Corban said, “I know. You want me to go west. To find out where that golden head came from?”
“The Sun people made that head. I want you to find them. Miska began to say more, but something moved in the corner of his eye.
It was Epashti, who must have been watching, Miska realized, the whole time—who might have seen him nearly leap on Corban; she came up toward them, looking from one to the other. She said, “What has happened? What is this, husband, where are you going?”
Corban turned to her, his shaggy, ugly head bent toward her. “My sister told me to go to the west. Miska—” He glanced at Miska, and said, with a sting in his tongue, “Haka-Miska needs to know something there.”
Epashti looked from him to Miska, and said, “I will go too.”
Miska folded his arms over his chest. He wanted to get rid of Corban but Epashti belonged here. “You are the herbwoman of us, we people need you.”
Corban said, “He’s right, Epashti, you should stay here.”
Miska raised his head an inch, wondering why Corban did not want her with him. Epashti laid her hand on the wild man’s arm, and turned to the sachem. “A war band going out of the country always takes the herbwoman with them. I went with you last year, remember, when you went to the Long Lakes, and that time to the salt. There is Ehia, now, she has been going around with me for over a year, she can watch over everybody here.”
Miska jerked his head up, angry. “He is not a war band. He is not a Wolf.” He turned and glared at Corban, standing there with his head down, looking from under his eyebrows at Epashti.
Reluctantly, Corban said, “She wants me to take Ahanton, too.”
“No!” Miska took a step toward him, crowding him “She’s a child. She stays here. She’s my child.”
He bit his teeth together, annoyed with himself for saying so much. Corban never moved; he stood so close Miska felt the heat of his body, and said, with a shrug, “My sister said she should go. It could be a hard journey, I don’t wish for either of them to come.” He stared up at Miska, daring him to refuse what the Woman had required.
She required it. Miska took hold of his anger, and turned away, walking off a little, thinking this over. She had required it for some reason. He faced the wild man again. “Did she say why?”
Corban shook his head. “I told you, I don’t want her to go either.”
Epashti said, swiftly, “But if Ahanton goes then I must as well.”
Miska lowered his eyes. “Very well,” he said. “Take her.”
His anger rose again at being overruled. He thought of the Forest Woman, but his belly boiled. If he looked at Corban again, he knew, he would attack him. He said, “Take them both, Ahanton and Epashti.”
Epashti saw his temper, and reached out her hand to Corban again. “Come along, husband, it’s cold, come along.”
Corban saw it also. He gave a low laugh, and said nothing, only stood a moment, watching Miska, and only then went along after the woman. Miska stood there, breathing hard, as if he had fought a great battle, and been ruined.
Epashti was dividing up her medicine pouch; she laid down a bundle of dried mint in the flat basket to her right, for Ehia, and the other into her carrying pouch, to take with her. Ehia knelt down on her left hand, watching, and saying nothing, but every now and then she cast a black look at Corban.
The whole village was angry Epashti was leaving and blamed him for taking her. Corban, watching Epashti through the side of his eye, wondered again how such a quiet little woman could push her way into this against the will of everybody.
“My sister will nurse the baby,” she said.
“Aengus,” Corban said. “What about Finn, and Kalu?”
“My brothers should be watching over them more anyway. And Mother Eonta will keep an eye on them.”
Corban lowered his eyes; he knew none of the men save Miska, certainly not her brothers. He had laid his gear out on his red and blue cloak, his knives and slings, the tinderbox and a piece of flint, his extra boots, a strip of hide stitched with his fish hooks, a leather box for bait, a coil of string. He pushed away a little stab at the thought of leaving his children to these people; the urge to be on the way was as strong as an itch.
Epashti felt like a weight on him, something holding him here even while she went with him. Ahanton, he knew, would make it even worse. He wondered why his sister had wanted them to go along. He wondered what part they could have in what he was searching for.
