Shadow Valley Read Free Page B

said.
    “What?” Frog asked.
    “Their eyes are so bright,” the old man whispered. “The young ones believe in this great man, this hero named Snake.” His thin shoulders rounded forward. “Why would Father Mountain not give me a stronger heart?”
    Frog knew his uncle’s pain but could not ease it. After the Mk*tk war, theholy women had decided to climb Great Sky to ask Father Mountain and Great Mother for advice and aid. Seven had begun the climb, two had completed it. Four had died and one, Snake, had given up. But Frog and Sky Woman had lied to protect Snake, had made him a hero of the climb.
    What a wonderful, blessed lie it had been. In that lie, Hawk Shadow had died on his feet instead of his knees, crawling away from the wolves. Fire Ant had died defending Sky Woman instead of trying to kill her. Snake had driven them on with the supernatural strength of his
num
instead of turning back like a coward.
    His uncle, whose strength and courage had failed him, had been transformed by Frog into the strongest of them all. Was it wrong to protect the man who had fed and raised him?
    He considered, then asked the question that itched at him. “When was the last time you took pleasure with my mother? She loves you, and you do not touch her.”
    Snake’s lips twisted in annoyance. “Why do you say this?”
    “I know my mother,” Frog said. “When she is loved, she dances through her day.” He paused. “She has not danced in moons.”
    “I am old,” Snake said, “and my root-fire is low.” Snake seemed unable to meet Frog’s eyes. “I should steal
num
from Gazelle?”
    Frog shook his head. “You cannot steal what is given freely. And I do not believe your root has wilted. Just a year ago, around the fire you bragged of how you made her sing in the tall grass.” A hummingbird-swift shift of Snake’s eyes told him his arrow had struck home. It was Snake’s spirit that failed, not his flesh. “You have loved little since we came from the mountain. Since we began our journey. Is she so ugly to you now?”
    Snake winced. “Do not say such things!”
    “Are her breasts empty?” Frog bore in, deliberately provoking. Anger was better than self-pity. “Perhaps her eyes were brighter when she’d danced fewer winters. Has she lost a girl’s easy step?”
    Snake growled and raised his hand as if to strike his adopted son. He hesitated and lowered it again. “Do not speak of your mother so.”
    “Why don’t you go to her?”
    Snake’s nostrils flared, but his tongue found no words.
    “Uncle,” Frog said, “as men, we think that all our strength comes from our muscle, our bones, our
num.
I think that is wrong. I think that a man is strong when his soul vine binds him to his woman.”
    “What of the hunt chiefs?” Snake retorted. “They lived without women, and were they not strongest of all?”
    A good question. All had died, save the coward Boar Tracks, who had refused to attempt the climb of Great Sky.
    Could the dead ones have been strongest of them all? When he, Frog, had done what they could not? All his life he had believed the songs and stories, but now he was not certain. “Were they? Did they? Uncle, they
all
had Ibandi women. Whenever a hunt chief’s root hungered, he needed only walk down from the mountain and display it. You suffer no weakness. You believe you are no longer worthy.”
    Was that a
smile
tugging at Snake’s lips? “Perhaps.”
    “Uncle … I was strong because I had the Nameless One, she we now call Sky Woman. You walked alone.”
    “And your brother Fire Ant?”
    Frog flinched as if Snake had thrust a stick at his eye. “I do not speak of him.”
    Snake frowned. “Frog, he is dead. He died trying to save his people. There is nothing you could have done.”
    “Perhaps.” Frog ground the ball of his foot into the dirt. When he finally replied, his voice was flat and harsh. “And if you could have been braver, stronger, you would have been. And can be now, if you will