The Sacrifice (6 page)

8

Now that she knew for certain where she was and how to find her village, she had no intention of going there. She made camp immediately. There was plenty of game here in the Land of Boiling Waters, more than enough to sustain her while she prepared to meet her destiny. For the spirits, she suspected, had led her here, and revealed the cliff to her. What else could explain the sudden rain? Had she not seen that sand while it was wet, she would have walked past it. And if the spirits had led her to the cliff, was it not possible that she
was
the Great One? She barely dared think such things, but something important awaited her here, she was certain.

Whatever it was, she would be ready. She held up the arrowhead she was working on. It gleamed black in the soft evening light with secret power.

“What do you think, Bull?” she called. “These arrowheads have medicine; they will strike anything I aim at.”

Bull, grazing across the creek on the other side of the meadow, ignored her. Satisfied with her edges, she laid the arrowhead proudly on a rock next to the others, above her new knife blade. They were jagged and uneven, for she was no arrow craftsman, but they were beautiful nonetheless, like tongues of black fire.

“Tomorrow I will replace my old heads with these, and we will have fresh meat,” she announced. Bull snorted. “I know, you don't think much of that, since you won't eat any and yet must carry it.”

The next morning, as soon as she had finished her arrows, she went out in search of game. Almost immediately she spotted a band of elk moving like ghosts among the pines. Just as she had boasted, her first arrow found its mark, a young buck, and with a second arrow, she brought it down. More than ever, she saw no reason to thank the animal.

Her new knife blade glided through the buck's hide as though it were mud. She began to hum, then sing about her adventure. She wished she had a good name to sing also, something fearsome. She could not sing of being Weak-one-who-does-not-last.

She unwrapped her fire drill and tinder and soon kindled a clean little flame. While the meat sizzled, she fitted her new blade into one of the buck's short antlers.

The fresh-roasted elk tasted so good she ate too much and made herself sick. She lay in the grass until the worst of the feeling had passed. In the buck's hide she wrapped as much meat as she could fit in Bull's saddlebags. Much of the meat would have to be left behind, but she did not worry; game was plentiful in this country. Bull still flinched when she touched his sore, so she smeared elk grease on it and rode bareback once more. With a kick and a lusty cry she set out to meet whatever enemy the spirits set before her.

The afternoon was cool and gray. They passed through a pine forest and near some strangely steaming, stinking holes in the ground. She stopped to admire a vibrant green-yellow lake, wondering what such water tasted like.

As they approached a bare white patch on a small mountain, steam roared from several holes in its side.

She stood and watched in amazement, but pulled back as she realized the steam was coating her in a smelly film. She rinsed herself in one of the ponds across from the roaring mountain. Not long after, she came upon a spring that sizzled like bear grease on a cooking rock. Bull clomped through a narrow river that rose to his thighs, and they followed its twists awhile.

Then, above the treetops on the ridge ahead, she saw smoke rising. Could this be the enemy she was to brave?

Cautiously she weaved Bull between the pines up the side of the ridge. From the top she could see several columns of smoke. It must be a large party, perhaps a small village, she could not guess of what nation. She tied Bull to a broken tree and crept up on foot. Her heart began to trip over itself as she made her way through the trees over ground turned white and barren.

A sound like a waterfall floated to her. She crawled over the crest and beheld the source of the sound, and of the smoke.

Before her spread a wet, whitish valley burbling with columns not of smoke but of steam. A small hillside spewed steaming water into the air, as if spitting out mouthfuls of broth too hot to swallow. The place was alive with gurgling and hissing sounds, but empty of life.

She trotted back down to fetch Bull. She was able to mount him easily from the broken tree, and soon they were crossing the barren valley.

Sickly-sweet steam rose in tufts from the pale gray earth, as if fire had just swept the valley, leaving nothing but smoldering ashes. In places the ash-colored earth melted into pale red or darker gray. Rivulets and sheets of water flowed soundlessly from deep, burbling pools.

