The Headcutter caught Chews-the-bear by the hair before he could collapse to the ground. With his blade the warrior sliced down along the old man’s head and began peeling back the scalp. A groan forced its way through the gaps in Chews-the-bear’s clenched teeth.
“No!” his daughter screamed and flew up from the grass, hurling herself at the Headcutter. “No! No!” She shrieked and pounded and clawed his blood-soaked chest, and, finding his face, dug her fingers into his eyes. Then a crack of lightning flashed through her and she was sliding to the ground. The thudding and cries and horses’ bellowing grew distant, and as she sighed into darkness a thought, strangely, brought her peace: her twin brother had finally exacted the perfect revenge.
3
Born-great, chubby even at four winters old, stood in the doorway of their lodge, grinning. He had a quirky, disarming smile that opened many hearts to him, but not his sister’s. The broken black owl hanging against his bare chest seemed to point at her with its remaining wing.
“You thought you killed me,” Born-great said in a voice that seemed too old for him.
She froze in her bed of buffalo robes, as though by not moving she would not be seen. “You are dead,” she rasped.
“But I did not die,” he said.
She cleared her throat. “You are dead.”
“I am your twin. I am a part of you,” he said, still smiling.
Born-great opened his arms and began walking toward her. She screamed, scrambling backward, against the sloping wall of the tepee. “I killed you!”
“No,” Born-great said, and kept coming. “You killed yourself.”
Stars began raining in her head. The wind swelled, lifting her from her dream. She was sweating, clenched in a ball on her bed robes. The light was dim, and her panting was like smoke in the cold air as her eyes darted around the lodge. She was used to the nightmares, but still it took time to be certain her brother was truly not there.
She was alone. The wind beat against the tepee, rushing in around the door flap, carrying the sound of a woman wailing.
The girl pushed her covers aside and sat up. She waited for the pounding in her head to subside, fingering the crusted wound on her crown.
It had been two days since her father’s death. The burial could be delayed no longer. She must see that he was prepared for his journey to the Beyond-country. It would be a difficult journey this time. Many winters ago, when he had been mauled by the she-grizzly, Chews-the-bear’s spirit-soul had journeyed to the Beyond-country and back again, but he was a young warrior then and traveled in a time of plenty, When-the-leaves-turn-yellow. Now he was old and tired, and the season was spring, when mountains and rivers make dangerous crossing, and food is scarce.
She did not eat or bathe, but went straight to her task. She packed two parfleches to bulging with pine nuts and dried berries, and another of the flat, folded rawhide boxes with pemmican.
The tepee creaked under the force of the wind as she gathered her father’s belongings. Stuffed deep in his quiver she found the wolf-tail moccasins he should be buried in. She laid them with everything else on the old, worn bearskin robe, and, bundling it into her arms, she stepped out into the flat gray day. At her feet lay the body of her father, wrapped in part of their tepee cover.
As she knelt down, she noticed an unfamiliar parfleche, painted with yellow diamonds, jutting out from her father’s shroud. With a dry mouth, she slid the parfleche out, untied its thongs, and opened the rawhide flaps. It was filled with strips of barutskitue, the dried chokecherry mash that her father prized.
She looked around. A few young children and dogs shuffled by. She saw none of the boys from Laughing Crow’s group. They were probably inside, shivering under their covers, drinking their mothers’ licorice-root tea, she thought scornfully. Cut-ear’s two wives stood outside their lodge restaking the windbreak. One of the women had cropped her hair in mourning for a brother. She glanced over, and the girl hurriedly looked down.
The mysterious gift made her uneasy. It was not the first; there had been many given to her, in the days before she had convinced her father that she was the Great One. It was a time she remembered only vaguely. Night and day the people came to look at Born-great, and in the excitement, his twin was not much noticed. Those first years, there was a grandmother who took care of her, but after the grandmother’s death, the girl ran wild, fighting the camp dogs for scraps. It was then that the mysterious gifts began, always left while she slept. Food, sometimes clothing. After she stole one of Born-great’s many toy bows and taught herself to shoot, she once awoke to a gift of arrows. Now it struck her that through all these winters, deep in her heart she had felt the gifts had been left by her father.
