People of the Moon(7)
“Yes.” He swallowed hard, a fleeting image of a red-shirted warrior slipping through him. He remembered the flash of sunlight on the polished war club as it began its arc downward toward—
“I am older than the rest.” Her words interrupted the image. “Wiser in so many ways. The time of the Blue God and the Flute Player is passing. Spider Woman waffles, unsure where her loyalties lie. Father Sun Dreams of miracles and events far beyond this world.” She hesitated. “Did you know that I can grant wishes?”
A terrible shivering racked him. “No.”
“If I could grant you one wish, Ripple, what would it be?”
Without thinking, he said, “To be rid of the First People.”
“No matter the cost?”
He hesitated. “No matter the cost.”
“If it meant pain and disfigurement, would you still pay such a price?”
A different cold filled his souls. “Yes.”
Her mouth curled in a smile that exposed more pointed teeth behind her lolling tongue. “I have to know if you are the one I seek. Are you strong enough? Can you bear the pain and harden your souls?”
He winced at the violence in her voice, watched her panting breath freeze in the air like a white question.
“Oh, so your words desert you?” She turned slightly, a haze of frost following her cape. “Little wonder, I suppose. Not all humans are glib in the face of a god.”
“I’ll do it,” he gasped.
Her black pupils grew against their background of red. “You and I have an agreement, then, Ripple. If you can take the pain, if you have the faith and strength locked away in those shivering souls of yours, you shall have your chance to destroy the First People. But you must know it will be fraught with danger. Many of the old gods will side with them. Are you ready for such a trial?”
“I am,” he told her bravely, wondering what he’d just done.
“The threads of Power are being drawn tight across your world. Terrible dark days are creeping up on you. If they do not break you, seek the old woman you know as the Mountain Witch. The one who Dreams the One. She knows you, has watched you, as you have watched her. She Dances with Brother Mud Head and weaves the threads of the future from the turquoise cave. Allies appear in unusual places.”The movement was so rapid he barely saw her cape whip around. She vanished in a swirl of bitter-cold white.
Her voice lingered in the frost: “Do not disappoint me!”
The Dream shattered.
With a cry, Ripple bolted upright in the night, his body possessed with violent shivers. Gods, he was cold clear to his core! How could he feel like this? It was the middle of summer.
He stared around, blinking, to find his fire burned down to glowing coals. Fumbling in the near darkness he placed his hand on another length of aspen wood before adding it to the fire. He placed another, and yet another, on the coals. Bending low, he blew, heedless of the swirling ash. A flickering tongue of fire curled up the smooth gray wood. Within moments the fire crackled to life again.
Ripple extended his shaking hands, grateful for the warmth.
A Dream! It had to be. As the flames leapt, he looked toward where he had Dreamed the old woman.
Ripple stopped short. There, in the growing light, he could see a frosty ring of snow lying thick on the grass, nodding the heads of flowers. When he stepped over, brushed at the snow, and pulled the spruce bows from atop the elk, he found all four quarters frozen hard as stone.
Morning light grayed the sky as Bad Cast led Wrapped Wrist and Spots into the little clearing. His contested hunting shirt from the day before was smudged and dotted with forest detritus. They had been climbing for most of the night.
Kin helped kin—especially when it came to retrieving freshly killed meat. Bad Cast’s First Moon People were divided into two moieties: the Black Shale—to which he, Spots, Wrapped Wrist, and Ripple belonged—and the Soft Earth, which laid claim to his wife and daughter. Within the Black Shale Moiety were four clans. Of these, he and his friends belonged to the Blue Stick Clan.
Bad Cast had known roughly where Ripple’s signal smoke had come from, having hunted this mountain all of his life. Despite being familiar with the trails, no one liked climbing up through the forest in darkness—and last night had been particularly inky, with only starlight illuminating the faint paths that led up the steep slopes. In the black timber, they’d had to feel their way, tripping over deadfall and cursing. Talus fields had created their own nightmare of shifting rock and poor footing.
In midsummer, however, meat had to be immediately tended to or it soured rapidly. Bad Cast knew that Ripple would have immediately cooled the carcass and taken measures to protect his kill from crows, coyotes, wolves, and bears, but the first priority was to get it off the mountain and down to First Moon Village, where it could be cut into strips, dried, and smoked. It had been a long time since they’d had a kill good enough to risk traveling the mountains at night.