“There were many more Ibandi than Mk*tk,” Hawk said. He scratched his wounded head, looked at the blood on his fingers. He licked at the wet red stains, eyes bright with fear. Frog had never seen that expression on his brother’s face. Never. “What happens next time if they bring more?”
“I say that they brought all that they have. That if they had had more, they would have sent them against us!” He had their attention now. “And further,” Ant said, “I say that Father Mountain was with us. I for one felt His presence as we fought for our homes. I say that He is alive and watches over us. That the hunt chiefs were taken home because Father Mountain needed their strength, and we are more than we ever were.”
Frog could see the hope in their eyes. Fire Ant may not have trained as a hunt chief, but he had something, some ability to move and sway the tribe.
And this, he thought, was a good thing. With so many hunt chiefs and fathers dead, with Hawk a shrunken shadow of his former self, new leaders had to arise. Why not Ant?
After the terrible battle, by twos and threes they returned to their bomas to lick their wounds.
Despite their momentary rousing at Fire Ant’s hands, Frog had never seen the men of his clan so disheartened.
Uncle Snake called the meeting. The subject was clear: what should they do?
This was a gathering of all the tribes, all who could attend, both inner and outer bomas, Ibandi and bhan alike. Folk were still trickling to the site of the Spring Gathering even as the first speakers had their say.
Members of the men’s and women’s councils drew images in the dirt with sticks and fingers. The disagreement between the different genders could not have been starker. The men said that they should stay and fight. The women, wailing over the dead, insisted that they should leave.
“We fight and die,” Snake said. “Or we run and die. In the beginning of the world, Father Mountain gave our ancestors this land, and now He turns His back. We water this land with our blood.”
The widow Hot Tree spoke. “Our children need to live. There may be better places for us. Once, years ago, Stillshadow spoke of such things. This may be the time our dreams have spoken of.”
“A woman’s words!” Fire Ant mocked. “It is time to forget the words of women, time for men to be strong.”
Although Hawk was stronger than Fire Ant, Frog saw that he was content to stand beside his brother and let Ant’s words speak for both of them.
And just like that, as Frog watched, the power in Fire boma changed hands.
In the thick of the night, when Frog was deep in the sticky part of sleep, he was dragged from dream by violent screams and thrashing just outside his hut. His heart pounding, Frog grabbed his spear and headed out into the night, but by the time he reached the gate, the trouble was already over.
Frog had feared that the Mk*tk had already been able to regroup and mount an offensive this far north. Fortunately, it was just a small raiding party, just a few Mk*tk who fled hooting, arrows showering about their heels as soon as the Ibandi responded in force. Although the attack was intended to terrify the boma folk, it actually forced them to make a decision that had been hovering in the air from the very beginning.
“You see? You see?” said Fire Ant. His injuries during the battle had been minimal. Frog had not caught sight of him during the battle, but other hunters had said his brother had fought like a fiend and helped with the killing of three of their enemy. After the battle, Ant had carried himself more proudly than Frog could remember since his walkabout. He was known and admired, and the men seemed to listen to every word he said.
“You see? You see? We must fight or we will die. Only a fool would say differently.”
“Then call me a fool,” said Hot Tree, “to think that life is better than death.”
“Then go!” Ant roared at the old woman. “Perhaps you are no longer Ibandi. I do not care if you are Stillshadow’s sister. Go slut for the Others—we will not stop you.”
When T’Cori went to Stillshadow’s hut to fetch her, their teacher was unconscious. Raven and Blossom knelt over her, rubbing nut oil into her chest.
“Is she…?” T’Cori started to say, and then noted the rise and fall of her teacher’s chest.
“She did not awaken this morning,” Raven said.
T’Cori fought panic. “The boma folk have come to see her.”
Raven squared her shoulders. “I must meet with them,” she said. “Blossom, come.” She looked at T’Cori and bit her lip, as if the next words were like twigs in her throat. “I would have you at my side,” she said.
The nameless one nodded.
