Children of the Dawn (3 page)

D
EFORE IT WAS COMPLETELY DARK
, A
LHAIA THE
M
OON
arose—huge and glowing, dusty golden, in the way of a full autumn moon—soon after Kai, the Sun, descended, taking with him
what little warmth he’d given.

Close to Tor under furs, leaning against travel poles, gazing at the wide sky filling up with stars, Ashan didn’t mind the
cold.

“This Great River,” she said. “How far is it?”

“What does your nose say, oh chief who understands the languages of nature?”

“Be serious, Tor. How far?”

“You cross a few more hills. Then there it is, down in a gorge.” His voice softened with memory. “A trail takes you down to
the place where we’ll live. I named it Together Teahra. I wonder if the Tlikit still call it that?”

“Maybe they don’t live there anymore,” Ashan said, thinking that would be fine with her.

“Teahra has everything. They wouldn’t leave.”

“Maybe we should wait. Or go up the river, or down the river. Settle somewhere else. Leave the Tlikit alone.”

“Ashan, our dreams were different, but they had the same end: people of both tribes living together at the Great River.”

“I know, Tor. But how will we get them to
want
to live together?”

“That I don’t know.”

Ashan shook her head, annoyed. “Where are your promises now? How much help are you going to be? You lived with them. I thought
you’d know more.”

“I haven’t told you everything,” he warned.

Without ever speaking of it, both knew there were things Ashan wouldn’t want to hear. So she asked questions carefully, learning
enough to make a plan, while not learning anything that would hurt her heart.

“How many are there?”

He had to think. “About ten hands.”

“What about guards?”

Tor shook his head. “They think they’re the only people in the world. Even if they wanted to, the place is impossible to guard.
There’s more than one way through the cliffs.”

Good for now,
Ashan thought.
Bad for later.
If the Tlikit couldn’t guard Teahra, how could the Shahala?

“These Tlikit people… are they good, or bad?”

“A hard question. I have seen kindness and savagery.”

“What makes the difference?”

Tor shrugged. “There was much about them I never understood. At first they treated me like a god, even called me by the name
of one: Wahawkin, the Water Giver, a trickster, like Coyote Spirit. They believe this Wahawkin stole the water from the lake
where they lived.”

Ashan said, “I always thought it was strange that anyone could look at
you
and see a god.”

“I don’t think it’s so strange,” he said. “But later, they turned mean and used me as a slave. I would have died if one of
their little ones hadn’t helped me escape.”

Ashan doubted it. “People might argue and fight, but they don’t kill each other… except for man-eaters… ”

“You don’t know them.”

“I’m trying. But you only told me good things. You never said they were killers.”

“I’m telling you now: I would have died at their hands. That’s why I took the boy with me when I got away.”

“How many did they kill when you were there?”

“None. But I think they would have killed him for letting me go.”

She still had trouble believing such a thing.

“I wonder if they still want to kill him?” she said. “It was two summers ago.”

“I hope not, but I don’t know. Once you make people that angry, it might take more than time to forget. That’s why we have
to be careful about how we do this.”

Ashan nodded. “So. Our new brothers and sisters, with their mix of good and bad—”

Tor interrupted in a firm voice.

“Listen, Ashan: This is what we must do. I know a way down into the canyon, so they won’t hear us coming. We’ll wait until
they’re full from eating, then walk right up on them. Can you imagine how shocked they’ll be to see the whole Shahala tribe?
With our warriors in front, fierce with paint, showing our weapons? We are sixteen hands; they are fewer than ten. They’re
smart enough to fear us.”

“That’s a terrible idea. One hand should not be made to fear the other.”

“You don’t understand how simple they are. How different from us. You never know what they’ll do. We must use the strength
of how many we are, until they accept our ways.”

“But the spirits say we must work together, like bees in a nest, or geese in a flock.”

“You may understand this, my love, but no one has told the Tlikit.”

“I am the Moonkeeper of Amotkan’s favorite tribe. I refuse to lead my people down there like a tribe of man-eaters. What about
Elia? He could go first and tell them about us. He’d do anything for you.”

