The Serpent Dreamer Read online

  BOOKS BY CECELIA HOLLAND

  The Serpent Dreamer

  The Witches’ Kitchen

  The Soul Thief

  The Angel and the Sword

  Lily Nevada

  An Ordinary Woman

  Railroad Schemes

  Valley of the Kings

  Jerusalem

  Pacific Street

  The Bear Flag

  The Lords of Vaumartin

  Pillar of the Sky

  The Belt of Gold

  The Sea Beggers

  Home Ground

  City of God

  Two Ravens

  Floating Worlds

  Great Maria

  The Death of Attila

  The Earl

  Antichrist

  Until the Sun Falls

  The Kings in Winter

  Rakossy

  The Firedrake

  FOR CHILDREN

  King’s Road

  Ghost in the Steppe

  For JACOB

  corban redux

  P R O L O G U E

  So they’re on the Turtle Island. For Mav, whose mad mind has no boundaries, time is just another place, and this place just another time in the seamless flow of what she knows is real. By the Christian calendar, which Corban has lost track of anyway, and which pertains an ocean away, it’s the year 993. To Miska, who knows nothing but his time and his place, it is the war season, summer. For his people, the Wolves, the men in their lodges, the women in their gardens, the medicine woman Epashti, and the child Ahanton, it is the time of Miska’s being sachem, which began ten summers ago when he drove the white men into the sea.

  All the white men but Corban Loosestrife, who is still here. Who is still trying to break his father’s curse to find some way to go home.

  C H A P T E R O N E

  Before he reached the gate into the village Corban could see that the men had come back. His steps slowed. The gate opened through the wall of upright stakes that enclosed the stand of lodges and huts against the riverbank; vines and brambles grew up all over the wall and almost hid the way in, but he could see the man dozing in the shadow. When the men were gone the women didn’t even bother putting someone to guard the gate but Miska always kept his sentries out.

  Corban shifted the squirrel carcasses from one hand to the other, thinking this over. During the winter there was some kind of truce between him and Miska, but the warm time was different. He could stay back in the forest, out of their way, let them ignore him, until they left again. Very likely they had brought meat back with them and nobody needed what he had. Nonetheless the idea rankled, letting Miska frighten him off, not even by doing anything but simply by being here, and Epashti liked squirrel meat, and he had not seen the boys in a while. He went on to the gate, slipping quietly past the guard, who had propped himself up in the cool of the shadows.

  As he went by, the guard opened his eyes, one of the lodge men, sharp-witted and glib-tongued. Corban didn’t know his name, and the Wolf watched Corban go by without speaking.

  Inside the gate Corban turned at once to the right side of the village, where Mother Eonta had her lodge. Across from Eonta’s doorway, against the wall, was a little hut, which had been deserted when Corban came, and which he had taken over in the first winter. As he went that way he looked quickly toward the big lodge just opposite, right by the gate, which was Miska’s. The doors were shut and nobody stood around there so he knew Miska was not there.

  The village was busy and loud. Looking toward the river, through the space between the women’s lodges, he could see people moving all around the big oak tree, where they danced and held their councils. As he went along he could hear the women inside Eonta’s lodge, their voices piercing through the bark walls, and the wailings and shoutings and shrieks of the children. When he reached his little hut, Epashti was there, sitting on the ground in front of the door, with the baby in her arms.

  Corban hung back a moment, his tongue locked; he had been out in the woods most of the spring and the new language had gotten hard again. It stirred him to see her there, with his child at her breast. Then she raised her eyes and smiled at him. He sat down beside her and laid the squirrels down between them, and made a sign that they were for her. For a long time, before he learned her language, they had spoken almost completely with their hands.

  She said, “So you are back, husband, and with good meat. I’m glad to see you.” She tipped her face forward, and he leaned toward her and pressed his cheek against hers, as her people did, and then turned his head and kissed her mouth. She laughed at that, surprised as always. The Wolves did not kiss much. He sat back, and put his hand on the baby’s head.

