People of the Silence (50 page)

“Doesn’t matter. Thank you, Creeper.” Webworm picked up the bowl and spoon and began shoveling the delicious beans into his mouth. The image of Cloud Playing’s face drifted in his soul, seeking to break loose and drown him with grief.

No, not yet. Keep it at bay, just a little longer.
Weary relief filtered through his empty belly as it filled.

Creeper put another spoon of beans into Featherstone’s open mouth. After a few moments, she chewed and swallowed, though her unfocused eyes never moved. When her mouth gaped again and bean juice ran down her chin, Creeper lifted a piece of cloth from his lap and wiped her chin, saying, “That was good, Featherstone. Try to eat another bite.” And he lifted the spoon to her lips again.

Webworm finished his beans and picked up a corncake. It was cold, but good, flavored with dried bits of prickly pear fruit. He leaned back against the wall and extended his muscular legs across the soft deerhides. Webworm had watched Creeper feed Featherstone hundreds of times. Why did it still disturb him?

“You spoke with Snake Head?” Creeper asked as he ladled another spoonful into Featherstone’s mouth and waited for her to chew.

“If that’s what you call it.” Webworm finished his corncake and reached for another. Chewing slowly, he swallowed and added, “He didn’t have much to say. I gave him the boy’s head and he … he laughed, Creeper.” Webworm let his head fall back against the wall and stared up at the stars visible through the roof entry. He lowered the cake to his lap. He’d yet to change clothes, and old blood stiffened the fabric of his red shirt. He felt dirty—in many ways.

“It’s not your fault.” Creeper glanced sympathetically at Webworm. “You are the new War Chief. You had no choice.”

Webworm’s eyes tightened. “Maybe,” he murmured. “I’m not so sure. I think Ironwood would have asked for more proof before he went off to slaughter an entire village. I—I didn’t even consider questioning the order.”

And had I been here, perhaps Cloud Playing would still be alive.
He struggled to force his thoughts away from her torn body. He should go to her, be there for her through the night. He pinched his eyes closed, afraid tears would betray his attempt at self control.

Creeper dabbed at the juice on Featherstone’s chin again. “When the great priest Sternlight tells people that something is true, who dares to doubt it?”

“I do!”
Webworm replied sharply, happy to strike out. “He’s a liar, Creeper. You know it! Why did we believe him? My cousin is wicked! He’s never told the truth in his entire life. Yet all he has to do is say Night Sun’s child lives in Lanceleaf Village and warriors go to find the boy and kill him.… What’s the matter with us?” In a frail voice, he asked, “Have we all lost our souls?”

Creeper placed the horn spoon in the empty bowl and set them aside. His calm brown eyes peered at Webworm. “No one has ever found evidence of Sternlight’s wickedness, or he would have been killed for witchery many summers ago. Until such evidence comes to light, most people will continue to revere him as a great priest—and believe him.”

Exhausted, disheartened, Webworm smiled and bowed his head, resting his chin on his chest. “Yes, yes.”

Creeper leaned forward and dipped up two cups of tea. He handed one to Webworm, who took it gratefully.

“I’m sorry, Creeper,” Webworm said. “I know you do not relish hearing me complain all the time, but I—”

“You have good reasons.” Creeper leaned against the wall beside Featherstone and drank his tea. “May I ask you a question, though?”

Webworm looked up. “Of course.”

Creeper’s bushy black brows drew together over his small nose. “Do you recall the rumors in Talon Town about sixteen summers ago?”

“You mean about Night Sun being pregnant? Yes, I recall, but I never believed them.”

Creeper frowned down into his cup of tea. “I didn’t either, not fully. But after the accusations Crow Beard made just before he died, I began asking questions.”

“Of whom?”

“The slaves.” Creeper looked up and gave Webworm a stern look. “Mourning Dove was one of Night Sun’s chamber slaves when the Matron became ‘ill’ while Crow Beard traded with the Hohokam.”

Webworm shifted to lean his right shoulder against the wall, taking the pressure from his aching left shoulder. The pain had grown fiery. “So?”

Creeper glanced at Featherstone, as if worried that she might hear their conversation. He lowered his voice and said, “Mourning Dove told me that Night Sun had not bled in four or five moons. One of Mourning Dove’s duties was to wash and dry Night Sun’s bleeding cloths.”

