The Serpent Dreamer

by Cecelia Holland

  First came Miska, his war club in his hand, and his face Wolfpainted, walking all by himself, and ignoring the screams and cheers of the women. The sight of him made her happy; she took a step toward him, her father, the greatest man in the world, and he saw her and smiled

  In the gate the women were all cheering and screaming. On the path behind Miska the whole pack of the men bounded and leapt, shouting and howling and waving their arms. As the women called names, and the men answered, the cheers grew steadily louder, because all had come back.

  In the midst of this celebration, the baby forgotten in her arms, Ahanton looked up at Miska’s face and her whole heart went to him; she wanted to do anything he asked. But then she saw Corban.

  He was walking alone in the middle of them, the red and blue cloak around his waist as always, his hands tied behind his back. She stepped back out of the way, out of Miska’s reach, the baby heavy in her arms. They went on by her, through the gate, and she stood rigid, clutching the baby, watching him, until Epashti who had walked last of them all came to her, and took the baby, and freed her at last from the weight.

  Finn said, “That’s my—”

  Beside him in the crush of people watching and cheering, Kalu thrust out his arm out, and clapped his hand over his little brother’s mouth.

  They took Corban down to the oak tree and tied him to the huge boll, among the knobby roots all worn from people sitting on them. The women came and built the fire, and made ready for the feast of welcoming the men back, which would start at sundown. At sundown, also, they would see about Corban.

  Eonta said, “You must have come here as soon as you reached the village, even before you saw me.”

  Epashti had put the baby into a cradleboard, so she could carry her on her back; she was unused to the weight and her face was sweating, her hair sticky. She said, “I had to get out of there. If I stay there I will go and sit down by him, and they will have to stake me, too.”

  Eonta gave her a sharp look. “Then best you came here.” She trudged the last few steps to the garden, and stood, breathing hard, and looking around.

  On the level meadows beyond the river the first-year gardens were sprouting up in shoots and tufts of green, glowing in the sun. The two women had come across the river on the float, old Eonta moaning and complaining at the effort, Epashti insistent. “There is something you must see.”

  “You chose a good place,” Eonta said. She stooped and pulled up a piece of grass sprouting in the dark soil of the garden and ate it, her eyes roving over the new plants.

  Epashti waited for her grandmother to notice what was here. When she had gone off with the men the first sprouts had only just been rising up through the mounds of earth. Ahanton had tended them, and now the garden stood high and green in the broad sunlight, raising its leaves like the palms of hands up toward the sky. Eonta said, “It seems very good. We had some good rain while you were gone, and she has turned up the ground around them well.”

  Then she frowned, straining her old eyes, and Epashti stood and waited patiently.

  “She’s let enemy plants take hold.”

  “Come here,” Epashti said, and led her grandmother up through the mounds of bean plants, where already the tiny new buds were growing, the tips swelling into white flower. In the center of each mound, like a post, stood a tall stem that opened into two long narrow leaves, with another tight-curled leaf coming up from the center. She reached in across the beans, murmuring an apology, as she did, for getting into their sunlight, and picked off a bit of the stem-post leaf.

  She tasted it; she held it out to Eonta. The taste made her mouth water. She thought of the warm sweet cakes of maz, that first surprising bite, how it satisfied her stomach. The plants were growing tall and strong; some already had two pairs of leaves, one above the other.

  Eonta was gumming at the strand of leaf. She shook her head slightly. “It’s too faint for me.” She turned her gaze fretfully on the post-stem plant. “I don’t believe it,” she said.

  Epashti swallowed the leaf. In the lingering flavor she felt the power of the plant, and she stepped away from it, shaking her dress as she did, to throw off anything that might cling to her.

  She said, “I know what this is, Grandmother. This is a plant I saw in the west, which gives so much fruit, and the fruit is strong to eat and can be kept, I think, a long time.” She paused, considering the way through this. “Corban had some seed with him. I thought he had taken it, when he left.”

  Eonta said, “Ahanton tended this field.”

