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The Broken Land(33)

By:W.Michael Gear


Koracoo said, “If we are to accomplish the things your Dreams say we must, we need this alliance.”

He laughed softly and shook his head. “Very well, Mother, but I don’t like it.”

Koracoo flipped up the hood of her cape, adjusted it around her face, and said, “I must speak with our council again. Hear their thoughts. Then we’ll arrange another meeting with Kittle. She’ll be expecting us tonight. So we’ll wait until tomorrow morning.”

As Koracoo started to walk away, Sky Messenger caught her arm. “Mother, if … if. I will need you to approach Chief Cord of Wild River Village. I …” He released her arm. “We will need them on our side.”

Taya stiffened. Wild River Village was of the Flint People, their enemies! Was this some plot?

Koracoo watched the rain for a time. “Is she still there?”

Sky Messenger squinted and looked away. “That’s not the reason I asked you to go. I’m not afraid to see her. I just know that Cord will listen to you.”

Taya wondered who she was.

“I see.” Koracoo pulled her cape closed beneath her chin. When she exhaled, her breath condensed and drifted away. “I can’t leave while the fever rages.”

“No, of course not.”

“When I can, I will discuss it with …”

As they walked away across the rainy plaza, Taya lost their voices. She leaned back against the longhouse wall and hugged herself. She didn’t know how to feel about any of this. Why had no one consulted her about this marriage? Not that it was any of her business. Marriages were arranged by the prospective couple’s mothers or grandmothers, in consultation with their respective clans. The man and woman involved had little say in the outcome of such negotiations, though if either party seriously objected his or her desires were taken into consideration. Taya had to make her objections known immediately!

She ran back the way she’d come, heedless of the number of times her elbows banged the wall.





Fourteen

Kittle gracefully paced through the firelight of the Deer Clan longhouse, refusing to look at her granddaughter, her withering gaze instead upon her daughter, Yosha. How such an ugly child had come from her womb never ceased to annoy her. Yosha’s nickname as a child had been Rodent-face, which aptly described her. She had small beady eyes, a long pointed nose and a bad overbite, as though her teeth were too big for her jaw. The thin mousy hair that hung to her chin added to the rodent image. Worse, she constantly pawed at things in a ratlike manner, and had the minuscule intelligence to match.

A young slave girl, recently captured from the Flint People, fluttered around Yosha and Taya, setting a platter of cornbread and cups of walnut milk before them. Yosha sniffed and looked away, taking no more notice of the girl than she would of a mosquito. Taya, to her credit, stared fixedly at the floor mats. She wore an elkhide cape with the hair turned in for warmth. The exterior leather was painted with a curious, fanciful pattern of flowers and finches. Petals and feathers—yellow, red, blue—scrolled across the shoulders. A girl’s cape. Not a woman’s. Leave it to Yosha to be oblivious.

Kittle folded her arms and glared. “Well?”

“Mother, you already know what I’m going to say. Please sit down so that we might discuss it in a civil manner.”

Kittle turned to the slave girl. “Leave.”

The girl bowed. “Yes, High Matron.”

When she was gone, Kittle grudgingly sank onto the bear hides across the fire and propped her moccasins on one of the hearthstones to warm her feet. The night had been damp and bitter, and despite the morning’s excitement, she remained cold to the bone. Kittle pulled her magnificent blue cape more closely around her and examined her daughter. Yosha selected a piece of cornbread filled with hickory nuts and dried mint and bit into it slowly, as though relishing the flavor. Sitting to Kittle’s right, Taya was so still she might not have been there at all.

“Do you think I have all day to listen to your drivel? Get to the matter.”

Yosha continued to chew at her leisure, then swallowed the bite and wiped the crumbs onto her knee-high legging. “Taya objects to the marriage. She says it will disgrace her children and the entire Deer Clan.”

“She has seen fourteen summers. What does she know of disgrace? Ask me about her father. Now he was a disgrace. I should never have let you have your way on that one. From the instant I saw him I knew he was worthless. I’ll never forget the day I sent him running for his home village. It’s one of the high moments of my life.”

The muscles in Yosha’s jaw clenched a few times before she responded. “My choice of husbands is not at issue. Taya—”