“All my life, I’ve feared Craal. But now I realize that I will not see Craal until I see the slave market at Denai. I wish we were home.”
Wisteria laughed softly. “You are afraid to stay, and I’m afraid to leave.”
“What do you mean?” Tull asked.
Wisteria had not meant to tell him, but they were far enough from camp so that no one else could hear. Her stomach knotted with fear, but she realized that she had been living a lie too long, that if she did not speak now, she would drive a wedge between them. “Tull, the night that Phylomon killed my parents, I think I went crazy. I felt as if everyone in town had turned against me, and I hated them. I can see now that I was crazy. Phylomon killed my parents, and I can never totally forgive him for that. But we were so in awe of him that no one could stop him. If anyone else had tried what he did, we would have tossed him into a bear pit. But not Phylomon. He was too much of a legend. The great warrior who once leveled Bashevgo. Too much of a hero.
“So after the execution, I saw Garamon. I told him I wanted vengeance, and he was like me, so angry that three of his brothers had died, that he was like a crazy man.” Wisteria halted. She did not know how much to reveal. She couldn’t tell him how she had given herself to Garamon. And she did not know if she should portray Garamon to be as ruthlessly evil as he’d seemed. She licked her lips. “Garamon said he’d give me that vengeance. Since there was practically no money in town, the men would have to work elsewhere. And while they were gone, he could arrange an attack by the slavers. He said we could empty the town, ship off every woman and child.”
Tull turned his head and gaped at her. Even in the dim moonlight, Wisteria could see his disbelief. It was not that the plan was impractical. It was just so totally corrupt.
Wisteria could not imagine what Tull was thinking about her now. She forged on. “But in order for the plan to work, he said we could not let the people in town have even a glimmer of hope for the future. He wanted me to come with you—to make sure the quest failed—so that there would be no hope for a big fish run in the spring, so the men would go out now, over the winter, to work in the mines down at White Rock.”
A pained expression drew across Tull’s face.
“What are you thinking?” Wisteria asked.
“Did you marry me only so that you could sabotage the quest?” he asked.
Wisteria hesitated. “I did at first. Until I realized that I love you. I … I have your baby in me. I couldn’t betray you now. Even to withhold the truth would be a form of betrayal.”
Tull did not speak for a long time. At last he sighed. “Don’t tell anyone about this. If you tell Phylomon, he would kill Garamon outright. I think I had better talk to him alone—give him a chance to get out of town. I can’t imagine him being as evil as you say. I’ll give him at least that much of a chance.”
Wisteria turned to Tull and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “Do not be afraid of Denai. I will come with you, Tull-zhoka-thrall,” she said in Pwi, “Tull with the love that enslaves.” She kissed him then, and he stroked her face. “Make love to me,” she said, and Tull smiled at her, pulled her hair roughly.
She bent forward and kissed him. She had trained him to take her roughly, but for once she did not want that. “Let’s try it your way for once. Make love to me tenderly.”
The only moon in the sky was Freya, and its light was dim as a star. Tirilee had been running almost ceaselessly for the past two weeks. After leaving the party, she made her way to the river alone, following the party by day, restlessly striking out in one direction at night, only to be pulled back to the party by morning light.
Her mother had warned her as a child that this would happen. The brief dizzying flashes of wantonness were first to strike, like a rush of a heady wine. But then came the night fevers that shook her to the bone, and the restlessness, the desire to run. So, she raced under the starlight just as she was running now, driving ahead of the party through thick brush. She was far ahead of the others, and for the first time she believed she could finally leave them. She had been climbing the hills all afternoon, but she smelled something rich and wonderful like a spice in the air or the scent of boiling honey, something that called her.
She leapt over a bush, and a bird chirped a question, and then she was in the pines again, loping along a trail. She kept it up for an hour until a wind from the hills blew to her again, and the beauty of that scent almost staggered her.
Her mother, Levarran, had told her of the restlessness, but had never told her of this dark craving to follow an unknown smell. She’d been so young when she was taken that Tirilee felt sure Levarran would have told her many things to prepare her for this, had she lived.
