Call Down the Stars Read Online Free PDF Page B

inflict. At least he could throw himself into the sea and have it done quickly.
    Or better yet, he would wait until morning, rest a little, then turn his boat toward the next village, warn them that the Bear-god warriors were coming. They might see him as a hero and, if they were successful in fending off the attack, would welcome him in their village. Surely they would want him as one of their wise elders. Perhaps he would even find himself a wife and get himself sons in his old age. Hadn’t his own grandfather once put a son into the belly of a young wife?
    Water Gourd lay back in the boat, retrieved the woven rush shirt that the builder had left in the stern, and pulled it on over his head. He tried to sleep, but the dreams returned, and he blinked himself awake, sat up.
    The moon had risen, lending light, bouncing it from wave to wave. The wind cut across the water, not strong, but cold enough to raise the flesh on Water Gourd’s arms. His eyes fell on the bundle of supplies in the bow, and he remembered that it was covered with deerskin blankets. He crept forward, but suddenly the top blanket began to move, raising itself as though it were alive.
    Water Gourd had once seen a deer that had been chased into a river, and he had not forgotten how hard it struggled to get back to the sure footing of land. Perhaps this blanket, too, wanted to find its way to shore. He thought for a moment of plucking it up and dropping it into the waves, but he was cold. How foolish to throw away a blanket just because it had a little life of the deer still in it! Better to wrap it around himself, subdue whatever weak power it claimed by sitting on it.
    He clutched the blanket in one hand, and with a quick jerk flipped it up and swaddled it around his legs.
    The blanket settled around him, warm and still. Water Gourd nodded his approval. Even an old man had more power than a deerskin blanket. But suddenly the boat again started to wail, more loudly this time, so that Water Gourd lost his temper.
    “You want to go back and be captured by the Bear-god men?” he shouted. “They know nothing about boats. They wouldn’t take care of you. They would let you rot.”
    The wails continued, louder now—surely not the sound a tree-boat would make. Then Water Gourd’s old ears remembered the cries of his sons when they were babies. He leaned forward, groped under the other deerskin blanket until his hands came upon flesh—warm and soft and round. A child!
    He felt until he found the head. The boy was well-haired, his mouth filled with small, hard teeth. Water Gourd pushed his hands under the baby’s shoulders, lifted, prodded, and pulled until he managed to get it to his lap. Two years, perhaps three, he thought, for the number of teeth in the child’s head. The baby rooted and thrust against Water Gourd’s chest.
    “I am not a woman,” Water Gourd said. “I have no milk.”
    The child’s cries grew more frantic. Water Gourd twisted one corner of the blanket and thrust it into the boy’s mouth. He began to suck, and his wailing stopped. Water Gourd patted the baby’s back, mumbling his consternation. The boy’s mother must have hidden him in the boat when the Bear-god People attacked. The baby jerked the blanket from his mouth and began to fuss again.
    Water Gourd sighed and pulled the plug from one of his gourds, took a swallow of water. He sucked out another mouthful, then lowered his head to the baby’s head, pressed his lips to the baby’s lips and released a stream of water. The child choked at first, but then he drank, and Water Gourd chuckled to himself at his own cunning. After several mouthfuls, the baby seemed content, and Water Gourd leaned forward, opened the pack of supplies that had lain under the boy in the bottom of the boat.
    There was a heavy pot, the kind women store food in, also a few of the small soft skins mothers use to pad their babies’ bottoms. A woman’s knife and three full bottle gourds. A packet that