Blood Indigo

by Talulah J. Sullivan

  If he stayed here, he would die.

  Keeping his eyes upon the leader, Tokela slid from his boots, one then the other. Gripping the ground with long, bare toes, he snaked his free hand behind the small of his back, palm surveying the tough bark.

  The chastised youngster’s ears flattened; the two pacing went still. The leader’s head lowered.

  Tokela spun, digging feet, fingers, and knife into the bow tree. Almost in the same breath, the creatures leapt to the attack.

  Tokela wasn’t there. As the creatures piled against the trunk, he scrabbled higher into the bow tree. The huge leader leapt after. Stinking breath heated Tokela’s backside, fangs stabbing sharp as the creature grabbed his calf. Only the thick hide leggings gave protection from a bone-deep bite; unfortunately they allowed the creature better hold. Shaking its massive head, it flung Tokela against the bow tree as if he were an ill-tied door flap. Sparks popped behind his eyes; he stayed up only by virtue of the panicked grip on his deep-dug copper blade.

  Growling, the leader set itself to finding some purchase against the trunk, braced, pulled. Tokela’s arm tendons stretched nigh to ripping, but he managed to hang on, gave a vicious, desperate kick with his free leg. It was enough. The creature’s long claws suited more dog than any cat, and it fell with a tearing of leather and flesh. A muffled scream bursting from his throat, Tokela hauled himself upward, even as the creature hit the ground with a crack! that would have broken any normal creature’s spine.

  The others clawed and scrabbled, trying to follow. The bow tree shuddered and rocked beneath the onslaught. Tokela’s slender build for once proved boon instead of bane. He kept climbing, husking faint orisons to the tree from which his People made some of the finest bows in thisLand. The creatures kept venting their fury against his haven.

  Persistent. But he’d climbed enough to be safe. With a shaky groan, Tokela leaned hard against the trunk. Only then did the hot blood of fight and flight drain away, leaving him shivering like the branches. His fingers wouldn’t let loose of his knife. His arm and leg flashed pain of bite and strain of ligament with every little movement. The scratches the creatures’ claws had left on his thighs, shoulders, and abdomen expanded from mere sting, to sullen and angry.

  If the creatures’ spittle was poisonous…

  Then none of it mattered. What did matter, now, was his leg. The blood smell would draw every predator around—it was driving Tokela nigh mad, a thick, nauseated scorch in the back of his throat. Not to mention there’d be little need for poison if he bled out and fainted.

  The tree stopped swaying. Tokela peered down with bleary eyes. The creatures had abandoned their punishment of the tree, instead circling it with thwarted clucks and rumbles. The grey-brindled leader sat on its haunches, peering upward. The eerie cognisance in its gaze filled Tokela’s heart with ice and sickness.

  Was that what Inhya saw—n’da, felt?—when she looked into his eyes? Tokela had taken her recent inability to hold his stare as a shameful and sorry triumph; now it hurt him, wondering.

  Breaking the creature’s gaze with a small shudder, Tokela decided the stouter limb just an arm’s length away might make a safer perch, and tried to shove upright. It was a miserable failure. To move, after being still, was agony. It took every fibre of will Tokela possessed to merely crawl across the limb. Forever, it seemed—with the creatures following every wobble, every shift.

  Finally, he lowered himself against the thick branch, panting and grateful.

  The leg looked worse than it was; bleeding, a’io, but not spurting. Untying his hip wrap proved difficult; easing out of it, more agony. Again, forever, and once Tokela had the thing free he had to lean back, wait until his heart stopped pounding and his limbs stopped jerking. Only then could he even think of wielding his knife in what should have been an easy task: ripping the triangle of spun seed-pod fibre in two. No doubt he’d catch his fair share of misery from Inhya for ruining new finery.

  Assuming he made it back.

  He had to prise his hands from his slimed knife, fingers sticky with the creature’s… it had to be blood. Yet it was unnatural. Clotting slow and hued, not with the normal crimson of a sullen Sun’s rising over River, but like…

  Like indigo.

  One corner of his mouth gave a sudden tip upwards. With his middle fingers, Tokela scooped the blood from his blade then made two smears across his left cheek. Smile widening—a gleam of teeth that made the creatures below him bristle—Tokela did the other cheek then looked down. Growled back.

