People of the Silence (52 page)

“No.” He shook his head. “Just in the fiery pillar.”

“Did we burn up?”

“No. The next thing I knew, we were walking through the Soot World together.…” His voice faded as the memory returned. Now that he knew Silk had been the young woman in the vision, it changed everything. “We were holding hands. Walking among giant trees, talking with the ghosts.… Until I found my father. Then you vanished.” Poor Singer lowered his hand to his lap. “I never saw you again in the vision. The rest of the time I spent walking and talking with my father.”

“I vanished the instant you saw your father?”

“Yes,” he said, perplexed. They’d been walking along a winding deer trail that led between two huge cedar trees, and on the other side of the trees, the trail had forked. Silk said,
I don’t want to go that way.…
Then his father had stepped out, dressed in his beautiful white hide shirt, and Silk just disappeared. “It was very strange.”

Poor Singer drifted off, remembering how much his father had looked and sounded like him, recalling the things his father had said.…

Silk touched his ankle softly, and Poor Singer jerked back to this world. “Poor Singer, why do you think I was in the vision?”

“I don’t know.” Against his better judgment, he reached down and twined his fingers with hers. As darkness gathered about them, the air grew sweet with the fragrances of damp pines and mud. The wan starlight lay like a hazy veil over the desert. Poor Singer tightened his grip, and his heart started to pound. “Silk, I honestly don’t know why you were there, but being with you made me very happy.”

She looked down at the ground, and it took all of his strength to hide the dread that surged in his chest.

“W-what happened with your father?”

“Oh,” he said, “something I still don’t understand. We were in some kind of fight … and the ground began to quake, then I climbed into a flaming sky, using the clouds as stepping stones.”

Silk’s gaze jerked up. “You saw a flaming sky?”

“Yes, a hideous orange color, filled with smoke. And rivers of fire poured over the earth.”

Her beautiful face slackened. “Hallowed Ancestors.” Her eyes seemed to enlarge. “I’ve been dreaming of a flaming sky, too, but I have a bear there to help me, Poor Singer. Whenever I’m in a dangerous situation, that bear keeps me alive.”

Wind Baby gusted through the camp and blasted them with stinging sand. They turned their heads and closed their eyes until it passed. The pines creaked and groaned. When Poor Singer looked up again, he found Silk staring into the dancing flames, her expression contemplative.

“Thinking about the bear?”

She nodded, and firelight glimmered in the wind-blown locks of her hair. “I think that I’ve always dreamed of that bear, but I didn’t remember until recently. If I could recall each of those dreams, do you think I’d discover the bear has always been there helping me?”

“Like a Spirit Helper, you mean?”

“Yes.”

Poor Singer threw another dead branch onto the fire and orange flames licked up around the wood. Sparks whipped away in a blinking veil. “It’s possible. Spirit Helpers can be mysterious. Maybe the bear doesn’t wish you to know that he’s your Helper.”

After thinking about it, she nodded, and replied, “That’s how it feels. He’s never spoken to me. But he’s always there when I need him.”

“Have you tried talking to him?”

Silk’s brow lined with a frown. “No. How strange. I never have.”

“Maybe you should.”

“Perhaps…”

Poor Singer waited for her to say more, and when she didn’t, he said, “If we get up before dawn, I think we can make it across the flats to Talon Town by midmorning. Which means we should probably get some sleep.”

Silk rose to her feet. “Yes, we should. I’ll wash our cups and bowls if you’ll kick dirt over the fire.”

As she collected the dishes and went to dip them into the small pool of water, Poor Singer smothered the flames. What wonder this night had brought him. And trepidation.

In the Soot World, he had loved her with all his heart.

Thirty-One

Thistle and Leafhopper secreted themselves behind a thorny wall of greasewood and peered down into the drainage channel that cut through the rolling hills like a jagged wound. People walked below. They moved like black ghosts, their bodies consumed by the lengthening evening shadows. Not one of them so much as looked up as they slogged through the trickle of water in the drainage, seemingly too weary to hurry or to care about the mud, and so silent that had it not been for the steady hiss of their breathing, each might have been a weightless earth spirit. Clothing hung in tatters from their bodies. Heavy packs bent their backs. Many walked barefoot and, here and there, a dirty bandage wrapped an arm or leg wound. Guards marched beside them, hemming them in.

