Zadayi Red (8 page)

Clarity
, she told herself. Her mind to night was on the miracle in her lap. She fingered the webbing.
A boy,
she told herself for the thousandth time in joy and trepidation,
and the left hand.

Flashes of fear jolted through her arms and legs, glimmers of terror she hadn’t felt in years. Not since she’d accepted, genuinely, that the two people who knew her secret were dead and no one could expose her.

Now, if the old tales were true, Sunoya had arrived at her moment of truth.
Am I a half moon waning or a half moon waxing?
Her spirit rebelled.
I am too young for everything to be decided now.

She looked into the eyes of the boy, which looked back at her, imponderable.
It all depends on whether I save the life of this new being who bears strong medicine into the world.

She looked down to make sure her
zadayi
was red side forward. At that moment the boy tugged hard on her nipple. “Well,” she said to him, “the least I can do is give you a name, the one you’ve earned, Dahzi.” In the Galayi language it meant “hungry.”

Su-Li hovered in the air just outside the cave, wings flapping hard and loud. Gently, he set down a dog. A bitch, Sunoya saw—a bitch with swollen tits. He covered the animal with his huge wings, and she was too scared to run off.

Sunoya said to the Immortal, “Su-Li, you’re smart.” She said to the child, “You want some of that?” She went on, talking
to Su-Li, “I gave him a name, Dahzi.” She pulled hard to get him off her nipple. “Later I hope he craves something more spiritual.”

She set the child down, grabbed the dog, flopped it into position inside the cave, and put Dahzi to the tits. “Come now, suck a dog’s milk. She’s an animal, just like you and me.”

If the dog will let the boy feed,
said Su-Li. After he spoke, he pulled himself back into buzzard shape. Sunoya let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

Dak padded forward and sniffed the new dog. The bitch suddenly realized where she was and started to get to her feet. Sunoya put a stop to that and shoved Dak away. She set Dahzi back in the right position and pushed his head forward. When he tried to grip her nipple in his lips, the mother dog growled at him.

“It’s all right,” Sunoya told the dog, stroking her head. Then she took thought. “We’re going to call you Mother. That’s your calling, to mother.”

Sunoya got out some dried meat and gave Mother some. The dog chewed on it nervously. “You’re scared, poor thing,” Sunoya said. She rubbed the dog’s ears gently. “Who wouldn’t be scared, kidnapped by a bird monster?”

The young woman also gave pieces to Su-Li, Dak, and herself. “Everybody has to eat.” She gave Mother some more. “You, soon your tits hurt. You’re too full. Then Dahzi gets all he wants.”

And he did.

Sunoya wept. She wept as hugely as the skies wept yesterday. On this beautiful, sunny day she laid her hands on Noney’s cold body, raised her face to Grandmother Sun, and sang.

Nothing lives long

Not on this Earth

Nothing lives long

Nothing but the Earth

Nothing lives long

lives long

lives long

When her voice disappeared on the wind, she was left with only wishes. She wished that she could hold her cousin and trade the warmth of her own body for Noney’s cold one—it was the young mother who should live, who should raise this child. Sunoya wished she could sing with a more beautiful voice. She wished she had her drum, to give her song a heartbeat. And she wished most of all that she could bury Noney properly.

Tradition called for a mound of stones on the side of the mountain that faced east, the direction all good things come from. Tradition asked Noney’s women relatives to wrap her in a winding cloth they had woven themselves from the inner bark of the mulberry tree. It required them to send her favorite possessions along with her, and a little food.

Except for the food, Sunoya could do none of this. She and Su-Li had tried to move the body, but it was too heavy, even with Su-Li at condor strength. They had no winding cloth and little meat to spare. Noney had fled from the village with no possessions but the clothes she wore.

Since Su-Li was checking their back trail, Sunoya started gathering enough stones to give the body a light covering. She picked up rocks as big as she could manage with both hands and started making a mound on top of Noney. It was a terrible job, laying stones directly on her cousin’s body—Sunoya started with the feet and didn’t think about covering her face.

In a few minutes she sat down to rest beside the sleeping child. Dahzi, the Hungry One, whimpered, and she held and rocked him. She looked across the rocky mountainside and
faced her own situation glumly. She wasn’t strong enough to build a mound high enough to protect Noney properly, and she didn’t have time. Inaj would come soon and find his daughter. He would be furious about her death, incensed at the desecration of her body. She looked at her cousin’s body and felt a shiver of helplessness.

