Saphyri (Nova Terre, with a better name)

I know you're not supposed to forward fiction, but this is continued from a post called Nova Terre. It isn't necessary to have read the prologue, but it will help later on. Right now they don't have anything to do with each other.

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CHAPTER ONE

Beside the Great Sea, where thousands of years’ worth of waves and spray have pounded, stood the History Rock. Among the people of the Great Sea Clan, it is said that the wisest of the wise, the medicine men, have only to look upon the cliff face to read the history and the future of the world in the very texture of the stone.

The Great Sea Clan was governed by a Chief, a man named Hannowek, a man who loved and lived the rules of his people, who smiled upon all and created peace with every glance from his gentle blue eyes. His people called him Zahuala de ma Uendo. The Man Who Understands. Chief Hannowek was a young man, perhaps twenty summers, for in the Great Sea Clan age is measured only by children, eager to boast their stature. He was handsome and well-built and many Clan women claimed to have received a kiss from the mouth of the chief. But they were liars all, for Hannowek’s mouth belonged to one woman alone, a woman named Penya.

There was nothing special about Penya. She was called Sahiri Musaneia, which meant Fisherman’s Daughter, and she was called this because no one really knew what lay beneath that black hair and uninteresting brown skin. But Hannowek knew. Hannowek and Penya met in secret, in the darkness of the medicine man’s cave, and exchanged promises of love, exchanged kisses and stories and dreams of a future in which they did not have to hide themselves from the Clan.

And then, on an ordinary hunting trip in the forest above the beach, an ordinary bear caused the death of Zahuala de ma Uendo, the Man Who Understands. Saddened and hungry, the hunters descended the ancient staircase that ran from the top of Anan Cliff to the sandy beach where hundreds of tents stood against the sea winds. Before all of the people who lived beside the sea, Chief Hannowek’s hunters told the sad tale of their mighty leader’s death at the claws of a mother bear. In the crowd, Penya the fisherman’s daughter cried soft tears for the man she loved, and the man whose child she carried inside her.

When the child was born the Great Sea people rejoiced, for with her birth came a future for the clan, a new chief, a new age. And the people called her Saphyri sa Masana, Gem of the Future. She had no name, for she was as yet just a baby, but already Chief Penya’s child was marked by her people, marked to be extraordinary.

Spring became summer. Groups of men and women climbed the Anan Cliff and crossed the Mighty Forests, to the buffalo plains. Summer became autumn and those same groups returned, laden with skins and bones and meat to last the tribe through the winter, when fishing was scarce. Autumn retreated against winter chill and the Great Sea Clan huddled together in the medicine man’s cave, listening to stories of the olden days and finding once again the religion of their heart. And then the last gusts of winter receded and spring once warmed the air and the sea. The people returned to their abandoned tents, started the central fires and pulled out their fishing nets.

Also, as spring rekindled the spirits of the people, Saphyri sa Masana turned one year old.

Chief Penya wrapped her small, weak daughter in swaddling and carried her to the cave of the medicine man, standing at the entrance, wind whipping her hair sideways and tugging at his buffalo-skin clothes. And the medicine man came forward, emerging from the darkness of his cave, his cloak swirling about him, his clothes dark with mystery.

“It is time, Kenichi,” whispered Penya, and the wind carried her voice away, her words lost forever. “Make me proud to have Chief Hannowek’s daughter.”

The medicine man nodded solemnly. He reached forward and took the bundle of cloth and child from her mother’s arms, hugging her to his own chest. He carried her to a small canoe the rose and fell on the waves, untied the vessel and paddled the girl through the sea to the History Rock far away. Moving slowly, serenely, Medicine Man Kenichi climbed the rock staircase to a small place on the endless cliff face, a spot where he knew this girl’s future to be written.

Eyes closed, the holy man moved his hands over the rock wall, reading, learning the child’s future. He understood then, how very important this child was to be, how vital in his own uncertain future, in the clan’s. He leaned forward and into the child’s ear he whispered her name, her true calling, even more her own than Saphyri sa Masana.

