Shadows in the Cave (2 page)

Outside, Salya said, “Enough of this.” She took Aku’s hand, pulled him back into the hut, and immediately said, “I want to go see Adani.”

“We all need to see him,” said Shonan, “and he needs to see us.”

Every spring the Galayi people planted corn and then made the journey to the peace village named Cheowa, the principal of all Galayi towns. Here they sang, drummed, and danced for a quarter moon, celebrating the return of the season when all things grow and asking for the blessings of Grandmother Sun on their crops. Some also made pilgrimages up the mountain to cure their bodies in the Healing Pond, outside the entrance to the Emerald Cave. That was where Meli’s great-grandmother lived, Tsola, the Wounded Healer of the tribe and the prophetess empowered to wear the eagle-feather cape and see the future. The Dance of the
Planting Moon was one of the tribe’s three big annual ceremonies.

This spring Adani—the word meant the grandfather who was your father’s father—hadn’t made the trip from his own town, well to the southwest. The family said he was too feeble. Shonan, Meli, the twins—all of them knew that meant Adani wouldn’t survive another winter. If they were going to see him again before he went to the Darkening Land, this was the time.

“Shonan, I want to see Adani, too,” Aku said. For some reason the boy never called his father “Father.”

“You kids be quiet!” said Shonan. “Your mother and I are talking.”

“Shonan,” said Meli, “you promised Yim some help. Why don’t you and Aku do that, and we can talk later?”

Shonan looked into his wife’s eyes and understood. She was wise. He led his son out of the hut.

“Red Chief,” said Yim, “Aku. Just in time.” Yim and his son Fuyl were already at work rebuilding a corner of their hut. They were opposites, the father squat and sturdy, the son handsome and slender.

The hut was made of walls of slender limbs plastered and held up by posts, and the roof thatched. One of Yim’s corner posts tilted off-kilter, threatening to open his home to the weather. Yim wanted to go along to Equani to visit his own family, and he wanted his home snug while was gone.

Yim was the quietest man Aku had ever known, so he knew better than to chatter with his friend Fuyl.

Shonan and Aku shoved the post upright, lifting the corner of the roof, while Yim and Fuyl braced it with dirt and
stones. Aku pushed, but he was reed-slender and did little good. His father’s thick, powerful legs and strong back did the work. Aku wished he had the kind of strength his father respected men for.

All four stamped the dirt firm.

Yim nodded without a word to the big pile of muck a few feet away. It was a mix of dirt, straw, and animal dung. They would smear the goop onto the thin limbs, and when it dried, the plaster would keep the inside warm and dry.

While we’re gone,
thought Aku.

As soon her husband’s legs disappeared out the door flap, Meli felt Crani’s light touch on her shoulder. Her mother gave Meli a toothless smile and handed her an awl and a piece of deer hide. Salya joined them. The three generations of women often sewed together in silence, communicating without words. Now they began to stitch moccasins. “I will be fine,” Crani said. “And the children do need to see Adani again.”

“Shonan, too,” admitted Meli.

The women concentrated on punching the sharp awls through the tough hides and lashing them with thongs. Crani’s fingers were discolored now, and puffed up like sausages, but she had the strength to push the awl needle through the hide.

Meli pondered her husband, always bluff, hearty, and practical. He might have a little regret about marrying into her family, with their gifts as shamans and shape-shifters. Regardless of his vigor and self-confidence, he had his needs, including the blessing of his father.

If ever she wished he was different, she needed no effort to remember why she wanted to spend her days with him. He was passionate about her.

Most Galayi men did not have passion for their wives.
They chose a mate as an antlered deer chose a doe, because their bodies felt the need, and then they looked for another doe. For a sits-beside-him woman they chose companionship rather than passion. Sometimes, yes, an adolescent’s heart was taken with a girl. That generally went the way a creek tumbled swiftly through rapids. Youthful feelings soon eddied out.

In their case, though, Shonan was devoted to Meli and her only from the time they met at fourteen winters. He felt to her like a big boulder heated to the core by a thousand suns for a thousand days, warm all the way through, an unending source of comfort. If she lay close beside this man’s love, she knew, it would last a lifetime. She and her children and grandchildren could make a family around it.

When he asked her to marry him, she made a request—that when her younger sisters were offered to him as wives, as they inevitably would be, he would decline. The radiance of his love was a gift to be treasured. She wanted it for herself and their children alone.

He said that those words made him love her more.

Meli looked toward the door flap. Shonan and Aku would be back eventually.

“I’m a lucky wife,” she said to her mother.

“That’s true. And you gave up some things.”

Crani seldom said even that much. Meli had hidden part of herself for the sake of the marriage. She had only a little of her great-grandmother’s gift of seeing the future, and none of the ability to travel from this ordinary land to the world of the spirits and back. She did have the other gift that ran in her family, but Shonan forbade her to use it.

Before the two were wed, Crani warned Meli gently. The spirits gave human beings abilities, some courage, some fleetness, some quickness of mind, and some a kind of magic. If you scorned your talent, the powers would scorn you.

Meli chose to put her marriage first. But all these years, protected by her sister, her mother, and other women, Meli had practiced her particular gift in secret.

