Sindak looked down into the gruel as though he suspected Gonda had spat in it. “I’m glad I didn’t know you as a child.”
“Let’s face reality. None of us is going to trust the other for a long time, if ever, so I guess we should just try to make the best of it. What do you say? I agree not to slit your throat in the night, if you agree not to slit mine or Koracoo’s.”
A gust of wind blew Towa’s long black hair around his face. In a slightly confused voice, he said, “Deputy, we are bound by our chief’s orders to obey you. We will do whatever you tell us to.”
“I take that as a yes. What about you, Sindak?”
Sindak leaned over to sniff his cup, and the nostrils of his beak nose flared. When he looked up at Gonda, suspicion pinched the lines around his eyes. “Are you still married to Koracoo?”
“What?”
“Are you still married? She doesn’t act like it, but you do. Are you?”
Gonda sat back. “No, she divorced me. Why? Thinking about crawling between her blankets some night?”
“Of course not.”
“That’s smart, because you’ll have a stiletto through your balls before your voice can change. Think how embarrassing that will be.”
Sindak took a drink of his gruel and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “You are trying to befriend me. Thanks for the advice.”
Gonda dipped his cup full of soup, swallowed it in six big gulps, then glared one last time for good measure and rolled up in his blanket to sleep.
After a few hundred heartbeats, Towa whispered, “I don’t think he likes us.”
Seventeen
The fire has died down to a crimson gleam, leaving the woods frosty and smoke-colored, streaked here and there by the last echoes of moonlight.
I’ve been shivering for over a finger of time. That’s when the shouting started. I watch Gannajero through the weave of frozen grass stems. A pile of riches rests on the ground before her: quivers decorated elaborately with porcupine quills … etched copper breastplates … a shirt covered with elk ivories … and many necklaces, stone tools, feather pouches. But she is apparently unhappy. She paces before two Flint warriors, shouting and waving her fists. One is a big crazy-eyed man. He is stocky, and geometric tattoos cover his face. The sides of his head are shaved, leaving a central roach of hair on top. White feathers—war honors—decorate it. Each man holds a Flint girl by the arm. One of the girls weeps inconsolably. The other keeps trying to fight.
“You fools! This isn’t enough to buy one of the girls, let alone two! Release them!” Gannajero’s wrinkled face has contorted into a hideous long-nosed god mask.
The fighting Flint girl shouts, “Leave my sister alone! Let her go. Take me! Take me!” and repeatedly lunges at the big crazy-eyed man, who smiles and shoves her to the ground … over and over.
Her sister just hangs in the thin man’s grip like a soaked rabbit-fur doll, sobbing.
I don’t know where the other Flint girl is … or Hehaka. He’s gone, too.
“Give them to me, or the girls stay here!” Gannajero yells.
“I’m not giving you my soul!” the crazy-eyed man shouts back. “You can’t have it! I’ve given you everything else I own!”
“Then you can’t have the girls.” Gannajero folds her arms over her chest.
Kotin and three other men move in, surrounding Gannajero as though to protect her, or perhaps to kill the men with the girls if it becomes necessary. They have war clubs in their fists.
I lift my gaze to the trees. Their faint shadows are like smudges of gray silk in the branches, swaying, flying.
“What’s ha-happening, Odion?” Tutelo whispers.
“They’re still fighting. Try to sleep.”
“I can’t sleep!” She weeps softly. “No one could sleep with all the shouting.”
I stroke her long hair and hug her. “Then just don’t cry. Be a cloud. All right? Remember what Shago-niyoh said. Be a cloud.”
Tutelo squeezes her eyes closed and hisses like a snake.
From my right, Wrass murmurs, “The old woman has lost her soul. She’s totally insane.”
Chipmunk stutters, “M-Maybe she needs one of their souls to p-put in her own body.”
“Maybe,” I answer. “I just wish she’d kill them and take the girls back. I—”
When Gannajero whirls around and stalks toward us, Wrass yips, “What—?”
“Don’t move!” Gannajero says. Ten paces away, she spreads her arms like a bird and spins toward us. She is so graceful she might be a crow sailing on wind currents.
We all sit as if carved of wood. There is a rotten blood stench about her. It envelops me as she leans over. Wrass clenches his jaw and stares at her, but I turn away, too afraid to look into her wild black eyes.