Begin Reading
Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
Thank you for buying this
Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
To my mother and father,
who raised me to believe in dreams
For what is a man profited,
if he shall gain the whole world,
and lose his own soul?
or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
—MATTHEW 16:26
1
The girl clawed the wind-whipped hair out of her eyes with bloody hands, and listened.
She had heard a foreign voice, but the sound was difficult to find again over the wind. She leaned forward on one knee and scanned the wide, flat valley and the gentle mountains that encircled it, searching for sign of an enemy.
The setting sun was painting the sky a brilliant orange, streaked with violet clouds. Such colors made her feel like singing. Usually, if no one was looking, she would sit back for a moment and allow herself this one pleasure. But now she kept her eyes on the ground.
The sun had dipped behind the peaks, leaving their valley dim, and her eyesight was not as sharp as that of some in her village. Still, she had learned to discern distant things by their motion. She could tell a buffalo or a deer or a horse or a pronghorn by the way the animal moved. People were easy to identify; they did not lift their heads when they sensed danger, but turned them. They ran more slowly than other large animals, and they looked as if they had legs running on top of their bodies, too, because of the pumping of their arms. When they did not want to be discovered, people walked carefully, like long-legged birds.
There was nothing to be seen in the valley now but the brown river and occasional patches of snow. The ice was just beginning to go out of the rivers, and the wind was cold and relentless across the open valley, but the girl bore discomfort easily.
Reluctantly she turned her eyes back to the buffalo carcass. If only she had heard an enemy raiding party. She would give anything for a chance to prove herself as a warrior.
She shifted to her other knee and pushed her hair back again. It snarled in a grimy black nest down her back. She was a starved-looking, long-limbed girl of fifteen winters, with eyes that smoldered from deep within, like a wildcat’s eyes at night from within its den. The high cheekbones and fine, straight nose so common among her Apsaalooka people would have been beautiful on another girl, but her face was a hard mask, with a taut, thin line for a mouth. She wore crudely sewn boy’s clothing: a plain buckskin shirt and leggings, gray with dirt from long wear, and a breechcloth that was now soaked with blood.
She wiped her hands on the breechcloth again, trying to stop their trembling. It gave her a dizzying sense of power to have risked joining the buffalo hunt—she still could feel the pounding of deadly hooves all around her. She did not even care that her father would be angry. Surely three buffalo felled by her hand proved she was ready for battle; how could he tell her again that she was not?
She should have defied him long ago, for then the day she had dreamed of might already have arrived. It was a day she had imagined for so many winters that the very thought of it was nearly real.
She would return to the village just after the sun had set, when the sky was green-blue. She could almost feel the charcoal that blackened her face in the sign of victory, and smell the smoke drifting from the tepees. The dogs would begin barking as she approached, and the villagers would scramble from their lodges, shouting. One and all would stare in awe at her fine war shirt, at the pretty-faced white mare she would be riding, and at the scalps snaking in the wind from her coup lance. With all eyes upon her she would thrust the lance overhead and shout, “I am the Great One!”
Then the people would rush around her to touch her finery, and beg her forgiveness—especially her friend Grasshopper—and her father would come running, to pull her from her horse and throw his arms around her. The singers would make praise songs about her, and all the people who now looked past her as though she were not there, or called her bad in the head, would beg her to feast with them and tell the story of her adventure.
At last she would be someone—the Great One—with a real name, instead of Weak-one-who-does-not-last. She would take a mighty name, reflecting her mighty deeds.
Not a single sun set without her imagining that day and that name. Of course, the real name, the right name, would not present itself until she had earned it. When that came to pass, she felt, her brother Born-great’s curse would be broken.
She smiled grimly. Born-great had thought that tearing away her friend would defeat her, but he was wrong. It only made the desire in her burn stronger. She thrust her stone blade into the buffalo’s chest with a vengeance.
“It is not over yet,” she told her brother’s ghost. Her big dirty-gold gelding, grazing a few paces away, snorted and ambled toward her. “I was not talking to you, Bull,” she said, patting his broad, black face and evading his attempts to nip her. Bull was a homely beast with a lazy gait and a habit of biting, and he was too big to mount without a step up. But he was solid, and the only creature she trusted.
She buried her knife in the carcass again, pretending not to hear her father shouting at her through the wind as he came striding across the dead grass.
“I asked you a question,” Chews-the-bear said. His talk was stubby-sounding and full of whistles, because all but one of his front teeth were snapped off jagged or gone completely.
“We needed the meat, and the hides,” she said, continuing to gut the carcass as though nothing were wrong.
“You know only hunters are permitted on buffalo hunts.” The wrinkles carved into his brown face made his scowl seem even more severe. “You might have stampeded the herd. Then the tribal guard would have your hide!”
