The Sacrifice (2 page)

Chews-the-bear widened his stance against the wind. “I am not your friend,” he said. “I am your father.”

He gave her chin a tap upward and she jerked away. “You must remember who you are, daughter. You are destined to be one of the greatest Apsaalooka ever to live. A boy like Grasshopper is beneath you.”

I would not be so certain,
she dared not say. “My stomach is sick with being whispered about and laughed at. Why do you not let me show them that I can ride and shoot as well as any of them?”

“There is no room in a warrior's heart for vanity.”

Maddened, she leaped to her feet and began pacing. She was certain the village would accept her as a warrior—it was not unheard of for a woman—if only she could show them. But since Born-great's death, Chews-the-bear had been afraid. “How can I be the Great One if I am permitted to do nothing?” she demanded.

“One day when you are ready…”

How many times she had heard that! She snatched up the bloody knife and thrust it toward him. “I
am
ready. This”—she kicked the dead buffalo, and her father flinched—“is ‘ready.' Not just to hunt, but to make war.”

“You are
too
ready,” Chews-the-bear said, chopping the air with a leathery hand. “You are reckless, dangerous.”

“I will never be ready enough for you!”

“Do you want to get yourself killed?” he shouted. The question struck them both like a blow.

“You are afraid,” she said, unable to stop herself. “You are afraid I will be killed like Born-great!”

Chews-the-bear shut his eyes, and his craggy face stiffened with pain—not physical pain, but the other kind. She took a certain satisfaction in having hurt her father. She knew he was listening again to the scream from long ago.

Her twin brother had been four winters old when he rode on the raid against the Cheyenne. No one intended that he get into the fighting; he had been taken only for his medicine. The whole village believed that Born-great had powerful medicine, because an owl had foretold it to Chews-the-bear in a dream: his wife would die bearing twins, and one of the twins would die young, but the other would become one of the greatest Apsaalooka ever to live. Not only was Born-great thought to be the Great One, he also wore an owl-shaped
bacoritsitse
—sacred stone—around his neck. Wherever he went, he brought good fortune—good hunting, good weather, good water. They had no reason to doubt that his medicine would be strong against the Cheyenne.

It had taken three men to hold Chews-the-bear from running back into the Cheyenne ambush when he heard his son screaming for him. Those three men saved Chews-the-bear's life. That made four survivors. The village called that winter the winter the Cheyenne killed eleven men.

For a time Chews-the-bear had insisted that Born-great still lived, and tried to mount a rescue party, but the people no longer believed his dream, they could not forgive, and they could see he had lost his mind along with his son. No one ever followed him into battle again.

After a time he gave up the dream that his son was alive. Many days he did not rise from bed, and when he did he seemed to be sleepwalking. He went on this way for many moons, looking right through his daughter, until the afternoon she convinced him that he had made a mistake, that she was the Great One.

Although the scream still haunted him, eleven winters after the ambush, Chews-the-bear thought that Born-great's death was as the dream had foretold. He did not know that the scream haunted the girl, too, although she had not been present to hear it. He did not know that it was not the Cheyenne, but she, who had caused Born-great's death.

After a time, with immense control, he said only, “It is disrespectful to speak of the dead.”

The girl felt sick with a sudden fear that she was nothing but evil. “Perhaps there was a mistake,” she blurted. “Perhaps I really am the Weak-one-who-does-not-last, and I should have been the one to die.”

She turned away, but Chews-the-bear grasped her wrist.

“It is I who made the mistake,” he said, “in thinking that your brother was the one because it is not usual for females to become warriors. It is also not usual, when twins are born, for both to survive. Usually one is weak and soon dies. The people call you Weak-one because no one expected you to live. But you are not usual. And when you are ready, then the people will be ready for you. Then you will make a name for yourself. Your name is not Weak-one. Never let me hear you speak it again.”

“You don't understand,” she said.

“I understand more than you think I do.”

Just as a panic struck her that he knew what she had done to her brother, that he had found the broken medicine, an urgent noise snatched her attention. Head cocked, she stood alert, trying to catch a thread of sound through the wind.

