The Serpent Dreamer

by Cecelia Holland

  Spearmen, and many of them. In a moment there would be too many. He lifted his war club and waved it at the little knot of spear-carriers closest to him, and shouted a string of insults. Then, with a stretching of his arms, as if he were only bored now, he turned and ambled back toward the hills.

  The four Wolves waiting for him immediately sprinted off. He glanced over his shoulder, and saw the spearmen starting after him. First came the two or three who had been closest to him, but behind them, from all over, other men were running forward in a wave.

  “Hai!” they shouted, back and forth, like the drums. “Hai!”

  The air around him flickered, and then the thunder cracked out, ear-splitting, head-ringing; he broke into a dead run, following the others back toward the crease in the hills. He twisted his head around to see behind him. Like a pounding herd the spearmen rushed after him, the first three only a stone’s throw away.

  “Hai!” they roared at him, and steps from the green thickets where the ravine ended, he flung his arms straight up.

  He wheeled around to watch. On the slope of the hill, in the ravines and on the high ground, all the Bears and Wolves stood up at once. They raised their bows at once, and fired, all at once.

  The rain was driving down, darkening the air, and the arrows fell like hard rain down into the running stream of the longnoses. For an instant, the spearmen slowed, and shrank around, and Miska saw one or two of them fall.

  The rest roared forward, shouting, “Hai! Hai! Hai!” headed at a dead run for the bowmen. Another wild shower of arrows pelted them, but none of them fell; as if the arrows could not kill them, they charged straight up the slope toward Miska’s war band.

  In one motion, Wolf and Bear, they turned and ran. Miska gave a bellow of rage, watching this—his fighters running like rabbits up the slope—and then in the great pack swarming up the hillside, three men veered off and started for him.

  He set himself, his war club low in his hand. They were between him and Ahanton. Up on that hillside, Ahanton waited for him. They spread out, to come at him from all sides, and when the one directly ahead of him cocked back his spear to cast it he charged that man, with each stride ducking to one side or the other.

  In a single breath they closed. His eyes took in the shiny hard chest, the round hard head, before the spear sliced toward him and all he cared about was that point. It jabbed at him and he coiled himself out of the way, struck at the taut muscled arm coming along with it, and hit the spearshaft instead. The spear broke. The longnose fighter shrank back, his arms up, and Miska lashed out sideways with his war club, aiming for the other man’s ribs, a killing blow.

  The blow only glanced off the spearman’s shiny chest. The longnose went to one knee, his arms over his head, but his friends were howling at Miska’s back, and instead of killing him, Miska leapt across him and raced up the hill toward Ahanton.

  Here the slope was steep and he struggled to keep moving forward. The thunder rolled again and in the flash of the lightning he saw, up ahead of him, the rock where he had left Ahanton. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the two longnose spearmen coming after him, and he veered away from her, off back across the slope, running easier, anyway.

  The rain pounded down, the ground under his feet already slippery, streaming; he raced down toward the thick close trees swaying and dripping in the cleft of the hills, and the two spearmen came doggedly after him. Men he could not kill. Running, he tried to remember their chests, their heads, what was strange about them, the shape—the shine—He leapt over a fresh windfallen branch and in the close wet sloping ground just beyond, he spun to face them.

  One was many steps ahead of the other; he slid to a stop on the other side of the great leafy fallen branch and hoisted his spear. Miska gripped a mass of leaves and branches and lunged, pushing the branch up into the other man’s face. The spearman dodged nimbly away from him, the branch in Miska’s way as much as his, and sliced at him with his spear. The second man was crashing through the brush toward them. Miska plunged free of the branch, and struck with his club at the spearman’s bare arm, and the longnose recoiled, whipped his spear around, and got the pole between Miska’s legs.

  Miska fell hard on his back. The two spears came jagged through the air toward him. His muscles tensed to meet the thrusts. Then, from overhead, something fell with a heavy crash, something with heavy red and blue fluttering wings, that flopped down over the two longnose spearmen and dragged them helpless to the ground.

