In this sacred place, this cave on the slopes of Great Sky, he could more easily believe.
But he swore to himself that one day he would climb the peak and see the gods.
Or see nothing.
Whichever there was.
Even these great men, and great they were, lacked the answers he sought. Perhaps at the top of Great Sky, he could ask Father Mountain. If the god existed at all. Frog no longer knew what to think. There was power here, and knowledge, but he also sensed an emptiness, just beyond the light of his knowing.
Chapter Twenty
Frightened, but too proud to show his fear, Frog stood shoulder to shoulder with his healing cousins as the boys faced one another in a circle beneath a stand of wild fig and whistling thorn trees. “This is what you will do,” Cloud Stalker said. “One at a time, each of you must step into the circle, and you will fight all of the others for as long as we chant.”
“What are the rules?” Frog asked.
“There are no rules, except that you stay in the circle.”
Frog watched as the largest and the strongest of them all, a boy named Baboon Eye from Wind boma, stepped into the middle. The men began to chant as the boys rushed him. Baboon fought back as best he could, but there was just no way to keep the strokes from falling upon him, and he was dragged down and thrashed. Frog gripped his own staff with sweating hands, wincing at every vibration as he thumped Baboon about the ribs and legs.
It was both exhilarating and frightening. What would happen when his own turn came? How would it feel? What would he do?
And so it went with the next, and the next after that.
In each case the men chanted for about ten and ten breaths, time enough for a generous serving of misery. Frog’s stomach soured, and he could smell the stink of Rat’s fear, and Scorpion’s as well.
Scorpion did well, moving this way and that with the agility gained through endless days of wrestling and tumbling, but then he tired and was dragged down. He curled into a ball and wept as they thumped him.
And then came Frog’s time. Old River Song stood before him, peering deeply into his eyes. “Into the circle,” he said.
Frog felt very clear, very calm. They had devised the rules. He might use them in his own fashion.
The center of the circle was a very lonely place. All of his cousins faced him, their arms and ribs welted, knots on their foreheads and blood trickling from their noses. They blinked back sweat, chests heaving, simultaneously fearful and excited. Each of them had, in turn, suffered in the circle. They wanted to see how Frog would bear his pain, carry his wounds.
“Go!” River Song called. Instantly, Frog grabbed Scorpion, spinning him so that he was behind his stepbrother, arm around Scorpion’s throat. The boy was so surprised that he hadn’t time even to squeal. As the others attacked, Frog wheeled Scorpion around and around, using him as a shield. Strokes intended for Frog fell on his cousin instead. Frog felt himself going into a kind of trance, so that he watched the staves falling and it seemed that it was all a dream.
And then it was over. His shoulders and forearms stung a bit, and he felt swollen skin low on his back, but that was nothing compared to the drubbing his brothers had taken.
Frog swore that he saw the hint of a smile on Uncle Snake’s ravaged face. “Once I told you to bring me a new thing if you found one, something no one has ever seen before. That,” said Snake, “was a new thing.”
That was the last thing they did before the hunt chiefs blessed the boys and led them back down the mountain path.
When Frog finally trudged through Fire boma’s burnt clearing and through the gate, Wasp and Frog’s younger cousins regarded the returning young men as awe-inspiring strangers. He saw his own face in theirs, longed to tell them what had happened to him.
And then realized that no, he did not want to spare them the terror. If he had endured it, why not the sprouts? He managed an exhausted smile at the thought. He now understood exactly why no one had ever warned him.
He could hardly wait until it was Wasp’s turn.
Sweltering in the day’s heat, any bit of shade was a welcome respite.
“Welcome home,” Gazelle said, and offered him a gourd of water. He drank deeply, sighing with gratitude. In the loving, tender expression on his mother’s face was the kind of pride that he had never seen before.
My son is a man, she was saying.
Not yet, Mother, he answered without speaking. Soon now. Not yet.
Frog crawled into his hut and collapsed onto his side, perspiring and shaking.
