Children of the Dawn (28 page)

The friendship between his son and his daughter
should have
scared him. What if it did turn to love? He told himself that it wouldn’t, that being raised together would make them feel
like brother and sister.

But what if Tor was wrong? Maybe there
was
no such thing as a “safe” secret.

Tahna loved the Moonkeeper’s hut. Its muted light calmed her eyes. The air, smelling of smoke and herbs, seemed to wrap around
her. She delighted in learning new things from the Moonkeeper, in being smart, and doing important work. She liked medicine
plants, and thought they had a language not made of sounds. Holding them, staring until her eyes blurred, she tried to understand.

One morning after everyone else had gone, Tahna said,

“I think plants want to talk to me, but I’m too stupid to understand.”

Ashan smiled and placed her hand on Tahna’s shoulder.

“You’re not stupid. It seems you have the gift.”

“What do you mean?”

Ashan didn’t answer.

“Let’s sit and work. I have herbs for Mitawi. She’s been bleeding since her baby was born.”

They sat on the mat-covered floor. Ashan unfolded a medicine pouch, and put pinches of dried leaves on a flat grinding stone.

“Watchwater, goldengrass, and stick-to-moccasin.”

She crushed them with the stone’s worn mate, grinding slowly, round and round, pulling Tahna’s eyes into her hand.

When she spoke again, the Moonkeeper’s voice was different, as if some other creature used her, a deep, sure voice, in no
hurry with its ancient words.

“In the Misty Time, Amotkan gave the work of healing to Plant Spirits. They divided human sickness among themselves, making
sure every sickness had a cure. But how would people know which plant to use for what? The plants decided that Coyote should
teach First Woman their language.”

Tahna blurted, “They do have a language!”

“Yes,” Ashan said in her own voice. “That is the gift of medicine… to understand the language of plants. It takes patience.
And you will have to learn not to blurt.”

The Moonkeeper ground the herbs in silence, then spoke in the strange voice.

“The people were glad First Woman could heal them, but they weren’t interested in how. So she taught her daughter, who taught
hers, and hers, until the knowledge reached me.”

The Moonkeeper picked up a pinch of the pungent powder she had made, rubbed it between her fingers, let it drift down.

“Take some. Feel it. Smell it. Taste it. Say: Watchwater, goldengrass, stick-to-moccasin. Stop the bleeding that is no longer
needed.”

When Tahna had done this, Ashan smiled and spoke in her own voice.

“If you have the gift—and I think you do—plants will share their secrets with you. You’ll know what’s wrong with people when
they don’t know themselves. But there’s a lot of work between now and the day we can call you Medicine Woman.”

“Medicine Woman!”

“Someday, perhaps. Would you like to be my helper for now? Amotkan knows I need one.”

“Oh yes!” Tahna said, clapping her hands and trying not to jump up and down. “This is the happiest time of my life!”

After many moons, a bedraggled Tsilka returned to Teahra Village. Everyone gathered to hear her story.

“Those men,” she said. “I don’t know why they wanted
me,
but they did. They came in my hut and took me away, and kept me tied for days while we walked down the Great River. When
we got to their village, I was a slave. They were cruel. They made me work from morning till night. I cried all the time,
missing my daughters. I thought I would never escape, that I’d die and they’d throw my body in the water that reaches to the
sky—that’s what they do with the bodies of slaves.

“Then I heard something that scared me, and at the same time gave me courage: They were planning to raid our home.”

Shocked sounds rose.

“Yes. Teahra Village. To get more slaves. I thought of my daughters. I thought of all of you. I saw slaves killed, just to
show how rich their owners were.”

The people of Teahra couldn’t believe it. Even the Tlikit, who had once kept slaves, had never
killed
one.

Tsilka said, “How could I let that happen to my own people? I stole food and leathers, and slipped away from their village
in the night. It wasn’t enough just to warn you. I had to stop them from coming here. So I did what Tor did that time… remember
how he tried to scare us by dressing in feathers and yelling?”

People laughed. What had seemed so terrifying then was now seen as a joke—no one would admit they had ever believed Tor was
a god.

