Miska sank down, exhausted and satisfied. He took the honor and power of the dead man as a gift, a Wolf’s heart. The daughters of Anapatha divided the body up for the cooking pots, to accept this man into the clan, to make him one of them. Miska sat slumped there, sweat covering him, his whole body aching. The dying man had taken him far, had taken him to the edge of death, to the leap between worlds.
He thought of Corban, even now, in this moment of connection and power, he thought of Corban, who somehow had leapt between worlds without dying.
C H A P T E R T E N
Green where the sun reached it, brown in the shadows, the river roared along broad between banks clogged with the leavings of the spring flood, clumps of grass wound high into the branches of the willow trees, twigs and leaves rammed into the spaces between them, everything covered with an inch of brown dust patterned with bird tracks. Corban worked his way down to the water, hearing ahead of him the plop of creatures leaving as he approached.
He reached the lip of the bank where it curled over a pool of deep quiet water, sheltered from the race of the river by a fallen oak tree. Six feet below the top of the bank, at the edge of the pool, was a tiny shelving beach, and he dropped down onto it. In such a sheltered place the heat was unbearable. Having no need here to hide the color of his skin, he put his line and the gourd down on the beach, peeled his shirt off and tossed it up onto the bank above his head.
He splayed his hand over his chest, where the skin was fishwhite. This whiteness, which he had never noticed until he came here, was bad, one of the reasons Miska hated him. For the whole summer after he joined Epashti’s people he had gone around naked in the forest, trying to get his skin to turn as brown as theirs, but he had never gone so dark, and so around them he always wore all the clothes he could. When his little boy Finn was born he was pale and Corban had fretted until he saw that as the child grew he was darkening to his mother’s coppery color. He rubbed his hand over his chest, struggling with the problem why this was so important.
Here it was not, here, days, even weeks away from the Wolves. The willows leaned over the water and insects floated in the air above it. Nobody noticed he was white. He picked up the line and the gourd with his bait, and he worked the top of the gourd carefully off and shook the contents into his hand. A clutter of insects fell into his palm, most of them dead. He took the liveliest, a little green grasshopper, and tied it to the hook with a strand of Epashti’s hair. With the line looped in his hand so that it would spin freely out he tossed the hook lightly up into the air above the pool, to settle down on the still water by the log.
Nothing happened. The grasshopper wriggled uselessly on the surface. After a moment Corban brought the line in, shook the water off, and did it again, aiming for the grasshopper to settle down onto the surface just inside the curving barrier of the fallen tree, where the water would be deepest.
As he did he heard something moving above him in the tree. He knew who this was. Since she would be eating whatever he caught, he wondered why she worked so hard to prevent him from catching it. He gathered in the line again, thinking of changing the bait.
Bits of leaf and bark and broken twigs began to shower down on him. The branch over his head bucked violently up and down. Nothing would rise now, no matter what the bait. He looked up into the green masses of the willow.
“Ahanton! Get down.”
She laughed at him. He could barely see her through the massy green leaves. She had crept out along a branch that snaked far over the water; a thicket of new shoots sprouted up from it, which bent and cracked as she passed. “There’s a nest,” she said.
He waded out into the shallow water, watching her; she was crawling far out over the river, the branch bending under her weight in a great shaking and sweeping of leaves.
“Ahanton, get back here.”
“I can feed myself,” she said, out there, and the branch suddenly snapped with a loud crack and pitched down into the river.
“Ahanton!”
He crashed through the water toward the fallen branch, clawing swathes of leaves and sticks out of his way. The branch was halfsunk into the river, and the current was lashing through it, dragging the long sidestems out madly flapping. He could not see Ahanton. She was trapped in the branches, under the water. He thrashed around in the great streaming net of the willow branches, looking for her, and then he heard her yell.
The sound jerked his head up. Not in the tree. She had fallen clear of it, or leapt away into it, and now she was sweeping away down the river, only her head showing, already rushing away from him down the river.
He shouted, wordless; as he watched, she flung one arm up, struggling, and went entirely under the water.
He scrambled across the fallen branch and dove into the river and swam, keeping his head above the surface, his eyes on the place she had gone under. The river hurled him along like a leaf in its grip, banging and yanking at him, splashing dirty water into his mouth and nose. He would never find her. He would never find her. Then some way down from where he was watching she popped up again, thrashing, bleating.
He was nearer, he was catching up; he shouted wordlessly to her, to give her hope. His arms milling at the water, his legs churning, he went wildly along, bundled in the current. Her head swung toward him, he saw the wild shine of terror in her eyes, and then she went under again.
He dove down, his aims sweeping out ahead of him. Beneath the sunlit surface she twisted in the murky green water, her hair streaming around her, and he kicked hard down toward her. His outstretched hand caught her arm and he turned upward, pushing her ahead of him, toward the air.
They broke the water in the middle of the rushing river; the roar of its coursing burst deafening into his ears, the hot air struck his face. He gulped for air, and the child, choking and coughing, flung her arms around his neck like an anchor and drove them both under again.
