Shadows in the Cave (39 page)

Maloch snapped his huge head that way. Shonan flew, butted by the big snout and raked by the teeth. One side of his body drizzled blood from shoulder to hip.

Aku screamed in terror. The monster drowned out his screech with a crow of triumph.

Aku feared that the monster’s greatest weapon was his roar. Somehow Fuyl gathered himself and launched his last dart and drove it deep into the soft palate.

Aku clung to the ridge of the monster’s neck with one
foot, bent down, and pried up a scale with the other.
Let this be the one!
he cried to himself. He sank his beak into the flesh.

Maloch yowled. For the first time he sounded hurt.

Somehow Shonan got to his feet.

Aku ate.

Fuyl rushed to where Aku had his beak jammed in. At full charge he rammed his spear toward the same exposed flesh, but the dragon whirled, snapped, and bit his foe in half.

Shonan crawled toward Maloch on all fours.

Aku tore flesh as deep and hard as he could.

Kumu ran forward, spear raised. He slipped in the dragon’s blood and slid directly beneath the great belly. The dragon mouth stretched toward Kumu but didn’t reach. Kumu ran out between a back leg and the tail.

Shonan staggered to his feet and mustered all his waning strength for one running thrust toward Maloch’s heart. The spear point skidded along Aku’s beak and sank in next to it.

The great beast shuddered. It screeched out a cry greater even than all the wails that had assaulted Aku in the Underworld.

Maloch fell sideways onto Shonan. The spear’s shaft hit the ground square, and the monster’s bulk drove it deeper.

Crushed by the great weight, Shonan cried out life and death.

Aku hovered in the air for an uncomprehending moment. Then he sailed beyond his father’s body and began the transformation. When he looked human again, the red and green flutes were, as always, in his hand.

He ran to his father. From behind he heard Oghi calling loudly but didn’t understand the words.

Aku knelt in his father’s blood. For a moment he fumbled
with the flutes—he couldn’t remember which one raised the dead. Of course, the red one. He put it to his lips.

Oghi, Kumu, and Iona knelt in the same blood. In their arms they bore the body of Salya.

“My wife first,” said Kumu.

“Your sister first,” said Oghi.

“Your twin first,” said Iona.

Aku screamed—what words he didn’t know.

“Take care of Salya,” someone said.

Aku couldn’t figure out who was talking.

A low voice: “Take care of Salya.”

Praise be the Immortals! His father’s lips were moving.

“You will die,” said Aku. “By the time I play the song for Salya, you will bleed to death.”

A whisper: “Take care of Sal …”

“You are my father.”

Less than a whisper: “Take care of Sa …”

Aku screamed again. He felt like he was being split in half.

Oghi snatched the flutes out of Aku’s hands. The sea turtle man and Kumu took Aku by the arms and led him to the mouth of Maloch, still open, its last breaths gasping out. Then they picked up Salya and laid her where the breath ran over her, warm and moist, bearing the spirit. Oghi handed Aku the green flute.

Aku’s soul quaked as the earth sometimes quaked. Half conscious, half transported, he put the green flute to his mouth, looked into Salya’s face, and played.

His eyes closed, Aku saw it even as he heard it. The music floated, but it also spun. It drifted, yet it whirled. It spoke of timeless beauty, yet it danced. It changed colors, beginning in the green of the earliest leaf of spring, warming to the yellow
of a gentle blossom, deepening to salmon, and twisting itself into every color at once, scarlet, lavender, gold, and the blue of the loveliest twilights. Yet always it seemed frosted with green, a green that brought back to Aku the sense of promise he got from early grasses after a long winter.

He did not see Salya begin to move. Her lips compressed, then opened. Her tongue ran along them.

Aku played.

Salya’s eyelids fluttered, opened, shut, opened, shut.

Aku played.

On Salya’s hands random fingers waggled. She bent a knee.

Aku breathed the last of his song through the flute. He held the instrument across his legs.

“Look,” said Iona.

Aku looked, and saw Salya’s eyes gazing at him.

He kissed her lips gently.

Weeping, Kumu took her in his arms.

Aku walked to Shonan, knelt, and saw that his father’s eyes were fixed, unmoving. Aku could not bear to look into his father’s face again. He took up the red flute and marched into a grave and stately music.

At the end of the song, Aku said, “I have failed him.”