Some of the pools glowed milky turquoise or bright blue. She urged Bull over to them, but after a few steps across the flat, his forelegs crashed through earth into hot water. With a scream, he reared and shied back. The girl clutched his bridle, managing to stay on his back, but she could not control him. He plunged about in a panic, punching through the crust several more times before he veered onto solid ground.

“Easy, easy,” she murmured in his ear, patting his neck. She slipped to the ground and crouched to examine his legs. Fortunately the water had been shallow, no deeper than his fetlocks. Bull stood quietly, showing no signs of pain, while she felt his legs up and down.

“I am sorry,” she said, stroking his black face. “This is a strange kind of land. I must be more careful.” She remounted from a fallen rock and gave the center of the valley a wide berth.

Along the edge, though still ashen, the earth seemed solid. Bull walked through a golden river half as deep as his hooves. Ahead they met one of the turquoise pools, glowing like a moon. She wanted to gather all the colors like flowers and hold them against her skin.

She started Bull up the side of the hill. Along their path a small, deep pool of steaming water suddenly belched, as though she had dropped a big stone into it. She squinted at the pool. No stones were being dropped into it, yet it continued to splash. Then, abruptly, it stopped and lay still.

“This valley is a camp of the Great Mystery,” she whispered to herself, beginning to feel frightened. “Or of Death. It is not for humans.” She urged Bull out of the valley.

From the hilltop she turned and took a long look to burn this place into her eyes. Near the middle of the flat a few dead trees stood like ancient gray skeletons in the white landscape.

She turned and started down a long slope. It was bordered by pine forest but the slope itself was barren except for a few brave clumps of lodgepoles. Sputtering, steaming holes dotted the hill.

On her left spouted a powerful spring, spilling into multicolored gullies down the hillside. Some of the deeper gullies were dry; the spring must once have run quite heavily. Now it was spurting straight into the air, almost even with Bull's knees. She was turning Bull away when she felt a trembling in his body.

Before she could think, a column of water exploded from the earth next to them, bursting high into the sky, raining boiling water on them and blasting them with nauseating steam. Bull shrieked and reared so sharply it seemed he would crash down on her. Falling, the wet reins sliding out of her hands, she grasped at something hard that broke off in her fist, and she landed on her shoulder, crashing through the crust into burning water. She scrambled on all fours through blinding, reeking, hot spray, suffocating in the steam.

Finally she broke through to fresh air. She kept stumbling forward, not stopping until she collapsed on brown earth on the hilltop. Pain seared her skin as she lay gulping air. Water thundered into the sky, towering above the pines. A shift in the wind gusted more boiling rain on top of her, and in terror she scrambled into the trees. The edge of the thicket was all she could manage. She slumped dizzily against a tree trunk.

“Bull! Bull!” she croaked, looking frantically about for him, but he was nowhere to be seen, and her cry was like a drop in a thunderstorm.

9

She had seen people die, and she knew it was happening to her. She felt weak and chilled, her heart beat in trembles, she could not catch her breath. She needed warmth, but her buffalo robe was strapped across Bull's back, and Bull was gone. Gone with her robe, her food, her bow—everything.

She huddled against the tree trunk, struggling not to panic. She needed some kind of covering, quickly.

She tried to focus her thoughts and blot the pain from her scalded arm and shoulder. Her eyes searched the thicket and the hilltop for anything of use.

Water was still blasting from the spring, but only as high as her head. There was a rumbling underground.

An idea came to her. She struggled to her feet and slowly walked across the hilltop. The feathered ends of her arrows, which had broken off in her hand as she fell from the horse, lay scattered across her path. With every step her buckskin shirt, heavy with water, chafed her burns. Holding her upper body as rigid as she could, she staggered to a hot spring. She crouched down and dipped her uninjured hand into the water washing over the rim. Too hot.

But one of these pools might be cool enough to warm herself in. She stumbled down the hill through the pines. She tested pools quickly as she went. All were far too hot.

Though her burns seared her, the rest of her skin was cold and clammy and she had to pause every few steps.

