Great Sky Woman

by Steven Barnes

  Although it was a two-day trek up Great Earth to the ash cone hidden behind her summit, the dream dancer encampment was only a half day above the plain, a steep and beautiful walk between honeysuckle and weeping fig trees, tall blue-green grasses and countless berry vines.

  Like other bomas, their camp was ringed with thorn walls. Unlike the camps around Great Earth and Great Sky, the dream dancer camp had been in the same place for a generation, the dancers using their magic and knowledge to keep it clean and free from pests. In all her journeys, Stillshadow had never found another permanent boma.

  The waters flowing from Great Sky nurtured a constant source of game and fruit, such that the Ibandi had remained in its shadow for all their history. They traded with other tribes from the north and the east, their people migrants, following the herds and the seasons. Only the Ibandi were rooted, all the proof she needed that they, and no others, were Father Mountain’s first and best-loved children.

  Dream dancers, chosen at birth, were selected and trained for the clarity of their seven eyes. Although they did not take mates or raise families as the boma folk did, they lay with hunt chiefs and had children, that both flesh and spirit might live on after breath had ceased. But their hearts were trothed to Father Mountain, and their bodies belonged to the people themselves, rather than any mere mortal men.

  The wooden lean-tos and huts rustled, and one at a time her students emerged: some small, some of them tall and strong, some as young as five springs, others women old enough to be her sisters. All were curious and powerful, all learning and growing under Stillshadow’s protection.

  Several of the younger girls approached, accompanied by their teacher, a toothless dreamer named Far Eye. In her youth, Far Eye had been a great walker. Now she rarely roamed far from her hut, and soon, Stillshadow suspected, she would return to the mountain.

  Eight-rained Raven grinned as if she had received a present. “Back so soon? We did not expect you until full moon!” She peered more closely at her mother’s bundle. “A new dancer? From Fire boma?” Stillshadow watched the girl carefully, knowing that beneath her good spirits, Raven was doubtless of two hearts concerning any new addition to their boma.

  Stillshadow shook her head, and Raven’s smooth forehead wrinkled. “Then, where does she come from?”

  Far Eye spat to the north. “The dream world. Her mother’s body. The place all babies come from, silly thing. We need to make room. Bring soft skins, and call your sister. Her milk came down hard, so one more child will be no great burden. Blossom!”

  Blossom was Stillshadow’s eldest, a broad-hipped, sharp-eyed girl of ten and ten rains. Blossom emerged from her hut. In her strong right arm she carried a drowsy baby nursing from one enormous breast. Her left hand toyed with a half-finished braid. “Far Eye? Mother? You called me?”

  “I have another baby for you,” Stillshadow said.

  “Another baby?” Blossom cut her eyes at the medicine woman slyly. “If I take this baby, someone else will have to take some of my cooking and gathering.”

  Stillshadow laughed. This one was loyal but lazy, and not half as bright as Raven. Despite her potential, the girl had never fasted and prayed to Great Mother as she should, and her hand and foot eyes had winked closed once again. Now she managed best simply letting her body function in its most basic fashion: eating, sleeping, loving, making and feeding babies. “Yes, and I suppose you will need extra food.”

  “Yes.” Blossom bobbed her head. The loose braid fanned in front of her eyes. “Good. Well, let me see her.” She began to inspect the foundling. “All fingers and toes.” Blossom peered more closely still, moving her hand before the child’s eyes. At first there was no response, but then the small moist lips curled in a smile. The baby gurgled merrily, eyes fixed on the moving fingers.

  “Is she the One?” Raven asked, voice a bit nervous.

  Stillshadow fished in her deerskin pouch, then crouched and threw the bones, staring at the broken white pieces quizzically. She threw again, and then again. Each time her expression grew more discouraged.

  Finally she looked up. “I cannot see her nature,” she said.

  Raven licked her lips nervously. “Then…she cannot be given a name.”

  Stillshadow scowled and stood, listening to her knees crackle. “So. Until we know her nature, we will call her T’Cori, meaning ‘nameless one.’ In another moon, perhaps, a totem will come to me. One day she will have her name.”

