Great Sky Woman

by Steven Barnes

  At the same time, something inside her felt as if someone had twisted a thorn into her chest.

  T’Cori bumped into Fawn’s twin sister, Dove, who put her finger to her lips in caution as they backed away. T’Cori was shaking and felt a gnawing sensation, as if her heart had not eaten in days. She leaned her head against Dove’s chest, tears scalding her cheeks.

  “Why do you cry?” asked Dove.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Do not lie,” Dove said, and it was only then that T’Cori fully understood that the word she had spoken was far from the truth.

  “They play,” she said finally, surprised by the bitterness in her voice.

  Dove smiled. “My seventh eye felt that someone was sexing. It is a good thing. You will know this one day.”

  Yes, they would play with boys, straddle the men of Great Sky and squeeze the seed from their roots. But never would T’Cori have a true family unless she left the dream dancers.

  On the one hand, the honor and obligation. On the other…

  T’Cori would never have a man of her own, and until that very moment, she had not realized how deeply she desired one. T’Cori gazed at Dove. Could it be that they did not share the same loneliness? She knew that one day a hunt chief would be the first to enter her. Her sex-eye would open, and T’Cori would come into her full power. He, or others, would give her children, so she would not mourn the lack of a man’s touch.

  But there was more. She could feel it. No matter what anyone said, there was the part of her that yearned to belong. To belong to…

  Owl Hooting?

  No.

  She squelched that part of herself. That was not her path. And she reckoned that everyone, even those she envied most, had days in their lives they would rather not have lived. Even Stillshadow herself must have sometimes wished that she had walked another path.

  But a dream dancer’s path was not hers to choose. That was for Great Mother to decide.

  Dove grinned at her. “Who was with Fawn?”

  T’Cori gathered strength and dried her tears. “If we are very quiet…,” she said, and Dove nodded. The two crept on their bellies until the tall grass thinned at the clearing’s edge. And there, for a time, they watched as Fawn ground her hips against Frog, urging him on or slowing him down, guiding his hands and lips and tongue.

  They watched as the couple’s num-fires flared and sizzled, as they flared brightly and then calmed again.

  And they learned.

  T’Cori heard Frog’s cries and sighs. And as her ears burned she swore that one day she would be with a hunter. Not a scrawny one like Frog, but one possessed of great strength and beauty. She had breasts. She had hips and thighs. She, T’Cori, had full moist lips. And more important than that, she saw things that others could not. Heard and felt and saw the num-fire more easily than any of the others. She had premonitions that, given time, might ripen into wonders.

  So she and Dove lay, and watched, and held each other, and laughed silently to keep the tears at bay.

  That night, the nameless one lay in her hut, warmed by the breath of her sleeping sisters. Unlike most of the pilgrims down below, T’Cori slept in a permanent dwelling, not something erected for rapid raising and equally swift dismantling at the end of Spring Gathering.

  She lay listening to their inhalations, trying to match their breathing with her own. This was the beginning of the pathway into their dreams. In dreams, the dancers leapt and swirled together in Great Mother’s bamboo fields. She wanted to be a part of them, to join with her sisters in every possible way. But no matter what she did, every day it felt that she became something more and more different from the others. The others simply did not see….

  Finally, careful not to step on her slumbering sisters, T’Cori rolled up and crawled out through the waist-high entrance into the moonlight.

  The moon was the sun’s mate, as Great Earth was Great Sky’s. Glimmering above, its pale, cold white light bathed the landscape with a glow strong enough to sharpen the shadows.

  There in the darkness, she found a place of solitude. T’Cori leaned back against a rock a handsbreadth taller than she, gazing up and out. The eternal mists surrounding Great Sky’s peak shimmered in the moonlight.

  There, in some hazy place between sleeping and waking, T’Cori’s seventh eye called to her. Her right hand slipped between her legs, beneath the loincloth. It was not the first time, of course: her sisters had taught her this trick long ago, for personal pleasure and in preparation for the eventual taking of a lover.

