Blood Indigo

by Talulah J. Sullivan

  The good-natured laugh spread, and Madoc joined in. Hard to remain solemn during First Running. Better to let thisSun’s bliss fill him. Whatever reasons the adults gathered were, after all, inconsequential. The season’s first run of silvers had been spotted downRiver. It meant work, ai’o, but it also meant gathering and games and dancing and cookpots filled to brimming…

  Like now. The teasing odors wafting from the cooking hearths thought to slow Madoc, but he kept going—steadfast as the best Naisgwyr’uq hunter, he congratulated himself—and raced upward as he reached the main stair.

  By the fifth terrace, however, he’d stopped for a breather. Foiling many floods, the Great Mound also thwarted quick ascent. The hands Madoc propped against his hide-clad knees gave little comfort: pale streaks of salt, callused every bit as hard as Tokela’s, but podgy instead of quick-fingered, not yet nimble enough for the finer tasks of netting upkeep. Instead Madoc found solace in eyeing the considerable distance he’d already climbed. Not many his age could run so well and fast, after all.

  Still, good to wait a little longer before resuming his climb. Nothing worse than heaving his way to the top terraces—not only from the dignity befitting a son of chieftains a’Naišwyrh, but because Madoc hoped to surprise Tokela.

  More proof Madoc was strong for his age: it didn’t take long to catch his breath. Tossing the thatch of Sun-tipped, unruly bronze from his face, Madoc skipped upward, counting another four and two of terraces by the dens and hollows of each level. Almost there. And not as Tokela oft teased him—heavy-footed as a herd of shaggy curvehorns—but sly, and gentle-quick.

  “—you so soon forgotten?”

  Madoc hesitated midstep. His dam’s voice, stern and subdued, floated about the topmost terrace. A pause followed, then a low, halting response. Tokela.

  Ai, and what had his cousin done now? Madoc crept back down to the hollow beneath the upper scaffolding, peering up through the wooden slats. He saw the soles of his dam’s boots, then the midcalf sway of her Forest-coloured kirtles revealing the bright turquoise head wrap limned against treetops and Sky. There was no sight of Tokela, only the familiar comfort of scent—evergreen, sweat grown sharper thisHoop, and a hint of River wrack. Tokela must be over against the cliff edge railing.

  He’d even less fear of heights than most, had Tokela. Would lean out into Wind from the highest branches, enough to sent Madoc’s heart aflutter, but never once had Wind betrayed him.

  “Tokela.” Inhya’s kirtles gave another sway. “Even during festival there is work to be done. First Running comes. Branches must be felled in preparation. Your uncle chose you and several others to accompany him.”

  Madoc frowned. Choosing the right branches and taking them to the spawning streams, receptacles for the coming harvest of tasty roe, was a task given to oških. Tracing his own hennaed Clan Marks, he frowned harder. If Tokela was old enough for the felling, then he was old enough to have his Marks replaced with indigo, to take his next path. And that meant Tokela was old enough to leave the den he shared with Madoc and the other children and remove to where the males laired. Tokela would no longer be ahlóssa, but oških.

  Madoc didn’t like this, not in the least.

  “It is an honour.” Inhya sounded… uncertain? “Why should Sarinak not include you?”

  Tokela didn’t answer.

  “Perhaps it would help.”

  “Help how?” Soft, proper and respectful to one’s elders. Yet. There was something… wayward underneath. Lately when Tokela spoke, his tone flirted with the boundaries of courtesy. As if he’d found a secret, one he would not tell.

  “What happened is a sign, nothing more. You are too far past your changing time, that is all. Your heart longs for a place.”

  What had happened? And… changing? Tokela wasn’t past any time. Tokela’d had the wyrh tree tattooed upon his ribs several summerings past, true, but even then he’d not gone to the oških dens like many did. Tokela hadn't so much as started to wrap his clout differently, though this past wintering had seen him grow taller, quieter, making Madoc fear the worst. But nothing had come of it, to Madoc’s relief.

  Tokela wasn’t oških, not yet! All oških did was scuffle and preen, swagger and rut each other!

