Great Sky Woman (34 page)

Chapter Forty-five

Once upon a time, sleep had fallen from Cloud Stalker as rapidly as a snake-eagle taking flight. Now the hunt chief’s dreams were sticky, clinging things, and his limbs felt like stones for almost a quarter after awakening. On this early morning, however, he shed sleep as swiftly as a young man.

At first, he wasn’t certain why he had awakened at all. Then he felt Father Mountain’s growls and rolled up to sitting.

Emerging from his hut, he stared up at Great Sky’s mist-shrouded peak. His toes curled into the dirt as it shuddered against his bare feet.

Since boyhood he had lived here, given over by parents convinced of his gifts by the former grand hunt chief, Leopard Eye. Since those early days he had explored its slopes, hunted in its ravines, climbed the great strange cliffs of cold dead water they called ice.

His gut told him that something terrible was happening to his home, but his wildest imaginings could not have anticipated just how terrible it would be.

Over hands of hands of hands of years Great Sky’s ice pack had grown thicker than two tens of men standing on one another’s shoulders. The volcanic gases and steam blew chunks larger than whole bomas into the clouds above. Magma gushed from the earth. In an instant, the searing heat converted a mountain of ice into boiling water.

The seething mass mixed into a slurry of ash and pumice and dirt. It tumbled down the mountain slopes, reaching a speed far faster than even the fastest hunt chief.

Within half a quarter, the landlocked tidal wave swept down the slopes, crushing trees, slaughtering mountain goats, lemurs, zorillas, antelopes, leopards and baboons in numbers beyond counting, plowing up enough ground to fill a valley, gaining heat from new fissures in the ruptured and rupturing earth.

The fiery cloud gushed from the mountainside, wrenching trees up by the roots and tumbling them like straws in a cyclone. A blistering flood of water and rock carried with it everything from sand and gravel to boulders taller than two men.

As it rushed down, its size, speed and volume constantly changed, tearing rock and brush from the sides and along the river valleys it entered, creating a cascade of boiling water mixed with mud and rubble, devastating anything in its path.

Debris flows cut across streams, damming them. The water continued to rise until the dam was breached.

As the flow dissipated, the action of the wave reversed as it redeposited the debris. The heaviest objects dropped out first. As the flow continued to lose energy, progressively smaller and smaller fragments dropped out until the wave faded out of existence.

But by that time, the damage had been done.

River Song, Laughing Buzzard, High Tree, and the other hunt chiefs emerged groggily from their huts, witnessed the approaching devastation and tried to flee. They ran the race of their lives, as swiftly as any human beings had ever moved, but the mass of searing water and tumbling logs caught up with them in moments.

Some hunt chiefs were killed by collapsing huts or flying debris. The rest were engulfed, the bodies of some contorted and crushed against trees, other suffocated by mud as it forced its way into eyes, mouths, ears and open wounds. The pressure of the mud against their chests slowly choked those buried to the neck. Some were burned, some drowned.

There was only one thing in common: all died.

Men, animals, hunters, prey, all a divine unity there in the holy place. All at terrible peace in a white hell on earth.

They died in their hands of hands, knowing that their god had not only deserted them but singled them out for destruction. Or perhaps their god, the very force that had created the world itself, was dying.

They died, but not one of them cursed the mountain. And of that, at least, Stalker would have been proud.

A tower of ash blotted out the dawn. The mountain’s death cry was heard where the land met the sea, farther than a man could run in ten days, where bhan ceased their fishing to look back west at the clouds darkening the morning sky. Ash fell over mountains so distant the Ibandi had never dreamed of their existence.

Despite the dream dancers’ desperate singing, the blessed morning sun was never born that day.

Everything exposed to air was covered with a pall of white. Everything, as far as the eye could see and even where it could not, was transformed.

Heaven was gone.

In the face of such a catastrophe, it seemed even death itself might die.

Cloud Stalker, mate of Stillshadow, leader of the mighty hunt chiefs, opened his eyes a final time. The tumbling wall of mud had somersaulted him over and over again, stones suspended in the mass grinding his bones to splinters. His head remained aboveground, but jagged, broken ribs pierced his lungs, so that with every passing moment they filled more deeply with blood.

In his last moments, gazing up into the sky, in the billowing, swelling cloud above him, Cloud Stalker finally saw the mighty visage of Father Mountain.

