Spirit Walker

by David Farland

  Chapter 17: How the Sky Feels

  While the men were gone that morning, Wisteria and Scandal straightened camp, watching over their shoulders for danger as they repacked food from broken barrels and smashed crockery, salvaging all that they could.

  A herd of giant deer wandered through camp—”trees on heads,” as the Pwi called them, or “megaloceroses,” as the Starfarers preferred. The enormous antlers on the largest one must have spread fourteen feet across, and each of its eight tines had webbing between them, making it’s rack truly massive.

  The giant deer were nobler in bearing than an ungainly moose, larger than even the biggest elk.

  The giant deer wandered along not fifty feet from the wagon, grazing on watercress and other tender plants that grew near a winding stream. It was as if he knew that the humans wouldn’t harm him.

  Wisteria watched the creatures, so majestic and serene, until one of the does tried to edge away from the herd. The huge buck made a bugling sound and charged her, then nudged her back into the fold.

  Scandal chuckled. “Mating season comes early for these ones.…” He gave Wisteria a sidelong look.

  All day, Wisteria had worried that Tull and the others might not return, that she and Scandal would have to make their way home alone, and she imagined how well they would fare if Mastodon Men attacked or if a scimitar cat decided to carry her off for its cubs to eat.

  So when the men returned in late afternoon, rolling the barrel in front of them, Wisteria felt a thrill of relief. Scandal didn’t bother asking what had happened to the mastodon, and Wisteria suspected that the men did not mention it in an effort to protect her tender feelings for the beast. Instead Tull quietly kissed her and the men loaded the barrel onto the wagon, then he and Ayuvah pulled the wagon half a mile as they moved camp. They ate a cheerless dinner consisting of items that would spoil now that their containers were broken.

  They set camp in the deep forest beside twin redwoods that seemed to have sprouted from the same root.

  Farther into the shadowed woods, the dire wolves howled.

  “I keep trying to count my blessings,” Scandal said over dinner, “but I'm coming up short! This was a fool’s quest. We might make it a couple hundred miles north to the river without a mastodon to pull the wagon, but once we get there, we’re stuck. Fifty men couldn’t pull that wagon once we fill the barrel with water.”

  Phylomon considered. “Once we get out of the mountains, perhaps we can find some farmer and buy some oxen to pull the wagon. I don’t know. It’s been nearly a hundred years since I’ve visited this part of the world.”

  “A hundred years hasn’t changed a thing along the Mammoth Run. It’s still the Rough!” Scandal said. “There’s nothing but a few wild Neanderthals on those plains, and they’re smart enough not to bother trying to domesticate cattle out here, where the wolves sneak in camp to eat your babies while you are busy fighting the cats that want to drag off your livestock.”

  Phylomon gazed off, raised an eyebrow, as if an idea had struck him. “You’re wrong, of course. Fifty men could pull the wagon! As long as the barrel is empty of water, we can push the wagon to Denai ourselves, and then buy slaves to push the wagon from Denai to Bashevgo.”

  “You’d buy slaves?” Wisteria asked. “I thought that you killed slavers.”

  “I’ve bought many slaves over the centuries,” Phylomon said. “And I’ve set every one of them free. If we were to buy some Neanderthals, they’d thank us for it in the end.”

  Scandal was not at all pleased at the prospect, and Ayuvah refused to hear talk of journeying into Denai to buy slaves. The whole reason they had wanted to bring the wagon in the first place was so they could avoid the city, but Phylomon insisted that in Denai, with its large flesh markets, they would not attract much attention. Tull did not take part in the argument. Instead, he sat quietly with Wisteria on the wagon and held her hand. He was still dressed in war gear.

  He does not know what to say to me, Wisteria thought. He’s like a child, totally ignorant of how to please me.

  From a nearby hill, a wolf raised its voice in a forlorn howl. Wisteria smiled at Tull, and felt her nipples tighten. The response surprised her, yet he had aroused her the night before. Why shouldn’t I want to make love to him? she wondered. He is my husband.

  But in her heart, she felt it was a lie. She’d married him so that she could join the quest, but she’d never believed for a moment that she would begin to feel this strongly for him.

