The Year the Cloud Fell by Giambastiani Kurt R.A

Author:Giambastiani, Kurt R.A.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

By the time Speaks While Leaving and her family arrived at Fishing Lizard Creek, many of the People had already established their camps. More lodges went up as they approached. The air buzzed with voices and whistler calls and the songs of lodge-raising. Barks Like Thunder did his best to live up to his name. He barked and squirmed until his young captor was forced to let him out of her grasp. The puppy yipped and growled and charged everything they passed until his quarry turned to challenge him in return, at which point he retreated to hide amid the whistlers with their hatchlings.

One Who Flies rode close by, silent now as he generally was during the second half of the day. Once the sun passed the top of the sky, fatigue descended upon him like a stone eagle. He roused a little at the puppy’s noisemaking and looked around at the scene.

“I think I slept,” he said.

His skin was very pale and the light seemed to penetrate him as if he were made of tallow. She nudged Two Cuts closer, hoping he was only suffering from too much sun. His wrist and cheek were hot to the touch. From the look in his eye, he knew what was wrong.

“It has gone sour, yes?”

She signed agreement.

He sighed and shook his head. “I can’t seem to do anything right…even heal.”

“Do not despair of it,” she told him. “With a wound like this, it would have been unusual if it had not gone sour.”

He looked at her from beneath a furrowed brow. “I must be well for the meeting.”

“We will see,” she said.

“No. I must go to the meeting. It is my only hope of going home.”

“Then you will either be sick or well when you go. Now calm yourself and stay quiet. We will look at the wound as soon as the lodges are raised.”

The Closed Windpipe band gathered in its traditional spot, immediately south of the east-facing sun road that welcomed the light of morning and creation into the heart of camp. One Bear led his family to an open spot near the center of the area, for as a chief he wished to be accessible to all in his band. Once there, he pointed down to the ground. There they would raise the family’s main lodge—the big seventeen-skin lodge—and all around it, in a circle like the circle of the lodge itself, would be the family’s other lodges; those for Speaks While Leaving’s other-mothers, and the women’s lodge where the women would spend their moon-time. The circle of the lodge, the circle of the family, the circle of the band, and the circle of the People. Raising the lodges was like rebuilding the family and the band all over again, each time better than the last, and the gathering of the bands in the summer months meant a time of plenty, of stories, and of friendships renewed after the separation of the winter moons. This was Speaks While Leaving’s favorite time.

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