Now she was running, racing over the hills, free forever. The scent came again, beautiful, strong, and heady, and she turned to her right and leapt through thick ferns and began climbing. She came to a small windswept meadow and peered up and her heart beat so fiercely she thought it might open her chest: It was there! Just as she had known it would be! Aspen trees with white trunks silvered by moonlight.
Tirilee fell to the ground, and without realizing it, a cry ripped from her throat, a long beautiful eerie note that carried on the wind like the cry of a hawk.
She listened for a long and painful moment, trying to still her heavy breathing. She waited. There was no answer. No Dryad served this stand of aspen. Tirilee cried for joy and rushed up hill to inhale the rich aroma of the aspen, the luscious smell of rotting leaves on the forest floor, the sap that flowed through their sluggish veins. It carried an aroma more beautiful than anything she had ever known. Yet her legs were became tired and leaden, and she staggered the last few yards. The time for running had stopped. She had found her home.
That morning, Wisteria woke and considered her conversation with Tull from the night before. In her father’s house, she’d always been such a child. Her father had ordered her about as if she were a servant, making her feel weak, incapable, sometimes embarrassing her. Because he’d been a Dicton, had carried the ancient memories in his head, she realized that he felt superior to those who were not born with a memory of English. Because he felt powerful, he’d treated her like an idiot.
Yet, this morning, for the first time in ages, she felt powerful. Confessing to Tull about her deal with Garamon had given her a sense of power, a taste of victory and independence. She felt wholesome and clean, and she had almost nothing to hide anymore.
At sunrise, the men looked ragged and worn, and Wisteria decided that pregnant or not, she’d take some of the burden from them. She laid the morning fire, then went to work preparing corn cakes and bottled curry sausages for breakfast. Scandal got up, wrapped a blanket around himself and watched her sullenly, too worn to help.
As they ate, a terrible ruckus rose from their barrel—the sound of armored scales scraping and slapping the wood, thrashing water, and a long keening squeak that was somehow frightening simply because it was so odd. When the thrashing quieted, Ayuvah jumped up on the wagon and popped the top of the barrel open.
“I can’t tell for sure—but it looks as if the serpents have been fighting … yeah. There is blood in the water.”
Phylomon climbed on the wagon and peered into the barrel. “Serpents are herd animals; they don’t fight with each other,” he said, “except the females, when they are fighting for a rock to attach their eggs to.” He looked into the barrel for a long time, and then said. “It is as I feared. They had to eat one of their own.”
“You mean one’s dead?” Scandal asked.
“More than dead,” Phylomon said, “consumed. Young serpents normally eat their weight in food once a day. With eighty serpents at fifty pounds each, they’ll want two tons of meat a day. I don’t know that we’ll need that much just to keep them alive, but we’ll need something.”
“I’ve got a hundred pounds of rations left,” Scandal said. “They can have it all.”
“That wouldn’t last long. Someone is going to
have to spend the day hunting,” Phylomon suggested. A serpent jumped from the barrel and snapped at Phylomon’s face. He placed the lid back on the barrel.
“Ayaah,” Scandal said, “Well, it had best be you, then. You could probably outhunt any two of us.”
So Phylomon spent the day hunting while the rest traveled. They made their way over the hills, and to Wisteria, it seemed as if the day were spent in one long steady climb. They passed only one water hole, a muddy pond where a trickle ran down the hill through a thicket of dry reeds.
The mud at the side of the pond was covered with the tracks of Mastodon Men, and the group hurried away. With the Mastodon Men about, Born-in-Snow stayed close to Wisteria, and she felt comforted, though she knew that he was only protecting his precious mammoth.
At sundown, Phylomon brought in two small wild hogs and a fawn that was just losing its spots. He dumped the carcasses into the barrel unceremoniously, and the serpents thrashed the water and scraped the barrel in a feeding frenzy, and then lay still.
“That water is beginning to foul,” he said, putting the lid loosely over the barrel, leaving a crack so the serpents could breathe.
