But with Tor gone, Tsilka treated her daughters like slaves. Though she recovered completely—except for her looks—she refused to do anything for herself, would not even get up from her sleeping place. Devoted to being the meanest person alive, she never ran out of work for the twins to do.
“Cover me! Uncover me! Move this! Carry that! Raise me, lower me, feed me!”
So often Tahna wanted to scream: It’s not our fault!
Overworked and mistreated, she found herself missing Tor. So what if he’d betrayed her? At least he had taken care of the witch who used to be her mother.
Tahna gently wiped a sore on her mother’s back that refused to heal because she lay on it all the time.
Tsilka snapped, “Don’t be in such a hurry! You’re hurting me!”
How long do you think you can get away with this? Tahna wished she had the courage to ask.
But she said, “I’m finished, Mother. You may lie down.”
Gaia returned from the river with cooking things that their mother had insisted were filthy.
Tahna hissed, “You took your time. It’s my turn to get out of here.”
“See you later,” Gaia said with a big sigh.
Tahna left the hut with her leatherwork under her arm. The sight of people going about their work made her smile, reminding her that normal life still went on in the world outside. She filled her chest with breezy, sunny air, and let the throb of the river calm her. She sat on a nearby rock and unrolled her leatherwork in her lap. A little more sewing, and the foldover pouch for dried herbs would be finished.
If her twin were making a pouch, it wouldn’t be enough to just finish it. She would have to decorate it, too.
Saying, “Things should be pretty,” Gaia might change the color of the leather, or paint on it. Gaia could make pictures that looked like things—a gift stolen from her sister in the womb. Tahna couldn’t make pictures, and didn’t care. What good were they? Time would deepen this amber leather to rich brown. It didn’t need Tahna’s help. It looked fine all by itself.
Gaia stamped out of the hut.
“Tahna! Where are my new moccasins?”
“How would I know?”
“I think you do.” Her sister’s voice was ugly. “I think you stole them.”
There went Tahna’s good mood. She had only stolen once or twice, not all the time.
She snapped, “I spent enough time with a witch today. Go find someone else to fight with.”
“I want my moccasins!” Gaia shrieked. “I’m tired of making things, just to have you steal them!”
Tahna should have backed down, but she was tired of her sister’s accusations. How arrogant she was! Tahna’s thefts were nothing compared to Gaia’s!
“I never touched your moccasins! They’re so ugly, I wouldn’t wear them! But if I wanted to, I’d have every right to take them, after what you stole from me before we were born!”
Gaia’s fists balled. “Someday I’m going to go crazy and kill you!”
“Finish what you started in our mother’s womb? It will be harder now. I’m not a helpless lump.”
Gaia sputtered, then wept—great blubbering sobs—as if the black bird of tragedy had landed on her.
Disgusted, Tahna shook her head. Her sister usually put up a better fight. But Gaia—who suffered the most from their mother’s rage—was falling apart like an old basket.
“Oh, stop it!” Tahna yelled.
But Gaia didn’t stop. She was on her way to one of those disgusting things she couldn’t stop until she wore herself out, or the Breath Ogre choked her. She did it for sympathy, but they weren’t children anymore, and now it only made Tahna feel hard and cold.
Gaia cried, “The older we get, the less I understand you and your stupid ideas about how we should have been one. I have never felt like half a person. It’s so stupid!”
“But it’s true, Gaia. That’s exactly what you are. Together, we might have made one good person. Split apart, neither one of us is worth spit. I only wonder if you did it on purpose. And why you don’t feel it yourself?”
“There is nothing to feel! We’re just sisters, like any other sisters! It’s not possible to steal part of someone!”
“Yes, it is. If you listened when the Moonkeeper talked about medicine, you’d know that the pain of birth is the baby tearing pieces from the mother to finish itself. So why couldn’t a selfish spirit—such as you—hide in my mother’s womb and tear off parts of me?”
