About THE UNFINISHED SONG Series

LONG AGO, to win a war, humans Cursed the Aelfae, fairest and wisest of the faeries…. But all magic has a price. The same Curse that destroyed the Aelfae now threatens all of Faearth. One young woman and the warrior she loves must fight the Curse to prove which is stronger…love or death.

Book 1: INITIATE

DINDI blah blah blah

KAVIO  is falling in love with her….

This is the first book in The Unfinished Song epic fantasy series. The books are best enjoyed in order as part of a complete saga.

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Initiate

The Unfinished Song, Book ONe

Copyright Misque Press, 2011, 2015

Cover Design: Tara Maya

Table of Contents

Book 1: Initiate

Dance

Rover

Doll

Hex

Yellow Bear

Stone Hedge

Test

About The Unfinished Song, Book 2: Taboo

Chapter One

Dance

Dindi

Dindi scanned the crowd, hoping to slip into the plaza unnoticed. Barter Hill swarmed with people because aunties from the three clans met here to trade every half-moon. A kraal at the bottom of the hill held aurochsen and horses. Interconnected rectangular adobe buildings created a square around the top of the rise. The old uncles, to suit their dignity, leaned against the wall on a log bench, under the shade of the eaves of the buildings, drinking corn beer, chatting amiably. They hid their thighs with waist blankets and caped themselves in shoulder blankets that reached the ground. Dindi slithered by them.

Unfortunately, the first person Dindi locked eyes with was Great Aunt Sullana. Though the whole plaza separated them, Great Aunt Sullana tore across the market like a tornado on the Purple Plains. She would demand to examine Dindi’s basket, and finding nothing in it except a kitten, pinch her cheek until Dindi stuttered some explanation. The natural and obvious defense would be to lie, but frankly, Dindi had always been a terrible liar. Her whole face ripened like a tomato, her eyes slid this way and that, she couldn’t convince a child honey was sweet never mind fool Great Aunt Sullana, who ate secrets for morning meal.

Evasion her only option, Dindi darted past a couple of elder women haggling over an exchange of vegetables for pottery. Married women, with their salt-and-pepper hair coiled in stacked rings atop their heads, sat with their wares on blankets arranged all around the dancing platform. Dindi wove a path around multifarious piles of tubers and bone awls, behind bunches of water gourds hung like grapes over racks of smoked venison. Aunties shouted and tried to call her attention to bargains by slapping her calves with horse-hair whisks.

Great Aunt Sullana changed course to track her. Dindi hopped behind a group of bare-chested warriors who mock-fought one another, to the annoyance of an auntie whose tower of baskets they upset. A gaggle of girls giggled at their antics. Great Aunt Sullana kept walking in the wrong direction. Dindi sighed in relief.

A slow drumbeat reverberated throughout the market square. The Tavaedies! No one could see the drum, but each beat shook the ground like earth tremors. Heads jerked up and eyes began to sparkle. Rattles and flutes supplemented the drumbeat. From a hole in the ground in a clear space just in front of the dancing platform, a line of masked dancers emerged. Each costume was slightly different, determined by the dancer’s color of magic and the dance the troop performed that day. A large headdress and a matching mask of either cloth or paint disguised each face. Each Tavaedi wore a costume entirely dyed and painted in shades of one of the primordial six colors.

Dindi had never told anyone she aspired to become a Tavaedi. She wasn’t interested in reaping snickers or commiseration. Besides, what did she care what the others thought of her? She knew how hard it was, but she had a plan.

Every head in the square was riveted on the Tavaedies. Drum, rattle, and flute flared into dramatic music. The masked men and women leaped into motion. Occasionally, to emphasize the moves, the dancers chanted or shouted as well.

Dancing wove magic. Some ritual dances, or tama, ensured bounty, others averted drought. This tama, Massacre of the Aelfae, recalled history. The Tavaedies only performed it once a year, and as a child, it had been her favorite—until she understood what it was really about.

Half the Tavaedies wore wings. “We are the Aelfae, we are the Aelfae,” they chanted.

The other half of the dancers carried spears. “We are the humans, we are the humans.”

The dance showed a clan of Aelfae, the high faery folk who had lived in the Corn Hills before humans came. High fae were not like low fae, pixies and brownies and sprites and such, but possessed grace and grandeur beyond anything human. In form they were as tall, or taller, than humans, although more beautiful, a strange, glowing people, with wings like swans. There had once been seven races of high fae, and of them all, the Aelfae had been the most beautiful and powerful and wise.

The fake Aelfae took the stage first. They flapped imitation wings. To pretend they were flying, they engaged in numerous acrobatic flips, handsprings, handless cartwheels, and somersaults over each others’ backs. The fake Aelfae flitted about the platform until the “human” dancers with spears arrived.

She had to focus. She had to get this right, every move, every detail. She intended to teach herself everything she could from watching them, so when the time came they would invite her to join their secret society. She wasn’t supposed to know, but she had eavesdropped on enough conversations to learn one secret about the Initiation. Each Initiate would be asked to dance a tama, and only those with magic would perform it correctly.

The two sides began to mock-fight. They punched and kicked and crossed spears, they threw one another and made dramatic vaults over one another’s heads to attack from the rear. The humans began to slaughter the Aelfae. Maybe the dance exaggerated the humans’ prowess, but the Aelfae fled, wailing, across the stage. None escaped the humans.

While they danced, Dindi reproduced tiny imitation movements with her hands and feet—nothing noticeable to anyone watching her—to help her commit the steps to memory so she could practice them on her own later. At first, when Dindi had started observing the dances with the object of learning them, she had missed most of the steps. Every moon, she noticed more.

Lately, as the Tavaedies danced, she had begun to see the most amazing thing. The interactions between the dancers were not random. They formed rows and columns, circles and chevrons, shaped arrangements of dancers. And these patterns glowed. It was as if the dancers created ribbons of living light by their movements, tracing out incandescent symbols with their bodies. The dancers themselves glowed too, in the same color as whichever costume they wore. Even now that Dindi knew what to look for, she couldn’t see it all the time, only if she concentrated.

The human dancers encircled the last of the Aelfae dancers, who fell into an artful pile of corpses.

“The Aelfae are no more, the Aelfae are no more,” victors and corpses droned in a mournful dirge.

The chant hit her with a wave of melancholy. The interlocking patterns of light the dancers had created rippled outward like disturbed water, and when the light hit her, vertigo robbed Dindi of her balance. She stumbled, nearly fell.

For a moment, instead of the Aelfae dancers, she saw beautiful beings with wings like swans, and instead of stylized flips and leaps, she witnessed atrocities she could barely comprehend. Aelfae men forced to eat their own intestines, Aelfae women with bloody thighs pinned down under grunting human males, Aelfae babes clutched by their tiny wings and smashed face-first into walls…. Underlying it all, she sensed not one battle, but decades of skirmish and ambush, truce and betrayal, wearing the Aelfae down, driving them to their final extinction, not just in the Corn Hills, but across all of Faearth.

She blinked, and the double vision cleared. Tears streaked her cheeks. It was not just a dance. Though the events reenacted had happened long ago, they were real. Her people had done this, wiped out the most beautiful and powerful faeries in the world, pushed them all to extinction save one. In all the world, except for the White Lady, who was the last of her kind, the Aelfae were no more.

On stage, the triumphant humans split into three groups. One carried a full basket, another a basket split into two halves, and a third a swan feather. They represented the three clans who now lived in the Corn Hills—the victors in the war with the Aelfae. That was the end of the dance. The Tavaedies formed a line and snaked back down into their hole, to their kiva beneath the square.

“Ooooh, look, it’s the goose from Lost Swan,” said a catty voice. Dindi whirled around.

Kemla and a few of her cousins stood there, young women from Full Basket clan who were always harassing Dindi.

“Crying because when Initiation comes, you won’t be invited to become a Tavaedi like me?” Kemla taunted. She always wore as much scarlet as a non-Tavaedi could get away with, and had arranged cardinal feathers in her breast bands to show off her cleavage.

Hastily, Dindi wiped her face. “You don’t know that.”

“It’ll never happen, goat-legs,” snickered Kemla. “No one in your scraggly clan has ever been chosen as a Tavaedi. The closest Lost Swan clanholders come to dancing magic is to go mad and run off with the fae.”

The Full Basket girls laughed. Dindi flushed.

“Goat-legs! Goat-legs!” The girls formed a circle and shoved Dindi back and forth, finally pushing her into the dust. They laughed and flounced away.

The dust tasted like dung. They were right. No one from Lost Swan Clan had ever passed the test given during the year children disappeared for Initiation rites. She could be taken for Initiation any day now, Dindi thought. And all omens indicated she’d fail miserably. Like her mother. And her grandmother. And every single person in her whole clan since the days of the Lost Swan Clan’s great-mother.

Her basket had fallen. A tiny meow and skritching came from inside. She pulled her kitten out of the basket. His fur stood on end and he looked outraged. She’d rescued the kitten from a grolwuf, a cat-eating goblin, who had already devoured mama cat and the other kits. The little thing had been snow white, eyes sticky shut, but since then his ears, nose, paws and tail had darkened to black, as if he’d pranced in mud, so she’d named him Puddlepaws. She petted and kissed him until his fur settled and he purred to let her know the upset basket was forgiven.

The purring kitten on her shoulder and the beauty of the day rinsed away her gloom on the walk home. Rolling green hills stretched out in every direction under a perfect blue sky marked only with the V of migrating swans. Everything smelled fresh. The corn was shoulder high, while inside the pale green husks, the kernels flushed deeper gold with each passing day. Innumerable clouds of tiny willawisps hazed the fields like sparkling mists. Maize sprites clambered nimbly to the tips of the straight-backed stalks to wave at Dindi when she brushed by them. Pixies of every color fluttered on luminous wings around her head, making her dizzy. Puddlepaws batted at them.

“Wait up, Dindi,” called her cousin, Hadi, puffing behind her. “Aunt Sullana asked me to find you.” He posed with his spear, in an attempt to look stern. Unseen by Hadi, a pixie banged the butt of Hadi’s dangling spear on his knee.

“Ow.” He dropped the spear and hopped about on one foot. He glowered suspiciously at his spear when he picked it up, and then at Dindi. “There aren’t any fae around, are there?”

“Hardly any,” Dindi assured him.

The pixies laughed as he plowed right past them without seeing them. Most people could not see the fae. Kittens could. Puddlepaws leaped from her shoulder, trying to catch a pixie, missed, of course, and flipped in the air before landing in the dirt.

“I’m not a wayward goat,” said Dindi. “I don’t need herding.”

“I’m older than you and I’m the closest you have to a brother, so yes, I am your keeper,” he said, brandishing his spear. “Once I pass Initiation, and I am a Man, my duty will be to protect your honor from all who threaten it—”

The mischievous purple pixie crouched at his feet, fiddling with the laces to his legwals. While Dindi tried to guess what the fae was up to, the pixie untied two pairs of laces on either of Hadi’s legs, then retied the wrong strings together. Meanwhile, another pixie buzzed around his ear to distract him. Though Hadi couldn’t see the fae, and couldn’t make out the words, he could hear the hum of pixie voices.

“You little fiends!” Hadi waved his spear. “I know you’re here somewhere! I’ll get you!”

“Hadi, don’t…!”

When Hadi tried to lunge, he tripped because his calves were tied together. He fell face first into the moist soil.

“You mucky faeries!” He pounded the mud where he’d fallen. The pixies cheered and jumped up and down on his back while congratulating each other on their victory over the foe. Puddlepaws pounced on the pixie. Very proud of himself, he held the pixie by the back of its little tunic and brought it to Dindi.

“Bad kitty! Bad kitty!” cried the pixie.

Dindi scooped up the kitten, freed the pixie, and shouted back over her shoulder, as she took off down the row of maize, “I’ll just go on ahead.”

“Dindi! You are not to leave my sight!” He squirmed in the mud but only managed to dig himself into a shallow trench. “Dindi! Dindi, get back here this instant! I’m in charge of you!”

She just laughed. The empty basket bounced on her back as she ran. The fae followed Dindi in a cloud.

“Come dance with us! Come dance with us!” they urged in a babble of flute voices.

“I can’t this afternoon, friends,” Dindi apologized. “I have to gather soap roots, tallow and ash to make soap and pick and juice blueberries, all by middle meal.”

A purple pixie fragile as a butterfly, landed on Dindi’s shoulder. She twined her tiny lavender hands in Dindi’s black hair.

“Chores are boring, Dindi,” she said.

“That’s why they call them chores.”

“Don’t let those humans tire you out, Dindi,” chided a green pixie. He landed on Dindi’s other shoulder. A red shoved him off and claimed the shoulder for his own. That enraged the purple, who raced over Dindi’s nose to attack the red pixie. All this activity excited Puddlepaws, who squirmed in Dindi’s arms. She kept her grip firm on the furry pixie-hunting predator.

“Do you mind?” Dindi said. “It’s very difficult to walk when you’re using me as a battleground.”

“Then come dance with us!”

“Yes, yes!” agreed a yellow dandelion sprite. He parted the corn stalks to skip at Dindi’s feet. “You dance with us and in exchange, we’ll do your chores for you.”

“Mm. Just like you milked the bull for me and winnowed the sugar out of the gravel for me, and wove a sitting mat I was to give to Uncle Lubo out of prickly pear thorns?”

“Friends,” the green pixie said to the others, “anyone would think she wasn’t grateful for all our help.”

“Impossible.” The purple one giggled. “She just can’t express herself because she’s so overwhelmed with joy that with her chores out of the way she is now free to dance with us.”

Dindi frowned.

“Are you sick, Dindi?” asked the orange.

“We won’t do your chores for you anymore if you stop dancing with us,” blustered the yellow sprite.

That would be a big loss. “Soon, I might not be dancing with you anymore at all. If I fail the test to become a Tavaedi, I must stop dancing.”

The fae were stunned silent for a moment. Then they all began to shout at Dindi at once.

“Enough!” cried Dindi, making the Dispel hand-sign in earnest this time. The clouds of willawisps scattered, the pixies were flung away as if by gusts of heavy wind, and the sprites all went rolling like tumbling stones. Corn stalks were flattened around Dindi in a perfect circle three yards out.

From the perimeter of the circle of dispellation, the fae peered at her with hurt expressions.

“I’m sorry,” Dindi said. “You know I don’t want to abandon you.”

The fae crept back towards her until at last they huddled as close as before, murmuring her name.

“Uhm.” She was abashed. “Could you help me fix the corn?”

“Hurrah! She will dance with us!” squealed the purple pixie.

What harm would it do to share one more teensy weensy dance with her friends? After all, who knew when Initiation might come? She might never have another chance. She would sip one last taste of wild faerie magic. She shrugged away the basket and let Puddlepaws down in the grass. Dindi let the fae lead her into their circle.

The pixies began to fly in circles over the ruined crops. The cob-sized corn sprites whose stalks she’d knocked over joined in next. Willawisps were drawn to all the activity. They all began to twirl and shuffle and skip and jump in a ring around and around, Dindi dancing right along with them. As the corn stalks began to right themselves, the dancers changed the pattern and started to weave in and out of the stalks. Wild swirls of color trailed in the wake of all the fae dancers, strange and marvelous.

Dindi laughed with exhilaration despite herself, abandoning herself to whatever moves her body wanted to make. The corn was upright again. If anything, it was greener and more fragrant than before. Dindi slowed down, signaling the fae to stop too. They refused to take the hint. They kept whirling.

She danced alongside them, but she knew it was their magic at work. If she didn’t stop them from getting carried away, they would continue dancing and possibly start to do more damage than good. She had seen them summon storms, uproot trees, start geysers from bare rocks. It was one reason she normally only danced with them out on the heath, far past the cultivated fields. Mama had warned her never to let other humans see her play with the fae.

The swarm of whirling faery dancers moved up the mountain, without ever missing a step. Dindi moved with them, keeping up easily with their improvised patterns of skips, turns, kicks and leaps. Soon they emerged onto a patch of flat heath with a view of the whole valley below. The sky seemed to pull back to give them more room.

She spread her arms and drew in a drought of the fresh air. Then she closed her eyes and envisioned again the shinning swirls of light patterns created by the Taevaedis on Barter Day. In her mind, she recreated the role of every single dancer. What steps had each player in the pattern made? One by one, she danced each person’s role as best she could remember it. First, she played the ‘human’ parts. Then, saving and savoring them for the end, she played the Aelfae parts. But when she came to the finale, when the last Aelfae in the dance was to fall and die, she decided to change the ending. Instead, she leaped up again, spread her imaginary wings behind her and vaulted across the field in a full twisting double back leap.

The fae laughed in glee. They much preferred her new dance to the dance of the Tavaedies. Satisfied now that she had run through all the steps of all the dancers in yesterday’s dance, Dindi finally abandoned herself to free-form dancing. That delighted the fae even more.

The low hum of faerie voices, the sparkle of pixie wings and her own pounding blood wrapped Dindi in a trance of pure feeling. Movement inside her itched to spill out.

A pixie curled a small hand around Dindi’s ear, whispering, “You never have to go back, Dindi. You could dance with us forever and ever…”

Their voices hummed hypnotically, enticing her forward step by step. The lullaby lure of the faery ring shimmered all around her, a mixture of light and song. The fae clasped hands together, closing the circle about her. A chain of pixies undulated in the air, the sprites linked up, and then, in the last gap in the circle, a heron-winged kinnara soared toward the dancers to close the circle. “Come dance with us, Dindi. Come dance with us forever…”

“Nice try, but I’m not yours yet!” Regret tinged her amusement, but her resolve was firm, as it always was when the fae played this game with her. Dindi somersaulted through the air with an aerobic leap that catapulted her right out of the gap. She rolled away on the moss, laughing.

“You can’t catch me in a faery ring that easily,” she teased them. The fae responded in delight.

“Again, again!” they urged her.

“My family needs me. Oh, mercy!” She clapped her hands over her face. “Soaproot and blueberries! I haven’t had time…”

Boast waved his little scarlet arms in an expansive gesture. “Fear not, friend Dindi! We have taken care of all that silly human stuff for you!”

Oh.

Oh, no.

“How, um, exactly?” Dindi asked.

“How else? We juiced the blueberries and sudded the soaproot.”

“Here it is now,” said Kippy. A goat legged satyr with tawny fur and an Orange glow, skipped up to Dindi. He carried a covered basket in one hand—the soap—and a jug in the other hand—the blueberry juice. It was the same jar she had broken this morning. The fae had stuck the cracked shards back together. After Kippy placed these on the grass before her, he bowed solemnly and pranced away.

“We did it just like the humans do,” Giggles said.

Dindi had her doubts, but just at that moment she heard Hadi shouting. He appeared around a bend in the path and glared at her with exasperation.

“There you are! An important guest has arrived for middle-meal and Great Aunt Sullana will chop off your toes if you miss it. And on top of that, I’m starving. If you make me miss middle-meal, I’ll tell her you went off dancing with the fae again.”

An important guest?

“I have to go,” Dindi told the fae. She rescued another pixie from Puddlepaws, shouldered her basket, and followed Hadi back down the hillside.

Kavio

Kavio smelled the costumes of his accusers before he could see them—corn-husks, horse hair, quilt skirts and shoulder blankets soaked with years of dancers’ sweat. He heard the rustle of many bodies, the clicky-clack of shell and chalcedony bracelets jangling upon wrists and ankles. The susurration of disapproving voices rose in pitch as people noticed his entrance.

Stone spearheads pricked him in the shoulders. Tiny trickles of blood coursed down his back, mingling with his sweat as a testament to his guards’ enthusiasm to see him judged for his crimes. The warriors guarding him had told him nothing. He had been blindfolded, stripped to a loincloth, and bound with his hands behind his back. Still, Kavio didn’t need to see to know he had been brought to his trial.

The cool, musty air, crisscrossed by rays of warmth, told him this must be the kiva where the Society of Societies convened for the most serious of deliberations. The underground amphitheatre was one of the few kivas with windows in the upper reaches of the room. Otherwise, the texture of the walls and floor—volcanic rock daubed with adobe and dung whitewash—felt no different from the rest of the Labyrinth.

The guards shoved him to his knees before one them tore off his blindfold.

Three dyed reed mats had been placed at intervals down the center of the rectangular room, one white, one black, and one orange. A large polychrome pottery vase painted in patterns of those same three colors had been placed beside the middle, black mat. Kavio knelt in front of the white mat.

Tiered adobe steps around three sides of the rectangular room provided seating for the Tavaedies and Zavaedis, the men and women of the secret societies. From the squeeze of costumed bodies, it looked as though every dancer in the Labyrinth was in attendance. All were masked. Many of the masks sprouted huge fans of woven cane, feather tufts, or carved wooden animal faces. Others sported horns, manes, or false beards. Still others displayed abstract shapes, ovals or diamonds, or a cascade of beaded fringes. It wasn’t easy for so many masked dancers to fit in the tiers. Feathered and beaded shoulder blankets, necklaces coiled as thick as snakes, and full corn-husk skirts took up space.

Only his mother, indifferent as ever to convention, wore no mask, just a simple white beaded dress. She sat stiffly on the lowest tier, face-to-face with Kavio. Even at her age, she was the most beautiful woman in the room. She was also the only one in the tiers who had no closely-pressed neighbors. No one quite dared sit next to her.

Opposite her, behind Kavio, rose an adobe platform taller than any of the tiered seats. He had to twist his head to look up the seven steps to the top of the platform to see the man who stood there in full regalia, holding a rain stick. Paint divided the man’s already severe features into an interlocked pattern of sharp edges and boxes. Colorful matching mazes were woven into his shoulder blanket and outlined in beads of obsidian and pearl. His massive headdress consisted of numerous coiled cords, horned and feathered and shelled. Beaded hoops rested around his neck, as did a gold coiled torque. The pin that held his shoulder blanket in place had also been beaten from gold, into the shape of a stylized wild horse.

The man pounded his rain stick on the platform. He had a voice of gravel and stone.

“Let it be remembered on the Memory Stick, that in This Year, yet to be named, I, the War Chief of the Rainbow Labyrinth and head of the Society of Societies in the absence of a Vaedi, have called all of the secret dancing societies together to sit in judgment at the trial of Kavio . . .”

He paused to make the ponderous trip down the seven steps to the floor of the assembly room. Even so, because Kavio had been forced to his knees, the other man had to look down to glower at him.

“. . . Kavio, my own son.”

Even though he’d expected it, his father’s contempt stung.

“Who will cast the first stone?” asked Father.

The men and women in the tiers shuffled, whispered. Most of them removed their masks from their sweat-drenched heads, and a few went so far as to fan themselves.

A woman in amber necklaces removed an orange eagle-feathered mask before she rose to her feet. She was an elder from Father’s generation, his brother’s wife and Father’s bitterest political rival. As a child, Kavio had nicknamed her “Auntie Ugly.”

“I will cast the first stone on behalf of the accusers,” Auntie Ugly said with ill-concealed relish. “Kavio committed the most serious crime of which a Zavaedi dancer is capable. He concocted his own Pattern, a dance unknown to our ancestors. He cannot name the teacher that taught it to him, nor the society who held its secret. That is hexcraft.

“That in itself would be reason to discipline him. But on top of that, he used this Pattern for the vilest of purposes, to harm the community that bore him and to deprive his neighbors of their very livelihood.”

Kavio glanced involuntarily at Mother. He had never seen her so ashen. Though a part of him wanted to spit in Father’s face, the knowledge that he had disappointed Mother burned like chili pepper in his mouth. But no matter what happened, he’d be cursed before he’d show how he felt in front of this assemblage of vultures and jackals. Or in front of his father.

He lifted his chin and faced his accuser with his most insolent smile.

As he’d known it would, his smile infuriated Auntie Ugly. She jabbed a bony finger at him.

“Three days ago, Kavio, you went into a room here in the Labyrinth and performed a hex that diverted a part of the river upstream from the Valley of the Aelfae. By doing so, you have lowered the water level in the fields, making it possible that not enough silt will be deposited by planting season.

“As witness, I call my own son, Zumo the Cloud Dancer.”

Kavio’s cousin, a young man of similar age, build, and height, stood. He removed his mask of blue shells. While Kavio seethed inside, Zumo repeated the lies that had led to this trial in the first place. Not that anything Zumo testified was false; his deception lay in what he didn’t say.

After Zumo, a second witness repeated the story of having found Kavio dancing alone in a kiva in the Labyrinth.

“Thank you both,” Auntie Ugly said smugly after the second witness sat down again. “Kavio, do you deny these charges?”

“I don’t deny what I did,” he said. “I deny that I invented the Pattern, I deny that it was hexcraft, and I deny that it was intended to harm our people.”

When Auntie Ugly sneered at him, the anger that had been pummeling his belly these last days bettered his sense, and he added sarcastically, “I do not deny that there are times I wish I had let you all drown.”

He knew it was a mistake as soon as he said it. The masked Tavaedies and Zavaedies hissed and shouted.

“Zavaedi Kavio’s guilt is plain,” said Auntie Ugly. “I cast my stone with justice. I call for Kavio’s death!”

She glided to the pottery jar and pulled out a smooth, gray stone, then tossed it on the black mat.

Big surprise there, thought Kavio. You’ve always hated me, you old toad. I never even understood why.

“Zumo?” Auntie Ugly asked her son.

More slowly than his mother, Zumo picked a stone. He threw it on the black mat. He had to walk by where Kavio knelt on the adobe floor to reach his seat again. Just as he passed, Kavio looked up and met his eyes.

“Is that what you really think I deserve, cousin?” Kavio asked in such a low voice that only Zumo heard him. “For what crime? The lies you told here or because I know the truth about you?”

Zumo flushed, whether with guilt or anger, it was impossible to tell.

“No one will listen to anything you have to say now, Kavio,” Zumo replied, also too quietly for anyone else to hear. “They’ll know you’re just clawing at worms to try to save your own hide.”

He stomped back to his seat, where he replaced his mask.

Auntie Ugly had sentenced the son of her rival to death; all eyes now fell upon Father to see if he would defend his son.

Father’s heavy shoulder blanket seemed to weigh him down as he walked to the jar to pick up a stone. He stood there a long while, turning the rock round and round in his hands.

“I would like to speak,” he said finally, looking straight at Kavio, “on behalf of the accusers.”

Surprise stirred the onlookers. Kavio just smiled grimly. He wasn’t surprised at all. He’d known from the day his father had called for the trial that Father would put political need above family sentiment. Sure enough, Father gave a pretty little speech, distancing himself from his son. He locked his jaw when he finished and clutched his fist around his stone. “I too must cast my stone with justice, even if it means the death of my own son, my only child.”

He threw his rock on the black mat. He met Kavio’s eyes without flinching, but when Mother gasped, Father would not look at her.

Mother stood up next and pleaded on Kavio’s behalf. Even she would not declare him innocent. Instead, she simply begged for mercy—exile instead of death. Mother picked a stone out of the jar and placed it on the orange mat.

Kavio felt his face burn with shame. He wouldn’t beg for his life himself, and he didn’t want her to crawl for him either. Besides, death would be easier than exile. He didn’t think he could bear the humiliation of wearing ash. Exile meant fleeing his home like a vole from a prairie fire. Exile meant scorn would meet him wherever he went. Exile meant he would not have the opportunity to finish unraveling the puzzle he had discovered in the heart of the Labyrinth, the only magic he still cared about.

Far, far better to die.

One by one the rest of the Zavaedis came to cast their stones for either exoneration, exile, or death. Some spoke to the assembly of their reasons why, others simply placed the stone according to their choice.

Unfortunately, his mother’s plea moved many people to pity him. When all the rocks had piled up, the orange mat held the most stones.

Exile.

Kavio swallowed hard to conceal his reaction. You have murdered me all the same.

Father pounded the rain stick.

“Kavio, you have been found guilty of the most heinous of crimes—hexcraft. Though you remain a member of the secret societies that initiated you and are therefore spared death, nonetheless you are forbidden to enter the Labyrinth, to take with you anything from the Labyrinth, or to study with any dancing society of the Labyrinth. Do you understand and acknowledge your punishment?”

“I understand it all too well,” Kavio said through gritted teeth. “But I will never acknowledge it as just.”

“So be it,” Father said tonelessly. “Bring the pot of ashes.”

Two warriors hefted a ceramic pot from where it had rested in the shadow of the tall platform. They forced Kavio to lean back while still on his knees. They smeared him with a paste and rubbed in the gray-black powder. His bare chest and clean shaven face disappeared under a scum of grey crud. Humiliation itched, but like poison ivy, he knew it would be worse if he scratched it. He forced himself still as stone while the warriors slapped on more mud.

“You must wear mud and ash for the rest of your days,” the Maze Zavaedi concluded. His voice broke. “I am ashamed to call you my son.”

Kavio struggled to his feet. The warriors escorting him surrounded him with a hedge of spears. Did they fear him, even now?

“You never could just trust me, could you, Father?” Kavio asked.

Father’s jaw jutted forward. A muscle moved in his neck. Otherwise, he might have been rock. “Escort my son out of the Labyrinth.”

Dindi

Dindi and Hadi climbed down a ladder to the kitchen in the main house. Puddlepaws was not invited but the kitten scrambled down the ladder after them. Smoke dimmed the whitewashed walls to grey and hazed the air with spicy fumes. She searched the room for an important guest. In the corner opposite the ladder were three beehive-shaped ovens, each with its own adjacent ash pit. Mixed with lard and soaproot, the ashes would be used to wash clothes in the stream—which reminded Dindi of the chores she should not have let the fae do for her. Nearby were quern stones for milling corn.

Beyond the querns was a deep, cool pit for storing jugs of milk and water. The two walls extending from the cooking corner were lined with shelves above and jars below. The shelves were crammed with spices, cheeses, dried fruit and tools knapped of chert. The rest of the chamber was given over to a broad clay platform at knee height, which served as an eating-place. As a tot, she’d danced there, pretending to be a Tavaedi, earning laughter and cheers from her family. She’d never stopped dancing; they’d stopped cheering. By the time she was five, the same aunties who had praised her grace and dedication complained of her clumsiness and laziness. Little girls should keep the platform white washed, and cover it with fresh reed mats, not dance there.

The members of the clan had seated themselves in a rough rectangle around the edge of the platform, smallest children on laps. Hands passed back and forth the communal bowls of food. The clay bowls and platters held flat triangular bread, bean mash, goat cheese melted to a gooey sauce and bowls of crushed chili peppers and lemon juice to be added for flavor. Family members used their hands to make pishas by wrapping the beans and cheese in the bread. The warriors sat nearest the door, the maidens nearest the ovens. Great Aunt Sullana and Mama and the other aunts sat against the wall, the matriarchs an isle of dignified manners amidst the chaos. Only matriarchs knew the secret of eating pishas full of melted cheese without getting sticky fingers.

Zavaedi Abiono, the leader of the Tavaedi troop, sat in the place of honor, between the warriors and the aunties. He nodded to Dindi. Her heart drummed faster.