Ehia packed her basket and went out, with one last scowl in Corban’s direction, and the flap over the door fell closed. Epashti spoke, and her voice was like a nettle drawn over his skin. “Where are we going? What did your sister say to you? Why do we go into the west?”
The baby was sleeping in his bundleboard, hanging from the centerpost; they were alone in the hut. All along the walls, on strings, bundles of herbs dried in rows, and there were still two leaves of smoking herb spread across the frame of the hut in the back, so the air was rich with smells. He began to put his belongings into his shoulder sack, picking them up one by one from his red and blue cloak.
“I am to find some people, called the Sun people.”
She gasped. He looked up at her, seeing her face pale suddenly, even in the dusk. “Does that change your mind about going?”
She said, “No.” She sat there, her hands on her thighs, staring at him.
“Who are these Sun people?”
She hunched her shoulders up. “Very bad. Very hard.” Her wide eyes studied him. “You don’t know this?”
“No—tell me.”
“You know that we came here from the west, we Wolves.”
“I know that,” he said, thinking it was almost the first thing he had known about the Wolves, that they were interlopers, running from something.
“We used to live near a great water. I was a baby. Maybe I wasn’t all the way born yet. I don’t remember but we remember.” She wiped her eyes with her fingers. “The Sun people came. First there were a few of them, with gifts. Then there were many, and they gave us orders. When we said no to their orders they came on a day when the thunder rolled. They crashed down on our village like thunder and they killed us like lightning. Some of us ran away. Eonta and her husband, who is dead now. Gallara and her husband, who is dead now, and Burns-His-Feet, who is dead now, and old Murula, who is dead now, and Anapatha, and Merada. Most of us died but those few ran away, and we came here. Now let no one ever come against us again.” She made a sign with her hand. Tears slicked her cheeks.
“Where was Miska?” he asked.
“Miska was a baby. His grandmother was Murula. She took him by the hand and led him out of the fire of the village. No one else of her lodge remained, none of her daughters, none of her granddaughters. When she died, her lineage died with her.” She rubbed her hand over her cheeks, and faced him. “If they are coming we have to find out. And warn everybody. And make ready. You see that.” She turned back to her herbs. “So it’s even more important that I go.”
Corban shut his mouth; he saw she knew nothing but what she had said. I don’t remember but we remember. His mind quested after them, out there somewhere in the west, the Sun people, who made fine things of gold, brought gifts and gave orders, and struck like thunder and lightning; what else did they do, he wondered, who were they? She said they were evil, but she was a Wolf; what did she know about evil? He closed up the top of his sack over his belongings and picked up his red and blue cloak, longing to get out the gate.
Since she could remember Ahanton had dreamt of her father, that he grew like a huge oak tree out of the midst of the other people, and stood over them all, and was great over them. His arms spread over them, protecting them; he hid them in his shadow, and they grew to be very many. They spread away across the world, and her father was the father of them all, a tree towering to the top of the sky, and spreading its broad leafy arms over all of them.
They ate of him, they gathered nuts from his branches, and
nibbled on his bark, and he gave them freely of all of it. Then Mother Eonta came, and she made a hole in his side, the way that sometimes people made holes in trees, to collect the sap, and the sap ran from her father and the people came and drank of it. Ahanton saw all this happen in her dream, but she told nobody.
When she dreamt of Corban, he was always standing off on the side of things, watching, and his head was the head of a wild beast.
C H A P T E R F I V E
Corban left, with Epashti following a step behind him, her herbwoman’s pouch over her shoulder, and Ahanton dashing on ahead. When they were out of sight, Miska went around the village, gathering the men.
He said nothing to them, only went among them, touching one or another on the shoulder, and they rose up and followed him. As they proceeded on through the village their voices rose, tremulous, excited, so that ahead of them people knew they were coming, and when they came to another group of men they were already stirring and ready and Miska had only to move through them and they followed him.