  “He’s bigger.” The baby was almost a year old, with a mass of black hair, a short straight nose, long arms and legs.

  “He’s a strong boy, like his father,” she said.

  “Let me hold him.” He reached in to take the baby, who was asleep. As he did, the back of his hand slid down against her breast, and his body tingled. “Where is Finn?”

  “With Kalu, I guess.” Kalu was her own son, got before she and Corban were together. She let him take the baby from her; she pulled the front of her dress over the full moon of her breast. Her face settled. She looked away, over his shoulder, toward the center of the village. “Miska is coming.”

  Corban could hear something going on, over in the center of the village. He kept his back to everything and looked down into the baby’s face, the tight little puckered mouth, the eyelids fine as shell. More than anything else his children here comforted him. “Did you name him?”

  “No one wants to name him that,” she said. She was still staring off toward the center of the village.

  “I want it,” Corban said. “Aengus. Aengus.” Behind him, in the village, he could hear people shouting another name. He turned around, the baby in his arms, to face Miska.

  The sachem was just coming up from the river, where he usually spent the mornings when he was in the village. As he walked, there stirred around him the steady ripple of interest that followed him everywhere. Everybody here knew every move that Miska made; whenever he was around they watched him constantly and minutely. He ignored this. The center of everyone’s eye, he went around almost naked, only a squirrel fur to protect his tender parts. His black hair hung down like a pelt over his shoulders. Today he had painted his face with black marks like a wolf’s mask. As he walked up through the village the voices of his people followed him, speaking his name fondly into the air, kissing sweet, strung with endearments. Corban glanced around at Epashti, standing just behind him, and she came up and took the baby from him.

  “Talla-Miska.”

  “Miska-Tonanda, sha-Miska-ma—”

  Thunder-Miska, mighty-Miska, big-stalk-Miska. The women all courted him, in the open and in the shadows. Epashti said, “Maybe you should go.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Corban said.

  From beneath the oak tree a crowd of the men called out, flirtatious as the women.

  “Haka-Miska—”

  Fighter-Miska. Killer-Miska.

  Miska acknowledged none of it, did not stop beneath the oak tree, but kept walking up through the village, coming straight toward Corban. Corban folded his arms over his chest and set himself. The scar along the side of his face gave an electric twinge into his jaw. In Eonta’s great lodge a few steps away the women were laughing and singing back and forth. He smelled the ashy smell of banked fires, the aroma of a toasted bean cake.

  Miska walked up past the curve of Eonta’s lodge, and the men from the oak tree followed in a crowd on his heels. Corban’s fists were clenched; he made himself open them. He knew if he ran or jumped first, he was done. Miska walked up to him so close
their chests touched. They stood face to face, Miska a few fingers taller; their eyes met. The other men gathered all around them. Corban held fast, thinking if they attacked him he would leap on Miska, tooth and claw. In the black pits of the sachem’s face he saw the will rising to strike, and thought he would die, but take Miska also, at least hurt him, and then Miska’s gaze flattened, and his eyelids drooped, as if he wanted to hide something.

  He waved his hand, and the other men went off, disappearing like smoke into the air. Miska moved a little, turning aside, and said, “Come with me, rodent.”

  “Call me by my name and I will,” Corban said.

  Miska shifted his weight, looking at him over his shoulder. Corban watched him steadily, his back set, and his fists clenched again. Miska sniffed at him down his nose.

  “Come, then, Corban. Rodent. Come.” He moved off, toward the big lodge, by the gate.

  Epashti came up beside Corban, the baby slung against her shoulder. “What are you doing? You’re not going there with him.”

  “He wants something,” Corban said. “I’ll be back.”

  “Ah,” she said. “You are not a Wolf.”

  He laughed. He patted her cheek and went away off toward the sachem’s lodge, on the far side of the gate.

