People of the Silence (82 page)

Durie nodded calmly. “I’d planned on telling you. Eventually.”

Mourning Dove put a hand to her throat as if to ease a pain there, and said, “It was only a matter of days after the youth’s arrival that Talon Town was attacked and the slaves freed. The prophecies … they came true!”

Jay Bird lowered himself to the sand beside Poor Singer and studied his thin face and beaked nose, his tall, skinny frame, and long black hair. Could this … And then it came to him. “Blessed gods,” he murmured. “You don’t look anything like Young Fawn … but you do look a great deal like—like
me
 … forty summers ago.”

Poor Singer’s open mouth trembled before he clamped it shut. He searched Jay Bird’s eyes, not certain what to say or do. He, too, saw the resemblance. “Dune?” he begged as he turned. “Why didn’t you ever tell me? Why didn’t Black Mesa tell me? Did my mother, Snow Mountain, know?”

“Yes, of course, she did. But we all wanted you alive. If the truth were known—even by you, Poor Singer—there was a good chance you would be killed. If not by Crow Beard himself, by one of the other First People. They would have been just as frightened of you as Crow Beard was.”

“You could have told me!” Poor Singer yelled. “It’s my life we’re talking about!”

“Exactly my point!” Dune snapped. “Your life!”

Poor Singer deflated and looked around the fire. He winced at the sight of Night Sun’s lowered brows and hard stare.

Tentatively, Jay Bird reached out and placed a hand on Poor Singer’s shoulder. “Is it true? Are you my grandson?”

Poor Singer stared at him open-mouthed. “If … if Dune says so. I believe him. I’m just very confused. My mother always told me that Sitting-in-the-Sky was my father. No one even hinted to me that … though mother never said a bad word about Crow Beard. She’d always insisted that people who did were just misinformed or bitter. She did everything she could to make me think well of Crow Beard.”

Poor Singer squeezed his eyes closed and kept silent for a long time.

Jay Bird’s grip on his shoulder tightened. The boy
did
look like him. And deep inside he felt the truth of Dune’s words. This was Young Fawn’s child. His daughter had given him a grandson. It didn’t help with the succession, but a member of his family had come home. A flood of warmth went through Jay Bird. He reached for the hafted knife on his belt. As he sawed through Poor Singer’s bonds, he said, “Don’t be afraid, Poor Singer. At least, no more afraid than I am.”

Jay Bird stood and signaled to his guards. The six men closed in around the fire. Howler had a worried look on his scarred face, as if skeptical of the truth of the story. “Help Thistle and her daughter to one of the guest chambers,” Jay Bird ordered. “Take all the others and lock them in the western pen. I will decide what to do with them after consulting more with my grandson.”

Howler nodded stiffly. “Yes, my chief.”

“Poor Singer, if you will come with me, I will introduce you to—”

“May I stay for just a few moments?” the youth asked. “To speak with Dune?”

Jay Bird glanced at the ancient holy man. Dune had his forearms propped on his knobby knees, and a glint shone in his watery eyes. “Of course, Poor Singer. When you are ready, Howler will show you to my chambers.”

Jay Bird walked around the fire, feeling a deep sense of longing. He needed time. And needed to hear Downy Girl’s thoughts. Her wisdom had guided him for more than twenty-five summers. She would be as astonished as he that Young Fawn had left a son.

He started up the trail for the village.

*   *   *

Darkness hugged the rolling hills, but starlight gleamed from the pines that whiskered the mountain behind the village. Tears blurred Poor Singer’s eyes as he looked at Dune. “I had a
right
to know, Dune!”

Dune didn’t respond. He sat watching the guard saw through the yucca cord binding his hands and wrists. Once the guards had finished, Dune grunted to his feet and hobbled over to take Poor Singer by the arm. He led him down to two large rocks by the side of the river.

“Here,” Dune said softly. “If we talk in low voices, the sound of the river will cover them. Sit down, Poor Singer.”

Poor Singer lowered himself to the cold rock.

Mourning Dove hovered in the background like a wounded ghost, her gaze fixed on Poor Singer as though her very life might depend upon him.

Poor Singer whispered, “Why didn’t you tell me, Dune? Why didn’t my mother tell me?”

Dune eased down atop the other rock, and a faint smile turned his toothless mouth. “The time hadn’t come,” he said gently. “Black Mesa and I had decided that I would tell you after you had completed your Singer’s training. Unfortunately, I never had a chance.”