  “I’ll have a new fur for my bedshelf and teeth to string for a necklace.” Mere bravado. Yet the voicing of it soothed, almost as much as the prickle and draw of the oddling blood on his cheeks.

  The brindled leader settled onto his haunches. He looked set to wait forever.

  “We’ll see who can wait,” Tokela muttered under his breath.

  It was as if the creature understood. Teeth showed and the pale eyes gleamed, eerie and white as Starlight.

  Wind picked up and began to sway the tree branches, soft and sap-heavy, across Tokela’s sweat-streaked face. He tied the torn hip wrap snug about his wounded calf and let Wind ply what comforts They could. There would be little enough of those from here on out. He’d come away with not so much as a strip of dried meat, a handful of nuts, or fruit. A clutch of small amber berries lay well within reach. Unfortunately, an overabundance of those would merely make him piss his water away all the faster.

  Instead Tokela turned his attention to wrapping the lesser mauling on his right bicep, then set himself to cleaning his knife with peels of bark and what remained of his hip wrap. He’d begun a painstaking attention to the wrapped hilt when everything sidled abruptly sideways, skimming the hilt and his hands into a blur.

  The fuzzy vision retreated with several good blinks and a rub against his tunic sleeve. Likely a splash of sweat or a flake of blood in his eyes. He began cleaning again.

  Below, several of his captors had started to pace. The leader stood and began a strange, guttural… it was like to a howl, wavering upwards and tapering down.

  This meant something.

  Only Tokela wasn’t quite sure what it meant. He should know, certainly, but possibilities kept drifting, just past any reach. And the odd scum—sweat or blood—returned. Tokela gave a fierce rub of his eyes, nearly dropped his knife. Catching it just before it would have fallen, he clutched it tight. Sweat rashed over him, prompting a wave of shivers. Dully, Tokela contemplated this, came to a just as leaden conclusion. The bites. Poisoned.

  The lead creature kept yowling. Tokela snarled back, but it wavered, threaded with fear. The creatures knew. Had likely known all along what would happen, its timing and its end.

  The rest took up the noise—not anywhere near as melodious as the pack-call of wolfKin, so Tokela refused to designate it a true howl. For all the good it did him. Soon or late, he was going to drop out of this tree, easy meat…

  N’da. Tokela began unwrapping the bandages from his leg and arm, revealing an unhealthy, black and yellow tinge to the bites like aged bruises. The sick-sweet reek of it made him gag.

  It also cleared his head.

  Gritting his teeth, Tokela sheathed his dagger and began binding himself to his perch with the soiled bandages. If he had to die, it was not going to be as meat for those things. Ai, something would have him in the end, but the pack would have to wait for whatever dropped from the scavenges of flyingKin.

  If they were indeed flyingKin, not Shaped into obscenity like the twisted whatever-they-weres below.

  Hard—so hard—to focus. It shouldn’t be. Tokela had used these wraps and knots since his fingers had grown limber enough to rig weirs and mend nets. The creatures’ caterwauling didn’t help; increasing in pitch, a maddening hum behind his ears that he couldn’t quite hear, only feel.

  And answers, faint but unmistakable. Others approached. Tokela tried to squint through the trees, but his vision kept fading into blurry shadows. His h
ands, too, were traitorous, twitching as he worked. His teeth chattered; he gritted them, entreating whatever Spirits would listen that the fabric should not give when he finally did fall.

  Lashed to the tree like a wyrhling ship’s sails during Wind’s anger, Tokela growled down at the crooning creatures again.

  The leader paid no attention; he’d fallen silent, alert. As quiet spread through the remaining creatures, Tokela also heard it. Different, this, a high-pitched drone hanging in the treetops. Disturbing, too; akin to the lamentations that would echo up and down River when She received ash and bone on Longest Dark.

  The leader whined, thin and hoarse. The others resumed their aimless self-circles. Dark clouds kept skimming Tokela’s gaze, sloe flecked with shards of blue-white.

  Like the skin of the t’rešalt.

  Tokela listed sideways, stayed in the tree only by virtue of his self-made fetters. Tried once more to blink away the lingering sparks.

  But n’da, even the creatures below were plagued with the things. The leader’s brindled fur seemed alive with pale flicker-flies. Tokela found himself staring, hanging limp with bark scraping his face and neck. Beneath his refuge the predators squirmed, swerved, bit at their haunches.

