People of the Mist (26 page)

 
          
Later
that night, when the star people first began to build their campfires, the call
came, as Sun Conch had known it would. She jerked her head up when two of her
cousins marched across the plaza toward her. A nervous flutter taunted her
belly, but she did not rise from where she sat between Nine Killer and The
Panther. She knew what Redbird and Whitesides wanted. They often acted as
messengers for her uncle Sawtooth. As they closed on her, Sun Conch squared her
shoulders and braced herself to meet them, staring them in the eyes. Twirrs,
they had seen seven-and-ten Comings of the Leaves. They wore deer hide capes
over their broad shoulders, and had twisted their hair into buns on the left
sides of their heads. Both had wolfish eyes, with long hooked noses and full
lips. When Redbird grinned, Sun Conch had to will herself not to shiver.

 
          
“You
are wanted, Sun Conch,” Redbird said.

 
          
“I
knew you’d be coming sooner or later, cousins. Let me—”

 
          
“Who
wishes to see Sun Conch?” The Panther said as he turned away from Nine Killer.
He gave the twins a narrow-eyed appraisal.

 
          
Whitesides
stiffened. “Her uncle, Sawtooth. He wishes to speak with her about this thing
she has done—binding herself to you, witch.”

 
          
The
Panther started to rise, to go with her, and Sun

 
          
Conch
said, “No. Please. I wish to go alone. Let me do this. I will return as soon as
I can.”

 
          
The
Panther sank back to the ground, but his faded old eyes searched her face. “If
you need me, you have but to call.”

 
          
She
nodded. “I will. Elder.” And rose to her feet

 
          
Her
cousins silently led the way across the plaza toward her mother’s small
thatched house. As she walked, she held her chin high, and focused her eyes on
their broad backs. She did not want to look into the faces of the people
crowding the plaza. She could see them from the corners of her eyes, recoiling
from her as she passed, pointing and whispering behind their hands, and knew
what they must be saying. She had, after all, shamed her family by declaring
her love for High Fox; then she’d returned home at the side of the most feared
witch in the world. What had she expected? To be welcomed with open arms?

 
          
She
shifted her gaze to the houses. Starlight glimmered on the thatched roofs, and
frosted the palisade poles behind them. Clouds drifted through the midnight
sky, their edges painted with the palest of silvers. As she neared her mother’s
house, she slowed down, letting her cousins go ahead, and fought the
overwhelming urge to vomit.

 
          
“Pull
yourself together,” she whispered to herself. “Do it! You can’t let them see
you like this.”

 
          
Her
old ordered life had crumbled to dust before her eyes, and all of her
sanctuaries had vanished. She couldn’t run to her family, High Fox, or her
clan. Warriors who had once been friends now stalked the forests, waiting for a
chance to murder her and everyone else she knew. The only thing she had left,
the only thing she could be certain of… was herself.

 
          
Sun
Conch clenched her jaw as Redbird and White sides pulled back the door hanging
to her mother’s house, and announced, “We have brought your niece, Sun Conch.”

 
          
Sun
Conch waited before the fire pit. Had it really only been four days since she’d
sat there listening to her mother and aunt talk? It seemed like a lifetime.

 
          
Uncle
Sawtooth, burly and tall, ducked out through the entry, followed by Sun Conch’s
mother and Aunt Threadleaf, the clan matron. The elders threw mats down around
the fire, and sat. Not one of them looked at her.

 
          
Uncle
Sawtooth brushed long white hair away from his brown eyes. Her mother’s oldest
brother, Sawtooth had seen three tens and nine Comings of the Leaves. He had
deep wrinkles and a flat nose that spread halfway across his face. He said,
“Redbird. Whitesides. You may go.”

 
          
Her
cousins turned and trotted toward their own long house, which sat near the
eastern palisade wall, twenty paces away.

 
          
Sun
Conch folded her arms beneath her cape, and hugged herself. The people in the
plaza kept a respectable distance, but all eyes were on her. Even The Panther
watched from his place beside Nine Killer. He had a curious, worried expression
on his elderly face. It touched Sun Conch that he would care. She was, after
all, only a slave.

 
          
She
said, “I am here, Uncle, as you requested. What is it you wish to speak with me
about?”

 
          
Aunt
Threadleaf lifted her eyes and glared at Sun Conch with open dislike. “You are
a headstrong, foolish girl, who does not know her duty to her clan! That is why
you stand here.”

 
          
Sun
Conch said nothing. Her mother squeezed her eyes closed.

 
          
Uncle
Sawtooth shifted to a more comfortable position, bringing up his knees, and
wrapping his long arms around them. As always when he disciplined her, his voice
came out soft and forgiving: “My niece, are you well? We saw you arrive and
worried that you did not return to your family, as you should have.”

 
          
“I
am well, Uncle. But I am no longer bound to my clan. I have given myself to The
Panther.”

 
          
“Given!”
Aunt Threadleaf shouted. “You had no right to give yourself to anyone! You are
Star Crab! You are a child. You belong to your clan!”

 
          
Sun
Conch stared unblinking into those white-filmed eyes. “Nonetheless, I have done
it.”

 
          
“And
the witch accepted?” Sawtooth asked.

 
          
“He
did, Uncle.”