He thought he would not be able to sleep, and rest did elude him for a time. Then suddenly he found himself in the world of dreams. In that mystical place trees pranced, and gazelle were rooted to the ground. Everything in his world had changed order, position, perspective. Nothing in Frog’s world was the same as it had been. In all likelihood, nothing would ever be the same again.
Frog awoke sweating from a dream in which hunters hunted animals who in turn hunted fleeing boys. He could not see his own face anywhere among them. Was he hunter or prey?
We are both, Snake had said.
When he crawled back out of the hut, the sun was heading toward the western horizon. He saw Scorpion creeping around behind the huts, but when their eyes met, his stepbrother flinched.
What next?
Gazelle gave him a gourd filled with mashed yam and pieces of fish, and a folded leaf with a few chunks of hot blackened zorilla meat. The flesh of the small black-and-white furred four-legged was usually one of his favorites, but today…today it seemed that every taste and texture was far stronger. All the colors, the smells, the flavors…everything so stark and strong that it was as if he had never eaten at all.
His hearing was sharper as well. He could hear every soft, grinding stroke as Uncle Snake slowly and methodically sharpened a knife. Frog stared at his stepfather, and it seemed somehow that he was looking not just at Snake, but at the Snake that he had known as a child. Many, many younger Snakes, with firmer bodies. And then an even younger Snake, one that Frog had never known. His face was unscarred. Both eyes were whole and firm.
A Snake no older than Frog himself. A flash of clarity illuminated Frog’s mind, a sudden, strong sense of where he, Frog, fit into the order of things.
He, Frog, would also grow old—if fortune smiled upon him. If he was wary enough to evade the leopard and the lion, he would grow old. If Frog was lucky and wise and strong and good, the reward was to live long enough to watch his body rot.
Was it possible the only reward for a lifetime of work and risk was deterioration and disease? The naked eye of death itself seemed to fix him, the terror that none of his fellows seemed to fear, because unlike him, they believed. And if that was true, then who was really more alive in the mind? He who saw through the tricks and lived in constant fear? Or one who succumbed to the mirage and lived his life in joy?
And if there was nothing but the struggle of life, then what good was it all?
Uncle Snake seemed to have been studying Frog through his one good eye, almost as if he could know Frog’s mortal thoughts. “You go,” he said. “Stay until two moons pass, then you bring zebra. Or boar or topi. Understand? When there is meat to share, you come back.”
There it was. He had always known this day would come, but had had no idea how it would feel. It felt as if a precious part of himself was dying. And yet, and yet…there was great excitement as well.
“Uncle?” he said. There was so much more that he wanted to say, but dared not. Did Uncle look at him, see in him someone like the boy he once had been? Did he know what Frog had done to save Lizard?
Why could he not wrench his thoughts away from death?
Frog felt as if a mist had cleared away, as if for a brief breath he had clarity that no Ibandi had ever known. There were no gods, no magic. Just men, and animals, and plants, and dirt.
And that was all.
Then the mists closed back in again, and that clar
ity was gone.
What if he was wrong?
Uncle handed him the black rock knife and gave him a hard smile. “You are my brother’s son,” he said. “Since you were a baby, you have been mine as well. You will succeed.”
The knife. He had seen Deep Dry Hole hand Snake that knife. Had Snake accepted it as payment to influence Cloud Stalker? And when the stones had been given, did Stalker return it? Was it a cursed blade, its intentions foiled, and did it now live only to fail poor Frog at some crucial moment?
Frog wanted to wrap his arms around Snake, to feel his strength. Do you love me, Father? Am I worthy? Am I a bad thing?
But then, for the first time in memory, Snake simply turned his back, as if Frog had offended him. Snake flicked his hand toward the opening in the boma wall.
A question, a plea rose in Frog’s throat, one swiftly repressed.
Frog turned to his mother, Gazelle, who would not look at him either, choosing instead to stare at the ground. Tears dropped from her eyes, puddling in the dust.