She breathed deeply. How could she have thought such a thing? Her father had seen only Born-great, hardly knew she was alive, until long after her brother was dead. Angrily she grabbed Chews-the-bear’s moccasins to slip them on his feet, so she could be finished with her task.
Last night she had dressed his body in ceremonial clothes: his ermine-striped shirt and horsehair-fringed leggings, his bone-pipe breastplate, the old blue-and-buff-beaded gauntlets her mother had sewn for him when pregnant with her and Born-great. The moccasins were of soft elk skin, a wolf’s tail knotted to each heel signifying that he had counted coup—touched an enemy in battle—a higher-ranked war exploit than killing an enemy. Chews-the-bear had worn these moccasins at council and on war parties long ago, before the Cheyenne slaughter, when he was still a respected man.
A different pair of moccasins, blood-brown, stepped into the edge of her vision, a wide, red sash dragging on the frosty ground beside them. She knew they belonged to Grasshopper, but she ignored him.
They had been friends, before, drawn together by their similar lack of status. One of Grasshopper’s legs was shorter than the other, and his left arm was small and bent. He could not even pull a bow. There could be no stolen horses or scalps or weapons snatched in battle for him.
He might have led a tolerable life as a medicine man like his father, but to Grasshopper such a life was no life. He wanted to be nothing less than a warrior.
Yet the only brave thing a crippled boy could do in battle was die.
So, a few moons ago, Grasshopper had become a Crazy-dog-wishing-to-die. He was by far the youngest member of the brotherhood; usually only old men who were tired of living, or perhaps someone who had suffered losses so great he could not bear to go on, became Crazy-dogs. Grasshopper was only fourteen winters old. He looked gallant with the brotherhood’s long red sash trailing from his waist, and was good at talking the crosswise way of the Crazy-dogs—saying the opposite of what he meant. He had become wildly popular among the other boys, boasting in crosswise talk that the next chance he got he would stake his sash to the ground before the advancing enemy and die unflinchingly. Some of the girls even began to look at him—a cripple!—with soft eyes.
She had stayed in the shadows, forgotten and nearly mad with envy. But it was Grasshopper’s betrayal that she could not forgive, his calling her an orphan.
“I am not sorry for what I said about you,” Grasshopper said in a cracked voice. Although she was used to his crosswise talk, she had difficulty translating now. “I am glad that your father is dead. My father says that you must live the wretched life of an orphan, that you are not welcome as a daughter in his lodge.”
She flinched at the word orphan.
“Di axparaaxe,” she said coldly. It was not as harsh an insult as his calling her an orphan a few nights ago, but she said it with a finality that he could not fail to understand. She was not just insulting him, she was telling him that from now on, he was a ghost. He was dead to her, and she would never speak to him again.
One of the blood-brown moccasins scuffed at a stone. She forced herself to unwrap the stiff yellow shroud. Without touching her father’s feet, her hands slid the wolf-tail moccasins on. She could hardly see through her black hair streaming across her face, but she did no
t stop.
Grasshopper spoke again. “You are strong enough to bury Chews-the-bear yourself. I will not help.”
She continued to look through her hair at the moccasins she was tying.
“Please—my heart is light with joy because of what I did. Won’t you…” He did not finish his sentence; perhaps it was too difficult to express crosswise. Her fingers faltered with the laces.
“I would be ashamed to be your brother,” Grasshopper said quietly.
She pulled hard on the knot and her hand slipped against her father’s ankle. The dead cold shot through her arm like a pain. She flung the shroud over the feet and jumped up. She had not finished tying the second wolf-tail moccasin, but she did not care. Let him tie it himself. As fast as she could without running, she hurried away across the grass, toward the river. No sound rose above the wind from behind her.