  Epashti said, “Ahanton planted it. And she has green hands, look. But Corban brought it.”

  Eonta lifted her eyes, looking across the river, and her mouth pursed, her cheeks sucked hollow. Epashti spoke to the doubtful trouble on her face. “He came from the sky to help us. And we are going to kill him. Miska will make us kill him, for his sake, not ours.”

  The old woman’s voice came up from some deep place, ragged. “What has he brought us? Are you sure this is good? Did this plant grow free, there, in the west?”

  “No, the women cared for it like children. The seed came from somewhere else; the longnoses brought it.” Epashti shook her head. “That’s where it gets crooked. I’m not sure that it is good, for all the good it is. Corban thought it was a great danger. The longnoses brought it. Who knows what comes with it?”

  Eonta was still looking across the river, her hands together before her, her face slumped in thought. She turned toward Epashti. “When do they gather the fruit?”

  “While we were there,” Epashti said, “in the Sturgeon Moon, they were gathering it in then.” Her head bobbed with a sudden new rush of understanding. “That was why the longnoses came then. To steal the maz. They sowed the maz among the people, and then they reaped it from them, they were gardening the people, the way the people gardened the maz.”

  Eonta’s mouth quirked. Her eyes were moist. Epashti knew she could hardly see the river, much less the village, and yet she had lived here most of her life, she had everything in her mind, more clearly than anybody else.

  Her head bobbed. She had decided. She turned her filmy rheumy eyes back to Epashti.

  Eonta said, “Here, we are the masters. Let it grow.” She started off toward the river, groping carefully with her feet through Epashti’s garden. “Now take me back home.”

  Ahanton went to her father, in his lodge. She went in through the big door, the one he used, which no one else was supposed to use.

  Miska was sitting at the far end, doing something with his hands. She went up through the quiet and empty gloom. The rows of beaded belts hanging from the ceiling were like an upsidedown forest. She wanted to put her hands up and stroke them as she passed. She went up before him and sat down.

  Miska said, “Look at this,” and held out his hand to her.

  He had Corban’s fire box. Her mouth went dry. She imagined it growing and growing in his hand, hot and fiery, until the whole world burst into flame.

  She blinked, startled at her own thought. Cautiously she reached out and touched the little box. The sides were squashed in and she tried uselessly to straighten them. She said, “He pushes out the sides sometimes.” He put something into it, too, she remembered, but she was unsure what.

  “I can’t make it work,” Miska said, sounding angry, and put his thumb to the part on the side that moved, and moved it.

  A spark leapt from it; in the dark of the lodge it seemed like a flying chip of the sun. But it made no lasting fire. Miska growled under his breath, and tossed the box aside.

  “What, now?” he said to her, already angry.

  She faced him, hard as he was. “You must not do this to him, Father-ka.”

  “Humph,” he said, and slashed one hand across the space between them. “I don’t want to hear it. You can’t change my mind, Ahanton. You are my child, the heart of my heart, but this is between him and me.”

  “If you kill him, I have dreamed it, we will all die,” she said. T
his was not so; she had not dreamt any such thing, but she thought he might believe her.

  Miska only laughed at her. “Everybody will die, little one. And I have to kill Corban. This even you must see, this is from the beginning, not mine to change. He is Malsum, I am Kooska, I must kill him, or he will kill me.”

  She gulped, the whole thing twisting, the lie she had told him come back on her in the old story, twisted. His face was like stone to her. She dared not speak against the hard ready anger in his eyes. She turned around and walked out of the lodge, and this time, going, she went out the little door, which the ordinary people used.

  Usually the Wolves’ prisoners shared in the feast with them, but they had no stomach to share meat with Corban, and Miska would not have let them anyway. It was a quiet feast, not even much dancing. Then when the sun was going down they brought Corban to the stake.

  Hasei brought him, and Faskata, one on either side of him. Miska went up before him. Everybody stood watching, not knowing what to do; Miska was changing the way this was done, as he changed everything, at his whim, to his own purposes. They were supposed to welcome Corban, and speak kindly to him, but Miska went up to him, and suddenly slapped him on the face.

