Confusion clouded Wolfstar’s face.
“I worked hard,” she murmured. “By the time I was eight winters old I could shoot three arrows through a hoop before it fell. That was when my father finally believed. I said to him, ‘Look at me! My brother is dead. I have survived. Have you ever thought that I am the one?’ But no one else believed.”
Wolfstar stared at her.
“I know, you are thinking I am bad in the head. I am used to that,” she said and laughed hollowly. “Everyone in my village thinks I am bad in the head, like my father. Even I didn’t believe myself, until this.” She shook her bear-claw necklace. “You see this? And this robe? They are all I have to prove that I am not no one—that I am the Great One.
“Now you know the truth,” she said bitterly. “I did not want you to.” The wind kicked her hair up in her face, and she did not brush it aside. “I tell you so you will see that you do not have to lie down and die simply because your village expects you to. Even if your own father expects you to.”
After a long moment, he said, “I see. But if I refuse to do what is asked of me, my people will perish.”
She was stunned. How could it be—that this boy should be responsible for his whole people?
Finally she shook her head. “I do not understand any god that asks you to go against your heart,” she said.
“Nor do I,” Wolfstar said in less than a whisper.
* * *
The corn was twice her height and “in the milk,” as Wolfstar called it. It would soon be ready for harvest. The squash and pumpkins glowed in yellows and oranges, and some of the beans were bursting their pods.
Wolfstar was pouring his last skin of water on a row of pony-spotted beans. “The rest of the village will be home from the hunt soon,” he announced, and tossed the empty waterskins and pole aside on the dirt.
The girl was not certain how she felt about this news. She looked forward to the return of excitement and games, but she did not want to give up the quiet summer she had shared with Wolfstar. The fondness she felt for Hummingbird-in-her-hair had changed to confusion. She did not like to think of Wolfstar loving Hummingbird-in-her-hair, even if it was in the past, though she told herself she did not care.
“We will not have many more times,” Wolfstar continued, “alone together.” Looking around furtively, he beckoned her into the sunflowers. “I want to give you this, before the others return.” Uncertainly, she followed.
Wolfstar held out a fist and opened his fingers.
In his palm lay a small, narrow arrowhead, crudely cut of bright blue stone marbled with shades of green. A thin strip of pale orange metal had been coiled around the stem and curled up from it in a hook.
“It’s an ear pendant, since you already have a necklace,” he said shyly. “I worked on it while you were shooting with the boys. It’s your colors. See, the colors of your favorite time of day?”
She tried to say something, but all she could do was bite her lip. She was afraid to reach for the gift.
“I know your ears are not pierced, but that’s easy to do. I would have made two, but I only had stone enough for one.”
Pressing down a powerful urge to run away, she nodded.
Wolfstar walked over to the field and peeled the silk back from an ear of corn and broke off the tip of the cob. “Don’t worry, I’ve seen this done many times,” he said, slipping a bone needle from a flat pouch. “Which ear?”
Raising both hands nervously to her throat, she touched a finger to her left ear.
Her hair was covering the ear, and as she began to brush it away, Wolfstar lifted the thick strand and smoothed it back. She felt the moist corncob behind her earlobe, the heat of his hands, then the sting of the needle, and the thread of blood dribbling down the side of her throat. Most acutely of all, she felt the absence of his touch.
He slipped the hook into her earlobe and twisted the wire around itself. With a bit of cornhusk he whisked the blood off her neck.
“Just keep the wound packed with grease for a few days and it will heal.” He stood back to look at her.
“You should not—I cannot—” she stammered.
Abruptly he turned and walked toward the village.
She stood trying to keep her balance; was it the sunflowers swaying or herself?
“Wait!” she called after him, and raced down the path. “What am I to you, Wolfstar? Please don’t joke with me now,” she pleaded as she caught up to him. “A sister? What? I must know.” She reached toward him and he shrank back in alarm.