She tensed at the mention of a whipping from the guard—one man had never recovered from it. But she was a hunter, a good hunter, and would never have startled the herd. Her father knew this, too; that was not his real fear.
“But,” she said, “I did not stampede the herd. I brought down three buffalo.”
Chews-the-bear worked his tongue around the stumps of his front teeth, gathering his thoughts, as he always did when angry. “Did you thank that animal for giving up its life?”
“Yes,” she lied, wrenching the intestines free and heaving them onto the billowing grass. She had no intention of thanking any animal she killed. It was she who had killed it, with her sweat and her skill. She picked up the knife again.
Chews-the-bear seized her wrist, and she dropped the knife in surprise and pain. “Have some respect,” he hissed, “and stop hacking at the beast.”
He threw her hand down. She rubbed her wrist, seething.
“A true warrior hates to kill,” said Chews-the-bear. “Not so you. Sometimes you make my skin cold.”
Sometimes she made her own skin cold, too, the girl realized with alarm, but suddenly she heard a sound that pressed the thought down.
She held up her hand in warning. “Voices.”
Chews-the-bear squinted, listening. A strand of gre
asy gray hair caught on his lips. He heard only the wind humming through the matted buffalo grass, but this did not mean his daughter had not heard something.
Presently Chews-the-bear broke the silence. “You hear one of the boys. A group of them ran off into the hills earlier.”
She wished he had not reminded her of them. A tight feeling gripped her chest.
Chews-the-bear narrowed his eyes. “You disobeyed me because Grasshopper has joined with Laughing Crow and his friends, and you are jealous, is it not true?”
She felt slapped in the face. She and Grasshopper had become friends because both were outsiders, but now that Grasshopper had become a Crazy-dog-wishing-to-die, even Laughing Crow looked up to him, and he had no more use for a crazy girl with a crazy father. Her chest tightened further as she remembered last night’s humiliation. She had walked past Laughing Crow and his friends, and they began mocking and insulting her, as always. But this time Grasshopper was with them, and just to better the others, he had called her an orphan—the vilest insult in the Apsaalooka tongue. To be called an orphan was to be called less than a dog.
“Grasshopper is not worth your jealousy,” Chews-the-bear said as though he were spitting out something sickening. It enraged her, although only hours ago she had found comfort in the same thought.
“He is my only friend,” she burst out. Then she added, “Except for you.”
Chews-the-bear widened his stance against the wind. “I am not your friend,” he said. “I am your father.”
He gave her chin a tap upward and she jerked away. “You must remember who you are, daughter. You are destined to be one of the greatest Apsaalooka ever to live. A boy like Grasshopper is beneath you.”
I would not be so certain, she dared not say. “My stomach is sick with being whispered about and laughed at. Why do you not let me show them that I can ride and shoot as well as any of them?”
“There is no room in a warrior’s heart for vanity.”
Maddened, she leaped to her feet and began pacing. She was certain the village would accept her as a warrior—it was not unheard of for a woman—if only she could show them. But since Born-great’s death, Chews-the-bear had been afraid. “How can I be the Great One if I am permitted to do nothing?” she demanded.
“One day when you are ready…”
How many times she had heard that! She snatched up the bloody knife and thrust it toward him. “I am ready. This”—she kicked the dead buffalo, and her father flinched—“is ‘ready.’ Not just to hunt, but to make war.”
“You are too ready,” Chews-the-bear said, chopping the air with a leathery hand. “You are reckless, dangerous.”
“I will never be ready enough for you!”
“Do you want to get yourself killed?” he shouted. The question struck them both like a blow.
“You are afraid,” she said, unable to stop herself. “You are afraid I will be killed like Born-great!”
Chews-the-bear shut his eyes, and his craggy face stiffened with pain—not physical pain, but the other kind. She took a certain satisfaction in having hurt her father. She knew he was listening again to the scream from long ago.
Her twin brother had been four winters old when he rode on the raid against the Cheyenne. No one intended that he get into the fighting; he had been taken only for his medicine. The whole village believed that Born-great had powerful medicine, because an owl had foretold it to Chews-the-bear in a dream: his wife would die bearing twins, and one of the twins would die young, but the other would become one of the greatest Apsaalooka ever to live. Not only was Born-great thought to be the Great One, he also wore an owl-shaped bacoritsitse—sacred stone—around his neck. Wherever he went, he brought good fortune—good hunting, good weather, good water. They had no reason to doubt that his medicine would be strong against the Cheyenne.
It had taken three men to hold Chews-the-bear from running back into the Cheyenne ambush when he heard his son screaming for him. Those three men saved Chews-the-bear’s life. That made four survivors. The village called that winter the winter the Cheyenne killed eleven men.
For a time Chews-the-bear had insisted that Born-great still lived, and tried to mount a rescue party, but the people no longer believed his dream, they could not forgive, and they could see he had lost his mind along with his son. No one ever followed him into battle again.