Tsilka continued. “Raven is the trickster of the Masat, like Wahawkin is to the Tlikit, and Coyote to the Shahala. Hiding
in the forest, I carved a raven’s head out of cedar wood to fit on top of my head, and painted it black, with a huge yellow
beak and orange eyes. I painted the stolen leather black, cut feather shapes, and made a cape that looked like wings.”

She pointed at Tor. “You who looked like a half-dead crow would have been impressed. I looked like a huge, fierce raven—a
god with no mercy, and power to kill. I stood on a tall rock at the end of the village. Flapping my arms, I yelled at them
in a voice of wind and thunder. Of course I knew their language by then.

“I said, ’You stole Tsilka, one of my people from up the river, but I came and flew her home. Now I hear you talk of
stealing more. I say you must not. Take people who live in the forests, and ones who live by the endless water, but you must
leave my river people alone, or I will tear you to pieces, starting with the chief.’”

“They believed you?” someone asked.

“Oh, yes. What happened next terrified them. The chief clutched his chest, gave a loud groan, and fell to the sand. I disappeared
behind the rock, and made my way home as fast as I could.”

“Are they coming?” people asked.

“I don’t think so, but we must be careful from now on.”

Tsilka had not been kidnapped, but the rest was true. Her tolerable life with the Masat ended when she heard about the slave
raid they were planning. It wasn’t the people of Teahra she cared about—many of them deserved to be slaves. But her daughters!
Her beautiful twins! Leaving them with Tor was one thing, but they were not born to be slaves. Tsilka had to stop it. There
was a good chance that she had: The Masat would believe that Raven struck down their chief for stealing river people.

On the long way home, Tsilka let herself dream of being called a heroine, but it didn’t turn out that way. Teahra people knew
her too well to believe her—though for a time they guarded the village.

They had not liked Tsilka before, and still didn’t.

Being back in her own hut with her daughters was enough to make up for the rest. Tsilka felt better than she had before she
left. She tried being nice, as she’d been forced to do to survive with the Masat. People responded by being nicer to her.

Within herself, she made peace with Ashan. No more tricks. Let Ashan have Tor. There were better lovers somewhere else. One
would someday come her way. And she would leave again.

This was not her home anymore, nor were these her people.

A
SHAN’S SON GREW TO AN ALMOST-MAN OF SIXTEEN
summers. Her mate enjoyed long hunts with old friends. With Tenka and Tahna sharing Moonkeeper work, Ashan now had time for
herself. She liked to spend it at her place in the cliffs above Teahra Village—her takoma, where trails that spirits traveled
crossed in the sky.

In the Summer of Little Deaths, the lives lost were minor compared to human life. But the deaths were odd.

A gray bird came to Ashan’s takoma. The next day, she brought oily sunseeds and dry worms. The bird ate the sunseeds and stayed.
Ashan began to look forward to their perfect visits: She talked, the bird listened. Soon it would sit on her knee and eat
from her hand.

She saw the bird as she approached one day, sitting at the edge of a rock. It fell over when she touched it. She made a small
fire and burned it. Because it was her friend, she didn’t keep its feathers.

Peeping guided her to two nestlings—half-yellow fuzz, half-gray feathers. Ashan brought mashed seeds and water to the ugly
things until they grew beautiful and flew away. She admired the gray bird, who had lived long enough for her babies to be
safe.

A cougar came to the women’s washing place at the Great River’s edge, lay down on the flat rock, and died. The women
with babies in their futures shared the beautiful, unmarked fur to line cradleboards.

Teahra Village had one tree, an ancient oak back near the cliffs. It gave the people summer shade, and dropped its leaves
in autumn so the sun would warm them in winter. Its dried leaves made comfortable stuffing under sleeping skins. Its acorns—ground
up, soaked, and rinsed to get the bitterness out—made a bland, white meal.

Long before people came to live here, the oak had split into the shape of a man with his arms out. The arms were monstrous
branches, like two trees growing out of a trunk that took four or five children linking hands to encircle it. The deep grooves
in the tree’s bark were like an old person’s wrinkles… a proud thing.