  Her students murmured. All of them remembered the story. A nameless child will come. She heralds the death of gods….

  The child’s eyes had gone a bit vacant again, wandering, and the girls were puzzled. “Her face-eyes are strange,” Raven said, and kneaded the tiny hands. “I think she sees.”

  “More than most,” the old woman said. “She is new from the dream, closer to Great Mother.” She peered into those eyes again, and then smiled.

  So tiny. So helpless. With such wide-open eyes in face and hands and feet. Without aid, the child would have been dead within a quarter. But why and how had she survived the night, if someone had left her the previous day? Was she bhan? Had her people been killed, as poor Lizard’s had been? Had she been left to perish, or could someone have known that Stillshadow would come along?

  Or…if not someone, then what?

  Stillshadow sent her apprentices to their tasks. She needed to make certain the child would be properly nurtured. Only then could the old woman continue her circuit of the inner bomas. At the moment, she noticed that her bones did not feel the usual fatigue, and despite lingering fears about the nameless child’s future, that was as good a sign as any that Stillshadow had done the appropriate thing.

  Butterfly Spring

  Chapter Eight

  At ten and two springs, Frog Hopping was considered neither a child nor an adult. He considered this a perfect age, with greater freedoms and few responsibilities. Neither disease nor leopards had taken him. Frog had survived an intense fever in his fifth spring. A plague of tiny red mites that had killed two other boma children in his seventh had not crawled in his ear to devour his num. He was a fine, knobby, gap-toothed boy the color of spearwood bark, with busy fingers and questing eyes.

  Spring Gathering was Frog’s favorite time, a time when fortunes were told and dreams were danced by Great Earth’s wise and mysterious women. Such frenzied movement seemed to open a door to the sleeping world, the world in which all men spent half their time, a world as rich and varied as that viewed through open, waking eyes.

  Some among them even believed that the dream world was the more genuine world, a world in which the four-legged still spoke to men, in which Great Mother and Father Mountain revealed Their faces. Who could truly say which world was more real?

  At Spring Gathering, Stalker and the hunt chiefs came down from Great Sky to predict where water and hunting and herbs might best be found. If that lay many days’ run from the current locations, then some of the clans might move, or join boma walls as they did in the lean years. Frog knew of no Ibandi who had died from hunger, because the Circle was spread over a large enough area that none of the prey were hunted to death, and the foraging was always good somewhere.

  At the foot of the eastern edge of Great Earth stood the Life Tree, the largest baobab that any Ibandi had ever seen. Its branches were as wide as the horizon. Its top leaves supported the clouds.

  Inscribed in the trunk were tens of symbols dreamed by dream dancers over the years: gnu and elephants and giraffes and clouds and women birthing children, as well as symbols no man could name.

  This was the first year that Frog had been allowed to climb the Life Tree. Always in previous years he had been told he was too young, had been forced to watch as the other boys earned their bruises.

  Now it was different. Now he waited with others of his age, untried boys hoping to prove their fitness to become hunters, perhaps even hunt chiefs.

  Numbering hands of hands, the boys waited in eager rows. Beside Frog, his ste
pbrother Scorpion, no older but half a head taller, bent and whispered in his ear: “I will push you from the tree,” he said. “Today you die.”

  That was just Scorpion’s attempt to make Frog so afraid that he might lose his balance and fall. Scorpion didn’t really mean it. Or so Frog hoped.

  Then the starting drum began to beat. With a roar, the boys leapt eagerly out toward the great tree.

  As a swarm, youngsters jostled and elbowed each other out of the way in a blur of thin, dark limbs, clambering up to the prize: a deerskin tied to one of the highest branches.

  With despairing cries, one boy after another tumbled to earth. Most caught branches on the way down, but some few fell twisting onto the heaps of grass and soft branches clustered around the trunk. The grass below the Life Tree grew tall, but mothers sometimes crept out at night to push even more leaves beneath the tree, that their sons not cripple themselves in pursuit of glory. In truth, few were ever badly hurt, although lumps and bumps and sprains were commonplace, and baobab scars the source of mirth and merriment for moons to come.