“Two hundred pounds of meat,” Phylomon said. “I don’t think it’s enough.”
“See any sign of moose?” Scandal asked.
“Not down here,” Phylomon said. “Too many Mastodon Men hereabouts. They’ll stay up in higher range in the summer, then head down into the fields for the winter. Even if they pass through, they won’t be here long. I think that in the morning, we should all go hunting. There’s a large herd of wild hog up here—if we had four guns, we’d get a lot of meat quickly.”
That night, Wisteria took a bucket of water and went to wash her clothes away from the camp. She took off her dress and put it in the bucket, put in some flakes of lye soap, and worked the dress with her fingers, trying to banish the smell of mammoth. She’d only been at it a moment when someone touched her shoulder.
“I knew I’d find you naked,” Scandal said. “You can’t resist showing me your body. I knew it all along—you are one of those who love, I see it in your eyes.”
She looked up at the fat man, and he smiled. His beard was combed, and he wore a fine green shirt, as if he’d dressed to meet her on a date.
“I thought you’d want Tirilee?” Wisteria said, pulling the wet dress from the bucket to cover herself.
Scandal laughed. “Of course I want Tirilee, if she were around. Who wouldn’t? I am a gourmet, after all, the Gourmet of Love. Nothing compares to a Dryad during her Time of Devotion. Of course I want that sweet child. She is the main course, but I want you for my appetizer. I need you.” Scandal pulled the wet dress back from her chest, looked down at her breasts.
Wisteria smiled. “I know what you need,” she said, and she stood and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
Scandal chuckled and pulled her forward, trying to kiss her, and she kneed him in the groin.
The fat man’s eyes bulged and he gasped for breath, fell to the ground and began groaning.
“You’ll be okay,” Wisteria told him, pulling on her dress. “That ought to hold you until you get to Denai.”
***
Chapter 19: A Bower of Fire
Tirilee slept most of the day and woke hungry. The hill held plenty of wild raspberries, and she spent an hour eating these and autumn rose apples. She caught a wild dove that had become snared in a thicket. After making a small meal, she found herself suddenly tired and fell asleep, but woke to the cry of a red-tailed hawk.
Perspiration poured from her body, and she wandered in a daze till dark. When an aspen grows, in each place where a root meets the surface, a new tree shoots up, so that the woods become very dense. Tirilee reached the deepest part of her thicket, and lay down. She wiped beaded sweat from her forehead and felt the palms of her hands. Even they were sweaty with a thick resinous oil.
She grabbed a sapling, smeared the resin along the branches, and bent the tree to the left, holding it fast for a moment. When she released it, the sapling remained exactly as she had placed it. In her mind she saw a picture of aspen branches interwoven to create a living wall, and as she thought about it, she began wiping the sweat from her brow and holding branches in place, weaving the tiny limbs to form a curtain in a huge circle, pulling branches from larger trees down as a roof.
The idea excited her, and the sweat poured from her more fiercely as she worked. She stopped several times during the night, just long enough to run downhill to a small stream and fill her belly with water.
By dawn, she had woven a bower of living trees, and in the center of her home, she raked together a pile of leaves to be her nest.
Tirilee closed her eyes and hummed to herself, sitting in the great bed of leaves. As suddenly as she had begun to perspire, she stopped. She knew what she must do next, but she did not want to do it.
For hours she fought the urge. Her lips began to burn, as if they had been rubbed with pepper. Her skin felt alive to the touch, and she could feel the gentlest wind play across her body. She took off her clothes and stood at the entrance of her nest. It was getting late in the afternoon, and the sun was setting.
The red of the dying sun shone upon her aspens and upon her skin like fire, and she stood in the evening breeze and felt it play over her legs. Her breasts felt heavy and swollen, and she stroked them and marveled at how they had grown in a few short weeks. Her lips were on fire. Her breasts were on fire. Everywhere was fire. And in her mind, she began to compose a song about the beauty of fire.