  Miska kept this one house all to himself, although it was one of the biggest longhouses in the village, because no one could go in or out of the village without his knowledge. In the short side that faced toward the gate were two doors, one tall enough that Miska could walk through without stooping; and one much shorter, that made everybody else crouch down. Corban went in through the short door. When he straightened on the other side the sachem was already standing at the far end of the long dim room, taking something down from the wall.

  Corban stood looking around. The long elm-bark walls were laid in sheets over rows of saplings, which bent together overhead to form the roof, and under this expanded arch the space went dimly away from him like a cave. Unlike most longhouses, this one had no sleeping apartments along the sides, no line of hearths down the middle. The floor was pounded flat and swept clean, and there was only one apartment, at the far end, and only one hearth, banked and smokeless. The house was far larger than Corban’s but empty and quiet. It smelled like no other longhouse he had ever been in, cold, and still, and bitter.

  The walls leaked, and the air moved. From the arched ceiling, in rows and rows, there hung thin banners of white and purple beads, cut and smoothed out of clam shells and strung together in complicated patterns, and they shifted and stirred in the drafts with a sound like whispering. Corban knew these were the pledges of other villages, begging Miska for his protection and promising him certain gifts every year. They reminded him of a Viking fahrman’s tally sticks. Every year these banners of beads increased, and every year more gifts streamed in through the gate.

  Yet this house was empty. Miska kept nothing that came to him, but gave it all away to his people; Epashti had told Corban that often in the evening the people saw their sachem going to one longhouse or another and begging food from hearth to hearth. He kept this huge bare longhouse to himself, he required that they obey him instantly, he allowed no word of argument from anybody, but in return he gave them everything. Corban took his eyes from the Miska’s house, and looked toward Miska himself, who was turning toward him, a pipe in one hand, and a little pouch in the other.

  Miska said, “You should come to hunt with me, rodent.” He had seen Corban staring at the bead tallies. He gestured toward his banked hearth with the pipe. “Go bring me a coal.”

  Corban instead untied the corner of his cloak, and took out his tinderbox. Miska grunted. They sat down by the banked hearth, and Corban made fire in the tinderbox and then lit the pipe. Miska’s eyes followed his hands with the tool.

  “Maybe,” Corban said, putting the tinderbox back in his cloak, “you should hunt with me, Miska.”

  The sachem grimaced. “What you hunt I have no taste for.”

  He took a long pull on the pipe. Corban wondered what this peace between them was made of, considered what they had in common, and guessed. Miska held the pipe out to him and he inhaled. The sharp, flavorful herbsmoke made his head whirl.

  Miska had the pouch still in his hand, and now he shook something out of it. “What is this?”

  Surprised, Corban took the thing, small and cool and smooth in his palm. Even inside, in the shadows, the metal gave off a smooth evil glamor. He turned it over in his fingers, studying the detail. “It’s a bauble, see, to hang from a cord around someone’s neck.” He rubbed his finger over the loop on the top of the thing. The image was fine and subtle, and very strange. Tiny rings hung from the ears and the hair was all gathered up on top like a tree. “It must be a man’s head, but I’ve never seen anybody with a head like that. It’s made out of gold.”

  He knew no word for that in the Wolf-tongue, and so said it in dansker. Then, from a deeper well, he found the word in Irish.

  Miska frowned at him, his eyes sharp. He took the little gold head back and studied it again, sniffed it, put his teeth to it.

  “Where did you get it?” Corban said.

  Miska folded his hand over the little gold head. “Someone brought it to me. From the west.” He looked away across the house. His voice went flat and even. “You have not seen a man with a head like that—that big nose, and the eyes like that. But I have. Long ago, it was, and I was a child, but I remember them, and what they did.” He jerked his gaze around toward Corban. “I want to see—” His breath ran out. He licked his lips. His voice fell to a reverent hush. “Her.”

  Corban shrugged. This was what he had guessed in the first place. “Go into the forest and wait, that’s all I do.”