The horses stood waiting with sharpened ears. Bull greeted her with his usual snort.
“I have some work for you, Bull,” she said, dodging his teeth as she slipped a halter over his big face. “Today I bury my father. I need you to carry his body and his burial things up to the ridge where we once sat to smoke and watch the sun set.” A tightness pulled at her throat, and she said no more.
* * *
The digging was slow. The dirt was almost as hard as the buffalo-shoulder-blade tool she hacked at it with. She piled the larger rocks to the side to cover the grave later. When she stood not quite to her knees in the trench she hit frozen ground. She turned to widening the pit. Finally, sweaty and light-headed, she swung the digging tool away.
With his head toward the sunset, the girl laid her father in the grave. She covered the dull yellow shroud with a new buffalo robe, for the air was cold and the sky was surely not yet empty of snow. Then one by one she placed beside Chews-the-bear’s body the other things he would need on his journey.
The barutskitue, fresh and dried buffalo meat, the berries and pine nuts. Three new pairs of moccasins. His pipe and tobacco. His finely carved elk-antler bow, which had leaned against a backrest for several winters now. Its sheath of rattlesnake skin crinkled like a brown leaf in her hand.
She picked up his lance, and saw again the image of her father struggling with the Headcutter.
Resting on one knee for a moment, she balanced the spear in her hands. It was a joy to hold, but it had seen little blood since Chews-the-bear wrested it from a Blackfoot in battle many winters ago. Her father had not wanted to break the gleaming head, which was as long as her forearm and knapped of black obsidian, the mysterious, rocklike substance that shone like black water and cut sharper than flint. She liked to imagine that this spearhead had been cut from the black cliff in the Land of Boiling Waters. It was at that cliff that he had found Born-great’s sacred stone: a thick shaving of obsidian in the shape of an owl in flight. It had fallen from the cliff to land at Chews-the-bear’s feet, just as the owl in his dream had foretold.
Though there was no sun, the spearhead glinted, as though it held light of its own. She had seen other colors of obsidian—milky green and red-brown mingled with black—but the color that enthralled her was pure black. It was utter black in its depths and faded to clear at its edges. It was like a living thing, black fire, power: the sharpest substance known. But very brittle.
Reluctantly she laid the lance in her father’s grave. Her knee cracked as she stood up and drew her flint knife.
Bull was grazing so close behind her that even over the wind she could hear the grinding of his teeth. She pressed his head against her chest and began sawing through his coarse black mane, and when she had finished, she cropped his tail. She stuffed the hairs under her father’s robe where they would not be blown away. Some mourners killed and buried a man’s horses, but she had several practical considerations. She could not bury four horses without a great deal of help, and she would not ask any. This way, since each hair would become a fine horse in the Beyond-country, her father would own many horses instead of only four, making him a wealthy and respected man again. And though she would be expected to give the other three animals away, she could keep Bull for her own.
She was glad of these practical considerations, because one creature she could never have killed was a horse. Especially not Bull.
She lifted up the hide of the grizzly her father had long ago battled. The men who had distracted the bear from him and driven a spear through it had given him the hide, because he had earned it with his courage. The skin side had been painted with figures showing his many exploits, and as the robe billowed in the wind the faded horses galloped across it. The fur had thinned over the years. It was especially bare at her father’s teethmarks, where so many fingers had admired it that it was worn right through. When she was a child, her own slender fingertips had rubbed the ragged little flap to a dark polish. One last time she slid a finger through. Her father had been mauled by a grizzly bear and had bitten back! How many times she had listened to him tell the story, secretly wishing something like this would happen to her, while he tried to make it a lesson as dry as clay dust.
She spread the grizzly hide over the grave and began piling rocks on it. She worked hastily, not caring when her fingertips were caught between the stones. She was sweating and breathing hard as she heaved the last one into place.
