I am young, eleven summers, and not yet a man. For as long as I can recall, I have feared that this day would come. Warfare rages throughout our country. Many villages have been attacked, and women and children taken as slaves. Now that I am one of them, I feel like a duck hit in the head with a rock—too numb to think.
When we enter the clearing, four white-tailed deer bound away, and I watch them with my heart racing. They are free … as I was yesterday.
The girl in line ahead of me stumbles. The warriors curse her as she regains her balance. Her name is Agres. She wears a beautiful white doehide dress. She arrived last night, and carries an infant in her arms. We all assume the baby is her sister.
I stare at the holes in the soles of the infant’s moccasins.
My People, the People of the Standing Stone, have a saying: An infant’s life is as the thinness of a maple leaf. We believe that each person has two souls: a soul that stays with the body forever, and an afterlife soul that travels to the Land of the Dead. Babies are just barely separated from the Spirit world, and vulnerable to being stolen back by unseen ghosts who follow their mothers. The holes tell the ghosts to stay back, that this child’s souls have been claimed by the living.
“Agres should throw away those moccasins,” I whisper.
If ghosts take the baby’s souls, she will be reborn in a new body and won’t have to face what lies ahead for the rest of us.
My eight-summers-old sister, Tutelo, tightens her grip on my hand and looks up. “What, Odion? What did you say?”
Tutelo has a pretty oval face with bright brown eyes. A long black braid hangs down the back of her tan dress. Tiny circlets of copper decorate her sleeves and hem.
“Nothing,” I answer, and squeeze her small hand. “Don’t talk, Tutelo. You know it causes troub—”
One of the Mountain People warriors—the one I have named Broken Teeth because of the jagged yellow teeth that fill his mouth—glares at me. I quickly look away.
Four warriors guard us. Each carries a bow and has a quiver filled with arrows slung over his left shoulder. War clubs and stone knives hang from their belts. Big Man, the one in charge, really scares me. He has a heavily scarred face, and every time he looks back at the line of children, his jaw clenches with hate.
Tutelo whispers, “Where’s Mother?”
“Shh.”
Tutelo has been asking the same question since midnight. Our mother is War Chief Koracoo. Yesterday morning, Mother led half of our warriors into the forests to scout for the enemy. Father, her deputy, was in charge of defending our village. The attack came at dusk; it was swift and brutal. The People of the Mountain brought three times as many warriors to the fight. Yellowtail Village didn’t have a chance.
I remember little of it … Father dragging us out of our beds and ordering us to run … longhouses burning … screaming people racing through the firelit darkness … dead bodies. Then standing in the forest, clutching Tutelo’s hand, stunned, as enemy warriors rounded us up and marched us away as slaves. I must have more memories—somewhere inside me—but I cannot find them.
I don’t know if Mother and Father are alive, but I keep praying they are. If they survived, they are tracking us, coming for us.
Big Man holds up a hand. We all stop, and out in the forest I hear people moving. I search the shadows and see them weaving among the smoke-colored trunks. One warrior emerges, shoving three girls in front of him. All are beautiful, and have seen perhaps twelve or thirteen summers. The new warrior forces them to join our group.
No one speaks. We just stare at each other in fear and disbelief. The same thing happened last night. That’s when Agres and her sister arrived. Big Man has made four stops so far. The red quill patterns on the new girls’ capes mark them as Flint People. Was their village also attacked?
Mother says the warfare must stop. She hates it. Father calls her a “peacemaker,” and it always sounds like an insult.
Big Man studies the girls carefully, walking around them several times before he nods and hands over a heavy hide sack to the man who brought the girls. The man shakes it, smiles, and disappears into the trees like mist vanishing on a warm day.
They did not say a word. Have they made this kind of exchange so often they do not need to speak?
Big Man lifts his hand again, and we march, heading east through the sun-dappled forest.
“Where’s Mother?”
“Stop asking, Tutelo!”
Tears fill my sister’s eyes, but she knows better than to cry out loud. We have each taken a beating for crying. Instead, Tutelo clutches my hand in a death grip and sobs without a sound. My souls shrivel.