“O Child of the goddess, born of the fisherman’s daughter and the man who understands, I name thee Delset.”

Even as he said the name a shiver spread through his body, a shiver made of more than the chill of the wind and the spray of the sea. He turned his face to the ocean, looking over the goddess’ s great world. Then he turned his eyes to the infant in his arms, already growing black fuzz on her small head, sucking her thumb, watching his with alert brown eyes. “You, little one,” he murmured, “have quite a destiny.”

Delset sat atop the Anan cliff, looking out over the water, her eyes glossed over as she thought about the unanswerable questions in the world. Questions like, Why is the sky blue? Why do people have to eat other animals? and Why am I the way I am? They were the questions of a fourteen-year-old eager for answers, ready to be full of the knowledge that adults seemed so careful to withhold until she achieved the title, Adult.

“Go, Del. It’s your turn.”

Del yanked her mind back to the game of black-stones-white-stones, where Camena had her most powerful white piece cornered by three black, and the only way out was to play her valuable banyam piece. She blew air outward and up, dislodging a bit of hair. She ignored it. “Cone on, Camena, we both know you won. Can we go down now?”

Camena, the frisky girl who had befriended Del way back when they were clinging to their mothers’ legs, smiled knowingly. “No way. You’re going to be my chief some day, I want to see if you can beat me at black-stones-white-stones. I won’t be bowing down to anyone who can beat me.”

Del stared blankly, but a smile crept onto her face. “I do not understand your logic.” She reached for her banyam piece beside her and played it confidently, sweeping two of Camena’s black stones away and placing hers in their spot. “I went. Your turn.”

Camena studied the stones for a moment, leaning closer. In the silence, the gentle winds of low tide became more noticeable. “Del?”

“What?”

The girl paused, shifted sharply. “Aren’t you scared?” Del knew enough about reading moods that she kept silent, letting her friend make herself clearer. She did. “I mean, you’re thirteen years old. It’s time for the ceremony, the one that makes you a. . .woman.” The word sounded strange on her tongue, as if she struggled with simply saying it. And it was a big concept, womanhood. It meant separation from the world of childhood, from simple days of black-stones-white-stones and skipping rocks at low tide. It meant responsibility, and joining with a man, and then children.

Del sighed, knowing that Camena wanted the truth. “Yes, I’m scared, but not about that. I’ll still be myself. What scares me is becoming chief. Chief Delset. It sounds weird. It’s always been Chief Penya, and just Mata to me. It can’t be that bad, though, right? Just a ceremony.”

Now it was Camena’s turn to look out over the ocean, into the distance. “Do you believe in the goddess? All the things Medicine Man Kenichi preaches, about the goddess being full of love? And about when you die, you go to her? Do you believe that?”

Del shrugged. “You’re move.”

Camena absently slid a black stone across the space between them, a stupid move, one that made it ridiculously easy for Del to capture two more pieces. Instead, Del bundled the stones together and put them back in the deer-skin bag they came in. “I was gong to let you win,” Camena said sullenly.

“So you wouldn’t have to bow down to me when I’m chief, right?”

“I’m cold, are you cold?” Camena asked. Del nodded and together they descended the Anan Cliff stairs, which were carved by Azara de ma Sanja, the ancient chief who lead her people across the buffalo plains, through the Mighty Forest and to the Great Sea so many generations ago. As they reached the bottom and their feet slid into the forgiving sand, Camena leaned backwards subtly. Del understood. They hugged and went on their separate ways without so much as a word of farewell, for everything that needed to be said had already been uttered, every goodbye already spoken.

Del trudged across the sand towards the tent she shared with her mother, the tent which stood a mere few feet away from the entrance to Medicine Man Kenichi’s cave. It was a cozy tent, dark inside with nothing but two pallets of fur and a few piles of clothes stacked haphazardly against the walls. The whole place smelled pleasantly of herbs, which meant that Mata had been cooking again. But as soon as Del pushed through the flaps of the tent she knew something was wrong. Mata was not sitting cross-legged inside tasting a boul of soup, nor was she squinting in the scarce light as she repaired a pair of pants or a shirt. Instead she lay on her pallet, eyes closed, breathing heavily.

