Children of the Dawn (19 page)

They nodded. It made sense.

“This is how Shahala warriors agree,” Tor said, thrusting out his hand. It was met by six others.

Tor looked at the Tlikit. “Join us.”

Twenty hands slapped. The loud noise said that no Teahra warrior would kill another, no matter what kind of blood flowed in
him.

“Let’s go home,” Tor said.

“What about the slaves?” Wyecat asked.

“They’re gone.”

“But we know where they live. There’s more to this than agreeing not to kill each other, Tor. Are you going to leave our slaves
alone?”

The answer was no. Ashan would not give up. Tor knew that, but he couldn’t say it.

“I don’t know, Wyecat. For now I’m asking: Do you want to die over them?”

“Not really.”

“Neither do I. I think we should go home and let our mates fuss over our wounds. And then we should talk about it. Everyone
in both tribes—I mean—”

“I know what you mean, Tor. Slapping hands doesn’t make our blood the same.”

“I’m trying, Wyecat. I’m not a god.”

“Not since you found out how much work it was.”

The men from Teahra Village went home.

For now, there was no problem to be solved. The slaves had run while they were being fought over. But not toward the faraway
forest—the home Ashan was so certain they must crave. No. They ran back to Teahra Village.

Like the Shahala, like the Tlikit… their old home wasn’t home anymore.

Ashan said, “Finally, Tor, one of them talked to me, in a mix of Shahala and Tlikit. Her name is Weechul. I asked why they
came back here when they could have gone anywhere. Do you know what she said?”

“What?”

“Being a slave is not the worst thing. Not being able to feed your little ones is. I realized she’s right. I would have done
the same thing they did.” Ashan shook her head. “I can be so stupid, Tor. I’m a mother. Why didn’t I look at it through a
mother’s eyes?”

“You may be a Moonkeeper, my love, but you
are
human.”

Ashan didn’t like excuses, especially for herself.

“But I caused all that trouble for nothing. Everything is the same as it was. No matter what
people
say, I have to listen to
spirits,
and I’ve never known one to change its mind. Having slaves is against the Balance.”

“Ashan, you need to relax a little… be easier on yourself and others.”

Tor knelt behind her and massaged her shoulders, speaking in a soothing voice.

“What happened out there was
not
for nothing. Something
very
important happened—a man-thing, but I’ll do my best to explain it… ”

Ashan sat with Tor on a ledge by the cliffs, watching the village. After all that had happened in the last three days, people
were subdued as they went about their work.

An argument by the oak tree got everyone’s attention.

“No!” Weechul shouted. The other slaves stood behind her. She threw something down in front of Tsilka.

“I won’t do it! Neither will my sisters!”

People stopped what they were doing and listened.

Fists clenched, Tsilka shook with anger.

Weechul spoke loudly in a mix of two languages.

“All you people, I have something to say. We will not do the dungwork of these women anymore. We will keep the village fire.
That is more than most women do. We want to do it, for our tribe.”

Tsilka sputtered, “You already keep the fire, or we beat you!”

“Come on, Tor,” Ashan said.

As Ashan and Tor hurried toward them, Tsilka picked up the hide thrown down by Weechul and thrust it at her.

Weechul didn’t take it, and didn’t back up.

“If you don’t chew this hide, I will—”

“You will do nothing!” Ashan said.

Tsilka whirled around.

Ashan spoke loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Keeping the fire is the work of four women. They will be known as Firekeepers. They will be no one’s slaves, and their little
ones will be their own.”

Tor said, “Brothers, we don’t want to fight. We already know why. Why should men care? It is only women’s work the slaves
do. Let the women do their own work.”

People agreed.

Except for the Tlikit women. They lost their workers, and the little ones they’d been mothering. But there was nothing they
could do.

That night, the Firekeepers and their little ones slept together by the oak tree.

Ashan said, “Someday, Tor, they should have a hut.”

A few nights later, Elia died in his sleep.

Shocked, Ashan found no cause. She told people there must have been something bad on the spear.

Tor suffered terribly.

So did Ashan.

