People of the Weeping Eye by W. Michael Gear

Author:W. Michael Gear [Gear, W. Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Historical, Native American & Aboriginal
ISBN: 9781466815643
Google: ZMitSTp8na8C
Amazon: B007PRZLPU
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2008-12-02T13:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

Smoke Shield! I am to belong to Smoke Shield! Morning Dew’s world had stopped, the sounds of the tchkofa grown distant. The universe shrank to the thunderous beating of her heart. A numbness, like a smothering blanket, settled on her souls. Her body had ceased to exist. She heard nothing, felt nothing, souls floating, disjointed and loose.

Morning Dew was barely aware that two young men grasped her ams to carry her from the smoky tchkofa’s interior. The laughter and jeers at her expense had no meaning. As if through another’s ears she heard the slave Thin Branch say something to two women who waited just beyond the tchkofa gate. The sight of them hurrying off through the crowd might have been through a stranger’s eyes. The crowd parted as the men dragged her after them, her senseless feet scuffing the grass.

For three long days she had longed for death, her situation little better than an animal’s. From where she’d been tied to the post, she had watched Screaming Falcon as the Sky Hand abused his body. Some had brought sharpened sticks to pierce his flesh; others jabbed at his belly and chest. People had delighted in slapping Screaming Falcon’s broken jaw. That afternoon Morning Dew had watched in horror as a young woman used a burning branch to singe the hair from his groin. Afterward his genitals had turned red, blistered, and swollen.

Somehow, she had forced herself to watch, her anguish a mirror of his own. When he had blinked back tears and called, “Be strong!” a guard had smacked his swollen and bruised jaw with a war club.

If only they would kill me! The pain would be merciful in its swiftness. She prayed that they might do it before they tortured Screaming Falcon to death. More than anything, she hadn’t wanted to watch that. His continued screams would have been like burning thorns in her souls. The sight of his wounded body, bleeding, blistered, and slowly cut apart, would have broken her.

But nothing had prepared her for the tchkofa. When two men had appeared in the darkness, whispered to the guards, and untied her, she had stumbled along. A desperate hope that ransom had been received from her people imparted a frantic belief that within a hand’s time she would be in a canoe, heading swiftly downriver toward freedom.

Only when she had heard Blood Skull’s words did she begin to fear. But even then, as he talked about carefully selecting whom he would give her to, hope had flickered like a tiny flame. With all the multitudes of Sky Hand to choose from, surely she would go to some influential clan, to some family of special merit.

And then the very sky had come crashing down on top of her. She remembered her legs giving out and the derisive hoots of the Sky Hand. There, among the plates, she had lost all of her wits, the words, No, not him! echoing in the hollow between her souls.

As the men pulled

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