The Broken Land (40 page)

“What are you thinking about, my husband?”

He stretched out on his side on the mat and propped his head on his hand, watching the girls play. “About the Dream. He said it changes, as though not even the Spirits know the final shape of the story, but he’s certain it has to do with what happened to him that last night in the old woman’s camp. He asked me if I’d seen what happened.”

Her heart twinged. “He doesn’t remember?”

“No.” Hiyawento grimaced at his tea cup. “Which I think is a blessing, but he says he must know.”

“He’s always been touched by Spirits. I wish I’d seen him. I would have so loved that.” They had endured so much together as children. He was almost as much a part of her souls as Hiyawento was. “What did you think of his betrothed?”

“Hmm?” Hiyawento blinked as though just hearing her. “Oh, his wife-to-be? She’s very young, fourteen summers. Pretty. Actually, she looks very much like her grandmother, High Matron Kittle.”

“In that case, she’s not pretty, she’s stunningly beautiful.”

He shrugged and fiddled with his empty tea cup, turning it where it rested upon the mat. She watched him closely. His thoughts seemed far away.

“What else did Sky Messenger say? The thing you haven’t told me. Was it Sky Messenger who asked you to argue against war in the council?”

Hiyawento looked at each person who was close enough to hear them, then he lowered his voice. Barely audible, he said, “Yes, but he’s right.”

“But in a war council?” She felt slightly ill. “Urging peace in a village council meeting is one thing, but in a war council?”

“Zateri, someone has to stand up for peace. You know it as well as I do. I don’t mind being the first.”

She placed the horn spoon upon one of the hearth rocks and sat down beside him to stare into his worried eyes. “Peace, no matter the cause? Even if we are attacked by Mountain warriors?”

“Yes.” He squinted at the flickering flames.

“He can’t be suggesting you refuse to defend our village?”

“If we are attacked, I’m sure he knows I will fight to my last breath to protect our people. Just … I think he wants one war chief out there who always, in every case, counsels against war.”

“He must know, however, that if the Ruling Council approves an attack, you will have no choice but to lead our warriors into the fight. He does understand that, doesn’t he?”

“All he asked was that I vote no in council. He said nothing about what happened when everyone else voted yes.”

She drew up her knees and propped her elbows atop them, trying to imagine how the council had gone. The other members of the war council must have been furious, especially if they’d just lost loved ones in the White Dog Village battle. Hiyawento had told her he’d been accused of both cowardice and treason, but she suspected a few people had also probably threatened his life. If anyone attempted to carry out that threat, it would be catastrophic. Murder was the worst crime. It placed an absolute obligation upon the relatives of the deceased. They had to seek revenge, or retribution. Often grieving family members claimed the life of a member of the murderer’s clan—his mother, grandmother, even the clan matron—as was their right. Blood feuds could and did escalate into civil wars. And the nation was already on the verge of splitting down the middle.

She asked, “Does Sky Messenger realize that always voting no will make you appear to be a simpering weakling? Not to mention a fool?”

“He’s thought it through, Zateri. He needs a symbol.”

“A symbol?”

“A war chief who preaches peace. He needs me to become a
peace chief.
He says he will never pick up a weapon again, never raise his hand in violence, not even to save his own life, or the lives of people he loves.”

Zateri frowned at the sooty shadows clinging in the corners. The firelight turned them into spectral dancers, their dark feet pounding out the sacred rhythms that had created the world. A strange, almost bizarre notion was forming in her heart. “He’s trying to launch an unarmed revolt.”

He lifted his head. “What do you mean?”

“I mean if village matrons followed his example and simply refused to cooperate—to attend council meetings—the Ruling Council could never vote to dispatch warriors.”

“Any matron who refuses to attend a meeting of the Ruling Council will be labeled a traitor.” As he thought about it, Hiyawento’s brows drew together over his hooked nose. “For the renegade matrons to remain steadfast will require a great deal more bravery than swinging a war club at an enemy warrior.”

