Children of the Dawn (2 page)

“If it’s this bad now, what will we do when it’s covered with snow?”

“If I’m going to die, I’d rather starve at home than walk myself to death through this place. At least my ashes would be with
the ancestors.”

“But the Moonkeeper dreamed the new home. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“The Moonkeeper—phhht! All that time, she was fat in the mountains, while we starved. Then she walks out of the woods one
day and old Raga tells us to follow her? Tenka should have been chief. What’s wrong with her? She wouldn’t have made us leave
the home of our ancestors.”

“And what about Tor? Remember when Moonkeepers were
forbidden
to mate? And that boy of theirs? Where did he come from?”

“All that time, we couldn’t even say Tor’s name, had to call him the Evil One, and now… ”

Then the wind had shifted, carrying their words away. Ashan reminded herself that the three almost-warriors were too young
to have power in the tribe. But there were others who felt the same. How much longer would she be able to control them?

“Yes,” Ashan said absently. “You know how boys are.” But Kyli and Wista had fallen back with the tribe.

The wind brought a new scent.

Ashan sucked deep breaths of clean, moist air—

“We made it!” Tor yelled.

“Water!” Ashan yelled, thrusting her hands in the air. “I smell it!”

People threw off their packs and ran toward her.

“Water to drink, and walk in!” Ashan licked her lips. “Water to taste and listen to!”

“Tomorrow you will see the Great River,” Tor said in his proudest voice.

Laughing, crying, hugging, people thanked the Moonkeeper for her dream, and her mate for knowing the way. They praised each
other for faith and courage.

“Don’t forget. Thank the spirits,” Ashan told them. “Get this place ready for sleep. Talk in whispers and make no fire. We
are the strangers here.”

A
S THE
S
HAHALA PEOPLE MADE THEIR CAMP READY
for the night, the Moonkeeper went off by herself to offer thanks.

Ashan was twenty-two summers in age, and shorter than most women, but by carrying herself as a chief, she seemed taller, and
older. She held a staff with magic powers. She wore a browband with two eagle feathers taken from an old proud bird who’d
lived and died in the ancestral homeland. Her black hair separated in back and blew long and thick around her shoulders. She
wore a fox cape over a doeskin shirt, pieces of leather as a skirt, and knee-high moccasins.

Standing on a low mound, she dropped her staff and cape, and lifted her slender arms. Her sleeves slid up. The light of the
setting sun gave her dark amber skin an unworldly glow.

The Moonkeeper faced Where Day Begins, tipped her face to the sky, and began an ancient song.

“Spirits Who Love People, the Shahala thank you… ”

The wind whipped at her skirt and stung the backs of her legs.

“Spirits Who Love People,” she began again. But her thoughts drifted. She sat on the fox fur cape, and let them go where they
would.

The Great River
…
in dreams I soared above it, but Tor is the only one who has tasted its water…
.

Ashan didn’t like to think about how he’d found the Great
River—so much bad on the way to something good. She remembered how it began, six winters ago…

While she had sat deep in prayers, Tor had kidnapped her—the
only
way he could have the Chosen One. He’d stuffed her in a bearskin sack, and run, and when he’d stopped in snow up to her knees,
she hadn’t known where she was.

Why had Tor wrenched her from her life like a sapling from the ground? Why not simply ask her to be his mate?

Because Ashan, chosen to lead the tribe after the Old Moon-keeper’s last death, was forbidden by ancient law to have a mate.

After a time in the wildplace, Ashan got over hating Tor, because she loved him. She had always loved him. They were soulmates
after all. The hardest thing had been to accept that she would never see her people again. She could have found the tribe,
but the risk to Tor, and to Kai El, the son she had borne, was too great. There was no way to know what the Shahala would
do to them.

Ashan had been happy with her little family, thriving in friendly mountains, living in a cave she herself had found… the Home
Cave. Then Tor had brought it all crashing down. How like a man to get what he
had to have,
then find out it wasn’t what he wanted.

She had known he was dreaming again when he talked about new places and people, about belonging to something larger than just
a family. He got all his crazy ideas from dreams. She had tried to make him stop, but in the wildplace, she was nobody’s chief.

