Shadows in the Cave (6 page)

Now—
Let it come!
—she lost control again. She rushed between the banks and swept out along the tidal flats. Where sweet river met salt ocean, the log spun in the churning sea. She whirled past the last point of land and into infinity. She felt triumphant. Let fate come—she wanted whatever it brought, she wanted an enormous blast of something, she wanted to throw away her daily wisp of a life, she wanted experience, real and strong. She wanted to feel alive
today
.

She saw it now—the ocean was as big as the sky. She wasn’t a bird, she wasn’t a fish. She couldn’t swim in the one, couldn’t breathe in the other. She was going wherever the tide took her, and it was running toward the end of the world, wherever that might be. She was possessed wholly—she lived in immensity. She wanted to feel owned, lips, arms, breasts, legs, crotch, the heart that drove the blood, the blood itself, the place her feelings lived—she wanted to be usurped and melded into this sea, this world, this power.

She stood up on the log, wobbly.

It rolled.

She plunged deep, took two strokes deeper, held herself underwater for a delicious moment, turned, and surged upward to the light. Her head popped into the air. At that moment the log banged her shoulder. She cried out in pain. With her other arm she grabbed a stud sticking out from the log and held on hard. She rotated her sore shoulder in several directions. It sort of worked. She clambered back onto the log and straddled it.

She looked around. Grandmother Sun was well up from her watery bed, bright and strong—a strong woman like Iona.

The girl looked straight up and saw an osprey cruising overhead, hunting. It wanted fish for its belly. It had the swiftness, strength, and skill to get what it wanted.

Iona wanted a belly full of life, and she would take what she wanted.

And she wanted to stay out here all day and play and ride the tide back.

“It doesn’t look like much to me,” said Salya.

She and Aku looked from the top of a low hill across sand flats toward Amaso. The huts were few and shabby and the sands barren. The wide river split into a lot of stringy braids. She wasn’t enticed by the horizon-to-horizon immensity of water to the east. It was just somewhere she would never be able to go. The sun, straight overhead, didn’t make the place look better. She was dispirited, missing Kumu. The six men came back with the food, but, true to his agreement with her father, Kumu would wait in Tusca until he and Salya were married.

Aku said, “It’ll be fine.”

Salya humphed. She was back to wondering why her twin let their father push them to this odd place without protest. Didn’t he love the mountains where they grew up? She liked the foothills full of canopied hardwood trees, too. She was bored by what her father called the coastal plains stretching eastward from the foothills, much too flat, and boasting none of the rich herds of game of the foothills. At least the traveling party had taken a lot of meat in the foothills.

“What do you think fish and crabs taste like?” she said. “I hear they’re too salty.”

“You’ll like them as soon as you’re here living with
Kumu,” Shonan said. They hadn’t heard him walking up. He gave Salya a hug. “And until then you can slow down on the grumping.”

She sort of smiled.

The three walked close to the village, the traveling party trailing. The Amaso gathered. Aku’s eyes searched for Iona.

“We better teach them to build stouter huts,” Shonan said. The homes were just brush huts, spread fingers of flexible limbs bent into the shape of cupped hands, turned upside down and covered with hides.

“They say it’s warmer here,” Shonan said, “never snows. Maybe that’s why the houses are flimsy.”

Aku said, “Or maybe it’s because the good hardwoods are eight or nine days walk back toward the mountains.”

Salya nudged her brother and grinned. She liked talk like that.

They approached the council lodge at the west edge of the village. “I didn’t want to tell you about this,” said Shonan. It was a shabby thing, as though nothing important could happen there.

“I’m glad our weddings will be at the Cheowa village,” said Salya.

Aku still couldn’t spot Iona.

“There aren’t enough people here,” said Salya, “to make a real blessing.”

“I told you I picked these people because they’re weak and will be glad of the safety of becoming Galayis.”

They’d heard it before.

An old man came walking toward them, bearing a pipe. A short, slight, boyish man walked next to him, Oghi the seer.

“Chalu,” said Shonan, “the chief. They don’t even have a war chief.”

When the chief came close, he made the signs for wanting a ceremony.

Aku was proficient in the sign language. “Signal him yes,” Shonan told his son.

Aku did, but his mind was on something else.

“As soon as we get our camp set up,” said Shonan.

Aku signed it.

Chalu turned and made his doddering way to the council lodge.

Oghi signed to Aku, “She’s waiting for you. You see the flat-topped rise over there?” He nodded toward it. “In the dunes right beyond it.”