“Mata?” Del asked quietly. She knelt beside her mother, leaning over her, biting her upper lip.

“Fetch Kenichi, Del,” Penya murmured, between quick breaths of air.

“Mata, what’s wrong?”

Penya grabbed her by the shirt front, mostly because it was the first thing her flailing arm found. “Fetch the damn medicine man, girl!”

Del pulled back, startled. Never in her life had she heard her mother use a vile word like that. She nodded and flew out of the tent towards Kenichi’s cave, the dark black spot in the cliff face where generations fo medicine men and women had made their homes. All her life she had been told to wait at the entrance, never go into Kenichi’s cave without his permission, but regardless she ran into the darkness, calling his name again and again.

Darkness enfolded her like a cold, scratchy blanket and Del realized that she had no idea where she was. When the clan huddled in the cave during the winter, Kenichi lead them into a small earthy room beneath the ground, not far from the entrance. Del was at least three minutes in, running downhill. She had no idea where she was, or how big the cave was, or where Kenichi might be.

Panic filled her lungs and mouth with sulphur and copper, dread pulled the strength from her knees and made her wobble weakly. She moved slowly, hands before her face, stumbling over pebbles and whimpering as imaginary monsters jumped at her from behind. “Kenichi! Kenichi it’s Del!” In the cave, everything was silent save the plink, plink. . .plink of water dripping to the floor. She couldn’t even hear the ocean, or the wind, two sounds which had been constant her entire life. She missed them more than she thought possible.

And then she heard a very faint noise, like a whisper, growing louder as she advanced on it. A hum. And then words, and then a melody. Someone’s singing, she realized. Kenichi.

Blindly, Del ran towards the deep, soft sound of the medicine man’s song, hope blooming in her chest like a peach-colored daylily reaching for sun-light, a slow excitement building in her and then exploding as she rounded a dark corner and saw Kenichi standing beside a fire, singing. The sudden light made her cringe.

Kenichi was an older man, probably in his middle sixties, or he would be if adults payed any attention to age. He had a look that at once demanded respect and gave it, a look that held both humor and severity, and all the wisdom of the goddess’s own translator. He did not stop his song when he saw her, nor did he leave his fire. The strong, vibrating melody continued unbroken. “Follow the goddess’s footsteps, the stars so part for thee, follow her ways of wisdom, another land for thee. Listen to her music, the wisdom goes forever, abandon not her teachings, leave her lonely never. Delset, girl, I see you, come forth and sit down here, This cave is full of secrets, but you have naught to fear.” He smiled at me across the flames, his form rippled by the waves of heat that flickered upwards from his fire.

Del advanced slowly, not wanting to interrupt the song that went on after the verse Kenichi had so obviously made up off the top of his head. Kenichi was one of the people who didn’t exactly scare her, but weren’t high on her list of favorites. He was mysterious, always going on about the goddess and the religion of the sea, and he smelled of old man and seaweed. But she never doubted that he was a gifted healer, and so she sat beside his fire, straight-backed.

He stopped singing. “Good posture, I see,” he commented. “Or perhaps you are just nervous around me.” His words were followed by an uncomfortable silence, during which Del frantically searched for something intelligent to say.

Kenichi saved her. “You must have something urgent, if you broke the ancient code and did not wait for me to bring you in myself.”

“Yes. Sir.” Del nodded. “My mother is sick. She needs your help.”

Kenichi pondered this for a moment. “Did you ever wonder why you are called Saphyri sa Masana? The Gem of the Future?”

“Please, sir, my mother is sick. We need to hurry.”

“You were not given this powerful calling because you clung to your mother’s skirts now, did you?” He smiled across the flames, solemn and cruel.

Understanding rippled across Del’s heart as she realized that Kenichi intended to let Chief Penya die. Tears jumped to hear eyes and her breath came faster, her hands shook in her lap. “Kenichi, you can’t be serious. Mata’s only a little ill, a few herbal remedies could fix it. You can’t just let her die, for some crazy name I got as a baby. Kenichi, please, don’t let her die!”

