Children of the Dawn (32 page)

He thought… two pretty girls at his heels. That was a picture worth sharing with Jud.

“Are you sure we should go on, Gaia?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Gaia… ” said her twin. “What a pretty little name.”

Kai El felt Gaia’s heat, a different kind of heat than he’d felt when they had climbed to the Moonkeeper’s takoma. She was
furious at her sister—more than she needed to be, he thought. But he didn’t know what it was like to have a sister or brother.
It seemed you would love such a person, but he supposed you could hate them, too. A mate you could choose, a friend you could
get away from, but a brother or sister lived in your hut.

He led the way into the canyon—going slower this time. It was like walking the bottom of a wild, narrow river whose water
had been sucked out—a twisting, turning channel, scarred by long-ago floods rushing to join the Great River. Dry now, it would
be a bad place to go in the rainy season.

They turned into a side gully that ended on a slope of loose
scree. The remains of an old trail cut up and across the scree, heading toward smooth outcroppings near the canyon top.

’The rock pictures are up there. You girls go first. I’ll be behind if you slip,” Kai El said, thinking he’d get plenty of
looks at legs in motion.

Tahna took off with the speed and agility of the cat for which her sister was named, throwing challenging glances back at
Kai El. Gaia needed a slower pace, and he didn’t mind staying with her. The distance increased between them, then Tahna was
out of sight. In places there was no trail, but Gaia knew about keeping hands, feet, and sometimes belly, touching the ground.

Like the shaking of a shaman’s rattle, Kai El heard the warning of the snake coiled across the trail, within distance, ready
to strike. The rattler shot out. Kai El threw his spear, shoving Gaia with his other hand. The spear ruined the snake’s aim.
Kai El caught it slithering away, and killed it with a blow from his spear butt.

He heard those awful, desperate gasps again, the sound of dying for breath.

Oh Amotkan
…

To save her from the snake, Kai El had almost thrown Gaia down the canyonside. She was on her knees below him, clinging to
the steep ground, shoulders heaving.

He scrabbled to her, knelt, tried to hold her.

She pushed him. “Go away. I’ll come later.”

At least he thought that’s what she said, between those terrifying noises of pulling, reaching, grasping—sounds of a fish
snatched out of water, drowning in a river of air. He admired the courage that kept her struggling. He couldn’t imagine what
it must be like. Never in his life had anything kept him from breathing.

What would happen if Gaia gave up? Why didn’t Tahna come back?

He had to get her to Tenka, the Other Moonkeeper, who was now the only Moonkeeper.

“I’m taking you home. You’ll have to hold on to my back going down this scree.”

To his surprise, she agreed.

When they reached lower ground, Kai El carried Gaia in
his arms. New desires filled him. He wanted much more than to make love to her. He wanted to protect her, to spend every moment
with her, to hear her laughter and wipe away her tears. He thought the name for these feelings was “love.”

The attack on Gaia ended with a coughing fit. But it—whatever
it
was—had done something to her this time. Her heaviness in his arms was a sign of her weakness.

“Put me down,” she said as they approached Teahra Village. “Please don’t tell anyone what happened.”

“But—”

“I promise I will talk to your Moonkeeper.”

Kai El didn’t believe her, but he didn’t know what to do.

Gaia might think this was the end of it, but she was wrong. He had to know more about the thing that attacked her. If she
was just
any
girl… but she was not. That had changed when he held her in his arms carrying her home.

A
SHAN’S DISAPPEARANCE UNSETTLED
T
EAHRA
Milage. Even after a turning of the seasons, people still thought of Tenka as the “Other Moonkeeper,” of her hut as “Tenka’s
hut,” and Kai El and Tor’s as the “Moonkeeper’s hut.”

Compared to Kai El’s mother, Tenka was an oil lamp next to the sun. She would not have been his choice for chief, but no one
cared what an almost-man thought.

On the way to see Tenka, Kai El told himself that she was doing her best, and she was the only one who knew medicine.

Tenka welcomed him to her hut. The warm air was heavy with sweet grass smoke. She bent over a small fire, spreading it with
a stick.

