Great Sky Woman (42 page)

Chapter Fifty-seven

The wind was quiet in the morning, so that the first thing either of them heard clearly was Fire Ant’s distant voice. “Little brother!” Fire Ant called. “Come out. You know I would not hurt you. Give me the girl, then you and I will get Hawk, and we will go back down the mountain. Hawk needs us.”

So Fire Ant had stalked them part of the way but then lost the trail. Frog’s brother was good. Far too good. He would pick up the scent again, and then they would die.

“Would he kill you?” T’Cori asked.

“No,” Frog said. “Unless there was no other way to stop you.”

She did not speak, but her breaths were a rapid panting high in her chest.

He answered her unspoken question. “I will not leave you,” he said.

“What will you do?”

“I will be back,” he said.

“I know,” she said. And he knew that she did.

As Frog crawled out of their cave, he saw that the snow was thinned in places by trickles of steam from beneath the earth, creating a dizzying mixture of heat and cold.

If he could lead Fire Ant away from her, then perhaps T’Cori might make her way back down the mountain with her message. If not…well, at least he had had a taste of magic, for magic she was, and he had no more doubt about it. At least he had visited the home of the gods, seen the spirits, known that the dead lived again.

“Brother!” Fire Ant cried, and Frog spun to see Ant.

Frog and Fire Ant faced each other, just the two of them braced against the wind, their life paths having brought them to an almost unimaginable moment in time. There was nowhere for him to run, and if he tried, Ant would catch him.

And kill him? Would he? Frog prayed not, but did not know. The man before him no longer seemed like his brother.

The trip up the mountain had changed them all.

Frog felt empty, not even frightened. If there was any emotion remaining to him, it was a kind of sadness.

“Where is she?” Fire Ant hissed. An enormous welt swelled above his right eye. The time for compromise had passed. Frog could not see the
num
-fire surrounding Ant, as T’Cori could, but knew she was right: Ant would kill them both.

“Here,” she called, and to his despair, Frog turned to see the waifish T’Cori standing on the powdery dead water, her feet wrapped in furs, almost floating there. So beautiful. He, Frog, could run fast enough, perhaps. She could not. All was lost. Ant would kill her and dare Frog to tell a story no one would believe.

Fire Ant turned to him and smiled. “You lose, brother,” he said. “We win.” He stalked toward T’Cori, arms raised.

But he had taken only three steps when the surface beneath his feet cracked, and a gout of steam gushed up around his feet. He turned around and locked eyes with Frog, the anger and ambition vanished. All that remained was panic.

“Brother,” he said, “help me!” He tried to take a step, but the roof of the ice tube continued to crumble.

Frog could not move, could only stare, his gaze sliding back and forth between the two of them. T’Cori’s face was so cool and placid that she seemed completely above everything that was happening now, as if she was the living presence of Great Mother Herself. So small she was—small enough to stand on a thin sheet of dead water above the ice tube.

The last thing Frog saw of Ant was a flailing, and then the tube ceiling collapsed, steam gouted up around him and he fell, screaming, into the void.

Ant was gone.

Frog froze, just looking at the empty place where, moments before, his brother had promised death. Then he looked at T’Cori, who just stared. She looked at him, and despite the distance between them, he heard her voice clearly.

“He never knew his size,” she said. “Never.”

And then she collapsed.

Chapter Fifty-eight

For five days Frog and T’Cori searched Great Sky’s slopes for Hawk Shadow. For five days Frog thought only of Fire Ant’s death, dreamed only of finding his living brother and preserving some small part of the family and life he had known. For five days they scoured the slopes until they were exhausted, until fatigue banished the guilt and pain to a dark hut in his mind, where it could scream and curse at him, but not exit to possess his mind.

Time and again he thought that he recognized some landmark—a twisted tree, a tumble of rocks—but then could not find another.

It was T’Cori who spotted the first cairn, and Frog who found the second. Half starved but spirits buoyed by hope, they followed them to the small cave and found nothing. Carefully, he traced the ragged tracks revealing how Hawk Shadow had dragged himself from the cave, trying to make his way back down the mountain.

They did find him. But the wolves had found him first.