“Why, here’s Lost Swan Clan’s very own lost cygnet!” cried Papa. He was a big, wry man with a spreading belly. Papa and Uncle Lubo led the others in cheers and whistles. Dindi blushed.

“There you are at last, girl,” said Great Aunt Sullana. “Your hair looks as though beavers had abandoned a dam there. Your face is smudged. Did you spend the morning rolling in dust? Never mind, Zavaedi Abiono is doing us the great honor of a visit. Comb your hair and wash your face before you join us. This is a kitchen, not a den of bears.”

Flustered, Dindi took her basket of soap to where deep clay pots had been sunk as a cistern in the earth. This was the darkest corner of the kitchen, smelling of dirt hardened with aurochs dung and the memory of pools in ancient caverns. A single Blue nixie floated on his back in the depths of one of the jugs. He winked up at Dindi. Puddlepaws extended a tiny paw to reach him and almost fell in the water.

She took out a lump of soap, splashed water on her face and rubbed up a quick lather. The soap did not lather well, but rather than struggle with it, she rinsed her face again, dragged her fingers through her wild hair and hurried to the platform where everyone else sat.

She shoved herself between her female cousins, Jensi and Tibi. Dindi peeked curiously at Aunt Sullana, at Zavaedi Abiono, at Mama, at Papa, hoping for a clue to the real reason behind their visitor’s purpose.

They stared back at her in amazement.

“Yes, I can see why you were asking about Dindi,” Papa said to Zavaedi Abiono.

“Oh, Dindi,” sighed her mother.

Uncle Lubo slapped his thigh and bellowed with laughter. In minutes, the whole clan joined him.

“For mercy’s sake, girl,” said Great Aunt Sullana. “Did you smear your face with blueberries?”

Dindi’s hands flew to her face. It did feel sticky…. Horrified, she glanced back at the pile of soap lumps she had left by the cistern’s lip. The lumps were blue.

Blue soap.

Blueberry soap.

The fae had mixed the blueberries, not the soaproot, with the ashes and lard.

Oh, mercy. Her whole face must be stained with the indelible juice.

“Because you don’t know her well, you may think Dindi’s just a little strange,” Papa said to Zavaedi Abiono. “Once you get to know her better, you’ll realize that’s not true. She’s extremely strange.”

Uncle Lubo’s renewed peals of laughter reverberated around the smoky kitchen.

“Enough,” said Great Aunt Sullana. It was a decree. The guffaws of the uncles subsided to an echo of snickers and snorts from the younger cousins. “Where have you been, Dindi? Hadi says you ran off without him despite my express wishes.”

Dindi shot Hadi the wounded look of one betrayed. He shoved a pisha into his mouth and shrugged.

“Seven and seven times and seven times more,” said Great Aunt in a voice wheezing with age, “I have warned you and warned you about going off on your own. Didn’t I just say that strangers have been spotted in the woods? What if some outtribesman had seen you alone and made off with you!”

“Well,” said Papa, “You’ve been wondering how we’d get Dindi married off.”

“I said I wanted her married off, not carried off. Elli, can’t you put a leash on this man’s tongue?”

“If I had married a goat, I could leash him,” Mama said.

“Instead you had to marry a boar.”

Papa just laughed.

Great Aunt Sullana turned to Zavaedi Abiono. “You see what I have to put up with, Zavaedi.”

Zavaedi Abiono glanced at Dindi, at her sticky blue face. He emitted a non-committal cough. She wanted to die.

“I gave up on taking that wild child in hand long ago,” went on Great Aunt Sullana. “If her mother won’t do it, I can’t. And her mother won’t. Will you, Elli?”

“She’s still just a child, Aunt Sullana,” Mama said.

“Not for much longer,” said Great Aunt Sullana.

The adults’ conversation moved on, finally and thankfully, but beside Dindi, Jensi and Tibi began whispering.

“Dindi, before you arrived, Abiono was asking what year you were born,” said Tibi. “He asked about Hadi and Jensi too. Do you think there’s going to be an Initiation?

“Of course that’s what it means, you squirrel brain,” said Jensi impatiently. “It’s finally here. Finally. You’re lucky, Dindi. It came early for you. It came late for me. Just think, Dindi, a year from now, we can start to pick a husband! And after that, you know what comes next. Babies!”

“Ugh,” said Dindi. “I can do without either, thanks much. What would I want with babies and a husband? They just give you a lot of cooking and cleaning to do. I’d rather dance.”

“Well, you can’t dance without magic,” said Jensi.

“I hope you’re not as stupid as Mad Maba,” said Tibi. “Someone told me that she wanted to be a Tavaedi so badly that when they told her she wasn’t worthy, she--”

“Kemla told you that,” said Jensi.

“What if she did?”

Across the room, Hadi and the other boys were apparently having a similar conversation, and reached a similar conclusion, for he suddenly burst out very loudly, his mouth still half full, “Is that why Zavaedi Abiono is here? Is it time for the Initiation?”

This overly loud question silenced the room, and Hadi turned bright red.

All the adults in the room found someplace else to look, except Great Aunt Sullana who withered Hadi where he sat with a hard stare.

“Not my place to ask,” he mumbled. “My apologies, Zavaedi.”

Zavaedi Abiono nodded. He glanced again at Dindi, coughed again, and toyed with his pisha thoughtfully without taking a single bite. A small furry creature, Puddlepaws, noticed the undefended lunch and lowered himself into a crouch to sneak up on the pisha.

That kitten loved cheese.

“So, Zavaedi Abiono,” said Great Aunt Sullana, affecting a tone of innocent interest that fooled no one, “If an individual were not invited to join the Tavaedis, the best thing for her to do would be to marry a nice young man, give him her fields to plow, bear him children, all in all, settle down to a quiet, responsible life?”

“Er, yes, I suppose.”

“You have two nephews on the verge of manhood, don’t you? Tamio is too handsome for the likes of Dindi, but sturdy Yodigo will make a fine farmer one day.”

“Well...”

“For mercy’s sake, let the man eat, Sullana,” Uncle Lubo said. “Here, Zavaedi, would you like some blueberry juice? Dindi made it this morning.”

“Why, thank you…”

Dindi looked up in horror. But before she could compose a proper warning, Abiono lifted the jug to his mouth.

She covered her face with her hands, but she could still see the disaster unfolding on the other side of her fingers as Abiono sipped from the jug of soap juice. His face scrunched up and his mouth opened into a rictus of gastronomic distress. He spit out a spray of sudsy liquid.

Great Aunt Sullana cleared her throat to warn him that not even a Zavaedi would be permitted to behave rudely while dining.

“Urghrem,” Abiono said, manfully wiping his chin. “Quite delicious, I thank you. Er, Dindi made that, you say?” He glanced at Dindi before he set down the jug and reached for his pisha, now wrapped in kitten. He pried Puddlepaws off his food, which prompted the kitten to tackle his finger. “I thank you so much for the wonderful meal, Dame Sullana. I fear I must take my leave now, however, as I must also visit Full Basket clandhold before the sun sets.”

Is there anything else I could do to convince Abiono not to invite me to become a Tavaedi? Dindi despaired while the rest of the clan fussed over Abiono’s departure. My life is a colossal joke that’s funny to everyone but me. Uncle Lobo was still chortling.

Once the guest was gone, taking the excitement with him, a general exodus out of the kitchen followed. One by one the others finished, burped and left, until only Dindi and her mother remained. The kitchen was very hollow and empty without three dozen bodies filling it with life. The smell of farmers’ sweat lingered, mixed with spicy food aromas and smoke from the burning dung.

Dindi sniffled.

“Lady of Mercy,” said Mama under her breath. Muttering to herself, she went to the oven, where she placed a dollop of bean mash from a storage pot onto a piece of flat bread. She laid cheese on top, and folded over the three corners of the bread. She placed it on the pottery bread shovel and pushed it into the oven, which was kept stoked all day. When she decided that the pisha was crisped to her satisfaction, she pressed it into Dindi’s hands. “Eat, eat.”

Dindi pushed it away. She hid her blue face against her drawn up knees.

“You behave like a child,” Mama said. She lifted Dindi’s chin. “But you’re twice seven years, now, sweetling, and past your moonblood. If you lay with a man, he could make you a mother.”

“I know I’m a burden to everyone around me. I try to do what’s right, but everything I weave gets tangled.”

“There is still a chance you will be chosen.”

“Great Aunt Sullana obviously doesn’t think so.”

“What does she know?”

“Maybe something I don’t,” said Dindi. She lifted her head just enough to peer at her mother through tear dewed eyelashes. “You weren’t chosen.”

Mama stilled. “No. I wasn’t.”

“But you could have been the best dancer of your generation. Everyone thought so. Then, one day, instead of choosing you to dance magic, they told you could never dance, ever.”

“It…wasn’t as bad as all that,” Mama said. “By then, I had your father. Soon I was trying hard to have a child. Sometimes you have to let a dream die.”

“I just want to dance.”

“Oh, Dindi.” Mama put down the pisha. “If you won’t eat, at least let me clean you up.”

She went to the shelves in the corner. There she fiddled with various jars, until she returned with noxious, sharp smelling goo on a rabbit skin cloth.

“Come here, my little blueberry face,” she said, taking Dindi by the chin. Mama wiped the ick on Dindi’s cheeks and scrubbed. Hard.

“Ow!”

“Stop wiggling.”

“Are you washing me or flaying me?”

“If you prefer, we can just rub blue soap over the rest of you, so at least you’ll match.”

“Mmmrrff,” said Dindi, while her mother wiped the cloth over her mouth.

“My mother loved dancing too,” Mama said. An old hurt quivered in her words. “She loved it more than me. Shortly after I was born, she abandoned me to dance with the fae. They caught her in a faery circle and she danced herself to death. Her sister had to raise me in her place. That’s why your great aunt worries so over you.” She lifted Dindi’s chin and inspected her face for any trace of blueberry. Apparently she found none. “I understand you love to dance. I do, Dindi. You cannot know how well I understand.” She stroked Dindi’s cheek. ”But I would never choose dancing over you.”

“Why can’t I have both?”

Mama was silent a moment. “My mother used to sing me a song. The night before she left me forever, when I was still just a tiny child, she told me it was part of an ancient tama, and if only she could dance that tama, to the end, she would never have to leave me. She didn’t know how the song ended, so she hadn’t performed the tama correctly during Initiation, but she never gave up trying. She thought the fae could help her learn it…. I was too young to understand that she was really saying goodbye. The unfinished song began like this:

Came a faery cross some kits

Suckling at their mother’s tits,

Pawing, kneading with their mits;

Ma, content to laze

‘neath these tiny, mewling bits

Hid in a row of maize.

Cat and kittens were all a-purr.

Their mama licked and cleaned their fur.

Cat met the faery’s eyes, demure,

And yet with pride ablaze.

Strange the mood that crept on her,

She watched them in amaze.

To her came her darkest sister,

Put her arms about her, kissed her

Drew her to her in the middle

Of the twisted ways,

Whispered in her ear this riddle:

‘Chose the Windwheel or the Maize!’

Chills whispered down Dindi’s spine. A reverberating hum of the song echoed in the room for a few seconds after Mama finished signing.

Mama expelled a heavy breath. “Over the years, I have asked everyone I know about that song. No one knows it. A long time ago, a Green Woods tribeswoman, fleeing the Whistlers who ruled the Rainbow Labyrinth tribehold in those days, told me that perhaps the Zavaedi with the Singing Bow would know the tune. But the Green Woods tribesfolk have retreated to the Hidden Forest.” She shrugged. “Perhaps all our worries are wasted. I truly hope you will be chosen to become a Tavaedi. And if not….”

“I’m sorry, Mama,” said Dindi. Her jaw hurt, so hard did she clench it. “I think I’m more like Gramma Maba than like you.”

Mama touched her cheek.

“Eat,” she said. “Eat, already.”

That night, Dindi was kidnapped.

You never forget the night they come for you.

Shuffling in the dark, followed by silence. You wake up with your heart already racing. Intrusive smells, chalk paste and feathers. Sweat. Beer. Heavy male breathing.

Their aim is to terrify you, disorient you, and they succeed. Grotesque heads loom over you, claw-like hands grasp you, yank you to the hay-strewn dirt in the goat pen under the loft. More hands smother your scream.

Their aim is to strip you of dignity, of comfort, and they do this literally. Horrible things, uglier and taller than men, surround you. They shove you from one to another, casual but brutal, tear off your clothes, smack your bare flesh, gag you and snag your wrists behind your back with scratchy twine. Beside you, your clan sister Jensi suffers the same abuse. Tibi cowers in a corner of the goat pen, but the kidnappers ignore her.

They herd you into the courtyard. Whitewashed adobe reflects the moonlight like bone. Night leaches color from the intricate designs painted on the houses, so the buildings look strangled by black nooses.

Firelight winks on a dozen naked captives, all in a line, a snake winding around the houses, preyed on by monsters. For a moment, you think the monsters are fae, some hideous sort, trolls or harpies, but fae do not carry torches or cast shadows. Fae glow with their own light. The kidnappers must be men in masks and mantas. As the enemy Tavaedi warriors shuffle and cavort, deformed shadows spring up to dance beneath and between them.

Their aim is to crush you, to grind you down like corn meal. They steal your senses one by one. You’ve already been gagged so tightly you find it hard to breath. Now they blindfold you. Have you ever had black cloth wrapped so tightly you can’t see a torch held right next to your face? No, you’ve only played at it, in children’s games. Real blindness, forced blindness, petrifies you. They shove a hollowed tree drum over your head, then pound it, assaulting your ears. Your hearing and balance, gone. A heavy basket, a mountain of stones, is forced onto your back. Your knees buckle under you, you want to collapse and cry, but you can’t afford weakness. A switch against your thighs drives you forward.

You hate the switch, the ropes, their rough hands, yet, in your helplessness, you crave even the touch of these things to guide you, assure you the rest of the world is there, that you aren’t lost alone blind and deaf in the dark.

Their aim is to keep you so exhausted, so helpless, you can’t think beyond surviving the next step, and the next after that. They never let you rest, they hit and curse and threaten you. They force-march you down a narrow trail through bushes and trees that slap you. Occasionally, you trip, slip, bump against another captive tied in the line, and this brief rub of flesh on flesh reassures you that you aren’t alone, but also makes you want to rage and weep because it reminds you the enemy has captured your cousins, your friends.

A strange thing happens. You’re terrified, disoriented, humiliated, helpless, panting with exhaustion, focused on trying to place one foot at a time while avoiding the switch. You’re also angry. As your hearing and sense of balance returns, your anger creeps up on you, growing fiercer, until it strangles your fear.

Despite the enemy’s precautions, your woodcraft whispers certain secrets. The brush of the air on your skin, the texture and tilt of the ground, these tell you you’re heading west, toward the ocean. You know you will be sold as a sacrificial slave, a mariah, as soon as they leave the boarders of your clan and tribe, too far away for your kin to find or avenge you. Obedience doesn’t bake well in your oven; you’re certain you wouldn’t last long as a slave. They warn you they will kill you if you don’t do what they want, that your life is worth less to them than a fistful of seed. They call you wormbait, carrion.

Their aim is to make you think you are going to die, and they succeed.

So you have nothing left to lose.

Chapter Two

Rover

Kavio

Kavio stood on the balcony of his father’s house, back in the shadows, and the mob hadn’t seen him yet. That couldn’t last.

The mob filled the dusty streets between the blocks of adobe houses. Torches waved like luminous war banners. The throng had been gathering every evening for days before the trial, shouting for blood. Wild fae whirled around them, vicious little Red and Orange imps, unseen by most of the people in the crowd.

“Death to Kavio! Death to Kavio!” the people shouted.

Kavio inhaled the dry summer night. The decree of the Society of Societies might have been commuted to exile, but he still had to get out of the tribehold alive. Now that he faced a mob ready to rend him limb from limb, he found he preferred life in exile to death after all.

Father, still in his face paint and dance regalia, went to the edge of the balcony. Like the kiva, the adobe house had been painted white and the mud walls of the balcony rose organically out of the lower story of the house. For defensive purposes, none of the houses in the tribehold had doors on the first story. Ladders allowed access between the balcony and the street.

Father held up his arms to silence the crowd. It took some time to still their chanting.

“Your cries have been heard. Justice is served!” he shouted. “Kavio has been judged guilty. He will be exiled!”

This appeased few in the mob.

“In the Bone Whistler’s day he would have been stoned!” someone shouted.

Thunderous rage contorted Father’s face, but he never lost his self-control. “The Bone Whistler is dead and so are his ways. The judgment is exile.”

“Of course the mighty Imorvae War Chief spares his own son!” someone else shouted.

Father’s knuckles whitened on the ledge of the balcony, but his pride would not let him stoop to correct the accusation.

“Let Kavio begin his exile, here, now!” cried another voice. “We’ll see how long it lasts!”

Ugly laughter rippled through the crowd.

“Lower the ladder,” Father said to the Tavaedi warriors who still guarded Kavio.

Even the guards looked dubious. “The crowd will rip him apart as soon as he’s down the ladder.”

“Lower the ladder,” repeated Father.

Kavio might have expected Mother to object to this, but she had not accompanied Kavio and Father back to their house from the kiva. In her typical way, she had disappeared without a word of goodbye. I guess she hasn’t forgiven me for turning down her offer.

The warriors lowered the ladder to the street. The crowd began to cheer. Someone took up the chant again.

“Death to Kavio! Death to Kavio!”

He knew his cue when he heard it, Kavio thought sardonically. He stepped forward into the torchlight and the sight of the mob. Another roar went up in the mob, and so many people tried to press close to the ladder that it almost fell into the street. One of the men pushed back the others, shouting, “Let him come down first, if he dares!”

“That’s my invitation, I believe,” he said to Father, grasping the ladder.

“If new evidence or new witnesses step forward to exonerate you,” Father said, “You could resume all your duties as a Zavaedi in the Labyrinth. Is there anything you want to tell me, Kavio, which you didn’t want to say at the trial?”

Kavio thought of Zumo, and what he might have said, did his cousin not share Auntie Ugly’s unreasoning hatred of everything Kavio was. The chances that Zumo would change his testimony seemed slight. To say the least.

“Goodbye, Father.”

He swung his legs around and descended the ladder into the waiting crowd.

They didn’t even let him climb down the ladder, but shook it and pushed it over. He flipped in the air as he fell and landed on his feet, but at once, enraged men and women assaulted him from all sides, some with their hands and feet, some with rocks and sticks. The sheer volume of kicks, sticks, punches, pinches and pummels drove him to the dust in a heap of bruised flesh.

And he thought he had been ready to die. He fought for every last breath, made them pay for every blow with two blows back of his own, but still they were winning, they were going to beat him to death right under his own balcony, as Father watched impassively from above.

A strong arm clasped and dragged Kavio back to his feet. He could breathe again.

“The judgment was exile!” his helper shouted at the crowd. “You will not commit murder tonight!”

Blood dribbled into his eyes, so it took Kavio several blinks to realize who had saved him.

“Zumo,” he said hoarsely. His mouth tasted of blood and dust.

“I’ll escort you out of the tribehold, cousin,” Zumo said evenly. He snapped his fingers. Several other Tavaedis, all Zumo’s hangers-on, formed a defensive square around Kavio and Zumo.

The crowd jeered at Kavio as they passed, and a few of the braver ones hurled rocks or mud at him. He felt the shame of his nakedness strongly, not because of the attire itself, but because of the ashes smeared over his chest and thighs. He tried to hold his head up proudly rather than hunch over and shield himself from the taunting mob. He wondered which was worse, to need the protection of his enemy to walk the streets of the tribehold, or to wonder at its price.

“I thought you cast your stone on the black mat. Why are you suddenly so eager to keep me alive now when you wanted me dead this afternoon?”

“Ah, the stone. Mother suggested it would look more believable. But the fact is, I’ve got what I wanted,” Zumo said.

Kavio pressed his lips together.

“This doesn’t have to be forever, Kavio.”

“What?”

Zumo gestured to Kavio’s bloody, ash-smeared body. “This. Your exile.”

“That’s not the judgment I heard.”

“There is a way that an exile may be allowed to return—if he is pardoned by a War Chief or a Vaedi. Your father can never pardon you, because his impartiality would be called into question. But I could.”

“You?”

“After your father steps down, a new War Chief will have to be appointed,” Zumo went on. “It would have been you before. Now it will be me.”

Kavio felt sick. “Congratulations.”

They had arrived at the large wooden gates at the entrance of the tribehold. There were too many warriors on guard at the gate for the mob to follow. Muttering, the crowd dispersed.

“If you would agree to serve me loyally, I would let you back into the Labyrinth as a Zavaedi again,” Zumo said. He sounded as though he thought he was truly doing Kavio a favor. “I mean it.”

Kavio laughed. He looked his cousin up and down in contempt. “Never forget, I know what you really are, Zumo.”

Hatred boiled in Zumo’s face. And fear. “No one would believe you.”

“Don’t worry.” Kavio’s lips twitched in a self-mocking smile. “I know that. That’s not the point. The point is, I know what you are. And I would rather live in exile the rest of my days than serve a man who lives a lie every day of his life.”

“Be careful, Kavio. Death might still find you.”

“It finds us all in the end, doesn’t it? Goodbye Zumo.”

Outside the Rainbow Labyrinth tribehold, no mobs harassed him and no enemies taunted him. Fields that smelled of sweet maize surrounded him. The tribehold stood on a mesa in a large box canyon cut by a river. Irrigation ditches and low stone walls divvied up the fields. The sparkle of willawisps blinked on and off against the night sky. He decided he would walk as far as he could by dawn before he stopped to consider camping. He had no sleeping roll, no pack, no water gourd, not even a weapon.

When the moon rose, he started to scan the valley for the journey omen. He admitted he was vain enough to hope for something noble, a nighthawk or a cougar, but no living creature crossed his path. All he found was the shed skin of a snow snake, luminous white, perfectly intact and as long as his arm. Snow snakes were rare creatures, which lived high in the mountains, but once a year they shed their white skins for jet black scales and descended by the hundreds to mate in the hot desert valleys. A poor omen, he decided. Even after he found the skin, he kept an eye out for a cougar.

He had walked most of the night when he heard footsteps paralleling his. He tensed.

Mother stepped out from the rows of maize. She seemed to glow white in the moonlight. He felt absurdly glad to see her, surprised yet not surprised to find her out here, just where the tilled fields gave way to wild forest. He quickened his step to join her, but when he saw her face, full of pain, he stopped short of embracing her.

She had not forgiven him. Aching inside, he mulled her painful words to him during their fight. You can’t even do this one thing for me.

He remembered reaching toddler-chubby arms up to her, commanding, “Fly with me!” She would sweep him up, as her wings spread behind her, until they rode the wind. Father hated those flights; Mother and Father always fought about it afterward. To stop the yelling, Kavio had learned to stop asking her to fly.

When he’d been seven years old, she’d sewn him his first dance costume, the most wondrous thing he’d ever seen, of spider silk and parrot feathers, cowrie shells and rainbow stitches. He’d ripped it up in front of her. She’d never sewn him another one.

Little by little, over the years, he had pushed her further from him. It was the price he’d paid to please his father.

He wanted to say: I’m sorry. To say: I love you.

He wanted to say: Fly with me.

Instead, his words tumbled out like stones on a slippery mountain trail, hard and impatient. “Just before the trial, you said you wanted me to look for the Vaedi, that humankind would perish if I didn’t. I can go now.”

Mother’s chalcedony bracelets chimed when she shrugged. “I don’t remember saying that.”

“This quest was supposedly so important you told me it was worth dishonoring myself to flee in secret rather than attend my trial. You don’t remember?”

“I thought they would execute you.” The scent of ripening corn wafted from the fields. Mother’s nose wrinkled slightly in distaste. She’d never liked corn, something she’d only eaten after she married Father. “I must have concocted wild things to save you.”

Why had he thought otherwise? She would never change.

“This is the last time I’ll see you, Mother.” He was proud of his straight back. He would not let himself scratch the dried mud that caked his body, though it itched like crawling flies.

She ruined the solemn moment by crying. He let her hug him and weep into his chest. He patted her shoulder. He realized he had been looking forward to her quest, to give him purpose in his exile. In his mind, he tore up the idea of finding the Vaedi, and all the other crazy things his mother had urged him, all lies, all spider-silk and parrot feathers.

As he walked away, the mud didn’t itch as badly. Her fierce hug had rubbed away most of the dust cake, leaving behind only a stain.

Rthan

Rthan surveyed the damage to his water spell. Weeks of fasting, planning, traveling and dancing, ruined. The careful crystalline lines he had built up around the mountain snows had been realigned, diverted. His original configuration would have unleashed a flood of snowmelt several months from now, with spring’s kiss. No longer. The new glowing blue lines of magic would sluice the melt water harmlessly down a dozen smaller arroyos, instead of toward the enemy settlement in the main valley below the mountain. Someone had protected the Rainbow Labyrinth tribehold.

“Who could have done this?” he asked aloud.

The other six men and women with him only mirrored back to him his own bafflement and bemusement. They shivered and wheezed in the snow, not used to either the temperature or the altitude. He knew they were wondering if he would order them to stay the long weeks required to dance the entire spell again.

He wasn’t really speaking to the little girl at his side. Nonetheless, she looked up at him with large, grave eyes.

“Kavio the Rain Dancer,” she said. She had joined him almost unnoticed.

Meira. His daughter, his only child, was only eight, but already she promised to be a classic beauty. Her long, straight black hair was knotted by strings of pearls in twists that reached her ankles. Her tiny face was a perfect moon, her mouth an adorable pink shell, and her eyes deep tide pools reflecting the shades of the ocean and the sky. People said she looked like him, but miniaturized and refined. He was a bulky, tattooed tower of muscle, with his long hair disciplined into a top tail of tiny braids to mark his kills. She was an adorable pixie doll.

Meira. His daughter, his only child, had died six years ago. He knew this, knew the person at his side wasn’t really Meira, and yet, he couldn’t stop the love and pain he felt every time he looked at her, glowing faintly blue by his side.

The six with him were all Blue Tavaedies, and they could see her, not as Meira, but as an azure radiance too brilliant to bear. They knew he sometimes called her by his dead daughter’s name, and because of that and because her power frightened them, her presence spooked them. They backed away now, shielding their eyes.

“Should we break camp?” asked Rthan’s second in command, Dorthamo. The man’s gaze slipped past the shimmering blue girl, back toward the lean-tos and campfire along the shore of the frozen tarn. “If we don’t leave now, we won’t have time to do the primary hex.”

“If we hex the Yellow Bear tribehold, but leave their allies unmolested, their allies will still be free to come to their aide during the attack,” Rthan said.

Dorthamo’s face sagged. “Yes…”

“But if we stay longer, the pass will freeze over and we won’t be able to return at all,” Rthan said. “We must break camp. We must cast the primary hex. Or call off the venture entirely.”

“I don’t think the War Chief would agree to canceling.”

“Neither do I,” said Rthan. He waved. “Go ahead. Break camp. I need a moment to speak to…”

“Her?” Dorthamo still wouldn’t look at Meira.

Rthan nodded.

Dorthamo swallowed hard. “Is she angry?”

Afraid to hear the answer, he scuttled away before Rthan could reply. The others hastened after him, and began to disassemble the hide tents.

The little blue girl slipped her hand into Rthan’s, just as his daughter had so many times.

“I’m not mad at you, Daddy,” she said.

“Don’t call me that. I can’t…” He pulled his hand away. “You said Kavio the Rain Dancer did this. Then the Rainbow Labyrinth must know of our spell. They will try to retaliate.”

“No.” A breeze lifted strands of her hair to play in a chilly wind. Dark, inhuman power shone from her eyes, belying the innocence of her child’s face. “They are fools. As for Kavio....”

She smiled at him, but it wasn’t the smile of a mortal child. The coldness of glaciers and the ruthlessness of typhoons glinted in that cruel smile. He shivered. He loved her. She was all he had, since the murder of his family. He had to admit, though, she terrified him even more than she frightened the others. He knew her better.

Kavio

Three days out from the tribehold, Kavio found his first fight. Rovers, men who had left their birth clan, but not yet married into a new allegiance, often traveled together in packs, like wild dogs, and like dogs, they hunted. Sometimes for need, sometimes for pleasure.

Three dropped onto the path in front of Kavio. One was missing his nose and ears, which meant he was probably a mariah, a captive destined for human sacrifice, who had escaped in the middle of his torture. The other two were undoubtedly exiles like Kavio, judging by the whip marks on their backs, though they did not wear their mud and ashes, and he assumed had no compunction against carrying out more of the crimes which had won them expulsion.

To his surprise, the rovers didn’t attack. They invited him back to their campfire. Shrugging, he accepted—was he any better than they? He found their lack of either resentment or awe oddly refreshing.

“Do you know who I am?” Kavio couldn’t help but ask them.

The noseless, earless one grinned. “I don’t care, Exile. Don’t you understand? This is your chance to escape who you are, become who you want.”

In their camp, they had a captive, some toothless old man, whom they’d tied to a tree. Taking turns, each rover sliced a piece of flesh off the old man’s thigh, ignoring his piteous howls, then tossed the meat on a rock in the fire and ate it.

“We eat first,” the leader, the earless one said, “Then we dance and invite the fae to eat the rest. Who says you have to be a Tavaedi to dance? The fae don’t care who serves them, or how well you dance, only that you do.”

None of the three had magic in their auras, save for a few wild, random glimmers born of strong hates and brooding envies, but—and this was kept secret for this very reason—fierce emotion alone could do damage if combined with dancing, especially if the fae were involved, never mind blood sacrifice and dark bargains. When my Father looks at me, thought Kavio, is it these men he sees?

“So you’re hexers,” Kavio said, “as well as cannibals?”

The two exiles kept chewing. Their noseless, earless leader stopped.

“You’re not going to join us, are you?”

Kavio smiled apologetically. “No. I’m going to free the old man. You’re going to try to stop me. Then I’m going to kill you.”

The leader hefted his spear, which spurred his companions to do the same, but Kavio was already moving. Weaponless, it took him several minutes and cost him an ugly punch to the ear to kill all three rovers. He untied the old man and asked if his clanhold was far. The old man scrambled away, too terrified to answer. Pursuit seemed more likely to scare than help him.

He couldn’t desecrate the dead, even bandits, so he searched near the main path until he found a smaller path which paralleled it, a trail marked as Deathsworn by a black megalith capped by a skull.

To trod the path of the Deathsworn was to join them, or join the dead, and they in turn, were forbidden to taint the paths of ordinary men. The Deathsworn were neither fae nor exactly human, though they had once been human. The fae couldn’t see them. The Deathsworn recruited from all tribes and belonged to none. They were not allowed to involve themselves in tribal wars or clan politics. They performed a gruesome job, and most people loathed and shunned them, but everyone needed them.

He left the bodies beneath the skull stone. After a slight hesitation, he relieved one corpse of legwals and a spear.