He led them at last to the oak tree, where they milled around, the older men, who all lived together in the two lodges, flexing their arms and looking each other deep in the eyes, the boys howling and laughing and embracing, until he raised his hand, and then they all hushed. They came up around him, the eight men of the lodges in front, and sat down at his feet, and he looked calmly from one to the other, letting each one know that he was in Miska’s eye.
Hasei was there, who always had a mouthful of words, often annoying. Miska nodded to him. “Hasei, take all these—” He pointed around the band, saying the names of the older men, who had followed him the longest. “There is a village of the Bear people, down by the Broad River. Go there and tell their headman I am coming.”
Hasei stood up, frowning. Short and square, he always tried to find some way to escape from Miska’s will. He said, “The Bear people. They don’t even like us, Haka-Miska, what am I supposed to say to them?”
“I told you,” Miska said. “Say that I will be coming there, and they should get ready.” He smiled at Hasei, pleased to make him uncomfortable. The other men were already on their feet, shuffling around, ready to follow when Hasei was ready to lead them. Miska said, “Go, get your war bundles, and do as I tell you.” He turned away, showing the side of his face to Hasei, and with a shrug the other man went off, and with him the other seven, reliable and steady, as long as nothing unusual happened.
Miska turned toward the rest, the untopped boys and young men, his green sticks, more of them than the men of the lodges, almost twice as many. He let his gaze drift over them, as if he were mulling over what to do, although he had already decided. When his gaze finally lit on Lopi, the young man snapped upright like a sapling, his face shining.
“Haka-Miska! Give me an order!”
Miska laughed at him. “Go for a long walk, and then do nothing,” he said, and Lopi’s face slumped. Miska laughed again. “But you can all do this together.” With a gesture he gathered them in toward him. “Lopi leads. Go away to the east, to the hills beyond the Broad River. There is a pass through them. You will know it by the blasted oak tree on the top, like a tree of feathers.”
Lopi was nodding at him; Lopi had been there. Miska went on, “Find the pass but don’t go into it, make a camp there, at the western foot of the way into it, and wait for me.”
Lopi was rigid with excitement, his face flaming “Haka-Miska-ka, how do I—”
“You will find out,” Miska said. “Just do as I say, Lopi.” He nodded, and the young men bounded up, gathering around Lopi in a sudden bubbling of excited talk, arms around each other’s shoulders. One threw back his head and howled to the sky out of sheer exhuberance. It would take them a long while even to leave the village, Miska guessed. He left them to sort it all out and went to his own lodge.
His war bundle, wrapped in a wolf skin, hung from the lodge pole, and his club beside it. He had made the club himself, the haft of ashwood as long as his arm, the killing end a fist-sized stone, bound into the split of the ash with rawhide. At the other end of the haft he had sunk a smaller stone, to give it a better feel in his hand.
It seemed alive to him. Whenever he picked it up he felt its joy, its eagerness for the hunt. He held it in his hands a moment, enjoying its weight and balance, feeling it awaken. With it something deep and hot within him wakened also. He gathered himself; then he slung the bundle over his shoulder and went out of the village and away to the east.
He followed an old trail of the woods bison. The great beasts had mostly left this country now but their paths remained, pounded knee-deep into the ground, thick with powdery dust and overhung with trees. The lower leaves of the brush on either side were gray with the dust. As he went along he ate what he came on, mushrooms and berries, leaves and grubs. He thought little, his mind open to the forest as he went through it. His feet knew the ground under them, his nose knew the smell and sound of the wind, his ears knew the birds shrilling at him and calling warning to one another. He moved fast. Twice in the first day he spooked deer, coming quickly on them from upwind.
At night he found shelter under the overhang of a creek bank, and there he woke in the dark, and then miserable thoughts crowded into his mind. He saw himself small and lost and unnoticed, a little nut between earth and sky, that the indifferent world would crush at its whim, and then he consoled himself thinking of the Forest Woman, who had raised him up and made him sachem, and chosen him to father her daughter.
