The Unfinished Song: Taboo (25 page)

“But you did
not
dance like a novice, that much I remember clearly.
Somebody
must have taught you before now.”

Not unless you count the fae
. Dindi had the sense not to say that. Anyway, the fae didn’t ‘teach’ either. They just danced, and let her scramble to copy them as best she could.

“I tried to copy the Tavaedies.”

“You mean you were spying on the Tavaedies even before you failed the Test?”

“No. Before the year of Initiation, I would watch their performances, then tried to copy them later, on my own.”

“I’ve never heard of anyone learning to dance that way.”

“Are you sorry you
agreed
to this?”

“When I give my word, I don’t go back on it,” Kavio said.

Which didn’t quite answer her question.

“Watch me,” he said. “I will go through the sequence of animal positions.”

He stood in the center of the demarked area. What he did looked to Dindi like a simplified dance, a shift from one pose to another.

“That’s easy,” she said.

His gesture invited her to try.

She imitated his movements, except she flowed through them more smoothly and more quickly. When she finished, she looked up at him with an air of mischief, wondering if he would take up her challenge.

Instead of smiling back, he frowned.

“Close,” he said. “But you blurred the positions. This time take it slower, let me see how your feet are placed and the shape of your hands.”

That wasn’t the reaction Dindi had hoped for. Chastened, she repeated her movements more slowly.

“Again, even slower.”

Growing bored, she repeated the sequence again.

“Adequate, for now.” He crossed his arms. “But your form needs polish. Let’s work on them one at a time. In honor of
my new tribe
, let’s start with the Bear. Arms up at the elbow, back arched, feet apart, up on your toes.”

She struck the pose, not to his satisfaction. He adjusted her elbows, tapped her legs further apart with his foot,
touched
the small of her back to push her hips forward.

“There.
Exactly
like that. We’re going to go through the positions one at a time. When we return to this one, I want your body to return to this exact position, each time, every time. We’ll drill until you get it right.”

Kavio didn’t exaggerate his obsession with precision. Dindi had never had a duller dance session. The slightest misalignment of a foot or finger, and he would make her start the sequence all over. True, she had often drilled on a single move or set of moves when she practiced on her own, but once she could execute the move to her own satisfaction, she went on to the next one. She’d never had to perform according to someone else’s satisfaction before.

And there was another problem.

As a joke, to relieve her boredom, she began to concoct variations of the moves in her own mind. When Kavio said they should take a break for water, she slaked her thirst,
then
began to practice her variations.

“Wait until we start again, Dindi,” he said. “You’re doing the Goat wrong.”

“This isn’t the Goat,” she said. “It’s the Goat With Three Legs. See?” She ho
p
ped around comically.

Kavio’s eyes widened and he rushed to physically stop her by grabbing her arms.

“Never,” he said, “
Never
do that again.”

His intensity frightened her.

“What did I do?”

“You must never,
never
dance the patterns other than as they have been handed down by tradition. You must never make up your own positions or dances. It is forbidden.”

She stepped back. “As the Shunned are forbidden?”

“It’s not the same,” he said tightly.

“Isn’t it? Who’s to say our taboos aren’t just as foolish and cruel as their taboos?”

“They aren’t.”

Taboo. Forbidden. Shunned
. Dindi hated those words
.
The fae never forb
a
d
e
things. Why
couldn’t
humans dance with the same freedom?

He must have guessed her mutiny
from the expression on her face.

“Dindi, this is important,” Kavio said.
He clenched his fist and ground it into his other hand.
“I cannot teach you if I think you will abuse the knowledge I impart.”

“I wouldn’t abuse it.”

“A wrong move in a dance could unleash a hex instead of a blessing. Two generations ago, a group of Tavaedies in the Rainbow Labyrinth made a mistake while dancing. During a toss, they dropped a dancer, who broke her neck and died instantly.
T
here is no worse hex than a death during a
tama
. The Tavaedies had been dancing a pattern to bless the aurochsen herds. Instead, the cattle were cursed with a blood-cough that spread like prairie fire through the herds. It was in attempt to stop the aurochsen blood-cough that the Rainbow Labyrinth tribehold first invited in the Bone Whistler.
”

He caught her wrists in his, holding her like a captive, in a grip strong as stone yet soft as suede. His touch sent a shimmer of warmth up her arms and down to her toes.

