The Sacrifice

by Diane Matcheck

21

  There was only darkness in her now. Her old friend anger, who had led the fight to survive so many times before, guided her footsteps hurriedly away from the lodge. She must not be seen there; she must not raise any suspicion that she had overheard. Hastily she struggled to weigh her situation. There was no time to worry about food or even weapons. She had the clothes she was wearing, and she had freedom enough to go to the horses—no one would worry at seeing her among them. If she could linger in the pasture until dusk, she might not be seen slipping away. If only the ceremony did not begin before then! The sky was now gray as slate, so there would be no light tonight to follow her by. But what of her grizzly robe? She no longer took it everywhere, and this morning she had left it inside the lodge.

  Aching, she looked back at the earthen dome. If she went back in the heat of the afternoon to fetch her robe, they would know something was amiss. And she could not face Wolfstar without revealing herself.

  With tremendous effort she turned down the path to the river. As she strode along, she felt the ear pendant swinging against the side of her throat and ached to rip it out. But she did not dare, not until she was out of sight.

  “Danger,” Wolfstar called from the head of the path. She started violently and was afraid she had given herself away, but he was too far from her to notice. He trotted down to her, a loaded saddlebag bouncing from his shoulder and another large pack dragging behind him.

  “I want to apologize for the way I acted earlier,” he said. “You were right. I have been a coward. I won’t be any longer.” He adjusted his grip on his burdens, clenching them so that his knuckles whitened. “I will speak to my father tonight, after the ceremony.”

  His voice sounded so warm and safe, as always. Yes, he had done his task well. She clutched her wrist to stop herself from trying to crush his throat.

  “Please don’t be angry with me,” Wolfstar said. “I am sorry.”

  She could not bear to see the necklace she had given him draped over his black-and-green-beaded ceremonial shirt.

  “Here,” she said abruptly, holding out his medicine bag. “Look what I found.”

  “Oh!” He seemed stunned, and looked up with real gratitude. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  “It’s all right, old man,” she forced out, parodying Her-corn-says-so.

  Briefly Wolfstar’s lips parted in an unreal smile. “You are wanted in the lodge,” he said. “My mother and my aunt have grown more corn than they can shuck.”

  She swallowed hard. She had never before been asked to work; they must want to keep her under watch until the ceremony. “I was going out to take care of the horses,” she said as evenly as she could.

  “My father has just sent me to see about one of his horses. I’ll look after the others, too.”

  “I don’t think…”

  Wolfstar smiled knowingly. “Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of Bull for you.”

  “No—” she said, groping. When Wolfstar reached the pasture he would see the mud already on their backs and know she had lied. “You don’t have to,” she said. “I already plastered them up earlier; I just wanted to see … Sometimes the mud cracks off.”

  “You certainly care a lot about those beasts,” Wolfstar said. “I’ll tend them for you.”

  There was nothing to do but walk back up the path, with Wolfstar watching her, and go to help the women with their corn.

  * * *

  As she tore off husk after blackened husk from the roasted ears, and then joined in cutting the kernels off the cobs row by row, time seemed to drag endlessly, yet race. It seemed the moment would never come when she could escape. Yet the moment of her death was hurtling toward her as if she were falling off a cliff.

  The lodge grew ominously dark, but whether from the oncoming dusk or a gathering storm she could not judge. She thought she heard thunder in the distance. Two-voices sat on his bed against the wall, where in the dim light she could barely see him; but she knew he was watching her.

  After repeating the words over and over in her head until she thought she could say them naturally, she asked, “How much longer until the ceremony?”

  A shadow crossed every face in the circle, and suddenly she realized that she was the only person in the village who had not known all along that she was to be sacrificed.

  “Not long,” Her-corn-says-so said without a hint of her feelings.

  Wolfstar appeared in the passageway.

  Her-corn-says-so laid her clamshell blade on the earthen floor. “Now,” she said.

