Children of the Dawnland (North America's Forgotten Past Series) (3 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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T
HE NEXT MORNING, as they ran for the Snake Rocks, Greyhawk yelled, “Twig, this is a terrible idea! Let’s go home!”
Twig dodged a patch of ice that hid in the shadows of the boulders and continued running down the hill. Dead grass snatched at her doeskin dress as she leaped a deep gully filled with rushing water. On the other side, she turned to watch Greyhawk to make sure he could jump the gully.
Yipper leaped it in one bound and turned to bark at Greyhawk, as though to tell him it was easy. Greyhawk stopped and grimaced at the gully. He wore a buckskin
shirt that hung down to his knees and had many fringes on the sleeves. “I thought you said Screech Owl’s cave was close! How much farther is it?”
“It’s right there.” She pointed to the black boulders piled in the valley bottom like a lumpy snake. At the far end, gigantic oaks grew. “Screech Owl’s cave is behind those trees.”
Greyhawk cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted, “Twig, we shouldn’t go see him! My father says he’s an old witch.”
“I have to talk to him, Greyhawk. He’s the only one who understands my dreams. And he knows Cobia better than anyone. He raised her.”
“Are you sure it was Cobia in your dream?”
“No. That’s why I have to talk to Screech Owl. I have to know for sure.”
Greyhawk frowned down at the gully again; then he leaned over to sniff it. Yipper’s ears went up, and he sniffed the gully, too. Greyhawk and Yipper liked to smell things—some of them pretty putrid. Once last summer he had taken Twig to a recently abandoned wolf’s den and gotten down on his hands and knees to sniff the ground alongside Yipper, telling her he could distinguish the pups’ sleeping places from the adults’ just by the smell of the wolves’ urine.
Twig couldn’t see any use to such knowledge. She could tell the difference by the look of the tracks. Who wanted to smell wolf urine?
“Come on, Greyhawk!” she said. “You’ve made it this far.”
Yipper barked at Greyhawk and wagged his tail, as though wondering what was taking his master so long.
Greyhawk yelled, “I’m coming!”
He nerved himself and took a flying leap across the gully, but stumbled on the other side and fell to his knees in a puddle. Water splashed up around him. As he dragged himself to his feet, Greyhawk made a low sound of disgust.
Twig said, “Did you hurt yourself?”
“Of course not.” He shook water from his hands and straightened his buckskin shirt. “I swear that gully is twice as wide as it was a moon ago.”
“It is twice as wide. Mother says the Ice Giants have been melting faster, flooding the creeks and gullies, washing them out.”
Greyhawk flung out an arm to point west and said, “I’m telling you, we should do this another day. Thunderbird is coming.”
Twig turned and saw blue-black Cloud People walking across the earth on spindly legs of rain. Thunderbirds lived in the bellies of Cloud People. They guided the storms and brought rain and snow to heal Mother Earth, but sometimes they could be violent.
“You’ve dodged lightning bolts before,” Twig said. “Besides, we’ll be at Screech Owl’s cave soon, and there’s a big rock ledge just above the cave. It’s always dry beneath it.”
“But … Twig,” Greyhawk said nervously. “I talked to Father last night. He said the village elders banished Screech
Owl from living with humans because he had the soul of a wolf.”
“He has a kestrel soul now. He says his soul has had many shapes. You’ll like him. He tells great stories.”
Greyhawk didn’t move. He was biting his lip and glancing back toward Buffalobeard Village. Yipper followed his gaze, as though expecting to see something dangerous bounding toward them.
“What’s wrong?” Twig called.
Greyhawk made a face. “I’m not going.”
“Greyhawk! He’s not as crazy as people say. Screech Owl is … different, but he’s not bad. Come on, you’ll see.” She waved him forward.
“But what if Screech Owl does something to us, like casts a spell on us?”
She groaned. “A spell? What kind of spell?”
“I don’t know! Maybe he’d witch us to make us lose our human souls so he can put kestrel souls in our bodies.”
Twig spread her arms and whirled on her toes, imitating a soaring bird. She felt absolutely free. “I’ve always wanted to fly, Greyhawk. Haven’t you?”
“No!”
