Children of the Dawn (12 page)

Now, with Tsilka’s help, Euda and Yak had turned their sourness against the intruders instead of each other. Today they were
making a plan to ruin belief in Ashan’s power to heal.

Tsilka said, “You’ll pretend to be
very
sick… maybe something in the belly… something with lots of howling, so everyone will know. One will go to the Shalala Moonkeeper
to be cured. The other will refuse.”

The fat sisters looked baffled. They were not the smartest women in the tribe.

Tsilka continued. “The one who goes to the Moonkeeper will pretend to get
sicker.
The other will pretend to get
better,
without any help from the Shahala medicine woman.”

The sisters looked at each other, smiling as they understood.

Euda sneered, “I want to be the one to go to her. I want to be there when she sees that her medicine isn’t working.”

“Fine,” Yak said. “I will be the one who is smart enough to refuse.”

Tsilka smiled. She couldn’t help thinking how smart she was to have these two agreeing with each other.

“You will come to
me
for help, Yak. I will be the one who makes you well. Our people will see that Tlikit ways are good enough for Tlikit people.”

“But Tsilka, you don’t know anything about medicine.”

“What does that matter? You won’t really be sick.”

Awakening, Ashan touched the empty place next to her, and remembered that Tor had gone hunting. Kai El and Tenka still slept
in the gray light of early morning. Ashan knelt by the fire ring and struck her sparkstones. As she blew into a glowing wad
of dry grass, she heard scratching on the doorskin.

“Moonkeeper?” Elia said.

“Shh… I’ll come out.”

She blew again and the smoldering grass flamed. She used a stick to poke it under the waiting kindling, then stepped out into
a drizzle.

Elia looked worried. “Mother very sick. And mother sister. They cry. Moonkeeper fix?”

The Tlikit tribe had no medicine woman. Over time, they had stumbled over a few helpful plants, but they possessed nothing
close to Shahala knowledge, taught to First Woman by plants themselves, handed down from Moonkeeper to Moonkeeper since the
Misty Time. Tor had told Ashan that the Tlikit seldom got sick; if they did, they either got better by good luck, or died.
As she followed the boy, Ashan thought this would be a good chance to show the Tlikit people the value of a chief who was
also a medicine woman. That is, unless the sickness was something over which she had no control. No shaman could heal every
person who came to her. The Shahala understood this. Would the Tlikit?

Let it be something easy,
she prayed, but loud groans as she approached told her to expect the worst.

Entering the cave, Elia said in Tlikit, “I brought the Moonkeeper. She knows everything. She will fix what is wrong.”

Stepping into darkness, Ashan wrinkled her nose, then told herself to ignore the stale, unpleasant smell. An oil lamp
glowed in the depths of the cave. A knot of Tlikit people parted to let her through. She saw two moaning women, side by side,
doubled up, writhing under sleeping skins. Tsilka was kneeling at one side. Ashan knelt at the other.

Euda grabbed her hand.

“We’re sick!” she cried.

“We’re dying!” cried the other, whose name Ashan didn’t know.

“Easy,” she said in their language. “Let me look at you.”

The Moonkeeper felt their tear-streaked faces: sweaty and warm with excitement, but not hot with fever. She pushed the sleeping
skins down.

They should eat less,
she thought.
All this fat isn’t good. It’s like carrying a heavy pack around all the time.

The weeping women clutched their bellies. Prying Euda’s fingers loose, Ashan pressed on her belly, feeling for hardness, but
couldn’t feel anything through all that flesh. She thumped with her fingertips. The sound was solid, not hollow as it would
be if the woman were filled with stinking air.

Euda howled and pushed her hand away.

Ashan thought it odd that the same thing happened at the same time to sisters. They must have eaten something harmful. If
so, she would have them eat ashes to soak up the poison.

“Did you eat something different?” she asked.

“No,” Euda moaned.

“Think,” Ashan said. “You were out gathering yesterday. Maybe you found something new and tasted it?”

“No,” the other one said. “We did not.”

“Did you eat food that was spoiled?”

“Do you think we are stupid?”

“Of course not… what is your name?”

“Yak,” the woman said, then scrunched her face, let out a long, painful “ooowww,” doubled up tight, and rolled onto her side.