“You may think it harsh that those who dance without guidance are executed,” Kavio said.
“But that’s why. The consequences of a wrong dance can be dire. That one mistake let down a ladder of mistakes, each mistake l
eading to one worse, nearly destroying
the Rainbo
w Labyrinth tribe. T
housands died from famine, torture and war. Two thirds of my grandparents’ generation perished. Our tribe has yet to regain its former preeminence. Maybe it will never do so. All because of one dance
done
wrong.”

“Oh,” said Dindi, subdued.

“If I teach you as though you were a Tavaedi, you must honor the responsibilities of a Tavaedi
,” he said, “Do you still want to do this?”

He still held her. She unclenched her fists, unlocked her jaw, relaxed in the custody of his arms by force of will.
This is what it means to be a Tavaedi. I can do this.

“Yes.
”

“
Good. Next…”

“Kavio.”

“Yes?”

Her hand rested on the lump beneath her breast sheath. “There’s something else I have to tell you. Something that may make you
change
your mind about teaching me. Even about…sparing my life. But I have to tell you.”

“Dindi?” He crossed his arms. “Not more secrets.”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“What is it?”

“There’s a…thing. An old totem I found. When I touch it, sometimes, I see …Visions. Strange fragments of another person’s life.”

“Ah.” To her surprise, his face cleared. “You found something hexed. And I’m guessing you thought it could grant you real magic.”

She thought of her dream of learning the
tama
of the Unfinished Song by studying Vessia in the Visions. “Something
like
that.”

“Dindi, I’m sorry. Whatever it is, it can’t give you magic if you have none. The Visions you see are
haunts
, the magical imprints left from the person who owned the totem before you. The Visions no doubt feel very real, and it
is
magic, but not the kind someone like you can control.”

She started to take out the corncob doll, to hand it to him. “But you can.”

However, he shook his head, placed his hand palm out, and backed away. “I could, but I’d rather not. Hexed things and haunted places affect people like me even more strongly than people like you. I’ve encountered them before, and I don’t much care for the experience. It…. This is embarrassing.”

He tilted his head away, ashamed. Dindi couldn’t imagine what Kavio had to feel ashamed of.

“I have fits,” he admitted in a low voice. “Around tangled magic, especially; that’s all a haunt is, old Patterns of magic that have become so tangled with the physical world they don’t let go to reform something new. My body reacts to such things and I can’t control it. I’m only telling you in case you see it happen, I don’t want you to be afraid. It won’t hurt me, but I’m told it looks frightening to others, as my body tends to thrash around. I usually fall. It’s all pretty humiliating, so I’d rather you not speak of it to anyone else.”

“No, of course not!”

“I’m glad you told me about the hexed totem, though you can see why I’d rather not touch it. The best thing you can do is
destroy
it.”

“I thought…I hoped… I just wondered if there was a chance I could retake the Test,” she said in a small voice.

“Um.” He grimaced. “Let’s not say it’s impossible.
If
you learn to dance the
tamas
correctly, as has been handed down in the traditions.”

“
Teach me how to do it right, as has been
handed down in the traditions.”

“We’ll meet again like this each time we have the chance. Tell no one.” He dismantled the arrows he’d set up around their practice area. “
We shou
ld go back separately.”

A few days later, they arrived at a clanhold with a familiar name: Jumping Rock. Kavio was curious to see the clanhold that Hertio would have had him attack to collect the deathdebts. It was not large, although a section of abandoned, half-submerged docks indicated it had been larger not too long before. Just as Hertio had claimed, there were few men in their prime and no Tavaedies in the clanhold. The main residents were elders, women, children, and a handful of Shunned.

The one thing the folk had rebuilt since the flood was the bone wall that surrounded their hold. In fact, they had built an entire second wall, one of wood, outside the first, for added defense. Obviously they knew that with a shortage of warriors, they were vulnerable to plunder. Kavio could not help studying it with an eye to war, wondering how he would have breached it if he
had
planned an attack.

As usual, they arrived shortly after noon. He spent the afternoon teaching Dindi, but it was winter, and night closed in sooner than he wished. At sunset, they returned to the compound.

Ever since Gremo and Svego had latched on to one another at the beginning of the journey, they had been inseparable, but tonight, Gremo (with the rock still lashed to his back) huddled in a shadowy corner, speaking to Rthan. Kavio did not know what common cause those two could share, and what he didn’t know worried him.

Coincidently or not, Gremo also behaved unexpectedly at the evening meal. He began interrogating their hosts about a man named Ezlo of Jumping Rock. At first, all the old aunties would say was that Ezlo had died, but Gremo kept pressing.

“How did he die? In the flood?”