The Dawn Country(39)
“I will risk it. Close the door.”
As the door closes, the lamplight seems to grow brighter, reflecting from the plank walls like gigantic amber wings. Atotarho wears a beautiful black ritual cape covered with circlets of bone cut from human skulls. When the lamplight touches them, they wink. “War Chief Koracoo, Deputy Gonda, I must speak with you in confidence. Is that possible between us?”
Our people have been at war for decades. It is a fair question.
Koracoo rises to her feet. “You have my oath, Chief. Whatever we say here remains between us.”
I get up and stand beside her. “You have my oath, as well.”
Atotarho comes forward with great difficulty. “Forgive me, I cannot stand for long. I need to sit down.” He lowers himself to sit upon the cold dirt floor and places his oil lamp in front of him. “Please, join me.” He gestures to the floor, and I notice that his fingertips are tattooed with snake eyes, and he wears bracelets of human finger bones. “This will not be an easy conversation for any of us.”
We sit.
Koracoo asks, “What is it you wish to discuss?”
The old man doesn’t seem to hear. His gaze is locked on the lamp. The fragrance of walnut oil perfumes the air. Finally, he whispers, “Stories have been traveling the trails for several moons, but only I believed them. She has been gone for many summers—perhaps as long as twenty, though no one can be sure. She’s very cunning.”
Koracoo says, “Who?”
Atotarho bows his head. “Have you heard the name Gannajero?”
I feel like the earth has been kicked out from under me. More legend than human, hideous stories swirl about Gannajero. She is evil incarnate. A beast in the form of an old woman.
Koracoo softly answers, “Yes. I’ve heard of her.”
Atotarho flexes his crooked misshapen fingers. “Rumors say that she has returned to our country. Many villages are missing children. I have been … so afraid …” He rubs a hand over his face.
“That your daughter is with her?”
He seems to be trying to control his voice. “Yes. All day, every day, I pray to the gods to let my Zateri die if she is with Gannajero. I would prefer it. Anything would be b-better …”
Koracoo gives him a few moments to continue. When it’s clear he can’t, she says, “I understand.”
Atotarho’s mouth trembles. “No, I do not think you do. You are too young. When she was last here, you were not even a woman yet, were you?”
“I had seen only seven summers, but I recall hearing my family whisper about Gannajero, and it was with great dread.”
Atotarho extends his hands to the lamp as if to warm them. His knuckles resemble knotted twigs. “When I had seen five summers, my older brother and sister were captured in a raid. My sister was killed, but my brother was sold to an old man among the Flint People. I heard many summers later that my brother was utterly mad. His nightmares used to wake the entire village. Sometimes he screamed all night long. He eventually killed the old man, slit his throat, and ran away into the forest. No one ever saw him again.”
From some great distance, Sindak says, “Towa, I swear, you’re a fool for continuing to be loyal to a chief you know you cannot trust.”
Then Koracoo says, “It would help me if you told me everything you know about Gannajero. Who is she? Where is she from? I know only old stories that make her sound more like a Spirit than a human being.”
Atotarho clasps his hands in his lap. “I don’t know much. No one does. They say she was born among the Flint or Hills People. Her grandmother was supposedly a clan elder, a powerful woman. But during a raid when Gannajero was eight, she was stolen and sold into slavery to the Mountain People. Then sold again, and again. She was apparently a violent child. Several times she was beaten almost to death by her owners.”
“And now she does the same thing to other children?” The hatred in my voice makes Atotarho and Koracoo turn. “What sort of men would help her? How does she find them?”
“I wish I knew. Twenty summers ago, we thought they were all outcasts, men who had no families or villages. Then we discovered one of her men among our own. He was my sister’s son, Jonil. A man of status and reputation. He’d been sending her information about planned raids, then capturing enemy children and selling them to her.”
I clench my fists. Warfare provides opportunities for greedy men that are not available in times of peace. Since many slaves are taken during attacks, it is easy to siphon off a few and sell them to men who no longer see them as human. War does that. It turns people—even children—into things, and gives men an opportunity to vent their rage and hatred in perverted ways that their home villages would never allow.