Kai El caught his breath. In the Moonkeeper’s cape of black condor feathers, it was like—

“How are you?” she asked, smiling up at him—Tenka, after all—his aunt, not his mother.

“I did not come about myself.”

“It’s Tsagaia, then?”

“How did you know? Did she talk to you?”

“I’m the Moonkeeper. I’m supposed to know. How may I help you, Kai El?”

Of course she wouldn’t say whether she and Gaia had talked—visits with the Moonkeeper were secret.

Kai El settled cross-legged on a woven mat. The firecoals glowed between them. Tenka looked like an ordinary woman,
except for the shining condor feathers. Whatever power she had wasn’t obvious in her long-boned, pleasant face, an open face
that invited trust.

“Tsagaia is my friend,” Kai El said. “I took her to see some rock pictures. But I walked too fast, and a rattlesnake scared
her, and… ” He didn’t know how to describe the rest.

“She couldn’t breathe?”

Surprised, Kai El nodded.

“I thought she was dying,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do. I was carrying her home, but her breath came back, and she
made me put her down. She made me promise not to tell.”

Telling took a weight from Kai El. Of course he hadn’t told Tor—his father was the last person who should know about a flaw
in Gaia.

“I’m glad you told me,” Tenka said. “I didn’t think she could keep her secret forever. Though I did hope so, for that would
mean she was over it.”

“You mean it’s happened before?”

“Many times.

Kai El was astonished.

“How could I miss it?”

“She didn’t want people to see. She thought it made her look weak, and you know, Kai El, among animals, sometimes the weak
do not survive.”

Tenka looked at Kai El to make sure he understood. He swallowed.

“Her mother brought her to your mother when she was about knee-tall. I was young and still learning medicine. I thought she
looked perfect, but Tsilka told us it was sometimes hard for the child to breathe. Your mother gave her sage to carry. When
the Breath Ogre wanted to steal Tsagaia’s air, she could drive him away by smelling rubbed sage. It helped, but it didn’t
stop the attacks.”

Something called a Breath Ogre did not like sage… the mysteries of plants amazed Kai El. None of his mother’s healing skills
had been passed on to him.

Tenka continued. “Tsagaia learned things no other child had to learn. Hard things. How not to be terrified when you
feel like you are dying. How to hide such a thing from others. Her shyness comes from it. So does her courage.”

“Courage? No one thinks of Tsagaia as having courage. They think she’s afraid of everything.”

“What about the wildfire, when she stayed calm while the rest of you panicked? Wasn’t that courage?”

“Of course. It was so long ago, I guess I’d forgotten.” Kai El shook his head. “How stupid I am. I thought she had the heart
of a mouse, but she has the heart of the cougar she is named for.”

“Yes, she does. But it’s not your fault you didn’t understand that. She works hard to keep people from knowing her.”

She won’t keep
me
from knowing her,
Kai El thought.

The Moonkeeper said, “When she was ten summers, the Breath Ogre left her. Season after season, he didn’t come back. I think
Tsagaia had begun to believe she was safe. I’m sorry to hear that her old enemy has returned.”

It was hard to ask this question, but Kai El had to.

“Could the Breath Ogre kill her?”

Tenka hesitated. “I don’t know.”

He frowned. His mother would have known.

“What should I do?” he asked.

“Don’t tire her. Don’t frighten her. Get her to carry sage.”

“Would birthing tire her too much?” he blurted.

“I don’t think so. Nor would lovemaking.”

Tenka’s look said she understood what was in Kai El’s heart.

Heat rose in his face. He didn’t want anyone to know how he felt about Gaia. He himself did not really understand how he felt.

P
EOPLE SAID THAT IT WAS HOTTER ON THE
G
REAT
River that summer than it had ever been in Shahala land. Those who thought Ashan was the last
real
Moonkeeper didn’t trust Tenka to change the seasons, though she had done so several times.

“It might not work this time,” they said, and talked about what would happen if summer went on and on, agreeing it would be
better to get stuck in summer than in winter.

Ridiculous. Kai El respected his mother, but seasons changed themselves. It was one of the things Ehr had taught him.