  Sinking back against the stones, Madoc reached into his own memory. He himself had been possessed of three summerings when Tokela’s dam and sire had been taken by River. Tokela’d had ten. Now Madoc was twelve summerings, so Tokela possessed…

  Madoc’s frown turned puzzled. Most took the path from ahlóssa to oških before they reached twenty summerings.

  “Why should it matter?” Tokela answered, still soft. Still coiling, underground, with not-quite-resentment. “Why are you both so set upon—?”

  “Why are you not? If you go to fell, then it’s seen that you're starting down a proper path.” More silence. “You know he won’t ask again.”

  “Then we should both be content.”

  “Content? Content cannot stop the talk, growing with every return of Brother Moon!”

  Talk. What talk? Madoc cocked his head to better hear.

  “You’ve been given an honour you will not refuse. A chance to prove…” Inhya’s voice trailed off.

  “Prove what, my mother?”

  Madoc winced. Tokela sounded more of frostKin than the affectionate brother-cousin Madoc knew.

  “You misconstrue.” No less adept at frost, Inhya padded nigh silent across the terrace and came to a halt directly over Madoc’s hiding place. “I’ve every right to remove you to the oških den. Why I haven’t is yet another source of speculation. But I know that you’re not—”

  “I know,” ai, still so soft, “what I’m not.”

  A breath, held between then, saying nothing that Madoc could understand. Then another shiver of bells; Inhya padding closer towards Tokela.

  “It remains that you are not yet oških. This is not your fault. But, now. This… this thing, this… image you’ve made.” It wavered into a silence laden with too many things to count.

  Ai, that was it. Tokela had been caught sketching. Again.

  If only their father could understand. Tokela’s lovely, lifelike sketches weren’t Shaping! Madoc knew what Shaping was—sorcery, evil, interference with the natural ways! Like the Moons-pale Chepiś giants, who had long ago Shaped parts of thisLand into unnatural Other.

  “They let me sketch.” Tokela’s voice made unwilling escape.

  “And you know why, Tokela. Your father came of midLands; he chose not to understand our mistrust of such things. Your dam…” Inhya’s voice quavered; through the slats Madoc saw her grasp the pouch at her hip with a rustle and clink of dangling shells. The touch seemed to give her strength. “Your dam was heedless of too many things.”

  Again, Tokela fell silent.

  “You broach dangerous paths, my son. This… thing that has shown itself to you”—another incomprehensible clutch at the pouch—“is a warning. You must cast aside anything that further threatens your place here, with your family.”

  “Do you think I don’t…?” It strangled into silence. Footsteps, stumbling-quick, from the far cliff edge, and Tokela’s figure lurched into view between the wooden slats of the terrace, making for the stair.

  Madoc angled back farther into hiding and held his breath.

  “You are a’Naišwyrh!” Inhya’s voice snapped like a midLands herder’s whip.

  Tokela halted as his boot touched the top step. He turned, slow, and Madoc could see his face at last. Above the faded Clan Marks livid against flushed cheeks, his eyes gleamed from the coppery black shadow of his forelock; through some oddling trick of Sun they seemed more high-polished silver than indigo-and-black.

  Tokela closed those eyes, ducked his head, and said, “A’io, hearth-chieftain.”

  So hoarse, so flat and resigned. Madoc hunched beneath the weight, miserable. It was the one thing he’d ever wanted and never received; to somehow be as deft a weaver as amongst midLands folk, repair
this frayed skein seeming to rip more, every Sun’s passage, within his own den.

  Tokela turned way, started to descend. Inhya’s voice halted him midstep, soft and somehow wounded.

  “Your dam was of thisLand, raised in the footsteps of her sire’s People. Before her heart… changed, she welcomed me here, too. She was daughter and sister to Beloved Ones.”

  Tokela kept shaking his head. Madoc was unsure whether it denied Inhya, or the sudden glitter in his nigh-hidden eyes.

  “This is your home. She would have wanted—”

  “My dam is dead.”

  The shock of hearing it—so blunt, so perilous—stilled Madoc's breath against his teeth.

  “And she would have told me what that”—a gesture towards Inhya—“is. Told me why.”

  “Tokela.” A warning. “There are things that should not soil our tongues. Your dam spoke of such things, heedless, and look where it got her.”

  “It got her,” Tokela said, deathly quiet, “with me. And that’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

  A small, choked sound came from Inhya.