The ground was too hard to bury Hawk, so they built a cairn of rocks to cover him. With every stone he lifted Frog shed a hand of tears and asked himself a hand of questions.

What should he have done? What
could
he have done? What was right? And with placement of the final stone, he strained, listening to the wind, hoping to hear the voice of either brother. Nothing. There would be no easy answers, nothing to ease his mind. This was one riddle he might never solve.

They continued down the mountain.

Three days later, they emerged from the forest at Great Sky’s feet. Just before reaching the bottom of their trail, they found Uncle Snake. He crouched there beside a tiny fire and a poor lean-to of branches and white-flecked mud. Frog sensed that if they had never returned, Snake would have stayed there forever.

“You went all the way to the top,” Snake said hoarsely, his empty left socket staring at Frog, then at the nameless girl, and back again.

T’Cori nodded.

Snake glanced behind them. “Where are the others? Where is my son?” Snake closed his eyes. “Your brothers?”

Frog had dreaded this moment. What was there to gain in telling the truth? That one brother had been torn by wolves, another swallowed by the earth? Their people’s future was hard enough as it was. This, he sensed, was how legends began.

“Father Mountain was lonely,” Frog said. “He asked them to stay.”

Snake searched Frog’s face for answers. He must have had more questions than any man could count, but merely hung his head. “What will you tell our people? What will you say about me?”

Frog thought of all the lies and pain, but also the many seasons of love, of the way Uncle Snake had taken them into his home, hunted for them, fed them, loved his mother and treated her with honor. Sadness engulfed him, but mingled with it was a great sense of compassion. Before he could voice the words in his heart, T’Cori spoke for him.

“We could not have done it without you,” T’Cori said. “You were with us, do you not remember?”

Snake’s lips trembled, and a single tear rolled from the corner of his good eye. Frog’s uncle held his arms out to them, and the three travelers held one another.

“An old man thanks you,” Snake whispered.

In the midst of the embrace, Frog opened one eye and studied T’Cori. So…dream dancers
could
lie? Then…

His head whirled. Why had he ever thought he would be clever enough to understand this world?

Hands of hands of their people were camped there at the bottom of Great Sky, waiting for the emergence of their heroes, drumming their feet against the ground as T’Cori, Snake and Frog arrived.

Most important, Stillshadow was there at the camp, recovered enough to walk with Blossom’s help. She and the others had waited for them, and waited, and had at last been rewarded.

“Where is my daughter?” Stillshadow asked, the pain in her eyes proclaiming her foreknowledge.

“She remained at the mountaintop,” T’Cori said. “She was too fine a thing for Great Mother to return.”

Stillshadow’s face was filled with questions, questions she would never ask T’Cori in front of the tribe. She squeezed her eyes shut, allowing herself a moment of grief, and then sighed. “And the others?”

“The mountain claimed them. They are still at the mountaintop.”

“Did you see the ancestors?” Hot Tree asked.

Frog shook his head. “I did not,” he said. “But
she
did. And the gods spoke to her. We are alive only because they wished this great dreamer to bring their message to the people. Listen to her, if you wish to live.”

Come nightfall, the clearing was ringed with flickering torches. Before an open council, with every available adult in attendance, Frog and T’Cori told their story before the largest gathering of Ibandi ever held in the fall. She recognized elders from Fire, Wind, Earth and Water bomas. All wore their ceremonial raiment, their skins and horns and painted faces, their best braids and piercings. Every one of them understood the importance of the message to come. The hunters held their spears at the ready, believing they would be told to fight and die to protect their land. The women held their children closely, trying to strengthen their nervous hearts.

What she had to tell them was something none of them expected.

“We climbed the mountain,” Frog said, taking his place at her side. “There we saw Father. He spoke to T’Cori and told her to bring her tale down to you.”

“What did he say?” asked a woman from Water boma.

“We must leave Great Sky’s shadow,” T’Cori said. “If we do not leave, we will die.”

“I do not believe!” a hunter from Earth boma said. “This girl hasn’t even a name! If Father Mountain won’t even give her a name, why should we give her honor?”

The sad-faced man named Water Chant stood. “I believe her,” he said, gazing at her. “And I speak for my boma. I will trust the dancer’s vision.”

Is this my father?
she asked the mountain silently. And she knew the answer: he was, if she wanted him.

