“He didn’t have a whole lot to say about them.”
Ha’kan’ta smiled. “The quin’on’a are a secret people. One privileged to be named their friend may tend towards secrecy when referring to them.”
Sara eyed the wolves nervously.
“Those pets of yours,” she asked. “Are they tame?”
“They are not my pets,” Ha’kan’ta said stiffly. “Would you tame the wild?”
“Where we come from it seems like they’ve tamed everything.”
“Then it is a sorry world you come from.”
“Depends. There’s a lot of good things in it too.”
Sara knew she was being a little snarky, but couldn’t help it. They’d been sitting around twiddling their thumbs for a couple of days and now this woman waltzes in all magical and beautiful while the pair of them were as grubby as a couple of rubbies on the streets back home. She looked past Ha’kan’ta to where the bull moose stood placidly chewing its cud, then back at the wolves with their clear, overly intelligent eyes.
“I just wanted to know if they were dangerous,” she said.
“Do not be alarmed, Saraken. Approach them with respect and they will respect you in turn.”
Easy for you to say, Sara thought. Before she could ask the question that was most on her mind, Kieran voiced it for her.
“Why were we brought here, Ha’kan’ta?”
“To meet my father, A’wa’rathe. But He-Who-Walks-With-Bears walks with them in the Place of Dreaming Thunder now, so I have come in his place. The message that the quin’on’a sent me was that Toma’heng’ar wished my father to teach you the Beardance. That is a gift not lightly given, but there are bonds between my father and your craftfather that reach back across the passing of many summers, so I have come where he could not.”
She paused, eyeing Kieran curiously. “Tell me, does your craftfather still pursue his foe, the thing of shadows that the manitou have named Mal’ek’a?” At Kieran’s nod, she sighed. “Hunter and hunted. The one hunts and in turn is hunted. And in the end, will either survive? My father told me once that should either one of them succeed, the survivor would have nothing left to live for. They are bound to each other, like the caribou to the wolf. The wolf keeps the caribou strong, weeding out the weak stock, while the caribou sustains the wolf. But what happens when the balance is broken?”
“Tom only wants peace,” Kieran said.
“And his foe?” Ha’kan’ta asked. “The thing of shadows that he will not name? Who can say that it does not seek peace as well?”
“I can give it a name,” Kieran said. “Taliesin.”
“You don’t know that!” Sara protested.
Before Kieran could reply to Sara’s outburst, Ha’kan’ta shaped a ward against ill luck and took a step back. The wolves, startled at the sudden movement, arose bristling to flank her.
“Taliesin?” she said. “Toma’heng’ar seeks Taliesin Redhair’s death?”
“But only because Taliesin seeks his! Tom wants peace. Nothing more.”
“Then peace he has,” Ha’kan’ta said, “for Taliesin is long dead, Kieranfoy. The little mysteries still sing their laments for his passing. If you seek him, you must seek him in the Place of Dreaming Thunder, for he no longer walks the worlds we know. He is with my father now, for they were drum-brothers. As were your craftfather and mine. And by such reckoning, Toma’heng’ar and Taliesin were drum-brothers as well. Mother Bear will only bring bad medicine to your craftfather if he continues on this path.”
Kieran shook his head stubbornly. “Maybe his body’s buried somewhere, but a part of him still lives. A part of him’s out to get the old man.”
“Dead men do not hunt—save in the Place of Dreaming Thunder, young warrior, and what is done there is of no concern to the living. Believe me.”
“Then how do you explain. . . .” Kieran began, then he shook his head.
He’d already been through this argument with Sara. Why was it that everyone he met couldn’t understand what danger Taliesin was?
Standing beside him, Sara said nothing. She was still mulling over the fact that Taliesin was dead. It was something she’d never really stopped to think about before. This whole time-travel paradox was bewildering. It had been different when she was with him, knowing that she could reach out and touch him and he’d be real. Then she could talk about him being a long-dead legend and they could both laugh about it. But the fact was: he was dead. Just because through some magic she could reach back into time and be with him didn’t change the fact that in her own time he didn’t exist anymore. He was only so much dust, gone to this Place of Dreaming Thunder that Ha’kan’ta had spoken of.