The frigid wind chilled her inside the sweat-dampened skin shirt as she pushed up the sleeves and drew her knife again. She knew without thinking that she would not cut off her hair, as many mourners did in spite of the humiliation, nor would she cut off a finger joint. Rather, she rested the sharp edge on her bare forearm and, holding her breath, dragged the blade across.
Then she cut her other arm, and her legs. She felt no pain, only the sensation of blood flowing down her limbs. She reached out her arms over the grave and watched her blood, sprayed by the wind, splatter onto the rocks. It gave her a feeling of relief, as if something bad were going out of her.
“You are gone, do not turn back,” she said. “We wish to fare well.” That was all the ceremony she knew. She should cry now. But she never cried. There were no tears in her.
Before Born-great’s death, Chews-the-bear had been a chief and a respected man. The whole village should be here mourning his death. He had earned a burial platform flocked with red streamers, and a long procession led by drummers. Yet here he lay in a shallow trough, attended by no one but an orphan girl.
Orphan.
She was back where she had started: no one, nothing, dependent on charity and her own wits. The humiliation was unbearable. She could not think of adoption. She was fifteen winters old—she should have been married by now! And adoption would mean crawling on her belly to Grasshopper and his family or to one of the others who had spurned her and her father.
In legend, orphans begged the gods to have pity, and with their help became great warriors and returned home in glory. But what god would favor a murderer? Indeed, Born-great would try to destroy her at every turn. But she had managed this far on her own. She could do it. She must do it.
It is not over yet, she told Born-great silently.
“Father, your spirit is still near. Hear me,” she said into the wind. “The owl said that one of your children would die young and one would number among the greatest Apsaalooka ever to live.”
She looked at her arms and legs. The wind had dried the blood to a sticky, dusty film. “My legs are swift, and my arms strong. You have taught me the ways of a warrior, but I am never allowed to fight. I am tired of running races against no one and shooting with no reward.
“The time has come for me to prove myself, Father.” She paused, wiping the blowing hair out of her face and gathering her courage as the idea took shape in her mouth. “Your death must be avenged. Therefore I will go with the revenge party and I will kill a Headcutter.
“Yes, I will kill a Headcutter,” she repeated to herself as if the words tasted good.
She turned to Bull and clambered up the travois onto his back. “They must l
et me go, Bull,” she said into his ear. “I am his kin.”
4
The council fire hissed and spat blue flames. Sobs for lost sons and husbands rose with the sparks into the night, where clouds slid past the sliver of moon. Most of the villagers were already seated, and the elders and warriors with painted faces and bodies gathered like varicolored moths around the fire.
Laughing Crow, dark and fierce-looking, was walking toward the war party, and a group of boys eddied around him. Everyone wanted to be Laughing Crow’s friend because no one wanted to be his enemy. He was big for his age and an excellent archer, and he was as deadly with words as he was with arrows. The girl noticed Grasshopper was not with him. She scanned the gathering and saw her old friend sitting next to his mother and her kin. His father, Broken Branch, was an important medicine man and stood near the fire with the other council members. He looked unusually young for a man of forty or forty-five winters, with a dignified bearing and eyes that seemed to see more than others’. Tonight those eyes followed his oldest son, Lies-down-in-water, who would be riding with the revenge party.
She had painted a yellow stripe across the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones, and wore a freshly sewn buffalo-skin shirt, leggings, and moccasins. Beneath her shirt she wore a medicine necklace made from the owl’s wing. It felt like a spark swinging against her skin.
How that owl had tantalized her, hanging from Born-great’s throat. In her child’s mind it was the difference between them, the mysterious power with which her brother attracted all the toys and treats and reverent touches. The day they were preparing to set off against the Cheyenne, when the fawning over Born-great was unbearable, she broke it. When all his protectors had for once wandered a few steps out of sight, she dashed at him and worked her thin fingers around the owl and pinched with all her might, until a delicious crack shot from it as she snapped a wing off. It was mostly the sound that she remembered. And she knew the memory was real, because hidden away for eleven winters she had kept the broken wing.
The Sacrifice Page 2