People of the Fire (33 page)

 
          
 
"When First Man saw what had happened he
hit his brother on the head and cut him open. The bad brother ran off into the
night, bleeding. That's why, to this day, you can find red
chert
.
That's where his blood went into the ground and turned to rock."

 
          
 
"But that doesn't have anything to do
with Spirals," Elk Charm pointed out.

 
          
 
White Calf clapped her hands, a big smile
creasing her ancient face. Her eyes gleamed, fired by the enthusiasm of her
audience. "Ah! But it does! You see, after he'd killed his brother, First
Man drew the Spiral to remind people that everything is One. He hoped that
maybe that way he could keep the bad things from happening. So long as people
remember that a spiral is a circle within a circle without end, they'll never
forget the One. Never allow the world to fragment and break apart and become
separated like happened in the First World. That's why we need a Dreamer, to
Dance and keep the Spiral whole."

 
          
 
"So that's why it's so Powerful? It
reminds the People of the journey from the First World?" Elk Charm's
forehead lined as she inspected the Spiral.

 
          
 
White Calf nodded, a loose-lipped smile on her
face. "More than that, girl. The Spiral is the most powerful of all symbols.
The Spiral is life. It's the whole of creation, everything within itself:
unity. Beginning and end and the transition between. It's the circles within
circles. The Oneness, the whole of Wise One Above right down to the smallest
seed or bit of dust. Everything and nothing. One."

 
          
 
“One." The call echoed in Little Dancer's
head. For a brief instant, his vision shimmered and shifted. Slightly dizzy, he
dropped his head down between his knees. When he pressed his eyes closed,
afterimages of the Spiral burned on the backs of his eyelids, turning,
spinning, encompassing his very soul. White Calf's reedy voice echoed in his
mind: "The whole of creation, everything within itself: unity."

 
          
 
Too much work today, he lied to himself.
Should have carried a lighter pack. It's exhaustion. That's all. He shook his
head, as if to rid himself of the images spun by White Calf's story. When he
lifted his head, White Calf had shifted, keen eyes missing no detail of his
discomfort. He glared back, defensive.

 
          
 
The old woman sighed and mouthed her toothless
gums as she sat down on her robe again. "So how long do you think you're
here for?"

 
          
 
Elk Charm's eyes glowed with the magic of the
old woman's story as she continued to stare at the big rock carving. "I
don't know. Until my mother says Blood Bear has turned his mind to other
things."

 
          
 
''Blood Bear?" Little Dancer frowned.

 
          
 
Two Smokes puffed at his pipe where he rested
against a pack that had been propped along one wall. "It seems the leader
of the Red Hand has developed an interest in Elk Charm since she's become a
full woman. He would force himself on her."

 
          
 
"But rape—"

 
          
 
"It's different among the Red Hand."
Two Smokes rubbed the back of his neck. "A man who forces a woman is
ridiculed. What man wants it known that he isn't Powerful enough to win the
woman he desires? Who wants to be a laughingstock? And, believe me, a forced
woman would tell everybody! Men will exclude him from their company. Women will
lift their skirts and tease him. Children will throw dung on him and urinate on
his belongings. Who could live like that? The last man I know of who forced a
woman was so shamed that he finally stripped himself naked and walked off into
a winter blizzard to die rather than live like
th

 
          
 
"Then why would Blood Bear risk
that?" Hungry Bull asked, looking up from inspecting his butchering tools.

 
          
 
Two Smokes lifted his hands wide. "Blood
Bear is the Keeper of the Wolf Bundle. That gives him certain privileges. Elk
Charm can tell any man no—any man but the Keeper of the Wolf Bundle. To deny
the Keeper is to deny the Wolf Bundle. The Keeper and the Power are One. Do you
see?”

            
"The Wolf Bundle."
Little Dancer experienced a tug at his heart. He saw the tortured expression on
Two Smokes' face. Until the day he died, the
berdache
would torment himself over the defiling and loss of the Wolf Bundle.

 
          
 
"It's not right," Hungry Bull
insisted in his stilted
Anit'ah
speech. He lifted a
mottled agate point up to study it. The rippled surface of the stone caught the
firelight, gleaming like polished ice.

 
          
 
"Right or not," White Calf grumbled,
resettling herself, "the ways of the Red Hand are different from the ways
of the Short Buffalo People. Not better, not worse, just different. Among the
Red Hand, a woman doesn't normally marry until she's pregnant. The Red Hand
place a great value on a woman's ability to bring life into the world. I
remember the curious remarks when Clear Water went to Blood Bear. But then, she
was a Spirit Woman." White Calf's eyes narrowed as she looked at Little
Dancer. "And I still haven't unraveled all the knots and twists in the
weaving of her actions."

 
          
 
Little Dancer dropped his gaze, pursing his
lips. Two Smokes had finally told him about his real mother. Maybe it helped
blunt the pain of Sage Root's death. Maybe it only made things worse.

 
          
 
"Blood Bear." Elk Charm shivered.
"He doesn't believe in Power."

 
          
 
"Oh?" White Calf snapped her head
around.

 
          
 
Elk Charm bit her lip, looking suddenly
ashamed.

 
          
 
"And how do you know this, newly made
woman?"

