Children of the Dawn (27 page)

“Hayah!”

Hearing the shout, neither Tlikit nor Shahala, Tsilka peered through the door of her hut.

At the downriver end of the village, five strange men stood on a rise of ground. They looked massive in furs that covered
them from shoulders to feet.

Sitting around the village fire, waiting for food the women were preparing, the men of Teahra jumped to their feet and scurried
for their weapons.

“Hayah! Ee cha!” one of the strangers yelled. They threw down their spears and held out their arms in peace.

“Ee cha! Ee cha!” they said.

Nothing like this had happened before. Women and little ones scattered in noisy confusion, hiding in the huts. Brandishing
spears, blades, and sticks, Teahra men charged at the strangers. But they didn’t run.

“No!” the Moonkeeper yelled, putting herself in front of her men.

“Who are you?” she said. “What do you want?”

The strangers looked at each other. One pointed at the Moonkeeper, shook his head, touched his ears. She repeated the words
in Tlikit. It was obvious they did not understand.

“Masat,” one said. “Chi chi ah nee.” Which meant nothing. But from the looks on their faces and the way they held their bodies,
Tsilka knew they meant no harm. Besides, what could five men do against a whole tribe?

“Ee cha,” said the one who spoke for the others. Stepping forward, he took off his fur robe and held it out, offering it to
Ashan.

“Get away from her!” Tor yelled. With a thrust of his spear, he knocked the robe out of the man’s hands.

“Tor!” she said. “There’s no reason for that. I don’t think they came to hurt us.”

The Moonkeeper picked up the fur and draped it over her shoulders. The size of it made her look very small.

“Thank you,” she said. “You are kind.”

Behind the Moonkeeper, the men of Teahra grumbled.

“We should kill them,” Tor said, “or at least chase them away. What if they have a tribe behind them?”

“If they do, it could be much larger than ours. We will welcome them. That is my command.”

The Moonkeeper motioned for the strangers to come into the village. Teahra warriors opened a path for them. Women
cautiously came from the huts bringing food. Even Tsilka came out. This was too exciting to miss.

The night passed uneasily around the fire. With hand-signs and marks on the ground, the strangers told about their tribe,
the Masat, and about their home, far away in the direction Where Day Ends. There, they said, the dirt-world stopped and the
water-world began. Compared to the water-world, the Great River was just a trickle flowing into it. The Masat men patted their
well-fed stomachs to show that life was good there.

As Tsilka watched, an idea was born: She saw herself in a new home, with a new tribe, living a new life that had to be better
than this miserable existence. Here was a chance to start over with people not poisoned by Ashan, people who would value Tsilka
for the beautiful and powerful woman she was. She bubbled with excitement to think of going away with the strangers, of leaving
forever this hateful place and its memories of humiliation, pain, and loss.

When it was time to sleep, the strangers chose a spot by the riverbank. Tsilka followed. She dropped her dress and stood naked
before them, becoming the animal that drove men wild. She gave herself to the one who seemed strongest. The others watched—strange,
though not unpleasant. Afterward she let them know that she wanted to go away with them. Eagerly agreeing, they headed down
the river trail in the dark.

Tsilka wished she could have said good-bye to her daughters, but she wasn’t worried. Tor would take care of them. The twins
would be better off without her. She wondered what people would think when they found her
and
the strangers gone. Would they think she’d been stolen, or would they realize that she’d run away? Tsilka didn’t care what
they thought. In her mind, the people of Teahra Village already belonged to the past. A whole new life awaited her. She would
be happy at last.

Filled with dreams, thriving on everything new and different, feeling like a girl again, she traveled with the five men for
many days. She turned the dried food they carried into tasty meals, adding things she gathered along the way. Every night
she made love to the leader, Lacanya. Not understanding
each other’s words didn’t matter. The sounds they made would not be mistaken for anything but lust.

Hills turned into mountains, prairie into forest, as they followed the Great River along low banks and high, gouged canyons.
They crossed rivers that flowed into it, making it ever wider, until she could barely see the gray-green trees on the other
side. At a place where the water began to flow backward, they turned away from the Great River and headed in the direction
Colder. After walking for several more days, they arrived at the home of the Masat tribe.