  “She will not come to me.” Miska beat his fists once on his thighs. His cheeks sucked hollow; Corban saw how it ate at him that he needed Corban for this, that he could not summon her himself—that the one woman he loved paid no heed to him. His eyes lowered. After a moment, he said, “She comes to you.”

  “She’s my sister,” Corban said. “We shared the womb.” He said the Wolf-word for twins, which was a curse.

  Miska looked at him through the corner of his eye. This was old to him. “We kill such babies.”

  “I know. My people don’t.” Corban bared his teeth, amused, enjoying having this edge on him. “I will take you. We should take Ahanton also.”

  “No. She would be frightened.”

  “Ahanton is afraid of nothing,” Corban said. “She should see her mother. We’ll go in the evening, before the moon rises.” He got to his feet, looking down at Miska sitting on the floor, his head bowed, his hair across his face. “Until then, Tonanda-Miska.” He went out of the lodge.

  When he crept out of the lodge again into the sunlight the women were going off toward their fields. They went in streams, in their lineages, singing, their tools on their shoulders and their babies slung on their backs. As they went they called to one another. Mother Eonta’s family was dancing by him now, tall women who laughed and bounced their breasts at him, and shouted insults across the way to their main rivals, the women of Mother Anapatha’s lodge, just now coming up from the river.

  “Late—late—late again—” Eonta’s daughters and granddaughters picked up the chant, voice on voice, and boomed on the ground with their feet, going out the gate.

  From Anapatha’s daughters and granddaughters the answering chant, fainter, a little breathless: “Make hurry—Make trouble—Hurry, hurry, come to trouble—”

  His house was empty, Epashti gone with the baby and the little boy Finn off to her garden. Kalu, her older son, disdained garden work and with the men here would trail after them. Corban had given Epashti no girls to help her, only Ahanton, who was a daughter to neither of them.

  He went down through the village, past the dancing ground, powdery soft, and the fire pit still smoking off the last heat of a celebration from the night before. He was glad he had not been here. He thought he could sti
ll smell the stink of burnt flesh and drying blood. Under the overhanging boughs of the big oak tree there was the stake, a pole driven into the ground, old broken cords hanging from it like shreds of bark. He kept his eyes away from it. What happened there made him sick but he could do nothing to stop it, which made him worse than sick, empty-hearted, mind-dulled.

  Even Epashti did this. He wiped his hand over his mouth, struggling not to think of it. He went on down toward the riverbank, watching out for the men, and looking for Ahanton.

  Most of the time the men of the village were elsewhere, hunting in the great western bison grounds or the closer deer meadows to the east, fishing in the camps upstream and on the narrow lakes in the north, or following Miska in one of his endless sweeps of the country. Now they were all gathered along the riverbank, enjoying the sun, more than twenty of them. He stayed well wide of them, cutting around the far side of Mother Anapatha’s longhouse to do so.

  The men clustered together in knots, painting themselves, picking through each other’s hair, telling stories, eating and gambling. They kept up a steady rumble of talk. They said the women were the talkers but they jabbered just as much. They ignored Corban as he ignored them. Between him and all of them was nothing as sure even as a feud, a lot of blows and anger, cold now, hot again in a moment, at a look from Miska.

  Corban went along the river to where it met the wall, and climbed around the end of the wall into the open. The people inside pitched their garbage over the wall here, and the ground just outside smelled bad, a litter of rotten mats and broken pots, nutshells and bean pods, and just beyond, the ditch where the women came out from the village to shit. He circled wide as he could around this place, out along the riverbank.

  Beyond the edge of the village, the forest began, and the bank of the river rose up high over the water, held fast in the roots of a line of old trees. The air was still cold here, the boles of the trees hairy with moss, the sky far off above the green crowns. He went along the rank of the old oaks, walking on the ridges of exposed roots, to a place where a tree had fallen, and let in the sunlight down to the water’s edge.