  You must find the flame within yourself, if you would help a man to find it, Stillshadow said. Women who expect men to fan a fire they themselves had never kindled would be very disappointed by sex.

  All of the girls pleasured themselves. Some formed pairs and relished each other. T’Cori had hugged and groomed and played with the other girls but never found it as satisfying as her solitary explorations…. or her dreams of love.

  “No one wants you,” she whispered to herself. “No one. What is wrong with your body? Will your belly ever swell with child?”

  “Yes,” Stillshadow said from behind her.

  The nameless one leapt up, startled and suddenly ashamed of herself. “I…,” she began, and then merely said, “I did not know you were there.”

  The old woman shook her head, laughing. “There is no shame in your body,” she said. “There is pleasure in touching it, yes. And even more pleasure in mounting a strong man, making him yours.”

  T’Cori hung her head. “What of love? Will there be no…love?”

  “Blindness such as yours is rare in those who still have teeth.” Stillshadow laughed warmly. “We have a whole world of love.”

  T’Cori listened to the words, their texture warming her. “What about you and Stalker?” she asked boldly. “I have seen the way you look at him, and he at you. Don’t you yearn to share your hut with him?”

  “I have, often. We’ve had our times,” Stillshadow said. “He gave me five children, and I love them all. Blossom and Raven are here; the others were given to good families in the inner bomas. But I am the grandmother of all our people, as Stalker is the grandfather. As Father Mountain and Great Mother birthed the tribe. All things in the world are alive and in balance.”

  Stillshadow clucked empathetically. “You are daughters of Mother and Father,” she said. “In our lives, there is little room for mortal men.” She clasped T’Cori’s shoulder. “Morning comes too soon. There is much to do tomorrow.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  When Frog awakened one summer morning in the fifth year past his tenth spring, something had changed. He could feel it in his bones, without the ability to speak its name. His ten-spring-old brother Wasp still dreamed. Little Brook had gone to live with Lion Tooth’s family in the north. Hawk and Fire Ant had moved out long before. Hawk, the older, had built out on the side of the family hut.

  Two years before, the spiders and pests had grown too numerous, and the entire boma had moved half a day’s walk north, to an old boma deserted years earlier for a similar reason. In this new place, Fire Ant built himself a place separate from the rest of the family, but still nearby. The boma walls were disassembled and expanded outward, as had been done many times in the past.

  The familiar dome of their living space was roomier now than it had been since he was a tiny child. But that was not the only difference.

  Was it something in the sounds and smells? Perhaps, but that might not have been it either. Frog rolled over onto his side, listening. His thoughts were like stones skipping across the surface of Fire Lake.

  Exiting the mouth of the hut, he looked out over the camp. Since returning from Spring Gathering, he had noticed that at times the adults seemed to demand more of him, increasing his burden of chores and requiring greater skill in his performance of them. It seemed that he could do nothing right.

  His mother, Gazelle Tears, was already awake, preparing the morning gruel at their family fire
pit. She gazed at him, her slender face drawn, upper teeth gnawing at her lower lip. Into the coals she inserted yams wrapped in leaves and grasses. She smiled, but he thought that a bit of sadness curled her lips. He counted new vines of white in her hair, and realized that his beloved mother was getting old. Her breasts, once full and fertile, now sagged as shrunken husks.

  “Come, eat,” she said, and rolled two of the leaf-wrapped yams over to him. He touched the spongy surface of the larger yam…. hot! Frog blew on his fingers to cool them, then pulled the tuber closer and unwrapped it, tossing it into the air whenever his fingers started to sizzle.

  Uncle Snake crouched nearby, grinding points onto shoulder-length sticks, sharpening them one after another with long, calm strokes against a whetstone. After a while Wasp awakened and crawled out, rubbing his eyes and his plump belly, wandering his way down to the cook pit.

  Wasp stamped and spit toward Great Sky. “Good morning, Father Mountain,” he yawned, and then threw his arms around Frog’s neck, leaning sleepily against him.

