The Fairies of Sadieville

by Alex Bledsoe

  III

  DAHNI AND THE DRUMMER

  16

  “Don’t … wake … the bear,” Yakon whispered to his older sister, Dahni.

  “Shut up,” Dahni shot back. “If there is a bear in there, you’re the one who’ll wake it up.”

  Dahni was nineteen suns old and a daughter of one of the Ta-Mihzo elders. She was tall for a woman, with a figure that had filled out so much over the last few seasons that she had to spend the winter making all new clothes.

  Above them, the sun blasted its way through the pristine air and banished shadows across the valley floor. The jagged mountain slopes cut into the sky, rising so high that wisps of clouds clung to the sharp spires. Wide-winged birds navigated the swirling air currents, watching the ground below for anything small enough to kill, or dead enough to eat. The air was cool, and dry, and felt like the soft sigh of a contented lover.

  Dahni and Yakon often hunted rock bird eggs in the foothills of the towering mountains. Today, they scrounged in the crevices around a narrow, vertical cave mouth. As Dahni resumed hunting for eggs, Yakon crept close and peered into the cave opening.

  “What did I tell you?” she whisper-shouted.

  “Come here!” Yakon said urgently. “You have to see this!”

  “If you wake it up—”

  “It’s not a bear, idiot. Come see.”

  She put down her basket of eggs and joined him.

  “Look on the ground,” he said.

  In the dust were the prints of bare human feet; not just one or two, but dozens, all overlapping and all headed out of the cave.

  “Have the elders been meeting up here?” Yakon asked.

  “No,” Dahni said with certainty.

  “Then who made these?”

  “I don’t know.” She let her eyes follow the tracks out of the cave, but they vanished as soon as the ground grew rocky.

  “A war band?” Yakon suggested.

  “From where?” Dahni asked.

  “Let’s go find out,” Yakon said, and started into the cave.

  She grabbed him by his ponytail. “Not a chance. We have to go back and tell Papa and the other elders.”

  “What if they don’t believe us?”

  That made her laugh. “I guarantee they’ll believe me.”

  * * *

  “What could you tell from the tracks?” asked Dahni’s father, Kesak. They sat in the council lodge, and the other five elders waited for her response with serious faces. As she predicted, none of them had questioned her veracity. They knew she would take her father’s place on the council when he died, and treated her accordingly.

  “They seemed recent; the edges of the prints were still clear in the dust,” she said carefully. “And I saw none going back in; I do not believe they have returned.”

  “Then where did they go?” Olonta, the most senior woman on the council, asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dahni admitted.

  “Thank you, daughter,” Kesak said. “We’ll discuss this in private now.”

  Dahni nodded and left the lodge. Yakon and their younger sister Mikka waited just outside and immediately flung questions at her.

  “Did they believe you?”

  “Are you going to be punished?”

  “Is there going to be a war?”

  “Where are you going?”

  She answered that last one. “We are going back to the cave.”

  “We are?” Yakon said excitedly.

  “Me, too?” asked Mikka, her seven-suns-old eyes glittering with anticipation.

  “Yes, you, too. We’re going to look around more closely, and see what else we might learn.”

  “And then maybe there will be a war?” Yakon asked, almost with delight.

  “Maybe,” Dahni had to admit.

  * * *

  Nothing had changed at the cave. The tracks remained, with no new ones going in or coming out. Nearby, she found the fresh print of a saber-toothed cat, but she saw no sign that it had entered.

  She pointed it out to Yakon. “Keep your eyes open for that,” she said.

  He clutched his hunting spear for dear life. “I will.”

  Mikka stayed quiet, holding the hem of Dahni’s dress with one hand and sucking the two middle fingers of the other.

  Dahni peered into the cave. She squinted against the darkness and listened as hard as she could.

  And suddenly, there he was, his face a finger’s length from hers. His eyes were wide and bright blue, something Dahni had never seen before. He had black hair matted with dirt, a scraggly beard, and was totally naked.