Very slowly, Wolfstar said, “I am sorry. I can’t explain. I can’t—”
“Am I so horrible that you can’t stand the thought of touching me?” she cried.
“Don’t be foolish,” he said fiercely, grasping her arms through her calfskin dress. “I have responsibilities.” Wolfstar flung her arms down. He rubbed his hands over his head as if trying to hold it together.
“I can’t explain,” he said quietly. “Please do not ask me to.”
He strode away. This time she let him go.
* * *
That evening they trudged up the long hill to their sentinel post in silence. The sun was still burning red atop the horizon. The girl sat on her feet, trying to summon the courage to speak the words she had been practicing in her mind.
“Wolfstar,” she said finally, too loudly, “I have something I want to give you, also.”
Wolfstar looked at her, puzzled, perhaps wondering what she possibly had to give.
She slipped her hands under her hair and unlooped the leather clasp of her bear-claw necklace.
“No, I couldn’t take that!” Wolfstar exclaimed.
“I want you to,” she said, holding it out with trembling hands, as she would offer a sacred pipe.
“I can’t. This necklace means too much to you.”
“That is why I want to give it to you,” she said. “Don’t worry—I will still have my robe.”
Wolfstar shook his head. “There is so much you don’t know…”
“I know enough. I know that your star gods have commanded you to go against your heart,” she said. She dared to look into his eyes. “But they cannot command me to go against mine.”
Wolfstar looked away. “As you wish,” he said heavily.
She stood and walked behind him. Then she draped the heavy necklace over his chest. Her stiff and nervous hands needed several attempts to hook the clasp. She walked around and sat beside him. He had only needed a necklace; he was a fine-looking young man.
“It feels as though it’s yet glowing with the grizzly’s spirit,” he said, touching the thick fur reverently. “Or yours. Your spirits are much the same.” He breathed in deeply. “I will remember you by this, Danger-with-snarled-hair.”
She looked out at the evening sky darkening to her favorite time of day. From this day on, the green and blue would no longer be simply her favorite colors, but also the colors of Wolfstar’s gift to her.
She did not say that she was certain he would not need to remember her, that in the end his heart must win out over the stars. She merely began singing, “Even worms…”
20
Though she was target-shooting for arrows down in the bottomlands, she saw the movements from a long way off. They were the movements of people on horseback, heavily laden and dragging travois.
“The village is coming,” she exclaimed, and ran toward the lodges. Sticking-his-tongue-out and Yellow-tail came running after her.
They reached the lodges just as three scouts were galloping in.
“Was the hunt successful?” shouted Yellow-tail.
The scouts’ victorious shrills answered plainly. They wheeled their horses around in front of the communal lodge and began tossing packets of meat to the women gathering in the doorway. The Stay-at-homes crowded around to hear the news.
“The buffalo were so thick, we could hardly get among them to hunt,” one of the scouts called out with a laugh.
“What of
our men?” asked Her-corn-says-so.
“Your husband is well,” the scout said. “Three men injured, but none were lost. We did lose many horses.”
“Which horses?” the girl wanted to know. “What about the big black-and-gold gelding?” The scouts seemed taken aback at her speaking to them in their own tongue, but they had no response, for none had given a thought to individual horses.
Wolfstar pushed through the crowd. “Did Dreamer take a fat cow?” he asked, but his voice was drowned in the clamor as the rest of the party began pouring over the ridge.
Dreamer led the way on foot, trailing his horse behind him. On its back was strapped a slaughtered buffalo cow, feet upward.
She pointed it out to Wolfstar. “Is it important?”
“It’s important to a ceremony we will soon hold,” he said, squinting.
“Then it’s good that he took the cow.”
“I don’t know,” Wolfstar said vaguely, as if he had forgotten the question. He rushed on to meet his father.
The girl caught sight of Hummingbird-in-her-hair in the crowd, and lifted her hand shyly, but the Pawnee girl did not see her.