Aku started running.

“Where are you going?” called Salya.

Aku turned, ran backward, grinned big, waved, turned again, and sprinted toward Iona.

Salya and her father set up their own camp and looked around. They had the same thought, but didn’t share it.
We’re at our new village, but we still don’t have a home
. Salya shrugged. “Hey, we’re used to it.”

Oghi walked up. He and Shonan had a short, quiet conversation off to one side. Salya saw that several digital repetitions were necessary. Then each man nodded and smiled a lot.

People were gathering in the arbor used as a council lodge.

“Go find your brother and this Iona,” said Shonan.

Near the center fire stood Chalu, holding the sacred pipe, on one side of him Oghi and on the other Shonan.

Chalu picked up an ember from the fire with two twigs
and dropped it onto the sacred tobacco. Then he drew the smoke in deeply and offered it to the four directions. Shonan couldn’t understand what he was saying. He watched carefully how Oghi handled the pipe and again couldn’t understand. When his turn came, he performed the ceremony in the Galayi style. He thought,
We’re not going to learn to be them. They’re going to learn to be us.

Chalu addressed the assembly, and Aku fingered his words to all the people of both groups. Shonan paid enough attention to see that it was a welcome to the visitors. “Except they’re not visitors,” said Chalu. “They will become our relatives, our children, even our fathers and mothers.” Other words followed. Shonan gathered that it was a diplomatic speech.

When Chalu handed him the pipe, Shonan smoked ceremonially and repeated some of what the Amaso chief had said. “This is a great moment,” he said. “Let us no longer call each other Galayi and Amaso. We are one people, and we will be known as the Amaso village of the Galayi tribe.”

It was well done, a good acknowledgement for both groups.

Now Shonan raised his voice. “And I have something special to add.”

Iona stood up beside Aku, who was still translating with his fingers.

“Proudly Oghi the seer and I announce to all the first blood joining between our two peoples. At the Harvest Ceremony in three moons my son Aku”—here Aku pointed to himself with both index fingers—“will be married to Oghi’s daughter, Iona.”

Aku held Iona’s hand high in triumph.

Chalu said, “Let me show you a good place to build your houses.”

Oghi signed the words, and Aku told them to his father.

The crowd was filtering out of the arbor, back to their huts or their temporary camp. Chalu asked Iona to stay behind while he led Shonan, Oghi, and Aku up a little hill to the north. He pivoted back, gestured to his people’s circle of huts, and said, “You see there’s no room in between.”

There wasn’t. The Amaso circle was tight, with the traditional opening to the east, and in this case to the sun rising from the sea. He turned to the north and spread his arms. “But this is a good spot.”

Shonan was on guard.

The place Chalu had picked out for the Galayi circle was fine, a wide space of dirt mostly free of trees and brush. It was bigger than the Amaso circle. The only disadvantage was being further from the river, making a long walk to get water.

Aku was surprised when his father said, “No. No, no, no.”

Chalu looked like his face had been slapped. “It’s a beautiful place,” he said. Oghi watched the war chief curiously.

“I want our peoples to live right together,” Shonan said. “We should mingle constantly. I want your people to have a chance to learn the Galayi language fast. We shouldn’t be
two villages side by side. This is where we make a choice to be one people.”

“But there’s no room,” said Chalu.

“We will make room.” Shonan turned back to the Amaso circle. “I think we should build another circle just outside yours. The ground is not quite as even, but we’ll make do. And in a couple of years it will all solve itself.”

Chalu looked at Shonan, puzzled. “We’ll teach you to build bigger houses out of posts and limbs.”

Chalu said, “War Chief, we use these little huts because the weather is mild, and they’re warm enough.”

Oghi hesitated before he spoke. “Besides, sometimes a big storm comes in from the ocean and blows our homes to little pieces. If we build bigger ones, it will just be more work to rebuild them.”

“We’re going to have big families and lots of people,” Shonan said. “We’ll need bigger houses. If there are storms, we’ll just build them stouter.”

Aku thought of dragging posts from the stands of timber several miles back. He also thought of his father’s will.

Apparently, Chalu felt that will, too. “All right,” he said, “War Chief.”

Aku thought,
My father will be principal chief soon.

A hard time started for Shonan’s group. He drove them to get their brush huts built in a couple of days. The huts were easy. What was hard was learning when the river was sweet and when it was salt, according to the tide. When people forgot to get water at the right time, they went thirsty.

But the days were sweet for Aku and Iona.