 
          
Her
mother buried her face in her hands. Sun Conch longed to go to her, to comfort
her, but she stood as if rooted to the hard-packed soil. It would be yet
another breach of duty if she even sat down before her uncle gave her
permission. She hugged herself tighter.

 
          
Uncle
Sawtooth gazed up at her in concern. “Why did you do this, niece? To hurt your
family? I know you must have felt trapped, your soul bruised, after all the
shouting that went on in the plaza five days past. But why did you not come to
me? You could have. I would have listened. Together we would have worked things
out.” “

 
          
“Uncle,”
she said through a halting exhalation, “I bound myself to The Panther because
it was his price for helping High Fox. And I—I love High Fox.”

 
          
Aunt
Threadleaf said, “You have seen four-and-ten Comings of the Leaves. You are not
yet a woman. You know nothing of love! Not only that, your precious High Fox
loved this Flat Pearl woman. Did you not know that?”

 
          
“I
knew.”

 
          
“High
Fox never returned your adoration, not that I saw,” her aunt continued. ‘Oh,
you were friends, that’s true, but nothing more. Anyone could see that.”

 
          
“Even
I saw. it her mother murmured, and gazed up at Sun Conch through tear-filled
eyes. Long black hair framed her oval face and highlighted the breadth of her
cheekbones and the fullness of her lips. She lowered her shaking hands and
clasped them in her lap. “I told you, Sun Conch, did I not? I told you that he
was not the man for you. He—”

 
          
“Thank
the gods,” Aunt Threadleaf interrupted, “that my family would not allow me to
marry the man I loved when I was a girl. He turned out to be a worthless,
shiftless sort. Ran off to be a Trader for some unknown people among the
western wild men. If I’d married him I’d be out there to this day, starving and
sifting manure for seeds to fill my belly!”

 
          
Love
for High Fox swelled Sun Conch’s breast until she could barely breathe. “I
would have gone with High Fox anywhere he wanted to go,” she said in a shaking
voice. “I would not have cared what he wanted to be, or do. So long as I was
with him, I—”

 
          
“Then
you are even more of a fool than I thought.” Aunt Threadleaf’s expression
turned icy. “But then I have proof of that! First you run off and give yourself
to the wicked est man in the world—a night traveler!—and then you come striding
home acting as if you have no relatives! You must be a blithering imbecile!”

 
          
To
act as if you had no relatives meant you were being selfish and prideful, and
deliberately hurting the people who loved you most. Nothing worse could be said
about a person—except an accusation of incest. Sun Conch lowered her gaze to
the leaping flames in the fire pit, and mustered her courage. She could not let
them see her pain. Aunt Threadleaf would pounce on her at the sight of
weakness, like a gull spying a skittering hermit crab.

 
          
“Uncle,”
she said, stiffening her spine. “I cannot take back the words I told The
Panther. I said them. I made my offering, and he accepted it. If you wish to go
to him and tell him that he cannot have me, that is your right.

 
          
You
are my family. But I ask you not to do that.”

 
          
Sawtooth
tipped his wrinkled face up, and blinked sadly. “And why is that, niece?”

 
          
“No
matter how many Comings of the Leaves I have seen, I know my heart, Uncle.” She
removed a hand from beneath her cape and placed it in the middle of her chest.
“I made a promise to High Fox that I would help him. And I made a promise to The
Panther that he could have me, body and soul. I will not break those promises.
So, if you go to The Panther and tell him he cannot have me, I will still be
his. I will go with him wherever he wants, and do whatever he says. I—”

 
          
“Body
and soul?” Threadleaf’s filmy eyes widened. “What does that mean? Has the old
man shoved himself inside you, girl? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?
That you’ve shamed us again?”

 
          
“Oh,
no. Blessed Spirits,” her mother murmured. “He hasn’t, has he?”

 
          
Sun
Conch’s knees shook. “If he wished to, Mother, I would not stop him. I belong
to him. But he hasn’t harmed me—hasn’t so much as touched me. Not yet. He—he
has been very kind to me.”

 
          
“She
needs to be beaten!” Threadleaf bellowed at the top of her lungs, and the entire
world seemed to die around Sun Conch. Heads jerked to watch. The startled birds
in the trees went silent. “If I were your uncle, girl, I would thrash you with
a green willow until you shrieked. I would leave scars that would never heal!”

 
          
“It
would not make me break my promises, Aunt. Not to High Fox, or to The Panther.”
Tears streamed down her mother’s face. “I tried so hard,” she said. “After your
father died when you were five, only you gave me a reason to live, Sun Conch.
You needed me. And I—I loved you so much. I tried to—”

 
          
“And
you see what a fine job you did,” Threadleaf said, and thrust out a hand at Sun
“Conch. “Girls are supposed to be obedient, modest, and hardworking. Sun Conch
is everything but! Look at her standing there, that silly war club at her
waist! You’d think she was like a Weroansqua, her nose in the air!”

 
          
Sun
Conch’s stomach churned. She had to fight to keep the contents from rising into
her mouth. What her aunt said was true. She had turned against everything she’d
ever been taught. Yet the more they belittled and humiliated her, the more
determined she became. She felt as if some unknown person had been living,
hidden, in her bones, and had just started to climb out.

 
          
She
turned to Sawtooth. “Uncle, if you are finished with me, I have duties to
perform for The Panther.”