He tried to move his lips, to whisper a prayer-song, but could not. But by then he was too weak for even that frustration to upset him.

With the face of his god burned into his brain, Cloud Stalker closed his eyes and died.

Chapter Forty-six

For most of the last night of his old life, a morose Frog Hopping had enjoyed the company of Little Brook and her husband, Lion Tooth. The pair had made the four-day walk from Wind boma in the north to comfort him in his loss. They had prayed and danced and eaten with him. Little Brook finally scolded him enough to coax out a reluctant smile, then convinced him to tell them stories of his time with Glimmer.

For the first time in a moon, the pain in his heart lessened. Parting from them even for slumber seemed a sacrifice.

Frog was still dreaming of Glimmer’s soft braided hair, the clasp of her smooth warm thighs, when the earth began to tremble.

Shaking sleep from his eyes, he climbed out of his hut and gazed up at the mountain that had been a comfort all his life. The night was clear, and unspeakable horror seized him as a cloud larger than anything he had ever seen or imagined sprouted from Great Sky’s side. It writhed and coiled like a ball of snakes, flashing with lightning, although there was no rain. His cousins fled their huts, gazing up in slack-jawed disbelief.

They dashed mindlessly to and fro, tore their hair out, clawed at the ground and howled. “Father Mountain is dying!”

Hawk Shadow’s wife, Flamingo, appeared before him, naked and wild-eyed, a baby beneath each arm. She thrust his son at him. “The end of the world!” she screamed.

Frog sank to his knees, clutching his unnamed infant son to his chest. Nothing that he had ever seen or imagined prepared him for such chaos. He felt beyond himself, outside himself, completely detached from his world. He no longer believed in gods, but at the moment there seemed no contradiction in his conviction that he was watching one die.

The cloud swelled and billowed, and in it he saw Glimmer’s face, and Lizard’s, and trembled at the sight. The others saw fire and dust and smoke and stars disappearing from the sky. They dropped to their knees, gnashing their teeth, tearing their hair and wailing, begging forgiveness for sins real or imagined.

Forgiveness, but not grace. They were witnessing the death of heaven, something no mortal eyes should ever see.

For a day and a half T’Cori walked and ran and staggered without rest, until her head swam and her limbs were like stones. She had now gone almost three nights without sleep. All that kept her stumbling along was the fear that her mentor might already be dead.

Ash rained from the sky, transforming the entire world into something alien and foreboding. She felt so numb, so shocked, that it was all she could do just to put one foot before another.

Was this her doing? Had her transgressions caused this, the end of the world?

Should she go back, return the fungus?

The world swam around her as she reached the familiar trails and began to climb, ash coating her skin and the trail. It felt less like coming home than like presenting herself for judgment.

But whatever might happen next, she would not quail. She had done what no one else could or would do.

When Blossom and two other women blocked her path on the outskirts of camp, T’Cori finally stopped, heart thundering in her chest. The thick-bodied Blossom’s eyes were wide and wild. The bamboo cane in her right hand might have been intended as a weapon, but to T’Cori it looked as if her former wet nurse needed it to keep herself erect.

“Wh-Where are you going?” Blossom stammered. There seemed no way to prevent a confrontation. Slovenly Blossom might have been, and slow of mind. But she was devoted to her mother and sister.

T’Cori said nothing.

“Where have you been?” she asked again, only then noticing the pouch on T’Cori’s belt. “Our mother is almost dead. You are too late. If you have something, give it to me. I will give it to her.”

T’Cori’s stolen stone blade was in her hand almost before she knew what she had done. Exhausted and frightened she might be, but the blade reminded her of something: she was the girl who had escaped the Mk*tk. Who had slain an Other, and walked many days to rejoin her clan and bring them knowledge. She was not a mere girl to be intimidated by anyone, even Blossom.

All her life she had feared her gigantic wet nurse. She remembered the boxed ears, the slaps and pinches when no one watched, the feeling of helplessness in the grip of the stronger, larger, older woman who had nurtured her body but starved her spirit. But her concern for Stillshadow and her own fatigue and guilt had accomplished something unexpected. It had driven her fear into the shadows.

T’Cori no longer cared what Blossom thought or tried to do. The sense of freedom was extraordinary.