“Tell me what parts you don’t have! I’ll cut myself open and give them to you!”
“It’s too late for that!”Tahna shouted. “Why couldn’t you have waited for your own time to be born?”
“My sister,” Gaia said, “I’ve told you more times than the sky has stars: I didn’t steal your soul, or any part of you. I would never do it, even if I could. I don’t know why we are twins, but I had nothing to do with it. I’m glad I have a twin. I love you.”
This wasn’t fun anymore. Tahna ended the game.
“Look behind the firewood. I might have seen your moccasins there.”
Sniffling, Gaia went in the hut.
Tahna’s leatherwork wasn’t interesting anymore; the sounds of people annoyed her. Her secret place called. But before she could sneak away, Gaia came out wearing a clean skirt, a cape, her new moccasins, and a frown.
“I have to get out of here or I’ll die,” she said.
“Well I’m sorry, but it’s your turn to watch our mother.”
“I gave our mother sleeping vine tea. She won’t bother you.”
Tahna jumped up. “Sleeping vine in the morning? We are trying to wean her!”
“What’s one more day?” Gaia said without a trace of concern. She turned and walked toward the river trail.
“How much did you give her?” Tahna yelled. “Where are you going? When will you be back?”
Gaia kept walking without a backward glance.
Tahna went in the hut. She left the doorskin open, but the breeze didn’t want to enter the place rattling with snores, and the hot air settled on her, unwelcome as a bear robe on a summer night.
Tsilka was lying on her back—at least Gaia had made sure of that. Turning her over would stop the noisy snoring, but people sleeping with the help of the vine must lie on their backs, or they might stop breathing.
Tahna knelt beside her mother, shaking her head. She couldn’t believe what Gaia had done. Should she go for the Moonkeeper? Listening to the sounds of snores, the spacing of breaths, she picked up her mother’s wrist and found the beating: a little slow, but strong and steady. There was no need to bother the Moonkeeper. Tsilka would sleep for a long time, but her daughter didn’t think she was in danger. Maybe a good long sleep would bring relief to them all.
Sunlight came in the open door, enclosing them in a dusty glow. Tahna stared at her mother, who couldn’t tolerate being stared at when she was awake. The face that a little girl had once thought the loveliest in the world was half-human, half-demon.
“They should have let you die,” she whispered. “It would have been kinder than this.”
Holding her hand up, Tahna made a shadow to cover the scarred half of her mother’s face, and made her beautiful again. The girl gazed at her mother until her arm was tired. Then she cried and cried.
CHAPTER 49
KAI EL THOUGHT ABOUT THE BREATH OGRE THAT attacked Gaia whenever it pleased, and how the Other Moon-keeper said that sage drove the demon away. He smiled as he thought… he could get a sage plant, and move it to the place in the cliffs where he was making their home. The Breath Ogre wouldn’t try to get Gaia if its enemy lived here. It was probably a crazy idea that wouldn’t work, but he had learned from Ehr that crazy ideas were sometimes the best ones.
Kai El climbed to the plateau and searched for a sage plant—a young one, because he thought the young would be stronger and have more will to live than the old. Some looked good, but he wanted only the best. He found one as tall as his knee whose ro
und top and bare trunk had the look of a little tree, not a ragged bush like most.
He thought that plants never understood him, but he talked to them anyway.
“You are the best one,” he said.
With his hands around its trunk—the size of Gaia’s wrist—his face full of stiff gray leaves, he tugged gently. The sage tightened its grip on the earth. Kai El tightened his grip on the trunk.
“Come on,” he grunted. “You want to help, don’t you?”
He twisted and yanked, this way and that.
Like a skunk defending itself, the threatened sage gave off an eye-burning smell.
“I’m not killing you. You’re just going to a new home. My woman needs you.”
He pushed, pulled, wiggled the bush back and forth, getting his face scratched, squinting against the biting fumes.
“You can burn my eyes if you want. It won’t stop me. This smell will save her life.”