  * * *

  A raindrop blew against her face as they walked toward Dreamer’s lodge, and at her feet more drops began splashing into the dust. Under the calfskin dress her body was slick with sweat. In desperation, she tried to walk slowly. Wolfstar walked on her left, Two-voices on her right, and the rest of the family behind her. Ahead, the whole village was gathering outside Dreamer’s lodge. All the men and boys, even toddlers, carried bow and quiver. Many people had climbed onto the dome’s roof and were ripping up the sod so they could watch through holes.

  The horses had been driven into the village against the impending storm, and on the edge of the herd milled the swift little buckskin no more than twenty paces from her grasp. But though over that short distance she might out-race the Pawnee, she could never outrace their arrows.

  The entrance tunnel gaped before her. Inside the lodge a fire burned, and at the end of the passageway stood the priest, his false smile seeming to welcome her.

  Her only chance was to convince them she knew nothing, to submit to the ceremony and watch for an opportunity to escape.

  She stepped into the tunnel.

  22

  The faces of the priest, Dreamer, and several assistants glowed red in the light of the embers, and their long shadows writhed over the dome’s walls above the heads of the seated figures filling the lodge. Dimly lit faces watched through jagged holes in the roof, and a dozen more crowded the smoke hole, deathly somber. There was no sound but the whisper of the fire and the groan of faraway thunder.

  Wolfstar bade her sit down on one of two buckskin cushions near the fire pit, and sat beside her on the other. Most of the remaining villagers squeezed in behind them on the floor, stepping over four carefully laid out circles of tiny breathfeathers. Between the feather circles lay four long poles, longer than lodgepoles, pointing from the fire like rays from the sun, to each of the four sacred directions.

  Shaking a gourd rattle, the priest began to sing mournfully. It was a simple but long song repeating over and over that Mother Corn was in the lodge. On and on he sang, but after a time the girl no longer heard him. She must be calm. She must wait for an opening. Then she must run as she had never run in her life.

  The priest finished his song, then sang more strange, repetitive songs that made no sense to her, though she understood the words. Between songs she could hear a heavy rain falling outside, although the roof deadened its roar to a sigh. As the slow-burning ends of the poles were gradually consumed, hands shoved the saplings farther into the fire. She watched the poles shrink, wondering if they measured how long she had left to live. Her thoughts began to blur as the songs droned on, and her muscles ached from the tension.

  Dreamer marched to one of the poles jutting from the fire, knocked the coals off, and lifted its glowing point into the air. He wore striped leggings and an otter belt thickly tasseled with scalps, and his face and naked upper body had been washed with white, making him look like a spirit of the dead.

  The priest began to sing, urgently now. “Oh, this is what I did: I became like him. I became ferocious, I became like him…”

  Dreamer lurched forward into a frenetic dance. He stomped and wheeled with the pole in his hands, twisting it over his head and around his body. The red-hot point burst into flame and painted an orange trail in the darkness. Suddenly he stabbed the fiery point at the girl, so rapidly that she cried out before she realized she had not been touched. Again Dreamer whirled around
and jabbed at her without striking.

  “The earth; I became like him, I became ferocious,” the priest chanted as Dreamer reeled through the lodge, sweeping up the other poles one by one from the fire and into his dance. He stomped out the feather circles, blasting white down into the air like a snowstorm. Her head was whirling as wildly as the dance. In the darkness the people’s eyes gleamed red. With every lunge of the burning lance they shouted.

  Abruptly the priest stopped singing. Dreamer laid the last pole, now no longer than a lance, into the fire once more and stepped back. Except for the heaving of his chest, he stood as still as the tree trunk pillars beside him. Sweat rinsed dark streaks through his white stain. The priest motioned to one of his assistants, who gathered a few coals from the fire and heaped them between the fire pit and the entrance tunnel. Kneeling beside them, he deftly cut a shock of sweet grass into bits and blended them into a lump of buffalo fat. He worked in silence, all eyes upon his hands.

  How long she had been inside this lodge! The night must be nearly over. She looked up to the holes in the roof, still crowded with villagers, who were dripping but heedless of the storm. The rain-darkened fragments of sky that showed between them were of no use in distinguishing night from morning.