“Touch it,” T’Cori said, brandishing her spar of leather-wrapped obsidian. “Touch it, and I will cut you. You think I am small? You think I will not fight? Small things have sharp teeth,” she said.

The other girls were speechless, shocked by the sudden change in T’Cori’s demeanor. Blossom’s heavy jaw worked side to side, and then she nodded. “Raven will deal with you,” she said, and sent a runner off to find her sister as T’Cori pushed her aside.

Stillshadow lay collapsed on her zebra skin amid the shadows. The air reeked with a sour, damp aroma. T’Cori could just barely make out Stillshadow’s shrunken silhouette. She seemed dead already.

T’Cori came closer. Although her teacher’s breathing was slight, the withered breasts still moved up and down with each exhalation.

Most of Stillshadow’s preparations were made fresh, but a few, like godweed and other healing or ritual herbs, were made in batches. T’Cori searched among her teacher’s pouches, sniffing and judging textures until she found the right mixture, recognizable by a sharp, stinging scent. Now she needed to add the glow mushroom, the most powerful component of godweed. How much? She had never learned, and unfortunately, now it was too late to ask. She knew only that she had to do what she could.

For a moment the mixture glowed slightly in the lean-to’s darkness, and then the glow died. Half-dead from lack of sleep, fatigue and injury, T’Cori propped Stillshadow’s head on the crook of her arm, and tried to feed her a bit of the mash. The old woman’s jaws did not move.

What to do? She suddenly remembered something she had seen Stillshadow do. The young woman took the medicine and slipped it into her own mouth, chewed until the sour, tingling mash was all one texture, then pressed her lips against Stillshadow’s. T’Cori pushed the wet pulp into Stillshadow’s mouth with her own tongue.

Very slowly, the old woman’s mouth began to work, taking the mash, and then chewing at it. Swallowing.

“Mother,” the girl whispered. “I am here. I am here. I got it. Please. Please take this from me.”

Stillshadow finally began to eat a bit, managing to consume two mouthfuls.

The old woman’s hand rose, as if to say,
Enough.
Her withered lips curled in what might have been a smile, and the eyes fluttered open just long enough to fix on T’Cori and then close again.

T’Cori waited at her side for a few moments, then slipped out of the hut.

Raven stood just outside the doorway, face strained. “You disobeyed Father Mountain,” she said, and pointed toward the northern sky. The ground still shook. Clouds still fountained from the mountainside. The sky rained ash, not water. “Look at what you have done.”

The lining of T’Cori’s mouth tingled. When she looked at Raven she saw not a girl but a shimmering shadow. How strange! Was her vision returning? No…the edges of everything in sight began to blur. The world swirled painfully. She could barely stand, but she knew a truth, as surely as if she could still read the
num
-fire.

Raven was afraid of her.

A nameless child will be born. And that child will end the world and cause the death of gods.

A power shift had just occurred, like a stream changing level at a waterfall. The chosen one was not happy. There was ritual, there was tradition, and then there was the holy woman they all loved. Every dream dancer in the camp knew that she should have been willing to do anything to protect Stillshadow, who had raised and protected them all.

“I did what I had to do,” T’Cori said. Her tongue felt swollen enough to block her throat. In that moment, T’Cori ceased to hate Raven. The girl was a bully, but not evil. Fear was the destroyer. Raven didn’t know where she fit in the world any more than T’Cori did. All she knew was the rules, and how to keep them.

“We must follow Father Mountain’s will,” Raven said. “You will see, stupid one. You will see.”

Sky, mountain and grass swirled, changing places. She staggered, but no one helped her. T’Cori tripped, pulled herself to her feet again, then managed to wobble as far as her hut before collapsing again.

She lay there in the dirt and looked back over her shoulder. Her sisters, young and old, watched without moving. They spoke among themselves, but she could not hear a word.

A row of white-haired old women came and stood in front of her. The sun-singers held hands and stood with spines straight as bamboo. Then they dropped their hands and gave their judgment.
She has the godweed in her,
they danced.
Foolish girl! The nameless one has not the strength or knowledge, has not undergone the rituals, to stop godweed from draining her
num.
It is between the nameless one and the immortals.

If the gods still live.
That last was both question and prayer, a plea for Father Mountain and Great Mother to heal sky and earth, once again revealing Their bounty to faithful children.

T’Cori managed to crawl into her hut, but then darkness claimed her.