So she wrapped Dahzi tightly, set him in tall grasses, and went back to carrying what stones she could. As she worked, she got her mind clear about what she truly had to accomplish, only one task, a great one. Save the life of the boy child.

To get it done, she, Su-Li, Dak, and Mother had to walk to the village of the Soco people and present Dahzi to his father.

She looked up at the ridge top. They had to cross that ridge and several more ridges on a trail that was steep but easy to see. Then cross the Soco River and walk downstream to the village. Difficult, but she would do it. And receive a small additional blessing—she had spent her girlhood in the Soco village.

She covered Noney’s bloody belly, glad to get it out of sight. She set stones on her breasts, and another one just below her neck.

She stood up, panting, partly to get her eyes away from Noney, partly to catch her breath. She saw Su-Li gliding down toward her. She waited for him, arm extended.

The instant he landed on Sunoya’s shoulder, Su-Li said,
Time to get out of here. Inaj and four other men are coming up the trail.

Sunoya packed Dak, lifted Dahzi into her arms, told Mother to come, and barked at Su-Li, “Do something.”

He winged his way back down the trail.

Sunoya took one last look around that awful place. Her eyes lingered on Noney’s young and beautiful face uncovered by rocks, eyes staring at the sun. Sunoya reached down and closed them.

Then she scooped handfuls of gravel on Noney’s face and ran.

I
naj’s mind was all rage at his renegade daughter—he refused even to think her name. He’d bet she intended to rendezvous nearby with the bastard who stuck a baby into her belly, the Soco—where else would the girl run?

So he plunged upward in a huff, paying no attention to his men. Flee to the Socos, his own daughter!

“Ow!”

He threw a hand at whatever jabbed at his head.
What the hell was that?

He felt the outside corner of his right eyebrow and his finger came away bloody.

“Ow!” Left eyebrow!

Inaj hit at it, and swiveled his head in all directions.

“Ow!” Now the top of his head.

His men were chuckling, even his sons Wilu and Zanda.

Inaj looked straight up and saw a blue jay fluttering in his face. He cuffed at it, and it dodged.

“What the hell?!”

The men were laughing out loud now.

“Shut up! What is this damn thing doing?!”

The blue jay whirled in midair and dive-bombed him.

Inaj flailed the head of his spear at it and missed foolishly.

The bird fastened on his nose with both claws and pecked fast and hard at his forehead.

Inaj bellowed. Then he remembered he was a warrior and slapped his own nose. He nicked a feather out of the jay’s tail as it squirted off.

“What in hell?” he shouted.

The jay landed on the branch of a pine tree and gibed at him. “Shkrr,” it said, “shkrr.”

“Bastard thinks he can make fun of me?” Inaj hurled his spear at the jay, which simply bobbed to a higher branch and watched it sail below him.

“Ja-a-ay!” it screeched, a shrill cry from high to low. “Jaa-ay!”

“He’s lecturing you now,” said the round son, Wilu. The other son, Zanda, was hard-bodied.

Inaj whirled on Wilu and stalked toward him, brandishing his war club.

Wilu backed up. Laughter choked in the men’s throats and died.

The muscular son, Zanda, said in a sharp tone, “Chief!”

“Too-li-li!” shrieked the jay. “Too-li-li! Too-li-li!”

Inaj turned and took a long look at the bird. “To hell with being mocked.” He glared at his sons. “Let’s move.”

Sunoya stopped in the cover of the last trees before the ridge and looked down. “Spirits, help us,” she murmured. She could see Inaj and his comrades on the trail below. And when she stepped into the open, followed by Dak and Mother, Inaj might easily see her. She looked at the sky and cried out, “Immortals, help us.”

An idea came to her.
A woman followed by two dogs—we won’t look like Noney.
And a sadder idea:
When he finds Noney, he’ll stop thinking about us for a while.
She shook her head to clear it and stepped cautiously into the open, peering downward.

Suddenly Inaj flicked a hand at his head. He waved at it over and over. After a moment he stomped off the trail and threw his spear at . . . some pine needles?

Sunoya laughed. She understood. She broke into a run for the top.

Inaj brushed the pebbles off his daughter’s face. He looked at her—dead, dead, dead.

He threw up on the mound. Incapable of words, he let out a croak as from a dying raven. He lay down, one arm in his own vomit. His body heaved up and down with emotions. Grief, rage, grief, fury, grief . . . He yelled. He beat his fists on the stones that buried his daughter’s body. He kicked his feet. He roared like a man impaled on a spear.