  Miska leapt up, howling. A few feet away his daughter was scrambling up out of the brush, her sodden hair all in her eyes; the red and blue cloak still shrouded the two spearmen. He gripped the strange hide and yanked it away, and then waded in, striking down hard, at arms and legs, whatever was bare, until the men only moaned, and didn’t try to move.

  “Come on.” He grabbed hold of Ahanton’s arm. “Hurry.” He pushed her on ahead of him, up the slope, running; the rain was letting up, and the sky was suddenly lighter.

  He thought, first, how badly the attack had failed; then he thought that maybe the Forest Woman had not deserted him after all. As he went along, he felt over his body; he had no wounds. It came to him that by this proof he could know if she had abandoned him. Ahanton walked beside him, and he took her hand, as if to lead her home.

  C H A P T E R S E V E N T E E N

  The next day they did not move on. Before sunrise the drums woke them, and Epashti with the rest of the people around her stood up, waiting to be told what to do, but they went nowhere, only waited in their long lines, while the drums beat and something happened she could not see, up at the great lodges at the head of the camp.

  When the sun had risen up above the distant trees, the drums fell still, and the food came around again. Slowly the people sat down, and the long lines dissolved gradually into little clumps, sitting together to talk and eat, to mend the scraps of their clothes and coddle their children. There was no other work. The leather men fed them. Slowly, by twos and threes, they made their way over to the ditch at the edge of the camp, and then back again to their places.

  Epashti sat beside Leilee and some other women. None of them had known each other before. It was odd to sit among women and not even know their names. She wondered how to tell them who she was, when they wouldn’t even recognize her lineage, much less the names of her mother and grandmother. They talked a little, fitful and wary.

  Up ahead of them, she saw a leather man lead away some of the people down the line, in another group, and her belly tightened.

  “What are they doing to us?”

  Across from her sat a round woman with round red cheeks, whose name was Pila. She said, “Oh, it’s not bad. You go to a big circle, and they give you new picked maz and you husk it and strip it. They did this before.” She had two children with her; she made them sit by her, and gave them a bit of thong to play with. “After, they give you a garment.” She plucked at the thin skirt she wore, plaited together of long blade-shaped leaves. She probed at Epashti with her eyes. “Didn’t you say you were an herbwoman?”

  Epashti stiffened, as if she had been caught doing something wrong. Wordless, she lifted her empty hands. The other woman pushed at her fingers. “Never mind. I’m not sick!” She laughed, harsh; one of the children pulled on her aim and she swatted at it. “Go play.”

  Epashti lowered her eyes. Pila seemed carefree about being here, gathered up with her children like deer started out of their home meadows and shunted toward some unforeseeable end. Different visions of that end paraded through her mind. A little icy thread of panic ran down her spine. She leaned toward Leilee and murmured, “We should try to escape.”

  Leilee’s eyes flitted toward the nearest of the leather men, leaning on his spear near the end of their line. “They’ll hurt us.”

  “Maybe they will hurt us if we stay. Maybe worse.” Epashti put her hand up, shielding her mouth from the others. “I have to find my daughter.” She wasted no worry on Corban; the Sky people
took care of themselves, but Ahanton was somewhere alone, frightened, hungry, hurt.

  Leilee said, “I want my baby back.” Tears seeped from her eyes. With the heel of her hand she ground at her eyes, as if she could crush the tears before they came out. “Who will feed us if we run away?”

  “Tonight, when it’s dark,” Epashti whispered. “Save what they bring us to eat then.”

  Leilee blinked rapidly. “I don’t know. I can’t.”

  “Ah,” Epashti said, discouraged.

  The thin girl reached out and gripped her arm. “Don’t go. Please.” Her face was slick with tears again; she had more tears than the maple tree in the story, that wept all winter long. Epashti sighed, lowering her gaze to the pounded ground; her heart ached.

  She lay down where she was, trying to sleep; Leilee took her head in her lap. Even so, Epashti thought she would never sleep, in this place where nothing grew, where no one knew her. Then someone was shaking her awake, and she sat up, startled, into the afternoon sun.