Dense forest marched down to a beach at the edge of a gently sloshing bay. A line of rocks separated the bay from the water
beyond that went on until it joined the sky. It was raining, but Tsilka thought it was a wonderful place. She saw many huts,
each large enough for several families to live in. There were people everywhere, many more than lived at Teahra. They stopped
what they were doing and rushed to greet the returning men.

Standing tall and proud, Tsilka readied herself to meet her new tribe. They would see from the beginning that she was someone
to be reckoned with.

Suddenly Lacanya grabbed her arm, threw her to the ground, and put his foot on her back.

Face down in the mud, Tsilka was too shocked to move. All the way here, he’d treated her like she was something special. Now
this? Why?

“Let me up!” she cried, struggling.

The pressure of his foot increased. He sneered down at her, then said something to his people in a proud voice. Everyone jabbered
at once. She couldn’t understand their words, but they were happy and excited.

Lacanya jerked Tsilka to her feet. She was wet, muddy, humiliated, infuriated, and, most of all, scared. People surrounded
her, pinching, poking, laughing. They shoved her into the village, pushed her down at the base of a tree, and tied her arms
to it. As if she were some fine piece of meat, they sang and danced around her in the rain.

“No!” she cried. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be!”

Tsilka was just what the five Masat brothers had gone
hunting for: a gift for their father to give away at their sister’s mating ceremony.

A slave.

Her new life was nothing like she had hoped for. The family who received her forced her to work from morning till night. They
watched her all the time, and beat her if she did anything wrong or moved too slowly.

She and another slave lived with three men, four women, and six little ones, in a large hut made from stacked cedar slabs
split with sharpened blades of yew. Long, thin pieces lapped over each other on top, and the hut didn’t leak. On rare sunny
days, pieces were removed. It always smelled fresh inside.

Masat huts were much better than the hide-covered brush huts of her own people. Everything about her new home was different.
It rained when it wasn’t foggy, but the air was usually warm, except when storms blew in from the great ocean beyond the line
of rocks.

The Masat floated in carved-out cedar trees that held twenty men. Far out in the endless water, they speared black-and-white
fish—monstrous creatures larger than tree trunks—layers of fat over mountains of meat that fed the village for days. Animals
with shells lived in the salty water, and strange-looking fish. People were fat from so much food. They had skins of beaver
and otter, furs of bear, cougar, and sheep, hides of elk and deer—more than they needed. And plenty of time to enjoy it all,
since slaves did most of the work. When they weren’t out hunting or fishing, the men sat around smoking dried plants in carved
wood pipes. They threw bone pieces and guessed how they would land, and the wrong one gave something to right one. They carved
the walls of their huts, and made totems of people and animals that stood up in the ground. Women made baskets of spruce roots
with woven grass designs. They made beads of shell, wood, and seed, and wooden holders to keep them in. Little ones didn’t
do anything but play.

They gave feasts for any reason, with lavish gifts to each other. Sometimes at a feast a slave would be killed, just to show
how rich a family was. Of course, Tsilka was much too smart to let that happen to her.

Each morning some half-grown boys took Tsilka and other slaves into the forest. They lashed wood to a carrier on her back
until it was so heavy she could barely stand, roping large pieces to her waist to be dragged. To stumble or fall brought scornful
laughter or a beating. Morning after rainy morning, one exhausting trip after another, autumn turned to winter. There were
huge woodpiles stacked all around the village, covered with leather to keep them dry, but no matter how much wood the slaves
hauled in, the Masat never had enough.

Afternoons were spent with the four women of the family she belonged to. Tsilka and their other slave, a girl named Eenoway,
worked hides, prepared food, twisted ropes, made baskets. Though the women expected their slaves to work without stopping,
they were kinder than the men.

Winter passed in a dull haze. Tsilka, at first too shocked, was now too tired to fight back or try to escape. For a Masat
slave, the only escape was death.

