People of the Longhouse (11 page)

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Authors: W. Michael Gear

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Native American & Aboriginal

BOOK: People of the Longhouse
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O
dion
 
As Grandmother Moon climbs high into the night sky, a ghostly sparkle filters through the trees and coats the autumn leaves with a liquid silver sheen. The yips of wolves carry on the cold breeze sweeping up the trails, and I have the chilling feeling that the night is filled with wandering forest Spirits. Sometimes I see them, flitting between the trunks like white scraps of cloth.
“I need more corn brew!” a man shouts. “Come over here, boy.”
I peer out at the warriors who perch like vultures on logs around the fire, using their teeth to rip hunks of meat from roasted grouse. The fire’s orange gleam reflects from their greasy mouths and hands. Hehaka wanders through the gathering, carrying a gourd filled with a brew made from fermented corn, pouring it into cups. I watch him. He moves as though he’s done this many times, and I wonder how long he’s been a slave.
I think about the corn brew, and my throat aches. I tasted it once. Our people pound corn kernels to mush, then leave it until it turns sour. Finally, they pour off the liquid to create the bitter brew. I don’t know how anyone can drink it. It scorched my throat like fire.
Gannajero crouches on the far side of the circle with a clay cup of
tea in her hands. All night long, she has been staring into the fire, or talking quietly with her deputy, Kotin. He smiles a lot, and his yellow broken teeth glint in the firelight.
I roll to my side and find Tutelo wide awake, staring at me.
I smooth her hair with my hand. “You should be asleep, little sister.”
Tutelo sucks her lower lip for a while, then says, “Where’s Grandfather?”
“Grandfather?” I find it curious that she did not ask for Mother.
“Yes. Where is he?”
“Oh, let me see, he’s been dead for four summers. Don’t you remember singing his afterlife soul to the Land of the Dead in the Sky World?”
Tutelo seems to be trying to remember. “There were new green leaves on the trees. It must have been spring.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Tutelo slides closer to me and nuzzles her cheek against my shoulder. “When is he coming home?”
“Who?”
“Grandfather.”
Icy wind gusts through the forest and creeps spiderlike through my clothing to taunt my skin. I feel slightly sick to my stomach. I look down at her. Has her afterlife soul left her body?
“He can’t come home, Tutelo. Someday we will go and find him in the Land of the Dead, but I hope that will not be for a long time.”
“I miss him.”
“I miss him, too.”
Tutelo’s teeth flash as she flops onto her side and props her head on her hand. Her brow is furrowed, concentrating very hard on what I will say next. “Sometimes the dead come back, but if he can’t, we should go see him.”
“I don’t want to go to the Land of the Dead. Not yet.”
“Can I go by myself?”
My heart aches. Is she serious? Does she want to die? “But what would I do without you? You are my only sister. I need you.” I adjust Tutelo’s collar, pulling it up around her throat.
“Did you see that man in the forest a little while ago?”
I frown. Two men guard us, and warriors are always walking around in the forest, but she seems to mean something else. “What man?”
“I don’t know his name. He just stood out there and stared at us. He picked up one of my copper ornaments.” She touched the sleeve of her dress. “I keep losing them.”
I glance at the place where the tiny ornaments were sewn. Several are gone, probably torn off by the brush. “Was he one of the warriors?”
Tutelo shakes her head. “No. He wasn’t a warrior.”
“How do you know?”
“He didn’t have any weapons.”
My gaze roams the clearing while I consider this. Every man in camp carries a weapon. Quivers bristle with arrows, and belts are heavy-laden with knives, clubs, and human arm-bone stilettos. We are at war. No one can risk being without a weapon.
“He’s a human False Face.”
“Who is?”
“The man. Can you tell me the story again?”
It takes me a few moments to stop thinking about the man in the forest and understand she’s moved on to a new topic. Since the Flint girls were hauled out into the forest, Tutelo has been acting strangely. She found a twig on the ground earlier and has refused to let go of it. She has been clutching it all night long, and this has been a night of desperate nightmares for her. She’s awakened me several times, crying; then she twists away from me when I try to touch her. I imagine that in her dreams she is running … running with every bit of her strength. But now, suddenly, she is smiling and longing to hear me tell her stories.
“What story?”
“About the human False Face.”
“Do you mean the story about the end of the world, or the contest between Hawenniyo, the Master, and Shagodyowehgowah, the Great False Face?”
“Either one.”