  After a while the yam had cooled enough for Frog to nibble at its firm orange flesh, and then to gobble it down, sharing half with Wasp, who smacked his lips merrily. It was sweet, and sweetness of any kind was something of which Wasp never tired.

  The knot of scar tissue in Uncle Snake’s empty eye socket seemed almost to be watching Frog, judging him. “When you have finished,” Snake said, “go to the river and bring water.”

  Frog almost choked on his yam. “But that is Wasp’s job!” Frog had hoped to spend the day with the older boys, helping the men with their traps, learning songs and stories and the names of things.

  “Frog!” his uncle insisted, without a hint of sympathy. “Wasp has other tasks. Go now.”

  Wasp stuck his tongue out at Frog, then begged their mother for more yam.

  Muttering under his breath, Frog grabbed a stitched skin strung with hand-loops through the sides and sealed with acacia sap. It could hold a backbreaking load of water. Frog groaned, wishing that Wasp would hurry up and grow large enough to do his share of the work.

  Fire River was fed by creeks running down from Great Sky and from streams farther north. Two days’ walk farther east, it emptied into Fire Lake. The river was the lifeblood of the eastern Ibandi, bringing water to their boma and many of the eastern bhan as well. In years when the river dried up, they dug wells or found alternative springs. If such sources could not be found, and the game vanished as it did in the dry years, new babies might be exposed, sent home early to Father Mountain, to return in better times.

  But in good years there seemed no end to the river’s bounty. It brought them fish and turtles in abundance. Tubers clustered in the rich soil along its banks. It gave boma hunters cool places to lie in hunting troughs, awaiting the unwary zebra or pig. It gave Fire boma water for drinking and cooking and bathing and swimming and sport.

  So many forms of plenty. Of course, the adults said it was fed by Father Mountain. Some said that the water was His tears, as He was crying for all the ways His children failed him. Uncle Snake said that it was His piss, and Uncle Snake had trained with the hunt chiefs, so he would know. On the other hand, Frog was never certain if he was meant to take that seriously. After all, both tears and urine were salty, and these waters were fresh and delicious.

  He looked up at the mountain, wondering once again: Was there anything at all up there? Could the hunt chiefs be wrong? Could Uncle Snake?

  The one thing to keep carefully in mind about the river was that Ibandi were not the only ones who benefited from it. Lions and leopards also appreciated its cool wet rushing depths and had been known to lurk along its banks. Best be careful, and be certain that he was not the target of those flesh-eaters! We are both hunters and prey….

  So he kept his eyes open, ears peeled back and nostrils flared as he filled the bucket.

  It was probably for that reason that he was both mortified and frightened when the world suddenly went dark. A piece of leather brushed past his eyes, muffled his mouth, dampening the river sounds. Frog thrashed this way and that, to no effect. How could he have been so careless?

  He felt no claws tearing his flesh, no fangs rending the skin of his back, seeking his vitals. Had he been seized by killer beast-men or Others? If so, was poor Frog destined for the same cook-pit that had doubtless claimed Lizard?

  “What do you want with me?” Frog called.

  There was no answer to his pitiful question. He was hauled to his feet, his hands lashed behind his back. Something unpleasantly sharp pricked his shoulder blade, followed by a shove with the flat of a callused hand. Frog lurched forward and began to walk.

  For a half day he stumbled over broken, rock-strewn ground. His one comfort was the sound of Fire River guiding him, so he was always fairly certain where he was. From time to time the river sounds diminished. He was walked in a circle several times. When they finally stopped, Frog was spun around five times, so that he momentarily lost all orientation.

  Then the warmth of the sun on his shoulder reminded Frog which way lay east, and the fear gnawed less painfully.

  He heard Scorpion’s voice, recognizing his stepbrother’s plaintive whine before a hard slap ended the complaints.

  His abductors walked him for another quarter day, leading him with a thong about the neck so that he did not stumble into a bush or tumble down a ravine. When he tried to ask questions, a rod lashed his shoulders until his mouth closed. The air cooled as night fell. Frog was pushed to the ground, and he slept cloaked in the same leathery darkness. There were new voices in the darkness as other boys joined them. He recognized some, but others he was uncertain of. Were those boys from the other bomas?

