Shadow Valley Page 27

  No! This could not be happening! It could not. It—

  Chapter Fifty

  Flat-Nose lay bleeding, exhausted, his scalp torn and matted with blood. He groaned, but could not rise.

  Frog could not believe his eyes.

  Fire Ant stood motionless beside him, staring at T’Cori as if she were the face of Great Mother.

  And perhaps, Frog told himself, just perhaps she actually was.

  Stillshadow reached out to the hunters at her sides. They pulled her erect. She hobbled to the prostrate Flat-Nose.

  “Hold him,” she said. Despite his wounds and fatigue, as they laid hands upon the defeated Mk*tk his body convulsed violently. It took four of them to hold his limbs. Stillshadow pulled his loincloth aside and extended her other hand.

  “Knife,” she said.

  Without hesitation, Leopard Paw handed her his blade. Her arm swept down, and Flat-Nose screamed.

  Frog turned his head.

  When he looked back, Stillshadow was handing T’Cori a small chunk of bloody meat. T’Cori stood hugging her sister, both completely exhausted. “For your medicine bag,” she said. “Dry it. Keep it, always. His power is now yours.”

  Then she handed another chunk to Quiet Water. “For yours.”

  “Fire,” she said to Uncle Snake. He handed her a burning branch. She thrust it between Flat-Nose’s legs. As he writhed, in a cold flat voice she said, “so you will not bleed to death.”

  He thrashed and snapped at her as she took his right eye, and the tendons of his right wrist, once again searing the flesh with fire.

  “Translate for me,” she said to Quiet Water, after the shrieks had died to groans. “Tell him I do this not because it gives me pleasure, but because it is the only language the Mk*tk understand. Tell him to return to his people. Tell him that our women can now kill his men. Tell him that if they ever return to our lands, we will kill them all and burn their bones. Tell him!”

  Although barely able to stand, Quiet Water spoke in a guttural, barking voice. Flat-Nose’s head lolled to the side, coughing blood. Frog wondered if he had bitten his tongue.

  Then the four hunters released Flat-Nose, who crawled a hand of paces, then staggered to his feet. He looked back at them, his single eye vast and dark, then disappeared into the shadows.

  When Frog turned to speak to Stillshadow, she had collapsed. The old woman’s blind eyes stared up into the night clouds, “Cloud Stalker …” she whispered. “I come.”

  T’Cori and Sister Quiet Water knelt and cradled Stillshadow’s gray head between them. She said nothing more but smiled up at them. For a moment Frog swore that her dead eyes focused on the dream dancers.

  Just for a moment …

  Stillshadow balanced above the burning ocean, the jowk. It churned, containing all forms and no form. Within it, she saw everything she had ever known and loved that had passed on, as well as everything that would ever be born.

  It gaped for her, and she felt a flash of fear, uncertainty. No. It was not her time….

  Then, out of the chaos, a face she knew.

  A face she loved.

  “Cloud Stalker,” she whispered.

  His arms opened for her, and after a moment’s hesitation, she returned the embrace.

  The jowk, she thought, there being a final time for all things. The Kori. Nothing.

  Everything.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Drifting fingers of acrid smoke clutched at Frog’s nose, at the valley walls. After the Mk*tk corpses were burned in bonfires, their bones would be scattered. God Mountain would not want them, he thought.

  The Ibandi buried their own dead in the valley floor, that their flesh might run into the earth and their spirits flow to Great Sky, where, Sky Woman said, Father Mountain would give them new bones.

  Fire Ant had died in Giraffe Kill. He and his brother, dead in Shadow Valley. Dead securing their new home for their tribe’s children and children’s children. The Vokka sprinkled his grave with flower petals.

  Stillshadow was burned upon her sitting stone, that her spirit might rise to Father Mountain more swiftly. Then her bones were buried. Father Mountain and Great Mother would give the holy one new bones, strong bones, that she might dance with them, and Cloud Stalker, until the end of days.

