People of the Black Sun(127)

Sweat mats my black hair to my temples and soaks the hide of my shirt, trickling down my sides. Warmth like this two moons before winter solstice is very odd, almost supernatural. By early morning we’d removed our capes and tied them around our waists. Tiny damp curls fringe Baji’s forehead, but the rest of her long hair flies around her shoulders in sinuous glistening locks. Her bow and quiver sway with her motions. She has tied her arrows together to keep them from rattling, and carries her war club in both hands, clutched across her chest for balance. Her candid black eyes scan the trees incessantly.

As I watch her, my heart aches. It seems impossible that we are separated by six hands distance. I feel her presence like a physical thing, a warm sea swirling around me, penetrating my body, washing against my souls in languid waves. We are both exhausted. I have no ability for long complex thoughts. The trail has turned into a series of precious moments … light dancing on the curve of her cheek … snatches of birdsong falling around us, spiraling down from the branches like wing seeds … the heart-numbing scent of her hair … my body sulking, longing … memories of silken textures … of skin sliding, inflaming the darkness.

The sunset-varnished air grows cool as evening comes, stroking the fevered flesh beneath my shirt. The odor of hot earth slaked with mist is strong. I breathe it in as though my lungs can’t get enough and try not to let my worries overwhelm me.

Blessed gods, I love her. Since she’s been at my side, I haven’t had the Dream. What does that mean? Is her presence enough to stop the horror from unfolding? Or … is her presence something else?

In the hundreds of times the Dream has come to me, I have never seen her there with me at the end. The soot of the dying world does not darken her face as it does Hiyawento’s. I never hear her voice or feel her touch. The possibility that she dies before the final events begin is too much to bear. It haunts me, gnawing at my vitals like a wild beast. I will do whatever I must to protect her … no matter the cost.

Nor have I seen Shago-niyoh there, or heard The Voice seeping from the air around me. Have I done something wrong? Is he gone forever?

We crest the swell in the trail and plunge down the other side into a hollow filled with oaks and dry ferns that shish when Gaha softly breathes across the land.

Baji glances at me. I feel it like a huge hand squeezing my heart. “You have to stop worrying about me.”

“How did you know I was—”

“Dekanawida, I know every expression you’re capable of.”

“Well, that’s unnerving.”

“Get used to it. Even if I die I’m going to haunt you forever.”

“Promise?”

“Absolutely,” she says with such dire certainty it makes me laugh.

Tension drains from my exhausted muscles, leaving me feeling slightly light-headed. The world takes on a shimmer.

“Can you feel it?” she asks.

“Yes, we’re headed into it.”

“What does it feel like to you?” Her head tilts in curiosity.

I think about how to describe it. The dark tingling sensation of Power swells and eddies through the trees. “It’s a … fire … searing my veins. I…”

Baji suddenly cocks her head and her eyes go wide as she stares to the west with such longing that it tears my heart. It’s as though she sees the Blessed Ancestors marching over the hills, coming right at us in a vast spectral army.

“What’s wrong, Baji?”

Her smile is heartrending. “Nothing’s wrong. I just thought I heard something.”

Gitchi suddenly goes stone still in the trail, and the hair on the back of his neck rises into stiff bristles. Baji and I both stumble to a stop. His yellow eyes are focused unblinking on something.…

As though they emerge from the Land of the Dead, the warriors seem to step from nothingness into this world of rich amber light. While I only see twenty or so, more move out in the trees. I hear their legs threshing ferns, coming. It sounds like thousands. These men and women have been on the trail for many hard days. Each dusty face has sleepless bloodshot eyes, and a greasy mop of mourning hair. Walking skeletons in windblown rags. Ghastly eyes that seem too huge for bony faces. As they draw back their nocked bows, emaciated muscles tremble in arms that once bulged through war shirts.

“Mountain warriors,” I whisper.

Gitchi lets out a vicious growl and starts barking, preparing to defend us with his life.

Baji shouts, “Gitchi down! Stop it!”

The old wolf obeys instantly, sitting close at her side, but he can’t suppress the barely audible deep-throated growls that vibrate his throat.