  Corban’s head turned. He said, “You are brave, Miska. My hands are tied.”

  Miska ignored him. He tore at the red and blue cloak, unbound it from Corban’s waist, and flung it into the fire, now a broad bed of coals close behind the stake. “Tie him.”

  The two men pulled Corban to the stake, tied his hands to it, and forced him down on his knees.

  “There was no death,” Epashti called. “Nobody died. We don’t need a life.”

  Her voice rang loud in the quiet. Eonta gripped her arm and pulled her back. “Be still, girl. See how he is.”

  Miska turned, and glared at her; she felt the force of his gaze like a blow behind the eyes, like the heat off a fire greater than the coals. He swung toward Corban again and said, “Yoto died. We need a life for Yoto.”

  Kneeling on the ground, Corban had set himself, his jaw locked, and his body coiled tight. Faskata had stepped aside, but Hasei still stood beside the stake. Epashti was holding her breath; she put her hand to her belt, where she had Corban’s knife sheathed, although she knew she could not use it.

  Hasei said, “Yoto was my brother. I won’t take Corban’s life for his. Corban saved me once, I won’t touch him.”

  A sigh went up from the people watching. Beside Epashti, Eonta lifted her head, looking all around.

  Miska gave Hasei a stare that drove the other man back several steps, and lowered his gaze to Corban, looking back at him. Miska turned and glared at them all, his eyes yellow in the fireshine.

  “He attacked me. He will attack me again, if I let him go on living. I have to kill him, or he will kill me.”

  Lopi stepped up out of the crowd, his arm still bound against his side; his face was flaming with rage. “He owes me something—” He lifted his long-bladed flint knife and slashed it down across Corban’s arm.

  Corban recoiled against the rope, his head flinging back; blood sprayed across the dust. Epashti felt, around her, the whole people move suddenly forward, drawn toward the blood, toward the stake and the pain and the death. She glanced at the fire, to see if anyone was picking up coals.

  What she saw made her gasp, and she reached out and took Eonta’s aim and pulled her. “Look.”

  Eonta blinked her filmy eyes at the fire. Corban’s red and blue cloak lay in the fire bed, but it was not burning. All around it and above it and below it the flames leapt and the coals glowed red but the cloak lay at the center, untouched.

  Epashti thought, She is too blind—she will not see. Eonta took a step forward, peering toward the fire, and around them, following her, again everybody moved in closer toward the stake. Still in front of everybody, Miska wheeled, his arms up.

  “Ask him Corban, you will try to kill me again, won’t you?”

  Inside the closing ring of the people, Corban had pulled himself up again, the blood sheeting down his arm. He shouted back, “Give me the chance, Miska, and I will.”

  The crowd exhaled a high, breathless gasp. Eonta gave one look into Corban’s face, and turned to Epashti, who bit her lip, and wished he had no tongue. Without a word the old woman took Corban’s knife from Epashti’s belt. Shapeless in her long dress, her gray hair wisping from her head, she swung forward again, as Miska cried out again, “You hear him! We have to kill him!”

  Eonta took two steps toward Miska, as he raised his arms up, calling to them all, and drove the knife in under his arm, into his side between his ribs, deep into his body.

  Everybody saw. A cry of horror went up from the people, and then silence fell over them.

  He had never taken a wound before; he would never take another. Eonta still stood beside him, her hands at her sides, offered unresisting to his rage, but he paid no heed to her. He laid his hand over the spurting hole in his side, the fury draining out of his face, so that he looked younger, and he began to sing his death song.

  At that the others all wailed again, because they saw he would die, that even he would die. They closed in around him, sinking down on the ground around him, weeping and stretching their arms toward him, afraid to touch him.

  After that first cry, they hushed, to hear him.

