People of the Moon(6)
A thrill shot through Ripple’s body, and he blinked at the bright yellow light. In the dark-domed sky above, stars began to ebb and flow like waves. Here and there he could see them floating softly down toward earth, turning into snowflakes. His breath fogged, thick with each exhalation. The growing cold made him shiver and hug himself.
A flicker of movement in the trees brought him alert. White flashed in the shadows.
The bone-numbing cold intensified.
Ripple reached for the fire. To his consternation, frost glittered on his fingers. Despite the bright light, no heat came from the leaping flames.
He cried out in fear.
“Scared, are we?” The voice was an old woman’s.
He raised his gaze from his frozen hands to the white apparition that stepped out from the hoar-frosted trees.
No nose marred her blank white face. And those eyes! Large red irises surrounded black pupils that gleamed like polished midnight. Sharply pointed teeth glinted in her open mouth, and a tongue as red as smeared blood lolled down over her chin.
The cloak on her shoulder might have been spun of dusk and blew about her like a storm. It blended with her disheveled white hair. One hand held a long walking stick, the tip of which she planted in the snow that deepened around her feet. Belted with a corn-yellow sash, her long dress hung below her knees. The swaying hem sparkled with lines of delicate beads. Leggings, white as summer cloud, were dotted with gems of turquoise that reflected against the snow. As she raised her hand in greeting, he could see the most extraordinary turquoise bracelet gleaming in the firelight.
“Who … What are you?” he stammered.
“Hard times are coming,” the crone’s voice told him. “You of all people know that, don’t you?”
“Hard times? What … What do you want from me?”
Huge black pupils expanded in her red eyes. “I want the future.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t understand what? The future? It’s what will come. What can be.” Her head tilted; ice crystals flashed in the cold yellow light. “That is, assuming you have the courage and skill hidden away inside that strong young body of yours to make it come true.”
Ripple shivered, curling in upon himself like a ball. Gods, had he ever been so cold and frightened? When he looked up into those red-rimmed black eyes, he wanted to weep.
“I was married to him once, you know,” she told him offhandedly.
“Married … to whom?”
“The Blessed Sun.”
Ripple tilted his head. “You were married to Webworm?”
She jabbed at him with her walking stick, causing him to scramble sideways in the snow. “No, you wretched lump! What would I have to do with some incompetent and fragile man? At my touch he’d freeze solid! No, I mean I was married to the Blessed Father Sun. A long time back. Before your kind ever climbed into this world.”
He tried to concentrate. “But I thought Sister Moon—”
“Later,” she snapped. “Much later.” Her body swayed slightly as snowflakes fell around her. Then she sighed and straightened. “You’ve seen the Rainbow Serpent?”
“To the southwest,” he managed between chattering teeth. “Yes. It crawled up from the earth five summers ago.”
“The fulfillment of prophecy, boy.” She fixed on him again. “The Straight Path Nation is teetering.”
“May the Rainbow Serpent devour them all!” he growled through clenched teeth. Then, realizing what he might have said, cowered back.
“Yes,” she hissed. Her tongue shot this way and that as did a bloody rope when jerked by a child. “Do they still talk of how the Straight Path warriors came to the First Moon villages?”
“It is said that they surrounded our people while they were assembled for the renewal. That they came in the night, trapped us on the heights, and took our elders hostage in return for allowing the rest of us to pass back down the mountain.”
“And then?”
“Then they took every tenth person, and along with the elders, marched them off to Straight Path Canyon as slaves. They worked many of them to death, made them build the White Palaces. Those of us left behind in First Moon Valley were given orders, told to pack stone, mud, and water to the heights. Each clan had so many loads to carry or their people in captivity would be killed—and the red-shirted warriors would come and maybe kill the rest of us.”
“To save yourselves, your people complied. You built their great Pinnacle House high on the spire just below the twin pillars.” She paused. “The Straight Path Nation considers you to be barbarians, you know. They think you are little better than two-legged beasts—animals like this elk you’ve killed—meant only to serve them.” A pause. “How well you, of all people, understand their ways.”