Shadow Valley (27 page)

Could she climb back down?

Too late.
Up over the lip, no more than ten paces distant, scrambled two lions. Once on the knoll they froze, their yellow gazes locked upon her. Then one slow step at a time, they slunk forward.

Thought was slipping away, something beyond fear rearing itself in her heart:
surrender.

She had seen this thing before back at the Circle in the days before the Mk*tk. While on a medicine walk she and her hunt chief guides had come upon a hyena stalking a wounded deer, and waited until the drama was complete. Still alive, the deer hung limply in the hyena’s jaws, as if the leaf-eater feared that hope or struggle or any attempt to preserve life would merely prolong its agony. She had witnessed the surrender in its body, the limpness.
Kill me
, it seemed to say.
But don’t hurt me….

A sense of that reality wound through a hunter’s prayers, asking that an animal’s
jowk
return to the burning lake, surrendering the fleshly shell so that a worthy hunter might provide his family with meat.

Deep within the pit of her stomach a sour, quiet warmth whispered:
give up …

She climbed as high as she could, looking down at the lions as they searched for a way to reach her. The killers leapt after her, the only sounds the heavy thump of their bodies against rock and their low-throated growls.

Hunger
, raw and hot, radiated from them like heat from desert sand. Leopard Eye had not satisfied them but had perhaps answered the question of whether or not these two-legged creatures were proper flesh.

Poor Leopard Eye. No: poor T’Cori! If she could not find an answer, she would be joining him soon.

Farther to her right a brown tangle of roots burst from the rock. T’Cori strove to work her way over there, but weak, slippery fingers betrayed her. Balance vanished in an instant, and only a desperate lunge for the roots prevented her from toppling over backward. Ten paces away the lioness licked its lips, already tasting the fresh meat.

Then she heard another noise. A hooting call, not quite an animal sound. Not Mk*tk, certainly, but she was certain that no Ibandi throat had ever made such a sound.

And despite the unfamiliarity, her pulse quickened. When she managed to turn her head to look, what she saw gave her pause.

There were four of the pale, squat males who had fetched the strange
child. Their jaws were wide and brows low. They were so heavily muscled that they might have been sun-bleached Mk*tk. They were shorter than the average Mk*tk, but from their proud bearing and well-fed frames, she reckoned them mighty hunters.

Each carried a bamboo spear. The weapons had stone heads lashed to the tips, more complex than the simple spears favored by Ibandi hunters. They wielded them as if the stalks grew from their bones.

The tallest motioned for her to remain still, and then lowered their weapons to advance on the lions.

One of the three cats ran at the odd pale strangers, thundering its rage, coming up short as the spear points lowered to threaten its face. Another of the men lowered his weapon to address the big cat’s belly.

The lions paced side to side in frustration, but every time they made any approach to the men at all, two or three of the spearmen faced it. One tried to disregard the flaked-rock spear points and come at the men from the side, and was gouged for his trouble. Not a mortal injury, but meat-eaters cannot afford damage that might limit their agility or speed.

The men were slower than Ibandi, but their width of shoulder and hip, the thickness of waist proclaimed them stronger. They seemed heavy, perhaps even clumsy compared to the great hunt chiefs, but they moved in harmony one with another, as if a single mind controlled a pair of them. It was a dance such as she had never seen before. A lion dance.

Jabbed and shouted at, the cats backed down the mountain, snarling their frustration. One of the men watched them, keeping his spear at the ready, while the others motioned for T’Cori to descend.

Despite their superficial resemblance to Mk*tk, T’Cori felt no fear. Their eyes were yellow-blue and light brown, the limp hair on their heads a dirty yellowish hue as well. Their teeth were broad, strong and flat.

The largest of them held his hand out to T’Cori, and as she took it she recognized him: He was the gap-toothed giant that the girl-child had run to. Her father? Uncle? Perhaps merely the leader of these strange folk and therefore someone the girl knew would protect her?

She did not know. But her heart sang and said,
You are safe.

And she believed it.

He grunted at her. The men surrounded her. Then, together, they descended the valley wall.

Frog and his hunters had climbed up and down the wall, seeking a sign. A torn root here, an overturned stone there … T’Cori had made no attempt to conceal her passage. When at last they found a proper switchback, Frog sent Leopard Paw down to fetch Water Chant and Stillshadow. Together they dragged the old woman’s sled up the steep grade. As the shadows shortened and then lengthened again the rescuers scouted and searched, until they lost the trail halfway up the valley wall.

Now they stood on a shelf of rock and dirt edged with scrappy yellowish bushes, with no idea what to do next.

“There was so much blood back by the stream,” Leopard Paw said, voice dull. “So much. Perhaps …”

“No,” the old woman said, her voice disturbingly certain. “She still breathes.”

How could she say such a thing when Frog’s own eyes told him there was no sign, except that which proclaimed his woman dead?

And then …

Uncle Snake pointed out at the dusty horizon, almost directly into the sun, now near setting along the valley’s western rim.

Shimmering against the dying sun were four, no,
five
human figures. Was this, at last, the final battle he had so long feared?

Mk*tk?

He pushed Bat Wing behind him. Shoulder to shoulder, the four Ibandi hunters readied their spears. If their blood enemies had found them … well, perhaps all they could do was sell their lives dearly.

Frog squinted, finally able to make out three wolf forms. They were near the humans but not attacking them, nor being attacked
by
them.

“It is the strange ones,” Snake whispered. His white-speckled beard trembled as he spoke. “The foundling’s people.”

Water Chant shaded his eyes, muttering under his breath as he peered out.

What did they want? Could they know something? Frog tensed: could they have harmed T’Cori? Were they masters of lions, as well as wolves?

There was someone
with
the male figures. It took only a moment to recognize it as an Ibandi female, heavy with child. And only another moment for his gladdened heart to realize it was his mate.

