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“Do you believe otherwise? How can you know? You have not walked on Earth since the old days, and the old days are forgotten by humankind. They recall us only in stories, as an ancient enemy long banished and defeated. Or is it the memory of the Bright One that blinds you, so that you do not wish to war against them?”
“It is ill mannered for a daughter to speak so disrespectfully to her own sire,” commented Feather Cloak. “Your words may carry truth, but your behavior gives us cause to doubt you.”
“You are fools!” The Impatient One snapped her fingers, and one of the young warriors, loitering by the passageway that led out of the cavern, came to attention. “Still, it is possible—just possible—if they are not dead but only caught between the worlds….” She grinned, leaped up the steps, and vanished into the darkness, the young man at her heels.
“Who is dead?” asked White Feather.
“We are caught between the worlds,” said the elderly woman known as Green Skirt. “What mischief is she up to?”
“She’ll try to get pregnant again,” said White Feather. “She’ll want the Eagle Seat. She’ll wrest it from you, if she can.”
Feather Cloak had weathered many trials in her life. They all had, who lived in exile. She smiled, feeling the familiar tug of weariness at her heart, leavened only by a memory of laughter she had once shared with The Impatient One when they were girls together. “In the old days,” she said as the last of her council gathered around her, “we did not acclaim a leader solely on her fertility. It is a shame it has come to this.” She patted her belly. Muscles tightened under her hand. The skin rippled as the child within rolled like one of the fabled merfolk underwater.
“How has the world changed?” she asked the others, marking each one with her gaze: Eldest Uncle, Green Skirt, the old warrior Skull Earrings, and White Feather, who would act as midwife. These were the ones she trusted most because they were honest, even and particularly when they did not agree. They were her spring, winter, autumn, and summer. “We do not know what we will find when we return to Earth, for none among us has walked in the other land as it is now. None except The Impatient One.”
“Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari walked the spheres,” said White Feather. “She risked her life so that she could learn what was necessary to cross over the aether and back onto Earth. We should not dismiss her words so lightly, just because she does not agree with her father.”
Eldest Uncle chuckled.
Green Skirt had an older woman’s distaste for nonsense. She lifted her chin sharply to show she disagreed. “That she refuses to listen to her elders is precisely what makes her opinion suspect. She is rash.”
Skull Earrings crossed his arms. He had once been a bold, impetuous, impatient warrior like Cat Mask, but age, hunger, and despair had worn him down. He was like ancient gold, burnished to a soft gleam. “First, let us survive what is coming. We do not know what to expect, except what the Bright One told us. That our old enemies the Horse people and their human allies still live, and seek to exile us forevermore. If we survive, then we can send scouts to survey the lay of the land. If we do not survive, if we are cast adrift a second time, then we will certainly die. What can we do?”
“We can do nothing,” said Eldest Uncle, “except take shelter and hope for the storm’s winds to spare us.”
“There must be something we can do!” cried White Feather. “Are we goats, to be herded at the shepherds’s whim and slaughtered when it is time for meat?”
“Now—right now—we are helpless,” said Eldest Uncle. “There is no shame in accepting this as truth, since it is so. I agree with my nephew.” He gestured toward Skull Earrings.
The other man laughed. “After so many years, it is good we agree at last, Uncle!”
The old man smiled, but Feather Cloak saw that the gesture came only from the head, not his heart. “I will wait beside the clearing where the burning stone appears,” he said.
“That is on the edge of the land,” protested Feather Cloak. “The tides may wash over you. You will be at risk.”
“As you are here, Feather Cloak.”
“I cannot leave the Eagle Seat. I like you close at hand. It makes me feel more at peace.”
He shrugged, knowing she was right, knowing that as leader she had no peace. The weight of the Eagle Seat was as heavy a burden as pregnancy. “Nevertheless, I must wait there, in case—”
White Feather snorted. “In case the Bright One reappears? Perhaps your daughter speaks the truth, Uncle. You have a young man’s mind in an old man’s body.”
“That never changes!” he retorted, but he was not offended by her statement. The others laughed. “I am eldest. I will do as I wish in this. I will see what I will see. If the tides overwhelm me, so be it.”
A contraction gripped Feather Cloak’s womb. As if in echo, the earth trembled and shook on and on until she found herself breathing hard, hands clutching the eagle’s wings.
White Feather knelt beside her. “You are close.” She beckoned to Green Skirt, who nodded and hurried to the door to give a stream of directions to one of the warriors waiting there, a young woman wearing a fox mask tipped back onto her hair. The girl ran out to fetch water while White Feather emptied coals out of a hollow stick and coaxed a fire into flame. Skull Earrings fetched the birthing stool.
All this industry, and the intense grip of further contractions, distracted Feather Cloak. She had the merest impression of Eldest Uncle’s brief farewell and the pair of young warriors who followed him. When she next looked around the chamber, all three were gone.
As the contractions came hard and with increasing frequency, she began no longer to be able to distinguish the forces shaking her body and those shaking the land. So many burdens; so much exhaustion; so great a trial to be faced. She had to let it go. It was beyond her control. All she could do was endure it. All she could do, between stabs of red-hot pain, was pray to Sharatanga, She-Who-Will-Not-Have-A-Husband.
“Guide us through this birth and this death. Give us your blessing.”
Was that her voice or White Feather’s? Was it Green Skirt speaking, as the green beads and little white skull masks clicked together each time the old woman moved? Did she herself mumble words, or only grunt and groan and curse as the pains of opening came and went?
She was vaguely sensible beyond her skin of the greater skin of the cosmos, that which wrapped Earth, opening as a flower opens to receive that which now returned to it: the exiled land. Vast forces moved within the deeps. The sea waters raged on the surface and winds howled, while in the caverns far beneath, rivers of fire shifted to create a new maze of pathways.