Zateri considered the ramifications of refusing to attend the next council. Blunting the arrows of war through noncooperation would be very much like swinging an invisible war club at her own relatives. Could she, with her minimal influence, gather enough matrons together to accomplish anything meaningful? “Do you believe his vision?”

Hiyawento didn’t even hesitate, “You know I do.”

“Then you also believe you will be there when the World Tree shakes and Elder Brother Sun covers his face with the soot of the dying world?”

He answered in a sober voice. “Yes, and he’ll need me more at that moment than at any other time in our lives.”

When he looked up at her, his eyes were like night stars. Too bright. She had to look away. She prayed to all the ancestors who had ever lived to give her, and Hiyawento, the strength for the trials ahead. “When is the next war council?”

“Tomorrow. The war chiefs are afraid that Kittle’s retribution will be swift. Every village is preparing to be attacked.”

“What will you say to them when they suggest striking first?”

Firelight fluttered over his tense features. “I will counsel against war, as I did today.”

“Then you had best take ten warriors with you to guard your back. I don’t want you waylaid on the way home.”

He smiled. “That would make me appear afraid. I can’t afford such—”

Across the fire, a shrill,
“You’re ruining it!”
erupted, and Zateri looked up in time to see Kahn-Tineta rip the corn-husk doll from her youngest sister’s mouth. As she wiped the drool on her cape, she cried, “Look what you did, Jimer! Now it’s going to fall apart!”

Three-summers-old Jimer let out a yowl and tried to grab it back.

“Here, give it to me.” Zateri held out her hand.

Kahn-Tineta’s lower lip quivered. She clutched the doll to her chest. “Mother, it’s my turn to play with it. Jimer and Catta have been chewing on it for the past hand of time!”

“Give it to me
now
, Kahn-Tineta,” Zateri ordered, and extended her hand farther.

Kahn-Tineta grudgingly handed it over, and Zateri placed it on the mat beside the hearth ring. When she turned back to Hiyawento, he was struggling to suppress a smile.

“The doll is a pretty thing,” he said. “Where did you get it?”

“Me?” she asked in surprise. “I thought you brought it to them. I’ve never seen it before tonight.”

They both turned to stare at their daughters. Jimer’s gaze was still fixed on the doll, while Kahn-Tineta glared at Zateri, and Catta seemed to have found something fascinating on the bottom of her moccasin.

“Kahn-Tineta,” Zateri asked, “where did you get the doll? You didn’t take it from another child in the longhouse, did you?”

“No, Mother! I wouldn’t take something from one of my relatives. Catta brought the doll to me this afternoon. She said a man gave it to her.”

“A man? Catta, who gave you the doll?”

Catta’s five-summers-old face took on a guilty expression. She licked her lips nervously. “I don’t know his name. He was scary. He said the doll came from Sedge Marsh Village and he wanted me to have it—though he said it was really more of a gift for you, Father, than for me.”

Hiyawento lifted his head slowly, his eyes unblinking. “What did the man look like, Catta?”

She drew lines across her young face. “He had his face painted white with black stripes. He said he was a friend of yours.”

“A friend … to me?”

Someone from the war council.

Catta nodded vigorously. “And to Mother. He said he’d known you both since you were children.”

When Zateri turned to meet Hiyawento’s eyes, she found him staring not at her, but at the corn-husk doll. “Did the man say anything else?”

Catta swallowed hard. Her enormous eyes were shiny with tears. “No.”

Zateri’s gaze burned into Hiyawento’s. “There’s something I have to tell you. I—I’ve been meaning to. Sindak came to me. He said … he—he wasn’t going to tell me anything until he was sure.”

“What about?”

“Hehaka. And Ohsinoh.”

With the swiftness of lightning striking, Hiyawento grabbed the doll and threw it in the fire. The dry corn husks instantly caught and burst into flame.

“Father!” Catta groaned. “No!”

Zateri glanced at her chastened daughters, then at the charred doll in the fire pit. It was little more than a human-shaped clump of ash now. The polished stone beads that had decorated the dress fringe had split apart and rolled across the logs. The holes in their centers, where the beads had been strung, resembled tiny glowing eyes.

