The Unfinished Song: Initiate Page 5

  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 summersaults 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 an
d 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 Dinid’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 the
ir 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.”r />
  “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 quesy.

  “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 outcaste. 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.