  And here, at last, was an arena in which Frog might outperform his brothers Hawk Shadow and Fire Ant. They were stronger and faster than he, but there was more to the climbing of trees than mere muscle. As one climbed higher and higher, the branches grew thinner, so that a small, skinny tadpole such as Frog actually gained advantage.

  “I will catch you!” Fire Ant panted, snarling at him from a branch just an arm’s length below. He was making his anger face, a sure sign that Ant was laughing inside. Frog scrambled to another branch, fighting for position with River Song from Water boma. The two boys jostled for the same position, wrestling in midair, and Fire Ant pushed River with his foot. The boy lost his grip, lost his balance and fell, hitting another branch on the way down, which tore skin but broke his fall.

  Father Mountain, that must have hurt!

  Branch by clambered branch, Frog approached the elusive skin, only his stepbrother Scorpion and a smaller boy whom he did not know still even with him.

  Scorpion howled as his grip failed, and he slid back down along a branch, scraping a strip of skin from his thigh as he did.

  Suddenly Fire Ant was surprisingly close below him, clutching at his leg. Frog broke free and eeled along a narrow branch. Fire Ant followed. In trying to clamber ahead of Frog, he made a mistake: the branch would not hold his weight. Frog had seen this before. Neither of his brothers understood how large and heavy they were. They were so strong that what to another might have seemed clumsy weight was like an ape scampering effortlessly through the forest.

  The branch cracked. The Ibandi gathered below screamed with mirth as Fire Ant plunged, scrambling to catch this or that branch to slow himself before smashing into the heaped grass, leaves and branches at the tree’s foot.

  To much laughter, Fire Ant staggered to his feet and danced a few painful steps to show that he remained unslain.

  Rejoicing at his fortune, Frog climbed and climbed, feeling that this time at long last he was in his glory. There remained only one rival to rob him of his victory.

  This one was even smaller than young Frog, almost as small as some of the tiny folk who sometimes came in from the outer bomas. He raced among the slender branches like a monkey, with eye-baffling agility and a complete disregard for risk to skull or bones.

  His competitor grabbed the deerhide token and scrambled back down the tree. Frog pursued him: if he could catch the boy, snatch the skin and push him from the Life Tree, victory might still belong to Frog. But with breathtaking balance and agility this one leapt from branch to branch, heedless of the risk. Frog scrambled after his rival, but no matter what he tried the boy remained ahead of him, finally jumping down from the lowest branch to land upon the heaped leaves as lightly as a grass mouse.

  Only then did Frog hear the hooting from those on the ground, and as the rest of the boys reluctantly returned to ground, he saw what had caused the mirth.

  The winner slipped on a headband, and then a shell necklace. He doffed the gazelle skin waistlet and donned a dream dancer’s short leather skirt. The boy was a girl.

  Frog Hopping’s cheeks burned.

  The crowd cheered for the embarrassment of the groaning boys, even as they simultaneously made wet burring sounds at the girl for doing such a thing. The women were more upset at her than the men, who seemed to find it delicious that their sons had been shown up in such a fashion.

  “It serves you right! Climb harder next time!” Uncle Snake called at him, laughing. Even Scorpion and Fire Ant chortled, which confused him. After all, he had beaten them both! What in the name of Great Sky did they have to laugh about?

  T’Cori was still breathless, but exultant. Never had she climbed so! Surely now she would be given a name: Sunshine Treeclimber, perhaps. She could explore that name, would have no trouble living up to it. A name like that she could be proud of, and maybe her sisters would stop teasing or twisting her hair about a prophecy made generations before she was born.

  Most of the dream dancers chided her for her climbing performance. Some frowned, but a few girls stood back, eyes aglow with admiration.

  Two, a pair of twin sisters named Dove and Fawn Blossom, made hard faces. “She thinks she can do anything,” Dove said.

  Her larger sister, Fawn, spat toward Father Mountain. “Stillshadow thinks your eyes are so wide. But look at the old woman’s face now! Did you see this trouble, Nameless?”

