The only thing whole in the entire world is Baji. To my right, she stands as a coherent woman-shaped shadow, a living shadow, moving, breathing. I long to reach out and touch her, but dare not move. My legs are shaking too badly. I don’t know how long I can stand.
I let my head drop forward long enough to get a full breath into my lungs. Sounds and scents seem exaggerated. The cries on the battlefield surround me like soaring birds, flying about, puncturing the air. And the tears! The scent of tears claws at the back of my throat like a stone hand trying to find a way into my heart—a way to die a meaningful death.
I exhale hard before I tilt my face up to the sky.
In the center of the eerie blue background, a single black eye wavers, watching me. Huge and velvet.
“Please, Elder Brother, I beg you…”
My knees are about to buckle. I fight to keep them rigid as I stretch out my hands, and in a deep agonized voice, cry, “No more! No more war!”
In the distance, a defeaning roar booms and rolls across the sky. The ground beneath my feet trembles. Then the blast comes. Blinding flashes sear my eyes as gigantic white roots split the Skyworld and crackle outward to the four directions.
Hundreds of warriors throw down their weapons and flee, abandoning the field of battle. The sound of frantic feet tripping over corpses strikes like fists.
… And I wait.
I wait for a voice. For a child to cry out. I have heard that suffocating little boy’s voice so many times in my nightmares.
Hoarse breath tears my lungs.
It’s growing darker as Elder Brother Sun flies farther and farther away, but I can’t hold my arms up any longer. As I lower them to my sides, tears trickle from my wounded eyes and flow down my face.
Hiyawento suddenly shouts, “Look!”
My heart seems to stop when a blinding crescent of Elder Brother Sun’s face reappears. As he steps from the abyss, white veils flutter, pouring down from the heavens. A man yells, “Elder Brother Sun is turning his face back to the world!”
I see it. The light in the darkness shines.
Something cold strikes my face.
Snow. Snow drifting down. Spinning flakes flash and dance around me like tumbling petals of pure light.
“Odion?” Hiyawento points.
The gates of Bur Oak Village are thrown open. People rush out carrying clan flags. As the carriers weave across the meadow, cheering at the tops of their lungs, their lines furl and unfurl like dark tines raking through a sea of white.
Hiyawento reverently whispers, “I finally understand. Gods, Odion, I understand.”
From the southern hills beyond the old sunflower fields, women, children, and elders flood down the slopes and onto the battlefield. Sobs of joy and cheers shred the cold air. I know that accent. They are Landing People.
As my knees shudder, and give way, my vision sparkles.
Both Baji and Hiyawento lunge to grab me, but I fall … and fall … landing without a word in the glistening blanket of newfallen snow.
Fifty-nine
That night, Baji sat around a campfire to the east of Bur Oak Village, listening to the stunningly beautiful cries echoing across the moonlit hills. It was as though the very fabric of the air was woven of long drawn-out howls, melodic hooting, and the shrill calls of plummeting eagles. For the first time since Atotarho’s ambush on her war party, the cries were unbearable. They created an ache of longing in her soul like nothing she had ever known, and she knew at last that such beauty could not possibly exist in this world.
She looked around the fire. The most important people in her life were here—except for Cord, Jigonsaseh, and Zateri. As they talked, her heart thumped painfully. To her right, next to the warm flames, Dekanawida lay on a litter beneath a pile of hides. Jigonsaseh had ordered that he be taken to one of the warm longhouses, but he had refused, saying he had to be out among the people where they could see him and know that he had not been killed.
For many hands of time, the line of awestruck people had passed by him, reverently looking down, whispering gratefully to him, then moving on to allow others to see.
Finally, at dusk, they’d gathered in the meadow below, where they danced around dozens of great fires, singing and laughing with joy. Scents of roasting venison and acorn bread wafted on the cold breeze. It was as though not a single person doubted the war was over, and with the burden gone, their happiness overflowed. Most of their songs were about the Creator and Sky Woman. Rumors had already begun to filter across the camps that Dekanawida was the returned soul of Sapling, and Jigonsaseh was Sky Woman herself. Within a moon, Baji suspected everyone south of Skanodario Lake would believe it … and even unknown peoples far beyond.
She looked down at Dekanawida’s swollen face. In the firelight, the purple bruises had a bluish-orange tint. It comforted her to see him. He was still here. Still alive … after all the horrors they had lived through together. If only she could lie at his side with her arms around him, watching his breath rise and fall, absorbing every small movement of his body, while the long summers etched the lines deeper into his face, her life would be perfect. During the long periods when they had not seen each other—she had lived in fear that he would vanish as her parents and sisters had vanished. The terror had tormented her dreams.