How can they throw away vigilance like an old piece of meat? Tsilka wondered.
Without another glance at the Tlikit, the tribe of strangers went about their task—whatever it was. There was no Tlikit word for the way they moved—a slow, floating walk. Each one seemed alone with a spot of ground in front of him, but they also seemed together, since they were all doing exactly the same thing. They made low sounds, between humming and moaning. There was no Tlikit word for such a sound made by people together.
Many Feathers tugged the body; she wanted to move it. She tried to get the huddled man to help, but he didn’t respond.
Tsilka had a desire to go to the girl and help—a strange desire that she resisted.
Many Feathers pushed and pulled, and finally the dead woman’s feet pointed to the river. Satisfied, the girl settled on the ground, picked up a limp hand, and stared into the face with concentration so strong Tsilka could feel it.
Tsilka named the dead woman Longest Hair.
The sun peeped over distant hills. An old woman picked up a stone and turned it over in her hands. Smiling, nodding like it was something special, the old woman touched it to her forehead, and placed it on the ground near the dead one’s feet. Other strangers found rocks and solemnly placed them to make a circle around Longest Hair, like the ring of light around the sun when the seasons are changing.
What are the rocks for? Tsilka wondered. How do they know one from another?
A child of the strangers found the stone she wanted—a large one, bigger than her head. She made a brave effort, but it was too heavy for such a little girl. She kept dropping it, gave up carrying—dragged, pushed, pulled—then sat down in frustration.
The Tlikit boy named Klee went to the little girl, and together, the two children struggled the stone into place.
These children loosed an invisible power that compelled Tlikit to help Shahala, without knowing what they were doing. As people of both tribes brought stones, the circle around Longest Hair grew to several rows.
And so, at the beginning, the people were together.
CHAPTER 5
AT THE EDGE OF THE GREAT RIVER CHIAWANA, THE Moonkeeper breathed, but she did not move, hear, or know anything that happened around her.
In a dream, she was sitting on a high cliff, gazing at a forever view of grass and sky. She was alone, but not afraid, for she sensed an unseen watcher in the rocks behind her. She heard a distant noise. The watcher also heard, and charged by her: a beast with bared teeth, bristling fur, vicious bark. Wolfcoyotedog.
She heard: Nothing born of earth or sky can harm you.
The dream faded.
Leaving her body on the riverbank, Ashan rose like heat, unnoticed. Interesting to see the flesh down there, looking so dead, everyone so concerned, all of it becoming smaller as she ascended.
A strand like fine sinew connected her to the shell she’d discarded like a worn-out garment. Tor’s voice climbed up the strand, plucked at her.
“You cannot leave me now… ”
But Ashan was a spiderling caught on a breeze, spinning out an invisible web, carried ever higher, knowing no more than a young spider knew where it was going, nor any more caring. As she drifted through the colors of dawn and into the blackness beyond, the world shrank behind her.
A distant point of brilliance showed her the way.
The Light.
Still Tor reached her, ever so faint: “You are alive.”
Ashan’s spirit laughed. Oh, Tor! Of course I’m alive! More than when flesh bound me, more than you ever dreamed of being, more than any creature who ever lived!
The Old Moonkeeper Raga joined her flight. Ashan knew her Spirit Mother by a new sense—not sight or touch, sound or smell, but all these and more.
Raven Tongue, she thought, I love you.
I love you, Whispering Wind.
Presently Ashan wondered, Why are we here?
We are Moonkeepers, Raga replied.
Beyond stars the Moonkeepers flew: through light that didn’t blind them and heat that didn’t scorch them; by clouds of colored dust and swirls of ice specks glittering; past silent voids and rivers of sound. Always toward the Light, whose rays were love.
On her own, Ashan might not have known when to stop, but Raga did.
The home of Amotkan. We will go no farther.
There was only light in this part of the sky—no stars, no sounds, no smells. But it was not an empty place. Ashan felt power. Amotkan was everywhere, but would remain invisible to protect the puny visitors.
