The Sacrifice (3 page)

A different pair of moccasins, blood-brown, stepped into the edge of her vision, a wide, red sash dragging on the frosty ground beside them. She knew they belonged to Grasshopper, but she ignored him.

They had been friends, before, drawn together by their similar lack of status. One of Grasshopper's legs was shorter than the other, and his left arm was small and bent. He could not even pull a bow. There could be no stolen horses or scalps or weapons snatched in battle for him.

He might have led a tolerable life as a medicine man like his father, but to Grasshopper such a life was no life. He wanted to be nothing less than a warrior.

Yet the only brave thing a crippled boy could do in battle was die.

So, a few moons ago, Grasshopper had become a Crazy-dog-wishing-to-die. He was by far the youngest member of the brotherhood; usually only old men who were tired of living, or perhaps someone who had suffered losses so great he could not bear to go on, became Crazy-dogs. Grasshopper was only fourteen winters old. He looked gallant with the brotherhood's long red sash trailing from his waist, and was good at talking the crosswise way of the Crazy-dogs—saying the opposite of what he meant. He had become wildly popular among the other boys, boasting in crosswise talk that the next chance he got he would stake his sash to the ground before the advancing enemy and die unflinchingly. Some of the girls even began to look at him—a cripple!—with soft eyes.

She had stayed in the shadows, forgotten and nearly mad with envy. But it was Grasshopper's betrayal that she could not forgive, his calling her an orphan.

“I am not sorry for what I said about you,” Grasshopper said in a cracked voice. Although she was used to his crosswise talk, she had difficulty translating now. “I am glad that your father is dead. My father says that you must live the wretched life of an orphan, that you are not welcome as a daughter in his lodge.”

She flinched at the word
orphan.

“Di axparaaxe,”
she said coldly. It was not as harsh an insult as his calling her an orphan a few nights ago, but she said it with a finality that he could not fail to understand. She was not just insulting him, she was telling him that from now on, he
was
a ghost. He was dead to her, and she would never speak to him again.

One of the blood-brown moccasins scuffed at a stone. She forced herself to unwrap the stiff yellow shroud. Without touching her father's feet, her hands slid the wolf-tail moccasins on. She could hardly see through her black hair streaming across her face, but she did not stop.

Grasshopper spoke again. “You are strong enough to bury Chews-the-bear yourself. I will not help.”

She continued to look through her hair at the moccasins she was tying.

“Please—my heart is light with joy because of what I did. Won't you…” He did not finish his sentence; perhaps it was too difficult to express crosswise. Her fingers faltered with the laces.

“I would be ashamed to be your brother,” Grasshopper said quietly.

She pulled hard on the knot and her hand slipped against her father's ankle. The dead cold shot through her arm like a pain. She flung the shroud over the feet and jumped up. She had not finished tying the second wolf-tail moccasin, but she did not care. Let him tie it himself. As fast as she could without running, she hurried away across the grass, toward the river. No sound rose above the wind from behind her.

The horses stood waiting with sharpened ears. Bull greeted her with his usual snort.

“I have some work for you, Bull,” she said, dodging his teeth as she slipped a halter over his big face. “Today I bury my father. I need you to carry his body and his burial things up to the ridge where we once sat to smoke and watch the sun set.” A tightness pulled at her throat, and she said no more.

*   *   *

The digging was slow. The dirt was almost as hard as the buffalo-shoulder-blade tool she hacked at it with. She piled the larger rocks to the side to cover the grave later. When she stood not quite to her knees in the trench she hit frozen ground. She turned to widening the pit. Finally, sweaty and light-headed, she swung the digging tool away.

With his head toward the sunset, the girl laid her father in the grave. She covered the dull yellow shroud with a new buffalo robe, for the air was cold and the sky was surely not yet empty of snow. Then one by one she placed beside Chews-the-bear's body the other things he would need on his journey.

The
barutskitue,
fresh and dried buffalo meat, the berries and pine nuts. Three new pairs of moccasins. His pipe and tobacco. His finely carved elk-antler bow, which had leaned against a backrest for several winters now. Its sheath of rattlesnake skin crinkled like a brown leaf in her hand.

