The Feverbird's Claw (9 page)

“Oh, ancestors, give her courage,” the woman chanted.

Moralin hid her smile, remembering Ooden acting out a wild beast, arms high, fingers stiffened into claws.

“May she be …” The woman said an unfamiliar word. “Worthy,” Moralin finished to herself. It must be. That's what the Delagua would say.

Ooden took the snake. The painted lines across the girls' mouths must mean they should not talk or cry out.

Next, the old woman took something—a sharpened bone?—from the hot coals. She used it to pierce the first girl's lower lip and moved to the next girl, leaving the bone in place. None of the girls flinched or gasped.

At the end the painted lines were wiped away. “These children are worthy,” the old woman called out. “Mark it well.” She began to paint a red leaf shape on the first girl's stomach. The circle burst into a high, shrill joy cry. The sounds shimmered in the air as she painted.

Soon Ooden was back. The girl's eyes were shiny in the firelight. “I was worthy,” Ooden said. “Go forward and be worthy, too. He calls.”

Moralin hesitated. What would she have to do to be worthy? The smoke seemed to form itself into the thin head and wide, baleful eye of a snake.

“Go,” Ooden whispered. Moralin swallowed and took a step.

“Who speaks for her?” Green Cloak asked.

To Moralin's surprise, the warrior woman came forward. “This is my story.” She said something about the kachee. Moralin heard voices crying out, “True, true.”

Ooden stepped gingerly forward. “This is my story. She knows many words.” The man's eyes seemed to burn Moralin's face, already slippery with sweat. Could she convince him she had changed? He held up a pouch and asked for its name. The whole circle seemed to watch her with one fierce eye. She took a deep breath and said the name, hoping she had pronounced the word close to right. She heard muffled laughter near the back.

The man held up one thing after another. “This girl says thee wishes to become one of The People. True?”

“True.” She looked briefly into his eyes.

“We ask the fire to give us a sign.” He motioned, and two men took sticks and pulled coals from the fire, a terrible orange-red path dusted with gray. Moralin shrank back. Grandmother had spoken of this barbaric custom, walking on fire. The stories said some survived. Others were badly burned. She could almost smell the stink of her own burning flesh.

Green Cloak folded his arms. The orange glissim of the coals made her sick with terror.

She forced herself to breathe calmly. She looked up at the moon, heard the far-off cries of tree animals, a wailing like a weird wind. How many times had Old Tamlin tried to get her to master her fear of high places and climb the wall? “Name your fear,” he would say.

“It's a muddy river, pouring through my heart.”

“Go into that river. Turn the mud to solid ground. Climb upon it.”

She had never been able to go into the river of fear. Could she do it now? She made all her thoughts and feelings go up, up into the whirling in her head. Slowly she made the waves and trickles stop. The mud hardened. She saw herself, now a small girl, climb out. Sit on top. “Mamita,” the little girl on the solid river whispered over and over. “Help me.”

The child in her head watched as Moralin walked calmly to the coals. She was silent and fearless as Moralin raised her foot and set it right down on the coals and then walked quickly, steadily across.

Moralin was startled by the joy cry. Now the elder raised his hand. “This girl,” he said, “has entered the path to become one of The People. Her name will be Kadu.”

He looked to Moralin. She said nothing, even though his words cut a hole in her heart.

“Mark it well,” the man cried loudly.

“Mark it well,” the people echoed.

When their gazes turned away, Moralin quickly checked the bottoms of both feet. Nothing. Not one small blister.

The next storyteller wrinkled her face and popped her eyes wide open as she told her tale, making those around the fire shriek with laughter. Moralin followed Ooden out of the circle. At the back she caught a glimpse of Figt. The girl, thin and unhappy, hung back from the rest. Moralin felt a flutter of triumph. No beastie. Good. The skulkuk must have killed it.

Ooden showed her the longhouse where she would now sleep. “Yes,” Moralin said, and then: “Wait.” She ran to the place where she had stayed, lifted the reed cage and looked at the wood creature. Its nose twitched. Her chest crackled with sadness, a sadness so hot that if she had been a Great One, she would have been able to turn herself to fire and rain down on this village.

She fumbled with the hair that tied the door shut. “I'm not to be a prisoner anymore,” she whispered. “You mustn't be either. Go well, small friend.” She opened the door and watched the animal flick off into a dark corner. As she turned her face to the longhouse, she wondered how long it would be before she felt any stirring of love and care for another creature again. In the next weeks Moralin came to know the village well. People labored hard for long days always according to their ordered tasks. She shared the house of the young plant keepers.

Each morning the women who were plant keepers gave instructions. The girls knelt and touched their foreheads to the elders' feet. Then they hurried to their work.

Whenever Moralin had a moment to rest, she looked for Salla but found nothing to show the other girl had reached this place alive. Perhaps it was just as well, Moralin thought sadly. If she was right about the skulkuk, better that the Arkera not have soft Salla to pry information from.

Stay alert, she told herself. Find a plan. Whenever adults weren't around, she tried to ask questions or coax Ooden to show her things. “The ancestors don't like that,” Ooden was quick to say.

So she watched the young plant keepers as they ate, worked, did their body painting, adding more leaves and brightening up the old ones. When she dared, she peeked inside the little houses around the edge of the village, filled with yellow seed and with other food—green globes, brown pods, scarlet legumes.

Cloth was made from sheets of bark taken from the red trees. Young boys soaked the sheets and then laid them over a log and beat them with wooden mallets. No wonder the cloth was ugly. The yellow birds from the lake were scratching in the dirt now and giving up their eggs. Tame, Moralin thought scornfully, the way she would never be tamed.