Though at first it had seemed impossible, Tsilka began to adjust. She realized that sullen or angry slaves were treated with
the greatest cruelty. Those who were pleasant had better lives. If she had to live here, she would make the best of it. Forcing
herself to be pleasant, she learned the Masat language. Gradually the women demanded less work of her and gave her more freedom.

She became a friend to Twe We, the young woman she’d been given to. One morning Twe We confided in her.

“I don’t enjoy making love with my mate,” she said, rubbing her bruised eye. “I think that’s why he hit me.”

“Lovemaking is not for enjoyment,” Tsilka told her. Of course that wasn’t true, but Twe We needed to learn the most important
thing first. “Lovemaking is power, the only power a woman can have over a man. You are wasting it. I can teach you how to
use it.”

The grunts and groans she heard in the night as Twe We used her new skills made Tsilka long for a man. It had been a long
time. Lacanya had wanted her on the journey, but once she was a slave, no man wanted anything to do with her.

She turned her attention to the youngest son of the Masat chief. Squill was little more than a boy, but Tsilka knew there
was a man growing inside that hard, muscular body, a man
who hadn’t yet known a woman, but who must surely be dreaming of it. She could tell by the way he looked at her. She returned
looks that would encourage him.

One day she found him alone.

“Haven’t you dreamed of being with a woman, Squill? Of making love?”

“You are a slave. I would not make love with an animal.”

“I’m a woman, just as human as you are. See?”

Tsilka shrugged the robe from her shoulders. He stared openmouthed at her breasts.

“Touch me.”

She guided his hand. It lay hot on her breast, without moving.

“I am more than just a woman. I am a Tlikit, and we know things about making love that Masat women have never thought of.”

Pulling him down on the soft forest floor, Tsilka showed him. It was wonderful—
wonderful
—to have a man again, even a half-grown one. In fact it was better to have one so young, so eager, so grateful. Tsilka never
forgot that the boy was the best-loved son of the chief. If she used him well, maybe she could someday become an important
woman who would have the best of everything.

At times being a Masat slave seemed better than being a free woman of Teahra. Tsilka didn’t love Tor anymore; she didn’t hate
him; she didn’t care. She missed her daughters, but not enough to return.

W
HEN THE PEOPLE OF
T
EAHRA
V
ILLAGE DISCOVERED
Tsilka and the strangers missing, a few thought she’d been stolen, but most thought she had left because she wanted to. People
knew of her unhappiness. They had seen her looking at the strangers in a hungry way. Warriors were not sent in pursuit. Tsilka’s
hut was taken by a family who’d outgrown theirs.

The twins came to live with Ashan and Tor.

Ashan knew that she hated Tsilka, but she hadn’t realized how
pleasant
life would be without her. The strange tricks stopped. A snake in a boot, a dress somehow made too small during the night,
being startled by tossed pebbles—Ashan had thought Tsilka was responsible. Now she knew for sure.

She loved being with the twins. They unfolded like trilliums who’d been waiting for snow-melt.

Tsagaia had always kept to herself because the Breath Ogre could attack her at any time. She didn’t want anyone to see the
helpless gasping, and no one but her mother, sister, and Ashan ever had. But the demon must have gone away with her mother.
Cautiously, Tsagaia joined other little ones in play.

It pleased Ashan to see Tsagaia and Kai El becoming friends. Friendship might someday become love. The sweet girl would make
a good mate for her son.

And Tahna… after her mother left, Ashan saw no more
dangerous flashes in her eyes. Tahna wanted to learn. Ashan loved to teach. Someone so eager and smart would learn fast. The
growing tribe could use three women who knew the ways. Tor surprised Ashan. She expected complaints about the crowded hut,
but he seemed to love having the twins as much as she did.

For Tor, life without Tsilka was beyond wonderful. He’d been her slave—bound by the secret Ashan must never know—and now he
was free. No more sneaking to her hut and resisting temptation so he could give his daughters gifts; no more gazing at them
with longing.

All his little ones with him… his secret safe forever… it was so good that it scared him.