She picked up his lance, and saw again the image of her father struggling with the Headcutter.

Resting on one knee for a moment, she balanced the spear in her hands. It was a joy to hold, but it had seen little blood since Chews-the-bear wrested it from a Blackfoot in battle many winters ago. Her father had not wanted to break the gleaming head, which was as long as her forearm and knapped of black obsidian, the mysterious, rocklike substance that shone like black water and cut sharper than flint. She liked to imagine that this spearhead had been cut from the black cliff in the Land of Boiling Waters. It was at that cliff that he had found Born-great's sacred stone: a thick shaving of obsidian in the shape of an owl in flight. It had fallen from the cliff to land at Chews-the-bear's feet, just as the owl in his dream had foretold.

Though there was no sun, the spearhead glinted, as though it held light of its own. She had seen other colors of obsidian—milky green and red-brown mingled with black—but the color that enthralled her was pure black. It was utter black in its depths and faded to clear at its edges. It was like a living thing, black fire, power: the sharpest substance known. But very brittle.

Reluctantly she laid the lance in her father's grave. Her knee cracked as she stood up and drew her flint knife.

Bull was grazing so close behind her that even over the wind she could hear the grinding of his teeth. She pressed his head against her chest and began sawing through his coarse black mane, and when she had finished, she cropped his tail. She stuffed the hairs under her father's robe where they would not be blown away. Some mourners killed and buried a man's horses, but she had several practical considerations. She could not bury four horses without a great deal of help, and she would not ask any. This way, since each hair would become a fine horse in the Beyond-country, her father would own many horses instead of only four, making him a wealthy and respected man again. And though she would be expected to give the other three animals away, she could keep Bull for her own.

She was glad of these practical considerations, because one creature she could never have killed was a horse. Especially not Bull.

She lifted up the hide of the grizzly her father had long ago battled. The men who had distracted the bear from him and driven a spear through it had given him the hide, because he had earned it with his courage. The skin side had been painted with figures showing his many exploits, and as the robe billowed in the wind the faded horses galloped across it. The fur had thinned over the years. It was especially bare at her father's teethmarks, where so many fingers had admired it that it was worn right through. When she was a child, her own slender fingertips had rubbed the ragged little flap to a dark polish. One last time she slid a finger through. Her father had been mauled by a grizzly bear and had bitten back! How many times she had listened to him tell the story, secretly wishing something like this would happen to her, while he tried to make it a lesson as dry as clay dust.

She spread the grizzly hide over the grave and began piling rocks on it. She worked hastily, not caring when her fingertips were caught between the stones. She was sweating and breathing hard as she heaved the last one into place.

The frigid wind chilled her inside the sweat-dampened skin shirt as she pushed up the sleeves and drew her knife again. She knew without thinking that she would not cut off her hair, as many mourners did in spite of the humiliation, nor would she cut off a finger joint. Rather, she rested the sharp edge on her bare forearm and, holding her breath, dragged the blade across.

Then she cut her other arm, and her legs. She felt no pain, only the sensation of blood flowing down her limbs. She reached out her arms over the grave and watched her blood, sprayed by the wind, splatter onto the rocks. It gave her a feeling of relief, as if something bad were going out of her.

“You are gone, do not turn back,” she said. “We wish to fare well.” That was all the ceremony she knew. She should cry now. But she never cried. There were no tears in her.

Before Born-great's death, Chews-the-bear had been a chief and a respected man. The whole village should be here mourning his death. He had earned a burial platform flocked with red streamers, and a long procession led by drummers. Yet here he lay in a shallow trough, attended by no one but an orphan girl.

Orphan.

She was back where she had started: no one, nothing, dependent on charity and her own wits. The humiliation was unbearable. She could not think of adoption. She was fifteen winters old—she should have been married by now! And adoption would mean crawling on her belly to Grasshopper and his family or to one of the others who had spurned her and her father.