  He sang how he had become sachem, how alone he had driven out Corban’s people, when they gathered on the island in the salt. He told of all the other victories since then, how he had defeated everybody he had fought, Bears and Muskrats and Turtles, east and west, north and south. He sang of the long raid itself, when he had brought down the arrogance of the Sun chief and avenged the Wolves’ ancient hurt. He sang how he had brought wealth to his people and made them great.

  He swayed, and sank down on his knees in their midst, the women crying, the men whispering oaths and pleading with him, creeping as close as they dared, reaching out to touch the dribbles of blood that ran down from him.

  “Don’t try to find another one like me,” he said to them. “I am alone. I was a leader to you but I was also a scourge on you. I fed you but I ate you up. I did nothing for any of you, all I did was only for myself, to win the one I loved, and in the end, I lost her.”

  He sang of her, how she had touched him, and guided him, and in the end deserted him. Slumped down, the life all but gone, he said, “I would give everything to see her again. Just to see her again.” All his people huddled around him, terrified, knowing he was not only dying but also abandoning them, and he lowered his head, his eyes shuttering.

  Then he raised his eyes again, fixing on the air above him He cried out. “Oh, but she comes. She comes! See—see where she comes—” His face shone, beautiful in the sun like the face of an untouched child, and he struggled his hand up, to reach into the empty air. He sagged down, and his eyes closed, and he was dead.

  They sat around him a long while, no one daring to speak or move, stunned at what had happened. Even Eonta was still, her eyes shut, hardly breathing. Then Epashti rose up onto her feet. Her face glistened with tears, and in one hand she took a knife, and in the other she took a pot. She knelt down by him, and began to cut his body, to put it in the pot, and one by one, weeping, the other women came to help her, to keep all of him that they could.

  C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - E I G H T

  While the people were still pressed tight around Miska, Epashti unbound Corban from the stake; she could not rouse him, and the deep wound on his arm was still bleeding. Half-carrying him, half-pulling, she got him away from the oak tree and the fire and up the slope toward his own little lodge, near the gate.

  Behind her she could hear the drumming begin. The deep throaty mournful howling of the men. The sound raised the hair on her head; she knew they would kill Corban if they found him. She was afraid also they would try to kill Eonta. The old woman was trudging up the slope past her, going to her lodge, and when she got there she went in and shut the door. The other women
were disappearing behind their doors also, and the village was all but empty, except for the clamor around the oak tree.

  The night had fallen when Epashti finally struggled him into his lodge. The wound in his arm hung open like a mouth. In the dark of the little round lodge she laid him down, plastered the wound shut and wrapped it in herbs. She worked by touch, whispering all the while, telling her hands what to do, asking for help, explaining what she did. She felt the pain in him like a stinging in her fingertips. The stinging slowly faded, and his body relaxed and he slept, still breathing hard. She laid her hand on his great shaggy head and tried to settle her mind, to fit everything that had happened into some sense. Then the door of the lodge pushed open.

  She shrank back, getting between him and the door, groping around her for a weapon. In the dark she could see only the shape pushing in, and she said sharply, “Stop there!”

  Sheanoy said, “It’s me, sister. Eonta has sent me. The old women are holding council and they want you to come to her hearth.”

  “I can’t leave him,” Epashti said, her hands on Corban. “If they find him—”

  “We will be only in Eonta’s lodge, very close. You must come. No one will hurt him.” Sheanoy, in the dark, was hunched like an elder, her voice deeper, softer than usual. “He is one of us now. He was staked, and he was brave, and so now he is one of us. Come to Eonta, she needs you.”

  Sheanoy crept back out of the doorway, leaving behind a faint pale circle in the gloom. Epashti smoothed her hand down Corban’s shoulder and went after her.

  Outside, in the clear night air, the howling and moaning of the men sounded louder, wilder, higher-pitched, keen-edged. From the oak tree came the jumpy glow of the fire, throwing shadows up through the village like glimpses of things running. All the women had drawn back into the homes, taking their children with them. Following Sheanoy, Epashti went the few steps over to Eonta’s lodge, and went in.