Shifting Plains by Jean Johnson

Author:Jean Johnson [Johnson, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780425230862
Published: 2009-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

They were almost to the Family, and she still couldn’t stop blushing. Not that she was blushing quite so much by now, but every once in a while, she would look over at Kodan, who would be glancing her way, and when their eyes met . . . she blushed. To be fair, he blushed a little, too. He also smiled at her. A lot. He also engaged her in conversation, asking her more questions about her childhood, about the books she had read, and about the things she liked to do.

Right now, they were traveling through herds of sheep, having passed the herds of cattle and horses at the outer edges of the large encampment. Kodan pointed at the tents they were approaching. “The geomes of Family Tiger are laid out in a specific pattern. The structures that the whole Family uses are set up in the center: the two Council geomes where problems are brought to the two factions for solving, decorated in either horizontal or vertical stripes; the ageome, the Lord’s tent with its paintings of tigers and nothing but tigers, where those problems the Councils cannot solve are brought and where lawbreakers are brought for Truth Stoning and sentencing.“Then there is the healer’s geome with its red and white walls, where the sick and injured are tended; the all-gold teaching geomes where the priesthood give our children and young adults their lessons; and the all-white, holy geome where one can go to worship Father Sky and Mother Earth. They’re all arranged around the great bonfire pits in the center.

“Beyond them in eight spokes stretch the private geomes, and the milking stalls—those are the tents with domed roofs but no walls, the ones spaced between the spokes of the camp,” Kodan told her, pointing at the canvas roofs in question. “Each one is painted with the animal shapes its owner can take, and here and there will be the red and green refreshing tents. The geomes that are all blue are bathing halls—you will use the one’s with the red-painted doors, not the green ones, just like the refreshing tents. Close to the center of the camp along each spoke are the eight maidens’ geomes. You will know those because they are painted to look like a grove of birch trees.

“Farther out are the eight earth-priestess geomes, at about the midpoint in each spoke; those are painted with rolling hills. At the very ends are spots reserved for the eight warband geomes, which have a diamond painted around the pertinent body part identifying it,” he said. “This is why we had to swing to the right a little, since we’re aiming for the South Paw site. That’s the right hind foot of the Tiger, with the Tailtip warband on the southwest spoke in between it and the West Paw, which is the left hind foot of the Tiger. Most everyone who fights in the South Paw Warband lives in the South Paw spoke.

“Continuing sun-wise, we have the

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