The Broken Land (14 page)

Sky Messenger didn’t reply for a time; then his head dipped in a nod.

Speaker Koracoo continued, “Besides, there is no fault here. Any man who refuses to answer his Spirit Helper’s call endangers not only himself, but his people.”

“Well, you have the right to your sad opinion, Koracoo. He is, after all, of your clan and your village. But it is extremely unlikely that he will ever regain the respect of this village.” Grandmother paused for effect before she added, “It would take a miracle. He would have to distinguish himself in war as no other man has ever done in the entire history of our people! Then, and only then, would he be worthy of siring children for the Deer Clan. Though I’m not certain your son even knows how to accomplish that.”

Each venom-laced word had a clear ring of finality, as though the discussion were over.

Sky Messenger straightened to his full height, and his eyes focused on the longhouse wall, but he looked like an inferno was raging inside him.

Taya held her breath and strained to hear. Rain had started to patter on the roof and splat on her head. The noise made it even harder to hear.

“I will not fight again,” Sky Messenger said defiantly.

Astonished, Grandmother said, “The Standing Stone People have been struck a devastating blow by the warfare and the fever. We are more vulnerable now than we have ever been. Are you saying openly that you refuse to protect your relatives?”

“I must protect them in a different way. My Dreams warn—”

“Bah!” Grandmother spat the word, and Taya saw her wave a slender heavily ringed hand through the firelight. Her numerous shell bracelets rattled. “A man who will not fight for his people should be condemned and chased from the village. Though I doubt your relatives have the stomach to do it.”

Taya saw Speaker Koracoo’s face go rigid. “Your ears seem to be filled with pine resin, Kittle.” She stood up. “When you are ready to listen to Sky Messenger’s visions, we will return. Until then, please think about this: in exchange for your approval of the marriage, the Bear Clan is willing to offer half its walnut harvest.”

“Half?” Grandmother scoffed. “I want it all! And your hickory nut and plum harvests, as well!”

Grandmother had just subtly told Koracoo that
if
the Bear Clan offered enough, the marriage would happen. Taya felt like she’d been struck in the head with a rock. As a child, she had worshipped Sky Messenger. Back then, it had never seemed possible that she, the fifth granddaughter of the high matron, forever doomed to live in the shadows cast by her older sisters, would ever have a chance to marry the greatly esteemed grandson of the matron of the Bear Clan.

But she didn’t want to marry him now! Horned Serpent’s teeth! No matter what he did in the future, his disgrace would forever condemn their children to ignominy. Disgust churned her belly.

Koracoo replied, “Our Women’s Council will consider your offer.”

Grandmother must have been taken aback. She laughed out loud. “Yellowtail Village must truly be desperate for this alliance.”

“I only said that I would present it. Nothing more.”

Grandmother gave her a knowing smile. It was dangerous to show any weakness before Grandmother. She would use it like a fine chert knife to cut your heart out. “For the moment, I will rescind the death sentence on his head. But do not come back to me until you’re prepared to pay the full price of Sky Messenger’s actions. I will only meet with you one more time.”

“That is acceptable.”

Taya eased to the end of the wall to peer around the corner.

Koracoo and Sky Messenger ducked beneath the door curtain and stepped outside, followed by the old gray wolf that never left Sky Messenger’s side. They stood beneath the porch for a time, murmuring to each other, apparently examining the makeshift refugee houses that leaned precariously along the palisade walls. In the past moon, Grandmother had welcomed almost five hundred refugees, far more than they had the food to feed. But what else could she do?

“She asks too much, Mother,” Sky Messenger said. When he finally turned to face Koracoo, Taya saw his angry expression. “I know marriage is my penance, but this is preposterous. Choose another clan.”

“We must be patient.” Koracoo gazed out at the village plaza, mostly empty due to the rain, and her eyes seemed to linger on each of the longhouses, as though contemplating her chances for an alliance with the Wolf or Turtle clans.

