Children of the Dawnland (North America's Forgotten Past Series) (19 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear,W. Michael Gear

BOOK: Children of the Dawnland (North America's Forgotten Past Series)
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A
LL DAY LONG they’d been hiding and running. Twig was so exhausted, she felt light-headed. And Greyhawk looked pale, and hurt. The pain in his wounded arm must be unbearable.
But at nightfall, Twig and Greyhawk found Oakbeam Village.
Empty. Burned to the ground.
“When did this happen?” she softly asked. “Can you tell?”
“Not long ago. Maybe yesterday. The fires are still burning.”
Fog blew through the smoldering husks of lodges. Everywhere, wooden bowls and baskets tumbled in the wind. Many of the bodies lay just in front of burned lodges, as though the people had been killed the moment they’d ducked outside.
Twig felt suddenly cold. Her clan, the Blue Bear Clan, believed that the souls of the dead stayed in the village for three days before traveling to the Land of the Dead. Twig could feel them. Each time a burned lodge pole creaked in the wind, she thought she heard voices.
Greyhawk kicked at a broken atlatl. Then he picked up two spears that must have missed their targets and been forgotten in the raging battle.
“Where are their families?” Greyhawk asked. “They should have come back to bury the bodies.”
“Maybe they’re all dead.”
They followed the trail through the smoke-blackened chaos and westward around the edges of the ice flow, where the fog was especially thick. It was like walking through a shimmering white blanket. Here, at this place, the glaciers flowed down and spread out across the land to form towering ice cliffs cut by deep cracks and fissures, and honeycombed with tunnels that seemed to go back into the ice forever.
“What’s that?” Twig said, and blinked at the canyon that appeared and disappeared as the fog shifted.
Greyhawk stopped. “I—I don’t know. Do you think it’s Hoarfrost Canyon?”
The sheer walls rose fifty times their height, as though
the frozen waste had been split by a lightning bolt cast by Earthmaker himself.
Twig clenched her fists to keep them from trembling. “Grandfather said that the entry to Cobia’s cave was at the end of Hoarfrost Canyon. Sh-should we go look?”
Greyhawk nocked a spear in Puffer’s atlatl. “Yes.”
Twig exhaled a long, frightened breath and walked out onto the sand and gravel that filled the bottom of the canyon.
The deeper they went, the more the canyon narrowed, as though it were funneling them in to some unknown darkness, and the walls grew steeper and taller. Twig glanced up. In less than two hundred paces, the ice cliffs had soared to one hundred times their height. Caves and tunnels of every size and shape sank into the walls. Twig tried not to look inside them, for fear of what she might see looking back.
The canyon was quiet and still. Twig stopped.
“What’s the matter with you?” Greyhawk asked.
“Power is loose. Can’t you feel it?”
Greyhawk looked at the birds darting over the high ice walls and said, “No. But I believe you.”
“Oh, Greyhawk, I wish Mother was here, or Screech Owl.”
“Well, they’re not. We have to do this by ourselves.”
Twig stopped, and the Stone Wolf radiated warmth against her chest, tugging her deeper into the canyon. “I—I’m going, Wolf,” she murmured.
As they kept walking, the ice above them knitted into
a roof, and the canyon became a deep dark tunnel. The huge black maw gaped as though ready to swallow them.
“Don’t tell me we have to go deeper into this tunnel,” Greyhawk hissed. “We don’t have a torch. How will we see?”
“I don’t know, I—”
Twig gasped when black flits of cloth darted from the caves to her right and flew straight at them. All she could do was stare at the glowing eyes in their soot-covered faces.
Greyhawk cried,
“Thornback raiders! Run, Twig!”
and he cast his spear.
“I said, RUN!”
Twig ran. But she’d barely taken four steps when a man tackled her from behind and knocked her to the ground. She smashed her head on a rock. The world started to spin. Above her, she saw the grinning face of the raider, then glimpsed Greyhawk racing toward her with his atlatl up. He cast his spear, and the big raider let out a cry, leaped up, and ran away with Greyhawk’s spear sticking from his chest. Greyhawk cast two more spears, but missed.
Pain was swelling behind Twig’s eyes like an enormous black bubble. She struggled to get to her feet, but kept falling back to the ground.
The next thing she knew, Greyhawk had grabbed her and was crawling, dragging her by the hand, into a narrow ice tunnel barely wide enough for a child’s body to pass through. Inside, the ice had a strange shimmer. Greyhawk stretched out flat on his belly and pulled her deeper
into the darkness. Twig tried to crane her neck to see how far back the tunnel ran, but it was black ahead. Utterly black. After dragging Twig about twenty paces, the tunnel grew wide enough for Greyhawk to sit up. He stopped and released her hand. Twig lifted her head to look back down the tunnel into the gray light of dusk.