  The Vokka had lost two of their own and one wolf. Both two-and four-legged were buried amid somber songs and the graves heaped with fragrant flower clusters. The Ibandi stood respectfully behind them, humming along to the songs and swaying in rhythm to their dance. Only the dream dancers understood the words, but the emotions needed no translation.

  After the sad singing ended, the Vokka whooped and began to dance. For folk such as these strange pale ones, sadness was not meant to last. Death begat new life. The night was only the hiding place of a new and better day.

  They urged and cajoled the Ibandi into dancing with them, until the journey up to the campground was a moving celebration. Fire Ant and Uncle Snake remained behind with Frog. “They bled for us,” Snake said. “To save us, they lost two of their own.”

  “These are not friends,” Ant said. “They are family now, or I do not understand the word.” He examined his uncle’s wounded left arm, torn by a Mk*tk spear. Muscle had been severed but not tendons. He doubted Snake would hunt again, but that was not a bad thing: it was time for Uncle Snake to teach the young ones, make spears and join the elder’s council.

  “Uncle,” Frog said, “you are a hero, or I do not understand that word either.”

  Snake’s eyes filled and spilled as Gazelle Tears pressed herself against his back, wrapping her arms around his waist. He leaned back, resting his neck against the top of her head. “You have always been the smartest of us, Frog. What a son I have.” He grasped Ant’s shoulder. “What sons I have.”

  Snake and Gazelle Tears left Ant and Frog together. Frog finally seemed to realize that his brother was staring at him, and had been for some time.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I just realized that I never knew you, Frog.”

  Frog said nothing.

  Ant heard the wind whistling high through the branches and smelled the smoke from the distant bonfires. So much death, in the service of life. He found the strength to smile. “I would like to spend the rest of my life undoing that mistake.”

  “Long life to us both,” Frog replied.

  They danced that day, and into the night. Shared meat and honey and song and touch, one with another. The Ibandi children came close to the wolves, who let them feel their fur and, rather than biting, gave them licks and playful nudges.

  And the next morning, two wolves stayed in the Ibandi camp, and from that time on, Ibandi and Vokka moved back and forth between the camps as if they were family.

  As Fire Ant had said. As in time, they became.

  At dusk on the second day following their great victory, T’Cori and Quiet Water stood before a roaring fire and addressed the tribe.

  “We have been blessed to live. The Mk*tk who chased us are dead. The one who lives carries our message: Our women are not prey. We are not prey.”

  Quiet Water stalked the circle, a cold and terrible smile twisting her lips. “I shattered his egg,” she said. “His body is mine.”

  They spoke of many things that night, weaving a picture of the future they could have here in the valley, if only they kept heart. Fire Ant’s men pledged to remain. No one spoke of abandoning their new home, only questioning where in the vast valley they might best build their first boma.

  The singing and dancing and speaking continued until the children were asleep on their parents’ laps and it was time to put them to bed.

  T’Cori’s sisters kissed her. “I dreamed of knowing Great Sky Woman,” Morning Thunder said. “I never hoped to stand with my sister.”

  “We have many days to stand and dance and dream together,” T’Cori said to Thunder and Flower. The three women hugged, then her sisters returned to their families.

  As th
e others drifted away, Kiya brought T’Cori the infant that the dream dancer had borne in her body and given away for safekeeping.

  “We gave her a name,” Kiya signed and said, “we call her Naya. Friend.”

  “A good name,” T’Cori said and touched the child. No tears. No sign of sorrow. A gift is a gift. You are not just a mother. You are chief dream dancer. Dream dancers give their children away. Their bodies, and the fruits of their bodies, belong only to Great Mother.

  But she knew in her heart she was lying.

  Kiya’s face crinkled in a smile. She spoke and gestured. “I wonder …”

  “Yes?”

  “It might be good for a child to have two mothers. To have two people. We named her, so she is ours. I think you would like to raise your daughter. I think that this would be a good thing.”

