Great Sky Woman (29 page)

Half a day out T’Cori and Frog met the first of his people. “My cousin Little Slug!” he grinned.

Slug was perhaps two years older, taller, with a huge smile. Slug danced to see him, hooting, fat belly jiggling, artfully dragging his leg behind him to leave a trail. “We thought you were lost!” Slug said. “Scorpion came back many days ago. We sent out hunters to look for you!”

“I am Ibandi,” Frog said, straightening his shoulders. “I bring meat.”

Coming closer, they encountered a few more cousins, and then more as he and the nameless one approached the boma walls.

As the thorn walls became visible, his cousins surrounded them, shouting greeting.

“Frog,” they said. “You return!”

“With meat!” he said, dropping the sled.

T’Cori knew his legs and back ached, and admired the way he concealed his weakness from his people. What a fine hunter he was!

“And there is more!” Frog threw the scrap of Mk*tk flesh on the ground.

They gawked, silent, and then Break Spear plucked the ear up. He examined it cautiously. “Who was this?”

“An Other. They are called Mk*tk,” he said. “I rescued one of the dream dancers from them, and I know. This one has seen their camp.” He took a deep breath. “They are not beast-men. They are larger, stronger than beast-men.” He paused, trying to think of a way to explain it. “As we are to bhan, the Mk*tk are to us.”

Fire boma’s people stared as if he spoke monkey-tongue, then nodded, although he knew they did not really understand.

An old woman shuffled forward as well, leaning on her stick. T’Cori knew her—this was Stillshadow’s younger sister, Hot Tree, Fire boma’s mother.

“Who is this?” Hot Tree asked.

This was T’Cori’s time to conceal her weakness. She and Frog had walked in off the savannah, with game and the ear of a dead enemy. The people’s eyes were worshipful. “I am the one with no name,” T’Cori said. “I am protected by Stillshadow herself.”

“What do you do here, girl?”

How could she even begin to tell them? The girl Frog called Butterfly hung her head, but he jumped into the conversation. “She was taken by the Others, the ones who call themselves Mk*tk. I saved her. I killed my first man.”

He pointed to the scrap of severed flesh in the dust. Already, ants were testing it with their jaws.

Hot Tree looked at him closely, and then peered at T’Cori as if she had never seen a dream dancer before. She picked up the ear and held it up closer to her eye. “He speaks truth,” she said.

“There is more,” Frog said, sadness thickening his voice. “I found my friend. I found Lizard’s broken bones.”

Runners were sent to fetch Stillshadow. A day passed, during which the nameless girl slept in Hot Tree’s hut, discovering new and unexpected depths of fatigue in her bones. Her dreams were of silent giants clambering down a rock wall, mocking her.

The messengers retuned with two young hunt chiefs and the crone herself, leaning heavily on her cane with every step. T’Cori ran to her, clinging desperately. The old woman returned the embrace for a long fierce time, and for the first time in any of their memories, tears started from her eyes.

“The other dancers…?” she asked her sister, as if the implied question tore her mouth. “Quiet Water. Fawn. Dove?”

Hot Tree shook her head.

“My girls,” Stillshadow said, her voice barely audible. “Poor Lizard Tongue. Terrible.”

The old woman turned and faced Frog, who had watched it all. “And you are the young hunter who brought my dancer home.”

“Yes, honored one,” he said, swallowing nervously.

She touched his forehead. “You are a fine one. There is something in you. You are Frog Hopping. I remember naming you. I saw something special then, and I see it now. You and I will speak again,” she paused, and then added, “Great Mother is pleased with you.”

Then, smiling, she turned to her apprentice. “You must come home now,” she said. T’Cori nodded gratefully.

And so they left Fire boma. T’Cori looked back over her shoulder as they headed toward Great Earth, and there, in the gap in Fire boma’s wall, stood Frog. He waved to her, and T’Cori waved back.

From time to time she continued to look back at the boma. And he was there every time, until the time came that she could no longer see the gap, and could not have said whether he was there or not.

But something in her heart hoped that he was.

Chapter Thirty-five

For the next two days, T’Cori slept and ate and drank and slept. When she finally crawled out of her hut, the morning’s fierce sun was shaded by noon clouds, and she felt more wholly alive than she had in over a moon.

Small Raven greeted her, and for once, the older girl’s expression contained something other than disdain. To T’Cori’s surprise, there was actually a measure of compassion in her eyes. “My mother wishes to see you,” she said. “Find her at the sitting stone.”

Wobbling a bit but feeling stronger by the step, T’Cori made her way down the path until she spotted her teacher, perched atop the boulder, knees drawn to her chest, smoking a pipe.

“Come sit with me.” Stillshadow patted her palm against the stone.

“But…no one but you sits here.” The girl could not even meet her mentor’s eyes.

“This is a special day,” Stillshadow said, and held her hand out. “Come sit with me, girl.”

They sat there alone for a while, looking out on the valley floor and at Great Sky’s misted expanse.

“You are a woman now,” Stillshadow said. “Not the way I had planned, but the way it was intended.”

“But how could that be?”

“Do you think anything happens that Great Mother does not plan?”

“But why?” the nameless one asked.

