The Broken Land (26 page)

“War Chief, if Sky Messenger were here, the first thing he would tell you is that this war must end. If it doesn’t, he has foreseen catastrophe. So … in the future, we will either have a chance for many long discussions. Or we will all be dead.”

Hiyawento absorbed her grim expression before he replied, “If it’s the latter, I pray we have those long discussions in the Land of the Dead.”

Koracoo tilted her head uncertainly. “We are warriors. That is unlikely.”

“I will still hope, Speaker.”

Hiyawento lifted a hand and trotted away. When he turned to look back, he saw Koracoo still standing there, her face faintly lavender in the deepening twilight. She watched him until he crested the ridge and plunged down the trail, heading home to Hills country.

Twenty-seven

K
oracoo walked back through the first two gates, listening as each was locked behind her. When she passed through the last gate, she saw the large assembly of people who stood waiting for her. Most were curious refugees in tattered clothing. Their children wore starved, vaguely feral expressions.

One man, short with matted black hair, called as she walked by, “Speaker? Was he truly a messenger from the Hills People? What did he want?”

Another skinny woman shouted, “Are they planning to attack us? When?”

Koracoo answered, “We are all safe for now. The council is considering the messenger’s words. As soon as their deliberations are concluded, you will all be notified.”

Koracoo put her head down and bulled her way through the crowd. She needed to think before she said anything more.

Snow frosted the longhouses and the corpses piled near the palisade, along the walls, beneath the porches, anywhere their relatives could find space. Tomorrow at dawn, Bahna would hold a mass burial ritual. The bodies would be cleansed and Sung to the Land of the Dead.

But for now, the plague-stricken longhouses were so quiet, so dreadfully quiet. Which meant most of the suffering was over. The evil Spirits that had brought the fever were, at last, fleeing for other hunting grounds.

She had awakened at dawn and gone outside to help Tutelo and several other women bundle the fishing nets and cover them with hides. They had to be kept out of sight of the corpses. Each net had a soul, and it feared contact with the dead—as did fish. If they scented decaying flesh on the nets, they would not allow themselves to be caught. With so little food in the village already, they had to be especially cautious.

As she passed the Hawk longhouse, she lifted a hand to Deru, who stood giving orders to fifty warriors. He nodded back and went on with his nightly guard-duty assignments. The illness had left Yellowtail Village vulnerable. Many of their warriors were down with the fever. It would be strange, indeed, if all of their enemies missed such an opportunity.

One warrior, a man’s whose face she couldn’t see in the darkness, called, “Speaker? How is Matron Jigonsaseh?”

Koracoo shook her head. “Not well. I’m headed there now.”

“I pray this ends soon.”

“As do I. Be vigilant, warrior. You know the stakes.”

She hurried across the plaza and ducked beneath the door curtain into the Bear Clan longhouse. The heat struck her like a fist in the face. The air was oppressive, scorching, and filled with the sickly sweet odor of death. Fires blazed down the length of the house, built up high to keep the sick warm. She untied her cape laces and pulled it away from her throat. Already sweat trickled beneath her armpits.

After days of weeping and agonized groans, the firelit silence was startling. It should have eased her frayed nerves, but it had the opposite effect. As she walked by the compartments, hollow-eyed people stared at her. Hopelessness pervaded the air. There were no sounds of supper being prepared. No children raised dust with their running feet. No dogs trotted by with tongues happily dangling and tails wagging. Somehow this evening’s stillness felt even more sinister than the evenings filled with screams of grief and sobs.

No one spoke to her. They just watched her pass, as though they considered her to be just another ghost, one of many that roamed the house. The dishes that surrounded the fires sat dirty and in disarray, scattered, as though the owners had been too exhausted or disheartened to nest the cups or clean the pots. Children huddled in the rear of the compartments, their haunted eyes wide, staring at the empty places where mothers or fathers had once sat. When she looked at them, it was almost as though she could hear the loving voices behind their eyes: mothers telling them not to be afraid, fathers assuring them that everything was going to be all right. The voices of people they’d trusted, saying things they now knew to be untrue.