  And so saying, handed the squirming bundle to T’Cori.

  The dancer could not keep the tears from her eyes. “Now I owe you,” she said.

  “In time,” Kiya said, “I am sure you will find a way to pay”

  Chapter Fifty-two

  That night, for the first time in almost three days, T’Cori slept.

  Her dreams were not her own. She felt like a spider in the middle of a web that reached from horizon to horizon and beyond.

  All the dream dancers who lived, or had ever lived, were part of that web, like jeweled dew in the moonlight.

  These were not her dreams. They were Stillshadow’s. They were the dreams of every chief dancer. Vaguely, she could sense that there were other women, from other tribes, clustered just out of her sight. The world was larger than she had ever thought, and smaller.

  She dreamed that she saw the future of her people, and it was one of peace and prosperity. And knew in her bones that this was no dream but a glimpse of the world they had earned by faith and courage.

  There … there. She raced along the web until she found a familiar face, voice … until she found a place where the jowk took human form as someone she knew well, Wind Willow.

  Her sister dream dancer Willow was sleeping, dreaming in her hut on Great Earth. Waiting.

  Sister Willow, T’Cori said. All is well. Tell the people. Tell them to come to Shadow Valley. If their hunting is poor, if they wish new sights, and to meet new friends …

  Tell them the Circle has grown.

  • • •

  When Frog awoke the next morning, he felt a deep and fulfilling contentment. His brother was his brother again. His family was whole and safe, T’Cori at his side with Medicine Mouse and Naya nursing at her breasts. It was difficult even to imagine hunger or thirst in a place such as this.

  And he knew that his fear, and constant obsessive training, had birthed something that had never existed before. A meld of hunt and dance, male and female, life and death. Men and women who were not just hunters or dancers … capable of waging war without losing their hearts.

  Warriors.

  That was what he had created.

  It was a new thing. A good thing. He sighed, a deep, thorough sigh.

  The happiest sigh of his life.

  “Good morning, my love,” he said.

  “Good morning, my life,” she replied, and kissed him.

  “I have been thinking of Great Sky and Great Earth,” he said finally. “We need to—”

  “It is done,” she said.

  “What do you mean? The people need to know—”

  “They know,” she said. “Everything is safe.”

  “We need to teach them—”

  She smiled. “It is done.”

  He gazed into her wide, placid eyes, and … the voices of fear within him faded. Died. It was the strangest thing. It was a new thing.

  “Yes,” Frog said. “Then … it is good?”

  “Yes. Everything is good. Everything is perfect.”

  Frog did not understand. “You lost your mother,” he said.

  “I never had a mother,” T’Cori replied.

  He stared at her, uncertain. “Stillshadow,” he said. “She was your mother. Your teacher.”

  T’Cori shook her head. “Stillshadow was not my mother. She was not my teacher.”

  “Then … what was she?”

  Within their shadowed hut, her eyes were focused on something far away, beyond the valley walls. Beyond Great Sky and Great Earth. Beyond Frog and Mouse and Naya and the things of this world. “She was me.”

  Was it his imagination, or did her eyes seem a bit darker than they had just a moon ago?

  If Ant and Snake could find healing, what of Frog? What wound was there for him to close? Only one, the one torn in his soul by the emptiness atop Great Sky. He now knew the meaning of that emptiness. And that if his curse was to be the only one to see it, it was his responsibility to fill it or walk his life in a shadow deep enough to devour thought and hope and happiness.

  Only one thing could fill a void so deep and terrifying.

  He took his woman into his arms and, feeling her heartbeat against his own, knew he had made the right choice.

  “What is it, Frog?” she said. “Something just changed in you. I see it in your num.”

  He laughed, aflame with a joy bright enough to banish any darkness. “I do not know if I believe in num. Or jowk or gods,” he said at last. “But I believe in you.”

  Afterword

  Six years of research have gone into the tale of the Ibandi, contained in the two books Great Sky Woman and Shadow Valley.