He swallowed and looked into the flames, beyond them, into the very earth itself. “I am sorry, Delset. Do not think this does not hurt me, because it does, but some things are meant to happen. I suggest you leave now, and take some time to be with your mother. The exit is to the left there. You made quite a twist-about way of finding me, for sure. Goodbye, Delset.”

Crying, frantic, Del stood and followed Kenichi’s pointing finger to the exit, back to the world of loud waves and whipping winds. She tripped through the sand and into her tent, falling over her mother ans weeping as if she was already dead.

Shaking, Chief Penya caressed her daughter’s head with one trembling hand. “Hush, my love, my Delset. What is wrong?”

Her sobs turned to breathy hiccups as she told her mother the words that Kenichi had spoken, and she gripped Penya’s hand as she spoke. “Mata, I love you, I love you, don’t die.”

Penya smiled. “Calm down, girl, I am only a little sick. A virus, nothing more. I will be fine even without his herbs.”

But by morning the next day, al corpse was ll that was left of Penya the fisherman’s daughter, Penya, Sahiri Musaneia. Del sat beside her mother in the dark tent, listening as the waves and the wind and the gulls sang a sad testimony to Kenichi’s betrayal, to the death of a chief, the death of a mother. Delset added her own tears to the song, laid her head on Penya’s shoulder as she had as a child on many a dark and angry nights, and brushed her mother’s silky black hair for one final time.

As evening brought soft shades of pink and purple to the sky, Del walked through a crowd of weeping onlookers, carrying the limp, cold body of the woman she loved most in the entire world, and set her gently into a canoe. Kenichi climbed in behind her, and they paddled out into the ocean. Some way out, they let the waves carry them and Del lifted her mother’s lifeless shell from the floor of the canoe into her arms, and kissed her gray forehead. Great tears of hopelessness and despair ripped from her throat as she tossed her mother into the sea, the great return, the final resting place.

Kenichi spoke a few words to the goddess, words to grant Chief Penya a safe and warm place by the goddess’ side, and then they paddled back to shore. Long after Kenichi returned to his cave, Del sat in the canoe and listened to the waves crash into shore, knowing that some part of her mother was in those waves. But not enough. Never enough.

For a long time, no one asked Del to participate in any of the daily chores of the tribe, and perhaps, she thought, that made it worse. She sat in the tent and thought about things, about the past and the future, and her own life as the chief of the Big Sea Clan. Around her, life went on and people gradually forgot about the woman who was only chief because of the man who fathered her child. It seemed like they barely noticed that they had no chief, that they needed no leader, that fishing and hunting and gathering and building went on with or without someone directing it.

And Del watched as Camena, her dearest friend, stopped visiting her and spent her time with Erron instead, a boy her own age, a boy she clearly loved. Del watched as Camena disappeared with that traitor Kenichi for her womanhood ceremony, came back from it walking proudly, smiling. She watched as her former best friend, now a real, true woman, wrapped her arms around Erron’s neck and kissed him, and he kissed her back, and they were happy.

Del watched, but as hard as she tried she could not claw her way out of the dark cloud of despair that had surrounded her for the three seasons since her mother’s death. She sat beside the sea, looking out across the water and wondering what happened to her mother’s body, physically. Was it just a skeleton, or was it a bloated, waterlogged shape bobbing through the water, too rotten to attract even sharks? She dipped her toes into the sea, which remained cold even at the height of summer.

“Del, come away from there.”

She ground her teeth and glared at the horizon. It was Kenichi, the betrayer, the murderer. He had not spoken one word to her in the entire eight months since Penya had been tossed into the frigid November seas. What could he possibly have to say to her now?

“I know how you feel, I understand. Please, you must attend your own ceremony.”

“What ceremony?” Del spat. She hated this man, hated every fiber of his being.

He sat beside her in the sand, his hip a good distance from hers. Still, it was too close for Del. She scooted away, but he seemed not to notice. “You are fourteen, well beyond the age in which most girls are made women. It is also the ceremony in which I will make you a chief.”