The streamlets running down the sides of the hill were just warm, but they were tiny and shallow. She remembered the deeper gullies she had seen branching out from the angry spring. Water from the spring must be running in them now, and they would be deep enough for her to lie in.

She hurried to the other side of the hill and began climbing up. One of the gullies cut a path through the trees and branched into smaller, steaming streams on the open hillside.

Where the gully forked into streams she squatted and touched the rushing water. Hot, but not burning. She eased her body into the gully, wincing. After a moment the heat became tolerable. She leaned back and let the hot water run over her.

*   *   *

At first, she did not remember where she was or what had happened, but as soon as she tried to sit up, the pain in her arm and shoulder reminded her.

She did not know how long she had been lying in the ditch. It was dry. Her skin, her hair, her clothes were coated with white scum. The sky was pale pink, but from sunset or sunrise, and on what day, she did not know. Her throat ached with thirst. Water gurgled in pools and rivulets all over the hillside, but she did not trust that it was good to drink.

Her head felt as light as breath when she stood up. She crouched down for a moment to let the dizziness fade.

There had been a river, she remembered. With effort she walked up the hill and down its other side through the pines, trying to retrace her steps. It would have been easier to skirt around the hill, but she thought the trees knew best where it was safe to stand, so she stayed in the thickets.

She called to Bull as she went, hoping he might have circled back, but he did not appear.

Her shirt was dry and had plastered itself to her burned back, shoulder, and arm. She moved carefully to keep it from tearing at her wounds. The sky grew rosy and then blue as she made her way down the white hill, around the edge of the ashen flat, and over the rise to the river. So, it was morning.

Like an old woman with pain in her bones, she knelt stiffly on the lip of the riverbank and scooped water into her mouth, again and again. The water was fresh and cold. She stepped into the river and sucked in her breath as she let herself sink up to her chin, in the hope that wetting her shirt would loosen it from her skin.

The icy water felt good washing over her scalded skin and her bruised shoulder. As the cold numbed the pain, she began to notice the ache in her stomach.

Again it came to her that Bull had taken everything with him. She thought of the broken arrow ends strewn across the white hill. She could use the feathers from these for new arrows. There seemed to be no stone nearby for the heads, but perhaps sharpening the wooden shafts would be enough. What of a bow? She had no sinew, but she could make a fiber cord, and a green branch or a shoot would hold its spring for a day or two—then she could cut another.

If she had her knife. She fumbled underwater and felt the antler handle jutting from her belt.

But there was the problem of her shoulder. Even when it was healthy she needed all her strength to draw a bowstring. Now she had no strength. She thought of Grasshopper and his small, bent arm, and for the first time knew what it was like for him. Were he ever left alone, he would starve to death.

She must find shelter and food. She could make a shelter from pine boughs, if only leaned one against another. But what would she eat? Perhaps she could catch small game. She had always scoffed at the village boys, setting snares for rabbits while she stalked deer and buffalo and bighorn sheep, but even a stringy hare would taste good now.

No berries or seeds or nuts were yet ripe, but there were always roots. She wished she knew more about what roots to dig and where they like to grow. But that was women's work, much beneath a great warrior like herself, she thought ruefully.

Even an abundance of small game and roots would not keep her alive for long, however. They did not contain enough fat.

The river was growing too cold. It had unpasted her shirt from her skin, and she drew her knife to cut away the leather. The tip of the blade had broken off. Nevertheless, she could cut with it. She was not clever with her left hand, but she managed to slice off the right sleeve and free her shoulder blade.

Her flesh stung when the air touched it. Most of her right hand and arm was red and raw. This must be how her shoulder and right side of her back looked as well, because the air also burned her there. With one hand, she wrung out the sleeve remnant and took it with her out of the water. She dared not throw anything away.

There were tracks by the river telling of buffalo, elk, and other animals that had passed this way. The Land of Boiling Waters was a land of plentiful game, but there would be none for her now. She tried to forget the tracks as she searched along the riverbank for plants to eat. The plants were young, making it difficult to tell one type from another, and it seemed that most of the food plants she knew from her valley did not grow in this strange country.