 
          
 
Elk Charm swallowed hard, her glance darting
about, looking for a means of escape. Seeing none, she sighed and explained,
"Tanager and I were hiding one day while Cricket was looking for us. We
were back of Blood Bear's lodge. He was inside talking to himself and to the
Wolf Bundle. I heard him thumping it with his finger and telling it how he
didn't believe. We both got so scared we froze there. We didn't leave until
hours later."

 
          
 
Despite himself, Little Dancer gasped, staring
at the girl in shock before his eyes were drawn to the Spiral; it seemed to
twist and shimmer in the light, sucking him into the middle of the endless
circles.

 
          
 
White
Calfs
face had
hardened, a glint in her obsidian stare.

 
          
 
Two Smokes groaned under his breath, pained
eyes focused somewhere only he could see. "But he cares for it? Keeps it
safe anyway?"

 
          
 
"He guards it jealously." Elk Charm
looked up uneasily.

 
          
 
"Of course he does," White Calf
growled. "What would Blood Bear be without the Wolf Bundle? Remember how he
was before he brought it back to the Red Hand?"

 
          
 
Two Smokes nodded miserably, hitching himself
to his feet. Limping on his bad leg, he ducked out into the crisp night, the
sound of his shuffling gait growing fainter in the darkness.

 
          
 
"Blood Bear will suffer in the end."
Little Dancer shook his head, mesmerized by the Spiral. "He's a fool. I
know, I felt the outrage that night. ..." He started, suddenly realizing
what he'd said. White Calf hadn't missed a word. One of the old woman's eyebrows
lifted to crinkle the lines of her forehead.

 
          
 
"I didn't mean to hurt Two Smokes'
feelings," Elk Charm apologized. "I didn't know he'd—"

 
          
 
"Hush, child." White Calf waved it
away. "This stew's about done."

 
          
 
"Let's eat," Hungry Bull agreed.
"Here we are, talking about all these terrible Power things. That's for
Dreamers and Spirit Healers. Today we should celebrate. Little Dancer and I
have made meat for the whole winter. We're forgetting that today my son is a
man! He's killed his first buffalo. Maybe he's earned a man's name'.'

 
          
 
A mans name? Little Dancer's heart leapt in
his chest Finally, after all these years?

 
          
 
"We could probably think up a name."
White Calf frowned, chin propped on a withered arm. "Let's give it some
thought. A man shouldn't be named just like that/' She snapped her fingers in
emphasis.

 
          
 
Elk Charm gave him an openly appraising look,
a pensive anticipation in her eyes. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but
her cheeks seemed to redden.

 
          
 
He should have swelled up fit to burst himself
open at the ribs. He should have been jumping and hollering his joy, dancing
and singing his adulthood. Instead he stood, stepping over to touch the deep
grooves of the spiral. The stone felt warm and gritty under his fingertips. He
couldn't forget the pain in Two Smokes' face, the words about the Wolf Bundle,
and First Man, and Blood Bear. He could feel Elk Charm's presence as she came
to stand beside him. White Calf's eyes burned into his back with the intensity
of glowing coals. Power pulsed on the night.

 
          
 
Outside, beyond the hangings, a wolf howled
anxiously.

 
          
 
Rattling Hooves trotted down the trail in the
swinging gait of a woman used to traveling. To either side, the tightly growing
firs stretched toward the cloud-mottled sky above. The first frost had passed.
Humans and animals would have a reprieve before the real breath of winter blew
down to lock the
Buffalo
Mountains
in their white grip.

 
          
 
She slowed, climbing over a deadfall blocking
the trail. Elk had already broken most of the branches, making it easier to
swing her legs across. Her dress caught on a snag. With old familiarity, she
broke it off with a loud snap and continued on down the trail to White Calf's.

 
          
 
So, it had all worked out sooner than she
could have thought. Blood Bear had found sign of Short Buffalo People on his
fruitless hunt for Elk Charm. Good luck had a way of cropping up periodically.
Perhaps by the time the hunt for the raiders wound down, Elk Charm might have
had enough men to dull Blood Bear's interest. Perhaps one might even have made
an offer to marry her if she conceived. Many things could happen.

 
          
 
She filled her lungs happily, exhaling as she
resumed her distance-eating gait down the game trail.

 
          
 
The track barely registered in the hardening
mud of the trail. She slowed, stooping to inspect the track. No! They wouldn't
be here. Not on this back trail so far from the buffalo tracks that led to the
plains to the east.

 
          
 
Slowly she began to back away.

 
          
 
She didn't have time to draw a breath as a
hard arm slipped around her. A muscular hand clapped over her mouth, cutting
off her scream.

           
 
* * *

 
          
 
"I get the feeling White Calf doesn't
want me here." Elk Charm tilted her head to watch Two Smokes' expression.

 
          
 
He rubbed at his brow, slapping at a fly that
insisted on pestering him. They sat on the slope several dart casts south of
the shelter, enjoying the golden sunshine. Even the sky reflected the peace of
the day, stretching forever in an incredibly blue canopy that dazzled the eyes.
Here and there a brilliantly white fluff of cloud coasted slowly, changing
shape as it crossed the sky. A chipmunk paid them modest attention as it
continued its routine of clipping the spikes from the sagebrush around them,
nibbling off the tiny seeds until it filled cheek pouches to brimming and
skittered off with a stiffly erect tail to cache them.