His legs milled the water. He held her tight, pressed to his chest, and struggled back up to the surface. “Ahanton! Be still—I have you—” Still she was strangling him with her desperate grip. He sobbed for breath. By force he tore her arms from around his neck, swung her backward against his chest, and grappled her against him with one arm.
Quickly he looked around. The current was hurrying them down into a great bend of the river, where on the inside of the curve the land shoaled out to a point. The child clutched his arm around her; he could feel her body bucking as she coughed and gasped. He swam along with the current, angling across it, toward the shoal. They would be a long way from their camp. Epashti would know something had happened. His feet struck the ground and he walked up the shelf of the point, holding Ahanton tight against him.
She was limp in his arms, vomiting water. He turned her upside down and held her by the ankles and shook, and water ran out of her. She screeched; she writhed around in his grip, and he knew she was recovered.
At that his temper went hot against her. He swung her around again, gripped her by the arms and held her up in front of him and shouted at her. “You see what you do! You could have died—brat! Fool! I should beat you bloody!” Half of it was in languages she did not speak, and she twisted in his grip, half-drowned, streaming dirty water through her hair and down her face, her eyes brimming with rage, and roared back at him.
“I hate you!” She tore herself from his grasp and scrambled up the shoal toward the riverbank. From the top she turned and volleyed fury at him. “I never want to see you again! I’m going to run away and live in the woods and never come back!” She wheeled and disappeared into the green thickets.
He waded to the riverbank and leaned against , still standing ankle-deep in the slapping water, and coughed. He had water in his belly and his chest somewhere. He put one hand to his belt; his knife was still there, fastened with a thong, but he had lost his fishing line, his hook and the gourd. He thought it was a good thing Ahanton had run away before he did kill her. After a while he hauled himself up onto the bank and walked
back along the river to find his shirt.
Epashti cleared old leaves and dirt from under an overhanging rock and spread out Corban’s red and blue robe, and built a hearth of stones at the opening of this little cave; every day when they broke camp she brought a stone from that hearth to make the new one, so it was not entirely cold. Corban had left his firebox in the camp, but she did not put the wood to flame, because the day still hung warm around her.
There was still much daylight left, and she had seen some interesting plants down by the river. Yet she lingered in the new camp. She was glad to be by herself. All the while now, with only the three of them, she was set between Ahanton and Corban, and she felt worn to a sliver from it.
For a moment she sat there by the unlit fire, listening to the rustle and clatter of the forest. The sticky overheated air was busy with insects. She kept watch for the little whining biters and for big slow bugs Corban might use for bait. She listened also for some sign of Ahanton. After a moment she took up her bag and got out an awl to mend her shoes, which were always falling apart now.
She wondered what she had thought would come of this, travelling along with him on this quest. They were much together now and yet Corban was still as strange to her as before. He moved through the forest as quickly and surely as a deer, and yet it seemed to her he only saw half of it. He only saw the parts of it he wanted. He made no offerings when he killed, although the forest gave bountifully to him. He crossed streams and rivers without ceremony; he stepped across the fire, just like the wild man they had all believed him at first.
Sometimes though she saw him sitting alone, at night, staring into the stars, and this gave her hope. He was hurt, she thought, he had lost his way, but he still felt the call of his home place.
She finished her shoes and worked on some of Ahanton’s. She had her own reasons for being glad they weren’t in the village. Under her belt, she was beginning to think, there was a baby growing, and out here, she didn’t have to think about what that meant.
This was the baby nobody wanted, the baby who would never have a name. She knew without having to count that it would be born in the Hunger Moon, when there was hardly enough food for the hunters, and everybody starved. As she grew bigger with it, the other women would pretend not to notice. When she came to bear it, no one would help her. If she lived through the labor, and the baby lived, she would have to take it to the midden and leave it there.
She poked the needle into the hide of the shoe. Here, she didn’t have to see the knowledge surface on her sisters’ faces, the fear, the turning away. She didn’t have to think how quickest and easiest to kill a newborn baby so it wouldn’t suffer long. She pushed it out of her mind again. She worked steadily on Ahanton’s shoes.
Toward the end of the day, Corban came back, very gloomy, and with nothing to put on the fire. When she asked him where Ahanton was he grunted at her. He sat down with his back to the edge of the rock; he was covered in a fine film of dust, and his hair was wet. A little while later Ahanton came back, naked, also filthy with dust, and sat down and would not let Epashti touch her. She kept her back to Corban, and stuck out her lower lip.
Epashti got her food basket, and took out acorn cakes, and some dried meat; it was still too hot for the fire. She laid the food out where they could reach it. Neither of them moved, nor looked at each other or her. Finally, and sitting in the wide space between them, she began to tell a story.
“In the beginning, you know, there was no world. All the people lived on an island that floated in the sky, and beneath was only water. On the sky island there was peace and plenty, and so the people were happy there.
