The Broken Land (28 page)

“You said ‘her’ camp. But I thought you said the voice belongs to a man?”

“It does.” I turn to her. Taya’s eyes have started to dart about, as though expecting hideous creatures to emerge from the shadows and gobble her whole. “The old woman’s name has been forgotten by our people. I thank the gods that no one will ever speak it again.”

Taya’s brows draw together over her straight nose. “Forgotten? Was she that evil?”

Names are clan property. Immediately after birth, a child is given a name that had belonged to a revered ancestor. After the deaths of evil people, names are retired forever and no one mentions them again.

“She was a witch. Powerful … incredibly Powerful. The things she did …”

Taya lowers her voice to a whisper. “As Powerful as the foul Bluebird Witch? I’ve heard he can kill with a glance or the wave of a hand. Just seeing him out in the forest can be a death sentence.”

I crouch and begin parting the leaves and grass with my fingers, trying to see what Shago-niyoh wished me to. The leaves rustle with my motions.

Taya spreads her feet, as though preparing for a battle of wills. “Hurry, can you? We’re in enemy country, vulnerable every instant.” She pauses and adds, “I have no idea why your Spirit Helper told you to abandon your weapons. If I were you, I’d find a different Spirit Helper.”

I continue searching. “I was called to something greater. That’s all.”

“What did he ask you to do—other than see visions?” The last word comes out sounding like a curse.

“His call is less a summons to
do
something than an invitation to
be
something.”

Impatiently, she says, “You mean to be a hermit, to run away from life, as you did after that battle? Grandmother still wants you to return to the war trail, you know.”

This refrain is becoming almost unbearable. She says almost these exact words to me at least once a day. Through gritted teeth, I respond, “I was called into life
,
Taya, into relationship with the Faces of the Forest, and Cloudland Eagle, even the grains of sand. I’ll never return to my old life. So you might want to stop hoping for that.”

Her mouth purses. “All right. Fine.”

Gitchi moves forward to help me. He claws at the ground, tearing away the grass. Flecks of charcoal emerge. Gitchi sniffs the charcoal, licks his muzzle nervously, and pants.

“Did he find something?” Taya asks.

After I have cleared away more grass, I stare at it. The cries are barely audible at first, then gather strength, seeping up from the ground. Men wail and shout. I’m breathing as hard as Gitchi now.

Taya asks, “What’s the matter? You’re panting like a dog.”

Hoarsely, I say, “Don’t you hear them?”

“What?”

“The men, screaming.”

“You mean men who died in the attack? Are their ghosts still here? You hear ghosts? What do they want?” She spins around searching for ghosts.

Shago-niyoh moves across the meadow, heading toward a small clearing surrounded by scrub bladdernut trees. I may not remember critical moments of that night … but I recall that clearing. That’s where we were held. Warriors guarded us while the old woman plied her Trade, buying and selling children from the victorious warriors. Atotarho was here that night … . Amid the deep morning shadows, Shago-niyoh’s black cape is almost invisible.

I brush at the charcoal. Large sherds from a big pot, probably a stew pot, thrust up through the dark gray soil. I reach for the largest sherd and tug it from the ground. A handful of earth comes up with it, filled with charred bones. One chunk appears to be from a human skull. My hand shakes when I try to touch it. I pull back. Every time I reach for it, my fingers go numb.

“Here, let me help you, I can get it out. Maybe if we pull out that big potsherd first, it will dislodge the bone, and we can leave.” Taya kneels beside me and reaches for the sherd.

“Don’t touch it!” I order. “The stew was poisoned. I’m sure it’s all right now, but just … don’t.”

I don’t want her tainted by what happened that night.

She jerks her hand back. “
Poisoned?
Who poisoned the stew? Why? Was this the evil witch’s stew pot?”

In a voice almost too faint to hear, I say, “Yes.”

I steady myself, pull the sherd out, and set it to the side. Then I return to digging through the old charcoal and debris. More charred bone emerges from the upturned dirt, including a palm-sized blackened fragment of human skull.

