Zadayi Red (6 page)

The difficulty was that Inaj resented the Socos. The big council had chosen their Chief Ninyu over Inaj as the head of all Red Chiefs.

“Father will never let me marry Tensa,” Noney wailed. She shook with sobs now.

She was right about that. Marriage would have invited a Soco to father his grandchildren, even to move into Inaj’s own house.

“I don’t know what he’ll do when he finds out I’m . . .”

“He doesn’t know?”

Noney’s mother certainly knew—every woman in the village did, despite the shapeless deer hide dress she wore every day. Sunoya chuckled to herself.
He can track a deer, and even tell by the pee whether it’s a buck or a doe, but he doesn’t notice his own daughter.

“I’m scared of him.”

“You should be.” Everyone in the village had heard Inaj raging at his wife, and how she wailed when he beat her.

“There’s something else . . .”

Tears spilled out with the stories. Noney was having terrible
dreams about the infant within her. When the child came forth, lightning burst out of her, killing mother or child. Ahsginah, the Evil One, rose out of the smoke.

These dreams gave Sunoya a shiver, but she said nothing.

Su-Li said,
Take care of the child.

Sunoya asked him what he meant, but he said nothing more, and Sunoya gave her attention back to Noney. As soon as her cousin went home for supper, Sunoya asked, “Why is this child so important?”

I’m can’t tell you the future. Only what is important for you to do in the present
.

“You’re a nuisance sometimes.”

She had the impression that he would have chuckled if he could.

Soon Noney was spending every afternoon with Sunoya, sitting in the sun and doing a little sewing or other domestic chores. Mostly they didn’t talk, because they had no need. Sunoya wondered what story was being written in her belly.

Two young women squatted in front of Sunoya, sisters, one sweet-faced, Pica, one blocky of body, Toka. Though they’d known Sunoya half their lives, they were a little uneasy about looking into the red-gold eye of that buzzard, who seldom left Sunoya’s shoulder. Toka was in the style of a woman eligible for courting. Her black hair was brushed to a high gloss and pulled up into rolls the thickness of three fingers. On a thong around her neck she wore a disc of mother-of-pearl, a very dressy accessory, and expensive. She was round and chatty as an autumn squirrel.

Pica wore the plain hairstyle of a married woman, straight and chopped off at the shoulders. She was long-faced and had cause enough to come to Sunoya. She’d been married for two years and was childless.

Sunoya showed her how to begin. She cut a hank of hair
longer than a finger from Pica’s hair. Then, carefully, she trimmed a tobacco leaf into slender strands of the same length. She gathered hair and tobacco into finger-thick bunches, three each, and braided them together. “Now,” she said, “cut a hank of your husband’s hair the same size. Braid it into each of these. You’ll end up with a circle of his hair, your hair, and tobacco, about the size of two cupped hands. When you’re done, bring it to me and I’ll show you the rest.” It was a charm every medicine person knew.

“
Hai! Hai! Hai! Hai
!” Shouts coursed and echoed from the upriver end of the village. People thronged in that direction, and Sunoya recognized Inaj’s bull voice proclaiming a triumphant return—“
Hai! Hai! Hai! Hai
!” He and his cadre of warriors were back from the fall hunt, apparently bringing lots of meat, for they wore their rawhide discs outside their shirts, the red sides showing victory.

Though only men wore the discs, and only on hunting or fighting expeditions, Sunoya had quietly made one for herself. She wore it all the time, hidden in her bosom, and with the red or blue side out, according to how she felt, a confession of her emotions. Even having Su-Li didn’t always lift her up. Sometimes she suspected she was destined to rise high, then fall low. The curse.

The men’s families crowded around them, children shouting for the attention of their fathers and women making the trilling noise that praised the deeds of heroes. Tonight these families would put away their cornbread and seed cakes and feast on meat.

Inaj strode past Sunoya’s small hut without acknowledging her. Kanu came out of his own hut and hailed the Red Chief as he went by, Medicine Chief to War Chief.

Sunoya’s guests grinned at each other. “I think he’ll figure a certain something out pretty fast now,” Toka said. A lot of
women were tickled at the prospect of the proud chief being shamed by his daughter.

He walked with the cockiness of a herd bull. A dozen warriors, young men who wanted to become the lead bull, trailed after him, carrying hide bags of dried meat. Aside from getting food for their families, they’d probably spent the Moon boasting about the bloody deeds they would rain on the heads of their enemies when spring arrived.

“Do you think there’ll be trouble?” asked Pica.

“Let’s hope for the best,” Sunoya said. She told Su-Li,
I can smell the trouble already.

Me, too.

Inaj’s wife Iwa embraced him and then lavished her attentions on their two sons, carrying the family’s winter meat. Inaj’s small daughter Igalu clung to her father’s hand. Her name meant “red leaf.”

“Noney hasn’t come out of the house,” Sunoya said to Pica and Toka. “She’s hoping the shadows inside will help hide her condition.”

With only the small hole for light, a Tusca village house was shadowy on the brightest day.

She raised a quizzical eyebrow at Su-Li. Sometimes the buzzard at least hinted at the future. He said,
Times like this make me sorry to live among you human beings.

Pica looked at Sunoya peculiarly. She couldn’t figure out quite what was going on with this young medicine woman, and besides, she had what she came for. “Let’s go find Mom,” she said to Toka, and off they trotted.

Iwa scurried across the village circle with a big sack and handed it to Sunoya with a merry smile. Since Sunoya had no father or husband to provide for her, it was Inaj’s duty to give her some meat. Iwa skipped and pranced back toward her husband, young and silly enough to be eager to see him.