After a few days he left the bison trail and cut through the forest and hills, moving steadily eastward. In the low ground he crossed stretches of burnt-out ground, with the grass springing up through the black ruin. He avoided the villages of the Bear people who lived here, who had burnt the ground to bring the grass to lure the deer. He saw much sign of them, the burnouts, trails, and traps set, and once or twice through the trees he caught a glimpse of a hut, but they never knew he was there, he passed through their midst like a shadow.
He came to the Broad River, flowing brown and deep in its southward course. On the bank he found a big old dry limb fallen from an oak tree and he lugged it into the water, and with one arm around it and his feet kicking let it carry him down the current and across to the other side.
He picked up a deer trace that took him on east, and a few days later he came down a little creek and into sight of the pass where he had told Lopi to make his camp. The pass was a notch in the craggy old hills, with a big chunk of rock overhanging it; at the foot of this rock, in the hump of the pass, the broken fireblackened crown of an oak tree stuck out like a burnt hand over thickets of brush and green vines. From the meadow at the hills’ foot a narrow path snaked up toward the blasted tree.
There was no sign of Lopi in the meadow, which did not surprise him; the boys would be slow getting here, needing to hunt food, to find a way to cross the river. Miska walked back and forth across the meadow, noticing who had come by, and watching the heights for signs the pass was guarded, but he didn’t expect that and saw no evidence of it.
Yet he did not cross through the hills by the low and gentle way. Instead he climbed up the steep side of the hill south of the pass, moving up through young oak trees and dense patches of brush, insects swarming thick in the still green light. The summer was coming and the day grew warm around him, smelling of leaves. Crossing over the rocky summit he went on down the far side, moving carefully now, slow and cautious, watching ahead of him, his ears up, sniffing the air.
For two years now this pass had marked the eastern edge of his power. East of this place the people gave their respect to another sachem, the Turtle chief, Tisconum. Tisconum had once been a greater chief than he was now, for which he blamed Miska, which Miska accepted as an honor, although he knew that the rodent, Corban, had a lot also to do with Tisconum’s downfall.
Tisconum hated the Wolves, and he hated Miska above any other Wolf. For two years Miska had been pretending he didn’t care about Tisconum. This year he
meant to make it unnecessary to care about Tisconum ever again.
These hills were the margin between them. He had been scouting them for over a year, finding out how to move around them, learning where everything was. In the course of that scouting he had noted that some of Tisconum’s people kept a hunting camp at the foot of the eastern slope of this hill, where also they could watch the pass; but mostly it was a hunting camp.
He drifted that way, easing slowly through the forest, his ears stretched open and his eyes looking everywhere, as the day grew hot and the wind died. Around noon he stopped, his nose picking up the faint tang of woodsmoke from up ahead of him.
He stayed where he was through the heat of the day, listening, and noticing the way the animals in the forest were acting. He knew where the camp was, off to his left by a little spring; he could tell that people were moving up and down between it and the large meadow away on his right. A jay was keeping up a racket in a tall tree ahead of him. A few breaths later he heard the quail in the meadow piping out their alarms. After a while, back in the camp, someone was singing.
Two men and a woman, he thought. As the sun sank down, and the air cooled a little, he left his pack behind and moved in through the woods, from one tree to the next, the club in his hand.
He circled the camp once, noting the paths in and out. The sun was rolling over the edge of the sky, the wind was moving in fitful little swirls through the leafy masses of the trees. He could hear the men coming up from the meadow, carrying something heavy. From the thick cover on the slope above the spring he looked down and watched the woman laying sticks on her fire. The spits were ready for the meat the men were bringing. In nearby baskets she had other food, berries and acorn meal cakes. Their gear hung on the tree branches and lay tumbled on the ground of the camp, beds of pine boughs, heaps of firewood.
He moved slowly down the slope, moving one foot and then the other, to avoid giving her any warning. He edged his way down to where the path from the meadow came up to the camp, and there the men were just approaching, one after the other, with a deer slung between them on a pole.
The Serpent Dreamer Page 4