“War cries,” she whispered.

This time Chews-the-bear heard, too.

2

In the dusk, she made out a swarm of dark figures pouring down a steep, stony slide on a nearby mountain, and spilling out onto the plain toward the village.

They were definitely people, on horseback.

“They are not headed toward the horses,” Chews-the-bear said. He ran the few paces to Bull and jerked the gelding's head from the grass. “Help me up,” he commanded. His daughter ran to him and shoved his foot up. He swung onto the horse's back. “Lie down and hide. Do not move, no matter what happens.” He gave a kick, and Bull bolted toward the village.

The girl flattened herself into the grass, her cheekbone pressed against something sharp. She was unable to see a thing but her bloodstained, broken fingernails and the tangle of grass in her face.

The distant thudding and cries of the beginning clash carried to her on the wind. Her bow and quiver were strapped to Bull's back, and she cursed herself for being caught without them. No one could stop her from fighting in the midst of an attack. And after the battle, how could Chews-the-bear argue against slain enemies? She might stand before the council fire she had been dreaming of all her life, if only she had a bow.

She raised her head. Although the village had been attacked many times, she had always been off by herself in the hills, or shoved into a lodgeful of women and children where she could see nothing.

Slowly, on her elbows and toes, she crawled toward the foothills that flanked one side of the village. She reached their cover of scrub pine and juniper and scrambled up to run toward the fighting.

Twenty-five or thirty warriors on horseback struggled forward among the Apsaalooka, slashing with knives and swinging studded clubs. She knew from the leader's blue-and-yellow shirt that the invaders were Headcutters. Amid the war cries and howls of agony, she felt herself unexpectedly pierced by fear.

The reputation of the Headcutters, or Lakota, as they called themselves, was well known to her. Her people were frequently attacked, often for their horses, for Apsaalooka horses were coveted by many, but although many tribes took prisoners of women and children to adopt into their own families, Headcutters were as likely to kill as to kidnap. She crushed her fear down harshly, as she would cuff a begging dog, and cursed again under her breath at being without a weapon.

Her eyes searched for Chews-the-bear but did not find him. She spotted Grasshopper's father, Broken Branch, trying to pull an attacker from his horse. Unable to unseat the warrior, Broken Branch stabbed at his mount. As the animal's legs buckled, he leaped on the Headcutter and together they rolled under the falling horse.

The girl circled wide around the village on the hillside, watching for her father. From up here, the warriors seemed melted together into a single living, raging thing. As she drew closer to the other side of the village, she could see from the riderless horses plunging about that several Headcutters had fallen. Some were already fleeing along the river.

She saw a flash of white—Chews-the-bear's doeskin leggings. They disappeared into the swarm again. She reached the plain, slid into the grass, and began creeping along the edge of camp. Occasionally she tipped her head up to see where she was. Through the haze of grass she could make out her father grappling with the blue-and-yellow-shirted warrior as he tried to run up the hillside. The Headcutter leader had lost his horse, and they were struggling hand to hand over Chews-the-bear's lance.

Suddenly Chews-the-bear twisted his lance free and lunged into the enemy. Then he stepped backward. A blot of bright red splattered the Headcutter leader's war shirt.

But the blood was not his own. Chews-the-bear took another step back, and another, then crashed to his knees. Blood ran from his rib cage.

The Headcutter caught Chews-the-bear by the hair before he could collapse to the ground. With his blade the warrior sliced down along the old man's head and began peeling back the scalp. A groan forced its way through the gaps in Chews-the-bear's clenched teeth.

“No!” his daughter screamed and flew up from the grass, hurling herself at the Headcutter. “No! No!” She shrieked and pounded and clawed his blood-soaked chest, and, finding his face, dug her fingers into his eyes. Then a crack of lightning flashed through her and she was sliding to the ground. The thudding and cries and horses' bellowing grew distant, and as she sighed into darkness a thought, strangely, brought her peace: her twin brother had finally exacted the perfect revenge.

3

Born-great, chubby even at four winters old, stood in the doorway of their lodge, grinning. He had a quirky, disarming smile that opened many hearts to him, but not his sister's. The broken black owl hanging against his bare chest seemed to point at her with its remaining wing.