  He yelled.

  She screamed.

  Mikka and Yakon screamed.

  The naked man squinted into the sunlight. His body was also filthy, covered with dirt and dried mud. He dropped to his knees with a cry of anguish, then fell forward and lay still.

  “Get over here!” Dahni called to Yakon. She didn’t expect help from him, but she wanted his spear a lot closer in case she needed it.

  Yakon aimed the stone point at the man’s spine and demanded, “Who is he?”

  “You know as much as I do.” She knelt beside him and said, “Hello? Are you all right?”

  With great effort, he rolled onto his back. He was so skinny his hip bones and ribs were visible beneath his pale skin. He said something in a language she didn’t recognize and that had a weird lilt to it that she’d never heard before. Then he pointed at the cave.

  “He looks scary,” Mikka said around her fingers.

  “He’s sick,” Dahni said. “Yakon, give me a hand. We have to get him back to the village.”

  “I’m not touching him,” the boy said. “Look at him; he’s filthy.”

  “He’s sick,” Dahni repeated.

  “Yeah, well, that’s not my problem.”

  Dahni glared at him. “Get … over here … and help me,” she growled.

  “Will he hurt us?” Mikka asked.

  “He won’t right now,” Dahni said. “Hopefully when he’s well, he’ll remember that we helped him.”

  * * *

  They took him straight to the lodge of the medicine woman, Sixela. It stood at a distance from the rest of the village, so that the sick might not spread their maladies.

  Sixela was almost as young as Dahni, and had taken over from her late mother Tomulza just eight moon cycles previously. She ordered the stranger brought into her lodge and placed near the opening, to benefit from fresh breezes. She knelt and ran her hands quickly over him, pressing and turning to check joints and organs. Then she opened his mouth and examined his gums.

  “He’s dying of thirst,” she said. “Didn’t you give him any water?”

  “He wasn’t awake,” Dahni said, too ashamed to admit that the thought hadn’t occurred to her.

  Sixela, as usual, cut her no slack. “So you don’t know how a mouth opens?”

  “I didn’t want him to drown,” she mumbled defensively.

  Sixela took a ladle from her water barrel, raised the man’s head and put it to his lips. As soon as he tasted it he grabbed the ladle and pressed it against his face, moaning as he drank.

  “Easy, calm down,” Sixela said. “You’re safe.”

  “He doesn’t understand our language,” Yakon offered.

  “And you know this how?”

  “Because he spoke just before he passed out, and we didn’t understand what he said.”

  “Do you even know how to think, Yakon?” Sixela said. “That just proves we don’t understand him. It tells us nothing about what he understands.” She turned back to her patient, who had gulped down another ladle of water. She took it from his hands, then raised his chin so he faced her. She touched herself over her heart. “Sixela. Sixela.” Then she touched his heart.

  He looked blank.

  She waved her hand in front of his face. His eyes didn’t move.

  “Is he dead?” Yakon asked.

  “No, he’s exhausted.” She closed his eyes for him, and he
began to lightly snore. Then she looked grimly at Dahni. “Tell your father about him. But also tell him he’s in no condition to answer questions. I’ll let them know when he is.”

  “So you think he’ll live?” Dahni asked.

  “I think he might.”

  “I’m sorry if I made his condition worse.”

  “You didn’t run off and leave him, which an awful lot of our people would’ve done. That makes you one of the bravest people around.”

  Dahni nodded at the compliment, but inside she was still furious with herself. She needed some time alone, so she took her brother and sister to her uncle’s lodge and left them with her aunt. Then she grabbed her hunting spear, longer and lighter than Yakon’s, and headed into the woods.

  17

  Miles away, outside a different cave on the far side of the valley from the Ta-Mihzo village, a sound totally new to this world rang out: music.

