Wind Rider

CHAPTER ONE

BOG

Where are you going, Fern? Grandmother croaked in her dried-up-spider voice. You fed that bird twice this afternoon already.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. Sometimes I could sneak away without Grandmother knowing, but other times she seemed to feel with her spirit the empty place where I had been. Old and blind she might be, but she was still one of the best workers in our ahne. Even as she asked the question, she cleaned and hung yet another fish, ignoring the stink and the smoke that made my throat close up and my eyes water. She moved like a branch that dips, bends, and dips again in the endless current of the river.

Xj’i sah, I answered crossly. I did not really need to return my body’s water to Earth Mother, but I had to get away. I paused a moment at our shelter to stroke the neck feathers of my baby crow, who was perched in the shady nest I had made for him between the cross poles. I had found him a few days before, under a tree, with his mouth wide open, showing me his red, hungry insides. My mother wanted to put him in the stewpot, but instead I fed him scraps of fish and named him Black.

It felt bad to lie to Grandmother, but not as bad as being stuck cleaning fish while my brother played in the river. I was supposed to be splitting fish—thumbing their guts into a heap, and sticking them on racks to cure in the sun and the smoke from our fires. After the snow melts, the first warm rains bring suckers swarming up the rivers in slippery herds. It is not such a large run as that of the salmon in the fall, or as tasty, but it is food. The five families of our ahne would be busy for several days.

Ahne means hand. I like to think about that. We move over the steppe, gathering what we can to feed our own life. When winter storms would swallow us, we go into the Earth herself, to the shelter of our pit houses. So ahne also means a group of families that travel together during the warm months, joined together like the fingers of a gathering hand.

It is strange how I remember everything about that afternoon. My mother, Moss, and her friend Rain sat talking together in the shade of our hut, each nursing a baby. Our Little Brother was teething. Hush now, or the Night People will hear and steal you away, Rain scolded him. They might be hiding in the bushes this very moment.

Do not say such a thing! my mother answered sharply. I saw her glance over her shoulder. The Night People live beyond the place where the sun sets. They are horrible. When Moss was a girl, a group of hunters from our ahne found her. She was hiding under the burned skins of her family’s shelter—a bundle of bones with staring eyes. Everyone else was dead or stolen. For many days she could not even tell them her name.

Over in the river, some boys splashed beside the men who were catching fish in hemp nets. I could see my brother Young Flint looking into the water behind each rock, trying to spear a fish. It was too cold this early to wade very long, but boys want to spear something alive instead of an old skin target.

In many ways Flint and I are as different as the sun and the earth, yet like them as connected. He is not just my brother but my twin. We were the only twins in all the ahnes. Sometimes people whispered about us.

Choices, excitement, and honor lay ahead for Flint. I, on the other hand, would no sooner find blood running between my legs than I would be packed off to begin growing babies, tending pots, and scraping skins for some young man as reckless and stupid as my brother, who, like him, would not listen to anything I had to say. It was a black thought, yet when Flint yelled, raising his spear with a flopping fish on the end of it, I could not help grinning and calling out, Good—it is a big one!

I might have gone to the river’s edge to laugh at my brother slipping and falling like a person who has drunk from a skin of fermented berry juice, but I was sick from fish stink, and I was sure I had hung enough suckers for ten summers’ use. Besides, I told myself, they will forgive me when I bring home a basketful of fern sprouts.

Snatching an empty gathering basket from behind the tent, I started off. I heard my dog, Bark, get up and pad softly along behind me. Once away from the camp, Bark and I raced across the grassland to the clump of willows that marked the edge of the bog. We stopped in their cool shade, panting.

The bog lies where the river once curved like the print of a horse’s hoof. When my father, Old Flint, was a boy, a great storm led the river to find a shorter path, where it runs today. The ferns for which I am named can be found in the wet place that was left behind. Later in the season they would grow almost as high as my head, but now, all the way to the edges of the world, the steppe was barely touched with green. Earth Mother seemed to yawn and stretch, like a girl just waking up. Toads trilled and these same ferns were curled tight, like a baby’s fist.

With the stench of fish behind me, my stomach growled at the thought of fern sprouts. I love them best boiled with a bit of fat melting over them. They are my favorite springtime food. When the land is frozen white and hard, and we wonder if it will ever be warm again, my mouth waters just thinking about them. In the season’s first bellyful, I can almost feel the spirit of the plants uncurling inside me, green with life.

Ferns are strong, but bending, beautiful, yet unmindful of their beauty, my mother always said to me when she caught me plaiting flowers into my hair and peering at my reflection in the water of the cooking pot.

I would rather be named for something proud of its beauty that does not bow to the wind but flies with it—like a horse, I would answer back, not some stupid old plant.

Now I kept to the edges of the bog, remembering how once, when I was little, I got into the black muck over my knees and could feel it sucking like one of those fish we were drying, only so huge that I thought it would swallow all of me. I screamed until Moss found me and pulled me out with a branch. Then, instead of hugging, she cuffed me—but all the time tears streamed down her cheeks. I clung to her, furious at the spank yet desperate for the safety of my mother’s arms.