“Mother is in the dream,” Raven told Snake when he demanded to see her.
“She has not come back to us,” Blossom said, and Frog saw that the big woman was fighting not to shiver.
It was easy to understand why. Stillshadow sick. The hunt chiefs gone. Water boma destroyed. We are doomed.
“What do we do?” Uncle Snake asked, his voice rough with emotion. “Please, tell us.”
“We cannot decide,” Scorpion said, “and thought to come to you.”
“It is good.” Raven and T’Cori sat side by side, addressing them. Frog thought that Raven was the stronger of the two, but that she needed T’Cori’s support. “We are speaking well together.”
“What shall we do?” Snake repeated.
Raven drew herself up until her spine was straight, in a single instant transmuting herself from a girl to a woman of power. “I must pull my dreams into this world. Tonight, we dance. I will speak my visions tomorrow.”
That night, in the center of the encampment, for the first time Raven performed the ceremony without her mother’s help, leading the dreamers and the hunters together, hands of hands of feet dancing at the fire, howling to the stars, begging their gods for wisdom. Raven and T’Cori danced at the fire’s edge, at the center of the milling throng, the plant people swimming through their veins.
Until dawn the ceremony continued, Raven whirling around and around until the hunters, trying to follow her, fell. Dizziness forced Frog to stop long before Ant or Hawk or many of the other hunters, but eventually, all fell. One by one so did the dream dancers, until Raven danced alone, spinning like a feather in the wind.
Frog watched in awe as the first rays of the sun brushed her cheeks. She stopped, panting, and looked out at them all with glassy eyes.
“The dream says we must climb Great Sky,” she said. “I have heard the voice of the ancestors.” Raven trembled as she spoke. Clearly, she did not like what she was saying. “They say that we must go and find the hunt chiefs.”
“And if they are dead?”
“Then we speak to Great Mother and Father Mountain. They will tell us how to fight the Mk*tk.”
“How can this be done?” Snake asked.
“There is only one way,” she replied. “We must choose heroes to climb the mountain. And there, at the top, I believe Mother and Father will speak.”
“How can you say such things?” asked a man from Wind boma. “None but the hunt chiefs has ever done this.”
“And where are they?” she asked. “Where?” Perhaps the others thought she was shaking with power, but Frog sensed it was fear. Raven was doing the best she could, but she was not ready for such an important role. Would any of them be?
“Where are the hunt chiefs?” Blossom asked. “Gone! They’ve not come to our aid, and none of you has had the courage to go and look, to see what has happened.”
The men looked at one another with shame and dropped their heads.
“So we women will have to go. Someone must climb the mountain. We will need to speak with Great Mother. With Father Mountain.”
“But what if they are dead?” Scorpion asked, giving voice to their thoughts.
So fierce was Raven’s gaze that it was clear to all who looked, who heard, that this was Stillshadow’s daughter. That she was the most powerful of all the dancers. “Then we will die!” she said. “We will die.
”
There, beyond the clouds, rose Great Sky, the first and greatest mountain in the world. Atop that mountain lived their god—if live He did. There was a terrible, lonely silence that seemed to last forever.
Raven stepped forward. “I will go. Mother is far too sick, but I am her daughter, and I will climb for my sisters.”
Hot Tree nodded. “Yes. You are strong. But not alone. You will need companions to help you and keep you safe. Raven, which of the other women would you choose?”
Raven looked out at the others and seemed to chew over her answer. “The nameless one is strong enough,” she said finally.
T’Cori would climb the mountain? Frog’s mind reeled. The small, nameless one? He felt a tickle of premonition. By Father Mountain, as impossible as it seemed, he knew that his own future had just changed.
“Good. Raven and T’Cori will each need spirit twins. Who will aid your bodies, that our spirits might fly?”
The men from the other bomas clustered together. “It is death,” they whispered. “Death.”
Then Fire Ant stepped forward.
“Fire boma is not afraid,” Ant said. “We will go.”