  She hushed her voice as Stillshadow shuffled forward to face the girl. T’Cori gazed up at the old medicine woman. Despite Fawn’s words, T’Cori’s face gleamed with perspiration and joy. Would today be her naming day? Perhaps Stillshadow would even call her daughter! The thought thrilled her, for T’Cori loved Stillshadow with her whole heart.

  The dream dancer extended her hand, palm up. “This is not a thing for women,” she said, voice thin with fury.

  “But—”

  “No!” The single word was very nearly a scream. “Look at me, girl! Feel my fire. What do you see?”

  The happy expression on T’Cori’s face flattened, died. Never had T’Cori felt such anger from her mentor, and she fought the urge to turn, to run away. Instead, she crossed her eyes slightly, blurring her visual field. Instantly, Stillshadow’s num-fire appeared, spiked and burning red, the solid masses churning within proclaiming both age and anger. “I—I am sorry,” she began, but Stillshadow cut her off.

  “Everything under the sky has its place, and that place is good. Do not seek to change what you do not understand. You have entertained your sisters and shamed the young hunters. Do you think that you make them stronger, braver, wiser by doing such things?”

  “But, Mother—” she said, and then stopped herself. Only the medicine woman’s actual daughters were allowed to address her so.

  The flat of Stillshadow’s palm cracked across the nameless girl’s cheek. Pain, bright and sharp, flared suddenly. Worse by far than the pain were the shame and humiliation, coming so soon after a moment of victory.

  The crone’s face was set in stone. “Now I see why Great Mother denies you a name. There is none so low that you would not shame it.”

  Tears started from T’Cori’s worshipful eyes. The crone’s hand reached out again, and the girl flinched. But instead of striking her, the wrinkled palm turned upward, and Stillshadow merely said: “The skin.”

  The girl handed her the deerhide that she had taken from the top of the baobab tree, by rights the mark of her victory.

  Stillshadow handed the skin to Raven. “Burn it,” she said. The old woman’s daughter, tall and graceful, her hair more beautifully braided than any other Ibandi woman’s, took the striped prize in her hands, bowed slightly, and without a backward glance walked toward the fire.

  T’Cori tried to turn away, but Stillshadow’s hand fell on her shoulder. “And, girl,” the dream dancer said, voice flat and cold, “don’t call me mother.”

  The nameless one sobbed as the crowd dispersed. Their
initial amusement had transformed into shame, embarrassment and anger at the entire business. Even the young dream dancers who had cheered now echoed Stillshadow’s mood, sneering, unwilling or unable to remember that just moments ago their delight had been as great as hers.

  Of all the mockery that Frog endured, beyond a doubt his sister Little Brook’s was the worst. “You beat your brothers but lose to a girl?” she asked, her voice like a sharp stone. “Just wait for the next time Uncle tells you to obey me. You won’t finish your chores until the moon sets.” Anger and shame sat in his belly like a stone, like a bad nut that he could not pass. His head knew that the emotions would eventually fade, but his heart said, This is always. They will never let you forget.

  That night, Stillshadow tossed and turned, struggling to find her way to the world of dreams. She regretted humiliating the nameless one. The girl was usually meek and obedient, but spirited when it came to running and climbing games. This was fine when she confined such competitive urges to her sisters, but it was not right to shame the young men. Such doings would bring nothing but grief. If she had not struck the girl, Raven and Blossom would have taken it upon themselves to punish her later, in secret. So such things were best done publicly.

  But then…T’Cori was different. Stillshadow’s own teacher, Night Bird, had said that people in the old days could speak to animals in the world of flesh as well as dream. T’Cori, the nameless one, was like that. She saw the fire, read the num-flames without tricks or teaching, more easily than anyone Stillshadow had ever known.

  But that did not change one important fact: there was a line between women’s things and men’s things, a line to be crossed only at peril. Why were the men willing to risk their lives hunting? One thing and one thing only kept them on guard between the lions and the boma: the fact that such dangerous tasks were matters of masculine honor and pride. Women were born to the mysteries of childbirth, and no man, however worthy, could step into that circle. When women began to do men’s things it caused confusion, fear and pain, upsetting the balance that had kept the world as it was since the first Ibandi walked from Great Mother’s womb.