The Broken Land(142)

… Pain. Shock.

I twist my head, looking for Wrass. Watching him as he stumbles out into the warriors’ camp. Dumping the bag of poison into the stew pot. If I can just … see him … I can … stand this—

Sindak’s voice breaks in. “Chief, end this battle. You’re asking your warriors to murder their cousins!”

I look at Sindak, at the warriors behind him, and shout, “Sindak’s right. Chief, clear the battlefield so we can talk to one another. Please, just give me fifty heartbeats to—”

Atotarho laughs, the sound low and disdainful. “Clear the battlefield? You’ve always been a coward. I remember when you were a boy, you …”

I’m trembling all over when I turn eastward and lift my arms into the air, as though reaching out to touch the Sky World. I shout, “This war must end! We’re killing Great Grandmother Earth!”

There is a momentary hush.

A curious far-off rushing sound echoes to the east. Everyone hears it. The battlefield whispers as warriors turn, their eyes wide, asking questions. It is as though the mist has been suddenly sucked away, leaving cold sparkling sunlight behind. I squint against the brilliance. The rushing grows louder, like a tidal wave coming in, and a black wall boils over the forest canopy, swelling into the sky, rising so high it blots out Elder Brother Sun’s face as it floods toward us.

“What is that?” Atotarho props his walking stick and shifts to look at it.

Sindak’s dark eyes narrow. He shouts, “Get down! Everyone get down!”

A few people obey and hit the ground, but most run, trying to find cover before the leading edge of the blackness strikes. At the first opportunity, Sindak pulls a chert knife from his belt and cuts Kahn-Tineta’s bonds, but orders, “Stay down!”

She flattens on the ground.

I seem to be frozen, my hands extended over my head, as though I am the first to surrender to the monstrous storm. Shocked cries erupt. A torrent of fleeing warriors floods around me, the Standing Stone warriors trying to get back to the safety of the villages, the Hills warriors just running, running with all their strength. A few dive behind boulders; others crouch near the most massive tree trunks.

I turn to the east. Into the storm. Close my eyes. Voices fill the wind—powerful, hushed, as though the ancestors have walked the Path of Souls back to earth and are riding the backs of the Cloud People, soaring straight for us. For me. The thundering of their ghostly feet pounds in my chest.

“Blessed gods,” Sindak shouts. “Run!”

I open my eyes. The men who’d thrown themselves to the ground rise and flee. One carries Chief Atotarho over his shoulder. There are only two people before the war lodge now. Two people left in the open. I kneel before Kahn-Tineta. She seems too terrified to breathe. “I’m Sky Messenger. Stay with me. You’re safe with me.”

Her tear-streaked face is disbelieving. She looks over my shoulder just as the trees on the eastern hills explode. Dark fragments of branches and leaves blast upward into the spinning darkness and vanish, crushed to powder.

“Please, let’s go. We have to run!”

“No, don’t run.”

“It’s coming! It’s going to kill us!” Kahn-Tineta throws her arms around my neck in a stranglehold.

I clutch her tightly against me, whispering, “Just listen, Kahn-Tineta. Close your eyes and you’ll hear them. Our ancestors are telling our story on the wind.”

Against my cheek, I feel her squeeze her eyes closed, and I lift her into my arms and stand up to face the telling. All stories are lived between the listener and the teller, but until this moment I have never realized there is a third person in the story. The silence. Just before the ancestors enfold us in their arms, silence steps into the space between us. It is a pause in the heartbeat of the world. But I feel it like muscular arms tightening, pressing us close, encircling us with an invisible palisade of human bodies.

And perhaps that’s what it is. Perhaps the souls of the lost warriors in the palisade logs have stepped out for just a moment, just an instant in time, to defend us, as they have always defended their people.

“Hold me! Don’t let go of me!” Kahn-Tineta screams.

When the blackness strikes, I crush her small body against me and close my eyes.





Sixty-four

Hiyawento threw his arms around Zateri and dragged her to the ground as the blackness swept over them. All around, people in the camp shrieked, racing for whatever cover they could find.

Hiyawento never closed his eyes. He kept watching, watching Kahn-Tineta and Sky Messenger. A thin spiral of mist rose from the ground and seemed to cling to Sky Messenger’s cape; then the worst of the blackness thundered down upon them, swallowed them, blackness and spinning darkness, grass and dropped arrows swirling high into the air, as though to fuel some sky war.