From the Creator’s home far away in the sky, Ashan looked down on a frozen world—a world without people, or any living things—nothing but ice.
The Beginning of Time, Raga said.
Ashan blinked, and then she saw people, uncountable as migrating birds.
The First People, Raga said. Our ancestors.
Had there ever been that many people? If the Shahala were like the seeds in one head of grass, then the ones below were the seeds in all the heads of grass in a meadow. It would take days to walk from the first person to the last.
They snaked along a passage between tall mountains of blue-white ice. They must be freezing, and starving. How could there be any food in that frozen land? Yet the First People seemed happier than people could be.
Children of the same Father, Raga said.
Another voice filled Ashan—thunderous, yet soothing—a voice with all the power and knowledge of creation:
In the Beginning, the people were one.
Ashan understood. Her destiny was greater than she’d thought, and far from finished. Bringing the two tribes together had been the easy part. Making them into one, in the way of the First People, would demand everything she possessed.
CHAPTER 6
LIKE A TADPOLE IN ITS BUBBLE, ALONE AMONG MANY, Kai El walked along the Great River searching for a rock with special power. But he felt more like kicking rocks than looking for one.
She’s dead! What will a boy of only five summers do without a mother? Would somebody tell me that?
No, no, Kai El, he said to himself, she’s not really dead. She’s the Moonkeeper, who can die and live again, like other people go to sleep and wake up. So they say.
He didn’t understand this rock-finding medicine, but he wanted to do right, and that meant not thinking bad thoughts. Too young to have his own song, he walked in silence searching the ground not just with his eyes, but also with the part of his mind above and between his eyes, and with his heart.
He found his stone, gleaming smooth in rough gravel: a blue-lined white agate, as big as his father’s fist. Power stretched from the stone—pick me up. Kai El obeyed, and found it solid and heavy, though he could see light through it. His hands tingled. Warmth skittered up his arms.
Yes, he thought. This is the stone, the only stone that can show my love.
The Moonkeeper’s son walked to the circle, touched the magic stone to his forehead, and placed it on the ground on the side of her heart. He didn’t look at her face. He was afraid of what he would see. Looking at the sky, he silently prayed to the spirits he knew best, Sun and River, for whom he was named.
Warm her. Make her strong. She’s not just the Moonkeeper of these people. She is my Amah.
Kai El thought the spirits heard him. He thought his mother heard him, too. If he had courage enough to look at her face, he believed he might see her smile.
The boy had done all that he could for his mother. He went back to Elia, hiding behind the boulder where he’d darted when they first saw the tribe of strangers.
He nudged his friend.
“Go find a rock. The Other Moonkeeper said Amah needs all of us.”
Elia shook his head. Kai El smelled fear.
“How can you be afraid of your own people?”
Elia crossed his arms over his chest, frowning.
Kai El was sorry for his words—his friend had talked about how they had beaten him. But still, Tenka said everyone must help.
He squeezed Elia’s arm. “This is important. Amah needs you, or she will die. Your people will see you sometime.”
“Not now.”
“If you don’t go by yourself, I’ll push you!”
Not that he could—Elia was much bigger—but he was getting angry enough to try. Kai El made a fist and shook it.
Elia opened his medicine pouch and took out a stone: white with blue lines, like the one Kai El had found, but small as a baby’s hand.
“I take when leave here many seasons gone. Look, I carve.”
Kai El leaned closer. He could see the rough shape of a bear. Elia touched the fetish to his forehead, put it in Kai El’s hand, and closed his fingers over it.
“Courage of bear. Give Moonkeeper.”
“I’m sorry I yelled,” Kai El said. “We must be spirit brothers. I found the same kind of rock.”
Kai El went to the medicine circle and placed the rock near his own.
“The bear’s courage,” he said. “From Elia.”