  “Are you the herbwoman?” A strange face leaned down toward her. “Please—we need an herbwoman. Someone said you are.”

  “I will come,” she said. She gave a sideways look at Pila, now absorbed in mending her skirt. She stood, the dust sifting from her clothes.

  The strange woman led her away along the line; the leather men turned, seeing them move, and watched, but did not stop them. The woman led Epashti through the scattered campfires to another group, where some mothers sat with their children.

  They looked up at her as she came among them, their eyes shining, desperate. With a corner of her mind Epashti noticed they all wore the new skirts, given out for working. One of them pushed a little girl forward.

  “A spirit has hold of her. She can’t lift her arm. Please—”

  Epashti sat down cross-legged in their midst, facing the child. The little girl put one hand over her face, trying to hide, but the other arm hung down, awkward, and Epashti saw she could not move it. Words rushed out of the mother beside her.

  “It happened yesterday, the spirit took her, and tried to pull her out of my arms! But I held tight, only now—the spirit has her by the arm—I’m afraid to sleep it will drag her away—” She stopped, her face crumpling.

  Epashti took hold of the child’s stricken arm. Relieved, she realized it was not dead, but warm and firm, and when she took hold of the wrist she could feel the little beat on the inside, the tap-tap of the life there. She put her thumb on the inside of the girl’s elbow. The child was still, did not wince when Epashti touched her, only held her free hand over her face, pretending not to be there.

  Under her thumb, on the inside of the girl’s elbow, Epashti could feel a lump. She realized it was the end of the bone, which the spirit was pushing up out of the joint. She took the girl’s elbow in one hand, and held her wrist with the other, and turned the wrist, pushing down the bone with her thumb. There was a little click, and the lump disappeared.

  The little girl lowered the hand covering her eyes. “Hey,” she said, and she bent the arm, and brought the hand up before her eyes. “Hey.”

  The women all cried out, and clapped, their faces raised like little suns around her. From every side they lurched toward Epashti and hugged her. The mother leapt to her feet and went around waving her hands and shaking her dress, singing something to drive away the spirit.

  Epashti thought she should not do that; it was likely a kind spirit, trying to save this child from the leather men and their skirts and their thunder, and she hoped it stayed around them. She made a quick song to it, in her mind, and then sat back, soaking in the praises and strokes of the other women.

  Her heart fed on their words and touches. Even here, where she had nothing and no one, and where nothing grew, yet something still remained of her; her heart was still good, she could still do good. The baby inside her gave her a solid thump on the ribs, as if agreeing. She lifted her head, and straightened herself, and went back to her own place, her head high.

  Tok Pakal said, “In another place they would have been killed for doing this.”

  Corban gave him a startled look. They were sitting side by side in the palanquin, overlooking a broad stretch of ground by the river. A single tree grew out in the open here, and the Itzen had trimmed the tree’s lower limbs back, so that only one branch stuck out. Now they were playing some game with a ball, centered on the tree.

  Qikab Chan was one of the players. He wore a feathered helmet, a heavy pad on one arm, and bands around his knees; racing up and down the ground, he kicked at the heavy ball and tossed it up into the air, and then closed with it, hip first, knocking it higher. The other men shrieked and milled and leapt around him. The ball disappeared among them and they all rushed off down the field.

  Tok Pakal said, “They don’t know how to play it properly. They kick the ball, they even touch it with their hands, sometimes. That would have meant their deaths, in Mutul.”

  He put his hand out, and the dwarf gave him a cup to drink from. Corban’s eyes followed the game, the players now churning back up the field, kicking the ball on ahead of them.

  “Of course, in Mutul,” Tok Pakal went on, discontented, “the ball court would have been made of stone, and the ball of sacred stuff that gave it life, and the crease would have been the very jaws of the serpent itself, the lord of time and death. All around we would have seen the greatest lords and warriors watching, instead of . . .” He waved his hand fretfully out to the air. “And it would have meant something then, it would have meant everything. But that was Mutul.”

