“I was sent here to die, too, here where the snows live,
The waters live, the animals and trees live.
And you And now I live.”
The last words came out before she realized she had added them to the song.
Then Lonciana and Pablo made their way to her and took her hands, holding them to their cheeks, their tears moistening the backs of her fingers. Each of the Ondelacy children, smiling shyly with their misty eyes, touched her hands. too.
Other voices lifted in appreciation of her song and she was able to get down off the stool without any help.
Bunny led Diego to the stool. There was a purpose in the young man’s eye now, Yana noticed, that hadn’t been there before. He was growing into his true manhood, and what had happened at McGee’s Pass had tempered him.
“This is Diego Metaxos, who was with me at McGee’s Pass and risked his life to save me,” Bunny said, giving Diego’s hand a squeeze before she released it. “He has a song that all must hear.”
Diego tipped his head back, closed his eyes to slits, and rested his hands on his thighs with his feet hooked on the lower stretcher of the stool.
“Deep is the place of communion
Where mist and ice and stone are warm
With what is more than friendship,
More than father or mother love,
With nurturing and understanding.
We all treasure this place of communion.
It is our place, our place, our place.”
His voice, now firmly baritone, raised to the top of his range and intensified as he repeated the phrase. Then his tone altered to that of a story teller who is forced to relate truths that disturb him.
“There are others who do not believe that our place
Is ours and has been since men and women came here.
They were once of us, and knew of communion.
They left and in their years of leaving learned
Much of evil and selfishness and unsharing, uncaring, un—
kind, self-seeking, self-helping self-first and always.
Having knowledge of things that bind and score and cover
They have returned to make evil what was good”
Again his voice changed, colored with a bitterness that made Yana twitch uneasily, a bitterness that roused all his listeners.
“Why steal what is ours for no purpose but to keep it for
only one?
Why deprive the many of communion and hope and peace
in times of worry?
Why bury truth?
Why bury our planet alive!”
Gasps of horror greeted that phrase, but Diego did not falter.
“For it has been buried alive, screaming unheard
At McGee’s Pass.
The stone smothered,
The roots strangled,
The soil smothered
White death like
Your snow-skin
From one like
But unlike
A son.
What son wishes death to his father?
What son demands honor unearned?
Women raped and villages frightened
And deprived of their place of communion
And the gentle mists that heal,
The gentle touch that soothes,
The spirit that nurtures us. All of us!”
Diego’s song roused the indignation of every listener that evening. Bunny was so proud of his song and his singing she almost vibrated. Then, when he had rested from the exertions of his singing, both young people related what had happened at McGee’s Pass, and described Satok’s treachery.
Well and truly blurred, Yana was still quite conscious of some of the discussion that went on late into the night, to the accompaniment of guitar, fiddle, flute, tambourine, maracas, and castanets. But she, Loncie, and Johnnypossibly Bunny, too, at one pointhad decided that the most important thing they could now do was rescue La Pobrecita from Shepherd Howling.
From Lonciana’s description, the man was worse than Satok, but only marginally, if he insisted on marrying a prepubescent child when he already had four or five wives. Yana had been well drilled in leaving alone the customs and mores of indigenous populations, but she was not indigenous, and the whole concept of forced wife-hood was abhorrent. That night they pieced together what La Pobrecita had said and came up with a fair idea of where the Vale of Tears might be, judging from where she had been found, how long she said she’d been traveling, and from what direction. By Johnny’s reckoning, the place should be a valley set in the Sierra Padres somewhere near the head of the Lacrimas River. Given decent weather, they should have no problem flying right to the place. And if they met Luzon, at least two of them could give chase on the snocub, a two-person snocle that Johnny had fit handily in the cargo net.