Wisteria woke early in the morning, and sent the men off to hunt. Born-in-Snow took his mammoth downhill to a stream. Being a vegetarian, he was not willing to hunt. Wisteria got the wood to set a fire, then got out the pans and readied breakfast so that she could cook it in a hurry when the men returned.
At ten in the morning she heard a coughing sound uphill, among the alders and thick vine maple. It could have been a buck snorting, she thought—but it did not repeat itself—and bucks usually snort for several minutes.
Somehow, she knew that a Mastodon Man was near. She listened closely, got one of the guns, then dropped a shell into its chamber.
Heavy footsteps cracked in the brush uphill, and she backed slowly from the wagon, placing it between her and the sound. The forest here was thick, with trees rising tall, and a floor of ferns and smaller bushes below. She could not see more than forty feet in any direction, and she dared not take off running, for Mastodon Men could be all around her. She waited fifteen minutes. She began creeping toward an old pig trail, heard a stealthy movement behind.
She looked back and saw a Mastodon Man not forty feet away. She stopped dead in her tracks, knowing that the Mastodon Men are color blind and attracted by movement.
The Mastodon Man was large—over nine feet tall—and he knuckle-walked into the clearing to sniff at the wagon.
He looked at the breakfast pans and knocked them to the ground. Then knelt and sniffed the food. He’d broken a jar of pickled meat, and he picked it up and began eating.
Wisteria searched the clearing for others, but dared not move. There could be forty Mastodon Men hiding in the brush, and she’d never know. She decided it was safer to wait, and if one approached, she could shoot as a last resort.
She might not kill it, but the noise from the rifle might scare it long enough so that she could find a place to hide.
The Mastodon Man crept around the wagon, and she watched. He was an old male with a grizzled hide, and she saw that he walked with a slight limp. An old bull, she hoped, thinking he might be the deposed head of some tribe. That would be best. He might be alone.
The Mastodon Man glanced her direction, and suddenly stopped and stared at her, unmoving.
Wisteria held as still as possible, and he watched her for a full three minutes, trying to decide whether to investigate. He put his knuckles to the ground and began sniffing loudly.
Behind him, one of the serpents scraped the sides o
f the barrel with his spiked tail. The Mastodon Man leapt in the air and looked at the barrel. He sniffed furiously, the jumped up on the wagon and began pushing at the barrel. The serpents inside began swimming, thrashing the water.
Wisteria held still and watched him for several minutes. The Mastodon Man hammered at the barrel with his fist, trying to knock it open. Suddenly, quite by accident, he knocked the top off. He climbed up on top and looked into the dark water for a moment. The serpents thrashed, scraping the sides of the barrel with their armored fins. The Mastodon Man reached in, and let out a very human sounding yell of pain. One serpent actually leapt from the water and grabbed his face in its jaws while another snapped onto his shoulder.
The Mastodon Man tumbled full into the barrel, and for a long while the barrel hissed and seethed as the serpents fed in a frenzy.
Wisteria held place, frozen in fear, but no other Mastodon Men appeared.
The men returned to camp an hour later with three large pigs, and they cooked up a breakfast that included strips of fresh pork cheek.
As they sat eating, Scandal said, “Hah! Fifteen hundred pounds of meat for the day. You say we can get over the hills and meet the river by tonight?”
Phylomon nodded.
“Then we’re off to Denai. When we hit the river, we can jig us a couple of big serpents and store meat for a day or two. No more hunting. No more stinking water in our barrel! Just a couple more days of toil.”
Wisteria saw Tull flinch at the thought of Denai. His mind was not easy. Phylomon watched them. The blue man lay his head back and let the sun shine full upon his strange hairless face for a while. “You know, Tull, you are a lucky man.”
“Why is that?” Tull asked, his voice tinged with fear at the thought of entering Denai.
“You got your serpents, just as we needed them, and when it looked as if they’d starve, a Mastodon Man walked into camp and fed himself to them. And isn’t there a saying among the Pwi, that if a man and woman make a child on their wedding night, the wedding is blessed?”
Serpent Catch: Book Two of the Serpent Catch Series Page 12