A big raider tried to squeeze into the opening, but his shoulders were too wide. He cursed and backed out.
“Twig? Your head is bleeding. How badly are you hurt?
Answer me!
”
But she couldn’t, because the world was spinning into darkness, spinning … and she felt so sick.
S
HAKING, GREYHAWK SAT beside Twig and studied her face. Her eyes were sunken in twin black circles, and her breathing was ragged.
“Are you all right, Twig?”
She winced as she turned her head for him, and in the faint light that penetrated the cave, he saw a mat of gore and blood.
“Oh, Twig,” he whispered. “You have a bad head wound.”
She stammered, “H-how long do we … how long before …”
“Before they find a way to reach us?”
She nodded. It was obviously hard for her to speak.
“I don’t know, Twig.”
Twenty paces away, outside, the raiders shouted. Several more, smaller men, tried to crawl into the opening, but failed.
Greyhawk leaned back against the ice wall and let out a breath. His wounded arm was bleeding again. The tunnel continued to his right, utterly dark. He had no idea how far back into the ice it went; it might be a dead-end. But for the moment, they were safe.
“Greyhawk?”
“Yes?”
She looked at him with frightened eyes. “We’re t-trapped. We’re never going to be able to find Cobia’s cave from in here.”
“I know,” he said, feeling utterly defeated. Sweat was freezing on his face, and every nerve in his body screamed at him to run. But there was nowhere to go.
They had come so far, braved so many perils, and all of it for nothing. It made him ache deep down. Maybe they should have given up and gone back when she’d …
“So …” Twig took a deep breath and squinted her eyes as she said, “I’m going to try to dream my way there.”
He jerked around, astonished. “Can you do that?”
Sheer terror strained her face. “I don’t know. I—I feel sick, shaky. If I fall into the river at the edge of the Land of the Dead, I may not be strong enough to swim out.”
“Then maybe you should wait. Tomorrow, when you’re stronger, then you—”
“Boy!”
one of the raiders shouted into the tunnel.
Greyhawk froze. They had built a fire outside, and he could see the man’s shining face. He had a thick bandage around his throat, soaked with blood.
The raider said, “I just wanted you to know that I killed your filthy dog. I clubbed him until his head was mush; then I cut out his heart and ate it for supper.”
Greyhawk couldn’t speak. Sobs spasmed his chest. He wanted to shout
You’re lying!
but he feared it was true. The last time he’d turned to look back, he’d seen two warriors running to help Netsink, and each had carried a war club.
Twig said, “Don’t listen to him, Greyhawk. You know how fast Yipper is. He ran. He got away.”
“Y-yes, I know he did.”
But he didn’t.
“And you, girl!”
the raider called again. “Hook killed your mother, Riddle, and who was that old man with her? Shrike slit his throat clear through to his spine.”
A strange numbness seemed to filter through Twig, as though her soul were loose, and preparing to fly away. She kept opening her mouth, then closing it. Was she trying to speak?
Greyhawk slid closer to her. “He’s lying. They’re both alive, Twig. I know they are.”
The raiders’ shadows moved across the face of the
cave. Twig whispered, “I have to try now, Greyhawk. I have to try to dream.”
“Can I help?”
She shook her head. “No. You’re a warrior. I—I’m a dreamer.”
With shaking hands, she tugged open the laces on her belt pouch and pulled out the tiny spruce branch from First Woman’s tree. It looked black in the dim light. She had tears running down her cheeks.
Greyhawk said, “You can do it, Twig. I know you can.”
She closed her eyes.
In an agonized voice, she started calling, “Eagle-Man, Eagle-Man, Eagle-Man …”
“
E
AGLE-MAN, PLEASE, PLEASE, help me!”
In the middle of the night, Twig was on the verge of giving up. Her throat was raw from calling out to her Spirit Helper, and the pain in her injured head had grown to fill the entire world.
She stopped for a moment and gulped in deep breaths of the icy air.
Greyhawk had positioned himself in front of her, between Twig and the raiders outside, but she could see around him. The raiders had built a fire in the mouth of the cave. They were melting it out, making it larger. The fire’s gleam turned the inside of the tunnel a gaudy orange.
It wouldn’t be long before they’d enlarged the cave enough for a man to crawl in after them.
Twig curled on her side on the floor of the cave and choked out, “Eagle-Man, please, hear me? I need you. I can’t do this without—”
The Ice Giants suddenly let out a low, deep-throated growl, and the ground shook.