Sky Messenger had turned away. Taya couldn’t see his face, but he had his fists clenched tightly. “Maybe I should just leave.”

“And abandon your vision?” Koracoo had seen thirty-nine summers pass. She was still a handsome woman. Though she kept her gray-streaked black hair cut short in mourning, it framed her small narrow nose and full lips.

Sky Messenger exhaled hard. “My vision is all I have. I’ll never abandon it. But this alliance …” Frustrated, he slapped his arms against his sides. “Tell me what to do?”

He didn’t look like he’d been sleeping. Dark puffy half-moons swelled beneath his brown eyes, and tiny lines etched the corners of his wide mouth. Despite that, his tanned round face was striking with its high cheekbones and slender nose. At twelve hands, he was taller than most men in the village, and the muscles of his shoulders, accustomed to wielding a war club, bulged through the leather of his belted knee-length shirt.

Koracoo said, “If we are to accomplish the things your Dreams say we must, we need this alliance.”

He laughed softly and shook his head. “Very well, Mother, but I don’t like it.”

Koracoo flipped up the hood of her cape, adjusted it around her face, and said, “I must speak with our council again. Hear their thoughts. Then we’ll arrange another meeting with Kittle. She’ll be expecting us tonight. So we’ll wait until tomorrow morning.”

As Koracoo started to walk away, Sky Messenger caught her arm. “Mother, if …
if.
I will need you to approach Chief Cord of Wild River Village. I …” He released her arm. “We will need them on our side.”

Taya stiffened. Wild River Village was of the Flint People, their enemies! Was this some plot?

Koracoo watched the rain for a time. “Is
she
still there?”

Sky Messenger squinted and looked away. “That’s not the reason I asked you to go. I’m not afraid to see her. I just know that Cord will listen to you.”

Taya wondered who
she
was.

“I see.” Koracoo pulled her cape closed beneath her chin. When she exhaled, her breath condensed and drifted away. “I can’t leave while the fever rages.”

“No, of course not.”

“When I can, I will discuss it with …”

As they walked away across the rainy plaza, Taya lost their voices. She leaned back against the longhouse wall and hugged herself. She didn’t know how to feel about any of this. Why had no one consulted her about this marriage? Not that it was any of her business. Marriages were arranged by the prospective couple’s mothers or grandmothers, in consultation with their respective clans. The man and woman involved had little say in the outcome of such negotiations, though if either party seriously objected his or her desires were taken into consideration. Taya had to make her objections known immediately!

She ran back the way she’d come, heedless of the number of times her elbows banged the wall.

Fourteen

K
ittle gracefully paced through the firelight of the Deer Clan longhouse, refusing to look at her granddaughter, her withering gaze instead upon her daughter, Yosha. How such an ugly child had come from her womb never ceased to annoy her. Yosha’s nickname as a child had been Rodent-face, which aptly described her. She had small beady eyes, a long pointed nose and a bad overbite, as though her teeth were too big for her jaw. The thin mousy hair that hung to her chin added to the rodent image. Worse, she constantly pawed at things in a ratlike manner, and had the minuscule intelligence to match.

A young slave girl, recently captured from the Flint People, fluttered around Yosha and Taya, setting a platter of cornbread and cups of walnut milk before them. Yosha sniffed and looked away, taking no more notice of the girl than she would of a mosquito. Taya, to her credit, stared fixedly at the floor mats. She wore an elkhide cape with the hair turned in for warmth. The exterior leather was painted with a curious, fanciful pattern of flowers and finches. Petals and feathers—yellow, red, blue—scrolled across the shoulders. A girl’s cape. Not a woman’s. Leave it to Yosha to be oblivious.

Kittle folded her arms and glared. “Well?”

“Mother, you already know what I’m going to say. Please sit down so that we might discuss it in a civil manner.”

Kittle turned to the slave girl. “Leave.”