  All these people around her, normally so spirited and free-spoken, were somber. Wolfstar sat like a stranger beside her. The weight of it all pressed upon her like the close air of those burning summer afternoons that now seemed from another lifetime.

  The assistant set his mixture of sweet grass and fat on the coals. It sizzled and coughed up a cloud of smoke. The smoke rose and spread throughout the lodge, like the bad feeling that hung in the air and grew heavier with every passing moment.

  Finally the priest turned to Wolfstar and spoke. “Bring the girl.”

  She did not move. Wolfstar stood over her, motioning for her to stand. All eyes were on her. Unable to think of any other course, she rose on trembling legs, and followed Wolfstar to the priest.

  Dreamer stepped forward and drew up something in his hand that was visible only for the instant that the dim red glinted off it—a knife.

  Her heartbeat crashed crazily through her body. As he raised the blade, her throat clenched tight as a fist. He began to slice, but she felt nothing. The blade did not touch her skin. Meticulously he slit only the calfskin dress, from collar to hem. The priest slipped the dress from her shoulders, and with hide daubers the assistants fell to painting her from head to ankle, black on one side and red on the other.

  In her relief that Dreamer had not cut out her heart, she barely felt the grease-paint being smeared on her body. How much longer could she keep this secret that everyone knew? At the edge of the fire pit she could barely make out one of the poles lying with one end in the fire—it was shorter than her arm.

  The men had finished painting her. They slipped a new calfskin dress, black as her hair, over her head, and began chanting, “They are making you, they are making you, of earth.”

  This she understood: they were turning her back into earth: killing her. She could not control her trembling as they slid a pair of black moccasins onto her feet. The smoke and the fear and the heat from so many bodies made her grease-paint coating unbearable.

  “They are making you, they are making you, of earth.”

  Opening a large hide box that must have been the Morning Star sacred bundle, the priest pulled out a bow and passed it four times through the smoke still rising from the sweet grass–buffalo fat ball. Then he reached for a quiver and performed the same ritual. Then an arrow, a red-bowled pipe, an ear of corn, owl skins. Four times each he guided the procession of sacred objects through the purifying smoke.

  Lastly he fished out a long, braided leather cord. It, too, passed through the smoke four times before the priest reached out with it toward the girl’s left hand, singing, “Cloud comes yonder. The thongs that are tied on. See, cloud comes yonder.”

  She strangled a scream as the priest began to tie her hands.

  The thong tightened around her wrists as if around her throat. “Not for long does she look about, not for long does she stand,” the priest cried as he lashed her hands. Tears trickled down his face, but the ever-present false smile twisted his expression into a grotesque leer.

  Panic burbled up like bile in her throat. This must be the end.

  Other voices joined in his song, many of the people weeping openly as they chanted, “Not for long does she stand, not for long does she move.” Even Dreamer seemed mournful. Strangely, everyone grieved at killing her.

  Everyone but Wolfstar. He stood nearby, dry-eyed.

  Tears of horror swelled in her eyes. She continued to try to feign ignorance, though she was the only one still pretending. She felt the priest’s hand on her shoulder like a spider. He gestured toward the smoke.

  Slowly, she walked through it, her eyes stinging, her quiet movement belying her mounting hysteria.

  He is afraid to touch me, she suddenly realized. Just like Wolfstar—they are all afraid the Morning Star will kill them if they touch me! Frantically, she grasped at this knowledge as the priest bade her walk through a second time. Not one of the Pawnee had ever touched her skin, even by accident. They’ll touch my dress … my hair … but they won’t touch me, she drummed in her head, groping for a plan.

  But anyone could launch an arrow through her back without touching her, and tonight every man carried his bow.

  Slowly, she walked through the blinding smoke for the third time. Now she stood at the brink: only one more pass to make through the smoke. The priest grimaced at her through the haze, his face illuminated only where the wetness of his tears reflected the red gleam from the coals. The people’s sobbing and wailing threatened to smother her. “Not for long does she lift her foot, not for long does she set out walking,” they sang.