And from somewhere far, far away, a voice called her name. It kept speaking, but she couldn’t really understand what it was saying. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. Something about Cobia … finding Cobia …
Then the Stone Wolf grew warm, almost hot, against her chest, and she clearly heard a boy say,
“It’s through here. This way. This is the way, Twig.”
A strange glitter danced behind her closed eyelids. Like a swarm of blue fireflies.
“Twig?”
Greyhawk called, but she could barely hear him. “What’s happening?”
It was as though Twig’s soul had stepped out of her body.
She found herself walking down a dark ice tunnel, alone and scared. She couldn’t feel her feet or hands, but her heart was beating. She could hear it.
She walked. And walked.
There were ice mountains, and frozen creeks, and towering blue glaciers that leaned over her like monstrous beings.
After what seemed like days, the tunnel began to grow larger. She must be in the very heart of the Ice Giants,
because their voices were deafeningly loud. The deeper she traveled, the larger the tunnel grew, until it became a shining blue cavern. There were ice spires everywhere, and she heard water lapping against a shore, as though a great ocean spread beneath the ice.
And … she thought she heard people chanting. The rhythm reminded her of the ghost chants her own people sang to drive away evil Spirits.
“Hello!” Twig shouted.
High-pitched squeals answered. They mixed with the chanting and echoed in a way that struck terror into Twig’s heart.
“Hello! Who’s there?”
The cavern seemed to close in around her, the ice walls bending down to peer at her more carefully. Twig shivered. This place was not beautiful, though she had the feeling that it was old, very old, and that living humans had never dared to tiptoe beyond the well-worn trails. To her left, tumbled piles of ice choked the floor, and wherever the blue light touched, the ice seemed alive, pulsing.
Twig turned around in a full circle. “Oh, Cobia, where are you? I’m scared. I don’t know how to find you. Cobia?”
Sobs clutched at her chest as she started to run again, dashing down a dip in the trail and up the other side.
The chanting grew louder, and life stirred the depths of the cavern. But Twig did not think she knew this kind of life. Feet pounded—heavy, thrashing angrily in a dance that shook the trail.
Twig ran like the wind. Shadows moved at the edges of
the trail, some of them loping along beside her, keeping pace while they hissed their resentment at her presence.
“Cobia? Cobia, please!”
She rounded a bend, and one of the dancers leaped at her. He didn’t have any arms or legs, just enormous black eyes and a protruding mouth shaped from pink pipestone. Colorful feathers adorned the dancer’s costume.
“What do you want?” Twig asked.
The dancer dodged into a shadow. But Twig saw others moving nearby. Their masks glinted as they floated between the ice spires.
Twig ran on, racing down a winding trail, slowing only when the trail vanished. She couldn’t see it anywhere. Which way should she go?
She decided to run straight ahead. Thirty paces later, the tunnel narrowed. If it shrank any more, she would be crawling on her hands and knees.
Suddenly she broke out of the tunnel and stepped into a huge washed-out cavern. High above her, Star People glittered. Trails led off in every direction. Ten or more!
Twig spun around, examining the path that dropped off down a long slope. Then she looked at the trail that climbed into another ice chamber above her.
From out of her memories, she heard a voice whisper,
“To step onto the path, you must leave it. Only the lost come to stand before the entrance to Cobia’s cave.”
Tears blurred her eyes. She looked back down the trail. Even from this distance, she could see dark shapes moving. “But the only place without paths is that horrible cavern.”
Twig clenched her fists, took a deep breath to fight her fear, and walked down, down through the small tunnel and into the cavern where there were no trails, where dark shadows watched in silence.
The chanting started again.
Twig shouted, “Eagle-Man?”
She waited.
For a while, she thought she might be all right.
Then the masked dancers returned and floated around her like a ring of wolves. She couldn’t see them clearly. Just flashes of hideous red mouths, or of long beaks carved from pale wood. When she looked the hardest, the dancers vanished into twists of ice.
“Eagle-Man? Help me! Show me the way to Cobia’s cave!”
The shadows went still. Twig jerked around, trying to figure out what they were doing. The strange chant had stopped, the cavern gone silent.
“Eagle-Man?”
Something glimmered to her right. It seemed a trick of starlight when the figure loomed up from the heart of the darkness and stepped toward her.
“I heard you, Dreamer.”
Relief made Twig laugh. “Eagle-Man!” She ran to him, weaving between ice spires. “Thank you. I’ve been so lost, I …”
Eagle-Man lowered his head, and his beak opened, revealing sharp teeth. He shrieked like Hawk.
Then he spread his wings and dove at her.

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