I swallow hard.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

I feel my eyes go enormous and shiny. Old rage, aged to horrific perfection, washes around inside me. “The next day, we returned here. I remember everything. The smell of death permeated the air. When we found his body, Father hacked it to pieces with his war ax. Everyone helped scatter the bloody pieces. Then …” I look at the pile of bone fragments. “Then Father cut off the man’s head and forced me to carry it to this fire. He made me throw it in and watch it burn.”

Violently, I wipe my hands on my cape.

“Why did your father do that? It sounds cruel. You were just a boy.”

A low, bizarre laugh shakes me. Tears press against the inside of my skull, just as they did that day. “Father was not cruel. He did exactly the right thing. For that single instant I had power over this piece of filth.”

I can’t help it. I ball my fists and viciously slam them into the bone fragments, over and over, making small agonized sounds as I pulverize them.
I see his smile … .
I have to kill him. “You deserve to wander the earth forever. You deserve it!
”
I slam my fist into the skull fragment hard enough to send splinters flying in all directions.

“Who does?” Taya cries. “Is that the war chief’s skull?”

I can’t stop to answer. I have to keep killing him. I continue beating the bones. When my hands are torn and bloody, I jerk a rock from the ground, and pound the bones to dust. The sharp
crack! crack! CRACK!
rings through the meadow.

Taya backs away. Her expression tells me everything. My actions have terrified her. She knows for certain now that I am indeed a madman. Despite the danger, she’s seriously considering running home alone.

The rock in my fist hovers in midair, suspended over the battered splinters. She’ll never make it. I rise, draw my arm back, and hurl the rock as far as I can. The breeze blows loose black hair over my eyes. I’m surprised when strands stick to my cheeks as though they are wet.

“Sky Messenger, you’re scaring me!”

I wipe my face on my sleeve. My eyes ache, but it is more than just the cries I’ve kept locked inside me all these summers. I suddenly
understand.

“Blessed gods,” I murmur. “This is not about
the way out.
The long summers of war made me forget a very important lesson.”

“What lesson?” Taya fearfully glances over her shoulder and clenches her jaw. She’s shaking.

As though the words are engraved on my soul, I say, “Our people have an amnesia of the heart. We’ve forgotten that we were once one people.”

“We? Who is we?”

“All of us. All of the peoples south of Skanodario Lake.”

The words seem to stun her. “Don’t
ever
say that again. I refuse to believe that any part of me could come from Flint or Mountain blood. They are evil beasts who deserve to be destroyed. When I am clan matron, I will be brave enough to—”

“To what?” My voice comes out savage. “Kill more people? Burn more villages? Only the bravest dare to try to end the violence, Taya. You want to be brave? Make that your goal.”

“Peacemaking is just another word for cowardice. It—”

“Peacemaking is the
best
quality of the brave, and the only thing to fight for!”

She clenches her fists at her sides. “I want to go home! This journey is making you even stranger.”

“Taya …” I have to remind myself that she is terrified. I force calm into my voice. “I think, maybe, the way out is to dip with the river, not against it. I’m not sure I can do it. I am frail and more than a little frightened, but I must try.”

“I don’t care. I just want to go home!”

I blink at her, truly seeing her for the first time. She has left all of the camp duties to me: fishing, cooking, cleaning. I set up camp and take it down. She doesn’t lift a finger to help. She acts very much as though she’s home and I am just another of her slaves. On the war trail, every warrior cares for himself, so this is not a burden to me … . It’s just—I had hoped this journey would help her grow up.

“I’m going to take you home. I’ve already promised you that. There’s one stop I must make on the way. Then I’ll take you straight home.”

She wets her full lips and gazes at me suspiciously. Uneasily, she says, “Where do we have to stop? We are in enemy country surrounded by those who wish to kill us. We should go straight home.”

“I have to see an old friend. He saved me once. I pray he can do it again.”

Night is falling … . Wrass keeps glancing at me from where he walks at my side … . In a very soft voice, he says, “I will be there. I promise you on my life, I will be right at your side.” When the end comes.

Sulking, Taya breaks the memory, saying, “We should never have come here. What can an old fire pit filled with bones teach you? We—”

“I had to. Bahna was right.”

I bend, pick up a splinter of skull, and clutch it so hard my knuckles go white. Sickness tickles the back of my throat. The last thing on earth I wish to do is Sing him to the Land of the Dead.

