Do you hear me? He said to them in thought. The images faded, seemed to meld for a moment, then separate. “You understand me?” he asked in Pela’s tongue. She turned, looked at him, and realized that he was not talking to her. “Hal tafhamunii?” he asked the images in Arabic.
Pela looked to where Gordon was speaking. “Do you see them?” he asked her.
“No,” she whispered. “What God’n see?”
Right then it was nothing. The images had faded away. He shook his head in answer to her question. “My eyes play tricks,” he said as he gently tapped the right side of his head. “Head hurt make me see things.”
“See Pela work, God’n,” she said.
Pela was working on a white bear skin she had taken from a substantial pack of pelts she kept at one end of the lean-to. With a sharpened bone punch, a bone needle, some kind of vegetable fabric for thread, braided leather cords, a bone hair pick, and her flint knife, she was creating a beautiful white fur coat. “Killing coat,” she said. “White for winter hunter.” She glanced knowingly at him. “Look like bear, look like snow, stay still, bear no see you.” She cocked her head slightly in the direction of the fire’s far side.
He nodded at the woman’s wisdom and set his gaze to searching among the shadows beyond the fire. Winter camo training. If you and your weapon are white, and if you lie flat and motionless, you look like snow. If you stand and move, you look like Frosty the snowman. If you are made of light waves and can only be seen when you move, don’t move if you don’t want to be seen. Gordon removed his covers, stood, and asked Pela to tell him about the coat she was making. While she talked he walked around the fire and searched among the trees and shrubs.
The coat had been commissioned by a hunter of the eastern Many Horses Clan named Afeht, three days ride, Pela told him. Afeht paid Pela in advance for the coat with a healthy packhorse four winters old. “Too cold for horse sitting toahmecu,” she said, waving a hand at the night. “Horse with Bonsha. Bonsha sister of dead husband. Bonsha feed horse while Pela sit toahmecu.”
Gordon continued searching and asked. “What is toahmecu? Why Pela on hill?”
She was silent for a long moment, then Pela explained as she worked. She had been married before to Iveleh the pointmaker. Iveleh had been collecting flint nodules three summers before at Tall Bird Cliffs deep in Yellow Claw Country to the south and had been killed in a landslide. Pela had given Iveleh no children and she was now an old woman as her people reckoned such things: twenty and eight summers. She made winter outerwear, had a thriving trade, owned a bit of property, and could cook and keep house. However she wasn’t a terrific prospect for marriage, she insisted Gordon understand. No possibility of sons. “Too old, so they say.”
She nodded her head toward the shadows and Gordon shook his head and returned to the lean-to.
“Pela,” she continued, “trap animals, stretch and cure pelts, make caps and coats and snowsuits, and die alone. Pela not like alone and go to village naticha, Tonton Annajaka.”
A naticha appeared to be something like a shaman or witch doctor. Very wise woman. The naticha prescribed god-waiting, or toahmecu. Pela did just like Tonton said. She needed to pray to Tana to bring her a man and go to a place where her prayers could be fulfilled, if the god so chose. Such prayers and waiting required a tall hill. Her cousin, Shayvi Woodman, owned this hill, and it was the tallest hill south of the Avina. It also faced the red cliff on the opposite side of the river. On the other side of the south cedars the hill had a view of Black Mountain. Powerful spiritual place. “Crops on Shayvi’s Hill almost as good as water bank crops,” she claimed.
“What is power of the red cliff?” Gordon asked, putting aside the light distortion entities for the moment.
“Up high on red cliff ledge, God’n, where men go, meet, perform rites, talk with Wuja, white bear god of men, fatherhood, and hunting. Higher on cliff, next ledge, girls welcomed as women, perform rites, talk with Tana.” Pela pointed toward the north. “High, high on top of cliff Tonton Annajaka speak with Itahnika—” She pointed at her own eyes, “—seeing spirit. Naticha see from Itahnika there what Pela must do.”
So, on Shayvi’s Hill Pela set her fire, built a lean-to, spread her spices, and prayed for Tana to pull down from the night skies what Pela could not seem to obtain for herself from the land. Pela then god-waited. She had been camped there for thirty-one days and nights filling in the idle times between praying and caring for herself by filling a few garment orders.
Then from a blinding blue flash of lightning entered Gordon Redcliff and his mortally wounded brothers in their crumbling turquoise flying boat. Pela was distressed that Tana’s gift had come at such a terrible price, the deaths of Mehmet and Taleghani. In her singing that first night with Gordon she had asked Tana for Gordon to forgive her the deaths of Gordon’s brothers. Mimmit was all dead when she pulled him from the falling-apart boat. Tallygan was still some left alive a little.
“Taleghani, Pela, before dying, he see you?” Gordon asked her, pointing at his own eyes.
She nodded. “Tallygan see Pela.” She thought for a while. “Tallygan say Pela,” and she continued in heavily accented Arabic, “very—very beautiful.”
Gordon told her then what the words meant. He assured her that Ibrahim Taleghani had died a happy man just to have seen and heard her, to have felt her touch. He also told her that the death of his two companions had not been of her doing.
She frowned and after a long silence she looked at Gordon. “You man thinking for Pela, God’n? Gift from Tana? You no say.”
Hard to argue with a goddess, thought Gordon, particularly one who delivers the goods with such spectacular production values. He wasn’t sure though what she meant by “man thinking for Pela.”
“Pela, was Iveleh man thinking for you?”
She nodded and held up her left hand with all fingers spread. “Five moons Iveleh wander between choices, then he think for Pela.”
“Gordon no understand thinking for Pela.”
Pela screwed her face up in an expression of attempting to solve a difficult problem. At last she smiled and nodded. “God’n hunt?” she asked.
He nodded, his gaze fixed on the fire. “I hunt.”
“Before God’n throw spear, he need to close with prey. Get close, no?”
He nodded. She could have instructed snipers at Benning.
“Before stalk, God’n look at all animals, then choose one for kill. After God’n choose, he think for prey before throwing spear.”
Stalking. Thinking for was getting inside the prey’s head, knowing enough about the quarry to tell what it was thinking. Was this one worth the hunt? Was Pela talking about engagement? Or was it a stage in which a prospective mate thinks about it, considers it, gets inside the quarry’s head. An engagement to be engaged? “Pela thinking for Gordon?” he asked.
“Yes.” She placed a hand on her breast. “God’n thinking for Pela?”
He glanced down at the fire and said, “I know not.”
“Ask Wuja,” she urged. “Ask shadow-tail dog.”
“Coyote,” he reminded her.
She leveled her gaze at him. “Ask Coyote. Pela must know. When God’n know he thinking for Pela, Pela must know.” She went back to her sewing, her look of concentration designed to conceal her feelings.