Tomorrow, after the burial ritual, they would all gather sticks and pots and walk through the longhouses beating them to chase away the ghosts so that they could not drag the living away into the Land of the Dead.

Koracoo’s first glimpse of Tutelo caught her off guard. Her steps faltered. Tutelo was on her knees, hunched over her grandmother, gently wiping her face with a wet piece of hide. Tears ran down Tutelo’s pretty face. “Mother? Please come quickly. She’s been asking for you.”

Koracoo knelt beside Tutelo. Unlike the compartments of most village matrons, this was the smallest in the longhouse, stretching just twelve hands long. The sleeping bench on the back wall, where her mother lay, brimmed with tattered hides and worn but neatly folded dresses. Jigonsaseh owned almost nothing. Each time a Trader brought her a gift to show his esteem, she gave it to the most needy family in the village. What she lacked in possessions, she made up for with the love of her people.

Matron Jigonsaseh lay on her back, pale and shrunken. She’d shoved the hides away from her fevered body. Two gray braids fell on either side of her wrinkled face, and her closed eyes were sunken in twin deep blue circles. Her shallow breaths rattled.

Koracoo smoothed her forehead. “Mother? It’s me. I’m here.”

Jigonsaseh’s eyes fluttered open, then fell closed again. Her face had a yellow waxy sheen that Koracoo had seen many times on the war trail. It was drained of life’s blood. She was dying. The idea transfixed Koracoo. Her mother had survived so much: the destruction of her village, the losses of three husbands, the deaths of many children, two just days old. She couldn’t die, not when Yellowtail Village needed her so much. How would they survive without her wisdom and kindness?

Koracoo clasped her mother’s limp hand, holding it between both of hers. The flesh was searing hot. Again, she said, “Mother, I’m here.”

Jigonsaseh opened her eyes a slit, stared as though to make certain in was in fact Koracoo, then drew a phlegmy breath and whispered, “Tell me you’ll accept. They’ll be coming to you … soon. Promise me.”

Koracoo exhaled a long slow breath before she replied, “There are others far more deserving.”

“But none … more capable.”

She gently squeezed her mother’s hand. “Are you sure?”

There was the faintest hint of a smile on her pinched lips. “No … doubts. We talked about it … once. Remember?”

“Oh, yes, I do.”

How could she ever forget that day twelve summers ago? Almost as clearly as if she were there again, she found herself standing in the smoldering ruins of the longhouse, frantically searching through the burned timbers for her family. She’d found her sister Tawi first, burned almost beyond recognition. Then she’d heard a barely audible sound, like a voice rising through layers of hide, and realized there was someone beneath Tawi. Her sister had died trying to protect their mother. Without Tawi’s body to shield her from the roof-fall, Jigonsaseh would certainly have died that day. Amid the stifling heat and stench of burned flesh, Koracoo had dragged her mother free. As she’d carried her outside, her mother’s voice had been crystal clear:
“Promise me … . Receive my name.”

Rattling breaths filled the silence, and Mother seemed to be fighting to gather enough strength to speak. “Your son …”

Koracoo frowned. “What about Sky Messenger?”

“He’s … afraid. Told me—he’d done something.”

Koracoo’s brows drew together. “Something he couldn’t tell me?”

“Anyone … close?”

Koracoo cast a glance over her shoulder. “Just Tutelo and me.”

“Baji …” Her voice faded to a rattling like dry bones in the wind.

Tutelo looked at Koracoo with tear-filled eyes. “Why does she want to know about Baji?”

Koracoo shook her head. The time was almost at hand. Grief caught in her throat.

Jigonsaseh reached out to touch Koracoo’s hair and feebly tugged at it. “Look … look at me.”

Koracoo raised her head and gazed into her mother’s loving eyes, drowsy with death. “What about Baji, Mother?”

“ … He … let her … adopt him.”