  Before I go any further, I would like to thank the three most important women in the project’s life: my wonderful editor Betsy Mitchell, who set everything in motion, guided with a light hand and ensured I always had the necessary time and resources. There is no one better in your field, as either an editor or a human being.

  To Eleanor Woods, my agent, who has been with me from the beginning. How incredible it is that my first professional contact still has a guiding presence in my life.

  And my wife, Tananarive Due. Meeting you was the completion of one entire act in the story of my life, and the beginning of another. Every day has been filled with wonders and miracles. But even if I didn’t believe in such things, I would believe in you.

  That research involved travel to most of the locations in this story but extended to books such as Specimens of Bushman Folklore collected by W. H. I. Bleek and L. C. Lloyd, Africa’s Great Rift Valley by Nigel Pavitt and When the Drummers Were Women by Layne Redmond.

  I would like to thank Harley Reagan, Diane Nightbird and the facilitators of the 2002 Aura Perception Analysis workshop in Phoenix, Arizona.

  Jon Wagner, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at Knox College, and his wife, Jan Lundeen, of Carl Sandburg College, were incredibly gracious to provide opinions and information for this project. They warned me often of the degree to which I bent anthropological data to a novelist’s needs: any transgressions are solely my responsibility Hopefully while many rules were bent, none were actually broken beyond repair.

  Extinct Humans by Ian Tattersall and Jeffrey H. Schwartz was a phenomenal resource. Could Neanderthals have traveled as far as central Africa? The experts I consulted with opined that, while there is no evidence they did, it is certainly within the realm of possibility. A fantasist can ask nothing more. At any rate, it was certainly fun, and I hope that readers will indulge the presence of the Vokka, strangers far from their homeland.

  I have to mention Nisa, the Life and Words of a !Kung Woman by Marjorie Shostak, and Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers, edited by Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore. While the Ibandi have greater levels of social organization than most hunter-gatherers of the time, by combining selectively chosen practices of the Koi-San peoples, I was able to create an amalgam who, I hope, would not have been entirely alien to their Upper Paleolithic ancestors. The works of Professor Barbara J. King and Professor Brian M. Fagan, teachers of biological anthropology and the history of ancient civilizations, were extraordinary sources during the germination and structuring of both books. In fact,
their Teaching Company lectures set the foundation for my research.

  The real Shadow Valley is the Ngorongoro volcanic crater in Tanzania, arguably the finest wildlife preserve in the world, the place where my daughter, Nicki, and I were charged by an elephant, that had been provoked by a crazed tourist.

  I confess to using both dramatic and documentary film to tweak memory and imagination. These works include the Imax film Africa, the Serengeti, 1980’s unique and hysterical The Gods Must Be Crazy (whose hero, Kalahari bushman and wonderful natural actor N!xau, died in 2003), Howard Hawks’s amazing Hatari! (if you haven’t seen the giraffe hunt sequence, you must. I doubt anything like it will ever be done again), and countless hours of the National Geographic Channel.

  Again, thanks to Gebra Tilda and Djusto, the Chagga tribesmen who shepherded me in Tanzania, and Buck Tilly, station manager for Thomson Safaris, whose facilities and expertise I would recommend without reservation.

  One and all: this couldn’t have happened without you.

  Glendora, California

  August 1, 2008

  www.lifewrite.com

  About the Author

  STEVEN BARNES is a prolific author and scriptwriter who has been nominated for Hugo, Cable Ace, and Endeavor awards. His work for television includes episodes of The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Stargate, SG-1, and Andromeda. A lifelong student of human performance technologies, he holds black belts in judo and karate, has lectured at the Smithsonian, has an instructor certificate in Circular Strength Training, and is a trained hypnotherapist. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, novelist Tananarive Due.

  Shadow Valley is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,

  and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used

  fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons,

  living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Steven Barnes

  Maps © by Toni Young