Kai El dug in his heels and threw his body behind them. Roots breaking, dirt flying, the sage tore free. He heard a screech, let go, stumbled backward; then laughed at himself—he’d heard the cry of a hawk in the sky, not the death scream of a bush.
The soaring red-tail screeched again. Kai El’s Spirit Guardian had come to watch. Maybe this would work.
Out of the ground, lying on its side, the sage looked hurt and scared. Dirt clods hung on dangling roots. Most of the soft gray bark was stripped from the trunk. But it still had its branches and most of its leaves.
With roots cradled in his arms, Kai El carried the sage bush to his halfway place, wondering where to put it. Where would trouble come from? Human trouble would sneak along the trail, but what about the Breath Ogre? Kai El didn’t know enough about Gaia’s enemy. He would see the Moonkeeper Tenka again. This time he’d ask longer questions and give a better ear to her answers.
Standing at a spot on the edge of the sitting place where the dirt was soft, Kai El dug a hole with his spear, pushed the wad of roots into it, and packed dirt around them with his feet.
He stood back. The sage stood up straight, but it was shorter. At its home on the plateau, it had reached his knee—now it only came to his shin. Trying to do a good job, he’d made the hole too deep.
“Well, maybe it will keep the wind from blowing you over.”
He walked around, admiring it from all sides.
“You look good,” he said. “How do you feel?”
It wasn’t that he expected an answer, but to acknowledge the spirit of the plant.
There he was… sweaty, streaked with dirt, wearing nothing but his oldest loinskin and moccasins, and talking to a bush… when Gaia came up the trail.
Kai El stared at her, breathless.
She wore golden doeskin too clean to have been worn before: A skirt, tight-fitting at the top, fringed from thigh to knee; a cape, painted with symbols of the four directions; knee-high moccasins with neat, crossed laces. White and blue beads at her throat. The breeze pulled strands of long, black, untied hair across her pretty face.
Kai El felt his legs under him, the ground under them. No, he wasn’t dreaming.
“Look at this!” she said with delight.
He breathed again. “Isn’t this beautiful? Wait until I’m finished.”
“I can see that!”
He explained anyway, and it helped bring his spinning mind under control.
“This flat part here—I’m making it bigger by taking rocks out. Then I’ll use dirt to make it smooth.”
He pointed to the sharp-edged rocks, from huge to small, stacked on the river side—the start of a low wall.
“I put the extra ones there, so people in the village won’t see up here.”
“Hmm,” she said.
“When it’s finished, the flat place will be for sitting in good weather.” He knew women liked a nice place to do their outside work.
She gave him a curious look. “You really are going to make your hut up here?”
“I am. Over there.”
He swept his arm toward the cliff wall, where it curved around the back of a knee-deep hole, as long as three men lying head to foot, and wide as two. Kai El had spent days digging with a pointed stick and a stone ax, muscling out the rocks, carrying or rolling them out of the way. Cuts and bruises showed how hard some of them fought. Then he brought in smaller rocks, beat them into place, and filled the holes with tamped dirt.
“That will be the floor,” he said with pride, pointing to the large, smooth-bottomed hole.
“Very large,” she said, sounding impressed.
“I don’t like to be crowded.”
“I don’t know anything else,” she said, laughing.
He cleared his throat. “See how that stone slab hangs out? Underneath will be the sleeping place. Even the best skin roof lets rain in, but it never gets wet back there. I will never wake up with drips on my head.
“But it won’t be like a cave, all dark and smelly,” he said. “The front will be like any other hut, with walls of branches covered with stretched skins. My door will face Where Day Begins, for first light and warmth.”
“I have never seen a more wonderful home!”
Kai El felt light-headed.
“You like it? You really do? There’s nothing to see yet, but—”
“You made a good picture inside my head. Of course I like it. Who wouldn’t?”
Kai El released the breath he’d been holding—a loud, unintended whoosh. He swallowed for courage.