Now I scrubbed my hands with mint leaves to get rid of the fish smell. Mosquitoes and midges swarmed around my head, crawled behind my ears and into my hair. The Spirit of Life gave us biting insects so that when Sun Father transforms the land from harshness to beauty, we will know that we have not passed into the afterworld, Grandmother told me one time. I think we might have gotten the idea with half as many bugs.

Just ahead, I knew, I would find a large patch of sprouting ferns, but as I came around a willow tree, Bark growled and I saw broken reeds and torn earth, then the half-devoured body of a horse with the legs sticking stiffly up in the air.

I sniffed, smelling blood and torn-open guts, but not the sickening stink of a rotting carcass. It was freshly killed, perhaps the night before. The horse had been chased into the soggy ground where it could not escape. I found huge cat tracks in the soft earth, but Bark stopped growling and tore hungrily at what was left of the hindquarters, so I knew the cat could no longer be near. I was just taking my knife out of its sheath to cut some meat to bring home to our cooking fire when something moved out in the bog. Something big and tawny—the cat? My heart pounded and I could not breathe. But no, it was another horse, a young one, just past its second winter.

When it saw me, it plunged and snorted. Its eyes rolled, showing white flashes of fear. Perhaps the mother was old, without a new baby, and so this one had still run beside her. Being smaller, it had stumbled farther out before becoming trapped, belly deep. Maybe the cat was satisfied with one kill. Maybe it was afraid of the bog. It had not tried to go after the smaller horse.

My brother Flint would have run all the way back to camp, bursting to tell about finding so much fresh meat. But the young horse quieted again and turned to look at me. Its eyes were big and afraid, its nostrils huge and blowing. I knew I could not do that.

CHAPTER TWO

DREAM

It looked as if a battle between two beasts had been fought there in the bog, but the battle had truly been between the young horse and the sucking earth. I snapped off some willow branches and laid them over the mud. Bark whined as I crawled out onto the branches. For once he did not follow. Twigs poked into my belly. One caught on the little bone amulet around my neck. Impatiently I tugged it loose and turned it on its thong so that it would hang down my back out of the way. My nose was filled with the oily, dead-plant stink that is the bog. The cold slime of it soaked through my clothing to my skin.

Suddenly I felt my knees and elbows sinking. Fear clutched my belly. I had to crawl back to find more branches. All this time the horse eyed me watchfully. When I finally got within arm’s reach, it squealed, plunging and thrashing like a storm in a forest. But it could go nowhere. Mud rained on me. I crouched, covering my head. Once I saw the underside of a hoof in front of my face and felt on my cheek the wind it made passing through the air.

After many heartbeats the storm died, and the horse lay still, sides heaving. I spoke to it then, softly. I will not hurt you. I will help you. But how? I had no idea. If I asked anyone of our ahne for help, there would be a great horse roast that night. Then I reached out and touched the little horse’s sweat-soaked rump. The skin quivered, but that was all. How long had it been trapped here? It must drink and eat or the bog would kill it as surely as the great cat had killed its mother.

There was a spring not far away. Peeling off my leather shirt, I lined the gathering basket with it and filled it with water. Getting the water to the horse, crawling over the mat of broken branches, was not easy. I lost some of it on the way. Then I clawed a pit in the mud near the horse’s nose and set the basket of water there. But now the young horse stared beyond me with empty eyes. I pulled up fistfuls of grass, too, and left them beside the water. Please do not be afraid, I whispered. I want you to live.

Then I struggled back to solid ground, pulling the branches behind me so that no beast could get to it when I was not there. That was all I could think of to do. Bark had left his scent all around. He was big, larger than some of the wild dogs, and many animals were afraid of him. I hoped the little horse would be safe until I could come back. I piled the muddy branches over the body of the mare, hoping the cat would not return.

On the way home I washed the bog slime off in the river. I was scratched all over, and the water stung. With no shirt, I shivered. I pulled my amulet to the front again and stared at it.

On our Naming Day, Moss carved a fern for me on a disk of deer antler. Flint was proud of the tiny, perfectly knapped point he was given. But I had seen the amulets that Wolf and Bear wore. I sobbed. I did not want to be named for a plant; I wanted to be named for an animal. I woke and slept with the horse’s tail that my father had given me for a plaything. It was horses I loved best.

Then Grandmother took the short bone from inside a hoof and carved it into a tiny mare with a curving neck and a rounded body. With the finest awl she had, she drilled a hole through its middle and strung it on a strong piece of sinew. Then she fastened it around my neck instead of the other.

It seems we should have named you Hekwos for your love of horses, she said then, ignoring my mother’s frown. Perhaps since you think so much of wind runners, the Spirit of the Wind will watch over you. Then she held the horse so that I could see the tiny fern she had carved on its back, saying, That is so you will not forget who you really are.

