The Broken Land (32 page)

“Why are you here?” I ask.

“The cold.”

“I don’t understand.”

His cape waffles as though touched by wind, though I do not feel a breeze.

“The cold has worked its way into the hearts of all living creatures and twined around the roots of the sycamores and oaks. It’s killing us all. Especially him.”

“Who?”

The Voice is unsettlingly soft:
“He has no afterlife soul. She locked it in her soul pot.”

Deep inside me, memories flash. The tormented faces of children. Terror congeals like the impact of an arrow. “Are you talking about Hehaka?”

Twelve summers ago, the old woman who held us captive used an eagle-bone sucking tube to suck out the boy’s afterlife soul. Hehaka. Zateri’s brother. He’d seen eleven summers. She blew Hehaka’s soul into a pot where she imprisoned the souls of anyone who crossed her. The old woman used the pot to threaten Hehaka, telling him to do as she ordered, or when he died she’d take his soul far away and release it to wander among enemy ghosts for eternity.

Suddenly, I understand. “Are you saying that Hehaka is the witch who’s hunting me? Was he the man with the Flint warriors?”

“You know where it is.”

He says the words with a strange serenity far more frightening than a shout.

“The pot? Yes, I—”

“He needs it.”

I shake my head. “Is that why he became a witch? Is that what you’re telling me? His afterlife soul is still locked in that pot?”

The Voice moves its pale hands, reclasps them. It is an inhuman gesture, as quiet as the frost.
“Help him.”

“Help Hehaka?” I say angrily. “Why? Don’t you recall that he betrayed us to the old woman? I hope I never see him again. For many summers, I prayed he was dead.”

He turns toward me. Inside his hood is only darkness. Both Tutelo and Wrass have seen his face. Why won’t he show it to me? Just empty blackness fills the space where eyes, nose, and mouth should be.

“If you are to find brothers in all human beings, you must start with the most abandoned. There’s something you’ve forgotten. He has not.”

I become acutely conscious of the blood pounding in my ears. Memories struggle to rise. Images burst in my mind like bubbles on a pond—I’m back in the clearing with the other children … .

Wrass asks,
“Do you know what they’ll do to you if they catch you?”

Zateri lowers her eyes, and her face flushes. “I’m not going to lie to you. I’m scared to death of what they’ll do … mostly scared of what they’ll do before they kill me. But I can stand it, Wrass. If I know you’re all safe, I can stand anything.”

A faint smile touches Wrass’ lips. “What if one of us gets injured escaping? He will need you and your Healing knowledge. I think you’re the only one of us who is not expendable, Zateri.”

Zateri’s mouth quivers. “But I—”

“You’re too valuable. Not you, Zateri.”

He does not look my way, but I feel Wrass thinking about me. Waiting for me to speak.

Baji sits up straighter, girding herself, and smooths long black hair away from her face. She knows from firsthand experience what the warriors will do to her before they kill her. How can she volunteer?

Baji says, “Me. I’m the one, Wrass. I’ll do it.”

“You?” I say in panic. “Why—”

Wrass grasps my arm to stop me from continuing. He nods at Baji. “Baji may be the only one of us who can get close enough.”

“Why do you think that?” I demand to know.

With tears in her eyes, Baji answers, “Because, silly boy, I’m beautiful. I can make the men want me enough that they’ll carry me right into their camp and sit me down by the stew pot. No matter what happens, by the end of the night, I will have dumped the Spirit plants in that pot.” Her eyes are stony, resolved to do what must be done.

I …

The Voice intrudes:
“It wasn’t your fault. You must stop blaming yourself because you did not volunteer. If you had, well … we wouldn’t be standing here now.”

The emotion in the words never touches the glassy stillness of his tall body. He remains oddly motionless, as if eternity has taught him that, like the white hare hidden in the snow, survival rests in closing your eyes and freezing as solid as the drift.

When I do not respond, he turns and starts walking away through the trees.