  Yet, she wanted him in bed tonight. The thought of having him in her bed every night, nights without end, filled her with a deep sense of longing and brought a thin smile to her lips. I should not smile so soon after my father’s murder, she told herself. The crabs haven’t even finished picking the flesh from his bones.

  She held that thought and pushed Tull’s hand away.

  Wisteria got up off the wagon. Tull looked at her, confused. She led him to a secluded spot away from camp and sat with her back against a tree. She pulled Tull down so he could lean against her, then she massaged his shoulders while humming softly.

  “Did you find Snail Follower?” she asked.

  “The Mastodon Men got him,” Tull answered.

  “Did you see them? What happened?”

  “The Mastodon Men were feeding on Snail Follower. Ayuvah and I went into their camp, and I found the one that killed Little Chaa, and I just looked at him.”

  Wisteria wondered what he was thinking. She combed her fingers through his long red hair. It was very soft and fine. His face was broad and thrust forward, like those of all Neanderthals. His cranium did not have the box shape of a human—instead, it was round, and his skin seemed almost stretched taut over those round features. No one could mistake Tull for a human. She knew that he thought about things, experienced the world, in a way she could never quite imagine. She asked, “What did you think when you looked at him?”

  “Never ask a Pwi what he thinks,” Tull smiled. “Ask him what he feels. Sometimes, when I am unhappy, the most important question you could ask me is ‘How does the sky feel today.’ That is the way you speak to a Pwi.”

  “Then, what did you feel when you saw the Mastodon Man?”

  “I felt Adjonai, the god we all fear. But he was not as powerful as last night. When we first saw the Mastodon Men, it reminded me of a time with my father, and the fear made me fall to the ground. But when I looked upon him today, he was only a great beast. Something was missing. Sometimes, kwea is only aroused because all of the circumstances are right. For instance, my mother likes to work in the garden, but only in the morning when meadowlarks are singing. She does not enjoy the kwea of it in the afternoon or on mornings when the meadowlarks do not sing. I think it was the same with me. When I saw the Mastodon Man today, the kwea was more bearable. Some element was missing.”

  “I’m sorry I asked.”

  “It was good that I faced him. If we go to Craal, Adjonai will be there, too, in his strength.”

  Wisteria decided to change the subject. She squeezed him tight pressing his back against her breasts. “And what do you feel when I hold you?”

  “I feel cradled by the sea.”

  Wisteria laughed a little. “Why do you say that?”

  Tull pondered, seeking for the root of that feeling. “Once, when I was young, I took a boat out on a still lagoon to fish with my spear in the morning just as it reached high tide. The water was like glass, and I speared some good big fish. Then the tide went out, and the lagoon became a pond. So I laid down to rest. The wind came up, and the sun shone on me, and the boat rocked in the waves. It was pleasant, and I imagined that the sea was a goddess and she was caressing me.” Tull smiled at her over his shoulder. “Even then, the name for the goddess I imagined was Wisteria. I have loved you forever.”

  The words both pleased Wisteria and confused her. Pleased her because in a way she felt like a little girl playing house, pretending to love this man. At the same time, the very act of playi
ng house, of pretending to love him, was satisfying—so satisfying that she wasn’t sure she wanted to stop. Could I be falling in love? she wondered. The thought shook her.

  Tull turned to kiss her. A chorus of wolves lifted their voices in song, as if the pack were closing in. Since the others were still arguing by the fire, Wisteria took Tull’s hand and placed it on her breast as they kissed.

  The men by the fire began to argue loudly; she looked up, but she did not stop kissing. She listened to the men’s conversation.

  Phylomon brought out a map of cloth, with the world painted on it. “We’re forty miles north of Botany. It was a fine town when last I visited. They should have cattle to sell.”

  “Pshaw,” Scandal said. “No one has lived in Botany for thirty years. At least, I haven’t heard of anyone there.”

  Ayuvah said, “Some Pwi live there. A couple of bird trappers.”

  Ayuvah studied the map a moment. Directly north was a picture of two stones, both with frowning faces. “Wait,” he said. “In ten days, we end the month of Dragon. The Pwi here in the valley will hold a rendezvous—here at Frowning Idols. It is only forty miles off our trail.”