Hiyawento dropped his face into his hands and massaged his temples. “Blessed gods, I pray Sindak is wrong. I …”

Kahn-Tineta screamed,
“Mother!”
just as Jimer toppled backward and went into convulsions. Her body flopped and jerked across the mats. Before Zateri could even get to her feet, Catta collapsed with her mouth foaming and her limbs twitching like a clubbed dog’s.

Hiyawento lunged to his feet and grabbed Catta. “Zateri! What’s happening?”

“I don’t know!” She scrambled around the fire and stared down at Jimer’s face. The little girl’s eyes rolled in her head as her jaws spasmodically clapped together. She lifted her head and shouted, “Pedeza, go find Ahweyoh!”

Her cousin ran.

Zateri dropped to the floor and pulled Jimer into her lap, holding her daughter, praying that the seizure would end soon, and she could … Jimer’s body suddenly went limp. Zateri lifted her up and pressed her ear to her daughter’s chest. She couldn’t hear a heartbeat. She shook Jimer until the girl’s head flopped. “Jimer? Jimer, no!”

Hiyawento cried, “Blessed Spirits, this can’t be … what’s happening?” Hiyawento clutched Catta tightly against his chest. He was rocking back and forth with tears streaming down his face. Catta’s head flopped with his motions. Half the longhouse had crowded around them. A buzz of hushed conversations rose.

“Hiyawento?” A sob caught Zateri’s throat. “Is Catta … ? Is she … ?”

“She—she’s not breathing.”

Kahn-Tineta burst into tears. “Mother! Father!” The last word became a wail.

Forty-one

Z
ateri gazed down at Ahweyoh while the old Healer examined Catta and Jimer. Ahweyoh had seen almost sixty summers and had thin, chin-length white hair and a face like a shriveled scrap of leather. He wore a tattered buckskin cape over his sleep shirt. Everyone in the longhouse had crowded close, whispering, shaking their heads as they watched.

The little girls rested on Zateri and Hiyawento’s bedding hides. Their faces looked so peaceful. Their mouths were ajar, their eyes closed. Catta’s head tilted to the left, spilling black hair across her right cheek. Jimer lay on her back with her arms over her head. Ahweyoh pressed Jimer’s ribs; then his hands moved lower to prod her belly. A strange moldy scent issued from her mouth. Ahweyoh leaned forward to sniff her breath. Finally, the old Healer’s somber expression slackened, and he stood. Ahweyoh glanced at the far corner of the chamber where Hiyawento sat holding Kahn-Tineta. Kahn-Tineta had her face buried against his shoulder, weeping softly. Hiyawento patted her back and spoke into her ear, but his face had gone deathly gray, wiped clean of all except the hideous realization that his two youngest daughters were dead.

Ahweyoh said, “It was musquash root, probably in the doll.”

“In the doll?” Zateri asked.

“Yes, I suspect the powdered root had been folded between the corn husks.”

At the expression on Hiyawento’s face, Zateri’s heart went cold. Three women nearby sobbed. Zateri kept her eyes on her husband, for he looked as though he longed to be dead himself. His expression had contorted. He couldn’t take his gaze from his little girls.

“Are you certain? I need to know,” Zateri asked. She felt numb, not really there. None of this seemed real. But she knew, all too soon, her world would come crashing down. As her gaze flicked to the people standing close by, her breathing went shallow. She was the village matron. No matter what personal loss she sustained, she could not appear weak or ineffective. She had enemies. Every matron did. Give them one small opening, and they would slit her throat politically.

Ahweyoh searched Hiyawento’s face, clearly cataloging the extent of Hiyawento’s strain, perhaps wondering what he might do next. “Yes, I’m sure.”

Hiyawento lifted Kahn-Tineta’s chin to look into her brimming eyes. “Your mother and I must speak. Could you stay with Pedeza for a time?”

“No, Father, don’t leave me!” she wailed. “I’m afraid!”

“You’ll be all right. Go on now. We won’t be long.”