She learned to answer to her new name, but she never used it in her thoughts. Although she could understand far more than she could speak, she forced herself to be bold about trying new words even if she appeared foolish. The day she tried the word for “wife” and said the word “termite,” instead, most of the young girls shouted with laughter.

“Stop,” Ooden told them gravely.

They ran off, still laughing.

Whenever people taunted her for her mistakes, she smiled, but only with her mouth. I will soon have hold of your powers and your secrets, she told herself.

By the time another full-eyed moon came and went, no one had yet approached her for any kind of information. She did not think Green Cloak would tap her shoulder and say, “Come tell us everything of the Delagua city so we may better plan our attack.” But she had hoped she might uncover some small clue to how she could save her people.

How long did she have? She watched women pounding yellow seeds in hollow cylinders, their sticks moving urgently up and down in tune with their chanting, and thought the sticks were like her own heart. She had to know more. Quickly.

“Does everyone go to the camps when the rains come?” she asked Ooden.

The girl hesitated and then told her that most were needed to grow and gather food, but some stayed back.

What if Green Cloak's plan was to get answers from her and then leave her behind?

Finally she was allowed to go with Ooden and the others to the place above the village where they gathered plants. Now she could study the shape of the land. She looked out over the rough buttes to the faint outline of mountains beyond. Those must be the Brown Turtle Mountains. The red forest was to the left of the range. To the right lay a slash of chasm and the ginger-brown land that was said to dry people's lifeblood and leave them shriveled lumps. From up here the sun turned a faraway haze of brown sand-dust into something golden and beautiful.

Pretending to work, Moralin tried out one plan and then another. Make them trust her enough to take her with them if they attacked the city? At the least they must choose her to be among those who went to the red forest when the rains returned. Starting now she'd be ready for anything. She'd begin by making a small store of supplies.

That evening she crept out to the eastern fields and drew close to the place where the skulkuk was held in a huge cage. Bones littered the ground. The Arkera were feeding it, of course, hoping to gain its trust that way. It didn't seem much bigger. Skulkuks must grow slowly.

It lifted half-grown wings at her and growled in its throat. Its purplish eyes gaped, sharp and malevolent. But she felt only sadness for it. Even an ugly creature belonged somewhere. Probably under its dark scales, it, too, longed to go home.

On her way back she saw Figt, scuttling along the eastern fields, alone except—Moralin was surprised to see—for the beastie at her heels. So it hadn't died. Was the girl spying on her?

Moralin's favorite place became the clifftop above the village, where they dug and gathered roots and plants, soaking in the smells of their savory leaves. Anything that seemed helpful she slipped into a pouch that she carried with her always. Sometimes she sat for a moment with her toes buried in the warm earth, watching Ooden, thinking about Lan. Did her little sister miss her? Did they all assume her dead?

When the girls fell silent, working hard, the only sound was creaking birdsong. One particular call reminded Moralin of Song-maker's flute.

Quite often the girls laughed and shoved one another playfully. Then she remembered the times, long ago, when the house owned by her grandmother was full of wonderful smells and good food, and the servants spoiled Moralin, letting her run among their vats of dye—even if she spilled them—smiling indulgently when she became demanding. Her mother and grandmother moved on the edges of the rooms, always serene, always beautiful, always a little mysterious. When they took her to visit Old Tamlin's house, he made no secret, even then, that he thought her special.

Later she and her mother had rubbed like sand against each other. Now Moralin could hardly remember what they had argued about, except Mother was so disappointed she hated the weaving work. “Mamita,” Moralin murmured often, choosing to use the name from when she was little.

Slowly the plant keepers seemed to accept her presence with them. She let them comb her hair with the red oil that kept it from flying in her face. They showed her green seeds she could eat when she needed to work long hours without falling down from tiredness and where to dig for insects that were made into paste for stomach illness. She learned the uses of many herbs.

Each day brought hard work, more than she had ever done at home, where shadows did the back-bending chores. But work made her arms and legs stronger and kept her thoughts from wandering to fearful places.

One dry afternoon the herb gathering led them high above the village. She and Ooden wandered far from the others, following a bird that Ooden said would lead them to a food of shining sweetness. Moralin was pushing branches aside when she heard Ooden hiss sharply. She stopped.

Ooden stood as if her feet had turned into roots.

Moralin squinted. She took a cautious step forward.

“No,” Ooden whispered. “Do not even turn thy head toward that place.”

Moralin had never seen the other girl frightened like this. “What is it?”

Ooden was wheezing slightly. The air was hazy, but Moralin thought she could make out a chasm. She took another step. “Stop,” Ooden said, but she made no move to stop Moralin.

“What? An animal?”

Ooden opened her mouth but seemed unable to speak.

“A poison plant?” Whatever this terrible danger was, she needed to know.

A breeze stirred the dust. Was that some kind of swaying rope bridge that covered the chasm? Maybe enemies of the Arkera lived on the other side of that log. So close to the village? Impossible. But then what?

The breeze carried a soft keening sound toward them.

Moralin paused, not wanting to turn her back on danger. “Run!” Ooden shouted. They crashed through the brush. A whiff of something odd lifted the hair on the back of Moralin's neck. She risked a quick glance behind her, but nothing that she could see or hear was chasing them.

Ooden slowed, reaching for Moralin's hand.

“What is it?”

“The place of the dead.” Whatever Moralin asked, she would say nothing more except “Tell no one where we were.”

Late that night, when everyone seemed to be asleep, Moralin stared into the darkness, feeling the prickles of fear all over again. Ooden, on the mat beside her, moaned and moved in her sleep.