Great Sky Woman

by Steven Barnes

  Frog screamed that he did.

  And then Owl left Frog crying in the sand. The younger boy picked himself up and ran, embarrassed, from the sight of his brothers, to where he might be alone, howling his humiliation and pain.

  T’Cori was happy, and ashamed of herself for being so.

  Chapter Twelve

  For a hand of days, the sky had opened the clouds, releasing a downpour that drove most Ibandi into their huts. Frog thought the rain a perfect match for the miserable mood following his beating. The sight of Wind and Water bomas’ folk dancing and cheering the downpour was wearying, and he was happy when, after three days, most of the others shared his opinion that the gods had offered them entirely too much of a good thing.

  The dream dancers finally found the right song, sang it with enough heart and fervor to birth a sun strong enough to banish the water from the sky.

  Then, under the critical eye of Uncle Snake and his hunt chief brothers, Frog practiced rolling and jumping in the mud, wincing at his sore back and shoulders. Still, he did the best he could and kept up with most of the others. There were many different types of play, all of them preparing the boys for wrestling: baboon jumping, snake crawling, elephant walking and more. They wrestled, practiced making their arrows and ran races.

  But during this entire time the adult males were conferring in private, arguing and dancing their opinions beneath the Life Tree. No children were allowed near, but Frog knew from the location alone that something serious was in the offing. He could sense the fear in the camp as he had felt the weight of the sky before the rain drove them into their huts.

  Something was wrong, and there was some momentum building, like a flow of rocks rolling down a mountainside.

  The adult council was opened, so that all of the Ibandi, every adult and child who had come to Spring Gathering, was welcome to stand beneath the branches of the Life Tree and hear the words of their elders. Cloud Stalker himself, four scars on each cheek, wearing the skin of a lion and a mountain gorilla’s skull tied to the top of his head, appeared in all his fearsome glory.

  “We are here,” he said, “to decide what is to be done about the beast-men. Shall there be peace between us, or shall we fight?”

  Frog saw the men who nodded, and those who turned away, as if ashamed to admit their fear before their brothers.

  Cloud Stalker danced, throwing powders that caused the fire to flare and smoke. He howled and mimed stalking lions and angry elephants, contorting his body so that the keloid scars etching his back seemed to come alive. Watching him, Frog forgot Stalker was a man, and instead saw far plains, strange beasts and deadly struggles beneath a pitiless sky.

  But then he saw the chief’s hand steal to the belt at his waist and stealthily slip out a small object. Frog’s heart froze, a sudden understanding flashing into his mind. Hadn’t he seen Snake making just the same move, distracting the audience with a sweeping motion of his right hand, while his left extracted a white stone from his belt?

  So when Cloud Stalker held his hand up, pinching a white rock between his fingers, all the tribe roared with approval and awe.

  Except Frog, who stood, dazed, realizing that a sentence of death had been passed not by the omniscient Father Mountain, but by mortal men.

  One term was repeated over and over again the next day as two tens of men prepared their weapons. All the next day as they chanted in the men’s hut he heard the sound coming from the walls. The term was “beast-men.”

  Frog was not told what was happening, shared no words with the hunters who took their weapons, embraced their wives or lovers and walked west around Great Earth’s curve, murder in their minds.

  Five of the men were from Fire boma. Snake and his closest friend, the short, thick-bodied Deep Dry Hole, split off, each seeking to bid farewell to his family.

  Snake held Frog’s mother, Gazelle, tightly, whispering something into her ear that Frog could not hear. She seemed to shrink. Snake held Scorpion, Fire Ant and Hawk Shadow each in turn, then Little Brook and finally Frog. Frog could smell the fear on his uncle, but stronger than the fear was anger. His heart swelled with pride. The beast-men thought they were killers! Well, the men of the bomas would show them, would spill their blood and brains. Frog could not wait to be a hunter, could not wait to experience the glory of fighting to protect the bomas.

  Surely on that great day he would be a man.