Now as I touched my amulet, my hands shook. As long as I could remember, I had watched horses. It was almost as if I were thirsty for them, drinking in their swiftness and beauty. But the only ones I had seen up close had been killed for meat. Today I had touched a living wind runner. Could it be that Hekwos was seeking me? The thought made me shiver.

It was nearly dark. I hurried back to the camp. Cooking fires were already blazing. I paused in the shadows outside my family’s fire circle hearing my father ask, Where is Fern?

Grandmother rested her grindstone, squatting back on her skinny haunches. Her toes were bent from all the time in her long life that she had spent kneeling to grind roots and barley. She slipped away to her own doings when we were cleaning fish, she told him. I have not heard her dog bark for many long thoughts. She is not in the camp.

My mother said, She must be watching the herds again or trying to catch some animal for a pet. I do not like it.

Then Grandmother said, The child sees with different eyes. Her friendship with animals may be a gift.

Moss snorted. Sometimes I think she is touched with darkness. No other child would talk to a grass snake or steal a half-grown marmot from her brother’s snare and try to mend its broken leg or keep a frog in her gathering pouch. She may as well make a pet of this soup I am cooking.

My brother Flint would surely have spotted me slithering half naked under the edge of the tent to hunt for my other shirt, if he had not been busy helping Old Flint make preparations for a hunt. Everyone was sick of fish. A few scattered aurochs had been spotted near the edge of the forest land. The men might be gone for several days. Flint begged to go along instead of packing our father’s carrying pouch with dried fish and a few handfuls of the last of our grain, as he was supposed to be doing. I am big enough to hunt, truly I am, he pleaded.

Moss turned from where she was roasting a large sucker with onions over the coals. She pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. Sometimes hunters return torn and bleeding. Sometimes they do not return at all. Next year is soon enough for you to make your first hunt.

But you saw how many fish I speared, Father!

It would be difficult to miss when they swim so thickly. I also saw the two good spears you broke, said Old Flint, rolling a sleeping fur into a tight bundle. His voice was stern, but the twitching at the corner of his mouth showed he was not angry. It is no small thing to guard the camp. Because you are old enough to help with that, we can take along another hunter.

Silently I came out of the tent and stood a moment listening to see if they would talk about me again. Grandmother’s head turned my way. She smiled to herself. It was no good hiding from Grandmother, so I stepped into the firelight.

Where have you been? my mother demanded. Little Brother, whining with swollen gums, clung to her so that she could work with only one hand.

Into the tent and out again, said my grandmother, before I could answer. And the dog named Bark, who prefers having his belly rubbed to hunting with the pack of camp dogs, has rolled in fish guts once more.

My face burned. I went to find fern sprouts for my father’s supper.

And where are they? my mother asked, seeing my empty hands.

Not up yet, I mumbled. I took Little Brother from her, hoping she would be pleased by my helpfulness.

My father looked at me sharply. If he knew that I spoke untruth, he said nothing, but again his mouth twitched.

Fahnie! Little Brother crowed. He dropped the bone he was gnawing to grab my hair, but he did not let go of Wolfie, the tattered wolf tail that he carried everywhere. I motioned to Bark to lie down outside the fire circle where we could not smell him as much.

But Wolfie does not stink, I said to Little Brother, pretending to stroke his pet. Wolfie is good. Bark is a bad stinky boy. Bark made a sad sound in his throat, and Little Brother laughed.

He had not yet reached his Naming Day. Often little ones are taken back by Earth Mother, so we do not give them names until they have passed their third winter. Moss had lost more babies than most of the women in our ahne. I had seen another Little Brother and a Little Sister laid cold and still in the breast of the earth. Both times Flint and I had crawled into bed and crouched together, pulling our sleeping robes tightly over our heads, but we could not block out the endless wailing of our mother or the groans of our father, and we could not stop seeing memory pictures of each lifeless little body.

Grandmother had told me that two others, before Flint and I were born, died in Moss’s belly. The lines around my mother’s mouth were deep, and she did not laugh very much.

Now I took Little Brother to see Black. My baby crow made cross, muttering noises when I woke him, but he needed his supper and gulped it greedily. The firelight sparked in his eyes as he watched us between bites of smoked fish. He was a baby, but his eyes looked like a wise old man’s. When he was full, he shook his feathers, shut his blue eyelids, which closed from the bottom up, and stuffed his head back under a wing.

Little Brother was sleepy now. I gave him back to my mother. Silently I ate my own food and began cleaning up the mess of the meal while my brother, copying Old Flint, lay back and relaxed. I scowled, remembering the untidy camp I had once seen of three men who lived without women. Half-eaten food lay about uncovered, with flies crawling on it. The ground around their fire pit was littered with bones and rubbish, tools and clothing. A stink came from their bed furs as if they had never been washed or sweetened in the sun. The men smelled the same way.

Males were pigs, I thought. How could you