  The strange drone came closer, filling his chest; contrarily, it hoisted Tokela back into his own senses. Clearly a voice this time, a deep drone hinged in an unmusical fashion that nevertheless suggested talk being made, But even Matwau, the tall ones who traversed Sea to trade with People, didn’t speak so harsh.

  Harsh or no, it held a Power akin to taleKeepers singing over solstice Fires. It buzzed at the base of Tokela’s neck and spine, an itch impossible to scratch.

  The predators fled. One heartbeat they were there, and the next, vanished.

  Save, of course, the dead one.

  Silence hung in the canopy. The undergrowth gave a rustle. A voice boomed through the silence.

  Tokela tried to move, draw his knife… something! Yet he could only loll against the branch, a hide and grass doll blinking scum from his eyes as this new unseen danger stalked him.

  Oddly enough, he found himself clinging to the strange new voice. Even if he didn’t understand a thing it said.

  The thicket shivered, parted. Tokela blinked rapidly, finally beheld a scrawny, colourful figure progressing on absurdly long legs. It seemed unfinished—or perhaps unfed. Tokela couldn’t see the two-legged’s face, but a pale mane squatted in tight curls atop its head, unbound and unadorned. And…

  And it must be the poison, cloaking his thoughts so they refused to stay with his body; wandering, justifying, nattering like little Kuli about inconsequentials whilst the poisonous ebon haze heeled him.

  The figure came to a halt below Tokela’s refuge and looked up, and the breath knocked within Tokela’s chest.

  The face he’d drawn… or enough like it as not to matter. His own fears, mirrored in an alien gaze. Shapers. Ghost-eyes.

  Chepiś.

  Its skin had the same Sky-sand hue as Brother Moon’s face. Its eyes were only a shade darker, with no normal spark of darksight even in dim shadows.

  How did they see?

  “Be eased, little one.”

  Either he was starting to imagine things, or the Chepiś was making a mangled attempt at Commingling-talk.

  “I shan’t eat you, though you were wise to not give these predators such trust.” The Chepiś gave a nudge with its foot to the slain creature, nodded upward. When Tokela merely hung there, blinking, the Chepiś made an expression with its face. It seemed a smile, though it could have been a snarl.

  Tokela wasn’t sure how to respond. Or if he could.

  The Chepiś laid a hand on the bow tree, gestured again. Again, it seemed friendly, almost earnest. “Come, little ghoteh. You’re safe enough now. Yes?”

  Go-tay? Yas? Nothing in Tokela tempted him to obey what talk he did understand. That it kept calling him “little” wasn’t encouraging.

  And he was going to be sick.

  He tried to rise, could not. Tried to slide back, could not. His free arm fell from the branch—and surely it did so slowly enough for him to halt it, but all Tokela could do was watch it fall, recoil, then hang, swinging limp and nerveless as a dead thing. He blinked down. The visage of the Chepiś seemed to float and waft below him, like the palest of Brother’s Moon’s siblings…

  Then it slipped and folded itself into the ebon cloak, taking the light and Tokela with it.

  4 – Madoc

  “I almost didn’t recognise you, sister-son! Eh, you’ve decided you won’t be waiting for your changing to grow tall?” Palatan’s greeting teased, yet all the while his eyes scanned the gathering; from Madoc’s eager face and over the Mound-People, then lingering with a frown upon Chogah, then to Aylaniś herself, questioning. Where is Anahli?

  Of late Aylaniś had no good answer. She tilted her head, making a quick scan of the Bowl within the Great Mound. No horizon here—and treeKin could disguise many things.

  Madoc was laughing, a delighted response peppered with breathless questions fit to outdo Kuli, who kept trying to interrupt. But Madoc kept his composure in one fashion—his manners—and pitched his queries in polite talk a’Šaákfo.

  Madoc’s father had a quizzical frown upon his face; a middle-aged male a’Naišwyrh had sidled up to murmur in his ear. A message of some import, from Sarinak’s reaction.

  “N’da, horse-chieftain, I’ve not yet seen Anahli.” Inhya’s decorum showed where Madoc’s had been patterned. Yet Aylaniś had never seen Madoc’s exuberance reflected in Inhya; even as ahlóssa had her Spirit tended grave. Dark eyes narrowing, Inhya furthered, “My other son, Tokela, is absent as well.”