Twig put her hands on her hips. “Then go home! I’ll go by myself. I should have known you were too young to bring along. But I’m telling you the truth, Screech Owl is no witch, and he’s not crazy either. He’s just a little—”
Thunderbird chose that instant to crackle lightning
bolts over their heads, and she saw Greyhawk leap off the ground and collapse into a trembling heap. Yipper frantically licked his face to comfort him.
“See?” Twig grinned. The first drops of rain started to fall, cool and wonderful on her face. “Even Thunderbird agrees with me. You’re a coward, Greyhawk!”
She turned and raced for Screech Owl’s cave.
Rain began falling harder, soaking her dress and the long black braid that bounced against her back.
Thunderbird roared again.
“Wait!” Greyhawk yelled as he scrambled to his feet. “Wait for me, Twig!”
“Well, hurry!”
As she dashed for Screech Owl’s cave, the hair on her arms started to prickle. Spirit power did that; it rode the wind like tiny teeth until it could find a human and chew its way inside to coil around the soul.
From a short distance away, she called, “Screech Owl? It’s Twig. Are you here?”
No one answered.
Twig ducked beneath the low branches and into the dry spot created by the big rock ledge above the cave. Rain beat the ground, growing in strength.
Greyhawk stumbled through the branches behind her. With wide eyes, he hissed, “Is—Is Screech Owl here?”
“I don’t think so,” she said, disappointed.
Yipper was sniffing the tattered hide door curtain that covered the cave. After ten heartbeats he lifted his leg … .
“Yipper, no!” Greyhawk shouted, and dragged Yipper
away before he could mark the curtain as his personal territory.
Yipper looked totally confused, probably because he wasn’t the first dog to do such a thing.
Greyhawk said, “Twig, crawl inside his cave. If Screech Owl isn’t here, we can run home right away.” He longingly looked at their back trail. Water had started to puddle in the low spots.
Twig got down on her hands and knees, shoved aside the leather curtain that covered the cave, and crawled halfway inside. It was dark, but she could see the smoldering fire pit in the middle of the floor, and the tripod, made from three long sticks tied together at the top, that stood beside the pit. A hide bag hung from the tripod; it was probably filled with water or tea. The cave was large, fifty hands across. Her people measured distances by the length of a person’s hand, from the base of the palm to the tip of the longest finger. Power symbols covered the gray walls: red spirals, black crescent moons, purple starbursts, and many dancing buffalo, some playing bone flutes. The old man’s woven rabbit-fur blankets lay in the back of the cave.
“What’s that strange smell?” Greyhawk’s nose wiggled as he scented the air. “It smells like poison.”
“Screech Owl probably made another potion for his eyes. He tries new ones all the time. Nothing seems to help. He just can’t see very well these days. At least not close up. I think he’s getting old.”
“How old is he?”
“I don’t know. He’s lived maybe sixty summers.”
Screech Owl’s cave always smelled odd. The fragrances of wood smoke and Spirit potions hung in the air. All along the walls, brightly colored baskets of dried blossoms, fish scales, snake heads, Spirit plants like coughgrass root, as well other things that Twig couldn’t remember made bulges in the shadows … but Screech Owl was gone.
Twig sighed and slumped down outside the cave. “What am I going to do now? I really need to talk to Screech Owl.”
Greyhawk eased down beside her and propped his elbows on his drawn-up knees. “As soon as the rain lets up, we should go home.”
Twig watched the rain move down across Ice Giant Lake in the distance. Flashes of lightning struck at the tallest icebergs as Thunderbird took the storm north.
Greyhawk said, “Why can’t you just tell your mother about your dream? She’s a Spirit dreamer. And the keeper of the Wolf Bundle. She’s supposed to understand Spirit things.”
The Wolf Bundle was old. It had been handed down from Spirit elder to Spirit elder. Made of leather, like an old pouch, it was covered with paintings of spirals, buffalo, and wolves. A big yellow spider stared out from the middle of the bundle. Inside the bundle lived the Stone Wolf, a tiny black obsidian carving of a wolf. Legends said that the ancient hero, Wolf Dreamer, had carved the Stone Wolf right after the creation of the world. It had
enormous Spirit power … though Mother said she could never seem to feel it.
“Can’t she just ask the Stone Wolf?” Greyhawk said.
“She has more important things to do.” Twig left it at that.
Her mother didn’t have Screech Owl’s knowledge or power, but Twig couldn’t explain that to Greyhawk. He would think she meant something bad about her mother, and she didn’t, not really. Her mother had actually studied with Screech Owl for a while, so she did know important things about Spirit dreams.
