People of the Lightning(43)
“But,” she whispered and ran a hand through her long hair, “all the safe places in the world vanished with Diver. Oh, Father, I feel so empty. For the past few days I have gone through the motions of life like a sleepwalker, praying I never wake up.”
“But you will, daughter,” Seedpod assured her in a loving tone. “No matter what diversions you try to stop it. You will awaken.”
Musselwhite shook her head. “Already I feel the tendrils of unbearable anguish filtering through my souls, and I know that soon that pain will grow to monstrous proportions and drive out every other concern. And there’s this—this wild hope that rocks me, Father. Back and forth, two voices arguing inside me. One says ‘He’s dead,’ the other insists, ‘No, he’s not.’ If I had only seen Diver d-die … but I did not.”
Seedpod kept silent. After all, not even Diamondback could say for certain that his father was dead.
Musselwhite threw her blanket off and rose to her feet. Starlight shimmered from her dark eyes and deepened the lines etching her forehead, making her seem tens of tens of summers old. “I need to walk. I’ll be back soon.”
Seedpod braced a hand on the floor mats. “Sounds like a good idea to me.”
“You don’t have to come, Father.”
“I know that. But I’m awake. We can talk more.”
He followed her out toward the surf. Her tunic whipped around her hips in the cool night wind. She hooked her atlatl on her belt and carried her darts in her right hand as she walked southward through a glittering field of seashells.
Seedpod walked beside her. “Are you all right?”
“He’s dead. Isn’t he, father? Diamondback saw him fall. This is just fear tormenting me. Fear and hope. Diver can’t be alive … can he?”
“It is very unlikely. No matter how much it hurts to admit.”
But a memory long buried rolled over and showed Seedpod its face. His nephew, Toad Slayer, had been alive. Two-tens-and-seven summers before, he had led his village against Cottonmouth’s warriors and been wounded. Cottonmouth had kept him screaming for days before killing him. Those hideous cries still woke Musselwhite on occasion. She had told Seedpod the story over and over, like a litany used to drive out the evil spirits that possessed her souls. Cottonmouth had tied her in their shelter, so that she couldn’t free her cousin, and so she could “stand witness” to what he did to his enemies. Every time Musselwhite had shouted or raged, Cottonmouth calmly returned to the shelter, knelt before her and slapped her until she stopped. She had been pregnant with his son at the time, and the child had kicked frantically throughout the episode, as if trying to escape. With each blow, Cottonmouth had tenderly murmured, “I love you, Musselwhite. Don’t do this to me … . I love you, Musselwhite. This man is not your cousin. He is our enemy. Don’t do this to me!”
Musselwhite crouched in the surf and picked up a small, perfectly-shaped conch shell that had washed up on shore. Foam encircled her ankles, coating them with bubbles which tickled when they burst. Seedpod stood beside her, looking down. Water filled the hollow of the shell, and in the starlight, her soul stared up at him.
“Maybe … maybe if I stare at my own watery soul,” she whispered, “I’ll be able to wash away my memories of Cottonmouth. Blessed Sea Girl, I still hear his voice, Father. Whispering, seeping from a crack in my souls that I thought I had buried beneath a huge mound of earth.”
“What’s he saying?”
“He’s saying, You are right, Musselwhite. You are right … .”
“Right about what?”
She shook her head. “He’s lying. He must be. He always lied to me.” She clutched the shell more tightly.
Seedpod did not know the whole story of what had happened those long summers ago. He doubted anyone did. Musselwhite refused to talk about it, and Seedpod suspected that somewhere deep inside her she believed that by never speaking of those events, she could strip them from her past, or maybe just convince herself they had never happened.
She murmured, “No one is hurting Diver, are they, Father? Those were not his screams I heard in my dreams?”
“Diamondback saw him darted and clubbed, my daughter. To have survived that … well, it would take a miracle.”
A sob lodged in her throat, but the renewed certainty of Diver’s death seemed to ease her fear. She managed to nod. “I must force Cottonmouth’s voice down and seal it in its hole again with all the other horrors in my life. Then … then I can go on.”
“Were those times so bad, my daughter? Why do you never speak of them? It might help.”