Del scrambled to her feet, tears in her eyes, emotions ripping through her heart. She leaned over Kenichi. “Get the hell away from me, you murderer,” she whispered, and ran. She sprinted down the beach, her heels kicking up wet sand, her hair whipping about her face. She could not be near the man who had so willingly, let her mother die, so willingly tore her world from under her feet and trapped her in so cruel a world as the one in which she found herself.

From behind her she heard Kenichi yelling, “Yesterday your friend Camena joined with Erron.”

Del stopped, closed her eyes. Kenichi had hit home. More than anything she wanted that life, the life of boys who were rapidly becoming men, girls becoming women, women choosing men and making their own lives. No more destiny. She turned to face the medicine man. “Why?” she muttered.

“Why did I join Erron and Camena?” Kenichi asked.

Del ran a hand through her hair. “You know exactly what I meant, don’t lie to me, Kenichi. Why did you kill my mother? And this had better be good.”

Kenichi drew his thick, heavy, mysterious buffalo-skin cloak further around him and angled his head in his direction, asking Del to sit beside him. Steeling herself, preparing for his old-man stench and his hurtful words, she lowered herself into the sand a good distance away from the medicine man. He made himself comfortable. “Into every generation there is one medicine man or woman, and it is their duty to aide the chief, to offer council and above all, to listen for the subtle words of the goddess.”

“I know this,” Del interrupted. Her brain refused to listen, her heart shied away from this hateful man. He was a killer.

“The goddess has quite a story planned for you, Delset, yes indeed. Your mother has no part in it. She was only the vessel, holding you until you were ready to come forth on your own, enter the great wheel that is destiny. Penya, however good a chief she might have been, was no more than a placeholder. You, girl, you are the Gem of the Future. You are Saphyri sa Masana.”

Once more Del scrambled to her feet, pounding away. “I can’t hear this, “ she yelled over her shoulder. Tears overflowed her eyes and ran down her cheeks, landing in the sand overturned by her sandals. More than anything she wanted the medicine man dead, wanted her mother alive again. She wanted her life back.

So focused of her own misery wa she that she barely noticed the boy in front of her, the boy who was so rapidly becoming a man and was in fact already joined. She bumped into him, apologized, ran on. He called back to her. “Chief Delset! Camena misses you!”

Chief Delset. Del stopped, sank to her knees. She spoke quietly, firmly, leaving no room for questions. “Erron, I need you to take a message to Camena from me. Tell her that the Del has been replaced by Delset. Tell Camena that I’m sorry, but I’m making a decision, and she won’t like it and I don’t either. But I have to. I have to become the chief, Erron, tell her that, because. .. It’s easier that being just. . .just the orphan.” She sank lower, head in her lap, back to the boy who fell in love with her best friend. “Tell her that somewhere, below the disguises, Del still misses her.”

“I’ll tell her,” Erron said softly, and he retreated. Del stayed there in the sand, weeping quietly. These tears were not for her mother, but for her. For until that moment, Del did not know how very possible it was to lose herself.

I am strong. I am a pillar of strength. I am Delset, I am chief, I am strong like stone. I am unbreakable and no sticks can injure me. I stand before the enemy and I will not break because I am stone.

Del stood straight and tall, eyes closed, perfectly still, perfectly balanced. She wore no clothes, no shoes, only the impenetrable armor of her skin. Around her naked body stood seven men, carrying clubs, and Kenichi, bearing the red-clay body paint that was the other part of the ceremony. Even through her closed eyes, Del could feel them circling her predatorily, their clubs ready to strike her bare skin.

“Delset, do you promise to stand strong in the face of all that tries to harm the Great Sea Clan?” Kenichi’s voice, low, smooth, oily.

“Yes.”

She heard the rush of air as the club moved before she felt it slam into the side her stomach, bare skin. She knew the rules: no movement, not even a flinch. She remained still, while pain flooded to her abdomen. She clenched her eyes against the tears that formed there, threatening to spill, to give away the awful, throbbing pain that ravaged her inside the stillness.

Kenichi spoke again. “Do you promise to lead without looking back, to protect, to nourish, to know every man and woman and child who you have been chosen to shelter?”