The girl bowed. “Yes, High Matron.”

When she was gone, Kittle grudgingly sank onto the bear hides across the fire and propped her moccasins on one of the hearthstones to warm her feet. The night had been damp and bitter, and despite the morning’s excitement, she remained cold to the bone. Kittle pulled her magnificent blue cape more closely around her and examined her daughter. Yosha selected a piece of cornbread filled with hickory nuts and dried mint and bit into it slowly, as though relishing the flavor. Sitting to Kittle’s right, Taya was so still she might not have been there at all.

“Do you think I have all day to listen to your drivel? Get to the matter.”

Yosha continued to chew at her leisure, then swallowed the bite and wiped the crumbs onto her knee-high legging. “Taya objects to the marriage. She says it will disgrace her children and the entire Deer Clan.”

“She has seen fourteen summers. What does she know of disgrace? Ask me about her father. Now he was a disgrace. I should never have let you have your way on that one. From the instant I saw him I knew he was worthless. I’ll never forget the day I sent him running for his home village. It’s one of the high moments of my life.”

The muscles in Yosha’s jaw clenched a few times before she responded. “My choice of husbands is not at issue. Taya—”

“No, what is at issue is how silly a young woman can be about such things. One day she’s frantic to have a man, and the next she hates him. That’s why they should have no say whatsoever in the men chosen for them.”

“But Sky Messenger is a traitor! You said so yourself.”

Kittle lounged back on the warm bearhides and gave her daughter a half-lidded stare. “It’s almost inconceivable that you are one of my daughters. How is it possible that I could have produced a woman this stupid?”

“Insulting me will not help, Mother. We need to—”

“You, of all people, should understand that this has nothing to do with either Taya or Sky Messenger.”

Taya, who still had her eyes downcast, shifted slightly. Thank the gods that the girl had Kittle’s face, from her large dark eyes and long eyelashes, to her sweet full lips and perfect nose. Taya’s waist-length hair, glossy and jet black, fell over her narrow shoulders like a shining blanket. Hopefully she did not have her mother’s rodent intelligence.

“So, Granddaughter,” Kittle said to Taya, and the girl could not suppress the shudder that went through her. “What do you have to say to me?”

Taya’s eyes instantly filled with tears. When she choked back a whimper, Kittle grabbed her wrist, and squeezed until her nails bit into the girl’s flesh. Taya let out a pained yelp. “If you cry I will pick up that piece of firewood and beat you across the back.”

Taya struggled to control herself. Kittle released her and leaned back. Her female descendants had to learn very early that displays of emotion were unacceptable. Tears, especially, made them appear to be weak fools, and women who might one day hold power in the Standing Stone nation could not afford such indulgences.

Taya wiped her eyes on her cape. “Grandmother, I know my obligations. I will obediently marry whomever you choose. But why Sky Messenger? Am I being punished?”

“If I were punishing you, you would not have to ask. You would feel it in your broken bones.”

“Then … why?”

“Why? You are such a spoiled child!” Kittle waved a hand through the smoky air. “You used to swoon over him every time he returned from a war walk. Only last summer you flew in here clutching some trinket he’d brought you and danced around shouting that you loved him. Can true love die so quickly?”

Yosha said, “It always has for you, Mother. Stories of your whoring filled my youth. I recall once—”

“Recall later. Right now we’re talking about your overprotected daughter. Or did you forget that?”

Taya glanced between them. “Grandmother, that was before he betrayed us! I don’t wish to marry him now.”

“My dear girl, you must have been standing right outside listening when his relatives were here or you would not yet know about the marriage plans.” Taya’s face flushed in a silent admission of guilt. “Did you not also hear his mother say that he’d had a great vision that could save this nation?”

“Well … yes, Grandmother.”

“Then you did not believe it?” Kittle picked up her cup of walnut milk and sipped it, watching her granddaughter over the polished wooden rim.