Death Chants (15 page)

"I have winter in
my eyes," said the old woman, and her head fell back against the buffalo robes of the birth bed.
"I have seen visions. I have danced in the darkest of nights and became with child because I know
another truth."

"An evil truth,"
said the chief. And the people muttered darkly in agreement. The chief was angry and fearful, for
the old woman had plainly committed a terrible sacrilege and the night child was the result of
it.

The people began to
edge back, sensing an unseen horror.

The chief
pronounced his judgment.

"This child must be
destroyed, for we know not the father, and wish no nameless, creeping thing, growing among our
own children, spreading some night poison of its own making."

"Leave him be!"
screamed the old woman, her face contorted with pain. "In my visions, I have seen him stronger
than all of you, neither good nor evil, but poised at the beginning of two roads. Down one road,
lies darkness, on the other, the far-going days of our race. Someday, he may lead us down one of
these great roads." There was hope in her face and fear and even some measure of peace, for she
felt the burden leaving her in the quiet at the end of the road.

"He must be
destroyed. It is my judgment and it shall be done."

The shaman, Heart
Killer, came into the room then and looked into the face of things beyond his own great powers,
and said nothing. The people turned to him for an answer, but his face held none.

"Heart Killer, I
call on you to judge as I have judged. We must destroy this night-fathered child. Is this not
right for the sake of our own children?" asked the chief of the shaman.

All of the people
crowded close, staring at the small, innocent, defenseless baby.

Heart Killer, the
shaman, a man of great power and evil strength, looked down and saw into the depths of the
child's eyes and screamed. He dropped his great medicine shield and his medicine bundle and ran,
ran as if a wolf tore at his legs, stripping them to the bone.

And the people were
terrified of something they could not feel or see or sense.

It was a great
mystery.

The old woman
seemed to sink deeper into her birthing robes, the life fading and melting from her bones. She
was now powerless to defend her newborn child.

A shadow appeared
in the doorway of the lodge and the cold wind walked into the room and touched each being in the
room with the sharpened spearpoint of winter. The shadow became a man.

It was Yasheya's
father. The man that had been a shadow entered the lodge.

"None of you will
raise a hand to destroy this child. He is a hope of the world yet to be. My woman has spoken
true," he said, and the thunder and lightning crashed outside the lodge as if the world itself
was angry.

"Look upon my son.
He is like no other human being in this world. Do you not see thunder and lightning in his eyes?"
asked the shadow man.

In great fear, the
people looked and saw as he saw, for Yasheya's eyes seemed to flash and flare with a great storm
in them. And so it was that Yasheya came into the world.

And ancient rat,
unseen, crouched in the birth bed robes, hiss­ing in anger and unslaked hunger. His eyes saw the
beginning of the feast yet to come, a small baby with many days yet to grow before it would come
dancing into the rat's ruined pueblo at last.

Later that day, the
old woman closed her eyes for the last time and the people burned the lodge around her, to chase
the spirit of death away.

Shadow father stood
and watched the burning. He held Yasheya in his arms.

In his way, he had
loved the old woman very much.

He was a thunder
and lightning man, a shadow being of great dark power, but his heart was as soft as fawn skin.
The death of the woman made the human world empty for him.

He no longer had a
home there.

In the middle of
their human night, at a time when his physical being was strongest, the shadow man left the
village, vanishing into the night with baby Yasheya in his arms.

He went high into
the mountains beside the sea and there he raised Yasheya far from the others of his
kind.

The shadow man
loved his son so much that he wished to keep him by his side in the nonhuman world. In that
place, he would fashion a great shaped, spirit being of his half-human son.

So the shadow man
hoped it would be.

But first it was
necessary for the little one to be fed. Without a mother, the baby would soon sicken and
die.

He took Yasheya to
a special place high in the mountains.

He placed the tiny
baby on a rocky ledge and then went even higher into the mountains, to the heart of his great
power, thunder and lightning.

He became a shadow
again and asked the lightning to find a mother for Yasheya.

And the lightning
went journeying across the sky and touched the heart of a wolf.

It touched the
sadness in the heart of a mother wolf, for her newborn cubs were winter-dead and her den was
empty.

The lightning came
back to the old man, burning the sky with
a sad story, and the old shadow man sought out the young she-wolf.

Softly, in the
language of her kind, the shadow being called her.

The wolf shook with
the sound of distant thunder and came slowly, fearfully, out of her den. Her fur was blue-gray
and soft as summer sky. Her eyes were quick and golden and full of the longings she felt for her
dead pups.

The wolf began
running down the mountain, in a thunder-quickened dance, down toward the innocent, storm-eyed
Yasheya, lying naked on a rocky ledge in the sun.

The wolf did not
know what called her, but it was something that pulled the mother strings of her heart and she
had to obey. She came upon the baby suddenly.

She growled,
hackles rising at the smell of human in the air. That familiar, hated enemy smell. And she would
have darted forward, to attack, to kill and rend with her strong teeth, but the dance inside her
was so strange a dance that she could not move. Not in that way.

The sudden hatred
of human enemy tried to grow but it was such a tiny thing, all arms and waving legs, and
something in her made the strange enemy smell seem unimportant.

In the rocks far
above, the old one watched her and smiled, for he well understood her strange, savage mother's
heart.