“Yes.”

Another meaty whack, another swirling eddy of pain. Del answered Kenichi’s questions, barely listening to their words, standing tall as two more beatings followed. And then the final question. “Delset, by withstanding the pain inflicted upon you by your own clan, you are proving yourself worthy. I will ask you one question that will determine once and for all whether you will become the chief, the highest and most respected person in the land. Delset, daughter of Hannowek and Penya, do you want to be chief?”

A blow worse than any of the others landed on Del’s shoulders, and it came not from any club. A choice? Her mother, who had withstood this very ceremony, had never spoken of such a question, for never, in the history of the Great Sea Clan had a potential chief, raised from a long line of chiefs stretching back to the great Ghari ma Uari, the great Kaska, had someone not wanted to become leader. Del felt herself swaying, felt herself lose the stony distance that had allowed her to withstand the clubbing. Say no, say no.

She had only one word. Now was not the time to explain herself, to beg forgiveness if she said the wrong thing, to cry, to beg. She was chief, more than a woman, more than a person. A legacy. She drew in salty air and said, “Yes.” Why did she say that? Her mind told her to say no, her body craved the forgiveness of the simple word, yet her mouth had spoken the opposite. “No!” she said quickly, blurting, forgetting that she had only one word per question. “No, no, I don’t want it!”

Del’s eyes flew open, realizing her mistake, and seven strong men raised their clubs against her frail, naked body. She fell to the sand, arms over her head, curled into a ball against the onslaught. Her bare, unprotected spine. Her buttocks, her arms. Gradually she loosened her body’s tight knot, relaxed as unconsciousness took her away from the boiling cauldron of pain.

Del woke suddenly, starting out of the deepest sleep she had known in many a month, sitting bolt upright. Mata!

Mata was dead, she told herself sternly. She gently massaged her aching stomach and rib cage, her sore thighs and throbbing head. She sat in Kenichi’s cave, but there was nothing to do about that now, because she knew for certain that if she tried to stand she would find herself sadly lacking. Out of the corner of her eye she could see broken tongues of flame licking heartily at the air, dancing away without even realizing that fuel was running low, that death was close at hand, and no matter how joyfully it frolicked now it would soon be no more than dim coals.

Gradually she became aware of someone lurking in the shadows, someone who could only be the man who had betrayed her twice, the medicine man. She remembered her mantra from the ceremony, and repeated the phrases that had kept her strong through it. I am strong. I will stand before the enemy and I will not break because I am stone. I am a pillar of strength. I am strong. She drew in the stale cave air and let it out, steadying herself. Her anger, her frustration, her despair relaxed its iron hold.

“I see you are awake, then,” he observed.

Del imagined him as a snake, hissing and spitting, and then she imagined herself bring a stone down on the neck of that snake, and cool satisfaction that would bring her. A smile spread across her face.

“You don’t have to answer, I understand what you must be feeling right now.” His voice sounded very rehearsed, as if he spent days wandering about in this subterranean hell and practicing what he would say to a certain reluctant teenage chief.

“No you don’t.” It was easy to sound amused, when all that he mind’s eye could see was the Kenichi-snake severed in two, its forked tongue lolling out in the sand, its glossy, calculating eyes glazed over.

She heard him draw in a sharp breath, and then stand still. And then she heard him walk very quickly towards her, lean over her. In the complete darkness, to which her eyes could never adjust, she could only smell the fish on his breath and feel the tiny stirring of air as he spoke over her. “I am not amused. I will not stand for such. . .insincerity in my clan, never! You are not a child anymore, Delset, you are a chief, and you cannot, ever, treat anyone with such flippancy as you displayed there. Do you think your father was respected and loved for being a, a common jokester? Do you think he treated the problems he confronted every day, every day, with witticisms and sarcasm? No. You are finished with childish behavior. I will not allow them to you. You are to spend every waking moment with me, until you learn to treat your destiny with more respect.” After the final word, after he pulled away from her face, the medicine man spat at her, a big wet smack that landed on her nose and dribbled down the side of her cheek.

That word again, destiny.

