Shadows in the Cave by Caleb Fox Read Free Book Online Page B

smoothing her skirt down. Their clothes were made of deer hide.
    Aku pulled the shirt over his head and double-checked his owl feathers to make sure they were tight. The Amaso people thought the feathers were daft. Owls were thought to be witches, and their night cries made people hurry inside. But the memory of his mother was enough for Aku.
    Sea turtle man pulled up beside them and heaved out a half comprehensible mix of words and big breaths at Aku. Iona signed it.
    “Your sister has disappeared!”
    Oghi got his breath and spoke slowly so that Aku would understand. He was an odd young man, because his nickname was Old Man.
    “What do you know about it?” Aku asked.
    Oghi looked at the sand and fidgeted on his feet. These two had circled each other warily for a reason—Oghi sensed the seer power in Aku, and Aku knew it. “You better hear what the moon women say first.”
    Iona signed those words.
    “Let’s go,” Aku said.
    Aku and Iona ran, outdistancing Oghi, who was short-legged and out of breath. Like raindrops splashing off a boulder, the awful news couldn’t get into Aku’s head. My sister. My twin. Taken? Dead?
    They sprinted into the circle of huts and across the village green. A new friend of Salya’s staggered around making a sound somewhere between moaning and singing. Aku and Iona dashed right by her and out of the circle of houses to the isolated brush hut where women on their moon slept. A ring of men stood at a distance from three moon women, talking.
    “She went out to pee just after the sun went down,” one of the Galayi women told Chalu, signing to be sure to get the facts across.
    “She said she’d be right back,” said one of the other moon women. “We were about to eat.”
    “But she didn’t come back.”
    “We went and checked.”
    “She’s nowhere.”
    Shonan called out, “All right, everyone, have any of you seen Salya since sunset?” Anger licked his tongue.
    No one answered.
    “I’ll ask all around the village,” said Iona. Her tone was despair.
    “Let’s go check the signs,” Shonan said to Aku. They both took burning chunks of wood from the cooking fire.
    The women’s pee place was beyond some scrub and behind a dune, a spot washed by the tides. One look and Shonan said, “Damn, damn, damn.”
    They barely needed the torches to read the signs, which were obvious in the light of the moon. Someone had been dragged away, heel tracks lining the sand.
    “Why didn’t she yell?” said Shonan.
    Aku had never felt so dumb making words in his life. “Maybe they hit her over the head.”
    “Or maybe the sound of the damn surf was louder than her cries.” His father missed the hills and mountains, disliked the roaring ocean.
    The lines of the dragging heels and the footprints led to a place littered with moccasin tracks. In the middle of all the tracks was a smooth, back-shaped depression in the sand. Aku’s mind felt as disheveled as the tossed grains.
    “They laid her down here,” Shonan said, “lifted her up again, and walked that way.” The two followed the moccasin tracks straight toward the trail away from the town. Anyone could read the distinctive moccasin stitch of the Brown Leaf people, who lived on the far side of a big bay to the north, at one destination of the trail.
    “I can’t tell if some of these tracks are deeper than others,” Shonan said, “but I think they carried her on a litter.”
    His voice was half growl. A scar flashed away from the corner of his left eye, the mark of a spear point. When his eyes became embers of anger, the scar turned white and Aku got nervous.
    Shonan said, “Let’s go get her.”
    Aku tried to order his thoughts. “Too tricky at night.”
    “Which is why they picked it,” said Shonan. “All right, at dawn.” He had always wanted to teach Aku the path of the warrior, and often teased his lanky son about learning. Aku didn’t refuse, but he avoided.
    Aku nodded his head yes. He had other thoughts he couldn’t