  Scandal watched Ayuvah’s finger. “By God, he’s right!” Scandal agreed. “Fremon Hume and his boys bring a load of ivory into town every fall, and they buy it at that rendezvous. There are three or four men that make the run, and all of them will have ox carts. Maybe we can buy a few head of oxen. Hell, maybe we can even buy us a mastodon.”

  “Even if we can’t,” Phylomon agreed, “we'll meet almost everyone who lives within two hundred miles. Someone will know where we can find draft animals. We can’t leave the wagon here without a guard—the bears would eat our supplies before we get back. Besides, we'd lose too much time. Do you think we could push this wagon down the mountains, eighty miles? It won’t be easy.”

  “Ayaah,” Scandal said. “That would do. That would do fine.”

  The men sat in silence, gazing at the map, each lost in private thoughts.

  Wisteria shifted her attention. She kissed Tull with passion, and felt him respond in kind. His eyes closed, and she watched his face for a reaction. He seemed to kiss with his whole soul, using every muscle of his body to caress her. She reached up under his shirt and stroked the hairs of his chest. He felt so strong and reassuring. Being with him was nice.

  Yet she knew that if the journey reached a point where it might succeed, she would have to betray him. She wondered how she could accomplish such an act—betray him so that he’d never know. If Phylomon found out what she’d done, he’d punish her.

  Tull moved his hand down to her thigh. A wolf howled nearby, followed by others, and Wisteria shivered in fear.

  The fire crackled and spread its light to the nearer trees. Beyond that, the forest was impenetrably dark. Wisteria noticed a smell that reminded her of cheese, a delicate yellow cheese her father sometimes bought from farmers far to the south, and she thought it strange that Tull’s skin should bear this sweet, sour smell. And suddenly she became aware that the scent was growing stronger, and she thought that very strange.

  A twig cracked beside her, and Tull whirled and pulled his kutow, swinging the double-headed ax over his head as he issued a battle challenge.

  Scandal jumped for his weapon, but Phylomon shouted, “Hold!”

  Four giant women stepped out of the darkness, each completely nude, each of them well over eight feet tall, with dark cinnamon-colored hair and skin as dark as the redwoods themselves.

  Wisteria gasped, for they seemed to her to have materialized from thin air, their presence heralded only by their smell. Each was shapely and beautiful, with wide hips and pointed breasts; Wisteria felt so embarrassed by their nudity that she had to stifle an impulse to run and grab blankets to cover them. They were Dryads, of course, keepers of the redwood forest.

  One woman carried a thin white bundle on her shoulder.

  She stepped forward and tossed the mayor’s Dryad to the ground at Wisteria’s feet, as if the girl were a sack of grain. The red woman moved her fingers through the air, waving them as if they were falling snow blown by the wind. Wisteria recognized the action from legend—Hukm finger language—but she’d never known anyone who spoke the strange tongue. The Dryad of the redwoods waved her fingers downward three times, then made a single emphatic chopping motion.

  Phylomon said, “Get the mayor’s Dryad some water.” Phylomon waved his fingers at the women, then blinked once.

  The red woman raised her hand and let her fingers fall, weaving syllables into the motions of her fingers; she made a chopping motion at the end, and then backed silently into the shadowed woods.

  Wisteria raced back to the wagon to get the last of the drinking water. Tull, seeming hesitant to give up kissing Wisteria, went to the wagon and stripped cloth for compresses. Phylomon and Wisteria washed dirt and blood from the Dryad.

  Tirilee’s pale white skin, normally mottled by a few dark stripes, was blackened by bruises and tiny cuts. Her clothes were shredded. She watched Phylomon with unfocused eyes, but seemed not to realize where she was.

  “The Dryads of the redwoods caught her following us,” Phylomon explained. “They beat her at first, but decided she might be with our party, so they brought her here. I told them that she was our scout. They say we must take her from their forest immediately. If we let her plant any of her aspen trees, they’ll kill us.”

  “My God!” Scandal said. He walked away from the fire and peered beyond its ring of light. Wisteria could smell the scent of cheese very strongly as she worked. “Do you smell that,” Scandal called. “Froghollow cheese, yellow and sweet. You’d think it was fermenting in their breasts.”