So, then. This was goodbye. Young Frog Hopping, the boy he had been only days ago, was dead to them. His heart rumbled in his chest. Today was the beginning of all things! He wanted to be worthy, to make his family proud.
More than anything beneath the sky, more than life itself, he wanted that.
Frog carried nothing but that knife as he walked through the gap in Fire boma’s thorn wall. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Scorpion approaching his father. Frog sensed that Scorpion’s behavior on the mountain had angered Snake, that despite the bond of blood, Scorpion would have to earn his father’s love with a good walkabout. And yet when Scorpion’s eye briefly met Frog’s, there was no resentment there.
It was fear that Frog saw. And that, he could understand.
What was about to come was terrifying enough to drive petty concerns from Scorpion’s mind. They were both in this alone, together.
Walkabout
Chapter Twenty-one
“Moon-blood is special,” said Stillshadow from the height of her sitting stone. Several of the elder dancers were seated about her, but it was to the younger girls that she directed her words. “It carries in it a living being. It is like a tree. Before bearing fruit, a tree must first bear flowers.
“Moon-blood,” she continued, “is like the flower: it must emerge before the fruit—the baby—can be born. Childbirth is like a tree finally bearing its fruit, which the woman then gathers.” She was most directly addressing the four girls who had recently begun to bleed: T’Cori, Fawn Blossom, Dove, and Sister Quiet Water. Fawn and her twin sister had already had their seventh eyes opened.
The Ibandi ceremony for the coming of moon-blood was called Tinaalá. It was considered the most important of their religious rituals. Its purpose was to make sex holy and fruitful. During this time, the menstruating girls were secluded in the Tinaalá hut. For one full moon the other dancers sang and celebrated the new women, as T’Cori and the others contemplated the changes within their bodies.
When a woman was in her moon-blood, she was among the most powerful beings in the universe, temporarily raised in status. At such times it was vital to isolate herself so that she would not waste her energy on everyday matters or have her concentration broken by members of the opposite sex.
“Here is the tale,” Stillshadow said, and began to dance. The depth, extension and pace of her motions all told the story more eloquently than words.
Great Mother birthed a blessed daughter, who loved and protected all the animals in the shadow of Great Sky. Angry at a group of hunters who killed more than they could carry, she followed them until, gorged on the flesh of her beloved, they fell into a stupor and slept. She slew each of them in turn, and then appeared before all of the people covered with blood. She grabbed a live antelope with one hand and wiped her other hand over her vulva. She wiped this hand on the antelope’s nose, and twisted its nose, and then let it free. From then on, it knew the smell of man. From then on, it was hard for men to hunt the antelope.
Stillshadow paused, and although the dancing had been impeccable, T’Cori saw that she was more than out of breath: she was shaking. “To the moon shelter,” she panted, and Blossom helped her mother to her rest.
Within the Tinaalá hut, T’Cori learned that all of her energy should go toward meditating on the purpose of her life and the gathering of her num.
During her days crouched naked in the sweltering hut T’Cori used a special willow stick instead of idly scratching herself with her fingers. It was important to focus her whole attention on her body, to become aware of even the smallest natural actions. It was her duty to study her own body the way hunters studied their prey. The other girls groaned and smeared the sweat with their hands, but T’Cori pulled deep inside herself and was content.
When she emerged from the women’s hut, T’Cori watched the world swirl around her, and had to sit on the ground with her head between her legs, waiting for it to slow. When she was ready, Blossom led her to the circle of the eternal fire, a sacred spot protected by a tumble of rocks and ringed with berry vines. She had never been here before. From time to time the old women threw a handful of powders into the fire. When they did green sparks and a sharp spicy aroma rose into the night air.
Some of her sisters were grown now, with children of their own. With Stillshadow’s approval, some of those children would become the next generation of dream dancers. Others would marry or be adopted into the inner bomas. Some were younger than she, girls who had been given to the dream dancers as infants, just now entering the circle. Not all born to the dream dancers became medicine women. Every woman who yearned to be of the circle had to be approved by Stillshadow. With some, Stillshadow sorrowfully looked into their hand-eyes or face-eyes and said: “This one does not have the fire.”
