Silent Dances (40 page)

ed mou
rn
fully.

Sailor asked whether the Old Male thought his father's people were in

danger.

Were
n
'
t all the people of the World in danger
,
wondered the wea
ry
elder
,
since those not-of
-
the-World had dropped out of the sky
?
They
killed indisc
ri
minately
,
taking only the skins of the dead and leaving
them where they lay to pollute the marshes.

The World itself had to fear beings that killed without touching and had no

respect for their victims' re
mains. Even Death feared them
,
so cap
ri

cious was their power.

Then the pair of Travellers swam away,
leaving Sailor alone with his g
ri

ef
.
The cooling touch of the
ri
ver flowing around his legs was the only
thing ancho
ri
ng the young avian to
re
ality. Overwhelmed with sorrow
and confusion, he ducked his head underwater
,
as though that would

take the heat from his blood. Then he tu
rn
ed and strode toward the

nests of the Blue Cloud people.

They panicked,
flying wildly around him
.
They had the
ri
ght to build he
re,
they insisted
.
This ter
ri
to
ry
was open now. Sailor assured them he
knew that
.
This calmed the small

cre
atu
re
s
,
and they halted their manic flight.

But how had they known the terri
to
ry
was open
?
Sailor asked.

Oh, every
one knew now
,
they said
,
but they had not taken just anyone

'
s word
,
oh, no
.
They had sent scouts to be su
re
, oh, yes
.
Wasn
'
t it
ter
ri
ble
?
So sad
,
and such a waste. The whole flock
,
dead
.
And
skinned
.
Sickening
.
Had he seen it? No, Sailor told them
,
numbly
,
he
had not seen it.

Terri
ble
,
ter
ri
ble
.
Don't go
,
they wa
rn
ed
.
They
'
ll get you like they
got the others. Did Sailor know why the aliens were so crazy
,
why they

would kill people just for their skins? He had lived with them
,
wasn
'
t
he a
fr
aid they would kill him?

Sailor assure
d the Blue Cloud people that the humans he knew were

not like that.

The Blue Cloud people said nothing for a moment,
and that in itself was

sta
rt
ling. Then they politely informed Sailor that perhaps he did not

know the aliens
as
well as he thought. Their

197

scouts had been at the
massacre
sight. They had seen the dark alien there,

the same alien
that had been
he
re
arguing
with the pale one, the same pale
one that
had been inside the silver ship that had flown near their old

nesting site.

A feeling of numb detachment flowed through Sailor.

Yes, said the Blue Cloud people
, mo
re
to one
another than to the young

avian. The two
aliens
had argued here, then the dark one had gone to the

massacre site and looked on the dead with his teeth showing, as if it made

him hungry.

Sailor tried to imagine the Collector,
a human he
'd always considered

funny and kind, grinning as he viewed the corpses of his kin. How many

feathers could be collected from a flock?

The other human must have followed him, the Blue Cloud people said. That

one with yellow hair. Then, when he'd found him, he killed him, just by

pointing at him.

Killed him? Relaxed had killed the Collector? Sailor pressed the small

avians, knowing they could spread rumors like wild fire, but knowing also

that they were the best informed people on the World.

Oh, yes, they said. And after the light one had pointed the dark one dead, he

then opened up the dark human's soft organs to tempt Death, who had

tasted the organs, but couldn't finish them. Even Death could not eat those

not-of-the-World, and
nothing else
would either. Finally,
the pale alien
had covered the body with grass and left it there. So wasteful. So crazy. Why did

they do those things?

How could you explain insanity? Sailor responded. How could you

understand what was not-of-the-World? Perhaps that was what he was

supposed to learn on his flyaway.

Sickened and despondent, the youngster wondered what to do. It was taboo

to return home until the flyaway was finished. The Blue Cloud people would

take this information to his father, and Sailor would have to go on.

Then he thought of Good Eyes. She had wanted to visit the dark forest

again
. At the time he wasn't concerned, but now he thought of Relaxed,

who could kill his own friend, then prepare his body to be consumed by

Death. He remembered how Relaxed looked at Good Eyes. She would not

understand
the Blue Cloud people'
s wa
rn
ings
. Sailor knew where he had to go.

198

Tesa eased herself into the clear,
cold water
,
its icy touch feeling like an
elect
ri
c shock as it flooded her open po
re
s. The water had collected
in a cave
rn
ous wound in the earth
,
created by the to
rn
roots of a
massive tree that had toppled over. The bo
tt
om of the dead giant towe

re
d over her like a hinged lid, its broken roots reaching out like a halo

of frozen tentacles. She felt as though the cold water were sh
ri
nking

her skin.

The day she and Sailor had escaped the Aquila,
she'd known she had to

come back
,
to touch t
re
es older than the human race and watch the

light change colors. Even at that tense moment, she'd known this

would be a good place for a sweat bath.

She had wanted,
also, to find the nest she'd been studying. It hadn
'
t

been hard
.
Tesa gazed up at the t
re
e nearest the sweat lodge
,
her
eyes following the outthrust limb that held the nest, suspended

hundreds of feet over her tiny hut.