  She choked through the smoke. Her hands were tied. She had no horse. She had no weapon. Yet a feeling of invulnerability flooded her. She would not die. She had fought too hard for too long to die now. Intermingled with the crying voices a faraway song seeped into her, long neglected and almost forgotten. It hummed faintly at first, but as she recognized and welcomed it, it reverberated in her breast with absolute conviction: I am the Great One!

  That instant the Pawnee song ended. The echo of the last word receded slowly into the night among muffled sobs. She absorbed a strange comfort from the thrumming of the rain on the roof, as if she were safe and dry in her own bed.

  “Hurry,” Wolfstar whispered at her elbow. Her eyes caught a twitch of his hands in the darkness, wanting to shove her toward the smoke.

  The girl looked into Wolfstar’s face.

  She said slowly, “You can’t touch me.” She turned toward the smoky black, to the many more enemies she could not see surrounding her. “I am the Great One. None of you can touch me.” Then resolutely she turned and walked toward the entrance tunnel.

  No Pawnee moved or spoke.

  Her bound hands outstretched, she hurried through the darkness toward the sound of the rain. She stumbled over someone and slammed her shoulder against a wall, followed the wall with her hands as it opened into the passageway. Her eyes and nose were running so badly from the smoke that for an instant she did not notice the rain streaming down her face.

  She was out, but she could see almost nothing through billowing sheets of water in the dark gray of dawn. The stunned gathering behind her began to crawl with confusion. She ran.

  Her bound hands swung and bounced crazily off her thighs as the long grass, beaten down by the rain, snatched at her feet like snares. She squinted through the water pouring into her eyes, unable to wipe it away, searching for something, a horse, anything. The calfskin dress and moccasins quickly grew heavy with water, until she was lurching along, every step planting itself by accident. Behind her, shouting voices wove through the rain.

  Suddenly her feet slid out from under her. She flipped sideways into the ground, and as her shoulder blade struck she felt
the thong between her wrists snap. Pain surged through her shoulder, but her hands were free. She floundered in the soaking dress as if in a spider’s web. Clutching the slick grass, she finally pulled herself to her feet. Before she could stand, however, something grasped the scruff of her dress and yanked her upright.

  Wolfstar. His eyes blazed with something she had never seen before. Screaming, she struggled to wrench herself from his grasp.

  “Down in the wash,” he shouted over her cries and the roar of the rain, thrusting his free hand out toward the gully ahead.

  “Never!” she shrieked, twisting away from him.

  “Bull is down in the wash,” he shouted at her as she started to run in the opposite direction.

  She stopped.

  “Hurry! They’re coming!” He flung his arm toward where the earth dropped away a few paces beyond him. “Your horse is waiting in the gulch.”

  She stood paralyzed. Did he really mean to help her, or was this another pretense to lure her to her death? Her gaze flashed from the ravine’s edge to Wolfstar’s wildly lit face, and back again. She could hear voices closing behind her.

  “Hurry!” Wolfstar screamed.

  She hesitated another instant, then bolted for the edge of the gulch and leaped off.

  Plunging feet first down the sheer incline, she careened through the crumbling mud, barely able to kick one foot out in front of the other. At the bottom, knee-deep in the floodwater raging through the wash, stood Bull. She slammed into his side.

  He began rearing and she grasped at his neck and back to stop him. He wore no saddle, but she managed to grab a saddlebag.

  “It’s me, Bull, it’s me,” she cried, struggling to gain her footing in the current. She groped along his face and found the knot that held him to his tether, but her stiff fingers were slimy with grease-paint and rain and mud and she could not loosen the swollen leather. From far above she heard sharp voices. Frantically she dug at the slippery lump.

  “Steady,” she said in a voice as close to soothing as she could make it, trying to shove the bridle off as Bull snarled, but he wrenched his head away. Her fumbling hands caught the tether. The stake!