Tor was unhappy without a tribe. Ashan found out
how
unhappy when he stole away one night—just
left
them—a woman and a baby of only two summers. She had waited at the Home Cave until their food ran out. It broke her heart
to leave, but she had to find the Shahala, or she and Kai El would have died.

Maybe she would have found the tribe. But savages stole Kai El, and she broke her leg, and got him back, then they fell in
that pit—

Even now, Ashan shuddered to think of that time in her life. One of the things she learned was that a mother would suffer
any pain for her child, would even give her life—
indeed she nearly had. “Be strong, be smart, or your child will die.” Words that kept a woman going, that taught what she
must know. And when her child lived, she believed in herself.

From terror, pain, and the struggle to survive had also come good: the grandfather Ehr, with his love and wisdom. Seasons
alone with Kai El in the cave hidden behind the waterfall—to teach, love, and know her son as no Shahala mother ever had.

It all seemed marked with Destiny’s handprint.

Still, it was hard to forgive Tor for what he’d done to them. But Ashan loved her soulmate enough to forgive him; he was young,
and just a man. Tor had meant to return to the Home Cave by winter. But by autumn, he was a slave. Three summers had passed
before she’d seen him again.

See what dreaming did for him,
Ashan thought.

While they were apart, Tor had found the “Great River” of his dreams. After they were reunited with the tribe, he would praise
it to anyone who’d listen:

“Chiawana… Mother of Water. Wider than the flat top of Kalish Ridge. Choked with fish. On its shore, a new home for the People
of the Wind, Amotkan’s favorite tribe, whose old home has died with the dying of horses. A home that does not know hunger,
where sunshine and rain are in balance… ”

If anyone asked about the tribe who already lived there, he would say, “Don’t worry. I know these Tlikit. They are simple
drylanders. They fear me. I am a god to them.”

Ashan pulled a grass stem from a clump beside her and chewed its end. Though it was autumn, there was still a crisp bit of
moisture in its fiber. She noticed the wind again.

Tlikit,
she thought, shaking her head.
What an odd name for a tribe, the sound a tree locust makes. But two bugs caught in the spiderweb of Destiny will share the
same future.

Tor had talked on and on about the Great River, but not much about the Tlikit people. Now Ashan wished she had made him tell
her more—maybe she would feel prepared to meet them.

Raga would know what to do,
she thought.
The Old Moon-keeper had a plan for everything, plans for things that might never happen.

But Raga died for the last time before this journey began. Her ashes rested in the ancestral burial ground near Anutash. Ashan,
the old woman’s successor, sometimes felt too young—even at twenty-two summers—to wear the Moon-keeper’s robe, and the responsibility
that went with it.

I should be able to talk to Tenka about this. She is the Other Moonkeeper.

With a sigh, Ashan remembered coming home to Anutash after all that time… finding Raga near death, and Tor’s sister Tenka
ready to lead the tribe… as if Tenka could lead a child.

The Old Moonkeeper had lived long enough to tell the people:

“In the changing world, a tribe needs
two
Moonkeepers, not one. Listen to Tenka. She is the shaman who speaks with spirits. Follow Ashan. She is your chief.”

After Raga died, Ashan became “the Moonkeeper,” and the tribe followed their new chief. Tenka became “the Other Moonkeeper,”
but they didn’t ask anything of their new shaman. Tenka did her best, but the girl was weak in many ways.

Ashan looked to the darkening sky.

“Raga, we are here at the Great River. What now?”

She waited for an answer. A star appeared, then another. She heard silence, felt cold wind, tasted water in the air. But no
answer came. Sometimes, the Old Moonkeeper’s spirit would visit her, but on this twilight at the edge of the new beginning,
Raga chose to be somewhere else.

The Moonkeeper Ashan returned to the desolate spot on the plains where her people would spend the night, and walked among
them to see that all was well. Women were doing the work of evening. Tor sat with a group of men, talking about the end of
the journey, the Great River, the tribe called Tlikit—new land, new life, new brothers and sisters—what would it all be like?
Ashan heard relief, anticipation, and fear in their voices.