As the truth of those words sank into Koracoo’s souls, her heart seemed to stop. She clutched her mother’s hand and leaned closer, so that no one could possibly overhear. “Are you saying he allowed the Flint People to adopt him?”

Jigonsaseh made a great effort to nod. “He wished to—marry. No other …”

Koracoo silently finished the sentence for her,
no other way.
In order to marry Baji, he would have had to become one of her people. Dear gods. If anyone found out, nothing else would matter, not his visions, not his former valor, nothing. He’d be dead in less than the time it took say the word
treason
. Even if he managed to escape and return to the Flint People, they had certainly “unadopted” him after he’d returned to take up his position as a Standing Stone deputy war chief. Which meant he would be a traitor to two nations, and he …

Jigonsaseh wheezed, “Protect … him.”

Koracoo stared at her mother. Her breathing was coming in short desperate puffs. “Yes, of course. As best I can.”

“His coming … was foretold.”

Koracoo hesitated, uncertain what to say to that. “I’ll look after him. I give you my oath.”

“ … It will help.”

Did she mean Koracoo’s protection would help, or the fact that he’d allowed himself to be adopted into an enemy people would help? Surely, the former.

“I’m sure it will,” she answered softly, and kissed her mother on the cheek.

As though Koracoo’s promise had given her peace, the struggle seemed to go out of Matron Jigonsaseh’s exhausted body. “You’re … a leader—best leader—for our village.”

At these words, pain constricted Koracoo’s chest. She whispered, “I love you so much,” and gently placed her mother’s hand on the sleeping bench.

She heard moccasins rapidly coming down the longhouse but did not look up until Tutelo said, “Mother.”

When she turned, Deru stood behind her with his war club in his fi st, his massive shoulders heaving with swift breaths. He must have run to get here.

Koracoo lurched to her feet. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

He clenched his jaw, and it set his caved-in left cheek at an odd angle. “Two scouts came in. We have a flood of refugees coming.”

“What? How many? From where?”

“We won’t know until they get here. Papon said hundreds, but you know how he is; he exaggerates.”

“Did he have any other details? What village? Who attacked them?”

Deru shook his head, and short black hair flapped across his crushed cheek. “As soon as our scouts saw them on the trail in the distance, they climbed down from the sycamore where they were keeping watch and ran—”

Tutelo suddenly sobbed, “Oh, Mother!” She clapped a hand to her mouth to smother her cries. Her gaze fixed on her grandmother.

Koracoo turned. Jigonsaseh’s eyes stared up blankly, peacefully, at the smoke hole in the roof, as though her afterlife soul saw the way out.

Deru said, “Oh, Speaker, I did not realize—”

“No one did. And I needed to hear your message, Deru. Thank you for bringing it swiftly. It gives me time to prepare.”

Tears did not come easily to Koracoo. In her many summers as a warrior and then as war chief, she had seen dozens of friends perish. Sodowego, the harbinger of death, was an old familiar companion. Often, she’d been desperately glad to see him. As she was now. Yesterday had been the longest day of Koracoo’s life, her mother’s rattling lungs and whimpers unbearable. Now, the great matron’s suffering was over, and for that, Koracoo was deeply grateful.

“I’ll leave,” Deru said. “I’m sorry to have disturbed—”

“How far away are the refugees?”

“A good distance. They were moving slowly. Papon suspected they’d make camp for the night, and come in tomorrow morning.”

Koracoo expelled a breath. “Very well. Inform Chief Yellowtail. I’ll inform the matrons.”

“Yes, Speaker.” Deru turned, and his steps pounded away.

Koracoo turned to her grief-stricken daughter. Tears blurred Tutelo’s eyes. “Tutelo, please run to each longhouse and first inform the clan matrons that we have more hungry people coming in, probably tomorrow, but maybe tonight. They’ll need places to sleep, and probably hides to keep them warm.” She paused, then finished, “After all the deaths, they should have enough to share. Then tell them that the great Matron Jigonsaseh will need to travel to the afterlife tomorrow.”