The legwals stank of sour milk and blood, a stench that reminded him of the first time he’d killed a man. Though Kavio had only been ten, not yet past Initiation into manhood, he’d already been Tested and proved a Tavaedi. During the fight, he’d been so sacred he pissed himself, and because of that so embarrassed, he hadn’t told Father what happened. His stupid fear, his stupid pride, had almost started a war.

Was this the meaning of his journey omen? He’d spent his whole life trapped in the literal and political mazes of the Rainbow Labyrinth tribehold. This was his chance to shed those restrictions, grow himself anew. He didn’t want to be his father’s shadow, or his mother’s reflection, but neither did he care to be a rover. If he remade himself, he wanted to become more than he had been, not less.

Sheer cliffs lay directly west, so he took the gentler eastern path from the box canyon then circled back into the mountains. A generation ago, many thriving clanholds had nestled in the arroyos and cliffs of these mountains. Eagles nested in the thatch bomas where warriors had once stood guard. Whole clans had bequeathed nothing to the future but their bones. His father would not say how he had survived those years; that generation hoarded food and secrets, but Kavio knew more than his father suspected. It was in the West, in Yellow Bear, Kavio had learned his father was not the hero he’d always believed.

At times, he felt sure someone followed him. He went so far as to double back on his tracks, in case the rovers had friends. He saw no one.

At a major crossroads in the trail, however, a crowd of men and women waited. He growled to himself. He’d sharpened the stone point on the spear he’d won from the rovers, but if it came to real battle, he wasn’t properly armed.

This lot looked more deadly than the rovers. For one thing, he knew them and many of them were Tavaedies. It stung to realize that many of those standing there to confront him were young men and women of his own generation whom he had considered friends. Even Nilo, the son of Danumoru and Shula.

Kavio refused to show how they had hurt him. Weakness must be concealed; he’d learned that much from his father.

“Well?” he challenged.

“We want to come with you.”

This, he hadn’t expected. “Are you mad?”

“If the Morvae are going to start exiling Imorvae again, we want to be with you,” Nilo said. “If the blooded spear is to come, we’re going to be on your side.”

The others grunted agreement.

“Don’t be fools. There must be no blooded spear, no war. It would rip the tribe apart.”

“So you’re just going to accept being smoked out of the Labyrinth like a rat?” cried Nilo. “You’re just going to let Zumo win? You know that none of us will ever follow him as War Chief!”

“It’s too early to say it will come to that.”

“His blood flows from the Bone Whistler, and so do his ambitions. He’s already got you out of the way!” said Nilo. “With the White Lady under the Curse of Obsidian Mountain and your father growing older, and now you exiled—who else is there to stop him?”

“You going into exile with me won’t help,” said Kavio.

Nilo exchanged glances with some of the others. “It will—if we go to the Yellow Bear tribehold to raise an army against him. There are many of our people still living there who would follow us, who would follow you, Kavio. You could return in a year’s time with Tavaedies and warriors at your back! We could finally wipe out—”

“Enough!” said Kavio. He inhaled air past his clenched teeth to calm himself. “Enough, Nilo. You mustn’t talk like that. You mustn’t even think it. I will raise no army to march against my own tribehold. And I will take no one into an exile that I alone earned.”

“I guess we all knew you would say that.” Nilo shifted his feet. “That’s why we brought you journey gifts.” He held out his spear. “I want you to have this—no, don’t shake your head. You can’t refuse, it’s a journey gift. We took care to gather nothing from the Labyrinth itself, only outlying holds.”

One by one, each one of them pressed close to Kavio to give him gifts. Weapons, clothing, food, water, even jewelry. Overwhelmed, touched, Kavio could only murmur his thanks.

When his friends had dressed him and weighed him down with almost more than he could carry, they finally allowed him to say goodbye.

Nilo clasped his hand, then hugged him. He said in Kavio’s ear, “But you are going to the Yellow Bear tribehold, aren’t you, Kavio?”

“Perhaps.”

Nilo smiled, satisfied with that. “Whatever you do there, we will be waiting for you when you get back. We have no doubt you will be back. And then the blooded spear will be loosed, whether any of us like it or not.”

Kavio

Kavio camped alone, as before, in much greater comfort, but with even less peace of mind. Nilo and the others had meant to encourage him to come back to the Labyrinth. Instead, the disturbing conversation made Kavio wonder—if his return to the Labyrinth would ignite a civil war, maybe the best thing he could do would be to stay away. So much for the freedom of exile. His responsibilities trailed him like spies.

Perhaps actual spies trailed him as well. He again heard a rustle nearby, a subtle crackling in the leaves that made him tense. Maybe Nilo, or some other would-be ally, still wanted to follow him into exile. Or maybe some would-be enemy wanted to make certain he would never return.

Kavio climbed higher into the mountains. The peaks met like clapped hands to divide the rains of the world in half. All waters of the eastern fingers cascaded into a drought-dry landscape of sandstone phantasmagoria—stone rainbows, stone islands, stone waves, striated stone flavors of pepper and cayenne. All the waters to the other side flowed west, through terrain sweetened by late summer storms, down, gently down through valleys of oak and golden poppy, down, gently down to coastal forests and the sea.

In the mountains, however, autumn had already given way to winter, and he found the pass already thick with snow, where he sacrificed a night and a day to lay a trap. He had to choose his spot, plan his moves against possible countermoves, dance a spell without making it obvious to any hypothetical observers what he was doing. The crisp powder proved a convenient medium for false footprints. By the next nightfall, he was ready. He cast his prepared illusion around a log to make it look like his sleeping form, and then he doubled back over his trail, climbed a tree, and watched his own camp.

The moon rose with no sign of any intruder. Once he heard scritching in the tree where he waited and looked up into the stare of a snow snake, camouflaged like a fall of snow on the branch. Their venom was quite lethal, he recalled. He glared at it until it slithered away to find its own damn tree. He took this living echo of his journey omen as a sign he wasn’t just trying to catch an enemy who existed only in his paranoid imagination.

Then, close to midnight, he heard a twig snap below his tree.

Two masked Tavaedies crept into position, and, after exchanging a silent nod, rushed to hack apart the log he’d left in his sleeping roll. They cussed like drunks when they discovered they’d dulled their flint axes for no reason. In the dark, he couldn’t see their tribal marks, and might not have been able to guess in any case, since they both wore furs against the cold. He shadowed them back to their camp, a neat affair of two leather tents and seven canoes. The snow gave way to the ice-choked grasses of a frozen river. The ice was unbroken, and the grass tall enough to offer cover, so he followed cautiously, but something nagged him. Two men had attacked his sleeping roll, but there were seven boats.

Five more men cracked out of the ice in a circle around Kavio. Human, not fae. He couldn’t tell their tribe. Lathered with lard for warmth, camouflaged by mud and rushes, they were clumps of living marsh. They’d been crouching under a layer of ice no thicker than flatbread, breathing through reeds, waiting to spring their trap. Nets weighted with rocks dragged Kavio down while the men cudgeled his back. The blows brought agony without the solace of oblivion —the warriors knew their art, and steered their blows away from his head, aiming to hurt and subdue, not kill—yet. They tied his hands and feet, yanked his hair to expose his neck.

A mountain of muscle tattooed on both arms and both cheeks loomed over Kavio.

“The death blow is mine, blame or fame. You are all witness,” the leader barked at his men. They grunted back.

This man knows who I am. Unfortunately, their acquaintance was not mutual.

“I know why you plan to kill me,” Kavio announced. Bold lies worked best. “But just the opposite is true.”

The leader shot a beefy hand out to grip Kavio’s neck. “Don’t waste my time.”

“Let me prove it.”

“How?”

Good question. Kavio would bet his mother’s goat and toss bones the big man and his sept of disciplined warriors weren’t petty bandits. The big man fought for kin and glory, but whose? What was his rank? Too good to be a mere sept leader, too far in the wilderness to be a War Chief. A war leader, then.

“Take me to your War Chief and let him decide after he hears my proposal,” Kavio dared him.

“Why should I waste War Chief Nargono’s ears on your begging?”

Nargono was War Chief of the Blue Waters tribe, once an ally of Rainbow Labyrinth, now one of his father’s bitter foes. To be fair, his father had a knack for embittering foes.

“Did you know my own father once gave me as a slave to the War Chief of Yellow Bear?” Kavio asked. “Yellow Bear—are they friends of yours?”

The big man glared at him through narrowed eyes. Whatever he saw, it bought Kavio another day of life. “Dump him in the boat.”

“Gag him, Rthan?” asked a warrior.

Kavio trotted the name through his memory, but it didn’t sound familiar.

“No, I want him to talk.” Rthan unclenched Kavio’s throat one finger at a time.

Chapter Three

Doll

Brena

Before dawn, the clanhold of Sycamore Stands already throbbed with the sounds of women pounding nuts. The astringent smell of acorn drifted from the leeching ditches between the clay domed huts. Once Zavaedi Brena made certain her snoopy neighbor, Auntie Ula, was not following her, she urged her two daughters, Gwena and Gwenika, past the clanhold stockade, down the embankment, to a spot hidden by sycamore trees. They did this every morning, yet every morning Brena had to battle all over again to force them to move, as if it were the first time.

Gwena, the oldest, spent an inordinate amount of time combing her hair. On the way to the woods, she craned her neck to attract the attention of young men burning brush for gardens. Several of the hooligans smiled at her like idiots, until they saw Brena and hastened back to work.

Gwenika, younger by two years, started her whining earlier than usual. “Do I have to practice today?”

“Yes. You have to practice everyday.”

“But I’m feeling very dizzy this morning.”

“Hrmf.” Brena still smarted from her cousin Ula’s admonishments last night. For fifteen years Ula had failed to have children of her own, but she insisted on lecturing those who did. “You’re too soft on the girls, that’s why the little one is so lazy. A good mother wouldn’t put up with that.” In the next breath, Auntie Ula went on to say, “And why do you push those girls so hard? It isn’t natural for a mother to put so much pressure on her daughters to become Tavaedies. What’s wrong if they just want to be wives and mothers?”

Brena wanted to shake her. Well, which is it? Am I an unfit mother because I’m too soft on them or an unfit mother because I’m too hard on them? She already knew the answer. She couldn’t win either way. A woman, even a Zavaedi, had no business raising a family without a man, and Brena had made it clear to the whole clanhold years ago that one husband had left her bitter enough for a lifetime. The last thing she needed was another man in her life.

And if my girls become Tavaedies, they won’t be dependent on having a husband to tend their fields either. After her husband died, what would have been her lot if she had not been a member of the secret society, able to earn gifts from the community by her own skills? With one hungry babe toddling at her feet and a belly full of a babe to come…she shuddered at the memory. It had been hard enough as it was, returning to the troop after she’d quit to raise her family.

She checked the clearing again to assure they had privacy, then clapped her hands to retrieve her daughters’ errant attention. “Today, girls, I want to see you walk through the Badger and Deer Positions, in both the Still and Moving forms.”

“Yes, Mama,” they chimed. Warblers chirped overhead.

“Begin girls!” commanded Tavaedi Brena. “Deer Leaps, from Still to Moving.”

Gwena flawlessly performed the steps several times. Gwenika, however, slumped through the forms with limp arms. She kicked at the dry leaves on the ground, then bent to pick up one of the spiky sycamore balls that littered the dust of the clearing.

“Can we dance somewhere else? These keep poking my feet.”

“No,” said Brena. “This is the safest place. I don’t want anyone spying on us.”

“How can you expect me to dance with poked feet?”

“Gwenika.” Every day it was some new complaint. Maybe Auntie Ula is right. I must have done something wrong with this one.

“Besides, my head is spinning. I’m feeling dizzy again.”

“Gwenika, I’ve told you—”

“Also, I’m suffering from fatigue. And my heart is beating more rapidly than usual.”

“Your heart is supposed to be beating more rapidly. You’re exercising.”

“Yes, but my face is pale and my lips and fingertips are white. See?” Gwenika held out her hand. “I recognize the symptoms from your Healing stories. I think the fae have hexed me with Feeble Blood Lack. Can I sit down?”

Beside her, Gwena rolled her eyes.

“The fae have not hexed you,” said Brena. “No one has hexed you. You’re just not trying. Let’s start that again. Gwena, good job, but keep your toes pointed in the leap. Gwenika, your leap looked like a frog, not a doe. Copy your sister.”

“I’ve been bleeding in unspeakable places for no reason,” Gwenika said.

At that, Brena swiveled her head and focused the brunt of her attention on Gwenika. For the first time, she noticed her younger daughter’s slightly swelling chest and widening hips. Oh no. It’s too soon. Where have the years gone? Yesterday, you were still my baby. Today . . .

Half encouraged, half disconcerted, Gwenika said, “I think the bleeding is causing Feeble Blood Lack.”

“You might be right,” said Brena.

“I might?”

“You should sit down and just watch for a while.”

“So that means that the fae are hexing me?”

“No.” Brena pulled her hand through her hair. “It means that you, like your sister, have already had your first moonblood. It means I am running out of time to teach you everything I can before the Initiation.” She paced the clearing and gestured at the sycamore trees. “So little time left! These girls are still not ready!”

Or is it that I’m not ready for them to be ready?

“We’re trying to learn as fast as we can, Mama,” said Gwena.

“Aren’t we supposed to wait until Initiation to learn all the secret dances anyway?” Gwenika asked.

“Don’t let nonsense fall out of your mouth.” Brena scowled at what trouble Auntie Ula could cause if she had the idea that Brena was actually teaching the dances themselves. “I haven’t taught you any tama. I’ve taught you the basic steps, the hand gestures and the foot positions, the flips, the turns and the leaps. Believe me, without knowing those, you would never pass the Testing. And you also better believe that all Tavaedies teach their children these things. Why do you think that the honor of belonging to the secret society tends to stay in families?

“It isn’t forbidden for me to teach you what I do, as long as you’re still children. But once you are initiated, I will not be allowed to teach you any more. If you fail the Test, that’s it, that’s your last chance. Do you understand why it’s so important that you pay attention to everything I tell you now?”

“Yes, Mama,” both girls said in unison.

“Good.” Brena drew a deep breath. She put her hands on her hips. “Let’s begin again. Gwena, start with your feet in position—”

“But Mama!” said Gwenika.

With a toe tapping in annoyance, “Yes, Gwenika?”

“Gramma says that the best cure for anemia is eggs. Should I look for birds eggs?”

“Did nothing I said mean anything to you? You must practice, girl, practice!”

“But Mama, you said yourself, I’m sick…”

“Are you really going to go find eggs?”

“Of course.”

“Not just go play in the woods?”

“Mama.” Gwenika looked the model of wounded innocence.

“Fa! Go, then. Find eggs. Take them to your Gramma. I’m sure she’ll be glad to prepare them for you.” By mercy, she coddles you. Meanwhile, your sister will stay and practice. At least one of you will not fail her family honor. Go!”

Gwenika scrambled away.

No sooner had Gwenika departed, however, than a niggling suspicion began to plague Brena. “Stay here,” she told her oldest daughter Gwena. “Keep going over the Deer Leaps until I return.”

“Yes, Mama.”

It did not take Brena long to find her younger daughter. Gwenika was climbing a low leaning sycamore tree with fist-sized nest built on a horizontal limb thirty-five feet above the ground. Brena was surprised. Maybe she really is after eggs. She recognized the nest as that of a sycamore warbler. The interior of the nest would be lined with last year’s sycamore balls.

When the girls had been younger, Brena had walked with them in the woods, holding up a feather or a leaf, challenging them to guess the name of the bird or tree it belonged to. Brena’s own mother had used the same technique of those guessing games to pass on the shape of every bird, tree and herb in the woods.

Gwenika apparently hadn’t noticed her. The girl reached the nest. She reached into it—but not to remove something, to deposit something.

Eeeep.

Brena heard the tiny cry.

“There you are, little lost one,” Gwenika cooed. “Safe back at home.”

The eggs in that nest had already hatched, and one of the baby birds must have fallen out. Gwenika had helped one of the chicks back into the nest.

Brena shook her head. She’ll learn soon enough that good deeds are repaid with cruelty, sure as offering food to a wolf only leads to lost fingers. Nonetheless, she turned to leave without saying anything to her daughter. Brena didn’t have the heart to yell at her for saving the baby bird instead of practicing.

Suddenly, Gwenika screamed. Brena ran back to the tree.

An immense, shaggy blond bear, wounded by an arrow and nursing its bad paw, had crashed through the underbrush and now stood between Brena and her daughter.

Brena

Brena stared at the bear, torn between fear and awe. Her tribe used bear hides for rugs and hangings, for door curtains and room dividers, so she knew that bears were large, but she had never encountered one in person. Those lifeless skins hadn’t prepared her for the immensity of a live bear. As large as an aurochs bull, but with sharp teeth, the bear had thick honey colored fur that darkened to cinnamon around its haunches. Black ooze dripped from the arrow wound in its hind leg.

“Girls,” Brena said, “Walk until you are out of sight, then find your sister and run to the clanhold as fast as you can.”

“But Mama, what about you?”

“Go.”

For once, to her relief, Gwenika did as she was told and ran away through the woods.

Slung over her shoulder, Brena wore a bark fiber sack where she kept a number of useful things: herbs, a water skin, a rock-like lump of sugar, another of salt, various elixirs in stoppered jars no bigger than a finger.

“I’ve helped many wounded animals,” she said. She lowered her body to a crouch, with her arms at her sides, as unthreatening as she could make herself. “I can take out the arrow for you and staunch the bleeding.”

The bear shook its head, as if it understood her.

“I know what you are,” added Brena. “I know why you approached my daughters. But if you want help, you’ll have to come to me. I won’t let you subvert them with your faery wiles.”

“Stay away, human,” growled the bear. She had a low, but unmistakably feminine voice. “I’m not so weak yet that I can’t still kill you.”

Bears did not talk. Faeries did. “I knew it. You are a Brundorfae.”

The bear shuddered and tried to back away. Instead, she collapsed. Another spasm rippled through the beast’s body and she howled, in terrible pain.

“Let me help you,” said Brena. “I have herbs. Medicines.”

“I don’t want your damn help!” said the she-bear faery. Dry leaves crackled under her thrashing body.

“Then why did you approach us?”

“Didn’t think you could see me,” wheezed the bear. “Human young see us, but human olds mostly ignore us.”

“Well, this human ‘old’ sees right through you, faery bear,” said Brena. “I know why faeries prey on virgins. Once a woman has been screwed by a man, she’s not naïve enough to trust your ilk either.”

The bear made an odd snuffling sound. Almost like chuckles. At the end, however, the sound turned into another roar of pain, and the bear again twisted in a futile attempt to bat away the arrow.

“Are you going to let me help you or not?” asked Brena.

“No! I told you to leave me alone!”

Brena inched forward in small steps. Her heart was pounding so hard she was sure the bear could hear it. A bear was still a bear, and the fact that it was a faery bear only made the situation more dangerous. Once she reached the bear’s side, she knelt and examined the puncture. The bear writhed in pain, too weak to stop her.

Brena tried to remember everything her mother had taught her about war wounds. Beware the barb. The arrowhead will want to stay under the blanket of flesh to continue its misdeeds. “I’m going to have to cut it out. It will hurt, I’m sorry—”

“Just leave!” ordered the bear, showing her canines. “It’s poison, it will take your life.”

Brena took out a stone knife from her satchel. Though she worked as quickly as possible, the bear still shuddered in pain when she cut out the arrowhead. Brena forced herself not to flinch or pause.

The she-bear groaned.

The arrow, when it finally emerged whole, was black, both shaft and fletch, with no clan markings. The obsidian tip gleamed like a wicked smile. Brena took care not to touch it. She wrapped it in a leather oilskin.

The bear still bled, but the removal of the arrow restored her to greater strength. She was able to rise and shake out her fur. She stood up on her back legs, tall as a totem pole, towering over Brena. Her strange yellow eyes glittered with anger.

“I suppose you think you’ve earned my eternal gratitude and are now entitled to wish for wealth and love and luck and power.” The bear snorted in derision. “But you’ve only removed the weapon, you haven’t healed the wound. The wound cannot truly heal unless that arrow takes a human life. Will you kill someone for me?”

Brena stepped back. “I tried to help you, and you’re demanding a mariah?”

“You humans kill one another all the time,” the bear said. “You have two daughters. Do you really need both?”

“Stay away from them, faery!”

“You brought this on yourself,” snapped the bear. “I never asked for your help. I begged you to leave. The arrow demands death. An immortal can’t quench the arrow’s thirst. By taking it from my flesh, you’ve taken the responsibility of providing a human sacrifice. If you find a mariah for me, I will be fully healed. If you don’t, I will live in torment. I am at your mercy.”

“I won’t kill for you.”

“I will never force you to,” growled the bear. “I didn’t want to foist this choice on you. Despite what you think of the fae, we are not your real enemies. The wound is not mine alone. There is a wound in the world.”

A crow cawed. The bear shouldered her aside and lumbered away, unevenly, into the woods.

Dindi

Tamio recovered his wits most swiftly, in time to pull Dindi off the enemy.

“Dindi! Stop!” shouted Tamio. “That’s my mother’s brother Abiono!”

Dindi stopped struggling.

Coughing and huffing, the leader of the “enemy” Tavaedies removed his mask, revealing Abiono, Zavaedi of their own Tavaedi troop. The other Tavaedies removed their masks too, and all were men and women from the Corn Hills.

She saw now that the half-dozen Tavaedies and two dozen boys and girls stood on a forested cliff buff with a view of the sea on the far horizon. Pale morning light flooded a lovely expanse of land below them, meadows pimpled by artificial hills. Autumn tinted the fields and trees shades of citron and cinnamon. At the top of each man-made hill, a log stockade enclosed dome shaped houses. Cold tingles skipped down her back when she considered how close she had come to running off that cliff during her blind escape attempt.

“Abiono! Did you rescue us already?” Hadi asked. He rubbed his eyes.

“No, idiot,” Tamio said, giving Hadi a disgusted look. “Don’t you get it? The mock kidnapping is part of Initiation. Isn’t it, Uncle?”

“Yes.” Abiono winced as he adjusted his costume. “Learning to face fear is an important part of becoming an adult.”

A babble of questions and exclamations followed. Hadi kept repeating, “So we aren’t slaves?” as though he didn’t dare believe it yet. Jensi wanted to know if they could bathe now. Kemla declared, “Fa! I knew the truth all along. Your goat-headedness had better not have ruined our chance at Initiation, Dindi.”

Dindi burned with an all too familiar feeling of shame and frustration. How did she always mean to do right and still go so wrong? It didn’t seem fair she violated a taboo even when trying to defend herself and others from becoming human sacrifices.

“It’s taboo to reveal too soon the true nature of your capture. However, since you all know now, thanks to Dindi,”—Abiono heaved a sigh in her general direction—“We may as well distribute the totems. We would have soon in any case. We will be traveling to the Yellow Bear tribehold for your Initiation.”

“What?” Tamio sounded outraged. “Why go to outtribesmen?”

“Once we would have taken you to the ancestral tribehold of our own people, the Rainbow Labyrinth,” said Abiono. “But a generation ago, the Bone Whistler took over there and forbade the practice of Many-Banded magic, Imorvae magic. Those of us who were of the age of Initiation had to go elsewhere for our testing and training. I myself went to live with the Purple Thunder tribe. A few years later the three clans in the Corn Hills made a permanent agreement to bring our Initiates to be tested along with the youth of our allies in the Yellow Bear tribe. We have kept that agreement ever since, even after we heard of the fall of the Bone Whistler. Remember as we travel to the place of Initiation, that we represent not just our clan, and not just our clan-klatch, but our whole tribe. It is we who are the outtribesfolk here. Walk with honor.”

Abiono stared out to sea. He cleared his throat. “Many other secrets you will all learn as you become men and women. Though there are also secrets you will only learn if you become Tavaedies. Now.” He smiled slightly. “We will not let you pass through the lands of outtribesmen as naked as pigs. Look inside your baskets.”

Blushes passed all around. They had grown so used to it that they’d forgotten their nakedness. Girls and boys instinctively edged away from one another. They unwove the cords that fastened down the top flaps of the baskets.

“I knew it,” said Hadi, pulling out a number of flint arrowheads, axheads and spearheads from his basket. “I have been carrying rocks.”

The first thing Dindi saw when she opened her basket was a ball of fur, who stretched and yawned, entirely pleased with himself.

“Puddlepaws, how did you hitch a ride?” She scooped up the kitten, scratched his head until he purred, then set him aside. He had been sleeping on a long strip of woven cloth, mostly white, but banded in maze-like patterns of purple, blue, yellow, green, red and orange. Below that, she found tools of chert and bone, wrapped in grass—awls, spoons, loom weights and scrappers.

“Your clans will have provided each of you with your Birthright,” said Abiono. “You should find guest gifts to give to our hosts, the cloth wrap of an Initiate—I’ll show you how to wrap it—a dancing costume, and your totem.”

Dindi clothed herself again, in the single piece wrap, just as Abiono instructed. Most of the other Initiates did the same. They helped paint themselves. The symbols included black paint across their eyes to represent blindfolds and red paint around their wrists to represent ropes. Then they all dived back into their carrying baskets, to see what other treasures they could find.

Grass stuffing separated the items in the basket. Dindi kept digging until she found a beautiful beaded costume. Guessing by the exclamations from the others, they found the same. Expensive and ancient, the formal garments were dyed white and embroidered with colored beads and clan markings. Dindi’s dress included a slit skirt, a chest band, numerous hoop necklaces, and a cape and headdress of swan feathers.

“What’s this?” demanded Tamio routing through his own basket. “I don’t need a girl’s toy!”

“The dolls are not toys. The doll is the totem of you soul, made for you in your first seven days of life,” said Abiono. “It will be buried with you when you die. It is precious and you must not lose it. You will need it for the Initiation ceremony. Before you become men and women, you must pass the tests we give you. If you pass, you receive a new totem in addition to your dolls. Men will be given a pestle, and women a mortar. Those chosen as Tavaedies will be given a Windwheel.”

“Oh, mine is beautiful!” exclaimed Kemla. She held up a carved, painted doll made from a corncob. Hers had real horsehair braids and wore a vermilion dress embroidered with luxurious amber and gold beads.

Tamio’s totem doll wore a purple shoulder blanket and held a diminutive riding hoop. It was quite cute. Hadi’s had a little spear and a rather crookedly painted smile. Jensi’s totem doll had corn silk braids and a bone bead dress, not as polished as Kemla’s, but it carried an adorable miniature water jar on its head.

Dindi had to dig underneath the formal attire before she found something wrapped carefully in dried grass. Her corncob doll. It looked old, tattered and half rotted. The paint had been worn down so much that the face was just a blank. Holes for roots testified that the doll had once had horsehair, but now it looked bald. The torn dress had no beads left either. This was not why she dropped it as though burned.

The doll flashed in Dindi’s hand. For one translucent moment, every detail, the blades of grass at her feet, the sun glinting off the distant sea, sprang into vivid relief. Dindi felt she had taken off a blindfold and seen a world of another, brighter sun. The effulgence drove her to her knees, and rushed up to entangle her in another mind, another place, another time.

Vessia

A woman opened her eyes to find herself in a field at dawn. Two people stood before her, an old man and an old woman. They wept and smiled at the same time, and touched her, possessively, as if they owned her, gently, as if they feared her. She did not know them. They tried to look into her face, but she stared past them. They did not matter to her one way or another. The sunlight as it filtered through the leaves, now, that she found strange and wondrous.

When they tried to embrace her, she screamed. Her scream was not one of terror or rage, simply a noise, a discomfort to match the discomfort of their touch, and when their touch withdrew, so ended the scream. After that, her face went still again, as if nothing had happened, and she stared past them, to gaze upon the wonder of the shifting leaves.

They pulled back, still crying, still smiling, still trying to touch her as much as she would allow.

“Daughter,” they called her, over and over, now a question, now a statement. “You are our daughter”—as if they didn’t believe it themselves, but would speak hope into truth.

“You are our daughter,” she repeated. Her words pleased them, not quite.

The field meant nothing to her. The couple meant nothing to her. So it meant nothing to her when the couple led her away from the field. Gradually, however, a new emotion did bloom a little in her—curiosity. The couple led her to a domed house of baked clay, with a tiny door at the top of a ladder, so tiny she had to crawl through it. Inside the dome, the round room was spacious, with a hole in the high roof to let in light and air. Rugs woven with patterns covered the clay floor. Patterns of light and shadow crisscrossed chevrons and zigzags on the rugs, creating complexities within complexities. It was beautiful. And she was content with that.

A wildness pulsed inside her, this ‘daughter’ whom they called ‘Vessia.’ She could not stay inside for long periods of time. Outside, she would run, as if searching, and then fling herself headlong into the wind, flipping and twisting to catch the clouds. Instead, the hard ground always claimed her. The old couple loved to watch her, and could do so endlessly, the way one could look again and again at a waterfall, or the sun setting over the ocean, or a baby sleeping, and never tire or cease to amaze at it. If the river itself jumped out of its bed to leap and twirl it would have astonished them no less. Yet her runs and leaps frightened them too, the way that coming face to face with a wild cat or a forest fire fascinates and terrifies. See how she dances, they whispered when they thought she was not listening, never predictable, never repeating herself.

She was not trying to dance. She was trying to fly.

They gave her food, water, a place to sleep. They tried to meet her eyes, but she had no interest in looking at them. They tried to hug her, sometimes, and she would shrug them away, or screech if they pressed her. They clothed her, but she simply removed the garments if they itched. She loved to look at cloth while it was still on the loom, however. Beauty moved her. If she found beauty, for hours at a time it would occupy her. Lights, patterns, colors, movements. Once, the old woman set up the loom before going to bed, and in the morning, found that Vessia had completed the entire weave, a perfect copy of one of the rugs upon the floor.

“You finished the whole thing in one night!” exclaimed the old woman. “And without a single mistake! You are amazing!”

“You are amazing,” Vessia repeated without inflection and without looking at her.

After that, the old couple let her weave often. Other simple chores they tried to encourage, however, did not work so well. She simply stared at the needle they gave her to sew the cloth she’d woven into garments. In the end, the old woman folded and sewed the garments for her, and it was the first dress that she would abide without removing.

As seasons passed, the old couple wizened like grapes shrinking to raisins, but she did not change. The old couple finally decided it was safe to introduce her to other people. They lived alone in the forest, in their beehive dome house, but there were other domes, other houses, closer together, past the woods, beside a brook. “Our clan,” they told her.

“They will ask why we haven’t shown anyone our daughter before,” said Old Woman.

“No,” said Old Man. “Once they see her, they will think they know why.”

“But she is beautiful,” said Old Woman.

“Too beautiful,” he said. “Too strange.”

Vessia went out among the other people, though it was hard for her. They stared at her, spoke loudly to her, tried to touch her, told her all the things she couldn’t, shouldn’t, mustn’t do. She liked market day—she liked to pick up the objects sitting on blankets and play with them. That made the women who guarded the blankets angry. Old Woman told her, “A bargain has two sides,” and gave her small beads of gold to leave in place of the objects she picked up.