In the center of the camp, where they would sleep together, the little ones played a quiet guessing game with Tenka.

Yes,
Ashan thought,
there’s my boy.

The best-looking child ever, his mother was sure. Kai El was five summers—hard to believe—little ones grew so fast.
His sturdy body reminded her of a little oak tree. His face was still baby-pudgy, but he could get a determined look in his
dark eyes and the set of his mouth. Or he could melt her with baby love eyes and flower bud lips.

Mother and son smiled at each other as she walked by. She would have liked a hug, but he was too old for that in front of
his friends.

Tor had put their packs and travel poles a short distance from the others. Ashan took sleeping skins from the packs—a huge
grizzled bear from his for the bottom, a smaller black bear from hers for the top. It would be good to nestle between the
furs and rest. But the load on her travel poles had come unbalanced. There would be enough to do in the morning without having
to repack them.

Travel poles were made from two long, slender trunks of light, flexible alder. Short pieces held them apart. Leather straps
spanned the open space. A person’s belongings and a share of the tribe’s were heaped on the straps and tied down. Once only
warriors pulled travel poles, but on this journey, there was so much to carry that all but the youngest and the oldest pulled
them.

Ashan’s travel poles—lighter than some, more important than any—carried the tribe’s sacred things.

She untied the knots in the leather ropes. It felt good to hold familiar treasures in her hands. They gave her strength. The
white tail of Kusi, the Horse Spirit, given to the First People in the Misty Time. The ceremonial robe of furs and feathers
in its painted horseskin cover. A bear skull with the time balls of long-dead Moonkeepers. Rattles of deer hoof and turtle
shell; bird wings, throwing bones, and other pieces of magic. Many kinds of medicine; not knowing what this land would provide,
she’d brought all she could. She also had the tools of a woman: baskets, bowls, plates, cups, blades, grinding and scraping
stones.

She finished repacking and lay back on the bearskin, snuggling into softness.

It was almost dark when Tor came. He stood over her, hands on hips, smiling like a man who had found a herd of mammoths long
after people thought they died out. Here he
was, right at the edge of his dream. Had Ashan ever seen him look happier?

“Hello, my love,” he said in a lustful voice.

“Hello, Sweetmate,” she answered in the same tone. She was tired, but that special energy stirred in her.

“You look like a flameflower to a hummingbird,” he said. “I’m the hummingbird, and I’m starving.”

“You don’t look like a bird to me. You look like a
man.
” She said
man
as if there was nothing better. And was there?

Tor slowly untied the laces of his shirt and shrugged it off. After all this time, Ashan still loved looking at his body.

“Mmm,” she said. “That broad chest, all curves and shadows and lines. Those shoulders, those muscles. Those arms.”

She loved saying these things, and he loved hearing them. Bending over to show his firm rear, he took off his leggings, and
flexed his thighs. The wind played with his loinskin.

“Had enough watching, woman?”

“I will never have enough.”

He lay beside her, and pulled the bearskin over them so only their heads were showing. She felt his body heat through her
leathers. His hands crept over her skirt until they found a way inside. He stroked her thigh. The tingling energy in her lower
belly turned to heat. His hand moved up and touched her with the practice of a longtime mate.

“Turn on your side,” he whispered.

“It isn’t dark yet.”

“Close your eyes. Then it’s dark.”

“People will see us.”

“Danger makes it even better.”

She turned on her side, pulled up her knees. Tor snuggled close behind, holding her tight, fondling her breasts. He entered
her, moving slowly, deeply, until the silent explosion came.

Waves were running through her body and her head was spinning, when she heard a voice.

“Moonkeeper?”

She sat up, cleared her throat.

“Mosscakes, Moonkeeper?” Tashi asked. “There’s meat from yesterday’s kill, but you said no fire. And these grass stems? I
picked them for you.”

“Thank you, Tashi,” Ashan said. “You are kind.”

When the woman left, Ashan said to Tor: “All that water, so close, and my people have to chew grass for their thirst.”

“It’s almost over, my love. I promise.”

He had said those words before. But this time she did smell water in the air.