  Wisteria glanced over her back. Shadows covered the wild clover on the forest floor. There was no sign of the Dryads.

  Ayuvah stepped up beside her and said, “We should try to get some rest.”

  Scandal laughed, “How can I sleep with those lovely creatures out there?” He called aloud to the trees, “Ladies, it’s warmer here by the fire!” but none of the red women came back into the camp. “Ah, well, I’ll go get some water.” He grabbed a bucket from the wagon and headed off into the woods.

  Phylomon very tenderly prodded each bone in the Dryad’s arms, ribs, and legs, checking for breaks. He said to Ayuvah, “She’s got some cracked ribs, but I think she'll live. Help us get her on the wagon. We can lay her in the barrel.”

  Ayuvah shuffled his feet, kicked at a pine cone. “Tcho,” he said. No.

  Wisteria looked up at her husband, and he too stared down at the ground. She was shocked at his heartlessness. “None of us Pwi can touch her,” Tull said. “Touch a Dryad, and she will destroy you. You can wash her and put her in the wagon … if you must. I stand with Ayuvah in this.”

  She had seen how the Pwi men crossed the road when they’d passed the mayor’s house back in Smilodon Bay. No Pwi would dare touch a Dryad for fear that they would be destroyed by their own lust.

  Phylomon gazed up at Tull, studied him for a moment.

  Off in the darkness, Scandal stubbed his toe on a log, muttered a curse, sloshed his bucket into the stream. Phylomon asked, “What would you do, leave her to die?”

  Ayuvah said, “Yes, leave her. We would not let any other man-eater into camp. We should not let that creature near, either.”

  Tull said nothing.

  “It is not her fault that she is what she is,” Phylomon said. “Her Time of Devotion may be months away. Her lust cannot hurt you now.”

  “You do not know that,” Tull said.

  Phylomon stared at the ground, weighing the risks.

  “She’s just a child,” Wisteria said. “I'll take care of her.” She took off her own bearskin robe and placed it over the girl. The Dryad seemed tiny and frail, a young thing with breasts that had not budded. Wisteria wondered at the girl’s courage, to have come this far in the wilderness without protection.

  Scandal brought the water back from the stream
, took out a pan and poured some to set by the fire. “We’ll have no talk of leaving her,” he said. “Why, when I was an apprentice, my master told me to never throw anything away—especially people. You never know what you can get in return. He always kept a few ‘table scrap' children around. He said, ‘When a girl comes begging for table scraps, you give them to her and ask for a little work in return. You can let her clean the tables in the inn. As she gets older, you put her to work whoring, and when her looks are gone, she goes back to the kitchen. And when she's too feeble for that, you put her to work as a maid, let her do some light sweeping and whatnot. In the end, you can get a whole lifetime of work from the girl, but what have you invested? Why, mostly table scraps!”

  Scandal and Phylomon made a bed in the huge barrel on the back of the wagon and then lugged the girl to her bed. Wisteria sat with her far into the night.

  When it was time to sleep, Wisteria went to lie beside Tull. He was already wrapped in a bearskin. When she crawled under the blanket, she found he was naked. He put his arm over her and kissed her, as if to take up where they’d left off before the forest women came.

  She kissed him once, but in her mind’s eye she saw the young Dryad bleeding and broken on a bed of redwood needles, with Tull and Ayuvah walking off to let her die.

  Wisteria asked Tull, “Would you have left that girl—I mean really left her, if I hadn’t been here?”

  “No.” Tull said after a moment. “I’d have taken her to a human settlement, given her to someone else.”

  You would have sent her back into slavery, Wisteria thought. He’d have punished the girl for having the audacity to try to escape. She studied Tull a long time, his flaring nostrils, pale skin smoothed by a round skull. He even spoke with a Pwi accent, making his vowels nasal by routing them through enlarged sinuses. Human thoughts did not flow through his mind. She was ashamed for wanting to make love to him earlier. He was so clumsy and stupid; if he had not insisted on standing next to her on that night, her father might have escaped. Now he was clumsy at love. Why didn’t he understand that she couldn’t love him after the coldness he’d just shown that little girl? She shoved him away, turned her back.