  No hesitation this time; merely heavy footfalls, stumbling then strengthening, gaining. Madoc shoved back hard into the shadows of his hiding place just as Tokela came hurtling downwards.

  Madoc stayed pressed there, his heart nigh lifting the tunic from his breast, the rock cool against his back. On the terrace above, Inhya’s hands came to rest on the faded grey of the railing. Madoc knew those hands well, had known them since birth and even before, their slender, callused power smoothing over the belly that had sheltered him… for Madoc remembered, even though he’d been told it was impossible to know such things.

  His dam held a thin-stretched and crumpled skin. It resembled the bits of hide Tokela scavenged for his sketches.

  “It can’t be,” Inhya whispered. “I won’t let it be!” Her hands clenched, and she laid her head against them, started to sob.

  Madoc slid down the stone and curled his knees tightly to his chest, burying his face in the thick weave of his leggings. He didn’t understand. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

  THE COMPOUND was crowded: people heading to the communal cooking hearths, children laughing and fretting, dogs barking, guests arriving and being settled. Then, voices, rising in surprise; hands making as if to grasp Tokela as he darted, twisted, and slipped through.

  None of it mattered. By the time he gained the stair to Talking Bluff, Tokela was running.

  He clambered up the drum heights three strides at a time, refusing to look back or so much as cast a glance at the shining, massive ribbon of water that fascinated… repelled… dominated him. From the moment She had taken his parents, River had been both succour and terror.

  Now, it was the latter. He fled Her. Fled Naišwyrh’uq.

  The drumKeeper, lounging by the great talking drums and smoking a pipe with an acquaintance, gave a small yip of query. Perhaps they wondered at his haste. Perhaps it had nothing to do with him.

  No matter—he kept going.

  Away. Outward. Over stony crags, through a clearing of scattered logs and stumps recently harvested for Fire’s feeding, into a meadow. Tall new grass bent in the wake of his passage, swaying with lastdark’s wet. A clump of grazingKin spooked in his wake.

  Tokela wanted trees to take him in, bracken and moss to muffle and hide his passing, hidden pools still enough to be silent and clear enough to wash bone-deep apprehensions. His shadow flitted beside him in an unending race, then flickered and disappeared as he ran from field into Forest. The going slowed him, but only a little. Tokela’s feet had eyes; his body tensed keen with running-memory, his nostrils flared to scent his way, his eyes gleamed with the darksight gifted to all kin—footed, furred, feathered, and hoofed—by the Grandmother who bore them upon Her belly.

  Over rotting stumps and under low-hanging, mossy branches of standingKin; here a twist, there a leap. One of hedgeKin puffed up to twice ša’s bulk and growled from a burrow entry as Tokela trod too close; a tree-lounging wildcat twitched ša’s tail, beryl eyes watching avidly for a half-breath then slitting, disinterested.

  Finally, quivering limbs and burning lungs enforced a floundering halt. Tokela propped palms on thighs. His eyes stung, his tunic clung to the small of his back, the thin ahlóssa braid wrapped slick and serpentine about his throat.

  Truth more and more seemed the ultimate pursuer, and him Dancing it from childish whisper to ripe reproach.

  You are a’Naišwyrh!

  Hard to believe, when she didn’t.

  Wind had fallen. The only sound was Tokela’s lungs labouring against the cool, damp air. Forest lay sparser here, Sun loosing gilt arrows through the treetops, and…

  Tokela stiffened.

  He’d never seen such a thing before. Never wandered into this particular edge of wild. Yet he’d no doubt what it was: Šilombiš’okpulo. The forbidden place.

  And an extraordinary, outLand thing guarded it.

  Tokela crept closer, every sense twitching. The arch seemed of rare, long-polished stone; it reached into the ancient canopy and also tunneled deep. A guardian like—yet unlike—the tight-woven trees that led into the Great Mound. And tall, ai, it reached taller than five of Tokela standing atop himself, glowing ebon-smooth as the obsidian point to a MedicineKeeper’s knife. On either side as far as Tokela could see, the forbidden place lay choked by a tangle of brier. Coiled unnaturally tight, as if even a stray bough didn’t dare to grow sideways, and the scattered bits of sun that filtered through lent no light. The thing seemed to suck them up, swallow them. Nothing reflected.

