in the easy way of mates.

“This will take all day,” she said. “But I have to save these medicines. We may never see some of these plants again.”

“Spring will surprise you,” Tor said. “I think you’ll find more than you expect.”

From a goat bladder, Ashan poured water into a bowl-shaped basket given to her by a Tlikit woman named Skacha.

“I’m so impressed with these baskets that don’t leak,” she said. “I think this one is made of spruce roots and nettles.”

She added dried, ground fish, mashed juniper berries, and small hot rocks, and kept it moving with a stirring stick, changing
the rocks several times until the mush was hot.

“This is different,” Tor said as he ate. “I like it.”

She said, “I thought juniper berries might help the taste. Fish, fish, fish. I think I’m turning into one.”

“It’s not just
fishy
Ashan. It’s
salmon,
and I could never tire of it.”

When they finished, Tor said, “It’s nice by this fire, but there’s a lot of dirt between me and our hut.”

He removed his shirt and leggings. She looked at him, wearing only loinskin and moccasins.

“It’s cold today. Aren’t you wearing anything but that?”

“There’s no reason to get my leathers soaked. It takes forever to dry anything. Besides, digging keeps me warm.”

“I think you’re turning into a Tlikit,” she said. They laughed, and Tor headed off to work.

As she tended the fire and dried her herbs, Ashan watched her man. The woman of twenty-two summers loved looking at him as
much as the girl of fifteen summers had. Muscles bulging, working together or against each other; straining face; rain-sleek
skin and hair. What a perfect thing, the body
of a man and the way it moved—as he broke the hard ground with a stick, gouged, scooped, piled, tamped. Other men did the
same work, but Tor was the only one worth watching.

The Shahala were making their huts on the flat middle ground of Teahra Village, with the Moonkeeper’s hut in the center.

Knowing Tor, their hut would be the largest and finest. For days he’d been working on the floor—a flat-bottomed, straight-sided
hole; knee deep; round in shape; wide as three men. He piled the dirt around the outside. When the floor was finished, he
would bury pieces of wood in the earth wall, and weave them with others to form sides and a roof with a round shape. Then
he’d stretch hides over the frame—the same hides that had covered their hut in Anutash—leaving an opening for smoke in the
top and a door in the side.

Ashan closed her eyes, imagined what it would be like inside, and sighed… dry, warm, and private… wonderful.

When Tor came for midday food, Ashan patted his wet hair and cold, red skin with fur, wrapped him in a bearskin, gave him
hot stew, and rubbed the muscles in his shoulders as he ate.

“Look at that hut,” she said, though it was nothing yet but a half-dug hole with a pile of wood pieces next to it. “Good floor—smooth,
flat, easy to sweep. Deep hole, high sides—it’ll be warm and dry—better in every way than sleeping under the sky. And Kai
El will sleep with us instead of in the Tlikit cave, and we’ll have dry leathers, and—” She sighed. “Oh, Tor, it will be wonderful.”

“Mmmm,” he said, savoring the food, the shoulder rub, the praise. Ashan knew the value of appreciation to someone working
so hard.

“Have you decided where to put our sleeping shelf?” she asked in a voice that suggested what—besides sleeping—happened there.

“Anywhere you want, my love. I’m doing this all for you. I do everything for you.”

T
HE WORD “;SISTER” HAD SEVERAL MEANINGS.
A Shahala woman called all the women in the tribe “sisters.” There were blood sisters, who had the same mother; time sisters,
born of different mothers during the same summer. And spirit sisters, closest friends from one lifetime to the next, like
soulmates were lovers over and over.

Ashan—lucky enough to have a spirit sister—valued the seasoned relationship with Mani that was like no other. Also time sisters,
born twenty-two summers ago, Ashan and Mani had discovered their
spirit
relationship as little girls. Tor was the best friend that a man could be, but Mani was a woman, and there were some things
that could only be spoken of between women.

Mani and her mate, Lar, had two little ones: Tahm, a boy Kai El’s age; and Yayla, a baby girl. A good woman with a strong
sense of right and wrong, and a healthy fear of the spirits, she was not afraid to speak freely to Ashan, as most people were.
Moonkeeper or not, Mani knew Ashan would never harm her.

On a mild winter morning soon after the Moonkeeper’s hut was finished, Mani came to visit. Her long black hair, pulled back
and tied, was damp from river washing. Her open, friendly face had a shiny, scrubbed look. She wore bison fur around her shoulders,
a loose dress of two doeskins, and low elkhide moccasins.

The baby Yayla, snug in the cradleboard carried by her mother, moved only her curious eyes.

“Let’s sit outside,” Mani said. “The sunshine is good for the little one.” She propped the cradleboard against the hut wall,
turning it so the arched hood shaded Yayla’s eyes.

The women talked about how this was as good a winter as either tribe could remember… lots of food, not much work, new things
to be learned. Even the weather hadn’t been bad, except for some rainy times.

Ashan said, “I’m surprised by how well this has gone. It helps that the Tlikit have no chief to stand in my way.”

“Well, there’s one who’d
like
to be their chief, but they call her names when she’s not there… like Thinks She’s a Man.”

“And Ram with no Horns.”

They laughed at Tsilka, and made up a few names of their own. Ashan didn’t like her, without knowing why.

She said, “I haven’t had to do much in the way of being chief. People are getting along on their own. I know they disagree
on many things, but each tribe seems content to let the other behave as it wishes. So far, wishes have not collided.”

“This is like living with a mate at the beginning, when everything seems wonderful just because it’s new. Wait till they learn
to talk to each other.”

Ashan looked at her friend. “Do you think time will change tolerance into a struggle for power?”

Mani answered slowly: “You must make sure they know that to struggle with a Moonkeeper is to die.”

Ashan thought about that… Shahala people were born knowing it. They were also born knowing they would be led by
women.

“Tlikit chiefs have always been men. I’m going to have a problem with that. They believe women are
less.
Even the women believe it.”

Mani made a sound of disgust. “You may need to kill a man or two to prove them wrong.”

“Only if everything else fails.”

Ashan, like Raga before her, had managed to lead without
having to kill. She hoped she’d never have to, but if the good of the tribe required it, she wouldn’t hesitate.

After a pause, Mani said, “You know what’s going to be your biggest problem, Ashan? Those four women who live under the oak
tree.”

“The Forest Women bother me too.”

“Forest Women,” Mani said. “That may be what Tor calls them, but they are slaves, and they bother everyone of Shahala blood.”

Ashan’s deep sigh blew strands of hair off her forehead.

“Women afraid to say ’no.’ Others who want to keep it that way. I don’t understand it, Mani.”

After they’d been in Teahra Village for a few days, Ashan had questioned Tor.