  An unseen drummer kept the rhythm, while a chorus of voices sang, so quietly it was almost a whisper:

  See that bear, sleeping by

  See that bear, sleeping by

  If I wake that bear, I might die

  See that bear, sleeping by …

  There was no movement from the cave. The next verse was louder:

  See that bear, waking up

  See that bear, waking up

  If I poke that bear, he’ll rip me up

  See that bear, waking up …

  That did the trick. An enormous female cave bear emerged into the light, sleepy and pissed off. The drumming grew louder and more insistent, taunting her with its steady rhythms. She stepped out into the open and rose to her massive twelve-foot height. Popping her jaws and roaring her challenge, she swiped at the air. There was nothing, she knew, that could stand against her in a fair fight.

  Unfortunately this fight was not fair at all. Free of the cave’s protection, she was immediately pierced by a dozen arrows and spears, their stone tips burrowing deep into her body. One found her heart, and she fell onto her back, swiping at the shafts. Her roars grew weaker, until at last she lay still.

  Only then did her killers emerge from their hiding places behind various boulders, gnarled trees, and stands of tall, dry grass. There were four of them, clad in animal hides. Instead of cheering or celebrating, they approached their quarry wearily, and warily, humming along with the drumbeat.

  Finally one of the group, a man known as the Carpenter, stopped humming and said, “’Tis a fair big beastie, she is.”

  “Now, now, lads, there’s no hurry,” a woman, the Healer, said. “Let’s let her be for a bit. When our queen made time, she made plenty of it.”

  The mention of the Queen made them all do the same elaborate hand gesture of respect and fealty.

  The drumming continued. Finally the Carpenter yelled, “Hold your bloody fingers, will you? They’ve done their job!”

  The drumming ceased, and another man emerged from the trees. He carried no weapons, but only a drum made from a bit of hollow log and an animal skin. He was young, lean, and one of those people who radiated both confidence and irreverence. He tapped his fingers on the drumhead as he approached, calling out, “See? Gave the old hairy one a slap on the ear, didn’t it?”

  “Could’ve done the same thing with shouts or songs,” one of the older men, the Jeweler, said.

  “Aye, perhaps,” the Drummer agreed smugly. “Never know, will we?”

  The Jeweler narrowed his eyes. He didn’t care for the Drummer in general, and his attitude in particular. “You’re a chancer, my friend.”

  “Keep your breath to cool your porridge,” the Healer said to the Jeweler. “We need to skin that bear and get whatever meat we want from it.”

  The hunting party drew their bone-handled stone knives and warily approached the bear. As they began their work, the Healer sang:

  Where is the home for me?

  Inis Ealga, set in the sea,

  Fomorian’s home in the soft sea-foam,

  Would I lend to thee;

  Where in the wings of the wind are furled,

  And faint the heart of the world …

  It was almost sundown by the time the hunting band returned to their village, a circular collection of primitive huts made from tree branches and animal skins, similar in concept to the Ta-Mihzo lodges. But near them, several half-built log cabins rose, permanent homes in place of the temporary ones. There were only grown men and women, no children, although a handful of women had large bellies.

  Three moon cycles ago, they’d stumbled naked, nameless and disoriented, from a cave on the far side of the valley. It had been cold, and damp, and three of them were killed by animals before they even managed to reach the shelter of the trees. Now they’d begun, slowly, to acclimate.

  Their leader’s second in command, known as the Tall Woman, met them at the village center. She was, as her name implied, taller than most of the men, with the broad shoulders and narrow eyes of someone used to fighting, and winning. She asked the group, “How did it go?”

  “The cave’s all his,” the Hunter said. “Or it will be, once we muck it out.”

  “So the drumming worked?” she asked the Drummer.

  “Like a charm,” he said. He was, of course, being sarcastic; it had worked like a charm because it was a charm. “The better the day, the better the deed.”

  “Aye, except when you’re acting the maggot,” the Jeweler muttered, scowling beneath his glaring eyes.

  “Let’s bring him the good news,” the Tall Woman said.