The Stay-at-homes ran up the hillside, darting among the swarms of horses and travois and people and yapping dogs, searching for their loved ones. She ran with them, nearly colliding with the priest astride his buffalo pony. Tied behind, Bull labored under several large rawhide packets of buffalo meat. She raced to him and rubbed his broad face and laughed as he snorted and tried to nip her.
“Bull, you big puppy,” she said in Apsaalooka, “I’m so glad to see you. Are you all right? You are covered with dust! Did they treat you well?”
Bull sneezed in response. She tried to pry up his burden to check his back for raw spots.
“Get back from there!” called the priest, twisting around in his saddle.
“I will see you at pasture, Bull,” she said into the horse’s neck, and with an affectionate slap she ran on.
She spotted Two-voices on top of the rise, sliding off his horse into the arms of Her-corn-says-so. He threw his arms around his wife and clasped her against him. They were still standing there holding each other when the girl arrived, just behind Wolfstar.
“My son,” Two-voices said with mostly his squeaking voice. He reached a hand behind Wolfstar’s head and pulled the boy to his chest.
“Father,” Wolfstar said quietly. “Dreamer killed a fat cow.”
“Yes,” Two-voices said, and released his grip on Wolfstar to look into his eyes. Wolfstar looked away, chewing on his lip. Two-voices put an arm around him and, with his other arm around Her-corn-says-so, clucked at the horse, and they all started down the hill.
“I see you have taken care of the girl. And your mother,” Two-voices said. He squeezed his wife closer to him. “I trust you have also taken care of the fields. How are the crops?”
“Quite good,” Wolfstar said.
“Oh, they are looking wonderful,” the girl chimed in, walking alongside. “Almost everyone’s corn is in the milk, and most of the flat beans are ready for picking. The sun shone hot here nearly every day you were gone, and Wolfstar brought water—” She stopped speaking as she realized she was alone. She turned to look back and saw Two-voices standing on the hillside, clutching his son’s and wife’s shoulders, glaring.
“What goes on here in my absence?” he demanded.
Her-corn-says-so said softly, “It’s all right, old man.” But her face looked anxious.
“She is quick with our language,” Wolfstar said. “She could not help picking it up.”
“She is carrying a bow,” Two-voices snapped. “And a quiverful of arrows.”
“She has not run away,” Wolfstar said disrespectfully. “She might have run away many times, but she hasn’t.”
“This is true,” Her-corn-says-so agreed.
Two-voices was scowling.
The girl looked from one family member to another, and finally, her eyes meeting the old man’s, she said earnestly, “I want to stay.”
Two-voices grunted his disapproval.
“It’s all right, old man,” Her-corn-says-so said again, and pressed him to walk on. He allowed her to lead him down the hill to the lodge, but the matter seemed far from settled.
* * *
She had never seen such abundance. All along the hillside, women scraped at buffalo hides stretched out on pegs. One could barely walk between all the drying racks sagging with buffalo strips and pumpkin rings, and the beans spread underfoot. Popping noises filled the air as the beans dried in the sun. The mouth-watering aroma of new corn roasting wafted across the prairie from dozens of pits dotting the countryside.
Since the return of the buffalo hunters, Wolfstar seemed under great strain. Two-voices did not hide his disapproval of his son’s treatment of their Apsaalooka captive, and although he did not interfere, he and Wolfstar hardly spoke to each other. When the girl talked to Wolfstar, he seemed far away. He had important things on his mind, he said, preparing for his responsibilities in the ceremony.
The day of the ceremony, the Morning Star rose with a red ring around it. At their meal of tiny boiled pumpkins everyone was tense. There was none of the usual joking. Her-corn-says-so did not speak a word, and the silence between Wolfstar and Two-voices was like screaming.
“Perhaps you should try to speak to your father about me,” the girl suggested to Wolfstar later as they spread out with a group of boys and men hunting for wood to stoke the roasting fires.
Wolfstar was constantly squinting, though the sun was hidden behind a cloud bank. As they combed the tall grass he would pick up a stick of wood, and then a few steps later absently toss it away. “What could I say,” he murmured.