I take a breath and think about where to begin. The entire story takes too long. “Well … the ending is the most interesting part, so I’ll start there. In the Beginning Time, the Master was wandering around inspecting creation when he met the Great False Face. The Great False Face was a huge man who lived far west at the edge of the world. The Master and the Great False Face got into an argument about who created and owned the earth. To solve the argument, they decided to have a contest to see who could command the mountains to move. Whoever made the distant mountains come the closest would win. They both sat down with their backs to the mountains. The Great False Face, Shagodyowehgowah, shook his magical turtle shell rattle—”
“And the mountains moved,” Tutelo filled in.
“Yes, but only a finger’s width. Then Hawenniyo lifted his hand and
called to the mountains in a great roar, and the mountains immediately moved to rest right behind him. The Great False Face, who was impatient to see how far the mountains had moved, spun around very fast and—”
“Smashed his face into the mountain!” Tutelo smiled.
“That’s right. He broke his nose and jaw. That’s why the Faces today all have bent noses and crooked mouths.”
Tutelo giggles happily and buries her face in the folds of my sleeve.
I pat her back, and stare across the clearing. The warriors do not seem to hear us.
“Like the man,” Tutelo says. “He has a crooked nose. Maybe we should give him a name, like Shago-niyoh?”
I don’t answer for a time. “You think he’s a combination of Shagodyowehgowah and Hawenniyo? That would make him very powerful.”
“He is very powerful.”
Fear moves like a cold wave through me. If she did see something it might be one of the
hanehwa
. Witches flayed human beings whole and used their skins to serve as guards.
Hanehwa
never slept. They warned witches of a stranger’s coming by shouting three times. Cautiously, I ask, “So he had a crooked nose. What else did he look like?”
Tutelo softly hums to herself and kicks one foot. “He was very tall and handsome—except for his crooked nose—and he had a shining face and cape.”
“You mean they shone in the moonlight?”
She shrugged as though she didn’t know.
“Did the man speak to you?”
Tutelo blinks. “Why? Are you afraid of him?”
“A little.”
She holds out her twig, and in a frightened whisper asks, “Do you want to hold the club?”
She keeps a tight hold on one end of the twig, but hands up the other end for me to grasp. I wrap my fingers around it.
“Thank you, Tutelo.”
It’s a war club. I should have known. Mother sleeps with her war club across her chest. Every time I wake in the night and see her holding CorpseEye, I know I am safe.
Tutelo’s fingers creep up the twig to touch mine. She sighs.
Did she really see a man? I doubt it. How could a stranger have gotten so close without raising an alarm? He must have been one of Gannajero’s warriors but …
Odion
.
I stiffen. I swear someone whispered my name. I stare around the forest, searching, before I say, “Did you hear that?”
“He’s a human False Face.” Tutelo’s voice is sleepy. She yawns. “If I went to the Land of the Dead, he would stay here with you.”
I do not know what to say to this. Our people have a legend that foretells the coming of a half-man half-Spirit False Face. It is prophesied that he will don a cape of white clouds and ride the winds of destruction across the land, wiping evil from the face of Great Grandmother Earth. We have to memorize the story by the time we’ve seen eight summers.
Tutelo makes a strange hiss, like a snake. It startles me. I stare down at her. As Grandmother Moon continues her journey above the branches, a silver slash paints the middle of Tutelo’s pretty face, leaving one eye in darkness and the other glowing like a frosty ball of ice.
She hisses again.
“What are you doing?”
Tutelo presses her forehead against my arm. “He told me I must never cry, or they’ll kill me.” But with tears in her voice, she says, “Do you know that clouds cry in the voice of the rain?”
A curious numbness spreads through me. These are not her words. Where did she hear them? From one of the other children? I haven’t seen her speaking with anyone. We are all so frightened, we’ve spoken very little, and we are never together during the day. Gannajero sends one or two of us off with different warriors; then we meet again at nightfall. I don’t even know the names of most of the captives.
“Rain,” she says in a hiss.
And I realize, finally, that the hiss is not a snake sound. It’s rain falling through the forest.
“Are you a cloud, Tutelo?”
She nods.
I kiss her forehead. She has found a way to cry without being beaten. I wrap my arms around my sister and hold her tightly.
S
indak spread his feet and yawned. Grandmother Moon stood straight overhead. Their watch was almost over. Akio and Ober should be coming to replace them soon. He let his gaze drift over the silvered darkness that cloaked Atotarho Village. The warriors on the palisade catwalk resembled slender pillars of moonlight. Twenty paces away, a happy dog trotted through the night with a half-chewed packrat dangling from his jaws.
Towa whispered, “Where are Akio and Ober? They should be here by now.”
“Akio is probably sound asleep. You know how he is. All he does is eat and sleep.”