“In a lodge on the sky island lived Sky Woman and her husband. They lived on opposite sides of the lodge. Every day Sky Woman went around the fire to her husband, and combed his hair, but they had no other relations. Still, by some miracle, she became pregnant.
“When her husband found out she was pregnant he was furious. This being angry made him seem sick, so sick he was near to death, and all the people were very worried, and came and begged him to get better.”
Now Ahanton at least was eating, her little hand reaching out to the acorn cakes. Corban’s head was turned toward her, listening. She went on.
“Sky Woman’s husband told all the people that he would not be well or happy until a big tree that grew on the sky island was dug up, and so everybody went to the tree and dug the tree up. This made a big hole in the island, and all the people gathered around to look down. Sky Woman also stood at the edge of the hole looking down, and her husband came up behind her then and he pushed her into the hole.”
Ahanton gasped, her wide pale eyes fixed on Epashti’s face; the woman looked at her, and waited a moment, but the child said nothing and Epashti went on.
“Sky Woman fell and fell through the air. Some birds saw her, and they flew right away to the Great Turtle, who lived in the water below, and warned her that Sky Woman was falling. The Great Turtle summoned up all the creatures of the water, and asked each one to dive down to the bottom and bring up some dirt, to make a place for Sky Woman to live on, when she reached them.
“They all dove down through the sea, but none of them could reach the bottom. Finally the little toad dove all the way down and brought up a mouthful of mud, and then died from it. But the Great Turtle spread the mud on her back, and so the whole world grew on the Turtle’s back, and was ready for Sky Woman when she fell. And this is the world we live in now and that’s why we call it the Turtle Island.”
Ahanton said, “What about her baby?”
“That’s another story,” Epashti said. She glanced at Corban, who was watching her from the side of his face.
He said, “What happened to the bad husband?”
Epashti snorted at him. “I don’t know. He doesn’t matter anymore.” She wondered why he paid attention to the wrong things. She had hoped talking about the sky island would remind him of something, but he was looking at her with a half-angry, half-smiling face, as if at some joke, and in a rush of anger she thought he had understood nothing.
He said, “They used to tell us that we lost heaven—the sky island—because of a tree. Maybe there’s a tree at the middle of everything.”
She blinked at him, astonished, trying to gather in what he had said. It came to her that he did understand, somehow, but crooked, broken, like something seen through water. Ahanton was tugging on her arm.
“What about the baby?”
Epashti reached out and smoothed the child’s filthy hair back from her face. “That’s another story. Tomorrow.” She turned to Corban, who had finally begun to eat. “What do you remember of the tree?”
He shrugged. The anger had run out of him, he was tired, and he sat breaking off pieces of the dried meat to chew. He said, “There are two stories. One—”
He stopped, chewing, staring away. The light was fading into evening; sideways to her, his pale eyes seemed to shine like water. Finally he said, slowly, feeling the words out, “There was a sky spirit, who made the world, and he made the first people also. They lived in a wonderful place, where they had all they wanted, but they disobeyed the sky spirit, who had told them not to eat some fruit from a certain tree, and he drove them out into the outside world. Now we all have to struggle just to stay alive.”
“Ah,” she said, excited; she saw that he did remember, in his crooked way, that once he had lived in the world above. But now he turned and faced her, and his voice had a harsh edge to it
“So that is one tree. There is another story, that the world began with frost, and giants, and there is a great ash tree in the middle, whose branches are the world of spirits, and giants, and whose trunk is the world of men, and whose roots are a place called Hel, the underworld, where the dead go. And a rat gnaws at the taproot of the tree, a serpent girdles its trunk, the leaves are turning yellow, and soon the tree will die, and with it, the whole world.”
Her skin prickled up, as if the wind turned cold; beside
her Ahanton murmured, and slid her hand into Epashti’s. The woman saw that he meant this fear, that he was fighting her with this story. She held the child’s hand tight, and faced him.
“Which of them do you believe?”
Even in the growing dark she could see the glint of his pale eyes. Then abruptly he turned away. Somehow she had found the right words. In another voice, he said, “I don’t believe either of them. I don’t believe anything.” She licked her lips, wondering what this meant, how she should speak now, and then he said, “I believe in justice.” He got up and went away, off around the fire into the dark trees.
Epashti sagged, baffled. Ahanton was leaning against her now, suddenly half-asleep, and she turned and busied herself getting the child down onto the robe. What he had said ran through her mind over and over. She wondered what “justice” meant, if it meant anything, some word he had made up, part of the gibberish that still underlay the slow-gathered store of his words. He had intended the terrible story as a weapon against her, somehow, but she had turned it aside. She knew he would not be back for a while; probably he had gone out to stare up at the stars again.
Ahanton was asleep now. Epashti stretched herself out next to her on the red and blue robe, put her head on her arm, and shut her eyes. The story of the tree still unsettled her, like something she had heard before and not understood. She had never heard it before.
She was still awake when he came quietly in and lay down beside her. After a moment, his arm slid around her waist, and his breath warmed the back of her neck. She sighed, glad in spite of herself, and slept.
The Serpent Dreamer Page 9