People of the Silence(26)
“An offering?” He paused uncertainly. “You mean like two mice on a juniper stick?”
Her smile waned. “I will demand much more from you than the Monster Thlatsina.”
“How will I know what it is you wish me to bring—”
“You will know.”
From the pool behind her a huge figure slowly emerged. Water cascaded from its body, shining with moonlight. Buckthorn’s muzzle gaped as the creature dropped to all fours. It leaped and kicked like a prancing deer. Only when the creature looked straight at him did Buckthorn see its massive twisted face, coated with pink clay from the sacred lake where the thlatsinas were born.
Mudhead!
The sacred being extended his arms and began to Dance. He whirled like a leaf in the primal winds of creation, floating higher, the rhythmic stamping of his feet pounding out the heartbeat of the world.
When the Mudhead kicked and soared like an arrow for Buckthorn’s belly, Buckthorn let out a horrified shriek …
* * *
And jerked awake sitting up in his blanket. Drenched in sweat, he blinked to clear his blurry eyes, searching the starlit juniper grove. His firepit had blown clean of ash. One lump of charcoal sat in the ring of stones, completely dead.
“P-Power Dream…”
Buckthorn looked down. The trembling fingers of his right hand had knotted in the fabric over his aching belly. It took an act of will to pry them loose. When he brought the hand up, he frowned at the blood, not understanding at first.
“It can’t be!”
He jerked up his long brown shirt, and starlight shone on the shallow cuts that covered his stomach and legs. Frantic, Buckthorn pulled up his sleeves. He gazed wide-eyed at the bloody scratches.
Just as if he’d loped through brush!
… Or rolled into the spiky nest of dead juniper limbs at his back.
A pack of coyotes broke into song, serenading the silence with mournful cries. Buckthorn bit his lip. Their beautiful voices echoed through the desert stillness. He listened intently for a time.
“Whew,” he finally breathed. “It’s all right. I don’t understand any of their words.”
He snuggled into the worn softness of his blankets and watched the darkness. As his gaze roamed the sparkling heavens, his thoughts kept returning to the beautiful woman in the turquoise cave high in the icy mountains.
Six
Footsteps. Very faint.
Thistle turned toward the leather door hanging that kept some of the cold at bay. As she moved, thick black hair fell over her shoulders, framing her fine-boned face. Thirty summers old, she stood ten hands tall and slight of build. She cocked her head, listening.
The steps came up the dirt path slowly, as though her husband’s soul drifted in one of the skyworlds, seeking answers he could not find. He placed his feet so lightly that his sandals barely crunched the gravel.
She knew that walk. Knew what it meant. She had dreamed of yucca root last night, a warning of the nearness of death. But whose?
Thistle wiped her sweating palms on the hem of her lichen-dyed yellow dress, and looked to her left at Cornsilk and Fledgling. The children slept beneath brightly colored blankets. Only the top of Cornsilk’s head showed, but Fledgling had thrown off most of his covers. She listened to the deep rhythms of their breathing, letting the sounds comfort her fears.
From the woodpile beside the slab-lined firepit, she picked up a pine knot. When she placed it on the glowing bed of coals, flames crackled and sparks winked upward toward the roof’s smoke hole.
Her gaze roamed their small house, four body-lengths square. They had built it from sandstone, then plastered both interior and exterior walls with white clay carried all the way from the sacred lake in the south. A small window with a leather curtain pierced the rear wall. In front of her, on either side of the doorway, a black long-necked water jug stood in a line with several plain pots which held red, yellow, white, and blue cornmeal, as well as a variety of Healing herbs. She and Beargrass had collected them on a trip southward. It had been a bright spring morning filled with laughter and tender touches: turkey mullein for heart ailments, screwbean for stomach distress, prickly pear cactus pads to use as drawing poultices for bruises and burns, and the roots of yucca to ease the pain caused by the knotted-joint disease. Mugwort leaves to induce miscarriages.
A ring of scalps encircled Beargrass’ weapons, his bow, two bone stilettos, and a long obsidian knife, which hung on the wall to her right, over their bed. After being carved from the head, the souls of the enemy scalps transformed themselves into water and seed beings, and bestowed long life and great spiritual Power upon the warrior brave enough to have taken them in battle.
A flat basket of stone tools and a pot of dried juniper berries rested to her right. When brewed into a strong tea, the Spirit of the berries trickled into a person’s soul and warded off witchcraft. She had been using these more often of late. Rumors ran the roads, saying that entire villages had turned to witchcraft to protect themselves from the ambitious First People at Talon Town—especially the Powerful priest, Sternlight, and the terrible Crow Beard.