“I don’t think so,” said Oghi.

Aku touched the slack face of his progenitor and shed a tear. “Father, come back to us.”

He walked over and started to sit beside Salya. Instead Kumu stepped in front of him. The warrior of the crooked tooth held out a prize to Aku—the eye of the dead Uktena, the diamond that foretold the future.

“You earned it,” said Kumu.

Aku cupped it in his hands.

“Wha …?” Salya said. Aku and Kumu sat down next to her. “Who? What? Tell …”

It was such a long story. Aku, Oghi, and Iona took turns telling it while Kumu held her. Salya remembered walking down the dune. She remembered one whack on the head, and thought maybe a second whack sent her into the darkness. She remembered nothing else.

They couldn’t tell her about the ceremony where her life-fire was stolen—none of them had seen it. They could tell her how she looked when they found her in the Underworld. They told her some of what they saw and heard down there in the Darkening Land—the people writhing in agony, the imaginary causes of their pain.

Here Salya perked up and began to ask some questions. They promised her all the answers tomorrow, when she had rested.

When she protested that she’d had months of rest, Kumu said, “And now I’m going to see that you get some real rest.”

Oghi went to check on Shonan.

The others told Salya about the Great Dusky Owl, the Tree of Life and Death, how Yah-Su died, and how the Master of Life and Death determined that the other adventurers had passed the test and could return to life, carrying Salya. How they bore her for many days’ walks, from the Emerald Cavern to the Tusca village to this spot.

Then, in considerable detail, with pride stirred into grief, Aku told how they’d fought Maloch the Uktena and killed the monster.

Salya laid her head back against Kumu, took his hand, closed her eyes, and seemed to be at peace.

Footsteps grabbed Aku’s attention, and he turned toward Oghi. In front of the sea turtle man, his steps a little tenative, walked Shonan.

Aku jumped up and embraced his father. He trembled in the big arms.

Shonan broke the moment. “All right, I give in.” He chuckled and patted his son’s back. “I guess maybe magic works.”

Aku said, “You know it does.”

“Hey, you two,” said Salya.

They separated. Shonan squatted and took his daughter’s hand. Tears ran down both faces.

“There’s one more thing,” Salya said.

“Yes,” said Aku and Shonan at once.

“I want to know.”

“Yes?”

“What took you so long?”

Aku and Shonan laughed and clapped each others’ backs.

The next moon was momentous—Aku knew he would remember every day separately, an occasion to be honored.

The people of Amaso first elected new leaders. Oghi was named chief and Shonan war chief. Because Aku possessed the diamond eye, they chose him as seer.

Oghi called for the rebuilding of the huts brought down by the storm.

Shonan recommended sending runners to ask the Equanis for help.

Emboldened by his new position, Aku said he had a better idea. Everyone liked it. He led a group of Amaso men and women to the Brown Leaf village and met with the women, children, and elderly people left there. Since they were defenseless with their warriors dead, and facing hungry moons, he proposed that they join the Amaso people.

The Brown Leaves instead offered their own houses to the Amasos, stout houses of wattle and daub, a bay better protected from the ocean, and the security of a joined community.

Aku immediately transformed himself into an eagle, flew back to Amaso, and gave the word to everyone. They applauded the offer.

Shonan said, “I set out to add fifty families to our tribe, and my son has added another hundred and fifty.”

Aku was flattered, but more impressed with what had to be done. He, Shonan, and Oghi organized the trek to the Brown Leaf town—every Amaso went.

On the seventh evening they made camp and looked down at the distant village of their onetime enemies. “It’s a good place,” Oghi said to Aku and Iona, “better protected against storms than our old village, and with more fields to plant.”

The three of them rolled up in their elk hides. Aku looked distracted.

“What’s on your mind?” said Oghi.

“Two weddings to be held at the ceremony.”

Iona squeezed his hand.

“What’s really on your mind?” said the sea turtle man.

“My responsibilities,” said Aku.

“Which ones?” said Iona. Her mind was on their coming child.

“To be a good seer, I have to go back to the Emerald Cavern many times and learn much more.”

Iona sat up and slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “To be a good husband you need to give me lots of loving, raise our kids right, and hunt enough food for all of us. Think you can keep your mind on that?”

Aku kissed her, then caressed her. He said, “I don’t think that will be a problem.”