People of the Longhouse(62)

“Baji.”

“Where are you from?”

“S-Singleleaf Village.”

Chipmunk gently strokes her hair. “I’ve studied Healing. I’ll make a poultice from snapping alder bark. You won’t even have a bruise. I promise.”

I turn to watch Gannajero. She is packing up camp, collecting huge bags of trade goods—her payment from last night. When she finishes and piles all of her packs in one place, she stalks around camp, shouting curses and kicking sleeping men, forcing them to get up.

Hehaka draws my attention when he rolls to his side and seems to melt into the bed of leaves.

“Tutelo, I need to go speak to Hehaka. Will you be all right?”

She nods and releases me so that I can crawl over to Hehaka. “Are you all right, Hehaka? Are you hurt?”

He looks up at me with agonized eyes. His lean, starved face has gone pale. “She sucked out my soul,” he whispers, and glances around, hoping none of the other children hear. But Wrass does. He turns to gaze at Hehaka. “She sucked it out with that eagle-bone sucking tube and blew it into the little pot that she carries in her pack.”

“Why?” Wrass asks.

He squeezes his eyes closed. “She told me that when she kills me, my afterlife soul will never be able to find its way home. I’ll be chased through the forests forever by enemy ghosts.” Tears leak from the corners of his eyes.

“She’s an old fool,” I say in anger. “She’s not powerful enough to do that. It would take a great shaman, and she’s—”

“Shh!” He grabs my arm and shakes me hard. “You mustn’t say that. She’ll hear!”

“She can’t hear me, Hehaka. She’s way over on the other side of cam—” As I speak the words, Gannajero turns and stares right at me. Her eyes are like black suns burning me to cinders. My mouth goes dust dry.

“She’s a witch!” Hehaka whispers. “She can hear voices from half a day’s walk away. I swear she can. I’ve seen it.”

Wrass moves over and crouches beside me, staring down at Hehaka. He holds his wounded hand protectively against his chest. “You’ve seen it? How long have you been her slave?”

“S-seven summers,” Hehaka whispers.

Stunned, I hiss, “Seven?”

Wrass asks, “Why hasn’t she sold you? Where do you come from?”

“I don’t know.” Hehaka shivers and covers his eyes with his arm so that he can cry unseen. “She won’t let me go. I don’t know why. She says she’ll never sell me.”

Wrass clenches his fists and whispers to me, “That doesn’t make any sense. She’s a Trader. That’s what she does: sell children. Why would she keep Hehaka?”

I grip his arm and tilt my head, telling him I want to talk with him alone. Wrass rises. We walk a few paces away. The warriors guarding us straighten. One nocks an arrow in his bow. Another swings his war club suggestively.

I pull Wrass close to hiss, “Do you think she’s a witch?”

Wrass swivels around to gaze at Gannajero. “She’s evil, that’s for sure. Do you think she really sucked out Hehaka’s soul?”

I lick my chapped lips, taste blood, and glance again at our guards. They are watching us with half-lidded eyes. One wrong move and they’ll kill us, just like they did Agres and her sister. “I don’t know. Do you remember when old Pontoc lost his soul? Mother told me that his afterlife soul walked out into the forest and left his body like a moth flying away from a cocoon.”

“But Pontoc couldn’t talk after his soul left, and Hehaka is still talking.”

We both turn to study Hehaka where he lies on the ground, shivering.

I say, “And Pontoc went insane. He started sneaking up on people in the night and trying to strangle them.”

We stare at each other. Wrass is probably remembering—as I am—the morning when Pontoc’s own relatives dragged him screaming from the longhouse and clubbed him to death. They had to do it to protect their clan. The Standing Stone People followed the Law of Retribution. Murder placed an absolute obligation upon the kinsmen of the dead man to seek revenge by claiming the life of either the murderer or someone closely related to him. Since they traced descent through the female, the obligation fell particularly upon the murdered person’s sisters, mother’s brothers, and sisters’ sons. If Pontoc had actually managed to kill someone, the victim’s family would have had the right to claim the life of anyone else in Pontoc’s clan that it wished to be rid of, including the chief or clan matron. No clan could risk that.

“We should keep watch on Hehaka,” Wrass said. “If she really does have his soul captured in that pot he’ll go insane, and we’ll need to protect ourselves.”