I clench my fists. “If I can, I will help Hehaka.”

He stops. His back is to me. His hood moves in a nod, which is at best a faint imitation of an earthly gesture.

As I watch him blend with the night, there is an instant of terrible certainty where I know my Spirit Helper is an evil monster in disguise, a deceiver biding its time, waiting to leap until its chosen prey grows careless. I don’t believe I’m his prey … but I sense that I am important for his final kill.

Or perhaps I am just frightened. All men are bound in the swaddling clothes of their deepest fears, and the truth is that I am more afraid of the dead now than the living. Dancing soul lights, Spirit Helpers, ghosts—they are far more my world today than the land of the living.

Twigs crack, and I glance back over my shoulder at Taya. She has crouched down beside the toppled pine and is studying me. Waiting impatiently for me. She is certain I am mad. I can see it when she looks at me. Of course, she isn’t alone. I heard many people at the betrothal feast whispering behind their hands that the last battle was too much for me. They said it had driven my afterlife soul from my body, leaving an empty husk of a man.

Taya stands up, obviously wondering what’s taking me so long. My fingers lower to gently pet Gitchi’s head. “Let’s go back, old friend,” I whisper, and the wolf trots for Taya.

I gaze longingly at the Path of Souls for a time, imagining what that brilliant glittering silence must be like. Like all men, sometimes I yearn for it.

“Come on!” Taya says.

I walk back.

Taya clutches my sleeve as though her life depends upon it. “Let’s go.”

I say, “We must be very quiet.”

“I will.”

This time I think she finally understands.

O
hsinoh stepped from the cold shadows of the boulder, and the night breeze blew his long black hair around his triangular face. He smoothed the locks behind his oversized ears. The Flint warriors he’d been traveling with were long gone, headed home. The only other human sounds in the forest were the soft voices of the two people on the trail ahead of him. He knew Sky Messenger. He’d been watching him, dogging his path, since they were children, though he doubted Sky Messenger had the slightest idea.

They were only thirty paces in front of Ohsinoh. He had to be cautious. His enemies said he had ears like a bat, but Sky Messenger’s hearing was even better. It had been honed by many summers on the war trail when missing a strange sound could have cost him his life.

He glanced around, wondering what had happened to his gahai. Had the deer and the lost souls scared them away?

With the stealth of a big cat, he moved from tree trunk to tree trunk, hiding long enough to listen to the forest. Finally, lights flickered to his right, out in the trees. When he turned to look at them, they sped away, heading straight for Sky Messenger.

He smiled and followed.

Thirty-two

A
s the two warriors dipped their paddles to steer around the bend in the river, the canoe rocked beneath Koracoo and water slapped the hull, shooting spray over her white hood and cape. She wiped the drops from her face and returned her gaze to the shoreline, searching the maples and red cedars, expecting to see a war party emerge at any instant. Despite the fact that she’d sent a runner ahead with a white arrow, she kept CorpseEye resting across her lap, just in case. She didn’t trust the Flint People to honor the request. In fact, it would not surprise her to find her runner’s body on display, lying gutted on the bank, when she arrived.

Pale pink shards of broken dusk light scattered over the river, twinkling and shifting as Wind Mother touched the branches that overhung the water. Koracoo—
no, I am Jigonsaseh now
—Jigonsaseh took a few moments to appreciate them before her thoughts returned to the Flint People.

After they started bickering last summer, their alliance dissolved, and the relationship between the Standing Stone and Flint peoples had gone from bad to worse. It had started with war parties clashing on the trails, then a few raids where warriors had attacked people harvesting crops and stolen their food, and finally they’d fallen upon each other like wolves. When the Ruling Council had ordered War Chief Deru and Deputy Sky Messenger to attack a Flint Village, there had been no going back.