“Yes, but Ober takes responsibility seriously. And one of them better get here soon, or I’m going to faint from hunger. Do you realize we haven’t had supper?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were hungry? When I knew I was going to be on sentry duty today, I stuffed my belt pouch with food.” He untied the laces on his pouch and pulled it open.
Towa leaned sideways to look inside. His waist-length black hair swung out like a dark curtain. “What did you bring?”
Sindak pulled out jerked venison, wild rice cakes—hard enough to cause brain injury if thrown—and a chunk of half-rancid bear fat. He
tore off a piece of jerky, worked it into a gummy mass, then used his teeth to rip off a hunk of bear fat.
Towa winced. “I can smell that fat from here. It’s gone bad. Don’t eat that.”
“It just smells bad. It tastes fine.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“My wife used to say that.”
“Please, do
not
tell me why.”
Sindak knelt, picked up a rock, and smashed the rice cake to bits. He scooped up the crumbs and ate them. Around a mouthful, he said, “If you chew these up together, it tastes a little like quality aged pemmican. I discovered that one night on guard duty.”
Towa’s brows lifted. “You are truly the bravest man I know.”
Sindak grinned and handed him a piece of jerky. “Here. Try it. Eat the jerky first.”
“No, thanks.”
“Then you are not starv—”
Sindak straightened when he saw Akio and Ober emerge from the Wolf Clan longhouse. Ober towered over the pudgy Akio. Both wore knee-length capes and carried war clubs. He could hear them talking softly.
“It’s about time,” Towa said. “I’m tired.”
“How can you even think about sleeping? That story about Gannajero will keep me awake for days. I’m going to go back to my longhouse, wake everyone, and find out what each person knows about her.”
“That should make you a hero with your relatives.”
“Well, think about this: If Gannajero is bold enough to steal Chief Atotarho’s daughter, she is bold enough to steal anyone’s.”
“I doubt Gannajero knows that Zateri is Atotarho’s daughter. She probably doesn’t ask who the children are or where they’re from.”
“Why not? That could be useful information. There could be rewards out for a child’s safe return.”
“I suspect no reward can rival what she earns from allowing outcasts to mistreat them.”
Sindak swallowed and ripped off another chunk of jerky to chew.
Akio and Ober walked up, Akio panting. “Anything interesting happen?” Akio couldn’t walk more than twenty paces without panting.
Towa shrugged, and Sindak said, “Have you ever heard the name Gannajero?”
Akio said, “No, who is he?”
“She. She’s a Trader who hires men to steal children.”
“Sounds like my grandmother.” Ober gestured over his shoulder to Kelek’s longhouse. “She’s always demanding that we bring back more slaves from our raids.”
“That’s different,” Towa insisted. “Everyone takes children as slaves, but we adopt them into our families. Gannajero, apparently, makes money by allowing them to be used abominably by outcasts.”
“What? That’s impossible! Anyone who would—”
“Wait. I think I’ve heard of her.” Ober’s face suddenly slackened. “When I was a boy, my grandmother told me a story about an evil woman Trader. She said there was a Trader who stole children’s souls and condemned them to wander the forests forever. Could that be Gannajero?”
“I don’t know,” Towa said. “What’s the rest of the story?”
Ober swung his war club up and rested it on his shoulder. The chert cobble on top shone in the moonlight. “I don’t remember much, just that the Trader used a sucking tube—you know, the sort our Healers use to suck evil Spirits from sick people? Anyway, she used a hollow eagle-bone sucking tube to suck out the children’s souls; then she sealed them in a pot and hauled them far from their homes before she blew the souls out into the air again.”
Sindak shifted his weight to his other foot. “So that the souls could never find their villages or loved ones?”
Ober shuddered with disgust. “I guess so.”
“That’s inhuman. If a ghost is near its village, it can see its loved ones now and then, eat the dregs left in the cooking pots at night, and maybe even sit around fires with old friends. But if she releases the soul in an unknown territory, it’s utterly alone, cast adrift among strangers, perhaps even enemies. That’s a fate only truly evil souls deserve.”
“Yes, certainly not the souls of innocent children.”
Sindak tried to imagine what that would be like. Sometimes, usually after an illness, or a hard knock to the head, the afterlife soul wandered away from the body and couldn’t find its way back. Families hired great Healers to go out into the forests, find the lost soul, and bring it back to the body again. If they couldn’t, the soul became a homeless wanderer, forever condemned to travel the earth.
Sindak added, “If I ever meet her, I’m going to kill her as fast as I can.”
“After what Atotarho said,” Towa pointed out, “I don’t think that’s as easy as it sounds. What makes you think you’re smarter than the dozens who have already tried?”
