People of the Masks(7)
“Who? Who wants us?” she asked in panic.
Lamedeer’s guts suddenly went runny. The boy had inhuman eyes, blacker than black, and old, as if the souls that inhabited that small malformed body had lived for more centuries than Lamedeer could conceive. He clenched his fists to nerve himself, and said, “Who’s coming for us, Rumbler? Jumping Badger?”
Rumbler’s tears ran in silent streams down his round face. “No. No, it’s Grandfather Day Maker’s children. They’re hunting us.”
“What? Grandfather Day Maker’s children?” Lamedeer gazed at the western horizon. The drifting clouds had turned pink. “Why would the sun …”
Rumbler ran away, across the plaza, and ducked beneath the leather door curtain of his mother’s lodge. Stonecoat dutifully trotted after him.
Red Pipe gripped Briar by the arm, and said, “Find out what he meant, cousin. We must know.”
“Yes, I—I will.” Briar left Lamedeer and Red Pipe alone in the cold windy plaza.
The wrinkles around Red Pipe’s eyes deepened. “What do you make of that?”
Lamedeer shook his head. “I cannot say. The boy often sees and hears things we do not. It may have been a message only for him, or Briar, and have nothing to do with us.”
The leather curtain of Briar’s lodge swung as she ducked inside, revealing glimpses of her and her son, the colored baskets on the walls, a pot lit by the glowing embers in the firepit. Rumbler had his back to the door. A strange sound, like the keening of distant wolves, rode the wind.
Silver Sparrow stumbled down the slope through an ancient grove of sycamores, heading for the blue-gray coils of smoke that rose from the valley below, and trailed across the darkening evening sky. Sparrow started to run, his moccasins slipping on the damp leaves.
Within a hand of time, he saw the gigantic oaks that overhung Paint Rock Village. As he ran the well-worn trail toward the plaza, the fragrance of roasting beaver filled the air. He could almost taste the sweet, fatty meat. His starved belly whined. He had not eaten in five nights.
“Blessed Ancestors, give me the strength to keep going. Just a little farther.”
The trail seemed to go on forever, winding around rocks and fallen timbers. Owl eyes blinked at him from the treetops, and he heard a faint hoo—hooo.
Panic warmed Sparrow’s veins. They might be owl calls. Probably, they were. But they could also be warriors signaling each other in the darkness.
He had been a warrior once, many winters ago. He knew the tricks men used to stay in contact while sneaking up on their victims.
As night deepened, more and more Cloud Giants gathered overhead, blotting out the white feathered lodges of the ancestors in the Up-Above-World. Sparrow had the feeling they had come just to watch him, to see if he had the courage to race into a doomed village, a village where they disdained him and his Dreams, and tell the people what he’d seen.
He almost tripped over the guard. The burly man sat on the low hill overlooking the village, his back propped against the thick trunk of an oak. When he saw Sparrow, he let out a cry, and leaped to his feet with his bow drawn.
“Wait! Don’t shoot! I am Silver Sparrow of Earth Thunderer Village. I have run for two nights to speak with War Leader Lamedeer.”
The man lowered the bow slightly and squinted at Sparrow, as if trying to discern his features in the dwindling light. “Come forward. Show yourself.”
Sparrow walked toward the man. He appeared to have seen around thirty-five winters. A braided leather headband held his shoulder-length black hair held in place, and he stood a head shorter than Sparrow.
“I am Calling Hawk,” the man said, introducing himself. “What business does the famed madman of Earth Thunderer Village have with War Leader Lamedeer?”
“My words are for Lamedeer. I must see him. Now.”
Calling Hawk released the tension on the bowstring, but he did not remove his arrow. “You should have sent a runner ahead, to let Lamedeer know you would be coming.”
“Why?” he asked, his voice shaking. “Don’t tell me he’s gone. He can’t be gone! I must—”
“I did not say that. He’s here. But he hates to be disturbed when he’s asleep. Not only that, I have orders never to let you set foot in this village. Red Pipe hasn’t forgotten the time you told him he was going to contract a terrible disease. He wandered through blizzards for three weeks in fear that he might give the disease to the rest of the village. The whole time he was gone, he never even had a sniffle.”
Sparrow had been a new Dreamer at the time, and not yet adept at interpreting the curious images that plagued him. He said, “Lamedeer is asleep? It’s barely past sunset.”