The low harsh
kak-kak-kak
of a gyrfalcon sounded overhead. She looked up. Against the pastel evening sky, the bird’s sleek body resembled an arrow in flight as it plummeted toward the ground. Every other bird in the forest launched itself heavenward, flocking together for protection. The air was suddenly filled with warning chirps and batting wings. When the gyrfalcon disappeared into a copse of oaks, the flocks of smaller birds seemed to calm down. In barely ten heartbeats the sky was empty again, except for three ducks circling over the glassy river ahead.

Deputy Wampa, kneeling in the bow, lifted her nose and scented the air. She wore a slate gray cape painted with brown spirals that blended with the leafless trees and brush. The morning dew had glued her shoulder-length black hair to her cheeks, making her nose seem wider and her lips more narrow. “Matron Jigonsaseh? Do you—?”

“Yes, Deputy. I smell the smoke.” She could also hear the far-off sounds of the village: people chopping wood, dogs barking. Her fist went tight around the smooth wooden shaft of CorpseEye. He was cool in her hand, which made her nervous. CorpseEye always grew warm when there was danger or he was trying to show her something. How could there not be danger ahead?

A short while later, warriors appeared on the right bank and ran along the river trail, paralleling her canoe. They carried nocked bows, but the bows were not aimed at her. Instead, the warriors’ gazes scanned the trees, as though searching for anyone who might wish to do Koracoo and her party harm.

“What do you make of that?” Wampa said.

From the rear of the canoe, Jonsoc replied, “It looks like they’re here to protect us. I’m intrigued. Maybe my relatives won’t have to requicken my soul in another body after all.”

“Don’t get overconfident,” Koracoo warned. “It could be a ruse to make us feel safe.”

“Yes,” Wampa agreed. “It’s a lot easier to hack people to pieces when they’re inside your palisade than outside where they can run.”

As they came around the curve in the river, Koracoo saw the crowd at the canoe landing. There had to be thirty people.

“What’s this?” Wampa hissed, and her eyes narrowed.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it,” Jonsoc said.

“Wait,” Koracoo breathed, and clutched CorpseEye tighter.

Standing near the front of the assembly was a tall man with a black roach of hair down the middle of his shaved head. As the canoe slid closer, she could see the snake tattoos on his cheeks. He’d seen forty-one summers now, and had moved up through the ranks from war chief to the Chief of Wild River Village. He wore a black cape decorated with turtle shell carvings, symbols of his clan.

When Jonsoc dragged his paddle, steering them toward the landing, Chief Cord walked out of the crowd and down to the water’s edge. As the canoe came slapping in over the waves, Cord reached out, grasped the bow, and dragged it ashore.

Wampa leaped out first and stood beside Cord with her hand on her belted war club while she gave him threatening looks. “You are Chief Cord?” she asked.

“Yes, warrior.”

Wampa extended a hand. “May I present the esteemed matron of Yellowtail Village, Matron Jigonsaseh.”

Cord’s gaze warmed when he looked at her. She gave him a small smile, for old times’ sake, and he walked forward and extended a hand to help her from the canoe. Jigonsaseh took it and stepped onto the sand. He must have been standing outside waiting for her for a long time. His grip was iron and ice. The knife scar that cut across his jaw had puckered from the cold, and his long pointed nose was flushed.

In a deep voice, he greeted, “You are welcome in Wild River Village, Kor … Forgive me, Matron Jigonsaseh.”

“It’s all right, Chief. It is new to me as well.”

He nodded. “My warriors have orders to protect you and your guards with their lives. We have prepared chambers for you, if you wish to spend the night here.”

“That is gracious. We will consider it.”

“Good. If you’ll follow me, I’ll escort you to the council house.”

Jigonsaseh turned and handed CorpseEye to Wampa. “Please take care of him while I am gone.”

Wampa took the legendary war club. Her eyes widened, as though she felt his Spirit tingling her fingertips; then her gaze shot back to Jigonsaseh. “Gone? What do you mean, gone?”

“I want you and Jonsoc to remain with the canoe until I return.”