Shonan lectured the children about such magic stuff. Like every Galayi, he knew that spirit powers lived in the Land Beyond the Sky Arch and sometimes roamed this world below. He knew they let some people see them and showed some what the Immortals knew. But he thought such powers were fading into the past. “No Immortal taught us how to dam creeks and flood our crops with water,” he told them. “No Immortal taught us how to make a blow gun. No spirit showed us how to throw a spear with a handle.” Learning to throw atlatls with levers, in fact, had changed the lives of the Galayi.

“The spirits brought us here to Mother Earth a long time ago,” Shonan often said. Everyone knew the story of how crowding forced all the animals, including human beings, to come to Turtle Island. “More and more they are leaving us alone. A man has to make his own way, relying on his own brain and the strength of his own hands and legs.”

He said these words especially to Aku. Meli was afraid that, of the twins, Aku was the one who inherited her special ability. Shonan with that kind of son—it was a bad combination.

“Do it for your family,” said Crani.

Meli thought a moment—
It’s silly to be afraid
—and put away her sewing things. When Shonan and Aku came back, they saw her packing the family’s belongings in big rawhide containers.

Adani, Shonan, and Aku, the heart bond of grandfather, father, and son—that was what mattered most.

The walk to Adani’s village took six days. The country was rugged—high mountains and swift rivers—but it was safe. Since Shonan had become war chief, few enemies ventured into Galayi territory anymore. Then on the fifth day’s walk from their home, it happened.

Shonan thought at first he was dreaming. Then he went stiff in the elk hides. Meli’s body was still soft, her breathing deep and slow. She hadn’t heard anything. Shonan sat up, wide awake, and looked around. This campsite could be defended—that was why he chose it. Though the boulders were nearly invisible, shadows blacker than darkness, he knew where everything was, where everyone was.

Two more calls propelled him into soundless motion. Owl hoots in the forest, or rather the voices of enemies imitating owls. They wouldn’t attack in the dark. A man who died in the forest at night might never find his way to the Darkening Land. First light would be when they’d strike. Shonan looked at the stars, judged how long he had, and knew that it was enough. His foes had started too early.

No thoughts: he reached for the war club, spear, and knife laid out next to his pallet. He crawled to where Yim slept and laid fingertips on the man’s cheek. Decades as a warrior
served Yim well. Instantly, without sound, he was wide awake and arming himself, Fuyl behind him.

A touch startled Shonan. It was old Feyano, ready to go. Age made no difference to Feyano. Shonan liked to travel with comrades of years’ standing. Getting up, the war chief bumped Feyano’s son. Shonan nodded at him. The more weapons the better.

Shonan looked around in darkness that was almost absolute. The moon was down, luckily. He made motions, and his companions understood. Swiftly and in absolute silence each one rousted out his family, got them hidden behind a big boulder, or on top of one, or squatted behind the huge downed log. They bunched up the empty bedding to fool the enemy. If they were lucky, the attackers would come creeping in, hoping to catch the Galayis in their beds. And then the hunters would become the prey.

Heads stuck up, bodies crouched, people crawled to their hiding places. No sounds. Even Galayi babies were trained to silence. When they cried, their mothers held their mouths shut and pinched their nostrils closed. After enough repetitions the child stopped crying. Basic safety.

Meli led the twins under a big overhang. They shivered with cold and would goose-bump until … until what? Meli shivered with uncertainty. Her husband defeated every enemy, but she felt it again now, not just the fear of human warfare, but that odd feeling she’d had since she and her husband talked about it the morning of their argument, that hint, that sense of something else wrong, something worse. If only she’d paid more attention to what her grandmother said and developed her second sight, the eye of the spirit.

To the devil with Shonan. At least she could take a look at the dangerous present, could use the other gift, the one she’d never given up, regardless of what he said—this was the time
to defy him. The sky was beginning to shade from black to gray, so she would have to act fast.

She padded, one slow step and one gentle shift of weight at a time, to the back of the boulder. She crawled up toward Shonan, deliberately making a little noise. He turned around with brows furrowed, concentration broken.

She pointed to herself, made a flying motion with her arms, drew a big circle around her head, and pointed to her eyes.

Shonan shook his head vigorously—
No!
He understood well enough. But he didn’t want a spy in the sky, not if it was magical. He didn’t want women to do men’s fighting. Most of all, he didn’t want his wife at risk.

Meli backed away from him on all fours. When she felt grass beneath her feet, she raised to her full height and began. She was pleased to see how he fixed his eyes on her. Did he object to what she was doing? She didn’t care.

The twins crept close to her and watched intently. She was glad of that. Salya had been the one who guarded her secret. Meli turned her attention to Aku.
Look
, she thought,
behold this power that also belongs to you.

She shifted the shape of flesh to feather. Nose became beak. Feet turned into claws. Arms became wings. Blood and brain, eyes and instincts became an owl’s. She raised her wings, took two quick steps, and launched into the air.

She loved flying. As a child she dreamed of nothing else, not that she could remember. Her first flight as an owl, when she was twelve, had been the most marvelous experience of her life. Her heart shot higher than her wings. She jiggle-jaggled in the air. She dived, just to feel the exhalation. She soared.

She turned her head back toward the twins and her husband and let out a single hoot. It was a pretend bit of
playfulness to relieve her fear. Of tonight’s owl hoots, only hers were genuine.