“I want to show you something.”
He took her to the not-yet doorway, reached under her arms, and helped her down to the floor.
“I’ll put a flat rock here for you—for people—to step down on.”
They stood side by side in the center of the soon-to-be hut, the cliff wall at their backs, a view to forever before them. He looked down and saw her lush hair falling smooth over her shoulders, without a whisper of wind to disturb it. She was small enough to hide under his arm. She smelled of soap leaves and new-made leather. As his senses swelled, Kai El almost forgot what he was going to show her.
“What do you notice?” he asked.
“How big it is.”
“Not that.”
“Urn… the floor is very smooth.”
He shook his head. “Your hair.”
She looked up at him. “My hair?”
“It’s not blowing. The cliffs keep the wind out.”
“Oh, Kai El! How nice that will be in winter! Yet the wind can blow across the sitting place outside, and that will be good in summer!”
Loving her excitement, Kai El could barely control his own.
He shook out his rumpled sleeping skin—an old antelope missing most of the hair that someone gave him after the fire—and spread it over the dirt shelf he’d been using for a bed. It was a good place to sit, with smooth rock to lean against.
“You must be tired,” he said with a sweep of his arm. “Will you sit?”
“I’m not tired. It’s an easy trail.”
It was not an easy trail, but he didn’t say so.
She went on. “It would be nice to sit and… just talk.”
He couldn’t agree more.
Gaia sat cross-legged, leaning back—a pretty, young contrast to the ancient, lichened stone behind her.
Kai El sat across from her, in what would be the doorway of their hut. He remembered the time when they’d sat almost touching. Since then, it seemed like everyone and everything wanted to keep them apart.
“What were you saying to that bush?” she asked.
He wouldn’t have talked about the bush; it might remind her of her weakness. He answered without mentioning his real reason.
“I love the way sage smells. I thought it would be nice to smell it all the time, so I tried something. I took this plant from its home on the plateau and moved it here. When you came up the trail, I was talking to it like you would a frightened child—you know—telling it not to worry, it will be happy here.”
> She laughed. “I don’t think a plant would want to move.”
“You’re right.”
“I hope I’m wrong,” she said. “I love the smell of sage, too.”
After a silence, she said, “I didn’t know you were one who speaks with plants.”
“I speak, but they don’t understand. I know the sage was laughing at me.”
She laughed, and he realized he was trying to say things in a funny way just to hear the tinkly sound.
“My mother tried to teach me,” he said, “but plants knew me better than she did. I can hardly remember which mushroom not to eat—the red-spotted ones, or the ones that turn blue if you scratch them.”
She giggled. “I’m not good with plants, but I do know that red spot kills you and blue streak makes you see things that aren’t real. I don’t eat either one.”
“At least you know their names.”
“Tahna is the one who knows about plants. She would have been Moonkeeper someday if your mother had lived.”
Kai El didn’t want to talk about her sister. He wanted to talk about Gaia, about love, about the life he had planned for them, but he didn’t know how to start.
“What do you think of all this?” he asked with a wave of his hand.
“It will be very nice. I can see that. But why up here? Men make their huts in the village. People wonder why you don’t.”
Kai El had good reasons. He believed Gaia would be healthier away from her mother and sister. And it would be safer to live up here. If savages attacked the village, they wouldn’t know about the hut in the cliffs. There had been no attacks since people moved to the Great River, but stories told of earlier tragedies.
Those aren’t things you say to a girl, he told himself. You don’t want to scare her.
“Well… ” he said, trying to think of other reasons.
“Is it your mother? You loved her very much. This is near her favorite place.”
She knows me, he thought.
“That’s part of it,” he said. “It’s because this is a takoma.”
She said, “A takoma is… where spirit lines cross in the sky?”
“Exactly.”
“I listened when your mother talked about spirit lines, but I never understood.” She looked at the sky. “I don’t see anything up there.”
Children of the Dawn Page 30