Forty-five

Tsilu

After dusk, a cold wind sweeps down from the snow-capped mountains to the north and blasts me where I sleep beneath a gray limestone overhang, my head pillowed on Kwinsi’s pack. Grandfather sleeps beside me. At least I think he’s asleep. He hasn’t moved in more than one hand of time.

It’s shocking how the world has changed since we joined the main road to Flowing Waters Town. There are so many people!

Across the rolling desert landscape to the south, fires flicker everywhere. The large clusters must be towns in the Straight Path nation, or maybe war parties, but most are individual camps, like ours. Victims of destroyed villages? The camps form straight lines, as though set up along roads, rather than winding rivers. That puzzles me. If I were fleeing, I would not camp along a road, even if it was the fastest way to travel. I’d head for the untrammeled backcountry, where the only trails are made by deer and elk.

In a low voice Grandfather inquires, “What do you see out there, Tsilu?”

I whisper back, “Grandfather, who was Ravenfire?”

He seems surprised and lifts his head to look at me. “Oh, well, that’s a very long story. Why do you ask?”

I stare at him, noting the way the night’s gleam outlines his deepest wrinkles.

“Blue Dove told me something today that made me wonder about him.”

“Really? What did she say?”

Out in the distance kit foxes break into song, serenading the darkness. I listen for a moment. Their yips echo, reverberating off the canyon walls.

“She said that Leather Hand had an ugly daughter named Yellow Gill or Yellow Quill, and when she was barely a woman he forced her to marry the madman Ravenfire.”

Grandfather reaches out to affectionately move a windblown lock of hair away from my face. All the love in the world shines in his eyes. “Did she tell you what happened to them?”

“Partly. She said Ravenfire was considered a hero by many for betraying his grandmother, Matron Night Sun, but others wanted to kill him for it. Assassins kept chasing him, so he took his family to live among the barbarian buffalo hunters in the far north. Was he a bad man? A traitor?”

Grandfather pauses for several heartbeats, and I see him frowning up at the Star Road that stretches across the sky just beyond the limestone outcrop. His lips move in silent words. Is he praying to his ancestors? Or for the thlatsinas to take his hand and lead him to that inevitable road now, before he must answer?

“It’s a—a hard thing to explain, Tsilu, except to say that he was very young, just a boy, and we all make grave mistakes in our youth.”

“But he betrayed his own grandmother, didn’t he? That’s more than a mistake. It’s unthinkable. How could anyone—”

Grandfather interrupts, which he rarely does. “If I tell you that I find no comfort in the fact that effect simply follows cause, and that I judge none as guilty, can you—at the immense age of thirteen summers—understand?”

“I … I don’t know.”

My hands fumble around beneath my cape, tugging my sleeves straight while I think about that. Can I, even a little, understand the truths that an old man has acquired through a lifetime of experience?

“Then you forgive Ravenfire for what he did?”

Grandfather stares at me for a long time without blinking. “I want to forgive. I very much want to believe that all the summers of suffering were necessary to pay for justice. But part of me will always weep that the price was too high.”

“What do you mean by justice?”

“Ah…” he says with a wry smile. “That question has watered the ages with its tears.”

I reach out to squeeze his hand and find his knobby joints cold. “That’s not much of an answer, Grandfather.”

“No.” Something old and sad fills his eyes. “No, it’s not. Let me try again. Ravenfire walked as a haughty weakling boy into Leather Hand’s arms. His crimes were terrible, horrific. But is it not enough that in the course of thirty summers he lost everything, including himself? How long should a man suffer for crimes committed before he became a man?”

I blink up at the vault of the sky, watching the dead walking to the afterlife, their soft shining footprints stretching forever into vast and fathomless darkness above me.

“Some would say he should suffer forever.”

“Most would, I suspect.”

He stops talking, and I can tell words have failed him. But the words he’s just spoken echo across an immeasurable wasteland inside me. I long to forgive everyone for everything, but what do I know about true evil and prices paid?

Grandfather quietly takes a breath, as though to fortify his courage, before he says, “If you knew without a doubt that torturing one child to death would save a nation or a People, would you do it?”

Without a moment’s hesitation, I say, “No. Of course not.”

“Ah…” he says in that soft voice that teaches lessons. “Even if that child’s death would trigger the collapse of monstrous kings and kingdoms and become the edifice upon which a thousand years of peace would be built?”