Greyhawk looked at her from the corner of his eye. “Twig, what’s the old man like? If everyone in our village thinks he’s crazy, he must be.”
“No, he’s not. Really. He’s a good man. And he’s smart. I helped him fix a rabbit’s broken leg last spring. We tied sticks around it to keep it straight. Then Screech Owl built a cage and gathered grass and flowers for the rabbit to eat.”
“He fixed its leg instead of eating it? He doesn’t sound very smart to me,” Greyhawk grumped, and suspiciously sniffed the air again. “We should go. He’s not here, and if your mother finds out that we—”
Loud shrieks erupted when two kestrels swooped out of the sky and dove straight for them.
Greyhawk grabbed Twig’s arm in a death grip. The birds pulled up just before the cave and floated on the air currents, chirping to each other as they eyed Twig and Greyhawk.
Yipper growled and leaped into the sky to try to catch one, but the birds easily got away.
“Who are they?” Greyhawk whispered hoarsely. “Part of Screech Owl’s family?”
“If they are, I’ve never met them before.”
Sand trickled over the ledge, and they heard steps, like something heavy moving through the rocks above them. Twig and Greyhawk craned their necks to look.
“Can you see it? What is it?” Greyhawk hissed in panic. “A dire wolf? A short-faced bear?”
Dire wolves were much bigger than regular wolves, and short-faced bears were the most terrifying predators in their world. They had heads twice the size of grizzly bears.
Twig got to her feet. “I don’t see anything!”
Just then a shaft of sunlight pierced the clouds, and in the boulders high above them, someone shouted,
“There it is! Kill it!”
G
REYHAWK LET OUT a hoarse scream, and he and Twig crashed into each other as they tried to dash away in opposite directions. Yipper started growling and running circles around them. But before they had gone ten steps, Screech Owl’s tall, skinny body dropped from the ledge. He staggered sideways with his gray hair spiking out wildly. He had a long beaky face with deep wrinkles. His wolf-hide shirt and cape were little more than rags.
“Look at it!” Screech Owl shouted, and began grabbing up rocks and smashing them into the ground. “Hurry! Get some rocks. We have to kill it. It pounced on me first thing this morning! Tried to eat my soul!”
Greyhawk clutched Twig’s shoulders and hid himself behind her. She could feel his heavy breathing warm on her neck. They stared in utter terror at the tiny mouse that darted from rock to rock.
“Screech Owl!” Twig blurted. “That’s a mouse. What are you doing?”
The old man stopped throwing rocks in mid-swing and bent forward to squint at it. “It’s a mouse? Are you sure? I thought it was a baby mink.”
“No! Look at it.”
Screech Owl squinted harder; then he slammed his rock down and sighed. “Twig, I wish you’d come earlier. I wasted all morning chasing that mouse through the rocks.”
He strode forward in a whirl of ragged wolf hides and lifted her off her feet to hug her. “In fact, I wish you’d come moons ago. I’ve done some very strange things this winter. I think I’m changing form again. I may be turning into a mink. Look how sharp my teeth are getting.” He opened his mouth very wide to show her.
Twig pried herself loose from his grip when she heard Greyhawk make a strangling noise. “Screech Owl, we’ll talk about it later, all right? This is my friend, Greyhawk.”
She extended her hand to Greyhawk, who had flattened himself against one of the boulders and was breathing as though he had just finished a tough race.
Screech Owl stared. “Why, yes, of course. Reef’s son, from the Smoky Shrew Clan. I remember the night you were born. What a nasty hailstorm that was. It actually
cracked people’s skulls.” He shook his head and clucked noisily. “Yes, I recall that well. Of course, I wasn’t much help with the rescue. I had the soul of a vulture at the time, and I was always hungry, so I—”
“Screech Owl!” Twig cut him short when she saw Greyhawk’s eyes bug out. “Why don’t we have some tea? I need to talk to you. I had a strange dream.”
“Oh, forgive me,” Screech Owl said. “You’ve come such a long way.” He knelt and pulled aside the leather curtain to the cave. “Please, go inside and sit down.”
Twig winked encouragingly at Greyhawk before she ducked inside. Yipper followed her and began roaming around sniffing things. The ceiling was just high enough for her to walk upright across the dirt floor and sit down on a soft pile of fox hides in the rear.