“And there weren’t any during that time?”

Creeper shook his head. “None.”

“Perhaps she asked another slave to take care of them.”

Creeper glanced at Featherstone again. “Perhaps, but I suspect Night Sun
was
pregnant, and that she bore a child.”

Webworm massaged his forehead. The ache behind his eyes pounded in time to his heartbeat. Weariness, mixed with his grief over Cloud Playing, had drained his strength. He longed to sleep. “I don’t care anymore, Creeper. Even if she did—”

“Do you think it might have been a girl?”

Webworm glanced up. Deep lines carved Creeper’s plump face. He looked almost … frightened. “You mean you think Sternlight lied to shield the real child?”

“I think he might have.” Creeper set his teacup down on the deerhides and laced his fingers over his ample belly. “The only thing I can’t figure is…”

Featherstone suddenly leaned forward and heaved a tired sigh as though she’d been running for moons, and only just found a resting place. “You know why, don’t you?” she asked.

Webworm’s soul sank. Her eyes were still vacant. Only her voice spoke.

“No, Featherstone,” Creeper said gently. “Why?”

“He’s doing it for me.”

Webworm fumbled with his hands. Sometimes she droned on and on, speaking nonsense for hands of time without stopping.

Creeper brushed gray hair away from her face, and said, “Why is that, Featherstone?”

“Because!” she shouted. “He knows I am the rightful clan Matron!”

“I see,” Creeper said with a smile.

“No, you don’t!” she spat. “None of you do! But
he
does.”

Something in the way she’d said it made Webworm go cold inside. He stared at his mother. As though the words had taken every bit of her energy, she wilted, her muscles going slack. Creeper grabbed her before she could topple sideways and helped her to lie down on her sleeping mats. He pulled the blankets up around Featherstone’s throat and gently kissed her forehead.

“Sleep well, Blessed Featherstone,” he whispered, and patted her shoulder.

In a curiously detached voice, Webworm said, “Snake Head told me he’s going to kill his mother.”

Creeper jerked around to look at him in shock. “Even if she did bear a child, none of the First People leaders will wish her dead! I know it!”

Webworm rubbed his aching shoulder, feeling sick to his stomach. “I pray you’re right. But which of them will have the courage to defy the new Blessed Sun?”

Creeper shifted to sit cross-legged on the hides and his shoulders slumped forward. After thinking for a time, Creeper said, “Why don’t you sleep, Webworm. There’s nothing we can do about any of this tonight. And you’ve had enough blows in the last few days. I’ll sit up for a time and watch over Featherstone.”

Webworm gave Creeper a warm look. During her “vacant” episodes, she often choked after eating. At these times, she couldn’t raise herself to swallow or get a breath, so someone had to be there for her. “I thank the Spirits that you came into our lives, Creeper. I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

Creeper smiled. “Get some sleep, War Chief.”

Webworm nodded and stretched out on his side on the soft hides. His limbs felt like granite.

He heard Creeper rise and felt a blanket being draped over his shoulders. Webworm could not count the number of times Creeper had done that … and no matter what troubled him, that kindness always eased the pain.

Creeper returned to sit at the head of Featherstone’s sleeping mats, and pulled an exquisite malachite figurine and a quartzite graver from beneath his cape. He sat there in the crimson glow, carving quietly. But worry creased his forehead.

Sleep overwhelmed Webworm almost immediately.

… And he found himself back on the mesa top. Morning sunlight slanted down, splashing the tan stone with warmth, waking him where he lay rolled in the blanket with Cloud Playing. At his movements, she woke and smiled up at him. Love and joy filled her eyes. They had loved each other for the first time that night. Black hair spread around her beautiful face in a dark halo. He touched it reverently and bent to kiss her …

*   *   *

Creeper sat beside Featherstone long into the night, as he had a hundred times, listening to the broken words she spoke—words that left him numb:

“Voices shouting … pain. Pain in my heart. Young woman … village burning … coming … to hurt me … she brings such pain … on the back of a bear. She’s riding a huge bear!”

“The same girl?” he asked softly. “The one you saw last moon?”

