The Broken Land(66)

One man, short with matted black hair, called as she walked by, “Speaker? Was he truly a messenger from the Hills People? What did he want?”

Another skinny woman shouted, “Are they planning to attack us? When?”

Koracoo answered, “We are all safe for now. The council is considering the messenger’s words. As soon as their deliberations are concluded, you will all be notified.”

Koracoo put her head down and bulled her way through the crowd. She needed to think before she said anything more.

Snow frosted the longhouses and the corpses piled near the palisade, along the walls, beneath the porches, anywhere their relatives could find space. Tomorrow at dawn, Bahna would hold a mass burial ritual. The bodies would be cleansed and Sung to the Land of the Dead.

But for now, the plague-stricken longhouses were so quiet, so dreadfully quiet. Which meant most of the suffering was over. The evil Spirits that had brought the fever were, at last, fleeing for other hunting grounds.

She had awakened at dawn and gone outside to help Tutelo and several other women bundle the fishing nets and cover them with hides. They had to be kept out of sight of the corpses. Each net had a soul, and it feared contact with the dead—as did fish. If they scented decaying flesh on the nets, they would not allow themselves to be caught. With so little food in the village already, they had to be especially cautious.

As she passed the Hawk longhouse, she lifted a hand to Deru, who stood giving orders to fifty warriors. He nodded back and went on with his nightly guard-duty assignments. The illness had left Yellowtail Village vulnerable. Many of their warriors were down with the fever. It would be strange, indeed, if all of their enemies missed such an opportunity.

One warrior, a man’s whose face she couldn’t see in the darkness, called, “Speaker? How is Matron Jigonsaseh?”

Koracoo shook her head. “Not well. I’m headed there now.”

“I pray this ends soon.”

“As do I. Be vigilant, warrior. You know the stakes.”

She hurried across the plaza and ducked beneath the door curtain into the Bear Clan longhouse. The heat struck her like a fist in the face. The air was oppressive, scorching, and filled with the sickly sweet odor of death. Fires blazed down the length of the house, built up high to keep the sick warm. She untied her cape laces and pulled it away from her throat. Already sweat trickled beneath her armpits.

After days of weeping and agonized groans, the firelit silence was startling. It should have eased her frayed nerves, but it had the opposite effect. As she walked by the compartments, hollow-eyed people stared at her. Hopelessness pervaded the air. There were no sounds of supper being prepared. No children raised dust with their running feet. No dogs trotted by with tongues happily dangling and tails wagging. Somehow this evening’s stillness felt even more sinister than the evenings filled with screams of grief and sobs.

No one spoke to her. They just watched her pass, as though they considered her to be just another ghost, one of many that roamed the house. The dishes that surrounded the fires sat dirty and in disarray, scattered, as though the owners had been too exhausted or disheartened to nest the cups or clean the pots. Children huddled in the rear of the compartments, their haunted eyes wide, staring at the empty places where mothers or fathers had once sat. When she looked at them, it was almost as though she could hear the loving voices behind their eyes: mothers telling them not to be afraid, fathers assuring them that everything was going to be all right. The voices of people they’d trusted, saying things they now knew to be untrue.

Tomorrow, after the burial ritual, they would all gather sticks and pots and walk through the longhouses beating them to chase away the ghosts so that they could not drag the living away into the Land of the Dead.

Koracoo’s first glimpse of Tutelo caught her off guard. Her steps faltered. Tutelo was on her knees, hunched over her grandmother, gently wiping her face with a wet piece of hide. Tears ran down Tutelo’s pretty face. “Mother? Please come quickly. She’s been asking for you.”

Koracoo knelt beside Tutelo. Unlike the compartments of most village matrons, this was the smallest in the longhouse, stretching just twelve hands long. The sleeping bench on the back wall, where her mother lay, brimmed with tattered hides and worn but neatly folded dresses. Jigonsaseh owned almost nothing. Each time a Trader brought her a gift to show his esteem, she gave it to the most needy family in the village. What she lacked in possessions, she made up for with the love of her people.

Matron Jigonsaseh lay on her back, pale and shrunken. She’d shoved the hides away from her fevered body. Two gray braids fell on either side of her wrinkled face, and her closed eyes were sunken in twin deep blue circles. Her shallow breaths rattled.