  Erkan leaned on his knee, his eyes wide, with a little wrinkle between them. He glanced at Corban and caught his eye and winked. Then to Tok Pakal, he said, “The game’s going to start, though, Tok Chan. Don’t you want to wager?”

  The chieftain reached out and stroked Erkan’s hair. “Calling me to myself again, my little friend. Very well. Qikab will score first.” He tapped the dwarf on the shoulder. “Two stones.”

  Erkan grinned at him, bright-eyed. “As you say, Tok Chan.”

  Corban wanted to find out about the fighting, the day before. His gaze strayed to the arrow the Itzen had brought back, laughing at it, an ash twig with a misshapen head of flint. The arrow now lay on the animal bench, beside the palanquin.

  His knife was there, too, along with some sheets of bark or whatever it was the Itzen wrote on, and some cups and a jug. He had to get his knife back. He glanced at Tok Pakal, keenly watching the game, which had started. First two of the players ran up and down the field, kicking the ball along, and then they all charged around fighting over the ball. Mostly they kicked and butted and knocked it around with their hips and thighs, but now and then they used their hands to bat it up into the air. All the while they slammed into each other, pushing and shoving.

  Now the mass of bodies churned toward the tree, and the ball arched up suddenly, and fell across the outstretched branch.

  There was a thunderous roar from all the men watching, and the players stopped and half stood around dejectedly and Qikab led the other half up and down the field, shouting and shaking their arms. Qikab jogged over before Tok Pakal. The young man’s muscle-rounded body shone with sweat, and his face was bright with smiles. His gaze flitted toward Corban, and then he turned all his attention to his chief.

  Tok Pakal said something in the Itzen language, and made some ceremonial moves with his hands. Qikab bowed down, and Tok Pakal touched the back of his neck. Then the young man strutted away, and a few moments later, the game started again.

  Erkan turned to Tok Pakal and gave him two stones. Corban hitched himself around in his seat, seeing a possibility open up before him.

  He said, “Are you—” and ran out of words he had in common with Tok Pakal. He pointed at the stones. “If something happens, you get stones, he gets stones.”

  Erkan giggled at him. “That’s called gambling, Animal-Head.” He nudged Tok Pakal with his aim, inviting him to join in the joke.

&nb
sp; Tok Pakal made no joke of it, but said, “Yes, we’re gambling. He has nothing, of course, so we use the stones for counters.” He held up smooth round stones, pale blue-green, each marked with some sign. “Do you want to join us? Erkan, give him some stones.”

  “He won’t know how,” Erkan said sulkily. He took a pouch from under the seat and spilled out a handful of the stones for Corban.

  “Then we’ll both win more,” said Tok Pakal, and laid his hand on the dwarf’s arm. Erkan leered at Corban, comforted.

  The game started again; Corban paid more attention. He watched Qikab and another man race down the playing ground, chasing the ball. Tok Pakal leaned toward him, saying, “They must take the ball two ends of the field before they can try to hit the crease.” His large kindly eyes surveyed Corban. “You follow me? Erkan, two stones that Qikab takes the first end.”

  “Done,” the dwarf said.

  Corban’s eyes followed the two men running. “They play against each other.”

  “Yes. On different teams. Whichever shoots the ball across the end gets that end.” Tok Pakal lurched suddenly, watching the men run along, kicking at the ball and at each other, flailing at each other with their arms, the ball never more than a few feet ahead. “In Mutul,” he said, “the balls were different. They were alive. I saw one once, years ago, when I was a boy. It bounced, it flew. Hah!” He jerked sideways, watching a move in the game, and Corban saw that in his mind he played as hard as the men on the field.

  With a sudden sprint the man racing against Qikab bounded ahead, with one arm fending Qikab off, caught the ball with both hands, and dropped it and kicked it as it fell. The ball flew through the air in a high looping arc and dropped on the far side of a line of sticks at the end of the playing ground. Qikab stopped running; the other man dashed around with his arms over his head, bellowing. Down the field half the players screeched, ran to meet him, flinging their arms up, and the other half moaned and drooped.