Free Great Sky Woman by Steven Barnes Page B

shadows.
    Shadows. Men. Shadow-images of men. What were they? Fire was alive, he knew. It ate, it breathed, it died if drowned or neglected. It roared with anger through the brush, it drove game and was given a portion of the food in reward.
    But what were shadows? They might be the soul-force, some form of
num…
he wasn’t certain, and had never heard a story that really helped him understand. But when he stared at them, he thought of sacred drawings on Great Earth’s rocks and trees and wanted to make such images himself.
    Frog shook himself from his reverie. The two visiting hunters had retired for the evening, and Uncle Snake had stopped dancing. His muscular torso gleamed in the firelight. “Men are weaker than beasts,” he said, panting. “But we have fire! And we have spears! And by the shadow of Great Sky, we choose what will live—” His right hand opened. Within it lodged a black pebble. The boys groaned in appreciation. “And what will die!” He opened his left, revealing a white pebble.
    “My father is a great magician!” Scorpion whispered to Frog. Frog said nothing, irritated that Scorpion would say “my” instead of “our.”
    Even distracted by thought, it seemed he had been the only one to see Uncle Snake take the pebbles from his waist pouch as he danced. Had no one else glimpsed that furtive motion? The other boys remained entranced. No, they had seen nothing. Then Snake sank to the ground in ritual conclusion. The boys drummed their feet on the ground in appreciation.
    Snake’s single eye peered up, locked with Frog’s.
    Uncle Snake knew that Frog knew.
    And Frog knew that if he said nothing about it, neither would Uncle Snake.
     
    At night they lay back against their skins, and Frog pointed up at the clouds. “It looks like a baobab,” he said.
    Scorpion squinted. “How do you see that?”
    “You cannot see it?” Frog asked. He pointed up at one foamy edge. “The trunk, there. And the edges are branches. And the stars are like shrikes, perched on the branches.”
    For a moment Frog thought that Scorpion understood, might answer with his own discovery. That would be good, to have at least one brother, or stepbrother, who could see what he saw.
    Instead, Scorpion said: “If you are trying to fool me, I will beat you.” Genuine anger made his voice brittle.
    “Perhaps I was mistaken,” Frog said, and stretched upon his hide and tried to sleep.
     
    In the morning, his stepfather let the visiting hunters lead the boys through a variety of rolls and movements designed to stretch and strengthen their bodies, to prepare them for wrestling. “Watch the monkeys when they awaken!” Uncle Snake said as they suffered. “They do not just get up and spring for a sunfruit. They bend and twist and yawn and stretch. Look at the great cats. They stretch before they hunt, and before they lay down, and they are greater killers than men. We must learn from them.” His ravaged face made it impossible to dispute his hard-won knowledge. Some of the other boys thought the wounds were terrifying. Frog found them beautiful.
    So, thought Frog, these were the lessons of the hunt chiefs and the boma fathers. It was good to hear these secrets, the things that men knew. Perhaps when he knew more of them he would no longer be afraid of Scorpion and the larger boys.
    One at a time, Snake wrestled with the newcomers, and they demonstrated how hunters grew strong in the northern bomas. Then they taught the boys. Frog lost more than he won, of course, but he lost “pretty,” which was considered better than winning “ugly,” or without grace, as Scorpion often did. And of that, he was justly proud.
    Afterward, they breakfasted and then left for the hunt, Frog feeling as springy and light as his namesake.
     
    “See this indentation?” Uncle Snake brushed his fingertip against a cloven zebra print at the root of a nettle-bush, stopping it at a tiny break in the smooth, rounded edge. “It means that the