Free Harvest Moon by Krista D Ball Page A

trembling from the nauseating mix of anger and fear. She bit back the disrespectful words that boiled inside her. Hawk Sight was not just her maternal grandmother, but also the band healer and an elder. No one would dare speak back to her, let alone the tribe exile.
    She looked up at the several generations of women around her. The nodding heads and smug looks told her that the threat of starvation was real. She pushed her grandmother’s words out of her mind by grinding the berries perfectly between the two flat rocks.
    “Remember Stoney?”
    Dancing Cat slumped. Hawk Sight never could let things go.
    “She thought she could laze around while we women worked. But when we ran out of food that winter, she was the one left to starve. We don’t need lazy women.”
    “Yes, Nohkom .”
    And on it went for the afternoon, story after miserable story about women who starved to death. It would have been bad enough for just her grandmother to have told the stories. Instead, the others joined in, telling of captured Red Valley, Cree, or Inuit wives who had been left to starve when food stores ran low. All at her grandmother’s say. Hawk Sight might have been a great healer, but she was also cold and merciless in Dancing Cat’s opinion.
    They told the stories to make her work harder, but it had the opposite effect. Her work slowed. She could not stand up for herself against an entire band, but she could refuse to obey the people who threatened to kill her. If they wanted her to die, then they could starve, too.
    Dancing Cat shook her head, shocked at herself for even thinking such a thought. Perhaps she deserved her title, after all. Only the Cursed One would be so disrespectful towards her elders.
    “I will fetch water,” she said, picking up the small basket of empty water bladders in the middle of the circle. None of the women acknowledged her.
    She dragged her feet to the river, past the elk-hide tepees and the five wooden structures drying buckskin. A colt followed her for several steps until she stopped to scratch it between the ears. He nuzzled her belly before taking off to eat. A pang of longing pricked Dancing Cat’s heart. The colt was the offspring of her messenger horse. Her former horse, she reminded herself.
    Smoke filled the air throughout the camp, though it was thickest along the northern edge where the fire pits dried the berries and deer meat. She coughed and rubbed her watery eyes.
    The smoke created a wall between the river and the watchful eyes of her people. For that, she was grateful. A moment’s peace was rare for Dancing Cat, and she treasured the moments in case they became her last.
    She slipped out of her boots and waded into the calf-deep steam. Frothing cold water slammed against her bare skin. She looked to the west, towards its source, squinting against the descending sun. One of her first messages was to a band of her people in the western mountains, who trapped wolverines and cougars there. She peered towards the south with a sigh. She had been in the lands of their rivals, Red Valley, several times. She loved their wide open plains.
    The only place she had never been was north, to see the isolated Inuit. It had been a hope that she would see their ice-covered world. Now, she was lucky ever to leave the clutches of her band. Unlike those who cursed her, she knew exactly what she had lost. Taking away the honour to ride took away the freedom and lust for life that she had once had.
    As she filled up each dried deer bladder, she dreamed about the water sweeping her away to the next life. Perhaps the next existence was better than this one.
    Motion caught her eye, and she squinted against the afternoon sun. She gasped. By the tree line, not ten steps away, her tribe’s sacred bundle dangled from a wooden trivet. It swung gently in the breeze. She assumed the Caretaker had moved it out of his tepee in preparation for the Harvest Gathering.
    Dancing Cat frowned. She was banned from the festival.