Aiyana Redfeather's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

Aiyana counted the beast carcasses stacked by the huts and felt no pride. Four hunts in four days. The chief wanted more. Aiyana knelt on the raised wooden floor and cleaned mud from his drilling spear. Naia climbed the walkway toward him. She did not sit. "Come look," she said. "Now." She led him along the reeds to a wallow where the beasts once gathered. The water sat still and empty. No blunt heads broke the surface. No trails cut the mud. "They are gone here," Naia said. "And here. And here." She pointed across the flat green water. "You hunt faster than they breed. My people will starve. Your people will starve. There is no arguing with an empty swamp." Aiyana looked at the drilling spear in his hand. He had earned his tribe a roof with it. Now that same weapon would empty the swamp and kill them all. The chief would not stop asking. And the chief wanted the spear's secret so he could hunt without Aiyana at all. "He wants the spear," Aiyana said. "If I give him the cone point, he floods the swamp with hunters. Your people lose everything." "Then do not give it," Naia said. "Then he throws my tribe back to the beasts." They stood in the reeds and said nothing. A great bird crossed the sky above them, wings spread wide, hunting the shallows. It dropped and rose with a thrashing fish in its beak. Aiyana watched it climb toward the dry stone hills. Toward the cavern his tribe had lost. An idea took hold. "The beasts fear water," he said slowly. "But they own our cavern. Full of dry stone. Full of our food stores." He turned to Naia. "What if I stop hunting your swamp? What if I take my tribe home instead?" Naia frowned. "The beasts kill anyone who tries." "Maybe. But if we leave the swamp, your people keep it. The chief keeps his hut and his quiet. Everyone wins but the beasts." Aiyana's chest tightened. He had a plan, and he hated it. He returned to the swamp hut at dusk. He did not bring meat. He carried a folded cloak of woven hide, bright with colored strips. He set it before the chief on the platform. "No more beasts," Aiyana said. "The swamp is dying. Take this instead, for the nights we sheltered here. My tribe is leaving." The chief lifted the cloak and turned it in his huge hands. He studied Aiyana for a long moment. Then he grunted and draped it over his shoulders. "Go, then," he said. "Trouble someone else's water." Aiyana walked back to his people under a dark sky. He had saved the swamp and lost the roof in one breath. Tomorrow his tribe would march toward the stone hills, toward the cavern, toward the invisible beasts that had beaten them once. He gripped the drilling spear. This time he would not be driven out.