  As if from far away, a small Riverling could be heard, making Her way through the thicket, gleaming and glittering through briar. She was unafraid of this thing. So must he be.

  Nevertheless, fear and fascination did battle within his breast. Fingers twitching with the urge to sketch it, capture it, Tokela drew closer, step by wary step.

  Got a mere five paces away before he realised what he was doing. He halted. Crouched. Contemplated.

  None here could say him nay. None would even know. It would be a challenge, to see if he could capture the beauty and terror of such a thing in a mere sketch. Perhaps even carry the memory of it with him…

  Take the image of something Shaped back into his home? The thought prompted a shudder, bone-deep. Why would he ever think of such a thing?

  Perhaps the thing had the power to turn his heart. He could feel the draw of it, an oddling, silent, thrum mimicking his heartbeat. All the taleKeepers warned how there was a arch of unnatural stone and briar that guarded an evil place—a place where Chepiś sorcery had festered and gone mad.

  He should go back. Leave this forbidden place behind and never think upon it again.

  Deliberately, Tokela rose, eyed the thing, then turned away.

  A sharp crack! made him whirl back towards it, hand to knife.

  The gate… entryway… whatever-it-was spoke again, with another crack then a deep drone. Shards of what looked like SkyFire chased across its surface—only this flared blue-white, not gold, amidst pitch. Tokela froze beneath the burst of light and sound, staring, transfixed, whilst all the while the thing flashed and leapt, speaking… n’da, it was a Dance. It moved and sparked akin to the rare Star metal he'd occasionally seen in trader hands, or the shimmer-melt writhe of copper in a consecrated forge.

  It seemed full of intention. It seemed… alive.

  Perhaps it was. If something Danced, his dam’s dam had once said, then ša wasn’t it, wasn’t a thing. Ša had a place on Grandmother’s belly, and a name.

  So Tokela jerked his chin upward, answered with the outLand name used by taleKeepers. “You are t’rešalt.”

  Another spackle of light and sound, as if in acknowledgement.

  Names had power. His own, never spoken even amidst his family, had meanings coiled like serpentKin beneath: Tohwakelifitčiluka. Eyes of Stars.

  Chepiś, it was said, had come from Stars. The same Stars forbidd
en to any save the ancestors.

  Look where it got her.

  It got her with me.

  Had this been the same place through which his dam had passed to meet with Chepiś? Could it answer riddles?

  Tokela wrapped his arms about his knees and rocked back and forth, contemplating the entry with darkened eyes and darker thoughts. The t’rešalt smelt of Sky gathering a storm, and emitted a strange, not-quite-croon that teased at the edges of hearing.

  A question? An answer?

  He lurched upward, drew the dagger from the sheath at his calf, and strode forwards.

  “I TRIED,” Inhya said, settling beside the hearth.

  Sarinak said nothing, laying the meal before her with no less of the grave pride he’d shown upon their firstdark’s sharing of hearth and blanket. The horseClans moieties required a spouse who could provide a good meal, a good tipo to shelter a family, and a fine string of horses. Sarinak a’Naišwyrh had, of course, possessed none of those. So in wooing Inhya a’Šaákfo, he’d learned from his granddam how to prepare more than trail food. He’d set up a scrim of colourful woollens within the dens where so many of his tribe had espoused their mates, and if the gathered mounts had been, instead of the lithe horses of her birthing-tribe, several braces of stout dogs and a small herd of curvehorns—they were enough to pull any travelling rig she would care to load.

  Even Inhya’s granddam had given grudging approval to “that Mound dwelling whelp’s efforts.”

  The Hoop had spun nearly thirty winterings since Inhya had accepted Sarinak’s offerings, but in this much he still insisted: upon each quartering of Brother Moon, with skills uncustomary to males a’Naišwyrh, he’d cook a meal with his own hands, upon their own hearth, in their own company.

  Such times, naturally, were a perfect opportunity to speak of heart matters.

  “I tried,” Inhya ventured again.

  Sarinak put a wide-mouthed copper drinking bowl between them and poured steaming water from a fat jar. A shrug lifted his broad shoulders. “You waste breath with that one.”