“Oh, Dune.” Poor Singer flapped his arms. “I don’t know what to say. I feel … lost.”

“Well, don’t. You’ve just been found. By your real family. And,” he said, and squinted at the muscular guards in their black-and-white capes who were cutting the bonds of the other captives, “if I live through this, I’ll gladly finish your training. That is, if you still wish me to be your teacher.”

Poor Singer tugged a blade of grass from where it grew in a crack in the rock and tore it in half, then in quarters. “Dune, I don’t know what to do. My whole world has been turned upside down. I don’t know anything about my real mother. My real father was a—a monster! I even lost my nation tonight. I can never go home. You know that, don’t you? If anyone were to find out that I was Jay Bird’s grandson…” He couldn’t finish it. His throat constricted with grief. “And I miss my mother and Black Mesa, Dune. I
want
to go home.”

Dune let out a breath and frowned at the river. Sparkles of firelight reflected from the black surface. “I’m sorry, Poor Singer. At least you are alive, and you—”

Howler tramped across the sand toward them. “Are you finished talking?” he asked Poor Singer.

Poor Singer glanced at Dune. “I guess so. For now.”

“Then come on, old man,” Howler said, and gestured to the group of captives ringed by guards near the fire. “Let’s go.”

Dune patted Poor Singer’s arm, and said, “We will speak more of this later,” slid off the rock, and walked toward the fire.

Howler called, “Mousetail? Carry the injured girl. Show her and her mother to the southern guest chamber. Foxbat, you and your men take the rest to the western pen. I’ll bring up the rear, and show the boy to Jay Bird’s rooms.”

Mousetail knelt by Cornsilk, and Thistle said, “Be gentle, please!”

Mousetail carefully lifted and carried Cornsilk up the trail with Thistle walking closely behind him.

The remaining guards, arrows nocked, closed in around Dune, Sternlight, Ironwood, and Night Sun, and herded them up the hill. Ironwood kept glancing around, as if seeking an opening for escape.

Poor Singer couldn’t convince his legs to move. When he finally did, his knees almost buckled. He caught his balance and walked across the sand with Howler ten paces behind him.

As he neared the trailhead, Mourning Dove met him. Her eyes shone like stars. She glanced back at Howler, then gripped Poor Singer’s arm and hissed,
“Ask Sternlight about your mother. He murdered her! I saw it all! He stabbed her in the chest and cut you from her womb! Ask him! Ask!”
Then she raced up the trail with her orange dress flying about her legs.

Numb, his pulse pounding, Poor Singer watched her blend into the darkness, then he sat down in the middle of the trail and dropped his head in his hands.

Howler stopped beside him. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, I just … I wish to stay down here for a time. Is that all right?”

Howler gave him a distrustful look, dark and boding ill if he tried anything suspicious. “Yes. But not for too long. I’ll help Foxbat with the captives, then I’ll return for you and take you to Jay Bird’s chambers.” He paused. “You won’t run off, now, will you?”

Poor Singer shook his head. “No. I won’t. I just need time to think.”

“Very well.”

Howler’s steps faded as he climbed the trail toward the dingy village.

Poor Singer ran his hands over the damp soil of the trail. Fragments of the conversation wheeled through his head.

Everything he had once believed about himself was false, his family, his village, even his people—and the men and women who had deceived him were his most trusted loved ones. He couldn’t reconcile the two facts. They tugged at his soul until he feared they might rip it in half.

In a hoarse whisper, he said, “Blessed thlatsinas, who am I?
What
am I?”

Forty-Eight

“Hummingbird is the Creator, Poor Singer,” Jay Bird said and pointed to the painted bowl in the rear of the chamber. The lavender glow of dawn streamed through the window to Poor Singer’s left and threw a long rectangle across the gray stone floor. The beautiful animals painted on the bowls that lined the wall seemed to spring to life, especially the black wings of Hummingbird. “Every beat of her wings gives breath to the world, and if her wings ever stop beating the world will suffocate. That is why we pray to her and offer her corn pollen, to give her strength.”

“Thank you for telling me, Grandfather.” Poor Singer listened inside his heart for some resonance of the story, some hint that his soul was Mogollon, but he could find only a confused Straight Path youth. On the wall above the Hummingbird bowl, an array of baskets hung in shadow. They rattled as Wind Baby sniffed about the room.