Kanu walked up. “She likes him in the blankets, I guess,” said Sunoya.

“A lot of village women like him in the blankets,” said Kanu, “or in the bushes.” It was a compliment.

“Let’s eat,” Sunoya said. The pack dog Kanu gave her, Dak, was sniffing at the meat bag. Sunoya stooped low and ducked into her house, Su-Li on her shoulder. He didn’t like to hop around on the ground, partly because he hated the earth compared to the sky, and partly because he never quite trusted any dog.

That night the Red Chief gorged himself on hot food and hot flesh. Then, even satiated, Inaj awoke at first light as usual. He watched from his hide blankets as Noney got up and went out, carrying the pot she would use to get water. Through the shadows, Inaj studied her carefully. He took a moment to sort through his mental pictures of his daughter for the past day, especially the clumsy way she walked. As Iwa started to get up, he grabbed her by the hand. Finally he said, “What’s going on with Noney?”

No answer.

Now he demanded, “Is she carrying a baby?”

Iwa still didn’t answer.

Inaj slapped Iwa so hard she tumbled sideways onto Igalu. Startled awake, the child bawled out.

Inaj towered over his wife. “Iwa, is Noney pregnant?”

Iwa hesitated.

Enraged, Inaj shoved her with both hands. As she fell backward, one bare foot landed on the warm stones encircling the center fire and the other jammed straight into the coals. She screamed, jumped, and collapsed to the ground.

At that moment Noney slipped back into the hut. Inaj whirled and fixed her with a withering look. A little water sloshed out of her clay pot. Inaj stepped forward and put a
hand on her belly. He felt her roundness and the tight stretch of her skin. He glared at her and said in a low growl, “Who’s the father?”

She looked daggers at him, walked past, stooped, and checked Iwa’s burned foot. She poured some water on it and said, “Let’s go get some ice from the river.”

Inaj grabbed Noney’s arm and jerked her up. The water pot dropped and smashed. The rest of the water soaked Noney’s legs and moccasins. It splashed Igalu in the face, and the child cried louder.

Inaj barked, “Who is the father?”

She shoved his hand off her arm and glared.

Inaj could see fear in Noney’s eyes. He loved weakness. “You’ll tell me,” he said, “or I’ll beat it out of you.”

He raised his arm, but Iwa spoke up in a quaver. “It’s Tensa.”

“Mother!” snapped Noney. She never kowtowed to her father.

“Tensa?!” shouted Inaj.

He cocked his arm high. Iwa grabbed it and held on.

“Yes, it’s Tensa,” said Noney, her voice hard as a spear tip. “I love him.”

His face changed from amazement to rage. “You slut!” he shouted. “You bitch! That bastard Soco boy—he won’t be the father of any of my grandchildren.”

Abruptly, he launched himself at Noney, but Iwa grabbed one of his legs and threw him off balance. In horror she watched him topple toward the fire face down. At the last instant he rammed a hand hard onto one of the stones and flipped himself away. Her husband was amazing and scary.

Noney ran.

Inaj grabbed her hard by an ankle.

She tumbled and landed on her butt.

Inaj scrambled to his knees and pummeled Noney’s belly.

Iwa threw herself on her enraged husband. He hit and
kicked blindly. He bit an ear and came away with blood on his tongue. When he had his wife reduced to whimpers, he thought to wonder where Noney was. He realized that she’d scurried out.

He bolted out of the hut and looked up and down the river, up and down the mountains. He saw nothing of his daughter. He stared for a couple of minutes in every direction, then looked up at the sky. Dark clouds crowded down from the peaks. Rain, not snow—the day was unseasonably warm. He smiled and went back into his house.

“She’s gone into the woods,” he told Iwa. He chuckled. “But where’s she going to go? She has no food. She doesn’t even have a robe to keep warm. Looks like it’s going to rain today,” he said. “She’ll be back.”

Iwa said nothing. Igalu whimpered in her pallet of blankets and robes.

“Let’s send Zanda out to find her,” whined Iwa. Her lips were swollen, her tongue cut, and she could barely speak the name of Noney’s older brother.

“No need. Noney will be back. Give me something to eat.”

F
rom outside the hut, Su-Li a-a-arked. Sunoya stayed half asleep as she let him in. Part of her mind wondered what was wrong. The buzzard loved the sky and hated to be cooped up in the house. Why would he come back in the morning, when he loved to ride the warming currents of air?

He let her hear his thought.
Noney is running away, up Willow Creek. She has no food and nothing to wrap herself in.

The medicine woman shook her head and woke up. “Up Willow Creek?”

Yes, too fast and hard for a woman carrying a baby. Maybe hysterical.

Sunoya murmured, “Toward the Soco village.”

A storm is coming
, Su-Li told her.
Take care of the unborn child.

“Yes.” She considered. “Yes, all right.” She’d have to move fast.

She trotted to her uncle’s hut and gave him the news. “Can you go find out what people know?”

“Yes, but old bones are slow in the morning.”

Sunoya rushed back to her hut and started packing.

In a few minutes Kanu came to the door and confirmed it. People had heard Inaj’s family have another fight this morning, a big one. Some saw Noney run out of the hut bare-headed and bare-handed.

“He doesn’t care,” Sunoya said, “he lets her go, dares her to go. Inaj doesn’t know his daughter.”

The girl was running blind to nowhere.

Rolling dried meat into an elk hide, Sunoya told Kanu, “Don’t tell anyone what I’m doing. Let’s not stir Inaj up.”