Vessia could not fly, but she could dance, and other people began to notice. Not only did people in the clanhold watch her dance, they could not, it seemed, look away if she started dancing in front of them. This made the old couple nervous.

“If people ask, you must tell them you are a Tavaedi,” they told her. “You must tell them you are our daughter, and a Tavaedi like us. The Corn Maiden.”

Once a man, younger than Old Man, who wore a golden torque about his neck and gold bands on his arms, visited on market day. He saw her dance. Afterward, he came close to her, but did not touch her.

“I love you,” he said and many similar things. “Don’t tell me no.”

“Why would I tell you no?” she asked. She didn’t like it when people told her no.

“Then I will go to your parents tonight,” he said.

He arrived at the clay dome house, just as he’d promised. However, he and Old Man exchanged loud words.

“She loves me,” shouted Young Man.

“She doesn’t understand love,” said Old Man. “You don’t understand her.”

“Do you think I can’t tell where she came from?” asked Young Man. “She’s not your daughter!”

They bowed their heads, accepting his words, afraid. “Who do you think she is?”

“She is obviously an Imorvae exile from the Rainbow Labyrinth. She suffered some terrible hurt, and lost her mind. You took her in, you cared for her. I know your history. You tried to have children of your own for many years, and couldn’t conceive. So you adopted this beautiful waif as your own child.”

Old Man and Old Woman raised their eyebrows. They still looked cautious, but they no longer stank so much of fear. Vessia knew that Young Man had not guessed right. His words did not fit the whole Pattern, only the small pieces of the Pattern that he could see. Yet, to her confusion, they did not correct him.

“Though I wear the gold bangles of your tribe, I am not one of you,” he continued. “I also am an exile from the Rainbow Labyrinth. The Bone Whistler killed my parents because, like me, they were Imorvae. I fled here, and took work as a healer to the War Chief in Yellow Bear tribehold. I saved his life after a battle, and he rewarded with me with wealth and place. But I wish to marry a girl from my own tribe.”

“I’m sorry,” said Old Man. “It cannot be.”

Young Man frowned. “I could heal her.”

“Nothing can heal her, because she is not broken. She is what she is.”

Young Man begged, “Vessia, Vessia, please, let me love you.”

“What does that mean?” she wondered aloud.

Wetness streaked the cheeks of Young Man, and he left with no further words.

Long after, she puzzled over her many names. Daughter. Vessia. The Corn Maiden. Yet when she reached inside herself she encountered no solid sense of self, only mist and fog. I am missing myself, she realized. I am a husk hungry for my core.

“Who am I?” she asked the old couple one day. “Who are you? Where did I come from? Why am I here? I am not like other daughters. Am I an ‘exile’, as Young Man said?”

“Danumoro the Herb Dancer? The healer? Vessia, were we wrong? Do you love him?”

She shrugged. They looked disappointed. Why? There was still so much she could not grasp.

“He was wrong and right,” Old Woman said. “You are not an exile. But you are not our blood daughter either. You are unique.”

“Once we did a favor for the White Lady,” said Old Man. “She asked us how she could pay her debt, and we told her we wanted for nothing, except a child, which she could not give us. She told us we would have a daughter, and gave us this.” He reached up to a jar tucked in the rafters of the house. From this he pulled a strange corncob doll. “The next day, we found you.”

Vessia took the doll. It had no face. It was blank, like she was. “A bargain has two sides. What did the Lady ask of you?”

“Only that we protect you,” said Old Woman. “And—”

“Which we have tried to do,” interrupted Old Man. He shook his head at Old Woman. She placed her hand on his leg.

“And,” finished Old Woman, “That we let you go when you were ready. Are you ready, Vessia?”

“Yes,” said Vessia. She did not know what she would do, or where she would go, but she knew she had to find the missing pieces of the Pattern. Tears streaked Old Woman’s face. “You see, you really are our daughter. Only children can please their parents by leaving, and at the same time, so break their hearts.”

Dindi

Excess light cleared. Dindi stared upward at tree branches against vivid blue sky. She rolled away, gasping. The corncob doll had fallen into the grass beside her. Puddlepaws hissed at it and backed away, tail and fur spiked.

You did this, Dindi accused it silently.

The doll stared facelessly back at her.

Laughter roused Dindi from her daze. Kemla and a few other girls were pointing and sniggering at her. Jensi and Hadi knelt by her side, concerned.

“Dindi, what happened?” Jensi asked.

The confusion—and, in Kemla’s case, derision—in their faces told Dindi they had not seen the light, or the Vision. The doll had magic, which, like the fae, only she could see. Dindi knew better than to speak of seeing of the fae, and so she pressed her lips together and said nothing about the Vision either.

“It’s been a difficult journey,” Abiono told her, not without sympathy. “But soon we will meet up with allies. Until then, we must conserve our food and water. Remember as we travel to the place of Initiation, that we represent not just our clan, and not just our clan-klatch, but our whole tribe,” warned Abiono. “And it is we who are the outtribesfolk here. Walk with honor.”

Rthan

Rthan’s canoe was a bark boat shaped like folded hands, light enough for a warrior to carry on his back during portage, long enough to hold three while rowing. Or, in this case, Rthan, his prisoner, and two packs of supplies.

They’d been paddling downstream without stopping for meals, but they’d come to the first of several cataracts soon, and Rthan knew they needed to eat before they portaged. Past the cataract, they’d be in Yellow Bear territory.

Rthan signaled the others and the seven canoes pulled into a still pool in the river, guarded from sight by drooping willows. None of the warriors left their boats, only anchored their paddles through the handle of the canoe post-down in the mud.

The captive tried to lift his head over the edge of the kayak to see where they were. Rthan slapped him back down to the bottom of the boat. The boy endured the latest bruise without speaking, though his wary gaze locked on Rthan.

Rthan rubbed his thumb over the boy’s purpling jaw. “You shave, how often? Your mother shouldn’t have let you out of the clanhold until you stopped nursing.”

The boy jerked his chin away, about the only movement he could make, since he was netted claw to tail like a lobster in a trap. Rthan wondered how much of Kavio’s reputation wasn’t simply borrowed from his father. The boy didn’t look particularly intimidating. True, his little trick might have fooled Rthan’s men if the Blue Lady hadn’t tipped him off, but Kavio struck him as just another dryfoot, more mouth than meat.

Speaking of meat, none of them had eaten in several days. In his oiled leather pack, Rthan pulled out a treat he’d been saving the whole trip. His mouth watered just peeling away the gut he’d wrapped it in.

Kavio recoiled. “That is foul!”

“Did crabs eat your nostrils? This is hakarl!”

“Kill me now, but do not make me eat that.”

“I wasn’t about to let you eat it.” Rthan cradled his hakarl. “I hunted the poison shark myself, buried it in the gravel by my house and waited six months for it to rot just right.”

“Most of us prefer food which doesn’t involve the words ‘poison’, ‘gravel’ or ‘rot’.”

“Hakarl was given to our tribe’s first War Chief Hathan by the Shark Lord.”

“A botched assassination attempt, as I recall.”

“No!” Rthan waved the fermented meat in front of Kavio’s wrinkled nose. “It was the first sacrifice. The human warrior Hathan befriended the Merfae. One year, during a famine, Hathan’s family was on the verge of starvation, so he decided to trick his faery friend. He proposed they throw bones and whichever tossed the knuckle would kill himself to feed the other. Hathan cheated and gave the Shark Lord a pouch with nothing but knuckle bones, so the faery lord allowed Hathan to kill him, bury him and then eat him. However, the next dawn, the Shark Lord returned to life, and told him, ‘I let you kill me and eat me, now you must do the same for me.’ Hathan had no choice but to agree to pay the deathdebt. Just then his daughter Mariah ran up and…”

Rthan stopped speaking. He no longer had a taste for either banter or hakarl.

Kavio caught his mood at once. “She threw herself to the shark in place of her father.” He added quietly, “You have tattoos on both cheeks—you’re married. Do you have any children, Rthan?”

Rthan punched Kavio across the jaw. Kavio spit blood into the brine that pooled in the boat bottom.

Rthan cracked his knuckles. “So what was it you wanted to tell Nargano? Before you try to convince me you would betray your father, I think it’s fair to let you know there’s nothing I hate worse than a man who turns against his own blood.”

“Nargano will tell you after I’ve told him.”

Rthan hit him again, harder. “I don’t bite hooks. I’m going to kill you unless you give me one good reason not to, and it better be more than that you’re willing to switch sides and slice bellies for us. I don’t need or want you on our side. I just want you dead.”

“Kill me, then.” Kavio flicked his tongue over the blood on his lip. “What I have to say goes to Nargano or dies with me.”

“Fa!” The boy was bluffing. Time to bone the fish. Rthan wouldn’t ask his tribesmen to increase their own risk by dragging a captive all the way across enemy territory. He hefted his knife.

In all his wriggling, Kavio had wedged himself into the curl of the boat, and he used that leverage to kick both legs square into Rthan’s chest. Rthan went overboard, found his footing on the river bottom and came up, just in time to have the paddle smack him in the face. Kavio had somehow untied himself. The boy pushed the canoe into the current.

The men in the other boats grabbed their paddles.

“Two men to a boat!” Rthan shouted. “One spout, one fin!”

He jumped into the canoe of his second in command. His men doubled up on the boats without supplies, as they’d often practiced. In each case, the second man crouched behind the man paddling, legs balanced on either side to keep from toppling the craft, while he fired arrows. Rthan had lost his bow with his boat, so he used his second’s weapon.

To Rthan’s surprise, Kavio had obviously rafted before. He drove his canoe to the white water, and shouted catcalls at the nixies and water sprites to incite them to surge after his boat, pushing it to insane speeds.

“Lady, aide me!” Rthan cried. Beneath his canoe, the water churned and lifted his boat forward on a blast of white water after Kavio. The two boats of his men jostled on the frenzied froth right behind him.

Just when Rthan had been silently giving Kavio credit, the idiot boy steered his boat toward a low hanging tree. At his unnatural speed, the crash would kill him.

Kavio’s boat surfed the spray over a rock just before the tree and sailed over the trunk.

The two men in the boat to Rthan’s right didn’t bounce off the rock at quite the right angle. They hit the tree. Their canoe splintered into pieces, the men themselves careened through the air. The tree caught one, the river the other, but before Rthan could check to see if they’d survived, he and his partner reached the tree too.

“Flip!” Rthan shouted. As one man, they shifted their weight and the boat turned in the water. The bottom scraped under the tree. The boat continued to rotate and they landed upright again, still bucking the rapids.

Kavio leaned back in his boat. He notched Rthan’s own bow and shot several arrows in quick succession. The Blue Lady sent a wind that snapped across the river and blew the arrows off course. Kavio shot another volley of arrows, and he must have called upon Red fae Rthan couldn’t see, for the arrows burst into flame. The other boat caught fire. Rthan’s men dived into the river. But Kavio couldn’t shoot again. A wicked run of rocks forced him to turn forward again to steer.

Rthan recognized the rock formation. “Turn to the shore!”

He joined his fin man in paddling. The lower fae were beyond control, even of the Blue Lady, and they wouldn’t release their grip on his kayak. Rthan crashed the boat on the rock rather than ride the rapids through the narrows—he and his second both scrambled to climb onto the boulder to dry rock.

From that vantage, they watched Kavio’s kayak shoot out of the narrows like an arrow from a bow and arc into free fall over a thousand foot waterfall.

Rthan felt no triumph, only weariness. He still had to find those of his companions who survived, portage the boats they’d left behind down the cliffs and make the rendezvous with War Chief Nargano before the Autumn Equinox.

Blue light flared, and, impossibly, he smelled the ocean. His little girl Meira climbed next to him on the rock.

“He’s not dead,” said the Blue Lady. “You have to go after him.”

“No human could have survived that fall, my Lady, but even if he sprouted wings like a fae lord, I must tend my men first.”

“If you ignore my warning, you will suffer.”

“Is that a threat?” He frowned. “Or a prophecy?”

“Water rolls downhill to the sea. Is that a threat or a prophecy?”

Kavio

In answer to his call, sylphs buffeted Kavio’s boat with their zephyr breath, guiding it past the thundering spume at the foot of the falls. The canoe skipped on the water like the rocks he’d thrown at ponds as a boy. Finally, it snuggled into a gentle current.

He looked up at the top of the cataract, but he couldn’t see Rthan. Leaning back in the canoe, he let tension drain from his body, though even now he did not relax completely. He wondered how he could remake himself if everywhere he went he kept stumbling upon the vipers left to nest by his father.

Once already he’d underestimated Rthan, he would not do it again. Despite his desire to rest, he forced his canoe to the fast currents, and where there were none, paddled hard. Settlements occurred more thickly with each day he spent on the river, with less no man’s land between; the totem poles he passed were engraved with the symbols of three, four, five clans at a time, and the moss growing on the weathered wood testified these clanklatch alliances had stood firm for generations. He was seeing what the Rainbow Labyrinth tribe might have been, if not for the rise of the Bone Whistler and the civil war between the Morvae and the Imorvae. Several times he had to duck warning arrows from warriors in bomas, but at least the closer he got to Yellow Bear tribehold, the less chance he would encounter the Blue Waters tribesmen. Even they would have better sense than to attack the tribehold itself.

Occasionally Kavio saw groups of women rinsing roots and filling water baskets at the river’s edge. If the women spotted him, they fled, for a warrior paddling a kayak was not a welcome sight. Outtriber, exile or scout for a war party—he could be up to no good as far as they were concerned.

All the more strange, then, that one afternoon a lone woman standing on the shore caught a glimpse of his canoe and ran toward the river, shouting.

“Hey ho! Hey ho!” She waved both arms. Flaps of loose skin jiggled under her arms and chin, giving the impression of a once nicely plump woman who had eaten too little for too long. Her skirt was ragged too, a shaggy mane of raccoon tails and bark felt tassels that ended in knots. She hid her sagging, wrinkled breasts with necklaces of twisted robes made from the same material. Nothing else. Not a single bangle of gold, which was odd for Yellow Bear. The womenfolk here treasured their gold more than their children.

“Stranger, hey ho! Come nigh, I wish you no harm!”

His first thought was that she was a hexer, and a cannibal. Nonetheless, his curiosity overcame his sense, and he paddled his canoe to the shore. The mud was slick and carpeted green with fuzz that tickled his bare feet.

“Are you a Tavaedi?” she asked. Up close, he could smell the fetid rot from her mouth.

“I am an exile,” he answered cautiously. “I have no tribe or clan.”

“I guessed as much already. I don’t care, nephew. My need is too great. I saw the glow about you, even from the across the river. Do you dance Yellow? Can you heal?”

She had a small daub of Yellow in her own aura, probably not enough to be a Tavaedi, but enough to recognize magic in others. He deemed it for the best she could not see the other Chromas in his aura.

“I know a few healing dances,” he said. Better to understate the case. “What is your need?”

“My son.” She tugged on his arm. Her fingers felt like dry sticks. “He is sick. Come to my house and I will give you a ringlet of gold if you can heal him.”

Chapter Four

Hex

Dindi

To Dindi’s dismay, the distance from the wooded cliffs down and across the lowland fields was greater than it had looked from up above. There were many switchbacks on the way down the hill, and then a long meandering footpath led them through more woodsy areas and cultivated cornfields. Unlike in the Corn Hills, where the clans tilled permanent fields, the Yellow Bear people still practiced swidden agriculture. They burned out an area to be planted for a season or two, then allowed the woods to grow back over it while they moved on to cultivate another spot.

Settlements in the Yellow Bear lands were spaced farther apart than in the Corn Hills, and smaller. Several times over the next several days, they passed clanholds, all of the same peculiar design. The beehive shaped mounds that Dindi had mistaken for houses from the buff were actually steep, artificial hills of much larger dimensions than she had estimated. At the top of each artificial hill, a clay or log pike wall enclosed a dozen or less dome shaped houses. Warriors sat in bomas, crow’s nests. These cage-like platforms at the top of tall posts reminded Dindi of larger versions of her rabbit hutch back home. The Yellow Bear people did not seem to have kraals for horses or aurochsen, but goats gamboled everywhere, along with many kinds of fat, waddling birds and peccaries. Also, occasionally Dindi caught the tantalizing smell of smoking fish.

The fae here were strange too, though not unfriendly. Brownies rode on the backs of the birds. Nymphs in flowing gowns dangled from the branches of the trees. Many of them waved at Dindi as she passed, but she scrupulously ignored them.

They snaked along through Yellow Bear territory circuitously at first, in order to avoid trespass whenever they saw a warning totem post. These posts, of wood or stone, featured the tribe’s totem on the bottom, a bear standing on its hind legs with one paw raised, the clan marking in the middle, and a rayed disk at the top. Once, they saw a clanhold burning in the distance, mute evidence of war with a neighboring clan.

They did not rest in any of the clanholds, but camped by night in the wilderness near the path, as they had before. The Tavaedis also allowed them each to scrounge the forest for edibles, with the caution to stay in pairs and beware of trespassing directly on the lands of any Yellow Bear clan lands. They had not packed enough food for the whole journey, so they needed to find more as they traveled. The Tavaedies set aside days to send the boys hunting and the girls foraging for food.

Dindi wasn’t the only Initiate disappointed to learn they would not see the ocean in the far West. In fact, they had not caught a glimpse of the ocean since they entered the lowlands.

“It’s better that we don’t go near the ocean,” snapped Abiono, in response to Tamio’s complaints on this point. “The settlements on the coast are often attacked by Blue Waters tribesmen. Sometimes the vicious thugs even bring their war canoes up the river!”

“Really?” Tamio leaned into this news, enthralled. “Is there any chance they might attack while we’re here? A war would be really marvelous!”

“Yellow Bear tribehold is the third largest in Faearth. Blue Waters barbarians aren’t foolish enough to attack such a hold when even the Bone Whistler himself did not dare,” Abiono said crushingly. “I suggest you worry about passing the Initiation and not go looking for more trouble.”

As they neared the tribehold itself, settlements occurred more closely together. When the Tavaedies decided to ask for shelter at one of these, Sycamore Stand, the Initiates had their first chance to look at Yellow Bear tribesfolk up close.

From a distance, Dindi had already seen that they built their holds upon some sort of mound. Sycamore Stand was no different. The travelers descended to the hold from some hills thick with chaparrals. From this vantage, the outline of the artificial earthen mound, raised from the valley floor, showed clearly. It was not a simple round hill, Dindi now saw, but a disk shape with a long extended earth walkway, like a tambourine with a handle. A ditch surrounded the disk. Sharpened stakes prickled the ditch. The only safe approach into the hold, then, was to cross the narrow walkway. Five clumps of dome houses, perhaps a hundred domiciles in all, dotted the flat disk top. The houses looked like beehives or birdhouses. Each was round, domed and plastered white. A tiny hole in the middle of the wall, well above ground level, served as the only entrance. Rope and wood ladders dangled from these window-doors.

Most of the houses were painted along the bottom, patterns of stripes and circles in color pallets dominated by yellow, but graced by occasional touches of blue and orange. Those with the finest and freshest paint had also been crowned with a golden disk on a miniature ladder in the top center of their domes. “The ladder to the sun,” Abiono explained the ubiquitous symbol.

Yellow Bear Tavaedies and warriors came out to meet the visitors and escort them across the long neck of earth to the hold. They dressed distinctly from Rainbow Labyrinth tribesfolk. The male Tavaedies here wore billowy knee-length elder bark skirts under immense diamond shaped masks that reached below their waists and far above their heads. The outsized ‘eyes’ and ‘lips’ of the diamond-head masks were plated in beaten gold. One Tavaedi wore an immense gold Ladder to the Sun disk above his diamond shaped mask. The female Tavaedies wore longer skirts and complicated crowns of golden beads and bangles formed into prongs, loops and horns.

Yet, to Dindi, the ordinary clanfolk appeared no less outlandish. Matriarchs and maidens wore their hair chopped short, like the cap on an acorn. They swished about in full skirts made from bark rag strips and knotted cords. Patriarchs wore hats mounted with disks, warriors, hats mounted with horns. Gold necklaces and arm torques encircled the necks and limbs of both genders, and a few of the men’s disk shaped hats were plated in gold as well. Women wore gold ear rings and nose rings and seashell ankle bracelets that click-clacked when they walked.

The Tavaedies in regalia strode out to meet them, led by a majestic woman in a headdress of gold spangles.

Brena

A black crow swoops toward the bear, shedding a feather, which becomes an arrow. A girl is there, with a bow, who unleashes the arrow into the bear, and watches as the whole world melts and dies. A baby’s cry. Brena tries to scream but she has no mouth.

There is a wound in the world. The bear looks right at Brena. Help me heal it.

Brena awakened from the nightmare with her hands digging into her thigh. The fire in the hearth had died to low embers. Her sleeping mat lay on one side of the ovoid, one-room house, her daughters slumbered together on the other side. All of her herbs hung in baskets on pegs on the curved mud wall, forming a nest of sage and chamomile. She breathed in the aroma and forced herself to relax.

Dulled by mud walls, but not damped completely, came the sound of weeping—Ula’s younger sister, in the next compound, still sobbing over her miscarriage. The ugly affair with Ula hadn’t done anything to set Brena at ease. Ula and her sister had married the same man, because Ula had proven barren. In public, Ula had made a show of welcoming her younger sister’s pregnancy. In secret, Ula, who had no magic, made some nasty bargain with the lower fae, who gave her blue cohosh to slip into her sister’s acorn stew.

The hexery had been discovered, and Brena, among others, cast stones on the mat to condemn Ula. The Tavaedi society of Sycamore Stands clan gave Ula the usual choice for a witch, to be sacrificed to the fae or given to the Deathsworn.

Brena could not help but think of her nightmare, and how easy it would have been to slip the black arrow into Ula’s heart—Ula who was condemned to die anyway—and end the faery’s torment. It infuriated Brena to catch herself in these unworthy thoughts. She pushed away the temptation. In any case, Ula chose to be tied to the black obelisk at the edge of the clan lands, to be given to the Deathsworn.

The clan of Sycamore Stands belonged to a clanklatch, a local alliance, of five clans, and did not often suffer attacks from outtribers. However, one morning, not long after Ula’s trial, the warriors who manned the bomas – crow’s nests built on tall masts – sounded their conch shells. Clanfolk fled their gardens and cornfields to huddle inside the stockade on the top of the hill. Outtribers, an entire band including Tavaedies, had been spotted crossing the totem poles marking the boundary of Sycamore Stands territory. The outtribers approached the earth ramp to the hill, where they left gifts and waited to be invited further. The Sycamore Stands clansfolk observed the newcomers, recognized them, then designated Zavaedi Brena to greet them when the stockade opened.

The Zavaedi of the outtribers bowed his head and spread his arms. He raised his voice for all to hear.

“Sycamore Stand Clan of Yellow Bear Tribe, we trespass without malice upon your hospitality. By your leave, Zavaedi Brena of Sycamore Stand.”

“Zavaedi Abiono of Broken Basket of the Rainbow Labyrinth, welcome,” she said. “It’s been long since we’ve seen you. How many Initiates do you bring?”

“Seven boys and seven girls, Honored Auntie,” said Abiono.

Brena inclined her head. “We also have Initiates to send to the tribehold. I will be escorting them. The Initiates can all travel together.”

Native and visiting Tavaedies danced and played rattles and drums to escort the Initiates into the center of the hold, where the hosts prepared a feast for the guests.

Brena felt back in her element overseeing the preparations.

“The friends you chose now will influence the rest of your life,” she warned her daughters as they rolled out the flat bread on large rocks. “When I was your age, I neglected the people who could have helped me become a better Tavaedi and only spent time with those I thought were ‘amusing’. That was a mistake. They held me back from being as good a dancer as I could have been. I didn’t want to humiliate my friends, so I didn’t try as hard as I should have.”

The memory still irked her. One of her so-called friends later became her husband. Even then, all he’d cared about was that his wife not outshine him.

“But Mama, you became a Zavaedi eventually,” said Gwena.

“That’s just my point,” said Brena. “Not until after your father…” She caught herself. She’d never told the girls the full story. “…died in battle,” she revised in mid-sentence, “did I really focus on honing my skills. I don’t want you two to make the same mistake. When you reach the tribehold, there will be hundreds of young people. Search for the best dancers and make them your friends. Then you will be encouraged to be the best too. Don’t make friends with people who are likely to fail the Testing.”

“Well, of course,” said Gwena. “Why would we want to spend time with failures?”

“Maybe they might have other qualities besides just being able to dance well,” said Gwenika. She cuddled a chipmunk, her latest inseparable pet.

Brena fought the same helplessness that always welled up in her whenever faced with her youngest daughter. Gwena is tough, like her father, but Gwenika is too much like I used to be. A weakling.

“Maybe I should hold you back until next Initiation.” Brena combed her hand through her hair, considering that possibility. “You’re too young.”

Gwenika brightened. “Yes! I can stay here with my pets and Gramma, while you and Gwena go off for seven moons to the tribehold.”

“Never mind.” Brena punched another sticky ball of dough on the rock until it was flat. “You’re coming.”

By noon, Brena saw to it reed mats laden with food were arranged in a square around the performance platform in the center of the dome-shaped houses. Tall structures of a wooden lattice leading to a disk of beaten gold, the Ladder-to-the-Sun symbol of Yellow Bear, surmounted many of the mud-and-dung houses. Brena noted with pride the awe of the Rainbow Labyrinth tribesfolk as they eyed the beaten gold. The Rainbow Labyrinth excelled in many things, but no one surpassed the gold smiths of Yellow Bear.

The two Taveadi societies held an impromptu Vooma, a dance war. They took turns displaying their cleverest tama while the aunties of Sycamore Stand served roasted pigeons, acorn porridge, onions, carrots, celery and rhubarb in addition to corn pishas and corn beer.

“Tama Tama,

Tae Tae,

Vooma Vooma

Tae!”

The chanting and the drums thundered and the Tavaedies flipped and kicked on the platform. Zavaedi Brena won the Vooma against her counterpart, but Abiono took defeat with good grace. As they returned to the feast, his eyes twinkled and he gestured vaguely toward the gold ornaments and paint she wore which indicated her widowed state.

“You still haven’t remarried? Neither have I. My offer stands . . .”

She smiled, despite herself, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “I remain as flattered as always. But I have no desire for a man to complicate my life.”

“I wish you would let go of your grief for your husband, Brena. It won’t bring him back.”

“It isn’t grief,” she said. “It’s anger. He brought his death on himself. He had no need to join his cousin’s clan’s war, he just wanted to win glory. He could never forgive me for having a Shining Name when he didn’t. But he would have found more glory protecting his own children than swallowing a spear. What good did a Shining Name do for him then?”

Her eyes slid to her daughters. The elder, Gwena, had already attracted the attentions of several of the new Initiates. She laughed and tossed her hair, looking completely at ease and so like her father Brena’s breath caught in her throat. The younger, Gwenika, on the other hand, wagged her tongue at one newcomer after another, always with the same result: after a moment or two the other person’s smile began to twitch, and her partner abandoned the spot next to her to escape her chatter. Gwenika ended next to the last girl in the line, a pretty but mousy thing who looked twitchy to begin with, certainly not like someone capable of teaching Gwenika to better herself. Brena couldn’t say why, and she told herself she was being foolish and unfair, but she took an immediate dislike to the girl. There was something unsettling about her. Brena’s mouth thinned to a line.

“Who’s that?”

Abiono’s sigh held a basketful of untold woes. “That one would be Dindi.”

Only then did Brena recognize her from the dream as the girl who had shot the bear and destroyed the world.

Dindi

During the feast and dancing, Puddlepaws escaped Dindi’s pack. She worried in case the kitten tried to steal foods from the feast mats, but found Puddlepaws preoccupied behind her. Head low to the ground, eyes glowing with intent, small furry rump stuck up in the air, tail lashing, the kitten stalked a scurrying rat.

Puddlepaws pounced and caught the rat, which he didn’t know quite what to do with.

A girl swooped down and picked up Puddlepaws. “Fa! Go! Leave her alone! Oh, you poor little thing, are you whole? Did that meanie cat bite you?”

The girl was cradling the rat. No, now Dindi saw it clearly, it wasn’t a rat but a chipmunk. Puddlepaws scrambled away and peeked out from behind one of the huts.

“That’s my cat,” Dindi said. “Don’t chase him off, he might get lost.”

“He terrified my chipmunk!”

“I’m sure he meant no harm,” Dindi said. “He just wanted to eat an arm or two. Maybe a leg.”

The girl snorted. In her looks, she was typical of Yellow Bears folk, solid and healthy, with cropped, thick dark hair and sun-warmed skin that shone golden brown. Her dress was beaded with polished acorn caps and quail feathers, and she wore a single gold ring in her nose.

“My name is Gwenika.” She coughed and plunked herself down next to Dindi, displacing Jensi, who had been chatting with Yodigo on her other side and not noticed her.

“Hey!” protested Jensi.

“Be careful not to sit too close to me,” said Gwenika morosely. “I have Drowned’s Man’s Lung.”

Jensi scooted away. Now Dindi and Gwenika were isolated at the end of the mat.

“Drowned Man’s Lung!” said Dindi. Normally, anyone with a contagious, fatal disease such as that was asked to join the Deathsworn rather than risk infecting the rest of her clan.

Gwenika chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. “I may have the wrong diagnosis, I’m still not sure. My symptoms are fever, coughing and chest pain, which could indicate Drowned Man’s Lung. But it might also be the Black Boil Plague.”

Either possibility seemed quite dreadful to Dindi. Several of her clanfolk—two younger siblings to Jensi and Hadi’s mother—had died from disease a few years ago, because Uncle Lobo had angered a troll.

“I’m sorry,” said Dindi. “How were you hexed?”

“I’m still not sure. My mother refuses to help. She thinks I’m not really sick.”

“Oh,” said Dindi. “What does your clan’s Healer Tavaedi say?”

“My mother is our clan’s Healer.”

“Oh.”

Dindi didn’t know what else to say, but Gwenika talked, and very rapidly. She asked a lot of questions but didn’t wait for answers.

“So you have a cat? Where did you find him? What do you feed him? Other than chipmunks. I’ve never met anyone else with an animal. That wasn’t a horse, I mean. Or goats, but those aren’t really pets because you eat them. Some people do eat horse, though, which makes sense because there’s a lot more meat on a horse than on a chipmunk. No one has horses here, but I’ve heard all of the clans in Rainbow Labyrinth do—is that true? This is my chipmunk. I found him when he was hurt and helped him heal.”

Dindi nodded.

Encouraged by this response, Gwenika continued, “I was the lucky one. I had Stomach Upheaval at the time, and Stripe—that’s my chipmunk—helped me through it.”

The rest of the meal, Gwenika merrily continued to discuss the various illnesses she had endured in her short life. For some reason, the more diseases she mentioned, the less Dindi worried about catching Drowned Man’s Lung.

“You must be our guest tonight,” Gwenika said after the dancing ended and the revelers began to totter to the huts to sleep.

