People of the Sea - Hardcover

Gear, W. Michael; Gear, Kathleen O'Neal

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312931220 ISBN 13: 9780312931223

Publisher: Forge, 1993

Synopsis

The harsh post-glacier landscape provides the setting for this story of native American prehistory, in which the pregnant Kestrel flees westward from her vengeful husband after witnessing her lover's murder

About this title

About the Author

Kathleen O'Neal Gear is a former state historian and archaeologist for Wyoming, Kansas, and Nebraska for the U.S. Department of the Interior. She has twice received the federal government's Special Achievement Award for ""outstanding management"" of our nation's cultural heritage.

W. Michael Gear holds a master's degree in archaeology and has worked as a professional archaeologist since 1978. He is principal investigator for Wind River Archaeological Consultants.

Together they have written the North America's Forgotten Past series (People of the Morning Star, People of the Songtrail, People of the Mist, People of the Wolf, among others); and the Anasazi Mysteries series. The Gears live in Thermopolis, WY.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

One
The lodge had grown unbearably hot, stifling. Sunchaser shoved weakly at the mound of hides that covered him. Sweat drenched his naked body, matting his long black hair to his temples and stinging his deep-set eyes. Cold trickles ran down his sides. He was so tall--twelve hands--that his feet rested uncomfortably against the opposite wall. The fire in the center of the dirt floor had been built up high enough that the flames leaped and crackled. Golden reflections danced across the shiny coating of creosote on the hide ceiling. He studied them through fever-brilliant eyes, and the images wavered like a silvery mirage on the desert.
“Good Plume? Aunt?”
He managed to lift his head enough to look around. The lodge consisted of a pine-pole frame covered with hides. It spread in a rectangle, four body lengths long and one wide. Good Plume was gone, but from the dimly lit corners of the lodge, tiny eyes gleamed as field mice froze at the sound of his voice. For long moments he watched the small creatures before they began to scurry about in search of food. One mouse jumped like a grasshopper onto the log that held down the southern wall. Long whiskers shivered in glints of silver as he sniffed his way around the bases of two soapstone bowls, hopped over a curved throwing stick used for hunting rabbits and stopped beside a winnowing basket. He chewed a bit of wheat-grass chaff while he stared unblinking at Sunchaser, his glossy sides pulsing with his rapid breathing.
Then the mouse zipped behind the winnowing basket as Sunchaser sighed and settled into the robes. A nightmare sensation of helplessness possessed him. His mouth had gone as dry as the autumn grasses. Was it the fever, or did he hear voices...soft, muted words intermixed with the sputters of the fire?
He let his head fall to the left. Sweat slipped over the skin of his face. Along the northern wall stood a row of thirteen baked-clay figurines. They peered at Sunchaser through sparkling dovesnail-shell eyes. The Steals Light People. In their hands they held the timeless ebb and flow of divine Power. Above-Old-Man stood at the far end of the lodge, looking down upon the Steals Light People. Like Mother Ocean, he was not one of the Steals Light People, but was greater than all of them. Because of that, his figurine was twice the height of the others, four hands tall. His entire body had been painted pure white, but he wore a black weasel-fur headdress sprinkled with quartz crystals that had been glued on with pine pitch.
Sunchaser blinked wearily at the figurine. It seemed to be watching him intently. “Above-Old-Man...” he murmured reverently. “Your death...gave life to the world.” Sunchaser smiled.
In the Beginning, Above-Old-Man was all that existed. He was soft and shapeless like the clouds. He knew that to create the world, he would have to use part of himself. It took a great act of courage for him to open his veins and allow the blue blood to flow unheeded, but it poured out and turned into the blue waters of Mother Ocean, from which every other life form emerged. The froth on the Mother’s surface gave birth to the Steals Light People: Father Sun, Dawn Child, Winter Boy, the Ice Ghosts, the Thunderbeings, Great White Giant and all the others. Even Sister Earth and Brother Sky were born from the vast blue womb.
First Condor, the biggest bird in the world, sprang to life soon thereafter, created from a ball of Sister Earth’s clay. As Above-Old-Man’s blood drained away, he called to Condor. When Condor came, Above-Old-Man said, “Please, Condor, I am too weak. Let me give you the Power to breathe Life into the things I have created. You must hurry, before the magic of Creation dies. Otherwise, everything will just be bone and stone and water. It will never feel or think.”
Condor had to fly very fast to cover the whole world before the magic was gone.
While Condor did his duty, Above-Old-Man grew weaker and weaker, until he shrank to nothingness and died. The world lived because of Him and Condor, but Above-Old-Man became cold and white and hard. Mother Ocean wept. She begged the other Steals Light People to help her, and they made a net of seaweed and put Above-Old-Man in it. First Condor carried the net high into the sky, where Above-Old-Man was reborn as the moon.
