People of the Earth by W. Michael Gear Read Free Book Online Page A

He looked away then, head bowed. "Maybe
it's a terrible joke, some temptation by Power that makes me love what I can't
have as long as I'm White Clay." He shook his head before turning back to
her, features haunted. "And I have driven a final thorn between Brave Man
and myself. Why did this have to happen? What's gone wrong with the Power of
the White Clay? The two people left to me to love are denied me. The laws of
the People keep you from me. And the voices in Brave Man's head—whatever kind
of Power they are—have removed him from my life."
                   She stared up at the leaves that rustled in
the breeze, seeing irregular fragments of blue through the yellow mosaic, too
undone by the day's events to deal with any more. "I looked into his eyes,
Wind Runner. He's not right. Something's wrong inside, I could feel it."
She paused. "He'll never forgive you."
                   "I know. But then, it's better that way
than if you were still on the ground under him, isn't it? He's ... I don't
know. Something changed after the Black Point raid, after that warrior hit him
on the head. Rock Mouse told everyone that the blow killed Brave Man. She said
she saw him fall just before she ran. Then Brave Man appears and says he came
back from the Camp of the Dead. Maybe he did. He's not the same person we
loved. Remember how he was before that? Happy, joking." A wistful tone
came to his voice. "He and I, we used to run, play at darts and hoops. We
dreamed together then . . . dreamed of what we would do, of the hunts we would
have, and of how we'd raid the other clans and make names for ourselves as
warriors. The person he was then would never have dragged you off or tried to
rape you. I've felt the scar on his head. He says that headaches come from
there—and the voices of the Spirit Power that whispers in his mind."
                  “And do you believe it?"
                   Wind Runner lifted his hands. "I don't
know. A different Brave Man walked into camp that day with Bobcat and No Teeth.
Someone— something— different in my friend's body."
                   She placed a tender hand on his shoulder,
hating the longing that formed within her. Yes, she loved him. How could she
live with the tragedy of never fulfilling that love? She forced herself to
ignore the question and said, "No matter what happened to him, he's possessed
by something." She shivered. "No good will come of this day. I ... I
can feel it, like a winter of the soul."
                   The fire popped, bringing her back to the
lodge and the endless night of Bright Moon's prolonged death. Brave Man would
seek more leverage now. For two years she'd been a woman. Each turning of the
moon found her taking four days in the menstrual lodge. She'd avoided the
chances to sneak off to the bushes with the available men. She'd become somehow
special, somehow different, among the White Clay, perhaps because of her denied
love for Wind Runner.
                   And then there were the Dreams. . . .
                  

 
                   Far to the south, a lilting chant rose on the
night, rising and falling as voices twined in time to the beat of a pot drum. A
zip-zipping sounded from a grooved bone stroked with a chokecherry stick. A
soft, rhythmic clattering accompanied the whole as someone shook an
antelope-hoof rattle to the beat of the music.
                   The song carried on the chill of the night,
drifting from the earthen lodge's smoke hole, creeping through the slits of the
door hanging, where yellow bars of light slipped past to splash on the
hard-frozen ground. The music echoed on the packed soil of the camp and wound
through the sagebrush. The chiming notes caressed the winter-tan grasses,
hovered over the frozen shadows of drifted snow, iced now from the melt.
                   The song rose, trilling the evening chill,
traveling on its way