“I can tell you things, but they would all be lies,” the old woman said. “I do not know the way of all things. But I believe there is a plan. Look at me. Tell me what you see.”

T’Cori considered before answering. “I see the woman who has always cared for me.”

“Yes. Do you see my
num
-fire? Look, as I have taught you.”

T’Cori shaded her eyes, squinting as she peered at Stillshadow. She tried and tried, but the fire would not materialize. T’Cori threw her arms around Stillshadow’s shoulders.

“I see nothing!” she cried. “Nothing at all.”

Stillshadow’s ancient face sagged, overwhelmed with pain. T’Cori shivered like a small, trapped animal.

“So,” the older woman said quietly. “The Mk*tk, is that what you called them?”

The nameless one nodded, shuddering at the memory.

“The Mk*tk hurt your sight. But, girl, they cannot take that which only Mother can give. If She wills so, your vision will return.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes.” Stillshadow’s warm dry hand clasped her shoulder, an attempt to comfort. “You must be strong for your people.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Then your sisters sacrificed for nothing.”

“I left them behind,” T’Cori whispered. “They’re still there. Still—”

“Silence,” Stillshadow said. “We have this, now. The rest is dreams. You may dance all of that out, as the dreams come to you. But life is for we who live. My other students are dead.” Her mouth quivered, and for just a moment T’Cori glimpsed the almost unimaginable depths of the old woman’s guilt and pain. How must it feel to be the old medicine woman, to know that she was the one who had sent the dancers out to disaster? “Dead to us,” she said. “You are alive and must be strong.”

At that moment it seemed that the weight of all the world had suddenly descended upon her chest. “And if I can?”

“Then you might sit at Raven’s right hand,” Stillshadow said.

The words, doubtless intended to comfort, sent a cold shudder up T’Cori’s spine. “I’m afraid, teacher.”

“Your sisters failed their test,” Stillshadow said. “But Great Mother brought you back.”

T’Cori covered her face with her hands. “I failed the tribe. I could not keep them from my body.” She sagged. “I am a weak and wicked thing.”

“No!” Stillshadow roared. “You are an Ibandi woman. A mountain daughter. There is no one, nothing strong enough to change that.”

T’Cori looked down at her belly. Was there a monster within her, even now? “But…if their seed grows within me?”

Stillshadow’s face softened. “You are skinny but strong. Your strength is hidden, like Great Mother’s. Like the strength of women. She will turn their seed to ours.”

Stillshadow slid down from her sitting stone, opened her leather pouch and crouched to throw the bones for the eighth time. “I have a good feeling,” she said.

T’Cori could see nothing in the jumble of bleached monkey bones. Then again, she had not been trained to see, and hope blossomed within her. “Is there a name?” the girl asked.

Stillshadow remained crouched. When she straightened, her mouth was twisted in an uneasy smile. “What was the name that that boy called you?”

“Butterfly Spring,” T’Cori said.

“Perhaps we will call you Butterfly for a while, until Great Mother sends you a name.”

T’Cori shook her head slowly. “Thank you,” she said. “I love you for what you try to do. But Great Mother delivered me. And I will stand by Her choices, whatever they are. I will wait.”

Stillshadow turned her face away, wiped at her eyes without speaking. For a time there was no sound but that of birds and monkeys. “Tell me,” she asked eventually, “did you dream while you were away?”

“Yes,” T’Cori said. “Many dreams.”

“Were there dances in those dreams?”

T’Cori shook her head sadly. “No.”

“Did you see animals? Clouds? Water?”

“Clouds,” T’Cori said after a pause.

“You saw clouds. Did they move?”

T’Cori squeezed her eyes tightly. “Yes.”

“Stand,” Stillshadow said. “And show me the cloud dance.”

T’Cori paused, uncertain, and then climbed down off the rock. Slowly, nervously, she spread her arms and began a shallow gliding motion, then spun in a circle. She stopped and blinked. “That is what I can remember.”

Stillshadow smiled broadly. “That is what I sent in the dream,” she said. “Truly, we are blessed that you have returned. Truly, you are a dream dancer.”

T’Cori ran to her and buried her face against Stillshadow’s chest. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she murmured again and again, as if the old woman’s words had saved her life.

Stillshadow closed her own eyes and leaned back against her sitting stone, feeling the girl’s heart fluttering against her chest.
Such a small lie,
she thought. She was certain that Great Mother would understand.

Chapter Thirty-six

Word of Frog Hopping’s adventure passed through the bomas like wildfire. News of the Mk*tk traveled to Great Sky itself, where it came down from high that Father Mountain Himself had proclaimed the war with the beast-men concluded, and forbade any of their people from molesting them in any way.

This, as much as anything, made Frog proud, almost as proud as Cloud Stalker himself giving Frog his second scar, with the small keloid dots beneath which meant “man-killer.”

The boma children would run up to him, touch his hand and run away again, laughing. When he encountered girls from other bomas traveling through their territory, they knew who he was, fluttered their eyes at him and turned away shyly. On two occasions, parents attempted to open marriage negotiations with Gazelle, but his mother pretended not to understand, and they went away.