“You thought you killed me,” Born-great said in a voice that seemed too old for him.

She froze in her bed of buffalo robes, as though by not moving she would not be seen. “You are dead,” she rasped.

“But I did not die,” he said.

She cleared her throat. “You are dead.”

“I am your twin. I am a part of you,” he said, still smiling.

Born-great opened his arms and began walking toward her. She screamed, scrambling backward, against the sloping wall of the tepee. “I killed you!”

“No,” Born-great said, and kept coming. “You killed yourself.”

Stars began raining in her head. The wind swelled, lifting her from her dream. She was sweating, clenched in a ball on her bed robes. The light was dim, and her panting was like smoke in the cold air as her eyes darted around the lodge. She was used to the nightmares, but still it took time to be certain her brother was truly not there.

She was alone. The wind beat against the tepee, rushing in around the door flap, carrying the sound of a woman wailing.

The girl pushed her covers aside and sat up. She waited for the pounding in her head to subside, fingering the crusted wound on her crown.

It had been two days since her father's death. The burial could be delayed no longer. She must see that he was prepared for his journey to the Beyond-country. It would be a difficult journey this time. Many winters ago, when he had been mauled by the she-grizzly, Chews-the-bear's spirit-soul had journeyed to the Beyond-country and back again, but he was a young warrior then and traveled in a time of plenty, When-the-leaves-turn-yellow. Now he was old and tired, and the season was spring, when mountains and rivers make dangerous crossing, and food is scarce.

She did not eat or bathe, but went straight to her task. She packed two parfleches to bulging with pine nuts and dried berries, and another of the flat, folded rawhide boxes with pemmican.

The tepee creaked under the force of the wind as she gathered her father's belongings. Stuffed deep in his quiver she found the wolf-tail moccasins he should be buried in. She laid them with everything else on the old, worn bearskin robe, and, bundling it into her arms, she stepped out into the flat gray day. At her feet lay the body of her father, wrapped in part of their tepee cover.

As she knelt down, she noticed an unfamiliar parfleche, painted with yellow diamonds, jutting out from her father's shroud. With a dry mouth, she slid the parfleche out, untied its thongs, and opened the rawhide flaps. It was filled with strips of
barutskitue,
the dried chokecherry mash that her father prized.

She looked around. A few young children and dogs shuffled by. She saw none of the boys from Laughing Crow's group. They were probably inside, shivering under their covers, drinking their mothers' licorice-root tea, she thought scornfully. Cut-ear's two wives stood outside their lodge restaking the windbreak. One of the women had cropped her hair in mourning for a brother. She glanced over, and the girl hurriedly looked down.

The mysterious gift made her uneasy. It was not the first; there had been many given to her, in the days before she had convinced her father that she was the Great One. It was a time she remembered only vaguely. Night and day the people came to look at Born-great, and in the excitement, his twin was not much noticed. Those first years, there was a grandmother who took care of her, but after the grandmother's death, the girl ran wild, fighting the camp dogs for scraps. It was then that the mysterious gifts began, always left while she slept. Food, sometimes clothing. After she stole one of Born-great's many toy bows and taught herself to shoot, she once awoke to a gift of arrows. Now it struck her that through all these winters, deep in her heart she had felt the gifts had been left by her father.

She breathed deeply. How could she have thought such a thing? Her father had seen only Born-great, hardly knew she was alive, until long after her brother was dead. Angrily she grabbed Chews-the-bear's moccasins to slip them on his feet, so she could be finished with her task.

Last night she had dressed his body in ceremonial clothes: his ermine-striped shirt and horsehair-fringed leggings, his bone-pipe breastplate, the old blue-and-buff-beaded gauntlets her mother had sewn for him when pregnant with her and Born-great. The moccasins were of soft elk skin, a wolf's tail knotted to each heel signifying that he had counted coup—touched an enemy in battle—a higher-ranked war exploit than killing an enemy. Chews-the-bear had worn these moccasins at council and on war parties long ago, before the Cheyenne slaughter, when he was still a respected man.