  There was only one completed wooden home in the village, a small cabin set away from the rest. They’d all pitched in to build it first, both out of respect for their leader, and to give him someplace to go so he wouldn’t just wander around and stick his nose into their business. Survival in a strange place was hard enough without the boss looking over your shoulder.

  A deerskin marked by a white handprint with six fingers hung over the cabin door. She knocked on the wooden frame.

  “’Tis me,” she said. “The lads have returned with bounty.”

  After a moment, a six-fingered hand pushed the deerskin aside and their leader, the Six-Fingered Man, emerged and scowled into the bright sunlight. He was broad-shouldered, potbellied, and had the look of both immense strength and chastened arrogance. “What bounty?”

  “That cave you wanted up in the foothills.”

  “The one with the bear?”

  “Aye. ’Tis now an empty hole in the sullen rock.”

  “So you killed it?”

  “Not me. They did,” she said, and nodded back at the group.

  The Six-Fingered Man looked over the hunters; his gaze stopped on the Drummer. “And what did you do?”

  He smiled smugly. “Called her forth with a rhythm and a song.”

  “And it worked?”

  “’Tis true, it did,” the Hunter said.

  “And it went straight to his already swollen head,” the Jeweler muttered.

  “I wasn’t talking to either of you,” the Six-Fingered Man said. He continued to watch the Drummer for a long moment, then said, “Hmph,” and turned to go back inside.

  The Tall Woman was just about to sigh with relief when he stopped and turned back. “Wait. Were any other eyes cast your way?”

  “No,” the Hunter said. “We saw not a one besides ourselves.”

  The Six-Fingered Man frowned. “Did you look?”

  “Not … so much, you know,” the Hunter said, suddenly nervous. “As you do. We did have a fair big bear to worry about, you know.”

  “So they could’ve been watching?”

  The Hunter looked at the Tall Woman, who shook her head microscopically.

  “As the wind’s own truth, I can’t see how,” the Hunter said.

  The Six-Fingered Man looked up at the bright sky and the ring of peaks around them. “This is their world, you know. They could be anywhere. They could be watching us right now, waiting to pick us off.”

  “No
w, there’s nothing to make that true,” the Tall Woman said.

  “There’s nothing to make anything true, for good or ill. And until there is, my rule stands: no contact with the others.”

  The Tall Woman made a weary gesture of respect and fealty. The Six-Fingered Man responded with one of his own, and went back inside.

  “Now what do you suppose that was all about?” the Gardener asked softly.

  “Maybe he feels guilty for getting us exiled,” the Hunter said. “Guilt has quick ears for an accusation, after all.”

  “Perhaps,” the Gardener said doubtfully. Then he looked around. “Wait—where’d the Drummer go?”

  18

  Deep in the forest at the center of the valley, the Drummer strode along the riverbank, sending out a steady rhythm of triumph. Birds rose from the trees and cawed their annoyance at him before settling back down in his wake. The trees overhead rippled with the winds, casting mottled shadows.

  He reached the bend in the river where the current created a large, still pool. He climbed up onto a high rock overlooking it, and watched the fish swim lazily in the clear water. He wondered if there was a way to drum the fish into a net, or even onto the bank.

  Then movement caught his eye. Something came through the forest on the other side of the river. And when it stepped into the open at the river’s edge, his eyes opened wide.

  It was a young woman.

  * * *

  Dahni emerged from the forest and stopped at the edge of the pool, lost in thought. Somewhere in the valley, a group of strangers might be preparing to assault the Ta-Mihzo. Despite her brother’s enthusiasm, the idea of war terrified her. She had never seen anyone die by violence. She thrust her spear point-first into the soft ground and stared at the water for a long moment before something very obvious struck her.

  The pool’s surface showed a man watching her from atop the big rock on the opposite bank.

  She hid her reaction. It was not one of the Ta-Mihzo; she knew everyone in her tribe, even at a distance, even in an uncertain upside-down reflection. So it must be one of … them.