Poor Singer took another bite of bread. He sat across the fire from Jay Bird, finishing his morning meal of roasted venison and toasted squash-seed bread. At home, in Windflower Village, they rarely had venison. It should have tasted particularly sweet and rich to Poor Singer, but he’d lost his appetite.

Downy Girl sat to Jay Bird’s right. She’d been fawning over Poor Singer, stuffing his skinny carcass with food, forcing him to drink bitter willow-bark tea, just in case some of the evil Spirits from the Straight Path lands lingered in his body. She’d even given him a magnificent new red-and-green shirt to wear. As he ate, Poor Singer looked down at the soft cloth. Two hands of time ago, he had bathed in the river. His long black hair gleamed, and his deeply tanned skin had a glossy sheen. But despair lived in his heart. He kept trying to smile as he ate, but his soul floated somewhere outside his body, looking down upon this strange new world.

A frightening wrongness pervaded everything. Like icy wind, it whispered in the depths of Poor Singer’s soul, warning of disaster to come, promising horrors much worse than any he had yet witnessed. He couldn’t shake off the sensation.

Jay Bird leaned back on his deerhide and sipped from his cup of dried gooseberry tea. Downy Girl, her long gray hair coiled on top of her head, sat beside the Chief. She wore a black cape about her gaunt shoulders. She looked very old. Her cheeks, which once must have been pink and full, had gone hollow. A white film covered her brown eyes. She suffered from the aching joints disease. All night long, she had moaned in her sleep.

Downy Girl’s wrinkled mouth drew down in disappointment when Poor Singer set aside his half-finished bowl of venison and bread and picked up his cup of gooseberry tea.

“You well? Yes, Poor Singer?” she asked in her broken Straight Path tongue.

“I’m just full, Downy Girl. It was a delicious breakfast. Thank you.” He frowned at the green-and-red geometric designs on his shirt. They looked bright against the gray floor.

Jay Bird turned his teacup in his hands. “You look sad, Poor Singer.”

He lifted a shoulder. “Not sad. I feel hollow. The people I loved most lied to me. All of my life, I believed my mother was Snow Mountain. The man I respected most in all the world—Black Mesa—told me stories about my dead father, claiming he’d been a Trader.” He sipped his tea and swallowed. “I know they must have thought they were doing the right thing, but they weren’t, Jay Bird. I just don’t understand how they could have deceived me for so long.”

Downy Girl reached out and placed a hand gently on Poor Singer’s shoulder. “We not lie to you, Poor Singer. I promise.”

Poor Singer smiled weakly. “You’ve been very kind, Downy Girl, but I feel like an outsider here.”

“Not long. Today we send word to all villages that grandson has come home. Then, on Summer Solstice, we make you formally a member of clan. You be surprised to know how many cousins you have. Each wish to speak with you, to welcome you to their hearts.”

A sick qualm of dread filled him. “I don’t even speak their language, Downy Girl. They’ll whisper about me behind their hands, and I won’t be able to understand a word of it.”

“You learn.” She gently patted his arm. “Six moons, perhaps a little more, and you speak well enough. You see.”

Poor Singer bowed his head and his black hair fell over his shoulders. He toyed with his cup. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure I can stay here. Not if … those captives outside are my friends. Some of them, I love. If something happened to them…”

Jay Bird’s face fell. Poor Singer saw it from the corner of his eyes. Jay Bird had been elated about the perfectly executed raid and the capture of Talon Town’s most esteemed citizens. But Poor Singer had to try to save his friends.

Tersely, Jay Bird said, “They are slaves now, Poor Singer, part of the spoils of war. You understand this?”

Poor Singer finished his tea and set the cup on the stone floor in front of him. “Yes, but what’s going to happen to them? Have you decided?”

Jay Bird’s brows drew together at the hurt in Poor Singer’s voice. “Not yet. I’ll treat each differently. But I assure you, none of their fates will be pleasant.”

Poor Singer jerked a nod of acceptance, and Downy Girl reached out and touched his arm. “Perhaps, something might be worked out for a few of them.” She winked. “This old woman, your grandmother, she’s pretty important around here.”

Jay Bird scowled at her. “
Which
few?”

If Mogollon society worked at all like Straight Path society, the fate of captives was ultimately decided by the Matron. Jay Bird looked uneasy about the sentimental way Downy Girl gazed at Poor Singer.