People of the Silence by Kathleen O'Neal & Gear Gear Read Free Book Online Page A

rims weighted with sandstone slabs, held what was left of their winter corn and beans. Smaller cooking pots sat to one side, the outer surfaces charred from countless fires.
    How familiar and safe it all seemed on this long-hoped-for and terrible day.
    Buckthorn’s fingers tugged nervously at the fringes on his knee-length shirt. The white buckskin warmed his skinny body and reflected the firelight’s wavering patterns like a pyrite mirror. His mother had painted the black-and-yellow images of the Great Warriors of East and West on the shirt’s chest, and the Rainbow Serpent, a slithering line of red, yellow, blue-black and white, that encircled his waist. In the fluttering gleam of the flames, the Great Warriors blazed. The lightning lances in their upraised hands wavered, ready to fly across the face of the world in a great roar, to slit open the bellies of the Cloud People and offer life-giving rain to Our Mother Earth—or to bring eternal destruction to wicked human beings.
    Buckthorn had not eaten in four days, a holy number, and he felt lightheaded and frightened. Soon, very soon, his life would change forever. He would no longer be the strange, lonely youth that the other children shunned and laughed at. His soul would tumble down the dark tunnel to the First Underworld, and he would either become a revered sacred Singer … or he would be dead.
    Buckthorn frowned down at the Great Warriors. Do they already know which it will be?
    In the Age of Emergence, just after the First People had climbed through the four underworlds to get to this Fifth World of light, the Great Warriors of East and West had vanquished many monsters that threatened to eat the new people. In the last horrifying battle, the Warriors’ bodies had been turned to stone, but their heroism had earned their souls special places in the skyworlds, sparkling on either side of Father Sun. Father Sun often told them about things that would happen in the world of humans. When necessary, the Warriors soared to earth as shooting stars and walked among men, advising, helping. Sometimes they even killed.
    Buckthorn had once known a boy named Little Shield who had been chosen by the elders, as Buckthorn had been, to journey into the underworlds. He had died horribly. At the first sign of trouble, the elders had dragged the boy up from the kiva, the womblike subterranean ceremonial chamber, and stretched him out on the plaza while they raced about gathering herbs and Power bundles, anything that might help tie his soul to his body again.
    Buckthorn had been six summers old at the time. He vividly recalled the way Little Shield had thrashed about and screamed that he saw the Great Warriors swooping from the sky to tear his flesh from his bones. It had taken half a day, but the holy twins had finally sunk their talons into Little Shield’s soul and ripped it apart; then they had carried its pieces to the skyworlds and cast them loose in the brilliant light of Father Sun.
    The elders said that Little Shield had not been strong enough to make the journey to the underworlds, and that the Great Warriors had killed him so his soul would not be lost forever in the darkness.
    A shudder climbed Buckthorn’s spine. Little Shield had died with his eyes wide open, staring in terror at the evening sky.
    Will that happen to me?
    A low drumbeat outside reminded him that his heart, that all hearts, beat in rhythm with that of the Creator, and that she alone had the Power to decide how long a boy might live.
    Buckthorn tugged at his turquoise necklace, fighting vainly to loosen it so he could get more air into his lungs.
    Just breathe.
    He’d been choking since dawn, when he’d bathed in the icy river and his mother had twisted his wet black hair into a bun on top of his head.
    He forced himself to inhale and exhale.
    Beyond the door, Our Mother Earth slept beneath a soft blanket of snow, gathering her strength for spring. The Wind-flower Clan tiptoed about—so as not to