People of the Silence(40)
“Crow Beard’s ‘trinkets’ might amount to unimaginable wealth, brother.”
Fledgling said, “No matter who my real mother is, a true son of Crow Beard would have a claim on his personal belongings. I would be a threat to Snake Head’s inheritance.” He swallowed hard. “Do you think he’s the man who wants to kill me? The one our mother fears? I’ve heard he’s very wicked.”
“I’ll tell you exactly what I think,” she said. “I think we’re both leaping off a cliff before we’re sure we’re being chased. We may have all of this figured out wrong. I think we should speak to Mother and Father.”
She started to rise and he gripped her hand. “We’ve seen fifteen summers, Cornsilk. Almost sixteen. If they haven’t told us by now, they never plan to. You know how they are!”
She sagged to the sand. Their parents loved secrets. She and Fledgling frequently heard them whispering to each other in the darkness at night, always about frightening or forbidden things. “Maybe we should begin making plans of our own, Fledgling. If you have to go to—”
“Let’s pretend we are going where they tell us to, and … and then let’s go somewhere else! Together.”
She nodded. “All right, maybe. We’ll think about it.”
“Let’s just do it. In a moon, we can come home. They might be worried for a time, but in the end, we’d be all right. They’d get over being mad at us. They always do. And then—”
“Listen! If we decide to do this, we can’t tell anyone. Do you understand? Not even Ruddy Boy in the afterworld. He might tell one of the ancestor Spirits, and there’s no telling who would find out after that.”
“I promise I won’t tell.”
Cornsilk got to her knees again and brushed her sweaty hands on her leggings. The fragrance of crushed sage filled her nose. “Well, let’s go in and let them tell us they’re sending us away, then we’ll wait until they’re out of the house and gather the things we’ll need.”
“Thank you, Cornsilk.”
She smiled confidently, but her stomach ached with doubts. Nothing made sense. Except … except that her parents had always treated them differently. An extra pat on Fledgling’s shoulder, a special tenderness in their smiles when they looked at him. Until today, Cornsilk thought they loved Fledgling more because he was just more lovable than she. Her brother obeyed their commands without question, while she took it as a matter of honor to figure a way around directions she didn’t like. Her parents told her not to fight, so Cornsilk waged one subtle war after another among her peers. She had to out-shoot and out-hunt every other child in the village—especially the young men. On many occasions her exasperated mother had joked that a wild strain of weasel blood ran in Cornsilk’s veins.
But they never joked when Fledgling did something wrong. They punished him.
Because he was truly their son, and it mattered?
Through the window, she glimpsed her mother duck out the door and heard her call, “Fledgling? Cornsilk? Where are you?”
They leaped to their feet and ran.
Eight
As the chill of winter deepened, the sunlight grew feeble and pale; it fell through the drifting clouds in streaks of fallow gold and slanted across the canyon.
Night Sun clutched her black-and-white cotton cape closed with both hands and descended the winding deer trail that ran along the west side of Straight Path Wash. Small garden plots dotted the flats. Filled with the withered corpses of frosty bean and squash vines, they were also scattered with corn stalks and tiny immature corncobs. They’d had a very wet spring and autumn, but cold had come much earlier than normal. Many of their crops had frozen on the vines. It had been a hard winter for smaller villages. In another moon, when the last supplies disappeared, raiding would intensify. No matter how much peace men and women held in their hearts, when their children cried for food, weapons filled their hands.
She shook her head and said a soft prayer to Spider Woman, begging for spring to come early. When people could gather enough tubers and tender plants, it staved off violence.
Her daughter’s steps pattered behind her. Night Sun turned to look at Cloud Playing.
Though she had seen only nineteen summers, gray already touched her temples, highlighting the two long braids she wore. Her life had not been an easy one. Cloud Playing had borne four children and lost all four. They had died, along with her beloved husband, Tassel, from a strange wasting sickness that had swept the canyon two summers ago. Night Sun diligently pushed her to remarry, but Cloud Playing maintained she hadn’t the heart for it, not yet. But her daughter also said she had “prospects.” When Night Sun had seriously said, “Not Webworm, I hope,” Cloud Playing had replied, “He is my friend, Mother. Nothing more. Though I do love him. He has been kind to me since I was a little girl.” Still, it worried Night Sun.