Frog’s heart swelled. His brother was indeed a leader! Hawk Shadow was a great hunter and killer of men.
Frog turned to his Uncle Snake. “You can take them,” he said. “You know the way.”
Snake nodded. “I know the way,” he said, and then shifted his eyes away. Frog felt uneasy, wanted to question him further, but held his tongue.
In her hut’s solitary darkness, T’Cori spent a quarter drawing circles in the packed earth, girding herself for the confrontation to come.
Finally Boar Tracks crawled through her doorway in response to her summons.
He stood and asked, “What do you want?” although she could see in his face that he already knew.
“For you to come with me.”
Boar Tracks shook his head. “I failed my brothers,” he said, then pointed to his wounded right leg, packed with herbs and moss. “I could never make the climb.” He could not meet her eyes.
“If you wanted to climb,” she said, and came close enough to smell the fear in his breath, “if you believed that your brothers, your fathers awaited you atop the mountain, could that leg stop you?”
He was shaking as she circled him. The hut’s roof was low enough to make him bend over, but she stood tall, not coming within a hand of the thatch. Despite the difference in their size, he seemed to shrink back from her.
She was horrified and disgusted. “To think that you were the one that Stillshadow chose for me,” she said. “To think I let you touch me.”
“As you let the Mk*tk touch you!” he cried, but still could not meet her eyes. “I gave you favor. I brought you back into the tribe. How dare you speak to me in such a manner. I am a hunt chief!”
For just a moment Boar seemed to regain his strength, and she prayed that anger might empower him where courage had failed. Surely he had too much pride to let a woman, any woman, speak to him in this way!
The anger sustained him for but a few moments. Then he seemed to collapse again. “I am sorry,” he said. “I cannot.”
And he left her.
T’Cori sat on her hut’s packed earth, listening to the wind, and thinking of what had just occurred. Had she been fair? Was his wound great enough to preclude such effort? Perhaps he was right. Certainly he knew more about it than she. Stillshadow and all of the women’s circle had made pilgrimage to Great Earth’s peak. T’Cori had not done so yet. But she had climbed around much of the mountain and knew that when the time was right, she would make that fiercer effort and succeed. Was Great Sky really such a farther reach?
So enmeshed in her thoughts was she that T’Cori was unprepared when Raven came to her. Never had the two of them been alone in her hut, and she was so startled to see the young woman crawling through her doorway that her mouth hung open.
Raven folded her legs to sit before T’Cori, hands resting on her knees. And then she waited, perhaps offering the nameless one the courtesy of first speech.
When T’Cori had nothing to say, Raven spoke. “We have never been friends,” she said.
“Once, long ago,” said T’Cori, “I hoped we would be sisters.”
The older girl moved closer. “We are not friends. Or sisters. Perhaps one day one of us will kill the other. But this is not that day. Our people’s future is at stake. And I would lie if I said I thought that anyone but you could make the climb.”
T’Cori wagged her head. “This is so strange.”
“The world is bigger than we are,” Raven said, and when T’Cori looked at the girl she could see the strong lines of Stillshadow’s own face. For the first time she found herself able to admit that Stillshadow had been right not to push Raven aside. This was a strong and good woman. Enmity they might feel for each other, but both loved their people.
They had to, or the Ibandi were dead.
“What do you think?” Raven said. “Who might come with us? The one named Fire Ant spoke first. He is brave and strong. I would have him as my spirit twin.”
T’Cori waited, weighing her words, trying to be certain that they were correct before she spoke them. “My num says I will succeed if Frog comes with me.”
“Frog Hopping?” Raven asked. “Of Fire boma? The boy who saved you.” She nodded approval. “He is Fire Ant’s younger brother.”
Raven closed her eyes. T’Cori thought her smooth and placid face beautiful, and was surprised by the thought.
“I see Great Mother’s hand in this,” Raven said, opening her eyes. “But it is Frog Hopping’s choice. He has the right to refuse.”