She held his gaze for a moment, and then gave a slow nod of acknowledgment.

“I believe,” said another. “But this is all I know. If the Father says leave, then we must obey, or risk His wrath.”

“We have heard!” a woman cried. “We have heard, I say! We must listen to what Father Mountain has said.”

“T’Cori,” Stillshadow said, “you have climbed the mountain.” There was something in her eyes that T’Cori could not quite grasp. Did she know about the mountain? Had Cloud Stalker told his woman the truth? Or could she have guessed? “I say that you have earned the right. Surely Great Mother will grant you a name.”

“A name,” the people said in chorus. Again and again they chanted. “A name. A name for the holy girl…”

T’Cori dared not even pray for such a boon.

Stillshadow bent her tired old legs and for the ninth time threw the bones. She peered into them, and as she did it seemed that no one breathed.

And then her wrinkled face lit in a blissful smile.

“Of course,” she said, pushing her hand against her hip as she straightened. “Of course. Now I understand why the name has been withheld for so long.” She laid her hands on both of T’Cori’s shoulders. “Such a name cannot be given, only earned.”

“What is the name?” the girl whispered.

“Great Sky Woman,” Stillshadow said.

The tribe pounded the butts of their spears against the ground. Hot Tree nodded sagely.

“Sky Woman,” the girl said, voice breaking. “Great Sky Woman. I have a name!” She wrapped her arms around her teacher’s waist, holding on for dear life. A name! A name! After all these years, she had a name. The mightiest totem imaginable, and a name that would live for generations after her death. Her heart felt swollen with pride and gratitude.

“You have earned a great boon,” Stillshadow said. “What might I do for you?”

She considered. Sky Woman knew every ear was tuned to her words. That every one of them wanted to believe life would continue on, whatever might happen to them. For that, they needed what only she could give. “When I left to climb the mountain,” she began, “there was nothing I wanted so much as to be a woman of the Ibandi. Not a medicine woman, a dream dancer. Just a woman.”

The elders nodded. Frog took a step forward, reached for her hand, then let his arm drop.

“But Great Sky spoke to
me
and told
me
my people’s tomorrows. And if He needs to speak to them again, He speaks through me. I must be open.”

She smiled at Frog, face filled with both love and regret. “I must remain as I am.”

Stillshadow nodded her admiration. “It is the only choice, Great Sky Woman.”

“This is what you really want?” Frog asked her, his voice low enough that the others could not hear.

“No,” she answered. “But this is what must be.”

Frog closed his eyes. What was he thinking? She wanted to take him somewhere privately, to talk to him and comfort him. She wanted the touch of his body, and to share a hut with him.

Some of those things she could have, in time. She could see in his
num
-fire that Frog loved T’Cori. Could he love Great Sky Woman as well?

The tribe watched and listened to them. This was not about the two of them and what they might or might not be able to mean to each other. This was about their people’s survival. And that was more important than anything else, everything else, anything else at all.

“I understand,” he said, and then drew himself up. Everything in their world had changed. Perhaps in time, the rules that had governed the dream dancers and the hunt chiefs would change as well. She could hope.

“You said I would be a great hunt chief,” he whispered to her. “Did you lie?”

“T’Cori thought she lied,” she said, watching his face fall. “But Sky Woman says the same. And Sky Woman does not lie.”

Frog searched her eyes, finally pulling back from her, wearing the first smile she had seen on his face in many days, and knew at that moment that all would be well between them. There would be danger and death and unimaginable terrors out there in the unknown savannah to the north.

But there would also be love and life.

Frog turned, and seemed at that moment to be twice his height. “Who will come with us?”

Slowly, a few of them rose to stand beside Frog. Less than a fifth of the Ibandi gathered to hear their words. The others looked on fearfully, drawing back. Life beyond the shadow was simply too fearsome a concept.

Stillshadow rose on her rickety legs. “I know not where our path will take us. I know only that for my whole life I have served Great Earth. And if Sky Woman says we must go beyond the shadow to find a new beginning, then that is what I will do.”

“But you will die!” Hot Tree said, lips pressed tightly together, the grief and fear almost beyond her ability to control.

“And you will not?” Stillshadow retorted.