As I walk away from Taya, she lets out a small frustrated cry. “Where are you taking that piece of skull? Put it down!”

Gitchi trails a few paces behind me, taking his time licking the morning dew off the blades of grass.

Taya does not follow.

S
he looked across the field of blowing leaves to where Sky Messenger stood at the edge of the forest, turning the splinter in his hands. As though hot, he’d thrown his cape back over his shoulders, revealing his tattered war shirt and the array of Power bundles dangling like cocoons around his waist. Taya was utterly convinced now that he’d lost his soul. Maybe he’d lost it here, and that’s why he kept speaking to invisible things. Was his soul standing right here beside her? Is that who he was talking to? Cold and terrified, she desperately longed to run away. She looked around, judging which direction to go. She had no idea which way led home.

Sky Messenger tilted his head back. In the sky above him, Cloud People, scouts of the Thunderers, marched westward through the pink rays of dawn. The cool breeze tousled his shoulder-length hair around his face. His lips moved, but she couldn’t hear his words. Was he calling to his loose soul? Or to the ghosts of those long dead, killed in this forgotten battle? He spread his arms, hesitated like a hovering kestrel, then whirled in the motions of the Thunder Dance. The seven Thunderers, very Powerful sky-dwellers, controlled the rains, and also kept the monsters of destruction, like Horned Serpent and Tawiscaro, the Evil-Minded One, locked beneath the earth.

Sky Messenger’s muscles bulged through his shirt as he swayed and spun, his feet stamping the ground while he clutched the splinter of human skull and Sang as though his heart were bursting.

Taya’s brows plunged down. “What’s he doing? Calling the Cloud People so the dead war chief can use them as stepping stones to reach the Path of Souls? But he said the man deserved to wander the earth … .”

Without warning, lightning flashed and the deep rumble of the coming Thunderers shook the morning. Rain drifted out of the sky in a glistening wind-borne mist. A hushed whisper filled the air as drops pattered on the grass and brittle leaves. Sky Messenger continued dancing, his moccasins cutting dark swaths across the wet meadow.

As though rubbed with fox fur, the hair on Taya’s arms stood up. Her whole body seemed to be crawling with ants. With each stamp of his feet, she could feel the Power quickening. Gitchi must have felt it, too. He flopped down in the grass and laid his ears back.

Finally, Sky Messenger lifted the bone splinter straight over his head. As though they’d heard his pleas and opened their eternal eyes, the Thunderers roared so loudly Great Grandmother Earth shuddered.

Taya cried, “The Thunderers are getting closer! We should run for cover!”

He didn’t hear her, or he was ignoring her, which she suspected he often did. Rain drenched his upturned face and ratty war shirt.

“You fool! You’re going to get blasted by lightning!”
Then how will I make it home?

When he still didn’t answer, she ran for the riverbank, slipping and sliding her way down to the bottom. This seemed to be a canoe landing, for almost no brush grew here. She could just peer at Sky Messenger over the lip of the drainage. He was spinning like a mad fool.

Suddenly, as though Elder Brother Sun had waited for this exact moment, a brilliant lance of sunlight shot through the clouds and cleaved a bright path through the leaves at Sky Messenger’s feet. It resembled a pointing finger. He stopped spinning, and his gaze traced the light as it moved westward across the forest; then he wiped the rain from his cheeks with the back of his hand. Just as he turned toward her, lightning split the morning and the blaze turned his body into a pillar of pure white.

Sky Messenger lifted the skull splinter up to the shower again. Only after it had been washed clean did he tuck it into the red Power bundle that hung from his belt. For more than one hundred heartbeats, he stood with his eyes closed, letting the rain drench his upturned face. Finally, he turned and plodded toward her.

She scrambled up the bank and trotted to meet him. “Are we finished here? Can we go?”

He turned to look at the small clearing surrounded by bladdernut trees. He seemed to be watching something move. “No, not yet.”

“Why did you keep that blackened piece of skull?”

He put his hand on the red Power bundle, and his bushy brows drew together. “I’m collecting wounds.”

What does that mean?
“And now that you have it, why do we have to stay here?”