Spears held tip high, the Ibandi walked to meet the strangers. The strangers were as pale as the grubs that burned to death when exposed to the sun. They walked two on either side of T’Cori.

She looked exhausted and bruised, her fingers streaked with blood, her lips swollen and her braided hair clotted with dust.

But she was
alive.

Frog began to run toward them. The men walking beside her looked at T’Cori as if to note her reaction before stopping and allowing her to walk on ahead, until Frog and T’Cori stood staring into each other’s eyes. They linked hands and leaned toward each other until their foreheads touched.

Frog lived in a world of solid things, not spirits. And had lost the last of his hopes of another world atop Great Sky. But … now he felt as if the sun had emerged from behind a storm cloud. He felt contentment so deep, it was almost frightening. Was this all that it took to make him happy? For the woman he loved to hold his hand? To once again gaze into her eyes?

He laid his palm against the soft warm swell of her belly. Frog imagined that he could feel the life within. His child.
Their
child.

He slipped his arm around her, then looked up at the others.

“Our friends have returned,” he said.

“They saved me from the lions.” Her smile vanished. “They were too late to help poor Leopard Eye, but their spears saved my life.”

Frog stepped toward them, stopped a hand of steps away. He touched his chest. “Frog Hopping,” he said.

The second largest of the newcomers seemed to Frog to be the headman. The largest of them hovered at the headman’s right elbow. Their eyes were the girl-child’s shade of light blue. His nose was shaped like hers, broad and wide nostriled. His teeth were strong, square and gapped in front.

Family?

“Thal,” said the leader.

“Frog,” said Frog. He swept his arm, indicating the search party. “Ibandi,” he said.

The newcomer’s thick pale brows arched. “Vokka,” he said.

The revel ranged from one end of the Ibandi camp to the other, and lasted until first light. Two of the Vokka males thumped awkwardly about, waving their arms and screaming to the sky in a shaggy dance with the Ibandi hunters. Soon after their return, another Vokka male had arrived, escorting several females. Frog noted that these females were not the subservient and docile sort favored by the bestial Mk*tk. Much of the time it seemed they were the ones giving the males direction. Men held children, and he saw one of them serve food to his woman.

So. Unlike Mk*tk these folk knew their women were human. Vokka and Ibandi were not so foreign after all.

Since T’Cori had appeared, Stillshadow had held her hand in a death grip. Held her, perhaps fearing that without touch, she could never believe that her daughter had returned.

Frog watched without speaking. He put fire to the herbs stuffed in his bone pipe, and took one deep, satisfied puff after another. The world, he decided, was a very good place.

Stillshadow’s ancient cheeks tightened with a smile, and her blind eyes wept.

“My daughter has returned,” she said. “Neither famine nor fire could take the joy from my heart.” She suddenly looked up at the sky. “Oh! I should not say such things. The gods love troubles. It is why they gave their children so many of them. Still, this is a happy day.”

Another commotion at the fire’s edge, and suddenly six more Vokka appeared, including the girl-child they had sheltered mere nights ago. She was clean and washed, her pale eyes bright. Frog guessed that the woman walking behind her was a loving mother or perhaps an aunt. Their loincloths were rougher than those of the Ibandi, not of beaten deer leather but of lion hide.

Beside them trotted another of the gray wolves. It was a bit smaller, paler than the wolves known to the Ibandi. Its snout was blunter as well. It watched them warily, remaining close to the Vokka.

Uncle Snake appeared behind Frog. “What manner of two-legged are these?” he asked. “I do not understand them at all. We save their child, and they do not speak or come to make friends. Now, suddenly, they are everywhere and cannot get enough of us. And what of the wolves? In what world do two-and four-legged walk together?”

“This world, it seems.” Frog and one of the wolves had locked eyes, and Frog refused to be the first one to turn away. Foolish, perhaps, to play such games with a four-legged, but then perhaps he was a fool. He would not lose a contest to a wolf. He was a man!

He blinked, suddenly laughing at the oddness of the thought, and realized that he had lost. The wolf’s tongue lolled out, flickered back, and it turned away.

“I think I know,” T’Cori said. “We saved their child, which put them in our debt. What they did was wait until they could do a service in return.”

Still muttering to herself, Stillshadow hobbled forward, knelt and drew a crescent moon symbol on the ground with her finger. This was followed by a child symbol: an oval head, stick of a body, and short arms and legs. The Vokka woman commenced to do the same, and soon the ground was covered with scrawls. T’Cori and Stillshadow pointed and spoke. The Vokka jabbered in response.

“What are you doing?” Frog asked.

“It is our medicine,” T’Cori answered, new confidence lightening her voice. “Every year at Spring Gathering, bhan arrive from horizons away. Not all speak well. It is our place to learn their speech and teach them ours. The
jowk
tongue is beyond words: symbols for woman, man, life, death, moon, sun. They are shared by many, perhaps by all. This is what women do: when
jowk
wears a man’s skin, it loves to fight. In a woman’s,
jowk
craves a joining. It is up to women to find the symbols we share.”

After a long day of dancing and scrawling and sharing, Frog and T’Cori reclined on zebra skins. Beneath a sky that seemed so clear it was almost as if he was seeing it for the first time, Frog’s mind could no longer restrain his heart. “When I thought I had lost you,” he said, “I died. My heart did not want to beat. T’Cori, kill me now.”

“What?”

Frog withdrew his knife from its sheath and placed its point against his breast. “Push it. End my pain. Or take me as your man.”

Dry lightning ripped the sky above them, blistering the clouds. Holding his eyes without blinking she wrapped her hands around the knife and pushed until a trickle of blood flowed down over his nipple. Thunder rolled across the plain, and she smiled as if she welcomed it as a holy sign.