“That is because you are a scout,” said Atsula, the priestess. “When you die, you shall fall into the sky and become a star, to guide us as you guide us in life.”
“There are cliffs of ice to the east, high cliffs,” said Kalanu, her raven-black hair worn long, as a man would wear it. “We can climb them, but it will take many days.”
“You shall lead us safely,” said Atsula. “I shall die at the foot of the cliff, and that shall be the sacrifice that takes you into the new lands.”
To the west of them, back in the lands from which they had come, where the sun had set hours before, there was a flash of sickly yellow light, brighter than lightning, brighter than daylight: a burst of pure brilliance that forced the folk on the land bridge to cover their eyes and spit and exclaim. Children began to wail.
“That is the doom that Nunyunnini warned us of,” said Gugwei the old. “Surely he is a wise god and a mighty one.”
“He is the best of all gods,” said Kalanu. “In our new land we shall raise him up on high, and we shall polish his tusks and skull with fish oil and animal fat, and we shall tell our children, and our children’s children, and our seventh children’s children, that Nunyunnini is the mightiest of all gods, and shall never be forgotten.”
“Gods are great,” said Atsula, slowly, as if she were comprehending a great secret. “But the heart is greater. For it is from our hearts they come, and to our hearts they shall return…”
And there is no telling how long she might have continued in this blasphemy, had it not been interrupted in a manner that brooked no argument.
The roar that erupted from the west was so loud that ears bled, that they could hear nothing for some time, temporarily blinded and deafened but alive, knowing that they were luckier than the tribes to the west of them.
“It is good,” said Atsula, but she could not hear the words inside her head.
Atsula died at the foot of the cliffs when the spring sun was at its zenith. She did not live to see the New World, and the tribe walked into those lands with no holy woman.
They scaled the cliffs, and they went south and west, until they found a valley with fresh water, and rivers that teemed with silver fish, and deer that had never seen man before, and were so tame it was necessary to spit and to apologize to their spirits before killing them.
Dalani gave birth to three boys, and some said that Kalanu had performed the final magic and could do the man-thing with her bride; while others said that old Gugwei was not too old to keep a young bride company when her husband was away; and certainly once Gugwei died, Dalani had no more children.
And the ice times came and the ice times went, and the people spread out across the land, and formed new tribes and chose new totems for themselves: ravens and foxes and ground sloths and great cats and buffalo, each a taboo beast that marked a tribe’s identity, each beast a god.
The mammoths of the new lands were bigger, and slower, and more foolish than the mammoths of the Siberian plains, and the pungh mushrooms, with their seven spots, were not to be found in the new lands, and Nunyunnini did not speak to the tribe any longer.
And in the days of the grandchildren of Dalani and Kalanu’s grandchildren, a band of warriors, members of a big and prosperous tribe, returning from a slaving expedition in the north to their home in the south, found the valley of the First People: they killed most of the men, and they took the women and many of the children captive.
One of the children, hoping for clemency, took them to a cave in the hills, in which they found a mammoth-skull, the tattered remnants of a mammoth-skin cloak, a wooden cup, and the preserved head of Atsula the oracle.
While some of the warriors of the new tribe were for taking the sacred objects away with them, stealing the gods of the First People and owning their power, others counseled against it, saying that they would bring nothing but ill luck, and the malice of their own god (for these were the people of a raven tribe, and ravens are jealous gods).
So they threw the objects down the side of the hill, into a deep ravine, and took the survivors of the First People with them on their long journey south. And the raven tribes, and the fox tribes, grew more powerful in the land, and soon Nunyunnini was entirely forgot.
PART THREE
The Moment of the Storm
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
People are in the dark, they don’t know what to do
I had a little lantern, oh but it got blown out too.
I’m reaching out my hand. I hope you are too.
I just want to be in the dark with you.
—GREG BROWN, “IN THE DARK WITH YOU”
They changed cars at five in the morning, in Minneapolis, in the airport’s long-term parking lot. They drove to the top floor, where the parking building was open to the sky.
Shadow took the orange uniform and the handcuffs and leg hobbles, put them in the brown paper bag that had briefly held his possessions, folded the whole thing up and dropped it into a parking lot garbage can. They had been waiting for ten minutes when a barrel-chested young man came out of an airport door and walked over to them. He was eating a packet of Burger King french fries. Shadow recognized him immediately: he had sat in the back of the car when they had left the House on the Rock, and hummed so deeply the car had vibrated. He now sported a white-streaked winter beard he had not had when they had met at the House on the Rock. It made him look older.
The man wiped the grease from his hands onto his sweater, extended one huge hand to Shadow. “I heard of the all-father’s death,” he said. “They will pay, and they will pay dearly.”
“Wednesday was your father?” asked Shadow.
“He was the all-father,” said the man. His deep voice caught in his throat. “You tell them, tell them all, that when we are needed my people will be there.”
Czernobog picked at a flake of tobacco between his teeth and spat it out onto the frozen slush. “And how many of you is that? Ten? Twenty?”
The barrel-chested man’s beard bristled. “And aren’t ten of us worth a hundred of them? Who would stand against even one of my folk, in a battle? But there are more of us than that, at the edges of the cities. There are a few in the mountains. Some in the Catskills, a few living in the carny towns in Florida. They keep their axes sharp. They will come if I call them.”
“You do that, Elvis,” said Mr. Nancy. Shadow thought he said Elvis, anyway, but he couldn’t be sure. Nancy had exchanged the deputy’s uniform for a thick brown cardigan, corduroy trousers, and brown loafers. “You call them. It’s what the old bastard would have wanted.”
“They betrayed him. They killed him. I laughed at Wednesday, but I was wrong. None of us are safe any longer,” said the man who might have been named Elvis. “But you can rely on us.” He gently patted Shadow on the back and almost sent him sprawling. It was like being gently patted on the back by a wrecking ball.
Czernobog had been looking around the parking lot. Now he said, “You will pardon me asking, but our new vehicle is which?”
The barrel-chested man pointed. “There she is,” he said.
Czernobog snorted. “That?”
It was a 1970 VW bus. There was a rainbow decal in the rear window.