Del lay still, biting her upper lip, remembering the epic word battles she had waged against Camena, exchanging creative curses and hilarious insults, the fights which invariably ended with one of them tossed in the sand, the other in the sea. All in friendship, of course. Was Kenichi being serious? No more humor? And then she digested the part about spending all her waking hours in the company of the monster, the beast that stole her life from her.

I am strong. I am unbreakable. I am Delset.

For a long time, nothing moved in the cave but the dying fire, now a single tongue, lonely, aware of its coming death. The blackness was absolute, the silence unbroken, and Del thought that perhaps the medicine man had left her. Then, out of the blackness, came his low honeyed voice. “I will leave you here for some time, to rest and heal yourself. If you leave this room, I will know, and you will be punished severely. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes.”

Footsteps, the swoop of a cloak pulled forward, then silence. The fire crackled, flickered. Del lay still.

As soon as Kenichi was out of the girl’s hearing, he stopped and leaned against the cool, textured cave wall, rubbing his forehead. Why did she hate him so? Did she not understand why he had to let Chief Penya die? No, he answered himself. She did not understand, because she had lost the way of the goddess. He leaned his head back against the wall, eyes closed, letting the peace of the cave wash over him.

He remembered Del’s first birthday, before she had a name, a destiny, when she was only Saphyri sa Masana. He remembered running his hand over the bumps and indentations over her little swatch of the History Rock, his heart beating faster, his eyes widening as he realized how powerful a being this girl was. He thought of the very grown-up young woman in his fire room, her stubbornness, her willful hatred of everything he tried to do to help her along on her path.

And she was not doing very well. When Del was a child, he had sat with her in his lap as she played with the talismans around his neck, talking to Penya about her complicated future and Penya’s sacrifice. “Your death is necessary, Penya,” he had said. “With your love to lean on, she can never stand alone.” Kenichi remembered the pain of letting her die, the infinite grief in Del’s eyes as she realized what he intended to do.

A quiet sob from the room in which Del slept brought him back to the present, to the cave, to his resolution to see if anything had changed. He pushed himself off from the wall, feeling his arthritic knees grate and grumble as he moved.

Sometimes he tried to recall what it was like to be an ordinary human being, without the enhanced senses, the enhanced life of a medicine man. When he had first been ushered into the cave, after Medicine Woman Brakkiya told him of his destiny as her successor, he had been unable to see anything in the perfect blackness. Now, his eyes guided by the goddess’s hand, he could see as if it were dusk in the outside world. He could hear well beyond normal ranges, smell as well as a hound, feel as well as any blind person. Now he strolled through the passages of the cave with purpose, towards his sleeping room.

It was small in comparison to the other grand rooms in the cave, but it was his, and it contained all he really needed. His pallet, made of several buffalo skins piled on top on one another, dried fish in case he was ever to occupied to attend meals with the rest of the clan, his deer-skin bag of runes. As he lifted the small bag off the floor, he felt the familiar shiver of magic run through him. These runes seemed to be the only way the goddess was willing to speak to him. He could never understand the words in the wind, not could he decipher enough of the History Rock to feel secure in his knowledge of clan destinies.

He swallowed his excitement and tossed the contents of the bag onto the red rock floor, leaning closer.

The ravi rune, laying sideways atop the psaia. Tell her the truth, Kenichi. Sanja and kavan, head to head. She is not ready to hear. Kenichi scoured the twenty-six small stones in the set, the symbols and their meanings, finding only contradictions and nonsense. Take her swimming. Let her be a child, you fool.

Was he losing his gift at reading the runes? He looked again, squinting, rechecking, asking the goddess for help. He felt her stirring around him, bored, unwilling to use her endless energy on his human concerns. “This does concern you, goddess!” he cried. She pushed the air around lazily, sending him toppling to the floor on top the the runes. They were moved now, and their meaning was lost. If they had any meaning to begin with. Stinging at the goddess’ insult, he gathered the runes into the bag once more and tossed them onto his pallet.

If he was truly losing his gift and the goddess’ favor, now was most certainly the time to tell her the truth.

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