And for those, when the butterflies returned and it was time for Spring Gathering, families were found to take them in. Tears stained Stillshadow’s cheeks when one of them left, but she wiped the water away quickly, and never knew she had been seen.
The younger girls gazed at the older ones with an almost worshipful awe.
Stillshadow strode among them, tired, perhaps, but still powerful as a gray-muzzled old shelion. Her voice rang from the rocks. “We live lives apart from the others, apart from the normal women. But this is not a loss. We are the soul of the Ibandi! We are the heart beating within their chests. Only as long as we, the dream dancers and the hunt chiefs, are whole are we a true people. Only so long as we sing is a new sun born every morning. Only as long as we keep the fire does Father Mountain know we are here, and protect us,” Stillshadow said.
Raven bowed her head. “It is sometimes lonely,” she said.
“Yes!” Stillshadow replied. “It is lonely, but that is our place. And it is only lonely to she who does not feel the warmth of the mountain’s shadow, who does not hear Great Mother’s voice. The mountain calls to some of our sisters now.”
Immediately, the girls around the fire began to buzz. What did this mean? Were some of them to be blessed in such a fashion? Stillshadow spoke to each of them in turn, explaining what they must do to earn power and honor. To T’Cori and several others, Stillshadow nodded. “And it is your part to bring back healing herbs.”
“Which herbs?” T’Cori asked.
“Close your eyes,” the old woman said sharply, but then softened her voice. “Close them!”
They complied.
“Now think of this: imagine that the hunters of Earth boma are leaving to seek flesh. They are gone for many days, and when at last they return, four have been tusked by an elephant. Of those, you must heal those who are able to heal. Some will return to the mountain. You must help them die without pain. You have learned much by now. Go, and find those things needed to make this happen.”
T’Cori thought about this, understanding what was being asked. Heal those who can heal, and provide num-chilling potions for those who are beyond healing. She knew of poisons, o
f course, as did the hunters. But the idea of using them on her own people was sobering indeed. “Could I start with thistleroot?”
“Do not ask me, girl,” the old woman thundered. “Have you not watched and listened these years? Your men rely upon you.”
“When shall I go?”
“Tomorrow. But not just you. Your sisters also.” Then as if the speech had emptied her, Stillshadow sighed deeply, and sat.
T’Cori searched her feelings, seeking the meaning in those words. She, T’Cori. Fawn. Dove. Sister Quiet Water. Could they do this? They were being asked to function as women of the tribe, with all the freedoms and responsibilities that that implied. Her next words emerged as a whisper. “Where must we go?”
“The best thistleroot can be found to the west, beyond Father Mountain’s shadow,” Stillshadow said.
Dove blinked hard. “I…saw thistleroot in the rocks near the stream….”
Stillshadow smiled at Dove’s feeble attempt to influence her fate. “Oh, no,” she said. “A baboon pissed on that. We need new root. Do you understand me?”
T’Cori nodded, trembling. “Yes, teacher.”
“Go,” Stillshadow said. “Prepare for the morning. And then sleep.”
Although the camp was unusually quiet that night, deep sleep evaded T’Cori. Fawn Blossom and her twin, Dove, were even less fortunate. Twice during the night the nameless one awakened to hear them tossing and groaning, muttering to themselves as if afraid they would be devoured on the morrow.
And perhaps they would.
When sleep finally came, T’Cori dreamed of colored bands bending and bonding around her, of a sun blazing fire tracks in the sky, of a moon little more than a hole torn in the darkness, a tunnel to all the secrets of this world and the next. She was restless, but excited as well.
This was her chance.
T’Cori swore she would make Mother Stillshadow proud.
She glanced at Raven. Could the girl hear that she had called Stillshadow mother, even in her mind?
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