In legend, orphans begged the gods to have pity, and with their help became great warriors and returned home in glory. But what god would favor a murderer? Indeed, Born-great would try to destroy her at every turn. But she had managed this far on her own. She could do it. She must do it.

It is not over yet, she told Born-great silently.

“Father, your spirit is still near. Hear me,” she said into the wind. “The owl said that one of your children would die young and one would number among the greatest Apsaalooka ever to live.”

She looked at her arms and legs. The wind had dried the blood to a sticky, dusty film. “My legs are swift, and my arms strong. You have taught me the ways of a warrior, but I am never allowed to fight. I am tired of running races against no one and shooting with no reward.

“The time has come for me to prove myself, Father.” She paused, wiping the blowing hair out of her face and gathering her courage as the idea took shape in her mouth. “Your death must be avenged. Therefore I will go with the revenge party and I will kill a Headcutter.

“Yes, I will kill a Headcutter,” she repeated to herself as if the words tasted good.

She turned to Bull and clambered up the travois onto his back. “They must let me go, Bull,” she said into his ear. “I am his kin.”

4

The council fire hissed and spat blue flames. Sobs for lost sons and husbands rose with the sparks into the night, where clouds slid past the sliver of moon. Most of the villagers were already seated, and the elders and warriors with painted faces and bodies gathered like varicolored moths around the fire.

Laughing Crow, dark and fierce-looking, was walking toward the war party, and a group of boys eddied around him. Everyone wanted to be Laughing Crow's friend because no one wanted to be his enemy. He was big for his age and an excellent archer, and he was as deadly with words as he was with arrows. The girl noticed Grasshopper was not with him. She scanned the gathering and saw her old friend sitting next to his mother and her kin. His father, Broken Branch, was an important medicine man and stood near the fire with the other council members. He looked unusually young for a man of forty or forty-five winters, with a dignified bearing and eyes that seemed to see more than others'. Tonight those eyes followed his oldest son, Lies-down-in-water, who would be riding with the revenge party.

She had painted a yellow stripe across the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones, and wore a freshly sewn buffalo-skin shirt, leggings, and moccasins. Beneath her shirt she wore a medicine necklace made from the owl's wing. It felt like a spark swinging against her skin.

How that owl had tantalized her, hanging from Born-great's throat. In her child's mind it was the difference between them, the mysterious power with which her brother attracted all the toys and treats and reverent touches. The day they were preparing to set off against the Cheyenne, when the fawning over Born-great was unbearable, she broke it. When all his protectors had for once wandered a few steps out of sight, she dashed at him and worked her thin fingers around the owl and pinched with all her might, until a delicious crack shot from it as she snapped a wing off. It was mostly the sound that she remembered. And she knew the memory was real, because hidden away for eleven winters she had kept the broken wing.

That night they left on their raid against the Cheyenne, and two nights later Born-great was trampled in the ambush. But that was not the end of him. His ghost cast a long, vengeful shadow.

Now, however, she would finally have her chance. The things she would need for the war party stood packed and waiting inside her lodge, ready to be snatched up and strapped onto Bull's back. She walked to the outer edge of the crowd, where the firelight did not reach, and knelt in the darkness.

Redwing, a tall man of seventy winters and the leader of the village, lifted his hands to quiet the crowd. “It is time,” he said.

As the people took their places, Redwing, Broken Branch, and the other elders sat in a half circle facing them. A splendid pipe, with a red bowl shaped like a horsehead and snakes carved around the stem, was lit, raised to the four sacred directions, and passed quietly among the elders. The men did not speak, but each sent his silent prayer for victory with the smoke up to the spirits. The fire licked around the logs and popped in the cold night air.

She was hungry like the fire, but she had to wait until the right moment to speak. When the smoking ended, there would be women calling for someone to avenge the murders of their family members, and songs of war from the scouts. The Crazy-dogs-wishing-to-die would vow to run into the middle of the Headcutter camp and stake their red sashes to the ground with their lances and call out, “It is a good day to die,” and fight to the death. Finally, Cut-ear, the leader of the party, would announce his men. Then she would speak.