Come the next Spring Gathering, life changed again for young Frog Hopping. On one fine, sunny day Uncle Snake and Gazelle sat him down with Earth boma’s father and mother. With them were a small man and a woman almost twice the man’s size, of great beauty and smiling aspect. Between them sat a young girl, of perhaps ten and three summers, compared to Frog’s own ten and five. Her back was to Frog, so he could not see her face.

He could see her back, however: her skin was smooth, and there was a trio of keloid scars in the sign that meant
dawn.

He found himself imagining her touch. For almost a quarter his uncle and mother spoke of Fire boma’s fine heritage, and the great hunters living within its walls.

The small man spoke of his wife’s strength and great wisdom and loyalty, and the woman herself spoke of the ease with which she had brought seven children into the world. At the end of that time, both spit once on the ground, and then again in the direction of Great Sky Mountain.

Snake and Gazelle took Frog away, and Snake sat him down. The rest of the Gathering buzzed around them, but young Frog heard none of it. He had, all his life, waited for the words that Uncle Snake was about to speak.

“You are a man now,” he said. “And we have chosen you a wife. She is a fine girl, of a good Earth family. This marriage would bind our families together. As is our custom, you do not have to accept my choice, but if you do not, then we cannot support you, and you will have to make your own way.”

These were more or less the ritual words. An obedient son, Frog had always followed the guidance of his parents. He sat with his spine as straight as the path of a dropped stone, with full respect. “I know you want the best for me, Uncle.” Frog lowered his voice to a whisper. “Is she pretty?”

Snake grinned. “She has a face like a warthog,” he said.

Frog’s heart filled with anguish. The girl T’Cori had not been beautiful, not really, but she was hardly a warthog. He certainly would have been happy to find her in the marriage ritual….

The thought stunned him. Where had
that
come from?

Snake saw Frog’s confusion and perhaps misinterpreted it as anguish. “Did you not see her mother, Smoke Leaf? My nephew,” he said, “I would not curse you with an ugly woman. Your root must grow strong when you dream about her, that you give the boma many fine hunters.”

In the midst of their shared laughter, Hot Tree hobbled over to join them.

“Come with us,” she said.

Together they led Frog to Hot Tree’s lean-to, and he bowed down to crawl within. Seated at one side was a dream dancer he had seen before, a slender beauty named Small Raven. She was, he had heard, Stillshadow’s daughter, Hot Tree’s neice.

Seated on the other side of the hut was his future bride. Her face was turned down, but when she tilted it up, he saw that she was indeed a pretty thing, with a round face, smooth warm-looking skin the color of a pepper pod, and eyes so bright they glistened. Her hair was braided with carved bits of bone and shell.

“Her name is Glimmer,” Hot Tree said. “She will be your wife. You take her from her family, and so must give back to them. You will live with them in Earth boma until she is of age to make children.”

The knowledge that she would be his made his root burn. He also thought of Fawn, dead Fawn, the first woman his body had ever known, and felt an odd mixture of joy and sadness.

He had not seen a dream dancer since his return from walkabout, and sensed a sadness about them he had never detected before now. How could it feel to be one of them, to know that somewhere out beyond the horizon, your sisters had been turned into Mk*tk women, and that there was nothing to be done for it? How did one make peace with such a reality?

“Until Glimmer is a woman, do not enter her,” she said. “Her mother will tell you when.”

“What if she
never
gives permission?” he blurted out. The girl smiled in a way that gave him warm tremors below his navel. Fear, passion, need, caution, eagerness…all warred within him.

Hot Tree, perhaps noticing the way he fidgeted, gave a knowing laugh. “Boys! So eager to be men. Of course her mother will try to postpone. She wants your work, your hunting for as long as she can. But she also wants strong grandchildren, and knows that until the night you enter her daughter, you can choose another mate. Or may sleep in the hut of a widow, or older woman. She will not want this. She will tell you when.”

And so the deal was made.

At Gathering’s end Frog gathered up his spears and arrows and knives and traveled west with Glimmer’s family to his new home. What wonders might this new life hold? Or troubles? As custom demanded, he had not so much as exchanged a single word with his bride-to-be. What if they hated each other, like Dry Hole and his witch of a wife?

Frog sighed. He had to have trust, trust that this would be best for him, as every decision that Uncle Snake and Gazelle had made had been good for him.

But as he walked with them on that different path, he saw the eyes upon him, the whispers saying what a fine young hunter he was, the stories about the Mk*tk he had slain, the dream dancer he had rescued. With every telling, the story of his adventures upon the plain had grown. Frog began to sense how stories of gods and heroes were born. One distant day, his grandchildren would dance Frog’s tale by firelight. In those leaping shadow-plays he would be as tall as two men, a great hunter who had slain three Mk*tk with his bare hands.

He carried himself strongly, shoulders back, strutting as befitted a man-killer, the husband of a great beauty, a girl of good breeding, whose wide strong hips would produce many children.

But there was something that he did
not
see. What he did not see was the girl that he had rescued, watching him with wistful eyes, watching Glimmer with her parents, watching him disappear to the west, off to his new family. Off to be married.

A girl who, for a short precious while, had danced to the name Butterfly Spring.