Yesterday Kai El had taken refuge from the heat at his mother’s takoma in the cliffs, where there was always a breeze. He
had slept here last night and might again. The night would be warm and full of bugsongs, whose rhythm heightened as autumn
approached, until they were silenced by the first frost

He wished he knew what to do. Gaia was hiding. He hadn’t been able to talk to her, not once, since he’d carried her home the
day the Breath Ogre had attacked her. The only time he’d seen her alone, she hurried away as he approached.

What had he done to make her act this way?

Why do you care?
asked the part of his mind annoyed by the summer heat.
Why would you want someone like that?

But I do. And she needs me. All I have to do is convince her.

Kai El opened his waist pouch and took out a bundle of strands—long black hairs pulled from all over his head, gathered and
tied like a horse’s tail, and ready for braiding—the beginning of a pledge band.

Pledge bands were an old Shahala tradition that few men bothered to make anymore. He thought few even remembered what they
meant. Kai El remembered. His mother had worn his father’s pledge band until she died. And afterward, for all he knew, since
only her time ball was found.

When horses still roamed the earth, pledge bands were made from their tails. The work told of a man’s love for a special woman.
More colors meant more horses killed, and that meant the man would be a good mate. Horses were only a memory now… sad, they
must have been beautiful, the way people talked of them.

Kai El decided to use his own hair to make his pledge band. It was shiny and coarse, and his head had more than it needed.
He would line it with soft leather, so it wouldn’t make Gaia’s arm itch.

He smoothed the hair bundle, combing the strands with his fingers. Gaia liked Shahala ways. Gaia made beautiful things. She
might appreciate a pledge band.

She might use it to choke him.

That gave him an idea. He took sage from his medicine pouch and rubbed it between his fingers. The sharp fragrance reminded
him of rain on the prairie. One at a time he pulled the strands of hair through his scented fingers—like women used beeswax
for sinew—making the strands stronger, wrapping them with the sacred plant’s protection.

Kai El separated the magic strands into hanks, brought one over, another under, beginning a band for Gaia’s arm that he hoped
would bind their hearts.

Through a gap in the hut’s cover of woven tule reeds that needed patching before the autumn rains, a girl of fourteen summers
watched stars fade from the dawn sky. Her name was Tsagaia, Big Tan Cat; but since a warrior had called her the name that
meant Kitten, she thought of herself as Gaia. She’d been elated by his attention. All a girl could want in a mate, Kai El
was wellborn, son of the lost Moonkeeper and
Tor. He was kind, funny, and smart. She pictured his muscled body—the strength and grace of his movements; a face for dreaming
about; eyes that spoke a secret language she understood; voice that stroked her ears.

Sun River—she loved the meaning of his name—could have anyone. How could he be interested in her?

This and other worries had kept Gaia awake most of the night.

She’d been afraid her sister would take Kai El from her, when the real worry was herself… and the Breath Ogre. After what
he had seen, Kai El must think her unfit for mating.

Tears blurred the patch of morning sky. More than anything, Gaia wanted to be a mother. But what if the Breath Ogre attacked
while a baby was being born? She had watched birthing; she knew how hard it was for the mother. What if she became too tired
to fight? What if she died? Who would care for her baby? Once she would have trusted her twin, but no longer.

What if the Breath Ogre attacked the helpless baby?

I’ll burst if I don’t talk to someone,
Gaia thought.

She’d always felt comfortable with the Moonkeeper Ashan, but Ashan was gone. Anyway, how could she have talked to a mother
about her son… about these kinds of feelings…

Why not talk to Tenka, the Other Moonkeeper, who had taken Ashan’s place? Tenka was said to be wise and kind. Gaia would trust
her about medicine, but what could a mate-less woman know about love? She had promised Kai El she would talk to Tenka, but
she just couldn’t.
You have to know someone to trust them,
she thought.

Gaia was nearly miserable enough to talk to her twin. They used to be closer than bark and tree. Tahna knew how to help fight
the Breath Ogre. Gaia never needed another friend. But womanhood changed Tahna’s mind along with her body: She became selfish,
sneaky, and mean. Gaia didn’t hate her, though she sometimes felt like choking her almost to death. When Tahna stole her neckband,
Gaia knew she’d never trust her sister again.