People of the River(34)

Only Badgertail had talked to her, taught her the language, soothed her at night when the Dreams came. He had held her, his the only warm body in a cold and frightening world. Now he had come for her again—still the only kind voice here to comfort her.

Nightshade saw the landing loom up through the eyes of a terrified four-summers-old girl. She huddled in upon herself as the warriors jumped out and tugged the canoe up onto the sand, laughing, calling rude jokes to one another.

Her gaze fixed on Badgertail, barely seeing the gray strands in his braided forelocks or the lines that now etched deeply around his eyes. He picked up a bloody bundle, rose, and stepped out onto land. As he trudged up the muddy slope to the first terrace, he gestured for two of his warriors to bring Nightshade.

The men, one very young and the other about twenty summers, leaned over her, trying to coax her into getting up so they wouldn't have to touch her. She peered at them in terror. When the young one kicked her lightly in the foot. Nightshade screamed, "No! Please don't make me! Leave me alone! I just want to go home. I want my mother! Take me home! Take me home, takemehome!"

Badgertail spun where he stood on the terrace, silhouetted against the dying flames of sunset. He cocked his head as though baffled, and then slowly understanding dawned.

"Get away!" he shouted at the warriors. "Leave her alone!" He ran back toward the canoe, slicing through the crowd of warriors that milled on the banks, unloading supplies and gathering belongings.

The warriors around Nightshade stumbled out of the boat, and she buried her face in the dirty folds of her red skirt. "Mother?" she choked. "Where are you? Why did you let them take me?"

Sister Datura seized images from that forbidden storeroom of Nightshade's soul and flung them against Nightshade's closed eyes, forcing her to remember Badgertail in his youth—tall and commanding as he had been on the night they had spent at Black Warrior Mounds, just below a big river. The village had been abandoned long before—grown over with trees and brush—and it was the first time she had seen sparkflies. They'd come out at sunset, glittering through the grass and climbing into the tops of the trees like a brilliant net of fallen stars. Badgertail had buried a warrior in one of the conical mounds . . .

When he knelt before her now, taking up all of her vision, horror swept her. She struggled to crawl away. "Leave me alone! I want my mother! I want to go home. Please," she cried, "take me home."

Badgertail's eyes softened. "I'm sorry, I don't understand your words. No more now than I did twenty cycles ago."

"Please, please!"

He reached out, letting his hand hover uncertainly, as if to brush her hair; then he withdrew it and clenched it into a fist at his side. "Nightshade, I don't know what Sister Datura is doing to you, but—"

"Twenty . . . cycles?"

A cry echoed in her memories. She saw her mother's face, her mouth gaping, eyes dusted with sand where she lay, blood drenching her ceremonial dress . . . and Nightshade sobbed. She would never go home. Everyone she loved was dead, and only Brother Mudhead cared about her.

"Nightshade?" Badgertail's voice sounded so gentle that she almost didn't recognize it.

Sister Datura faded back. Dancing away to twirl just out of reach. Nightshade swallowed her tears.

Badgertail leaned closer. Fear and bewilderment strained his features. "I don't know what to do, Nightshade. Tell me what to do."

She shook her head. "Just . . . just help me stand up."

He tucked his bloody bundle under one arm and gripped her elbow to support her while she got to her feet. On wobbly legs she stepped out of the canoe and onto the soft sand. A brier of arrowleaf snagged at her dress as she climbed the steep incline to the &st terrace. Warriors shuffled backward, their silent glares as powerful as shouts.

From the terrace, Nightshade could see the people tilling the northern fields with chert and clamshell hoes. They'd already started to plant, dropping seed kernels into the long, ridged rows that would sprout four different kinds of com: pop, flint, flour, and sweet. Around the fields, blackberry vines twined over ancient stumps, forming a natural fence. The new green leaves stood out against the rich black soil.

Dozens of mounds were scattered in the west and south, but her gaze skipped over those formidable legacies of the elite, resting on an area where a Commonbom family was constructing a new house. The grandfather had a work line going. Children peeled chestnut logs to make them more resistant to insect attack. Then they fire-treated the ends of the logs to protect the wood from ground moisture before handing them to two men who sank the ends into a trench in the ground. At the rear, three women, apparently grandmother, mother, and granddaughter, sat weaving cattail leaves for the mats that would serve as walls once they had been daubed with clay. Two sides of the house had already been completed.