He took a deep breath, and looked at her. The earth color of her skin said she was asleep, not dead. Remembering the grandfather, Ehr—and the ash color people turned when they died—Kai El began to believe she would be fine. He wished he could touch her, just to be sure, but he knew Tenka wouldn’t let him.
From the hiding place behind the boulder, Kai El watched his people, and these other people, all wandering around in a trance.
He was not surprised to find strangers here. Amah and Adah had told the tribe that another tribe lived at the Great River. Kai El even knew their name: Klikit. What surprised him was how different they looked.
They were almost naked. Hanging down in front from a thong around their waists, men and women wore a woven grass mat no larger than a rabbit pelt. A few had something wrapped around their feet—nothing like good Shahala moccasins. That was all—no leggings, shirts, or robes. Warm in his leathers and furs, Kai El thought how cold they must be. Their dirty skin was dull in the early sunlight. Men and boys had chopped-off hair that stuck out stiff. Women and girls had longer, matted hair. They all had well-fleshed bodies. Some of the women were so fat, with hanging breasts and drooping rears, that he couldn’t stand to look at them.
Their puny weapons made him shake his head. Some had short, thin spears. Others had blades or hand clubs with stones on the ends. Many had no weapons.
So different from his people. And yet they were walking around looking for healing stones just like his people were. Kai El wondered how they knew what to do. He wondered if they understood what they were doing.
“Look how they work together,” he said, shaking his head with disbelief.
“Not like Tlikit,” Elia said.
Kai El didn’t know if this was like Shahala people or not—he hadn’t been with them long enough to know them. Little ones had been warned to expect trouble when the tribes met. But this working together didn’t look like trouble.
Kai El explained it the only way he could: “Amah used magic to bring spirits here.”
Elia nodded, but his face showed he doubted such a thing.
* * *
The Tlikit woman Tsilka had been watching the strange ritual as if she were dreaming. Now her eyes were drawn down. Sunlight danced on a nearby rock—not big, but important-looking—made of sparkly bits of silver crushed together. She knelt and pried it loose. It was warm in her hand. As she carried the powerful rock that seemed more than a rock, warmth spread up her arm and spilled into her chest.
Tsilka placed her offering with the others. She stepped back to join the people of the two tribes, who stood mingled, gazing at what they had made.
The medicine circle around the Moonkeeper was finished. The chanting fell away. And everything changed. Kai El thought it was as if the invisible bubble enclosing the riverbank had burst, and the friendly magic called by his mother escaped.
People blinked, looked around, found themselves mixed up with others of a different tribe. With suspicion and fear on their faces, they moved away, seeking their own, joining into bigger and bigger clumps, separating—the Shahala on the upriver side of the medicine circle—the strangers on the downriver side.
Whispering, muttering, the strangers looked like they might attack the Shahala.
Fools! Kai El thought. They won’t have a chance!
But what about Amah, lying helpless on the ground? She’d be trampled if people started fighting. What was wrong with Adah? Why didn’t he get up and do something?
“Elia,” Kai El whined, “they’re going to fight.”
“I know. I the only one who can stop.”
Elia was just thirteen summers, barely old enough to hunt. But he—once Tlikit, now Shahala—was the only connection between the tribes. Kai El understood the older boy’s fear, but thought he looked very brave as he stepped from hiding and walked toward his old tribe, arms raised, shouting words Kai El didn’t understand because they were in that other language.
The Tlikit people stopped muttering, and gaped at the boy they hadn’t seen in three turnings of the seasons.
One came forward, a female with layers of drooping fat. Kai El wrinkled his nose and stuck out his tongue—why didn’t they cover their bodies? He couldn’t stop staring at her nakedness, though disgust tried to turn his eyes away.
“Chimnik!” the mean-faced woman spat.
Could that be Elia’s mother?
Elia-who-used-to-be-Chimnik cowered before the fat, ugly creature. Looming over the boy who suddenly looked much smaller than his age, she yelled—loud, fast, clackety—then struck him.
Kai El could not believe it! Wouldn’t a mother be glad to see her missing son?