She’d made magic stones to protect the First Warriors. When Tor told her Elia would be going, she had planned to make him
one too, but…

A boy died because I didn’t find time to make him a rock. A brave, loyal boy
…
clever, funny, loved and loving
…

People mourned him. Elia had belonged to both tribes—the Tlikit by birth, the Shahala who had taken him in. They grieved as
a whole village, not blaming, not asking what kind of spear killed him.

Elia’s death had meaning. People always remembered the boy whose name meant Friend as the one who gave up life
so his tribe could see that they must never do that again. It came to be told that he jumped in front of the spear.

Because of Elia, no Teahra warrior would ever again raise a weapon against another. They were all one now: the People of Teahra
Village.

A
SHAN SAT WITH
T
OR ON THE SLEEPING SKINS
. S
HE
pretended not to watch Kai El on the other side of the hut as he made himself ready for his power quest.

“Oh, Tor,” she whispered. “How can my baby be seven summers already?”

Her mate shook his head. “I don’t know, but my stomach is still full from yesterday’s feast. And there are the gifts people
gave him.” He waved his hand toward Kai El’s side of the hut.

“It’s hard to believe,” she said wistfully. “We’ve been here for almost three turnings of the seasons. Elia’s been gone more
than two.” She still thought of him often.

Tor sighed. “Yes.”

“In the homeland,” she said, “time flowed like winter honey. Here it rushes like the water in the Great River.”

“Mmm,” he said, lost in his own thoughts.

“I think it’s because I’m so busy. Even with Tenka, I’m so busy.”

The Other Moonkeeper had her own hut now, and took some of the work from Ashan’s shoulders. People liked to talk to her about
their problems. Instead of giving good advice, Tenka told them what they wanted to hear, but it seemed to make them feel better.
She was good at storytelling, talking to girls when they made their first blood, and other work like that. It helped, but
Ashan was busy all the time with spirit
speaking, decisions, rituals, healing, magic rocks, and all the other demands of a tribe so large she couldn’t keep count.
And her family, too.

Ashan watched Kai El lacing his new moccasins. She swallowed hard. Yesterday a feast marked the day of his birth. Today he
would begin his power quest.

A power quest was like a door Shahala boys and girls passed through to get from one part of life to the next. With no food
and only a little water, Kai El would go alone to a special place and wait, perhaps for several days and nights, for a spirit
to reveal itself as his guardian. It would give him his own song, and his new name.

He would be different when he returned, ready to join in the things of older boys. He would call her Mother instead of Amah,
and she wouldn’t dare call him “her baby” again.

Like every mother, Ashan had different feelings about it. She was proud of his strength and courage. She was sad, because
after this he wouldn’t need her in the same way as before. And like any mother, she was afraid. Some did not return from a
power quest. No one knew what happened to them. It was a sad thing for the tribe, worse than a baby lost in birthing—but it
happened. It was a natural part of life. Easy to say, unless you were one of those unfortunate mothers.

Ashan gazed at the little boy she loved so much. Her throat tightened. Tears filled her eyes.

Kai El was tall for his age, with just enough baby fat to make him look squeezable. Thick black hair reached his shoulders.
His soft skin was the color of sunset amber; an ochre glow touched his high cheeks. His black eyes sparkled with eagerness.
Ashan was certain that her son was the best-looking child of Teahra Village.

He loved laughing, but today he was serious.

So grown up,
she thought.
It seems like only yesterday he was a baby, and we lived in the mountains, and
…

Her tears spilled over. To hide them, she got up, crossed the hut, and knelt by him. She had made him all new things: tough
elkhide moccasins; lightweight deerhide cape, loinskin, and leggings. She fussed with his moccasins.

“Ah-mahh,” he said, squirming.

“Hold still. I want to make sure these stitches are tight.”

Tor said, “He’s fine, Ashan. Spirits will be impressed by what they see.”

She stepped away, sniffling behind her hand.

Tor had something hidden behind him, and brought it out with a flourish… a traditional Shahala headpiece.

Sucking in his breath, the boy looked at his father with wide eyes.

“You made it from your horsetail rope,” he said in a voice filled with awe.