Outside, she heard Screech Owl say, “Come on, Greyhawk, you little rodent. I’ve got baskets full of your dead kin in there for you to look at. Hurry it up! Do I have to cast a spell on you to get you into my cave?”
Greyhawk darted through the doorway and scrambled over to sit by Twig, whispering, “I told you! You didn’t believe me. We’ll be lucky to leave here with our human souls!”
Screech Owl smiled as he hooked the curtain back over the peg hammered into the wall, then entered. Cool wind gusted into the cave. “My, it’s good to have someone come to see me again. It’s been such a long winter. And how are you, Twig? Did you have another Spirit dream?”
“Yes.” She watched Screech Owl move about. Because
of his height, he had to stand in a hunched position while he gathered kindling to add to the fire. “In the dream, I’m …”
She stopped when a single tern—a sharp-eyed little bird with white wings—fluttered down to stand in the doorway and gaze suspiciously in at them.
Greyhawk pointed, and hissed, “Who’s that? Who’s
that
?”
Screech Owl turned, saw the bird, and chirped to it, which made Yipper prick his ears. When the tern chirped back, Screech Owl said, “Why, thank you, Old Mother. No, I didn’t know that.”
“What did she say?” Greyhawk asked.
“Hmm? Oh, she said a very bad storm is coming. It will be here by tonight. So make sure you pile lots of hides over you before you go to sleep.”
The tern hopped into the cave, glared briefly at Greyhawk, then flew away.
Screech Owl knelt in front of the fire pit and blew on the smoldering embers until the kindling caught and flames leapt up. Orange light flickered over his elderly face. He tossed two round rocks into the middle of the fire, then sat down and gazed wide-eyed at something on the ceiling.
Twig and Greyhawk looked up, but saw only soot-coated rocks and the crack in the ceiling through which the smoke escaped. They shrugged to each other.
“Twig,” Screech Owl said, “tell me more about your dream while we wait for the rocks to heat up.”
She tried to lean forward to answer, but Greyhawk was
holding her sleeve too tightly. He seemed to be examining the painting on Screech Owl’s wolf-hide shirt, where a black tortoise spread its red legs across the old man’s chest. From the end of each red leg, a green spiral spun out.
Twig said, “The dream begins with the sky exploding, but at the very end, I’m standing next to a woman on a sandy beach. The shore is covered with thousands of shells, and out in the water enormous monsters float, blowing fountains from their backs. It’s a beautiful place.”
“Ah,” Screech Owl said with a nod. “That’s the Duskland. Far, far, to the west, along the great ocean.”
Twig’s heart almost stopped. In hushed awe, she whispered, “You’ve been there?”
Only the greatest holy people journeyed to the Duskland. It was a powerful vision quest. They went in search of the tunnel where Father Sun disappeared into the underworld at night. Legend said that if a person could find that cave, they could live forever—just as Father Sun did.
“Oh, yes,” Screech Owl said, “many summers ago, when I had the soul of a dolphin. The Dusk land sits on the shore of a vast sea that stretches to the edges of the world. And out in the middle of the sea is a bright glowing spot that marks the tunnel that leads to the underworld.”
“Who do you think the woman in my dream is?” Twig asked.
Screech Owl didn’t seem to hear her. He reached into a blue-and-red woven basket, pulled out a handful of leaves, and dropped them into the water bag.
“What’s that strange smell?” Greyhawk sat up straighter to sniff the tangy fragrance that filled the cave.
“My own tea mixture,” Screech Owl answered. “It’s made from spruce needles, grass seeds, and dried snail guts.”
“Snail guts? Why would you put that in tea? What does it do to a person?”
“Do?” Screech Owl blinked. “Why, it clears the head and takes the soul up—”
Screech Owl stopped abruptly to watch a feather that floated around the ceiling. To make matters worse, the kestrels outside let out low chirps and took wing, shrieking as they soared away.
Greyhawk rose to his knees, ready to bolt. “It takes your soul up where?”
“Up where?” Screech Owl repeated as if he had never heard the words before. He snatched at the feather, missed, and asked, “Where what?”
“You said the snail gut tea takes the soul up somewhere. I want to know where!” A tremor had invaded Greyhawk’s voice.