She had the strongest urge to will herself back to him right now, but knew that the attempt would be doomed to failure. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t tried already. But she just couldn’t accept the fact of his death. Not when just yesterday she’d been with him. Been with him, listened to him play his harp, heard his voice, watched the way his red hair caught the sun and his green eyes sparkled with light. . . .
She blinked, surprised at the intensity of emotion that just thinking about him woke in her. To give her trembling hands something to do, she rolled a cigarette, lighting it with Kieran’s lighter that he’d left rolled up in her pouch. Ha’kan’ta regarded her strangely as she exhaled, blowing blue-grey smoke out into the late afternoon air, and for the moment Sara worried that the Indian had some taboo about smoking. Then she remembered the peace pipe in Aled Evans’s picture and what tobacco had been used for in the Native American culture.
She thought of offering Ha’kan’ta a drag, then realized that she wasn’t really sure what the sharing of smoke actually stood for among the woman’s people. To be safe, she took another quick drag, then pinched the cigarette out and stuffed it back into her pouch.
Ha’kan’ta looked from Sara back to Kieran.
“If one could return from the Place of Dreaming Thunder,” she said thoughtfully, “then indeed I could see some danger. But . . .” She shook her head. “I cannot teach you the Beardance, Kieranfoy—not until we have sought guidance on this matter. The quin’on’a have a lodge near by. I meant to take you there before you brought up these troubling thoughts, Kieranfoy. We will go there now and speak with the elders of their tribe. We will see what the quin’on’a say about Toma’heng’ar’s thing of shadows that they have named Mal’ek’a, and you named Taliesin Redhair.”
Sara and Kieran regarded each other with misgivings, though each had a different basis for worry. Kieran wondered at the wisdom of placing himself in their hands, if they were Taliesin’s friends, or had been, and held him now in some hallowed memory. On the other hand, they were Tom’s friends as well. He and Sara were also here on the sufferance of the quin’on’a in the first place. The quin’on’a held the power to send them back, keep them here, or do whatever they wanted to with them.
Sara, for her part, just wanted to get away from all this. She wanted to be back on the seashore where there were only good feelings and good company, where a red-haired harper—who made her feel funny inside whenever she thought of him now—was walking the beach, waiting for her. What was keeping her back? How come she’d been able to go before and couldn’t now?
“Do we have a choice?” she asked suddenly.
Ha’kan’ta looked surprised. “You are not my prisoners.”
“What about the quin’on’a?” Kieran asked.
“For them I cannot answer, Kieranfoy. But they are honorable. Do not be alarmed about your safety in their hands. They will not harm you. I will stand as your guarantor, if you will. We go only to ask their advice—not to make war.”
Maybe you do, Kieran thought, but nothing they say is going to change what I know is true.
He looked about the glade and saw only the forest that enclosed it. So where would he go if he didn’t follow Ha’kan’ta? Then he remembered that Sara’d gone off somewhere and met . . . who? All she’d t
ell him was “a friend.” He looked at her now but could read nothing in her face. Who’d given her the guitar and cloak?
He wondered as well what it was that set them so much at odds. And the way she defended the harper. Mother of God! What did she know about any of it? Except she had that ring and there was something about her, some secret assurance, that didn’t sit right. He had to wonder what her part was in all of this. Because, like Sara herself, he didn’t hold much with coincidence. She was here for a reason. But what was that reason, if it wasn’t simply to confound him?
“Come,” Ha’kan’ta said. “Their lodge is not far.”
Kieran still hesitated, but Sara’d decided she might as well see this through. Logically, she could return to Taliesin as easily from the quin’on’a lodge as from here—just saying that whatever was blocking her eased up. Besides, she’d always wanted to meet an elf. “Let’s go,” she said.