Dindi followed her to one of the beehive shaped houses honored by a golden Ladder-to-the-Sun top piece. There was no way that either girl could reach the round window-door from ground level, and there appeared to be no ladder.

“Hey!” shouted Gwenika. She slapped the side of the house.

Another girl, Jensi’s age, appeared in the window-door.

“That’s my sister, Gwena,” said Gwenika. To her sister: “Let us up!”

Gwena shoved a dark bundle over the ledge of the window. A rope ladder with wooden slats snapped down to knee’s reach. Gwenika scrambled up, followed more slowly by Dindi. As soon as both had crawled over the sill, Gwena silently rolled the ladder back inside and pushed it into a nook next the door.

It took Dindi a moment to adjust to the dimmer light inside the beehive house. Smoke stung her eyes.

Two adobe steps led down from the window to the interior floor, which was raised compared to the ground level outside. A fire flickered in the hearth at the center of the round room, while about the edges were adobe platforms for sitting, sleeping and eating. Everything looked clean and well swept.

It wasn’t hard to guess which platform belonged to Gwenika. Two rabbits snuggled on the blankets, under dangling birdcages. Other cages sat on the platform, which held a prairie vole, an opossum and a dozen lizards. A large, ventilated pot sat behind them all from which came the distinctive, and most unnerving sound of a rattlesnake. Each of the animals that Dindi could see had an injury that had been lovingly bandaged—the birds had broken wings, the lizards lacked tails, one rabbit had a hurt paw, the other suffered a mite-infected ear. She wasn’t sure about the rattlesnake and didn’t care to investigate.

Puddlepaws, who had returned to Dindi’s pack and was peeking out, looked extremely interested in the rabbits.

Gwena and Gwenika’s mother turned out to be none other than the rather intimidating Zavaedi Brena. Her greeting was accompanied by a critical cross-examination, with particular focus on Dindi’s family background.

“So there are no Tavaedies in your family?” Zavaedi Brena asked several times, several different ways.

“No, Auntie.”

“Hrmf.” She glanced significantly at her daughters, with a tiny shake of her head.

Gwena avoided close conversation with Dindi after that, but Gwenika appeared not to take her mother’s hint.

“You’ll guest with us,” Gwenika informed Dindi.

Late as it was, Dindi wanted nothing more than to sleep, but the platform barely had room for a single human, definitely not two.

“Gwenika, sleep on the floor,” said Zavaedi Brena.

“But her delicate health—” said the grandmother.

“She will survive one night.”

“I can sleep on the floor,” Dindi said.

“You’re our guest, it wouldn’t be right.”

Gwenika unrolled a mat of rushes and lay down beside the platform; while Dindi tried to accustom herself enough to the strange place enough to sleep. The animals shifted in their cages, except for the cat and bunny, which snuggled her. Once she closed her eyes, it almost felt as though the warm bodies breathing beside her was Jensi, and the smell of animal fur was the smell of goats milling in the pen below her loft.

Dindi

Wailing awakened her. Dindi sat up, her heart pounding as it had when she’d been kidnapped. The sky, visible through the smoke hole in the ceiling, showed the face of night freckled with stars. She identified the source of misery as Gwenika. While her grandmother patted her back helplessly, Gwenika threw up into the hearth. The burning vomit stank up the whole hut.

“Is Gwenika sick again?” asked Gwena, rubbing her eyes. She sounded less concerned than Dindi would have expected. “What is it this time?”

“I’m going to die,” sobbed Gwenika. “This time, I know I’m going to die.”

“Fa, then, can’t you just die quietly for once and let the rest of us get some sleep?” demanded Gwena.

Gwenika gagged and retched again, although nothing came out this time. She looked terrible. “One day I will die, and then you’ll be sorry you were so mean to me.”

“I’ll be too busy catching up on my rest,” said Gwena.

“Gwenika, don’t jest about such things, you’ll invite the Deathsworn. And Gwena, just focus on resting yourself,” said Zavaedi Brena. “You know your sister isn’t like you, but you mustn’t ruin your own chances at you-know-what.”

“Yes, Mama,” said Gwena.

“She can sleep on my bed,” said the grandmother. “I’ll brew her a soothing tea.”

They all returned to bed, except the grandmother, who stayed up long into the night, brewing tea and humming songs of healing.

Dindi

The next day, the Initiates from the Rainbow Labyrinth tribe were joined by another dozen Initiates from Sycamore Stands, as well as their chaperon, Zavaedi Brena. Among the new Initiates were the sisters Gwena and Gwenika. The new Initiates wore grass skirts and wood disk headdresses painted yellow instead of a woven wrap, but they also painted symbolic bands of kohl like blindfolds over their eyes, and stenciled rope designs around their wrists and ankles.

Gwenika clutched Dindi by the elbow for the day’s trek. Dindi felt uncomfortable, like a leashed goat, but also pleased, just a little, someone besides the fae wanted her company. Also, Puddlepaws liked Gwenika, and that sealed it. The furry little traitor took to riding on Gwenika’s shoulder. As she pet Puddlepaws, she explained she’d had to leave her pets behind in the care of her grandmother.

“Though perhaps it’s for the best.” Gwenika hunched under the weight of her backbasket. “With the number of Upper Back Bloat Spasms I’ve been suffering, I won’t be around much longer to care for them.”

They stopped an hour before sunset to eat evening meal and camp by a river. The two groups of adults were too busy talking amongst themselves to bother about enforcing the No Talking rule among the Initiates. The boys had gone hunting together.

Jensi nodded vaguely at Gwenika, but looked thrilled to meet Gwena.

“Everyone in your clan thinks very highly of you,” Jensi told her. “They say you are the best dancer since someone called the Corn Maiden, and you’ll be invited to join the Tavaedi for sure.”

“It’s too soon to say,” said Gwena, although she looked pleased.

Her younger sister Gwenika chewed her lip and looked away.

“Who is the Corn Maiden?” asked Dindi. A shiver had coursed through her as soon as she heard the name.

“You’ve never heard of the Corn Maiden?” Gwena asked. “But she’s famous in the Rainbow Labyrinth too!”

Jensi and Kemla exchanged a baffled look. “No.”

“Maybe your people know her by a different name. She was the best dancer that has ever lived.” Gwena blushed. “I’m not saying I really dance like her. People just say that.”

The Corn Maiden. Dindi’s heart thumped. Should she say anything about the doll, the Vision? Gwena, in particular, might know more about the Corn Maiden, and be able to tell Dindi if the corncob doll actually had some importance.

Then again, she might make a fool of herself.

She wished there were some way she could invoke Visions from the doll again, to learn more, before she started telling other people about it. That way she could be sure they wouldn’t just laugh at her—or worse, call her a liar.

Dindi

The days of walking blended together, not unpleasantly. Now that they traveled with Yellow Bear tribesfolk, it was easier to barter with clanholds along the trail, so they ate better and hunted less. The pace was swift but not grueling, and it must have been safe from marauders, as the Tavaedies let the Initiates hike at their own pace. For long stretches, Dindi and Gwenika walked alone together, mostly out of sight of the others.

It was on one of these stretches that Gwenika asked, “Do you ever think about becoming a Tavaedi?”

All the time. She answered, “Maybe. What about you?”

“Maybe.” Gwenika chewed her lower lip. “Do you know what tama you’ll do?”

Dindi looked at her in surprise.

Gwenika lowered her voice, even though no one was close enough to hear them. “I know it’s a secret. And I know you said no one in your clan was a Tavaedi. But I thought you might have said that to… fa, you know. Hide. So no one would steal your tama. Mama says only the Initiates who perform the best tamas will make it. My sister knows enough steps to handle a difficult one, but it’s easy for her. Mama says even if I get an easy one, I’ll likely still flub it. But it’s not my fault! Whenever I try to dance, I get sick, because of the hex on me.”

“I don’t know what tama I will do,” Dindi said. Her heart thumped so hard it hurt. This must be what her grandmother meant, that if only she had known the tama of the Unfinished Song, she would have passed the test.

“I’m just being realistic. It doesn’t matter. I’m happy for my sister. She’s the important one. I don’t matter.” Gwenika’s whole body shuddered when she coughed. “How can I when I’m so sick with Incurable Coughing Foot Pox?”

Dindi had never heard of Incurable Coughing Foot Pox.

“I’ll be dead by morning,” moaned Gwenika. She examined her foot. It was a perfectly ordinary foot, complete with five healthy, pink toes, except for a single blister on her sole. “Look, the characteristic death poxes have appeared already!”

“Try to survive the day, at least,” advised Dindi.

“I’m sure my sister Gwena will do well in the Testing, but I probably won’t be able to participate,” Gwenika said, teary-eyed. “But really, what does it matter if I go through the Initiation? I’m likely to die before we reach the tribehold anyway.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“You don’t believe I’m really sick, do you?” Her faced purpled and she began to cry. “You’re just like all the rest! But I am, I really, really am—oh, Mercy—”

Gwenika gasped. Her face had turned ashen. Dindi followed her gaze and saw several diminutive but ugly Yellow fae riding upon squirrels, creeping toward her.

“They’re coming for me,” Gwenika whispered. “The yeech. Those are the fae who bring me the sicknesses. You can’t see them, can you?” Gwenika asked, already resigned to a negative. “No one can, except for…”

“Who?”

“Gwena.” She said her sister’s name with an odd catch in her voice.

The yeech were following a faint, luminous trail, like a ribbon of pale yellow light, that led to Gwenika. One of them darted forward and pricked Gwenika with a tiny spear. She bent over coughing so hard she vomited on the dirt trail.

“I believe you, Gwenika,” Dindi said. For the first time, she did. “Let’s get away from here. Maybe we can outrun them!”

They took off running down the trail until they were both panting. Up ahead, Gwena and Kemla were walking together, and heard them coming.

Gwena turned around and smiled innocently at her sister. “How are you feeling, Gwenika? Sick again? Poor baby!”

She and Kemla burst into snickering laughter. Dindi’s skin crawled at the sound.

Gwenika stopped and stood still until the older girls disappeared from view.

“No one believes me about the yeech,” said Gwenika hoarsely. “No one believes I’ve been hexed. So who would believe me if I told them I knew who did it—or that it was my own sister?”

Dindi put her arm around her shoulder. “I believe you. I don’t know what I can do to help. But somehow, we have to find a way to stop her.”

Kavio

The woman led Kavio to an isolated dome-shaped hut in a clearing in the woods. He did not dare leave his canoe unattended, so strapped it onto his already heavy rucksack.

Her home was not far from the river. Someone had erected sticks and slim tree trunks in a fence around the clearing, but it was a shoddy defense at best. Inside the fence, a shallow ditch formed a circle around the hut, but it was not deep enough to constitute an obstacle.

She invited him to sit, but though he removed his rucksack and his canoe, and stretched the pains from his back, he remained standing.

“Have you no clan?” he asked.

“I do,” she said. “I am Ruga, daughter of the Lark Creek Clan. But they won’t let my son in the clanhold, and I won’t leave him alone. So we live here, we two. My sister and her husband help me, though they won’t spend the night here. I’m no beggar. If you heal my son, I can give you your price.”

“What sickness hexes him?” asked Kavio.

Ruga fidgeted with her rope necklaces.

“I’ll let you judge,” she said, then cupped her hands over her mouth, calling, “Gremo! Hey ho, Gremo!”

Kavio expected to see a small child, but a full-grown man shambled into view, from round the backside of the hut, walking in the ditch. He was skinny enough his ribs showed, but otherwise seemed healthy, and obviously strong, for behind him he dragged a boulder almost waist tall. It was the immense stone, Kavio saw, which slowed Gremo’s pace to a crawl. Hundreds of ropes had been wrapped around the boulder, and thrown around Gremo’s body, so it looked as if a nest of mad spiders had spun a web to glue him to the rock.

Gremo would not meet his eyes, or acknowledge his greeting. Instead, the man muttered to himself and shambled forward, ropes streaming behind him, dragging the great stone across the yard, following the curve of the ditch. The stone would never fit through the door of the hut, but Gremo did not remove the ropes, or make any attempt to enter. He kept going round the yard, in the same rut, which indeed, he must have created.

“The ropes are knotted too tightly to remove,” said Ruga. “That is his curse.”

Kavio walked closer, and Gremo flinched away, ashamed. He kept slogging forward, the rock grinding behind him. Kavio sliced at the ropes with his obsidian blade, but the stone edge only dulled against the cords without cutting them.

Ruga was right. The ropes glowed in his Vision with many Chromas, Blue and Yellow especially, entwined like a nest of snake. The bindings between Gremo and the rock were magical as much as physical. The magic web would have to be destroyed before any blade could hew the ropes.

Gremo cringed and whimpered during the inspection in a way that made Kavio want to slap him and tell him to stand like a warrior. I am not my father, Kavio reminded himself, and I should pity weakness, not punish it.

“Don’t be afraid.” Kavio hoped he kept annoyance from his voice, but Gremo cowered under his arm. Exasperated, Kavio walked to the far side of the yard and sat against a log in the fence.

“What are you doing?” demanded Ruga. “Why aren’t you dancing? Do you wish me to hide my face?”

“I need to look at the knots,” Kavio said. “Then I will tell you if I can untie it.”

“You promised me you would heal my son!” Her voice rose to a screech.

“I promised nothing. Please, auntie. I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”

Grumbling, she went behind the house, and he heard the sound of a mortar on pestle. He let the rhythmic thud-thud-thud fade into the background. Dimly, he was aware of the wind in the trees, the smell of bread when Ruga began baking, the purpling sky as day shifted to evening. But he never removed his gaze from Gremo, the ropes, and the rock. Gremo made several rounds about the house while Kavio watched. Ruga brought a piece of flat corn bread and set it beside him on a leaf, but he ignored it.

In his mind, he reworked the knots seven upon seven times and then seven upon seven more, but try as he might, he could not make the pattern unfold. The bread, now stiff, tasted flavorless and gritty with sand. He ate the whole thing. His stomach growled afterward, less satisfied with the small offering than complete neglect.

At sunset, a man armed with a spear and painted for war entered the compound.

“You! Outtriber!” He jabbed the spear toward Kavio. “My wife’s sister told me a stranger was here.”

Ruga hurried from behind the hut. “Lambo, I asked him here. He’s a healer who can cure Gremo.”

“Is he, now? Doesn’t look to me like he’s done any healing, only lounging around on his arse, guzzling your food and beer.”

Beer? There was beer?

Lambo stomped over to stand chest to chest with Kavio. “You may think Ruga is an unattended basket, but she has kin to collect her deathdebt.”

“And Gremo?” asked Kavio. “Would his clan collect his deathdebt?”

“Gremo is her baby, and Ruga would die before letting harm come to her baby.”

On the other side of the yard, Gremo continued to grunt softly as he heaved the rock. The muscles across his emaciated back gleamed with sweat. He was no baby.

“He’s never gone through Initiation?” Kavio asked. “He’s been suffering this hex for that long? No wonder the magic is so tangled and strong.”

“Smoothly spoken, but fancy gabber about magic doesn’t prove you are even a Tavaedi, still less that you can free Gremo from the stone. Others have tricked Ruga out of her gold. But look at her, outtriber. She has no gold left, or she would be wearing it. She’s promised you a sun and a star, I’m sure, but she has nothing left to barter. So save your tricks and your lies.”

“I’ll take your warning for what it is worth to me,” Kavio said. “Which is not much.”

He turned his back to return to his spot by the wall.

The shuffle in the dust and a growl would have been warning enough, but Lambo’s attack was also clumsy. Kavio ducked beneath the first blow and lifted up into a throw that sent Lambo sprawling onto his back. In the same move, Kavio grabbed the spear, which he held to Lambo’s throat.

“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear,” Kavio said. “I don’t care about the gold. I don’t require payment. The magic of the knots is an interesting puzzle, and I hope I can untangle it. If I can, I will. If I can’t, I’ll say so. Either way, I will be moving on in a few days, at most. So I would appreciate it if you didn’t eat my time.”

“Forgive me, Tavaedi,” Lambo quavered. “Let me keep my life, I, I, I have children of my own and, and, and my wife…”

Kavio dropped the spear on the dirt. Fighting a man of little skill made one’s Shining Name smaller, his father had always taught him.

He walked away and went to the river. He relieved himself under a tree and then bathed. The water washing over his skin felt cold and made him think of the icy mountains between him and the home he would never see again.

A bowl of beer would have been welcome.

When he returned to Ruga’s compound, Ruga and Lambo both greeted him with astonishment. Ruga clapped her hands and squealed.

“You’ve returned! You’ve returned!”

“I feared I had offended you, Tavaedi,” Lambo said. “And that you’d changed your mind about freeing Gremo and departed.”

“And left my rucksack and canoe here?” Kavio raised an eyebrow. “Hardly. You didn’t touch it, did you?”

“No, no, Tavaedi!”

“Good,” he said. “Don’t.”

Kavio

The next day, another woman joined Ruga, Lambo and Kavio for morning meal. Kuruga was Ruga’s younger sister, Lambo’s wife. She looked like a less tormented version of Ruga, still a twitch too lopsided to be pretty, but with more black than gray hair and a more thoughtful tilt to her head. During the meal, she shared trivial news about the clan with Ruga. Lambo spoke little, and Kavio said less. No one mentioned Gremo, who, after sleeping beside his boulder, had started up walking in circles again as soon as the sun had risen.

Kavio spent the day sitting by the barricade, studying Gremo, the ropes and the rock. He ate when bread was set beside him, but otherwise did not move. The tangle of magic cords still perplexed him.

Kuruga brought him the evening meal once it was obvious he did not intend to join the family.

“Lambo is right,” she said after a moment. “You’re not like the others who promised they could heal Gremo.”

“I promised nothing.”

“I know. But Ruga won’t believe that, no matter how many times you tell her. When you fail, it will hurt her. The longer you stay, the greater her hope, the more it will hurt her. You should leave, tonight. Say nothing to her. Just go.”

Kavio gave her his full attention. “Give up on your nephew? Strange advice from a loving aunt.”

“There’s something you should know about Gremo,” she said. “Something Gremo himself doesn’t know. He was fathered by the spear. Blue Waters warriors came up the river and raided our clanhold. When Ruga found out an enemy left his hate in her belly, the Tavaedies gave her a drink to rid her of the poison, but though she drank it, the kicking in her belly did not stop. When the babe was born, she was advised by all to return the thing to the river, and let it float back to him who made it. She took the babe to the river, and threw it in, but when she saw it start to turn blue she fished it out. They told her again to get rid of the spawn of our foes when Gremo started toddling and talking. She tied him to the black stone of the Deathsworn one night, but in the morning, when she found him still there, again she took him back. All were disgusted by her weakness, but there was nothing we could do. No one was surprised when the spear’s spawn grew wrong.”

“There’s no law in the light or shadow that says a woman must void a child she wants, even if she was raped,” said Kavio. “Or are you telling me that someone hated the baby so much it might have been a motive for the hex?”

“I’m just telling you.”

“Unless it can help me solve the puzzle, I don’t care who Gremo’s father was. It’s not his father’s spear a man throws in battle, but his own.”

“You arrogant boy.” Kuruga curled her hands into fists in her lap. “I know your kind. You are young, strong, headstrong. No doubt you’ve led raids on your clan’s enemies and earned a fine Shining Name. You probably have some rival, as young and strong and headstrong as you. Like two bucks, you locked horns and he drove you off for a time. But you plan to go back, fight him again, and win or die trying.”

His lips curved very slightly, and he shrugged. “Your arrows hit their marks except for one. I will never go back.”

“All those weapons in your pack—don’t look at me like that, how could I not notice the sharp bits straining the leather?—and you tell me you don’t intend to fight?”

“A man needs to defend himself.”

“You have enough weapons for an army. Are you carrying an army in your pack, Outtribber? Are you carrying a war?”

“Your sister asked me here to heal, not fight,” he said. “That’s what I’ll do.”

“You’ll fail.” Kuruga said flatly. “No one can heal Gremo. Many healers have tried. None succeeded. You won’t succeed either.”

“I have to try.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I just have to try. Let me ask you something. Is there anyone in the clan who hated him enough to curse him?”

“To curse him as cruelly as that? I don’t know. But to be rid of him, and the shame he brought us through his birth?” Kuruga stared hard at him. “I will tell you the truth. None of us, not even among our Tavaedies, has the power to create such a powerful hex. But among us all, only Ruga would have not wanted to.”

Kavio

Just before sunset, Kavio stood up and began to dance. He danced each of the five colors of light in the cords binding Gremo to the boulder, using his movements to lift the strands of light in an intricate series of steps. Loop by loop, he unwound the knot, until the last band of light dissolved. Kavio took his obsidian dagger and sliced apart the physical ropes, which fell away gracefully as autumn leaves.

Gremo looked up in amazement. He straightened his back and met Kavio’s eye for the first time.

“I am free,” he whispered. His cry lifted to a shout. “I am free! Ma, ma, I am free!”

Ruga ran to her son and they embraced, both crying unabashedly. Lambo clapped Kavio on the back, saying, “I knew from the first time I saw you that your powers were not fool’s gold!” Even Kuruga murmured, “I was wrong.” But she looked more troubled than pleased.

The family celebrated until the moon rose. Gremo spoke haltingly, but he smiled hugely, and even sang drinking songs with Lambo, after the beer, which did exist after all, made an appearance and filled many a bowl.

“Your son has powerful magic,” Kavio told Ruga. “Five Chromas. Perhaps that was why a jealous enemy sought to bind his power. Gremo, do you have any idea who did this to you?”

“It was my father,” said Gremo.

The other three family members shifted on the eating mat. Ruga laughed shrilly. “Impossible. Your father—“

“I know he was a Blue Waters warrior who misused you, ma,” said Gremo. “I always knew. I heard every ugly whisper, saw every nasty stare. I don’t know how he hexed me, how he even knew I was born. But I heard him calling me to finish what he started, kill all of you, kill the whole clan, then travel to the sea and join him. I heard him telling me you deserved it for what you did. Even you, ma. Sometimes I hated you for bringing me into this world. I could have done it too. My magic was stronger than any Tavaedi in the clan. But I wouldn’t let the monster win.”

“But, Gremo…” Kuruga hesitated. “Why did he tie you to a rock if what he wanted was for you to slay the clan with your magic and then join him at the sea?”

“Monster,” said Gremo. To everyone’s embarrassment, tears made streaks in the dirt on his unwashed face. “I hate the monster.”

Kavio

The next morning, Kavio slept late. When he woke up, he heard a strange noise outside the hut. Poking his head out, he saw Gremo, grunting and waving his arms.

Kavio hopped out of the hut. “Enjoying your freedom?”

Gremo cringed, did not look at him, and did not answer.

The awkward arm-waving, with occasional kicks, continued, forcing Kavio to step back. Bands of light snaked around Gremo. Powerful magic made the air crack the way it did on the cusp of a storm. The hairs on Kavio’s arms stood on end.

“Gremo, what are you doing? Stop!”

Gremo threw back his head and howled at the sky. Spittle foamed at the corners of his lips, and his gaze, when he glared at Kavio, burned with hate. Black clouds boiled overhead out of an empty sky. Lightning crackled, touching Gremo and illuminating his aura like a blaze.

There was a monster. Kavio had set him free.

He rushed forward, but Gremo waved an arm and a shock of pure power knocked Kavio off his feet. He gasped for breath. The man’s strength was astounding, like a force of nature, and Kavio realized that during years of winding circles around the hut, Gremo had accumulated such power no ordinary human could subdue him.

Kavio had no choice but to try.

He rolled to his pack and groped blindly for a weapon, any weapon. He pulled out a spear head with a short haft, which he thrust up just as Gremo assaulted him again. He blooded the man, but Gremo never even slowed. He pummeled Kavio with fists of granite. Another blow like that would knock him senseless. He leaped out of the way again, and again, when Gremo kept coming, but he wasn't used to be being always on the defensive. Trying to regain control of the fight, Kavio attacked with a series of punches followed by a round-house kick.

Bad choice.

Gremo locked his leg and twisted, slamming Kavio into the dirt. Then, before he could wrest himself free, Gremo bent and lifted him up over his head and threw Kavio against the boulder that had once imprisoned him. Winds screamed in Kavio's ears, with gale force, pinning him there, helpless to stop Gremo's advance.

Then Gremo reached him and clenched his fingers around Kavio's throat.

"I am my father's son!" roared Gremo. "I will slay you and everyone in the clan!"

This would have been a good time for Kavio to come up with something heroic. If he did not, Gremo was going to snap his neck like a twig. Instead, maddeningly, Kavio felt a wave of weakness, accompanied by a flash of light, and knew that his cursed fae blood, his mother's legacy, had caught him at the worst possible moment. His eyes rolled back in his head and he surrendered to the fit and a memory.

Kavio (10 years old)

He stood behind his father, and his father's warriors. Across the defense ditch around their camp, another group of warriors stood, led by a man in headdress that sparkled with golden bangles. The man in gold was Hertio, War Chief of Yellow Bear.

"He is his father's son," said Hertio. "I demand the boy as my surety or none at all."

"I have seven sevens of men who would serve as your hostages," said Father.

"You would sacrifice them all in a heartbeat," said Hertio, "if it suited your purpose. Your son is your own blood. I think even you might hesitate to betray me if it meant his death."

You don't know my father, thought Kavio. He would never abandon his men. Me, on the other hand...

His father put his hand on Kavio's head.

"Please don't make me go, Father," Kavio whispered. "I don't trust him."

"Give me your hands, Kavio," Father said.

Kavio held up his wrists, and Father wound a sinew rope around them, pinching the flesh painfully. Kavio swallowed a foul taste in his mouth. There was no plea he could make, no way to save himself. Father tightened the rope into a knot.

Father pushed Kavio in front of him. Loudly, he announced, "My son will be your hostage and your slave, yours to command and yours to slay."

Kavio

Kavio snapped out of the memory. It had felt as vivid as if he'd relieved it, and Gremo stared at him wide-eyed in shock. The man had apparently shared the Vision from the past. However, Gremo shook himself free of the daze. He still held Kavio by the throat and now he lifted his other fist to deliver the killing blow.

Chapter Five

Yellow Bear

Kavio

Gremo roared again, but instead of smashing in Kavio's face or twisting off his head, Gremo tossed Kavio out of the way and threw himself on the boulder. Frantically, he assaulted the rock with his fists. At first, Kavio thought he sought to destroy the rock that had bound him for so long, but soon it became evident that, on the contrary, Gremo was using the ropes of lightning to electrify and re-weave the physical ropes that Kavio had cut apart the day before. He also coiled the lightning strands around himself and the rock, until, finally, he was more strongly lashed to the boulder than he had been before Kavio had arrived.

The blaze of light subsided; the storm clouds parted and drifted away.

Ruga, Lambo and Kuruga had all emerged from the hut at some point during the magic storm. Ruga blanched white and her mouth moved wordlessly. Lambo looked grim. Tears coursed down Kuruga’s face.

Gremo grunted and began laboriously tugging at the stone lashed behind him.

Someone pulled Kavio’s arm. Ruga.

“You healed him once,” she said. “You can heal him again.”

“I can’t.” He gently removed her hands. His whole body throbbed from the drubbing Gremo had given him. “He hexed himself, auntie. He bound his power to the rock to prevent himself from turning it against all of you.”

“He hates us that much?”

“And loves you that much. It’s a knot I cannot untangle. I’m sorry.”

With her fists she beat his chest, screaming, until Lumbo pulled her away. Kavio glanced at Kuruga, who still silently wept.

“You knew,” he said.

“I knew of his hate, but not of his love. Maybe…maybe when I tell the others in the clanhold, they will look differently at him. Maybe if we can put our rocks down, Gremo can release his.”

“And if they don’t, and he doesn’t? What will happen to Ruga? Will she live the rest of her life tending a madman walking in circles?”

“She will never abandon him,” said Kuruga. “She has bound herself as tightly as he, and he is the stone she carries.”

Kavio strapped the canoe onto his rucksack. Something had shifted inside, and poked him in the back, so he set it down and re-packed. One of the chert spearheads Nilo had given him was to blame. It was so sharp he cut himself when he moved it, spilling a few drops of blood on the leather. He sucked the finger, then re-shouldered the pack. This time it fit, and he even found the weight comforting.

Kavio

Over the following days of travel, Kavio struggled to put the disquieting episode with Gremo behind him. The secret of a peaceful journey was not to interact with other people. He resolved not to. Thank you, Rthan, Kavio smiled grimly to himself as he paddled. Your boat has eased my journey tremendously.

He had other difficulties, however. Travelers, moving in well protected groups, streamed toward the tribehold. Kavio caught glimpses of them on the trail parallel to the river: Tavaedies guarding Initiates. What arrested his attention was that some of the Initiates wore the distinctive hexachrome-maze-on-white of Rainbow Labyrinth tribesfolk. Were they slaves? Exiles? Traitors? Not that he was in a position to throw judgment stones, but none of the possibilities sat well with him.

They also slowed his progress because each time he saw other travelers he hid his canoe in the tangled shrubs by the shore until they left. Life would be so much easier in a world devoid of people, he reflected, as he poled his canoe into a hidden pool. Up ahead, a tree had fallen across the river, forming a mossy bridge, and someone stood there.

A young woman.

To his surprise, she was alone. She’d left her backbasket and outer garments on the bank. Her hair tumbled free, long and rich, as she began to cartwheel to and fro across the log. The sun set on the river behind her, turning her into a silhouette. She gave the impression, not of a Tavaedi performing a ritual, but of a faery at play, to whom handsprings, backflips and hand stand splits were as natural as walking. Her grace and strength made him catch his breath and forget to release it.

She must be from the Rainbow Labyrinth tribehold, he thought. Nowhere else in Faearth were children tested for magic at age seven; everyone else tested during Initiation. This was foolish, he’d always felt, because fourteen was too late. This woman had obviously been practicing since she was a child. His imagination built a whole life for her, from her successful testing at seven, to years of acclaim and danger. He wondered how many Chromas she had, and how many men had already begged her to marry them. He wanted to let the current carry him under her bridge, to ask her how she felt growing up as a prodigy—had people mocked her for it, as they’d mocked him when he’d come here as a child Tavaedi? Were they jealous of her skill, as they had been of his, did their resentment force her to build a wall of stone between her and a world of idiots? Would she hold her hand out to him and invite him to join her on the bridge?

Or would she look down at him and see just one more badgering fool?

The sun dipped directly behind her, bathing her in an aura as strong as one of the Faery Ladies. He had to look away.

When he turned back again, the clouds had covered the sun, but she was gone.

Dindi

“Dindi!” Gwenika called from the woods. “Where did you go?”

Muck and mercy. Dindi hopped down from the log, scrambled into her outer wrap and backbasket and managed to be seated sedately on the riverbank by the time Gwenika caught up with her.

The travelers had stopped an hour before sunset to eat evening meal and camp by the river. The two groups of adults were too busy talking amongst themselves to bother about enforcing the No Talking rule among the Initiates. The boys had gone hunting together.

