People of the Sea(28)

had vanished with the coming of the warm breeze off the ocean, and the wealth of water that had melted into the soil had transformed the surrounding country. Wildflowerscented wind whispered in the thick needles of the firs and ruffled the extravagantly painted hide walls of the lodge. It was like a Song, that breeze, lilting and beautiful as it played over the black, yellow, red and white designs. He granted himself a moment to drown in the beauty of the painted yellow hills covered by red star bursts where men with atlatls hunted mammoths. He’d been managing scarcely two hands of sleep a night, and he feared his legs might buckle if he didn’t sit down soon. I just need to rest for a moment. Only for a moment. He set his Healer’s pack on the ground and braced a hand on the lodge’s ridgepole.

Women moved silently through the bright sunlight. Hunters had come in yesterday, bringing meat, and, in the central plaza, three kneeling girls used flakes struck from a large obsidian core to strip meat from the haunches of a llama. Despite the sorrow in the village, every so often one of the girls would smile and lift a slice of meat, comparing it with her friends’ to see whose was the thinnest and longest. Drying-racks stood here and there. Old women monitored them, shooing flies, magpies and small animals from the red meat while it browned in the sunlight.

Good Plume, who never seemed to feel sick, stood a short distance away from Sunchaser. She’d pegged out a fresh pronghorn hide and fleshed it with a hafted chert tool. The chert stone had been flaked along one surface to create a scraping edge. The reddish-brown stone had then been inset into the angle of a branch handle, making a tool that when used with a chopping motion would remove the last bits of tissue and meat by peeling them back from the hide. Tomorrow, when Good Plume finished scraping the hide, she would roll it up with ashes from the fire and soak the whole mixture. The ashes would loosen the hair so that it would slip away under her blade. When she’d shaved away the last of the slipped hair, she would use a rounded river



cobble to rub a mixture of brains, white clay and urine into the skin. Again she would roll it tightly and allow it to soak.. For several days she would repeat the process. Then, when the tissues had taken the curing, she would pull the hide over a graining post to turn it soft. Finally she would sew it into a fine shirt of the purest cloud-white color. He’d seen her do it a hundred times and had never lost his awe of her skill. No one made more beautiful clothing than Good Plume did.

Sunchaser smiled. Without her, he would have died long ago. His parents’ lodge had caught fire in his seventh summer. They had been sleeping closest to the flames and had perished quickly, but Sunchaser’s robes had lain along the back wall. He remembered waking up, coughing and choking on the smoke. He had tried to call for help, but couldn’t. Frantic voices had yelled outside. Just when he’d thought he would die, too, Good Plume had rushed into the blazing lodge and dragged him out onto the dew-soaked summer grass. She had covered his nose and mouth with her mouth and forced air into his spasming lungs. Days later, she had told him, “My breath is in you now. We have shared souls. You will carry on my work—become a mole.” She often spoke like that, in riddles he did not understand. Sometimes she drove him crazy with her curious words. A mole? What do you mean, I’ll become a mole, my aunt?

But he’d come to understand. Over the cycles when he had lived with her, she had taught him the solitary ways of the Talth Lodge, the secret society of the Steals Light People. Good Plume had shown him how to see without eyes in the darkness. And many other things. She had taught him how to call animals by their secret names, the names they knew themselves by—and to hear them call him by the name they knew him by. Animals thought of humans in very different ways. The elk called Sunchaser “Wildflower Killer,” because he collected so many Power plants in the early spring. The ravens called him “That-Howling-Scavenger,” because he Sang over dying people. Sunchaser smiled to himself. Yes,



Good Plume had taught him many important secrets about the world.

She seemed to sense his gaze, for she straightened her humped old back and stared at him. No expression crossed her age-seamed face, but her eyes had a glint like that of Weasel with a cornered mouse. Grabbing her walking stick, Good Plume started toward him, each step an effort. Her thin neck stuck out of her doeskin dress, and her long hair, yellowish in the glow of sunlight, hung like old straw over the red and blue quilled chevrons on her collar.

Sunchaser met her halfway. “Good afternoon, my mother’s sister,” he said. He towered over her like a giant.