  When the men had gone, Gazelle walked back to their lean-to as if all the bones had been removed from her legs. Fire Ant took her arm that she might lean against him, Hawk Shadow on the other side. Frog was close behind, wishing that he was large and strong enough to help his mother.

  “What did Uncle say to you?” Hawk asked.

  Her eyes were hollow. “He said, ‘It is time to wash the spears.’”

  The men were gone a day and a night. Frog thought that they would return running and dancing, eyes bright, heads high. But the blood-spattered men who stumbled back to Spring Gathering seemed almost to be sleepwalking. Their words were loud and boastful, but their eyes…their eyes reminded Frog of Silent Warthog, the bhan hunter who had stopped breathing. Their eyes had lost life.

  Snake would not speak fully of what had happened, but days later he took Hawk Shadow and Fire Ant out into the brush. They did not know, but Frog crept after them. He was very good at secret following. They did not see him as he overheard the things Snake said.

  “We found their camp,” he said. “We burned their huts to drive them out. Our arrows and spears were hungry.”

  “Are they large and strong?” Fire Ant asked.

  “Yes,” Deep Dry Hole said. An unhealed crescent bite mark scarred his right thigh. A bite mark? No arrow or spear wounds? “But they were cowards when faced by men. We are Ibandi!”

  And then he would say no more.

  The next day, the gathered clans prepared to return to their homes, to go their separate ways. In previous years this had been a happy time, a time to return to their lives having renewed acquaintances and made good trades for medicines and knives, and even marriage contracts.

  But the Ibandi were quiet this year, faces long, as if some of the joy had been sucked from their lives like moisture drying in sun-bleached bones.

  Fortunately, the marriages arranged during Spring Gathering were still joyous occasions. Marriages meant children, and the safety of increase. And this year it was Frog’s own sister, Little Brook, who brought home a husband. To Frog’s pleasure, that husband was the playful, courageous Lion Tooth.

  Lion Tooth had seen seventeen rains, the same as Hawk Shadow. Frog thought him more than a match for the sharp-tongued Brook, and could hardly wait to watch them squabble.

  That would be in the future: before they could be married, Tooth would spend at least a year in service to Snake and Gazelle Tears in Fire boma.

  “Farewell,” Tooth’s father said to Uncle Snake. Tooth’s father was a scarred and grizzled hunter from Wind boma to the north, and there was every reason to think that his son would prove as reliable a provider. “Watch my son, teach him, help him grow.”

  “I will hold him as my own,” Uncle Snake said, and they clasped hands. It was a hunter’s grip, strong, the free left hand forming into a fist to strike at the back of the other hunter’s hand, hard, both at the same time. It was a show of strength, a thing done only between men.

  Then the people went about their lives, and Frog returned to his own fire with his family and the new brother, Lion Tooth, with his happy songs and gymnastic dances.

  Tooth’s unfailing good humor swiftly made him a favorite. Tooth was folded into the games and life of Fire boma: the running and chasing and throwing and wrestling. Boys of all bomas played the same games, but Fire Ant, Lion Tooth and Hawk Shadow were usually the best. Ant and Tooth became almost inseparable, and Frog quickly found that Tooth was easy to talk to and good at keeping secrets.

  Frog watched as the new husband-to-be worked with Uncle Snake, patching, hunting, carrying
. Little Brook did not live with her man yet, could not even speak to him, but the air vibrated with a tension Frog’s ten-and-two-spring-old body did not yet comprehend. Little Brook no longer seemed a miniature version of Gazelle, but more playful and eager, and in an endearing way nervous.

  One day, Frog followed Lion Tooth down to Fire River’s reeded banks, and as he suspected, Little Brook met him there in forbidden seclusion. “Hello, husband,” Little Brook said shyly. At ten and five rains, both her body and mind were ready for marriage, but by custom they were compelled to wait a bit longer.

  “Hello, wife,” he replied.

  She came closer to him and touched his arm. “You are very strong.”

  He rubbed his cheek against hers. “Strong enough to carry you and all our children.”

  Frog grinned, imagining Little Brook heavy with child. She wouldn’t be quite so nimble with a switch then, would she?