  But even if he couldn’t picture them from their voices, their smell was familiar. Fear spiced their sweat.

  Frog slept in his hood, his hands tied. Again and again he awoke in the night, listening blindly to the harsh rasp of his breathing inside the bag.

  Late the next day they were heading uphill, as he knew they would. The warmth of the morning sun on his back told Frog they were heading west. They were being taken to Great Sky, home of the hunt chiefs and Father Mountain Himself.

  For the last quarter, Frog had staggered blindly up Great Sky’s slopes, prodded by spear butts in the back.

  When at last they stopped, Frog was so dizzy that he almost threw up inside the leather sack. He swallowed the sour mush back, unwilling to drown in such a humiliating fashion.

  Something soft bumped into him, and he screamed, “Who’s there?” only to be smacked sharply on the back of his head.

  Be silent.

  They were walking again, over uneven ground. From time to time one of the boys would speak, followed briskly by the sound of a slap or cuff or groan, and the voice fell quiet.

  His stepbrother cried out in fear and despair. Frog heard a brisk thump, clearly the sound of a hand against a head, and Scorpion sniffled but no longer whined. In spite of his own misery, Frog smiled.

  The air cooled as the slope began to steepen. They were surrounded by different sounds now. Running water again, and distantly, the chattering of blue monkeys, larks and sparrows.

  The boys were led down a sloping path, bumping into one another and scraping their feet. Their captors stopped them and then pushed them down into a seated position. Finally, the skins were removed from their heads, and at last they could see.

  They sat in a cave almost twice as tall as a standing man. Frog choked as he breathed in the fumes from torches jammed into the walls on either side of the room. Through the smoke he saw that the walls were covered with countless animal skulls, hands of hands of hands of them, all hollow eyes and bleached bone staring down on him as if daring him to be worthy of their precious flesh. In the dim light he could see that the walls curved like the inside of a gigantic bubble. And were they smooth as packed mud? He suspected that this place might have been dug, not discovered.

  More than two hands of boys crouched or knelt ne
xt to him. Scorpion, Frog and Sunset represented Fire boma, and Frog knew Rat, from the west. All looked as disheartened and frightened as he felt.

  As far as he knew, he was more afraid than any of them. But he realized then that he could be afraid without showing that he was afraid. It would not do to let them know!

  Two hunt chiefs, masked with the leather faces of gorillas, stood with arms crossed at the only exit. For one crazed moment he considered attempting to overpower them and flee. The size of their muscles persuaded him that this was not the best course of action.

  Then the idea of escape became moot, as six men filed through the narrow opening. Each wore a leather mask from a different animal: lion, leopard, antelope, oryx, buffalo, warthog.

  The largest of them was a head taller than Frog, with wrinkled skin hanging from strong old arms. He wore an antelope face skin over his eyes and nose. By the gorilla skull lashed atop his head, Frog knew him to be Cloud Stalker.

  The water threatened to squirt from Frog’s root. He clenched it back, furious with himself for behaving as a little child! He would not disgrace his fire!

  By their wide-eyed expressions, he guessed that some of the other boys did not understand what was happening to them. It was then he decided that he wasn’t the strongest or fastest of them, but would keep his fear deep within, where the others could not see.

  “You have dreamed of this time,” Stalker said, his voice and presence swelling to fill the kiva. The antelope mask wavered in time with his words. “Trembled in fear of it. This is that day, the time when you must stand before the mountain to be judged.” A few of their masks covered eyes and noses but not mouths. The lips he saw were flat and merciless, and it occurred to Frog that it was possible some of the boys might not survive this night.

  He fought panic. No matter what happened, he would not soil himself. He would not disgrace his father and fire.

  Despite the shared body warmth, the boys shivered in the underground chamber. He recalled stories whispered by firelight: this was Great Sky. This was where the nectar from rotting bodies flowed. Here dead flesh received new bones.