Once common among Shahala men, horsetail ropes were becoming rare as they wore out and couldn’t be replaced. Ropes could be
made of leather strips or plant fibers, but nothing matched the long strands of a horse’s tail.

“Adah, you love that rope.”

“I love you more.”

Once white, now gray with age, made from the tail of the first horse he’d ever killed and lengthened with others over time,
Tor
did
love the rope, so much that Ashan had once risked her life to save it from a river when he lay unconscious.

But now his boy needed the protection it would give. Little ones didn’t take weapons on their power quests. To carry a weapon
they didn’t yet know how to use might be seen as a challenge by an animal or a spirit who would otherwise leave them alone.

To make the headpiece, Tor had straightened the twisted strands on a heated rock, and woven a strip for a base. One by one
he tied lengths as long as his hand to the base, so thick he couldn’t get another one in. The stiff strands stood up on top,
and trailed down in back.

With thongs and porcupine quills, Tor secured the headpiece in Kai El’s hair.

“I give you the power of Kusi, the Horse Spirit, so you can outrun anything that tries to get you, or catch anything you want.”

Kai El looked up and around, trying to see the headpiece, but he couldn’t. He ran his hands over the strands, his round face
split by a smile.

“Thank you, Adah.”

Tor nodded. “You are lucky. Once every Shahala boy wore
such a headpiece for his power quest, but you will be one of the last, now that all the horses are gone.”

Ashan said, “You will save it for your first son.” She was serious, but it made Kai El giggle. A boy of seven summers couldn’t
imagine having a son someday.

She held out her open hand.

“I have something for you, too. It’s a magic stone. Wear it all the time.”

The Moonkeeper made a stone for every child’s power quest, to be worn on a thong around the neck. Spirits helped her pick
the right one for each. As she shaped and smoothed, thinking about the child, the stone absorbed the power of Moonkeepers
from the Misty Time. She scratched the name sign given at birth on one side. When the boy or girl returned, she would scratch
the new name sign on the other. This showed that people changed their names, but were still the same people.

The stone the Moonkeeper had made for her son was a flat circle, light blue because he said his eyes liked the sky when it
was that color. Ashan had never worked so hard on a magic stone. She had
pushed
her power into it, gathering it up, sending it to her arms, her hands, and into the stone until the stone became hot, squeezing
herself until she felt drained.

Kai El took it from her, turning it over, fingering the lines of his name. He looked up, and love flowed between their eyes.

“I like it more than anything!” He put the thong over his head. The blue stone lay against his chest.

“How do you get magic into stones?” he asked.

“I’m the Moonkeeper—I just do it. The magic works, especially for you.”

Teary-eyed again, Ashan embraced him. He allowed it for a moment, then wriggled out of her grip.

“I’m ready to go.”

Ashan looked at Tor. He nodded. They went with their son to the edge of the village. She pointed in the direction Colder,
toward the lands of their ancestors.

“Walk into the hills. You’ll be drawn to a sacred place, and you will know when you have reached it. It will be higher than
the places around. That’s all I can tell you.”

In the ancestral homeland, seekers had gone to the top of Kalish Ridge to meet their guardian spirits. In the new land, the
Moonkeeper had not been shown such a spot, so she let seekers find their own.

“When you get there, pray for your guardian spirit to come. Then wait. It may take time, but your guardian won’t let you die.”

Well… there
had
been the occasional little one… but why remind Kai El?

Tor said, “Stay awake. You don’t want to miss the spirit if it comes in the dark. And don’t leave just because you get hungry.
Hunger helps.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Kai El said. “You have raised a brave son.”

“I know,” Tor said. “You make me proud.”

“You make your people proud,” Ashan said, speaking as the Moonkeeper.

Kai El left them. The sunshine gleamed on his hair. Watching him climb up through the cliffs, Ashan’s chest hurt; it was hard
to breathe. Tears ran down her cheeks.

Tor said, “I wonder what his new name will be?”

“Oh, Tor, how can you think about that? No food, no weapon, just enough water to keep him alive. That’s all I can think about.
It’s hard.”