  “We will have many?” Her hand touched his rump, rubbing him.

  He grinned. “If Great Mother blesses us.”

  She looked to see if anyone was watching. Frog ducked down, but snuck his head back up to see her press her mouth against the corner of Tooth’s, a clumsy openmouthed smack. Then she dashed away. Tooth grinned, flustered. He heard hooting and turned to see Frog, rolling around on the ground, laughing helplessly.

  He waved. “You wait! Your turn will come.”

  Frog scratched his head, doubting very much that such a day would ever arrive, and returned to the soft work of hard play. It was good to see his sister happy. She had ceased being such a nag, as if her coming wifedom had sweetened the sourness in her heart.

  It was good to see and hear happiness in the camp. There had been far too little of that since the night of the thirsty spears.

  Days rolled like the currents of Fire River. But despite the endless chores, joys and sorrows, the killing of the beast-men seemed to weigh on his people. Every day, there were times when Gazelle or Deep Dry Hole or Snake looked to Great Sky, and Frog thought he saw doubt in their eyes. Why? Not one of them seemed to have noticed that Cloud Stalker had pulled the white death stone from his belt.

  It had been said that the tracks at the bhan boma were those of beast-men. Still, they were not sure. They were not certain. They had done all that could be done to protect their families, the ones they loved. But in truth, they did not know.

  It hit him like a thunderbolt. Ibandi did not kill Ibandi. They did not kill bhan. Even to kill a beast-man was something that troubled their dreams. It was forbidden, but they had done it, and although their cause had been just, killing the beast-men had been like killing a part of themselves. Frog did not fully understand it, but there it was, a fact for all to see.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Occasionally, the men of Fire boma hunted as a group. Twice during these times, Frog saw Deep Dry Hole’s wife, Wind Song, sneaking off into the brush with Lizard Tongue.

  Once he followed them, hiding behind a tree as they laughed and groaned for a time, then returned to the boma by different paths. He asked Lizard about it, but his friend only smiled.

  Such dalliances were not strictly forbidden but could cause fighting between the best of friends. For a boy not yet a man to do such a thing was begging an invitation to the wrestling circle. A boy without the protection of father or uncles risked broken bones.

  Still, the risk was one Lizard seemed happy to take.

  Could sex be so wonderful that it was worth a sore head? Frog did not know, and could not wait to know, but such delicious speculations seemed a distraction from the pale, serious discussions conducted at the firesides, at the hide-scraping rocks down by the rivers, in the huts before sleep time.

  There had been more attacks on bhan: bomas destroyed to the northeast. Men had disappeared on the hunt, their bones never found at all. The elders began to speak of things that had never happened in living memory—the Ibandi joining into a single unit in preparation for slaughter. Not two tens of men, but tens of tens. The idea was almost beyond Frog’s imagining.

  Uncle Snake used a word Frog had never heard before.

  War.

  “See this skull!” said Break Spear at the men’s fire. Fire boma was hosting a group of southern hunters who had discovered yet another slaughtered family on the plain. He held up an orb of splintered bone, the skull of a slain bhan.

  The men had the seats closest to the fire, ranked by age. Frog and Scorpion stood at the back, watching avidly. Frog could hardly wait until he had years and honor enough to sit next to the fire itself.

  But even from such distance, he could easily see that a chunk had been torn or broken out of the skull. He shivered at the thought of such violence. “This is what the beast-men do.”

  “We fight again, kill more,” said Snake, “or they will take our land. Fight!”

  “We can talk with them,” Thorn Summer said.

  Fire Ant spit toward Great Earth. The Between was rarely criticized for his lack of scars, but speaking so at such a serious council was very nearly a transgression.

  “You speak like a woman,” said Water Chant, father of Water boma. He was a tall, lean man with the saddest eyes Frog had ever seen. They were touched with green, he noticed, much like those of the girl T’Cori. “They do not talk. They kill. And they will kill us unless we kill them.”

  “How can you say this?” Thorn insisted. “How do we know? Perhaps Father Mountain is angry, wants us to welcome new children. Our land is rich. We can share.”