Grandfather often forces me to think unpleasant thoughts, as though spinning moral conundrums will give me the practice I need to make difficult decisions later in life. I dare not answer until I’ve thought the implications through.

“Will the child’s death save the lives of other people?”

“Thousands of lives, probably. But it means that no one will mourn that child. They will celebrate his death as a great moment in history and, thereby, his suffering will go unavenged.” Pain fills that last sentence. “Is that justice, Tsilu?”

From every crevice in my soul, cries seep—shouts that justice was not done. The child was innocent and should not have been forced to suffer such an agonizing fate.

But I say, “I … well, maybe. I mean, if the child’s suffering was the price that had to be paid to save a nation or a People, then wasn’t it a small price to pay?”

“Umm,” Grandfather says, gently squeezes my hand, and rolls to his back to gaze up at the night sky, where Meteor People blaze across the heavens, leaving frosty trails in their wake. “It is beyond my comprehension that one innocent child is somehow worth less than one hundred. Is not his life as sacred as theirs? If it isn’t, then perhaps we delude ourselves, and life is not sacred at all.”

Bewildered by this comment, I watch the clouds on the eastern horizon. Moon Mother hides just out of sight, but she’s lifted her radiant hands into the bellies of the clouds and turned them into glowing white towers. Such beauty seems out of place, even extravagant, in light of our discussion.

I adjust my head to a more comfortable position on Kwinsi’s pack. “Grandfather, can you tell me more about Leather Hand’s first daughter, the ugly girl named Yellow Gill or Yellow Quill?”

He’s still gazing at the sky when he smiles and says, “I think, perhaps, you are trying to ask me if Blue Dove got the name wrong and Yellow Quill was actually Golden Quill, your mother.”

I grit my teeth, as though that simple act can protect me from the truth about to be revealed. “Yes, Grandfather.”

A veil of sadness comes over his weathered face, and I can tell he’s been dreading this question for a long, long time. The deep furrows across his forehead tighten, casting shadows that resemble bottomless cracks in the world. My world. I fear his answer may be an earthquake that shatters everything in my life.

“Yes, she was your mother.”

“Then Ravenfire was my father?”

Involuntarily, I turn to Crane where he sleeps with his back to me three paces away and, from the corner of my eye, I see Grandfather quietly follow my gaze.

Barely audible, he says, “He was. Yes.”

“And Maicoh is my brother?”

Surprised, he says, “Did Crosswind tell you that?”

“It was one of the memories that came to me afterward. I was playing in a wildflower meadow with my family. I saw him there and knew he was my brother.”

Grandfather shifts to prop himself up on one elbow and looks out across the camp, scanning the sleeping warriors and guards who keep watch on the high rocky bluffs. I’m intrigued that his eyes do not fix on my brother, but instead come to rest upon Blue Dove. It’s as if something sharp has sliced him open inside. The woman sleeps completely surrounded by warriors, invulnerable, but I have the feeling that he’d like to remedy that situation.

“Then Blue Dove is my aunt?”

“I’m afraid she is,” he replies, then adds, “My precious granddaughter, do I have to tell you never to repeat that? Or any of your memories?”

“No, I—I know. Crane told me.”

Grandfather nods. “Good. I’m relieved.”

As I watch, a faint blue glow surrounds him. Must be a trick of the moon rising above the horizon behind him, but I remember things Kwinsi said about Grandfather and murmur, “Why haven’t you escaped? Kwinsi said you were more Powerful than I realized. If that’s true—”

“Oh…” He sounds very tired. “Because I must go to Flowing Waters Town.”

“Why?”

“It’s an old reason. One that I’m not even sure I fully understand now, except that it’s necessary for me to be there when everyone suddenly grasps what it has all been for.”

“Just tell me why—”

“No, my beloved Tsilu. I’ve told you far more tonight than I should have, and by doing so I’ve placed you in the path of forces so dangerous they terrify me. Forgive me. I would answer if I could, but I can’t.”

He reaches out to stroke my chopped-off hair, and I grasp his hand and pull it down over my heart where I hold it tight. “Thank you for telling me what you could. I’m going to try to sleep now.”

I kiss his hand, then release it and roll to my back to watch autumn leaves blow through the air above me.

Beneath my head, the figurines in the pack shift, and I hear them whispering to one another long into the windy night.