After a time he gave up the dream that his son was alive. Many days he did not rise from bed, and when he did he seemed to be sleepwalking. He went on this way for many moons, looking right through his daughter, until the afternoon she convinced him that he had made a mistake, that she was the Great One.
Although the scream still haunted him, eleven winters after the ambush, Chews-the-bear thought that Born-great’s death was as the dream had foretold. He did not know that the scream haunted the girl, too, although she had not been present to hear it. He did not know that it was not the Cheyenne, but she, who had caused Born-great’s death.
After a time, with immense control, he said only, “It is disrespectful to speak of the dead.”
The girl felt sick with a sudden fear that she was nothing but evil. “Perhaps there was a mistake,” she blurted. “Perhaps I really am the Weak-one-who-does-not-last, and I should have been the one to die.”
She turned away, but Chews-the-bear grasped her wrist.
“It is I who made the mistake,” he said, “in thinking that your brother was the one because it is not usual for females to become warriors. It is also not usual, when twins are born, for both to survive. Usually one is weak and soon dies. The people call you Weak-one because no one expected you to live. But you are not usual. And when you are ready, then the people will be ready for you. Then you will make a name for yourself. Your name is not Weak-one. Never let me hear you speak it again.”
“You don’t understand,” she said.
“I understand more than you think I do.”
Just as a panic struck her that he knew what she had done to her brother, that he had found the broken medicine, an urgent noise snatched her attention. Head cocked, she stood alert, trying to catch a thread of sound through the wind.
“War cries,” she whispered.
This time Chews-the-bear heard, too.
2
In the dusk, she made out a swarm of dark figures pouring down a steep, stony slide on a nearby mountain, and spilling out onto the plain toward the village.
They were definitely people, on horseback.
“They are not headed toward the horses,” Chews-the-bear said. He ran the few paces to Bull and jerked the gelding’s head from the grass. “Help me up,” he commanded. His daughter ran to him and shoved his foot up. He swung onto the horse’s back. “Lie down and hide. Do not move, no matter what happens.” He gave a kick, and Bull bolted toward the village.
The girl flattened herself into the grass, her cheekbone pressed against something sharp. She was unable to see a thing but her bloodstained, broken fingernails and the tangle of grass in her face.
The distant thudding and cries of the beginning clash carried to her on the wind. Her bow and quiver were strapped to Bull’s back, and she cursed herself for being caught without them. No one could stop her from fighting in the midst of an attack. And after the battle, how could Chews-the-bear argue against slain enemies? She might stand before the council fire she had been dreaming of all her life, if only she had a bow.
She raised her head. Although the village had been attacked many times, she had always been off by herself in the hills, or shoved into a lodgeful of women and children where she could see nothing.
Slowly, on her elbows and toes, she crawled toward the foothills that flanked one side of the village. She reached their cover of scrub pine and juniper and scrambled up to run toward the fighting.
Twenty-five or thirty warriors on horseback struggled forward among the Apsaalooka, slashing with knives and swinging studded clubs. She knew from the leader’s blue-and-yellow shirt that the invaders were H
eadcutters. Amid the war cries and howls of agony, she felt herself unexpectedly pierced by fear.
The reputation of the Headcutters, or Lakota, as they called themselves, was well known to her. Her people were frequently attacked, often for their horses, for Apsaalooka horses were coveted by many, but although many tribes took prisoners of women and children to adopt into their own families, Headcutters were as likely to kill as to kidnap. She crushed her fear down harshly, as she would cuff a begging dog, and cursed again under her breath at being without a weapon.
Her eyes searched for Chews-the-bear but did not find him. She spotted Grasshopper’s father, Broken Branch, trying to pull an attacker from his horse. Unable to unseat the warrior, Broken Branch stabbed at his mount. As the animal’s legs buckled, he leaped on the Headcutter and together they rolled under the falling horse.
The girl circled wide around the village on the hillside, watching for her father. From up here, the warriors seemed melted together into a single living, raging thing. As she drew closer to the other side of the village, she could see from the riderless horses plunging about that several Headcutters had fallen. Some were already fleeing along the river.
She saw a flash of white—Chews-the-bear’s doeskin leggings. They disappeared into the swarm again. She reached the plain, slid into the grass, and began creeping along the edge of camp. Occasionally she tipped her head up to see where she was. Through the haze of grass she could make out her father grappling with the blue-and-yellow-shirted warrior as he tried to run up the hillside. The Headcutter leader had lost his horse, and they were struggling hand to hand over Chews-the-bear’s lance.
Suddenly Chews-the-bear twisted his lance free and lunged into the enemy. Then he stepped backward. A blot of bright red splattered the Headcutter leader’s war shirt.
But the blood was not his own. Chews-the-bear took another step back, and another, then crashed to his knees. Blood ran from his rib cage.
The Sacrifice Page 1