  “Trouble travels in pairs, like Brother Moon’s siblings,” Aylaniś offered. “Perhaps our two have found each other and are comparing possibilities.”

  Hopefully that was all they were comparing, what with Anahli’s unseemly interest in the few things disallowed oških. Across Grandmother’s belly, with the rich variance of tribes and customs, some things were often agreed upon: for one, the right to court opposites had to be earned.

  Another burst of laughter from Madoc. The set of Inhya’s mouth turned from forbidding to fond.

  Aylaniś spoke to that; much easier. “Palatan is right: how Madoc has grown! He will have his indigo soon.”

  “Too soon, a’io?” Inhya’s dark eyes met Aylaniś’, who took the offered opening and touched her spouse-sister’s arm. They’d little enough in common, but a dam’s heart-longings made for easier agreement.

  “He will be the only get of your body.” Chogah slipped into their conversation like grease upon water.

  Aylaniś didn’t dignify it with so much as a glance. Inhya stiffened, towering over Chogah’s hunched form. Flawlessly polite, Inhya gave an upward tip of chin to acknowledge a guest, if not that guest’s talk, then spoke to Aylaniś. “I myself shall take your mounts to the grazing fields.” Taking first the rein of Aylaniś’s mare then Palatan’s, her eyes lingered upon her brother, fond, as she turned away with the horses. “We welcome you and your People, Aylaniś horse-chieftain.”

  Sarinak repeated the words then, with a rough muss to Madoc’s hair, made polite excuse and strode away with the male who’d first beckoned—some host business to attend.

  “And yet you banish your eldest to these.” Chogah gave a sneer after Inhya’s retreat. And ai, it had been that—albeit with head held high.

  “You are part of that reason, old viper,” Aylaniś gritted through bared teeth. “Your base cruelty does none of us credit.”

  “Is it cruel to remind one so set upon ignoring the ripples in one’s wake? Inhya abandoned her own tribe, after all.”

  “You would deny her the choice? Such talk is hardly respectful.”

  “Hunh! Hardly respectful is the way she treats that hearthling son of hers. Tokela, they call him here, when his mother called his Tohwakeli. As if even his name is forbidden!” Chogah pulled her shawl tighter. “Hunh!
As Inhya ruined the mother, she’ll ruin the son! And now, our Anahli… still, you insist upon abandoning your eldest to such foolishness?”

  Pointless to dignify such talk, yet Aylaniś had to respond, still through her teeth, “Kuli thrives here.”

  As if he’d heard his name, Kuli looked her way and grinned. Skipping over, he wrapped freckled arms about his dam, hugging close to her belly. “Aška, I’ve missed you.”

  Aylaniś smoothed her fingers through the tangled hair that had given him his child-name. “I’ve missed you, my little Fox.”

  Chogah made a disagreeable sound.

  Palatan had been watching them, a slight frown twitching at his new-scarred brow. He started to make his way closer despite being submerged beneath a joyous wave of ahlóssa chatter. Madoc was taking full advantage of Kuli’s absence.

  Kuli, in the meantime, had fixed an unflinching gaze upon Chogah. “Are you hungry, Aunt? There’s food over there.” He jerked his chin towards the cooking hearths.

  “Cheeky brat!” Chogah sniped back, yet she refrained from further invective. It had been so since she’d first laid eyes upon the baby sitting naked in the Breaking Ground, playing in the cinnabar dust as if Alekšu weren’t parsing his fate.

  Perhaps, in that moment, she had done. Palatan often claimed it as explanation for Chogah’s wariness of their youngest—but then, Palatan had no gift for prescience and, as one male in both Spirit and flesh, sparser connexion to such things.

  I’ve no need. You are the one who Walks my future, he would say to Aylaniś, softened after loving. You and our children.

  “…and Kuli is going back with you, isn’t he?” Madoc was saying. “Once Councils are done?”

  “If he wants to.” Palatan’s eyes were full of mischief as he meandered over.

  Madoc followed, face falling. “Only if he wants to?”

  Aylaniś answered glint with grin, even as Kuli shifted against her hip and hissed in the back of his throat. It wasn’t approving. Madoc’s nostrils curled in reply.

  “Anahli was at the cookFires when you arrived, Aška,” Kuli tossed his head at Madoc and turned pointedly to Aylaniś. “D’you want me to go find her?”