Featherstone’s dark eyes opened wide, staring at something Creeper could not see. It terrified her. She started to shiver. Tenderly, he pulled the blanket up and tucked it about her wrinkled throat.

“I won’t let her hurt you, Featherstone,” he said softly. Then he glanced at where Webworm slept and cupped a hand to Featherstone’s ear to whisper, “And what about me? Do you see anything about me?”

Her lips moved.

Creeper bent down, leaning so close his ear almost touched her mouth.

“…
The dead,
” she murmured.
“They’re calling for you.”

Fifth Day

The dead do not go away.

I sit cross-legged on the flat stone, my naked body cold in the dawn wind that whispers through the stunted pines. Father Sun sleeps below the eastern horizon, but a soft blue gleam sheaths the world. I gaze out across an infinite vista of purple ridges. They twist across the land like knotted lengths of cloth. As I watch, the silver Traders of the Evening People—the last falling stars—fly down to bargain with Our Mother Earth.

All day I have been desperately lonely, missing my mother and father, my friends, and I fear loneliness. It is not Silent. Loneliness overflows with the wrenching cries of my own suffering and the suffering of the world.

For a time, I thought I might go mad from those cries.

Then I heard my name whispered. Softly. Barely audible.

The dead did not call to me from the underworlds, but spoke to me from the rustling pine needles. They did not gaze down upon me from the skyworlds, but smiled up at me from a bead of dew trembling precariously upon a blade of grass.

They told me I have never been alone. Not for one instant.

Every soul is a thread in the fabric of the world. All I must do to see my relatives is gaze into the shining water that sleeps, and the grasses that weep. The Dances of the dead are motes of light, their voices sighing rocks.

My loved ones are all around me.

As I turn to face the east, I see the dead in the light that is coming alive. They climb over the rocky horizon like a sparkling golden tribe, and run across the face of the land, ruffling the grass, playing in the swaying pines.

I shiver and wonder at my own blindness.

Death is a silent, attentive partner in everything alive.

Of course the dead do not go away. They are the cloth that binds up the wounds of the world.

… My wounds.

Thirty

Cornsilk walked the rocky mesa rim with her arms out for balance, placing her yucca sandals carefully to avoid the thorny patches of cactus. Father Sun slipped behind a butte in the west, and a glistening halo engulfed the red tower of stone. The Cloud People blazed, brilliant orange puffs that glided through a sea of turquoise blue. Shadows lengthened across the rumpled land, cutting through brush-filled drainages and twining with the eroded rust and yellow beds of clay. Cornsilk smiled and hugged herself. Wind Baby gusted out of the north, whimpering and fluttering her long hair over her shoulders. Poor Singer said they would reach Talon Town tomorrow. She wanted to enjoy this evening of freedom. She might not have many more.

Basking in the warmth of the fading sunlight soothed her. She took her time, picking up sharp flakes of chert and obsidian left by a man who’d sat on this rim and knapped out stone tools sometime in the past. The exposed sandstone ledges made good places to sit and watch the surrounding country. A seep of water glistened at the base of the mesa, filled with cattails and three stunted pines. Poor Singer crouched in their camp at the edge of the water. He had a fire going and a teapot and boiling pot set up.

She would go down soon to help him with supper. But not just yet. For a while longer, she wanted to feel the wind through her hair and let the infinitely scoured vista beat life into her veins. She wanted to think.

Over the past few days, she had been struggling to piece together the things her mother and father had said, and the things she’d heard Webworm claim on the night of Lanceleaf’s destruction. She could look at the events a little more clearly now and see the flaws to her original conclusions. Webworm
had
come looking for a boy, and he
had
said that Night Sun was the mother. Then he’d accused Sternlight of being Fledgling’s father. In fact, Webworm had sounded convinced of it. But as the great Sunwatcher of Talon Town, Sternlight would have known about the order to kill Fledgling. He could have sent a messenger to warn Beargrass. Or hired someone to send signals down the roads. But he hadn’t. Why would Sternlight have let his son die? The First People had great resources. He
could
have intervened.

The only answer that made sense to her was that Sternlight had not feared the outcome of the battle. Someone, somehow, had managed to deceive Webworm into killing a boy … to protect a girl. That’s why no warning had come. Her mother had told her the truth.