Finally,
feeling more invigorated than she had in years, she hoisted

herself out of the hole and scrubbed her skin d
ry
with soft
-
needled
re
d conifer boughs she'd cut earlier. She dressed, enjoying the warmth of

her jumpsuit and feathered shi
rt
. Shaking open her quilt
,
she wrapped
up in it.

Pushing wet hair out of her eyes, she looked fondly at the small, beehive-

shaped sweat lodge
,
as the rays of the setting suns bathed it in colo
re
d light
.
It was a good sweat lodge, one that would stand for a long time

befo
re re
tu
rn
ing to the elements,
one she could
use again and again.

But that comfort
ing thought lasted only a moment. Something about the

lodge bothered her. As the suns' rays angled obliquely through the

shelte
ri
ng trees, she
re
alized the entrance to her lodge faced west
.

That
'
s where it was supposed to face. But if it faced west
,
it should be
bathed in the light of the se
tt
ing suns
.
Instead
,
the suns' light
touched the back of the
lodge.

Tesa frowned
. On Trinity,
the suns set in the east because of its

retrograde rotation. She knew that
.
But did that mean she should have

built the entrance facing them
?
Tesa felt diso
ri
ented
.
Only
a heyoka
placed his entrance facing east-facing the
rising
sun. But that was on Eart
h
.

This was a different
world, with different rules. A backward world. She

clutched
her blanket tighter as she realized what had happened.

She'd been disappointed when,
during her sweat bath ceremony
,
she

could still only recall fragments of dreams. Now, a flash of dream came

to her, a sense
of deja vu.
In it, the

199

entrance to the sweat lodge had been mistakenly placed toward the
ri

sing sun. She had looked into the water
an
d seen the face of a

laughing bear ... or had she
.
seen Laughing Bear, her
grandfather? Had

she seen the face of a
heyoka?

As if that were the key, memo
ri
es flooded her mind, dreams
of Aquila

and Wakinyan, of lightning and silent thunder. She
understood
everything

now, and that comprehension settled
over her like a cold mantle. She

was a heyoka,
on
a heyoka
planet.

Thoroughly shaken, Tesa started to walk back to the hollow tree where she'd

hidden with Sailor. Her belongings were there,
except for the sled
,
hove
ri
ng at a discreet distance like a patient dog. Picking up the voder she'd

left on the sled, she strapped
it to her wrist.

But what task could
a heyoka,
a backward-forward contrary, be fated to

perform on Trinity?

A stiff breeze blew up suddenly, and she squinted through
the treetops
,

wonde
ri
ng if it me
an
t rain
.
She thought she saw a flash of white
,
but
it disappea
re
d behind a massive trunk.
When she found it again, moving toward her, her heart felt
lighter.

It was Sailor;
the white had been his underwings. By the time he

backwinged to a l
an
ding
,
Tesa felt a p
re
monition of trouble
.
A
sudden gust sca
tt
ered the leaves.

"The weather is changing," Sailor signed abruptly. "There
could be

lightning."

How appropriate,
Tesa thought bitterly. "We can stay out of the rain in my lodge," she signed, pointing.

Fat drops splatted onto Tesa's shoulders as the two friends crawled into the

tiny shelter. Though the rocks were no longer
steaming, the lodge was

warm-too warm to stay fully dressed.
She dropped her blanket and pulled

off her feather shirt, leaving on the dark jumpsuit she typically wore beneath

it.

Sailor folded
up as small as he could manage
,
and still almost
filled up the lodge. His overlapping cinnamon and white feath
ers almost made him

disappear against the oranges and reds of the lodge walls
.
It beg
an

raining
heavily;
even through the
dense canopy of the trees, tiny rivulets trickled into the shelter. Suddenly Sailor's head jerked up, one eye cast

toward the
domed ceiling.

Tesa felt cold with fear. "What is it?" she demanded. "Lightning?"

200

"Not lightning," he signed cryptically. "Something else." Eerily he snaked his head out the entrance, then whipped it back inside. "Good Eyes, look!"

Tesa scrambled past him to stick her head out. She could barely make out

the edges of dark, swollen clouds through the onslaught of rain. The huge

outthrust branch overhead was swaying as it sheltered the sweat lodge from

pelting water. Sailor slid his head out beside hers, pointing.

At first, she could only discern a flash of silver-gray, but then the sharp edge

of something not-of-the-World came into focus.

What's the
Baraboo
doing here?
she wondered, recognizing the familiar

shape.
Are they looking for me?
She glanced at her voder. It was flashing,

strobelike.

Sailor's eyes were wide with fear. Tesa was tempted to call the ship using

her voder, but something held her back. Everything about this felt wrong.

Suddenly a flash ripped across the sky, a bolt of power that blew the top off a

distant tree, as though someone had dropped a bomb into its center.

Ribbons of wood flew in al directions as the top slowly toppled in the

reduced gravity. The explosion startled Tesa, making her flinch back into the

lodge, nearly landing on the hot rocks. She crept cautiously toward the

entrance again.
That
was no lightning.

With the massive treetop blown away, she could see the ship much better.

When the next bolt erupted from its side and decapitated another giant, Tesa

tried to figure out what was happening.

The shuttles aren'
t
armed! she thought blankly. Unless ... the
Baraboo
carried mining equipment, the kind Jamestown Founders might use to