Now it was two to one, Kieran thought. He touched the bandage on his side. He hadn’t had to look at the wound, but from the way it felt he wouldn’t be surprised if it hadn’t healed already. So. The quin’on’a had taken the time to patch him up. Surely they wouldn’t let that effort go to waste? How can so much hang on so little? he asked himself as he nodded to Ha’kan’ta.
“Lead on,” he said.
The lodge of the quin’on’a was an hour’s trek from the glade. The land began to rise and the stands of larch and pine gave way to thickets of sugar maple, balsam fir and beech. Higher still were stands of hardwood—red oak, aspens and white birch—mixed with groves of hemlock and jack pines. Ha’kan’ta’s mount left them when they reached the steeper slopes, drifting off through the trees like some huge brown specter. The wolves remained, one on either flank, silver fur stark against the tree-covered slopes.
Topping a last ridge, they looked down into a long narrow valley with a small lake at the end nearest to them. Here the forest gave way to meadows on their left. On the right, black ash and cedar met the marshy shores of the lake. Between the two, on a small rise overlooking a series of stone seams that led down to the water, was the village of the quin’on’a.
In its midst was a rectangular barrel-roofed lodge, the longhouse that served as the chieftain’s quarters and a place for community gatherings in winter. It was some fifty feet long, eighteen feet in width and sixteen feet high. The entire frame was covered with bark, perforated and lashed together in overlapping layers like shingles. In front of it was a tall totem pole, topped by the carving of a bear’s head. Spread out like wings on either side of the lodge were a number of conical tipi covered with hide and bark.
“The lake’s name is Pinta’wa,” Ha’kan’ta said. “Still-Water.”
“I feel like I’m in a remake of The Last of the Mohicans,” Sara said. When Ha’kan’ta regarded her quizzically, she shrugged, adding: “Don’t mind me. I always loved playing cowboys and Indians when I was a kid.”
“The elders await us,” Ha’kan’ta said. “We should not keep them waiting.”
The wolves remained behind as the three of them began their descent to the lodge. Approaching the village, both Sara and Kieran were surprised by the activities of the quin’on’a. Two were mending a tipi. Others were curing meat over red coals. Women were weaving on looms made of bound branches and one man was sewing a beadwork collar onto a buckskin tunic. Shouldn’t they be doing elvish things, Sara thought, like getting ready for dances in mushroom rings?
But if their activities were mundane, their appearance, barring the Indian garb, was more what Sara had imagined. In height they were no more than a slender and delicate five feet, yet there was strength apparent in them. Their faces were sharply featured and high-browed, and many of them had small horns on their foreheads. Their hair was braided for the most part, jet black and hung with feathers and beads.
As they entered the village, the quin’on’a regarded them with dark brown eyes, but said nothing. Sara noticed that many of them carried small drums that hung from braided leather straps at their waists or over their shoulders. She remembered the sound of those drums and the sense of dislocation that had followed their playing. One moment she’d been in Patty’s Place, the next waking up here . . . wherever here was. The Otherworld. She wondered if they called it the Otherworld as well? Before she could ask Ha’kan’ta, they reached the front of the lodge. The totem pole towered above them and a quin’on’a woman, older than all the others, stood waiting for them.
“Sins’amin,” Ha’kan’ta said respectfully. “I give you greeting.” To her companions she explained, “This is She-Who-Dreams-Waking, the Beardaughter of this tribe.”
Sins’amin’s braided hair was heavy with grey and her dark skin was stretched taut across her facial bones. The bead work on her collar was shaped into a design that mimicked a strand of bear’s claws. Though she stood a head shorter than Ha’kan’ta, she gave the impression of being the taller of the two.
“The word you have sent is troubling,” Sins’amin said.
Ha’kan’ta inclined her head. “For that reason we have come to you for true-speech, old mother. I bring you Kieranfoy, craftson of Toma’heng’ar, and his companion Saraken, who your people brought from the World Beyond at the request of the young warrior’s master.”