Dindi had hoped to spend some time alone, but Gwenika had found her, as usual, and now Dindi heard the voices of other Initiates meandering toward the log bridge.

“Your mother is a Zavaedi and you dance just as well as she,” Jensi was telling Gwena, the elder sister. Kemla and five or six other girls were with them too. “They say you’ll be invited to join the Tavaedi for sure.”

“So you’re that good, are you?” Kemla, nearby, shoved her way into the conversation. “What can you do? Let’s have our own little Vooma.”

Gwena looked coy. The Tavaedies were out of sight behind some trees around a bend in the river. “You know we can’t perform tama.”

“Who said anything about tama? I just want to see what you can do. Do you see that log? Can you do this?”

Kemla ran to the log and cartwheeled across it. She held her arms up in a V on the other side. “Well?”

“That’s so easy I can do it with one hand behind my back,” said Gwena. She cartwheeled over the log with one hand resting in the small of her back.

“Who needs hands?” said Kemla. With a rush back across the log in the opposite direction, she executed a no-handed cartwheel, landed on the log and did a handstand off the edge of the log to drop to the bank again. She crossed her arms and smirked at Gwena.

“Fa!” said Gwena. “Babies could do as much. Try this.”

Bending over backwards, Gwena flipped swiftly across the log in two successive back handsprings.

Kemla immediately followed by attacking the log with a round off back handspring.

Gwena replied with a full-twisting double back leap, an amazing move that ended with two backwards somersaults in the air before she landed several paces past the log.

“That’s nothing,” Jensi said loudly.

Kemla and Gwena both swiveled their heads in her direction.

“You think you can do better, Jensi?”

“Not me. I’m not insane. But I’ve seen Dindi do flips like that on a branch half as thick and twice as high off the ground. Haven’t you, Dindi?”

Dindi turned flame red. “Jensi, what are you doing?”

“You’re better than both of them put together. Show them what you can do!”

She wanted to sink into the earth and dissolve. “Um.”

“Yes, Dindi, show us what you can do,” Kemla said like sticky sweet poison.

“Sure, Dindi, give it a go,” Gwena said, more kindly. “It’s all in fun.”

Urged by the other girls, Dindi stood up. She ran toward the log.

“Dindi, wait, don’t you—” began Jensi, but her warning came too late.

Dindi flipped herself into a handstand at the end of the log before she realized she had forgotten to take off her shoulder basket. Turned upside down, the flap at the top snapped from the pressure and the entire contents spilled over her, down the log and into the river.

She squealed and tumbled out of the handstand. She caught her fall in a roll in the soft mud of the bank, so she wasn’t hurt, but the fall must have looked less controlled than it was because Jensi screamed, Kemla laughed and Gwenika gasped, “Mercy! Are you all right?”

True enough, it made a mess. When Dindi stood up, river slime coated her face and hair, not to mention her white wrap. Worse yet, her beautiful white dancing costume had fallen in the river, fortunately just in the shallows, and was covered with mud as well. Several of the heavy stone tools had rolled in deeper, and Dindi had to wade into the chill water up to her thighs to find them all. Was that everything?

The corncob doll.

She didn’t see it either on the bank or in the water. She was just starting to panic when she heard Kemla burst into another peal of laughter.

“Fa la, Dindi, is this your totem doll?” Kemla asked, holding up the ratty cob by its torn dress.

“Give it back to me,” said Dindi. The water reeds in the river tangled her feet as she struggled to climb back up the riverbank to grab the doll.

“Just look at it! Have you ever seen an uglier doll?”

Kemla threw the doll to Gwena, who sniggered. “She’s bald!”

The girls played keep-away with the doll, throwing it from one to another every time Dindi tried to snatch it back.

“She has no face!”

“All the beads have fallen off!”

“It looks a hundred years old!”

“What a disaster of a totem!” Kemla cried. “How—appropriate!”

The other girls on the bank laughed. Even Jensi. Not Gwenika though.

“This isn’t funny,” Dindi tried to jump and catch doll from out of the air, but Kemla caught it first and did a one handed cartwheeled over the log with the doll in her other hand.

“You have to come get it,” Kemla said. “Cross the log for it—on your hands. If you let your feet touch the log, I’ll throw Baldy here in the water.”

Gwena led the rest of the girls in a slow, rhythmic clap. None of them would help her. They thought this was just a game. If Dindi tried to warn them of the real danger, they would laugh and tease her.

Clap.

Clap.

Clap…

What choice did she have? She couldn’t think of any clever way to put them in their place. If her fae friends were here, she would have at least had allies. But the only faery watching was a blue haired rusalka who lurked in the deeper currents at the center of the river. Feral glee swirled in her eyes and her waterweed hair swayed with the whitewater eddies of the river. If anything, she seemed to take more pleasure from Dindi’s misery than the human girls—rusalki were nasty Blue fae who enjoyed drowning humans. Fae weren’t always nice either.

Dindi handstanded onto the log. Her muddy skirt flipped down over her waist, revealing her loin girds, which caused more giggling. She grit her teeth and ignored it. Palm by palm, she hand-walked down the log. The moss slipped under her fingers, but she grasped the grooved bark underneath to keep her grip. It had been easy when she’d been practicing by herself, but now she felt self-conscious and clumsy.

“You have to ask nicely,” Kemla shouted from the far bank as Dindi neared the center of the log.

“Can I please have my totem doll back?” Upside down and covered with mud, she felt like an utter fool, but she had to have the doll back before it hurt somebody.

“Sure, Dindi. Here it is!”

Kemla threw the corn cob doll as hard as she could right at Dindi’s solar plexus.

Light flashed all around her. No, not now, was Dindi’s last thought before she tumbled into the water below and into the other mind.

Vessia

Vessia found Danumoro in a place where people lived on three hills, which they called the Tors of Yellow Bear tribehold. The people here wore much gold and they snickered at Vessia when she walked the rows between their houses without even a single gold necklace to grace her neck. “Another grubby exile from the Rainbow Labyrinth,” the women commented loudly to one another as she passed. “I don’t mind the outtriber Initiates, at least they pay their way, but the exiles are too much. Dirty beggars.”

Danumoro, in contrast, expressed delight that she had come. His only disappointment was that she had not come to marry him.

“The local secret society here knows I am a Yellow Tavaedi, but the dances I know are different than theirs, so I do not dance with them,” he explained to Vessia. “But they don’t bother me if I dance healing for those in need, and that’s how I barter for my needs. Also, when I first came here, I healed Hertio, who is now War Chief for the whole tribehold, and he still counts me as a friend.”

Vessia nodded, though she didn’t understand. The intricacies of people’s social exclusions and inclusions layered over one another like autumn leaves accumulating on the forest floor, obscuring and transforming the underlying foundation past recognition.

“You can accompany me on my rounds,” he added. “Do you know any dances of healing?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can teach you what you don’t know yet. I know you can dance Yellow. I’ve seen you.”

“I dance what I dance,” she shrugged.

So wherever he went, she followed him. She watched. She learned. Not just the dances he performed, which she found stilted and simple, but his manner with people, which she found astonishing and complex. Sometimes Danumoro would spend much time tending people with small complaints. Though he did little for them, they would put corn, meat, shells—even pebbles of gold, which he said were most valuable of all—into his travel basket when he departed.

“Why do you dance so long for them?” Vessia asked. “You could have healed them with a gesture.”

“I know,” he admitted. “But if they perceive my tama as taking a long time, they will give me more. They don’t want to be told that they are spoiled squawk birds. They want to be fawned over and catered to. That’s the real reason they fill my basket.”

“So what matters is filling the basket?” she asked, trying hard to understand. “But then why do you also go to the people who don’t fill your basket?”

He grimaced. “I tend the wealthy only so I can afford to tend the poor. If I could, I would only dance for those who can’t fill my basket, but I need to eat too.”

Many of those who couldn’t fill his basket were the “dirty beggars” of whom the gold-clad women of the tribehold spoke so scathingly. Exiles from the Rainbow Labyrinth, these people were dirty, and they did beg in the streets, where they slept. Hertio had found a way to keep them from being idle all day; any who wished could go work dragging dirt and stones to build a new tor a short distance from the three tors already in the valley. In return, at the start and end of the day, each worker would be given a handful of corn gruel. But some were too young, too old, too weak in body or too weak in mind to do even that much. These were Danumoro’s patients.

She learned how he healed. He used herbs and leaves, teas and poultices, but this was only a part of it. An aura of light, woven like a basket into different patterns, surrounded each person. Danumoro kneaded the aura with gestures over the patient’s body. In more serious cases, he drew strands of the patient’s aura into his dance to reshape it and redeploy it. “I never really heal anyone,” he explained to Vessia. “They heal themselves. I just show their aura how to do it.”

Except he couldn’t always stop the weave from unraveling. Once, he could not save a hollow-eyed orphan child from falling asleep. When none of his dancing would wake the child, he wept like a child himself.

“Some wounds never heal. Sometimes it’s better to let go. But it’s hard, Vessia, it’s hard to let go, even when it hurts us more to hold on.”

“Why does it bother you so much?” Vessia asked.

“Eight years old is too young to die,” he said. He dashed away his tears and punched the air. “The Bone Whistler murdered that child, as surely as if he did it with his own hands. How I wish I could kill that monster.”

Another time, Danumoro tended a man with boils under his arms. Rather than dance healing, he said to the man’s family, “The plague yeech have already conquered him. You must send him away to the Tor of the Stone Hedge right away, and burn his house, or more yeech will come.”

“What does it mean to go to the Tor of the Stone Hedge?” asked Vessia after they hurried away from that house and the wailing family.

“It means the man is already dead,” said Danumoro. “I can’t help him. The Deathsworn must finish him before others die.”

“The Deathsworn?”

“Sometimes,” Danumoro explained reluctantly, “there are those who are too sick or injured to live. There are those who are old and never had children to care for them in their last years. And there are criminals and witches who break the law of light and shadow. Such people go to a place marked by a black stone. The Deathsworn come to take them.”

“Take them?”

“Kill them, Vessia,” he said gently.

She couldn’t understand why one would try so hard to make some live, and so hard to make some die.

Vessia heard many rumors and opinions about a person called the Bone Whistler, none good. Then one day, a new rumor swept through the tribehold: The Bone Whistler’s army is marching on Yellow Bear. The exiles panicked. Some fled immediately, heading toward the Green Woods. Others heeded the call of the War Chief Hertio to join his warriors and “face the blooded spear like men”.

Danumoro stayed. “I’ve already run once. I wish I could dance Red.”

“Not to heal.”

“No, not all dances are for healing,” he said.

Soon new exiles arrived—not Rainbow Labyrinth tribesfolk, but Yellow Bear tribesfolk whose clanholds had been razed by the advancing army of the Bone Whistler. They begged for help on behalf of other clanholds in the Bone Whistler’s path. Hertio agreed to send Tavaedies and warriors out to help them.

Danumoro volunteered for the mission. He forbade Vessia from accompanying him, but she followed anyway. By the time they arrived, however, the battle had already ended. Wounded littered the field.

“It looks like I will be healing after all,” Danumoro said grimly. In these times, the Yellow Bear Tavaedies did not object when he joined their circle of dancers.

The Tavaedies divided the wounded into two groups. They treated one group kindly and began to dance healing for them at once. They tied up the men in the second group.

While the healers busied themselves with the first group, Vessia wandered over to the tied up men. One in particular caught her attention. The man had strong masculine features and an athletic physique, which Vessia had learned meant he was to be considered handsome. That wasn’t what drew her. Rather, it was the way he looked at her, directly, unafraid.

“Why did they tie you up?” she asked him. “Why aren’t they healing you?”

He looked amused. “They would rather piss in our teeth.”

“Why do you serve the Bone Whistler?” she asked. “Nobody likes him.”

“The Bone Whistler does not aspire to be liked,” said the man. “He aspires to be loved. And people love most what they fear most.”

Vessia wrinkled her brow. “That is not how Danu explained love to me. He’s often told me he loves me, but never that he fears me.”

The prisoner studied her. “I’m not sure why, but I think I should fear you.”

She looked him up and down. Gashes crisscrossed his bare chest. His arms were pinned behind his back. Nothing remained of his leather legwals but shreds and he hadn’t shaved in several days. Blood, sweat and muck smudged the muscles of his chest and arms.

“Well, I don’t fear you,” said Vessia.

The prisoner laughed. It was a low rumble almost like a purr. “You wound me more than any of the weapons I have faced in battle, beautiful one.”

The Tavaedies had finished healing everyone in the first group as best they could. Now they approached the second group with drawn knives.

“Ah,” said the prisoner, jerking his chin in their direction. He smiled defiantly as he said it. “Here come my executioners.”

Danumoro stepped in front of the prisoners. “Don’t.”

The prisoners looked surprised. Vessia noticed that they all glanced at the handsome strong one for direction. Which was strange, she thought, because he wore no marks of leadership. In fact, he wore less than the other men. As if he had removed his outer garments to hide the markings on them.

He’s their leader. But he doesn’t want us—his enemies—to know.

“You of all people should rejoice in the blood of these murderers, Herb Dancer,” the Yellow Bear Tavaedies told Danumoro.

“Then listen to me when I plead for the lives of these enemies,” Danumoro said.

After much argument, they finally gave in to him. But none of them would heal the wounded warriors of the Bone Whistler. Danumoro crossed his arms and addressed the prisoners.

“If you give me your parole that you will not try to run, I will dance healing for you,” he said.

Again, the men’s eyes slid subtly toward the handsome one, who inclined his head slightly.

“We’ll do it,” said a gruff warrior who held an unconscious man in his lap. “Start with Bapio, here. He’s in a bad way.”

One by one, Danumoro took aside the wounded enemy warriors and healed them to the best of his ability. Not all survived, but Vessia could tell by his dancing that he tried as hard to save them as he had his own people. The handsome one sent all the other men before himself to be healed. He insisted his wound was not that bad. Finally, Danumoro gestured for him to come. Only then did Vessia realize that the entire time the handsome prisoner had been holding a broken arrow still in the flesh where it had punctured his lower back.

Danumoro was furious. “This is a terrible wound! You should have let me treat it right away!”

“I’m fine,” the handsome one said. Now that she knew what to look for, though, Vessia realized that his smile was pinched with pain. He had to have been in ghastly agony the entire time he was sitting there sending his men to be helped before himself. Grumbling, Danumoro directed the prisoner to the center of his healing circle. He pulled out the arrow—the prisoner grunted, but clenched his teeth rather than cry out—and staunched the wound with special leaves.

An aura of light surrounded the handsome prisoner. All people had auras, but some, Vessia had noticed, were stronger and more colorful than others, and his aura gleamed brilliantly. Danumoro noticed it too. After he finished his dance, the hole in the man’s lower back looked better, but Danumoro frowned.

“You’re a Tavaedi,” he accused the prisoner.

The handsome prisoner lifted an eyebrow. “If you were going to kill me, you should have done it before you drained your aura healing me.”

“Tell me your Shining Name,” demanded Danumoro.

“No.”

“You owe me your life, but you won’t even give me your name?”

“I won’t be in your debt for long.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The prisoner smiled cockily. “Even as we speak, the War Group of Vio the Skull Stomper, foremost Zavaedi of the Bone Whistler, is encircling your position. You’re trapped. When they close the circle, they will slaughter you like pigs on feast day.”

Danumoro paled. He ran to warn the others.

The prisoner had not issued an idle bluff. Not long after that, they all heard the enemy beat their war drums. The trap had closed. The Yellow Bear Tavaedies accompanied Danumoro back to the prisoner.

“You owe me a lifedebt,” Danumoro said. “You must allow us to leave.”

“I owe only you,” said the prisoner. “Your friends would have slit all our throats.” Before Danumoro could object, he held up a hand. “But since you showed uncommon compassion, and since--” the handsome prisoner glanced at Vessia, “I am feeling generous, I will allow your whole party to leave unmolested in trade for myself and my men.”

“Agreed.”

A short while later, the Yellow Bear war party walked silently through rows of Rainbow Labyrinth warriors, while the prisoners walked in the other direction. The last Vessia saw of the handsome warrior, he paused to call back to Danumoro.

“We are even now, Healer. Be wary. Next time we meet, the balance will be fresh, and I’ll owe you nothing. Don’t expect unearned mercy from me. I am Vio the Skull Stomper.”

An angry murmur rose among the Yellow Bear tribesfolk at that name. Danumoro clenched his fists.

“I wouldn’t expect unearned mercy from any of you scum!” he shouted back.

“And yet,” said Vessia, just to him. “You showed mercy to them.”

“I wish I hadn’t,” said Danumoro. “If I had known who he was, I would have rather died at the hands of his warriors afterward, if it meant I could have slit his throat first. The other Tavaedies were right. I was a fool to spare those prisoners!”

So many contradictions. She didn’t think she would ever fathom it.

Dindi

Dindi awakened from the Vision, drowning.

Blue-skinned rusalki grappled Dindi under the churning surface of the river. She could feel their claws dig into her arms. Their riverweed-like hair entangled her legs when she tried to kick back to the surface. She only managed to gulp a few breaths of air before they pulled her under again.

She hadn’t appreciated how fast and deep the river was. On her second gasp for air, she saw that the current was already dragging her out of sight of the screaming girls on the bank. Some of them, including Jensi and Gwenika, were running along the edge of the river, trying to keep up with her, but trees and rocks slowed them down, while the fae propelled Dindi forward even faster. Now she could see where they wanted her to go. A whirlpool of froth and fae roiled between two large rocks in the middle of the river. The rusalka and her sisters tugged Dindi toward it. Other water fae joined the rusalki. Long snouted pookas, turtle-like kappas and hairy-armed gwyllions all swam around her, leading her to the whirlpool, where even more fae swirled in the whitewater.

“Join our circle, Dindi!” the fae voices gurgled under the water. “Dance with us forever!”

“No!” She kicked and swam and stole another gasp for air before they snagged her again. There were so many of them now, all pulling her down, all singing to the tune of the rushing river. She tried to shout, “Dispel!” but swallowed water instead. Her head hit a rock, disorienting her. She sank, this time sure she wouldn’t be coming up again.

“Dispel!” It was a man’s voice.

Strong arms encircled her and lifted her until her arms and head broke the surface. Her rescuer swam with her toward the shore. He overpowered the current, he shrugged aside the hands of the water faeries stroking his hair and arms. When he reached the shallows, he scooped Dindi into his arms and carried her the rest of the way to the grassy bank. He set her down gently.

She coughed out some water while he supported her back.

“Better?” he asked.

She nodded. He was young—only a few years older than she. The aura of confidence and competence he radiated made him seem older. Without knowing quite why, she was certain he was a Tavaedi.

“Good.” He had a gorgeous smile. A wisp of his dark bangs dangled over one eye. He brushed his dripping hair back over his head.

Dindi’s hand touched skin—he was not wearing any shirt. Both of them were sopping wet. On him, that meant trickles of water coursed over a bedrock of muscle. As for her, the thin white wrap clung transparently to her body like a wet leaf. She blushed.

“It might have been easier to swim if you had let go of that,” he teased. He touched her hand, which was closed around something. “What were you holding onto so tightly that it mattered more than drowning?”

Dindi realized she still clutched the corncob doll in one hand. She stared at her hand as if it were someone else’s.

“You must think I’m a fool.”

“Not at all,” he said. “You must be a strong swimmer to have survived in the water that long. I couldn’t tell if the fae were trying to hold you up or pull you down.”

Both, she thought.

“Let’s get you dried off,” he said, with another dazzling smile. “My pack is back there.”

Great Aunt Sullana would have had quite a few words on the topic of accompanying a strange male through the woods, but Dindi followed the young man without question. His travel basket was not far. It sat on a large rock beside the river, next to a beached kayak. He must have taken it off right before he jumped into the river to rescue her.

“And I thought my rucksack was too big,” Dindi said. His was as tall as Dindi and must have weighed twice as much. “Can you really lift that monster?”

He grinned. “My friends were a little overenthusiastic when they gave their journey gifts.” He opened the basket flap and began to rummage through the vast piles of neatly folded blankets and wrapped objects. “You’re an Initiate, aren’t you?”

She crossed her arms over her breasts. “Yes.”

“I’m afraid I don’t really have any girls’ clothing with me.” Without looking at her, he held out some folded fabric. “Here, try this, at least until we can get you back to your camp. The Tavaedies responsible for you will be worried, I imagine.”

Dindi scampered behind some bushes. As quickly as she could, she dropped the wet wrap in a heap and rolled the new material around her torso.

The material felt like swan down against her chilled skin. She had never seen cloth so smoothly woven before, with such tiny, even threads. And the colors! Though they were the same six colors of the Rainbow Labyrinth tribe in her old wrap, the dyes in this textile were much more vivid. Nor had she ever seen the maze pattern of her tribe detailed with such intricacy.

“You’re from the Rainbow Labyrinth tribe too!” she exclaimed, emerging from behind the bushes.

He was facing away from her. In her excitement at the discovery that he was a fellow tribesman, she hadn’t bothered to check if he’d finished dressing. He had removed his wet legwals, and she had a fine view of his bare backside: powerful thighs, broad back with shoulders so defined they resembled wings, and everything in between.

“Oh, mercy!” She turned red. “I’m so sorry.” She backed up, tripped over a root, and bumped into a tree. “I’ll, um, go…”

“It’s all right,” he said easily. Her blunder did not appear to have offended him to the degree it had mortified her. “I’m almost ready.”

She ran to hide behind the bush. She only returned once he was lacing up his legwals. They were not leather, she noticed, but of the same richly woven fabric that he had given her. He shouldered his huge pack without a sign of strain, including the kayak, which cupped the rucksack like a turtle’s shell. He might as well have been carrying a kitten.

“Your people are back that way,” he said, pointing upstream.

Where were her manners?

“My name is Dindi,” she said. “Of Lost Swan clan of Rainbow Labyrinth tribe.”

He hesitated before he returned his name. “Kavio.”

How odd. Why did he not mention his clan and tribe?

“From the weave you lent me, I thought you were from Rainbow Labyrinth tribe—”

“I was. Once.”

“Oh.” Her heart sank. “You’re married, then?”

“No.”

It was obvious he didn’t really want to talk about why he had no clan to his name any more than she wanted to talk about the corncob doll, so Dindi fell silent, still confused. A new topic seemed best.

“Thank you for saving me,” she said. “I owe you a lifedebt.”

“I believe the traditional reward would be a kiss.”

The idea both terrified and thrilled her.

Sparks danced in his eyes, like mischief, but more intense, as lightening was more intense than burning oil. “But, I confess, there’s something I want from you even more.” He leaned forward. His voice dropped to a conspiracy, husky against her ear. “Tell me your Chromas.”

“Wh—what?”

“There’s no one who can hide from me. I mean no one—it’s been tried by the best. Except you. I honestly can’t tell.”

“You’re talking about Tavaedi colors? I thought you understood. I’m still an Initiate. I haven’t been tested yet.”

His bewilderment, almost anger, befit a man expecting water but given sand.

“Have I forfeited my lifedebt?” she asked, suddenly queasy.

“No.” He shook himself from his daze. “Of course not, I’ll accept something else, whatever you wish. I just thought…I’m not often mistaken.”

People rushed toward them along the river’s edge. Jensi was one, Gwenika another, the other girls were right behind—including Kemla, who was crying—and the Tavaedies from both tribes, led by Abiono.

“Dindi! Thank the Six Faeries, you’re still alive!” he exclaimed. “Kemla said you were fooling around on the log and fell in the river, and she was so upset…”

Kemla was upset? But, yes, there was Kemla, wailing like a baby.

“It was all my fault!” she screeched. “I was demonstrating a few flips—not dancing, mind you, just demonstrating—and Dindi insisted on copying me, even though she hadn’t the skill, and she just…” She trailed away into loud blubbering.

“That’s not quite what happened,” said Gwena. At least she looked guilty. “We were—“

“I dropped my doll from the log and fell in when I tried to catch it,” Dindi said. Gwena looked at her gratefully. Hurrying on, she gestured to Kavio. “This man saved me.”

“Er, I see.” Abiono looked flustered at the presence of the stranger. “Is this true?”

Kavio inclined his head.

“Then we are most grateful,” Abiono said. “As you can see, we are on our way to the Yellow Bear tribehold for the Initiation. Are you by any chance headed in that direction?”

“As a matter of fact, I am,” said Kavio.

Abiono beamed. “Marvelous. If you wish to travel with us, we would be happy of your company. You have saved one of our clan daughters and we cannot thank you enough. In the absence of Dindi’s parents, I am her guardian, and will pay you the lifedebt.” He added, under his breath, “You cannot imagine what her great aunt would have done to me if the girl had drowned.”

That set Kemla into another fit of weeping.

“It was horrible, horrible to watch,” Kemla cried. “I still don’t think I’ve recovered.”

Several of the other girls comforted her all the way back to camp.

Dindi

The next morning, Dindi kept glancing sidelong to try to catch a peek at Kavio as everyone washed and prepared to travel. He was on the boys’ side of the river, of course, around the bend and out of sight as the girls bathed and painted on the kohl blindfolds of Initiates. Sadly, Dindi had to wear her old wrap again—she would have much preferred to wear the wonderful weave that Kavio had lent her. She still hadn’t had a chance to return it to him.

Instead of Kavio, however, Zavaedi Brena called her aside to speak with her.

“Dindi,” the older woman said. “I’m sorry. Your friend has just told us he has no name.”

“He has a name, it’s—”

“He has no clan and no tribe. Dindi, child—he’s an exile.”

She felt cold. “So?”

“So we cannot permit an exile to travel with us.”

“But he saved me…”

“Which is why you must be there when I tell him that he may not travel with us.”

Her stomach turned. “Must we do this?”

“He’s a criminal, an outcast. He has no place with us. He must agree that the lifedebt is settled, he must agree to demand nothing else from you, or from us. He helped you, we repay him, and that’s all he can expect from us. Come with me, and bring one of the guest gifts your family gave you for barter.”

Having seen the quality of the textiles that Kavio possessed, Dindi wondered what she could possibly give him that he would consider worthy. A chert scrapper? No. A flint arrowhead? No, he probably had arrowheads made from obsidian. A set of tear-shaped stone loom weights? Fa, he didn’t build those muscles sitting on a balcony weaving.

“I have no worthy gifts,” she said.

Zavaedi Brena clucked her tongue. “He’s just a clanless beggar, child, I’m sure a simple thing will suffice. Here.” She pulled out a small pottery bowl embossed with the swan design of Dindi’s clan. “This will do. Now, come.”

Dindi took the bowl and also the cloth he had lent her. Miserably, she followed Zavaedi Brena. They crossed the log to the boys’ side of the river to find Kavio.

“Careful, Dindi!” cried out the first boy to see her, Tamio. “Don’t fall in again!”

Tamio and the other boys laughed. Another ‘stupid Dindi trick’ I’ll never live down. She did her best to ignore the jibe.

“Where is Kavio?” Zavaedi Brena asked severely. Tamio sobered at once.

“You mean the stranger?” Tamio jerked a thumb. “Further down the river.”

They followed the river. In the dawn light, the fae gamboling in the water were completely different in nature than those who had been churning the water the evening before. Now smiling Blue naiads and undines splashed there. They waved innocently at Dindi.

Kavio knelt over a still pool at the river’s edge, carefully applying a thick paste of ash and mud to his face and upper body. When he stood up, he no longer looked like the same warrior who had rescued her. His face looked lumpen and strange. His bright eyes sparkled eerily from the mask of mud. They seemed to pierce right through her. Then he inclined his head to acknowledge Zavaedi Brena.

He knew why they’d come.

Zavaedi Brena paused, tense and worried. In a low voice, she said to Dindi, “There is a chance he might not accept the gift. By tradition, he is entitled to demand whatever he wishes. If he demands anything…inappropriate…let me deal with it.”

Dindi nodded. She wondered what the older woman meant by “inappropriate”.

“Stranger,” Zavaedi Brena called out. “This child brings you payment for the life you saved. Will you agree that the debt is settled and move on?”

Zavaedi Brena waited tensely.

“Yes,” Kavio said, without any inflection. “I understand. I’ll move on alone.”

“Go ahead, give it to him,” Zavaedi Brena nudged Dindi. “I’ll be right here.”

Dindi walked forward. How she hated this.

“Kavio,” she said. She bit her lip. He had saved her life. How could she tell him he wasn’t worthy of accompanying their party? To buy time, she held out the fabric he’d given her, neatly folded again. “Um, here’s your cloth. Thank you for lending it to me.”

He took it silently.

“You’re an exile.” Stupid. He knows that.

“Yes,” he said. Just one word. He waited for her to go on.

“Here…this is all I have to give you,” she said, lowering her lashes because she couldn’t bear to meet his eyes when she handed him the bowl. She added in a whisper, “I’m sorry. I guess my life isn’t worth much.”

Her whole body trembled.

“I accept it,” he said. “Don’t worry. I won’t be bothering you again.”

He shouldered his traveling basket without further discussion. But the look he gave her before he walked away wounded her like a spear.

Chapter Six

Stone Hedge

Dindi

Another week’s travel brought them at last to Yellow Bear tribehold. Looking out over the valley, Dindi rocked back on her heels. She had seen this place before, through Vessia’s eyes. Perhaps the leaves crinkling beneath her feet hid the skulls stomped upon by the army of the Bone Whistler.

Abiono pointed to five tall hills that dotted a river valley.

“The Tors of Yellow Bear. Hertio the Mound Builder, War Chief of Yellow Bear tribe, has promised the matriarchs and patriarchs of the tribe he will build seven Tors in all. He’s been building up the tribehold for many years now. His ambition is make Yellow Bear tribehold rival the Rainbow Labyrinth.”

“Is that possible?” asked Tamio, his pride prickled.

Abiono shrugged. “He has added two Tors in twenty-two years, but he is old now, and was supposed to step down as War Chief already a year past. It depends if the War Chief after him wishes to complete his project.”

Dindi shivered. Hertio the Mound Builder. She recognized the name. In Vessia’s time, there had only been three Tors: the Tor of the Sun, the Tor of the Moon, and the Tor of the Stone Hedge. The fourth and fifth hills were barely older than the Initiates.

Atop the Tor of the Stone Hedge, there were no houses, only three circles of giant megaliths, one inside the other. At this distance it looked foreboding. And old. Even in the Vision, the Tor of the Stone Hedge had already looked dark and ancient.

Until now, Dindi had imagined Vessia had lived long ago and far away, in the time of legends before humans and Aelfae had fought. To find herself following just twenty years behind the footsteps of the Corn Maiden unnerved Dindi.

Vessia might still be alive. I might meet her.

The scale of the tribehold gradually sank in as they spent half a day just crossing the folded river and its fields to reach the mound next to the incomplete one. This fourth settlement looked different too; the houses weren’t beehive domes, but longhouses that formed neat parallel rows across the round, flat hill top. Once the travelers walked up the narrow raised path and into the hold, Dindi realized why. There were no ordinary families living here. All of the people who poured out of the longhouses to meet them were other Initiates or Tavaedies.