Maybe they were bound up inside from eating too much meat and not enough plants. For that she would give cascara bark she
had brought from the homeland.

“Do you make waste every day?”

“Yes,” they groaned.

“Are the wastes runny or strange-colored?”

“No,” Euda said.

“Who looks at their own waste?” Yak said.

“Do you feel like vomiting?”

“No. It’s pain I feel.” Euda howled. “Owwww… the pain!”

“Aiyeee!” Yak cried.

Ashan thought of little worms that could get in the belly, but they usually took their time to make a person sick, and these
two had been fine yesterday. Kia leaf, the poison to kill worms, was strong. She didn’t want to chance making them sicker
than they already were.

Ashan didn’t need to look at the people around her to feel their fear—not so much for the sick women, but for themselves,
that it might happen to them.

She wished she knew what was causing the pain, so she’d know exactly how to treat it. Sweet spear was the only thing she could
think of to use. At least it was safe. Tenka had found a patch in a tree-sheltered place up the river, dug some roots and
brought them home. If only Ashan could be sure that it really
was
sweet spear.

Sweet spear and blue spear—named for the shape of then-leaves—both had healing power in finger-thick roots that ran just beneath
the ground. They liked damp, shady places, and sometimes grew together. Sweet spear made stems with fleshy thumbs on the end
instead of flowers. Its roots were good for stomach pains. Blue spear had beautiful, large three-part flowers. The ground-up
root was used as a poultice for wounds, but must never be eaten, for it was poisonous.

Because the plants could easily be mistaken, they were only gathered in the spring when the blue was in flower. It was autumn
now, but…

“Rest,” the Moonkeeper said to the groaning women. “Try to be calm. I’ll bring medicine to ease your pain.”

In the Moonkeeper’s hut, Ashan questioned Tenka about the roots.

“The leaves were withered,” Tenka said. “It’s lucky I even saw them. Maybe it was their voice I heard.”

“Did the leaves smell tart, like sorrel?”

“Umm, I think so.”

Ashan scraped a root with her thumbnail and smelled. She tasted. She couldn’t be certain.

Tenka said, “It was very wet there, more than blue spear likes. I’m sure it’s sweet spear.”

Euda ate the ground-up roots.

But Yak refused.

“Shahala medicine is for Shahala people,” she said loudly. “Tsilka will cure me with Tlikit medicine.”

As the cave full of people watched, Tsilka gave something to Yak. She swallowed it before Ashan saw what it was.

Soon Euda was howling, then screaming.

But Yak was better.

“Look, people,” she said, getting up. “Tsilka’s medicine has cured me. My foolish sister should have listened.”

“Aiyee! Aiyeee!” Euda cried, rolling from side to side, clutching her gut. “Somebody help me!”

Ashan tried to comfort her, to no avail.

“She’s dying!” people said. “The Moonkeeper has killed her!”

Ashan turned to them. “Trust me. Euda is not dying. She needs another medicine, that’s all.”

“Show me where you dug the roots, Tenka,” she said, and they hurried off.

The autumn-yellow spears lay withered on the ground. Ashan crushed one in her fingers, and her heart sank. It smelled bland,
like grass—even dead, a sweet spear leaf should have a faint tart smell.

“We’ve made a mistake, Tenka. It’s blue spear. I gave her blue spear.”

“Oh, no. Will she die?”

“Maybe not. If we hurry.”

The Moonkeepers ran all the way.

After the Moonkeeper left the cave, Yak went around telling people how good she felt from Tsilka’s medicine.

Tsilka whispered to Euda, who was still crying loudly.

“How convincing. You sound like you’re dying.”

“Ohhh,” Euda moaned. “I
am
dying. Ohhh… ”

“You don’t have to pretend for me.”

“I’m not pretending. I’m
dying,
I tell you. She gave me
poison. She knew our plan, and she poisoned me. Ohhh… I should never have listened to you.”

Tsilka actually saw Euda’s gut tighten in a cramp. The woman wrapped her arms around herself, weeping from the pain.

What was happening?

Tsilka’s plan had fallen apart, but she liked where the pieces were landing. If Euda died—and Tsilka thought she just might—no
one would ever trust Ashan’s medicine again. If they didn’t trust her medicine, they would not trust
her.