Tor sighed. “I know.”

Elia was the boy who had helped Tor escape from the Tlikit tribe. The Shahala thought he was just a lost boy who wandered
into Anutash one day, but Tor had told Ashan the real story.

The Tlikit called one child the “kicking child,” and treated him almost as a slave. His name was Chimnik, their word for “spoiled
food.” When he and Tor were free, he changed his name to Elia, Shahala word for “friend.” He and Tor became close as they
searched for Ashan and Kai El. When Tor lost hope, he left Elia near Anutash for the Shahala to find.

Never loved by his own people, Elia was loved by his new people as if he’d been bora to them. Most of all by the one who took
him to raise: Tor’s father, Arth. Elia helped fill the hole in Arth gouged out by the death of his second son Beo at the hands
of man-eaters, and deepened when his mate, Luka, had chosen to stop living.

Elia loved Tor and would do anything for him.

“Well,” Ashan said, “what about sending the boy?”

“I can’t. They still might want to kill him.”

“What kind of people would kill children?”

“Tlikit people.”

Ashan sighed. “Oh, Tor… how will this ever work?”

“I know another way,” he said. “I will go alone.”

“No.”

Ashan would not send her beloved mate into the village of savages with no magic to protect him.

“If this is not work for a Moonkeeper, what will ever be? When the sun rises, you and I will go together.”

The round moon crept up the sky and began its descent. The long night was silent, but for the keening wind and the distant
cries of a coyote.

Ashan could not sleep. Warm under bearskin, she snuggled against her mate, enjoying the firmness of his muscles, and the way
his backside fit the curve of her stomach—feelings to make her forget almost anything.

But not tonight. Worries about tomorrow crawled through her mind like cave bugs through bat dung.

She could tell that Tor was awake by his uneven breathing.

“Sweetmate?” she whispered.

“Mmm?”

“You say it isn’t far, this Tlikit village?”

“No, it’s not.”

“Could you and I walk there tonight?”

“We could.”

“Can we see where they live without them seeing us?”

“Yes. Do you want to?”

Tor waited for her answer, but the word “yes” stuck in her throat.

The
Moonkeeper
must protect her tribe, and it might help
if she could see what they faced. But it troubled the
mother
to leave her son… her baby, she still thought of Kai El, though he was five summers now.

We were away from people all that time; everything to each other; never apart I would die without him.

Ashan knew she shouldn’t worry. The Shahala valued and protected little ones above everything, because they were the future.
Out here in the tabu land, they slept in a cluster at the center of camp surrounded by their elders. But still… she would
never be comfortable with Kai El out of sight, had come too close to losing him.

Ashan pictured the heap of little ones: tangled arms and legs, some heads showing, some hidden under sleeping skins.
Like the litters often coyotes, she thought No telling which pup is mine.
She took a deep breath and sent a thought to Kai El:
Amah will be back soon.

“I want to go,” she whispered to Tor.

“Make yourself warm,” he said

She looked at the moonbright sky. In autumn and winter, clear nights were the coldest.

“I will,” she said.

Under the cover of the bearskin, Ashan pulled on leather moccasins and leggings, and a rabbit pelt robe with the fur inside.
She had to get out to lace and fasten, and nearly froze by the time she finished. The wind snatched her hair, so she tied
it with a thong and tucked the ends into her robe. She wrapped a fox pelt around her head and neck. Finally, she was warm.

She gazed at the tribe.

“Look at them: Unmoving mounds. How can they sleep with tomorrow’s unknown hanging over them?”

“People have a Moonkeeper to do their worrying for them,” Tor answered, fastening his bison robe.

The Moonkeeper and her mate left the camp and headed in the direction Warmer. They hadn’t gone far when moonlight fell on
a path.

“Right where I remembered,” Tor said.

“I guess they still live here,” Ashan said, looking at trampled grass.

“I never doubted it. Why move? As I told you, everything is here that could ever be needed.”

Holding hands, they walked along the path, absorbed in their own thoughts. Aromas of water and fish grew stronger. Ashan sniffed
for smoke, was glad not to find it… a good sign the Tlikit were sleeping.