Hundreds of children had gathered for the Initiation. The majority of them, of course, were Yellow Bear tribesfolk, but there were a few other clans from the Rainbow Labyrinth present as well.

The Tavaedies assigned the children to longhouses based upon age and gender. Jensi, Gwena and Kemla were all assigned to Fourth House, while Dindi and Gwenika were assigned to Ninth House. Amidst the sea of strangers, even an extra week of acquaintance felt like familiarity, so Gwenika clung to Dindi’s side as if they were clan sisters. The long houses had no sleeping platforms, just dirt floors and reed mats. Each girl staked out her spot along the north or south wall, and marked it with her own basket of things. They both contributed a few scraps of cloth to make a separate bed for Puddlepaws, but he sniffed this once, then curled up in the middle of Dindi’s mat.

The disease yeech had left Gwenika alone during the last week of the journey, but the day after their arrival, the yeech attacked with renewed vehemence. Gwenika broke out into a rash and a fever. While the other Initiates left to explore the tribehold, Dindi stayed by her side all day, patting her head with a damp cloth and brewing her tea. Gwenika’s grandmother had fortunately packed the leaves in the travel basket.

“I don’t know why Gwena hates me so much.”

“Shhh,” said Dindi, dabbing Gwenika’s tear-stained and rash-red cheeks with a cloth. “Just rest as much as you’re able.”

Thinking of Gwena reminded Dindi of the corncob doll. The thing was definitely a menace. Just touching it appeared to set off the magic Visions. But what could she do to protect herself from the doll? She couldn’t just throw it away…

“They’re coming for me again,” Gwenika whispered. “The yeech.”

The ugly Yellow fae rode rats that scampered in the thatch of the lodge roof. A line of them crawled furtively down a wooden post, toward the girls. Unlike most fae, they didn’t want to be seen. If she looked directly, she saw nothing but the thatch and the post, but if she cocked her head, she could see the flicker of light out of the corner of her eye. As before, the yeech were following a trail of yellow light.

“It looks like something is leading them to you,” said Dindi.

Gwenika bit her lip and Dindi could tell that the same thought had already occurred to her. Then she did a double take.

“You can see them too?”

“Just a little—like a flickering candle. Do you want more of your grandmother’s brew?”

Dindi pored some more from the clay jar in the hearth into a bowl, but Gwenika pushed it away.

“No, it’s too bitter.” Suddenly, Gwenika sat up. She grabbed Dindi’s wrist. “What if I’ve been wrong all along? What if it wasn’t my sister? What if it was my grandmother?”

“Why would your grandmother hex you?”

“She and my mother were always arguing. She thought that my mother shouldn’t push both of us to be Tavaedies. One Tavaedi in the family was enough. What if she didn’t want to kill me, only to keep me from becoming a Tavaedi?”

Dindi considered. “Maybe we could follow the yellow rope of light to see where it leads.”

“Yes!” Gwenika chewed her lip. “Unless it leads to a horrible troll as tall as a tree who eats us.”

“If a troll eats a sick person, does it make the troll sick?”

“I’d rather not find out.”

The snakes of yellow light bit into golden aura around Gwenika’s body. Her aura, Dindi thought, recalling what she had seen in the Vision. They followed the thickest strand of light up the post and across the room. Gwenika could see it much more clearly than Dindi, who saw only a flicker. They had to climb into the rafters of the lodge.

“Are you sure you can do this?” Dindi asked.

“It will probably kill me,” said Gwenika. “There’s still time to talk me out of it.”

They followed the shimmery trail of light all the way down the lodge, creeping from beam to beam in the framework. The golden rope led down again and then back across the floor to the other side, then climbed once more into the rafters, then across the room…

“The fiend is clever,” huffed Gwenika. “She’s hiding her handiwork and leading us in circles!”

“Gwenika!” Dindi stopped in her tracks so abruptly the other girl bumped into her from behind. “Don’t you see what’s going on here? The strands of light are coming from you. That’s why we’re climbing in circles. Your aura is shining so brightly it’s attracting the yeech. You hexed yourself!”

She gently reached to massage Gwenika’s shoulders and neck, the area where the cords of light seemed thickest. The aura flexed and twisted under her touch. Now Dindi saw that there were several other colors embedded in the aura, just slivers, outshone by the gold, but still there. Gentle movements of her hands over Gwenika’s back strengthened the other colors. The yellow strings fell away.

The yeech howled in frustration. Without the path of light, they weren’t able to proceed any further. Hissing and growling, they skittered away.

Gwenika batted her hands away. “Leave me alone! If you don’t believe how sick I am, you could have just said so. You didn’t have to pretend to believe me and then say it was all my fault. You sound just like my mother!”

“Maybe your mother is right. You have to figure out what you’re doing to yourself and stop it. I know how terrible I would feel if anything made me miss my chance to be a Tavaedi. I wouldn’t want that to happen to you either.”

“I hope I’m not chosen. All my life, it’s all I’ve heard, you have to be a Tavaedi, you have to be a Tavaedi, and I’m sick of it!”

Gwenika clapped her hand over her own mouth. “Oh!”

Brena

“Each of you will be Tested for magic upon the Tor of the Stone Hedge,” Zavaedi Brena instructed her flock. By tradition, none were the Initiates she’d arrived with, so she could not show favoritism toward her own kin. Elsewhere, in front of the longhouses, other Tavaedies gave similar instructions to other groups of adolescents. “Those of you who have magic will learn the secrets of the Tavaedies. The rest of you will learn the responsibilities of manhood and womanhood. For some lessons, all three groups will assemble together; otherwise, Tavaedies, warriors and maidens will meet separately.

“Wear your totem doll on a cord around your neck,” she added. “You will present it after the Testing to whomever will be your new teacher, and receive a totem of adulthood in turn.”

She shooed the Initiates into two long columns, boys and girls, to trek from the Tor of the Initiates to the Tor of the Stone Hedge. They wore their tribal colors. Also, they had to don again the blindfolds and submit to having their hands tied behind their backs.

Though she kept sharp watch over her assigned charges, Brena also glanced from time to time at her daughters, who were in another group. Tension knotted her belly like labor cramps. She suspected she was more nervous than they were. The night of her own Initiation had been the worst and best of her life. She forced herself to take deep breaths.

Three rings of menhirs, upright slabs of granite, formed concentric circles on the flat summit of the hill. If one looked closely, one could see strange symbols etched into the stones. No one knew what the glyphs represented or who had put them there. It was believed that the Aelfae had built the circle of stones, and inscribed them, but others said the Brundorfae had done it, and others, that the Deathsworn had built the monument. Some said all three shared in the building of the rings, one ring each.

The Zavaedies and Tavaedies in charge of the Initiates rolled away a huge stone from a hole in the ground. They drove the blindfolded children down the hole, into the darkness. Remembering again her own Initiation, the stark fear, the chill close brush of death, then warm stroking hands, Brena’s stomach roiled. Oh, my daughters, I’m sorry. You have to face the darkness on your own.

Once the last child had descended into the dark, the adults rolled the stone back over the hole, sealing them under the earth. They took their position just inside the innermost ring of stones, to begin their long vigil.

Rthan

Rthan and his men slipped the canoe into the river. He leaped in first. The warriors climbed in and crouched behind him. All were dressed in full war regalia. Meira, his daughter who was not his daughter, glowed blue from her seat in the prow, where she leaned on the graven head of the war canoe. She looked so small and out of place, like a child playing where she didn’t belong.

As if sensing his continued reticence, she turned to him with his daughter’s solemn face. “Never forget what they did to me and mama.”

He saw again the hideously charred bodies, burnt and twisted. He didn’t need her reminders or her faery games.

“It wasn’t you they murdered.” He reminded himself more than her, not from disloyalty but for his sanity’s sake. Of late, he found it easier and easier to forget who she really was. “You’re immortal.”

“I speak for her because she can never again speak for herself.” The blue faery child didn’t flinch. “Will you avenge me, Daddy?”

He tightened his grip on the oars and maneuvered the boat into the swiftest part of the current. He could hear the water slapping the sides of other boats setting out from shore, an entire war party. The glow from her body illuminated the moonless night, highlighting ripples on the black waters.

“I will avenge you, Meira, I swear it,” he said.

Kavio

Kavio noted the changes to the Tors of Yellow Bear since his first visit eight years ago. It had seemed bigger then—he’d only been ten years old—but that was the distortion of a child’s awe. He remembered running down the crazy, curvy paths between the beehive shaped houses, first in play, again after the old man tried to kill him. He recalled the jingle of gold bangles on the ankles and wrists of Hertio’s daughter Lulla and the smell of the boiling nuggets from the smelting ovens.

Beyond the tors, across the river, the land sloped up into a forest of giant sequoias. The oaks and sycamores at their knees bowed before them like conquered warriors. His father’s army had camped on those slopes, keen to make peace but prepared to wage war. Finally, he made himself look at the Unfinished Tor, where he had killed another human being for the first time, and almost started that war.

He could still feel the old man’s breath on his neck, stinking of beer and rotted teeth, shouting, Your father murdered my son, and I will pay his deathdebt with your blood. It was the first time Kavio had met anyone who did not regard his father as a savior, and after that terrible day, and the terrible night one moon later, upon the Tor of the Stone Hedge, he had never looked at his father the same way again.

In Yellow Bear, Kavio had known terror, humiliation and disillusionment, he’d spilled human blood, and been abandoned to die as a slave. It felt like home. If Hertio would welcome him—by no means a certain thing—did he dare settle here? His allies expected him to appeal to Yellow Bear for assistance. His enemies no doubt expected it too. Deep in his gut, he had an uneasy premonition that if he stayed here it would cost blood; no last minute human sacrifice would stave off war this time.

I’m sorry Yellow Bear. I must pass you by, he bid the tribehold, and turned his feet south to follow the river downstream, toward the ocean.

The valley of the Tors was large enough that by evening, Kavio could still see the final tor, the Tor of the Stone Hedge. Along the river, bomas for lookout scouts, made from wood and branches, guarded the tribehold from strangers like him. Several of these scouts noted his progress, but did not challenge him when they saw he was alone and skirting around the edge of the valley.

Toward midnight, they stopped watching him and looked in another direction. Following their interest, he saw two columns of tiny figures walk up the hill, the leaders holding torches against the darkness.

The Initiation, he thought. In the Labyrinth, it was slightly different. It took place in the stone maze beneath the tribehold. Nonetheless, he recognized the ceremony. His own Initiation had not been but three years ago. Unwillingly, his thoughts skipped to the young Initiate girl, Dindi. Let it be, he warned himself. It’s no use casting nets where you can’t fish. Spurred on by that unhappy thought, he decided to press on without camping for the night.

The new moon shed little light on the river at his side, but in the distance, other lights sparkled on the river like sapphire glitter. Coming upstream. Kavio tensed. The lights must be on boats. Who would be boating upstream in the middle of the night? Illuminated by what? Torchlights?

No, he realized. Fae lights. That eerie blue iridescence looked nothing like the yellow-orange of ordinary fire.

He crept closer, crouched behind river reeds for concealment. The lights were still far downstream, but he could make out the silhouettes of bark-sided boats with carved wooden prows. Blue fae perched on top of each of the prows, their phantasmagoric faces uglier than the carvings meant to represent them. Behind the fae, each boat contained one Tavaedi in blue regalia, and a handful of tattooed bare-chested, muscular warriors.

Blue Waters tribesmen, obviously. What was their goal? What could they hope to achieve? Kavio expected to hear the ram’s horn sounded from one of the boma towers, but the lookouts appeared not to notice the boats.

The same fae light that reveals them to me, conceals the intruders from them, Kavio realized. The Yellow Bear scouts could not see the Blue, which meant that the Blue Waters warriors could hit at least one target quickly before Yellow Bear could muster its own warriors in defense. Where? Oh. Of course. They must know that tonight is the Initiation. Two hundred vulnerable captives, perfect hostages…half of them girls just on the brink of womanhood.

Kavio almost stumbled with relief when he saw a sept of Yellow Bear warriors rushing to meet him.

“We haven’t much time,” he gasped between heavy breaths, “We must intercept them before they attain the high ground of the tor…”

The warriors aimed their spears at him. The sept leader chewed a leaf, supremely unalarmed. “Throw down your weapons and come with us.”

“Are you mad? I’m not your enemy. Your enemy is attacking the Tor of the Stone Hedge! They’re trying to capture the Initiates!”

“I don’t see any enemy but you.”

“Boats are coming up the river…”

“Our scouts would have seen them. They saw only you. Why were you running toward our tribehold?”

“To warn you, you squash-headed buffoons…”

The sept-leader punched Kavio in the gut just as two warriors to either side of him grabbed his arms. He resisted the urge to fight his way free. If he bashed their skulls together, it would make his point more difficult to convey.

“I’m on your side,” he repeated. “I’m from the Rainbow Labyrinth, I’m an ally.”

“We’ll let Hertio decide that,” said the sept-leader.

“There’s no time, there could be a massacre by then!”

The sept-leader curled his lip. “Sure.” Several of the warriors snickered. “Take him. If he fights, kill him.”

Dindi

You never forget the night of your Initiation.

Always, you are taken by force. By now you know the rough hands twisting your arms and blindfolding you belong to your own kinsmen, but this doesn’t reassure you, since by now, also, you have heard the other Initiates whisper legends that some children will die during the rite. The tribe has no use for the weak.

Switches, whittled from green saplings, strong and springy, sting the back of your thighs to herd you down stone steps, into some kind of underground cavern. The stone beneath your bare feet is unhewn, too rough for a kiva. The chamber narrows, until you have to crawl, but your hands are tied behind your back, so you writhe like a worm. Gravel grinds under your belly and cuts up your knees.

You aren’t aware of faint light at the edges of your blindfold until even that tiny splinter of light is extinguished. The darkness that follows is so heavy it feels like a rock sitting on your chest. The breathing of the Initiates around you merges into a single rhythm of in-breath and out-breath, as if the cave itself gasped and heaved.

They’ve put a stone over the hole, someone whimpers.

Hush, whisper a dozen others. Initiates are not permitted to talk.

A hiss and the pungent smell of urine. No one admits to pissing themselves, but sniggers and curses lash out against the unseen coward. Disembodied conversations turn into a competition between complainers and those trying to enforce the rule of silence.

Hours of dark teach you to see shapes in sound. You assign faces from memory to a cough, a murmur, a hum. Like bloated rats, bodies skritch past, using one another at guideposts, and you feel the passage of someone’s long hair across your shoulder, the press of bone beads from a costume into your arm. When you find yourself squeezed too tightly between an unwashed boy and the ticklish smell of bobbing feathers from a girl’s headdress, you wriggle yourself free. By now, no one obeys the stricture against silence, so you add your voice to the coos in the darkness, seeking friends. You find Gwenika.

You snuggle back to back against your friend, so you can untie each other’s bindings. Thereafter you stay side by side, hand in hand, despite the heat. For the cave is sweltering, not cold as you generally expect caves to be. Reaching up, you feel the ceiling right above you where you crouch; you could not stand if you tried. There are over a hundred bodies crushed into a cave no higher than a badger. The stench of urine is stronger now, but the sweat is even more overpowering. The spicy breath from someone who mangles your knee as he crawls by makes your stomach roil. It is a sign of how hungry you are that even this foul reminder brings to mind stacks of round, flat bread freshly toasted in the oven and piled with cheese, beans and onions.

You and Gwenika exchange confidences in tones pitched low enough for just each other. For once, she doesn’t complain about all the exotic diseases she has suffered. She doesn’t whine at all. Her voice is dreamy as she describes pets she’s had over the years, a long string of frogs, gophers and sparrows. Creatures she found injured and nursed to health. She describes the sycamore trees around her clanhold, their pale trunks perfect for climbing, and the kinds of songbirds which nest there. You talk about the hills of your home, how trails wind by sudden vistas and cliffs overlook waterfalls which shower into a cloud of rainbow mist. You don’t admit to dancing with the fae because even here, even now, where the darkness spills secrets, you have secrets you don’t know how to share.

What you would do for a jug of cool water.

You ask if she’s ever killed or kissed anyone. No, she says. What about you? No. Would you ever? If he forced me to, you say, and she says, forced you to kiss? No, no, forced me to kill. You both giggle madly as if this is much funnier than it really is. You admit your greatest fear is to die by fire, and she says her greatest fear is to die alone, in the dark. She squeezes your hand tighter.

The darkness is like an animal now, panting hotly against your neck, squeezing your chest. The air tastes stale. Gulping it faster doesn’t help.

Discontent rumbles across the Initiates like a wave on a night sea. The air is running out. We will suffocate. We must free ourselves. Maybe this is the true test? Maybe this is what we must do to prove ourselves worthy of adulthood in the tribe? If we all push against the rock covering the entrance, we can lift the stone.

The stone cannot be lifted—it cannot even be found. Hundreds of hands trace the rock walls. Hundreds of fingers scratch frantically for a crevice or a crack. It is as though the entrance never existed, entombing you all in solid rock.

Others keep looking, but you decide it is a waste of breath, breath more precious now than bread or water. Gwenika will not let go of your hand. You don’t chide her even when you fear she might crush your knuckles into one shapeless lump. You whisper, We’ll be fine, but you are thinking about the legends of the children of Initiations past who didn’t survive. Your hand closes around the corncob doll you wear on a gut string around your neck.

Gwenika says, once she helped a fawn that had broken its leg. She kept a splint tied to its lame leg all through the summer. When winter came, the fawn had grown into a deer and could walk again. But I will never heal another deer, adds Gwenika. Why not? My mother slit its throat and we ate it, says Gwenika. I didn’t want to, but we were very hungry that winter.

Brena

By the time Brena realized the shadows rushing toward her were actually men, she had no time to escape. The warriors swarmed out from behind the megaliths, overrunning the Tavaedies and Zavaedies who were standing vigil.

Not since she’d been her daughters’ age had Brena fought in hand-to-hand combat, but she did her best to fend off the attackers. A barrel-chested thug pounded toward her, but she ducked into a roll under his feet, came up and hit him on the head from behind with her wooden mask, the only weapon she had. All around her, she could see the other Yellow Bear and Rainbow Labyrinth Tavaedies fighting overwhelming odds. Abiono killed one of his assailants, but two more bore him down and tied him up.

Thudding steps brought her attention back to her own plight. This time she threw the mask in the attacker’s face as he neared her, then turned to run…

…smack into another enemy warrior.

She had a quick impression of blue eyes, tattooed cheek, black hair, a chest that was nothing but wave after wave of muscle, also tattooed, and a terrifying masculine rumble. Then the barbarian with arms like tree trunks tossed her over his shoulder and loped away. Her short hair, no longer pinned under her mask, came free in a halo of damp curls.

He deposited her next to a megalith where the Blue Waters warriors were herding their captives. She tried to hit him, but her effort only placed her wrist in easy reach of his huge hands. He twisted her arm behind her back, snagged her other arm without problem, and trussed her up deftly. Then he grinned at her, like a boy at mischief.

He was no boy, however, but a warrior, probably a Zavaedi, in his prime. Scars inscribed a history of many battles across his otherwise impeccably fit physique. Like all Blue Waters warriors, his hair had been shaved close to his head everywhere except for a pony tail of braids down one side, next to his ear. The number of braids recorded the number of kills he’d made, and this man wore too many tiny, beaded braids for her to count. A tattoo of a salmon and three moons on his left cheek denoted his marital clan affiliation, which meant he had a wife and family back home.

More captives arrived, bound and surrounded by enemies. Counting, Brena realized that no one had escaped. Nor had she heard any ram’s horn sound from the watchtowers in the valley. Yet, for some reason, the Blue Waters warriors were keeping them alive.

It soon became clear why.

The leader of the war party, an ugly man with a seagull clan tattoo on his cheek paced before the captives.

“Tell us how to enter the kiva under this place,” Gull Face commanded.

Dread scraped over her nerves like physical pain. None of the Zavaedies or Tavaedies spoke, but Gull Face had expected their resistance. He gestured to Salmon Face, Brena’s own captor.

“You’ve earned first choice, Rthan. What about this one?” He grabbed one of the young female Tavaedies by the hair, jerking her head back.

Salmon Face—Rthan—walked right by the young woman, to loom over Brena. He pulled her to her feet. “This one.”

“Suit yourself,” shrugged Gull Face. He continued to distribute the captives while Rthan dragged Brena across the clearing to one of the stones in the circle. Her hands were tied in front of her body to a long rope. Rthan tossed the rope over the top of the megalith and staked it into the ground on the other side with his spear. The tension in the rope pulled her to her tip-toes, arms stretched above her head.

He displayed a shell knife. “Don’t make me do this.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself, murdering innocent children!”

“Once they come out of that kiva, they won’t be children any longer. Besides, better to kill the cubs before they grow into full-fledged bears. Why not? Your people murder our children, down to the helpless babes. We only wish to wipe out those who are about to become dangerous.”

Rthan put the knife to her throat and stroked down. Brena squeezed her eyes shut, anticipating pain; instead, a cool breeze touched her breasts. He cut away her outer Tavaedi costume piece by piece. The tatters puddled at her feet. Beneath the outer mantle, she only wore a breechcloth and bands to support her breasts.

“You’re an animal!” she said.

“I don’t want to hurt you, but I obey my War Chief,” Rthan said. “Look around you.”

She peeked to either side. There were twenty-one prisoners in all, seven Zavaedies and fourteen Tavaedies, to match the number of megaliths in the inner circle. In a grotesque perversion of the ritual they had come to perform, each captive had been hoisted naked against a stone. Some of the Blue Waters warriors commenced to whip the naked captives. Cries of human suffering despoiled the sacred space.

Gull Face strode from stone to stone, surveying his men’s grisly handiwork.

“We’re just getting started,” Gull Face said. “This will only end when you decide to tell us what we want to know. Whoever tells us first will be spared. The rest of you will have lost your opportunity to end this torment. We will continue this until you die.” When Gull Face passed Rthan, he asked in surprise, “What are you waiting for? This is our chance to avenge Lyass.”

Rthan flipped Brena face and belly to the stone. The cold seeped through her bare skin.

She heard the whip snap a moment before a snake of fire slithered over her back. She couldn’t swallow her shriek. The pause lasted just long enough for her to anticipate the next blow with mounting fear. Then another agonizing sting bit her bare buttocks. Dread swelled in another long pause. By the third lash of the whip, she began to sob into her arm.

A hand brushed her hair back from her wet cheek. A soft, deep voice. “Tell me what we need to know, so I can stop. I hate hurting you.”

“You were eager enough to chose me to torture.” She tried to twist away from him, but only succeeded in wiggling her side to the rock.

“It was the only way I could keep some control over your fate.” He leaned closer, whispering, “Please. Help me end this.”

“I don’t care what you do to me, I’ll not let you take my daughters.” She twisted to glare at him, helpless in her rage and bile. Hate thawed the icy grip of terror. Gwenika was only fourteen.

A flash of something that almost looked like empathy crossed his face.

“Your daughters are Initiates? But no, you’re too young to be a Zavaedi and have daughters that age.”

She had no intention of explaining her life story to this fish faced brute. She merely snarled at him.

“If you let me in first, before the others, I will claim your daughters as my slaves,” he said. “I’ll protect them.”

“Take them, you mean.”

“I have no desire for the green fruit when I can have the ripe one.” He stepped closer to her side, so that his body heat radiated off her breasts.

“Isn’t your own wife ripe enough for you?”

The mix of compassion and desire vanished from his face, replaced by hard, cold, old rage. “My wife and child were murdered in a sneak raid by Yellow Bear warriors, slain in their sleep while all the men were fishing at sea.” He pressed himself closer, skin to skin. Lust washed into his anger. “It’s only fair turn around that I should take back something from your people.”

He turned her face and smothered her lips with his mouth. The sensation shocked her, awakening a vivid memory of the night of her own Initiation: The sounds of keening, rustling bodies, the mold in the cave that had made her sneeze. And hands. Male hands, freed from their bindings though she herself remained tied up. The hands had stroked her without asking. She’d been too afraid to speak—they’d been told not to—she had been confused and terrified, wondering if this was part of the Initiation. And so the boy who would become her husband later that year had forced her back to the rock ground, parted her legs and wriggled himself onto her. She hadn’t protested. The whole time she was sure she would die. He took his pleasure quickly the first time, but the night dragged on many hours. He never untied her. He stayed by her side and played with her body, idly, and under his roaming, possessive fingers, she peaked. She had often dreamed of that night since, and awakened feeling aroused and guilty.

Rthan broke off the kiss and knocked his forehead against the slab of stone. “Let me protect you and your family.” He sounded hoarse with need, almost pleading. Pulling back, he looked her in the eyes and rubbed her kiss-bruised lips with his thumb. “You have no good choices. Your people will not discover us until after we’re gone. There will be a massacre. We are avenging years of raids of your people against our tribe. But some prisoners may be spared—your daughters can be among them.

“If any other warrior takes them, he will make them his slave girls, but I swear by the Blue Lady, I will ask only you to my bed. Your body can guarantee their safety. No one else will offer you that bargain. Take it. I beg you. Agree to surrender yourself to me.”

She knew something that he did not. The underground chamber was not a true kiva, but a natural cave with only one opening. Once the opening was covered, the air would run out if the Initiates were not released soon. Brena shut her eyes against the turmoil she felt. “How do I know you’ll keep your word?”

“I won’t betray you.”

“All men betray women. I’ve learned that the hard way.”

He leaned closer, husky and hypnotic. “Then you haven’t met real men.”

A scream pierced the night, one of the other torture victims, followed by surprised shouts. He ignored the scream, but the shouts evidently disturbed him, for he turned around to identify their source.

Kavio

Kavio finally found the simplest way to encourage the Yellow Bear warriors to see for themselves the danger to the Tor of the Stone Hedge. He kicked his guards in the chins, shins and bellies, then raced toward the tor, with them stampeding after him. Now they blew their horns, rousing still more warriors, from the Tor of the Sun and the Tor of the Moon. A satisfactory mass of armed men followed him up the hill and burst over the rim.

The Yellow Bear warriors had been expecting to corner one man. When they stumbled into an armed camp of enemy warriors, they slid to a stop, croaking in surprise like startled frogs.

Fortunately, the Blue Waters tribesmen proved no more prepared. Engrossed in the task of torturing the captives they had already overwhelmed, they had no appetite for a battle between equals. The Yellow Bear warriors regained their advantage first, pushed into berserker rage by the sight of their honored Tavaedies suffering abuse. Howling in fury, they smashed the skulls of their foes with stone clubs. The grassy hilltop between the upright stones turned slick with splattered brains and spilled intestines. A critical part of Kavio’s mind noted lost opportunities that the Yellow Bear warriors might have exploited, had they better organization or strategy. Raw fury and blind slaughter, though less elegant, did begin to dent the ranks of their foes.

Kavio wove his own patterns of mayhem. The last time he had been to the Tor of the Stone Hedge, he had been on his knees with a knife to his throat, hostage to a broken treaty, helpless human sacrifice. His father had given Hertio permission to kill him to pay the deathdebt between Rainbow Labyrinth and Yellow Bear. Kavio remembered the sweet onions he’d been given for his last meal, the coldness of the obsidian pressed to his jugular. The turf had been muddy, and his knees sank when he kneeled. A beetle had crawled up his leg while Hertio intoned the ritual farewell; he remembered thinking it would reach his thigh by the time his throat was slit. He’d desired then to do what he had no choice but to do now, slaughter every man who dared come at him with a weapon.

The same flips and spins that aided his dancing found lethal application in the chaos of combat. Though many of the Blue Waters warriors were themselves Tavaedies, no strangers to martial acrobatics, none could match Kavio for speed and precision. The tall stone slabs created the perfect foil for him to run up and leap backwards over the heads of his opponents. He dispensed foe after foe in a few brief moves. The mud that had once caked his near naked body could no longer be seen beneath a new patina, the gore of battle.

As he fought, he also strove to free the captives tied to the menhirs, whenever possible. Borrowing an ax from a Blue Waters warrior no longer capable of wielding it, considering his missing arm, Kavio was about to cut free a handsome, naked woman bound to a stone, when he chanced to recognize her. He missed a step. Though they’d not been formally introduced, he knew she was the Zavaedi who had told Dindi he was an exile and not to be trusted. Zavaedi Brena, he had heard her called.

Apparently her opinion of him had not improved. Her eyes widened when she saw him, then narrowed in outrage.

“Traitor!” she cried. “Exile! Were you working to lead our enemies here all along?”

The absurd accusation helped clear his head. He lifted his ax, ignored her wince – did she really think he intended her harm? – and cut the cords binding her wrists.

Brena fell into the churned up grass. She looked more confused than grateful. Yet she must have re-evaluated which side he was on, for just as Kavio bent to help her up, she pointed behind him. “Watch out!”

He rolled out of the way just in time to avoid the blow from a huge warrior.

Rthan.

Not bothering to bandy words, Kavio aimed a kick for the man’s jugular. Belying his bulk, Rthan moved swiftly, without wasted movement. He grappled Kavio by the ankle, twisting his face into the mud. Kavio performed a bouncing push-up and donkey kick that sent Rthan reeling, but he recovered with a back roll, and came back up punching the air where Kavio would have been if he hadn’t spun away. Then the fight picked up pace.

Hot, hard, and fast, blow after blow, spin and kick they exchanged, neither able to smack the other down for long before he rebounded for more action. By now they were the last two still fighting. The rest of the Blue Waters warriors were either face down in the mud, prisoners, or face up in their blood, corpses. A circle of Yellow Bear warriors surrounded the two combatants. Rthan noticed his predicament, but instead of surrendering to the inevitable, he hunkered down into the fight, faster and harder and meaner than ever. Kavio gestured to the rest to leave him his kill, which they respected.

The tiniest bit of ill luck decided the outcome for Rthan when his ankle caught on a disconnected arm. On a roll, Kavio picked up a fallen spear and dove toward that massive chest in the final, mortal blow. Seeing his doom, Rthan spread his arms and roared a welcome to Lady Death.

From behind, a wooden mask clubbed the Blue Waters warrior on the head, dropping him like an axed tree. The spear whizzed harmlessly overhead. Rthan was already unconscious in the mud.

Zavaedi Brena held the mask. Kavio glanced at her curiously. “I think you saved his life.”

“Did I?” she asked coolly.

“Though I suspect he would have preferred death in combat to the slavery and torture that surely await him.”

“Enough blood has been spilled,” she said in disgust. She threw down the mask. Grime streaked her cheeks like tears. “This sacred place has been defiled, and the very children we fought to protect will die because of it.”

“But we won.”

“Even so.” She met his eyes with such hollow despair that he recoiled. “The kiva beneath this tor is no ordinary chamber. It was crafted by the fae, and can only be opened by magic. But we cannot dance it open until the entire hill has been cleansed of blood. By then, the children will have died from lack of air.”

Kavio, remembering his own Initiation well enough, understood. Initiation made children taste their mortality. Now, however, mock tomb would turn true tomb.

Brena collapsed to her knees, hopeless past weeping.