When the beast started beating his friend with a stick—without thinking of the trouble he was making for himself—Kai El ran at her.
She looked down at him. She was huge. She spat on Kai El, and resumed beating Elia.
Kai El grabbed Elia’s arm to pull him away, and the woman hit him! The Shahala boy had never in his life been struck! He hollered, more from shock than pain.
“Adahhh!”
CHAPTER 7
TOR BELIEVED THAT ASHAN WOULD USE HIM TO FIND her way back from the world of spirits. He didn’t understand how, but he was not going to fail her. Their minds, their very souls, were connected as she journeyed among the stars—so connected that he missed all that had happened since he laid her on the riverbank in the gray light of dawn.
His mind was gone when Tenka brought their people. He was far above the world at sunrise when the tribes saw each other for the first time; missed the ritual of finding stones as morning became day. Even when the spell around the two tribes broke, Tor’s mind still did not come back to the riverbank.
It took his son’s howls.
“Adah!”
Tor shook off the remains of the trance, glanced around; Saw Ashan, sleeping in a circle of stones; Tenka hunched over her—
“Ahhh-dahhh!”
Kai El! Tor looked for his spear, but it wasn’t there. He stood, and found himself between two tribes facing each other like bristling cougars.
The Tlikit crone, Euda, was holding two children by the hair, beating them with a stick—Elia—and Kai El!
“Stop!” Tor shouted. Then in Tlikit: “Yah kuut!”
Euda looked up. The two boys broke loose and ran.
Struck silent, the Tlikit people gaped at Tor.
What were they thinking? If they saw Tor, the man, their former slave, they might attack him. But if they saw Wahaw-kin, the god they’d once believed him to be…
“Wahawkin the Water Giver returns!” he boomed—surprised at how their language came back after so long. “Sahalie the Creator sent me to give you one more chance!”
Euda jabbed her stick in the air. Her ugly flesh shook.
“We know who you are, Tor! You’re nothing but a man! Go away! And take these people who hide under animal skins!”
Tor wished he had his spear—he would smash her head. He
clenched his fists and took a menacing step forward.
“Stinking woman! I found this place! If anyone leaves, it will be you!”
The crone did not back down. “This is our home, not yours! We will keep what is ours!”
Tor! He’d been there all that time, and Tsilka hadn’t known it! It felt like a bird was loose in her chest; her ears buzzed; her head was light. Some old part of her hated the man, but she’d already forgotten that—the greater part had never stopped wanting him.
Tsilka bit her lip—this was no time for passion. The world was coming apart around her like a spiderweb in a windstorm. She had to get control—now. The intruders were too many. If fighting broke out, it would be a massacre.
Tsilka elbowed her way through the snarling mob. She gripped Euda’s shoulder, digging her fingernails into fat flesh.
“Do you forget the man-god’s power?”
“Man-god!” Euda said, and spat.
Tsilka raised her hand to strike the witch. Euda’s chin jutted out and her eyes challenged, but she backed away.
Tsilka looked at Tor again and sighed. Everything else faded from sight but the magnificent creature who stood there looking at her, with long legs spread, hands on hips. A shaggy bison robe made him seem like a powerful, very male animal. His flowing black hair gleamed in the sun. His proud face was lean, high-cheeked, and sharp-jawed; with knowing, demanding eyes; long nose with arrogant nostrils; full lips drawn in a faint smile. To see him after so long took her breath away. She imagined his broad chest under the bison robe, his shoulders, his arms; imagined hard flesh under deerskin leggings; her fingernails scratching his back; his arrogance turned to desire.
Forgotten longings shivered inside her. Breathing deep, she went to him. Instead of taking her outstretched hands, Tor held one of his up, palm outward as if to greet a brother. Tsilka bit her lip and lowered her arms. She gazed into his shining black eyes in a way that made men want women. She licked her lips.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” she said, and was surprised that her tongue still knew Shahala words.
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