“I’m not smarter. I’m sneakier.”
“Thank the Spirits,” Akio said. “I was so afraid.” He shivered for effect, and Ober chuckled.
Towa said, “This is not a joke, my friends. If Gannajero is behind this, you’d better think twice before crossing her.”
“I’m not good at thinking,” Sindak responded. “If I have to do it twice, I’ll be dead.”
Akio and Ober laughed out loud, and they heard stirrings in the prisoners’ house. Someone cursed, probably Gonda.
“Shh,” Towa said. “War Chief Koracoo and her deputy have to be back on the trail long before dawn.”
Ober hooked his thumb toward the house and whispered, “I don’t think my clan will allow Atotarho to free them. Two summers ago, she killed my cousin, Roton. CorpseEye bashed his brains out.”
Sindak said, “So? You don’t look all that brokenhearted.”
“Yes, well, he was a worthless worm, but nonetheless, my family has sworn a blood oath against her. I am obligated to kill her.”
“Well, don’t do it before you get an approval from Chief Atotarho. He might let Koracoo use CorpseEye on your brain.” Sindak paused. “Assuming, of course, that she can find it.”
Ober’s bushy brows drew together over his pug nose. “Does the chief favor her?”
“Maybe. He was here earlier. He spoke with Koracoo for a long time.”
“About what?”
Towa answered, “We couldn’t hear most of it. Just that our chief fears his daughter is being held by Gannajero, along with the Yellowtail Village children. He has authorized Koracoo to buy his daughter back.”
“Really? For how much?”
“He said only that he would be sending a warrior along with Koracoo at dawn, a man who could verify his offer.”
Ober’s eyes widened. In a worried voice he asked, “Did he say which warrior?”
“No.”
“I hope it isn’t me,” Akio whispered. “I’m afraid of Koracoo. I’ll have to sleep with one eye open, which means I’ll never get any rest.”
“Another brave friend.” Ober jabbed him in the ribs with his war club, and Akio danced sideways.
“Hey! Stop that!”
Sindak said, “Atotarho wouldn’t pick Akio. Half the time, he’d be puffing like a wounded elk and stumbling around through the brush, lost. Gannajero would hear him coming from a full day’s walk away.”
Akio grinned. “Spoken by a legendary warrior destined to wind up with an arrow in the back of his skull. That is, unless someone can finally convince you to turn around and face the enemy.”
Ober and Towa roared with laughter, and half the dogs in the village started barking. Two dogs near the Hawk longhouse got into a fight, and a whirlwind of flying fur broke out. The larger dog must have gotten in a good bite, because the smaller one yipped and ran off limping.
Ober said, “Woosh, even the dogs get upset by stories of Sindak’s bravery.”
Sindak scowled.
Towa said, “All right. Let’s get back to the subject. I suspect Koracoo has sworn blood oaths against many, or all, of our families. Any man ordered to accompany her may be getting a death sentence.”
“Surely she wouldn’t kill the man who could verify the chief’s offer?” Ober said.
“Not before he verified it,” Sindak replied. “But after? Who knows?”
They stood around staring at each other for thirty heartbeats, and Sindak enjoyed the dismay he’d conjured. Fortunately, with his reputation as a warrior, he didn’t have to worry about any of this.
“Maybe he’ll send Nesi. Nesi can take care of himself.” Akio swiveled around, and his plump face and buck teeth reminded Sindak of a beaver.
“He can’t send Nesi. The war chief needs to stay in the village to protect it. Though he might—”
A loud knocking sounded inside the prisoners’ house.
Akio’s eyes went wide. He hissed, “They’re knocking on the door. What do we do? Are we supposed to talk to them if they call out?”
From inside the longhouse, Gonda answered, “Yes, you idiot. Since we can’t sleep, we’ve been talking about your chief’s offer.”
Towa walked over to the door. “Have you arrived at a decision?”
Koracoo answered, “We have. Please tell Atotarho that we accept his offer.”
Towa nodded somberly. “Very well.” He turned. “Akio, deliver
this message to our chief: War Chief Koracoo has made her decision, and she accepts his offer.”
“Yes, Towa.” Akio puffed away across the plaza toward the Wolf Clan longhouse with his chubby belly jiggling.
“Do you think the chief will come down here after he knows?” Sindak wondered. “Or will he wait until just before dawn?”
“If it were my daughter out there, I’d want the search party on the trail immediately. Or at least before Ober’s relatives find out I’m letting Koracoo go.”
“So. We wait?”
Towa gave him a skeptical look. “Would you really want to miss this?”

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