Sunchaser could feel the Power of the Steals Light People; it radiated from them like heat from flames. They made the rains come and winter go. As the children of Above-Old-Man, their prayers gave their Father the strength to rise and cross the belly of Brother Sky every night. If the Steals Light People ever failed to pray, the moon would rise no more.
Pinches of sacred acorn meal lay sprinkled at the feet of the clay figurines, just as it was sprinkled on the living Dancers who represented them at the annual ceremonials. Good Plume had laboriously painted, these Steals Light People, crushing the colors from plant roots, flowers, berries and clays, working for long hands of time with a frayed willow-twig brush to get the details right. Then she had dressed them in special, ritually blessed clothing-as befitted gods.
Sunchaser’s voice rasped as he asked, “Where is Good Plume, Steals Light People? Do you know?”
They seemed to be whispering; the Thunderbeing’s voice was especially loud. Thunderbeings looked like young children, but they had the shining, membranous wings of dragonflies. And talons grew where a human child would have had feet. As they soared through the clouds, their wings caused thunder to rumble across the sky. He couldn’t make out the Thunderbeing’s words. Or were those sounds only the passing of the mice? Sunchaser blinked to steady the wavering focus of his eyes and fought the drifting sensation that possessed him.
Bright paintings lived over the heads of the figurines. On the long north wall, two zigzags of yellow lightning sliced a path through silver moons and blue stars and lodged in the heart of a crimson sun. The southern wall flamed with orange trees whose branches curled in and around to form the interlocking pathways of a labyrinth. Near the edges of the branches, dark swirls spiraled out, like tongues of black flame....The Darkness that roasts the soul when it attempts to find the twisting road that leads to the Land of the Dead.
With all of his strength, Sunchaser rolled to his right side so he could extend a trembling hand and pull the door flap back. His clammy fingers could barely keep their grip on the leather, but he managed to hang the flap on its peg. As he did so, the hides slipped off his chest, exposing it to the cold wind that swept Brushnut Village. He relished the shiver that shook him. The crisp scent of pine flooded his hot nostrils and he inhaled deeply, seeking to fill his soul with the essence of the trees.
Outside the lodge, the green pines gradually darkened into charcoal spears. They stood like dark sentinels against the translucent rays of pale pink light that shot across the sky. Sunchaser could see no clouds, but flakes of snow pirouetted through the trees and landed on the frozen ground.
How long had he been ill? He couldn’t even recall when he had retreated to his aunt’s lodge to lie down. Where was she? Was the sickness still ravaging the village?
“They need you, you fool,“ he murmured feebly. “Good Plume is old...eighty summers. She can’t work all the Healings by herself. It will kill her. Get up. Get up before it’s too late and everyone that you care about is dead.”
He tried to sit up, but fell back to his hides, panting and trembling from the effort. The interior of the lodge swam around him in a blur of color. He felt sick to his stomach.
Sunchaser had been born here in the mountains at Brushnut Village twenty-five summers ago. He knew and loved each person in the village. How many of them had died since he’d fallen ill? Good Plume’s lodge nestled on the western side of the village, down the slope from the others. But he could hear the moans and cries of the sick.
“Blessed Spirits, what’s happening? How...”
Footsteps crunched on the frozen ground above the lodge, slow, methodic, as if each step required great care.
“Good Plume?” he called again.
“Yes, it’s me.”
She pushed her walking stick through the doorway before she ducked through herself. Snow frosted the fur of her heavy buffalo coat and glistened in the gray straggles of hair that had come undone from her short braid. Her face had a skeletal angularity; her sagging, wrinkled skin was the color of walnut oil.
Sunchaser closed his eyes for a moment.
Good Plume leaned her walking stick by the door and unhooked the door flap, letting it fall closed again. “Are you trying to kill yourself? Winter Boy is still out and about, looking for souls to eat.”
She bent down and covered Sunchaser with hides again, then went to the middle of the lodge, where she removed her coat and laid it by the fire to dry. Her thin arms stuck out from the sleeves of her doeskin dress. She kicked a stump of wood closer to the fire and sat down on it, the beaded hem of her skirt fanning around her feet. Her hands shook as she held them out to the flames. “When I get warm, I’ll heat up that raccoon soup we had for breakfast.”
Sunchaser wet his chapped lips. “Tell me...I have to know. What’s happening?”
“It will just worry you. You’ll use up your strength--”
“Tell me!”
Good Plume exhaled a heavy breath. “Flint Pond died today. Everyone in the village is going mad trying to figure out who should be the next chief.”
“What about Flint Pond’s son?”
Good Plume’s voice broke when she said, “Little Elk died this morning.”
Faint, wavering images of Little Elk’s face moved through Sunchaser...

About this edition

• Publisher: Forge
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0312931220
• ISBN 13: 9780312931223
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 425