Hunting the Ghost Dancer by A. A Attanasio

Author:A. A Attanasio [Attanasio, A. A]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, General
ISBN: 9780061099359
Google: 3HiJOAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0060179090
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 1991-07-14T22:00:00+00:00

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At the center of a subterranean chamber with root-woven walls, Neoll Nant Caw sat in a circle of blue fire. A gopher-tunnel and several mouseholes overhead vented the smoke. Even so, the place still reeked with acrid fumes from burning tar-oil.

Kirchi feared this chamber, for here the witch made her drink bitter dreaming-potions. Many a night she had sat on the packed earth at the center of that circle, watching slim blue flames twist inside the witch's crystals. With the help of the dreaming potions, she had seen deep inside those rocks, seen the moon-bright Forest under the mountains, watched her clan wander the grasslands with the herds.

And once, she had witnessed a ghost dancer possessed by the Dark Traces. That had happened early in the spring, when Baat defiled the Longtooth's priestess and slaughtered her escorts. Even now, eight moons later, she still touched that nightmare whenever she entered this chamber.

"The boy works?" the witch asked.

Kirchi nodded, glad to see that none of the crystals lay unsheathed. "He should be watched. He might easily doze off."

"You watch him then. And steep him a brew of this." The crone held out a rolled leaf packed with root-tip pinchings. "It will give him strength to work. Study what I have mixed here. I will ask you later to make some of your own."

Kirchi stepped closer to the ring of fire. Though the flames flickered low, no more than skinny blue worms glowing in the dirt, she dreaded the circle. Inside waited the trance, the way out of her body and into misting gulfs, where the Forest and even the mountains existed as no more than ghosts. She snatched the leafroll and backed away.

"When he is finished with the pine seeds, have him shave some tinder." Neoll Nant Caw shooed Kirchi off with a hiss, and a frown crossed her face as the young woman disappeared.

Four years they had worked together and still the child feared her. Perhaps the old woman had been too strict, made Kirchi imbibe too many dreaming brews. With so much to learn and so little time left, how else could she have trained this neophyte?

The crone despaired at what her life had come to. Since the day in her twelfth summer when a witch had touched a crystal to her forehead and she had heard a Bright One singing, Neoll Nant Caw had wanted to be a witch.

The Bright One had been singing about trees, lanterns of water that shone with the light of the sun. After hearing that song, nothing about the craft frightened her, not leaving her clan, not drinking the sour brews or losing herself in trances. She had yearned only for the Bright Ones and to learn everything from them.

In those days, it had seemed that from the ul udi everything could be learned. They knew not only how trees ate sunlight but also how sunlight in the grass became the life of the herds.

The men, who wanted simply to kill the Old

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