When the Tlikit warriors captured slaves, the oak gave them a place to tie them. Mats were attached to the trunk to shelter
the prisoners from rain. After the slaves had been given their freedom, and their new name, Firekeepers, they built a real
hut for themselves and their little ones against the trunk of the ancient oak.

Ashan used it to teach about Balance.

“When you look at that tree, its arms growing straight out instead of up, each with a huge top, you wonder why it doesn’t
split in the middle and come crashing down. Can you think how heavy those branches must be? They have to grow together, stay
the same weight. They depend on each other. That is Balance.”

The previous autumn, one side of the oak tree had lost its leaves as usual. The other side browned, but the dead leaves clung
all through winter. They drifted down in spring, while the other side greened. That summer there was only half as much shade.
People noticed that the side still living had covered itself with acorns—more than the whole tree used to give them. They
worried.

“What will happen when the dead side falls? What will hold the living side up?”

“It will be many winters before the dead side falls. Look how healthy the living side is.”

What could they do but wait? And stay out from under it, once it started giving occasional creaks.

Many were there when the dead branch gave up, warning them with groans from deep inside. Out of reach of its arms, people
watched in fascination.

With a loud crack, the huge branch slowly peeled from the trunk, seemed to hang in the air, then fell with an echoing boom.
The ground shook. A dust cloud filled the silence.

Alone against the sky, the living branch was too heavy to hold itself without the other for balance. It crashed down. The
butt smashed the Firekeepers’ hut to splinters. A mound of green leaves covered it.

They saw that the tree’s heart was dark and hollow where there should have been living wood.

It took days to haul the wood out of the middle of the village. When the debris was all gone, the ground underneath was thick
with acorns.

The newborn showed its glistening head.

The Moonkeeper urged, “Again, Shavon! Push!”

The Shahala almost-mother bore down. The grunting and gnashing of tenacity over pain stirred Ashan’s memory of her own triumph
long ago: Kai El’s birth, the purest joy she had ever known.

The tiny warrior slid into the Moonkeeper’s hands. She wiped his mouth and nose. He howled before she had to slap him, a sign
he’d been here before.

“A boy!” she said, holding him up. “Eager for life!”

The baby’s cries were lost in the cheer that arose in the women’s hut at Teahra Village, echoed by the men waiting outside
at a safe distance.

Ashan put the baby in his mother’s arms.

“You did well, Shavon. He’s beautiful.”

Exhaustion and pain, forgotten in the wonder of birth, washed over Ashan.

“Tenka, you finish.”

She handed Tenka the sacred blade for cutting the cord, left the women’s hut, and made her slow, painful way downriver.

After her recent fall, Ashan had given up medicine work. Tenka, the Other Moonkeeper, could have managed a birth by herself,
but this baby was so special that Ashan would not have missed the privilege of welcoming him.

The one just born was the
first
of mixed Shahala-Tlikit blood. Who would have thought he would be eleven summers coming? Or was it twelve since she had seen
the Great River for the first time? It was becoming harder for Ashan to remember things like that without looking at her time
ball.

Twice before, a mixed-blood baby had been lost in birthing—one took its Tlikit mother with it to the otherworld. Ashan had
prayed nothing would go wrong this time. Some people would take another failed birth as a sign that the tribes should separate.
There had always been a small, unhappy minority who felt that way. After Tsilka, their leader, was subdued by her life as
a slave, they had caused less and less trouble in Teahra Village. The Moonkeeper wanted to keep it that way.

Ashan reached the Great River. Tall bushes hid large, flat rocks at the water’s edge… the women’s washing place. Early morning
was the best time to be here. Sunlight floated on the water. Ashan cleaned herself, her robe, and a spot on her moccasin.
She spread her robe in the sun to dry, and pulled her long skirt around her shoulders as a cape. Sitting with her head on
her knees, the Moonkeeper listened to the Medicine Drum, muffled by the lapping water, welcoming the newborn. The sun gave
her energy. Wind blew up the Great River, taking exhaustion away.

Because of a trick of the wind, she heard the Medicine Drum as if it came from the cliffs instead of the village. Her takoma
called to her, or maybe it was the wind-whipped drumsong, or her own longing.