“So we did,” Sins’amin said. “Yet had we known . . .” She shook her head. “We will speak of this inside—in full council.” She stepped aside and motioned them into the longhouse.
“You guys go ahead,” Sara said then. “I think I’ll go and sit down by the lake until you’re done.”
Kieran shot her a dirty look. “What do you mean, ‘Until we’re done’? You’re just as involved as I am.”
“Hey,” Sara said. “Wait a minute. I didn’t ask to come here.”
“And you think I did?”
“You’re the one who’s got it in for harpers, Kieran. Not me.”
“Lord lifting Jesus! I—”
“She speaks true,” Ha’kan’ta said, breaking in. “This council is your concern. Not hers.”
“But—”
“The elders are waiting, Kieranfoy.”
Kieran clenched his fists at his sides. He looked from Sara to Ha’kan’ta to the old quin’on’a Beardaughter who stood silently waiting by the entrance of the longhouse. On his face was the look of one betrayed, but Sara ignored it. The lines are being drawn, she reminded herself. Correction: Have been drawn.
“You don’t understand, Sara,” he said, trying one last time. “If you only knew—”
“I understand enough to know that I can’t stand by while you hurt someone that I . . .” She paused, leaving unsaid: someone that I care for.
“What do you know about Taliesin?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” she said, knowing it was as much truth as lie, and looked away.
“Sara,” Kieran began. He reached out a hand to her, then let it fall to his side as she stepped away from him. “Nom de tout,” he muttered.
He followed Ha’kan’ta into the lodge. Sins’amin let them pass her, then pulled a flap of deerskin across the doorway, leaving Sara standing on her own outside.
She stood for a moment, looking around the village. The quin’on’a had all returned to their various activities and were ignoring her. Smiling uncertainly, she made her way past the lodge and down to the shore of the lake. There, under the shade of a broad-boughed tamarack, she made herself comfortable and stared across the water. She saw a blue heron wing above the marshes on the far side of the lake, heard the hubbub of nesting redwings and swamp sparrows, above them the clear notes of olive-sided flycatchers.
Despite the peaceful scene laid out before her, she sighed, her thoughts circling back to Kieran. If only there was some way she could get through to him. Maybe if he met Taliesin, he could see for himself. . . . But no. There was too much danger in that. What if he tried to kill the harper? Which he probably would do. God, things could get complicated. What would she do if he convinced the council
that Taliesin was a threat and they decided to help him out?
“There is little chance of that,” a voice said from behind her, “yet still it would be a good thing to be cautious with that one.”
Sara whirled around to face a curious individual who was squatting on his heels not three feet from her. At first glance he looked like a quin’on’a child, but a closer inspection proved that, though he might be another of these Indian elves, he was an altogether different sort from the ones she’d seen so far.
Standing, he’d come up to the middle of her chest, and where the quin’on’a’s faces were long and finely boned, this fellow had a broad face that seemed all grin and eyes. His hair was more brown than black, and hung not in braids, but in many thin ringlets like the dreadlocks of reggae singers. As she regarded him, she wondered if she’d been thinking aloud. No sooner had that thought come to her, than her unbidden companion shook his head vigorously.
“Oh, no,” he said. “But I hear you all the same.”
Then that must mean . . . she started to think, and again he nodded.
“Get out of my head!” she cried.
“Can’t help it,” he said mournfully. “You think too loud. It’s not my fault that you think so loud. Why can’t you keep your thoughts to yourself instead of throwing them at people, hey? And then you get mad.”
Sara just looked at him for a long moment. Every time she thought she was adjusting somewhat, something new had to come along.
“I’m not new,” the little man said. “I’m as old as . . . as the land itself.”
Sara sighed. “I don’t know how to keep my thoughts to myself,” she said.
“You should get Redhair to teach you how,” he replied. “It’s not hard.”
Redhair? Remembering what Ha’kan’ta had said, Sara realized the little man meant Taliesin.
“How do you know about him?” she asked.
“We all knew him.”
“Well, how did you know that I knew him?”