Yasheya cried,
milk-hungry.

It was an appeal as
old as the singing sky, a thing that all mothers understand. To the she-wolf, human or not, it
was the sound of a baby that wanted to be fed. She came closer now, standing over the tiny human
baby. It had the milky smell of the newborn.

She whined and
tenderly licked Yasheya's face. In the dance that moved her, this strange baby reminded her very
much of her own now dead pups.

Had it been one of
hers, strayed from her at the time of birthing, perhaps touched by humans, and only now, newly
found again? It was a question a heart asks, when it knows an answer it wants to find.

The she-wolf ran
her cold nose across the tiny baby face. The
infant was delighted with the attention. His short clawless hands gripped her fur,
clinging to it with surprising strength.

The old one danced
softly in the wind, an offering to thunder and lightning.

The she-wolf
whined, more lonely now than ever before. The wolf part of her wanted to abandon this strange
baby, this thing with a smell of humans about it. But the old man touched her once more with a
flash of heart-reaching lightning, with a roll of deep thunder, and the mother part of her rose
up.

And the wolf part
drowned in the sudden flash flood of a mother's love.

Gently with her
teeth, so as not to hurt the young pup, she seized the child, holding him securely the way a
mother cat carries her kittens.

She began the long
climb back to her empty den. Yasheya did not cry. He liked this sensation of being carried,
rocking back and forth, and he cooed contentedly.

The she-wolf's mate
came out of the den when she returned. He was larger than she and his coat was a proud
silver-gray.

The she-wolf laid
the baby down at his feet. The male wolf smelled Yasheya carefully. He growled, scenting the
newly taken meat.

He drew his lips
back, showing his killing teeth. It still lived, the prey was not dead yet, and he lunged forward
to bite and kill with one quick snap. The she-wolf jumped at him.

The force of her
sudden attack knocked him flat to the ground. She bit him sharply and cruelly on his face and
neck. He whined in fear and outrage and retreated, his tail flattened against his
body.

She picked up the
baby again in her teeth and carried him inside the den.

The he-wolf whined
outside the entrance of the den. He hated having this strange thing in his den but there was
nothing he could do about it. If his mate had adopted him, then he would have to adopt him
too.

In the den, the
she-wolf was a force that must be obeyed. It

was a wolf way, and
all the things of time could not change it.

The mother wolf
curled herself around the baby in one corner
of the den. Her mate crept slowly into the den. She growled at him but he made no move to
bite at the little one so she let him come close.

Fearful that she
might strike, he inched forward until his head almost touched her. She stood still, watching to
see how he would act.

The he-wolf nosed
the baby cautiously. Yasheya responded by wriggling happily at his touch.

The he-wolf licked
the tiny human face, accepting him in the den, pleasing his mate, and then turned and went out to
hunt.

Gently, the
she-wolf gathered the little one to her. The milk which she had for her dead pups was ready for
him.

His small mouth
opened and she pressed him to her side. He found the milk and the ache in the empty baby stomach
and the ache in the empty heart of the mother wolf were filled then to trouble them no
more.

The shadow man
ended his lightning and thunder dance.

The education of
Yasheya into some of the special secrets of the world had begun.

The wolves cared
for Yasheya all that summer.

Summer turned to
fall and Yasheya grew strong on wolf milk and tiny bits of fresh-killed meat.

The wolves kept him
safe from the dangers of the wild places, sleeping close by him in the dark of the den, wanning
his furless body with their own heat.

Fall gave way to
winter.

Day by day, Yasheya
grew stronger. And more unlike any child that had ever walked the face of this world.

For as he grew, the
wolves taught him their wisdom, their great secrets and strengths.

And thus he lived
for several years until one day, the thunder and lightning man returned.

The shadow man came
in a lightning bolt, splitting the sky. He crashed to earth, light and shadow in his face, great
fear in his heart.

The sudden
appearance of shadow father frightened Yasheya and he bolted, wolf-quick, for the safety of the
sheltering den.

The old man caught
him as easily as the wind catches the petals of a flower.

Yasheya was strong
and could run like a wolf overtaking dawn, but still he could not outrun the lightning of the old
one.

The old one spoke
to him in the language of the wolves, for it was the only language Yasheya knew.

"You do not know
me, but I know you," said the old one. "I am your father."

There was no word
for lies in the tongue of the wolf, for none in that language can be told. Yasheya snarled. He
knew this human-seeming one was his father but it did not mean he had to like it.

"You will get used
to me," said the shadow man. "In time, you may even learn to like me, or more, be a son to your
strange father. It is time for you to leave this place and journey once again with
me."

"I am happy here,"
said Yasheya, and struggled against the shadow man, trying to break free from the old one's
grasp, but he could not break free.

"You have learned
all you can learn from the wolves, now it is time to learn of the ways of your own kind. Those
things and much more."

"But I am happy
where I am," insisted Yasheya with a growl, a wolf who would not give up his bone.

"Still you must
come with me."

Yasheya tried to
bite the old one but the shadow man held him so tightly that he could not sink his strong white
teeth in the flesh of the shadow man.

Yasheya
whined.

His wild heart
struggled to escape as the old one dragged him higher up the mountain but he was powerless in the
strong grip of shadow father.