The wind died suddenly, as if speared. It had been with them for so long that its absence was eerie, a silence broken only
by the occasional barks of a coyote. They crested another hill like the rest—except that Ashan saw no hills beyond. The moon-washed
grass of the plateau gave way to flat, rock-strewn ground. They walked on, and suddenly they were standing on a cliff—

—
at the edge of the world!

Ashan dropped her staff and it went clattering down. She swayed, would have fallen, but Tor had his arm around her.

“Oh Amotkan,” she gasped.

“The Great River,” Tor whispered. “For so long I’ve wanted you to see this.”

Bands of moonlight shimmered on black water so wide she couldn’t see any edges, except one far below, where waves lapped the
dark shore. Great herds of fish swam against the current, taking no rest even at night… glistening silver specks dipping up
and down, breaking the moonlight into splinters that quivered and formed themselves whole again.

“So many!” she said. “They must be huge to be seen from up here. Are they salmon?”

“They are, and they fill the river in all seasons.”

She shook her head in wonder.

Tor pointed downriver. A tongue of land pushed into the water. Ashan saw the glow of a used-up fire.

“Teahra,” he said in a voice soft as a dream. “See how the cliffs curve round to protect it?”

She wondered where the huts were.

Tor seemed to know what she was thinking. “Someday it will be a great village with many huts. Right now, the people sleep
in a cave—see the dark slash? It’s long and low, a good cave, except for the smell, and a nose gets used to that. The wind
can’t—”

A howl ripped his words away.

The hair on Ashan’s neck stiffened. She’d heard this coyote before. Closer than ever, it seemed to be stalking them. But why?
Coyotes didn’t follow people. Known by legend as both trickster and friend, songdogs traveled in families. Why was this one
alone?

Tor went on as if he hadn’t heard it. “Our people will never know hunger again.”

Another howl, closer yet. Then eager yips.

Ashan whirled around. She saw nothing but moonlit ground strewn with rocks too small to hide a coyote. The yipping died away,
leaving the night air thick with silence, heavy with power.

Her voice shook. “Why would a coyote stalk us?”

“What are you talking about?”

“That coyote! It’s been following us! It’s right over there!”

She pointed a shaking finger. The howling started again. It rolled on and on, longer than any coyote ever howled. Noise grew
to pain. Ashan covered her ears, but the sound sliced through her hands and pierced her heart like a porcupine quill made
of cold stone. A scream rose in her throat. If the beast didn’t stop, Ashan would start howling with it.

But it stopped. Thank Amotkan!

The silence roared.

“You didn’t hear that?”

“What?”

She shrieked, “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with you, Ashan?”

But she could not answer.

TWO lights blinked on in the night, a stone’s throw away. Fist-sized, pale green, bright as chunks of sun, the light balls
bobbed above the ground, as if thinking—then hurtled, faster than shooting stars—growing huge—coming straight for her face.
She saw eyes in the lights—hot, burning eyes—and a black nose, and lips curled back from white, sharp teeth. Coyote Spirit!

Shoving Tor away, she backed up and plunged into empty air. Falling free, she screamed the trickster’s name.

“Spilyea!”

The creature of light slipped under her, a sling to cradle a
birthing baby, slowing Ashan to float like a leaf above a storm. A point of rock reached out and caught hold of her robe.
She began sliding, tried to grab—

Ashan knew no more.

T
HIS CAN’T BE REAL!
T
OR THOUGHT.
I
MUST BE
dreaming!

A moment ago, Ashan had been here beside him at the edge of Chiawana’s high gorge. Then, terrified by—
by what?
—she pushed him away—fell—

Her screams echoed up from the dark canyon.

“Speeel-yea-a-a!”

“No!” Tor cried. “No-o-o!”

Their mingled terror bent the night.

Sounds from below silenced him: a heavy thud, a clatter of rocks… then nothing but riversound.

What did she see that sent her backward off a cliff, to her
death.
No, he would not think that word! Moonkeepers did not die like other people.

Everyone dies!