Thistle brushed her dark hair away from her fine-boned face and crawled closer to get a better view through the screen of branches. She bumped Leafhopper’s arm. Despite being twice Leafhopper’s age, Thistle stood about her height. They looked strange lying side-by-side, Thistle’s thin childlike body next to Leafhopper’s squat pudgy frame.

“They must be slaves,” Leafhopper whispered bitterly.

Dirt streaked Leafhopper’s round face and green dress. Twigs and old leaves tangled with her chin-length black hair. The hatred in her eyes chafed Thistle’s heart. Where once a little girl in a woman’s body had looked out, now a crone glared. Leafhopper had grown up in a single night of horror—and Thistle didn’t have the heart to try to find the girl and bring her back. Nor did she think it wise. Hatred had a way of giving purpose to even the most defeated person. With the difficulties ahead, Leafhopper might very well need that resolve.

Hatred had, after all, become Thistle’s nourishment. It gave her strength and fed her will to survive, allowing Thistle to smother her overwhelming desire to lie down in the sand and weep. For the past four days, as they’d headed south, she’d been fighting with herself, forcing her feet to walk, struggling against the sobs that lodged like a white-knuckled fist in her throat. Without hatred to feed that fire in her soul, she knew she would yield to grief and be no good to anyone.

“Yes,” Thistle murmured. “When the next guard goes by, look at the tattoos on his right wrist—a red star, a crescent moon, and a handprint. These warriors are from Starburst Town, northwest of Talon Town. They’re Straight Path warriors.”

Southward, in the direction of Starburst Town, the towering sandstone-capped walls of Straight Path Canyon butted against the clouds. Though shadows cloaked the lowlands, Father Sun’s fading rays flamed over the highest cliffs and ignited the drifting Cloud People. A luminescent red-orange halo arced over the western horizon. Buttes stood like dark blocks in the distance, their shadows stretching across the desert. Eastward, behind broken slabs of uptilted sandstone, lavender hued the sky. It would be night soon. And cold. Already the chill ate at Thistle’s bones. She needed to find a campsite for them.

But she didn’t move. She only stared down at the despairing slave women. How strange. A few days ago, she would have run down into the drainage with open arms, seeking shelter and food among the Straight Path warriors. Now, they were her enemies. Her
own people
were her enemies.

Her fingers tightened on her bow.
I couldn’t carry them down the sacred road, so I buried my husband and son with my own hands. I piled rocks on their graves. I Sang their souls to the underworlds … and I will never forget
who
killed them, or why.

“Stay down!”

Thistle grabbed the top of Leafhopper’s head as she lifted it above the greasewood for a better look. Leafhopper grunted when her chin struck the dirt. Her eyes widened. “Sorry,” she whispered.

“Wait just a moment. They’re almost gone.”

As the last women and children passed, a little girl, dragging her injured left foot, stumbled. Dirty black hair framed a thin starved face. She stopped and stared at the people in front of her like a sleepwalker. Tears traced lines through the dirt on her sallow cheeks. “Mother…” the girl cried weakly. “Mother?”

Slowly, the girl’s knees buckled and she crumpled to the dust. Her torn yellow dress flared around her skinny body. Without making a sound, two older girls turned and walked back. One, tall and slender with a beautiful triangular face, silently handed her pack to the other shorter girl, who had a long hooked nose. Kneeling, the tall girl slipped her arms under the child’s body and lifted her.

Leafhopper stayed so still she did not seem to be breathing.

The little girl whimpered, “Where’s my mother? Moth, have you seen my mother?”

Not new slaves. They speak the Straight Path language. These women have been slaves for generations. They must be moving them from one work location to another.

It was time to begin preparing the fields for the planting moon. First the fields had to be cleared, then they were usually burned, and the soil turned with stone hoes. In the outlying villages, the clans completed these chores, but the First People—who could afford them—used slaves.

Moth patted the child and exchanged a look of mourning with the shorter girl. “Shh, Lambtoe. Your mother has gone ahead. It’s all right. She’s just up ahead.”

Thistle’s heart clutched up. She knew from the tone of Moth’s voice that Lambtoe’s mother would not be up ahead, not ever again. Many slave women died from blows to the head, or broken bones. Thistle had seen it. When the time came to leave a work location, the guards rounded up the slaves, killed those too slow, and trotted the rest off as quickly as possible, leaving the dead where they had fallen. By now the coyotes had shredded the remains and hauled the bones off to their dens. Ghosts would wail tonight, roaming the earth, alone and frightened.