Screech Owl broke into a grin. “You’re an inquisitive little rodent, aren’t you? Did you know that a person’s entire future can be read in the wrinkles of dried mammoth dung? I’ve spent forty summers making collections for nearly everyone in Buffalobeard Village. Here, let me see if I can find yours. If I recall correctly, it’s …” He grabbed a big hide sack, dragged it across the floor,
and proceeded to pull out chunks of dried mammoth dung.
Twig sighed. “Screech Owl, we were talking about my dream. About the far western Duskland? I wanted to know about the woman. Do you know who she is?”
He studied her as though he had no idea what she meant. “Who who is?”
“The woman. In my dream.”
“What woman? … Oh, wait! I remember.” He threw the sack down, heedless of the fact that two chunks of dung bounced out onto the floor and cracked into a thousand pieces. Greyhawk looked appalled, as if half of his life had just turned to dust. “That’s right, we were talking about the great western ocean. Let’s see …” A distance filled his gaze, as if he looked back across time. His voice gentled. “It all started with Cobia. Yes, Cobia and her people, the People of the Duskland.”
Twig remembered the story Elder Bandtail had told, and a shiver ran up her spine.
Screech Owl made a delicate gesture, the way he would push aside a cobweb. “Yes, it started forty summers ago. The mammoths were all gone. No one had even seen one in many summers. Our people were starving. Then the great Spirit dreamer, Chief Minnow, told us that a powerful little girl was calling all the mammoths to the west, to the Duskland. He said we had to go there and kidnap the girl, then force her to call the mammoths only for us.”
“And did Cobia call the mammoths?” Greyhawk asked.
“A few mammoths returned after Cobia came to live in Buffalobeard Village, but not many.” In a softer voice, Screech Owl added, “Your grandfather, Halfmoon, led that battle-walk, Twig. That journey took two summers.”
Greyhawk whispered, “Did Elder Halfmoon kill all of Cobia’s people?”
“No. Just the people who tried to stop him from taking her.”
“Elder Halfmoon is a very great warrior,” Greyhawk said solemnly. “His burns and scars prove his courage.”
“Yes,” Screech Owl whispered, “Minnow got more than he bargained for in Cobia. By the time she’d turned ten, she had great power. Cobia could dream the future and kill with a shout.”
“She can kill with a shout? Did you ever see her do that?” Twig asked.
Screech Owl jerked his chin up, startled by the question. “Oh, yes. She killed her first victim at the age of thirteen summers. Then, when she was nineteen, I saw her kill an old man.”
Greyhawk hunched forward and whispered, “Cobia is a baby killer, too, isn’t she?”
Screech Owl leaned toward Greyhawk until their noses almost touched, and whispered back, “What would make you think that?”
Greyhawk frowned. “Well, you just said—”
“Come here!” Screech Owl grabbed hold of Greyhawk’s head and started rapping on the top of it with his knuckles, as though sounding it out.
“What are you doing!” Greyhawk shouted and squirmed, trying to get away.
Screech Owl released him and said, “Well, that’s too bad,” and duckwalked back to the fire pit. He used a buffalo-horn spoon to scoop up one of the hot rocks and dropped it into the tea bag. Steam gushed up around his face in a glittering veil as the water came to a boil.
Greyhawk rubbed his head. “What do you mean too bad? Too bad what?”
Screech Owl flicked a hand. “Oh, it’s just that humans are born with cracks in the top of their heads through which they can talk to Earthmaker, the creator. In most people, the cracks close up when they’re very young and reopen only at death to let the soul depart to the Land of the Dead. But!” He shook his finger emphatically. “A person can learn to keep them open if he tries. I thought maybe you’d been getting messages from the Spirits about Cobia. Turns out you were just guessing.” He paused thoughtfully. “But you know, I do brain operations. I could fix that for you.”
Greyhawk choked and started coughing.
Screech Owl grabbed for a wooden cup, dipped it into the tea pot to fill it, and handed it to Greyhawk. “Here, drink this.”
Greyhawk shrieked, “No!” and continued coughing.
Screech Owl offered the cup to Twig, who took it. She’d had the tea before and knew how good it tasted. Nothing had ever happened to her soul because of it.
Screech Owl said, “Tell me more about this dream, Twig. Did you see people?”
“Yes, running. But it’s the woman I want to know about. She was young, maybe twenty, and had a beautiful face.”
“Did you talk to her?”

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