She avoided looking at him. “You could tell him that I don’t have a real home in my own village. This could be my village now.”
Wolfstar nodded, but he seemed not to be listening.
“So you wouldn’t have to lose the Wolf Star bundle to another village,” she explained. “And I have no family to provide for.”
He turned toward her, blinking. “What?”
“And I’d work, I’d work hard. I’m a good hunter. But I could learn women’s work if you want me to.”
“Stop,” Wolfstar said angrily. “Stop talking that way.”
She stepped toward him. “But—you do care for me?”
“What does it matter?” He plucked a branch from where it leaned against a yucca plant.
“Wolfstar, you have picked that stick up three times. What’s wrong with you?”
He flung the branch away. “I need to be alone,” he snapped.
Angrily, she stalked off. She would go visit Bull. Surely Wolfstar did care for her, but he seemed to have more responsibilities than she knew. She wondered if there was truly no answer to this problem. She picked a few stray cobs of sweet corn along the path to the river. The water was so low from the hot summer that by leaping from one sandbar to another she crossed without wetting her feet. She crouched to scoop mud from the riverbed into her skirt, and called a greeting to the string of boys sitting on the other bank, watching the horses, but strangely, they only stared at her. She shrugged off their rudeness and walked out onto the plain where the horses were grazing.
While Bull munched at the corncobs, she soothed his saddle sores with mud and complained to him about Wolfstar. She spent the whole morning and much of the afternoon among the horses, packing up the raw spots on every one that would let her near.
“That will keep the flies off,” she said to a paint mare, wiping the last of the mud off her hands onto the long grass. A leather thong trailing from under the mare’s hoof caught her eye. It ran to a little yellow buckskin bag. Wolfstar’s medicine bundle, she realized, and pushed the mare’s foreleg off it.
She splashed through the river and walked up the footpath toward the village. Almost everyone was outside, shucking corn or tanning hides or gathering wood. They stopped talking and averted their eyes as she passed
. Her cheeks burned. Did the whole village know, then, how she had thrown herself at Wolfstar?
Of Wolfstar there was no sign. He must be inside. She walked around to the back of their lodge. She swung a leg up to the edge of the roof, hoisted herself up, and clambered to the top of the dome. Just as she was about to call to him down the smoke hole, she heard Two-voices saying, “A boy of your age cannot help feeling—I should not have placed such a responsibility on you. I pray you have not touched her.”
She jerked her head back from the opening and flattened herself against the dirt. She knew these words were not meant for her ears, but she could not turn away.
“I have not,” said Wolfstar.
“If you have touched her, I cannot save you,” Two-voices said severely. “If the Morning Star decides to take you instead, there is nothing anyone can do.”
“I have not touched her, Father,” Wolfstar insisted.
“My son, it hurts me not to trust you.”
“I gave up Hummingbird-in-her-hair,” Wolfstar said coldly. “What more proof of my allegiance do you require?”
“I am warning you,” Two-voices said in a way that sliced up the girl’s spine. “Do not try anything foolish. She will be at the ceremony tonight. I know how painful it is for you. None of us wants to do it, but we must! Remember your people. The Morning Star must have the blood of that girl’s heart, no matter what feelings you have for her.”
Over the pounding in her ears, she heard Wolfstar scoff, “Feelings for her? What feelings? I have done only what you taught me: be kind to her, keep her happy and ignorant of her fate so that she may be led through the ceremony willingly when the time comes. I think I have done my task well.” His voice rang angrily through the lodge’s rafters. “Yet you suggest I have betrayed you, betrayed my people!”
There was a long silence, broken only by the old man’s sigh.
“Son…”
“Father, she will be at the ceremony tonight,” Wolfstar said in a tender voice.
She was nearly sliding off the roof, but she did not care. Nothing mattered. Her heart had already been ripped from her breast.
The Sacrifice Page 11