The Broken Land(107)

She drew lines across her young face. “He had his face painted white with black stripes. He said he was a friend of yours.”

“A friend … to me?”

Someone from the war council.

Catta nodded vigorously. “And to Mother. He said he’d known you both since you were children.”

When Zateri turned to meet Hiyawento’s eyes, she found him staring not at her, but at the corn-husk doll. “Did the man say anything else?”

Catta swallowed hard. Her enormous eyes were shiny with tears. “No.”

Zateri’s gaze burned into Hiyawento’s. “There’s something I have to tell you. I—I’ve been meaning to. Sindak came to me. He said … he—he wasn’t going to tell me anything until he was sure.”

“What about?”

“Hehaka. And Ohsinoh.”

With the swiftness of lightning striking, Hiyawento grabbed the doll and threw it in the fire. The dry corn husks instantly caught and burst into flame.

“Father!” Catta groaned. “No!”

Zateri glanced at her chastened daughters, then at the charred doll in the fire pit. It was little more than a human-shaped clump of ash now. The polished stone beads that had decorated the dress fringe had split apart and rolled across the logs. The holes in their centers, where the beads had been strung, resembled tiny glowing eyes.

Hiyawento dropped his face into his hands and massaged his temples. “Blessed gods, I pray Sindak is wrong. I …”

Kahn-Tineta screamed, “Mother!” just as Jimer toppled backward and went into convulsions. Her body flopped and jerked across the mats. Before Zateri could even get to her feet, Catta collapsed with her mouth foaming and her limbs twitching like a clubbed dog’s.

Hiyawento lunged to his feet and grabbed Catta. “Zateri! What’s happening?”

“I don’t know!” She scrambled around the fire and stared down at Jimer’s face. The little girl’s eyes rolled in her head as her jaws spasmodically clapped together. She lifted her head and shouted, “Pedeza, go find Ahweyoh!”

Her cousin ran.

Zateri dropped to the floor and pulled Jimer into her lap, holding her daughter, praying that the seizure would end soon, and she could … Jimer’s body suddenly went limp. Zateri lifted her up and pressed her ear to her daughter’s chest. She couldn’t hear a heartbeat. She shook Jimer until the girl’s head flopped. “Jimer? Jimer, no!”

Hiyawento cried, “Blessed Spirits, this can’t be … what’s happening?” Hiyawento clutched Catta tightly against his chest. He was rocking back and forth with tears streaming down his face. Catta’s head flopped with his motions. Half the longhouse had crowded around them. A buzz of hushed conversations rose.

“Hiyawento?” A sob caught Zateri’s throat. “Is Catta … ? Is she … ?”

“She—she’s not breathing.”

Kahn-Tineta burst into tears. “Mother! Father!” The last word became a wail.





Forty-one

Zateri gazed down at Ahweyoh while the old Healer examined Catta and Jimer. Ahweyoh had seen almost sixty summers and had thin, chin-length white hair and a face like a shriveled scrap of leather. He wore a tattered buckskin cape over his sleep shirt. Everyone in the longhouse had crowded close, whispering, shaking their heads as they watched.

The little girls rested on Zateri and Hiyawento’s bedding hides. Their faces looked so peaceful. Their mouths were ajar, their eyes closed. Catta’s head tilted to the left, spilling black hair across her right cheek. Jimer lay on her back with her arms over her head. Ahweyoh pressed Jimer’s ribs; then his hands moved lower to prod her belly. A strange moldy scent issued from her mouth. Ahweyoh leaned forward to sniff her breath. Finally, the old Healer’s somber expression slackened, and he stood. Ahweyoh glanced at the far corner of the chamber where Hiyawento sat holding Kahn-Tineta. Kahn-Tineta had her face buried against his shoulder, weeping softly. Hiyawento patted her back and spoke into her ear, but his face had gone deathly gray, wiped clean of all except the hideous realization that his two youngest daughters were dead.

Ahweyoh said, “It was musquash root, probably in the doll.”

“In the doll?” Zateri asked.

“Yes, I suspect the powdered root had been folded between the corn husks.”

At the expression on Hiyawento’s face, Zateri’s heart went cold. Three women nearby sobbed. Zateri kept her eyes on her husband, for he looked as though he longed to be dead himself. His expression had contorted. He couldn’t take his gaze from his little girls.

“Are you certain? I need to know,” Zateri asked. She felt numb, not really there. None of this seemed real. But she knew, all too soon, her world would come crashing down. As her gaze flicked to the people standing close by, her breathing went shallow. She was the village matron. No matter what personal loss she sustained, she could not appear weak or ineffective. She had enemies. Every matron did. Give them one small opening, and they would slit her throat politically.