  Break Spear snorted with derision. “They will kill us all. My father’s father spoke of beast-men from the east. They did not speak our tongue. They did not look like us or share our ways. We let them come into our lands, and this is how they repay us.”

  The men drummed their feet against the ground.

  “But—” Thorn began, voice plaintive.

  Break Spear cut the Between off. “Where are the great hunters of my father’s day?” Break Spear said. “Have the Ibandi grown weak and soft? Are we women, to let them come and take us? Perhaps you wish them to kill your daughters and bugger your sons, but we are men, and we will fight!”

  They continued to discuss the ripe and rotten of the ideas until the moon began to sink below the horizon and the new sun was born in the eastern sky.

  Later that moon, Little Brook left their boma with Lion, to join her new husband’s family in Wind boma. Despite her harsh words and stinging slaps, Little Brook was his sister, and Frog was sorry to see them go. He had come to think of Lion Tooth as another brother. But Wind boma was only two days’ run to the north. He would visit, and when he did, he could play games with Lion, and once again have the pleasure of ignoring Little Brook’s commands.

  She took his hands. “You will bring water, and scrape the skins well, and do everything Mother says, or I will come back and beat you,” she said, tears sparkling in her eyes. Frog hugged her.

  “I will miss you too,” he said. She brushed her lips against his forehead, then turned to leave the boma with her husband. She seemed so sad, and yet so filled with hope for her future. Frog had a sudden, terrible premonition that he would never see her again, and blinked back tears. His only consolation was that, as yet, none of his premonitions had ever come true.

  Of course, there was always a first time.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The following winter brought the worst days of Frog’s life. Hard rains were followed by a terrible plague of flies tiny enough to crawl up his nose and into his ears. It was not so bad in the boma, but as Frog, his uncles and brothers walked out on a five-day hunt, it got worse. Flies everywhere, in their mouths, biting at night. They encountered bhan in the outer circle completely overwhelmed by the buzzing plague, small, sickly men and women huddled in the corners of their boma, shivering, unable even to move.

  Frog and his brothers inhaled clouds of insects, spitting them out when they could, choking on masses of them until they found a cave and set fires in the mouth, preferring to gag on s
moke than that revolting living mass, dreading to become like the bhan, living there in the crawling cloud, their wailing children with maggots in their eyes.

  They were forced to return home with empty hands, and it was of little comfort that the other hunters had fared no better. Indeed, it seemed that the flies had driven away all game, and as stomachs emptied, the Ibandi began to grumble.

  And then finally, the word curse was spoken. It was Deep Dry Hole who used it.

  “A witch!” Deep Dry Hole called, and pointed his finger at Lizard Tongue. Frog’s friend recoiled. At times Lizard had been an object of mockery or suspicion, but never of direct accusation.

  Dry Hole’s wife, Wind Song, shrank back. Everyone knew that when Dry Hole hunted, she had slunk into the bush with Lizard.

  “My hunt was for nothing,” Dry Hole said. His eyes glittered with malice. “For days I hunt, and find only rodents and snakes.“

  Hot Tree tried to be reasonable. “This happens,” she said.

  “Not to me!” Dry Hole roared. “But I know why hunting has been bad. There is only one reason.” He wheeled dramatically, fixing his eyes on the hapless youth. “Lizard Tongue! I saw him touching my spear. He pointed at me and mumbled.”

  Shock burned through Frog’s bones. His friend was in trouble. Touching a hunter’s weapons without permission was rude, even for a two-scarred hunter. But for one without a single stripe to do such a thing was a terrible breach and insult. And a bhan boy as well? Frog groaned.

  “What is it you say?” Break Spear asked.

  Dry Hole sneered, knowing that at last he had their full attention. “This is not a boy! Not a man, not even an Ibandi,” he said. “This is a witch. He brings bad luck.”

  “No! It is not true!” Lizard said, panic in his voice. “I have lived among you since I was a baby. You know me!”

  Dry Hole was scornful. “Any witch might protest as much. Witch, I say!”