Chapter Seven

Test

Dindi

Each breath hurt.

Voices from the darkness had been complaining about feelings of suffocation since the stone had been rolled over the exit, but now it was no figment of a nervous imagination. The air smelled rank. Dindi had thought thirst would kill them before hunger, but it seemed asphyxiation would beat out both. No one could deny it now: they had been abandoned to die. Quiet weeping echoed from somewhere. No one hushed or chided the weeper.

What had happened to the Tavaedies? Did they lie dead in heaps from war or plague, or had they chosen to sacrifice the children to the Deathsworn for some dark purpose? All the theories had been advanced, hashed and rehashed, debated, refuted and revised. They still knew nothing, except that they were going to die.

“Dindi, I don’t feel well,” Gwenika said. She sounded awful.

“You have to hold on.”

“I don’t think I can.” Even more breathily, “I’m not sure I want to. I’m so tired of fighting. I just want to let go.”

She sounded peaceful, which drove Dindi to panic. She shook Gwenika. “No! You can’t rest! If you sleep, you’ll never wake up!”

“If only we could hibernate like bears…” she trailed off.

“Gwenika? Gwenika!” No answer. Gwenika felt like a limp weight in Dindi’s arms. Her body was still warm.

Dindi felt too tired to cry. The same lassitude that had stolen Gwenika away crept over her like a thief.

Hibernation reminded Dindi of something. A trance. She closed her hand around the corncob doll tied to the ribbon about her neck. Every time I go into the Visions of the corncob doll, time seems to slip by in a funny way. But wait—that will only help me. What about Gwenika? Is there anyway I can extend the trance of the corncob doll to her?

Dindi wasn’t sure, but she knew they would al

l die if she did nothing. Share,> she wished to the doll. Share with us all.

The Vision world appeared, as though superimposed upon the real world. Dindi could see both, yet it felt as though she didn’t fully sit inside either. The Vision world extended as far as Gwenika.

Further. She tried to push it with her mind. Whether because of her silent command or some other cause, the Vision world billowed until another handful of Initiates fell under its glow. A few of them were still conscious and they blinked in surprise.

If she pushed too far, too hard, would she ruin what she’d already achieved? She feared to ask for too much. On the other hand, what if the alternative meant that the Initiates left out of the trance perished because time passed for them, breath by breath, until they ran out of air?

Further! Share with us all!

The Vision exploded.

Vessia

Vessia trailed the delegation from the Tor of the Sun. The agreement was that both sides would send a delegation to the Tor of the Stone Hedge, the megalith circle upon an artificial hill. They never noticed her, not even the War Chief Hertio, or her friend Danumoro, or any of the Tavaedies or warriors, because she kept to the shadows and backs of things. Stones thicker and taller than grown men stood like sentinels in three circles, one with in another, on the hill. The huge basalt rocks provided perfect cover.

Inside the innermost circle of stones, two half moon arcs of hide rugs had been set out. Each side stood facing one another, with the food piled in baskets on mats in between. Only Tavaedies and Zavaedies were present, and all wore full regalia. It had been the argument between Danu and the War Chief Hertio of the Yellow Bear tribehold, over what Hertio should wear, which had first alerted Vessia to this secret meeting. Danu had pressed him not to openly flaunt Yellow Bear’s wealth, but Hertio had scoffed, “I won’t go dressed like a beggar.”

Hertio’s costume jangled with so many disks of beaten gold that his shuffle to the center of the circle sounded like a flock of woodpeckers. The enemy wore a musk-scented robe of winter fox tails and his mask featured a wooden foot stepping on a bleached human skull. With their masks, the two leaders looked like eight-foot giants confronting each other. Vessia wondered if they would fight.

The man in gold bent to his knees in front of the man in white. A tangible groan swelled from the Yellow Bear onlookers, not so much heard as felt, like a subtle earth quake, a shared tremor of shame. Lower still bent the man in gold, until his mask sank into the grass. The man in white lifted a fox fur boot and stepped on Hertio’s neck.

The man in white removed his foot-on-skull mask. “I spare your life and your tribehold in the name of my master, the Bone Whistler.”

A jolt of recognition hit her when she saw the enemy leader. It was the handsome prisoner—Vio the Skull Stomper.

Hertio left his mask face first in the grass when he stood. Unlike Vio, who only looked haughtier with his face showing, Hertio had shrunk. The bulky gold costume now looked ridiculous with his tiny head sticking out from the wide shoulder spikes. He slunk back to his side. All Tavaedies of both sides removed their masks and sat down at the mats to feast. On the Yellow Bear side of the feasting court grim faced men and women picked at their food, eating only enough to avoid giving offense, while across from them the Rainbow Labyrinth Tavaedies gorged themselves and laughed at jokes they pitched too low for their hosts to hear.

On the enemy side, next to Vio the Skull Stomper stood a taller, thinner man who shared many of his features, including handsome charm. The third man lacked a lovely face. Judging by his bulging muscles, he did not lack strength. All three were much younger than the usual Zavaedies that Vessia had seen in the Yellow Bear tribehold. Danumaro had said that the Bone Whistler’s whole army was like that, “because none of the elders would serve him.”

At length, Vio made an announcement. “I am Vio the Skull Stomper, Purple Zavaedi to the Bone Whistler, of the Rainbow Labyrinth tribe. This is my brother Vumo, the One Horned Aurochs, the Green Zavaedi; and my friend Gidio the Bull, the Red Zavaedi. We are here on behalf of the War Chief of the Labyrinth, the Bone Whistler.”

“We know who you are, Skull Stomper. What are your master’s demands?”

“As you know, the Rainbow Labyrinth experienced a number of plagues some years ago.” Vio leaned back, at his ease. “My master was called in to eliminate the plagues, which he did. But he did more. He found the source of the plague. Imorvae scum had been casting evil spells upon our people. He vowed to destroy all such hexers.”

“We also experienced some blight to our crops and livestock,” Hertio replied stiffly. “We did not find that any people were to blame, no matter what form of magic they practiced.”

“You were mistaken,” said Vio, unruffled. “Many-Banded Imorvae hexers were to blame. And some of them, unfortunately, escaped the great cleansing undertaken by my master.”

Vio looked directly at Danumoro.

The direction of the eyes indicates the direction of the thoughts, Vessia remembered Danumaro telling her. Vio knows that Danomaro is one of the Imorvae who escaped.> For some reason, this disquieted her.

“I repeat,” said Hertio. “What are your master’s demands?”

“The Bone Whistler has no wish to inflict the cruel wounds of war upon innocent people. Do you really want your tribehold to hear the wails of widows and orphans just to save a few outtribers?”

“I will not ask more than thrice,” said Hertio. “What are your master’s demands?”

“Surrender all of the Imorvae Tavaedies within the hold, and turn back any more that seek refuge in your lands,” said Vio. “Do that, and he will spare you the blooded spear. Refuse and we will consider your defiance as a deathdebt unpaid.”

“Then here is my answer,” said Hertio. “Better the blooded spear of war than the broken dagger of an oathbreaker. I gave my word as a refuge to those in need, and my word will stand.”

Vio laughed softly. “You know that you cannot resist once you hear the song of the Bone Flute. No one can.”

“I know,” said Hertio. “And that is why I have a counter offer.”

Vio raised his brows.

“Your master has a Bone Flute that no one can resist. But I have a dancer whom no one can resist. We call her the Corn Maiden because she is as pretty as a living doll. If I give him the Corn Maiden, let him pass us by—”

“No!” shouted Danumoro, rising to his feet. “You cannot betray her! She is your guest too!”

“I have never given her my pledge,” said Hertio sharply. “If she had accepted your offer of marriage, Danu, then I would never dream of turning her over, but she rejected you. You owe her nothing.”

“It is not a matter of what I owe her, it is a matter of what is right,” Danumoro said. Tears streaked his cheeks. He fell to one knee before Hertio. “I beg you, do not turn her over.”

“It is too late,” said Hertio. “I’ve already sent warriors to fetch her.”

Danumoro shook his head.

Warriors, those Hertio had sent, Vessia presumed, entered the circle of stones. “She has fled!”

“This is a load of aurochs’ dung,” the enemy called Gidio said. “What is the point of this charade?”

“It is no charade, when you see the maiden dance, you will understand,” said Hertio. The skin of his face beaded with sweat. “We will find her, she often wanders off, I doubt she has fled, and when you see her, you will gladly take her in place of everything you asked.”

“One girl? I doubt it,” said Vio.

“She’s odd, but she’s not stupid,” said Danumoro. “She found out your plans, and ran away! You’ll never find her.”

“What are you so happy about?” Vio asked him. “If I had agreed to take her, it would have saved your life.”

“I would never buy my life so steeply,” Danomoru said.

Vessia stepped out from the shadows behind the megaliths and walked down the center of the grassy circle, until she stood directly between Vio and Hertio.

“There is no need to look for me,” she said. “I am here. I will dance, if you like.”

The three men stared at her as if they had never seen a woman before.

“I should have known he must have been speaking of you,” said Vio the Skull Stomper. An expression almost like pain convulsed his face.

The one called Vumo whistled and said to Hertio, “You didn’t exaggerate her beauty. Once we conquer you, I think I’ll ask my master for her as my share of the war booty.”

“You stinking carcass for vultures,” said Danomoru.

Vumo laughed at him. “She already turned you down. How do you know I’m not just what she wants?”

Vessia looked him over. “You aren’t.”

This time Vio chuckled. He elbowed his brother. “So much for your charm with women, Vumo.”

“I can win her over, just give me time,” said Vumo. After some thought, he added, “And beer.”

The three men laughed. Vio’s eyes never left her though. He looked as though he wanted to devour her.

“You are a Tavaedi?” he asked.

“I dance.”

“Imorvae, I suppose. Many-banded.”

“I dance what I dance.”

“Dance, then.” Vio folded his arms and narrowed his eyes. Challenging her. “Let us see what’s so irresistible.”

Hertio clapped his hands and women who ducked their heads hurried to clear away the uneaten feast. No one spoke of moving to a dancing platform, nor did it occur to Vessia to ask. She began to dance. And all around her, the stones burst into light, and into song.

Dindi

Caught up in the Vision, Dindi still retained enough of herself to recognize the unearthly music that haunted the Corn Maiden’s dance. The tune tormented her, it was so familiar. Where, where, where have I heard it before? She strained to hear, but there were no words.

Then she remembered.

The Corn Maiden was dancing the tama of the Unfinished Song.

It was the simplest of dances. Bare feet on the grass, skipping in a circle, arms raised in joy. So stark, so beautiful. No wonder Mad Maba had thought she could do this tama, if she could do no other. Anyone, anyone at all, could dance this tama.

I can dance it! I can learn it from watching her.

If I only I can remember it. If only I can hold on and never let it go.

But the Vision went on, and she had no way to awaken from the past.

Vessia

Vessia danced now as she always had, and as always, it seemed a mere wink of time. Yet hours passed. The moon-cast shadows of the stones crossed over her while she whirled. Then the sun-cast shadows from sunrise crossed her the other way. When the shadows of the moon and sun, filtered by the position of the stones, both touched her, she stilled. Time blinked, awakened.

Vio stretched and rubbed his eyes. He shook himself. “By the Seven Faeries! It’s dawn! We were watching you all night.”

She looked at him.

“You aren’t even sweating,” he marveled. “What are you?”

“I must have her,” said Vumo. “At any price. I must have her!”

“You must have her?” Vio asked coldly. “You forget yourself, little brother. We serve the Bone Whistler. But I agree with the basic idea.” He bowed to Hertio, who was also rubbing his eyes. “We will take your bargain, War Chief of Yellow Bear. We will take the Corn Maiden.”

“Then you must take me as well,” said Danumoro, rising to his feet.

“Don’t be a fool, Danu,” said Hertio. “It was out of friendship for you that I did this.”

“Then you never understood what it meant to be a friend,” said Danumoro.

Brena

Brena bowed her head over the fallen body of her enemy. Though he hadn’t driven a spear through her heart, he’d killed her all the same. She wasn’t sure why she had saved him from Kavio’s blow. To spare his life, or to keep him alive until she could drive the bear’s black arrow through his heart? Would she do that, take the life of an enemy in cold blood, a human sacrifice? With Gwena and Gwenika dead…

The young man who had fought with such supremacy touched her on the shoulder. She supposed she should apologize to him for misjudging his honor, but she didn’t have the strength. In any case, he seemed preoccupied with another matter, asking, “Would rain cleanse the hill?”

“I suppose,” she said. She rolled her eyes to the cloudless, moonless sky. “Do you know how often it rains in Yellow Bear?”

“No less than it does in the desert canyons of my home, I imagine,” he said, and she remembered he had originally been from the Rainbow Labyrinth. “But I am a Rain Dancer.”

Her jaw dropped. When he requested a clear space to dance, she nodded dumbly and staggered back to tell the other Yellow Bear warriors and Tavaedies to drag the bodies out of his way.

“He claims to be a Rain Dancer,” she told them, suddenly afraid to believe it. Many Tavaedies claimed such powers, but true Rain Dancers were more rare than rain itself.

Nonetheless, everyone worked to remove the bodies from the center of the Stone Hedge. Brena helped organize teams to help the wounded and carry away the dead. All the while, however, out of the corner of her eye, she watched the young man, and was aware when he began to dance.

As his fighting had been flawless, so was his dancing. Otherworldly grace whispered in his movements, sending chills down her spine. Something about him frightened as much as awed her. She was glad he was not her son, and wondered what his mother thought of having born such a fearfully powerful child.

Thunder clapped above, startling her. Hard torrents of rain out of nowhere pelted the hill. Gore and grime streamed away in the sudden flood. The water felt delicious against her bare back, washing away the ache of the lash marks along with the blood. Not just rain, she realized, a healing rain. Her amazement deepened. Those who danced the most powerful of Blue Chromas might dance rain, but who could dance healing and rain, Yellow and Blue, into the same spell?

Ten minutes of bucketing rain battered the hill, then ended as quickly as it had started.

“Who are you?” Brena asked him, but he didn’t hear her. His attention snapped to watch someone walking across the clearing.

Hertio, the War Chief of Yellow Bear tribehold, threaded the rings of stones, with his elite band of Bear Warriors in tow. He must have arrived some time during the Rain dance. He pointed to the young Rain Dancer.

“Seize him!” Hertio commanded. “He is an exile from the Rainbow Labyrinth tribe.”

“No!” cried Brena, daring to thrust herself forward. When Hertio turned to look her up and down, she blushed, but persisted. “He may be an outtriber, even an exile, but he fought on our side. He saved us!”

“Did he?” asked Hertio. “Or was he in league with the Blue Waters tribe all along? The Initiates are dead. Perhaps it was the plan all along to distract us with a fake battle while they suffocated.”

“No!”

“No, they didn’t suffocate? If they are still alive, then what are you waiting for? Perform the spell that will allow them to arise out of the earth. Finish the ceremony you came here to perform. My men and I will take care of the wounded, the dead and the prisoners of war—including this one,” he jerked his finger at the Rain Dancer, “until we can determine if he is friend or foe.”

Brena

The twenty-one Zavaedies and Tavaedies dressed in swift silence. The utter blackness of pre-dawn matched their spirits. Though the healing rain had soothed the physical wounds inflicted on them, nothing could heal the ache of what they had lost. They danced open the faery door to the underhill knowing they would find corpses.

At least they died innocent, Brena told herself. Better than to emerge into this world of torture and war and hate, where even good deeds were rewarded with betrayal.

The hole into the earth appeared at the center of the clearing. Normally, the magic of the exit would have allowed each Initiate to emerge from the ground one at a time, as the ceremony required.

Abiono descended into the hole. He leaped back out almost immediately, his whole face transformed.

“They live! They live!”

“But how is that possible?”

“The magic of the tor itself? It was built by fae…”

“Who cares? They live…”

Dizzy babble finally found focus in the agreement to carry on the ceremony as though the abomination had never interrupted it. The Tavaedies took their places around the circle, one before each of the stones, not bound this time, but bathed in halos of magic light.

Hadi

Hadi woke up with a biting headache. He’d had the strangest dream, of a beautiful woman dancing…

No light. No food. No water. No air. No wonder he felt like gunk under toenails. But a draft of air had revived him somewhat. He didn’t see anyone around him…

…because it’s dark, you idiot, he reminded himself.

But he couldn’t hear anyone around him either. Rejecting the possibility that he had gone deaf, and the even more unlikely scenario that the other Initiates around him had stopped whining, he crawled toward the fresh air.

He saw the faint outline of moonlight. He scrambled to his feet and raced outside.

Ugh, he was in the center of the creepy megalith circles they called the Stone Hedge.

“Follow the brightest light you see,” instructed a voice.

The Tavaedies, all dressed up in their finery, stood in a circle around him, in line with the stones of the inner circle of megaliths.

Hadi didn’t hesitate. The brightest light? Only one Tavaedi held a torch. The rest stood in the shadows. He walked toward the torchlight. How easy was that? Some Test.

The Tavaedi said, when he approached, “Present your totem.”

“Uhm, here.” Hadi fumbled with the corn doll he had on a string around his neck. He lay this at the feet of the Tavaedi.

“Congratulations, Hadi, son of the Lost Swan clan of the Rainbow Labyrinth tribe,” said the Tavaedi, handing him an ornate obsidian pestle. “You are now a man.”

Gwenika

Gwenika awakened to a golden light. The wisps of a beautiful dream, a dancing maiden more brilliant than the sun, tingled at the edges of her mind.

She was still in the cave, but she appeared to be alone except for a glowing ball of yellow light that hovered in front of her.

Come with me.

Gwenika couldn’t stand in the cave, so she crawled after the puff of light through the catacombs. At last, the unhewn rocks in the floor tilted up an incline. Gwenika crawled faster. Soon she realized the ceiling was tall enough that she could stand, so she did. The glow puff didn’t wait. She hurried after it.

Pale as it was, the moonlight stabbed her eyes when she first emerged from the cave. She recognized where she stood—the center of the Stone Hedge.

Tavaedies dressed in elaborate costumes stood in between the large monoliths. Most of them stood in shadow, except for one, who held a torch.

He called aloud to her in a sepulchral voice, “Follow the brightest light you see.”

The golden puff twinkled at Gwenika. It bobbed toward the shadows on the opposite side of the circle from the man with the torch. While Gwenika looked on, wide eyed, the golden ball of light grew into a blinding sun.

“It’s so bright,” Gwenika murmured, hiding her head with her arms.

Dance with me.

The miniature sun turned into a Vision of glowing men and women dancing. Nothing felt more natural than to copy their movements and join them.

That’s when she saw the yeech, flying toward her on the backs of leathery-winged bats. She wanted to duck and run, but she remembered what Dindi had told her, and indeed, when she forced herself to look up at the horrid things, she realized she was pulling them toward her on strings of light. Let go! Let go! she begged. The dance was becoming hopelessly tangled.

“Let. Me. Go!” she shouted. She slashed at the strings, not really expecting it would help, but to her surprise they were as frail as cobwebs and floated away. The yeech on their bats veered away into the night sky.

All that remained was the grace and golden light of the dance of the Ladder to the Sun, the oldest and most powerful tama of Yellow Bear.

At the end of the tama, the golden sun faded to a tiny puff of light cupped in the hand of a Tavaedi in a Yellow costume.

“Do you see any other lights?” asked the Yellow Tavaedi. “Look around the circle carefully. The torch is not important—look for other spheres like the golden one that led you here.”

Gwenika scanned the circle of Tavaedies and stones, but all she saw were men and women standing in the dark. She shook her head.

“You’ve done well,” the Yellow Tavaedi reassured her. “Present your totem.”

Gwenika unfastened her corn doll totem from the gold bead necklace about her neck, and deposited it with a bow to the Tavaedi.

The Tavaedi regarded her gravely. “You are invited to join the Yellow Dancers secret society, to learn its dances, its magics and its hidden Patterns. Do you accept the invitation and pledge to impart knowledge of the secrets to no one outside the society, upon pain of death?”

A Tavaedi? Me? Gwenika’s heart began to pound very fast. My sister, yes, we all knew she would be invited. But me?

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I pledge my word.”

“Congratulations, Gwenika, daughter of the Sycamore Stands clan of the Yellow Bear tribe,” he said, handing her a windwheel with painted yellow petals. “You are now a Tavaedi of the Golden Maize Society.”

Dindi

Dindi woke up alone, bathed in light.

All around her on the cave walls, she saw luminous glyphs. The symbols looked the same as the abstract designs painted upon houses or woven in to clothing. Chevrons, half moons, zigzags, arrows, squiggles. Things that looked like claw marks, and things that looked like bird wings. All glowing in every primordial color of the rainbow.

She traced the sigils with her fingers. Where did the light come from? She couldn’t tell. She followed the glowing glyphs up a slope, until she reached the exit from the subterranean vault.

Wind whipped her hair once she stepped into the cold night air. All around her, she saw huge stones inscribed with more glyphs. The symbols shone like brilliant flame against the basalt rock of the megaliths and the black night sky.

“The Tor of the Stone Hedge,” she whispered, spinning in a circle. She remembered the Vision clearly. Where were the other Initiates? Had they also seen the Corn Maiden’s breathtaking dance before her enemies upon this very tor?

Dimly, she could see the silhouettes of people, Tavaedies in costume, standing at the base of the megaliths with faint balls of light cupped in their hands, but it was impossible to see their faces because they were backlit by the overwhelming waterfalls of light streaming from every stone.

“Follow the brightest light you see,” a woman commanded her.

Is it a riddle? she wondered. Among lights all equally bright, can any be brightest?

She turned around again, in a slower circle this time, searching to see if any particular megalith glowed more strongly than the others.

“If you can follow the light, do it now,” said the woman. “The brightest light you see.”

“But all the stones are lit!”

“Don’t spin fancies to impress us. The stones are not lit. Dance, if you can see the tama to follow. Otherwise, walk to the torch.”

Which of you should I follow? Dindi asked the stones of light silently. Which of you can sing me the Unfinished Song?

As if in response to her thoughts, the three concentric circles of shining stones pulsed more brightly still. It was like trying to stare into the sun. The light stabbed her eyes. Music washed over her like a river that would drown her.

Luminous figures jumped out of the stones and swirled all around her, cavorting madly. It was the tama of the Unfinished Song, and it was as breathtaking as when the Corn Maiden had performed it. But she saw now that it was not simple at all. The dancers flipped and leaped and twirled in the air. They flew through the moves, they swayed, they swam, they fought, they flung themselves around the circle in steps so convoluted she couldn’t even catch the movement clearly, never mind copy it. The faster they twirled and whirled, the more cacophonous the song and the brighter the lights until she couldn’t see anything any more. The radiance from all sides battered her like a rain of fire. She screamed and hid her head.

“Go away, go away, I can’t take it!”

Darkness felt like a cool cloak when it settled back around her. She collapsed onto the grass. It felt cold and wet and prickly.

“Fool girl,” a woman who sounded suspiciously like Gwenika’s mother, Zavaedi Brena, called to her impatiently, “Stop spinning in circles like an idiot, and just go to the woman holding the torch!”

Still woozy, Dindi struggled to her feet. She staggered to the woman holding a torch.

“Present your totem,” said the woman. It was Zavaedi Brena.

Dindi braced herself for another Vision. To her surprise, nothing happened when she released the corncob doll from its ribbon to present to the Zavaedi Brena, except that Brena handed Dindi an obsidian mortar.

“Congratulations, Dindi, daughter of the Lost Swan clan of the Rainbow Labyrinth tribe. You are now a woman.”

Dindi stared at the grinding bowl blankly. A bowl in which to mush corn and crush spices. The companion piece to the pestle some young man—Yodigo, perhaps—had been given this night. How practical for a new wife and mother. But utterly useless for a Tavaedi. Where was her windwheel? What had happened to the invitation she’d dreamed of hearing for so many years?

I failed.

Her stomach collapsed on itself in a fierce cramp, her jaw worked up and down of its own accord. Her head felt like someone was hitting her with rocks.

I failed. I failed. It was all she could think. I haven’t enough magic. I can never be a Tavaedi. I can never dance again.

Author's Note

Every story starts from a seed, the tiniest grain of an idea. The seed that began this story planted itself in my mind ten years ago. It was simple: I wanted to tell a fairy-tale. With the fairies left in, as they so often aren’t in the retellings.

This is just the beginning of the story, of course. I hope you wouldn’t think I’d end a fairy-tale in failure. Even the Littlest Mermaid, in the original Hans Christian Anderson story, though she perished because her lover was untrue, gained a soul. Besides, the older, true “folk” fairytales almost always have happy endings. A gruesome sort of happy, in some Grimm versions, but happy.

This story has a happy ending too, and it’s already written, in case you were worried I was one of those authors who might depart to another plane of existence before finishing my story. I am the morbid sort who worries about that a lot, so I wrote the ending first.

That wasn’t hard to do, because the whole thing is based on a myth. I shan’t tell you which myth, because then you would know the end, but chances are, you haven’t heard of it anyway. It’s Polynesian, and I’ve only found one reference to it.

Some stories are omnivorous. They overlap and interweave, they transform and transmute like the lycanthropes and pumpkins they describe. Therefore, although The Unfinished Song began as as a simple retelling of an obscure Polynesian legend, it quickly gobbled up other fairytales, legends and myths, churning and turning them into something a little bit old, a little bit new.

The first fairytale I learned as a child was Cinderella. Not surprisingly, there is a bit of Cinderlla in this story. (We’ll get to that bit in a later novel in the series. There’s a pretty dress involved, but no glass slippers, since they haven’t invented glass yet.) A bit of Beauty and the Beast. (Oh, just wait til we meet the man in black! What? Of course there has to be a man in black. Come now, really.)

But many of the fairytales that found their way in were stranger ones. If you’ve read the novella Tomorrow We Dance, or the Author’s Note about it in the anthology Conmergence, you may know that it draws on The Pied Piper and The Emperor’s New Clothes.

The very idea of the Tavaedies, and their secret societies, and their power dances, comes from Native American and African sources. The fae of Faerarth are not Celtic, despite the familiar name.

Originally, I wrote the first three chapters of Dindi’s story set in a quasi-medieval landscape of castles and peasants, knights and princesses. Familiar ground for fantasy readers, and a resonable setting for fairytales.

Yet wrong.

Something about it didn’t satisfy me. Maybe it was just that the medieval period is overdone in the genre, and I wanted to stretch further than that. In addition, though, I wanted to set the story in a primordial time when all the fairytales of the world were first being written, an age when the population of the world was limited to the first seven tribes. I called it Faearth because it is a time when fae still openly roam the earth. There are seven tribes of peoples in Faearth, seven and no more.

So the technology and social structure of Faearth is neolithic. Neolithlic means “new stone age,” which means they have all the major inventions to make them more civilized than cave dwellers: weaving, sewing, clay thattched houses, beaten gold. But they have no bronze, and definitely no iron. They have bows but not swords. I did decide to allow them horses, but horse-riding is new to them, and in many clans, they still think it more fit to eat than ride a horse.

The astute reader will also notice that I have mixed European fauna with North American flora. They grow corn, but they have wild horses, and so on. Other customs are shamelessly stolen from real cultures too. There was a culture in India that used to raise slaves as their own children, until some need arose for a human sacrifice. Then the mariah (their term, which I borrowed) would be ritually killed. This struck me as a particularly heartwrenching form of human sacrifice. It’s one thing to kill your prisoners of war. This is more like killing your foster children.

Another suspect combination is the sequoia forests of Yellow Bear, roughly based on my own native California, and the hakurl, beloved rotten shark dish of Blue Waters. Hakurl is a real dish, but not served anywhere near California. You can buy it in Reykjavik, Iceland (officially as far from California as you can get without leaving the planet). In case you thought such a food could exist only in fiction, or that I exagerated its charms, Michael M. described hakurl in an article on, “The Worst Meals on This Earth”: “So what does hakarl taste like then? It tastes like crying. It tastes like broken promises. It tastes like the Lord God Almighty ripping the Bible out of your hands and saying, “Sorry, this doesn’t apply for you. I think you want ‘Who Moved My Cheese?’” It tastes like the Predator wading into a Care Bears movie and opening fire.” Exacttly what you would expect Vikings to eat, in other words.

This eclectic mix is not due to botonical or anthropological ignorance on my part. It was a deliberate decision, to show a primeaval earth yet undivided into continents. Not that I want to insist Faerarth is our earth separated only by time. If it is our earth at all—I am agnostic on this point—it is separated from us by a great deal more than time, and by a great deal less. I cannot explain more clearly, as faeries are involved, and their sense of time and space is notoriously suspect.

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About TABOO -- the next book in the The Unfinished Song Series…

Book 2: TABOO

A DEVASTATING SETBACK

Enemy tribesmen attacked during the Initiation. Dindi used the magic of the corn cob doll to protect herself and others but at a terrible price. Now her dreams are in shambles. In despair, she decides to step into the forbidden faery ring, and dance herself to death with the fae. Then she discovers another choice that saves her life…but breaks the ultimate taboo.

A DESPERATE OUTREACH

After being unfairly exiled from his own people, Kavio may have found a new home, but only if he can protect it from another attack by the enemy. He gathers a small group to venture deep into the heart of enemy territory in search of the ultimate prize…peace.

But by the harsh laws of their land, they cannot both break taboos and keep the peace. They will each have to choose, what, or whom, to betray.

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To request a free review copy of any of my books, email me: tara@taramayastales.com or my publisher: editor@misquepress.com

The Unfinished Song series:

The First Trilogy:

Initiate

Taboo

Sacrifice

The Second Trilogy:

Root

Wing

Blood

The Third Trilogy:

Mask

Mirror

Maze

The Final Trilogy:

Sworn

Flute

Wheel

A New Urban Fantasy Series from Tara Maya: The Daughters of Little Red Riding Hood

Read the Prequel Novella: Hood & Fae

Roxy Hood is just trying to make ends meet, to pay her mom’s medical bills. Sure, Roxy takes on some jobs of, ahem, dubious integrity, like pretending that she can speak to the dead. But hey, that’s harmless. It's not like a malevolent ghoul is going to attack her. Or a sexy billionaire will show up trying to buy her red jacket. Or a werewolf will attack Granny Rose. Because that would be whacked.

To request a free review copy email me: tara@taramayastales.com or my publisher: editor@misquepress.com

Adult Romance from Misque Press

Fantasy Romance, Sci-Fi Romance, Historical Romance and Paranormal Romance…passionate love stories with steamy bedroom scenes, alpha Heros and happy endings.

Sign up for Vashti Valant’s Newsletter and receive three free sexy novellas. Or email: editor@misquepress.com

Mystery from Misque Press

The Hot Dog Detective Series

Homeless person…

Hot dog vendor…

Detective.

Follow Mark MacFarland as he helps solve the cases the police have given up on. The Hot Dog Detective mysteries are part cozy, part noir, set in the Mile High City of Denver.

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Science Fiction from Misque Press

STRAT - Military SF by Tara Maya

WAR IS FIRST WAGED IN THE MIND…

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