Chapter Fifty-two
When Frog first heard of T’Cori’s choice, he simply collapsed to a seated position, squatting there in the dirt as Hot Tree explained it to him.
He was stunned, couldn’t believe that he’d been correct: T’Cori and he seemed to share a destiny. The possibility of climbing Great Sky entranced him. Throughout all time, only hunt chiefs had ever braved the demons and the dead water to climb the tallest mountain in the world, there to speak with gods and ancestors. There were so many stronger and braver than Frog, but he had been chosen. His cousins congratulated him, slapped him on the back, and wished him courage. Deep Dry Hole watched him carefully, and Frog wondered at his bland, unreadable expression: would Dry Hole be happy for Frog to have a conversation with Lizard’s spirit?
“Little brother, it is your time,” said Fire Ant, approaching with Hawk at his side.
“What do you mean?”
Hawk sat beside him. “The nameless girl chose you as her spirit twin. She will use your strength to climb the mountain. We will climb, and be remembered in dance and song. We will see our father, Baobab, and our grandfather.” His eyes were distant. “Such a day that will be!”
“The mountain,” Frog said, and looked up at the misshapen peak. Gray rock glistened through the white mantle. Clouds still oozed from the cracks in the sides.
“But can we?” Hawk asked. Although his body was broader and harder than Fire Ant’s, he seemed shrunken. “Do we merely waste our lives? How can we do this thing?”
The peak looked different to them now. The strange misting had ceased, but the very contours had altered. “The women say Father Mountain and Great Mother have taken the hunt chiefs home to Them. So many things have been said. This is our chance to learn what is true.”
Fire Ant gripped his younger brother’s shoulder. “We are strong. We will do this. And you will be there, if you are Baobab’s son.”
“I am his son!” Frog said without hesitation.
“Yes,” Hawk said. “You are.”
Frog smiled, a small, sad smile. “I remembered that full moon was yesterday, and that that marks my birth. I have lived ten and nine springs. I think that that must mean something.”
“It means it is a fine time,” Fire Ant said. “A very good day.”
Every story of the c
limbs, every tale in memory, was danced or sung that night. The celebration continued until the old ones dropped out to chant at the fireside, until the children slept nestled in their mothers’ arms, until only the hunters and the strongest of the young women remained upon their feet.
Until dawn split the darkness, they sang and danced.
The only one of them who had been all the way to the top, Uncle Snake told them everything he knew. “There are rocks that will cut through your feet, or even sandals,” he told them. “You must cover them as you never have before.”
“How do we do this thing?” Hawk asked.
Speaking the next words seemed to pain him. “There is a way, and the hunt chiefs knew it. I will show you. The hunt chiefs knew these secrets, and for many many lives they have defeated the mountain demons. They have tools, if we can find them.” He gazed up into the heights. “And we must.”
All of Fire boma, and many from the inner and outer family, had gathered to say their goodbyes. On every face Frog read an unvoiced conviction: that none of the adventurers would return. But without words, all had decided to pretend this was not the case, that they might ascend to heaven and then descend with wisdom, to be greeted as heroes.
Fire Ant stood. “Now we leave to begin this great journey.”
“All of our hopes are on you,” Hot Tree said. “And when you return, there will be great feasting.”
“We will speak with the gods,” said Hawk Shadow. “Or remain with them.”
Chapter Fifty-three
Raven and T’Cori they were, from the wise and powerful dream dancers. Frog and Fire Ant and Hawk and Uncle Snake and stepbrother Scorpion they were, great hunters from Fire boma. For a quarter they were praised with song and dance by well-wishers who accompanied them until the incline began to steepen. At that point the boma folk seemed to realize that they were entering the realm of the dead. Then the well-wishers dropped back, and the seven adventurers were alone.
Their climb began on the edge of a rain forest, walking through endless fields of white-powdered ferns and flowers, beneath the watchful eyes of the yellow-faced monkeys. They trekked another quarter day into a world of tall timber, and the spot where Snake said to make the first night’s camp.
Great Sky Woman Page 33