Thistle’s fingers dug into the soft tan dirt of the hillside.
Cornsilk? Where are you? What happened to you?

The ache in her chest made breathing difficult. Her daughter should have been with Fledgling. Thistle had searched through the smoldering remains of Lanceleaf Village, and Cornsilk’s body had not been there. What had happened that night? Had Fledgling seen the flames and come running home, leaving Cornsilk behind somewhere? Or had the Straight Path warriors brought Fledgling with them and kept him outside the village until they’d captured Beargrass? Had they found Fledgling in Standing Gourd’s village and dragged him back to use against Beargrass—to force Beargrass to give them information about Cornsilk?

Thistle gripped her bow harder and let her rage swell until it quashed the despair. Perhaps all of her fears about the identity of Cornsilk’s father were misplaced. Had Crow Beard sent out warriors because he’d discovered the identity of Cornsilk’s
grandfather?
Of course, Beargrass had told them nothing. He’d loved Cornsilk with all his soul. Fledgling had probably died first, as a warning to Beargrass. Blessed Spirits, watching his only son die before his eyes …

But if the Straight Path warriors had captured Fledgling to use against Beargrass, Cornsilk was still free. Somewhere.
Alone and aching.

Thistle’s gaze wandered the sunset sky, the dark hills hemming them in, and Leafhopper’s strained expression. She studied the new lines in Leafhopper’s young face; her fears had coalesced and stared out from the depths of her soul like dark hunching monsters.

“They’re gone,” Leafhopper said as the slaves and warriors disappeared around a curve in the drainage. “We should go.”

“Yes,” Thistle whispered. “We
will
go.”

Leafhopper sensed the double meaning. “You mean to find a campsite?”

Thistle sat up, put her arrow back in her quiver, and slung her bow over her shoulder. “No, to find Cornsilk’s grandfather.”

“We’re going to Standing Gourd’s village? I thought you said we had to go to Talon Town, to speak with the great priest Sternlight, and try to—”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

Thistle rose to her feet, made certain no one could see her, and started down the hill, veering away from the road that led to Straight Path Canyon, heading southeast instead. As she walked, the Evening People twinkled to life. The Road of Light which led to the highest skyworld dusted the belly of Brother Sky.

Leafhopper followed dutifully until it grew too dark to see, then stopped dead in her tracks. “Thistle, shouldn’t we make camp? Where are we going?”

Thistle turned. Leafhopper stood ten paces away, silhouetted blackly against the choppy gray desert. The fragrance of damp earth carried on the cool night wind.

Thistle walked back and gently touched Leafhopper’s tangled hair. “We’ll camp here. Then, tomorrow morning, I’m heading for Gila Monster Cliffs. I think I can make it in five days, if I push myself and don’t—”

“Why?”
Leafhopper’s mouth hung open. Her white teeth gleamed in the starlight. “The Fire Dogs will kill you! They’ll know you’re Straight Path and they’ll enslave you and—”

“No, they won’t.” Thistle stroked Leafhopper’s hair to calm her. The young woman had started clenching and unclenching her fists. “Not if I can reach their Chief. And it may be the only way I can protect Cornsilk—if she’s still alive. You see, Chief Jay Bird and Matron Moondance’s only daughter was Young Fawn—and I’m almost certain Young Fawn was Cornsilk’s true mother.”

“Cornsilk’s true mother? But, I thought
you
were?”

“No, Leafhopper. I’m not.”

“Why didn’t Cornsilk ever tell me!”

“She didn’t know. It’s a long story. One I’ll tell you on the way south, if you wish to go with me. You don’t have to. As a matter of fact, it might be better if I leave you at a small Straight Path village along the way. You’ll be safer—”

“I—I don’t know,” Leafhopper stammered. “I’ll think about it tomorrow, but finish telling me what you are thinking.… You plan to tell Chief Jay Bird that his granddaughter is alive?”

Thistle unslung her pack and dropped it silently to the sand. “I do. Jay Bird married Moondance’s sister, Downy Girl. That union only produced sons. If I’m right, Cornsilk is heir to Gila Monster Cliffs Village and all its surrounding lands. Jay Bird won’t be happy that the Blessed Sun is holding his granddaughter captive at Talon Town.” She left the threat dangling.