One step closer,
Tsilka thought,
to pushing my enemy out of power, to taking her place as chief of this village.

Ashan brought a bowl of wood ashes to the sick woman, but she screamed in pain and fear.

“You poisoned me! You poisoned me!” she cried, refusing to eat any.

Ignoring the people around her, Ashan—who was truly afraid for Euda’s life—chanted a song about courage in the face of evil,
shaking an old turtle-shell rattle. She called on pain-soothing spirits. Euda began to calm, then slipped into Ashan’s control.
She ate some ashes, and in a while she felt a little better.

Ashan stayed until Euda was well. It took three days.

Only she and Tenka knew about the mistake. Tenka would not forgive herself. Ashan told her over and over that everyone—even
a Moonkeeper—makes mistakes.

“In this whole world, Rising Star, only Amotkan is perfect.”

Tsilka’s plot had mixed results. Euda called her an evil witch, blaming her for all her pain, for almost dying, even though
she herself had thought it a fine idea at the beginning. Euda believed in the Moonkeeper now, partly from fear of what she
could do to someone who plotted against her. But there was more to it than just fear. She also believed the Moonkeeper had
saved her life. Ashan had somehow won her over in the three days she sat by her side. Tsilka had lost a weapon.

But others announced they wouldn’t let the Shahala Moonkeeper touch them, no matter how sick they might get. Tlikit
medicine was good enough for Tlikit people, as Yak’s experience proved.

Had the enemy really known what they were up to? Had Ashan poisoned Euda? Tsilka didn’t know. She felt a small, cold knife
of fear in her heart. She blunted it by turning her mind to what she could do next.

“There’s something strange about what happened, Tor. I wish you had been here,” Ashan told her mate.

“What’s so strange about you curing a sick person?”

“Euda almost died before I cured her. But I did nothing to help Yak, who seemed just as sick at first. She said she didn’t
want Shahala medicine. Tsilka gave her something, and she got well long before Euda did.”

“Maybe Tsilka gave her the same thing.”

“No. I don’t know what it was, but it was not wood ashes. I just don’t see how it’s possible, Tor… unless Yak was never sick
in the first place.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think they were pretending.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know, but I think Tsilka had something to do with it,” Ashan told him.

T
HE
M
OONKEEPER SMILED:
A
NOTHER COLD, SUNNY
day. It was good in the middle of winter for people to see blue sky instead of gray.

She spoke in Tlikit, her second language.

“This should be the worst season. Instead, spirits give us one fine day after another, strung like beads on a time ball, so
many it’s becoming hard to think of them as rare. It’s a sign that spirits approve the joining of our tribes.”

Most of the faces around her were Tlikit. Ashan doubted they knew what a time ball was. But they nodded agreeably. The winter
sun had them smiling, too. Warm in their furs, with the cliffs at their backs to keep the wind up high, they sucked in sharp
air, puffed out mist, and waited for her to say more.

Ashan’s ability to use both languages fascinated the people of Teahra, especially the Tlikit. She had no trouble getting listeners,
and gathered them often. There was so much they needed to learn.

She said, “But fine as it is right now, the Darkest Day is coming soon. It’s a dangerous time. We almost lose the Balance.”

“What do you mean?”

Knowing Tlikit words did not make communicating easy. Besides not knowing Shahala words, these people knew little of Shahala
ideas, especially those about what spirits wanted
from people. So she could say “the Balance,” and they might think of one rock sitting on another, not “
the Balance,”
as
That Upon Which All Life Depends.

“I have told you about the war between the Spirit of Light and the Spirit of Dark, and how people are keepers of the Balance.
Soon a day will come that is the shortest. Then that night will be the longest.”

“We know of winter’s long darks.”

Ashan nodded. “It’s the hardest time, for animals, plants, even for the sun and the moon. They become weak. The Spirit of
Dark is about to win the ancient war, and that would be terrible: Night forever. Do you understand?
Night forever.
People must help the Spirit of Light. We sing, dance, and offer sacred smoke. It’s medicine for the sun, and we do it all
day. Then I stay up with the moon while the rest of you sleep. After that, the days will grow at both ends. Green grass will
come. What are your questions?”